1903-07-14

Mr. F. D. MONK (Jacques Cartier) moved :: 
The PRIME MINISTER (Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier).: Explain.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I wish to give some explanation in regard to this motion. These explanations are somewhat useless to those members of the Railway Committee who have attended the discussion of this Bill ; but I must give the explanation in order to enlighten the House and obtain the favour of this motion. The Ottawa Valley Railway Company was incorporated several years ago, somewhere in the seventies, I think or 'eighties, and began operations by constructing a line from Lachine to St. Andrews. It operated that line for a certain time, when the line was found not to be a paying one and the railway was subsequently transferred, I believe, under some agreement, to the secretary-treasurer of the municipality, who operated it for a certain time. The company applied this year to parliament for power to extend this line from St. Andrews down through the county of Argenteuil by St. Placide, St. Benoit and St. Eustache, crossing a part of the county of Laval and part of the county of Jacques Cartier into the city of Montreal. When the Bill, which was a very simple one- for the line of railway does not extend for more than about forty miles-came up for consideration, several objections were raised. One was that there was a previous charter in favour of another company. But the merit of that objection was not very long sustained. There was, in fact some time before confederation-in 1856, if I mistake not-an Act passed by the old province of Canada, which was subsequently am'ended in 1859-having reference to the Mr. WILSON.
Carillon and Grenville Railway Company, giving that company power to construct a line through the county of Argenteuil, thence to some point in the county of Jacques Cartier near Point Claire or Lachine. The objection based upon this charter was not discovered to be well founded for two reasons. In the first place, the charter has become obsolete. There is no doubt about that. The company organized when the late Sir John Abbott was a young man. and never prosecuted its work and had manifested no intention of carrying the line down in the direction of Montreal. Furthermore, what rights it might have were possessed by the Ottawa River Navigation Company; which Jiad only availed itself of these rights in order to make the connection between Grenville and Carillon and enable the navigation company to overcome the obstacle in its route between Ottawa and Montreal offered by the Grenville rapids. I say that that objection was easily disposed of. Well, the line contemplated, even in 1859 or 1856, as the case may be, went in the direction of Pointe Claire, or in the direction of Lachine, and not at all along the line contemplated by the present statute, which was through St. Placide, St. Benoit, St. Eustache, across Rivifire des Prairies, through the counties of Laval and Jacques Cartier, and into the city of Montreal itself. I will not further detain the House with that objection, which, as I understood, was disposed of at once.
A more serious objection was raised founded upon the Canadian Statutes of 1894. In these statutes, under chapter 63, is found an Act respecting the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway, and without going into details of that Act, it is sufficient to say, for the purpose of my present argument, that that Act sanctions an agreement entered into between what I may call the celebrated Atlantic and Lake Superior Railroad, and this very railway company, the Ottawa Valley Railway, and under the terms of that agreement, which is schedule D of the Act, chapter 63, of 57-58 Victoria, it would seem that the Ottawa Valley Railway Company had transferred all its rights, powers and franchises to the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company in order to form one of its lines. When that objection was raised I was not prepared to meet it, but delay was given in order that the matter could be looked into as to whether the Ottawa Valley Railway Company really existed any more. In the agreement there were various conditions. The Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway was to transfer, within a delay of sixty days to the Ottawa Valley Railway, as a condition of its acquisition by the first named railway, a certain amount of bonds, a certain amount of shares and a certain amount in cash; failing which transfer within sixty days the agreement, to use the very terms of the schedule, would be null and void, and of no effect. It there-

fore became important to know whether that part of the agreement had been carried out, failing which the whole agreement became null and void and ceased to be in any way an objection against obtaining the powers which we sought by this Act. Proof was given that the agreement had not been carried out, and that therefore it was null and void and could not be invoked against our present application. It is necessary for me to point out that the proof was very complete. It consists in a certificate of the secretary treasurer of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway, a party to that agreement, and formulated in the present terms : I hereby certify that the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company did not within the delays mentioned in the agreement entered into with the Ottawa Valley Railway Company, on April 16. 1884, or at any time since making any payment or tender of payment on account of the purchase price mentioned in said agreement, either in cash, shares or bonds or otherwise, nor has the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company ever claimed or had possession of said Ottawa Valley Railway or any part thereof.
Then there was a letter from the president of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway to the Hon. J. P. B. Casgrain, who is the attorney of the trustees and of the bondholders of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway. In a letter dated the 2nd of July instant, he writes as follows :
Dear Sir,-The question having arisen as to the title of the Ottawa Valley Railway, I am desirous of learning from you at the earliest possible moment whether the trustees which you represent intend to take any steps towards claiming possession of that line.
As you are aware, the line was purchased by this company in 1894, but the conditions of purchase were not carried out by this company and nothing has been paid to the Ottawa Valley Company. Our company has always wished to carry out its obligations but circumstances have prevented it from doing so. Possession has never been taken of the Ottawa Valley Line, and the principal holder of the bonds of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company assures me that they have no intention of taking any steps towards claiming the property as he does not consider that under the circumstances such steps would in any way benefit the bondholders, if you do not intend to take immediate steps towards claiming possession, the company will do what is considered best in its interests by cancelling the agreement of purchase or as it may be advised. Yours truly,
J. R. THIBAUDEAU, President, Atlantic & Lake Superior Railway Co. On behalf of the Hon. J. P. B. Casgrain, on the 2nd of July, to the Hon. Mr. Thi-baudeau, the following letter was sent: Dear Sir.-We are instructed by the attorney and representative of trustees for the bondholders of the Atlantic land Lake Superior Railway Company, to acknowledge receipt of your letter of this date, and to inform you that he has no instructions from the trustees to act in the matter of the Ottawa Valley Railway Company.	Yours faihfully,
McGIBBON, CASGRAIN, RYAN & MITCHELL,
Acting for the trustees for the bondholders.
Mr. McMullen, I may mention, Mr. Speaker, is the president of the Ottawa Valley Railway Company, and on the 2nd of July instant, being in Montreal, he also wrote to the Hon. J. P. B. Casgrain, representative of the bondholders of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company. These letters were addressed to the Hon. Mr. Casgrain, because he Is at present the only representative of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company, acting, as he does, for the bondholders. This letter says :
Dear Sir,-A statement having been made before the Railway Committee of the House of Commons that the Ottawa Valley Railway was the property of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company, under virtue of the deed of agreement between the two companies ratified by the parliament of Canada in 1894, I wish to call your attention to the last clause of that agreement, which provides that the agreement shall be null and void if the purchase price was not paid within sixty days of the ratification of the agreement. No payment of any kind in shares, bonds or cash was ever made and the agreement became null and void and no possession was ever claimed by the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company.
The Ottawa Valley Railway Company would be pleased to transfer its line even now if the Atlantic Company were prepared to pay for it. but without, such preliminary action you can well understand that neither the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company or its bondholders will be allowed to take possession or be in any way recognized as having any rights whatever in connection with this railway.
Yours truly, edgar mcmullen,
President, O. V. R, Co.
On the 2nfi of July an answer was sent on behalf of the trustee for the bondholders in the following terms :
Montreal, July 2, 1903.
Edgar McMullen, Esq.,
President Ottawa Valley Railway Company, Montreal.
Dear Sir,-We are instructed by the attorney and representative of the trustees for the bondholders of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company to acknowledge receipt of your letter of this date and to inform you that he has no instructions from the trustees to act in the matter of the Ottawa Valley Railway Company,
We remain, faithfully yours, McGIBBON, CASGRAIN, RYAN & MITCHELL.
This was more than sufficient to establish that this agreement entered into in 1894 by the Ottawa Valley Railway Company, or this offer, because it was only an offer practically, to transfer these assets and this franchise to the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company never had any force or effect. There could he no doubt about that anyway, because, upon the allegation made by us that the transfer was never carried into effect, that the cash was never paid, that the bonds or shares were never handed over it would have been the duty of the opponents of this measure to establish that the agreement invoked against us was in


Mr. CHARLES MARCIL (Bonaventure).: I deem it proper to explain why I took objection to this Bill from the very begin-ing. I find in the annual report of the Department of Railways and Canals the statement that the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway comprises the Baie des Chaleurs Railway; the Montreal Bridge Company; the Great Eastern Railway; and the Ottawa Valley Railway Company. The Baie des Chaleurs Railway runs through my constituency, and its history is familiar to this House, familiar to this country and more especially to the electors whom I have the honour to represent. The scandalous transactions in connection with the Baie des Chaleurs Railway in the past are too numerous to be rehearsed now. The Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway is merely a new name for the old concern. There is at the present time as far as we can ascertain, some $300,000 due to the people of Bonaventure, both Conservatives and Liberals, for right of way, labour and material supplied, and this money is due to poor people for the most part. When I saw that an application was made to this House to revive the Ottawa \ alley charter which is comprised in this Atlantic and Lake Superior scheme,
I thought it was my duty to my constituents to see that this Ottawa Valley line was not taken out of the Atlantic and Lake Superior system and put into another corporation, for the reason that the claims which the people of Bonaventure have are against the entire Atlantic and Lake Superior system which, as I have stated, comprised originally the Baie des Chaleurs section, the



Great Eastern Railway section, the Montreal Bridge section, and the Ottawa \ alley section; the whole forming links in a chain of railway which was to extend from Gaspd Basin to Sault Ste. Marie. The charter has lapsed; this House has refused with full knowledge to revive the charter of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company. These debts remain unpaid and now an attempt is made to take out portions of this road, to give it new life, to turn it into an electric railway and to give it an entrance into the city of Montreal. The arguments advanced to the House by the member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) have been laid before the committee by him on two occasions. To-day, seventy-two members were present in the committee when the vote was taken, and by yeas and nays the majority declared that the case presented for this application was not a favourable one. I protest in my own name and in the name of the people I represent against the taking of the Ottawa Valley section out of the Atlantic and Lake Superior system until that concern has satisfied the legitimate debts which are due to mv constituents. As long as this official report of the Railways and Canals Department of Canada shows that the Ottawa Valley section remains a portion of the Atlantic and Lake Superior system, no letter from Mr. Globensky, the secretary of the Ottawa Valley Company, and no letter from Senator Thibaudeau of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company has weight against the official document which is in possession of members of this House.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Charles Marcil: So far as Mr. Armstrong is concerned, I may say that if X were to undertake to sketch before this House his doings in the county of Bonaventure, I would occupy most of the afternoon. But I consider that above him I owe a duty to my county, and it was for that reason that I took the stand which I did, and which I was glad to see ratified by the majority of the Railway Committee.


Mr. J. E. LEONARD (Laval.) (Translation).: 
The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES (Hon. Raymond Prefontaine).: There were more than sentimental reasons which guided the committee this morning in deciding as it did on this measure. There are legal objections which in my mind are fatal to the Bill. The first objection is this, that by 55-56 Victoria, chapter 54, the Ottawa Valley Railway Company was incorporated. Under the general Railway Act the company had two years within which to commence its operations and seven years to finish them. This time has expired, and only seven miles of the railway are built, between St. Andrews and Lachute. These seven miles are not in operation, but quite the contrary ; they have been stripped of the rails, and there is only the roadbed left. The first section of that Act of incorporation gives the names of the incorporators : Charles N. Armstrong, W. C. E. Phillips. Robert Watson. Archibald Campbell and A. C. AVurtele. These gentlemen were constituted a company to construct the road. Section 3 provided :
The company may lay out, construct and operate a railway of the gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches from St. Andrews to Carillon. and from Grenville to a point at or near Calumet on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the undertaking hereby authorized is declared to be a work for the general advantage of Canada.
It is clearly shown by this Act that the construction of this railway was purely and simply a local matter. It is a piece of railway situated entirely in the province of Quebec, and mostly in the county of Ar-gentenil. As I have stated, seven miles of the railway were built between St. Andrews and Lachute, with money received from the parish of St. Andrews, 810,000, and subsidies received from the provincial government and the federal government. In IS94 an Act was passed by this parliament, 57-58 Victoria, chapter 63, by which an agreement entered into between the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company with the Ottawa Valley Railway Company, by which all the rights and privileges of the Ottawa Valley Railway Company were transferred to the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company, was ratified by parliament. Section 2 of that Act provides :
The agreements made and entered into by the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company, for the purchase or lease of the Baie des Chaleurs Railway, the Great Eastern Railway, the Ottawa Valley Railway, and the Montreal bridge, and which are set out in the schedules to this Act, are hereby confirmed and made valid, so far as the respective parties thereto are concerned, and shall in all courts and places be taken and be held to be legal, valid and binding in all respects whatsoever upon the respective parties thereto.
The agreement is incorporated in the Act ns schedule D. So that by that Act the Ottawa Valley Railway Company ceased to exist. It would have ceased to exist according to the genera] Railway Act in seven years after incorporation, that is to say, in 1899. Well, what was to be done ? If these gentlemen who bought out the rights of Mr. Armstrong had really intended to construct this railway it would have 'been very easy for them to have asked for a new Act or an Act to revive the Act of 1892. They are not doing that by this Bill

quite the contrary. They assume by the Bill which was thrown out by the committee this morning that the Ottawa Valley Railway Company is still in existence. They assume, therefore, that they can go on and build. By the first clause of the Bill it is clearly shown what their intention is :
The Ottawa Valley Railway Company, hereinafter called ' the company,' may extend its line from St. Andrews to the city of Montreal, passing through the counties of Argenteuil, Two Mountains. Laval and Jacques Cartier ; and may also build branch lines to St. Cdme and to connect with the Canada Atlantic Railway.
It may be asked, what is the reason that, instead of asking for an Act to revive the charter of 1892, they have proceeded in this way ? The reason is very clear. It is this, that by the original Act, 55-56 Victoria, Chapter 54. the Ottawa Valley Railway Company was authorized to buy the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company, and instead of that, it was the Atlantic and Lake Superior

Company that bought the Ottawa Valley Railway Company so that by assuming to keep this charter in force, they make it appear that the Ottawa Valley Railway Company will buy the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company. These facts seem extraordinary, but they are not extraordinary to anybody who knows anything about Mr. C. N. Armstrong, who is the mainspring of this fake charter. It is not stated in the Bill where the railway is going to run except in a general way. All that is given is the indefinite information that it is to run through these counties. But everybody knows well that the counties of Argenteuil, Jacques Cartier, Two Mountains and Laval are provided with railways. Of course there is not a railway through every parish, but traversing these counties are the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada Atlantic Railway, Great Northern and the TJnion Jacques Cartier. Besides these, there are electric roads to Montreal from points nearest that city, such as the county of Jacques Cartier. These reasons no doubt had some weight in the opinion of the committee this morning, since it rejected the Bill. But my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) says that the agreement of 1894 was never carried out, and he bases that statement on a certificate to that effect by Mr. Globensky. Well, whether it was carried out or not is a legal question, which, in the opinion of the committee, will have to be decided by the courts. What we have before us is the fact that in the reports of the railway department since 1894, the Ottawa Valley Railway has always been considered as having been merged in the Atlantic and Lake Superior system, and the proof of that is the sworn declaration made year after year by the Hon. J. R. Tliibau-deau, president of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company. Against this evidence we have only this certificate of Mr. Globensky. Such a certificate is not the best proof. Surely there should be minutes of the meetings of the board of directors of this Ottawa Valley Railway Company, surely there should be some documents to show that they put the Atlantic and Lake Superior Railway Company into default to carry out the agreement stipulated in the statute 57-58 Victoria. But no such proof has been produced before the committee. For these two reasons, this Bill has no legal standing before the House. Such was the decision of the Railway Committee this morning. You cannot take away the rights of the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company to this property, nor can you take away the rights of its creditors. Since 1894 the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company have issued bonds on which certain people have advanced money. These people have not been paid, and a part of their security consists in this privilege of continuing this piece of road and in the seven miles constructed. They are also a guarantee to the creditors who are not


Hon. Mr. PREFONTAINE.: bondholders. It is well known that there are in the hands of the Railway and Canals Department at present outstanding claims by labourers, boarding-house keepers, contractors, &c., to the amount of $300,000 against this comjiany. How could it be possible, after the Atlantic and Lake Superior Company have bought this Ottawa Valley Railway Company and issued bonds on that part of the road and contracted debts- how could it be possible for parliament to take away this Ottawa Valley Railway from the system of the Atlantic and Lake Superior, constitute it an independent company, and give it the right to buy back the Atlantic and Lake Superior ? Under the circumstances, there is no cause at all for complaint. If the gentlemen interested in building a railway in that part of the country want to get a charter, it is easier for them to get it by coming to this House than by going to Mr. Armstrong and buying his pretended rights.
As regards Mr. McMullen, I have nothing to say against him, but he has told me that he bought out the rights of Mr. Armstrong, conditionally on a charter being granted, so that Mr. McMullen will not pay anything, because the shares which he has got are worth nothing. But if he wants a charter himself, all he has to do is to make a regular application just as anybody else would do. Reference has been made to my relations with Mr. Armstrong. The hon. member for Jacques Cartier has said that I have been Mr. Armstrong's intimate friend. I beg to deny that in toto, unless you would call an intimate friend a man who tries to ruin you. I, however, am not disposed to call an intimate friend a man who takes my money and will not pay it back. My connection with Mr. Armstrong consists in this, that I was dragged into endorsing a paper for railway enterprises in which he was interested, and beginning with $1,000 and $2,000, I got dragged into the extent of over Vio,000.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: How much did he lose with the hon. minister ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE A.: ,.) FISHERIES. He could never lose anything. He never had a cent to lose in his life. To my knowledge he has judgments against him to the extent of $900,000. He is a very clever man, who can fool men who consider themselves more clever than they are, and he has taken in many people in that way. I am one of his victims, and I am still trying to recoup myself some $25,000 or $26,000 due me by him.


Mr. BENNETT.: Give him a contract.


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: The connection I have with him is due simply to what I have said and I do not want to have anything more to do with him. I wish I had never had anything to do with him, and a great many people

are in the same position. The people of the Baie Des Chaleurs and the south shore of the St. Lawrence wish they had never anything to do with him and his fake enterprises.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: How about the South Shore?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: What does the hon. gentleman mean ? He had nothing to do with the South Shore. He had something to do with the Montreal and Sorel Railway. He built that railway with subsidies from both governments and money borrowed in England, and never paid anybody. That railway was finally sold by the sheriff. I had nothing to do with it except to try and get the farmers paid for the land he had taken from them to make farm crossings. That Montreal and Sorel line was bought by the South Shore Railway Company, in which company I was not even a shareholder. So I do not know what the hon. gentleman wishes the House to infer when he speaks about the South Shore. That is a railway from which I am trying now to collect legitimate debts for which I have a judgment. For these reasons, and not at all because Mr. Armstrong is connected with it-though that would be sufficient, but the other reasons are stronger than that-I think the House will stand by the decision of the committee.
House divided on motion of Mr. Monk.
TEAS :
Carbonneau.
Champagne,
Charlton,
Copp,
Costigan,
Davis.
Delisle.
Demers (Levis), Emmerson,
Ethier,
Fielding,
Fisher,
Fitzpatrick,
Fortier,
Fraser,
Gallery,
Gauvreau.
Geoffrion.
German,
Gibson,
Girard,
Gould.
Harwood,
Heyd,
Holmes,
Hughes (King's, P.E.I.), Hyman,
Johnston (Cape Breton), Lang,
Laurier (Sir Wilfrid), Laurier (L'Assomption), Law,
LeBlanc,
Lemieux,
Lewis,
Motion negatived.
Malouin,
Marcil (Bagot),
Marcil (Bonaventure), Matheson,
Meigs,
Mignault.
Monet.
Morrison,
Mulock (Sir William), Oliver.
Paterson.
Prefontaine.
Proulx.
Puttee.
Reid (Restigouche), Roche (Halifax),
Ross (Ontario),
Ross (Rimouski),
Ross (Victoria, N.S.), Russell.
Schell.
Scott.
Sifton.
Smith (Vancouver), Stephens.
Sutherland (Essex), Sutherland (Oxford), Talbot,
Thompson (Haldimand and Monck),
Tolmie,
Tucker.
"Wade.
Wallace.
Wright.-87.



FISHERIES ACT AMENDMENT.

[Stage Direction]
Messieurs
Alcorn,	Kaulbach,
Ball.	Kidd,
Barker,	Lancaster,
Bell,	Leonard.
Bennett.	MacLaren (Huntingdon)
Blain.	MacLaren (Perth),
Borden (Halifax),	Maclean.
Brock,	McGowan,
Broder,	McIntosh,
Bruce.	Monk.
Cargill,	Morin.
Christie,	Northrup,
Clancy,	Osier,
Clare.	Pope,
Clarke.	Richardson.
Culbert,	Robinson (Elgin),
Dugas,	Rosamond,
Earle.	Sproule.
Fowler,	Tarte.
Gilmour.	Tisdale,
Gourley,	Tolton.
Hackett,	Vrooman.
Haggart,	Ward
Hale.	Wilmot, , [DOT]
Henderson, Ingram,	Wilson.-51.
 NAYS : Messieurs
Angers,	Logan,
Beith,	Loy,
Belcourt.	Macdonald,
Bernier.	Mackie.
Borden (Sir Frederick), MacKinnon, Bourassa,	Macoherson.
Bruneau.	McGugan,
Calvert;	Mclsaac,
Campbell,	McLennan,
The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES (Hon. Raymond Prgfontaine) moved for leave to introduce Bill (No. 224) to amend the Fisheries Act.
Mr. R. L. BORDEN (Halifax).: Will the hon. gentleman (Hon. Mr. Prefontaine) be good enough to state briefly the purport of the Bill ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: The Bill has three purposes. The first is to allow the use of explosives in the killing of whales and animals of that kind; the second to provide that the Minister of Marine and Fisheries shall be authorized to license the use of purse seines in the waters of the Pacific ocean; and the third to allow, by Order in Council, the use of trap-nets. This is the result of the work of a commission which was appointed a year or so ago.


Robert Laird Borden: Has the report of the commission to which the hon. minister referred been laid on the Table and printed ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: It has never been laid on the Table. It is simply information for the department, collected from the different members from British Columbia.


Robert Laird Borden: Is it the intention of the hon. minister to lay the report on the Table in order that we may be in-

formed as to the nature of the suggestions made ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: I suppose-yes, I will.


Mr. E. B. OSLER (West Toronto).: As the minister proposes to bring in a Bill regarding fisheries, I would draw his attention to the fact that under the present system of licensing, salmon fishing in the rivers of Quebec and New Brunswick is practically being destroyed. This government is spending large sums of money every year for the purpose of increasing the fish in these rivers and pi'otecting them. As a matter of fact, as the law stands, fish are decreasing in these rivers year after year.
I can speak from my own experience, and I know it is the experience of all those who fish, that there is no salmon caught in the Restigouche, or in many other of the eastern rivers, that is not damaged by having his back fin practically cut off. Nine out of ten of the fish are so damaged as lo show they have struggled to get through the nets and have been torn in getting through. If the government would do away with the fish-breeding altogether and take a little advice as to how these rivers should be protected, there would be more fish in those rivers ten times over, yes, fifty times over, than there are now. The nets, as I understand it, ought to be taken up over Sunday. As a matter of fact, they are not taken up. The nets in the mouth of the Restigouche are weighted nets, which, as I understand, is against the law; and they are not taken up from weeks' end to weeks' end. No salmon comes up that river without being damaged to such an extent that it is a melancholy thing to see a fish caught there by the fishermen who pay so much for the privilege of fishing and spend so much money in that district. If the government would investigate and have a report as to the condition of the sporting rivers, they would make a very material alteration in the licenses.


Mr. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX (Gaspe).: Probably the hon. gentleman (Mr. Osier) is not aware that, so far as the province of Quebec at least is concerned, and I think the same is true of the other provinces, the salmon fisheries have been under the control of the provincial government since the judgment of the Privy Council. As regards the salmon fishery in the province of Quebec, and the New Brunswick and Gaspe Peninsula, the fish are better protected than ever before. The number of licenses has been decreased, and I must say that, through the great care of the commissioner of lands, forests and fisheries of the province of Quebec, the salmon fishery is becoming more and more important, because the fish are better protected and the license fees are higher. I have the honour to represent a county where salmon is plentiful, and perhaps the best in the world, notwithstanding


Robert Laird Borden: what may be said by our friends from British Columbia, yet I have not previously heard it saiu that the salmon fishery is not increased and is not better protected than ever before.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day being called,
The PRIME MINISTER (Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier).: I have to inform the House that the Hon. Mr. Blair has tendered his resignation as a member of the cabinet and Minister of Railways, and that His Excellency the Governor General, who has been acquainted with the facts, has been pleased to accept his resignation. The ministerial explanations which are usually given in such cases will probably be given on Thursday next.



HON. MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND THE MILITIA ACT.

Mr. A. C. BELL (Pictou).: Before the Orders of the Day are proceeded with, I would like to have the attention of the right hon. gentleman. I see by a special to the Montreal ' Herald ' from London, this statement :
Hon. Mr. Chamberlain has been invited by the Canadian government to discuss certain proposed amendments to the Canadian Militia Act. It is understood that these deal with the subject of appointing a Canadian commanding officer.
Might I ask the right hon. gentleman if he can confirm this statement, or if he has anything to say with reference to it ?


The MINISTER OF MILITIA AND DEFENCE (Hon. Sir Frederick Borden).: In answer to the hon. gentleman, I have to say that a short time ago the Hon. Mr. Chamberlain intimated that as he understood a militia Bill was to be put through the House, he would be glad if the Minister of Militia could, after the close of the present session, go to England and discuss the matter with him and with the Secretary of State for War. The First Minister has intimated his willingness that that should be done.



PRIVILEGE-THE COUNTY OF ELGIN AND THE REDISTRIBUTION.

Mr. A. B. INGRAM (East Elgin).: Before the Orders of the Day are called, I rise to a question of privilege. The 1 Globe ' of Saturday last, July 11, 1903, contains the following report concerning the ' Division of Elgin ' :
There were four propositions before the committee with regard to Elgin. One proposition was to put St. Thomas as a whole in West Elgin; a second to divide it by the London and Port Stanley Railway east and west; the third to

divide the city by the Michigan Central Railway, and last night Mr. Ingram proposed that the township of Yarmouth be divided by the Talbot road, running directly north of the city, leaving St. Thomas in the east and transferring North Dorchester, North Yarmouth, Southwold, Dun

wich and 'Aldboro'. Mr. Ingram opposed the adoption of the provincial boundaries, on the ground that there would be too great an inequality in the population.
Ultimately the provincial boundaries were adopted, St. Thomas being placed in West Elgin. Mr. Borden reserved his right to move an amendment.
I desire to correct this report, and to say I did not propose or originate any of the propositions contained in this report of the ' Globe,' nor did any Conservative, so far as I know. And I am satisfied that the statement in the said article as to the origin of the propositions is without any foundation whatever.



STEAMBOAT INSPECTION.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on the following proposed resolution :
Resolved, That it is expedient to amend the Steamboat Inspection Act, to make provision for the abrogation of Steamboat Inspection Fees and Dues ; and for the better regulation of yachts propelled by gas, fluid, naphtha, or electric motors.-The Minister of Marine and Fisheries.
The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES (Hon. Raymond Prdfontaine).: The resolution is clear in itself. The Bill founded on the resolution, though important, does not make any radical changes. As the committee is aware, the House decided early in the session to abolish the inspection fees, and in order to conform to that decision it has been found necessary to amend the Inspection Act, so as to make the abolition legal, otherwise, according to the statute, these inspection fees and dues are obligatory and must be paid, for the Governor in Council has no power to remit them. It is provided in the Bill that they can be reimposed by Order in Council, if at any time it is thought proper to do so. It will be remembered that the House at the same time abolished the tolls on canals for two years and at the same time abolished inspection fees and dues. The government do not intend to extend the operation of the Bill longer than two years. Section 3 of the Bill provides that section 3 of the Steamboat Inspection Act, 1898, is repealed. The part which is affected is found at the latter end of the section :
And no vessel propelled by gas, fluid, naphtha or electric motors shall be subject to any of the provisions of this1 Act, provided however that if any such steam yacht or any such vessel propelled by gas, fluid, naphtha or electric motors is over three tons gross tonnage; the obligation to carry one life buoy and to take the precautions against fire and to carry a life preserver for each person on board, hereinafter imposed upon all steamboats, shall be imposed; provided always that if any of the vessels mentioned in this section carries passengers for
hire or remuneration of any kind, such vessels shall be deemed to be passenger steamboats for the time being and shall be subject to all the provisions of this Act.


Mr. SPROULE.: What was the tonnage the hon. member mentioned ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: Three tons. There is a new section introduced here, section 3 :
The Governor in Council may direct that this Act or certain provisions thereof shall aDply to, or shall not apply to, any steamboat or class of'steamboats registered elsewhere than in Canada. and may fix a rate or duty to be paid for the inspection of such steamboat or class of steamboats :-
(b) Provided, however, that when satisfactory evidence has been produced that no steamboat inspection fee or tax is levied on Canadian steam vessels trading to or from any country outside of Canada, the Governor in Council may direct that no steamboat inspection fee or tax be levied on steam vessels of such country going to and from Canada ;
lc) And it is further provided, that when satisfactory evidence has been produced that any country outside of Canada has steamboat inspection laws approximating the steamboat inspection law of Canada, and the steamboats of such country having unexpired certificates of inspection issued by the proper authorities of such country, the Governor in Council may direct that they shall be subject to no other inspection than may be necessary to satisfy the Canadian inspectors that the condition of the steamboat, her boilers, machinery and life-saving equipment are as stated in the current certificate of inspection ; but no such certificate of inspection shall be accepted as valid in Canada, except when held by steamboats of a country which has by its laws accorded to the steamboats of Canada going to and from such country the same privileges as is hereby accorded t.o steamboats of such country.
I suppose hon. members of the committee understand the question. This is to provide that there shall be no inspection in Canada of boats coming from a country which exacts no inspection of our boats. This matter has been reported to tlie department by vessel owners especially on the great lakes. Sometimes they have been asked to pay fees twice for the inspection of their boats. They were obliged by the United States, as they carried passengers to the United States, to pay inspection fees because we were charging American boats inspection fees. It has been agreed that if we charge no fees they will charge no fees.


Hon. Mr. HAGGART.: The Americans charge no fees for inspection.


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: Well then we will not charge any.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I may say perhaps it is not apropos of this subject-that I had a long letter some time ago from a friend who lives near the Soo. He says that as a result of the regulations under which American vessels are admitted into Canada the Soo canal is practically strewn with the wrecks of old worn out hulks that are of no use
*

and that are now only an obstruction to navigation. That ought not to be allowed. After a boat is practically worn out in the United States it is brought in here. I do not remember upon what ground he said these boats are brought in-it is used for a short time in Canada and then becomes completely disabled. Along the Canadian shore and sometimes in the channel these disabled boats are found to the great danger of navigation in that part of the country. In regard to inspection, I had a memorial recommending that there should be no inspection of boats that were below five tons. I see the hon. minister is putting it at three tons. That will be more favourable to the requirements of the public.


Robert Laird Borden: I would like to ask what is the exact meaning of the latter part of the resolution :
And for the better regulation of yachts propelled by gas, fluid, naphtha or electric motors.
Is it the intention to exempt them altogether from the operation of the Steamboat Inspection Act ?
The	MINISTER	OF	MARINE	AND
FISHERIES. Under three tons.


Robert Laird Borden: And in case they are not carriers of passengers ?
The	MINISTER	OF	MARINE	AND
FISHERIES. Yes. They are obliged to carry life saving apparatus.


Robert Laird Borden: They are at present ?
The	MINISTER	OF	MARINE	AND
FISHERIES. Under the new law.


Robert Laird Borden: I did not quite gather from the hon. minister what provisions of the Steamboat Inspection Act would be applicable to yachts of less than three tons. I am under the impression that there has been some representation made by qualified engineers in regard to the effect of this proposed amendment of the law, and I would like to ascertain what the exact operation of the law will be when the proposed Bill is passed.


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: That will come under the next resolution.
Resolution reported, read the first and second time, and agreed to.
The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES moved for leave to introduce Bill (No. 225) to amend the Steamboat Inspection Act.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.
Resolved, That it is expedient to further amend the Act respecting Certificates to Masters and Mates of Ships, by making provision for a new Certificate called a ' Home Trade Certificate ; ' and to otherwise amend the said Act.-The Minister of Marine and Fisheries.
The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES (Hon Raymond Prefontaine).: The whole of this Bill is new. There are only two changes made in the existing law by this amending Bill, namely :	(1.) The
introduction of a certificate for a * Home Trade Voyages ' the limits of a ' Coasting Trade Voyage ' will not be changed by this Bill, but will be as wide as they were before this Bill becomes law. The extent of the home trade voyages is limited to the voyages along the eastern and western coasts of Canada. For instance, a Canadian home trade certificate would not allow a man to go to the West India Islands or South America, or to any port in the United States further south than the harbour of Portland, Maine, whereas, the now existing coast certificates allow a man to go to the West Indies or any port in the United States, either eastern or western, and, therefore, permits a vessel to go around the Horn from Halifax to Vancouver, or from Halifax to San Francisco. This Bill purely and simply amends the existing law so as to provide for the issue of this new certificate, and for the limits of a home trade voyage.
In the fourth section the provision of the existing law granting temporary certificates for the current season to a master to take charge of a steamer of ten tons has been altered so as to allow him to take charge of a steamer of twenty tons. This has been found necessary to meet the growing wants of the outlying territories, such as the North-west, Manitoba and part of British Columbia, where the carriage of freight is of supreme importance to the settlements, and where ordinary certificated masters will not serve, as the venturer could not pay them the wages they required. It is in the interest of these supplements to give a resident of the place who ventures his money in building a steamer to accommodate the traffic authority to take command of his vessel, provided he satisfies the examiner that he is quite competent to do so on the route over which he wants to ply. These are the only two points affected by this Bill. These amendments, the last one especially, have been asked by the people of the west.


Robert Laird Borden: Is the home trade certificate granted for length of service or after examination, or both ?



CERTIFICATES TO MASTERS AND MATES OF SHIPS.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on the following proposed resolution :
Thomas Simpson Sproule: 


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: After examination of course.


Robert Laird Borden: Does it depend to any extent on length of service ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: The examination will remain the same or new regulations will have to be made, for this is in order not to exact the same qualifications for the home trade voyage as is expected for coasting voyages.


Robert Laird Borden: Is this based on any legislation to be found in England or elsewhere ?


The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES.: I cannot state. The suggestion has come from the shipping and fishing interests.


Hon. Mr. ROSS (Victoria, N.S.).: The regulations require for first-class certificates for foreign voyages ; six years sailing from a port in Canada. I knew of the case of a young man who went from New Zealand home as first mate. He came to Halifax |to take charge of a ship to go out to New Zealand, but he would not be allowed to pass the examination because he was not sailing for six years out of a port in the Dominion. That regulation, I think, is still in existence.


Mr. SCOTT.: I have been asked by the hon. gentleman from Selkirk (Mr. McCreary) who is unavoidably absent to-day, to bring to the attention of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries a protest which has been addressed by a Manitoba gentleman who is engaged in the fishing trade on Lake Winnipeg. This gentleman writes to the member for Selkirk with regard to engineers' certificates, in the issue of which it is proposed to make a change. He says :
lit does seem to me absurd that a fish-tug such as we have running, about five horsepower. should be compelled to carry a licensed engineer while a yacht with three times as much power, and three times as many valuable lives on her can go free or run without a licensed engineer. Those tugs have no one but fishermen on them, they carry no passengers, and as far as the steamboat interests here are concerned we would like to have the law left as it is, till wo have an opportunity to look into it. We find it very difficult at present to' conduct our business ; engineers have to be imported here every year, we have only about three months work, and to import an engineer every year for three months work will cost us about $300 per month. All that expense tacked on to a little fish-tug will simply make the running of fish-tugs In this country prohibitory. When I say $300 a month I know what I am saying. We have an engineer here from the east now ; we pay him $900 for the season. Pew of the fish-tugs run more than two months and a-half. The license to fish runs out on 1st September, and as you know we do not get started to fish till well on in June.
The MINISTER OF MARINE AND FISHERIES moved for leave to introduce Bill (No. 226) to amend the Act respecting certificates to masters and mates of ships.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR (Hon. Clifford Sifton) moved that the House again go into Committee of Supply.
['One or two of the Bills on the Order Paper we may be able to take up. At an early stage we will resume Supply, and the Minister of the Interior will continue his estimates.']
Mr. URIAH WILSON (Lennox).: Mr. Speaker, before you leave the Chair I wish to call the attention of the House to a subject which I think is of very great importance to this country. It is not that we on this side of the House are opposed to immigration, because we would be very glad to see coming here a very much larger number of immigrants than we are getting at present provided they were of the right class ; but, what we do object to is that the government has not been particular enough in examining the kind of people they allow to come to this country. If I may be pardoned for referring to a statement made by the Minister of Agriculture the other night, I may say that my eyes were opened as never before to the system under which immigrants are allowed to come here. I was under the impression that these immigrants were inspected before they were allowed to land on our shores, but the Minister of Agriculture stated that his officers took no notice of what he called these smaller diseases such as trachoma, and that the only diseases which come under the attention of his department were such as small-pox and fever. If the ship reported a clean bill of health she was allowed to go through, no matter whether the immigrants were paupers, or criminals, or were suffering from disease generally. I was greatly astonished when I read the last report of the immigration commissioner at Washington wherein he referred in very strong terms to the kind of people we are allowing to come into this country. He showed that it was impossible for the Americans to keep them out of the United States without placing a numerous staff along the border. They first commenced by opening an office in Montreal which had control from Sault Ste. Marie to some port in Maine, but they found that was not sufficient and last December they had to appoint an inspector at Winnipeg, and last April they extended their system to Vancouver, because they found that a very undesirable class of immigrants were getting into the United States through what they called the back door of Canada. My attention was called to the report of the Immigration Department of the United States with reference to the number of immigrants that landed at the port of Quebec during the month of May. There were 2,627 who were, I suppose intended for the United States, and of these 2,584 were passed and forty-three detained. As I did not understand' what ' detained ' meant, I thought I would try and get the information by putting the following questions on the ' notice paper, which I did on the 24th of June :

Dated Paris, France, August 22nd, 1902.
Through the courtesy of the manager of tire Red Star line at Antwerp, I am able to present herewith a list of rejections at Antwerp, from January 1st to August 9th, 1902, for cause, to wit : trachoma, favus, &c. Of these 373 persons, not ten per cent were returned to their native homes, ' the remainder fell into the hands of Canadian steamship agents and disappeared.'
I found the examinations at Rotterdam to be equally effective, and the rejections approximately the same in percentage, and the rejected ones there were also reported to have been almost invariably taken up by Beaver Line agents and forwarded to Canada.
This seems to have been reduced to a practice. Those not fit to go to the United States are sent to Canada. There seems to be a society among the agents, and an arrangement by which badges are affixed to immigrants indicating by what route they are to be sent. And in this way we get all the diseased persons, while those who were healthy went to the United States. One gentleman told him that out of all the immigrants he sent out, he sent 1.230 to Canada and only 30 to the United States. Mr. Watchorn, in an interview with the Montreal ' Star ' of June 3rd, gave the proper idea of what we should do :
With the co-operation of Canada we would preserve this continent of North1 America for the decent, the healthy and self-supporting from other lands.' This was the remark made by Mr. Robert Watchorn, United States immigration commissioner, to a ' Star ' representative.
That is one of the most desirable things we could do-we should endeavour to keep this country for the honest, industrious and healthy people. Then, we should have a country in a few years that would develop and make rapid progress. But if we allow all classes to come in as they have clone in the past, instead of going ahead, we shall certainly degenerate.
But now I wish to come more particularly to a matter that, perhaps, interests us more directly. We have spent for immigration during the past year the hon. Minister of the Interior tells us, $560,857.45. I am a little at loss to know how he gets these figures. If you take the main estimates we passed for the year ending 30th June, 1903, you find the total vote was $445,000,
made up as follows Salaries of agents and employees in Canada, Great Britain and foreign
countries	$100,000
Contingencies in Canada, Great Britain and foreign agencies and general immigration expenses, including salaries
of extra clerks	and	head	office	 333,000
Women's National Immigration Society,
Montreal	   1,000
Girls' Home of	Welcome,	Winnipeg	 1,000
Total	$445,000
Then, we find in the first supplementary estimates brought down : Immigration further amount required, $100,000. Then, in the second supplementary estimates for the Mr. WILSON.
same year, page three, immigration, $9S,114. This makes a total of $643,114, or $82,254 more than the minister gave to me a few days ago as a total expenditure. I presume that the hon. minister, if he sees fit to answer me, will be able to give reasons for this difference.
I wish to take up the question of homesteading, because I find that the hon. minister lays a great deal of stress upon the homesteads. The department seem to think, judging from the evidence of the deputy minister, that by quoting the number of homesteads they prove that the immigrants who come to Canada remain here. The report is that 14,633 homesteads were taken up last year. But we must see where these homesteaders came from. In the first place there are Canadians, as follows
From Ontario	 2,583
Quebec	 316
Nova Scotia	 81
New Brunswick	 53
Prince Edward Island		35
British Columbia	 32
Manitoba	 661
North-west Territories .. ..	319
Total	:	 4,080
These can hardly be spoken of as immigrants, that is people who come into our country from outside. Then, there are 1,158 who had previously entered. These added to the number of Canadians makes a total of 5,238, which is to be taken from the total of 14,633 homesteads, leaving 9.395 homesteads taken up by immigrants. You can multiply that by three or three and one-eighth, and still you will not account for one-half of the immigrants that are reported as having come to this country, for the report of the Minister of the Interior shows that 67,379 immigrants came into the country in 1901-2. As the government pretend to encourage only farmers or farm labourers to come to Canada, it would be supposed that a very large number would take up land and be found located in the North-west. But they are not to be found. For instance, the minister's report shows that 6,550 Galicians came into the country, but not one of them is shown as having homesteaded. Also there were 2,451 Scandinavians, and not one of these is among the homestead entries. We are spending a very large amount of money on immigration, and I fear we are hardly getting as much return as we have a right to expect. We have the Barr colony, which was investi-gater pretty thoroughly before the committee. We had Mr. Smart, the deputy minister, for several days before the committee, and I have not the report of his evidence. Of the 3rd June, 1903, Mr. Smart was before us, and he gave us the following information as I find at page twenty-three of that day's proceedings :
Q. How many homesteads have been applied for ?-A. Up to the number of about 1,400 or 1,500.

Q. Who makes the declarations of entries for these persons ?-A. They are making them now.
Q. Themselves ?-A. Very largely themselves; most of them.
That is what Mr. Smart told the committee, and being the deputy minister, he ought to have known. But one of the officers of the department, Mr. Spears, I think is the name, wrote a letter to the Toronto ' Globe,' which appeared in the issue of June 18th, 1903. And he says, instead of their being, as Mr. Smart reported, 1,400 or 1,500 people taking up homesteads, only about 500 have settled in the colony and adjoining territory. They represent about 300 homesteads. The balance are scattered, a few having homesteaded. About 250 young men went out to work. Then there is this other matter that was discussed the other day about the amount that Mr. Barr got from the shipping companies, twenty-five shillings a head, and a reported interview with Mr. Preston, in which he said that he expected the government would pay Mr. Barr seven shillings a head in addition. Whether that is true or not, I do not know; but if it is true, Mr. Barr has made a very good thing out of it, especially when you remember that Mr. Smart stated in the committee that over ninety per cent of the men that Mr. Barr brought to this country would have come out had Mr. Barr never seen them.
New, Mr. Speaker, we spend a very large amount of money in advertising and printing pamphlets amounting to $149,759. According to a report brought down to the committee, that amount was distributed as follows ; In the United States, $70,664; Great Britain and Ireland, $62,923; Europe and Iceland, $6,6S2. Now let us see what results we get for this money. On the continent we have no agents, we have no agents in Gallieia, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Scandinavia, Russia, Finland, nor in other countries put down as miscellaneous from which immigrants come. Although we have no agents in those countries, still we got from them more than one-third of oar immigration, at an outlay, so far as we have any account, $6,682. That is the amount spent to get 23,732 people from those European countries. Now we got, according to the report, 43,047 from all other countries, for which we paid in advertising, and pamphlets, $143,077. That does not include agents. This is only a small portion of the total cost, because, if I figure it out right, and I get my information from the estimates, we spent $643,000 last year on immigration; that is what the government asked for, at all events. We have salaried agents in this country, 120, costing $107,246. Then there was besides sixteen temporary officers at Ottawa who received $6,613. In addition to that we spent a good deal of money in my judgment foolishly, on newspapers. The Manitoba ' Free Press ' supplied 110,000 copies, for which we paid $5,-
500, or five cents a piece. I would like to know what good that paper did for immigration. They got also for advertising nine months, $712.42; a total to the ' Free Press ' of $6,228. The Toronto 'Star' furnished 5,000 copies of New Ontario, and got $500, or ten cents a piece. I have in my possession a circular issued by that paper, saying that we could buy it for $1.50 a year. There is another paper which seems to be a German paper, worth about $1 a year. It furnished 15,000 copies for $750, or five cents each. I suppose you could buy a better paper on the street for one cent. Then the Toronto * Globe ' furnished 1,000 copies for $770, or thirty-five cents a piece. I would like to know what use these papers have been for immigration purposes. A thousand copies of any particular paper for immigration purposes would be of no earthly use to distribute, because there is not enough of them. Besides, so far as I could gather from anything the deputy minister said, they were simply advertisements for which we paid an extraordinary price, and that were sent out for the benefit of people who want something nicer than ordinary literature.
Now we come to a matter that I think will require some explanation, that is our agents in the United States. We have agents employed both on commission and on salaries. A couple of years ago, I believe we had 500 immigration agents in the United States on commission; at the present time we have 280, according to the statement made by Mr. Smart in the committee. I asked him to give me a list of the agents and the amount of money each received, and I found when the list came down that there were just fifty of them who furnished any results for what they were paid. But I wiil come to that later on. Now then last year the total immigration to this country "was 07,388 persons reported. I will quote from Mr. Smart's evidence given on May 29, 1903 : Q. In all there seems to be 67,388 persons reported ?-A. Yes.
Q. You do not intend to associate that number of persons with your agents in the respective countries ?-A. No, I cannot possibly do-that.
Q. I suppose you cannot tall what proportion of them came in through the instrumentality of your agents ?-A. No. not directly. But I suppose with a good many of them they could be traced ; but for a large number it would be almost impossible to say.
Per Capita Cost.	1901.	1902.Continent	$2	65	$2	44British	
9	58	7	01United States	
7	96	6	74Average cost per capita.. .. 6	11	5	29-
Q. 7,902 miscellaneous immigrants ; how many of these came in through the expenditure vof money for immigration purposes ?-A. Very few.
Q. Very few ?-A. Yes.
Q. Immigration from the United States. Are-you prepared to say that all of them came through your agents from United States ?-A. No.

Q. What proportion did come ?-A. A very large proportion.
Q. As a matter of fact are you prepared to say that these 26,000 people came through the efforts of your agents ?-A. Yes, I am prepared to say that considerable over one-half of the people came through the efforts of the department.
Now then he did not claim that we got more than one-half through the efforts of the department, and that will make it all the worse when we come to find the total that he claimed to have got. I have here a statement of the agents on salary, and the salaries run from $1,800 downward to $1,500, $1,200 and $900. I will single out a few examples to show how well we pay them for the services they render. There is Mr. C. A. Laurier, in Michigan, who seems to have got forty-six immigrants. His salary is $1,200, and his board and lodging amount to $467.75; his railway fare, $266. So that for these forty-six immigrants we paid $1,934. Then we have two agents operating in Ohio, Mr. Young and Mr. Williams, who got 225 immigrants. They had $1,200 each salary. Their board and lodging amounted to $1,168, their railway fares, $502, making a total of $4,070 for 225 immigrants. Then we have a Mr. MacLachlan, who seems to have got twenty-eight immigrants. He received $1,200 a year, his board and lodging amounted to $258.95, and his railway fare $625. That gentleman got $2,084 for bringing twenty-e'sbt immigrants to this country.
The report that was made to the committee was that there were 23,721 immigrants brought in by the salaried agents. We have then a report of those brought m by the agents on commission. It was claimed that the commissioned agents brought in 3,822. That would make a total of 27.543 immigrants that were brought in by the agents that were on salary and the agents on commission. The yearly report of the Minister of the Interior says that there were 26,388 so that the report that was made to the committee represents that we got 1,155 more than we did according to the report of the hon. minister. I think that ought to be explained, and more especially should there be an explanation in connection with another matter that I will bring up in a few minutes. I want to call the attention of the government to some of the ridiculous amounts that were paid to agents on commission. We have Mr. William Ritchie, who in 1901 got $4,559. That appears in the evidence presented before the committee on Agriculture and Colonization last year. During the fiscal year 1901-1902 Mr. Ritchie received $1,S96. The deputy Minister told us that he had discharged him because he was making too much money. It shows that if the system is right he did very wrong in dismissing him, but the system being wrong, I think he did right in dismissing him, and I think he would do right if he dismissed all the agents on com-Mr. WILSON.
mission. Mr. Bartholemew, during the year before last, received $1,851 commission, and last year $1,979 and that is the way it goes.
I would like to point out that these immigrants are not brought in by the agents of the government. There are fifteen or twenty land companies operating in the North-west Territories who have large tracts of land and they have been putting forth extraordinary efforts to induce people to settle in the country so that they may be able to sell their lands to them. Mr. Turriff, who, I believe, is the land commissioner, in the Department of the Interior, was before the committee, and I would like to read some extracts from his evidence. Speaking of the Saskatchewan Yalley Land Company he said :
I am not prepared to say just how many have gone in on their grant but last summer there were over 300 homesteads made in that part. They had gone in under the colonization scheme and I know they have put in over 1,000 settlers outside of their colonization scheme altogether for which they get no credit.
That would mean at least 2,000 people brought in by that company. Then, here is another company, the Canadian American Land Investment Company :
Q. And they were quite successful you admit? -A. Well, I know that in that part of the country a great man? settlers have gone in during the last year or two.
Q. How many would you say ?-A. I should say within the last two years in that land district, the Alameda district which takes in township ten, speaking roughly, that between 4,000 and 5,000 homesteads entries have been made.
That would mean at least 12,000 people. Now, it seems to me that with fifteen or twenty land companies working in that country there must be a considerable amount of immigration work done by them. After the agent of the company had prevailed upon a man to emigrate to Canada, the North-west Territories government immigration agent on commission goes to him and says :	If you take a ticket from me
you will get your fare for less than if you do not. The intending immigrant will take an order from the commissioned agent and he will go to the railway company and get a ticket on that. The order given him by tlie agent is sent to Montreal and then sent back to the Department of the Interior. If the immigrant happens to be a man over 18 years of age the agent gets $3, if a woman over 18 years of age the agent gets $2 and for any person younger he gets $1. I look upon that money as being thrown away. These people are coming in as a result of the efforts of the land companies. Tlie land agents are the people who do the work and the commissioned agents are the people who get the money. I have here a copy of a newspaper containing an advertisement of one of the land companies and it is a sample of the advertisements that they have been publishing all over the

United States. Tliese advertisements are not paid for by tlie government, but they are paid for by the land companies and after the land companies advertise their lands they send their agents to work amongst the people. After the land companies have induced people to come to this country to buy land these commissioned agents' come along and reap the benefit of that work and the people of Canada are the poorer for it. I think it is folly for the government to spend so much money in the way they are spending it. I think it would be wise if the hon. minister would abolish altogether the system of employing agents on commission. In fact, I believe that the deputy minister has under consideration the possibility of doing away altogether with the commissioned agents because the fact that he reduced the number within two years from 500 to 280 and that only 50 have latterly done any work is a pretty good guarantee that they are of very little use. These 50 are only going to those parts of the country where the land agents have worked up the business for them, they give intending immigrants orders for tickets and draw the pay, they are benefited by that, and we are that much the poorer.
House resumed at eight o'clock.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. WM. ROCHE (Halifax).: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry it was so near six o'clock when I rose to speak, because I only intended to make a few observations upon one point or two in the speech of my hon. friend (Mr. Wilson). If he had been personally acquainted with the subject which he was discussing, and if the circumstances he related had taken place under his own observation, I would be disposed to pay a great deal of deference to the opinion of the hon. gentleman, but, as he obtained his information from a distant source and from channels which are subject to misrepresentation and distortion, I am compelled to fall back upon my own personal knowledge and to have some doubt with regard to the statements of my hon. friend and the conclusions which he has drawn. If I followed his argument correctly, it was that this government was blame-worthy for introducing a number of undesirable immigrants into this country, and that the expense of procuring those immigrants was disproportionate to their numbers and value. As to the question of expense, the means of procuring the immigrants, and the number of officials employed, the Minister of the Interior will no doubt deal with that. I think I may say without any egotism that so far as the immigrants are concerned who come to the port of Halifax, I have as good means of observing them as anybody else. From the fact that the port of Halifax is used by the immigrant steamers before the other ports in Canada are opened for navigation, the greater portion of the Galician immigrants arrived at that port on their way to the North-west Territories.
I see every one of these immigrants in the vessel when the doctors go on board to examine them for contagious disease. I see them afterwards when they march in single file over the gangway and proceed to the dock. I see them afterwards when they are in the immigrant shed. We go amongst them and examine them when they are in little knots, and when they get out their cooking utensils and prepare their food for their families. They are examined again singly by the officials when they come to the wicket to exchange their tickets, and we see them when they go into the cars to take their departure for the North-west. Now. I think that a person who has an opportunity of examining these immigrants five or six times over, is as capable of forming an intelligent judgment as to them (if he has the right faculties) as one who has never seen them and who takes his information from hearsay. On the whole I think I have seen the majority of these immigrants for the past five years. Formerly they were introduced promiscuously into the United States with very little restriction. Now, the United States authorities have set up a standard of examination for the disease of the eyes called trachoma, and the American officials are very diligent in detecting and rejecting those who suffer from that disease. Until two years ago no test for that disease was made in Canada, and perhaps a number of Galicians and others suffering from trachoma got into the North-west and afterwards may have presented themselves on the borders of the United States for admission into that country. But those must have been immigrants who were introduced into Canada about two years ago, or they may have been immigrants who had been introduced through other ports than Halifax. Perhaps they are more lax in Montreal and Quebec than in Halifax, but certainly those people could not, in the numbers designated, have arrived in Canada, under the regulations which now exist. The regulations now set up by the Canadian government are amply sufficient for the rejection of all those who are diseased, and for the securing of a proper class of immigrants, valuable to Canada. I have no doubt that there are some acute Democrats in the congress of the United States who sometimes point their fingers to the items of expenditure and say that there must be a very large amount expended for immigration, that the salaries of the officials appointed by the Republican government are very high and that they do not earn their money. I take it for granted that these officials are interested in their own salaries and that they wish to impress

not only tlie skeptical people in the United States, but on some sceptical people in Canada also, that they are vigilant, and that the home of the brave and the land of the free shall not have a single star obscured or a single stripe displaced in all that glorious banner, in consequence of the admission of the diseased and the immoral, and the disaffected, and the unwelcome and undesirable that are hovering on the frontier of Canada and only awaiting a relaxation of the vigilance of the officials for them to make their descent upon that happy and favoured land. Hamburg is the port whence most of these continental European immigrants start for the western hemisphere, and when once it is reported there that the Canadian officials are extremely sharp in the detection of diseases, the steamship company which transports the immigrants is most viligant to send back inland any who are afflicted with a disease which may subject them to be returned. These immigrants are collected in large depots, and they are there examined by expert German doctors who are exceedingly particular. It is the interest of the steamship company not to run the risk of their transportation back should they be deported. Neither do the companies desire to break up the homes of those people who leave their farms and other avocations to come to the sea-board to take the ocean voyage. They have increased their viligance in consequence of the action of this government. Then on board the steamships they have experienced doctors who examine the passengers every day, and those who show traces of disease are set apart from the others and treated for the cure of any disease which may develop. These ships are amongst the largest in the world and have the best accommodation for passengers, and every appliance necessary to present the immigrants in as good shape as possible. At Halifax the immigrants are minutely examined by the port doctors. If they are found with infectious disease they are put into quarantine hospitals, and the ships are fumigated, and the families of diseased persons are carefully separated from the others. Then the immigrants are brought on shore and they are placed in sheds where they are examined by the United States officials and doctors. I have been with these doctors, and frequently there have been disputes between specialists of the ships and the specialists on shore as to whether the disease was really trachoma or as to whether it was some harmless disease contracted on the voyage. Then the question frequently arises as to whether the disease is curable or whether it demands the deportation of the patient. Frequently the doctors differ. Under the Canadian law those who are pronounced by the specialists to be capable of cure are allowed to remain under the treatment until it is determined whether they can be cured or not. If they can be cured they are Mr. ROCHE (Halifax).
allowed to enter Canada and if not they are sent back. When they are cured they are allowed to proceed to their destination. Under the Canadian law the examination is as rigid as that which takes place under the United States law. Every passenger is examined with the minutest care and it frequently happens that on account of one child in the family being afflicted with trachoma, an entire family of five or eight are deported to their country of origin.
Therefore the statistics which my hon. friend from Lennox has exhibited are no index of the number of passengers who were afflicted with diseases and sent back. You can divide the number at least by five. It is often very hard to see a large family sent back after spending a large part of their means, perhaps at the worst season of the year, to the place from which they came, because of the disease of one child, I have often been with the doctors when they saw the disease before it began to spread; and large families have been sent back by the American doctors simply on account of a trifling affection of the eyes of one little child. These people are not paupers, and they are not a diseased people who have been dumped on our shores by the passenger collectors of steamship companies; but they are people who are accustomed to have money sufficient to carry them to their destination and to support them for some time after they arrive there. Any one who has not $10 is not allowed to proceed. Frequently these people telegraph to their friends who have bettered themselves, and they send them money until they can earn some for themselves. Some of them are possessed of as much as $1,000. But they are a poor race of people. When they formerly came, they had a very quaint garb; and many of them, after a voyage on a vessel, were dirty and unkempt. But from the sanitary treatment they have received, they are clean and well clothed. I have often admired the care they took of their families, the attention they paid to then-wives and children, and their state of morality. They are not at all like beasts herded together; but are neat, orderly and moral, well qualified for the ordinary occupations of citizenship and fully qualified to enter on the state of agricultural labourers who are so much required in the Northwest. We do not want clerks in this country; we do not want a collection of professional men, or men from cities who have no occupation or profession, but live on their wits. * What we'want are men and women who are accustomed to work in the fields from morning till night; and these people, both men and women, work in a manner which might well stir the emulation of some of our Canadia people. Having been acquainted with workingmen from my youth up. having been among farmers, farm hands, and workmen of all descriptions, I can say emphatically from my own observation that

tlie statement of tlie lion, member for Lennox is altogether aside from the question, and presented an erroneous view of the qualities of these people. If the hon. gentleman were present among them and saw them, and heard the remarks he himself made, he would burn his books and go home, and never make another speech in parliament. Then, there is another stage. When these people leave the cars and go upon the farms, they immediately commence the hard work of the country. They belong to the very class we desire, these who begin at the very bottom and work their way up. If they own a piece of land, they immediately begin to cultivate it; but the first stage is the work for those who can give them employment to do the rough work of the country. I ask lion, gentlemen from the Northwest if that is not the class of people who are wanted in that country. The farmers want men who are pioneers who come in contact with the soil, and prepare it for those who succeed. These men are not dressed in broadcloth, nor the women in silks and satins; but they are dressed ill a way to tit them for a thrifty, industrious, orderly, quiet life on the farm, determined to make their own way in the world and build themselves up with the country. When these people are on their farms and have commenced their working life, then is the time to see whether the government has been justified or not in bringing them into the country. Parliamentarians are perhaps not the best informed on questions of this kind; but I have heard from interpreters of their own race, who have seen them on their farms, have witnessed their daily life, and can contrast their condition in Galicia and other countries from which they came with their condition in the North-west. They say that these people are infinitely improved; their children have become educated; their daughters fire more refined; they have gathered about them little homesteads, and they are beginning to live as people do in luxurious America. There is every reason why we should be satisfied that these jieople form an integral part of our population. Therefore, I cannot condemn the government; therefore, I say that the opinions of the hon. member for Lennox are erroneous. I say, from my own observation and the knowledge which I have acquired. that he is altogether astray. I do not believe he wishes to condemn this government for what it has done. The expenditure ill bringing them here is insignificant in comparison with the benefits derived from securing this large industrious population, which is suited to the needs of that new country which we are paying so much at the present time to develop. The minister will no doubt reply upon the other points of the question. But I thought it was my duty, as I had this knowledge, to give the House my own personal opinion, without any desire to shelter the government 200
for wrong or to refute the hon. member for Lennox, but just to present that view of the question to which the House is entitled and upon which it can form its own judgment.
I unhesitatingly pronounce my opinion that as the sources from which immigrants can be derived are so limited, the government should refuse to put obstacles in the way of immigrants coming to this country; and there is no class of people so desirable as the very class of agricultural labourers brought from Galicia and Hungary and the southern and western parts of Russia, which this government has fortunately secured at the present juncture in the history of Canada.


Mr. FRANK OLIVER (Alberta).: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member has called to witness representatives from the North-west in regard to this subject of immigration, it would hardly be in keeping if he did noli receive a response. I would take the liberty of suggesting that the subject of immigration takes on different aspects according to the different points of view from which we regard it. It looks very different to a man in Halifax, who sees the immigrant pass from tlie steamer to the train, from what it does to the man who has to live alongside that immigrant for the rest of his natural life. I do not wish, however, to discuss particularly the feature of the question which has been treated by the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Roche). Since I have had the privilege of being a member of this House I have taken the view that indiscriminate immigration was anything but a desirable policy for this country, and that selected emigration was by all means the policy we should follow. Let me call the attention of the House to the importance of the character of the Immigrants coming to this country. These immigrants mainly come in for the purpose of settling in the North-west. It is in the nature of things that the country between the Lake of the Woods and the Rocky Mountains is destined, at no distant date, to dominate this Dominion. The House will relieve me from any imputation: of talking bombast when I say this, because it must be admitted that with fifteen hundred miles of unbroken fertility in that country, every foot of which is suitable for cultivation and the profitable support of human life, there are bound to be more people there than can possibly find settlement in the east. The filling up of the North-west with settlers therefore is not merely a question of furnishing a market for the manufacturers and the traders of the east. It is not merely a question of filling that country with people who will produce wheat and buy manufactured goods. It is a question of the ultimate result of the efforts being put forward for the building up of a Canadian nationality, so that our children may form one of the great civilized nations of the world, and be one of the greatest forces in that civilization. This can never be accomplished if the preponderance of

COMilOISTS
the population should be of such a class and character as will deteriorate rather than elevate the condition of our people and our country at large. It is the feeling of the people of the North-west that we should bring into that country a high class rather than a low class of immigrants. Our western people are convinced that it is in the highest degree necessary for the welfare of this Dominion that there should not be any deterioration in morality and intelligence and In civilization in the settlement of our western territories.
When I took the liberty of placing these views before the House some years ago, the reply was made that we must have settlers, we must have people to cultivate our prairie lands, and if we cannot get them from one class, we must get them from another. In my opinion, that argument was not good then ; but even if it were, it does not exist now. There are desirable people, our equals in every way, in civilization, Intelligence, enterprise and aspirations, pouring into that country by the hundred thousand. We are, therefore, not dependent on picking up settlers wherever we can. We are getting settlers of a most desirable character, and every undesirable settler tends to keep out a desirable one. That is the point of view from which I regard immigration, and I believe it is from that point of view that the majority of the people from the North-west regard it. They do not want to see their institutions deteriorating. They do not want their political or social or municipal life to be placed at the mercy of people who do not understand their benefits or advantages. In any country whose government depends on the popular vote, every voter is a part of the governing body and in bringing people into the North-west, we are introducing people who will have as much to say in the government and the management of the country as we will ; and if the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Roche) thinks it is a good thing for this country that its destinies should be placed in the hands of those whose ideas and aspirations are not the same as ours, I certainly cannot agree with him. I believe in a vigorous immigration policy, such as has been pursued by the government of this country, but I believe that the success of that policy lies in the improved administration of the land and affairs generally in the North-west as make that country desirable for settlement to settlers of a high class. There is no need of depending on the less desirable class of immigration, when we can certainly get the more desirable class. It cannot be any longer a question as between immigration of an undesirable class and no immigration. The country has got beyond that point. It is now a question, as it possibly was not before, as between a less desirable and a more desirable class of immigration.


Frank Oliver: Something has been said, I understand, about the paying of bounties or commissions to induce immigration. To my mind, if ever there was need for that system, that need has passed. The payment of bounties and commissions has a tendency to bring the less desirable rather than the more desirable class of people. The work of introducing immigration is carried on in many different ways. Some are better than others ; and I would take the liberty of suggesting to the House that there is a certain system being carried on to-day which is in every way desirable, a system which is producing the best possible results and which may very well be enlarged so as to continue these results. I speak of the system which is followed in one case by Mr. Swan-sen, who is especially an agent for the immigration of Scandinavians, more particularly of Swedish people. He is an enthusiast on the subject. His system of work is to go to the colonies of his countrymen in the United States and deal with the people personally and individually, tie does not induce or ask any man to eome whom he does not consider a desirable settler. Then, when he gathers together as large a party as he can handle well, he accompanies them right to the ground where he intends to locate them, he sees them located, takes an interest in them while they are preparing their new homes, and goes back for another party. That may seem a slow process of inducing immigration ; but 1 may tell the House that, as the result of the work of that one man applied in that way, there have been added to the population of the district which I represent some ten or fifteen thousand people, all of a character which does not admit of any question-intelligent, energetic enterprising people, peopu: full of the highest aspirations of civilization. Another gentleman who carries on much the same work, is Mr. Adamson who goes to Scotland, selects his people there, brings them out, places them and goes back for more. What I suggest is that this system of selected immigration be extended and expanded, and be depended upon for the tilling up of our country. That system I claim, coupled with satisfactory administration and with a sound railway policy for the development of our country, will bring as many immigrants as we can handle from year to year, as many as we can assimilate from year to year, as many as can be brought into the country with advantage from year lo year ; and by that system we avoid any question arising from inducing the lame or the halt or the blind, or the mentally or physically or socially unfit.
Different ideas are held and expressed in regard to this great North-west. There is apt to be, on the one hand, an idea that the North-west does not matter, and the immigration that comes in does not matter so long as it goes to the North-west.

Another idea is that the North-west is so great that it does not matter either, for it will be all right in the end. Now the Northwest is a great country; it is a large country ; but it is not a country without limits or without limitations. That country gives great opportunities for the exercise of intelligence, energy and enterprise ; but it does not provide intelligence, or energy, or enterprise. It gives an opportunity for the people who have these qualities, but if the people who have not these qualities till up that country, then we have such a country as that from which they came. But, the North-west, as I said, has its limitations and its limits. It is not so large a country but that it can be filled up. IVe have not before us the prospect of continuously, and everlastingly. and for ever, pouring people into the North-west. It can be filled up, it will be filled up within a moderate period of time. And I say the responsibility rests upon this House and upon the government, upon any government that may be in power, to see that the people who fill up that North-west, who ultimately will dominate the affairs of this country, are of such a character as shall not lower the aspirations that we have or lessen the efforts w.e are putting forth for the improvement and advancement of this great Canada of ours. We spend hundreds of thousands, we spend millions year after year for the purpose of elevating the material, mental, social and political condition of our people ; and is it to be said that from year to year, while we make this effort with'one hand, we should, with the other hand, bring in a class of people who individually or collectively will doubly or trebly increase the task that is set us. Let me inform the House that there are already in the Northwest some very serious social and political questions^ arising from this indiscriminate immigration, which, if they continue to increase will do to this country, in the west and in the east incalculable harm.
Now, as to the possibilities. Mention has been made of a certain class of immigrants who have come, and objection lias been raised particularly to that class ; and I believe the government is being held up to condemnation because of their efforts in bringing in that class of people. There is a mistake, I believe, in that regard, and many of those who are interested in the subject of immigration make that mistake. The government is not bringing in that class of people. It is not putting forth any effort to bring that class. These people are coming in because of the pressure behind and not because of the efforts put forward to draw them. And therein lies our greatest danger. It is because the conditions in the country in which they live are unfavourable, it is because there is continually pressure behind them, the pressure of political sentiment, the pressure of landlordism. the pressure of race and religion, that they are being driven out of that coun
try into this. And we stand at the mercy of these people in their thousands, in their hundreds of thousands, and in their millions at no distant day. This, Mr. Speaker, is not a fancy picture, it is not a dream ; it is a matter of fact. If my hon. friend from Halifax (Mr. Roche) speaks as an expert as regard to the appearance of these people, I take the liberty of saying that I speak as an expert in regard to the conditions that prevail in the country from which they come, having received the information from their own lips. There are millions of these people who live under conditions which tend to drive them out of their own country. They certainly find the conditions favourable here, and they are coming in in increasing numbers every year, without government assistance or government aid. This is the danger in which we stand, and this is the future of the immigration question which the House should be well aware of and should be prepared to deal with as I believe it will have to be dealt with.
As to the immigration that is coming from the United States, as I said in the beginning, this is the largest immigration we are getting, and is certainly the most desirable foreign immigration we are getting. The only immigration that could be more desirable would be that from the British islands.
I do not speak of the movement of our own people to the North-west, for that is the most desirable of all, and that, I am glad to say, is a movement that is increasing from year to year. It is a pity that it had not started sooner, but thank God it has started at last, and we are getting our own people to settle in our own country. Canada has been the greatest emigration country in the world. We have sent more of our own people into foreign lands within the last thirty years in proportion to our total population, than any other country on earth, not barring Ireland. The fact is we have sent so many of our people into the United States within the last thirty years that of this tremendous immigration that is coming from the States, a very large proportion are our own people coming back, or their descendants. This fact shows to what a tremendous extent our people have gone to the States in previous years. Now I say these people are desirable, take them in the mass, desirable in every way. They are people of intelligence, of energy, of enterprise, of the highest aspiration. They speak the same language, they worship in the same churches, they have the same political ideals, although they have been enjoying different political institutions. Moreover, these people are the strongest objectors to the idea of indiscriminate immigration. They say they have suffered from that in the United States, and they will hold up both hands against such a policy in this country. We, in the west, believe in a vigorous immigra- * tion policy, but we do not believe in a policy

of indiscriminate immigration. A policy ot selected immigration will till the North-west as fast as is good for tlie country, as fast as is good for tlie Nortli-west, as fast as the people can be properly assimilated, and that is the policy we desire to uphold in this House. We cannot have that policy without a satisfactory administration ot public affairs in the North-west, we cannot have it without a satisfactory policy of railway development in the North-west. We have had a satisfactory administration, we are having a policy of railway development. We believe that the North-west, and very soon all Canada, are entering upon an era of progress and prosperity, such as-it is usual to say, was never dreamed of but such as was dreamed of twenty years ago, but was not realized then, for reasons which it is not necessary to mention, but which is being realized uow to the fullest extent of the wildest dreamers of that day. Because of that fact, it is more than ever necessary that there should be a careful selection of the immigration that comes into our country. It is not now so much a matter of bringing them in as it is a matter of saying who we shall accept.


Mr. A. AV. PUTTEE (Winnipeg).: 1 entirely agree with the hon. member for Alberta (Air. Oliver) in his protest against indiscriminate immigration into this country, and in the sentiment that public money is practically worse than wasted if it is spent to increase that menace in the North-west. As a matter of fact, I believe it is a position generally conceded, most people will admit, that the immigration of four or five years ago was a decided hindrance, that it was a menace and a danger, and that we are all very glad that it has practically passed away and that the immigration at the present time is coming from better sources, and is of a better quality. At the same time, there is still need for close scrutiny. AVitli the volume of immigration that is now coming into Canada, it seems to me that we should pay more attention to inspection and less attention to agents in the various countries. It must be admitted that where immigrants come in in large numbers, there is a proportion who are physically undesirable, and we are doing our own people an injustice by letting them come in, we are placing burdens upon our own people, we are endangering the health of the community, and in fact, endangering the general public good. Now, Air. Speaker, in proportion to our population we are getting a tremendous immigration, far larger proportionately than that which has gone into the United States, twTo or three times as large. And as they have for years seen the necessity of very careful inspection, it behooves us to institute likewise a very careful inspection. As a matter of fact, we have a greater necessity for closer inspection than they have in the United States; because they have had for some years a policy of inspection, Mr. OLIVER.
and as it has become generally known throughout Europe that it is troublesome and a waste of money for shipping agents to ship undesirables to the United States, the consequence is that a larger proportion will come to this country. Not only that, but a great many come to Canada first, with the expectation of being able to cross over the border into the United States. This has been recognized and attempted to be met, and now if you go to our stations in the interior of the country where railways terminate that connect with the United States, you will find the officials of their Immigration Department parading our platforms, watching every train that leaves for the United States. They are watching for the physically unfit, and when they succeed in stopping them from going into the United States that means that they are left in Canada. If we watched the ports and refused admission to all the undesirables wherever they were detected, that might serve the purpose, but practically that cannot be done. But the United States officials have found that it is not enough lo watch the ports, and so they watch at our railway stations in Canada where lines connect wHli the United States. At a station some distance west of here, I saw two men on tlie platform looking carefully into the train. As the train approaches the border these officers of the United States Immigration Department board the train and communicate with all on board, to find out who have got tickets that have been given to them at a port of entry. If they find these people undesirable, they are advised for their own benefit to stay on this side of the line. Now unless we pay more attention to inspection, we are getting for our money something that we do not want, something that is going to be troublesome. The amouut of money that is now being spent on immigration is very large indeed and .1 think it would be wise' that the outside expenditure should be limited materially, and that more should be done inside in the way of inspection, and more assistance given to these immigrants in placing them on the land.
Now, Air. Speaker, there is the question of the quality of these immigrants. Unfortunately for us, Great Britain has not got a large rural population that we can draw from. The population in the rural districts there is stationary, one that would be hard to influence. In fact all the associations that surround them are such that it is difficult for Canadian agents to induce them to leave the country, and what is worse still, our agents do not pay a great deal of attention to that class. Unfortunately their principal work, heretofore and at present, is in the large cities of the old country.
Now, it must be apparent to anybody who gives any thought to the proposition at all that under the most favourable circumstances a very large proportion of the immi-
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grants will be mclianies who will come to our cities.	They Yome no doubt after
having read the literature, thinking probably that they would like to take up farm life.' As a matter of fact you will find that a very considerable proportion of them go to the cities and stay there. For several years In succession now we have been told on behalf of the government that it is not the policy of the government to encourage the immigration of mechanics, that they understand that they will come without being specially encouraged and that in fact they do not encourage them on the other side of the water. But, notwithstanding this the fact remains today that the greater part of the work of our immigration agents in Great Britain is done in the cities, and it is the mechanics in these cities who are encouraged to come to this country. What I complain of is that although our agents have been- instructed by their superiors, they still continue to do this work, and to still continue to do it openly, and in fact during the last few months they have insulted some of the citizens of this country who have addressed the British public on the subject. I notice as an instance in the Ottawa ' Journal ' of to-night this item, and this is but one example of what has been going on during the last few months :-
Toronto, July 14.-Fifty old country iron moulders and twenty core and pattern makers reached Toronto yesterday to take positions in the Canada foundry at Toronto Junction, where a strike is on. Upon learning the situation they did not go to work, but many of them attended a union meeting and related their experiences. They said they had been engaged on the understanding that there was no trouble, but that there was a great scarcity of moulders in Toronto. The men are unionists. Another batch of men arrived from Eastern Canada and were switched into the company's yards. They were not molested by the strikers.
Through various agencies during the last eighteen months hundreds of men have been induced to come to this country under such pretenses as that. They have been told that they were wanted, that there were large wages going here, that there were not men enough to do the work aud that there was no trouble. The employers, notwithstanding the prosperity of the country have determined to keep wages down to the minimum at which they were previously, and to accomplish that they have been bringing in outside men to do the work. When this was in full swing at the end of last summer, aud seeing the effect it was having on the industrial centres of this country, more especially Winnipeg,, the mechanics there, as represented by the Trades and Labour Council, had a full statement of the case drawn up. They are mostly men who in their time were workmen in England or in some portion of the British Isles. They understand thoroughly the conditions existing in that country as they do in this
country and they sent a full statement of the conditions here to the British press and it was widely published there. It was immediately replied to by our immigration officer in London, Mr. W. T. R. Preston. He contradicted the statement from top to bottom. Here is a man who does not know the conditions that exist at all contradicting men who know all about them. He practically tells the British public that the three men who indited the circular were paupers before they came to this country and that they have been liars ever since. That is a fair summing up of the statement of this agent to the representatives of labour in this country. I have_ the letters of that gentleman, I do not wish to read them all, but as a matter of fact that is a fair summary of the matter. Here is one sentence of Mr. Preston's letter, dated London, June 10, 1903 :-
In further proof of this contention it is not out of place to say that the three labour representatives who have signed the manifesto in question to the emigrating' population of Great Britain are to-day living like princes in comparison to their positions prior to their arrival in Western Canada.
That is the letter of Mr. IV. T. R. Preston to the British public coutradictiug the statement sent over by these men who were selected by the workers of Winnipeg to address the British public. This letter was published in the Manchester ' Guardian ' of June 11, I understand. A reply has been sent to it and a very fair reply indeed. I think Mr. Preston should be notified that it is not in the interest of immigration even for him to continue this kind of campaign over there. I understand fully the influences that are at work behind him. Considering the nature of the contest that is going on between employer and employee I think the workmen should not have any interference from the government agent in carrying on their operations. But, there is another matter that I especially wish to draw the hon. minister's attention to and it is that the British public is being misled as to who are private immigration agents and who are immigration agents in Uie employ of the Dominion of Canada. There has been appearing in the want columns of the British press a small advertisement that reads like this [DOT]
Immediate employment in Canada guaranteed. All kinds of competent labour, including moulders. boiler makers, machinists, carpenters, agriculturists, farm pupils ; also, domestic servants. No fees.-Canadis' Labour Bureau, 13 Charing Cross, London.
The new address of the Canadian government office is this, or very near this. I believe the government office number is 17 while this is 13. It is so near to it that it mixes it up in the British mind, and the people there accept this as being a Dominion government advertisement. In addition to inviting mechanics of all kinds it also


Mr. DAVIS.: Would the hon. gentleman tell me if this appeared as reading matter in a newspaper, or was it an advertisement put in by some private bureau.


Arthur W. Puttee: I do not know who is putting it in the newspapers, but it has been appearing in the British newspapers for some months past. It states that it is by the Canadian Labour Bureau, 13 Charing Cross, London, S.W., and what I point out is that that address is practically the address of the Dominion government agent in London. If it is done by a private firm it is done to mislead the people into imagining that they are corresponding with the Dominion government agent, and I say that our agent in London should put that matter right at once. We have obtained immigration from the United States during the last year which is exactly suited for our country, and we have obtained some very good immigrants from Britain, but on the other band we have obtained a very large percentage of immigrants who are 'anxious and determined to settle in the cities. That has rendered the condition in our cities alarming to the man who has to earn his living. In the city of Winnipeg it has had a very detrimental effect, the result being that the wage-earner has now to buy his supplies at increased prices while his wages have not increased. Is it not a fair argument to


Arthur W. Puttee: say that the workingmen of this country should be taxed to provide funds to keep immigrant agents in large cities in Europe for the purpose of inducing men to come out here to compete with them and to keep down their wages to a minimum. That is really the effect of this kind of policy. I state here on my responsibility, that there has been no scarcity in Canada of skilled mechanic labour. If you want proof of that, here it is. Whenever an article is scarce there is an immediate rise in the price of that article, but there has been no undue rise in the price of labour in this country. Wages have not increased to anvthing like the extent that the cost of living has increased. The very fact that the Postmaster General can find hundreds of people for his service who are willing and anxious to 'hang on to their jobs at $30 and $10 a month is positive proof that wages have not increased. The people who have come to Manitoba and who have settled on the land are heartily welcome, b'ut I say again that the government has no business to spend public money in inducing the mechanic and ordinary city labourer to come to Canada under the impression that wages are so far higher here than in England and that the cost of living is lower. Why, Sir, we had it stated publicly in the papers by Mr. rreston, the Canadian agent, that in the city of Winnipeg the necessaries of life cost far less than they do in Great Britain. That is a most absurd statement and the only reason why he could possibly have made it was. that he thought the people who knew the real truth were not in a position to directly make a contradiction. It is outrageous to induce people to come into Canada by such a statement as that.
I am sure that the Minister of the Interior is well informed of those things I have mentioned, and I trust he will again assure us that our agent in London, and other agents as well, will not only be instructed that they must not give undue colour to the information which they supply intending immigrants, but that they will also be told that they must carry out these instructions. There is no use bringing people out here under false pretenses and having them disillusionized on their arrival. It is a good deal better to tell people that they would have to work when they come here, and that it is safer for them to have some capital even if they are going to a homestead, than it is to'set on foot the cock and bull story of Mr. Preston that all they have to do is to arrive at the nearest port in Canada and that then they are on the high road to prosperity. This gentleman stated that if he had $20,000 be could bring thousands of families out here and that they would at once start out on a prosperous career. That is no kind of story to place before people who when they arrive here will become disgusted and send back reports that will deter others from coming out.

It appears to be always the case that when there is a very large immigration to a country the ordinary precautions are pushed to one side. It is well known, that taking them on the whole, the Barr colonists were perhaps the finest and best class of people who ever came to this country in such numbers, and that they had more money than any similar number of immigrants who ever arrived here. And yet that colony of respectable people who had been well brought up in the old land were crowded together on board ship in a style that was not decent. That is an evidence of how prone transportation companies are, and government officials are for that matter, to break through the ordinary precautions when a large number of people are being handled. If that is the case even with steamship companies who have to conform to board of trade inspection before they leave British ports, is it not much more apt to be the case on this side considering the comparatively small amount of inspection which exists in this country. I claim that unless you are going to spend money to our own detriment, you have got to have some more strict scrutiny of immigrants than you have at the present time.


Mr. M. K. RICHARDSON (South Grey).: There seems to be a consensus of opinion on both sides of the House that the great need of the immigration department at present is a more careful discrimination as to the character and the health and the adaptability of the immigrants who come to this country. Some years ago the feeling was very strong that we should fill up the great North-west as rapidly as possible with immigrants, and little thought was taken as to their character, their occupation, or their suitability for employment in Canada. We are now just beginuing to realize the prophetic vision of these statesmen of thirty years ago who projected great enterprises for the opening up of our North-west. Men who foresaw and foretold that the time would come when that country would De opened up to the teeming millions of Europe, and when prospects would be offered to them which they never experienced in the old world. We are only now coming to realize that prophetic vision ; but we are coming to a point in our history when we should pause and consider whether the present management of that department of the government is as wise and prudent as it might be and ought to be. I think, from the evidence that has come out during the discussion this evening on both sides of the House, that it must be conceded that there is room, and vast room, for improvement. We have already had evidence of the -undesirability of bringing out what we may almost call the sweepings of some of the European nationalities, men who are not desirable as citizens in any country in the old world, and whom their fellow-countrymen were quite willing to let
go, no matter where they went to. But now we realize that it is necessary to the future of Canada that we should use more discrimination in regard to the class of men who are to become the future citizens of this country. We spend large sums of money annually for immigration purposes, and the question whether we get value for that money or not is not to be estimated in numbers of immigrants, but it may be estimated quite as much in the character of the class of immigrants we get. If we get a class of people who are undesirable, physically, mentally, from their national proclivities or from any other cause, we are not getting that value which we ought to have. I know that there has been a feeling expressed, and I entirely agree with it, that it is very desirable that we should get immigrants from the British isles, as they will more readily assimilate with the ideas, thoughts and feelings of Canadians.
It has been admitted by the hon. member for Alberta (Mr. Oliver) that there is just one class of immigrants who are superior to them for the great North-west, that is, immigrants from the older provinces of Canada. We lose a large number of young men from our'older provinces annually, and we may expect to lose them. It is necessary, when young men grow up, that they should leave their homes. ' Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits.' And there is a disposition everywhere among Anglo-Saxons to move about and see the world, and see whether they cannot better their condition. That movement will continue, and it is desirable that we should retain in this great Dominion of Canada as much as possible of that class of young men, especially the farming class, from Ontario and Quebec, who wish to move away from their homes and find other homes and prospects. It is very necessary that we should always bear in mind that one of the great dangers of the future of this country is that with our large extent of territory stretching from ocean to ocean there may arise a dissimilarity of Interest or sentiment or aim ; and it is very necessary that we should endeavour as much as possible to infuse into the population of the great North-west some element that will carry with it a national sentiment, a feeling of love for Canada, something that will bind together the different parts of the country far better than telegraph lines, railway lines, commerce or anything else-a bond of kinship and national sentiment which shall tend to hold us together nationally, and give us larger and broader national views. What is it that gives us the greatest trouble with our fiscal policy at the present time ? Is it not the extent of our territory and the divergence of our interests ? We need a larger and a more national outlook, and we need to preserve it in the great North-west. We do not want the feeling to grow up among the people of the North-west that they can be better served by the United States or by



 )
cultivating commercial or fiscal relations with tiie United States. We rather want a national sentiment that will overlook to some extent these considerations, that will look from one end of the country to the other, and will ask what is best on the whole for this great Dominion of Canada. We want to subordinate local and even racial interests to the general interests of the country. These general interests can be served to' some extent by promoting the settlement, of the great North-west with our own young men, especially with the sons of the pioneers of these older provinces of Quebec and Ontario ; and this much I would claim for them, that whatever assistance may be given to any class of immigrants, none deserve more of this country than the sons of the pioneers of those older provinces.
It is also very desirable that we should have a good share-and I am glad to learn that we are obtaining it at present-of the immigration coming from the old country, especially from Great Britain. I know that there is a feeling sometimes expressed that people who come from the cities of Great Britain are not desirable immigrants ; but from my own personal knowledge I can say that men who have come from the city of London, who have been accustomed to indoor work, but who have brought out with them that native intelligence, industry and indomitable perseverance which pertains to our kin, have made a perfect success of farming operations in Canada, though they never were on a farm in their life before.
I had the pleasure of transmitting a few days ago to the Minister of the Interior a letter from a man who only twelve months ago was in a London warehouse, where he said he had to dress like a duke on the salary of a dustman. But he made up his mind that he would come out to Canada, where, if he could not do anything else, he would go on the soil and try to make a living. He was told by one old man that he would soon be back again with his mother or his grandmother. But he describes how he came out and what he had learned within twelve months, and he said he was enjoying life amazingly in the North-west turning up the rich soil of Manitoba and driving a team across the prairie, an occupation which he had never followed before, and where he had found a new vigour, zest and interest in life such as he never experienced before. Men will be successful if they have the energy, the determination and the intelligence necessary, even though they have not been brought up to agricultural pursuits. There is great room for gathering, even from the cities of the old world, men of this class, who are tired of being slaves to indoor duties all their lives, and who will, if they have the opportunity, make a success of agricultural life. I read an extract from a North Cumberland paper only a week or so ago. the ' Penrith Observer,' which is large-


Matthew Kendal Richardson: ly circulated in the counties of Northumberland and Westmoreland, about a number of Barr colonists who had returned and who were complaining bitterly of the misrepresentations that had been made to them by the agencies which had induced them to come out, and also of their reception and treatment in Canada.	.	.
I only give the statement for what it is worth, and to show what reports are in circulation in the press of Great Britain. Although the Immigration Department may disclaim responsibility for the treatment of the Barr colonists in Canada, yet the people of the old country will not make any discrimination. They will simply take the reports from their countrymen who went to Canada, and who complained about being overcrowded on the steamers, and of not having been decently treated in the railway transportation across the country, and of being landed into a wilderness without any of the accommodations they had been promised, and will hold the government responsible. I am not imputing any mismanagement or remissness of duty to the department, but I merely point out the necessity of the government taking under its care and supervision every scheme of emigration, whether promoted by Mr. Barr or anybody else, because if there be any grounds for dissatisfaction, the fault will be charged against the Canadian officials and government rather than against the organizers of the emigration scheme. Therefore it is necessary that the government exercise careful supervision even over private colonization schemes, such as the Barr.colony. I need not refer particularly to the statistics compiled and given to the House by the hon. member for Lennox (Mr. Wilson). They must convince every one of the necessity of our using much more careful oversight and discrimination in the character of the emigration we are getting. Our country has great resources and possibilities, but its progress and influence in the future will depend not so much on the numbers as on the character of the population. It is the individual qualities of our people which will tell in the formation of our character as a nation, and that greatness and influence which we all desire this Dominion should attain will only be secured by a more careful supervision and discrimination in our immigration policy.
Hon. Win. BOSS (Victoria, N.S.) I think that we should bring this discussion to an end pretty soon; for if we continue to waste the time of this House much longer, we will have to send away home for our winter clothes. I was sorry to hear the speeches of the bon. member for Alberta (Mr. Oliver) and the hou. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Puttee). They come from a great country, but are very narrow in their ideas. It is about time that they should get some expansion in their views. They may rest assured that for all time to come our immi-
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giation will contain a certain percentage of the nationality to which these lion, gentlemen belong. The Irishman, the Englishman, the Scotchman and the Frenchman will come to us for generations yet just as well as these people from the continent of Europe. Those people from the continent come to Halifax, well clad and pay their way to the great North-west. Will these lion, gentlemen turn them back again as we do the Chinese ? I say no, let them come and work out their living and *destinies in this country. I am sorry to hear intelligent men preach such doctrines as we have had to listen to to-night. Those people to whom they allude come from the midst of civilization and bring with them the civilization and the characteristic of their native countries, and we should deal with them in a broad-minded and Christian spirit and not treat them as outcasts and publicans.


Adam Carr Bell: The different opinions held by the hon. gentleman who has just addressed the House and the hon. members for Alberta and Winnipeg are due, no doubt, to the different standpoints from which they view the question of immigration. X suppose there never was a time when there was a greater temptation to promote immigration than there is in Canada to-day. The extent of our country and its wealth producing qualities are so immense that it will take a great many years to populate it at all adequately. Furthermore we have in every part of Canada such enormous resources, agricultural. mineral and industrial, that the statesmen of the day are naturally anxious to bring these resources in touch with the one element which is required to create national wealth and progress. All that Canada wants to-day is people. Without people, enormous as is her area and boundless as are her resources, she is still a comparatively small and weak community. It is therefore natural that Canada should hunger for people. To a certain extent it is not amiss that there should be occasionally such a remonstrance as we have had to-night from the hon. members from Alberta and Winnipeg. These gentlemen represent that part of Canada in which population is most desirable, and in which there are the greatest possibilities, and it is rather a remarkable circumstance that representatives from that part of Canada should raise a warning voice against our not being sufficiently discriminating in encouraging immigration. If such a warning were to come from one of the older provinces, it would not be so surprising; but it is rather surprising that it should come from that section of country which is suffering from lack of population. Has the government erred in the direction of bringing in undesirable people ? Taking the report of the Immigration Department and the investigation carried on by the Committee on Immigration, it seems to me that no great attempt has been made to secure emigration from those portions of the continent of Europe from which we might possibly gather an undesirable class.
There is, as has been pointed out, a pressure upon these people which is sending them to the new world. But it is not the part of the programme of the Immigration Department of Canada, as 1 understand it, at this time to offer special inducements to these people t* come, but the department is rather withdrawing its efforts from the centres of continental Europe and is confining them to the home- islands and the Vnited States. And therefore it seems to me that we are not, at present at least, erring in the wrong direction of making great efforts to gather in immigrants that the hon. member for Alberta (Mr. Oliver) might c insider an undesirable class. Now, apparently. all the money that has been spent by Canada in the matter of securing immigration has been not very adequately rewarded by increase of people. We have not seen the immigration into this country increase very largely, although for a great many year's past it has been the policy of governments in Canada to spend money in a manner exceedingly liberal when we take into consideration what is really a comparatively limited revenue, the revenue of Canada. It will be found thdt in some years, owing, probably, to some circumstances which it might lie. exceedingly difficult to arrive at an understanding of. it requires a very much larger expenditure of money than in others to secure the arrival in Canada of an immigrant or a hundred immigrants. Looking over the figures as I find them in the published returns, the expenditure for manv years past would represent an average of about $9 to $10 per head for immigrants brought into Canada. But there is an exception in 1900 in the number of immigrants secured, whether it be owing to some defect in the returns or some circumstances which, for the moment, controlled or had an adverse effect upon the immigration into Canada. The percentage of expense almost doubled. In that year it cost nearly twice as much as in other years if the figures in the Year-book are reliable to secure a given number of immigrants to this country. The figures showing the amount expended and the number of immi grants, as I took them from the returns are as follows ;
Year.	Expenditure. No Immigrants.
1MS	..	$ 261,195	31,9001899!!	..	255,879	44,543;p>O0	.. ..	434,563	23,895X901	444,730	49,1491902!! "	
494,842	67,379
Taking all these figures, it will be found that it cost somewhere about $9 per head for the immigrants reported as arriving in

this country. And, so far, I suppose we might say that the result was fairly satisfactory. For every immigrant who comes into Canada and makes a home here becomes at once a contributor to the revenue under our system of raising our revenue largely by indirect taxation, and, in very little more than a year that immigrant, if of the self-supporting class and not destined to become a burden upon the community, will have contributed nearly the sum of money it has cost to secure him. It is, therefore, not a bad proposition that the government should spend something like $9 per head to bring in immigrants, provided it secures a desirable class. And, generally speaking, I think it has been the policy of both parties in Canada for a number of years past to treat immigration as one of the most important things that could engage the attention of parliament. And to-day parties in Canada, I think, are united in justifying the government in expending money in a liberal manner in order to secure population for this country. The only matter about which there can be any question or dispute, and I presume the matter which the hon. member for Lennox (Mr. Wilson) had largely in mind when he introduced the subject to-day-a subject for years past to which he has given a great deal of attention to the great advantage of the House-was to look closely into the figures to discover if there was a defect in the mode of expenditure, to see if the returns set forth in the statistics of population coming into the country were correct, and if the results of the immigration expenditure were exactly what they purported to be. I think, that to a certain extent, my hon. friend from Lennox has been able to show that there is, perhaps, a leakage from Canada of some of the immigrants that were reported as coming into this country. All the persons who land at our ports as steerage passengers and who are destined for Canada or who assert that they are Canadian immigrants,
I suppose, are included in the gross number of immigrants set down to' the credit of the Immigration Department. But I think there can be no question at all that the authority quoted here to-day by the hon member for Lennox, air. Watcliorn who is the head of the United States service in Canada, goes to showr that, to a certain extent at least, there has been on the part of some of the older and less desirable countries of Europe a disposition to send into Canada as Canadian immigrants a certain percentage of persons whose ultimate destination is not really Canada but the United States. And these, of course, would not take this means of reaching the United States if the more ordinary and easy avenue of direct immigration were open to them. Inspector Watcliorn states that there were, last year, 26,000 immigrants landing in east-tern ports in Canada and claiming to be Mr. BELL.
destined for Canadian points, of whom, as he contends, a very large proportion were really trying to make tlielr way into the United States by this roundabout route. It would not be a matter of any seriousness if these 26,000 persons chose to make their way through Canada and there were no objections to their entering the United States. It would only mean that the revenue of the steamers coming to our ports and the revenues of those persons who, in the course of their passage through this country are called upon to supply the wants of these immigrants would be benefited.- We might look upon that immigration passing through Canada to the United States as just as important and valuable a class of traffic as any other that comes to our shores, and we should welcome it. But the point that has been made, not only this year, but in past years, by the hon. member for Lennox, and for which he has relied largely in the report of the United States officers who man the frontier and are found in all our ports and important railway stations, is that, to a certain extent the reason why these 26,000 people, or that portion going to the United States through Canada instead of going to the United States direct is that there are circumstances of a most undesirable character which compel them to use that avenue to the United States. Whereas a very small percentage of the immigrants who go by direct passage to the United States are rejected as undesirable, from either mental defect, poverty, or contagious or loathsome disease, the figures of this gentleman, Mr. Watchcrn. go to show that a large percentage of that immigration from the continent of Europe which goes to the United States through Canada, or which he believes is on its way to the United States when it comes into Canada, is so affected with disease, or impoverished, or so defective in intellect, that the people would be rejected if they tried to make their way into the United States by the direct route ; and so they choose Canada as a back door through which they can slip into the United States, escaping the vigilance of the officers whose duty it is to inspect these immigrants going into the United States.
Now, in connection with that matter which was discussed in this House last session, a Bill was passed in 1892, the operation of which I suppose comes under the care of the Minister of the Interior, which authorizes, for the first time, the government of. Canada to deport such immigrants, to arrest them summarily without warrant, wherever they are found, and to deport them from the country. Now, it would be very interesting to learn to what extent that Act has been put in force, how far it is in operation in Canada to-day. and to what extent Canada is being purged from the dregs of the immigration which the officers of tiie United States refuse to receive, and which the people of Canada in years past



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have had reason to fear, after its rejection by the United States, was left to remain in Canada to the injury and danger of our population. It is highly important that these matters should be brought to the attention of the Minister of the Interior, and I shall look with a great deal of interest to his statement in reference to this point, because I hope he will make it clear that his department and the government are using all the powers given to them by the legislation which has been adopted'in Canada in order to prevent the permanent settlement in Canada of any large proportion of the undesirable immigrants who have been refused by the United States officials.
Now, on this subject the testimony of Mr. Watchorn is singularly complete. He not only shows that there is a very much larger percentage of diseased and undesirable immigrants which come to Canada than that which goes to the United States, but he goes on to show in one of his pamphlets that actually, in the case of Italian immigrants, there is a system by which the desirable immigrants are selected and turned over to the Atlantic companies to be carried to the ports of the United States, whereas those of an undesirable character are sent north towards Rotterdam and Antwerp, and there, instead of going upon the boats of the trails-Atlantic Companies for the United States, are turned over to a Canadian company, to the Beaver Line, and are brought to Canada. He furnishes a large amount of evidence to show that not only was that the system of one agent among those who were soliciting immigrants for the steamship companies, but it is a recognized system. He speaks of a point in Switzerland which he describes as being a centre and headquarters of this traffic and he represents it to be so well organized that these immigrants are sent north towards the ports of the German Ocean where the shipping agents can discriminate and select them when they arrive at Antwerp and Rotterdam, and detect the undesirable immigrants and turn them over to the Beaver Line steamers plying to Canada, while the good immigrant who is not likely to be refused by the United States government comes across the Atlantic by the direct route to the United States ports. Now, if the vigilance of the officers of the United States in refusing to accept any part of this undesirable immigration, result in the deportation of all those who are undesirable and in sending them back to the country from which they had come out, of course it would not be a matter of great conse-. quence to us in Canada. It would be a painful circumstance to those poor people, as has been mentioned by the lion, member from Halifax (Mr. Roche) who have been hoping to escape from the hard conditions of the old world to be sent back into what they looked upon as a condition of hopeless misery; it would be a painful thing to contemplate, and yet it would not do for I
this country to indulge in any sentiment that would induce us to offer an asylum to a class of immigrants that are rejected by our neighbours to the south.
The condition of things between the two countries is very different. The United States has long ago reached tbe point that it does not feel itself to be in urgent need of an increase of population by immigration. The people of the United States now feel that they are receiving immigrants in such abundance that they can afford to chose, and at present, instead of allowing immigrants to come freely into that country, [DOT] and far from spending any money to secure them, they are now doing the very opposite, for they are spending money to select the immigration. The course of the two countries is dissimilar, and the consequence has been what might be reasonably expected, that an undesirable class of immigrants is finding its way into Canada with the ultimate intention probably of going into the United States. In reference to this matter the legislation which we passed at the last session enables us to guard ourselves from the danger of the introduction of loathsome disease into this country, provided the government of Canada is sufficiently wide awake to the danger, and makes sufficiently good use of the powers put into their hands by the parliament of this country. As I said, 1 shall wait with a great deal of interest to hear the statement in reference to that matter which I hope we will receive from the Minister of the Interior.
In reference to the matter which has been discussed here to-night to a certain extent, of the class of immigration which ought to be brought into this country, I notice there is a marked difference of opinion between at least one of the speakers who addressed the House and several others. I find there is voiced here an opinion which would go to show that the great want of Canada today is simply people to go utfon the lands of this country, an agricultural population, and that there is no need of any other class of population; that Canada does not require mechanics, but requires agriculturists. Now, to my mind that is not exactly the case. We want agriculturists, it is true; we probably want them more than any other class in this country. We have conditions which will enable agriculturists, almost as soon as they arrive, to become producers, to become valuable factors in increasing the wealth of our country, in expanding the trade of our country, and in making themselves felt at once in the trade returns of the country. Probably there is no class of immigrants coming to this country who can sooner make desirable homes for themselves than the agriculturists. But it must be recollected that wherever* you have a certain number of agriculturists, you necessarily must have to supply their wants and to do their work a certain percentage of mechanics as well. While it possibly may be true, as
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has been stated by the hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Futtee) that there is not that increase in wages of labour in the west which would go to show that there is any scarcity of labour there, or any want of mechanics or handicraftsmen, I think the experience of those who live in the older provinces is in the opposite direction. In their experience, and within my knowledge at least, there has been a tendency in the older provinces for the wages of mechanics to advance constantly in the last few years. They have advanced so that now wages are reaching a point which used to be looked upon as solely characteristic of the newer portions of the west, and you will find to-day that mechanics in the inovince of Nova Scotia are receiving wages in certain trades
land meets with. There are no reduced rates for him. I do not speak of the matter of assisted immigration, but if a citizen wishes to move from the older provinces of Canada to the west, if he wishes to take his family with him. if he wishes to take his domestic belongings, his furniture, he finds that he has to pay a very large and expensive railway charge before he can move his family from one part of Canada to another. It is the constant complaint from those from the older provinces who are moving into the North-west that while citizens of the United States and of other foreign countries who go into the west are favoured in the matter of railway rates, receiving, I am told, a rate over the railway of one cent per mile if they are land-seekers, both
averaging 84 a day. You cannot get any | going and coining, people from the older labourers as a rule under 81-56 a day, and in provinces going into the North-west with the case of such labourers they will very the intention of becoming settlers are com-probably be inefficient. There are not such j pelled to pay very nearly the ordinary rates
men as we used to be able to procure at one time in our province. They are large]}' made up of persons who would not he employed if the labour market were not comparatively bare. Therefore, I maintain that in the older provinces there is a large demand for labour. There is not only a demand for men hut for women as well. It is unquestionably a fact that household service is absolutely out of the question and almost
of travel, that there is a great discrimination and that it is a very expensive process today for a man from the older parts of Canada to take his family and belongings into the west with him. I do not at all urge that the government should set up a migration department with the intention of removing people from the older provinces to the west. I would not be prepared to support any such process as that, but in view of the fact
absolutely impossible to get in the older that there is unquestionably an enormous provinces of Canada. Therefore, it would j trend of people from the older provinces seem that it would not he amiss even if the ! hito the United States, it appears to me government did make it known to the people that the government would be well employ -of the older countries that not only is there j jn making such conditions of railway room on the farms of this country for people travel and giving such advantages ns would who are willing to work but that in the enable the people of the older provinces to various trades and in domestic service there 1 make the acquaintance of the west and is ample room for a very large immigration j gee how far it would he desirable for them indeed.	|	to remove from the older parts of Canada
In connection with immigration to Mils 1 and thus enable them to divert the movecountry there is another matter which I would not like to pass over unmentioued and that is the fact that to my mind, although it lias been asserted in this House on various occasions in recent years that exodus has ceased from the older parts of Canada, it is not the case that the exodus has ceased. It really seems to me as if tlie exodus from the older provinces of Canada is as great as ever it was. In connection with that matter it would almost seem as if it were proper that the government of Canada which is anxious to fill up witli reasonable speed the fertile parts of the west should make some kind of an effort to divert the large stream of immigration which is flowing from the older parts of Canada to the United States, towards our west. If the Nova Scotian, or the New Brunswicker, or the citizen of Prince Edward Island wishes to go to the Saskatchewan valley, or to the neighbourhood of Edmonton, or to settle down to work upon a farm in the west he deos not meet with the same favourable treatment that a citi
ment from the older provinces of Canada to the United States towards western Canada. We are, in the older provinces, not at nil convinced that the exodus has ceased. We have every reason to believe from the large number of unoccupied farms and the large number of strangers whom we see in our towns, because, while the population in the older counties may be about the same as it was, it is made up to a large extent of new people who are coming into these counties, that a large part of the older population is moving into the cities of New England and other parts of the United States. I do not say at all that it would be proper for the government to endeavour to divert the people of Nova Scotia or New Brunswick from these provinces and take them to the west, although I believe that in a great many cases it would lie largely to the interest of the people of these older provinces many of whom are living under conditions which do not at all compare with the conditions under which they could live after having spent four or five years upon
zen of Europe or of England or of Soot-1 the rich, virgin soil of the west ; still, I
Adam Carr Bell: maintain there might be with very great advantage an inquiry made by the government, through the Department of the Interior which would enable the government to determine to what extent this movement of population from the eastern portions of Canada to the United States still goes on and enable it to do everything in its power to divert that movement from the United States to tlie North-west Territories. There iji a discrimination against the citizens of the eastern provinces when he proposes to go to the North-west. He finds, that, whereas, the foreigner from Europe or the settler from the Unitel States is welcomed and every facility is put in his way to enable him to go with comfort, ease and cheapness to take up a home in the Northwest, he is treated simply as a person who is perfectly well able to pay his way, and although he is, I think, by far the most desirable settler that can be found anywhere in the world to go into the Northwest lie finds that the transportation system of Canada is such as to discriminate against him. That is certainly not as it should be, but the reverse. It would be a very easy matter, to my mind, if a system of instruction were used to show to those persons who are dissatisfied with their conditions in the older parts of Canada the advantages of our own west; to secure a large proportion of these people and take them to the west. I tlo not know that the whole of them would choose, if a choice were left to them, to settle upon farms, but the men to be found in these older provinces are of the most adaptable character. The very large percentage of the population devotes itself to industrial occupations. The population produces a large percentage of mechanics and although the hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Puttee) would seem to maintain that there was no need for any more mechanics in the country, it is impossible for me to make myself believe that any country which is increasing in population as fast as Manitoba and the North-west Territories does not present openings for a large increase in the percentage of mechanics. It is perfectly out of the question to suppose for a moment that where you have settled one hundred farmers you will not require ten or twelve men to minister to their wants just as they must be ministered to, because the farmer is a specialist. He is not a man who fills all his wants. His action is confined to the important business of producing as much wheat as he can out of the quarter section, or half section or section, which has been thrown into his hands. There is no country which offers such inducements for the farmer, and there is no country which offers such inducements to the mechanic whose business it is to minister to the wants of the farmer. Any one who travels through the older provinces may see on every hand evidence of a great movement of population. There appears to be a restless instinct in a man
who is born on our eastern seaboard, which leads him to conclude in some fashion that there are prizes to be got by moving from home. It would seem almost as though a more restless population is not to be found in the world than that which occupies the eastern provinces of Canada. So soon as they come to manhood, so soon as they are masters of their trade and get their avocation, they seem to be prone to venture forth into new fields to explore the world and see what prizes are to be gathered. It ia not uncommon, I regret to say, in the county in which I live, and it is the same in many other counties in the eastern provinces-to find farm after farm abandoned by the first settlers and now reverting into a state of wilderness. In these older provinces there is a country to which it would be the greatest possible advantage to Canada to bring in a population who would be content to farm upon these lands. They are not infertile. Although our country does not possess the amazing agricultural wealth of our western prairies it is still a fertile land. In no part of Canada to-day are to he found so many of the comforts and the pleasures and necessities of life, with the church and the school and the neighbour and everything that goes to render life pleasant and agreeable, as you will find in these older provinces. A long time must expire before one can suppose that even the most fertile part of the west can afford .the settler a home in the same fashion that he would have it in the older provinces. There are features in that life which must make it attractive to one who is not a genuine pioneer, who is not prepared to rough it, who is not prepared to put up with a good many discomforts and a great many hours of loneliness in order to achieve success rapidly. There are conditions in these older provinces that would be most inviting to a large number of people who are living upon small holdings in the old country. If we could succeed in bringing upon the deserted farms of Nova Scotia and New' Brunswick, those who are at present living in Ireland and Scotland and England upon, rented lands w'liere they have to pay a large part of their earnings to the landlords, wiiere they have learned that mixed farming to which our country is adapted, w'here they have learned to care for animals and w'here they have not acquired the desire for these huge crops, and these immensely wide fields! of the west, but where they are accustomed to the smaller culture of smaller holdings-if that population could be induced into the eastern provinces to a certain extent, it would be well for Canada. I am afraid that there is a disposition to forget the needs of these older provinces and to devote nearly all the energy of the Immigration Department to the work of peopling the w'est. It is my experience that those who move from Nova Scotia to the west seem to have an ambition to get as far-west as possible. If you talk to a person

in the county of Pictou who is going to the west, he is not satisfied to go to the neighbourhood of Winnipeg; he has the idea to get as far west as he can, and the great desire of most of them is to stop nothing short of Edmonton. That disposition is not only common to those who are moving from the older provinces of Canada, but I think it characterizes the European immigrant as well, and if we could counteract that disposition and persuade a larger proportion of them to settle in the older provinces where they could procure at nominal prices farms which are perfectly capable of supporting a family in great comfort and of giving large returns to an industrious man who knows how to farm, we would be doing our country a great deal of service. It is true that our western friends are anticipating at a very early day the time when the balance of power in this country will be west of the great lakes, and they are reminding us constantly of it in this House. While they are a very fine people and while we would not like to see them disappointed in their aspirations-possibly if we have to have masters in this country we could not desire better than they-yet, I would think that it is very important to maintain the population of the eastern provinces without diminution. While it is desirable to see the west grow up it is just as desirable to see the population kept as large as possible in the eastern provinces. There are features in the west which we have not in the east, and there are features in the east which you cannot have in the west for a long time to come. There is a far more highly organized system of living in the east, which you cannot achieve in the west except by the expenditure of time and money. Therefore it is of the highest importance to Canada that the whole object of government should not be devoted to increase the population of the west, although I admit this to be a most desirable thing. It seems to me that if an effort were made' to induce a large percentage of the immigrants to make their homes in the eastern provinces, Canada would be just as well served as she is at present by directing that tide of immigration to the far west. In speaking of the east I have to include Ontario, because while at one time we, in the maritime provinces, used to speak of Ontario as the west, I find that now when you get to the real west the people there speak of Ontario as the east. There is no question at all but that Ontario, Quebec and the maritime provinces are now the eastern part of this country. The condition of affairs in the whole east is that labour and population is being drained from it rapidly either into the manufacturing centres or to the virgin lands of the west, and there is an urgent cry in eastern Canada for labour. There is not in Ontario or in any part of the older provinces, anything like the number of men who are necessary to continue Mr. BELL.
that condition of tillage which was formerly the rule. There is an urgent demaud for labour in the older provinces and through sheer want of labour, a great deal of tillage which so largely contributes to the wealth and resources of the country, is being left undone.
The eastern part of Canada to-day is absolutely suffering from want of (labour. That being the case, I must say that while we are willing to do everything in our power to build up the west, we really feel that the government of Canada should not neglect the east, and that some consideration should be given to the demand of the east for more people. I do not know that the government intends to be partial ; but If any one takes up one of the atlases or one of the maps that are being published, he will find that while great prominence is given to the extraordinary, wide and wealthy country of the west, the older provinces are relegated to where they really fill the position that has been described as the shreds and patches of the confederation of Canada. A map has recently been published in which the plotting is done in such a fashion that all that delightful country in which I have my home seems to be moved some hundreds of miles towards the north pole, and is represented as lying away to the north of Winnipeg, Southern Alberta and Assiniboia. It is sim* ly a result of the map-maker's method : instead of putting the centre of the forty-ninth parallel where it ought to be, about Lake Superior, it is placed away west of that, and the consequence is that the eastern provinces are set away up towards the north, which would naturally give one the idea that if he settled in that part of Canada he would be in danger of perishing from frost. Possibly that is an unintentional misrepresentation ; possibly the necessity of utilizing and developing at the earliest date that country upon which we have spent so much money has unintentionally biased the map-maker's mode of thinking and feeling and depicting Canada when it is being presented to the population of Europe, from which we draw our immigrants. While we admit the greatness of the west, and join with those who express the hope to see that western country developed to an extent which will probably in the next fifteen or twenty years be most amazing and gratifying to those who live to see the results, still it seems to me that those of us who come from the east should occasionally raise outvoices in this House and insist on having a certain amount of the attention of the Department of the Interior and of the government devoted to the work of keeping the population of these eastern provinces as much as jiossible at home ; or, if it will not stay at home, diverting it to our own North-| west, and, in place of that population, bring: ing into the older provinces some of the people whom we can get from the British isles or the northern countries of Europe.

Perhaps the most desirable immigration going into the North-west to-day is that from the United States-that overflow, consisting partly of those who were once Canadians and who are coming back from the United States, and partly of those who have gone into Minnesota and Dakota for a time and are now moving into the North-west. That immigration is going into the country at such a rate that the government could probably dispense with some of the expenditure which they are devoting to attracting that immigration. The eastern provinces get none of that overflow, and the immigrants brought into this country from Europe by the machinery and the expenditure of the Dominion government do not stop in the eastern provinces, but are hurried off to the western part of Canada. But. in view of what has been done in some of our provinces in the east, I maintain that we cannot look upon that as a good thing, either for the immigrants themselves or for the country. There can be no doubt that if the Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Finlanders or any other men from the northern part of Europe coming to Canada to make it their home, could be induced to spend a number of years in the eastern provinces, to become acclimatized, and to acquire a capacity of making homes for themselves anywhere, they could learn the business of living in Canada admirably in the older provinces, and then, if they moved to the west, they would go as very desirable settlers. There is no part of Canada where an immigrant could learn the duties of Canadian citizenship better than in the older provinces, where all the machinery necessary to make him a thoroughly well qualified Canadian citizen exists in great perfection. In the older provinces of Canada, while we have not the great fertility that exists in the west we have a capacity for maintaining a large population. The little province of Prince Edward Island maintains by far the largest population per mile that is to be found in any part of Canada. It has a population of fifty to the square mile, and if the most desirable parts of Canada had an equal density of population. Canada would contain a population of 100,000,000. Prince Edward Island is an exceedingly prosperous part of Canada ; it is a very fertile and productive country, and is most important to Canada. It has not only great powers of production, but those powers are being developed, not in that wasteful fashion that prevails in the west, where the whole business of the farmer is to produce enormous quantities of grain and ship it out of the country as rapidly as possible. In Prince Edward Island, as well as in a great part of the older provinces, you do not have that process of producing grain in enormous quantities and exporting it in a very wasteful fashion. You have, on the other hand, an organized industry. That grain is a raw material which is converted,
through feeding, into butter, milk, cheese, pork and beef, and you have a condition of things far more valuable to the country in every respect than that in which we see the settler exhausting as rapidly as he can the fertility of his acres in order that he may export the grain he raises out of the country as rapidly as possible, and doing it all with the least expenditure of labour. In these eastern provinces we have conditions which make for the welfare of the country, and it would be to my mind most important that these older provinces should receive a large part of the care and interest of the government, and that as large a part as possible of the immigration to Canada should be turned into them and be induced to stay there as long as possible. I am pleased, of course, to note that at last we are beginning to receive a large increase in our immigration, and I am, to a certain extent, pleased to hear our friends from the west raise the note of warning against the admission into Canada of undesirable immigrants. I hope to hear from the Minister of the Interior that care is being taken to make use of the powers conferred upon his department by the legislation of this parliament to see that no undesirable immigrant is allowed to land in Canada, or, if he does, to see that he is deported. Great as Is our power of assimilation, we cannot afford to receive disease, or filth, or weak intellects, or paupers. The attention of the minister should be directed to a careful sorting over of the people brought into Canada under the policy of the government. It is very gratifying to us to notice and to record the fact that even as compared with the United States our immigration has assumed such large proportions. In Canada we received last year some 65,000 - immigrants, and the United States received something like 618,000. We have a population of about one-fifteenth that of the United States and are receiving immigrants to the extent of about one-ninth the number going to that country, so that towards Canada the emigration of the old world is being turned to an extent larger in proportion than to that country, which for the last fifty years or more has been the Mecca of every one who desired to improve his position by changing his country.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I thought we would have heard from the hon. the Minister of the Interior. But for some reason or other he is not disposed to defend his policy or explain the weak features of it or say anything regarding it.
I would have expected, after the arraignment of his policy by the hon. members for Alberta and Winnipeg, that he would have been disposed to say something in defence of the system of immigration which he has been conducting, and vigorously conducting, of late years. It has always seemed to me that we have erred very greatly with

regard to our immigration policy. I admit that it is desirable our country should lie filled up as rapidly as possible provided we get the right class to come to it, but I have always thought it much more important that we should use greater discrimination in our selection of immigrants than we have done in the past and be more anxious to have quality than quantity. We have a glorious heritage, but I regret that we are too anxious to fill it up rapidly as though it was utterly impossible ever to populate our immense prairies in the west. But while our fields appear to be illimitable, it will not be a great problem to till them up, considering the overflow of population from eastern and continental countries seeking new worlds and the seventy million people to the south of us. We should therefore guard against being too eager to gain population irrespective of quality. Through our desire to populate our country rapidly, we are too ready to welcome the riff raff of every country in the world. Such a policy is not the best for the people who inhabit Canada to-day, nor will it bring about the best conditions for those who succeed us. The indiscriminate immigration that we are having to-day is to my mind full of menace to our people. It is one of the greatest of dangers that confront us. We are importing the undesirable elements of Europe and continental countries-people who know nothing about our institutions, who are not in any way to the manor born, who are aliens to the conditions of Canadian or American life, who are inbued with Instincts and natures which have not in themselves any tendency to elevate humanity but rather to lower it in every particular. Yet such people are coming in by the hundred thousand, and every nation under the sun which desires to send its overflow to this country has our assistance. It does not matter whether these immigrants are diseased, or mentally or physically weak, they are welcome. Take the Doukhobors, we received them with open arms, just as we do the diseased or pauper classes who are bound to be a burden on our country. We count them all up and congratulate ourselves on their numbers and praise the government for the increase in immigration. We read week after week of such and such a steamer landing so many thousands in Halifax, and we do not ask who they are. We do not inquire whether they are physically, mentally or educationally suited to the country. Their elevation in the scale of morality or civilization appears to be a matter of indifference. We ask nothing of these important factors, but we say that the government are entitled to our thanks because two or three thousand of these Galicians or Doukhobors or Finns or Russian Jews or Poles or Mexicans have come to settle in Canada. Canada to-day is the dumping ground for the refuse of every country in the world. And the time will come, though


Thomas Simpson Sproule: it may not appear imminent now. when the social problems of life will press as heavily on us as they are doing to-day on the people in European and continental countries, and when it will tax the energy, ingenuity,, intelligence, political astuteness and statesmanship of our people to provide some protection against the dangerous elements we are importing in such large numbers. The fear that our country will not be filled up soon enough is not well-founded. A comparison is usually made between our country and the western states, to show liow rapidly their country was filled up-and how slowly ours. There is no use making comparisons between the settling of our western country and the filling up of the western states because the cases are not parallel, and you cannot draw any fair deduction from a comparison between them. It was not to be expected that our western country should fill up anything like as quickly as did the western states. The United States had. in the first place, a population of fifty or sixty million people, from which its unoccupied western states could draw settlement. In the eastern portion of that country, the population was becoming too dense and had to seek ail outlet. The cities and towns and rural districts in the east were becoming overcrowded, and the surplus found a field for their energies in the attractive wheat fields of the west. It was therefore an easy matter to populate the western states, when they had these millions at home to draw from, besides the immigration from European and continental countries. Very naturally, with these sources from which to draw population, their country settled much more rapidly than ours. And because we have not been able to vie with them in rapidity of settlement, we are apt to think there is something wrong with the condition of our country or with the way in which we carry on our immigration. But I say that it is not a fair comparison, for they had fifty or sixty of millions of their own people to draw upon, while we had only three or four million. Many portions of their country were overcrowded while we were not overcrowded in any part of ours. Again, they had commerce in every part of the world, vessels going to all European countries, and naturally they would attract a larger number of people to their country than we would to ours. We were comparatively a home-staying people, having little commerce and littie communication with European continental countries, and so could not be expected to draw from them as the United States did. Then, the United States had plenty of money to spend in immigration. She could spend hundreds of dollars where we could only spend dollars, so that in this respect also she has a great advantage.
We are reasoning on the same lines, while all these conditions have changed. AYe stand at the beginning of this new century faced

by new conditions. The territory of the United States is crowded, and the people are looking for the virgin soil of new fields to settle upon, with conditions of climate, soil and institutions similar to their own. Therefore, we have now seventy-five millions of people to draw upon to fill up our country, whereas a few years ago the surplus population of the United States was settling in their own west. The advantages now offered by our country for a start in life are so much greater than those in any portion of the United States that, of necessity, the people must move to our country and settle here. We are glad to welcome these people, because we know they are very-similar to ourselves. They- are accustomed to the conditions of climate, soil and institutions of our country-, and they can, with a little change of habit take up the responsibilities of life with us. And they make perhaps, some of the best settlex-s we can get. But they- are coming whether we spend money among them or not. The land companies acting as immigration agents in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Dulxith, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, companies that buy-eighty, one hundred or two hundred thousand acres of land in Western Canada and sell it to the people of the United States through agencies in these great cities- these concerns have established themselves as immigration agents that are more profitable to us than any system of immigration that we can carry out in their country. That being the case, is it desix-able that we should keep an army of immigi-ation agents in the United States to-day ? We are told that we have 280 agents who are. working there upon commission and salai-y. If we were to dismiss every one of these but ten or twelve we should have plenty. And 1 believe we should have quite as many- immigrants as are coming in to-day. They are making money out of us, but there is no reason why we should spend money for this pui-pose, because the immigrants would come in in any- case. A few years ago we spent only $120,000 for immigration ; and the oppositon of that day declai-ed that this was too large an exepnditure. Last year we spent $560,000 and there is not half the need for the expenditure to-day that there was five, seven or ten years ago. Because of these other influences of which I have spoken which ai-e sure to have immigrants whether our expenditure be great or small. We will get the immigrants in any case


Thomas Walter Scott: And keep them. We used to lose them.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: And keep them. There is no trouble in keeping the great bulk of them.


Thomas Walter Scott: There used to be.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Because we had not the conditions of life that we have to-day. As 207
we open up the country, build more railways, make the country more productive, and develop more manufacturing establishments that will give employment to people, there will be less trouble in keeping them. We are getting a very respectable class of people and we desire to get as many as we can of Irish, English, Scotch, Gex

man and French. All these we welcome because they make good and desirable immigrants. And I think we would be entitled to spend a reasonable amount of money to get a reasonable number of these people to come to our country. But we should exercise careful discrimination as to whom we allow to come in. I do not apprehend any danger from people of the races I have named, but I do appi-ehend danger from those coming from European continental countries where the degeneracy- of human life is greater than in the others. If we exercised wiser precaution we would exclude many- who now are allowed to come in. We find that last year we allowed to come in 3,934 paupers. I was struck with an experience I had a few weeks ago in Winnipeg. Three times in one day I was stopped in the stx-eets by beggars. Who were they ? Concerning two, I was told in most unmistakable way that they had landed in the country but lately and had nothing to live upon. I said :	' Why don't you go to work ? ' The
answer was :	' The work here is not such
as we have been accustomed to.' These are not the desirable class to have here. Then we admitted 704 diseased people. Have we not enough diseased at home, physically and mentally, persons who must remain foi-ever a burden upon the charity of oui* people, filling our hospitals and almshouses, that we should take them from European countries ? We are doing wx-ong in not exercising greater discx-imination in preventing this class of immigration. We find that the United, States rejected 4,534 from Canada and Mexico. What were they rejected for ? They seemed to be good enough for Canada, but the United States rejected thm. We were told the other day that w.e sent hack a few, but comparatively very few. There are a lax-ge number of these undesirable people in Canada to-day. We welcome people from England, fx-om Ireland, Scotland. Germany or France, because we know what they are. They belong to the races to which we belong, they axe men who will tend to the elevation of our population, and to the progress of our coxxn-try. They are accustomed to our institutions. they are suitable to our climate, and we desire to get them. But there are many immigrants coming from continental countries that we do not desire to get, that we woxxld be better without. Better a small population that are living under favourable conditions, that ax-e happy and contented, than a country filled up with paupers. We are often told that we want population. If



that is the great need to make a country great, go over to China and Japan and look at the conditions prevailing there-four) hundred and fifty millions of people, the great bulk of whom are living iu a condition worse than that of the brute beasts of our country, humanity almost too low to be called humanity, conditions of life below the lowest that prevail in our own country. Is that what you want to make of Canada. Is there nothing else to be desired but an immense population ? We must take into account how that population is employed, whether they are living in comfort, in contentment, whether they are educated. I say it is much better to be careful about the quality of our population; husband our broad acres for the overflow of our own country; be more careful about whom we allow to come in, and try to conduct the affairs of this country so that we may keep those who settle among us by affording them employment which will keep them happy and contented. In my judgment we need not incur a very heavy expenditure for immigration to-day, because we will get plenty of it whether we spend much or little. It is not the part of wisdom to send an army of immigration agents into foreign countries. We should be more careful to discriminate between those whom we allow to come into this country and those we keep out. Keep out those who are mentally and physically unsound and diseased. Above all things we should endeavour to keep that class of people out of our country. We have enough disease at home. The expenditure for immigration is entirely too -large, in my judgment, and might be greatly cut down.
Tnere is another thing to be regretted, and I have spoken of it before in this House. I have always regarded the custom of planting people in colonies as wrong. I think the immigrants should be mixed with our own people. We could teach them many things which it would be advantageous for them to know, but when ypu plant them in colonies they live according to the conditions of life at home, they are apt to keep all those habits which they brought with them from home and which might not be suitable for our country. We have not the opportunities of teaching them that we would have if they were mixed up with our own people. I believe there should be a fusion of races and population, and if we make a proper discrimination among those whom we allow to come here, the results cannot fail to be beneficial to Canada. We should never set apart so many townships for this colony and so many for that, so many for the Barr colony, or the Doukhobor colony, or the Galician colony, or the colony of Russian Jews. In my judgment that is wrong, and we will live to regret it. There is too much discrimination against our own Canadians. If we try to get people in from the United States, what do we do ? In the first place, we pay an agent a commission Mr. SPROULE.
to bring them here. Suppose that agent goes over there and tries to bring in a family composed of ten individuals. There is a father and five sons. We pay him $3 a piece as commission to bring them here. Then take the mother, we pay $2 to bring her here; then take the three children and we pay $1 each, that is $23 to bring that family over here. We give them a ticket which enables them to get a reduction in transportation of at least $10. That makes $33 as the cost of bringing that family over here. Now take a family from Ontario, or Quebec, or Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick, or Prince Edward Island, how much do we pay them V There is nothing for commission to get them to come. They desire to come, because they think they can better their situation. What assistance do we give them ? Not a dollar, but we give it to the foreigner. Therefore I say we are discriminating against our own people, who are the best people in the world that we could have to settle up that country. Again, we are sending out literature to ali the world to induce immigrants to come here, but our maps are made over in Chicago. We have not intelligence and brains enough in Canada to make a map, and so the Minister of the Interior must go over to the United States and pay them Canadian money to make maps for us, which ought to be made at home. I do not care if we paid half as much more on a home-made map, so long as we spent our money at home. Let us keep our money and our labour in our own country, for our own people, and not spend it abroad. In these lines I think our immigration policy is deficient, and the people of Canada will condemn the Minister of the Interior and the department over which he presides for the way this immigration business is carried on. In my judgment it is wrong in many respects, and the government are entitled to censure for the system with which they are conducting the immigration business of our country to-day. It ought to be amended, it cannot be changed one hour too soon; otherwise, in the near future there will rise up a sentiment which no government can withstand, and which will oblige the government to change their system much more rapidly than they desire.


Thomas Osborne Davis: I am sorry to say that I did not have the pleasure of listening to all the remarks of the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Sproule), but I have heard enough of what he said, and of what has been said by other hon. gentleman on this question, to justify me in addressing the House for a few moments. The hon. gentleman has been discussing the question of the army of immigration agents that this government has employed at the present time in the United States. Now I want to say that from my knowledge of the army of immigration agents that have been employed in the United

659S
States, we are getting satisfactory results. He says that some years ago when his friends were in power they spent $100,000 on immigration, but, he did not tell the House what we got for the expenditure of that $100,000. I know what we got in one instance. We got a few Jew pedlars that were brought up to that country. Talk about paupers ! I do not know what you would call them; they turned out to be criminals, because they were not long in the country before some of them were lauded in the jails in Calgary, Winnipeg and other portions of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. As far as paupers are concerned my hon. friend said that he went to Winnipeg last year and that he saw a lot of paupers. He should hare gone west previous to 1896. As a matter of fact we were nearly all paupers before the people turned the hon. gentleman and his friends out of power. There was scarcely any one else in the North-west Territories, and it is too bad that the hon. gentleman did not come up about that time. He goes on to say that he does not believe in colonies. Who introduced the system of colonies? The hon. gentleman's friends, and he, himself. because he was a memb.er of the House at that time, first introduced the system of colonies, but the difference between their system of colonies and the system of this government is, that, whereas, every colony they established was starved out and the people had to leave, tire colonies that are being introduced now are thriving and successful. I was amused to hear the hon. gentleman say that he believed in bringing in English immigrants. From the sjieecli I heard the hon. gentleman make on a previous occasion. I did not think he was very much in favour of bringing in English immigrants into this country, because, speaking of a number of English immigrants that were brought in, he said that they were brought in from the slums of London.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: When the hon. gentleman says I made use of any language that can reasonably be interpreted to mean that,
I reply that X certainly never did.


Thomas Osborne Davis: X do not wish to allude to a previous debate, but if the hon. gentleman will read his speech delivered the other day he will see that I am correct. The hon. gentleman does not know what he does say.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: 1 say it is entirely incorrect. I absolutely deny it.


Thomas Osborne Davis: If the hon. gentleman will refer to the debate on the Barr colony he will see that he said that a number of these colonists were taken from the slums of London. He objects to colonies. He says we want civilized people. Does he say that these people who were brought here by Mr. Barr, a lot of intelligent, clever and in many cases, wealthy people, are not ' 207*
civilized ? I can tell the hon. gentleman that they are civilized, that they do not require to be spread over the country in order to be civilized and that if he will go up there and see them he will know that when making a statement of that kind he was speaking without a knowledge of the condition of these people. If the hon. gentleman really wants to encourage immigration from England to this country lie is taking a very strange way of doing it by saying that a great many people that are brought in are paupers. My attention has been called to the debate in which the hon. gentleman made that statement to which I referred and I will read what the hon. gentleman said.


Adam Carr Bell: I rise to a question of order.


Thomas Osborne Davis: The hon. gentleman said :
I need not say-anything of the class of immigrants which were brought out, but I am told that many of them were picked up from the slums of London indiscriminately, and will be of little use in this country.
There is the hon. gentleman's own statement as to the character of the colonists brought out by this gentleman. The hon. gentleman seemed to have forgotten what he did say as to that, but the fact is that he has classed a lot of these very respectable people who have been brought out by Mr. Barr, who have settled in this country and who are doing well, as people who have been picked up in the slums of London.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I made that statement on the strength of what I saw in one of the papers. I have no reason to know whether it is correct or otherwise, but does the hon. gentleman say that to make the statement that many of them are brought from the slums of London justifies the allegation that I am opposed to immigrants coming from England ?


Thomas Osborne Davis: If the hon. gentleman were as patriotic as he claims to be, if he were working in the interests of the country, if it were a fact that he wanted to settle the western country with English people in place of getting up in this House and making statements of that kind about people who are brought into the country lie should inform himself as to the class of people which is being brought in.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I think I am tolerably well informed on that point.


Thomas Osborne Davis: An hon. gentleman assures me that if the hon. gentleman (Mr. Sproule) went up there and made that statement in the presence of some of these gentlemen there would be another battle of the Boyne.
I want to read a statement by me Battle-ford ' Herald,' a paper published in the district in which the Barr colonists are settled.^ whose editor was in constant contact with them every day going into their tents and seeing what they were like. I may say that this is the leading Conserva-

tive paper of the district of Saskatchewan. The article reads as follows :
The Barr Colonists.
The Saskatchewan ' Herald ' of Battleford, the pioneer Conservative paper of the territories, in a recent issue pays a high tribute to the members of the colony promoted by Rev. I. M. Barr and also to the Department of the Interior for the able manner in which it extricated the colonists from the mishaps into which Mr. Barr had led them. The ' Herald ' says :
Where a few weeks ago there stood a couple of hundred bell-shaped tents, containing part of the British colony, there are to-day less than a dozen, and within the past few days nearly all the remaining Britishers, who have for various reasons not located, are now on lands *which they have homesteaded. Many have small crops of potatoes and oats in, while others who delayed locating are now moving out their heavily laden wagons to their new homes.
Probably the most striking feature of the whole movement is the degree of perseverance shown by the new settlers. Despite troubles and trials brought on by being badly advised by the promoters of the colony, and weather as disagreeable as could be imagined, these people have, with the exception of two or three, all remained and braved the worst to reap the best.
Almost every difficulty in the way of the Britishers, has now been removed by the government. who have decided no longer to allow Mr. Barr the right of looking after the people.
Through the efforts of Colonization Agent Speers all the difficulties which have been so prominent, have been removed and the Department of the Interior is to be congratulated on the-able manner in which they rescued the sinking ship from destruction and put it afloat to glide on through yejrs as prosperously as the picture of living in Western Canada was first painted.
That article appeared in a Conservative paper. I am sorry that the hon. gentleman has left bis seat, because I am sure that after that he would come to the conclusion that these people were not taken from the slums of London, hut that they are a very respectable lot of people.
Now, I want to say a few words in reference to the statements made by the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Belli who spo)re previous to the speech of the hon. member for East Grey. I would not refer to this except that "the hon. member for Pictou alluded to the speech made by the hon. member for Alberta (Mr. Oliver) and the speech made by the hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Puttee). He alluded to these speeches as showing that perhaps western members were not satisfied with the class of immigrants they were getting in that country. I would gather from the speech of the hon. member for Pictou that he was not satisfied with a certain class of people going into that country, and he alluded to a certain class of immigrants brought in by the Department of the Interior and settled in colonies. Years ago when the Menno-nites came into the west the same hard things were said against them, hut to-day we have no better settlers than are these very same people. A few years ago a Mr. DAVIS.
howl went up against the Galicians, and I am sorry to say that my hon. friend from Alberta (Mr. Oliver) joined in it, but to-day there is no person in the west who will say a word against the Galicians. They are a thrifty hard working people and they are helping us to build up that country. It was the open door in the United States which allowed every decent healthy man who could work to enter, that helped to build up that country. The back bone of the United States is not to be found in the people of the cities or those who work in the mines and go on strikes, but it is to be found in the farmers, especially the farmers of the west and they are the descendants of the men who were not acceptable to some people when first they landed on the American continent. We are getting a lot of these people from the western states into Canada, and I can assure the House that in view of their experience in the States we could have no better citizens. My hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Bell) said that the immigrants we brought to Canada cost us $9 a head. His figures are not correct, but suppose they were, let me remind him that every able bodied immigrant is worth $1,000 in cash, and as we got 125,000 last year who brought with them ,fl2,000,000 in money and property, he will find that at $9 a head even, the investment is a good one. And yet, hon. gentlemen opposite are not satisfied. I wonder what would satisfy them? I suppose that if we reverted back to the old days when you brought a man into Canada by one road and he dodged out by another these gentlemen would be perfectly satisfied. They do not like to see a rush of immigration to the west. They do not like to see the progress and development of that country, because the fact is that the greater the development there the longer they will have to sit on the opposition benches to make pessimistic speeches. My hon. friend (Mr. Bell) is sometimes logical, but he got badly twisted in his speech to-night. He first told us that we should get the sous of the farmers in the east to settle in the west, and two minutes afterwards he said that we had not enough people in the east to carry on the ordinary tillage of the soil. I would like to know from the hon. gentleman how Canada is going to get rich by taking a dollar out of one pocket and putting it into another ? I would like to know from him how we are going to increase the wealth and population of Canada by removing it from one province to another ? He wanted us to spend money to take the people from the east to the west, and then he wanted us to spend money to bring them back to the east. That is neither logic nor common sense. Then the hon. gentleman tried to make out that some of the 125,000 immigrants which we got last year wandered into the United States. I can tell the hon. gentleman tnat I have been at the ports where these immigrants entered, and that my experience is that it would be very

phlets and in every other way. The next thing to do is to let the people see that the country can produce ; and that is what the government have done by showing at the fairs in the United States the classes of products which the country produces. The people naturally took an interest in these exhibits, and they are now coining in. My hon. friend says that the land companies are doing this immigration work, and that we need not do any more. But how did these land companies come in and invest their money ? Hon. gentlemen opposite were in power eighteen years, and 1 never heard of any land companies coming in during that time. The broad acres, instead of passing into the hands of the land companies in those days, were passing into the hands of the railway corporations, which have become rich in consequence. If these land companies are operating here, who can take the credit for that ? It is not hon. gentlemen opposite. If such a thing is true, the hon. Minister of the Interior and his department should get the credit for bringing that capital and those people into the country. Not only are they reaping the benefit, but the railway corporations to whom hon. gentlemen opposite gave millions of acres, are also getting the benefit, because their land which was formerly worth from fifty to sixty cents an acre, is selling for from $6 to $10 an acre to-day. With reference to what the hon. member for Alberta (Mr. Oliver) has said, I never did agree with that hon. gentleman with reference to the class of immigration we are getting. I maintain that we are getting a good class of immigration. I said that in this House four or five years ago, and I think my statement has been borne out by the facts. These people are getting along, and are getting wealthy. While there may be something about the Doukhobors which we do not like, still only a few days ago they deposited in the bank $8,000 with which to get some things they wanted. The Galicians are going to make first-class settlers, and the next generation will be of such a character that the hon. member for East Grey would not know that they were Galicians.
difficult indeed for an immigrant who comes to a Canadian port to evade the rigid examination made by the United States officers, and get back into the Republic. I may tell him also that the business people at these ports like to see the immigrants coming through Canada because they spend a certain amount of money there.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Are they loyal ?


Thomas Osborne Davis: You will have to ask my hon. friend from Grey (Mr. Sproule) that, because he is the custodian of all the loyalty that is to be found in the country. The hon. gentleman from Winnipeg (Mr. Puttee) complained that our immigrant agents in the old country were encouraging artisans and labouring men to come into Canada. Well, I have been living for twenty-three years in the west and I know the class of people who will succeed there, and I can tell the hon. gentleman (Mr. Puttee) tyiat if a man is prepared to work and knows the value of a dollar, he will make a success in the west no matter what calling ini life he followed before he came there. One of the most successful farmers in my district was a tailor in his early days, and we have another family of Scotchmen who never had hold of a plough before they came to that district, and to-day they are the most successful farmers we have. The people who are not successful there are the people who do not want to work. A few of these drift in and although we have a fertile soil 'and broad acres, yet if a man does not want to till the broad acres he cannot hope to succeed.
My hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Bell) stated that a great many Canadians were still leaving the country and finding their way across the line. I do not know where he got that information. Prom all the information I can get, I think that exodus has been completely stopped, and in place of our people going to the United States as they did a few years ago, when the policy of hon. gentlemen opposite drove them out, they are returning to the country as fast as they can come back. Of the people coming to my district, one-third at least are Canadians who left the country years ago, and some of them have told me that they left on account of the monopoly of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the land laws which were in force at that time. Now. they find things changed^ and they are glad to come back to the country. If you want to make an immigration policy a success, you have to advertise. My hon. friend from Lennox (Mr. Wilson), who introduced this resolution, showed us a lot of papers, and he wished to lead the House to believe that we were wasting money in advertising. In the immigration business, as in any other business, you cannot be successful unless you do advertise. That is the foundation of all success. If we have a good country, we must let the people know what we have got, in newspapers, in pam-


Thomas Simpson Sproule: How much did the Doukhobors try to corral last fall and deposit in the bank?


Thomas Osborne Davis: If my hon. friend had been there, he might have assisted. I say that the class of settlers we have got have been doing very well. We have been getting in good settlers. I do not generally deal in figures, but I have a few here which I have no doubt will please the hon. member for East Grey. I know he is interested, because he has told us that he would like to see more people coming in from the old country, although he has made speeches which, if sent there and circulated, would have the effect of frightening people from coming to this country. I do not think


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR. (Hon. Clifford Sifton).: At this hour I am not going to detain the House with any very lengthy remarks upon the subject which has occupied our attention since five o'clock this afternoon, but there are a few matters concerning which it is only proper I should say a few words. Some of the remarks which were made by my hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Bell) require a little explanation, and I shall endeavour to make the facts clear. He referred to the expenditure per capita in the year 1900. and said that Mr. DAVIS.
it was in the neighbourhood of $20 per head on the number of immigrants which came to Canada. My hon. friend has been misled by the fact that in that year a change was made in the method of keeping accounts from the calendar to the fiscal year, so that he has got the expenditure of the whole year on the number of immigrants who came in the half year. It is quite natural that my hon. friend should make this mistake, as the change in the method of keeping the statistics was not known. But I may tell him that the total cost that year was $9.22 and not $20 per head.
I want to say just a word or two with regard to the general question raised by the hon. member for Pictou with respect to the movement of population from. the eastern provinces. I am not going to discuss the question as to what the policy of the government should be with regard to moving the people from the east to the west, because that has been discussed time and again, and there is in reality no serious difference of opinion in the House to-day. It is well settled that it is not wise for us to expend money moving people from one part of Canada to another. I have no hesitation in saying that so long as I am a responsible minister, I shall not be in favour of a policy of spending public money for the purpose of extending assistance to the citizens of the older provinces in order to enable them to move to another province. In the first place, because it would be depleting the population of the eastern provinces, and in the next place-and perhaps I regard that as the stronger reason-because it would be in a sense pauperizing our population, which would be an extremely unwise policy. I do not believe that the people of Canada desire that public money should be expended for the purpose of giving assistance to Canadians in the manner suggested; and so far as I am concerned, the giving of such assistance is wholly contrary to my ideas of a wise public policy. We have quite enough in this country of government assistance being extended in such a way as to remove from the individual that self reliance which is the foundation of all success, and I do not think it desirable that the Immigration Department should pursue work in that direction, which would tend further to sap that principle of self reliance without which .there can be no stlccess in any walk of life. One principle we have followed in the last seven years in connection with our immigration work has been that we have not given assistance to any person, except under the most pressing circumstances, and then when the circumstances were quite beyond the control of the person to whom the assistance was given. We find, as the result of our experience in dealing with people coming to this country, that the man who has started to come by means of government assistance is pauperised by the fact that he is imbued

with the idea that if he does not succeed by his own efforts, the government will in some way see him through, and he is con-1 sequently not so desirable a settler as the man who comes determined to succeed by his own efforts and knows that no one will help him if he does not.
As regards the question of the difference in the cost of transporting the foreign emigrant from the sea-board to the North-west compared with the ordinary passenger or the native Canadian has to pay, I have from time to time attempted to get the railway companies to make some arrangement which would give the people of eastern Canada a similarly low rate as is given emigrants from foreign countries. Up to the present, however, the railway companies have not made any arrangements which can be described as fully satisfactory, although they have made arrangements for the moving of large numbers at certain seasons of the year at very low rates that the people who desire to come from Quebec, and particularly from Ontario, have been enabled to do so at just about as low a rate as the emigrants who come from the sea-board to the North-west.
My hon. friend referred to the movement of people from the eastern provinces to the United States, but if he will give the matter a little consideration he will come to the conclusion that this movement is not due to the fact that the people have not been made fully aware of the circumstances in the North-west or have not been supplied with all necessary information about that country. The reason is because they do not desire to follow an agricultural life. The reason is because they have been educated and schooled in such a way that, looking to the United States and seeing there opportunities for entering into various cal-lings which they conceive more agreeable than the hard life on a farm, they decide to go there. We have had the same experience in the province of Ontario. Thousands of our young men educated in our high schools and grammar schools have gone to the United States, and no amount of effort on the part of any government in directing their attention to the agricultural resources of our Northwest would have made any difference to them. At present, however, it seems that that movement has to some extent ceased, and there is a feeling on the part of our young men, particularly in the province of Ontario, in favour of agricultural life in the west. But it is because their views with regard to occupation have become changed, and they have been led to the conclusion that agricultural life in the North-west has possibilities with which they did not in former years credit it.
There have been very marked differences of opinion developed in the course of this debate, and inasmuch as no two members of this House have been able to express the same views with regard to our immigration policy, it can hardly be expected that the Department of the Interior will be able to satisfy the views of all the hon. gentlemen who have spoken. Upon the subject of the encouragement of the immigration of labourers, while I quite recognize what my hon. friend from Pictou says, that, under certain circumstances, it might be desirable to secure a movement of mechanics and labouring people other than agricultural labourers, to certain parts of Canada, yet the fullest consideration has not led me to the view that it would be wise to engage in encouraging such a movement. As a result, it has not been the policy of the department to encourage, nor has the department followed the practice to any extent whatever of encouraging, the movement of labourers to Canada, except agricultural labourers. We have not, under any circumstances encouraged or assisted in the movement of mechanics from any other country to Canada. But we have, especially during the last couple of years, devoted special attention to the encouragement of the immigration of agricultural labourers. So far as the remarks ot my hon. friend from Winnipeg (Mr. Puttee) upon the class of people brought in is concerned, speaking particularly of the labourers who have been brought in, I cannot say I experience any great degree of sympathy with the views he has expressed. I am aware of the fact that certain' organizations in Canada have persistently and consistently opposed immigration of all kinds under whatever restrictions or whatever policy. I am aware that these organizations, in some cases, have made strong statements as to the results. But, so far as the labouring people of the city of Winnipeg are concerned, whom my hon. friend represents, the prosperous and happy state they are in at the present time, enjoying an abundant demand for labour at liberal wages, is due almost, if not entirely, to the active immigration policy that has been followed by this government resulting in the opening up of the agricultural lands and the consequent growth of the city in which the workingmen reside. I can remember the time, possibly before my hon. friend was there, when the labouring men of Winnipeg were leaving the city; and it was because the agricultural population of the west was not increased, consequently the city was not growing and so there was no steady' demand for labour. Since that time, owing entirely to the development of the agricultural lands of the west, the city of Winnipeg has been growing rapidly, and the very men who are opposing this immigration are the men who are reaping the" greatest amount of benefit as a result of that work. And I venture to say for myself that I am prepared to take this stand, as I have done in the city of Winnipeg before these very men. and justify the policy I have followed ; and I am prepared to show them that it is a policy from which they benefited more than

any other people In Canada. My hon. friend from East Grey (Mr. Sproule) has an original and highly interesting policy, if I am to gather that policy from the words he has addressed to us to-night. I take his suggestion to be to the effect that the government should take the money that we are -spending for immigration purposes to furnish employment to the people at home. In other words, we should turn ourselves into a relief institution to pauperize the people ot Canada by opening relief works instead of developing the country in a legitimate way.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I may say to the hon. Minister of the Interior (Hon. Mr. Sifton) that I certainly never intended to convey such an idea by anything I said. The hon. gentleman has misunderstood me, or else, i was not very clear in what I said. The only reference I made to anything of the kind was when I said that it was much better to have a country not with an immense population, but to have the people of the country industrially employed and living contented and happy.


The MINISTER OF THE .INTERIOR.: I am a little like my hon. friend from Saskatchewan (Mr. Davis)-I am not surprised that my hon. friend from East Grey does not recollect exactly the statements he makes to the House, or may n6t have a very clear idea of the ideas he expressed. What he said was that we should take the money, instead of spending) it on immigration and furnish employment to the people at home.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I deny that in toto.
' Hansard ' when it comes up to-morrow7 will bear out what I say.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: If the hon. gentleman (Mr. Sproule) did not intend to say it, I accept his statement of his intention. But he will surely admit that he sometimes makes mistakes, as he did in regard to what he said about the Barr colony the other day. It may be a mutter of comparative indifference, what my recollection of the hon. gentleman's statement was. But let me point out that the policy of the department is to place these people upon| lands in the western portion of Canada where they will be a developing and producing population and will become customers of the manufacturers of eastern Canada, who furnish employment to the labourers and mechanics, by giving them a market for the goods they produce-a legitimate proposition instead of a relief proposition or one that would pauperize the people at large.
I am not going to enlarge upon the fact of immigration into the western country; but just at this moment I desire to say a few7 w7ords in regard to the class of people who are going there, t think that the 125,000 people who have landed in Canada and who, in the proportion, I should say of five Hon. Mr. SIFTON.
to one, have gone westward and settled upon the lands of the North-west, would be surprised to learn, as they would from the remarks of the hon. member for Lennox (Mr. Wilson) and the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) and other gentlemen w7ko have spoken in the same strain, that they are of diseased and criminal antecedents and are a most undesirable class of people. If these hon. gentlemen would take the trouble to go down, as my hon. friend from Halifax (Mr. Roche) has had the opportunity of doing, to see the kind of people they are talking about they would cease inflicting the pictures they customarily do upon the House in this connection. I make the statement that you cannot find anywhere, man for man, 125,000 better people than the 125,000 people who came to Canada during the past year. Take the people coming from the United States numbering something like 40,000 or 41,000. Any person who knows anything about these .people knows that they are the very salt of the agricultural population of the United States. They are intelligent, capable, strong, healthy and progressive-the very class to make a successful developing population upon our western prairies. Of the English people who come I need say nothing. Our friends opposite, except when discussing the Barr colony, are very much in favour of the English immigration. But when we come to the continental immigration, we find objections taken, and we are told that these people belong to an undesirable class. But there is no class of people who come to Canada who are more capable of taking care of themselves than these very immigrants. They are the people who, of all others, from the day they land in the city of Winnipeg and are directed to the place they want to go, never give the officers of the department the least particle of trouble. Any gentleman acquainted with the movement of population in the North-west knows that the class who never give anybody any trouble and are never found trespassing upon the public for any support or assistance is this very class. So, I say in regard to the attitude ftken by some hon. gentlemen toward these people. I take issue with them directly in their attacks. These immigrants are sober, intelligent, industrious self-reliant, and capable; and, according to tlie experience we have had for the last six or seven years of our work, there is no class of people that give the department less trouble or are more capable of taking care of themselves then these people are. If we did not receive that class of people where would the labourers come from"? If it had not been for that class of people during the last three or four years, the magnificent crops that have been reaped in the Northwest and have contributed to the wealth and prosperity of this country-and to which, is diie. Sir. the great prosperity of Canada-would have lain on the ground, the
(5609

grain would have been left in the fields to rot instead of being marketed and turned into the channels of commerce. These gentlemen appear to forget all these things. What happened last year, and the year before last ? There was the very greatest difficulty, not only in the North-west,. but in the province of Ontario, in securing the number of agricultural labourers that were necessary for the purpose of putting in the crops. This fall there will be the greatest difficulty for them in securing the number of labourers for the purpose of taking the crops off. Would the hon. gentleman have police stationed at Halifax to stop these labourers from landing, and allow the grain to rot for the want of their labour ? That would be the statesmanlike policy the hon. gentlemen would like us to pursue ; but I venture to say that inside of one week after a policy of that kind was pursued, the farmers of Ontario and the North-west would be prepared to vote this government out of power on account of its total lack of intelligence in dealing with a question of (bat kind.
Well, my hon. friend from Lennox (Mr. Wilson) is in serious trouble about the question of the health of the people that come in. It is a strange thing that nobody except the hon. member for Lennox and the United States inspector ever finds anything wrong with these people. Practically five-sixths of the people who go to the western prairies have passed through the hands of our immigration commissioner at Winnipeg, and nobody ever heard of their being ill or diseased. There is no suggestion that they do *not belong to a desirable, class of people so far as health is concerned. The only persons we hear that suggestion from is the hon. member for Lennox and his friend the United States inspector, Mr. Watchorn. If my understanding of the hon. gentleman's argument is correct, it is in effect that we should make such an arrangement as would allow the officers of the United States to decide who should come into Canada.


Uriah Wilson: I made no such statement. What I said was that we ought to enter into at) arrangement with them, tnat we ought to have as much to say about it as the Americans, and that there should be a good understanding between the two governments.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: That is precisely what I said. The hon. gentleman says that we should make an arrangement with the officers of the United States to the effect that if they thought a man was not desirable, we should also think that he was not desirable, and that consequently they should decide who should come into Canada. I have to say that as long as the department is under my charge the officers of the United States shall not decide who shall come into Canada, the officers of the Canadian government shall decide that.
We consider that the officers of the Canadian government are just as competent as those of the United States government. We have power to make this inspection at the present time.' A medical inspector is stationed at each of the ports of landing, a competent medical inspector. They are all presided over by a general inspector of first class professional attainments ; and we have no reason whatever to believe that it is necessary that their inspection should be revised by officers of the United States.


Uriah Wilson: When was the medical inspector appointed at Montreal ?


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: I cannot give the hon. gentleman the date.


Uriah Wilson: I may say that his deputy minister was before the committee as late as the 11th of June, and, according to his evidence, no one had been appointed there then.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: The hon. gentleman may refer to the fact that the deputy minister stated there was no permanent appointment made. There has been an acting medical inspector since last December. So I say that so far as his proposition is concerned that we should put ourselves in the hands of the officers appointed by the United States Immigration Department and allow them to decide upon the management of our affairs. I do not approve of that suggestion, and I am not able to hold out any encouragement to my hon. friend that I am likely to follow it. If it can be shown in any way that the officers of the Department of the Interior, the medical officers appointed for the purpose of making this inspection, are not making their inspection properly, then I shall be happy to have my attention called to that fact.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The hon. gentleman says : If it can be shown. How was it that there were 4,534 persons rejected by American officials on account of being diseased, and who proposed to go from Canada to the United States, if they had not already come in ?
The	MINISTER	OF	THE	INTERIOR.
Where were they rejected ?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: They were rejected at the frontier.
The	MINISTER	OF	THE	INTERIOR.
Where ?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Part, I understand, at Montreal, and part at Sault Ste. Marie, and others either in Winnipeg or at the boundary line.
The	MINISTER	OF	THE	INTERIOR.
So that the hon. gentleman desires to argue that because, for their own purpose, it suits the Immigration Department of the United States to station inspectors

all along tlie international boundary line from here to Vancouver, and they reject people that are passing from Canada to the United States for one reason or another, therefore we are to conclude that these are immigrants that were let in at the ocean ports by defective inspection on the part of our officers. Sir, I happen to know, as a matter of fact, that the inspector at Sault Ste. Marie would stop a man if he had a sore finger as soon as he appeared at the boundary line. There is no evidence whatever that these people are immigrants. It is known to be the poliey at the present time of the Interior Department of the United States, for the purpose of carrying out the views of certain labour organizations in that country, as far as possible to discourage the movement of people into the United States. But what happens in connection with these officers ? After these officers are appointed, you may be certain that when they make their reports they endeavour at least to make it appear that they have been doing something. They do not put in a report that would indicate that there has been nothing for them to do during the twelve months previous ; and the result is, as every person knows who is familiar with what goes on wherever these officers are stationed, that people going from Canada are stopped on the most frivolous and ridiculous pretexts, they are stopped often times on the pretext that they have some disease. We do not propose to follow that policy, we do not propose to be dictated to in that respect by officers of the United States ; we do not propose that they shall decide for us who are proper people and who are not to come into Canada. We think we can get officers who are just as competent as they are, and we do not feel that our inspection ought to be checked by the results of the inspections that are made by officers who may or may not be competent for the purpose. Let me further point out the system of inspection that is followed, and that was pointed out by the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Roche). When a vessel enters the port the immigrants are examined by the port physician for all infectious diseases, then the physician of the Department of the Interior has instructions to make his examination, and when the immigrants land they are examined again. It is practically impossible that there should be any considerable number of people who would pass free of such inspection, for the simple reason that under our system, when people are landed from the ship, it is known where each group is going; they are taken in charge by officers of the department, and it is known practically where every man goes and what he does. So it is practically impossible, under our system, for any considerable number of people to stray away and avoid the inspection of our officers, and, as has been suggested, endeavour to get Hon. Mr. SIPTON.
over the line under the pretext of having been destined for Canadian points.
I want to say a word or two in regard to the general plan of the work which we follow. A word or two will perhaps make more clear than a mere statement from myself respecting the results of the work, the fact that there is in reality a weeding out and selecting going on under our system of procuring immigrants, which is of the most effective character. In the United States and in England the system under which our advertising is carried on results in inquiries being made of our officers, and when these inquiries are made, either personally or by letter, the persons are advised to come to Canada or they are advised not to come, according to the view of the agent as to whether or not the person making the inquiry is a person who is suitable or a person likely to succeed. If, in the opinion of the agent, the person making the inquiry is not likely to succeed, he is advised not to come, and the result is that right at the primary point of our immigration system these inquiries are made, and that is the very best possible process of selection you could have. In regard to continental immigration, the work is carried on largely under the direction of the North Atlantic Trading Company, who are under contract with this government, who are a responsible company and who know perfectly well that if they send undesirable people they are liable to be sent back, and the expense of sending them back is charged to them.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: How much per head does the North American Trading Company receive ?


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: Five dollars for an adult and S3 for what is called a half ticket, or a ticket that is purchased for a person who is not an adult. This North Atlantic Trading Company is a responsible company under contract with the government. Our arrangement was ipade with them because of the fact that for several years the department had been in the habit of paying a bonus to steamship companies for this work on, the continent of Europe. That policy was found unsatisfactory. It was found that we had no proper check on the class of people sent and we had no responsible body whose interest it would be to winnow out the persons who were undesirable and forward only the class of persons that we desired to get. After a good deal of discussion and consideration a contract was finally made with this company and the result is that during the last three years the work on the continent has been carried on under its supervision. The company does not make any special effort to stimulate immigration from the southern part of Europe but the most of its work is in the Scandinavian countries and of northern Europe. Although there is a cer-

tain amount of Immigration that comes from central Europe there is not very much from southern Europe, none from Italy and practically none from France. The bulk of it comes from the countries north and east of those which I have mentioned. The North Atlantic Trading Company devote themselves chiefly to the Scandinavian countries. The immigrants which come as a result of their labours are listed and statements are sent to us showing the numbers, names and all particulars in regard to them so that we have an absolute check upon the people who are sent by that company. We know exactly who are sent to this country and in case any of these persons turn out to be undesirable we deport then* and charge back against the company the cost of doing so. So, there is the very best system of weeding out and selecting that it would be possible to have. That is the reason why it is found,*as the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Roche) has said, that when you come to look at these people you find that they are people who have been carefully selected. It is true that they are not ail millionaires or college graduates, but, they are respectable, sober, intelligent and capable people and the result of their efforts after coming to this country shows that they possess these characteristics. I have very little more to say upon this subject, because I have only touched briefly, as I could only do at this hour of the evening, upon the important points that have been raised by the hon. gentlemen who have spoken in opposition to the policy of the department. I have just to say in general that I think, if hon. members of this House would give the subject a little consideration they will come to the conclusion that the result of the work of the department in connection with immigration during the last seven years has been that out of practically nothing we have built up a system under which we have been able to secure very large and very desirable acquisitions to our population. I think they will admit, however, that there is no work in all Canada at the present time which is more important or which is more conducive to the prosperity and greatness of the country and I think they will admit that anything that would stop the movement of population which is going on at the present time would be a national disaster to the Dominion of Canada. I cannot at this moment conceive anything which would have a more disastrous effect upon the Dominion of Canada than, for instance, at the end of this year to have it known that the movement of population and the filling up of our vacant lands, was about to cease and that this movement was about to stop. I do not think that any man who knows anything about the business situation of Canada would disagree with me when I say that it would be about the most disastrous thing that could
possibly happen, and that it is the duty of the Department of the Interior to go on with the work which it has been carrying on, disregarding the more captious criticisms which have been made in regard to that work. Let me say one thing further and f will give to the members of the House my opinion on this subject which they can take for what it is worth. I have been identified with this work for six or seven years, and before I took office under this government I had an opportunity of paying some little attention to immigration work in connection with the government of the province of Manitoba of which I was a member, and more or less for the last ten or twelve years my attention has been directed to the subject. By devoting a very ordinary amount of intelligence to it, I thiilk I should have been able in all that time to form an opinion that would be of some value. Whatever the value of that opinion may be I give it to the House for what it. is worth. There are a great many people who think that at the present time, because attention has been directed to Canada, it is therefore unnecessary to spend any more money or keep up the work and the propaganda we are carrying on, that attention having been attracted to Canada to such an extent, if we ceased advertising and called in our agents the movement would keep on, that we would still continue to get about as many people in the country and that we might therefore look to continued accessions to our population without any further expenditure. I think that is an entire mistake. I think there could be no mistake possibly made which would be a greater mistake than that. I am perfectly convinced that if the Department of the Interior and other departments of the government withdrew from the work of encouraging immigration and disseminating information in regard to Canada and called in its agents within turn years the movement would practically cease. We might get 10.000 or 15.000 or 20.000 people a year, but we would not get many more than that and they would be less desirable than the people we are getting in at the. present time. It is the best of the people who come to-day.


Adam Carr Bell: May I ask the hon. minister how that statement that he has just made squares with the experience of the United States ?


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: I do not think the experience of the United States is in point at all. I do not think that the United States have made any special effort to secure immigration. Any person who has at all considered that question knows perfectly well that the movement of population into the United States was not the result of any effort made on the part of the United States, but that does

not prove that we would have the same experience. We know as a matter of fact that we have not had the same experience.
I think I can prove to my hon. friend that my statement is correct and I can prove it by simply bringing to the attention of the hon. gentleman one thing that came to my attention. X thought it desirable in January to make an inspection of the immigration agencies in the United States and while I was there I inspected the agency at St. Paul. In that city we had an officer conducting an agency and when we came to examine his work we found the curious fact that he had received 200 fewer letters of1 inquiry during the month of December 1902 than he had in December 1901. I said to him :	Every one here has been talking
about the movement of population to the North-west, and the land companies have been filling the papers with advertisements, and I would have thought you would have five times the number of inquiries this month of December as compared with last. He replied : the explanation is very simple, we did not advertise in the month of November of this year and we did advertise in the month of November of last year; there was so much advertising by the land companies in the daily papers that I thought it would be safe not to advertise in the month of November, and possibly save that amount of money, but the result is that we have received 200 fewer letters. I mention this as an illustration of the fact that it is the experience of every officer in the department that just so soon as you stop advertising and circulating literature you stop getting inquiries, &c. I do not know that there is anything else that it is necessary to say, but I shall be glad to furnish information in detail when, we go into Committee of Supply.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House went into Committee of Supply.
Immigration, $110,000.
Uriah Wilson: The minister stated the other day that the expenditure was $568,800, but the total amount asked for in the estimates is $643,000. What is the explanation of that ?


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: The amount given in the answer was the amount which had been actually expended up to that time. When these supplementary estimates are passed and the bills paid the total expenditure will be $643,000.


Uriah Wilson: The answer was misleading because the minister must have known very well that the information I wanted was the actual expenditure.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: We gave what we understood the hon. gentleman asked for.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The discussion on this matter has lasted for several hours and I believe a great deal of good has come of it.


Hon. Mr. SIFTON.: I would suggest in view of the lateness of the hour that we should pass this item and perhaps the two small ones, and that the item of $483,000 be reserved as there must be considerable discussion on it. [DOT]


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: That suggestion is quite satisfactory.


Uriah Wilson: Will it be understood that we may discuss the whole thing at any time.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: The vote is a general vote and includes everything.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: How many agents are there in Great Britain and foreign countries ?


The. MINISTER OF THE  INTERIOR@: The number is thirty-seven.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: That number does not include the commission agents. It would be very interesting if the hon. gentleman could give us a list of all these agents, their names, where they are employed, their salaries, commissions and expenses.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: I can give a list of the salaried agents now. It would take a little time to figure out the other information, but we can get it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Could not the hon. gentleman furnish it within the next few days without taking the time to do it to-night ?


Mr. BOURASSA.: I may say that at the beginning of the session, at my request, there was a report brought down to the House, giving the names of all the agents, their salaries and travelling expenses.


Uriah Wilson: My impression is that that was given to the committee so far as -the United States agents were concerned. But I understand that the hon. member for East Grey wants the same information with regard to the old country agents. I understand that you have commission agents there.


The MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR.: Just a few. I understand that the hon. gentleman wants a list of the commission agents in Great Britain with the commissions they are paid ?


Uriah Wilson: Yes. We also want a list of the agents on salary, and their salaries and expenses.
Some resolutions reported.
The MINISTER OF FINANCE moved the adjournment of the House.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Will the hon. gentleman give us the order of business for to-morrow ?


The MINISTER OF FINANCE.: One or two of the Bills on the Order Paper we may be able to take up. At an early stage we will resume Supply, and the Minister of the Interior will continue his estimates.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 12.20 a.m., Wednesday.
[Stage Direction]

Wednesday, July 15, 1903.