Unemployment during the Great Depression

During the Great Depression, unemployment in Canada soared, and there was no security net. To reduce unemployment, the government passed laws that increased funding for public works and provided direct relief, on which more than a million and a half Canadians depended. Despite these measures the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high: by 1933 it had reached 27 per cent, on par with the United States. The work camps set up in 1932 for unemployed single men were becoming hotbeds of discontent, giving rise to the On-to-Ottawa trek in particular, the most significant protest movement of the depression. In 1940 the federal government introduced unemployment insurance.