The subjects inquired into by Canadian federal royal commissions have ranged over such a wide field that the reports and special studies prepared by the 400 commissions since Confederation have become an essential part of any research in Canadian studies. In many cases the special studies which are always prepared by the best experts available stand as the most important works ever to appear on a given subject. For example, the studies used by the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (1937-1940) are still used as required reading in both graduate and undergraduate university courses almost thirty years later. In the author's work as Government Documents Librarian, he witnesses the daily use of royal commission material. The importance attached to royal commission documents and the considerable difficulty in locating many of the earlier reports let Henderson to undertake the compilation of this checklist four years ago.

"Report of the Dominion fishery commission on the fisheries of the province of Ontario, 1893", issued as an addendum to vol. 26, no. 7.

The Canadian Public Service is now so large that it employs over ten per cent of Canada's labour force, and among its many boards, commissions, and corporations there is a constant juggling of conventional departmental portfolios in an effort to keep pace with changing public priorities. As these bureaucracies penetrate our lives more and more, there is increasing need for a study which describes and explains them. This book is the first to offer the necessary clarification. It says nothing about public servants themselves; rather it focuses on the physiognomy and physiology of the structures in which they work and through which programmes are allocated, work distributed, and policy decisions made for all of Canada. It also examines the way in which environmental forces have helped to shape our so-called administrative culture, as well as the monumental difficulties that are involved in co-ordinating the administration of this vast country, three-quarters of whose public service concerns are located outside the capital. It concludes that all of our public organizations, the public service has proven the most responsive to the forces of change, but that it has been so caught up in structural and managerial adaptation that its capacity to concern itself with substantive policy issues has been subverted.

"Report of the Dominion fishery commission on the fisheries of the province of Ontario, 1893", issued as vol. 26, no. 7, supplement.

In 1908, after decades of struggling with a public administration undermined by systemic patronage, the Canadian parliament decided that public servants would be selected on the basis of merit, through a system administered by an independent agency: the Public Service Commission of Canada. This history, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Commission, recounts its unique contribution to the development of an independent public service, which has become a pillar of Canadian parliamentary democracy.