A policy or institution is often objected to on the ground that it interferes with freedom. Yet even where a policy is shown to have certain effects, it is frequently far from clear whether these effects constitute a diminution of freedom. To clear up the matter, many thinkers have tried to elucidate “the meaning of freedom.” Most who have made such an attempt have missed the mark through including within “the meaning of freedom” other things which they regard as desirable besides freedom itself. It is notorious that many who attempt to say what art is tell us only what they regard as good art. Many who try to define “law” fail to give an account applicable to bad laws as well as good laws. Recently a few attempts have been made to avoid this sort of pitfall in elucidating what is meant by the familiar word “freedom.” The latest and most ambitious attempt at this is made by F. E. Oppenheim in his book Dimensions of Freedom.

If a man has freedom, he is free. Yet if someone is not free on a certain evening, we should not say on that account that he is lacking freedom. “Freedom” is not simply the substantive corresponding to the adjective “free,” as “redness” corresponds to “red.” We speak of a room as being free of dust, of a lawn as free of weeds, of milk as free of impurities. The adjective “free” is applicable in many contexts in which the substantive “freedom” is not. Freedom is literally asserted only of human beings, whether singly or in groups. When applied elsewhere, as in speaking of a tiger recovering its freedom or “freedom of the will,” it is used only metaphorically, on analogy to its literal use. Yet “freedom” is clearly also not the substantive that corresponds to the adjective “free” whenever this adjective is applied to human beings.

This paper presents estimates of the relative importance of Canadian-controlled and non-resident-controlled firms in the exploration for and discovery of petroleum (including natural gas) in western Canada for the years 1946 to 1954, and offers a tentative explanation of the difference in performance of the two groups in terms of the relative sizes of the firms involved. This hypothesis tends to minimize the importance of non-resident control per se in explaining the dominant role of foreign-controlled firms in the early postwar expansion of this industry. If it provides a valid interpretation of this particularly important case it would lend limited support to a more general thesis, namely, that the apparently leading role played by non-resident-controlled firms in Canadian resource developments in the late 1940's and 1950's was due in the main, not to superior entrepreneurial talent or access to superior technological skills, but rather to readier access to massive capital resources. The study therefore has a twofold interest. It is primarily a study of the relationship between size and economic performance in one type of economic activity generally recognized as inherently highly risky. At the same time, however, it makes a minor contribution to the analysis of the role of non-resident-controlled firms in the expansion of the Canadian economy in the late 1940's and early 1950's.

For many years the defence of the giant corporation and oligopoly has been rooted in the argument that both were the product of a technology that requires large-scale enterprises for efficient production. In brief, the economies of mass production are supposed to give rise to optimum-scale firms that are too large, relative to the size of markets, to permit the large numbers of sellers needed to minimize monopoly powers over prices and production.

Although still possessing many adherents, this defence of the giant corporation and oligopoly has recently fallen from favour, perhaps mainly for lack of empirical support, but probably also for other reasons that need not be examined here. In its place has come a new defence. The large oligopolistic corporations, we are now told, have become the principal sources of research and development, and thus of the technological progress which is the backbone of economic growth.