Watkins, Mel

Melville (Mel) Henry Watkins (1932-2020) was a Professor Emeritus of the Departments of Economics and Political Science at the University of Toronto, where he researched and taught on the subject of Canadian economic history and the nature of Canada’s political economy. In addition to his academic appointment, Watkins was co-leader (along with James Laxer) of The Waffle (1969-1972), a movement within the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Watkins was born on 15 May 1932 in McKellar, Ontario. At the age of 16, he enrolled at the University of Toronto, alongside his twin brother Murray, receiving a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1952. He pursued graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and returned to the U of T in 1958, first as a Lecturer, then Assistant Professor (1962), Associate Professor (1965), and Professor (1970).

Watkins had a lifelong interest in the work of Harold Innis and his staples thesis, and in 1963 published an article “A Staple Theory of Economic Growth” that would modernize Innis’ ideas and apply them to a postwar context, in which Canada had an unbalanced reliance on natural resources exploitation and foreign investment. Watkins would write about Innis’ ideas throughout his career, in addition to writing about the impact of multinational corporations and foreign investment on the Canadian economy, and the implications of Canada’s resource-based pattern of development for indigenous communities, particularly in the North.

In 1967, at the behest of Walter Gordon, a minister in the federal cabinet, Watkins was appointed head of the federal Task Force on the Structure of Canadian Industry. The federal government at the time was concerned with the impact of high levels of foreign investment on the development of the Canadian economy. The Task Force’s report, known colloquially as the “Watkins Report”, led to the establishment of the Canada Development Corporation to help facilitate greater Canadian ownership and the Foreign Investment Review Agency to regulate foreign ownership.

Watkins’ concern for Canada’s economic sovereignty led him to co-found the Waffle, a wing of the New Democratic Party that called for an increase in public ownership of the economy as a means of securing Canadian independence from the United States. The group was expelled from the NDP in 1972 and went on to form its own party, the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada, but by 1974 had disbanded.

In addition to his teaching and writing activities, Watkins was active in several other social and political causes, in which he gave talks and served as a consultant. In the mid-1970s, Watkins worked as an economic advisor to the Dene Nation during the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. He was also active in 1980s and 1990s in the opposition movement to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and subsequent North American Free Trade Agreement. He would eventually rejoin the NDP and run as the NDP candidate in the riding of Beaches-East York in the 1997 and 2000 federal elections. Upon his retirement from the University of Toronto, he continued to lecture and write, participate in peace and anti-nuclear groups such as Science for Peace and Pugwash Canada.

In 2005 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree from the University of Guelph and in 2019 he was named a member of the Order of Canada. He died in Ottawa on April 2, 2020.

The way archival record creators identify themselves and are identified by others is key to understanding the perspectives and content of their records. Mel Watkins was a Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual man. This information was provided by Watkins' spouse.

• E. Sommers, June 2024, version 1, as part of the Mel Watkins fonds finding aid

• "In Memoriam: Mel Watkins", University of Toronto Department of Economics Newsletter, Fall 2020

• Valpy, Michael. "Prominent socialist intellectual Mel Watkins believed in a political philosophy of compassion" The Globe and Mail, 10 April 2020

• Wikipedia contributors, "Mel Watkins," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (accessed April 15, 2024).

• Wolfe, David. "Remembering Mel Watkins (1932-2020)", University of Toronto Department of Political Science website, 6 April 2020