1908-05-05

OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE DEBATES.

Mr. HONORE GERVAIS (Montreal, St. James).: I beg leave to move that the second report of the Debates Committee be con-cured in.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: I wish the hon. gentleman (Mr. Gervais) would delay this motion until the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) is in his seat. He will be here, I think, to-morrow or the day after.
Mr. SPEAKER, Stand.



GOVERNMENT BUSINESS.

Wilfrid Laurier: I stated yesterday that I would give the House some idea of the measures which the government propose to introduce during the present session. These measures are not new; they have been more or less discussed already and the House is somewhat familiar with them. In the first place, there is the Civil Service Bill, which, I think, will be introduced early next week. There are also the Bill to provide for the extension of the boundaries of Manitoba, the amendment to the Manitoba Grain Inspection Act-to be intro luced within a day or two-and the amendment to the Lands Bill These are the principal measures. But I must say that another important measure to be introduced is that respecting aid to railway construction, including the Hudson Bay Railway. There are some minor Bills of some importance, but, I think, not contentious. One relates to judicature, and another to Chinese immigration, and another is to mile the Yukon Council absolutely elective, instead of partly elective and partly nominative as at present. There is also an amendment to the Customs Act. This is a fair list of the measures that we propose to introduce.



CANADIAN AND UNITED STATES BOUNDARIES TREATIES.

Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Before the orders of the day are called, I would ask the Prime Minister whether he has any news of the treaty, which, I observe, has been ratified by the Senate of the United States. It seems a little curious that we cannot get it here until it has been considered and ratified there.


Wilfrid Laurier: There are two reasons for that. According to the constitution of the United States, as my hon. friend knows, treaties must be ratified by the Senate in executive session. They are not passed unless they have received the approval of the president and the sanction of the Senate. The second is that we could not have the correspondence and treaty laid before this house until we had the authority of the British Colonial Office. We have asked for that authority, and, no doubt, it will be given. I have the correspondence prepared, and, as soon as we have received the sanction of the Colonial Office, we, will lay the two treaties-for there are two- before the House.



DOMINION ELECTIONS ACT AMENDMENT.

Hon.  A. B.@: AYLESWORTH (Minister of Justice) moved the second reading of Bill (No. 115) to amend the Dominion Elections Act. He said : When this Bill was introduced some two_ months ago, I gave an explanation, with considerable fulness of detail, of the various provisions therein proposed and the reasons which had led to these provisions being recommended for adoption by the House. In the two month which have passed since that time there has been, in the newspapers and otherwise in the country, considerable discussion with reference to the provisions of this measure. But that discussion seems, so far as I have seen it, to have limited itself very largely, if not practically altogether, to the first clause of the Bill. Perhans in these circumstances, and subject to what hon. members wish to say with reference to other paragraphs of the Bill, I may, at this stage of its progress, limit myself to a discussion of the provisions of that section, leaving other clauses of the Bill to be discussed either upon this occasion or in Committee of the Whole. The first clause of this Bill deals with the question of voters' lists and the franchise in a very considerable portion of the Dominion. For the purpose of classifying the method of preparation of the voters' lists, one might divide the Dominion, with not unfair accuracy, by the boundary line between the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. Speaking in the rough, the whole of Canada east of that line prepares its voters' lists with the assessment roll, or valuation roll, of the municipal locality as the basis of the list, while all of the Dominion to the west of that line pursues the opposite system and prepares its lists upon the system of registration and without reference to the assessment roll.
Now it will be no doubt in the memory of many hon. gentlemen, it is upon the pages of the ' Hansard ' of ten years ago when our present Franchise Act was under discussion in this House, that that principle was laid down as being the rule in a gen-Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
eral way, of application upon which die present Dominion system of voters' lists was based. Prior to that time, for thirteen years the Dominion, under the Franchise Act of 1885, had been controlling the preparation of its own voters' lists. In 1898 the present law was passed, the old Franchise Act of 1885 was repealed, and a system of adopting the voters' lists as prepared by the various provinces, substituted in its stead. Upon that occasion the opposition of that day put itself upon record in the form of a substantive motion against the second reading of the Bill, and In favour of the principle that the Dominion should absolutely control its own franchise, that this House should not under any circumstances part with the preparation of its own voters' lists, or hand that work over to the provincial legislatures in any case. But upon this side of the House, and in support of the proposition, it ivas contended by different hon. gentlemen that wherever you have voters' lists prepared by the municipalities upon the basis of the assessment roll you have in that circumstance a guaranty of substantiality and a guaranty of fairness. You have the various municipal councils consisting of four or five, or at most six or seven, members who are necesarily acquainted, possibly personally acquainted, with practically all the families in their district. You had the assessor, with certainly no inducement to omit from his roll which was to be tlia basis of taxation in the community, any landowner or any individual liable to tax, you had that guaranty that every man who ought to pay taxes would find his name placed upon the assessment roll in order that a levy might be made upon him, and you had a local body consisting, possibly and very probably, of men of opposite political feelings engaged in the work of revising that assessment roll, with naturally a personal acquaintance, probably, with the majority of the men whose names they were dealing with, and that roll as so settled by the municipal council to be the subsequent basis of the voters' lists for municipal, provincial and Dominion purposes. It was pointed out at that time, in nnswer to an observation by the present hon. leader of the opposition, that if, notwithstanding the fears which he then expressed, the time should come when any provincial government or provincial legislature should by its legislation, or by its administration of that levis'aM'in. so interfere with the course of the preparation of the voters' lists in that province, or if there was not an acceptable list, or there was ground for belief that the list so prepared was not of a fair and satisfactory nature, then this House always had it in its power, this parliament at any time could resume control over its own lists and over its own franchise, and prevent the apprehended evil from taking place.
Now that being an outline of the considerations which were urged on either side in

1898 as reasons for and against the adoption of the system which was then inaugurated in the Dominion, and which has since obtained, the situation which we have now reached necessarily comes to be considered. At the last general elections in 1904 there was a difficulty, to use a mild word, with reference to the voters' lists in the province of Manitoba, particularly in that province, more esnecially there, perhaps elsewhere as well, but a difficulty which had its origin out of the system of preparing lists which, under the Manitoba statute, and under the method in which that statute was administered, had necessarily arisen. Their lists were not based upon the assessment rolls, their lists were prepared upon a system of registration, personal registration on the part of the voter possibly, but not necessarily personal registration, provision being contained in the statute law for the registration of the voter without personal application in the circumstances that the statute describes. The general outline of their system of preparing the voters' lists was that registration clerks were appointed for the various constituencies of the province, and the work of the registration clerks in forming the basis of the voters' lists was afterwards revised by some member of a registration board, which consisted I think in practice of the county judges of the province, which upon the face of the statute might consist either of the county judges or of barristers of three years standing. Those lists were necessarily prepared under the system obtaining in Manitoba with reference to the various electoral districts as laid down for provincial purposes. Now what is the consequence ? For the purpose of representation in this House the whole province of Manitoba is divided into ten constituencies, while for the purpose of representation in the provincial legislature of the same province, we have the same territory divided into forty constituencies. For every Dominion constituency there are four provincial constituencies, and the boundaries are not coterminous. I do not know whether in any single instance any Dominion constituency is composed of just four, or just three, or just five, or exactly any other number of provincial constituencies ; but I imagine that in no single case is any constituency as defined for Dominion purposes composed of exactly a certain number of provincial constituencies. The result is that throughout the whole province there is an overlapping. A Dominion constituency will have all round its borders an outstanding fringe consisting of portions of various surrounding provincial constituencies, and in many instances the boundaries of the individual polling subdivisions in the provincial constituencies will not be coterminous with the boundaries of the Dominion constituency either. So you have as a consequence men who would be grouped together for provincial purposes
upon the voters' lists for either a particular polling subdivision, or taking it in the Large, for a provincial legislative constituency, who would not be grouped together for the purpose of a Dominion election.
Now under the system of registration as distinct from the system of preparing voters' lists with the assessment roll as a basis, you have the voters' lists prepared for the various provincial constituencies divided, not into polling subdivisions, but into registration districts, and the registration districts do not necessarily correspond with the polling subdivisions. They may do so or they may not do so, but the group of voters brought together by the registration clerk upon the one sheet of paper and certified to be the list of qualified voters for a particular registration district consists, it may be, of men who vote in more than one polling subdivision. But more than that and worse than that for the difficulty I am about to present, these voters are not, in I think I may safely say, the majority of instances, designated by the ownership of a particular piece of property. In some cases, possibly in the greater number of cases, the voter's post office addres is given, but in a great many instances, in a very large percentage of the voters' lists throughout the province, not even a post office is given, but simply the name of the man entitled to vote. I have before me ordinary sample sheets of the lists which I shall be happy to lay upon the table and hon. gentlemen may see them for themselves. The lists that I have are taken entirely at random. These were, I may say, presented before the committee of this House which made some inquiry into this matter two years ago, and in that way came before my notice and have been in my possession since. The first of these two that are before me is, the list of voters of 1903, and I shall read the caption in order that you. Sir, may see exactly what the list as certified by the provincial authorities to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery contains, and what exactly is the information and the whole of the information which any one having such a document before him would possess in regard to the voters whose names appear on it. It is headed :
List of voters, 1903, provincial electoral district of St. Boniface, registration district No. 1.
There is no reference to any poll, but simply registration district No. 1 and that is in the provincial electoral district of St. Boniface. This list contains 226 names. To show how these names are in most instances entered I shall read the first one :
Anderson, Eric, Louise Bridge, Mason.
That is the identification of the voter and that is the case in respect of most of the names throughout the list, the voters' name,

his post office, and his occupation are given with no reference whatever to the property in respect of which he votes or to the exact place where he may live. On this list, as a matter of fact, all the names enumerated of the men entitled to vote in the electoral district of Selkirk, are now marked with a check. Those who are entitled to vote in the adjoining constituency of Provencher, as delimited for purposes of Dominion representation, are left without a mark. These 226 names are divided between the two constituencies of Selkirk and Provencher in the numbers of 140 in Selkirk and 86 in Provencher. Of course it will be seen at once that the post office address of the individual without knowledge of who the man himself is and where he lives is no guide. The post office might be upon the boundary line, and a man who voted in the constituency of Provencher might have his post office in Selkirk or vice versa. His post office he selects according to his own convenience, and the post office itself while, if it were far distant from the boundary, would be some guide, in a case where the boundary bisects the registration district, as in this case, affords little or no light.
The other list I have is similar.
List of voters, 1903, provincial electoral district of Morris, registration district No. 5.
There are 120 names on the list and of those 120 names 77 are in Provencher and 43 in Macdonald, as divided for Dominion purposes. If any one taking up this paper without local knowledge entered upon the effort to discriminate between the voters who were entitled to vote in Macdonald and those who were entitled to vote in Proven-cher, he would simply have to abandon the effort as absolutely impracticable, because in this case we have no post office whatever, we have in some instances, in most instances, a reference to the section upon which the voter, presumably, is to be found or which, at any rate, he may be supposed to own. But we have no other information given than that. These gentlemen whose names are here recorded are voters some of them as farmers' sons, others as farmers, others as blacksmiths ; their occupations are given throughout with simply a reference to some particular lot and nothing else.
Those are ordinary samples. In some instances the lot is given, in other instances no lot will appear from one end to the other of the list. It depended, I presume, on what was the habit of the registration clerk in taking the necessary information and recording the names in the first instance.
In that position of matters, I ask hon. gentlemen to reflect what was to be done by the men who received His Majesty's writs in the fall of 1004, requiring them to hold the ten elections in Manitoba for the purpose of representation in this House. Un-Mr. AYLESWOBTH.
' der the statute, they received from the proper officials at Ottawa printed copies of just such lists as I have been adverting to, which gave them the names by registration districts of hundreds upon hundreds of voters, thousands necessarily, in each constituency. If you take the case of a registration district as defined by the provincial law, which the returning officer, possessing local knowledge, may, of his own knowledge, be aware is in the centre of a Dominion constituency, is wholly within some particular Dominion constituency, the returning officer will certainly be aware that every man on the list for that particular registration district will be within his bailiwick. But in the cases in which there was not a coincidence in all the borders around the four sides of any constituency in Manitoba between the limits of tire registration district and of the provincial constituency and the limits of the Dominion constituency, there was, of necessity there had to be, some division of the voters in order that those who voted under any particular returning officer should be known. Now that was a case absolutely unprovided for in our legislation. I suppose it had not been thought of in 1898 or at any subsequent session of parliament. Possibly it was thought of in 1898 but considered not of practical importance for this reason : In 1898 the voters' lists in the province of Manitoba were not revised annually or at fixed times, they were revised whenever the lieutenant Governor in council so directed.
Accordingly the legislation of this parliament as passed in 1898 provided that whenever that was the case with the voters lists of any particular province these voters lists should not necessarily be accepted for the purpose of elections to this House. Our statute at the present time continues to provide that where under the laws of any province the voters' lists for any particular electoral district or division are prepared not at regular intervals but at such times as are fixed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or by some other provincial or local authority or only from time to time for the purpose of a general or other election in immediate contemplation, then the last preceding list shall be used if it is less than a year old, but only in that event. If it is more than a year old the Dominion prepares its own voters' lists in the manner at present prescribed by the Dominion Elections Act and which has been on the statute-book since 1898. So that in 1898 when this legislation was passed repealing the old Franchise Act of 1885, Manitoba was not having annual revision of its lists, and was not in that sense affected by the Dominion legislation. But the provision of 1898, in the condition of things which then existed in Manitoba, was that the provincial lists of that province should

be used for Dominion purposes only if there came a Dominion election when such lists were less than twelve months old, and that If such lists were at that time over twelve months old then the Dominion would prepare its own lists. That possibly is the explanation of the circumstance that no special provision was made in 1898 for the case of such overlapping as I have been describing. Whatever explanation of it may be, the fact is as I have stated. Now, in the spring of 1904 the Manitoba legislature made a change in its law. The Manitoba legislature provided by the statute of 1904, (repealing the provisions as to voters' lists which had theretofore existed in that province) that their revision should take place annually. It is true it was a sort of peculiar revision, but it was what they called revision at all events. It was not registration preparing lists de novo by requiring each man who claimed the right to vote to appear before the official appointed for the purpose and state his claim, but it was the taking of the existing lists by the registration clerk and the adding to such lists or the revision of them on his part by making the changes which might appear to be necessary. Accordingly we have the legislature of Manitoba in the spring of 1904, by the enactment I have referred to, making their provincial voters' lists revis-able at regular annual intervals and no longer at only such times as should be fixed by the government of the province. The effect was at once to make this provision of our Elections Act which authorized the Dominion authorities to prepare lists for a province no longer applicable to Manitoba, and to require the Dominion elections of 1904 which were then approaching to be carried on upon these Manitoba lists, samples of which I have placed before you a few minutes ago. These Manitoba lists of 1903 had been prepared for another purpose altogether ; they had been prepared at a time when under the then existing Dominion legislation there was every prospect that they never would be needed for Dominion purposes ; they had been prepared with a view solely and entirely to the provincial elections. At the time these lists were prepared in 1903 the Dominion legislation was of such a character that there could have been no expectation on the part of the officials who prepared these lists that they would ever be required for Dominion purposes unless the Dominion elections should follow within twelve months of their completion. Under these circumstances they were not prepared by the officials who were engaged in the work with any idea of their being used in Dominion elections ; they were not prepared in any way with reference to Dominion constituencies or Dominion polling sub-divisions but with no other thought than the provincial limits I have mentioned. The
consequence was the absolute inapplicability for the practical purpose of conducting an election of those lists which by the change of the provincial law in the spring of 1904 became under the terms of our legislation of 1898 the lists upon which the Dominion elections had to be carried on. Every returning officer in the ten constituencies of Manitoba found himself consequently face to face with the question of what he was to do about it. His duty was to send to his various deputy returning officers for use at the various polling places in his constituency, lists which should show just the names and only the names of the men entitled to vote at that poll.
Now, we who are better acquainted with the older settled portions of this country possibly do not always appreciate conditions as they exist in the larger west. I myself must frankly concede that it was with some astonishment I heard the testimony given before the committee I alluded to a little ago, with regard to the size of the constituencies in Manitoba. We were investigating specially at that time the conditions with regard to the three constituencies of Selkirk, Provencher, and Macdonald and the size of these constituencies was stated to be in round figures : Selkirk 100 miles wide by 210 miles in length, Provencher 50 miles by 115 miles and Macdonald 80 miles by 86. Now, I ask hon. gentlemen who like myself are more famili-liar with the geography of the province of Ontario : Suppose you had a constituency extending with regard to its width as far as from Toronto to Trenton, and so far as its length as far as from Toronto to Brock-ville, and you had a returning officer appointed for that whole territory 100 miles one way and 210 miles the other, and you placed in his hands a series of voters' lists amounting to perhaps 4,000 or 5,000 voters in all, scattered over that territory, and with no other guide than at most the number of the lot and very probably with no other guide than the post office or possibly not even a post office, to enable him to say whether or not a particuliar voter is within these boundaries; is it not manifestly impossible that any man, unless he has travelled from end to end of the province and from end to end of the constituency and unless he has a local knowledge greater far than the average citizen possesses, is it not manifestly impossible that he would be able to do anything more than make one may say a guess, or secure such information as he could with reference to an individual and endeavour to make in that way lists which should be appropriate and legal for the purposes required? The returning officer has no guide in the statute ; he is not told what he is to do. He is under obligation to send to his deputies a proper list, and is given no kind of direction or information as to how he can

prepare that list. If a returning officer, face to face with such a difficulty, had in the few weeks which remained before the polling day, set himself to obtain all the information he was able, and having so obtained it, had written down name after name upon sheets of foolscap, extracting them from the printed lists that had come to him from Ottawa, and had sent such certified lists of copied names to his different polling sub-divisions, I venture to say that no man could by any perversion or distortion of the statute assail that returning officer as having transgressed his statutory duty or as having committed any offence against the laws of the land. In this case the returning officers probably never thought of writing out the lists, possibly wished to avoid the manual labour that would involve, and instead of writing out the list for each separate poll, they went through those lists and endeavoured to mark those voters who did not belong to their respective constituencies by striking out the names. They used red ink for the purpose.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Mr. AYLESWORTH.: And we have had from that day to this the changes rung upon every platform and in every newspaper in the country upon the convenient catch-phrase that somebody coined of the thin red line. The government of the province of Manitoba had had to do, in the rearrangement of its lists for the purpose of its elections, precisely the same kind of work. Their officials did it with black ink, and that is the only difference.


Mr. W. J. ROCIIE.: Will the Minister of Justice say who did it with black ink ? What class of officials did this kind of work ? Was it the Conservative organizer, like the Liberal organizer in the other case? As a matter of fact, it was done by the judges of the province.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Order.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I must ask my hon. friend from Marquette to acquit me of any intention of discourtesy if I do not answer or if I do not notice what he has said, because it is my misfortune to be quite unable to hear him.


Mr. SCHAFFNER.: You do not want to hear.


Mr. SPEAKER.: That is quite an improper remark.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I am not making the least attack, political or other, upon the officials of the legislature or government of Manitoba in what I have adverted to. I am saying that it was necessary; it was a thing which could not possibly be avoided. I certainly make no point on the colour of the ink. I should have been equally well pleased if instead of being black it had Mr. AYLESWORTH.
been in accordance with the political sympathies of the gentlemen and been intensest blue. My hon. friend who sits next to me calls my attention in this connection to a circumstance which I might with nro-priety have adverted to, but which escaped my memory at the moment, that the direction of the Manitoba Elections Act on the subject is the use of a black line or a red line for this very purpose. In section 5, subsection 6, of the Elections Act of Manitoba provision is made for the drawing of a line with black or red ink through the name of any person to be removed from the list of electors or from the list appearing in the register, but in such a manner that the name can be readily read and distinguished, and. of course, it is an important provision, that the name should not be erased so that it could not be distinguished, but that it remain legible, although indicated in some manner as not belonging to that particular voting place or that particular constituency. Now, the doing of this work of rearranging the names by some person was a necessity, as I think any fair consideration of the condition which the law was. in at the time will at once demonstrate. There was no statutory authority for it in the Dominion Elections Act. No one, I think, pretends that the Dominion Elections Act ever contemplated the necessity for any such thing, or had provided authority for anv official, judge or other, to take that course. But the necessity for it, the reasonableness of it, would, I think, apart from the heat of party conflict in this country, not be questioned by anybody. And let me say here-what will be I have no doubt in the memory of my hon. friend from East Hamilton (Mr. Barker), as a member of the committee to which I have already referred-that in the inquiry into this matter which was made during several weeks of the spring of 1906, we had before us as witnesses two gentlemen from the city of Winnipeg, who were legal men, and who had been by their experience in the courts familiar with this whole business, one on either side. Mr. Knott, who had been the solicitor for the prosecutions which were launched against the returning officers in connection with what I have described. and Mr. Howell, who had been counsel for the defendants in these proceedings. Each was examined, and Mr. Knott, after referring to the statute and detailing in the quiet of an examination before a small committee of this House exactly what had been complained of and pointing out, what was undoubtedly the fact, that there was no statutory authority on the face of the Dominion legislation authorizing this thing to be done, was asked by one of the members of the committee whether he could suggest anything unreasonable about it, or whether it was not the most reasonable thing in the world for these returning officers to have done.

And Mr. Knott, with all candour, said he considered It was perfectly reasonable, but the question was whether or no it was legal. The question was the legality of what was done, and the only thing in that connection I should have to complain of would be that there had been discussion in connection with this matter and an effort to make political capital out of it. There was necessity to do it, it was done, and the question now is whether or no this parliament, with the necessity for doing exactly the same tiling, will or will not authorize its officers to do that which is necessary unless we are to throw overboard altogether the provincial lists and prepare our own lists, as we did under the Franchise Act of 18S5. In the heated discussion on the conduct of the Manitoba officials, which I have mentioned, there was at all events a very great difference of views as to the number of men whose names were struck off and were not placed upon the lists in their own particular ridings, and in that way prevented from voting. In one sense, for my purpose here in advocating the passing of legislation to remedy the existing conditions, it is not very material how many or whether there were any voters who, as a consequence, lost their votes upon that occasion; but I wish to say a word or two upon that head, because it was a subject of long investigation and consideration before the committee two years ago of which I had the honour to be chairman. The whole matter was debated at very considerable length in this House in the session of 1905, and I have but to refer hon. gentlemen who may be interested to the ' Hansard ' of May 30, 1905, when, upon motion to go into supply, the question was taken up and debated. Of the ten constituencies in Manitoba as represented in this House, we had on that occasion, I think, all their representatives taking part in that debate. We had the hon. member for Lisgar saying that in his constituency he had personally examined the lists and had found only nine errors-six names left off and three put on in the wrong polling division, and that of these nine, six were his own supporters. The hon. member for Souris addressed the House on that occasion but made no complaint about the lists in his constituency. The hon. member for Portage la Prairie said that, so far as he could ascertain, there had been but one left off the lists In his riding. The hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Roche) though he spoke in general terms, made the charge, so far as anything specific was concerned, simply that ten names in one polling division had been put in the wrong township. The hon. members for Brandon, Winnipeg and Dauphin made no complaints whatever; and there could be no complaint in Winnipeg or Dauphin, because in Dauphin the election took place by acclamation and in Winnipeg there was no readjustment because the bounds were coterminous between the one constituency and the other. So*that we have seven of the ten Manitoba constituencies accounted for at all events by their representatives in this House on the occasion to which I have referred. And the aggregate of the complaints from those seven constituencies was twenty votes

twenty men misplaced, not twenty disfranchised, but twenty put upon the lists in a wrong polling subdivision or a wrong township.


Mr. STAPLES.: May I ask a question? The hon. Minister of Justice has been kind enough to mention all the members who spoke on that occasion with the exception of myself. If he will kindly refer to what I said as to the number who were struck off in Macdonald, that might interest the House.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: 1 am not going to omit my hon. friend's constituency by any means. I say that of the ten Manitoba constituencies, the seven I have spoken of were discussed in the debate by the representatives here. The remaining three, Macdonald, Provencher and Selkirk, were also discussed, and they are the three in respect of whose returning officers there were prosecutions in Manitoba. And those three constituencies were the only ones with regard to which witnesses were called before the committee of two years ago, to which I have referred. In these circumstances, I am not without justification if I come to the conclusion that it is in those three the pi'incipal grounds for complaint by our friends opposite exist, and that, to say the least, there is not the same reason for complaint in the other seven, in respect of which their representatives three years ago said that at the most twenty names had been misplaced. My hon. friend from Macdonald (Mr. Staples) did not limit himself in his general observations, which were strong enough, to the specific statements to which I am about to refer; but so far as he specified any grounds of complaint, there wei'e three polling places or registration districts-I do not know which they are- in his constituency in which he considered there was reason for complaint.	These
places were Miami, Treherne and Poplar Point. At Poplar Point he said there were fifteen, at Treherne two, and at Miami eleven names misplaced, so that there were twenty-eight voters in the whole constituency who had been disfranchised in this way. There was nothing, so far as I can recall, contradicting that statement in the testimony before the committee. There seemed to be a consensus of opinion that that was about the number of voters in the constituency of Macdonald concerning whom there was ground for complaint. The great complaint was with regard to Selkirk and Provencher, and especially the poll at Beau-sejour where. It was said, forty-two names had been struck out. We had before us a

witness from that poll, the postmaster, I think, one of the men whose names had b'een struck off, and who was brought all the way from Manitoba to testify to his undoubted right to vote and to his having) been deprived of his vote because his name was struck through by the red line at his own poll.
He was an ardent politician, as he candidly stated. He attended at the poll upon the occasion as the agent at the poll-the scrutineer-of the candidate of his choice. * When he found that his name was not upon the list, or had been struck off the list, he protested. He claimed from the deputy returning officer, with whom he was perfectly acquainted, the right to vote. ' The deputy returning officer fully conceded it; he was given his ballot; he marked his ballot; he cast it and in fact, as he testified before the committee it was counted. He claimed that he had the legal right to vote, independent altogether of the certified list, in the circumstance that he was at the polling place as the accredited agent of one of the candidates. No one felt then disposed, and I have no doubt no one feels now disposed, to question for a moment the course which he took in insisting on casting his vote or the course which the deputy took in receiving that vote, even though the voter's name was not on the list certified to him as authentic. That man's right to a ballot was acknowledged just as effectively as though the ' thin red line ' had not been drawn through his name. He travelled all the way from Winnipeg to Ottawa to testify as to these circumstances; and, if he can be taken as a sample of the 42 struck off at the Beausejour poll, one would say, certainly, there was no great grievance in It. But, of course, I do not pretend that the other 41, or, perhaps, any of the other 41, succeeded in voting in the Beausejour poll. None were called before us, and we were not in a position to come to a conclusion as to how that might be. But there is no kind of question that these men, or a majority of them, had voted-or had the right to vote- at the adjoining poll of Cromwell. I do not remember whether this was in the same constituency or not. But that was their proper poll, and the striking off was because the boundary line running through the polling subdivision found on either side of it a portion of the names recorded in the registration list as proper to a certain registration district. It appeared to be the fact that, either by design or inadvertence-which you will, according to your political sympathies-the name of a legal voter at Beausejour. the witness who was before us, had been struck off and that it ought not to have been struck off; but hoc the slightest evidence was given even hinting at it having been done by intent or otherwise than by inadvertence. Now, 1 do not make any kind of doubt-I am not pretending to argue otherwise before this Mr. AYIESWORTH.
House-that, throughout the whole province of Manitoba, there may have been many more names of honest voters who had the right to vote whose names were struck off in this necessary readjusting or redistributing of the voters' names that I have described. And I am not wishing for a moment to pretend that this readjusting or redividing and redistributing was limited to cases in which the boundary line between two constituencies ran through a registration district as it existed for provincial purposes. I do not wish In the least to be misunderstood, and I assure you I am not in any degree blinking the situation, nor am I unwilling to take the fullest responsibility for the measure of redress as I believe this to be, which I am presenting to the House in the Bill now under consideration. Not only were there, in many instances throughout Manitoba the redistribution of names I have pointed out as absolutely requisite under this system of registration by registration districts, of these districts not corresponding to the boundaries of any Dominion constituency. but there was also a similar redistributing of names in cases where that was made requisite because of the Dominion returning officers subdividing polling divisions as they had existed for provincial purposes. The statute under which the registration of voters took place in Manitoba provides for the delimitation throughout the province of registration districts or of polling subdivisions. That statute had been repealed, or these provisions of that statute had been repealed, by the legislative Act which I have already mentioned and which was passed by the Manitoba legislature in the spring of 1904. The authority for the existence of provincial polling subdivisions had been, by that repeal, swept away, and nothing substituted for it; and the result was, when you came to October and November, 1904, and the writs were issued for a Dominion election, there was impossibility on the part of the returning officers to comply with the provision of our Dominion statute which requires the adoption of provincial subdivisions for the purpose of Dominion elections. In many cases, the registration districts of the province, which were supposed to correspond with the polling divisions, and which, I presume, in the main did so correspond, and according to which the voters were grouped, consisted of territories so large as to be altogether unwieldy and in which it was impracticable, it was physically impossible, to poll the vote at one polling booth within the hours assigned for the voters. A case has been mentioned to me by one hon. gentleman from Manitoba as coming within his personal cognizance, where the registration district was over fifteen miles from end to end and where there were two settlements in the same registration district divided by an impassable swamp, a swamp that you had to go round, and which made the colony at one

end, distant, for all practical purposes, from tlie poll, if it was at the other end, so many miles that it was a physical impossibility for the people there to record their votes. Now, this is not a matter of political difference ; it is a matter of men entitled to vote being physically unable to record their votes between 9 and 5 o'clock on polling day, simply because they were too far distant from the poll to make the journey. In these circumstances, which existed, or with regard to which something similar existed, in many eases, wholly within some Dominion electoral constituency, the returning officers appointed two polls, giving one at each side of the swamp-to use the illustration to which I have adverted. Then it became necessary to divide, to distribute the names of the voters upon the voters' list in the registration district in precisely the same way. So, this redistribution of names, while it did not take place in every school section or in every community in the province, was scattered, and necessarily scattered. over the whole area of the province of Manitoba, and I am not pretending to the House that this redistribution was limited to cases where polling registration districts were subdivided by county or electoral dig trict boundary lines. In the whole province, I suppose, there is a matter of 50,000 names to be handled upon the voters' list. I tlgnk if you have ten returning officers set down with 50,000 names, 5,000 on the average for each one to distribute according to their proper polling subdivisions, to do [DOT] that work in the four weeks that pass between the receipt of the writ and of these lists, and the polling day, to get together the necessary information and do the best they can, no matter how honestly they may try, you will find a percentage of inadvertences or honest mistakes, and you will find some men who will be disfranchised. The great bulk of the men whose names were struck off the roll in the voting place to which they did not belong, were left on in the voting place where they did belong; and the great bulk of those who were so struck off, 1 will venture to say, voted at the electiou in 1904; they had an opportunity of doing so, at any rate. But if you find any voter whose name was struck off by design and if you find the statute law in such a condition that it is possible, either by inadvertence or by design, that that should take place, you have a condition of things which calls for a change, and calls for legislation in this parliament which would make it impossible, so far as human foresight can do so, that the same state of things should occur again; and that is the whole purpose of the legislation in question so far as this provision of it is concerned. Now I have tried to point out, having reference to the debate in this House, and having reference to the evidence that was given two years ago before the Elections Committee, some indication of how much at
any rate was testified to, of how much was asserted by hon. members of this House in regard to the instances in which members' names were struck off and their votes thereby lost, I say as the result of the evidence which we listened to two years ago. equally as the result of the statements made in this House by the ten members from Manitoba in the debate to which I have referred, and especially upon the statements made by the three hon. members from Macdonald, Selkirk and Provencher, that the aggregate number throughout the whole province of Manitoba, of that whole 50,000 voters whose names had to be handled by the deputy returning officers, would not exceed 100; and if you have in 50,000 voters at the most 100 men whose names have been either by design or inadvertence struck off, it is a percentage, not of one in 100, but at most of one in 500 votes; it is a pretty small percentage. If the number had been even ten times as great, if it had been 1,000 and far more, if it had been 2,000 or 3,000, according to some wild flights of imagination I have seen, we might then find some evidence that there must have been intention, that it could not have been by accident, that there must have been design. But it is manifest that the whole contention that there was in what then took place an intention to do wrong, an intention to disfranchise qualified voters, rests absolutely upon the question of the number of men'in regard to whom that thing was done. In that respect no evidence certainly was offered before the committee of two years ago; I have never heard any evidence offered other than the statements I have referred to; and I suppose that question of numbers is one which never can be decided. I make no point of it here, I say at once with all frankness that if there were even 100 in the province of Manitoba, it is ample to justify some measure of legislative change in that regard which will secure this necessary work to be done in such a manner that it will not, in human probability, go wrong.
Well, Sir, I need not detail what followed. I am only referring- to it in order that I may answer a statement with regard to myself which I have seen rather freely made in the newspapers. The elections of 1904 having taken place in November, and the condition of things I have described as to the rearrangement of names having taken place, prosecutions were promptly instituted under the direction of the Attorney General for the province against the returning officers for, among other constituencies, the three especially I have referred to, Pro-veneher, Selkirk and Macdonald. Originally some sixteen men, deputies and others, were attacked for participation in what was claimed to have been an indictable wrong ; but in the result true bills were found against only one of the officials, the returning officer for Selkirk. That true bill or indictment coming up for consideration in

It is printed Alberta, but that is a manifest misprint, because we had nothing to do with Alberta; it should be :
-in connection with elections held in Manitoba and under the order of that committee all documents in connection with these indictments, exhibits and papers in connection with the election, were transmitted to Ottawa for the purpose of examination by com-Mr. AYLESWOETH.
mittee. The committee has not reported and parliament will not sit until the 28th.
He was speaking on the 17th of November.
These documents are in the possession of the committee, and we shall have great difficulty in getting them unless the committee report to the House this session, which I understand they are going to do.
Accordingly, the absence of these precious documents was made the excuse to tlie judge, in November last, for the unwillingness of Mr. Knott, the representative of the Manitoba Attorney General, appearing for that government, to go on with those prosecutions. I read that statement in the Montreal ' Gazette ' last November with some astonishment. I thought I had a reasonably accurate memory of what had taken place in connection with these documents before the committee In question. I was not then in this country, but on returning I looked among my papers and found my recollection entirely supported by some correspondence which passed between members of that committee in April and May of 1906. It was upon the request of the bon. member for Bast Hamilton (Mr. Barker), as a member of that committee, that the papers in question were called for. Those papers were the papers connected with those elections which were properly in the custody of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery flei'e. That gentleman bad attended with them under subpoena on two different occasions at Winnipeg, travelling there first upon the occasion of the preliminary investigation and secondly when the case was before the Grand Jury or the Petit Jury. They were left in the custody of the court in Winnipeg. In the spring of 1906 it was thought that they might be needed for purposes of reference before the committee in question, and the hon. member for East Hamilton (Mr. Barker) asked that they should be sent for. They were sent for, they came here, they were delivered to the clerk of the committee, and for anything that I know, the clerk of the committee has the original package to this day unopened. I do not remember that the package was ever opened before the committee, perhaps it was; my point is simply that this gentleman, Mr. Knott, himself a witness before the committee, himself counsel for the prosecution and having personal knowledge of exactly the situation In regard to the papers in question, in open court, according to this report in the Conservative newspaper of Montreal, alleged as his reason for not going on with this prosecution in November last, that the committee of which Mr. Aylesworth was chairman held these papers and that he could not get ou without them. Not only that, hut since then, on more than one Manitoba platform, more than one member of the provincial government has charged that I, personally, as Minister of Justice, have had these papers

in my custody, have prevented their presentation to court, and that in the absence of these papers they were precluded by the conduct of the Minister of Justice from probing to its foundation this alleged scandal of which otherwise they were going to make such a manifest exhibition before the courts and before the people of this country. This prosecution, upon the excuse which I have stated, was directed by the presiding judge to stand over until the March assizes this year. On the 3rd day of March, last, these prosecutions were called in the city of Winnipeg and the Attorney General of the province of Manitoba voluntarily entered upon that occasion what lawyers call a nolle prosequi, a formal statement to the officer of the court that he was unwilling to proceed further with these prosecutions which he had launched more than three years before. In the meantime those charges had been canvassed broadcast through this country. I suppose that for the next three years, and possibly for three years beyond that, the same thing will continue, but I point you, Sir, to the circumstance that after three years of consideration and of preparation, if there had been any the least evidence upon which charges such as were so freely made of wrongdoing in connection with the voters' lists upon the occasion in question could have been substantiated by that prosecution, there was the fullest means to their hands to do it, and there was ample opportunity to have justified if they could, by evidence and by the result of that trial, whether or not those men had done anything for which they ought to be condemned. With these prosecutions against men to whom His Majesty's writs for the purposes of a Dominion election had been sent, so instituted by the constituted Crown authorities of the province in which those elections took place, I think, Sir, we should have had difficulty in finding any men willing, in case another election came to be necessary, to execute such writs of election if they were without statutory protection and statutory authority for doing things which are essential to be done if elections are to be carried on at all in the province of Manitoba. We find ourselves accordingly face to face with this situation, that if Dominion elections are to be held in Manitoba, if you are to have men with any stake in the country, men who are not willing to be subjected to legal prosecutions, acting as returning officers, you must point out to them by statute law what course they are to take in regard to distributing the names which they find on the provincial lists to the appropriate polling subdivisions at which these men are entitled to vote.
This Bill accordingly proposes that immediately upon the issue of a writ or, if circumstances render it proper, before a writ issues; men shall be appointed who will act, subject to the revision of the county judges, as a registration board, men who will be act-249
ing upon their responsibility as officers of the law and subject to an appeal to the county judges of the province, whose duty it will be to take the lists of voters and to distribute those voters according to the Dominion polls at which they are entitled to vote, and who, if they do that work conscientiously and honestly, will not be subject to subsequent attack in the courts, by reason of the fact that there has been legislative authority for the work they have been called upon to do. Such legislation is, under the circumstances I have tried to detail, in my submission a manifest necessity, and without such legislation it would be impossible that elections for Dominion purposes could hereafter be carried out in Manitoba.
There are other provisions in this Bill in regard to which I have a few words to say. Not only does clause 1-because I am limiting myself to that clause-deal with the necessity for the distribution of names to their appropriate polling subdivision, but it also provides for a measure of revision of the lists, and this feature of it seems particularly to have excited the indignation and the ire of many representatives of the opposite political party in the Manitoba legislature and the Manitoba government. In noticing the newspaper warfare in Winnipeg and elsewhere that has gone on in the last two months in respect to this provision of the Bill, I could not help being reminded of that to which I alluded briefly at the opening of my observations this afternoon. It was the settled policy of the Conservative party in this country when it was in power from 1885 to 1896, that the Dominion parliament should control its own franchise, that the voters' lists for Dominion purposes should be prepared by officials named by the government of the day, that the provincial lists should be altogether discarded; that no reference to them whatever should obtain in the preparation of the lists for Dominion purposes. Not only was that settled policy introduced and placed on the statute-book by the Franchise Act of 1885 which remained until it was repealed in 1898, but when its repeal was under consideration in 1898 a motion was made by the then member for Westmoreland:
That no system of franchise would be satisfactory which did not preserve federal control over the voters' lists.
That resolution was pressed to vote by way of amendment to the second reading of our present Election Act and the division upon that resolution was an absolute party one. In these circumstances it does seem to me that the Conservative party in this country is certainly-unless it has abandoned the faith of its predecessors-is certainly wedded and wedded indissolubly to the principle of discarding the provincial lists. Speech after speech was made in the debate of 1898 by the leaders and by the prom-



inent members of the Conservative party in this House advocating the retention by the Dominion authorities of absolute control over the preparation of voters' lists for Dominion purposes and arguing strenuously that it was utterly improper for this parliament to abdicate its functions or to entrust the preparation of these voters' lists to any provincial body. Nay more, when the House was in committee on that Bill in 1898, on the 1st of April of that year, (page 2991 ' Hansard '), I find the present hon. leader of the opposition placing himself upon record and insisting that it was unwise on tire part of this House to denude itself of control over its own electoral machinery ; that it was one of the privileges most ancient and most important of this House that it should control its own elections and the preparation of its own voters' lists, and that it was a very unwise thing on the part of parliament to delegate that power to any provincial legislature or to any provincial authority. The opposite view was maintained by the Prime Minister and by the Solicitor General of that day, (Mr. Fitzpatrick), who contended that the proper authority for the preparation of the voters' lists was in origin the municipal authority, and that the proper basis was the assessment roil which contained that element of substantiality to which I have already referred.
In the province of Manitoba and equally in the province of British Columbia and in the unorganized portions of Ontario and Quebec we have under our present law a different system of the preparation of the voters' lists. We have also a totally different system in the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and in the Yukon territory, but legislation on our part is not requisite with regard to these new provinces or to the Yukon territory as such legislation already exists. Under our Election Act a special provision is made for ' Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Yukon, but the provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia, with the unorganized portions of Ontario and Quebec remain the only portions of the Dominion in which the voters' lists are not in their origin and initiation prepared upon the footing of the assessment rolls and by the municipal authorities. Now, what has been the result ? The system in the province of Manitoba-and the system is not different in principle in British Columbia-is registration before an official of the provincial government coupled with revision before some officer, either judge or barrister appointed for that purpose. In the province of British Columbia there seems to have been what I will call a less unsatisfactory administration of the law than has taken place in other parts of the Dominion. There is less complaint in regard to British Columbia but complaint is not absent there, and complaint is. I venture to say, inevitable as long as you have an effort to sand-Mr. AYLESWORTH.
wich together the two systems each of different character, and unless they are to be worked by the same officials. In the province of Manitoba the registration on which the list as it now exists was made, took place at least as long ago as 1903. The lists used in November 1904 were those established in the year 1903, but those lists had been so prepared under the law of Manitoba as it stood in 1903. The legislature by its statute of 1904 provided there should be annually what they call a revision of these lists; not the preparation of new lists but the taking of the lists as they then stood and striking off the names of any persons disqualified or adding the names of any new persons who had become qualified. Since 1904 there has been in Manitoba an annual acting under his provision of the provincial law. I do not think I am doing any injustice to the proceeding which has been taken annually in that province under this provision of their law, if I speak of it as never having been of a very satisfactory character. I think I use a mild word when I say that, and I will explain exactly why. The times at which and within which the revising of the list, such as it is, shall take place are by tlie provincial statute to be fixed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Formerly the dates and places were fixed by the registration board consisting of the county judges but now they are fixed toy the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Whatever the reason, the result has been that the time allowed for the revision in each year since then has been, according to the view at any rate of the one political party, entirely inadequate for the purpose. The statute requires notices of appeal from the registration clerk to be given within a certain number of days from the closing of the work of the registration clerk. The statute empowers the Lieutenant Governor in Council to fix the number of days upon which the revising officer, judge or barrister shall sit in his work, and when the day fixed by the proclamation for the concluding of that hearing of appeals or revising work is passed there is no power on the part of the officer to continue his work no matter how much may remain to be done and no matter how many appeals may remain unheard. When the hour comes which has been fixed beforehand as that at which his jurisdiction ceases there is an end of his right to continue further in his work, and his work, of necessity, comes to an end. Now, to say nothing more, that feature of the system has been highly unsatisfactory. It has been alleged, I do not know with what truth, that in some instances there have remained hundreds of men entitled to vote, or at all events, claiming the right to vote, with their appeals to get on the list standing regularly for hearing by the revising officer, and with the revising officer, judge or barrister, unable to hear those appeals or to

dispose of them, simply because his time has expired. It is alleged that such men are of one political party, that their names are left off right and left by the registration clerks, that their only means of getting on the list and obtaining the right to exercise their franchise is by an appeal to the judge, and that the judge is given, it may be for a whole constituency, but one day between the hours of ten and five within which to do the work of days or weeks. As a necessary and inevitable consequence, if that state of things exists, there must be throughout the province men by the hundred who claim the right to vote, and whose claim it is impossible for them, in the system as it is administered, to get any adjudication of by the constituted authorities for that purpose.
Well, I do not know-I do not suppose anybody can know, without the taking of evidence-whether or not that state of things as so described does exist. I say simply that -men assert that it exists, and I call attention in that connection to a contemporaneous article on the subject which appeared in the Manitoba ' Free Press ' on the 26th of May, 1906. I refer to it for the reason that it is contemporaneous with the happening of the events which the writer is depicting. He says that in the constituencies of Kildonan and St. Andrews registration takes place on the same day as elsewhere, May 29 and 30, while revision takes place at Selkirk on June 6, exactly one week later than the last day of registration. Now, under the Manitoba statute, all protests must be in the hands of the revising officer five days before the sittings of his court of revision, and accordingly it follows, if the statement in that newspaper is correct as to the dates, that there was given only one week within which to revise after the close of the work of the registration clerk, and five days out of the seven in that week would have to run for the purposes of an appeal. In other words, the revising barrister or judge would have to be in possession of all appeals for those constituencies within one day after the close of the work of the registration clerk. When you remember that the registration clerk is appointed for a whole constituency, and that the constituency may be and frequently is 100 miles from side to side, you have some idea of the physical impossibility of conducting an appeal under a system administered as this provincial system is said to have been administered in Manitoba. I am not complaining of the system. The system is spread upon the statute-book. I think it might be improved. I think the system in Ontario to-day is much better. That is a matter of judgment; that is a matter in respect of which the views of the Manitoba legislature are no doubt different from the views I am expressing. They think, I presume, that their system is better than the system in the sister province of Ontario, as 249*
administered by the government of Ontario to-day. But without questioning what the merits or demerits of the provincial system may be, I say that it is manifest that any system, no matter how good, may be so administered that it will be oppressive and unjust, and that there is at any rate ground for complaint that the present system in Manitoba, as at present administered in the preparation of the voters' lists, is an engine of tyranny and oppression as against the party that is opposed to the provincial government.
We have, ever since 1898, retained in the hands of this parliament a power which was deliberately retained at that time, the retention of which was then urged by the present hon. leader of the opposition-the power to prepare our own lists in circumstances such as are described in the statute, circumstances which existed at that time in Manitoba, which continued to exist in that province for six years afterwards, but which were changed a few months before the elections of 1904. In the condition which now exists in Manitoba, with voters' lists which were prepared more than five years ago, with voters' lists that have never been since that time effectively revised, with voters' lists therefore that contain the names of hundreds of men who are either dead or departed from the province, we have lists that need revision. We have lists that ought to be submitted to the work of a revising officer, a county judge or a barrister according to the Manitoba system, with time given him within which he can effectively do that work of revision, within which he can effectively purge the lists of dead men and of absentees, the presence of whose names upon those lists is but an invitation and a temptation to personation. We have lists from which the names of hundreds of men in Manitoba are absent-hundreds of men who, whether rightly or wrongly, claim the right to be upon those lists, and the right to exercise their franchise; men who claim at any rate that they have been prevented from having their claims adjudicated by the insufficiency of the time allowed under the statute for the purposes of revision. When we have lists presenting features of that description, the question is simply what ought to be done in regard to them ? Ought we to adopt the policy which for so many years was that upon which our opponents acted, when, carrying out their views, they had upon the statute-book the ' Domiuion Franchise Act, and when voters' lists for Dominion purposes were prepared throughout the whole Dominion by officials appointed by the government of the day, and the work of the provincial authorities was altogether disregarded.
Or should we, on the other hand, adhere to the policy laid down by this government in 1898 and adopt the provincial system, no matter how ineffective, no matter in how

many features it might be improved, and apply it to the preparation of the Dominion lists ? We have preferred to adhere to the policy of retaining the provincial lists, and not to go to the length, to which the Conservative party went before 1898, of adopting in whole the principle of preparing our own lists altogether from the foundation. We prefer to adhere to the provincial lists, and accordingly, in the Bill I am submitting, the lists as established in the provinces, shall be taken in the preparation of the lists for Dominion purposes, and to them shall be added the names of any persons qualified to vote which are not on them and from them shall be struck the names of all those who are not qualified. The lists so prepared, subject to the revision of a county court judge, shall be allotted and distributed to the polling divisions to be used in the Dominion elections. That is in brief the outline of this clause. We propose to apply it to those parts of the Dominion not already provided for by our own legislation, in which municipal organization and assessment rolls as the basis for the voters' lists, are not to be found ; and with that provision we make the Dominion system consistent with the intention of this parliament, as expressed in 1898. We not only adopt the provincial lists in their entirety as the basis upon which revision and appeal takes place, but in addition we follow completely the provincial method of preparing and revising the- lists, and the lists are made in accordance with whatever laws the provinces choose to enact for their own purposes, as was the intention when the statute of 1898 was passed. That is the outline of this first clause of the Bill. The other provisions of the Bill can be discussed in committee or at a later stage of this debate, more especially as I have already, in introducing this measure, explained their general outline with fullness of detail. I beg to move, therefore, the second reading of this Bill.


Mr.   R L. BORDEN@Carleton, Ont.: We have listened, Mr. Speaker, to rather a remarkable speech from my hon. friend, the Minister of Justice, on the great question of the reform of the electoral laws of this country. That is the subject which it became his. duty to present to us this afternoon. but two-thirds of his speech has been devoted to a consideration of how many voters were disfranchised by the thin red line of 1904, and a very large portion of the balance to more or less irrelevant details of the electoral methods in the province of Manitoba. 1 do not propose to follow my hon. friend into many of these subjects. I do not propose to waste the time of the House by discussing the number of voters disfranchised by the thin red line in 1994, because that has already been discussed in this House over and over again, and there are other matters of much Mr. AYLESWORTH.
more moment in which our time may be occupiel.
There can be no doubt that the election law of this country requires amendment. We have been urging its amendment for the last three or four years. In this connection, I very much regret that the government have not seen fit to bring down, at the same time as they brought down this measure, an additional Bill for the purpose of simplifying the Dominion Controverted Elections Act and doing away with some of those delays and useless proceedings which have rendered the administration of the law a by-word and a disgrace. The government have not seen fit to take that step and I am sorry for it.
My hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) has Introduced a very elaborate Bill which contains many valuable provisions, and I regret that the Bill now submitted contains but very few of the valuable and useful provisions embodied in the Bill of my hon. friend. I do not say that the measure brought down is without merit in some respects. I approve entirely of sections 2 and 3, especially section 3, which supplies a want that has been long felt, namely, the obligation to furnish an address at which all legal processes, notices and other documents can be served on any man who becomes a can didate under the Dominion Elections Act. That will do away with a great many difficulties in regard to service which we have had in the past. It will do away with all those cases in which, by a judgment of a court of the province or a court of appeal, some hon. member of this House, against whom a petition may have been brought, may have escaped any inquiry whatever into his election simply by reason of some technical point raised in connection with the nature of the service. I approve also of section 19 of the Bill, which is a reform we have advocated ; and the object aimed at in sections 18 and 21 is no doubt a very good one, though I do not think these provisions are adequate to. the purposes intended. Section 21 provides :
Every person, including the candidate, and every partnership, association or company making, on behalf of a candidate at an election, any contribution otherwise than to or through the agent of such candidate, is guilty of an indictable offence.
That does not seem to me adequate because the expression ' on behalf of auy candidate ' would leave a very wide loophole whereby those who ought to be punished might escape.
Section 28 seems to me rather to lend itself to the making of political contributions by organizations formed for that purpose than to bring about any reform of the law such as has been attempted by my hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Al-[DOT] corn). However, as that and other sections

come to the observation of the committee will later on, we can then discuss them more fully. For the moment I can only say that, for the purposes intended, section 28 seems to me absolutely inadequate.
So far as section 17 is concerned, it does away entirely with the secrecy of the ballot. And I, for one, am absolutely opposed to any such provision. The guiding principle of the Dominion Election Act has been the secrecy of the ballot, conveying the assurance to each voter that when he marks his ballot, either for one candidate or the other, his choice will remain a secret within his own knowledge and not to be disclosed. When we find the Minister of .Justice proposing to amend the Dominion Election Act by adding thereto the following words :
Provided, however, that no ballot paper shall be rejected on account of any writing, number or mark placed thereon by any deputy returning officer.
-we are face to face with this situation: that if it is desired that the vote of any particular elector shall be known, and the manner in which he marks his ballot shall be known, any partisan deputy returning officer can mark upon it, ' This is John Smith's ballot' and that will be an absolutely good ballot. I see no jurisdiction for any such amendment to the law as that. And I say it is far better to continue the system we have at present, a system which may bring about the voidance of elections now and then, but which will not do away with the secrecy of the ballot, which secrecy is the safeguard of the country and of the voter.
Now, I commend also the provisions of section 11 so far as they go. There has been an attempt there to provide that the forms of oath which ought to be administered in any case to any elector coming for ward to deposit his ballot shall be set forth in the instructions so clearly and unmistakably that no deputy returning officer, no scrutineer and no voter shall have any doubt upon the subject. I approve of the principle embodied in that section, but I say that the section is not sufficiently explicit, not sufficiently definite, and I shall, therefore, ask that it be amended when we get into committee.
I greatly regret that my hon. friend the Minister of Justice-and the government, for that matter-have not embodied in this Bill certain provisions contained in the Bill of my hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn), some, but not all, of which I shall now enumerate. There is no provision in this Bill for the holding of by-elections within a reasonable time, nor is it provided that, where several by-elections are pending, they shall all be held upon the same day. There is no provision by which the respectable character of returning officers shall be assured, and we know from
some experience in the past that this is an extremely important desideratum to the end that we shall have fair elections. There is no amendment doing away with the provision of the law by which certain elections in the province of British Columbia and the province of Manitoba shall be held at a time subsequent to the general election, The time has long gone by when these elections should be delayed. In the province of British Columbia, the provincial elections in every constituency are held on the same day. After examining into the matter very carefully, after going to all the sources of information available, I am thoroughly convinced that there is no reason for delaying these elections in British Columbia, or in any other province beyond the time at which the general election is held.
My hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) introduces very elaborate provisions respecting contributions by corporations and contractors, and I regret to see that the corresponding provisions contained in the Bill introduced by the government are not at all effective to my mind and require very important modifications before they can be said to fulfil in the slightest degree the purpose alleged to be aimed at. There is provision in the Bill of my hon. friend from Prince Edward with regard to civil servants taking part in elections. Its effect is simply to embody in the statute law a principle which has been accepted by the government and affirmed by unanimous vote of this House. I see no reason why it should not be placed on the statute-book that he who runs may read and that the civil servant may know that he must not take an active and offensive part in elections. Then, there is no provision In the Bill now before us against bribery by promise of expenditure of public money, or the withholding of that expenditure, according to the election or defeat of any particular candidate. The provisions in this Bill of the government with regard to compelling payments through official agents are not effective, while those in the Bill of the hon. member for Prince Edward are effective and valuable. The Bill introduced by the government omits the statutory declarations respecting expenditure which are required under the Bill of my hon. friend (Mr. Alcorn).
So much for the details of the Bill-and I pass over them very hurriedly for the reason that it will be our duty to go into them more thoroughly when the Bill is in a later stage. Let me pass now to one or two of the reasons given by my hon. friend the Minister of Justice, and deal with the ostensible reason assigned by him to-day for clause 1 of this Bill which has undoubtedly provoked a great deal of discussion and a great deal of adverse comment throughout the country. Now my hon. friend either said too much to-day or he said altogether too little when he introduced this Bill. For, I

have read most carefully liis remarks on the occasion of the first reading, and I find that he did not allude by one single word in that speech to the preparation of new lists or the revision of any lists whatever in the province of Manitoba or the province of British Columbia. He brought this Bill before the House, and made a very innocent speech with regard to its provisions. We did not know at that time what its provisions were. The hon. gentleman simply pointed out the difficulties that had taken place in Manitoba in 1904 in cases where the boundary of a Dominion riding cut through some local polling division, and he pointed out the necessity of some provision by means of which the distribution of voters to one or another Dominion division could be made in accordance with the law by proper officers and so as not to create any suspicion of unfairness or injustice. But, as to the preparation of new lists in Manitoba or British Columbia, the Minister of Justice on that occasion said not one word in explanation of the Bill the second reading of which has been moved to-day. Well, we have more information on that subject to-day from the hon. gentleman.
I will pass very briefly over a few of the remarks by which he has endeavoured to sustain the recession of his government and his party from the position they took as far back as 1885, when the Dominion Franchise Act was under consideration in this House; which they reaffirmed in most emphatic words in 1893, when they laid down their platform here in Ottawa; and which they reiterated ad nauseam when they introduced and passed, in 1898, the Bill repealing the Dominion Franchise Act. My hon. friend the Minister of Justice declares that there is no provision in the Dominion Flections Act for the case of overlapping, as he termed it, the case where the boundary between two Dominion ridings cuts through a polling division as established under the provincial law. I may not have gathered the intent of the hon. gentleman's remarks in that respect, because, as he proceeded with his argument, lie seemed to refer more or less to the registration districts in Manitoba, and to the cutting of these by the boundary between two Dominion ridings. I do not know what the consideration of registration districts has to do with his explanation of this Bill, because I do not find in this Bill the slightest reference to the overlapping of any registration district, but I do find a reference to the overlapping of polling divisions and to the consequent necessity of distributing the voters of any particular polling division to one riding or the other. Why then did the hon. gentleman spend twenty minutes of his time in discussing the cutting in two of registration districts in the province of Manitoba by the boundary between the two Dominion electoral divisions. I do not see Mr. B. L. BORDEN
the pertinences of the hon. gentleman's remarks. As concerns the cutting of a polling division in two, there is a provision in the Dominion Elections Act under which it was sought to justify, in the province of Manitoba, that which was done, not by the returning officers, but by Mr. Leach, the head of the Liberal provincial organization. I will quote from the Dominion Elections Act two sections :
24.	The polling division _ shall except as herein otherwise provided, be there estab-ished by or under the laws of the province for the purposes of provincial elections within the territory comprised in the electoral district for which the election is held.
25.	Where any provincial polling division, as constituted at the time of the receipt by the returning officer of the writ for an election, lies only partly within the electoral district for which such election is to be held, the part thereof within such electoral district shall, for the purpose of that election, form a separate polling division, or it may be attached by the returning officer to an adjoining polling division; and the returning officer shall, as soon as possible after the receipt of the writ, prepare from the existing voters' lists a separate voters' list containing the names of the persons entitled to have their names placed on the list for such part of such polling division.
That law can be carried out without any difficulty provided you have honest returning officers, provided you have officers disposed to do their duty, and who do not hand over their functions to be discharged by the Liberal organizer in any province, whoever lie may happen to be. The Minister of Justice speaks of the province of Manitoba as if that were the only province in which this overlapping occurs. Does he not know that it occurs in other provinces as well? Does he not know that in the city of Toronto, as I am informed by memebrs of this House from that city, there is exactly the same overlapping? The boundaries of the Dominion divisions are not coterminous with the boundaries of the provincial divisions, and the result is that polling divisions established for provincial purposes are cut through over and over again by the boundaries established for the purpose of Dominion elections. It is not in Manitoba alone that this difficulty occurs, it may occur iu any province, and whenever the legislature of any province sees fit to change the boundaries of the provincial riding this difficulty always occurs and probably always will occur, and that difficulty will have to be met in some way. How is it met in Manitoba to-day ? In 1906, when something of the same difficulty had arisen, it was met by legislation, and I will quote from the statutes of Manitoba for 1906, chapter 23, section 7.
In the event of territory comprised within or partly comprised within an electoral division being changed and included in another electoral division, or other electoral divi-

sions whether newly created or not, a judge of one of the county court divisions of the province, to be nominated and appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, shall subdivide the names appearing on the list of electors, as so finally revised, according to the altered boundaries or limits, and make a complete list of electors for the electoral dvisions affected, as aforesaid, and appropriately divide the names of the electors and allot the territory between suitable polling subdivisions, as shall in the opinion of such judge, be just and equitable.
If any amendment is required it is sufficient to follow the lines of that Manitoba statute, and provide that where the boundary between two Dominion electoral divisions cuts through a provincial polling division in the province of Manitoba, then the voters in that polling division shall be al-loted, by a county court judge, to that particular Dominion electoral division to which they properly belong, and according to the place where they reside. That is required, if anything is required, and nothing more. When the Minister of Justice in his observations to-day endeavoured to make the people believe that anything more was required by the exigency of the case, he attempted a task which I think even his great ability is unable to accomplish.
Now, the hon. gentleman made a very laboured argument-I do not exactly see the pertinence of it, but it was to this effect, that the two systems of preparing voters' lists which prevail in Canada to-day, had their division line in the boundary between Ontario and Manitoba; west of that boundary line there was a system of registration, east of that boundary line there was a system of municipal lists, of lists made up upon the assessment rolls. As I understand his argument, he appeared to draw the conclusion that because of this system of registration in the west, his proposal as embodied in section 1 of this Bill ought to be favourably entertained by this House. Let me point out to my hon. friend that in the province of Ontario to-day there is a population probably fifty per cent in excess of the population of Manitoba, 500,000 or 600.000 people, in respect of whom the voters' lists are made up, not upon assessment rolls, but by a system of registration. His argument either goes too far or not far enough. The city of Toronto, the city of Hamilton, the city of London, all the cities and towns of Ontario with a population of over 9,000, have, I understand, a system of registration and not a system of preparing voters' lists upon assessment rolls.


Mr. GREEN WAY.: The registration the hon. gentleman refers to as prevailing in cities is for the manhood suffrage vote, not for the entire registration.


Robert Laird Borden: I am not very familiar with the law of Ontario, and I speak
under correction. I understand the entire vote in the cities and towns of Ontario may be made up in that way.


Mr. GREENWAY.: Only the manhood suffrage.


Robert Laird Borden: Well, the hon. gentleman is apparently right in that regard. But that does not alter for a moment the argument I was making, that the vote of 500,000 or 600,000 of the population of Ontario is derived from a system of registration, and is not made up on the basis of the assessment rolls.


Mr. LANCASTER.: The hon. gentleman from Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) is not quite right in endeavouring to make the leader of the opposition believe that this registration in Ontario applies only to manhood franchise voters. It applies to any one who is not on the list and who has a right to be on. If he is a property owner he can register under that system. It would apply, for instance, to a property owner who has been skipped by the assessor.


Thomas Greenway: That does not affect what I say at all.


Mr. CONMEE.: There is also a very large section for which there is no list, either registration or municipal. I refer to the unorganized section of Ontario, where you have the unorganized list. I wish the hon. member would make reference to that.


Mr.   I@: What does the hon. gentleman want me to explain ?


Mr. FOSTER.: His unorganized argument.


Mr CONMEE.: I drew attention to the lists in Ontario in the unorganized sections. One of the hon. gentlemen opposite referred to the Ontario lists and I suggested that it would be well for the hon. gentleman to explain this.


Robert Laird Borden: It seems to me my hon. friend's remarks are a little disorganized and as the Minister of Justice did not see fit to put forward one single word in respect of his proposal so far as it affects the unorganized districts of Ontario and Quebec, it would be well if my hon. friend, when lie conies to speak, to supply that omission and to do that which the Minister of Justice should have done if he had regard to his duty to this House.


James Conmee: The hon. gentleman has the floor just now.


Robert Laird Borden: And is likely to have it for some time, but my hon. friend does not seem to be aware of it.
Let us now discuss the observations of the Minister of Justice with regard to the real object of this Bill-and every one understands pretty well what the real object of this Bill is. It is exactly the same Bill that was prepared in 1904, which at that

time they were afraid to bring down to the House. They have screwed their courage to the sticking point on this occasion and have brought it down, and, absolutely regardless of the pledges which they have made to the people of this country ever since^ 1885, they are prepared to take the position that, in these two provinces, Manitoba and British Columbia, where there has been no complaint, so far as I am aware, respecting the list, they wish to make the lists by means of their own officers and will not accept those provincial lists respecting which there has been no complaint. My hou. friend the Prime Minister asked in 1885 where were the petitions, where were the public meetings, where were the complaints in respect of the system of preparation of voters' lists which had existed up to that time. The Minister of Justice today said that if statements made to him were correct-a favourite form of expression with the Minister of Justice-there were hundreds of men in the province of Manitoba who had been disfranchised. Disfranchised how ? Disfranchised under what circumstances ? Disfranchised for what reason ? If my memory does not mislead me, I recollect one occasion where the legislature of ^Manitoba passed a special Bill to put on 'the voters' lists some seven or eight men who complained that they had been improperly omitted. Where were these hundreds at that time? Why was their voices not raised then? The Minister of Justice used the expression 'if'' and he bases the whole of this Bill in respect of this matter upon ' if, if, if,' with regard to certain statements he has made to this House. The province of Manitoba has a system of electoral lists which, in the first place, provides that every man in that province may go before a registration clerk and that registration clerk, as I understand the laws of Manitoba, for a period of two months or thereabouts, the months of May and June in each year, sits to receive applications.


Thomas Greenway: Does the hon. gentleman mean to say that the registration clerk sits two months ?


Robert Laird Borden: There is a period of two months during which these men can put in their applications.


Thomas Greenway: A period of two hours.


William James Roche: The proclamations are issued by the first of May and the courts of revision must be completed by the first of July.


Robert Laird Borden: Will the hon. gentleman tell me what his view is of the time during which the registration clerks receive applications ?


Thomas Greenway: I have told the hon. gentleman and this House before that some Mr. R. L. BORDEN
registration clerks sat two hours at a particular point to take applications.
Mr. R, L. BORDEN. So far as the Manitoba lists are concerned, I would like to-quote the opinion of a journal in Manitoba which most strongly opposed the Roblin government at the last election, the Winnipeg ' Tribune.'


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh.


Robert Laird Borden: Did not that paper attack the Roblin government very severely at the last election ?


Thomas Greenway: No.


Robert Laird Borden: And did it not take a stand against-


Thomas Greenway: No, not very severely.


Robert Laird Borden: Well, I am mistaken.


Thomas Greenway: Mistaken in the language.


Mr. R. R. BORDEN.: 1 thought the editor of that paper was a candidate in the Liberal interest in that provincial election. That paper made very strong attacks. However, 1 bow to the hon. gentleman's superior knowledge. He tells me I am mistaken. At all events that journal said this :
To be quite frank, it is our judgment that one of the bright spots in the administration of the Roblin government has been its preparation of the voters' lists. Under the system of registration followed by that government, all parties receive a square deal, and we do not think it has ever been successfully charged against the Roblin government that an injustice in this regard lias been perpetrated. Indeed, the conduct of the Roblin government in the matter of the preparation of the voters' lists has been so much better than one might expect from a party government in these degenerate days, that it has always been a pleasure to the ' Tribune ' to comment on the action of the government. The fact that an attempt is now being made bv the Dominion government to single out this province and have lists of its own prepared, seems to us a sinister proceeding. It is difficult to understand what arguments have been produced to influence the government to depart from the general principle adopted after elections. One would think that the Dominion government had abandoned a sufficient number of its pledges and principles to influence it to at least stand by some one or two in order to save its face.


Mr. S. J. JACKSON.: What is the date of that article ?


Robert Laird Borden: The Winnipeg ' Tribune ' of March 27, last.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: He has changed his politics again since then.


Robert Laird Borden: The Minister of Justice made two rather remarkable statements in dealing with his proposal as contrasted with the operation of this Act in

Manitoba. He said that the time allowed by the officials of the Manitoba government is altogether too short. He spoke of a period of two months in some connection and he tells us that although the provisions of the Manitoba Act are absolutely insufficient, although it is so worked out that men are left off those lists, yet in the preparation of the new lists by officials of this government, they are going to observe, absolutely and thoroughly, the provisions of that law which is so unfair. That is to say, in a period of about 30 days between the issue of the proclamation dissolving parliament and the time of the general election yon are to appoint your officers, you are to give weeks during which the voters may register, and you are apparently according to his view-although X do not find it in his Bill-to have a revision by county court judges in the province of Manitoba, and then you are to print those lists and place them in the hands of the returning officers in time to be distributed to the deputy returning officers all over that province in order that they may perform their duty at the then ensuing election. Did any one ever listen to an absurdity more apparent? Why, the mere statement of it by the Minister of Justice is sufficient to indicate to the House and to the country the true nature of this Bill.
The Minister of Justice told us there have been hundreds of men disfranchised in the province of Manitoba. Has he with him to-day a declaration from a single one of these men to that effect ? Has he the record of any public meeting, has he petitions from any of these hundreds of men declaring that they have been unable to get their names upon the lists in the province of Manitoba under the operation of the present law. The Minister of Justice has not pointed to the name of a single man who so complains. I venture to say that for every man in the province of Manitoba whom he can show to have been wronged in that regard I will bring two from the province of Nova Scotia which is not to be interfered with by this Bill. The Conservatives of the province of Nova Scotia would rejoice if they had the same opportunity for fair lists as that afforded by the Manitoba law. The Conservatives of Nova Scotia have been asking the Liberal government of that province for the last 15 years to permit them to appeal to die county court judges in respect to the revision of the lists and up to the present time that has not been allowed. The only appeal allowed in the province of Nova Scotia is an appeal from the revising board to the sheriff who is appointed by the provincial government and absolutely under their control. The appointment of these sheriffs has been placed absolutely in the hands of the provincial executive by a statute passed some years ago, although in the good old days the appointment of sheriffs was made by the judges in consultation with a representative of the executive government.
The Minister of Justice tells us in the first place that some provision must be made for allocating the voters in cases where the boundary betv,een two federal electoral divisions cuts in two a local subdivision. I have pointed out there is already provision in section 25 of the statute for that purpose, _ and that such provision would be presumably sufficient if there were honest returning officers desiring to perform their duty according to the law. In case there might be any suspicion of wrong-doing, it would probably be a prudent course to provide that such revision should not be made by the returning officer himself but should be made by an independent authority-the county court judge-and I do not think any one in this country would object to a proposal of that kind.
The other part of the proposal of the Minister of Justice is that the provincial lists in Manitoba and British Columbia shall be disregarded although the provincial lists are observed and acted upon everywhere else in Canada. I use the word disregarded advisedly because although the Minister of Justice has some very plausible -words in his Bill, nevertheless section 1 gives it absolutely into the power of this government to make new lists both in Manitoba and British Columbia. In order that there may be no doubt about it let me read the section:
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein contained, voters' lists for the portions of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec which consist of territory not municipally organized and where there is no regular assessment or valuation roll upon which voters' lists are based and for the several electoral districts in the provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia shall be prepared immediately after the issue of any writ for an election in any such electoral district or in any electoral district composed or partly composed of such territory, or at any time when the Governor in Council so directs; and for the purpose of preparing and giving effect to such voters' lists the Governor in Council may appoint all necessary officers and confer upon them all necessary powers.
2.	In the preparation of such lists the provisions of the laws of the province regulating the preparation and manner of revising and bringing into force the provincial voters' list in the like cases shall as far as possible be observed and followed and no person whose name is not included in the voters' lists as prepared and revised shall be entitled to vote.
3.	In the preparation of such lists ithe voters' lists which were prepared for the several polling divisions situate wholly or in part within the electoral district or wholly or in part within such unorganized territory as such polling divisions were established at the last preceding provincial election, and which under the laws of the province, are then or -were last in force, for the purposes of provincial elections, shall be taken, and the

7871
names of voters on such lists shall be distributed anions the different polling divisions established for such Dominion election, so that each voter shall be assigned to his proper poll, and the names of all persons who are not qualified to vote in the said electoral district shall be struck off the said lists, and the names of all persons qualified to vote in the said electoral district and not already on the said lists shall be added to the said lists.
X need not read subsection 4 at present. Now there is nothing ambiguous about that. The provincial lists ' shall be taken ' whatever that means and whatever legal significance can be given to that, but you are to add thereto, and strike therefrom, names as may be necessary, and that is neither more or less than the making of an absolutely new list in the case of these provinces and of the unorganized territories. For what reason is the government of Canada to adopt provincial lists in the five provinces of Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and to declare that the provincial lists which have been established, with an appeal to the judiciary, with proper provision for the preservation of the rights of voters, are to be discarded in these two provinces of Canada which happen at this moment to be under the control of Conservative administrations? Why is it that in these two provinces you are to pass by the provincial lists and to have lists made up by officers of the Dominion government? It has been argued in favour of the proposal, that in Manitoba and British Columbia these lists are made up by men appointed by the provincial administration, and that in the sense that the registration clerks who make them up are appointed by the provincial executive, they are partisan lists. As I understand the laws of Ontario the same thing is true with respect to the registration system there.


Mr. CLARKE.: Not for Dominion elections.


Robert Laird Borden: Am I wrong in my statement?


Edward Frederick Clarke: The registrars are appointed by the Dominion for Dominion elections.


Robert Laird Borden: I am speaking of the provincial registration which goes on in Toronto, Hamilton, London and other Ontario cities. The registration, I understand, stands good for a Dominion election if held within a certain period afterwards.


Edward Frederick Clarke: The Dominion has its own registration.


Robert Laird Borden: Then the hon. gentleman disagrees with me in that?


Edward Frederick Clarke: Yes.


Mr. BRISTOL.: I would be glad if the hon. gentleman (Mr. Clarke) would in the Mr. R L. BORDEN.
course of the debate refer to the section of the Act where he finds that.


Edward Frederick Clarke: I refer to my own experience.


Edmund James Bristol: people of these provinces, and which permit an appeal to judicial authority, the right hon. gentleman should find it necessary to receded from every principle he has laid down in the quotations he has just read and ask parliament and the country to consent to the preparation of lists by this government. in absolute disregard of those prepared by the provincial authorities?
At six o'clock, House took recess.
After Eecess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


Robert Laird Borden: Mr. Speaker, I desire to refer to the argument with regard to the boundaries of registration districts of Manitoba which are supposed to be not coterminous with the electoral divisions or with the polling divisions. I hold in my hand the Manitoba ' Gazette ' of 25th April, 1908, in which appears an order in council passed by the Manitoba government shortly before, setting forth the names and post office addresses of the persons appointed to act as registration clerks for the several electoral divisions of the province. I observe that registration clerks are not appointed for registration districts, but for the electoral divisions. In certain of the electoral divisions only one registration clerk is appointed, in others two, in others three, and in others a larger number. The territorial limit of their jurisdiction in each case is that of the electoral division. I am also informed by my hon. friends from Manitoba on this side of the House that under this system which prevails in Manitoba the lists are made up for the several polling divisions as established under the provincial enactment. So the argument of the Minister of Justice seems to have been based upon a consideration of the enactments as they formerly were and not upon the enactments as they are to-day. His argument does not carry any force as it does not apply to present conditions.
If there is nny difficulty about the overlapping of polling sections, to which I have already alluded, let it be borne in mind, in the first instance, that it is not confined to Manitoba and British Columbia. It should be borne in mind, in the second place, that any such difficulty can only be properly met by providing for the allocation of the electors by the county court judge upon such principle as that contained in the Manitoba Act to which I alluded to-day.
I would like to remark once more that no unfairness in making the lists for any province has been brought to the attention of the House except in the srate-ment of the Minister of Justice based upon a hypothesis which he has not been able to prove. It has been stated to me that the Prime Minister of Manitoba has challenged, both inside and outside the legislature, his political opponents or any person Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
within the province to bring to his attention the case of any man who has been unfairly deprived of his franchise in that province. Further than that, I am informed on the best possible authority that during the recent session of the legislature in Manitoba he asked his opponents whether they had any amendments to suggest to this Act and no amendments were suggested. One would suppose that, if the condition of affairs described, by the Minister of Justice prevailed in Manitoba, the active, vigilant opposition in that province would have moved in the legislature for the amendment of the Act. I am not aware that any such amendment has been proposed, or that any reasonable amendment has been proposed which has not been accepted.
Further than that, if the government of the Dominion after having adopted, as they did in the most unequivocal way, the provincial lists, have come to the conclusion that the effect of the Manitoba enactments was not in the public interest and operated unfairly or to the disadvantage of persons in the province who were entitled to vote, or operated unfairly in another way by retaining on the list the names of persons not entitled to vote, such a government, desiring to adhere to the principles of 1885, or 1893 and of 1898 would have brought these matters to the attention of the Manitoba government and would have asked that government to propose to the legislature such amendments in the electoral law of Manitoba as would reform the evils alluded to. But I am not aware that such a proposition has been made, either by the government of Canada of by the Liberal opposition of the province of Manitoba.
Now, what objections can there be to the Manitoba lists and to the British Columbia lists ? In the first place there can be no possible objection on the ground that the lists are not recent. In British Columbia they are revised every six months and in Manitoba yearly. I understand that, if an election were held this autumn, say in September or October, the Manitoba lists used would be those prepared this year, while in Ontario the lists used would be those prepared last year. So far as time is concerned, therefore, there can be no objection to the lists either in one province or in the other.
There can be no objection on the ground of want of appeal, for appeal to independent judicial authority is allowed in every province except Nova Scotia, to whose case I alluded this afternoon. Any one who has any knowledge of the way in which matters work out in practice is surely aware that the real contest in regard to adding names to the list or excluding names therefrom takes place before the final court of appeals. That is my own experience at least in the province of Nova Scotia, and I suppose it would work out in the same way in the province of Manitoba.

No petitions have been received by this House, no public meetings have been held in Manitoba to protest against the alleged iniquities. I do not know how many electors there are in Manitoba; I suppose from 50,000 to 75,000, assuming the population of that province to be about 400,000. Of the 50,000 or 75,000 electors in Manitoba not one has come to this House by way of petition asking for any redress at the hands of this parliament, and not one name has been given by my hon. friend the Minister of Justice this afternoon of any man in the province of Manitoba who has been unjustly deprived of his vote. I would like my hon. friend opposite to give any names, to adduce any instance in Manitoba or in British Columbia which would justify the interposition of this parliament. I can readily understand that under any system, whether a municipal system of preparing voters' lists based upon assessment, or a system of registration, you will undoubtedly now and then And that the names have been improperly omitted from the list or improperly added to it. I have run three elections in the county of Halifax where a municipal system prevails. At every one of those elections I met dozens of Conservatives whose names had been omitted from the list. X cannot give the names of all of them to-night, but I can assure the House that I am stating the fact. I can give the names of some men who were disfranchised at the last election in Halifax. In 1904, John W. Payment, a leading citizen, possessing large property interests in the city of Halifax and outside, found his name was not on the voters' list. Yet he was a very prominent man, president of the Bank of Nova Scotia, and a man actively associated with many business enterprises in the city. Fortunately he discovered that in a remote district, some distance away his name had been put on in another polling division, but in the division where he usually voted his name was omitted. Then there was Mr. George S. Campbell, one of the leading citizens of Halifax, a merchant possessed of a very large amount of property, who found in the last election that his name was not on the voters' list. Dozens of other illustrations could be given of men who, under that system, were deprived of their vote in that election. This does not necessarily prove that the Dominion parliament should intervene, after it has once adopted the system of relying upon provincial voters' lists. I do not care whether you have a municipal system or a system of registration, notices must be given, proceedings must be taken in order that justice may be done and that names may be struck off the list or added to it. My hon. friend the Minister of Justice has not given any names of persons deprived of their votes; X have, and I happened to remember just by chance this
afternoon that some papers were sent to me a year ago from the province of Nova Scotia touching the default of a revising officer in not posting a list of names sent to him for the purpose of an application to strike them off, and another list of names sent to him for the purpose of having them added. By reason of the default of that revising officer, fifty-five names were left on the list which should have been struck off, and eighteen names remained off the list which should have been added. The case went before the revising officers for consideration and they decided that the fifty-five names should be struck off and that the eighteen names should be added. The case went upon appeal to the sheriff of the county, a gentleman appointed by the present government, and a strong partisan, and that official decided-I am not impugning his decision- that because the revising officer, without any default whatever on the part of the men who were seeking to make these changes in the list, happened to neglect his duty, the list could not be touched, and the fifty-five names of persons who should not be upon the list remained there, and the eighteen names of persons who should appear on the list disappeared therefrom. Instances of this kind will occur under any system. But I respectfully submit that even if such instances were brought to the attention of the House in respect to the list of Manitoba, there would be no more ground for interfering with the list of that province than there would be for interfering with the list of Nova Scotia under the conditions to which I have alluded.
My hon. friend the Minister of Justice says that if this Bill does not pass it will be impossible to procure returning officers who will undertake the duties of their office. Let me say to my hon. friend the Minister of Justice and to the government, that any returning officer in this country who observes the provisions of the law need not have the slightest apprehension. It is only the man who surrenders his functions to the organizer of a party, and who may thereby be called to account in the criminal courts, that need have the slightest possible fear as to any consequences which will result to him by reason of his undertaking this responsible office. I might retort to my hon. friend the Minister of Justice that if this Bill does pass it will be impossible for the Conservative party to get candidates to remain in the field, or to enter the field, either in Manitoba or in British Columbia. What would they expect? They would expect that some gentleman such as Mr. Leach, or an organizer of that character, would, under the apparent sanction of the law, accomplish in 1908 or 1909 what was accomplished without the sanction of the law in 1904. Although I do not desire to take any but a reasonable attitude in regard to this Bill, I do submit to the Prime Min-

788a
ister and to this House that we are entitled to treat this Bill exactly as if it provided in terms, and not merely in intent, that no person other than a supporter of this government shall be elected either in Manitoba or in British Columbia. A very prominent member of the Liberal party in 1885, in debating whether the Dominion Franchise Act ought to pass, used this language :
Give us the power of appointing the revising officers and we can determine beforehand who will command a majority in this House.
Now, if there were any cause shown, any reasonable cause shown to this House why we should interfere in Manitoba or British Columbia rather than in Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick, or Ontario or Quebec, there might be some ground for considering this Bill and treating it as a reasonable measure. But when we realize that it is precisely the same Bill as that which it was intended to introduce in 1904, and when we know that the proposed introduction of that Bill was the signal for the intimation to the Liberals of Manitoba in the spring of that year that they need not pay any attention to the lists because there would be lists prepared by Dominion officials for the election of that year; when we realize that the interference with the lists of the province of Manitoba and the province of British Columbia is altogether unauthorized and unjustifiable; and when we realize that my hon. friend the Minister of Justice put it very frankly this afternoon when he said that the lists prepared under the Manitoba statutes were not very acceptable to some members of the Liberal party in that province; when we realize all this, we cannot treat this measure otherwise than as an intensely partisan one. Show me, in the first place, the wrong that has taken place under the Manitoba Act; show me the wrong that has taken place under the statutes of British Columbia relating to the preparation of the lists; show me that you have brought those alleged wrongs to the attention of the governments in both provinces and that they have refused to redress them; show me that this government has made any representation whatever on this subject to the government of either British Columbia or Manitoba, do this, and you make the foundation at least for the consideration of some measure of amendment, some measure of reform. But until you have done that, until you have furnished to the House something more than the hypothetical statements of the Minister of Justice this afternoon, I venture to think that my right hon. friend the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) on reflection will come to the conclusion that this measure, so far as the particular section is concerned, ought not to be pressed.
Mr. Speaker, I apologize for having trespassed so long on the attention of the Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
House. So far as the proposed Bill effects any reforms of the electoral law of this country, I am prepared to give to the government a hearty and earnest support in their endeavour to improve existing conditions. But so far as concerns those provisions of the Bill which take away the secrecy of the ballot and provide for an unjustifiable interference with the voters' lists in British Columbia and Manitoba, I for * my part will give them as strong and vigorous resistance as my physical strength and energy will permit.


Thomas Greenway: Mr. Speaker, I may be pardoned for taking the first opportunity that presents itself to offer a few remarks on the subject which is now before the House, because it was one of the first subjects upon which I had the pleasure of addressing the House when I came to this parliament. I pointed out then the difficulty under which we laboured in having no lists for the Dominion in the province of Manitoba, and I make that statement now. My hon. friend (Mr. R. L. Borden) is a lawyer and I am not, but I will take issue with him in saying that there is no provision in the law by which we may legally have a voters' list for the House of Commons in Manitoba. My hon. friend devoted a good deal of time to what the right hon. the leader of the government (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) said years ago, that he was in favour of the provincial franchise. That may be right or it may be wrong, I have never had very strong convictions upon it either way, but I do know that the use of the provincial franchise places the electors sometimes in an anomalous position. I am going to suggest to the government now a matter to which I have given a good deal of consideration. I refer to the case of people from other parts of the Dominion, from Ontario for instance, moving to Manitoba, people who have lived all their lives in Ontario, people who have always been British subjects, and who have all the qualifications necessary to vote in Canada, but who, if they go to Manitoba, are immediately met by the Manitoba law which provides that they shall not be upon the list unless they have resided 12 months in that province.


Mr. BENNETT.: The Act in Ontario was the same for years until this year.


Thomas Greenway: I cannot help that.
I believe in some respects it works that way now, but I do say that there ought to be, if it can be worked out, some provision by which persons of that kind should be able to go and register their votes when the time comes. Whether that should be done by supplying them with a certificate from their previous place of residence, or by some other method. I leave to others to work out, but anything that places a man

in that unjust position appears to me to be an unjust law.


Robert Laird Borden: Tbis Bill would not redress that?


Thomas Greenway: Not as far as it has gone, but I had hoped that something might be suggested.


Mr. BARR.: Would my hon. friend suggest that foreigners and others coming in should have the right to vote immediately on arriving there?


Thomas Greenway: I was not talking about; foreigners, I was talking about British subjects, about citizens of Ontario. I take the position, and I think I am correct in taking it, that we have no provision for making a list for the constituencies of the House of Commons in Manitoba, so that if 1 am correct and I think I am, my hon. friend will see upon reflection that there is not such a provision as he quoted this afternoon.


Robert Laird Borden: There is the same provision in Manitoba as elsewhere. The Franchise Act provides that the provincial lists in all the provinces shall be taken.


Thomas Greenway: If my hon. friend puts the construction he does upon the law he read to us this afternoon, and as a lawyer he ought to be capable of construing it, why was it that we had those prosecutions in the province of Manitoba?


Mr. PATERSON.: Hear, hear.


Thomas Greenway: Why was it that the Attorney General of Manitoba prosecuted the returning officers for doing what they might have done, according to my hon. friend, under the law? It would be well for my hon. friend to answer that.


Robert Laird Borden: I would refer my hon. friend to the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Rex vs. Duggan, which set forth very distinctly what the difficulty was.


Thomas Greenway: I was very much pleased with my hon. friend in the first part of his remarks. It did me good to hear my hon. friend say: I do not propose to discuss the red line. That is a subject out of which my hon. friends since the year 1904, have tried to make more capital than anything else I know of, and for that reason, because my hon. friend would not discuss it, I propose to say something about it before I sit down.
I was referring to my hon. friend's speech in reference to the right hon. the leader of the government and other Liberals who took the ground in 1885 that it was proper to have the provincial franchise. I presume that my hon. friend believes that to-day, but he does not find the machinery by which he can do it. There is no machinery by
which he can do it, and I defy my hon. friend or any one who supports him to take the lists we have in Manitoba and compile from them a correct list for any Dominion constituency. The voters upon'the list are not sufficiently designated to enable that to be done. My hon. friend asked this afternoon with a good deal of gusto why were men disfranchised ? I will tell my hon. friend why they were disfranchised. It is because they had no opportunity to get on the list. I have here the proclamation to which my hon. friend refers in which the government of Manitoba undertake to show they are going to deal very fairly with the people and to give them a little more time than formerly for registration. But what are the facts? Here it is under date April the 25th. They provide a registration booth for the class of people they don't want to give an opportunity to of getting registered, and if they do register they compel them to travel 100 miles. That is what my hon. friend calls a square deal.


William D. Staples: Would the hon. gentleman say where, in this registration that is to take place in the near future, a man will have, in one instance at least, to travel 100 miles to register?


Thomas Greenway: In Selkirk, and my hon. friend who represents that constituency will verify what I say.


William D. Staples: The hon. gentleman is entirely wrong.


William Frederic Kay: I hope my hon. friend (Mr. Staples) will continue asking questions ; he asked me this afternoon about the registration clerk coming to a district and spending two hours for the purpose of revised the list. I knew what I was talking about, I lived in Crystal city where it was done. The Minister of Justice spoke about registration districts, but in those days there was nothing else although we were asked to make a voters' list upon the polling subdivisions which the government had made. I have the evidence of that right here too. Let us have another sample of the fair play of these gentlemen, and here, it is on their own record. In the large local division of Springfield, situated in the constituency of Selkirk, they have a very large amount of business to do if they make a correct list because there are a large number of foreigners-to whom my hon. friend has referred1-who are not on the list, and so far as the Manitoba government is concerned they are very anxious they should not be on the list. In this district of Springfield they have a number of places for the registration clerk to meet, and the last place he meets is at Springfield on the 6tl) day of June and the court of revision for the whole district-to be wholly completed in one afternoon-is held on the 12th of June. Let me say another word about a

square deal. In the old days when we prepared a list we got it printed, we sent it to the school houses and the post offices and the other places designated in the Act, thus giving the people an opportunity [DOT] to see whether some were omitted, or voters that should be on. We gave thirty days for that. But now we have a registration clerk, he goes to the office and he does his work there, he is supposed by law to make a list of what he has done, and when he goes outside the door he tacks the list on the door and that is all the notice you get. That is what the hon. gentleman calls a square deal. Then, if you are going to complain of any one who Is on the list you are supposed to furnish the registration clerk with his name and post office address and that complaint is to be sent by registered letter to the person complained of. I have here a list of the local constituency of Mountain and upon that list there are 2,194 names and of that number 1,459 have no post office address. The gentleman who complains comes before the judge and he is asked : to what place was the notice sent containing the complaint ; because the judges are very particular and some of us knew how difficult it is to take a name from the list unless we have conclusive evidence. He answers tin-judge: I gave the registration clerk notice that the complaint should be sent to such a post office, and I think that is the right address. Then he is asked if he knows It is right, and if he tells the truth the complainant has got to say that he does not know. My hon. friend was kind enough to remind me of something else and that is that although I have looked over a large number of the lists for the province of Manitoba there was only one so far found where the post offices are given. The hon. gentleman said that this Manitoba government which takes such care of the voters was good enough upon one occasion to solemnly pass an Act of parliament to place certain individuals upon the list in order that they might vote. Well, I have that Act here. An election was coming on and I suppose somebody suggested that perhaps they were going to be shy a few votes in that district, and they had better make a few. Now, this was a premeditated mode of doing business and I am going to show how they made the voters. I am told in reference to this, but I do not know as to the truth of it, that the registration clerk had omitted to put 25 names on the list, but there are not 25 mentioned in this Act of the legislature. The Act reads:
Now therefore His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the legislative assembly of Manitoba, enacts as follows:
1. The names of Eugene Derby, Thomas Smolok, John Craigie, Hanson A. Larson, John George Thomas, Petro Kosar and Frederick Orris are hereby added to the list of electors for said polling subdivision <No. 13 Mr. GREENWAY.
of the electoral division of Kildonan and St. Andrews.
And the names were added with no address or designation of any kind, and somebody went to try and find them and they could not, and the only time they had ever been seen was upon polling day, so I am told. Will my hon. friend say that it is right to put names on the list without any designation whatever, as to where they are to be found, or where they can be complained of,, or where they can be canvassed if somebody wanted to canvass them? That is what my hon. friends, I presume, would call a square deal.


Robert Laird Borden: Does the hon. gentleman say that the names were not entitled to go on the list ?


Thomas Greenway: I do not know. I am not going to give the hon. gentleman anything but what I can verify unless I qualify it with the statement I have made just now. I do not know that it is worth while dwelling upon tihe list, for, after all, that is not the question. If the list were what it ought to be or what it might have been, if these gentlemen had undertaken to do what they might have done, and that was to make the polling subdivisions coterminous with the boundaries of the electoral divisions for the House of Commons, there would be no need of this. But I say again, I defy any man to take the list and go over it, and from that list, with the information upon it, put the voter in his proper place. If you have to find out from other sources, you must have the means of taking evidence.
I will give my hon. friend another reason why people are disfranchised. The revising officers are by this proclamation and by the law designated for certain points. The longest they sit at any one point is from eleven o'clock to six. Where the hours are not specified, according to this proclamation they sit from one to six, for the revision of the list for a whole local constituency. During the time of the revision of 1904 one of the revisers came to a point where the country was divided, and it was represented to him that there were a number of voters at a certain point who ought to get the opportunity to go upon the list. He adjourned the court that day, and called it the next day at the point named, and there put 38 names upon the list. Then what happened? When tlie list came into the department, those hon. gentlemen who want to be so very fair tore the names out of the book. There was no red line nonsense about that.


William James Roche: Would the hon. member for Lisgar be fair enough to state that Judge Walker, the chairman of the registration board, reported to the government that this officer had held a court of revision illegally, after his certificate had expired.


Thomas Greenway: I am not talking ' about the legality of it; I am talking about

what was done. If there was a law that would allow a man to commit an outrage like that, the law ought to he changed. Now, Sir, what about this list? The body of the list was made in 1903 ; it is a five-year-old list; and I am somewhat like my hon. friend the leader of the opposition -I do not know how he is going to weed it out. The little things that have occurred since then have been merely revisions, and notice is now given in this proclamation that it is not necessary for those on the list to appear at the court of registration. It is simply necessary to revise the list.
Now, I want to say a word about all this talk that has taken place with regard to the thin red line. My hon. friend, though he does not like to discuss it, does not let it come near him unless he has a slap at Mr. Leach. My hon. friend from North Toronto, who is not at present in his seat, shouted :	A man appointed to distribute
the seed grain in the west who disfranchised thousands upon thousands.


An hon. MEMBER.: Hear, hear.


William D. Staples: What salary did he draw last year ?


Thomas Greenway: I want to say this, that if my hon. friend knew Mr. Leach as well as I do


An hon. MEMBER.: Did you recommend him ?


Thomas Greenway: No, I did not. He did not need any recommendation from me. He is a good, respectable citizen of Manitoba, who is incapable of doing the things they alleged, and what happened ? In all their prosecution or persecution of him did they show that he disfranchised anybody ?


Mr. A. JOHNSTON.: They dropped him.


Thomas Greenway: Yes, they dropped him, because they did not have anything against him. Now, I think perhaps I have said enough about the list ; the less said about it the better, so far as its character is concerned. As I said before, that is not the trouble. If we had the means of preparing a list for the constituencies of Manitoba from the local list, with the information which we have there, then I would say that the argument which my hon. friend has laboured so long at might have some force in it; but we have not, and we have to make some provision for it.


Mr. SPROULE.: If that be correct, does it not indicate the need of a Dominion franchise and Dominion machinery to compile the list ?


Thomas Greenway: I would hail it with pleasure, so far as I am concerned.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Then why did they repeal the one we had ?


Thomas Greenway: What has that to do with the subject we are discussing ? If 250
somebody believed something ten years ago and changed his mind, does that upset everything ? My hon. friends opposite must have changed, because now they are arguing against what they argued for in 1885. So that we have all been changing, I hope for the better. '
Now, Sir, we have had various exhibitions with regard to this thin-red-line business. We had a gentleman in the legislature of Manitoba saying this :
Mr. Speaker, I say there is not a man, either in this House or outside of it, who would venture to undertake to defend the appalling, the outrageous conduct of the employees of the Dominion government with respect to the manner in which some 9,000 of the best citizens of this country were deprived of their liberty and franchise previous to the last general election.
1 suppose I hardly need tell who it was said that. It was the great author of this scandal. 9,000 people were deprived of their franchise. He got down to particulars, and so, when Mr. Leach was appointed by this government to look after the distribution of seed grain, the Montreal ' Gazette,' a leading paper-a respectable but a misled paper, so far as that was concerned-came out with this comment. Here is a man, it said, appointed to distribute seed grain for the western provinces who disfranchised, because of their Conservative leanings, 1,131 in Lisgar, 1,395 in Portage la Prairie, and 1,406 in Selkirk. Well, I stand here in my place and say that there is not one word of truth in that statement.	I have lived in
Lisgar, formerly called Selkirk, for nearly thirty years. I know nearly every man in it, and when I heard of this having taken place during the election of 1904, I took care to find out exactly how many people had been left off the lists in my constituency. My hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) gave the number to the House this afternoon. There were six Liberals left off-by mistake, I presume- and there were three Conservatives who had been misplaced, and consequently had to go to another division to vote. That is the sum and substance of the whole thing, so far as Lisgar is concerned. Do you suppose that if there had been twenty men in Lisgar, prominent citizens, who ought to have their votes-because Lisgar is an old place, there are not many foreigners who go into it, and there is not much change in the people, so that the vote remains about the same-do you suppose that I would not have heard of it and found these men grumbling at being deprived of their vote ? And yet we have this veracious newspaper saying that 1,131 had been disfranchised in Lisgar. In connection with this, my hon. friend, who is the chief exponent of this outrage, undertook to particularize.


An hon. MEMBER,: Who made that statement in the House?


William Frederic Kay: I shall tell you'in a few minutes. I want to keep you thinking awhile. I thought possibly some gentleman might have suggested the name, tout this same gentleman, on another occasion, made a speech in which he undertook to particularize. I have got his name written on the top of this sheet in red ink. The first letter of his name is Rogers. He went to the constituency of my hon. friend who feels very nervous on this red line business, and he made a speech to explain how this disfranchisement had been done and how it had affected the different local constituencies- because it was a local matter-in that district. He selected Hamiota and he said, giving the numbers of polls from No. 1 to 9, that 777 voters had been disfranchised in Hamiota because they were Conservatives. Well, as a matter of fact, there never was polled in Hamiota any more than 740 altogether. He had disfranchised more Conservatives than were there, by 40 nearly. Let me say this to my hon. friends in all good spirit. I would like, as a sort of climax to this thing, if they would furnish me with the names of fifty people-my hon. friend said 100, and I think I said 100, when I first spoke on the subject, but I have reason to believe that is entirely too much- but I challenge my hon. friends to furnish me with the names of fifty people who were disfranchised in Manitoba by having their names dropped off the lists.


Robert Laird Borden: Will the hon. gentleman give us the names of fifty who should be on the list and were not ?


William Frederic Kay: In my constituency?


Robert Laird Borden: In all Manitoba.


Thomas Greenway: I am asking my hon. friend who complained that names were struck off, to give me the names of fifty.


Robert Laird Borden: I am asking the hon. gentleman to give me the names of those who were left off the Manitoba lists who should be on. Does he say that any names were improperly left off?


Thomas Greenway: I do.


Robert Laird Borden: Who are they?


Thomas Greenway: I say there are a good many. I say it is the most imperfect list we ever had for another reason, because there are many names on the list that ought to be off.


Robert Laird Borden: Will the hon. gentleman give us the names?


Thomas Greenway: I can give the names right in my own neighbourhood. I can mark them right on this list which I have in my hand, and my hon. friend can see them if he wants to. My hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) said something this afternoon about the committee of which I had the honour of being Mr. GREENWAY.
a member and of which he was chairman. What was the sum and substance of the whole thing? Chief Justice Howell was on the one side and Mr. Knott on the other, and when we got through we discovered that two men had been left off the list One was named Johnson; I forget the name of the other. I suppose we shall have to get the names, but they can be got from the evidence. One was left off because of some doubt about his residence, as to whether it was in Winnipeg or in the constituency of Macdonald. That was all the direct evidence we got. If there had been any considerable number disfranchised, why were not witnesses brought here to prove it? As the expenses of the witnesses were paid, it would have been easy to get them. I took occasion to say in this House in 1905, as I say now, that we had no Dominion lists. in order to show that we had none, I sent over to the icing's Printer and asked him to send me the voters' lists for the constituency of Lisgar. What did I get? I got a list containing 7,334 names. There were over 4,000 belonging to Lisgar, and the balance of 3,000 had. to be distributed between Provencher, Macdonald and Souris. Somebody had to do the distributing, and Mr. Knott told us, in his evidence, that he did not see any other way it could be done than the way it was. Now, I say that there is no local provision for doing this.


Robert Laird Borden: Apart from the question of distribution, was there anything wrong with the list?


Thomas Greenway: Not that I know of. I am not sure about that. My hon. friend from East Grey (Mr. Sproule) was kind enough last session to pay me a little attention. He said that I would not have been elected for Lisgar had it not been for the * thin red line.' I took the trouble to look up the figures so as to make a comparison which would enable the House to judge how far the hon. gentleman was correct in saying that. Lisgar is a pretty well established place, and one in which there are not many changes. In the local election of 1907, when our friends of the provincial government had the compilation of lists in their own hands, doing it at their own sweet will-and some of us know what that means-there were something over 3,200 votes polled as against 3,134 for the Dominion in the election of 1904. Now, in that election and on that voters' list I had a majority of 180. But in the provincial election in which, as I have shown, there were about 100 more votes polled in what constitutes Lisgar, three out of the four local members who represent that district three were Liberals and the Liberal majority was 184. That shows that there was not very much the matter with Lisgar. Or, take another illustration: The vote polled in the whole province of Manitoba in the Dominion election of 1904-estimating Dauphin at
7889	MAY 5, 1908	7890
what it had been before-was 51,988, and in the local election of 1903 it was 52,232, or a difference of 244. I am sure hon. members will understand that in a local contest where you have forty-two constituencies and eighty-four organizations you are likely to accomplish more in polling votes than when you have only twenty organizations. Or, let us come down to the election of last year. In the local election of last year the vote polled was GO,593. But the increase was all, or nearly all, attributable to Winnipeg, which, in 1903, had a polled vote of 9,G30 and in 1907 of 17,324, an increase of 7,694. Deduct this increase in Wipnipeg from the total vote polled in the province and you have left 52,899, as against 51,998 in the Dominion elections, a difference of only 911.	'


Samuel Jacob Jackson: In three years.


Thomas Greenway: And I Say, in defence of my province, that Manitoba is not increasing very rapidly in population for the reason that a great many of our young men are going to our western provinces to get free land.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: That would account for the small increase in the vote in that time.


Thomas Greenway: That is exactly what I say.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Take, for instance, the case of Ontario. The newspapers a few days ago said that over 5,000 residents of Ontario have left for the west. Our lists must be decreased in proportion as these who are leaving us are voters. If young men are leaving Manitoba for the west, it would be necessary to accept the same condition of things as in Ontario.


Thomas Greenway: I am pointing out that the great increase outside of Winnipeg is in the western provinces. Now, Winnipeg is going to be a very large city, for it is the distributing point not only for Manitoba, but for the western provinces as well. You can see what it did in the way of votes-17,000 as against 9,000 three years before. And then hon. gentlemen opposite will go out and we shall hear them expounding the iniquity of the ' thin red line.' But, Mr. Speaker, I am impressed with the idea that this is a sample of the political capital which these gentlemen try to make. But their percentage of accomplishment is small. What they have accomplished in their exposures is not at all alarming.
Now, I just want to say that I am in hearty sympathy with the proposition that we should have a fair list in the province of Manitoba, and if my hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) can find any way in the law which governs the compilation of the lists by which he can increase the length of time necessary or make more registration places he should do so. I do not suppose we are confined 250J
to time-you can make the time longer in order to make it right. But I would like to see a law adopted to enable those authorized to deal with the matter to compile a fair list, and, to use the words of the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden), ' give everybody a square deal.'


Mr. GEO. O. ALCORN (Prince Edward).: The hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) has emulated the Minister of Justice this afternoon and has made a stump speech- the same stump speech that he gave us in 1905. I am a little curious to know upon what sections of the Bill we are supposed to be discussing the hon, gentleman thinks he has thrown any light. He did not through the entire length of his speech by one syllable refer to any section of this Bill. Probably the best answer which could be made to his.speech would be to read to him and the House when the proper time comes the salient parts of the Manitoba Election Act of which he appears to be entirely ignorant. This same gentleman (Greenway) was for twelve years premier of the province of Manitoba. He attacks the Election Act of his province very viciously, without saying anything about the Bill now under consideration.	,
Surely, Mr. Speaker, if that Act is so very bad that it left the province over which he presided for twelve years in such a mixed condition as to its election law, he himself must be largely to blame. The hon. gentleman then spent a good deal of time in showing from various lists relating to his constituency how it was that he came to be elected to this House. No doubt that is a curious fact and one which requires some explanation. Reverting to the Bill now before the House, it appears to me that foremost amongst the matters of principle with which that Bill deals, and proposes to make law, are the following four. By section 1, the principle is introduced that in all cases of Dominion elections in unorganized Ontario and Quebec and in Manitoba and British Columbia there should be new Dominion voters' lists made up by new Dominion officials, after the issue of writs for an election, distinct from the provincial lists. That is the principle of the first section. Then by section 13 we have introduced the principle of numbered ballots, a principle which finds no place in the Act as it now stands. The introduction of that principle in the eases to which it applies will effect the destruction of the secrecy of the ballot, and in my opinion will open the door for a great deal of corruption. The third principle is introduced by section 17, and is one which we can easily understand. That section deals with the marks which may be placed upon ballots by deputy returning officers. I have simply to observe here that the principle sought to be introduced by that section is the absolute and total destruction of the secrecy of the ballot. Surely,

pared, or appeals? lieard and determined shall forthwith after the said period of 30 days or forthwith after the determination of such appeals, deposit in the [DOT] offices of the sheriff, the stipendiary magistrate, the police magistrate and the clerk of the peace, respectively, a certified copy of such list.
So that there are four public offices in which this list is open and available to the public.
That is the procedure laid down by the statute with regard to the compilation and revision and bringing into force of lists in unorganized Ontario, and I would submit to the House whether they can see any flaw in those proceedings, whether they be not eminently fair, impartial and effective.
The first clause of the Bill before the House provides that separate lists shall be prepared after the issue of the writ for any election and that the Governor in Council shall also have the right to order such lists to be made at any time. Now would this be possible in the case of unorganized Ontario ? The time required to post the notices would be say, ten days. The sheriff could not very well occupy less than ten days in driving all over one of these northern constituencies and putting up the notice at the various places indicated by the statutes. The notice to be given of making the lists is thirty days. The notice of appeal is also thirty days and the time occupied in hearing the appeal and correction and deposit of the list is five days, making a period of seventy-five days. By section 86 of the Dominion Act the returning officer is to post up his proclamation within eight days after it is received. It is to remain up eight days, and seven days after that the polling takes place, so it might be that an election might be called on within twenty-three days from the time the returning officer receives his writ. But here in unorganized Ontario wo have a period of seventy-five days which, if this provincial Act is carried into effect, and observed, would be occupied in making the list alone. This government made a list in unorganized Ontario, I think, on one occasion only, in 1904. We have had that experience, and I think the House will be told how and in what manner that compilation and revision took place. It is perfectly evident from the figures I have given, that it is absolutely impossible to observe the provincial law in unorganized Ontario in the making of the list. There is no intention, I am convinced in my own mind, on the part of the government that the law shall be observed. It has not been in the past and would not be if this section was adopted. What we have had in the past is just what we may expect in the future with certainty *under this Bill.
As to Manitoba I propose, as shortly as possible, to give the House an epitome of the Act, so that they may judge intelligently of its quality and whether it is such a very


George Oscar Alcorn: bad and ineffective Act as the hon. member who has just taken his seat would lead the House to believe. I have here a copy of the Act issued by the King's Printer of Manitoba, and embodying various amendments of the law, up to and including the year 1906. Any person may be registered who-
(a)	Is of the male sex.
(b)	Is of the full age of twentv-one years.
(c)	Is a British subject by birth or naturalization ; and
(d)	Has resided within the province for one year, and within the electoral division, for which he makes application to be registered as an elector, for three months, next preceding the date of his application for registration.
(e)	Provided, however, that any person otherwise qualified who is at the said date a resident of and domiciled within said electoral division, and who has been a resident of and domiciled within the province for one year, immediately prior to said date, but who has not been a resident of and domiciled within said electoral division for three months immediately prior to said date, shall be entitled to be registered as an elector for the electoral division of and within which he was last a resident and domiciled for three months during the said period of one year.
That is a much more liberal provision than we have ever had in Ontario. In Ontario a man must be resident in Canada for a year and until the session of the legislature before the last, within Ontario for a year, and he must have been resident daring the last preceding three months in the municipality in which he applies to be put on. In Manitoba, when a man has been resident for three months in any electoral district, and for a year in the province, he can get upon the list:
Any person, if otherwise qualified, becoming a natrualized British subject, or of the full age of twenty-one years, at any time up to and inclusive of the last day fixed in an electoral division for the revision of the lists of electors shall be entitled to be registered as an elector.
These are certainly very liberal provisions. Now in regard to the making of the lists, it has been questioned during this debate whether these lists were or were not made annually. The law distinctly provides they must be made annually :
Annually on or before the first day of May, the Lieutenant Governor in Council shall, by order in council authorize the issuing of a proclamation (form 1 in the schedule to this Act) setting forth:-
1.	That it has been determined to add to, correct and revise the list of electors;
2.	The names and post office addresses of the persons appointed by such order in council to act as registration clerks in the respective electoral divisions of the province, for such purposes;
3.	The date or dates on, the place or places at and the hours between which applications for registration and the correction and striking off of names of electors will be received

and shall he concluded in each electoral division;
4.	The date or dates on, the place or places at, and the hours between which courts of revision will be held in the several electoral divisions of the province to consider and decide such applications, and to receive further applications of others to have their names added to the list of electors.
This again is a more liberal provision than we have in Ontario. The judge in Ontario upon revision is powerless to put the name of a single applicant upon the list, unless it comes regularly by way of appeal ; in the first place, he cannot proceed with an application in court as apparently can be done in Manitoba :
That only such persons as shall possess the qualifications to be registered electors under the provisions of this Act, and whose names do not appear on the list of electors, need attend and apply to be registered as electors at the registration sittings of courts of revision.
This provides that all those who are already on the list and who are not objected to shall remain upon the list, which is extremely liberal, and it compares very favourably in that respect with the making of the list in Ontario:
Provided that at least five days shall elapse between the last day fixed in each electoral division for the sittings of registration clerks and the fixed days of sittings of courts of revision in each electoral division.
23. It shall be the duty of the provincial secretary, forthwith after the issuing of the proclamation hereinbefore provided, to publish the same in the ' Manitoba Gazette' and to cause to be published a notice, containing the information contained in such proclamation, in a newspaper published in each of the several electoral divisions in the province, or, if there be no newspaper published in any of such electoral divisions, then in a newspaper which has a circulation in such electoral division, and to have printed in poster form a sufficient number of copies of such notice as shall be adequate, to post up one of such posters in a conspicuous place in each of the polling divisions established and maintained at the last previous election held in the respective electoral divisions and at the place or places named in the proclamation at which applications for the registration of electors and for the correction of names and for striking off of names of electors from the list of electors will be received.
So that there is the most ample provision made for giving the utmost publicity to every step in the compilation of those lists :
A registration clerk appointed under the provisions herein contained shall either be a qualified resident elector for the electoral division for which he has been appointed such registration clerk, or be possessed of the qualifications entitling him to be registered an elector of the electoral division for which he has been appointed registration clerk (form of commission of registration clerk, form No. 2 of said schedule).
Every registration clerk shall forthwith, after receiving notice of his appointment take and subscribe to the oath prescribed in form 3 of said schedule of this Act and shall with all convenient despatch thereafter post up or cause to be posted up in the electoral division to which his appointment is applicable. one copy of the poster notice hereinbefore referred to in the manner and at each of the places hereinbefore provided; and a copy of the list of electors for each polling subdivision shall be posted in the respective polling subdivisions, and a complete list of electors for the electoral division shall be posted at the office of the registration clerk.
A further section provides:
Every registration clerk appointed for an electoral division shall sit and attend in the said electoral division at the time or times, place or places and between the hours provided in the proclamation hereinbefore mentioned, and shall at such time or times, place or places and between the hours so fixed, receive the applications of all persons presenting themselves to be registered as electors of the electoral division for which he acts as registration clerk whose names do not appear on the list of electors for such electoral division, and also the applications of any person or persons who desire to have any name or names appearing on any such list struck off therefrom, on the ground that such name or names improperly or wrongfully appear there" upon according to the provisions of this Act '[DOT]elating to the qualification or disqualification of electors and the application of all others who desire corrections to be made in any name or names appearing on said list.
This disposes of a good deal which was said by the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) with regard to the time these registration clerks are to sit. Here is a provision of law saying that the proclamation fixes that time and they are bound to sit during the time named in the proclamation:
Registration clerks shall receive all applications of electors applying in person to be registered electors by means of interrogatories and statutory declaration, as shown in form No. 4 of said schedule of this Act, and of persons unable to attend to make application to be registered, as aforesaid by reason of any of the causes hereinafter set forth in this Act, by means of interrogatories and statute rv declaration, as shown in form No 5 of said schedule of this Act.
To any person not accustomed to this method of registration it is almost a curiosity. The statute provides in parallel columns a series of interrogatories which are to be answered in detail by every elector presenting himself for the privilege of registration. The registration clerk puts the interrogatory and the answer is written opposite the interrogatory in each instance. The full particulars with regard to every case are thus kept a strict record of and [DOT] it is sworn to by the elector and signed by him:
In a book to be provided for the purpose, as hereinafter mentioned, which shall be called

' The Registration Register J and be as in form No 6 of said schedule of this Act, the registration clerk for the electoral division for which he acts or has been appointed, shall enter the names, residences, occupations and post office addresses of all persons applying to be registered as electors in or for such electoral division and the names, residences, occupations and post office addresses of all persons whose names and applications have been filed with him, as hereinafter provided, to have struck off the list of electors, and similar information as to all such applicants.
The registration clerk before registering the name of any applicant for registration in the registration register, shall fill up from the statements of the applicant the blanks contained in the form of interrogatories, and shall also fill up and administer to the applicant the form of statutory declaration at the foot thereof after the applicant has signed the same.
We have had instances cited here to-day, and the newspapers have been teeming with instances of want of observation of matters of form consequent upon which many electors have been disfranchised. As. will subsequently appear both political parties and all applicants hare the right to be present at these proceedings before the registration clerk to see that he performs the functions which are laid down in the Act. If that has not been done it is as much the fault of the political representative present for the purpose of seeing that the law was observed as of any one else. There is also the fullest opportunity given in the Act for those who are sick or absent to become registered voters.
Section 40 says :
Any qualified elector may, on his behalf or on behalf of any other person or persons, file with the registration clerk, an application or applications to strike off the name or names of any person or persons from the said list, for want of qualification, death or removal, or upon any ground as would disqualify such person or persons from having his or their names retained on such list.
. So that every possible step Is provided for in the fullest possible manner.
Durmg^ or at the conclusion of tbe registration sittings, tbe registration clerk shall by registered letter, notify, or cause to be notified, each person against whom application has been made to strike off his name from the list of electors, stating the grounds of such application, and the date or dates on, the time or times when, and the place or places at which the court of revision for the electoral division to which the application relates or refers will sit.
Here we have personal notice given to every man whose name is to be dealt with at the court of revision, sent him through the post by registered letter. Here is a provision that is not contained in the law of Ontario.
Any person who shall have changed his residence from a place in one electoral division


George Oscar Alcorn: to a place in another electoral division, shall be entitled to make application to be registered an elector in and for the electoral division in which be resides, upon filing with the registration clerk a written request

In the form which is given.
All such requests received by and filed with the registration clerk shall be transmitted to the revising officer, and it shall he the duty of the revising officer to strike off such names without investigation or inquiry.
In the event of any manifest clerical error being evident in the description of the boundaries of any registration district or polling sub-division, the revising officer may correct the same and apportion and divide tbe names of electors therein according to said corrected description.
This is id addition to tbe provision to which attention was called this afternoon, under which a judge has the right to make the allotment of names where there is a division of a provincial polling division. There is a further section to this effect:
. The registration clerk shall receive all applications of electors for registration, striking off names of electors, and for the correction of names on the list, who are present for that purpose at the time fixed for the conclusion of the registration sittings, notwithstanding that such applications are, in point of fact, received by the registration clerk after the hour of closing the registration sittings aforesaid.
It has been said that these registration clerks are remiss in their duties, and that in consequence people have lost their franchise. Here is a provision which any person can set in motion by applying to the law officers:
Any registration clerk who shall wilfully refuse or neglect to make out any list of electors, or who shall wilfully neglect to insert in the registration register the application of any person who claims to be entitled to be an elector and shall have complied with all the provisions of this Act necessary td entitle the application of such person to be received and entered in the registration register, or who shall wilfully and without reasonable cause insert in any such registration register the name of any person not having applied for registration, or the name of any person against whom no application shall have been filed to strike off from the list, or the name of any person not having so applied, or who shall wilfully neglect to publish any notice, post any lists, or decline to give access to a copy of same to persons entitled thereto, or who shall wilfully refuse or neglect to make the return and deliver or transmit the books and documents to the revising officers, as required by this Act, or who is guilty of any other wilful misfeasance or malfeasance or wilful act of omission or commission in contravention of the duties of his office, shall for every such offence be liable, upon summary conviction before a police magistrate or two or more justices of the peace, to a penalty not exceeding two hundred dollars and to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months.

Then, by section 48 it is provided:
The following persons shall be entitled to be present at sittings of the registration clerks: the candidate or candidates of the last election ; any person who considers himself to be a prospective or probable candidate; any two qualified persons entitled to be registered electors representing any political organization; any person desirous of being present as a spectator; provided that no more than twelve persons, other than the persons before mentioned and officers in attendance, shall be entitled to be present at the same time.
The registration clerk shall strive as far as possible to allow the representation of all political parties in the place or places of registration to be fair and equal.
Then it is provided:
The King's Printer shall, free of cost, provide and furnish to registration clerks a sufficient number of copies of the last revised list of electors, duly certified by the clerk of the executive council.
With regard to the posting of lists we have this provision:
Within two days succeeding that on which applications for the registration and striking off names of electors from the list of electors shall have closed, each registration clerk shall prepare, in writing in duplicate, a full, complete and true list, duly certified to, of the names of all persons having applied for registration alphabetically arranged, and also a list of the names of all persons against whom applications have been filed to strike off their names from the list of electors, and he shall post one copy of both such lists in a conspicuous place and in a durable manner upon the main outside door of the place in which the registration sittings had been conducted. Certified copies of the lists shall be obtainable from the registration clerk at the rate of 40 cents for 100 names.
For the purpose of revising the list of electors in the manner hereinafter provided, the Lieutenant Governor in Council shall, either simultaneously with the issuing of the proclamation fixing the dates, places and sittings of the courts of revision, or in any event within at least ten days thereafter, authorize-the issuing of a further proclamation constituting the several judges of the county courts in the nrovince a hoard for the purposes hereinafter mentioned. Suchboard shall be designated or called f The Board of Registration.'
Then follow the duties of that board. Then it is provided:
The board shall in the first instance be convened and hold their first sitting in the city of Winnipeg, and any subsequent sitting or sittings may be held either at the same place or at such other place or places as may he determined by the hoard.
On the next day succeeding the time allowed registration clerks for posting the list of applications or registrations and striking off names, each registration clerk shall transmit by registered package, or delivered to the proper revising officer appointed for the electoral division by the Board of Registration, as thereinafter provided, the registration register, all applications to strike off names
of electors and to correct names incorrectly printed, all interrogatories and statutory-declarations received, and all other books, papers or things in any way relating to the registration in the electoral division for or in which he has acted as registration clerk, accompanied by a certificate to the effect that the list of names of persons desirous of being added to, and of those persons whose names it is desired shall he struck off from the said list of electors, contained in the registration register, is true in substance and in fact, and contains all the names of such persons, and that the applications of persons to have names struck off the. list, and of persons desiring to have names correctly inserted therein, comprise all such applications received by him.
So that the judge on revision has before him an absolutely complete return of everything that has taken place before the registration clerk ; and the political agents of both parties, and a dozen spectators, if necessary, in sympathy with them, may be present to see tliat the registration clerk performs all his duties. With regard to ret vision it is provided:
The Board .of Registration shall, within four days after the publication of the proclamation constituting the said hoard, designate or state who shall preside at the courts of revision and the persons so designated or assigned shall, in all cases, be either a member of the Board of Registration or a barrister of at least three years' standing.
It shall be the duty of the provincial secretary to notify or cause to be notified each person designated or assigned to act as revising officer the fact of his appointment, giving the name of the electoral division to which his appointment relates and the date or dates on, and the place or places, and the hours between, which the courts of revision shall sit >n such electoral division, and he shall also, at the same time, forward to the revising officer a copy of the last revised list of electors relating to such electoral division, certified to by the clerk of the executive council.
And subsection 8 of section 63 provides :
Any person claiming to he entitled to be registered as elector in any electoral division may, notwithstanding the fact that he has neglected or omitted to apply for registration at any of the sittings of the registration clerk in the electoral division of which he so claims to ba entitled to be registered an elector, or having applied was refused registration by the registration clerk, apply at any of the sittings of the revising officer for registration as an elector.
This is a provision not obtaining in Ontario.
No notices of application for the purposes of this subsection shall be required.
And section 72 provides :
The revising officer, at any court held by him for the revision and closing of list of electors under this Act, may, without previous notice of complaint having been given in that behalf, as hereinbefore provided, correct any

mistake which shall have been proved to him to have been made by the registration clerk in the registration register in respect of name, residence, occupation or otherwise howsoever.
So that there appears to be practically no limit to the anxious care exercised to make the revision of the list absolutely perfect. Then as regards the closing of the lists, section 79 provides :
Immediately after the closing of the list, the revising judge or barrister shall:-
1.	See that all names, decided by him to be struck off the said list, are in fact struck off and duly initialled by him in the manner hereinbefore provided;
2.	Make a list of all names on and added by him to the list of electors, pursuant to applications made to the registration clerk, and under the provisions of this Act, appropriately divided in or between the polling subdivisions, as established in the electoral division at the iast previous legislative election held in such electoral division, and shall append such list in a secure manner to the list of electors accompanied by a certificate;
3.	Transmit the completed list of .electors, as aforesaid, accompanied by all the lists, books, papers and documents referring to the revision, by registered package, addressed in a distinct and legible manner to the clerk of the executive council at Winnipeg.
Here is a provision cited this afternoon, to which I direct the particular attention of the House :
In the event of territory comprised within or partly comprised within an electoral division being changed and included in another electoral division, or other electoral divisions, whether newly created or not, a judge of one of the county court divisions of the province, to be nominated and appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, shall subdivide the names appearing on the list of electors, as so finally revised, according to the altered boundaries or limits, and make a complete list of electors for the electoral divisions affected, as aforesaid, and appropriately divide the names of electors and allot the territory between suitable polling subdivisions as shall in the opinion of such judge be just and equitable.
And section SI provides ;
Every list of electors revised and closed under the provisions of this Act shall be binding and conclusive and shall be subject to no appeal.
And section 82 ;
All lists of electors revised.and closed under the provisions of this Act shall be and shall constitute the lists of electors of the electoral divisions or division to which they refer until other lists of electors therefor shall be similarly revised and closed.
Section S3 provides ;
Lists of electors shall, in any event and in all cases, be finally revised and concluded, as by this Act provided, annually, not later than the 1st day of July.
That is the Act which the hon. gentleman has designated as so faulty. It seems to me Mr. ALCORN.
most complete and to provide for almost every conceivable contingency.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: That is the Manitoba Act.


George Oscar Alcorn: lost tlie franchise through the wanton or wilful act of an officer of the government, every seat in the province would be allowed to go by acclamation to the Reform candidate in the next election. This was a perfectly safe challenge because it was known In the province that these lists were absolutely fair and impartial. In Ontario we have, as has been mentioned, a system of registration in our cities and towns of over 9,000 inhabitants. If the government desired to be consistent they would have to include in this Bill a provision for making new lists in each one of the many places in which the Ontario Registration Act applies. If their objection to the lists is based on the contention that those made by the registration are faulty, that would be the only consistent contention they could set up. Now with regard to British Columbia, I propose as shortly as possible to place the House in possession of the provisions of the Act in that province. Section 4 provides the qualification and says :
Every male of the full age of twenty-one years, not being disqualified by this AcUoi any other law in force in this province, being entitled within this province to the privileges of a natural borh British subject, and being able to read this Act, or any portion thereof, to the satisfaction of the registrar, if required by such registrar so to do, having resided m this province for six months, and in the doctoral district in which he claims to vote for one month of that period immediately previous to sending in his claim to vote as hereinafter mentioned, and being only registered as an elector under the provisions of this Aet>
shall be entitled to vote at any election.
Then with regard to the revision of the lists :
The Lieutenant Governor in Council shall appoint for each electoral district, or for any polling or polling divisions of an electoral district, a person to be registrar of voters, and the duties of such registrar shall be as follows:
(a) To furnish to any one applying for the same any of the first three forms in the sche-uule hereto, without charge.
This is the form of application to be placed upon the register:
I	do hereby apply to have my
name inserted in the register of voters for the electoral district, and I do hereby make oath and say (or solemnly affirm):
1.	That I reside at	in the
electoral district, and my post office address is	British Columbia.
2.	That I am of the male sex, of the full age of 21 years, and a British subject.
3.	That I have been for a period of six
months immediately prior to the date of this application, a resident of and domiciled within the province of British Columbia, and that I have been for a period of one month immediately prior to said date a resident of and domiciled within the	electoral district.
It is further their duty :
To receive from any person offering the same a sworn affidavit in writing in support Mr. ALCORN.
of application to vote in the form A in the schedule hereto, and to insert the name of such person in a list of persons claiming to vote, which list shall be posted up in the office of such registrar, and a copy thereof shall be placed in some conspicuous place on the outside of the door of such office; and such list shall be according to form B in the schedule hereto. The registrar shall not insert the name of any person upon such list unless the said form A as furnished is in accordance with this Act, and shows such person to be entitled to be placed on the register of voters.	. ,
Said list of persons claiming to vote shall be suspended from and after the last Monday in March and September of each year, and all applications to vote received after the said last Monday in March and September shall be held over until after the courts of revision provided for in subsection (e) hereof respectively, when they shall be posted up as provided in subsection (b) hereof.	_
On the first Monday of May and November, in each and every year, the registrar shall hold a court of revision, of which two months notice shall be given by him; such notice to be published in the British Columbia 'Gazette, and copies of such notice shall be posted in the office of such registrar, and on the door of the principal court house of the electoral district, and in not less than three conspicuous places within the district for which, or for the polling division whereof, he shall have been appointed.
That is, that all the names that are on it and not objected to shall stay there.
Upon the holding of such court, it shall be the duty of such registrar to hear and determine any or all objections against the retention of any name or names on the register of voters, as "settled at the previous revision, and on the said list of persons claiming to vote, as provided for in subsection (b) hereof; provided notice of every objection, and the reason thereof which may be in the form B in the schedule hereto, shaU have been given to the registrar by the person objecting fifteen clear days previously to the holding of such court, and that the registrar shall have forwarded, twelve clear days before the holding of such court,1 a notice through the post office, or in such manner as he may deen advisable, to the person objected to, stating the facts of such objection, the ground thereof, and that the same will be heard at the holding of such court.
Here again we have, as in the province of Manitoba, personal notices given to every man with regard to objections to putting him on or putting him off.
It shall also be the duty of such registrar to strike off the register of voters, and off the said list of persons claiming to vote, all names thereon of persons who shall be dead, oi shall have ceased to reside in the province of British Columbia; before striking off the name of any person on account of his being dead, or of his having ceased to reside in the province of British Columbia.
The registrar shall certify to said register of voters, and it shall be the list used at any

election which may take place before the next revision has been completed.
In the case of the first register of voters, the same as made up as above, shall be certified to by the registrar, and forwarded forthwith to the King's Printer, who shall print the same, and the said register of voters shall be the list used at any election which may take place before the next revision has been completed.
After the first register of voters for any electoral district has been made up, the registrar of voters, after the holding of each court of revision shall make up and certify a complete register of voters, which shall consist of the names on the last register of voters not removed therefrom, and all names that have been added thereto, and any other corrections made in such register, and shall forward the same forthwith to the King's Printer, who shall print the same.
Then it is provided that no fee shall be charged for putting names on the register of voters, section 12 provides :
The affidavit provided for in subsection (b) of -section 10 hereof, may be sworn or affirmed before any justice of the peace, mayor, reeve, alderman, councillor, commissioner for taking affidavits in the Supreme Court, registrar of titles, notary public, registrar of voters, provincial constable, special provincial constable, government agent, government assessor, mining recorder, deputy mining recorder, judge of any court, stipendiary magistrate, municipal clerk, municipal assessor, postmaster, postmistress or Indian agent, and no fee shall be charged for taking such affidavit or affirmation.
13. The Lieutenant Governor in Council may appoint any person who is a British subject as a commissioner for taking affidavits in the Supreme Court for a limited period without payment of any fee, for the purpose of acting under this Act in the electoral district in which he resides.
11. The King's Printer shall furnish any person with a reasonable number of blank forms of said affidavit, without charge.
Then with regard to the transfer of names :	*
Upon the written request of any registered voter, in manner aforesaid, for the transfer of his name from any register -of voters to any other register, it shall be the duty of the registrar forthwith to remove the name of such person from the register of voters, and to deliver or forward to such registered voter, a certificate that his name has been so removed from the said register, and the said voter may forward the said certificate to the registrar of the district in which he resides and desires to become a registered voter.
So there is the utmost ease provided for [DOT]the elector who has changed his place of residence, to transfer his name.
Every registrar shall reject every claim or application to be registered as an elector unless the claim contains full particulars of the place of the claimants or applicant's residence, whereby such claimants'or applicants' whereabouts may be easily ascertained.
Where any impediment, misfeasance, *r>
omission shall have happened in the preparation or transmission or printing or publication of any list or register of voters or other document, of what kind soever, the Lieutenant Governor in Council may take all such measures and make such regulations as may be necessary for removing such impediment or rectifying such misfeasance or supplying such omission.
Section 22:
All such regulations, on being published in one issue of the ' British Columbia Gazette,' shall have the full force of law as if hereby expressly enacted, and shall be laid before the legislature within fourteen days after such publication.
Then with regard to an appeal:
Any person dissatisfied with the decision of the registrar may have the same reviewed before any county court holden within the electoral district, or polling division thereof, for which such registrar shall have been appointed; or in case there, shall be no county court holden within such electoral district or polling division, then to the county court holden nearest to such district or polling division thereof as aforesaid, by giving to the registrar a notice of review which may he in the form ' C ' in the schedule hereto, within six days after such decision shall have been rendered. Such notice shall also be served, within such time, upon the elector objecting, or the person whose claim to vote shall have been allowed, as the case may be; and such notice shall he given ten days before the hearing of such review, or at such other time as the county court judge shall appoint, and the case shall be beard at one of the usual sittings of such county court, and the judge shall either affirm or dismiss such appeal, and make such order as to the costs thereof and generally as to the premises as he may deem just, and may enforce the same as and in the same way as a judgment of the court is usually enforced; provided always, that every such decision of any such county court judge may be appealed from to the Supreme Court of British Columbia ; and all the proceedings concerning such appeal shall be conducted as nearly as may be according to the provisions of the County Courts Act, and rules of court made in pursuance thereof for the time being in force relating to and governing appeals. The registrar, on any such review, shall regard and be governed, as to placing, retaining or removing any name on or from the register of voters, by the decision of the county court judge, or if such decision shall -Ire reversed by the Supreme Court, then by the decision of the Supreme Court: provided, however, that with respect to the electoral district of Cassiar, the provision hereinbefore mentioned, instead of being made to, taken, or held before a county court, shall he made to, taken or Jheld before any two justices of the peace residing in such district, the registrar not being one of such justices.
27. The registers of voters, as made, scrutinized, settled and revised under and pursuant to -the provisions of chapter 67 of the Revised Statutes, 1897, and amendments, and of the Redistribution Act, 1902, shall, subject

to revision under this Act be, and continue to be the registers of voters in and for the several electoral districts^ constituted and defined by said Redistribution Act, 1902,
So that in this province we have not only an appeal to the county judge, but a further appeal to the supreme court of the province. The time within which such proceedings shall be had in British Columbia as shown by the sections of the Act to which I have called attention would be: Notice of the court of revision must be published for two months; the holding of the courts of revision would occupy ten days; notice of review of decision of the court is limited to six days; then there is notice of review before the review takes place; and not taking into account the time occupied by the review and correction of the lists there would necessarily be occupied in the compilation and revision of the lists two months and 26 days. Therefore, it is obviously impossible that the provincial law should be observed if the whole work has to be done, as proposed by section 1 after the issue of writs for an election.
Mr. Speaker, there have been absolutely no complaints against this Act by the people of British Columbia. They have chosen to make their lists in this way, and they are satisfied with them. I propose to lay before the House a letter from Mr. W. A. Macdonald, of Nelson, in which he says:
No Liberal papers in British Columbia have as yet been able to advance an argument in favour of the contemplated change.
That is section 1 of the Act.
You will have received copy of ' Daily News/ containing condemnation.' Do not forget that Deane, proprietor and editor of paper, is an active Liberal politician. He represented Kamloops in the local House, and at the last Dominion election stumped Yale-Cariboo for Duncan Boss. He is now president of the Liberal Association of Nelson, and is in touch with compilation of voters' lists, elections thereunder and revisions.
The extract from the ' Daily News ' to which he calls attention is in these words:
We do not know why Mr. Aylesworth should seek to have special Dominion lists in British _Columbia and we have been waiting to learn what explanation he had to offer on the point. The provincial lists, under ordinary circumstances, are, or should be quite satisfactory. They were used in the last Dominion election and we heard no complaint of any injustice being done to any person properly entitled to vote. The system of registration in British Columbia is as near perfect as it is ever likely to be, and, in our opinion, is absolutely fair to all parties. There is practically manhood suffrage in British Columbia and if a man be not registered, who is entitled to have his name on the list, it is usually his own fault. So far as we have observed, no party has any special advantages over the other, as we utterly decline to accept the Tory theory that the collectors Mr. ALCORN.
of votes and the revising officers are necessarily corrupt.
On the contrary, Mr. Speaker, this government goes upon the theory that because the lists in Manitoba and British Columbia are made under the authority of Conservative governments, therefore the officers who made them are corrupt and also the people are unreliable and corrupt and capable of being corrupted by those officers. I have quoted the evidence of Mr. Macdonald, a very prominent resident in that country, and of the editor and proprietor of that Grit paper.
I further propose to place upon record this extract:
The ' Telegram ' has received the following letter from a British Columbia elector: ' I was in active politics in British Columbia for over ten years. I have seen the ' old timers ' party in power under successively John Robson, Theodore Davie and J. H. Turner. In many respects these were bad governments. They were far from progressive. In 1898, the provincial party under Chas. Semlin, a staunch Conservative, took office. His government was succeeded for a brief but lurid interval by that of Hon. Joseph Martin. Then lames Dunsmuir, a man of no politics, came into office. He was followed by Colonel E. G. Prior. After him, Mr. McBride was called in, and, going to the country on party lines, was returned and has retained office ever since. Through all those changes in all those years, the question of voters' lists was never raised by any person, Liberal, Conservative, Socialist or Mug-wump, black, white, yellow or mixed, except of course in the way of improving registration and purging old lists, Political feeling ran high, very high indeed, but any idea of fighting on an unfair list never occurred to one solitary human being. The lists might be imperfect, they were never unfair.
That is the evidence* of a prominent resident of that province.


Mr. GALLIHER.: Who is that, is that Mr. Boville ?


George Oscar Alcorn: He is stated to be a prominent British Columbian writing to the Winnipeg ' Telegram.'
I would be glad if, at some convenient time during the debate, the government would state whether it is their hope or intention that any provision of the first clause or any other portion of the Act shall authorize returning officers to cut and carve constituencies, or alter the boundary of particular polling divisions. If so that would introduce an excessively contentious principle into this debate. There are certain portions of clause 1 which would indicate that to a certain extent and if the government will during the debate announce their intention in that respect it will facilitate matters to some extent.
With regard to section 13 of the Bill which I referred to some time ago, on the splitting of polling divisions I would suggest that

each portion of a polling division which has been divided in that way should stand as a separate polling subdivision and should not be attached to any other polling division, the latter course would certainly lead to a good deal of trouble. The allotment of the names of the voters between the various portions of divisions so dealt with should be made by a judge as provided in the. section of the Manitoba Act which I pointed out. I would also suggest that notice should in such cases be given to every elector who will vote in any portion of that polling subdivision as subdivided. I propose to read extracts from a number of letters that have been received from different persons in those two provinces with regard to this Bill.


Mr.  J. D.@: Taylor of New Westminster, writes:
Apart from the political aspect of the matter with which it is not necessary for me to deal since you must fully appreciate the significance of this seizure of control of the lists, the objections most apparent are as follows:
Lines 12 and 13 provide for the making of the iists by Dominion authority immediately after the issue of the writs, but at last general election three contests in British Columbia were deferred because of the plea that there was not time to go through the necessary formalities on .account of the great size of the constituencies. How, then would 'it be possible to prepare lists as well as fulfil the other requirements of the Act? Is this a scheme to make it necessary to defer all the elections in British Columbia until Several weeks after the general elections. The saving clause, ' or at any time when the Governor in Council so directs/ would not be available in the case of the issue of writs immediately after the close of the present session.
Paragraph 2, read in this connection is senseless, in its first provision, because the law of British Columbia compels the provincial lists to be open for inspection for five weeks before confirmation by the court of revision, and this is not too long a time in order to permit any voter against whom an objection is recorded to be notified and make his reply, the mail service here being villainously slow. It would therefore be impossible to apply the laws of the province to any revision after the issue of the writs.


Mr.  W. A.@: McDonald, K.C., Nelson, writes:
, The more I think of this Act, the more it is quite apparent that it is nothing but an attempt to get control of the voters' lists so that some partisan officials may pad the lists to suit the Liberal party or out off names of those likely to vote against them. There is no necessity whatever for the list being amended or interfered with after it leaves the hands of the registration clerk in May, when it will be revised. Our lists are fairly made up and no complaints whatever have ever taken place as to any partiality. I was pleased this morning to see that the ' News ' which is our local Liberal newspaper was candid enough to admit that there was no necessity for any change. I do not see what members from British Columbia can suggest as a reason for the movement, and the copy
of the paper which I inclose will afford good support to my statement above.
Hon. Hugh John Macdonald:
If the government were allowed to prepare the lists we might as well throw up our hands. The Thin Bed Line at the last election was bad enough and shut us out of several seats which were fairlv ours, but what is no w proposed is ten times worse.	One of the
strong planks in the Beform platform when they were in opposition was the doing away with Dominion voters' lists and leaving all matters of this sort to the provinces, and this plank was the only one that they really carried out of those that put them into power. Now it seems that even this is broken and thrown on the pile for waste lumber.


Mr.  G. H.@: Barnard, Victoria, B.C.:
With reference to the proposed changes in the Dominion Election Act as they affect this province. It would appear to us that this is a most unjustifiable proceeding on the part of the government and one that is calculated to place us at a great disadvantage during the election. We cannot see how there can possibly be any necessity for the proposed change so far as British Columbia is concerned. Under our Election Act any of the following officials are qualified to take applications from voters to have their names placed on the list : justice of the peace, mayor, reeve, alderman, councillor, commissioner for taking affidavits in the Supreme Court, registrar of titles, deputy registrar of titles, notary public, collector of votes, provincial constables, special provincial constables, government agent, government mining assessor, mining recorder, deputy mining recorder, judge of any court, stipendiary magistrate, municipal clerk, municipal assessor, postmaster, postmistress or Indian agent.
From this list you will see that there is no lack of opportunity offered to any person desiring to get on the list to have the necessary application sworn. Moreover the provincial government has been in the habit of accepting from the Liberal committee recommendations of persons they desire to have appointed as commissioners under the Election Act, and such appointments have always been made without any demur on the part of the government. The existing system has so far been found to work absolutely satisfactorily and without friction. We feel that if this Act is allowed to pass it is opening the door for corruption of the worst kind on the part of our opponents and that we look for a repetition of the ' Thin Bed Line' affair. The only grain of comfort in the situation is that the proposed action is such an iniquitous one that it may re-act strongly upon its perpetrators. It is difficult to see why different treatment should be meted out to British Columbia and Manitoba from the rest of the provinces, unless for the reason that they are strongly Conservative in feeling.


Mr.  W. J.@: Bowser, Attorney General of British Columbia:
There is absolutely no justification for the proposed amendment, as we have courts of revision here twice every year, viz., on the first Monday in May and the first Monday in November, and all persons wishing to get



placed thereon with as little trouble and expense as possible, and as little doubt and uncertainty as possible, as to who have the right to be placed on the lists and who have the right to vote.
Let me point out that even if this new Dominion list is made, the provincial lists will go on as usual, so that there will be the double expense and double trouble of making both lists at the same time
I say that is a practical question of the greatest consequence to those who really value representative government. I say our first care ought to be to place sis few obstacles and impediments as possible in the way of the honest man, who is entitled to the franchise, getting on the voters' list, and as few obstacles as possible in the way of his knowing what he is to do in order to get there; and I say that if you establish, as you inevitably will, by your law, one franchise for the local and another for the federal legislature-because you say you are going to establish one for all the provinces, and because we know that the conditions and the views in the provinces vary- you will then establish complications and trouble, a double trouble, a double registration, a double inquiry on the part of the voters and you will thus create, instead of removing, obstacles towards a full and fair representation of the people.
These observations apply with equal force to the present proposal of the government.
Great expense will be caused too. Why, I suppose everybody knows, who has directed any attention to this subject, that it is an expensive matter to keep the voters' list right, that it is an expensive matter to see that no improper votes are put on, on the one side, and that all proper votes are kept on, on the other side. It is often neglected now; it is often neglected by both parties, and, when an unexpected election takes place, you find sometimes that the real expression of the people's will is thwarted by the circumstance that the lists have not been revised and do not accurately represent their view.
In this way did the Hon. Mr. Blake speak of the municipal lists which this government says should be the foundation of all voters' lists. He said that they are extremely faulty and that no election could be run upon them without revision. He continued;
Are you going to double all that trouble? Are you going to have two sets of voters' lists to be looked after every year instead of one set? Do you think that is helping the elector on? Do you think that is making easy the path to a real and true representation of the people? It cannot be. It is impossible that those who argue for the Bill can contend for that result. Then there is the expense-the expense to the public in this double registration, the work that has to be done, the printing and revising of a separate set of lists. The local authority-in my province, at any rate; 1 know not whether in the others-provides you a list now: they provide you a printed list; they provide you a revision, a framing of it by the municipal officers elected by the Mr. ALCORN.
people, a revision by the judicial officers you appoint yourselves; the judicial officers that you appoint here, the county court judges. They give you your list, complete, framed and revised, revised finally by judicial officers appointed by the authority of this legislature. There is the system. And you are going to take upon yourselves the public expense of framing lists and printing them yourselves, and you are going to impose the private expense on individuals which is involved in the carrying out of this double franchise.
All this equally applies to the double list which the government is now proposing to make.
I ask this House not to make this franchise more difficult than it now is, and I say you are making it more difficult, perhaps more than if you raised it, by the practical obstructions you are placing in the way by a double franchise. Make it easier if you can, and the easiest thing you can do is just to leave it alone.
On page 1192, Mr. Blake made certain other observations which I think are material. Speaking with regard to the Right Hon. Sir John Macdonald, he said:
When he got back here in 1882, he took the electoral district and now he has taken the voters' lists. His efforts have been to secure and retain and increase a majority by the use of these powers, powers which ought not to be in the hands of government, in the great contest between the two political parties as to which has the majority of public opinion, powers which ought as far as possible, to be kept out of the hands of governments, which being human, 'are liable to misuse them. Well, the hon. gentleman may succeed in procuring the passage of this clause as to the appointment of revising officers, which he did not say anything about which he did not intimate might be considered an open question, so that any of his supporters he felt they could not conscientiously accept a revising officer of their own nomination might be free to vote against it. He did not make this an open question, and he has not defended it as yet. He may succeed in carrying it, but as he has from time to time found that many of his efforts to obtain control have failed, though many of them have succeeded, I hope and trust that this effort, even if successful here will be less successful elsewhere, that a spirit of fair play and justice will be dominant through the land, that the people at large will say that the hon. gentleman ought to deal as he would be dealt by, that they will say there ought to be a pure and equitable and honest system of making the lists, and that he will not derive, at any rate, all the advantage from this disposition which, in his secret heart, he hopes to obtain.
I might remark in this connection that at present throughout Manitoba indignation meetings are being held in which the action of the government is being denounced in no uncertain tone. I think the observations I have quoted are peculiarly applicable to this Bill, and the right hon. gentleman will find that this very high-handed proceeding will not redound to his credit even among his

own friends. In the third volume of ' Hansard ' of that year, I find further observations by Mr. Blake. Speaking on the Bill which had been introduced in 1870 by Sir John Thompson with regard to the making of lists, he said :
It contained the provision objectionable in the highest degree, that the Governor in Council should appoint the persons to make the lists. '
Here the government is appointing their officers who will deal with those lists at every stage. On page 2175, speaking of the different plans of making voters' lists, Mr. Blake observes:
The worst plan of all is that which puts the making of lists in the hands of the government of the day.
On page 2176 he continues:
I am not inclined, I hope, to place on too low a position the political morality of our country, the political morality of countries, the standing of those who at one time or another may have the majority in this country, but I say that you have got to remember, whatever elevated view you may take with reference to our status, however far you may be disposed to go in the assertion that Canada will not depart from those principles of justice and fair play which must underlie parliamentary government and all other-forms of government-and without it, your talk of self-government is a farce and your talk of parliamentary government is worse than a farce-however much you may be disposed to affirm that no party when in power will use its power to aggrandize itself to the prejudice of the minority, to perpetuate its own power by unfair means, we cannot contend that we are less liable to misuse our own strength, that we are less restrained by high considerations of the character to which I have referred, that we are less moved by those baser considerations to which I have referred than the English people, the English parties, the English government, and yet there no government was bold enough to propose to the free parliament that it should be entrusted with the nomination of the men to make or to revise the lists, no parliament has been base enough to surrender to the executive government, in which it confided, that power. They felt that it was a power which ought not to he asked, and they did not ask it. They proposed a different mode of appointment. Why ? Why is it that no English government propos-d to an English parliament, and an English parliament accepted and recorded upon the statute-book, Where it stands, amid all the vicissitudes of electoral laws, from that time to this, the proposition that the judges of the land should be the persons who should appoint the revising officers? It was because they felt that it was a power with which the government of the day ought not to ask that it should be entrusted. It was because they felt that the appointment coming from that source was coming from a suspected and tainted source in the eyes of the people, it was because they felt that those engaged in the discharge of this duty could not do it with a fair chance of being considered impartial between the two 251}
great parties, if they were the nominees of the government of the day, it was because they felt that the well working of the system depended upon the adoption of that special and peculiar provision which in this case, and for those purposes they used.
Yet in the face of that declaration of policy, the government is proposing to make new lists simply for the purpose of having them made by their own officials. He continues, at page 2177:
The evil is at the source, the taint is at the source, the difficulty is at the source. It is the suspected, and improper authority who is to appoint the officer that makes the difficulty. Why, sir, to say that our present system involves occasionally some injustice in the making of the lists to the one party or the other, that occasionally an over-zealous and improper Conservative assessor or functionary, makes the lists wrongly, and occasionally an improper and over-zealous Eeform assessor does the same thing and that that is a reason for'this change-I do not say for a change, but for this change-is absurd; because this change is one which puts the dead weight of a revising officer all the time on one side

And in this case the government is putting the dead weight of the revising officer always on their own side.
which says it shall be tbe nominee of the government in all cases who shall make the list, and the other party, the party of the minority, shall have the function of appeal.
And at page 2346, Mr. Blake says:
I think, it is highly important that there should be as few elections brought on, while yet it is uncertain what the voters' list is, as, possible. I think we ought to do everything that we can in the way of legislation to minimize the temptation on the part of the party in power to bring on an election at that inconvenient season. ... I hope that we are dealing with an entirely exceptional class of cases; I hope, for instance, that such a thing would not he thought of as, in a general election, the government which had control of the issue of the writs not having regard to the general condition of appeals from the voters lists. I think it would be a very great abuse of power to cause a general election to be had when there was a very considerable number of the voters' lists under appeal pending before the judge, when consequently, in a considerable number of constituencies, it was uncertain who would have the right to vote.
It would be uncertain who would have the right to vote under this Bill, because the list will not be brought into existence until after the writ for the election is issued.
A debate took place in this House in 1898, and which has been referred to here to-day. I think some parts of that debate should be placed before the House. At page 308, the Solicitor General of that time, Mr. Fitzpatrick, in speaking of the Bill said:
The object of this Bill is to repeal the existing Franchise Act and to substitute there-

for the laws of the different provinces as to the qualification of voters, polling divisions and preparation of lists.
Then, at page 2270, he further says:
The object of this Bill is to repeal the Franchise Act of 1885 and to revert for the franchise, for the' polling divisions and also for the voters' lists to the condition of things existing previous to that time. The Bill is not a lengthy one. It provides, in the first instance, for the repeal of the Franchise Act; then it provides that the franchise shall be in each province the franchise existing under the provincial law for the purposes of the provincial election-the words ' provincial election ' being defined in the Bill-and then it provides that the list of voters shall be the same as that in existence in the province. We then go on to provide that the polling divisions or subdivisions are to be the same as those that exist in the province.
Then, at page 2288, the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), speaking of an amendment which had been proposed to the Bill, said:
The blemish in the Act introduced by Sir John Thompson, and it is to me an absolute and irredeemable blemish, was that while he adopted the provincial franchise, yet he retained the revising officer and the preparation of the list by the revising officer. I say this is the blemish in the Act. Here is section 5;
The Governor in Council may from time to time appoint a proper person to be called the revising officer.
Let me call attention to section 10.
Then he reads section 10 which has already been read here, and goes on:
These are the objections which we had at the time to the Bill of Sir John Thompson. It was far more logical, according to our view, having adopted the principle of the provincial franchise to also accept the voters' lists so prepared under the authority of the provincial legislature. On this side of the House we have an absolute hostility to the revising officer and the lists prepared bv the revising officer.
And yet these hon. gentlemen to-day are appointing not merely a revising officer, but a full set of revising officers who shall make lists for two whole provinces. At page 2289, the right hon. gentleman says:
I propose that we shall revert to that system. If we apply the principle of the provincial franchise, why should we not take at the same time the means and methods by which the principle is applied?
Later in the same page, he says:	.
This very Franchise Act was an abuse of power whereby the revision of the lists was placed in the hands of henchmen of the administration.
Then, at page 3983, we find the hon. gentleman speaking as follows:
Let me recall to the hon. gentleman's mind, because he seems to forget these matters very readily, that1 for the first nineteen years of Mr. ALCORN.
confederation, this parliament was elected on lists prepared by the local legislatures. Let me recall further that there were no complaints made at that time against that system. Let me recall again that under the system of the Dominion Franchise Act, passed in 1885, there was not a year but there were complaints, and grievous complaints, in regard to that matter. I ask my hon. friend this question; Is it not the fact that if this Franchise Act is not passed during this session we shall be obliged to have -a revision of the Dominion lists? There is not an hon. member who would not look with absolute terror on the prospect that in July he would have to meet the worry and expense of a revision of the list.
But what shall be said of the terror of those members of the House who represent constituencies in unorganized territory in Ontario or Quebec or in the other provinces affected, if they have to go to the country and face the expense of two complete lists?
If hon. gentlemen opposite have a better system to propose, let them offer it; but as between a Dominion and provincial franchise, as between a Dominion list and provincial lists, there can be no hesitation, because we have had for nineteen years a provincial list and provincial franchise.
Then, at page 4013, the Prime Minister says:
We propose a system which has been in operation for nineteen years here. We propose a system that has been in operation^ in the United States ever since the establishment of the constitution. If there is anything better to be offered, I should like it now to be offered; but if we are only asked to adopt a system of registration

And that is what the right hon. gentleman proposes to adopt now.
-it will not at all remedy the evil, it will not relieve the expenditure necessary to-day; but if the House -adopt the principle of the Bill we propose, we shall have a list pre* pared without any trouble, without any expenditure, and we will have, I believe, the best system of franchise and preparation of lists the country has had so far.
And the right hon. gentleman knows that these provinces have made their lists and they are satisfied. Why should they be changed? And then at page 4014, we find the Prime Minister speaking as follows:
It is easy for hon. gentlemen opposite to pick flaws and create difficulties, hut after all we must suppose there is some reason and. _ conscience in them. Local legislatures -are likely to represent the people of the province; they are elected to represent the same people we represent here, and no other people. It is supposed, and it is not a very violent supposition to make, they will exercise that power in the best interests of their constituents, according to their judgment and light. It is supposed they will adopt the best franchise to suit the province.
That is what has been done in these provinces, and the right hon. gentleman is not

content to leave it alone, but insists upon having separate lists. He goes on:
It is because we believe and suppose that the local legislatures will act as they have been acting, in the best interests of their own constituents, that we are acting in this way.
In 1885 the legislature of the Province of Quebec was in the hands of the Conservative party. It had been in the hands of the Conservative party ever since confederation, with the exception of two years. But I would not have hesitated to accept the franchise provided by a Conservative legislature in Quebec, because, though there were many things in that franchise, on the whole, to which I would have objected, still as it satisfied the province it would have satisfied me. It is in the same way as regards other provinces. It is possible that the control of the several provinces may pass into the bauds of the Conservative party

That is a catastrophe which has happened now.
-still on a question of this kind I am quite disposed for my part to accept the franchise prepared by the legislature, whether Liberal or Conservative.
On the next page he says :
Would it not be far better, as a matter simply of good government, if the elections for this House could be conducted on the local lists, and that the members of this parliament and the members of the legislature Who represent the same body of people, should be elected by the same electors?
Then on page 4127 I find the then Minister of the Interior, the present member for Brandon, (Mr. Sifton) saying this :
And I have this to say further, that the Act which came into force in 1891, under which revising officers are appointed, as they are appointed under the Dominion Franchise Act-and who are sometimes judges and sometimes not-has worked satisfactorily. There has not been to my knowledge, and there never was while I sat in the legislature, any complaint made against the conduct of these revising officers. Not a single complaint was made during the five years that I was a member of the government of Manitoba, during which that Act was in force, against the conduct of any revising officer. Not only was no complaint ever proven, but none was ever made.	.
On page 4309 the right hon. gentleman said :
We are now upon subsection 'a' of section 5 of this Act, which reads as follows:-
The qualifications necessary to entitle any person to vote thereat shall be those established by the laws of that province as necessary to entitle such persons to vote in the same part of the province at a provincial election.
An amendment was moved to that, and to that amendment the right hon. gentleman addressed himself :
Now my right hon. friend wants me to supplement that language in the manner which I have already indicated. Well, it is a matter
of record that there are no two provinces in which the franchise are absolutely alike. They are alike in all provinces in principle, they are alike mostly in the nature of the qualification of the electors, but they are not absolutely identical in their respective provisions. What does this prove? It proves the principle which my hon. friend has refused to admit up to this moment, that the local franchise is necessarily, from its very nature, a local question to be determined by the local circumstances of the community in each province.
That remark is very applicable to both provinces in question in this Bill. The people of those provinces speaking through their representatives have passed certain Acts which have established the character of their franchise. Why snould this government now, for Dominion purposes, simply because those provinces have become Conservative, insist upon making separate lists by partisan officers of their own?
My hon. friend will at least have to recognize this. The amendment which we have now before us has been considerably changed from what it was the other day when it was first presented. When it was first presented it did not contain a provision that this should apply only to certain provinces; it was to apply to all the provinces in which there exists an appeal as well as to provinces in which an appeal does not exist. Since that time the amendment has been restricted only to apply to those provinces in which there is no judicial appeal. Take the case of each province. Take tlie case of the province of Ontario and the province of Quebec. They are provinces where an appeal lies to	the judicial
authority. In those provinces the lists are prepared by the municipal authorities. In the province of Ontario the lists are prepared by the municipal bodies, and in the province of Quebec the lists are prepared by the municipal bodies. If any elector is not satisfied with the lists so prepared, if he feels aggrieved, he has an appeal to the judicial authority. In the province of New Brunswick there is nothing of the kind, there is no appeal to a judicial authority. In the province of Nova Scotia there is no appeal either to the judicial authority. My hon. friend says: Why should there not be an appeal to the judicial authority? The reason is very obvious, it is that in those provinces no want is felt for such an appeal.
On page 5672 the right hon. gentleman says, speaking to an amendment which had been proposed with regard to the revision of the lists :
We have certainly power to take the provincial lists as they are made, and to adopt them as our own; but I question very much whether we have power to interfere in the preparation of the local lists and to impose conditions which are not imposed by local legislation as to the manner in which they are to be made. This is a question which, in my judgment, is one of great moment and of some difficulty. I do not press it strongly, however, because I apprehend that there may he perhaps a difference of opinion in this regard. But there can be no difference of opin-



'927 COMMONS

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ion, at all events upon tliis point, that even if we had power to pass such an amendment, its adoption would create great confusion, lou would have a set of lists prepared for local elections, and by this amendment you would introduce federal legislation to take effect at a certain time, which would take away the lists from the local jurisdiction and bring them under federal jurisdiction as to the method of their preparation.
Here the right hon. gentleman is in set terms condemning the precise thing which he now proposes to do by this Bill :
I submit to my hon. friend- that this consideration alone shows that the amendment would undoubtedly and inevitably lead to very great confusion.
On the next page, 5673, he says :
X have no doubt that if the people of Nova Scotia
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All this is to show that the lists should be prepared by the people themselves, and that is what is being done in those two provinces.
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And the present system not satisfactory
-(the system which has given satisfaction hitherto-if they thought that the sheriff being appointed by the executive authority did not give them the same security as in former times when the sheriffs were appointed by the judicial authoriy, they will undoubtedly, in the exercise of their rights as citi-, zens of a free province introduce legislation in amendment to that legislation. But it may be said that their efforts would be unavailing because the party suffering would not control the legislature.' That may be so at the present time. But when any grievance exists in any legislature governed under British institutions, the minority is never slow to avail itself of any opportunity to offer amendments to remove it, although ths minority may be sure that its efforts will not succeed, but be rejected.
That is what we are doing uow with regard to this Bill.
A minority will never fail to bring grievances to the attention of a legislature, thouo-h they are satisfied their efforts will be prostrated, because the minority will do so simply for the purpose of affecting public opinion and affecting it m its own direction. I am therefore forced to the conclusion that as nc efforts have been made either in theMegis-latuies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the direction indicated by my hon. friend the law has been found satisfactoiy to the people of those provinces.
On the same ground no change should be made in Manitoba or British Columbia. On the next page the right hon. gentleman continues :
Be that as it may, we have come to the conclusion that the best method we can adopt as regards the preparation of voters' lists for the elections for this House is the adoption of the local lists.
On page (467, the then Solicitor General, speaking of the amendments which were sent down by the Senate, said :
George Oscar Alcorn: The second amendment provides that on page 2, line 5, paragraph 'c ' be left out and in lieu thereof the paragraph ' e ' framed by the Senate, be inserted. I would therefore beg to move:
That the amendments be disagreed to for the following reasons:-
Because the amendments made by the honourable the Senate to the Bill, excepting from its operation the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Manitoba, and providing for a special revision of the voters' lists in those provinces for elections to this House, is inconsistent with and subversive of the general principle of the Bill.
There the hon. Solicitor General (Sir Charles Fitzpatrick) hit the nail precisely on the head, that is precisely what this government is proposing to do with Manitoba and British Columbia.
That the procedure proposed by the hon. the Senate for -securing the revision of such lists, under the authority of this parliament,
wholly inadequate, and cannot be rendered effective without creating complicated and costly machinery incompatible with the object of the Bill.
At page 7543 the Solicitor General said:
The object of the amendment to which I will especially address myself is that which -practically provides in effect that in so far as three of the provinces are concerned, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, there shall be for these provinces Dominion list3 instead of provincial lists as exist elsewhere.
. . . We -are by this Bill adopting the principle that obtained in Canada from 1867 to 1885, during which period we had a provincial franchise and provincial lists for federal purposes.
On the next page he says:
Now not only had we those lists from 1867 to 1885 without a single word of protest from the Senate, and without a single word of protest from the Conservative party, but when, in 1885, the Dominion Franchise Act was introduced, a strong -protest was made by the Liberal party against the introduction of the principle of having the federal lists under the control of federal officers, -and, Sir, not only was there a protest made at that time by the Liberal party against the principle adopted, but in season and out of season since that time the voice of the Liberal party has been raised throughout the whole of the Dominion in protest against these federal franchise lists, and -in favour of -the principle we are now seeking to carry out by this Bill. Not only did we raise that protest in the course of the debate in 1885, but we protested in the election of 1887, the election of 1891,the election of 1896 and in those elections that was the chief plank in the Liberal platform, in addition to the platform laid down by the Liberal party at Ottawa in 1893.
Now we h-ave the fact that these conditions existed frorp 1867 to 1885, we have the fact that in 1885 the Liberal party protested against the change, we have in addition the fact that "in each recurring election the chief plank in -the Liberal platform was a reversion to the condition of things existing be-

fore 1885, and we have also the fact that this policy was inserted in the Liberal platform at the Ottawa convention. The Liberal party came into power, therefore, with an express mandate from the people to repeal the Dominion Franchise law of 1885, and to refer to the provincial lists, and we find. that at the very first working session after_ the change of government, the session of1897, a Franchise Bill was introduced by us. Not only do we find that, but we find also that because we wanted the Bill to be thoroughly understood and that the public might know what our intentions were, that hill was placed before the people for their consideration, and at this session, a Franchise Bill was the very first measure disposed ot. Under these circumstances, is it possible to conceive for a moment that there can be any doubt that we, the majority in the House ot Commons, as now constituted, the supporters of the present government came here with an imperative mandate from the people of ths Dominion to rid them of the useless and e -pensive system known as the Dominion I1 ran-chise Act and to substitute this proposed law. Not only did we receive that mandate from the people of the Dominion, but, s:r, when we introduced our legislation in _ this House, there was not a single voice within these walls raised in favour of the old Dominion Franchise Act, and it went down to its grave unwept, unhonouied and unsung. In view of the fact that our des're is to obey the imperative mandate of the people, in view of the fact that our desiie is to rid the people of this country of this incubus in the form of the Dominion Franchise Act, an Act which has cost us in the years it was in operation over $2,000,000, an Act which has not been revised for the last four years and that hon. gentlemen opposite dare not revise, because of the expense incurred in that revision, in view of tlese facts, we are justified in carrying out our promise to the people and in endeavouring as far as possible to place the making of the lists under the control of the people themselves, thus proving' that the Liberal party have and always had confidence in the people, as distinguished from hon. gentlemen opposite, who, because they did not trust the people wanted to keep the control of the lists in the hands of officials appointed by themselves.
That is peculiarly applicable at present. Not only have this government no confidence in the Conservative governments of Manitoba and British Columbia, but they have no confidence in the officials whom these governments will appoint and no confidence in the people of those provinces who, they say, may be interfered with, and improperly interfered with, by these provincial officials.
I need not observe that this present Bill absolutely departs from the principle laid down in the extracts I have read and does so because Manitoba and British Columbia are now Conservative. This government insists on having lists made, in the words of the premier, by their own henchmen and parasites who feed on this government. We know what kind of lists we will get if this is done. Mr. Mills' words will be peculiarly applicable.
Section 13 then introduces the principle of a numbered ballot which is a vicious principle and wholly unnecessary. If the object were a legitimate object It would be served by requiring the voter to produce to the deputy returning officer a certificate from the returning officer that the voter's name is on the general list and by mistake was not transferred to the separate list. There should also he a clause inserted in the oath to the same effect. The voter himself should swear that he was on the general list. I invite hon. gentlemen opposite to imagine the operation of clauses 1 and 13 along the line of the National Transcontinental Railway. Here you will find a horde of thousands of foreigners and other workmen, birds of passage, and their contractor will consider it his duty to the Construction Commission and the government who employ and pay him to place all those men upon the lists and to vote them. Being foreigners in great part they will be indistinguishable and it will be impossible to trace them out afterwards; their names will be unintelligible and they will be un-tracealde. A petition against a government supporter elected by that vote in such a constituency as I have suggested would be without hope. The witnesses whom the petitioner might wish to subpoena, the foreigners and other workmen along the line would be scattered, no one could tell where, and the cost of endeavouring to procure evidence would be absolutely prohibitive. Therefore I ask if it would not be much better to take the provincial lists as the province provides them and not place upon the country the expense of separate lists and open the door, as clause 13 will, to a great deal of corruption in making the lists and recording the vote.
Section 17, as hon. gentlemen are aware, absolutely destroys the secrecy of the ballot. At this late hour I shall not make any extended observations upon that, but will merely say that the Bill which 1 had the honour to present to this House contained a clause embodying the same principle, hut in conversation with my colleagues in the House I find I have yet to meet a single gentleman who is in favour of that principle, and if my Bill was before the House I would drop that section.
I commend the language of section 28 to the consideration of the right hon. the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) and other members. It appears to me that it directly authorizes and legalizes the commission by a corporation or association incorporated for political purposes alone, the doing of anything and everything that every person else is by the prohibition contained in the section forbidden to do, so that such corporation or association may collect and distribute in the most corrupt manner possible an election fund of any size.
Under these circumstances and subject to what the leader of the opposition (Mr. COMMON'S
R. L. Borden) may say, but voicing I be7 lieve the sentiment of every hon. gentleman on this side of the House, I -will observe that if these sections to which I have directed attention, sections 1, 13, 17 and 28, be maintained, the opposition will exhaust their constitutional rights in opposing this Bill before this House.
On motion of Mr. D. W. Bole, the debate was adjourned.



ADJOURNMENT-THE QUEBEC BRIDGE.

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Sir WILFRID LAURIER moved the adjournment of the House.
Robert Laird Borden: Before the House adjourns, I direct the attention of the First Minister to the following statement of the Toronto ' Globe ' of to-day :-
It is said here that when the Quebec bridge eventually spans the St. Lawrence it will not be from the points on either shore whioh it was intended the bridge should link, but at a site farther up the river near Batisean, where it will not be necessary to erect an arch of such gigantic proportions' as was proposed for the first structure. This change of site will necessitate a change in the surveyed route of the Grand Trunk Pacific between St. Maurice river and Quebec.
I would ask the Prime Minister if there is any foundation for this report.


Wilfrid Laurier: There is not the faintest foundation for it. So far as I know the width of the river at Batisean must be twice the width of the river Cap Rouge.


Robert Laird Borden: I regret that I should have been so much misled by a leading Liberal organ.


Wilfrid Laurier: The best men will fall sometimes.


Robert Laird Borden: What business tomorrow?


Wilfrid Laurier: I suppose we will take up the same thing.	.


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Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 11.40 p.m.

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Wednesday, May 6, 1908.