1908-04-23

[Stage Direction]
Mr. HONORE GERVAIS (St. James, Montreal) presented the second report of the select standing committee appointed to supervise the official reports of the debates of this House during the present session, as follows:
That the salary of $2,000 per annum, at present paid to each member of the staff of official reporters of the debates, be increased to $2,500.
That the salary of $1,200 per annum, now paid Mr. C. W. B'oyce, assistant to the chief reporter, be increased to $1,500.
That the above mentioned increases date from the 15th May, 1906.
All of which is respectfullv submitted.
(Sgd.) HONORE GERVAIS, Chairman.
Mr. HONORE GERVAIS (St. James, Montreal) presented the third report of the select standing committee appointed to supervise the official reports of the debates of this House during the present session, as follows :
lour committee have had under consideration the question of the improvement of the system which has prevailed with respect to Mr. ROB1TAILLE.
what is considered an unnecessary delay or interval of from eight to ten days between the date of publication of the daily (unrevised) and the issue of the French edition of the official report of the debates due to the system in vogue of publishing a revised English edition which, upon examination, has been found to contain such extensive changes, in the majority of cases are alterations, not corrections, that it cannot be considered an accurate record of what has really transpired in the House.
Your committee with a view of remedying the existing deficiencies recommend that hereafter the debates be translated into French from the daily (unrevised) edition, and that members in revising their speeches be limited to the correction of clerical errors only which may appear therein.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
(Sgd.) HONORE GERVAIS, Chairman.


Mr. GANONG asked :: How many pounds of glucose were imported from Great Britain between March 31, 1907, and March 31, 1908, and what was the value
of the same? '


Hon. WM. PATERSON (Minister of Customs).: The imports of glucose from Great Britain during the year ending March 31, 1908, amounted to 3,538,501 pounds, valued at $72,583.


RIVER JESUS DREDGING.
Mr. DESJARDINS asked :: 1.	Is the government still indebted to Mr. E. A. D. Morgan, contractor, for the dredging of the River Jesus, during the summer of 1907? If so, what is the amount?
2.	If not, at what date was he paid, and what amount was paid him?


Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works) :: 1.	No.
2.	Last payment was made 23rd December last. Total payments for season of 1907, $13,064.05.


CUSTOMS OFFICERS AT NIAGARA FALLS, FORT ERIE, SARNIA AND WINDSOR.
Mr. ARMSTRONG asked:: 1.	What officers are now employed in the Customs Department at the ports of Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Sarnia and Windsor?
2.	What ranks do these officers hold, what are the duties of their respective appointment, and what were their salaries at the time of appointment?
3.	What is the rank at present of each of these officers?
4.	What increase of salary has each of these officers received since date of appointment?


William Paterson: This is rather a long question to answer, but I suppose there is now no

opportunity for a notice of motion. I would ask that the Question stand. There is no objection to it. I will have the information prepared ; it will take a little time ; perhaps I shall be allowed to hand it to ' Hansard.'


EDMONTON DOMINION LANDS AGENT.
Mr. LAKE asked :: 1.	Has Mr. K. W. McKenzie been recently appointed to the position of Dominion Lands Agent at Edmonton?
2.	If so, what position did Mr. McKenzie hold previous to his appointment, and what were his special qualifications?
3.	Is it the practice of the Department of the Interior to make promotions to the higher appointments from among the permanent officials of the department?
4.	If so, are promotions made by seniority when other qualifications are equal, and are the private political opinions of an official any bar or any assistance to his promotion?
5.	Were there no senior officials in the Edmonton or other laud offices fully qualified for the appointment of agent there?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior) :: 1.	Yes.
2.	He was in business in Edmonton. He had been mayor of the city and before that principal of the High School.
3.	The practice is to take the best men that can be got at the time and place.
4.	Political opinions do not debar an official from promotion.	.
5.	In the opinion of the minister. No.


DISTRIBUTION OF SEED GRAIN.
Mr. LENNOX asked :: 1.	Has an order in council been passed amending the regulations governing the distribution of seed grain in the west by authorizing the furnishing of grain to persons who had not sown grain in the season of 1907?
2.	Do the amended regulations apply to Alberta and Saskatchewan?
3.	On what authority does the Governor in Council purport to divert the appropriation for said grain from the purpose for which it was voted?
4.	Have the agreements between this government and the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan been varied? If so, when, how, and to what extent?
5.	Will the government bring down and lay upon the table of the House the order in council above referred to?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior) :: 1.	Yes.
2.	Yes.
3.	The appropriation has uot been diverted from the purpose for which it was voted.
4.	Yes, to the extent provided for by the order in council of the 17th March, 1908.
5 Copy of order in council of the 17th March, 1908, herewith.
Certified copy of a report of the Committee of the Privy Council, approved by His Excellency the Governor General on the 17th March, 1908.
The Committee of the Privy Council have had under consideration a report, dated 14th March, 1908, from the Minister of the Interior stating that under clause 15 of the regulations approved by order in council of the 6th of February, 1908, respecting the purchase, sale and distribution of grain to homestead settlers in the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, it is provided that no seed grain shall be supplied to homestead settlers who had sown no crop in the season of 1907. According to the reports received from the officers of the Department of the Interior who have been at work in the west in connection with the distribution, it would appear that the number of applications that are being received for advances of seed grain under the provisions of the regulations is not as large as had been anticipated, and that in consequence that appropriation lately made by parliament to cover this expenditure is likely to be in excess of the requirements.
The minister recommends, inasmuch as numerous applications have been received from farmers in the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan who, although they had sown no crop in 1907, are urgently in need of seed grain during the coming season, and as the machinery for the purchase, distribution and taking of security for advances of seed grain now in operation is well fitted and sufficient to deal with such applications and as the seed grain needed as _ above stated, is uot available in the provinces mentioned, and therefore cannot well be secured by the individual action of those who require it, that clause 15 of the regulations, approved by order in council of the 6th February, 1908, be amended so as to permit of advances to be made to settlers who had sown no crop in the season of 1907,_ under the same terms and conditions as set forth in such regulations.
The Committee submit the same for approval.
(Sgd.) RODOLPIIE BOUDREAU,
Clerk of the Privy Council.


THE MARINE AND FISHERIES DEPARTMENT.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. FOSTER-by Mr. Taylor-asked :
1.	Who are at present ^performing the duties of Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries Department, commissioner of lights and Quebeo agent of the department, and what positions have they heretofore held?
2.	What was the date of first and each subsequent appointment and promotion of the late commissioner of lights, with salary attached ?
Hon. JACQUES BUREAU (for the Minister of Marine and Fisheries) :: 1. Mr. G. J. Desbarats, heretofore director of the government shipyard at Sorel, province of Quebec, is acting Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries. Mr. Cecil Doutre, heretofore superintendent of the wireless telegraph service, is acting accountant. Mr. J. G. MacPhail, heretofore technical assistant to the Commissioner of Lights, is in temporary charge of that branch. Mr. P.

J. Mailloux, heretofore chief clerk and accountant in the Quebec agency, is acting agent at Quebec.
2. Mr. J. F. Fraser, late Commissioner of Lights, was first appointed temporarily on the Hydrographic Survey at $600 per annum in October, 1893. Appointed permanently at $625 per annum in September, 1894. Received $50 annual increments until 1901 when his salary was $1,000. By order in council of the 20th May, 1902, Mr. Fraser was appointed technical officer in charge of Aids to Navigation between Montreal and Kingston at $1,500 per annum. Appointed Commissioner of Lights by order in council of the 31st October, 1903 and in November, 1903 his salary was raised to $2,000.


THE .FRENCH REVISED STATUTES.
Mr. ROBITAILLE asked :: 1.	When will the last volume of the French version of the Revised Statutes of 1906 be printed for distribution?
2.	Is the government aware that Frenchspeaking lawyers of Montreal and Quebec are said to be handicapped by their English colleagues in facility of indexing. &c.?
3.	Is it constitutional that both languages be treated on an unequal footing?


Hon. A. B. AYLESWORTH (Minister of Justice) :: 1.	The King's Printer states in about five weeks.
2.	No intimation of this character has been made to the government.
3.	The requirement of the constitution is that both languages be used in the Records and Journals of both Houses of parliament.


PARDON OF DOUKHOBORS.
Mr. LAKE asked :: 1.	Have the following telegrams been sent by the Department of Justice to Magistrate Palling, of Fort William:
' The Minister of Justice requests that you will be good enough to send immediately report upon case of ten male and nine female Doukhobors committed by you to Port Arthur jail.'
' Please report pardon for Doukhobors now in Port Arthur jail preparatory to their being shipped back to Saskatchewan, where they came from.'
2.	Is it true that the government have pardoned or contemplate pardoning these Doukhobors committed to prison for an aggra-vatetd offence against public decency?
3.	Is it true that they contemplate sending these people to the province of Saskatchewan? If so, on what grounds, under what authority and at whose expense?
4.	Win they undertake the responsibility for the good behaviour of these people by guaranteeing the province of Saskatchewan against any expenses that may be incurred should they commit the same offence?


Hon. A. B. AYLESWORTH (Minister of Justice) :: 1. On 14th April inst., the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for the pro-


Mr. BUREAU.: vince of Ontario and the Inspector of Hospitals and Public Charities for the same province saw me, bringing a letter from the Deputy Attorney General of the province which stated that a number of Doukhobors had come from Saskatoon to Port Arthur, Ontario, and that some of them had been sentenced, for indecent exposure, to the Central Prison and Mercer Reformatory re-pectively. The letter added that there was no room, either at the Central Prison or in the .jail at Port Arthur, and that it was thought the best course would be to have these persons pardoned and let them be removed to the part of the country from which they came where they would be amongst tlielr own people.
The inspectors stated that there were nineteen Doukhobors detained in the jail at Port Arthur and over fifty others living in Fort W7illiam-that all of them, both those at large and those in jail, desired to return to their homes in Saskatchewan, or were willing to do so, but that those who were at large would not go leaving behind those who were in jail, and in these circumstances the inspectors asked that those in jail should be pardoned at once.
I stated that it would be necessary to inquire the views of the convicting magistrate. The inspectors asked me to do so by telegraph and I directed that to be done.
A telegram was accordingly sent in the words following :
April 14, 1908.
Mr. Police Magistrate Palling,
Fort William.
The Minister of Justice requests 'rou will be good enough to send immediately report upon oases of ten male and nine female Doukhobors committed to you to Port Arthur jail.


A. POWER,
[Stage Direction]
For Deputy Minister of Justice.
No other telegram or message of any kind relating to the matter was sent by or from the Department of Justice to Mr. Magistrate Palling, or to anybody. I have no knowledge whatever of the other telegram which is quoted in the question put by the hon. gentleman. The newspaper statements that it was sent by me, or from Mr. Power, or any one in the Department of Justice, are entirely without foundation.
The report of the convicting magistrate was received by mail on the 16th April instant, and the case was submitted to His Excellency the Administrator of the government on the 18th instant.
2.	The release of the prisoners has been directed.
3.	It is not true that the government has, or has had, it in contemplation to send these people to the province of Saskatchewan. or to any other place, or to take any step whatever in the matter except to release the nineteen prisoners and leave them at liberty to come or go where they will,

as any other residents of the country might, if the laws of the country are observed.
4.	The government does not undertake, or recognize, any responsibility in the premises except for the recommendation to release the prisoners. If a Doukhobor offends against any law, he is in exactly the same position as any other resident of the country who may so offend, and the administration of justice in the province is matter wholly for the authorities of such province.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: Mr. Speaker, with reference to the question that was asked yesterday and the day before yesterday by my hon. friend the leader of the opposition concerning certain charges made by Major Hodgins as to the manner in which the work of construction of the Transcontinental Railway is carried on, I had this morning an interview with Mr. Parent. I should say that the correspondence which led to the dismissal of Major Hodgins as an engineer of the Transcontinental Railway has been before the public five or six weeks. With reference to the charges of Major Hodgins affecting the manner in which the construction of the Transcontinental Railway is carried on, I have asked Mr. Parent for, and he has promised me, a statement which I intend to place on the table of the House as soon as it is received. I do not expect that I can have it in time to lav it before the House to-day, but hope to have it to-morrow, when I shall give a further statement regarding any action to be taken thereupon should any be needed.


TREATY BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES.
Mr.   I@: Has the right hon. gentleman any further news with regard to the proposed treaty between Great Britain and the United States ?


Wilfrid Laurier: Yes, I received this mornimr a telegram from the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, informing us that he had sent the treaty to the colonial office for transmission to this government in the ordinary routine, but that in the meantime, if we desired, he would have it sent directly to us. I answered in the affirmative.
I


MR. WILLIAM MACKENZIE.
Mr. T. S. SPROULE (East Grey).: T notice an item in the Toronto 'Globe' headed ' A Diplomatic Matter ' announcing that Mr. William Mackenzie, one of the press gallery representatives, lias been appointed by the First Minister to establish a new central bureau for handling the correspondence relating to imperial and foreign affairs. The ' Globe ' goes on to say that it will be his duty to keep the correspondence in this connection properly centralized and attended to in an adequate and diplomatic manner. Then it mentions that there are some treaties at present under way, in connection with which Mr. Mackenzie will be found very useful. What are the duties and functions of this diplomat, if I may properly call him so? Is he invested with diplomatic functions? Is this a new office? Will he come under the Civil Service Act? How will his salary be paid? Under what department is he to carry on the work ? At present I understand the foreign correspondence is carried on through the Department of the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister's Department. Are these two to be combined in this new office? Is the work now being done by the Secretary of State and the First Minister to be centered in one individual and under what authority will he come?


Wilfrid Laurier: In order to answer more categorically I shall to-morrow lay before the House the order in council which was passed appointing Mr. Mackenzie. In the meantime I may say that he has been appointed a clerk in the office of the Privy Council. His duties will be to classify and keep track of the correspondence, which is now accumulating very fast, from the imperial authorities and colonial and foreign governments. He will have no functions other than those of a clerk and is to be under the orders of the head of tile dexrartment. His salary will be $2,800 per year, which will involve an appropriation of only $800 by this parliament, because the salary of Mr. Foley, who has been promoted to be Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, will be available for that purpose.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I do not ask the question with any view of objecting to the individual, because, so far as I know, he is a suitable man for the position.


Wilfrid Laurier: The question is quite proper.


ACCIDENT ON THE INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY.
Mr. SAM. HUGHES.: I -desire to call the attention of the Minister of Railways to a letter I have received regarding an accident on the Intercolonial Railway between St. Hyacinthe and Quebec, where there have been two accidents lately. The letter is as follows :
I lost a whole day, thanks entirely to the rotten state of the Intercolonial Railway which caused a bad accident to our train, but thanks to a merciful Providence no lives were lost. You ought to bring the matter to the notice of the minister. The line as it is now,

is quite unfit to carry troops or in fact for any heavy traffic. Within two miles of the same place where the run off occurred last Thursday, where the line is perfectly level and so straight that you can see as far as the eye can reach, the weight of the engine caused the spikes in the absolutely rotten ties to give out and let the tender in between the rails. It caught the 90 pound rails and bent them up double. It rolled the baggage car and smashed the baggage and ditched all the rest on their side except the parlour car, which only had the front truck off, and the sleeping car behind. We examined the line carefully and there is no doubt that the accident occurred owing to the rotten ties and want of ballast. The track at that part is in the most disgraceful and unsafe condition.
Is it the intention of the minister to repair the line and has he heard anything about this accident?


Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals).: I have heard about the accident and very much regret it, but the best conducted railways have their accidents, and as they are somewhat scarce on the Intercolonial Kailway, when one does occur particular attention is drawn to it. The fact is that a part of that portion of the line is considered to have a roadbed equal to any on the continent of America. Just what the particular causes of that accident were I do not know. They are not only being inquired into, but the road has been repaired and the line is running, I presume, as usual. If my hon. friend will give me the name of the individual who has written him, I may he better able to judge the value of his complaint.


Samuel Hughes: When I make any statement in this House I assume the full responsibility, and my name will carry as much weight in this country as that of the Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham).


FLOODING AT STE. BARBE, HUNTINGDON.
Mr. K. N. WALSH (Huntingdon).: Has the Minister of Railways received any report from his engineer with regard to the river St. Lawrence breaking through the embankment at Ste. Barbe in the county of Huntingdon and damaging a lot of property there? And has the government taken any action in the matter ?


George Perry Graham: I cannot tell that personally I have received any such communication. I presume the chief engineer has. and if any damage has been done the matter will be attended to at once.


AGREEMENTS BETWEEN MUNICIPALITIES AND RAILWAYS.
Mr. HENDERSON.: Some time ago I moved an amendment to the Hamilton Radial Electric Railway Company's charter providing that the company be penalized in the event of its failing to carry out cer-Mr. SAM. HUGHES.
tain agreements made between it and the municipalities. The Minister of Railways advised me not to press Tny amendment and promised that he would subsequently introduce a clause in the Railway Act which would compel a specific performance of these agreements. The session is passing away and I have heard nothing about the amendment. Has the minister forgotten it ?


George Perry Graham: The Bill has been introduced and explained and stands for a second reading.


David Henderson: I have analysed that Bill and I do not find in it anything explicitly carrying out what the minister promised.


George Perry Graham: My hon. friend will find a clause there if he will refer to it.


TRENT CANAL-SURVEYS.
Mr. LENNOX.: Has the minister had an opportunity of ascertaining when we may expect the report of the survey made between Georgian bay and Kempenfeldt bay in connection with the Trent valley waterway?


George Perry Graham: I have that among my many other notes, but have been so busy to-day I did not get that far on the list.


ALLEGED IRREGULARITIES AT SOREL
Mr. J. G. II. BERGERON (Beauharnois).: The Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Brodeur) is not in his place, but I would like to put a question which, perhaps, some of his colleagues will be good enough to convey to him. I wish to know if Mr. Gaudet, who was appointed to make an investigation into some irregularities in Sorel, has made a report. The gentleman has received his pay, and I should imagine that hw report must be nearly ready, or ready. Perhaps the colleagues of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries -"-w call his attention to this point. It will facilitate the consideration of the estimates of the department.


THE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY.
Mr. C. L. OWEN (East Northumberland).: I would like to ask the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) if it is the intention of the government to come to the rescue of the woollen manufacturers in the near future with a specific duty?


Wilfrid Laurier: I am sorry to say that I cannot today give any specific answer to my hon. friend (Mr. Owen).



SUPPLY-IMMIGRATION.

[Stage Direction]
House resumed adjourned debate on the proposed motion of Mr. Fielding:	That

Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair for the House to go into Committee of Supply, and the proposed amendment of Mr. Monk thereto.
['I beg to give notice of the following motion. I propose to move in amendment to the motion to go into Supply when next made :\nThis House regrets that the sums spent by the country to pay bonuses on immigration have not been employed in bringing back to our country the Canadians who hare emigrated to the United States.\nOn motion of Mr. Fielding, House adjourned at 12.45 a.m., Friday.', 'Friday, April 24, 1908.']
Mr. L. ROBITAILLE (Quebec County).: Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned at six o'clock last evening, I was endeavouring to answer some of the arguments of the bon. member for Stratbcona (Mr. Wilbert McIntyre). I stated then that the arguments brought forward showing the development of the west are not entirely creditable to the system of bonusing immigrants. I stated that a majority of the people in at least a good portion of our western country were American citizens whose entry into our country was easy because of the contiguity of some of the American states to these portions of Alberta and Saskatchewan. I have here an article entitled ' Building a new nation,' and very cleverly written, which seems to corroborate the opinion I enunciated last night. It is a very lengthy article and I have no intention to force it all on the attention of hon. members, but there are certain passages that I desire to read. The author tells of a trip he made in 1901 to that western country and notes the changes which he found in a trip made in 1906. He says:
I travelled westward to the edge of the Rocky mountains and northward in Alberta through plains which, when I first visited them in 1901, wer_e almost peopleless, but which are now thicklv settled and more thoroughly American than the state of New York. I travelled through most of these regions in an immigrant car; talked with some who were seeking new homes, ate with them-in fact, inasmuch as I could, I became an immigrant myself, and tried to look at conditions and the oountry from the viewpoint of the thousands of Americans who are now flocking into the vast fertile regions of the Dominion. . .	[DOT]	[DOT]
I could not have received a more vivid impression of the effects of the so-called ' American invasion of Canada,' than in this comparison of my first trip with my last. Four out of five of the homes that I looked upon were the homes of American farmers; the great majority of the people I met and talked with were Americans. For 1,000 miles westward from Winnipeg along the line of the Canadian Pacific the population of the country and towns to-day is, as I have said, more generally American than is that of the state of New York, and Alberta, especially from the border northward to Edmonton might be regarded as a typical American state.
It goes on to show that the west is so very much Americanized


Mr. WILBERT McINTYRE.: Will the hon. gentleman (Mr. Robitaille) allow me ? The quotation he has read and his comments upon It would give one the impression that the province of Alberta is more American than the state of New York.
Now it so happens that at the time this party visited the west, in the year 1906, the census of that province was taken. There can be no doubt, therefore, of the exact condition of affairs. The population of Alberta in 1906 was 185.412 people and the number of Americans was 43,251, or 23-3 per cent.


Lorenzo Robitaille: Does the hon. member (Mr. Wilbert McIntyre) admit that there are 400,000 or 500,000 Americans in western Canada who have come in since 1901? The statistics


Wilbert McIntyre: I can only say that the statistics are incorrect.


Lorenzo Robitaille: What guarantee have I that the hon. gentleman's own figures are more correct than mine? It is a question of good faith. Following the main columns of this army of immigration back to their beginnings, the real reasons of its existence are soon discovered. The momentum is given at the source, and we find men pushing each other up the gangplanks of departing emigrant steamers to make their escape from incredible political and economic wrongs. There is another reason, based upon the first, but none the less potent. The traffic in ocean passages has reached a stage of fierce competition, unscrupulousness and even inhumanity, inconceivable to those not familiar with its details. Men who profit by the march of these millions of people have a drag-net out over continental Europe so fine in its meshes as to let no man, woman or child escape who has the price and the desire or need to go. Several cases of unscrupulousness have been brought to light. This summer, I met two families of French people who had come to Canada via London. One of these people had had some wealth which he had lost in certain mining ventures in Russia and he was coming to Canada to recuperate his lost fortune. He states that whilst in London, the immigration agent

a pretty foxy fellow-succeeded in learning what amount of money he had with him intended for investment in Canada, and, by a series of objections and delays, prevented him from getting on the steamer. The man was practically forced to stay in London for a period of at least three weeks in certain hotels recommended by the immigration men. I do not say these were directly immigration department officials, but booking agents. But it shows that the system affords opportunities for those who try to extract or extort money from intending immigrants on the other side of the water, and that these opportunities have been taken advantage of. It seems to me that it would be well for the government to have a close watch put upon such people through its own immigration officials, and to take every reasonable means to cause the bona fide immigrant to depend upon



tlie immigration offices for information, for booking and even for steamship tickets, rather than leave them in the hands of these men who are but too eager to exploit them in every way. Also, a few days ago, we had what I may call the Doctor Dickey incident concerning which the following appears in a London despatch:
London. March 11.-The trial of Maikeal Lurkis, Charles Harnson and Arshay Atonia, charged with conspiring to defraud emigrants, began at Liverpool yesterday. N. Cockshutt watched the case on behalf of the Canadian government. When Atonia was arrested a large number of letters was found in his possession. Counsel said these letters showed that Atonia was on terms of very intimate relationship with the authorities who had to pass the . emigrants on the other side. One of the letters found on him was from a man who described himself as Hugh L. Dickey, M.D., Halifax. A letter from Halifax, signed W. Dodds, said:
Your eleven people were all passed. Be a little more particular next time with Montreal cases. Do not let them make any signs whatever. If vou describe something that they will wear it will be enough. I felt quite nervous when they all made signs with their hands on their ties.
This clipping shows that the immigration officials do not thoroughly enforce the regulations regarding newcomers when they disembark in Canadian ports. The proof of that is the fact that, in order to procure entry, they have only to put their two hands to their neckties, which is considered a sort of password. It shows further that these men are sent over by unscrupulous partles, probably the booking agents at the other end, in collusion with certain officials of the department who allow these undesirable elements to pass, and if there was no bonus given for each immigrant coming to this country these officials would not be so eager to force immigrants upon us. That bonus is an inducement to fraud and unscrupulousness, and it ought to be condemned on that ground.
Where do our immigrants come from ? From the British isles. London absorbs into her mighty heart thousands of feeble human beings, talking a gibberish of tongues, and quickly becoming public charges. Last year I believe it was stated in this House that there were 1,200 immigration agents in the British isles. The other day certain people took offence at the remarks of my hon. friend from Montmagny (Mr. Armand Lavergne) relative to the Salvation Army. Now I am free to say that the work which the Salvation Army has done in trying to elevate the depressed element of humanity is a most creditable one from a religious standpoint. But when we come to consider the class of people which the Salvation Army deal with we find that men who are broken down financially, men who are demoralized physically, morally and re-Mr. ROB1TAILLE.
iigiously, are brought into the barracks of the Salvation Army who try to do all in their power to make them good citizens. Moreover, we are told that there are certain political evils in England, such as Socialism and collectivism, which imperil the present order of things, not only the monarchy, but also the lords and the ruling classes. Naturally these ruling classes, being the moneyed people, are eager to foster any movement with their advice and patronage, and even with their financial assistance, which will diminish the number of these undesirable classes which the Salvation Army are taking away. The ruling class are all too eager to support the work of tlie Salvation Army in thrusting upon Canada some of the scum of the population. I do not say that all the English immigrants are undesirable, but I am speaking of the work whic-li tlie Salvation Army is doing in taking hold of this low grade of people, and trying to elevate them in the scale of citizenship, and that is the class of people which the Salvation Army is sending over to Canada. We also receive immigrants from continental Europe, particularly from Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia. These are countries where the majority of people are low in the social scale, and where the percentage of illiteracy is discreditable to the twentieth century. These people are directed to channels of emigration made easy by those seeking cargoes for their ships.
Now, Mr. Speaker, since it has been demonstrated that the bonus system has forced upon us a certain class of undesirable immigrants, what are the consequences that we have to contemplate ? We find first of all an evil effect from a municipal standpoint. The Toronto, Winnipeg and! Montreal newspapers report frequent attacks upon citizens Who are these sinister bandits, and what do they want ? Look up the criminal records, and you will find that 95 per cent of the convicts are penniless immigrants who want to eat, and more especially to drink The charity organizations claim that there are thousands of people who lack the necessities of life. On Bleury street, Montreal, where a charitable institution is located, demands for help are made daily in the shape of food and fuel, In Winnipeg also if we are to believe newspaper reports, there is a large number of penniless and destitute people walking the streets, and armed attacks are made daily upon citizens. In Toronto matters are still worse. The ' Globe.' the ' World,' the * Star,' the ' Mail,' and several other newspapers give us information regarding this class of people. It is not my intention to weary the House with statistics, but It may be well to give a concrete case where a too large number of immigrants have been forced upon the community. Several char-

itable organizations assembled In an extraordinary meeting at Mr. Go Id win Smith's residence, about the beginning of December, 1907, and adopted the following resolution :
1.	That employees of labour are urged, in the name of fraternal spirit, to provide work for the greatest possible number, even if it were necessary to reduce every one's task to a half day's work-
2.	That the municipal authorities are begged to give employment to the greatest possible number even if it is necessary to reduce the dav's work to every one-
3.	That for public works that have not been awarded, the city should exact from the contractors that they employ by day work people of all nationalities-
4.	That all those who have projected -work should endeavor to hasten their operations.
5.	A delegation should wait upon the Board of Control asking to press the starting of projected public works-
6.	That the government is requested to give without delay work on the Grand Trunk Pacific to as great a number as possible of immigrants-
7.	That publicity be given that Toronto is congested with idlers, in order to prevent their increase in number-
8.	That the Ontario government is requested to establish, without delay, an employment bureau-
X may also say that this memorandum, of which I have just given the substance to the House, shows what a burden upon local charities these immigrants have become, and what a tax they are upon citizens from a financial standpoint. I read the other day a very able article in the ' Globe,' covering about the same point I have been elucidating. The title of the article is ' Carefully selected immigrants.' The article deals with the economic aspect of tlie immigration question, and I will take the liberty of quoting a certain portion :
Indeed, the Canadian government have appointed over one hundred employment agents in the agricultural district of the province of Ontario, and are paying them out of public funds for the very purpose of obviating the necessity of a further influx to the large cities of those immigrants who claim that they are going on the land.
That is taken from a letter written by Mr. J. Obed Smith, Assistant Superintendent of Immigration for Canada in Loudon, in reply to a gentleman named Hamilton, of the Church Army, and transmitting to him the new regulations which the government is trying to put into force to prevent the entry into Canada of immigrants thrust upon us by charitable institutions. To give the House an idea of how these people become a charge upon the community I will just glance for a moment at a report prepared by tlie House of Industry of Toronto in which it is stated that they have furnished relief to 2,387 families during last year of whom 484 were recorded as being native-born. If Toronto has to provide for the 222$
relief of 2,387 families bow many others are there who are in need, but who have not made applicaion for assistance ? The report continues:
Despite the large arrivals of immigrants from southern Europe, comparatively few of them applied for assistance.
Another point that I wish to call the attention of the House to is one that has been brought forward by the hon. member lor Jacques Cartier, and it is one in regard to which the lion. Minister of the Interior has not given any answer. How can the government explain that from 1901 to 190C the settlers reported by the department as having been located in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are 200,000 to 250,000 short of the number which the immigration returns are supposed to have shown? That is a point that the minister has not touched.
Now, I wish to call the attention of the House to the objection which can be raised to this forced immigration system from the provincial standpoint. The immigration policy, as carried out by this government, results in increasing the population of the western provinces and in enhancing tlie value of land retained by the railway companies as well as by companies of tlie stamp of the Saskatchewan Valley Land company. it also increases tlie population of tlie province of Ontario who are supposed to take care of immigrants as soon as they arrive in the country and try to establish them on farms or secure positions for them in other walks of life. In Quebec, only a few years ago, we succeeded in getting one single agent appointed who was supposed, not to work for Quebec, but to try to augment the population of the eastern townships. I shall refer, at greater length to this gentleman in a few moments. I do not enunciate this opinion in any unwarranted manner. A few days ago my bon. friend from East Grey (Mr. Sproule) enquired of the government to what religious denominations different people holding offices under the government belonged. If we could rely on our English friends generally sharing the sentiment which was expressed in reply to that question by the lion. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham) we, in Quebec, would entertain no fears that our prestige would suffer as a result of the policy of the immigration branch of the Department of the Interior. The idea of the preponderance of any one race in Canada is contrary to the spirit of the constitution which was framed for the purpose of maintaining the equilibrium between the different races inhabiting this country. Tlie question is brought up. not in a spirit of aggressiveness, but as a matter of self-defence, and it is a result of such racial appeals as that to which I shall now call tlie attention of the House. The Hon. Mr. Weir, who happens to hold an official position in tlie local government of Quebec,

speaking on the 18th July, 1907, before a Protestant synod, described the English depopulation of the province of Quebec as a national peril and suggested the establishment of an organization which would prevent rural property from passing out of English hands, Protestant ministers would, he said, advise this organization of the departure of an English farmer in order that he might be replaced by one of the same nationality. This could only be effected by immigration. Why not, Mr. Weir asked, direct towards the province of Quebec, a portion of that large English immigration wave bound for the west. What was the effect of this speech? The first practical result of this suggested policy for the English population of the eastern townships was the nomination of Mr. E. W. Brewster, the only immigration agent who performs duties corresponding to those of the 199 agents in Ontario. That shows you how fairly Quebec has been treated on this immigration question. When we pay 40 per cent of the money that the government collect in revenue we ought, at least, to get our fair share of the expenditure not only in public works but with regard to this question of immigration the object of which, according to certain officials, seems to be to maintain the preponderance of one nationality. One and a half years' work by Mr. Brewster resulted in the location of about 1,500 immigrants in the eastern part of the province of Quebec, known as the eastern townships. That is the figure as given by the Minister of the Interior on April 15. 1907, in answer to an inquiry. The basic policy is to strengthen the British element. This policy has already borne its fruit in as much as within the space of one year it has added 16 English ridings to confederation. In fifteen years we, of the province of Quebec, shall form one-tenth of the whole population of this country; in twenty years this policy if carried out, will have caused the placing of 1,000,000 English immigrants in the northern part of Quebec, and in twenty-five years the English element will have conquered the eastern townships. Our premier himself sees no difficulty in admitting that in a quarter of a century Canada will have a population of 30,000,000. Sandwiched between the English of the far west, the English of the eastern provinces, between the Americans massed to the south of us and the English established in the north all along the Transcontinental route what influence will we have on the destinies of the nation? They say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Let us put this into practice. Now is the time to act. To-morrow it may be too late. What effect has this undesirable immigration upon us from a national standpoint? It will be necessary to notice the influence of immigration on the growth of population and to follow the ethnic changes which are being, wrought thereby. Equally important Mr. ROBITATLLE.
is it to observe the effect of immigration on the economic condition of the labouring classes in this country, whether it is made better or worse. In the same way it is advisable to study the influence of the newcomers on the ethical consciousness of the community, whether there is a gain or a loss to us. In short, we must set up our standard of what we desire this nation to be and then consider whether the policy we hitherto pursued in regard to immigration is calculated to maintain that standard or to endanger it. As to the character of the immigration I shall quote expressions of opinion from prominent Canadians, men who hold high position in the land and who can impartially view this question. I quote from Judge McMahon, who believes in securing immigrants that will be a credit to the country.
Mr. Justice McMahon, at the opening of the spring assizes yesterday, expressed his satisfaction that the duties of the grand iury would not he unusually onerous. But there was one matter which he brought to the jurymen's attention.
Dr. Clarice, superintendent of Toronto asylum, the judge said, stated recently :	' Of
362 admissions of lunatics last year 136 were foreign born, the majority recent arrivals. Those that the province will never get rid of amount to about 40. Each patient retained will cost the province $G.000.'
Sixty-five per cent of these weak-minded foreigners were afflicted with dementia proe-cox, the same form of insanity accredited to Harry K. Thaw. They were the failures sent from the old country by immigration companies to try and make good in Canada.'
The judge stated that the disease was usually contracted in early life and that 60 per cent of the cases became evident before the age of 25 years. 'We pay for immigration; then why not secure those who will be a credit to the country rather than a detriment to its progress ? '
Here is another quotation from a newspaper :
M. Regimbal, assistant agent of immigration for the district of Montreal, left for Portland last evening having in his charge 21 English immigrants who came from the west and who are to be deported. One of these is a lunatic, and the others have refused to do any work, and so are sent back to their country.
I do not mean to have it inferred by these quotations that by any means the entire immigration from England is undesirable, but I read them simply as a basis for my statement that no matter from what country people come they should be of a class calculated to advance the interests of Canada. I quote from Mr. Justice Lavergne who was at one time a law partner of the right lion, the Prime Minister, and who said :
For the last vear or so crime seems to have become epidemic among Italians of the lower classes. Men with the worst of records in

the old country invade out shores and lead here a life of crime.
Mr. Bruce Smith, inspector of prisons for Ontario, in his last annual report to the government, says :
Although the year closes with the largest number that have been in confinement in the jails of Ontario within the past twenty years, this increase is not due to any increase in crime in the province, but is largely due to Canada, and especially Ontario, being made the dumping ground during the past year of some most, undesirable immigrants. Every jail I have visited within the past six months has had among its prisoners persons who have been only a few months in this country. Some of them have spent most of their lives in English prisons. Several have admitted that they had been discharged by English magistrates on condition that they would emigrate to Canada. There must be something radically wrong with our immigration regulations that will permit such apparent neglect in the inspection of persons seeking and obtaining passage as immigrants to this country. The whole system of encouraging such people to seek a home in Canada is wrong, and the sooner the conditions complained of are recognized and changed the better.
These statements from men who are in a position to know show that undesirable immigrants are coming to our shores and that for the sake of gaining a few paltry dollars the immigrant agents are sending them here.
Let us look at this question from the economic standpoint. Economic well-being is a difficult thing for a nation to acquire, aud once acquired is too precious to give up without a struggle-once lost it may require generations to attain again even if the economic conditions are favourable. The standard of living in this country should be jealously guarded, so that our working classes should not either consciously or unconsciously lose it. It may be lowered in either of two ways. Excessive immigration may overstock the labour market and reduce wages ; or immigrants accustomed to fewer of the comforts of life may supplant the native workman. In either ease we have brought undue pressure to bear on the mass of the people and have forced them down to a lower level. We have substituted the lower for the higher and preferred that which is inferior. On this point I quote the following from the Toronto ' Globe ' of April the 17th :
If there is a great demand for men in Toronto when the seductive steamship agent is talking to the intending emigrant in London, it is no assurance that there will be any demand when the same emigrant reaches this city. Such instances go to show how widely the impression has been spread abroad and accepted that Canada is a country in which the laws of political economy have no existence.
Now, let us look at the question from the electoral standpoint. The continued addition to our electorate of hundreds of thousands of persons who have had no training in self-government, who have other and quite different state of action-will this not tend to weaken our political capacity and self-reliance ? Will it not also effect the adjustment of our institutions to our people. an adjustment which is so necessary if the institutions are to work successfully ?
If the new beam of our political life have neither the aspirations which our ancestors cherished, nor the experience which we have cherished, will not the homogeneousness of our social organizations he seriously imperilled ? A free ballot which was safe in the hands of our intelligent and self-respecting democracy is no longer safe in those of an ignorant and degraded proletariat. Will these alien races rule at the ballot box ? Will they govern our great cities ? What will be their rule ? Will their be the dominant church life ? What will he their faith ? Will their children determine our social and industrial conditions ? What will be their ideals and standards ? We must answer for all this. These immigrants are our raw material out of which we make our to-morrow. Canada welcomes the self-supporting, intelligent and healthy foreigners ; but unfortunately for the peace aud safety of well governed communities in this promising country of ours, a very large proportion of these now on the move cannot, even by courtesy or true sympathy, be placed under this classification. Patriotism, loyalty and other civic virtues are by the present immigration policy sinking to a low ebb. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to support the motion of my hon. friend (Mr. Monk)-1. Because the premiums are paid to other parties than for those intended by the regulations ; 2. Because a bonus incites greed of graft and thereby has forced upon us undesirable immigrants which inevitably shall lower our standard of ideals. To these immigrants I would apply the words of the poet :
Canada, charge not thv fate to these;
The power is ours to mold them or to mar,
But freedom's voice, far down the centuries.
Shall sound our choice from blazing star to star.


Mr. W. F. COCKSHUTT (Brantford).: Mr. Speaker, I have very much pleasure in supporting the resolution which has been brought forward by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk). The question of immigration is one that is attracting and should receive more attention from this House and this country than probably any other question that can be discussed. When this House met in November last I took the

earliest opportunity of placing on the Order Paper a resolution dealing with this very matter. As that resolution has not been and probably will not be again reached, I take this opportunity of making the few remarks which I otherwise would have made in closing the debate on that resolution.
The hon. Minister of the Interior the other day made the broad statement that there were ten men out of work in 1896 to one who is out of work in 1908 ; I think those were about his words. So far as my observation goes, if he had reversed that statement and said that there were ten out of work to-day for every one who was out of work in 1896, he would have been mucli nearer the mark. I think every hon. member of this House who has anything to do with labour will corroborate my statement. I deplore the fact of the hon. minister sending out broadcast the statement he made, when everybody knows that there are hundreds and thousands without employment in our towns and cities to day. I have been found fault with because I have drawn attention to this state of affairs. There are two ways of meeting a difficulty : one is to say that it does not exist; the other is to recognize it and endeavour to get a remedy for it. I have taken the latter course, but the hon. minister says no difficulty exists. It is true, the hon. Minister of the Interior and the hon. member for Strathcona (Mr. Wilbert McIntyre) say that we are quite out of touch with western conditions, and that the immigration policy must entirely hinge on what the west wants. I think we might retort that these hon. gentlemen know very little about the requirements of the east if they make the statement that there is room in this country for many others seeking employment, and requiring to get work almost the day they land. The Minister of the Interior makes the statement that the bonus is doing a public good and has been adopted in order that we might have a selected class of immigrants. i do not find that it works that way at all. I think the minister, long before he became a minister, took the ground that the bonus was the means of bringing in those who were not desirable. That statement was made yesterday, and I did not hear the minister contradict it. Whether that is the case or not, in my opinion the offering of a bonus for immigrants is the most approved way of getting an undesirable class. There are other weaknesses in the immigration policy of the government, but none so great as the bonus. See how it works. A man who may be dissatisfied with his position in the country to which he owes his birth, or who may be out of work, 'makes up his mind to go abroad. He goes to a ticket office to make inquiries with regard to South Africa, Australia, the Argentine Republic, the West Indies or some other country, many or all Mr. COCKSHUTT
of which are not offering a bonus at all. But the ticket agent, knowing that a bonus is offered by the Canadian government, at once sees an opportunity of turning an honest five dollars, and he endeavours to persuade the immigrant that Canada is the country to go to. The man may have felt that Canada was unsuitable for him, on account of climate or for some other reason, but he is deflected from the course he had intended to take by the ticket agent, and is induced to come to Canada. The minister will say : ' That is good policy ; I approve of that ; we are getting lots of people.' There are many other things to be taken into account in order to judge whether this great influx of immigrants is a public advantage. I can easily conceive of a situation in which a large immigration is a source of weakness rather than a source of strength especially if a large proportion of those we are getting belong to an undesirable class ; and that we are getting many of that class goes without saying-the fact is too well known. The hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Robitaille) has read a long list of pronouncements by judges and others. These men are not biassed, and yet they point out that we are receiving large numbers of the undesirable class, which is largely attributable to the bonus system.
I notice that some Liberal papers are taking the ground that people who oppose the bonus system do so because they do not understand it, they being under the impression that the immigrant gets the bonus, and not the booking agent. I think very few indeed are under that impression. That is simply drawing a red herring across the track. There might be a good deal said in favour of the poor immigrant getting the five dollars, because it would help him to pay his way for a little while after he lands in this country. But it is the booking agent who gets the five dollars. Though we are paying' hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in this way, the money is a small matter compared with the wrong done to the country in getting here so many of the undesirable class-people who are not able to maintain themselves on the soil after they get here.
I was much interested and to some extent pleased with the speech which my hon. friend from South Perth (Mr. G, H. McIntyre) delivered in this House yesterday. We have several members of this House who may be said to be independent members. Their independence is not always evident; yet on this occasion we have had three of the so-called independent members speaking, and all of them have condemned the bonus system. But our hon. friend from South Perth, who I am sorry to see is not in the House at the present time, delivered a long oration on this question. When that hon. gentleman was elected he

posed as an independent; but of all the questionable policies that he could very well have called in question, he went so far as to endorse the bonus system as at present carried on by this government, although he said that the day was near at hand when it must go. In my opinion, Sir. Speaker, the bonus system has been retained very much too long. If there ever was any excuse for it, that time has long since passed away. It should have been abolished years ago. The hon. member for South Perth put the Minister of the Interior away up on a pedestal. He said that he stood as the one man who had more to say about what Canada was and what it should be in the future than any other man in the Dominion of Canada.
1 am not willing to place the minister on quite so high a pedestal. I hold him responsible to a certain extent for this policy, but it is the government, which is paying out the money to enable him to carry out that policy, that the people will hold responsible. The hon. gentleman told us that we require people in this country and are not afraid to pay for them. He says that the west is badly in need of people and that the bonus system is approved of by the large majority of our population. Well, I have been in the west two or three times recently but did not have an opportunity of discussing the bonus question at any great length with our friends there; but I can speak for the province of Ontario, with which I am familiar, and I am satisfied that if to-day a plebiscite were taken in that province as to whether or not a bonus should be paid for immigrants from any country in Europe, 75 per cent would say no. And what I say with regard to Ontario, I believe, would apply with almost equal force to Quebec and the maritime provinces. I do not believe that the west would be unanimous on this question, but admitting that 50 per cent would be in favour of continuing the bonus system, if you take the whole country through you will find that 75 per cent of our people, if asked by a plebiscite, would say that we should pay no more bonuses for immigrants. Why should we? We have the best country under the sun. We give 100 acres of No. 1 land to every man who will take up a homestead. We have the freest and best institutions of any country almost under the sun and a country with a climate and opportunities second to none. Why then should we go beyond these natural re-soui-ces? After we have given a man 100 acres of land, after we have offered him all this country has to give, why should we pay $5 a head to a booking agent to send him here? Is there any good reason for our doing this especially when the United States is charging 84 per head on immigrants going into that country? The Americans charge $4 a head for permission to enter the United States, and we pay $5 per
head to get people to come to Canada, making a difference of $9 between the two countries. And besides we have more to offer intending settlers than has the United States. Let me point out a danger which is menacing, and which I have not heard any one discussing. According to the American papers there are between 4,500,000 and
5.000.	000 people in the towns and cities of the United States to-day without employment. Those people are in many instances within twenty-four hours of our border and can cross at any moment. That is a fact which should receive the serious attention of the government. We are too close to our neighbours in the south not to feel every breeze that blows on them. When financial conditions are bad there, they are bad here, when the labour market is not good there it is not good here. Today there are in the United States between
4.000.	000 and 5,000,000 people who are walking in the streets without anything to do. That is a serious problem. It is one which should cause us to pause in our policy of paying men to come to this country, who have no profession and in many instances are undesirable.
The hon. minister said that we had the right to deport undesirable immigrants within two years. If any municipality lias undesirable citizens all it had to do was to deport them. But that must be done within two years of their arrival, and the minister throw's the burden of doing it on the . municipalities. The government brings them in at $5 per head and then unloads them on the municipalities and saddles on the municipalities the whole onus of the transaction. Why should the onus be thrown on the municipalities? If any deporting is to be done, it should be done by the government w'hic'h brought in these undesirables and not saddle that expense on the municipalities. Let me point out the attitude of the government with regard to the Doukhobors, we have heard so much about. We had a long discussion the other day about the invasion of Ontario by these Doukhobors from the Northwest Territories. The Minister of the Interior then told ns that these people could not be deported because they had been here eight years and were free citizens of Canada. Under that ruling of the Minister of the Interior, confirmed by the Minister of Justice, there is no man under the sun who could not come Into this country and free himself from the risk of deportation. On landing he could go to some of the unsettled districts in the north, and w7e have lots of such districts in Ontario and Quebec and the other provinces. He could, as the Doukhobors did, settle outside the pale of civilization and remain there until the two years w'ere up. That is what the Doukhobors did, and now we have them marching back into the heart of the country, and the Minister of Justice

said that those men have been given the freedom of the country and can come and go as they please the same as any other citizen in Canada. But we are told by the Minister of the Interior that we are all equally responsible for their coming. Well, I do not hold myself in the slightest degree responsible, and there are dozens of others in this House who can equally say that they cannot be held responsible. We were not in this House ten years ago when the immigration of these Doukhobors was started: and no man who has been elected to this House since that time can be charged with any responsibility in this matter. These people were brought out at heavy cost. It cost the country $7.50 per head' to bring them here, and if we could get rid of them at $50 a head we would be doing a great stroke of business in the interests of this country. But the Minister of the Interior says that they have been here eight years and are consequently free to go or stay as they like. I refer to this in order to show that, under our deportation law, we have no control over these people. Undesirable people may come into tins country and settle in the northern, part of Ontario and after they have been there two years, they are free to settle in any of our towns or cities or in any other centre of population in this country they please. If they went immediately to any city in Ontario, they would no doubt be deported at once. But they do not. What they are advised to do is to go into some remote district and remain there two years. Then they have perfect freedom to come and go and violate by their eccentricities the decencies of life, and there is no means by which we can rid ourselves of them. This government boasts of the great things it has done. Well, this country has not yet fully realized what this government has done with regard to immigration. They have inflicted on us a burden that it will take the toil and the strain of one to two generations to remove.
The hon. member for South Perth (Mr. G. H. McIntyre), who spoke very feelingly and very properly with regard to immigration in the old days, touched a theme he might very well have enlarged upon. Look at the immigration that flowed into the provinces of Ontario and Quebec when this country was being settled. Go back a hundred years when this territory in the midst of which we assemble was one vast wilderness. There came into this province and the province adjoining it a little band of sturdy citizens driven out of Great Britain by the stern law of famine. No bonus was paid to these men to come here. They came here and hewed out their homes in what were then the wilds. They settled in the forest and for forty or fifty years they lived almost shut out from civilization and humanity, but all the time hewing out places for themselves and building strong 1 Mr. COCKSHUTT.
and true the foundations of the citizenship that we have enjoyed for fifty years. We owe to these people a debt of gratitude we never can repay. But we can show that at least we feel the gratitude we would like to express by preserving unsullied and undimmed the citizenship they banded down to us when they passed to their reward. But are we doing that under the policy of this government ? I think not. We have thrown all that to the winds ; we have no regard for it to-day but we are going on simply looking to numbers, as the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) has stated-it is simply a matter of numbers to be brought in regardless of whether their coming will or will not be a lasting good to the country.
With regard to that particular point I wish to draw attention to the fact that the older provinces of Canada have been, thus far. mainly responsible for the settlement of the west. That is a statement that, I believe, neither the Minister of the Interior nor any other hon. gentleman on that side will gainsay-that the large proportion of the settlement of the West has been effected from the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Probably 50 per cent of the people in the West to-day are Canadian by birth. I have not the figures at hand, but I know that, at least, within recent times, that proportion would hold good. These people have been drawn from the older provinces very largely within the last ten years and so great has been the drain upon us, especially upon our farming community, that we have parted with almost every farmer's son that the older provinces could possibly spare- I fear far more than they should have spared-and to-day we have in the older provinces scarcely enough men to man our own farms. I am pointing this out to show that this element that has gone from the older provinces and that has become the backbone of the Northwest has been drawn upon to its limits-we can go no further ; we have not the men to spare. The older provinces can no longer afford the population necessary to assimilate the incoming hordes of Europe. If that be the case, are we nevertheless to go on receiving a great immigration from Europe without mixing with it the representative Canadian citizenship to make these people good citizens ? The colonization of any part of the West by a particular nation is bound to be a failure. It has always been a failure in every sense of the word. We must have only one citizenship in the Dominion of Canada, and that the citizenship of broad Can-adianism ; but this we can never have if we are going to keep together in one settlement the immigrants coming from any section of Europe, whether they be Doukhobors or any other. They will never get over the evils that they have brought in. The only way is to have population go in

tliat will spread out to all tlie provinces of Canada and that will become Canadian in the broad sense.
Mow, I have said that this is not a matter simply of the growth of the country, nor of the labour of the country. But I would point out that organized labour, I believe, without any exception, is utterly opposed to the bonus system. The hon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville), who spoke the other day upon this question, the hon. member for Montinagny (Mr. Armand Lavergne) and the hon. member for Quebec County (Mr. Robitaille), representing as they do, large elements of labour, have all been against it. We know that almost every trade and labour council in Canada has passed resolutions opposing the proposition of this government to pay further bonuses. . In considering this matter. we must not neglect the interests of labour for they are a factor of our population of which we should take the greatest care. They have been in this country many of them all their lives and others for many years. Is it right or just to bring in from the countries of Europe a lower class of citizenship to displace and supplant the men who, with their wives and families, are dependent upon getting work in the places in which they have lived so long ? The common cause of humanity would declare this unjust and say that it should immediately cease. The Minister of the Interior seems to have the idea that he can force prosperity in this country by bringing in a vast influx of people. I take the opposite view. I say that if we have a stringency to-day or if our trade is at all depressed at this time, that stringency and that depression can be materially increased and the burdens of the people multiplied by bringing in more people, who, instead of being a help at this time will become an encumbrance and will add still further to our difficulties by their calls for charity. But this is what we have seen in Ontario. Yet the Minister of the Interior has the hardihood to rise in his place and tell us that there were ten men out of work in 1896 for one man out of work to-day. The hon. gentleman was entirely astray in his facts. There is no doubt' that this bonus question is receiving, as it should, the very earnest attention of the citizens of the Dominion of Canada. And our hon. friends opposite seem to be disposed to continue this policy. If I were looking at this from a political point of view, I should not find fault with their taking that course, because the more they advocate this policy the worse will they stand in the opinion of the country. I could ask no better campaign literature than reprints of their arguments in support of this policy. I could ask no better campaign speech in favour of my election than to have the hon. member for South Perth (Mr. G. H. McIntyre) come down to Brantford and advocate the bonus
system as carried on by this government. I would welcome the hon. gentleman as a worker in my interest. Nothing could be more detrimental to the interests of the government in the towns and cities of the Dominion than the continuation of this bonus on immigrants coining to this country. You may say :	' Why give away
your tricks ? ' It is bad politics I admit. But the minister has charged me with keeping politics in view in everything I do. I admit that what I am doing is bad politics, but I feel compelled, in the interests of Canada, to declare that the government is pursuing a suicidal policy in regard to immigration. This system should have been stopped not this year merely but several years ago. There may have been a time when it was safe, when the immigration brought in was a negligible quantity as the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) has said. But that time has gone by. pur immigration has increased by leaps and bounds. And we need not fear that it will unduly decrease. This country is so well known, its resources have been so widely advertised, its capability of producing a living for additional millions of people is so widely appreciated, that it should not require a single dollar, either for advertising or for bonuses, to bring into Canada every man who can possibly be employed or planted upon the soil to advantage.
Take the history of the United States, our great neighbours to tlie south, and you will find the same facts I have pointed out with regard to Canada. Two or three hundred years ago that country was almost unknown. Look back to the days when the Pilgrim Fathers moored their barks on the wild New7 England shores, and laid broad and dee]) the foundations of the great citizenship of the United States. Look at the class of men that come out in those days and planted the flag, and started in to hew out a home in the wilderness where they could worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. That little band, under the providence of God, multiplied and increased until it was able to furnish a leaven that has made a nation to the south of us second to none, in intelligence and civilization, on the face of the earth. We have to some extent in the older provinces of Canada a like leaven that we seem disposed to part with very lightly. We cannot assimilate all the people that these gentlemen wish to bring in to the extent they have been bringing them in, without doing great injustice to Canada. I say it, and I feel it, Mr. Speaker, that we have to-day within the confines of this Dominion all the people of the classes that have been coming in lately, that can possibly be taken care of and given a good home, and become good citizens in the territory where they have chosen to settle. That applies, I think, to all the eastern sections of Canada. It is


Mr.   I@: I always listen attentively to my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt), and especially do I listen to him with interest when he speaks on the question of immigration. I remember the speeches that hon. gentleman made in this House just twelve months ago. I read the correspondence which he had Mr. COCKSHUTT.
with the Minister of the Interior in favour of immigration into his own city just two years ago, and it is now a tremendous surprise to listen to the extreme denunciations of that same policy by my hon. friend. I remember that the member for Hamilton just one year ago presented to this House a petition from the manufacturing interests of Hamilton, calling upon the Minister of the Interior to provide men for mechanical labour of every kind. I remember that just a year ago my hon. friend from St. John, X.B.. complained in this House, and especially to the Minister of the Interior, that in all the processes of immigration to this country New Brunswick was being passed by, that no interest was taken in the lower provinces, that immigrants were ail sent out west. When I remember that just two years ago the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat repeated all these complaints and requests, I am utterly surprised at his inconsistency to-day. I think it is worth while to read to the House the correspondence of that hon. gentleman with the minister. This is an important question, and no doubt he thinks it is of tremendous political importance in his constituency. He seems to have committed himself this afternoon to the task of working up this question of immigration in view of its ffolitical importance in the district he represents. Well, let us read the letter which the hon. gentleman sent to the Minister of the Interior on May 0, 1905, in favour of this class of immigration which he denounces to-day :
Dear Sir,-I am in receipt of the inclosed correspondence from the proprietor of the Employment and Information Bureau of Brantford, in which he makes a special request to me to endeavour to forward to our city the various classes of help that are at present urgently needed in that city and district. Would you oblige me by kindly noting the matter and advising me at your earliest convenience as to what method, if any, we can pursue to attain the required ends.
What end? That of getting all classes of labour sent to Brantford.
The letter, I believe, contains fairly correct information, and Mr. Hall, the proprietor, furnishes several letters of reference as to his standing and ability to place the various classes of labour required.
Hoping to receive an answer from you at an early date, or if convenient to wait upon you in connection with the matter, I beg to remain.
Tours very truly,



[Stage Direction]
My hon. friend who, one or two years ago, was advocating a stimulation of Immigration to this country, forgot that it was utterly impossible to carry on a national policy of immigration for any length of time without such immigration receiving a momentum that it would be impossible to stop all at once. If my hon. friend's requests are being answered to-day by the

influx of the very people that he insisted upon getting two years ago, and one year ago, he ought now to remember that he has lent his influence to bringing about the very condition he complains of, and the very facts which he represents as existing.
Now here is the document ; it is a long document and I do not desire to read it because it would take up too much of the time of the House. It impresses upon the Minister of the Interior the necessity of encouraging the immigration of these different classes, not of agriculturists, but of mechanics and artisans to the city of Brantford and yet the hon. member from that city, within two years of that very same period after lending his influence to the propagation of a national system for the encouragement of immigration of this class and which, after it receives a certain degree of momentum cannot very well be stopped at a moment's notice like a clock, refuses to-day, because there is a different industrial condition in Canada, to take his share of the responsibility for any condition that may or may not exist as a consequence of his own advocacy in this House. This was two years ago. But, my hon. friend spoke in this House one year ago-eleven months from the very period at which he made his speech and this is what he said :
The farmers of Ontario, I believe, are in a very prosperous condition. They are suffering more perhaps, from lack of help upon the farm than from any other one cause. That I know is the main factor in our part of Ontario. I think it is the duty of the immigration department-
This was on November 30, 1906 :
-while they are bringing out the vast number of stalwart men from the old country that they do, to see to it that Old Ontario is not entirely passed by. They have taken from us our very best young men for the west. And with all our hearts we wish those young men well. Our sympathy is with them and our best wishes for their prosperity. I believe, that nearly fifty per cent of the settlers in the west come from the province of Ontario and Quebec. Having lost our young men, the farmers of Ontario have none to fall back upon except the immigrants. But the immigrants are going right through-
It was in this way that my hon. friend declaimed in this House a year ago. The burden of his speech was that by a system of bonuses certain classes of Immigrants were brought to this country, that they were suffering in the industrial centres of eastern Canada for want of help, and he stated in this House that the immigrants were going right through and leaving the farmers without help.
-and so the farmer is without help and has not been able to take advantage of the prices that are going so much as he would have done if he had been able to hire others to help him produce large quantities of goods.
I have a' great deal of respect for my hon. friend in a personal way and in every other way, but I must declare to him that I do not know of auy instance on record where any single man has manifested, on any single subject, such a degree of inconsistency as the hon. member for Brantford has on this question.
William Foster Cockshutt: May I ask the hon. gentleman a question ? Did he find in the speech that he has just read any suggestion that artisans or labourers or any one else should be brought to the towns or cities ? It was entirely to farm labourers that I referred.


Mr. RALPH SMITH.: Well, If It is any consolation for my hou. friend I will just need to go back one year and read that letter again. Will he stand up in this House and say that he did not, two years ago write this letter to the Minister of the Interior calling upon him to initiate a system of industrial immigration on behalf of the operators in Brantford ?


William Foster Cockshutt: No, I deny that entirely. I never recommended any such course. I simply encouraged the hon. gentleman to give attention to the letter that I was inclosing to him from one of my constituents who had written me. I inclosed it to the minister, I called his attention to it and 1 might remark incidentally that the minister is retaining letters that do not belong to him, and that have not come back yet. As far as that is concerned I simply took the opportunity of inclosing this letter which was sent to me in the House here by one of my constituents. If the hon. gentleman says that I presented it in the House he is not correctly stating the fact. This letter has only come to light recently and it is only within a few days that anything damaging has been discovered in relation to it. if indeed there was anything damaging about It.


Ralph Smith: My hon.,friend takes the full responsibility of this letter :
The letter, I believe, contains correct information.


William Foster Cockshutt: ' Fairly correct,' is it not ?


Ralph Smith: No, the hon. gentleman will excuse me :
The letter, I believe, contains fairly correct information.
And further he says that he has sent letters of reference as to his standing and ability and of the necessity for these various classes of labour. The only point I want to make in regard to my hon. friend on this question is that having denounced, the policy of the government with regard to bringing agricultural settlers to this country, he

ought to be willing to share the responsibility of his own acts as a member of this House. Previously to the hon. member for Brantford taking the floor I was beginning to think that something had seriously happened down in the good old province of Quebec for the resolution was enunciated by a prominent member from the province of Quebec, and it was supported, one after another, by members from that province. The cloud of dismal description, pessimistic complaint presented to the view of the House by these gentlemen led me to think that something had happened in Quebec. To listen to those speeches one would think that Almighty Providence had left them, that Satan and his emissaries had been brought in and that by a combination of all the forces of evil with anarchism the whole country was going to be ruined. I have every respect for the representatives from the province of Quebec and for the hon. member who moved the resolution in favour of every kind of restriction upon competitive labour coming into this country, and on that point I am prepared to discuss the question : but in order that the supporters of the resolution might maintain their position they had to ignore the law, regulations and history of the restrictions which have been imposed by the Immigration Department in Canada for years. The contention of these hon. gentlemen is that the policy of bonusing booking agents is the cause of every evil in connection with industrial depression in this country. The hon. member for East Huron (Mr. Chisholm) gave extraordinary reasons and made extraordinary charges against the policy of paying a bonus to booking agents, and in the course of his speech he gave a number of results which he claimed had come from this policy. Oue was : He said that an ignorant Scotchman who had been transferred to some part of his constituency did not know the difference between a plough and a manure wagon. That was a very serious calamity, but no one will believe any such story. Then the hon. gentleman went on to say that another thing he had to complain of in connection -with this policy was that the wives and daughters of the farmers in his district of Ontario were unable to go to the market in safety because there was such a number of automobiles on the highways. It was news to me that the Minister of the Interior was to be blamed for placing bonuses on the importation of automobiles; this was the first time I had the least suspicion that there was included in the immigration policy of this government the importation of automobiles to frighten the farmer's wives and daughters and to prevent them from getting to the market.
My hon. friend the member for Maison-neuve (Mr. Verville)-for whom I have the greatest respect as I have for the institu-Mr. E. SMITH.
tions which he represents in this House- he attached the blame of any evils that might exist in connection with the immigration policy upon the paying of bonuses to ticket agents. I cannot agree with the hon. gentleman in that, and while I say I have the highest respect for my hon. friend and the institutions he represents, I do not think that when his speech is placed in the hands of the organized labourers in this country-for whom I have no mandate to speak more than in a general way, because in this House I represent every class-and always the masses of this country -when his speech is placed in the hands of organized labour in this country I think the conclusion arrived at will be that the facts were not properly presented by him. The hon. gentleman made very serious general statements as to which he gave very little proof, and later on I shall take the trouble of examining into some of these statements for the purpose of presenting what I consider to be a correct idea as to the condition of immigration matters. My hon. friend from Montmagny (Mr. Arrnand Lavergne) drew a doleful picture ; he said that our grand national edifice was going to be torn up, that the constitution of this country was going to be uprooted, and all because he had seen a socialistic parade in the city of Montreal. Well, if he comes out west he will see lots of them. He drew a fearful picture of existing conditions because he had met a few men in Montreal who shouted loudly and who have a perfect right in a British country to parade the streets of a city if they wish to do so, and having seen this parade the hon. gentleman suggested seriously that the Minister of the Interior should lock the door of Canada and keep everybody out.


Mr. ARM AND LAVERGNE.: Will my hon. friend allow me?


Ralph Smith: My hon. friend wants to be allowed very often. He does not like to be told what he said. Does the hon. member dispute the correctness of my statement?


Armand Renaud La Vergne: Yes. My hon. friend ought to remember that when I was speaking I answered without objection every question that was put to me. I want to say that these socialists in Montreal not only paraded the streets-a right which I concede to them, but which some of the aldermen 'sought to deny them-but they insulted priests and broke the windows of Laval university.


Ralph Smith: We can find men in every community in every country in the world who do unreasonable things at times. But is that any reason why Englishmen who have contributed their share to the up-building of this country and who make no apology for coming to this country, should be debarred from entering here?

Let us remember that years ago they paid the taxes for the protection and security of the citizens of Canada and their action in this respect is appreciated to-day by all intelligent citizens of Canadian birth. If my hon. friend (Mr. Ariuand Lavergne) has courage enough to follow up the logic of this argument, then he would get a whip and whip every one of us out of the country who were not born here ; he woutld lock the door of Canada, he would keep within the three and a half million square miles of the richest territory in the world which we enjoy only two or three millions of people, and let me tell him that if that condition prevailed the country would run to seed in a very little while indeed. My hon. friend (Mr. Armand Lavergne) spoke about the religious sentiment of the people. In this British country we do not ask a man whether he is an atheist, a 'Methodist, a Catholic, or a Protestant. That is not the test of true citizenship in a British country. Every true Britisher believes and every true man believes that even though his fellow man be not a professing Christian, he may still be a moral man, and the last thing a British subject would do would be to make a religious profession a test of citizenship. A man may be an atheist, but his moral character may be equal to that of the man who is not an atheist, and in my opinion it is simply mocking the intelligence of this House to raise such an argument against the British people who are coming to our shores. What the government of Canada has to do is to bring here people who are industrious and enterprising, and to prevent the imposition on the country of scoundrels who may be a menace to our civilization and our liberty. But to argue that you can have a stupendous system of immigration and that you can provide some kind of national sieve small enough to clean out every man who does not come up to a certain' theological standard and who is not associated with some Christian institution and who may not be up to the average standard of the industrial people of this country, is to argue for an impossibility. But in this country of ours, with all its territory and all its wealth, when we speak of taking men from the congested districts of the British isles and giving them an opportunity to breathe free air and to have a little more room than they ever had in their lives before.
I want to say on the floor of this House, that to me it is a proud thing to be a citizen of a country that can offer such advantages to this class of people when they are placed on the vacant land of Canada. Now. the hon. the mover of the resolution blames every evil that may exist on this policy of paying bonuses. It seems to me that the whole question is whether the immigration policy of the government as well as the machinery for carrying it out is beneficial to the people of
Canada as a whole. Let us see what has been for years the declared policy of the government on this matter. It has been asserted that it was the policy of the government to bring artisans and mechanics here to compete against that class in this country. They encourage only people for the lands. Four years ago I brought up in this House the question of certain persons in England using their influence in favour of bringing artisans to this country, and the then Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) published on the records of the House an advertisement printed in every newspaper in the British isles giving notice to all the people of the old country that the immigration policy of the Canadian government was to bring no one to this country who would not come to take up homesteads and settle on the land, and domestic servants. Surely the hon. member from Maisonneuve must know that every time this government became aware that there was the slightest suspicion of any misrepresentations being made in the British isles which would induce mechanics to come to this country it at once instituted proceedings to correct these misrepresentations ?
They have circulated literature ; they have instructed their agents ; they have advertised in English newspapers ; they have passed a law prohibiting misrepresentation; they have sent a representative to the British government to ask them to pass a law against misrepresentation similar to the law passed in Canada. Taking the immigration policy of the government as we have it on record, and taking their action as disclosed by the facts I have mentioned, I submit that ! there is every evidence that the government have done everything in their power to prevent the bringing into this country labour that would come into competition with the labour in the cities and towns of the country. I have evidence in my hand that some of the strongest regulations that have been adopted to protect the labourers of this country against unsuitable labour from the old country, have been suggested to this government by the very booking agents who receive the bonuses that the hon. gentleman thinks should be dispensed with. I have a periodical in my hand, written by Mr. Bruce Walker, in which he lays before the minister the serious dangers of philanthropic societies in England. He mentions the East End Emigration Fund, the Self Help Emigration Society, the Salvation Army, the Church Army, the Church Emigration Society, the Central Unemployed Body and the Central Emigration Board; and gives the numbers they have sent out to Canada. But the [DOT]point I am making is this, that the very machinery which hon. gentlemen condemn as inducing unsuitable people to come to this country is demonstrated by this very pamphlet to be the machinery that is keeping the minister informed, and is offering

suggestions to ltim as a result of which regulations are adopted to prevent the very thing whicli these lion, gentlemen say is accomplished by this very machinery. On the 25th February. 1908. an order in council was passed which reads as follows:
The minister, therefore, recommends that an order in council be passed, prohibiting, from and after the fifteenth day of April, 1908, the landing in Canada, of any person whose passage has been paid, wholly or in part, by any charitable organization or ont of public moneys, unless it is shown that the authority in writing of the assistant superintendent of emigration for Canada, in London, has been obtained for the emigration of such person, and that such authority has been acted upon within a period of sixty days.
That order in council was passed a little over a month ago, and no attention has been paid to it by the hon. gentlemen who are so sweepingly condemning this system.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: Who made the recommendation?


Ralph Smith: Mr. Bruce Walker, one of the superintendents of immigration in England, the very instrument that my hon. friend said ought to be dispensed with. I have in my desk a large number of articles which have appeared since this order in council was passed in the most important and responsible newspapers in London. expressing the strongest possible complaint and condemnation of the department for the passage of such an order, because of the restriction it imposes upon English people who have the right to come to this country except for physical reasons. X cannot take up the time of the House to read them, but I mention the seriousness and importance of these articles and of letters written by responsible men who are at the head of different English societies, complaining of the tyranny of the Immigration Department of Canada. And at the very time these criticisms are being made upon the department, a resolution is presented by my hon. friend to tills House complaining of the very reverse. I would like to remind the House again of the severe restrictions that have been imposed by the Immigration Department in the interest of proper immigration. On the 27th of March, 1908, an order in council was passed stipulating that immigrants must be in possession of a certain amount of money: and the whole policy of the government, if the hon. gentlemen would be honest in stating it. has been one continued disposition to restrict undesirable immigration to Canada.


Mr. MONK.: Was the provision of the order in council extending the bonus to railway navvies in England and on the continent a restriction? That only dates a year or so back. Does my hon. friend approve of that ?


Ralph Smith: 


Ralph Smith: The extension of the bonus to railway navvies in England and on the continent was a matter that might reasonably come under the consideration of the Dominion government. I want to say to my hon. friend that the most difficult employment in this country to get any kind of intelligent workmen to go on to is tile construction of railways on account of the small wages paid for that kind of work. My hon. friend has not been very far out of the province of Quebec, and I do not propose to allow him to set up his experience in these matters as against mine; and I want to tell him that in the Nanaimo district today", times are slack and miners are out of employment but it is not easy to get them to work on railway construction, they prefer to wait for a chance of work in the mines rather than work on railways. My hon. friend must admit that the standard of wages in the construction of railways is very low.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: That is not what I asked my hon. friend. I asked him whet her the extension of the bonus to railway" navvies in England and on the continent was a restriction or not.


Ralph Smith: man advocates the principle that it would be in the interests of the workingmen-the men who work in the mines and the railway concerns and on the canals and in the development ot' all enterprises-to keep the supply of labour below the demand, he is doing them an injustice. If any of our industries are not producing to their full capacity, you are raising the cost of living and the expense of the working people. It is in the interests of all citizens, and especially of the working classes, that every enterprise should be fully employed and producing its maximum of benefit.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The labour congress does not admit it.


Ralph Smith: If they do not, they are foolishly advised because the principle is indisputable. It is one on which the hon. gentleman would operate his own mill or his own mine.
Mr. ARMAXD LAA'ERGXE. That is the employer's point of view.


Ralph Smith: No, it is in the interests of the workingman. If an industry has the equipment and the capital to provide labour for 100 men and if it is short ten per cent of the labour it requires, there is a ten per cent loss in the production of that industry and the labouring men have to pay for it. There is not a living man who will take the responsibility, in the presence of the labouring men. of controverting a proposition of that kind. No man of the intelligence and experience of my hon. friend would ever think of adopting any other principle with regard to his own business.
I want to deal for a moment with the argument that bonuses are paid on all immigrants. I got a telegram from a friend of mine in British Columbia last Saturday which I should like to read to the House. M.v hon. friend's speech had been sent to tin* newspapers of that province, and this telegram gives the impression which the newspaper despatches of his speech made on the minds of the community:
The despatch report of Mr. Monk's speech contends that bonuses are paid on the total immigrants to Canada.
Does my hon. friend take the responsibility of that proposition? That is the impression which was made on the public mind by what he said, namely, that this government were paying out of the public funds bonuses on the total immigration.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I never said that. I said what I believe, and what is generally believed, that bonuses are paid in many cases where they are not due.


Ralph Smith: I do not think there is a man who would not say that the
impression I have mentioned is one which would reasonably be drawn from his speech. If his speech be analysed, there is every indication to show that it was his intention to create that impression. Let me take the opportunity of placing on the records of the House a few figures that will remove that false impression. My hon. friend in his speech-see page 6892 of ' Hansard '- gave a statement of the total immigration to Canada in ten years. Immediately following that statement he gave a statement of the bonuses paid on immigrants during the same decade. Any ordinary man reading the statement showing the total immigration to Canada and right beneath a statement showing the total bonuses, cannot fail to conclude that the bonuses were paid on the total immigration. Certainly I could come to no other conclusion. But what are the facts? Many people believe not only that the bonus is paid on every immigrant but that it is paid individually to the immigrant. I have had to correct a misapprehension of that kind hundreds of times. But certainly lots of people believe it, and they believe it because of the speeches made by men like my hon. friend, and of tabulated statements given in the way I have referred to. No reasonable man reading his speech could fail to conclude that the total immigration and the total bonuses covered the same number'.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I do not see how that could happen because the immigration is given for every year and the amount of bonuses paid every year, and it is easily to see, by comparing the two. that the bonus is not paid on every immigrant. But what I believe is that the bonus is paid to people who go to-the States and the people who go to jail.


Ralph Smith: There are people in every country, even in countries where there are no systems of immigration, that go to jail, and there are lots of men in every country who ought to be in jail and are not.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Is my hon. friend alluding, to the grafters? They never go to jail.


Ralph Smith: AVe have in Canada. as other countries have, people who are not desirable: but if we are superlatively good ourselves we ought to be thankful to be given the opportunity of redeeming the character of other men and communities worse than ourselves. In 1904-5, the total immigration to Canada was 146,266. I have compiled these figures from the records so-as to place them in ' Hansard ' and dispose of the misapprehension which exists among so many people. The number on which bonus was paid was 28,833 or one-fifth of the total immigration that year.


Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: The answer given by the Alinister of the Interior, as recorded' in ' Hansard,' is 32.004.


Ralph Smith: My hon. friend, if he follows closely, will see that he is mistaken.


Robert Laird Borden: I am referring to the answer given by the Minister of the Interior to be found in the revised ' Hansard ' of the 19th March. I am not saying that the hon. gentleman is incorrect. I am merely pointing out that he is not in accord with the Minister of the Interior.


Ralph Smith: When I took these figures from the record, I compared them with figures given by the minister the other [DOT]day, and I find that the statistics are the same.


Robert Laird Borden: The figures he gave were 32,684.


Ralph Smith: In 1905-6 the total immigration was 189,064 and the total number on which bonus was paid was 33,608 or about one-sixtli. In 1900-7, the total immigration was 124,667, and the bonus was paid on 14,094, or on one is nine of the immigration coming to Canada. In 1907-8, the total immigration to Canada was 235,328 and the bonus was paid on 20,492, or one in twelve. So, if we take the average, it seems to me we shall find it would range from fifteen per cent to twenty-five per cent of the total immigration coming into the country.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Ralph Smith) is proving that we get immigration without the bonus.


Ralph Smith: I am correcting the misapprehension cultivated by hon. gentlemen opposite that the bonus applies to the total immigration to this country. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Monk- then made a reference to the United States, declaring that no immigration bonus was given in that country. I am not sure that there ever was a bonus system in the United States- certainly there has not been for many years. But I do not think that fact helps the hon. gentleman at all; There are over a million immigrants coming into the United States every year. But whence do they come ? Largely from southern Europe. Whence come the immigrants to Canada under our system of bonuses to agents and careful regulation ? They come largely from the British Isles and northern Europe. It is true that the State of Virginia has a system of bonus assistance to immigration from Belgium, designed to bring in a special agricultural class from that country. But, generally speaking, there is no bonus in the United States, and the hon. gentleman asks if we cannot have the same system in Canada. I declare with all earnestness my opinion that, if the government were to withdraw the whole of the machinery used in carrying on its immigration policy, the Mr. R. L. BORDEN
labour coming into this country would soon become very largely of the very class of which the hon. gentleman (Mr. Monk) complains as combined employer's associations and transportation companies would become the agencies. If we did as the hon. gentleman proposes to do-called back your agents from England, broke off relations with your booking agents, destroyed your immigration department, but merely kept on the Atlantic coast officers to enforce a reasonable protection so that the worst classes could not enter, we should receive a much greater proportion of the very nationalities of people of whom the hon. gentleman complains, but who would have the right to come into this country. But these very classes are kept out by the supervision which our present system affords.


Robert Laird Borden: Would the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ralph Smith) point out the words in the resolution which declare that the government agents should be withdrawn ?


Ralph Smith: I say that if the resolution were carried out to its logical result


Robert Laird Borden: Where are the words that point to that ?


Ralph Smith: My hon. friend (Mr. Monk) advocates doing away with the bonus. Can the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) tell me the difference between giving a bonus to a booking agent and having a special agent in the same place who would be paid out of the public treasury for using exactly the same influence in bringing immigrants to Canada?


Robert Laird Borden: There is just this difference, that the resolution attacks one and does not attack the other.


Ralph Smith: But the reputation of a successful immigration agent in any country depends upon exactly the same foundation as does that of the booking agent -it depends upon the successful service he renders in sending a good class of people to this country.


Robert Laird Borden: How does it happen that 215,000 came without a bonus, and only 20,000 with the bonus ?


Ralph Smith: My hon. friend (Mr. R. L. Borden) is discussing a result which was due to the very energy I am speaking of exercised years before. These agents have been lecturing for years ; they have been distributing literature for years; they have been advertising for years. All these- agencies, paid for by the government, have been exercising their influence, and immigrants come to us as a result, not to compete with Canadian labor but to develop the lands of Canada.


Robert Laird Borden: Was it these influences of the bonuses that brought the 215,000 ?


Ralph Smith: My opinion is that the bonus is not the great influence that hon. gentlemen opposite think it is-and I think I know something about some of the men engaged in this work. Take, for instance, the evidence of Mr. Jury himself before the select committee of this House : Did not he declare under oath that every opportunity was taken advantage of by the paid immigration agents in England to instruct all engaged in the work as to the classes of people wanted in this country ? I do not think the booking agents in England simply go out and gather up the scum of the population for the sake of getting so many dollars out of the enterprise.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


Ralph Smith: I am expressing an opinion, in opposition to the opinion held by bon. gentlemen opposite. It might be possible for the government to exercise the greatest discretion in selecting suitable men to do this work. But what I believe is that the government is doing its utmost to get the right class of men to operate these agencies, and I believe these men are a good deal more honest in their work than hon. gentlemen opposite who have spoken on this question would have us believe.
I was speaking about the statement made concerning the United States. I have a few figures here which will not take a minute to read and which I would like to put on ' Hansard.' I take it that the following countries offer good material for immigration to Canada : Great Britain and Ireland, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, the German Empire, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Now, I have collected the reports of immigration into the United States.
I find that in the fiscal year 1905-1900, the total immigration into the United States was 1,100,735 people. Of these only 38 per cent came from the countries I have mentioned, the countries from which we most desire immigrants. From Italy came 25 per cent of the whole, and from Russia, including Finland, 20 per cent. That is, from the countries that we seek to protect ourselves against, the United States received 45 per cent of its total immigration for the year referred to. This immigration, of course, was without bonus and without the supervision and regulation that that system allows.


Mr. ARMAND LAYERGNE.: Is it not a fact that tile proportion coming from these countries to Canada is greater than that going to the United States according to population ?


Ralph Smith: I will state the figures which are a complete answer to the hon. s'entleman. I do not believe his statement for a moment. I was making a eotu-parison in view of his statement, and now I will complete it. During the same year that Canada received 189,064 from these favoured countries, the Uuited States took 30 per cent and Canada took 50 per cent. From Italy, from which undesirable immigrants come, we took 4 per cent, and from Russia and Finland, from which undesirable immigrants come, <we took 2 per cent. From these three countries we took less than 9 per cent of their total immigration. From the United States, Canada received 30 per cent of the entire immigration for that same year, while the United States received from -Canada and Newfoundland less than one-haif of one per cent of our entire emigration. In other words, the United States received from Canada and Newfoundland in that year 5,063 souls, while in the same period Canada received from the United States, 57,919.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Am I correct in understanding the hon. member to say that the United States got from Canada onlv 5,000 last year?


Ralph Smith: I have said more than once that in 1895 and 1896 the United States got from Canada and Newfoundland. 5,063.	'


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What of 1907?


Ralph Smith: I have not got the figures for 1907.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: They got 19,000.


Ralph Smith: Well, the hon. gentleman can say so at the proper time. Now, Mr. Speaker, I desire to deal with some statements of my hon. friend from Maisonneuve (Mr. Yerville), statements which are very general and very misleading. My hon. friend stated :
But the bonuses have been diverted to other classes (other than farming).
Now if my hon. friend is content to make a statement of that kind in the face of the regulations, in the face of the orders in council, in the face of the advertisements from those countries, in the face of instructions to agents, of course he will have to take the responsibility for it. But I do not think he can prove in a single case that bonuses have been diverted to other than agricultural classes. I have been unable to find a single case, and I have made inquiry at the Immigration Department, and this is what the department told me, that whenever the labour men of this country could discover a case of a bonus having been paid for a man that had not settled on the land according to his agreement, the department would take the responsibilitv and expense of deporting that man back to

702:

702S
I want to say to this government: Settle all the vacant lands in this country, divide them up just as quickly as you can among bona fide settlers. Get the people on to the land and arrange as quickly as possible to alienate the public lands from railway companies and sell it reasonably to settlers. That is a foolish and false theory that is set up by my hon. friend from Maison-neuve, that it is possible to cultivate the lands to the Injury of the industrial labour of this country. Why, Sir, it is the settled land that affords a market for the results of the productive labour of other industries. Keep the people from the land, keep the people out of the country, keep the lands barren, keep them tied up and you will have no need for factories. Does my hon. friend who is responsible to the associations of labour men place this consideration before them? Every agricultural settler brought into this country and placed on the land is creating a market for the man who works in the mine and in the mill.


Mr. VERVILLE.: Who is going to absorb all the surplus labour in a slack time in the cities throughout the country?


Ralph Smith: Get the people on the land and provide a market and you are pursuing the best policy in the interest of industrial labour, but keep the people off tue land and there is no need for factories. The barren lauds of British Columbia, the immense stony hills of that country, that were not considered to be worth anything, are being made most fertile in fruit producing properties. Why? Because there is a market in the Northwest. The rich timber areas of British Columbia have been developed to an enormous extent. Why? Because they have found a market in the agricultural districts of the Northwest. Fish and coal production has developed enormously within the last two years. Where do they'find u market? They find a market in the Northwest. I want to say to this House that when this country becomes settled with enterprising pioneers beneficial results will accrue to the industrial classes. It is not an easy thing to get people on the land. It is not an easy thing to collect men who are prepared to go to the backwoods and take up land. Hon. gentlemen opposite act upon the assumption that it is perfectly easy to get people to settle on the,land. The member for Brantford says: Do you not give them 1G0 acres each ? My hon. friend from Montmagny (Mr. A. La-vergne) complains that Quebec is not receiving justice. Why do the people of Quebec or of Ontario or of Nova Scotia or of British Columbia not go upon the land?


Armand Renaud La Vergne: Why is it that the government prevents a man from going west from Quebec and helps an immigrant coming from the old country?


Ralph Smith: 


Mr. OLIVER.: How does the government prevent any man from going from Quebec?


Armand Renaud La Vergne: The government prevents a man from


Mr. SPEAKER.: Order.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: No, Mr. Speaker, I want to answer the hon. gentleman.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Order.


Ralph Smith: My hon. friend from Montmagny asked a question and I am going to answer it.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: The hon. minister has asked me a question-


Robert Franklin Sutherland: If the hon. gentleman rises to a question of privilege he has the right to do so.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: The minister has put a question to me and I think I should have the privilege of answering it.


Ralph Smith: Perhaps the House will give me three or four minutes as I am obliged to go to a meeting this evening. I want to say to my hon. friend that there is no citizen of Canada who has not an equal opportunity with every immigrant to take up land in the Northwest.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: I deny that.


Ralph Smith: Well, my hon. friend is afraid to allow me to give him his answer. I do not make statements without being prepared to vindicate them.


Mr. TAYLOR.: Six o'clock.


Ralph Smith: My hon. friend asks: How is it that immigrants from the British isles can go to the Northwest at a less rate than people from Quebec? The government have nothing to do with that; they do not determine the rate.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: What about the railway commission?


Ralph Smith: Has my hon. friend submitted that grievance to the railway commission?


Armand Renaud La Vergne: Is it not the duty of the Minister of the Interior to submit it to the railway commission?


George Taylor: Six o'clock.


Ralph Smith: I cannot conclude before six o'clock, and I must thank the House for their consideration. Will hon. members give me one minute? I want to say a word to the House and to the government. What the people of this country want is a bold and courageous government which will get settlers unto the lands. There may be weaknesses and mistakes in some cases, because the government is made up of human beings, just like other poor creatures, there are no such things as cabi-

nets of angels in this country any more than in any other, hut I want to say that the people are looking to the Laurier government to promote, even more extensively than they are doing to-day, the development of this great country by the extension of the principle that they have adopted in applying strict regulations to immigration on this side of the line and in granting financial and other assistance that discretion and supervision may be exercised on the other side of the line in favour of bona fide settlers to the end that these people may be placed upon the land, that more markets and greater opportunities may be opened up and that the country may be further developed as a consequence of this policy. I want to assure my right lion, friend that in spite of everything that has been said the great mass of the people will support this policy and forgive a whole lot of the small trifles that lion, gentlemen put before the country and waste time iu discussing in this House. These are small matters that never reach the corridors of this House, but the great development of this magnificent country and the placing of settlers with a Crown title on the public lands, to bold them for ever for the benefit of themselves and their families, to live under our institutions and to be the subjects of a free British government, is the natural result of the policy which this government have adopted and I want to say that is the policy that will be supported by the people. The government wants to go ahead. Do not take any notice of these whinings and complainings. This whole debate has been one funeral dirge as if the country were going to the devil. We are getting into a terrible condition when some man in Liverpool is getting $10 for sending a man to this country which will enrich it to the extent of hundreds of dollars, or when some other individuals in some other countries are getting a few dollars for sending people here who will enrich Canada to the extent of thousands of dollars. The people understand this policy and they will support it. There is nothing in the position taken by bon. gentlemen opposite. If the government exercise close supervision and make a selection of suitable immigrants their coming will be a great benefit to this country as land settlers.
At six o'clock, House took recess.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


Haughton Lennox: The hon. gentleman from Nanaimo (Mr. Ralph Smith), enunciated the view, so far as I could hear his closing remarks, that many of the attacks made on the government by the Conservative opposition would not penetrate beyond the corridors of this House. If the volume of his voice was the
measure of how far the hon. gentleman's speech would carry, his utterances would certainly get beyond the precincts of this building, but I venture to think that when the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ralph Smith) has time to reflect he will be glad if some of his statements in the latter part of his speech should remain in oblivion to those whom he mainly represents in this House. The hon. gentleman made a new departure this afternoon and although he had volume of voice he had not the volume of independence we would expect from him. The hon. gentleman has seen' fit for reasons best known to himself to turn his back upon the labour party which he was supposed to champion, and to stand on both feet for the government party in support of their immigration policy. I do not propose to follow my hon. friend in his dealings with the labour party, because no doubt they will themselves determine how far they are satisfied with him. However, if you give certain people rope enough they will hang themselves, and that seems to be the misfortune of the hon. gentleman. He asked for more time to finish his speech, and then with the assistance of the Minister of the Interior he endeavoured to crowd down the statement of the member for Montmagny that in the matter of transportation, there was discrimination between immigrants coming to this country, and our own good citizens. A moment's reflection will show that there is a distinct discrimination against the people of Canada in the matter of transportation. If the sons of the province of Quebec for example, wish to go to the west they are not carried by the transportation companies upon the same terms as the poorest and most wretched foreigners who come to our shores.


Wilbert McIntyre: Does the hon. gentleman think that the policy of the government should be to transplant the people of this country from one portion of it to another 1


Haughton Lennox: When hon. gentlemen on the other side interrupt me to ask a question that has no relevancy to the point I am discussing I do not propose to answer. The question of the hon. gentleman has absolutely no relation to the matter with which I am dealing. The hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Ralph Smith) thought tit to deliver a vicious attack upon the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt), and if the hon. gentleman (Mr. Cockshutt) had the privilege of replying I would not refer to it for I know he could dispose of the hon. member for Nanaimo in good style. He attacked the member for Brantford because, he said, he has changed his views on this question since May of 1903. But what ground is there for condemnation. The hon. member (Mr. Ralph Smith) alleges that

at that time the hon. member for Brantford advocated the importation of skilled labour Into Brantford and other cities of the Dominion. I do not admit that such a position was ever taken by the hon. member for Brantford.


Mr. JOHNSTON.: It was.


Haughton Lennox: I prefer to take the documents rather than the statement of my hon. friend from Cape Breton with respect to that. And the written evidence shows that what the member for Brantford did was to forward to the proper department a letter from one of his constituents.


Alexander Johnston: And what did he ask ?


Haughton Lennox: Never mind for the present ; you are very fond of breaking in.


Alexander Johnston: I thought you would not answer.


Haughton Lennox: The hon. member for Nanaimo has condemned the hon. member for Brantford because he alleges that in May, 1905, that hon. gentleman advocated the immigration into this country of skilled labour, and that now he has changed his attitude in regard to that. Would the hon. member for Nanaimo dare to take the position to-day that he advocates the introduction of skilled labour into Canada ? He did take a pretty distinct departure from the position of an advocate of the labour party ; but he would not dare to take the position that he advocates the indiscriminate immi-? ation into this country of skilled labour and artisans ; and yet, with his inconsistency, he attempts to condemn the hon. member for Brantford.
Again, he condemns the hon. member for Brantford because he says that a year ago that hon. member advocated immigration into this country, whereas to-day he says he condemns immigration into this country. The hon. member for Nanaimo has not properly sized up the situation. I venture to say that neither he nor any other member of this House can find, in all the speeches made by hon. members on this side, during either this or preceding debates on immigration, one utterance condemning immigration to this country. It is not immigration that we condemn, but it is the system which he government pursues of bonusing booking agents to send to this country a class of immigrants that we do not want.
The hon. member for Nanaimo waxed eloquent over the position he takes on the question of religion in connection with the class of immigrants he desires to see brought into this country. Now, I do not for a moment say that we are to make nice distinctions in this regal'd as to the class of people who come to this country; but when I find the hon. gentleman stating that he does not care whether an immigrant is an Mr. LENNOX.
atheist or a Christian, that the moral or religious attitude of the immigrant is an entirely immaterial question to him, I venture to say that the good sense of the people of this country will not join with the hon. member in that position. Speaking for myself, while I draw no narrow lines in this regard, holding that a man can exercise his conscience in the way he sees fit, I do feel that it is important that we shall bring into this country a class who shall be God-fearing people, and that it shall not go forth that an atheist is an acceptable citizen of this country. What is atheism? It is the absolute repudiation of the existence of God ; and do you want it to go forth that the representatives of the people in this parliament have got to the position that they care not at all whether the class of immigrants who come into this country are or are not such as the hon. gentleman said he was quite willing to have come into the country-atheists and men of that class ? I am sorry the hon. gentleman is not here, but I strongly commend tQ the perusal of the labour party in this country the utterances of that hon. gentleman this afternoon. I think it will be a surprise to them to find that he has so utterly and completely abandoned them and gone over, as I could have predicted long ago he would, holus bolus to the present administration.
Now, I have never spoken upon the question of immigration, although I have thought very seriously upon it ever since I came into this House. I have been somewhat puzzled as to the best policy to pursue having regard to a certain class of the inhabitants of this country. I have always felt that the people whose interests should be most anxiously considered are the people who form the backbone of this country, the farmers; and from a careful watching of this debate, I think I can say without any fear of contradiction that not one note has been sounded from the government side in favour of the agriculturists of this country. I believe that whilst we should endeavour to advance the interests of all classes, the interests of the bulk of the communitv. of those who contribute most to the country's progress and prosperity are most to be considered. The farmers are the largest class in the country, and if I were convinced that a payment of money, by bonuses or otherwise, for the purpose of promoting immigration would be in their interest in the sense of giving them the labour they require on their farms, I would not be prepared to condemn it in any way. But I am convinced, from a careful observance of the policy of the government, that we shall never get in this country a class that are required to labour on the farms of Ontario and the other older provinces, or for assistance to the farmers who are settled in the west, by the system we are pursuing at the present time. Now,

as to the relative position of the farmers and another great class in this country, the manufacturers, we have in Canada farmers, owners and tenants, to the number of 544,688. Computing in the ordinary way the residents on the farm, the people who are dependent directly on agriculture for their existence, will number 2,723,440, or more than 50 per cent of the entire population of Canada. From the census returns of 1901, T find that the farmers have invested in their farms and implements and various means of carrying on their indus-trv $1,787,102,620. and that they pay for hired help $24,173,988 annually. On the other hand, the investments of the manufacturers amount to $446,916,487. Of this their working capital, which can hardly be called a permanent investment, amounts to $237,537,849, leaving only a little over $200.000,000 as an actual permanent investment by the manufacturers of the country. The farmers therefore have at stake as a permanent investment in this country, in order to advance its prosperity, four times as much as all the manufacturers of the country. Then, take the products. The farmers of Canada in 1901-and there has been a vast increase since then-produced $363,126,384, whereas the manufacturers, if we take the sales, produced $481,053,375. But the amount of raw material which went into the manufactured products and a large portion of which was produced on the farm was $266,527,858. Therefore the actual product of the manufacturers was $215,525,517, as compared with the figures I have given with reference to the farm. In other words, the products of the farm exceed the products of the factories some 70 per cent. What I say is this. We must not neglect the interests of any class, but all the same we should keep steadily in view the fact that Canada is preeminently a great farming country. The farming interests should therefore be the first consideration of any competent and wise government because that which is the greatest producer must tend in the greatest degree to the prosperity of the country.
I know that the policy of the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) is a western policy and a western policy alone. I do not object to a western policy within proper limits. It is a policy to people the farm lands of the west. But we want something more than that. Our first object should be to secure farm help. Labour is wanted on the farms of Canada, and if we do not see to it, the finest land in any part of the world to-day-I refer particularly to the older portions of Canada-will be left uncultivated for the lack of an adequate labour supply. Therefore the first consideration of the government should be, not so much to get farmers to take up farms in the west, as to get in farm help. Get in people who will work on the farm, let these people acquire in that way a knowledge of the country, and after they have done so let them take up farms of their own and they will be successful to a degree they would not be, under other conditions. i" have said that the policy of my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) is a policy of occupying the farms of the west and a policy of that kind alone. Let me refer to his statement in the debate on the 15th of January last on this same question. Dealing with a letter written by Mr. Scott to the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Coekshutt) the Minister of the Interior said :
He (Mr. Coekshutt) received his answer and it states the policy of the department, which then and before and since has been to secure settlement of the western lands.
And he follows that up on the next page by saying:
I know it is, but it is my hon. friend and not I who is finding fault. He was at that time with the policy of the government so far as the need of immigrants was concerned, but his policy differed from the policy of the government in that- he wanted to empty the overcrowded tenements of Europe into the citv of Brantford and other cities of Ontario, when the policy of the Dominion government, as stated to him in black and white over the signature of an officer of the department, was to settle the Northwest, to cultivate the prairies, to fill up that western [DOT]ountry in order that there might be employment and business for the commercial and financial interests of eastern Canada.
So that the policy of the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) is a policy of filling up the farm lands of the west and that alone. We must no doubt fill the farms of the west, but if you bring into this country a hardy agricultural class who will assist our farmers before taking up lands of their own, who will graduate from farms tilled by men who understand the conditions of the country, you will develop this country in the most effective way and you will ensure that those who take up lands will not afterwards abandon them into the hands of speculators and grafters. This government have made no attempt of that kind to assist our farmers, particularly those of the older provinces and enable them to obtain the necessary help from the old country. Will the policy of the minister bring about an improvement in that respect ? I venture to say that when we pay a bonus to a booking agent, his chief effort will be to secure quantity rather than quality and thus increase his commission, and the same may be said of the transportation companies. All these are concerned in procuring the greatest possible number, regardless of quality, and in this way making the greater profit. Their interests are in that sense antagonistic to those of the people of Canada, and while that system continues we shall never acquire that class of immigrants which will be a benefit to our own

farmers. What is the remedy ? I am not called upon to devise a remedy, although it will be but a little time before we on this side will have to propound a remedy. When that time comes I shall be prepared to give my advice in the interests of Canada, but in the meantime it seems to me that we ought to adopt the methods which any business man would use in securing assistance in his business. We might very well establish an Immigration Bureau which would keep a record of the labour required. Our farmers, manufacturers, merchants, miners, railway companies and other interests could then readily communicate with the government through this immigration bureau and inform them of their wants. They could define, not only the number of assistants, they required but also the terms of employment. A farmer for instance would state how many months he would undertake to employ one or more farm hands. When all that information is obtained, then work, not from this end, but from the other end. Employ reliable agents in Britain to come in direct communication with the class of men required and let these agents guarantee that the men they send out are the kind we want. Knowing how many farm labourers are wanted, they will try to obtain them. The responsible agents of the government will take pains to ascertain that the proposed immigrants are actually and bona fide farm hands or as the case may be. They will make arrangements with these people, having 'n mind the condition that exists on this side of the ocean and the actual farmers who want these men. Then they will enter into arrangement for these men to come here, and the farmers here will be advised that the men have come and will be asked to meet the men, make their contracts, and take the men to their homes. If you do this, you will be bringing in a class that will add permanently to the welfare of our country and will assist in supplying our producers with the men thev require.
Now, the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) seems to think that 160 acres of free land is not a sufficient inducement to the people of Europe and elsewhere to come in and occupy our territory. The hon. minister objected to comparing the conditions of Canada to-day, with its six millions of population! with the conditions of the United States with 80000,000. He said :	I ask you to go back
one hundred and twenty-five years in the history of the United States. But let him take us back any number of years he likes he will not find the United States ever made an offer such as we are making, or gave a bonus such as we are living to bring immigrants into their country. And I ven-tenure to say that neither the United States nor any other country has offered the same Mr. LENNOX.
inducements to hardy, sturdy, self-reliant immigrant that the Dominion of Canada is offering to-day in the lands of the west. We do not need to give prize-packages in order to get rid of these lands. Our west is the greatest and last west available for the teeming millions of Europe. And if you adopt the policy of endeavouring to restrict immigration to the end that none but the fittest should come in, that none but those who measure up to the level of our own citizenship should be allowed to enter, you will have these lands occupied as readily as by depreciating their value and crying them down-which you are doing at the present time by saying in effect: Here is a prize, an inducement for you to come in and settle these lands.
Now, what kind of immigrants are we getting by our efforts? I wish to refer you to some records upon that matter. I do not think that the hardiest and most reckless of the supporters of the government will dare to say that the class of immigrant that we are getting into this country make a better average than those they are getting into the United States. I do not think there is any of these hou. gentlemen quite hardy enough or indifferent enough to the facts to assert that, taken as a class, our immigrants compare favourably with those that go into the United States. Therefore, for a moment, I will direct attention to the class of Immigrants that are going into the United States, even with ail the precautions taken in that country, with all their rigid examinations and in spite of the tax of $4 per head that the immigrants must pay before they can enter that country. Before I go into that, let me say that the hon. member for Lennox (Mr. Uriah Wilson)- a county with a very good name-wrote to tile United States to ascertain whether that country ever paid a bonus to encourage immigration in the reckless and dangerous fashion in which we are endeavouring to encourage it. And he received the following letter from the acting Commissioner of Immigration for the United States :
I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 8th instant, which has been referred to the bureau for attention. So far as I am informed, the United States never solicited immigrants, although no restrictive measures were enacted until 1875, prior to which time foreigners came to the United States of their pleasure.
So they have had restrictions upon immigration ever since 1875. Beginning with a charge of $2 per head, they now charge 84 per head for admitting immigrants to the United States, besides subjecting all to a most rigid examination as to their fitness, physically and otherwise. Let me read a few quotations from the report of Thomas Darlington, M.D., president of the board of health of New York. Under the heading of ' Inspection of School Children in New York City ' he said :

They are subject to a rigid physical examination. During the first three months of 1906, 23,733 children were examined and 17,462 were found to be suffering from some physical abnormality. Of this number of defectives, 12,170, or 70 1 per cent were of foreign birth. It is safe to assume that a large proportion of the remainder were of foreign parentage, for their names give satisfactory evidence of foreign extraction.
In 1905 the 88 children in one truant school in Manhattan were examined. Of these 77 were found to be physically defective; 74 or 96-1 per cent of these latter being of foreign birth. In 1900 about 40 per cent of the school children in the city of New York were foreign born.
In another paragraph of this report I find the following :
An investigation of 500 consecutive deaths of infants from diarrhceal diseases in New York city, shows that 120 or 125 per cent were of native parentage, while 325, or 75 per cent were of foreign parentage. These conditions exist although 63-5 per cent of the total population of New York are natives of the city.
And again :
Practically 33 per cent of the insane-
And this is a very important question.
-in the United States are of foreign birth.
The New York State Lunacy Commission in 1904 reports that 60 per cent of the insane patients in New York city were foreign born. Prom 1885 to 1894 the total admissions to the hospitals for adults of New York city were 282,928; of these 63-7 per cent were of foreign birth. During 1905 there were admitted to 7 of the largest hospitals of the city 26,839 patients ; of these 12,550 or 46 -6 per cent were native born, and 14,289 or 53 4 per cent were foreign born.
So we get a pretty clear idea from this report of the condition of things in the United States. IVith all the rigid examination, with all the care, with all the regulations adopted by the United States, we find that the large percentage of those who are physically unfit are people of foreign birth. Now take our own country. I will read only brief extracts from the inspector of hospitals in Ontario:
There is marked evidence that public attention should be called to the large number of undesirable and unsuitable immigrants that are being induced to seek a shelter in Ontario. This has been found nowhere more noticeable than in the city of Toronto, whore more than half of the indigent casuals, who have had to be provided for, belong to the immigrant class. . . .
The present policy of Canadian emigration agents in Europe would seem to be to secure the number and pay no heed to the quality of persons urged to seek a haven in this country. The system of the Dominion government of bonusing agents to send out in an apparently indiscriminate manner a class of people totally unfit to provide a livelihood for themselves is deplorable.
Further on, and summing up, he says :
But you must have noticed how crime is on the increase in Canada-crime of an abominable character. Evil deeds are rife in this land which we never knew before. Our nation was a better one before these people came.
I do not think there can be any doubt as to that. Now, Mr. Hanna the other day spoke in regard to lunatic asylums, perhaps the most serious phase of the whole question:
We seem to be bringing into this country a cla,ss of people who are going a long way towards peopling (our insane asylums, towards peopling our jails, and towards supplying a pauper population for the cities during the winter time.
Mr. Hanna points out that five years ago, of the total commitments to the insane asylums in Ontario, 20 per cent were foreigners and 80 per cent were Canadians. Now, the percentage of foreigners has increased to 30 per cent, and the percentage of Canadians is 70 per cent. During these five years Mr. Hanna points out that the cost of maintaining those immigrants in Ontario has increased from $24,613.20 to $51,744.30. He shows that last year the total number of patients was 1,162, and of these 346 were immigrants. He also makes a computation, which I presume is correct, to the effect that taking the probable average length of life of these people, the province of Ontario will pay for their maintenance during their lives the sum of $1,487,038.80. He says that of the total population of the province over 16 years of age, 20 per cent are immigrants, or 291,675, and 80 per cent are Canadians, or 1,209,308; but that although the immigrants are ouly 20 per cent of the population, the jail population is composed of 38 per cent of immigrants. and the cost of maintaining them last year was $21,724.65.
Now we have had a large influx of these undesirable people, but for some reason, I think without reason, the Minister of the Interior has seen fit still further to stimulate the bringing in of these people. He cancelled the contract with the North Atlantic Trading Company on the 30th of November, 1906, and we paid no bonuses down to the 19th of February, 1907. From this latter date to the 8th of January last we were giving 5 shillings per head for children, 10 shillings for adults of certain classes, such as farmers, farm labourers, navvies and miners, and 10 shillings for domestic servants. Rut at a time when every city in this Dominion was groaning under the weight of taxation, voluntary taxation it is true, brought about by the invasion of these helpless people, this government, with a recklessness which has nwt been explained, saw fit to double the bonus to be paid, and no earthly reason can be suggested for it unless it be some ulterior motive of assisting those pets of the government who are in

some mysterious way brought into relations with the government in order to bring about this immigration.
Could any sane government imagine for a moment, that, at a time when every city in this country was complaining of the presence of foreigners who were a tax upon the generosity of the good people of those cities, when every jail was more than crowded by the class of people who had been brought to this country, it was necessary or wise for the Minister of the Interior to double the bonus and thereby increase the difficulty under which this country was groaning ? What was the bonus for ? I have only heard one explanation-that it was for the purpose of enabling the booking agents to advertise Canada in foreign lands. I would like to ask the Minister of the Interior-and before he joined the government he was a sensible man-who should do this advertising? Do we always want middlemen intervening in the affairs of Canada or, if we have to advertise Canada, would it not be better that the people of Canada should do their own advertising and not- go to middlemen such as the North Atlantic Trading Company was and such as these men now are not knowing even whether the money has been expended or not ? If I remember rightly, if there has been anything that the minister has boasted about or prided himself upon it has been, in this House and on the public platform, to let the labour party know that he was not hand in glove with the Manufacturers' Association, that, in fact, he was hostile to the Manufacturers' Association. Is the government honest with labour unions and skilled labour? I want to know and tomorrow the labour unions, and skilled labour. will want to know, whether the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Smith) has been honest to-day or not, and I think they will bring in a verdict adverse to that hon. gentleman. I want to say definitely and emphatically that all the evidence goes to show that the government have been playing a double game in this matter, that they have not been honest with the labour unions or skilled labour but they have been playing into the hands of the Manufacturers Association, while they [DOT]pretended by their speeches to the labour party that they were fighting the Manufacturers' Association. The Minister of the Interior, like his brave supporter to-night, made a vicious attack upon the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) and I think in that regard he did not go too far, if he was judicious, because he had a foeman worthy of his steel. He realized that the hon. member for Brantford was doing the government very serious harm in regard to their , immigration policy, but in the discussion he brought in some questions which resulted in the hon. member for Brantford retaliating. Among other things the hon. member read a letter which came from where?-which Mr. LENNOX.
came from the Department of the Interior- and which showed pretty conclusively the attitude of the government in regard to skilled labour in this country. Now, I will read that letter and I will point out to you, Mr. Speaker, in connection with the reading of it, that the Minister of the Interior did not dare to ask that the hon. member from Brantford should give the name of the official, who sent out this letter. Why? Because if he had got the name be would have been bound, if this gentleman had done wrong to call him to account. The only reason I can suggest in connection with the matter is that he knew perfectly well from the tone of the letter that it 'was in accordance with the express or implied instructions of the government to that official and he dared not call him to account. Here is what the letter says. It is an unsolicited letter which shows what the minister calls the aggressive immigration movement of the government :
Interior Department of the government of Canada.
Immigration branch,
Agent, ,Tohn McLennan,
26 Guild Stret,
Aberdeen, June 3, 1907. W. F. Cockshutt, Esq.,
Brantford, Out., Can.
Dear Sir,-I see by reports of various newspapers, that numerous members of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association are in need of skilled and unskilled help. As representatives of the government here, we have many inquiries from skilled mechanics in nearly all branches of the trade, desiring information about opportunities for their line in Canada and having no specific information we must be governed in our replies by general terms and conditions.
That looks like a desire on the part of the government to be put in a position of supplying necessary information to these men who are making inquiries in order that they might come and find homes and employment in the labour market of Canada and to that extent, come into rivalry with the skilled and union labour men of Canada. This letter goes on :
I believe that if the secretary of your association would supply the government offices from time to time, of which the inclosed is a list; of the needs of your association, that it will be of great practical assistance in securing some of the needed help, say for instance, in this form, that there are so many carriage blacksmiths, so many boilermakers, lathe men, moulders, carriage builders and so forth wanted If we had such a list as that in our hands we could give definite assurance to men that they could get work, and then refer them to the headquarters of your association in Toronto, Montreal or other large centres, for distribution.
That looks like wanting to enter ipto a contract with the Manufacturers' Associa-

tion, to concur with them and carry on this aggressive propaganda, which the Minister of the Interior is so fond of speaking of-in bringing into Canada skilled labour in competition with the skilled labour of Canada. It goes on :
I make this as a suggestion, as we are quite often at a loss what to say, not having any definite information respecting the needs of numerous lines of work, for which we have inquiries here.
I am directing this communication to you, as I believe that you are the president of the association or was, the last information that I had.
Mark you what he wants done.
I know in any event that you will forward it to the proper authorities, in the event that you are not at present the active executive of the association I will be glad in any event to hear from you, your opinion respecting this suggestion.
Very truly yours,
john Mclennan,
Canadian government agent.
And the Minister of the Interior recognizing the significance of one of the his principal agents in the old country coming into direct conflict with the organized labour unions and skilled mechanics of this country, did not dare to ask the hon. member (Mr. Coekshutt) the name of his informant. Do the union men of this country want more conclusive or damning evidence of the guilt of the government and of the minister than the production of that letter? I do not think so. But the Minister of the Interior even though he be not always brave is daring, and he concluded his eloquent but irrelevant speech by reading a document which was issued by a certain historical personage whose alias is Lazarus. Was it not daring and indiscret for the minister to mention Lazarus or Leopold in 9 connection with immigration. He read a letter to show that Mr. Leopold was advertising as follows :
This week's vacancies are: fitters, turners, joiners, labourers, tinsmiths, toolmakers, coat-makers, brushmakers, hammersmiths, chair-makers, cottonweavers, brass workers, cabinetmakers. Daper mill engineers, wood working machinists. Fresh vacancies from Canada by each mail. Girls! Girls! Girls! Also families, high wages, assisted passages. Experienced and inexperienced machinists for straw hats, caps, whitewear, tailoring. Mill hands for knitting, woollen and cotton mills. Chocolate dippers, &c., &c.
And the Minister of the Interior said this was signed by Mr. Louis Leopold on behalf of the Manufacturers' Association. Who brought Leopold from oblivion into the position he occupies ? Who but this present government, and who but the Minister of the Interior and his predecessor. Have the people of Canada forgotten that this Louis Leopold alias Lazarus who was picking up large crumbs at the expense of
the people of Canada was the man who acted hand in hand with W. T. R. Preston, who is still in the employ of the government, and as to whose acts although the government promised an investigation they dare not investigate. It was this Mr. Lazarus who had an office in the same building with Mr. Preston when he was representing the government in England, it is this man whom the Minister of the Interior resorts to in an endeavour to refute certain facts. The chickens have come home to roost. Such an incident opens the eyes of the labour unions and the skilled mechanics of this country who are struggling to make an honest and competent living, and who have been befooled far too long by this government. Now, I want to revert to a statement made by the Minister of the Interior in this debate on April 13, when he thought fit to refer to the amendment to the immigration law passed this session, and to the attitude of the opposition in connection with it. He said :
It is not long since in an effort to make it possible to carry out our understanding and to complete the fulfilment of our obligations, there was before the House a little amendment to the Immigration Act, a trifling little matter of some four or five lines.
Mark you, this was to enable the government, as he said, to carry out their understanding with one nation, evidently meaning Japan.
We had to face an immigration question on the Pacific coast as well as on the Atlantic, and it is different on the Pacific from what it is on the Atlantic.
I agree in that.
The immigration differs at every point of the compass. It is necessary to adopt a restrictive policy on the Pacific coast.
You will see what restrictive policy they have adopted because I intend to charge that here again the government have not been guilty of honesty. I do not want to use any harsher term, but I say that the government have not been guilty of being candid either with the people of British Columbia or with the labour party of this country.
Different measures were suggested with regard to that restrictive policy, but it was thought well in the interests of the country, in the interests of the empire, that a conciliatory rather than an aggressive policy should be adopted in connection with one country at any rate.
Evidently meaning Japan.
In pursuance of that idea an amicable arrangement was arrived at with that country, and it is hoped that a similar arrangement can be arrived at with another that is in a somewhat similar position in regard to immigration. But an agreement with Japan as to the restrictions on immigrants from Japan to Can-

ada or an agreement with the government of India as to the restriction of immigrants from India to Canada was of no value without the provision we asked this House to pass the other night. It was absolutely of no effect.
Mark you, they could not work out their policy with Japan or with India unless they got this legislation. I want to say, not only has the government added additional shackles to Canada in the matter of immigration by the Act they passed the other day, but at the present moment Canada, by reason of the treaty, by reason of negotiations of the Minister of Labour, and by reason of the final crystallization into law of that whole matter, stands in the most humiliating and degrading and despicable position of any nominally free nation in the world.
I want to say to the people of British Columbia, I want to say to the labour people of Canada and to all the people of Canada, that we are tied hand and foot as regard^ the question of immigration, by reason of the treaty with Japan, the treaty being, as the right hon. gentleman said the other day, above the law with regard to immigration wnich we put on our statute-book. My right hon. friend shakes his head. I do not go by a shake of the head ; I go by the records of this House, and I refer to what was said the other day when we were debating this matter, and when the right hon. gentleman said that as between the statute we were passing and the treaty, the treaty should prevail over the statute; and so it does as a matter of fact, whether the right hon. gentleman had said it or not. Now, what have we done? As the Minister of the Interior said, we had to pass this law. There were negotiations, and we had to satisfy Japan. The right hon. gentleman said: Japan is a sensitive nation; it is willing to be treated on the same basis as other nations, but is not willing to be discriminated against. The right hon. gentleman has made it clear that we are in this position, that whatever restrictive laws Japan may have as regards emigration from its shores, Canada is not allowed by Japan to enact any legislation which will conflict with Japan uuless Canada enacts similar legislation with regard to every other country in the world, including Great Britain itself. A sensitive nation, the right hon. gentleman says. Yes; yet in 1905, when the treaty between Great Britain and Japan was in force, Australia demanded free action as regards immigration, and Australia got that concession from Japan. A sensitive nation! Yes, sensitive when Canada has only a population of six millions, but not sensitive towards the United States when the United States lias a population of eighty millions: and in 1904. the same year in which the treaty with Great Britain was consummated. Japan conceded to the United States the right which we should have safeguarded in our treaty with Japan. Sensi-


Haughton Lennox: tive? Is no one to be sensitive in Canada? Are we to have no national pride? Are we to surrender the right of making our own laws, and submit to the indignity of having our laws in regard to immigration made at Tokio, as in fact they are at the present time? Just follow out this legislation. Before the other day we had this provision:
The Governor in Council may, by proclamation or order, whenever he considers it necessary or expedient, prohibit the landing in Canada of any specified class of immigrants, of which due notice shall be given to the transportation conpanies.
The hon. Minister of the Interior says that means a certain class as regards occupation, not as regards a country, and I think he is right as to that. Then the government the other day introduced an Act wnich was intended to get over difficulties

which was intended to prevent Japanese coming to Canada, which was intended to keep the Hindus out of British Columbia. and it was proclaimed to the people of British Columbia as having that effect. It has not that effect, and the right hon. gentleman and the Minister of the Interior well know it. Here is the form in which the Act was introduced:
The Governor in Council may, by proclamation or order, whenever he considers it necessary or expedient, prohibit the landing in Canada of any specified class of immigrants-
That was in the old Act, and in the new we read:
-or of any immigrants who, being natives or citizens of any specified country, have come to Canada otherwise than by continuous journey from that country on through tickets purchased there.
That was the Act as it was introduced. But when it came to be considered by this House, that would not do. That gave us too much liberty. That enabled us to specify Japan; it enabled us to say that if the labour market was congested, the Governor in Council could make an order that Japanese artisans or mechanics or labourers should not come in. But we dare not do that, because the right hon. leader of this House says that Japan is a sensitive nation, and is only willing that we should legislate in the same way in regard to Japan that we do in regard to other countries. And so what we must do in order not to offend Japan is to surrender our rights. We have, as he told the hon. member for South Lanark (Mr. Haggart), the right to shut out British subjects if we like; we can shut them out with reason or without reason. But, the right hon. gentleman says by his action and the action of his ministers, we cannot do that with regard to Japan. The Minister of the Interior says this parliament is supreme, but in the same breath he asks us to mutilate the statute which he brought in, and it was passed in this form:

-or any immigrants wlio have come to Canada otherwise than by continuous journey from the country of which they are natives or citizens and upon through tickets purchased in such country.
What is the meaning of that ? The difference is this: that we had the right to specify any country under the Act as it was introduced. But Japan would not stand that; we dare not do it. And now by the change made the only order in council that can be passed is an order which excludes everybody-which puts Australia and every other British possession, which puts Great Britain itself, on the same line of exclusion that we adopt in reference to Japan. That is the position we are in. We are bouusing immigrants; it is the boast of this government that we are endeavouring to get British immigration into this country. British immigrants come to Canada, remain for a year, and then go to the United States. British immigrants go to the United States, remain there a year or two, and want to come to Canada. An order in council has to be passed. That order in council confronts them at the border, and it is said to them; You are British subjects; you have never foresworn your allegiance to the British Crown; you are of us, but you cannot come in. That is what the law does. We are endeavouring to get immigrants from Holland; the Hollander must come by direct course or he cannot come at all. We are endeavouring to get the citizens of France; they must come direct from France or they cannot come at all- -why? Because Japan says so. Take every country from which we are seeking immigration, and we are confronted with the mandate of Japan. It is by the mandate of Japan that we have had to pass this law, which will exclude British subjects unless they come direct, which will exclude the people of the best nations of Europe unless they come direct, which will exclude the citizens of the United States unless they came direct, which will exclude everybody unless he comes direct, or else we have to leave that law a dead letter. Is the hon. gentleman going to enforce that law? No. He says to the labour people of British Columbia: I have passed a law which will be your protection. I say to the Minister of the Interior that no more humiliating condition ever existed in Canada or in any other country than that which exists by reasou of the attitude of this government in regard to that treaty with Japan. Although I desire that we should have friendly relations with that nation, yet rather than feel that we in this free country have surrendered our rights as a sovereign people to make our own laws with regard to immigration and have consented to have our laws made at Tokio, I for one would be prepared at any moment to denounce the treaty we have with Japan at the present time.


Mr. J. G. TURRIFF (East Assiniboia).: The resolution which my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk! has presented is one of vast importance to every portion of the Dominion. It is of special importance to the western country, and that must be my excuse for my taking up a short time of the House to-night. The hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Lennox) passed a few compliments to the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Smith). He said that the hon. member for Nanaimo was now opposed to the labour party. Well, 1 would venture the statement that the labour party in Canada have not in the whole Dominion a better or a truer friend than my hon. friend from Nanaimo. He has given evidence of his devotion to the labour party time and again and be has, as a big broad-minded man, done more for the labour interests in Canada than any otliet man in public life. The hon. member for Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) argued that because my hon. friend from Nanaimo supported this government he was therefore opposed to the labour party. But that does not follow by any means. No one who is not a blind partisan will deny that no government in Canada has ever done so much for the labour interests as the present administration. I would venture the statement that the labour party themselves acknowledge this. I do not say that every individual does, but the labour interests as a whole are convinced that this government has done more for them than any previous administration.
Then we had the hon. gentleman arguing that the government are discriminating in their immigration policy against the province of Quebec and the other eastern provinces. Well, would he advocate that this government should spend money to take thousands of people from Quebec or Ontario up to Manitoba or Saskatchewan or Alberta or British Columbia? I venture to say that any hon. gentleman who would move a resolution to that effect would be laughed out of court. It is not the duty of this or any government to remove population from one part of the Dominion to the other. Is not a good citizen in Quebec or Ontario wortlj as much to the Dominion, earning his living there, industrious and contented, as he would be if we were to remove him to the west ? As representing a western constituency, I should certainly not be inclined to support any such proposition any more than I would be disposed to support a proposal that the government should pay out money for the purpose of taking settlers from Saskatchewan or Alberta and bringing them down here. The policy is so absurd that one wonders how any reasonable man could think of suggesting it.
The hon. gentleman also claims that the policy of this government on immigration is not in favour of the farming community. That statement rather surprised me, be-

cause if there is any part of the community which benefits by that policy it is our farming population. What are the classes of people on whom this government pays a bonus for bringing them out? They are first of all the farmers and farm labourers, then female domestic servants and under certain circumstances railway navvies. Those are the only classes on whom we are paying a bonus, and even with the payment of this bonus we have not been able, although we have been giving special consideration to the agricultural class, to secure sufficient labour. My hon. friend suggests that it is not farmers, but farm labourers to which the government should specially devote its attention. Would any sensible man prefer, as a settler, a farm labourer to a farmer who would own and work his own farm ? I do not think that the class of farm labourers, those who would be content to always remain farm labourers, is the most desirable class and the one we most require. What we specially want are men who will, if you like, work as labourers for a year or two and then take up farms of their own, or who will, if they have the means, take up a farm at once. I think, therefore, that the government is doing what is the very best in the interest of the farming community.
The hon. gentleman tried to create the impression that the west is receiving the greatest benefit from the policy of this government. Let me tell him that the province from which he comes is that which gets by far the largest number of immigrants. Ontario gets far more immigrants than Manitoba or Saskatchewan or Alberta or British Columbia or any other province. 1 have here a statement of the number of immigrants who have gone into each province every year. Take the last three years for instance. Ontario got in 1906 52,000 ; in 1907, 32,000, and in 1908, 70,000.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The hon. gentleman must be wrong because we are only beginning 1908.


John Gillanders Turriff: I mean the nine months of the fiscal year 1907-8. Quebec received
25.000	in 1906, 18,000 in 1907 and 40,000 in the nine months of 1907-8. Manitoba received 35,000 in 1906, 20,000 in 1907 and
36.000	in the nine months of 1907-8. Taking the totals from 1901 to the present time we find the immigrants were divided as follows :
Ontario	 243,117
Quebec	 164,371
Manitoba	 230,946
Saskatchewan and Alberta	 299,949
So, it will be seen that if this is a western policy it is also a Dominion policy, it builds up the east as well as the west, the immigrants being sent largely where they want to go. Of course, you cannot make people go to the maritime provinces if they wish to go to the prairies; you cannot make Mr. TURRIFF.
them go to Ontario if they prefer to go to Quebec. But the government gives information and what guidance it may and does not interfere with their going to one province or the other. The immigrants have distributed themselves and the province of Ontario, from which the hon. gentleman comes, has received far more immigrants than any other province of the Dominion.
The hon. member also stated that it would be but a short time before they would be on this side of the House, and they would find a remedy. I can only say to the hon. member again that he and his friends were on this side for eighteen long years. And, by the way, the hon. gentleman spoke this afternoon about prize-packages, saying they were not necessary in order to secure the occupation of our western lands. But, if is is so easy to settle up these lands now why did not his friends do something during the eighteen years they were on this side of the House ? They had time enough to experiment; but what they succeeded in doing was not in bringing a million immigrants into Canada but in sending a million emigrants from Canada into the United States. That is the difference between the policy of the government under its successive Ministers of the Interior and that pursued by hon. gentlemen opposite. I doubt that the people of Canada, knowing what was done by hon. gentlemen opposite during their eighteen years of office to populate that western country as well as the rest of Canada, will give these hon. gentlemen the mandate to find a remedy for this policy, for there is no remedy needed. Things are going very well; the country is prospering-


George Taylor: For a portion of the people.


John Gillanders Turriff: Yes, it is going very well for nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the people. You can go to any part of the Dominion and you will not find very much grumbling. The hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt) said that if the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) had stated that there were ten men out of employment now for one out of employment ten years ago, he would have been nearer the truth. I do not think the hon. member (Mr. Cockshutt) will find many to back him up in that statement. I remember very well, as I am sure most of us do, the condition of things ten years ago, and I doubt if any hon. gentleman except the member for Brantford will say that the conditions for employment of labour were as good then as they are now. And I venture to say that at this moment-and the same would be true of any time during the past six months-notwithstanding the talk about unemployed people in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and others of our larger cities, there has not been employment for every man in the Dominion who was will-

iug to go to where the work was and to do the work when he got there. What is the reason that people are unemployed? Simply because they would not do the work offered them. Some, perhaps, were not suited to the work. A gentleman from Winnipeg who came down to-day told me that he had the greatest difficulty during the past few months in securing farm labourers. He offered $25 a month and board and could not get men to work. He hired a number who promised to go but afterwards would not go. Certain people will not live in the country; they congregate in the cities and complain if they do not get work there. 1 believe the statement cannot be refuted that at no time during the past five years has there been more labour In Canada than the demand for labour, except in a few places where there has been overcrowding because the people were not willing to go where they could get work. The hon, member also made the statement that the United States were getting a much better class of immigrants than Canada is getting. How any man can make a statement like that is more than I can undei'stand. As stated several times in this debate, the United States do not pay a bonus on immigrants, nor have they any immigration agents authorized to carry on work in European countries. Further than that, they put a head tax on immigrants for the purpose of keeping the people out. X believe that the mover of this resolution, the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) and almost every hon. member on that side who has spoken in this debate has advocated the adoption by Canada of the same measures as have been adopted in the United States. Well, if the result of adopting those measures should be the same as what we see in the United States, God forbid that we should adopt them. For, as has been pointed out by the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Ralph Smith) 65 per cent of the immigration going into the United States- and it is going in now at the rate of a million and a quarter people a year-comes from a portion of Europe that we look upon as undesirable, the southern countries, in which oountries we do not carry on an immigration propaganda or from which we do not seek to induce immigrants to come to this country. On the other hand, not more than ten per cent of our immigrants come from these countries. In fact, if you exclude the Japanese and the Hindus you find that only six or seven per cent of the total immigration into Canada comes from such countries as southern Italy and other places in the south of Europe and in Asia that we do not look upon as desirable fields of immigration. I say we do not vfant. to adopt the same methods as are adopted by the United States, if they are going to bring about the same results. I have no doubt that if we did adopt those mjethods the result would be exactly the same.
A good deal of objection has been taken during this debate by members on the other side of the House to the system of paying bonuses, and they claim that all the undesirables that come into Canada are brought in. practically, by the bonus system. Now I do not pretend that there are no undesirables coming into Canada. You cannot bring in a quarter of a million people per annum without having some of the lower classes among them. But the very fact that we pay a bonus enables us to select our people. The bonus, as has been pointed out, is not paid to the settler, and it is not paid to the booking agent primarily for the purpose of inducing him to secure immigrants for Canada. The object of the bonus that is paid to the booking agent is this : The booking agent gets a commission on the tickets that he sells. If he sells an expensive ticket his percentage is naturally a great deal more than if he sells a cheap ticket. A steerage passage ticket from Europe to Canada will cost about $25 or $27. The commission on that ticket does not amount to nearly as much as the commission on a ticket to the Argentine Republic, to Australia or New Zealand, or Brazil, or many of the other countries which are anxious to get immigrants. Naturally therefore the desire of the booking agent is to sell the ticket to wherever he can make the most money on it. So in order to offset the inducement they would have of advocating these other countries and directing settlers to go there, the government steps in and gives them a bonus on all the people of a certain class that the booking agent can direct to Canada. Now what is the result ? Suppose that five men of different occupations go to a booking agent in order to get information. They want to find out about Canada, about Australia, about New Zealand and about the Argentine Republic. If there is a farmer amongst them or a farm labourer, the booking agent naturally, for his own benefit, advises that farmer or that farm labourer to buy a ticket to Canada, because, although he gets a smaller percentage from the steamship company, he gets a bonus from Canada. But if among the five men there are three who do not belong to the classes on which we pay a bonus, the agent does not advise them to come to Canada. Why ? Because he gets no bonus on them, and if he sells them a ticket he makes a smaller commission. But if he can persuade that man to go to the Argentine Republic, or to New Zealand, or to Australia, he sells a much higher priced ticket and he gets a larger commission. So the result is that the payment of this bonus has exactly the opposite effect that speakers on the other side of the House have tried to make out all through this debate. It has the effect of bringing the right class of people to Canada, and it has the effect of keeping the

class of people that we do not want out of Canada, and directing them to the other countries who do want them. Those are the facts of the case, and they cannot be controverted.
The hon. member was very anxious to know why the government had doubled the bonus. I will tell him why. It is because we want more settlers. We want more settlers in the western country. I do not know whether the people of Ontario and Quebec want more settlers to settle up their farm lands, because those provinces have millions of acres of good land yet to settle. Wheu the government of Ontario a few years ago sent out men to inspect the north land, they found one stretch of 1(3,000,000 acres of good land. You have to think for a moment in order to realize what 10,000,000 acres of land means. It means as much laud, I think, as is cultivated in the jirovince of Ontario at the present time ; at all events, it means about three times as much land as we have cultivated in the three western provinces on which we have raised in some years as much as 200,000,000 bushels of grain, besides all the cattle. There is any amount of land in Ontario being opened up at the present time by the Temiscaming and Northern Railway, and by the new Grand Trunk Pacific. The same remarks apply to the province of Quebec. In the hinterland of Quebec there are many millions of acres of good land. Does not the Dominion of Canada want to have these lands settled up ? Does not Ontario want to have her lands settled up ? Does not Quebec want to have her lauds settled up ? I do not think any one will say for a moment that these lands should not be settled up as quickly as possible. The bonus has been doubled iD order to bring out more settlers, and because we are getting settlers of the right class. I know that in the western provinces, for which I can speak, we are getting the most satisfactory class of people.
Now almost every speaker on the other side of the House has reflected on the character of the immigrants that come from the continent of Europe. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that I have seen hundreds and thousands of those settlers in the northwestern provinces : I have driven through their settlements, I have stopped at their farms, I have entered their houses, and I want to say that you cannot go to any country in the world and find better settlers than the Icelanders, than the Germans, than the Swedes, than the Norwegians, than the Hungarians, than even the Galicians, who have been ridiculed so much by hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House.
I want to say that the Galicians are a good class of people, they make good settlers for the western country. We have thousands of Galicians who have settled on lands that the ordinary English speaking Mr. TURRIFF.
settler from the old country, or from Canada or the United States, would not have settled on at all, for the present at all events, land that they would not take as a gift. But these Galicians have gone on those lands and have made good farms out of them and are becoming prosperous. I venture the assertion that within twenty-five years from this date the Galicians in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, will, as a class, be the wealthiest farmers in that country. Besides being able to make themselves comfortable, they are good settlers, because the first thing a Galician learns is to say, [DOT] Me Canadian.' He wants to become a Canadian at once. He wants to forget his Austrian way of living, he wants to forget his Austrian way of farming. Wheu you And a Galician settlement and an English speaking farmer in the near vicinity, you will find them going out three or four at a time and spending hours watching him doing his work. Inside of two or three years, drive up to a Galician house, or to his farmyard, and until you speak to him and And that he speaks broken English, you would not think, by looking at bis place, that he was not a settler from the province of Ontario. If you wanted to teach them the Galician language in the schools they would not accept it. They say, no, I want my children to learn English, I want my child to be a Canadian; we can teach them the Galician language at home, but we want them to learn English in the schools. They have the right spirit all through, and are a clever people. They have been criticised simply because when they first came out after a months' travel on land and water, they are not as finely dressed as our settlers would be going up from this country. They have their Austrian style of wool or sheepskin coats which look a little incongruous perhaps, but, in a year or two, you do not know these people. They are just as fine a class of settlers as we have in Canada. I have none in my constituency, so I am not saying this for the sake of catching any Galician votes.


David Henderson: We thought you were.


John Gillanders Turriff: Yes, but you are very often mistaken wheu you have thoughts like that; you are entitled to another think.


David Henderson: You are helping your friends.


John Gillanders Turriff: Well any friends of mine who have Galicians in their constituencies do not need any help. Not only in this debate but out of the House and in different places we find hon. gentlemen opposite criticising the foreign immigrants who are coming into the country, but, taking them as a class, they are a good lot of settlers, and let any hon. gentleman go to aiiy

of the western provinces and he will find that the class of settlers we have there will compare well with the class of settlers that can be found in any other part of the country. The hou. member also had a good deal to say about the letter of an agent by the name of McLellan written to Mr. W. F. Coekshutt, the hon. member for Brantford.
I remember some discussion of this at the time and if I am rightly informed the letter was not unsolicited as the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) states.


Haughton Lennox: Yes, it was.


William Foster Cockshutt: The letter was entirely unsolicited.


John Gillanders Turriff: On your part.


William Foster Cockshutt: Unsolicited by any one.


John Gillanders Turriff: Was it not in reply to a letter written by Mr. Cocksliutt, who was then president of the Manufacturers' Association ?


William Foster Cockshutt: No, it was not written by Mr. Coekshutt or any one else. The writer of the letter says that he had seen notices in the newspapers that the Manufacturers' Association wanted skilled labour.


John Gillanders Turriff: I was informed at the time-perhaps I am wrong and I accept the hon. gentleman's word as being correct as he ought to know the facts of the case -that the letter was not unsolicited. Apparently, the letter was in reply to notices that had been seen in the papers. At all events the member of the service who had departed from the line of his duty in so far as to write that letter was disciplined by the department. He had no authority or instructions to take part in any such correspondence or in any such immigration work.
I just wish to say another word or two in reference to why the bonus was doubled. I wonder if many of us really realize what we have to settle up in that western country. At the present time there are about
120,000,000 acres surveyed, roughly speaking, south of the North Saskatchewan river and extending from the eastern boundary of Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains. Of that area there are about eight and a half million acres under cultivation. There were five million acres in wheat in 1906 and from that five million acres there were one hundred million bushels of wheat threshed. There were also about one hundred million bushels of coarse grains. In addition there were cattle raised by hundreds of thousands. What I want to say is that if with the cultivation of eight and a half million acres there is a production of some two hundred million bushels of grain and hundreds of thousands of head of cattle, what are the possibilities of that country when, say, half 224
of that area will be under cultivation ? In a very few years, not many years to come, within the lives of men who are now listening to me, we will be raising in these three provinces south of the Saskatchewan river, or in what we may call the settled portion of the Northwest, a bullion bushels of wheat. What does that mean to the whole country ? Does it mean benefit only to the western portion of the country ? What does it mean to Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton and the different manufacturing towns and villages throughout this eastern country ? It is acknowledged that the best customers of (lie manufacturer to-day is the farmer on the prairie because he is a large producer, he is a large buyer, he is able to pay for what he buys, he raises wheat and cattle, he sells these products for cash and he has cash to pay for his goods. If we can accomplish what we have done with eight and a half million acres under cultivation what will be the position a few years hence when we will have fifty million acres under cultivation ? With that prospect in view would we be justified, would this government be justified, would the Minister of the Interior be justified in sitting idle, doing nothing and letting the country go back to that state of stagnation it was in ten or twelve years ago when we only got 16,000 of a total immigration and when a very small proportion of the British emigration came to this country ? At that time I do not think we got over ten per cent of the people who left the British isles. What has been the result under the administration of this government ? At the present time we get mofe than half of the immigration that comes to the continent of America. We are getting thousands every year from the British isles, more than double the number that go to the United States, whereas, ten years ago, they were getting about ten times as many as we were. That is what we have to look forward to. By the peopling of that country the manufacturers, the merchants and the railways of the east, the railways of the west and everybody in Canada are going to reap the benefit, not only the people of the west but everybody in the whole Dominion. That is the reason why this government is justified in doubling the bonus ; they are doing it in order that we may double the. immigration coming into this country. I believe that if we can double the immigration instead of having a quarter of a million people coming in yearly, inside of three years, we will be having had a million people annually coming to our shores. Not only have we that one hundred and twenty million acres to settle, but the people of Canada are now finding out, that, north of the Saskatchewan river, in that part of the country that a few years ago we did not look upon as being suitable for settlement, or only a small portion of which, between Edmonton and the Peace river,



was regarded as being suitable for settlement, there are great possibilities. The more we learn about that country the better we find it to be, and for hundreds of miles north of Edmonton there is a country that men who have travelled through it and who are in a position to express an opinion about it say contains as much good land fit for settlement and possesses as good a climate as can be found south of the Saskatchewan river where, as I have said, there are one hundred and twenty million acres of land already surveyed. That being the case why would not this government double the bonus and bring in people, not a few thousands at a time as we had them coming some years ago. but by the quarter or the half million, and in a short time make every part of the Dominion prosperous ? Some hon. gentlemen, especially the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Sir. Slonk), keep going over and over again the vast expenditure that this government are making every year upon immigration. The hon. member' for Jacques Cartier referred to the fact that we are now spending a million dollars a year on immigration, and he also pointed out that since the government came into power they have expended $S80.000 in bonuses. So they have, but, I hope, Mr. Speaker, that during the next ten years, instead of paying out $780,000, they may pay several millions of dollars in bonuses if by so doing they can bring in the same class of settlers that they have been securing in the past and thereby do good to the country.


Mr. J. D. REID.: Doukhobors.


John Gillanders Turriff: There has been a great deaj said about the Doukhobors, but out of 7,000 or 8,000 of them that have come to Canada all but the merest fraction are first-class settlers and are doing well and nothing can be said against them in anv shape or form, and so far as their mode of living is concerned it may be said that they are more moral than we Canadians ; a better class of people you cannot find anywhere.
ill'. HENDERSON. Would the hon. gentleman speak for himself?
Mr. TURRIFF, a great many hon. gentleman opposite have not been in the west and they do not know what they are talking about. When I was interrupted unnecessarily, I was going to say that while there are a few among the Doukhobors who are religiously crazy, I have seen English speaking people in the city of Ottawa whom I thought were religiously crazy, and just about as crazy as anybody could be.


John Dowsley Reid: What part of the city of Ottawa was that in?


John Gillanders Turriff: Not far from here. You must not judge a whole community by the actions of a few. You might as well say Mr. TURRIFF.
that because a Canadian commits a murder that all Canadians are bad. Of course nobody approves of the actions of some of these Doukhobors and while we would not advocate bringing in any more of them at the present time, yet I do say that the great majority of them are very good settlers. Objection has been raised to the government spending $1,000,000 a vear on immigration, but let me point out that during the last three or four years the value of the settlers' effects coming from the United States has amounted to over $50,000,000 a year in addition to the cash these settlers brought in.


Mr. BRODER.: They were not bonused.


John Gillanders Turriff: A portion of them were bonused exactly the same as a portion of those coming from the British isles and from continental Europe were bonused. I am safe in saying that for the $1,000,000 a year we are spending on immigration, $100,000,000 a year is brought into the country. Now, is that good business or is it hot?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It is not $100,000,000 a year.


John Gillanders Turriff: Yes.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The Trade and Navigation returns do not give any such figures.


John Gillanders Turriff: I got the information from the superintendent of immigration as to the value of settlers effects, and I have estimated the amount of cash brought in.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The settlers' effects are given in the Trade and Navigation returns.


John Gillanders Turriff: Only with respect to the immigrants coming from the United States, but not with respect to those coming from the British isles or continental Europe.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: But you spoke of those coming from the United States.


John Gillanders Turriff: The hon. gentleman from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) argues that we should stop paying bonuses, and he said the best advertisement we could have is the contented settler in the west. I agree that the contented settler in the west is a very good assistance, but to say that we shall stop paying bonuses would be on a par with saying that the wholesale merchant who for years and years has built up a prosperous trade by judicious advertising and sending out travellers to sell his goods should cease advertising and should cease employing travellers. It is all very well to say that that wholesale merchant had contented customers in different parts of the country, but if he ceased his enterprise and if his rivals continued advertising their business and sending out travellers, the man who had decided to rest on his oars would very soon find himself without a business. There is no use making spasmodic efforts to attract immigrants;

you must keep steadily at work and it has been the steady work of tfte Immigration Department during the last few years that has resulted in such great numbers of people coming to this country. Now, the hon. member for Jacques Cartier said :
So far as I have been able to find out, not only from the official reports of the Uuited States, but from personal information sought by me in Montreal and the United States itself, their inspection laws at present are well nigh perfect.
Let us see how that is. The examination of immigrants conducted by the Canadian government is practically the same as that conducted by the American government. True, immigrants are excluded from the United States because of certain diseases and with respect to which in Canada they are put into hospitals, and if they recover they are allowed to remain here. On the other hand, there is a good deal of political influence in the United States bearing on those immigrants who should land and those who should be debarred, and happily we are free from that. The following statement will show the number of immigrants debarred in the years 1905, 1906, 1907, both in the United States and Canada :


UNITED STATES.
[Stage Direction]
-	No. of Immigrants.	Released from Hospital.	Debarred.	Deported after being in Country.1905 ...	1,026,499	7,776.	11,879	8451906....	1,100,735	9,300	12,432	6701907....	1,285,349	11,528	13,064	995

[Stage Direction]
1905....	146,266	1,948	611	861906....	189,064	3,046	524	1371907,9 m	124,667	3,103	440	201In these three years there were 37,375 people debarred from entering the United States. The hon. member for Jacques Cartier argued that it was their perfect inspection laws that prevented these people coming in. Let us analyse that statement. The hon. gentleman all through his remarks was not as fair as he usually is. We on this side of the House have placed the hon. member for Jacques Cartier on a pretty high pedestal; but on this occasion, while I do not accuse him of being intentionally unfair, I can hardly think that he gave careful attention to the reports which he read, though he appeared to be so anxious to have his statement right that he did what is seldom done in this House, he read it. I do not wonder at his doing that because he was on very dangerous ground: he was advocating 224}	'
a policy which I venture to say he dare not advocate before his friends the Manufacturers' Association, the principal pet, the godchild of hon. gentlemen opposite. He dare not advocate before his political friends in the large transportation companies, nor before the large importers or business men, nor before the farmers of the country, what he advocates, not so much in the words of his resolution as in the speech he has made. But he makes his appeal practically altogether to the labour element in one part of the country. He says that the laws of the United States are almost perfect, and he gives the number of people who were debarred in those three years from going into the United States. But let us see why they were debarred. A man is debarred from going into the United States if he has made a contract to work for another man. We, on the contrary, look upon it as a great advantage if a man who comes to this country has his work secured. A great number of the men debarred from the United States were men who the authorities considered had not funds enough, and might become a charge on the people of the United States. The number debarred on the ground of having made contracts was 4,912; the number debarred on account of not having sufficient funds was 21,833. So that of the total number of 37,375 debarred in those three years, 26,745 were debarred for reasons that are not in existence at all in Canada, and they would not have been debarred at all from coming into the Dominion of Canada.
George Taylor: What about our Alien Labour law?


John Gillanders Turriff: That does not apply to people coming in from Great Britain.


George Taylor: Not from Great Britain, but from foreign countries.


John Gillanders Turriff: Nor does it apply to a farmer in Saskatchewan who hires a man in Dakota. It has never been so applied.


George Taylor: What is the reason? Because it is no good.


John Gillanders Turriff: So that the American law which the hon. member for Jacques Cartier finds almost perfect is administered under altogether different conditions to what we have iD Canada, and the results are not as good. Now, let us carry this on to its conclusion. Deducting the 26,745 who were debarred by reason of contracts or not having sufficient funds, there were left 10,630 who were excluded during those three years as being morally and physically unfit, out of a total immigration of 3,412,583, or one person excluded out of over 321. In Canada in the same three fiscal years 1,575 persons were excluded out of a total immigration of 459,997. or one out of every 292. So that under the inspection by the Immigration Department of Canada we are

in reality excluding between 9 and 10 per cent more than they, are excluding at Ellis Island in New York. So that the hon. member for Jacques Cartier, in setting up the laws of the United States as being much ahead of our laws, and recommending thh Minister of the Interior to adopt the methods of the United States, either was trying to deceive this House, which I would not think of accusing him of doing, or he had not looked carefully into the reports or given to them thorough consideration, and therefore came to a wrong conclusion. It is well known that the steamship companies endeavour as far as they can to have the inspection of certain classes made easy and to have the inspection of any settlers going, to the United States through Canada made difficult, in order as far as possible to have them booked by American lines to the city of New York instead of by Canadian lines to Montreal and St. John. Another statement made by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier was that the Department of the Interior, through the initiation of the American officers had arranged to have returns made of all the people that went into the United States through Canada, and he gives the credit for that to the American officers. That is very wide of the fact. That question was taken up in the year 1903. not by the American officers at all, but by the Department of Immigration here, and I will read the first correspondence in the matter. This is a letter dated Ottawa, May 30. 1903:
Dear Mr. Watchorn,-I beg to inclose you herewith^ a list of names of Galicians and Bukowinians sailing from Europe per Allan line steamers between the middle of .Tune, 1902, to April, 1903, and also a list of the same nationalities sailing per Beaver line steamers, from the 1st of July, 1902, to 4th of March, 1903. Would you do me the favour of havin'!? one of your clerks go over these lists and mark opposite each name the date upon which they went to the United States. I have no doubt but what ,voa have a full list of. the names in vour office. I would be exceedingly obliged if you could return me these lists at an early date.
Since that letter was written, regular monthly reports have been received of the passengers going to the United States within one year after their arrival at Canada. I fail to see how the hon. member for Jacques Cartier could give the credit to the American officers when the whole matter was initiated by the department here. When the hon. member for Jacques Cartier was quoting from the report of the commissioner of the United States, he read only a part of the report, leaving out a part which was very material. The hon. member was endeavouring to make out that Canada had not been active in reporting undesirables. If he will look at page 59 of the report for the year ending June 30, 1904, he will find the following paragraph:
Not only has Canada deported large numbers of undesirables who sought to perman-Mr. TURRIFF.
ently settle in Canada, but of the 24,797 applicants for permission to pass through Canada those who were rejected by your officers as unfit persons under United States laws, 'because of being afflicted with loathsome contagious diseases, were deported to Europe by the Dominion immigration authorities, the steamship companies bringing them to Canada being compelled to return them and to assume all expenses incident thereto.
During that year, the total rejections at Canadian border stations numbered 2,022, as given in table 2, page 84, of the same report. The hon. gentleman tried to make out that a great many of these people were a poor class which came through Canada in order to reach the United States but were refused admission into the United States and remained in Canada. But of that 2,022 which were refused at the American ports of entry, 297 were Canadians, 342 were excluded under the contract, labour law, and 864 for the stated reason that they were liable to become public charges or not possessed of sufficient money to pass through. So that out of the 24,797 who passed through Canada to the United States, only 579 were excluded because they were unfit mentally, morally or physically. The balance were excluded because they had not money enough or were going contrary to the contract labour law.
The hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) took it for granted that all those who were refused admission into the United States had come through Canada, but the fact is that quite a number had originally come to the United States direct and then drifted to Canada, and when they wanted to return to the United States, were refused. But I have here a statement showing the number of immigrants who arrived at American ports, passed United States inspection, drifted into Canada, applied for and were refused admission to the United States again within one year of the date of their arrival from the North American Continent. In 1906 there were 191 and in 1907, 253. These were settlers who came to the United States by New York and then came to Canada and were refused permission to return. There are several other inaccuracies in his statement.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: In that report these men are specially mentioned as having been booked to the United States through Canada and going to the United States within the year. How can the hon. gentleman say they went to the United States first and then came to Canada and wanted to return ?


John Gillanders Turriff: If my hon. friend will look at that report more carefully he will find that out of that number there was quite a large proportion who were refused admission at the American ports from Canada. The bulk of them were people who were shipped through Canada to the United

States, but a certain number were people wbo had drifted into Canada through the United States and wanted to get back.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: There is no trace of that in the report whatever.


John Gillanders Turriff: I have a table which gives the number each month.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I quoted from the report giving those who came to Canada first and then went to the United States. How can the hon. gentleman say they came to the United States first and then went to Canada and then returned to the United States ? It is impossible. That is not in the report.


John Gillanders Turriff: My hon. friend may be very easily mistaken because he said a very large number were refused admission into the United States but did not give the reason why. He wished us to believe they were refused because they were unfit morally or physically.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I did not give the causes. I said they were refused. Some may have been refused because they violated the contract labour law and others for other reasons. I did not pretend to give the reasons but said they had been refused by the United States and remained with us.


John Gillanders Turriff: That is what I object to all through the hon. gentleman's speech. His speech would convey an impression altogether different from the facts The hon. gentleman was referring to the American laws as being much more strict than ours and was pointing out that 2,000 remained in Canada, who intended going to the United States, because they would not be allowed into the United States. And the impression he gave was that these people were refused entry into the United States because they were morally or physically unfit.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: He will find that stated in the American reports for 1902-3 and 4, and the American authorities take credit for having improved our system.


John Gillanders Turriff: If the hon. gentleman will look through the report carefully, he will find that out of the 2,022, 297 were Canadians, 342 were excluded under the contract labour law, and 864 because they were likely to become public charges or had not sufficient money. So that out of the 24,797, 519 at the most come under the heading of being undesirables either physically, morally or mentally.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: That is pretty good for one year.


John Gillanders Turriff: But instead of the number being 2,022 it was only 519, and some of those 519 were people who came to the United States via New York and then drifted into Canada and wanted to go back.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: No.


John Gillanders Turriff: I think I am right.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: There is no authority for that.


John Gillanders Turriff: Further on in his speech the hon. gentleman said :
Of those arriving .at Canadian ports with the avowed and declared intention of going to the United States there were in 1905 12,663, and 183 were debarred. What became of them when they were debarred at our Canadian ports I do not know. It is impossible to find any trace of their disposition.
Some hon. gentleman asked him if they were still in Canada and he said he supposed they were. I want to correct the impression that those undesirables were allowed to remain in Canada. Of the 183 who were debarred the hon. gentleman said-it was impossible to find out any trace of their disposition. If he had looked carefully through the reports of the Interior Department, he would find that on page 123 of the annual report concerning immigration for the year ending June 30, 1905, there is a table YII which shows by nationalities the deportation of 139 immigrants of the 183 mentioned by him. The remaining 44 were either still in the hospital at the time of the report, or, after careful examination, had been considered suitable for Canada and allowed to remain. So that those who were debarred from going to the United States were not 'turned loose in the Dominion of Canada, as the hon. gentleman would have us believe, but 139 of them were deported. He will find that in the report. Further on in his address the hon. gentleman made this statement:
It. is impossible for me to think that a man having at heart the interests of the country, and totally dissociated from th.e interests to which I have referred-great, powerful and influential interests-could ever have believed that a scheme of paying so much a head per immigrant, was a suitable, feasible and wise method for a country to follow that was desirous of increasing the national family by the addition of good, suitable and carefully selected subjects.
Now, in connection with that, I want to read a letter which, I think, the hon. gentleman should regard as satisfactory :
June 24, 1889.
Dear Mr. Carling,-I beg to refer to your telegram of the 20th (?) March and the 23rd April, on the subject of the discontinuance on December 31 next of the payment of the $5 bonus to continental steamship agents, for adults whom they may book to Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. In accordance with your directions, I have arranged that the agents shall be notified in July next. After discussing the subject with Mr. Dyke I came to the conclusion that it would be unwise to send out the notice before that d-ate, for the reason that it might imperil the success of this year's work.

I cannot, however, allow the opportunity to pass without placing on record an expression of my opinion that the measure will in all probability tend to retard the movement which after many years of. labour and effort we have been able to set in motion in the direction of the Dominion. I certainly think the bonus system was the best and most economical that could possibly be adopted for obtaining continental immigrants, and for these reasons I regret its suspension. I believe there is no difference of opinion as to the value of these people as settlers, or as to the fact that we must look to a considerable extent to the continent in settling the vacant lands in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.
It must be borne in mind also that the payment in question was not an indiscriminate expenditure of money, but simply a payment by result. The success, however, which has attended our efforts in this direction is abundantly proved bv the statistics of the emigration that has taken place. I find that in 1885 the total number of bonus emigrants was 418; in 1886, 586; in 1887, 808 ; and in 1888, 1,430. In this connection it will be remembered that no payments have been made excepting in those cases in which the settlement of the people in Canada has been proved beyond question. From the information I have been able to gather, I fear it is a matter of some doubt whether the steamship agents on the continent will he. licensed to distribute printed matter about Canada and endeavour to attract attention to the advantages which are offered bv the different parts of the country with that eagerness they have hitherto shown if they have not some more inducement to do so than the steamship and railway commissions.
I would also call to your attention our past experience

I wish to draw the bon. gentleman's attention particularly to this passage ;
-in connection with the cessation of activity in emigration work. We may pursue a policy of comparative inactivity for two or three years, and in this way show some saving in the expenditure, but the time inevitably comes when a period of activity is again necessary, and in' order to get the people then, a very much larger expenditure has to be incurred than would have been necessary bad a steady and moderate policy been continued, devoted to keeping before the public in all countries wherever emigration has taken place, the advantages of Canada for purposes of settlement. I do not regard our expenditure in connection with emigration either continental or British on this side as having been at all of an extravagant nature. Indeed, it has been exceedingly moderate, and very much less than that which individual railway companies in the United States have devoted year by year to such purposes.
All that I. have said on the subject of continental emigration applies with equal force to the importance of keeping the Dominion prominently before the British public. Immigration of certain classes is very essential to Canada, not only to populate the vacant lands, but for the purposes of developing its trade and commerce, and it seems to me that this is not sufficiently borne in mind when the question of the comparatively small ex-Mr. TURRIFF.
penditure that is necessary to attract it is under consideration in the press and other quarters.	'
I am, yours faithfully,
(Sgd.) CHARLES TUPPER.
This, it will be seen, was a letter written by Sir Charles Tupper, when High Commissioner to England, to Hon. Mr. (now Sir John) Carling, whose department had charge of immigration work for the Dominion of Canada. Thus It will be seen that the hon. gentleman's own friends took a very different view from that which he takes. And every word of this letter is applicable at the present time. And the letter shows bow easily they were satisfied in those days, for it speaks with satisfaction of an increase from 500 or 600 to 1,400.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The bon. gentleman (Mr. Turriff) has beeu reading from a carefully prepared document. Wrould he have any objection to laying it on the table of the House ?


John Gillanders Turriff: This is information that I have gathered from the Department of the Interior and other sources and the hon. gentleman (Mr. Monk) will find all that I have said in 1 Hansard.'


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I would like to see the document the hon. gentleman has been quoting from, if he will lay it on the table.


John Gillanders Turriff: It is a letter from Sir Charles Tupper to Hon. John Carling ; and as I have spoken a good deal longer than I intended and as I do not wish to take up the time of the House in all the matters here prepared, I should be pleased to hand the matter I have prepared to my hon. friend (Mr. Monk) or to lay it on the table ; there is nothing in it of a private nature, it is compiled mainly from the reports of the Department of the Interior.
Now, I think I have shown some reasons at all events why this government should continue the bonus system. I think I have shown that the bonus system is not responsible for any of the undesirables that come into Canada. No doubt we should get some undesirables-you canuot have a quarter of a million of people come into a country during a year without having some undesirables among them. But I venture to say that if we do away with the bonus system we do away with our right of selection and we throw our doors open indiscriminately to everybody who wants to come into the country. The result will be here as in the United States that, instead of getting ten per cent of our immigrants from countries of southern Europe that we look upon as not being the best, we shall get, as the United States are getting from sixty-seven per cent to seventy-five per cent of our people from these countries and only a small portion from the British Islands and the northern countries of Europe. So, I think

the government will do well not to pay any attention to the carpings of my hon. friends opposite and their desire to do away with spending money in populating the country, but will continue the good work.
Now, while hon. members opposite are decrying the class of people coming into this country-not only those from continental western Europe, but those from the United States and British isles as well-I should like to show what their friends in the west think of these classes of people. I have here the Winnipeg ' Telegram ' of April 16 instant-and I think that nobody will accuse the Winnipeg ' Telegram ' of being other than a very staunch and loyal supporter of the policy of the hon. gentlemen opposite. Still, the Winnipeg ' Telegram ' is published in Winnipeg, and it has something to say about the class of people who are going in and who are wanted in that western country. It would not agree with the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) that all efforts should be stopped, it wants to see that country filled up. I will read an extract or two from that paper, written by a man that was sent out by the paper to meet several trains of immigrants coming into the country. Here is what he says :
They were mostly British immigrants, here and there interspersed with a taciturn Scandinavian, who had crossed the Atlantic on the last trip of the ' Empress of Britain,' and were being borne in on the crest of the wave of the immigration of 1908. They were pouring into the country by hundreds, and every outgoing train from Winnipeg was carrying them, here, there and everywhere, distributing them wherever the trail-blazers had hewn the first notches of advancing settlement. Hard times in Great Britain, fulsome praises of Canada from relatives, and chances to do better here had turned their attention toward the great educational campaign that had been instituted across the waters, and the tons of literature that had been distributed advertising the last great west. Hence their wholesale migration. That was also the reason that 'The Telegram' delegated a special correspondent to meet train loads of the new settlers before they reached the western metropolis and to test their plans and see how they were likely to learn the discipline of a new life in the upbuilding of a new country.
Then he goes on to say:
One perceived that they were the prospective tillers of the soil, saw that they were men who were to know what is understood as settlement or home making in western Canada, enjoyed their exuberant optimism, tolerated at times their masterful airs, smiled at their ideas of western geography, and sympathized with them in their temporary dejection. Had I been master of this great country, endeavouring to procure great people to develop her great resources, I admit I would have been satisfied.
There is the verdict of a prominent Conservative newspaper in Winnipeg. The
writer admits that he was satisfied. There is another long article here that is well worth reading, but I will not take up the time of the House by reading it. The writer gives the names of a number of men that he talked with, and says :
Andrew Tweedley, a Dumfriesliire Scotchman, was bringing his wife out to Canada and intended to locate somewhere. He had some money laid by to start on. By this time I knew that I had obtained a start. The train had just pulled into Keewatin.
' 'What I want,' declared William Dryden, a native of Dundee, ' is to have a look at the country. That Dublin exhibition was certainly a fine thing for Canada. If the west can produce what they exhibited there, why, I ought to be in the game to stay.'


David Henderson: That is very important.


John Gillanders Turriff: It may not be important to the hon. member, but it is important to the people of Canada. He will find when he goes before the people of Canada that no other subject is as much discussed as the immigration policy of this government, because it is the immigration policy of the Dominion of Canada that has made the difference between 1896 and the present time. So if it is not important to the hon. gentleman-


David Henderson: I beg the hon. gentleman's pardon. What I said was that the article he was reading was very important.


John Gillanders Turriff: I misunderstood the hon. gentleman.


David Henderson: I admit that I said it in sarcasm.


John Gillanders Turriff: Then I was right in the first place. He will find that the country believes that the government is right in carying out the policy they have adopted. While hon. members may decry the policy of the government for party purposes, their friends in the west will not deny it, because it is filling up the west, it is building up the west; and not only is it building up the west but it is building up the whole Dominion of Canada; because you cannot build up one part of the country and make it prosperous without helping all parts of the country.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I apologize for having taken up so much of the time of the House. But I regard this as a subject of special importance to Canada, and of special importance to the west, and I felt justified in trying to offset in some degree the very erronous impression sought to be made by hon. members on the other side of the House throughout this discussion.


Robert Laird Borden: The hon. gentleman need not offer any apology for speaking so long on so important a subject. But when he concludes that he has said very

much ill support of tlie bouusiug system, one is tempted to believe that his mind has been affected by some of those peculiar religious exercises which he says he has witnessed in Ottawa. As a matter of fact, what he said with regard to the bonus system bears about the same proportion to the rest of his speech that Falstaff's pennyworth of bread bore to his gallons of sack. Let us look for a moment only at certain of his arguments, because I desire to lie very brief. He endeavoured to criticise the argument of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) witli regard to those who, having gone to the United States via Canada had been turned back by the United States authorities; and he said that of these. 1S3, or some such number, had drifted from the United States over to Canada and then had attempted to cross again to the United States and been turned back. I would like to ask any man of common sense what there is in that argument. These men were permitted to come into Canada and then they were not permitted to return to the United States. Does not the hon. gentleman's statement of that fact show that the regulations concerning the admission of immigrants into Canada are more lax than those of the United States on their side? One cannot understand what logical result the hon. gentleman was aiming at when he made that statement. Then he says that some 800 or more of these were turned back to the United States because they were public charges. Is he so absolutely ignorant of the immigration laws of this country as not to know that the fact that a man is liable to become a public charge is good ground for excluding him from Canada ? What then is the result of his argument in that regard? Does he pretend that these men should have been admitted to Canada in violation of the law, although they were properly turned back to the United States in the proper enforcement of an exactly similar law? Therefore this very feeble attempt at criticism of the hon. member for Jacques Cartier amounts to nothing at all, because the hon. gentleman has not succeeded in making a single point.
Then he has spoken of the wonderful results of the efforts of this government in regard to immigration. Might I ask him why it was. if to this government is due all the credit of the great immigration of recent years, that it was six years in power before there was any very substantial increase of immigration? The great increase of immigration to this country came after the great crop in the west of 1-101 or 1002. It was that which advertised Canada to the world, and it was then for the first time that immigration to this country reached the hundred thousand mark. Then he tells us in the most extraordinary statement of all that we are likely, by the abolition of the bonus svstem. Sir. R. L. BORDEN.
to bring into this country immigration from certain undesirable countries that he mentions. He regards Italy and Russia as especially undesirable, and he declared to this House upon his standing and responsibility as a member, that he believed the abolition of the bonus would result in bringing in immigrants from Italy and Russia. Well, can any man of common sense in this House understand that argument?


John Gillanders Turriff: I did not mention Russia at all. I mentioned Italy and other southern European countries.


Robert Laird Borden: I do not care what country the hon. gentleman mentioned; the argument is precisely the same. How in the world will the abolition of bonuses bring us immigrants from Italy and other southern European countries that we are not now receiving from those countries ? Did any one ever listen to such an argument out of the mouth of mortal man as that which was presented by the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat? Further than that he told us that the effect of this bonus is to keep undesirable immigrants out of this country. I am quoting his words as exactly as I can from recollection. Well, Mr. Speaker, last year we received 235,000 immigrants. With respect to 20,000 of these bonus was paid, and with respect to
210.000	no bonus was paid. Does the hon. gentleman desire us to understand that the
20.000	alone were desirable immigrants and that the 215,000 were undesirable immigrants?-because that is precisely and exactly the logical effect of the argument which he has addressed to the House in that regard. I do not think I need say anything further; to state the argument is precisely to state its refutation.
Let me say one or two words in regard to certain statements which were made by hon. gentlemen who preceded the hon. member for East Assiniboia in the debate. The hon. member for South Perth (Mr. McIntyre), who, I regret to say, is not in his seat at the moment, made a very sensible speech and with a very great portion of it I thoroughly concur. ' But, it did not seem to me that in all respects it was up to the standard of fairness which we might expect from that hon. gentleman, because, while he criticised my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. ' Monk) very severely, although in very courteous terms, he endeavoured to lead the House and the country to believe that we were desiring to conceal from the people the fact that the bonus is paid on only a very small proportion of the immigrants. Why, Mr. Speaker, the question was put for the purpose of extracting that very information because the answer to that question is the best possible argument in favour of abolishing the bonus as I shall endeavour to point out further on. How could the hon. member for South

Perth say that there was any endeavour on the part of the opposition to conceal that information from the House and the country when the information was given to this House in response to a question addressed by the government by my hon. friend from Peel (Mr. Blain) ? Well, he criticised my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier because of some statements appearing at the head of one of the tables. That table established exactly what my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier was demonstrating and any man looking at that table must be an obsolute idiot if he could be deceived for one minute as to what was intended. He commented on the speech of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier In other respects which 1 need not especially allude to and his remarks merit no further answer than to say that the statement of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier showed completely the facts as they were disclosed by the official records and no man who read that speech with any care or listened to it with any attention could be deceived by it in any way.
The hon. member for Strathcona (Mr. McIntyre) was good enough to devote some of his attention to myself and he did not seem inclined to accept the statement which I had made when in the west as to the speech which I had delivered at Valleyfield, I think it was. As soon as the report of that speech came to my attention I made the correction, and I would have thought that with the usual courtesy which is extended from one side of the House to the other, my hon. friend might have accepted my statement. However, if he, does not see fit to accept it that is his own matter, and I do not know that I shall be greatly distressed on that account. The hon. gentleman showed himself to be the champion of the North Atlantic Trading Company. He portrayed to this House the advantages which resulted from the North Atlantic Trading Company. There is one thing that he forgot; he forgot to explain how it was that so valuable and beneficient a contract as that which existed between this government and the North Atlantic Trading Company was put an end to by the government. * Why did not my hon. friend rise in his place in parliament when the hon. Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) announced the termination of the contract and protest against it if it were so valuable a contract as he has endeavoured to make it appear. If the hon. gentleman desires any statement with regard to the character of the Galician immigrants he had better not refer so much to my remarks as to those of the hon. Minister of the Interior. In 1901 I listened in this House to the remarks of the hon. Minister of the Interior with regard to these immigrants. Does my hon. friend from Strathcona concur in that gentleman's statement as to their character ? He has read it ; will he state now whether he
approves of it or repudiates it ? My hon. friend seems to regard that as a conundrum which he is unable to answer. I listened to the diatribes of the Minister of the Interior. I was influenced to some extent by them. I went west next year myself, I came back from the west and in the year 1903 and again in 1904 I said to this House that I had been subject to some prejudice against these people principally on account of the remarks of the hon. Minister of the Interior, but that I had gone to the west and I had been agreeably disappointed, that I believed the Galicians would make good settlers and I repeat the statement now and state my belief that we would hardly be able to distinguish the second generation from the sons and daughters of Canadians in the west. Last year I repeated to my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior his own remarks characterizing these people in the most scandalous terms and what answer did I get from the Minister of the Interior? I got from him the answer that his statements were facts. I have these words under my hand here and the Minister of the Interior will not see fit to deny them. Thus, if the hon. member for Strathcona wishes to learn the opinion of his leader, which he is not willing either to approve or repudiate, let him turn to the debates of 1901 and commit to memory some of the adjectives which were applied by his present leader to the Galicians. So much for that portion of the matter, except that I want to say one or two words about certain remarks of my hon. friend from Nanaimo (Mr. Smith). He has been answered on all points, I think, except one, and that is the one I desire to mention. He declared in this House and he gave me an evasive answer to what I thought was a courteous question that the motion of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier was designed to do away with all efforts to promote immigration to this country. There are no such words in the resolution. My hon. friend from Nanaimo knew that perfectly well when he made that statement. The motion of the hon. member for Jacques Cartier simply declared that while it is desired to maintain the efforts to promote desirable and legitimate immigration the time to pay bonuses has ceased; that is all.
Let us look for one minute at the merits of the question itself because I desire to be very brief indeed. Before doing so, however, just let me make one remark. We have had speeches from three or four gentlemen from the west, but from not one of them have we had a single reference to the 200,000 lost immigrants who ought to be in the west but who are not there according to the census returns. Does the member for Strathcona know where they are. Have they been destroyed in some great catastrophe ; are they hidden in some remote corner of the Northwest, have they
*

gone to the United States, or did they exist only for the purpose of paying bonuses to the North Atlantic Trading Company. In the old days the Minister of Customs made the welkin ring while discanting on these discrepancies between the immigration returns and the census returns, but now there is not one word from him or from his. friends as to the whereabouts of these 200,000 lost souls who are supposed to be in the west if the immigration returns are to be believed.
The total immigration to this country, according to a government return, from 1896 to 1907-1908 (nine months) was 1,209,437 ; the bonused immigration was 250,259 and the non-bonused immigration 959,179. Less than one-fifth of the total immigration during that period was bonused. During the very last year the total immigration into Canada was 235,235, the bonused immigration 20,516, and the non-bonused immigration 215,000. Can any hon. member of this House tell me how many of these 20,000 bonused immigrants would not have come to Canada if there was no bonus paid. I am not one of those who believe in the glib story often repeated on the other side of the House about men going to booking agents to decide for them the country in which they shall make their future home. I am firmly of opinion that very few of these 20,000 bonused immigrants would have been lost to Canada if we had paid no bonus at all. We got 215,000 people to come to Canada last year on the merits of Canada and by properly advertising Canada, and on 20,000 immigrants only did we pay a bonus. And when we realize that a very great majority of these
20,000	would come to Canada in any case what man of common sense will say that the motion of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) is not absolutely right, and that the time has come to cease giving a bonus for immigrants.
Let us see how these bonuses have been paid during past years. From 1898 to the present time we have paid in bonuses on British immigratns $252,230.89, on United States immigrants, $82,571.97, but on continental European immigrants we have paid no less than $445,811.16, making a total altogether of $781,613.96. I have already said in the House that bonusing might be justifiable under certain conditions and for the purpose of obtaining settlers of a specially excellent type; but I have never heard it claimed that the 20,000 immigrants that came last year under the bonus were of any better class than those who came without the payment of a bonus.
The hon. member for Perth (Mr. McIntyre) called attention to some remarks I made in the House last year when the hon. member for Montmagny moved a resolution in the exact words which the Minister of Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
the Interior used before he took office. On that occasion I said:
I was impressed with the baldness of this resolution wlien my hon. friend from Montmagny (Mr. Lavergne) moved it. But its somewhat bald and abrupt wording was explained afterwards when it was shown to consist of two sentences taken from two speeches of the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver). It could not therefore be expected to be in precisely that form which would command the adhesion of a majority in this House.
Let us look at it for a few minutes and see what it involves. It declares that the payment of bonuses on immigrants has a tendency to bring a less desirable rather than a more desirable class of people into this country. That was the utterance of my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) some few years ago before he was a minister of the Crown. I do not think that sentence expresses a principle in which 1 would be inclined to confer. It does not seem to me that the payment of bonuses in itself has any tendency to bring in a less rather than a more desirable class of people into this country. That would depend altogether on the way you work it out. If without the payment of bonuses you permit people to come in indiscriminately, if you use every possible means by advertising and otherwise in any particular country from which immigration is not very desirable, you might, without a system of bonusing at all, increase the tendency to bring in people who are not desirable. On the other hand, if you use the system of bonusing, you might attach to it such conditions as would not tend to bring in undesirable people.
I adhere to that statement to-night. I do not see one word in it that is at all inconsistent with the motion of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk). The motion of my hon. friend from Montmagny last year with regard to which I spoke was this :
That the payment of bonuses on immigration has a tendency to bring in a less rather than a more desirable class of people, that it is a most unwise policy and expenditure and therefore should not be continued.
If the hon. member for Perth (Mr. McIntyre) were here, I would ask him if he is prepared to extend the same words of commendation to this language of the Minister of the Interior before he took office, as he did to the more recent utterances of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Oliver) in regard to this matter. At all events the words quoted in the motion of my hon. friend (Mr. Lavergne) are entirely inconsistent with those the Minister of the Interior has since uttered.
Reference has been made to the settlers from the United States who are going into the Canadian west. Having seen something of these settlers during the past year, I am prepared to say that I do not believe there is a better class of settlers in the western provinces than those which have come from the United States. I have seen them in

Alberta and Saskatchewan especially. 1 have found them imbued with the spirit of our institutions, understanding the principles of responsible government and immediately upon their arrival in this country prepared to take an interest in our public affairs and to assume the full duties of citizenship. I do not think we have anything to fear from settlers of that kind. My hon. friend from Perth alluded to what he termed the spirit of sentiment of Canadian citizenship) and the impossibility of our obtaining at the present juncture people from all countries in the world who fully comprehend' the spirit of responsible government. I do not doubt at all that men who come from continental European countries which enjoy in some measure at least responsible government will make thoroughly good citizens, but at the same time I believe it to be most desirable so far as possible to bring into Cauada and especially into the great west, only those who are already acquain-ed by active participation, with the duties and the responsibilities and the privileges of that same responsible government which we enjoy in Canada. Let us not forget that criticism has been made upon the English speaking nations of the world-that, the principles of democratic government are only in an experimental stage, and that the day may come when there will be some reversion from the system which we now enjoy, and more absolute system will take its place, for the very reason that men engaged in the haste and pressure of the affairs of every day life are not inclined to give to the service of the state that proportion of their time and energy which is necessary if we are to attain the highest standards of democratic responsible government. If there be anything in that criticism-and perhaps it would not be well to minimize it too greatly-it is certainly desirable that we should get in this country as far s possible men of the type I have described ; and therefore, while for, the most part, I concur in that regard in what my hon. friend from South Perth has said, I still insist that a great deal of care should be taken in the line of what I have just now suggested.
Of the character of the immigration that is coming into this country, I do not propose to speak by way of distinguishing one nationality from another. I propose to speak of it by way of distinguishing those of any particular nation who are fit from those of that same nation who are not fit to become citizens of Canada. We have gathered some rather important information on this point reported to us from the events of the past year and of the past six months, and I propose to refer for a few moments to a very notable speech-which unfortunately has not been very fully reported- delivered by the hon. Provincial Secretary of Ontario not very long ago. The fullest
report of that speech that I have been able to obtain uses the following language :
During 1907 there were 1,163 admitted to asylums of the province, of whom 346 were foreign born.	'
Mr. Hanna was evidently using the expression ' foreign-born ' to indicate those born out of this country.
During the past five years the perecentage of foreigners admitted to these institutions had increased from twenty to thirty per cent, while Canadian born patients had decreased from eighty to seventy per cent. In the same period, from 1903 to 1907, the cost of maintenance of foreign horn patients had increased from $24,613.20 to $51,744.30. While the foreign horn of the entire adult population were only twenty per cent, the total admissions to asylums from that class was thirty per cent. The figures showed the necessity of effective methods to prevent the dumping of undesirables by friends and others aided by charitable associations with no other object than to get rid of the responsibility of providing for them. Taking into consideration the probable length of life of these patients, the cost of maintaining those jadmitted in 1907 alone would amount to $1,487,038.80, without including any proportion for capital expenditure.
That statement attracted my attention to such an extent that I sent to Mr. Hanna and asked him for particulars of it, and I have here the particulars which I will take the liberty of bringing to the attention of the House. The statement on which he bases it is this :
For future maintenance we find that the expectation of life (Carlisle) at age 37 (the average of foreign horn patients) is 29-64 years; and assuming that the cost of maintenance is $145 per patient per annum (which is a low estimate) the total future cost to the province for maintenance of the foreign bam patients admitted during 1907, spread over the years they will he on our hands, will amount to the sum of $1,487,038.80 without taking into account tile compounding of interest, cost of buildings and many other items of expense which are sure to arise in the future.
Then he proceeds as follows :
Of the estimated total population of the province over sixteen years of age, 1,209,303 were Canadians and 291,675 foreigners, or twenty per cent of the whole. At the same time, of the commitments to jail thirty-eight per cent were of foreign birth and the cost of providing for them amounted to $21,724.65.
The difference in percentage is rather striking. The percentage of persons born outside of Canada committed to jail should be 20 per ceDt. Instead of that it is 38 per cent, or nearly double. That seems to me to indicate a rather serious condition of affairs. He goes on to say :
Toronto asylum gave a practical illustration of the position. Of 262 persons admitted less than half were Canadians.
I have obtained the exact figures. They are 134 born outside of Canada and 128

born in Canada, and among those 134 born outside of Canada, 77 were recent arrivals. Mr. Hanna continues :
Of course, many of the foreign born had been resident in Canada for some years, but no less than seventy-seven were recent arrivals, who should have been deported if a satisfactory law had been in force. The majority of these people should not have beeri allowed to enter Canada. Owing to technicalities, only twenty-four came within the requirements of the Deportation Act, and therefore Ontario had to assume the cost of maintaining forty-three. That meant that the province would have to expend $224,000 for the support of people who had not the slightest claim for their consideration. No matter how it was regarded, the picture was one that could not be contemplated with equanimity. The figui'es, he claimed, showed that the proportion of insane among arrivals was twenty-six times greater than it should be, and there was a strong suspicion that many were deliberatetly sent out from Great Britain to be got rid of. An analysis showed that whole families of degenerates were included among arrivals, and weaklings of all objectionable types were represented, as well as many with criminal records.
In a communication to me, Mr. Hanna says :
An analysis of their characteristics is an interesting study in degeneracy of a type we rarely see in Canada. Sexual perverts of the most revolting kind, the criminal insane, slum degenerates, general paretics, in fact weaklings of all objectionable types are represented. Whole families of degenerates have been found.
Under these circumstances, I do not think it can be contended that our inspection of these people is what it ought to be. Does the hon. Minister of the Interior or the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) realize the care that Is taken in this regard in the Uuited States ? In that country they have created an expert department for the purpose of detecting mental infirmities. While I have several extraets on this subject, I will read only one. Dr. Salmon says :
At first thought it would seem a hopeless task to attempt to pick insane and mentally defective immigrants from the unending lines of humanity which file through Ellis Island, but a systematic plan of inspection has been devised which results in the dectection of many. Officers of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, who have had special training in institutions for the insane, are assigned to this duty, and the other medical officers unite with them in searching for immigrants who seem a typical or who present sivns even remotely suggesting mental disease.
Then he goes on to enumerate various other precautions taken for the purpose of detecting any mental infirmity.
I would like to make this one suggestion before I close. It does seem to me that we should have some regard to the fact that we have in Canada surely as good a Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
country for the immigrant, under present conditions, as can be found on the face of the globe. I have only to remind my hon. friends opposite, who want to discuss this question in a dispassionate manner and with the view of doing what is best in the interests of the country and of assuring ourselves that future generations will have nothing on account of which to reproach us in connection with our policy, that we have in the Northwest and the eastern provinces as well as lands to offer to the best races of the world which ought to induce the very best elements of their populations to come to this country. Look at the United States to-day. Let me quote the words of Mr. James J. Hill showing how little Is left in the United States for the emigrating races of Europe. In an address delivered on ' The Nation's Future ' at St. Paul, Minn, on the 3rd September, 1906, Mr. Hill spoke as follows :
The United States has been able easily to take care of the great increase of population in the past been use _it had a vast area of unoccupied land. This was the main asset in its natural inheritance. Within practically the last half of the last century the whole country from the Mississippi river to the Rocky mountains was occupied. No pressure of population could make itself severely felt when it might be turned loose in such an empire. In those fifty years there were added 547,640,932 acres to the agricultural area, an increase of nearly 200 per cent and the increase in the actually improved acreage was nearly 300 per cent. This is cut off from the list of resources. Within the last six years there have been transferred from public to private ownership more than 100,000,000 acres of government land, an area twice the size of the state of Minnesota, The entire area of surveyed and unappropriated land within the United States is only 2j times that amount.
At the present rate therefore every acre of public land would disappear within the next fifteen rears. But as a large percentage of the lands included in this estimate are wholly or partially unfit for tillage, it is literally true to say that our arable public lands have almost disappeared. And where are our children to find standing room and the tens of millions of the future a place for wholesome industry? This is an intensely practical question. It is immediate. For within twenty years we must house and employ m some fashion 50,000,000 of additional population; and by the middle^ of this century, at a time when the child now born will be in the prime of life, 'there will be approximately 21 times as many people in the United States as there are to-day.
With such a prospect of access of population to this great continent of which Canada forms a part, ought we to be in a hurry to bring into this country any except those who are the most desirable ? Therefore I repeat once more that it Is a question of quality and not of quantity to which the immigration policy of the government should in the future be directed. I do not minimize the necessity of the west for

population-the immediate necessity of the west-but with 215,000 people coining in withouf any bonus at all, surely we may say that the day of the bonus has gone by, and surely, with the reports of the asylums of Ontario before us, we ought to exercise a little more discretion regarding the fitness of these people than we have seen fit to use in the past. The strain of the blood of the people of Canada is a good one. It is one we are proud of. And it is no harm to say so because that man is not worth very much who is not proud of the race from which he has sprung and the blood which runs in his veins. The men who first came to this country, its pioneers, came from the shores of France, and the best blood of France from the peasant to the noble, was represented in that population which came to hew out homes for themselves in the wilderness three hundred years ago. After that we had the great trek of the Loyalists from the United States, at the time of the revolution, into Ontario and the maritime provinces and I believe also into the Eastern Townships. And when my hon. friend from South Perth (Mr. G. H. McIntyre) said no doubt inadvertently, that all our ancestors had come to this country for the purpose of bettering their condition, I would desire to take issue with him as regards that particular class. These men sacrificed home and propertv and prospects everything almost that men hold dear, in order that they might remain under that flag which floats to-day over Canada and proclaims Canada to be part of the British empire. And later on those who came from Scotland, Ireland, England and Germany as well-the pioneers of Ontario and Quebec and the maritime provinces-these people were surely of the best strain that the countries from which they came could give. They came to the wilderness and hewed out homes for themselves. They converted that which was a wilderness a hundred years ago into a garden. They were the makers of Canada, not only in the material but in every sense, and the history of these people, their energy, their courage, their devotion, their faith in the future of this country, should remain an imperishable memory in the hearts of every true Canadian. Therefore surely the parliament of this country should especially look to it to see that this strain of blood in every province shall be maintained without taint and without loss of the strength, vigour and vitality which we have maintained in Canada up to the present. I have detained the House longer than I intended, and shall only say in conclusion that I shall vote for the amendment of my hon. friend.


Rt.   H@: Although this debate has been protracted to a very great length, I am sure the time of the House has been very well
occupied. In fact I do not believe it has been so well occupied during the whole of this session. The subject brought to our attention is a very important one, and therefore it is important that it should be discussed in all its aspects and phases. If I may be permitted to express my own opinion, I think the debate has been maintained on a very high plane and does credit to the House. As regards the speech of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk). I am bound to say that he put his views in a very able and on the whole a very moderate manner. But with all due deference to those views, he has failed, in my conception at all events, to appreciate the. true point of view-the only point of view from which this question can be approached and solved. The position taken by my hon. friend is that we should put an end to the policy of immigration we have been carrying out for many years. No doubt he will take issue with me on that point and say it is not his intention to put an end to the whole system; but although he does not say so in so many words, he wants to put an end to the salient feature of that system, without which it would be ineffective. He wants to put an end, I say, to that system of immigration, which, at last, has brought under cultivation those fertile lands of the west long dormant, long useless, but now, perhaps, the most important part of our national development. His opinion is that we should let nature unaided produce such results as it may; that we should, in a happy-go-lucky spirit, aw'ait and accept such results as chance may bring forth. The motive which has inspired him, so far as I have been able to appreciate it-for, I believe, on this point my hon. friend has not been as clear as in some other parts of his speech-is the fear that the present system w'hich wre have followed and are now following exposes us to the danger of having our population contaminated by certain undesirable elements. Well, Sir, the position I intend to take upon this question, the position to which I desire to draw the attention of the House, is that the primary aud dominant consideration which should influence every gentleman in this House and this country is to retain and maintain upon the soil of Canada every man who is born in Canada. And, Sir, it is a strange fact, it is a fact that it has only been by the impetus given to our national life through our policy of immigration that we have put an end to the scourge of emigration which, for years, was a running sore in the very vitals of our country. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) has spoken eloquently and w'ell of the devotion of those who, in the last years of the eighteenth century sacrificed everything that they might remain subjects of the British Crown, who left everything they had in the American colonies and came here to make

new homes for themselves in what was then a wilderness. The praise he gave to these people could not be too high. There never was, perhaps, in any part of the world, a greater example of devotion to conviction. But, Sir, it is a fact that the descendants of those men, and the descendants also of the early French pioneers who likewise came here from very similar motives to hew out for themselves homes in the forests of Canada-the descendants of these people at a certain time could not find a living in their own country, but went away by thousands and hundreds of thousands to seek homes in a foreign land no better endowed by nature than their own. Must I remind my hon. friends opposite that in the closing thirty, years of the last century, up to the taking of the last census, the population of Canada did not increase. Decade followed decade, census followed census, but every census had the same story to tell, that Canada hardly retained even its own native population. During all these years mothers brought forth children, but when the time came to enumerate them they were not to be found in the land. Our census showed that in 1891 the population of Canada was 4,883,239, the increase during the preceding decade having been only 5-9 per cent. At the end of the following decade in 1901, the population was 5.371.315, and during that decade the population had increased barely 11 per cent. And how was that 11 per cent made up ? British Columbia had increased 81 per cent. 

foreign population; Manitoba had increased 67 per cent-foreign population ; the Northwest Territories had increased 113 per cent-foreign population. And what were the increases in the older provinces ? In New Brunswick, barely 3 per cent; in Nova Scotia, barely 2 per cent; in Ontario, 3 per cent; in Prince Edward Island less than 1 per cent: in Quebec, 10 per cent. The same story had been told by the preceding census. During that decade, ending 1891, New Brunswick showed no increase; Nova Scotia, 2 per cent; Ontario, 9 per cent; Prince Edward Island less than 1 per cent; Quebec, 9 per cent. These figures show the condition of affairs down to 1901. Sir, it is written in the Book that the Angel of Death visited the land of the Egyptians and smote the first born. If any one, not knowing our history had taken the record of these two censuses, he would have believed that even a worse visitation had come upon us. that the Angel of Death had passed through our land aud smitten not only the first born but the whole offspring of the nation. These were not dead, but they were lost to us. They had gone, as I have said, from their own country to benefit and favour another with their presence and their labour.
Sir, in the history of the nineteenth century, there is perhaps no page more notable than that on which is recorded the extraor-Sir WILFRID LAURIER.
dinary development of the United States which brought its population from only two and a half millions, as it was at the time the constitution was adopted in 1789, to no less than 80.000 000 as it is to-day. What is the cause of this wonderful increase ? Undoubtedly, the first had been the glamour under which the new nation sprang into life. The appearance of this new democratic community amongst the monarchies of the world was an event that claimed the attention of the people of every country who had their own aspirations to freedom and who, not satisfied with their own laws, sought refuge in the new land. But it would be a fallacy to suppose that this first cause of immigration to the United States was not favoured and helped by the Americans themselves. My hon. friend the member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) stated a few days ago in proposing his motion that the Americans had made no effort to bring immigration into their midst. If he meant that the federal government had done nothing of that kind, he was right. But what was not done by the federal authority was done by the state government. I have only to quote to my hon. friend a book which is in the hands of everybody, the last edition of the ' Encyclopedia Americana.' In that work he will find the following:
The first legislation in the United States on the subject of immigration was of March 2, 1819, and merely provided that a record should be kept of the number of passengers arriving in each customs district, with their sex, age, occupation and country of birth. For many years there was no thought of anything but exultation in the number of arrivals, as increasing the wealth of the coun-trv and providing an asylum for the poor and oppressed. Even the Know-Nothink agitation of the fifties, prompted bv political reasons, led to no restrictive legislation. In 1864 the first Immigration Act was passed by Congress, and was to promote and not restrain it; this was repealed 1868. Several states established immigration bureaus to encourage it and draw it their way.
Not only was there this action on the part of several states of the union, but the railway companies likewise established bureaus in Europe to bring immigration their way in order to sell their lands and to create traffic for their systems. Navigation companies did likewise. There was a continuous procession of immigrants from all the countries of Europe into the United States. In that long procession the country which led the way was Ireland. For this immigration from Ireland there was not only the same cause which affected the rest of Europe, but, as we all know, the bad and vicious legislation of years was followed in Ireland by famine. One-half the population of Ireland passed over from that country to the United States. Next after Ireland, the country which stands second in the long procession, in propor-

tion to the number of its population, is Canada. In 1901, as I have just said, the population of Canada was 5,371,315. Of this number 4,671,815 were born in Canada, the rest were bom elsewhere. But in that same year the American census showed that of the American population 1,183,255 had been born in Canada. Therefore, \ye had at that moment of people born in Canada, and living either in Canada or in the United States, 5,855,070. Of this number every one in five had gone to the United States. What was the cause ? The cause is not difficult to find. The newcomers in the United States had to be fed and clothed and shod. They had to be supplied with tools, instruments, furniture, with all the requirements of modern civilization. A tremendous impetus was thus given to American industries. The labour market of the United States was a great attraction to our hardy population, who went to find in the United States the employment which their own country could not give them, and there, Sir, you have the explanation of the calamitous exodus which for so many years was a sore upon our country. Under these circumstances what was to be done? Were we to remain idle and make no effort to arrest this current of emigration? No, our policy was to tear a leaf out of the book of the Americans, and we not only tore a leaf out of the book of the Americans, but we went them one better. What the federal authorities at Washington left to the state governments, we did ourselves, and the results have been what we know them to be to-day, that immigration which had been coming in a thin and narrow stream, came at last in a copious flood, and not only was emigration from Canada to the United States stopped, but we now have an immigration from the United States to Canada.


Robert Laird Borden: Do not the American returns show that there were 19,918 emigrants from Canada to the United States last year?


Wilfrid Laurier: Pardon me, the records of the United States do not show anything of the kind; they show that out of the immigration which came to Canada last year 19,000 immigrants percolated from Canada into the United States. But the records, so far as I have seen them, do not show that 19,000 native Canadians went to the United States. But, Sir. I do not care so much for statistics in this matter as I do for the horse sense of the people. Does not everybody know today that there is practically no emigration from Canada to the United States? Does not everybody now say that there is a stream of immigration from the LTnited States to Canada? Why, Sir, in the olden times when these gentlemen were in office, they used to pile up statistics mountains high to prove to ns that the country was
prosperous, but when the people put their hands into their pockets they could not find prosperity there. At the present time those hon. gentlemen are piling up figures mountains high to show that there is no prosperity in this country, but when the people put their hands into their pockets they find it there. It is no use for my hon. friend to quote statistics to prove that there is still a current of emigration from Canada to the United* States, because it does not exist, and everybody knows it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Do you deny the correctness of the American statistics ?


Wilfrid Laurier: My hon. friend is quoting American authorities. I will also quote from an American newspaper, the New York ' Sun.' which a few days ago published this article :
News comes from Winnipeg that the spring tide of emigration from our Western states to Canada has already set in and gives promise of reaching at least high water mark. This is a serious loss to the United States. Accepting, as we may, the Canadian statistics of immigration, it appears that since the opening of the century about 300,000 people have moved across the line to make homes in Canada. Probably a few have returned, but most have stayed and are content to stay.
These people do not go to Canada because they are not doing well in the United States, but because they hope to do better in the new land. Many of them are of the class which has made our great west. They or their fathers obtained lands in the west either by homesteading or by purchase for a small sum an acre. They can now sell their holdings for many times the original cost and take their money, their experience and their equipment into a new country, and there buy land for a few dollars an acre and see its value increase as did the value of their farms in this country.
Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons a few days ago, the Hon. Clifford Sifton said of these people:
I desire to say that I do not think any country conld possibly get a better class of settlers than the western Americans who have come into our western provinces. They are vigorous, resourceful, law abiding; they become citizens the day they arrive in the country, and at the earliest possible moment they become producers.
I am glad to see that this testimony of my hon. friend from Brandon (Mr. Sit'ton) is verified by the testimony of my bon. friend the leader of the opposition. This article goes on to say :
In point of numbers this exodus from our west to the Canadian west is in part offset by arrivals in onr eastern states from eastern Canada, but Canada gets muchlhe better end of the bargain in the exchange of population in both quality and quantity. Comparatively few Canadians now come to this country either for temporary work or for permanent residence, and many who came in earlier years have gone back, some to their former homes and many to new homes in the Northwest.

Many of these Canadian transients and many of the American emigrants take money with them. A considerable cash capital is not at all infrequent.


John Dowsley Reid: Was a bonus paid on them ?


Wilfrid Laurier: Well, I would like to know what my hon. friend wants to make out of that question. If he knows himself he will tell us ; for my part I do not understand him. Now, this is the result of our policy. I say, subject to contradiction, and I do not think I can be successfully contradicted, that our policy has put an end to the scourge of emigration. But now the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) comes forward and says. Halt, stop all this, reverse your policy. I answer the hon. member for Jacques Cartier, if we halt, if we reverse our policy, and revert to the old conditions which existed before this policy was adopted, what would be the result? Let me say here that this policy was not our own creation, it was not our own invention, it was the invention of hon. gentlemen of the Conservative party. They do not seem to be at all proud of it now, but it is their misfortune. Because it is successful now they do not want it, and they did want it when it was not successful. Why was it not successful? Because they never carried it out with a stout heart. They always administered it in a feeble manner, in such a feeble manner that at one time they thought seriously of putting an end to it. But there was at that time a man of resolute opinion, a man of strong courage, if there ever was a man who had courage, and the name of that man was Sir Charles Tupper. Sir Charles Tupper wishes the Canadian government of to-day to maintain this policy, and he has reason for it. I will not quote the letter which he sent to Mr. Carling, it has already been quoted by my hon. friend from East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff).
Now, I shall give the House the opinion of a noted French economist as to what would be the effect of a cessation of immigration to this country. Mr. Anatole Le Roy-Beaulieu is one of the leading French economists of the present day. He wrote an article to apply not to this country but to the United States, but I quote it, as the condition is absolutely similar in Canada, to-show what would be the consequences of what is suggested by.hon. gentlemen opposite. Mr. Le Roy-Beaulieu contributes an article to ' La Revue Hedomadaire ' of January 4, 1908, upon American immigration, and this is what he says :
With a large number of Americans there exists, at present, an inclination, if not to prohibit, at least, to restrict immigration. Their present laws have already set an obstacle in its way; all who desire to land there may not do so. There are certain categories of people excluded-those stricken with con-Sir WILFRID LAURIER.
taoious diseases, idiots, anarchists, the indigent and those who threaten to become a menace or a burden for the commonwealth. Every immigrant should be possessed of ten dollars. This amount might be slightly raised; entrance might be made" more difficult; but it is not apparent that this would be a benefit to the United States. To diminish immigration would be to check the development of the population in the United States, and thereby shackle its economic impetus-for, it must not be lost sight of that, if the United States has had such a wonderful expansion in the world, it is due above all to immigration. It lias been proven that families, which have been American for four or five generations, are less prolific than are the families of immigrants. Consequently, it might well occur that, with the checking of immigration, the population might become stationary.
Who would benefit thereby? In the first place, Canada; possibly also Europe. But they who would above all benefit thereby are the Latin American states. They will possess vast expanses of territory calculated to form two or three republics such as the United States. It would greatly benefit Mexico, Brazil, the Argentine Republic, the Latin section and Latin civilization-all of which need scarcely more than a strong current of immigration to equal the United States in development. It may possibly happen that when the United States has two or three hundred millions of inhabitants, there may no longer exist there anv interest in securing emigrants from Europe. Moreover, it is questionable whether in fifty years, or in one hundred years, the European population will continue to increase as it does today and have as large a number of emigrants to forward to the shores of the other continent.
Be the future what it may, it now seems that, from both the standpoints of population and of industrial activity, the United States has every interest in not closing its doors against the newcomers from Europe.
Up to the present, it is true, not only has the United States freelv' received emigrants, but has quicklv naturalized them. Frequently they have been accorded the rights of American citizenship before they were able to exercise them. Therein lie abuses and mistakes from which the United States, from which at times the European peoples, might have to suffer; but the remedy is easy. All that is required would be to exact a longer sojourn on the part of the emigrants before granting them the rights of citizenship. For exemple, they might be accorded after a residence of twenty vears:_ a knowledge of the English language might be required of them. In a word, it would be easy to raise a barrier in the pathway of those strangers who unduly lay claim to such rights. To this I can see no serious objection. The Americans would gain thereby; equally so would the European countries; nossiblv even the emigrants themselves, for when they secure their rights of citizenship too easily they become the prey of politicians who dragoon them, who, for party and not for national interests, drive them to vote. Consequently, a title to American citizenship not being so freely granted, benefits wmuld arise for all-save the adventurers and political agitators.
This reservation as to the obtaining of

political franchise being excepted. I believe that the United States would commit a grave error in opposing any legal barriers to the emigrants from Europe. The United States has every interest, political and economic, in remaining, as heretofore, open to all white men who are sufficiently enterprising to brave the Atlantic. In the past century this has been one of the sources of American greatness, it is still so for the present, and will long remain so in the future.
This is intended for the American people but does not every word of it apply also to Canada ? If we check immigration to this country we thereby check our prosperity and we expose ourselves to the danger of reverting to the position in which we were ten years ago. Now, what Is the objection to this policy ? The objection which has been raised is not against the policy itself so much as against the possible consequences of the policy. It is that, possibly, if we maintain that system of encouraging immigration, we may bring in a certain number of undesirables and degenerates. My hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) insisted upon that at great length and he made some statements which rather gave me a shock. He stated that our surveillance was not as effective as that of the Americans, and that we accepted degenerates and undesirables. Our immigration laws are almost word for word in that respect the same as the American laws. But, the statement of my hon. friend, or the impression that he gave was that the surveillance of the Americans was much more severe and exacting than ours and that ours was very lax. He also made the statement that we allowed in certain parties who, upon seeking admission to the United States, were rejected as undesirables. My hon. friend, as I said a moment ago, made certain statements that gave me a shock and I thought I would investigate the matter for myself I will give the result of my investigation, but perhaps I cannot do better than give the very words of my hon. friend in order that I may not misquote him or be unfair to him. This is what he said on that question on the occasion to which I have reference :
Of those arriving at Canadian ports with the avowed and declared intention of going to the .United States there were 12,663 and 183 were debarred. What became of them when they were debarred at our Canadian ports I do not know, it is impossible to find anv trace of their disposition. Were they sent back to Europe in the vessels in which they came to Canada? I doubt it very much. If, on the contrary they did not land and proceeded without examination to one of the examining stations on the Canadian frontier and were there debarred, I doubt very much if they were deported back to Europe.
The second class are those destined to Canada and who have gone to the United States within a year after their arrival in this country. They have to submit to examination at one of the numerous examining stations which the United States government have established along the border, on the ground that we admitted a great manv undesirables who found their wav into the United States. After having made representations to the Canadian government on that subject which to a large extent the American commissioners admit have been carried out, still they have found it necessary to establish these posts of examination. In the second class of immigrants we find 8,517 and 589 were debarred. I shall not go into the details of the causes of their exclusion from the United States, many were refused admission for those causes which were causes of exclusion from Canada and hoiv they succeeded in entering Canada I do not know. Nor do I know what became of them when they were refused admission to the United States. It is impossible to trace the matter any further, but my own view is that they remained in Canada, and that we have to-day in Canada these immigrants who were deemed undesirables under the American law for pronounced and stated causes.
Nothing can be clearer than that my hon. friend conveyed the impression that while the Canadian authorities at Quebec had allowed a certain number to come in of an undesirable character these parties, upon seeking admission to the United States, were turned back and they had remained in our midst ever since. My hon. friend professed to be very much aggrieved by that state of affairs. My hon. friend and I are old friends and I would not leave him in an agony of doubt. My hon. friend is pained and chagrined to believe that there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of degenerates who have sought admission to the United States but who were kept in this country. But if the hon. gentleman had looked further into the report of the American commissioner from which he quoted he would have been relieved of his pain ; be would have found there that according to the report of the American agent these degenerates have been sent back to Europe by the Canadian authorities. This is what I find in the report of the American commissioner, and if my hon. friend had examined it more carefully it is there for him to also find it.
Notwithstanding the fact that the bureau of immigration was duly represented at all the Atlantic ocean ports of the Dominion of Canada by a commissioner and a full corps of inspectors as early as 1893, no deportations whatever are recorded prior to the above mentioned date, (September 1, 1901) so that the whole value of accomplished results up to that time was lost, firstly for want of a sufficient border force, and secondly because the Dominion of Canada made no scrutiny of its immigrants, and consequently had not made arrangements, at least in practice, for deporting undesirables.
Now, however, a change has been effected, a most salutory one, in both instances, the United States has strongly guarded the border at all its vulnerable points, and the Dominion government finding the unwelcome stream



successfully dammed and flowing back on itself, bas made very rapid strides towards adopting a policy, in the main similar to the bureau's policy.
As an evidence of this change, it should be stated that the Canadian immigration department has deported a large number of applicants for admission to Canada on the ground that they were unfit to mingle with the citizens of Canada in the pursuit of that life and pleasure which they came here to find.
Not only has Canada deported large numbers of undesirables, who sought to permanently settle in Canada, but of the 24,797 applicants for permission to pass through Canada to the United States, those who were rejected by your officers as unfit persons under United States laws, because of being afflicted with loathsome contagious diseases, were deported to Europe by the Dominion immigration authorities, the steamship companies bringing them to Canada being compelled to return them and to assume all expenses incident thereto.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: This surely could not apply to the immigrants who have come from *Europe and who have been admitted to Canada by our own authorities and who within a year or after a year at one of the border stations tried to get into the United States and are refused. We could not deal with them because we have admitted them into this country.


Mr. TALBOT.: How do you know ?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I know because there is no doubt about it. What the right hon. gentleman has said may perhaps apply to the immigrant when he arrives in Halifax or at the first port of landing in America, but it cannot apply to the other two classes I refer to, namely, the immigrant who is admitted to Canada by our own authorities and who is refused at Niagara or some other border station within a year or after a year.


Wilfrid Laurier: In the observation of my hon. friend there is both an admission and a negation and I will deal with the admission first. He may have said to-day that this report of the American agent applies, as it does apply, to those who land in Quebec intending to go to the United States, but what my hon. friend did say the other day was :
Of those arriving at Canadian ports with the avowed and declared intention of going to the United States there were 12,663 and 183 were debarred. What became of them when they were debarred at our Canadian ports I do not know, it is impossible to find any trace of their disposition. Were they sent back to Europe in the vessels in which they came to Canada? I doubt it very much.
* The hon. gentleman doubted it a few days ago but he does not doubt it now.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: There is no proof of it in our own reports on immigration.


Wilfrid Laurier: There is a proof of it in the report of the American commis-Sir WILFRID LAURIEP
sioner from which my hon. friend was quoting. I shall read the words again.


Robert Laird Borden: What page V


Wilfrid Laurier: Page 79.


Robert Laird Borden: What report ?


Wilfrid Laurier: The report of 1904 which was quoted by my hon. friend (Mr. Monk). There is there a statement that those who are undesirable under American laws and landed at Quebec were sent back to Europe. This is what the American commissioner says :
Not only has Canada deported large numbers of undesirables, who sought to permanently settle in Canada, but of the 24,797 applicants for permission to pass through Canada to the United States, those who were rejected by your officers as unfit persons under United States laws, because of being afflicted with loathsome contagious diseases, were deported to Europe by the Dominion immigration authorities, the steamship companies bringing them to Canada being compelled to return them and to assume all expenses incident thereto.
Nothing could be plainer than this. Even on the admission of my hon. friend (Mr. Monk) this applies to those who landed in Quebec with the intention of going to the United States. The hon. gentleman asks : What becomes of those who resided in Canada for some time and then sought admission to the United States? Well, as I understand this report-but as to this I do not speak with the same certainty as with regard to the other question-as I understand this report those people were also examined at the border station and sent back because the American agent here speaks of 24,797 applicants for permission to pass through Canada to the United States and at page 87 of the report I find :
-	No. manifest- ed.	No. admitted.	No. rejected.E xamined at ocean * ports of arrival,.	15,399	15,097	262Examined by border boards of special inquiry..	9,438	8,771	667-and it gives the total manifested at 24,797 which is the same number mentioned by the commissioner in his report when he says :	_
But of the 24,797 applicants for permission to pass through Canada to the United States, those who were rejected by your officers as unfit persons under United States laws, because of being afflicted with loathsome contagious diseases were deported to Europe by the Dominion immigration authorities, the steamship companies bringing them to Can-

ada being compelled to return them and to assume all expenses incident thereto.
Therefore it shows as I understand it, that although they came later on they were examined at the border stations and rejected and sent hack to Europe. If that be so it is a complete answer to my hon. friend. But even if it were not so, are we to reject a system of this kind because there may be abuses under it. If my hon. friend were logical his conclusion would be that if the Americans have a superior system of examination we should adopt their system of examination but not reject their policy. Now, to deal with the remarks of the leader of the opposition ; he stated and stated correctly that many degenerates from England have been brought into Canada. But, Sir, far from that being a part of our system of immigration it is absolutely against our system, and we are doing our best to prevent these degenerates from landing in Canada. We know that charitable institutions are disposed to send such people out here, but we have protested against it and the Minister of the Interior in order to prevent a practice has issued an order in these words :
The minister, therefore, recommends that an order in council be passed prohibiting from and after the fifteenth day of April, 1908, the landing in Canada of any person whose passage has been paid, wholly or in part, by any charitable organization or out of public moneys unless it is shown that the authority in. writing of the assistant superintendent of emigration for Canada in London, has been obtained for the emigration of such person, and that such authority has been acted upon within a period of sixty days.
This regulation will it is expected absolutely do away with the practice which has prevailed in this respect. There is another feature of this question as to which I shall say a word. My hon. friend from Mont-magny (Mr. Lavergne) and my hon. friend from ' Quebec (Mr. Robitaille) have complained that we have no emigration system in France. But before I refer to that let me say to my hon. friend from Montma-gny that he made a statement in his speech which on reflection he seriously should regret, because it is absolutely unfair to a gentleman who is not in this House to defend himself, and for whose alleged action my hon. friend has sought to make the Canadian government responsible.
My hon. friend in his speech the other day wanted to prove that Mr. Smart had intended to devise a system specially against French immigration, and bethought he would support his contention by an extract from a newspaper which he had quoted last year. The extract is as follows :
The ' Northern Express,' Liverpool, February 10, 1902.-British blood is needed.


The Hon.  J. A.@: Smart, Deputy Minister of 2251
the Interior of Canada, and Mr. W. T. R. Preston, immigration agent general for the Dominion, arrived in Liverpool to-day from London and Glasgow to arrange a gigantic system of British immigration to Canada.
More British blood is also needed to be infused if the views of the Dominion of Canada is not to be Frenchified by the rapid growth of the French population.
Now, Sir, I ask my hon. friend, as a fair and candid man, where does he find that Mr. Smart used that language.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: It is a mistake in 'Hansard'; the last words are the words used by Mr. Smart.


Wilfrid Laurier: I have looked at my hon. friend's language in ' Hansard ' of last year, and it is exactly the same.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: Yes, because I had the paragraph saying that Mr. Smart had said so and so, but I did not put in any notes. Only his words in ' Hansard ' are copied exactly.


Wilfrid Laurier: I have not the paper at hand. I can only tell my hon. friend that if this is all the authority he has for accusing Mr. Smart, he is guilty of a serious and unwarranted accusation against an honourable man. First of all, is it fair or right? This is said to be an act in 1903. Mr. Smart has not been in the service of the government for four years. The attention of the government was never called to anything of the kind.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: I beg the right hon. gentleman's pardon. It was called to their attention by the ex-member for Labelle, Mr. Bourassa.


Wilfrid Laurier: When?


Armand Renaud La Vergne: At the time the statement was made, in 1902.


Wilfrid Laurier: I never heard of it. I do not say that it was not done, but my attention was not called to it. If it had been, I would have thought it advisable to have called Mr. Smart's attention to it. But to say that we are responsible when Mr. Smart has not been in the employ of the government for four years is stretching our responsibility to an extreme point.
But now I come to the statement of my hon. friend from Montmagny that we have no system of immigration in France. I say at once that our system of immigration in France has been inadequate ; but we have had no better system there because we have had no direct line of communication between Canada and France. The government has made efforts for twenty years to establish such a line, not only for commercial purposes but for purposes of immigration. The moment we established a line of communication with France we

attempted to establish a system of immigration in France, and at present we have four immigration agents in that country- Mr. Wiallard, Mr. Foursin, Mr. Geoffrion and Mr. Montpetit. In addition to these we have sent from time to time different agents. H. F. Morel was appointed as delegate to Belgium for four months from December 7, 1907. Mr. Morel already has had experience at this work, having been employed for six months by the department as special agent from December, 1905, to June, 1906. Paul Auve, Morinville, Alberta, has been offered a position as farmer delegate in France. The department is not yet advised of his acceptance. He is a practical farmer and has spent fifteen years in western Canada. J. E. Des-lauriers has been appointed temporarily to do emigration work in France and Belgium. He would probably enter upon his work on or about the 1st instant. Edouard Parent, of St. Jean Baptiste, Manitoba, had been appointed as farmer delegate to France. The appointment is for three months from January 20, 1908. Mr. Parent is a qualified farmer and strongly recommended as a suitable man.
Now that we have a line of communication with France, we will pursue the work with all possible diligence, because we realize-and in this I am sure I voice the sentiments of everybody in this House and out of it-that we cannot have a more valuable class of immigrants than the French peasants and the Belgian peasants. Every one acknowledges that they possess thrift, morality and all the qualities that go to make good citizens. For these reasons I think my hon. friend will exempt us from the blame he has attempted to fasten upon us.
Now, I have only one word more to say. Everybody admits that one of the sources of wealth of any. nation is its immigration. All economists agree that the immigrant brings with him a source of wealth, not only in the cash which he possesses but in the labour he brings to the country of his adoption. The value of the wealth which an immigrant brings to a country has been variously estimated; it is impossible to give an exact figure in that respect. Some have estimated the value at $1,000; but this is not very satisfactory. I find in an American work on immigration by Prescott F. Hall, a paragraph which sems to give a fairly satisfactory basis of estimating the value of an immigrant. Mr. Hall says :
It is difficult, therefore, to say precisely what the money value of the immigrant is. The remote as well as the immediate effects of his coming must be considered, and also the state of employment and the rate of wages at the time of hip arrival. A thoroughly conservative estimate is probably that of Mr. John B. Webber, formerly Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York. He assumes that there were 10,000,000 foreign born at the date of the eleventh Sir WILFRID LAUBIER
census and that 2,000.000 of these were working at an average of $1 per day; and he points out that these persons added $600,000,000 a year to the earnings of the country.
Now, Sir, last year we received over 200,000 immigrants. If we take the estimate of Mr. Hall that twenty per cent of these were earning $1 a day, these immigrants added to the wealth of the country no less than $12,000,000. We know for a fact that the American immigrants brought into the country, in money and goods equivalent to money, in one year $49,000,000 and in another year over $50,000,000. Does anybody think under such circumstances that we should deprive ourselves of the valuable addition to our wealth which our policy of immigration has brought to this country ? Sir, if we were to do that, we would revert to the condition of ten years ago when we were losing our population. I do not claim that the policy we have at the present time is to be permanent ; it is only a temporary policy ; it cannot last for ever ; but under the existing circumstances, with a powerful neighbour to the south, having a population of 80,000,000, while our population is only 6,000,000, the time has not yet some for departing from that policy, and I would therefore invite the House to reject the motion of my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier.
House divided	on amendment of Mr. Monk.	YEAS:
Alcorn,	Messieurs Lewi s,
Armstrong,	Macdonell,
Bennett,	McCarthy (Calgary),
Bergeron,	McLean
Blain,	(Queens, P.E.I.).
.Borden (Carleton), Martin	
Brabazon,	(Queens, P.E.I.),
Broder.	Monk.
Chisholm (Huron), Morin.	
Christie,	Paquet,
Clements,	Perley,
Cockshutt,	Reid (Grenville),
Crocket,	Robitaille,
Daniel,	Sproule,
Elson,	Taylor,
Fowler,	Verville,
Henderson,	Walsh (Huntingdon),
Jackson (Elgin),	White,
Lancaster,	Wilmot,
Lavergne	Wilson (Lennox &
(Montmagny),	Addington),
Lennox,	Worthington,
Leonard,	Wright (Muskoka)-12.
Adamson,	NAYS: Messieurs McColl,
Archambault,	McCool,
Aylesworth,	McCraney,
Beauparlant,	McIntyre
Beland,	(Strathcona),
Bickerdike,	McKenzie,
Boyer,	McLennan,

Brown,
Bureau,
Burrows,
Caldwell,
Calvert,
Caron,
Carrier,
Carvell,
Copp,
Delisle,
Demers,
Desjardins,
Dubeau,
Dugas,
Emmerson,
Ethier,
Einlayson,
Fisher,
Fortier,
Galliher,
Gauvreau,
Geoffrion,
Gervais,
Girard,
Graham,
Grant,
Guthrie,
Hall.
Hunt,
Jackson (Selkirk), Johnston,
Lanctot (Laprairie-
Napierville),
Lanctot (Richelieu), Lapointe,
Laurier (Sir Wilfrid) Laurier
(L'Assomption),
Lavergne
(Drum. & Arth.), Loggie,
Lovell,
Maclean (Lunenburg), Macplierson,
Marcile (Bagot), Marcil (Bonaventure), Martin (Montreal, St. Mary's),
Martin (Wellington), Mavrand,
Meigs,
Michaud,
Miller,
Oliver,
Pardee,
Parmelee,
Paterson,
Parent,
Pickup,
Proulx,
Pugsley,
Rata,
Reid (Restigouche), Rivet,
Ross (Cape Breton), Ross (Rimouski),
Ross (Yale-Cariboo), Rousseau,
Savoie,
Schell (Oxford), Sifton,
Sloan,
Smith (Oxford), Stewart,
Talbot,
Telford,
Templeman,
Tobin,
Tolmie,
Turcotte,
Turgeon,
Turriff,
Walsh (Montreal, Ste.
Anne),
Watson,
Wright (Renfrew), Zimmerman.-95.
PAIRS:
Carney,
Brodeur,
Conmee,
Wilson (Russell), Cash,
Knowles,
McIntyre (Perth), Finlay.
Amendment, Mr. Barr,
Ames,
Bristol,
Seagram,
Avery,
Boyce,
Thompson,
Seliaffner.
Monk, negatived.
Motion agreed to and House went into Committee of Supply.
Progress reported.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: I beg to give notice of the following motion. I propose to move in amendment to the motion to go into Supply when next made :
This House regrets that the sums spent by the country to pay bonuses on immigration have not been employed in bringing back to our country the Canadians who hare emigrated to the United States.
On motion of Mr. Fielding, House adjourned at 12.45 a.m., Friday.

Friday, April 24, 1908.