1903-04-27

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Bill (No. 126) respecting the Mexican Light and Power Company, Limited.-Mr. Thompson.
Bill (No. 127) to confer on the Commissioner of Patents certain powers for the relief of George M. Depew.-Mr. McCarthy- by Mr. Logan.

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Bill (No. 102) respecting the Red Deer Valley Railway and Coal Company.-Mr. Cowan.
Bill (No. 119) respecting the Alberta Railway and Coal Company.-Mr. Oliver.
Bill (No. 120) respecting the Lake Erie and Detroit River Railway Cofhpany.-Mr. Cowan.
Bill (No. 122) respecting the Rathbun Company.-Mr. Harty.

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Bill (No. 25) respecting the Eastern Townships Bank.-Mr. McIntosh.
Bill (No. 79) to incorporate the Bank of Winnipeg.-Mr. Scott.
Bill (No. 72) respecting the Bank of Montreal.-Mr. Bickerdike.
Bill (No. 68) to incorporate the Lumberman's Fire Insurance Company.-Mr. Charlton.

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Bill (No. 28) respecting the Atlantic, Quebec and Western Railway Company.-Mr. Lemieux.

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House in Committee on Bill (No. 31) respecting the Canadian Order of the Woodmen of the World-Mr. Calvert.
On section 3,
Mr. BORDEN (Halifax).: I suppose the attention of the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Fielding) has been directed to the wording of this clause. I thought possibly he might have some criticism to make as to whether it was justified or not. I observe it permits the order to invest in the bonds of any company incorporated in Canada whose bonds are adequately secured by mortgage to trustees.


The PRIME MINISTER (Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier).: The hon. Minister of Finance is not here just now, but I have no doubt the clause has been considered in committee and that he is satisfied with it.


Robert Laird Borden: I imagine he is satisfied.
Bill reported ; read the third time and passed.



QUESTIONS.


Mr. CLARKE asked :: 1.	Has any protest been received by the government, and it so, on what date, from the Toronto District Labour Council, respecting the following cablegram, which apeared in the Toronto ' Telegram ' of Wednesday, 8th of April :-


' NO MECHANICS AVAILABLE.
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' (Special cable to the ' Evening Telegram.')
' London, April 8th.-In an interview given to a representative of the * Pall Mall Gazette,' Mr. W. T. R. Preston, the Canadian emigration agent, stated that mechanics were simply unobtainable in Toronto, owing to the great demand for skilled labour in that country.'
2.	Has any reply been sent to the protest received from the above council ; and if so, when was it sent, and what was the nature of the reply ?
3.	Have any instructions been sent to Mr. W. T. R. Preston respecting the protest of the above council ; and if so, what is the nature of the Instructions ?
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1S56
4.	Have any protests been received from labour organizations, other than the Toronto District Labour Council, respecting the statements alleged to have been made by Mr. W. T. R. Preston, in the interview above quoted ; and if so, from what labour organization ?
Tlie POSTMASTER GENERAL (Hon. Sir William Mulock) :: 1.	On the 23rd instant a communication was received from the secretary of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada on behalf of the Toronto District Labour Council, with reference to a telegraphic despatch in the Toronto ' Evening Telegram ' of the 9th instant, with reference to an alleged interview of Mr. W. T. R. Preston, with the representative of the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' wherein Mr. Preston is alleged to have made the statement in question and requesting that inquiry be made as to whether Mr. Preston has been accurately reported.
2.	The communication was acknowledged on the 25th instant, and Mr. Preston has also been communicated with as to whether he has been correctly reported.
3.	Instructions have been sent to immigration agents to confine their efforts towards promoting the immigration of agricultural classes.
4.	A communication on the subject has also been received from the Federated Trades Council of Toronto and vicinity.


IMMIGRANTS FOR THE MARITIME PROVINCES.
Mr. EMMERSON asked :: 1.	Are any efforts being made by the immigration officers of the Dominion in Great Britain and Ireland to secure immigrants to settle in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Prince Edward Island ?
2.	Have any efforts been made to induce any of the immigrants who have recently reached our maritime ports, to settle in either of the said provinces ?
3.	If any efforts have been made, or are being made, to secure such immigrants for the maritime provinces, or either of them, what is the nature thereof ? What means are exercised, and what methods adopted ?
4.	Are any pamphlets descriptive of such provinces, or either of them being circulated, and to what extent ? What particular pamphlets are being circulated ; and by whom were they respectively prepared ?
5.	Have any immigrants, as a result of any such efforts (if any), settled in any of the said maritime provinces ; and what number in each of said provinces ?


Tlie MINISTER OF RAILWAYS AND CANALS (Hon. A. G. Blair).: The work of the immigration officers is directed to securing immigrants for the Dominion, leaving it to settlers to select the parts of the country where they desire to locate. Immigration literature, in describing the Dominion, incidentally refers to the various provinces.
During the calendar year 1902, 3,161 immigrants arriving at a Canadian port declared their intention of settling in the mari-


Mr. CLARKE.: time provinces, and 1.S79 have done so for the first quarter of 1903.



COST OF DREDGES.

Mr. BLAIN asked :: What was the cost of the following dredges when built new :-'' St. Lawrence,' ' Prince Edward,' ' Nipissing,' 'Canada,' 'Sir Richard,? What number of yards capacity for each lift has the dipper attached to each dredge ?


The MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS (Hon. James Sutherland) :: The ' St. Lawrence,' cost $114,911.23, has 33 buckets of 8 cubic feet on ladder.
The ' Prince Edward,' acquired from the Prince Edward Island Government at the time that province entered confederation, on payment of $22,000 ; capacity of bucket, 14 cubic years. Original cost, $23,582.
The ' Nipissing,' cost $15,501.57, including two scows ; capacity of bucket, 2J cubic yards.
The ' Canada,' cost $41,300.19, has 24 buckets of 5 cubic feet on ladder.
The ' Sir Richard,' cost of hull and installation, $12,934.74. Her machinery is that formerly used on old dredge No. 7 ; and. as altered, it is valued at $3,000, making the total value of this dredge $15,934.74.



PUGWASH, N.S., LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER.

Mr. BELL asked :: 1.	Who is lighthouse keeper at Pugwash, N.S.?
2.	Is he allowed to engage in any business ?
3.	If so, what is that business, and why is he allowed to absent himself from his post ?


The MINISTER OF RAILWAYS AND CANALS. (Hon. A. G. Blair):: 1.	Murdock A. McLeod.
2.	Yes.
3.	The business of a stevedore in Pugwash harbour. At some stations where keepers are not paid sufficient salary to entitle the government to the whole of their time, they are allowed to engage in such private occupations as will not interfere with a proper performance of their work as lightkeepers. Mr. McLeod receives; only $250 per annum, and has, therefore, been permitted to supplement his salary by work ns a stevedore in Pugwash harbour. This permission was given with the proviso that it should not interfere with his personal discharge of duties as lightkeeper at night, and that when he is absent during the day he leaves some responsible person in charge of the station.



SPRINGHILL, N.S., ARMOURIES.

Mr. BELL asked :: 1.	Who is caretaker of the regimental armouries at Springhill, N.S.?
2.	What is the age of the caretaker ?
5.	Did Major Potter, of Springhill, resign his commission in the 93rd Regiment ?
4.	If so, what action has been taken on his resignation ?

The MINISTER OF MILITIA ANI) DEFENCE (Hon. Sir Frederick Borden):
1.	Joseph Wylief Potter.
2.	Not known.
it. He tendered his resignation.
4.	It was not accepted.



INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY RATES.

Mr. BELL asked :: 1.	What are rates over Intercolonial Railway for live stock, coal, lumber and for classification 1-10, between Stellarton and West River ; and between Stellarton and Antigonish ; and between Stellarton and Pictou Landing, at present ?
2.	Wbat were rates for same classes between same points in 1897 V


The MINISTER OF RAILWAYS AND CANALS (Hon. A. G. Blair):: The answer to the hon. gentleman's question would require quite au array of tigures, and if he will kindly move for a return, I will furnish him with the information forthwith.
\



CENTRAL EXPERIMENTAL FARM-SALE OF BUTTER.

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Mr. MONK-by Hon. Mr. Haggart- asked :
1.	What is the total amount obtained from the sale of butter at the Experimental Farm, Ottawa, during the past year ?
2.	Is any portion of said butter disposed of gratuitously ?
3.	If such gratuitous distribution is made, in favour of whom is it so made ?
The MINISTER OF FINANCE (Hon. W.
S.	Fielding) :
1.	The total amount obtained from the sale of butter at the Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa, during the year ending June 30tli, 1902, was $703.80. The total quantity of butter produced during that period was 3,04(5 pounds. The above sum is the proceeds of the sale of 3,2811 pounds. Of the remaining 3614 pounds, a part was on hand on the 30th of June, 1902, and the proceeds of the balance sold during that month were not received in time to be included in the returns for said fiscal year.
2.	No.

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Mr. MONK-by Hon. Mr. Haggart- asked :
1.	Have any regulations in council been passed under the Preservation of Health on Public Works Act of 1899 ?
2.	Have said regulations been printed ?
3.	To which of the public works referred to in report number 14, of the Minister of Agriculture's Report, of 1902, did Charles Fisher, the public health officer, make a personal visit ; and which of them were inspected by other persons ?
4.	Was anything paid for the reports of physicians detailed in said C. Fisher's general report ?
The MINISTER OF FINANCE (Hon. W.
S.	Fielding).
1.	Yes.
2.	Yes; in the 'Canada Gazette ' of May 25th, 1901.
3.	Mr. Charles A. L. Fisher, the inspector under said Act, made a personal visit to all the public works referred to in his report, being Appendix No. 14 to the report of the Minister of Agriculture of 1902, with the exception of the Welland canal works, of which the inspector had such information that he did not consider a personal visit necessary. The department is not aware that any of said works were inspected by other persons.
4.	No.

Mr. ROCHE (Marquette) asked :: 1.	Has the government disposed of any public land by public auction in or near the city of Winnipeg recently ?
2.	If so, how was it advertised ?
3.	Who were the purchasers, and what was the price received for each parcel ?
4.	What were the terms of sale ?


The POSTMASTER GENERAL (Hon. Sir William Mulock) :: 1.	Yes, a portion of the outer two miles of lot thirty-five, in the parish of St. John.
2.	In the Winnipeg ' Free Press ' and by poster.
3.	D. K. Elliott and R. T. Riley. The price per each parcel sold is as follows :-
Parcel No. 2, $9,782; parcel No. 3, $8,740; parcel No. 4, $6,000
4.	One quarter cash at time of sale, balance in three equal annual instalments, bearing interest at five per cent per annum.



ST. PATRICK'S DAY.

Mr. HACKETT asked :: Is it the intention of the Right Honourable the Prime Minister to recommend to His Excellency the Governor General the propriety of proclaiming the 17th of- March, St. Patrick's Day, a public holiday, following the example of His Most Gracious Majesty the King ?


The PRIME MINISTER (Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier).: I have to inform my hon. friend that the advisers of His Excellency believe that we have a sufficient number of public holidays in this country, and therefore it is not their intention to add another one to the list.



POSTAL FACILITIES AT ST. BONIFACE.

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Mr. LaRIVIERE asked :
1. Has the honourable the Postmaster General received a copy of the following resolutiop passed by the town council of St. Boniface, Manitoba, during its meeting of the 9th March, 1903 :-[DOT]
' Moved by Councillor Cinq-Mars, seconded by Councillor Cusson, that the postal authorities
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be requested to erect a suitable post office at St. Boniface ; and also, to give better postal facilities than exist to-day. Adopted.'
2. Is it the Intention of the government to satisfy the just demands made by the authorities of St. Boniface ?
The POSTMASTER GENERAL (Hon. Sir William Mulock) :: 1.	Yes.
2.	The question of the erection of a public building at St. Boniface is under consideration.
3.	The department is not aware of any request for better postal facilities at St. Boniface which has not been granted.



WELLAND CANAL WATER POWER.

Mr. LANCASTER asked :: 1.	What Is the quantity of water from the Welland canal per minute, or per second, in cubic feet, which has been granted, or promised, by Order in Council, lease or otherwise, and the duration of. the concession, to the Hamilton Cataract Power, Light and Traction Company, limited, or its predecessors, the Hamilton Electric Light and Cataract Power Company ?
2.	Have the said companies, or either of them, been authorized to take their supply of water from the Lake Erie level of the Welland canal?
3.	What quantity of water, per minute, or per second, in cubic feet, can pass at present, or after the enlargement now in progress is completed, without detriment to navigation in and along the Lake Erie level of the Welland canal, from Port Colborne northerly to Allanburg ?
4.	What quantity of water is required for the feed of the new Welland canal for purposes of navigation ?
5.	Has authority been granted, or promised, to either of the aforesaid power companies to place any structures, dams, or other erections, in the Beaver Dams creek that will obstruct or otherwise interfere with the free flow of waste water from the old Welland canal through Higgins' flume, and in the channel of the said Beaver Dams creek, which latter privilege the government enjoys by agreement from riparian land owners ?


The MINISTER OP RAILWAYS AND CANALS (Hon. A. G. Blair) :: 1.	700 cubic feet per second leased. Twenty-one years renewable to January 1st, 1906. Lessee-Hamilton Electric Light and Cataract Power Company, Limited.
2.	The lease gives the right to draw the water from the Lake Erie level.
3.	Say 2,000 cubic feet per second.
4.	Prom 250 to 300 cubic feet per second.
5.	No.



RIVER NAVIGATION IN MANITOBA.

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Mr. LaRIVIERE asked :
1. Has the following report of a committee of the Winnipeg Board of Trade been submitted to the honourable the Minister of Public Works ?
' Winnipeg, 18th March, 1903.
' The President and Council,
' Winnipeg Board of Trade.
'Your committee appointed to report on the Assiniboine river as a navigable stream, beg to report as follows :-
Mr. LaRIVIERE.
' 1st. That all the bridges now existing on the Red and Assiniboine rivers, east of Portage la Prairie, have been constructed with swing spans.
* 2nd. That the population along the banks of the Assiniboine is becoming dense enough to provide traffic on the river.
' 3rd. That with the completion of the St. Andrews locks and dam, It is believed that an impetus will be given to river traffic.
' 4th. That the extra cost of providing for a swing span is Inconsiderable.
' 5th. Therefore, the committee recommend that the board should use every means to have the Assiniboine and Red rivers retained and held as navigable streams ; and to that end, that representations be made to the Minister of Public Works.
' All of which is respectfully submitted.
' ANDREW STRANG, Chairman.
2. Will the minister refuse to authorize the construction of any permanent bridges on the Red and Assiniboine rivers, unless such bridges are provided with swing spans ?
Tile MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS (Hon. James Sutherland) :: 1.	Yes-on the 7th April instant.
2.	It is the intention of the department to preserve the navigability of this river.



WAYS AND MEANS-THE BUDGET.

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House resumed adjourned debate on the proposed motion of the Minister of Finance :
That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair for the House to go into Committee to consider of the Ways and Means for raising the Supply to be granted to His Majesty ; and the proposed motion of Mr. Borden (Halifax) in amendment thereto.
['The enumeration may have been made, and the other day I received the schedule relating to the agricultural condition of New Brunswick, but, as far as I know, no progress has been made in the preparation of the schedules relating to the manufactures of Canada, and judging from the amount set down in the estimates, and the assurances we received the other day that only $10,000 more was to be expended on the census, it looks almost as if that work is not to be completed at all. Now, this is a very extraordinary thing. The hon. Minister of Finance was waiting last year for these particular schedules. He was not in a position to revise the tariff last year, and after waiting a year, we find that he is still disposed to wait another year, and not at all disposed to find fault with the fact that this census, which has cost as', "much as the last two censuses, and twice as much as the last census, and is probably the worst census that has ever been taken in Canada, has not been completed. The right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce, when he gets up to assure this House and the people of Canada that the census of 1891 deserve to be looked upon with suspicion, and to be criticised as inaccurate, is probably entirely wide of the mark.\nNow, I do not wish to detain the House much longer, but I really feel as if it would not be amiss to call attention to a few things which were not in the budget speech. We find that there is a certain amount of protection. We have a tax of $7 per ton to be imposed on steel rails, but there are a great many things which are generally looked upon as proper and which generally find a place in the budget speech that did not find a place in the speech of the hon. Minister of Finance. The hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Roche) drew a very amusing contrast between Canada and the United States, the most amusing contrast I have ever listened to, for in every thing he said, except in one or two items, the circumstances of the two countries were practically the same. One of these exceptions was the tropical or subtropical section of the United States. We were told that the United States fronted upon two oceans. Well, Canada fronts upon two oceans. We were told that the United States had enormous resources and rich lands. Canada has these. But, in speaking of one of these matters, I think he did make out a case. He pointed to the fact that Canada had no tropical or subtropical region. Undoubtedly, Canada has not, and in respect of that matter it is not probably as well rounded out as the United States, but I do not know that we would be willing to exchange our present climate and northern mining regions for the subtropical regions of the United States, which will not produce as good citizens as the hardy men of our high lands. But, there is a chance for a progressive and able government that is willing to stake its existence on the policy which it may enunciate to secure for Canada a tropical region in the West Indies. Two or three years ago the hon. Minister of Finance did seem to be making a little effort to secure trade relations with the Island of Trinidad, in respect to which, however, I fear he was not very successful. Although this is one of the most important questions from a national standpoint that could engage the attention of the government, no progress has been made, and apparently no attention has been given to this subject. It would be of the highest importance that all the British possessions on the American continent should be gathered together under one government. It would round out our nationality, it would make of Canada a microcosm, it would make a complete world in itself, and give a market for the produce of our fisheries in those islands, Mr. BELL.\nand a- market for the sugar of those islands in this country. It would be worthy of the statesmen of Canada to undertake to bring these islands of the Carribbean sea under the flag of Great Britain that waves over Canada, but although this is an important matter, and although attention Is called to it from time to time, alhough it is mentioned in this House year after year, we find, so far as we can judge, that the government has not even attempted to deal with the subject, and has nothing to report in connection with it. There is another matter of even greater importance. There is the island of Newfoundland, the oldest British colony in the world practically, outside of the home island, and the oldest British possession in America. There is an island whose possession at some time or other is absolutely essential to the welfare of Canada. It commands the great sea approach, the gulf of St. Lawrence, in such a fashion as to make it impassible for the citizens of Canada ever to contemplate without shrinking, the idea that it should pass into the possession of any other power. It ought to be part of the confederation of Canada, and the work of bringing it into the confederation is the only work left to be done, because the statesmen of the Conservative party have completed the rest of the work so far as the northern part of the American continent is concerned. The work of bringing that last outlying post of British population within a Canadian nationality, is one that lies unquestionably at the door of this government. And yet we find that towards this question of the very highest national importance, this question that is so urgent that one must think it calamitous should the object not be accomplished ; towards this question our government is apparently indifferent. So far as we know, they entirely ignore its vast importance. It may be that there is correspondence, and we will, perhaps, get it some time, but so far as we can judge, no progress has been made towards bringing in Newfoundland, nor is there in the mind of the government of Canada any aspiration in that direction.\nThen again, this government has made no effort to secure new markets for this country. The only action they have taken is in regard to our trade, is to impose a surtax on German products, and that I consider an exceedingly proper course to adopt. But that is in the direction of curtailing our markets and not of increasing them. It is, however, the right course to follow, and I was rather surprised to find that two years ago, speaking in the budget debate, when I took occasion to recommend the very course that has been followed, namely, that increased taxation should be imposed on the products of Germany, the Minister of Finance answered me by saying that the government had already imposed a preferential tax against Germany, and he argued that in so far as they had given a preference to\n\nGreat Britain they had imposed a disability on the German empire, and they were disposed to rest satisfied -with that. I am glad to say that in this respect as well as in others, the government has shown itself willing to learn, and that it has bowed to the suggestion of the opposition, and in respect to that its action in that particular It has the support and the good wishes of every man who sits in His Majesty's opposition in this House.\nI believe, Sir, that the great question that is uppermost in the minds of the people of Canada is : Are we going to have a more active and a more positive realization of the purpose of keeping Canadian trade for Canada and the Canadian people ? It has been argued by the Minister of Finance that a policy of Canada for the Canadians would mean the disintegration of Canada; would mean the separating of the west from the east, because he alleges that the west and the east have such diverse interests that they cannot be harmonized. If that were the ease, we would have no nationality. If you could not get the inhabitants in one section of Canada to be willing to co-operate with those of another section in order to maintain a common policy for the common good, you would have no nationality and you would have no Canada. Such a suggestion coming from the Minister of Finance shows that he is not telling us seriously what he thinks on that subject. There is no country in the world in which the inhabitants living in different sections have not diverse interests. The people of the British Isles, two or three hundred years ago, were further apart, more divided by race, as much divided by religion, more divided by interests, and most of all divided by the want of intercommunication, than is the case with Canada to-day. But all this did not prevent the development of the home land, and it should not prevent the development of any part of the empire outside of the home islands in which there are the' advantages that we in Canada possess. The existing conditions in Canada should not prevent us looking to a homogeneous population, all of the same education politically, all of the same aspirations, and all with the same dream of a great imperial federation in which Canada is to occupy a foremost part. If it were possible to have in Canada a people who were so local and so selfish that they could not realize a national policy for the common good, and could not be filled with a common desire for the welfare of Canada, then we would not be the people that we are. But with such a population as we have, there is every reason to believe that there should not be any trouble in persuading the people of every section of this country to join in a policy which would be for the good of all. In opposition to that idea of a harmonious Canadian nationality, we had the speech of the lion, gentleman from North Norfolk (Mr. Charlton), who was\nput up to advocate the cause of reciprocity with the United States. That lion, gentleman advocated a policy, which if it could be enforced, would break Canada up into three or four sections. You would have on the Pacific coast a commonwealth comxiosed of two or three states of the American union, and the province of British Columbia. You will have in Ontario a people who had no care for their fellow-citizens of British blood in the east and west, but whose whole trade and whose whole sympathy would be with the people of New York, and Ohio and Indiana. And the people of the maritime provinces living under the idea involved in the speech of the hon. member (Mr. Charlton) would carry on their commercial affairs with the people of the United States, and on the whole you would perfectly destroy fOr ever that Canada which is in existence today. The fact that we have a Canada; that we have a national policy ; that our statesmen in the past have found it possible to persuade the people of Ontario to submit to a tax on coal and the people of the maritime provinces to submit to a tax on flour and cornmeal, because in doing so they are giving vitality to a national policy; all these facts accomplished in the past are a guarantee that they can be continued and should be continued with much more ease and much greater facility in the future. It is a very short-sighted policy, to my mind, to endeavour to persuade the people of Canada that the interests of the west cannot be harmonized with the interests of the east. It is quite easy to show that the interest of the arable west is at present very largely in the one direction. They are producing wheat. It is said you cannot protect the farmer. Well, the western farmer cannot be improved so far as his conditions are concerned as a farmer, because his conditions are absolutely perfect to-day. He has a magnificent soil, a perfect climate. He has seed time and harvest, and he is not subject to the interruptions which come to us in the lower provinces from the broken seasons we have there. He has an ideal condition of farm life, but he has one disadvantage- he is out there on the plains producing wheat and the farmers about him are producing the same crop; they are competing with one another ; his disadvantage comes when he goes to market, because the wheat which is grown by himself and his neighbours who are his rivals, is to be sold on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, thousands of miles away. He has to go five or six thousand miles before he can sell his wheat. Will you not protect that farmer when you can build up at Brandon, at Winnipeg, at Sault Ste. Marie, at ail the towns of Ontario and Quebec, large manufacturing and commercial centres ? You can protect the western farmer in the most effective and complete fashion by giving him consumers in Canada. But more than that, I think it would be anything but statesmanlike to admit that", 'the people of the west are to be for ever limited to the productions which they have now. To my mind the salvation of the people of the west is involved in their ceasing to be wheat growers exclusively, and in becoming mixed farmers. They are doing the best they can at the moment; they are doing that which is ready to their hands; and the conditions are so favourable that they are producing wealth to an enormous degree, and the whole of Canada is reaping the benefit of it. But any one who knows what the best conditions for the development of our race are, knows that the man who is living in a small house, and is merely a producer of wheat on an open plain, is not living under conditions tending to develop his highest characteristics as a man. These can only be realized by bringing to the prairies the mixed husbandry of the older provinces, and to that end the policy of the government must contribute as rapidly as possible. Not only is this important to the western provinces, but to the east it is absolutely essential. Though we are greatly interested in the west, we must not forget the east. We have not in the eastern provinces the great perfection of soil and climate that they have in the west. Our conditions in the east are such as to make it out of the question that the people there shall become great producers of grain. They cannot, in fact, realize the conditions of the west. In the east we can realize the condition of the husbandman who pursues mixed husbandry. But in spite of the assertions of the Finance Minister, the exodus in eastern Canada has not ceased and the people who are leaving are not going to the west; they are not tempted even by those marvellous lands of the Saskatchewan valley and the great plains; but they are going to the United States, to a highly protected country, to the manufacturing cities of the New England states, and it would be impossible to change the character or the disposition of those people. They are not disposed to be farmers; they are not convinced that the highest condition of life would be realized by their becoming farmers; but they wish to live a life of greatly diversified interests in which the manufacturing interests should occupy a very prominent and important place. These men do not want to live on a thousand acre farm without a neighbour within a mile and a half of them. They want to live in cities where you can enjoy not only all the conveniencies and comforts and pleasures available in cities to men with reasonable incomes, but where they can share the luxuries and refinements of life, and indulge their taste for the graceful and the beautiful. The disposition of these people is not only to go to the cities of the United States, but to build up cities in our country as well; and no policy would be the best for Canada or can secure the approval of the Canadian people, which does not recognize that there are in the country Mr. BELL.\nI\ngreat and varied possibilities entirely outside of the production of wheat even on the most fertile acres in the world. We want to build up in this country a state with great industrial resources. Who are the people who are taking the lead in the world today ? They are the great manufacturing peoples ; and with our vast country capable of supporting two hundred millions of people as rapidly as they can be put into it, with the skill and energy of our people, with our illimitable and varied resources, we should aim to develop the highest possible state of civilization, and to realize that ideal we must have not alone an agricultural population, but a people trained in all the varied pursuits that are to be found in countries which at this moment stand in the van of civilization. Therefore, while it may be good politics and good tactics on the part of the administration of the day to so shape their tariff and so control their discussions as to let the public of Canada feel that they will not be unfavourable to them, whether they are lovers of free trade or a revenue tariff or reciprocity or protection, it is not a position that stamps it as an administration of clear convictions, but rather as a do-nothing, opportunist administration, and one which cannot and ought not to have the hearty and earnest support of the people of Canada.\nMr. MACLAREN (Huntingdon) moved the adjournment of the debate.']
Mr. R. F. SUTHERLAND (North Essex).: Mr. Speaker, the splendid financial showing of the budget speech, on which the hon. Minister of Finance and the government received such well deserved congratulations, was received on this side of the House with unqualified approbation; and indeed it seems to have been received also with approbation on the other side of the House, because our hon. friends opposite are, like ourselves, Canadians, and could not but for the moment forget their party feelings in the pleasure and satisfaction which they felt at the splendid showing of the hon. Minister of Finance on this occasion. In this respect they gave an apt illustration of that sentiment so well expressed by a Canadian poet-the ' love of country soaring far above dull party strife.' But there is something more important than the spirit in which the budget was received in the House and that is the way in which it was received by the people of Canada at large. And if one can gather from the sentiment expressed by that exponent of public opinion in Canada, the public press, the facts set out in the budget speech have been greeted with approval from one end of Canada to the other and have aroused the greatest possible satisfaction-a satisfaction which will no

doubt find vent in new trade activity among our people.
Before addressing myself particularly to the matter In hand, I desire to offer a word or two of sympathy to my hon. friend, the leader of the opposition (Mr. Borden, Halifax). Three years ago he was elected to the honourable and responsible position which he now holds, and shortly afterwards the debate on the budget was announced. At once my hon. friend began to look around among his followers to find one best capable of filling the role of financial critic. His eye fell on an hon. gentleman who enjoyed a great reputation os a financier, and who was naturally expected, when he entered the House, to become an able financial critic. That hon. gentleman essayed to follow the hon. Finance Minister in his first budget speech of this parliamentary term. Did be come up to the expectations formed of him by his leader at that time and the party opposite ? Did he answer the requirement of a financial critic, in the opinion of his friends on the other side ? Well, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the fact that since that time that bon. gentleman has not been asked to repeat the performance is abundant evidence that he did not. In the year following, 1902, my hon. friend the leader of the opposition again looked around among his followers for some one competent to take up the mantle dropped by Hon. Mr. Foster when he left this House. It was rumoured that the hon. member for Bothwell (Mr. Clancy) had been qualifying for the position. And so eager was his desire to lead the attack, that lie sprang to his feet no less than sixty times during one afternoon and evening of the first session of this parliament. It was also reported that the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) was girding up his loins for the same work. And evidently there was no lack of foundation for that report, because our hon. friend from East Grey went the hon. member for Bothwell one better by rising to his feet about ninety times on another afternoon and evening of the same session. Then came the session of 1902, and my hon. friend the leader of the opposition found himself compelled to take up the task himself because he was unable to find any hon. gentleman behind him to whom he could safely trust it. I am bound to say that the hon. gentleman acquitted himself very well, but how he relished the duty we can judge by what happened between the session of 1902 and the present one. Between 1902 and 1903, a chorus arose from the Conservative leader, members, party and press, the burden of the song being a request to the hon. Mr. Foster to consent to be returned to the House. Hon. Mr. Foster did not turn a deaf ear to their pleadings and consented to present himself as a candidate in North Ontario. But North Ontario was obdurate, and instead of answering the 59J
prayer of the Conservative party to elect its financial critic, answered the prayer of the Liberals by returning Mr. Grant to this House. Again the leader of the opposition was compelled to search among his followers for a financial critic, but despite his most vigilant search, he was unable to find one. It really seems to me that out of sympathy for their leader, who has so many other duties to discharge, some hon. gentleman on that side should qualify for the position and relieve his leader from this one which usually devolves on the first lieutenant of the party in opposition.
In reply to the budget speech this session, the hon. leader of the opposition made some very sweeping statements. On page 1479 of [DOT] Hansard ' he is reported to have used these words :
I think we all pretty well know what was done; goods coming to us from the mother country had the duty increased upon them in 1897, and then the merchants of the mother country were presented with a preference which left the rate of duty practically the same as that which is paid on the imports from the United States, even if you take into consideration dutiable goods alone.
I submit that is not in accord with the facts. I submit that, as a general proposition, it is entirely inaccurate; and if it be, then I think it is pernicious, coming as it does from so prominent a member of this House as it will tend to lower the good opinion the British people will have in reference to integrity, good faith and reliability. It may be true and it is that the tariff was slightly raised on a few articles of cotton, and some of wool, but with the 33J per cent off the rates of duty on even these are substantially reduced under the preferential tariff to what they were under the tariff prior to 1897. I submit that there is not an hon. member opposite who can point to a single item of the tariff which under the preferential rate is equal to or higher than it was under the former tariff.
While I am anxious to give every credit to the hon. leader of the opposition for frank and honest criticism, it seems to me that he was far from displaying these qualities in the language I am about to quote. He said, as reported on page 1475 of ' Hansard ' :
Is there not some attraction to a certain class of people in this country when a surplus of $12,000,000 or $13,000,000 is announced ? There are people in this country as well as in every other, whose chief concern about the public revenue is to appropriate some of it to their own use under the guise of a parliamentary vote.
That is a statement which, I submit, is not creditable to the hon. gentleman. He could not have ignored the fact that the hon. Minister of Finance had stated explicitly that the surplus was to be applied not in improperly assisting party friends but in a manner most gratifying to the people of this country, namely, to the reduction of the public debt. Not only is the public

debt to be reduced, but it is to be reduced by about $6,000,000, which makes this the best financial record in the history of Canada. Hon. members opposite invariably, when dealing with the question of surpluses, refer back to statements made in other times and under other conditions by leaders of the Liberal party. But the people of this country are not so much concerned with what the certain members of the government may have said ten or fifteen years ago, as with what they are doing in the present day. What particularly interests the people is the manner in which the business of the country is being carried on. I do not agree with those who blame the government when they have a surplus, who find in a surplus nothing but an occasion for adverse criticism. In my opinion, there are several ways in which a surplus may be a matter of usefulness. When there is a large surplus, as at present, it can be used to reduce the public debt. That is what the hon. Finance Minister has told us he intends doing. In the next place, the fact that we have a large surplus of itself attracts the attention of other countries to Canada and gives Canada a higher position in the world at large. Then there is another advantage arising from a large surplus', and that is the effect it has in stimulating trade and commercial activity, opening up every avenue for progress and expansion. The knowledge that our public finances are in such a condition that we have a surplus of $13,000,000 inspires public confidence.
The leader of the opposition seems to be very much concerned about the fact that we are buying so much more from the United States than we sell to them. That is something we would all prefer to see a little different. But, if he sympathizes with us in that respect, he must sympathize with the efforts of Mr. Chamberlain to sell more British goods to Canada. But he seems frequently to give forth this idea-that we should deal with our brethern in Great Britain practically as he says the United States deal with us ; we should seek to keep them out of our market. This, I suppose, is another sample of the Conservative patriotism we hear so much about. The policy of the Liberal government is to admit the British goods under a tariff which admits of reasonable competition, while that of the Conservatives seems to be to leave to our British brethern only such small crumbs and pickings as they can gather under a high protective tariff. A good deal is said by the Conservatives about the preference and about the probability of our getting a preference in return. This matter has been somewhat changed, perhaps, even since this debate began. But Sir Charles Tapper, Mr. Foster and the present leader of the opposition seem to have moulded their policy on the belief that a small preference should be given to Great Britain for which we should get a small preference


Robert Franklin Sutherland: in return. But we know that it has been declared clearly that no small preference will be considered as of importance by the British statesmen. Mr. Chamberlain and others have said so, and have even gone to the extent of saying that a preference of 33J per cent was not of much value. So. whatever chance the Liberal party, with the preference now afforded, may have had to get a preference in return, the Conservative party, with its declaration that the preference is too high and should be lowered, have no chance whatever.
Beyond this, I desire to consider, for a moment or two whether or not the preference has been of any considerable benefit to our British brethren. One would think at the outset that the matter was scarcely worth discussing. It would seem quite obvious that an advantage of 33J per cent would be a wonderful advantage to such merchants and manufacturers as those of Great Britain. But hon. gentlemen opposite criticise it, and even our friends across the water criticise it as of very little importance. It strikes me that if representatives of British and American manufacturers were to come to Ottawa and seek to sell to one of the merchants here the same class of goods, the merchant realizing, as he must and does, that, buying goods from Great Britain under the preferential tariff, he will be charged 33J per cent less duties on bringing them from Britain than from the United States and this will be a great inducement to buy from the British manufacturer, as it will be such an aid to him in selling to the Canadian purchaser. It has been said that this preference is of no consequence, but we see cases in which it must have been and has been of a great deal of consequence. It would have been of more consequence if our British brethren had realized its possibilities and seized upon it as they ought to have done. But in this, as in other matters, they seem not to have the necessary knowledge of the conditions in this country, and so they are handicapped as compared with the manufacturers of the United States. Now, I do not know where the position is put so well as it is in the colonial conference blue-book 1902. in a memorandum prepared by our own commissioners in answer to the memorandum prepared by the representatives of the British Board of Trade. At page 121 of this book, our commissioner deals with a couple of the conclusions in the British memorandum. Section 13 of that memorandum is quoted as -follows :
We should not expect to find any material effect exerted by the preferential tariff in the case of heavy and bulky goods in which freight bears a high proportion of total value, and It is precisely in these classes of goods in which the main increase of Canadian imports has recently taken place. It is also in these classes of goods e.g.. coal, grain, raw cotton, timber, Iron and steel, and heavy manufactures thereof,

such as bridges, girders, rails, engines, &c., that the United States, by geographical contiguity as well as wealth of natural resources is to a large extent beyond reach of any competition from the United Kingdom in the Canadian market even if aided by a greater preference than that now accorded.
Then they quote also from section 14 in the British memorandum :
The articles stated are :-Metals and manufactures thereof, coal and coke, grain and breadstuffs, meat, dairy produce, and fruit, wood and manufactures thereof, raw cotton.
Having quoted these, the Canadian commissioners then deal with and criticise these statements in the following practical and forcible way. At the same page :
If we eliminate the dutiable imports of such articles in which it is admitted that Great ' Britain cannot compete in the Canadian market even if aided by a much greater preference than that now accorded, and ccmpare the progress of trade in the balance of dutiable imports, it will be found that the preference has been of substantial advantage to Great Britain.
Then they proceed to give this statement :
of the preference granted by Canada in favour of British goods, certainly none exists in the United States. The manufacturers there have found it necessary to reduce their prices to Canada to offset the preference.
To conclude and to summarize it is respectfully submitted :-
1.	That the preference is a substantial and
genuine one.	.
2.	That it gives British merchants a material advantage over .foreign competitors in the foreign markets.
3.	That the preferential rates are not too high to shut out reasonable competition with the Canadian producer.
4.	That the preference has resulted, not only in arresting a continuous decline in British trade but in stimulating the trade. If it had not been granted it is not very likely that the volume of British imports into Canada would be as large as it is to-day, to say the least.
5.	That the advantage given by Canada to the British manufacturer is proved beyond all question. If he has not fully availed himself of it that is not the fault of the Canadian government, or of the Canadian fiscal policy.
Surprise is sometimes expressed at the trade we are doing with the United States,
The following statement shows the net dutiable importations for consumption after
deducting these articles.
1901.
Total from all countries Increase 1897-1901 ... Rate of increase, 47 p.c
From Great Britain... Increase 1897-1901 ... Rate of increase, 59 p.c
From United States... Increase 1897-1901 .... Rate of increase, 49 p.c
From other countries.. Increase 1397-1901 . . Rate of increase, 29 p.c
70,849,
22,710,
28,052,
10,448,
24,493,
8,114,
18,303,
4,152,
084
437
800
1897.
Total from all countries. Increase 1893-1897 .... Rate of increase, t p.c.
From Great Britain.... Decrease 1893-1897 . . Rate of decrease, 33 p.c.
From United States_____
Increase 1893-1897 .. -Kate of increase, 22 p.c.
From other countries... Increase 1893-1897 . . Rate of increase, 81 p.c.
48,133,701
360,785
17,003,948
8,955,940
16,378,627
2,972,276
14,151,126
6,344,449
1893.
$
Total from all countries.. 47,772,916 From Great Britain	 26,559,888 From United States. . . 13,406,351 From other countries.... 7,806,677
Then, at the end of page 121 and the top of page 122, they summarize in this way :
These figures are instructive.
Briefly stated they show, first, that between 1893 and 1897, the imports from Great Britain declined by 33 per cent as compared with an increase of 22 per cent from the United States, and an increase of 81 per cent from other countries. But a change took place during the following four-year period when the preference was in operation. During that time British imports increased 59 per cent, United States 49 per cent, and other countries 29 per cent. The increase in the total from all countries was at the rate of 47 per cent.
Then they summarized the whole thing on another page, 125, in the following words :
It might he remarked here that if any doubt exists in Britain as to the substantial nature
but there are reasons why that is not unnatural. We are lying alongside that immense country for thousands of miles, and the nearness of the Americans to Canada enables them to become vastly better acquainted with the people of Canada than are the British people across the water. One of the things that we complain of from time to time is the fact that the British people do not seem to acquire, as quickly as the Americans, a knowledge of Canada and of Canadian wants and interests, and as a result they are not able to compete with the Americans in our market. It appears from the statistics quoted in this blue-book beyond doubt that if Hr. Chamberlain, before making his speech, had had before him the facts and figures which were set out in that memorandum of our Canadian com-

missioners, he never would have said what he did about the preference, and certainly he would never have attempted to belittle it. The preference which we have given Britain over the United States is a real and true preference, it is a preference which the condition of things between Britain and the United States on the one hand, and Canada on the other, makes perhaps not as effective as we would like it to be, but makes it one which helps the British manufacturers and minimizes the consequences of the fact that the United States manufacturer is closer to the Canadian market than the British manufacturer.
Now the leader of the opposition has made, in a moment of candour, a significant statement, as a former leader of the Conservative party made once in a moment of weakness. On page 1471, the leader of the opposition, speaking of tlie large expenditure made by this government, said this :
I do not pretend for a moment that these increases are all unjustifiable. On the contrary, I regard some of them at least as entirely justifiable ; indeed, I should be glad to see the increase larger in some cases.
Now the criticism of the leader of the opposition amounts to this : The expenditures are very large, and X criticise them on that ground ; but I cannot and do not point out a single instance in which they are too large. I would point that out if I could, but I cannot. Indeed, if I were Finance Minister, there are some cases were I would make expenditures larger. I do not think a criticism of that sort will appeal very strongly to the people of this country. He is the watchdog on the opposition side to whom the public is looking to see that the government does not make an extravagant expenditure ; and when the people of Canada are looking to him, all they can find is the statement that although the expenditures are large, he does not know in what respect he would reduce them ; that while the expenditures are large, in some respects he would make them larger. I think the people will see in that statement one more testimony to the efficient and business-like administration which this government is giving to the country, one more testimony to the fact that the opposition cannot complain of the existing condition of things.
Another ground of complaint that we hear from across the floor during the progress of this debate, is that the government is taking too large a revenue from the people. But the obvious answer to that is that if hon. gentlemen opposite had their way, if they were able to introduce the higher protective tariff which they had in vogue prior to 1897, millions of dollars more would be taken out of the pockets of the people, that is to say, millions of dollars more in revenue would be collected, of course assuming that the same amount of imports would have come into the country under the late tariff Mr. SUTHERLAND (Essex).
as under the present tariff, which is very questionable. Again, there is a consideration arising out of this budget debate which strikes us as peculiar on this side of the House, and must strike the country in the same way, and that is the question as to what is the real tariff policy which hon. gentlemen opposite would introduce if they had an opportunity of doing so. We hear a great deal of general talk from the other side, but we never hear an exact definition of the tariff policy which they would bring down to the House, stated in such precise terms as that we could discuss it and see in what respect it differs from ours. It seems to me that the present government, when they created this tariff, were guided by a principle of moderation that must always be followed in conducting the affairs of this country. Very recently a book was published in this country which gave the following estimate of the character of the leader of this government:
Moderation is the keynote of his career, and the secret of all his achievements.
It seems to me that this characteristic, along with the splendid abilities which have made the present Prime Minister so successful in his administration, also belonged to another great Canadian, perhaps the greatest public man that Ontario has yet produced, Sir Oliver Mowat, who has recently died, and is now being mourned by all true Canadians, moderation was the great characteristic of his magnificent life, and was the secret of his wonderful success. This same moderation is required in the government of this Dominion, in view of the varying conditions of the people, and of its varying industries and material wants, and no fiscal policy can be successful in this Dominion which is not based on the principle of moderation, and which does not have as its keynote the intelligent compromise which characterized the tariff policy introduced in 1897. Rightly or wrongly, the public have thought that the Conservative policy was one of high protection for a few interests, and that any measure of protection which might be given to the great farming interests would be merely incidental. That seems to have been the impression which the people of Canada have got.	-
Now we have five great sources of national income upon which we do our national housekeeping. Some of our industries, particularly manufacturers, it is generally admitted" require some protection; but the real question is how far can we go in protecting manufactures and at the same time deal fairly with the other great interests that require consideration at our hands. I believe that the true policy was inaugurated in 1897 by the present government. We can judge by results as to whether that tariff was a good one for the manufacturing interests or not, and under that tariff the manufacturing interests of this country

seem to have progressed and prospered in a remarkable degree. I am one of those who believe that when the time comes to revise this tariff, we can safely leave the work to the government that has dealt so successfully with the various large public interests in the past, feeling assured that no interest, manufacturing or otherwise, will be sacrificed or jeopardized by them.
1 believe heartily in the care of the manufacturing industries of this country, because wherever large manufacturing concerns arise success and prosperity follow in their train. The very construction of a large manufacturing building gives employment to various sorts of artisans. The moment a manufactory is started wages are paid out with which to rent homes or build homes, money is distributed amongst the merchants in the various parts of Canada, and in one way or another all along the line a great manufacturing establishment is a very useful thing for the people in any locality in the country. But while that is so, the interest of the agricultural class is a matter of equally great concern as that of the manufacturing class of the country. If we make the farms of Canada attractive, if we seek to do what we can for the farming interests, if we encourage men to go upon the farm and stay there, if we take care of the immense numbers of people who are coming into Canada to take up lands, we are going to help create that great home market which we all appreciate and which our manufacturers are particularly anxious to have, and to my mind the best thing we can do, not merely in the interest of the farmers themselves, but in the interest of the manufacturers as well, and in the.interest of every other class of the community, is to do all we can to aid and assist the farmers. This government has been seeking to do that in various ways, by assistance in transportation facilities, by assistance in the way of providing cold storage facilities, by diffusing information and the results of experiments among the farmers, and thus making them, I believe, more intelligent than their competitors in other countries. This work has been aiding and assisting the agricultural classes very much, and in the railway commission which the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Hon. Mr. Blair) proposes to pass this session we will have railway rates attempted to be remedied, we will have the cattle-guard question dealt with, we will have drainage across railway property provided for, and in these ways the agricultural classes will be still further benefited. On the other hand, in the revision of railway rates, in the power taken by the government of reducing duties on raw material, in the increase of the home market that the government is concerning itself about-in all these respects the manufacturer will be benefited as well.
Now, one would think at times, although that story seems to be getting a little weaker, that, in the opinion of hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House, under the existing tariff, manufacturers could not exist or prosper, and that new manufactories could not be started. Is that true ? Do the facts warrant any such view as that ? Is it not the fact that the existing manufactories of the country are for the most part, and as a general thing, very successful and prosperous at this time ? I think that I can appeal confidently to almost every hon. member when I ask him to look upon the manufactories in his own immediate locality to bear testimony to the fact that in the main the manufacturers are prosperoujs. The introduction of large manufacturing concerns into this country proves that under the present tariff business men are not afraid to invest their money in these enterprises. In this connection I desire to read a couple of extracts, which, coming as they do from unbiased authorities, are extracts which I regard as being more forcible and effective than the mere statement of an hon. member of this House. On the 14th October, 1902, the president of the Grand Trunk Railway Company, Sir Charles Rivers-Wil-son, presented a statement to the meeting of the shareholders of the company for the first six months of that year, and in presenting that statement he made use of these remarkable words :
A very interesting return had been prepared by the traffic department. During 1901 no fewer than 115 new industries comprising many large works and manufactories were established or put in course of establishment along^their line in Canada, representing a capital of $5,541,000, and 51 industries along the line of the Grand Trunk Railway in the United States with a capital of $1,985,000. It would be difficult to afford a more practical illustration of the prosperity of the times and of the increased carrying capacity of the Grand Trunk Railway arising therefrom.
It seemed to me, when I read it some time ago, a most remarkable statement, that along the line of one railway in Canada no less than 115 new, and many of them large, industries and manufactories in one year were commenced or in course of commencement representing a capital of $5,541,000. It is a complete answer to those who say, or who attempt to say, that under the present tariff manufactories are not being started and are not prospering in this country. But there is another citation which seems to me to be a very important one. In the Montreal ' Gazette ' of November 27, 1902, there is a statement which Major John L. Bittinger, Consul General of the United States in Montreal, furnishes to his own people on the other side of the line. It is not at all likely that this United States officer is going to exaggerate the facts in this report, a report sent to his own government, and which reads as follows :

The people of the United States are aiding largely in the development of Canada. Within the last year, millions of dollars have been invested here in agricultural and timber lands, mining and manufacturing industries.
Canada is also showing wonderful enterprise in self-development. People are throwing off their conservatism.
I do not know whether that refers to the election of 1900 or to the previous election.
When industrial openings are presented to them they no longer take a year for consideration, but investigate promptly, and when satisfied, invest liberally.
Many American syndicates have been looking over the ground in Canada during the last few months. A significant fact to those connected with the paper industry is that the largest of these syndicates, the Gres Falls Company, is controlled by men prominent in the International Paper Company. The Gres Falls Company was organized in April last, and owns water power and extensive spruce limits at Three Rivers. The company is capitalized at $500,000, and it is said to be the intention to develop the industry at once.



[Stage Direction]
The investments made by Americans in agricultural, grazing, and timber lands amount tc many millions of dollars. Only recently, a Columbus, O., syndicate purchased 600,000 acres m the North-west Territory. A Minneapolis and St. Paul syndicate has purchased a much larger area, and is promoting emigration from the western states to the Canadian Norlh-west, to which over 50,000 settlers have gone during the present year.
The consul-general then specifies the following industries, either recently established or about to be started and financed wholly or partly by American capital.
Louis B.: Jennings, New York, has recently organized the Canadian Steel and Coal Company CpPit?^ze<^ $6,000,000. His properties consist of 4,000 acres of iron ore, and 3,000 acres of coal lands.


Claus A.: Spreckles and W. W. Cool, of New 1. ork, have made application for the incorporation of the Federal Sugar Refining Company, fp^ie caP*tal of the company is $6,000,000. The refinery will be located in Montreal.


Theodore P.: Burgess, president and general manager of the Burgess Sulphite Pulp Company, of Berlin Falls, N.H., has closed a deal with the Quebec Department of Lands, Forests and Fisheries, for the purchase of 600 square miles of timber on the Upper St. Maurice river.


BIG PLANT FOR TORONTO.
[Stage Direction]
Another large American industry has decided to evade the duty of 25 per cent on agricultural machinery, and establish itself in Toronto. The new firm will be known as the American Abell Engine Thrasher Company ; it has taken over the Toronto Abell Works, Behind it are two of the largest thrashing-machine manufacturers in the world. Their agents have already placed orders for 1,000,000 feet of hard-wood lumber The new company is to have $1,000,000 of capital stock, and it will employ about 400 men The company will erect a large warehouse and machine shop at Winnipeg.
The Westinghouse Company, of Philadelphia the Ingersoll Sargent Drill Company, of New York, the Port Huron Thrashing Machine Com-Mr. SUTHERLAND (Essex).
pany, of Port Huron, Mich., and the Deering Harvester Company, of Chicago, are engaged in the location of great plants in Ontario.
The Oil Exploration Company, of Canada, a new concern, has been incorporated with an authorized capital of $200,000, with the head ofiiee at Walkerville, Ont.
The Canadian Coral Marble Company has been incorporated, with the head office at Toronto, with an authorized capital of $500,000, of which it is said, the largest amount is American.

[Stage Direction]
It is stated that as a result of the investigation made by American capitalists in St. Johns, Que., an extensive plant for the manufacture of porcelain enamelled baths will be established there.
The Locomotive and Machine Company, of Montreal, has Just been incorporated to carry on business. The capital stock is $1,000,000, largely American.
Letters patent have been issued incorporating Robert Stuart, of Chicago, Walter Donald Douglas, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and several Cana.-dians as [DOT] The Northern Cereal Company.' The capital stock is $2,000,000, the majority of which is American.
The meat-packing firm of Swift & Co., of Chicago, recently purchased the property of the Fowler Canadian Company, of Hamilton. A new porlt-packing plant is to be erected, which will be larger than any like establishment in the Dominion.
The Haines Piano Company, of Rochester, N.Y., has purchased the old Hess factory, at Toronto Junction. It is enlarging the plant, and will employ 200 hands.
A charter has been granted the Clover Leaf Mining Company, with a capital of $1,000,000. The head offices are at Toronto. A majority of the capital is American.
The Buffalo Forge Company, a $1,000,000 corporation, has declared its purpose of establishing a branch factory in Canada.

[Stage Direction]
A New York Company has in operation in Montreal a large plant which makes lumber fireproof.
The American Bridge Company, of New York, has been licensed to carry on business in Ontario at a capital not to exceed $100,000.
The Globe-Wernieke Company, of Cincinnati, manufacturers of school supplies and special lines of furniture, is to establish a plant at Stratford, Ont.
A party of Americans is preparing to erect in Ottawa a factory for the manufacture of spades, shovels, and garden tools. The capital stock is $100,000. The company will employ ICO hands.
John Critchley, representing the American Actinolite and Asbestites Company, of New York, says that his company has commenced operations in Hastings, Ont., by working some actinolite properties. Mr. Critchley intends to establish works in Canada to refine the actinolite, which is used in the manufacture of heavy paints.
The Stohl Wagon and Farm Implement Company, of Harrisburg, Pa., will be removed to Toronto within the next month.
Letters patent have been issued for the Northern Aluminum Company, with a capital of $500.000, organized for the manufacture of aluminum and other ores. The company has erected a building at Shawinigan Falls, and is already at work. The capital is largely American.

The Montreal Novelty Company has been established here by New York parties.
Letters patent of the province have been issued incorporating the Imperial Pneumatic Tool Company, with a capital stock of $25,000. The caphal is nearly all American.

[Stage Direction]
Frontier Peters, of Prince Edward Island, has an.njuced an agreement with a firm of Canadian and American capitalists, which insures for the island the most complete and modern outfit of cold storage appliances that, can be obtained. The capital of the company is $1,000,000.
An important tobacco firm in Pittsburg, Pa., has written the Dominion statistician for details respecting the cultivation of tobacco in Canada, with a view, if circumstances are favourable, of establishing a large factory for the manufacture of cheroots and ' stogies.'
The International Harvester Company erecting a plant at Hamilton, will employ 1,500 hands.
The Altman-Taylor Implement Company, of Peoria, 111., will soon establish a branch in Canada.
The Canadian Woollen Mills Company, at St. Hyacinthe, has passed into the hands of American capitalists, who will hereafter operate the industry.
The Laurentides Pulp and Paper Company has an immense plant, and has built up around it the thriving town of Grand MOre.
The latest announcement in connection with the incoming of foreign industries is the news that the International Paper Company, a gigantic concern, is about to utilize the areas it has secured in the Three Rivers district and establish pulp mills in that portion of the country.
This, Mr. Speaker, is on the whole a splendid testimony as to the manner in which capital is being attracted to Canada. This report shows that level headed business men are prepared to risk their money in Canada; it shows that Canada is prosperous under the present tariff, and it shows that few if any countries in the world are so prosperous.
Now, Sir, in my estimation, the policy of the present government has been a most skilful, statesmanlike, sane . and manly policy; and, in various ways. In the first place preferential tariff was a very great stroke of political genius for not only did it reduce taxation to the Canadian consumers and assist British trade, but it also struck somewhat of a blow at the United States, and some of us are not adverse to a little of that sort of thing if the United States do not treat us somewhat better. And. Sir, the preferential tariff strengthened the ties of the empire and increased Canada's national status. In the second place the reductions in duties were with respect to goods chiefly imported from the United States and were made for our benefit. The Liberal party draws the line against a policy of retaliation or conservatism which would simply cut off our nose to spite our face. In the third place the preference in favour of the West Indies showed a commendable disposition to help a weak member of the
empire and to recognize the responsibilities of the empire. In the fourth place, the opposition were prepared to allow their resentment to cause them to go right at Germany at once without conciliation or negotiation at all; but the policy of the government was quite the reverse. The government tried conciliation, they tried correspondence, they tried every reasonable, sensible, and moderate means, and when they were not able to induce the Germans to do what was fair and right, then the Canadian government adopted a policy of retaliation which all Canadians have heard of with the greatest satisfaction. Instead of starting out with fisticuffs as the opposition wanted, the government started with correspondence and negotiations, and when that would not do we ended up with a little fisticuffs on our own account. Now, in addition to all this, and in view of the fact that Great Britain does not appear to think very much of this preference; in view of the fact that she is not very well informed as to this preference and seems to look this gift a little askance, Great Britain is now told : If you do not think the preference is any good; if you are not prepared to deal with us on a little better terms then you deal with countries which give you no preference, then we will have to consider what we will do with the preference. It is also true, Mr. Speaker, that this government lias made all reasonable and fair efforts to induce the people on the other side of the line to adopt a little more friendly and favourable trade policy' towards the people of this country, and they are given a slight intimation by this government that if they persist in doing as the Germans are doing, one of these days they may have something of the same sort happening to them. All and all, Mr. Speaker, the policy adopted by this government is in the truest and best interests of the people of the country at large. And why should we change from this policy ? Why should we change from the prosperous conditions which prevail under this policy to go back to the conditions which existed under the national policy. The national policy was reported at the start to be a wonderful policy'. We were told that it would cause manufactures to start up in tlie most marvelous way, and would bring work and wages, comfort and prosperity and happiness to the people of Canada. But we tried it for eighteen years and with what result ? Why, at the end we had made practically no progress; our population had scarcely increased. In one way and another we found that that policy was a failure. When we contrast the period before 1896 with the period from 1896 to 1902 we see in the former period a stagnant trade, an impoverished treasury, an exodus of the very cream of our population, manufacturing going on in a very slow way, and the Conservative government too busy with
[Stage Direction]
its own strifes to do much for the country, i But since 1896 we see a most wonderful reverse policy; a most wonderful reverse picture. We see trade going ahead in the most wonderful way at a greater ratio than that of any country in the whole world. We see a bouyant revenue; an overflowing treasury; lower taxation; reduction of the public debt; immigrants pouring into the country; the North-west being rapidly developed ; factories working up to the limit of their capacity and railways projected in all directions. Surely no man, no patriotic man who desires the best interests of the people of Canada would want to recede from this present splendid condition of the country and go back to the conditions that obtained prior to 1896. Time and again in days past, eminent men have spoken of the possibilities of Canada. They have made predictions as to the future of Canada; they have pointed out that with her resources and the intelligence and pluck and enterprise of her people she was able to make extraordinary progress. But that progress did not come until the accession to power of the Liberal party and the inauguration of their policy. But now, when the east has commenced to know something more about the west, when the older parts of Canada are commencing to know more about the west and the Northwest; when the various parts of Canada are being brought together by railway and other transportation facilities; when the people are beginning to understand the great resources of this country; when we are commencing to be advertised at home and abroad; when we are begining to attract population and capital; now, these pictures that others have presented in times past are being realized. One eminent man who was Governor General of this country has spoken perhaps more beautifully than almost any other man of this magniflcient young country of ours, and of its great possibilities. Fortunately he lived to see the day when some of his predictions were to an extent realized. He had travelled all over Canada; he had come to know our people and to understand their intelligence, enterprise, and pluck, and he pointed to the future. I refer to Lord Dufferin who used these words From its geographical position and its peculiar characteristics, Manitoba may be regarded as the keystone of that mighty arch of sister provinces which spans the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was here that Canada emerging from her woods and forests first gazed upon her rolling prairies and unexplored North-west and learned as by an unexpected revellation that her historical territories of the Canadas, her eastern sea-boards of New Brunswick, Labrador and Nova Scotia, her Iaurentian lakes and valleys, corn lands and pastures, though themselves more extensive than half a dozen European kingdoms were hut the vestibules and anti-chambers to all that tell them their undreamt of Dominion whose illimitable dimensions alike confound the arithmetic of the surveyor and the verification of the explorer. It was hence that counting her past achieve-Mr. SUTHERLAND (Essex).
ments as but the preface and prelude to her future exertions and expanding destinies she took a fresh departure, receive the afflatus of a more imperial inspiration and felt herself no longer a mere settler along the banks of a single river but the owner of half a continent and in the magnitude of her possession in the wealth of her resources, in the sinews of her material might the peer of any power on earth.
I believe, Sir, that if the splendid policy commenced and perpetuated by this government is carried on for some years to come; if members on both sides of this House do their duty to this young country; the glowing predictions made by Lord Dufferin and others will soon come to pass and Canada will take that high rank among the nations of the world, which her resources and the character of her people entitle her to take.
Mr. W. J. ROCHE (Marquette).: The hon. gentleman from Essex (Mr. Sutherland) in his opening remarks extended his sympathies to the leader of the opposition, because that lion, gentleman (Mr. Borden) had himself undertaken the task of making a reply to the speech of the Finance Minister. Well, Sir, as an humble follower of the leader of the opposition I can assure the hon. gentleman (Mr. Sutherland) that the leader of the opposition is not at all in need of his sympathies. The hon. leader of the opposition undertook the task of replying to the Finance Minister and he acquitted himself in a highly creditable manner; in a manner which won encomiums from political foe as well as from political friend. And when the hon. gentleman (Mr. Sutherland) says that the leader of a party should be relieved from such a duty, I can quite understand that if the position of parties in this House were reversed, how anxious, nay how eager lion, gentlemen opposite would be to relieve their leader from that duty because they would And him scarcely big enough to fill the bill. The hon. leader of the opposition has always been equal to the occasion when called on to speak, whether in reply to the budget speech or at any other time. We feel proud of him, and he has received encomiums from all parts of the Dominion upon having made one of the best speeches in reply to the budget speech ever delivered in thisHouse. This is but the third session that the hon. member for North Essex has occupied a seat in this House, and I think it came with rather bad taste from him to attempt to lecture the hon. leader of the opposition as to who should or should not undertake the duty of replying to the budget speech. It is true, those who have the honour to follow the leader of the opposition in this House may not be possessed of the transcendent abilities of the hon. member for North Essex; they may not be imbued with the same amount of egotism or conceit; but they have endeavoured to acquit I themselves creditably by talking from a business standpoint, unlike hon. gentlemen oppo-

site, some of whom have spoken as free traders, some as protectionists, and some as revenue tariff men, each one catering to the narrow view of the particular constituency he represents.
The hon. member for North Essex has referred to the prosperity which Canada is enjoying. This is a favourite theme of hon. gentlemen opposite. As lovers of our country, as men who put country before party, we on this side of the House also rejoice in the evidences of the country's prosperity, and at the fact that Canada has not yet entered on that down grade towards a period of depression which is bound to come in the natural course of events. The hon. Finance Minister himself admitted that two years ago, when in his budget speech he prophesied the return of a period of depression. This prophecy, he says, has been somewhat delayed in its fulfilment, and he rejoices, as we all do, that the trade of Canada is still on the upward grade. It is a fortunate thing for Canada in one respect that the Conservative party at present occupy the opposition benches. Were the positions reversed, were a Conservative government in power, and were we taking from the people the large amounts of revenue now being taken, imposing upon them the large taxation now being imposed, and piling up the spurious surpluses which hon. gentlemen opposite are gloating over, we would never hear the end of these things from hon. gentlemen opposite, who, when it suits their purpose, do not hesitate to go the length of libelling their country and prejudicing her in the eyes of the world. This has been their history in the past, and, unless they have changed greatly, it will be their history in the future. Now, you do not see Conservative speeches ornamenting American immigration literature to the detriment of our country. You do not find Conservative leaders playing the unpatriotic part of visiting the American republic and advising the statesmen of that country how best to put the screws on Canada, in order to make her subservient to American interests. Nor do you find them lauding American states as fields for settlement to the detriment of their own country, nor advocating a policy that would result in our tariff being made at Washington. We have, however, witnessed these and other things of a like character when the opposition benches have been occupied by the party of hon. gentlemen opposite, who, in their despair, have resorted to every expedient to reach the goal of their ambition, the treasury benches. We trust that the good example set by the loyal and patriotic Conservative opposition rnny prove beneficial to them, so that when again, in the course of a short time, they come to occupy their proper places on this side of the House, patriotism will bo a more prominent feature of their conduct, and that in this respect their past record will not be repeated.
The hon. leader of the opposition has so well acquitted himself in that able address of his, in which he dealt with everything of importance touched upon by the hon. Finance Minister, and he has been so ably, followed by hon. gentlemen on this side of the House, that little remains to be said of an original character. But it is the duty of an opposition to indulge in legitimate criticism of the government's policy and record, past and present, even at the expense of a certain amount of repetition.
Now, if there is any body of men, in the history of this or any other country, who have laid themselves open to adverse criticism and to charges of inconsistency, duplicity, double-dealing and want of statesmanship, it is the hon. gentlemen who now constitute themselves the representatives of the Liberal party of Canada and the so-called government of Canada. Why, Sir, there is scarcely a promise which they made to the Canadian electorate, and on which they secured their support, that they have not shattered ; there is scarcely a profession which they made that they have not openly abandoned ; there is scarcely a policy which they formerly advocated that they have not turned their backs upon ; there is scarcely a principle to which they formerly gave their allegiance that they have not ignominiously violated or repudiated. This is the second parliament in which I have occupied a seat in this House ; but the time has been long enough to enable me to witness an amount of political acrobatism on the part of these hon. gentlemen to which the past history of the parliament of Canada has not afforded a parallel. Linos of policy advocated on this side of the House which at the time met with the jeers and the strenuous opposition of hon. gentlemen opposite, have been adopted by them ; and the very men who formerly belittled and decried them now uphold and applaud resolutions, clear cut and decided, setting forth the policy of the Conservative party of Canada. Questions of great national importance which formerly met with the gibes and sneers of hon. gentlemen opposite, have since, in almost identical words, been put forth at the intercolonial conference ns the expression of the views of the government of the day, in their attempt to obtain that which they formerly described as4 absurd and impossible. We all remember how the desks were pounded and how this chamber rung with the plaudits of the government supporters when a member on that, side of the House rose and said how absurd it was to expect that England would impose an import duty upon or tax food stuffs, and how they cheered when members accused the Conservative party of want, of loyalty and patriotism for even daring to ask that England should give to Canada a preference in her markets. We have seen that tax on food stuffs imposed. We have seen hon. gentlemen opposite not merely asking, but

demanding that Canada be given .a return preference in the British markets ; and these same gentlemen have applauded to the echo, not the mere request, hut the threat of the government that unless this preference were granted, Canada would hold herself free to withdraw the preference accorded to England in our markets. With so docile and subservient, though none the less inconsistent a following to the puzzled Conservatives, the skill of these hon. gentlemen as political acrobats and humbugs can scarcely be over-estimated. To the oldtime Liberal, who in years gone by was led to believe that when Canada had an expenditure of some $38,000,000 or $40,000,000. the country was fast drifting on to the shoals of bankruptcy, it must come as a rude shock and surprise to be now told by these former prophets of evil that an expenditure of $65,000,000 is justifiable and commendable and deserving of their support. Party lines are pretty strongly drawn in this Canada of ours, and the average follower will forgive his political leaders a great deal, but still I think to the honest Liberal it must be with many an inward gulp and an extra prayer for forgiveness that he attempts to mark his ballot for those who have betrayed his confidence, secured his vote under false pretenses. and who now in their Pharisaical manner attempt to justify and condone that which they formerly denounced as ruinous and inexcusable.
The policy laid down by the late Sir John Macdonald that a government should not rush into huge expenditures of public money merely because we had a buoyant revenue but should rather prosecute the necessary public works in periods of depression, when labouring men are more in need of work, is, in my opinion, a wise and judicious policy. The hon. gentlemen on the government benches seem to have reversed this policy. They are heaping huge burdens on the people and leaving to posterity the trouble of paying in periods of depression the large debts they are creating. These large surpluses which they were wont to declaim against in days gone by as an evil, they now laud as evidences of statesmanship. But these much-vaunted surpluses are really not surpluses in the proper sense of the term. They are simply moneys wrung from the people for the most indefensible purposes and to suit political and party exigencies. These hon. gentlemen will fin'd it far easier to incur large expenditures, to pile up our debt and increase our taxation in a period of prosperity than to reduce these expenditures and come back to a normal condition in a period of depression. I need only quote an authority which will be acceptable to hon. gentlemen opposite to back up my opinion. I refer to that authority, the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce, who, in criticising the budget speech delivered by a Conservative Finance Minister. used the following expression :


William James Roche: Now it is quite true so long as we continue having this prosperity the mischief of this may not be so apparent, but even the hon. Minister of Finance will hardly venture to say that he has any patent that will enable him to secure a continuance of this prosperity for ever, and the moment the check occurs, the moment times become in the slightest degree hard, then, Sir, our surplus will disappear, but unhappily our taxes will remain. And the scale of expenditure which the hon. gentleman is now fixing will remain too ; there is no more difficult task than to cut down, or materially reduce the expenditure of any country, when it has been allowed to attain a certain figure.
If these words were true and applicable at a time when our expenditure was only $40,000,000, they are doubly true and applicable to-day, when our expenditure amounts to the enormous sum of $65,000,000. Since these words were uttered, we have had an addition to our annual expenditure of $23,000,000, an addition to our taxation of some $16,000,000, and an addition to our public debt up to the 30th of June, 1902, of about 13,000,000. Or, in other words, to the burdens of each family of five there has been added an increased expenditure of $19 per year, an increased taxation of $15 per year and an increased debt of $13 per year, or a total increased burden of $47 annually. If public men are to be allowed to hold one set of opinions and views out of office and another set in office, then responsible government becomes, in the words of the Finance Minister, a farce. And if the words I have just quoted are true, when applied to an expenditure of some $40,000,000, bow much more forcible are they when applied to an expenditure of some $65,000,000 '!
My hon. friend the leader of the opposition visited last fall our western country. He met the people from the provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia and from the North-west Territories, face to face, and learned for himself, at first hand, their wants and requirements. The hon. gentleman was welcomed by all the people irrespective of politics, for if there is one characteristic for which the average westerner is noted more than any other, it is his hospitality to the stranger. Our western people admired the practical and outspoken sentiments of the leader of the opposition. They appreciated his candour and honesty.. They realized that they were not being addressed by a mere vote-hunter, but by a gentleman who was appealing to them on broad and national lines, who was not trying to secure their support on any sectional issue, who was not endeavouring to set one class against another, who was not seeking to persuade the farmer that his natural enemy was tlie manufacturer, but who was appealing to the people on a broad national policy which he believed to be in the best interest of the country. In fact the Toronto ' Globe ' was rather surprised and shocked that the lender of a great party should give evidence of what that journal considered a tactical blunder. The display by a public man of

so much candour and sincerity came upon it as a revelation. It was something which the ' Globe ' was not accustomed to witness in either the leaders or the followers of the Liberal party. Hence its surprise. Contrast the frankness of the hon. leader of the opposition with the subtlety displayed by the right hon. leader of the government. The right hon. gentleman visited that country in years gone by and proclaimed himself out there as the apostle of the new gospel of free trade. He almost made the farmers of the west weep, as he recounted to them in graphic language the great burden under which he declared they were groaning ' Death to protection,' was his battle cry, and the sonorous tones of the hon. member for Guysborougli (Mr. Fraser), as that hon. gentleman took up and repeated the cry, rolled across the verdant prairies and reverberated through the distant hills and gorges of that western country. The right hon. gentleman promised to strike off every shackle that fettered the tiller of the soil and to make this country a cheap one to live in. How was he to accomplish that purpose ? By giving the farmers free raw material, by lowering the duties on the necessaries of life, by reducing expenditure and by divers other methods-all of which would only be put into effect if the Liberal party were returned to power. Well, Mr. Speaker, the right hon. gentleman, in the course of time, reached the goal of his ambition, and he has now been some years enjoying the sweets of office. Has he kept faith with the people ? Why, there is not one promise on which he has not turned his back. His broken pledges confront him on every hand. Is it then to be wondered at that the people of that western country should have welcomed with open arms the leader of a party which has been consistent with its principles from 1878 down to the present, which has invariably been true to its policy of preserving our Canadian markets for our Canadian people.
The Minister of the Interior (Hon. Mr. Sit'ton) stumped Brandon in 1896 in the interests of the late Mr. Dalton McCarthy. From one end to the other, that county was. placarded with the motto : ' Vote for McCarthy and free agricultural implements.' He told the people that they were being robbed in order that the manufacturers of agricultural implements might amass huge fortunes. He touched their hearts and their pockets by appealing to them to return the Liberal party to power and put an end to this deplorable condition of affairs. Let me contrast this appeal with the speech made by the hon. gentleman for Saskatchewan (Mr. Davis). He said that the people of the west are perfectly satisfied with the tariff as it stands.
Now, what has occurred in relation to the tariff to change the hon. gentleman's opinion since 1897 ? If the hon. gentleman will look up his speech in 'Hansard' in 3897. when the present tariff was submitted to
the House he will find that he declared against the tariff and stated that the people would not be satisfied particularly with this duty on agricultural implements, and that he himself was not satisfied with it. The tariff was the same then as it is to-day. Why, then, does he state that he is satisfied ?
The hon. gentleman said speaking of the farmer, in case of an increase in the tariff-
-he will have to pay so much for his mowing machine and his rake, so much more for his plough, so much more for everything else he uses on his farm.
Now, these were the remarks of the hon. member for Saskatchewan. The Minister of the Interior (Hon. Mr. Sifton) during the Brandon campaign of 3S96, preached the same doctrine. He told the farmers they were being discriminated against by the manufacturers sending their machines to England, Australia and elsewhere and disposing of them at $90, whereas the Canadian farmer had to pay $140 to $150. The Minister of the Interior has somewhat changed his tune. He tells the farmers now that not only is this not a protective tariff, but the duty of 20 per cent on agricultural implements is not even an average revenue tariff. Beduce it, he says, and what condition of things will be brought about ?
Nine thousand workmen now engaged on Canadian soil will make their homes across the line, there to swell the population of the American republic and buy the products of the American farmer. And, for a while, there must be a reduction of the price of machines by the slaughtering of American goods. But, afterwards, up would go the price of machines, and the last stage of the Canadian farmer would he worse than the first. Good Conservative doctrine. What a wonderful effect the responsibilities and emoluments of office have had in changing the hon. minister's opinion. He tells us now that if you reduce tlie duty you will increase the price of goods. But the hon. member for Saskatchewan tells us that if you increase the duty you increase the price. I would advise these gentlemen- both of whom were in the Lisgar campaign -to get together and have a little re-hersal, so that when they address the people they may tell the same story. But if this is true as applied to agricultural implements, may it not be equally true as applied to other industries ? 'Why draw the line at agricultural implements ? Take, for instance the very few articles upon which there have been a reduction. They have been mentioned before, but they will stand repetition. Take the case of barbed wire and binder twine. Barbed wire was reduced in duty ; but that which was promised did not come about-there was no reduction of price. On the other hand, the farmer is paying more for his barbed wire than he did when the Conservative

government was in power, notwithstanding that tlie duty has been reduced. The simple reason is that the Canadian barbed wire industry has been crushed out, the Americans have a monopoly of our market and we are now under the domination of the American combine. Binder twine was placed on the free list by this government, although the duty was only 121 per cent. And binder twine is higher in price than it was under the Conservative government. Thus the very thing that the Minister of the Interior now tells us will come about if there is a reduction in the duty on agricultural implements has come about in the connection with barbed wire and binder twine. Now, some of our opponents, especially the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Ut. Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright) declared that we cannot protect the farmer. However, there is a member of the cabinet one of the hon. gentleman's own colleagues who does not agree with him. I refer to the Minister of Custom (Hon. Mr. Paterson). That hon. gentleman is at heart a protectionist. We have had a good certificate of character given him by a gentleman who ought to know the facts. ' Birds of a feather flock together '-and the ex-Minister of Public Works (Hon. Mr. Tarte) has been working in harmony with the Minister of Customs for years, and now he thanks him for having stood up in favour of keeping the tariff as high as it is. The Minister of Customs thinks the farmer can be protected, unless he has fallen from grace in recent years-which could hardly be the case in view of what we have been told about him by the ex-Minister of Public Works-but he makes his own views subservient to party interest. The hon. Minister of Customs said :
The administration should protect our agricultural interest. Such a duty would not in any way bear upon the consumer and would be of great advantage to the interests concerned. The small duty on grain would benefit the farmers of this country. It is well known that we pay* a bonus to the inhabitants of other countries to come into Canada and settle in our midst. I believe, by a defensive tariff, that you would not have to pay to bring those men here. Adopt it, and you will find that the steam whistles of our factories will be the call for them to come. The other year, the Finance Minister, in revising our tariff, gave some encouragement to one industry which it never had before. The result was that one thousand men who were engaged in that industry in Germany, were literally transported by the change in the tariff to Canada and set to work here. The cost of the article was not increased one iota, and Canada got all the benefit.
So, the Minister of Customs advocated protection not only to tlie manufacturing industries but to the agricultural industry as well. But some of these bon. gentlemen take the ground that because the farmers Mr. ROCHE (Marquette).
dispose of their products in the markets of the world it is impossible to protect them. No greater fallacy could be propounded. When it is realized that not less than 80 per cent-I think that is a fair proportion-of the farmers' products are consumed in Canada, will any intelligent man pretend to say that the home market is not the most valuable market ? Keep that market for our farmers, shut out the unfair competition of the products of the American farmers coming in here, and you will secure better prices for our farmers. X do not think anybody will gainsay that proposition. The home market is the best market. Selling in the home market does away with a great deal of the expense necessary to place our products in the markets of the world. It does away, to a large extent, with freight rates, insurance charges and other charges incidental to the shipment of our grain to a long distance. If we can protect our market properly by adequate duties we shall, as I say, afford a better market to our farmers. There wore imported into Canada from the United States during the last year, of the products of the farm, as follows :
Animals	$	751,623
Breadstuff's	 7,432,530
Fruits	 2,433,974
Provisions	 2,257,183
Seeds and roots	  1,205,435
Vegetables	 370,419
Total	$14,451,164
Will any man say that these cannot be grown on our Canadian farms or that they should not be ? These importations displace Canadian products which would have been, sold here had they not this unfair competition to contend against. Take also the following list of articles that came in from the American side last year :
Butter	$ 179,479
Cheese	 245,489
Bacon and hams	 656,024
Beef (salted)	 123,242
Pork, barrelled	 587,784
Meats, dried		193,328
Other provisions	 565,366

We have sent our money over there for these articles to enrich the American farmers, that we should have kept in our own country to go into the pockets of our own Canadian people. Now what is the key to this position ? If we compare the duties imposed by the Canadian tariff to those imposed by the American tariff upon the same articles, you will find a solution to this difficulty :

Article.		American	Canadian
		Tariff.	Tariff.


Wheat .. ..: 25	cents a bush.	12 cents a bush.Oats	15	cents a bush.	10 cents a bush.


Barley .. ..: 30	cents a bush.	12 cents a bush.Pease	40	cents a bush.	10 cents a bush.Hay	. $4 a ton.	$2 a ton.


Apples .. ..: 75	cents a brl.	40 cents a brl.


Potatoes .   ..@: 25	cents a bush.	15 cents a bush.Beans	45	cents a bush.	15 cents a bush.Butter	6	cents a lb.	4 cents a lb.Corn	15	cents a bush.	Free.Wheat flour.	75 cents a bush	60 cents a brl.
Is is at all surprising that, with this discrepancy in the tariff duties, we have so large an importation of staple articles coming into our country from the American farmers ?
But, Mr. Speaker, if there is one feature of the trade policy of the present government upon which, through their erratic course, they have left themselves open to ridicule, it is their action with regard to preferential trade with the mother country. They came into power on the promises of getting a mutual preference, promises sacredly made to the people of Canada, promises made in addresses delivered by the Prime Minister prior to the election of 1890, wherein he lauded the advantages to he derived by Canada if the products of our farmers were admitted into the English markets on a preference over the products of other countries, when he pledged his word to the people of Canada that one of the first acts of his government upon their accession to power would be to send a commission to England to negotiate a basis for preferential tariff with the mother land. The hon. gentleman was returned to power in 1897, and the Minister of Finance propounded his tariff policy, which he himself and those who followed him declared not to be a preference to Great Britain alone, of which any other country in the world could avail itself by complying with the conditions of our Canadian tariff. But the tariff was an illegal one, and though its defects were pointed out by hon. gentlemen on this side of the House, the government would not be guided by our advice. The matter was) carried to the Privy Council and was there decided against them, and were it not that England came to their relief and denounced the German and Belgian treaties, they would have made themselves the laughing stock, of the world. When the Prime Minister visited England, in the very first speech he delivered after landing upon English soil, did he attempt to impress upon the pebple and government of England the necessity of granting Canada a preference in her markets ? On the contrary, he told them, in those brilliant phrases of his, that Canada did not take into consideration at all any preference to be granted in turn by England to Canada, Canada's action was taken out of the fullness of our heart, we did not ask or desire a preference. The people of Canada were astounded when they
read these remarks of their Prime Minister. They could not understand how that hon. gentleman, coming so recently from the electors, who was sacredly bound by his word that he! would endeavour to obtain a preference, immediately on arriving in Great Britain, betrayed his country and went back upon the policy he had formerly advocated. The hon. gentleman when he was in England made use of the following expressions :
Now, Sir, this is what we have done deliberately, and for this let me tell you, gentlemen, the Canadian government and the Canadian people ask nothing in return. They have done it out of gratitude to the motherland. They do not ask any * quid pro quo ' ; they do not ask for the pound of flesh ; they do not require a price for their loyalty.
Language calculated to tickle the ears of the particular audience he happened to be addressing at the time. Now the people of Canada took him to task upon his return to this country, but still the members of his government scouted the idea of our seeking a preference in the old country market. Resolution after resolution introduced by hon. gentlemen on this side of the House in favour of * a mutual preference, was voted down. The Liberal press of Canada stated that if the Conservative party were returned to power one of the first things they would do would be to repeal the British, preference, this one bright and shining act of their administration, although in the performances of which they had sadly bungled, this one feature which has since been denounced by its own friends. British statesmen like the Hon. Mr. Chamberlain have denounced this preference as entirely worthless to Great Britain. At the Intercolonial conference, Mr. Chamberlain spoke with no uncertain sound, and stated that the authors of this preference to England were themselves disappointed with it; and speaking as a member of the British government, he and the English people were disappointed at the results. Well, the English people had evidently been humbugged with regard to this preference; they did not realize that a confidence game was being played upon them by our Canadian; ministers when this tariff of 1897 was submitted, raising the duties upon importations that came over from England before applying this preference of 33J per cent in favour of English goods. The English people were deceived by the spurious cries of loyalty on the part of hon. gentlemen opposite and by their press. The members of the British government were particularly pleased when the Prime Minister stated that he was giving them a cut of 33J pei- cent on their general tariff, but they failed to understand that the Canadian government had already raised that tariff before doing so.
Now after what has taken place, what must the British statesmen think of our Canadian statesmen, so-called, when they compare these high sounding phrases of the Prime Minister in 1897 with their state-

ments committed to paper in black and white at the colonial conference ? After the Prime Minister had stated that Canada had granted this preference out of the fullness of her heart, and that she desired nothing in return, we find it laid down in black and white, in a memorandum submitted to the British statesmen by our representatives to the colonial conference, that unless a preference is conceded by England to Canada, Canada will hold Kself free to abolish the British preference. This is the only intelligent interpretation that can be placed upon that declaration. Very soon, no doubt, we may hear the Prime Minister reiterating his sentiments of 1S92, when he declared :
Our duty is to Canada, not to England. Just as the British government teaches this government that the first duty of the British government is to England and not co Canada, so I insist that in all these matters it is for any self-governing colony to look to its own interests, first, last and always.
Those were the notable words of the Prime Minister when he was advocating unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, and which probably we.will hear again in the near future.
Consider once more the government's position with regard to Germany's treatment of Canada since the abrogation of the German and Belgium treaties. Time and again lion, gentlemen in the Conservative party have pointed out the unjust discrimination to which Canada was being subjected at the hands of Germany by having the maximum tariff levied upon the products of Canada that were imported into that country, whereas German goods were imported into this country under the guise of the British preference to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth. Immediate action was urged by gentlemen on this side of the House, but the government refused to take our advice. In fact the hon. Minister of Finance, as recently as last session, attempted to defend and justify the action of Germany in Its treatment of Canada. The Liberal press of Canada attempted to establish the extraordinary claim that Canada was not being Injured by this discrimination. It condemned the Conservative party for advocating what it said was a policy of retaliation, and It upheld the government for not protecting Canadian interests. But, as in other respects, the government was forced to yield to a growing public opinion, and the coon came down. The government has abandoned its former position, and now we see it levying on future importations from Germany a one-third higher tax than that under the general tariff of 1897, as a result, as the hon. member for Bothwell (Mr. Clancy) says, of its own blunder. Now, we will hear, and we do hear the Liberal press and Liberal speakers applauding the recent action of the government, showing that there is no corner so sharp that they cannot take Mr. ROCHE (Marquette).
the turn. Take, again, the government's position in regard to the question of reciprocity. Prior to 1896, prior to the Liberal government's accession to power, it was, they said, the easiest thing in the world for the people of Canada to secure a fair reciprocity treaty with the Americans by those whose hearts were in the business. That able luminary of the government, the lion. Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Fisher) stated that if his leader were in power the feat would be accomplished by the mere scratch of a pen, and that within twenty-four hours he and his friends could secure a fair reciprocity treaty. The exMinister of Marine and Fisheries (Hon. Sir Louis Davies) followed in a similar strain and claimed that any honest man could secure this treaty. We, therefore, watched with increasing interest the negotiations that were carried on by these gentlemen for six months with the statesmen of the American republic. We thought, surely, that if in the words of Sir Louis Davies, one honest man could secure a treaty, this aggregation of honest men, representing the government of Canada, would be able to secure a treaty. What was our surprise-I will not say surprise, but it must have been a surprise to those who pinned tlieir faith to the government's declarations-when these hon. gentlemen announced their failure to secure a treaty of reciprocity with the people of the United States. The only legacy we have of the attempt of these hon. gentlemen is an account for 834,000 for the high jointers expenses. Then, we had the right hon. Prime Minister rising in his place a very few sessions ago, and declaring that after all Canada is not anxious or desirous to secure a reciprocity treaty with the United States. Now we have the negotiations again pending for a reassembling of the joint high commission in the near future, and we have this announcement following closely upon the heels of the notice that has been served on the home authorities that unless they grant a preference Canada will abolish her preference to the mother country. Can it be that we are once more to have the American dollar preferred to the English shilling ? Are we once more to hear from the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Rt. Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright) that Canada owes nothing to Great Britain save Christian forgiveness for the bungling she has done ? Are we to hear him raising the Issue again-give me the seventy million market that lies right at our doors? I would rather that we should be excluded from the markets of the world than that we should be excluded from the markets of the American republic ? The right lion, leader of the government told us upon one occasion : It is absurd to suppose that, situated as we are. the interests of Canada will always be identical with the interests of Great Britain. Some day must come when these interests will clash, and whatever the hon. gentlemen may

be, for my part, whenever it comes to that, and however I may regret the necessity, I will stand for my native land. I, for one, when I made up my mind in favour of this policy of unrestricted reciprocity, looked first and last to the interests of Canada and not to the interests of England. Let the British subject who sits in the British parliament look after the interests of England. I do not believe in the principles of the United Empire Trade League, for the reason that that scheme limits trade to allegiance. It proposes to make allegiance the basis of trade, whilst we desire to make trade interests alone the basis of trade.
It was rather a different kind of song that the right hon. gentleman sang when he was in England, and when he based his whole policy on the question of sentiment and on what we owed to Great Britain. Stranger things may come to happen than to see these hon. gentlemen falling back upon the policy which they advocated in years gone by. These hon. gentlemen, with their devious records, have become experts in the accomplishment of turning somersaults, and they will stop at no policy in order to cater to political party exigencies. Now, we have to-day, a balance of trade against us with the United States of $67,000,000 per annum. It is true that we purchase from Germany seven times more goods than Germany purchases from Canada. Last year we exported in settlers effects to the United States, notwithstanding the stopping of the exodus referred to by the hon. member for North Essex (Mr. Sutherland), $1,502,265, and this has been steadily increasing every year since the Liberals came into power. We imposed on British imports, dutiable and free a tax of 17-18 per cent, whereas, we imposed on United States imports dutiable and free a tax of 13-20 per cent, notwithstanding the British preference. This, in days gone by, would have been seized upon with avidity by our opponents as evidence of gross discrimination against the mother country. The government have extorted from the people by way of this spurious surplus, upwards of $13,000,000 during this present year more than was necessary to meet the exorbitant demands of this most extravagant government. The hon. Postmaster General (Hon. Sir William Mulock) has been starving his service and his department in his vain efforts to make a little political capital for himself at the expense of his employees, who are over worked and underpaid. We have seen the administration of justice prostituted in the interest of party ends ; we have seen political criminals released from the consequences of their crimes. We have seen members of the government resorting to all sorts of legerdemain in their efforts to create a fictitious surplus by charging to capital account that which was formerly and properly charged to ordinary expenses. We have watched with interest the declaration of the hon. Minister of Finance year after year to see if he would implement the pledges of the 60
preceding year, but all we have seen is that he has been jollying us, to use the street vernacular, and no intelligent man can say what the policy of the government is. These hon. gentlemen are always ready to trim their sails to catch the popular breeze, no matter how contradictory their course may prove to be. We have, to-day questions of great national importance to grapple with, and questions which should be grappled with in the near future, questions such as the granting of local autonomy to our great North-west Territories, so as to allow them to be more self governing and not to be hampered by unnecessary restrictions. We have the great transportation question to solve, a question of national importance, particularly to the great west, whose productions have already assumed gigantic proportions, and for the moving of which it is necessary that we shall have improved transportation facilities. . We have these and other important questions to grapple with, but the present government seems not to have the courage or capacity to cope with them.- On the other hand, the record and history of the Conservative party are a safe guarantee to show that it has within its ranks sufficient statesmanship to cope with and carry to a successful issue these great important questions involved in the building up of a great and thriving nation.
The Rt. Hon. Sir John Macdonald and his able and distinguished colleagues of the past securely and firmly laid the foundations of our present prosperity, notwithstanding the opposition they met at the hands of their Liberal opponents, and the criticisms and carpings they indulged in at that time. And, Sir, now that we are reaping the benefit of his statesmanship, now that we are having the great west filled with an incoming population-the country that was referred to in years past by Liberals as being a wilderness that it would be a doubtful benefit to open up to civilization-now that Canada is reaping some of this prosperity that is universal in its character ; we find these hon. gentlemen opposite attempting to take to themselves all the credit as being the originators and authors of It, thus stamping themselves as political mountebanks, whose professions are as foundationless as they are absurd.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I will not intrude further on the attention of the House, but will simply say in conclusion : It is my intention to support the amendment of the hon. leader of the opposition ; first, because it is definite in its policy and cannot be misunderstood ; it is based upon the underlying principle of protection that has done so much to make Canada what she is to-day. Second, because I am convinced that the people of Canada prefer and desire that a party aspiring to govern this young country should have some policy that cannot be misunderstood ; some principle underlying that policy-though certainly tour lamendmient

will be misrepresented by bon. gentlemen opposite, as would any declaration of policy on our part. And in the third place, Sir, because the government, though they have been in office for seven years and have had ample opportunity to formulate a definite policy, have lamentably failed to do so, and have simply been actuated by political expediency, and political expediency alone.


Mr.   WM@: ItOCHE (Halifax). Mr. Speaker, those fortunate mortals who had been summoned to a banquet of the gods, on their return reported that the bill of fare was very scanty, and that the nectar had made three or four rounds of the table before they were called upon to take a sip. My hon. friend from Essex (Mr. Sutherland) made an allusion to my hon. colleague the leader of the opposition which was of a highly complimentary character. He said that several other gentlemen on that side had been selected to criticise the statement made by the Minister of Finance and that they had not been found adequate to the task. He said that the leader of the opposition, not having anybody behind him capable of ably criticising the speech of the Finance Minister, took that duty upon himself. My hon. friend (Mr. Sutherland) intended it as a compliment and in no way as disparagement of or a flaunt at the learned leader of the opposition. The leader of the opposition was well within his rights when he challenged the speech of the Minister of Finance, but he incurred a great responsibility in doing so. No living mortal could fathom what was the intention of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Borden, Halifax). Perhaps he was actuated with the desire of heading off some of the divergent opinions of his supporters ; perhaps he wished to prevent the policy of the Finance Minister from being too largely expatiated upon or too much explained before he promptly presented his amendment. Now, let me ask : What has the learned leader of the opposition left out by his resolution ? His amendment is, that after the word ' that ' the whole of the motion should be struck out, and his amendment substituted. Now, Sir, the leader of the opposition has left out of consideration our gross trade of $423,000,000. the largest trade enjoyed in the history of Canada ; he has left out a revenue of $58,000,000, the greatest in our history ; he lias loft out a surplus of $7,000,000 ; he has left out a reduction of $5,000,000 in the debt ; he has left out of consideration also the generous provisions for all the services of the country and for all the public works throughout Canada-a more generous and sensible provision than ever was made in the history of the Conservative party. That the statement of the Finance Minister was satisfactory to the country, we have the opinions of bankers, of capitalists, of investors in stock companies and savings banks, of merchants, of labourers. The manufacturers of Canada


William James Roche: i
have generally admitted that they are prosperous and that their warehouses 'have grown in order to provide ample space for the goods which they produce. All this was admitted, even by the speakers on the other side of the House. In connection with this state of affairs we have a tariff comprising schedules of duty with exact sums set against certain articles, definite and intelligible.
Now, Sir, those gentlemen of the opposition who contended that the tariff was not exactly that which they would approve, and those who contended that the tariff was not the cause of the prosperity, did admit that the country was prosperous. If the tariff was not the causa causans of prosperity it certainly was not hurtful; it certainly was not powerful enough to counteract the growing trade of the country and its rising prosperity. If the tariff did not assist that prosperity; if it did not conserve that prosperity, it was certainly harmless to prevent the energy of the country exerting itself and achieving beneficial results. But what did the leader of the opposition give us as a substitution for our present fiscal policy ? He gave us an exceedingly nebulous and indefinite resolution. He gave us no statement of specific duties. He did not give auy tariff rate that he would have levied upon articles if his motion were to prevail, but he simply submitted that very stretchable policy, which might mean something in the west, and could be stretched to mean something else in the east. He gave something to awaken the hopes of manufacturers and others in order to obtain votes, it may be-although I believe he has not the slightest hope of obtaining votes by it. However, he gave us a policy which might be made so flexible and so adaptable to certain localities that it might be supported by his followers and declared to mean something in one direction and the very reverse in another. Now, Sir, we on this side of the House prefer that there should be a policy definite and intelligible, and we also realize the acceptance of the poetic lines in their application to this case :
'Tis better to bear the ills we have, than fly to others we know not of.
My ethymological and orthoepical and philological friend from Brant (Mr. Heyd) when he read the resolution of the leader of the opposition, and the term ' adequate protection,' in it referred to that source of consolation on this and every occasion, the dictionary. There he found that the term adequate meant something that was equal to the occasion, something that was enough, something that was sufficient. Now, we all know, without the dictionary, the acceptation of the term adequate. We know that it is something operative, something that answers the expectation, or the purpose, what is effectual, what is conclusive. AVhat does that term adequate mean when inter-

preted in this way ? Does it mean a duty of 20 per cent or of 30 per cent, or a duty within any moderate limits i Does it not mean, when interpreted in its entirety, that if a duty of 20 per cent, or 40 per cent, or 50 per cent, or 100 per cent, is not sufficient to keep out the goods on which this tariff is levied, it shall be made effective to the utmost extent of the word, and that a prohibitive tariff must be put in force in this country ?
The learned leader of the opposition is under no obligation to me whatever. I do believe that I have never given him any of my votes in this House, and therefore I have no right to call upon him for information or for anything else. But I think he intends by his resolution to gather together the votes of all those behind him, and I believe also he wishes to appeal to the ingenuous band of moral reformers on this side of the House, and endeavour, if possible, to secure some of them for the support of his resolution. Besides, and outside of the Conservatives and the Liberals of the House, amongst the Conservatives and amongst the Liberals, there are plain men ; on their behalf I call on the learned leader of the opposition to make an explicit declaration, not in legal or metaphysical phrases, but in plain and sufficient language, what specific duties he will apply, if his policy is carried out, to the articles enumerated in the tariff, so that merchants, business men, and plain men of all classes throughout the country, may know what they are to expect and may give their approbation or disapprobation to the proposals of the hon. gentleman.
The tariff is a complex instrument. It goes much further than mere verbiage, because it applies itself to various interests and various articles throughout the country. It has not an arbitrary application, but it is a system of balances, adjustments and allotments of certain duties to certain articles, with regard also to the localities in the country where those articles are consumed, so that the taxation will not bear more heavily on one quarter of the country than on the other. A tariff of that kind cannot be summed up in general business phrases; but to have a general understanding and comprehension of it, it is necessary that its elements should be specifically mentioned, so that the people at large can understand what they are, and judge whether it is an acceptable and proper tariff, or something that ought to be rejected. The learned leader of the opposition, by the terms of his resolution, is not to wait for anything; but he has proposed his resolution as an amendment to the motion to go into Committee of Supply, in order that the House may take up his proposal to revise the tariff and put a new tariff into operation, without any delay, without any time being given for consideration, without any reference to men expert in the construction
of tariffs, without any regard to the present interests of the country, without any reference to what the future interests of the country may be. But, my learned friend the leader of the opposition may say : I am not a trader; I have no right to mention articles and to state what duties may apply to those articles; I am not conversant with mercantile affairs; I am not a buyer or a seller of goods, my duty in this parliament is to gather up the opinions of those behind me, and express them in the most forcible and telling way as parliamentary questions; I have framed my resolution so that its corners cannot be cut off, so that it cannot be headed off. But my hon. friend the leader of the opposition has behind him gentlemen who are skilled in the work of analysis, in the decomposition of tariffs, in the enumeration of goods and of the duties that should be laid upon them. He has behind him my hon. friend from Bast Grey (Mr. Sproule) with his encyclopedic mind; and he has behind him the gentle and insinuating revealer of truth, my hon. friend from Bothwell (Mr. Clancy). If these gentlemen were not sufficient, he has behind him a gentleman who lias taken the ground that a tariff of 17 per cent must have been a protective tariff, and who two sessions ago delighted the House with a list of all the articles under the sun and everywhere else, which read like the inventory of a Newfoundland store. He could have informed my hon. friend the leader of the opposition precisely what articles ought to be charged with certain definite duties, and how those duties would bear with reference to other duties. He could have given him all that information with cheerful power and persuasiveness, with the comprehension and approval of members on this side of the House who are supposed to have protectionist proclivities, and with the cheers and support of the hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House who are so ready on every occasion to pay a tribute to his parliamentary skill on all other subjects brought forward from time to time. But my hon. friend the leader of the opposition did not present his case in this way. Therefore, because of the indefiniteness of the resolution of my hon. friend, the leader of the opposition, I shall be compelled to vote against his proposition. We have heard a great deal of argument, in this House and out of it, to the effect that a tariff higher than 171 per cent, or at any rate, higher than 35 per cent, must of necessity be protective. But I think that I can demonstrate clearly that the present tariff, while giving sufficient protection, is mainly a tariff for revenue. Exigencies may arise under a revenue tariff which call for the imposition of a higher scale of duties. Exigencies will arise of a public nature which can only be met by a large revenue than would be obtained under an ordinary protective tariff, so then the rates levied under any tariff is no indication of its being purely protective or purely
60J

for revenue. Sucli a tariff must be judged by the intentions of those who put it in force. On the other hand the national policy although intended to be protective to some industries, although professedly protective, was really the highest conceivable grade of revenue tariff and the highest amount of excise which could be extracted from the people to meet the requirements of the government. This is proved by the increased importations of goods and the increase in our revenue following the introduction of that policy.
Hon. gentlemen opposite complain that we pay too much attention to the argument derived from the Increase of exports and imports, as indicating the beneficial character of the policy of the government. But you will remember, Sir, that in days gone by, the Conservative government and its followers always pointed to the fact that under its regime, our exports and imports were increasing. This they pointed to as an indication of our growing prosperity, and this they gave as a reason why the electorate should retain them in power and reject the appeals of dishonest free trade Liberals. In addition to that argument, they urged that the Liberals were utterly incapable of administering the affairs of the country and moulding its destinies. They said that the Liberals had not the requisite experience, that they were not men of proved business abilities, that they had not a sufficient acquaintance with public affairs to control the business of a great country like Canada, and that if they should be returned tot power, one calamity after another would arrive as the result of their mismanagement, and the country would very soon hurl then from their places again. They dilated on the disappearance of the tall chimnies and the sorrowful wail which would arise from the poor starving children and wives of the labouring people deprived of work. They predicted all sorts of direful calamities which would follow the election of the Liberal party to office. When, we remember these prophesies, are we not justified in pointing to the increased prosperity on every hand, to the factories running over with orders, to labour abundantly rewarded, to merchants and traders prosperous to an increasing public revenue, to the service of the government amply provided for, and to the smiling, content and satisfaction prevailing throughout the land, as a flagrant contradiction to these dismal forebodings. Hon. gentlemen opposite are very fond of crediting my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce with certain utterances made bv him on previous occasions. Well, Mr. Speaker, my memory runs back a little further. I remember when the Minister of Trade and Commerce and the late Alexander Mackenzie had to contend against the charge of woeful extravagance and wastefulness of the resources of this country, levelled against their Mr. ROCHE (Halifax).
administration. I remember how they were denounced for taking $23,500,000 out of the hard won earnings of the consumers of this country. Put us back into power, they cried, and we will conduct the affairs of this country economically, we will make ample provision for all our public works and requirements, and we will do it on $22,000.000. Well, Sir, the people took them at their word and put them back into office. What then happened ? Did they confine themselves to an expenditure of $22,500,000 ? No, Sir, they did not. In the first year of their administration, they spent $24,500,000, in the next, $25,000,000; in the next, $27,000,000; and in the following year $31,000,000. And so their expenditure kept on swelling and soaring ever since. Such were the promises against which the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce had to contend in those days, and it were well that hon. gentleman opposite should remember those broken pledges. Let me remind these hon. gentlemen that the phrase they are so fond of using :	Wrung from the pockets of the
people,' is neither novel nor original.
At six o'clock, House took recess.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.
Mr. ItOCHE (Halifax). Mr. Speaker, the method of argument used by the leader of tjie opposition reminded me of the method of the Rabbins. They did not give an authoritative statement of their own upon which to found an argument, nor did they state any facts positively; but they said: I, M say, on the authority of N that so and so is so and so ; and on that they based an argument. That is the method pursued by the leader of the opposition. He takes, for instance, an extract from the speech of the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir Richard Cartwright) and on that lie proceeds to build up a scale of figures, tables or elaborate argument to prove to a demonstration or to his own satisfaction on that hypothesis that certain things are untrue and that certain things are condem-nable. The hon. gentleman should not take the statements he quotes from the Minister of Trade and Commerce as being absolute ones, definite and limited, and complete of themselves. He should give the accompanying circumstances. He should give the context of the speech and the circumstances under which the speech was delivered, the contentions made and the position taken which he was rebutting. Then we could understand the full force of the argument. But why base it upon the hypothesis of the statements of the Minister of Trade and Commerce ? Why does he not go back to the foundation of the matter and establish what is the first truth ; establish his proposition as a universal one and then go on to make his argument. By

these tables which he has submitted the leader of the opposition hopes to make out his case that the tariff is unsatisfactory to the country, and he gives certain quotations from the speech of the Minister of Trade and Commerce as tests by which we would acquire a knowledge of popular opinion, on this subject. Now, I would be content that we should rest our case entirely upon the speech and upon the - tables presented by the Minister of Finance, taking in addition to the very excellent speech and very conclusive tables which have been submitted by my lion friend from South Brant (Mr. Heyd). But the leader of the opposition when he gave his tables and when he arrived at his conclusion, lest he should be taken to task for having opposed votes for some of the services which make up the total of the vote, said that as to some of the details, he approved of them and wished that the expenditure under these headings had been greater. So, his argument that these expenditures were excessive falls to the ground. And so, whether he relies for his argument upon the statement of the Minister of Trade and Commerce or upon the tables prepared by himself his argument that the government have taken too much money from the people will not stand.
In the course of his very excellent speech this afternoon, my hon. friend and namesake from Marquette (Mr. Roche), condemned the government for not negotiating, at the time when the preference was established in this country, for a similar reference to be extended to Canadian goods when brought into the British market. A great deal of ridicule has been thrown on the government for its course in huckstering, now, when before, they were so very open and generous in allowing British goods to come in under the preference, exacting nothing in return. Now, a number of those opposed to the government in this House have plumed themselves on that fact, as they allege it to be, that the preference tariff was a failure. Some of them contend that it was futile as a means of introducing British goods. I do not understand exactly their attitude with regard to preferential tariff, whether they wish British goods to be introduced or whether they wish the British goods to be kept out. But, however, if they wished the British goods to be imported under this tariff the resolution proposed by the leader of the opposition is against that end, because he proposed to lay heavy duties on the goods imported so as to practically prohibit them and give the market to the producers of Canadian goods. So, I count that the leader of the opposition is against preference treatment. The examination given that tariff is entirely superficial and entirely inadequate. You cannot, by contrasting the amounts of money set forth in columns of figures say exactly what articles might have been brought in or the quantity of
articles there were brought in. You have to examine the cost of these articles that you may learn whether there were more brought in. That of itself may not in this case make a very essential difference. But certainly, the mere inspection of a column of figures will not show you whether the preference tariff had an influence in bringing in these goods and allowing them to be consumed in Canada. But what is the fact? These imports from Britain are the precise qualities of goods, the veritable articles which are duplicated by the manufacturers of Canada. The Canadians have aimed at manufacturing such articles as were brought in under the preference tariff. Therefore, as our manufacturers increased, as they improved the quality of their goods, more and more of British goods have been kept out. It is a proof of efficacy in the preference tariff that, where the amount of British goods imported into Canada was declining by a regular process, after the introduction of Ihe tariff, the amount of these imports which had fallen from $43,000,000 to $22,000,000, a decline of $21,000,000, rose again. Thus the preferential tariff checked a decline of importations and changed it into tin increase. But how much would have been the decline of importations without the preferential tariff? How far would the manufacturers of Canada !~nve displaced these British goods, and how much would the manufactured goods of the United States, made of a similar material and perhaps of better quality, perhaps with finer adaptation for our wants have displaced these goods, if the tariff had not been such as to lower the price in our markets of the British goods and so prevent the American goods entering ? If I had been in this House when the preferential tariff was introduced I do not know that I would have voted for it. I do not know that Canada was bound at that time to pass a measure which favoured the introduction of British goods. But the tariff, including this preferential feature being in force, and desiring that British goods should be introduced, desiring to cultivate British trade, certainly that preference had a good intention and it was effective in carrying out the object by preventing the decline of British importations and converting it, on an ascending scale, into increased consumption in our markets of these articles. Now, I do not know that it is the function of the Liberal government to stand by inactive when a movement takes place by a combination of manufacturers in a foreign country, or when, by any legal enactment of a foreign government any industry in the country is menaced, I do not think the Libejt-al government will stand by and say it lias no duty to discharge to manufacturers or the people in the encouragement of any energy which was overborne by any adverse influence outside of the ordinary competition of one manufacturer with another. If there be governmental action, if such action is needed, government is erected for

the purpose of controlling these combinations. The people have entrusted the gov-ernmeut with the function of regulating these matters. It is one of the duties and powers of government to interfere in questions of that kind, and to aid struggling manufacturers, struggling industries or struggling interests, to overcome obstacles so far as governmental action can do so.
Now so far as my opinion goes, I believe that a revenue tariff, by its uniformity, gives such proper inducement and such proper attention to the various interests of the country, that they all flourish and are all equally treated under it. But if the government should think it necessary to encourage any of the industries of the country, if the government should think proper to develop any of the manufactures of the country, I think it ought to be done along economic lines. If encouragement is afforded, it should be to industries which are beginning. I do not think that an economical policy should specially favour those industries that are well established, after their products have obtained currency in the country, after they are well known. I do not think that such industries should be assisted by increased duties on competing commodities imported from other countries. I think that goods made from the raw material of Canadian origin might be a subject of this protection and this ecouragement, so as to spread the benefit over a larger number of people, that producers of the raw material might benefit as well as the manufacturers, and that the business of transportation might also partake of the benefit which is given by the government. Such public contributions ought not to be monopolized or absorbed by the capitalist who runs the factory, irrespective of any other interest or industry which may exist In the country.
Secondly, when government aid is afforded it should be in favour of those goods which have an economic value. It is no advantage to make goods that require an enormous assistance so great as to deplete or exhaust the country; there is no public advantage in giving such assistance to manufacturers, industries or employments of any kind which have no natural hold upon the people, and which cannot be economically managed or carried on to the advantage of the people. It would be better to employ the people in some other industry; because in imposing enormous protective duties we are fighting against the arrangements of Providence, we are fighting against natural laws, we are fighting against the diversity which nature has established in the productions of the various countries, and against the natural law that the productions of one country should be exchanged for those of another, all tending to that end so much condemned by my hon. friend from East York (Mr. Maclean), the brotherhood of man. Now, Sir, there are compensations to be con-Mr. ROCHE (Halifax).
sidered when manufactures are encouraged and assisted by government funds or by tariff arrangements, there should be compensation given to other industries and to other localities where those industries do not exist, because if one locality is benefited by money taken from the whole country, and if there be no counter-balancing advantage to the various sections who contribute to the individual section, evidently there would be injustice.	[DOT]
I think that under the present conditions in this country, due encouragement should be given by the government to the manufacture of iron, because iron enters into the manufacture of the machinery used in all the various industries of the country. So many employments, so much mechanism depends upon the cheapness of iron that any encouragement that is given in that direction is certainly justifiable and is part of the duty of a paternal government. Another thing that might be done is to improve the style and quality of the fabrics, to introduce artistic excellence, to patronize artistic schools of design whereby the nature and symmetry of the articles produced might be improved. The quality of all our Canadian manufacture ought to be improved so that they may be equal to the best productions of other countries which enter into competition with ours. Our Canadian manufactures should not be made out of shoddy, should not be made of adulterated or inferior material; but all the articles that are made in Canada should be stamped * made in Canada,' and that stamp should be a guarantee of the excellence of the material and the artistic nature of the workmanship. In the next place, provision should be made that all the benefits should not inure to the capitalist, or to the manufacturer, or the company that owns the factory; but the workmen should equally enjoy a portion of the benefit of the protection afforded by the government, either in the encouragement of new industries or in the sustentation of old ones.
Some hon. gentlemen on the other side in talking to us about suffering industries which ought to be the subject of public assistance, have mentioned the article of woollens. Now woollens is a very general term, and comprises a great deal. I would like to be instructed on the subject of woollens. I think there are some gentlemen in this House who are familiar with woollens. But what is comprised in that article ? Ought not any woollen factory which obtains benefit from the tariff, or any encouragement from the Dominion treasury, enter into a stipulation that the product of that factory should be made from Canadian wool alone, so that the Canadian raw material may be entirely used in the composition of the article ? Would Canadian woollens thus made be as good as those made of imported wool ? Would they be as en-

during, would they be as acceptable to the people ? Now what do we mean when we speak of woollens ? Do we mean that every woollen factory, every industry in that line, should receive benefit by the tariff ? There are cloths, for instance. Now we know that the cloths made in Canada are made to the appearance of English cloths. Are they as good in quality ? For instance, there is the article of underwear, shirts and similar articles that are comprised under the name of woollens. Then there are carpets, and a great variety of similar articles. Now we ought to trust to Canadian sentiment to some extent to patronize goods produced in Canada. If the articles are of equally good quality as those imported, I have no doubt that they would be extensively used in Canada. In my own province, those woollen factories which make cloths and other articles, have more orders than they can fill, and the reputation of those articles is very high. They are made of good material, they are well made, and they are durable.
Then again we must remember that in Canada these articles of Canadian tweeds, Canadian cloths, &c., have displaced the imported clothing which formerly came from England and as the taste of the people has now moved in the direction of accepting these articles which are made in Canada, great care should be taken that in their manufacture they reach the very highest artistic perfection and that they be composed of genuine materials made in Canada. There is another article, which cries out, I believe, for protection, and I ask this House and particularly hon. gentlemen opposite : Should protection be accorded to it V I refer to the article of cotton. There are gray cottons and printed cottons. The printed cottons come from England, and, to a very large extent, from the United States. We know this is not an article that is grown in Canada. Should cotton printers and those who manufacture cottons have the same assistance as those who manufacture woollens V Again, taking this as an illustration, should not the line be drawn between those factories which work up American and foreign goods and those which work entirely upon goods or material of Canadian growth and which articles are used by the Canadian people ? I think there are other articles the manufacture of which should be encouraged. I refer to manufactures of wood. Wood largely grows in this country, it is very useful in the manufacture of furniture and other products and an advantage might be given to these articles under the tariff. To me it seems that the articles most susceptible to the application of government favour should be those in the manufacture of which iron enters, because, this is one of the greatest industries of the new and the old worlds and is an industry in which Canada should participate and which Canada could pursue with great advantage. The raw material is here, the refining can be done here, the application of the arts can be made here and all the combinations into which iron enters can be readily carried out in Canada. Therefore,
I think it should receive government assistance. Mr. Speaker, I hope you will not think it mock modesty in me if I announce to you, in confidence, that the right lion, the premier has not called upon me to speak. If I could gather anything, not being exactly a mind reader, from the indications of the government I sometimes imagine that they often say :	I wish to gracious he had never
got up, and when he is going on, I wish to gracious he would finish soon. It was a very interesting incident in which the hon. member for Bothwell (Mr. Clancy) and the hon. member for North Norfolk (Mr. Charlton) figured the other day. The gentle and insinuating way in which the hon. member for Bothwell extracted from the hon. member for North Norfolk an intimation', as to whether or not he was to speak was highly amusing, and also the efforts of each to get before the other and make his little pirouette before the footlights. I have to say that if the policy outlined by the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Borden, Halifax) should be carried into effect, if we had a strong prohibitory tariff, if we should think it would be to the advantage of Canada, to adopt the enactment that the hon. leader of the opposition has proposed, it is quite manifest that a heavy loss would be inflicted upon some portions of the country. I think a very large proportion of the loss would be suffered by the extreme west and the extreme east. No doubt if a prohibitive tariff were adopted against the United States they would retaliate against us. How do you contemplate the compensation which ought to be given to the lower provinces for the loss of the lumber trade which might follow ? That amounts to the sum of $7,000,000 annually. Then, again the American tariff might be elevated so highly that the American people would not take the fish which are caught in the lower provinces of a valuable character and that mainly find a market there. They might prevent our fish from being admitted to the United States and if we suffered the loss of that market it miglitj be that we would look to the government for compensation. Suppose that the duty on coal, which is now suspended in the United States, should be reimposed and increased, suppose we should lose the market that we at present enjoy in the United States and the coal owners of Nova Scotia be compensated for the loss which they would sustain through, this tariff ? Suppose we were to lose the market of oor plaster in the United States which is at. present a large one, would we be compensated for that ? Suppose, for instance, that a duty should be placed on the salt, which is used in the fisheries, and I under-

stand there is a movement on foot to place a strong duty on salt, should not the maritime provinces be compensated for that V Suppose that we should lose our market for deals in England ? A very large amount of lumber, both timber and deals, is shipped to England. We have only a market on the west coast of England, the Norwegians and Swedes have the market on the east coast of England, they are penetrating more and more to) the central parts of England, and they are likely to come over to the west. They are also competing with us in pulp wood. Large mills are being erected in Norway and Sweden, and they will place pulp on the English market in enormous quantities and probably at better rates than we can supply them. Suppose a high tariff should prejudice the British people against us, suppose that we -should lose that market, suppose that the additional cost that the lumber men have to pay on their supplies and provisions would make the cost of lumber higher than that at which it can he produced in Norway and Sweden and with the lower freights and shorter distances to carry the Norwegians and Swedes should exclude us altogether from that market and thus destroy to a great extent the lumbering industry which is one of the largest Industries in Ontario, Quebec and the maritime provinces-suppose these things happen, I would like to know if, under this scheme which is being proposed, parliament wotild be prepared to impose a duty of a dollar a ton or more on the anthracite coal which is imported into the province of Ontario. I want to know if the manufacturers of Ontario, as compensation, would submit to pay the increased cost of those articles which we are told enter so largely into the cost of these products. If we were to lose the American market and if we are to be put under the disadvantage of the increased cost of the production of the article of coal, the coal miners will naturally look to an increased market in western Canada. Are the farmers, the manufacturers and the coal consumers in any part of western Canada prepared to pay a very large additional amount for that necessary article ?
Again, Sir, the loss of the carriage of these articles to Europe would cause an increase in the price of freight, and the reduction of the quantity of articles brought to the west from Europe, would cause an increase in tlie price of freight charged for carrying these bulky articles from the place of production to the place of consumption. England and other parts of Europe. I want also to know what compensation would be given to the labourers who handle these goods which are brought into this country. Would there be any provision made for them ; would there be any scheme of superannuation when they grow old; would there be any scheme of weekly allotment of wages to compensate them for the loss of the employment which they have all along oh-1 Mr. ROCHE (Halifax).
tained ? Would the miners, the exporters, the steamboat men and all others be content that their employment should suffer, and that they should lose their great industry, lose their great employment, lose the labour of their people, their wealth, their maintenance, for the sake of charging an additional tariff on goods in order that the consumption of these goods may increase. These questions are quite crude, as I have put them down, they need elaboration, and they might be elaborated by the skilful mind of the leader of the opposition. At all events, they would have to be considered. They are of living interest in the country; there are a large number of people who are concerned in them and they want to know. We are told by gentlemen on the other side that the tariff is unsatisfactory, but is it not true that with the adverse conditions which an increase in tariff would bring about, there would be a great deal more dissatisfaction. My hon. friend from St. Mary's (Hon. Mr. Tarte) compared the United States with Canada, and he said in effect:	that
the United States had been built up by a high tariff; that it had become a manufacturing country mainly, that Canada could imitate it, that Canada would become a second United States if the tariff was increased and if we were to become a manufacturing people. Well, there is no analogy between the United States and Canada. There can be no just comparison formed between them. The United States front on two oceans ; it is almost a square block of territory; it is intersected by great rivers; it has the most wonderful productions in the soil and it has all kinds of minerals in rich profusion. It lias a great quantity of cultivated land; a great quantity of rich soil. It has advantages which Canada does not possess in that it is a part in the semi-tropical regions; the greater part of it, of course, being in the temperate zone. Furthermore, it is a continent, it is a continent in itself. It enjoys free trade throughout the whole of it; it enjoys its own market. There is no legislative restriction on the interchange of goods between one state and another. They have every facility of transportation; they have cheap transportation by river and canal and quick transportation by railroads and every such appliance that can be invented. The United States cannot repeat itself. It was brought into being at the most favourable epoch. The manufactures of the United States, its agricultural interests, its resources were built up in the trying times of the Napoleonic wars. They were matured and encouraged by circumstances which can never be paralleled. They obtained their vast extent, their predominance, simply because the rival nations were engaged in cutting each others throats, and destroying each others resources, and the United States at that time went on to build up her resources and to flourish. There is no comparison

possible. Canada must now enter into competition with the most highly developed nation in the world. If we take the line, not of utilizing our natural resources in which we excel; not of cultivating the design of being a great user of raw material; if we take the line that we shall not aim at sending our grain, our cattle, our deals, our flsli, all our products to these highly cultivated countries in Europe, and if we are to aim at rivalling them, we have undertaken a great contract. My contention is, Sir, and it is the contention of this side of the House, that we should largely follow the lines of developing our natural resources. We should not destroy ourselves by emulating our rivals or by competing with them in things in which they have a great predominating advantage. On the contrary, we should use our own resources in which we have advantages and use them for the benefit of the whole people of Canada. Mr. Speaker, you will remember that a short time ago when you and I were boys, there was a very popular economic work called ' Poor Richard's Almanac,' and Richard complained that his trade of almanac making was very much interfered with by a rival almanac-maker. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition is a constructor of tables and he has great rivals in the construction of these very useful implements. There was some time ago a very interesting discussion in this House, and my ears were wringing with the eloquence of the member for Simcoe, who announced in very emphatic terms that this government had increased the duties on the articles which were consumed by the poor-cottons and other fabrics-while they had reduced the duties upon the silks and ribbons of the wealthy classes. Our rival table-maker from Bothwell (Mr. Clancy) in making up his list of the articles which formed the necessaries of life on which duties were increased by the tariff in 1897, charges the government in the opposite direction, for he says: That the duties were increased from 30 to 35 per cent on ribbons of all kinds. Well, I do not think that ribbons are necessaries of life. And then, as a further necessary of life, he quotes $7,000,000 of sugar on which the duty was increased from 50 to 06 cents. I quite well remember the exhaustive and learned argument of the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) on the establishment of the sugar industry, in which I believe he went the length of saying that the duty on sugar should be very much increased for the benefit of the sugar industry; while the table-maker from Bothwell (Mr. Clancy) denounced the taxes which were levied on the necessaries of life by this wicked government. Mr. Speaker, we send $107,000,000 of our productions to Great Britain. How are the British people to pay for these enormous quantities of goods which they import for consumption, if the countries which send those articles do not take in
exchange the products of British labour ? How are they to continue to be the great absorbing market of the world, if they can give nothing in exchange ? Their money would soon become exhausted. They would either have to abstain from importing those articles or they would have to convert their surplus land into wheat fields and produce for themselves many of the things which they now import. How could they find employment for their vast and teeming population if the products of their factories could not be sent to all lands with which they trade 1 Unless they are treated with reciprocal fairness, how can their resources continue ? How long can England continue to take freely our wheat, our timber, our cheese, our cattle and everything else we choose to send, if she cannot pay for these articles with the productions of the labour, the skill and the enterprise of her own people ? We know, Sir, that the great resource of England is not her army or her navy. These are her outside defences. We know that Great Britain has often in war perpetrated great blunders. At the commencement of many of her campaigns, from imperfect strategy or from lack of preparation, she has suffered defeat and discomfiture, and her resources have sometimes been reduced to a very low ebb by the military successes of other powers. But through all her wars, the war with Napoleon, the American war, the Peninsular war, the war with Russia, the resources which Great Britain accumulated from the labour of her mechanics, from the produce of her mines and the savings of her people, have carried her through all her struggles, and have brought her out triumphant at the last. Not alone her armies or her fleets, but the subsidies she was able to give to the other countries of Europe, enabled her to come through with unimpaired resources, and to spread her power and influence to all quarters of the globe, the triumphant, respected, venerable empire to which we pride ourselves to belong. And will Canadians now refuse to take a portion of her goods ? Shall we put up a prohibition against British goods ? When the British people take so much from us, shall we take offence at the rebuff we have had from Mr. Chamberlain, or from any one else who knows nothing about our circumstances or our affairs ? Or, shall we act in a generous spirit as children of the empire, and aid Great Britain in her great financial problems ? The lion is at bay, beleaguered by all the nations of Europe, ready through their protective tariffs or their governmental arrangements, to snatch the bread held in his hand. They are gathering around him, but he can fight them all; he can meet them all and vanquish them all, provided America does not combine with the nations of Europe in commercial rivalry or military operations to destroy the prestige and power of the empire. I wish my hon. friend from North

Victoria (Mr. Hughes), the Wallenstein of Canada, were here. I would ask him, although he feels himself to have been griev-iously treated by the British government, if he would stand up and vote for such a resolution as that proposed by the hon. leader of the opposition, knowing that the effect of it would be to aid the enemies of Great Britain in refusing to receive British goods, and to minify the resources of that great empire which depends on the labour and accumulations of her people during many years of peaceful industry.


Mr. A. C. BELL (Pictou).: Mr. Speaker, I have had a great deal of pleasure in listening to my hon. friend and fellow countryman (Mr. Roche, Halifax), but I find it somewhat difficult to determine which side of the question fye is on. I was glad to know that so far as protection to all the native industries of Nova Scotia is concerned, he was sound, and I presume that, generally speaking, he will be found not to be a local politician, but a gentleman of breadth, who is prepared to support not only the industries of his native province, but those of the Dominion generally. I was inclined to think that he was a little severe on the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Rt. Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright) in passing over the argument which I understood him to say the hon. leader of the opposition cited on the authority of the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce, as to what was the proper rate of expenditure for this country, so carelessly and lightly as he did. We are inclined on this side of the House to regard the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce as a very weighty authority; and I was a little surprised to find my hon. friend from Halifax (Mr. Roche) disposed to pay very little attention to that authority. As I said, I am somewhat at a loss in attempting to reply to or criticise the speech of the hon. member, because I failed to grasp very clearly what his attitude on the question of protection was. From what I heard, I rather supposed that he was inclined to support the amendment moved by his colleague from Halifax, the hon. leader of the opposition ; and perhaps for that reason we should not criticise him at all, but rather welcome him to our ranks as an ally. The discussion which we have had in connection with the budget has been, as usual, one which has taken a somewhat wide range. I suppose, strictly speaking, we should confine our arguments in this debate entirely to the amendment of my hon. friend, the leader of the opposition ; and tvhile I shall no doubt be permitted to avail myself of the same liberality and kindness as the House has extended to other speakers, I shall endeavour to do so as closely as possible. It is somewhat difficult to fasten oneself down to what is more particularly the object of our debate at this moment, and it is almost inevitable that one Mr. ROCHE (Halifax).
should wander more or less over the whole range of subjects introduced by the Minister of Finance in the course of the speech.
Generally speaking the result of the discussion so far has not been to emphasize any great difference of opinion between the opposing parties. I do not think that any one at all speaking from the government benches, with the exception probably of my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir Richard Cartwright) has pronounced any strong opinion in favour- of free trade or a reversion to a low tariff. Generally speaking the trend of the speeches made from the other side has been not to declare for any present increase in or revision of the tariff, but rather to discuss when is the proper time to make that revision. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance certainly did not very definitely lay down any opinion on the subject of protection or free trade. I know of no one in this House who, during this debate or at any time, has advocated what is strictly free trade. While the hon. Minister of Finance did not announce himself as opposed to the revision of the tariff, either this session or last, neither did he in either session advance any reason why this tariff revision should not be made at the proper time. Naturally he used the opportunity given him t,o bring prominently to the notice of the country-which I think it was perfectly legitimate for him to do-the fact that Canada is to-day in a highly prosperous condition. I now repeat what I have said on every occasion when we have had the pleasure of listening to a budget speech made in the exceedingly prosperous times in which the lot of this government has been cast, that we are as delighted as are our hon. friends opposite over this prosperity. In fact we are more so because it enables us to demonstrate to any reasonable audience that the abundant prosperity now prevailing in this country is due entirely-so far as it may be said to be due to the legislation or the efforts or the foresight of any administration-to the foresight and the wisdom of the administration which preceded the present one. Generally speaking, the country is much interested in the facts and figures given on the occasion of our annual stock taking. As a rule, the average citizen looks more particularly to the facts and figures showing our trade and the ratio in which that trade is expanding. The average citizen looks to the general impression prevailing in his own mind and to be found in the opinions of the people as well, as showing the existence of good or bad times. But he does not, as a rule, make as close and careful an estimate of our circumstances in exceeding good times as he does in those which are less cheering. He is not disposed to be so critical when times are prosperous, work plentiful and wages good, as he is at other times. Still if he will give his atten-

tlon to tlie condition of affairs in the country generally, he will find every reason to admit that while the government has its lot cast in prosperous circumstances, on the other hand this prosperity is largely offset by the fact that he is contributing to a very large extent to the revenue and the resources of the government. Our population is increasing at a fairly good rate. It is estimated by my hon. friend the Minister of Finance, and no doubt fairly, that we had in Canada in April of this year about 5,500,000. At that time we were collecting from those 5,500,000 some $65,000,000. A year ago we were taking from the same people-or some 50,000 less-some $58,000,000. A year ago these 5,450,000 people had expended for them by the government nearly $64,000,000. In the course of this year, as nearly as I could estimate the expenditure for the current year-the hon. Minister of Finance did not give the exact figures in his speech-the expenditure of this country will be something like $58,500,000 down to the 30tli of June. That is to say, to put it into the form in which it will come home to every man, our revenue of 1902 was $10.55 per head of the people and in 1903 it will be $12 per head. Then our expenditure, which in 1902 was $11.80 per head will this year, 1903, be $11 per head. If you multiply these figures by five and a half-taking five and a half to be the average number of a family-you will arrive at the exact amount, or nearly so, which every head of the family contribute in taxation, in one form or other, to swell the revenue and resources of the government. And on the other hand, you will find, by the same process of calculation, just about what this government is expending per head of the population. The result shows that in good times the amount of money which the government collects from the individual citizen, in one form or other, is largely increased, and that the amount which our paternal government is expending for him is still more largely increased. The net result is that just as in the case in a period of inflation, the business of the whole country is approaching the point where depression is bound to begin, so this increasing expenditure is bound, in the course of a few years, to bring about that change when the individual citizen will begin to realize that the times are not so good and that he is being taxed too heavily.
Now,, though, two years' ago the Finance Minister expressed the opinion that we could not always have good times, that we could not always be upon the crest of the wave of prosperity, that, under the operation of natural laws, hard times would follow the good times, yet I do not find any evidence in the financing of the present government of any great preparation for these hard times which they say they expect and which we know they must expect. We have the fact that this year there is an attempt, or a tendency to prepare for a
rather more limited expenditure. But I am inclined to suspect, and I think my suspicion will prove fairly well founded, that this is not so much an evidence of a change of heart with respect to the matter I have just referred to as it is an evidence, which we may well take to heart, that the country may expect to be in the throes of a general election at an early date. It seems to me that the tariff bears evidence in several particulars to convince any disinterested person who looks at its provisions that this government will appeal to the country before long, probably before another session. I may be mistaken in my judgment, but I do not think I am. Therefore, I do not attribute to any desire on the part of the government to relieve the burden of taxation upon the people, any diminution of the tariff that we may see; but I look upon it, rather, as the hon. member for St. Mary's (Hon. Mr. Tarte) said in drawing a distinction between the ways a government may manage its business, as politics, not policy. Now, the reasons assigned by the Minister of Finance for not favouring the country with a revised tariff at this time were three. First there was the prosperity of the country, which he said was a sufficient reason why matters should not be disturbed. The second was that this government had made application to the British government for preferential treatment. The third was that negotiations were to be resumed with the United States with a view to negotiating a reciprocity treaty with that country. We have to admit, and we admit with pleasure, the fact that we have prosperity in the country. We must admit that we have rather abnormal prosperity in this country. If we look back over the years the government has been in power, we must see that this is a government that has had an exceedingly great share of good fortune. There was a series of years, when the late government was in power, when we had not one go id harvest. In that I speak particularly of my own province. On the other hand there has not been a year since this government came into power when we have not had a good harvest. And, if my hon. friends opposite want an argument, an argument such as I have heard them use in the past, they have it in this fact. They may ask, as they have asked :	What can be said against
a government so blessed by Providence as never to have known a bad harvest ? But not only have we had exceedingly large increments of wealth from the hands of Providence in the shape of large harvests, but we have had the special advantage that, almost uniformly, we have been able to sell these large harvests at high prices. Since 1897, we have had good prices. But we are not willing to allow the government to use the argument that these good times, these great harvests and favourable prices, are to be attributed to the fact that they are in power. We are quite willing that they should make these statements to their

friends. They may form themselves into a mutual congratulatory society for that purpose. But we cannot allow such a statement to pass here unchallenged. We must recall to the minds of the people the fact that while times are exceedingly good in Canada, times are exceedingly good everywhere throughout the world. To this, I presume, we may, to a certain extent, attribute 'the fact that we have good prices. Not only have we customers abroad who can buy- what we want to sell, but those customers are in easy circumstances and cau pay good prices. A good deal of time has been spent in this House arguing as to the effect of the British preference. But that preference is about to undergo the experience which generally comes to every visitor who outstays his welcome. It looks very much as though the British preference, which was hailed by the friends of the government as one of the most cherished and beloved of all the products of the brains and heart of this administration, is to have its face turned toward^ a cold outer world and the door closed behind it. There has been, however, a great deal of argument addressed to the consideration of this very matter. It has been argued upon the government side that the British preference has resulted in increasing British trade with Canada. And the speakers upon the government's side point to the fact that, while British trade with Canada had sunk to a point when the imports amounted to only $29,000,000, those imports have increased to $12,000,000. And as this has synchronized with the period of the British preference, so they have assumed and stated very freely-led by no less a person than the Minister of Trade and Commerce-that this very desirable result of increasing the trade of Great Britain with Canada is due to the . operation of this preference tariff. Unfor-tuuately for that argument, British trade f with Canada began to increase just at a time * when not only the British preference was i introduced but Britain's trade with every ' other country commenced to increase. And, i while I think it would be idle to argue that i the British preference has had no effect In i increasing British exports to Canada, yet, ] when we see an increase in the volume of j Great Britain's business with every other i country going on regularly from 1897 to the ; present time, we see that it is absolutely i impossible to hope that the Canadian pre- j ference was the cause of the increase that < has actually taken place in Great Britain's i exports to Canada. Hon. gentlemen opposite ( say that Canada's purchases in Great Bri- 1 tain since the preference tariff was intro- i duced have increased, and, following that i form which has always been held as a < model of defective reasoning, post hoc ergo i propter hoc, they say that the fact that this i increase follows the introduction of the pre- ( ference is of itself proof that the increase i was due to the preference. The history : of the trade of the world goes to show, I ( Mr. BELL.
think, conclusively that this is not a sound contention. Nevertheless I am not at all disposed to say that the British preference has had no effect whatever in increasing the trade of the mother country with Canada. We on this side of the House, I think, looking upon it as a compliment, looking upon it as an act of grace, and kindness, and friendliness, are not disposed to find fault with that preferehce; but in view of what is likely to be the treatment of that preference by the government, we are disposed to repeat what we said many times in the past, that in respect ofl this preference the action of the government was hasty, without due consideration, and that we are not unjustified when we assert that the government of 1897 blundered into the British preference, and will probably now, in some ungracious fashion, blunder out of it.
Now, the question whether we should revise our tariff, the question whether we should increase our protection, must largely be finally decided by considering what it is that makes times so good in Canada to-day. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance holds that because we have prosperity in Canada, the tariff requires no interference. That is to a certain extent a fairly workable theory on the old principle that you should let well enough alone. But if you look carefully into the conditions which are making trade good in Canada to-day, and I suppose are making trade good elsewhere as well, you will find that a statement made by the Minister of Trade and Commerce in the course of his speech the other day, was, I think, absolutely erroneous. He cited as an instance of the good working of the present system, which he described as a revenue tariff system, the fact that the imports of this country were increasing out of all proportion to the exports-if I did not misunderstand him, and I looked over his remarks again. Now. what have been the distinctive features of the trade of Canada during this period of prosperity since 1897 ? Whereas, during the whole history of Canada, from 1867 onwards, the imports of this country exceeded the exports by an average sum of about $14,000,000, during the present period of the regime of this government, for the most part the exports of Canada have largely exceeded the imports. We are not living in a normal condition of affairs. We are not living in Canada to-day as is the mother country habitually, in a condition of affairs in which our imports are equalled by our exports with some other resources. On the other hand, we have a condition of affairs in which the prosperity, activity and industry of Canada are producing commodities, largely natural commodities, but in some cases manufactured commodities, and in others what we might call quasi manufactured commodities, the products of the farm, largely in excess of the average imports; and we are therefore building up for ourselves a credit upon which we may draw for some

years to come, and which will help us to tide oyer that period of depression which I think is undoubtedly in front of us, in common with all the other countries of the world.
Now, in addressing himself to the consideration of this question of protection, the Minister of Trade and Commerce confined himself altogether to a consideration of the condition of the agricultural industries, and he thought he had made a suflicient argument against protection when he said : You cannot protect the farmer. He said, The farmer ships his wheat to Great Britain, where he has to sell it in an open market in competition with farmers in every other part of the world. He has to take the market price, and we cannot protect him in the price which he receives for his wheat; and therefore, as he assumes, the whole argument is complete, and protection must be condemned because in respect of this one of the smaller items-certainly not one of the larger ones-you fail in that specific instance to protect the farmer. But how about all the other products that go to swell these exports ? How about all these other products which go to constitute that enormous stream of exports which fill the treasury of Canada, enabling us to buy from the world abroad all that we require for our comfort and luxury ? What about the products of the mines, the products of the fishery, the products of the forest and the manufactures of this country ? In respect of every one of these you will find that between the years 1901 and 1902 there were large increases, except in respect to the mines, which show a diminution, owing to a curtailed output in the Yukon :
1901.	1902.
Millions. Millions.
Mines	
41	35Fisheries	
11	14Forest	
30	32Animals and products	
55	60Agricultural products 39	48Manufactures	
18	21
I maintain that in so far as these are concerned, there is room for a good government to do a great deal to benefit the condition of tiie producers, and to help them. I am not willing for a moment to limit the great principle to that one line of protection in respect of which the Minister of Trade and Commerce has told us that we cannot protect the farmer. I think you can protect the farmer in assisting him to send his grains abroad to the most open market in the world. All the expenditure that Canada is making for purpose of improving the mode of farming in this country, of expediting the passage of the crops to the seaboard, of assisting the farmer in the preservation of his perishable products, in teaching him and showing him how best to place those products on the market in order to acquire the highest possible price-ail that work is
of the nature of protection, and it is done for that one class at the expense of all the other classes of the country. Now, that kind of work can be greatly increased. Who is there in this House that would raise his voice against a policy of the government to double or treble the expenditure made in this country to-day to enable the farmers to produce their products at a lower price, to market them at a less cost, and to attain, by any reasonable government expenditure, the highest possible price in the market ? No one, I am sure. But that would be protection in the proper sense of the word. There are two ways in which you can benefit the producer and the man who has goods to sell. First of all, you can help him to get the highest price for his products. Or rather before that, perhaps yau can help him most of all by assisting him to reduce the cost of his products. That work has been done in this country, and is being done to an enormous extent, by the assistance which the government of to-day, following out the course laid down by the government of yesterday, is affording the farmers of Canada.
Now there is another cause to which are largely due the good times that we are enjoying to-day. That is, putting it in a more concrete form, the matter to which I referred a few moments ago, when speaking of the general prosperity. It is measured by the prices at which the commodities of this country and of other countries as well were selling in 1896. Take breadstnffs and other leading commodities. The prices in 1896 were 67 per cent of an assumed normal price represented by 100. In 11902, in March of that year, these prices had advanced from 67 per cent of the normal to 85 per cent. They have made an advance of 27 per cent, or nearly one-quarter above the point at which they stood in 1896. That was a time in our history when we had reached a low point of depression, a point in our history at which the government of the day were not in a position to say that their lot was cast in very happy times, and scarcely a time when the sunshine of prosperity was shedding its rays very fully upon them. But, we must remember that while we have a tremendous increase of products from the mines, our forests, and our agricultural lands, that our prosperity is not altogether owing to this great mass of products which is being placed at our disposal for sale, but it is to the favourable condition of the market to-day, and we must realize that we cannot always have plentiful harvests or good times, and that when the bad times come, when shrunken and shrivelled harvests occur, we will have shrunken and shrivelled prices as well. It should be the policy of the government not to live up to the full income which is given to it by the favourable times we are in at present, but to a certain extent, to be prepared for the bad times which unquestion-

ably will be ours before very long. Generally speaking, the manner in which the people of the country ought to estimate the advantage of their position, ought to measure whether or not they are being favoured by the government, ought to estimate whether it is a good government, is to measure it by the way in which it touches themselves personally. It is in the end inevitable that the general prosperity is represented -by the individual, that the wealth of the country is the wealth of the individual, that if too large drafts are being made on the individual purse, in the end it will be found that the common purse is depleted, and that the country, instead of being as prosperous as it thought itself, has not maintained and has not the power of maintaining the standard to which it has, to a certain extent, grown accustomed. Measuring it by the individual experience, you will find that these good times in which we are at the present time, have been accompanied by a tremendous draft upon the resources, the patience and the patriotism of the tax-payer. In 1896 the average taxation for customs and excise, the branches from which the government derive the largest part of its revenue from the people directly, was $5.46 per head. I am only taking the figures to be found in the ofllcial books, so as to leave the matter beyond criticism. In 1901 it had risen from $5.46 per head to $7.19 per head, or an increase of $1.73 per head, or over $10 per family.


Mr. COCHRANE.: They are bleeding the people white.


Adam Carr Bell: I am sorry to find that one of my hon. friends on this side of the House (Mr. Cochrane) is recalling one of those old speeches which I think we in all charity should try to forget. He is reminding us of a speech in which an hon. member of the government spoke of bleeding the people white. It seems to me that the contrition which the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Rt. Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright) must have felt hundreds of times in this House when this speech has been referred to ought to have produced for him a certain amount of forgiveness and a charitable desire to forget the old, unhappy words, and while they never cease from rankling in that hon. gentleman's mind and heart, it would be a kindness on our part not to remind him any further of them. There is, I must say, a certain amount of justification for my hon. friend who recalls that remark, because, in so far as the government of the country is concerned, the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce does not seem to make very ardent efforts to stop the process of bleeding. He does not seem to be so much opposed to whitened countenances as he was at one time. It almost seems that he had become a patron of vivisection, and was rather enjoying this bleeding process in order to ascertain how


Adam Carr Bell: much bleeding a Canadian citizen could stand without absolutely expiring. The expenditure per head, which was $7.26 in 1896, and that was a time, when, according to our friends opposite, it was $4,000,000 or $5,000,000 too much for the good of the country, had increased in 1901 to $8.70. The revenue has gone up from $7.20 per head, to $9.55. Measured by these figures, which are put in such a form that every citizen, every householder, every head of a family, can 'decide for himself what was the relative advantage which he received from that protection loving government, that government which was said to favour combines and combinsters, which was said to be impoverishing the poor man and enriching the rich man, which was said to have nothing in its conscience or in its convictions, to check it from carrying Canada along on a course that was bound to end in its destruction, and what are the benefits he derives from the present government ? He now has an opportunity of measuring by these simple figures, by this yard stick, that I am putting before the House, which government has been the more satisfactory, and of determining to what extent one party or the other is more deserving of his confidence. Let us, for a few moments, see what results from the process which this government is carrying on. It is not economizing, it is spending money more freely, it is not reducing taxation, it is rather increasing taxation. It is not content with being a protectionist government, as it really is, but it is a revenue tariff government as well. It cannot get enough money out of the people with a protectionist tariff alone, and therefore it adds to it a revenue tariff as well. In the mother country, today, the government levies taxation for revenue and it does not exact anything out of a protection tariff. It takes its tax upon sugar and tea, and it, in a great emergency, took a tax upon corn, and it collects in general a large amount of money from these Indirect sources, but it is a revenue tariff government, and it does not take protectionist rates as well. In that respect our friends in Canada have learned not only from the government of the mother country, but from the United States, and to-day, while they _ are maintaining tariff rates of from 35 to 40 and often a higher percentage, they are in addition, maintaining in full force and effect every one of those great imposts which they placed upon the people when they came into power in 1897, and they are doing it in the face of the fact that they do not require it according to their own showing for the use of the country, and are simply undertaking to extract these vast sums from the pockets of the people in order that they may be able to wave over their heads a flag inscribed with the figures of the great surplus that they have heralded in order to mislead the citizens of this coun-

try as to the source from which that surplus has come, and which gives the present government the credit of being the greatest tax gathering government that Canada has ever known. The surplus in 1902 was $7,291,398, and the hon. Minister of Finance was proud of it. He has not for the first time boasted of his surplus. Two years ago he and his friends in this House were cheering and jubilating over the fact that they had the largest surplus that Canada had ever known. It was my duty on that occasion to recall to the mind of the hon. Minister of Finance and his friends the fact that they were shouting before they were out of the woods. I reminded these hon. gentlemen that they were not in possession of the largest surplus ever known, but that away back in 1883, when Canada was a comparatively small and poor country compared to its condition to-day, Sir Leonard Tilley had a surplus of $8,060,000, considerably in excess of the boasted surplus of to-day, and considering the condition of the country, if not in excess, it must be considered quite equal to the surplus which these hon. gentlemen anticipate at the end of the current year.
Our friends opposite are inclined to forget these things, or perhaps they do not take the trouble to know them. They do not seem to think, as has been well observed, that there is much profit to be derived by them from any study of the history of the parties in this country. For a time after they came into power, it was their fashion to devote all their ability to pointing to the prosperity of Canada and to citing this as evidence of the heaven born statesmanship of the gentlemen in power. All their speeches in this House year after year contained nothing of argument, contained nothing but a simple vaunting and glorification of the fact that these gentlemen were in power, that they had a tremendously increased trade and a tremendously increased surplus. To some extent age is bringing to them wisdom and experience is correcting the pruriency of youth in this respect. Latterly there has not been so much evidence of a constant desire on their part to call attention to the fact that times are good and to claim the credit for it. But to my great surprise and regret, the Finance Minister- and I take a great deal of pride and interest in him, he being a fellow-citizen of mine from Nova Scotia-much to my regret, the Finance Minister, in his budget speech, lapsed most fearfully into the old fault. In his speech he takes the four greatest years of expansion of trade that this country has ever known ; he adds together the surpluses acquired in these four fat years, and he boasts that he is able to show in these four immensely prosperous years a net reduction in the debt of Canada amounting to $94,000. I suppose that the Minister of Finance may be admitted to be at least, if nothing else, a good politician, and I presume
that he thinks that the recital of such figures as these, added to the fact that a Liberal administration has been in office during the time that all these good things are happening, will be a sufficient reason for the people of Canada to want to keep that particular brand of politician in office as long as possible. I presume that is his intention and purpose. Well, I do not know that it is a very convincing argument so far as I am concerned, and I do not know that it will be a convincing argument with the country. I can scarcely believe it possible that in our province of Nova Scotia, where the schoolmaster is abroad, and where we enjoy the blessing of the parish school which the Scotchman used to boast of ; I can scarcely believe it possible that the Minister of Finance will be able to persuade the people of Nova Scotia at all events that because there has been a large trade in the last four years, and because the government has been unyielding in extracting the last drop of blood in the shape of taxation, and thereby rolling up an immense surplus ; I can scarcely think it possible I say that that will pur-suade any reasonable Nova Scotian to be thankful for the fact that he has been ground under the force of the wine press to such an extent as to enable the government to boast of the fact that out of the taxes of the people the government has reduced the debt of Canada by $94,000 in these four abundant years. But even if our education in Nova Scotia were not so advanced as it is, I think that in the Scotch county of Pictou, or in the Scotch county of Victoria, whence my hon. friend (Hon. Mr. Ross) comes, our knowledge of Scripture would help us to give an answer to the boasts of a government with such a record as that. We would be able to avail of the instruction we received in the Sabbath school and at our mother's knee, and we would recall the experience of Pharaoh, whose Finance Minister had administered fat years and lean years. If Pharaoh's Finance Minister would come to him and say : Look what a wonderful Finance Minister am I ; In these four fat years I have actually cut the expenditure of the country down by $94,000 under the receipts ; I have accumulated a genuine surplus of $94,000, or about $23,000 a year ; what do you think Pharaoh would answer to such a Minister of Finance ? In the face of the fact that Pharaoh and the rest of his people knew that the four fat years would unquestionably be associated with four lean years. Pharaoh would say to such a Finance Minister : Surely thou tallest me for a sucker.


Mr. KENDALL.: He would vote all right, though.


Adam Carr Bell: I cannot believe he would vote all right. I cannot believe it possible that the people of my province would not be saved either by their knowledge of Scripture or by their knowledge of arithmetic,

and that they would not agree with Pharaoh that the Finance Minister should have been able to report something better than that. If in a condition of things which has been unparalleled in Canada, and during a time when there were no great public works to construct, no unusual demands made upon the treasury ; if during these times which are absolutely unexampled in their prosperity, and when conditions exist that might have justified the claim of this government to being the greatest administrators Canada has ever known ; if in the presence of all these things they can only keep the expenditure of this country under the revenue by $23,000 a year, I say, Sir, that they have failed to establish the fact that they are an able, or a competent, or an economic administration.
Now, Sir, the amendment which lias been moved by the leader of the opposition is to the effect that we should at once proceed to change the tariff ; not to change it radically, because to my mind that is not necessary. We are to-day, on both sides of this House, either supporting or opposing, as the case may be, an administration which is a protectionist administration. I cannot for a moment see how my hon. friend from Victoria (Hon. Mr. Ross) can sit with any kind of comfort or quiescence on his side of the House at all, because he is undoubtedly, as he takes occasion to let the House know, an ardent free trader.


Mr. NORTHRUP.: He used to be.


Adam Carr Bell: How can my hon. friend (Hon. Mr. Ross) content himself to sit under the administration that is now in power, and be content to believe that he is a free trader ?


Hon. Mr. ROSS (Victoria, N.S.).: Where would I go ?


Adam Carr Bell: Well, if the hon. gentleman (Hon. Mr. Ross) is going to support a protectionist government at all, he should support one that has the proper brand of protection to offer. Let him come to this side of the House and assist us in getting a little more protection-not a bit more than this government professes to be willing to give- but to get it at such a time as it will serve the interests of the country. Then, if my hon. friend is anxious to know where he must go, I would suggest that he must form a government of his own. My hon. friend is very fond of telling stories. I remember one which I think would fit his case. A preacher was telling about the two great roads- the narrow one which led to salvation, and the broad one which led to perdition-and a coloured brother who was listening said: ' In that case, this coon must take to the woods.' My hon. friend, I think, will have to take to the woods to get comfort, for in my opinion he has not a very happy home on the side of the House where he is now.


Adam Carr Bell: The motion before the House is substantially that the protection which we have in Canada to-day is not adequate or sufficient, and we should at once adopt increased protection or modify or change the protection which we have in such a manner as to make it more effective. There is no doubt that the Finance Minister is right when he says that at present a great number of orders are coming to the manufacturers, and that their difficulty is in procuring labour and in filling orders. He is not as entirely right in that respect as he was a year ago or two years ago; because any one who is in contact with the manufacturers in this country must know that the day is comparatively past when orders were thrust upon them, when it was not a matter of price, but how to get the! goods. If I am not mistaken, the time has come when the old forms have to be gone through, when the producer has to seek the customer instead of the customer chasing after the producer. The fact is, judging this matter entirely from an economic standpoint, it is impossible to deny that this government is logically in a position to give the country more protection. It is impossible to doubt what their duty is to-day. There is no reason why they should balk at or shrink from giving the country protection. To my mind the rather apt expression of my hon. friend from St. Mary's, Montreal (Hon. Mr. Tarte) applies to the whole position of Canada to-day, when he said that the course followed by the administration did not represent policy, but politics. Why should the government hesitate to give the country a little more protection ? The government of Canada is in a far better position to give an increased rate of protection to-day than it was in 1897 to give the rate of protection whicn we have now. This government came into power in 1896 fully pledged to do away with protection. It had gone through a great many changes of mind as a party. It had wooed the public of Canada under a great many guises. It had been a commercial uuionist, it had advocated unrestricted reciprocity, it had worn the clothes of the advocate of continental free trade, and finally it approached the last election, at which it was victorious, in the garb of an advocate of a revenue tariff of the brand they have in England. When the government came into power in 1896, it was pledged so far as a party could be pledged by the utterances of its leading men, to do away with protection in Canada^ There could be no question about those utterances. The right hon. leader of the government, when he visited Winnipeg, told the people of the west that he was there to preach to them the gospel of free trade, that it was the message that would bring them relief from bondage, that it was not an imaginary bondage, but as real as that which had existed in the United States, and that he would lead them out of that bondage to a land

flowing with milk and honey, the land of free trade. The Minister of Trade and Commerce, too, exhausted the resources of the language in pronouncing the protective system as one which was, not human, as one which was inhuman, and he posed as the St. George who was going to pierce the dragon of protection with his spear. If we wanted examples to place in our school books and to put into the hands of our children as everlasting warnings against a disposition which was irrational, insincere and nnsound, we conld do nothing better than take extracts from the speeches delivered by tbe Finance Minister and the lion. Minister of Trade and Commerce, and other members sitting in the government of Canada to-day. These hon. gentlemen came into power in 1896 pledged to abolish protection. Did they abolish it ?


Matthew Henry Cochrane: Not much.


Adam Carr Bell: I think that is a very good answer; it exactly summarizes the situation. They could easily say that they had nd mandate from the people to abolish protection or to introduce free trade, and we are bound to say that that is true. They were not elected in 1896 upon their tariff policy. It was not a decision of the people that they wished to turn from protection and revert to free or freer trade. Hon. gentlemen opposite were put into power largely as the result ofl an agitation and a movement which drew a line across the tracks which the two parties had been following, and which had created the most extraordinary alliances, and out of the action of those extraordinary alliances the present government came into power. Therefore, I feel grateful that they did not give us free trade in 1897. Between the contending forces in the government, some for free trade, some for revenue tariff, and others for common sense and protection, if I were not convinced that common sense and protection would be successful, I would regard the hon. gentlemen as benefactors, because they have failed to do what they pledged themselves to do. They might have taken the reverse course; they must have said: AVe must be consistent; there are people who supported us because we professed ourselves ready to bring about free trade.
I do not, in my own heart, believe that they had a mandate from the people, when they were elected in 1896 to change our policy. They had ample excuse for doing so. They had claimed for years that the Conservative policy was a mistaken and damaging one which they were going to change. They did not change it in 1897. On the contrary they gave us the same policy that came down form the Conservative party since 1879. All they did was to make some small reductions in the tariff. According to some statisticians on the other side, the reductions they made ranged from one to one and a half per cent

not very far from one per 61
cent. Contrast this with what was done by previous administrations. The Conservative administration, which previously held office, never for a moment denied that they were protectionists, yet they often made greater reductions in the tariff, when they thought it was in the interests of the country, than have been made by the present government. So that so far as regards the extent to which they have reduced the average taxation of the country, these gentlemen had every example from the Conservative government to warrant them in going to the extent they did. But now when there is undoubtedly a demand from the country and from the manufacturers for greater protection, t^is government hesitates to give that for which the people are clamouring. How is it that this government, which did not hesitate to incur the charge of shameless inconsistency by keeping intact in spite of all its professions, the system it had denounced for years in opposition as one of oppression, ruin and tyranny, which the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce was wont to stigmatize as responsible for all conceivable ills, real and imaginary, refuses to-day to act one way or the other. We now find the hon. Minister of Finance resorting to any and every kind of argument as an excuse for not doing anything. My own opinion is that in this case hon. gentlemen opposite, if without a policy, are not without a following. You will find to-day that the forces of this country are making for increased protection. Go over the proceedings of parliament since 1879, and you will find that there has ever been a conflict between the partisans of a high and a low tariff. You can see it iu our debates and in our legislation. The live question which divided the two parties has always beeu the question of protection to our industries. That question is still paramount. There is still a great demand for increased protection, and that demand is largely due to the fact that in 1897 the government plunged into the British preference. If they had not thrown that little sop to the free traders-for that is what it was-the people and the manufacturers to-day might have been fairly well content. But the result of the operation of that one feature, in respect of which they departed from the protective system, is the trouble they now suffer. I was not much amiss last session when I compared the government to Sinbad the sailor staggering along under the weight of the old man of the sea whom he had unwisely taken upon his shoulders and of whom he could not get clear. What is the position of the government to-day on this question? No one can tell. Last session there was agitating in the country, delegations were here waiting on the government, but the Minister of Finance shelved the question for the moment and gave the country to understand that the tariff revision would take place this year. He never said that tariff revision would never take place. All he said was



that the time was not yet opportune. And j Ue left the impression that in another year he would revise the tariff. What do we find to-day ? We find a change of wording but the very same plea used for doing nothing. The policy of the hon. Finance Minister is a do nothing policy. His policy is to borrow another year from the future. He is not pressed at the moment very hardly, but he might he if he undertook to decide the question. Therefore his argument to-day is exactly in the line of his argument a year ago. He furnished reasons why nothing should be done now, but he does not say that he will never do anything. Just look at the beautiful position in which this policy leaves the government. When in opposition these hon. gentlemen on the treasury benches had the support of the free trade element and also the support of those who were in favour of reciprocity with the United States, as well as of those who advocated reduced taxation and cheapened living. And we have the authority of the ex-Minister of Public Works (Hon. Mr. Tarte) that, at the last moment, in 1896, they also secured the support of the manufacturers by giving them the promise that if returned to power they would keep faith with the manufacturers and break faith with the free traders and those who favoured reciprocity. Viewed from the standpoint of a politician, the position of the government is an admirable one. If politics were statesmanship, if evasion or resposibility were the crowning mark of a statesman, I would say that the budget speech was exceedingly clever, and that the situation created for the government, with the assistance of the hon. member for North Norfolk (Mr. Charlton), is an admirable one. Here we have the Finance Minister practically promising protection. He says there is no reason why I should not give you protection but I will not give it just now. But as an assurance of my intention, I give you 87 a ton protection on steel rails, which surely is an ample measure coming from a free trader. Then comes the Minister of Trade and Commerce who makes a speech in praise of free trade. He has the audacity to tell the people that the present tariff is not protective at all but a free trade policy. He has the assurance to declare to the people that all the evils which existed under this tariff, while the Conservatives were'in office, disappeared the moment the Liberals took charge of the administration. He said that the tariff previous to 1897, which we all know is practically in existence to-day, drew $2 from the people for every one that went into the treasury, and then he proceeded calmly to argue that ever since 1897, by some mysterious mystical working out of a similar tariff, the extraction of the 82 from the pockets of the people has ceased- that while the government gets its one dollar, there is no tribute of two dollars to the manufacturers. This is arrant humbug-if
I may use that expression without violation of parliamentary rules, Mr. Speaker-it is asking the people of Canada to believe something which is manifestly absurd. To say that a tariff of 35 per cent previous to 1897 passed two dollars into the pockets of the manufacturer and one dollar into the public treasury, and that that same tariff of 35 per cent in 1897 ceased altogether to have that effect and that the two dollars are now left in the pockets of the people and only the one dollar taken out which was taken for the government by the Conservative government, is arrant humbug. If such assertions as that can be accepted by any rational creature as argument when given forth, as they are, with all the fluency and assurance of the Minister of Trade and Corffmerce, they may have some effect. But, to my mind, the only effect is to make every citizen wonder that any man can have the audacity to stand up in the parliament of Canada and seek to establish such a proposition. Now, you will see that the government has two strings to its bow. The Minister of Finance is ready to oblige the manufacturers at the right time, while the Minister of Trade and Commerce appeals to the farmers. When the Minister of Trade and Commerce tells the people that, though they pay increased taxation on their sugar and tobacco, and the same, taxation on cottons, woollens, and many other manufactures, there is no longer a protectionist tariff in existence but that they are living under a free trade system, those who believe in the Minister of Trade and Commerce and in free trade will naturally be prepared to vote for the maintenance and continuance of such an admirable policy, a policy which, by some mysterious process, keeps the old system in force and yet gets rid of its bad effects. But, to make the thing complete, and to make an ideal condition for a government going to the country, they are not satisfied with the manufacturers and the free traders, but they are going after that class, no matter how few or how many they may be, who believe in reciprocity. And, so we find the hon. member for North Norfolk (Mr. Charlton) who came last year and propounded a big, manly policy-so far as words went-of meeting hostile tariff with hostile tariff and extending a measure of good-will and favour to the country that showed good will and favour to us-we find that hon. gentleman, at the beck of the government. ready to assure the people of the country, as the Minister of Finance is doing, that the time for increasing the protection against the United States, the time for setting up a tariff that will admit of a 40 percent reduction has not come. It will come- when ? Next year ? May be next year or in two years hence. But, at the moment, the hon. gentleman who argued so strongly and conclusively last year that it was essential to the people of Canada to assert their independence and manhood by meeting the


Adam Carr Bell: hostile act of the American administration with a tariff that would put our manufacturers, farmers and other producers in a position of independence and equality, is induced to use his great authority with those who hold that particular brand of opinion to say, with the Minister of Finance, that that time has not come to follow this particular policy. So, you have a policy announced and advocated by the government and its supporters that will allow everybody, no matter what his opinions and hopes and wishes are, to vote for the government. And, no matter what his opinions may be, he has as good a chance as anybody else of getting what he wants. I think that a government that can take such a position as that is very fortunate. The only drawback that may cause us to say that they are not fortunate is that the people of the country may see through it and express the opinion which I have always thought was held by the people, that the government to admin- j ister the affairs of this country ought to have a clear, decided policy and express it honestly, that a government that would try to ride even two horses, much more a government that would try to ride three horses, would be sure to come to the ground. And, for my part, I feel that, by the course they pursue, they forfeit all confidence and all claim to the vote of every man who has opinions upon public questions and desires to see in control of Canadian affairs a government with a declared policy, ready to stake its existence upon the success of that policy.
There is one thing about this government which I think is very admirable from an educational point of view-it is a government that can learn. As I have said, they came into power pledged to free trade. They were only in power a few months when they learned that that would not do, and they adopted protection. They threw a sop, as I have said, to the free trader in setting up the British preference. I do not know anything that was ever so vaunted and magnified in this country as that alleged concession to the British people, the so-called British preference. They felt so strongly on the subject, that one time, their only course, when any objection was raised, was to challenge hon. gentlemen on this side with the question : Would you repeal it ? Manifestly, it was one of the most sacred things in the house of their gods. They could not believe that any man on this side would have the audacity to touch the sacred thing. But hon. gentlemen on this side were not slow to give their opinion. They said: There is nothing in the British preference so dear to us as the prosperity of the Canadian producer, and the Conservative party cannot be frightened by a bugaboo of that kind. You cannot silence us by saying that the Conservative party is not loyal to Great Britain. The record of the Conservative party was too good, too manifest, too con-61i
sistent, to give members of it cause to fear. The Conservative party was in a position to act upon its judgment, it was in a position to sa'y: No, we will not bind ourselves to support the British preference, unless it can be shown that it can be maintained without injury to Canada. Even up to two years ago, hon. gentlemen on the other side were ready to stake their existence upon the maintenance of the British preference. Where are they to-day with reference to that subject ? There can be no doubt that ip the correspondence and proceedings of the conference of colonial premiers there is a threat-it may be a veiled threat, but it is a distinct one-addressed to the British government, that if the government of Canada does not receive a quid pro quo, if it does not receive concessions in return for the concessions it has made, it will know how to act. So, this government is one that can learn-it has learned. It has learned from its Conservative opponents to become protectionist, to maintain a protectionist system in force, and it has learned that the criticism directed by its opponents directed against this so-called British preference, was sound. Hon. gentlemen on this side, even when this so-called British preference was proposed, declared that it was not a British preference, but involved a preference with any country that had a treaty with Great Britain, having in it the most favoured nation clause. They laughted at this assertion, but they learned that it was right in the course of time. This, so-called British preference was decided by the British courts to be a preference to be applied to every nation in the world that had a treaty with Great Britain calling for most favoured nation treatment. They were very fortunate then in the fact that the British government, in order to help them out of what was unquestionably a very awkward situation, incurred a certain amount of odium and ill-will from the German people and the Belgian people by denouncing the treaties which caused that state of affairs. And it was not the wisdom of this government of Canada, it was not their foresight, or their knowledge of the conditions that would ensue upon the establishment of the British preference, that kept them out of trouble, it was the kindness and assistance of the British government whicll got them out of trouble after they got into it.
Now these gentlemen are in a very awkward situation indeed. They have as usual talked far too much. The right hon. the Prime Minister who leads the government, and other gentlemen as well, have assured the British people over and over again that the preference was not given in a huckstering spirit, that we wanted nothing for it. The Prime Minister definitely told the British people that it was given in return for that splendid freedom which we enjoy in Canada. Now we still enjoy that splen-

did freedom. Why, then, do the present government propose to withdraw the British preference ? The manifest objections that existed when it was first given, involving the same concession to some twenty other countries in the world, had been removed by the assistance of the British government;' there is not the same objection to the British preference to-day that there was then; why, then, is it not to be maintained ? How is it that this government, which has been in power for six years, and which began with such magnamious declarations, such broad and kindly views, with such a complete absence of anything like chaffering, or bargaining, or huckstering-how is it that this administration to-day, after having assured the people of Great Britain that this concession was not given for a price, are now prepared, so far as we can judge, to withdraw that concession from the British people ? To my mind they are at last convinced that that British preference has been carried too far, has been raised to such a point that it is really inflicting a certain amount of injury upon certain branches of manufactures in Canada; and seeing no other way to relieve those branches of manufacture from the injury they are now receiving, the government has made up its mind to do a disagreeable and unpleasant duty. They are going to do that in the interest of the manufacturers of Canada, and if we can judge at all from their words, they are going to repeal that British preference.
Now they have to a certain extent repealed it already in connection with the surtax which they have imposed upon importations from Germany. They have to a certain extent deprived the preference of the value which it had in the minds of the British merchants. The British manufacturer is one man, and the British merchant is another. The British people are perhaps almost greater as merchants than they are as manufacturers. They gather into their markets the products of the whole world, and distribute them again to the whole world. Now the concession made to the people of Great Britain by Canada in the form of a preference, had a large part of its value from the fact that it permitted not only the British manufacturer but, the [DOT]British merchant as well to send into this country the goods which he had purchased in the marts and workshops of the various countries of Europe. That part of the value of the preference .is all wiped away. They have not made a formal withdrawal of, the preference, but you will find, in connection with the imposition of the surtax of one-third upon the duties levied upon German goods, that all goods imported from Great Britain, of which' the major part of the value is derived from work done in Germany, are to be subjected to the surtax; the British merchant will find that, instead of getting on those goods
a reduction of one-third, he will have to pay an increase of one-third. So that, so far as the products of German workshops are concerned, the preference has already been withdrawn from the people of Great Britain.
Now there is apparently a very strong opinion in the mother country that that preference is either of no value, or is not of sufficient value to warrant them in making any concession to us. They have refused within a few months to give to the people of this country a concession in respect to the cattle trade, which the people of this country feel they ought to receive, and which would be of great value to them. They have within a few hours repealed the corn duties, which were somewhat unexpectedly imposed upon grain last year by tlie British parliament, and which gave us the only hope we ever had that we would get a preference in the British markets. That hope has gone. There is, I fear, a certain amount of danger that a little ill-feeling may grow up between ourselves and the mother country in respect to this matter. In my opinion, now that the preference has been given to the mother country, I think it would be better, if any other way in the world could be found in which we could obviate or prevent the injury that is being suffered by certain manufacturers in Canada without repealing the preference,
I would say that would be a preferable course to adopt. The Canadian government has not formally repealed the preference, though it has to a certain extent, as I say, repealed it so far as the German goods are concerned. But there is absolutely no necessity why the Canadian government should repeal the preference. They can continue it. All it has to do is to follow the course that has been advocated and adopted in every country in the world that has a tariff in existence to-day, that is to say, where the tariff is an important matter, and where it has had to be changed to meet changing conditions and to meet friendly and unfriendly legislation on the part of other governments. All that is necessary for this government to do is to raise their general tariff, the very thing we are asking them to do. At this moment, by raising their general tariff, they can continue to give the people of the mother country that same preference which they now enjoy over every nation in the world. And this is what the mother country might expect of us, and it is, I think, a thing that we ought if possible to do. For my part I should be very sorry indeed to see the preference struck down or taken away in such a manner as might cause a great change in that feeling of kindness and good-will which it excited when it was given, and which it drew forth in large measure from the people of the mother country.
Now there were several other matters touched upon by the Minister of Trade and


Adam Carr Bell: Commerce in his speech on the budget. I have already referred to his extraordinary declaration as to the effect of the tariff. Now the! Minister of Trade and Commerce has again this year referred to a subject which he dealt with largely last year. He deals in striking assertions, and he has again this year repeated an argument which he used last year when he wished to make capital for his party out of the prosperity of tiie country. He argued that because Canada is prosperous under the present tariff, the present tariff is the cause of prosperity. In connection with that argument he referred last year to the census of this country. In order to maintain his argument that Canada has made no progress during the last years of the Conservative administration, he asserted that the exodus from this country had been completely stopped. If all these things were true, I suppose we would have to admit that the Minister of Trade and Commerce had furnished certain reasons why things were well enough and we should not ask for a change. But the fact of the matter is that there is no warrant, so far as I can discover, for these assertions. They rest upon the bare affirmation of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and I think a little examination will show that probably he is entirely mistaken in what he says in that regard. He asserts that the census of 1S91 was absolutely wrong, that the figures were largely concocted; while at the same time he argues that the figures of the census of 1901 were correct.
Now these two censuses have been made by two different administrations. If one of these censuses be wrong the chances are that the last census is not the accurate one. The census of 1891 was made by trained enumerators. It was made by the same gentlemen who had made the enumeration in 1881. They were, to a certain extent experienced, while in 1901 the enumerators came to the business new and without previous experience. The enumerators had more to do, they had a larger number of schedules to fill in, and the chances are that the errors correspondingly increased. Taking the estimated population of Canada as made by a mathematical calculation from the census of 1891, and when the estimated population came in 1901 to be corrected, by the new census, the possible error in the original estimate in 1891 could not have exceeded 1 per cent, and it may not have exceeded it at all, because the error was more likely to occur in 1901 than in 1891. The right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce says the exodus has ceased altogether, that it was very active and that a great number of people were going out of Canada under the national policy as administered by a Conservative government, and that it had ceased under the national policy as administered by a Liberal government. The figures which I read in the
House last year are still available to any one who wishes to see them. A census taken by the Comonwealth of Massachusetts goes to show that the exodus, instead of diminishing after 1896, rather increased, and that more people actually went out of Canada and into the United States after the incoming of the present government than before the incoming of the present government. Therefore, that argument advanced by the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce to persuade the people that the country is prospering at the present time and that the cause of this prosperity is a revenue tariff, falls to the ground as far as the census is concerned. The census is rather an important affair in the history of Canada, and possibly a few moments of consideration may not be out of place. Last year one of the reasons advanced by the right hon. Minister of Finance why we should not have a revision of the tariff at that time was that the schedules relating to manufactures in the census were not completed. It is a rather singular fact that they are not completed yet. Two years have elapsed since the census was taken. Apparently the government laid the greatest possible stress on the importance of these schedules of manufactures. It was apparently waiting to obtain all the information in order to settle upon its policy, and although this service is entirely under the control of the administration, a remarkable fact exists that up to the present moment, two years after the census is taken, the members of the House of Commons have not seen one of these manufactures' schedules, (and so far as I can discover, they are not likely to see them. We are practically told that the expenditure on the census is completed. Still nil these important schedules which would reveal the advancement being made by this country in the matter of manufactures are still unclassified and untabulated and useless to the people.


Mr. MONK.: The hon. Minister of Finance said they had been completed.


Adam Carr Bell: The enumeration may have been made, and the other day I received the schedule relating to the agricultural condition of New Brunswick, but, as far as I know, no progress has been made in the preparation of the schedules relating to the manufactures of Canada, and judging from the amount set down in the estimates, and the assurances we received the other day that only $10,000 more was to be expended on the census, it looks almost as if that work is not to be completed at all. Now, this is a very extraordinary thing. The hon. Minister of Finance was waiting last year for these particular schedules. He was not in a position to revise the tariff last year, and after waiting a year, we find that he is still disposed to wait another year, and not at all disposed to find fault with the fact that this census, which has cost as

much as the last two censuses, and twice as much as the last census, and is probably the worst census that has ever been taken in Canada, has not been completed. The right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce, when he gets up to assure this House and the people of Canada that the census of 1891 deserve to be looked upon with suspicion, and to be criticised as inaccurate, is probably entirely wide of the mark.
Now, I do not wish to detain the House much longer, but I really feel as if it would not be amiss to call attention to a few things which were not in the budget speech. We find that there is a certain amount of protection. We have a tax of $7 per ton to be imposed on steel rails, but there are a great many things which are generally looked upon as proper and which generally find a place in the budget speech that did not find a place in the speech of the hon. Minister of Finance. The hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Roche) drew a very amusing contrast between Canada and the United States, the most amusing contrast I have ever listened to, for in every thing he said, except in one or two items, the circumstances of the two countries were practically the same. One of these exceptions was the tropical or subtropical section of the United States. We were told that the United States fronted upon two oceans. Well, Canada fronts upon two oceans. We were told that the United States had enormous resources and rich lands. Canada has these. But, in speaking of one of these matters, I think he did make out a case. He pointed to the fact that Canada had no tropical or subtropical region. Undoubtedly, Canada has not, and in respect of that matter it is not probably as well rounded out as the United States, but I do not know that we would be willing to exchange our present climate and northern mining regions for the subtropical regions of the United States, which will not produce as good citizens as the hardy men of our high lands. But, there is a chance for a progressive and able government that is willing to stake its existence on the policy which it may enunciate to secure for Canada a tropical region in the West Indies. Two or three years ago the hon. Minister of Finance did seem to be making a little effort to secure trade relations with the Island of Trinidad, in respect to which, however, I fear he was not very successful. Although this is one of the most important questions from a national standpoint that could engage the attention of the government, no progress has been made, and apparently no attention has been given to this subject. It would be of the highest importance that all the British possessions on the American continent should be gathered together under one government. It would round out our nationality, it would make of Canada a microcosm, it would make a complete world in itself, and give a market for the produce of our fisheries in those islands, Mr. BELL.
and a- market for the sugar of those islands in this country. It would be worthy of the statesmen of Canada to undertake to bring these islands of the Carribbean sea under the flag of Great Britain that waves over Canada, but although this is an important matter, and although attention Is called to it from time to time, alhough it is mentioned in this House year after year, we find, so far as we can judge, that the government has not even attempted to deal with the subject, and has nothing to report in connection with it. There is another matter of even greater importance. There is the island of Newfoundland, the oldest British colony in the world practically, outside of the home island, and the oldest British possession in America. There is an island whose possession at some time or other is absolutely essential to the welfare of Canada. It commands the great sea approach, the gulf of St. Lawrence, in such a fashion as to make it impassible for the citizens of Canada ever to contemplate without shrinking, the idea that it should pass into the possession of any other power. It ought to be part of the confederation of Canada, and the work of bringing it into the confederation is the only work left to be done, because the statesmen of the Conservative party have completed the rest of the work so far as the northern part of the American continent is concerned. The work of bringing that last outlying post of British population within a Canadian nationality, is one that lies unquestionably at the door of this government. And yet we find that towards this question of the very highest national importance, this question that is so urgent that one must think it calamitous should the object not be accomplished ; towards this question our government is apparently indifferent. So far as we know, they entirely ignore its vast importance. It may be that there is correspondence, and we will, perhaps, get it some time, but so far as we can judge, no progress has been made towards bringing in Newfoundland, nor is there in the mind of the government of Canada any aspiration in that direction.
Then again, this government has made no effort to secure new markets for this country. The only action they have taken is in regard to our trade, is to impose a surtax on German products, and that I consider an exceedingly proper course to adopt. But that is in the direction of curtailing our markets and not of increasing them. It is, however, the right course to follow, and I was rather surprised to find that two years ago, speaking in the budget debate, when I took occasion to recommend the very course that has been followed, namely, that increased taxation should be imposed on the products of Germany, the Minister of Finance answered me by saying that the government had already imposed a preferential tax against Germany, and he argued that in so far as they had given a preference to

Great Britain they had imposed a disability on the German empire, and they were disposed to rest satisfied -with that. I am glad to say that in this respect as well as in others, the government has shown itself willing to learn, and that it has bowed to the suggestion of the opposition, and in respect to that its action in that particular It has the support and the good wishes of every man who sits in His Majesty's opposition in this House.
I believe, Sir, that the great question that is uppermost in the minds of the people of Canada is : Are we going to have a more active and a more positive realization of the purpose of keeping Canadian trade for Canada and the Canadian people ? It has been argued by the Minister of Finance that a policy of Canada for the Canadians would mean the disintegration of Canada; would mean the separating of the west from the east, because he alleges that the west and the east have such diverse interests that they cannot be harmonized. If that were the ease, we would have no nationality. If you could not get the inhabitants in one section of Canada to be willing to co-operate with those of another section in order to maintain a common policy for the common good, you would have no nationality and you would have no Canada. Such a suggestion coming from the Minister of Finance shows that he is not telling us seriously what he thinks on that subject. There is no country in the world in which the inhabitants living in different sections have not diverse interests. The people of the British Isles, two or three hundred years ago, were further apart, more divided by race, as much divided by religion, more divided by interests, and most of all divided by the want of intercommunication, than is the case with Canada to-day. But all this did not prevent the development of the home land, and it should not prevent the development of any part of the empire outside of the home islands in which there are the' advantages that we in Canada possess. The existing conditions in Canada should not prevent us looking to a homogeneous population, all of the same education politically, all of the same aspirations, and all with the same dream of a great imperial federation in which Canada is to occupy a foremost part. If it were possible to have in Canada a people who were so local and so selfish that they could not realize a national policy for the common good, and could not be filled with a common desire for the welfare of Canada, then we would not be the people that we are. But with such a population as we have, there is every reason to believe that there should not be any trouble in persuading the people of every section of this country to join in a policy which would be for the good of all. In opposition to that idea of a harmonious Canadian nationality, we had the speech of the hon. gentleman from North Norfolk (Mr. Charlton), who was
put up to advocate the cause of reciprocity with the United States. That lion, gentleman advocated a policy, which if it could be enforced, would break Canada up into three or four sections. You would have on the Pacific coast a commonwealth comxiosed of two or three states of the American union, and the province of British Columbia. You will have in Ontario a people who had no care for their fellow-citizens of British blood in the east and west, but whose whole trade and whose whole sympathy would be with the people of New York, and Ohio and Indiana. And the people of the maritime provinces living under the idea involved in the speech of the hon. member (Mr. Charlton) would carry on their commercial affairs with the people of the United States, and on the whole you would perfectly destroy fOr ever that Canada which is in existence today. The fact that we have a Canada; that we have a national policy ; that our statesmen in the past have found it possible to persuade the people of Ontario to submit to a tax on coal and the people of the maritime provinces to submit to a tax on flour and cornmeal, because in doing so they are giving vitality to a national policy; all these facts accomplished in the past are a guarantee that they can be continued and should be continued with much more ease and much greater facility in the future. It is a very short-sighted policy, to my mind, to endeavour to persuade the people of Canada that the interests of the west cannot be harmonized with the interests of the east. It is quite easy to show that the interest of the arable west is at present very largely in the one direction. They are producing wheat. It is said you cannot protect the farmer. Well, the western farmer cannot be improved so far as his conditions are concerned as a farmer, because his conditions are absolutely perfect to-day. He has a magnificent soil, a perfect climate. He has seed time and harvest, and he is not subject to the interruptions which come to us in the lower provinces from the broken seasons we have there. He has an ideal condition of farm life, but he has one disadvantage- he is out there on the plains producing wheat and the farmers about him are producing the same crop; they are competing with one another ; his disadvantage comes when he goes to market, because the wheat which is grown by himself and his neighbours who are his rivals, is to be sold on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, thousands of miles away. He has to go five or six thousand miles before he can sell his wheat. Will you not protect that farmer when you can build up at Brandon, at Winnipeg, at Sault Ste. Marie, at ail the towns of Ontario and Quebec, large manufacturing and commercial centres ? You can protect the western farmer in the most effective and complete fashion by giving him consumers in Canada. But more than that, I think it would be anything but statesmanlike to admit that

the people of the west are to be for ever limited to the productions which they have now. To my mind the salvation of the people of the west is involved in their ceasing to be wheat growers exclusively, and in becoming mixed farmers. They are doing the best they can at the moment; they are doing that which is ready to their hands; and the conditions are so favourable that they are producing wealth to an enormous degree, and the whole of Canada is reaping the benefit of it. But any one who knows what the best conditions for the development of our race are, knows that the man who is living in a small house, and is merely a producer of wheat on an open plain, is not living under conditions tending to develop his highest characteristics as a man. These can only be realized by bringing to the prairies the mixed husbandry of the older provinces, and to that end the policy of the government must contribute as rapidly as possible. Not only is this important to the western provinces, but to the east it is absolutely essential. Though we are greatly interested in the west, we must not forget the east. We have not in the eastern provinces the great perfection of soil and climate that they have in the west. Our conditions in the east are such as to make it out of the question that the people there shall become great producers of grain. They cannot, in fact, realize the conditions of the west. In the east we can realize the condition of the husbandman who pursues mixed husbandry. But in spite of the assertions of the Finance Minister, the exodus in eastern Canada has not ceased and the people who are leaving are not going to the west; they are not tempted even by those marvellous lands of the Saskatchewan valley and the great plains; but they are going to the United States, to a highly protected country, to the manufacturing cities of the New England states, and it would be impossible to change the character or the disposition of those people. They are not disposed to be farmers; they are not convinced that the highest condition of life would be realized by their becoming farmers; but they wish to live a life of greatly diversified interests in which the manufacturing interests should occupy a very prominent and important place. These men do not want to live on a thousand acre farm without a neighbour within a mile and a half of them. They want to live in cities where you can enjoy not only all the conveniencies and comforts and pleasures available in cities to men with reasonable incomes, but where they can share the luxuries and refinements of life, and indulge their taste for the graceful and the beautiful. The disposition of these people is not only to go to the cities of the United States, but to build up cities in our country as well; and no policy would be the best for Canada or can secure the approval of the Canadian people, which does not recognize that there are in the country Mr. BELL.
I
great and varied possibilities entirely outside of the production of wheat even on the most fertile acres in the world. We want to build up in this country a state with great industrial resources. Who are the people who are taking the lead in the world today ? They are the great manufacturing peoples ; and with our vast country capable of supporting two hundred millions of people as rapidly as they can be put into it, with the skill and energy of our people, with our illimitable and varied resources, we should aim to develop the highest possible state of civilization, and to realize that ideal we must have not alone an agricultural population, but a people trained in all the varied pursuits that are to be found in countries which at this moment stand in the van of civilization. Therefore, while it may be good politics and good tactics on the part of the administration of the day to so shape their tariff and so control their discussions as to let the public of Canada feel that they will not be unfavourable to them, whether they are lovers of free trade or a revenue tariff or reciprocity or protection, it is not a position that stamps it as an administration of clear convictions, but rather as a do-nothing, opportunist administration, and one which cannot and ought not to have the hearty and earnest support of the people of Canada.
Mr. MACLAREN (Huntingdon) moved the adjournment of the debate.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned.
On motion of the Minister of Finance, House adjourned at 10.55 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday, April 28, 1903.