1905-05-15

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Ool. 5974, 1st and 4 th limes from top, ' Providence ' should read: 'Provident.'
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House of Commons Debates

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Monday, May 15, 1905.

Mr. T. S. SPROULE.: Mr. Speaker, before the Orders of the Day are called, I beg leave to notify you and this honourable House that, through the death of Hon. James Sutherland, there is now a vacancy in the constituency of North Oxford, and to i desire you to take notice of it in the usual way.



THE PORTFOLIO OF PUBLIC WORKS.

Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Before the Orders of the Day are called, I would like to inquire of the government whether or not there is any truth in the rumour, which has appeared in the public press, that the member for London (Mr. Hyman), the acting Minister of Public Works, has been sworn into office as a member of the administration ; and also, if that has not taken place, if the government will be good enough to say whether it is contemplated that that shall take place at an early day ?


Hon.   S@: The rumour referred to as to the acting Minister of Public Works having been sworn in as minister is not correct. With reference to the second part of my hon. friend's question, perhaps he will be good enough to repeat it to-moi-row, when the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) will be in his place.



INQUIRIES FOR RETURNS.

Mr.   I@: Before the Orders of the Day are called, I would like also to call the attention of the government to certain papers which were to be brought down, but which, I think, have not been laid on the table. I refer to the papers relating to the contract for a wire fence along the international boundary between the Northwest Territories and the United States. In that connection, I thought possibly the government would bring down some explanation from the secretary of the department, which,
[DOT]	190
I think, has not yet been laid before the House. The explanation which was read before the House on a previous occasion was not, as I understand it, from the gentleman who wrote the letter to the company which made some complaints because they were not afforded an opportunity to tender.
There was also a promise by the acting Minister of Public Works (Mr. Hyman) to bring down the papers in connection with a contract and a proposed contract for bitu-lithic pavement-the contract being for a pavement in front of the parliament buildings and the proposed contract for a pavement on Wellington street.
In one of these cases there was a promise by the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) that the original papers should be brought down-I think that was in response to a request of my hon. friend from South Lanark (Mr. Haggart), and related, if I remember well, to the proposed contract with respect to the wire fence.


Sir WILLIAM MULOCK.: When this subject of the wire fence was referred to in the House on Thursday last, the Prime Minister stated that he would have the papers laid upon the table at the earliest possible moment I have no doubt that orders were given for their preparation, and there will be no delay in carrying out the promise made. My hon. friend will permit me to say that, as I understand it, there was no contract, although he spoke of a contract-


Robert Laird Borden: No, no.


William Mulock: There was a draft sent over to the Justice Department of what might have become a contract. That is what he refers to, I suppose.


Robert Laird Borden: I refer to all the papers in relation to that particular matter.


William Mulock: I understood the hon. gentleman to speak of a [contract, and I wished to make the distinction, for fear that otherwise it might be assumed that I had assented to that view. I do not understand that there was a contract. As to the bitulithic pavement, my hon. friend the acting Minister of Public Works (Mr. Hyman) will answer.


Hon. CHARLES S. HYMAN (Acting Minister of Public Works).: I shall be glad to



lay the papers on the table or hand them to the hon. gentleman ('Mr. R. L. Borden) tomorrow.



FRANKING PRIVILEGE.

Mr. J. BARR.: I would call the attention of the Postmaster General (Sir William Mulock) to a question previously asked with regard to the franking privilege of members.


William Mulock: The matter has been arranged in accordance with what I understood to be the wish of this House. I do not want the House to think that I am dominating their view. I understood the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) to suggest that, instead of adhering to the decision of the House of some time ago, that the actual signature or the initials of a member should be required, we might still allow a stamp to be used on condition that the member whose stamp is being used should deliver the mail matter to the postmaster himself. The Deputy Postmaster General informs me that that can be arranged, and he is sending a letter on the subject to the postmaster here.


John Barr: That is satisfactory.



PORT ARTHUR AND FORT WILLIAM DREDGING CONTRACT.

Mr. W. II. BENNETT.: Can the acting Minister of Public Works (Mr. Hyman) inform me if the contract has been let for dredging at Port Arthur and Fort William ? The time for tendering, I think, expired on the 1st instant. If the contract has been let, would the acting minister say who are the successful tenderers ?


Charles Smith Hyman: The contract has not been signed, but the Order in Council to let the contract has been passed. The successful tenderer is A. F. Bowman. I do not recollect the particulars. Some-ten or twelve tenderers were included in the schedule submitted to Council.


William Humphrey Bennett: Is A. F. Bowman the Great Lakes Dredging Company ?


Charles Smith Hyman: The Great Lakes Dredging Company-I speak lrom recollection-were also tenderers, but the lowest tenderer was A. F. Bowman.



PRIVATE BILLS.


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House again in committee on Bill (No. 92) respecting the Ottawa and New York Railway Company.
Mr. W. S. FIELDING (Minister of Finance).: In the printed Bill there is only one clause. But I understand that another clause has been added, which is not open to objection.


Charles Smith Hyman: 


Charles Smith Hyman: If I may be permitted, I will read the second clause, which was added in committee :
The directors may annually appoint from among themselves an executive committee composed of at least three directors, for such purposes and with such powers as the directors by by-law determine ; and the president shall be ex-officio member of said committee.


Mr. DANIEL.: What is to become of section 1 ?


Charles Smith Hyman: I shall move that section 1 be struck out. It was understood when this Bill was under discussion the other night that there would he a motion to strike out section 1 as reported by the Railway Committee, and that there could be little if any objection to section 2 as now contained in that amended Bill.
Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER We are on the preamble now.


Mr. W. F. MACLEAN.: I would ask the government to define their policy in the matter of the creation of executives and in the management of large companies. There are some very large interests in this country controlled by boards of directors, and we have in some instances allowed these directors to appoint executive committees of three to administer the affairs of the company. Now if that is to he an accepted principle the public ought to know it. I take objection to it for instance in the case of insurance companies that have large trusts to handle. I object that an executive should be appointed to take control, say, of the funds of an insurance company. It is well worth the attention of the government, and a declaration as to whether they intend to allow great corporations to be managed, to all intents and purposes, by a small executive of three. I believe it is the case in the matter of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was refused in the case of the Canada Life Insurance Company. I would like to know the underlying rule of the government in these matters.


Air. EMMERSON.: I do not view this question raised by my boil, friend (Mr. W. F. Maclean) as one of public policy. It is not a question of policy. ;Each case must be determined upon the merits surrounding it. There may have been some good reason for withholding the privilege from the Canada Life Insurance Company : I presume that the committee of that day considered that there were strong reasons why the privilege should not be accorded. They have granted it in several instances. It is not a question of governmental policy.
I presume that in the case of the Canada Life Insurance Company it was the judgment of the committee that the privilege should be refused.


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Preamble agreed to.
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Mr. EMMERSON moved to strike out section 1 of tlie amended Bill.
Motion agreed to.
Mr. EMMERSON moved to substitute the following therefor :
The directors may annually appoint from among themselves an executive committee composed of at least three directors, for such pur- poses and with such powers as the directors by bydaw determine ; and the president shall be ex-officio member of said committee.
William Findlay Maclean: Can it be the case under this legislation that not one of the members of this executive shall be British subjects, that the executive may be composed absolutely of aliens? _


Charles Smith Hyman: 1 presume so, under the wording of that section. But they must be elected by those they represent, a majority of whom must be British subjects. A majority of the directors must be Bri-t.tish subjects, and it is they who elect the executive and have control.


William Findlay Maclean: But this is another way of having an American directorate over a Canadian railway company. That is the thing we have been trying to avoid, and now we have got it.


Mr. FOSTER.: Is it a condition that the executive must be members of the directorate?


Henry Robert Emmerson: Yes. The same principle has been followed in the matter of some other Bills that were before parliament, notably, that of the Grand Trunk Pacific, and there was no exception raised at that time. The object of this is to have a committee right on the spot here in Canada, and necessarily they would require to be British subjects residing here.


Mr.  W. F.@: (MACLEAN. Now will not the same thing happen in regard to the other Vanderbilt interests in Canada? Take the Canada Southern and roads like that-they will be administered and managed in the same way. The object of the Railway Commission is to have men in Canada responsible to the Canadian people and to the Canadian Railway Commission, and who can be brought J)efore it. Now there will be an executive that you cannot reach, men residing in New York; they may be the board and elected by residents here. The other day the Minister of Railways said the object he had in view was to have somebody in Canada who could be called before the Railway Commission, or before the government's Railway Committee, to make explanations, and who could be held responsible. That was declared to be the policy of the government. Now this executive can be in New York, or can be outside of tills country ; and in a few days it will happen that the Vanderbilt [DOT] interest will ask for the same legislation for ail their 190*
railroads, and once they get in the thin edge of the wedge, they will start buying railroads all over this country and administer them by a small executive in 42nd street station, in New York. If that is the object of the government, they ought to say so.


Henry Robert Emmerson: It does seem to me that my hon. friend is straining at a gnat in this matter. In all our corporations we have what we call managing directors, they control the routine, and they practically control the entire business of these corporations.
.Mr w. F. MACLEAN. Who do ?


Henry Robert Emmerson: The managing directors, under the responsibility that rests with the directorate who appoint that managing directorate. Now here you have under your legislation required that every railway corporation shall have a board, a majority of whom shall be British subjects. Now that majority can control the board, they can control the selection of the executive provided by this section. Therefore, it seems to me that no difficulty can arise. The mere management, the mere directors, the mere train service surely are not of very material moment in this Bill. They are of moment to the company who are interested in serving the needs of the people, and in accommodating its patrons. But the real responsibility for the corporation rests with the board, a majority of whom are British subjects, and this executive must be responsible to that board ; they must be guided by it, and directed by it on every point. Surely there are no Canadian interests that will suffer by reason of this fact, nor would it be good policy to invite capital to come into Canada and to tie it up at every point. I think it is carrying the principle of restriction quite too far indeed for us to refuse to give a Board of Directors, a majority of whom are British subjects, the right to select any one, two or three of their number to manage the everyday affairs of the company.


Mr. SAM. HUGHES.: Are not the managing directors of the Grand Trunk Railway all Americans to-day and have they not been for some years ?


Henry Robert Emmerson: I am not personally familiar with the facts but if what my hon. friend says is so I can see no wrong in it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: But you have given no information whether it is fact or not. It would be well for the government through the Minister of Railways to give to the House some information as to the usual custom on the American side with regard to this question. Even with a majority of the directors British subjects a case might arise where the Railway Commission would require some one of the three composing

this executive to appear before them and if they were foreigners what powers would the Railway Commission have to compel their attendance ?


Henry Robert Emmerson: The Railway Commission have ample power to deal with the railway in Canada even if the board live in Omaha. I do not think it is at all material that the members of the board should reside in Canada. We have corporations the members of whose boards almost wholly reside across the Atlantic, but that does not affect the corporation which has its entity in Canada and is controlled by the laws of Canada and by the Railway Commission. The Railway Commission has power over the entity of the railway in Canada regardless of the residence of the directors ; it can stop the railroad trains, abolish a tariff and impose penalties. X might almost say in numberless ways, the Railway Commission have full power to require any railway corporations to fulfil the will of parliament and the requirements of the laws of Canada.
Mr. SPROUT,E. We had a case only the other day in the Telephone Committee which bears upon the subject. The committee, if we may accept what appears in the papers as correct, invited the manager of the Grand Trunk Railway to come before them. He said that he could not come and that they had better get the vice-president, who made a similar reply and said they should get Mr. McGuigan, but Mr. McGuigan said he could not come. Suppose the president, the vice-president and the managing director were all in the United States, the question which suggests itself to me is what power would the Railway Commission have to insist on one of those members coming before that committee.


Mr. MONK.: At that rate where will we stop ? You would have to oblige the railway company to have all their employees Canadians as the commission might require the presence of an employee other than a director. Not only would require them to be British subjects but all resident within the limits of the jurisdiction of the Railway Commission. It is perfectly absui'd.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Not at all.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: At the present moment what jurisdiction has the Railway Commission over directors residing for instance in England ? No jurisdiction at all:	And to
render nugatory all the processes and endeavours of the Railway Commission the directors even if they were all British subjects would simply have to cross the line and go into a foi-eign country to escape the jurisdiction of the commission and render the acts of the commission absolutely impotent. The whole disposition of The Railway Act seems to me to be going very far under the policy which we ought to adopt Mr. SPROULE.
of encouraging foreign capital. I do not think that the fact of the majority of the directors being British subjects is any assistance at all to the government or to the Railway Commission in carrying out the principles of the Railway Act. Anyway in this case it is only an executive committee, and I believe that without this disposition of the law the directors of this company could name an executive committee, but even if they could not why should we not give them power ? The executive committee is named by a majority of British subjects and I think it is carrying the idea of loyalty a little far to adopt such a restriction as is now proposed.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I want it understood that I am not objecting ; I only desire to get the information to which I think the House is entitled, so it can understand what power the Railway Commission has and whether there is any necessity for that executive committee or not, and whether the appointment of that executive would in any way retard the Railway Commission. I think the government should be able to give that information.


Henry Robert Emmerson: That question is purely a question of law as to what power the Railway Commission has, I am not the keeper of the law conscience that has been referred to in this House.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: You ought to know the railway law.
Mi-. EMMERSON. I know just exactly how far, in my judgment, the powers of the Railway Commission go, and I know that in the exercise of these powers it is not necessary to have directors either British subjects or l'esidents of Canada. Some hon. gentleman may dispute that statement but it is a statement of fact based upon an interpretation of the powers of the commission, which of course is a legal question. It seems to me that the powers of the Railway Commission can be carried out without the directors being British subjects or without their residing in Canada.


William Findlay Maclean: The Minister of Railways does not apprehend what he is doing. He is making it clear that any gi-eat foreign railway interest can, if it desires, acquire all the railways in Canada and put their administration in the hands of an executive sitting in New York. That is the object of the Vanderbilt interests at this moment ; they want to get a small admission made in connection with this small railway, so that they can put the principle into effect in regard to all the railways in this country. They will not allow the ad-ministi-ation of their railways in the United States to be placed in the hands of a small executive sitting in London, Ottawa, or Montreal ; they keep that authority in their own country and we should treat

them as they treat us. This is a vicious principle that is being introduced 'by this legislation. The international complications that arise in the world to-day largely arise out of the administration of foreign capital in a country toy a board of directors outside of that country, and there is nothing President Roosevelt takes so much interest in as backing up boards of directors living in his own country and exploiting some foreign country with their capital. He says he is the 'big policeman of this continent to compel all the governments in North America to carry out their commercial obligations and to respect the rights of United States corporations having interests in. these countries. If you pass this legislation you are forming the ground work of international complications ; you are opening the door for the administration of Canadian railways by a small executive committee sitting in New York and you are giving that power to the great Vanderbilt interests who will extend it and extend it until they take over all our railways. It is not good national policy, and it is not in line with the statement made by the Minister of Railways in this House last week. I am where I was last week, but he has changed his view. He now tells us that Canada has no national policy in maintaining in her own hands the control of the railways in this country. True, the Canadian Pacific Railway has an executive of three, but that executive is in the city of Montreal, and the proposition now before us is that this Ottawa-New York line shall be administered toy an executive of three sitting in the city of New York.
Mr. EM'MERSON. Selected toy a board, the majority of whom are British subjects.


William Findlay Maclean: And the majority of whom, are elected by one man in New York.


Mr. NORTHRUP.: I agree with the member for East York (Mr. W. F. Maclean) as to affirming the principle of Canada for the Canadians, tout it does seem to me that the strongest blow you can strike at this principle is to try to apply it in defiance of common sense. I suppose there is nothing more generally admitted in this country thau that what every part of Canada wants is as much foreign capital as we can possibly induce to come here, and it is just a question whether or not we in this House are doing anything to assist the investment of foreign capital if we throw as many obstacles as possible in the way of foreigners investing their money in Canada. I feel very strongly that anything we may do to make it more objectionable from the standpoint of an outsider to invest his money in Canada, is doing just so much 'to retard the progress of this country. There is another consideration that strikes me. Looking at the matter practically, while I am very glad to see the majority
of the board, Canadians, and while I would be very glad to see this committee of three, Canadians, I do not feel that practically it makes one iota of difference whether you have them Canadians or not. If the Americans are bound to purchase this railway, and if we pass a law that all the directors or a committee of three must of necessity be Canadians, we will have dummy Canadians, men who are merely placed there to do what they are ordered to do by those who own the road, and in such a case it seems to me the latter end of that railroad would be worse than the first. When my hon. friend from East Grey (Mr. Sproule) inquires as to whether or not the Railway Commission would have still more authority over this railroad in case the committee of three were all Canadians, it seems to me the Railway Commission has this advantage ; that in case this railroad comes before the commission the railway is in the position of a litigant in court. If the litigant lives on the other side of the line and he has a case in a Canadian court I do not think his opponent need be worried as to whether or not he will call his witnesses, for the Railway Commission will have perfect power to proceed whether any witnesses are called on behalf of the railway company or not. I think we can give credit to these Americans for sufficient common sense to rest assured that if a question arises before the Railway Commission they will protect their own interests by calling all the witnesses they think necessary, and if they do not so much the worse for themselves and so much the better for the people of this country, because then judgment would be given in favour of those who are attacking the railway.


Mr. LENNOX.: I am very sorry that I may be open to the insinuation that I am not capable of exercising ordinary common sense.


William Findlay Maclean: We get that insinuation often now.


Haughton Lennox: Even in view of the possibility of being open to that imputation I will venture to do my own thinking. I ventured to express my view on this matter briefly the other day, and it is of such importance that I feel justified in restating that view. I had not the pleasure of hearing the hon. member for Cornwall (Mr. Pringle) to-day, but I infer from something which has been said since I came into the Chamber that he had put the matter in a somewhat different light.


Mr. HAGGART.: He has not spoken today.


Haughton Lennox: Then probably he has done so by his silence. This is not a question as to what we shall do generally, but, it is a question as to what we shall do in a case where we have invested the money

of the people of Canada, and in such a case I am perfectly sure that we have the right to have a say in the question of whether the directors shall be British subjects or foreigners.


Mr. PRINGLE.: Does the hon. gentleman understand that clause has been struck out of the Bill ? It reads now that a majority of the directors shall be British subjects, and it simply gives these directors the power to operate this small line of railway by three delegates who must be three directors. I have accepted that amendment.


Haughton Lennox: I was not aware until this moment that a change had been made, but the position I take is that we do not want special legislation for individual companies ; what we want is the same legislation for all companies and this company like all other companies should be made to conform with the general law we enacted a year ago. I have not had an opportunity of examining the proposed amendment to this Bill, but I assume it does not conform with the general railway law, and if it does not it ought not be allowed to pass. We have invested a very large amount of money in this railway. I cannot perhaps do better than read a few lines from an article on Canadian railway taxation in the 1 Canadian Magazine a year or two ago by Mr. Pettypiece. He says :
At Cornwall, a bridge across the St. Lawrence, connecting the Ontario and New York sections of the New York and Ottawa Railway, furnishes another example. The New York end of the bridge is assessed at $40,000, and pays taxes on that amount ; the Ontario end is neither assessed nor taxed. On the New York portion of the road the fare is two cents per mile ; on the Ontario portion three cents. The New York end of the bridge received no government aid ; the Ontario end received $125,000 from the Dominion and provincial parliaments.
All that I mean is expressed in the statement which I have already made that what I want to govern this railway is the General Railway Act.


Robert Abercrombie Pringle: 
George Eulas Foster: When this Bill was in the Railway Committee, without the amendment which has been moved at the present time, I was opposed to it, because it was cutting out the general law in the special instance. I thought then and I still think that it is a good thing sentimentally, and it may be a good thing practically, to have a majority of the directors of a road which is being operated in Canada, British subjects. That is maintained by the excision of the first clause, and at the same time a modus vivendi is prepared, by which this road can be managed practically by an executive : but it

seems to me that we have kept all the power in the Dominion of Canada. That executive may manage the road from New York, but all the operations of the road are under Canadian law and are subject to the Canadian commission ; and if the officers who reside in New York do not bring their evidence and make their case good, that does not deter the commission or the laws of this country from having their full effect. Foreign capital is a thing we require in this country. The more we get the better, and we can scarcely consider it foreign capital after it comes here and becomes fixed. It then becomes Canadian capital, and all that the foreign holders will get will be the profits over and above the working expenses. I am quite willing that the Bill, with the amendment now proposed and the first clause taken out, should pass and become law.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I want to say a word in answer to the hon. member for Cornwall (Mr. Pringle). He says that it seems to be the desire of those taking part in this discussion to retard or prevent these people bringing capital into Canada. I think that statement is quite gratuitous. So far as I know, that is not our desire or intention ; but while we are willing that capital should come in with the greatest possible freedom, we merely wish to know what safeguards are taken so that these railways may be controlled in the interests of Canadians. I asked for that information from the Minister of Railways, who speaks for the government and ought to be able to give it, but with no desire to prevent these people from spending their money in Canada. That is not the intention, at least it is not mine, and I have never spoken with that object in view.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.	[DOT]

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 133) respecting the Citizens' Bank of Canada.
George Eulas Foster: Has the Finance Minister any objection to this extension ?


William Stevens Fielding: That was considered in the committee ; and as we have granted a similar privilege to one or two others, we agreed to grant it in this case. We desire however, to discourage the policy of extending charters, and our hope is that hereafter we may apply the rule more rigidly.


Mr. TISDALE.: Is this the first extension ?


William Stevens Fielding: I think there was a previous extension.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.



PROVIDENCE SAVINGS ASSOCIATION (LIMITED).

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 134) to incorporate the Providence Savings Association (Limited).
'Section 3-capital stock.
George Eulas Foster: What is the reason the ' capital stock is so very small as $25,000 ?


William Stevens Fielding: It is certainly small capital, and the first impression of the committee was against the charter. On examination it will be found that the Bill has been changed very materially. We objected to the title as calculated to associate the company in some way with a savings bank, and we had the name changed. It is merely an investment company for the doing of ordinary financial business ; and it was represented that if we insisted on a larger capital, we would be shutting out smaller people from doing business which is very legitimate.
Mr. TI'SDALE. Are they allowed to take deposits ?


William Stevens Fielding: No.
Section as amended, agreed to.
On section G

the number of directors.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER.: The new subsection has been added to section 0 by the Banking and Commerce Committee ; a director must be a holder of at least ten shares capital stock and have paid up Ins shares and all the liabilities incurred by him to the company.
Section and subsection agreed to.
On section 7-power of company,
(a) Underwrite, buy, pledge and otherwise deal in, lor cash or on the instalment plan, stocks, bonds, debentures or obligations ot corporations, whether secured by mortgage or otherwise, and Dominion, provincial, British, foreign or other public securities, with the privileges and rights thereto attached ,
Mr. DEPUTY 'SPEAKER. The words ' for cash or on the instalment plan ' were struck cut by the Banking and Commerce Committee.
Mr. FOSTER, AVhat powers does this give them with regard to stocks ?


William Stevens Fielding: The right to buy. and sell these securities which an individual could exercise for himself without a charter.


George Eulas Foster: If you give them power to underwrite and buy and sell and pledge, you give them all they sought to have. Otherwise they could deal in stocks on margin.


Charles Smith Hyman: There is no doubt they could, under subsection (h).


William Stevens Fielding: Why should they not be allowed to deal in margin, if they wish

to ? It may be inadvisable, but it is no crime. Any individual can do it. If it were a trust company or insurance company, it might be different, but I do not see any objection to this company being allowed to deal in margins with their own funds.
Mr. FOSTER, it is not simply that they buy themselves on margin, but they buy for other people.


William Stevens Fielding: Even so, that is an ordinary broker's business, and any individual would have a right to carry it on.


Mr. HENDERSON.: The object of the Banking and Commerce Committe in striking out the words ' or on the instalment plan ' was to prevent dealing in margins. But 1 think the committee went too far when they struck out the word 1 cash.' Had that been left in, the clause would have had much stronger effect in preventing the corporation from being used as a means of buying and selling on margin-it would limit them to the cash plan. I would favour having the word ' cash,' reinserted, to accomplish the purpose the Banking and Commerce Committee had in view.


David Tisdale: Why should not this company have, to the extent of their capital, the right that any individuals would have? This is simply a combination of capitalists instead of any of them acting separately.


Mr. LEMIEUX.: I understand that th'e promoter of the Bill has accepted the amendments as they are.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Suppose that a large estate is left in the hands of this company and they use it to deal on margin ?


William Stevens Fielding: That would be a breach of trust. Any individual might be made trustee of an estate, and if he used it on, margin, he would be guilty of a breach of trust. As I understand it, there is nothing here except an ordinary Act of incorporation allowing these people as a company to do what any of them can do individually if he has the money.


John Waterhouse Daniel: I was under the impression, though I may be wrong, that bucket shops were illegal and that those who frequent them were breaking the law and were liable to being arrested. I know that in my own city such people have been arrested.


William Stevens Fielding: This does not affect the criminal law. Whatever is illegal remains illegal. We give no power to the company that they would not have as individuals.


George Eulas Foster: There are many things which an individual can do alone which you do not authorize a company to do.


William Stevens Fielding: Not many, I think. The
object of incorporation is to enable indi-


William Stevens Fielding: viduals to unite their capital and so put themselves In a position to do what they would not have the financial strength to do as individuals. Though there may be exceptions I think, that, as a rule, whatever a man has a right to do alone we authorize the formation of a company to do.


George Eulas Foster: I think that under subsection (h) they will have to borrow money on what they absolutely own.
Bill reported, and read the third time, and passed.



ANTHRACITE COAL RAILWAY COMPANY.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 136) to incorporate the Anthracite Coal Railway Company.-Mr. Galliber.
George Eulas Foster: Where does this railway run ?


Mr. GALLIHER.: It runs from the town of Lethbridge in a westerly direction south of the main line of -the Canadian Pacific Railway and crossing the Calgary and Edmonton Railway and on to a point called Lineham, and from there jogs down to some coal lands, although I forget the number of the township and range in which these lands are situated. It is entirely through a new portion of country, and I may say that the amendment that was made to the first section is simply because they wish to have five names instead of three.
Bill reported, read the third time, and passed.



SECOND READINGS.

[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 151) to incorporate L'Uuion Saint Joseph du Canada.-Mr. Btelcourt.
Bill (No. 154) for the relief of George Dance Harper.-(Mr. T. G. Johnston.
Bill (No. 152) An Act for the relief of Clara Bidwell McDermot.-Mr. Campbell.

[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 131) respecting the Vancouver and Coast-Kootenay Railway Company.- Mr. Macpherson.
Bill (No. 135) respecting, the Western Alberta Railway Company.-Mr. Gallilier.
Bill (No. 140) respecting the Northwest Coal and Coke Railway Company, and to change its name to tbe Great West Railway Company.-Mr. Galliber.
Bill (No. 141) respecting tbe Ivaslo and Lardo-Duncan Railway Company.-Mr. Galliher.
Bill (No. 143) to incorporate tbe Owen Sound and Meaford Railway Company.- Mr, Telford.


[Stage Direction]
Mr. COCKSHUTT-asked :
1.	At what points in the Dominion has recruiting been carried on tor the permanent forces during the present year up to May Sth ?
2.	How many men have been recruited at each point visited ?
3.	What is the number recruited for each arm of the service ?
4.	What is the total number recruited ?
5.	Is it the intention of the government to cause recruiting in England for the Canadian permanent forces, or :s such recruiting now going on ?
Hon. SYDNEY FISHER (for Minister of Militia) :: 1.	Ontario.-Alexandria. Almonte. Arn-prior, Belleville, Berlin, Brantford, Brock-ville. Carleton Place, Cornwall, Co-bourg, Chatham, Deseronto. Gauanoque, Georgetown, Gnelph, Hamilton, Lindsay, London, Millbrook. Morrisburg, Napanee, Oshawa, Ottawa. Perth. Pembroke. Peterborough, Petrolia. Pic-ton, Port Hope, Prescott, Renfrew, Sarnia, Shar-bot Lake, Smith's Falls, Stratford, St. Catharines, St. Mary's, Toronto, Trenton, Tweed, Watford, Whitby, Woodstock. Walkerville, Windsor, Yarker. Quebec.-Acton Yale, Coaticook, Cookshire, Cowansville, Drum-mondville, Granby, Magog. Megantic, Montreal, Richmond. Sherbrooke. Stanbridge, Staristead, Sutton, St. Hyacinthe, Waterloo, West Farnham. New Brunswick.-Moncton, St. John. Nova Scotia-Halifax, New Glasgow, Pictou. Sidney, Truro. Prince Edward Island.-Charlottetown.
2.	There is no record at headquarters.
3.	Royal Canadian Dragoons, 37. Royal Canadian Mounted Rifles, 20. Royal Canadian Field Artillery, 35. Royal Canadian Garrison Artillery, 35. Royal Canadian Regiment of Infantry, 215.
-1. Total, 417.	.
5. Application has been made to the imperial authorities to permit of some 30 to 40 artillery reservists being enlisted in that arm of the service of the Canadian permanent force.



POSTMASTER AT KENTVALE.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. BOYCE-asked :
1.	Who is the postmaster at Kentvale, Ont. ?
2.	Who were his sureties ?
3.	When was he appointed ?
4.	Who was the former postmaster there ?
5.	When did he vacate the office ?
6.	Was he discharged ? If so, for what reason ?
7.	Has the post office been removed from the site on which it was established ? If so, when, and for what reason ?
8.	Where is it now established ?
9.	Has any protest been made against such
removal ?	.
10.	If so, how was such protest dealt with ?
11.	What is the salary attached to the office ?
Hon.   S@: The former postmaster at Kentvale was F. B. Kent. On the 4th January last, he was directed to be removed from his office because of his having been an active political partisan during the last Dominion election, and also with a view to removing the office to a more convenient site. The present postmaster is John Rousseau, who was directed to he appointed on the 4th of January. 1905. He is insured under the assessment system. Instructions were given to the inspector to transfer the office to the new site, and the department is not aware whether such transfer has actually taken place. A petition against the change in the location was presenred, but the decision ot the 4th January last lias been adhered to. The salary is $25.
FISHERY OVERSEERS IN COLCHESTER. Mr. LAURENCE-asked :
1.	How many fishery overseers are, there iu office in the electoral district of Colchester ?
2.	What are their names, what is their remuneration, and the names of the rivers ovei which they have care or jurisdiction ?
3.	Does the government assume the duty and responsibility of enforcing the laws and regulations respecting the preservation of the inland and coastal fisheries of Canada ?
4.	Is the law regarding the pollution of rivers, especially in respect to depositing sawdust arid other substances therein, being enforced ? If so. by what officials ?
5.	Does the government contemplate any efforts to restore or revive the shad fisheries of the Bay of Fundy ? If so, what scheme for the revival of said fisheries has been decided upon ?
6.	Have the federal and provincial governments completed any agreement or understanding in regard to the protection and preservation of the river, lake and coastal fisheries of Canada 1


Hon. SYDNEY FISHER (for the Minister of Marine and Fisheries) :: 1.	Three.
2.	J. W. Davidson, salary $100 per year. E. H. McGregor, salary $100 per year. G. W. Henderson, salary $75 per year. Each of these overseers has jurisdiction over the whole county of Colchester.
3 Yes
l! Yes ; by the federal fishery officers.
5.	Yes ; provision has already been made for the construction of a shad hatchery.
6.	The federal government, by constitution, possesses the sole right to legislate for the protection of the sea-coast and inland fisheries. No agreement in this connection is therefore necessary. There is a question pending between the Dominion and the provinces regarding rights of fishery below low-water mark in tidal waters. While this is undecided, by arrangement with the local governments, the federal government is continuing the policy obtaining before the Privy Council decision, with regard to fishery

licenses affecting proprietary rights, except in the province of Ontario and a portion of the province of Quebec.



PACKING AND SALE OF STAPLE COMMODITIES.

[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 155) respecting the administration of an Act respecting the packing and sale of certain staple commodities.-Sir Wilfrid Laurier-was read the second time, and House went into committee thereon.
On section 1,
Hon. SYDNEY FISHER (Minister of Agriculture).: Section 8 of the Act to be amended says :
The Governor in Council may assign the administration of this Act to such member of the King's Privy Council for Canada as he sees fit, and may make such regulations as are deemed necessary for the proper working of this Act.
A portion of this Act is in regard to fruit packing. Under the Fruit Marks Act, the Department of Agriculture has a staff of inspectors to deal with fruit marks and we thought it better and more convenient that they should also deal with the administration of the fruit packing. We therefore desire to have the power to transfer to the Department of Agriculture the administration of that part of this Act which deals with fruit packages. The administration of the rest of the Act remains in the Department of Trade and Commerce. As the law now stands only the whole of the Act can be allotted to any one department, but by the amendment a portion of the Act can be so allotted.


David Henderson: This amendment will transfer the administration of this particular Act respecting the sale of certain commodities. absolutely from the Department of Trade and Commerce to the Department of Agriculture ?


Sydney Arthur Fisher: No ; the present law covers number of things such as the size and weight of certain measures, standard of weights, the size of packages of salt and registered trade marks, and it also refers to apple packages and the size of fruit packages. The intention of the amendment is to transfer by Order in Council to the Department of Agriculture, the administration in regard to fruit packages, but it does not deal with any of the other matters. This is done for the convenience of utilizing the inspectors under the Fruit Marks Act to administer the law in respect to the size of fruit packages.


David Henderson: I am under the disadvantage of not having a copy of the Bill before me, but I understand that the Act or any part of it can be transferred to the De- ' partment of Agriculture.


Sydney Arthur Fisher: 


Sydney Arthur Fisher: The present law authorizes tlie administration of the whole Act being put under any minister, and the amendment allows any portion of the Act to be put in charge of a minister as well as the whole Act.


David Henderson: The administration of the law as regards the matters referred to in this Bill is now under the Department of Trade and Commerce, and the amendment will authorize the Governor in Council to transfer the administration of that Act entirely to the Department of Agriculture !


Sydney Arthur Fisher: The present law allows the administration of the whole Act to be transferred to any minister, and as a matter of fact an Order in Council has been passed entrusting its administration to the Minister of Trade and Commerce. There is no desire to put the administration of the whole Act under any other minister, but we think it better to put the fruit inspection under the control of the Minister of Agriculture so that Ins officers who are doing similar work may be enabled to do this work. It just happens that although the whole administration might be transferred to another minister, a portion of it cannot be, and we want to have the power to transfer a portion without transferring the whole.


David Henderson: But the power to transfer a portion gives the power to transfer the whole.


Sydney Arthur Fisher: We have that already.


David Henderson: I have noticed from time to time the tendency of the Minister of Agriculture to practically take away from the other departments matters which properly belong to them and to overload his own department. We have had an example to-day when the Minister of Agriculture presumed to answer for the Minister of Marine and Fisheries and the Minister of War. That was referred to prominently last session, when the hon. gentleman was acting for the Minister of War. Today he is answering for the Minister of Militia and Marine. I think the great agricultural interests of this country demand that the Department of Agriculture .should not be overloaded with every other conceivable thing, detracting from the time which the minister should devote strictly to the interests of the farming community. We know that large interests pertaining to agriculture have been neglected. Last year that was prominently brought out in regard to transportation, when it was shown that the Minister of Agriculture or some other minister had neglected to see that the people of 'Canada got as fair rates by shipping from a Canadian port on lines which had been largely subsidized by the parliament of Canada, as were obtainable on the same class of goods shipped through American

ports. My own impression is that the Minister of Agriculture is so extremely fond of work that he has practically overloaded his own department by adding various branches to it. Why should the Census Department be added to the Department of Agriculture? It should be taken away and given to another, department. We have the Department of the Secretary of State with practically nothing to do, practically a non-existent department, while the Department of Agriculture is overloaded with a great deal more work than any ordinary minister can properly attend to. I think there should be a fairer division of the work of the various departments. The Minister of Agriculture especially should devote his time exclusively to matters pertaining to agriculture, and leave the Minister of Trade and Commerce to deal with matters of commerce, so that we can have a more thorough administration of the agricultural affairs of this country. I think the minister is making a mistake in reaching out at every opportunity to get some further power, to aggrandize himself and make himself exceedingly prominent in the face of the country. If we go on in this way, in the course of a year or two we shall be able to dispense with nearly all the other departments and simply have the Minister of Agriculture, with power to add to his powers by Order in Council, and taking away matters belonging to the Minister of Trade and Commerce, who, I am sorry to say is not now privileged to have a seat in this House.
I think the w-ork of the departments should be more fairly divided, and more especially that the Minister of Agriculture should be left free to deal with matters belonging strictly to what we understand by a Department of Agriculture, and not have every other department robbed for the sake of aggrandizing that minister.


Sydney Arthur Fisher: 
Mr. LEXIS OX.: The text of my hon. friend from Halton may be wrong, but the sermon is all right. In this particular instance, the Minister of Agriculture may be right ; but I have had occasion to speak of this matter before, and if a remedy is not brought about, I shall have occasion to speak of it again.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh.


George Albertus Cox: And the hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House who are uneasy, if they consult the agricultural interests of this country, will have occasion to think of it as well. A year or so ago we were discussing our exhibits in Great Britain, when the question of the Imperial Institute came up. The Minister of Agriculture was good enough to give us a description of the Imperial Institute, or that branch to which our exhibit, was assigned, and he said that it was an ' omnibus department, into which was put everything that there was no other place for. similar to the Department of Agriculture in this country '-in other words, a general dumping ground where everything that was not wanted anywhere else was put. We have not only the speech of the hon. member for Halton to-day, but evidence all along the line to show that there are too many matters undertaken by the Minister of Agriculture, at the expense. I venture to sav, of the best interests of Canada. The "minister on the occasion I refer to spoke of the fact that he had charge of the census and some other things that might very well go to some other department not so loaded with work as his. The minister to some extent misapprehends, I think, the meaning of the hon. member for Halton when he speaks of his solicitude for the Minister of Agriculture. I think it is not so much that as it is solicitude for the best interests of the farmers of Canada. I have ventured on previous occasions, and I will again venture, to call the attention of this House to the fact that the interests of agriculture in this country, are large enough, great enough, important enough, to have a minister whose attention shall be undistracted, and solely and exclusively devoted to agriculture. The interests of the farming community require it, the magnitude of our farming operations justifies it, and from time to time I shall take occasion to press upon the minister, my good friend the minister-and, as I have said before, there is a very strong bond of union between us, because of the similarity of our pursuits-the importance of applying all his

energies, all his talent and all his industry to the interests of the farmers of Canada.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 69) to establish and provide for the government of the province of Alberta.-Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Mr. FITZPATRICK.: To repeat what I said a few days ago, there is not a single province in this Dominion to-day, as their Lordships of the Privy Council held in the second Manitoba case, which can exclusively make laws in relation to education. That subject is separately dealt with, and has its own code in section 93 of the British North America Act, by which section the power to make laws in relation to education is expressly limited.
1.	The right to denominational schools which any class of persons has by law in each province at the union must be preserved ;
2.	The powers, privileges and duties conferred in Upper Canada upon separate schools and school trustees of the Roman Catholics are extended to the dissentient schools of Protestants and Roman Catholics in Quebec ;
3.	Where in any province a system of separate or dissentient schools exist by law at the union, or is thereafter established, an appeal shall lie to the Governor General in Council from any act or decision of any provincial authorities affecting any right or privilege of the minority.
Manitoba has a special code, contained in section 22 of the Manitoba Act. This section 22, which, as Sir John Macdonald, who drafted the Bill and introduced it into this parliament, declared, was intended to establish a separate school system in Manitoba and to make section 93 applicable as far as possible to that province, failed to accomplish the object this parliament then had in view, as was subsequently determined by the judgment of the Privy Council in the -case above cited.
The Territorial draft Bill, called 'Haul-tain s Bill, which contains the provisions of the constitution which the inhabitants of the Northwest Territories asked this parliament to grant them, by section 2 makes applicable to the new province all the provisions of the British North America Act applicable ^ to all the provinces originally embraced in the union, except where inconsistent with the expressed provisions of that Bill.
There being in that Bill no provisions relating to education, the provisions of section 93 of the British North America Act would have become applicable to the new province.


Haughton Lennox: The effect, therefore, of that Bill would have been to preserve ' any right or privilege with respect to denominational schools (not merely separate) which any class of persons had by law in the province at the union.' If the words ' in the province at the union ' mean the /time at which the Territory came into the union as a province, the word ' law ' would include the provisions of section 11 of the Northwest Territories Act of 1875 and ordinances 29 and 30 of 1901.
The effect of section 16 of the Autonomy Bill would be no greater than the effect of the introduction of section 93 of the British North America Act by section 2 of the Territorial Bill, and clause 16 was only deemed necessary to remove doubt which had been expressed as to the meaning of the words ' province ' and ' at the union,' and to secure to the schools, whether public or separate, of the minority, the government aid which in practise they have always received, and which is necessary to place those schools ' in a position to play their necessary part in the scheme of national education.'
Section 16, as originally drafted, was intended to confirm the minority in the rights they now enjoy and makes :
First. Section 93 of -the British North America Act applicable to the new province as if it were a regularly organized province coming into the union at the date of the passing of this Act ;
Second. Re-enacts -section 11 of the Northwest Territories Act of 1875 ;
Third. Makes provision for the continuation to the schools of the minority of the grant now made in aid of education by or through the territorial government.
The effect of the section which it is proposed to substitute for the original section 16 is to limit the rights and privileges of the minority to those secured to them by chapters 29 and 30 of the ordinance^, to the exclusion of the rights -and privileges guaranteed ^either by section 11 of the Northwest Territories Act, 1875, or any other legislation in force iin the Territories with regard to any class of schools.
The differences in the rights and privileges under -section 11 of the Northwest Territories Act, 1875. and those under the ordinances, chapters 29 and 30, are as follows :
1. Section 11, Act 1875, empowering the'
' majority of the ratepayers of any .	.	.
portion of the Northwest Territories . .	.
to establish such schools therein as they may think fit,' and -the minority of the ratepayers in any i .	. portion of the Territories
to establish ' Protestant or Roman Catholic separate schools.'
The meaning of this section was expressed in the earlier school ordinances.
Under the present ordinances, chapters 29 and 30, the public schools are the schools of all the ratepayers ; so that under the present ordinances only three classes of schools are authorized, viz.:-
(a) Public (undenominational) schools ;

(b) Protestant separate ;
(e) Roman Catholic separate ;
And a separate school district can be established only in an existing public school district.
2. Under the ordinances no rights or privileges exist with respect to separate schools as contrasted with public schools, except the initial right of effecting the separation, which right carries with it resulting advantages hereinafter set out in detail.
Under the regulations there is one difference only :
' Authorized text-books, standards i-iv, approved, August, 1903 ; the Dominion (Catholic) Readers, first (part 1, part 2) and second. These are optional for Roman Catholic separate schools.'
The rights and privileges which result from the right of effecting the separation, and which the proposed substituted clause 16 preserves to the minority, whether Protestant or 'Roman Catholic, in a public school district, appear to be these :-
(1)	Right of separation-by the ordinance -common to Protestants and Roman Catholics alike ;
(2)	Half-hour religious instruction-by ordinance-to Protestants and Roman Catholics alike ; common to public and separate schools ;
(3)	First and second Catholic readers-by regulation ;
(4)	Right to elect trustees, who choose the teacher-by ordinance ; common to all schools.
I thought proper to carefully draft what I intended to say on the subject and read my opinion, so that there might be no doubt or uncertainty as to the position I take.


Robert Laird Borden: I think the hon. minister has adopted a very proper course in carefully preparing and reading, as a judgment, so to speak, his opinion as the law officer of the Crown on a question which has been discussed a good deal in this House. I do not know whether it is the intention of the hon. minister to go on this afternoon with clause 16, and move the amendment


Charles Fitzpatrick: I thought, that, in the absence of the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) we might allow clause 16, the amendment to which is to be moved by the Prime Minister, to remain over so that my hon. friend . (Mr. R. L. Borden) might have an opportunity to consider the matter. We might take up one of the other clauses of the Bill now.


Charles Marcil: Clause 16 stands.
On clause 15.


Charles Fitzpatrick: I will ask to have that kept over. Part of it has reference to joint stock companies. I am drafting a clause in view of the objection made by the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster). We might take that up to-morrow and in the meantime go on with clause 29.
On clause 20 :
The Dominion lands in the said province shall continue to be vested in the Crown and administered by the government of Canada for the purposes of Canada, subject to the provisions of the Northwest Territories Act, as amended, with respect to road allowances and roads or trails as in force on the thirtieth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and five, which shall apply to the said province with the substitution therein of the said province for the Northwest Territories.
2. The Rocky Mountains Park shall continue to be subject to the provisions of the Acts of the parliament of Canada applying thereto and to regulations made or to be made thereunder; provided that the provincial laws shall apply to and be operative within the said park so far as they are not inconsistent with such Acts and regulations.


Mr. ARMSTRONG.: If I am not out of order, I would ask the Minister of Justice (Mr. Fitzpatrick) if it is possible to have a reprint of these Bills with the amendments as proposed by the government so arranged that we could readily turn to them and deal with them.
Mr*. Fitzpatrick;. The practice is
when the Bill is in committee, to prepare the amendments and have them read here so that they may go on ' Hansard ' that hon. members may have an opportunity of reading them ; and then have the Bill reprinted before the third reading. If it would suit the convenience of the committee, I should be glad to have a reprint made. I think, however, there are only three clauses left over. And it might take a little time, as just now work cannot be rapidly pushed through the Printing Bureau.
I will be glad to give the hon. gentleman (Mr. Armstrong) personally typewritten copies should he desire them.


William Findlay Maclean: What is the object of the change ?


Charles Fitzpatrick: The addition of the subsection is to provide that the control of the Rocky Mountain Park shall remain in the federal government as it has been heretofore. That is the only thing. Of course, the intention of the section generally is to retain in the Dominion government the public lands of the territory.


Robert Laird Borden: The provisions with respect to lands in the draft Bill submitted by Mr. Haultain are contained in sections 18, 19, 20 and 21, which are as follows :
18. All lands belonging to the Crown situate in the province of	other '.han lands reserved by statute or Order in Council, for the use of Indians or for and earned by any person or corporation, and lands entered for homestead or pre-einption, but not granted, and all sums due and payable on the first day of January, 1903, for such lands shall belong to the province.

19.	All mines, minerals, timber and royalties
belonging to the Crown situate, being or arising in the province of	, and all sums due
and payable on the first day of January, 1903, for such mines, minerals, timber or royalties shall belong to the province.
20.	The province shall receive and retain all the public property of the Northwest Territories not otherwise disposed of in this Act.
21.	All buildings in the Northwest Territories belonging to Canada used or intended for court houses, jails, and land titles offices and for residence and offices of the Lieutenant Governor and government of the Northwest Territories, together with all appurtenances connected therewith, and all moneys, the proceeds from the sale or leasing of school lands in the Northwest Territories, and all moneys forming
[DOT] the assurance fund under provisions of the Territories Real Property Act, and the Lands Titles Act, 1894, shall be the property of the province of	.
These are all the provisions, at least all that I have noticed, relating to the disposal of lands which are contained in the draft Bill submitted by the government of the Northwest Territories some two or three years ago. I assume that my hon. friend (Mr. Fitzpatrick) has had these provisions under consideration-possibly not so much under consideration as would have been the case if the government had adopted a different policy from that embodied in their Bill. But he has probably had them under consideration sufficiently to answer a question which I now wish to ask. That question is : Whether, assuming that the policy of the government had been the reverse of that which has been announced, that is, assuming that they had thought proper to hand over to the control and administration of the new provinces these public lands which are not at present used for the public service of Canada, would the provisions of these four sections which I have read, in the opinion of the government, be reasonable provisions ? In other words do these sections provide for reservation to the government of Canada of such land, public buildings, &c., as might properly. be reserved to the government of Canada if a policy the reverse of that which has been announced had been entered upon by the government in connection with the establishment of the new provinces ?


Charles Fitzpatrick: I have not considered the sections from that standpoint. As we have decided to retain the control of the lands, it seemed unnecessary to consider the matter. Such sections as my hon. friend refers to would have been necessary had it been intended to divest ourselves of that title. I had not looked at it from the other standpoint whether or not we would have left to us that share or part of the public domain which, taking into account the distribution made at the time of confederation, would have accrued to the Crown under the British North America Act.


Robert Laird Borden: I may inform the Minister of Justice that it is probable an |


Robert Laird Borden: amendment will be moved to this clause, and in moving that amendment I desire to give such information as will make it a reasonable amendment, and one which will fully protect public rights.
Mx\ FITZPATRICK. I will be prepared to answer that question to-morrow afternoon. But I would like to consult the officials of the department, who are more familiar with these details than I am.


Robert Laird Borden: I will be much obliged to the minister. I think it would facilitate our work, perhaps.


Charles Fitzpatrick: We might perhaps discuss the general principle.


Robert Laird Borden: While we have had, of course, a great deal of discussion of a general character on the question, sometimes we can endeavour to test each other's conclusions a little better by short discussions in committee. As I understand the policy of the government on this question, it is largely based upon the necessity of the retention of these lands for the purpose of immigration. I realize that there have been other reasons put forward by individual members on the other side of the House ; but so far as the policy of the government is concerned, my understanding is that if it were not for the supposed danger to the policy of immigration upon which the country has entered, we might have expected that the lands would be handed over to the Northwest provinces for the purpose of administration and control. It is true that one hon. gentleman opposite, speaking when he was not a member of the administration, I refer to the Minister of the Interior, took the view that from the standpoint of the finances of the new province it would be better for the government of Canada to retain these lands, to administer and control them at the expense of Canada, and to make the provision for carrying on the government of the Northwest provinces which have been made in the Bill we are now discussing. The Prime Minister, however, in introducing the measure and in speaking to it subsequently, has not, I thin^r, put forward any such contention as that. He has based his argument solelv upon the ground to which I have already alluded, except that he drew an argument from the example in this respect of the government of the United States which has retained control of the administration of the public lands in that country. So far as immigration .is concerned, I am bound to say, with all due deference to the views of hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House, that I have not yet heard any argument or any statement of facts which leads me to believe that the new provinces would not as thoroughly conserve the interest of the country as a whole in respect to immigration into the

Northwest, as the government of this Dominion might be expected to do. Det us consider for a moment what has been the trend and object of the immigration policy of the present administration during the last four or five years. It is a complaint in some of the eastern provinces, as I personally know, that the money which has been expended on immigration by the government of Canada during the past four or five years has been expended practically altogether in the interest of the Northwest Territories and for the purpose of attracting immigration to those portions of the country. I am not for the moment concerned with discussing the question as to whether that complaint is well founded. As a matter of fact we know that the efforts of the government, if they had any result at all, have resulted in attracting immigration to the Northwest Territories rather than to other portions of the country. I am inclined to think that the immigration to the Northwest Territories has been the result, not so much of any efforts on the part of the government or of its officials, as of the advertisements which the Northwest Territories have received by reason of the splendid crops which have been raised in that country, and by reason of the enormous amounts of wheat it has sent forth to the markets of the world. But if the immigration which has come to Canada during the past four or five years has come chiefly to the Northwest Territories, if an expenditure of $600,000 or $700,000 is to be made annually for the purpose of keeping up or possibly of increasing that immigration, is it to be considered that the people of the Northwest are likely to embark upon any policy which would have the result of deterring immigrants from coming into that country ? We are told, I think by my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior, certainly by other gentlemen, that an immigrant going into the Northwest is not of value so much to the Northwsst as he is to the people of Canada as a whole. I would not be inclined to look at the matter 'from that standpoint. 1 would think that when you send into the new province of Alberta for example 100,000 or 150,000 immigrants each year, the settlement and development of the country thus created must be a very potent factor in increasing the value of the possessions of the people of the Northwest who are already settled there. There cannot, it seems to me, be any doubt about that. It is quite true that that immigration may be a source of increased expenditure to the government of the new provinces, and for that reason some provision must be made for such increased expenditure. But to say that an immigration of 100,000 or 150,000 annually is not of benefit to the people of the Northwest Territories, seems to me to arrive in short at this conclusion, that it is not the interest of the people of the
Northwest that there should be any more immigration into that country. That is the logical result of it, and that is a conclusion, I am sure, that no one of us would concur in. Then if I have made my premise good that the people of the Northwest of Canada are interested not only equally with the rest of Canada, but to a far greater extent than the rest of Canada, in attracting immigration to that country, in having it opened up and settled, then surely we might reasonably arrive at the conclusion that the people of the Northwest, through their representatives in their legislature, would not embark upon any policy or undertake any action which would be inconsistent with the best interests of the country viewed from the standpoint to which I have just alluded. Therefore it seems to me that so far as that particular aspect of the case is concerned, the government have not founded their policy upon good and substantial grounds in declaring that these lands shall continue to be administered and controlled by the Dominion as a whole.
And in that connection I might point out to the gentlemen who sit on the Treasury benches the words of the Minister of the Interior, words it is true, uttered not exactly in this connection, but equally apt and equally appropriate to this occasion. That hon. gentleman said that in his opinion the government of Canada should lose no time in ridding itself of the control and administration of distant territory-and for very good reason. Does any one for a moment contend that the people of the Northwest Territories are less capable of dealing with their own lands than the people of Ontario, Quebec or the maritime provinces ? Is there any special advantage or reason in making it necessary that the people of the Northwest Territories should come to Ottawa or send to Ottawa for the purpose of dealing with their lands, their mines, their minerals, or their timber ? For what reason should the people in the Northwest Territories, 2,500 miles away from Ottawa, be obliged to have these matters dealt with at the capital of the Dominion instead of by their own officials at their own provincial capital. For what reason should these matters be considered by 215 men in the House of Commons of whom only a small proportion come from the west, rather than by the people of the province itself in their own legislature every one of whom has an intimate personal knowledge of the local affairs of that country ? For all these reasons it seems to me that the policy upon which the government has entered is a mistaken policy, and one which is not in the interests either of the people of the Northwest Territories, the people of the new provinces, or the people of Canada as a whole. Then my hon. friend the Prime Minister alluded to the example of the United States. I think some hon. gentleman from the Northwest

Territories on the other side of the House during this debate has expressed his apprehension that if these lands were handed over to the control and administration of the provinces we might expect maladministration. I venture to think that that suggestion should be repudiated by every hon. gentleman in this House and especially by every hon. gentleman from the Northwest Territories. I think these people are as fully alive to their rights, as fully alive to the necessity of utilizing the public domain in the public interest as the people of any part of Canada. The brief observation of the conditions in that country which I was enabled to make some two and a half years ago and my knowledge derived from some acquaintance with the public affairs of this country in connection with the Northwest Territories, would lead me to the conclusion that they are at least equally alive to the value of the public domain as are the people of the rest of Canada and certainly we might expect that the people of the Northwest Territories would be at least as much alive to the value of their own domain to themselves as the people of the whole of Canada would be alive to the value of that domain to the people of the Northwest Territories. We are referred to the example of the United .States. Well, if we are to look to the example of the United States, do we find any very great encouragement so far as the hope of wise administration is concerned ? I think that if we look to the example of the United States we would rather reach the opposite conclusion, than the one at which the Prime Minister has arrived. We would find in the United States that administration of distant territory in the departments of the government at Washington has not been conducive to good legislation, good administration, good executive action, and if I am not mistaken-although I have not refreshed my memory recently on this point-I think that the administration of public lands by the central government in the United States of America upon more than one occasion has been attended with grave scandals. For these reasons it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that the grounds advanced by the Prime Minister to the House in support of this policy are not well founded, and that it would be in the interest of the people in the provinces, in the interest of the people of Canada as a whole, to entrust the administration of those lands to the people of the provinces, and in doing that we would be doing exactly that which the British government has done so far as the public lands in Canada are concerned. Every one who has the slightest acquaintance with constitutional history knows that the idea of British statesmen years ago was to retain the control and administration of public lands of all the British dominions in North America, and to administer those lands not for the benefit of British subjects residing in Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
British North America, but for the benefit of the empire at large. That was the view expressed by British statesmen of years ago, that was the policy embarked upon by British statesmen years ago, that is precisely the policy on which the government of this country has embarked in connection with these lands in the Northwest Territories, and as the British government and British statesmen long years ago abandoned, and wisely abandoned, the policy upon which they then entered, so I venture to think it will be found that the policy on which the government of this country has entered with respect to the administration of lands in the Northwest Territories is equally unwise, and will have to be abandoned sooner or later with the result that complications will arise in respect of provincial subsidies and financial assistance which would not arise if the government had adopted the policy which has been adopted by the home government with respect to the public domain in Canada. What would have been the result in British North America long before this if the home administration, the imperial government had insisted upon retaining the public domain throughout the British possessions in North America and administering those lands, not for the benefit of the people of this country, but for the benefit of the empire at large ? Could any one realize what the result would have been ? Can any one at this moment, looking back over the history of this country for the past 50 or 60 years, have any doubt as to what the result would have been ? It seems to me that the same reason, to a certain degree at least, exists for giving the control and administration of these lands to the people in the provinces and I for one have in conclusion to express my regret that the government have not seen fit to adopt that policy.


Mr. OLIVER.: This question has been gone over already in the House since the Bill came up, and I do not know that anything new requiring special attention has been brought before the House on this occasion. The contention as I understand it is that the province is the better authority for the administration of the land. That contention has already been placed before the House and in opposition to it has been placed the contention that the Dominion is the better authority for controlling these lands. There is no question involved as to the respective business ability of the people of the Territories and of the Dominion. There is no question as to the respective honesty of administration on the part of the territorial or provincial government as compared with that of the Dominion. I presume there are honest men in the Territories as well as in other parts of the Dominion and that the honest men are fairly represented in the territorial or provincial governments.


Robert Laird Borden: I only mentioned that because one gentleman from tlie Territories pointed out a danger from that source which I did not think existed more than would exist here.


Frank Oliver: Probably not. I can only repeat that the Dominion government under the necessity of the case, under our system of confederation, necessarily has a greater interest in securing the establishment of a settler upon land in the Northwest than the provincial government has. As I understand it the Dominion revenue is principally derived from customs and excise, and each individual in the country contributes on an average about $8 or $40 per year for a family of five. I do not know that these figures are exactly correct but they will do for the purpose of comparison. When you consider the different expenditures of those settled on lands in the Northwest as compared with the dwellers in eastern cities, I think it will be admitted that a family in the Northwest Territories is worth a great deal more than $40 per year to the Dominion revenue. I would be inclined to think that such a settler's family established on their land would be worth perhaps $100 per year instead of $40. To the provincial revenue they are worth absolutely nothing ; the province does not levy direct taxation upon these settlers. It is true that a school district or a local improvement district may be organized and the settlers may contribute to them by direct taxation, but under the system that has prevailed so far, the establishment of a school district or a local improvement district does not mean relief to the provincial treasury. Every group of settlers coming into the Territories may be taken to mean the establishment of a new school district and local improvement district, which in turn means a direct charge upon the provincial government just as their settlement means a direct contribution of the Dominion treasury. The local government is consequently not in the same position to derive revenue from the influx of settlers that the Dominion government is, and therefore it cannot afford to spend money in attracting settlers. The Dominion government for a number of years has expended about a million dollars a year to secure an influx of immigrants, and no provincial government would be in a position to make such an expenditure because there is no source from which, according to our system of confederation, the provincial government could acquire a compensating amount in revenue. The influx of settler^ means increased revenue to the [DOT] Dominion, irrespective of the value of the land. The Dominion government can well afford to spend large sums in attracting the attention of prospective immigrants and in providing for the security of life and 191
property throughout these Territories, which has a very important bearing upon the question of immigration and which at present entails an expenditure of about half a million dollars per year. As a pure matter of business, as the plainest and simplest business transaction, if we expect to have inducements held out to people to settle on our vacant lands, and if we expect to have law and order maintained, there is no question but that we have better grounds for looking to the Dominion authorities than to the provincial authorities. If we do not reach that conclusion by any other process we might very well reach it by looking at the conditions in the various provinces. British Columbia has a very large land area which is under the control and administration of the province, but so far as I know, within recent years British Columbia has not spent a dollar in attracting immigration to that province. The province of Ontario has a vast area of vacant land, and I do not know that Ontario has spent a dollar in attracting immigrants within recent years. The same may be said of Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, all of which provinces own their own lands. The reason for this is that the provinces cannot afford to do so ; there is not enough in it 'for these provincial governments. The interests of the entire Dominion depend upon the successful filling up of these prairies with desirable settlers and neither the Dominion nor any interest in the Dominion can afford to place the responsibility in hands other than those best fitted by circumstances to discharge that responsibility. It is not by reason of any greater business ability, or any greater honesty, but because the Dominion gets $40 revenue per family while the provincial government is billed with $20 say, annually of additional expense for each family. Another feature of the case is this. The leader of the opposition has said, and said truly, that the influx of settlers increases the value of the land and that the increased value of the land is of benefit to the province. But, we cannot have an influx of settlers unless we take means to secure it, and the success of the immigration policy is due mainly to the fact that the settlers have been able to get free lands. We send immigration agents to different parts of the world ; we supply them with literature and they give information to the best of their ability, and there are no doubt good crops in that country. These factors are a consideration in securing immigration, but the main consideration is the free grant of land. It is the Dominion which can afford to give the land away and not the province. The increase in the value of the land which benefits the province and the people already in it, comes from the general influx of immigrants which is attracted, not by the lands which directly receive the increase of value by the coming in of the



settlers, but by reason of tlie land which is given away. The tendency of the provincial government naturally would be to direct settlement so as to increase the value of the land already occupied, just as the tendency of the Dominion government is to secure settlers on the lands which they have to give away. The process of increasing the value of lands can be carried on independently to a limited degree, but as any man who has ever lived in that country must know, it is the spread of settlement over the still vacant areas that is really the main cause of the increase of land values, If for any reason attention is withdrawn from this effort to spread settlers over the yet unoccupied territory, the tendency to increase in the value of land now occupied, would be retarded to the extent to which the effort was relaxed.
I think the experience of the past few years has shown clearly, in the first place, that the results in regard to the settlement of the lands in the Territories have been satisfactory. Those results to the whole Dominion have been so very definite and so very satisfactory, that we cannot afford-it would not be sound public policy -to change a system which has resulted so satisfactorily, in the face of the experience which we have fin regard to the pro-[DOT] vinees which have the ownership of their lands. It may lie said, and it is quite true, that a government sitting here -in Ottawa might at some future time reverse the present policy of free lands in the Territories. If that were done, it would reverse the argument which I have made here to-day. Certainly the government that was in power untlil 1896 did not have the policy of the land for the people which has prevailed since; but I believe that the people of this country, through the experience of the past few years, have arrived at a definite understanding that the policy of free lands is the policy for the wellbeing of this Dominion, and I can scarcely believe that even a change of government would bring about a change of that policy. The people of the Dominion at large have become so well aware of the benefits resulting from the rapid settlement of the Northwest through the giving of its lands free to settlers, that I cannot imagine any Dominion government reversing that policy. But a provincial government cramped for money, as all our provincial governments are, deriving no dfirect revenue from the influx of settlers, but carrying an increased burden by reason of every ship load of immigrants that arrived would be likely to adopt a policy of administration of the lands for revenue, which would be injurious in the ultimate end of the province itself, and still more to the whole Domin'ion.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The experience of the province of Ontario is the very reverse of that. In that province the land is not only Mr. OLIVER.
sold at a very small figure, at one time as low as twenty cents an acre, but there are free grants as well.


Frank Oliver: That was not the point I raised. The point was that the government of Ontario has not made expenditures for the purpose of promoting immigration in order to settle up those lands.


Mr. INGRAM.: Yes, it has an agent at Liverpool now, and has had for years.


Frank Oliver: Even if the hon. gentlemen hold that the province of Ontario has an immigration service, the facts show that that service does not produce the results that have been' produced by the Dominion service, and I take for granted that there is some reason for tnat inherent in the case, and not in any lack of desire on the part of the Ontario government to secure the settlement of the lands. It cannot afford to go to the expense that the Dominion government can.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The great reason why Ontario does not get the bulk of the immigrants whom it otherwise would get is the fact that so much prairie land has been opened up for settlement, on which people prefer to go and get immediate returns rather than go on timber land and clear it up. I want to put myself on record as being in favour of the provinces having their lands. We have only one instance in the Dominion of a province not owning its land, that is, Manitoba, and we bave bad complaints from that province ever since it has been a province, and applications for the right to control its lands. In view of that experience, it seems to me that we should avoid committing the same blunder in connection with the new provinces which we are establishing. The hon. gentleman says the Dominion has a greater interest in securing settlers than the province has. I do not think it has, and I do not see why it should have. It is said that the province would not have as much interest as the Dominion, because it would not have free grant lands ; but all the land in the Northwest is not free grant. While a portion of it is free, as is the case in Ontario, we still reserve a portion that may be sold to recoup the public treasury for the outlay. The Dominion is following very much the same system as is being followed by some of the provinces. We gave the province of Manitoba a portion of the swamp lands ; it applied for more, and complained because we withheld what we did. If it is a grievance to the people of Manitoba that the Dominion withheld the public lands, it must be equally so to the people of tie Northwest Territories. I see by a return which has been brought down that there are 938,813,210 acres of land in the Territories not yet taken up. A large portion of that is not fit for settlement; but as settlement goes on and improvements take place, and

drainage is made throughout the country, this land which is to-day not fit for settlement will much of it become fit for settlement. Who will make the improvements ? The settlers. Whom do the settlers belong to ? The province in which the lands are located, and if the province makes the improvements in those lands which are not settled to-day and increases them in value, will the province not claim to be entitled to the increased value resulting from its expenditure and labour ? Will that not be regarded as a very important grievance in the future? I think it will be. The land for which we give these new provinces a return we estimate at the value of $1.50 an acre. Much of this land, if held back, may increase to $8, $10 or $12 an acre. Will the province be satisfied with the moiety of the return which they get to-day ? I do not think they will. They will be applying for a larger subsidy in lieu of that land, or for the land which ought to belong to them; because the British North America Act, I submit, contemplated that every acre of public land in each province should belong to the province when it came into the confederation. The hon. gentleman says the present system is very satisfactory, but they have never been able to test any other system, because it is the only one that has been in effect.
How long will they remain satisfied wnen they are set apart as provinces of their own and have an opportunity of testing the other system, such as Manitoba has had for several years? Every year they will be coming back and complaining that while they were treated with apparent liberality, there was really no liberality at all and what belonged to them was withheld. They will point out to the increased value of these lands given to them by their labour. which increased value inures only to the benefit of the federal government, and they will continually be demanding a readjustment of the financial arrangement. We have heard some members of the Northwest say that the people are perfectly satisfied, but if so, why are they sending petitions and resolutions against these land clauses ? Years ago I put myself on record with regard to this very question when I claimed that the province of Manitoba should be given its own land, and I take the same position to-day.
At six o'clock, committee took recess.
After Recess.
Committee resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr.   BLAIX@: The discussion of clause No. 20 has brought out certain statements that, I think, do not do justice to the province of Ontario. The Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) has ventured to say that this province has not been spending a dollar 1914
towards the location of settlers in the northern district. The hon. gentleman is not well informed on that point. If he will study the history of provincial government in Ontario, he will learn that year after year that government has been spending a considerable amount of money surveying new districts and locating settlers. I have here a report on the province prepared by the direction of the Commissioner of Crown Lands, and published in 1903, containing a great deal of valuable information, and showing that the government of the province have devoted a good deal of attention to settling our northern districts. This shows that the agricultural lands explored in the several districts of northern Ontario are as follows :
Agricultural lands explored.
Acres.
Nipissing	 1,920,000
Algomar	 11,200,000
Thunder Bay	 2,560,000
Rainy River	 384,000
I do not say that all this land is suitable for agriculture, but if we are to believe this report-and I suppose it cannot be questioned-a considerable portion of it is farming land. We know that during the discussion on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Bill in this House last session and the session before much stress was laid by hon. members on the other side of the House upon the fact that a large and valuable clay belt, heretofore unknown, existed in the northern part of Ontario comprising many millions of acres of valuable land. There have been located and sold in New Ontario, during 1901, according to the returns of the Crown land agents, farms of some 100 to 160 acres each to the number of 2,541, amounting to 330,000 acres, and representing a population of nearly 10,000 souls. These official figures, however, do not fully represent the total influx of people into New Ontario. Let me give a comparison of the increase of population in the northern part of this province ;
1891.	1901. Increase
Muskoka and Parry Sound 6,919	45,356	38,437Nipissing	'.	..	1,791	36,552	34,761Algoma	
7,018	63,669	56,651Total	
15,728 145,577 129,849
So my hon. friend will see that the province of Ontario has not altogether neglected the settlement of the northern districts. Then it is to be borne in mind that the provincial government are constructing a railway, largely at the cost of the province, from North Bay northward to the Timis-kaming district, which will open up a large area for settlement. Concerning the Timis-kaming country, let me read a short extract from this report :
The Timiskaming country forms the southeastern extremity of the great clay belt, the ex-t istence of which was established by the exten-I sive explorations undertaken by the provincial.

government in 1901. Beginning at this point it stretches in a northeasterly direction with a slight break to the Height of Land across the district of Nipissing and Algoma and into Thunder Bay district, comprising a total area of some 24,500 square miles or 15,680,000 acres. This almost unbroken stretch of good farming land is nearly three-quarters as great in extent as the whole settled portion of the province south of Lake Nipissing and the French and Mattawa rivers.
Now, let me give the railway mileage in
that country :
Railway Mileage.
Miles.
Muskoka and	Parry	Sound	 184
Algoma	  537
Thunder bay	and	Rainy	river.. ..	873
Nipissing	 210
Total	 1,804
In 1891 there were only 12 miles of railway in that northern section of the province. I do not venture to say that the Canadian Pacific Railway system was constructed by the provincial government, but the province of Ontario had something to do with the construction of that railway, and the people of that province contributed largely towards the expense. And one of the purposes they had in view was the opening up of the northern section of the province. The production of iron ore for 1902 was 359,288 tons, most of which was smeltered in Ontario. Mining operations were commenced at Sudbury in 1886, and the district now furnishes about half the world's supply of nickel. So it will be seen that the provincial government have been giving some attention to the mining interests of northern Ontario. The copper-nickel matte is at present shipped to the United States, where the final stages of the processes of extraction and refining are carried on. That policy I. do not agree with. I am in favour of a policy that will cause these final operations to be carried on in Canada. I hope the time will come when this mineral will be completely refined in Canada and the wages earned by Canadians. This is a policy that should receive the support, not only of the government of Ontario, but of this government as well. In 1902 11,890,000 pounds of nickel were produced, valued in the matte and before being exported for refining at $2,210,961. And in the same year, 1902, 4,932 tons of copper were produced, valued in the form of matte at $680,283.
Now, I would like to say something of what lias been done by the provincial government for the settlement of that part of the province. I may say that it has been a disappointment to the people of the province of Ontario that a larger number of the sons and daughters of the province do not go to northern Ontario rather than to the west. One of the reasons of that is that the policy of the Ontario government-and I do not wish to refer to this in a party political sense-has not altogether been in Mr. BLAIN.
the interest of the people of the province. Let me give you an example. In 1901 the legislature of the province passed an Act to provide for the appropriation of certain* lands to be given to the volunteers who had served in South Africa and to those who had served on the frontier in the Fenian Raids of 1866. One reason urged in favour of this policy was that, of the men returning from South Africa, many would want to take up farming pursuits, and would be more likely to settle in the northern part of Ontario if the provincial government were, liberal with them. But there is a clause here over which a great deal of comment has arisen by the people of Ontario, and which, I venture to say, is one of the chief reasons why a large number of the voters in the northern part of Ontario voted against the government in power in the province at that time. Clause 9 reads thus :
Every location of Crown land under this Act shall be subject to the reservation of the pine timber.
That is, they were willing to give the land to the volunteer, but they reserve to the provincial government the pine timber : in other words, the volunteer could go and settle upon the farm, and he could clear the pine timber that he needed to construct his house or outbuildings ; but if he ventured to put an axe to any portion of the pine timber upon his own farm, to sell then he had to pay to the provincial government timber dues. Thus a large number of volunteers complained bitterly, and a contention arose in the province of Ontario upon this question. There was a division in the House, but the government of the day insisted that in their opinion the better way to settle that northern country was to reserve the pine timber. However, when this question was tested before the electors in the northern part of the province they declared that that kind of policy was not in the best interests of the people, and was not calculated to invite settlers to locate in the northern part of the province. It is a policy which will now, I suppose, be made right, a policy that will of necessity be made right in the near future, because the people of all shades of politics in the province will be in favour of a liberal policy to the settler. so that he shall have the right to cut piue timber to sell if he wishes, and put his money in the bank and thereby help to make* his home prosperous and happy. We must keep in view the fact that to-day the province of Ontario has an agent in the old country, and has had for some time, Mr. Byrne, who is stationed at Liverpool. The Ontario government has also had for the last year a special agent for the purpose of bringing out hundreds of men to engage in agricultural pursuits, it has been expending a large amount of money in this way for the purpose of settling up the northern part of the province. Let me also point out that

tlie policy of the provincial government is to give free grants of lands. To hear some of our lion, friends from the west, one would almost think that the people of the province of Ontario were not given free farms in the northern parts of the province to settle. Let me read from the regulations under the ' Free Grants and Homesteads Act: '
Persons desiring to take '.he benefit of the Free Grants Act must apply to the Crown lands agent for the district in which they intend to settle. The agent will give them information as to what land is open for settlement, and will furnish them with printed forms of affidavits which are necessary to be made by the applicants.
On being properly located by a Crown lands agent and on .performing of settlement duties, a single man over eighteen, or a married man, without children under eighteen residing with him, or the female head of a family having children under eighteen residing with her, is entitled to a free grant of one hundred acres. If the hundred acres selected consists of a considerable portion of rock, swamp or waste land, the Commissioner of Crown Lands may make an allowance for such waste land, and may increase the quantity of land located to any number of acres not exceeding two hundred acres. The male head of a family having a child or children under eighteen ''esiding with him or her may be located for two hundred acres as a free grant. And such male head of a family is permitted to purchase another hundred acres at fifty cents per acre cash at the time of location.
So you see there is some inducement 1'ot people to come from the old country and elsewhere, and for the surplus population of Ontario ami the other older provinces of Canada, to locate in the northern section of Ontario. I do not understand why the government of the two provinces that are to he created on the 1st day of July next-if these Bills get through the House before the 1st of July next, there seems to be some little doubt about that at the rate they are going ; however, when the two provinces are inaugurated and each sends twenty-five representatives to their legislature for the purpose of taking care of their provincial interests, these men will represent every section of those two great provinces, they will understand, the local conditions, they will understand the requirements of the people who are residing there and who are coming in to settle ; and when they meet together in their provincial legislatures I am of the opinion that if the lands were given to the provinces, these 25 men in each legislature would be well able to administer them in the interests of the people; and if, after due consideration, they decided that the best policy was to give the lands free to the settlers, or if they adopted that policy and it was found after experience that a small charge should be placed upon the land, then it would be for them to do as they wish ; and if these representatives did not adopt a policy in the best interests of the people, the electors would
take care of them when they went back for re-election. So they would have the matter entirely in their own hands, they would have an opportunity of developing the country and appropriating their lands in the way they considered best. Men can go into those provinces now and receive free grant lands ; but in five years from to-day it may be considered prudent that the new settler should contribute a small amount per acre for his land. I do not think that would be a very harsh provision, the proceeds would go towards helping the settlers. This would bring in a considerable amount of money to the provincial treasury, and if they did not have the land they would have the money. I think it was stated the other day by the Minister of the Interior that the new provinces would require an enormous amount of money to build their roads and other purposes, and it would be for them to say whether it would not be good policy to derive some revenue from the lands. If these lands were given to the provinces, as I think they should be, they would still form part and parcel of the Dominion of Canada, they would be given to the sons and daughters of the people who live in older Canada, men who are going from other parts to help develop that country. I do not think that the federal government at Ottawa is in the better position to administer and control these lands, and to adopt the best policy for the settlement of that country. I am rather inclined to think that a provincial government would be in a better position to administer the lands for the best interests of the country. Therefore I am not in favour of clause 20 of this Bill.
I submit that in my humble opinion the policy of giving the lands to the provinces as they were given in Ontario and Quebec, would* offer a stronger inducement to people to go out and settle there. I think it would be one of the very best policies that could be adopted by this government for the further settlement of that western country.


Mr. A. A. WRIGHT.: If it be true, as the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Blain) states, that it is possible we may be discussing this Bill until the 1st day of July, there is one feature of this Bill that I think we might spend a good deal of the intervening time in considering, and which affords one reason why the Dominion should own the lands in the Northwest instead of handing them over, to the provinces. As you know, Mr. Chairman, there is a large extent of territory in both of those to-be-provinces of what is called arid lands; but these lands, when they are properly irrigated become the most fertile and productive lands we have in the Northwest. It is true also that in the neighbouring state of Montana, there is a large amount of the same kind of land. Now in order to carry out this irrigation scheme it is necesasry to have a sufficient amount of water to irrigate these lands. It so happens that there are two of

the most important rivers which have their sources in the United States, one of these is the St. Mary and the other is the Milk river. Both these rivers have their sources in the United States and run into our territory, and from these rivers we derive the water which will be required to irrigate those lands.
Now, when we started to do this, and to draw water from the 'Milk river which runs for over 300 miles in our territory and then Suds its way back again into the United States, the American government found fault with us for doing this and difficulties arose. I wish now to draw your attention particularly to this fact, because in my opinion it is one of thj most important features connected with this Bill. When the American government found out that we undertook to draw water from this river they said it should not be done. They sent delegates down here to the Dominion government to protest against our doing anything of the kind and said that they owned these waters themselves inasmuch as the source of this river was in the United States. If we had the provinces owning the so-called arid lands, and they undertook to draw water from these rivers about which there is dispute, we would not' be able to handle the difficulty in the same manner as we would if it was owned by the Dominion of Canada alone. How does the matter stand ? When they found that we were going to take water from the Milk river they protested against it and said that they had a prior claim themselves, because they had undertaken to draw water from the sources of these rivers. Then they proposed another scheme, that they should dam the water of St. Mary lake and Milk lake and then by increasing the water hold it there, draw it through the Milk river through our territory and get a large quantity of water to supply the valleys of the Milk river in Montana with water. When they tried to arrange that matter with our officers the scheme fell through. Then the secretary of the interior of the United States took the matter up along with the present president of the United States, and intimated that he would pursue a more vigorous policy, and that they would guard their own interests. The result is that $1,000,000 was set apart by the United States government in order that they might dam the waters of these two lakes in the United States, and then if no arrangements could be made with the Canadian government whereby they could take the water through the Milk river and into the United States in Montana, they would take the water and divert it from our rivers entirely, bringing it into one of their own streams, the Cut Bank creek, and then into another the Maria river, and then dig a canal and take it through the lower waters of the Milk'river to supply their own territory with water, depriving us of our supply. Now you see here Mr. WRIGHT.
is the very important feature of this matter and it is necessary that we should guard against any difllculty of that kind. They now propose that Mr. Grunskie, a reclamation engineer shall inspect the sources of these rivers, inspect our irrigation arrangements in Canada and then report to the United States government who shall see what terms they shall mete out to us. We are all anxious-I am, and I believe every one is -that we should live on friendly terms with the United States, but you know, and the House knows, that the United States has not always treated us in the most friendly manner possible. You must bear in mind that they purchased the Alaskan territory, not because they wanted that territory, not because they had any necessity for it themselves, but because they wanted to deprive us of as large a portion of the seashore on the Pacific ns they possibly could and prevent us having any harbours on that coast if they could avoid it. We have not treated the United States in that manner I can assure you. When they had their civil war we sent at least 30',000 of our men over there who fought for the freedom of the United States under the Stars and Stripes, and to-day the bones of hundreds of our brave sons lie bleaching on the plains of Tennessee and Kentucky, where they died fighting for the cause of the Union. And when the American government wanted to bring armed troops through our territory from Detroit to Buffalo we allowed them to go over our old Great Western Railway without auy trouble whatever. On th:e other hand, when we had our little difficulty in the Northwest and wanted to take armed troops up through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, how did they treat us ? They said : No, w'e will not allow you to take armed troops through our canals. The consequence was we had to debark our troops, convey them across the portage, and embark them again causing great inconvenience, expense and delay. That is the way we have treated the United States. Now you know how the American government is trying to treat us. If they propose to treat us in the same manner in this case as they have done on previous occasions, I think it is time to look about and to see if it is not advisable that the Dominion government should own these lands, so that if difficulties of this kind arise as they are almost certain to, we would be in a position to handle them without any trouble, and instead of the United States government having to treat with two or three provinces in the Northwest it would be able to treat directly with the Dominion government and we shall see that our rights are properly protected and that no undue advantage is taken of us by the United States.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I would like to ask the Minister of the Interior if he can give us

any idea of the acreage of unsold land in these two new provinces? In the return we have the acreage in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Assiniboia, some 122,309,000. Has he any information to give us on that subject ?


Charles Fitzpatrick: If the Minister of the Interior will allow me. If my hon. friend will look at sessional paper 97 on page 3 he will find there the information he requires. He will find that in Alberta there are 38,100,901 acres.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I have that. But are the three provinces all included in the two new provinces ?


Charles Fitzpatrick: Yes.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Is any portion of Atha-baska ?


Charles Fitzpatrick: Yes.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: How much ?


Charles Fitzpatrick: All of Athabaska.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: There is none of Franklin or Mackenzie, which is 155,600 more ; that would be approximately 277,000,000 acres of land in the two provinces that is still unsold. Does not the minister see that we have recognized that the beneficial ownership of that land is recognized by us-as being vested in this because we agree to pay them practically a certain interest upon $37,500,000, which is at the rate of $1.50 per acre on 25,000,000 acres. We take 25,000,000 acres out of nearly 278,000,000 acres and say we value that at $1.50 an acre, and we are now going to pay you on that annually 1 per cent until the population reaches 400,000, or $375,000 a year ; thereafter until the population reaches 800,000 we will pay you at the rate of 11 per cent or $562,000 a year; thereafter until the population reaches 1,200,000, two per cent or $750,000 a year, afterwards three per cent or $1,112,500 a year, and an addition annually for five years of one-quarter of one per cent for building purposes, or $94,500 a year. We are practically giving them at the maximum, a fraction over three per cent of the money that would be realized by the sale of 25,0oo,000 acres of that land at $1.50 per acre. I suppose the people of the west will in time come to say to us :	You	have taken 25,000,-
000 acres but there are 125,000,000 acres left; we ought to have some interest and some rights in that land but you have allowed us nothing for it; you only gave us a very small interest upon 25,000.000 acres valued at $1.50 per acre, and most of which would sell to-day at from $3 to $5 per acre. I assume that the people of the west will not long be satisfied With this financial arrangement, nor will they regard the federal government as having done full justice to them. I take it that
in the near future they will set up other claims against us. I see herein another return that each province is supposed to contain 75,000,000 acres of arable land and grazing land-I wonder if that is grazing land or grazing and agricultural land combined, because there is no distinction made between them in the return. At all events it would indicate that there are to-day 150,000,000 acres of good land there and if we deduct 25,000,000 acres from that, it would appear that we have taken 125.000.000 acres from the provinces and given them nothing in return. I have no doubt that will be their claim after a while. From whatever standpoint you view it, it seems to me we are only building up arguments for the people of these two provinces to appeal to us on in the near future, either for additional financial aid or for some compensation in lieu of the land.


Mr. BARKER.: It appears to me that this clause 20, dealing with the lands, is an example of that which runs throughout the whole of the Bill. The government seem to have been concerned to find some means to do, not what the interest of the province or of the Dominion requires, so much as what party exigencies demand. We find that from the beginning to end of this whole measure; history is knocked endways, dates are upset and everything is done to fit in alleged facts to certain intentions of the government. I would like to call attention to what I think is really before us. In my opinion it was the intention of the British North America Acts, 1867 and 1871, that when any portion of the Territories became so far developed as to justify provincial status, it was not merely the privilege but it was the duty of this parliament to confer such status upon that portion of the territory. It was not only our duty to do that but we were not at liberty to add anything which could hamper new provinces in the enjoyment of such provincial rights. What do we find here ? We find south of the 55th parallel of latitude, three districts, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Assiniboia, all of a somewhat similar nature and developed very much in the same degree. They would constitute, so far as area is concerned, a compact province of reasonable dimensions ; a little larger than Ontario and not quite so large as Quebec. The government, instead of granting the wishes of these districts and constituting out of them a new province, chooses for its own purpose apparently- because I cannot see any other purpose in it-to add to these provinces a territory that is yet undeveloped, that requires perhaps the nursing and administration of the Dominion. It adds that territory to these three developed districts, cuts the whole area in two parts and says : You have got in each province something that requires fos-

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tering and care, and therefore we will not give you the control of your lands. The government thus set up a condition of things to palliate their desire to withhold from the provinces the reasonable control of their own lands. I have not heard from any hon. gentleman opposite one word of explanation why these new provinces should be obliged to take in undeveloped Athabaska, a territory of over 200,000 square miles in w'hich we are told there are only 242 white people. Why should that territory be added to this developed territory which is itself entitled to provincial status, unless it be to enable the government to say : Oh, you cannot have your lands, we must develop these undeveloped portions. If there had been no such desire on the part of the government I doubt if we should have heard a word as to withholding from the three older districts the administration of their own lands. What other excuse has been given ? We heard from the Prime Minister that in the interests of immigration it was essential that the Dominion should retain control of the lands because the new provinces might act adversely to the interests of the Dominion as a whole in that regard. That was an extraordinary reason to come from the Prime, Minister. Section 95 of the British North America Act provides for such a ease and in a way which leaves no room whatever for any question on the part of the Dominion. That section provides :
In each province the legislature may make laws in relation to agriculture ill the province, and to immigration into the province ; and it is hereby declared that the parliament of Canada may, from time to time, make laws in relation to agriculture in all or any of the provinces and to immigration into all or any of the provinces

So, stopping there for a moment, you will see that even if we gave all this territory to these new provinces, it would not deprive this parliament of its power to legislate as regards agriculture and immigration. The province could legislate and we could legislate. So that we could take care of the Dominion interest. But the clause goes further :
-and any law of the legislature of a province relative to agriculture or to immigration shall have effect in and for the province, as long and as far only as it is not repugnant to any Act of the parliament of Canada.
So that the very reason that was given by the First Minister for removing from the control of the province the administration of its lands is provided for in the British North America Act. That was the one reason given in all this debate that seemed to have anything in it to justify the withdrawal from the province of the control of its lands ; and section 95 seems to have been most thoughtfully provided for the purpose of meeting such a case. If there is any other reason why this new province should Mr. BARKER.
not have the control of its lands we would like to hear it, because the reason that has been given is absolutely without foundation. The Minister of the Interior, who is familiar with this clause, could perhaps tell us some other reason than that given by the First Minister ; for it seems to me, after reading section 95 of the British North America Act, that there is no reason whatever in what the First Minister has told us. Until the Minister of the Interior gives us some other reason it seems to be our duty, in constituting this new province, to give the province full control over its lands.


William Findlay Maclean: I think the hon. member for Hamilton is very innocent if he does not see what the real reason of this legislation in regard to the public lands is. The real object of this Bill is to carry out a contract by which the government seeks to impose an unpopular school system on the two provinces of the west. To do that, in the first place, they interfere with the boundaries of the provinces. Athabaska is taken in in order that the two legislatures may be constituted with a certain political complexion ; in the next place, the schedule of constituencies, as outlined, has a very distinct object, and that is to secure two legislatures, if at all possible, that will endorse this obnoxious school legislation ; and, in the third place, the government are keeping control of the lands for the political power which it gives them in the elections which are to come off in those provinces. That is the object of this legislation, especially with regard to the lands. The government, with their agents, will be masters of the situation. They will have land agents administering the land laws, and these agents can intimidate the settlers just as they wish. These land agents will be political agents and nothing else ; they will be there in the interest of the government. Their whole energies in the forthcoming provincial elections, if they are ever held, of which I have some doubt, will be devoted to the object of electing two legislatures that will pass such school legislation which, once passed, will be fastened on those provinces for all time. Any one can realize what the power of the government will be in those provinces, with the full control of these lands. They will have the granting of patents to the settlers ; and especially the large foreign element which is in a portion of the constituency of the Minister of the Interior, can be handled by the land agents, as they are called, blit the political agents, as I would call them, of the government. In that way there will be two legislatures elected that will try to fasten this obnoxious school system on these two provinces. That, to my mind, is the main,object of this Bill, and that is the reason the government propose to retain control of the lands. Why are not the men of the Northwest making the fight they did in the old

days to have the lauds reserved for the people of that country ? Why are they abandoning the old claim of the Territories to have the possession of their own lands ? For years they stumped the Northwest in support of the demand that the provinces, when created, should have the complete ownership of their lands, and not only the lands, but the mines. Now they propose to surrender all these to this government.
I jjointed out the other day that the jjeople pf the Northwest should control the lands if for no other purpose than to control the supplies of fuel, which are essential to the development of the country. But as it is, the coal lands, as all others, will be in the hands of this government, who will be free to alienate them and hand them over to corporations of all kinds, so that the people of the Northwest, instead of getting cheap fuel, will have to pay extortionate prices for it. That is not what the people of the west desire. They have expressed themselves on this subject time after time, and in the mouths of gentlemen who to-night are silent on this question, and who, I believe, are ignoring the instructions given to them by the voters of the two new provinces. We even heard the Minister of the Interior in the old days claiming that the settlers of the west ought to own their own lands. Now the song is : We want the Dominion to own them in order that it may develop our country. I do not see that' that argument fits the case at all. On the contrary, the policy of those lion, gentlemen from the west to-clay. Is against the interests of that country. That policy is dictated solely by a political reason, and I think they will hear from the west before this debate is through.


Frank Oliver: AA'e have heard.
Air. AA7. F. MACLEAN. In what way ?
Air. OLIA7ER. From Edmonton.
Air. AA'. F. AIACLEAN. Some sessions ago the hon. gentleman wanted the lands for the people. At that time he was speaking the sentiments of the people, but he certainly is not to-day. His sole object now is to help the Liberal party, and he and his colleagues on that side from the Northwest are willing to rob the people of that country of their undeniable right to own and control their own land.


Air. SCOTT.: What did Edmonton say V
Air. av. F. AIACLEAN. It said it wanted the control of the lands by the people.
Some hon. AIEAIBEKS. Oh. oh.


William Findlay Maclean: I think these lion, gentlemen will find that when the people are given the opportunity, they will say they want what should belong to them. If a man has a farm, he wants to keep that for himself ; and just as sure as we are here, an agitation will begin in the west and grow and grow until the people get control
of their own land. They will insist on being put in the same position as the other provinces and not be treated as wards, incapable of self-government, incapable of making their own school laws and administering their own public lands. This whole Bill it intended for the one express purpose, and that is to fasten this vexatious school legislation on the people. In order to do that, the government are treating the people as wards, not competent to make their own laws on education, or administer their own lands, or have a voice in the fixing of the boundaries of their own provinces. In the same way also Alanitoba is being punished for its course on the school question. Everything that is taking place in connection with this Bill, has its origin in the school policy and has for its object the forcing of that obnoxious policy on the people. Are not the people in the west capable of administering their own lands just as well as this Dominion government ? In my opinion they could administer them much better and create out of them a great reserve fund which would save them from taxation for years. But if this Bill passes, they will have to resort to municipal taxation of all kinds to enable them to carry on their own affairs and will be dependent on this government for whatever income they may get. AVliat we should do instead is give these provinces a fair start and then let them manage for themselves. The First Minister declared that he was completing the freedom of the Northwest. AA ell, there never was a province so hampered as these two are going to be. They are to be cribbed, cabined and confined in every sense of the term, and by men who have always posed as the advocates of their rights, it the people had control of their own public lands, they might find in them a means ot freeing themselves from the tyranny of the railway companies or from any railway monopoly. I am not in favour myself of giving land bonuses to railways, but a solution of the great transportation problem might be found in the control by the provinces ot their own lands. But under this Bill, these lands are to be administered by the Dominion.


Thomas Walter Scott: Aly hon. friend the leader of the opposition reneated this afternoon some remarks which he had made on several previous occasions. He appears yery mucn concerned because he thinks a doubt has been expressed on this side that should these new provinces be given possession ot then lands, they might some day make a mistake, well n is the hon. gentleman himself who has made a mistake. He has attributed that doubt to the wrong partner. It is held by Ids own follower, the hon. gentleman from South York (Air. AA'. F. Maclean) and not by any one on this side. Last year the hon. member for South York (Air. AA7. F. Maclean) told the House that every legis-

lature in Canada was corrupt and turning handsprings with the public resources, and he gave that as reason why new provincial legislatures should be endowed with public resources. We cannot expect that versatile gentleman, however, to keep in his mind one day what he said the day previous or to be guided by any fixed principle ; and when he talks about some ulterior, dark, hidden political purpose animating the present government, no one in this House really takes him seriously. Had he taken the trouble to look up the records, he would have found that there have been other governments in this country which have dealt with this same matter of public lands. More than twenty years ago, there was a Conservative government in this country, led by the late Sir John Macdonald, and that government dealt with the public lands in a new province. Does the bon. member for South York think that the late Sir John Macdonald had any ulterior, political motive in the policy he then pursued ?


William Findlay Maclean: He may have had.


Thomas Walter Scott: I have here a portion of the record on that subject, contained in the journals of Manitoba for 1884. I find here the report of the subcommittee of the Ottawa government, which reads as follows:
After having very fully discussed with the delegates all the points embraced in the said memo and the other matters referred to, report as follows :
That following the order of the memo of instructions the delegates urged with great ear-' neatness :
1st. The right of the province to the control, management and sale of the public lands within its limits, for the public uses thereof, and the mines, minerals, wood and ' timber thereon, or an equivalent therefor, and to receive from the Dominion government payment for the lands already disposed of by them within the province less cost of surveys and management.' And they, the subcommittee, have given to all the views advanced by the delegates in support of this claim the fullest consideration, and with every desire to meet their wishes as far as possible, in the general interests of the Dominion cannot advise Council to recommend to parliament to grant this request.
The lands of Manitoba hold a very different position in relation to the Dominion government, from the lands of the other provinces.
This applies with equal force to the lands of the Northwest Territories.
Shortly after the union of the old provinces, the government formed from that union purchased at a large price in cash, all the rights titles and interests of the Hudson Bay Company in and to the territory out of which the province of Manitoba has been formed. It incurred further a very large expenditure to obtain and hold this territory in peaceable possession, and at a still further cost which is continuous and perpetual, is extinguishing Indian titles and maintaining the Indians, so that the Dominion government has a very large pecuniary interest in the soil which does not exist Mr. SCOTT.
in respect to any other of the confederated provinces.
Further on I find the following :
Parliament pledged its faith to the world that a large portion of those lands should he set apart for free homesteads to all coming settlers, and another portion to be held in trust for the education of their children.
This was a statement of the government of Sir John Macdonald that parliament was not free to transfer these lands to the locaj government of any province without attaching to them the condition that the free homesteading policy should be continued :
No transfer could, therefore, be made, without exacting from the province the most ample securities that this pledged policy should be maintained ; hence in so far as the free lands extend there would be no monetary advantage to the province, whilst a transfer would most assuredly seriously embarrass all the costly immigration operations which the Dominion government is making mainly in behalf of Manitoba and the Territories.
The great attraction which the Canadian government now offers, the impressive fact to the mind of the men contemplating immigration is that a well known and recognized government holds unfettered in its own hand the lands which it offers free, and that that government has its agencies and organizations for directing, receiving, transporting and placing the immigrant upon the homestead which he may select. And if the immigration operations of the Dominion, which involve so large a cost, is to have continued success and to be of advantage to Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, your subcommittee deem it to be of the utmost importance that the Dominion government shall retain and control the lands which it has proclaimed free to all comers. Were there other considerations of sufficient force to induce them to recommend this transfer to Manitoba, and as a consequence and by precedent the surrender to the provinces to be created from the Northwest Territory, all the lands within their boundaries, then they would advise that the provinces holding the lands should conduct their own immigration operations at their owm expense.


Mr.   W.@: F, MACLEAN. From what is the hon. gentleman reading ?


Thomas Walter Scott: From the journals of the assembly of Manitoba for 1884.


William Findlay Maclean: AVould the hon. gentleman read what follows-what the people said in answer to that ?


Thomas Walter Scott: I think I have read sufficient.


William Findlay Maclean: AA'ell, if the hon. gentleman will give me the page, we will have some one else read It.


Thomas Walter Scott: It is page 142 of the journals of the provincial assembly of Manitoba, 1884. Does the bon. gentleman (Air. AV. F. Alaclean) dispute that the portion I have read conveys the real meaning of the report of that subcommittee ?


William Findlay Maclean: I want tlie answer to it that the people of Manitoba gave.


Thomas Walter Scott: Was the action of the government of 1884 not in accordance with that report ? Of course it was, and the lands were withheld from the province of Manitoba. I do not say that I agree with every sentiment expressed in this report. But our friends opposite are extremely suspicious of the intention of the present government in dealing with this subject in the same way as their predecessors dealt with it. Are the suspicions of lion, gentlemen opposite based on their experience of twenty years ago ? The leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) made some reference for the fourth or fifth time, to the idea that the government here is going to the United States for a precedent. And he spoke for the fourth or fifth time of the British practice with regard to lands and put the question : What would have been the result with regard to the northern half of the North American continent if the British practice of many years ago had not been changed. The obvious answer is that the British Crown would have lost British North America as she lost the thirteen American colonies. But it seems to me that the cases put by the leader of the opposition are not parallel-, and, if my hon. friend will look further into the matter, I think he will agree with that view. What did the United States do ? Immediately they obtained their independence, the first thing they did was to provide for control of all lands throughout the United States by the central government. I think that is sufficient proof that the cases are not parallel.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Am I correct in understanding the hon. gentleman (Mr. Scott) to say that the United States government held control of all the lands ?


Thomas Walter Scott: I understand that to be the case, with the exception of perhaps the state of Texas.


Charles Fitzpatrick: Outside of the original states.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Did the United States government hold the lands in the state of Michigan ?


Thomas Walter Scott: My hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Fitzpatrick) states that they held it outside of the original states.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Let me understand. Was Michigan one of the original states ?


William Findlay Maclean: No.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Because, I lived in Michigan for a time, and I never heard or knew anything of the United States government, holding the lands. When a man got land he got it from the local agent of the state government.


Thomas Walter Scott: Certainly the states west of the Mississippi river do not have control of their own land. In those states the lands are controlled by the federal government. I was going on to say that if I could get satisfaction as to how our local governments were going to carry on their business without the amount of money paid in lieu of the lands-even if the lands were to be transferred absolutely, without string on them-certainly with the string suggested by the leader of the opposition and stated to be necessary by the report I have just read, that the provincial government must maintain the free homestead policy, the local government's difficulty in obtaining revenues would be greater,-I, for my part, would have less objection to the local government assuming the responsibility of administering these lands.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The report the hon. gentleman read laid down the principle in regard to the Manitoba lands, that the government were bound to the world to give free homesteads. That would take away half tne land, but we would hold the other half. Could not the province do exactly the same thing, giving every alternate section as a free homestead and reserving the others for sale ?


Thomas Walter Scott: Will the hon. gentleman tell me that after giving away the even numbered sections as free homesteads the local government will get enough out of the odd numbered sections to enable them to carry on their business ? Parliament has had these lands in its control for thirty-five years and its experience so far is that, with the free settlement policy, it has not made a cent out of the lands, in fact it is about $1,000,000 behind. I have a calculation to show the amount that these new: provinces will receive in the next thirty-five years under the arrangement proposed by the government. In the first place it is proposed in the resolution that the sum of $937,500 is to be paid to the tw-o provinces as a special grant from the land fund for public buildings within the next five years. Then, within the same period the two governments will receive as ordinary land subsidy, $3,750,000. And if, at the end of five years it is found that the population of each province has increased to 400.000 souls, which is altogether likely, in the succeeding five years the two provinces wrill receive a total of $o,6-o,000 from the lands. I calculate that, at the end of that period of five years the population of each province will be 800,000, in which case, in the next period, they will receive $7,500,000 for the two provinces. If at the end of that period, the population has increased to 1,200,000, the payments will amount, within the next period of five years, to $11,125,000. Then in the fifth period the amount will be equal, $11,125,000. In the sixth period the same, in the seventh period the same, bringing us



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up to the end of the thirty-fifth year with a total amount of $59,301,250, roughly $60,000,000 in the thirty-five years. I venture to say that the provinces, even if they obtained the land unreservedly and carried out the free homesteading intention to a reasonable extent, and the settlement policy which is in force at the present time, could not hope to obtain such an amount of money in that period. We heard the leader of the opposition say the other day that his suggestion to hand the lands over to the provinces with a restriction as to prices, was only an alternative suggestion.-that it was only in the event of there being danger in doing otherwise that he would ask the people of the province to consent to accept tile lands and give an agreement to continue the free homestead policy with regard to the even numbered sections and the low-settlement-price policy with regard to the, odd numbered sections. Well. Sir, it struck me as peculiar that the hon. gentleman was willing to invade provincial autonomy to that extent, and that he should be unwilling to do the same thing with regard to schools. Now, I say in all sincerity that I think the people would much more readily agree to the limitation upon their autonomy that is being put upon them in relation to the subject of education, than they would be willing to agree to such a limitation of their autonomy as the leader of the opposition has suggested with regard to their substantial resources.
Thomas Simpson Sproule: They would like freedom in both.
ill-. SCOTT. The verdict of Edmonton was not to that effect, as I have pointed out. If there was any reason to prevent hon. gentlemen going to Edmonton to lay down their school policy, that reason could not apply with regard to the land policy, because the interests of Roman Catholics and Protestants must be precisely identical with regard to the lands. The sentiment of the people of the Northwest is that the school question which we have discussed is a very immaterial matter. The letter that the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) read the other evening, and which he said came from a prominent Liberal in his district, is a proof that the* people of the Northwest 'Territories consider the school Issue as being an immaterial matter, they consider the land question as far more important. If there is any difference of opinion in the Northwest Territories, the matter of the land is looked upon as a very much more serious one than the matter of the schools. There was no reason in the world why the hon. gentlemen should not have gone up to Edmonton and presented their land policy. Some hon. gentlemen rather jeered when I mentioned Edmonton. What objection have they against the verdict of the people of Edmonton ? Is it not a fact that the leader of the opposition, before the Minister qf Mr. SCOTT.
the Interior was appointed, got up himself and suggested that the district of Edmonton was a proper district in which to ask for a verdict of the people of the Northwest Territories upon the question of autonomy ?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: In the language of the boy on the street, that is too thin.


George Eulas Foster: I have been listening ever since this debate commenced two months ago to try if possible to get at the reasons why members from the Northwest, including the present Minister of the Interior, were not in favour of the provinces having their own public lands ; and so far as I can see now one of the chief reasons has been defined by the hon. member who has just taken his seat (Mr. Scott). They would like to have the lands, they would like to have the whole outfit for the provinces, but they do not like to assume the responsibilities. They want to be men full grown, but they don't quite know whether they could walk if they were left alone. They would like to have the full birthright, but the little mess of pottage which is handed out to them just now is so enticing that they would rather lap that up and let the future take care of itself. Now the financial policy and the land policy are closely joined. The speech that has been made by the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat shows that if it was not for the financial difficulty he would like to take the lands, and the west would like to have their lands, would like to be full-blooded in that respect, have all their rights, but they don't quite see how they could raise the money for the present and current expenses of the provincial governments. My objection to the matter as it stands is on two grounds, first, because these terms are not arranged on any ground of principle. There is no well grounded principle upon which the whole financial system with reference to these two provinces has been reared. The other ground of objection is that there is no finality to it. I think every member on either side of this House, must feel that there is no finality in this arrangement. Neither province will be satisfied if it does not have what really belongs to it. When either province is fully organized what will it have ? It will have no control over its timber lands, it will have no control over its mineral lands, it will have no control over its prairie lands, it will have no control over its agricultural lands, it will have no control over its irrigable lands, it will have no control over its grazing lands. What is there but the mere skeleton of a province, in so far as regards the vast possessions which are yet undeveloped in each one of these territories ? Not over a single a cry or foot of all the soil which is yet unalienated will either of these provinces have any rights at all, so far as these rights are concerned in ownership. What have they, then? They have the name of
a province, they have the municipal work of a province to legislate for, they have the small provincial functions of road building and bridge building, the duties and responsibilities which belong to the ordinary routine management. They have that. But there is not a foot of their soil, not an acre of their resources outside of what are possessed now by the inhabitants of that country, not one acre of this, not one foot of that will belong to them. So X say it is against human nature to suppose that these two provinces will be satisfied with this settlement. From the very moment they begin to be provinces they will commence an agitation which dissatisfaction will ai'ouse, and which dissatisfaction will push further each year, and it will be reinforced by tlieir necessities which will constantly grow. So I say this feeling will grow as the provinces grow, it will be accentuated by their necessities ; as their population increases demands upon them will become greater. They will feel more and more that in the first place they were defrauded of their full heritage, that they have not got what actually belonged to them that consequently they are not a full and independent province, and they will not rest until they get these rights. As my hon. friend who sits beside me (Mr. R. L. Borden) well observed, the longer the thing goes on the greater the dilemma, and the more the difficulty there will be. Therefore I say these provinces will not be satisfied, because they will feel from the first that they have not power over their own belong-
Suppose you take the converse of it and the argument is shown with greater strength. Suppose a proposition were made in tins House to-day to take over the lands of the other provinces of the Dominion to administer them and assume all the cost of administration and take all the profits of administration. Is there a single province m the Dominion which would look upon a * proposition like that as being fair, which would admit it for a single moment, lhe argument is not a bit stronger by reason of their being now already full-fledged provinces and in possession of their lands, than it is with reference to the new provinces from which you would withhold what every old province has and possesses in its own right, from which you withhold what the British North America Act considers to be and contemplates as the possession of a province.	Simply because you hold the
lands at the present time and refuse to give them up the argument is not a bit stronger in the one case than it is in the other and the injustice of it will be equally felt. Every year that these provinces are provinces, while this condition of things with refenenee to their lands prevails they will feel more and more that they are marked off from their sister provinces, that they have not the resources and not the
powers and consequently not the full rights which their sister provinces have. These feelings will become seeds of dissatisfaction which will grow and spread and ripen into the harvest of desire and of a constant agitation until the desire be realized that they shall have their own birthright and their own lands. As I said before you can hardly approach the question of lands without approaching the financial question as well and that is the crux of the whole matter. As my hon. friend has said, they would like to have their lands but they do not see how they are to get their money.
As far as that is concerned it seems to me there must be some way in which that difficulty could be met. Taking all the information which I got from the Minister of the Interior and from the return which was brought down it seems that the grain growing, irrigating, ranching and general farming lands in the areas of the two provinces which are to be formed will amount to 294,000,000 acres, in round numbers. No one can say just how much of that will be agricultural land, just how much will be good grazing land, just how much will be land which proper irrigation will mane very valuable and very desirable, but the whole of it is returned as above. The total area, as I said, is 294,000,000 acres, deducting the water acreage. Alienated lands have been returned as bo,000,000 and if you subtract the 05,000,000 from the 294,'000,000 it will give you about 228 000,000 or 228,500.000 of lands belonging to oue or other of these categories. As I' said before, it would not probably be wise to prophesy just how much of that would be excellently good land, how much worthless, and how much would come between the two; but judging from our experience in the Northwest Territories and as our knowledge has progressed it is possible that we may ourselves be surprised to discover what a very large proportion of these lands are really serviceable lands, suitable for agricultural, farming and grazing purposes. If that be true-and I think we are not pushing the matter too far to take that as fairly true-you will have an acreage of 228,000,000 of this serviceable or fairly serviceable land. That is an immense patrimony. Suppose you leave the odd-numbered sections still to be used tor immigration purposes, for noses as an inducement to the outsiae world for speedier, better and more rapid settlement, suppose you leave that to b deducted from the amount which still remains you have still the immense acreage of 114 000,000 or 115,000,000 acres of land which would be at your disposal. No one thinks or suggests that these are lands that vou could put into the market and sell now, but let us take the history of the past which should throw some light on the history of the future. Twenty years ago m that western country along the mam line

of tlie Canadain Pacific Railway and up there where there were no lines, but where to-day there are lines stretching parallel and crosswise at the present time there was great doubt if large proportions of these lands were good agricultural lands. Within twenty years out of those areas which are well known now. but were not then so well known, the proportion of really good land has risen very high indeed, and the proportion of really unserviceable land has diminished almost to a minimum quantity so that in these large areas now better explored and better known there is very little of what you might call waste land; the greater part of it is land which is valuable for what it will actually produce and which becomes more valuable as railway and transport facilities are brought every year nearer to it. You have to take the same possible progression of things in connection with the northern part of the old provisional districts and the new provisional district which you have taken in and as year after year passes, in the course of fifteen, twenty or twenty-five years, how much of that land of which I have spoken, lying farther to the north in the old provisional districts and in the one to the north of the Saskatchewan will become absolutely as good and as valuable, treated generally as the same quantity of lands farther to the south ? You will say there are arid belts in the northern portion and so there were said to be arid belts in the southern portion. There is no doubt that there are, but the arid belts that were thought so serious a few years ago in the southern portion do not have any great depressing influence on us now when we forecast the future of that country. Whether the seasons have changed, whether agriculture has done its work in to a certain extent changing conditions there, we cannot tell the reason, but these are the facts of the case, that the area of what was thought to be unserviceable or arid land has gradually and constantly receded and the area of what is serviceable and useful has gradually and continually grown. I think that probably tne same change and the same course of events which has taken place with reference to the southern portion of it will take place with reference to the northern portion of it, so that tlie whole trend of my argument is that we have not by any means exhausted the serviceable land, and in the areas which are to be put in these two great provinces if you allow the same progress and development to go on in the future as in the past with accelerated rapidity as will be the case twenty or twenty-five years, we will see not only the area ot serviceable land largely extended, but the area of transport facilities equally as largely extended and consequently ' the value of the lands will become greatly enhanced.	J
There is the patrimony which, I think,


George Eulas Foster: ought to belong to these provinces ; there is the patrimony which to-day you are selling for ^$37,500,000, and you are selling it for $37,500,000, why ? Simply because you do not see how you are going to finance your province through unless you take the ready cash and give up your patrimony. Is there not another way ? I have no iloubt there is. Suppose a business corporation had 228,000,000 acres of that land, would it be an impossible thing for that corporation to set off a certain proportion and to raise money upon these lands for actual current purposes from year to year, and hold the power of redemption of these lands, and hold the power of the management and of the sale of these lands as well ? That is not a difficult thing. My hon. friend has said that within a certain number of years that would make awav with a certain number of millions of dollars. Would it be a difficult thing by way of their lands, a certain proportion of them as security, to raise that money which is necessary Cor the provinces in the initial period ? It is not a difficult thing for business people to do, and why should it be a difficult thing for a legislature ? But, Sir, there is another way in which it might be done, and I throw this out for what it is worth. The Dominion of Canada is proposing to pay in lieu of lands and as compensation for these lands ; it is proposing to pay, outside of all the other sums which it gives to each province, one per cent for a certain number of years on $37,500,000, and so on upwards. That is, for a certain number of years they will get $375,000 a year out of the Dominion treasury ; after that, and when the population comes up to a certain figure, they will be paid each year from the Dominion treasury $562,500, after that for another certain period $750,000, and after that they will be paid for all time $1,125,000 per year. Would it be a difficult thing, in the interest of both the Dominion and of those provinces, that the Dominion should undertake to advance that amount of money for that length of time-just exactly the amount it is proposed to give now-and that it should hold in trust as security for that money a certain number of acres of the lands of these provinces set off in certain divisions ? Suppose, for argument's sake, you were to set off 25,000,000 acres of land for one of the provinces out of your 228,000,000 ; set off 25,000,000 acres of fairly serviceable lands, and suppose that you should hold these lands without having any necessity placed upon you to sell from year to year under present conditions and at the present price ; suppose that you could hold these lands, selling as the price suited you (the price coming up to a good fair amount alongside of your settled portions), selling a certain number of acres of these lands each year, as much as you deem prudent and wise, but not by necessity forced to sell them, and so on, for a period of ten or fifteen years ; do you not think that the rise in the price of the lands from $1.50 an

acre, which is now the upset price, would become so much greater that it would be worth while to make some arrangement by which you could husband these lands until they became more valuable, and at the same time provide for your current expenditure during that time ? And in the end, when your lands did become valuable, you would have the patrimony which would last, not only for your necessities of ten or fifteen years, but would be an endowment which would largely meet your necessities for all time to come. Take, for instance, a calculation-you may vary it according to your practical view-But 1 take this as not being far out of the way :	Suppose you were to
set aside 25,000,000 acres of land and keep them for ten years. Am I right or wrong in saying that that 25,000,000 acres of land, after the progress of ten years, with your railway building, your increased settlement, your homesteading, your development ; am I wrong in saying that those lands would rise to the value on an even basis of $6 per acre ?


Mr. LAMONT.: Might I ask the hon. gentleman just what that would include ? Would it include the even-numbered sections as well as the odd-numbered sections ?


Mr.   POSTER@: It is a matter of arrangement.


John Henderson Lamont: Would the hon. gentleman allow settlement on these 25,000,000 acres ?


George Eulas Foster: I should think it would be a wise thing to provide that settlers would percolate through the part you set aside and get their 160-acre free homesteads, and thereby become the absolutely necessary purchasers for the lands you held close by.


John Henderson Lamont: Has not the great griev>
ance of the Northwest settlers been that they could only settle on the even-numbered sections, and is not the fact that they have been debarred from the odd-numbered sections a great hardship on the settlers ?


George Eulas Foster: 
William Stevens Fielding: Why stop your land value at ten years, why not carry it on to one hundred years ?


George Eulas Foster: I am going to carry it on ;
I will satisfy my hon. friend in that respect,
I say you have to carry on this in a reasonable way. You cannot set your 25,000,000 acres off and say you will not sell a single acre of it, but you can be careful to sell it as a reasonable price and if you can sell what you do sell, and as little as is necessary for $5 or $6 per acre, you will have the remainder of it to sell later on at an enhanced price. Suppose that you kept it for fifteen years. With the tide of progress and development going on continuously, and accelerated as it will be, is it too much to say that your land at that time will be worth $8 per acre, intrinsically worth it ? If you saved a portion of it, and a considerable portion, unsold for twenty years, you would have land which would be certainly worth $10 an acre, intrinsically worth it.. If you had 15,000,000 acres left, you would have at the increased price a still larger endowment *upon which you could draw for all time to come. Now, you can pick flaws in that arrangement if you please ; you can settle down on the plan which you have thought out and are going to put through, or which you have not thought out still are going to put through. But it is not outside of fair financial ability and of fair practical arrangement with reference to the best interests of that country to take some such measures as that, and to raise for your present necessities, either on tlie security of your land, which it would pay you to do, or on some such arrangement as I have outlined with the Dominion government, what you require, and to keep your patrimony intact as a large endowment for your future needs. That would accomplish two things. The Dominion government would be lending a helping hand at the present. It would get back everything it had advanced. The government of each province would be getting what was necessary for it during the time of its adolescence, its infancy, so to speak, and it would be saving that patrimony for an enhanced endowment for the future, when it could

well afford to pay back the capital which had been advanced to it, with the small interest rate that would carry it, and it would be the better off by hundreds of millions of dollars, and not merely by tens of millions. That is not very good statesmanship, it seems to me, which starts in to-day with a plan which will tide you over the present, but which has to come to its final block sooner or later. Do you mean to say that when you get 1,200,000 people or 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 in each of those provinces, you are going to get along without your lands and a subsidy of $1,000,000 a year in lieu of your lands ? What are you going to do when you get to that point ? There is only one of two things that you must do ; you must either come to direct taxation of the people there, or come back to this Dominion, and say to it : You put us off with a paltry 25,000,000 acres of land out ol' all this rich patrimony, and you allow only $1.50 per acre on it to set up housekeeping with ; we come back to you now. and say it was unfair ; we want our full birthright. So much for that. I listened with a great deal of attention to the Premier's criticism of 'the old confederation methods of settling the finances of the provinces. He criticised them. He always does criticise whatever the fathers of confederation have done. He leaves it to be inferred that if he had been a father of confederation and had lived at that time, he would have done differently. He entered into a somewhat elaborate criticism of the financial methods on which the old provinces were framed. He said :	You make one set of
authorities the gatherers of the money, and you make another set. the provinces, the spenders, and the spenders who do not gather it do not feel any responsibility, and consequently they are not held in check. And to-day, if there is one menace that fronts this Dominion of Canada, it is the menace of financial terms which seemingly can never be finally settled ; which arises from the fact that every province has gone into competition with the Dominion in matters which it never should have taken up. Take the subsidizing of railways, for instances. For that purpose it has lavishly run into debt and lavishly expended ; and' when the time for payment comes, it sets its face Ottawawards, and says : We want the financial terms of this confederation opened up again. They have been opened up again and again. That is what the Prime Minister inveighed against; that is what he characterized ; that is what he deplored. M ell, Sir, he had a brand new slate-there was not a mark upon it. He was making too great provinces, the greatest that ever were made in this Dominion. He had only one responsibility, and no ties or bonds in arranging the financial terms of these two great provinces of the west on a better basis, such as would please himself and avoid the rocks and shoals of the old finan-Mr. FOSTER.
cial arrangements made by the fathers of confederation, and what is'the result ? He has done two things ; he has violated the very system which was adopted previously in arranging the financial terms of this Dominion with these provinces. He has, on the other hand, laid down no principle and adopted no financial arrangement which has avoided the very rocks and shoals of which he spoke, and which he deprecated should have been left by the fathers of confederation. Where has he been consistent with the old terms in the matter of legislative allowance ? If you take population into account, the legislative allowance is not on the same level with the legislative allowance given to the older provinces. If you take the debt allowance, there is no parity between them. If you take the subsidy based on the population allowance, the others stopped at. a population of 400,000. On what principle should these have a population allowance of 800,000 ? And so, all through, he has not improved upon the principle, but he has violated the spirit and the letter of each of the arrangements with the old provinces. What has happened ? Two things have happened. The first is that all the older provinces have already commenced their march towards Ottawa to ask for a revision of the financial terms. They say : Our expenses are increasing ; we have exploited all we well can for the purpose of revenue ; we want more money ; you have been lavish with these new provinces, and we want you to revise our terms and give us at least the equal of what you give to them. How can the Premier after this say to the province of New Brunswick and the province of Nova Scotia, your eighty cents per head stops when you reach 400,000, when you say to Alberta and Saskatchewan your eighty cents per head does not stop until you reach 800.000. "Why should not the limit be placed at 800,000 for the other provinces as well as for the these two ? That is the kind of reasoning which will be relied upon ; and when all the provinces join together and march upon Ottawa and demand a revision, who is to withstand that demand ? Not the gentlemen who are in power to-day. Of that I feel quite certain. They will make terms at once, for party and political reasons if for no other, and there will be a vast increase in the expenditures of this Dominion in the way of subsidies to the older provinces, while on the other hand there will be no finality with regard to the west. It is as impossible as it would be to make water run up hill, to limit those two great provinces, after having kept all their land, to a million a year of revenue ; if a million dollars per year, compared with their needs are not at all sufficient. And so I say that you have no finality in your arrangement with the new provinces and that you are giving to the old provinces just cause for demanding a revision. I do not suppose

that I have all the wisdom in the world, and whilst I have outlined these few suggestions as to what I think might have been done.
I dare say there are gentlemen on each side of the House who will find weak spots in them : hut there is a way by which the early years of these provinces could he tided over and they could be set out on their great life race with a much more magnificent provision for their yearly expenditures than they now get under these Bills, and that is by endowing them with the lands. With reference to immigration I was sorry to hear the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver)-
I know he did not mean it in his heart-express the view that every man who came as a settler to the Northwest was really a load on the province. You should not say that out loud. You may think it in your own heart, but keep it behind doors, because it is no*- politic to say to these settlers : Every one of you is a burden to us ; you make us pay out $20 a year, and we would not have to pay that if you had not come.
X do not believe that the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) really thinks that but he should not say it.


Thomas Walter Scott: 
George Eulas Foster: Yes I have, and I have listened to my hon. friend reading the minutes of council of 1884. I do not suppose he has any great reverence for the authorities he read. These are all nice things for an argument; they may be useful in a debating school ; they may be pitched at an opponent so as to give warrant for saying to him : I have floored you. But after all can we not come down to the-principle which should guide us. I have not argued this question from a party point of view. There is nothing in my argument which I intended to be taken in that spirit. What I want is that we should do the very best we can by these great provinces. I want them to have for all the years of their future the best provisions we can give them. With regard to that immigrant, I think he is of infinitely more use to your new provinces than to the Dominion. True he pays his customs tax ; and if he be liberal in his eating and drinking and smoking, he pays some excise taxes too. But how small a proportion that is to the yearly toil he is putting into his land as a citizen of your province, adding to it two-fold, four-fold, twenty-fold, becoming a citizen who is a member of your society, who keeps up your schools and your churches, who does for himself and his family what is absolutely necessary to make a country great, who makes of himself and his family, reputable, honourable, moral, religious and progressive citizens. If that immigrant is worth $8 a year to the Dominion from a money point of view, he is worth, from all the best points 192	'
of view, eighty times that to the province in which he builds his home, raises his family and rears citizens for the state. So we must not look at the question merely from the point of view of dollars and cents. But there is enough in it in dollars and cents to make the Dominion government still do its duty in the matter of immigration, even though the^e lands are given over to the provinces. I would not say that the Dominion government should not continue its immigration work in a reasonable and moderate way. I believe that every year from this out less will have to be spent to bring immigrants, to Canada, and not many years will pass before this extraordinary expenditure may all be stopped. The men and women who will be your immigration agents will be those who have gone out to that country, who have made themselves-homes there and who have spread the news of what they have done to the great outside portions of the world from which they came. Every year there will be less necessity for this immense expenditure until within a comparatively short period we will be where the United States is to-day, and instead of spending a dollar to get people to come to the country we will have to spend money to regulate the stream of immigration. There is no reason for the Dominion government giving up its effortst in the way of immigraton ; and the argument of the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) has not affected me in the least, regarding the likelihood of the local governments not encouraging immigration. Why should not the local governments want to get settlers into that country ? In order to build up the country you must have settlers. And these provinces propose to go ahead and therefore will be in sympathy with all well ordered immigration. Surely the people living in the atmosphere of the Northwest, who have been born and brought up there, or have lived there a number of years and are right on the spot, will know better what kind of immigrants they want, where to place them, and how to deal with them, than we who come here from all ends of the Dominion, and the majority of whom have never lived in the Northwest. It is impossible for a man born and brought up in Nova Scotia, and who has never seen the western prairies, to form any adequate idea of that country. A man requires to have visited it often or to have lived there, or to have been born and have grown up there, to appreciate it properly. Why should there be any clash between the Dominion and a well ordered province, in directing the stream of immigration. There could not be, because men are sensible and reasonable in the west as well as here. My hon. friend from Hamilton (Mr. Barker) gave a very good legal reason why, if it were absolutely necessary, there should not be. conflicting laws with reference to immigration. We have not heard a really good argument

why these provinces should be deprived of the great land possessions which lie within their borders, either as regards financial terms or immigration.
But, judge yourself what pride, what hope, what energy would be given to the great province of Alberta or Saskatchewan if it knew it had these millions of fertile acres, that it was the manager of them, that it was the trustee for its future citizens, and that out of that immense acreage, so vast and so rich a heritage, it could provide for all the wants of a great future and could administer its own. What a different feeling that would be from that which will arise when they look at the lands, at the timber, at the minerals and are compelled to say : We have nothing to do with these ; they are here in our midst, and our police regulations, our municipal laws, our provincial administration conserves them and to a large extent adds to their value ; but they do not belong to us, we are not permitted to have them or administer them. There is something in the pride of a country as in the pride of a man. The settler who goes to northern Ontario and takes up 160 acres of land, is told : You may have this land, but of all the timber standing up on it you shall not have one stick except what you need to build your house and barn. And he feels : This is not my farm ; I have the surface soil, but what grows upon it does not belong to me. And is he satisfied ? No, he is not and will not be. He has not the pride of a man who owns what he uses. The same pride and the same energy that ownership inspires would give more intense life to the province that has its complete birthright. Now, my remarks have been crude ; and they may meet with favour or they may not. But such as they are, Mr. Chairman, you and hon. members on the other side of the House are perfectly welcome to them.


Frank Oliver: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster) has taken some credit to himself- and I think he is entitled to it-for not having made a partisan speech. I wish I could congratulate him on making a speech that would tend to good understanding and goodwill throughout the Dominion. I think there can be only one conclusion reached by those who have heard the remarks of the hon. member, and that is, that he was most anxious to create dissatisfaction between the new provinces with the terms that have been granted them, and likewise to create dissatisfaction in the old provinces for the same reason.


George Eulas Foster: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Oliver) may say that I was anxious to do that, and I could say there was not the least trace of that anxiety in my mind. I wanted to show what were the absolute results of the policy that is being carried out. But I had no desire to sow dissension in Edmonton.


George Eulas Foster: 


Frank Oliver: Perhaps I have made a mistake in suggesting the hon. gentleman's motive.


George Eulas Foster: The hon. gentleman may say' that my remarks will have that effect, but certainly that was not what I had in mind.


Frank Oliver: That is what I wished to say ; and I thank the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster) for giving me the right words. I think it will be agreed that that must be the effect of his remarks, so far as they have effect. I thought that the most regrettable feature of the argument was that which laid great stress on the assumption that the people of the west were deprived of their control of the timber, lands and minerals because these things were held in the ownership of the Dominion. The people of the west are citizens of the Dominion, and the ownership of these lands by the Dominion is not less ownership by the west than if that ownership rested with the provincial government. I think it is a pity that, in the stress of argument in this House, such ideas should be advanced, especially in the forceful, energetic and logical way which the hon. member (Mr. Foster) lias at command. It would he most unfortunate if the people of the west should be educated into the idea that in any way they were not citizens of the Dominion, sharing in all the liberties, all the rights, all the properties of the Dominion, as they certainly do. It matters not so much whether these properties are administered by the provincial or by the Dominion government, so they' be well administered, so the policy and administration is in the best interest of all the provinces. In this case it seems to me what is in the interest of the country must be in the interest of the province, and what is in the interest of the province must be in the interest of the country.
I have one criticism to offer on the point of view taken by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster). That point of view is the same that has been taken so persistently by our friends on the other side of the House. They insist on treating this question of ownership of the lands and dealing with the lands as a matter of revenue rather than of as a matter of development. Now, in my estimation that is where they are absolutely at variance with the whole spirit of the west. The spirit of the west is that, whether these lands are given away or sold, or whatever shall be done with them, the object and aim shall be the development of those resources, the bringing of those resources into active use ; the main object is not to derive a sum of money for their sale.


Robert Laird Borden: If the hon. gentleman will permit me I would like to ask a question. I understood distinctly from his predecessor (Mr. Sifton) that the policy of this government was to make a revenue

from these lands. Argument was made and the policy distinctly announced by the ex-Minister of the Interior in the session of 1903. He said : We have 25,000,000 acres of land which will be readily disposed of, and we can sell them within ten years at $3 per acre, and in that way we can reimburse the country for more than its expenditure in connection with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.


Frank Oliver: I do not dispute the statement, but I do dispute the inference. If the leader of the opposition will make a comparison between the statement said to have been made by the ex-Minister of the Interior in regard to the sale of these lands at a low fixed price and the suggestion made a few minutes ago by the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) that the lands should be treated on the same principle as our school lands which are held for the purpose of squeezing the last cent of value out of them, he will realize the difference between the two policies and systems of adminis-[DOT] tration ; the difference between the idea held by the people out west and the idea so persistently advanced by hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House in this discussion. In one case the idea was that these lands should pass out of the hands of the Dominion and into the hands of the settlers. I think that idea was specifically stated in the remarks of the Minister of the Interior ; certainly, it was the intention ; and, inasmuch as that hon. gentleman mentioned a fixed price, whether that price should be adhered to or not, it was clear that the idea was absolutely contrary to the idea suggested by the hon. member for North Toronto.


George Eulas Foster: Will the hon. gentleman allow me a word ? When the ex-Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) sold for $1.50 an acre, part in money and part in scrip, a very large acreage to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, did he do it with the idea that the land should pass at the cheapest rate possible from the hands of the government into the hands of the settler ? Let my hon. friend say from the information that he has whether one single acre of this land which passed for $1.50 of money and scrip to that land company, has gone into the hands of the actual settler at less then from $5 to $10 per acre. There is a practical proof of what my hon. friend's predecessor thought with reference to it. Add to that the proposition explained by my hon. friend that 50,000,000 acres could be set apart and sold in order to reimburse the cost of the Grand Trunk Pacific, and you have both the proposition and actual thing carried out, and both are against my hon. friend.


Frank Oliver: I do not gather that the sale to the .Saskatchewan Valley Land Company is at all against the proposition I laid 192J	.
down. The sale was made to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company at a certain price per acre, as the hon. gentleman has said, a low fixed price per acre, on condition of the lands being settled. The company which got the lands at that low price were under contract, it was a condition of purchase, that they should place settlers upon the lands, and neither he nor I have any means of knowing to what expense the company was compelled to go in securing these settlers and placing them on those lands. The essential point is to get settlers on the land, and that is a point which our hon. friends opposite seem to miss. The land as land has no value, it is worth nothing, it is the use of the land that gives the value, it is the requirement of that land by the people that gives it value. That land may stand from now till doomsday, as it has stood from the creation until now, without being of any value unless settlers go upon it and make it of value by producing wealth out of it.


George Eulas Foster: My hon. friend must not carry that argument too far, because the instance I cited is directly against them. The land does have value given to it by the work of the labourer. The land has a value before the labourer has put his spade into a single foot of its soil. The land that was sold for $1 or $1.50 per acre had no settlers upon it, the land that was retailed out by the go-between company had no labourer's spade or plough put into it when it had increased in value from $1.50 up to $5 or $10, but it was the prospective idea that by-and-by the real worker would come in and would raise enough from it to enable him to pay the $10 that came to the go-between. But my hon. friend has no basis, financial or otherwise for saying that there is no value in the land until the settler goes to work on it, there is.


Frank Oliver: Of course I do not wish to enter into an academic discussion with my hon. friend at this moment on the question between us. He must know that that parti* cular land was not worth anything until it came into the possession of the worker. The value that it had was because of somebody having worked the land and having demonstrated that it could be worked to advantage. The ultimate increase in the value or the land does depend, not necessarily on that particular piece of land being worked, but on the possibility of its production being demonstrated by the work on land there or thereabouts, and the demand for that land that comes by reason of the presence of the settlers The company who bought that land had to go to the expense of advertising it an d of bringing settlers there. I do not know, and he does not know what the expense was, and there is where our hon. friendc opposite altogether miss the point of how the value of land comes about. Our lands lay there for many years after they came under


William Humphrey Bennett: I happened to be in the Northwest a couple of years ago, when the leader of the opposition held a series of public meetings throughout that country, and 1 must say that this question of the ownership of public lands attracted a great deal of attention at the different meetings, and if at these meetings the arguments advanced by the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) and those advanced by the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) in this House had been presented, I think that my friend from North Toronto (Mr. Foster) would have scored rather heavily on the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver). As I understand it, and I have listened very carefully to the Minister of the Interior, he bases the claim that the Dominion should still hold the lands on two important points. The first one is the policy that more money was gained by the Dominion as a whole than by these provinces from the introduction of settlers into that country. Now, if that is a good argument, it is not one that was relied upou by the ex-Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton), for this reason, that a settler in the Northwest, if you are going to look only at what you get out of him in the way of customs duties, would be no more valuable than a settler in Ontario. I have here an atlas published by the Department of the Interior, ' Geography of the Dominion of Canada,' which deals largely with Western Canada. Out of sixty odd pages, nearly all are devoted to the Northwest country, and not a plea is advanced asking people to come into the old provinces other than the west. This is rather a reflection on the province of Ontario, because hon. gentlemen opposite will remember that when the Grand Trunk Pacific Bill was before the House one of the greatest pleas that was advanced for the taking up of that measure by this parliament was the fact that we had in Ontario a vast area known as the clay belt, which was one of the greatest assets in the whole Dominion, and the ministers from Ontario upheld their position by continually referring to that great asset of Ontario, and yet the ex-Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) apparently in this atlas pays little or no attention to that, so that his view was that the asset which the country desired was not a settler from whom to draw customs duties, but rather it was that a settler should come into the country, become part of the country, raise grain and other products, send these out of the country and
in return bring back the money and spend that money among our own people, and I think that is the great basis of success, not only of this province, but of the whole Dominion, or any part or portion of it. The next point the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) .took was on the question of immigration, that immigration could be more successfully handled and induced by the department over which he presides than by provincial departments. It would be very easy for any province to imitate the methods which the Department of the Interior has employed to induce that immigration. In the first place, I think that if they had left politics out of this matter to a great extent it would have been much better. One of the greatest experiments for inducing settlers to come to this country from England was the sending of a number of settlers from Manitoba and the Northwest to the old country who lectured at different points and endeavoured to persuade the people that this was a desirable field for immigration. I have no fault to find with that; I think it was an admirable plan. These were men speaking from actual experience, and I believe no better system could have been pursued in the old country than that. It was asserted ,a.t that time that these lecturers were chiefly recruited from the ranks of hon. gentlemen opposite. Be that as it may,
I think that if the provinces had the handling tff a similar line of scheme they could do it better than the Dominion, but the fact is, as pointed out by the hon. member for North Toronto, settlement has gone in there and the government could not have prevented it. This administration have had, according to this atlas, about a dozen immigration agents in the United States I notice the names here of some gentlemen who were known to me personally. These were stationed at Spokane and at one point and another in the United States. We all know that years ago settlers went from Ontario to the Dakotas, and settled there and in Minnesota, and, the reports they made induced other settlers to go from Ontario to these states. I know that from the township of Tiny, in Simcoe county, where there is a large French Canadian settlement, a large number of men, twenty-five or thirty years ago, went to these states, and by reason of the fact that they were successful, they led others of their friends in the same direction.	.
How much more difficult is it to attract immigrants from Ontario and the older provinces into out Territories, than to induce them to come from the Dakotas and the adjoining states. There was only an imaginary boundary between Canada and the United States ; these American farmers knew they had been successful in the States where conditions similar to those in Canada existed ; they knew their lands in the United States could be sold at a high price and they knew that the terms on which they
*6035

could acquire lands in Canada were easy. The greatest factor which has tended to the development of the Northwest has been the trips made through the country by newspaper men who disseminated their experience through the United States press. No fair man will deny that more has been done by this agency which cost us nothing, than by all the immigration agents this government has placed in the United States. I quote some samples of the literature published in the American press :
A special correspondent of the Chicago ' Tribune,' writing from Rosthern, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, on July of last year says: The American invasion of Canada is no more a figure of speech. The tide of emigration now setting in to the Northwest Territories is a movement of population comparable only to the great wave which for four generations swept into the United States from the Atlantic to the Rockies. The United States became for the first time a country of emigrants as well as immigrants, and is giving her northern neighbours experienced farmers, intelligent, trained iu western agriculture, good citizens, thrifty, progressive sons of the men who turned the rock prairies into an agricultural empire, and now seek new homes with a patrimony and experience which their fathers lacked.-Chicago * Tribune.'
A new nation is being born-under our very face and eyes. Things are shaping faster in Canada than most of us here in the United States realize ; indeed, faster than Canada herself realizes. The Northwest of Canada is rapidly filling up with a new life from eastern Canada and from our own Northwest. Farmers in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and the Dakotas are selling their valuable farms and are moving with their families, implements and live stock, up into this great harvest field, and are receiving a most generous welcome.-
' Saturday Evening Post ' Philadelphia, Pa.
The editors of the * American Agriculturist,' recently made a 4,000 mile tour through Manitoba, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The report of what they saw, after referring to the adaptability of western Canada for the growing of small grains and to the excellence of the stock, says :
Among the settlers are many from the United States. Such rapid development as we saw is only possible in a country blessed with a fertile soil and a prosperous people. The future of western Canada is full of promise. Rapid and substantial development is certain. When the newer part of the United States was settled, it had much to contend with. There were no railroads, consequently no markets. With the settlers in Canada everything is different. Railroads have preceded them, furnishing at once a market and means of securing the comforts of modern farm life.-' American Agriculturist.'
This information and this advertising of Canada in the newspapers of the United States has tended greatly to help the cause of immigration into our Territories. It has been argued by my bon. friend from South York (Mr. W. F. Maclean) and others, that if these lands had been given to the provinces they had peculiar advantages to administer them wisely, and, they would Mr. BENNETT.
have had the opportunity to apportion them to railroads by way of bonuses if they so desired. There are cases in which The provinces can better- deal with these assets than can the Dominion, in the district of Nipissing in the province of Ontario there are large deposits of nickel and copper, which I believe will become of vast value to the province and to the Dominion at large, when by salutary laws the export of nickel in its raw state is prohibited.
Another case, which may by analogy turn out in the Northwest is the fact that the Dominion government-I am not now referring to either political party-neglected to place an export duty on logs, resulting in the closing of the saw-mills on the Georgian bay and Lake Huron. Millions and millions of Canadian logs kept the Michigan mills busy at the expense of Canadian mills, and mill owners after failing to impress their ideas on the Dominion government, appealed j to the government of Ontario. The government of Ontario bowed to public opinion In the matter and did w-hat the Dominion government failed to do, to the great advantage of the province and to the great advantage of the Dominion at large. Indeed so successful has been the result of this policy that no political party would dare to interfere with it to-day. I believe that the administration of the lands in the Northwest could be much better conducted by the local ministers of the Crown who are on the spot, than by the mere agents of the Dominion ministers who are of necessity twenty-five hundred miles away from the scene of operations. For all these reasons I believe that the administration of the lands should be handed to the provinces, and I believe further that if the provinces are to be tied down to a fixed annual payment, some day, perhaps in the not distant future, these provinces will be coming back to us asking for better terms. I believe that if the Minister of the Interior advanced before public meetings in the west the argument which he has advanced in this House to-night he would not touch a very responsive chord in the hearts of the settlers in the Northwest, who, I believe, are of the opinion that the provinces should have control of their lands, and not the Dominion government as this Bill proposes.


Mr. LAKE.: The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) has proposed one method at any rate under which it might be possible for the new provinces to realize to some degree the actual value of their public resources. I consider that the figures quoted by the hon. gentleman were not in any way too roseate. The member for West Assiniboia (Mr. Scott) made a very hopeful estimate of what the population of these new provinces might be in the near future, and if that estimate be correct it is not only possible but probable that the figures given by the hon. member (Mr.1

Foster) would be soon realized by the pro- | vinces should the public lands remain in their possession. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster) has shown further, that there is a way by which ample means would be placed at the disposal of the local administration without entrenching on their capital in the way of public lands. The Minister of the Interior in his reply did not attempt to criticise the figures given by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Foster). In fact he admitted there was a great deal in them when he stated that the effect of that speech would be to create dissatisfaction with the financial terms among the people of the west. That statement clearly proves to this House that the Minister of the Interior thinks that the people of the west will be satisfied that the suggestions made by the member for North Toronto are well within the bounds of probability.
The minister says the object of the sale of lands in the west should be to develop the country rather than to derive a revenue, and he has deprecated the policy which he says the members of the opposition would adopt, of squeezing the last cent of value that could be got out of the land, as lie claims has been done in the disposal of the school lands. The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) very well called his attention to the sale of homestead lands to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company a short time ago at $1 an acre. Surely the fact remains that in that particular case every cent is being squeezed out of the people who want to buy these lands. There is this bad feature about it also, that the proceeds of this squeezing goes into the hands of a private company, and not into the hands of the Dominion or provincial authorities ; and yet it seems to me that the Minister of the Interior approves of the policy which was initiated at that time, of selling a vast tract of land to a private company, with the intention of making that company an immigration agent on a large scale. I hold that if this policy is continued, as we may anticipate will be the case if the Minister of the Interior so highly approves of it, it will have a most pernicious effect upon the immigration into the Northwest. I have already seen, in the part of the country with which I am familiar, the result which the possession of these lands held for speculation by the land companies is having upon immigration. There are a number of homesteads in that part of the country, but it is impossible for the ordinary settler to get a homestead from the government. As a general rule, however, one of the land companies will be able to offer him for sale one of its pieces of land, and in some way or another procure for him the right of homesteading a piece of government land alongside of it. That is a matter of common report all over that country,, and persons have told me of it from their own personal experience. I wish to say a word or
two with reference to the arguments put forward by the Minister of the Interior in regard to the Dominion government having a greater interest in the establishment of settlers in the Northwest than the provincial government has. Talking of governments alone, I think that is perfectly true ; but I think the deduction he draws from that statement is altogether wrong. It appears to me that the Immigration Department will continue to be maintained on its present very elaborate basis ; but if you had in addition the province directly interested in the lands, you would have it also working for immigration. We have already had an explanation of the way the provincial government of Ontario is working for immigration on its own account. Reading the teport of the Minister of the Interior the other day, I noticed that the Dominion Department of Immigration was claiming credit for putting a large number of farm hands into the province of Ontario during the year. I was told that the provincial authorities rather objected to that claim on the part of the Dominion authorities, considering that they had had a very large share in obtaining those immigrants. At any rate, the efforts of the Ontario government must have been successful to a very large extent ; and I hold that it is better to have both the Dominion and the provincial governments interested in procuring immigration, for the more immigration agents we have the better for the country. I wish to put on record an argument which was used by the Northwest government when it was requesting the grant of provincial autonomy from the Dominion government and was requesting at the same time that full ownership of the public domain should be vested in the province. As this deals to a certain extent with the legal aspect of the question, I wish to see it upon Hansard :
The right and title to the public domain is m the Crown, but in the colonies directly established by Great Britain the beneficiary interest in the revenues arising from the sale or other disposal of the public domain las been surrendered by the Crown for the benefit of the people residing in such colonies. The Union A.ct of 1840 specifically provided that the territorial and other revenues then at the disposal of the Crown should be placed in future at the disposal of the province of Canada then being formed. Similar dispositions were made, either by statute or by the exercise of the royal prerogative. in favour of the other colonies in British North America. The British North America Act continued these arrangements for the benefit of the provinces forming the confederation and the sections of the Bill under reference provide for the extension of the principle to the province of which it purports to provide for the formation.
It may be noted that there has been no legislation or exercise of the royal prerogative transferring to Canada or otherwise, any right to enjoy the beneficiary interest in the territorial revenues of the Northwest Territories. The


Mr. P. TALBOT.: I would like to take up a few minutes explaining the basis on which I reason out this matter from a practical standpoint. As nearly as I could estimate, the area of the two provinces will be about 300 million acres or perhaps slightly more than that. We know that the northern and eastern part of Athabaska and the northeastern part of the old Saskatchewan district will never be fit for actual settlement. I think it is a very liberal estimate to say that we have 200,000,000 acres of agricultural land in those two provinces. Now, since the Dominion government continues the policy of giving free grants to settlers or homesteaders, we actually in the provinces get half the land. We get the even-numbered sections just as thoroughly, just as completely as if we got all the land and were to continue the policy of giving free homesteads. That leaves then 100,000,000 acres of odd-numbered sections which will be retained by the Dominion government. We must remember that the odd-numbered sections 11 to 29 already belong to us by a previous arrangement. These are the schools lands. That will make 11,000,000 acres of that land which clearly belongs to the province, in spite of anything we can do at present. That leaves to the Dominion government really 89,000,000 acres, that is 89,000,000 of odd-numbered sections. But there have been alienated to railway and colonization companies some 30,000,000 acres of these odd-numbered sections ; that leaves a balance of 59,000,000 acres.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: This return which I hold in my hand only gives 25,000,000 of acres alienated, namely, Alberta, 13,000,000; Saskatchewan, 12,000,000.


Peter Talbot: In addition to that a large amount was given to colonization companies, so that you may take 30.000,000 acres as about correct. That will leave
59.000.	000 acres in the hands of the Dominion government for the two provinces. So that when we made that calculation of
25.000.	000 acres for each province, we were not very far astray. If hon. gentlemen opposite will look into this matter carefully,
*

they will come to the conclusion that there has been a fair arrangement both for the provinces and the Dominion government. Our revenue will be at least equal to that of the other provinces in the Dominion, and I think it is fair to all parties.


David Henderson: I confess that the figures given by the hon. member for Strathcona (Mr. Talbot) rather surprise me. In the statement brought down by the government giving the quantity of land vested in the Crown in these proposed provinces I find the following :
Lands vested in the Crown in the proposed provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan respectively :
Alberta, 129,556,903 ; Saskatchewan, 120,880,366.
These are certainly very far in excess of the figures mentioned by the hon. gentleman.


Peter Talbot: Your estimate is 250,000,000, and I was estimating the whole at
300,000,000. The hon. member for North York estimated that there are 228,000,000 of agricultural land. I put it at 200,000,000 and I think I am more nearly correct. I claim that not more than two-thirds of the entire area is land fit for agricultural purposes.


David Henderson: The figures 1 gave are the number of acres of land still vested in the Crown, not what is contained within the area of the two provinces. I am not dealing with that. I am aware that a considerable portion has been disposed of in a variety of ways, such as subsidizing railways, homesteads and so forth. That leaves us still nearly 250,000,000 acres in the two provinces. That is very far in excess of the amount given by the hon. gentleman.


Peter Talbot: The hon. gentleman will surely not say that there are 250,000,000 acres of agricultural or arable land.


David Henderson: The statement is of lands vested in the Crown.


Peter Talbot: That portion of eastern part of Athabaska is of the same formation as the Rainy River, which is not arable land.


David Henderson: Possibly not; but, of course, we have no information at handi to-night on that point.


Peter Talbot: Any good map will give a person an idea of what are agricultural lands, and that -is how I reach my conclusion.


David Henderson: suited. I do not think that there is anything in the statement that because Edmonton votes for the hon. gentleman (Mr. Oliver) to be Minister of the Interior, we are to accept that as an evidence that everything was satisfactory that the people wanted a dual system of schools, that they do not want to have ownership of their own lands, and that they are satisfied to remain simply like the Indians in that section, wards of the government, ready to remain under the tutelage, care and protection of the Dominion government. Notwithstanding all the discussions that have taken place, I have not changed my mind one whit. I have not heard one argument to convince me that the people of the west do -not want to have the lands within their boundaries, but would prefer that those lands should be retained and administered by the Dominion. I say that involves a grievance that never will be removed until this parliament-or some other parliament ; I do not know whether this parliament would have ihe power or not -undoes the mischief that we are now doing in taking away from these people what, 1 believe, of right belongs to them. Now, why deal with these provinces in a way different from the way in which other provinces are dealt with ? The older provinces were allowed to retain their lands. And it was a matter of pride with them. The younger western country may well point to the older provinces and ask of the Dominion : 'Why place us on a different basis from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick. Quebec, and Ontario ? Why deprive us of what belongs to us as a free people ? Or, take especially the case of the province of Quebec. In 1898 that province was given a very large addition to its Territories-I think something about 75,000,000 acres. Did any hon. gentleman on that side of the House ever suggest at that time that the province of Quebec should not be given the lands contained within the boundaries prescribed by the Act of parliament ? Not at all. The province of Quebec got that land added to its territory. The Act of parliament transferred everything that was in that area-lands, timber, minerals, water-power; everything. Yet the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are 'to be refused what the province of Quebec was given only some seven years ago. To1 my mind the treatment of one province by one method and of another province by an-otlier method will create dissatisfaction and constitute a grievance that will not be rej medied for many years.
Now, I cannot imagine why the Minister of the Interior should believe that the people in these new provinces are better satisfied to have a financial consideration and to do without the lands. If the Minister of the Interior has carefully considered this matter he will have observed that a large consideration is to be given to the provinces besides that given as payment for Mr. HENDERSON.
the lands which the Dominion retains or takes back from the provinces. There is an allowance of $50,000 to each province for governmental purposes. There is an allowance of 80c per head of the population according to the census which is to be taken at intervals of five years-this will be a very considerable subsidy. Then here is ah additional allowance on account of the provinces having no debt, amounting to something over $400,000 to each province. These are very large financial considerations out of which they can make a revenue for themselves. And I feel that the provinces would be very much better satisfied indeed than to have an additional $1,000,000 handed over, which, in any case, will not be immediately, but after the population has reached, if I remember well, a maximum of 1,200,000.
Even an increased subsidy of $1,200,000 I do not believe will satisfy the people of that northwestern country. It will be a burning question year after year amongst those people. They are a high-minded people, many of them have gone in from the old province of Ontario, from the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, many of them have come from the United States and from the British Isles, from Germany and other European countries, and they will say, why is this thus ? Why are we treated as serfs ? Some of them have come from Russia and other European countries, and they will say, we lived a long time in serfdom, we came to a free country, and we are not allowed to call our own our own, we are not allowed to call this country our own. We come here and settle in this country, and we are told it belongs to the people of Quebec, it belongs to the people of Ontario, it belongs to Nova iScotia and New Brunswick. Are you going to make a happy and contented people in that way ? Don't you think you would conduce a great deal more to the prosperity and happiness of that people if you were to hand over to them, or rather allow them to retain what already belongs to them, or will belong to them when we create the provinces ? When we create these new provinces, as a matter of course, automatically the land belongs to them.
We buy it back as a Dominion by paying a consideration for it. Why should the older provinces be called upon to put up a large sum of money, to tax themselves to buy back a large country simply for the purpose of giving it away-giving it away for whose benefit ? Giving it away in order to provide free homesteads. Now there are two sides to this question, there is the Northwest side and there is the side of the older provinces. For all time to come [DOT]-because we assume that this law is to remain Upon the statute-book-the older provinces of this country will have to tax themselves practically for eleven-twelfths of this entire payment that is given for the 'lands

of those two provinces ; for all time to come the older provinces will have to tax themselves practically for eleven-twelfths of that sum in order that we may have lands to give away to people who go into that western country. Now what return are we going to get for it V I am not sure hut there will he a grievance in the older provinces as well as in the new. They will say, what benefit is it to us ? We are told we are going to get an immense revenue from that western country, that, people will come in, and every man that comes in will be worth so much, and will contribute to the revenues of the country and make good what we tax ourselves to pay. Now I would not rely very much upon that. If the Minister of Finance is going to increase the revenues in this country so as to get money to buy this immense territory of 3,000,000 acres,' he will be obliged to cripple every industry in this country by reducing taxation down to a revenue basis in order to get money to do it ; and the result will be that the old provinces of the country where industrial pursuits are carried on, will be handicapped for all time to come, and the next Minister of Finance will not be able to give this country a policy w'hich will carry i; on successfully, and give us that prosperity which we all hope will continue for many years to come. Now this is a big question. It is not simply to be looked at from the little picayune idea of whether it will be the Liberal party or the Conservative party that is going to control the vote in the Northwest, whether we are going to be able, through tb.e land agents of the Dominion government, to go to the electors who have not yet secured patents for their lands, and tell them: Now, if you vote right you will get your patent, if you do not, dear knows when you will. Now that is a mighty small consideration if it is going to cripple the commercial industry of this country for all time to come. I think we had better broaden out our ideas ; and I hope that the Minister of the Interior, now that he occupies this higlT and honourable position, will throw away these picayune politics and take hold of this matter as a statesman, and he guided by statesmanship rather than by politics in dealing with the affairs of that great country.


William Stevens Fielding: I think it is understood by agreement that this clause is not to he pressed to a vote to-night, and as we have been told that an amendment is likely to the moved, I propose that we proceed to consider the clause respecting the Hudson Bay Company, which was held over the other night, but which I believe is not likely to be further debated.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: That was -the agreement.


Charles Marcil: Section 22 is struck out, and the following is substituted therefor :
22. Nothing in this Act shall in any way prejudice or affect the rights or properties of the Hudson Bay Company as contained in the conditions under which that company surrendered Rupert's Land to the Crown, and all rights, privileges and properties conferred on the Canadian government by the said conditions shall, in so far as they relate to matters within the legislative authority of the province, belong to and he vested in the government of the said province.


William Findlay Maclean: What are these rights of the Hudson Bay Company which you wish to protect ?


William Stevens Fielding: If there is any further information desired, we will have to postpone this discussion.


David Henderson: Will the lands of the Hudson Bay Company be subject to taxation by the local government ?


William Stevens Fielding: I am advised they are subject to taxation now.
Progress reported.
On motion of Mr. Fielding, House adjourned at 11.30 p.m.

Tuesday, May 16, 1905.