1908-06-03

Mr. F. D. MONK (Jacques Cartier).: I wish to present a motion calling for the



DREDGING CONTRACTS.

Mr. A. C. MACDONALD asked:: thi9 respect, what is the reason for such difference?


Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals).: The Department of Railways and Canals, cross section all dredging work ; and do not let contracts on scow measurement.


Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works).: For the Department of Public Works, I hare a statement from the chief eugineer. He says :
There are two ways of measuring the quantity of material dredged, one being measurement in situ and the other, scow measurement.
It has always been the custom of the department to adopt the latter, as it is considered that with faithful inspectors in charge of the different works, the quantities returned are as near as practicable absolutely correct and therefore fair and just both to the department and to the contractor. Moreover, the in situ mode of measurement necessitates extensive and most accurate surveys before the beginning of the work, monthly during its execution and after its final completion, which accurate surveys of course, would entail such a large expenditure in the way of additional staff, as to be, in my opinion, prohibitive, In fact, the expenditure for surveying would, in some eases, be as great as the cost of the dredging itself.
Moreover, I am of opinion, that it is practically impossible to return accurately, by this way of measurement, the actual quantity of dredging performed, as the surface dredged would have to be entirely covered with soundings, say every five feet apart, in order to arrive, even then, at only an approximation.
For these reasons, I am of opinion that the method adopted by the department is certainly the best, providing of course, that the inspectors be competent and thoroughly reliable.
Respectfully submitted, EUGENE D. LAFLEUR, Chief Engineer.
I should add that the dredging work in the two departments is entirely different. In the Railway Department it usually extends over but a narrow area, being mostly confined to canal work, while in the Public Works Department the area is very much larger, in connection with the dredging of harbours and rivers and the like.



BOAT HARBOUR AT TONEY RIVER NOVA SCOTIA.

Mr. STANFIELD asked :: 1.	What was the amount of contract for the boat harbour at Toney River, Nova Scotia, who were (the tenderers, what is the amount of each tender, and to whom was the contract awarded ?
2.	When was the work commenced, when wa.s it completed, and what was the total amount paid under contract?
3.	What extras, if any, did the contractor receive, for what were extras paid, and what were the several amounts paid as extras?


Mr. MACDONALD.: 4.	Since completion of work -has any expenditure been made on the work? -If so, when were the expenditures made, and what were the -reasons for making each expenditure since completion of work under the contract?
5.	What is the total amount to date paid since completion under contract?
6.	Is any further repair or addition to be made to work -in. the current year ? If so, what is the reason for such repair or addition, and whiat is the estimated cost of same?
7.	Was any land purchased an connection with this work? If so, from whom and for what purposes?


Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works) :: 1.	No contract; work was carried out by day's labour.
2.	Commenced 12th March, 1906; completed 23rd October, 1907.
3.	No contract, therefore no extras.
4.	No expenditure made since completion of work.
5.	Total cost of work, including purchase
of land, $7,588.71.	.
6.	Resident engineer has submitted a report regarding extension of channel protection works at mouth of river, estimated to cost $2,000. Matter under consideration.
7.	Land purchased from Duncan Johnston for $474.



INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY-MR. JAMES A. STEWART.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. FOWLER-by Mr. Taylor-asked :
1.	Is James A. Stewart still in (the employ of the Intercolonial Railway? If -so, in what capacity, <what is his pay, and what his hours of -labour?
2.	Why was he employed, on whose recommendation, and what were his special qualifications for the work?
3.	What iso far has been the net result of his labours, land how long has he been employed?
4.	Is it .still considered necessaa-y that Stewart be retained in his present employment?
Hon. G. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals) :: 1.	There is a James A. Stewart employed on the Intercolonial Railway as brakesman, at $1.75 per day.
2.	As brakeman.
3.	His services have been satisfactory to the railway. Employed since March, 1899.
4.	Yes ; as long as his services are satisfactory to the railway.



MILITARY CAMP AT GODERICH.

Mr. BRISTOL asked :: 1.	Is it (the case that the camp for military district -No. 1 is to be held at Goderich this summer? I-f iso, whiat superiority does this camp possess over London ?
2.	Was the change made on the recommendation of the military authorities? If not, by whom ?
3.	Will the accommodation for target practice be sufficient to enable the troops assembled to complete their practice during the



19Q8

[Stage Direction]
continuation of the camp? If not, what arrangements will be made to remedy this?
Hon. Sir FREDERICK BORDEN (Minister of Militia and Defence) :: 1.	Yes. It has a much larger area an.l better facilities for manoeuvring.
2.	Yes.
3.	There are four targets for long distance firing, and a sufficient number of min-ature targets will be installed.



BIC WHARF.

Mr. MORIN asked :: 1.	How many pounds of iron bolts were purchased for the wharf at Bic, province of Quebec, from the month of August to the month of December, 1906?
2.	How much was paid for that iron; and to whom were such amounts paid p
3.	During the same time, from the month of August to the month of December, 1906, what quantity of lumber and of timber was used for the same wharf?
4.	Who supplied that wood, what price was paid for it, and in what amounts?


William Pugsley: 1 and 2. From E. Lavoie :
24.9S0 lbs. at $2.50	$G24 00
7,900 lbs. at $2.65	 209 35


From J.:  37	98
N. Durette, 2,380 ft. spruce fenders at
12 cents	$285.60
N. Durette, 2,250 shingles	at	$1.50 ....	3.38

 288	98



$4.38 17 THE ROSS RIFLE-REPORT OF LIEUT.


[Stage Direction]
Mr. lVORTHINGTON asked :
1. Did Major Gaudet, of Quebec, either as inspector of small arms or in any other capacity, ever make a renort on the Ross rifle, which was not included in the returns laid on the table of the House of Commons in response to a motion for return of all reports, correspondence, &c., relating to the Ross rifle?
If so, on what date was the report made, and what was the nature of the same?
2.	If this report was not brought down, why was it not included in the returns?
3.	Where is this report at present?
Hon. Sir FREDERICK BORDEN (Minister of Militia) :: 1.	Yes ; the report is dated January 2, 1907, and is on tests on the Ross rifle.
2.	The report was laid before the Militia Council by the Master-Genera! of the ordnance, and subsequently it was referred to the Ross Ritfe Company, who complained that they had not been notified that the tests were to be made, nor given an opportunity of being represented thereat. The company felt that this was unfair, and disputed the accuracy of the tests. It was considered that their view was sound. The report was, therefore, held in abeyance in order to give time for further tests which the company proposed to make, at which, it was stipulated, the department should be represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Gaudet or some other competent officer. The tests now being made at Quebec will probably determine the question at issue.
3.	The report is on record in the Department of Militia and Defence as a confidential document.



CLAIM AGAINST NEW BRUNSWICK COAL AND RAILWAY COMPANY.

Mr. CROCKET asked :: Has the Railway Department any claim against the New Brunswick Coal and Railway Company or against the government of New Brunswick on account of the New Brunswick Coal and Railway Company, other than that specified by the Minister of Railways in his answer to Mr. Ganong's question on May 27? If so, what?


George Perry Graham: Yes. There is an unadjusted balance for car service, freight balances, ticket sale balances, car repairs, &c., amounting to $9,459.94.



SEMAPHORES AT INTERLOCKING PLANT NEAR LONDON.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. ELSON asked ;
1.	Is the construction of the semaphores lately erected at the interlocking plant on the railways near the London asylum sucli as to compel the employees to climb up a high, narrow and dangerous ladder to light and care for lamps?
2.	If not so constructed, can the lamps he lighted on the ground and pulled up to their places by a chain, the same as 'the Pipe semaphores ?
George Perry Graham: 1 and 2. The chief engineer of the Board of Railway Commissioners, states that the semaphores lately erected at the interlocking plant near the London asylum are

equipped with iron ladders the full height of the semaphores, and the employees climb them to light the lamps. These ladders are high and narrow, but not dangerous. They are in common use in many places, and have received the approval of the board's chief engineer, he having tested them personally.



PURCHASERS OF BINDER TWINE.

Mr. EPSON asked :: What are the names and post office addresses of the persons ito whom $39,574.64 worth of twine, including $14.40 for a .rope yarn, was shipped, as set out in first column of page M- 33 of the Auditor General's Report for 1907?


Hon. A. B. AYLESWORTH (Minister of Justice).: The names of these persons, together with the names of persons to whom $10,855.78 worth of twine was shipped in 1905-6, which was paid for in 1906-7, appear on pages M-33, 34 and 35 of the Auditor General's Report. I should be happy to send to my hon. friend (Mr. El-son) a list of these names as appearing in the report, but I hope that my hon. friend will not desire the post office addresses of these purchasers. There are something over two hundred of them and the post office address of each appears on the files at the penitentiary in Kingston, also iu the Auditor General's office here, but it is not published (as was the case formerly), because it was found that publishing the post office addresses of these individual purchasers prejudiced the interests of the penitentiary by reason of the access it gave to competitors of the industry to the purchasers of these consignments of binder twine.



ANGLO-AMERICAN TREATIES.

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day being called :
Mr.  R. L.@: BORDEN (Carleton, Ont.) I would like to ask the right hon. Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) whether or not all the correspondence with respect to the treaties between Great Britain and the United States has been brought down and is now being printed, or whether there are some additional documents to be brought d< wn ?


Rt.   H@: No correspondence has been brought down, but it is ready. I should have had it to-day. It is an omission of mine, it will be ready to-morrow.



GOVERNMENT STEAMER ' MONTCALM.'

Hon. GEO. E. FOSTER (North Toronto).: The hon. Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Brodeur) is not here, but the right hon. Prime Minister will take the request that the report of the investigation with regard Mr. GRAHAM.
to the accident to the ' Montcalm ' should be laid on the table of the House. I notice that the report has been given and we have seen just the bare results of it in the paper.



TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILWAY-COMMISSION ISSUED TO INSPECTORS.

George Eulas Foster: I would also like to know if the hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. Ayles-worth) has yet laid on the table of the House the commission issued to the inspectors that he is appointing along the Transcontinental Railway. I asked that one of the commissions be brought down so that we could see the general nature of the instructions.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I laid a copy of the commission to Mr. Paeaud, commissioner for Quebec, upon the table on the day following the inquiry.


Mr.   POSTER@: I suppose the commissions are all the same?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Yes.



SUPPLY-WHARF AT PETIT ROCHER.

[Stage Direction]
Sir WILFRID LAURIER moved that the House go into Committee of Supply.
['Those who have sent registered letters have the receipts in thier hands and they will know whether the parties to whom the letters were addressed received them or not, and they can themselves make complaint to the post office if they have a complaint to make. I am not aware whether or not instructions are given to the postmasters to notify the parties who sent registered letters ; but I will inquire as to that.']
Mr. GEO. TAYLOR (Leeds).: Before you leave the chair, Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire from the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley) it he has yet completed the return that I asked for some time ago with reference to the wharf down at Petit Rocher. I moved for an order of the House which was passed asking for all the papers. A return was brought down up to 1905 and we had quite a discussion on it the other day. I asked the minister to complete the return, telling him that I had in my possession correspondence that took place since then and that I knew that there was more correspondence. I would like to ask the minister if he has yet complied with the order of the House. That was on 24th April, over a month ago and I have heard nothing further yet.


William Pugsley: The order of the House was completely and thoroughly complied with. The return was brought down just as it was called for. I stated to my hon. friend at the time that if he desired any further information he had only to make motion and ask a question and the infonna-tion would be cheerfully given if there were any further information in the department.


George Taylor: was started on February 19, 1908, brt on March 11, when it had reached a height of about six tiers, it was carried away by the ice. It was, however, recovered on May 14. The outer section, which was intended to complete the main part of the breakwater was found to be intact and work on it was resumed. By the end of the fiscal year this crib had been built to a height of nineteen tiers and the two cribs sunk in 1905 had been filled with ballast and built up to half tide level, and the upper ballast floors were laid.
During the fiscal year 1908-7, the crib forming the remainder of the main work was sunk in place and a crib to complete the ' L ' was begun and placed in position. The building of the superstructure was continued on the main part up to about high water level, when two storms, on November 12 and 16 carried away nearly the whole top, the break being about 9 feet in extreme depth.
Work was resumed on March 7, and by the close of the fiscal year the remains of three damaged tiers of face timbers had been removed, and a part of the wrecked superstructure near the southern end rebuilt, the interior being filled with ballast.
The expenditure for the fiscal year 1906-7 was $5,029.60."
Here in his own report he shows that work was going: on up to 1907, and the last correspondence brought down in the return moved for was in 1905; and the minister tells me again to-day that he has complied with the order of the House asking for correspondence up to 1907, including contracts, tenders and everything else. Now I have from the department a notice that they issued calling fox' tenders.


William Pugsley: What is the date of the notice ?


George Taylor: June 14, 1907, I will I'ead the whole document for the minister :
Sealed tenders addressed to the undersigned, and endorsed ' Tenders for Petit Rocher Breakwater Extension/ will he received at this office until Monday, July 15, 1907, inclusively, for the construction of an extension from the Breakwater to the shore at Petit Rocher, Gloucester County, N.B., according to a plan and specification to be seen at the offices of E. T. P. Shewen, Esq., Resident Engineer, St. John, N.B., Geoffrey Stead, Esq., Resident Engineer, Chatham, N.B., on application to the Postmaster at Petit Rocher, N.B., and at the Department of Public Works, Ottawa.
Tenders will not be considered unless made on the printed form supplied, and signed with the actual signatures of tenderers.
An accepted cheque on a chartered bank, payable to the order of the Honourable the Minister of Public Works, for two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500.00) must accompany each tender. The cheque will he forfeited if the party tendering decline the contract or fail to complete the work contracted for, and will be returned in case of non-aecep tance of tender.


George Taylor: The department does not bind itself to accept the lowest or any tender.
By order,



[Stage Direction]
Secretary.
Department of Public Works,
Ottawa, June 14, 1907.
Newspapers inserting this advertisement without authority from the department will not be paid for it.
Now that will prove to the minister that there has been correspondence.
William Pugsley: Will you allow me to see the notice ?


George Taylor: There is no notice. Several tenders wei'e received, and I have in my hand other correspondence from the department, which I will not i'ead at present until I see whether the minister will comply with the order of this House. But I have here a letter from the department, proving completely that there was correspondence.


William Pugsley: To whom was the letter addressed ?


George Taylor: I will not tell the minister. I want him to obey the order of the House. When he gets up and tells the House that there is no further correspondence, I tell him that there is, and I know whereof I am speaking, because I have the correspondence in my hand. I have given the minister enough to convince him now that there has been correspondence, because there was an advertisement for fenders and tenders came in. I know of tenders coming in, and I know of correspondence going on in the department. Now surely the minister will make an apology for all he has said. I have read his report showing that there was an accident, that the wharf was carried away, that the work was going on, and an expenditure was made of $5,029 for the fiscal year of 1906-7. Surely this work has not been going on without some correspondence, and the correspondence is brought down up to the crucial point; July 12, 1905, is the date of the last document brought, down, although the order of the House asks for everything up to the 31st of March last. Now I want the file completed, I think it is high time. I have given him lots of time from the 24th of April, I have brought the facts all before him, I have made my statement, and I ask the Prime Minister to see that his Minister of Public Works obeys the order of the House. I have always undex-stood, when an order of the House was passed, it had to be complied with, no matter what department or what minister is affected. I have proved conclusively now to the Prime Minister that an order of the House was passed calling for all the papers, and the papers come down up to the time when it is discovered that there is a nigger in the fence, and then they are cut off.


William Pugsley: You mean a nigger in the wharf, this is not a fence.


George Taylor: My hon. friend is acquainted with the nigger In the fence, he knows what it means, he knows there is a job behind this.


William Pugsley: No, I do not.


George Taylor: I have correspondence in my pocket which proves it. Now I want the minister to obey the order of the House and complete this file up to the 31st of March, so that I may see what has taken place. I know there was a second tender called for, for I have given the minister the notice, and I want him to say when I may expect the order of the House to be obeyed.


William Pugsley: I am not fully persuaded by the remarks of my hon. friend that the order of the House has not been obeyed, in fact my deputy informs me that it has been completely obeyed. I am rather inclined to think my hon. friend is more anxious to find fault with me than he is to get information, because a month or so ago I told the hon. gentleman if he would be good enough to tell me what further information he desired I would be only too happy to bring it down. I want to say further, that coming here new to the House and new to the department I am only too anxious to receive any information in regard to any departmental matters which might require attention. If there has been any job in connection with this breakwater I have no knowledge of it, and if the hon. gentleman has any information to give I shall only be too happy to look into it with the utmost care. I repeat that if my hon. friend will tell me what further he desires I shall bring all that information down without a formal order.


George Taylor: The order of the House calls for it, and I want the minister to comply with it.


William Pugsley: The order of the House has been complied with. The order of the House asked for papers connected with matters which were detailed upon page 74 of the report of the Public Works Department. X saw my deputy and told him what the hon. member had said on a former occasion, and my deputy assured me that everything which was called for by the order had been furnished. There is no doubt tenders were called for in 1907, but that would be for additional work which is not referred to, so 1 am told, on page 74 of the report. There is no necessity for introducing any technicalities about it; without questioning whether my hon. friend is right or whether I am right, I say I will have any further information in the department brought down so as to carry the matter forward to the latest possible date.


Jlr. SPROULE.: When a member of this House asks for certain correspondence or for tenders, that member is not supposed to know what the correspondence is or what tenders there may be, and so he asks for all that is in possession of a department of the government.


William Pugsley: This motion was limited to a certain date and to what was detailed on page 74 of the Public Works report.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I think the minister is not justified in saying that because a member does not specify exactly what he wants the order is complied with when only certain correspondence is brought down. How can a member know what is in the possession of the department; he expects the minister and the deputy to attend to that?


William Pugsley: If the order of the House were to bring down all papers connected with a certain work to the 30th June, 1906, would the hon. member expect the papers to be brought down to the 30th June, 1907?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: This order calls for everything in connection with the construction of a breakwater at Petit Rocher as detailed in page 74 of the report of the Minister of Pifblic Works for the year ending the 31st March, 1907.


William Pugsley: That would not take in the work done up to June, 1907.


Mr.   T.@: lYLOR. It would; the report refers to it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It asks for everything in connection with the breakwater.


William Pugsley: As detailed on page 74 of the report, and that would not take in the new work.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The work was under construction and correspondence must have been going on all the time. A substantial compliance with that order would be the bringing down of all correspondence up to the date of the order. I will read what is said at page 74 of the report of the Department of Public Works.


William Pugsley: Would my hon. friend permit me to interrupt him to say that upon the intimation of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Taylor) that he desires further information I will cheerfully bring down everything right up to the date of the order. That ought to be satisfactory.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: But the minister has said that he brought everything down.
iMV PUGSLEY. I said I had brought down everything in reference to what was detailed upon page 74 of the Public Works report which the order of the House was limited to. Now, I say that at the desire of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Taylor) I will

give direction to place on tlie table of the House everything right down to the date of the order.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Less than that would not be a substantial compliance with the order.


William Pugsley: I will do it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The minister should not shield himself behind his deputy and say that he has literally complied with the order when it has not been complied with in fact.


William Pugsley: There is nothing to keep back I can assure you.


LETTERS DELAYED IN TRANSMISSION.
Mr. R. S. LAKE (Qu'Appelle).: On Sunday night or Monday morning of last week an accident occurred by the derailing and immersion in a lake of a mail car near Kenora, and on the Wednesday following I asked the Postmaster General if he had any information about it and he replied that he had not. Since then the Postmaster General has been good enough to inform me that the information had reached the department on the 1st of June, that "a portion of the mails had been rescued and had been spread out and dried and forwarded to their destination with a note stating what happened to them. The fact remains that a portion of those mails may nof yet have been delivered, and I was expecting letters myself about that date. I have since received two letters. One of them was inclosed in a wrapper from the Ottawa post office stating that it had been received in a damaged condition, at Ottawa, Ontario. That is all the information I got to account for the damaged condition in which this letter, which was posted on the 23rd of May at the town of Moosomin, reached me. The other letter had a note across it stating that it was damaged by water owing to a railway accident near Kenora, Ontario. Of course, I realize that that is practically all that the Post Office Department could do at the moment ; but it would be much more satisfactory to me if I had known at the time the accident happened that the mails coming from the Northwest had been delayed in consequence of an accident. It would have been still more satisfactory if I were aware that the persons in the Northwest who had addressed letters to me knew that an accident had happened to the mail car on which their letters,had been conveyed. Last year I saw a very brief item in a paper stating that a mail car had been destroyed by fire in the Northwest several days before, and I had no idea whether some important letter of mine might not have been in that mail car and
had not reached its destination. It seems to me that when accidents of this kind happen, the proper course would be for notices to be sent to all the post offices from which bags had been sent by the destroyed mail car, so that people sending important communications would have the earliest possible notice if their communications had been destroyed or damaged or delayed in transit. It must be evident to everybody that accidents of this kind may be fraught with very serious consequences to private individuals using the mails. A good many years ago I suffered a great deal of inconvenience from the fact that a letter disappeared, and I could only guess that it must have been destroyed with a mail car that had been burned, as some time later I heard had been the case. When such a thing happens I think the Postmaster General should give notice to the post office from which letters conveyed on the mail car were despatched, stating that it had been burned.


Hon. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX (Postmaster General).: I am glad that my hon. friend has called my attention once again to this accident which occurred on the Canadian Pacific Railway a few days ago. Since I wrote to my hon. friend giving him the particulars which had reached me after the accident, I think further details have reached the department, which I shall be glad to communicate to him. I quite understand that it is very annoying to have letters lost or damaged ; but after all an accident is an accident. I take note, however, of the advice which the hon. gentleman gives as to what should be done. As a matter of fact, I think that it is done-that as soon as an accident takes place, notice is sent to the different offices affected ; but my hon. friend will understand that when a fire destroys a mail car, with the mail bags, the result is a considerable state of confusion in the department. However, the advice given by the hon. gentleman is very reasonable, and I will see what is being done in these cases.-


Mr. W. J. ROCHE.: Are the notices which are sent to the post offices posted up, or are they merely sent for the information of the postmaster ?


Rodolphe Lemieux: The duty of the postmaster is to post the notice in his office.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Is there any instruction to postmasters to that effect ?


Rodolphe Lemieux: Yes.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Is the postmaster instructed to notify all parties sending registered letters for instance.


Rodolphe Lemieux: In the case of registered letters it is easier to reach the


William Pugsley: parties sending them, because their names have been entered in a book ; but 4n the ease of ordinary letters it is very difficult to reach the correspondents, but immediately after the accident the department notifies each postmaster affected, and it is his duty to post the notice up in the post office.


Richard Stuart Lake: X have never seen such a notice.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: When a postmaster is notified that a mail from his office has been destroyed, is there any instruction to him to notify all parties who sent registered letters by that mail ?


Rodolphe Lemieux: Those who have sent registered letters have the receipts in thier hands and they will know whether the parties to whom the letters were addressed received them or not, and they can themselves make complaint to the post office if they have a complaint to make. I am not aware whether or not instructions are given to the postmasters to notify the parties who sent registered letters ; but I will inquire as to that.



DEPARTMENT OF MARINE AND FISHERIES


Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Mr. Speaker, before the motion passes I would like to bring to the attention of the government two matters that are more or less connected with the report of the Civil Service Commission. The first thing that I desire to do is to ask information from the government as to when it is likely that Mr. Justice Cassels will resume his inquiry. The right hon. Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) will recollect that the report of the Civil Service Commission was placed in the hands of the government on the 17th March last, nearly three months ago, and that it was presented to the House on the 20th March, after inquiry had first been made of the commission for certain memoranda which were referred to iu the report, but which did not accompany it in the first instance. On the 26th March the hon. Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Brodeur) announced the determination of the government that a searching inquiry should be prosecuted with respect to the allegations of the commissioners in regard to his department. Later, on the 6th day of April, Mr. Justice Cassels announced to the Prime Minister in a letter that if he undertook the work of this commission he could only do so upon the understanding that his judicial duties should occupy his attention in the first instance and that he should give only such time to the work of the commission as would remain after he had properly discharged his judicial functions. Mr. Justice Cassels, in the same letter, made suggestions as to the appointment of some
person as his deputy to perform his duties as judge during the time in which he was engaged in the work of this commission. No action however was taken by the government, although a Bill had been placed on the Order Paper early in March and upon that Bill being presented to this House on the 14th May it was passed immediately with very little discussion and with some slight amendments and has gone from this House to the Senate. I do not know what its fortune has been in the Senate, nor do I know whether it is in a position to receive the assent of the Governor General. At all events it left this House on the same day that its second reading was brought on ; that is to say, on the 14th day of May last. Now, the allegations of the commissioners with respect to the Department of Marine and Fisheries were of a sufficiently serious character to evoke from the government, on the 26th day of March last, the statement that an immediate and effective inquiry would be made. Nearly three months have elapsed and nothing has been done except the examination of two of the commissioners before Mr. Justice Cassels, and possibly the examination of one or two other persons. It seems to me that this is a matter of some urgency. The opposition in parliament would be justified, without taking a very extreme position at all, in insisting that the work of that commission should be prosecuted to a conclusion and its report presented to parliament before the conclusion of this session and before any further supplies should be granted to the Department of Marine and Fisheries. I think that would be a perfectly proper and constitutional position for the opposition to take. We have not announced any such determination up to the present time, but I think it is only fair and right for me to say to the Prime Minister that this is a matter of urgency, that the government themselves have recognized it as a matter of great urgency and that the very slight progress which has been made in the prosecution of the inquiry does not reflect credit upon the administration of the government, nor does it indicate any great desire on the part of the government to facilitate these proceedings. That is all I have to say as to that particular subject. It might be elaborated at much greater length, but I think the Prime Minister will understand thoroughly, from the few words I have spoken, my view with regard to the matter.
'There is one other subject in connection with the report of the commission to which I also desire to call attention. Two of the commissioners were	examined-Messrs.
Fyshe and Bazin-and I believe that very little was elicited from them beyond the statement that they stood by the report and that they did not consider themselves subject to cross-examination with respect

to the grounds upon which they had made that report. They took, In effect, the position that all the information which they had obtained was available to the commissioner himself, that it could be procured by him and that it was not very consonant with the position which they had occupied as members of a royal commission that they should be cross-examined before another commissioner as to the grounds upon which they had reached their conclusions. But there was one officer, not a member of that commission, but an officer of parliament, who might very well have been called and called at the earliest possible stage before Mr. Justice Cassels, and I am at a loss to know why it was that the counsel acting for the government in this inquiry failed to have their attention directed to the necessity of calling Mr. Fraser, the Auditor General. As an example of the service that he might have been able to give in the prosecution of the inquiry, let me call the attention of the government to the evidence which Mr. FrSfeer has already given before the royal commission upon the subject of the Department of Marine and Fisheries. The evidence which I shall quote is at page 1309 of the evidence reported to parliament and printed :
Q. The Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries was here last Friday and he told us, among other things, that he had arranged with you about the system of certificates in use by the department. Is the system of certificates now satisfactory?-A. Not any more so than it was before.
Q. The certificates are either ' according to contract' or ' according to agreement,' or ' prices fair and just ' ?-A. Tes.
Q. And in regard 'to the Marine and Fisheries Department how far are they still satisfactory?-A. Well, they are just about as unsatisfactory as they were last year, or two years ago. I mean we have to be continually taking up accounts and going back of the certificate. The certificates they are giving us are not reliable-I mean they may be good, and they may not. There is a case now down on the ship channel where they have a lot of men employed by the day, and they also board these men on the vessels.
If there are any officers In the service of the government, whether in the Department of Marine and Fisheries or in any other department, whose certificate is not regarded as reliable by the Auditor General, I think it is very important that the circumstances should be inquired Into. We hare an inquiry proceeding with regard to one department, and one department only, in respect to which the Auditor General has stated upon his oath that the certificates which are given are not reliable. Then the witness is taken in hand by Mr. Fyshe and the evidence is resumed at page 1310:
O- You told us about that before?-A. Well, we find it very difficult to check that and see whether the men that aire em I w 'd by the Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
day are the mem whose board as paid for in the boarding house. The captain, or the man in charge of the work there, vets 75 cents per day for boarding them.
We asked them, for instance, to make out the two lists, that is the pay-list and the board list in the same oa'der so that we could see that the names would correspond, because there are a great many men, particularly down in that section of the country, who bear the same name. There is a recurrence of the same name frequently; it may be all right.
Q. But you cannot tell?-A. We cannot tell.
Q. Do they ndt sign for it or give a receipt ? -A.. The men give receipts for their own pay, but the man who has 'boarded them gives a general receipt for the board of the 'Whole list. We are trying to get the original books from him, to see whether he kept some record, a daily record, but we cannot get that. He says: ' Well, I did not keep it.' Of course you get the certificate from the man that these men were boarded there.
Q. But that is all you get?-A. Yes, but I want something back of that. That is why I say the certificates are unsatisfactory. I say a man ought to be able to back up his certificate with some other evidence.
Q. Instead of having proper vouchers you have only a bulk certificate?-A. Yes, the man receiving the money is practically certifying that his own account is correct.
Q. In fact that is net a proper receipt at all?-A. No, it is not.
By the Ohairman:
Q. Are there any other oases in which the certificates are unsatisfactory?-A.Well, I put it generally this way, that when you find a man makes a certificate in one instance that turns out to be wrong I have no confidence in his certificate afterwards.
By Mr. Fyshe:
Q. If he does the wrong thing once you cannot take 'his certificate again ?-^A. I have these certificates presented to me time after time. I mean certificates that are no guarantee the account is correct. It is unsatisfactory in that wav.
Q. Have you had any correspondence with the Deputy Minister pointing out what you want?-A. Yes, I haven't any doubt that in [DOT]the last year's accounts we had correspondence asking for further corroboration of the accounts. Take, for instance, the matter of travelling expenses

take an officer of the department, wheie I thought his travelling expenses account was too heavy and where he had to admit it and make a refund.
Q. He made a refund?-A. Yes, of course he said that his accounts got mixed up, that was the only excuse he gave, but the man's certificate is of no value to me ever since.
Q. Of oourse not?-A. And 'he is travelling still, and furnishing accounts, they may be right or they may be wrong.
I do not wish to add anything to what Mr. Fraser has said in his evidence, except that it is exactly the point that we had raised in respect of the investigation concerning the ' Arctic ' expedition. In that case there were certificates as to quantities and as to prices. It was urged by the Conservative members of that committee that we should go behind and investigate the cor-

rectness of these certificates and that the committee should hear evidence of persons who had made an examination of the stock remaining in the vessel after the expedition. The certificates were, so far as I recollect, considered to be prima facie evidence at least of the amount on board and there was not much investigation of the actual accuracy of the certificate. It is true that some persons were called who testified that certificates were given and they were all right so far as they knew, but I am making the same point that the Auditor General makes in his evidence that there as well as in the every day business of the government, the certificate is not good unless the officer certifying actually knows that the goods were supplied, that the prices are fair and that the expenditure is therefore a reasonable one.
There is another matter which concerns, but not so closely, the report of this royal commission. I shall not again refer to the parts of the report in which the commissioners point out that some better system should be devised with respect to the statistics of the country. It is pointed out in this report that the Department of Trade and Commerce and the Department of Customs both prepare blue-books containing reports of the trade and commerce of the country, and other important statistics. It is suggested ' by the commission that this work should be done in a more thorough and uniform way and they make several suggestions. Among other things they suggest that the publication might be supervised by the joint committee of parliament entrusted with the printing of parliamentary documents.
Certain correspondence has been forwarded to me by the government of British Columbia. I shall not quote it in full but shall merely state its purport. On April 2, 1908, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Provincial Information of British Columbia asked the Department of Customs for a statement of the total exports and imports of British Columbia for the last fiscal year. The details were asked for if it was possible to give them, but the totals were asked for in the meantime. No answer having being received, on April 27, more than three weeks afterwards, a telegram was sent to the Department of Customs to which, on the same day, a reply was received from the Department of Customs stating that the letter of April 2 could not be found and asking that a duplicate should be sent. A reply to that telegram was forwarded on the same day from the office of the secretary of the Bureau of Provincial Information of British Columbia repeating the request for the total of the imports and exports of British Columbia for the last fiscal year. On April 28, the Department of Customs telegraphed to the provincial secretary of British Columbia that the. report 309
had been mailed on the 21st of April and the letter of the 21st of April, which arrived shortly afterwards, contained the information as to the exports and imports of that province during the fiscal year ending March 31, 1908. That letter was acknowledged on April 28, and a further request was made for the details of these statements, it being alleged by the secretary of the Bureau of Provincial Information of British Columbia that people were constantly asking for the quantities and values of imports and exports of different classes of goods. On May 7, that letter was acknowledged by the Department of Customs and it wras stated that some time must elapse before the figures would be available, but that a note had been made of the matter and the department would endeavour to comply with the request at the earliest possible date. On May 14, a letter was written by the Commissioner of Customs to the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Information. The letter is as follows :
Ottawa, May 14, 1908. Frank I. Clarke, Esq.,
Assistant Secretary 'Bureau of Provincial 'Information, Victoria, British Columbia.
Sir,-On the 7th instant I wrote you in reply to yours of the 28th ultimo, in which yon ask for a detailed statement of the .imports [DOT] and exports of British Columbia for the fiscal year 1908, as follow's:
' I beg to inform you that some time must elapse before these figures-will be available, hut a note has been made of the matter and I will endeavour to comply with your request at the earliest possible dated
Upon looking further into the matter and consulting the chief clerk in charge of statistics, I am advised that the preparation of such a statement would entail a great amount of labour and consume considerable time in its preparation, necessitating the withdrawal of clerks from their regular duties while so engaged, and as the staff is fully engaged in the preparation of the annual report and other parliamentary papery it is impossible to prepare such a statement unless by assigning the work to special officers to be done after regular office hours, for which they would expect to be compensated.
In the circumstances. I am writing to state that if yon are willing to compensate these men while so engaged in overtime work, the statement will be got readv as^ soon as possible. I estimate the cost will he about seventy-five dollars.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
JOHN MoDOUGALD, Commissioner of Customs.
To this on May 21, 1908, the following reply was transmitted :
John MoDougald, Esq.,	.
Commissioner of Customs, Ottawa, Ontario.
Dear Sir,-I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of yours of the 14th instant, and I am



authorized by the lion. Minister of Finance to request you to furnish a detailed statement of the imports and exports of British Columbia for the fiscal year of 1908, on the terms which you name, that is an expenditure of $75.
It is regrettable that the statistics are not so compiled as to permit of the exports and imports of the various provinces to be got at without a large amount of extra work.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
FRANK I. CLARKE, Assistant Secretary.
I am not disposed to minimize the difficulties in the preparation of these statistics directly after the close of the fiscal year, but it does seem a matter of regret if information of that kind cannot be furnished to the government of a province who asked for this reasonable public information, without imposing upon them a certain charge for furnishing it. I dare say the same system has been carried out in the past, indeed I am disposed to believe the Minister of Customs has made some improvements in the preparation of statistics, but it is an unfortunate condition of affairs that figures of that kind should not be available at the very earliest possible moment ; and without desiring in any way to unduly criticise the record of the government in this respect I would submit to the Prime Minister that the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Trade and Commerce should undertake a reorganization of this statistical branch at the very earliest possible moment so that not only for the provincial governments but for all the citizens of the country who may desire reasonable information of that kind such reasonable information would be forthcoming without the necessity of imposing a tax or charge upon either the provincial government or any person or corporation who may desire information of that character with regard to an important public subject.


Rt.   H@: With regard to the latter part of the information sought by my hon. friend, I have only to say that it is a purely departmental matter as to which I am sure the Minister of Customs, as soon as he is in his seat, will be able to give some answer to my hon. friend. I am sorry to say that personally I could not say anything at present upon this point.
With regard to the other matter, that is to say the inquiry of my hon. friend as to the investigation of the Civil Service, my hon. friend is aware that Mr. Justice Cas-sels has adjourned his inquest, I think to a certain date in the present month.


George Eulas Foster: To a certain date ?


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: No, without any date. At all events he is coming back to Ottawa during the present month, and I daresay will be prepared to resume the investigation directly on his return, pro-Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
vided, as he has stated, that some one else is appointed by the government to take charge of his general judicial work. A Bill has been passed to that effect some time ago. That Bill is now before the Senate, and I do not know in what condition it is at the present time, but it will be ready for the sanction of His Excellency the Governor General as soon as we call upon His Excellency to sanction a Bill of Supply which we hope to be ready to present to His Excellency early in the coming week. At that time if the Bill which has passed this House receives the sanction of His Excellency, as it will, I have no doubt, the government will be prepared to make the appointment provided for in that Bill.



PRINTING OF TRADE RETURNS.

[Stage Direction]
lion. G. E. FOSTER (North Toronto). There seems to me to be an expensive and unnecessary reduplication of publications with reference to the trade and other statistics. There is also a lack of agreement between the publications as they are issued by the different departments. The Trade and Navigation reports are issued by the Minister of Customs and the Trade and Commerce reports by the Minister of Trade and Commerce. Any person taking these up and arranging a series of comparative statements or reports from one of them finds when ho refers to the other that for the very same year and the very same period there is a disagreement in the total figures, and in order to be accurate and save himself he has to state from which of these returns he takes the figures so that he may not be confronted with a statement for the same year which he cannot substantiate from the report he has used. Besides that there is a complete reduplication of matter in the Trade and Navigation report and the Trade and Commerce report in certain particulars. Both of these are very bulky and costly volumes, and I do not see why it is necessary to have a reduplication of the very same information in these two large volumes issued by different departments of the same government and simply issued by different departments. The Trade and Commerce Department issues a series of monthly reports. They call them bulletins. They are large reports, they are costly, but the trouble about them is that when you receive them they are two, three or four months late. To whom are they distributed? They may come to the members of parliament but they are practically of no use to them, the member of parliament may occasionally use some figures from them if he is preparing speeches, but a member of parliament depends upon the yearly reports. It is with yearly statements that he is particularly engaged. Then where do these go? It is supposed they are distributed to boards of trade and merchants, &c., but there again

the trouble is they are two or three or four months behind the time, and the information they give is, 1 think, of very little practical benefit, at least I have talked with people who get them who say that. Now, these cost a lot of money. Again you have the abstract which is now issued. Your census report is made up and is distributed in complete form and also in bulletin form. These figures come to the members of parliament, to the men who make a study of statistics and to all those who propose to use them. Then again there is the statistical abstract, the Year-book of Canada as it is called. The statistical abstract for the last two years'has been very largely an extension of the figures that have been published in the census report. It is, I was going to say, absolutely useless for the purpose for which a Year-book is compiled. Any man who wishes to study these figures gets them in the reports of the Census Department and then he takes up the Year-book thinking he is going to get fresh information but finds that a large portion of it is available in other forms. A very large proportion is taken up with a reduplication of the census returns. Another very large part is taken up with bolus bolus transfers from the Trade and Navigation Report or from the Trade and Commerce Report and the figures of Trade and Commerce in their different forms. You get absolutely nothing that you do not get in the Trade and Commerce Report, and you get it not in its full form but in a necessarily imperfect form. Then you get certain statistics with reference to some of the other departments which are culled from their reports. A condensation of some of these may be useful but my contention is that in the first place there is a large amount of statistical work done by different departments, each doing it separately, and that there is a useless and expensive duplication. It seems to me to be perfectly useless to publish a Y'ear-book which is merely a duplication of parliamentary reports which have already appeared. Your Year-book does not give anything fresh because it is a year or a year and a half behind the times. The Year-book ought to be fresh and up to date, which I am sorry to say the present Yearbook is not. The kind of statistics we want we don't get, and the kind we do not want we get measured up in two or three different forms. It would be a good thing for the government to appoint a commission of three or four competent people who are in the departments and let them look up the whole question of statistical reports so as to provide that there shall be no duplication, and if possible that they shall be brought up to date. When we compare our statistics with those issued in the United States the disparity in usefulness and efficiency is very apparent.
309J
Mr. D. HENDERSON (Haltou).: Sometimes I send these monthly reports of the Department of Customs back to the distribution office as I find them of no practical value. The last report for March, the end of the fiscal year, was placed in my desk yesterday and as that report gives a return for the full twelve months of the year I found it quite useful and a moment ago I forwarded it to a manufacturer in my county who I knew would be interested in it. But I would not trouble him by sending him the reports of the previous months because they would not give him an opportunity of ascertaining how the trade of the country was. I have often been confused myself with the superabundance of statistics we have. The report of the Trade and Commerce Department and the Trade and Navigation returns vary very greatly and are very confusing. I understand that the report of the Trade and Commerce Department gives the entire imports regardless of whether they are for home consumption or not, while the Trade and Navigation returns classify the imports. I do not think the members of this House would be one whit worse off if the entire reports of the Trade and Commerce Department were ignored for it is only a useless expense to print and duplicate the information they contain. I rarely find any good use for the report of the Minister of Trade and Commerce although I am very fond of studying the Trade and Navigation returns in which I generally get all the information I want.
I regret that the Minister of Customs is not in his place to-day-I am not finding any fault with that because I was absent myself last week, and I presume he is absent to-day for the same reason-but had he been here I would point out to him that the monthly reports of his department would be very much more useful if they included another column giving the amount of duties paid under the general tariff, the preferential tariff, and the surtax. I do not think it would add to the trouble or expense if that information were supplied, and I would ask the minister were he here to directions officers to set out in these reports what duties had been collected. More especially would I like to see that information in the last monthly report for the fiscal year, for then it would answer all the purposes of the complete volume of the Trade and Navigation returns which will not be published for perhaps six months after the end of the fiscal year. This w'ould enable the members of the House during recess to study these matters so as to be able to intelligently discuss them when parliament meets again. With regard to the Yearbook.


George Taylor: It's no good.


David Henderson: It may be useful to some, but when I get it, it is too old to be

of any use to me, and lienee I probably do not refer to it once a year. Frequently it may be used to compare one year with another, but generally speaking I have found it very useless.


Mr. DANCASTER.: The Minister of Trade and Commerce might repudiate it as he did two or three years ago.


David Henderson: Of course, the Minister of Trade and Commerce has practically nothing or very little to do, and if we were to deprive him of the publication of that volume, his department might be rendered almost useless, and there would then be no justification for paying him a salary of $7,000 a year and keeping a highly paid deputy minister.


Mr. KEMP.: The question of the duplication of statistical reports is one which I have referred to on a previous occasion, and like the hon. member for Halton, I am sorry that the Minister of Customs is not here to-day. If the reports of the Department of Trade and Commerce and the' Trade and Navigation returns were intelligently consolidated, they would be very much more useful to the members of the House and to the public than they are at present.
I cannot understand why it is necessary to go to the expense of issuing two reports so nearly alike. Besides these reports, there is the Statistical Year-book. This book, in its present form, is less useful than it formerly was. There has been omitted from it seventy-two important subjects which appeared in the former Year-book, and in order to get this information one has to go over the reports of various departments of the government and to search the books, periodicals and governmental reports published in foreign countries. I suppose that the object in reducing the size of the Year-book of Canada was to have members and the public refer to the reports of the various departments of the government; but as a matter of fact that is not practicable. People will not look through such voluminous reports. Most people want information in more convenient form. It seems to me that we have gone a little further than is necessary in the way of governmental publications. The whole question should be reviewed, by a commission or otherwise, and the reports made of more practical service than they are at present. In the Statistical Abstract of the United States there are very many subjects which are not to be found in the Year-book of Canada, but which were previously contained in it. I had a return brought down showing the various matters which are omitted from the present Year-book. Some of these are very important, such as imports and exports and duties per head of the population, imports and exports of foreign goods via Canada, imports and exports of foreign goods via the United States, im-


David Henderson: ports and exports of foreign countries, drawbacks allowed, aggregate trade of the Dominion, average value of imports in three year periods, public debts of foreign countries, provincial debts, &c. I think it would be well for the government to consider whether these subjects should not again be included in the Year-book, and whether the statistics of the Department of Trade and Commerce and the Trade and Navigation Returns cannot be consolidated.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I have been in the habit for many years of sending copies of the Dominion Year-book to Public school .teachers and to men in commercial life, who found that it contained valuable information. But since the change has taken place I have been reminded by several that the book has become practically worthless. This book was originally compiled by Mr. George Johnston, who was the best statistician we ever had here j but objection was taken that the book was too large, that it dealt with too many subjects, and some gentlemen were of opinion that Mr. Johnston should be supplanted, and that the book should be compiled by some one else on narrower lines. The government heeded these representations and made a change, and with what result ? That the book has become almost useless. I agree entirely *with what the hon. member for East Toronto has said. The book was formerly a valuable compilation of statistics, and it might be so again if it were properly compiled.


Mr. COCKSHUTT.: It was my intention to have taken up a matter relating to the Customs Department, but the Minister of Customs is not in his place. I sent him notice yesterday of my intention to take that matter up. Apparently, from what his colleagues say, he has left the city. I find that in my absence the other evening, he took the opportunity of criticising me for being absent. Well, I know of no argument he could apply to myself which would not apply with equal force to the minister. If he has gone to my constituency, as reported, I do not think he was justified in his criticism of me with regard to that same matter. I came down early in the week purposely to take up matters in connection with customs.
I had made a personal request to the minister that he would reserve one item in his estimates on which we might have a general discussion of the affairs of his department. This he did not do and I judge from what I see in ' Hansard ' that it is not the intention of the minister to give me the opportunity I asked for when going away. I shall take the earliest opportunity when he is here to criticise certain acts done in the department and certain parts of its administration. I shall therefore defer the remarks I was going to make until such time as the

minister is here attending to his duties. I thought it was well to explain the situation to the House because I sent him a letter yesterday saying that I was going to make some remarks. *


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House went into Committee of Supply.
Dominion Astronomical Survey-salaries of technical officers and clerks, $17,192.50.
Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior).: The explanation of the increase is as follows : Mr. J. H. Labbe gets an increase of $300 from the 1st July next. Mr. Labbe has proved a competent assistant secretary to the, chief astronomer and lias besides charge of the library.


Robert Laird Borden: Where is the library ?


Frank Oliver: At the experimental farm. Then there are the annual increases of $50 each.


George Eulas Foster: What force liav.e they there ?


Frank Oliver: Eleven men. Mr. Plas-kett is the astronomer. This is a special vote for these officials of the astronomical survey who are not included in the vote for civil government which went through last night.


George Eulas Foster: Is Dr. King the only one under civil government ?


Frank Oliver: No. there are besides Otto Klotz, J. J. McArthur and C. A. Biggar. These come under the civil government vote.


George Eulas Foster: Then there are eleven besides these ?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


George Eulas Foster: What is the work in wlrch these fifteen high class men are engaged.


Frank Oliver: As this is strictly a scientific branch, it would be better to let the matter stand until I can have Dr. King here. I intended having him here but was not sure when this item would be reached.


George Eulas Foster: If Dr. King would prepare a succinct memo, showing what this branch is designed to do, what it has done and what it proposes to do, that would be very useful to parliament and the country as well. I understand that we must have such a branch and, so far as I know, we have an efficient one, but it might be popularized a little by a statement of that kind.


Frank Oliver: I will have such a statement prepared, so that in case he should not be here I will be able to present it. Or I can have Mr. King here at three o'clock.


George Eulas Foster: That would be more satisfactory.


Mr. WM. ROOHE (Halifax).: The purely scientific facts that are gathered at this
observatory are not understood by a large number of people, and I think that the expenditure would be more popular if the people at large were informed as to the work which is done at the observatory. For instance, the nearer nebulae and the fixed stars


George Eulas Foster: They are first cousins, like, are they not?


William Roche: Wait a moment, my hon. friend has not studied astronomy as I have for forty years. I may say that popular information is now given in the newspapers by means of diagrams and there are also articles written by eminent astronomers at the Lick observatory and the Yerkes observatory which are familiarizing the popular mind with that species of information which deals with the movements and phenomena of the celestial bodies. Now, the professors at our observatory could write say monthly a popular article on the approximate distances and magnitudes, &c., of the nearer nebular and largest fixed stars and could obtain additional information concerning the most remarkable objects which are to be seen in the heavens, and this information could be published in a popular form and thus become useful to the schools and to all the people who are interested in that magnificent study. It could be done without much expense, and it would be copied in the newspaper periodicals ajl over Canada. Of course allowance would have to be made for the difference in latitude between the Lick observatory in California, for instance, and the latitude of Ottawa in Canada. But the objects which are most visible could be described, and this popular information could be communicated in that way. I know that I would have the support of my hon. friends opposite in advocating any expenditure for improving the instruments at the observatory, because 1 am satisfied that this expenditure if made more useful to the public would meet the approval of the Canadian people.
At one o'clock, committee took recess.
Committee resumed at three o'clock.


Albert Edward Kemp: Does the item we are now considering cover the boundary survey?


Frank Oliver: Yes, the second item.


Albert Edward Kemp: What boundary surveys are now being carried on?


Frank Oliver: There is the survey of the 141st meridian between Alaska and the Yukon Territory, the coastal survey between Alaska and British Columbia, the 49th parallel between the United States and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the boundary between the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick.


Albert Edward Kemp: Tlie boundary between Canada and the United States, from the St. Lawrence east, has been completed as far as the state of Maine, I understand.


Frank Oliver: As far as the state of New Hampshire.


Albert Edward Kemp: And is being continued east and north at the state of Maine.


Frank Oliver: They are working from the other end now.


Albert Edward Kemp: In the survey between the Yukon Territory and Alaska how many weeks in the year can they work and how many miles are they able to do in the season? How many men are there on the survey?


Frank Oliver: They are able to work about five months in the season. Last year they did 130 miles of the line.


Albert Edward Kemp: How many parties are there?


Frank Oliver: There are three parties at work, one actually running the line and the second taking the topography of the country adjoining the line and the third cutting a way through the woods along the line.


Albert Edward Kemp: How many men are employed altogether?


Frank Oliver: Our party works in conjunction with the party of the United States. I am informed there are probably about sixty men in the party.


Albert Edward Kemp: Is that line beihg surveyed right through to the Arctic ocean?


Frank Oliver: That is the ultimate intention.


Albert Edward Kemp: Is there necessity for this work going on up in the Arctic circle?


Frank Oliver: Of course the question of boundaries may at any time become important and it is generally considered better to have such questions settled at a time when they are not attracting attention rather than to await the time when they may be attracting attention. A dispute is much more easily settled if it is not allowed to arise. That is the principle we are going on in the case of the ,141st. meridian. As my hon.' friend is probably aware there is a part of that meridian which must be very accurately defined because of the gold mining operations which are going on on both sides of the line. That is a highly mineralized country and we have hopes that gold discoveries may be made in other places, we do not know where, but we think we should he preparing at a reasonable rate of speed and with a reasonable expenditure so that should it at any time be necessary to absolutely know where the boundary is we will know it. It is one of the responsibilities attaching to the ownership of vast territories. and having assumed the responsi-1 bility it must be discharged.	[DOT]


Frank Oliver: ilr. KEMP. As I understand, part of the territory is allotted to the United States survey parties and part to the Canadian, they do not work jointly but in alternate positions.


Frank Oliver: They work jointly so that their work is checked. Each checks the work of the other as it proceeds.


Albert Edward Kemp: I understood they had separate camps and came together at certain points, that we accepted their line for nine or ten miles and they accepted ours for nine or ten miles, that they did not work together.


Frank Oliver: The system of which my hon. friend speaks is that which prevails on the Alaska coast boundary, an irregular boundary line which divides the strip of Alaska along the Pacific coast from the interior of British Columbia and the Yukon. In that case each country accepts the work done by the party of the other country ; they work in alternate sections, but in that case it is a question of delimitation according to physical features. In the case of the 141st meridian it is a case of accuracy of scientific establishment and in such a case it is considered that the only correct way is that the work of each party should be checked by the other as it is being done.


Albert Edward Kemp: Is the minister sure the parties can survey as much as 130 miles in a season?


Frank Oliver: My information is that the work done last season was about 130 miles south from the point where the 141st meridian crosses the Yukon river.


Albert Edward Kemp: The reason I asked was that in going to the experimental farm the other day I met a man who had been working on that Yukon survey who told me that they were able to do about nine miles a year. I do not know his name but he was one of the men going out there.


Frank Oliver: I am afraid my hon. friend has derived his information from an unreliable source.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Does this item for surveys cover the delimiting of the boundary under the treaty recently signed with reference to which we have not yet received the correspondence ?


Frank Oliver: We will have to ask for a supplementary vote for the work of delimiting the boundary under the new treaty. This vote will cover part of that work but it is not sufficient to cover the expenditure caused by the treaty recently signed.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It seems to me that the House is treated with scant courtesy in being asked for votes to delimit a boundary under treaties when we have not the treaties or the correspondence referring to them in our possession. Surely parlia-
9741	JUNE 3, 1908	9742
ment ought to know under what conditions they are going to delimit tliis boundary. Parliament ought to be informed as to wbat has taken place between the imperial government and the government of the United States in regard to these treaties before it is asked to vote money for delimiting the boundaries. It is going it blind to a great extent and I think somebody ought to make a statement to explain to the House what has been done so that we could know the exact provisions of these treaties. We are voting money and allowing men to go and delimit the boundary without knowing upon what authority beyond the statement that there has been a treaty passed which is binding on Canada but which has not yet been laid upon the table of the House.


Mr.   MACPHEESON@: The boundary line between Canada and the United States was fixed at the 141st meridian six years ago.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: We are talking about the whole boundary between Canada and the United States. As I understand they are going on to delimit the boundary westward from the St. Lawrence river under a treaty that we have not even read in this House and as to which we have no information. I think it is a very unbusinesslike way for parliament to do especially with respect to a matter that concerns the country so much.	[DOT]


Mr. MACPHERSON.: I think the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) has possibly not been paying as close attention to his duties as he might have. Otherwise, he would have found that the treaty has been laid before parliament. I got it in my desk. I sent several copies out to people in British Columbia who were anxious to see it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: When ?


Robert George Macpherson: The day before yesterday.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: All I can say is that the minister said that it would have to be printed. He laid it on the table of the House, but it was not printed or distributed and in so far as I know it is not printed or distributed yet.


Robert Laird Borden: I have not received a copy of it yet.


Robert George Macpherson: I got mine from the distribution office in the regular way.


Mr. WARD.: You got some advance copies.


Robert George Macpherson: No.	'


George Eulas Foster: You must be the white headed boy.


Robert George Macpherson: May be I am. Perhaps I am like the man who was born blind and who was cured; he could not say how it happened but he was cured just the
same. I have been informed and I have also read in the coast papers that the Canadian and American Alaska boundary survey parties are held up on the coast due to the fact that there is no money voted to cover the cost of the delimitation of this boundary line. I would like to know if that is correct.


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend's information is only partially correct. The Canadian par-ties in question have not yet left Ottawa. We have not felt justified in sending them out without an assurance of the funds necessary to pay them. Of course the United States survey party cannot proceed under the agreement that has been made without our survey party being on the ground.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I see that they have had one meeting in Buffalo and that they intend to have another at Toronto. We are providing for the delimitation of the boundary without seeing the treaty under which this is to be done. Parliament ought to be informed of its details before being asked to vote money.


Robert George Macpherson: I would like to know what the facts are, Statements are made in the coast papers and it is common talk there apparently that the United States survey parties are at Juneau awaiting the arrival of the Canadian parties both of which were to have met some time in the early part of May to begin the work, but they cannot proceed because of the nonarrival of the Canadian party. When the Alaskan boundary award was made five or six years ago, was it not accepted by both governments that the 141st meridian would be the boundary line between the two countries ?


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend is absolutely correct. The parties should be on the ground, but the United States party, of course, cannot proceed with the work without our party being there. We cannot send them until we get the sanction of parliament. The delimitation of the boundary on the 141st meridian which is the subject of their work is not the subject of the treaty recently signed. The treaty of 1900 provides for a survey of the 141st meridian as the boundary between Alaska and Canada. The exact point at which the meridian crosses the Yukon was determined by astronomical observation in 1906; therefore, the vote which we are asking for now in that particular part has nothing to do with the treaty that is under consideration. The whole of this vote which is now before the House in these main estimates is apportioned amongst the boundary surveys which have been already arranged foi.


George Eulas Foster: Between what points?


Frank Oliver: The 141st meridian between the Yukon and Alaska; the boundary

between the coast strip of Alaska and Canadian territory : the 49th parallel between the Northern States and the Canadian west, and the boundary between New Brunswick and the State of Maine, coming westerly. The work in these four sections of the boundary is now being done under an agreement and under treaties entered into.


Mr.   POSTER@: Taking the New Bruns-woslc portion, how many miles are to be delimited there and how many miles have been delimited ?


Frank Oliver: There have been delimited about 65 miles between New York and Quebec and 100 miles between Vermont and Quebec. That part of the line is completed. We are proposing to begin now at the other end of the line between the State of Maine and New Brunswick and it is for that work, commencing at the other end and coming easterly, that we are asking for the money.
Mr. FOSTER, How many miles will that be ?


Frank Oliver: Between 350 and 400 miles remain to be done.


Mr.   POSTER@: Of the New Brunswick portion ?


Frank Oliver: Between New Brunswick and Maine and the remainder between Quebec and Maine and Quebec and New Hampshire.
Mr. FOSTER, How many miles altogether have to be delimited ?


Frank Oliver: About 550 miles.


George Eulas Foster: Of which how much will be done ?


Frank Oliver: 165 miles.
Mr. FOSTER, And of the New Brunswick portion none has been done ?


Frank Oliver: No, they are commencing that now.


Robert Laird Borden: It seems a pity that the treaties between Great Britain and the United States were not laid on the table of the House and printed earlier. As I understand it this vote is for the delimitation of the boundary provided for by the Alaskan treaty.


Frank Oliver: The only concern this vote would have with the recent treaty is that if there were a surplus from this vote it would of course go to the delimitation under the new treaty. It could be used for that but we are not asking the vote for that purpose. We will have to ask a supplementary estimate for the purpose of carrying out the terms of the treaty.


Robert Laird Borden: I have not had a copy of this treaty and I should think the distribution of public documents should be '


Frank Oliver: a little more uniform than It appears to
have been in this case.


Robert George Macpherson: I sent and got it in the distribution office.


Robert Laird Borden: I do not know why it should remain in the distribution office when there have been so many inquiries in the House for it.


Robert George Macpherson: Is the survey going on at present ?


Frank Oliver: The parties for the coast boundary have left but the parties for the 141st meridian have not because we did not feel justified in sending them to extreme points where expenses would be great unless we had the sanction of parliament.


Robert Laird Borden: And this is the first time this vote has been asked for.


Robert George Macpherson: The United States survey parties are cooling their heels in Juneau, Alaska, and our survey parties are doing the same thing around Vancouver and other coast cities. The United States have their men financed and we have no money for our men and so this parliament has "placed itself in a ridiculous position.


George Eulas Foster: This parliament which is in that position has never been asked for a dollar of this money until half past 12 o'clock on this the 3rd day of June, 1908.


Robert George Macpherson: I appreciate that.


George Eulas Foster: If the hon. gentleman has any fault to find let him pitch into his minister.


Robert George Macpherson: I make no captious criticism, but if parliament has not before been asked for this money it is because day after day this parliament tried to get into Supply and Supply has been blocked. The hon. gentleman from North Toronto knows it, everybody knows it. It is particularly annoying in an international matter of this kind that such should be the case. For weeks our newspapers in British Columbia have been discussing it and the people on the coast understand the reason for it.


George Eulas Foster: This is an important matter ?


Robert George Macpherson: It is an important matter.


George Eulas Foster: More important than anything else ?


Robert George Macpherson: I do not say it is more important than anything else, but it is more important in the delimitation of the boundary between Canada and the United States in Alaska it should be gone on with because there are gold discoveries taking place all the time, and if Canadian governments for the last 50 years had been

alive to their duty Canada would to-day own Skagway and Lynn canal.


George Eulas Foster: If your Prime Minister had not made the assertion lie did in parliament we might have had a great deal more.


Robert George Macpherson: I am endeavouring to treat of this question above party politics and I say we should have the international boundary line delimited because there is a rich country to the north and gold is being found and will be found for years to come and we want to have our flag floating over onr own land so that marauders cannot come as they have in the past and take a considerable portion of onr country, backed up by men like Lord Alvestone. I think it is time the House got this vote through.


George Eulas Foster: So do I.


Robert George Macpherson: It should be put through at once.


George Eulas Foster: I agree with you.


Robert George Macpherson: It is time also
that our good friends opposite should realize the condition they have placed the country in by blocking the supplies.


Mr. SCHAFFNER.: You placed it in that position.


Robert George Macpherson: Day after day
Supply has been blocked and this is only one instance of the result.


Robert Laird Borden: 
Robert George Macpherson: My hon. friend has taken that line of argument


George Eulas Foster: Meet it fairly.


Robert George Macpherson: It can be met fairly in this way. This House has been in session close on seven months, and its work could have been got through a njonth ago. There is no necessity for my hon. friend the leader of the opposition, for whom I have every regard, attempting to draw a red herring across the trail. There is no deliberative assembly, made up of business men, not even a county council, that would not have got through the business a month ago if it laid aside party politics.


George Eulas Foster: Where is your Civil Service Bill, where is your Hudson Bay Railway Bill, where is your Land Bill, where is your Manitoba Boundary Bill?


Robert George Macpherson: If every member of the House of Commons took up the amount of time taken up by the hon. member for North Toronto, who seems to be obsessed for talking


George Eulas Foster: I object, Mr. Chairman, to any such language as that being applied to a member of this House. I do not exactly know what the meaning of that word is: but from the fire in the eye of my hon. friend and the way it tripped off his tongue, it is a bad word, and I ask that it be withdrawn.


Robert George Macpherson: My good friend is like the fishwife whom Daniel O'Connell called a parallelogram.


George Eulas Foster: Mr. Chairman, I am not like the fishwife, and if the hon. gentleman wants to have a committee of investigation he can have it.


Robert George Macpherson: There are some things I would rather not have a committee of investigation on, because some horrible details mjght be spread on the records of this country. If all the members of the House of Commons took up as much time as the hon. member for North Toronto, we would require to be here twelve months. If our hon. friends would simply come to the conclusion to put party politics aside-and X am not saying that, all the fault is on one side-we could finish up the business in a very short time. Here is a case in which tlie United States government have their men in the field waiting for our people to come alongside and do the work. This House met in November last and got into Committee of Supply a week after, and the Supplies have been blocked by our hon. friends opposite from that day to this, and they know it.


George Eulas Foster: I asked my hon. friend to * meet fairly the circumstances detailed by

tlie leader of the opposition. Does he think he has vlone it ?


Robert George Macpherson: Of course I have.


George Eulas Foster: Suppose there has been a large amount of talk ; suppose the member who is at present speaking has done a great deal of it; he did no more and no less up to the 15th of May, and on the 45th of May the government, which was supposed to know what was most pressing, got the House into Supply, and instead of' taking up this international business of great importance, took up a number of dispersed public works in cities represented by Grit members in Manitoba and the Northwest, and we passed, with all the obstruction, as it is alleged, votes amounting to $538,000. Does my hon. friend think that if the Minister of the Interior had foreseen the circumstances and put his vote before the House, he could not have carried it when we voted more than double the amount for these public works ? On the 20tli of May we voted $1,104,895, about five times as much as the Minister of the Interior is asking for to-day. Is it reasonable to say that if the minister had taken this international question up on that date he could not have got his $330,00(3 ns well as the other departments got their $1,104,000 ? On the 22nd of May we voted $5,479,110 for the Post Office and on the 1st of June we voted $1,815,000 for the Customs ; and yet we were not asked for this vote. There is nothing but wind in what my hon. friend said. He declares that it is because the opposition obstruct-because a righteous, far-seeing government are not allowed to work their will in any particular -that they are cooling their heels in particular places, and Rritish Columbia knows the reason why. British Columbia is inhabited by intelligent people, and I am not bound to maintain that the most intelligent of its population have found their way into this House ; and the people of British Columbia, when that state of facts is placed before them, will ask the question : If these gentleman had any foresight as to what was more important, why did they not bring this vote on one of these dates? Besides, the Minister of the Interior has had one-eighth of that amount for nearly two months.


Robert George Macpherson: After this excellent lecture from the hon. gentleman I will trust that he will apply a little of his own sophistry to his own case.


George Eulas Foster: Why does my hon. friend use the word ' sophistry V Is it a fact or is it not what I have quoted? Does he deny the statement? If he does not, it is not sophistry, but plain, hard facts.


Robert George Macpherson: I have not been in the House so long as my hon. friend, and he has more liberty to interrupt than I have and he has more skill in suiting the rules Mr. FOSTER
of debate to his own purposes. But I want to tell him in reply to his satire, that nobody in the province of British Columbia has made use of his intelligence on the floor of this House to abuse his opportunities as my hon. friend has. I do not think that anybody from that province has ever attempted, for my part I have never attempted. to belittle any member of this House. I always try to play the game fair. I am a new member compared with the hon. gentleman. He is an old timer, he has sat around the council board of His Majesty and is a Privy Councillor, and I think he should be above making a statement like that.


George Eulas Foster: Like what?


Robert George Macpherson: A statement reflecting upon the intelligence of any member from the province of British Columbia.


George Eulas Foster: I did uot do that. I could not do it.


Robert George Macpherson: I want to tell my hon. friend that although in his opinion those coming from the province of British Columbia may not be very intelligent, we know how to hold our own, and we have never had to leave that province to find a seat in another one.


George Eulas Foster: Your experience has not been so long.


Robert George Macpherson: No, and my planks are not very thin and I have not had to run so far as the hon. gentleman. I have not been obliged to run about looking for a seat, and consequently have not had the same experience, but I tell my hon. friend that he should be above that kind of thing. Let me tell him, in all fairness, that we should come down to business and forget party politics for a while and get through with it.


David Henderson: I came in a few moments ago and have been since wondering what the item before the committee is. Judging by the speech of the hon. gentleman, the subject before us must be a very varied one because he has adverted to many things. What surprises me is that when he complains of our not getting the work, he should waste so much valuable time in talking of something not at all pertinent to the question. He has no right to make any complaint when he himself is using up the valuable time of the House by obstructing its business. I hardly think he can find fault with my applying that word to his own conduct, because, so far as I could understand, he did not appear to be addressing himself to any particular question before the committee at all, and I was surprised that you, Mr. Chairman, did not call him to order and refuse to allow him to air his eloquence in telling us about Hie fine people who come from British Columbia. We know that there are lots of

fine people in that province and that the hon. member for Vancouver (Mr. Macpher-son) is one of the finest. No doubt he represents his constituency very well, but this is not the time for him to raise his voice on behalf of Vancouver. That surely cannot be an item in the estimates, and I trust that when he again rises in his place to delay the committee and call its attention away from the practical question before us you will draw his attention to that fact. Self laudation is not what we are here for. I am anxious that we should go on and I hope we shall do some business this afternoon. We are anxious to give the Department of the Interior and some of the other departments some money. Some of the ministers are complaining that they have not got money, but they have not asked for it. Here is the Minister of Militia complaining when he has not asked for a dollar. It is time for ministers to find fault with the opposition when they bring down their estimates. We cannot vote their estimates through until they are placed before the committee. I fail to see the point of the hon. gentleman's criticism, and I trust, Mr. Chairman, that you will watch him this afternoon in case he should rise again and take such another stand as he has done. In such an event I hope that you will keep him down to the point and force him to confine his discussion to the question before the committee. I may be called to order because I have not been discussing the question, but, as a matter of fact, I do not know what the question is and consequently I am not able to discuss it. May I ask what is the item before us?


The CHAIRMAN (Mr. S. J. Jackson).: It is the salaries of the technical officers of the Dominion Astronomical Observatory.


George Eulas Foster: Now that the hon. member for British Columbia (Mr. Maepher-son) has ceased his obstruction, I hope to get some information. I have now traced the boundary lines-New Brunswick and the United States, Quebec and New York, Quebec and Vermont. What other boundary line is it that we are delimiting?


Frank Oliver: The forty-ninth parallel. At present the party is working on the international boundary between Montana and Alberta, eastward from the summit of the Rockies. The work was completed in previous years from the summit of the Rockies westward to the Pacific coast.


George Eulas Foster: About how many miles?


Frank Oliver: About 410 miles.


George Eulas Foster: And the two sections now being worked are Montana and Alberta?


Frank Oliver: Yes, the line between Montana and Alberta now being run will be continued eastward between Saskatchewan and Montana, Saskatchewan and Dakota, Manitoba and Dakota, and Manitoba and Minnesota to the northwest angle of the Lake of the Woods. That is the forty-ninth parallel. From there the line follows a certain described boundary.


George Eulas Foster: What is the length of the line of the forty-ninth parallel which has to be delimited altogether?


Frank Oliver: Between 750 and 800 miles?


George Eulas Foster: How much has been done?


Frank Oliver: Four hundred and ten miles in British Columbia, and they have just started this way.


George Eulas Foster: As we have it, there are 390 miles between New Brunswick and the United States, 60 miles between Quebec and New York, 100 miles between Quebec and Vermont, and 750 miles on the forty-ninth parallel. Then we come to the northern trend. What is the delimitation in British Columbia and north?


Frank Oliver: The Alaska coast survey is about 500 miles altogether, of which about one-half has been done. It has been done in sections rather than continually from end to end.


George Eulas Foster: Is that the whole?


Frank Oliver: Of the 141st meridian between Alaska and the Yukon, which is about 500 miles in length, of which 130 miles has been completed. There is water delimitation beyond the 49th parallel. The 49th parallel commences the water delimitation at the Lake of the Woods.


George Eulas Foster: Take all of these first lines which seem to have been sufficient in time past to prevent troubles, what has arisen to make it necessary that there should now be undertaken a new delimitation?


Frank Oliver: The line between New Brunswick and Maine, in fact the line generally from the Ste. Croix river to the St. Lawrence, was surveyed many years ago. Since then many of the survey marks have become obliterated through age; besides, the boundary at the time the survey was made was not very well defined. During more recent years, owing to the lack of definite boundaries, there have been facilities for smuggling and defrauding the revenue on both sides of the line, chiefly by means of building houses on the boundary line itself, and where that line is not well defined, this leads to a good deal of difficulty in suppressing the practice. This accumulation of circumstances necessitated a new survey of the boundary from one end to the other and that has been agreed upon.


George Eulas Foster: Is the United States bearing its share of the cost of this delimitation?


Frank Oliver: Each country has to make Its own survey. We make our survey and their survey checks ours; they make their survey and our survey checks theirs. They would not accept our survey, nor would we accept theirs. So the two parties work together, checking each other as the work' progresses. That is the reason why. as the hou. gentleman said, that the United States party was held up until our party could get in the field. That was the case with regard to the survey of the 141st meridian, and is also the case with regard to this survey between New Brunswick and Maine. The survey has to be made jointly by parties of the two countries, and unless and until our party is in the field, the United States party cannot go on with their work.


Mr.   POSTER@: Does it in the end cost twice as much for the two countries as it would cost for a single survey?


Frank Oliver: Approximately it does cost twice as much, but not actually; because, even if Canada were making a survey alone by our party, its work would have to be checked by another party, which would mean a certain amount of expense.


Mr.   POSTER@: But that is not equal to the first survey?


Frank Oliver: No, I say the fact that the two countries do not absolutely trust each other does practically double the cost of the survey, but not altogether.


Mr.   POSTER@: It seems to me this could be done ; 'Supposing Canada undertook to delimit 100 miles. Its men and methods are known, and it is understood that approximately they are going to make a true and honest survey, is it not possible for the checking to be done by the United States in the case of that 100 miles that the Canadian survey is doing; by the appointment of one or two of their men to accompany our party and act as a check over the work of the Canadian survey? And would it not be possible for Canada to do the same with reference to a hundred miles that the United States survey was carrying out? I should think they* could act as an almost positive check on each other, and thereby the cost would be almost one-half of what it is going to be under the present system. Is that impossible?


Frank Oliver: No, that is not at all impossible.


Mr.   POSTER@: Why can't that be done?


Frank Oliver: The hon. gentleman would have to address at least one-half of his inquiry to the government of the United Stated. In the case of the Alaska coast survey, the system the hon. gentleman suggests is followed, as I have already stated; that is, one country makes a survey of a Mr. FOSTER.
certain portion of the boundary and the other country checks that survey. But in that case the boundary is absolutely irregular, being fixed by the summit of the mountain ranges ; in these other cases the boundary is scientifically accurate.


Mr.   POSTER@: Would not that make it more easy? '
"Mr. OLIVER. I am not able to answer that question. I may say that many years ago the Canadian government did provide for the delimitation of the boundaries of the 141st meridian where it follows the Yukon river between Alaska and the Yukon. Many years afterwards it was found that there was a small error in the survey, and owing to the fact that gold mining was going on in that locality, that error led to what might have been serious complications. It is considered that where the question is one >f accuracy, it is important that there diould be absolute confidence on the part if both countries that the survey shall adequately protect the interest of each coun-ry. and for that purpose each country is willing to pay the cost of its own survey larties.


George Eulas Foster: Of course neither coun-ry wants to spend money uselessly and it wotal'd seem to me as a layman that the most difficult part would be that of the Vlaskan boundary where you have to keep he contour of the mountains in view and place your line in accordance with it. That would be much more difficult than where t is a straight line, say on the 49th parallel >f latitude, where there is nothing of that kind to be taken into account. If the two countries can come to an agreement to save *xpense and, do the checking by superior officers in the more difficult case, why'is it lot possible for them to do it on what ippears to be the easier - sections ? This work has only been commenced and the minister will see that it is going to cost a vast amount of money. There are 2,700 to 3,000 miles altogether to be delimited and at the present rate this will run away up Into the millions. It should not be too late yet to see whether the two countries canto! agree to adopt that system of checking >y superior officers so that the gangs would lo the work separately. In that way half the time would be saved, the work would be completed at a much earlier 'date and nearly one-half the expense m7ould be saved.


Frank Oliver: I was in error in stating that the system of having two parties prevailed along the whole line. That is the system on the 141st meridian where an absolutely new survey is being made in a new country, but my information is that in the New Brunswick-Maine survey a single party made up from the two countries carries on the survey and in the case of the 49th parallel in the prairie section which is

now being surveyed the system suggested by my hon. friend is in force. It is divided into 100 mile sections and one section is done by each country with the checking of each such section by surveyors of the other country. -


Mr.   POSTER@: The checking is not nearly so expensive as the first survey.


Frank Oliver: No, it involves some expense but not so much. The reason for the difference in expense is the difference in the conditions in the different sections. On the 141st meridian it is an absolutely new survey in a new country where the ownership of gold mines is in issue so it has been thought advisable that there should be two parties although it is a very expensive country to keep parties in. iii other sections the system varies according to the conditions and the difficulties of the situation.


Mr.   POSTER@: Could the minister from the experience they have had and the present cost of this work, give an approximate estimate of the total cost of this work ?


Frank Oliver: Just at the moment my information is that it is expected to, if not altogether, at least nearly, complete the work in three years at a cost of about $400,000. That would be in addition to the $125,000 here asked for, making $525,000, including this year.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: A dispatch appeared in last night's newspapers stating that the International Waterways Commission is meeting in Buffalo in regard to the international boundary between Canada and the United States through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river. This is a very serious matter and I would like to know if the dispatch is at all correct.


Frank Oliver: The information might be correct. The new treaty provides that the delimitation of the boundary through the St. Lawrence river and the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Pigeon river on the north shore of Lake Superior shall be made by the International Waterways Commission. In that connection the dispatch may be correct.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: That part of the boundary which passes through the Niagara river, connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, is of very vital importance. Every foot of it is of very great value to either country and a determined effort has been made by the United States people to make out that the boundary should be in the middle of the river. There may be, I am afraid, a disposition on the part of the Canadian members of the Waterways Commission to concede a sort of compromise. In these deals between the United States and Canada the American people generally manage to ask something extreme and get a compromise which in itself is more than they are entitled to. They are very good
bluffers in that respect and the people in the Niagara district are very much worked up on account of this disposition of the Americans. They apparently feel they have an easy crowd to deal with and they are attempting to get the boundary line there, where it is of great value, over into the river much nearer the Canadian side than it should be. The report of Dr. Spencer, lately published, gives a great deal of information and these people are more or less attacking it. I am afraid that if the government is not very careful a report will be made by the Waterways Commission agreed to by the Canadian section-I do not suggest that they would intentionally sacrifice Canada's rights-without having gone into all the facts as they ought to go into them before making a recommendation to this House. The boundary line between Niagara Falls and Niagara on the Lake and Buffalo, particularly along the part known as the Falls section in which the falls occur, is of the greatest importance, every foot is valuable and the question is one that will produce a great deal of difficulty hereafter if it is not very carefully dealt with. I would really think that at this moment, until they get more complete information, it would not be wise for the International Waterways Commission to undertake to say where the boundary should be.
I do not believe that they have proper data from our side of the case, and I do know that the Americans have been assiduously, for two or three years, working up evidence in the most careful way, surveying our side of the river, and I am afraid they will put professional men in the witness box who will, of course, give evidence on the side they are called upon. These American surveyors would not tell anything in favour of Canada. They have been allowed to survey the river on both sides, a free hand has been given them and they will be able to fortify their theories by what they will call corroborative evidence, and they will go into the witness box and give evidence in a way that I do not think is quite fair to Canada. I am afraid the Waterways Commission has not the evidence or information that it should have to deal with this question. I thought it was wise, as the question of boundaries is before the House, to draw the minister's attention to it, to sound a note of warning as to the matter and to indicate that the Waterways Commission ought not to be allowed to go very fast in deciding that question on the evidence it has at the present time.


Frank Oliver: I do not think that anybody could take any other view than that which my hon. friend (Mr. Lancaster) has taken, that the question of the boundary, particularly at that point, is one of the very highest importance, and that it is necessary that the interests of Canada should be properly protected. However, this is not a

matter under the administration of the Department of the Interior. The Waterways Commission is apnurtenant to the Department of Public Works.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: It was under your department, was it not ?


Frank Oliver: No.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I thought this was the proper place to mention it.


Frank Oliver: The director of the geological survey was a member of the Waterways Commission. However, I am indebted to the hon. gentleman for mentioning this point, and I have no doubt that attention will be paid to it.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: This treaty that we have before us specifically provides that the Waterways Commission shall do part of this work. Article 4 reads :
The high contracting parties agree that the existing International Waterways Commission, constituted by concurrent action of the Dominion of Canada and the United States, and composed of three commissioners on the part of the Dominion of Canada and three commissioners on the part of the United States, is hereby authorized and empowered to ascertain and re-establish accurately the location of the international boundary line, beginning at the point of its intersection with the St. Lawrence river near the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, as determined under Articles I. and VI. of the treaty of August 9, 1812, between Great Britain and the United States, and thence through the great lakes and communicating waterways to the mouth of Pigeon river, at the western shore of Lake Superior, in accordance with the description of such line in Article II. of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States, dated September 3, 1183, and of a portion of such line in Article II. of the treaty of August 9, 1842, aforesaid, and as described in the joint report, dated June 18, 1822, of the commissioners appointed under Article VI. of the treaty of December 24, between Great Britain and the United States, with respect to a portion of said line, and as marked on charts prepared by them and filed with said report, and with respect to the remaining portion of said line as marked on the charts adopted as treaty charts of the boundary under the provisions of Article II. of the treaty of 1842 above mentioned, with such deviation from said line, however, as may be required on account of the cession by Great Britain to the United States of the portion of Horse Shoe Reef, in the Niagara river, necessary for the lighthouse erected there by the United States in accordance with the terms of the protocol of a conference held at the British foreign office, December 9, 1850, between the representatives of the two governments and signed by them, agreeing upon such cession; and it is agreed that wherever the boundary is shown on said charts by a curved line along the water, the commissioners are authorized in their discretion to adopt, in place of such curved line, a series of connecting straight lines defined by distances and courses, and following generally the course cf such curved Mr. OLIVER.
line, but conforming strictly to the description of the boundary in the existing treaty provisions, and the geographical co-ordinates of the turning points of such line shall be stated by said commissioners so as to conform to the system of latitudes and longitudes of the charts mentioned below, and the said commissioners shall, so far as practicable, mark the course of the entire boundary line.
The commission, which is appointed under the present treaty, is laying down the line of demarcation. It is all to go on at the same ' time. There is first the portion . starting at the mouth of the Ste. Croix river down at the Atlantic ocean and crossing I'assamaquoddy bay. Then the work proceeds westward from the mouth to the source of the Ste. Croix river, then to where the 49th parallel crosses the River St. Lawrence, westward through the great lakes to Pigeon river, from Pigeon river to the northwest angle of the Lake of the Woods, thence to the Pacific ocean and finally to the boundary between Alaska and the territory of Yukon. I take it that it is all mixed up together. The commissioners already appointed must jointly do this work and it does seem to me that this House is scarcely as well informed as it ought to be with regard to these provisions where it Interests us above all other things to know what provision is made for delimiting this boundary and what precautions have been taken by the government to see that it is carried out in accordance with the provisions of these treaties, and that we have eminent men appointed to look after Canada's interests. X still think that the House ought to have from some minister of the Crown a comprehensive statement as to what is contemplated to be done and what we commit ourselves to before we commence the work.
Mr. POSTER, Was there any. map presented with this treaty or is there any map which shows the general outline of what the old boundary was and what the new boundary is as it has been laid down ?


Frank Oliver: There is no map that I am aware of accompanying the copies of the treaty which have been prepared for distribution. The treaty is not a matter appertaining to my own department and therefore I am not in a position to give the information in regard to it that I otherwise would. We are only dealing with the parts of the boundary which have been provided for by previous treaties and which are confirmed by this treaty.


George Eulas Foster: As I understand, this includes all the previous treaties and makes a final definite agreement ?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Will this money be used in regard to what I spoke of ?


Frank Oliver: No, the money we are asking for is simply the delimitation of the land boundary. Our department has nothing to do with the water boundary. This money is required to carry out the work under agreements entered into and treaties made on a previous occasion. We will have to ask for money to enable ns to do our part of the delimitation under the new treaty.


George Eulas Foster: What is the general purpose of this astronomical branch which has 16 high class officials? What have they done so far and what do they propose doing in the future?


Frank Oliver: The modern science of astronomy represents the accumulated learning of all the ages since the world began, and, therefore, it would be impossible for me-not being acquainted with that science-to give the House any very full account of the operations of the observatory. It is possible to locate definitely any certain point on the earth's surface by knowing the location of certain points in the heavens. The stars are studied partly because of interest in the stars, partly from a purely scientific or speculative point of view, and chiefly in the practical application of their study to defining the location of any point in our country. The work of the branch is divided into several classes. One is purely scientific and speculative; the other is for the purpose of applying the knowledge acquired to the location of fixed points in the geography of our country so that delimitations which have been or may be made upon the ground may be accurately fixed upon the maps. From this feature of the work comes the delimitation of the boundaries of our country which is specially the work of the officers of the astronomical branch who have the scientific knowledge which enables them to absolutely fix any point on the earth's surface. They are the officials upon whom depend the delimitation of our boundaries when a treaty is made which states that a certain line of latitude or longitude is to be followed. We depend upon the practical application of the scientific knowledge of these gentlemen to be sure that the boundary is correctly given. The fixing of geographical points within the country is in the hands of the geodetic survey and the purely scientific work is entirely in the observatory.


George Eulas Foster: Do I understand that we are equipping an observatory and employing a staff of astronomers whose sole idea is to carry on the study of the heavens with the idea of original research so as to advance the science of astronomy purely as a science? What number of officials have we set apart for that work? The thought that comes to one's mind is that this is chiefly the work of great universities and scientific institutions endowed by private benevolence, as is the case in other countries. What is our equipment for this work
which requires such very accurate and costly instruments?


Frank Oliver: The question my bon. friend asks is difficult to answer in accuracy and detail; but, speaking generally, the answer must be to a certain degree, yes. We are carrying on that original study of the heavens of which he speaks, and which he thinks should be relegated to educational institutions.


George Eulas Foster: I am not so sure that the government should not have something to do with it.


Frank Oliver: It is incidental to the necessary practical work of the branch. There are'very few countries in the world which have a longer boundary line or greater area requiring geographical expression than Canada. It is therefore necessary that Canada's equipment for dealing with questions of boundary or geographical location should be large and efficient, in proportion to the wealth and population of the country. Being under the necessity of maintaining an establishment with an equipment on a comparatively large and expensive scale in order to do the practical work, we do in addition and in conjunction with it some part of the educative work-not merely with the idea of adding to the sum of human knowledge of astronomy, but in view of securing greater efficiency in the handling of the practical work. We believe in having what may be called the educative and speculative side of the science in hand in our observatory, because this will enable us to assure the people of Canada better work in the actual delimitation of boundary lines and in the establishment of geogra-pliical points, than would otherwise be the case'. In this, I am informed, w'e are following, I suppose at a very great distance, the example of the British Government in the case of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. There is room for argument that in Canada, where the needs of this special scientific knowledge in its practical application are so great, and where our educational institutions of the higher class are not so amply provided with resources as those of more populous and vastly richer countries, we cannot expect to rely on these educational institutions to the same extent that these other countries do; and therefore, Canada situated as it is, may fairly do rather more in a national way for the purely scientific side of this science, in which the country has such large practical interests, than is done by the United States, whose circumstances are vastly different.


George Eulas Foster: It strikes me that, when it comes to the practical use you are going to make of your astronomical knowledge and your astronomical equipment, it is not necessary to carry on original researches. For instance, the question whether or not

an additional ring can be discovered in some far-off planet, does not liave any relation to your fixing a point geographically on the boundary line. I suppose you fix these points from known data, about which there is no variation. I suppose it is over and above the question of practical utility that you make original researches with your instruments to discover new conjunctions of planets, or new nebulae, or anything of that kind. What you want are the instruments and the men to make fair use of the knowledge you have at your command at present. It is a matter for argument whether we ought to use our staff or our instruments to advance astronomical knowledge in competition with other countries, or how far in that direction we ought to go. I am in favour of Canada taking a leading part in ail such matters. I suppose it is well to have different points of view of the heavens, and you probably do not get all the knowledge you should have by taking all your observations from one country, but get better results by having different points of observation; and that is a fair part of the work for Canada to take part in. But I would think that the practical side of the work would simply require good instruments and good men and accuracy In your calculations. We have extensive boundaries, of course, but we are settling these now, and when they are once settled we are not apt to have them disturbed. In four years time we shall have this whole round finished, and then we shall be pretty clear, so far as international boundaries are [DOT]concerned.


Frank Oliver: I quite appreciate the view that my hon. friend takes. I have no doubt that it will appeal to a large number of people, and I am bound to say that it appeals to myself in some degree, that we have not any money to throw away on purely scientific enterprises; and I would not like to encourage going beyond a very reasonable limit in regard to purely scientific research in connection with our astronomical branch.


George Eulas Foster: How would your instruments compare in power and intensity with those of large observatories?


Frank Oliver: They do not compare at all with those of the extraordinary class, but very favourably with those of the ordinary class of observatories. We do not go in for original research in the same degree as those entirely scientific and educational institutions in the United States and some other countries, but we are doing a fair share in the collection of data and the increase of accurate knowledge with regard to the heavenly bodies. No doubt we should be careful not to expend a very large amount, but for the educative value to our own institutions for our own purposes we are warranted in incurring a reasonable Mr. FOSTER.
measure of expenditure in order to keep up the work of original research in the observatory.


George Eulas Foster: How far is the astronomical branch utilized in meteorological research?


Frank Oliver: It has no connection with the meteorological survey. The only purely industrial service it accomplishes is the regulation of the time within the range of its operation.


George Eulas Foster: The hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Wm. Roche) suggested before recess that it would be well for the government to popularize the knowledge gained by its astronomical staff. Does the minister think that we are getting sufficient new information from this staff to popularize it?


Frank Oliver: I think the suggestion of my hon. friend from Halifax (Mr. Wm. Roche) is a good one, but we have not taken any steps in that direction yet. The measure of research carried on might very well be given publicity. At present during the *winter months a lecture is given every second week by one of the officers of the observatory to which the public are invited, and these lectures excite a great deal of interest.


George Eulas Foster: That is very local.


Frank Oliver: Yes, but it shows that there is some appreciation of the propriety of the suggestion to publish the work of the observatory. There is quite an active appreciation of that work by the local public.


George Eulas Foster: What is the cost of the observatory ?
Mr.	OLIVER.	The observatory cost
about	$110,000. The buildings are very
substantial and complete. The equipment cost about $50,000.


George Eulas Foster: What is the yearly cost of keeping it up?
Mr.	OLIVER.	Salaries, contingencies,
books and other matters, about $30,000.


George Eulas Foster: Does the librarian give the whole of his duty to that work?


Frank Oliver: He attends to the library and assists in the correspondence.
Mr.	SPROULE. This may be an admirable institution, and ought to be from its cost. We are asked to vote $230,000 in connection with it, a large portion of which will probably be taken to help in delimiting the boundary between Canada and the United States. How is the information obtained to be turned to practical account? The minister's explanations remind me of an old professor's demonstration of chemistry. He said : Take an effervescent, add

a deliquescent, there will be a precipitation, that Is a conglomeration, and that is a demonstration, and is therefore chemistry. The only definite purpose in view seems to be to fix some accurate point on the earth by means of some observations in the heavens. And for that we are spending $130,000 on a building and $30,000 a year to keep it up.


Frank Oliver: The delimitation of a boundary must start from a point on the earth fixed by observation of the heavens. The work you do on the survey is useless unless there is accuracy in the delimitation.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I admit yon have to fix your post to start from. But J wish to know the return that the country is going to get from this expenditure in a practical way. We wish to know what work is being done for which this large expenditure is asked. Is it a school for educating people in astronomy, or astrology, or experimentation in any scientific direction ? 1 think some person ought to write out an intelligent account of the work that is being done, and how it is likely to benefit Canada, so that it could be read to the House by the minister. We are much like what the minister says of the survey, we want some point to start from.


Frank Oliver: If the hon. gentleman does not know where to start from, why does he not stop ?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I am depending on the minister to give us the information, because he is supposed to be the source of knowledge.


Robert Laird Borden: I am sure we appreciate the necessity of having men of scientific knowledge and with the necessary scientific equipment to enable us to meet the experts of the United States in the 'delimitation of these boundaries. I presume that is absolutely essential, and I have no doubt the gentlemen who are connected with that survey are doing good work for the country.


Frank Oliver: That is the ultimate practical purpose of the survey.


Robert Laird Borden: There is another matter that might be mentioned just now, although it is more by way of suggestion. I observe on page 44 of the report of the Civil Service Commission, this paragraph :
Another important matter which is worthy of consideration is the preparation of maps required by the several departments of the Dominion government. Under the system at present in vogue, maps are prepared by the Departments of Railways and Canals, Marine and Fisheries, Public Works, Militia and Defence, Post Office, Geological Survey and the Department of the Interior. Much praise has been given to an atlas of the Dominion lately prepared by the geographer of the Department of the Interior. Your commissioners would suggest whether it is not possible to group the several officials engaged in this 310
one object under one department and one responsible minister.
It seems to me that is a suggestion which ought to be taken into consideration by the government, more especially by the Department of the Interior, because one would suppose that the gentlemen connected with this particular branch of the Department of the Interior would be those to whom some work of that kind might fittingly be conducted. Then there is another subject I might mention, that is the desirability of having the surveys which are made by the several departments brought under some uniform system, and carried on upon a scientific basis. I believe that every civilized country in the world has a system of what are called geodetic surveys, which are carried out according to very precise and scientific methods, and which are of great value, not only to the government, but to the jjeople who are engaged in various ways in developing the country. I understand this subject has been under the consideration of scientists throughout the country, and I presume it has been under the consideration of the gentlemen who are occupied with this subject in the Department of the Interior ; and I have reason to believe that its desirability has also impressed itself upon the gentlemen who are connected with some of our great educational institutions. I would like to know whether the subject, not only of a uniform system of maps, but of a uniform system of precise and scientific surveys, is engaging the attention of the government, and whether anything is likely to be done along that line in the near future.


Frank Oliver: The two questions of surveys and map making are not, of course, intimately connected, although they are cognate. The question of combining the map making of all the departments under one department has been under consideration, but so- far no conclusion resulting in the combination of the work has been arrived at. I am not altogether clear that there is all the advantage in such a proposal that the civil service commissioners seem to think. A railway map is compiled for a specific purpose, it has in view a certain object and with that object the employees of the Department of Railways are thoroughly and especially familiar. A map of the same area of country for the Geological Survey would be very different; that department would be interested in different details and it would be only the general scheme map that would be the same. So in any case, as the greater part of the work upon the map is in the details and as the detail work would necessarily have to be done in the department interested in the particular map, there is not a possibility of combining the work of the departments to the extent the commissioners seemed to think. It is possible to combine it to a greater ex-



tent than at present, it is possible that a certain part of the general work on the maps common to all maps covering the same area of country might be done in one branch instead of in several branches, but that would be only a small part of the total work, and would not be the very great advantage that the Civil Service Commissioners seem to think.


Robert Laird Borden: There may be, and 4 have no doubt there is, a great deal in what the hon. gentleman observes with regard to the necessary difference of details in maps intended for different purposes. But nevertheless if you had a. uniform scientific survey for the whole country in connection with that proposed map-making department, so that the results of the surveys could be made available for the purpose of all the different departments, you would have a system of maps, whether issued by one department or the other, which would be based upon scientific accuracy. It seems to me that this is of very great importance in Canada. The system to which I aliude has, I understand, been carried out in most European countries and has been carried out to some extent at least in the United States. It would seem to me that the services of this particular department ought to be utilized as far as possible towards bringing about that very desirable result.


Frank Oliver: The astronomical survey is under way. A section of its work is called the geodetic survey. A part of its employment is as my hon. friend has suggested. We have made a small start in establishing fixed points in different parts of the country by which the surveys already made can be checked up and so more accurate maps can be made than has been possible up to the present time. To make such a geodetic survey for a country of such vast area as Canada within any comparatively short period would cost a stupendous amount of money. In discussing this matter, comparison has been made with England or Belgium or some small European country where there is a large tax-paying power and a small area ; but to attempt to apply to the vast area of the Dominion of Canada the same geodetic survey that has been carried to completion in Belgium, would involve a cost possibly much greater than the advantage to be derived, although everybody must admit that it would be an advantage if we could have it We have started a geodetic survey which is at work in the settled parts of the country and which, as I said, will have the effect of making possible a more accurate system of maps and having more accurate knowledge of the surveys that have been made than we have at present. We are asking parliament of course from year to year for supplies with which to carry on this work, but we are not going into it to Mr. OLIVER.
the extent of undertaking to cover the country within any moderate time The work is so limited in its scope because of the large requirements of money to carry it on that we are subject, I suppose, to criticism from those who think we should have a geodetic survey of the whole country. This is essentially a part of the work of this scientific branch. It is another application of the scientific knowledge which particularly belongs to that branch, which is improved by the scientific research I have mentioned. We expect to have the boundary surveys completed within three of four years, but we will still have need of the same scientific knowledge in carrying forward the work of the geodetic survey, in which all parts of the country are interested and which sometime, no doubt, will be extended over the whole country and the whole country will get the benefit of it.


Robert Laird Borden: I suppose the geodetic survey will be able to go on more rapidly after these boundaries have been delimited 1


Frank Oliver: We would then feel justified in asking more money for that purpose, but at the present time, when we are asking so much for the boundary survey, we do not feel justified in doing so.


Mr.   I@: What is the nature of the survey which has been conducted in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories ?


Frank Oliver: The land survey in the west is called a linear survey ; it is merely for the establishment of roads and the setting apart of the country in blocks suitable for settlement. It is approximately astronomically correct but not absolutely. Astronomical correctness is, I might almost say, a secondary consideration, the main thing is to get the country laid out so that people can settle it and use the roads. The geodetic survey will come later and absolutely establish the fixed points in that survey.


Richard Stuart Lake: I cannot agree with the minister that there is no necessity for an accurate topographical survey of Canada. I think the very example which he has quoted of the two departments having to work over the same ground is in itself an argument in favour of having some organized survey made and the Dominion topographically surveyed. He has merely spoken from the standpoint of the public departments but outside of that of course there are a great many others, the public who want to build railroads or canals who want to get their water supplies or to find out where the- timber areas lie, or what parts of the country are capable of irrigation, have now to undertake independent surveys. All those have at the present time to start out on their own account and undertake individual surveys. They have to examine large tracts of country in preliminary surveys and when they find that their first

attempts are of no use they have to cast them aside and in this way they sustain a great deal of unnecessary loss. They have to undertake experimental surveys until they find a country that is suitable for their undertaking. The whole of that would be obviated if a topographical survey were instituted and carried on methodically. There appear to be six different departments which are carrying on systems of survey. Those systems of survey must overlap in many particulars. A great deal of the work which the department itself is doing must be lost and there must be a considerable duplication of work. I understand that some of the important bodies which occasionally meet, such as the Royal Society and the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, have strongly recommended to the government that there should be a topographical survey. It would mean an immense saving to the people as well as to the government. I would like to ask the minister if he could give any idea of the amount of money which is spent on surveys by the different departments of the government.


Frank Oliver: I have not the faintest idea.


Richard Stuart Lake: I presume that the surveys approximate very nearly $1,000,000 a year.


Frank Oliver: The surveys of the Interior Department alone amount to more than $1,000,000.


Richard Stuart Lake: The surveys of the Interior Department alone ?


Frank Oliver: Yes. We asked for $800,000 last year for land surveys and something over $200,000 for astronomical surveys.


Richard Stuart Lake: What is the approximate cost per mile of making a topographical survey of country such as we find in Canada?
' Mr. OLIVER. A geodetic survey has been in operation for two years and this has cost the country over $50,000. We have run a belted triangulation from Quebec to London, Ont. This triangulation would be the basis of a topographical survey. It will take another year to cover the ground between Quebec and London in order to perfect the triangulation and then the work of the topographical survey will go on. The triangulation fixes the points and the geographical survey fills in the details.
(Mr. LAKE. I imagine that a topogra-graphical survey cannot be exceedingly expensive. We have had maps supplied to us which were drawn up by the Department of Militia and Defence, very excellent maps, which gave all the natural features of the country and I imagine that such a topographical survey as that would be all that would be needed for this country. I 310J
cannot imagine that that could be so very expensive because I do not think that the estimates for that survey in the Department of Militia and Defence are very great. It seems to me. that a great deal of the money which we spend on the duplication of surveys is being wasted. How much have these surveys in the Northwest, for which we are paying $800,000 a year, cost per square mile?


Frank Oliver: I cannot answer that question at the moment. If my hon. friend wants to know what is the total number of acres surveyed in the Northwest by this linear survey I will tell him that it Is 120,000,000 acres.


Richard Stuart Lake: All that country will have to be gone over again some day with a topographical survey. Of course, I agree that it is necessary to get the work done at once by this rough and ready survey which probably will have to be very frequently corrected and which may lead to a good deal litigation. I think that under the present system we are liable to have a great deal of litigation in many parts of Canada from not having a very accurate survey. I cannot help thinking that the minister is making a mistake in not using his influence with the rest of the members of the government to have one general survey department established which would carry on a complete topographical and geodetic survey of the Dominion. It would be a great saving to the government and to the public generally.
Mr. OLIVER, The question my hon. friend raises has been under consideration. The difficulty in the way is the immense area of country the immediate requirements of which in regard to surveys have to be immediately provided for. It is desirable to build a railway in a certain locality and we cannot wait for a geodetic survey in order to build that railway. We have to make a linear survey to provide for the settlement of the country. Although we asked parliament last year for $800,000 and we are asking this year for an equal, or possibly a larger amount, we still owing to the enormous territory and the rapidity of settlement, are unable to provide, in all cases, for the requirements of the people who desire to push out into the farther and farther country. I would be afraid to ask parliament for the money that would be necessary to cover that country within a reasonable time with a triangulated survey such as we have been carrying on in eastern Canada. We could not keep settlers waiting until such a survey could be made to accommodate them. Our area is so great and our needs are such that we must meet these needs as thev arise without waiting for a survey which in itself is entirely desirable, but which our circumstances do not admit of our having.


Richard Stuart Lake: I frankly admit there is necessity for going ahead with the linear survey in the Northwest and that if you want to build a railway into a remote district you cannot wait to have a topographical survey made. But if a topographical survey had been going on for some years past the probability is that the location of the Grand Trunk Pacific in the maritime provinces, for instance, would have been already surveyed and the general route of the railway derived from it so that the necessity would have been obviated of striking out several different experimental lines before you could locate the exact line on which you are to run your railway. In that way the duplication of work would be avoided.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Article 1 of this treaty provides that an expert geographer or surveyor shall be appointed by each country without delay to more correctly define the international boundary between the Dominion and the United States in the waters of Passamaquoddy bay, and Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 provide for a similar commission. Is it intended to appoint separate commissions for the different sections or will the same commissioners do all the work ?


Frank Oliver: That is outside the work of my department, but should think that under the treaty the appointments should be made forthwith. The second last paragraph of article 9 provides :
It is understood that under the foregoing articles the same persons will he appointed to carry out the delimitation of the boundaries in the several sections aforesaid.
Therefore it would appear that one man from each country shall constitute the commission for the whole boundary line, with the exception mentioned in section 4.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Can the minister give any idea of how long it will take two men to fix that boundary which is, I suppose, 4,000 miles long?


Frank Oliver: I presume that commission would direct the workings of different parties in the different places.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Would they have subordinate surveyors to do the actual surveying ?	[DOT]


Frank Oliver: Precisely.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I thought we were told that one of the most eminent surveyors in the country was actually engaged with his assistants in the work of surveying through the mountains.


Frank Oliver: Was that said to-day ?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: No, some years ago.


Frank Oliver: As I understand it the intention is that the whole of the boundary line, except that part which has been assigned to the Waterways Commission, shall Mr. OLIVER.
be adjusted by the two commissioners who shall direct the work.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Do they remain at headquarters ?
Mr. OLIVER, If in case their personal presence was required at any point I suppose they would go there, but otherwise I presume they would be at headquarters.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: That was not the information that was given us some years ago. The member for Vancouver told us the Americans had their surveying parties out there already, but I saw it stated some time ago that the American parties remained there all winter as it was too expensive to bring them out and that the Canadian parties would join them in the spring.	-	.


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend is perfectly correct in regard to the work of making the surveys ; but under this treaty the commissioners are to see that the work is done and the boundary properly located.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What surveyors are being sent out to do this work ?


Frank Oliver: We are not sending any surveyors out on the surveys that will be necessary under the terms of this treaty. We have not yet asked parliament fpr the money to enable us to send them out, and we are not of course prepared to send them dntil parliament vote's us the necessary money.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: What do you mean by the demarcation of the boundaries ? Is not that surveying ?
Mr. OLIVER, The surveys for which we are now asking parliament for money are not the surveys to be decided upon by the commission. The surveys now going on are not because of this treaty, but because of a treaty made in former years.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Who are making those surveys ?


Frank Oliver: The names of the surveyors whom we propose to employ under the vote we are now asking the House for are: On the 141st meridian boundary, A. J. Bra-bazon, D. H. Nelles, F. Lambart; on the Alaska coast boundary, J. D. Craig, W. F. Ratz, George White-Fraser, F. H. Mackie ; on the 49th parallel, J. J. McArthur, N. J. Ogilvy ; on the New Brunswick and Maine boundary, G. C. Rainboth.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Who is the supervising commissioner ?


Frank Oliver: The commissioner to be appointed under the treaty has not been appointed yet.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Under whose supervision is the work being done that has been going on for some time ?


Frank Oliver: Dr. King is directing that survey on behalf of Canada. If a dispute arises, that dispute is to be settled under the terms of the treaty by two commissioners to be appointed.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: They have been working for years, and surely there have been differences of opinion.


Frank Oliver: That is what the treaty is for-to adjust those differences of opinion.


Robert Laird Borden: I would like to ask the minister for an explanation of the decrease of $14,000 in this vote.


Frank Oliver: It is due to slackening up the work a little on the 49th parallel.
Salaries of agents and employees, in Canada, Great Britain and foreign countries, $200,000.


Robert Laird Borden: I would like to ask the Minister of Finance, in the absence of the Minister of Militia, whether or not it. is intended to hold militia camps in the month of June ?


Mr. FIELDING.: In the absence of the Minister of Militia I regret I cannot give an answer.


Robert Laird Borden: Is the minister available ?


William Stevens Fielding: He is in the city and was present to-day. I do not know where he is at the moment.


William James Roche: Who is the government immigration agent in St. Paul ?


Frank Oliver: Mr. Holmes.


William James Roche: Is the government aware that charges have been made in the public press to the effect that certain Dominion lands agents and immigration agents were acting as selling agents of lands for certain lands companies. I have heard that some of the agents in the United States were acting for the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company and directing homesteaders to the lands particularly owned by that or some other companies, in whose behalf they were acting. Has the hon. minister any information on that subject ? I brought this matter to his attention some time ago.
Mr. OLIVER'. I think I remember my hon. friend bringing that matter to my attention and I made inquiries, but so far have not been able to substantiate the charges made.


William James Roche: Since I brought the question up last, I have received a clipping from the Minneapolis ' Journal ' of April 26 containing this advertisement :
Fifty thousand acres of Southern Alberta land for sale in blocks of 5,000 acres up. Canadian office, St. Paul.
That would look as if the immigration agent in St. Paul were acting as selling agent for this Southern Alberta Land Company. At any rate the party who sent me this is fully convinced that he is, and he thinks it would be entirely unwise for immigration agents of the Canadian government to be acting for land companies and throwing the weight of their official position in behalf of any particular land company, a position I heartily concur in.


Frank Oliver: Would my hon. friend kindly send me over that clipping ?


William Foster Cockshutt: Has the government as many agents in Great Britain and Europe this year as last and is it the intention to continue having as many ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, the same number as last year.


William Foster Cockshutt: How many are there?


Frank Oliver: Twenty-seven employees of all classes in Great Britain and Ireland and four on the continent. ,


William Foster Cockshutt: Are there not in addition agents specially sent on temporary engagements for three or six months and how many are there ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, something over twenty such agents went last year and we expect to send a similar number this coming fall.


William Foster Cockshutt: Are they subject to the agents already there ?


Frank Oliver: They are subject to the orders of the resident agent. Their business is to give personal experience of the desirability of Canada as a field for settlement. So far we have selected successful farmers who came originally from some part of the old country, as we think that the appearance of such and their statements are the best argument we can offer in favour of Canada as a field for settlement.


William Foster Cockshutt: On what basis are they paid?


Frank Oliver: They are expected to account for their actual expenses in addition to the salary we pay them. We pay them $100 a month for the time they are absent and their actual travelling expenses.


Mr. A. A. McLEAN (Prince Edward Island).: I note that Mr. McLaughlin, who was sent to secure immigrants to the maritime provinces, has only sent one so far to that section, although he has been on the other side two years. The probability is that he is working to promote emigration to western Canada. Have the government changed their idea of having him represent the maritime provinces? What instructions were given Mr. McLaughlin regarding the territory he has to represent when sending immigrants to Canada? The maritime

provinces should receive some consideration. I do not think that immigrants should be exclusively sent to western Canada. The government should take some steps to promote settlement in the maritime provinces and Quebec. The agent in the old country is likely to exaggerate the advantages of the western country and to neglect eastern Canada. If the government send these maps to the different schools and other places in the old country to be exhibited, they ought to give due importance to the maritime provinces on those maps, and instruct their agents to send immigrants to eastern Canada as well as to western Canada. I think there should be a more equal distribution of the immigration to this country, and that the immigrants should be told that they will receive just as good treatment and will fiDd just as great advantages in eastern Canada as in western Canada.


Frank Oliver: In regard to Mr. McLaughlin, he was employed two years ago especially to represent Prince Edward Island in the old country. It was believed that there was in the island a field for immigrants by reason of the rush of the native inhabitants to the west, and that there might be people in the old country who would wish either to become purchasers of farms in the island or tenants. Mr. McLaughlin did work in the old country for about two years, and I regret to say that his efforts have not been successful. At the present time I think he is no longer connected with the Immigration Department. We are considering the subject of dealing further with the question of immigration to Prince Edward Island, as well as to the other maritime provinces. I would like to say that so far as my knowledge goes, the maps we send to the old country or anywhere else give an equal share of prominence and publicity to the island, and give its area according to the best knowledge we have of geography. Recently we have published a further edition of our map of Canada for the use of schools in which we give special prominence to the maritime provinces.


Angus Alexander McLean: I do not think it would be fair to Mr. McLaughlin to allow the statements of the Minister of the Interior to pass without remark. I do not think it would be fair to any representative of the maritime provinces to say that he did not do his duty.


Frank Oliver: I did not say Mr. McLaughlin did not do his duty ; I said he was not successful.
Some resolutions reported.


Robert Laird Borden: What business will be taken up to-morrow?


Wilfrid Laurier: Supply, in the same department.
House adjourned at six o'clock.


Angus Alexander McLean: 

Thursday, June 4, 1908.