Canada: 20th Century Developments

Canada entered the twentieth century as a young confederation still finding its place within the British Empire, but the two world wars proved formative in shaping a distinct national identity. Under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, the country experienced strong economic growth and immigration in the years before 1911, and its contributions on the battlefields of the First World War strengthened its claim to greater autonomy from Britain, formalized in the Statute of Westminster of 1931.

The Great Depression tested the country's economic and political institutions, but it was the Second World War that transformed the role of government in Canadian life. Wartime mobilization expanded federal authority over the economy, and in 1944 the government created the Family Allowance program, the country's first universal social welfare benefit.

In the decades after 1945, Canada built out a broader welfare state, including public health insurance, while its economy diversified through manufacturing and resource industries. By the century's end, Canada had developed a reputation as a stable, prosperous middle power with a strong social safety net and an increasingly multicultural society.