Dr. A.E. Safarian was professor of economics at the University of Toronto. After graduating with a degree in political economy from the University of Toronto, he worked on compiling and analyzing data on Canada’s international transactions as a statistician with the Dominion Bureau of Statistics from 1950-1955. He received his PhD in economics in 1956 from the University of California, Berkeley. Safarian then joined the faculty at the University of Saskatchewan. In the same year, he worked with the Royal Commission on Canada’s Economic Prospects to prepare a study of foreign investment in Canada. He began working at the University of Toronto in 1966. His most recent work at the time of his talk was the book Foreign Ownership of Canadian Industry, an investigation into the behaviour of branch plants in Canada. He also wrote The Canadian Economy in the Great Depression, a study of the country’s worst period of economic failure. Both of these books have multiple editions, being reissued regularly as their central questions reappear in the Canadian political landscape.
Safarian’s lecture, “Approaches to Foreign Ownership” focused particularly on the question of Canadian nationalism.
