1908-05-19

[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 170) respecting the Nipissing Central Railway.-Mr. J. J. Hughes.

Rt.   H@: I would like to lay on the table a treaty between Great Britain and the United States concerning the fisheries and waters contiguous to the Dominion of Canada and the United States, signed at Washington on April 11, 1908 ; treaty between Great Britain and the United States providing for the more complete definition and demarcation of the international boundary between the Dominion of Canada and the United States, signed at Washington on April 11, 1908.
The correspondence will come later on.
I beg to move that the treaties be printed forthwith.	[DOT]


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. R. BLAIN (Peel).: Before the orders of the day are called, I would ask the attention of the Minister of Militia to a letter which I have received :


Mr. BERGERON.: The leader of the opposition has asked for a committee to investigate and he will bring evidence.


Mr. JOHNSTON.: There is no necessity for an investigation. The evidence has been taken and neither my hon. friend nor anybody else in his behalf will undertake to challenge the evidence which is on record in Nova Scotia for some years as to the conduct of this political party in the county of Colchester.
On motion of Mr. Miller the debate was adjourned.
Sir WILFRID LAURIER moved the adjournment of the House.
Mono Road, Ontario, May 15, 1908.
Dear Sir,-From information given out by lie Toronto press we are led to think that nly the permanent forces and city corps, ijitario and provinces east will be represented t Quebec in July. It is quite needless to ote the rural corps_ have been our country s reatest asset in times of hostilities and hould be in evidence at this event. As an fficer in the rural district of the good loyal ,ld county of Peel, I would very modestly ,sk you, as an honoured and trusted repre-entative, to ask the government what they mrpose doing in the matter. It will be a ;reat disappointment if we be not given the irivilege of showing our undoubted loyalty ,nd paying our deepest respect to His Royal

Highness, the Prince of Wales, when he visits onr Dominion on the above occasion.
Believe me, Sir,
I am yours very respectfully,
DAN. McCAUGHRIN, Lieutenant,
' D ' Company, 36th Peel Regiment.
I would ask the government what they purpose doing in the matter. There will be great disappointment if the rural militia are not given the privilege of showing their undoubted loyalty and paying their deepest respects to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. I would ask the Minister of Militia what has been decided ?


Hon.  W. S.@: While I agree entirely in the high encomiums passed on the rural militia, I have nothing to add to what I said the other day. The statement I then made represents everything up to date that has been decided with reference to the tercentenary at Quebec.
Mr. BLA1N. Will the hon. minister state that briefly again ?


Sir FREDERICK BORDEN.: It is all in the ' Hansard ' about a week ago. I said that owing to the difficulties of transportation it had been found impossible to carry out the idea of assembling at Quebec a large camp. To mobilize the whole militia at Quebec was the original idea. That has been found impossible, and it had not yet been decided what portion of the militia would be sent to Quebec. I think my hon. friend the member for North Victoria (Mr. Sam. Hughes) asked me the question, and I said I was unable to give any better answer. A considerable portion of the permanent force Will be sent to Quebec. What other portions of the militia .will be sent I cannot say, but as soon as it is decided I shall be prepared to make an announcement to tli* House.


Mr. FOSTER.: I would ask whether a small proportion of my veterans will come in or not. I understand that application was made to the commission and the commission cannot see their way clear and referred it back to the Department of Militia. It will be a great shame if preparations are not made for the representation of these old veterans. They have scars ; we have not.


Frederick William Borden: Some of them. I can only repeat what I said to my hon. friend the other day. In the letter which he sent me from Captain Collins reference was made to the fact that these veterans had appeared before the Prince during his last visit in 1901 at Toronto and I believe at other points. I pointed out then that this was done without any expense to the public whatever. Those veterans resident in Toronto and vicinity marched past there. The same thing might happen at Quebec and Halifax. I do not Mr. BLAIN.
see why the veterans might not be represented at Quebec by that portion which happens to live in Quebec. I said I would submit the question to the commission. I have done so and have an answer which I am going to send to my hon. friend from North Toronto (Mr. Foster). It is to the effect that the matter is being considered.


Mr. SPROULE.: The militia think that if they are not allowed to go, the transportation companies will not have very much trouble in handling the crowd that will go.


Mr. SAM. HUGHES.: I would ask the right hon. the First Minister whether any other influences have been brought to bear on him or his government or the commission than the lack of transportation or accommodation or the other causes put forward to prevent these troops going to Quebec. If so, what were these other influences ?


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: I am not aware of any kind of influence brought to bear on the First Minister either one way or the other unless it be the genial smile of my hon. friend.



INQUIRY FOR RETURNS.

Mr. BENNETT.: I would like to have some information with reference to a return ordered for copies of the tenders and contract for dredging let in 1907.


Mr. PUGSLEY.: In what province ?


William Humphrey Bennett: Principally I think in Ontario.


William Pugsley: I am under the impression that return was brought down. When was it called for ?


William Humphrey Bennett: Only three or four months ago.


William Pugsley: I shall make inquiries.


Mr. LEFURGEY.: When may we expect the return moved for early in the session in reference to the expenditure in Prince Edward Island?


William Pugsley: I think that return is nearly ready; probably in a day or two.


Mr. LENNOX.: Yesterday the Minister of the Interior promised that he would tell us to-day when the order in council with reference to immigration would be laid on the table.


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior).: It escaped my memory; I promise to give the information to-morrow.


Alfred Alexander Lefurgey: What steps, If any, have been taken by the government to establish telegraphic communication between Prince Edward Island and the mainland, and what progress has been made in repairing the cable between the capes. I

have numerous complaints from the island that business is tied up and that great inconvenience is occasioned for want of telegraphic communication. I understand the Marconi system is working between the island and Pictou.


William Pugsley: I am afraid my hon. friend does not receive the latest news from his native province. I received a telegram yesterday stating that with the assistance of the steamer ' Stanley' the cable had been repaired and was in operation.



SUPPLY-SASKATCHEWAN VALLEY


Hon.  W. S.@: FIELDING moved that the House go into Committee of Supply.


Mr. J. G. TURRIFF (East Assiniboia).: There is a matter on which I want to speak before the House goes into Committee of Supply. My attention has been called to an article in the Halifax ' Evening Mail ' containing a report of a speech delivered on the 18th of April last by the hon. member for St. Antoine, Montreal (Mr. Ames). Among other statements that are pretty wide of the mark there is one that is particularly so. The article refers to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company.


William Humphrey Bennett: Hear, hear.


John Gillanders Turriff: You won't say hear, hear, so much when I am through. I will read the article so as not to do the hon. gentleman any injustice and in order that he may have an opportunity of correcting it.


Mr. AMES.: What is the paper ?


John Gillanders Turriff: The Halifax 'Evening Mail ' of April 20 last. The article after referring to one of the planks of the liberal platform is as follows :
We contend that this promise also has been completely shattered. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in that deal known as the Saskatchewan Valley Company concession. In the middle west, between Regina and Prince Albert, there lav a stretch of country which did not receive early settlement. It was regarded by some as semi-arid, but Dominion Colonization Agent Bpeers, one of the best authorities in the west in his time, believed and said that this belt could support a thriving agricultural population. He rep-ported his belief to the government and requested that he be given an opportunity to establish an experimental farm to show what could be done with the land. At that time Mr. Turriff was Deputy Minister of the Interior. He appears to have turned a deaf ear to Mr. Speers' request. But Mr. Turriff had a brother-in-law by the name of Adamson (they both have since become members of parliament). Mr. Adamson formed a syndicate for the purpose of acquiring land in the Saskatchewan valley. First of all the syndicate purchased from the Qu'Appelie,
Long Lake and Saskatchewan Railway their rivht to select 800,000 acres of land.
Then what follows is what I particularly wish to draw the attention of the House to; and as it is printed in large type I would judge that it is an exact report of what the hon. gentleman said.
Now so long as the government had been dealing with it, the railway company had been compelled to select its lands within a limited area north of Regina, but, no sooner had Mr. Adamson and his friends purchased the railway's right, than the area of selection was vastly enlarged so that it became no longer difficult to find enough good land to satisfy the grant. This kind of treatment by the government increased the value of the railway grant enormously.
Now Mr. Speaker, I want to say that that statement from the first to the last in every shape, form, and manner is absolutely false. There is not one word of truth in it from the first word to the last word. I do not want to do the hon. member (Mr. Ames) any injustice, but he sat in this House when he heard the statement made clearly that instead of increasing the area it had been largely reduced, after Osier, Hammond and Nanton had sold their railway grant to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company. I expect he will try and make out, from the fact that the order in council was passed in August granting 1,700,000 acres out of which they might select, that the land grant was increased; but that very order in council itself-if he is depending on that- points out that the large areas that had previously to this been set aside for the railway company represented by Osier, Hammond and Nanton-the Mr. Osier of that firm is Mr. E. B. Osier, member for West Toronto-that order in council pointed out that these large blocks set apart for this railway company from which to select its lauds, had been withdrawn. Now in order that there should be no more misrepresentation in any respect with reference to this land grant at all events, I purpose placing before the House to-day the exact facts of the case so that the members of this House and the people of this country will be able to understand how little dependence may be placed on statements emanating from the source that statement emanated from.


Mr. TAYLOR.: Before the hon. gentleman proceds I would like to ask him a question. I understood him to say there was not one word of truth from start to finish in the article he read.


John Gillanders Turriff: That is what I said.


George Taylor: I would like to ask m.v hon. friend if Mr. Adamson, M.P., is not a brother-in-law of his?


John Gillanders Turriff: I am glad you are not my brother-in-law. Now, Mr. Speaker, I


Mr. BRISTOL.: Will the bon. gentleman (Mr. Turriff) allow me a question for information ? Do I understand that these lands were made available, or that Mr. Creelman claimed they should be available and proceeded to file a petition ?


John Gillanders Turriff: want to make a further statement. The original land grant, as I have said, contained 2,822,235 acres, and since the date of the sale to the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, there has been selected out of that original land grant over 2,000,000 acres, not by the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, but by the Saskatchewan Land Company and the Canadian Northern Railway Company, and the subsidy grants in connection with the Qu'Appelle and Long Lake Railway ; so that in the original grant that they claimed was so very poor, and where they could not get the lands they required, in that grant alone there has been over 2,000,000 acres selected since that date. Now, Mr. Speaker, ns this statement has been made, not only in Halifax, but I understand in Toronto, and was published by the ' Mail and Empire,' I wanted to put the facts of the case before the House, and to state absolutely that the area was not increased but was reduced from 12,000,000 acres to 4,500,000 acres.


George Eulas Foster: I have heard the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Turriff), and if I mistake not other members on the other side of the House, complain' of a lack of courtesy when they thought that something was brought up on this side in which hon. gentlemen opposite were interested, without any due notice having been given. Now I would like to ask the hon. gentleman if, before making this attack on the member for St. Antoine, Montreal (Mr. Ames), an attack which he premeditated, which he prepared for, he in any way made an intimation to the member for St. Antoine that he was going to bring it up, and impugn his reputation for accuracy, and impugn also his veracity as a man. I took the precaution to ask my hon. friend from St. Antoine whether he had received any notice, and my understanding is that he had received none at all from the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff). Very well. The hon. gentleman then -will not complain if he receives a Roland in return for his Oliver. At this moment it seems apropos to bring another case before this House, which I think will have a good deal of interest to the country at large, and considerable interest to the department in which this hon. gentleman who has just made this fiery attack and then subsided, was at one time a very prominent officer, and perhaps of some little interest to himself, who has been on more than one occasion fond of impugning the veracity of my hon. friend from St. Antoine, a member in good standing on this side of the House, and in good standing as a business man from one end of the country to the other.
Now I propose with your permission to make a short analysis of the case and to lay the facts before this House and the ^ Mr. TURRIFF.
country, and before the hon. member for East Assiniboia. There is a section of land known as section 29, township 1, range 6 west of the 2nd meridian, which at one time was school laud ; I believe it was also coal land. I believe at present that section 29 is being developed as a coal field, and promises to be a pretty rich development. The coal field is called at the present time, if I mistake not, the Roche-Perce coal field. Now this land has a history, a history with which the hon. member for East Assiniboia is to a certain extent connected, and I propose shortly to trace that history. As I have said, this was a school section, and belonged to the category of coal lands. It was applied for in the years 1900, 1901 and 1902 in the order named, by T. H. Gibnour, August, 15, 1900, .T. F. Howard, May 1, 1901, and S. J. Griffis, on March 25, 1902. When Gilmour applied he was told that the department was not anxious to sell the land, that it was in fact school land, and could only be sold by public auction, and that was not available for lease. So these three applicants in the order named received, I suppose, the same answer through and through. However, difficulties are made to be overcome ; and if that is not the proper way of putting it, departments are made for the purpose of overcoming and solving difficulties. So after a little consideration a way out was found, and an order in council was passed in June, 1902, opening this school section, and may be others in that vicinity, so that they could be leased as coal lands by the Department of the Interior. Now remember Gilmour one, Howard two, Griffis three, in the order of application, were all applicants before this was opened by the order in council for lease, and were all told that it could not be leased, as it was school land, and the department had to go according to a certain rule. It is on record that these people made no other application before the order in council opened it to lease, and the department had become, by that order in council, authorized to lease these school lands. In the end it turned out that Griffis, who was the last applicant, got the lease of the school lands on November 14, 1902 ; that is the last applicant became the final possessor of the lease of this section. Gilmour, the first applicant, does not seem to have been satisfied. Consequently through his solicitors, in the belief that he had not beeu fairly dealt with he brought legal training and service to his hand and on the 9th of May. 1903, certain solicitors sent in his behalf $96 as the rental for the six current months to the Department of the Interior and asked that it be credited to their client, the first applicant, Mr. Gilmour. This letter is replied to by Mr. Keyes who says that the lease has already been given to Mr. Griffis and that Mr. Griffis has paid the rent and the $96 is forthwith re-

turned to the solicitors of Mr. Gilmour. Mr. Gilmour is not satisfied yet and so he brings a suit in the Supreme Court in the Northwest Territories at Moosomin. An order was secured from the court dated the 25th of June, 1903, to one G. W. McLaren to examine J. G. Turriff who was, at the time of this transaction, commissioner of lands. On the 7th day of July, 1903, Mr. J. G. Turriff was duly examined under oatii and gave his testimony. I think X shall have to read that testimony so as to have it upon the records of the House. In the first place I have a declaration by Mr. J. D. McLeod, deputy local registrar of the town of Moosomin, in the province of Saskatchewan, deputy to the local registrar of the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan, for the judicial district of Moosomin, and he says:
I do hereby certify that the annexed is a true copy and correct copy of the examination of one J. G. Turriff held in connection with the action brought by Thos. H. Gilmour against Silas I. Griffis, which said action now remains of record in the said Supreme Court of Saskatchewan for the judicial district of Moosomin and which said examination was filed in the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories for the judicial district of eastern Assiniboia on the 12th day of June, A.D. 1903.
Given at the town of Moosomin, in the province of Saskatchewan, the 7th day of April, A.D. 1908.
(Sgd.) J. D. McLEOD, Deputy Local Registrar.
Here is the attached copy of the evidence, but before that comes we have a statement of Mr. McLaurin, the examiner :
In the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, Judicial district of eastern Assiniboia, between Thomas H. Gilmour, plaintiff, and Silas I. Griffis, defendant.
I.	whose name and seal is hereunto subscribed being the examined named in the order issued in this action dated the 25th dav of June, A.D. 1903, hereunto annexed, hereby certify as follows:
1.	Before I in any manner acted in execution of said order I on the 7th day of July, 1903, duly administered to John G. Turriff named in said order the following oath, namely: ' You are true answers to make to all such questions as shall be asked you, without favour or affection to either party, and therein you shall speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God/
2.	The deposition hereunto annexed is the deposition taken down before me of the said Turriff, examined, cross-examined and reexamined before _ me in my office according to ray appointment herein hereto annexed and under the said order; and the signatures subscribed to such depositions are respectively the signatures of said Turriff and of me, before whom such deposition was taken; and each of the documents annexed to such deposition and marked by my initials was produced by said Turriff at the time he gave the evidence in such deposition contained and thereat declared by him each to be respectively true and certified copies of the originals thereof now on file in the Department of the Interior of the Dominion of Canada, and in his custody as the Commissioner of Dominion Lands in the said department.
3.	The said deposition truly states the evidence given by said Turriff before me as examiner under such order at said time and place.	.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 7th day of July, A.D. 1903.
(Sgd.) G. W. McLAURIN, Examiner.
(Seal.)
Here follows- the evidence given in this court by this witness :
In the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, judicial district of eastern Assiniboia, between Thomas H. Gilmour, plaintiff, and Silas I. Griffis, defendant.
Pursuant to order made herein the 25th dav of June, 1903, John G. Turriff did appear before me on Tuesday the 7th day of July, 1903, to be examined herein.
Present-W. H. Curie for plaintiff, H. Millar for defendant, and the said John G. Turriff having been duly sworn said as follows:
I am the Commissioner of Dominion Lands in the Department of the Interior of the government of the Dominion of Canada and as such I have in my custody in such department all the papers and correspondence in connection with the lease of section 29, township 1, range 6, west of the second meridian, in the Northwest Territories, to Silas I. Griffis, dated the 11th day of November, 1902, from the said department.	[DOT]
There was an application from Mr. Gilmour to purchase the land but he was told that it was not for sale. This is school land and can only be sold by. public auction to the highest bidder. The mode of disposing of these lands is fixed by the Dominion Lands Act. Subsequently it was decide'd that we might lease school lands for coal mining purposes ; regulations were framed governing the leasing of school lands and an application was then made by J. F. Howard either to purchase or lease and also bv a Mr. Griffis. Subsequently both Gilmour and Howard withdrew their applications on condition that the lease would issue to Mr. Griffis, and when that was done it left Mr. Griffis as the only applicant and the lease was granted to him in the ordinary course. Mr. Griffis paid six months rental and the lease was issued to him.
As commissioner, these matters are referred to me in the ordinary way, and I am speaking altogether from my knowledge of the letters on file in my office, certified copies of which I now produce.
I know the statement I have made is correct, because I have the correspondence on file now.
I produce certified copies of all correspondence from both Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Howard and Mr. Griffis as requested by counsel on both sides.
The papers marked exhibit * A ' are certified copies of all the correspondence between J. F. Howard and the department in connection with these lands, and exhibit ' B' is certified copies of all correspondence between



S7(jo
the department and T. H. Gilmour, and exhibit ' C ' is certified copies of all correspondence with Mr. Griffis in connection with the same.
Exhibits ' A,' ' B ' and ' C ' constitute all the correspondence we have with Gilmour, Howard and Griffis in connection with these lands.
To Mr. Curie:
The department received the plaintiff's, Gilmour, application in August, 1900, John F. Howard's application in May, 1901, and the defendant, Griffis' application in March, 1902.
The department became authorized to lease school lands in the month of June, 1902.
Just above you will notice that the witness declared that the latter two made application after the order in council in 1902 had been issued authorizing the lease of school lands for coal mining purposes. There seems to be a little disparity in that. I imagine that the latter statement is the correct one. This would be a considerable time after the latest of the three applications :
The applications of these three persons were not renewed after the order in council was passed authorizing the lease of coal lands and the three original applications stood.
So that the witness of course has twice discussed his first proposition and he leans to the opinion in the last two utterances that these were not renewed after the order in council, so I imagine that is the proper statement of the ease.
The department recognizes the relative time of application,? in considering who shall be the successful applicant.
Q. Then which of these three applicants has the best right to the lease of these lands under the practice of the department?-A. Mr. Gilmour's application was first, Mr. Howard's was second and Mr. Griffis was third. If Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Howard had not withdrawn their applications Mr. Gilmour would have been given the first opportunity of leasing. If he had not carried it cut then Mr. Howard would have been given the next opportunity. The custom of the department in all cases is to deal with the applications in the order of priority.
Q. Then Gilmour's withdrawal was of material assistance with Griffis in enabling him to get the lease?-A. Yes.
That finishes the evidence. I have said that Griffis, the last applicant, got the lease in the end. At a certain time Griffis got busy ; he evidently wanted, if you can infer from the correspondence, to get that section of coal lands for himself and he wanted, if possible, to get rid of Gilmour and of Howard and I imagine pour parlers went on between them, Howard clinging to his right of priority and to have a portion if they made any arrangement amongst themselves and he does not seem to have got that portion. Some telegrams were produced by the witness at that time. He said he produced all the correspondence they had in the department. These letters Mr. FOSTEB
and telegrams were introduced. What are they ?
September 18, 1902.
Mark the date :
Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 18, 1902. The Minister of the Interior,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Sir,-Re coal mining rights on section 29, township 1, range 6, west second meridian.
On or about July 2, A.D. 1902, I made application for lease of and right to mine coal on legal subdivisions 5 to 12 inclusive in section 29, township 1, range 6, west second meridian.
I hereby withdraw said application and do hereby relinquish all claim to any mining or other rights in or on said land, provided a lease therefore is granted to Silas Griffis.
Yours truly,
(Sgd.) JOHN F. HOWARD.
That was on September IS, and by it he released absolutely and relinquished all claims on one condition, namely that this lease is issued to Mr. Griffis. But he does not seem to have lost interest after making the relinquishment, and on October 8 he telegraphs :
Winnipeg, Manitoba, October 9, 1902.
J. G. Turriff,
Department of the Interior, Ottawa, Ontario.
Kindly wire giving date when Griffis lease likely issue. Important.
(Sgd.) JOHN F. HOWARD.
Note that Mr. Howard has absolutely relinquished his right and all claims he has to these lands on condition that the lease goes to Griffis. A few days after having written that letter on 'September 18, he again becomes interested and he says :
Kindly wire giving date when Griffis' lease is likely to issue. Important.
(Sgd.) JOHN F. HOWARD.
Evidently the man must have some interest still in this property. We may exercise our own judgment as to what it was. Was it an interest arising out of an arrangement he had made with Griffis that the lease should issue in Griffis name but that he should receive consideration of some kind for relinquishing and assigning his rights.
On October 28, we have the following


John F.: Howard,
Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Form of lease before Department of* Justice. Am hastening matter as much as possible.
(Sgd.) J. G. TURRIFF.
That is the correspondence so far as it was brought down and Mr. J. G. Turriff swore that he had brought down ' All the correspondence which we have with reference to this lease with regard to Griffis, Howard and Gilmour.' Well, Sir, it was not quite all.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh !


George Eulas Foster: Howard got busy at Winnipeg with his letters to Turriff relinquishing his claim and his later telegram to Turriff urging him to hasten the issue of the lease to Griffis. On September 18, he started in to hurry and I have here a letter dated Ottawa, September 15,1902, reading as follows :
Dear Mr. Howard,-I duly received yours of the 2nd instant, addressed to Mr. Sifton, in reference to the coal mining rights on section 29, township 1, range 6, west second. The way the matter stands, Gilmour might be considered the most entitled, although after the orders in council providing for leasing were passed your application and his are on even dates.
There was only one application made by each applicant up to this date, but Mr. Turriff in writing to Mr. Howard says :
The way the matter stands, Gilmour might he considered the most entitled, although after the orders in council providing for leasing were passed your application and his are on even dates.
He continues :
It will, however, be. more satisfactory if Griffis can do as he says,-get an assignment or withdrawal from Gilmour-and we will issue lease to him for the whole section. I trust that you can get this arranged satisfactorily. If not, let me know and I will see if we cannot do it anyway, but I would much prefer to have Gilmour withdraw.
Yours truly,


J. G. TURRIFF.
[Stage Direction]
This is marked private. That was correspondence as much as any correspondence that ever went on with reference to those negotiations between the deputy commissioner and the gentlemen themselves. What right had he to mark that as private and after swearing that he produced all the correspondence with reference to this section of the land retain this amongst his own private correspondence. What right had the commissioner of lands in the Interior Department of this government at this city of Ottawa to interest himself as between Howard and Gilmour and the man Griffis. What right in the world ? None. He is the sworn officer of this government. He has to stand there as a judge in the case and issue in the final resort what is proper to be issued. He has no more right, Sir, than a judge upon the bench who is trying a case would have to write private letters to one of the litigants suggesting means and methods by which some of the litigants could be got out of the way to his pecuniary injury.	'
On September 15, Mr. Howard takes a hand and gets in his own relinquishment quick, and as a matter of course. I believe Mr. Gilmour was acted upon and put in his relinquishment too. But, the interest of Turriff did not wane after the writing of 2771
the letter of September 15. He slept over night-two nights-and then he thought and sent this telegram :	[DOT]
Ottawa, Ontario, September 17, 1902.
That is two days afterwards.
John F.: Howard,
Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Do not act on my letter of fifteenth. Writing you to-day.



[Stage Direction]
Well, he wrote on that same day, September 17. Here is the astounding letter that was written by an officer of this department, the Commissioner of Lands, who had all these lands under his particular care as lease issuer.
Private.
Ottawa, September, 17, 1908.
My dear Howard,-I just wired you to-day not to act on my letter of the 15th until you saw Griffis. I have just seen a friend of his here who tells me that possibly Gilmour will hold you up for one-quarter or one-third interest in the business, and I do not want to put you in that position, and unless Griffis can get Gilmour's withdrawal for a very trifling amount it would be better not to go near him at all, and we will issue the lease to Griffis.
Yours sincerely,

John F.: Howard, Esq.,
Winnipeg, Manitoba.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Crooked as usual.


George Eulas Foster: Those are letters written by J. G. Turriff, Commissioner of Crown Lands, to the contestants before him, Gilmour having the prior right, Howard the . second and Griffis the last by his own sworn testimony. Gilmour having the prior right to be considered first, Turriff interfered by private letters and telegrams in the interest of the last applicant, Mr. Griffis, in order to save him paying a fair value to Gilmour for the prior right and telling him in the end: Don't let yourself be held up. I will see you are not held up and unless you can get rid of him for a mere trifle I will issue the lease-and it was issued. No comment is needful after that, I leave it with the House and with parliament and with the country.


John Gillanders Turriff: Mr. Speaker


Mr. SPEAKER.: Of course the only motion before the House is the one to go into Supply and the hon. member cannot speak unless with the consent of the House.


Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Let him speak.


John Gillanders Turriff: With reference to the hon. gentleman's first remarks as to the bringing up of a matter of privilege In connection with reflections made on myself by the hon. member for St. Antoine division (Mr. Ames) I certainly was not aware that in matters of that kiud it was customary to give any notice, one way or an-

other. I notice that the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) does not give me any notice when he goes around the country traducing me. However, the facts of the matter which the hon. member for North Toronto has brought up are exactly as he has stated.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


John Gillanders Turriff: I do not see that there is very much in it. I never met Mr. Griffis as far as I know, I have met Mr. Gilmour once and Mr. Ho ward was a friend of mine. He had failed in business in Winnipeg, was absolutely down on the rocks and he was applying for a lease of coal lands for this particular section. When Gilmour first applied to purchase they could not be sold, as I said, except by public auction but a year or so after, on an ap->
plication by other parties to lease coal lands in other parts of the country, regular tions were made and it was a question, as I said, whether the applications that came in beforehand would be covered by these regulations or not, especially as Gilmour's application was an application to purchase and not to lease if my memory serves me aright. At all events both Gilmour and Howard had withdrawn their applications in favour of Griffis, and I had not the slightest doubt that they had formed a coalition or arrangement among themselves. I had no interest in it one way or another and never had. I do not know who owns the land now and do not know if it was ever worked, X know in fact, nothing about it. I was dealing with it absolutely in an official manner. As to the letters which the hon. member has read, I do not know how he got them, but I will tell you this that when I was in Winnipeg some time after that a gentleman came to me and said: Mr. Gilmour has two private letters of yours that are very compromising, and if you do not give him a grazing lease for which he is an applicant he will publish those letters. I said to this gentleman: You go to Mr. Gilmour and tell him to go plumb.


Herbert Brown Ames: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for East Assini-boia (Mr. Turriff) did not have the courtesy to notify me that he intended in any way to deal with the question of the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, and I do not propose to take up the time of the House with any observations on that particular subject; but I propose this afternoon to speak with reference to another matter which has, in one form or another, at various times occupied the attention of this House. Some weeks ago the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) made a motion asking for a general investigation into the policy of the present government in respect of the leasing of timber lands in the Canadian Northwest. That matter was Mr. TURRIFF.
discussed and the resolution proposed by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) was voted down. Since that time, however, there have been laid on the table of the House a number of original documents, at that time refused. Since that time too, many returns which had been previously asked for by members on this side of the House have become accessible and a limited inquiry, very much hampered in many ways by the usual obstructionist methods, has been carried on in the Public Accounts Committee and from this and other sources we are now in possession of considerable new information which as yet has not been officially laid before the House and the country. I claim that this new information justifies us in reopening this question and in discussing it from a different point of view this afternon. A number of individual transactions have been examined to ascertain the method in which certain gentlemen, close to the administration, have acquired timber berths. This examination has necessarily been confined to a comparatively few transactions and yet the disclosures which have been made from these investigations are so significant that we cannot pass them over without reviewing them and submitting them to the further examination of the House. The documents and the evidence show that vast areas of timber land have been improvidently alienated and have fallen into the hands of speculators by whom they are held today. The documents and evidence show a series of remarkable coincidences, proving at least that there has been great looseness in the awarding of these timber berths and proving also that the method under which these concessions were granted has been such that it might easily have been taken advantage of by ill-disposed persons, in fact that it opened wide the door to fraud and imposition.
I propose to show this House a number of distances in which the success of the bidders has been so marked, so inexplicable, that it is difficult to find any other reason to account for that success other that there must have been collusion in connection with the granting of limits.
The documents that have been produced and the evidence that has been taken show beyond a doubt that immense areas of timber lands in the Northwest have been improvidently alienated and have fallen into the hands of speculators. Nor is that all. The transactions examined exhibit a series of remarkable coincidences, as yet wholly unaccounted for, disclose a looseness of method in awarding berths by so-called public competition that might easily have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous persons and present evidence of phenomenal success on the part of certain bidders in close relationship to the minister of the day, all of which, to say the least, demands some reasonable explanation.

Within the comparatively short period of three and a half years, between 1902 and 1905, more than three thousand square miles of selected timber, that is to say, about one-half of the entire area under lease in the western provinces, fell into the hands, not of operators, but of speculators. One-half of this amount, comprising 25 percent of the timber of the three provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, was acquired by a group, which may be called the Burrows-Fraser combination, of which the brother-in-law of the then Minister of the Interior was the central figure, and acquired under circumstances so peculiar as to have excited general comment.
An analysis of the holdings of this group shows Mr. T. A. Burrows as having acquired 549 square miles, the Imperial Pulp Company, 417 square miles, the Big River Lumber Company 250 square miles, A. W. Fraser tafias John McBain) 250 square miles, A. W. Fraser, for himself, 120 square miles-in all, 1,586 square miles of selected timber, only 109 square miles of which are being operated, the remainder held presumably for speculatiou.
The extent of the holdings of this favoured group may be illustrated. Were these blocks, nearly 250 in number, selected out of an area many times their size, placed end to end they would form a continuous strip of thick timber one mile wide stretching from Montreal to Winnipeg, or, putting it another way, their combined area would completely cover two of our own counties such as Stanstead and Brome and make them one continuous forest.


Mr. BURROWS.: Does the hon. gentleman say that I own 1,600 square miles of timber limit?


Herbert Brown Ames: I say that you have been interested in 1,586 square miles of timber limits to my own knowledge, and I do not know how much more beside.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: It is not true.


Herbert Brown Ames: To go on with our illustration, on the sworn returns


Theodore Arthur Burrows: How does the hon. gentleman make out that I own 1,600 square miles of timber limits?


Herbert Brown Ames: I shall have nleasure in taking fully an hour to do this. For the year ending the 30th April, 1907, sworn returns furnished the Department of the Interior show that 80 berths in the three provinces, aggregating 1,125 miles, furnished all the sawn lumber marketed during that year. The ex-Minister of the Interior has told us that the supply was ample to cover the demand. Hence we are justified in concluding that 1,200 square miles of timber limits could easily fulfil the present requirements of the three western provinces. The holdings of the Burrows-Fraser group, therefore, are more than sufficient to supply the
entire demand of the western provinces for sawn spruce lumber.
In the acquisition of these limits, under the form of quasi competition then followed by this government, the members of the ' inner circle ' have been remarkably successful. Mr. T. A. Burrows, brother-in-law to the ex-Minister of the Interior, owned in 1901 three limits. Between June of 1902 and June of 1905, Mr. Burrows bid, directly or indirectly, nineteen times for timber berths. He succeeded eighteen times; he failed once. The time he failed to get his limit is one worth considering. It was in respect of berth No. 1050. Mr. Burrows put in an offer of $6,000 and Mr. Macdonald put in a bid of $13,125.
Since June, 1905, Mr. Burrows has but once tested his luck. When berth No. 12S1 was put up to competition he lost, but by a very narrow margin. His single tender of $5,000 was overstopped by a bidder who offered $5,195. Since June, 1805, Mr. Burrows does not appear to have ever tendered, at least not under any recognizable name. Naturally, we ask the reason why-whether it be because all the good timber is already annexed, or whether he does not find the present atmosphere as favourable to his operations as in years gone by.
Now, there is a company known as the Imperial Pulp Company, which has occupied, to a considerable extent, the attention of this House. It is one of those companies-there are many of them ; you will find them in every department-which keeps itself scrupulously hidden, but which has constant dealings for its own profit with the government. This Imperial Pulp Company, which has provoked curiosity and defied inquiry, entered the field as a bidder in December, 1902. It never applied for a limit. Search the records, and you will not find one case where the Imperial Pulp Company, in advance, indicated that they wanted timber; but, during these two years, under diverse names-sometimes the name of one party and sometimes the name of another-the Imperial Pulp Company put in bids nine times, and it never failed to secure the limit it was after every time it put in a bid. So it was the Imperial Pulp Company, this mysterious company, whose identity we could not discover, which had no office, no post office address, except the box in Winnipeg, which did its business through a lawyer and a banker here, signed its letters with a stamp and ' R.R.P.' and could not be found in any business directory on the North American continent, this company went on bidding successfully until it had acquired 417 square miles of limits worth to-day a million dollars, if not more. Now, I took the trouble to add up the offers the Imperial Pulp Company made when they were acquiring limits, and I find the total amount they offered on 9 limits for which they tendered was $54,975,

;and also that the combined bids of the next nearest highest bidders were $51,771.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Wrong again.


Herbert Brown Ames: It is a difference of only G per cent. I have the official figures here.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Wrong again.


Herbert Brown Ames: Mr. Burrows and the companies with which he is connected have been so remarkably successful, their success has differed so greatly from that of their competitors that it has excited a good deal of comment outside this House and has occasioned I may say to the right hon. Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), a good deal of distrust of the Department of the Interior throughout the Canadian Northwest. We undertook a partial investigation, an investigation very limited-it could not be otherwise under the reference-and so we find ourselves with but little of the information we would like to have about the transactions with which this company is connected. In the Public Accounts Committee, however, the original documents were all produced, and we examined several witnesses. We examined Mr. Campbell and Mr. Finnie. When we asked Mr. Finnie- who did the banking for Mr. Burrows and supplied the cheques for him with most of the tenders

when we asked Mr. Finnie in one specific case the order of entry of the cheques and whether they had been accepted upon a certain day the committee stopped us and we could proceed no further. So, we reached the point where it was necessary for us to review the evidence and report to this House ; and that is what I propose to do this afternoon.
Now, in all this inquiry, Mr. T. A. Burrows was the central figure, and his remarkable success is one of the features of the investigation. As I have said, on September 1, 1901, Mr. Burrows had limits 571a and 814, an aggregate area of 44 square miles. Between that date and June, 1905, he had added to his holdings about 500 square miles. He tendered in various names, but always with the same success. Twenty times during these four years he tendered, in nineteen cases with success and only once in that time did he fail. Compare the experience of the next largest speculative holders, Messrs. H. and K. MacDonald. They are shrewd firm of timber operators. There were two brothers. Kenneth was the practical man who went to the West and explored the timber limits and learned just what to offer. Hector was the Ottawa man; he stayed here and handled the business. They tendered thirty times during the period when Mr. Burrows was so successful, fourteen times they succeeded and sixteen times they failed. Add up their bids, and you find that they paid three and a half times as much for their limits as was


Herbert Brown Ames: offered by the next highest bidders. Contrast their bids in these thirty times, and you will see that they vary greatly. Trace the bids of Mr. Burrows and the Imperial Pulp Company and see by what narrow margins they always win.
Now, L propose to lay before this House a number of specific instances which have come out in connection with the Public Accounts Committee and have come to our knowledge by the study of the original documents that have been presented from time to time. This will enable us to ascertain something of the unique methods by which such success has been acquired by the brother-in-law of the late Minister of the Interior. The first limit is berth 1046. This lies on the Pembina river, 40 miles northeast of Edmonton. It is a selection berth and very valuable, or will be when the railway reaches Athabaska Landing. The bids were opened on May 7, 1903. They were four in number. The lowest was that of Crafts and Lee, of Edmonton, $815 ; next, James A. Powell, Edmonton, $1,510 ; then D. R. Fraser and Company, $3,015 ; and finally T. A. Burrows of Winnipeg, $3,500. If you examine the four original bids you will find that the tenders of Crafts and Lee, James A. Powell and D. R. Fraser and Company are all on the regular printed forms of the department. They were all filled out in perfectly proper manner, and in each case there was one accepted cheque and one only. There is other evidence that these three bids were perfectly regular. But when you examine the original Burrows tender, what do you find ? He encloses two cheques on the Bank of Ottawa here, one for $3,000 and one for $500. These figures are somewhat significant when we consider the other tenders. Here was the next highest, that of D. R. Fraser and Company, $3,015. If only the Burrows $3,000 cheque had gone in, or he would have lost the limit, but the second cheque carried him over and he won the berth. Now, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if there is not something strange and suggestive in these facts.
Again, take limit 1047, probably the most valuable limit of its size in the whole Canadian Northwest, traversed from end to end by the Canadian Northern Railway, lying right along the railroad and on both sides of it, a selection area of 50 square miles out of seven townships on the north slope of the Porcupine Hills. Last summer, an adjacent limit, 964, which contains only 32 square miles, selected from a smaller area, was sold by Shaw brothers to the Ruby Lake Lumber Company for $100,000 in cash. I have the documents to prove that fact. If this latter limit was worth $100,000, then limit 1047 was worth double the amount. Limit 1047 was applied for by Mr. Burrows, or rather by the Burrows interest-Mr. Burrows' stenographer in this case-and bids were opened on May 7, 1903. In this case there were five ten-

ders :	Pritchard and Stone, $2,000 ; J. S.
Hough, for client, $1,050 ; Mutchenbaoker brothers, $5,510 ; H. and K. McDonald et al of Ottawa, $13,524, and T. A. Burrows, $15,000. And, when we came to examine the originals, we found-what we never could have learned from any copies-we learned, from the marginal notes, that Mr. Burrows' bid of $15,000 was made up of three cheques, $6,000, $5,000 and $4,000.
Until the McDonald bid arrived, Mr. Burrow's $6,000 cheque was quite enough to capture the limit. But after the McDonald tender came in for $13,524, it required the combined three cheques of $6,000, $5,000 and $4,000 to clear the barrier and capture the limit. Now, I ask : Is that coincidence or is it design ? When we came to study before the Public Accounts Committee the history of 1046 and 1047, we found that bids for both berths were opened on the same day, the 7th of May, 1903, and we learned that upon that day Mr. Burrows had out at least five cheques for $6,000, $5,000, $4,000, $3,000 and $500. Now we examined Mr. Finnie, and we said to Mr. Finnie, these cheques were on your bank, did you accept these cheques on that day, and if you did, in what order did you accept them ? Now I leave it to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the right hon. the leader of the government, if that was not a fair question to ask. Here was Mr. Bristol's question :
Q. On March 7, 1903, there appears from the record to have been five cheques of T. A. Burrows, one for $3,000 and one for $500 put in in respect of timber berth No. 1046, forming part of the tender, and in the other case of three cheques for $6,000, $5,000 and $4,000 re-specively, put in in respect of timber berth No. 1047, and the record also shows that they are on the bank of Ottawa with whom you say Mr. Burrows had an account. I want you to tell me whether those cheques were charged up to Mr. Burrows' account on that day?
Mr. Macdonald objected to the question, and asked for the ruling of the chairman. The chairman ruled against the question, and on appeal being taken, it was voted down by the usual partisan majority. That is why the inquiry came to a close. That was a crucial question. We had to know the order in which those cheques were accepted in order to ascertain whether they were really there before 12 o'clock on the day when the tenders came in.
Now take up berth 1099, another berth of value.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Will the hon. gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? Is it not a fact that in the committee I said that if you would put me in the box I would tell you where the cheques were, and you would not do so, you would not give me an opportunity of telling you anything about the cheques ?


Herbert Brown Ames: The hon. member was too busy drumming up Liberal members out in
the corridors. He was quite at liberty to be called by his friends, if they had desired.
Now berth 1099 consisted of forty-four square miles on Brule lake, west of Edmonton, and close to the line of the Grand Trunk Pacific. Bids were opened on the 11th November, 1903. There were three offers, J. W. Blain, of Strathcona, $3,300 ; Kidd and Thompson, of Ottawa, $5,116, and T. A. Burrows, $6,500. Mr. Blain's and Thompson's tenders were on the regular printed form of the department, and there was one accepted cheque in each and no more. They were both perfectly regular tenders. The higher of them came in just before 12 o'clock. When we came to examine Mr. Burrows' original tender we found it was on plain paper, but in a departmental envelope, with crest and probably written in the department. We found it contained two cheques, one for $3,500 and the other for $3,000. There again you have the same coincidence. It is strange that Mr. Burrows' second cheque for $3,500 was just $200 above Mr. Blain's tender, and when at the last moment a tender comes from Kidd and Thompson, for $5,110, a second cheque of $3,000 makes it possible for Mr. Burrows to still capture the limit. Now again I ask : Is that coincidence or is it design ?
Take another berth, 1192, fifty square miles on the Pembina river, near the Grand Trunk Pacific. Bids were opened on December 7, 1904. There were three tenders, Hector and Kenneth McDonald for $5,551, John Walter, for $5,065, and T. A. Burrows for $5,500. There again there were two cheques of Mr. Burrows, one for $3,000 and one for $2,500, and the two cheques together were just a little above the John Walter tender. Once again:	Is that coincidence or is it
design ? If there were only one or two cases like these, we might say it was coincidence, but when we find case after case where the tender differs from the regular method, and where the results are always the same, and success always comes to the same individual, I leave it to you, Mr. Speaker, to say whether these circumstances do not call for some explanation.
Now something was said in this House some time ago about timber berth 1108. I will not refer to that at great length. Timber berth 1108 consisted of sixty square miles on Moose lake, north of Lake Winnipegosis. It was transferred to the Imperial Pulp Company. When the originals came down in connection with that timber berth, what did we find ? We found that Mr. A. W. Fraser, of Ottawa, had written with his own hand an offer of $1,000, that Mr. James Currie, of Cumberland, bidding for another party, had put in an offer of $6,420, and that Mr. Fraser had written a second offer, signing W. H. Nolan's name to it, not

his own, and that second offer, was for $7,000. We asked Mr. Fraser, and he admitted that he had written both his own tender for $1,000 and Nolan's tender for $7,000 ; but he said that he wrote the $7,000 tender in Mr. Nolan's name on instructions from Mr. Burrows, that he put it in envelope which he gave to Mr. Burrows, and that Mr. Burrows must have added the $7,000 cheque. That was Mr. Fraser's testimony. At all events I may say that Mr. Currie firmly believes that he was euchred out of that berth. He believes that the other tender was either bogus or that it came in too late ; and I would certainly say that the circumstances are such as to lend strength to such a belief. Now I will digress for a moment and deal with Mr. Fraser, because Mr. Fraser carried on several transactions, I do not know for whom ; but inasmuch as he often acted for the Burrows syndicate, in all probability he is connected with these deals. There is a large and strong company known as the Red Deer Lumber Company. It is financed by American capital, and it controls a considerable area on the Red Deer river, and sells great quantities of cut lumber. The Red Deer Lumber Company, in the early days, found it apparently necessary to procure their limits through middlemen. Latterly they have been acting directly apparently with much better satisfaction. Among their earlier acquisitions was timber berth 988. That was put up on the 16th of December, 1901. There were two bidders, A. C. Fraser, of Brandon, for $3,500, and A. W. Fraser, of Ottawa, for $3,769. A. C. Fraser's bid arrived by mail the day before the tenders were opened. The other offer arrived on the morning of the last day. When the bids were opened it was found that A. W. Fraser's bid was accompanied by a letter which says : ' I inclose an accepted cheque.' Yet there were two cheques in it. Mr. Fraser acquired the limit, and sold it to the Red Deer Lumber Company for a very valuable consideration. It would be of interest to this House to know who were the parties with whom he divided. Again, there was berth No. 1051 which went in the same way ; bids were opened on the 6th March, 1903. They were as follows :
Henry Christopherson, Yorkton.. .. $2,800 Mutchenbacker	Brothers, Rosseau.. 3,510
John Hanbury,	Brandon	 1,650
J. S. Hough, Winnipeg	 6,509
John McBain,	Ottawa	7,000
Now we find on examining them that Mutchenbacker's tender, Hanbury's tender and Hough's tender were all on the printed form of the department and were put in the regular way, but we find, when we come to the original John McBain tender, that it was written in A. W. Fraser's own handwriting. Thus Fraser has a second alias. He was first writing out tenders in the name Ur. AMES.
of W. H. Nolan and now he is using the name of John McBain. In the McBain offer we find no amount stated, but there were three cheques which the marginal notes show came from Mr. Fraser, one for $3,000, another for $2,000 and a third for $2,000. It will be seen that the $3,000 and combined $2,000 would have been enough to have captured the limit against the first three competitors, but when J. F. Hough's bid arrived it was necessary to put in an additional cheque for $2,000 so as to make up the $7,000. This limit was also sold to the Red Deer Lumber Company for a good figure.
Look now at berth No. 1239. Berth No. 1239 acquired by the Red Deer Lumber Company shortly afterwards, without the intervention of the middleman, Mr. A. W. Fraser. It was acquired direct and the company paid for it $25,150 ; in other words, they paid the government instead of paying A. W. Fraser.
Now, I propose to discuss for a few minutes what is known as the Prince Albert deal. This story discloses a betrayal of trust for the benefit of the same parties which is 'without parallel in the history of the Department of the Interior. It is the story of the Big River Lumber Company and its twin aggregation the McBain-Munson combination. We will extricate the limits as we go on. On the 17th of January, 1903, Urquhart, Richard and Pattison, real estate agents of St. Paul and Winnipeg, writing, as they said, 'on behalf of a syndicate of Urquhart, Richards and Pattison. real estate American financial men,' asked that 50 blocks of timber, each ten miles in extent, at the head waters of the Churchill river to the northwest of Prince Albert, should be put up at one time to competition. The southeast corner of the area of selection came within 25 miles of Prince Albert and these people asked that they might have an opportunity of selecting this timber throughout an area 100 miles long by 70 miles wide. It was an unprecedented demand. There is no such demand as that in the history of the whole department; 500 square miles to be selected out of an area of 7,020 square miles. Both the area of selection and the other features in connection with it were most unusual. It is almost impossible to understand at first sight how the department should have been persuaded to put such a proposition up. Think of the magnitude of it ! This means a strip of continuous woodland four miles wide all the way from Montreal to Ottawa. It meant a monopoly of the timber resources of Prince Albert for practically all time. There was a large number of people at Prince Albert dependent on the timber trade. It meant a monopoly which would shut them out to the last man and yet this enormous transaction, the largest on record, is characterized by practically the shortest

delay of almost any of these transactions. The delays allowed are in inverse ratio to the magnitude of the proposition. Of advertisements there was one in the Manitoba ' Free Press ' and one in the Prince Albert * Advocate.' The time allowed from the time that the advertisement left Ottawa till the bids got back to Ottawa, was from the 28th January to the 7th March, thirty-eight days from Ottawa to Ottawa. That meant four weeks for the people of Prince Albert to ascertain where that timber lay and to decide what they would pay for 500 square miles of timber spread out over 7,000 square miles. Protests galore came pouring into the department. The ex-Minister of the Interior told us the other day that only one protest had ever come to his notice, but let him look through the file in the department and lie will find that there were protests in this instance from the mayor, from the board of trade and from everybody in Prince Albert who had any interest in the country. That made no difference. To all the protests the Commissioner of Dominion Lands made this curt reply :
As these berths were put up and advertised in the ordinary manner it was not thought advisable to make any change.
The tenders were opened on the 7th March, 1903 ; there was no competition. Not one of the Prince Albert people who had been objecting made any attempt to bid, and when the department and its friends learned that there was only one outside bidder, namely, Mutchenbaeker Bros., they realized tiiat they had the whole situation in their own hands and so they bid $5,000 for the first choice and they put in another bid of $1,000 for the second choice. A. W. Fraser, at one time president of the Ottawa Liberal Club, using the name of William Crown, of Prince Albert, but acting under the instructions of T. A .Burrows, put in a bid in the name of the Big River Lumber Company for the first choice at $5,000. and again, this time using John McBain's name, he put in a tender for the second choice, and we find that in the envelopes there were unidentifiable manager's cheques on the bank of Ottawa which were given in exchange for cheques of Mr. Burrows. So that Mr. Burrows in this way acquired berths Nos. 1048 and 1049, comprising 500 square miles with the right of selection out of 7,000 square miles for the sum of $6,000, or $12 per square mile, or two cents per acre.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Does the hon. gentleman say that I acquired berth No. 1049 ?


Herbert Brown Ames: I do.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I say you are telling an absolute falsehood and you know it.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Order.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: That language is hardly parliamentary.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Mr. Fraser under oath, swore that he put in a tender in the name of John McBain and that he owned the limit.
Mr. FOSTER, Order.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The expression ' falsehood ' is unparliamentary.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I will withdraw the expression. but I say that the hon. gentleman's statement is not correct. Mr. Fraser swore under oath that he put in a tender in the name of John McBain and that he owned the timber limit. My hon. friend knows that and yet he makes the statement that I acquired this timber berth.


Herbert Brown Ames: You had No. 1048 and the two go together. Well, X will go on with my story.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: You make a statement that is not correct and we have sworn evidence by a man who went into the witness box and stated that he put a tender in for himself, that he owned the limit and that he afterwards sold it.


Herbert Brown Ames: If the hon. gentleman states that he has never had any interest directly or indirectly in berths 1048 and 1049 I will accept his statement. But, my statement that he retains an interest in 1048 remains.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I will deal with No. 1048 afterwards.


Herbert Brown Ames: Very well.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Now will you take back your statement? You made a statement which is absolutely incorrect. Ton know it is incorrect because the printed evidence shows that Mr. Fraser put in a tender in the name of John McBain, who,
I understand, is his brother-in-law. Mr. Bristol asked him what he got for it and he said it was his own business. In view of that fact you should not malign me by such a statement.


Edmund James Bristol: May I ask you a question, Mr. Burrows? Do I understand you to say you never had an interest direct or indirect in No. 1049?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I had no interest whatever in the tender of Mr. McBain.


Edmund James Bristol: I am not asking you that, I am asking had you any interest in 1049 at any time.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: The only interest I had in it was that I afterwards acted as agent for Mr. Fraser and sold the limit for him. I never owned it myself and had no interest in it before or after the tender.


Edmund James Bristol: I want to be absolutely fair. I see on the record that you paid the rental to the department on August 12. 1905. for this limit 1049 and you sent in your cheque for that.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: That is quite correct, but I did not own the timber limit. Acting for Mr. Fraser I sold the limit to a party and at that time I paid the ground rent. I never was interested in the tender and Mr. Fraser swore so.


Edmund James Bristol: You are quite right there, Mr. Fraser swore that.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: My hon. friend (Mr. Ames) should now take back the statement. He has absolute sworn evidence that I was not interested and I say I was not. Will he take it back?


Herbert Brown Ames: So far as No. 1049 is concerned, if the hon. gentleman says he never had any interest directly or indirectly in No. 1049, I accept his word, but so far as No. 1048 is concerned I am going to continue my remarks. Now, these two limits, first and second choice, this immense area was disposed of by this government for $6,000, or $12 per square mile, or 2 cents per acre. That limit has been cruised and I understand it contains over 1,000,000,000 feet of spruce. It was the largest proposition that was ever put up in the Canadian Northwest of a timber character, and yet it was put up with such evidence of haste that the competition for it was practically nil. You may search the records of the department for that year and the year before and you will find that the average bonus the department was receiving in these two . years was $150 per square mile throughout the whole department. And yet, they were prepared to let this immense area go, the timber reserve supply of Prince Albert, for the paltry sum of $12 per square mile. Now, as to No. 1048, although that limit stood in the name of the Big River Lumber Company it was a limit in which Mr. T. A. Burrows has shown a very great interest. Before it was explored, before it was even blocked out, Mr. T. A. Burrows sold his half interest in limit No. 1048 and whatever interest he may have had in No. 1049 for $80,000. What is more, he was paid in full in cash three instalments of $30,000, $25,000 and $25,000.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Speak now.


Herbert Brown Ames: There is a member of this House who has seen all the documents connected with that case and who is prepared to show that my statement is correct.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Herbert Brown Ames: In a former debate in this House there were certain members upon the opposite side of the House who had the effrontery to say that this limit went to Mr. Cowan, a Conservative.


An hon. MEMBER.: So it did.


Herbert Brown Ames: Mr. Cowan a Conservative -why, Mr. Cowan never would have got within 40 rows of apple trees of that limit if Mr. Burrows had not been behind him.


Edmund James Bristol: Mr. Cowan would never have acquired that limit if it had not been for the force that drove it through in the person of the brother-in-law of the Minister of the Interior of that day, and Mr. Cowan and his associates, before they could become full owners of that limit, had to buy out that brother-in-law for $80,000. That is what the middleman cost in that job.


George Eulas Foster: Great is the middleman.


Herbert Brown Ames: Now, I say that if these ten timber limits had been put up, 50 miles at a time, every one of them would have brought $5,000 or $6,000 to the government. And I say that it was a perfect outrage to put up 500 square miles (the whole reserve supply for the district of Prince Albert) at one time and under conditions which forced out every local bidder, in order that it might go where it went.
I have a little more evidence on that same matter; a little more evidence to show the value of that immense proposition, lying midway between that area and the city of Prince Albert there was a berth known as the Sturgeon Lake reserve. For the good of the country fortunately the putting up of that berth was in the hands of another section of the Interior Department, namely, the Department of Indian Affairs. The 35 square miles of timber in the neighbourhood of Sturgeon Lake were put uj) by the Department of Indian Affairs and they were well advertised. Very different indeed was the manner of their advertising from that of No. 1048 and No. 1049. They were advertised six times in the Manitoba ' Free Press,' three times in the * Weekly Times ' of Battleford, three times in the ' Weekly Phoenix' of Saskatoon, three times in the ' Weekly Advocate ' of Prince Albert, and two whole months were allowed for interested parties to go out and explore that limit, although it is only 35 miles in extent and close to Prince Albert and just this side of the limit of which I have just spoken. Well, you can see what happens when a limit is properly advertised and when sufficient time is allowed. There were three bids for that limit: $21,300, $27,609 and $28,000. In other words, that limit sold for $800 a square mile, although the adjacent limit had been sold for $12 per square mile. This Sturgeon lake limit sold for $1.25 per acre, or for $5.50 per thousand feet standing, whereas the other limit sold at $12 per mile, or 2 cents an acre, or half a cent per thousand feet standing. No more iniquitous transaction ever went through the books of the department, and it never would have gone through if it had not been for the motive power behind it.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Will the hon. gentleman allow me to ask him a question?


Herbert Brown Ames: 
Theodore Arthur Burrows: The hon. gentleman should state that No. 1048 was on the north side of the height of land where there were no rivers flowing through the country and where timber had not got the same value as timber in a well settled area easy of access. If this limit is worth $1,000,000 does any one think that I as a business man would have sold out my interest and got Mr. Fraser to sell out his interest for $80,000.


Herbert Brown Ames: I did not say anything about


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Be honest about it.


Herbert Brown Ames: You might deal with the other part of the transaction.
Now, I come for a few moments to speak of the Imperial Pulp Company, that same mysterious corporation whose identity we have been trying to discover for three years, which lived in a post office box in Winnipeg, which had no sawmill, no officers so far as we could find except R. R. |P., and, when it is dug out in the Public Accounts Committee, the centre of which we find to be Mr. T. A. Burrows. That Imperial Pulp Company has limits on the North Saskatchewan river that are worth at least $750,000. It also has limits which their own agent has put on the market accompanied by a circular saying it was worth $500,000. Not a stick of timber has been cut on any of these limits, and yet the Minister of the Interior knows perfectly well that some of these limits have been held five or six years and nothing has been done to make the people cut on them.
That mysterious corporation the Imperial Pulp Company, which has provoked curiosity and baffled inquiry for more than five years, but which we now learn is controlled by the same Mr. Burrows, first entered the field as a competitive bidder on timber limits in December, 1902. It continued to operate with the department from 1902 to 1904. It never once applied in its own name for a limit. These bids always went in from Mr. A. W. Fraser, or some one of his coterie. Its cheques were usually managers' cheques on the Bank of Ottawa, which could not be identified, and everything the company did was shrouded in the deepest secrecy. But that company never once failed to get the limit it bid for. It only bid nine times, directly or indirectly, anil it never once missed. During these two years this company, under diverse names, observing the greatest secrecy, bid upon nine limits. It never asked to have a limit put up, but it never failed to secure a limit upon wh'ich it bid. The total of its bids amounted to $54,975, the total of the next highest bidders in the nine cases amounted to $51,771, a difference of only $.3,204. In other words this company secured its limits by an average excess bid of but 6 per cent above the next competitor. This mysterious company, that possessed no domicile, whose home was a Winnipeg post office box, whose communications had to pass through an Ottawa lawyer or banker, acquired, for less than $55,000, during these three years, 417 square miles of timber limits that have a value to-day exceeding $1,000,000.
I want to say something of the bids of the Imperial Pulp Company, and I shall do it as rapidly as I can. The first appearance of the Imperial Pulp Company on the records of the department is in reference to timber limit 1031. In the summer of 1902, a local Edmonton syndicate sent an exploration party to examine the timber along the upper waters of the North Saskatchewan river. In conformity with their report, application was made to the department to put up 118 square miles in eleven blocks. The applicants asked that there be no unnecessary delay, as they wished to construct a saw-mill and commence operations at once. In this case the government did not act as rapidly as they sometimes do. It only took them fourteen days to make up their minds about the great Prince Albert area, but they took a couple of months to decide whether they should open this Saskatchewan River section or not. In the meantime they instructed Mr. John Cameron, a homestead inspector, to investigate and send back a correct description of the timber to be found along the river. That was a praiseworthy thing to do and it is what the department should have done in other cases. In this case it had the additional recommendation of enabling the inner circle at Ottawa to know, from a reliable source of information, what timber there was along the river. Finally the department decided to put the berth up to tender.
On November 19, 1902. the notices were issued putting up the entire area for competition as a single proposition. Forty-two days were allowed from the issue of the notice to the date of opening bids. One advertisement appeared in the Edmonton ' Bulletin ' about December 1. This gave about four weeks to outsiders to acquire information on which to make competitive offers. That this length of time was wholly insufficient is shown by a letter on tile from W. S. Dwinnell, who represents wealthy Minneapolis capitalists and who has also a large interest in the Edmonton Lumber Company. Mtl. Dwinnell in his letter says :
I have been endeavouring to secure information which would enable me to act intelligently, but have not had sufficient time to do so. I would ask you to have this sale postponed for thirty or sixtv days preferably the latter, to the end that I may complete an examination and make a substantial bid for the property. I om s&tisfied that the interests of the Dominion government would be subserved thereby, and that a much larger

bid would be received than if the sale toot place at this time. This tract comprising, as it does, 118 square miles, is so extensive that the time given under the notice is altogether insufficient to permit any one to make proper examination thereof.
It is the same story disclosed in connection with other transactions 'insufficient time ' ' tract too large.' A further letter from Messrs. Crafts & Lee, of Edmonton, asks * must the fenders be on each block separately or on the whole ' intimating that ' if so large an area be put up at one time there were few possessed of sufficient capital to bid upon it. It meant shutting out the small Edmonton manufacturer and granting every advantage to the wealthy Ottawa speculator.
But the department did not postpone the sale as asked by Mr. Dwinnell. Presumably sufficient information xvas by this time in the possession of those in whose behalf information was desired. The bids were opened on December 31, 1902. They were as follows, omitting several smaller offerings :
a.	T. A. Burrows	$ 6,057b.	James Ross, on behalf of Edmonton syndicate	
17,010c.	H. & K. McDonald & Frith.. .. 31,161d.	The Imperial Pulp Company.. 31,575
The tender of the Imperial Pulp Company was a model of brevity. It read :
Toronto, December 29, 1902. lo the Secretary,
Department of the Interior, Ottawa.
, SlD-Inclosed please find tender for timber berth No. 1,031.
Yours truly,
(Sgd.) IMPERIAL PULP COMPANY,
Toronto.
That was all.


William Humphrey Bennett: It should have been ' yours surely.'


Herbert Brown Ames: There was no amount specified in the letter at all. We find, however, that there were two cheques, when we get the original documents. One was for $17,575 and the other for $14,000. We find that the cheques inclosed were managers' cheques on the Bank of Ottawa, given to Mr. Burrows in exchange for his own deposit. We find that the letter dated Toronto, December 29, was accompanied by cheques dated Ottawa and we assume that the element of union in this business was the same Mr. Burrows. Look at the way those cheques dovetailed in. The cheque whicli came in with the first tender was for $17,575, which slightly exceeds the bid of .Tames Ross and the Edmonton syndicate. The combined cheques exceed the McDonald tender by a narrow margin. Is it any wonder the question is asked: 'Was this coincidence or design '?
Edmonton advices show that the local syndicate was represented at Ottawa on the


Herbert Brown Ames: day the tenders were opened by Frederick E. Moroney, who brought down the $17,010 Ross cheque. This gentleman told on his return of his experience and impressions. You will find his story, as repeated by Dr. H. L. Mclnnis, in the Edmonton ' Weekly Journal ' of February 28, 1908. After stating that the Edmonton syndicate sent a man to Ottawa with a marked cheque the citation reads :
When the man got there a tender had been submitted by Burrows for $6,610. The man was at the office a few minutes before the tenders were opened. The tender was taken inside and in the meantime a conference took place and a blank cheque signed by Burrows was filled out. . . . This made Burrows' total amount $31,110 and so he got the berth.
The figures may not be quite accurate, but it is plain that, rightly or wrongly, the Edmonton representative believed that his tender was tapped. Certainly the circumstantial evidence in regard to this transaction does not tend to remove that impression.
We will now for a moment examine the circumstances connected with the acquisition of two small berths on the Pembina and Brazeau rivers (1052 and 1058) by this same company. The bids were opened for the berth 1052 on the 11th March, 1903.
There were three tenders:
(a.) Grafts & Lee, Edmonton	$110
(b.) John Walter, Edmonton	 125
(c.) Imperial Pulp Co., Winnipeg.. ..	300
The tenders of the first two bidders are on the form of the department, properly filled out, with amounts stated and a single cheque enclosed. The tender of the Imperial Pulp Company is a typewritten letter as follows:
Enclosed please find tender for timber berth No. 1052.
Yours truly.


IMPERIAL PULP CO.
Per R.  R. P.@: It will be noted that no amount offered as a bonus is stated in the letter and that the marginal note on the original is the only clue as to the denomination of cheque enclosed. The letter is typewritten, the number of the berth filled in afterwards in ink. The cheque was a manager's cheque drawn on the Bank of Ottawa. The identity of the bidder was entirely concealed. It must be admitted that a tender so drafted opens wide the door to collusion and fraud.
The next is berth 1058. In this case the tenders were opened on April 22, 1903. The tenderers were R. B. Ferguson, Edmonton, $310; Crafts & Lee, Edmonton, $350; Imperial Pulp Company, Winnipeg, $500. Ferguson and Crafts & Lee sent their bids in on the regular forms of the department; they stated the

amount and inclosed a single cheque. The Imperial Pulp Company sent in another small typewritten letter :
Box 614, Winnipeg, Manitoba, April, 18, 1903.
The Secretary, Department of Interior, Ottawa, Ontario.
Sir,-We hereby inclose for yearly license to cut timber on timber berth 1058 being two and a half square miles on Brazeau river and also inclose cheque for bonus for same.
Yours truly,
The Imperial Pulp Co., per R.R.P.
No amount stated, typewritten letter, two cheques again, one for $350 and one for $150. It will be noticed that Crafts & Lee were the principal competitors, that if Burrows had put in only the $350 cheque he would not have got the limit, it was the second cheque of $150, making the total $500, that got him the lease. Again I ask, is that by coincidence or by arrangement ?
I now come to berths 1097 and 1098 on the Brazeau river. These two limits had a combined area of sixty square miles. They were put up on November 11, 1903, after a postponment of one month for which no reason was assigned. The bids for 1097 were John Campbell, $10 ; Aylmer & Fea-therstonhaugh, $500 ; H. & K. McDonald & Firth, $930; Imperial Pulp Company, $1,000.
The tender of the Imperial Pulp Company is on their own paper and reads as follows:
Winnipeg, Man., Nov. 7, 1903. The Secretary,
Department of the Interior,
Ottawa, Ont.
Sir,-
Enclosed please find tender for timber berth No. 1097 and bonus for same, $1,000.00.
Yours truly,


THE IMPERIAL PULP CO.
[Stage Direction]
(Sgd.) R. R. Pattinson.
The letter is typewritten but the amount $1,000 is written in with pen, apparently at a time subsequent to the writing of the letter, the signature is made by a rubber stamp. From the endorsement on the original we learn that the $1,000 was in cash.
For berth No. 1098 there -were three bidders:
a. Aylen & Featherstonhaugh, Fort
Saskatchewan	$ 300
b.	H. and Iv. MacDonald & Frith,
Ottawa	 1,860
c.	The Imperial Pulp Company.. .. 2,500 The tender of the Imperial Pulp Company reads as follows:
The Imperial Pulp Co., Limited,
Winnipeg, Man., Nov. 7, 1903. The Secretary,
Department of the Interioir,
Ottawa, Ont.
Sir,-
Enclosed please find tender for timber berth No. 1098 and bonus for same, $2,500.
Yours truly,
(Sgd.) THE IMPERIAL PULP CO.
Per R.   R.@: Pattinson.
Here again the body of the letter is typewritten, the figures setting forth the amount offered as bonus are written in ink and the signature is stamped. The marginal note on the original shows that $2,500 in cash accompanied the bid. These two tenders of the Imperial Pulp Company (1097 and 1098) are so drawn as to render collusion and fraud possible-were such action intended. It would not have been a difficult matter to have filled in the amounts and to have added the requisite cash after the offerings by the other bidders were known.
Berths 1118 and 1119 on the North Saskatchewan river and West Sheep creek have a combined area of 120 square miles. They are of great value, bearing magnificent timber, worth $150,000 or more. The Burrows interest applied in the fall of 1903. The advertisement was issued on December 10, once in the Manitoba ' Free Press ' and once in the ' Albertan ' and the ' Tribune ' of Calgary. But any one will tell you that this district is tributary to Edmonton, it is up the river from Edmonton and the two advertisements issued in Calgary would not reach any Edmonton man who wanted to tender; there was not a shred of an advertisement in any Edmonton paper. Forty days were allowed from Ottawa to Ottawa leaving four weeks net to explore. Even if an Edmonton man had been tendering he would have had to go 150 miles up the river from Edmonton or seventy miles across the hills from Red Deer to get to the limit. It was impossible for him to explore it. As might be expected, when the day arrived there were no tenders except those from the Burrows interest. It would not do to have it go abroad that there was no competition, so A. W. Fraser was instructed to prepare two bids, one in the name of T. A. Burrows and the other in the name of W. H. Nolan, the deposit in each case being in cash. Nolan was awarded the limit and immediately transferred it to the Imperial Pulp Company. Although the Imperial Pulp Company were the owners of this limit within a few hours of its being awarded to Nolan, the fallacy was kepv up In the books of the department for years that Nolan was the owner of that limit.

These two limits cost the Imperial Pulp Company $1,100 and their value must be in the neighbourhood of $100,000 or $150,000. At all events the limits went for $9 per square mile or about one and a half cents per acre, and these are valuable limits at the headwaters of the Saskatchewan.
I wish to refer to one more limit, No. 1122. The award of this limit was accompanied by every objectionable feature which appears in the case of practically every other limit to which I have referred. The applications were called for on November 27, 1903. They covered seven widely separated tracts amounting to 110 square miles, on the McLeod and Pembina rivers. When this was applied for the department acted immediately. The advertisement was issued on December 15, and the bids were to be received by January 22, 1904; that was forty-three days Ottawa to Ottawa, or four weeks net for any one in Edmonton to explore the limits. If you plot out on the map these tracts which were put up at that time for competition, it will be seen that a man would have to travel 450 miles from Edmonton to simply make a tour of the limits without any examination, and as this would have to be done in the dead of winter it was utterly impossible to explore the limits and put in an adequate bid. The country cannot fail to conceive that it was never intended or expected that anybody but men with advance knowledge would bid on that limit. The whole thing was a lottery as far as any one else was concerned. There were four tenders, McDonald & Frith $1,220 ; J. B. Lamont, $4,000 ; Kenneth H. McLeod, Edmonton, $10,025, and A. W. Fraser, (the Imperial Pulp Company) $11,000. The McLeod tender was doubtless put in by Edmonton people who knew more about the limit than any other group, but the offer of the Imperial Pulp Company was $11,000 which just cleared the jump. If you examine the original tenders of the Imperial Pulp Company what do you find ? The offer consisted of a letter written by A. W. Fraser in his own hand, and signed by him. From the marginal notes it appears there were two cheques, one for $5,000 and one for $6,000. The letter was written at the instance of T. A. Burrows and it was handed to him unsealed and the cheques that accompanied it. were those that he supplied. That is the evidence of A. W. Fraser. The Finnie evidence was that there were two managers' cheques that were issued by him in exchange for cheques given by Burrows and that the $5,000 cheque was the first. Look at the facts. J. B. Lamont offers $4,000 ; Kenneth H. McLeod, $10,025. Then on behalf of the Imperial Pulp Company you have one cheque for $5,000 and another cheque for $6,000 and with these two together the limit goes to the Imperial Pulp Company. I ask if that dovetailing does not


Herbert Brown Ames: indicate that there is design and that this is not merely coincidence. This limit was transferred by Fraser to the Imperial Pulp Company the very next day and it is now found to be covered with dense spruce which is valuable for railway ties and much of the timber on it will be sold to Tailways now going through that country. Look at the file and you will find hundreds of settlers protests against this concession. In fact after four years the government was forced to abandon one of these tracts because the settlers of the whole country rose in arms against having a lawyer in Ottawa keep them out of their own supply of building material.
To recapitulate, the Imperial Pulp Company have nine limits and you will find about every one of them something which is suspicious and which cannot but call for an investigation. As to 1031 I have spoken of the absence of amounts and in the cases of 1052 and 1058 no amounts are stated. 1097 and 1098 were accompanied by cash; 1118 and 1119 give evidence of friendly competition between Nolan and Burrows both representing the Imperial Pulp Company. In the case of 1122, it is perfectly impossible that there should have been any competition. So it is with all the Edmonton reserves for 150 miles around that city, to the value of $750,000. All these limits have been secured by this company which will hold its limits or sell them wholesale or perhaps retail but in any event they stand to make a very large amount.
I have brought to the attention of the House the unique method of tender they followed. The advertisement in the case of each one of these applications quotes the regulations under which a license will be issued and also states that a printed form of tender may be obtained at the land office or from the department. The department indicates to any one who wants to tender that there are regular printed forms and the natural inference is that they expect any on tendering to use those forms. The form of tender is :
Sir,-I hereby offer a bonus of	dollars
for a timber berth of	square miles selected, for which berth public competition is being invited, and I inclose an accepted cheque on the bank of	for	dollars, being
the amount of said: bonus
I undertake to comply with all the conditions of the Timber Regulations.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
The Secretary of the Department of the Interior, Ottawa.
That is the printed form used in 75 per cent of the cases. It is a form the department furnishes to the ordinary man who makes an application. It states in two places the amount and the bank on which the cheque is drawn. If that form were used in every case, there could be no such

hocus pocus as that in the case of the limits secured by the Imperial Pulp Company.
Mr. Speaker, at the recent meeting of the Canadian Forestry Association in Montreal, a very significant remark was made by Dr. Fernow. He said, 'The forests are the capital of the future not the spoils of the present.' I wish that this remark had been uttered about five years ago and had sunk deep into the minds of those who have the control of our western timber areas. To-day, half the timber areas in these three provinces are in speculators' hands, and for these areas the country has received a mere bagatelle. These forest areas are worth from three to five millions at a fair computation. There was no necessity for the government to put them up for sale at the time they did. There was no possible excuse for disposing of the outlaying areas. One-quarter of the area would have been sufficient, if those portions had been chosen within the range of transportation facilities, to supply the needs of the three provinces. The other three-quarters should have been held by the government until they became valuable, and the increase in the value should have belonged to the people and not have been given to the speculators for a mere song. So, I feel that a great opportunity has been lost ; it has been lost in order that certain gentlemen, close to the government, might become millionaires. And to this end our three new provinces have been despoiled. The day will come when there will be handed over to these provinces the ragged remnants of the lands that should have been theirs long ago. But, before that is done, practically all the timber of value will have been given away. These are the assets that these provinces should have in order to develop themselves and carry on their internal affairs. A short time ago, the provincial treasurer of Ontario brought down his budget, showing that province had derived a revenue of $1,800,000 for the year from a judicious use of their timber supply. And we are not far behind in the province of Quebec. Hon. Mr. Weir, in his report, shows that $1,000,000 a year is received by the province of Quebec from its timber resources.
Yet you propose to shear the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan of practically all their assets to give them into the hands of speculators.
Mr. Speaker, the circumstances connected with the tenders we have examined and which I have endeavoured to review before the House lead, to my mind, to one inevitable conclusion, and that is that there has been either fraud or imposition practised in obtaining some of these limits. That belief is general throughout the west. If it is well founded, what is the logical conclusion of the matter ? It is that the country has been robbed and that certain persons to-day are in possession of stolen goods, goods that should be restored to the people of
Canada. Out in the constituency of the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) they probably have read the evidence given in the Public Accounts Committee including the hon. member's valuable testimony, which, I am sure, will be ail the more appreciated after what has been said on the floor of the House to-day. We find the farmers there gathering together and moving a resolution, not that there ought to be an investigation-they have got beyond that-but that the timber and coal and other lands which have been unjustly taken away from the people should be restored.
Take up the report of your Civil Service Royal Commission, and turn to what it says concerning the Department of the Interior. The commissioners say that they had not time to investigate that department :
The commissioners regret extremely that with the short time at their disposal they were unable to visit the Northwest, much as they desired to see how the land, and more specially, the timber sales are affected.
The most cursory investigation of the Department of the Interior persuaded the commission that there was need to investigate the way the timber areas had been disposed of. A little while ago we had complaints brought before the government of my province showing that there was fraud in connection with the timber in the township of Boyer, that fake homesteading had beeu going on by speculators who took this means of securing the timber fraudulently. And what did they do in that good old province of Quebec ? They held an investigation ; they found 88 cases in which the timber had been acquired through fraud, and they cancelled every one of those leases, so that the timber came back to the Crown. We have an equally good reason to demand an investigation here and now. I would ask the Prime Minister to give an inquiry by an independent outside judicial authority into this whole question of the alienation of the timber of the Northwest, to ascertain whether these allegations are true or not. And if that were done, .and if what I believe to be true were found to be true, I think the government would be right in taking back at least a million dollars' worth of timber and placing it once more at the command of the public.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Mr. Speaker, I find it difficult to follow all the insinuations which the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) has cast upon me, and upon the gentleman who opened these tenders, and upon the government for their management of the country's timber resources. The hon. gentleman was so voluble that speaking only from memory and immediately following him, I may not be able to deal with all that he has said. If I do not reply to all the remarks he has made, it will only be because some of them have escaped my memory.

I will first refer to the timber limits which I secured myself and to which the hon. gentleman referred. The hon. gentleman's criticism is very unfair ; if parliamentary rules will allow me to use the word, 1 would say it was very mean because it was so unfair. He referred particularly to two limits I secured and tried to cast a reflection upon myself, and tried to misrepresent the conditions regarding these limits. Take, for instance, timber berth No. 10i6 He said that in this case he tried to find out from the bank manager certain facts in regard to the cheque put in. And he insinuated-if the English language means anything, this is what he meant-that I was here in Ottawa and found what the competing tenders were and went to the bank to get a cheque covering a larger amount than the amount of the highest tender. When the matter came up in the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. gentleman made inquiry of the bank manager to see if he had the cheques. The manager said that he had not the cheques, that if he ever had them they were mine and must hare been returned to me. The record shows that it was a Bank of Ottawa cheque that was put in. It was a cheque marked Winnipeg.
Now with regard to that matter, I will add what the hon. gentleman left out. He was very free in making insinuations, insinuations which he had no ground for making. But when it came down to making a clear representation of the facts, the hon. gentleman had not honour enough to do so. Now take berth 1046. Here is the copy of the application, and here is the original cheque. He could have got them from me in tile Public Accounts Committee, but for some reason known to himself, he was afraid to put me into the witness box, he was afraid to let me show my side of the case. I was there, and the chairman of the committee said to him: If you want to find out about these cheques here is Mr. Burrows, put him in the box and he will produce his own cheques. The hon. gentleman was too mean, I will use that word-


Robert Franklin Sutherland: Order.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I will say unfair then.


Mr. LANCASTER.: Was the hon. gentleman in the Public Accounts Committee himself at the time he speaks of ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I was.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Then why didn't he take the stand and give his evidence if he wanted to ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: The member for St. Antoine went out of his way to subpoena everybody, and Mr. Macdonald asked him to subpoena me if hh wanted to get this information, and he would not do it.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: You were there, and you didn't need a subpoena.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Mr. BURROWrS. Now with regard to this timber berth 1046, I will read the application, and I defy the hon. gentleman to point out anything wrong with it. In putting in applications for timber, the hon. gentleman knows as well as anybody that in many cases the regular form is not used, lumbermen very seldom have the printed form, and the department do not exact the use of a printed form. But in this case I used the printed form, and I will read it. The tenders were opened on March 7, 1903. Here is my tender, dated Winnipeg, March 3, 1003 :
I hereby offer a bonus of three thousand five hundred dollars for a timber berth No. 1046, containing forty square miles situated near the Pembina river for which public competition is being invited, and I inclose accepted cheques on the band of Ottawa for $3,500, being the amount of said bonus. I undertake to comply with all the conditions of the timber regulations.
I inclosed two accepted cheques on the Bank of Ottawa, and both cheques were marked good by the Bank of Ottawa in the city of Winnipeg. Both were dated on the same day, that is 46 days previous to the opening of the tenders. The application was in proper form, it specified the total amount of the tender, and the cheques were inclosed and sent to Winnipeg. I think that is clear enough.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Why did you make two cheques instead of one ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: The hon. gentleman was in the Public Accounts Committee when that matter was investigated, and he heard what the solicitor said with regard to it. In putting in tenders, lumbermen well know that the amount of a tender often becomes known. A competing tenderer could go to the bank and ask for the amount of my cheque. If the amount is known, and if there is a competing tenderer who wants to get a cheque at the same time, it is possible that one man may find out what another man's tender is.


Mr. SCHAFFNER.: And none of the rest of the tenderers know anything else about that ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: They do, that is just where the hon. gentleman is wrong. I will give him an instance. Mr. Fraser has acted for myself in regard to timber matters, he has acted in regard to the Red Deer Lumber Company, and he has acted for himself and his friends, because he is interested in the timber business. He was asked to say why more than one cheque was put in the tender, and here is what he said :
It is a pretty hard question, except in a general way. I have known clients who had an idea that by varying the cheques, by taking them from different banks and putting different amounts in, it would prevent the amount of their tender leaking out. They

have an idea, rightly or wrongly, that in getting cheques marked in the hank it 'might leark out what the amount of their cheque was.
Q. Leak out from where, from the bank?-A. Irom the bank. I have had cases where clients have sent cheques through the bank to me to put in with their tender, and have come along themselves and supplemented that cheque and asked me to put in an additional amount beyond what they had sent through the bank to inclose with their tender. As to their motives or reasons for doing so, I am not here to say so far as my practice goes that has not been confined to one individual, it has been adopted time and again by different clients.
Now that is quite understandable. The hon. gentleman who interrupted me asked me if anybody else did it. I will give him a little information in regard to some parties whom probably he knows. It is in regard to timber berth 1275. which was put up for public tender. W. Anderson, of Ottawa, manager for J. It. Booth, tendered one cheque of $15,050 ; and II. Finger, of Port Arthur, tendered $15,000, and inclosed cheques for $10,000, $2,000, $1,000,$1,000 and $1,000 making$15,000 in all. Now this circumstance proves two things; it proves that it is the practice of lumbermen to put in more than one cheque ; it also proves that tenders are often very close to each other. In this case there was only $50 between the two tenders, although they were for the large amounts of $15,000. I am sure that if I had been the successful tenderer, the hon. member for St. Antoine would have been examining the tenders with a microscope, and he would have insinuated on the floor of the House that I had been doing something wrong.


Herbert Brown Ames: If there were twenty cases like that, I would.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Here is another case. Take timber berth 360, that was old berth No. 208 on the Columbia river, B.C. Two tenders were put in very close to each other. One was by M. A. Anderson, manager of the Imperial Bank, on behalf of the Columbia River Lumber Company, for $20,Gil. The competing tender was put in by a firm of Ottawa barristers, Wyld & Osier, who I understand are Conservatives. They tendered on behalf of Messrs. Doherty, Ben-nis, Bird and Newton, of Bradford, Pennsylvania, and sent in two cheques, one on the Ontario Bank for $13,000, and one of the Molsons Bank for $7,5G6, making $20,-56G.G5, or only $44.35 higher than the unsuccessful tenderer. This instance also proves that it is possible for two tenders to be very close together. I do not wish to insinuate that there was anything wrong in tliis case, far from it ; but it proves what I have said, that even large tenders are sometimes remarkably close together. This case also proves that the firm of Wyld & Osier, in the city of Ottawa, apparently knew how to conduct their business. They 278
not only put in two cheques, but they were not satisfied with one bank, and they put in one cheque on the Ontario Bank and another on the Molsons Bank.
I am referring to this point to show that it is a practice that is knwon to public men and governments. It is a practice among lumbermen and apparently it is a practice amongst lawyers. The hon. gentleman made some insinuating remarks about the fact that tenders were put in in other people's names, but he, himself, before he sat down, told us of the instances in which McDonald Bros., of the city of Ottawa, put in a tender for berth No. 1108 in the name of James Currie. It is quite a common occurrence and I do not know that it suggests any idea of wrong-doing. Here is another instance. Timber berth No. 1388 was put up during last year. There were various tenders put in, I think, five tenders altogether. I know something about this berth myself, because it was applied for by a gentleman who was my competitor in the lumbering business in Dauphin, Mr. Shaw. There was also a competitor in another gentleman who resides in the same district. Mr. Shaw tendered, in his own name, $430 and tendered, in the name of a broker in Ottawa, $6,300. Why did he do that? He aparently first put in a small tender in order that if anybody found out the amount of his cheque he would not find out the amount of his actual tender and then he came down to Ottawa and got a broker to put in another tender in the broker's name. I am not making any insinuation against Mr, Shaw. He just did what lumbermen do in a case of that kind.


An hon. MEMBER.: Where does he live ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: He lives in Dauphin and he is a good Conservative. He is a most respectable citizen and I am casting no reflection upon him at all. He did what I probably would have done myself. There were three cheques inclosed in one of the tenders in that case. Take another instance, berth 333 situated in British Columbia. There were a great many tenders for that limit. I believe it was a valuable limit. It was situated on the Arrow lakes and it contained large British Columbia timber. One of the competing tenders amounted to $25,225, made up of cheques for $10,575, $7,650, $4,000 and $3,000.
Mr, BRISTOL. Will the hon. gentleman tell me where he got all his information from and whether these are all the cases that have occurred in the department?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: These are all the cases that have occurred in the department.


George Taylor: Are these original files?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: They are extracts from the original files. In regard to three of these cases I have personal knowledge my-



self. I referred a moment ago to my putting in a tender for berth No. 1046. I pointed out that the application was regular according to the criticism of the hon. member for Montreal, St. Antoine, that the application was on the printed form, that it specified the amount of the tender, the cheques were made out and marked good four days before the time for opening the tenders, and if the hon. gentleman wants to see them I will show him the cheques now. He could have seen them in the Public Accounts Committee if he had asked me or if he had put me into the box. In regard to berth No. 1047, I made application in that case. The tender is dated Winnipeg, March
3,	1903, and it is written on the printed form prescribed by the department as follows :
Winnipeg, March 3, 1903.
Sir,-I hereby offer a bonus of fifteen thousand dollars for a timber berth No. 1047, containing fifty square miles, situated near Red Deer lake and Armit river for which public competition is being invited, and I inclose an accepted cheques oil the Bank of Ottawa, for fifteen thousand dollars being the amount of said bonus.
This application read ' an accepted cheque.' I did not strike out the ' an,' but I put in an * s ' at the end of * cheque.' The hon. gentleman tried to make a point out of that.
I undertake to comply with all the conditions of the timber regulations.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant, THEO. A. BURROWS.
To the Secretary,
Department of the Interior, Ottawa.
I inclosed three cheques. The tender was dated March 3, 1903. The cheques are dated March 3, 1903.
Winnipeg Manitoba, March 3, 1903. The Bank of Ottawa, Winnipeg.
Pay to deputy Minister of Interior or order, $5,000. Five thousand dollars.
(Sgd.) THEO. A. BURROWS.
This cheque is marked * good ' on March
4,	1903. The next cheque is in the same form, drawn on the same day and also marked good on March 4, 1903, and the third is the same. There are the three original cheques The hon. gentleman can see them; they were marked good at the time I say and they have the endorsement on the back of them of a gentleman in the Department of the Interior who acted for the deputy minister-Mr. T. G. Rothwell. The tenders were opened on March 7, 1903, and the cheques were dated March 3, 1903, and marked good March 4, 1903, in the city of Winnipeg.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Would the hon. gentleman tell me if these cheques were all drawn on the same bank?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: 


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Yes.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: And accepted on the same day?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Accepted on the same day.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: How would the hon. gentleman disguise the amount if he were afraid of a bank clerk telling on him?
(Mr. BURROWS. As far as that is concerned there were three or four tenders put in on the same day.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I understand that his reason for giving more than one cheque was that the bank clerks could not see what was the total amount.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I was tendering on more than one item that day.	[DOT]


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I understand that the cheques were all on the same bank and that they were tendered the same day ; how is it that the bank clerk would not know the total amount because it would be a matter of simple addition ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: There were several tenders put in at the same time. I was tendering on various limits at the same time. These two applications that I have read are dated the same day, March 3, and the tenders were opened on Die same day, March 7.
The hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) also spoke about berth No. 1099. I have also the application here. It is not on the printed form. Tenders were opened on November 11, 1903, and the application was made in Ottawa on November 11, 1903. It reads as follows :-
The Secretary, Department of Interior, Ottawa.
Sir,-Inclosed please find tender for timber berth No. 1099, containing forty-four square miles on the Athabasca river and bonus for same amounting to six thousand five hundred dollars.
(Sgd.) THEO. A. BURROWS.
Inclosed two cheques for $3,500 and $3,000.
My tender in that case was $6,500 and the next highest was $5,116. My hon. friend tried to insinuate that there was collusion between myself and some gentleman in the Department of the Interior. If there was collusion between myself and some gentleman in the Department of the Interior by virtue of which I was able to find out what was the next highest tender, is it reasonable to assume that I would throw away $1,400 when I could have secured the limit by tendering $50 or $100 higher than the other tenderer ?
At six o'clock, House took recess.

After Kecess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


PRIVATE BILLS.
[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 151) respecting the Grand Trunk Pacific Branch Lines Company.-Mr. Crawford.
Haughton Lennox: When we last discussed this Bill in committee I moved an amendment. Although we have an agreement with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company to take over, at the end of fifty years, branch lines which they may construct in connection with the eastern division of the Transcontinental Railway, we have no such agreement with this, the Grand Trunk Pacific Branch Lines Company. This latter company is identical In interest with the Grand Trunk Pacific Company, but it is a distinct corporation and our agreements with the Grand Trunk Pacific Company will not bind this company. I have framed my amendment somewhat differently from the provision of the contract of 1904 between the Grand Trunk Pacific Company and the government in that I provide that the government shall have at the end of the fifty year period the right to take over all the branch lines and not such only as the company do not desire to retain. It would I believe be unfair for the country to be compelled to take the refuse lines and to leave in the hands of this company those branch lines which were profitable. If at the end of fifty years the government sees fit to resume possession of this national highway and to operate It, we certainly should have control of the important feeders which by that time will probably be constructed. If there is any doubt as to this company being the same practically as the Grand Trunk Pacific Company, that doubt will be removed by a reference to the first clause of the Bill which provides that Charles M. Hays, Frank W. Morse, Wm. Wainwright, W. H. Biggar and Darcy Tate, of Montreal, and others be incorporated under the name of the Grand Trunk Pacific Branch Lines Company. These gentlemen are identified with the interests of the Grand Trunk Pacific Company and the Grand Trunk Railway Company. There is no objection to these three companies having separate names so long as they are not enabled by that fact to evade their responsibilities to the country. I retire from the discussion of this matter for the time being in order that the House may have at once the advantage of hearing the opinion of the government on this question and that the Minister of Railways may state the attitude which the government takes. I hope the technical objection taken 2784
by the Minister of Public Works the other night does not mean that the government is hostile to the amendment I have taken considerable pains to draft and which I have at some inconvenience to myself attended here to support on several occasions. I may say for the benefit of those who were notin the House the other night that I have added to the amendment a provision safeguarding the people's rights by providing that any government which may happen to be in power when the fifty year period runs out shall not act without the consent of the people, and that parliament must give its approval before we avail ourselves of this option. I trust the Minister of Railways will give the amendment his friendly support and hearty endorsation.


Mr. GRAHAM.: It is a pleasure to hear the hon. gentleman speak so hopefuly. The whole Grand Trunk Pacific project is a question of national importance and so this amendment is of more than ordinary interest. The amendment of my hon. friend (Mr. Lennox) has something to commend it. He tells us that this branch line company while not the same in name is yet the same in interest as the Grand Trunk Pacific Company. That being the' case I presumed that if we treated this company in identically the same way as we treated the Grand Trunk Pacific in making the agreement with them as amended in 1904, no real objection could be made. That matter was threshed out at great length at that time as hon. ipepibers will remember. I had not then the honour of having a seat in the House, but I read with a good deal of interest the discussion of this very question of the right to take over branch lines in the transcontinental section of the railway. As I said a moment ago, granted, that the interests are the same in the Grand Trunk Branch Lines Company and the Grand Trunk Pacific Company, I am not sure that this is correct, but for the moment we will grant that it is, legally it is another eon>
pany and stands on another footing-but taking the statement of my hon. friend I again ask the committee to consider whether if we place this company in the same position as the Grand Trunk Pacific was placed in regard to taking over branch lines, we have not performed our duty to the public. The hon. member for East Hamilton (Mr. Barker) the other night in discussing this asked me if I would be content to amend this Bill so as to confirm with the Act passed in 1994. That is a matter that I have had under consideration. I realize at once that the interests of the people ought to be safeguarded in these branch lines and I would not for a moment allow the Grand Trunk Branch Lines Company under the guise of getting a new charter for a new company to get away from provisions which the same people contracted for under the old arrange-


S743 COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
ment. X tliink we could not fairly do that If we went further than that I thought we would be going too far In placing this company in a position inferior to that in which we placed the Grand Trunk Pacific Company. The position as described by my hon. friend is this:	In the agreement of
1904, the government took power to take over all the branch lines of the company at the end of the fifty-year period; if they concluded to take over the management of the road they took the power to take over such branches as the company did not elect to keep. That decision was arrived at after a full discussion in this House, and it was the decision of the committee that that was a fair proposition and so it went on the statute-book. It is hardly fair to say that in doing that we merely take over the refuse and leave the company only the paying roads. Superficially it looks as if that might be true, but as a matter of fact it is not. Roads can be profitable as branch lines that could not be profitable if made independent lines. The Act really and practically will work out in this way that at the conclusion of the fifty-year period if the government decides to take over the management of the Transcontinental they will take over such branch lines, as the company does not elect to keep. What does that mean? There may be some of these branches that will pay independently of the trunk line altogether, that is lines which as main lines will be paying propositions. If the company has a few of these t no not think it would be fair to the company to take over from them lines which they can operate independently on a paying basis. The other lines are not the refuse but they may be lines that in conjunction with the trunk line will pay as feeders to the trunk line, but which if left as independent lines will not pay. That distinction was made in this House in 1904. Without entering into a full discussion of that matter I may say that after considering the matter I have decided that it will be fair to all parties and will be a sufficient protection to the public to take the judgment of the House in 1904 and place the Grand Trunk Branch Bines Company in exactly the same position as the Grand Trunk Pacific would have been in, had this company not been formed in reference to branch lines; in other words to place the new' company in exactly the same position as the Grand Trunk Pacific Company was placed in by the agreement of 1904. I shall read the amendment I propose which is identical with section 11 of the amended contract of 1904. The amendment is as follows:
In ease the government .as defined in the schedule to the National Transcontinental Railway Act, 1903, in pursuance of the terms of the said schedule, shall at any time determine to undertake the operation of the Mr. GRAHAM.
eastern division of the National Transcontinental Railway, the government shall take over such of the lines of railway running from a point or points in the eastern division authorized by chapter 99 of the Acts of this parliament of 1906 as the company may elect not to retain, at such value as may he agreed upon between the government and the company, or as may in case of failure so to agree, be determined in manner provided by paragraph 24 (2) of the agreement between the Government of Canada and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, dated 29th July,
1903,	forming schedule to chapter 71 of the statutes of 1903. If any such branch line or lines shall have received anv grant or grants under the provisions of any Act of the parliament of Canada the amount of such grant or grants without interest shall be deducted from such value and the difference only shall be payable by the government upon the taking over of such branch line or lines. Provided, ho-wever, that nothing in this Act contained shall authorize the government to take over the said lines of railway or any of them -without the consent of parliament previously obtained to the exercise of such right of taking over as aforesaid.
That means that on any lines taken over the government shall deduct from the price to be paid to the company under the arbitration any amounts that may have been given in subsidy to these lines. I submit that this is fair. It places this company in the position in which the parliament of Canada placed the Grand Trunk Pacific in
1904.	As my hou. friend (Mr. Lennox) has moved his amendment I would move this as an amendment to the amendment.
Thomas Simpson Sproule: I will support the amendment for the same reason that I opposed the amendment to the original proposition in 1904. I always regarded it as an unwise proposition from a business standpoint if we were to take over any part of the road to take over onlv such parts as the company elected to give up, allowing them to keep such portions as they found desirable to keep. Under such a proposition the most natural thing would be for the company to retain the paying portions and hand over the rest to the government. We have an example in some parts of the Intercolonial. Some parts of that never paid expenses, although others yield a profit from year to year. But because these roads were connected with the Intercolonial it was contended by the maritime province people that since we owned the main line we should take over the branch lines as well. And what has been the result? It is that these parts of the road have not paid and are not likely to pay for a long time.


William Pugsley: What branches are they?


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I could not name them off-hand, but I have looked into the matter and am quite sure that my statement is

correct. And the hon. gentleman (Mr. Pugs-ley) knows that it is substantially correct.


William Pugsley: I was under the impression the Intercolonial did not purchase the branch lines.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Did it not purchase the Prince Edward Island Railway and some branches connected with it?


William Pugsley: That road was built as a government work.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: But there are some branches connected with it, and did not we


William Pugsley: The only branch that the Intercolonial has bought in the maritime provinces, so far as I am aware, is the Canada Eastern, and I am told that it is a line that pays very well.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Is that the Gibson line?


William Pugsley: Yes.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It was not paying before we took it over.


William Pugsley: But I am told it pays well to-day.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: After_ very heavy expenditure. It certainly was not a paying line for years before we took it over, and it was not expected to pay the Intercolonial. Take any railway system you like-any such system as the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Pacific or the Canadian Northern, and if a proposition were made to buy them would it be regarded as wise to purchase only those portions of the road the company desired to give up and allow them to retain the other portions ? We held that the principle was wrong and unsound when it was carried through before. It was carried through against the will of a large number of the members of this House, carried through by the force of the government majority. The mere fact that such a thing was carried at one time, it seems to me, does not justify the argument of the Minister of Railways and Canals that we must adopt it in connection with this Grand Trunk Pacific Branch Lines Company because we put a similar clause in the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Bill. I imagine that there will be a connecting link between the main line and the city of Montreal and that will probably be a paying line. It is likely that there will be another such link with the city of Toronto. These lines connecting with metropolitan centres will probably pay well. These would not be the lines the company would wish to give up. If the government took over the line without these branches, having no feeders from the great cities, they would find the line in a condition of starvation for many years until, at heavy expense, they had completed these links between the great cities and the main line. This
is a bad proposition from the point of view of sound business principles. It is a bad proposition from the point of view of the government. In my judgment, the country will not endorse it. The proposition made by the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) is a good one, and I am heartily in accord with it. I believe that a government that fails to accept this proposition will be regarded as one that is hot doing its duty and is not maintaining the interest of the public.


Mr. HAGGART.: The objection to the proposition of the Minister of Railways and Canals is the same as was urged in the case of taking over the branch lines of the Transcontinental. The bargain is that the government may after fifty years take over that line, but also, if it does so, it must take over any lines that the railway company may elect to give. That is, the company can compel the government to take over non-paying lines that are worth very little. The Minister of Railways is adding something to this Bill which the House does not want and did not mean to adopt. And to add this amendment to a private Bill is certainly a strange and unusual procedure. What is the object of adding this to the Bill? There is some sense in the amendment of my hon. friend from South Simcoe, for he gives the government the option to take over whatever lines it chooses if parliament consents to the transfer.


William Pugsley: I would like to point out to my hon. friend from Lanark (Mr. Haggart) that the amendment proposed by the hon member for Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) does not make it necessary for the government in case it exercises the option, to take over all the branches, but it allows the government to take over just such branches as it pleases. The result would be that the government could pick out all the paying lines when it took the main line, and leave the company with the non-paying branches. That would be most unjust.


John Graham Haggart: JBut what about the others where the company had the option to say that the government must take them over?


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I cannot see why the Minister of Public Works should be so afraid of the government doing what it ought to do in the interest of the country against the Grand Trunk Pacific. This is another instance 'of the kind of legislation which this company gets through this parliament.. Everybody representing the government is afraid that they won't give the Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific everything that it is possible to give them. Two years ago when this proposition was up in regard to these branch lines, I made a strong opposition, and moved the six months' hoist of the Bill, because the gov-

eminent, represented by tbe present Minister of Justice, insisted upon putting the Bill through without any precaution being adopted to protect the public interest. Having failed to get the government to adopt any reasonable amendment to protect the people of this country, I had the temerity to move that the Bill be not then read the third time. Some of the objections I urged then are urged again to-day by the hon,. member for Simcoe with regard to this measure, and I think very properly urged. I realize that no. words of mine will stay the hand of this government in continuing every session to give to the Grand Trunk Pacific everything they want. The Minister of Public Works has indicated that the government is afraid that they will be unjust to the Grand Trunk Pacific. I must say with all courtesy to the present Minister of Public Works that I think he would be better employed in looking a little more carefully after the public interest as against the railway, instead of looking after the railway as against the public. These branch lines are something that never was contemplated in 1903 when the main contract was made. We thought then we were making a bargain with a concern which would keep its assets in its own name; we did not suppose that we were making an arrangement with a concern which would come to this parliament and ask for the privilege of doing a large part of their business in the name of another concern and thereby escape the liabilities of the original company. This Branch Lines Act which was passed in 1906, is still open to the objection that they are allowed, by doing business in the name of another company called the Branch Lines Company, to escape the liabilities of the Grand Trunk Pacific to the people of Canada under the origiual contract which was made with that company in 1903, and confirmed again in 1904. The measure now before the House is a continuance or furtherance of an effort to give to this company every possible advantage that it can desire, and at the expense of the people of this country, I say this advisedly. They come to-day and ask for an extension of time, a privilege which they did not tell us in 1900 they would want. And when it is proposed by the hon. member for Simcoe to put in an amendment to the Bill that would give some slight measure of protection to the people by allowing them to take over the lines which the company may or may not build, I cannot understand how anybody wishing to protect the public interest can hesitate to vote for that amendment. It is only a slight measure or protection, but it is a measure that ought to be given. Speaking for myself alone, I would not be inclined to pass this Bill at all. As it is I do not think the Grand Trunk Pacific Branch Lines Company has made out a case for the extension of time they are asking for Mr. LANCASTER.
all the lines. But if the measure is going through, at least it ought to contain an amendment which if not worded exactly like the amendment of my hon. friend, would at least contain a provision that this country shall not be at the mercy of the Grand Trunk Pacific as to what lines the company may choose to force this country to pay for. We are assisting this com-jjany, we are practically financing their concern, and if we buy this railway we have a right to buy it without being compelled to include all the branch lines which the company may choose to ask us to buy. Simply because they are the Grand Trunk Pacific Company is no reason why wTe should give them everything they want, as we did this session when we allowed them to take the most beautiful part of the people's park for the purpose of building a hotel.


Richard Blain: I deem it my duty to support the amendment of my hon. friend from South Simcoe (Mr. Lenuox). I have before me the amendment moved by my hon. friend and also the amendment to the amendment moved by the Minister of Railways. I do not wish to weary the committee by reading them both, but will just select the important point out of each. The resolution of my hon. friend from South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) contains this paragraph :
The government shall thereupon and thereafter have the right to take over any of the lines of railway authorized by chapter 99 of the Acts of this parliament. 1906, as are connected with that line and with any point or points on such eastern division, at such value as may he agreed upon between the government and the company.
The amendment to the amendment reads:
The government shall take over such line or lines of railway running from a point or points in the eastern division authorized by chapter 99 of the Acts of this parliament, 1906, which such company may elect not to retain.
I prefer the amendment moved by my hon. friend from South Simcoe because it leaves to the discretion of the parliament of Canada what line or lines we shall take. If the Grand Trunk Pacific had on the floor of this House a special representative, that representative could not submit a resolution stronger in the interests of that company than the one proposed by the Minister of Railways. His amendment is strictly in the interests of the Grand Trunk Pacific, and I am sure Canadian people will be surprised that my hon. friend would come forward with a resolution directly in the interests of that company. Surely my hon. friend has forgotten the promises he made to protect the interests of the people. I do not wish to weary the committee by going over the reasons which have been so fully given by my hon. friend from South Simcoe (Mr. Leiinox) and my hon. friend from

East Grey (Hr. Sproule), but I do say that, in my opinion, it is in the interests of the people that we should adopt the amendment moved by my hon. friend from South Sim-coe. Looking into the future I am sure that the people who will then have to deal with this matter will be surprised that a Minister of Railways should have felt it his duty to move a resolution directly in the interests of the Grand Trunk Pacific and against the interests of the Canadian people.


Haughton Lennox: It is my duty to my hon. friend the Minister of Railways, who has been at the trouble of drafting this amendment, that. I should say a word or two to explain why I cannot agree with his suggestion. Whilst I am perfectly willing to accord to the Grand Trunk Pacific everything they have a right to, I am not willing to concede to them a discretion which is antagonistic to the rights of the people. The Minister of Public Works suggests that it is not equitable that we should take the right to select certain railway lines without taking over certain other lines constructed by this company. I would venture to submit that there is nothing in that contention. We are building, for the convenience and advantage to a large extent of the Grand Trunk Pacific, the eastern division of the Transcontinental Railway, which is the difficult end of the proposition. And we are chartering some of these branch lines long in advance of the necessities of the country. We are giving that company a blanket charter to construct such branch lines as they may see fit. Having come to us two years ago to obtain a charter, we are disposed to renew it, but only upon fair and equitable terms. The minister says it would be unfair that we should take over a portion of these branch lines and not all of them. Why so? During a period of fifty years, the railway company may see fit to construct log lines, and these log lines, during the twenty-five or thirty years they may be in operation, may give an adequate return for the capital invested in them and at the end of that period they may not be worth one dollar to the company. The company may construct a line into a mining camp and the mine may become exhausted, and at the end of the fifty year period the line, which may have paid for itself over and over again, may not be worth anything to the company or the people. But the Minister of Public Works, for whose astuteness I have the greatest respect, suggests that it would be eminently fair that we should be compelled to take over such a line and operate it. I do not think so. On the other hand, the Minister of Railways suggests that we should re-enact section 11. I am afraid that would be worse than a blunder. See what section 11 of the schedule to the Act 1904 provides. It provides that we shall have the right to take over-what? To take over
the useless line and leave to the company the valuable line. It provides that :
If, at the expiration of the said lease, the company shall undertake the operation of the said eastern division, the government shall take over such branch lines as the company may elect not to retain.
That is the proposition of the minister to-day. That proposition amounts to this that if the country shall determine to operate the eastern division, these lines to defunct mines shall be taken over by the people of Canada and the company shall have the right to retain all their paying lines. I cannot consent to any such proposition I cannot agree that we are to be at the enormous expense-double or treble the expense announced to us when the scheme was launched some few years ago

of constructing the eastern division, and that after covering with blank charters the territory that contributes to those branch lines, then at the end of 50 years, if the company should operate it for that period -which I venture to think it is very uncertain-we can only take it back from the company upon the condition that we shall also take with it such refuse, exhausted and useless lines, as the company determine not to retain, and that, mark you, even though the feeling of the people in favour of government ownership and operation should be far more pronounced than it is to-day.
Let there be a fair, square deal in this transaction. We are furnishing for the Grand Trunk Pacific the means of access to the ocean. We are giving them the rich and fertile prairies of the west as well. We are allowing them to get the construction of all that is easy, and we have taken upon ourselves the construction of all that is difficult and hazardous. Surely, when we are doing that, when we are giving them the right to construct branch lines of railways which equal in extent the total mileage of the original Transcontinental Railway, lines of railway which are to determine whether the eastern division shall or shall not pay, it is not an unreasonable proposition that we should have the right to take over that railway upon some such terms as I have proposed in my amendment. I have so drawn my amendment that in extending this charter, in giving this additional concession to the Grand Trunk Branch Lines Railway Company, we shall make it a condition that the public may acquire all or any of the branch lines at the end of the fifty-year period, that in case of a dispute it shall be referred to an impartial tribunial. to the Board of Railway Commissioners for Canada, with the right of appeal without leave by either party and that the sanction of parliament shall be obtained before we shall commit ourselves to the proposition. I submit, Mr. Chairman, that, as contrasted with the proposition of the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals,

that we shall go back to the burdensome provision of the Act of 1904 and to the obscurely worded provisions of that Act there should not be a moment's hesitation on the part of the government in adopting this amendment. I trust that upon further consideration the Minister of Railways and Canals, after consulting, I hope, with the right lion, leader of the government, will see the eminent fairness of the proposition I have made and recognize that merely because, in 1904, at a time when a portion of this parliament appeared to be ready to concede almost anything to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, we made great blunder, is no reason why we should repeat the mistakes made at that time ; and that the government will see the necessity, the wisdom and the justice of standing by the interests of the people in this regard and also see their duty, as has been suggested to me, and safeguard the rights of the public by securing not necessarily the exercise of the purchasing power in'this matter, but by securing an option which will give the people a fair deal at the end of the fifty-year period.


Mr. HENDERSON.: Mr. Chairman, I do not wish it to be understood that I would in any way favour any measure or any amendment that might be unfair or unreasonable towards this company, but I cannot help but remember that the people of Canada are contributing nine-tenths in money and guar-tee to the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Transcontinental Railway. In the light of that I feel that any amendment made to the charter which is now before us should be along the lines of giving greater protection to the people rather than to the company. I feel that we are doing nothing unfair in protecting the people's interests in so far as we possiblv can in this matter, and for that reason I am in favour of the aemendment proposed by my hon. friend from South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) rather than the amendment proposed by tile hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham). I realize that the first amendment is one that will give greater protection to the people and I believe that the other is an amendment designed to give the greater protection to the railway company.
Progress reported.



SUPPLY-TIMBER LEASES.

[Stage Direction]
House resumed consideration of the proposed motion of Mi-. Fielding that the House go into Committee of Supply.
['Supply, Mounted Police, Civil Service, Railways and other like matters.']
Mr. BUR ROM  S.@: When you left the chair at six o'clock, Mr. Speaker, I was referring to the statement made by the hon. member for Montreal, St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) in reference to three timber limits secured by "yselC Nos. 3046, 1047 and 1099. The hon.
Mr. LENNOX
gentleman insinuated, in reference to these limits, that I, by some means, had found out what the tenders were which had been put in by those who were competing against me, and that I was thereby enabled to put in a tender just a little above the others. I showed to the House a copy of the original tenders sent from the city of Winnipeg four days before the tenders weTe opened in which the amounts of my tenders were specified and accompanying which were cheques marked, in the city of Winnipeg, four days before the tenders were opened in the city of Ottawa. That proved conclusively that four days before the tenders were opened four days before the other tenders were put in, my tender had been sent here and were bona fide. What is the inference to be drawn from the statement of the hon. gentlemen ? The inference is that by virtue of my finding out what the next highest tender was I was enabled to put in a tender just a litle higher than the others. That argument refutes itself. The amounts of the competing tenders were as follows :
Highest
_	competing
Berth No.	My tender. tender.
1046	$ 3,500 .	$ 3,0151047	
15,000	13,5241099	
6,500	5,116So that the aggregate of my three tenders was $25,000 and the aggregate of the highest competing tenders was $21,655. My three tenders therefore were $3,345 in the aggregate more than the next three highest tenders. If the argument presented by the hon. gentleman or the insinuation which the hon. gentleman endeavours to make had any ground in fact, namely, that I was enabled to know what the other tenders were, would it be fair to assume that I would have thrown away $3,345 when I could have got the limits by bidding $10 more than the next highest tender in each case ? All that it is necessary to do in this case is to state the facts which will absolutely prove to any fair-minded man that the insinuations, in so far as these limits are concerned, are without foundation and altogether ridiculous.	,
The hon. member (Mr. Ames) made a statement this afternoon which I presume he did not know was incorrect until I pointed it out to him. However, this statement has gone the round of the party press for the past three months and the party press evidently under inspiration has been writing articles with reference to timber limits and at various times it has been stated that I owned so many limits. In the month of February the Toronto 'Mail and Empire' in an article sent as ' special ' from Ottawa stated that I owned 1,336 square miles of limits; in another Conservative paper it was stated that I owed 1,500 square miles, and my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) in a speech he

delivered in Halifax was bold enough to say that I owned 1,600 square miles. It does not matter what limits I own so long as I got my limits in an honourable way, but just let me state that I never owned 1,336 square miles, I never owned 1,590 square miles, and I never owned 1,600 square miles so that all three of these statements are not true In any part. My hon. friend (Mr. Ames) also stated that I owned timber limit 1049. Now, timber limit 1049 was tendered for by Mr. A. W. Fraser, of Ottawa, in the name of Mr. John McBain, and it was insinuated in the newspapers that Mr. Fraser was acting for me, and that Mr. MeBain's name had been used virtually for that of Mr. T. A. Burrows. The fact is that I never was interested directly or indirectly In this tender and Mr. Fraser in the witness box before the Public Accounts Committee gave the following evidence which will be found at page 63 of the report of the committee :
By Mr. Macdonald (Pictou):
Q. Who is Mr. John McBain?-A. John McBain is a millwright and contractor by occupation, and at that time, and for some time previous had been carrying on building operations and real estate in the city of Ottawa in which he and I were interested.
Again at page 72 of his evidence, I read as follows:
By Mr. Macdonald (Pictou):
Q. On whose behalf was this tender of John McBain, of March 7, 1903, for berth No. 1019 put in?-A. On my own.
Q. No. 1019?-A. Yes, that was on my behalf.
Q. You have that limit still, have you?- A. Oh, no, I have not.
By Mr, Bristol:
Q. Did you sell the limit?-A. Yes.
Q. For how much?-A. That -is my business, I am not going into that part of it.
The hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) must have known of this if he read the evidence, indeed he was present when Mr. Fraser gave that evidence before the committee, and it was not fair for him to make the statement to which I have alluded or to assume that I owned that limit. I had no interest whatever in the tender or in the limit afterwards.


Herbert Brown Ames: Would th6 hou. gentleman allow me to make a correction. He misunderstood me. I stated that the Burrows-Fraser combination owned 1,586 square miles. What Mr. Burrows did not own Mr. Fraser or those he represented did own.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I have nothing whatever to do with any limit that Mr. Fraser owns, and that brings up another question. The hon. gentleman referred to some limits that Mr. Fraser had tendered for and which he afterwards sold to the Red Deer Lumber Company, referring to limit No. 958 of forty I
square miles and No. 988 of twenty square miles, and I think he insinuated that I had something to do with these timber limits.


Herbert Brown Ames: No.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I never had anything to do with them and I am glad the hon. gentleman is fair enough to admit that. In the 'Toronto ' Mail and Empire ' of March 28, tli ere was an inspired article written from Ottawa which contained certain statements regarding me, and these statements were copied into the western papers and went the rounds of the Tory press. This is one of them:
Few berths acquired by Burrows are without value far exceeding the price paid for them. For $500 a 50-mile limit on Cedar lake was acquired in the name of A. W. Fraser, and that property was subsequently put up for sale for $500,000.
I want to say that I never had a one half cent interest in that limit at Cedar Lake.
1 was not interested in the tender and have not been interested since directly or indirectly, so that that statement is absolutely without foundation. In another article the ' Mail and Empire ' said that 120 miles appearing in the names of Mr. Fraser was virtually owned by Mr. T. A. Burrows, and that 120 miles is made up in this way : Timber limit No. 1031, thirty square miles, and No. 1107, ninety square miles.
I want to say that I never was interested in either of these limits directly or indirectly before they were tendered for or afterwards. I have never had anything to do with them whatever. These are the kind of statements which have been going the round of the press regarding me. They are entirely incorrect, and I would have taken occasion to state so before this were it not that I knew this debate was coming up and that the whole question would come under review, and that I could then make a detailed statement in regard to these matters. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) said that I was interested in timber limit 1048. Now, timber limit 104S was applied for by Win. Cowan, a lumberman of Prince Albert, and Win. Cowan and E. FI. Moore, of Prince Albert, two lumbermen, and myself were associated together in the tender. We tendered for the limit; it was owned by an incorporated company in which the three of us were interested called the Big Biver Lumber Company, and I afterwards sold out my interest to Mr. Cowan in that business. With regard to the other limits I have a statement here which I want to make to the House. Since the present government came into power there has been put up to public competition, 1062 different parcels of timber in Manitoba and the Northwest To read the Toronto 'Mail and Empire' and other strong Conservative papers one would conclude that T. A. Burrows tendered on

about 1050 of these and that all the rest of Canada had tendered on about twelve. But here are the facts: Out of that 1062 timber limits I secured nineteen and I tendered on seven on which my tender was too low. Two of these which I secured were no good. I paid $3,800 on them and I found when I came to survey them that the descriptions were wrong and that they did not cover any timber, and I have thrown them back on the government and the government got my $3,800 for nothing. That leaves seventeen limits, six of which are owned in joint shares between myself and some other lumbermen in the Northwest Territories, so that I really own only eleven limits out of the .seventeen personally and I have a half interest in the other six. But assuming that I owned all the other six what does it amount to. I intend to read a list of the limits and the tenders and how much my tender was above the others. &c. The first limit on the list is No. 814, fifteen square miles and my tender was $1,500, and the next highest tender was $1,100 which was put in by James Stewart of Winnipeg on behalf of Shaw Bros., of Dauphin. Hon. gentlemen on the other side have been casting insinuations on the idea of anybody tendering for timber limits in the name of anybody else, but here is a case where my opponents in business in Dauphin, good respectable lumbermen tendered for this limit in the name of somebody else. I do not cast any reflection on them for doing that, they could tender that wav if thev wanted to.
For the next limit. No. 986, 50 square miles, my tender was $4,600, and the next highest was $4,305. For limit No. 992. 40 square miles, my tender was $1,502 and the next highest $1,100. For timber limit No. 1000, containing 5 square miles, my tender was $625, and the next highest bid $210. Limit No. 1001, containing 6 square miles my tender was $1,003 and the next highest $640. Timber limit 1002, 4 square miles, my tender was $040 and the next highest $60. Limit No. 1046-this is one of those I had referred to this afternoon, my tender was $3,500 and the next highest $3,015. No. 1047. 50 square miles, my tender was $15,000 and the next highest $13,524. The next limit. No. 1054, containing 1 square mile, my tender was $500 and the next $200. No. 106S. 5} square miles, my tender was $400 and the next highest $310. This is one of the limits that is no good and has since been handed back to the government after I had paid $135 in dues. So that the government got that area back and my $535 for nothing. No. 1073, 20 square miles, my bid was $2,750 and the next highest $2,500. That is another case where the description was not correct and I relinquished the limit to the government so that the government got from me some $3,800 and the I property back again.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: t .	Square	Next.
No.	miles. Mv tender, highest.
1093	
12	$1,500	$ 7001091	
29	2,500	2,0251099	
44	6,500	5,1161120	
15	700	*1121	
50	6,000	5,350U91	
50	1,075	5841192	
50	5,500	5,0601219	
50	3,260	3,000
*No other tender.
These aggregate 534 square miles.


Herbert Brown Ames: How about 571A ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I did not buy it from the government but from a private individual.


Herbert Brown Ames: You acquired it however.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Not from this government but from Shaw Bros., who bought it from the Tory government eighteen years ago. The whole area put up to public competition, which I secured, was 534 square miles. Deducting the area I have relinquished and adding the amount I have surveyed, I have secured altogether 433 square miles. In surveying these limits you often find a lot of waste area. In some instances I have cut that out, and instead of 534 miles I got 433. Six out of the seventeen are limits in which I have only a half interest. The total amount of my tenders was $59,069 and the total amount of the competing tenders was $48,799. My tenders therefore aggregated $10,290 higher than the next aggregate, or 21 per cent, so that the government received $10,270 more than if I had not tendered at all. The average price which I paid per mile was $112.50, and the average price during the time I was tendering, which the government received for timber limits, was $60 per mile. So that I paid pretty nearly twice as much as the average price paid for all the limits that were sold during that time.
It has been said by the hon. member for St. Antoine division (Mr. Ames) that vast areas of timber have been improvidently alienated. In answer to this, I will point out that that were a great many limits put up to tender during the last eleven or twelve years-some 1,062 altogether. In that western country, where there are so many men with speculative'tendencies from all parts of the world, men with money which they are seeking to invest, surely there would have been some cases in which higher prices would have been paid for timber limits, if they were sold so cheap. But the fact is that until recently timber limits were not looked upon as a good speculation in that country at all. In fact they are not a good speculation at big prices, at present as there is great risk connected with them by reason of fires and considerable expense in carrying them. A short time ago my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) got a telegram from

the agent at Prince Albert, notifying him that there were extensive forest fires raging in the timber limits north of Prince Albert, and asking authority to send forty or fifty men to fight the fire, which request the minister granted. West of Edmonton there were forest fires in every direction. In 1906, I had a survey party out at that time, and for two months they did nothing else but fight the fire trying to save one of my limits, but all the work done by the forest guardians and the men who worked for me would have been of no avail were it not for a timely rain. Had rain not fallen most of the timber between Edmonton and Yellow Head Pass would have been burnt that summer. Here is a telegram which I find in an Ottawa paper of May 12 :
Devasting bush fires-Hundreds of square miles of timber destroyed.
Edmonton, May 12.-Charles Tompkins, contractor on the Grand Trunk Pacific, seventy miles west of here, brings a report of devast-ing bush fires which swept through the district last week. Hundreds of square miles of timber were destroyed, and a construction camp was only saved by the strenuous work of the men engaged on the grade, who worked all Thursday night, when the wind suddenly veered and the camp was saved.
I have myself had a report recently from the man who represents me in the neighbourhood of Edmonton to the effect that on two limits in which I am interested the fire this summer did considerable damage but I do not know to what extent. In that western country where the grass grows so luxuriously in the spring and autumn, the fire takes in the grass it is very dangerous for the timber. A fire there, is far more dangerous than it is in the eastern country where there is more moisture and not nearly so great a chance for bush fires to take place. In the east you have more moisture and there is not nearly as much danger of fire as there is in the west. Thus when you come to talk of timber limits as a speculation you find that there is a great risk of fire and that is why men who have money to invest would rather invest it in land than in timber limits : you cannot insure a timber limit and if it is burned you lose all the money you have invested.
My bon. friend (Mr. Ames') said this afternoon that the government bad been very improvident in the prices at which they have disposed of their timber. In answer to that I would say that if the timber was so cheap as tile hon. gentleman tries to make out, surely in some cases men would have tendered at higher rates for the thousand limits that have been put up during this period.
It has been charged against me that I did not pay full price for the limits I secured. I have a statement here showing what has been paid by others for timber
limits in that western country during the time I bought timber. I got the clerk of the Crown Timber Department to prepare me a short statement which is as follows :
Memorandum showing average bonuses paid for timber limits from 1896 to 1905 in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.
Total area disposed of by public competition, 4,576:58 square miles. Bonus received, $276,778.65, or an average per square mile of $60.
The following names apear as holders of the largest areas of limits (100 miles and upwards).
Names.	Miles.		Bonus.	A verage per mile.
			$ cts.	$ cts.
T. A. Burrows ....	534	00	59,069 00	112 50J. D. McArthur...	497	93	13,301 00	26 70McDonald & Frith.	498	75	40,128 00	93 14


Imperial Pulp Co ..: 483	00	54,975 00	114 50.1. \V. .Stewart	330	00	7,000 00	21 21Peter McArthur...	368	60	27,453 00	74 00Thos. Mackie	201	00	26,194 00	130 32Moore & Sanderson	159	00	1,830 00	11 51


Per R.   R.@: 137	00	5,144 00	37 50J. H. Sanderson...	97	27	559 55	5 75
It will be seen from the above memo, that the prices I paid were a good deal higher than those paid by any one else with the exception of the late Mr. Thomas Mackie, member for Pembroke, and the Imperial Pulp Company. Mr. Mackie paid an average of $130 per mile bonus, the Imperial Pulp Company an average of $114.50 and I paid an average of $112.50 per square mile. The average paid during that time for all the limits sold was $60 per square mile of timber. I give these facts in order to show that in securing timber in the west I paid prices not only equal to the average paid by others but nearly twice as high.
It has been stated by hon. gentlemen opposite that all the farmers of the western country are at the mercy of the lumber combine, and that the lumberman, having s.ecured all the timber in the west, can charge what prices he likes. That statement is not correct. According to the regulations portable saw-mill men can secure and do secure timber berths of one square mile on which they can cut timber for the use of farmers without competition. Those berths are not put up for competition but any man who owns a little saw-mill can apply for one square mile and when the timber on this mile is cut they can secure another mile, get a permit to obtain timber for the use of the settlers and need only pay the same dues as the lumbermen, fifty cents per thousand feet, and $100 as a bonus for the square mile. There are a great many of these mills throughout the whole country. Take the district represented by the Minister of the Interior and there are in it hundreds of mills, cutting timber

for the settlers. In my own district it is the same.
I notice in the Dauphin ' Herald,' a Conservative paper published in Dauphin, in its issue of April 30, 1908, the following item :
The following is a statement of the timber cut under permit granted by the Dominion land office here from March 31, 1907, to March
31, 1908:
Lineal feet	of	logs	
18,582Board measure	of	lumber	4,9-15,752Roof poles	
6,915Fence posts	
41,330Cords of wood	
7,751Shingles	
25,000Piles, lineal	feet	
8,000Fence rails	
25,700
It will be seen that in the county of Dauphin, which I represent and where my lumber business is situated, the farmers get a large portion of their supply of timber by going to the bush themselves, getting a permit to cut timber, getting it out themselves and having it manufactured by the portable mill. Although I have a lumber yard in Dauphin, I do not think we sell three-quarters of a million feet in the year to farmers. The farmers get their permits, they get out the timber themselves, using their own horses and men and in that way obtain it much cheaper than they could if they went to the mill and bought the lumber manufactured. I mention this to show that in Manitoba and the west there is ample provision by which the farmers can secure timber. A farmer has a right to secure a permit to cut 9,000 feet without charge. If he has exhausted his right to cut under a free permit, he can apply to the land office and get a permit to cut timber by paying $1.50 a thousand for as much as he wants to cut, or he can buy from the portable mill operator. There is a popular but very erroneous idea that the government having sold this timber receives no further revenue from it. This is not in accordance with the facts. The amount paid as a bonus is a very small proportion of the sum which the government secures on the cutting of timber. The regulations provide that the lumberman first of all cannot secure a limit except by paying a bonus for the right to do business. After that he has to cut the timber according to the regulations and pay the dues provided by the regulations. At the present time the dues are fifty cents a thousand, but it is in the power of the government to change the dues from time to time. If they wished they could charge $5 a thousand, their power is absolute to charge whatever dues they like at any time, now or hereafter.
I shall give a concrete instance in my own experience to show what the government received for one piece of timber. In 1S98 I tendered for timber berth 814, for Mr. BURROWS.
which I paid a bonus of $1,500 and I have since cut all the timber off that area. I have paid to the government, first of all, a bonus of $1,500. I have paid also, by way of dues, $11,907.48. So the government has received, through bonus and royalty on the timber cut on these 15 square miles the sum of $13,407.48. I did not secure any right to the land; I did not secure any right to the timber still left. There is growing timber on the land, and if this is cut hereafter dues will have to be paid on it. It sometimes happens that the government makes more out of the timber than the lumberman does. The lumberman may be unfortunate, but he has to pay his clues whether he makes money or' not. Take the case of this berth No. 814 on which I paid $13,407.48 royalty. I secured the right, under a clause that used to be in operation, clause 17 of the regulations of 1897, to cut the timber on the adjacent area. One of the terms under which the concession was granted was that the man who cut the timber should pay double dues. I cut the timber and paid dues to the government amounting to $22,014.88. So that on this operation, at a place called Pine River, I paid the government for cutting these two pieces of pine timber $35,422.36 by way of dues and royalty. I venture the statement that if I had charged interest on the money invested, charged a salary for my own time when I was looking after that business, charged wear and tear on the plant and other expenses and losses, it would be found that the government made more out of that operation than I did. The government made between $35,000 and $36,000 at no expense whatever. But I had two fires-my mills were burned down twice. The mill was insured, but you can never get enough insurance to cover you for a loss of that kind. So I say emphatically that if I charged these expenses, it would be found that the government had made more money out of that timber than I made. When a lumberman secures a limit he has to pay all the cost of survey and half the cost of fire-guarding, and $5 per year per mile ground rent, besides the royalty on all the lumber he cuts.
Now, let me make a brief statement showing the amount of dues I have paid altogether since this government came into power. The amount of bonus I have paid on limits altogether is $59,089. Also I have paid in dues $5S,585.42 in nine years -an average of between $6,000 and $7,000 a year in dues for cutting timber. Any lumberman carrying on business in an extensive way is a large contributor to the revenue of the country. This is a fact to which the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) takes no cognizance. The hon. member for St. Antoine may be an authority on some things, out certainly he is not an authority on the value of timber or the

quality of timber in the Northwest. I do not wish to east any reflections on the hon. gentleman, but I do not see how he can know anything about these matters ; when he speaks here he shows himself to be thoroughly incompetent to be a judge. The hon. gentleman talks freely about some timber limits of fifty square miles being worth $500,000. I state here, as a lumberman with twenty-nine years' experience- and I think I know as much about timber limits as any man in the Northwest country-that there is not a limit in the Northwest that is worth any such money. And I venture to say that no man but a novice would make any such statement as that which the hon. gentleman made. While timber there is valuable, it has no greater value than timber down here where you have the markets of the world to ship to. During a debate here some time ago the hon. gentleman spoke about a limit on Cormorant lake as being worth $375,000. Promptly the gentleman who owned that limit offered to take the $75,000 for it and allow the party who valued it so highly to pocket the $300,000.	1 feel
sure that that gentleman would sell the limit for less than $75,000. I know that I have limits that I would be glad to get rid of at cost price. Some limits that I have secured, of course, are worth more than I paid for them-I am frank to say that.
But there is a case in my own experience which I will relate which shows what dependence can be plactd on the statements of the hon. gentleman concerning the value of limits. This was the case of berth 571a which I bought from Messrs. Shaw Bros. This is an experienced lumber firm, and one worth considerable money. These men came from Shawville, up the Ottawa river. They moved out to that western country twenty-five years ago, and have been lumbering there ever since. They owned a limit on the Valley river, and I owned limits on that river also. 1 have a large mill there and they have no mill. If there was a limit anywhere that there was strong reason for me to obtain it was that one, because the Valley river is so small that it would be impossible for two of us to drive on it in a practical way, our logs would get all mixed up. Therefore, Shaw Bros, had me at a disadvantage-I simply had to buy their limit. This limit had an area of 28i square miles, and three years ago I bought it for $16,000. This is a first-class limit. It is within three miles of the main line of the Canadian Northern, where a transcontinental train passes each way every day. It is within ten miles of my mill at Grand View. This shows what limits are really worth. Here were men who were not stuck for money, who did not have to sell, and who had me at a disadvantage. They figured
there was about 16,000,000 feet, and that I was paying them $1 per thousand. I do not think there was 16,000,000 feet, and I figured I was paying $1.25 per thousand. So there you have an actual sale from bona fide lumbermen to a bona fide lumberman. I venture to say that this is the best situated limit in the whole of Manitoba and the Northwest. The limit was a very valuable one in proportion to the amount of timber that was on it. So I say that the statement made here by hon. gentlemen who have no knowledge of the facts that limits are worth from $300,000 to $500,000 has no foundation at all. No limits have ever been sold at any such prices. There have been but a few sales made of timber limits in the Northwest Territories. Had they been as valuable as the hon. gentleman tries to make out, surely there would have been more sales, because there are lots of people in that country who are looking for investments. But in the last five years, to my personal knowledge, there have not been half a dozen limits sold in that whole country, that is as a speculation. Big lumber firms from the United States have come into the west and bought limits at Prince Albert. They formed a company called the Prince Albert Lumber Company. This firm were worth a coujfie of million dollars. They were practical lumbermen and are still lumbering in the state of Minnesota. They bought these limits at Prince Albert and made a purchase on the basis of 50 cents a thousand for the standing timber. The Red Deer Lumber Company bought a couple of limits, one of which had been owned by Mr. Dickenson, of Ottawa, a former Conservative member for Russell. Mr. Dickenson secured timber limit No. 92 for nothing when his friends were in power. I understand that afterwards it fell into the hands of a financial corporation in the city of Toronto, who sold it to the Red Deer Lumber Company. Then Mr. A. W. Fraser, of Ottawa, sold two limits to the same company. Shaw Bros, sold a couple of small pieces of timber, besides -what I bought from them. But outside of that, I do not know of any sale having been made throughout Manitoba and the Northwest for speculative purposes. I do not know of any lumberman who has bought timber limits, I did not buy any myself except the one X refer to, and I do not know of any limits being sold.


Herbert Brown Ames: Has the hon. gentleman heard of the sale from Shaw Bros, to the Ruby Lake Lumber Company for $100,000?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I do not think they sold it for $100,000.


Herbert Brown Ames: I have their statement to that effect.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: That is all right, but I know differently. The company sold

tliat timber on the basis of stumpage; that is, when the timber is cut out, if it has not been burned, they will get $100,000 If there is enough timber on the limit to amount to that sum. But that was not a straight sale for cash.


Herbert Brown Ames: I have the statement in writing from a member of the firm of the Ruby Lake Lumber Company that in 1906 the sum paid was $100,000. Here is the letter if the hon. gentleman wishes to see it.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: They never paid $100,000 ; they may have agreed to. Will the hon. gentleman read the letter?


Herbert Brown Ames: The letter is dated April 18, 1908 :
Dear Mr. Ames,-I find the number of the timber berth about which we spoke is 964, and it was purchased by the Ruby Lake Lumber Company in the summer of 1906 from Shaw Bros., of Dauphin, for the sum of $100,000 not $110,000 as I stated to you. The Ruby Lake Lumber Company is composed of a number of Amherst men who took hold of the proposition as a prospective money maker
That is signed by Edgar N. Ross, of Amherst, N.S.


Mr. E. M. MACDONALD.: That gentleman is a Conservative candidate in Cumberland, N.S. He knows nothing about lumber.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I have been criticised by hon. gentlemen opposite in connection with my timber operations. I would like to read an extract from a Tory paper published in my own town where I have my mill. It is a Conservative paper edited by Mr. George Graham. I believe he is a relative of the Minister of Railways, is a good strong Conservative, and a very decent man. When the question of the timber limits was under discussion in the House, he wrote this article. I quote it from the Grandview ' Exponent ' of February 14, 190S :
Those Timber Deals.
During the past few weeks there has been considerable discussion in the Dominion House at Ottawa in the matter of timber deals, and there seems little doubt that some of these transactions have been of a very shady character. Locally we are interested, owing to our member, Mr. Burrows, being among those mentioned. In this case, however, the public have been getting results from the contracts, and while Mr. Burrows may not be in the business from philanthropic motives, he has been utilizing his timber limits, and his extensive milling establishment here in Grandview lias meant much toward the advancement of our district. The people of Grandview as a whole have derived much benefit through Mr. Burrows' lumbering operations. He has for several years employed a large number of men, both winter and summer. His last season's cut for instance, was the largest in the history of his operations, and owing to the financial stringency throughout the country he may have to carry many mil- I Mr. BURROWS.
lions feet of lumber in his yards here for a considerable time, and take long chances on the question of price, danger from fire, &c. In the interval he has expended a large amount in wages, &c, on which interest is constantly accruing. So that the criticisms can hardly apply in the case of Mr. Burrows.
That statement was written by a gentleman who is not a supporter of mine, but it shows the public sentiment in that district. The hon. member for St. Antoine has been very* much affected over a company known as the Imperial Pulp Company. I have a statement here of the timber limits owned by that company. They are nine in number. The company secured nine timber limits aggregating some 407 square miles. The first limit they secured, is 1031. When that limit was tendered for it was supposed to cover 1181 square miles. It was divided into eleven different blocks situated on the Saskatchewan river, and they were accurately defined. The area covering them was described by metes and bounds. That limit has been surveyed since and it is found that instead of there being 118 square miles there was only 521 square miles. The amount paid for that limit was $31,575. In the Public Accounts Committee the tenders for that limit were discussed, and Mr. Finnie, the manager of the Bank of Ottawa, was put into the witness box with regard to a tender given by the Bank of Ottawa through the manager. His evidence was to this effect :	He said
that I went to him and deposited $31,575 in the Bank of Ottawa, that I asked him to make out two manager's cheques for the whole amount, payable to the Deputy Minister of the Interior, and that he made two manager's cheques, dating them on the 30th December. The tenders were opened on the 31st December. These two cheques were put in with a tender for the Imperial Pulp Co., and secured the limit. Now, I want to make it plain that I deposited that much money in the Bank of Ottawa and I asked for two cheques, the cheques were made out by Mr. Finnie himself in his own handwriting; they were produced in the Public Accounts Committee and he swore to them. They covered all the money I had in the bank at the time, and they covered enough to secure the limit.
Now the hon. member for St. Antoine this afternoon undertook to criticise several other tenders in connection with the limits secured by that company. Amongst others he referred to limit No. 1098. Again he made the insinuation, or his remarks bore out the insinuation, that through some collusion between myself and some officer of the department-the Insinuation was that it was between myself and the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff), who at that time was Dominion Land Commissioner,-I was enabled to know what the next highest tender was and put my tender in accordingly. I think the hon. gentleman is
8765	MAY 19, 1908	8766
rather unfortunate in his statements. My tender was $2,500. He also made some reflections with reference to the fact that my tender was put in in cash. The next highest tender was $1,860. Does he think that I am so flush of money, that, knowing that the next highest tender was $1,S60, I was going to put in $2,500 cash? I do not think that I am so easy as that. I think that if I had an opportunity of knowing how much money was going to take a timber limit I would not waste $500 or $600 more than was necessary. I think that is all that is necessary to show how ridiculous the statement made by the hon. gentleman is. The hon. gentleman's remarks about other tenders were equally ridiculous.
With regard to the Imperial Pulp Company I havq stock in that organization. The company was formed with the object of going into the pulp business in the western country. We secured timber in the neighbourhood of Edmonton. The intention was to erect a pulp mill in that locality. We secured altogether four hundred and odd square miles but we have only three hundred and six square miles. The area was cut down. Berth No. 1097 proved to be of no use. so that notwithstanding the fact that we paid $1,500 for it on account of bonus and dues it was no good whatever and it will never be surveyed. Berth 1031, instead of getting one hundred and eighteen square miles we only got fifty-two square miles, and as to berth 1119, instead of getting twenty square miles, we only got eleven. The same applies to some other limits. We did not survey the whole of them because the timber was not there. The Imperial Pulp Company have secured three hundred and six square miles of timber limits and these timber limits were secured with the object of erecting a pulp mill in that western country. Upon going into the matter I found that that was not the place for a pulp mill, that while the timber is valuable for saw-mill purposes it is not valuable for pulp. To successfully manufacture pulp and make it pay in that western country you will have to have a a paper mill. If you ship pulp from a western point like Edmonton to an eastern mill the freight would be so great that you could not make a dollar out of It. That is one point against a pulp-mill in that particular district. Another point against it is that it is necessary to have water-power to operate the pulp-mill and it is also necessary to have good water. In that western country where freshets occur during many months in the year the water is so muddy that it would not be available for use in the pulp industry. The original idea of the company to erect a pulp-mill proved not to be a business proposition and the idea is now to use the limits for lumbering purposes. The company intend to erect mills and cut the timber into lumber. Hon. gentlemen opposite try to make out that there was some great secrecy about this company. This company was organized in the city of Toronto by a reputable firm there. Like any other company, it had its shareholders and, like any other company, it did not advertise on the streets who owned the shares in the company, but anybody who wants to know can easily find out. But, for political reasons hon. members of the opposition were trying to create the impression that we were trying to keep the identity of the company secret and notwithstanding the fact that my hon. friend the member for St. Antoine knew that I was a member of the company he scrupulously avoided asking me any question or putting me in the witness box when the committee was investigating this matter for fear that I would have an opportunity of stating the position regarding this matter.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I have taken up the time of the House at considerable length, and there are just a few more remarks I wish to make. In the first place I have been in the lumbering business in Manitoba since 1879. I have never done anything else as a business except follow the lumbering business since I went to that western country aud was able to conduct a business of my own. I have had saw-mills in various parts of the country. I first owned several mills on Lake Winnipeg and I afterwards changed my scene of operations to the western country so soon as we had railway communication in that district which made it possible to do a lumbering business there. I have at the present time three mills in operation. This year, the lumbermen in that country are not manufacturing so extensively as they did some few years ago. A couple of years ago there was a great agitation in regard to a lumber combine and it was stated that there was going to be a lumber famine. At one time there was shortage of lumber and all the lumbermen in the west undertook to get out large stocks. The consequence was that at all points when the hard times came, every lumberman throughout Manitoba, the Northwest and even British Columbia found himself with a very large stock of lumber that he could not sell. In the west you will find nearly every mill stocked up and in British Columbia you can buy fifty per cent of the mills at a good deal less than the cost price.
The limits which I secured and which I have enumerated to the House were secured by me before I became a member of parliament. I do not know that it makes much difference because I think a member is free to tender upon timber limits if he wants to, but at the time I bought most of these limits I never expected to be a member of parliament and did not aspire to the candidature. I do not understand why members of the opposition have picked me

out for attack. I am a lumberman and I have a right to follow my business if I want to. The timber areas, being owned by the Dominion government, it is necessary for all the lumbermen to deal with the Dominion government. In the east, where the provinces own the timber, as in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario, the lumbermen deal, with the local governments, but in Manitoba and the Northwest it is absolutely necessary for the lumbermen to deal with the Dominion government. It therefore became necessary for me to deal with the Dominion government. Some time ago insinuations were made to the effect that because Mr. Siftou happened to be the Minister of the Interior I got advantages, being related to him, that I would not have got as a stranger. I never secured any advantages over any other man in my line of business and any timber limits that I have secured at any time have been secured by public competition with the exception of the timber patent -which I have before referred to. There is one point I want to make again before I sit down. It is a point which has been hammered at considerably by the opposition press. I do not think that is material. As to how much timber I own I wish to make this statement from my place in parliament and upon my responsibility as a member of this House- I do not own 1,600 square miles as said by the hon. member for St. Antoine, nor do I own 1,500 square miles as said by the hon. member for Calgary, nor do I own 1,330 square miles as stated by the Toronto ' Mail.' The total amount of my holdings at the present time is four hundred and thirty-three square miles which I own myself- with the exception that I mentioned "that in six of these limits I only own a half interest, but suppose I own them all they amount to four hundred and thirty-three square miles. Then I own one-hair interest In the Imperial Pulp Company which has some three hundred and twenty square miles. Outside of that I have no limit interest in the west with the exception of a limit I bought from Shaw Brothers aud it was not got from this government. Therefore, instead of owning 1,500 square miles, or 1,336 square miles, or 1,600 square miles I own about 600 square miles altogether, including some in which I own only an interest. I do not think it is germane to the question that I should make this statement but it has been debated so often and so unfairly that I thought it only just to myself that I should deal with the subject.
My. hon. friend (Mr. Ames) seems to have an eye for irregularities; he seems to be suspicious about any man that has holdings in the west. He singled me out specially for attack and I would judge from the diligence he has displayed that he has gone through all the public records and knows exactly what limits everybody owns. But Mr. BURROWS.
it does seem very strange that everything else escaped his attention except what T. A. Burrows happened to own. If he had cast his eye out to British Columbia he would have found a firm out there-I am not saying anything against them for they are a good legitimate business firm-who secured IS limits before this government came into power, and who have further secured in their own name and in the name of others 50 limits since this government came to power. They own to-day 68 different parcels of timber and it is not scattering spruce such as we have in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories but it is large timber growing on the Columbia river. That firm is the Columbia River Lumber Company. Why did not Mr. Ames with his natural disposition for suspicion cast his microscope on that transaction ?
As to the general statement that the government has been improvident with regal'd to the timber resources of the Northwest, 1 would point to the fact that since the present government came to power they disposed altogether of 6,400 square miles of timber by public competition and the records show they sold that timber at an average bonus of 81 dollars per square mile, in addition to the dues and ground rents which the lumbermen have to pay when they cut. The late Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) speaking on this question some months ago pointed out that in the province of Quebec between 1885 and 1906, 26,000 square miles of timber were sold and that the average price obtained was 881.16 per square mile or just about the price the Dominion govez'nment obtained for its timber in the west. I am sure that any one who knows anything about timber in the Northwest and Quebec will agree that the timber areas tributary to the Ottawa and other rivers are of greater value are closer to market, are not so subject to fire, are a better investment in every way than timber areas in the Northwest where the timber is scattering and liable to be burnt up at any time. If you take that comparison which I think is a fair one, you will find that the statements of gentlemen opposite that this government has been improvident. are not borne out by the facts because we see that timber limits in the older parts of Canada have not realized any more per square mile than have the limits in the Northwest. Now, talking about areas owned by one limit holder, if you tell a lumberman in eastern Canada that a man owned 500 square miles, or 600 square miles, or 1,000 miles and gave that as an example of large holdings, he would simply laugh at you. There are men living within a 100 miles of the city of Ottawa who own more ; there is one man in the city of Ottawa who owns not 500 miles but 7,000 square miles of white pine, red pine, spruce, cedar, the very best timber in the Dominion. There are two other firms who own about the same area. There is a firm in the city of

Montreal, who I am credibly informed support the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) and who own some 7,000 square miles of limits in Quebec, an area greater than the total amount of timber sold by this government in eleven years. I would suggest to the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) that he might start his crusade on these people and point out to them that they own too much of the public domain and demand from them that they hand back some of it to the government of the province of Quebec.
In conclusion I wish to say that the references which have been made to me by the member for St. Antoine and his friends are very unfair, indeed. I came to this House a lumberman, I have been a lumberman for many years in the Northwest ; in the pursuit of my business as a lumberman it became necessary for me to tender for limits and I tendered for timber in the regular way and I secured it and I had the right to do so. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes my tenders were too low, and in that case I did not get the limit. I do not see why it is that because I have the honour to be a member of the House of Commons I should be singled out for attack simply because I am following the business that I have followed during all my business career. If the criticism of me had been reasonable I would not have felt it so badly, but I have a character to sustain in the western country just as well as the hon. member (Mr. Ames) has in Montreal. I can tell him furthermore that if he goes out to the west and meets the people that have associated with me for the past quarter of a century he will And that my character stands just as high there as does his character in the city of Montreal or anywhere else. Therefore I say, Mr. Speaker, that many of the aspersions that have been cast upon me through the Conservative press and which have been used as a political lever more than as a personal attack in some cases, have been unfair, unjust, and without foundation. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I tendered for timber limits, I tendered in a legitimate way like other lumbermen, I got nothing except what I am entitled to get and I have no apologies to make.


Mr. R. S. LAKE (Qu'Appelle).: The hon. member (Mr. Burrows) has not attempted to make an answer to the speech of my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) which was a most powerful arraignment of the policy of the present government in its disposal of the timber areas of the Northwest. The only attempt at defence put up by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Burrows) was his statement that there are several people in some of the older provinces who own very large areas of timber and that because of that the Dominion government was not improvident in disposing of vast areas of our timber resources of the west for specula-279
five purposes. The hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) has confined himself chiefly to a personal explanation as to the part he has played in the distribution of these limits, and he searched far and wide for individual cases of tenders which appear to be very close, and for instances in which more than one cheque was inclosed in the tender. But these do not account for the remarkable coincidence which time after time occurred in connection with his own tenders, nor do they account for the remarkable success of the hon. gentleman in securing IS out of 19 limits for which he bid; nor do they account for the invariable success of the Imperial Pulp Company in their tendering, in which company, he tells us he owns a half share. The practice of lumbermen, which he says, is common of giving more than one cheque, sometimes on different banks, does not explain why it was advisable to eo to one particular bank and get two or three cheques at the same time drawn on the same bank, because if secrecy were the reason for giving these different cheques, that end would not be accomplished by getting two or three cheques at the same time and on the same bank. I might further point out that when the time came to send the tender to the department, surely there was no reason for not stating then on the face of the tender itself what the amount was. The time for concealment as to the amount surely had expired by that time and that excuse would not carry any weight when it came to sending in the
tender.	_	...	,,r
The hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) had been afraid, he said, to put him in the witness box, and he used some very strong terms in denouncing my hon. friend. But the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) seems to have forgotten that he himself could have asked to be placed in that box, or he could have got his friend and confident, the member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) to call him in ns a witness. He passes over that as a very light matter. He must also have forgotten that only a short time ago in this Iloues, he spoke and voted against a resolution calling for an inquiry by a commission of nine members into the whole disposal of the timber limits of the country. That - very fact in itself would surely lead the hon. member for St. Antoine to conclude that the hon. member for Dauphin was not likely to be a candid and willing witness. It the hon. gentleman had desired to give evidence he would have gone into the box of his own accord. And it seems to me, as his name has been connected so closely with these timber limit transactions, he should have welcomed the idea of a committee being appointed to go into the whole question, so that everything might be cleared up, if there was nothing which was not capable of being cleared up iu connection w itn this [DOT]whole matter.



With regard to the Imperial Pulp Company, he told us that anybody who wanted to know who the shareholders were could easily have found out.
Mr. BURROWS I have them here and If the hon. member wants to see the names he can have them.


Richard Stuart Lake: I am not particularly anxious at present, but the point I wish to make is that he told us anybody could tell who the shareholders were if he wanted to find out. That question was asked more than once.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Who was asked?


Edmund James Bristol: Mr. Fraser was asked, the solicitor of the company.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: And he told you the moment he was asked.


Edmund James Bristol: No, he did not.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: He told you you the moment he was asked.


Edmund James Bristol: The evidence shows the contrary.


Richard Stuart Lake: Mr. Fraser's answer was that Mr. Burrows, Sir Daniel McMillan, the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, were members and that Mr. Pattinson was the secretary. Did they include the whole members of that company?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Yes.


Richard Stuart Lake: I am glad to hear that at last. For a very long time inquiries were being made as to who the members of that company were. Throughout the Department of the Interior there was an immense amount of curiosity to know who the Imperial Pulp Company consisted of, and there was a great deal of secrecy in connection with the matter. The only address given of the company was a post office box at Winnipeg. That fact itself would show there was secrecy in connection with this matter. The statement of the hon. member is rather amusing when he says that anybody could have found out at any time of whom the company were composed. But it was not until the original papers-which we fought for from day to day and week to week-were brought down that it was discovered that Sir Daniel McMillan was the president and Mr. Pattinson the secretary. In the earlier part of his speech the hon. gentleman complained that the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) had not pointed out the small value of the limits lying to the north of Prince Albert. When he made that complaint, the hon. gentleman did not, as he might have well done, inform the House that he had been able to sell one half a share in the 250 miles of these limits which he had secured for some $80,000. It does Mr. LAKE,
not appear to me that he offered the slightest defence of the policy of the department in putting up these other timber limits which lie to the north of Prince Albert and the northwest of Edmonton. Then he went on at some trouble to deny certain allegations as to the specific amount of timber limits which were said to have been owned by him; and after a good deal of discussion, he finally brought down the amount from some 549 square miles-which was the amount he originally obtained-to 534 miles. For these limits he said he paid some $59,000, and he went on to say that the timber business was very poor indeed. He forgot that little transaction I have just mentioned in which he sold one half share in the limit, which he with two others procured for $7,000 for $80,000. That cannot be a bad business in which one can make a turnover of that sort. There are many who would like to have a look in at the same sort of business. He went on to say how very bad an investment timber limits were. He said that the government, out of one lot of timber he owned, had made some $39,000 in dues, and that if he were to charge against his profits the whole of his salary and interest on the money, he would not have made so much out of it. Well, if a man can make anything like $39,000 in addition to paying another $39,000 in dues out of a single limit, he is doing considerable business, and the hon. gentleman has no great complaint as regards the profitableness of his timber investments.
I do not intend to speak at any great length. My hon. friend from St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) has made out a case with great clearness and considerable trouble, and it is one on which we propose to protest against the policy of the government regarding the timber lands of the Northwest. This question was raised in the House on a previous occasion in the early part of the session. At that time we considered we had sufficient information at hand to demand a searching inquiry into the whole question of the disposal of the timber in that country, and I moved a resolution asking that a committee of nine should be appointed to inquire into the question. I laid down my reasons for making that request in a most categorical way, and looking over these reasons to-day I concluded that they contained nothing whatever on which I should now go back. But since that time a vast amount of additional information has been obtained. Some voluminous reports have been brought down and also a number of original documents for which we fought in a determined way, and we have also some partial inquiry before the Public Accounts Committee. All three sources of information have shown us not merely that we were justified in the statements and suggestions we made when we asked for an inquiry in the earlier part

of the session, but that we have far greater ground for asking for such a committee at this time, and that the reasons for as thorough an investigation into the whole timber business are far greater now even than when the resolution was moved a few months ago.
My hon. friend from St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) has called attention to many points that have been brought out since that time. He has pointed out that one group had acquired some 1,586 square miles of timber limits. The hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) has explained that some of these limits are not owned at the present moment by some of the persons in this group who acquired them. Nevertheless the fact remains that they did acquire these timber limits and, as the hon. member for St. Antoine pointed out, if that area could be placed in a continuous strip it would be seen to contain an astounding amount of timber. If you took a train at Montreal on Monday evening and travelled all the way to Vancouver, arriving there on Saturday after travelling over some 2,987 miles, this timber would give a strip more than half a mile broad over the whole of that immense stretch of country and these limits have been selected out of an area many times as great as that. That gives a graphic idea of the immense quantity of timber which has passed from the hands of the government into the hands of that group who are holding it to-day, to a very great extent, for speculative purposes. I speak of them as a group. They are the group who tendered through or by the firm of A. W. Fraser or his law firm of Perkins, Fraser & Burbidge. Then again we have those remarkable coincidences in the way of bids which Mr. Ames has pointed out, and the remarkable success of the member for Dauphin and the company in which he was interested, the Imperial Pulp Company, in the bids they made between 1901 and 1905. The fact that the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) is a brother-in-law of the ex-Minister of the Interior and as a member of parliament is the possessor of vast areas in the Northwest which have been acquired from this government, would in itself be matter for some remark, though it would not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong in the acquisition of such limits by a gentleman who is a lumberman as Mr. Burrows is. That being the case I was very much surprised that he did not endorse the proposal that there should be a complete inquiry into the whole matter. But when you consider the peculiar facts which were brought to light in regard to tendering for these various limits by him and by his company, I think there is pretty strong ground for asking for a thorough inquiry into this matter and some ground for suspicion in regard to it. We have found that 279}
in the tenders put in, a considerable number of names and aliases have been used.,


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: When the hon. member speaks of a considerable number how many does he mean 1


Richard Stuart Lake: There are several of them.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: How many ? More than two ?


Richard Stuart Lake: There is Mr. Nolan, Mr. Mc-Bain, Mr. Fraser


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I told you I had no interest in Mr. McBain's limits.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Do you call these people aliases ?


Richard Stuart Lake: At any rate I have given two and there is also the Imperial Pulp Company. These have put in tenders', so that there were three at any rate. Mr. Fraser himself has used other names.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: How many other names did he use ?


Richard Stuart Lake: He used the names of Mc-Bain and Nolan.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Does my hon. friend think it fair to use the words ' a considerable number ' when he can only state one ?


Richard Stuart Lake: I have stated two at any rate and if the hon. gentleman takes exception to ' a considerable number,' I will say ' more than one.'


Theodore Arthur Burrows: I never was interested in any timber limits or tenders with Mr. Fraser directly or indirectly and am not now.


Richard Stuart Lake: Of course I accept the hon. gentleman's statement. Has he ever in his own name tendered for the Imperial Pulp Company ?


Theodore Arthur Burrows: In my own name ?


Richard Stuart Lake: The hon. gentleman does not answer that but he has put in his own cheque in tendering for the Imperial Pulp Company, so I think it may be assumed that he has been one of the tenderers for that company.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Yes, I have tendered on behalf of the company.


Richard Stuart Lake: We have the Imperial Pulp Company, Fraser, Nolan and Mr. Burrows, all tendering for the Imperial Pulp Company. I think that in itself shows there is a necessity or ground for inquiry into the whole series of transactions. Then again duplicate tenders have been put in by the hon. member for Dauphin in his own name and in the name of the Imperial Pulp Company of which he is the half owner, as he has told us. In more than one

instance there has been bogus competition, two tenders put in apparently to lead the public to suppose there was competition, when in reality there was no competition at all. As I said, to many of us the Imperial Pulp Company was a matter of mystery for a considerable time and it came quite as a shock to myself and other gentlemen on this side of the House when we heard the member for Pietou (Mr. E. M. Macdonald) in the Public Accounts Committee say that of course he knew and supposed everybody knew that Mr. Burrows was a member of the Imperial Pulp Company. I can assure the hon. gentleman (Mr. Burrows) that I did not know, and, I am sure there were not many people on our side who did know that for a fact.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Lake) may be interested in companies that I do not know anything about.


Richard Stuart Lake: Now, in connection with this Imperial Pulp Company there was an-omer very peculiar circumstance, and that was the way the applications were made to have these limits put up. I looked through a few of the applications, and in almost every case it seemed to me the applications were put in by persons who, in some instances-in one, at any rate-did not put in any tender themselves at all. In fact, the persons who tendered for the Imperial Pulp Company seemed to comprise quite a large circle of gentlemen. In two instances the then member for West Assiniboia, Mr. Walter Scott, now the premier of Saskatchewan, made application on behalf of another gentleman to have limits put up for public tender, which were subsequently acquired, on tender, by the Imperial Pulp Company. And it certainly would strike one as a peculiar circumstance that there were gentlemen of such standing who were asking to have these limits put up for public competition. Now, there was another fact which struck me as rather peculiar and somewhat worthy of remark, and that was that the hon. member for Pietou (Mr. Macdonald), who appeared-if I may so style him-as the chief counsel of the government during the inquiry which took place, and who had inside information, which a considerable number of us, at any rate, did not possess, did everything he could to prevent the inquiry into the tenders in connection with these timber limits. He toon up, I think, more than 1 aif the first day's session in protesting and arguing the point whether the inquiry should go on upon the lines on which it had been begun. It also struck me as peculiar that, when it came to the crucial point, when we thought we would get information which would settle things one way or the other, he was the one who stepped in and objected that Mr. Finnie should not be called upon to produce certain books. As I have said, it is curious to find that a gen-Mr. LAKE.
tleman who possessed this information was one to block this inquiry as far as possible. I think the country has a great interest in knowing everything in connection with these matters. Their timber is being disposed of, and they ought to know for what it is being sold and to whom.
Another important matter, and one which has been called attention to by the hon. member for St. Antoine, is the way the tenders were made in blank with cheques inclosed. In the evidence given by the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff), if I understood him correctly-and I think I did-that hon. gentleman stated that the tenders were opened by him and that he noted the amounts of cheques inclosed in these blank tenders, and that Miss Monro, who was present with him as secretary, made a note of the amount. Let me point out that nothing of these memos, appears in the papers which were laid before the House. I looked at some of the original documents, and I notice that the blank tenders have initials on the margin, but they had not any statement of the amount of the cheques inclosed in them. The statement of the amount of the cheques only appears after the papers have got into the accountant's branch, one or two days later.


John Gillanders Turriff: May I set my hon. friend (Mr. Lake) right? When the papers were down before the Public Accounts Committee I went over a number of these files, and I think I found in every case but one, where the amount had not been stated in the tender, I made a memorandum of the amount.


Richard Stuart Lake: I went through several of them this morning, and found it the other way. Where the amount was stated in the tender the marginal note restated the amount, but where it was not stated-and there were many cases in which it was not stated in the tender-no amount appeared until it appeared in the handwriting of the assistant accountant or the gentleman who signed for the accountant. What I wish to point out is that in the interval it would be easy to manipulate the cheques after they passed through the hands of the commissioner and before they got to the accountant. It would be interesting to read the remarks made by the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee in regard to the system of tendering which was in vogue in that department when the matter was up for inquiry :
We have given a great deal of latitude because it has been suggested that on account of the form of the tenders there was room for suspicion that cheques might have been supplemented after the tenders were opened. As I understand it that is the suggestion. In some cases the tender does not say the amount of the bonus and the amount is only ascertained by the cheques that are inclosed with the ten-

der. That is not a good way to put in a tender and it leaves it open to that suggestion that there is a possibility that a cheque might be abstracted after the tender was opened or another cheque might be substituted, or something of that sort might be done.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Whose language is. that?


Richard Stuart Lake: That is the language of the hon. member for South Essex (Mr. Clarke), the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. lie did not consider it a good system of tendering. But I have pointed out that when these blank tenders came in there were cases in which no memo, was made as to the cheques inclosed, and, even in the one case where mention of the amount had been put in the body of the tender, the memo, was only in pencil and could easily be rubbed out. Nothing appeared on those tenders until they reached the accountant. During that time there was ample opportunity to take some such action as was suggested as possible by the hon. member for South Essex.


John Gillanders Turriff: If the hon. gentleman will allow me ; I think he is perfectly well aware that when I was giving evidence before the committee I stated that I had never opened a tender before twelve o'clock.
I have never given out any information about tenders, and I have never received a cheque, or allowed any change or substitution of cheques after the tenders were opened. The remarks of the hon. gentleman are a sort of reflection that something like that could have been done, and I say it was not done.


Richard Stuart Lake: I made no statement or reflection in regal'd to that matter. The statement which I make is that tenders were opened by the hon. gentleman and that a certain space of time elapsed after they were opened and the time that the cheques were deposited in the hands of the official accountant of the government. Between these two periods there was room for such action as my hon. friend from South Essex declared to be possible under the circumstances in which these tenders were being dealt with.
Now, I propose to submit a resolution . calling for an investigation into the sale of these timber limits, and if the investigation shows that there has been fraud or imposition practised, it says that those timber berths so disposed of shall be revested in the Crown. I will refer to only two cases in regard to which very suspicious circumstances have been shown, limits 1031 and 1048. 1031 was a limit of 118 square miles north-west of Edmonton. It was advertised on the 19th of November and only 40 days were given for inspection. The advertisement mentioned 11 different blocks of land, and they all had to be included in the tender. Protests were put in against
the shortness of the time and applications were made for an extension of the time in order to ensure proper competition. Limit 1048 lies some distance to the north of Prince Albert. In this there were 10 blocks of 50 square miles each put up for sale.
A very short time was given between the calling for tenders and the date of sale. These blocks had to be selected out of an area of some 7,000 square miles, and this fact alone would make the exploration a matter of absolute Impossibility. These limits have been disposed of for a mere song.
I consider that in view of the fact that the most strenuous objections were taken to the Prince Albert limits being put up and that a further time was called for by the citizens of Prince Albert by their board of trade and by the municipality and others, there should be a full inquiry into the whole matter, and this House should be put in a position to know why those reasonable protests were disregarded and why the sales went on. I beg to move the following amendment :
That all the words after the word ' that ' be eliminated and the following substituted therefor :
This House regrets that the present government has permitted the improvident alienation of immense areas of valuable timber lands which are now held for speculative purposes to the detriment of the people, and records its opinion that such full and unrestricted investigation should be made and such available proceedings taken as may be necessary to revest in the Crown any timber lands in respect of which fraud or imposition has been practised.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am sure that every member of this House, with the exception of one or two who affect to take special interest in this matter, must have come to the conclusion that the attempt to discuss this question at the present stage of the session is nothing more than an attempt to resurrect an absolutely dead proposition. Ever since this matter was discussed in January and February the universal verdict of the House and thg country was that the masterly addresses of the' Minister of Interior and of the exMinister of the Interior had entirely disposed of the whole question.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: How was the verdict unanimous? Was there not a vote?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Well, my hon. friend sometimes votes differently from what he thinks.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: If the hon. gentleman is joking I don't mind that, but if lie means it seriously, he will have to take it back.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My hon. friend is not serious if he concludes that there are many members on his side of the House who have not arrived at the conclusion long ere this that nothing in the shape of a

serious argument has been brought forward to-day. Now, Hr. Speaker, following that discussion at that period of the session we had an investigation before the Public Accounts Committee of these fantastic theories and these unnatural insinuations. That investigation went to the point that the hon. member for Montreal, St. Antoine, became almost hysterical in his desire to have it stopped. The hon. member for Qu'Ap-pelle (Mr. Lake), who has just sat down, in alluding to me as having acted for the government before that committee, made a reference that was entirely unwarranted. His colleague, the hon. member for ft. Antoine, took advantage of the fact that I, as a humble member of that committee, happened to be out of the committee one day to move that all proceedings should be closed and reported to the House when he himself had four or five witnesses subpoenaed who were still outstanding and whose evidence had not been taken. I leave it to the hon. member for Lincoln (Mr. Lancaster) whether or not in his experience in legal matters or in investigations of any kind it is usual that the gentleman who is initiating the proceedings, who is acting for the plaintiff, who is given every opportunity in the way of documents and evidence, asks that the proceeding be terminated in such a way.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Since the hon. gentleman has appealed to me, we all know that the hon. member for St. Antoine could not discuss the matter in the House until a report was made by the committee. I think the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) knows that that was his sole and only reason for wanting the matter closed. It was that it could be debated on the floor of the House. We all understand that anyway.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My hon. friend
is very ingenious. He is always ingenious. What I thought that the hon. member foist. Antoine wanted was not to have a discussion in the House, but was to have an investigation and when he had an opportunity of having an investigation he tried to stop it. Then, after this peculiar proceeding before the investigating committee my hon. friend attempts to resurrect this dead and buried question and afteT the statement made by my hon. friend from Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) to-night and after the last vestige of the possibility of insinuation has been swept away, I think my hon. friend ought to do the candid, the fair, the honourable thing and stand up in this House and say that he was entirely unwarranted and unjustified in making the assertions that he did make. Why? My hon friend very judiciously and insinuatingly couples together the question of the policy of dealing with timber lands and the question of whether or not the regulations made by the department with regard to the let-


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: ting of these lands by public competition have been complied with and he asks us to talk about the improvident alienation of the immense areas of valuable timber lands. I do not think that the hon. member for St. Antoine wrote this resolution. While he is an adept at insinuation and while he possesses the quality of being able to distort language yet he is not an adept in the use of adjectives. Some hon. gentlemen whose idea of forming resolutions runs usually along the line of superlatives has been drafted for this occasion in order to write this resolution on the ' improvident alienation of immense areas of valuable timber limits to the detriment of the people.' My hon. friend from St. Antoine has been talking about this question so much that he has probably persuaded himself and, of course, judging from the remarks of the hon. member for Qu'Appelle and the peculiar opinion he has as to what went on in the Public Accounts Committee, he has evidently managed to persuade him that there is something to be said for his position.


Richard Stuart Lake: I was present during the whole of the investigation at the Public Accounts Committee.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: All I have to say to the hon. member for Qu'Appelle is that either his hearing or, his judgment is bad.


Richard Stuart Lake: It is a matter of opinion.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Whether the hon. member for St Antoine has persuaded the hon. member for Qu'Appelle upon this question, he, at least, wishes again to exploit in this House the peculiar statements that he has been making in the country and in regard to which, in the short time at my disposal, I hope to be able to show that the hon. member for St. Antoine has been deliberately misleading the people of this country.
Let us pass to the consideration of the question as to whether or not the proper policy has been in operation down to 1907 in dealing with the timber lands of the Northwest. Of course my hon. friend would like the people to forget altogether the fact that the policy of dealing with the timber lands of the Northwest was a policy adopted by his party in 1894 and followed exactly along the same lines down to 1907. Of course my hon. friend takes absolute care to suppress the fact before the people of the country that every one of the things which he says should be done in regard to the policy in dealing with these timber lands was accomplished and put into effect months before he spoke in this House by my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver). My hon. friend, in an adroit manipulation of the facts and conditions which were the basis of his speech, suppresses, while speaking all over the country and even in this House

the fact that these timber lands of such immense value are being exploited by the department in the interest of the treasury of this country and are not being given away to speculators. All the theories which he advanced as to how the latter result could be avoided were brought into effect by my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior months before he ever discussed this question in the House.
Now. coming to the question as to whether there was a proper compliance with the regulations and as to whether every one was treated fairly in the disposal of these limits by the Department of the Interior,
I apprehend that it is as to this subject upon which my hon. friend would allege that there should be an investigation. That is an investigation which he knew, there was no way of having and which he never expected to get when he addressed the House. We had a full and complete investigation upon this subject. Let me call your attention to what has taken place.
After the discussion in this House in the latter part of January my hon. friend went to tlio Public Accounts Committee and, on February 7, he moved for all the papers relating to payments on account of rental first made by R. E. McCracken, second, by W. Anderson, third, by Perkins, Fraser and -Gibson, made in 1907 in the Winnipeg district, fourth, by Charles R. Smith and fifth, by Herman Finger.
On the first day he moved that the original documents in connection with all these payments should be brought down. This original document question is one that vexes the soul of the hon. member for Qu'Appelle. If my hon. friend was in the Public Accounts Committee and I think he was there, he ought to have known and he must have known that there never was a time during this or aDy other session of this parliament at which original documents moved for in the Public Accounts Committee by any hon. gentleman were not at once produced and brought before that committee for inspection. So that, when the hon. gentleman talks about the long and weary effort to get original documents he ought to know this fact now that there never was a time in this or any other parliament when original documents moved for in the committee were not produced before that committee. The hon. member for Montreal. St. Antoine, got them. He moved for them on February 7.
On February 13, what did he do ? He moved for further documents regarding payments made by Perkins, Fraser and Gibson, in the Prince Albert district in addition to the Edmonton district, regarding payments made by William Cowan, by the Big River Lumber Company by John McBain, by Perkins, Fraser and Gibson in the Calgary district and by T. A. Burrows. No less than twelve large files moved for by the hon. gentleman on these two days were brought over to the Public Accounts Committee and
inspected by him with his miscroscopic and photographic machines and all the paraphernalia which he has. They were thoroughly and fully investigated. What followed? We have heard talk about attempts at obstruction by the chairman. Did my hon. friend come to the Public Accounts Committee and say: I desire to go into an investigation of these papers with a view of showing this substantive wrong-dong on the part of any hon. gentleman or on the part of the administration. No. On the contrary he said:	I want to be permitted
to go back to the original advertisement and tenders in order that I may show that the amount paid by the lessee to the government in the way of rental was not the amount that ought to be paid according to the original tender.


Herbert Brown Ames: Has the hon. gentleman any proof of that statement?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Yes, that will be found in the very first day's proceedings and every hon. gentleman who belongs to the committee knows it, and the chairman of that committee permitted my hon. friend to go back to the original tender and the original advertisement and to the last shred of every document in every one of these files.


Herbert Brown Ames: Which is far more than you would have done if you could prevent
it.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: This afternoon the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) abused the chairman of that committee because he did not rule according to his view, but now he admits that the chairman of the committee permitted him to go back to the very last document and the very last file.
And now as to this talk of obstruction which the Conservative press indulges in at the suggestion of hon. gentlemen in this House in reference to myself and other members of that committee who are endeavouring to see that parliamentary usage and rule is observed, and that there should be some regard for the traditions not only of this parliament, but the traditions of the mother of parliaments as well. We are accused of obstruction because forsooth we want to see parliamentary usage followed and because we venture to suggest that irrelevant questions which do not relate to the matter before the committee should not be allowed. But let us remember that when there was a question as to whether two cheques or three cheques inclosed with the tender was suspicious, and when it was sought to show that if this absurd insinuation was to tell against the hon. member forJbumhind was an insinuation that should be made against most of the other peop!le who ten dered; when it was sought to prove this verv relevant fact it was the member foi



St. Antoine and those associated with him in the committee who were the obstructionists.


Herbert Brown Ames: Will you allow me to make one statement? I want to set you perfectly right in that respect. Never has there been the slightest objection on our side of the House to Mr. Burrows going into the box if he wanted to. You could have called him ,any time you wished. It was not our business to call him and we did not call him. We never obstructed or objected to any thing.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The hon. gentleman is now referring to a point which I have not yet mentioned, but I will discuss_ the singular unwillingness of my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) to not only call Mr. Burrows but several other people whom he knew were in possession of all the evidence and whom he did not call because he did not want to prove the truth.
to that and I think it is a statement which should be withdrawn.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: With all due deference to you. Mr. Speaker, suppose I said that the bon. member for St. Antoine did not want the country to get the truth that is a statement which I believe is absolutely in order and which I am also sure is absolutely correct.
Mr, AMES. Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. That imputation as to my motives in the matter should not be made.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I think I shall also have to rule that the amended suggestion is an imputation which an hon. member should not make in reference to another hon. member.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Of course, in deference to your ruling I take back the proposition as it is understood by you, Mr. Speaker


Mr AMES.: I rise to a point of order Mr. Speaker. Is it right to say that I did not want the truth to come out?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I think that is a suggestion the hon. gentleman (Mr. Macdonald) should not make.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I want to observe the rules of this House to the fullest possible extent, and while I do not want to discuss your decision, Mr. Speaker and while I shall gladly withdraw anythin-you think is improper, I must say that I have sat here and heard some hon. gentlemen opposite make use of language in regard to the ministers we follow and with regard to those with whom we are as sociated (and whom we know to be just as good as they are) which would not seem undei that ruling to be parliamentary, in
sueTf	'T0 ?re deaIing with a tis-
-lie of absolute insinuations and nothin"
d mt nfJ <leS,h'e to characterize the conduct of some hon. gentlemen opposite in is respect in as plain and clear and definite language as possible, and to treat this question as it is and this story as it is I want to say that when I hear some hon gentlemen opposite and wdien I see th ' Conservative press of this country deseri mg myseif and those associated with m
taputatfon rUCti0DiStS>
1 reSent any suc:


Herbert Brown Ames: Do I understand that th expression objected to is withdrawn?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Mv hon friend had better wait.


Richard Stuart Lake: Withdraw.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The suggestion has been made that the hon. gentleman for St Antoine did not want the truth. The hon gentleman (Mr. Ames) has taken objectior Mr. MACDONALD.


David Henderson: Don't qualify it.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Now that my hon. friend (Mr. Henderson) has interrupted I will go on with my remarks.


Herbert Brown Ames: Has he taken it back, Mr. Speaker?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I understand the expression has been withdrawn.


Alexander Johnston: Take your medicine; it's a little bitter.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: While I want to keep within parliamentary rules, Mr. Speaker, yet when I see the good name of hon. gentlemen who sit around me defamed I am inclined to thjnk that the language I have used was not in contravention of the rules of the House.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Order.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I believe that in dealing with this question I have a perfect right to deal with it in the broadest possible way because it is only in the broadest possible way that it can be discussed. I would say, Mr. Speaker, that it is the first occasion since I have had the honour to sit in this House that you have had occasion to direct my attention to anj utterance not strictly parliamentary but such has been the line of conduct pursued against my hon. friends here that the offence calls for special treatment.
Now*. Mr. Speaker, what were the subjects we had before that committee? I have told you of the different papers that were moved for and that were there to be investigated. Here is a list of files on which were based the imputations made in regard to my hon. fiiend from Dauphin-the files which relate to berths 1281, 1282, 1118, 1119 1122 1081. 1052. 1058, 1068, 1097, 1098, 1108 and 1048. Well, in regard to berth 1281 it

87S6
was discovered that the highest tenderer for that berth was Mr. O. A. Robertson whose tender was. $5,195, and the next highest was Mr. D. M. Finnie, tendering for Mr. Burrows at $5,000, and the next tender was $4,013. Mr. O. A. Robertson's tender was only $195 higher than Mr. Burrows' tender, and Mr. Robertson got the berth, and although Mr. Burrows had been in regard to other tenders $400 and $500 higher than the gentleman who was next to him, and although that in the mind of my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) was a cause for deep suspicion, yet because Mr. O. A. Robertson was only $195 more than Mr. Burrows and got the berth we never heard anything more from my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) about berth No. 1281. It was dropped out of mind altogether, no witnesses were examined,, no analysis of envelopes and of red ink or black ink. There was no Sherlock Holmes business indulged in by the hon. member for St. Antoine. Indeed, the difference between my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) and Sherlock Holmes is that the hon. gentleman always draw's wrong conclusions whereas Sherlock Holmes always seemed to draw right conclusions. My hon. friend did not exhaust much of his energy on berths 1281 and 1282, because he found that Mr. O. A. Robertson again had bought these and Mr. Burrows had not tendered for the latter, and therefore it was not possible to find any evidence in that connection which could be possibly tortured into some possible connection with the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) either through relationship or other cause.
But with regard to eleven berths we did hear something. He summoned Franz Loyer, P. Robertson, 6. XL Kyley, D. M. Finnie. Mr. A. W. Fraser he summoned twice. On March 3rd he subpoenaed Mr. Hector Macdonald, Mr. C. H. Beddoe, Mr. R, A. Campbell. On March 6th he summoned Mr. R. R. Pattinson. On the 11th he subpoenaed Mr. Greenway, Sir Daniel McMillan, and later he got after Fraser again and again subpoenaed him. and also D. M. Finnie on two separate occasions. That made thirteen witnesses.


An hon. MEMBER.: At whose expense?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: At the expense of tlie country, of course ; and if the number of the witnesses be a fair indication, the case is an unlucky one for its sponsor. That fatal number was significant of its collapse. iMy hon. friend who is so anxious for an investigation that he even gets the hon. member for Qu'Appelle to move a resolution for further inquiry, what did he do when he had every opportunity to investigate? Why, he only examined six of those witnesses. On the 7th of March Mr. Fraser, after he had been hanging around a day
and a-half waiting to be called, was told to go away either by the hon. member for St. Antoine or one of his friends. He was told that they would not have him at all. He was not asked to give a word of evidence about the Nolan tender or the $7,000 being inserted in different ink, whether that was done by. Fraser or somebody else. After Mr. Fraser had been subpoenaed no less than four ditterent times, and after he had come there anu been in waiting on the committee, my hon. friend'or some one for him told him to go away, that they did not want him at all, and we would have never heard his testimony if my hon. friend for Lunenburg (Mr. Maclean) had not moved in the matter, and called him to the stand.


Herbert Brown Ames: I rise to a point of order. The hon. gentleman has no right to say what would have happened in that case. He has no right to say that I would never have called Mr. Fraser. He has no right to intimate what I would or would not do.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: If my hon. friend is serious about that proposition, 1 do not think it is wise on his part. Why did lie not apply the same rule to himself this afternoon when he was insinuating anything and everything under the sun?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I can hardly see that in this case there is any insinuation.


Richard Stuart Lake: I ask your ruling, Sir, as to whether the hon. member is correct in constantly accusing my hon. hon. friend from St. Antoine of insinuations. He accused him constantly of insinuating against hon. gentlemen on that side.	*


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I can hardly apply the rule unless a concrete case is put before me.


Richard Stuart Lake: That was the case.
Mr. SPEAKER, If, when a case comes up, the point is taken, I shall endeavour to rule upon it, but can hardly rule upon
some general statements.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I was referring to the fact that we would not have had Mr. Fraser's evidence unless some hon. gentleman not associated *faith the hon. member for St. Antoine had insisted upon his going on the stand. Nor did the hon. gentleman put Mr. Loyer or Mr. Robertson on the stand. He or some of his friends pledged their word that these witnesses could give important evidence or the subpoenas for them could not have been issued. They did the same with regard to Mr. Hector McDonald and Mr. C. A. Beddoe and Mr. Fraser. Mr. McDonald was one of the gentlemen who had tendered on this timber limit No 1031 we have heard so much about. That was the limit concerning which we had the theory put forward by the hon. gentleman that Mr. Burrows had put

in an additional cheque of some $14,000 to the cheque first given in order to cut McDonald out. The hon. gentleman had subpoenaed Mr. McDonald, but although the latter was in attendance from day to day, waiting to be called, he was not asked to give evidence. Neither was Mr. Beddoe put in the box. The hon. gentleman had also a subpoena served on Mr. Pattinson, of Winnipeg, the secretary of the Imperial Pulp Company, and he received a telegram from Mr. Pattinson stating there was illness in his family and his examination would have to be deferred until a certain date, but my hon. friend, at the time indicated by Mr. Pattinson, did not take the slightest interest about his coming, but tried to get the investigation closed, and put up an attack on myself and gentlemen associated with me iD that committee as being obstructionists, because we stood in his path and prevented him from closing the investigation. My hon. friend from Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake), whose soul was yearning for information with regard tto the Imperial Pulp Company, did not push for the examination of Mr. Pattinson. That was very surprising. One would have thought these gentlemen would have pressed for the examination of Mr. Pattinson, but they did nothing of the kind, and Mr. Pattinson never was called.
Then when it was discovered that Fraser's examination disclosed frankly, without the slightest reservation, who the membres of the Imperial Pulp Company were, and that there had never been any doubts about it except in the imagination of some hon. gentlemen opposite, these gentlemen who were talking so much about subpoenaing my hon. friend from Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff), never called upon him to give evidence. What then occurred? One would have thought that if the hon. gentlemen -were honestly Carrying on an investigation into the management of the Department of the Interior down to a period anterior to 1907, the first man he would have called as a witness would have been my hon. friend. But what actually took place ? The committee met on March 5 and 6, and. no request was made to call him. On March 13, at the next meeting of the committee, my hon. friend asked to be called. At that time we were sailing along under Innuendoes and all kind of peculiar constructions, and things were going rather swimmingly for my hon. friend, The hon. member for Dauphin, seeing that there was no indication of calling him, said that as his name had been mentioned several times in this connection, that as prejudicial inferences had been drawn, he would like to be heard. What did the hon. member for St. Antoine, who wanted this investigation so badly say? He said nothing. He never once suggested that he wanted to hear my hon. friend (Mr. Tur-Mr. MACDONALD.
riff). On the next meeting of the committee, March 19, Mr. Turriff said :
I desire to say that during one of the previous sittings of the committee, Mr. Ames tried to prove by Mr. Ryley, when he was on the stand, that I opened the tenders for these timber limits in secret. I have been here every day expecting Mr. Ames to call me. If he wanted to get the truth, why did he not ask for me to be called ? 1 was not called at the last meeting although I asked to be. X have come here again to-day and I am prepared to come at any time and give evidence under oath and be cross-examined. X have nothing to hide or to be afraid or ashamed of.
If the hon. member wanted to get the truth why did he not ask that the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) be called ? Here is the hon. gentleman who wants an investigation. Why, when his soul was yearning for this truth which he wanted so much and he had the gentleman at hand to go on the witness stand, why did he not ask for him to be called ? Mr. Turriff stated that he was not called at the last meeting although he had asked to be. He invited the fullest examination saying that he had nothing to be ashamed of or afraid of. Would you believe it that my hon. friend still failed to yield to the insistent requests of my hon. friend from the west ? It was not until the hon. member for Lunenburg (Mr. A. K. Maclean) moved in committee on the 19th day of March that Mr. Turriff be summoned to appear before it that we were able to hear Mr. Turriff's evidence. We had a right to expect that my hon. friend who was pushing this investigation and was so anxious to have it, would have called that hon. gentleman, but he did not do so. Then in regard to Mr. Burrows who know all about the pulp company, as my hon. friend was aware, because Mr. Fraser had told us who were the members of the company,
I was surprised that my hon. friend from Qu'Appelie (Mr. Lake) did not insist on Mr. Burrows being called. I had suggested several times to the hon. gentleman for St. Antoine division that if he wanted information in regard to these matters he should call Mr. Burrows, but we could not coax the hon. member to call Mr. Burrows, be did not want to hear the story, he was perfectly willing to let ail this distortion in regard to envelopes and red and black ink and peculiar dates and alleged difficulties in documents and all that sort of thing to go to the country without explanation. He did not want it and did not have it, but lie stood up here to-day, after telling us that the hon. gentleman who was chairman of that committee was eminently fair and gave the fullest opportunity for investigation, and complained that he did not get fair treatment in regard to the question of the examination of Mr. Finnie upon the cheques. What were the facts ? Mr. MAY 19, 1908
Finnie is manager of the Bank of Ottawa iii this city. He said that certain cheques had been issued by him as manager, in place of cheques given by Mr. Burrows. Certain of these cheques were in the bank and they were produced in the committee and given to the committee. As regards the other cheques they were in the possession of Mr. Burrows, being his property and having been handed over to him. We suggested that all they had to do was to call Mr. Burrows and they could obtain the cheques. Mr. Burrows produced them here to-day during this discussion and gave my hon. friends a chance to look at them, but they did not want them ; they saw that they were on the wrong side of the story and that they could hot make out their case. My hon. friend from St. Antoine division (Mr. Ames) found that the wiser heads around him, the older and shrewder and calmer and perhaps fairer men of his party who had watched the proceedings in the committee, the men who wanted to give a semblance of fair play to decent people in the country and had heard the evidence, told my hon. friend just where he stood and that it was about time to drop this business. Ever since then, instead of my hon. friend wanting investigation, he has done the best he could to prevent investigation all over the country. Even to-night in regard to this resolution we have a most peculiar situation. Mr. Ames is asking for an investigation when, with all the original documents before him and with six or seven witnesses whom he did not call and with power to subpoena any witness in the country, he had run away from the chance to investigate the matter in the committee. Is it any wonder that I should use language that may be deemed to be trespassing on the rules of debate, is it any wonder that X should say to you that I doubt the sincerity of my hon. friend in this matter?
My hon. friend went down to Nova Scotia a few weeks ago and held two meetings there, one on Saturday and one on Sunday afternoon. My hon. friend's Sunday afternoon address was delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association in the city of Halifax, and what was his subject? Hon. members of the Public Accounts Committee on both sides of the House away down in their hearts, even the hon. gentlemen who sit around my hon. friend, will, I am sure, be surprised at the title which my hon. friend took for his speech that Sabbath day. The subject was ' Pair Play.' He went on to speak about fair play in sport, business and politics, and here is a surprising statement to come from my hon. friend in view of msr hon. friend's course in this matter both in and outside of the House. He is reported as saying :
That there was nothing in public life to make him lay aside the principles for which Christianity stands.
Now, I hope that every hon. gentleman in this House stands for the principles for which Christianity stands, and I do not think my hon. friend should have found it necessary to have suggested the possibility of a different attitude on the part of any member of this House. He went on :
If democratic government is worth anything we must see that the maximum of opportunity is given and unless fair play is recognized this cannot he.-Pair play, respect for ourselves and for the other men.
.Tust think of that, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether my hon. friend from St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) honestly, in his heart of hearts, feels that this man who sits in this parliament as the member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) who went up to the Northwest land when it cost something to be a pioneer, who went up there and grew up with the country, grew up with it honestly, grew up with it along legitimate lines, developing proper business conditions, until he reached a position where he received the confidence of the people and was elected as their representative first in provincial politics and subsequently in the broader arena here

I wonder if, following the principles my hon. friend enunciated in Halifax, he in his heart of hearts feels that he was giving fair play to Mr. Burrows.
Fair play, respect for ourselves and for other men is a fundamental principle which must be observed in the interests of our country.
I agree with that doctrine ; I agree that unless we have fair play all around in politics it will be very bad for the interests of this country, and I know that there is a good old Golden Rule, one which should always guide our actions in politics or anything else, that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us, and X am in the judgment of this House and of any hon. gentleman who is familiar with this subject whether without being in anywise unfair to my hon. friend, there has been an exemplification of those Christian principles which some of us are not so loud in proclaiming from the house tops but perhaps observe as well as he does, or an exemplification of the principles of that Golden Rule or that fair consideration of the rights and position and good name and fair name of hon. members of this House who have been wantonly attacked and insinuated against by the hon. member for St. Antoine division (Mr. Ames). Nineteen hundred years ago there were men going up and down the country who thanked God that they were not as other men were and they received their just rebuke from the great Teacher who came to lead us all along the way we should go and in the land from which my forefathers came the poet of our race has sung of ' Holy Willie ' and his prayers. I want to say in the light of the evidence I am going to endeavour to pre-

sent to you that we have to-day in this twentieth century some people who bear a strong resemblance to these men who lived in the olden days.
Now, my hon. friend, speaking at Halifax, endeavoured to lead the people of the province of Nova Scotia to believe that there were not to-day upon the statute-books of this country fair and proper regulations in regard to the disposition of timber limits. Why did not my hon. friend tell his Halifax audience about the regulations made by the Minister of the Interior last December ? Why did not he tell them that the Minister of the Interior, even before lie (Mr. Ames) had said a word in this House upon this question, had provided for preliminary investigation and survey before timber limits were put up for sale, had provided for reports to be kept in the department, had provided for sales by auction, had provided for the compulsory establishment of mills and in the event of noncompliance the cancellation of the leases ? If he was so strong an advocate of fair play, why did he not tell the people of Nova Scotia all this ?
But what did he tell the people of my province ? He told them that over 6,500 square miles of timber had been granted by this government. Whereas, I find, at page 2271 of ' Hansard ' that he said that 1,840 square miles had been leased previously to 1896-that is, there were only 4,562 square miles of timber to be charged to this government according to his own statement on record in ' Hansard ' in this House. But he came down to the province of Nova Scotia, and, in the city of Halifax, told the people that the quantity granted by this government was 0.500 square miles, which was 1,938 square miles out of the way and to that extent incorrect. Was that fair play to this government ? Was that fair play to the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) and the ex-Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) ? Was it fair play to the people of Nova Scotia ?
And, if he so strongly desires fair play, why did he not tell the people that there are to-day in Ontario and Quebec men belonging to his own political party who own in their own right individually more square miles of timber than have been granted by this government since it came into power in 1896? Would not you think, Mr. Speaker, that a gentleman who enunciated these glorious principles-principles to which no one will take exception-should be the first to stand by them and should be most careful that there should be no departure in his statements from that accuracy which we have a right to expect from a public man ? He did not tell the people that we have in Nova Scotia, in the person of Mr. T. G:. McMullen, a Conservative and a former member of the local legislature, a man who is said to own in his own right 150,000 acres


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: of land, not by lease, but by absolute title. And my hon. friend knows, when he was talking about this 6,500 square miles of timber limits that he was astray to the extent of 1,938 square miles. He knew, when he was telling the people of Nova Scotia of the alleged enormity of the grants in the Northwest, that there were in his own province of Quebec men who own timber lands equal in extent to all this aggregate of grants by this government of which he was speaking.


Herbert Brown Ames: Mr. Speaker, is the hon. gentleman in order in saying I knew I was leading the people astray ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I think that if the hon. gentleman (Mr. Macdonald) said that the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) said that he knew he was leading the people astray, that would be an unparliamentary expression.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I simply assumed that my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) knew what he was saying


Some hon. MEMBERS: No, no.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: If he did not know what he was saying, then there is nothing more to be said about it. And perhaps, Mr. Speaker, that is the most charitable view to take of it-that he did not know what he was saying.


Herbert Brown Ames: Do I understand that the hon. gentleman


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The question is whether the hon. gentleman (Mr. Macdonald) used the expression that it has been suggested he used, or not. If he did, I think that expression exceeds the bounds of parliamentary discussion, and, of course, should be withdrawn.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am very much surprised, Mr. Speaker, at the objection taken by my hon. friend. I ventured to make the statement that my hon. friend had said in Nova Scotia that 6,500 square miles of timber had been granted by this government, though he knew at the time that there were men in Ontario and Quebec who held timber of an area equal to that-


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Unless my hon. friend wants to take the position that he did not know what he was talking about,
I do not understand the point he is now raising.


Haughton Lennox: What the hon. gentleman (Mr. Macdonald) did say-I think he will agree that I understood him correctly -was that when the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) made the statement he knew that he was representing the leases by this government to be 1,938 square miles more than they actually were. He ought to take that back.


Richard Stuart Lake: I understood the bon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) to state that the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) made a statement which he knew to be untrue.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Not at all. Mr. Speaker, I want to keep myself right, and X bow to your suggestion that I should take back any expression I may have used that is an infraction of the Rules of the House. My only desire is to discuss the material before me. My comment was based on the statement of the hon. member as. it appeared in ' Hansard ' and what I have under my hand as representing what he stated in the city of Halifax. When he spoke in Nova Scotia he attempted to give the impression to the people that this quantity of land had been given away by this government covering all the timber lands to be found in the Northwest Territories. There is no question about that. I am not going to take up time quoting the statements he made ; I simply say that he endeavoured to convey the impression to the people of my province that this government, since 1896, had given away all the available timber land found in the Northwest coun-tr. If I am not stating a correct conception of my hon. friend's language, I speak subject to correction. My hon. friend knew that that was the idea he was attempting to put forth, and also knew that the superintendent of forestry had been discussing that question not so very long before and had reported that, over and above the timber land granted, there remained 722,578 square miles of timber in the Northwest country and that of this 130.000 square miles were of the very best timber land. That is even making allowance for all the small timber, the scrub and that fit only for pulp and other purposes of that kind, there still remains 130,000 square miles of the best timber lands, after allowing for every foot of land granted not only by this government since 1896 but also by every government since 1867. Yet mv hon. friend, not only there but all up and down this country, attempted to show that this government had wasted the timber lands of the Northwest, and had given away to political favourites all the available timber lands ; and he sympathized with the poor settler, because when he goes now to the Northwest he finds there is no timber, it has all been given away to Mr. Burrows. Now was my hon. friend carrying out the golden rule, was he playing the game fair when he attempted to lead the people of Nova Scotia to believe that there was no available timber land in the Northwest to-day owing to the action of this government, whereas he knew that not one-thirtieth of the total available timber lands in the Northwest had been affected by all the grants made by this government ? Then he attempted to lead the people of
Nova Scotia to believe that these lands, which he said had been given away, had passed into the absolute ownership of Mr. Burrows and his friends for all time. I will quote what he said :
Often times he was the only tenderer. At other times several offers for paltry sums would be received, hut as a rule the man who wanted a berth though a form of public competition was gone through with, would secure the limit at his own price, and once having obtained it he was practically the owner for ever.


Herbert Brown Ames: I say that statement is absolutely true.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: He wanted the people of my province to run away with the idea that every one of these 6,500 square miles of land had gone to Mr. Burrows and his associates and had become their property and the property of their heirs and assigns for ever. Now what are the facts? My hon. friend knows that they were not the owners in fee simple of the land, they were only tenants. He knows, but he did not tell the people of Nova Scotia, that over and above any possible bonus that might be paid iu public competition every mail who had received timber lands from this government since 1896 was bound to pay $5 per square mile for ground rent, and had to pay it annually ; not only that, but the lease runs from year to year/it was not even a twenty-one years lease, but was a yearly lease, and could only be renewed from year to year by compliance with all the regulations which were contained in the lease granted by the government. He did not tell the people that every man who had a timber limit was obliged to cut lumber upon it and to pay to the government fees, under the provisions of section 20 of the regulations for sawn lumber fifty cents per thousand feet board measure. Railway ties 8 feet long one and one half cents each. Railway ties nine feet long one and three quarter cents each. Shingle bolts twenty-five cents per cord and five per cent on the sale of all other products of the berth. Iu addition to that, there were provisions in regard to putting up a mill which my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior attended to last year by giving notice to the holders of limits requiring them to put up a mill. In face of all this, what possible grounds had my hon. friend, this apostle of the gospel of fair-play, to tell the people of Nova Scotia that when a man got a lease from year to year of timber limits he practically became the owner for ever ?


Herbert Brown Ames: So long as there was merchantable timber upon it.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: According to the regulations made by the department a lease can be cancelled whenever the government sees fit, if the conditions are not performed under which the lease is held.

JIv hon. friend wished to lead the people of Nova Scotia to believe that all these gentlemen owned in fee simple for themselves, their heirs and assigns for ever, these 6,500 square miles of land that had been given away by this government.


Herbert Brown Ames: Absolutely untrue, for I showed them the form of the lease.


Mr. FIELDING.: The hon. gentleman characterizes a statement made by my hon. friend from Pietou as absolutely untrue. His words are equally objectionable to those that he has complained of himself.


Herbert Brown Ames: I say that the member for Pietou was misinformed, inasmuch as I showed the people the very form of the regulation.


William Stevens Fielding: I understand that he takes back his previous statement.


Herbert Brown Ames: Certainly.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am glad to see that my hon. friend is willing to take back something that is palpably wrong.
Again, my hon. friend told the people down in Nova Scotia that thirty per cent of the transactions were legitimate, that twenty per cent of the lease holders were reserve men, and fifty per cent were speculators. Of course these are figures he has made up himself, he has no data whatever to back them up. He has never given to this House any list of the people whom he put down in the class of speculators, or as reserve holders, or whom he put down as honest lumbermen. This is a pure figment of his imagination. And to show how ridiculous his position is let me quote what he says again :
Foremost among these speculators is T. A. Burrows, M.P., the brother-in-law of the Hon. Clifford Sifton, who, in his own name, and as a member of various companies owns or controls nearly 1,600 square miles, or twenty-five per cent of all the timber under lease in three provinces.
Now I think that the hon. gentleman owes the amende honorable to my hon. friend from Dauphin, in view of the latter's positive statement to-night that he does not own 1,600 square miles of timber limits, but only 640. I hope that the hon. gentleman will do the square thing by my hon. friend from Dauphin. When he attempted to show that Mr. Burrows has been speculating in land he was doing something that he knew was not fair, he knew that he was not playing the game fair ; because I leave it to you, Mr. Speaker, Whether, in view of Mr. Burrow's record as he has given it to us tonight. going out into the Northwest as a pioneer, spending his whole life in the lumber business, growing up with the country, he is open to the insinuation of the hon. gentleman that Mr. Burrows is not a bona fide operator in timber limits. This is the impression that he wanted the people of Mr. MiCDONALD.
Nova Scotia to get from his remarks because the hon. gentleman did not want to tell the people there that Mr. Burrows was one of the largest operators in timber limits.


Herbert Brown Ames: I did.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I have the report of the hon. gentleman's utterances in the Halifax * Herald '.


Herbert Brown Ames: I have the lantern slide that I showed.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: You have the lantern slide?


Herbert Brown Ames: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Bring them on.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am afraid that the dignity of parliament would hardly permit of an exhibition of this kind. But the point I wanted to make was this, that the official organ of the Conservative party in Nova Scotia says that foremost amongst these speculators was T. A. Burrows, who we here and the people of Manitoba know to be the mill owner, the mill operator, the man whose men did the cutting upon these limits to supply his mills. That is the type of man the member of Dauphin is. But the member of St. Antoine described him 3S T. A. Burrows, brother-in-law of the Hon. Clifford Sifton, the man who got these limits when he had no right to get them and the man who got these limits not as a mill man but as a speculator.


Herbert Brown Ames: How about 1048?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: We had a curious exhibition with regard to 1048. My hon. friend produced a letter presumably from some one in the Northwest Territories telling us about the price at which lumber was selling and his informant turned out to be not a man from the Northwest but a young man from Amherst, Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, who happens to be the Conservative candidate there and who knows no more about timber lands in the Northwest than my hon. friend knows about some of the people in Nova Scotia. My hon. friend talks about giving authority in making statements. My hon. friend's conduct to-night in regard to that question is a fair indication of how much reliance we can put upon some of the statements and suggestions put forward on this subject.


Herbert Brown Ames: The Red Deer Lumber Company is made up of a number of people from Amherst, N.S. Even the people of Nova Scotia are interested in these timber limits, and if a company is formed a; ' if the stockholders are there are they not in a position to say what they have paid for lumber?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: If it had not
been for the suggestion of my hon. friend from Kingston (Mr. Harty) that the letter

had better be read and the name of the gentleman who wrote the letter had better be given, the hon. member for St. Antoine would have allowed this House to get away with the idea that some expert lumberman in the Northwest had written that letter. I say that my hon. friend's conduct upon this subject was characteristic of and in keeping with his whole conduct in the discussion of this question. My hon. friend had no right to characterize Mr. Burrows as being a speculator. If my hon. friend from Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) is not a bona fide lumberman in this country I would like to know where you are going to find them and it was a matter of pure malevolence on the part of the hon. member for St. Antoine that he should have gone down to Nova Scotia where Mr. Burrows was not known and, instead of playing the game fairly and telling the people that Mr. Burrows was one of the foremost lumber operators in the Northwest, he entirely suppressed that fact and told the people of Nova Scotia that he was not a bona fide operator, but a speculator.


Herbert Brown Ames: I told them about every square mile over which Mr. Burrows had cut a stick of timber and the quantity.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I must not keep the House at this late hour, but this is a subject that perhaps had better be threshed out. I have dealt with the way in which my hon. friend exemplifies the principles of fair-play.
One of his charges is the making of leases with fictitious persons and this idea of fictitious persons seem also to have got into the head of the bon. member for Qu'Appelle. I think my hon. friend has hardly got over the wrong impressions that some people get on coming out from the old country. I am afraid that he requires to be educated along certain lines yet. He has been travelling in bad company, because if he had not he would not have given to this House, the peculiar impressions he did give with reference to what took place in the Public Accounts Committee. He told us that there was a considerable number of fictitious persons. I always understood that when you spoke of fictitious persons you had reference to persons who did not exist.


Richard Stuart Lake: I do not think I used the word ' fictitious,' I used the word ' aliases.'


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Well, we will take that. My hon. friend has got into a worse hole because he must know that when we speak of a man using an alias we refer to an existent person using the name of another person who is or is not existent.


Richard Stuart Lake: I merely wanted to correct the hon. gentleman.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My hon. friend
is welcome to any correction that he thinks
he has made in that regard. I am afraid that he is getting into the mire a little farther. He will have to get away from the influences that surround him because, while I regard my hon. friend as being sincerely desirous of doing that which is right, I think he gets off pretty often. My hon. friend got the idea from the hon. member for St. Antoine about the fictitious persons. The delightfully natural way in which the hon. member for St. Antoine insinuates and suggests and makes innuendoes of a most improper character is found at page 47 of the Minutes when we were discussing the question of evidence. Mr. Ames says :
I want to prove the facts-you have finished with what is on the margin of that bid, have you Mr. Campbell?
Mr. Campbell says :
I have answered all the questions I was asked.
The discussion went on and then Mr. Ames said:
Supposing John McBain never wrote that bid at all, supposing he is a fictitious person altogether ?
The chairman says :
That does not make any difference so far as this inquiry is concerned. The money has been paid, that is the question we are investigating.


Herbert Brown Ames: The question is, was the government making leases with fictitious persons ?
I believe that the hon. member for St. Antoine thought, down to a short time ago, because with that naturally suspicious mind of his, he is certain to go wrong, that the government had made leases with fictitious persons. How in the world does he imagine that the Minister of the Interior was going to avoid giving a lease to a man who came in, no matter what name he used and paid his money, he being the highest bidder at the sale ? I would like to know how my hon. friend would be held responsible if any person came along at an auction and bid or had some one else bid for them. But my hon. friend suggests that this government were making leases with fictitious persons though he knows now they did not.	My hon. friend went down to
Halifax and misled them there upon this subject although he knew days before that it was sworn to by Mr. Fraser in answer to a question by myself, because I felt that the hon. member for St. Antoine ought to be corrected and that that terrible body of suspicion ought to be removed from his mind, that Mr. McBain was not a fictitious person. I asked the question : Who is John McBain ? Mr. Fraser said upon oath :
John McBain is a millwright and contractor by occupation, and for some time previous and at that time had been carrying on building operations and real estate m the city ot Ottawa in which he and I were interested.

So that he was not a fictitious person after all, nor an alias either.
We have heard a good deal about the tenders being in irregular form, and it is said that because the tenders were not on the regular form of the department there should be investigation. Now, It appears to me that if a man were going about the task of misleading the department, and if he could get a printed form of tender, is it not common sense that the man who was going to do wrong would take the proper form to do it on? He might want to juggle with the amount, but what sense there would be in writing informal tenders if he wanted to do wrong is more than I can conceive. Any one who takes the trouble to think must come to the conclusion that any such inference as the hon. member (Mr. Ames) draws from that is so absolutely foreign to what a sane business man would suggest that it is impossible for me to imagine how my hou. friend (Mr. Ames) could put such an idea forth. Here is the proposition he lays down : A brother-in-law of the minister wants to get a timber limit and be wants to get it through connivance with an oflicial in the department and instead of writing out his tender upon the printed form and leaving the name blank-which according to the theory of my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) would be the proper thing-Mr. Burrows wrote the tender hurriedly, did not see that every ' i ' was dotted and every ' t ' crossed and therefore it must be assumed that there was wrong-doing. I say that proposition is absurd and 'untenable.
Then we heard something about Mr. 'William Sifton, the brother of the Hon. Clifford Sifton, and my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) read this afternoon, and it is quite characteristic of him, the fairy tale that some Dr. Mcln-nes. Edmonton, told about some man named Maloney, who came to Ottawa, and although his statements and everything were wrong in connection with the story it was thought to be something to base an insinuation on. Why, tliis Dr. Mclnnes was the gentleman who said in Edmonton that the Imperial Pulp Company was made up of William Sifton, the brother of the Hon. Clifford Sifton, and prominent gentlemen of the Conservative party went up and down talking about William Sifton, the brother of Clifford Sifton being interested in the Pulp Company, and it did not make any difference to them that the Hon. Clifford Sifton had denied that story in parliament on his honour as a member. nor did it make any difference to them that the Hon. Clifford Sifton never had a brother named ' William Sifton.'
Then the hon. gentleman for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) was strong on envelopes. When the unfortunate official in the Public Accounts Committee had gone through these documents with the greatest 'possible care tlie hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) said :	Let
me see the envelopes, and if there was a tear here or a pencil mark there the hon. gentle-Mr. MACDONALD,
man noted it down. He had the science down so fine that lie distinguished between an envelope provided by the department and marked ' tender for timber berth ' and an envelope with the simple stamp of the department on the outside, and he inferred something from that, and then of course if the envelope did not bear any official mark at all there was another inference to be drawn and the inference was always against the government. As to the question of different cheques witli each tender we had a frank statement on that subject from the hon. member for Dauphin and we have the evidence of Mr. Fraser and we had other evidence which went to show that it was a common practice of the people tendering here and elsewhere to use different cheques in the tenders. But here is the amusing part of it-my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) was perfectly willing to insinuate that because Mr. Burrows bad used three cheques when lie put in his tender he was a frightful speculator and a man whom the people of Canada ought to condemn. But when we wanted to show that it was a common practice for other people to use different cheques in putting in their tenders, who was the obstructionist wbo wanted to prevent that evidence going in ? None other than the great invstigator from St. Antoine. Let me read from the record. My hon. friend (Mr. Ames) had just said :
Will you turn us the envelope and tell us whether there were any marks on it?
And the answer was :
There is a memorandum * received 7-3-03 at 11.35/ I think it is.
Then says my hon. friend from St. Antoine :
In

And of course the clerk knew what he meant and he said :
In pencil.
Then the hon. member for St. Antoine said :
You recognize the writing?
And the clerk answered :
I cannot say whose writing it is.
And then Mr. Ames said :
It is in black lead pencil?
And what do you think the clerk answered ; he answered, yes. Now, this is very significant, for if it had been red pencil or blue pencil instead of black, just fancv the frightful consequences. Then I asked :
, Just turn to the tender of the Macdonald Brothers on that file.
And the record says :
Mr. Ames objected to the question on the ground that he had been refused permission to examine witnesses with reference to other tenders than the successful ones.


Herbert Brown Ames: Quite so.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My hon. friend (Mr. Ames) objected to my asking a question as to other people having put three cheques in, not because that he thought I should have the right to ask him upon that ground, but he says :
I object because I have been refused to ask in regard to other tenders.
Then I went on to say :
I want to say upon this question that when my hon. friend asks a question which is practically irrelevant to the inquiry, as he did when he asked Mr. Campbell how many cheques mae up the $15,000 bonus

And you will remark, Mr. Speaker, that my hon. friend had brought out from Mr. Campbell that the $15,000 bonus was made up of three different cheques. Then X said :
I want to show him that if there is any significance about there being three cheques making up the aggregate of the bonus it does not apply to that particular tender alone because in McDonald Brothers' tender, which is on the file alongside that of Mr. Burrows, there were three cheques inclosed which made up the amount of $13,500.
Mark, because my hon. friend from Dauphin puts in three cheques which make up $15,000, then according to the member from St. Antoine you are to infer there was all kinds of villainy. But when another gentleman puts in three cheques footing up $13,500, the hon. member (Mr. Ames) thinks there is nothing significant about that at all. I said :
Perhaps my hon. friend will withdraw his question as to the number of cheques?
Because I thought my hon. friend ought to have some appreciation of the ridiculous position in which he was in view of the evidence. Then X said :
Perhaps my friend will withdraw his question as to the number of cheques, but if he does not, I think it is quite proper to show that these cheques also accompanied another tender for the same berth, and that the sending of three cheques making up the amount of the bonus, is not confined to Mr Burrows. If you go through these files you will find that in almost every case there is more than one cheque making up the amount of the bonus. That is why I want to ask the question. If Mr. Ames is willing to withdraw the irrelevant question, I do not wish to go further on this line.


Herbert Brown Ames: Would the hon. gentleman kindly read the next five lines ?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Certainly. My hon. friend then said :
If the hon. gentleman wants to put this upon record I have no objection, but in that case I shall find it necessary to bring Mr. McDonald here in order to show that in every instance where there is more than one cheque whenever there have been two cheques or three cheques inclosed with his tender it has 280
been because he has had partners in the transaction, each of whom has forwarded his cheque and that there could not possibly be any collusion.
Now the great trouble with the member for St. Antoine was he had Mr. Macdonald sitting around waiting for days and never put him on oath land never called him.


Herbert Brown Ames: Does the hon. gentleman remember that the chairman, at the beginning of the inquiry, said that he would not permit any one to be examined except the successful tenderer, and consequently we were not permitted to call any other tenderer who had not succeeded in getting a limit.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I do not remember anything of the kind. I do not remember his having asked that Mr. Macdonald be called and he did not call him ? If he had, he would have had the assistance of those present on the government side to have him examined. I can go through this evidence and show where my hon. friend's innuendoes were unfair and bis insinuations unjust.
Let us take this innuendo regarding the way tenders were opened. There was no subject dwelt upon so earnestly and concerning which so much suspicion was sought to be aroused, as the method in which the tenders were opened. The wail of my hon. friend on that subject was almost equal to that of my hon. friend from Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) about original documents and equally as misplaced. What did the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) say on that question ? He made a very violent speech. He dwelt with that question along lines it is perhaps just as well to recall. My hon. friend (Mr. Ames) was a little more cautious than his leader on the front benches but this is what the hon. member for North Toronto said :
And that gentleman was formerly

He was there referring to my hon. friend from Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff).
And that gentleman was formerly a trusted employee who went into his own private room, locked the door, kept all inconvenient witnesses away and adjudicated upon the application of his brother-in-law and other relatives and party friends. I say, and X do not fear to say it, that the exhibition he made of himself in this House and in Stanstead for the advantage of his party, stamps him as a partisan who in the inmost recesses of his unwatched room, would not be beyond doing something for the good of a party supporter in the matter of tenders.
In another place he said :
When all that took place, a strong partisanship dying every fibre of his body, he was put into a darkened and seclued room and given the full power of making a decision in reference to these matters.
I need not quote the remarks of my hon. friend on this subject, though it might be



as well to put them on record because I am sure, if he has any sense of fair play, he will have the manliness to stand up and declare that all the insinuations and allusions he and his confrere had made concerning the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) have been shown to be absolutely unfounded. But I shall not take time to hunt his remarks up. What was the position of affairs ? I have told you the difficulty we had in getting Mr. Turriff on the stand. My hon. friends refused to call him, but he came on the stand, and then it was evident why they did not want him. They first put Mr. Biley on the stand and he told how this matter of tenders and so forth was absolutely fair. When Mr. Greenway came on, they discovered that their faairy tales about secluded and darkened chambers and locked doors were even more creations of the imagination than one would have supposed, and that at all times in that department there was no secrecy and that there was always two persons present when the tenders were opened. When they heiard Mr. Green way's evidence, the courage of the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) and others began to ooze out and they wanted to close the investigation. They knew what Mr. Turriff was going to say and they were anxious to avoid hearing him. If we are to have any practical illustration of the glorious principle of fair play, it is up to the men who in this House slandered the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) by these insinuations regarding private chambers and locked doors, with which they flooded the press of this country some three months ago, to stand up in this House and declare that their impressions were wrong and the statements they made utterly unfounded.
Then my hon. friend in connection with [DOT] limit 1031 told a story about a Mr. Mooney coming from Edmonton, and a cheque for 825,000 and 5a $6,000 cheque. Why there were never such cheques at all. My hon. friend from St. Antoine wants to give the impression that there was somehing terribly wrong. Mark you, he said Mr. Burrows first sent a cheque for $17,000. Look, he said, at the similarity of the tenders, look at the fact that Mr. Ross' tender was $17,010, and that Mr. Burrows cheque was $17,575, just enough to beat Mr. Ross. Then Mr. Burrows gives the $14,000 cheque because McDonald brothers came in and tendered at $31,161 and Burrows had to bid higher. So he gave the $14,000 cheque and in support of that story the hon. gentleman gave his yarn about Moroney coming down from Edmonton. My hon. friend would like people to believe that, but unfortunately when he got fooling around the envelope, it was shown that the two first tenders were received iu the department fifteen minutes after eleven on the 31st December, and that this tender of McDonald brothers of $31,161 did not get in until twenty minutes Mr. MACDONALD.
later. Not only that but Mr. Finnie the manager of the Ottawa Bank came before the committee with the cheques, and the cheques on their face showed that 'they were issued the day before the tenders were put in, so that it was absolutely an illusion to suppose that the second cheque was put in to be added to the first in order that the amount of Mr. Burrows' tender might exceed that of McDonald brothers. That was in regard to timber limit 1031. I could take you to 1022, 1122 and 1147, where my hon. friend built better than he knew and in his anxiety to hunt all around among envelopes produced the evidence that was his undoing, so far as his theories were concerned.
Then we have this question of close bidding. We had thirteen timber limits before us. In two of those Mr. Burrows was not the highest tenderer and did not get them, so we need not worry about them. In nine of these timber limits he was the highest and he got them, and how much do you suppose he was higher than the people who were next to him in all these competitions? In those nine cases he paid $5,134 more than the total amount of the next lowest tenderers. That is a pretty substantial amount for a man to pay, and I think the argument of the close bidding is rather far-fetched. What will my hon. friend think of this case, for instance? A timber limit, range 10, lot 21, was sold by the Ontario government on February 11, 1907. The tenderers on that occasion were as follows :
Board,
Name.	Logs, per	pine, per
	1,000 feet.	1,000 feet.
Foss	$10 52	$35 00Morgan Lumber Company	10 00	25 00George Gordon	
Michigan Land and Lnm-	9 00	40 00ber Company	9 85	30 00Burton	9 27	27 00Shannon	
Thessalon Lumber Com-	9 10	35 00pany	8 80	1 50Gilles	8 26	2 00Perry Lumber Company	8 20	2 00McCool	6 00	3 00McFadden	7 76	2 00
The result of the above tenders was not announced till the following day. The Foss Lumber Company, Bay City, Michigan, was the successful tenderer. The Michigan Land aud Lumber Company and the Morgan Lumber Company are one and the same, S. O. Fisher, of West Bay City, Michigan, being vice-president and general manager of the Morgan Lumber Company and president and general manager of the Michigan Land and Lumber Company.
The pine on Franklin Island, Georgian bay, was sold by the Ontario government by tender, September 3, to McGibbon, of Fenetanguishene, Ontario, who bid $12.26 per 1,000 feet, the next tender was $12.12

per thousand, and followed by another for $12.00 per 1,000. I would suggest to my hon. friend that he should go up there and bring all his great powers of introspection and Sail his paraphernalia to bear on these cases, and tell us what the Whitney government do when bidding is close.
My hon. friend from Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) is worried about the Imperial Pulp Company. We have heard many innuendoes and suggestions in reference to that. The suggestion that Governor McMillan was a member of the company and his alleged connection with it was discussed. There has never been any mystery about this company. We had full evidence in respect to it before the committee, and in the records of parliament for 1903, on the very first page of the report of the Secretary of State, there is a statement showing the incorporation of the company, the original shareholders and directors, all of them being in Toronto, and no attempt being made at secrecy. The mind that is so crooked and warped as to be able to draw some wrong intent from tue association together of two men like Mr. Burrows and Governor McMillan, who has so long borne an honoured name in Manitoba, has reached a depth where he is entitled to the sympathy of any hon. gentleman. What mystery was there about the connection of these gentlemen with the company? Do the opposition expect Governor McMillan and Mr. Burrows to go around the country with a sign out : saying we are members of the Imperial Pulp Company; or do they expect them to do business as any ordinary business people would do, with an office? Where was the secrecy and mystery, except in the minds of the men who wanted to conjure up evil and could not attribute to decent men in this country the ordinary methods of doing business ? They regarded it as suspicious that the tenders were signed by R. R. P. How is any tender by a company to be signed except by the secretary, or the company through the secretary, and when these gentlemen had the opportunity of bringing Mr. R. R. Pattinson before the committee they did not bring him, but were content to go around heralding these miserable innuendoes, these subversions of every principle of fair-play, as they are doing outside this House and, in a somewhat timid way, in this House to-night.
During this whole discussion not one man has been produced to show that he was unfairly treated in the tendering. It was open to my hon. friends to have brought before the committee any man to be found between Montreal and Vancouver who had any evidence that would indicate that the Department of the Interior had acted wrongly or unfairly in regard to the awarding of these timber limits. But no 280J
such person existed except in the wild imagination of my hon. friends, who had built up this fabric of suspicion which is falling and crumbling to pieces.
There has not been one actual case of land sales at the enormous prices quoted by these hon. gentlemen up and down the country, they are mere figments of the imagination. These gentlemen have taken the exaggerated descriptions to be found in the real estate offices in Winnipeg which might be found in reference to any property in boom times. In a distant province like Nova Scotia they quote these as if they were fair values and endeavour to lead our people to the belief that there have been actual transactions at these figures. There has been an absolute and complete failure of all these insinuations that have been made in regard to this matter.
Then we have the use of the photographs of the tenders by my hon. friend from St. Antoine. It is insinuated that because a man writes off a document informally, whether because he is illiterate or busy, it is suggested there is something improper. I have dealt with the question of whether there can be any inference or wrong-doing on that account and, in view of all that has occurred, I venture to say that the conduct of (Mr. Ames) in the use of these photographic documents is such that he knows that it can only convey to the mind of the man who has not studied this question an entirely erroneous impression of the true facts of the case.


Herbert Brown Ames: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. Is it permissible for the hon. gentleman to say that I know I am conveying an erroneous impression ?


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The hon. member will see, of course, that this is an insinuation that is not proper.


Mr.   E.@: M, MACDONALD. I think I can say that my hon. friend, if he does not konw, is reckless whether he knows or not.


Herbert Brown Ames: Is that proper?
Mr. SPEAKER, I think a statement that the hon. member might be reckless might be in order.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am sure that all reasonable men will agree that there should be a limit to this particular policy that has been introduced into the politics of this country, a novelty, it would seem, introduced under the peculiar conditions that have been developed within recent times. I have never heard such an unworthy and unjust interpretation put upon evidence as was given this afternoon. No man who wanted to be judicial, who wanted to be fair to his fellow man would try to establish the conclusion sought to be established here from the evidence that is before us. If I were counsel in such a case as this, I would go

before any fair-minded jury in this country, confident that the verdict would be that no ease had been made out that was worthy the attention of any reasonable man. So far as the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) and other members of this House are concerned, honourable men who have been recklessly maligned by people who go up and down this country loudly announcing the principle of fair-play and the exemplification of the doctrine of the golden rule, I have never known a more unfair and unjust attack than these that we have heard made in this case.
Both in policy and practice the course of this government on this subject has been amply justified. The Minister of the Interior anticipated the opposition by months in regard to the changes in the regulations as made necessary by the changed conditions, which fact is carefully suppressed. Why the west was found by the Liberal party


William Humphrey Bennett: Hear, hear.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My hon. friend from East Simcoe (Mr. Bennett) is always ready to say ' hear, hear.' I would call his attention to the fact which he knows full well that the west was a pretty poor place when it was taken in hand by the present government. There were but few people there. And now the people are coming in in such numbers that we are making a new province every 365 days that go to make up a year. With the increasing population you have a change of conditions which makes a change of methods necessary. The Minister of the Interior has anticipated these conditions and any improvement that hon. members opposite have been able to suggest was made a part of the government working policy before it was discussed in the House by these gentlemen.
It seems to me that in the name of everything that is fair and decent, in the name of fair play and the golden rule, this policy of innuendo, insinuation and misrepresentation ought to cease. Men of all parties should come to a realization that we cannot advance in Canada unless we are prepared to treat our brethren though differing in politics as entitled to fair play, unless we realize that in dealing with public questions we must deal with them as men, and, I hope, as gentlemen. If we do this, Canada will be better off, parliament will be better off, and some hon. members of this House will be free of the consciousness which I am sure now rests on some of them, they have not practised what they preach.


Edmund James Bristol: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of attention to my hon. friend (Mr. Macdonald). If I were to analyse his speech briefly, I would say that a fair Mr. MACDONALD.
proportion of it consisted of abuse of my hon. friend from St. Antoine (Mr. Ames), that another portion of it was made up of eulogy of my hon. friend from Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) and that the rest of it was made up of a discussion of what happened in Nova Scotia and a statement concerning timber limits that are two thousand miles away-statements somewhat resembling these limits in that they appear to be two thousand miles away from the facts.
Now, I hate to keep the House here for a couple of hours to follow my hon. friend through his extraordinary speech. I can well understand why the Liberal party put up that hon. gentleman whenever they get into a corner. I will give him credit for making the best defence possible of one of the worst cases that have ever come to the attention of this country. As my right hon. friend the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) has been looking for a new minister, I do not understand why he does not reward quite the ablest man sitting behind him in this respect.
It will not do for my hon. friend to talk about insinuation and innuendo. What he had presented by the hon. member for St. Antoine was a clear, precise statement of facts taken from the public records and conceded by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) himself. The only innuendo -if such it can be called-in the whole case as presented by the hon. member for St Antoine was that, after detailing each of nineteen different cases of extraordinary bidding on the part of Mr. Burrows and nine on the part of the Imperial Pulp Company, he asked the question: Was that accident or was it design? I am at a loss to understand the English language if that be innuendo or insinuation. He had a perfect right to state the facts as they appear in the records-he had the duty resting upon him as a member of parliament to do so. And we should have had a fair defence from the hon. member (Mr. Macdonald). But, instead of that, we have been treated to a tirade of abuse and to an argument relating to matters not before the House at the present moment. We have not heard an answer of any kind whatsoever to the statement of facts presented by my hon. friend from St. Antoine.
Now, my hon. friend (Mr. Macdonald) takes a great deal of credit to himself because, as he says, changes have been made lately by the Minister of the Interior and that government must change their methods with changing circumstances. I am glad indeed that the Minister of the Interior, even within the past few months, has had the good sense to make changes in the regulations. But I beg to advise the hon. gentleman (Mr. Macdonald) that the regulations were criticised by the hon. member for Argenteuil (Mr. Perley) before the

changes were made, and, no doubt, the objections then taken led to these changes. It was well known to hon. members opposite that a rotten state of affairs existed and had existed in the Department of the Interior. It has been a matter of attack for the last three years. It was a matter of small moment indeed that after practically all the best timber lands reasonably convenient and accessible to the population of the west for the next twenty years had been practically given away the Minister of the Interior should see that it was right to change these regulations.
But I want to go back a little in this matter. I think we are entitled to a little better statement of the position of matters in dealing with the question. In 1897 the First Minister took into his cabinet the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton). Now, that gentleman had been in the west for twenty-five years. He was intimately associated with the growth of the west. There was no one better acquainted with western affairs, according to his own statement and that of his friends, than the hon. member for Brandon. I am sorry he is not here to-night, because I do not wish to say anything about an hon. member when he is not present to hear me. When he took charge of the Department of the Interior he was fully acquainted with the condition of affairs in the west. The hon. gentleman stated to-night that the Liberals ten years ago discovered the west. That was in 1897 when the member for Brandon was Minister of the Interior. Well, when I hear a Liberal like the hon. member for Pictou making a statement of that kind, and when I think of the years in which the Liberal party fought against the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which really opened up that western country, it seems to me that he is losing his sense of humor. Then it is claimed for the member for Brandon that he not only discovered the west, but populated it. Well, this inevitably calls to one's mind the famous North Atlantic Trading Company and the Leopold scheme and the methods that were adopted by the government to bring emigrants into this country. It recalls to our mind the reward which was given to Mr. Preston for doing the dirty work of the Liberal party by appointing him agent general in London. In 1900 another general election took place. The member for Brandon had then been in power for about three years, and had, so to speak, got his feet in the saddle. He had become master of the situation. He had got orders in council passed so that instead of matters having to go before the council he became the practical dictator of the Department of the Interior and could do as he pleased. From 1900 to 1904 we have an extraordinary history of scandals which took place in that department, and who do we find as profiting therefrom? Why, the particular personal friends and following
of the ex-Minister of the Interior. We find Mr. McGregor, we find Mr. Hitchcock, we find these and other gentlemen getting thousands of acres of land by an irrevocable lease. I will not go into the details, but I will say that there has been no such record in any department of the administration of this country so disgraceful as the record of the Department of the Interior under the management of the hon. member for Brandon. After the election of 1900, when he became master of the situation, he got rid of the old and tried officials of the department who might stand in his way and we find Mr. Smart as Deputy Minister of the Interior, a certain delightful personage whose record stinks in the nostrils of the people of this country in consequence of his connection with the North Atlantic Trading Company. The mystery of that company is not solved yet. Then what happened ? Mr. Smart is the gentleman who got tired in the year 1902 of opening tenders and he called in the hon. member for East Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) to do that work. Now, does the hon. member for East Assiniboia ask what is the practice of the department in that regard? Not at all. He does not ask and he does not know, and he swears under oath that although he opened tenders in the way he described he was not concerned to know how it was done before. Well, the ex-Minister of the Interior in 1900 saw the population coming into the west from the United States and from the old country. The fame of the west had gone abroad, and he claimed for himself the credit of the influx of population. He knew that the Canadian Northern Railway was being built through that country ; he was well informed of the needs of the people and the question of timber limits, and one of the matters which I propose to take up is the fact that, although he had full knowledge of the circumstances, he not only did not change the conditions, as the present minister did two months ago, but if he had acted as an honest man, if he had a feeling of the trust reposed in him by the people and the duty which he owed to them, he would have changed these conditions in 1900 and would not have allowed the alienation of the public lands to grafters as the evidence has disclosed has been going on.
Now, I want to deal with some of the extraordinary statements of the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald). The hon. gentleman told us that there was not a tittle of evidence before this House that there had been a sale of any timber limits of any value. Well, Sir, I would have thought that out of common courtesy the hon. member for Pictou, knowing Mr. Rhodes, the Conservative candidate in Amherst, knowing Rhodes, Currie & Co. to be the biggest car builders in this country, would have been willing to concede that Mr. Rhodes had told the truth when, over his own sig



[Stage Direction]
nature, he had said that the Ruby Lake Lumber Company had bought a limit for $100,000. He denied apparently the truthfulness of that statement of Mr. Rhodes. We have the absolute admission of the hon. member for Dauphin that he got $80,000 for his and Fraser's share of the limits 1048 and 1049. We know that as a matter of fact they paid between them the sum of $6,000. Hon. gentlemen sitting here tonight must have felt great pain when they heard the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) describing how much money he was paying to the people of this country in timber dues. He actually paid 50 cents a thousand for sawn lumber ; if he had been living in Ontario he would have paid $2 a thousand. He says that he paid out $35,000 in dues and if he had charged for his time and interest and other losses he would not have made $35,000 clear. I would like to know how many gentlemen there are in this chamber who would not be glad to pay some one else $35,000 if they could make anything like $35,000 clear by doing so. I think we need shed no more tears about this hon. gentleman when we reflect that with this $80,000 he got more money by $36,000 than the total of all these limits cost him. He says that the total money he expended was $58,000. But "he and his brother Fraser make a profit on one transaction of $80,000.
Theodore Arthur Burrows: I never said I got $80,-
000.


Edmund James Bristol: I said he and his brother Fraser.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: He is no brother of mine.


Edmund James Bristol: I think he is a brother in this transaction. If you will allow me to make use of this term in a colloquial sense. We do you honour in associating you with him. The hon. member for Pic-tou, speaking of No. 1031, refers to the cheques of Mr, Finnie and he says that these cheques were both drawn on December 30. There is only one way to contradict a gentleman of that character and that is to read the evidence. I am free to say that Mr. Finnie's evidence was not as clear as one might expect but perhaps we can get at the facts. 1 propose to quote from pages 80, 81, 87, 88 and 89.
Q. Is there anything to show on these cheques to you, Mr. Finnie, the order in which they were made out?-A. The entry shows that they were made out, $17,575 in the first place, immediately followed the next entry by $14,000.
Page 81 :
Q. Is there anything in your books to show the order in which the cheques were made out?-A. Yes, one entry follows the other.
Mr. BRISTOL
Page 87 :


Mr. REID.: These two cheques were issued one on the 30th and the other on the 31st December, and the ledger will show when they were issued, because the ledger-keeper marks on his ledger, ' 30th December so much ' and ' 31st December so much/ That is what the book will show; these cheques show there is a possibility that one of the cheques has been altered.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Suppose it does show that? It will show this, that Mr. Finnie, of the Bank of Ottawa, issued to Mr. Burrows a cheque dated 30th December, that is the only thing this committee is interested in, as to when the cheque was issued doesn't make any difference.
By Mr. Barker:
Q. I think there is a reason here why we should see these books. You say both cheques are dated 30th December, 1902?-A. Yes.
Q. I see they are both accepted by your bank on the 31st December, 1902?-A. They are, yes.
Q. And one of these cheques was first written ' 31st December, 1902/ will you look at it ? -A. I know what you refer to, there is a slight mark there, that is not a ' 1/ it is not an alteration.
Q, It is distinct ' 31/ Now if it had been the other way I would understand it.


The CHAIRMAN.: Let me see what it is.
By Mr. Barker:
Q. Is not that an alteration?-A. No, Sir, these cheques were written at the same time.
Q. I dare say. Will you explain why there was first 'Written ' 31 ' ?-A. I do not think it was ever written ' 31/
Q. Do you mean to say this ' 31 ' is not written distinctly?-A. There was no alteration afterwards.
Q. I do not say it was; it may have been done at the time?-A. It was done at the time, yes.
Q. How is it that the larger cheque seems to have been dated ' 31' and then the ' 0 ' put in afterwards?-A. I can't explain it at all.
Q. That is the date it was accepted?-A. They were both accepted on the 31st, both charged in the ledger on the 31st and both provided for on the 31st.
By Mr. Ames:
Q. Were they written on the same day that they were

?

A. Yes.


Herbert Brown Ames: Mr. Finnie has stated they were written on the day they were accepted.
By Mr. Macdonald (Pictou):
Q. Were they written on -the date ith-ey purport to be dated?-A. Yes.


Herbert Brown Ames: I understood him to say they were dated on the day they were accepted.


Charles Marcil: He answered before you finished your question.
By Mr. Ames:
Q. Did you see them after they were finished?-A. I wrote them myself.
Q. Did you write them oh the same day they were accepted?-A. I believe I did, yes.
Q. How do you account for the fact that they were dated on the 30th and stamped on the 31st ?-A. I believe that ' 30 ' is simply an error in dating.
The final statement that Mr. Finnie makes on the matter is that these cheques were both written on the 31st and not one the

30tli as stated by the hon. member for Pictou.
Q. In your belief you think they were written on the morning of the 31st?-A. I am disposed to think so.
By Mr. Macdonald (Pictou):
Q. Have you any recollection of having made a mistake on that date in the writing of these cheques?-A. No I have no distinct recollection about it.
Page 89 :
By Mr. Bristol:
Q. A moment ago you told Mr. Ames that you wrote them on the 31st?-A. Not quite.
Q. Do you want to change that now? A. Well, I may have written them on the 31st,
^ Q. You may have written them on the 31st? -A. Yes.


John Dowsley Reid: If one cheque was written on the 30th and another on the 31st, it makes a lot of difference. I think it is most important.	,	,	,


Charles Marcil: He says he did not do
that.	,	...


Mr. BARKER.: He did not say he did not
do it.
By Mr. Bristol:	.
Q. The cheques were both written and accepted on the same date, is that not right? A. Yes.
My hon. friend (Mr. Ames) has been criticised for stating that Mr. Burrows was a speculator. My hon. friend has never failed to state that Mr. Burrows owned and operated 109 square miles of timber as a lumberman but that these other limits were of a speculative character and that in the nature of things for a period of 10, 15 or 20 years, they would continue to be of a purely speculative character. For the hon. member for Pictou to go into hysterics over the alleged statement of my hon friend from Montreal, St. Antoine, because he had actually described Mr. Burrows as a speculator seems to me as ludicrous as some other things which were said by the hon. member for Pictou. There was another matter that seemed to give him an awful pain. I suppose that this speech has been made to-night for use in Nova Scotia. I cannot understand it being used for any other purpose because it had nothing to do with matters in question.


William Humphrey Bennett: It will be of no use in the Northwest.


Edmund James Bristol: It will be of no use in the Northwest, because they know the facts there. I do not know that it could even be used in Nova Scotia. But, as I was say-
That is the correct statement as regards these cheques. I am not here to say that this matter was vital or material, but I simply wished to point out, as I propose to continue to do, how impossible it seems to be for the hon. member for Pictou to quote any hon. gentleman correctly.
Now, I want to place on record, because I am really taking the speech of the hon. member for Pictou, the exact position, as I understand it, of the timber limit proposition. In the first place, the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) obtained 534 square miles in his own name, then he obtained with Cowan and Moore 250 square miles and the Imperial Pulp Company got 483 square miles. Fraser obtained the second choice or 1,048 and 1,049, 250 and 120 square miles. And so the statement was made that the Burows-Fraser combination had got 1,637 square miles. That was the statement, as I understand, that my hon. friend from Montreal, St. Antoine, made and at the time that it was made, he believed it to be correct, but we find now that instead of Mr. Burrows gettiug 534 square miles he only got, when the timber was selected, 433 square miles. The Imperial Pulp Company only got 320 square miles, so that together they got 753 square miles. Mr. Fraser has still 120 square miles, making a total of 873 that the Bui-rows-Fraser combination got. But, there were 500 square miles, 250 of which went To Mr. Burrows and 250 to Mr. Fraser, a half interest in which has been sold by them for 880.000. making a total of 1,373 square miles that the Burrows-Fraser group obtained.
ing, it seemed to worry my hon. friend, that my hon. friend from St. Antoine should say that under the existing timber regulations the holders of these speculative timber limits had practically a perpetual title.
I have never heard that contradicted by any one. I have heard the hon. Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) get up in this House and defend it as sound policy that it was so. But, the real essential point, in my humble judgment, of this transaction is that you will find that the Imperial Pulp Company, that T. A. Burrows, that the Cowan-Moore-Burrows syndicate and the Fraser syndicate had acquired a large proportion of these very valuable limits particularly 1048 and 1049, 500 miles of speculative limits selected out of 7,000 square miles, that they had obtained these most valuable concessions under the old regulations which were not nearly so favourable, which, of necessity, would require them to pay much less for the limits, which would, of necessity, lessen competition, and shortly after they obtained these valuable concessions, in April, 1903, this regulation was passed which made these licenses practically perpetual. Among the other things that the minister did for his friends after they acquired these limits, was that he turned a yearly license into a practically irrevocable lease! I want to put on record section 3 of the timber regulations in effect on July 1, 1898, which reads as folows :	.
When a licensee has complied with all the :onditions herein set forth m histhe he regulations, and where no portion of the ;imber berth is required for settlement or ither public purpose, of which the Minister of

the Interior is to he the judge, the license may he renewed for another year, subject to such revision of the annual rental and royalty to be paid therefor as may he fixed by the Governor in Council.
That was the regulation under which these limits were bought. Now, the following is the regulation passed on the 14th of April 1903, and published in the ' Gazette ' on the 16th of June, 1903, in substitution of the section which I have just read :
So long as the licensee complies with the conditions of his license and of the regulations, he shall be entitled to a renewal of his license from year to year while merchantable timber remains upon the area licensed. When a substantial portion of the said area has been denuded of timber the minister may dispose of the same under sale or settlement regulations provided that no such disposition shall be made of land immediately contiguous to merchantable standing timber, or in such a way as to endanger destruction thereof by fire.
And so these leases which were before that period yearly licenses became, so long as there was merchantable timber, licenses which they had the right to demand the renewal of from the government. On the 23rd of July, 1906, the Privy Council passed the following :
Therefore the Governor in Council in order to make the intention clear, is pleased to order that the said section 3 shall be and the same is hereby amended by adding to the first sentence thereof immediately after the words 'the area licensed' the following ' provided, however, that such renewal shall be granted subject to any changes which may have been made m the regulations increasing or altering the rental or dues to be paid or otherwise varying the terms and conditions under which licenses are granted/
I am told that the following year this regulation, which changed the terms of the bargain under which these people bought, was actually inserted in the licenses granted to timber licensees without their attention being called to the fact. I am further advised that since the attention of the licensees has been called to the fact, they have made strong objections to the government for pretending to change the terms on which they purchased and to charge any timber dues or royalties which the government may think proper. See the confiscatory effect that such a clause would have. A man pays a reasonable bonus for a timber limit and he has the right to hold it so long as there is merchantable timber upon it, and then the government assumes to say that instead of paying fifty cents per thousand they may charge him $10 or $20 or any sum they like. That is practically confiscation of these limits and I am told that the licensees have entered strong objection to it. It would, of course, have been perfectly proper at the time their revocable license was being granted to have inserted such a provision, and if the government exercised pro-


Edmund James Bristol: Mr.' MACDONALD (Pictou). Do you rule that an order, Mr. Chairman?


Charles Marcil: I do not suppose you will be justified in going into the other tenders.
That was the ruling of the chairman, and it was perfectly proper under the circumstances, because the matter before the committee was the question of these payments and the other tenders had absolutely nothing whatever to do with them. So thnt when my hon. friend talks about our having had full scope to investigate, he is simply romancing, because it was absolutely impossible for us to make the full investigation we would have made, even if permitted a proper inquiry. But we had to drag out what little bits of evidence we could, with our hon. friends continually objecting, and calling on us to put the culprits in the box and let them do the talking.
My hon. friend from Pictou seemed to make a great point about our not having put Mr. Burrows on the stand. Well, I do not see that there was anything to prevent my hon. friend calling Mr. Burrows, if he wanted to put him under oath. If there is one man more than another who has declaimed in loud tones about the hon. member for Dauphin not having been called, it is the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald). But what did he do ? He called on Mr. Burrows' solicitor, Mr. Fraser. He made a great fuss because we did not propose to put in Mr. Burrows' solicitor for the defence, and so he called Mr. Fraser himself. And what then did he do ? He had the audacity to ask Mr. Fraser to give under oath his reasons why other lumbermen did certain things. He took good care not to call Mr. Burrows and ask him why he did certain things in certain ways ; and there are pertinent questions I would like to put to the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) if, instead of coming under the shelter of the House, where we have to accept his statements, he had come before the committee. There we could have cross-examined him, but it is much simpler and
much safer for him to come and make his statement here where he cannot be contradicted. But even if he had appeared before the committee, we had no right to controvert his evidence in any way, because we could not get beyond the scope of the inquiry which was whether the rentals paid to the Department of the Interior by Perkins, Fraser & Co., in connection with the timber agencies at Edmonton and Calgary were correct. And the man who would not let us get away from that was the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald). Yet he is the hon. gentleman who cries out so loudly here : Why did you not call Burrows ? My hon. friend from Pictou called Mr. Fraser but not Mr. Burrows. They also called Miss Munro and Mr. Turriff. But poor Burrows they would not call, and consequently they are now waxing eloquent over the grievance that the opposition did not call him. I would not however like my hon. friend from Pictou to run away with the idea that we did not tell him he was the right one to do the calling. At page 92, you will see that we were not getting the information we were entitled to get. We were asking about certain cheques, and the chairman, ruling on the objection raised by the hon. member for Pictou, said :
I think that the cheques ought to be identified before the witness is asked that question and if you require corroboration-I understand that Mr. Burrows is to be called to produce these cheques.
Did the chairman understand that from us? Not at all. We never subpoenaed Mr. Burrows, and one of the theories on which the chairman ruled, was that we could not ask Mr. Finuie about certain cheques entered in his books until we had the original cheques produced. I replied as follows :
If my hon. friend calls Mr. Burrows that is another matter, but we still want further information from Mr. Finnie.
I knew that if Mr. Burrows was to be called, he was coming as witness on behalf of the government and it was for the government to call him. My hon. friend was told so by me and he was told so by the chairman of the commission. What happened further ? After this inquiry was closed, the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) came back to the committee and with the aid of the servile majority he has there, he got the inquiry reopened and held it open two weeks or more for the purpose of calling further evidence, but he never called a solitary witness. What then was the object of reopening the inquiry ? It was to prevent the subject being debated in this House when it was fresh in the minds of the people and to postpone the debate until the public had lost sight of it. He did not call Mr. Burrows. He got scared. He thought it safer to get up here and ask : Why did you not call him 1

My hon. friend spoke of Mr. Pattinson. I may simply say that we had the information from Mr. Fraser that Burrows was practically the Imperial Lumber Company, that Sir Daniel McMillan was the president and Mr. Pattinson the secretary. We did call Mr. Pattinson, but he begged off a month or more on account of his wife's illness. And as we were anxious to get the matter before the House, we did not think it worth while to postpone the debate in order that we might ask Mr. Pattinson if Burrows was not practically the Imperial Pulp Company.
But there is a little mystery still left. My hon. friend talked a great deal about the Imperial Pulp Company. He said that anybody could find out of whom they were composed. They were simply a legal firm in Toronto. Think of that. Nothing hidden. A lot of information which he gave us. An hon. gentleman wrote to this legal firm and asked who were the Imperial Pulp Company, but they declined to give any information. They said they were the solicitors. The hon. member for Pictou says we ought to have known long ago who was in this matter. Why, Mr. Fraser, the solicitor for the company, who for five years had been putting up money for the company as their agent, swore that he did not know who were the directors. While they were not secretive, he said, they were certainly not communicative. All he could tell was that Sir Daniel McMillan was the president, that Mr. Pattinson was the secretary, and that Mr. Burrows was connected with it. But although the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) has been giving this House a long statement of several hours, he has failed to solve the mystery as to who constitute the other half of the Imperial Pulp Company. It is impossible to find it out in the records of the company. My hon. friend may say that this is immaterial, but as they have made a point of the fact, I call their attention that after they have given these names, we do not know where half the company reside, and some people think it resides among some gentlemen on the other side of the House who should not have any business there.
The hon. member for Pictou said that my hon. friend from St. Antoine had stated to the chairman that his reason for wanting to see the original lease was to check the acreage or something of that kind, and that he misled the chairman in reference to that matter. My hon. friend from St. Antoine asked him in a manly way to point it out, but the hon. gentleman did not do it. I think that, in justice to my hon. friend it was only fair to him that the hon. member for Pictou should have pointed it out if he could. But I wish to call your attention to the evidence, page 16, where this matter is under discussion as to the hon. member's reason for wanting to see the lease.


Edmund James Bristol: 


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Is my friend, Mr. Ames, alleging that in the case "of berth No. 1122 there is any incorrect receipt by the government or that a less amount was paid than ought to have been paid in 1906?


Herbert Brown Ames: I am asking for similar information.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Why are you going behind the account in 1906?


Herbert Brown Ames: For the purpose of obtaining information in the public interest and on my reputation as a member of parliament.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: For nothing else, is it ?


Herbert Brown Ames: In the public interest, I think that is sufficient.
Here is another of these extraordinary mis-statements made by the hon. member for Pictou which I have a right to correct because it absolutely misrepresents the position of the hon. member for St. Antoine who, in the public interest, was endeavouring to get such information as the chairman of the committee would permit him.
Now, perhaps it would be wise, in view of the repeated statements of my hon. friend from Pictou, that we could have had a full investigation, to read some of the observations of the chairman and of the hon. member (Mr. Macdonald) in reference to this matter. I refer to page 10 of the evidence :


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Has this any reference to the question before the committee ? I would like to ask whether the envelope it came in has anything whatever to do with the question now before the Committee, the question that has been referred to the committee by the House whether the amount paid was correct. My friend, Mr. Ames, started out in a very guileless way to say that he wanted to prove whether thjs amount was correct or not in accordance with the lease.
That is the limit of the investigation and of the rights he wished to give us. But when it suited his purpose, there was no limit to the questions he was allowed to ask and did ask in reference to matters quite extraneous-for	instance, what changes
were made in the regulations in 1907. What had that to do with the correctness of the rental? I only mention that by the way, to show not only the unfairness but the inconsistency of the hon. member for Pictou.
My friend, Mr. Ames, started out in a very guileless way to say that he wanted to prove whether this amount was correct or not in accordance with the lease. In the goodness of your heart, Mr. Chairman, you allowed him to go outside the reference and to deal with other matters that have nothing at all to do with it. I submit that the question as to what kind of an envelope the offer was contained or that it was in blue ink or red ink, whether it was open or not, anything of that kind, has nothing whatever to do with the account of 1906.


Herbert Brown Ames: I think that the envelope has an important bearing upon the case. It was only the covering of the tender.

And it goes on, at page 55-56 :


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I was going to say that I do not intend asking any questions as to what took place between solicitor and client. Mr. Eraser misapprehended the obiect of my question.


Edmund James Bristol: Mr. Fraser has, of course, made certain payments on behalf of clients, and his clients, he says, hare given him leave to give certain information here. Now, if my hon. friend (Mr. Macdonald) desires to go into the whole question of the timber limits which were held by the Imperial Company and by Mr. T. A. Burrows and all matters connected with it, there is nothing that would suit us better so long as it is understood we are to be allowed to follow it up and to investigate it as fully as we can before the committee.
That is our position. Yet the hon. gentleman says we did not want inquiry. These hon. gentlemen wanted an inquiry so far as it suited them, but we wanted a full inquiry :	,
But I do not want Mr. Fraser to be allowed to make what I would say, and very properly say, was a statement for the Imperal Pulp Company, a statement for the defence, without us having the very fullest possible opportunity to cross-examine and call witnesses on the other side.
Then the hon. member (Mr. Macdonald) switches round.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: This has arisen from a misunderstanding of the object in asking the question. By consent of the committee, Mr. Ames has been allowed to go back to the tender, the chairman laying down certain limitations with regard to the examination upon them.
You see the hon. member (Mr. Macdonald) takes the position that we could not look at anything but the original tender.
I am simply showing Mr. Fraser tenders which were shown to Mr. Campbell, they are in his handwriting, apparently, and 1 am going to ask him about it.
Now, I want to emphasize that, because on that occasion and on every occasion we declared that we want investigation; we wanted to be allowed to call witnesses and to cross-examine them as to these tenders and their correctness and whether there has been fraud or not. And yet, in spite of what the hon. gentleman said in the committee, he has the effrontery, the brazen effrontery, to stand up and say that we had all the investigation we wanted and could have had the fullest inquiry. I do not happen to possess the same command of the English language as my hon. friend-I mean the same picturesque part of it-hut if I had I would use some of his own words to treat the question under discussion. Now at page 60 we have this question by Mr. Macdonald :
Q. Well, now, perhaps you would just tell in detail, in so far as it is possible for you
to do so, the circumstances in connection with the putting up of this berth for tender, and these two tenders that are here.
Listen to that.


Edmund James Bristol: Mr. Chairman, there is happening now just what we outlined would happen all along-counsel for people who have got timber berths is now asked to make a statement before this committee not in relation to any payments he has made, or the legality of any tender, but an ex parte defence on behalf of the people who have obtained these berths. We have no objection to that provided we are going to be able to call all the witnesses we desire in regard to this transaction. What is going on now is virtually what we have asked for in the House, and that is an investigation into these tenders and we are only too glad to have this investigation go on, but we want to be permitted the fullest rights of cross-examination in regard to this witness and the other witnesses.
And what do you suppose the hon. gentleman (Mr. Macdonald) said? Did he say, 'Certainly'? Not at all:


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I was asking this witness a question in regard to a certain phase of the question, but if my friends obiect-	,, . ,	, .


Charles Marcil: I do not think you ought to go beyond what has already been brought out; that is the tenders that have already been put in.
Then the witness interrupts.
WITNESS. I have not been subpoenaed for that purpose. I have not qualified myself for this examination.	.	,	, .	,.


William Humphrey Bennett: We are simply asking the chairman if he will allow a cross-examination afterwards.


Herbert Brown Ames: We are simply asking that the same privilege be accorded to both sides. There may not be the slightest objection, but we are simply calling attention to the fact in the fullest confidence in your fairness, Mr. Chairman.


Charles Marcil: 
W. S. DWINNELL.
[Stage Direction]
Thus the department had specific knowledge at the time of the disposal of 1031 that there was great demand for timber and that a great deal more time should be given. We had a speech not long ago from the ex-Minister of the Interior, in which he said he received no letter in relation to this. He may not have received those letters, but I suppose there is some one in the department who is responsible. We have another limit, 1048, and if the Minister of the Interior did not get two letters, he got a telegram, which is more apt to call the at-
[Stage Direction]
tention of an hou. gentleman to such a matter. I have here a telegram of February 23, 1903, signed by the mayor of West Prince Albert. It is as follows :
Canadian Pacific Railway Comany's Telegraph, West Prince Albert, N.W.T.,
February 23, 1903.
Hon. Clifford Sifton,
Ottawa.
People of Prince Albert protest against sale of timber berths north of river timber limits passing into hands of speculators to the detriment of settlers.
(Sgd.) J. F. ANSTULL, Mayor.
On February 22 he received a telegram from the president of the board of trade, as follows :
Canadian Pacific Railway Comany's Telegraph, West Prince Albert, N.W.T., February 22, 1903.
Hon. Clifford Sifton,
Minister of Interior,
Ottawa.
Am forwarding you to-day resolution passed by board of trade re timber limits to be tendered for on March 7.
(Sgd. J. H. WILSON, President Board of Trade.
Here is the resolution referred to :
Prince Albert, February 23, 1902.
At a meeting of the Prince Albert Board of Trade held to-day the following resolution was unanimously passed:
It has been brought to our attention that in terms of the notice, dated Ottawa, 3anuajy 28, tenders are called for a license to cut timber on Dominion lands in the district of Saskatchewan on the following described berths.
Berth No. 1018, comprising 250 square miles. Berth No. 1049 also comprising 250 square miles.
We consider that in the interest of the town of Prince Albert and the country at large the area tendered for is too large, as few have sufficient capital to tender for such a large block and respectfully suggest that these berths be withdrawn and new tenders called for in blocks of fifty square miles and that the time for receiving same be extended for six months to enable lumbermen to examine limits for themselves.
We also further suggest that action be taken with a view of amending the present Act governing the sale of timber berths.
Sgd.) JOHN H. WILSON, President Board of Trade.
Here is this wonderful ex-Minister of the Interior, this Napoleon of the West, this man of gigantic intellect, this man who made the west-the others only discovered it-with these facts before him, with notice that the regulations should be changed, with a request from responsible people like the mayor of tne town and the board of trade, saying that a resolution had been passed asking that these 500 square miles be not offered in this way, but that the sale be postponed for six months and that it should be in small lots. Why, he has his
office boy write a letter to say that they don't see any reason for changing it at the present time. Here is the letter, dated the 13th of March :
In reply we beg to say that as these berths appear to be advertised in the ordinary manner, it was not thought advisable to make any change.
And this is a Reform government ! Now, Mr. Speaker, if there had been nothing else in this whole transaction, I say we have a right to condemn the ex-Minister of the Interior and the administration on the fact that away back in 1902, with the facts before him as shown to-night by telegrams and this resolution of the board of trade, he made no investigation, he did not postpone the sale. What happened then ? Why, Mr. Burrows did not have the effrontery to-night to deny the statement of my lion, friend from St. Antoine that it was his pul! with the ex-Minister of the Interior that got him these limits. He made a great many other denials, but he did not have the effrontery to make that one. What we say is this, that the ex-minister thought that under the name of William Cowan it would all be hushed up and nobody would know, and it was not until we got Mr. Fraser in the Public Accounts Committee that we knew for the first time that William Cowan's name was used by him under Mr. Burrow's instructions, and that Mr. Burrows provided the $5,000 cheque, and he never saw William Cowan. So here we have the lion, member for Dauphin sitting around with his $5,000 cheque, and we have the door closed against the possibility of bids by any other people, and we have 500 square miles of timber limits going under these circumstances to the brother-in-law of the ex-Minister of the Interior alias W'il-liam Cowan, and Fraser as his satellite. The bon. member for Dauphin says he has no interest in 1049. I am bound to accept his statement. But in looking at the records we find this receipt :
September 11, 1905.
Received from Mr. Theo. A. Burrows, of Grand view. Manitoba,, for John McBain, the sum of $1,250, in payment of one year's rent of timber berth No. 1049 to the 1st of May, 1906, and interest to 7th instant with the exception of $22,000 charged for interest.
(Sgd.) G. U. RYLEY,
Chief Clerk Timber, Mines and Crown Lands Branch, per Frans Loyer, bookkeeper.
Well, the lion, member for Dauphin may be a philanthropist, I dare say he is ; but when he says that he had no interest direct or indirect in this limit, I am astonished at the way he spends his money, and I am surprised that he has so much of it. He did say that he acted as agent for the sale of this property ; but I never yet have been able to discover an agent who was kind enough to pay the rent on the property as 1 to which he was merely agent for the sale.
[Stage Direction]
Apparently the relations between the Burrows and Fraser syndicate-I beg pardon, I mean the Burrows and Fraser group, are a little more intimate than the member for Dauphin has informed us to-night. I affirm that if there was nothing else shown on the records than the facts as they appear to-night, we have a right to an investigation as to that 500 square miles of timber, to find out from the ex-minister why he thought it was all right to go on in the ordinary way, and his brother-in-law sitting around here with a cheque for $5,000, which was slipped in .under the name of William Cowan. Those are facts from which the people of this country will draw their own inferences. The hon. member for Pictou says that my hon. friend from St. Antoine is making insinuations ; on the contrary I think that my hon. friend from St. Antoine has made the fairest and most reasonable statement that any man possibly could make on the records that are before this parliament. It will be for the people to judge whether the reckless assertions of the hon. member for Pictou are to be relied on in preference to the reasonable and well founded statements made by my hon. friend from St. Antoine on the records before this House. Now I want to emphasize this point. The ex-Minister of the Interior gets up and says that nobody made any objections. In the first place, he was there to do his work. He tells us that he is a great man, all his friends tell us that he is a man of great ability. He may be a very able man, but if so, how much greater was his responsibility when, although the mayor and board of trade of the town brought the facts before him in 1902 and asked that the timber regulations should be changed, yet this reform and business administration did not make any change until 1907. But what happens in the meantime ? The brother-in-law of the ex-minister is found possessed to-day of some 500 square miles of timber limits, part of which was obtained in the manner I have described. Now if the minister knows that it is practically impossible for anybody to examine those limits except the particular man who has asked them to be put up if he prevents anybody else from examining them, if he so hedges around the regulations and tries to work them that of necessity the limits must fall into the hands of the particular person who happens to be his brother-inlaw, it is as great an act of fraud against the people of this country as if there was some shuffling with cheques.
Now there is another thing that is rather amusing. The hon. member for Dauphin said he went over to the department and asked them to make up a list for him. Well, it is a great thing to stand well with the administration. When the hon. member for St. Antoine went over to the department to look at an original document, he had to get out of the office. If you are Mr BRISTOL.
the member for Dauphin, or the member for East Assiniboia, you will have all the departmental clerks working for you, you can have all the information the department has got, all this information which the hon. member for Dauphin was so anxious to give us to show that he paid $112 a square mile on the whole for the timber limits, and the Imperial Pulp Company had paid a certain amount* and somebody else had paid a little more. Now the price paid for a timber limit naturally depends as to whether you applied and got first choice, as Mr. Burrows, or William Cowan did in connection with 1048 and paid $5,000 therefor. or whether you paid for the second choice as Fraser did, who paid $1,000. As the hon. member for Dauphin did not want anything but the very best he paid more. But even if it was, he only paid apparently for 537 square miles the sum of $58,000. But he also went to a good deal of trouble to show that there were two or three cheques used in some other instances, and he spoke in a mysterious way as to some British Columbia lumber company having paid three cheques through Wyld and Osier. While I do not know anything about the facts connected with the matter I do say that if as a result of the investigation of the department they were only able to find, outside of the Imperial Pulp Company and Mr. Burrows, three cases where there had been more than one cheque, then we have established the contention that the three cheque proposition or the two cheque proposition was the invention of Mr. Burrows or the Imperial Pulp Company.
The suggestion was made that because a Conservative firm inclosed two or three cheques in one case a matter of that kind should not be criticised. You can always get a firm of lawyers to send in a certain number of cheques or to draw up tenders. Mr. Fraser drew up certain tenders but he handed them to Mr. Burrows and Mr. Burrows put in a certain number of cheques. We have not Wyld and Osier here, but Wyld and Osier could have acted in the same way although there is no evidence of it, Wyld and Osier could have written out a tender and another gentleman could have put in as many cheques as he thought proper. Yet, you have a great effort on the port of the department to show that what was done was usual and ordinary instead of being unusual and extraordinary.
John Gillanders Turriff: It was customary in dozens and dozens of cases when tenders were put in to inclose several cheques.


Edmund James Bristol: limits In the west. To give that as a reason in defence of the ex-Minister of the Interior in view of the protest of the mayor and Board of Trade of Prince Albert with reference to the time allowed for the examination of these 500 square miles seems to me certainly an extraordinary perversion of justice. My hon. friend was anxious to show that the method of tendering adopted by Mr. Burrows and by the Imperial Pulp Company was quite usual, and his evidence is as follows:
Q. Some of the tenders received in connection with these timber berths did not state the amount of the bonus offered P-A. Some of them did not.
Q. You have noticed that, was it a common thing?-A. Yes, a good many did not.
Q. A great many did not?-A. No, a good many did not.
Now, Mr. Speaker, among all these that were produced I am not aware of more than three which did not state the amount of the bonus and yet my hon. friend tells us that in a good many instances they did not.
Q. Have you from casually going through the files noticed tenders put into the department that did not state the bonus offered prior to your going into the department?-A. I do not remember.
Q. Did the tenderers always have a certified cheque or cash or both?-A. Sometimes one, sometimes the other and sometimes both.
Q. It was not an unusual thing to have the monies in cash and cheque?-A. No.
Among all these cases there is only one case where there was cash and cheque and yet my hon. friend says it is not unusual.
Q. It was not then an unusual thing to have cash accompany the tender?
I am not aware except in the two instances where the Imperial Pulp Company put in typewritten tenders and in ink was written $1,000 and in red ink was written $2,500, that any case occurred where the money was in cash. And yet we are told by this hon. gentleman that it was not unusual. And so we have the statement of this hon. gentleman, we have the statement of the hon. member for Dauphin, and we have had the statement of the solicitor, Mr. Fraser, and instead of asking Mr. Burrows why he put in double bids, and two or three cheques, and wrote tenders without stating the amount, and wrote tenders without even mentioning the cheque, we have the solicitor called to give under oath reasons that Mr. Burrows alone had in his own mind. And yet these gentlemen opposite speak of the fullness and fairness of this so-called investigation. Another humorous thing in connection with this is in respect to 1018 and 1019. We have had a good deal of explanation from Mr. Burrows, but we have not had any in respect to these two


Edmund James Bristol: In this case what do we find? We find the member for Dauphin putting in a tender and supplying a cheque to Mr. Nolan to put in another tender in the same transaction. Did Mr. Burrows know there was no tender? What was his idea in putting in a fake bid himself as if he were beaten, and as if Mr. Nolan apparently got these limits? But Mr. Nolan inside of twenty-four hours executed an assignment of these limits to the Imperial Pulp Company. What was the object of the Imperial Pulp Company using other names? We have not had any explanation of that, but perhaps I may give one. I do not think that my hon. friends from Dauphin and East Assiniboia are quite as popular to-day as they were a year ago because during the last three months the people of this country have got on to the fact of who it is that were getting the timber limits. Up to the present time it was shrouded in mystery except as regards those limits obtained in his own name by Mr. Burrows, but latterly he was getting limits in Nolan's name. The Imperial Pulp Company only bid nine times and the last four bids out of nine were put in the name of others outside the pulp company. The Imperial Pulp Company itself was not sufficient to shroud Mr. Burrows and his associates and so they resorted to Mr. Nolan and Mr. Fraser, the solicitor.
I venture to think that as an opposition we have done all that it was possible for us to do in respect to this matter. We have got all the original documents we were permitted to get at; we have obtained all the facts that these documents would throw light upon ; we have examined to the extent to which we were permitted the public accounts in respect to this matter. But, Mr. Speaker, we were prevented both in connection with Mr. Finnie and by the narrowness of the investigation to get at the facts. We wanted in connection with Mr. Finnie to find out whether on the 7th of March when there were five cheques out apparently in Mr. Burrows' name, these five cheques had been charged up in the bank on that date against Mr. Burrows and the order in which they were charged up. That was a perfectly fair and proper question, but my hon. friend from Pictou who says he was anxious to give the fullest possible investigation objected, and the chair sustained the objection and Mr. Burrows was going to be called. But Mr. Burrows never was called and there never was the slightest intention of calling him and for the very obvious reason that they intended to let him make a statement here instead of where he could be cross-examined. I venture to think in view of the facts we have before us; in view of the clear and absolutely uncontradicted statements which my hon. friend from St. Antoine has made in reference to this matter; in view of the extraordinary success of the bidding of the hon. member for Dauphin ;

in view of the still more extraordinary success of the Imperial Pulp Company in bidding; in view of the fact that Messrs. McDonald and others who apparently bid against Mr. Burrows only succeeded fourteen times out of thirty bids, and paid three and a half times as much as the next highest bidder for the limits they obtained while Mr. Buri'ows only paid 6 per cent higher; in view of such an extraordinary set of circumstances as has been shown here, I believe it would be only proper and fair in the interests of the people that an investigation should be granted now, and if the right hon. gentleman does not grant an investigation the time will come when the people of Canada will have their rights in this matter and when there will be an investigation and when restitution will be made to the country.
House divided on the amendment (Mr
Lake).	YEAS : Messieurs
Alcorn,	Lancaster,
Amos,	Lennox,
Armstrong,	McCarthy (Calgary),
Avery,	McLean
Barker,	(Queens, P.E.I.),
Barr,	Martin
Bennett,	(Queens, P.E.I.),
Bergeron,	Monk,
Blain,	Osier,
Borden (Carleton)	, Owen,
Brabazon,	Porter.
Bristol,	Reid (Grenville),
Broder,	Roche (Marquette),
Chisholm (Huron)	, Schaffner,
Christie,	Sproule,
Clements,	Staples,
Cockshutt,	Taylor,
Crocket,	Walsh (Huntingdon),
Daniel,	Ward,
Henderson,	Wilmot,
Herron,	Wilson
Hughes (Victoria), (Len. & Adding.),	
Jackson (Elgin),	Worthington,
Kemp, Lake,	Wright (Muskoka)-46.
 NAYS : Messieurs
Aylesworth,	Doggie,
Beauparlant,	Lovell,
Beland,	Macdonald,
Bole,	Maclean (Lunenburg),
Borden	Macpherson,
(Sir Frederick),	McColl,
Boyer,	McCraney,
Brown,	McIntyre (Perth),
Burrows,	McIntyre
Calvert,	(Strathcona),
Carvell,	McKenzie,
Cash,	McLean (Huron),
Chisholm	McLean (York, C.),
(Antigonish),	Marcile (Bagot),
Clarke,	Marcil (Bonaventure),
Copp,	Martin (Montreal, St.
Crawford,	Mary's),
Cyr,	Martin (Wellington),
Delisle, 281	Meigs,
Devlin,
Dubeau,
Dugas,
Fielding,
Finlayson,
Fisher,
Fortier,
Gauvreau,
Geoffrion,
Gervais,
Girard,
Graham,
Harty,
Hughes
(Kings, P.E.I.), Hunt,
Jackson (Selkirk), Johnston,
Knowles,
Lachance,
Lanctot (Laprairie-Napierville),
Lanctot (Richelieu), Lapointe,
Laurier (Sir Wilfrid), Laurier
(L'Assomption), Lavergne (Drum. & Arth.), LeBlanc,
Michaud,
Miller,
Pardee,
Parmelee,
Paterson,
Parent,
Pickup,
Power.
Pugsley,
Reid (Restigouche), Robitaille,
Roche (Halifax), Ross (Cape Breton), Ross (Kimouski), Ross (Yale-Cariboo), Schell (Oxford), Sinclair,
Sloan,
Smith (Nanaimo), Stewart,
Talbot,
Telford,
Templeman,
Tolmie,
Turcotte,
Turgeon,
Turriff,
Watson,
Wilson (Russell), Zimmerman.-91
PAIRS : Messieurs
Ministerial.	Opposition.
Logan,	Lefurgey,
Greenway,	Tisdale,
Galliher,	Stanfield,
Smith (Oxford),	MacLaren.
Kennedy,	Foster,
Lemieux,	Haggart,
Oliver,	Northrup,
Carney,	Elson,
Gordon,	Macdonell,
Savoie,	Paquet,
Emmerson,	Maclean (York, S.),
Dyment,	Seagram,
McCool.	Fowler,
Brodeur,	Leonard,
Bickerdike,	Ganong,
Tobin,	Morin,
Sifton,	Pringle,
Guthrie,	Clare,
Hall,	Smith (Wentworth)
Adamson,	Marshall,
Caldwell,	Lalor,
Wright (Renfrew),	Perley,
Ratz,	Beattie,
Contnee,	Boyce,
Finlay,	White,
Grant,	Lewis,
Law,	Thompson,
Bureau.	Forget
Amendment negatived.


George Taylor: The hon. members for East -Hastings and LTslet have not voted.
Mr. PAQU-ET. I have paired with the hon. member for Rimouski (Mr. Ross). Otherwise, I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. NORTHRUP.: I have paired with the Minister of the Interior or I would have 1 voted for the amendment.


J8835 COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House went into Committee of Supply.
Progress reported.
Sir WILFRID LAURIER moved the adjournment of the House.
Robert Laird Borden: What business tomorrow ?


Wilfrid Laurier: Supply, Mounted Police, Civil Service, Railways and other like matters.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and the House adjourned at 2.32 a.m., Wednesday.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, May 20, 1908.