The Wartime Prices and Trade Board is a former Canadian government agency, established on September 3, 1939, by the Mackenzie King government, under the authority of the War Measures Act, in the Department of Labour responsible for price controls and inflation control.
A chairman, Donald Gordon, was appointed in November 1941 and became a highly public figure at the time.
[citation needed] The scope of the Board's mandate was very broad, covering: In 1942, the Board was charged with reducing non-essential industrial activity to minimum requirements, in order to help concentrate employment in more essential sectors.
[3] The board employed over 6,000 people (of which many of the public service administrators worked for only $1 a day), plus 16,000 women volunteers who were on Women's Regional Advisory Committees responsible for rationing, labeling, clothing conservation, housing shortages, and price checking.
This latter initiative inspired the postwar creation of the Consumers' Association of Canada[4] The Board's regulatory actions were compiled in a series of volumes during the wartime period: Though initially the popularity of the Board was high, gradually, it lost some popularity.