Historians will probably mark the 1950's as the period in which the economists' two-decade preoccupation with stability gave way to a revival of their long-run and continuing preoccupation with economic growth. If they do, they will be under obligation to explain the coincidence of economists' renewed interest in growth and the economic affluence attained by those societies which produced most of them. Why should economists of the Western world assign primacy to growth and at the same time voice concern that most of their fellow citizens already earn larger incomes than they can dispose of intelligently? An obvious explanation, but not necessarily a full explanation, is that in the mid-twentieth century economists have become very much aware of the political interdependency of nations. The growing economic strength of the Soviet Union and Communist China, and the poverty and illiteracy of new African and Asian nations, not the low income of Mississippi dirt farmers, Belgian coal miners, and Sicilian fruit pickers, spark the interest of Western economists in economic growth. Growth rates otherwise sufficient to produce consumer affluence in Western countries may not in prevailing political circumstances assure this affluence and adequate defence, supremacy in space technology, and large aid programmes to underdeveloped countries.

The first report of the Borden Commission appeared in October, 1958. It dealt with the transmission, export and regulation of natural gas, and with the financing of Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited. Very little was said about the transportation and export of crude oil. This second report is designed to fill the gap. It deals with “the policies which the Commission believes will best serve the national interest in relation to the export of crude oil and the marketing of crude oil within Canada itself.”

On the model of their first report, the Commissioners start out by comparing reserves and potential output with future Canadian needs. But while they could regard natural gas as a limited stock of energy avidly desired by the United States market, they soon found that Canadian crude, like Canadian coal, had become excessively abundant. The United States and the rest of the world were so far from scheming to get hold of Canadian crude oil that they might even have been relieved if Canada had never found it. Even while the Commission sat, the situation deteriorated further. Those who sought approval of Canada's recently gained export markets along the Transprovincial pipeline in the American middle west, and in the Puget Sound area on the west coast, were replaced by those pleading for new Canadian markets to replace a falling export demand.