1908-06-12

Mr. A. K. MACLEAN (Lunenburg) moved :: That the report of the Royal Commission on the Quebec Bridge inquiry, together with the evidence (sessional papers No. 154) be referred to the select special committee appointed to investigate the conditions and guarantees under which the Dominion government paid moneys^ to the Quebec Bridge Company.


Mr. MONK.: I understand that the principal object of this motion is to place all the results of the inquiry made by the Royal Commission, with the evidence in support thereof, at the disposal of the committee named by the House to hold an investigation into the financial situation with reference to the bridge. It will greatly abridge 330i	.
the work of the committee and enable it to dispense with a great deal of evidence being repeated before that committee.


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Motion agreed to.

Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works).: My hon. friend from Leeds (Mr. Taylor) asked me if I would lay on the table of the House further papers with reference to the Petit Rocher breakwater. I now lay upon the table the papers with reference to the second contract. While they are not asked for and it is not usual to produce them to the House upon a motion simply for correspondence, tenders, contracts. &c., yet I felt that my hon. friend might desire to have them upon this occasion and I lay on the table the reports of the engineer on the progress of the work from time to time both on the first and second contracts.



SASKATCHEWAN VALLEY LAND COMPANY.

Mr. R. L. BORDEN (Carleton, Ontario).: I would like to ask the hon. Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) whether he has any reply with respect to the matter that I brought to his attention on the 26th May. He promised to make a statement on the following day but I am not aware that he did so. It had reference to an inquiry of Mr. Normal Willerton respecting arrangements made with the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company.


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior).: 

GOVERNMENT BUSINESS.

Mr. R. U. BORDEN.: I would like to ask the right hon. Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) whether, having given further consideration to my inquiry of yesterday, he is able to make any more definite statement as to what further legislation may be expected this session ?


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: No, Pam sorry I cannot. I will give a statement to my hon. friend on Monday morning.



SUPPLY-PEACE RIVER COLONIZATION AND LAND DEVELOPMENT COMPANY.

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Mr. FIELDING moved that the House go into Committee of Supply.
["Does it not look almost like an insane piece of business to do it? As to the names which I read but which were not published (I think at the request of hon. gentlemen opposite) perhaps I should not have read the names as it is of no use to have people pilloried for things loug gone by. I used these names in connection with the question whether in all cases, even where full restitution was not made, there should be prosecution. Some of these were cases where there had not been restitution and where there had been no prosecution. All of these offenders could still be prosecuted and I wanted to know if the opinion was that there should be prosecution in every case. As the leader of the opposition said, judgment must be used. Certainly this man deserved prosecution and he has had it ; acting as he did he could deserve no clemency.\nIt is for this reason, not at all to justify\nMr. PATERSON\nmyself, that this was done. There is in office a kind of continuity, certain rules have been laid down as the result of the experience of the department in administration When we remember that the customs collections have amounted to $20,000,000 a year, $40,000,000 a year, $50,000,000 a year, that this vast amount is collected by and passes through the hands of some 1,800 or 2,000 different officers, amounting in two or three years to $100,000,000 it is surprising how little has been in default, the merest trifle. *1 am not saying this to justify what defaulting there has been, we would rather have no defaulting, but I say that it is to the credit of the public servants of Canada, that it is a high testimony to them, that we have had so few defalcations.\nAt six o'clock, House took recess.\nAfter Recess.\nHouse resumed at eight o'clock."]
Mr. SAM. HUGHES (Victoria and Ilali-burton).: There is a matter which I wish to bring under the notice of the House and especially under the notice of the Minister of the Interior. Early in the session I moved for two returns in connection with the handing over to a certain company ol' some lands in the Peace River district. The first return was brought down on the 15th of January and the second on the 22nd of February of this year. From these returns it transpires that there was given to this company sixteen townships (odd and even-numbered sections) containing 576 square miles of land, or an area twenty-four miles by twenty-four miles-an area as large as that of an ordinary county In the provinces of Ontario or Quebec-and containing 368,640 acres, or more than three times the quantity of land that was handed over to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company. The Saskatchewan Land Company received its lands in alternate sections, had to do certain settlement duties upon them, had to pay a certain price, and somewhat similar conditions were imposed on this colonization scheme to which I refer, but these conditions have not been complied with. Now, I understand that negotiations are being carried on by this company to float these lands in the United States, in England, France, Belgium, and other countries of Europe where they think they can get capital. This company is asking $11 per acre for these lands retail and they are endeavouring to float them into a company at $7 an acre wholesale. The parent company has handed the lands over under agreement for $4 per acre to the company which now has an option upon them. The title of the first company is the Peace River Land and Colonization Development Company, and the terms of agreement respecting these lands were :
First. That fifty settlers be located within three years from October 20, 1904; one hundred settlers within five years thereafter, and a Mr. OLIVER.
total of 1,200 within twenty years from the commencement of the survey.
The order in council granting these lands to this company is dated the 27th of July, 1900. It does not say that there must be one hundred settlers additional within five years, leaving it in doubt whether it means one hundred settlers or fifty settlers more. It says that they are to locate 1,200 settlers within twenty years from the commencement of the survey, but it does not say when the survey is to commence.
Second. That the company may be given the privilege of purchasing at any time within 'ive years from October 20, 1903," and after the first fifty settlers are placed a portion not exceeding one-third of the total tract at $1 per acre; one-fourth in cash; and after each succeeding five years one-fifth of the lands remaining available.
Third. That the settlers located within the tract be given free homesteads.
On the 4th of January, 1908, some weeks after I had given notice for this return, the president of the company was notified to file within thirty days satisfactory evidence of the action taken by the company to fulfil the terms of the agreement under the two orders in council mentioned, or to show cause why such agreement should not be- cancelled. No lands were sold and therefore no price per acre was realized from these transactions. Negotiations were conducted with the following firms and individuals : Rainville, Archambault, & Gervais, advocates ; Beique, Turgeon & Beique, advocates ; L. P. Brodeur, Rev. J. A. Lemieux, A. H. Kent, and A. T. Thompson. It says :
The regulations governing the securing of lands in the Peace River valley -are like all similar iregulations based upon the Dominion Lands Act. a copy of which is attached hereto.
I may point out that the concession granted to this company is much larger than some of the principalities of Europe, and it has been handed over by the government on most favourable terms to the company. The first order in council was renewed on the 8th of July, 1904, and although I moved for copies of these orders in council they have not yet been brought down. Now, every one knows that since the year 1900 there has been a great influx of settlers into the Northwest, and we have heard portrayed-in eloquent terms the fertility of the soil and the beauty of the climate, but notwithstanding all that, in 1906 nothing had been done by this company to fulfil the terms of the agreement and in place of putting settlers upon the land they were endeavouring to hawk this land around and to secure American and European capital to float a company at no doubt a profit to themselves. On June 26, 1906, I find the first communication in relation to the

purchase of these lands. It is a letter addressed from the first National Bank, Mill-bank, S.P., to the secretary of the Department of the Interior, Ottawa. Canada. The writer of this letter, who is evidently a shrewd American, .wants to know under what authority these gentlemen are endeavouring to sell these lands and he writes to the secretary of the Department of the Interior :
Dear Sir,-I desire to obtain all the information possible regarding the Peace river country north of Edmonton. Can you send me maps and descriptive matter pertaining to that locality? I am informed that a certain grant was made to some priests for colonizing purposes some years ago covering lands in this valley. Can you give me any information as to who the grantees were and where I can reach them; also term's of the grant and whether conditions have been complied with. Do you know if the land has been transferred from the original grantees and if so who the present owners are. Assuring yon that your information will be greatly appreciated, I am, &c.



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Then follow the reply of the department aud letters from Messrs Ewart, Osier, Bur-bidge & Maclaren, Ottawa, dated Ottawa, 26th August, 1906, to the secretary of the Interior Department, Ottawa :
Dear Sir,-Re the Peace River Colonization and Land Development Company. We are acting for 'Messrs. Lafleur, Maodougall & Mac-farlane, solicitors for the Peace River Company. On July 27, 1900, and July 8, 1904, two orders in council were passed in favour of the above company. We should like to order certified copies of the applications made by the Peace River Company on which thg orders in council were based.
As the company is in a hurry for these documents, we would ask you to let us know as quickly as possible if we can get the same.
This is signed by the firm I have named. Then comes the answer of the department giving the Information. Then there are letters about settlers going in and other communications from the department concerning them. But we find the following letter dated the 4th of January, 1907, sent out from the Department of the Interior over the signature of W. D. Scott, Superintendent of Immigration. This letter is addressed to E. H. Kent, Esq., president of the Kent Realty and Investment Company, Grand Forks, North Dakota, who I understand, has still the option on the lands, and I am informed that he has been in the old land this year trying to unload them at $7 an acre in England, Belgium, France and elsewhere he can get them taken up. I do not know whether he has yet returned or not. The letter of Mr. Scott is as follows :
Through some correspondence with this department my attention has been drawn to an
ofter made by your company for settlement in the Peace river district, and I would bring to your notice the terms of an order in council dated 8th July, 1904, in which it is stipulated that the Peace River Colonization and Land Development Company (with whom this arrangement was made) is required to place fifty settlers on this tract in the Peace river district before the 1st October. After the company has located these first fifty settlers, it is given an option for five years from the 1st October, 1903, within which to purchase one-third of the total leasehold at $1 per acre. From the above it would seem clear that the company cannot undertake to dispose of any lands by sale until such time as these first fifty settlers have been placed on the land and the company has paid the price of purchase for lands required.
One of my correspondents has forwarded a number of your letters in one of which written under date November 2, this man is advised :
Here follows tlie quotation from Mr. Kent's letter, I presume a circular letter, sent out to the gentlemen whom they desired to become settlers on these lands :
We will sell this land on our special ten payment plan, and will guarantee each purchaser a homestead adjoining the land lie purchases. Each purchaser must agree to enter upon the land and make his final selection not later than July 1st, 1907.
From this it would appear that these gentlemen only got the alternate sections. The statement which I have read shows that they were granted sixteen townships, but it does not say whether they were granted the alternate sections or not. I was not favoured with a copy of the order in council. Can the Minister of the Interior tell me whether they were granted the sixteen townships en bloc or only the alternate sections ?
Mr OLIVER.: I cannot answer definitely. The question can easily be settled by reference to the order in council, which I can bring.


Samuel Hughes: This letter of Mr. 'Scott goes on to say :
Again under date 13th idem this correspondent is advised as follows : ' We are asking a special introductory price for $11 per acre tor land purchased, terms $4 per acre in cash, balance in nine annual payments with interest at 6 per cent. We also guarantee each purchaser of a quarter section a homestead at his option, either adjoining or m the vicinity ot the land purchased.
,So it would seem that the homesteads are reserved. Mr. 'Scott goes ou to say
I bev to draw your attention to the fact that he ofier made this person is scarcely a bona ide ofter, as the company has not satisfied ;he department that fifty settlers a,re actually ,n the land, and also to the additional fact :hat no payments have yet been made tor tne

purchase of the part of leasehold which the company desires to acquire. It is true that the company has until the 1st October, 1907, in which to place these fifty settlers, and an additional year, that is, until the 1st October, 1908, within which to purchase the land; but until the settlers are actually on the land no guarantee should be made by your company in which you undertake to dispose of lands.
Then follow a series of communications which I shall not read, until finally the government notifies the company to give reasons why the concession should not be cancelled, and there the matter ends,so far as the correspondence is concerned. There are in the return some very interesting documents. There is one showing that an attempt was made by this company to bring in some settlers, and when they got them in, the party broke up in a free fight, smashing saucepans and frying pans over each other's heads, and the gentleman who brought the party in told them that from the start the company knew that they were not going to place them on those lands, but brought them in in order to place them on some other lands, as they were going to make a deal with the government. The order in council does not say anything about reserving the even-numbered sections, although from the statement made by the gentleman who now holds the option on the company, it would seem that the homestead sections were reserved. But supposing that they were granted sixteen townships en bloc they would get 368,000 acres. If they were granted only the alternate sections, they would get one-half of that amount. It is a much more favourable concession than that to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company which has been so much talked about; the terms are infinitely easier. The demand has been made again and again that the balance of the lands granted to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company should not be allowed to remain with the company, and I think the government would be more than justified in cancelling instantly this concession. I desire to ask the Minister of the Interior what have been the developments, and whether he has demanded of the company to show reasons why the concession should not be cancelled? Here is a block twenty-four miles by twenty-four miles set apart for one company, which has been hawking the lands around the markets of Europe and the United States trying to sell them at $4 an acre and then at $7 an acre, and retailing the lands at aa acre, far in advance of settlement. This is something that should not be encouraged by the government of Canada These lands should be held on the same policy as the Minister of the Interior is holding lands in the older parts of the country- for the actual settler. I would like to know from the Minister of the Interior what the Mr. SAM HUGHES.
condition of affairs now is, and what the intention of the department is with reference to this matter ?


Frank Oliver: The matter to which my hon. friend has alluded was discussed a few nights ago on the estimates of the Department of tile Interior, and the facts were then brought out so far as they were material to the case. However, as my hoti. friend has again brought the matter to the attention of the House, it is perhaps necessary again to traverse the facts. As he has said, an order in council was passed in pursuance of an agreement arrived at, looking to the colonization of a tract in the Peace river country some time between 1900 and 1902. While there are great advantages of soil and climate in the Peace river region, those advantages are dormant because of thet lack of transportation facilities. It is no discredit to the Peace river country that it is not to-day an available locality for settlement. These advantages have been known for the last hundred years but have not been availed of for the reason I have stated.


Samuel Hughes: The hon. gentleman speaks of there being no transportation advantages. I myself have been over the same country in the saddle without much trouble. I might ask the hon. minister if he did not traverse the country between Winnipeg and Edmonton many years ago under pretty much the same disadvantages as now exist in the case of the Peace river country.
Mr. OLIVER, My hon. friend is altogether under a wrong impression regarding the transportation facilities to the Peace* river valley. When I travelled from Winnipeg to Edmonton, there was a fairly good wagon road the whole of the way, and the settler or trader who desired to reach Edmonton had only to provide himself with the animals of transport and vehicles and his arrival was a mere matter of time. That is not the case in the Peace river region. Although you can ride to Peace river on horseback, you could not hitch up a team and drive there during the summer from Edmonton. You could do it in the winter by using the ice of the water ways but not in the summer. At any rate up to the present no one has done so.


Samuel Hughes: What about the trail cut into the Yukon?


Frank Oliver: That is overgrown with timber and is not available for travel. In order that settlement may be successful, there must be a fairly immediate possibility of having satisfactory transportation facilities both for the purpose of bringing in supplies and sending produce to market. That condition does not exist in the Peace river country to-day any more than it has

for the past hundred years. Therefore except for purely pioneer settlement, the Peace river country is not a field for operation. Pioneer settlement necessarily has to precede agricultural settlement, and it was with the view of introducing pioneer settlement that the agreement in question was entered into in 1902. There are always ipeople willing to go in advance of settlement for reasons that seem good to them, and if we had no pioneers we would have no settlement, although the pioneer is not subject to the ordinary rule of commercial or industrial life.


Mr SAM. HUGHES.: Is my hon. friend not aware that there are already settlements far bevond this where they have gone down the waterways, and where there are flour mills grinding out wheat and turning out barrels by the hundred-north of this very spot.


Frank Oliver: There are settlements but they are essentially pioneer settlements and not capable of continued expansion such as we look to from the ordinarily settled parts which are provided with means of tianspor-tation and communication such as the civilized life of to-day requires. It was no doubt with the view of introducing pioneer settlement into this particular tract of the Peace rive country that this arrangement was entered into. I am not concerned for the purposes of the present agreement, as to whether it was provident or improvident.
I am merely stating its evident intent. Time went on and it was not possible for those who had undertaken the agreement, to carry it out. Arrangement was made in 1904 under which certain settlement duties were required to be done either by or on behalf of the company. The time for the completion of those duties expired October 1. 1907. During the season of 1907 the company did make some effort to comply with the conditions. They did, at some expense, organize a party which went from Edmonton with the ostensible intention of settling on the tract and fulfilling the first requirements and conditions. That party left Edmonton in July or August and had to be on the land before" the 1st of October. As^ the means of communication are not rapid, it was not until some time in December or January that we were made aware, by the reports of our officers, that the company had not established on their land the requisite number of settlers within the proper time. Notice was then served on the company that they had not fulfilled the agreement, and we gave them an opportunity to show cause why their concession should not be cancelled. The matter is still in that position We have been requested to extend the period for consideration of the rights of the company on the ground that the parties most concerned in the company are absent from Canada and it would not be fair to proceed in their absence.


Samuel Hughes: Was more than one absent ? I think only one was absent from Canada.


Frank Oliver: I am giving the House the ground of their application. They asked an extension of time beyond the thirty days, and we took advice as to whether that extension would prejudice our right to cancel. We were informed that it would not. u e were advised that the filing of our notice that the contract had not been fulfilled established our legal position, and we did not need to be in any particular hurry m order to save our legal position.


Samuel Hughes: Why should such a thing be necessary? Suppose a party obtained a concession and failed to comply with the terms, that would end the business the same as in the case of any other contract. Or was this some special favour.


Mr OLIVER.: Not at all. But even the Department of the Interior learns by opportunity and age. The department has cancelled concessions before, and the cancellations have been set aside by the courts. _ Iheie was tin agreement in this case requiting 1 fulfilment of certain conditions by the Parties In our estimation, these conditions have not been fulfilled. But we cannot take anv question away from the right or revfew by the court, and we must recognize that the people on the other side of the question have rights and views as v eil as we. And instead of immediately pie-cipitating the question into the courts, we thought it would be but right and fair to give reasonable opportunity to these people to say what they had to say in their own defence.
Now that is the position up to the present time, and I am not able to give anything further in regard to it,-except that the view of the department is that these people have not lived up to their agreement and that their rights are forfeited and, m due course, will be cancelled. We may be defeated in that view, but that is the view we take. And w'e do not think that any public interest is being injured at the present time by not pushing the actual cancellation. (Because there is no desire on the part of any person to occupy the lands. These lands are not in any sense being withheld from settlement by reason of the agreement wdth the company not having been definitely terminated. My hon. friend (Mr. Sam. Hughes), I think, may rest easy that the rights of the country will be protected, and that the lands will not be handed over to this company except on fulfilment of the conditions that are required by the order in council. As I said the other night, it might be that, if these people have made a legitimate attempt to comply with these conditions and have incurred large expenditures, some consideration would be given

them in that regard ;-I cannot say. But our position is already set forth in the file, and I do not know that I can add anything to what is there shown. I want however to say this : That, as to encouragement given by the department to the transactions of these people, my hon. friend (Mr. Sam. Hughes) was good enough to read from the file the view which the department takes. We gave notice to these people ; in order that they might have no opportunity to plead that they were taken unawares we took the responsibility of definitely informing them as to what were the requirements of their contract and that they would be required to live up to that contract or they could not get the land. We did that for our own protection and for the protection of the public, as we understood it. And "e refer to this letter as evidence that, at any rate, we wei-e not encouraging this
in the idea that they C0uld acquire this land except by fulfilling the agreement.


Mr SAM. HUGHES.: 
Frank Oliver: Well, that is not the intention, as I think the file that the hon gentleman has read and the remarks that I have made show.


Samuel Hughes: But does the minister intend to be firm about it ?


Frank Oliver: That is the intention so far as we can express ourselves in the Mr. OLIVER.
English language. I think the papers that have been read are all to that effect.


Samuel Hughes: But the grant is not cancelled.


Frank Oliver: I might perhaps, express myself more clearly, but not within the rules of the House. I want to emphasize the point that not at any time has there been any person deprived of an opportunity to settle on any of the land by the existence of this concession. And that is what is the matter with the company-they got land that nobody else seemed to want. That is where their trouble is, but it is not a trouble that concerns us.


Mr.  T. S.@: 
Samuel Hughes: And they went in themselves.


Mr. SPROULE.: I assume that they went hi themselves. And probably more would have gone In if the land had not been locked up. Yet, the minister thinks the question whether this is a good bargain or a bad one does not concern us. The report says, further :

The minister further recommends that at any tin^e within five years after the approval of this 'minute of council, the company shall have the privilege of purchasing a portion, not exceeding one-third of the total area comprised within the tract reserved, the terms of sale to be $1 per acre.
How much land is that? It means that they have the privilege of purchasing 122,874 acres for $1 an acre. That is an absolute sale by the Department of the Interior, and when these people pay that money for their 122,000 acres I take it that no conditions of settlement will interfere with their right to hold it in perpetuity ; it is a sale of 122,874 acres of the most valuable land that can be selected in these townships. Has the minister any concern ns to whether that would be carried out or uot? He says: I am not concerned whether this transaction is good or bad, I have no right to cancel it at the present time. Does the minister think it good policy to lock up land for thirty years with the rapid setlement now going on in that country? If the company has not complied with the provisions under which the land was locked up, does the minister not think that it is his duty and the duty of the government to cancel that holding and take back that land? It is held upon certain conditions, those conditions have not been complied with. Eight years, nearly one-third of the thirty years, has elapsed already and nothing whatever has been done except, it may be that they have purchased the land. It is of no interest to the minister that the time runs on, that the land becomes more valuable, that it is held up there out of the possession of the government while these parties are trying to peddle it around the country for sale. The minister recommends that at any time after five years they can purchase so much land. On what condition has this privilege been given ?
That the company shall locate on the said tract, within three years from the commencement of the survey thereof by the government not less than fifty settlers eligible to make homestead entries under the provisions of the Dominion Dands Act, that within five years thereafter the company shall locate 100 settlers, eligible to make entry, and shall continue to locate one hundred additional settlers.
Why do they want to do that ?
The minister is in receipt of a communication dated December 28. 1899, from the Peace River Colonization and Land Development Company, of Montreal, in which application is made for the reservation for colonization purposes of the tract of land coloured pink on the sketch .annexed hereto and lying between the Grank Forks of the Peac3 and Smokey rivers, midway between Peace River Landing and Dunvegan, in the district of Athabaska.
The objection of the company in applying for this reservation is to establish agricultural and industrial settlements in that part of the country.
How far have they been trying to do that? What evidence have they given the department that they have made any effort in the world to bring any settlers there? They have given evidence that they are trying to sell their interest in it, peddling it all over the country to sell it to other capitalists in the United States or any other country in the world and make money out of it, as the Robbins Irrigation Company did with theirs, and as those who held the grazing leases did with theirs, but as to the real object which they gave the department and which the department accepted as a justification for giving the reserve, we have no evidence whatever that there was any effort to comply with that condition.
-which would appear to be well suited for the purpose and to thus provide homes in Canada for persons who might otherwise contemplate moving to foreign countries, and at the same time induce the repatriation of Canadians who have already left the country.
What effort did they make to repatriate Canadians?. Has the department any evidence that they made any effort in the world? This paper shows no evidence. There is evidence that they have been peddling it around to sell it. Is it not another example of the desire of these parties to get possession of the public domain to make money out of it by hawking it around the country, not to settle it or to fulfil the purpose specified, yet the government have satisfied themselves through the Minister of the Interior. This order in council says :
The minister states he has satisfied himself of the bona fide of the company and after giving the matter careful consideration he is of opinion that the application is one which it would be in the public interest to entertain.
He also recommends that they may purchase one third of that tract, that is, 122,874 acres at a dollar an acre, whereas a poor settler going up from Ontario, Quebec or any other province could not purchase a quarter-section in that country for $1 an acre or for $5 an acre. I have applied over and over again on behalf of these people, the actual settlers, who would be of value to the country and would enrich it by putting it under crop. They could not get an acre, but speculators from Montreal can get 122,874 acres at $1 an acre.


Mr.   SAM@: HUGHES The company is offering it for $11 an acre.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What is amusing the Minister of the Interior in my remarks? Does he think it is a huge joke?


Frank Oliver: Yes, I think my hon. friend is trying to amuse the House. He is aware that the company have notice of cancellation of their contract and he is talking as if the government was giving them this land when in fact they have refused to give them the laud.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I have not had time to read over the papers and, therefore, I have not reached that, but I am looking at the terms on which the tract was granted.


Samuel Hughes: If the minister reads the notice of cancellation to the House it will be seen that there is a great string on the notification.


Frank Oliver: There is no string except what exists on all such notices, of the authority of the courts to adjust any dispute that may arise as between the Crown and individuals as they could between two sets of individuals. It is, I think, the ordinary way in which notice is given, to show cause why it should not be cancelled. It is the same notice as we give to the homestead settler to show cause why his homestead should not be cancelled. I fail to see the position my hon. friend is taking,


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Notice was given to the McGregor crowd who held the lease to show why it should not be cancelled, yet it was held for four or five years until they were able to dispose of it, and the same course will be followed here-and that is what amuses the minister.


Frank Oliver: I am afraid my hon. friend is mistaken in that as in many of his other statements. I think it would be well for him to read the files before undertaking to instruct the House. I am not aware' that McGregor was ever asked to show cause. He held a lease under order in council and I have no knowledge of his having received notice of cancellation.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I have a distinct knowledge of having heard letter after letter-read in this House notifying him that payment must be made within a certain time or it would be cancelled, yet it was not. Notice was given three times to H. B. Brown, of Grand Porks, in regard to the cancellation of the lease, yet it was not cancelled, and came into the hands of parties who sold it for a large amount of money. If the minister and his department are doing this it is not creditable to them and not to the advantage of the country. It should not, in my judgment, be a matter of levity or amusement that we have a Minister of the Interior who is so reckless with regard to the eminent domain, and so careless with regard to the interests of the country that he will enter into an arrangement of this kind. But I am dealing with the principle upon which it was made in the first instance. I have had handed to me the notice which was sent to this company and it reads as follows:
Department of the Interior, Ottawa, January 4, 1908.
Sir,-As it is understood that the Peace River Colonization and Land Development Company, of Mohtreal, has failed to comply with the terms and conditions provided in the order in council, of the 27th July, 1900, as Mr. OLIVER.
modified by the order in council of the 8th July, 1904, I am directed to request you to file here within thirty days of this letter satisfactory evidence (by solemn declaration) of the action which had been taken by the company to comply with the terms of the agreement under the two orders above mentioned ,-or, if the company has failed to comply with the terms, to show cause why such agreement should not be cancelled forthwith, after the expiration of such period of thirty days.
I am, sir,
Tour obedient servant,
(Sgd.) P. G. KEYES, Secretary.
That was in January. These thirty days were up in February. Here is a letter dated January 15, which. I presume, is the reply :
Re Peace River Land and Development Company.
You require the company, within thirty days of the date of your letter, to furnish proof that it has fulfilled the conditions of the grant.
Immediately upon the receipt of the letter I cabled Father Lemieux, the president of the company, who is at present in Rome on very important business. I have just received his reply stating that he is ill at present, and for this reason and the fact too that he has not yet concluded his business, he cannot return at once to Canada.
Under the circumstances I ask you to extend the time you first mentioned until the return of the Rev. Father Lemieux, as to which I will give you notice.
That is the reply. What action was taken on that reply ? Has he yet returned ? Have the government any information with regard to this ? Have they done anything towards the cancellation of this agreement or to secure compliance with the conditions of it ? As far as I know they have not. Therefore, I say it is a farce and I am justified in saying it in view of the transactions which have been carried out along the same lines by the Department of tbe Interior with regard to grazing and irrigation lands.


Frank Oliver: The hon. gentleman is entitled to say what he pleases and I am entitled to laugh if I like.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I am saying what the facts disclose and I am commenting upon the improvidence of such conduct by the Minister of the Interior. I am willing to leave it to the public to say whether the observation of the Minister of the Interior is any answer to the allegations which are put forth from this side of the House with regard to the improvident transaction that we are dealing with to-day. I am dealing with the question of their advisability of locking up land in any portion of the country for thirty years, with the unwisdom of selling 122,000 acres of land for $1 an acre and allowing these people five years to select it, selling it for that amount to the

speculator when the settler could not get an acre of it at $1 or even $8, selling.to the speculator who is now offering it for $11 or $12 an acre although the department have it in their power to cancel the arrangement.
Notice was given to the company in January last to show cause why the agreement should not be cancelled for non-compliance with the conditions and now six months afterwards nothing has been done. Notwithstanding the fact that it has been brought to the attention of the House there will probably be nothing done and I presume that the parties will succeed in making a sale to some other people and get a big rake-off. This is entirely wrong. Why should not this arrangement be cancelled at once? There has not been a compliance with the conditions in any respect. What will you take the chance for? Is it in the interest of the country that this chance is being taken or in the interest of the speculator? How long are you going to wait? What answer has been given? No answer, in so far -as we know and yet it hangs on from year to year. The same parties, after a while, will get another order in council passed giving them the right to hold this land. I have another of these files which I have not taken the time to go over carefully yet.


Frank Oliver: That makes no difference to the bon. gentleman.	[DOT]


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What makes no difference ?


Frank Oliver: The fact that he has not read his documents.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It makes this difference that perhaps they will be hidden in the pigeon holes of the department and the country will know nothing about it until I or some other members of the opposition bring it to light and compel the government to try and get something out of the property that belongs to the country rather than give it away to speculators for little or nothing.


DETROIT RIVER TUNNEL.
Mr. H. S. CLEMENTS (West Kent).: Mr. Speaker, I see the hon. Minister of Customs (Mr. Paterson) in his seat and before you leave the chair I desire for a few minutes to draw the attention of the House to what I consider a verv important question of interest to every individual in this Dominion. Out of courtesy to the minister I dropped him a note saying I would bring the matter up at first opportunity, but evidently the minister was busy in the province, and although I did not send him a note this morning, I took the chance of seeing the minister in the House and I am glad to see he is present. The matter I desire to
call the attention of the government to is one which affects the United States and Canada. I refer to the Detroit river tunnel which is being built under the Detroit river by a firm of American contractors. I want to draw the attention of the minister and of the government to the fact that the interests of Canadians have not been protected, but that, on the other hand, they have been neglected seriously by the government and the Department of Customs in connection with this important work. While the Americans are getting the entire advantage to be derived from the building of the tunnel, the interests of Canadians have been entirely ignored. In the past American contractors have been in a much better position, because of the undue advantage which they enjoyed, to build international bridges between the two countries and it seems that in this case an undue advantage has been given to these American contractors. If it were a matter of courtesy as between the United States government and the government of Canada I for one, as a public man, would not take objection, but when an advantage is eiven to American contractors, it seems that I am only doing my duty in protesting against the disadvantage under which, I claim, Canadian manufacturers and labourers are placed by this arrangement. When my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) referred to this matter a short time ago the Minister of Customs retorted, referring to item 596 of the tariff, that if item 596 did give to the Americans any advantage he, my hon. friend from Brantford, was a party to having that item placed in the tariff. AYhen these tariff schedules are laid on the table and when the time available for any member of the House to peruse these items is so limited, it is almost Impossible to grasp the purport of an item such as No. 590 which I consider is a great detriment to the interests of this Dominion. It seems to me that item No. 596 was placed in the tariff for the sole purpose of benefiting the contractors for the building of that tunnel. Butler Brothers and Hoff, of Minneapolis, have a contract to build this tunnel for $12,000,000 and I am informed that at the time they accepted the contract from the Michigan Central, labour being very high both in the United States and Canada they figured on not only paying high wages but also on the amount of customs duties they would have to pay under the existing law. But item 596 was subsequently placed in the tariff and it gives them the further advantage of being able to bring in everything free of duty, not only to the rivers edge but practically for the whole tunnel except the open cut. I moved for a return asking for the regulations pertaining to the United States and Canadian customs and so far as I have been able to learn no quid pro quo has been given to Canada for the concession

which we have made to the United States in the matter of this tariff item No. 590. No. 14994 of the United States tariff rulings says :
Materials for the construction of the international bridge and used in the river up to the shore end may be exempted from duty, but all materials used on United States shore are dutiable.
I have heard a great many complaints from Canadian manufacturers that they were not getting any advantage from the building of this great tunnel, and I took the trouble to write to a number of Canadian steel and cement manufacturers who would be glad to have had an opportunity to participate in supplying the material for this tunnel. I have received reply after reply in which they state they have never been asked to tender and have received no orders for supplies for that work. One of the largest steel concerns in Canada writes-and this is a sample of the rest:
Referring to yours of the 10th instant re item 596, we communicated with some of your friends and cannot find that any of them have received inquiries for material to be used in the construction of the Detroit tunnel, and as -far -as the writer can judge the Canadian producers of any goods that would require to be used have been side-tr-aoked.
This shows that the interests of the Canadian producers have not been attended to either by the government or by the Minister of Customs. I have here a copy of a letter which was being mailed to the Minister of Customs and which was given to me as I purposed bringing this matter up in the House. I may say that the writer of this letter is a very reliable man whom I know very well, and he appeared here in Ottawa in the interests of Butler Brothers and Hoff asking for these concessions. He states that in return for them they agreed as contractors to buy every article they possibly could in Canada, but so far as I can learn Canadian labour and Canadian goods have been ignored in every respect. This is the letter which was addressed to the Minister of Customs ;and which was handed to me the very day it was being written :
Detroit. Michigan, February 13, 1908. Hon. Wm. Paterson,
Minister of Customs, Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Sir,-You undoubtedly remember my calling on you in Ottawa, about a year anil a half ago, making a plea for the Butler Brothers, Hoff Company, contractors for the Michigan Central Tunnel, and in which I made a statement of the -amount of money -that would be spent on the Canadian -side for labour, gravel, cement, lumber, &c., and stated that we desired to get -a ruling from the government of Canada so that we might he able to bring in free of all duty such materials as we were unable to buy -on the Canadian side. The writer also stated at this interview that all -small supplies, such as shovels and hardware would be bought on -the Canadian side.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: From the -time the operations began up to December 28, I have acted as the purchasing agent of the company, and had charge of the customs and all -material sent over from the United States to Canada. You undoubtedly remember that you very kindly made a ruling in effect that we would be allowed to bring in all material to be used from' the river to the open out, such material to be used in the construction of the tunnel only, provided, however, that we -could obtain from the United States government a ruling to that effect. We never did obtain this ruling from the United States government, and have not to this day, but Butler Brotheis-Hoff Company told representatives of the Customs Department at Windsor, and their attorneys, that -they had such a ruling, and could -bring in from Canada material and supplies. However, this ruling -by -the United States -government was only a ruling which had been established -before, in so far that they could bring in supplies from Canada, land them on the -shore -for convenience, hut they must be -taken back -into that part of the tunnel extending from shore to shore. Nevertheless, we continued to bring into Canada material from the United States regardless of this.
I beg to say in this connection, that the contractors have never bought a barrel of Canadian cement. All the gravel, amounting now to several thousand yards now on the Canadian side, wa-s delivered there by Americans and -in American boats; all the machinery, with the exception of two hoisting engines, was brought fro-m -the Amerioan -side; and, in fact, orders were given me as purchasing agent, to buy everything on the American -side, even to small tools, -such as shovels, nails, &c., for the simple reason that by the non-payment of duty, -they could be delivered much cheaper on the works. The writer would say, however, in his favour as he takes it, that he disregarded this order to a great extent, believing that it was not fair to the Canadian government. And my troubles with the head contractor -arose practically from -this very fact that I would not be a party to this deception. For instance, we needed a lot of nails, and the contractor advised that I buy at least -200 kegs on the American side and take them over, Which was done. These nails could have been bought in Windsor, but there was a saving of fifty cents a keg by buying them in the United States. The writer has since learned that when operations were first begun there was sent over to Canada a vast amount -of machinery -and supplies, most of it bought from works down east. While I -made out the customs entry on this material, the value of the same was given to me by William -Butler, and I have since found that the value of material sent -at that time wa-s -placed at about onedi-alf of its value.
To show you the spirit of the contractors after this favour had -been given -by the Canadian government, it was necessary to send over to Windsor about a half dozen steel cars. These were bought new by Mr. Butler, and in order to get them over under value, he ordered the labourers to plaster these cars all over with mud to make them look like secondhand cars, and instructed me to bill them at the price of $35 each. I was not familiar with the v-alue of these cars at that time, hut I have since learned that their cost. approxi-


190S
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mated $65 each. This is only one of many instances whioh I could state of the deception which has been practised by these contractors.
I did not believe that the Canadian government was aware that they were allowing the contractors to bring over this material unless they had the same agreement with the United States government. Therefore, knowing these facts very clearly, I took up this matter with Ur. Smith, collector of customs, at Windsor, and gave him this information in full. I find, however, that the matter still rests as it was formerly, the contractors are still enabled to bring over all the material and supplies that they desire, while no materials from Canada can be brought over unless it is paid for. Therefore, I write you this so that you may have it before you in detail, and if any other information is desired, I shall be only too glad to forward same to you.
I do this believing that the Canadian government has been treated in a manner by these contractors which does not entitle them to any consideration whatever. I remember distinctly a remark made by William' Butler, head contractor, when it was found that we could not get the same ruling from our own government, that he did not care as he never would want to bring anything from Canada, and, in fact, no material has ever been brought in from Canada, excepting a few carloads of logs, on which there is no duty.
Now, Mr. Speaker, this is a letter which was intended for the lion. Minister of Customs. and which I received from the writer on the very day he had addressed it to the bon. minister.
Mr. PATERSON.: What is the date of it?


Herbert Sylvester Clements: February 13.


William Paterson: Did he say I had received it ?	[DOT]


Herbert Sylvester Clements: No, he does not say that you had received it. I happened to call on this gentleman at his house, and lie had this letter written, intending to have it mailed to the hon. minister, and he gave it to me, as I was going into the matter.


William Paterson: Did he give it to you to hand it to me ?


Herbert Sylvester Clements: No, he gave it to myself.


William Paterson: It looks as if you got my letter.
- Mr. CLEMENTS. He gave It In my charge, not to be delivered to you, but to be used in this House. I thought possibly he might send a copy of it to you. In the month of March I asked what quantity of materials had come in free of duty in the construction of this tunnel, and the hon. minister replied that up to the 1st of March, 1908, $144,525 worth of material had already come in free of duty to go into the construction of the tunnel on the Canadian side. I asked another question on the subject yesterday, and the questions with the minister's reply are as follows :
1.	What amount of materials of all kinds have been entered free of duty for the construction of the Detroit river tunnel?
2.	What amount of duties have been paid to the government on the importatibn of materials of all kinds for the construction of said tunnel?


Hon.   WM@: PATERSON (Minister of Customs) -.
1.	The total value of materials of all kinds
entered free of duty for Detroit tunnel is $229,838.	.	.
2.	Imported materials of all kinds for the construction of the Detroit river tunnel are free under tariff item 596.
I might say that the main tunnel is being built from the Detroit end. This tunnel is estimated to cost $12,000,000-the river bed portion $6,000,000, and the two approaches, at the Canadian end and the American end respectively, from the shore line, another $6,000,000; so that it would be fair to state that the Canadian end, from the Detroit river to the mouth of the tunnel, would cost $3,000,000. It seems to me that it would have been a great advantage, not only to Canadian manufacturers, but to Canadian labourers and mechanics if tlie hon. minister had not allowed that item to have gone in and had not allowed these American contractors to get this advantage.
I do not blame them, for If I had been in their position I would have done the same thing. They are Americans looking after American interests, and they do not seem to have any regard whatever for Canadian interests. But I do not want to see them getting this advantage over Canadian manufacturers and Canadian labour, and I think the minister should make a searching investigation into the construction of that tunnel and the methods that are being used there. These contractors, so far as my Information goes, have been employing very little Canadian labour, but have been bringing Italians from the other side to do almost all the work on the tunnel. These men are put down in a hole 90 feet deep from the water's edge, and are working under very high pressure at 17 cents an hour, or practically $1.75 a day. I ask the hon. minister if he thinks that is treating Canadian labourers and Canadian mecbanics in a fair manner. I want to say, so far as my information goes, that if any applications were sent to any of our cement concerns asking them to tender, they were asked to tender for the gross amount of cement, which prevented many of them putting in a tender. We have many large cement concerns in Canada, and if they had been allowed the privilege of supplying say one-half the cement for this immense tunnel, which uses so many thousands of barrels, they would have been able to do so, and that would have been a great advantage to our concerns, especially at a time when there is so much depression in Canada in the building business. But instead the American

concern is getting this advantage and is even laying down the cement in American bottoms, and is even getting American sand when millions of barrels could be found on the Canadian side, so that Canadians seem to be getting no advantage whatever from this work. While I do not want to weary the House by reading newspaper items, I think it would be only right that I should quote from the Detroit ' Free Press ' of May 6. You would hardly expect a prominent American newspaper, such as that- although of course it has a large Canadian circulation-which has American interests at heart would be inclined to publish anything of the kind, but evidently the question was such a prominent one that they could not help taking notice of it. This article is headed ' Canadian labour gets the raw deal.' The hon. minister knows the facts. I know the district very well, and so far as I have been able to gain information there from prominent contractors, our people are convinced that they are getting a raw deal in this matter. This is the article :


CANADA LABOUR GETS RAW DEAL.
[Stage Direction]
Tunnel workers mostly Italians who risk their, lives for small wages.
If the investigation into the construction of the Canadian approach of the Michigan Central tunnel, which Mr. Clements, M.P., for '.Vest Kent, promises to push to the limit in the Dominion parliament, really goes deep enough, there will be other things discovered that the good people of Canada will not be pleased about/ said a resident of Windsor, who has been quietly assisting to dig up facts that will throw light on the affair.
I have reason to believe, for instance, that the contractors have taken advantage of the depression in the labour market, and have cut wages to a point that is not justified by the conditions under which they are working. They took the contract at a time when labour was in keen demand and wages were good, and of course their bid was on the basis of the cost of labour at that time. They get their money with as much certainty and regularity as if they had it coming from the Bank of England, and yet, with no reason except to make a few more dollars, they are now paying labour, I am credibly informed, far less than they expected to pay when they bid for the work, and less than they could possibly hire men for if there was not a scarcity of work.
Risk lives at cheap price.
For instance, I am told that they have had a gang of men working at the bottom of a 90-foot shaft sunk on the Canadian river bank, and in the tunnel that they are drifting out from that, for a wage as low as $1.75 a day. Think of it. Working men in a hole 90 feet under ground, where they take their lives in their hands every minute, they are down there, for 17J cents an hour.
I am informed also that if they have not actually imported Italians to work on the tunnel, they have at least been successful in hiring a good many, and that they are hiring as few Canadian labourers as possible. In other words, Canada seems to be getting the worst Mr. CLEMENTS.
oi the deal not only in the matter of furnishing material and losing its rightful import duties, but in the matter of labour of all kinds that the contractors have to give out, and at a time too when Canadian labourers most need work.
I want to draw attention to this item also:	.
United States made no concessions.
John B.: Whelan, collector of customs for the port of Detroit, stated in reply to questions yesterday, that practically no material has been imported from Canada for use in the construction of the American end of the tunnel, practically the only exception being a few timbers, which, as has already been stated, can be purchased cheaper in Canada than in the United States. He confirmed the statement that the United States customs department has made no such concessions as that made the contractors by the Dominion government, and that if any material had been imported for use on the tunnel approach this side of the water's edge, the full duty would have been charged on it, as was the case on both sides of the river in the construction of the Port Huron tunnel.
The appointment of Mr. Wallace as 'special officer in Windsor to pass on the tunnel company's importations of United States material into Canada is causing as much comment there as any other feature of the affair, but Collector Smith was very indignant over the publication of the fact in this connection. Mr. Smith says all is straight.
Mr. Smith is a very prominent gentleman there connected with party politics and evidently thinks more of looking after the elections than of his situation :
There was nothing either irregular or unusual in that appointment, he declared. The ferry company pays the salaries of the customs officers so far as they are necessary to run the boats on Sundays and after hours, and when the steamer ' Hattie ' was running to Wolf's resort, where we do not of course have a regular officer stationed, we sent a special man there and the owners of the boat stood the expense. In the case of the tunnel company, they wanted their (material put through" without delay, and we did not always have a man that we could send on time, so they asked for a special man with the understanding, of course, that they should stand the expense. The appointment of Wallace was made in the regular way through the authorities at Ottawa.
Did any one connected with the tunnel suggest the name of Wallace? he asked.
I tell you the appointment was made in the regular way, and how many times do you want me to repeat it.
It seems to me that our Customs Department has been giving privileges it should not give, even under item 596, so far as taking material across the river is concerned. I should not take up time in reading all the different rulings which are to be found in the return I moved for. The Manufacturers' Association of Canada complain that the same advantages have not been extended to us as we have extended to the Americans under item 596 of our cus-

toms tariff. I cannot understand how the minister can accuse any hon. member on this side of being one of the parties to that item 596. There would be just as much .reason for the Minister of Agriculture to accuse me of being a party to the regulations attached to his Meat Inspection Act as for the minister to accuse any one on this side of being a party to placing item 596 on the Customs Act, if we consider it a disadvantage to Canadian interests. I do say that that is a great disadvantage to an important Canadian interest which, has a stronger even claim upon our attention than it had a few years ago. it is especially important at this time to cultivate our own industries, not only because, like the rest of the world they suffer under the financial depression of recent months, but also because employment is not so freely offered our working people as in the times of greater prosperity. The minister should have taken care of this interest for the benefit of the Canadian people, and not have sold to these contractors-well I will not use that expression-but ought not to have given these astute American contractors the advantage over our own people.
From my standpoint, it seems clear that the minister and the government deserve strong censure for not taking care of our own manufacturing concerns, but, on the contrary, giving to Americans privileges which will cause to Canada the direct loss of many thousands-perhaps hundreds of thousands-of dollars. This money could have been retained in Canada, for the benefit of Canadians, instead of allowing the benefit to go to three or four American contractors. in whom the government have no interest whatever outside of any private bargain which may have been entered into to get this deal. I do not want to accuse the government of anything of that kind, but I will say that many prominent men in this country cannot understand why these American interests should have been preferred over Canadian interests as they have been. As I understand it, our people do not secure on the American side the advantages which are given to Americans on our side under this item 596. It may be that some of our people are under the impression that the Americans have agreed to give us the same advantages. Even if this were so, the practical outcome of these international arrangements is that the advantage goes to the larger nation, the benefit is gained by American contractors rather than Canadian contractors. The government should have acted before now, but certainly it is high time, and action should not longer be delayed. Let me read from the Toronto ' Telegram ' a brief article under the heading ' Government to be asked to prevent all American materials being used at Detroit tunnel.' It is evident that this refers to a protest from the manufacturers, and of this,
no doubt, the minister is already informed. The article says :
A protest has gone down to Ottawa to be hurled in the face of the Dominion government about the injustice to Canadian merchants in connection with the construction of the tunnel under the Detroit river between Windsor and Detroit. The estimated cost of the work is about $12,000,000. The Cnaadian Manufacturers' Association have been asked to take the matter up and make an effort to have reciprocal relationship between the United States and Canada cancelled.
It is pointed out that this, as all other great works^ of its character, are always more of a benefit to the United States than to Canada. This particular work is one to facilitate the handling of American freight through Canadian territory by an American railway.
Is all American.
The Canadian manufacturers do not complain so much about the employment of American materials in that portion of the structure which is under the river, but they take exception to all American cement and steel being used in the three quarters of a mile of building and foundation inland from the Canadian portal.
Cement manufacturers charge that there is little hope for anything being done, as Hon. Mr. Sutherland, Speaker of the Canadian mouse of Commons, is solicitor for the contractor.
I do not think that this last statement is right. I do not wish to unjustly accuse Mr. Speaker of being the solicitor of Butler Brothers, Hoff and Company. But I am credibly informed that his partners are the solicitors of this concern. Here is a quotation from an article from the Detroit ' Free Press
Secretary Murray of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, who has given the subject some thought, feels that Canada is getting the worst of the deal. It is a reciprocal arrangement that does not reciprocate. Practically nothing is being purchased in Canada except the heavy timber. Incidentally, be points to the fact that Canada is paying bounties to steel industries, endeavouring to exchange the cement industries, and just recently passed an Act which permits the federal government to pay bounties to encourage Canadian shipbuilding, an industry which is in a bad way across the border, and in spite of all this, the tunnel tubes which consist of steel and cement are being manufactured in the ship yards of the Great Lakes Shipbuilding Company at St Clair. Canadian manufacturers also feel that the Michigan Central railway is indifferent to Canadian business.
Secretary Murray has caused the federal authorities some worry already, as a number of resolutions have been passed condemning the Canadian government's course. Incidentally, he feels that the United States federal authorities at Washington are naturally endeavouring to protect the government at Ottawa, because he has been unable to secure rulings to certain hypothetical cases which he placed before them. He also points to the fact that no ruling was made with respect to this

matter by the United. States government until comparatively recently, whereas the Canadian ruling was made mouths ago.
There is no question about it that, In the building of international bridges and tunnels within the last few years, the American government has allowed Canadian material only to go as far as the waters edge, and then an inventory was taken of every article that passed that point, .and every article had to be accounted for or duty paid upon it into the United States treasury. Now, it seems to me that we have been taken advantage of long enough. While I have every regard for our American friends and admire them in many ways-one of the reasons for my admiration of them individually being that they look after their own interests-yet I say it is high time that the Canadian government should look after the interests of Canadians, the interest of our own labour and manufacturers rather than consider the interests of the Americans. -So far as the construction of this tunnel is concerned, practically none of the advantages as in construction go to Canadians at all. It is simply an advantage to themselves to get a short cut through the western peninsula of the province of Ontario. I have on previous occasions called the attention of the House to the advantage which that large corporation has been taking of the leading interests of this country. It seems to be their constant aim, from an American standpoint, to get every advantage they can for themselves and to avoid giving any advantage which ought to accrue to this Dominion and to Canadian interests. I have quoted letters and correspondence enough to impress this on the attention of the minister and I trust he will consider it sufficiently serious to make a searching investigation. These contractors. Messrs. Butler Brothers and Hoff, are simply individual contractors ; it is not a question of international courtesy at all, it is simply a courtesy which has been farmed out to these gentlemen, and if anything can be done to deprive them of the advantage they now enjoy over Canadians, so that our manufacturing concerns and our labour may be protected, it is the minister's duty to do his utmost, without losing a moment.
At one o'clock, House took recess.
House resumed at three o'clock.
QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE-Mr. BERGERON.


Mr. BERGERON.: With the permission of my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) who, I understand, has the floor, I wish to rise to a question of iirivilege. I noticed in this morning's ' Citizen ' a report of something I said yesterday which is not correct. I would not have drawn the attention of the House to it had I not found that the same report has appeared Mr. CLEMENTS.
in some other papers, and as it might convey a wrong impression I desire to make the correction. Yesterday, speaking with regard to a certain pamphlet, I said that it purported to be written by one of the Jesuit fathers in New'York, and the papers make me say that it was written by one of the Jesuit fathers. I want to state to the House that what I said was that it purports to be written by a priest, not that it was, because, as a matter of fact, it was not written by a Jesuit father or any other priest.


THE DEPARTMENT OF CUSTOMS.
Mr. W. F. COCKSHUTT (Brantford).: Mr. Speaker, I desire to take this opportunity of making a few observations in connection with the Customs Department. Some ten days or two weeks ago, before the Customs estimates came up, I requested the hon. Minister of Customs (Mr. Paterson) to allow one item to stand over in order that I might take part in the discussion of his estimates. The hon. gentleman could not see his way to permitting me that courtesy, and all the items in connection with his estimates were put through in two sittings of the House. It is, therefore, necessary for me to take this, the earliest opportunity I have had, to draw the attention of you, Sir. and the House to some matters in connection with the Customs Department. I regret that it is necessary to do it under this order, because I would have preferred that the matter should have been debated pro and con while we were in Committee of Supply so that questions might have been answered and replies might have been made to whatever observations were offered with respect to these matters. That opportunity was not accorded me, and so I must make the best of the present opportunity. In regard to tlie hon. Minister of Customs criticising my absence from the House, as be did on two or three occasions, all I have to say is that I do not think it was necessary. We have always been the best of friends and I hope that after this discussion we will be the same as we have always been. Tlie hon. gentleman wras himself going away when I met him in the corridor and made this request of him. I wrote him a line saying that it was my intention on the very day he went away to proceed with the discussion of matters in connection with the Department of Customs. But that did not make any difference; he went away to fill his engagement in the city of Brantford. I have no objection to the hon. gentleman going, but I do not think he should take to himself privileges as a minister that he would not accord to me as a member of the House. I had as good a right to go to South or North Brant to take part in the local election as lie had himself, and I do not think his criticism of my action in that respect was justified. Further, I am not so

sure that if the minister had taken my advice and remained here he would not have felt quite as comfortable as he does now. But the hon. gentleman, instead of taking my advice, took part in the election in North and South Brant, and the result was that he came back with two black eyes. If he had not gone I do not know what the result would have been, but probably it would have been no worse than it was. However, it was quite proper for the minister to go and take part in this election, but I think that he should not have criticised me for doing the very same thing that he himself did.
I desire, in the first place, to refer to the Civil Service Commission report in connection with the Department of Customs, and I propose to read from page 29 :
This is one of the three departments whose outside service is recognized by the Civil Service Act. The salaries of officers in the outside service are duly scheduled, but, unlike the other two departments (Inland Revenue and Post 'Office), no annual increments have been given. The chief positions in the outside service of this department a,re political ap-, pointments. Every collector of customs has been appointed from the ranks of the party in (power at the moment. .Many of the inspectors are in .a similar position, and, under a clause in the Civil (Service Act waiving the examination of persons appointed to positions requiring special and technical qualifications, almost all the appraisers in the outside service of this department have been appointed without undergoing the civil service examination. By no chance can an officer of the Customs Department (outside service) be removed from one point to another. If .a vacancy occurs in a collectorship at any one point, no capable officer can be sent to fill the position from any other point. In the service of this department there are many anomalies and incongruities. In order to avoid the necessity of examinations a new class has been created under the name of ' examining officers/ a class not found in the schedule to the Civil Service Act. In 'Montreal no officer is graded as ' cashier ' ; in Toronto there s a ' cashier. At the last session of parliament the Minister of Customs obtained a grant of $100,000 which has been distributed in amounts of $100 .or $150 to officers within the limits of salaries laid down by the Civil Service Act. No officer at the apparent maximum of his class participated in the bounty. The salaries in the outside service seem to have been graded by the amount of revenue received.
Mr. Speaker, I desire to call special attention to a few lines in the paragraph which I have read. I have, perhaps, as intimate a knowledge of the Minister of Customs as any gentleman in the House. We have been life-long fellow citizens and lifelong personal friends, and I have had a good- opportunity of knowing thoroughly the character and standing of my hon. friend. I may say that in so far as I speak personally of the hon. gentleman I esteem him as a man of very high qualities, a man of personal honour and a man 331
whom it is perfectly safe to entrust with the funds of the country.


An hon. MEMBER.: Hear, hear.


William Foster Cockshutt: The hon. gentleman who says ' hear, hear ' had better wait for awhile. It is very nice to have such an appreciative auditor. I was saying in regard to the Minister of Customs that he was a man to whom you might hand a roll of bills without counting them, ask him for them next morning and get them all back. I am ready to say that with regard to the Minister of Customs. But after having said that, I want to say that although this civil service report has been depreciated very much by the government, the commissioners have succeeded, in a very few lines, in putting their finger on the soft spot of the administration of the minister. The reference to this is contained in about three lines, which I will especially call to his attention :
The chief positions in the outside service of this department are political appointments. Every collector of customs has been appointed from the ranks of the party in power at the moment.	-
After having given the minister the character I have I may be permitted to say that I consider the Civil Service Commission, in these three lines, have hit upon the soft spot in the administration of the Minister of Customs, that he is a partisan there is no doubt and that his office has been run on the basis of partisanship there can be no doubt. The Civil Service Commissioners when they say that these appointments have been made because of party exigencies rather than for reasons of fitness and efficiency, have put their finger on the very spot where the minister falls down.


Mr. JOHNSTON.: The soft spot.


William Foster Cockshutt: If he wanted a very soft spot to light on I think he would light on you. It is stated that every collector of customs has been appointed from the ranks of the party in power at the moment, and under these circumstances it is not likely the best results can be attained. The Minister of Customs should take to heart the criticism of his department by the Civil Service Commission which says it is a political department and that in it party exigencies and party rewards are considered before the efficiency of the service. That is a serious charge and it show's that when party comes in conflict with duty, party will win out and duty go to the wall.


Mr. TALBOT.: Has the hon. gentleman any instances to give ?


William Foster Cockshutt: You will get plenty of instances before I am finished. The report of the Civil Service Commission indicates that the Minister of Customs has fallen far short of what might be expected of him.



I have had a long and intimate knowledge of the Minister of Customs. I can remember in the old days when for twenty years in the county of Brant the rafters rang with denunciations by the Minister of Customs of the Sir John Macdonald government as a government of graft and a government of misappropriation. In these days the Minister of Customs held up high ideals to the people of Brant, but little did they think, and probably little did he himself think then, that for ten years he would be sitting in a government and condoning offences before which any scandals that attached to the Conservative government were infinitesimal. I say that the scandals that have been associated with the government of which the hon. gentleman (Mr. Paterson) is a minister are like mountains to small hills as compared with the Conservative government, and yet for ten years the Minister of Customs has backed up the various iniquities of the Liberal government in a manner that his best friends never dreamed he would be guilty of. I will not say the hon. gentleman has done that from lack of principle but he certainly has done it because of his partisanship which has so blinded him that he can see no wrong done by his friends and his supporters. Let me give you an instance. Three or four weeks ago he was asked by the member for Siin-coe : What about the steals, and the Minister of Customs answered : I know7 of no steals. And yet, tw7enty-four hours before that the hon. gentleman had admitted to me that his collector of customs at Huntington, British Columbia, had defaulted to the extent of $2,400. I made a criticism then of the action of the Minister of Customs and I pointed out to him that it was common report on the streets that his collector had not returned to the department nearly the amount of money that he had taken from it unlawfully. I see by ' Hansard ' that the Minister of Customs stated that immediately after I made that statement in the House he despatched another inspector to discharge the duty that the former inspector had failed to do and as a result about $0,000 more had been returned to the coffers of the country. I do not believe that we have yet got at the true inwardness of this case, and before this debate is finished I hope our good friend from Westminster (Mr. Kennedy) who won his spurs as a candid friend of the government on the Japanese treaty, will tell us the truth about the defalcation of this British Columbia customs collector as he knows it. He is on the ground; I have not been within 3,000 miles of the place, but nevertheless I was able to get the information which led to the restitution of thousands of dollars to the treasury of Canada. There was a compromise made with this collector of customs at Huntington and he returned some of the misappropriated funds but unfortunately for Mr. COCKSHUTT.
himself he was not satisfied to keep quiet and he boasted on the streets of his town that he wras many thousands of dollars ahead of the government. The information came to our side and was handed to me for investigation as chairman of the customs section of the opposition, and as a result the minister was forced to act and the treasury of the country is so much better off. And yet the Minister of Customs said that he knew of no steals. It will be interesting to hear the member for New Westminister (Mr. Kennedy) who has the reputation of being a candid friend of the government tell what he knows about this transaction.


Mr. KENNEDY.: Will I tell you now ?


William Foster Cockshutt: No. You can speak when I have finished. And then the Minister of Customs came to the House and said that he would like the instructions of the House as to how7 these defaulters should be dealt w7ith, and whether it wTas wise in the face of the tears of the wife and the children to prosecute a man who had been a defaulter to the extent of $8,000 or $10,000. He told us that if such a man were in his own employ he would promptly forgive him and that the man would be a faithful servant afterwards. I can conceive of nothing that should so much militate against the efficiency of our civil service than to have such a statement go broadcast throughout the country. What the minister practically says to his officials is: But your hands in the public chest and take out $10,000 that does not belong to you and if 4, discover it as Minister of Customs I will forgive you, I w7ill allow you to keep part of the money and you can go and be a faithful servant afterwar Is. That is practically the statement of the Minister of Customs. It is an invitation to every man in the department to put his hand into the public chest and appropriate it to his own uses and not give it up until he is found out, and then give up only part of it, with the promise that if there is no restitution of the balance, no prosecution will follow. Could anything be more subversive of the public interest than to have it go abroad to this country that a man who does such a thing as that will be forgiven ? And the minister comes down to this House two years after this defalcation has taken place and asks this House in a pitiful way how he should proceed. I know that the minister has a tender heart, and I do not want him to have anything else; but I do not see why the Customs Department should be weaker than other departments in that respect. The Minister of Inland Revenue recently gave an example which the Minister of Customs might well follow. I have here the government organ of Ottawa, the ' Free Press,' of Tuesday, June 2, containing an item which I will read for the benefit of the Minister of Customs :

Two years for Captain Harbottle-Stole from Inland Revenue and goes to Alberta Penitentiary.
Edmonton, June 2.-Captain Neville F. Harbottle was to-day sentenced by His Honour Judge H. C. Taylor, at the district court, to two years' imprisonment in the Alberta penitentiary, for the theft of $6,918.44 from the Department of Inland Revenue at Edmonton.
W. A. Greisbach, counsel for the accused, drew attention to the fact that Harbottle had voluntarily returned and given himself up. Public sentiment was strongly in favour of clemency. Captain Harbottle took his sentence very calmly.
Here Is an incident in the Inland Revenue Department which only came to light three or four weks ago ; and within that short space of time the man is bound to make full restitution of the $6,000 odd and is brought into court and sentenced to the Alberta penitentiary for two years for his defalcation. But the Minister of Customs comes down two years after a defalcation occurs in his department and in the tenderness of his heart asks the House what they think ought to be done about It. Surely that is begging the question. Bach of these cases must be dealt with on its merits, and ic is up to the Minister of Customs ano his department to make a full investigation into this Huntingdon affair. The minister can find out who shielded "this man, how a settlement for $4,200 came about when over $6,000 should; have been paid ; and he can find out, and the member from the district should know, who were the parties that became bondsmen for this man, and furnished him $6,000 to pay his indebtedness. That no doubt is common knowledge in the city and can be ascertained. Let this whole thing be investigated, and let the minister not shield wrong doing when it is brought home to any one in his department, and thus set an example before the civil service of this country that no one for a moment can stand for. It ought to be given out to every department of this country that if a man is the subject of any defalcation, he will immediately be visited with condign punishment, as his crime deserves. We have every regard for those who in a moment of weakness or in some inadvertence may take a few dollars which is not their own with the intention of immediately restoring it ; but that is different from defalcations that go on for years. In this case the Minister of Customs has shown weakness in the extreme, and I can only agree with the leader of the opposition that it was the party machine and those behind it who shielded this man who had defrauded this country out of a large amount of money. It is up to the Minister of Customs, if he wants to clear his skirts and to show that he did his full duty, to let the 1,800 employees of his department know that if any man jn that department takes money belonging to the 331}
people of this country and appropriates it to his own uses, he is subject to the laws of the land the same as any other man. Why should the man who defrauds the country of $10,000 be excused when a poor widow who takes a loaf or a poor man who takes a coat or a pair of pants has to pay the full penalty ? I say it begs the question for the Minister of Customs to come down and ask this House what ought to be done about it, and he should have taken action upon it two and a half years ago. So much for the Huntingdon case.
The next item which I wish specially to draw to the attention of the Minister of Customs is one which I have made the subject of considerable inquiry and in connection with which I moved for papers ; that is, the customs seizures. It is a very voluminous document which I hold, covering all the seizures that have taken place in the Customs Department for the last three years. Whether the minister intended to forestall any criticism or not, he seems to have taken a little notice of the matter the other day, as will be found on page 9819 of 'Hansard, wheie he deals with the officers who do the seizing for him. T hold here some fifty pages of foolscap, giving the various seizures that have taken place in the Customs Department for the last three years. The amount involved is very large. If justice had been done in all these cases, that branch of the department must have been kept very fairly busy. The particular features which I wish to point out in connection with these seizures are the various causes which have led to the seizures, the amount of money that has gone to the informer, the amount that has gone to the officer male-ing the seizure, and the final adjustment. The minister the other day said that I was wise in not asking for the names of those who were guilty. I agree with him, that it would be very unwise to place on the pages of ' Hansard ' the names of merchants who might inadvertently have been found guilty of an infraction of the customs laws. ' But there are many cases where that cannot be urged as a reason why the names should not be given ; and unless matters improve in the Customs Department in the near future, I think it will be" necessary to publish the names of all those offending, as is done in the Inland Revenue Department. The Minister of Inland Revenue is not so sensitive about hurting anybody as the Minister of Customs , because if he finds a pound of spice in a grocery which is not puire, he publishes the name of the grocer as that of a man who is selling spurious goods. Many men have been punished for that very thing when they have had nothing to do with putting up the goods, and did not know they were selling anything but pure goods until they were inspected by the government. The Min-

ister of Customs, with heartfelt sympathy for those guilty of wrongdoing, says it is not wise to give their names to the public. I admit that I would rather shield five who did wrong than see an innocent man improperly' charged with wrongdoing. But the case is different when a man has been for months and years bringing goods into the country and systematically misrepresenting the value of those goods until his defalcations to the Customs Department amount to a large sum of money.
I have here items that run from a few dollars each up to tens of thousands. In one ease-in Montreal, I understand, though the place is not given-the amount is $25,112, one single fine upon one single firm. This is a pretty heavy item, and, though the largest it is only one. The number of them you can judge from the fact that a mere list giving one to each line fills fifty pages of foolscap. These are the infractions of the customs law that have taken place in the last three years under this administration. Reasons are given for these seizures which I may, in part, briefly recount. Some of these reasons are trivial, while others are serious. The first is ' using goods for other purposes than those for which imported.' The second is ' Violation of bonding regulations,' third, 'Smuggling' and fourth, ' Under valuation.' These are the principal causes that have led to seizure. There are others such as ' receiving goods before they were passed through the custom.' Now this last is a very trivial fault, for, in nine cases out of ten it will be found that it is the transportation company and not the merchant that is in error. Transportation companies sometimes deliver the wrong goods ; I have known them to do it. For instance, a merchant has five shipments waiting for him in a bonded warehouse. He passes one shipment through the customs and directs the railway authorities to deliver. But a mistake is made, and a shipment which was not passed is sent and the one that is passed is kept in the warehouse. The inspector comes in, finds the package is not correct and seizes it. In such a case, if there was wrongdoing on the part of anybody, it was on the part of the transportation company. There must be a clear line of demarcation drawn between these different kinds of seizures ; some are trivial in effect, while others are serious. But, where a systematic attempt has been made day after day, week after week and month after month to falsify invoices and defraud the customs, the infraction of the law is a very serious one ; the guilty party should be punished and his name should not be withheld from the public, but should be given out as that of one guilty of a very serious offence against the country. This would only be an Act of


William Foster Cockshutt: justice to protect the honest men that are in business.
Another feature of this case to which I wish to draw special attention is the amount of money that goes to the men who give the information and make the seizures. I have totalled up roughly-I do not say with complete accuracy-the amounts in these fifty pages and find that the general seizures, those made in any part of the country and the principal part in point of value of all the seizures, amount to about $150,000. Out of that, the men who made the seizures apparently have obtained $21,037 and the men who gave the information have received $15,077. I presume that this is in addition to the salaries mentioned by the hon. gentleman in the statement to which I have referred. In order to be sure that I do not misrepresent the hon. gentleman, I will read his words as reported in 'Hansard,' page 9819. He said :
Yes, except the chief inspector who, for convenience, is located at the customs in Toronto. Now, as to the increase of $10,000; of this $6,700 is on account of a staff of inspectors of ports. There is one chief inspector, 14 inspectors and 2 assistant inspectors. The salaries of these officers amount to $39,400, and their estimated travelling expenses to $13,000. Some changes have taken place, that will increase the expenditure by $6,750 on account of this staff.
So, fourteen inspectors and one chief inspector receive in salaries $39,400. I presume that they are the ones who make the seizures and give the information-in fact, there can be little doubt that the man who gives the information and the man who makes the seizure are often the same. But whether that be so or not, I want to point out that the money they receive from fines is a much larger amount than that of their so-called salaries. The return I have mentioned shows that a very large amount of this money goes to the informer-in some cases one-half of the whole amount seized goes to the man who gives the information and the man who makes the seizure. I will read a few instances to show how quickly these men can make money in the Customs Department. On page 16 one seizure is mentioned, a seizure for undervaluation, in which the fine imposed was $1,544.72. It appears that the man who made the seizure received $309.50 and the man who gave the information $309.49, or a total of $619 for making a seizure of $1,500. The seizure probably took the man a few hours, both getting the information and making the seizure and he is rewarded, with about 40 per cent of the amount of the seizure made. If you look over this report, you will find that the average amount paid to the person seizing and the person giving the information is 25 to 50 per cent.

There are several of them that amount to 50 per cent more or less of the amount Involved. But it is in the case of the special branch more particularly that the amount is put up very rapidly. I have a few samples on page 45 of this return. One party deposited forfeit for undervaluation, $1,642.20. The officer seizing got $410.50 and the officer giving the information the same amount, or $821 out of $1,642, being exactly 50 per cent. The average salary of these men who make the seizures is about $3,000, and some are getting as high as $6,000 or $8,000 and in addition this vast amount of fees. Some of them are getting more than the salary of the Prime Minister. The hon. minister will correct me if I am wrong. Out of the fines, some are making upwards of $12,000 per annum. There is one item of a deposit retained, $11,411.40. The officer making the seizure got $1,426.43 and the informer $1,426.43 or a total of $2,852 was paid for making one seizure that would probably take a few hours. These men can step into a warehouse and make a seizure and make all this money out of it. This may lead to a great abuse in this very respect, that it may lead to compromises in order to liberate the goods seized. The system is open to all kinds of fraud the way it is handled to-day. A man who may be fighting the government bitterly may be held up for the very last dollar, and a party friend or a subscriber to the party fund may have the seizure of his goods hushed up. I have had cases brought to my attention in Montreal at present which are being hushed up. Why and how we want to know. It is a serious matter if our Customs Department may be administered for the favour of some parties and to the detriment of others.


William Paterson: Would you say it is?


William Foster Cockshutt: I say that in some cases the names are given out and in others they are not.


William Paterson: Will the hon. gentleman endorse a statement of that kind, namely, that the Customs Department is influenced in its decisions by political reasons, favouring the one party and not the other? Can he point out any cases of that kind?


William Foster Cockshutt: I have pointed out the very case a few minutes ago where the charge is made.


William Paterson: What charge?


William Foster Cockshutt: The charge made by the leader of the opposition that the party machine stepped in and shielded the man.


William Paterson: That was no seizure.


William Foster Cockshutt: It was a case in which the department is concerned.


William Paterson: I do not admit that, but you are talking about seizures. I know
nothing about the machine stepping in or anything of that kind. That is a different matter. But the hon. gentleman talks as if the seizures in the Customs Department are dealt with on different lines according to the politics of the men who make infractions of the law. Will the hon. gentleman say that and let it go to Brantford?


William Foster Cockshutt: My hon. friend is getting unduly warm.


William Paterson: I do not want insinuations of that kind.


William Foster Cockshutt: There will be no insinuations. I will give the hon. minister all he wants before I get through. I have a statement here now, and I have mentioned where the city is. When the hon. minister mentioned names the other night, he w-ent up to 1896, but would not go beyond that, and he wanted the names not inserted in ' Hansard.' He knows the names.


William Paterson: I do not.


William Foster Cockshutt: I can show him the name of a very prominent party who is at present concerned. The minister himself gave names the other night and they were all names of Conservatives before 1896, but he would not go beyond that. He was thus trying to lead the country to suppose that no infractions of the customs had been committed since the present government got into power. He read many names and then asked that they would be withdrawn as he did not want them to be published. I am not going to make any statement and ask that it be withdrawn from ' Hansard.' I am taking caution from the example of the hon. gentleman who did not want to give names and thus do injustice to any particular firm. But the names are known to the department. Can all these seizures be made without the hon. gentleman knowing the names?


William Paterson: Certainly I know the names.


William Foster Cockshutt: There are fifty pages of them here and he asks me to give the names.


William Paterson: Yes.


William Foster Cockshutt: He has not furnished the names and he said I did wisely in not asking for them. The jianies are known to him, and the system he follows in making seizures lends itself to a settlement privately between the inspector, or the man who makes the seizure, and the man who gives the information and the government and that system might be worked to the detriment of a man on the one side of politics and to the advantage of a man on the other.


William Paterson: Give an instance.


William Foster Cockshutt: I am dealing with the general principle on which the seizures were made, and I say that the system followed

lends itself to that kind of thing. Surely he can understand that. I have pointed out that the department has been paying altogether too much to the informers and the men who made the seizures. Will the hon. minister deny that? I understand that he is talking of increasing the salaries of these men and not allowing the thing I complaip of, namely, the holding up of any man. A respectable and responsible business man might prefer to pay $5,000 in the case of an infraction of the customs laws, which would involve only a fine of $500, rather than have his name branded as defrauding the customs. There were about $250,000 of fines imposed according to this report and on that amount no less than $105,305 has gone to the men making the seizures and the informers. Will the minster dispute that?


William Paterson: Certainly not.


William Foster Cockshutt: Is not that an immense amount to pay for making seizures, not one of which would take more than a few hours? Fancy a man getting $2,000 or $3,000 for a couple of hours'. work. In the special branch alone nearly' $44,000 were paid to the men making the seizures and the informers. In the preventive branch $13,595 were paid to the officers making the seizure and $11,094 to the informants, or in all $56,017 were paid to the officers making the seizures and $48,674 to the men giving the information, being a total of $105,391 paid out of these fines to men who are supposed to be getting their salaries out of this government.
The minister in his statement the other night said nothing about these men receiving this large amount for fines. The amount they realized from fines would appear to be much greater than the amount they realized from salaries. This has been going on for many years until this work has become a science and we have to-day more than 50 pages of these seizures up and down the country, showing fines all the way up to $25,000 and the amounts of these fines have been divided largely between the informants and the men making the seizures. In some instances $2,000 or $3,000 have gone to a single officer for a single attachment of goods. Surely that is out of all reason, and if this is to be on a percentage basis it should be on a graded basis. When the seizure is for thousands of dollars surely the minister should not pay the same proportion as if it was only $5 or $10. It would not be unreasonable in the case of a $10 seizure to pay 50 per cent but that seems an unreasonable proportion when the seizure runs up into hundreds of thousands of dollars. The time occupied in working up one case might be as great as in the other. The present method leads to a system of spying around, it Is a kind of informer business and it is a question whether the department are pursuing the right


William Foster Cockshutt: the business and prosperity of the country, why should they rob the towns and cities of the share of business which belong to them, as they do the city of Brantford, and give it to places which are not originating a single dollar's worth of exports? This is very much to be regretted, and I trust that the minister will, in the near future, return to the old time way of gathering and publishing these statistics.
I must ask the pardon of the House for trespassing at greater length than I intended to, but this is an accumulation of matters that has come to my hand during the time I have occupied the position of chairman of the Committee on Customs statistics on this side of the House, and I want to say a few words now with regard to the case which has been so ably presented by the hon. member for West Kent (Mr. Clements). This is one of the most important indictments that probably could be produced against the Department of Customs. It is not a new matter. It is one that the minister's attention has been drawn to by the hon member for West Kent, by myself and others on various occasions in this House and, in my opinion, we have not at all got at the bottom of it. Additional importance is given to it by reason of the fact that the work has practically, only begun. There is a great deal to be done and this country, I think, is being deliberately, or otherwise, kept out of a large part of the good that should come to it as a result of the trade that is to be derived from the great work that is going on there. I hold in my hand a copy of the Detroit ' Free Press ' of May 4, 1908. My hon. friend from West Kent has already quoted from some newspapers, and I shall only make this one quotation in order that I may show the minister that the question is a live one, that the question is being debated in that part of the country, on both sides of the line, and that public attention has been called to the gravity of the situation. I say the gravity of the situation, and I think I -use these words advisedly because a great injustice is being done to Canada to the government, to the manufacturer and to the workingman. If the minister does not regard the Canadian manufacturer or workingman he regards the government, I should judge, and in the interest of the government he should see that this matter is thoroughly investigated, and if he does, in my opinion, he will find that the coffers of this country are being robbed of a very large amount of money that should go into them. I am not going to say that it could not go into them under existing laws, because I believe it would go into them if the existing laws were carried out properly. I am going to show the minister why. But, before doing that I will just read a few words from this paper in order to bring tbe matter before the House as it appears in the Detroit ' Free Press ' and appeared in the Michigan


William Foster Cockshutt: papers on several occasions. I shall only read part of the article. It is headed ' Underbid Canadians ' :


The Butler B.: 
William Paterson: That will be less than the balance of trade you so dreaded.


William Foster Cockshutt: I am speaking now about the balance of customs and not the balance of trade. I am telling the minister that in two months we have lost $3,000,000 of Customs revenue this year as compared with the same two months of last year.
Mr. PATERSON1. That means that there are less imports which is what you desire.


William Foster Cockshutt: Canadian manufac-tureis get no benefit from that because you allow these materials to come in free of duty and you lose that $50,000 which should go to swell your customs receipts. I hope the minister will to-day take the House into his confidence and tell us what influences were set to work to cause him to give these favours to this American tunnel company. What were the influences at work ' Why were they at work ? Was it in the interest of the government? Was it in the interest of the country ? Was it in the interest of the manufacturers ? Was it in the interest of the workingman ? Let the minister answer these questions. They are questions that must be met. This is an open issue in western Ontario and the eyes of the country are upon it. A $12,000,000 tunnel is being built there, and the people of Canada are not reaping one dollar of advantage from the work. The hon. member for West Kent threw some light on the Customs concessions which are given to the company doing the work. He read a letter

from a gentleman who came down here as an emissary. The fact that an emissary had to come down here shows that it was not the intention of the Customs Department originally to give, this concession. When the emissary arrived a debate took place on the question, and -finally for what reason we know not the Customs Department put a more favourable construction on clause 596 than its terms would warrant. Since that was done materials that should bear duties of from 20 to 35 per cent have been coming in free to the value of $237,000. How much have we sent to the other side ? I do not suppose we have sent many dollars' worth. A few timbers, the hon. member for West Kent says, are all that has been bought in Canada up to date or that is likely to be bought. Not even sand or gravel or anything else from which any of the working men of Canada could reap advantage has been bought in Canada, but everything has been brought from the United States, and not a dollar of duty collected on it. This is an important matter, and one on which we shall expect a frank, open statement from the minister as to how he arrived at a decision which is not warranted by the terms of clause 596. That clause winds up by saying : ' under regulations prescribed by the Minister of Customs.' What regulations has he prescribed ? The hon. member for West Kent read a statement to the effect that cars worth $75 were smeared with mud in order that they might not appear to be new cars, and were passed in at a valuation of $35. Other things were brought free of duty altogether. A letter evidently written by a party who knows what he is talking about, lays bare all the facts. I commend that to the Minister of Customs as a statement which he cannot afford to ignore. He owes it to himself and to his department, if he is going to continue to bear the good name which he has hitherto borne in Canada as an honest, upright citizen and statesman, to make a frank statement to-day as to why these concessions were made, and as to why this strained interpretation was placed oil the law in order that this company might profit to an immense extent, and why, if the ruling is wrong, steps have not been taken to rectify it. I might go on reading a large number of extracts on that point, hut I do not wish to weary the House. I have brought up these matters simply as a candid friend of the Minister of Customs. I have no desire in anything I have said to be considered personal in any respect; but I am pointing out to him, in a fair, straightforward, business way, what I consider to be defects in his department. I have shown the soft spot for the Customs Department in the civil service report, I have dealt with the Huntington matter; I have dealt with the seizures; I would like to have dealt with the Halifax matter and the Montreal mat-Mr. COCKSHUTT.
ter, but I have not had time to go into them fully. As chairman of the Customs Committee I have been giving the hon. gentleman's department close study for the last three years. He may say that I am not qualified to speak on customs matters. My qualification is not perhaps as great as that of the minister. But I am familiar with the Customs Department and with the Customs law. I have been an importer of goods in Canada for thirty years; I have made many entries myself and have seen a great mauy other entries made. I know the impediments in the way of the honest importer. On one or two occasions I have pointed out to the department mistakes that have been made, and I think I have been properly rewarded for so doing. Now I am giving the minister my criticisms in a candid, straightforward, friendly way, and I ask him to make ias open and frank his statement in regard to the various matters which I have brought to his attention as I have done in presenting them to the House.


Hon.   WM@: PATER'S ON (Minister of Customs). Mr. Speaker, I do not want to detain the House any longer than is necessary. I think it has been detained a long time already. Of course, I am not going to find fault with the last speaker. He had some remarks which he desired to present when my estimates were under consideration, and had not an opportunity of doing so. He is perhaps disposed to blame me for not putting them off. But he has not been debarred from giving the House his view. I may say that it was through no discourtesy to him that I desired to proceed with my estimates. I stated frankly to the House that I wanted to get away, and the hon. leader of the opposition, referring to the wish of the hon. member for Brantford, stipulated that he should have an opportunity on concurrence to make his remarks, which of course jl was glad to agree to. He seems to think that I found fault with him for being away. I did not find fault with him.


William Foster Cockshutt: ' Hansard ' says that the hon. minister said that the member for Brantford should be here


William Paterson: What I said was with the idea that the 1,800 officers of my department should not be kept out of their pay because the hon. member for Brantford happened to be away. But he had a perfect right to be away to take part in the elections. The hon. member for North Toronto was away also; I wish he were away a little oftener. Other members were away, as they had a right to be. I was awiay myself. I take up first the matter of the tunnel, because it has been introduced by the hon. member for West Kent. A great deal has been said about this tunnel. I cannot tell what the fuss is all about. The hon.

member for Brantford asks me to be straightforward. Well, we have to look at two points which have been brought up. The first is that it is unwise to have a tariff item under which material for this tunnel is admitted into the country free of duty. The other point is that notwithstanding that item we are so administering affairs under it that we are not carrying out the spirit of it. Now, let us take up these points in order. First, how comes this item to be in the tariff ? 'The item is this :
.Materials to be used in Canada for construction of bridges and tunnels crossing the boundary between the United States and Canada when similar materials are admitted free under similar circumstances into the United States under regulations prescribed by the Minister of Customs.
That is in the tariff because it was proposed by the Finance Minister when the tariff was submitted to the House. When I say to my hon. friend that he is as responsible as I or anybody else, I mean that the legislation was before the House for approval or rejection, no objection was taken to it. If he considers it such an enormous evil, it came under his notice at the time and he should have objected to it strongly in the committee time and again on the resolutions, and again when the resolutions came up for concurrence, and again when a Sill was introduced founded on the resolutions. Also on the second reading of the Bill and again when the House was in committee on the Bill. Again when the motion for third reading was before the House and again when the motion was before the House that the Bill do pass. In all these cases it was before him and every other member for consideration ; and, so far as I am aware, there was not a particle of exception taken to it. As regards my own view, I think it is a right item to be in the tariff. When the tariff was being revised. I was anxious to have it there. Ever since confederation, precisely this line of action has been followed. It was followed in 1883 in the case of the bridge over the Niagara river at Niagara Falls, again in 1891. again in 1894, in the case of la bridge over the Ste. Croix river at St. Stephens, again In 1896 in the case of the suspension bridge over the Niagara river, again in 1898 in the case of another bridge and in 1901 in the case of a bridge across the Rainy x'iver at Beaudette and so on. In all cases of international work what is now in the tariff was the course adopted. But in these cases the course followed was to pass an order in council. My view is that we should not have business done by order in council if it can be avoided, I like parliament to know. I like parliament to give us the power and direct us in what way it wants business to be done. I prefer that to having to meet special cases by orders In council. Orders in council may have to
be passed to meet special cases, but when we know that in all these international works, for the past twenty or thirty years, the uniform practice, under all governments, has been to have a reciprocal arrangement put in force under which the materials from one country will pass free into the other, which are used in the construction of these works, I thought it better to have that in the tariff and have parliament pronounce its judgment upon it. Parliament did pronounce judgment, and its judgment is embodied in the tariff; and I do not think that if we were to try and rescind that item to-day, the House would approve of our doing so. If another connecting bridge were projected, I do not think there would be any objection to this item. But it is charged that we are not administering the Customs law as our neighbours are doing. The hon. member for Kent (Mr. -Clements) says we are to blame and so does the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cock-shu-tt). Well, these gentlemen are talking a great deal of nonsense. There is the item in the tariff and they are blaming the Customs Department because we let stuff come in free under that item. What else could they expect the department to do? Our officers are warned io carry out the laws which this parliament enacts; and if this parliament declares that certain things shall come into this country free, how can they expect the customs officers to say they shall not. Is that their conception of the proper line of duty which customs officers should follow?


William Foster Cockshutt: The hon. gentleman misunderstands the main point. We know that the law is there, but we say that you are not interpreting it as they are interpreting a similar law in the United States. There is a $3,000,000 section of the tunnel which they say does not come under that clause.


William Paterson: How does he know that?


William Foster Cockshutt: I know by the fact that the goods are coming in, and entering into the construction and are not charged duty.


William Paterson: Is not that provided for in the item?


William Foster Cockshutt: Not as I understand it.


William Paterson: Well, the hon. gentleman had better not speak until he does understand it. The language is plain enough. The stuff is coming in and is being watched and nothing will be allowed to come in free which does not come under that item. The argument of the hon. gentleman is a condemnation of the Customs Department because that department is carrying out the law. The arrangement is a reciprocal one.

They say the United States government will not admit what we are admitting.


William Foster Cockshutt: According to the rulings, the American authorities do not rule the same with regard to the western section of the tunnel that you do with regard to the eastern section.


William Paterson: You have not got your ruling at all. Let us see what we have. The Commissioner of Customs wanted to have the authority of the principal official in Washington with reference to this matter. It is not a question between thesel contractors and the government of Canada, but a question between the two governments. If the United States government do not admit free the materials required for the construction of that tunnel, that come from Canada, then the material - coming from the United States into Canada will not be admitted free. It is conditional. It was for the contractors themselves to see to it that the government at Washington should concede that, for of course, if the concessions were not given by the United States, they would not be given by us. Mr. Beek-man Winthrop, assistant secretary of the treasury of the United States, who is the authority in this matter, wrote as follows :
Treasury Department,
Office of the Secretary,
Washington, March 13, 1908. Division of Customs,
To the Collector of Customs,
Detroit, Mich., Sir,-The department is in receipt of your letter of the 6th instant, relative to the entry free of duty of tools and materials to be used in the construction of the tunnel between Canada and the United States under the Detroit river.
The matter of the free entry of materials used in the construction of a tunnel between Canada and the United States was considered by the department in connection with the construction of the tunnel between Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, and it was decided that the materials brought into the United States for convenience and taken back into the tunnel and used therein should not be regarded as dutiable importations without regard to the part of the tunnel in which the same were used. Materials used above ground in the approaches to the tunnel on the American shore were held to be subject to the payment of duty. You will be governed accordingly.
Respectfully,
BEEKMAN WINTHROP, Assistant Secretary.
Now, this is what the United States authorities declared in reference to that, and if that were not carried out, then, under the well understood rule of reciprocity, free admission would not be allowed into this country.


Mr. BLAIN.: Would that include cement ?


William Paterson: Yes, cement is one of the very largest items. I do not wish to


William Paterson: go into a discussion of the details, but I understand this to be a tubular iron c5n-struetion


Mr. TAYLOR.: Steel.


William Paterson: I suppose that, without depreciating our own manufacturers, it would be reasonable to say that the steel for such a structure would be prepared in the United States. It is probable that there are but a few firms in the United States that could produce it. But cement is produced in both countries. We have not been careless in this matter. We wanted to see that these contractors were not discriminating against us. The commissioner has had several interviews on the subject. I am sorry to take up so much of the time of the House, but these gentlemen opposite have made so much about it that I think, perhaps, it is better that I should deal with it.


Mr. FOSTER.: Has the hon. gentleman (Mr. Paterson) finished the portion with reference to the rulings of the United States?


William Paterson: Yes ; we are proceeding on these letters.


George Eulas Foster: I noticed that the hon. gentleman read from a late letter from the United States referring to the practice in the Sarnia-Port Huron tunnel. As I understand it, the treatment to be accorded in the case of this tunnel was the same as that accorded in the Sarnia-Port Huron tunnel.


William Paterson: Yes.


George Eulas Foster: Now, the whole thing, I understand, depends on the definition of ' tunnel.' If the minister will refer to the actual proceedings in the case of this former tunnel, he will gain some light on the present case.


William Paterson: ' Tunnel ' is considered by us-and, I suppose, by them; if not it will not be so considered by us-to cover more than merely that part of the construction under the water.


George Eulas Foster: That is the whole point, as I understand it. In this order, or whatever it was, of 1908, this United States official refers to the treatment accorded in the case of the Sarnia-Port Huron tunnel, and, if I understand it, says that materials taken into the United States for convenience and then used in the construction of the tunnel were to be free of duty. But you need to refer back to the ruling in that case to see the definition given to ' tunnel ' to find it was different from that which the minister has given. Was the ' tunnel ' the part of the structure directly under the water from river bank to river bank, or did the ' tunnel ' extend beyond the river bank on either side, materials used in it to be allowed to enter free ?


William Paterson: The tunnel, I take it, is the covered part. It must go further than the water. And, so far as this government is concerned, the commissioner tells me there were no duties paid on the material in any part of the tunnel whatever. But it is still open; the work is going on.


George Eulas Foster: But it has been there for settlement at any time. Surely the department has looked into the matter. If they will refer back to the ease of the old tunnel, they will find exactly what was considered ' tunnel ' at that time.


William Paterson: Yes.


George Eulas Foster: Well, what was it?


William Paterson: That no duty was collected on any part of the material.


George Eulas Foster: But I am talking about the length of the ' tunnel.' Here is the United States side.	Your train comes
up, comes into the open trench or cut; it then goes into the covered part which is not under water; it goes on into the part of the tunnel that is under water till it gets to the line of the river bank on the Canadian side where it passes into the part on this side which is not under water, and so into the open approach. Now, how do they treat the open approach and the closed tunnel up to the water line ?


William Paterson: They charge duty, and so do we.


George Eulas Foster: Then, they only allow to come in free of duty what is between the river banks ?


William Paterson: Within the tunnel.


George Eulas Foster: Between the river banks?


William Paterson: It goes beyond the river bank.


George Eulas Foster: No, do not let us have any misunderstanding. The minister misunderstood me, though I thought I made it as plain as I could make it. Here is your train


William Paterson: Don't take so long about it.


George Eulas Foster: I would not be so long only that the minister seems to be so dense about it.


William Paterson: You must speak civilly if you want a civil answer.


George Eulas Foster: I will speak civilly just as long as the minister does.


William Paterson: What I want to say is that on material used in the open part on either side duty is charged-it is charged on our side and on their side.


George Eulas Foster: Now, we will come down to it. If you go through the open part and into the tunnel which is not under water,
is that considered as ' tunnel ' for the purposes of


William Paterson: Why, isn't that tunnel ?


George Eulas Foster: Is it considered ' tunnel ' so far as the ruling of the United States for duty is concerned ?


William Paterson: I should suppose so.


George Eulas Foster: It is not a matter of supposition, hut a matter of knowledge


William Paterson: If it is not so considered by them, it will not be so considered by us.
Mr. FOSTER But he has been two years considering this


William Paterson: The minister is not tied up. Any material that comes in that should not come in free will be charged duty. The hon. gentleman knows the power of the customs hand ; it can take the duty any time it likes.


George Eulas Foster: Does the minister say he has not settled that question yet ?


William Paterson: The minister says he has an understanding Lhat he thinks is absolutely safe in reference to it.


George Eulas Foster: Will the minister tell the House that he considers a portion of the covered approach which he would denominate tunnel in the vernacular to be tunnel with reference to the letting in of material free of duty by the United States ?


William Paterson: Yes, I do ; it is tunnel, is it not ? I consider tunnel what is tunnel, and if the United States does not take the same view with reference to tunnel we will have an understanding with them.


George Eulas Foster: Do they ?


William Paterson: I believe they do. It says it shall be admitted free for use in all parts of the tunnel but not in the open approaches thereto.


George Eulas Foster: There may be tunnel which is outside the river bank before you come to the open approach. That is the portion in dispute. Will the minister show the exact action taken by the United States in the Sarnia and Detroit cases with reference to that ?


George Taylor: I think the letter the minister read said just to the water.


William Paterson: The matter of free entry of materials used in the construction of a tunnel between Canada and the United States was C9nsidered by the department in connection with the construction of the tunnel between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario, and it was decided that all materials brought into the United States for convenience and taken back into the tunnel and used therein should not

be regarded as dutiable importations, without regard to the port of the tunnel in which the same were used.
That is *whether it was a tunnel on the land or under the water.


Ur. LENNOX.: It does not say that.


William Paterson: Without regard to the part of the tunnel in which the same were used
And then we find still more :
Materials used above ground in the approaches to the tunnel on the American shore were held to be subject to the payment of duty. You will be governed accordingly.
I do not know that we could have it plainer. If there W'as any doubt or ambiguity about the first part that latter part makes it clear.


Air.   POSTER@: It would make it clear if you could get the exact action of the United States on the Sarnia and Port Huron tunnel. That is among the minister's papers and if my memory does not fail me he will find that there is a limitation on the word ' tunnel ' as regards the freedom of entry. In talking about the whole tunnel, as he does in his first letter, the tunnel is partly in United States territory under the river and half or nearly so is in Canadian water on the Canadian side. In referring to the tunnel, he may mean any part of the tunnel proper, whether it is under the jurisdiction of the United States or under the jurisdiction of Canada. That is what that refers to. I am only anxious to get at the bottom of it.


William Paterson: I cannot give any more than we have. We consider the assurances given us are reliable, that the material to be used in any part of the tunnel is to be free, while in the open approaches to the tunnel it is dutiable. So we are proceeding. As I said, it is to be reciprocal ; if the United States should refuse free entry for a part of that tunnel we would do the same.


George Eulas Foster: If a man sells the minister or bargains with him for a piece of property and says : My title is so and so, and is exactly the same as you will find in the records when that piece of property changed hands ten years ago and that the record is in the record office-would the minister pay his money and make the bargain for it until he had the record searched ? It is exactly the same here. This United States official refers you back to the circumstances and to the ruling in connection with the building of the older tunnel and I would think the Customs Department would go back and get the ruling in that case. What is done there is what is authorized here and I will be mistaken if the minister does not find the ruling to be as I stated.
Mr. PATERSON


William Paterson: I did not at first detect that my hon. friend was resorting to his old game and endeavouring to induce me to engage in obstruction. After repeating the explanation five or six times, I think I shall not comply any more.


Air.   POSTER@: If you confess your inability all right


William Paterson: When mention was made in the papers, &c., of this matter we inquired what was done. We have a special officer there watching the importations, we have all the entries made in Windsor, &c., and if at any time articles have come passed as free entries, which were not warranted by the law, the United States refusing to reciprocate, then of course we would call for amended entries and payment of duty.


George Eulas Foster: That would not affect this.


William Paterson: It would.


George Eulas Foster: I shall show the hon. gentleman.


William Paterson: No, we will not have any more of this I will read the letter to our special agent in Detroit, Mr. G. S. Brown. The commissioner wrote this :
I am sending you herewith copy of file No. 66344 for perusal and to be returned without delay.
I shall be obliged if you will see the vice president or other representative officer of the Detroit River Tunnel Company, and ascertain if there has been any objection by United States customs to the .admission of materials of Canadian origin for the Detroit River Tunnel without duty.
I also inclose letter addressed to the collector of customs at Detroit, and shall be obliged if he will hand you an early reply addressed to me.
. It may be that Canadian materials have not been used in this tunnel because the contractors find it in their own interests through circumstances advisable to use other materi-*als.
I shall be obliged for prompt attention to this matter, as inquiries are being made on this subject in the House of Commons.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
Commissioner of Customs.
Customs-Canada.
File No. 66344.
Detroit, March, 31, 1908. John McDougald, Esq.,
Commissioner of Customs,
Ottawa, Ontario.
. Sir,

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th instant., inclosing file No. 66344.
According to your request, I called upon the Collector of Customs, Detroit, and handed him you letter of the 25th, and inclosed herewith his reply to the same. I might state that early this month, Judge Whelan, the collector, 1 received a letter from the Treasury Depart-

ment at Washington, asking him what his understanding was_, relative to the admission of tools and material for the Detroit Eiver tunnel now under construction. Mr. Whelan replied on March 6, that he understood' that material and tools to be used in the tunnel proper were exempt from the payment of duty. The copy of the letter signed by Mr. Beekman Winthrop is the reply received to the collector's letter.
I also called upon the Detroit River Tunnel Company and had an interview with Mr. ICin-near, the chief engineer. He stated that so far as the tunnel company was concerned, the purchase of all materials, tools, etc., was now in the hands of the contractors. Mr. Kin-near stated that the principal material used in the construction of the tunnel was Portland cement, and that the contractors were at liberty to purchase this cement from whom they pleased, provided the requirements came up to the very severe test which his department gave to every barrel of Portland cement that was used in the construction of the tunnel. In the first place, the contractors must purchase cement from cement manufacturers, that have been making Portland cement for five years and over. This cement is tested by the tunnel company's own experts and sealed until required by the contractors. The seal is then broken by one of the staff of the tunnel company and shipment to Detroit is made under his supervision. Mr. Kinnear referred me to Messrs. Butler Brothers & Hoff, the contractors for any further information. I called upon the contractors and had an interview with Mr. William Butler, a member of the firm. As to any objection by the United States customs to the admission of material of Canadian origin for the Detroit river tunnel without duty, Mr. Butler said there had been none whatever.
Mr. Butler then referred to the objection which certain newspapers had raised to his firm purchasing a large part of the material, principally Portland cement in the United States. Mr. Butler admitted frankly that this was the case and gave his reasons therefor as follows :
I am reading this part of it to show what is said about this Portland cement which is the main thing. It seems to be the thing in which Canadians are mainly interested.
Late in the summer of 1908 when they secured the contract for the construction of the Detroit river tunnel, they wrote all the principal cement manufacturers of Canada, also Canadian houses handling English Portland cement, inclosing a copy of the specifications of the requirements insisted upon by the tunnel company, and asked for a quotation on Portland cement in accord with these requirements in lots of 50,000 barrels. Every Canadian manufacturer, except one, that replied, stated that they were not prepared to furnish the quantity asked for, but quoted a price on lots of 5,000 or 10,000 barrels. One firm quoted a price on 50,000 barrels but the price it was stated was very high. Mr. Butler said there was objection where the cement had to be tested, sealed, etc., by The Detroit Tunnel Company, in taking small lots even had the price been right, but the price was equal to the United States price plus the duty.
Mr. Butler also stated that the replies from the Canadian manufacturers seemed very indifferent. Some even stated that they were not anxious for the order under the conditions, while others said their domestic business was so great that they could not take care of an order of 50,000 barrels.
Mr. Butler said that as proof of the indifference of the Canadian manufacturer to securing a part of their orders, * not a single Canadian representative of any Portland cement company' had ever called upon his firm soliciting an order. In the face of the late newspaper and other agitation on this subject, he expressed surprise at this. On the other hand when they sent letters to the United States cement manufacturers asking for quotations these firms sent personal representatives to interview Butler Bros. & Hoff Company and did their best to secure the order. It was considered a pretty good advertisement Mr. Butler said, under the severe test of the tunnel company for the manufacturer to be able to say to the public that their brand of cement was being used in the construction of the tunnel.
I return the file.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Tour obedient servant,
(Sgd.) GEORGE V. BROWN, Special Officer.
Here is a large order for cement, manufacturers want to get the business, they are written to, some reply and say that they cannot take the order and others do not answer at all. In no case with an order like that offering is a personal representative sent to see them about it. If that be true


George Eulas Foster: That is the representation of Mr. Butler.


William Paterson: Of Mr. Butler. That shows that our people have not used the diligence that they ought to have used in endeavouring to secure this order.


George Eulas Foster: Unless there is another side to it.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: The purchasing agent of Butler Brothers, and Hoff Company, while he was asked to get prices from different concerns in Canada, was personally told to turn them down by Butler Bros. & Hoff and they were turned down. This is simply the contractor's side of the case.


William Paterson: These are statements of Mr. Butler as reported to us by our officer.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: That is Mr. Butler's side of the case.


William Paterson: The letter which I have read is dated March 31. He supplements that by a letter on April 2 as follows :
Customs-Canada.
Detroit, April 2, 1908. John MoDougald, Esq.,
Commissioner of Customs,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Sir,-In glancing over the copy of my report of the 31st ultimo in reference to my

interview with Mr. Butler, of Butler Brothers & Hoff, contractors for the Detroit river tunnel, I noticed that I did not make it quite clear that Mr. Butler stated, that in response to his company's letters asking for prices, the quotations of every Canadian manufacturer of Portland cement were higher than the quotations of United States manufacturers by just about the amount of the duty imposed hy the Canadian government. Mr. Butler said that owing to the immense amount of Portland cement that was being used in the construction of the tunnel, this difference in price, had large quantities been urchased from Canadian houses, would have een a very important matter to his firm'.
Mr. Butler also stated that he had given instruction to his purchasing agents, where it was possible, to purchase as much of their requirements from Canadian firms.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Tout obedient servant,
(Sgd.) GEORGE V. BROWN, Special Officer.
What struck us, as it apparently has struck the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden), was that that was the statement that the contractors had made themselves and we wanted to see if we could not verify it. So, the commissioner wrote Mr. Brown again as follows :
April 14, 1908.


Geo.   V.@: Brown, Esq.,
40 Pingiree avenue, Detroit, Michigan.
Re Detroit river tunnel.
Sir,^Referring to your letters of March 31 and April 2, 1908, in the above matter, as the question may come up for discussion in the House of Commons, the minister will be pleased if you can get a letter from Mr. Butlsr, signed by him (and to be sent to me), to the effect (as stated in your letter) that not a single Canadian representative of any Portland cement company had ever called upon his firm soliciting an order. I will also be obliged if you can obtain from Mr. Butler copies of the offers made by Canadian manufacturers as to supplying Portland cement for the Detroit river tunnel and forward to me after comparing the copy with the original offers.
Awaiting your early reply,
I have the honour to he, sir,
Your obedient servant.
(Sgd.) JOHN McDOUGALD, Commissioner of Customs.
Mr. Butler made this statement to our officer and he reported it to us. We said : Yes, he may have reported that to us but we wrote back to our agent to ask Mr. Butler to give a statement over his own signature and to send it to us. The following letter was received from our officer again :
Customs-Canada.
Detroit, April 18, 1908 John McDougald, Esq.,
Commissioner of Customs,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Sir,-I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 14th instant with Mr. PATERSON.
respect to supplies for the Detroit river tunnel.
I called upon Mr. William Butler, of the firm of Butler Brothers-Hoff Company, who gave 4ne the within letter addressed to you in which he states over his signature that no Canadian representative of any Portland cement company had ever called upon his firm soliciting an order.
Since my previous visit, Mr. Butler has received an inquiry from the International Portland Cement Company, Ottawa, Ontario, as to the prospects of an order at the present time. I inclose a copy of this letter and this firm's reply thereto. Mr. Butler pointed out, that although their answer was sent about two weeks ago, the International Portland Cement Company had not as yet replied to their letter stating that they were at present in the market for some 6,000 or 7,000 barrels of Portland cement.
I suppose there are some members of the company In the House who can verify from the books of the company whether that be true or not. But, if there is a chance for the sale of 6,000 or 7,000 barrels of cement, and a firm, anxious to do business, let two weeks go by without doing anything, it does not look as if any injury were done. Certainly business men should be prepared to do their business quicker than that.
Regarding the prices made by the Canadian firms, when tenders were asked for 50,000 barrel lots, Mr. Butler promised to write to his head office in New York and have them send the original copies of their letters to the Detroit office. On receipt to these letters, Mr. Butler will notify me and allow me to take copies of same or whatever extracts that may he required.
In the meantime I am forwarding the letters referred to above, to you and will not delay a moment with the other matter as soon as it is placed in my hands.
I have the honour to be, sir.
Your obedient servant,
(Sgd.) GEORGE V. BROWN, Special Officer.
Three inolosures.
P.S.-I inclose clipping taken from to-day's Detroit ' Free Press ' (Canadian items) re this question.


G. Y. B.
[Stage Direction]
Now, here is the letter of the Butler Bros. & Hoff Company :
Butler Brothers-Hoff Company,
Detroit, Michigan, April 18, 1908. John MoDougald, Esq.,
Commissioner of Customs,
Ottawa, 'Ontario.
Dear Sir,-In reference to the Portland cement used on the Detroit river tunnel, I beg to state that at the time that our firm' secured the contract for the construction of the tunnel, we wrote the leading cement concerns of both the United States and Canada, asking for prices on 50,000 barrels of Portland cement. With one exception, the Canadian houses stated that they were not prepared to supply 50,000 barrels, and the price in each case was considerably higher than the prices

quoted hy the United States firms. Possibly owing to the severe restrictions required by the engineering department of the Detroit River Tunnel Company, but it would appear to us that the Canadian manufacturers of Portland cement seemed indifferent to securing an order from us for Portland cement, as in no case, since we secured the contract, has any representative of any Canadian Portland cement manufacturer waited upon us soliciting an order for Portland cement.
Since being waited upon by your representative, we have received an inquiry from Ottawa re Portland cement and inclose a copy of the correspondence regarding same. No answer to our letter of April 6 has yet been received.
Tours truly,
BUTLER. BR.OTHERS-HOPF COMPANY, By Wm. Butler, Secretary.
William Foster Cockshutt: Is there any truth in the statement made in the letter read by the member for West Kent, that a special delegation came to Ottawa on this matter and that as a result of their visit they went back with certain special concessions which were not coming to them under the law? That is a serious charge.


William Paterson: What is that ?


William Foster Cockshutt: The letter says that their very first action after signing the contract was to come to Ottawa; it is stated they sent emissaries and got special concessions as a result of their negotiations with the department which gave them entry free of duty to which they were not entitled.


William Paterson: When we were contemplating tariff changes a great many delegations came here.


William Foster Cockshutt: This was an American delegation on behalf of this tunnel company.


William Paterson: They would not get any concessions except what this parliament gave them. If they asked for it, they would get what has been given by order in council in all other cases. I did not see the letter and I do not know anything about it. The hon. gentleman himself says he intercepted the letter and if he has kept possession of a letter of mine from February until now he is certainly more to blame than I am.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: I do not think the minister can claim the letter is his because it was never mailed to the minister. The letter was intended to be mailed to the minister by a gentleman who was one of the deputation who came down here to get the concessions from the minister and he gave me the letter for my own use as he had a right to do. It would have been sent to the minister had I not seen the gentleman on that day.


William Paterson: Why did not the hon. gentleman allow it to he forwarded to me ?


Herbert Sylvester Clements: Because he gave it to me for my own personal use in this House.


William Paterson: Well, there is something very strange about that. This man appears to have written me an official letter and then he gave it to another man and it was never forwarded to me. I made most particular inquiries in the department and no trace of any such letter can be found. I have never seen the letter nor does the hon. gentleman pretend that it was ever sent to me because he says it was given to him.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: In my opening remarks I said that perhaps the minister had a copy of this letter. I do not know whether he has or not. The letter I have is the original letter from the gentleman who was the purchasing agent of this tunnel. To-day is the first opportunity I have had of presenting that letter to the minister.


William Paterson: If the hon. gentleman has the original I suppose there is no copy of it. Why was it that the hon. gentleman kept a letter of mine from the 13tli of February until the 12th of June when he produces it to support a charge that I was not vigilant in this matter. The hon. gentleman says he intercepted this letter


Mr. HENDERSON.: No.


William Paterson: Yes, and ' Hansard ' will show he said it.


David Henderson: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Clements) said nothing of the kind.


Mr. E. M. MACDONALD.: He used the word ' intercepted.'


Mr HENDERSON.: I was sitting nearer to him than the hon. gentleman was and I know better.


William Paterson: Well, ' Hansard ' will show that be used the word ' intercepted and I will not discuss that phase of the nuestiou further. Is it not peculiar that ihe hon gentleman should find fault with me for being lax in the management of the department when he has retained Possession of a letter which if sent to me would have nut me on mv guard? I have only to repeat that I had no knowledge of this letter until I heard of it to-day. and no one to my.department knew anything about it But here is another letter received from Mr. Brown, our special agent officer :
Customs-Canada.
Detroit, April 2a, 1908.
John McDougald, Esq.,
Commissioner of Customs,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Re Detroit River Tunnel Company. gir_\s stated in my letter of the 18th instant! the Butler Bros. & Hoff Company promised to secure the original copies of offers ot Portland eenvent by Canadian firms from their New York house. This they did and


BUTLER BROTHERS-HOFF COMPANY.
[Stage Direction]
Sun Portland Cement Company.
Owen Sound, December 6, 1906. Messrs. Butler Brothers-Hoff Company,
605 Whitney Building, Detroit, Michigan. Dear Sirs,-We are in receipt of your favour of the 4th instant, and in reply will say that owing to the large freight rate, all rail from Owen Sound to Windsor, we do not believe we could quote you a price on cement that will he attractive to yon. Our works are situated directly on the dock' at Owen Sound and we have excellent arrangements for shipping by water, therefore, if yon be in the market for this 50,000 barrels or any part thereof, after the opening of navigation in the spring, we will be pleased to quote you figures, believing that we can give you a price that will be very satisfactory to you.
We inclose your specifications, and assure you that if you favour us with any of your orders we will furnish you with cement that will be the equal of anything manufactured. Trusting that you will give us this opportunity, and thanking yon for your inquiry, we are
Yours truly,
The SUN PORTLAND CEMENT COMPANY, (Sgd.) Thos. L. Dates.
Detroit, Michigan, December 12, 1906. Sun Portland Cement Company,
Owen Sound, Ontario.
Gentlemen,-We are in receipt of your favour of December 6, .and would be glad to have you quote us on 50,000 barrels of cement or any part thereof, delivered at Windsor, Ontario, after navigation opens, in order that we may handle same by boat.
We would have to receive this cement, however, in small shipments, say not to exceed 2,000 barrels in any one shipment.
Yours truly,

[Stage Direction]
The Canadian Portland Cement Company, Toronto, November 13, 1906. Messrs. Butler Brothers-Hoff Company,
Detroit, Michigan.
Dear Sirs,-We beg to acknowledge with thanks receipt of your letter of the 12th in-

stant, inclosing copy of specifications covering the cement which will be wanted by you for the Detroit river tunnel work. We are taking up the matter of rates on this cement with the railway people and will quote you at the earliest possible moment.

[Stage Direction]
COMPANY, Limited,
(Sgd.) C. O. Dingham.
November 12, 1906.
The Canadian Portland Cement Company,
Limited,
Temple Building, Toronto, Ontario.
Gentlemen,-We hand you herewith copy of cement specifications for the Detroit river tunnel, and we should be glad to have you quote us on cement to be used in the Canadian approach. Most of the cement will Rave to be delivered during the coming summer, and some the year after.
The total amount of cement required in the approach is approximately 50,000 barrels, and we could arrange to take this amount by either small or large lots. Please quote us on lots from 10,000 barrels and up, and state particularly if you will comply with the specifications with reference to the amount of cement in a barrel, and of course also the other requirements called for.
Yours truly,
TiTTmT TVD x>T>r\nYTTTT'T*C! XTrvTJf? Z''LA ATT) \ 1S.TV
JJ u AUUlt JUltV -L X L 1.JA.VKJ-J-L\Jil X VX/JlrlXil 1.
Detroit. Michigan, November 22, 1906. Ontario Portland Cement Company,
Brantford, Ontario.
Gentlemen,-Will you kindly advise us as to what price you can furnish us Portland cement for the Detroit river tunnel delivered at Windsor, Ontario, in quantities from 10,000 to 50,000 barrels, whatever you would like to figure on.
We inclose you a set of specifications for the cement required and it will be necessary to comply with all conditions of same, including weight of barrel, 376 pounds. Shipments to be made in jute sacks or paper bags, whichever would be the cheapest to us.
Kindly advise us as soon as you could commence delivery and at what rate you could ship the quantity you would quote us on.
Yours truly,

[Stage Direction]
The International Portland Cement Company was written to; the National Portland Cement Company of Durham, was written to; the Hanover Portland Cement Company was written to. I have read these not only because I wanted to satisfy myself in regard to Mr. Butler's statement as given to our special .officer, but because I wanted him to put over his own signature what he had told our officer.
Herbert Sylvester Clements: To whom do you refer as the special officer?


William Paterson: 
William Paterson: I have not heard any complaint from any one else. I do not remember that the Portland cement men made any representations. Perhaps from the Manufacturers' Association there was a representation, but whether that embraced more than the cement men or not I do not know.


William Foster Cockshutt: Did not a deputation come to Ottawa and wait on the minister in connection with special concessions, and did not they, as a result, take back special concessions which the law did not allow ? That is the statement of this man in the employ of the company, who was one of the delegation. He says they got from the department concessions to which they were not entitled.


William Paterson: I have no knowledge of that. I do not believe they could get any special concessions. If they came down and asked what regulations were prescribed as to what might come in and all that- but I cannot say whether they did or not. The commissioner says he knows nothing about it. I know of no special concessions that were given. We could not give any concession but must follow the law. It is well the country should thoroughly understand the matter. A,s regards what the hon. member for Brantford has said, I can only say that I am surprised at such a statement. He said that I was getting a little warm. I do get a little warm when any one insinuates that when a matter comes

before me as a member of the cabinet, bound to discharge his duty, I should fail to discharge that duty. The hon. gentleman did not make a charge but says there is a rumour or a belief and that he in a measure believes it. He says there is a rumour or a belief that I would, in the matter of seizures and adjudication-a matter judicial almost if not quite in its nature- my partisan feelings are so strong that I allow myself to be swayed and to deal severely with Conservatives and leniently with Liberals. The hon. gentleman surely does not understand how grave an accusation that is. He ought to be able to appreciate that one will get somewhat warm when a thing like that is said and said without any proof whatever. If I am constituted in that way and capable of acting in that way, there is only one way to deal with me and that is put me out as soon as you can, and put an honest man in my place. The law prescribes that I must give my decision as a final resort in these matters ; and when 1 do that, I do it to the best of my knowledge and ability. There is no need why I should enlarge further on this point. I believe that a man's yea should be yea, and his nay, nay. There is no use multiplying adjectives to affirm that I am innocent with reference to this matter. Whether my judgment has been right in every case or not is another question. You might as well ask whether a judge's judgment is at all times right. But according to the best of my judgment and the best information I can get in such little time as I have to look up the documents and files and see for myself, I try to satisfy myself. Of course I am largely dependent on the seizing officer, who has personal knowledge of the circumstances and reports to the commissioner. Then the commissioner in the time at his disposal-and he has more time now since we have given him an assistant-looks over the papers, and inquires into the evidence and makes his report to me, in which he states what, in his opinion, should be the penalty imposed. In such time as I can devote to the matter, as honestly and conscientiously as I know how, I look over the documents; and if I agree with the commissioner, I endorse his report. The law prescribes the various stages. The commissioner must weigh the evidence after giving 30 days to the party to put in his defence. Then the commissioner reports to the minister, and the minister must give his decision, either remitting the fine or relaxing a portion of it or imposing the full penalty. The discretion is left in the hands of the minister and, as I have said, you should not have any one there in whom you have not confidence. I do not believe that the bon. gentleman himself fully realized the gravity Mr. PATERSON.
of what he was saying when he intimated that because I am a partisan in politics, I would allow that partisanship to vitiate my ideas of right and wrong. That I am a party man, I do not deny.


William Foster Cockshutt: I said that I have information and I offered it to the minister at the time. He asked me the names and I said I would furnish them privately, and I gave as my reason that it was not wise to put names in ' Hansard ' just as the hon. minister himself said the other day. I have the document here giving the charge.


William Paterson: What is the charge ?


William Foster Cockshutt: It is practically what the minister has said.


William Paterson: Read it now, please, without giving the name. I would like to know what I am charged with.


William Foster Cockshutt: On the understanding that the paper is not to be laid on the table and that the names are not to be revealed, I will read it. Would you ask the government what has been done in the matter of a certain firm-I am not giving the name *-in Montreal who have lately been found guilty of defrauding the customs by entering goods on false invoices ? That firm is bribing some one in the department to try and hush everything up as is usually done.
There is the character of the information that I have.


William Paterson: I say that that is a vile charge. It says ' as usually done,' and the member for Brantford endorses it.


William Foster Cockshutt: I do not. I say that is the information that comes to me. I ask the minister if there is any truth in that ?
Mr. PATERSON1. I accept the offer of the hon. member to give me privately the name of that firm. It is my word against theirs-that is all that can be said. I am not conscious that the scales of justice have ever been swayed by any undue consideration. I am not going to claim that there have been no errors of judgment:-and do not misunderstand me, I do not want to cover, by the plea of error of judgment, any wrong-doing whatever; but there may be cases where I have given a decision that would not have been given by another man in my place. All I claim is that every decision has been honestly reached and rendered. I do not want to get too hot about this

*


William Foster Cockshutt: The letter does not state that it was the minister, nor did I state it. It was one of the employees.


William Paterson: You know that that is unworthy


William Foster Cockshutt: 1 say that is the statement.


William Paterson: That is unworthy because the seizures come before me, and I am not going to put any blame on the department or on my officers in relation to any matter that I have means of learning about and controlling.
Now, as to these seizures, the hon. gentleman is wrong in saying that the inspectors share in the fines Men who receive salaries of over $2,000 a year, as the inspectors do, do not share in the fines. The special officers, of whom there is a large number, share in the fines. The hon. gentleman speaks of one officer seizing and another being the informer. It is not the officer who informs, but some outside party.


George Eulas Foster: It may be the officer.


William Paterson: Well, it might be, but I think in practically all cases it is some party outside-some competitor in trade, some clerk who has been discharged and takes this means of getting revenge, and so on Now, as to this whole question, as I said the other night, I had my doubts about this method of procedure. But I have always understood from those who preceded me in the department and from the officers that this giving of part of the fines was the only way to get thorough work done. But in cases that have come before me, I have never been able to shut my eyes to the fact that the man who makes the seizure is to get a portion of the fine. While I believe that the officers are honest and true, and careful in their statements, still I thought it better to at any rate try the plan of greatly increasing .the salaries of these men and not giving them any interest whatever in the fines. The hon. gentleman spoke as though a seizure could be made in a few minutes which could give the officer thousands of dollars. But some of these examinations have extended over months, possibly years. Great piles of invoices have to be gone through ; information as to values has to be got from England, Germany and so on. It is a large task, and the rewards are not so great as they might seem. However, I am going to try what can be done under this new system. As to these amounts, they are all in the Auditor General's Report. The informer's name is not given, but the names of the officers are given, and in the case of every one of them it can be seen whether he makes a large salary or not.
Another point made by the hon. gentleman as to the statistics of exports. He says that Brantford and other places that do* large export business do not get credit in the returns for their export. I know that the new system that we have put in operation does give rise to this objection. It is natural that a city that is a large exporting centre likes to have credit for all it does. But we found that we could get more correct statistics of exports if we collected
the figures at the port of exit. That is the reason why we adopted the system. Of course, one result is to show that at Bridge-burg for instance, there are exports to the amount of $4,000,000. But that deceives no one; every one knows that there is no export trade originating at Bridgeburg On the contrary, every one knows that Brantford is a large exporting centre. The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) and the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) agreed with me the other night that it was well to drop the idea of keeping our customs returns by provinces. This is the Dominion of Canada and in its public service there is no reason to maintain these [ rovincial distinctions. The exports are the exports of the Dominion of Canada, not of any particular province. Even if you take the statistics by the former system, you do not show their origin. For instance, we have fifteen or twenty millions of bushels of wheat in elevators in Fort William In the statistics that would appear as exports from Ontario. If you were going to show the origin you would have to show that as exported from Manitoba. On the other hand, Manitoba gets credit for only four or five millions of bushels-one million perhaps. And we are putting out our literature boasting of our western provinces and their great wheat-raising capacity. When the returns were looked at and it was- seen that. Manitoba had exported only a few hundred thousand bushels of wheat, while Ontario exported ten or twenty millions, the people naturally ask what is the meaning of it. It is much better to show these exports as exports of the Dominion. If it is desired to show the local origin of these exports, let the several towns and cities through their boards of trade collect their own statistics and have their own report. It is eminently right and proper that they should do this. While it might gratify some places to have the statistics collected and published m that way it would be a decided injury to others. One knows, for instance, that while the imports are entered at, say, Montreal, they may be for consumption in Ontario, Manitoba or Alberta. But we must take them at the port at which they are entered And, with reference to the exports, we take them at the port of exit, and we believe that in that way we get more correct returns.
With reference to the report of the commissioners concerning the Department of Customs, all I have to say is-though I do not wish to boast-that I believe I have as good a band of officers serving under me as can be found. And I am using what common sense I have-be it much or little ___to do the best I can, and am administering the department as well as I know how. I do not know where there are any weaknesses that can be avoided. But I am not going to resent in the slightest degree any

criticism; for if there be any weak spot in the administration of the department, or any way in which it can be bettered, we are the ones who want to know it more than anybody else.
As to the tunnel, I repeat that we are carrying out what we consider to be the law. We feel sure we are right. We are taking every precaution that can be taken that the spirit of the law shall be carried out, that no favouritism shall be showu, that no discrimination against Canadians shall be allowed. Whatever the law instructs us to do shall be done; but, if the law says that certain articles are to be admitted free, we cannot collect duty on them and should be violating our duty if we attempted to do so.


George Eulas Foster: What about the enforcement of penalties on defaulting officers.


William Paterson: In reference to that the hon. gentlemen have been reading the ' Hansard ' in reference to the particular case that has been under discussion. We were indebted to the man referred to for giving us the information that this officer had been boasting that we had not secured all that he had taken from.the department that should have gone into the revenue. The moment he gave me that information the commissioner wired to Officer Busby to go there and make an examination and ho found that it was true. The man was prosecuted and I see that he has been sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. His action seemed to me to be very strange, as if he must be crazy. I cannot imagine a man in his sound senses having unlawfully in his possession certain sums of money belonging to the government, making a boast of it, letting people know it. It was simplv courting the penitentiary for him to do a thing of that kind.


Haughton Lennox: It was indiscreet/like the Jackson case,


William Paterson: Does it not look almost like an insane piece of business to do it? As to the names which I read but which were not published (I think at the request of hon. gentlemen opposite) perhaps I should not have read the names as it is of no use to have people pilloried for things loug gone by. I used these names in connection with the question whether in all cases, even where full restitution was not made, there should be prosecution. Some of these were cases where there had not been restitution and where there had been no prosecution. All of these offenders could still be prosecuted and I wanted to know if the opinion was that there should be prosecution in every case. As the leader of the opposition said, judgment must be used. Certainly this man deserved prosecution and he has had it ; acting as he did he could deserve no clemency.
It is for this reason, not at all to justify
Mr. PATERSON
myself, that this was done. There is in office a kind of continuity, certain rules have been laid down as the result of the experience of the department in administration When we remember that the customs collections have amounted to $20,000,000 a year, $40,000,000 a year, $50,000,000 a year, that this vast amount is collected by and passes through the hands of some 1,800 or 2,000 different officers, amounting in two or three years to $100,000,000 it is surprising how little has been in default, the merest trifle. *1 am not saying this to justify what defaulting there has been, we would rather have no defaulting, but I say that it is to the credit of the public servants of Canada, that it is a high testimony to them, that we have had so few defalcations.
At six o'clock, House took recess.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE-THIRD READINGS.
[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 164) for the relief of Edith May Gilmore.-Mr. J. D. Reid.
Bill (No. 175) for the relief of Catherine Ann Cannon.-Mr. Stewart.
Bill (No. 176) for the relief of Ada Katu-rali Stewart Paulding.-Mr. Stewart.
Bill (No. 177) for the relief of Mary Alexander.-Mr. Stewart.
Bill (No. 182) for the relief of Hattie iSpratte.-Mr. Ralph Smith.
Bill (No. 174) respecting certain Patents of the General Chemical Company.-Mr. Stewart.

[Stage Direction]
The order for private Bills having been exhausted House resumed consideration of the motion to go into Committee of Supply.
George Eulas Foster: Mr. Speaker, a word or two in relation to the matter under discussion this afternoon, as to the entry of materials free under item 596 of the tariff. I have some of the correspondence here which I will put on the record, tracing up the early history of the negotiations. This arrangement of free materials, in the first place, applied to bridges. Of course, they came before tunnels were in question at all and the original negotiations and the rulings of the United States treasury were with reference to the material which entered into the construction of bridges. Later came the Sarnia tunnel and an arrangement was made with reference to the entry of free materials for that tunnel. Other bridges then intervened and the same arrangements continued. Then, with reference to the building of this tunnel, the old question recurred and the rulings of the United States were not freshly made
in reference to this last tunnel but were the rulings that had been made first with references to bridges and afterwards with reference to the Sarnia tunnel. 1 find here a letter dated 'Treasury Department, May 19, 1904,' and the heading is :
Materials for the construction of international bridge used on the river shore end may be exempt from' duty, but foreign materials used on United States shore are dutiable.
That clearly shows that the materials were intended to enter into the construction of the bridge from shore to shore. This letter reads :
Materials for the construction of international bridge and used on the river up to the shore end may be exempt from duty, but foreign materials used on United States shore are dutiable.
Treasury Department, May 19, 1904. Sir,-The department is in receipt, by reference from Hon. John Sherman, United States Senate, of your letter of the 11th instant, in which you inquire what duty, if any, will apply to manufactured bridge iron to construct international bridge between Maine and New Brunswick, and, if applied, to what proportion of the length of structure or to how much tonnage.
On the understanding that your inquiries relate to foreign manufactured iron to be useu in the structure of the bridge, I have to inform you that under departments instructions of December 2, 1897 (synopsis 8,565) the foreign materials used in the construction ot the bridge on the river up to the shore end may be exempted from duty, but the foreign materials used on the United States shore will be dutiable.
In a letter addressed to Special Agent Wood, of this department, under date of March 5 last, in regard to the materials used in the construction of a tunnel extending from Port Huron to Sarnia, Ontario, the department stated that it was of opinion that the articles which were simply brought to the American end for convenience and taken hack into the tunnel, might be regarded as not dutiable importations under the law, as it would he practically impossible to establish a dividing line in the tunnel between the respective countries as to customs jurisdiction; and that, as the department had been informed that the Canadian government permitted articles to be brought from the United States for_ the purpose of construction, the same privilege was properly granted in regard to articles coming from Canada for the same purpose.
Respectfully yours,
CHARLES S. HAMLIN, Assistant Secretary. Mr. H. E. Beecher, Youngstown, Ohio.
Here we have the beginning of the history of this ; at first it was a ruling with reference to bridges alone and It Is ns plain as English can make it that the materials were to be used in the construction of the bridge between the two banks of the river and nothing was allowed to go in free for whatever part of the work extended fi'om the bank of the river in the "way of approaches. A bridge is a bridge and it extended from one bank to the other and as part of the river was under the jurisdiction of the United States and part under the jurisdiction of Canada the material was allowed to go In free so far as from shore to shore is concerned. Now, when it comes to the Sarnia tunnel If you reason by analogy the very same principle would he applied. The reference in the letter evidently was with regard to the difficulty of fixing a line as between the countries in the middle of the river and consequently they were allowed to come in free provided reciprocal arrangements were made on the other side. If the minister had the letter addressed to Special Agent Wood referred to, he would no doubt find an explicit statement of what was meant with regard to the Sarnia tunnel, and I would judge that in that case the material came in free simply for the tunnel from shore to shore, and as there was difficulty in fixing the dividing line in the middle then if reciprocal privileges were given the United States would make that free. Everything tends to show that nothing would be allowed in free by the United States except wliat was used in the building of the tunnel from shore to shoie. tiip next document is a Treasury Depai.t ment letter of August 26, 1895, which reads :
Free entry of materials for the construction of an international bridge, and for tools, &c.
Treasury Department, August 26, 1895.
Sir,-The department is in receipt of your letter of the 17th instant, in which you inclose a communication from the Niagara rails bus-pension Bridge Company, asking to be informed to what extent materials going permanently into the structure of a new suspension bridge to be built over the Niagara river, and the outfits and temporary material used during erection and returned to Canada at the end of the work, will he subject to duty.
In regard thereto, I have to state that your action in the matter should he governed by department's decision of September 2, 1887 (synopsis 8,565), wherein it was held that only such foreign materials as are actually used in the construction of a bridge on a river up to the shore end may be exempt from duty.
In accordance with the instructions ot the department issued to the collector of customs at Marquette. Michigan, on June 15, 1887, m the case of the construction of the international bridge at Sanlt Ste Marie, you are hereby authorized to place such tools, implements, &c while in the United States territory, in charge of an officer of the customs at the expense of the contractors, and it is suggested that upon the landing of any such tools and implements, a careful inventory be made and filed at your custom-house for reference at tne time when the said articles may be returned to Canada, and that duties should then be collected on any articles not so returned.
In this connection I have to inform you that under date of March 6, 1894, the depart-

meat addressed a letter to Special Agent Wood, in which it was stated that the materials which were used in the construction of a tunnel extending from Port Huron to Sarnia, Ontario, and were simply brought to the American end for convenience and taken back into the tunnel, might be regarded as not dutiable importations under the law, it being understood that the Canadian government permits articles to be brought from the United States without payment of duties, fbr the purpose of construction of bridges, tunnels, &c., connecting the two countries.
Respectfully yours,
(Sgd.) S. WIRE, Assistant Secretary.
Collector of Customs,
Suspension Bridge, New York.
The fair inference from that letter again is that the free articles are with reference to the tunnel from shore to shore, and following the analogy of the bridge it would not apply to materials for the approaches to the tunnel extending beyond the shore. Then comes the letter of March 13, 1908, which the minister read with reference to this present undertaking :
Copy.
above ground; so that it may apply to whatever part of the tunnel extends from the river bank to the level.


William Paterson: We feel sure that it is that. If it is not, we could find out.
Mr. POSTER, I could not certainly conclude that it Is that. The analogy all goes to prove that it is confined to the distance between the river banks.


William Paterson: It seems to me that he is there declaring what the ruling was in regard to the Sarnia tunnel and saying, you will follow what was done In the case of the Sarnia tunnel. You might bring it in free for the tunnel and land it on either coast and take it into the tunnel, and on the open approaches you will do what was done in the case of the Sarnia tunnel.


Air.   POSTER@: It does not say the open approaches; it says ' materials used above ground In the approaches.' But I notice that is the view the Canadian department took, because when they come to issue their letter, of instructions on December 28, 1906, they end in this way :
Treasury Department, Office of the Secretary,
Washington, March 13, 1908. The Collector of Customs, Detroit, Michigan.
Sir,-The department is in receipt of your letter of the 6th instant, relative to the entry free of duty of tools and materials to be used in the construction of the tunnel between Canada and the United States under the Detroit river.
The matter of the free entry of materials used in the construction of a tunnel between Canada and the United States was considered by the department in connection with the construction of the tunnel between Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, and it whs decided that all materials brought into the United States for convenience and taken back into the tnnnel and used therein should not be regarded as dutiable importations, without regard to the part of the tunnel in which the same were used. Materials used above ground in the approaches to the tunnel on the American shore were held to be subject to the payment of duty. You will be governed accordingly.
Respectfully,
BEEKMAN'WINTHROP, Assistant Secretary.
Referring again to the difficulty, which has been twice mentioned, of finding the dividing line in the middle of the stream between the two countries, so that if each country would reciprocate, the material for the tunnel would be free. That cannot, I think, fairly bear any other construction.
Materials used above ground in the ap-'proaches to the tunnel on the American shore were held to be subject to the payment of duty. You will be governed accordingly.
(Sgd.) B. WINTHROP,
Assistant Secretary.
. There is in that last sentence a colourable interpretation, as it refers to materials used Mr. FOSTER.
This privilege does not apply to materials and tools used in open approaches to the tunnel, but only to that portion of the work which is an actual tunnel, including the shaft used for entrance thereto.
That is, the minister appends what does not appear in any of the United States rulings, being under the impression that that was what was meant, thus amplifying the ruling of the United States and giving a definite meaning to it so as to allow material to be brought in for the tunnel until it comes up to the open shaft. But that is, I think, an interpretation which the minister cannot be certain of until he gets back to these documents which definitely point out the regulations in regard to the Sarnia tunnel. Hence the whole gist of it is that whatever was done in the case of the Sarnia tunnel will be allowed to be done In this case. Therefore, as I said this afternoon, the minister has not gone far enough into the matter, and he should go back to the original regulations and get the instructions of the United States authorities so as to find out what was done in the case of the Sarnia tunnel. The minister says the hand of the Minister of Customs is all powerful, and extends over a series of years; and if on investigation it is found that the idea of the department is incorrect, they can demand the duties, and he intimated that that would cure the whole difficulty. But the minister will see that it would not. There are two things involved. One is the collection of the duties for the treasury; the other is the effect on business in Canada. Now, the American contractor says, the ruling of the department is so-and-so, and we do not have to pay any duty. So everything comes in from the United States. But if the ruling of the department happens to

come out that way. and the minister finds that he is in error, and that his ruling should have been that no free materials be allowed in for any part of the tunnel after the shore-line is reached, then for about $3 000,000 of expenditure beyond the shore line he has allowed the whole drift of the business to get the advantage of free importation from the United States. If it happens that the minister is in error and he does not find it out for two or three years, the construction will then have been completed; but if he finds it out now, and immediately rules that these materials cannot come in free, then the dealer in Canada has his chance, aided by the doing away of free import of materials from the United States, and everything he has to supply to go into that tunnel from the beginning of the Canadian approach to the river bank, the minister will see, is quite a large item of business. As it is to-day, the Canadian has no chance at all. Under the ruling of the minister, the United States side has the free entry of material clear out to the open approach or shaft on the -Canadian side, which is about 3,400 feet, if I am rightly informed, from the bank of the river, involving an expenditure of some $3,000,000. There, labour is at work, material is being put in, and all the material that comes there, speaking generally, comes in from the United States free of duty. Now, what are the incentives in the case? In the first place, you have a United States contractor, his business affiliations are all in the United States. He has the advantage of the large markets of the United States, and when you allow everything to come in free of duty, he will not look for purchases in Canada, but it will be his disposition to throw off purchasers in Canada and make all his purchases in his supply market in the United States; and that is really what has happened. If the ruling had been that for the approach on the Canadian side up to the water line there should be no free imports, what would have happened? Canadian materials would have had to be used; because if the contractor tried to bring in materials from the United States, he would have had to bring them in with the duty added, and consequently Canadian materials would have had their proper protection in the market, and the Canadian producer would have had a chance for business in all that large expenditure of $3,000,000. That is where I think the Minister of Customs-I am not criticising him unduly-had better have informed himself at once and absolutely as to the exact nature of these regulations, and as to what the United States were giving; because business men are stating it as a fact that the United States does not allow materials to go in free of duty beyond their river bank. There is no test to it. because no Canadian gets a look in. The Canadian does not even get the business on the Canadian side
of the approaches, and of course he has no chance to get the business on the United States side of the approaches. So the question is not brought up in a practical way, and the minister might sit there until dooms day, and he would never find out unless he sets himself to work to find out; and that is what I think the minister should do. There are two or three treasury documents which are alluded to in the correspondence which, if the minister had them in his possession, would very easily show exactly what was done in the Sarnia tunnel, I repeat that the whole authority given is to give reciprocity in so far as it was given in the building of the Sarnia tunnel, no more and no less. The minister I think will agree with me in that.


William Paterson: That is all we intend to give.


George Eulas Foster: The minister does see my other point, does he not?


William Paterson: I do. but I cannot help seeing that a tunnel is a tunnel just as a bridge is a bridge.


George Eulas Foster: The best intentioned men may make mistakes, and I would impress on the minister the necessity of getting to the bottom of this matter. I am not going to say he is not, but on the other hand, from an examination of the documents, there is good reason to believe he may be wrong, and that matter ought to have been settled at the first, and a full settlement should not be delayed any longer.
The minister might have done something else. I put this as a matter of business. What we want in Canada is to give Canadian manufacturers and labourers and producers their fair share. Here is an international franchise. One half comes from Canada and the other half from the United States. The minister was up against a United States contractor. He knew at the time that about $12,000,000 altogether would be expended, and of that about $6,000,000 would be expended from the middle point of the river to the end of the Canadian approaches. I think he should have been fully alive to the conditions and have made them such that Canadian labour and material would get a fair show. It was absolutely a favour he was doing this company. They had no rights in the case. They put their case to the minister. They said : Give us reciprocal free privileges and the minister looked into the thing casually and determined to put an article in the tariff which would allow him to do that. That did not relieve him of responsibility. That tariff is not an absolute item. It puts on the minister the responsibility of finding out just the extent of the privilege allowed on United States side, and not give more than he obtained. He had it all in his own hands. He had fathered that legislation with respect to the construction of that tunnel, be-

cause that was in his mind at the time the tariff revision was made, and the minister should then have argued :	Here is an expenditure of $12,000,000, one-half of the franchise is Canadian, I will so arrange the item in the tariff that if these men want a favour they will have to come under some sort of guarantee that they will give Canadian labour and material a fair chance and that at least one-half of the labour and material employed on that tunnel shall be Canadian. Would there nave been anything unreasonable in that ? These people get a franchise from us for which they pay us nothing. The least we could have ashed them is this : Very well, gentlemen, you have the contract to do the work, but as one-half has to be done in Canadian territory, I want you to agree to give Canadian labour and material their fair share. I am going to give you a great favour, and must get something in return. In the United States they manufacture in immense quantities and very cheaply, and I am going to give you the favour of allowing all that which comes from the United States, and which is to be used up to the shaft on the Canadian side from a central point, to come in free of duty. I need not do that unless I like. The parliament of Canada is under no obligation to you, and if we grant you this favour we make it conditional on your giving Canadian labour and material its half share. That would have been reasonable and square dealing and the minister could have done that in various ways.


William Paterson: You do not claim we could do it under the item as it is ?


George Eulas Foster: The minister put the item in himself.


William Paterson: As it is in there now ?


George Eulas Foster: The minister cannot absolutely say that in the Sarnia tunnel the same privilege was given us. He thinks it was and he may be right, but he cannot absolutely say because he has not taken the trouble to find out. That item was not in the tariff when the minister was solicited by this company. He made it an item of the tariff because of that solicitation, and the minister and the government are absolutely responsible. What was the necessity of his taking time to tell the House how often my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) might have protested against it. That does not amount to anything. The item was put in by the government and the responsibility is on the government, if the minister had an idea of protecting Canadian labour and material, he could have so framed that item as to have achieved that purpose. If he did not want to do that, he could have done it by agreement with these men. But he did not take either course, and the result is what is galling Canadian labourers and producers. That $12,000,000 is being Mr. POSTER.
expended, and all the material and labour are practically coming from the United States. Our manufacturers and labourers and producing interests have to pay our taxes, yet they get none of the benefit of this expenditure, and United States labourers and manufacturers are allowed to make and run in everything free of duty which goes into that tunnel. That is the mistake and it is a grave mistake. If I were Minister of Customs, I would not let the grass grow under my feet until I found out whether or not I had authority under that item to make this arrangement and protect Canadian interests, and if I had not the authority, I would so amend the item that I would have the power to do a reasonable thing on behalf of Canadian labour and Canadian producers. That is always in the power of the government. Nothing would be violated. It is the rule of reasonableness and justice and a square deal. You give these contractors a particular favour, and you allow them to leave out of their expenditure of $12,000,000 Canadian producers and labourers entirely. So that I think the minister is not justified in endeavouring to throw on my hon. friend from Brantford, or any other hon. member on this side, the responsibility for that item, and then say he cannot do anything else under it. He does not know that he cannot. He has not taken the trouble to find out; but if he does, and if he finds out that his hands are tied and he cannot interfere, a fair deal would be fairly carried out if lie would chauge that item to an extent which would enable him to go to the contractor and say: I want a reasonable share of the labour done and the material furnished taken from the Canadian side. I think that my hon. friend from Kent (Mr. Clements) did well to bring this matter up and my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) did well to reinforce the idea, and I do not think the minister has got rid of his responsibility yet. His duty, after this discussion, is to take steps at once to find out just exactly what was done.	Even then he will not have performed his whole duty unless he takes some method by which he can obtain a fair share for Canadian labour and product. I do not want to follow this out any longer.


William Paterson: You want to know if this assurance means the whole tunnel. I think we have the assurance that that is what is meant. You think there is a part of the tunnel, after it strikes the shore running inland, the material for which they would not allow in free.


George Eulas Foster: That is just the point.


William Paterson: We do not think so.


George Eulas Foster: My thought is as good as the minister's, but the minister cannot be certain until he has found out. The minister cannot stand up and say : I have found

out and I am certain. It is only an inference of the minister


William Paterson: I think that letter shows it distinctly.


George Eulas Foster: I do not take it that way. Of course, that is only a difference of opinion. But it is a sufficient difference of opinion for the minister to take steps and find out


William Paterson: All right.


George Eulas Foster: But I do not want him to stop there. If he finds out that he has not the authority, I want him to change that item in the tariff, or to say to the contractor: We will change that item in the tariff unless you give Canadian labour and Canadian products a fair chance. They do not get a fair chance now. The hon. gentleman knows that a man whose affiliations are in the United States, who has carried on great works there and has bought a great deal of material from manufactui

ing centres there, tends to keep to his old connections, he seeks to give his old associates the custom if he can. The minister read Tvliat Mr. Ero^vn found, out from tiic contractor. It is simply a translation to the minister of what the contractor thought. He thinks, apparently, that Canadian manufacturers are not spry enough. Maybe they were not spry enough, but there may be another side to that question that the minister has not learned yet. Meantime, I think it is worth while to think about it seriously and see if this wrong cannot be righted.
As to this question of trade statistics, I see the difficulty with reference to the port of origin and so on. There are two views which may be taken. One is that you are trying to collect the statistics of Canadian exports and imports ; what you want to get at is Dominion trade, and, so far as these statistics are concerned you are not trying to show what this or that village, this or that country, this or that province may be doing; you want to take the figures in a way to get them most accurately and with the least expense. That was the minister's view in changing from the point of origin to the point of exit. I frankly say that there is a great deal to be said in favour of that view. You cannot trace exports back to their origin ; there will always be many mistakes. The only thing that occurred to me was that possibly these two ideas might be combined. For instance, the statistics show that at Bridgeburg you have exports of, say, $5,000,000. You know that those exports come from Brantford and other manufacturing places of that section. Would it not be possible to collect the figures so as to show not only that the goods are exported
by way of Bridgeburg but that they originate in such and such places ? Of course, that would cost something. So far as the Dominion statistics are concerned, I can see that there is a great deal to be said in favour of the view that you want the national figures collected in the most accurate way and with the least expense.
One word-and only one-with reference to the enforcing of the penalty. I know that the human heart is kindly and that it sympathises with the dependents of the man who has committed a fault. It sometimes seems very hard and very harsh for an employer to punish a wrongdoer in his service. But, whilst a private employer may be allowed some range for the expression of his good will, charity and kindness of heart with reference to a defaulting employee, it seems to me that in public office, where a public trust is concerned, it would be a lamentable thing if this country were to believe that the customs officials who had. defaulted were not fully punished. Such a belief on the part of the public would cause great laxity in the service as a whole. I must say that I was a little surprised to find from the debcite in the House the other evening, that there were so many who had not been prosecuted.


William Paterson: Comparatively few.


George Eulas Foster: I mean of those who had defaulted. I agree that the defaulters are few compared with the number of officers. The history of the service in Great Britain in this respect is wonderful. The Inland Revenue and Customs Departments are managed by commission. These show-one with a history of a hundred years, and the other *with a history of nearly as long- that the defalcations in the service are a mere nothing. It is wonderful how strictly the whole thing has been supervised. Our history also is a good one in that respect. Of all officers, very few men are dishonest; but the minister should not have the least hesitation in insisting that the law shall be fulfilled upon the officers of his department who default.


Hon. W. S. FIELDING (Minister of Fin ance).: I had not the good fortune to hear the whole debate, and so I am at some disadvantage. But I think that that portion of the debate which I had the privilege of hearing has enabled me to grasp the main points involved in this tunnel question. I understand that the argument is that this tunnel may be practically considered as having three sections-the portion under the river, the portion which is not under the river, but which, nevertheless, forms part of the tunnel, being actually under ground, and the third portion which is the open cut or approach. I understand that hon.

gentlemen opposite say that on the American side the concessions are confined entirely to material entering into the construction of that portion actually under the river, whereas we on this side have interpreted the tunnel to be not only the portion under the river but that portion which is still a tunnel and which extends for some distance under ground on the American or Canadian side. 1 have not attempted to study this point with sufficient closeness to justify me in expressing an opinion. I know that the Minister of Customs (Mr. Paterson) is of opinion that his contention is right, but that if there is any ground for doubt he will, as suggested, take pains to look into the matter. As to this item itself, I may be permitted to say a word, but I shall not detain the House at any length. As to the contention that the portion of the tunnel which is not actually under the river would not properly be comprised in the tunnel for Customs purposes, let me suggest that we get our precedents in this matter, as the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) pointed out, from the concessions in respect of bridges, bridges having been constructed before there were any tunnels. According to the principle just laid down, we should allow concessions only in respect of that portion of the bridge which happens to be immediately above the water. But we know that a bridge does not end immediately at the water's edge, but has to be carried to a considerable distance on one side and on the other. I have no reason to doubt that the concessions in the past applying to bridges have been granted to that portion of the bridge which extended a certain distance inland as well as to the portion which happens to be immediately over the water.


George Eulas Foster: Not by the United States ruling.


William Stevens Fielding: In the case of a bridge?


George Eulas Foster: Yes. I have it here, and I will send it over to the hon. gentleman (Mr. Fielding). That was my argument, that as it was done in the case of bridges it is absolutely certain by the same party-


William Stevens Fielding: I should think it would be difficult to draw a line of distinction between the material entering the construction of that portion of the bridge immediately above the water and that portion which extends a certain distance inland. Sir, I confess I am speaking from a general impression and not from a study of that phase of the question, and if any hon. gentleman has given it special study I do not wish to contradict him.


Mr FOSTER.: The United States treasury departmental letter under departmental instructions of December 2, 1897, says:


William Stevens Fielding: The foreign materials used in the construction of the bridge on the river up to the shore end may be exempted from duty, but the foreign materials used on the United States shore will be dutiable.


William Stevens Fielding: Much will depend on what is deemed the shore end of a bridge. The shore end is never resting on -the very water line ; the shore end .of the bridge has necessarily to be carried some distance on the shore.
As to the item itself, I think there is one aspect of it which has been entirely overlooked. We have been granting these privileges, as hon. gentlemen are aware, oq-casionally by order in council. They -were granted for several international bridges and for the Sarnia tunnel, and then application was made in connection with this Detroit-Windsor tunnel, at the very moment when we had the tariff under consideration, and we came to the conclusion that inasmuch as these privileges were always granted in the case of international bridges and had been in the case of an international tunnel, instead of allowing it to be done privately and perhaps secretly by order in council, the proper way was to provide for it by an item in the tariff.


George Eulas Foster: No one quarrels with that


William Stevens Fielding: Confining ourselves entirely to the item, not with reference to this particular tunnel, the question is whether the item is a fair and reasonable one. I am not debating whether the Minister of Customs has been sufficiently rigid in cardying it out ; I am discussing the general principle involved, and the general language of the item. It reads :
Materials to be used in Canada for the construction of bridges and tunnels crossing the boundary between the United States and Canada, when similar materials are admitted free under similar circumstances into the United States ; under regulations prescribed by the Minister of Cutsoms.
If a principle is to be adopted at all on reciprocal conditions in that respect I do not see how you could have any better language than is used in that item. My hon. friend has spoken of the desirability of seeing that Canadian labour is employed on the Canadian side. This item evidently contemplates something more than that, it contemplates that Canadian labour and materials may be used on the American side whenever Canadian enterprise is able to meet the conditions. Why should we assume that for ever, in the building of international bridges or tunnels, the Canadian is going to be helpless and unable to compete with his neighbour ? We are not afraid of our brethren across the boundary on fair terms. What Canadian manufacturer would object to that ? It is a fair and reasonable condition and there is many a manufacturer in Canada who would

not object to allowing American goods to come into Canada if be bad the corresponding privilege of sending bis goods into the United States In the discussion of the tariff we frequently had that view presented. We have had the manufacturer urging that some consideration should be given to his industry, arguing with some force in favour of his view, that the United States maintain a high duty against him but that if he could send his goods into the United States he would be quite ready to do so. This item presupposes that in some cases the United States may be able to supply materials. In other cases it presupposes that the Canadian producer will be able to supply materials and under that item if it is properly enforced it is not impossible that the Canadian manufacturer in some lines of goods will be able to supply not only for the Canadian side of the bridge or tunnel but for the American side as well. The argument that under no conditions can we hope to send any of these goods into the United States, even when we have a free market, I submit to my hon. friend is not a fair argument, it is not an argument that is complimentary to the spirit, enterprise and pluck of the citizens of Canada.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: If the minister remembers the discussion, Mr. Whalen, the United States customs officer at Detroit, says that under the same conditions Canadian materials would not be allowed to enter the United States.


James Buckham Kennedy: I wish to take a few minutes of the time of the House to relieve the mind of the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cookshutt) I am very much obliged to that gentleman for his good opinion of me and the way he expressed it this afternoon. I hope I will always maintain his good opinion as well as that of all the others on that side of the House.


George Eulas Foster: You have it now I think.


Mr KENNEDY.: The matter to which he referred was the defalcation of the customs house officer at Huntingdon. It may be well to state just where Huntingdon is, as some hon. gentlemen seem to think it is right in New Westminster. Huntingdon is an outpost of the customs office at New Westminster and is about 40 or 42 miles away on a branch line of the Canadian Pacific Railway which runs to the city of Seattle and other Puget Sound points. At that little post the collector was suspected of embezzling the funds. The matter was brought before the inspector some three years ago. The inspector had been in office a long time, I think he was appointed by the previous government and certainly had been 18 or 20 years in the service. He scouted the idea of there being any laxness or anything wrong in the office, and gave the informant a quiet hint that he would be
well to mind his own business and not trouble him with any such yarns. The party came to me about it shortly after my election. I went to the inspector, told him what I had heard and said he had better look into the matter. I think I wrote to the department Any way the inspector received instructions to look into the matter. After looking into it for some time he succeeded in finding that the man had defaulted to the amount of $4,000 or $5,000. The party owned up to it at once. As the Minister of Customs, has said, he seems to be a very simple-minded individual, although he would be taken for a pretty shrewd business man, but his action certainly looked as though he was a very simple party. He came to me, and cried and went on at a terrible rate, asking me for the sake of his family if not for his, I would try to have the matter hushed up and have him retained in his position. I told him it was out of the question, he would have to take the same chance as any other criminal, and if the department had followed my advice in the matter he would have been prosecuted at once.


George Eulas Foster: How long ago was that 1


James Buckham Kennedy: About two and a half years ago, at the time he was first found out I told him that if it had been a poor fellow who had need of money, who had broken into a store and stolen provisions for his family, who were badly in need of them, he would have been put in the penitentiary at once ; but he had been deliberately robbing the government for years and yet he had the cheek or temerity to ask me to try and have him retained in his position. I told him it was out of the question. I paid no further attention to it. I left it entirely in the hands of the government. It was hinted here to-day that there was some mysterious influence at work which keDt that man in his position. It was said in the House some days ago, when I was not here, that there was very good authority for the statement that the Liberal association had overruled me in the matter. I give that a most emphatic denial. The matter, in so far as I know', never came before the Liberal association. The only thing that it had to do with was the appointing of this man's successor, and we were quite agreed on this because w'e promoted the man w'ho was in the office with him, w'ho was beneath him and who was a worthy servant One of the principles I have advocated all long, is the promotion of worthy servants. There is nothing in that statement whatever. I can assure the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) that, wherever he got his information, it is entirely erroneous.


William Foster Cockshutt: I did not say that an attempt was made to keep him In his office.

That was a mistake. I said that the information was that they had got a settlement for a great deal less than the man had defaulted for. It was not that any attempt was made by the Liberal machine to keep him in office. I never made such a statement


James Buckham Kennedy: Well, I could not catch all that the hon. gentleman said, but it does not make any difference, I suppose. The inspector who was there at that time was removed to another field and a new inspector was put there. You would naturally have supposed that the matter was ended. It is said that this party went about blowing that he was still $10 000 ahead. I have not been able to find any person who heard him say so. The inspector has not heard of anybody who would say that he heard him say so. The story got out but from whom it came or to whom he made the assertion remains a mystery yet. Nobody will admit that he ever heard him say so. But, on the strength of what was said in the House, the inspector was instructed to go and look into the matter again with the result that when this gentleman was informed that he had been found to be several thousand dollars behind he handed it out at once, and acknowledged the corn pleaded guilty and I understand that he is now in the penitentiary, where, in my opinion, he ought to have been two and a half years ago. That is the plain statement of the ease as far as I know. If there is any other _ influence at work, I do not know anything about it and I never head of it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I think there is one thing that must be said to the credit of the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr Kennedy) and that is that he did his duty manfully and properly.


Alexander Johnston: Order.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What is the trouble ?	'


Alexander Johnston: I beg to direct the i Speaker's attention to the fact that the hon. 1 gentleman has already spoken on the reso- 1 lution now before the House.	l


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What resolution ?


Alexander Johnston: The resolution to go i into supply.	I


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I am not aware that I * have spoken on it	1


Alexander Johnston: Oh, yes ; you have a forgotten.	^


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Was the motion made to go into Supply to-day ?


William Paterson: Sure ; you spoke on 1


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I am not aware that I * spoke on it to-day.	*


Alexander Johnston: Certainly you are not, t but you spoke.


William Foster Cockshutt: 


Mr. SPEAKER.: The hon. member for Victoria and Haliburton spoke on the motion to go into Committee of Supply, and the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) also spoke upon that motion. That is the motion now before the House ?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Yes, I spoke on that. But I merely wish to say that the hon. member for New Westminster did his duty manfully and that if the government had been as strict in the performance of their's this would not be running on to this late day.


Herbert Sylvester Clements: Perhaps I will be permitted by the House to make a short explanation. I want to refer to a misrepresentation which was made regarding a letter which I read. I do not want the press or this House to misunderstand my position with regard to that letter which was supposed to have been written to the hon. Minister of Customs. It is said that I inadvertently used the word ' intercepted ' in the beginning of my remarks. I mentioned that it was a copy of the letter which I supposed had been sent to the Minister of Customs, and if I used the word 'intercepted ' I did not intend to do so because the copy which I received was not intended for the minister at all and was given for my own personal use in this House. I do not want to be misunderstood.


David Henderson: I am under the impression that I have not spoken on this motion A few words crossed the floor of the House this afternoon in reference to what my hon. friend from West Kent (Mr. Clements) had said concerning this letter. I said then that, according to my hearing of his remarks, he did not say that the letter was intercepted by him. I do not yet understand that the letter was intercepted by my hon. friend from Kent because it never had been sent to the Minister of Customs. If I have the story aright my hon friend from West Kent dropped into the oflice of this gentleman. I do not know who he was. He had written a letter, he had not posted it, it was still in his hands, he had made no effort to send it away and, meeting my hon. friend from West Kent who was about to take the question up, he handed this letter to him. That was certainly not intercepting a letter between the writer and the Minister of Customs, because it had never left the hands of the writer. There could be no intercepting in that.


Mr. D. ROSS.: The hon. member for West Kent (Mr. Clements) will have to make another explanation now.


David Henderson: Not necessarily, this is directly along the line, and if I said I did not understand the hon. member for West Kent to say the letter was intercepted that was just what I understood. There was no interception of the letter because it

had never left the writer's hands. It had never been forwarded to the minister and therefore it could not have been intercepted by my hon. friend from West Kent.
Motion agreed to and House went into Committee of Supply.
Legislation-salaries and contingent expenses of the Senate, $85,026.


George Eulas Foster: Here are $9,000 of an increase ; I would like to have an explanation.


William Stevens Fielding: A decrease.


George Eulas Foster: A decrease. I shall have to fall over myself.


William Stevens Fielding: I confess I cannot explain the decrease.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: How many employees in the Senate share in this item ?


William Stevens Fielding: On page 29 of the estimates the hon. gentleman will see that the Senate has furnished a statement and I am afraid I am not in a position to give any more information than that. It gives the number of employees and the salaries.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I see the number is the same as last year.


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, the number seems to be the same.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: How do you come to have this decrease of $9,000 ?


William Stevens Fielding: I should not like to guarantee that, because I would always be afraid that when the supplementaries come down we may not have anything to boast of in the way of a decrease.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The explanation of this will probably be the same as the explanation of a similar item in the vote for the House of Commons. There is a decrease of $23,000 in that vote which is accounted for by the fact that last year there were payments to the representatives of five deceased members, and there was expenditure for the translation of the report of the Royal Commission, and for the printing of the Revised Statutes and Criminal Code in French, which were unusual items peculiar to last year and which are omitted from the estimates this year.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: There is nothing at all in these estimates to indicate where the decrease in the Senate vote has occurred. I notice a reduction of $1,000 in the vote for the debates, but all the other items are the same as last year.


William Stevens Fielding: If my hon. friend thinks that the information as furnished by the Senate in the memorandum is not sufficient we will let the item stand.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I do not want to hold up the item if the minister will get the information later on.


William Stevens Fielding: I shall be very happy to ask the clerk of the Senate to furnish an explanation which I can present at a later stage.
House of Commons, $282,120.


Mr.  A. A.@: McLEAN (P.E.I.) I desire to bring to the attention of the House a matter of considerable importance to every hon. member. 1 refer to the accommodation which is provided for members within the precincts of this building. It- is true that quite a large number of members are accommodated with rooms, but there are still a great number that have no accommodation provided for them. It was stated last year that the new wing which is being constructed would afford the necessary accommodation but I have been through that building and fail to see wherein it will meet the requirements. There is a housekeeper in the building'who has a large number of rooms and the sergeant at arms is also provided with a large number of rooms in the building. It is the opinion of every hon. member to whom I have spoken that there is no necessity for these gentlemen being provided with rooms in this building, and that an office is all the accommodation they need. It is not necessary that either the housekeeper or the sergeant-at-arms should be here night and day, and the rooms occupied by these gentlemen should be placed at the disposal of members of the House. With all due deference to Mr. Speaker I believe that accommodation for him should be provided outside the building and that he should merely have an office here. I do not mean that the Speaker should be stinted in any way, for it is my opinion that he should be provided with accommodation at the public expense suitable to his position as first commoner. I would suggest to the Minister of Finance that provisioin should be made at this session for accommodation outside of this building for the Speaker, or that his salary should be increased sufficiently to enable him to obtain that accommodation, so that the members who now are obliged to do their work at their desks could be more suitably provided for. The members of the opposition have only a small room, No. 6, about 20 feet by 18 feet, and when fifteen or twenty or it may be thirty or forty of us go into it, it is very crowded. I understand that there are rooms in which eighteen or twenty government supporters have desks. It is impossible for members to work in rooms filled up in that way. In view of the facts I have stated, I think the housekeeper and his family and the sergeant-at-arms should have accommodation outside of this building, or if they are not getting sufficient, have their salaries increased. I throw out these suggestions in order that hon. members may consider them, and I think that every member of this House who has not proper accommodation should speak on this

subject so that it may be properly placed before the House. I hope that the Speaker and the government -will come to some conclusion before this House rises this session, which will result in proper accommodation being given to all the members of this House.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The question raised by the hon, member is one which has been raised repeatedly, both in the House and to me privately since I became Speaker. This proves that there is no possibility of getting any further accommodation for members under existing circumstances, unless the suggestion which the hon. member has made, and which has frequently been made by other members during the last three or four years, is carried out. It is a fact, as stated by the hon. member, that the sergeant-at-arms has a number of rooms. It is also a fact that the chief messenger has more rooms, or has had until within the past few days. Several rooms which have heretofore been used by the chief messenger are being taken in connection with the improvements and additions now being made. There are probably ten or twelve rooms in the basement which could be utilized for the purpose suggested. However, I can assure the hon. member -that when the new addition is completed, notwithstanding his inspection, which I am afraid has not been very thorough, there will be considerably increased accommodation for members. It will, of course, be necessary, in the first place, to utilize a portion of the new addition for the accommodation of a number of officials who are particularly cramped at the present time. It will also be necessary, as everybody who visits the press gallery quarters will readily agree, to provide very much better and larger space for the use of members of the press gallery, who at present carry on their work under great difficulties, and who are rapidly increasing in number, with the growth of the country. I would like members to consider the further question of what we shall do in the way of a restaurant for the House of Commons when the new addition is completed. My own idea is that it would be a capital arrangement if the two Houses would combine and use the top story of the new building, which will furnish excellent accommodation for a joint restaurant. There will be two elevators,, one at either end of the building. If the restaurant were then put in charge of a competent steward, who would purchase all the solid and liquid refreshments that might be necessary, I think very much better arrangements for the comfort and convenience of the members of both Houses would thereby be secured. If the restaurant were then put under charge of a small committee composed of members of both Houses, I have no doubt that members could get their meals at quite as cheap a rate and very Mr. A. A. McLEAN.
much better than they usually can in the city at the present time. 1 repeat that when the new building is completed, there is no doubt that there will be considerable accommodation which can and will be assigned for the use of members who have not now proper accommodation to do their work outside of the chamber.


Mr. SGHAFFNER.: I wish very earnestly to second the remarks made by the hon. member from Prince Edward Island (Mr. A. A. McLean). It has seemed to me, ever since I came here, that many.men who have been accustomed to do their business in offices affording them the accommodation they needed, have absolutely no place to do their work here apart from their desks. Some have rooms, but even there a number of members are placed together, aud their desks are so near to each other that they have to attend to their business under great inconvenience. I understand that there is a prospect of better accommodation in the new building, and I hope that the Speaker and other gentleman who have the management of these affairs will look into the matter very carefully. The room provided for the Conservative whips is a disgrace to this parliament. It is only about eight feet wide. As regards the restaurant, I would go further perhaps than any other members of the House, unless some member of the medical profession. I would say that there should not be any restaurant at all. I would not take meals in a restaurant of the House of Commons, no matter how good it might be, if I got them for nothing. I consider it most detrimental to the health of members, after being in this room from three to six o'clock, to go down to the restaurant, as many do, to get their meals. We ought not to sacrifice to the restaurant the accommodation which the members of this House so much need in order to do our work, and which I am sure the country is willing to give. Some members representing small constituencies may not have much business to attend to, but members representing very large constituencies have very much to do, and it is unfair that they should be confined to their desks. I appreciate very much the remarks made by the hon. member from Prince Edward Island, and I hope they will be very carefully 'considered in the division made of the new building.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: With regard to the suggestion that the restaurant might be made a union one for the Senate and Commons, I have heard that suggestion discussed a good many times, and it has never eventuated in anything. In my opinion it would not work. The Senate would not consent to it, and if they did consent to it, there would be a disruption of the arrangement in a very short time. I am quite sure, from what I have heard from time to time, that it would not be agreeable to them. Mr. JUNE 12, 1908
Speaker says that provisions in the restaurant here can be had quite as cheap and as good as down town. Well, we have had a good many devices for running that restaurant. The first part of the session it is pretty good, but when you come to about the middle of the session it is very bad. You cannot get accommodated with anything except at the regular meal hours. If you go for a lunch, you have to wait ever so long, only to find they have not got scarcely anything. You lose just as much time as if you went down town. Unless there is some different device from what we have had heretofore, I imagine that the restaurant will be in the future, as it has been in the past, anything but satisfactory.


Mr. DANIEL.: The subject which my hon. friend from Prince Edward Island (Mr. McLean) has brought up is a very important one, especially to members on this side. Not one of the members of the opposition from the province of New Brunswick has had a room where he could have a desk and his books or do any work at all. We have to carry our office in our hat. The only part in this building where we have the opportunity of doing any work is at our desks in this Chamber or possibly in the library I do not think it is treating these members at all fairly to compel them to do their work under such circumstances as I have described. They cannot do as efficient work and are put to great inconvenience in doing any work at all. I understand that the new building is intended to supply the want which has been referred to and I suppose we shall have to wait until it is ready. In the arrangement of the interior of that new wing, I hope it will be such as will allow Mr. Speaker to provide all the members of this House, no matter which side they may sit on, with the accommodation which would enable them to do their work there. Speaking for the members from New Brunswick on this side, we have had absolutely no accommodation whatever, since I have been here at all events.


Mr. MORIN.: I am not of the same opinion as my hon. friends are with regard to these rooms. From my experience for years, members on this side could not get a room for love or money, but the members on the other side could. Some years ago the then Minister of Public Works (Mr. Tarte) said that if we would vote him the money he would get an addition and then give us rooms. Well, the poor fellow is dead and we must not say much about him, but he did build an addition here and gave the members of Nova Scotia a general room and also those of New Brunswick.


John Waterhouse Daniel: The Liberal members.


Jean-Baptiste Morin: To be sure. And to every province in the Dominion he gave a general room, and then he gave men of profession and others of none whatever as many rooms as they wanted, but he did not have heart enough to give half a room to members on this side of the House. I have pleaded for a room for myself, and the poor members of the province of Quebec on this side- what few there are here-applied years ago, and I was told by Mr. Speaker that he could not see any place to give us satisfaction but advised us to go down town and get a room. That was a great consolation, I thought. Nevertheless I thanked him very much for it. But if we are to be treated in the future as we have been in the past, we might as well build a wigwam for ourselves outside of the House and then we will be sure to have it.


Mr. A. A. WRIGHT.: I am very glad this matter has come up. I have been a member for eight years and have never had a desk outside this Chamber. I never had any room. I consider I am as good as any other member and do not see why I should be discriminated against. When this new addition is made, some arrangement should be provided by which every member in this House, be he Conservatives or Reformer, will be treated on exactly the same footing. No man should be discriminated against, but all should be treated fairly and squarely. As regards the restaurant, I think it woud be an excellent idea to have a room for both the senators and ourselves, where we could meet one another and talk over our difficulties and in that way promote good fellowship. That would be better than having two restaurants and neither exactly what it should be.


Mr. LAVERGNE.: (Translation.) Mr. Chairman, I may call the attention of this House to the fact that the province of Quebec is represented by 54 Liberals and by only a few Conservative members. It is within my personal knowledge that about 30 Liberal members from the province of Quebec are obliged to prepare their work in a couple of rooms placed at their disposal.
I know there has been no injustice whatever, on the part of the government, and that hon. members opposite are treated by the government with as much equity as hon. members on this side of the House. The trouble is that we have not sufficient space to supply hon. members with required accommodation.
I am far from finding fault with the government ; I think he did all he could for hon. members opposite as well as for his own supporters in this House. I am expecting from the willingness of the hon. Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley).



that in the new building, he will give lion, members, according to their number, every necessary room accommodation, should they be government supporters or not. I am sure we will be treated with the same justice as we have been up to this date.


Mr. STAPLES.: I would like to ask, Mr. Speaker, how the restaurant is being run and with what success ? I understand he was turning it into a club. Perhaps the Speaker could give us some idea what success they have met with ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I cannot give any information about that ?


William D. Staples: Have they made an application for any vote to help them out of the hole ? Is any part of this vote intended to be used for that purpose ? Another question I would like to ask is : How many rooms has the housekeeper of the House of Commons ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: At present, I think, about nine or ten. Several of these are being taken for the purposes of the House, and I think about six or seven will be left for the housekeeper.


William D. Staples: I do not know that it is to the advantage of the opposition to make any great argument on this question. It is only a matter of a short time when we shall have the pleasure of distributing the rooms in this building. The members from Manitoba on the government side have very good accommodation in a nicely-furnished room, but we on this side who come from Manitoba are not given any consideration of that kind. However, in a short time we shall probably be able to secure better accommodation
Mr. SPEAKER, I can assure the hon member that protests have come to me in pretty lively fashion from both sides.
Mr. I' OSTER. This is a matter which comes up sporadically, which is discussed for a short time and then we hear no more about it. While the powers that be take the matter into their own hands and administer it in the best way they can, I suppose they have their own troubles. There was one thing that I think is not fair and concerning which I made protest early in the session. It seems to me that this matter of accommodation is really a matter for the House. My protest was against the assumption that the Minister of Public Works and Mr. Speaker were to have these arrangements under their own control with-o"t,.C0nJLultati0n "'itfi any of the members ?,f-1 do not say this because I think that the present Minister of Public Works (Mr Pugsley) and that the present Speaker (Mr. Sutherland) are not as good men for this purpose as we could get, but, after all, this is a matter of accommodation Mr. LAVERGNE.
for the members of the House, and it seems to me that a little more care should be taken to have consultation with the members. I would suggest, with reference to this new addition to the building that we are soon to have, that a small committee of both sides should be asked to co-operate with Mr. Speaker, who is the head of the House, in disposing of the accommodation. The Minister of Public Works is simply the builder of what the House needs for its acf V/XAH J_LU_*U.a LlUIi,
,	

,	Lilt;	Llie
building must be in the hands of his architects yet so far as the allocation of the space or the peculiar kind of accommodation that we shall have is concerned, the Minister of Public Works should have just as much to say as any other member of the House, but no more. But, Mr Speaker, as the head of the House, with a small committee representing both sides, might administer this matter.
One question is w'hether we are to have a restaurant or not. We shall come here next year and we shall find everything settled, and there will be no opport uni iy to remedy the matter if the arrangement dqes not suit us. A large proportion of the members have their houses or rooms m the city, so that a restaurant is not of very much use to them. In fact, I suppose that it is only a minority of the House that is accommodated by a restaurant. Therefore, to take up a large amount of space with a flue restaurant is a matter to be carefully thought about before it is done.
aTsT to the accommodation of officers ot the House there should be fair accommodation for these officers, but I do not know why any of them should have a number of rooms at their disposal whilst members ot the House are cramped for fair and reasonable accommodation. Why the housekeeper should have had, or should have now, ten rooms at his disposal, some of which, I hear, he rents, I do not understand -* he same remark would apply to the Sergeant at Arms. He is an officer of the House and should have proper accommodation as an officer. Whether he should have more or not I think is a fair matter for discussion. But the hardest problem arises when you come to what the members want for their accommodation. Two things are very clear. The first is that, whatever party is in power, the general room for each party and the rooms for the whips of each party should be provided. There should be no attempt on either side to crowd the others into quarters that were unreasonably small, and that are, as some members have said here, fairly disgraceful. Each party should have its general assembly room which should be reasonably commodious. The government side has more members and may reasonably require a somewhat larger room than the opposition ; but each room should be airy, commodious

and as well furnished as the other. The same principle holds true with reference to the whips-these should be first accommodated because they represent the members in the aggregate. When you come to consider what accommodation each member of the House should have, some may think that every man should have a room, nicely furnished, with good carpet, fine furniture, and so on. I do not think we shall ever come to that-that is I do not think we should come to it at the present time. I do not think the people of this country are called upon to furnish private apartments to every member they send here. I think that is wasteful extravagance, and, more than that, it leads to what is worse than extravagance, and I do not think we should run that risk in this House. But I think there should be some general working room where members of the House could get help in their work. In this parliament we do not have secretaries for the members. But every member of the House who does hard work knows what he lacks in that way. It seems to me that it ought to be possible for the wisdom of this House to arrange that there shall be something in the shape of fair working rooms for the members of the House. Members cannot do much here at their desks in this chamber. There might be a general room for each side of the House with typewriting machines, and the House could very well afford to pay the salaries of typists who would do the legitimate work of the members. The man who has to do all his own work, his typewriting and everything that devolves upon him as a member, finds it is pressing and if he has to do it all with his own right hand, he has a great deal of manual work. It would be a legitimate expense for the House to assist the work of members to that extent. As to furnishing a room for each member or two members, that leads to expense. I feel difficulty about it, I have a little room which I share with another member and I do not know what I would do without it, but it is a difficult question when you come to give accommodation to members outside of this chamber. There may be some wise method by which the difficulty might be met. I do not of course blame any of the Speakers of the House, because they have a hard time. I would sue-o'est that we might have a small committee of the House to assist the Speaker in the allotment of these rooms. .


Haughton Lennox: I would approve of having a committee to confer with the Speaker. I do not want to control the Speaker unduly, but if there was such a committee it would bring to his attention the general consensus of opinion upon these questions. The allotting of these new rooms will not be easy, but I would suggest to Mr. Spealc-ker that in addition to having a conionittee to assist him it would be wise to have a complete reallotment of rooms, that is to 333*
have all the rooms at the disposal of the Speaker. There is great difference of opinion as to the restaurant. Personally, if we have to sacrifice either the restaurant or the allotment of rooms to members, I would sacrifice the restaurant. But-1 would call the attention of the Minister of Public Works to the fact that the upper room which it has been said would, if used as a restaurant, afford a river view unequalled on the continent, the windows are so placed that it is impossible when seated to see the river so that the magnificent outlook cannot be enjoyed. There is stone panel work beneath these windows, so unless it would interfere with the architectural effects it might be possible to obviate this difficulty.


William Pugsley: I suppose they have to be uniform from the outside with the other windows.


Haughton Lennox: No, this is the third or fourth story and there is no corresponding story on the rest of the building.


Mr. FISHER.: I would point out that there has been a great improvement in the matter of accommodation for members in this House. Years ago there were only three or four members, perhaps half a dozen, who had any rooms allotted to them in which they could work. That accommodation has been steadily increased. I think that is right but I do not think it can be further increased until the new addition to the building is available. I agree with my friend from Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) that if the windows are so placed that a person sitting cannot look out of the windows it is a great misfortune. There is an opportunity for a great and beautiful view, and if the architecture is such as to prevent that view being available to the people inside it should be remedied in one way or the other, and I think the Minister of Public Works will be able to consult with the architects and see if that can be corrected. If every member is to have a room in which to do his work it may perhaps be advisable to remove the desks from the chamber here. That might contribute to shorter sessions and to more rapid progress in the House.


George Eulas Foster: It will be a long time before you see these desks go.


Sydney Arthur Fisher: I dare say it will be, but at the same time if every member is to have accommodation to do his work and to attend to his correspondence in other parts of the building the desks are not nearly so necessary as they were in the old days when we had to do our writing here. Until I became a minister I never had a room In any part of this building and never did any correspondence except at my desk in the House. Very few of the members of the opposition, in the days when we were in opposition, had rooms allotted to them-just two or three of the leaders. Nobody else

had any rooms at all. I am not speaking in a party sense. X believe that members on the government side at that time had very few rooms allotted to them in the way that members have rooms now. I think that the hon. member for North Toronto will probably bear me out as to the condition of affairs in the old days. Members who to-day are calling for more accommodation perhaps are not aware of how great an improvment there has been and how much greater is the accommodation which they have to-day than that which was provided.


David Henderson: I am unable to agree with my hon. friend from South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) with reference to the allotment of rooms when the new building is completed. The hon. gentleman said that he thought when the time came all those who had rooms should give them up and that then an allotment should be made between the old and new rooms. I think the reverse should be the case, that Mr- Speaker and the Minister of Public Works, who have control of these rooms, should first proceed to allot the new accommodation to those who have never had a room and then, if there is anything' left, let it be divided amongst those who have enjoyed the hospitality of a room during past years.
With reference to the restaurant, I have always looked upon it simply as a matter of patronage for some friends of the government. I understand that the caterer is a messenger of this House and that he is paid the same as any other messenger. His business is to make all the money he can out of it and give the least possible accommodation. I presume that it is run as a business proposition and I do not know that by scheming and planning we are going to make any great change in the system. I do not think there is very much in the idea of having a union dining room. I am inclined to think that the senators would not take very kindly to it, especially if they had to come over here and be elevated to the higher regions ; some of them would regard it as too much trouble. I speak as one who has never had the opportunity of having a room. I remember, when I asked about it, that the Speaker told me that it was my own fault because I had never asked him for one. I have not done so yet. I am waiting patiently, but after what has been said to-night I rather fear there will not be very much of an opportunity, especially if the officials of this House are to be transferred to the new building in order to give them larger accommodation. I understood the Speaker to say so. Then there, might be a few smaller rooms left that would be allotted amongst the members. I was under the impression that the building was erected for the benefit of the members, but I see now that we will have to take second place. We are spending a Mr. FISHER.
large amount of money to accommodate the officials of the House and not to give us the accommodation we expected.
Mr. SPEAIiER. X did not intend to give any such impression as that. There will only be two or three rooms required for the officials proper in addition to what are occupied by them at the present time. Then one of these will be for the purpose of replacing a corridor which has been taken up by the new building.
Mr. HENDERSON Will there be two or three rooms in this building vacant if the occupants are transferred to the new building ?


Mr.   SPEAICER@: Yes. The press will only require two new rooms.


David Henderson: I find no fault with that ; that is quite right.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I am quite satisfied that there will be a very considerable amount of room left for the use of members in the new building.


David Henderson: How many rooms will there be ? Will there be 20 ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Yes, there will be more than 20 when the building is divided up. At the present time there are a number of large rooms, and we are discussing and figuring as to how they can best be divided up. I have been conferring with members of the House with a view of giving them a fair share of the new quarters. There will always be, whatever party is in power, the fact that the government side, having more members, will require more space, and this will always have to be dealt with no matter which party is in power, but, in the new quarters there will be a very considerable space which can be utilized for members and already steps are being taken to find out what would be necessary and fair, and, it is my intention, in so far as I may have an opportunity of dealing with the matter, to treat both sides with perfect fairness. I may say that I share very largely the views of the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster), and I have previously expressed similar views, as to the necessity of providing members of the House with more clerical assistance than they have at the present time. My own view is that we should look to having one large room and, in future, as members of the present staff of sessional writers fall out, instead of replacing them by men of mature years, as has often been done, who are not expert stenographers or typewritters, we should employ young men, or if not young women, who are good stenographers and typewritters, place them altogether in one large room under the charge of some proper official of the House and divide that room up into small spaces-


George Eulas Foster: Cabinets.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Cabinets, or something of that character. As time goes on it can be *worked out because it would not be wise to allow it to become too expensive. I would propose that we should allot one of these stenographers or typewriters to three, four, six, eight or ten members, or whatever number might be decided upon, and in that way all the members of the House could be provided for.
Mr. FOSTER Let each member have his hour.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Yes, precisely ; divide up the hours. This is becoming, in modern times, more and more necessary. I think we are writing more letters by the fact that we have more clerical assistance not merely in this House but in all parts of the country. The country is growing and the demands of the constituencies upon members in the way of correspondence and otherwise have obviously increased from year to year. The necessity for this will become more and more apparent, and I think we ought, in the course of a session or two. to take this matter up seriously, set apart a large room in the new building and have it definitely understood that it will be devoted to that work. It will be quite impossible to think of allotting a room to every member, or two or three members, but there should be plenty of room to allot a room to five or six members, still reserving to leading members on both sides a room to themselves, or perhaps the one or two members who may be with them in it.


Mr. BARR.: In this respect we are very much behind some of the provinces. For the last decade the Ontario legislature has had a large room with from ten to fourteen typewriters, and members have been accommodated in that way. The result was that the members found it a great convenience as well as a great saving. In the Ontario House the members can get their letters written with no expense to themselves and with very little expense to the country.
House of Commons-salaries, $86,150.


George Eulas Foster: How is the increase in this vote accounted for ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: It is accounted for by the regular increase to 27 clerks. The clerk of the House who gets an increase of $100 and the others an increase of $50 each. The work of the Agricultural Committee has greatly increased and the clerk asked for an assistant. Provision is made for the appointment of an assistant clerk to the Agricultural Committee at a salary of $1,200. The gentleman selected is an expert stenographer and typewriter and has been in the employ of the House for a number of years.


George Eulas Foster: Who is the extra clerk of the Agricultural Committee?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Mr. A. E. Horton.


George Eulas Foster: You have one chief clerk additional.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Mr. Todd was at the maximum of the first-class and he is promoted to a chief clerkship. Mr. Macdonell has been promoted to a first-class clerkship, and Mr. Macleod, the clerk of the Agricultural Committee, has been promoted to a first-class clerkship.	[DOT]


George Eulas Foster: What increases are there in the translation branch ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Mr. Frechette, $100, and Mr. Dansereau, $50.
Contingencies, $37,010.


George Eulas Foster: Who is responsible for getting up these wonderful boxes that are given to the members each year.


Mr.   SFEAKER@: I think the clerk of stationery is.
Mr. FOSTER, But he must be under somebody's orders.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Under the supervision of the Printing Committee.


George Eulas Foster: Have we a pretty level headed Printing Committee this year?
Mr. SPEAKER, I think so.


Mr FOSTER.: Then there will be no possibility of having one of these monstrous things sent around this year ? I would suggest to Mr. Speaker that if you are going to distribute ladies trimmings at all you should have some one with good taste to make the selection. I have been told that these leather bags are ordered in England at a very high price. Is it not possible to procure something as suitable and much more economical in Canada? Is it heresy to suggest that to the Printing Committee?


Alexander Johnston: I am a member of that committee and


George Eulas Foster: That explains it.


Alexander Johnston: Although a member of that committee I had not attended the meetings for some time.


George Eulas Foster: Some freak has attended.


Alexander Johnston: I attended a meeting of that committee recently and the Riot Act was read about these boxes. I know that this session a number of the members have taken an active interest in the matter and that this year there will be an improvement not alone in the variety of articles but that the purchases will be made from our own people. It is only recently it was ascertained that these things were not purchased in Canada.


George Eulas Foster: Perhaps the hon. member can now explain a wonderful apparatus which there was to show the time when it was going to rain and the time when it was not going to rain. Mine has got out of order. Is there any ordinary officer or outsider who can put that into shape?


Alexander Johnston: He got that from the rain-maker of the Yukon.


George Eulas Foster: Another thing. I never was much of a dab at carpentering; but they sent me a set of tools, and when I undertook to do some work with them, I botched the job and cut my finger.


William Stevens Fielding: Was it not a suggestion of a possible cabinet-making?


Mr. SINCLAIR.: I think this is the proper place for me to make a modest request. I would like to see lock boxes in the post office. We supply these to the post offices throughout the Dominion, and if it is necessary for us to pay a dollar to get the accommodation I think we should be willing to do so.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I think that matter has been suggested, and we are getting some information as to the probable cost.
Estimate of Sergeant-at-Arms, $55,410.


George Eulas Foster: We are still able to get around the corridors, but will the Speaker tell us whether he has looked into the matter and whether we really require 125 people to take care of us here ? We have a little over 200 members, and there are nearly as many people to look after us. It seems to me that is a very large proportion of help. Are people being put on for the sake of providing places for them or because somebody wants them put on rather than because their services are required?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: There are really one , or two less than there were last year, and I think there were one or two less last year year than there were in the previous year. There is no increase, but rather a tendency the other way.
Library of Parliament, $43,137.50.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Of late years the library has not been by any means as useful as it might be. It is very difficult to get anything you want in the library. We have two librarians, neither of whom we are likely to see from the beginning to the end of the session. We have a number of clerks, two or three of whom are useful while the rest seem to be of little use. The library is kept open at night and on Sundays, but the clerks do not even understand their own catalogue, and cannot find what you want. The place, to begin with, is overcrowded with books. That is not, of course, the fault of the librarians. It is the fault of the government, who do not provide better accommodation. It is diffi-Mr. JOHNSTON.
cult to keep books so that they can be easily found when the room is so filled up as it is at the present time. I frankly confess that I think the library of late years has degenerated very much. You send for books, and you have to wait for them until the time is past when you have any need for them, and perhaps even then you cannot get them. Some improvement is needed in the library, because it is not what a parliamentary library should be.


Mr. ARMSTRONG.: I want to emphasize the remarks of the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule). I am sure that we all appreciate what Mr. Griffin is able to do, as well as several of the other men. who are very capable officers; but you could hardly find in an ordinary city library a number of men who are less acquainted with books and the proper sources of information than you will find in our library. It is certainly necessary for the government to see that more men are appointed there or that the men appointed are more capable of knowing where the books are, so that members may be accommodated in that regard.


John Barr: I think another grievance should be mentioned here. During some of the recent holidays, both the library and the newspaper room have been locked up. I do not think that is proper. The result was that a number of members who were sitting around here could get no information.


Haughton Lennox: There is a matter which I mentioned before and which, if this is an up-to-date government, they ought to take in hand; that is, the question of having the statutes properly noted and kept up-to-date. For instance, we have the revised statutes, but we have made a great many amendments to them. You take up the Ontario statutes. It is a long time since they have been revised, and it is very difficult to ascertain just what the law is. A lawyer in his own library, if he picks up a statute, will know at once whether it has been amended or not, because he has it noted. But nothing of the kind is done in the parliamentary library. There have been a great many amendments made to the statutes, and these ought to be noted, so that when we pick up a particular Act, we shall know just how the law stands. It would not be a serious matter, and would give employment to some deserving person.


George Eulas Foster: I think that Is an excellent suggestion, and I can point out how it can be done without cost. If there is one useless thing that comes to a member after it is two years old, it is that analytical index to ' Hansard,' which is almost as large as ' Hansard ' itself. I do not know whether anybody ever looks at it. I have looked at it only to wonder how the ingenuity of man could devise anything that could possibly be so useless. You open it and think

you are going to get something but you get a mere fragment and you have to go ito the ' Hansard.' But it comes out some two years after * Hansard ' and is of no earthly use. It is a large volumue, pretty nearly as large as the Trade and Navigation Reports. What it pretends to do is to give a digest of what everybody says on every subject, and as it is impossible to do that to any extent or with any accuracy, it defeats the very purpose for which it was intended. It is a perfectly useless piece of mechanism and I do not see why it is kept on. Other members may find some use for it but it has never been of any earthly use to me. Might I ask the Minister of Finance if he ever used it ?


William Stevens Fielding: If it would not be held up against me, I have never seen it.


Jean-Baptiste Morin: I would like to mention that about two weeks after a speech has been delivered, we get the ' Hansard ' in French. And after the House closes for good, it takes two or three months before we get the ' Hansard.' I do not see why it should take so long. Two or three weeks ought to be sufficient.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: That has been engaging the attention of the Debates Committee. We had a discussion on that matter just a few days ago, and I think the members of the Debates Committee are endeavouring to have a more prompt translation into French. As far as this index is concerned, that is also under the supervision of the Debates Committee. I am sure that the remarks of the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) will be noted, and the committee will see whether any improvement can be made to dispense with it. No doubt at present the library is thoroughly congested and the appearance of that magnificent room greatly spoiled by the piling up of books all around the place. It is not at all the handsome room it was when I first came to the House some eight years ago. The only remedy is to give other space for library purposes. There is a movement on foot to take away the room at present occupied by the Prime Minister and the secretary, also the room occupied by the Minister of. Marine and Fisheries and the smoking room and bring the library that far into the building besides raising these rooms one storey for the purpose of giving additional space. But even then the space would be very inadequate. The downstairs part is simply packed with books, and the time is very close when we shall have to remove a lot of books if we are to keep the library in shape for the use of members.


Jean-Baptiste Morin: A couple of months ago some member speaking in the French language found fault with the translation not being made promptly enough and the right hon. First Minister said he would settle that. I can mention a case which occurred before Easter. The House closed on Wednesday, and when we came back the next week one of the translators was on board the train and I talked with him about the lateness of the translation. He said it was not the fault of the translators at all, that all the translation was made and sent to the Printing Bureau on Thursday. We closed on Wednesday, and the next day everything was sent to the Printing Bureau.
I said that we did not receive it for two or three weeks later. He replied : It is not our fault, everything was sent to the Bureau on Thursday before I left. The translation was delayed in the Bureau about nineteen days, for it was nineteen days before we received the French edition. I do not see why it should not have been printed sooner. If my statement is questioned, Mr. Larose is the man who told me.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It has often occurred to me that we make a mistake in endeavouring to keep our library up as a general library. Years ago there was no good general library in the city but there is now, and if ours were converted into a parliamentary library exclusively, you would .be able to take away a large number of volumes which are absolutely of no use to members. The time will come when that must be done and I think it might as well be done now. The first requirement is that the library should be a parliamentary one, containing the books of reference required so that at any time members would be able to get them. But there are on our shelves a great many old books that are not read by any one once in ten years. There are books which not one in a hundred members ever read. If the library were turned into a library for parliament solely, we would have room enough for our needs.


George Eulas Foster: What is done with the works of fiction bought every year ? Are those stored up on our shelves or what is the final disposition of them after they have gone the rounds in a year ?


Duncan Ross: They never come back.


George Eulas Foster: A great many do not, but a large number do. There ought to be some way of disposing of them and not lumber up the room with that effete material. Then I find I can never get hold of a magazine, and the only solution I can arrive at is that the ministers cabbage them all. I have watched the library as a cat would a mouse trying to get hold of certain magazines but I always find that some min-

ister has them out. 1 do not know if they ever come back again, and I wish the ministers would mend their ways in that respect.
Legislation-general-printing paper and binding, $175,000.


George Eulas Foster: What is the reason of the increase here of $50,000 ?


William Stevens Fielding: The volume of printing is increasing. The demand of the House for documents, notwithstanding the revision by the Printing Committee, means that more printing has to be done. I think that this item must increase.


George Eulas Foster: I have thought sometimes that there is a great deal of useless printing done in these bulky reports. Do we ever undertake any revision through any committee or in any other way ? There is one case in which I think there is quite useless duplication, and that is in the ease of the Trade and Navigation returns and the report of the Department of Trade and Commerce. Every member of parliament gets all these reports, but I suppose there is no member who is quite equal to reading them all, and I do not know who else would.


William Stevens Fielding: The departmental reports are under control of the several ministers. I suppose the heads of the Department of Customs and Trade and Commerce will take note of what has been suggested by the hon. member (Mr. Foster). In the Trade and Commerce report there is a great deal of material that is not in the Customs, for example, with respect to treaties. Then there is occasionally to be found information regarding the commercial affairs of foreign countries. Much of the general printing is ordered directly by the House, and expensive printing. For instance, there was the report of the Insurance Commission, a large document. There was the report of the Civil Service Commission. Then there is the report of the Quebec bridge investigation, which, I am told, is a particularly expensive report. Probably, the number of members who will read it carefully is small. Yet, it is a report that will be called for for many years, and it is necessary to print it. The hon. members know that, when you have the type set, it costs proportionately little more to print 5,000 than to print 3,000. The returns to the 'House are increasing in volume. The joint committee of the two Houses on printing exercises its judgment as to the printing of these documents and a glance over their reports will show that they set aside scores and hundreds of returns that may be important for the moment, but are not considered of permanent importance sufficient to justify their being
Mr. FOSTER,
printed. I must say that I do not think we can hope that there will be a decrease in this item; it will naturally expand.
Contingencies of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, $3,000.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: There is a matter now under consideration that will involve some expenditure under this head-I do not know how much; it is to provide better lock boxes of some kind to secure the ballots.


George Eulas Foster: I do not think there will be any objection to that.


William Stevens Fielding: That will have to come in the supplementary estimates.
Provincial voters' lists, $8,000.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Is that to pay for the lists you get from the municipalities ?


William Stevens Fielding: I think that the lists made up in the province are procured from the provincial authorities, and the clerks who prepare them have to be paid certain fees. This amount, I believe, is for that purpose. I speak from recollection.


Mr. W. J. ROCHE.: Has the government taken into consideration the idea of printing the Dominion Voters' Lists in a little different form ? You have a long sheet that is most unwieldy for carrying about. It may be said that it is necessary to arrange the list by polling subdivisions, but instead of having it on one sheet, why could you not have it on three or four ? It would be less bulky and more convenient to carry.


Duncan Ross: Of course, this is entirely a matter of opinion, I find the lists as already printed very convenient. For committee work, they are much handier than if they were in smaller form. It would be impossible to print the voters' lists in so small a bulk that you could carry it conveniently in an inside pocket.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Why not follow the form of the provincial voters' list.


Duncan Ross: That form is not more convenient, I think.
Departments generally-contingencies, care and cleaning of departmental buildings, $38,062.50.


Mr MORIN.: Is it intended to increase the salary of the charwomen in this House? I have a great many applications from the ladies


Mr. GRAHAM.: They know where to go.


Jean-Baptiste Morin: And the first thing they say to me is : Do you think we will have an increase ? I do not know what the salaries are but I know they want an increase of pay.


William Stevens Fielding: The vote does not include the charwomen of this House. My hon. friend should have applied to Mr. Speaker a while ago. This is for the char service in the other buildings. It is somewhat larger for the reason that the number of buildings to be cared for is increasing. I had some conversations with my hon. friend from North Toronto (Mr. Foster) with a view to taking a further vote on account. We should have been very happy if we could have come to an arrangement to get a larger sum than I am about to mention, but after discussion with the hon. gentleman he suggested that the best that could be done at present was that we should cooperate in obtaining a vote of one-eighth of such items as have not already been dealt with in full. We have voted in the last week various sums for the whole year. These will be gathered into a Supply Bill and in addition I ask the committee to grant one-eighth of the remaining items. The clerks of the House have prepared a resolution on that basis and if there is no objection I will now move that we take a vote on account of one-eighth of the items which the House has not yet fully dealt with. It will be remembered that on a previous occasion we took a vote of one-eighth so this will be a second vote of one-eighth.


George Eulas Foster: So far as I know there would be no objection to the passage of the one-eighth that is asked for by the Finance Minister. We have had some negotiations and it has never been the wish of members on this side of the House to prevent the deserving employees of the country from having their pay so far as we can facilitate it or to stop the necessary works of the country so far as we can facilitate them. As the Minister of Finance knows there has been a difference of opinion with reference to some legislation which has been introduced by the government and for the last month and a half negotiations have been going on between the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition. So far as we can see some progress has been made and this grant of one-eighth is assented to by this side - of the House partly as a result of those negotiations and partly with the hope that it will lead to a speedy conclusion of the negotiations. I think it is right, however, to say that our position with reference to the disputed clauses in the Election Bill remains exactly the same as it was, that whilst we are willing to make reasonable arrangements with reference to it, we object just as resolutely as ever to the legislation as it is brought down to the House.


William Stevens Fielding: As to what my hon. friend has said he and I have had differences of opinion and we will have to just leave it as it stands at present.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: This covers one-eighth all along the line ?


William Stevens Fielding: Except where we have voted the whole. In the case of some services of the post office, the Intercolonial Railway and the Customs Department we have voted the full sum, and of course we do not need to vote one-eighth of them. We vote one-eighth of that portion of the original estimates which has not been yet dealt with fully.
Some resolutions reported.



SUPPLY-CONCURRENCE.

[Stage Direction]
House proceeded to consider resolutions reported from Committee of Supply.
Resolutions reported and agreed to.
On motion of Mr. Fielding, House went into Committee of Ways and Means.
William Stevens Fielding: That towards making good the Supply granted to His Majesty on account of certain expenses of the public service for the financial year ending March 31, 1909, the sum of $31,309,335.51 be granted out of the Consolidated .Revenue Fund of Canada.
Resolution reported, read a second time and agreed to.


William Stevens Fielding: The officers of the House have prepared in the usual form a Supply Bill based on the resolution which the House has voted, I beg for leave to introduce Bill (No. 186) for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the public service for the financial vear ending March 31, 1909.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, Bill read the first and second time, considered in committee, reported, read the third time and passed.
Mr. FIELDING moved the adjournment of the House.
George Eulas Foster: What business will be taken up on Monday?


William Stevens Fielding: Committee of Supply, with the estimates of the Minister of Public Works.


George Eulas Foster: May I ask the Minister of Finance when he expects that the Civil Service Bill will be introduced?


William Stevens Fielding: I am not in a position to give my hon. friend any information at present.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, House adjourned at 11.27 p.m.
[Stage Direction]


Monday, June 15, 1908.