1908-07-03

Mr. BERGERON.: Before the orders of the day are called, I would like to ask my
right hon. friend the Prime Minister if, in accordance with the recommendation made by the government of the province of Quebec last session, it is the intention of the government to appoint some judges for the Superior Count of that province, and if the necessary money for that purpose will be voted this session ?


Sir WILFRID RAURIER.: I will answer my hon. friend on Monday.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Mr. R. R. BORDEN.: Might I ask the Prime Minister just what was intended by his answer of yesterday to my inquiry as to the further legislative measures to be brought down by the government (this session. A great deal of criticism has been directed against this side of the House because of the length of the session, which it is said should have ended at the expiration of five months. We have been here now more than seven months, and have not yet all the government measures brought down. I am sincerely anxious to bring this session to a close at' the earliest possible moment, but that cannot be done unless we have all the remaining government measures before us almost immediately. I did not understand from the Prime Minister's reply whether on Monday next these measures were to be brought down or whether we were to be then informed when they would be brought down. If we get the measures then, that will be satisfactory ; if we are only to hear when they will be brought down, that is not satisfactory. I would ask the Prime Minister to be good enough to let us know what the situation is ?
Sir WIRFR1D RAURIER. I informed my hon. friend some time ago what was the nature of the legislation we had to bring down. I stated that we had to bring the supplementary estimates, also some railway legislation, and that we had under advisement legislation with regard to the extension of the Manitoba boundaries. I stated yesterday to my hon. friend that the Manitoba boundary question, since the session began, has undergone quite a change. My hon. friend knows that we cannot legislate on that subject without the concurrence of the legislature of Manitoba. The prayer of the legislature of Manitoba in regard to the boundaries, when we opened the session last year, was somewhat indefinite ; but I believe they insisted that they should have the land. Since (that time the legislature of Manitoba has adopted a memorial making specific demands both as to the boundaries and as to the terms on which the legislation should be enacted. They do not ask for the lands, but they ask for a grant of money in lieu of the lands, an altogether new idea, and (the terms I think are very much exaggerated. This will involve a question of adjustment. I shall be able to

inform my hon. friend on Monday whether the measure is to be brought down this session or not, and if it is brought down, it will he brought down early in the week.


Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Do I understand that all the legislative measures of government will be before the House on Monday ?


Wilfrid Laurier: I would not say that, but I shall be able to state on Monday exactly what measures we shall bring down or what we shall not bring down, and any that are to be brought down will be brought down early next week.


Robert Laird Borden: I do not wish to seem persistent, as there may possibly be some difficulties that I do not apprehend to cause a postponement of these matters. Can we not fix some date when all the legislative measures that are do be brought down this session will be before the House ?


Wilfrid Laurier: Certainly.


Robert Laird Borden: What is the date ?


Mr. FOSTER.: Before prorogation.


Wilfrid Laurier: Certainly, before prorogation, and I hope prorogation will take place before the arrival of the Prince of Wales. I cannot say more than that on Monday I will give all the information I can, and we will immediately thereafter bring down all the legislation we have to bring down.



THE GEORGIAN BAY CANAL.

Mr. G. V. WHITE.: I would ask the Minister of Public Works whether the final report of the Montreal, Ottawa and Georgian Bay canal survey will be presented to the House during the present session, and also whether it is the intention of the government to make an announcement regardin'* their policy on this work during this sessiom


Hon. WM. PUGSLEY.: I may say to my hon. friend that I expect in the course of two or three days to be able to'submit the report to the government, and I presume that in due course it will be laid before tile House. With regard to the broader question, the qnestion of policy that rests rather with my right hon. friend the Prime Minister than with myself.



DOMINION ELECTIONS ACT-AMENDMENT.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 115) to amend the Dominion Elections Act.-Mr. Aylesworth.
On section 3-nomination paper to state address of candidate.
Hon. A. B. AYLESWORTH (Minister of Justice).: Last night we were considering the advisability of imposing some penalty upon the candidate in case he omitted to give any address in his nomination paper.


Wilfrid Laurier: That seemed to me rather objectionable, and the idea has occurred to me that perhaps the desired object would be attained by imposing a penalty of $25 or less upon the returning officer, should he accept a nomination paper which did not give the address of the candidate. It is of course important to the candidate, if he is going to be liable to have process served upon him by simply leaving it at his address, to have it left at his proper address, and there is every indication to him to give his real address unless he takes the strong course of ignoring the law altogether and omitting to give any address whatever.


Robert Laird Borden: The difficulty about the situation at present-although the section in this respect is perhaps not very important-is that if there is no penalty and no consequence, it becomes a matter of perfect indifference to the candidate whether he gives in an address or not.


George Eulas Foster: Why not make it absolutely necessary to the validity of the nomination paper that it shall give the address ? I do not see why the address should not be given. It is the easiest thing in the world to give, and if a candidate wants to dodge, he should not be allowed to.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The trouble is that the address might be omitted without any fault on the part of the candidate. The purpose of the nomination paper, after all, is but to get the candidates formally before the electorate, and each candidate is publicly known and recognized for weeks before the nomination. The whole idea of this is to prevent technical or formal objections having effect and to palliate rather than to exaggerate the omission, which inevitably will be made and honestly made by officials and others, who find difficulty enough in familiarizing themselves with the various provisions of the law. The omission to give the address might not be discovered until after the election, and it would be less than a scandal that the candidate elected should find his election avoided because those who nominated him had made this omission.


Robert Laird Borden: Why not provide that the candidate should not receive back his deposit unless the nomination paper contained his address ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I have no objection, and I will frame a clause to that effect at the earliest opportunity.
Section 3 allowed to stand.
On section 10,


George Eulas Foster: Was section 8 carried?
Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER, Yes. It was slightly amended-clerical amendments were made.	.


George Eulas Foster: It seems to me that there was a conflict as regards the time fixed, as between that and section 5.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER.: Section 5 has been amended.


Mr.   POSTER@: But I suppose we can refer back to it.


Robert Laird Borden: The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) has called my attention to a matter about which I desired to make inquiry last night, but supposed that it had been considered. What I wish to know is whether the Minister of Justice has taken into careful consideration the various times specified for the various steps enumerated in sections 6 and 8 of this Bill, so far as they apply to the Yukon Territory. For example, in section G, a period of thirty days is provided for. In section 8, which provides a new section of the Act-section 48a-various periods have been enumerated. Have these been carefully considered as to whether they will work out in actual practice ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: That had better stand over for further consideration. I cannot answer at the moment.


Charles Marcil: These clauses are all carried.


Robert Laird Borden: Yes, but there is still opportunity to consider the matter.
On section 10,
Subsection 2 of section 67 of the said Act is repealed and the following subsection is substituted therefor:
2.	Any person hiring, or paying for, or promising to pay for, or letting to hire or demanding payment or receiving payment for, any horse, team, carriage, cab, cart, wagon, sleigh or other conveyance or any boat, steamboat or other vessel for any candidate or for any agent of a candidate for the purpose of conveying any voter or voters to or from any poling place at any election shall, ipso facto, be disqualified from voting at such election.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: This section has been recast. There is some difference-nothing, I think, substantial; but I think there are some new words in the enumeration of various kinds of vehicles which may be used. One new word is the ' boat ' by which the voter might be conveyed. The clause was considered, and, to some extent, if not completely, drafted by the Elections Committee two years ago. It was thought by that committee that the words had better be made a little wider; and I remember that one member of the committee had information of some case in which voters had been brought by a hired boat, which he thought was not covered by the clause as it then stood. In examining the wording of this provision of the existing Elections Act and the provision of the like section whieli makes the hiring of vehicles a corrupt practice, I observed that they did not correspond. I cannot suggest to myself any reason why they should not be in identical terms. It seemed to me it was only likely
to create difficulties if the two sections did not verbally and exactly correspond, and, accordingly I propose to make them correspond by this clause and by a subsequent clause of the present Bill. Then there is one change in that which is substantial-if it is a change at all; at any rate, it is making the law clear. The section under consideration, section 67, deals only with the disqualification of voters. Certain persons, though their names are on the list, shall be disqualified and incompetent to vote at any election. First, the judges, then persons disfranchised for corrupt practices, then persons who are enumerated-prisoners, or patients in lunatic asylums, men maintained wholly or in part out of charity in some public -institution, &c.; and, finally, there is this provision that the person who hires a vehicle shall be disqualified from voting. That is the present law. Then, as complementary to this provision disqualifying the person who has hired a vehicle, we have section 270 which makes the paying for a vehicle a corrupt practice. I am proposing that these two complementary sections shall be in identical words. But, further than that, I am proposing to make it clear that the prohibition of the statute extends, not alone to the man who pays money for his vehicle to convey voters to the poll, but, as wen, to the man who receives the money. Whether or not the prohibition under the law as it stands extends to the man who receives the money, I must say I am not able to state I have never known a case in which this point has been actually decided. I have heard it debated in courts more than once, but I have never known any actual decision upon it. I can see no reason, however, why, if the livery stable keeper who is an agent of the candidate has contributed to tiie infraction of the law by letting his vehicles to hire for the purpose of conveying voters to the polls, his candidate should not suffer the consequence of that unlawful act of his agent, quite as much as the candidate would suffer if the act of his agent had been to pay the money to the liveryman ; and in that view, I have inserted in each of these clauses words which will make that clear. The committee will observe that the present clause, for instance disqualifies from voting not only any person paying for a vehicle to convey voters to the polls, but also any person ' letting to hire or demanding payment for or receiving ' such payment. So, it is a question whether it is advisable to be distinct in that regard as it seems to me we had better be, and whether it is the wish of the committee to make the law more severe than possibly it may be at the present time against the man who lets his vehicle to hire for the purpose of conveying voters to the polls.


Mr. BENNETT.: Take this case : A voter wishing to go down into the country five miles to vote asks a friend who also has a

vote at the same poll to accompany him. They hire a livery rig from a man named Brown and when Brown presents himself to poll his vote is he to be disqualified because he rented a rig to another to go to vote ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I am afraid it would be impossible for me to answer that inquiry on the spur of the moment. Possibly it would be difficult for a court to answer if such a case actually arose. It would be a question of the intent with which the hiring or the letting to hire had been done.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: I believe the law should be as severe as possible. I think it is in the best interests of the country, but I do not believe it is good policy to adopt laws which cannot be enforced. There is not a member of the House who does not know that there is no election carried on without bringing voters to the polls in conveyances. There is not an election carried on in any city in Canada without voters being driven to the polls. It is done at every election and it always has been done against the law. No member has ever been disqualified under that provision of the law because it would be impossible to carry on an election otherwise. What is the use of putting on the statute books laws which cannot be enforced? No one can carry on an election unless some electors are brought to the polls. Sometimes it is done under necessity and with the most honourable intention. A man who is ill has to be brought to the poll in a rig. Old people are brought to the poll in the same way. Will it be understood that if this law is adopted a candidate as well as men who have been driven to the poll will be disqualified. It is ridiculous to pass laws which cannot be enforced. It would be better to have the law framed in such a way that it would be understood that in certain circumstances it would be permissible to drive people to the polls.


Mr. BARR.: That might create a hardship in many cases. Of course, we know that this is the same as the law has been, but the law has, in the past, always been evaded. Here, for instance, is a man who has a vote, but who is unable to walk to the poll ; a supporter of the candidate has no horse of his own but he goes to a livery and hires a horse and rig to take this man to the poll. It does not change his vote. He wants to vote but he is not able to hire a horse himself. So, it does seem that there is a certain disability in this respect. If a man owns a horse or an automobile of his own he can whirl the voters in and out all fight but under the circumstances I do think it is placing the livery man in a very dangerous position. For carrying on his business in the usual way he is liable to be disqualified.


William Humphrey Bennett: 


William Humphrey Bennett: All the livery man need do would be to present himself at the poll at nine o'clock sharp, vote and then go and hire rigs for the balance of the day if he wished to avoid being disqualified. If he should wait to vote until half-past four in the afternoon he would be confronted with an oath which would prevent him from polling his vote, because I assume that there would have to be something in the nature of an oath administered in connection with the enforcement of this provision.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Of course, the observation of my hon. friend from East Sim-coe would apply equally to the man who was going to bribe, who was going to spend his whole election day in paying out money to voters. He might vote the first thing in the morning while he was still pure and innocent and then proceed to pollute himself as rapidly as possible during the succeeding hours of the day.


John Barr: That is what they do in every election with regard to betting-vote first and bet afterwards.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The provision which makes it contrary to the law to pay money for vehicles has been amended from time to time always in the line of making it more strict. It has been extended to railway tickets, to steamboat tickets and companies in one form and another and always upon the theory that you must not give an advantage to a wealthy candidate or man who is going, in some way or other, to get voters to the polls by the expenditure of money. In old days, when we had in all of the provinces, large classes of absentee voters coming, it may be, a long distance there was a considerable expenditure of money in getting out the vote and in getting in the absentee vote at any election. The idea was to do away as far as possible with what expenditure, or with it falling upon the candidate, and force each voter to get to the poll, either at his own cost, or without expense to anybody if he could find a friend who would volunteer to take him there. It is just a question of policy. I agree with the views expressed by my good friend from Beauharnois (Mr. Bergeron). I expressed views of that nature in the committee that was considering this clause two years ago. Five members spent some time in discussing this provision. The view of the majority was in favour of making it more rigid rather than less and the suggestions which I have indicated and which are embodied in this clause come from that discussion. Speaking for myself, I quite agree with the views expressed by my hon. friend from Beauharnois that this is a provision which is very generally ignored. In the cities, we all see, at every election, any quantity of cabs dashing about the streets, and I think it is a great strain upon one's credulity to believe that men whose living

consists in the use of a carriage and a pair of horses are going to devote the whole of the day to the driving of voters to the polls and get nothing for it. In some shape or other, I think every one is satisfied that the money loss is made up to them sooner or later in disregard of this provision. None the less it would seem an absolute retrograde step in our election legislation if we were to repeal this provision. There can be no doubt there are cases in which it works beneficially and in which it lessens substantially the expenditure upon elections. It affords one source of inquiry in every election petition but the experience is that not much is- made out of it. I have in mind a case where in a provincial election the candidate was unseated because one of his opponents had been conveyed from the polls in a vehicle which an agent of his had hired. The hired vehicle was going in that direction and as a matter of good fellowship the man in charge of the hired vehicle gave him a lift and the elected candidate was unseated although he knew nothing about what had occurred. That was a case of great hardship. With the law in that state it is questionable whether we would be justified in permitting this sort of thing to be done.


Mr. LANCASTER.: The law, as proposed by the minister, goes too far. We ought to be honest with ourselves, and bold1 if necessary, and we ought to ask ourselves : Is there not a great difference between the illustration of bribery given by the Minister of Justice and the case dealt with by the section? Bribery is immoral of itself, but hiring a conveyance from a man who is in that legitimate business is not immoral of itself. Of course, you might class him with an hotel keeper, whom you prohibit from plying his trade on that day, but for a very different reason ; you prohibit the hotel keeper from selling drink because it will intoxicate a man and neutralize his intelligence and warp his judgment. What harm can there be in a man legitimately hiring a rig for his own purpose and paying the same price on election day as he would pay any other day? I have always thought, from my experience in the courts and as a candidate, that if a man did not charge any more for a rig on election day than on any other day, we would be doing substantial justice in allowing him to hire that rig. If he is paid the same price election day as at any other time, he is not being bribed. A grocer may sell me tea on election day, and if I pay him the ordinary price he is not disqualified, but if I paid him an extra price that would be wrong, because it presupposes he was getting the extra amount for his vote.


Mr. GONMEE.: I agree with the hon. gentleman, but what about the man who hires the rig and pays for it?


Edward Arthur Lancaster: The law as it is is not so unreasonable as the amendment now proposed. The present law provides that no person shall hire any conveyance for any candidate, or the agent of a candidate, and while it may be a little harsh it is not as bad as the proposal. But take the case of a poor man who does not own a rig, who is not able to walk to the poll, either because it is too far or that he is physically unfit; that poor man looks on his franchise as a sacred thing, and he hires a rig from a neighbour to drive him to the poll just as he would carry him to church or to a political meeting, and he pays the ordinary price for it; why should we legislate to prevent that?


James Conmee: Or he may be a labourer and have only an hour's time to vote, and cannot vote if he has to walk.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: That is quite so. Let us be manly in this legislation ; do not let us seek to get credit in the country for standing so straight that we may fall backwards. There is no vice per se in hiring a rig ; the vice is in hiring it on election day at a greater price than you would pay on an ordinary occasion. The rich man has his automobile and carriages ; let us see that the poor man, who honestly wants to register his vote and has to employ some one to drive him to the polls, is not disfranchised. If you pass such legislation as this it is only a temptation to securing that such a man shall be driven at the candidate's expense. He knows that such a man is a good party man, and he believes that even though the law does say so there is no harm in his hiring some one to take that man to the polls and give him an opportunity to vote. By making this provision so stringent that people will look upon it as a ridiculous interference with ordinary reasonable rights, you simply encourage infraction of the law. I would suggest that this section be amended so that it should not apply where the price paid for the vehicle was the same price on election day as that which would be paid on any ordinary day.


Mr. PARDEE.: I believe that the amendment suggested by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Lancaster) would work out in practice. My own opinion is that we had much better leave the law in this respect as it exists to-day, for I do not think we can get it into more practicable shape. As the member for Beauharnois says, every one knows there is an attempt to get over this clause in an election, and if you pass it as proposed it will only accentuate that. My own opinion is that the section should stand as it is.


Mr. BLAIN.: Sections 10, 23 and 24 deal with the matter of hiring vehicles of different kinds and the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) gave notice of an amendment on the 29th of June (Y and P-

p., 1227) which consolidates those three clauses and makes them more intelligible. Has the Minister of Justice considered this amendment ?
Mr-. AYLES WORTH. 1 have considered it but I certainly prefer the clause we have under consideration to the alternative proposition of the hon. member (Mr. Alcorn). It is not my own idea but it was the idea of the majority of the Elections Committee and I remember that in the committee the hon. member for East Hamilton (Mr. Barker) expressed pretty strong views upon that question. I have tried to depart as little as possible from the framing of the present section. That is always desirable if amendments are going to be made because different judicial opinions have been expressed from time to time in regard to the meaning of particular phrases in the existing law and those are a guide. I have tried to retain the same wording wherever possible in recasting the clause, and to insert the additional vehicles which previously had not been specifically mentioned. I like the phraseology just because it has been on the statute-book for so many years.


William Humphrey Bennett: In line 25 the language is : ' Steamboat or other vessel for any candidate.' Does the word ' for ' mean 1 in the interest of ' ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I would translate that word ' for ' as ' on behalf of.'


Richard Blain: I move that section 10 be stricken out and the following substituted in accordance with the notice given by the hon. member (Mr. Alcorn) :
(1) That sections 10, 23 and 21 of tlie said Bill be struck out, and the following section be added:
Sections 270 and 271 of the said Act are repealed, and the following is enacted as section 270:
270. The hiring or paying for or promising to pay for any horse, team, carriage, cab, automobile, cart, wagon, sleigh or other vehicle, or for any boat, steamboat or other vessel, bv any candidate or by any person on his behalf to carry any voter or voters to or from the poll or to or from the neighbourhood thereof, at any election, or the payment hy any candidate or by anv person on his behalf, of the travelling or other expenses of any voter in going to or returning from the polls, or to or from the neighbourhood thereof, or the providing or the furnishing by any person of conveyance or transportation by railway, tramway, boat or vessel free of charge, or at diminished rates to voters to or from or on the way to or from the poll, and whether passes or tickets or the like are or are not supplied, are unlawful acts.
2. Every candidate or other person so offending shall forfeit for each person so carried, conveyed or transported the sum of one hundred dollars to any person who sues therefor with costs.


Mr. BLAIN.: 3.	Every person by himself, or by any one on his behalf, demanding or receiving from any candidate, or his agent, or any person, payment for the use of any horse, team, carriage, cab, automobile, cart, wagon, sleigh or other vehicle, or any boat, steamboat or other vessel for conveying voters as aforesaid, shall forfeit for each person so carried, conveyed or transported the sum of one hundred dollars to any person who sues therefor with costs.
4.	Any person offending against any provision of this section stands ipso facto disqualified from any voting at such election.


George Eulas Foster: I am puzzled between the wording of the Act, and of the amendment, and tlie statement made by the Minister of Justice. It appears to me strongly that if I am a poor man or a rich man either, and I do not own a horse of my own, and I am 4 or 5 miles from the poll, I should have a perfect right to hire a vehicle and take myself to the poll to vote and to carry me hack again. The law has got to show mighty strong reasons for Infringing upon my right to do that before it penalizes me.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: Would not the last proviso of section 4 as amended cover that ?


George Eulas Foster: It might or it might not, but what puzzled me was that when the member for East Simcoe asked the Minister of Justice whether he thought that would disqualify the livery keeper from whom I hired the rig, the Minister of Justice said he was not able to give an opinion, that it would depend upon the intent, and that the judge was the final authority. Well, If we cannot put English so that we can provide for a case of that kind we had better abolish our ministeries of justice. It seems to me a wonderful thing that English is not English and that it does not mean what a man intended It to mean. It is so absurd that it would militate against the carrying out of any Act if you were to hold the voter responsible for the hire of a conveyance which he wanted to bona fide carry him to the polls. It is a very different thing when the hiring is done by the candidate or the agent of a candidate and should give them Indiscriminate power to hire vehicles and carry voters to the poll. That is what you want to prevent. You surely do not want to penalize a person who in good faith hires a rig to take him to the poll to vote and to take him home when he has voted. In section 24 you do not exactly meet the point. The proviso might cover It, but it might be made so clear as to give no chance for thinking that It did not cover it. As to the amendment moved by my hon. friend from Peel, I have read it over very carefully, and, so far as my judgment goes, I am favourable to that. I think It is only reasonable, if you are going to have a law at all against bribery in the form of conveyances, paying of passages, and the like of that. I do not see that you could construe

my hiring of a vehicle to take myself to the poll to vote as being on behalf of the candidate, which is the meaning the Minister of Justice gives to the words ' for any candidate.' It is on behalf of myself; I do not want to walk; I want to ride; I want to ride because I want to vote ; it is in my own behalf or my own interest. That is not the meaning of the law' as it stands, but could it not be made so clear that even a judge could understand it ?


Wilfrid Laurier: The language is quite competent to express what is meant. If a man hires a team for himself, no judge would construe that as being against the law. The object is to prevent candidates hiring a number of teams ou election day, and in all these matters the judge will apply his common sense to the interpretation of the law.


Mr. BARKER.: As I have been referred to as a member of the committee to whom *the election law was referred. I may say that I have a distinct recollection that there was never any thought on the part of any member of the committee to prevent any man hiring a conveyance for himself. The committee thought that he had just as much right to hire a livery rig or a cab as to take his own carriage and drive to the poll. In reading this clause, I do not think it infringes on any man's right to do that.


Mr. SAM. HUGHES.: But suppose he drives other electors to the poll, that disqualifies him.


Samuel Barker: He is not an agent of the candidate and does not do it on behalf of the candidate. I think perhaps it would be as well to make the matter absolutely clear, although I think the section as drawn by the minister does not infringe on the right of an individual to hire a carriage for himself or to use his own carriage.


Mr. ALCORN.: Would it not be an improvement to substitute the word ' transport ' for ' conveyance ' in the last line of the section?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The choice of the word ' conveyance ' may perhaps not be a happy one. In lawyer's language it has frequently the meaning of a document. But the very circumstance that it has been the word used in this legislation for thirty years makes it not advisable, I submit, to change it now, more especially for a word of rather uncertain legal significance. With regard to the amendment which has been moved, I observe in it the inclusion of one or two additional vehicles or means of carriage which are not specifically mentioned in the present section, tout which I think are fully covered by the general words that we have iu the section. We are considering this section at present as to the disqualification of a voter, but that is only by reason of the accident that it happens to come 375
earlier in the statute than the corrupt practices clauses. The order in which these clauses were framed, and the natural order to consider them is to take up first the clauses as to corrupt practices. We have in the present statute sections 270 and 271' dealing with that subject, making it illegal on the part of the person who promises to pay, extending possibly to the person who takes the pay. Section 271 imposes a penalty, using similar language. Then, reverting to section 67, we have included among the list of voters disqualified from voting men who have offended against sections 270 and 271. The desirable thing to do, it seems to me, is to settle what change if any we want to make in the clauses which make it illegal or a corrupt practice to deal in hired vehicles for the purpose of conveying voters to and from the polls, and, having settled on that language, to adopt the same language in this section. The aim of the present clause is to enumerate a number of vehicles and to wind up with the general phase ' or other vehicles.' That, it wall be observed, I have retained in exact terms, so that we have the defining of the specific means for conveying the voter which may be used, and general language which would cover, I think,, each individual kind of means of transportation. In the amendment which is proposed we have the word ' tramway ' inserted along with ' railway, boat or vessel.' I admit that I had not thought of tramway, tout When one considers the cost of conveyance toy a tram-car, in cities at all events, where you go all over the city for five cents, it does seem to me that we would toe legislating about a pretty small thing if we were to make it an act which might void an election that some one might have handed a street car ticket to a friend beside him who might be on this way to the poll. There is, however, a provision-and it seemed to me the most substantial difference between the amendment of my hon. friend and the clause as I have drafted it-In the amendment which I think it would not be safe at all to adopt. That provision is that the furnishing hy any one of conveyance or transportation by railway, tramway, boat or vessel free of charge or at diminished rates to voters to or from or on their way to or from the poll is an unlawful act. Is not that going entirely beyond what any one contemplates? Suppose a hundred voters go in a body and arrange with a tramway company, by reason of the fact that all are going together at the noon hour or some-other hour, that they should toe given an excursion rate. Surely that would not be an offence, and that is about the only thing which would be covered by that language in the amendment.


Samuel Hughes: Would each man pay his own fare ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: In the case I men-1 tiou he would.


Samuel Hughes: I have known of instances in my own case where railway trains-as many as three in one day- were chartered against me and the electors carried for the sum of ten cents although the regular fare was four dollars. That was done against me on two occasions.


An hon. MEMBER.: What did you do ?


Samuel Hughes: I depended, not on graft, but on the good sense of the free men of the country.


Robert Laird Borden: The minister has truly said that where a word has been used in a certain sense, it is inadvisable to use it in another sense. In the section which we propose to substitute for section 271 of the law, he uses in one part of it the word ' conveyance ' as meaning a vehicle and then at the end of the clause he uses it in the sense of being conveyed.


Samuel Hughes: I do not find anything to prevent the hiring of a railway train and collecting a nominal fare of ten cents from voters going to the poll when the usual charge is several dollars.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The remarks of my hon. friend the leader of the opposition regarding the use of the word ' conveyance ' appear to be well founded. Perhaps the difficulty would be removed if we made line thirty-five read : ' A reasonable charge for being conveyed to or from the poll.'


Robert Laird Borden: My hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) in his proposed amendment has grouped the provinces of these sections 270 and 271 in a certain way, and then he provides at the end of his proposed amendment, this clause :
Any person offending against any provision of this section stands, ipso facto, disqualified from voting at such election.
That carries with it all provisos and qualifications, but in the clause 10 of the Bill wre do not find the same thing. That clause amends section 0>7 of the law, but is not limited by the qualification which appears at the end of section 271 of the Act as amended by section 24 of this Bill. I would prefer the drafting adopted by my hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn).


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The only reason for maintaining the present order of the sections was that I found it at hand and was not consolidating or revising the whole statute at all. In fact, the committee, which was my authority for interfering with these sections at all, did not notice, as far as I now recollect, this section 10 of the Bill in any way, but were concerning themselves with sections 270 and 271 of the Act. Then, when these two sections had been put into shape, it was certainly advisable that this section 07, covered by Mr. AYLESWORTH.
section 10 of the Bill, should be made to correspond ; and I would think it better that this provision as to disqualification should not be taken out of section 67. It may be desirable to have it twice over in the Act; but we have in section 67, under the general head of ' Disqualification of Voters,' collected together all the circumstances which will disqualify a man from voting, notwithstanding the presence on the list of his name. Among these is included, this offence in regard to the hiring of vehicles. I would think it better to leave that in. If it is thought advisable we could give to section 270 or 271 the subclause framed in the amendment.


Robert Laird Borden: We must not take up .too much time with this, as there are many other important sections. I admit what the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ayles-worth) has said. We cannot revise the whole Act in the few hours that remain at our disposal for the consideration of this matter, if we are to close the session within a reasonable time. I would suggest that the minister introduce in section 10 the qualifications which he has introduced in section 24. This may be done afterwards. Then, I would suggest amending section 24 by enumerating some other vehicles, such as railway trains, steamboats, and, I would be inclined to add, tramways. I would include tramways for this reason. In this country, even at the present time we have tramways of the length of sixty or seventy miles. We are legislating not for to-morrow only, but for ten, fifteen or twenty years to come, and, during that time, our system of tramways will be greatly increased.


George Eulas Foster: Are automobiles included?


Robert Laird Borden: I understand they will be included. I would suggest that section 10 be passed as it is, with the understanding that the minister will add the same qualification-it ought to appear in both. Then, we could go on to the next section.


George Oscar Alcorn: The Minister of Justice stated some time ago that the object sought in drafting the sections relating to this subject, was that the same language, and language, as far as possible, that had received judicial consideration, relating to the three objects sought ; first, the hiring of vehicles ; second, payment for vehicles of any description ; and, third, the disqualifying of persons guilty of either of these offences should be used. It seems to me that, instead of scattering over the statute-book the three sections which we have been dealing with, in the clause the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Blain, has submitted, precisely the object stated by the minister has been attained. All classes of vehicles are there set out, including boats, railway trains and automobiles, and the same language is made to apply to the man who hirese

and the man who lets the conveyance, and both classes, without further repetition, are made to come under the disqualifying clause. It seems to me much neater. It surely is more comprehensive ; and it is a matter which tends to ease of reference to place it in one section as I have done.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The difficulty could be met, I think, very readily. We can adopt sections 270 and 271 as the committee may determine, and can add to whatever we adopt language practically the same as in subclause 4 of the amendment-that any person offending against any of these sections is ipso facto disqualified from voting, and we can insert the same subclause in this disqualifying section No. 67.


Mr.   I@: Or substitute for the proposed subsection 2 of section 67 the words . ' Persons disqualified under section 271 of this Act '-merely a reference in order that all the disqualifications may be kept together.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: To test the opinion of the House, I will move an amendment


Charles Marcil: Do I understand the present amendment to be withdrawn ?


Robert Laird Borden: It can stand subject to what the minister may say hereafter.


Charles Marcil: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Lancaster) will be in order in moving an amendment to the amendment.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: There is a point which has not been answered, and that is as to the man carrying on the legitimate business of a livery-stable keeper. I move in amendment that the following words be added :
Provided that nothing herein contained shall apply to hiring from a regular livery-stable keeper conveyances regularly kept by him for hire in his legitimate business and at prices not exceeding his regular tariff charged on other days.
The whole argument against my position amounts to this, and can only amount to this : You may possibly affect the vote of the livery-stable keeper by hiring from him on election day the rigs that he has for hire all the year round. But, if you do not give him more than he receives on any other day, surely it is carrying the matter to a ridiculous extreme to say that it is necessary to prohibit him from hiring these rigs which it is his business to hire. The effect is to prevent him from carrying on his legitimate business on that day. As I said in this debate an hour or so ago, this is treating the livery-stable keeper exactly the same as the liquor seller. I say nothing against the liquor seller, but we know that the reason for preventing him from engaging in his calling on election day is that that which he
sells tends to warp a man's judgment and may influence him in a way in which he could not be influenced if he were sober. The livery-stable keeper is not engaged in any such business. Many of us here are in favour of compulsory voting-to compel a man to exercise his franchise just as we would compel a man to become a juryman and take part in deciding disputes that are brought into court. And yet, here is a proposal to disfranchise a man or prevent him from carrying on his legitimate business during a certain day. I appeal to the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) in this matter ; not because I desire to ignore the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth), but because we must recognize the affliction which prevents that hon. gentleman from hearing what we say, an affliction which we all deplore. So I ask the Prime Minister, who can hear us, to take note of this and deal with it. Practically all agree that every citizen should be afforded the easiest and readiest method of casting his vote and register his opinion on questions of public policy before the people. I did think it would do no harm to pay a livery-stable keeper a fair price to take a man to the polls who could not otherwise get there, but I have left that out and If my amendment carries it will still be unlawful for any one to hire any one else to take a voter to the polls unless the person hiring is a legitimate livery-stable keeper. The livery-stable keeper seems to me to be in the same position as the dry goods merchant, the butcher or ithe baker. If I buy dry goods from a dry goods merchant on election day, it should not disqualify him nor do we disqualify the butcher. If I bought a bolt of cloth from a man who was not a dry goods merchant at an excessive price, it might be that I was inducing him to vote. But in this amendment I have endeavoured to exclude that amendment altogether. The livery-stable keeper must charge only the same price and only hire the same rigs as on other days, exercising his legitimate business on that day at prices not in excess of his usual charges. The worst that could happen is that you may affect the vote of one man, the owner of the livery stable.


Mr. FOWLER.: My hon. friend misses the point intended to be covered by this amendment. It is not the question of the livery stable keeper, but of the voter who is being influenced by being carried in the rig.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: My amendment does not affect that.


George William Fowler: The point is that the candidate or his agent shall not employ a livery stable keeper to carry voters to the poll. Any one may hire a rig to carry himself to the poll, but the livery stable keeper cannot be employed by the candidate or his agent to carry voters to the

poll. I am in favour of the amendment of the Minister of Justice as it stands.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: My hon. friend clearly does not understand the amendment. The amendment is that nothing herein contained shall prevent the livery stable keeper' from hiring. The voter does not get anything from the livery stable keeper, the voter is carried to the polls without receiving any profit.


George William Fowler: That is an inducement to vote.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: It is right that he should be induced in this way. He gets no share of the price received by the livery stable keeper, the livery stable keeper gets the same price as usual. My hon. friend might as well say Jhat because a voter buys a pound of beefsteak from a butcher on election day, because he is too far away from home and wishes to keep up his strength to go to the polls, the butcher should be disqualified.


George William Fowler: The amendment of the Minister of Justice is simply to prevent the candidate or his agent fi'om employing a livery stable keeper or any one else to carry voters to the poll. There is nothing to present a man hiring a rig to take himself to the poll. My hon. friend does not distinguish the difference between a man paying out something from his own pocket and having somebody else pay it out for him. Being carried to the poll is as much a benefit to the voter as if he received a $2 bill, and that is what my hon. friend fails to distinguish.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Supposing he cannot afford to hire a rig?


George William Fowler: Then he can usually walk.


Mr. BRISTOL.: From experience with a good many election trials, I have been forced to the conclusion that this is one provision of the statute that is never observed by either political party. I have had to do with nearly 100 election trials, but I have never known one case where this provision was really honestly observed. One method of getting rid of it is this : Instead of the poor livery stable keeper, that we are all shedding tears over, charging a high price on election day he does not charge on election day, but for a month before the election he charges very much more than his ordinary tariff to both sides. The livery stable keepers hire half of their rigs to one side and half to the other. That course has repeatedly been pursued. This is the worst provision that we have in the Act, because it is like attempts at the prohibition of the liquor traffic ; you cannot hope to get people to observe the law. While I believe the provision is a good one, inasmuch as it would prevent people from hir-


George William Fowler: ing every farmer in a constituency to work on election day, including his team, it is open to the objection that it will not be observed by the general public. They do not regard it as bribery or as any offence, and you will never be able to make people believe that it is bribery unless you take a whole constituency and pay all the farmers in it to work on election day and to bring out their teams. The Minister of Justice says that he knows of a case in which an election was set aside because of the hiring of rigs. I think that the saving clause was always applied, and that the election was set aside, not because of the hiring of rigs, but because they had hired rigs in cases in which there was bribery. I would not extend the provision ; I would strike out this clause and get on with the Bill.


Mr. MILLER.: I quite agree with the member for Lincoln and Niagara (Mr. Lancaster) in supporting the amendment. I think a livery stable keeper is not influenced by the hiring of his rig to convey voters to the polls on election day. If a candidate wishes to influence the vote of a livery stable keeper he can do so by extending to him his patronage during the whole campaign up to the day of the election. As far as the voter is concerned, my hon. friend from Kings and Albert (Mr. Fowler) said that the voter is saved a financial outlay by being conveyed to the polls and that constitutes bribery. I do not think there is anything in that contention at all. The use of livery rigs is usually confined to the driving of voters to the polls in towns and cities. The hon. member for Kings and Albert has spoken of driving men ten miles to the polls. It is not a customary thing to use a livery rig or a borrowed conveyance to drive men ten miles to the polls, but rather in towns and cities to take to the polls people who are aged, or unwell, or who will not take the time to go to the poll. They are driven there in a few minutes and driven back. They are not likely to be bribed by any such free ride as that and the law provides that the candidate, or his agent, may by the candidate's own rig or by a borrowed rig, or a volunteered rig. drive voters to the polls whether it be half a mile or ten miles. If the voter is not likely to be bribed by being driven in the candidate's own rig or a borrowed rig he is not likely any more to be bribed by being driven in a rig that is hired. I do not think there is any danger of any abuse following the permitting of a livery stable keeper to let his rigs out at ordinary prices for the carrying of voters to the polls. I trust that the amendment will carry.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I have a suggestion which I think will remove all our difficulties in so far as section 10 is concerned, and which will be satisfactory to everybody. I would propose that from line twenty to line

twenty-six and the words ' polling place ' in line twenty-seven of section 10, as printed in the Bill, he struck out and that we substitute for these lines the following language :
Any person offending against any provision of section 270 or section 271, of this Act-
Then going on:
-at any election shall, ipso'facto, he disqualified from voting at such election.
Then we can settle the terms of sections 270 and 271, either taking them up immediately, or taking them up when we come to them in their order so that we may make tlie different sections correspond with each other.


Robert Laird Borden: I think that will remove the difficulty.


Charles Marcil: Is the amendment withdrawn?


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I would like to know what the effect of the minister's amendment is.


Robert Laird Borden: This merely transfers it to a subsequent section.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: My amendment will come up on the other section?


Robert Laird Borden: Yes.	-
Section as amended agreed to.
On section 11-Instructions to returning officers.


George Oscar Alcorn: The amendment which I propose to this section consists of a number of details, but details which appear to me to be of very considerable practical importance. They relate to the forms of the oaths, the instructions to the returning officers, the copies of the Act and other materials which are to be supplied to the returning officer and, by him, to the deputy returning officers. The amendment which I have moved has been before the House in the shape of a section of Bill (No. 80) for some months, and I assume that hon. members are reasonably well acquainted with it. I will, therefore, not make any extended remarks, but it appears to me that pursuant to that section of my Bill, section 11 of this Rill should be eliminated on the ground that it does not go far enough, that the matter of oaths which is of vast importance, should be made as clear and as certain, and the knowledge upon that subject as easily accessible, especially at election time, as it is possible to make it. The oaths both provincial and federal should be contained in the instructions and should be in the copies of the Act which are supplied to the deputy returning officers. This amendment which I propose would also provide that a limited number of these sheets containing all these forms of oaths should be on the table in the booth on election day and should be hung up in the
booth. These copies should be accessible to the public and should be stamped with authority as being supplied by the government for the purpose of the election and so should be promulgated officially. With regard to the proceedings upon election day,
I think there is no greater cause of uncertainty, of mystery, of doubt, confusion and error amongst electors and election officials than the matter of oaths, as to what oath is proper to be administered to different electors. Therefore, I think that some such amendment as I propose should be substituted for the clause in the Bill. For the purpose of bringing about absolute certainty I think an amendment is necessary because we have had what has been well known as the emasculated form of oath, where as every one knows the brebery clauses were absolutely eliminated and which form was used throughout our general elections. Any person called upon to take an oath could have truthfully taken the oath if he were twenty-one and a British subject, as it was submitted to him on that occasion. We should know and it should be easily ascertainable by any person not only on election day, but at all other times, what forms of oaths are to be used at the polls. Particularly members of this House should be so informed, and the amendment which I propose covers that point. Without reading the amendment, which is a long one, I shall hand it to you, Mr. Chairman.
At one o'clock, House took recess.
Committee resumed at three o'clock.


George Oscar Alcorn: I wish to add a few remarks to what I was saying before the committee rose, by way of calling attention more particularly to the provisions of this amendment, which may be found in the Votes and Proceedings of the 29th of June at page 1227. It deals first with section SO of the statute, and provides that the word ' one ' should be struck out where it secondly occurs in the fifth line of paragraph (b) and the word 'three' inserted in lieu thereof. That paragraph provides that the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery shall transmit to the returning officer one copy of the Act. I propose, for the purpose of convenience at the polls, to change that to three, so that the deputy will himself have one copy of the Act for reference, and each candidate or his agent at the poll shall have one complete copy. I further propose that there be added at the end of paragraph (b) these words :
Together with a sufficient number of detached copies of the said instructions, containing all the several forms of oaths referred in the next following section, to provide four of such copies to ibe given by the returning officer on the day of nomination to each candidate or his official agent, and four for the use at each polling place.

The effect of that would be that the candidate, who is frequently without information as to the forms of oath, will be supplied as early as nomination day with a reasonable number, to be given ho his agents, so that they may inform themselves on that head, and there will also be on the table at the poll four copies for the information of all persons there lawfully present. Then the amendment deals with section 81 by providing to repeal that section and to Substitute the following : -
The said instruction shall contain under appropriate headings, forms proper from time to time of all the provincial oaths of which, under section 153, an elector in the province in which the electoral district where the returning officer is to act is situate, may be called upon to take, and also of all other oaths which, under this Act, may be put to an elector.
There are other sections of the Act dealing, as in the case of aD illiterate voter, with other forms of oaths. The object is that all the oaths shall be collected under official imprimatur and issued officially, so that all the candidates and their agents may be liberally supplied with official information of that nature. The amendment then proceeds to provide that these provincial forms shall be made applicable to a Dominion election. Further, for the purpose of preserving evidence as to what are the authorized forms of oath, and to preserve it in such a form that it will be readily accessible to all people, I wish to introduce this amendment:
The said instructions, together with the forms therein referred to and the orders in council approving them, made conformable to the requirements of this Act, shall be published in the ' Canada Gazette' within one month next after the date of such orders in council and thereafter, when and so often as any change is made therein, in the issue of such ' Gazette ' next following the making of any orders affecting such change.
So that there will always be available in authoritative form information as to what oaths, both provincial and Dominion, are to be used for all purposes at an election. The amendment then provides that these forms of instruction and oaths and the orders in council relating thereto shall be laid on the table of the House within the first twenty days of the session after any change is made. Then section 109 of the Act is to be repealed, and it is provided that the returning officer shall furnish each deputy with three copies of the Act, the instructions and the forms of oath and a copy of the voters' list. Section 110 of the Act is amended by inserting after the word ' book ' in the third line the words ' four detached copies of the instructions mentioned in the preceding section containing,' That refers to the poll itself. The returning officer shall bring the detached copies of the instructions containing the


George Oscar Alcorn: forms of oaths to the poll and hand them to the people lawfully there. Further, he shall maintain, available for the use of all persons lawfully present dui-ing the time the poll is open, two copies of the Act, with accompanying instructions containing the forms of oaths. The object is to make a liberal provision for the dissemination of this Information on polling day to all people interested.
Mr. AYLEiSWORTH. Perhaps it would facilitate the consideration of the matter if I explained to the committee exactly how this clause comes to find a presence in the Bill under consideration. Every one will * remember the difficulties that occurred in the holding of our elections three or four years ago, especially in the province of Ontario, with reference to the form of oath which should be put to the voter. 1 need not go over that ground again. There was difficulty in following out the directions of section 153 of the statute, which prescribes what is to be done at the poll when a vote is challenged and the voter is required to be sworn. He shall take such oath of qualification as by the law of the province he may in a like case be required to take at a provincial election, and shall also, if so required, take the oath in form Y; and the first form was a form of oath which did not in terms cover the clauses as to having received or having paid money. That was something which was in all provincial Acts, and the difficulty was, in the view of some hon. gentlemen, that only one of these forms of oaths would be put in practice. When the by-elections were coming on last year this difficulty was attempted to be met. I took the responsibility, in discussing it with the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, or with his officials, to suggest, and indeed to, direct, that form of oath should be made up for the purposes of the by-election, which should incorporate upon one sheet of paper all the clauses which were in both of these oaths ; and that was done, although it did not possess any direct legislative Sanction. I have not heard at auy time that there was the least practical difficulty in the conducting of those by-elections, and 1 imagine that the form of oath prescribed was administered In every instance where any objection was taken to the voter. I wished to authorize that in terms, and accordingly, in preparing the amendment, X proposed a new section 153, which hon. gentlemen will find in section 15 of the Bill, prescribing one form of oath to be administered in all cases where an oath is required under the Act. To follow out that change in section 153 of the Act, it is necessary to adapt to it section 81, and that is the only reason I have for proposing any change at all in section 81. But to adapt it to the new section 153, section 81 has been framed so as to provide that the instructions which are to

be sent out to the various deputy returning officers shall contain the forms of oath which may be required under the new section 153 and the existing section 154, which is a special section as to oaths applicable in Prince Edward Island alone. The section goes on, just as the law now does, to provide that in the case of the returning officers in Prince Edward Island, these instructions are to be accompanied by the sections of the provincial law relating to the qualifications of voters, because those qualifications are of special character in the Island. My hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) moves to strike out the section and substitute something else. Section 11 would be necessary anyway unless we get back to the old difficulty about oaths which every one wants to avoid. Ought we to add the section my hon. friend proposes ? The principal effect is that not one copy alone of the pamphlet, in which the election law is bound up; shall be sent each deputy returning officer, but three copies, also a sufficient number-however many that may be -of detached copies of the instructions containing all the forms of oaths referred to in section 81 ; and to provide that four of such copies shall be given by the returning officer to each candidate or his official agent and four for use at each polling place.
See what is proposed. That four should go to each candidate-and there might be half a dozen candidates, though usually only two. That would be eight copies anyway. Then four for use at each polling place would he at least 160 more for each riding.	.


George Oscar Alcorn: Not copies of the Act but detached copies of the instructions.


Mr. AYLES  WORTH@: That is what I am speaking of. That will be 170 sets of these instructions for each of 221 ridings in the Dominion-a considerably large order. Then there are to be three copies of the Act sent each deputy returning officer. When this proposition appeared in the records of the House, it seems to have struck terror into the hearts of the officials. The first I heard about it was a letter of an official character which I received from Dr. Dawson, the King's Printer. That letter is as follows:
Sir,-I beg to submit to your consideration section 9 of Mr. Alcorn's Bill amending the Election Act and to point out that if that section is made law it will throw an immense volume of apparently unnecessary printing and distribution upon the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery.
As the matter stands now he sends two copies of his pamphlet of instructions, together with the Act, to each returning officer, and one copy for each deputy returning officer. That distribution calls for a supply of 10,000 copies. Mr. Alcorn's Bill would call for the distribution of 120,000 pamphlets, 30,000 of the instructions with the Act, and 90,000 of the instructions with the forms of oath.
I beg to submit that the getting out of this printing under this section during the short and busy term preceding an election would be very onerous. At the time of the general election there will be an immense quantity of printing which must necessarily be done and it would seem inadvisable to add to the immense mass of preliminary work such an increase as the section calls for. If, indeed, it were necessary there would be some reason, but no inconvenience has hitherto arisen in the supply at present provided for.
I beg respectfully to submit the matter to your consideration.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,



S. E. DAWSON,

[Stage Direction]
King's Printer and Controller of Stationery.
Hon.  A. B.@: Aylesworth,
Minister of Justice.
Later the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery was heard from, and probably this is one of the last official pieces of business which the late Mr. Lamothe did :
Ottawa, April 1, 1908.
Sir,-I beg to call your attention to section 9 of Mr. Alcorn's Bill (No. 80) having reference to the transmission of instructions, &c., to returning officers.
As the law now stands, I send to every returning officer a sufficient number of copies of my pamphlet (comprising the instructions, the Elections Act and the forms, &c.) to supply one copy for himself, one for his election clerk and one for every poll. This sums up to a total of about 10,000 pamphlets, and as the pamphlets weigh each a trifle under one half pound, the weight of the pamphlets alone is about two and one-half tons. To this must be added all the other supplies, such as poll books, forms, envelopes, &c., &e., requiring about 300 large mail bags to contain them, and making in all a weight of about 15,000 pounds, or seven and one-half tons.
Mr. Alcorn proposes to make it three copies of the pamphlet instead of one for each poll, or, in other words, to add five tons to the two and a half for the pamphlets alone. It is also proposed to send a sufficient number of ' detached copies of said instructions, containing all the forms of oaths, &c., to provide four of such copies for each candidate, and four for each poll.
I fear there is some misunderstanding as regards the so-called ' instructions.' They simply direct the attention of the returning officers to the different sections of the Election Act which bear upon their duties, and to send, these instructions, without the Act itself, would give no information whatever. The addition of the forms of oaths to the so-called instructions would only add to the confusion.	.	,	,, ,
Under Mr. Alcorn s proposal it would be necessary to send out two pamphlets; one containing the instructions, the Elections Act and the forms, the other, the instructions and the forms only, without the Act: in round numbers say 30,000 of the first kind and 40,000 of the second. So that instead of some 300 mail bags, I would be obliged to send out about 700 or 800.	,,
I need not say anything about the enormous amount of extra printing that this

would entail, nor of the labour, the time or expenditure required. The attempt might he worth mating if any advantage were to he gained, but I respectfully submit that none would be obtained.
As the law now stands every poll is supplied with a copy of the pamphlet, comprising the instructions, the Elections Act and the forms, which the candidates, their agents or others, have every facility for examining and consulting, and there has never been any complaint upon this score. This is surely a more convenient and less cumbersome arrangement than for the candidates to carry four copies about in their pockets. As for this second pamphlet proposed, i.e., the instructions, without the Act. but with the forms, as I have said above, it would convey no information and would therefore be so much waste paper.
Coming now to section 10 of the same Bill

That is the part of the proposition my hon. friend has now made.
-and the proposed amendment to section 81 of the Elections Act, ' The said instructions shall contain under appropriate headings forms proper from time to time of all the provincial oaths which, under section 153, &c., Ac/ The pamphlet containing the instructions never contained the provincial oaths. These simply accompanied the pamphlet.
_ The pamphlet is sent to every constituency in the Dominion, but it is obvious that to send the Ontario provincial oaths to Quebec, or Nova Scotia oaths to New Brunswick and so on, would be not only useless but confusing. To encumber the pamphlet by inserting the oaths of all the provinces would not only increase its bulk very materially, but would also involve the transmission of the oath forms of all the provinces to every constituency, making it more confusing for the deputy returning officers. Then again, as the provincial oaths may be changed yearly wiith provincial legislation, T would be obliged to bring out a new edition of the pamphlet with every such change. Any alteration in the form of oath for one province, which would not affect any of the other provinces, would necessitate a new pamphlet for the whole Dominion. In addition to this, as the forms of provincial oaths are always revised by the Department of Justice on the eve of a general election, there would not be time to print a new edition of the pamphlet, containing the forms of oaths so revised, in time for use at the general election.
The remainder of the letter, which I shall be glad to lay on the table If any hon. member desires It, relates to his own status as an official of the House and does not concern this matter. It seems to me that these objections are practical objections taken by the officials who understand the practical working of this Act. They make it very manifest that it would not be advisable to make such change In the law as the hon. gentleman is proposing.


Samuel Barker: I notice that the officials are dealing with this question as if the only parties concerned in an election were the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery and return-Mr. AYLESWORTH.
ing officer, and perhaps deputy returning officer. The gentleman who writes that letter points out that he furnishes quite sufficient material to the returning officer and the deputy returning officer. But he overlooks the fact-and a very important fact- that in an election -the candidates and their agents want to know the law, and particularly they want to know the affidavits that are to be used with the voters. To say that your sending out a copy to the deputy returning officer does not at all help the candidates who want to tell their agents what the law is, what they are entitled to, what they are entitled to call for, and what the affidavits to be administered are. Now we have had some experience of the law as administered by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. In *1901, the forms of affidavit were sent out correctly. They used for the province of Ontario, and I think, for every other province, the oath including the clauses that were proper to be in the oath for a Dominion election. But when we came to 1904 we found that that affidavit has been altered, and so far as I have been able to learn, up to the present time, that change was made without authority. The instructions were sent out as usual, and a form of affidavit with the instructions. Now, the first thing, as I understand It, asked for by this amendment is that the instructions should be made and approved by order in council, that the forms to be used shall be published in the ' Canada Gazette,' and that every year at the opening of parliament these forms should be laid on the table of the House,-the object being that the people shall know what are the forms and procedure under which the elections are held. Had that been the law in 1904 no man would have dared to make the alteration in the affidavit making what has been called the ' emasculated affidavit.' I myself saw Mr. Lamothe, Clerk of the Crown in Chancery on that subject. I told him that the affidavit of 1901 had been altered. He said : ' No, there has been no alteration we have never had any other form than that we have now ; there has been no alteration whatever.' But I told him that the form of 1901 contained all the clauses and that of 1904 contained only' five out of seven or eight Clauses ; and I produced the papers. And no man was ever more startled or astonished than the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery when he found that he was using a different form than that he was supposed to be using. How that form came into his possession no man knows, or ever will know ; but there had been a change effected by some means-there is no question about that. That change had been made when this question was up on the first occasion in the House. The leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) had in his possession the form of 1901, also the form of 1904, when they omitted from the form of the affidavit sent out with the instructions.

the clauses which were to be in what is called Form Y. The result was that the deputy returning officers took the form of oath issued and administered that oath, which did not contain * word about bribery, or hiring teams. And it was not until we discovered the defect in the affidavit that, in Hamilton, at any rate, the returning officer caused the whole oath to be printed so that we could administer that oath. The very fact that that could happen is the strongest possible reason for demanding that the instructions and forms shall be approved by order in council openly and above board, and shall be laid on the table of the House and published in the ' Canada Gazette.' We want no more emasculated oaths. The Minister of Justice in 1905, for by-elections to try and cure the evil done in 1904. They tried it then, but there had been the general elections in 1904, and there had been byelections in 1905 where the emasculated form had been used.
We should not run the risk of them being used again. Mr. Lamotbe believed there would be no change in the forms he was using and yet there was a change. How was that accomplished ? When it was discussed in this House the then Minister of Justice said he had inquired of the Secretary of State whether any change had been made. The Secretary of State said no change had been made, the same old form would be used. Yet that was not true. He was in the same position as Mr. Lamothe, he did not say how that had been accomplished. Some other hand than that of the government or the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery had been in that business and the emasculated form had been put in and was used throughout the whole general election of 1904, certainly throughout Ontario and I believe in Quebec and other provinces. Is that not ample justification for the most strict requirements as to the adoption of what are called the instructions, the adoption and settlement of the forms of affidavit, I do not know what could render it more necessary to be absolutely taken care of. The Minister of Justice seems to think that under this amendment we are asking that in each province the forms of oaths to be used in all the other provinces should be sent. If that happens to be the reading of this amendment it is evidently not what is contemplated. What I understand the amendment to mean is that for Ontario you should send the precise form of oath to be used in that province and that the same thing should be done in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or any other province. Thus if the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery is frightened at the amount of paper he will have to send out he will have a very material alteration or reduction in that respect. But what is the cost or the trouble to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery as compared with safety in the conduct of our elections ? He speaks of
the time and labour that would be involved. My own obervation is that is would be a great deal better for the country if the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery had more work to do than he has. Apparently between elections that office has been in the habit of going to sleep and I do not think we can do any harm by giving them a little more work to do. At all events nothing can be wasted in the shape of care to see that everything in connection with the elections is absolutely safe and beyoud suspicion.
To speak of a little expense and a little trouble to the Clerk of the Crown in Chan-very or to say that four copies of the statute are too many to supply at the nomination to a candidate for parliament is absurd. In order to supply myself in the city of Hamilton with a sufficient number I have written to the King's Printer aud bought 20 copies out of my own pocket. Why should not every candidate have at least four copies of the statute relating to the elections V It is essential to the candidate to have the law in his hand and copies should be supplied in reasonable numbers. The instructions are absolutely necessary for him in order that he may know how to conduct his election within the law and to say that a little expense in furnishing those instructions is to stand in the way, seems to me ridiculous in a matter so important.


George Oscar Alcorn: If the officer who wrote one of these letters, I have no doubt a very efficient officer, had taken the trouble to examine the Bill which he was assuming to criticise he would not have made tile mistake he did in speaking of sending the oaths applicable to one province into another, and so seeking to bring the proposition contained in this amendment into disrepute. At the foot of page 1227 of the votes and proceedings of June 29, is the section relating to that:
81. The said instructions shall contain under appropriate headings forms proper from time to time of all the provincial oaths of which, under sections 153 and 154 an elector in the province in which the electoral district where the returning officer is to act is situate, may be called upon to take.
Thus restricting the forms to be sent to those applicable to the province to which they are sent. Then as regards the enormous expense foreshadowed it seems to me that if the government would curtail a little the really enormous expense which they incur in a vast mass of useless printing and advertising done elsewhere than in the Printing Bureau amounting to some $23,000 last year they would not be at all alarmed at the proposal which I have made.
As to the extra literature and his reference to the number of mail bags he now sends and the number he would be called upon to s6nd under this proposal, we witness daily the dispatch from the departments of a vastly larger number of mail bags filled

I understand with campaign literature, franked from the departments of the government. If that practice were curtailed the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery would not find the task imposed upon him so enormous.


Mr. AYLES  WORTH@: The subject discussed by the hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Barker) is one certainly well known in this House. It was a subject of prolonged debate before I became a member. I have read what was urged in the course of those debates by the hon. member and other members of this House and the answer which was at that time made by the Minister of Justice my predecessor, and I must say, speaking of the matter as one of law, that my view entirely concurs with that expressed by my predecessor, and that there was nothing of an illegal character done in connection with the election {o which reference had been made. By section 153 of our present Act every voter on being required to be sworn is before receiving his ballot paper to
Take such oath of qualification

And I lay stress upon the word ' qualification.'
-as by the law of the province he may in the like case at a provincial election be required to take.
So far so good. There is something else, however, in the section.
And he shall also, if so required, take the oath in form Y.
If you refer to form ' Y ' of this statute, it is called, to start with, an oath not of qualification but of disqualification, an oath that the voter is not disqualified under the Dominion Elections Act and the two things are manifestly separate things, the qualification of the voter that he is a British subject, that he is of the full age of twenty-one years, that he is the person named by the name of John Smith, on the voters' list. The absence of disqualification, namely, that he has not been disfranchised, that he has not voted previously, that he has not been paid anything is another and entirely different thing. Our statute, section 153, provided that in so far as qualification was concerned, the oath should be the provincial oath adapted to the purposes of the Dominion, but in so far as disqualification was concerned which included the denial of bribery, the oath should be the prescribed form ' Y.' Oaths of qualification vary in the different provinces; the oath of disqualification is uniform over all. The oaths which were sent out were sent out on separate forms. The hon. gentleman seems to think that this work, which is of the purest departmental character belonging to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, is regulated and directed by order in council solemnly passed after discussion in council and receiving His Mr. ALCORN.
Excellency's approval. It is the ordinary routine work of the 'Clerk of the Crown in Chancery which he discharges under ordinary circumstances as an officer of this House without reference to any minister, and, speaking entirely as a matter of presumption, because it is something I do not know anything about, I have no doubt that the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery acted without any direction from any member of the cabinet. There was no reason why he should resort to any person whatever for directions as to his duty. His duty was to send out to each particular province the form of the qualification oath proper to that province and to have nothing to do in so far as each particular province was concerned with the forms of qualification oaths for any other province, but to send out to all the provinces, as supplementary to the provincial forms of qualification oaths, the disqualification form of oath which is uniform throughout the Dominion and which contains the denial of bribery clauses. He did that. If at any poll in any province any voter was asked to take only one of these oaths that was the choice or the fault of the person who asked him to be sworn.	The law was precise that
the voter must, if he were required to do it, take the form which contains denial of bribery clauses which form applies to all the provinces. A person objecting had a perfect right to ask that only the qualification oath be put if he wanted that. It is quite conceivable that if a young man came to cast his first vote the only objection to his vote night be that he was not of age and it is also quite conceivable that a person objecting would not want to subject that young man to the indignity of taking the oath against bribery when he might desire to put to him only the oath which my hon. friend calls the emasculated form of oath, only the oath of the provincial requirements as to qualification. A man might be objected to because he was supposed not to be a British subject, and if he were objected to only on that ground there would be no occasion to put to him the oath which contained the denial of bribery clauses. On the contrary, if anybody wished a voter to take both forms of oath, he had the right to have that done under the law as it fins stood for years and distinctly, under these circumstances, as has been pointed out over and over again in this House, there was no ground for complaint in so far as the officials who were conducting the elections were concerned. The hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Barker) called attention last year, not long before prorogation, to this matter. He made at that time a strong speech; no doubt he has to-day made a speech of the same character in regard to this matter of complaint. He was assured at that time that in the coming by-elections for the vacancies which then existed in the House the matter would be attended to.


Samuel Barker: What I am contending for is that it ought not to be necessary to have any such assurances. The law ought to provide for it.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: It was not necessary to give any such assurances. There was, in fact, no need to do that which was done except to remove the possibility of complaint such as the hon. gentleman was making. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding), who was at that time leading the House, gave to the hon. gentleman the assurance that the matter would be looked into and that if there was anything needed to be done to put it beyond question that thing would he done. During the recess I made it my business to confer with the late Clerk of the Crown in Chancery and to work out a way in which it would not he possible for anybody to go wrong if there had been any going wrong before. In doing that I took the responsibility of going beyond what the law, as it stood then and stands to-day, permitted. The law, as it stood then, left it open to any person objecting to the polling of a vote to lequire that only one of these two oaths had to be taken. The forms which the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, with my acquiesence and approval, sent out last summer did not comply with the strict letter of the law, but they put these two forms of oath into one, and any person who was asked to be sworn last summer, I presume, took that form of oath although a person taking objection might, under the law, have insisted that the denial of bribery clauses should not be put to him if his vote was not challenged on that ground. To prevent there being any misunderstanding about it in the future it seemed to me that it would be proper to put the law into such shape that the amalgamation of the two forms would be authorized by statute.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: In revising this election law it seems to me that we ought to make it as clear and simple as possible. 1 have had a good deal to contend with about the oath, and I share the opinion of my hon. friend from Hamilton (Mr. Barker) that it should be changed. I have spoken of it before in the House. In my own county the deputy returning officer at one poll was using a sheet of paper which purported to contain the provincial oath. It became known very quickly in the place that this oath was simply a declaration that a man was a British subject, twenty-one years of age and that he had not voted before at the election on that day. In a city, probably more than anywhere else, an oath of that kind would not go far enough. As soon as I became acquainted with the fact I went to the poll and asked the deputy returning officer why he was using that form of oath and he replied that he was doing so in compliance with the instructions he had received from the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. He
said that he had found that form in the box.
I then took the Act and showed him form ' Y,' but he refused to use it. He said that his instructions were to use the sheet of paper that he had received. Fortunately the returning officer happened to be in the place at the time. I went to him, be understood the situation and he came over and told the deputy returning officer to use form ' Y ' of the statute, which is not altogether the proper form, but which is better than the one which had been administered. I do not understand why we should not have one form of oath like that which was used in former years in which a voter made the declaration that he was twenty-one years of age, a British subject, that he had not voted before and that he had not received anything which, as I understand, is the bribery clause. If the Minister of Justice desires it he might have the two forms of oath consolidated into one. But the distribution of these fly-sheets does more harm than good. There should be a sufficient number of copies of the statutes printed and circulated to place one in the hands of every candidate and every agent of a candidate and every man officially connected with the votation. Indeed, it would be no harm to send a copy of this Act to every elector of the Dominion of Canada so that he might be informed as to how he should cast his vote properly. I think the proposition made by the hon. member (Mr. Alcorn) should be accepted.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The letter of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery points out the impracticability of prescribing in the statute a uniform oath. The qualification of the voter varies in every province in the Dominion and the oath which would be applicable in one province would not be applicable in another.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: But all the provinces have uniformity in the oath with respect to the voter being 21 years of age, being a British subject, and that he has not already voted in that election on that day.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: There are some features that are common to these oaths in the various provinces but in the matter of details the oaths of no two provinces are alike. For instance, in Ontario there are references to the qualification at the dates of the revision of the lists. That difficulty arises and I imagine the law is framed as it is to provide of necessity that we shall take the oaths of the provinces just as we take the franchise of the provinces. As to the absence of bribery and disqualification, the oaths with reference to these are of course uniformly set out in our own law.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Why not start out with the idea that a man's name being on the voter's list is prima facie evidence that he is entitled to a vote? I do not see there can

be any difficulty with regard to that part of the oath which refers to the age of the voter, his citizenship, and the fact that he has not already voted in that election. The Minister of Justice referred to the dates of the electoral lists. Let me tell him that in the election in Nicolet in 1905 in some parishes the list used was that which was made up in the previous fall and in other parishes the list used was the list prepared a year before. The new list for those parishes not having been accepted. Notwithstanding that different lists were used in that very same county it does not appear to have been a cause for voiding the election of Mr. Devlin. If we accept the fact that a man's name being on the list he is entitled to vote, then all we have to do is to provide an oath as to his being of age, as to his citizenship, and as to his not having voted before in that election. Formerly the two oaths were on the same form and there was never any complaint about it so far as I know. The practice then was that the agent of the candidate might ask the returning officer to administer only the part of the oath which he thought necessary and this was found to be very convenient. We were told yesterday by the Minister of Justice that it was very difficult to obtain suitable men to act as deputy returning officers all over the Dominion in a general election, and that in itself is a very good reason why the law should be made as simple as possible. I might also say to the minister and to the House that I would be very glad to see the day when so far as this parliament is concerned, the franchise and everything connected with it should be uniform throughout the Dominion.


William Humphrey Bennett: In the Ontario form of oath there is the provision that the voter may be asked to swear that he is a voter in this electoral district, but that could not be applicable to the province of Quebec where a man can vote in several different constituencies on the same day.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: In consequence of that there is a provision in the form of oath used in Quebec which asks the voter to declare that he has not voted in that same constituency at any other poll in that election, but of course he may have voted in other constituencies where he was qualified.


William Humphrey Bennett: In Ontario the voter has to swear that he is a resident of the electoral district.


Mr.   CLARICE@: He must swear he was a resident in the locality when the list was made out.


William Humphrey Bennett: The point is that in Ontario you must be a resident of the electoral district on the day of voting, whereas in Quebec you may vote in any number of different ridings provided you have a property qualification in each.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: 


Robert Laird Borden: The Minister of Justice has referred to the preparation of instructions as being a matter of absolutely and purely departmental regulations by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. I do not think his view is borne out by the statute. Instructions to returning officers are provided for in itwo sections of the Act as it is at present. One of these is section 81, subsection (b) of which provides that 'the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery shall transmit to the returning officer one copy of this Act and of such instructions approved by the Governor in Council as are required to carry out the election according to the provisions of this Act.' The other section to which I refer is section 34, which relates to the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and the Yukon Territory, and which provides that ' one copy of this Act, with such instructions as are approved by the Governor in Council and as are necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act, shall be transmitted to the returning officer.' The instructions are therefore a much more formal matter than the Minister of Justice seems to imagine ; and the whole object of this amendment is to make it absolutely plain and clear to returning officers and deputy returning officers throughout the country, who are not professional men and may not have very much opportunity of making themselves familiar with the statutes, what oath they shall administer, so that there may be no such failure in the administration of the law as has been pointed out on many occasions in this House by the hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Barker).


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I am not sure that I can make this matter as plain to my hon. friend from Beauharnois as if he and I were sitting down together looking at the same document ; but let me try to do it across the floor of the House. I take the province of Ontario for illustration, but I have no doubt that the same peculiarities are to be found in each of the other provinces. In the province of Ontario we have three separate and distinct forms of oaths applicable to three large classes of votes, and there are variations engrafted on each of these three forms. The first form is the general oath which is applicable to the average voter

the farmer, the mechanic, the man who lives in his own house or who rents his house. The second is applicable to the man who does not own any property at all, who is entitled to vote simply because he lives in the province and registers in the cities under the head of manhood suffrage. The third is applicable to the voter in the unorganized territories. My hon. friend will see how impossible it is to apply these oaths to any other province than to Ontario or some other province that has the same method of conferring the franchise. The ordinary voter has to swear, if he is asked to take the oath, not only that he is the person

named in the list and that he is a British subject over 21 years of age, but also something special as to residence, namely, that he has resided within the Dominion for the nine months next preceding a certain date, that date being the date which, by the law of the particular municipality in which he happens to live, is the last day for returning the assessment roll. That is a date which is certified to the deputy returning officer by the clerk of the municipality; and when a man to whom this oath is applicable comes to vote, and is required to take the oath, he has to swear that for nine months before that particular day he lived in the Dominion of Canada, and further that he resided within the Dominion for the twelve months next before the date which was the last day for making complaints to the county judge under the Voters' l.ist Act ; and further, that he was on that date in good faith a resident of the municipality on the list for which his name is entered ; and, finally, that he has resided in the electoral district continuously from that day forward, and that he now lives therein. These are conditions of residence which are applicable to a large class of voters in Ontario, but which are probably not required in any other province of the Dominion. They may be required in Manitoba or in the west, but I imagine that they are not required in Quebec at all. I think residence in the electoral district is not required there. I do not know what the law is in the maritime provinces. There are slightly different requirements as to residence in the case of the man who does not own property, but votes under the registration for manhood suffrage in cities. In the last place, there are different requirements as to residence in regard to voters in the unorganized territories. Then, there are variations engrafted on each of these three classes. For instance, a clergyman or a schoolmaster is privileged in regard to residence. Now, we could not, unless we were to set aside at a stroke all our existing rules as to the method of conducting our elections, use^one form of oath which would cover all these varying conditions in the different provinces of the Dominion. We could not make ithe oath of qualification uniform. The utmost we can do is to make the oath of disqualification uniform, as we have done in form 'Y,' and we might also, if there were any point in it, make uniform the additional requirements as to being a British subject and being 21 years of age. But the other details, so long as we accept the provincial franchises of the different provinces, we shall have to leave to be adapted to the varying circumstances of each province.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: I want to emphasize what I said a moment ago. Why do we not accept the list in every province as given to us by the authority of that province ? In the province of Quebec the list, after it is
made up, is deposited with the registrar of the county. By him it is sent certified to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery in Ottawa. That is the list for Quebec, and a man whose name is on it is entitled to vote, unless he is under 21 years of age or is not a British subject. All the other qualifications we have nothing to do with ; we take the list as it is. Why do wTe not do the same thing for every other province ? If we do that, we are not encroaching on ithe provinces ; we are accepting their lists as they make them. Then all we would have to do would be to put these three questions : Are you twenty-one years of age ? Are you a British subject ? Have you voted at this election ?
'Mr. BENNETT. In Ontario the Act provides that you must live in the riding on the day you prefer your vote. If you have moved from another riding you lose your vote, even though your name be on the list in the riding you moved from.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: The man would only vote once anyway.


William Humphrey Bennett: He cannot vote at all. If he is on the list in one riding and has moved from that riding into another, he cannot go back to the riding where he is on the list and vote there.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Before this Bill is through, we shall probably have some little discussion about that. I would be willing that we should establish the principle all over the Dominion of one man one vote. That would do away with a great deal of difficulty. In reply to my hon. friend from Simcoe (Mr. Bennett), I would say that we have the right to provide that should a man be on the list in Toronto but have left that city and gone to another, where he is not on the list, he should not be deprived of the right to vote. He should be given the right to vote either in the one place or in the other, but be allowed to vote only once. Suppose he voted in Hamilton and then went to Toronto where he has his domicile, lie would be asked : Have you voted this day at the elections ? That would prevent his voting more than once. All that the Ontario law desires is that a man should only vote once. AVe ought to have only one form of vote and make that as clear and simple as possible. But if we follow this section out to the end, we will have any amount of sheets of paper. Suppose the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery or any official were a little absent minded, he might fill up the boxes for Ontario with the papers for Quebec or vice versa, and you would then have a fine state of confusion. Suppose the boxes for my county were filled up with papers for a county in Ontario, that might be the cause of annulling the election afterwards. If you can provide that one oath will cover the whole thing and have

that in the statute, you will simplify matters a good deal.


Samuel Barker: There need be no trouble about the oath question if the government will take the trouble to carry out the statute as it is. The government are directed to settle by order in council the instructions for carrying out the elections in the various provinces and it is expressly stated that they must include in those instructions for each province the form of oath to be administered. But what do they do ? They send out a form of oath covering what the Minister of Justice calls the qualification clauses, and then they ask the deputy returning officers to find the rest of the oath from the statute. It was owing to that confusion that all the trouble arose before. When the government in council were settling the form of oath to be sent out with the instructions, why did they not take the qualification oath and send that out and add the other sections from clause 7 ? They would then be sending the returning officers a complete form of oath. They are doing that now, but simply because the Minister of Finance said he would do it. Why did they not follow out the clear requirements of the statute and prepare the entire oath, giving not merely the qualification clauses but also the clauses in form 7? The trouble arose from this: When a deputy returning officer received from the Clerk of the Crown the form of oath with five clauses in it, he said : This is the oath I have to administer, I have nothing to do with anything else, and the result was the bribery clauses were not administered. We want the form of oath which is to be administered in Ontario to contain the whole oath that a voter should take. You should not have a form issue, as the forms have been issued by the Clerks of the Crown in Chancery, headed: 'To be administered to the voter in Ontario.' Naturally the deputy returning officer said that is all the oath I have to do with. There is the form and there are my instructions under the order in council. I will administer that oath and nothing else. Then some one says to him : Here is the statute, you must administer the form provided in that, he would reply : No, I will act on my instructions. The duty of the government is to frame an entire oath, including the qualification clauses and the terms of form 7. The returning officer gets that in one printed form and has no excuse for making a mistake. But if the clause proposed by my bon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) were adopted, we would have laid upon the table every session the instructions and forms which the government were using and we would not find after the election that a mutilated form had been used.


Mr. DUGAS.: (Translation.) The hon. member for Beauharnois (Mr. Bergeron) is needlessly alarmed when he calls for a Mr. BERGERON.
form of oath restricting to three only, the questions to be put to the voters, that is a form of oath which would give leave to ask a voter if he is a British subject, if he is twenty-one years of age, and whether he has voted at this election. Had the hon. member seen article 143, of the Quebec Electoral Act of 1903, he would have noticed that it is utterly feasible. Article 143 sets forth a complete form of oath. There are few questions which can be put to a voter. Article 144 qualifies the former in the following words :
The person requiring the oath may declare that he intends that one or some only of the questions mentioned in the above form be put to the elector, and, in that case, the deputy returning officer puts only that or those questions so indicated.
Therefore, I believe that the remarks which the hon. member from Beauharnois has just made, specially when applied to the province of Quebec, are groundless. What he calls for already exists in that province.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: What the hon. member for Hamilton is contending for is exactly the change which the Bill makes in the law. Under the existing law this parliament gave to every man who objected to a voter at the poll the privilege of putting to that man either oath from 1 or from 2. He might prefer to have put to him only one, and that was what he had the privilege of doing. I am proposing to change that. I am proposing to take away that privilege from the man objecting, and to put the law into such a form that if a man objects to a voter and requires him to be sworn at all that voter shall necessarily take the bribery oath. If the hon. member will look at section 15 of this Bill he will see that the effect is to require every elector, if he is compelled to take any oath at all, to take the provincial oath of qualification, ' there being added to such oath, or substituted therein for any clauses dealing, with the like matters or any of them, the clauses set forth in form Y.' So that the wish of the hon. member from East Hamilton (Mr. Barker) is being accomplished by this change, though I point out to the committee that it is forcing, it may be, upon one good neighbour as against another the necessity for submitting his neighbour to the indignity of taking the denial of bribery oath, when, very possibly, the man who objected to his vote had no wish in the world to have that .oath put to him.


Samuel Barker: I repeat that I am not discussing section 15, but the clause proposed by the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn), that you shall lay upon the table of the House yearly the forms and

instructions you are going to issue to tlie returning officer and the deputy returning officers, the form of oath to be administered to a voter. What I say is that the form should contain the whole oath.


Mr. FINLAYSON.: That fs provided for under this.


Samuel Barker: The forms issued by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery under order in council and settled by order in council did not contain this extra clause.


James Conmee: Would that not be provided for if this came into force?


Samuel Barker: What the hon. member for Prince Edward wants is that we shall have the right to see on the table of this House every year the forms as settled by order in council, so that we can see that they are correct forms and not, as they were before, incorrect forms. *


George Oscar Alcorn: We have had a very long discussion bearing upon the forms of oath, but that is a subject not touched by the motion before the chair. That motion is for the supply for election purposes of'certain pamphlets and forms provided by the statute, including the forms of oaths which happen to be at the time in use. And the object is that there may be the fullest possible publicity to all concerned as to the forms of oath. The motion does not touch these forms of oaths, however. The committee has rather got away from the terms of the motion under discussion.
Amendment (Mr. Alcorn) negatived : Yeas, 26 ; nays, 39.
On section 13,
13. The said Act is amended by inserting therein as section 150a, the following:
150a. Where any separate voters' list has been prepared by the returning officer under section 25 of this Act and any person applies to vote whose name appears on the general list from which such separate list has been prepared but whose name has been omitted from the separate list, the deputy returning officer, in addition to placing his initials on tlie back of the ballot paper as provided by this Act, shall also place on the back thereof a number corresponding to a number placed opposite such person's name in the poll book, and such person, having taken the oath in the form XI and, if required, the oaths prescribed by this Act, shall thereupon be entitled to receive such numbered ballot paper and to vote.


Samuel Barker: I wish to move an amendment to this section, of -which I have already given notice. The objection to this section 13, I suppose, everybody will approve. The name of a voter is occasionally omitted from the copy of the list sent to the deputy returning officer, although his name is on the general list. Of course, it will be unfair and improper that by a clerical error of that kind any man should lose his vote. This position is intended to enable the citizen in that case to vote. But I see objections to the wording of the clause. A man presents himself at the polling booth, or is brought there-as is usual in many cases-by his party friends. He tells the deputy returning officer that, though his name is not on the list before the deputy returning officer, it is on the general list, aud he demands the right to vote. According to this he can vote. How does the deputy returning officer know that that man's name is on the general list? The deputy returning officer, seeing a friend coming up, perhaps a party friend, will be content to say : If you take the oath I will allow you to vote. To another he may say the opposite. Now, what I ask is to amend this so that after the word ' person ' in the third line there shall be inserted :
Having deposited with the deputy returning officer a certificate signed by the returning officer that such person's name does appear on the general list and has been erroneously omitted from the separate list, and

It then proceeds with the words of the section, ' having taken the oath,' and so on.


James Conmee: How is the returning officer to know that the man's name is on the list?


Samuel Barker: Because he has the general list.


James Conmee: But the discovery may not be made in time. The voter may be fifty or a hundred miles away from the returning officer.


Samuel Barker: As a matter of practice and a matter of fact, it is well known these men who discover their names are off the list do invariably go to the returning officer or to headquarters to see that they are on the general list.


James Conmee: I have known eases where it has only been discovered practically on the day of the election. In that case, where the man was away a great distance, that would not affect very many voters.
Mr. BARKER, What I contend for is that we should not, in trying to relieve some man of an unfortunate clerical error, open the door to possible frauds. In a close election, in a hard fight, men may be brought up and, assert that they were on the general list, a friendly deputy can say :	All right,
you take this oath and I will allow you to vote.


James Conmee: May I suggest instead of requiring the voter to produce a certificate from the returning officer that the deputy returning officer be furnished with the list and he can himself ascertain whether the man is on. He is furnished only with a list from the clerk of the peace and he goes on that list for his particular division he can have the list for the municipality.


Samuel Barker: The hon. gentleman apparently does not know what he is discussing. The deputy is only furnished with the portion of the list for his own division, the general list contains all the divisions. In copying it sometimes happens that a man's name may be left off. That is usually discovered by the man himself or by the party, it is looked after pretty clearly, they go to the returning officer to see the general list and make sure the man is there because if he is not there, no matter how well he may be entitled to foe put on the list, he cannot be put on, it is too late. But if he is there mid is satisfied he is there and entitled to vote, let him get a certificate and go and vote. The oath is :
You swear that you are legally qualified to vote at this election

Any man that you bring up to a poll who has lived in the country believes he is legally qualified to vote, he thinks he ought to be on the list if he is not. Hardly a man will hesitate to take that oath.
-that you are	of	, that
you verily believe your name should have been placed oil the list of voters prepared for use at this poll.
Any ordinary man will take that oath, he can be easily satisfied that he should be on. He does not swear he is on the list but simply that he is qualified to vote. Unless we have a provision for a certificate from the returning officer there will be great danger of fraud and a not over scrupulous deputy returning officer can allow some men to get in by being very careless or indifferent as to the evidence they have that the man is really on the list.


Mr. CLARKE.: I think something of the sort suggested might be done, but I can very well see that the remedy proposed will defeat the object of the section. Let me illustrate with a case in my own riding, the incorporated village of Tilbury. That village was formerly partly in Essex and partly in Kent, but when it was incorporated as & village it was attached to Kent for judicial purposes. It still remains as before for electoral purposes, that is to say one-half which is situated in Essex is in the riding [DOT]of Essex and the other half is in West Kent. Under section 25 of the Act it is necessary for the returning officer to select from the list for the village the names of those who are to vote in' one riding and in the other. He has to get his information in the best way he can. The electors do not know ou which side they will be put until they go to vote, when they find they are in Kent or Essex. They are on the municipal list, but they may not have a right to vote, they must swear that they are in that electoral district.


Samuel Hughes: Do they not vote where the municipal list sends them ?


James Conmee: 


Edward Frederick Clarke: No, a part of even one polling subdivision may be in a different riding, they do not know until they go to vote. The returning officer is forty miles away so it is impossible to get a certificate from him. It would disfranchise the people if they had to go forty miles to get a certificate.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: According to the Act in Ontario those who reside on the side belonging to Kent would be voters of Kent and those who reside on the side belonging to Essex would be voters of Essex, because in Ontario you vote where you reside ; there should be no difficulty about that.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Yes, that could be, because they have to swear where they reside at the time the list was made up. The returning officer may have made a mistake and put them on the wrong side. That is the reason, I presume, why section 25 was passed because the returning officer might put a voter in a division where he should not be, and therefore he is not entitled to vote unless he can ask for a ballot at the poll, as this section provides, and he tenders this ballot. If he has to get a certificate he cannot vote if the returning officer has made the mistake.


Samuel Hughes: How can he get a ballot if he does not reside in that riding ?


Edward Frederick Clarke: I want him to vote in the riding he is entitled to vote in, but the returning officer may have put him in the other riding.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Can you not pass an Act of parliament saying the village shall be in Kent or Essex ?	.


Edward Frederick Clarke: It is not that village alone, there are many others. I have another amendment providing that moving from one part of a village to another shall not disqualify the voter.


Samuel Barker: 
William Humphrey Bennett: Not under the Ontario Act.


Edward Frederick Clarke: If he is entitled to vote in Essex he may find he is not ou the list for Essex.


Samuel Barker: He is not on the general list for the county of Essex.


Edward Frederick Clarke: He is on the general list for the village of Tilbury which is in the county of Kent for provincial purposes but not for Dominion purposes.


Samuel Hughes: Is it an incorporated village?


Edward Frederick Clarke: It is an incorporated village.


George Oscar Alcorn: The hon. gentleman need not go that far back. I was only going back to the list which Is here in the hands of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. If he is on that list for the county of Kent and if he lives in the other county he has clearly no vote.


Mr. CLARK.: My hon. friend is wrong about that. The Clerk of the Crown in Chancery does not know which riding he is in. All that officer has to do is to send to the returning officer for Essex or Kent the printed list for the village of Tilbury. Up to that time no division has been made. Then, the returning officer for each riding has to make from that general list a list of those who are entitled to vote in either electoral district.


Samuel Hughes: Is Tilbury a part of Kent or a part of Essex?


Edward Frederick Clarke: A part of each.


Samuel Hughes: I thought the principle laid down by the right hon. Prime Minister was that no municipality should be divided.


Wilfrid Laurier: No.


Edward Frederick Clarke: It is divided whether it should be or not.


Wilfrid Laurier: I never said a word about Tilbury.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Suppose both of the returning officers leave the voter off the list, suppose the returning officer in Essex says that he should be in Kent and the returning officer for Kent says he should be in Essex, that man has no vote at all.


Mr. LENNOX.: This section does not deal with the matter in that case.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I think so.


Haughton Lennox: This is only where he is on the general list.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I know. He is on the general list. He is on the list the King's Printer sends out, but he is not on the particular list which the returning officer makes up, he is entitled to be, and if he is not on he is entitled to tender his vote.


Mr. W. WRIGHT.: I would like to ask the hon. gentleman whether the amendment which he wishes to submit to the committee provides for finally arranging the list before it goes out from the King's Printer. If it is necessary to make this subdivision it should be made before it goes out from the King's Printer. The voters should be allotted to their different positions, the lists should be properly printed so that every elector would know where he was placed 376
and the list of the King's Printer should then be final. I want to ask the hon. gentleman whether his proposed amendment makes provision for that?


Edward Frederick Clarke: No. The amendment is what has already been adopted with regard to cities and towns but not with regard to villages. It provides that an elector removing from one part of a village to another part, which village is in two electoral districts, shall not be deprived of his vote.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Why should that not apply to a township as well as a village ? Why should it not apply to any municipality? Why limit it to cities, towns and villages?


Edward Frederick Clarke: I think it should apply.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Use the word 'municipality ' instead of the words ' cities, towns and villages.'


Edward Frederick Clarke: That would be extending it perhaps farther than the House would desire to go.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: If the principle is a good one it should be extended.


Edward Frederick Clarke: What I submit is that in a case like that, where a polling subdivision is in two different ridings and where there is a general list, that general list should be given to the returning officer.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: As it is here the elector could vote twice.


Edward Frederick Clarke: No.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Why not?


Samuel Hughes: I might take the opportunity to point out, right in line with the point brought out by my hon. friend from Hamilton (Mr. Barker), that in my riding last election forty-two men who were in there, not residing, but hunting, and did not live in the county at all, went to one poll or another and demanded ballots. John Smith, for instance, whose name was not on the roll, presented himself, demanded a ballot, was required to take the oath, was given a ballot and voted. Forty-two of these men did this and I have no doubt that there were many ridings in Ontario where the same thing was done. Men who were not known in the county at all were allowed to vote. There was no general list at the polls.


George Oscar Alcorn: How could they manage to vote if they were not on the list ?


Samuel Hughes: They claimed they should have been on the list. They claimed they were on the general list and there was no general list available. It was In outlying places that this occurred.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Those men should have been arrested for perjury.


Samuel Hughes: That misht have been but there was no machinery to get at



i
them. They were out of the country next morning. My hon. friend from Hamilton struck the keynote when he said the general list should be there to prove whether the man's name is on the general list or not.


James Conmee: I think that the hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Barker) sees a difficulty, but I do not think the means which he proposes for overcoming that difficulty are appropriate. In my own riding, for instance, the returning officer would be several hundred miles from some of the villages. An elector cannot find out from the deputy returning officer whether he is on the list until polling day or a few days before. If the deputy returning officer were furnished with the general list and if a voter came and asked for a ballot and the deputy returning officer found that he was not on the list which he had received from the clerk of the peace or the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, he could ascertain for himself whether the voter was on the general list. If he found him on the general list and the voter was willing to take the oath that he was the man referred to, as required by the statute, the matter would be settled. In that way you could reach all the men who were accidentally left off and there is a number at every election. I submit that the amendment, which the hon. member for Hamilton proposes would meet but a very few cases. It might meet the case of a city electoral division, but it would be entirely unworkable in any of the new districts and I fancy it would be unworkable in an ordinary country constituency. If an improvement is to be made why not make it so as to reach every man who might require to take advantage of it.


Aaron Abel Wright: I would like to point out to the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) that probably not in "his riding and probably not in any of the north country is there a single municipality that is subdivided by lines of this kind. It is only in two or three places that there would be any difficulty, and I do not think the proposition of my hon. friend from Hamilton would be unworkable.


Mr. M. Y. McEEAN.: Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, the object of this clause is to overcome two particular sets of difficulties. In the first place there is the difficulty referred (to by smy hon. friend from Essex (Mr. Clarke) and, in the second place, there is another difficulty. For instance, the voters' lists for a Dominion election are made up from the municipal lists furnished to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery by the municipal clerk. It is quite possible, and it has occurred, that in copying or in printing the list for a Dominion election there are names on the original list furnished by the municipal clerk left off the Dominion list. One object, and the greater object of this clause, as I understand it, is that the omission should be provided for, that a man Mr. SAM. HUGHES.
whose name is on the municipal list who has the right to vote should not be debarred from voting in the Dominion election because his name happens to be left off the Dominion list. The proposal of my hon. friend from Hamilton (Mr. Barker) would partly overcome the difficulty. It would overcome the difficulty in a city constituency but in a rural constituency where many of the electors are fifty miles from the returning officer it would not overcome the difficulty at all. In my own constituency at the last election six names were left off the Dominion list in one polling subdivision although they were on the provincial lists and had a right to vote. Nevertheless they were not allowed to vote in the Dominion election because they were not on that list and there was no machinery supplied to provide a remedy. I think the difficulty could be overcome by providing that a copy of the original list for each municipality should be sent to the deputy returning officer. Then the deputy returning officer would have the evidence before him and if he found that the names omitted from the Dominion lists were on the provincial or municipal list he would be quite justified in taking their votes. If we wished to add the oath, that the individual knows he is on the municipal list it would be an additional safeguard.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: It is an extraordinary thing that this division of municipalities should take place in Ontario. It would be far better to legislate that these municipalities should be put in the one county or the other. Some years ago there was a similar state of things in Drummond and Atlia-baska, but as the right hon. gentleman knows the whole parish was in the one county or in the other. This dividing of a municipality into two electoral districts should not be allowed.


Robert Laird Borden: Suppose these people come and make the affidavit provided for and vote, I suppose their ballots would be counted at the time ? You have no guarantee except the man's oath that his name is on any list at all.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I think the best idea is that the general list should be given to the deputy returning officer.	,


Robert Laird Borden: The provision in the Bill is a very dangerous one indeed. It applies to all parts of Canada, a provision which must be resorted to in Alberta and Saskatchewan because of the sparse and scattered population there and the difficulties of getting at a returning officer.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Has not the voter the right to vote under the present Act and is not this an additional safeguard ?


Robert Laird Borden: If that is the present law it should be amended.


James Conmee: The law is not generally understood in that way.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I think section 25 provides for that now.


Robert Laird Borden: Under section 25 no man is entitled to vote unless his name is already on some list.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Section 25 does not provide what I thought.


Robert Laird Borden: Under this provision of the Bill you could set aside the list altogether in any part of Canada provided you got enough men to swear their names should be on the list. I cannot see any possible justification for such a provision. Where there is a division of some polling district there might be some injustice, but section 25 is sufficient to provide for that if it is properly carried out. If the government would make some such provision as is intended to be applied to Manitoba in this respect, it would be much more salu-tory than this clause.
M;\ SAM. HUGHES. In Alberta and Saskatchewan a man whose name is not on any general list may vote on swearing that he resides in a certain polling subdivision. Under this provision all a man has to do is to come up and swear that he is on some general list which is not within 100 miles of the polling subdivision.


Robert Laird Borden: But he does not even have to swear he is on any list.


Samuel Hughes: It is worse than I thought.


Robert Laird Borden: Talk about a judicial revision, but this provision enables any man to revise the list so far as he himself is concerned by simply swearing he is entitled to be on the list.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Let me point out that under this provision a man could vote in two counties in Ontario. If he goes to a polling booth in Essex and swears he should be on the list he is sworn under form X which does not ask him if he had voted before in that election, and then he can cross over to Kent and vote in that county also.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Provided he is on the list.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: No ; all he has to do is to swear he should be on the list. Where is the secrecy of that ballot if it is marked with a number corresponding to the number in the poll book, so that it can be seen how the man voted ?


Murdo Young McLean: The number is necessary so that we may know whether the man has voted or not. If he swears that his name is on the original list and that he has the right to vote, it is necessary that we should know that he did vote, so that if he has not that right, he may be punished.


George Oscar Alcorn: It appears to me that this section has not been given the attention which might be applied to it, for this reason, that it assumes something of which there can be on the spot no evidence whatever.-it assumes that the name of the voter is on the general list, when the general list is not there to show whether that assumption is correct or not.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: Would It meet the case if the section were amended so as to provide that the general list should be left with the returning officer in each case ?


Robert Laird Borden: I would think that would be infinitely better than the clause as it is at present, provided you added that the man's name must appear on the general list. I think my hon. friend from Lambton will agree with me that it would be a thoroughly retrograde step, after having provided elaborately for lists all over the country, to allow an alteration of the list to be made by any individual voter.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: As I read the section it presupposes that his name is on the general list before he is entitled to vote.


Robert Laird Borden: My hon. friend is quite right so far as the operation of the first part of the section is concerned. My attention was more particularly directed to the procedure by which this man could vote, and in -the affidavit, which is the essential part of that procedure, there is no requisite of that kind.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The idea that was in my mind in preparing the section which is under consideration was this : Section 25 of the general Act provides for the case of an overlapping polling division, but only where the polling division as established by the province does not happen to coincide exactly with the limits or the Dominion riding. In such a case the returning officer is to distribute the names. Now we are proposing a different method of distribution for the whole of the province of Manitoba, and for these constituencies in New Ontario. For the remainder of the Dominion, wherever we have a case such as that described by the hon. member for South Essex (Mr. Clarke), action by the returning officer would be required. It might be that in transcribing the names he would leave some man's name off. If that has occurred in the past, that man has lost his vote, without redress. In considering the provisions of this Bill we thought it might be well to make an amendment to secure a kind of vote for such an unfortunate man, and that is the "whole object of this amended section 13. It is an entirely new provision. The question is whether it is worth while legislating for the very few of such cases which (in all human probability) will ever arise. I do not know how many such casesthere may be in the province of Ontario,

but I should think there would not be half a dozen. In the whole Dominion there may not be as many as 20 instances; and in transcribing the names, I think there would not probably be a single voter's name left off. But there might be; there might be one or half a dozen, if some returning officer should happen to be particularly careless. If that does take place, I am proposing that such a man, if he comes to the poll, will get not the ordinary ballot, but a special ballot, which will always be identifiable, and which may be thrown out on a petition before a judge, if there should be a petition and it should turn out that the man had not the right to vote at all. The question at once arose, how are you going to protect the public against the possibility of some man trading on this kind of ballot when he is not entitled to it ? I thought, considering how very few cases there would be likely to be, that we would be safe enough if we attached to the application for such a ballot, whether required or not, the necessity that the applicant should take an oath that he was legally qualified to vote, that his name was on the general list, and that he verily believed that his name ought to have been put on the separate list for that particular poll. Of course, he could be prosecuted for perjury if he took that oath and any part of it were untrue. I thought the sanction of that oath would, in the comparatively few cases that are likely to arise under this section, be a sufficient protection. If the committee thinks otherwise, it seems to me that a much simpler and more workable method of protecting the public against the possibility of fraud, or an unauthorized person voting on such a ballot, could be secured by a slight amendment to section 25. The practical difficulty in the way of such a voter securing from the returning officer, who might be many miles away, and in the few hours of election day, a certificate, is very manifest. Would the exigencies of the situation not be completely met if the returning officer, whenever he has to make out a separate list under section 25, were required to deliver to the deputy returning officer for such a poll the full list for the provincial polling division ? He wTill have a copy of that list from the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. If he has to supply two of the deputies with it, he can make a copy of it and certify it to one of the deputies, giving to the other deputy the copy he has received from the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. To require the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery to send to every returning officer ' throughout the Dominion complete lists for the whole riding, and to furnish a complete list to each of the polls in each riding, would be a tremendous order. These lists are long sheets of galley lengths, with 200 names perhaps on an average to a polling division and 30 to 40 separate polling places in each riding. If there were Mr. AYLESWORTH.
40 polls and each one had to be supplied with 40 copies, we should have 1,600 required for each of the 220 returning officers in the Dominion.


George Oscar Alcorn: It is proposed that in Manitoba the judges shall make the allotments of names in the cases provided for by section 13. Exactly the same risk will be run there, on such allocation by the judges, as is now run on the allocation by a returning officer in Ontario or elsewhere in Canada. But in what way will the minister dovetail this section in with the one which applies to Manitoba? He proposes to provide for the making of separate lists by the judges in a particular province, but he also has a section providing that the lists in all the provinces shall be made by the returning officers. These two sections w7ill conflict.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If the bon. gentleman will examine the proposition regarding Manitoba and New Ontario, he will see that it is prefaced by the words ' notwithstanding anything in the Act contained.' That will over-ride all general provisions of the Act.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: In the province of Quebec, when the lists are sent by the registrars to the Printing Bureau and when, by mistake, some names are omitted in the printed lists, could a voter whose name is on the first list in the hands of the registrar obtain a certificate from the registrar to that effect, and on the strength of that certificate have the right to poll his vote? Could he vote on subscribing to a certain oath?	.


Wilfrid Laurier: I have seen it done.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: So have I, but would it not be clearer to put it in the law? .


Wilfrid Laurier: Better not
complicate the Act.


Robert Laird Borden: The returning officer is guided solely by the lists sent from Ottawa. I have known of a case in which a voter's name was on the municipal list in my county, but by some inadvertence was not included in the list from Ottawa, and he was not allowed to vote.


Wilfrid Laurier: In my own province, in the county where I formerly resided, the list is deposited with the registrar of the county, and it is that list which originally gives a voter the right to vote. I saw a case where the list came from Ottawa with a name omitted. .The man went to the registrar and obtained a certificate that his name was on the original list, and his vote was taken.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: I have seen that refused, so that there is no certainty. This clause could be made to suit the case.


Robert Laird Borden: You cannot do that unless you revise the lists certified to by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. In 1901 a couple of Conservative electors were on the municipal list in Halifax and their names did not appear on the list from Ottawa. The sheriff decided they could not vote, and I think he was perfectly right. How could he take evidence again and revise the list certified to by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery?


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Why should they lose their vote?


Robert Laird Borden: Because little mistakes of that kind, due to accident and inadvertence, cannot be guarded against by legislation. Suppose you went further back and showed that these men had no right to be on the municipal list. There must be some finality, and that finality is the list of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Who makes the revision of the lists when printed? The lists are kept in the Printing Bureau, and the printed matter is kept without change until there is a revision. Then the printer goes through the list he has in his hand, strikes off the names that should not be there and adds the names that are on the new list. Who does the revision of this work? Who compares the new list with the one coming from the registrar?


William Humphrey Bennett: The Superintendent of Printing.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: These mistakes happen very often. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition knows of two men. I know of others. I know of men who were on the official registrar's list and not on the printed list. If there was some special officer charged with that work of comparing, there would be some guarantee against mistakes.


Samuel Hughes: Once, in the riding of Muskoka, we ascertained that a number of names had been left off the list furnished by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. Attention was drawn to the omission. The names had been regularly sent in ; and before the election came off, the new list was sent back (amended. Once we found out that the names of fifteen or twenty had been left off inadvertently, and we had the list amended by authority from Ottawa. I do not see the need of this section. It only puts an affidavit into the schedule that will be used for improper purposes.


Mr. DUNCAN ROSS.: Does the hon. gentleman (Mr. Sam. Hughes) suggest that, if it is discovered that, say, half a dozen names have been inadvertently left off the lists sent out from Ottawa, you can have that error rectified here at Ottawa?


Samuel Hughes: Yes; I had it done.


Duncan Ross: I can readily understand how a printer might inadvertently drop a whole page of names. He goes up to the hook, takes off two pages instead of one, and drops one on the floor without noticing it-all sorts of accidents of that kiud may happen. What I want to know is; If a palpable error of this kind is shown in the lists that come from Ottawa, can that error be rectified?


Samuel Hughes: The case of which I speak was in the list of the part of Muskoka that belonged to North Ontario-the list of Braeebridge locality. We knew that it had been regularly sent in and certified by the judge, and that the error was here in Ottawa somewhere. We drew attention to it, and it was rectified by the officers here, and a new list was sent in time.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: My hon. friend from Beauharnois (Mr. Bergeron) is leaving the House, still perhaps I may be allowed to explain the difficulty that seems to impress him, though the point is not exactly pertinent to the clause in question. Under the existing law, the system is that each official of the province is required, as soon as the list is finally revised, to send a certified copy of the list to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery here. The Clerk of the Crown in Chancery at once delivers that copy, so certified to the Printing Bureau and the King's Printer keeps that original list on record in the Bureau. Immediately on receiving that certified list, the King's Printer prints it, and as soon as he has printed it, he is required, under the law, to send twenty copies of his work to the sitting member and to the defeated candidate.
Mr. BERGERON, But he never does that until the writs are out for an election. When there is no election, new lists are not printed. So, what time is there to have the list corrected?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: By section 15 of the general Act, it is required that the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, shall immediately on receipt of the .list from the provincial official, cause it to be printed by the King's Printer. The King's Printer, by section 16, immediately after printing the list, must send by registered mail twenty copies of it to the sitting member and twenty copies to the defeated candidate, and must also furnish anybody who asks for them copies on payment. So, you have the vigilance of the sitting member and his antagonist, and their respective agents, to secure you that names will not be omitted. If they are omitted and attention is called to that fact, there is a provision for making alterations where those alterations are made in accordance with the provincial law after the provincial lists are prepared, though I am not aware of any provision in the statute for correcting an accidental error that might be made by the King's Printer. When

the writ is issued, it is the duty of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery to send to the returning officer a ' sufficient number ' of the voters' lists for that particular constituency. That is the modus operandi. My hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Duncan Ross) says that you are always liable to error. I remember one provincial election in Bast Durham some years ago where this is what happened: The lists were prepared, in the Ontario fashion, in pamphlet form, stitched. In one of the copies, by a pure accident, a whole sheet-four pages- was omitted; and it happened that the particular copy from which this sheet was omitted, was the one certified by the clerk of the peace for the county. The result was that the voters whose names were on these four missing pages were left off, irrespective, of course, of politics or anything else. There was great trouble about it; there was an election petition and the court felt that all they could do was to order a new election; and the election was held. It was one of those mistakes that you cannot guard against by legislation.	[DOT]


William Humphrey Bennett: At the outset, the list is prepared for the village of Tilbury-my hon. friend from South Essex (Mr. Clarke) will agree with that.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Yes.


William Humphrey Bennett: That is called the general list for Tilbury. Then the returning officer divides that list up, so to speak by writing out the names of those persons on the general list that are to go into Kent and those that are to go into Essex. I think the suggestion was made that these deputies, the one on the Kent side and the one on the Essex side, should each have a copy of the general list. Then, if on the so-called separate or written list, a name does not appear which is on the general list, the person whose name in thus omitted from the written list should still have the right to vote. If you make a proviso to that effect, that, I should think, is all that is necessary.


Edward Frederick Clarke: He should have the right to vote in the right place. He ought to be on the list in the right Dominion riding.


George Oscar Alcorn: The section of the Act would not be done away with by suggestion of the hon. member for East Simcoe (Mr. Bennett). It appears to me that it should be amended as he suggests, so as to provide that each deputy should have a copy of the general list for the whole municipality , provision to that effect being introduced into this section of the Bill. With that amendment, it appears to me, the section would be in practical shape..


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: I would like to settle this point with the Minister of Justice. I think he did not understand what I said, or he is under a false impression in some way.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Do I understand him to say that, every year, when the lists come from the proper authority of the province and are sent to the Printing Bureau immediately they are printed and twenty copies are sent to the sitting member and to the defeated candidate in the last election? If that is what the hon. gentleman says, he is certainly in error, because the lists are only printed whenever there is to be an election.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Not each year, but as often as new lists come from the provincial authorities and are printed. The King's Printer is required, by law, to keep standing in type a copy of the list which he gets from the provincial authorities, until the new list conies in, and, as soon as the new list comes in, to reprint and keep the new one standing in type.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: But a new list comes in every year.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: He does not reprint every year, but he corrects every year and keeps standing in type-so that he* can print at very short notice the new list.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Then anybody could go to the original list and compare it with the printed one at any time.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Any one could go with the original list and compare it with any printed list which had been received from the King's Printer, but if there was some alteration that had been made in the list for the next year by the provincial authority and that next year's list had not yet been printed, the only place he could go would be to the Printing Bureau and find from the standing type whether or not the correction had been made.


George Oscar Alcorn: It will be necessary to retain some form of oath attached to this section of the statute and certainly there must be the general list. Therefore I suggest that the minister should allow the clause to stand and look it over in that view.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If there is any reason I have no objection except that I thought it had been pretty fuiiy considered this afternoon. The hon. gentleman will see the form of oath in the next section which simply follows the provisions of section 13 in detail. I am quite ready to move an amendment to section 25 of the character I have indicated which will make it obligatory upon the returning officer to give to each deputy in the case of a distributed list such as this a full copy of the original list and that will ensure such deputy having the original list at the polls when any voter might present himself.


Robert Laird Borden: There seems to be some misapprehension about what the Minister of Justice intends. I shall state my

understanding of his proposal and then perhaps we can get the section through. This section relates altogether to section 25 which provides for the distribution of voters' names in bisected polling divisions. This has application only to section 25. The Minister of Justice by this section is endeavouring to provide that in case the name of a person has been omitted by accident from the special list for a polling division after that distribution has been made, the voter shall not lose his vote. He therefore says that where any separate voters' list has been prepared in the case of a bisected polling division, any person who goes there to vote and whose name appears on the general list shall be entitled to vote on taking a certain oath. It has been pointed out that the deputy returning officer in such a case will not have any evidence before him that the man's name is on the general list and therefore the Minister of Justice proposes to amend section 25 by declaring that it shall be the duty of the returning officer in such a case to send the whole general list to that deputy returning officer in order that he may know whether the man's name does so appear. That, I understand, is his proposal. I think it is a satisfactory one, and the clause may pass upon that assurance.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I wish to move my amendment which deals with a more important matter. It deals with a case where within one village a voter removes from one part of the village to another part of the village which would be from one electoral district to another. Under the present law in Ontario that man loses his vote. A great deal of complaint was found at the last election in regard to that. Often a man without a settled home 'Will move from one part of a village to another, perhaps not a hundred feet, and he thereby loses his vote. That should not be and >1 have prepared a clause somewhat similar to one in the Ontario Act. There is provision in the Ontario Act that where in such a case as Tilbury part of the village has been added, so that the village is partly in two ridings, the oath may bo modified so that it is sufficient that he resides in the same village. There is a similar provision in the present law, sections 151 and 152, relating to cities and towns in regard to the manhood suffrage vote. If a man moves from one part of the city to another it shall not affect his vote. I propose to apply that to the village. I would therefore move to add as section 152a :
152a. It shall not be required that a person whose name appears on the voters' list for a village which is partly in two or more electoral districts, shall at the time of tendering his vote be a resident of and domiciled within the electoral district or shall have resided in the said district continuously from the time fixed for beginning to make the assessment roll, or for making complaint, as the case may be. Provided such person was at such time a resident of and domiciled within the said village and the oath to be taken by such person shall be altered to meet the requirements of the case.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Is that not changing the provincial franchise ?


Edward Frederick Clarke: Not at all.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: How would he have voted in June ?


Mr CLARKE.: This particular village is all in Kent for provincial purposes. For Dominion purposes it is in the two ridings.


Mr. TAYLOR.: Should the hon. member not apply the word ' incorporated village,' because a village may be partly in one township and piartly in another, that would be extending it to townships.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I think you will find that under the interpretation clause * village ' means only an incorporated village.


Robert Laird Borden: There is no interpretation clause in ithis Bill, is there, defining ' village ' ? The hon. gentleman is probably taking it from the Ontario Act.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I am not very sure about that, but there is no village except an incorporated village.


George Oscar Alcorn: I think you will have to add after ithe word ' district ' the words ' in which such village is situated.'


Edward Frederick Clarke: I do not see the necessity of it, provided the elector is a resident of "the village.


George Oscar Alcorn: You will have to define what electoral district you are talking about and state the electoral district in which such village is situated.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I have copied that word for word from the Ontario Act.


Mr ALCORN.: You will find that the Ontario Act refers to some particular electoral district.


Mr. HAGGART.: If a voter removes from a village into a town is he qualified to vote under this clause, or is it when he moves to a different part of the village ?


Edward Frederick Clarke: That is all.


John Graham Haggart: I was listening, perhaps not too attentively, to the wording of the clause. I did not think that it covered the point exactly. The clause should be submitted to the Minister of Justice.


Edward Frederick Clarke: Some time ago I submitted it to the minister.
Section, as amended, agreed to.
On section 16-oath in Prince Edward Island.
Mr. BARKER, With regard to these clauses I would suggest to the Minister of

Justice that it would be better and likely to avoid any further confusion, such as we have had in the past, if, instead of referring to form ' Y ' as he does in both of these clauses, he should put in the body of these sections the words of form ' Y,' incorporating them directly in the Bill. Then there could never be any doubt or confusion on this subject. I would suggest that in clause 15 there should be struck out all the words after the word 'held,' in the 23rd line and then incorporate the several clauses of form ' Y ' and leave ' Y ' out of the schedule. There is half of an oath here and half somewhere else.


Mr. AYLES  WORTH@: Does my hon.
friend really think that that is necessary? These clauses, 153 and 154, are directory to the officials, directing these officials that voters, if required, shall take the oath in form ' Y.' Form ' Y ' is prescribed by the same statute. It is not printed in the body of the statute but is printed in the schedule and is there any possible difference between the two ? I cannot suggest any to my own mind.


Samuel Barker: The hon. gentleman has been telling us all afternoon that one might feel some delicacy about putting the clauses of ' Y ' to a respectable young man. He was arguing all afternoon that the qualification clauses might be administered and that you need not administer the disqualification clauses. We want to have no doubt that it is all one oath, and I propose that instead of having a form with half an oath in the appendix you shall put in the clause itself, the paragraphs that you intend to include in the affidavit.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The hon. gentleman will see that he is doing identically the same thing himself in his proposition. He proposes, in section 153, that the clauses shall be printed but that in section 154 they shall not be printed, but that the section shall wind up with the words 1 there being added to and included,' &c., 'the several clauses set forth in the next preceding section.'	6


Samuel Barker: Certainly ; you would not want me to repeat them in the next clause.
I put the clauses which are to form the oath in 153 and where they are mentioned in the next section I refer to the preceding section.
I do not understand the hon. gentleman's objection.


George Oscar Alcorn: The suggestion of my hon. friend from Hamilton seems to me to meet a long felt want. It has always appeared to me in practice one of the most inconvenient matters possible amongst people at the poll who are not acquainted with the law to have to hunt through a book and find the forms of oaths with the law relating to Mr. BARKER.
them scattered throughout the book. If the oath is put in as part of the statute, as suggested, there is no difficulty about it and it will really be something that has long been desired.
On section 18-=-statement of contributions, &e.


George Oscar Alcorn: I beg to move the amendment of which notice has been given and which appears at page 1229 of the Votes and Proceedings. As I observed before, this matter has been before the House for some time, and hon. members are now well aware that the effect of this amendment is to introduce in full the English practice with regal'd to returns of election expenses.
The return, under the statute as it stands, gives little or no information and it is not intended, in many instances, to do so. The amendment, as presented, according to the English practice, requires the absolute particulars of the accounts to be given, not only of moneys expended by the candidate himself, or by his agent, but of moneys that have been received, giving the sources from which they have been received, and all the particulars in regard to them. Without reading the amendment I might state the effect of it. It is : That all moneys provided by any person other than the candidate shall be paid to the official agent of the candidate and not otherwise, and that every payment shall be vouched by a Bill stating the particulars and by a receipt. The candidate shall send to the official agent within two months a written statement of the amount of his personal expenses and within two months from the date of the election a return shall be made by every candidate who ran at that election and by his agent in the form set out in the section. It should also state the sum paid to the returning officer, give the particulars of any disputed or unpaid accounts and a statement of all moneys received by the official agent or candidate or any other person for the purpose of the election. I will not read the whole amendment which is very long and has appended to it various schedules constituting the returns which are to be made and the statutory declarations of their correctness. In the case of returns now made they are not vouched by the oath or affirmation of either the candidate or his agent. I think Canada has now attained and that this parliament has attained a dignity amongst the nations which calls for the application of as strict rules in regard to election expenses in this country as obtain in England. The object sought is to provide against undue or corrupt expenditure, and if the particulars required by this amendment are furnished in every case a long step will have been taken in that direction.
At six o'clock, House took recess.

After Recess.
Committee resumed at eight o'clock.



SECOND READINGS.

[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 195) to Incorporate the Waterloo and Guelph Railway Company.-Mr. Zimmerman.
Bill (No. 196) for the relief of Arthur James Townsend.-Mr. Copp.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 115) to amend the Dominion Elections Act.-Mr. Aylesworth
On section 18-statement of contributions, &c.
Allen Bristol Aylesworth: As Is the ease with some of the other sections that have been discussed, the alteration in the present Act which this section proposes seemed necessitated by an amendment which is to be found later on in the Bill. I am proposing, in section 21 of this Bill, to make the existing law with regard to election contributions more rigorous-to require such contributions to be made to the agent; and, complementary to that change, it seemed to me that it would be desirable that the agent who received contributions in the way of assistance to his candidate from any supporter or friend, or from any source whatever, should publish a detailed statement of such receipts. In that view this section 18 was framed, amending and adding this subclause to section 244. The purpose and the scope of the section will be apparent enough from an examination of it, when we consider what the present law on the subject is. By the present section 244 a detailed statement of all the election expenses incurred by the candidate must be made out by his agent, signed by the agent, and sent within a limited period to the returning officer, whose duty thereupon it is to publish a summary of that statement in a newspaper published In the electoral district. What I am proposing by this change is simply to make that statement of the agent cover all contributions which he gets from any source, not limiting it to what the candidate gives him wherewith to pay the legitimate and proper expenses of the election, but making it include everything the agent gets. In that way this section is the complement of the new section which makes it an offence to contribute to election expenses otherwise than through the agent. That was all that it seemed to me the necessities of the situation called for in regard to the publication of expenses. My hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) wants to go very much further. He wants to make practically a new law with regard to the publication of election expenses. I do not know whether I fully appreciate all he is proposing by this long series of alterations. We have in the Elections Act as it stands a group of sections, beginning with 237 and ending with 246, collecting together what the present law requires in regard to election expenses. No payment is to be made otherwise than through the official agent. Then the death or legal incapacity of the agent is provided for.
Provision is made that the claims against the candidate must be sent in within a month or the right payment will be barred ; exception is made in the case of the death of the claimant; provision is made, in case there is no agent, to authorize a claim to be paid although sent in after the defined time. Then there is a clause providing for a statement to the returning officer of the expenses in detail, and the duty of the returning officer is to publish a summary of that statement, and thus observe the provisions of the present law on the subject to the end. Those provisions have constituted the law on this point not' only in the Dominion but as well in any province with the elections in which I have any acquaintance ever since we have had a system of voting by ballot under the Election Act which was first passed some thirty-five years ago. My hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) wants to reform all that. He wants more particularity in several respects. He wants the vouching of accounts, the making of affidavits and the greatest fulness of minute details in the statements that are to be made out, supported by statutory declaration which are the equivalent of affidavits. He provides the candidate may not take his seat until these returns and declarations are made. He provides a penalty for failure on the part of the candidate to comply with the requirements of this section ; also a special penalty in case there be anything untrue in the declaration ; and so on, through an elaborate set of sections, to provide for a condition of things in regard to which I have not heard at any time of any grievance existing under the system which has been so long in force in this country. These sections are not sections of a penal nature against the candidate. They are intended to secure an amount of publicity and they do not call for the publication" in full of the statement which the candidate sends to his agent of his own personal expenditure or of the agent's expenditure. The agent puts the statement upon paper and sends it to the returning officer, where it is accessible to anybody interested, and where the original accounts are on file to be examined by any one sufficiently interested to go to that trouble. But how often, in point of fact, are the means of publicity which now exist availed of by anybody ? I venture to think they never are unless with view to getting informa-

tlon, or hoping to find information, in connection with an election petition ; and I would like the benefit of the experience of any hon. member, who has had the conduct of election petitions, as to whether he ever found the least benefit from the examination of his opponent's returns.


George Oscar Alcorn: That is the very reason why we should have more full returns.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: No man who commits a corrupt practice, or knows of it, is going to publish it over his own hand.


George Oscar Alcorn: He has to swear to these particulars and that they were all for legitimate expenditure.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I think it is quite a stretch of credulity to imagine that any one who is so wickedly inclined as to commit a corrupt practice is going to write down on paper that he did so and put that on record for all time. I believe that anyone who commits a corrupt practice will not hesitate to avoid the requirements my hon. friend desires to put upon him by this amendment. Is there any real necessity for it ? The moment an election petition is lodged, you can scrape the conscience of your adversary by as severe a cross-examination as the most inquisitorial eixaminer can devise, and you can get far more in a short time in that way than you can ever get by requiring any quantity of affidavits to be made by the man himself, and before you can get any election petition lodged against him. I cannot see that it would be of the slightest advantage in the way of either securing information for the intending petitioners or In the way of preventing the commission of corrupt practices or the wrongful expenditure of money. Under any law you can devise, it is at the most a piece of evidence. Under the present law, the circumstance that a man has omitted from his published return some particular piece of expenditure, which afterwards other evidence shows he did	make-is	at once a cause of
suspicion. He is asked to account for that expenditure and is told by the court or the opposing counsel : You undoubtedly made that expenditure, it is equally plain you did not put that in your statement of legitimate expenditure, what answer have you to make in reply to the inference that that particular expenditure was not legitimate ? That very circumstance makes it important to the candidate to see that nothing is omitted, if by any diligence on his part he can prevent the omission ; and I think it is the result of experience that usually expenditures are entered with great care and that both candidates and agent are very particular to include everything the agent has paid. Any business agent will do his work by check or, if he pays cash, will keep carefully the receipts for the payments, and I think it is practically uni-Mr. AYLESWORTH.
versal experience that the candidate himself and his official agent take the very best bare that neither of them' is in any way mixed up with any questionable transaction. That is not where you find corrupt practices ; and no matter how much publicity you may icquxre with regard to statements and affidavits, you are not going to suppress corrupt practices by any such means. Those who will commit corrupt practices will be people who will not consider themselves under any obligation to show them in their returns. It seems to me that there has not been found any necessity for increasing the particularity or publicity which the present law calls for, and I cannot persuade myself that the amendments proposed by my hon. friend are necessary.


George Oscar Alcorn: I assume, as a matter of course, that the hon. minister is well aware that the provisions of my amendment are almost verbatim those of the British Corrupt Illegal Practices Prevention Act of 1883. My hon. friend being acquainted with the manner in which that Act came to be passed, with its history and operation, and its applicability to the conditions of this country, it is not worth while arguing the matter at all if he has made up his mind that in Canada we do not need what experience has shown necessary and highly beneficial in the old country.


Robert Laird Borden: Another circumstance to be taken into consideration is that the provisions of this amendment were devised in Great Britain for the reason that there elections have been, for the most part, conducted by political organizations. The candidates might be able very sincerely to make a statement of election expenses which would be a mere travesty of a statement of the whole expenses, because of the immense expenditures of such political organizations. And it is intended by this amendment, and particularly by the first clause to guard against that. This first clause of the amendment, in amending section 237 of the Act, makes this provision :
All money provided by any person other than the candidate, for any expenses incurred or to be incurred on account of the conduct or management of the election or for any purpose connected therewith, whether as gift, loan, advance, deposit or otherwise; shall be paid to an official agent of the candidate.
Then follows an exception with regard to payments by the returning officer and small payments made by any person in connection with any expense legally incurred by himself. The effect of this amendment is that all money, whether paid by the candidate or by any person whomsoever, in connection with the election shall be paid to the official agent and not otherwise, and an account of all expenses shall be giveD to the returning officer. I do not think yon can bring about a better condition of affairs

in regard to the expenses of election campaigns until you make a provision of this kind. So long as political organizations provide money to be spent corruptly or otherwise in connection with an election, you leave an open door for the entry of all the abuses that have prevailed in this country. In Great Britain, for the most part, they have absolutely stopped illegal expenditure in elections, and they have done it by provisions of this kind. The hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) has gone over the English Act and has made changes that seemed necessary because of our conditions, and he now proposes to put upon our statute-book an enactment that has worked marvels in Great Britain in the way of putting down corrupt expenditure. My hon. friend the Minister of Justice says that the man who will spend money corruptly will commit perjury with regard to it. I am not sure that that would always follow. A man may have a somewhat slight appreciation of the prohibitions of the election law, yet he might, and I think would, in a great many cases stop short of actual perjury in regard to it. But the Act does something more than that. It makes it a distinct offence, punishable by a severe penalty, for any person, corporation or individual to advance one single dollar of money for the election of any man to this parliament unless that money is paid to the election agent, so that a proper account may be rendered of its expenditure afterwards. For my part, I think it would be an excellent provision, even if we adopted no other part of the amendment, and I should be very sorry indeed to see the government refuse its approval of the proposal in that regard at least.
Amendment negatived.


William Humphrey Bennett: If the government will not accept that, they, at least, ought to safeguard this clause 18 by providing that there must be a statutory declaration accompanying the statement of particulars of expenditure joined in by the agent and the member elected. What would the Minister of Justice say to that ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Of course, it would be quite practicable that the candidate and the agent should each for himself, and each with respect of matters within his own knowledge, make a statutory declaration; but neither of them could, otherwise than from hearsay, speak of the conduct of the other. I have no objection, if the committee thinks it would be any additional protection, to a clause being inserted in the present Bill requiring the statement that is sent in to the returning officer to be verified by statutory declaration of both the candidate and the agent. I do not think it will,, add anything to the official character of the document or that it will be, as I said
when on my feet before, the least preventive of wrong-doing in the elections. The only difference that I can see in substance between the suggestion of the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) and the present law, is that the ceremonies-if I may use the word properly-attendant upon the publication, or making public, of the statement, are a very great deal more in detail in the sections which he proposes to substitute for our section. But I am not aware of any substantial difference. So far as I know, no substantial defect in our present system has been pointed out, or anything which is in substance omitted from our law, but is included in the proposition that is made by the hon. gentleman. If there is anything that can be pointed to as something which is enough better to make it worth while to legislate about it, it would be a different story; but so far as I am able to see by comparing the sections, no matter what the source of the sections may be which the hon. gentleman proposes, it is simply describing with more circumlocution and more detail things which the agent or candidate, or both, are called upon to do.
On section 20,
The concluding paragraph of section 255 ^ of the said Act, beginning with the words is guilty of an indictable offence/ is repealed and the following is substituted therefor:
Shall be disqualified from voting at any election for a term of eight years thereafter and guilty of an indictable offence and liable, if he is a returning officer, election clerk, deputy returning officer, pollt clerk, ov other officer engaged in the election, to imprisonment, without the alternative of a fine, tor a term not exceeding five years and not less than one year, with or without hard labour, and if he is any other person, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three .years and not less than one year, with or without Viarrl lahmir.


Gerald Verner White: Before this section carries, I would like to move an amendment to subsection (h) of section 255 of the Dominion Elections Act. This subsection provides that every one who :
(h) with fraudulent intent, prints any ballot paper or what purports to be or is capable of being used as a ballot paper at an election-

is guilty of an indictable offence. I
do not think that that section is quite complete. Therefore I wish to move the amendment as set forth on page 1235 of the Votes and Proceedings which reads ;
27. Paragraph (h) of section 255 of the said Act is amended by inserting after the word ' election ' in the last line of the said paragraph the following words: ' or, being concerned in the printing of ballots for a returning officer, with or without such intent supplies or is privy to the transfer of any ballot paper, or what purports to be or is capable of

being used as a ballot paper at an election, to any person other than the returning officer.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I do not know exactly the intent of this, perhaps I do not appreciate correctly what is in the mind of the hon. gentleman in moving this amendment. Apparently the object is to prevent any person who is engaged in the printing of ballots which are to be used at an election handing one of the ballots so printed to any person other than the returning officer. My impression is that this is covered already by a clause in the Elections Act. I should like to have an opportunity of being sure about that before discussing the amendment. In the meantime I would refer to the wording of the amendment. This is proposed as an addition to a clause in the present Act which creates an indictable offence and which is made by the section an offence rendering the person who commits it liable to a severe punishment, imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years, under either the existing section or the section as I am proposing to amend it. The offence which may render a person liable to this severe punishment is stated in the law as it stands to be the printing of a ballot paper which is capable of being used at an election with fraudulent intent. The hon. gentleman proposes to add to that paragraph of offences the act of a person who is engaged in the printing of ballots and is proven to have transferred, which I take to mean has handed over any ballot paper to such third person, with or without such intent. That is to say, he is proposing to create a new offence which may subject that man to a punishment of five years' imprisonment, although the man does the act which constitutes the offence without any fraudulent intent. That seems a very serious departure from the well known ordinary principles upon which the criminal law is established and administered, and unless there was some very clear reason for creating an offence of that character, subjecting a man to the possibility of so serious consequences, even although there may have been complete innocence of wrong intention on the man's part, I would hesitate very much before being willing to concur in such a proposal.


George Oscar Alcorn: The act of transferring or handing over a ballot to any person other than a returning officer can by possibility have only one object, that is to procure that ballot to be used for some improper purpose in connection with the election for which the ballots were printed. Every man is presumed to intend the natural consequence of his own act. He transfers that ballot knowing it is against the law to do so and knowing that none but an improper use can be made of it. Therefore, I think it reasonable to say that doing what he knows to be an unlawful act he must Mr. WHITE
intend the natural consequence of that act. It would not be necessary before a jury to prove the intent of his act, he does what he knows to be an unlawful act; and, therefore, I think the section is properiv framed.


Mr. PORTER.: I desire, in view of the exposures made after the last general election of 1904, when an effectual attempt was made to use in the general elections what was commonly known as the bogus ballot box, which has been discussed in this House, and with which hon. gentlemen are quite familiar, to move an amendment to this section of the Act, designed particularly against that class of fraud or crime in elections. I therefore move :
28. Section 255 of the said Act is further amended by inserting the following paragraph after paragraph (i):
i (2) manufactures, constructs, imports into Canada, has in his possession supplies to any election officer, or uses for the purposes of an election, or causes to be manufactured, constructed, imported into Canada, supplied to any election officer or, uses for the purposes of any election, any ballot box containing or including any compartment, appliance, device or mechanism by which a ballot paper may or could be secretly placed or stored therein, or, having been deposited during polling, may be secretly diverted, misplaced, affected or manipulated.
In view of the disclosures that amendment, I think, is worthy of the consideration of the House.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The law as it stands, and has stood for many years, quite covers the case which the hon. gentleman describes. Subsection (c) of section 255 compendiously states that every man who fraudulently puts into a ballot box a paper other than the ballot paper which he is authorized by law to put in is liable to the penalties of this section. The amendment which is proposed here is more elaborate in its terms and penalizes the man who has in his possession a box calculated to be used in a way to facilitate the fraudulent putting into it of a paper other than the ballot paper. There may be some object in spreading all these words upon the statute, I am not able to see myself what the object is, but I certainly have no objection if the hon. gentleman or any other member wants to amplify in language the provision which already is on the statute-book in that respect. The present provision, I may remind the committee, has already proved absolutely efficient in respect to the very matters the hon. gentleman has in mind. Punishment has been meted out in that connection, and no practical difficulty has, so far as I am aware, been suggested in dealing with an offence of the character the hon. gentleman has in mind under the law as it now stands. I

have no objection in the world to the clause as it now stands. .


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Allen Bristol Aylesworth: With reference to section 20 of the Bill before the committee, since last night I have been able to see, from a reading of ' Hansard,' what the point was of questions which were put to me while on my feet by the hon. members for Qu'Appelle and Lincoln. They have by those questions but anticipated what was in my mind and what I ought to have explained last night, and would have explained if I had understood wnat their difficulty was. The effect of section 17 of this Bill, if it is adopted, will, of course, be to put an end to the particular offence of destroying a ballot intentionally, which is covered by the first subsection of 255 as it now stands, and to obviate that difficulty all that is needed is an amendment which will provide that any deputy returning officer who puts upon a ballot any particular mark or writing intended to identify the voter who has cast that ballot, shall be subject to the penalties of this clause. That is a provision which has been sketched by the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Galli-her) during the adjournment, but I have not yet been able to consider that sketch or draft the provision. I am proposing, with the consent of the committee, to move such an amendment before the Bill passes out of the consideration of the committee.


Robert Laird Borden: Might I make a suggestion to the Minister of Justice which he Can consider before he prepares his amendment? I understand there has been a conference between some gentlemen interested in this section, and that they proposed to suggest to the minister what he has just now mentioned. I have had placed in my hand a memorandum of the language suggested by the committee as an amendment to clause 17. It reads :
But any such writing, number or mark, not authorized by this Act and placed thereon by a deputy returning officer with intent to identify the ballot, shall render him liable to the penalties contained in subsection (j) of section 255 of the said Act,
Probably the language of the first part of this proposed amendment might be improved a little, but that is not the point which I wish to bring to the attention of the Minister of Justice. I would suggest that after the words ' with intent to identify the ballot ' there should be inserted some such clause as this :
Which intent shall be presumed until the contrary is made to appear by satisfactory evidence.
The effect of tnis will be that if the deputy returning officer places upon the ballot any mark, he is not necessarily liable to punishment, but he will be liable to punishment unless it is made to appear by satisfactory evidence that he did not put that mark there for the purpose of identifying the manner in which the voter marked his ballot. I do not suggest you should make the man absolutely liable, but I do suggest that you should cast upon him the burden of establishing that he put the mark there with no criminal intent.


Mr. GALLIHER.: I presume the only way he could do that would be by his own evidence. The court would draw its own inference from the nature of the mark as to whether there was intent in the mind of the man.


Mr.   I@: I presume it would depend on the character of the /mark, whether it was such as would likely be used for identification on the various circumstances of the case, and also, I suppose, on the evidence of the man himself.
I am leaving that absolutely open to the court.


William Alfred Galliher: You wish to make it presumptive evidence in the first place until he disproves it?


Wilfrid Laurier: Sections 17 and 20 stand.
On section 28, paying for conveyance of voters.


Robert Laird Borden: The Minister of Justice told us yesterday that he proposed to make some amendment to that, as I understood.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: No, this clause was discussed very fully this forenoon and I proposed an amendment which was carried to section 10, which, I thought, would make section 10, certainly, and, I was sanguine, sections 23 and 24 as well, satisfactory to everybody. It does not meet the suggestion of the hon. member for Lincoln and Niagara certainly, namely, that if a livery man lets teams only at the usual prices for the purpose of carrying voters to the polls there should be no harm done, but I would not be prepared to agree to a change of such a radical nature as that in what has heretofore been the law.


Robert Laird Borden: I think the Minister of Justice told us this morning that he proposed to embody in the clause certain vehicles which were mentioned in the amendment of my hon. friend from Prince Edward county (Mr. Alcorn)) that were not included in this section. I think they included a railway train, for example. You might hire a railway train to carry a very large number of voters without being cov-vered by this provision apparently.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Of course, I do not know what understanding may have been arrived at by other members of the committee, but what I said in reference to the specification of vehicles, as contain-

ed in the amendment of (the hon. member for Prince Edward county, I thought, was that it seemed to me that everything of that character was included in the general expression, ' or other conveyance,' with the enumeration of the vehicles contained in the clause. Surely that expression, following as it does, the enumeration of a great number of different kinds of conveyance, covers an automobile, for instance. It would cover a wheelbarrow if anybody were to be taken to the polls in a conveyance of that kind. My idea was to leave it as it is, but if there is any object in specifying one or two more I have no objection.


Mr.   POSTER@: I think the Minister of Justice, in consideration of the rapid progress that is being made in certain directions, ought to include flying machines in this.


Robert Laird Borden: The difficulty in beginning to enumerate the various kinds of vehicles is this : if you do not make the enumeration pretty exhaustive then you are always driven to rely upon what lawyers call the theory of ejusdem generis, and I do not know whether a railway train would be regarded as the ejusdem generis of a wheelbarrow or a sleigh. You might make it general by saying ' by any means of transportation,' omitting the enumeration of a great number of vehicles, or else make the list tolerably exhaustive. However, I am content to allow the section to pass.


Edward Frederick Clarke: This is not an amendment to section 23, but this is a place where I think the question which I am about to introduce can be properly considered. I desire to propose an amendment to widen a little the expression ' personal expenses.' As I read the Act, the payment of the hire of a hall, or the cost of lighting it, must be made, as it is at present, through an agent. It is, in my experience, very awkward You go to a distant place and the people who own the hall-it may be a schoolhouse or other place where the meeting is held- do not like to wait for their money. The bill has to be sent to the agent of the candidate instead of being paid by candidate. We ought to include the hire of a hall in ' personal expenses.' The amendment to section 265 merely makes legal the payment of the hire of a hall. It does not provide that it can be paid as personal expenses. Section 262 of the Act says (that :
Every person, including the candidate, who shall make any payment except with respect to the personal expenses of the candidate, or any advance, loan or deposit, on behalf of the candidate, at an election, before ox during or after the election, on account of such election, otherwise than through the official agent of such candidate, is guilty of an indictable offence.
It is a question whether the term ' personal expenses ' includes the rent of the ! hall.	1


George Oscar Alcorn: The hon. gentleman will find that in section 22 of the Bill.


Edward Frederick Clarke: That is just what I am pointing out. Section 22 merely amends section 265 in dealing with certain payments, providing that they shall not apply to the rent of a hall. But, that clause does not say that they shall be made by the candidate personally. Section 262 says that the payment must be made through your agent, except personal expenses. Section 265 makes valid the payment but it does not make it a payment which the candidate may make personally. My amendment will read this way :
Paragraph lettered ' k' of section 2 of the said Act is repealed and the following substituted therefor:
' Personal expenses ' as used herein with respect to the expenditure of any candidate in relation to the election of which he is a candidate includes the reasonable travelling expenses of such candidate, and the reasonable expenses of his living at hotels or elsewhere for the purpose of and in relation to such election.
Then I propose to add the following :
And also a reasonable and bona fide rent or hire of halls or other places used by the candidate personally in which to address public meetings of electors and the expenses incurred in heating, lighting or cleaning same when necessary, and all other expenses which by this Act he may lawfully incur and pay.
These last words may not be necessary. Does my hon. friend the Minister of Justice think they are covered already ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I expressed my opinion on the matter last night, but what I am more concerned about are sections 23 and 24 which we are considering and which have not the remotest thing to do with what my hon. friend is talking about. I do not know what disposition has been made of section 23 which was under discussion a few minutes ago.


Edward Frederick Clarke: That was passed.
Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER, No ; we are on section 23 now.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I thought section 23 was passed and that this was an opportune time to mention this matter.
Amendment (Mr. Clarke) withdrawn.
On section 24, paying for conveyance of voters.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: In view of what the Minister of Justice has said I think it is right to move the same amendment that was under discussion this forenoon and which I allowed to be withdrawn temporarily so that the Bill could progress on the statement of the Minister of Justice that the matter would come up again. I have seen no reason to change my views as expressed earlier


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: 
Mr. DANIEL.: Hiring by whom?


Edward Arthur Lancaster: By anybody for the purpose of carrying voters to the polls so long as you do not pay the livery stable keeper more than he would be paid on any ordinary occasion. Under the section as it stands you can borrow a rig, you can use your own rig, you can get some one else to drive you to the polls and it is not illegal, but if you have not a rig of your own and cannot borrow one, why should you be kept from voting because you are not allowed to hire one from a regular livery stable keeper at his ordinary tariff. We might as well be honest about it and we all know it is done. Every member of this House is either a dead beat or he has done it; rigs have been hired for him and they are paid for either out of his own pocket or by some of his friends.


Edward Guss Porter: Suppose the livery stable keeper hires his horse by a clerk?


Edward Arthur Lancaster: If be did that he would evade the section. I say we should legislate as reasonable men and pass a reasonable law with the expectation that it will be lived up to. That is a much more manly course than to pass what seems to be a hypocritical law which we know will not be lived up to. Remember that by this amendment I exclude the hiring of rigs from men who are not regular livery stable keepers. Surely it cannot be said that a livery stable keeper with several rigs to hire is going to be affected in his vote by the fact that he rents a rig at the ordinary tariff charges.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If this amendment is adopted you will be either discriminating for no reason or else you will be destroying the whole section. If it is going to be permitted to every person to hire from every
livery stable keeper as freely as he pleases all the vehicles the livery man has there cannot be possibly any ground on which you should prohibit the hiring of the individual cab which may be the only one that cab owner possesses. If you permit the hiring of livery rigs and cabs I do not know on what principle you could prohibit the hiring of a farmer's wagon. It seems to me this amendment is destructive of the whole section and unless we are prepared to repeal the section altogether we ought not to adopt the amendment.
Amendment (Mr. Lancaster) negatived.
On section 25-canvassing by person not residing in Canada.


Mr. LAKE.: In regard to that section I beg to move :
(10) That the Bill be amended by striking out section 25 and adding thereto the following sections:
265b. Every officer and every employee of the government of Canada, or of any department thereof, and every officer or employee of the government of any province of Canada, every returning officer, election clerk, deputy returning officer, enumerator or other election officer, and every partner or clerk of any such election officer, and every person who is ordinarily resident outside of Canada, who acts before or during an election as the agent of a candidate in the management, conduct or control of his election, as a canvasser for votes or solicitor for political support, or as locator, organizer, agent at a polling place or in any capacity for, on behalf of, or in the interest of such candidate, at such election or in respect thereto, is guilty of an offence, and liable upon indictment or summarily if he is a person other than an election officer to a penalty not exceeding two hundred dollars, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to both, in the discretion of the court; and if he is an election officer to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year nor less than six months at hard labour vhthout option of a fine; and shall stand disqualified from voting at any election during eight years next following his conviction.
265c. Section 252 of the said Act is hereby repealed.
This proposed amendment includes practically the provisions of section 25, and in addition thereto makes provision for the enforcement of a principle which has been approved by unanimous resolution of this House. That resolution has been frequently read to the House, but I will read it again-it was passed in the year 1905;
That whilst it is desirable that every official in the employ of the government of Canada should enjoy perfect freedom of political opinion and the untrammelled exercise of his franchise in accordance therewith, no official should be engaged or permitted to engage in partisan work of any description in the election of a representative to the provincial or Dominion legislatures.

That resolution, as I say, was carried by the unanimous vote of this House, but it appears since to have been a complete dead letter. At any rate, it was generally disregarded throughout the northwest by the officials of some of the departments during the provincial elections which took place in the latter part of the year 1905. The Prime Minister, in speaking on this resolution said:
There is nothing in this resolution which has not been accepted more than once by this government, and upon which we have not declared more than once that it is our intention to act.
I hold that this is an occasion on which it is the duty of this House to take the proper action, and to provide by law that no official shall take a partisan part in an election. The Prime Minister, speaking on the same occasion, made this statement:
We accept the services of all those who are engaged in the civil service of this country on the understanding that they shall give their undivided attention to their business.
Further on he said :
For my part, X am strongly of the opinion I held when in opposition that an official who takes an offensive part in election campaigns makes himself and his party a scandal, places himself at once at variance with a large portion of the community who contribute towards the payment of his salarv and minimizes to that extent his usefulness.
Since the passage of that resolution X have brought to the attention of the House the manner in which it has been disregarded. I have read a large number of affidavits to the House, affording positive proof of the manner in which officials in the Northwest, particularly those of the Department of the Interior, have acted as agents of candidates in the local elections. I might recall to the memory of the House the fact that during the election of the year 1904 a large number of officials were sent to one constituency in the Northwest, the election in which had been delayed owing to some unforeseen circumstances, and took an active part in that election. But in spite of the fact that these matters have been called to the attention of the government, and that these proofs have been submitted to the House, no action whatever appears to have been taken in the way of notifying the officials themselves what the wish of parliament was in regard to this matter, or of punishing them in any way for their conduct. The practice has been continued, and it must be apparent to every one what an extraordinady influence this interference on the part of immigration officials must have upon the result of any election in the two provinces of the northwest. The people in that country generally are brought in under the auspices of the Immigration Department, and receive their lands under the auspices of the Interior Department ; and it is to the officials of those two departments Mr. LAKE.
that they look to receive the patents for their lands after they have accomplished their settlement duties. Therefore to immigrants who have no very close or accurate knowledge of affairs in this country, these officials appear to be vested with very much greater authority than they really are Officials who act in a partisan capacity in an election are using not merely their own influence, but the influence attaching to the positions they occupy; that is, an influence which belongs to the people of the country at large, and which should not be exercised on behalf of either the one party or the other. Further than that, I think it is only fair to the officials themselves that there should be some statutory prohibition against their taking a partisan part in elections. It is a question in my mind whether in many of these cases the officials willingly go in and take such a partisan part. On the one hand, they must of course be aware of the fact that if the government which they are supporting is defeated, the fact that they have taken a partisan part in an election renders them liable to dismissal immediately on the other party coming into power. On the other hand, it is apparent that if a man is asked by the head of his office to go out and take a partisan part in an election, he feels himself bound to do so more or less, if he hopes for promotion in the future ; and I am very strongly of the opinion that promotion has been given to officials in return for active work in elections. If this practice is made illegal, the officials themselves will not desire to go out. and they will be in a position to refuse when they are asked by their superiors to do so. I therefore trust that the government will see their way to accept this amendment. In addition to the officers and employees of the government, I have included in the section the election clerks, enumerators and other election officials who have not been included, so far as I have been able to see, in the Elections Act as it now stands. I know that in an election in which I was intimately concerned in the Northwest, the election clerk was actually, up to the very day of the election, acting as secretary of the central Liberal committee of the riding. I have been unable to find, from an examination of this Act, that he was doing anything contrary to its provisions, but that was a very wrong position for him to take. An election official should be non-partisan and interfere in no way in the election on behalf of one candidate or the other. I trust that this amendment will be accepted by the government.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The clause under consideration was to some extent discussed at a meeting of the Election Committee two years ago, and I think it was said there-or if not said there it was said elsewhere-that this was clause, which was submitted to this House some years ago, in a Bill Introduced by Mr. John Charlton,

who was then a member. It was thought that people not living in Canada had no business to interfere in our politics in one way or another. The provision was aimed of course practically altogether at citizens of the United States, who might be imported for the purpose of taking part in our political contests, and who, taken some distance inland where they were strangers to the people, might engage with greater or less activity in an election campaign and possibly commit corrupt practices which it would afterwards be difficult to trace by reason of their being unknown in the country. There had been in former years-I do not remember having heard any complaint of such things lately-instances where, for the very purpose of committing corrupt practices, some strangers from the United States had come into this country and had distributed money for the benefit of one political side or the other. That of course would be an offence under our existing law, and the guilty party, if captured, could be punished for the offence of bribery. It was thought that a clause of this sort, in order to be useful, should go further and prevent all interference in elections, even of a legitimate character. By such interference I mean the solicitations of individuals, the urging of people to vote for any particular candidate, or the seeking information to find out how any particular elector intended to cast his vote. In short the intention was to prohibit altogether the interference of non-residents in an election one way or the other. I must say that I did not see any great necessity for the legislation, but as it met with some approval at the hands of individual members of the committee, I thought it would do no harm, and after consideration, I am quite content to leave the clause as it is. It can do no particular harm and may be of benefit. But the proposition of my hon. friend from Qu'Appelle (Mr. Bake) is of a very much wider and radically different character. It extends to men who are citizens of our country and voters, and who will in ordinary cases cast their ballot ; and it is proposed to forbid these men from aeting as locators or organizers or in any capacity on behalf of a candidate, should these men occupy any position in connection with the elections. I do not know whether the word 1 locate ' has been judicially interpreted. I do not remember having heard of it in connection with an election except in the instance of an election in Montreal some two or three years ago, where it was used in evidence before the courts. As I understand, it means a man hired to locate or trace up individual voters and find out what has become of them. But that is a very necessary piece of work, quite as necessary as any of the preliminary work of organization, such as keeping a card index or book of information, showing where the voter lives, with whom he works, who his friends 377
are, and where he can be found when wanated.
But let me say a word with reference to the prohibition which it is sought to apply to the act of canvassing. Take an election official, a man who is in a position of responsibility at the polls-take for Instance a deputy returning officer, who is the official at the polls with the highest responsibility. Under our law, if he so busies himself in connection with an election that he has become an agent of the candidate, he has committed an indictable offence and is liable to punishment under the provisions of the code. That, is a reasonably severe penalty. There is no exact definition of what conduct it takes to make a man an agent. That depends on circumstances. But perhaps it can be described compendiously in some such way as this : If a man works for the election of a candidate in co-operation with any person who, to the candidate's knowledge, is endeavouring to secure the election of that candidate, then the person so working will be an agent. I do not pretend to have given an accurate or exhaustive description of the kind of behaviour which will suffice to make a man an agent, but it will do for the purpose of illustration. If a man who, afterwards remember

because the holding of the poll is the last step in an election-if a man who, after he has so conducted himself in connection with an election as to have made himself an agent of a candidate, undertakes to act as a deputy returning officer, he commits an indictable offence.
Is not that going reasonably far ? You do not want to prohibit the man from voting ; you do not want to prohibit him, if he has a son and the son is wayward and not inclined to vote in the same way as the father, from remonstrating with his son about it, or speaking to other members of his family or speaking to a neighbour. If two farmers live side by side, why should not either of them talk to the other about which way they should vote and try to get the other, by any legitimate means, to vote his way, I see nothing improper about it. Yet, that is canvassing. The man who does that would not be an agent necessarily, but he would be, undoubtedly, a canvasser ; and it seems to me it would be going a terrible distance to say that if a man talks to his neighbour about the election and tries to induce him to vote one way or another according to his predilections he is guilty of an indictable offence if he afterwards acts as poll clerk or deputy returning officer, or if he was before that in government employment. The law prohibits the deputy returning officer, or the partner or clerk of the deputy returning officer, from acting as the agent of any candidate in the management of his election in that electoral district. I think that is going far enough ; and [DOT] whatever we do with the clause I have



proposed to prevent the alien, the man from outside Canada, interferring, we ought not to put this restriction upon our own citizens who are bona fide electors in the country.


Richard Stuart Lake: The minister has requested an expression of opinion with regard to a certain portion of the amendment which I have made. I would ask him if he will not accept that portion, at any rate, which refers to government officials taking part in an election. This House has put itself on record in favour of that principle, and I consider that we should be open to the charge of hypocrisy if we are not prepared to put our opinions in such a way that they will be enforced. May I not ask the minister who is in charge of the Bill to give me an answer whether he will or not ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: There are so many considerations involved in what has been suggested by the hon. gentleman that 1 am certainly, at the moment, unprepared, to express an opinion about it, much less to accept the proposed amendment.


Robert Laird Borden: The House has passed a unanimous resolution declaring that it is improper for these officers to engage actively in any Dominion or provincial election. Either that was intended to have force and effect, or it was not. If it was not intended to have force and effect it was a piece of idle and wretched humbug to pass it. If it was intended to enforce it, then we are face to face with this situation: Member after member in this House, on this side of the House, has brought examples, within his own personal knowledge, of the absolute disregard of that resolution. If it was worth while passing such a resolution, it is worth while enforcing it, and it can only be enforced by putting it on the statute-book. So, whether it is accepted in this form or whether it is accepted in some other form, it seems to me it should not longer be treated as in the past.


Wilfrid Laurier: The House, as stated by my hon. friend from Qu'Ap-pelle (Mr. Lake) and by the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth), has more than once signified its reprobation of members of the Civil Service taking part in an election. The resolution which has been passed by the House in this matter has had the effect of rendering the officer who makes himself in this way reprehensible liable to censure and disciplinary measures. But my hon. friend must admit that there is a wide difference between this and making such an action by an officer of the government a criminal offence. I am not prepared, for my part, to say at this moment that I would reject the idea of the hon. member from Qu'Appelle ; but I have this to observe : The present amendment is very much involved; it brings in not only officers of this government but many other persons also, and I


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: do not think it is acceptable in this form even though the House were to accept the general idea of my hon friend. It provides that an officer of any department, an employee of any province of Canada, a returning officer, election clerk, deputy returning officer, enumerator or other election officer, and every partner or clerk of such election officer, becomes liable to punishment as being guilty of a criminal offence if he takes part in an election. Nobody, I believe, would think of accepting this amendment as it is drafted. The main idea conveyed by my hon. friend is confined to the proposition that any member of the civil service who goes beyond what is undoubtedly his right of exercising his franchise and takes part ini an election thereby becomes guilty of a criminal offence. I am not prepared to express an opinion at this moment, but I think the House will agree with me that this amendment should not be accepted.


Haughton Lennox: The statement made by the minister that the amendment as presented could not be accepted I am not prepared to dispute. But I think there are two salient features in this amendment that the government ought to take very seriously into consideration.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


Haughton Lennox: One relates to their own officers, persons in the employ of the government-I leave out altogether the parties employed by the governments of the provinces-and the other class being the returning officers, election clerks, deputv returning officers, enumerators and other persons engaged to carry out the elections, these being also practically selected by the government. If members of these classes act as agents and interest themselves in promoting the interests of one candidate, I submit that provision ought to be made for their punishment, and a pretty drastic provision at that. Whether it should be as drastic as here pointed out I do not know ; but I do hope the government, having, with regard to the one class-the officials of the government-expressed a clear opinion and aproved a resolution will not be satisfied to say as the Prime Minister has just said, that they should be liable to censure only, but will say that they shall be liable to punishment if they transgress. These two cases particularly I would like to impress upon the Prime Minister as being worthy the consideration of the government if the government is sincere in the action taken before.


William Alfred Galliher: For my part, I hope the House will not agree to make it a criminal offence, for an employee of the government, I do not care what his official capacity, to take part in an election. I think that would be a distinct mistake. If it is undesirable that offi-

cials, either of the provincial or Dominion government, should take an active part in a political campaign their punishment should be in the hands of the government in whose employ they are and that punishment should not be the branding of them as criminals because they take an interest, which, after all, it is only natural that they should take, in the affairs of their country. A civil servant in the employ of the government very naturally has his political leanings and to say that he shall be a criminal because he may ask his fellow civil servant to vote for his choice, or try to persuade him that a certain man should receive his support, is placing him on a plane I do not think he should be placed on. He should be as free as any other voter in the country. If he should speak on the public platform, if he should act as an organizer, or if he should become closely identified with a local political organization, that is another matter.


An hon. MEMBER.: That is what he gets promotion for.


William Alfred Galliher: Probably sometimes he may deserve promotion. That is a matter that can be dealt with by the government in whose employ he is. These things will right themselves. Do not let us put anything on the statute-book which will make the natural action of a civil servant a criminal act.


Mr. BOYCE.: I do not think there is very much reason in what the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Galliher) has advanced. This House, having adopted the principle that persons in the employ of the government should not take part in elections, there is very little hardship in making it an offence under the Election Act for such persons to take part in elections. If you apply this section to civil servants, all persons in the employ of the government will have notice that they are prohibited from taking part in elections. Why should they be exempt from any prohibition under the statute ? It is merely an extension of prohibition which 'is made by parliament incorporated in the Election Act so as to carry into practice the principle which has been enunciated in this House. What is more reprehensible than that an officer in the employ of the government should be permitted to act as the agent of a candidate in the management of his election, or that he should be allowed to canvass or solicit political support, or act as an organizing agent at a polling place in the interest of a candidate in a Dominion election? It is contrary to the principle laid down by this parliament and accepted by the government and contrary to the principle laid down by the Prime Minister. What object is there in protecting those civil servants who choose to incur such risk ? Why not expose them to the penalty that naturally follows their incurring such a 377j
risk? Otherwise the right hon. Prime Minister and his government come forward and say that they will repeal the resolution adopted toy parliament which laid down the principle that civil servants should not take part in elections.


William Alfred Galliher: It is another thing to go so far as to say that a man shall be branded as a criminal and that a penalty shall be imnosed upon him for taking part in an election.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The resolution did not go so far as that. I do not think that the right hon. gentleman intended we should go so far as that, but he laid down the abstract principle that no person in the employ of the government should take part in Dominion elections-


William Alfred Galliher: Then let him punish him if he does.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Other than to vote ; that he should be at liberty to exercise his franchise if he saw fit, but if he went beyond that and interfered with the conduct of an election, or chose to act as the agent of a candidate, or otherwise identify himself with an election contest on behalf of either of the candidates, he was doing something which was prohibited by reason of his being in the employ of the government. If that be prohibited in the course of his employment, why should not the people of Canada have the advantage of that prohibition and why should not that principle be carried into practice? So much for the civil service. I see absolutely no reason at all why the government should not adopt that principle and carry it into practice by placing it upon the statute-book of this land. What is more reprehensible, again, let me ask, than that a returning officer, or an election clerk, or a deputy returning officer, or an enumerator, or any other election officer, leaving out for the moment consideration of the partner or clerk, should act as a canvasser, should be the agent of either of the candidates and should canvass for votes or solicit support ? I know within my own knowledge of a returning officer in an election who, in a particular riding, carried out the duties of his office and at the same time was actively engaged in canvassing for votes on behalf of the Liberal candidate.


Wilfrid Laurier: I have seen that myself.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: And this returning officer was at the same time saying that the Conservative candidate, who was. your humble servant, would lose his deposit. Does the right hon. gentleman desire no countenance that or will he have the courage to place on the statute-book a prohibition aganst it? Will the right hon. gentleman even go so far as to say that an official who does that shall lose his employment. Will he not

do something to show that he believes in a practical way in the resolution which he approved of and which was unanimously adopted by this House ?


Wilfrid Laurier: I think we all will agree that any public servant who takes part in an election, otherwise than to cast his vote, creates a scandal, causes a great deal of dissatisfaction, and loses the respect of his neighbours in the community in which he resides. But the difficulty is where to draw the line. With a good deal of what my hon. friend (Mr Boyce) has said I can agree. If a public officer were to become a locator, an organizer, or an agent at the polling place for one of the candidates he would commit an act which any government must take cognizance of and reprimand if they would not dismiss him. The public servant who would commit acts of this kind would not deserve sympathy. _ But, suppose one of the officers in this building should canvass one of his friends in a friendly conversation and express his opinion in favour of one candidate or another, it seems to me it would be most invidious to subject him to criminal prosecution. We should aim to do what is right to have purity in elections, but we must recollect that if we attempt to stand so straight that we may fall backwards, failure must attend our effort. For example, the law provides that a postmaster in an incorporated city shall not have the right to vote and therefore he should take no part in an election, but would you apply the same rule to a postmaster in a village who is perhaps paid $30 a year for his services, and who holds the office not so much for his own benefit as to oblige his neighbours ? I do not think I would go so far as to say that such an officer should not have the right to vote or to canvass in election. I sympathize altogether with the idea that civil servants should not take part in elections, and that the civil servant who does should be visited with severe censure and punishment; yet, I am not prepared to say that an official who so transgresses should be branded as a criminal. The question is not free from difficulty; it is one we should hold in reserve and consider before the Bill gets out of committee. I think the House will have no hesitation in rejecting the amendment of the hon. member (Mr. Lake).


George Eulas Foster: I understand this section will stand for consideration.


Wilfrid Laurier: No, the idea will stand.


George Eulas Foster: Allowing the idea to stand does not amount to anything. My right hon. friend is fond of ideas but he is not fond of putting his ideas into practice.


Wilfrid Laurier: Will my hon. friend vote for this amendment ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: 


George Eulas Foster: I will vote for a large part of it. These testing times do come and this is a testing time for my right hon. friend. He has many a time made splendid professions to the people with regard to the non-partisanship of Dominion officials, but when it comes to carry out his professions he is not ready for action. For six years this government has been promising and considering an Election Bill, and meanwhile this House has passed this resolution with the hearty support of the Prime Minister. Now at long last we have a partial Election Bill before us and the Minister of Justice says that with regard to Dominion officials taking part in Dominion elections he has not considered the matter and cannot pronounce judgment upon it; and the Prime Minister follows pretty closely in his wake. But, my right hon. friend has done with public officials exactly what this resolution of the House of Commons which he so enthusiastically accepted declared he should not do. He has even promoted officials after active interference in elections, and he cannot cite a single case in which, after proof positive was placed before him, he has dismissed or degraded a solitary one of them. My hon. friend (Mr. Lake) read a dozen affidavits to show in special cases where Dominion officials had done absolutely the contrary to what the resolution of this House and the words of the Prime Minister said they should do; that Dominion officials have done what the right hon. gentleman five minutes ago declared would create an air of scandal about them, and yet, he has never even ordered an investigation after these affidavits were read and he has certainly not visited the offending officers with punishment. He knows the case of Wagner ; he knows that but a short time passed after the resolution to which he gave his hearty assent was adopted until his Minister of the Interior in an election campaign in the west actually stated in public that these Dominion officials ought to have some rights as human beings and took some of them on the political platform with him. There was the Dominion official standing alongside of his minister on the platform an intimation and submerged menace that the men who were looking to the reports of that official for certain landed rights had better take example and follow in his political footsteps. My hon. friend may not know-but he knows less than I think he knows if he does not-then there are to-day in the Northwest hundreds of people who dare scarcely call their souls their own because of their fear of the officials who are paid by my right hon. friend. They think their all, in connection with their homestead rights and landed rights, depends on the disposition of the official towards them. They see that official clothed with power, and using his power actively and openly in canvassing for the govern-

ment, which is to a great extent their godfather, and they live in daily terror of him. Dress that man up in his official robes, and put him on a platform with the minister, and have him become aD active canvasser. That creates a scandal ; my right hon. friend has just admitted it. Then, why does he allow scandals to remain? Can he point to a single instance in which he has purged the scandal by dismissing, or degrading, or punishment in any way the official who has offended in this way? And now we come to the supreme test. Does the right hon. gentleman believe what he said, or was that something he could say here and give to his apologists in the country, especially that class of apologists who want to stand right with the moral and religious community, and be able to defend the Prime Minister by saying:	Look at
these lofty sentiments ; are they not in accord with high moral and religions principles? Can we go against a man of that kind? When he is brought to the test, and he is asked to put a resolution of parliament into the law, which is the only place where you can make it effective, he refuses to do it. He has not thought of it sufficiently, and he runs to cover under the statement of what a gross exercise of arbitrary power it would be to make it a criminal offence for a civil servant to speak to a brother civil servant dining with him about his political opinions. That is the absurdity of an argument or of an attempt at an argument. We are saying nothing about that. But will my right hon. friend take the case of the flaring, flaunting disregard of his own resolution and attach a penalty to that? If he does not want to make the offending official liable to the penalty here provided, let him make the penalty milder, so that the law will be at the back of his resolution, or else let him in decency give up the passing of resolutions along that line. I think I can ask the co-operation of my hon. friend the Minister of Agriculture in this respect. What is he trying to do, so far as the government ,will let him? He is trying to make the civil service nonpartisan ; and here is the right hon. gentleman putting an argument into the mouth of every civil servant to be as partisan as he likes, or as he can be, because he sees on every side that the man who is boldly partisan gets an increase of salary-certainly does not get dismissal, or degradation, or reproval, or reprimand. How can you live together unless you are agreed? And if the Minister of Agriculture is actually trying to purge the civil service of partisanship, and the government is with him, what about this grossest kind of partisanship? And when you allow these things to be done by your officials, what spirit do you raise in the country? Every man against whom this unjust action is taken feels that it is wrong, that it ought not to exist, and vows in his heart that if he
ever gets into power he will ring that man down and ring his own man up. That is the spirit you cultivate by that kind of thing. It makes the spirit of partisanship strong in this country, perpetuates it, makes it almost a case of the survival of the fittest. Why cannot my right hon. friend add a beneficent force to the purifying of the civil service of this country and of the politics of this country by selecting even the most flagrant instances of open partisanship and banning it by the force of law? Why will he not do that? He would add a beneficent power and influence to the public life of this country by so doing. But instead of that he is inviting partisanship of the baser sort to do its worst and its utmost. There is a great responsibility upon the head of a government in this country in that respect, and-1 cannot see why my right hon. friend, after all that has passed, cannot add to the law something which will carry out the professions that he is making-professions that I believe to be and hope to be sincere, and that we on this side of the House will help him to make sincere in the most effective way, t>y embodying the resolution of parliament in the law of the country.


Wilfrid Laurier: I must say frankly that I cannot rise to the height of virtue of my hon. friend. I am a poor, miserable sinner; I must admit it. Although I have some good intentions, my aberrations are numerous-I know it too well. In the case of the civil service I have always held the opinion, and hold it still, that a civil servant should not take any part in an election. Indeed, if my own conviction in this respect were carried out, I think I would take the franchise from the civil service. However, that might be going too far, and in this respect I yield very willingly to the view of those around me on one side or the other, that as civil servants are citizens' they should have the right of citizenship. The rights of citizenship involve, not only the right to vote, but the right to influence others. We agree that while civil servants should have the primary right of exercising their franchise, they should be debarred from the privilege of influencing the franchise of others. We have passed resolutions to this effect. My hon. friend says we have not lived up to these resolutions. I have heard that before. He says nobody has been dismissed or reprimanded. I am not aware that nobody has been dismissed or has been reprimanded.


George Eulas Foster: Are you aware that they have been?


Wilfrid Laurier: My inquisitorial disposition has not gone that far. I cannot speak of the Northwest, which is very far away ; but within the circle which my gaze can embrace there have been very

few contraventions of that resolution of the House of Commons. But my hon. friend goes further ; he thinks that it is not sufficient to give the power of reprimand and dismissal to the government, but he thinks that the civil servant who takes part in an election, who canvasses his neighbour at dinner to vote this way or that way should be branded as a criminal and brought before a criminal court.


George Eulas Foster: My right hon. friend does not mean to say that I advocated that?


Wilfrid Laurier: Certainly.


George Eulas Foster: I did the exact opposite of that. I was trying to prove, what I thought was rather a weak argument of my right hon. friend, that he would let the flagrant violator go, and started out on the argument that you must not make a criminal of a man who would speak to his friend at dinner. I never said I would make that man a criminal, nor would I.


Wilfrid Laurier: I am very glad that my hon. friend takes back his words, that he does not mean what he said. This is what my hon. friend advocated, unconsciously or unknowingly, as I find now. My hon. friend said : You will punish a man who will do a certain act, but you will not punish a man who will do a certain other act. What is the act he refers to? A civil servant who becomes a locator, an organizer or an agent at a polling place, is liable to be punished as a criminal. My hon. friend agrees to that.


George Eulas Foster: I did not say I did, and as a matter of fact I do not. I expressly said there were things in this which I would not support.


Wilfrid Laurier: Very good. My hon. friend abandons his positions, one after the other.


George Eulas Foster: I beg to ask my right hon. friend to do me justice. When I say that I did not say It, he is scarcely right in saying I have abandoned my position. I have not abandoned any position or changed any position for I have never taken the position the right hon. gentleman would place me in.


Wilfrid Laurier: If my hon. friend would explain to me what he meant, I would be glad to have his explanation.


George Eulas Foster: On what point?


Wilfrid Laurier: That the civil servant who takes part in an election otherwise than by voting should be liable to criminal prosecution.


George Eulas Foster: I have not said that.


Wilfrid Laurier: I am delighted to hear it and we are both agreed.


Wilfrid Laurier: 


Samuel Hughes: There are two classes of civil servants that may be considered. I do not think any one would desire to punish an ordinary civil servant, such as those in the building here or customs officers or officials of that kind, because he canvassed his neighbour. I always like to have that class of officers come out and work against me because in my opinion it is always beneficial to the other side to have such men working against them. But there is another class such as the land agents, homestead inspectors, and inspectors of weights and measures, who are continually travelling up and down the country, these men should not be allowed to interfere in elections. When a land agent or a homestead inspector passes around the country in these Northwest districts and uses his influence to benefit a certain candidate, he is passing beyond the bounds and the minister should look up some way to reach him. When an officer of that kind goes out of his way to influence the people under him, that is a more serious matter, and that calls for action which is called for in the case of an ordinary civil servant. As far as the ordinary civil servant is concerned, I always welcome him in the field against me.


Richard Stuart Lake: The right hon. the First Minister took the ground very strongly that it would be improper to declare a civil servant, who is acting in direct contravention of the rules of this House and the law of the land, a criminal. Let me point out that many years ago in this House a gentleman, whose memory every one here holds in the highest respect, made use of that very word ' criminal ' when speaking of government officials who were taking part in an election. I refer to the late Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, who moved a resolution to the effect that it was highly criminal for any minister or other servant of the Crown to use the powers of his office in an election. I have not the exact wording of the resolution, but the expression * highly criminal ' was used by the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie with regard to officials of the government using the powers of their office in an election. Well, that is just what the officials of the Department of the Interior are doing in the Northwest to-day. I think it would be right to pass a law which, if these officials disregard it, would place them in that category. What we ask is that the law be so framed that these officials will bring themselves into that category if they violate it. As respects the class of officials to which the right hon. gentlemen referred to as those to whom the resolution of the House ought not to be applied-the class of postmasters-I think it was concerning that very class that Mr. Mackenzie spoke. I might remind the right hon. gentleman of what mischief a postmaster might do, who took a very strong partisan part in an election, by withholding election or other documents a few days.

There is one other point. I have referred to the case of an election clerk acting, as apparently he has a right to do under the Act, in a very partisan manner-acting as secretary of the central Liberal committee of the district in which he was acting also as election clerk. At the time he was secretary of the Liberal committee, he was acting for the returning officer, during that officer's absence, as he has to do under the law. Not only returning officers but election clerks should certainly be debarred from any part in an election on one side or the other. I realize that the provisions of my amendments are perhaps somewhat wide and did not expect that the amendment would be adopted in its entirety, but I hoped that some portion of it would be. I did not expect to find it rejected altogether, and I trust that the Minister of Justice will allow the section to stand in order that it may be amended and made to deal, perhaps in a less stringent manner than I propose, with some of the persons mentioned in my amendment.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The logic of the right hon. gentleman is not as clear as one would expect. If he will look at the section under consideration, which my hon. friend from Qu'Appelle proposes to amend, he will find a greater evil than that of restricting the interference of civil servants. Take section 25 of the Bill, to which this amendment is proposed:
Any person, not being a voter, who resides out side Canada and who, to secure the election of any candidate, canvasses for vote? or in any way endeavours to induce voters to vote for any candidate in an election, or to refrain from voting, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to a fine not exceeding $200 and costs and not less than $100 and costs, or in default of payment of such fine and costs to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months and not less than three months, with or without hard labour.
Which class is most entitled to our sympathy ? Here, for instance, is a father, possibly a Canadian citizen, who resides outside Canada and who comes into Canada on a visit to his children or near relatives while an election is being held. In the heat of that election, out of sympathy, and across the dinner table, he solicits a vote or endeavours to get some one to vote. Surely he is not doing a criminal act any more than a civil servant would be who does the same thing but who, by reason of the very terms of his employment and his relations with the government, is required not to take the slightest part in an election in any respect. Surely, the right hon. gentleman must see that there is less harm in the offence covered by section 25 than there is in a civil servant violating the duty which this House has clearly declared to rest upon him. The right hon. gentleman says it is a bad practice to allow civil servants to take part in
elections, and that he would do what he could to suppress it. If he believes bona fide to surpress it, I do not know any better way than to make part of the law of the land that which he has declared as an abstract principle. I see the Postmaster General (Mr. Lemieux) in his place. Numbers of postmasters throughout this province of Ontario are guilty of interference in elections. Take one case in the district of Nip-issing-and I see the hon. member for Nip-issing (Mr. McCool) also in his place. There is a postmaster at Copper Cliff, who was summoned, tried and found guilty of corrupt practices in an election. The knowledge of this fact, a petition signed by about five hundred people of the town to the Postmaster General, and an appeal in this House all failed to secure any remedy or relief with regard to this gentleman whose salary has since been increased. There is the penalty you impose on your civil servants who take part in an election.


Mr. LEMIEUX.: If the hon. member (Mr. Boyce) will allow me, I am sure the hon. member for Nipissing will be able to answer, because he knows the particulars of the case referred to. I know in a general way, that the statement made by the hon. gentleman is not founded on fact. As regards the salary of the postmaster of Copper Cliff, that has not been increased, unless the revenue of the office has increased, in which case there would be an automatic increase in the salary. As regards the alleged criminal act of this postmaster, the facts are not very clear in my memory at the moment, but I remember investigating the case last year when it was called to my attention by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Boyce), and I can assure the hon. gentleman that I did not think the postmaster was guilty of the offence the hon. gentleman is now stating to the House.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I am astonishd that the Postmaster General should have the assurance to stand in his place and give an official denial to a matter that is of record and is known to the people throughout the province of Ontario. Let the hon. gentleman look-and I ask him no more than that- at the records of the court and the decision ot Chancellor Boyd and Mr. Justice Teetzel in the Sault Ste. Marie election case, and he will find out the facts.


Mr. McCOOL.: What charge was proven against the postmaster at Copper Cliff?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: He was found guilty of having corruptly provided transportation for voters, and providing money for the purpose of conveying voters from Copper Cliff to Sault Ste. Marie to vote for the Liberal candidate. It was found that he spent no less than $600 for the purpose. These facts were brought to the attention of the Post-I master General in this House by myself

on the 12th day of July, 1906. I have a memory of the date; and if my hon. friend (Mr. Lemieux) will look at 1 Hansard ' of that date he will find who is right. Since that date, it has been again drawn to his attention not only by myself but by petition of the inhabitants of the town. He says he found no fault to justify the removal of this gentleman from office. Another instance with which the Postmaster General is familiar is the case of Dobie. X need not recapitulate the facts in that case ; they have been gone over before. There was not only interference in elections, but he was discharged for a very grave offence against the public treasury. Discharged from his office for that reason; of very great usefulness in an election in the meantime ; reinstatement immediately afterwards in the postmastership from which he had been discharged for a great crime. I need not refer again to the cases of Nixon and Wagner in the Northwest-they are fresh in the minds of hon. members in this House, and especially of the right hon. Prime Minister, who, of course, was the first to rise in his place and vote down a resolution in favour of an inquiry. That is the kind of example being held up to the civil service. If the right hon. gentleman desires to demoralize the civil service, to cultivate in them ithe belief that they may take any part in elections, and that, though there will be a pronouncement of this House against that conduct, in no way will that be enforced, he is making a farce and a piece of hypocrisy of the whole business. If he says that it is an offence for a father or brother, not now resident in Canada, but visiting his former home, to solicit a vote of a relative, and that one doing this firstly makes himself liable to imprisonment for no less than three months, can he say that it is a less offence for one in the civil service, who knows that it is part of ithe duty of his employment to abstain from taking part in elections, to play the part of an offensive partisan ? Surely if one is a fault, the other is a fault and one should be declared so by statute as much as the other.


Mr. HERRON.: I think the case must have been represented to the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) in view of what he has said with reference to the influence of government officials especially in the Northwest. He stated that he could see no reason why an official receiving $25 a month should not take part in an election.


Wilfrid Laurier: Not $25 a month ; $25 a year.


John Herron: In our country, many sub-land agents have salaries of $25 up to $50 a month. These men have as much influence in an election in that country as if they were receiving $2,000 or more. I know gentlemen in charge of sub-agencies who are head over districts comprising ten thou-Mr. BOYCE.
sand settlers. These settlers have to appeal to the sub-land agent every day. He is looked upon as a regular Dominion official. He has that position by reason of the fact that ' Dominion Lands Office ' is written over the door and that he is the sole land official in the district. I have been on the platform with men of that character every night for a month while they were lecturing on politics in that district. I have known sub-agents to retire from their offices on holidays for about three weeks about election time and go about telling the voters how to vote and what concessions they would get from the government. I have these facts and can prove them. I have known these men to stand in a polling booth all day and challenge the same men whom they had solicited during the weeks before the election, I think the Prime Minister is mistaken in his belief that because a man is receiving a small salary he is deprived of the privilege of taking part in elections. I have known instances where the same sub-agents refused to take off their coats and go out and work at election times, but I notice that these men are not holding their positions to-day. I do not think the Prime Minister is aware of these things or [DOT]that they have been properly laid before him or he would not take the stand he has to-day.


Charles Arthur McCool: I am surprised that the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Boyce) brings up this question of the Copper Cliff postmaster again. This is the third time I have heard him repeat the statements he has made this evening. I do not want to accuse the gentleman of misstating the case but while it is true that charges were proved against Kilpatrick of paying the fares of a few men from Copper Cliff, where they were working, to Sault Ste. Marie at the time of the elections. The hon. gentleman is mistaken when he says the amount was $600; I think it was considerably less than that. But let that be as it may. We have heard hon. gentlemen this afternoon discussing the propriety of allowing the hiring of rigs for the conveyance of electors to the poll on election day, and arguing that livery men should not be prevented from renting their rigs and doing their legitimate business because of an election. We know that the paying of fares from one place to another is a corrupt act but we also know that if every one who has been guilty of that act in the past ten or fifteen years were prosecuted the penitentiaries of this country would not begin to hold them. This is a common practice, we may as well face the situation as it is. Every one knows it has been done frequently. The hon. gentleman, I have no doubt, has probably done something of that kind in the past himself, or if he has not, he is one of a very few. It is not looked upon really as a corrupt act, although by law it is so.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does my hon. friend not know that this gentleman was found guilty by the court of this corrupt practice ?


Charles Arthur McCool: He was found guilty of that act, that was the corrupt act, the purchasing of a few tickets to enable men at Copper Cliff to go to Sault Ste. Marie to vote. Why pursue a man tor an offence that is so common as that ? There is no doubt it is a corrupt act if you are caught at it, but how much difference there is between that and giving money to induce an elector to vote. 1 have been in elections up there when railway tickets were to be had for the asking to send Conservative voters to the polls by the hundreds, they were to be had in bundles, not in single tickets, and there was no great howl about it. Mr. Kilpatrick is as decent a man as there is in this country; I do not have to apologize for him. On the receipt of the petition which the hon. gentleman has mentioned, I made a special visit to Copper Cliff to interview the president of the Canadian Copper Company and he said he had nothing against Mr. Kilpatrick. Other men who were there said they signed the petition because (they believed the president of the Copper Company wanted them to sign it and that their positions depended upon their signing it. It was generally understood that the Canadian Copper Company who practically own the town, but did not own this particular piece of land on which the post office was located took this method of trying to run him out of the town. That is an open secret there although I must do the justice to the president of the Canadian Copper Company, Mr. A. P. Turner, to say that there was no truth in the statement and that he did not care if Mr. Kilpatrick remained there to the end of time. He said he was a good officer, he had no complaint against him in regard to the conduct of his office, except on one occasion when there was one serious complaint made against him. There is no vegetation there owing to the sulphur fumes from the roasting of the nickel ore and in wet weather it is impossible to keep the office clean; with the number of people who enter a post office the floor will get dirty and one of the complaints is that he did not keep the floor clean. That petition was sent to myself. I handed it to the Postmaster General and asked him to send an officer there to make an investigation. This was done and I understood that the report was not unfavourable to Mr. Kilpatrick. I know that at Copper Cliff there is no more respected man in the town than is Mr. Kilpatrick. I think if the hon. gentleman (Mr. Boyce) would look right at home at Sault Ste. Marie he would find officers very much higher in the eyes of the people there who are active partisans and take active part in elections. He knows to whom I refer.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. member seems to think that I attacked Mr. Kilpatrick. I did not, that was done by the court and by counsel at the court, and counsel for Kilpatrick at the court made practically the same argument in defence of Kilpatrick, as my hon. friend has now made with the result that the court found against Kilpatrick and reported him for corrupt practices.


Mr.   M@: Did you not have correspondence with people in Copper Cliff with regard to the petition against Mr. Kilpatrick?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I had a letter informing me that a petition had been sent to the Postmaster General and that no notice had been taken of it and asking me to bring it to his attention, but no further correspondence. The only reply I made was to send a copy of ' Hansard ' of July 12 in which the Postmaster General promised me to sea that justice was done. The hon. member for Nipis-sing will see that I am not making any charges against Mr. Kilpatrick. I am simply stating the facts that have been brought to the attention of the Postmaster General. I am not condemning Mr. Kilpatrick; the court has done that. My hon. friend is inclined to be extreme in his language. During the last provincial election he came to Sault Ste. Marie and made a speech in which he told the people that after the 8th day of June Mr. A. G. MacKay would be called upon to form a government. I merely desire to point out that, for the very reasons which the hon. gentleman has mentioned himself, the case is abundantly proved and the Postmaster General ought to take cognizance of the statement of his own supporter that (this gentleman was found guilty of having committed corrupt acts, that money was corruptly provided for him and that he corruptly expended that money.


Charles Arthur McCool: I do not wish to have words placed in my mouth by the hon. gentleman that I did not utter. I made no statement of that kind.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I say that the Postmaster General must necessarily draw this conclusion, but what astonishes me more than anything else is that the Postmaster General should deny the record which was drawn to his attention as will be shown by reference to 'Hansard,' on the 12th July.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: On the 12th of July?


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Perhaps that was a dies non with the hon. gentleman.


George Eulas Foster: He was excited on that day.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Apparently, rather than look at the record, the hon. gentleman preferred to take the explanation of the hon. member for Nipissing which is rather a dangerous precedent when there is a record to

be looked at. I have referred tbe Postmaster General to the facts. I am not charging Mr. Kilpatrick with anything further than that he was, at the trial of the election petition at Sault Ste. Marie, reported and found guilty of corrupt practices in connection with the election, that this was brought to the attention of the Postmaster General on the 12th July, 1906, and that he promised to look into it and see that justice should be done and, from his point of view, justice was done by retaining this person in office.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Carried.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I do uot wish to detain the House at any length, but I merely wish to state that two years ago my attention was called to the postmaster at -Copper Cliff and I immediately took action. I had a report prepared by the inspector of the district, as is usual in such cases, the report is in the department and there is nothing in the report which would warrant the Postmaster General in dismissing that postmaster.


Robert Laird Borden: Did the hon. gentleman make any Inquiry as to whether there is a record of the court such as has been alluded to?


Rodolphe Lemieux: No, but if my hon. friend will look at the question that was put to me a year or two ago by the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce) he will see that nothing of the kind was mentioned.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: If my hon. friend will refer to ' Hansard ' of July 12, 1906, he will see that I made this statement:
The postmaster, who is one of the gentlemen who was reported for corrupt practices in connection with the famous ' Minnie M' excursion, has been retained as postmaster of that office-


Charles Arthur McCool: He was never connected in any shape or form with the 'Minnie M.'


Arthur Cyril Boyce: He was one of the men who was reported by the court at Sault Ste. Marie trial.


Charles Arthur McCool: But the hon. gentleman wants to connect him with the * Minnie M.'


Arthur Cyril Boyce: He was reported for corrupt practices at that trial.


Rodolphe Lemieux: At all events the report of the inspector is there. He is a very good officer. I was informed that a certain firm at Copper Cliff, who had bought nearly the whole of the property in that district with the exception of the property where the post office is situated was very anxious to see the postmaster dislodged in order to get the postmastership. That was obviously the reason why the dismissal of the postmaster was asked. As regards the postmaster there is no complaint against him, he is a good Mr. BOYCE.
officer, and from the official standpoint, there is nothing against him.


Robert Laird Borden: The doctrine of the Postmaster General seems to be that so long as an officer faithfully performs his official duties, he is at perfect liberty to treat with the utmost contempt a resolution passed by this House and to interfere in politics as much as he likes. The Postmaster General sees nothing against it. It is not necessary that a man should have been found guilty of corrupt practices, to create an offence against this rule of the House; and yet his own supporter sitting behind him has admitted to-night that this man was found guilty of having provided money, against the provisions of the Election Act, for the conveyance of voters. I do not care whether he was convicted by the court or not; that admission itself discloses an active and offensive interference in politics and a violation of a resolution of this House. The Prime Minister has told us to-night that the proper remedy for such a case as that is dismissal. The Postmaster General says that that is not the remedy that he proposes to apply. There could be no stronger argument in favour of some such amendment as has been proposed here to-night than that furnished by the words of the Postmaster General when he proclaims to the country that his postmasters can interfere in elections, even to the extent of committing corrupt practices, and they can remain securely in their offices.


Rodolphe Lemieux: That is an inference of the hon. gentleman. I never said that. I simply stated the case as far as I know it. I did not put the case as it has been put by the hon. gentleman. I never said that any postmaster might corrupt the electorate or be guilty of illegal practices and still retain his office.


Robert Laird Borden: Does the minister deny that this gentleman has interfered in elections to the extent that I have mentioned?


Rodolphe Lemieux: I have no knowledge of it. Besides this was not a federal election. The ' Minnie M ' incident was an incident in connection with a provincial election.


Robert Laird Borden: The resolution of the House of Commons extends not only to federal elections but to provincial elections as well.


Mr. PATERSON.: I did uot know that.


Robert Laird Borden: It does.


William Paterson: Oh, it went too far then.


Robert Laird Borden: These gentlemen pay so little attention to their own resolutions that they do not remember them more than six months and apparently they never intend to enforce them. The Postmaster General has the testimony, not only of my

hon. friend from West Algorna (Mr. Boyce) but the testimony of the hon. member from Nipissing who sits behind him, and, more than that, from the records of the court, this gentleman has taken an active and offensive part in elections to the extent of having been guilty of corrupt practices.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I have nothing mote than the ipse dixit of the hon. member for West Algoma. I have never seen the record of the court. Has there been a complaint made against the postmaster in that district that he corruptly interfered in a provincial election ? The hon. member for West Algoma made a complaint In the House two years ago as to how the postmaster's duties were performed. I investigated the case. I have the flies in the department and I will lay them on the table of the House. The report of the inspector is that he is a good postmaster.


Robert Laird Borden: The mental processes of the Postmaster General are past finding out.


Rodolphe Lemieux: The hon. gentleman is a little bumptious when he speaks. I understand the English language as well as the hon. gentleman does.


Robert Laird Borden: When the hon. gentleman gets into a corner he is apt to be a little impertinent.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Not at all.


Robert Laird Borden: But we will take the impertinence whence it comes. The hon. gentleman, if he is not careful, may be reminded of some other incidents in his own career that will not be very pleasant to him.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: In connection with this same subject.


Robert Laird Borden: In connection with this same subject. He had better not be too bumptious himself. I want to tell the hon. gentleman this : It has been stated in the House by an hon. member, upon his responsibility, that this man was convicted in the courts for active and corrupt interference in an election, and he thinks he discharges his duty by saying that he knows nothing about the case. Does he not understand that it was his duty to make an inquiry into that subject if he has any regard for the resolution of this House? Does he think he discharges his duty as Postmaster General by declaring that because he has made no inquiry and therefore knows nothing of the record of this court, he should not dismiss this man? That seems a remarkable way to discharge his duty to the House and to the country. I repeat that he has the testimony of the gentleman behind him to the effect that Kilpatrick did not disburse money to the extent of $600, but some smaller amount, and he distinctly declared that this man had paid fares
for the conveyance of voters in the provincial election. The Postmaster General can get evidence, the record of the court and under these circumstances to refrain from making inquiry is neglecting to discharge the duty of the high position he holds. Under these circumstances we can conclude that the resolutioin of the House has been treated as a dead letter and the Postmaster General has given an illustration of the manner in which it has been treated with contempt by members of this government ever since it was passed.


Charles Arthur McCool: I have to say that if this rule was carried out in the district of Nipissing or the four local districts comprising the district of Nipissing in the last election, and if Conservative postmasters were to be fired for taking part in that election you would not have a Conservative postmaster left in the whole district. '
On section 26,-Posters, &c., to have names and address of printer and publisher.


Robert Laird Borden: I direct the Minister of Justice to the following proposed amendment to this section which is published in the Votes and Proceedings :
That the said Bill be amended by striking out sections 26 and 27 and by adding the following section:
32.	The said Act is amended by inserting the following sections immediately after section 276:
276a. Any person who, before or during an election, knowingly writes, prints, publishes, posts, circulates or distributes, or causes to be written, printed, published, posted, circulated or distributed, any written or printed statement falsely purporting to be made by or on behalf of a candidate at such election, for the purpose of prejudicially affecting the election of such candidate, or of promoting or procuring the election of another candidate, is guilty of an unlawful act, and shall also forfeit the sum of two hundred dollars to any person who sues therefor, with costs.
276b. Every bill, circular, placard or poster having reference to an election shall bear on its face the name and address of the printer and publisher thereof, and any person publishing, printing, posting, circulating or distributing any such bill, circular, placard or poster as aforesaid which fails to bear upon its face the name and address of the printer and publisher is guilty of an unlawful act, and shall also forfeit the sum of two hundred dollars to any person who sues therefor, with costs.
33.	Section 277 of the said Act is amended by striking out the word ' two ' in the second line and substituting therefor the word ' four.'
34.	Section 278 of the said Act is amended by striking out the word ' thirteen ' in the first line and substituting therefor the word ' fifteen.'


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: This amendment is, I think, framed upon the corresponding clause in the English Act. and the clause in the Bill was drafted with that legislation before me. I believe the provisions con-

tamed in the Bill go as far as we should go in respect to a matter of this character. There is, 1 think, no substantial difference between the provisions of 26 and the provisions of the amendment, with the exception that the means of recovery provided by the amendment is a suit for the amount by any person who chooses to bring such action, that is, the suit of the ordinary informer in the civil courts. The hon. gentleman who has proposed this amendment will concur with me in the statement that any action of that character is one which is always viewed with extreme disfavour by the courts. Every impediment, one might almost say, is thrown by the courts in the way of the man who sues as a common informer, having no other claim to the amount he is seeking in the action than the circumstance that some statute has imposed it as a penalty upon the offender. Certainly, if the courts do not actually impede such a suit, they do not favour it, and the man who brings it is often precluded from availing himself of the ordinary means of securing evidence-for instance, by way of examining the defendant for discovery, which, in an action based upon an ordinary meritorious cause of action, he would enjoy as a matter of course. Just for that reason it seemed to me that it would be better, and be likely to be more efficacious, to provide as the penalty the fine of $200 to be imposed upon summary conviction, and in default of payment to be followed by a short term of imprisonment, with or without hard labour, in the discretion of the court. I still think that would be likely to be a means of enforcing compliance with the intentions of the law better than leaving it to the result of a suit by a common informer, as in a civil cause of action. But with reference to the other provisions of the amendment, there are much more serious considerations to be taken into account. The third proposition, hthat the word ' two ' should be struck out of section 277 of the Act and ' four ' substituted, is a very serious one. Section 277 is a section which immediately follows a dozen or more sections in regard to various corrupt practices.


Robert Laird Borden: If the minister will permit me, I think perhaps he misunderstands what is intended. If you add 276a and 276b to the statute, then, in order to include them, you would have to change the word 'two ' to ' four ' in section 277, and change the word ' thirteen ' to ' fifteen ' in section 278. Of course, if you do not add those two, there is no occasion at all for sections 33 and 34.
Mr. AYDE8WORTH. But the effect of inserting those two sections, 276a and 276b, in that place, before section 277, will be to make an offence ^against 276b a corrupt practice, which I do not suppose was intended. If it is desired merely to put these Mr. AYLESWORTH.
sections in the statute, they can have just as good a place under any other number. It was that effect which I supposed was intended which I was proceeding to combat. If I misunderstood the intention in that respect, I need not say anything more about it. With regard to the main question, the substantial thing which we are seeking to prevent, which I have been aiming at in section 27, as I have drawn it, is quite a different thing from that which is struck at by the amendment proposed. Section 26 of my Bill and section 276b are substantially the same ; I cannot see any difference between them ; but section 276a in the amendment and section 27 in the Bill are very different. Section 27 in the Bill is aimed simply at the publication, whether by writing or by word of mouth, of some false statement with reference to the personal private character of the candidate with a view to driving him out of the field or prejudieally affecting his election. I think that is a dastardly thing, and where it can be proven that any man has done that, he ought to be punished beyond the mere punishment of recovering pecuniary damages. If the statement he makes is in writing, it would, of course, be a libel, and damages might be recovered for it; but if it is a statement made merely by word of mouth, it would be necessary to prove special damage, and the loss of an election, I am afraid, would not be special damage in the eye of the law. Otherwise, any kind of slander of the most atrocious nature might be circulated to the detriment of a candidate, false in fact, with regard to his private conduct, having no reference to public affairs, and might either force him to give up the contest or affect very materially his prospects of election. I think it is not long since there was an actual instance of that in this country, and this provision of the law is therefore one which ought to commend itself. Section 276a as proposed by the amendment is quite different in its intention, and is much more debatable, I think. It proposes to penalize any person who makes public, not a verbal statement, but a written one, for the purpose of prejudicially affecting the election of such candidate or promoting or procuring the election of another candidate. That statement is not limited at all to a false statement affecting the private character or conduct of the candidate, but is any false written statement made for the purpose of prejudicially affecting the election. What else is a newspaper article which is absolutely untrue? Suppose an opposing political newspaper publishes an article, not about my private business or character, but on public matters, which article is absolutely untrue, ought I to have, as a public man, any more redress than the recovery of damages by means of an action for libel? I would think not,

yet this clause proposes to make that a penal offence.


Robert Laird Borden: I do not think my hon. friend has grasped the idea of section 276a. It is designed to prevent the publication of written or printed statements, falsely purporting to have been made by or on behalf of a candidate for the purpose of prejudicially affecting his election. The law now affords no remedy either civil or criminal and yet the offence may have very serious consequences. Illustrations of this were furnished to the House three or four years ago, and this means *of injuring a candidate is not unfrequently resorted to. It differs from section 27 of the Bill in this respect. So far as the offences covered by section 27 are concerned, the law gives remedy, but so far as the offence covered by section 276a is concerned there is no remedy in law, and some should be provided. A candidate may be placed in a most unfortunate situation by having statements published just on the eve of the polling, falsely purporting to have been made by him and of which he was absolutely guiltless.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I quite agree that a roorbach which is published too late to be contradicted is a very awkward thing to deal with. But I am not at all persuaded that the appropriate remedy is not an ordinary civil action for libel. If this amendment carries, you are practically fixing the amount of damages and making it $200. Would it not be better to leave that to a jury ? It was not without considering the provisions of the English statute that I prepared section 27. I have called attention to the fact that already, by our general law of elections, the publication of the false statement that the candidate has withdrawn is unlawful and subjects the publisher to a money penalty as well as to a conviction for corrupt practices, if committed by the candidate or his agent.


Robert Laird Borden: The minister is rather inconsistent in his treatment of English precedents. When we proposed to adopt the English practice with regard to statements of expenditures incurred in an election, he waived the English precedent aside very lightly, but he seems to attach great importance to it in this connection.
I do not agree that in all cases there would be an action for libel. It is quite possible that a statement falsely attributed to the candidate might be published which would appeal to the prejudices or passions of a particular section and yet not be libellous at all. The candidate would have absolutely no remedy, whereas in section 27 there is a remedy by an action for libel or slander. The case in section 276a is much more worthy of consideration than that provided for by section 27.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: I do not see why there should be a distinction between libel against the private life of a candidate and one against his public life. In our province we have some newspapers which are most unscrupulous and will accuse a man of everything possible under the sun.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Tory papers.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: No, the other press. There is not a day when there are not terrible accusations against public men; and it would be a long and very very costly process to take out a libel action on every occasion. Then if you take out an action the newspaper, as soon as the writ is served will come out with an article saying that a mistake was made, and what can you do ? In the meantime a man might be very much aggrieved before the denial was made. If the amendment should be accepted, newspapers will know that if they say anything untrue against a man in public or private life, they will be dealt with according to the law. For that reason I think the amendment should be accepted.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: As regards what has been said by the mover of the amendment (Mr. Alcorn), I do not wish to appear in the light of offering any factious opposition to what he proposes. If the House thinks it desirable that the publication of a false statement, purporting to have been made by a candidate, should be considered a crime, when it is done by the official agent of the candidate, I do not see any objection ; but it would certainly be much better that the penalty should be recoverable by criminal proceedings before the magistrate or court rather than by civil proceedings at the suit of a common informer. In either event, I think it important that section 27 in the Bill should be passed. Or the two may well stand together, if that is thought to be the best course to take. If section 276a is made a subsection of section 27, everything that is desired will be accomplished except that it would not be ipso facto a corrupt practice. With regard to the publication of a circular or handbill without having the name of the printer upon it, I cannot think that my hon. friend wants to have that made a corrupt practice. It would not seem to me to be a suitable thing at all. I can see no superiority in the wording of the clause in the amendment over the present clause 26. My view would be that sections 26 and 27 should be passed as they are drawn and if any one sees any advantage in having 276a as a subsection of section 27, I have no objection to it.


Robert Laird Borden: I would be willing to accept the suggestion of the Minister of Justice in that regard, so far as I am concerned. I do not attach very much importance to making these offences corrupt prac-1 tices. Section 21 could be passed in its

present form. Section 27, if the hon. gentleman thinks wise to adhere to it, can be passed, and a subsection framed on the lines we have proposed as 276a


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 28,
28. No company or association other than one incorporated for political purposes alone shall directly or indirectly, contribute, loan, advance, pay or promise or offer to pay any money or its equivalent to, or for, or in aid of, any candidate at an election, or to, or for, or in aid of, any political party, committee, or association, or to, or for, or in aid of, any company incorporated for political purposes, or to, or for, or in furtherance of, any political purpose whatever, or for the indemnification or reimbursement of any person for moneys so used.
2. Every director, shareholder, officer, attorney, or agent, of any company or association violating the provisions of this section who aids, abets, advises, or takes part in, any such violations, and every person who asks or knowingly receives any money or its equivalent in violation of the provisions of this section, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to both.
George Oscar Alcorn: X desire to move the amendment to the section, set out as No. 12 on page 1236 of the Votes and Proceedings as follows :
(12) That the said Bill he amended by striking out section 2 and by adding the following section -.
31. The said Act is amended by inserting the following sections immediately after section 265.
2ii5a. No corporation shall, directly or indirectly, by itself or by any officer, director, or employee, or by any other corporation, agency or person on its behalf, pay, give, lend, advance, deposit, receive, transmit, forward, deliver, or pay over, or by any device contribute or expend, or offer, or promise or aid or facilitate the contribution, application, delivery, payment or expenditure of any money, property, security or valuable consideration, or offer or promise to procure or to endeavour to procure any money, property, security, or valuable consideration to or for a candidate or to or for any person on behalf of any candidate or to or for any person in order to aid or influence the election or defeat of any candidate, or in order to promote the success or defeat of the candidates or prospective candidates of any political party in Canada or in any electoral district in Canada, or in order to aid or defeat the object of any organization, association or party maintained for political purposes in Canada. _
<2. Every corporation which violates any of the provisions of this section shall forfeit the sum of five thousand dollars to any person who sues therefor, with costs.
3. Every officer, director or shareholder of any corporation which violates any of the provisions of this section, who participates in, aids, abets, advises, consents to or acquiesces Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
in any such violation, and any person who solicits or knowingly receives any payment, gift, loan, advance, deposit or contribution prohibited by this section, is guilty of the indictable offence of bribery, and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, and shall also forfeit the sum of one thousand dollars to any person who sues therefor, with costs.	.
4. Every person who, directly or indirectly, by himself, or by any person on his behalf, pays, gives, lends, advances, deposits, or by any device contributes, or expends, or oners or promises any money, property, security,^ or valuable consideration, or offers or promises to secure or to endeavour to procure. money, proper, security, or valuable consideration to or for any candidate, or to or for any person on behalf of any candidate, or to or for any person in order to aid or influence the election or defeat of any candidate, or in order to promote the success or defeat of the candidates or prospective candidates of any political party in Canada, or in any electoral district in Canada, or in order to aid or defeat the objects of any organization, association or party, maintained for political purposes in Canada, which or some part of which money, property, security or valuable consideration, suchi person expects or intends shall be reimbursed, repaid or replaced to him or any person on his behalf, or in respect to which or any part of which he expects or intends to be indemnified by or on behalf of any such corporation, or in resjiect of which, or some part of which, money, property, security or valuable consideration such person accepts reimbursement, repayment, or indemnity from or by such corporation, is guilty of the indictable offence of bribery, and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, and shall also forfeit the sum of one thousand dollars to any person who sues therefor, with costs.
5. Every officer and every employee of the government of Canada, or of any department thereof, every contractor with such government or with any department thereof (including the officers of a corporation contractor) to whom, or whose assigns, public money may, as incident to such contract, become payable, and every officer or employee of the government of any province of Canada, or any department thereof, who directly or indirectly pays, gives, lends, advances, deposits, or by any device contributes, or offers or promises any money, property, security or valuable consideration, or who procures or solicits or endeavours or offers or promises to procure or solicit any money, property, security or valuable consideration to or for a candidate or to or for any person on behalf of any candidate, or to or for any person in order to aid or influence the election or defeat of any candidate, or in order to procure the success or defeat of the candidates or prospective candidates of any political party in Canada, or in any electoral district in Canada, or in order to aid or defeat the objects of any organization, association or party maintained for political purposes, or who becomes the trustee or custodian of any money or property for any of the purposes aforesaid, is guilty of the indictable offence of bribery, and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, and shall also forfeit

the sum of two hundred dollars to any person who sues therefor, with costs.
The amendment as drawn is largely suggested by the laws of the state of New York, which go even further than the provisions of the amendment. When the Minister of Justice moved the first reading of his Bill, referring to this section 28, and the amendment I now propose on page 1236 of the Votes and Proceedings he stated, if I remember rightly, that it was immaterial to him whose phraselogy was used, the principle, as it will be seen at a glance, being the same. Beyond question, the section as I have drawn it is much more comprehensive and considerably more explicit, and I submit, drawn in a manner which should commend itself to the Minister of Justice. I suggest that he should adopt the phraseology as set out.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I have not the advantage of understanding in what respect my hon. friend (Mr. Alcorn) thinks the amendment superior in its wording to the section I have framed, or more comprehensive. I suppose each of us was trying iu his own way to accomplish the same purpose. I tried to get at the end I had in view in as few words as possible. I will not for a moment say that my hon. friend did not try in the same way to get at his object in as few words as he could nse. But if he did, he did not succeed as well as I have succeeded, for his object is attained only at the expenditure of three times as much of the dictionary. And I very much prefer the more compendious form of the enactment. I have tried to see any substantia] difference between the two; but I am not able to understand any offence which could be conceived that would be covered by my hon. friend's language which would not be covered by mine. If any can be pointed out. I shall be very glad to consider. and consider anxiously, any suggested improvement that can De made in the shorter section. I can only say that I much prefer my own, and it is, to my mind, much the clearer of the two.


George Oscar Alcorn: I am not aware, and I do not admit, that mere brevity is the one and only thing to be aimed at. I think that where a person sets out to express a certain set of ideas, it is proper to cover the whole ground within view. The minister expressed himself in moving the second reading that he was then quite unprejudiced which version was taken. Of course, I am not going to argue the matter with the hon. gentleman. He says he has given some thought to both versions and prefers his own. He told us last night that his section 28 was not intended to mean what he had heard or read that it did mean. But for his statement upon that occasion, I might have agreed with the version to which the hon. gentleman refers. T would like now to hear the explanation of the first two lines of section 28 in their bearing on the rest of the section.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The explanation of my Bill was made at, I am afraid, wearisome length in the House yesterday. I cannot add anything to what I then said by way of explanation; and I am quite unable, as I said before, to imagine any transaction by a company in the way of contributing to a political purpose that would not fall within the words I have used to prevent that sort of thing being done. I thought I had covered the whole ground. If there is any portion of the territory my hon. friend can specify as not included, I shall be very glad indeed to know it.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
William Humphrey Bennett: Referring to section 28 and the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn). In subsection 5, I notice there is reference there to contractors, but I do not find any such reference in the section. The word * contractor ' is not there.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: That is something not covered or intended to be covered by my clause.


William Humphrey Bennett: Has the minister any objection to embrace that in his clause ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I think the men named in this section 5 are already prohibited from doing any corrupt act just as any other citizen of the country is prohibited and under exactly the same penalties. I do not see any reason why any one particular man should be singled out for special prohibition or punishment any more than another if he commits an infraction of the law.


William Humphrey Bennett: Is the penalty as severe for an ordinary person for a violation of the Act as in No. 28 it is for a company or association, a fine of $2,000 ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I do not think it is as severe a penalty. The penalty put upon a company by clause 28 as drawn is not exceeding $1,000. That is a maximum which is higher than in the case of a private individual and it was purposely made so because any company incorporated for private gain is supposed to be more or less wealthy and at all events if it is sufficiently flush with money to be able to make political contributions it should be able to pay a pretty severe fine.


Mr. URIAH WILSON.: I wish to move an amendment which is to be found at page 1241 of the ' Votes and Proceedings ' of June 29 as follows :
Section 161 of the said Act is amended by striking out the words ' where to ' in the second line, and substituting therefor the words ' at what respective places thereon he may.'

This I think makes the section plainer because the deputy returning officer might, if he saw fit, direct the attention of the voter to the compartment on the ballot opposite the name of the particular candidate for whom he wanted the man to vote. I think the amendment would make a distinction. As a matter of course there are two or three places on the ballot where a man may vote and he can only vote in one place. Therefore I think it would be an improvement if these words were changed.
Mr. AYLESWORTIL I have no doubt my hon. friend attaches importance to this amendment, but I would really like to ask him whether upon reflection he would think this worth while. It almost seems to be proposing a change for the sake of change. The law now is :
The deputy returning officer shall instruct the elector how and where to affix his mark and how to fold his ballot paper.
The proposition is to change the words ' where to ' into ' at what respective place thereon he may,' so that it will read, without the slightest change of meaning I am able to discern.
The deputy returning officer shall instruct the elector how and at what respective places thereon he may affix his mark and how to fold his ballot paper.
If you were to adopt those very words." I am afraid you would get into trouble. ' At what respective places ' suggests more than one place, but the ballot is only to be marked with a single cross at one place and it would be very improper piece of instruction to give the voter.


George Oscar Alcorn: I cannot agree with the Minister of Justice. The clause as drawn is quite capable of being read as indicating an intention that the deputy might, by placing his finger upon the compartment of one candidate, instruct the elector to vote in that one place. If the change is made it will be his duty to instruct the elector that he may make his mark at any one of the places but not at more than one.


Uriah Wilson: I can quite understand that a lawyer or a man in the habit of reading law, will at once grasp the meaning of this, but! a deputy is not always well versed in the law; and he might think he had the liberty of indicating where a man ought to vote, whereas we all know that in a ballot there must be more than one place. While the wording might not be explicit enough the intention is all right and I think a change should be made there.
Amendment negatived.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I would beg to move the amendments to be found at page 1239. These amendments are with reference to
the holding of all elections on the same day.
Section 86 of the said Act is amended by striking out all the words down to, and including the word ' and ' in the fifth line, and by striking out the words ' its reception in the other electoral districts of Canada ' in the seventh and eighth lines, and by inserting in lieu of such last mentioned w'ords., the words ' the reception of the writ/
(2)	Section 89 of the said Act is amended by striking out all the words in subsection 1, from and inclusive of the word ' except ' in the fifth line thereof.
(3)	Section 90 of the said Act is repealed.
These sections relate to the holding of elections in the electoral districts excepted under the present Act and the amendments conform to the original suggestion to strike out the exception in regard to the districts in which the elections are to be held after the general election. I understand that this is in accord with some expression of an opinion by the right hon. Prime Minister, that there was no necessity now for the holding of elections in these districts after the general elections. The means of communication have so improved and the conditions which necessitated in the past the provisions which I am now suggesting should be eliminated, have been altered to such an extent that there remains no necessity for the exception.


Duncan Ross: How is the hon. gentleman going to work this out in a district like Yale-Cariboo? By the amendment he presumably wants to hold elections on the same day.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: It is a question merely of time.


Mr. MACPHERSON.: It is quite impossible.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: It is a matter of getting the proclamations distributed and posted up within a certain period. If it is desired to do it it can easily be done, as my hon. friend knows well.


Duncan Ross: Personally, I have not the slightest objection to holding elections on the same day. I represent a constituency where there is a postponed election. Hon. gentlemen seem to think that there is a great advantage in having a postponed election. My experience is that it is the greatest possible disadvantage, because, up to the date of the election, you have a good organization, everybody is taking an interest in the contest, but when the result is known your organization simply goes to pieces. In my election iu 1904 we expected some 5,300 votes to be polled and three weeks later about 4,300 votes were polled. So that it works both ways. I have no objection to holding the election on the same day. but I do not want the committee to accept a proposition which is not work-


Uriah Wilson: able. I was looking at the hon. gentleman's amendment where the suggestion is made that the proclamation should he sent to the returning officer twenty-two clear days before nomination. That is sufficient time in the district of Yale-Cariboo. If the proclamation is in the hands of the returning officer twenty-two clear days before the general nomination day he has sufficient time to post this proclamation In every polling subdivision, as he is required to do hy law, but no more time. It will take him at least three weeks to post these proclamations in certain portions of the riding. Having put the proclamations up and the nominations being held, he is obliged to have the ballot boxes packed over the trails and to send returning officers in if there are none capable of doing the work, and it will take him three weeks more to prepare for the election after the nomination has been held. We tried it in three weeks at the last election, with the result that half of our deputy returning officers were not sworn in, because there was no justice of the peace within a hundred miles of some of the polling places. You have there, we will say, sixty days to be absolutely safe, from the time the proclamation reaches the hands of the returning officer before you can hold an election. It will take at least another week for the proclamation to go from Ottawa to the returning officer. That makes sixty-five or sixty-six days. If His Excellency the Governor General can dissolve this House find the proclamation can be Issued for an election sixty-six or seventy days before the election is held, I have no objection to a proposition of that kind, but I do not think it would be at all advisable or practicable that there should be a dissolution of this House granted, that the proclamation should be issued and that the whole country would have waited from sixty-six to seventy days before the election could take place because there are three or four constituencies in which it would be absolutely impossible to hold the election before that time.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: How long after the last general election did the election take place in Yale-Cariboo?


Duncan Ross: Three weeks.


Aaron Abel Wright: If it was only three weeks, then you did not have any sixty or seventy days after the issue of the writs.


Duncan Ross: The proclamation was issued on the 29th September, the election was held on November 3, and the election in Yale-Cariboo, being three weeks after that, it would make fifty-eight days. Although the returning officer gave three weeks for the last election, as a matter of fact, a number of the deputy returning officers in the more remote districts of Yale-Cariboo performed their duties on election day and were never sworn in.
We could not get a justice of the peace to swear them in. It is worse this year than it was four years ago, because, in the meantime, a great many people have gone in on the line of the Grand Trunk Pacific, and polls will have to be held in the Nechaco valley, at Fraser lake and in the Peace River country, where it will take six weeks to get the ballot boxes in. What is true of my constituency is true of Comox-Atlin, and the same difficulties will arise there. They make an exception in the Yukon. It takes more time to properly arrange for an election in Yale-Cariboo than in the Yukon district. As far as any advantage to be gained is concerned, I am not particular about that. Personally, I would much rather go on with the election on the date of the general election, because then you have your organization in working order. After the general election is over, and the Conservatives are defeated hopelessfy, your organization goes to pieces.


George Taylor: May I submit to the right hon. leader of the House that it is now twelve o'clock, the Bill is all through except three sections and we might defer this discussion and continue it at a later time.


Wilfrid Laurier: Can we not
finish the Bill this evening?


George Taylor: There are three sections still to be disposed of and when the Bill Is taken up again on another day-I understand it is not to be proceeded with tomorrow-we will dispose of it.


Wilfrid Laurier: Let us finish these amendments if you please.


George Taylor: Our leader has been obliged to leave to-night and his presence would facilitate matters. I do not think it would take long to dispose of the whole thing another day.


Wilfrid Laurier: How long ; two hours.


George Taylor: We could be expected to finish it in nine hours; it won't take long. The Speaker will be in the chair when probably most of the other amendments wfllbe moved.


Wilfrid Laurier: We will take the word of my hon. friend that it will not take long.
Progress reported.
Sir WILFRID LAURIER moved the adjournment of the House.


George Taylor: What business will be taken to-morrow?


Wilfrid Laurier: We will take the Land Bill and some minor Bills and Committee of Supply.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Will the House sit after six o'clock to-morrow?

/


Wilfrid Laurier: We will be guided by the wishes of the House in that matter.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at twelve o'clock (midnight).
[Stage Direction]
Saturday, July 4, 1908.