That such a pattern has not characterized Canadian economic development can be laid to the historical role of Canadian capitalist economic elites, concentrated in central Canada, who facilitated the transference of the surplus created in hinterland areas to central Canada and the U.S. Sectors.

Furthermore, the pattern of uneven sectorial development in Canada cannot be considered to have been inevitable. According to Clement, a quite different pattern emerged In other Western nations:

The decline of the primary sector is not an uncommon phenomenon in industrialized nations. Typically, however, it results in a rise in the secondary sector and only much later in an expansion of the tertiary (service) sector. In Canada the decline of the primary sector is matched by a rise in the tertiary sector, and remains unchanged in the secondary sector.39

As we have seen, the failure of the secondary manufacturing sector to grow, with all of the severe consequences of this for the labour market in Canada, can be laid to the continuing dominance of commercial, financial, and transportation interests in the Canadian capitalist class, and their function as dependent middlemen in the takeover of the primary and secondary sectors by U.S. economic elites after World War II.

Technological Change

Finally, the introduction of labour-saving technology in the primary extractive sector need not have led to the creation of a large unemployed and underemployed surplus population even allowing for the low level of educational attainment, of the Canadian workforce. Labour-saving technology could have been employed instead to reduce the burden of work and reduce the length of the working day for hinterland workers. However, in the context of the on-going competitive struggle among capitalists, labour-saving technology is seen in only one light--as a means of replacing workers and lowering the wage bill.

Workers have often resisted this pattern of technological change which occurs at their expense. Employers and the capitalist-controlled media refer to such options with pejorative terms like "featherbedding". An example of this is provided in the railroad industry, in which workers have had some success in controlling the pace and consequences of technological change. James O'Connor observes: