1908-06-04

QUESTIONS.


Mr.   SAM@: HUGHES-by Mr. J. D. Reid-asked :
1.	Is the government, or any member thereof, aware that the lockmaster at Fenelon Falls is keeping the waters of Cameron lake considerably higher than the legal datum point?'
2.	Is this action of the lockmaster done by authority of the Department of Railways and Canals ?
3.	Is it the intention of the government to reduce the waters to datum level?
4.	Will the government compensate land owners along the shores of Cameron lake for damages already done?
5.	Is it the purpose of the government to further purchase lands on that lake so as to raise the water still higher?


Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals') :: 1.	Owing to the unprecedented rainfall during the month of May the water is at present six feet ten inches on the lock-sill at Fenelon Falls ; two inches higher than it was at this time last year.
2.	The lockmaster's instructions are to the effect that as soon as the flow of water is normal the water is bo be held at six feet on the lock-sill at Fenelon Falls.
3.	The government proposes to hold the water at the usual level, viz.: six feet on the lock-sill.
4.	The government is not responsible for damage done by spring freshets and abnormal rainfall.
5.	At the present time the government does not intend to raise the water level at Fenelon Falls ; therefore the government does not require any additional lands adjacent to Cameron lake.


IMMIGRATION REGULATION AS APPLIED TO BRITISH SUBJECTS.
Mr. SAM. HUGHES asked :: 1.	Would a British subject, born in Great Britain, but having resided in South Africa since 1900, where he served in the war, be liable with his family for deportation from Canada in case he should ticket first from South Africa to Great Britain and then second, to Canada?
2.	Are residents of South Africa, being British subjects, but born in South Africa, liable to deportation from Canada; in case they came first to Great Britain and thence to Canada and on through ticket?
3.	Is the government aware that many such are desirous of coming to Canada via Great Britain, the usual steamer route, and after

remaining some weeks in Great Britain, come to this country?
4. Is such permissible under the Canadian regulations?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior) :: 1. and 2. No, not if otherwise admissible as an immigrant.
3.	No.
4.	Yes.


HOMESTEAD ENTRIES.
Mr. SCHAFFNER asked :: To whom were homestead entries granted for each of the four quarters of 10-17-17, west of the fourth meridian, and on what dates ?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior) :: N.E. i of section 10, township 17, range 17, west 4th meridian, Andrew T. Albertson, 18th June, 1907.
N.W. i 10-17-17, west 4th, Oscar F. Herrick, 18th June, 1907.
5.	E. i 10-17-17, west 4th meridian, Ronald R. j. Whittaker, 18th June, 1907.
S.W. i 10-17-17, west 4th meridian, Alfred R. Herrick, 18th June, 1907.
t/f.AD BOUNTIES.


Hon.  W. S.@: 
Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: Would the minister lay on the table of the House to-morrow a statement of such tenders as have been accepted ?


Mr. PTJGSLEY.: I could do it to-day if the hon. gentleman wishes but he had better leave it until tomorrow.



QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE-MR. J. D.

Mr. J. D. REID (Grenville).: I rise to a question of privilege. On my arrival here this morning I noticed in last night's issue of the ' Ottawa Free Press ' the following headings on an article :
A Conservative member of parliament got yacht repaired at country's expense.
Dr. Reid of Grenville has received favours from the Marine Department at Prescott- Merwin paid on the repairs to his tug Victor but Conservative member has not made good.
I want to say that this is absolutely untrue. So far as I am concerned the government works at Prescott never did any work on my yacht so far as I know that I have not paid for. I never used their men in any shape or form. But with the characteristic sense of honour of the lion. Minister of Marine and Fisheries


Sir WILFRID LATJRIER.: Order.


John Dowsley Reid: I withdraw it if it is out of order.


Wilfrid Laurier: It is an insinuation.


John Dowsley Reid: If it is an insinuation I withdraw it. I want to say that with the characteristic sense of honour of the hon. the Minister of Marine and Fisheries-

He said : His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the House.
Motion agreed to.



DREDGING CONTRACTS.

Robert Laird Borden: Before the orders of the day are called I ask the Minister of Public Works whether tenders have been accepted for dredging contracts and if so what are the contracts ?


William Pugsley: Tenders have been accepted for certain dredging in Ontario and Quebec.


Mr. SPEAKER.: Am I to understand that the hon. member rises to a question of privilege to explain something personal to himself ?


John Dowsley Reid: Exactly. This matter has been before the Public Accounts Committee for the last six weeks and I have urged the hon. member for Lunenburg who has charge of it


Mr. BRODEUR.: The hon. gentleman is referring to proceedings before the committee which have not been reported to the House.


Mr J D REID.: I asked that this matter be brought up and the Minister of Marine staved it off until I was not present.


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: I rise to a point of order, Mr. Speaker I have no objection to the hon. gentleman making a statement, but as he wishes to be offensive in his remarks I take the point that this matter is under investigation before the Public Accounts Committee and has been postponed until next week.


Robert Laird Borden: The hon. member for G-renville is referring to a statement in the public press.
Mr. ,T. D. REID. I am denying a statement in the public press. This matter will come up in the committee on Wednesday' next when I shall be present and I hope the Minister of Marine will be there too so that the question can be gone into thoroughly. In the meantime I state that I deny the whole matter absolutely.



SUPPLY-CALGARY TOWN SITE.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. FIELDING moved that the House go into Committee of Supply.
['We shall continue with the estimates of the Minister of the Interior, and later, if opportunity offers, we will take up those of the Minister of Railways and Canals.']
Mr.  M. S.@: McCarthy (Calgary). I desire to bring briefly to the attention of the House a question as to the disposition of certain government town sites in the new provinces of the west. The history of these government town sites so far as I can gather is that about the year 1882 the government and the Canadian Pacific Railway entered into a partnership and had joint town sites. Some years after the interest of the Canadian Pacific Railway in these town sites was relinquished to the government and the government have gone on transferring from time to time their interests in these town sites to the respective town and city corporations. For example, in the city of Regina the government town site consisted of four sections. A very small portion of this land was used by the city for city purposes and some years ago the government handed over to the city of Regina the balance of the town sites which were not then occupied. The same thing was done in the case of the city of Macleod. So far as I can understand this property was transferred to these corporations as a free gift and without requiring any money to be paid by the municipal corporation in each case The same applies to Moosejaw, to Qu'Ap-peile, and to Battleford. In the case of Regina this appears to have been a very handsome gift from the government. Some few years ago I saw it stated in the Manitoba 'Free Press' that up to that date the city of Regina had realized over $1,000,000 by the sale of this property. Now, I am not objecting that the government should transfer the interest they have in these town sites to the respective cities, but I would like to know from the government whether the transfer was a sale or a gift. I
Mr. J D RETD
My information is that the respective cities received this property as a gift from the government. I desire to point out to the Minister of the Interior especially that in the city of Calgary in section 14 there still remain in the hands of the government some sixty acres of these old town sites, and if similar property has been transferred to these other cities, then I urge upon the government and upon the Minister of the Interior that the sixty acres in section 14, township 24, range 1, west of 5th meridian, be handed over to the city of Calgary. I make that request on behalf of the city of Calgary. The government some years ago had a special survey made of this property and it was divided into villa lots. In 1902 another survey was made and it was divided into city lots. There are about 243 of these lots and the valuation placed upon them by a government official was from $50 to $250 each. I desire therefore to be informed by the government if they have surrendered their interest in the town sites to Regina, Macleod, Moosejaw, Qu'Appelle and Battleford, and on what terms ? If the land was given as a gift to these cities, I ask the government to grant my request to transfer to the city of Calgary the undisposed of government property in section 14. If the Minister of the Interior desires any further information from the view point I have of the matter I will be very glad to send it to him so as not to take up the time of the House now.


Frank Oliver: If the hon. gentleman wants the question properly considered it would be only fair that he should have given me notice that he was to bring it to the attention of the House and to ask a question. As he has not done so he will have to be content with such answer as I can make.


Mr. M. S. MCCARTHY.: I thought this matter was before the minister for some years and that applications had been made to the department with respect to it. On the 21st of January, 1907, I asked what property was still undisposed of and the minister answered as reported in ' Hansard ' : that the villa lots in section 14 remained with the government. Deputations from the city of Calgary have waited on the Minister of the Interior and a great deal of correspondence in reference to this question has passed between him and residents of Calgary.


Frank Oliver: I will not dispute that my hon. friend asked a question in January, nor shall I dispute the answer he got, nor am I going to dispute that possibly there is a large amount of correspondence in the department in regard to it. But I humbly submit that if the hon. gentleman wanted his question fairly considered to-



[Stage Direction]
day lie would have given me reasonable notice of his intention just as he had to give notice in January of the question he then asked. While this particular question is certainly of importance and requires attention, it is a recognized rule of the House that if an hon. member desires information, or to precipitate a discussion in regal'd to any matter he shall give notice of his intention so to do. I take it that my hon. friend is not anxious to get an answer to this particular question at this particular time. I can only say that so far as my memory goes the city of Calgary has not communicated with the department asking that these lots be handed over to tlie city. When the city does make such a request, it will receive every consideration at the hands of the department.

Robert Laird Borden: I would like to bring to the attention of my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals a communication which has been made to me this morning by a reputable person to the effect that the Intercolonial Railway employees in the county of Temiscouata are being coerced and intimidated to vote for the Liberal candidate in the provincial elections there against their will. This is not the first intimation we have had of federal activity in this election. I have already brought to the attention of the Prime Minister the use that has been made of the government steamer ' Champlain and while very plausible excuses have been made for the courses taken on two different occasions in the use of that steamer, it can nevertheless be proved that on one occasion Conservatives were refused admission to the steamer for the purpose of attending a political meeting, and that on another occasion it passed a point where there were a number of Conservatives, without calling and where a call would have been made in the usual course. The Minister of Railways and Canals gave me a very frank and satisfactory answer in regard to pressure which had been brought upon the Intercolonial Railway employees in the city of Halifax, and I would like him to take such steps as may be necessary to inform the employees of the Intercolonial in the county of Temiscouata or in any other county, whether in Quebec or anywhere else, that there is no authority for putting or attempting to put any pressure or coercion upon them, that every one of them is entitled to exercise his franchise according to his conscience and his opinion, and that in doing so be has no reason to arvprehend any unpleasant results to himself.


Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals').: Of course, the information given to the House is vague. I
can assure my hon. friend that so far as the Department of Railways and Canals is concerned, there is no foundation whatever even for the thought that there is any intervention in the provincial election, from a federal source. This is the first I have heard of it. I do not know who is using the influence or upon whom it is. being used. The only suggestion that is ever made from the department in regard to any election is that the management want to inform the employees that they are at perfect liberty to vote for whomsoever they like and to take part in an election as voters and enjoy their citizenship as any other citizens.


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: With regard to the statement concerning the 'Champlain,' I may be permitted to explain that some days ago we were asked to have the steamer make a trip from Murray bay to Baie St. Paul. We decided that there was no objection to that, provided that a certain deposit were made, in accordance with the rules of the department, and that a charge of I think 5 cents per mile was made to each passenger. I was surprised to hear that somebody was refused admission, because the trip was to be for every person who wished to take it.
I may say that after the statement was made in the House some days ago, I made inquiries as to whether or not any persons were refused admission, and the report made to me was to the effect that no person was refused admission. In view of the statement made by my hon. friend to-day,
I would ask him to be kind enough to give me the names of those who have complained in order that I may investigate the matter more fully.


Robert Laird Borden: I have not the names. The name of my informant, however. I may give to the minister. It is Mr. Rodolphe Forget, the member for Charlevoix.


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: The statement made by the agents at Quebec is that no person was refused admission. As to the other statement. that the * Champlain ' refused one morning to call at Ste. Ironoe. I may say that the wharf there is very hard to make in bad weather, and on that dm* the steamer was unable to go to the wharf, which is the reason it did not call. I do not know whether there was a meeting or not, but it is mentioned in the timetable that if that wharf cannot be made on any day oil account of bad weather, it will not be made. There was no intention on the part of the officers of the boat to prevent any person from going on board.


Robert Laird Borden: I give the facts exactly as they were given to me by the gentleman mentioned. who is my informant as to what took place on both occasions.


THE MILITIA CAMPS.
Robert Laird Borden: I would like to ask the Minister of Militia whether it is the intention to hold militia camps in June this year.


Hon.  W. S.@: I observed in ' Hansard ' the report of my hon. friend's question yesterday, and I asked the adjutant general to send me a memorandum this morning as to the present situation with regard to the camps. I am sorry to say I have not yet received that memorandum. However, I may say that it is our intention to hold the camps as usual. In one case, I forget which, the local militia desired to have a postponement, which of course was agreed to, because it is the rule to consult the convenience of the different regiments in the matter of holding the camps. In another case, that of Kingston, it was discovered that the water supply was doubtful, and therefore a postponement of that camp was ordered until we are thoroughly satisfied as to the condition of the water supply. With regard to another camp, that of Laprairie, a report has been received from the officer commanding in the province of Quebec that the ground at that place is largely covered with water owing to the fact that the St. Lawrence river is unusually high, and that it would be impossible to hold a camp there in the very near future ; so that there is a postponement there. Otherwise, so far as I know, there has been no postponement.


Mr. MacLAREN.: Can the minster say whether the Goderich camp on the lGth of June is likely to go on?


Sir FREDERICK BORDEN.: So far as I know, it is. I know nothing to the contrary.


Mr. LANCASTER.: Is the large camp at Niagara likely to go on?


Frederick William Borden: I have given all the information I have at present.
I hope to have the report of the adjutant general later in the day, and will give it to the House.


Robert Laird Borden: Perhaps the minister will be good enough then to give fuller information. Can he inform the House what the definite arrangements are as to the assembling of any considerable body of the militia at Quebec in July?


Frederick William Borden: I cannot give that information to-day; but arrangements are being made by General Otter with a view to having a very considerable number, a sufficient number of troops attend at Quebec and take part in the proceedings of the tercentenary celebration. I think I can make a definite announcement on Monday.


Robert Laird Borden: 


REPRESENTATION OF THE MARITIME PROVINCES.
Mr. J. W. DANIEL (St. John city).: Before you leave the chair, Mr. Speaker, to go into Committee of Supply, I wish to bring up the subject which I think of importance, more especially to the people of the maritime provinces. I refer to the subject of representation in the House of Commons. In speaking on this matter, I wish to refer more especially to the position in which the maritime provinces are to-day with regard to their representation in this House. This is a matter which has been up before this parliament on two or three occasions already. On each of these occasions it was very ably debated, but so far these debates have Dot been productive of a decision. The more I have looked into the matter, the more convinced I have become that grave injustice has been done the maritime provinces by the amendments which have been made to the original British North America Act, by reason of which the plan on which confederation was arranged was changed without the people of those provinces having been consulted or having had any opportunity to object. I might remind the House that before confederation this matter was up before the four provinces for a long time. It was discussed on all the public platforms of the country and was the basis on which those, both in favour of and opposed to the proposed plan of confederation, presented their views to the public. That controversy resulted in a certain charter or bond of union being adopted, but that bond has since been changed on two or three occasions without any opportunity having been given the maritime provinces either to object or assent to those changes. As a consequence the time has arrived when the people of those provinces are beginning to realize the position in which they now find themselves. They begin to realize that they are no longer under the bond of union under which they originally entered confederation. The terms of that bond having been changed, the maritime provinces are now liable to a decrease in their representation to which they would not have been liable had those changes not been made. Consequently they feel that they have been deceived and that they are suffering, through no fault or their own, from a grievance which this parliament should remove by seeing that the wrong is no longer permitted to exist. The matter is a serious one. There is no doubt that the feeling of unrest now prevailing will increase rather than diminish and finally develop into an agitation, the end of which uo one can possibly foresee.
As regards the campaign which resulted in our adoption of the British North America Act, I have taken some pains to look up that part of it relating to the province

of New Brunswick, and I find that at that time the question concerning which the greatest fighting took place was the question of representation in the House of Commons. It was on that question that the anti-eonifederates founded their strongest arguments and it was concerning it that the fierciest debating took place. In that connection I may say that the hon. the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) in a speech last session on this matter, rather took too much for granted when he said that the Quebec scheme had been adopted by the people of the maritime provinces. I think he hardly put that matter in an exactly fair position, and in order to be exact, I shall quote the words he used :
If we are, the moment the balance of representation, as determined by population shifts-if we are, the moment the representation of any particular province is consequently reduced, to have from that particular province a claim for the readjustment of the original terms of union, the principle of representation by population, which was solemnly adopted by the Quebec conference, is at once set aside. It is impossible that the terms of the union can be in that respect retained when upon such special and altogether unusual and unique circumstance, such as I have sought to describe, in the distant future with regard to Prince Edward Island, you are to have the whole terms of the Confederation Act set at nought and have everything left to further negotiation and determination between the parties.	,
I have two objections to make to that statement. The first is that the Quebec scheme was not adopted by our people as stated. The second is that in making our appeal for a readjustment of the original terms of the union, we say that these terms have not been acted up to and that on that ground we have the right to claim just treatment. No doubt the speech of the hon. minister was a very able one, but in my opinion he argued the case rather as a lawyer than a legislator ; and of course, with the law as it stands, we would have to go out of court. Both the Supreme Court and the Privy Council have given adverse decisions, but they gave them based on those amendments which were made to the original charter or bond of agreement and therefore did not adjuciate the case on its merits. With regard to the Quebec scheme, so far as the people of New Brunswick are concerned, the 'scheme was laid before the electors of that province in 1865 and was voted down by a very large majority. Afterwards in 1866, as II see by the ' Morning Telegraph ' of the 20th of March of that year, Mr. Smith, the Auditor General of the day-subsequently I believe the Hon. Albert J. Smith, Minister of Marine and Fisheries-said he would not vote for any scheme which involved the possibility of the interests of New Brunswick being swamped by the rest of Canada. On
the 22nd of that month the same hon. gentleman said :
I will go down in the ship rather than consent to representation by population as contained in the Quebec scheme, but I have no objection to supporting it, provided there is a check furnished in the upper House or otherwise which will serve to protect the interests of New Brunswick.
Subsequently in its report of a public meeting held in the city of St. John, when there was a general election pending and when this subject was of course the principal one under discussion, the 1 Morning Telegraph,' in its issue of the 21st of April, said :
The Hon. Peter Mitchell at last night's public meeting said the government would not insist on the Quebec scheme of confederation, they would accept such improvements as could be had, and would be willing to allow delegates chosen from both political parties, to go as delegates to the British government to urge such changes and alterations as might meet with the views of the maritime provinces.
All these statements, taken in connection with the fact that the Quebec scheme, as such, was absolutely defeated at the polls, go to show that the people of New Brunswick, at all events, did not accept the Quebec scheme as a basis under which they would join the confederation. The legislature of New Brunswick, on June 26, following, had the suggestion which Hon. Peter Mitchell had made, and which I have just read and passed the following resolution :
Resolved, that an humble address be presented to His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor praying that His Excellency will be pleased to appoint delegates to unite with delegates from the other provinces in arranging with the Imperial government for the union of British North America

	[DOT]
Not on the Quebec scheme, but
-upon such terms as will secure the just rights and interests of New Brunswick accompanied with provision for the immediate construction of the Intercolonial Railway. Each province to have an equal voice in such delegation. Upper and Lower Canada to be considered as separate provinces.
I believe that an almost identical resolution was passed by the province of Nova Scotia, with the exception that the Nova Scotia resolution made no reference to the immediate construction of the Intercolonial Railway. Now, the result of all this was the meeting of delegates at London in the conference which is known as the London conference. At that conference certain terms of union were drafted which were afterwards crystallized into law in the form of the British North America Act of 1867.
I do not wish to endeavour to make anything of a legal argument, but it will be necessary for me to refer to one or two sections of the British North America Act

province of Quebec in the year 1871. Our own publications showed that the area of the province of Quebec, as understood and printed on the maps, authorized and acknowledged as being correct, was bounded on the north by the height of land to which I have alluded. The result of this added territory must certainly, without the shadow of a doubt, have a very serious effect upon the representation of this country. It must necessarily enlarge the unit of representation. What is the country that has been added to the province of Quebec ? It is this large country about which we heard a great deal at the time the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Bill was before this House. We were told that we had mountains of information with regard to that country. I dio not know how much information there really was, but I do understand that the information that is gradually coming to the front, as explorers and surveyors are making their way through there, leads us to believe that a large part of it will be capable of supporting a large population and that there is a large quantity of good agricultural land in it. We also know that from the Abitibi region we have had reports of large mineral wealth, and it is also right that we should take into consideration the fact that in the near future the addition of this enormous area, will have a very decided effect upon the unit of representation. I think that the area of Quebec, by the census of 1871, was 193,555 square miles, and that by the addition to the area which was made by the Act passed in 1898 it became a region of over 351,000 square miles. If, as some state, this country is sterile, what justification have this government and this parliament to go through that enormous area and spend millions and millions of money to build a railway ? I take it that was not the idea of those who devised and carried out the building of this railway, that it was not thought that it was a sterile country but that it was a country worth opening up, developing an,di anaking the home of a' large population. What will be the result if that expectation is realized? All we can look forward to is that the unit of representation which is now about 25,000 will in the comparatively near future increase to as much as 50,000 or 60,000- or even more. What will be the result of that ? The result will be that Prince Edward Island would have one representative and perhaps none at all. and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick might have one, two or three ; practically we would be reduced to the condition of taxation without representation, and I think I need hardly remind you that the people of this country will not submit to such a position ; that is to be free to subscribe to all the expenditure that is necessary to build the public works of the Dominion and support the government of the1' country, but not to be free to have a word to say as to how these public works 1 Mr. DANIEL.
are to be built or as to how this expenditure is to be met. The Minister of Justice, in his speech last year, argued that because New Brunswick and Nova Scotia did not formally protest when their representation was reduced, therefore, they considered that they were being treated according to the bond. At page 2168 of * Hansard ' he stated :
During these years, if there had been foundation for it in the understanding of those who entered the union, there is little doubt that protest and objection would then have been taken, but there was none.
I submit that the inference that the Minister of Justice drew in that statement is not fair or correct, and that the people of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had no reason whatever to suppose that if they had made such a protest it would have been heeded. As a proof of that statement I might remind the House that in 1905, New Brunswick did protest against the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan being put into the British North America Act so that the Act would apply to them in the same way as if they had been part olf the original confederation. Was that protest heeded ? No, Sir, no result followed from that protest at all, no heed was given to it and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were placed under the British North America Act as though they had been part of the original confederation.
Now, Sir, the matter of this New Brunswick protest is a somewhat important -matter and I am going to bring it to the notice of the House. The matter was considered so important that it was referred to in the speech from the Throne and I am going to read the resolution which was brought in by the then premier, Mr. Tweedie, who is now the governor of the province, and I am going to read a few of the remarks which were made by those -who spoke on that occasion. I will first give the resolution as it appears in the New Brunswick assembly debates of 1905. The resolution is as follows :
Whereas the Judicial Committee of the Provincial Council in its recent decision on the appeal in the representation ease, left undecided the question whether in computing the population of Canada, under subsection 4 of section 51 of the British North America Act the population of the territories should be included, and
Whereas, in the Imperial order in council providing for the admission of British Columbia as a province of Canada, and by the statute which created the province of Manitoba it was provided that the British North America Act, 1867, should apply to them, as if they had formed part of the confederacy as originally constituted, whereby the contention of the government of this province that in construing subsection 4 of section 51 of said Act the words ' population of Canada ' mean the population of the four original provinces was greatly and justly prejudiced, and
JlTtfE 4, 1908
Whereas, the northern boundary of the province of Quebec at confederation was shown on the authorized maps, and was understood, and recognized to be the height of land between the waters flowing into the River St. Lawrence, and those flowing into Hudson bay, and
Whereas, the parliament of Canada did by the Act 61 Vic., chapter 3, enlarge the limits of the said province of Quebec by the addition to it of a large area to the northward (the area at that time being 193,355 square miles), thereby increasing the territory of said province to 351,873 square miles, an increase of 158,518 square miles, and
Whereas such Act was passed under the authority of the imperial statute, being the British North America Act, 1871, which declares that the parliament of Canada may from time to time, with the consent of the legislature of any province, increase, diminish or otherwise alter the limits of such province, upon such terms and conditions as may be agreed to by the said legislature and may, with the like consent, make provision respecting the effect and operation of any such increase or diminution or alteration of territory in relation to any province affected thereby, therefore it is resolved,
1st. That in the opinion of this House, the earnest attention of the government of Cam ada should be drawn to the effect of said order in council, and statute respectively, relat-[DOT] ing to the admission to the union of British Columbia and Manitoba, and it should be requested to take such action as may be necessary in order to restore the four original provinces to the position in which they would have been, but for order in council and legislation passed subsequently to the British North America Act, 1867, in respect to which such provinces were not consulted, and to which they were not parties.
2nd. That in the Act for the creation of the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan it should not be provided that the British North America Act shall supply to them as if they were in the union originally and the rights of the original provinces as to representation should not be affected by the creation of such new provinces.
3rd. That in justice to the other provinces, particularly New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, which have no opportunity for enlargement of their areas, it should have been provided, and should now be provided that for the purposes of representation the boundaries of the province of Quebec, the population of which is the basis of representation, should be deemed to be as they were at the time of confederation, ot that some just and equitable provision should be made to save the other original provinces, and also Prince Edward Island, from loss of representation; and further.
Resolved, that a copv of the foregoing resolution signed bv the Clerk of this House, be forwarded to the 'Secretary of State, with the request that the same be laid before His Excellency the Governor Geneial, and that a copy be also forwarded to the Right Hon. Sii Wilfrid Laurier.
There was a protest entered by a province of this Dominion against the continuance of this injustice to the maritime provinces and yet notwithstanding the opinion of the Minister of Justice that protest was unheeded and the grievance unredressed.
I may say that the Hon. Mr. Tweedie on that occasion made a very strong speech in support of the motion and he referred among other things to the lack of interest in provincial matters which is sometimes taken by former members of the local legislatures who happen to be transferred to the higher sphere of the Dominion parliament. He said :
I feel that this is a question which should be discussed by the members on both sides of the House, in the fullest manner and with the single eye to the interests of the province. It is worthy of note that sometimes gentlemen who are very heartily in favour of provincial rights when members of the provincial legislature, become strangely indifferent to them, when they go to Ottawa. I remember that Messrs. Fielding and Blair were very prominent in urging the rights of the maritime provinces at Quebec conference, in 1887, but when they got to the larger field they apparently forgot that they were pledged to support these interests.
Further he said :
At the time of confederation Quebec had certain well defined boundaries. According to the census of 1871 it had an area of 193,555 square miles. Quebec is the province by which the representation of the other provinces is regulated. In 1898 an Act was passed which extended the boundaries of Quebec so that it contained 351,000 square miles in addition of 158,000 square miles to its territory. This territorv thus added to Quebec is that through which the Grand Trunk Pacific will pass and which we may expect to become populous in the future. The result will be to diminish our representation in a way never contemplated by the British North America Act.
During the debate the then Attorney General of New Brunswick, now the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley), who repre-| sented the province before the Supreme | Court and also before the Privy Council in the matter, supported the resolution strongly and used this language :
I have never entertained the slightest doubt that the fathers of confederation in framing their scheme of representation intended that it should be confined to the four original provinces of Canada, and that if other provinces were admitted it should be on terms. In that view I was fortified by the statement of one of the greatest statesmen of Canada, who was himself one of the fathers of confederation, and .who took a leading part in bringing it about. I refer to the late Sir John A. Macdonald who in his report of the 29th December, 1870, on the admission of the Northwest Territory, said :
' The general purview of the British North America Act of 1867 seems to be sufficient to the four provinces, Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, originally forming the Dominion.

Again lie said :
When British Columbia was admitted into the union it was stipulated that her representation should be increased under the terms of the British North America Act, and that this Act should apply as if she had been one of the original provinces of confederation, the same thing was done with respect to Manitoba. Now what has been the effect of this? It is that you must construe the British North America Act as if these provinces had been in the union in 1867.
I call the attention of the House to these words of the Minister of Public Works :
If that is so. the compact of confederation has been violated by legislation and by order in council without our being consulted. Surely the authorities at Ottawa should see that this wrong is remedied.
If the population of the territories and of British Columbia had been excluded, New Brunswick would not have lost a representative.
Later during the debate Mr. Pugsley said:
Some may say it will be difficult to have the wrong done us righted, but I think that it can be. I have faith in sense of justice of those administering the affairs of the Dominion.
Later on, in concluding his speech, he said :
I can only repeat what I said yesterday that the province of New Brunswick entered into confederation with a Quebec with certain defined boundaries, and that it was never contemplated that a Quebec should be created double the size of the original province. Yet Quebec is the pivotal province upon which the representation of this province depends. I feel that they have done us a great wrong, yet I do not despair but that when the matter is brought to the notice of government and the parliament, some steps will be taken to see that this injustice is not continued.
These are the words of the Attorney General of the province of New Brunswick at that time, and now the hon. gentleman sits in this House as Minister of Public Works, and has an opportunity, which I hope he will put Into effect, of urging these views for adoption by the government oif which he is a member. He has the whole matter thoroughly well grounded In his mind, and he is now in a position, I think, to force these views on this government with some hope of ultimate success. He knows as well as I do that this matter is growing in intensity of interest in the maritime provinces, and that unless it is satisfactorily adjudicated upon at an early day there1wiil come a time when it will probably be more difficult of satisfactory adjustment. In the assembly of New Brunswick there were no two opinions on either side of the House in regard to this matter. The leader of the opposition at that time, Mr. Hazen, supported the stand taken by the government. Among other things he said :


John Waterhouse Daniel: I do not expect to be able to add anything to the arguments that have been advanced, but I think that it is extremely desirable in a matter of this importance that we should not give more perfunctory assent to the resolution, but should show our sympathy with it. I say this on behalf of myself and the other gentlemen on this side of the House of whom I am the leader.
Further on he said :
I sympathize entirely with the position taken by the members of the government with respect to this resolution, and I desire to say this emphatically so that it will not be possible for any one to say that there was a dissenting voire in this legislature.
So that it was not a party question at all. Mr. Hazen said further :
It cannot be successfully contended that we have not been affected by the increase of Quebec. If the attention of parliament is now called to the matter and to their right to legislate, it seems to me that any government should be willing to apply a remedy as it can be done under the provisions of the Imperial Act of 1871.
In conclusion he said:
In conclusion I may say that I sincerely trust that some practical good will come out of this discussion, and it will give myself and my colleagues on this side of the House great pleasure to strengthen the hands of the government in this matter.
Several other members spoke on the subject, but I will refer to only one more. The Hon. Mr. Hill, after going into the history of the confederation campaign, said :
What will be our condition if the reduction in our representation continues as we fear it may? It will mean taxation without representation. We, as Anglo-Saxons, and as the descendants of those who fought for responsible government, will never submit to that. If it should ever come to pass that we have to contribute to the vast expenditure to build up the west, and we with little or no influence in the councils of the country, if we find our importance buried under a swarm of Doukho-bors, Galicians and Russian Jews, all of whom count in the census we may have to turn to the big brother to the south of us.
Later on he said :
It is not safe to conclude because the sky is cloudless to-day, that we will have no more storms. The United States were lost to Great Britain because the people of these colonies were denied representation in the parliaments of the country. So may it be if our people find our representation gone, and our influence nil in this confederation and our people may find it necessary to look to the great nation to the south.
The short extracts which I have made from the speeches delivered in that debate make it abundantly clear that the whole legislature of New Brunswick, and we might naturally consider that that would mean the whole people of the province,

were extremely Interested in this question and considered it a really vital question, and such it is, as is becoming more evident as the days go on. It is said that there is a remedy for every wrong. If that is true in this ease, how can that remedy be obtained? There is no use of oui; going to the courts. The courts have already decided against us, not on what we consider our claim, but on an amended Act to which we never gave our consent and on which we were never consulted. So that it is not to the courts of law that we must go, but to the parliament of Canada, where not only Acts of parliament, but the equity and justice of the case as well may be considered, and it is on the equity of the case, on the fact that the people of the maritime provinces have not had fair play, in so far as the legislation of the imperial parliament is concerned, but that these British North America Acts have been altered and changed to our disadvantage and without our being consulted that we base our claim. Therefore, it is that we come to this parliament asking for relief, and I feel satisfied in my own mind that that relief must come at some time in the near future from this or some other parliament. On the 13th of February last, I placed on the Order Paper the following resolution :
That in the opinion of this House it is expedient to amend the terms of the British North America Act, 1867, relating to the representation of the several provinces of Canada in the Jlouse of Commons, so as to provide that the number of representatives of any province shall not at any time be reduced below that which was assigned to it when it entered the union.
It is not my intention to move this resolution to-day, as the House is small, a great many of the members, especially from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec being absent. But I would offer the idea contained in this resolution as an equitable means of settling this trouble-a means which would take away the grievance which the lower provinces have at present, due to the fact that the bond of union has been broken without their consent. The carrying out of such an idea could not, I think, meet with any objection, from the provinces of British Columbia or the prairie provinces, or Ontario, and I cannot see any reason why any objection should come from them. In any event, I offer the suggestion as one way by which the wrong from which we claim we are suffering will be righted. The idea is not a new one. When British Columbia entered confederation, she entered it on the condition that although her representation might be increased, it could not be decreased. That provision of the law which was made in favour of British Columbia we ask should be applied also to the other provinces. I understand that it applies also to the Commonwealth of Australia, so that in applying it to the other provinces of con-311
federation, we would be doing no violence whatever to historic precedent.
There is one more point I wish to make. The Act of 1871 authorizes the parliament of Canada to increase the boundaries of the various provinces under mutually agreeable circumstances, on condition that when that is done any of the provinces which might be affected thereby-and that is a very important provision-should be given redress. That is a provision which this parliament did not act up to when it enlarged the boundaries of Quebec; and there can be no doubt that it would be utterly impossible to make any objection to the statement that when the boundaries of Quebec were enlarged, every other province was affected thereby. That section read as follows :
The parliament of Canada may from time to time, with the consent of the legislature of any province of the said Dominion, increase diminish or otherwise alter the limits of such province, upon such terms and conditions as may be agreed by the said legislature, and may, with the like consent make provision respecting the efiect and operation of any such increase or diminution or alteration of territory in relation to any province affected thereby-
So that the parliament of Canada is given authority, under the Act of 1871, to make such arrangements in connection with the other provinces as would do away with any injustice will be more vividly brought to the minds and knowledge of the people in the near future than it is at the present.
I shall say no more on this subject at present. I think it is one which this parliament should take into its most serious consideration. The people of the maritime provinces are becoming awake more and more every year to the seriousness of the condition in which they are as regards their representation. These provinces have no possible means of expanding or extending their boundaries. The province of Prince Edward Island is entirely surrounded by water. The provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are surrounded by water on three sides, namely, by the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on, the other side by the province of Quebec and the State of Maine. There is therefore no possible chance for us to enlarge our boundaries, so that we are in the position of having to fight for what we believe to be our own; and I have not the slightest doubt that that aspect of the case will appeal to the people of the lower provinces, and that they will become more and more united on this subject, with the result that some day, unless this great grievance be rectified, it will be the rallying point around which the people of these provinces will act together and so present a united and strong front to this parliament, which appears to be at present necessary in order



to cause this parliament to make that change for which we are appealing and which it is only just and right we should obtain.


Mr.   O.@: TtTRGEON (Gloucester). Although the remarks made by my hon. friend from the city of St. John (Mr. Daniel) bear on a question which is undoubtedly of great interest to the people of the province from which I come, I regret that he has chosen a time to bring that question forward when public opinion is concentrated on matters of more practical and immediate usefulness. The question is an academic one to-day and may not appeal to the people as urgently perhaps as the hon. gentleman desires. In the meantime, although my hon. friend has cited elaborate documents in support of his contention, I deem it my duty to declare that, although I come from the same province, I am not in accord with the request made by him. It is possible that I may have to meet the censure of many of my colleagues from the province of New Brunswick as well as the other maritime provinces for the stand I take; but as I am well known, in my own province at least, for having always had the courage of my convictions, I consider that on this occasion I am bound to give publicity to the convictions I have entertained for a lifetime and which I have lost no occasion to make' known to the people of the constituency I have the honour to represent and its immediate surroundings.
In opposing any change in our constitution to-day, if I am wrong it is due to an excessive administration of the constitution of the British North America Act. I do not see why any one Canadian to-day should entertain other than an unmeasured admiration for the constitution we have enjoyed for the past forty years. The stand I take is due to the great confidence I have in the resources, wealth, capabilities and possibilities of the maritime provinces which, I am confident, will one day experience an industrial revival and take a leading place in the Dominion. When that day comes, and it is not far distant, I am convinced that the maritime provinces will acquire all the representaton we have lost during the first years of confederation. That we have lost any measure of representation is not due to any defect in the constitution but rather, let us frankly admit, to the lack of energy which the maritime provinces have shown in their own development. The time has come when we should stand together, not so much to look to the precise interpretation to be given to the statute, but to work together as one man for the development of our resources and the improvement of our means of transportation, which will give us the wealth and population that we lack today. I may, however, claim also that I am not altogether alone in the maritime provinces, and especially in New Brunswick, in entertaining the idea that we should stand Mr. DANIEL.
by the Act of Confederation. I know a good many old statesmen and old journalists in New Brunswick, men who have given to their country the best years of their lives, who to-day share my views; and I am sure I have their sympathy when I voice their patriotic warning to the people of the smaller provinces, of the smaller bodies in the confederation to be careful how they depart from the terms of the British North America Act.
Confederation was reached only through great mutual concessions. The hon. member for St. John city (Mr. Daniel) has stated, with due appreciation of their importance, the aspirations that were entertained by the leaders of the people at that time. But every province made its share of concessions, moderating its own claims and merging its local aspirations in those of the wrhole of British America ; and each province received in return privileges which should fairly and equitably balance her rights and interests when weighed in the great national scale of the Dominion. The happiness and permanency of the new-born nation was the common desire which led to the concessions of local interests and made the union possible, and towards which every constructive element was set in motion. Our representation is not only the representation in this House, though it was upon this subject that such strong contentions were put forward at the Quebec conference and at the Charlottetown conference, as well as at the London conference, their proposal of representation by population as a condition sine qua non of union. The people of the maritime provinces, on the other hand, brought under consideration the Intercolonial Railway as a condition sine qua non of union. While it was arrived at that there should be representation by population in this House, and that the construction of the Intercolonial Railway should be carried through, the fathers of confederation looked to further protection for the people of the smaller provinces and provided for that protection by permanent and equal representation in the upper chamber of this parliament of Canada. I claim that to-day the representation of the Canadian people is not merely the representation in the House of Commons, or the representation in the Senate, but the aggregate representation in these two chambers, which together form the parliament of Canada. Our representation in these two Houses are so closely allied that you cannot change one without changing the other ; you cannot destroy one without destroying the other. The texture of our parliamentary representation is so closely interwoven, so intimately united, that if you break even one of its filaments the whole fabric falls in shreds. The representation in this House was a question well understood and well discussed in the maritime provinces, not less in New Brunswick than in

either of the others. It was because of the expected future development of the west and Increase of its population that the people of the province of New Brunswick, as well as those of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, hesitated to enter into confederation. The only means by which that hesitation was overcome was the provision of permanent equal representation in the Senate. I do not mean to say that the Senate was established for the purpose of giving the smaller portion of the Dominion that representation ; but it was found that the only means of counterbalancing, as we may say, the position of the weaker provinces in this parliament would be by giving them further security in the upper chamber, which security was granted at that time. Myhon. friend from the city of St. John has claimed that the people -were taken by surprise, that they were not aware of what was to take place, that they did not know the position in which the maritime provinces would find themselves after confederation. He has cited as authorities men like the late Sir Albert Smith, who had been an opponent of confederation, to show that the people of New Brunswick were not in accord with the system of representation by population in this House, I might claim that this same Sir Albert Smith became 'one of the most ardent champions of the constitution from the moment that constitution was adopted by the people of Canada, and that he is on record as having held as sacred the very principle of representation by population in this House, even though the representation of his own province was put on a small minority. I might also show that no greater advocate of the present constitution ever arose in New Brunswick than another who had also opposed that constitution before it was proclaimed, Hon. Timothy Warren Anglin, who was first representative in this House of the constituency which I have the honour to represent to-day. It is true that British Columbia was admitted to confederation under a statute by which it was provided that she should not suffer from change in the proportion of population. It may also be placed in contradiction to the position of Prince Edward Island, which came in the next year, but under a statute by which her representation was to be subject to the spirit of the clause of the British North America Act in every point. The introduction of British Columbia into the confederation under a statute by which her representation was not to be decreased, was precisely the fact which awakened Canadian opinion, I might say, to the necessity of holding firm to the principle of representation by population.
At one o'clock, House took recess.
House resumed at three o'clock.


Mr. TURGEON.: Mr. Speaker, before recess I was endeavouring to show the con-311i
sensus of opinion which existed at the time of confederation in the maritime provinces as well as in the older provinces when it was proposed that the principle of representation by population should be accepted by the people of New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces provided that equal representation should be given to the maritime provinces in the upper chamber of the parliament of Canada. I have only to refer to the discussion which took place at the time, and which is concisely reported in Pope's confederation documents to find that it was always the aim of the ' fathers of confederation ' to give all due protection to the people of New Brunswick and the maritime provinces. While the people of New Brunswick, of the maritime provinces and the other provinces, as well as the fathers of confederation, were anxious to reach a con-pletion of the negotiations leading up to confederation, while they were even anxious to consummate the idea of securing the construction of the Intercolonial Railway, which would bind the maritime provinces to the provinces of the west, Sir Leonard Tilley himself would have gone back to his province without the Intercolonial Railway if he had not had the assurance that the people would get fair representation under the system of representation by population, if not by equal representation in the House of Commons, at least by the permanency of the representation which would be given them in the upper chamber of this parliament. You will find that Sir John Macdonald, in addressing the delegates from the provinces who were met together at Quebec, said :
In order to have no local jealousies and all things conciliatory, there should be a different system in the two chambers. With the Queen as our sovereign, we should have an upper and a lower House. In the former the principle of equality should obtain. In the lower House the basis of representation should he population, not by universal suffrage, but according to the principles of the British constitution. In the upper House there should be equality in number. The population of Upper Canada is 1,400,000, Lower Canada, 1,200,000, Lower provinces, 750,000. The rate of increase of population in Canada must be greater in future than in the maritime provinces. We considered at Charlottetown that Upper Canada should have twenty members, Lower Canada twenty and the maritime provinces twenty. If not politically united they should still have the same aggregate representation.
You see by that statement that in order to counterbalance the representation of other provinces in the confederation it was proposed that equal privileges should be granted to the people of the maritime provinces in the Upper House. 'We find that Sir Charles Tupper, the most influential representative of the people of his province

at the time, said in the discussion which took place in London :
In the maritime provinces we felt that the great preponderance of Canada could only be guarded against by equal representation in the legislative council.
There was no doubt that the people of the maritime provinces at that time were aware, as we are to-day, that there would be a great preponderance of influence in the west in the future by reason of the immense increase in the population which was bound to take place. It is owing to such an apprehension that the people of the maritime provinces were reluctant for a while to accept the terms offered them by the people of the western provinces. But from the moment that confederation was un fait accompli the very same men who had taken objection to the system of representation by population, who had objected to the terms of confederation, immediately lent their patriotic assistance to the movement in order that every thing might proceed smoothly towards a recognition of the status in which the people have been placed. Our people who are moving for a change in the constitution have always been pleased to quote what has taken place in British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. British Columbia, it is true, was admitted into confederation later on with a fixed representation of six members but that representation was increased under the provisions of the British North America Act. At the same time while we might say that the introduction of British Columbia was against the terms and spirit of the constitution at the time, we see a good deal of difference between the terms upon which British Columbia, with its large territory and immense resources, was admitted and the terms upon which the small province of Prince Edward Island, with a confined area and with less possibilities for the further, was admitted. The fathers of the confederation had determined that the maritime provinces together would have the same permanent representation in the Senate as the provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
The provinces of Quebec and Ontario were given a representation of twenty-four members in the Senate while the maritime provinces with a much smaller population were also allotted twenty-four senators and it was agreed that out of these twenty-four senators when Prince Edward Island entered confederation she should have four of the number. In 1872 British Columbia came into confederation and that province with her great territory and Immense resources was only given three senators, which shows conclusively that the fathers of confederation always maintained proportionate representation in the Senate as protection for the smaller provinces. British
Mr. TTJiRGEON.
Columbia with a large territory and great resources was bound to increase in population, and the terms of her union provided that her representation in the Commons was not to be diminished. When the British Columbia Act of union was submitted to the House the representatives from New Brunswick and others who had been urging before the people their apprehension as to the representation of the smaller provinces when other members entered the confederation, pointed out this danger in parliament. The Hon. T. W. Anglin, the first representative in this House of the constituency which I now have the honour to represent, and who through his position in the legislature as representing St. John, and who through his great newspaper the St. John ' Freeman ' wielded immense influence throughout the maritime provinces and in New Brunswick especially : he was the first to protest against the admission of British Columbia on the basis of a representation of members already existing. He said as reported in the debates of 1871 :
He would not object to the admission of British Columbia to confederation were not the fundamental principle of the constitution trampled upon in the matter of representation.
In the opinion of Mr. Anglin the representation of British Columbia should have been made subject to the constitution as found in the British North America Act. Sir Albert Smith who then represented Wrestmoreland in this House took exception on the same point and he said : -
There were two very important considerations and one of them was that there was a great departure from the principle of the constitution in the matter of representation.


Sir A.   T.@: Galt, who had been one of the leading fathers of confederation said :
He depreciated interference with one of the principles of our constitution, namely, representation by population, by this resolution. He indicated the evils of admitting colonies or territories on the footing of present members of the confederation.
While the statute admitted British Columbia with a representation which was not to be decreased, that conclusion was arrived at by the members of the government no doubt owing to the great possibilities of that province and the certainty that its population would continue to increase. However, the representatives of the maritime provinces and of New Brunswick declared themselves against the introduction of British Columbia under such conditions. When in the following year the smaller province of Prince Edward Island was admitted to confederation we find that she was submitted to the conditions of the British North America Act even in her representation in this House of Commons. A few years before Prince Edward Island had

refused to come into confederation under tliat system of representation, but time had wrought a change in public opinion and at the time of the union they were willing to enter under such terms, a condition which was no doubt rendered necessary by the opposition of the leading representatives of New Brunswick and the maritime provinces when the year before British Columbia had been admitted on the basis of representation of present members. If we are now to endeavour to change the representation of the smaller provinces in the House of Commons, would we not put ourselves in a position to lose that permanency and that equality and that protection which we enjoy to-day in our representation in the Senate. If to-day we are to endeavour to change our representation in this House may it not be that the members from western Canada would endeavour to change the representation which we enjoy in the Senate.
If we insist that in this House our representation shall be based on an electoral unit of 17,000 or 18,000 instead of 25,000, which is the present unit, and which in the future may be 35,000, then it may be that the people of the west would come to the conclusion that we have lost our right to protection in the Senate, and the maritime provinces would, therefore, be in no better position so far as protection in the parliament of Canada is concerned than they are to-day. If to-day we ask the people of the west to extend their sympathy to us so as to give us what we have lost naturally under the terms of confederation, we may open an adverse current of opinion in the larger provinces which may place us in a worse position than we are in by the'loss-of representation which we have suffered. I claim, Mr. Speaker, that we should stand by the constitution. The constitution should be the guide of our patriotism; we should cling to it as to our only plank of salvation. "We have stood by the constitution in the past. We in New Brunswick, the minority in New Brunswick especially, have stood by the constitution ; we have suffered in years gone by for the constitution and in our very sufferings we have learned to admire, to love and to cherish it. We have appealed to the constitution in other moments of danger when provincial rights were assailed; we appealed to the constitution not very long ago when we formed new provinces in the west; we have stood upon the rock of the constitution, and to-day we should place our feet firmly upon that rock; we should maintain and preserve intact the British North America Act and allow time to so harden the mortar and the cement that the materials may cohere and combine to resist all attempts at changes out of a mere spirit of novelty.	, , ^	_
Stability is better than uncertainty. We are building a great nation. We have since
confederation made Canada a great nation under the present constitution. We have gone ahead in progress and prosperity at a greater rate than any other nation of the world. Our constitution as it exists has created a national sentiment all over the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We want stability to-day more than ever. We are inviting people to come and settle on our fertile plains, to develop our resources. We are inviting them from the British Isles, from the continent of Europe, from the United States, whence they come as fast as steam power can bring them. We want to create a nation which will remain a Canadian nation. We cannot tell after all, what the aspirations of those people may be. They may be varied ; their desires may be excessive ; they may possibly not recognize limitations. We should let people know, as they come and before they come, that Canada is ruled by a stable and inviolate constitution which will for ail time resist attacks not warranted by wisdom or by circumstances. We should certainly put ourselves in a position to withstand in the future every attempt to change the constitution. As I said, in the few words with which I opened my remarks, if I am in error in opposing any change in the constitution which might for the moment appear to be of benefit to my province, I say that a temporary good in the destinies of a nation, especially a nation yet in its formative state, with tendencies to disunion or disturbance, is implicitly a wrong. Therefore I say that we should stand by the terms of our-constitution which is an object of admiration to
other nations.
On every occasion that this subject has been brought before the House, I have heard members from different provinces, more particularly the province from which I come, quote from the constitutions of other countries which would seem to commend themselves to their judgment. I do not see why we should not recognize as much of wisdom, as much of intelligence, as much of patriotism in the constitution of Canada, which was framed by a number of men assembled together at a moment when they were moved by the loftiest possible patriotism-a constitution which has been the admiration of other people, and which should be our admiration every day of the year. I regret as deeply as my hon. friend from St. John the loss by the province of New Brunswick of two or three representatives in this House. But would he and his friends think that the provinces by the sea would be more secure in the future, with two or three more representatives in this House, which is bound before the end of the century to have 300 or 350 members, if the people of the west should at that time claim some larger representation for their provinces in the House or in the

Senate? I have always been opposed to these changes in the constitution.
My hon. .'rend this morning made allusion to the position taken by the New Brunswick legislature some three or four years ago, in asking that some steps should be taken to have this wrong, as they called it, righted. The contention of the legislature at the time was, not that we should have 'a new constitution, but that the Dominion of Canada meant, so far as representation in the House of Commons was concerned, only the four original provinces which came into confederation. For my part, believing as I do that Canada should be compared in its origin to a growing tree. Canada meant the provinces that came in at the time of confederation together witli all the territory that was to come in afterwards. It was not the Act of the smaller provinces of the east alone ; it was the Act of British North America in toto. The courts have decided that the word Canada did not mean only the four original provinces, .but all the provinces that have come in or that may come in in the future. Therefore that agitation has ceased, as the Privy Council has declared that the contention of the provinces could not be sustained.
I have full confidence that the maritime provinces are able to hold their own in this great confederation, in the development that we must expect in our resources, not merely the resources of the sea, which are inexhaustible, not merely the resources of the forest, which are great and powerful, not merdly the resources of the soil, which are immense, but the resources of the undersoil, the resources of coal and iron, which have proved, in recent discoveries, to be the very richest in North America. The development of these resources is bound to bring population and capital to this country. I repeat that if the maritime provinces have lost representation in this House since confederation, it is not so much due to the constitution as it is due to our own lack of energy in the development of our resources.
I place no restriction upon the possibilities of development in the maritime provinces. We have not perhaps made the same efforts for the development of our resources and the keeping of our children at home as have been made in the west. But a new era has begun, our young children have been taught to see their opportunities at home, and I have no doubt that our population will soon reach the point it ought to have reached before now, and we will then be entitled to a larger representation in this House. It is a fact which I am sorry to mention, but which is unquestionable, that since confederation until the last census two-thirds of our young men left our territory. Of late, however, we have been developing our own resources, our young men are finding more attractions at home, our


Onésiphore Turgeon: population is beginning to increase, and in a few years we shall be in a position to recover our loss of I'epresentation. It is better for the representatives of New Brunswick to encourage a movement in that direction, to excite the patriotism of our young people, and induce them to remain at home and give the benefit of their labours to their own country instead of to a foreign land. If we have not made greater advance, the blame rests with ourselves, and I take my share of the responsibility. But if any efforts of mine in the district where I live have had the result of inducing our people to remain at home, if they have been the means of preventing some families from emigrating to the republic to the south, I think I have accomplished some good for my country. The present rate of emigration into the western provinces cannot continue, and I have no doubt that the maritime provinces, as their population increases, will be able not only to keep their present representation, but regain what they have lost. Let me, in this connection, draw attention to the fourth subsection of section 51 of the British North America Act, which provides :
On any such readjustment the number of members for a province shall not be reduced unless the proportion which the number of the population of the province bore to the number of the aggregate population of Canada at the then last preceding readjustment of the number of members for the province is ascertained, at the then last census, to be diminished by one-twentieth part or upwards.
'So that the representation of any province is to be determined by a comparison of the last census with the one previous. But I claim that with the increase of industry and population in the maritime provinces, we shall soon be in a position to recover lost ground and regain the representation we have lost.
I therefore submit to my hon. friend from St. John (Mr. Daniel) that he should join me in the patriotic endeavour to have our resources developed as rapidly as possible and thus keep our people at home. I would ask him to join me in calling the attention of the provincial governments, as well as the federal government, to the necessity of giving the maritime provinces all the transportation facilities to which they are entitled and which cannot fail to bring about a revival of industry and make our provinces the richest in the Dominion. I submit that we should direct our energies, not to obtaining a change in the constitution, but to the development of our own resources. Our resources are more lasting than those of the west because we have not only the resources of the soil but of the under-soil. We have the coal and the iron, which are every day becoming greater of greater ne-
cessity. Year after year larger quantities -will be required for the purposes of the west. Only lately an iron mine at Bathurst, in my constituency, which has been proved by the Department of Mines to be one of the most valuable in the country, was sold for $80,000, and will be developed, and we have other mines existing in other parts of the province, some of them close perhaps to the constituency of my hon. friend. We have also other sources of wealth and what we require is greater transportation facilities. Let us urge on the government the improvement of the Intercolonial Railway in every way possible. Let us urge the improvement of its road bed from Moncton to Halifax. Let us insist on the acquisition by the government of many small branches which should belong to the Intercolonial Railway in order that they may be better equipped and give better revenue and furnish greater facilities to the districts through which they run. Let us unitedly ask for the further improvement of our harbours along the sea coast, from which transportation can be made across the ocean. For my part I believe that whether we be twelve or thirteen or .fifteen members from the province of New Brunswick, we have no need to fear anything from the western representatives. I believe that every member of this House, whether from the east or the west, as soon as he enters this sanctuary of the Canadian people, feels himself animated with a sense of justice and British fair-play. I for one see greater danger in changing our consitution. If we change the representation in this House, we shall be called upon, in a few years, to change the representation of the upper House. In the upper House, we have our protection. A great movement has grown up lately for a change in the upper House. For my part I am as adverse to a change in the upper House as to a change in this House, for, as I have already said, our parliamentary representation is our representation in both houses of parliament: if we gain in one we shall lose in the other.
I do not wish to enter upoa n discussion of the question of maintenance of the Senate or changes in the Senate ; I say we should, first of all, maintain the protection which is given to the maritime provinces by our representation in the Senate-not that the Senate was created for the sole purpose of giving that protection, for it was created as the repository of mature wisdom, sober judgment and freedom from the turmoil of popular sentiment, but it was also so arranged that the smaller provinces should have in that body such representation as would afford them protection which they may lack in this House. Therefore, I say to my hon. friend from St. John that I, for one, as a representative of the province of New Brunswick, representing as I
do a constituency which stands equally rich in resources of the sea and resources ofi the land, that I care not whether the province of New Brunswick has twelve members or fourteen members provided that of the Canadian tree I get the shelter and the shade.


Mr. A. A. McLEAN (Queens, P.E.I.).: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member for Gloucester (Mr. Turgeon) that the representation of the maritime provinces in this House is a question of the utmost importance. The maritime provinces are suffering under a wrong which is no fault of their own. But our constitution is not unchangeable like the laws of the Medes and Persians. We already have four amendments to the constitution made by the imperial parliament, and there is no reason why, if circumstances have changed since confederation, further changes should not be made. I think that no harm would be done by giving to the maritime provinces the same representation they had at confederation and securing it to them for all time in the same manner as such representation was secured to British Columbia when it entered confederation. I do not think it will be necessary to make a change in the representation in the upper House. It is true that the last speaker has said that the gentlemen who composed that House are supposed to be men of mature wisdom and sober judgment. The probability is that the hon. gentleman (Mr. Turgeon) fills the Bill to a T and that he looks forward, when tired of the turmoil of elections, he will take his rest in the upper Chamber.


Onésiphore Turgeon: No hope.


Angus Alexander McLean: The hon. gentleman may not look for it now, but, perhaps, in the course of ten or fifteen years he may be glad to be clear of running around the country at election time. The constitution of this country, like the constitution of the United States, is quite different from what it was originally. Take the amendments to our constitution made since 1867-the amendments of 1871 and those following- and you will find that the changes made have been very important indeed. The constitution of the United States to-day you would not know to be the same as that which was passed by the first federal congress. The conditions changed and it became necessary to change the constitution to meet the new state of affairs. In the same way, it is necessary in the interest of the maritime provinces that, if the constitution allows their part of their representation to be taken away, the constitution should be changed so as to put them in the same position as that in which they were before. Prince Edward Island entered the confe-

deration in 3873/ That province would not enter in 1867, because the terms proposed for the admission to the union did not meet with the approval of its people, and so they kept out of confederation for nine years after the first proposals were made. And on what ground ? The ground was this very principle of representation by population, which they were not prepared to accept. They told the other provinces that they would not accept that proposition. The resolution which was adopted at Quebec by the conference based the representation in the House of Commons on the population as determined by the official census every ten years. It says :
The basis of representation in the House of Commons should be population as determined by the official census every ten years; and the number of members at first should be 194, distributed as follows:
Upper Canada	 82
Lower Canada	 65
Nova Scotia	 19
New Brunswick	 15
Newfoundland	 8
Prince Edward Island	 5
Now, the imperial government was very anxious that Prince Edward Island should come into the union, and despatches passed between the provincial government and imperial government with reference to the matter. The government of the Prince Edward Island informed the imperial government that they would not accept these clauses of the resolutions passed at the Quebec conference. The imperial government, being anxious, sent despatches to the government of Prince Edward Island, and, at the session of 1865 of the legislature of that province, the matter was threshed out carefully. The legislature, in the first place, passed a resolution which reads as follows :
18.	Until the official census of 1871 should be made up, there shall be no change in the number of representatives from the several sections.
19.	Immediately after the completion of the census of 1871, and immediately after every decennial census thereafter, the representation from each section n the House of Commons shall be readjusted ou the basis of population.
20.	Por the purpose of such re-adjustments, Lower Canad-a shall always be assigned sixty-five members, and each of the other sections shall at each re-adjustment receive, for the ten years then next succeeding, the number of members to which it will be entitled on the same ratio of representation to population as Lower Canada will enjoy according to the census last taken by having sixty-five members.
21.	No reduction shall be made in the number of members returned by any section unless its population shall have decreased relatively to the population of the whole union to the extent of five per centum.


Angus Alexander McLean: that matter upon their lordships in the Privy Council, but they saw fit to take the letter of the law as they found it and as I have read it from the resolution passed by the parliament of Canada and the legislature of Prince Edward Island. But, notwithstanding that fact we have the assurance of the Attorney General in his argument that it was the intention of the legislature and of this parliament that we should have that representation for all time to come. I think the evidence that he produced before the Privy Council was abundant to show to the government and the parliament of Canada that we lost that representation by the blunder of the man who drew the resolution, by a mistake, in the conditions and a wrong of that kind should be righted by this parliament. I do not think that the maritime provinces should lie any longer under this wrong which was committed when we entered confederation. Take this great province of Ontario with its vast resources ; every day we hear of new discoveries of minerals. It is the same in the province of Quebec. Their resources are illimitable. Priuce Edward Island is a province dependent altogether upon agriculture, and we will probably never be a great manufacturing country because we are shut out, as was stated by the gentlemen who were present at the conference in 1804, for six months in the year, by reason of the isolation which results from our being an island. There may be a time when we will be able perhaps to increase our population by a small amount when we get our tunnel,"but until that time comes I do not see any hope that our population will increase in proportion to the population of the other provinces of Canada, and I think, for the reasons which were given by the gentlemen who were present at the confrence of 1864 at Quebec, by reason of the facts which were adduced before the Privy Council by the Attorney General of Canada when he argued the ease for Prince Edward Island, and by reason of the other facts which have been stated to this House by my bon. friend from St. John (Mr. Daniel) and by other hon. gentlemen who have spoken during the last two sessions upon this subject, immediaate relief should be given to the maritime province by the government of Canada.


Mr. A. MARTIN (Queens, P.E.I.).: Mr. Speaker, this has been a profitable subject of discussion in this House since the days of confederation. I do not know that any subject lias created greater differences of opinion than the subject of confederation which we have before us to-day. I have with some little care, looked over the discussions of that day and I find that there were very great divergencies of opinion on the subject. George Brown, representing the large province of Ontario, was the great apostle of the principle of representation Mr. A. A. McBEAN.
by population. One of the greatest men of that day who hoped to round off confederation, Sir A. T. Galt, when the province of Prince Edward Island was taken into confederation, tried to consolidate the province. The province had held out strongly from entering into the confederation with a small representation. I have here some of the resolutions that were offered at that time. Sir A. T. Galt moved this resolution,
That the unit of representation be reduced and that the number of members for Upper Canada be ninety-nine, for Lower Canada, seventy-four, for Nova Scotia, twenty-one, for New Brunswick, seven, for Newfoundland, eight, and for Prince Edward Island, six.
That resolution was discussed at some length and, I will quote a few of the remarks that Sir A. T. Galt made in support of it. He said :
We have supposed that the population of Lower Canada, being tolerably equable in its character, would afford the best basis. But having respect to the rapid increase of Upper Canada, -we think the lower provinces should not be reduced if they do not increase in the same ratio.
I think that bears on the question to-day. That was the statement of Sir A. T. Galt, one of the fathers of confederation, a man who had done more, I think, to round off and complete confederation than any other with the exception, perhaps, of Sir George Cartier, Sir John Macdonald and a few others whose names I need not mention. Mark his words :
Do you think the lower provinces should not be reduced if they do not increase in the same ratio. Therefore the lower provinces would have the same as they have now unless in the very improbable case of any one falling off five per cent.
But the Hon. George Brown was not of the same opinion. Although Quebec and Ontario were united before confederation these two provinces had divergent views on many public questions and they never got along well together, and while Sir A. T. Galt held these views the Hon. George Brown, representing the great province of Ontario differed from him, and he moved a resolution in amendment to the motion of Sir A. T. Galt, to the effect that Upper Canada should have eighty-two members, Lower Canada sixty-five members, Nova Scotia nineteen members. New Brunswiick fifteen members, Newfoundland seven members, and Prince Edward Island six members. The disagreement between these two gentlemen shows that there was no great unanimity among the fathers of confederation as to fixing the representation. George Brown speaking in favour of his resolution said :
The practical result would be that while lower Canada certainly will not be less and the lower provinces may increase in population-

The central idea then was that the maritime provinces would increase in population. They at that time held a very prominent position ; they had resources in fisheries, mines, minerals, and agriculture and the central idea was that they would rapidly increase in population. Why they did not increase is a question for great speculation. And, Sir, the reason the maritime provinces have not increased in that rapid ratio that was anticipated hy George Brown and others is because the maritime provinces sipce confederation have not held the position it was supposed they would hold. Newfoundland refused to join confederation and compare her position to-day with the position of the maritime provinces. Newfoundland has made more progress out of the union than Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have made in the union ; Newfoundland has done more to make her fisheries a success than has been the case in any of the maritime provinces. I tell this House that you may ask Newfoundland to joint the union as much as you like, hut the record of progress in Newfoundland as compared with the record in the maritime' provinces will keep her out of confederation, and you have not terms enough to offer to induce her to join. If you expect Newfoundland to come into the union, for one thing you will have to act more generously with respect to the representation of the maritime provinces. George Brown continued to say :
-the lower provinces may increase in population; they cannot decrease in the number of representatives.
That was what the people of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia then believed hut that belief has not been justified by the events. One can hardly realize the time that has been spent in this House discussing this prolific question, and it is a question which will never be settled satisfactorily until a remedy is applied. Now, Sir, I purpose quoting the opinions of some other representatives from my province at the time the union was consummated, all of which go to show the importance 'attached to this matter by the people of the maritime provinces generally. The first confederation conference was held in Charlottetown, but Prince Edward Island did not enter the union at confederation, and I wish for ft few moments to refer to the views of the representatives of my province at that time. Here are some of the views expressed at that conference by gentlemen representing Prince Edward Island. I will not read the whole of them, but I will quote enough to show the great stress they placed on that province having a fair representation in this House. Some of those gentlemen were very prominent in their own province-such men as Colonel Grey. Mr. Haviland, Mr. Palmer, Edward Whalen and James Pope. Everybody who
knows anything about the history of Prince Edward Island knows that these men were men of no small calibre. Mr. Haviland said :
Prince Edward Island would rather be out of confederation than consent to this motion.
The motion .was to give Prince Edward Island a representation of five members. Mr. Palmer, who was afterwards Chief Justice of the province, said :
Our trade and revenue are rapidly increasing. Why give up so great certainties for an uncertain benefit where we have only a feeble voice. Looking first at the larger provinces, Canada has secured to herself a greater number of representatives than she had before. It may be said that we may join with the other maritime provinces in any matter affecting our common interests but even then our united strength would still be far below Canada's number of representatives.
On the same day that Mr. Palmer spoke, Sir Alexander Galt said :
. It would be a matter of the greatest regret that any difficulty should arise over this matter We request the Prince Edward Island delegates to reconsider their decision. It would be a matter of reproach to ns that the smallest colony should leave us.
Another who spoke on the same occasion was Mr. Whelan. Every one acquainted with the history of the maritime provinces knows something of the life of Edward Whalen. He began his studies in Halifax under the tuition of Mr. Howe, one of the most eminent men Nova Scotia ever produced, the man who did the most to introduce responsible government into that province; and Edward Whalen came over to Prince Edward Island and Introduced responsible government there, and his name is revered in that province from one end of it to the other. He broke up what was known as the family compact and established one of the most popular governments that ever existed in Prince Edward Island. Here is what he said :
We are in an isolated position. Our resources are large and our people would not be content to give up their present benefits for the representation of five members. It may be said that the confederation will go on without Prince Edward Island, and that we shall eventually be forced in. Better, however that than that we should willingly go into the confederation with that representation.
I am going to quote next the views of a man perhaps equally eminent, Colonel Grey, a man who as a statesman occupied a position perhaps second to none in Prince Edward Island, and who was honoured with great distinction. He said ;
I am instructed by my co-delegates to say that the provision of five members is unsatisfactory. Prince Edward Island is divided longitudinally in three counties, each return-

ing ten members (that is, to the local legislature.) But they have always been opposed to change in representation. You cannot divide the three counties into the five members.
I do not wish to tire the House, but this matter having come up, I think it my duty to place before the House these views. I am next going to quote Mr. Pope. I suppose every one at all conversant with the history of Canada knows something about the late James Pope. He was Minister of Marine and Fisheries in this country for a number of years, and was a man of great power and influence in his province. I do not know that there was one man, or even two or three men combined, who had as much influence in that province at one time as he. He was a practical man, a man of large vision, a man imbued with a desire to promote the best interests of his country and his province. This is what he said :
I agree with all that has been said by Colonel Grey and Mr. Coles.
I am going to refer to Mr. Coles. The most popular government we ever had in Prince Edward Island was a government known as the Coles and Whalen administration. They were Liberals of the old time and the old type. It was one of the most popular administrations and introduced some of the most advanced legislation ever known in the province of Prince Edward Island. The administration of Coles and Whalen did more for Prince Edward Island than any we ever had there. The names of Coles and Whelan will live in the hearts and memory of the people of that province for many years to come. They took hold of the educational question at that time. Coles and Whalen introduced a system of free education many years before it was ever thought of in any other part of Canada. We had a system of free education in the island, introduced by the government of Coles and Whelan, when such a system was not to be found in any other part of Canada. As far back as 1858, knowing that the youth of the province could never make any progress without an education, that government said : We will lay a tax on the land and provide a fund which will give a free education to every boy and girl in the province. And I do not know that at that time there was any other province in Canada so far advanced in education as the province of Prince Edward Island. The youth of that province rapidly took advantage of that system, and you will find in every part of the world, in every part of Canada and the United States, men from Prince Edward Island at the head of affairs, always associated with progress. Need I mention the names of Sir William Macdonald, of Montreal, Dr. Andrew Mc-Phaii, of McGill College, Professor Schur-man, of Cornell University. Time would Mr. MARTIN (Queen's, P.E.I.).
fail me to give a list of the men from; Prince Edward Island prominent in banking and commerce and in every thing that makes for progress. And these men will, I believe, admit that their great incentive was the educational system introduced by Coles and WThalen. At that time the gov-ernmept led by Coles and Whalen introduced an Act to release the' tenantry of that province from the oppression of landlordism. Landlordism had hold of that province. But the government of Coles and Whalen introduced what is known as the Fifteen Year Purchase Act. They practically made the tenants of the island free. These tenants are practically freeholders to-day. I merely refer to this to give emphasis to the opinions expressed by Mr. Pope. Mr. Pope said :
I agree in all that has been said by Col. Grey and Mr. Coles.
That was the late Hon. George Coles who led one of the most popular governments of Prince Edward Island. [DOT]
But the circumstances of Prince Edward Island are such that I hope the conference will agree to give it such a number as we can divide amongst our three constituencies. Nature as well as the original settlement of the island has made three counties and it would give rise to much difficulty if we have to adjust five members of the three counties. I cannot ask it as a matter of right, but one of expediency, as one without which it is impossible for us to carry the measure in Prince Edward Island. I therefore ask for six members.
Mr. Haviland. I fully agree with Mr. Pope.
I may quote one other gentleman. You know, Mr. Speaker, that there are only today two living out of the great galaxy of bright and able men who gather at the board to form confederation. One of them is Sir Charles Tupper and the other is the Hon. Senator A. A. Macdonald. Both men are very vigorous and healthy for their age. I have here the views which were expressed by these men at that time and as they are the views of men living to-day, I am sure they will have some force with the First Minister. I trust that something will be done to restore to Prince Edward Island what was taken from her very unjustly. The Hon. A. A. Macdonald, then a member of this House and now a Senator, spoke as follows :
We are not bound by the principle of representation by population laid down in Charlottetown. Our constituents will say and will speak of the increased representation of Canada and the decreased representation of the lower provinces.
There was the point at which the discussion rose. Later on Canada was very anxious that the province of Prince Edward Island should join confederation. The im-

perial parliament was also very anxious that it should. Our neighbours to the south then did not display that agreeableness which we thought necessary for good relations, and the imperial government wisely considered that the Canadian provinces should be united. But what followed? When those representatives reached Ottawa, there was an administration known in Prince Edward Island as the Haythorne administration. Mr. Haythorne was one of the delegates sent to Ottawa to try and negotiate terms. One of the principal elements in dispute was this one regarding representation. I have here copies of some telegrams which passed between Lieutenant Governor Robinson and Mr. Haythorne at that time. Mr. Haythorne telegraphed to the lieutenant governor on the 26th of February, 1875 :
Probably yield six representatives.
That had reference to the negotiations with Mr. Mackenzie. That was on the 26th of February, and the 6th of March, there was the following telegram :
Highly probably get six representatives.
Further on, in a document from the lieutenant governor to Mr. Haythorne on the same day, the governor says :
We hope six representatives will be conceded.
Later on he said :
Six representatives conceded.
And finally there came this one :
Six representatives conceded.
And Prince Edward Island was in the union. Prince Edward Island would not have entered the union without this. There had been negotiations for years, and the province never would have come into the union with less than six members. And the idea in the province was that Prince Edward Island was to have six members continually-there was to be no change. Why should I say that ? This world is a world of changes; there are changes every day, changes in everything.


Frederick William Borden: Tempora mutantur.


Alexander Martin: There are changes in things temporal and things spiritual-and in things military too, I suppose the Minister of Militia (Sir Frederick Borden) would say. Well, there came a change. And why ? Is there a doubt about the law ? Was the Act of union indefinite ? Was there any doubt about it ? I believe there was grave doubt. I believe that there was such doubt about it that the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) accepted a retainer from Prince Edward Island to maintain before the Privy Council the right of the province to retain its six members.
I think I had the honour-or, I do not know that it was a very great honour; in fact, it was a great pain, I may say-to hear the Minister of Justice, a session or two ago (it was last session, I think) telling this parliament that Prince Edward Island had no claim to retain its six members. Why should he accept this retainer from Prince Edward Island? Does not the Minister of Justice know the law ? Does not he understand the constitution ? I suppose the constitution is written so that he who runs may read. The Minister of Justice may have run, but he could not have read very well. The hon. member for Gloucester (Mr. Turgeon), a gentleman whom I respect, a gentleman who, I believe, is sincere and who is a credit to this House, made some remarks which I find it rather difficult to understand. He spoke of the constitution-he spoke of standing by the rock of the constitution. I know my hon. friend knows the constitution. I know also that he is student enough to be aware that this country has not stood by the constitution. The hon. member is ready to sacrifice New Brunswick in order to stand by the constitution, because he says that, while that province might benefit a little to-day, it would lose more some other day, and, for that reason, he would sooner stand by the constitution. It is not long since the constitution of this country was tampered with, and tampered with without any great benefit to the province of New Brunswick, and I do not know that the hon. gentleman (Mr. Turgeon) stood up in the House to maintain the constitution. It is not long since we had before this House the question of increasing the subsidies of the provinces-last year it was, I believe. The question came up in regard to the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, the two wealthiest provinces of Canada. The constitution said that they were to receive 80 cents per head of the population of 1861, and no more. Did they stand by the constitution in that ? No. And there was no such thing as appealing to the Privy Council, no such thing as giving the Minister of Justice a retainer to assist in interpreting the constitution. Not at all; for these provinces were to receive a great advantage. And I want to ask the hon. member for Gloucester, in all seriousness and generosity-for he is a gentleman whom I respect-a question which I think he will admit is a fair one. The constitution was changed so that, instead of receiving 80 cents per head of the population of 1861, these provinces were to receive 80 cents per head of the population of last year and on the increased population from time to time, and these provinces profited by this to the extend of over $1,000,000 a year. How much did my hon friend's own province get out of it? I question very much if it got a dollar.
Mr. TURGEON Same proportion.


Alexander Martin: No proportion about it -they did not receive a dollar, and do not stand to receive many dollars for a great many years. And I will tell you the reason why. These two great provinces were equal to the occasion, as has been said, and as I myself said some time ago. They were very anxious to have these changes. There was no such thing as sending this to the Privy Council or retaining the Minister of Justice. Not at all; they simply said : We will snap the constitution, we will tear it to ribbons, we will treat it as so much waste paper. And why ? Because the province of Nova Scotia was getting the support of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding), the province of Quebec was getting the support of the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), and the province of Ontario-well I suppose they gave it to that province in expectation of favours to come, in which I think they will be disappointed. Well, my province got nothing. My kon. friend's province got nothing, and still the hon. gentleman says that he is standing by the rock of the constitution. Mr. Speaker, if you will take up the little book containing the rules of this House, containing also the British North America Act and amendments thereto, you will find a statute known as 34-5 Vic., chap. 28, ' An Act respecting the establishment of provinces in the Dominion of Canada.' Here is a clause to which I would like the Minister of Justice, if he were in his place, to give some attention:
The parliament of Canada may from time to time, with the consent of the legislature of any province of the said Dominion, diminish or otherwise alter the limits of such province, upon such terms and conditions as may he agreed to by the said legislature, and may, with the like consent, make provision respecting the effect and operation of any such increase, or diminution, or alteration of territory in relation to any province affected thereby. I
I am not a lawyer, and I would like to have some of my legal friends interpret that clause. But it is so clear that I think it is sufficient to call attention to it. Here is another amendment, 38 and 39 Vic. chapter 38: An Act to remove certain doubts with respect to the powers of the parliament of Canada under section 18 of the British North America Act.' Now, Mr. Speaker, I call attention to this fact, that here thev amended the constitution because there were some doubts about it. Well, were there no doubts in regard to the interpretation of the British North America Act respecting the representation of Nova Scotia? And there were not very grave doubts, graver than in any other case, in regard to my own province? Did they proceed in the same way, by amending the constitution ? Oh, no. They said : We will send that over to England, and we will send the Minister of Justice, or the gentleman who has become Minister of Justice, Mr. TTJRGEON.
with it, so that we may be sure that you will lose your case. Well, here is another amendment, 49 and 50 Vic, chapter 35 :
An Act respecting the representation in the parliament of Canada of territories which for the time being form part of the Dominion of Canada, but are not included in any province.
I do not see- that there is even a doubt in this case, but they are going to amend the constitution and put something in it that is not in. In the other case they' are going to amend it because there are some doubts about it. When it becomes convenient to them to trample on the liberties of the people of a small province, oh, then they send it to the Privy Council in England, and they get an eminent lawyer to plead the case, and of course we know that you will lose it. But in the other instance, they amend the British North America Act. Well. I do not think it necessary for me to dwell on this question, because it must be apparent to almost every man that we are not getting the same kind of treatment as the other provinces. I was looking over the constitution to see if there was any amendment in regard to that. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, section 92 of the British North America Act, and if you will turn it up you will see that some questions are left under the control of the legislatures of the different provinces. Now, here is one to which I call attention because it bears directly on the question under discussion. Under section (10) we find among the exclusive powers of the legislatures:
Lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, telegraphs and other works and undertakings connecting the province with any other or others of the provinces, or extending beyond the limits of the province.
Now, Mr. Speaker, if you look over the estimates you will find that the government is violating every item in that clause, violating it every day, violating it even without going to the trouble of passing an Act to amend the British North America Act. Why, there are telegraph lines in Nova Scotia galore, you will find one in every little corner of the province. There are telegraph lines all over the country which this constitution says belong exclusively to the jurisdiction of provincial legislatures. Take the next item, railways. We know that previous to 1883 no subsidies were granted to railways which did not extend beyond the limits of one province. But what do we see to-day? The smallest railway, wholly within one province, perhaps connecting two small villages together, is constructed by this parliament; and they come here and add to the Bill the words * for the general advantage of Canada.' So they jump over the constitution and trample it under foot ; but when it comes to a question of treating a small province with justice, oh, then we find that the

constitution is a very sacred thing, and we cannot tamper with the constitution.
Now. Mr. Speaker, I hope I have said enough to convince the House that this question is not going to subside, this question will be kept to the fore as long as there is a government in Canada until a remedy is provided. I tell you that this is a burning question in every one of those provinces ; it is a burning question in my province. When this question was up not very long ago I remember the Prime Minister suggested a remedy, and I have given it a little consideration. We know that in the United States Senate the smallest state has an equal representation with the largest [DOT]state. If I remember right, and if I do not, I hope the Prime Minister will correct me, he said that that idea was worthy of consideration, and that perhaps it would be well to give the smaller provinces increased representation in the Senate and thereby increase the influence which they would have in this parliament. Perhaps it may be; I do you know. X do not know that it would satisfy the people because we believe in the principle of responsible government. But, I am of the opinion that the Senate is a most useful body, a body that I would not wish to be done away with, a body that, in some respects, is far more independent than the House of Commons, raised up, as it is, above the turmoil of questions which may arise suddenly and which may cause a wavering in the public mind. I believe that the Senate is a more independent body. I am a member of the House of Commons and members of the House of Commons are very often governed by those who send them here. Sometimes the public will may not be the correct one. I think that generally it is pretty nearly correct although it may not be sometimes. It has erred and it may err again. It has erred in every part of the world. A body which will revise hasty legislation is a useful body, and if the premier would consent to equalize the representation in the Senate it would to some extent remedy the grievance, although T do not say that it would be entirelv satisfactory.


Mr. A. A. LEFURGEY (Prince Edward Island).: Mr. Speaker, after the very exhaustive discussion of the subject to which we have listened, by the hon. gentlemen who have preceded me, I do not propose to occupy very much of the time of the House. I Was here in 1903 when this question of representation was before the House and I at that time made as strenuous objection as I was capable of against the treatment which was being accorded Prince Edward Island in again reducing her representation to four members. It was objected by the government and by the right hon. first minister (Sir Wilfrd Laurier) that, as on several other occasions, we had allowed our representation to be reduced without any
apparent objection from the then members of Prince Edward Island, there could be no valid reason why it should not again be reduced upon that occasion. In so far as that 'argument is concerned it has very little weight. In 1882, when Prince Edward Island was entitled to only five representatives in the House, according to the unit of population, we were accorded our six representatives. Why was it that 'at that time the interpretation as to representation by population, within the strict letter of the terms of union, was not insisted upon ? Was not that a sufficient precedent that the terms upon which Prince Edward Island came into confederation were not to be interpreted in the manner in which they have been, but were to be interpreted in the manner that I have contended for ever since I have been a member of this House ?! Because representatives from Prince Ed-: ward Island and members of the legislature! of Prince Edward Island saw fit not to! protest against a reduction of representation is no reason whv the wrong which was done should not be rectified at the present time. The legislature of Prince Edward Island had presented to it a statement in the speech of His Honour the Lieu tenan't Governor dated March 19, 1903, in reference to this matter of representation in the following terms :
At the opening of the provincial legislature on March 19, 1903, the lieutenant governor referred to this matter of representation as follows :
The claims of this province that its representation under British North America Act, in the Dominion House of Commons should not be reduced below the number of members conceded to it at the time of our entry into confederation, have been pressed upon the federal government by my premier and representatives of my administration, and I feel confident that the province will be given an opportunity to establish its rights in this respect.
And the mover of the address in reply to the speech from the Throne spoke strongly on this matter. His opening remarks were :
We now come to the question of representation, this is to-day a most important question. In the very near future the Dominion parliament will be called upon to discuss a Redistribution Bill, and the House would be derelict in its duty if it should allow the central government to perpetrate another such error as inflicted on this province in 1891 without the strongest protests.
A false intei'pretation was put on our terms of union by the Dominion government, the words: 'the representation to be re-adjusted from time to time under the provisions of the British North America Act, 1867 ' were torn from their contest and made to do duty as law. Mr Speaker, these words do not apply and never have applied to this province by right-it was an iniquity and we should deny it and defy it.
What, Sir, are the principles laid down in the various Acts of confederation; is there one

essential principle or are there two distinct standards of representation, let us see. In 1861 a basis of confederation was adopted by the Quebec conference, in which the principle of representation was laid down, that principle was accepted after a time by the province of Ontario. Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but it was not accepted- by us. We stood out for another standard and after a long fight we succeeded in securing a representation of six members for 95,000 of a population, this Sir, is quite another rule, and it is a rule of principle that has been acknowledged, accepted and applied to other provinces before and since that time, notably to Manitoba and British Columbia. One of the greatest obstacles to the scheme of confederation with this island was the insistence of the Canadian statesmen that representation by population should be part of the terms, while our people were quite as insistent of having not less than six members regardless of population.
Here was a protest from the provincial legislature at that time, and because other provincial legislatures had not seen fit to protest against the wrongs done to our province under the previous redistributions is Jio argument to be used by the right hon. first minister that they had acquiesced in it. In fact, we could not acquiesce in a situation of that kind without passing an Act in this House, in the provincial legislature and in the imperial parliament as we did In the ease of the subsidies. In the case of the subsidies it was put up to us in the opposite way because the representatives of Prince Edward Island had accepted the resolutions regarding the subsidies, therefore it was not in the mouths of the representatives of Prince Edward Island in this House to protest. The hon. Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) speaking with regard to the increase in the subsidy, said that because the representatives from Prince Edward Island at tihe conference had accepted the terms, we, therefore, 'as representatives of that province in the Dominion House of Commons, have no word to say about it. Of course it was, to my mind, a most ludicrous position in which to place the members of this House. What was the attitude of the right hon. first minister when a question of this kind was up jin 1892 with regard to the province of British Columbia ? At that time there was some grave doubt expressed as to the interpretation of the clause under which British Columbia came into confederation, as to whether or not she retained the representation that was given to her when she entered confederation. What do we find the right hon. first minister saying in 1892 upon that occasion when he was plain Mr. Laurier and when he was standing up for fair play to tihe smaller provinces of the Dominion ? We find that it was then a different story altogether. Speaking with reference to the reduction of representation with regard to British Columbia he said.:
But at the same time I am taken by surprise by the objection raised, for it has always been 'Mr. LEFUR.GEY.
understood that British Columbia was entitled to six members.
Further on he says :
I have always understood that British Columbia was entitled to six members until such time as she was entitled to a larger number, but that she should never have a smaller number than six. For my part I would be very sorry to come * to any conclusion which would deprive British Columbia of that which the people supposed themselves to be their right.
Now. the case of British Columbia is on all fours with the case of Prince Edward Island, and if the right hon. gentleman wanted to treat this 'as a matter of fair play and justice he had only to refer ' back to the words he uttered in 1892 and if, to use his own words, he had given to the people of Prince Edward Island ' that which the people supposed themselves to be their right ' the case would have been easily settled. The whole history of the case, the speeches made at the conference, the speeches which have been made in the House of Commons by the representatives of Prince Edward Island, the speeches which have been made in the local legislature of Prince Edward Island and all the evidence we can get as bearing upon the terms of confederation go to show that the representatives at the conference at that time were absolutely convinced that they had six members |u perpetuity, We have had several expressions from the right hon. first minister and also from the Minister of Justice that would lead us to believe that in their opinion, while the representatives of Prince Edward Island expected that they were getting six members at that time, they did not have it in their minds that they were going to get them for 'all time to come. The Minister of Justice, speaking on this question in 1906-7, at page 2100 of ' Hansard ' sad :
The contrast between the language I have read in regard to Prince Edward Island and that which had been used- in the case of British Columbia only two years before, coupled with the circumstance that at that time Prince Edward Island was not, upon the strict basis of population, entitled to six members, but barely to five, makes it to my mind irresistible that the thing about which they were stipulating, and about which alone the parties then negotiating were thinking, was the population at that time, and the representation at that time and the number of representatives in this House with which the island should enter the union.
I do not for a moment mean to suggest that there was at that time present in the mind of the representatives of Prince Edward' Island the expectation that the island would 20 or 30 years later find itself in the position it is in to-day.
Well, I will endeavour to show that it was in the minds of the representatives of Prince Edward Island and very distinctly

in their minds, that in time to come the increased unit of representation in Quebec would be such that Prince Edward Island would be practically without representation in this House. The strong appeal made against the island going into confederation was based on the question of its not receiving six members in perpetuity. Sir Wilfrid Laurier apparently had the same idea as the Minister of Justice for on page 2196 of 'Hansard' 1906-1907, he said:
One thing is plain and that is that when the lathers of confederation framed the British North America Act they never contemplated there should he any discrepancy in the future career of the several provinces. They were of opinion that the provinces would march forward with equal pace and that as decade after decade passed the rate of progress would be found to be about the same in all.
That was not the case in connection with the entrance of Prince Edward Island into the union, and if the right hon. gentleman would familiarize himself with the language used by the Prince Edward Island representatives at the conference he will find they never contemplated that the island would go forward decade after decade in the same ratio of population as the pivotal province of Quebec. Speaking on a resolution introduced by the leader of the government, the Hon. J. C. Pope, against confederation and the terms of the statute, Mr. Duncan said:
Nothing could be more unjust to Prince Edward Island than representation on the basis of population as laid down by that scheme according to which Canada would have 100 representatives in the House of Commons more than the aggregate of all the colonies; the number assigned to us being only five Kepresentation on that basis might do well enough for Canada but as respects Prince Edward Island it would be nothing other than mere mockery.
The right hon. gentleman will find that Mr. Duncan did not contemplate that in the thirty years after confederation Prince Edward Island would go forward in the same ratio as Quebec and the other larger provinces. Does any one suppose that these representatives of Prince Edward Island were contending for representation only until the next decennial census ? Were they not contending for the broad principle, that for all time to come Prince Edward Island would have a representation of six members in the House of Commons. Every thing in connection with the history of the entrance of Prince Edward Island into confederation points to the fact that her representatives were contending for the broad principle of six members in perpetuity. It is not comprehensible that the island would have stayed out of confederation from 1867 to 1873 upon this one point, if the people of the island expected that 312
the population of their province would increase in the same ratio as that of the other provinces. They felt that in the following thirty years their representation would be decreased to five members, and eventually to four, and that is why they contended for a fixed representation of six members. It is only reasonable to suppose that these gentlemen foresaw what would happen and that they were endeavouring to safeguard the position of their province for all time to come. Mr. Pope used these words :
Among these objections I may mention the principle of representation by population. The statistics of Quebec warrant the belief that in a few years the population will be so increased by the introduction of the tide of immigration that the island would lose in the halls of confederation even the small voice * it raised at its entrance to the union.
Do you think that a man of Mr. Pope's ability would view the horizon in the limited scope that the right hon. gentlemen, the Prime Minister seems to think. These men knew that the population of the island would not increase in the same ratio as the population of the other provinces and they supposed they were protecting the is-island in her representation for all time to come. Mr. Howlan said :
The fact is best shown by illustration. Prince Edward Island with a population of say 85,000 it is said to have five representatives at the start. Suppose she increases at the rate of 20 per cent each 10 years, at the end of 20 years the population would be 126 000, but at the same rate of progress the population of Lower Canada would be 1,596,000 which divided by 65 would give one representative to every 2i,550 people, so that the island would not be able to claim an increased membership.
Here Mr. Howlan prophesied what actually has taken place. The unit of representation at the last decennial census was a little over 25,000 and Mr. Howlan in the speech he made before confederation pointed out exactly what has occurred. There is no doubt in the world that up to the very last moment the contention of the representatives of Prince Edward Island was that their province should have a fixed representation of six members in perpetuity. The whole history of the entrance of Prince Edward Island into the union goes to show that the construction placed upon the terms of the union by the House and by the Supreme Court and by the Privy Council, was not the construction the people of Prince Edward Island intended should be placed on these terms. I tell the right hon. gentleman that the case of Prince Edward Island should never have gone beyond the walls of this parliament, and that the right hon. gentleman was not fair to the province of Prince Edward Island when he sent the case to

the Supreme Court and the Privy Council. He was no more justified in doing that than he would in referring the question of provincial subsidies or any other alteration of the terms of the British North America Act to the courts, and declined to leave the responsibility with this parliament. This clause in the Act of union with Prince Edward Island should have been interpreted by this parliament But the Prime Minister, because Prince Edward Island is a small province and has not the same strength in this House as the larger provinces, referred the case to the law courts, whereas if a more powerful province were interested he would have left this parliament to decide. Had a case arisen where there was any ambiguity or doubt as to the interpretation of a similar clause with regard to the larger provinces of the Dominion, the case would never have gone outside this parliament, and the right hon. gentleman and his supporters would have interpreted it, as he has declared such cases should be interpreted according to the intention of the province at the time of entrance into confederation. A few years ago the Minister of Justice speaking in this House compared the case of British Columbia as being on all fours with the case of Prince Edward Island, except that in the British Columbia Act the word * increased ' was used while in the Prince Edward Island Act the word used was ' readjusted '. I submit to the good sense of the House, the Prime Minister should have applied to Prince Edward Island the principle he enunciated when he said in referring to British Columbia in 1892 : For my part I would be sorry to come to any conclusion to deprive British Columbia of that which the people supposed to be right. In the light of all the evidence, the case of Prince Edward Island should have been settled in this House when the right hon. gentleman was leader of the government in 1903, on the same principle as he declared should be the case when defending British Columbia in 1892. When negotiations for a number of years had failed to bring about the entrance of Prince Edward Island into confederation, there was a conference, and a number of messages were exchanged between the representative of the province at Ottawa and the lieutenant governor and the local government in Prince Edward Island, and I probably cannot do better than read those telegrams. On the 26th of February Mr. Haythorne, who was the representative of Prince Edward Island sent this message to the Lientenant Governor of Prince Edward Island :
Probably yield six representatives.
The matter was then under consideration. On the 6th of March this telegram was sent by Mr. Haythorne :


Alfred Alexander Lefurgey: Highly probably get six representaties.
We have a telegram from the Lieutenant-Governor of the same date :
We hope six representatives will be conceded.
Later on the same day Mr. Haythorne wires his colleague in the government, Mr Edward Palmer :
Six representatives conceded.
Thus you find, nine years after the question had been first mooted, and six years after confederation had taken place, the point for which Prince Edward Island had contended was yielded, and she came in on the understanding that she was getting six representatives in perpetuity. I could go on and quote further from the people who were representing Prince Edward Island at those different conferences, and perhaps clear up the mists that seem to have settled on the government side of the House as to what the real intentions of the parties were at the different conferences. A debate arising upon a resolution in the Prince Edward Island legislature as to the representation of Prince Edward Island in this House, Mr. Palmer said :
Why give up so great certainties where we have only a feeble voice ?	-


Mr.   WHALEN@: Our people would not be content to give up their present benefits for the representation of five members. It may be said that confederation will go on without Prince Edward Island, and that we should eventually be forced in. Better, however, that, than that we should willingly go into confederation with that representation.
COLONEL GREY. The provision of five members is unsatisfactory. Prince Edward Island is divided longitudinally into three counties. We cannot divide three counties into five members. Besides, to divide it into ridings would cut the capitals in two.


Mr. COLE.: Mr. Galt has proposed six members for Prince Edward Island. I approve that rather than Mr. Browns motion, because it allows us to give our counties two members each.	.


Mr. POPE.: The circumstances ot Prince Edward Island are such that I hope the conference will agree to give us such a number as we can divide amongst our three constituencies. Nature as well as the original settlement of the island has made three counties, and it would give rise to much difficulty if ^we had to adjust five members to three counties. 1 cannot ask it as a matter of right but as one of expediency, as one without which it is impossible for us to carry the measure in Prince Edward Island.


Mr.   HAVILAND@: Prince Edward Island would rather be out of confederation than consent to the motion. We would have no status, only five members out of 194 would give the island no position.
Now, why were all the men talking of giving two representatives to each of tjie three counties 0f Prince Edward Island if

they were expecting that every ten years those counties would be carved up again, and that they were not getting six members for the province in perpetuity ? The right hon. leader of the government knows this ; and if he has not abandoned the position of fair play he assumed in 1907,1 can appeal to him on this occasion. He hoped that the different provinces of the maritime provinces would go on and increase their population and regain their representation. This is what he said, as will be found at page 2196 of ' Hansard ' of 1906-7 :
If unfortunately my anticipation should not be correct; if unfortunately these provinces should not regain their lost ground, and if as has been said by some the representation of Prince Edward Island should come to the vanishing point. I have no doubt whatever that all the other provinces would only be too glad to come to the rescue and make the necessary provision to give that province the standing it occupied when it entered confederation. I say this to show that the remedy which is sought by my hon. friend (Mr. Hughes) to-day is an extreme one, and one which ought to be reserved as a last resort, if it shall be found that nothing else can be done.
If the right hon. gentleman anticipates that when Prince Edward Island gets to the vanishing point, we shall get back the representation we had at confederation, why delay till that time the doing of justice to Prince Edward Island ? It is simply a case of delayed justice. If the right hon. gentleman believes that the government at that time will step in and do justice to the province by putting us back to the place we occupied at confederation, why does he not move the will of his government to give us that justice at the present time ? I do not see how the right hon. gentleman can escape from that position. And during all that time we would have a disunited Dominion and a dissatisfied province in regard to her representation. When this subject was up a few years ago. the right hon. gentleman suggested that the proper method of bringing it forward was by some sort of address to the Throne. I cannot see why such an address as was submitted by the hon. member for Kings (Mr. J. J. Hughes) upon that occasion, if it were properly worded, should not have, as I believe it would have, the support of this House. Now, this question is one of very great importance to our province, and the Prime Minister himself regards it as such. He wanted to see the case argued out in 1906. He then said :
I understand that several members desire to speak on the question who are not present. It is one of great importance, and the government has no objection to an adjournment.
My hon. friend, the leader of the opposition (Mr. It. L. Borden) also said :
The subject is one of great importance and it is desired it should be discussed and brought 312i
to a conclusion. Therefore I trust the adjournment does not mean that we shall not hear any more of it.	i
We did not hear any more of it that year but it was brought up last session, and I hope the First Minister is still of the opinion lie entertained then. The matter is one of paramount importance to Prince Edward Island and also, though in a lesser degree, to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The case of Prince Edward Island stands on much stronger grounds than theirs, and I trust the right hon. gentleman will not see this debate pass without expressing himself on the question and giving us some idea as to what action he intends taking to do justice to our province. If I can judge from the expressions he has used on several occasions in this House, I do not very well see how he can get up and throw cold water on the case which has been made out this afternoon.


Mr.  O. S.@: CROCKET (York, N.B.)	I
hardly know whether to say I am or am not surprised at the silence of the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley) on this question, because I am bound to say that those of us who are familiar with the political career and the methods of that hon. gentleman would require a great deal on his part to surprise us.	I
say this in view of the position which that minister took on this question before his transference to the federal cabinet. There is no doubt that he professed a very profound interest in it for two or three years before he became a member of this government, an interest, I may say, which he valued as worth to the people of New Brunswick, $5,000, for that is the amount he took from the provincial treasury for his services in connection with the endeavour to obtain for the province of New Brunswick its rights in respect of its representation in this House-the same amount, which he obtained from-the treasury of New Brunswick for his services in connection with the eastern extension claim while he was Attorney General of that province. The Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley) not only argued these cases before the Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but after the judgment of the Privy Council disallowing the contention which he set up, he brought the matter up in the provincial legislature by a resolution which I believe my hon. friend from St. John (Mr. Daniel) has already read. Speaking to that resolution in the legislature of New Brunswick, the Minister of Public Works said :
I hope, as a result of this discussion, that members of parliament who are friendly to us, will stand up for our rights and try to do away with the injustice we have suffered in the past.
I That is the statement made by the Minister of Public Works in the legislature of


C831 COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
New Brunswick with reference to the duty of the New Brunswick members of this parliament.
Edward Arthur Lancaster: How many years ago?


Mr. CROCKET.: In the session of 1905. Yet when my hon. friend from St. John brings this matter before the House, we find the Minister of Public Works absolutely dumb. I was occupied in the Public Accounts Committee this morning and had not the pleasure of hearing my hon. friend from St. John when he introduced this subject and am consequently not able to say whether the Minister of Public Works was then in his seat. But I do know that he was in his seat fifteen or twenty minutes this afternoon while the hon. member for Gloucester (Mr. Turgeon) was opposing the resolution of the hon. member for St. John (Mr. Daniel). He then left the House and has not since been seen in the chamber. This is the hon. gentleman who expressed, in so earnest and sincere a manner, in the legislature of New Brunswick, his hope that the members of parliament from that province would stand by its rights In the matter of our representation in this House and not let up until justice was obtained. In the course of the debate in the legislature of New Brunswick, I find these expressions used by the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Pugsley) :
I have faith in the sense of justice of those administering the affairs of the Dominion.
And again :
I feel that in passing this resolution we shall have done our duty, and after that the responsibility will rest with those who have the power to remedy this injustice.
The Minister of Public Works has since then become a member of the federal cabinet. He has become a colleague of those in whose faith he expressed such confidence in 1905. He is a member of that cabinet on whom, he then said, the responsibility would rest if justice were withheld from the province of New Brunswck. In view of those declarations, what can be said of the Minister of Public Works not so much as making himself heard in the course of this debate. He has been a minister of this cabinet for ten or eleven months and has sat as a member of this House for the past six or seven months without having once raised his voice on behalf of what he declared so solemnly he regarded as a matter of most vital concern to the province of New Brunswick. I must say-and I have no hesitation in expressing my surprise in this instance-that I was surprised to find my hon. friend from Gloucester (Mr. Turgeon) addressing the House this afternoon in opposition to the proposal of my hon. friend from the city of St. John. As that hon. gentleman himself said, this is a matter of the most vital concern to the Mr. CROCKET.
people of New Brunswick and has been recognized for some years past as one of the most important political questions that has been discussed in this parliment affecting the interest of the maritime provinces. I will venture to say his views are at variance with the sentiment of the entire province upon the question.
If I remember correctly, the board of trade of the maritime provinces, and the board of trade of the province of New Brunswick have both passed unanimous resolutions upon the question in favour of amendment of the British North America Act so as to provide that the representation of the maritime provinces should not be further decreased. I was not at a loss to understand upon what ground my hon. friend from Gloucester (Mr. Turgeon) opposed this proposition. As I understand him, it was because of the great admiration he had for the constitution and its framers, and his profound confidence in the resources of Canada. As my hon. friend the senior member for Queens * (Mr. A. Martin) said, the hon. member (Mr. Turgeon) took the position that he should stand by the rock of the constitution. But as my hon. friend from Queens has already pointed out, this constitution in which the hon. member for Gloucester expresses such great confidence has been amended on more than one occasion, and within the past year that constitution, on representations of this parliament was amended in its provisions respecting the subsidies to the several provinces. I did not observe my hon. friend from Gloucester at that time standing by the constitution as it was originally adopted; on the contrary he approved of the resolution which passed in this House changing the basis upon which the subsidies were appropriated to the different provinces, and changing them, as has already been shown, very much to the disadvantage of his native province of New Brunswick. At that time, I pointed out that New Brunswick came out at the small end of the horn, that it got the smallest percentage of increase of any province of the Dominion. And yet my hon. friend from Gloucester who tells us to-day that he has such a regard for the constitution as originally passed that he is willing, as a member of this House, that New Brunswick-should continue to suffer what is undoubtedly an injustice with respect to our representation here, rather than change the Act, did not raise his voice against that amendment of the constitution.
Now. as to the merits of this question, it seems to me there can be no two opinions. There can be no doubt that, although, at the confederation conference population was agreed upon as the basis of representation, as the guiding principle, yet this was expressly made subject to a limitation wb'ch is set out in subsection 4 of section 51 of the British North America Act. as follows :

On any such readjustment the number of members for a province shall not be reduced unless the proportion which the number of the Population of the province bore to the number of the aggregate population of Canada at the then last preceding readjustment of the number of members for the province is ascertained at the then latest census to be diminished by one-twentieth part or upwards.
It has already been shown by the quotations made from the proceedings of the confederation conference that the delegates representing the maritime provinces contended that there should be a provision that the representation assigned to the maritime provinc. s at the time they entered the union should not be subject to diminution. The clause which I have quoted was regarded as an absolute safeguard against that possibility. I believe that my hon friend fr m St. John (Mr. Daniel)-although i did not have the pleasure of hearing his speech-made quotations from the confederation documents proving that it was stated that if this clause were embodied in the Act there would be no possibility of the diminution of the representation of the maritime provinces in this House. That clause was accepted on that assurance and it is clear that had the conditions as they then existed and were in the minds of the confederation delegates not been altered by the admission of five new provinces and subsequent legislation with reference to which the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were not consulted, the clause would have operated to prevent any decrease in our representation down to this day. Now, that being the case, I ask could the delegates representing the maritime provinces reasonably have been expected to foresee these subsequent developments? I think it goes without saying that no man could fairly have been expected to foresee, in the year 1866 or 1867, the admission of the five provinces that have been since added to confederation and whose population has been counted in their entirety against the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the scheme of representation. There is no question that the bargain that was made between the four original provinces of confederation has been altered without the consent of these provinces. If that be so, is it unreasonable that the representatives of New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces should insist in this House upon that bargain being kept and their provinces restored to their original rights ? My hon. friend (Mr. I,e-furgey) who preceded me, quoted a section from the British North America Act providing that the boundaries of none of the provinces should be extended without the consent of the other provinces. But we know that the boundaries of the province of Quebec have since been greatly extended, so that the area of that province is now nearly double its size at the date of the consummation of the union. It has been stated in this debate that 150,000 square miles of territory has been added to the province of Quebec by virtue of the legislation of this parliament, thereby materially altering the unit of representation as laid down by the terms of the original Act Now, it was stated by my hon. friend from Gloucester as another reason for his position in this matter that the judgment of the courts had determined the case and that therefore there should be no further agitation of the question. Now, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that is a statement which should not have come from a gentleman so intelligent and well informed as my hon. friend from Gloucester. Surely that hon. gentleman sees at once that had the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council upon this reference, been otherwise than it was, there would have been no necessity for the intervention of this parliament. If the judgment had been favourable to the contention of the provinces, then we would have had within the four corners of the Act as it now stands all we are contending for. It is for the very reason the judgment of the Privy Council is to the contrary effect that we are now asking the intervention of this parliament, and the passage of a resolution memorializing the Imperial parliament to make the amendment. Now I want to point out in this connection that the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was based, not upon the Act as it was originally passed and accepted by the four original provinces of the confederation, but upon the subsequent amendments to the Act to which these provinces were not parties, and with reference to which they were not consulted. Last session I took occasion to examine the judgments of the several judges of the Supreme Court of Canada, and I find in them these extracts bearing upon that point. In the first place, I find this passage in the judgment of Mr. Justice Davies:
After careful consideration of the whole Act and its amendments I have concluded that the expression ' four provinces ' means and must he constructed as ' several provinces.'
That conclusion was based not upon consideration of the original Act, which embodied the agreement of the four original provinces, but upon subsequent amendments to which the original contracting parties were not privy. Further :
If any reasonable doubts did exist as to the true meaning of the sections under review, this subsequent Imperial legislation would seem to remove them.
Subsequent imperial legislation to which New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces were not parties.
Upon the whole, after careful consideration,
I am of the opinion that after the admission

of new provinces and territories into th union, the expression ' Canada and prov inces ' throughout the Act of 1867 must, unless specially restricted by the context, be necessarily given on interpretation different from that which they respectively bore before these provinces and territories were admitted.
Showing that the judgment of the court In this matter reposed entirely, not upon the orignial Act to which they were parties, but upon subsequent legislation and subsequent events. Then, in the judgment of Sir Elzear Taschereau, there is this passage :
.It may well be that the framers of the British North America Act have not foreseen or provided for every possible eventuality in the respective positions of the different provinces of the Dominion as to population or other matters; it may be that some provinces would have refused to join the union had they foreseen all the results that their adhesion to it is now ascertained to carry, but with such consideration we are not here concerned.
Of course Sir Elzear Taschereau sitting as a judge was interpreting in strictness of law the language of a statute that was before him. But I ask you. Mr. Speaker, and the members of this House, if that which iSir Elzear Taschereau said was not <a consideration for him is not fairly a consideration for this parliament-whether the confederation delegates could re-sonably have foreseen these conditions. If they could not, and the conditions have since been altered by legislation with which they had nothing to do, then I say it is but simple justice and equity that this parliament should intervene to restore the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, to the position which they undoubtedly occupied, to the position which was undoubtedly guaranteed to them by the Act as it was originally passed. In conclusion I feel that, although this matter has been before the House on several occasions, it is one of such great importance to the province of New Brunswick that I must renew my urgent request that the government take action and remedy the injustice, the admitted injustice, from which we have suffered.


MILITIA TRAINING CAMPS.
Robert Laird Borden: Before the motion carries I would like to ask the Minister of Militia whether he is prepared to give a statement with respect to the camps?


Sir   FREDERICK@: 
John Waterhouse Daniel: When will the Sussex camp be held ?


Frederick William Borden: I have no dates here, but there is no change in the date, whatever it is. The date has been published and the dates also, of the Nova Scotia camps. There has been no change. They are generally held later in the season. The Nova Scotia camp at Aldershot is always held in September.


Robert Laird Borden: Except in so far as the minister has mentioned, the dates will he the same as already announced ?


Frederick William Borden: Yes. In addition there was a militia order passed on the 29th ult, which I presume has caused the inquiry to be made and may have caused some of the remarks to which the hon. leader of the opposition referred,
I think, last evening in the House as having been made in the newspapers. At any rate,
I have seen some references in the newspapers to this order. No. 8, of the 27th of May, which is as follows :
It is notified, for the information of all concerned, that, in the event of provision not being made by parliament for the several camps of instruction referred to in militia orders Nos. 66' (1) and 108 (1), 1908, prior to the dates fixed for their commencement, it will be necessary to postpone the same until the requisite funds are available.
That is the order. Of course, it would be impossible to go into camp until the funds were voted, but there are some days yet before the camps would begin. Therefore, there is ample time. This was thought to be a proper precautionary notice to give. In addition, Mr. Speaker, I wish to say that in so far as the camps of western Canada are concerned, that is Manitoba, the Northwest and British Columbia, they are proceeding as the department has funds. The one-eighth vote which was granted some time ago under the Supply Bill approved by His Excellency, is in hand for these camps and they are being carried on.


Robert Laird Borden: Although there is a vote in the estimates, I am not aware of parliament, up to the present time, having been requested to vote the necessary funds for the camps, and I can only say that if the request had been made it would have been favourably entertained.


Frederick William Borden: There is plenty of time yet.


Robert Laird Borden: There is plenty of time yet, as the minister says. Therefore, while the notice was sent out, properly, no doubt, by way of precaution, it has given rise to certain rumours which have come to me and for that reason, I desired to have the matter cleared up, and at the same time to make it perfectly apparent that we did not obstruct the granting of supplies for the camps simply for the reason that we have not been asked to vote the money.


Frederick William Borden: Of course, the militia vote is a part only of the Supply Bill and although the vote might be granted, although the full amount might be passed by this House of the money necessary for the annual camps, it would not follow that the money would be available
until it had passed through the Upper House and received the assent of His Excellency the Governor General. As a matter of fact, the whole Supply Bill has been before parliament for some months. I may say that the militia votes were called earlier in the session, but the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster)-and I am not complaining of this-took exception to going on' with the votes, because at that time either some of the reports connected with the department or the portion of the Auditor General's Report referring to the militia estimates of last year had not been laid on the table of the House. I take no exception to that. I think it was a perfectly fair objection to make. .


Robert Laird Borden: As far as the Supply Bill is concerned, of course, it is quite practicable to do as has been done on many occasions-pass an emergency Supply Bill with respect to any service if the government think that course proper or advisable.


Mr. FIELDING.: I am obliged to dissent from the statement of my hon. friend when he says that no obstacle has been placed in the way of the passing of the militia estimates. I wish to say that an approach was made to hon. gentlemen opposite to take a vote on account for the public service, and that we received intimation that it would not meet their concurrence. However, it is six o'clock and perhaps you, Mr. Speaker, do not wish to remain any longer.


Robert Laird Borden: The only militia estimates that were placed before the House went through on the 26th of May, after five minutes discussion.	.


William Stevens Fielding: I am not specifying which estimates were passed or were not passed ; I am simply saying that an application was made to hon. gentlemen opposite to take a vote on account of the whole of the services of the country, including the militia estimates, and we were informed that we would not have_their cooperation to do that.


Robert Laird Borden: As a matter of fact the application was made by the government to pass militia estimates received instant attention. Subsequent to that difficulties arose with respect to a certain Bill and when hon. gentlemen opposite requested that the rules of the House should be superseded there was not that concurrence which had been manifested on a previous occasion.


William Stevens Fielding: Whatever may have been the cause of the hon. gentleman s objection, it is not for me to say. I do liot want to discuss it, but I wish to state that it is within my personal knowledge that application was made to hon. gentle-

men opposite to co-operate with us in making a further vote ou account to permit the public services to be carried on and that hon. gentlemen could not co-operate with us. I am not finding any fault, but I am putting on record a fact which is beyond controversy.


Robert Laird Borden: The proposition which was made to us was that the rules of the House should be suspended and that we should depart from the ordinary course.


William Stevens Fielding: The proposition was the same as was made before to vote a sum on account, including the militia estimates, to assist us in carrying on the public service.


Robert Laird Borden: It was to suspend the rules of the House.


William Stevens Fielding: Ail right.
At six o'clock, the House took recess.
After Eecess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


William Stevens Fielding: Lest it should seem discourteous if nothing were said on our part, I desire to say a few words with reference to the observations of the hon. member fcr St. John (Mr. Daniel) on the very important subject to which he invited the attention of the House to-day. I think it was worthy- if it had to be dealt with at all-of receiving fairer treatment than the hon gentleman himself gave it, or than he permitted the House to give it. At an early stage of the session the hon. gentleman placed a notice on the paper intimating his intention to bring this matter before the House and he had abundant opportunity to do so but for his own reasons he did not avail himself of it, and months passed, and now in the seventh month of the session he has brought up the question at a time and in a manner which certainly is not calculated to advance the cause he claimed to have at heart. He brought it up in an empty House with little more than a quorum present, with half a dozen of his own friends in the House, with the two front benches of the opposition vacant nearly all day, and with indeed a similar condition on both sides of the House. It -was quite evident that the object of my hon. friend was not so much to invite the attention of the House to the matter as to join his friends in that policy of delaying the business of the House which in their judgment they have seen fit to pursue. Now, I desire to say that While the representation of the maritime provinces is an important question, there are at this moment more important questions which concern the maritime provinces as they concern all other provinces of the Dominion. In our judgment the most important busi-
Mr. FIELDING
ness this parliament can do now is to devote its attention (after fair inquiry and criticism) to the appropriation of the sums of money needed for the carrying on of thd public service, for the payment of our officials, for providing the money for Public Works, and for all these services which the Dominion has to carry out. Believing that any extended discussion would simply play the part that my hon. friend desired to play, and assist in the policy of delay in the voting of supplies, I do not think it necessary to enter into any extended discussion of the question, important though it is. I would therefore say to my hon. friend (Mr. Daniel) were he in his place, that if we do not allow his observations to pass without notice -because that would seem discourteous- we are obliged to consider that important as the question is that he brought before the House it is less important than voting supplies for the public service.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and the House went into Committee of Supply.
Immigration-Salaries, agents, employees, Canada, Great Britain, and foreign countries, &c., $200,000.
Mr. MONK.: Are the moneys paid on account of the immigration service in England paid through the London office and at what intervals are statements rendered here ?


Frank Oliver: The salaries are paid monthly and the other accounts are paid as presented on cheques signed by the High Commissioner conjointly with the assistant commissioner of immigration. The accounts are sent here every month to be entered in the books of the department.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: What proportion of this $200,000 is expended in the British Isles, what proportion in France, and what proportion in continental European countries?


Frank Oliver: Great Britain and Ireland, $32,484; United States, $43,320; Canada, $119,140; continental Europe, $4,700.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Mr. Wiallard and Mr. Geof-frion are I think the only two immigration agents we have in France and there is considerable complaint about the service in that country. I do not think Mr. Wiallard has made any special study of immigration. He is a Frenchman by birth was occupied in other things while in France and when iii Canada I do not think he devoted any of his attention to that subject. Mr. Geof-frion is a young lawyer who I think has in no way studied the subject of immigration except perhaps since the government re-"cently sent him to France. Does the government intend appointing other agents in France ? What reports have been received from Mr. Wiallard and Mr. Geoffrion ? There is very good immigration to be had 1 from France but proper means must be taken


190S
[Stage Direction]
to get it. I have never seen any of Mr. Wiallard's reports in any of our official publications. Mr. Geoffrion is a very nice young man no doubt, and apart from letters he has written to the papers and which indicate that he is having a very pleasant time in Paris, nothing has been brought to our notice to show that he has taken up seriously the question of immigration. I would like to know if the minister has received any report from either of these gentlemen, and what is the general direction of their efforts ? Is it in Paris that they are looking for immigrants, or have they made any efforts in the provinces of France ?
Frank Oliver: 
Frederick Debartzch Monk: My hon. friend, before he occupied the responsible position which he occupies to-day, and when I think he entertained somewhat different opinions on immigration from those which he seems to hold to-day, expressed an idea which I have found confirmed by all those of long experience in immigration; that was, that the immigrant must be followed from the time he has been selected in a foreign country until he gets absolutely settled and acclimatized in Canada. In the province of Quebec. the provincial immigration agents succeed very well, because they correspond with the immigrant before he comes out here, or with societies that take an interest in sending immigrants here, and when the immigrant arrives, he is met by these men and is guided by them to the place where it is intended he shall settle. The testimony of those agents is to the effect that for two years at least they have to follow the immigrant. They go at stated periods to see where he is settled, in order to make sure that he is settled there, that he has all the assistance necessary, and that he becomes a good and valuable addition to the nation. I mention that because I have noticed for the last year or two that from most of our numerous agents we get no reports or they are not published in that part of my hon. friends yearly report which relates to'immigration. We have several immigration agents in the United States, but what they do is not apparent, so far as I know, from the reports laid before this House; and we have no reports from these agents in France. I think my hon. friend would render very much more effective the work of these men if he required them to make a monthly report, as to the work they are doing, what immigrants they have sent out, what parts of the country they come from, and what is their destination. You would then be able to trace some of those people after their arrival, and a very useful purpose would be served. In regard to Mr. Geoffrion, we have read some very interesting letters of his, from a literary standpoint, as to his impression of France, but they have nothing to do with immigration. I think that young man would be much better employed if he gave us a report every month of what progress he is making in the work he has been sent there to prosecute. The same remark applies to Mr Wiallard. I think our agents, not only in France, but in all foreign countries, should send us frequent reports, so that we would know how the tide of immigration is flowing in all those countries. I would like also to ask the minister if he has contemplated the possibility of imposing a head tax on immigrants-not such a one as is exigible in the United States, but one that would enable the country to lighten somewhat the burden of its immense immigration budget. I think that this year we shall be spending considerably over a million in the way-of payments to agents and others and their expenses of advertising. My own belief is, of course, that we should abolish bonuses, and that we should content ourselves with doing a certain amount of advertising to make our country known. If last year we had imposed a head tax of $2, or half the American head tax, we would have derivpd from it $500,000 on the immigrants that arrived here. I do not think we would have one immigrant less and we would have had a considerable amount for the purposes of this vote. That is a subject which might well engage the attention of my hon. friend, especially now that our immigration is increasing so much.


Frank Oliver: To take the last criticism first, let me point out that our immigration is not increasing.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Well, it has increased every year until this.


Frank Oliver: It is in the process of very rapid decrease as far as numbers are concerned. That is the tally this year, so far as it has gone, as compared with last year. There is about thirty-seven per cent decrease in ocean port immigration 'as compared withj the first four months of lasit year. As regards the suggestion concerning the bringing of reports by our agents, I would beg to inform my hon. friend that (these gentlemen do report from week to week. It would not be practicable to publish all these reports in the blue-book, but they are available, and my hon. friend or any other hon. member can have access to them whenever he pleases. He is mistaken when he says we have no printed reports from these gentlemen, because I find in the report of the Department of the Interior for the nine months ending March 31, 1907, a report from Mr. Paul Wiallard of Paris, dated April 1, in which he gives a statement of the class of work he is doing and generally such a report as we receive from our different agents in the same service in different parts of the world. My hon. friend would do well to read the report of the Department of the Interior pages 80 and (81.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: It is a very summary report and there is none from the United States.


Frank Oliver: When we have to deal with so many reports, we cannot give much space to each one, but he will find that the report in question is a very complete statement of the case for the space it occupies. Mr. Wiallard mentions that:
This year we have a delegate, Mr. Vauriot, a Frenchman, settled in Manitoba, for many years, and who has succeeded there. He has taken part in some of our gatherings and been able to judge of the work that we do. In company with Mr. Pierre Fourcin, my colleague, whom I sometimes send into the provinces when I am detained in Paris or called in other directions, Mr. Vauriot has himself spoken and given verbal information in regard to the Northwest at five private assemblies held in four days and at each of which there were present from forty to fifty persons, making ready to leave, and in every case enthusiastic for our country.
So that I think we are giving a reasonable measure of publicity to the work we are carrying on in France. It is to be re-jgretted that it is not more extensive, but my hon. friend will understand that there are difficulties in the way which need not bo enlarged upon, but which render it neither possible nor advisable in other circumstances and conditions such as prevail in the United States. There are several good colonies of old country French people in different parts of the Northwest, who are Mr. OLIVER.
very satisfactory as citizens and farmers. Their numbers are being increased in a moderate degree from year to year. As regards my own views on the subject of immigration, while I do not know that they are of interest ito the House and the country, my hon. friend and those beside him seem to have some trouble in their minds over them. Well, my views are exactly now what they have always been. I did object some years ago to the system of indiscriminating bonusing, and I say so still. I am not asking the House to sanction such a system but on the contrary a system of most careful and discriminating bonusing. At present instead of bonuses being used simply as a means to secure numbers of immigrants, they are used as a means to secure specially well selected settlers, such as are best suited to our conditions and circumstances. I have, therefore not a word to retract of anything I said regarding immigration in past years, because the policy I am urging at present is distinctly the one I then enunciated.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: My hon. friend is very modest when he says that because we echo the opinions he expressed in this House several years ago in opposition to the then declared policy of the government, we are giving indication that we have (trouble on our minds. The policy of the government has not changed since then.


Frank Oliver: As far as my poor understanding goes, it has radically changed.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I do not want to prolong the discussion, but my recollection is that my hon. friend was then (thundering against the importation of Galicians and others from eastern Europe and stated very vigorously that we were grouping in the Northwest elements which would one day cause great trouble. Yet (to-day we are paying bonuses in the same part of Europe.


Frank Oliver: No.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The order in council granting bonuses covers that part of Europe from which the Galicians come although we have not named booking agents there. My own impression is that people coming from that part of Europe book at Antwerp and other western European points and that we actually pay for them. My hon. friend to-day is, however, entirely in accord with the rest of his colleagues upon that point. I shall not deal further with the bonus matter, because I referred to that some time ago. My hon. friend (Mr. Oliver) points out the report from Mr. Wiallard. I had forgotten his report. But it is a very short report indeed. It seems to me that a man who is entrusted with the direction of a great immigration movement should be able to give us an annual
*9845

report containing some more detailed information than is to be found in what we can read in the report of Mr. Wiallard, printed in the report of the Department of the Interior. We ought to have a review of several pages informing us fully as to the chances we have of getting immigration from France, what the law is absolutely, to what extent our efforts may go without violation of that law, and what has been done during the previous year, with a quantity of detail. We need not fear the trifling expense -of printing a few more pages of this material. We are extravagant enough in other respects, that we need not mind, on such a vital, question as immigration, the expense of procuring a sufficient report and printing it. Did I understand the minister to say that we had a weekly report from all our agents ?


Frank Oliver: We have a weekly report from all our salaried agents.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Then we have such reports from Mr. Wiallard and Mr. Geoffrion ?


Frank Oliver: We have from Mr. Wiallard and I think from Mr. Geoffrion also, but, as Mr. Geoffrion is the subordinate, it Is possible we may not have a report from him. Mr. Geoffrion is not the agent, Mr. Wiallard is the agent.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Would my hon. friend have any objection to laying on the table the reports received from Mr. Wiallard and Mr. Geoffrion during the last few months ?


Frank Oliver: No objection.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: When the discussion on these estimates continues, I should like very much to see them. As regards the immigration agents in the United States, their bills foot up to a very large amount -somewhere between $50,000 and $75,000. Each agency in the United States-and we have a number-costs us between $4,000 and $7,000 a year. I think that we should have, at the end of the year, and should print in the minister's report, something more exhaustive from these officers that we may see exactly what they are doing and judge if their efforts are worth the money we are spending on the posts. My hon. friend knows very well, that most of these agents of ours in the United States are men who never specially qualified for a work which, to my mind, requires study and preparation. They are political friends of the minister, relatives of members of this House on the government side, and so on. That does not mean, nor do I pretend, that they are not qualified for the work : but it lays upon them, and upon the government the obligation to fully justify the large amount we expend for their
wages and expenses. I wrould suggest to my hon. friend that, for next year, he should get fuller reports from these men. and that we should incur the trifling expense to embody these reports in the annual report of the minister, in order that the people may judge of the value of the efforts being made by these salaried agents. Do I understand the hon. minister to say that the government at one time considered the question of putting on a head tax ?


Frank Oliver: I do not wish to interrupt the hon. member (Mr. Monk) but I may say, ns a matter of information, that when the Immigration Act was introduced in the session of 1906, it contained a provision which would enable the government to impose a head-tax should it see fit to do so. However, that provision was so strenuously opposed by some of my hon. friend's (Mr. Monk) friends that it was thought advisable to drop it. I may say, however, that it was not the intention of the government to impose a head-tax under the conditions then prevailing; the object was merely to give power to impose such a tax under some such conditions as now prevail which call for direct effort on our part, to exclude, as far as possible, certain classes of immigration. The government, I say, did consider the question of imposing a head-tax, but the House, and especially some hon. gentlemen opposite, seemed to think it inadvisable to confer this power upon the government, and therefore we are not in a position to impose such a tax.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: This would indicate that the government at that time desired to take the necessary power to impose the tax, and, as he states, the government contemplated that in view of conditions that existed then and now


Frank Oliver: Not then, but such conditions as exist now ;-I do not say the actual conditions existing now, but such conditions.	[DOT]


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I do not look upon the immigration question as a party question. I understand the hon. gentleman to say that it was opposed by hon. gentlemen on his own side.


Frank Oliver: It was not a partisan proposition. I merely mentioned the fact that it was opposed by some hon. gentlemen opposite.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I take the hon. gentleman's assurance as to that, having no recollection of it. I assure him that if I had been in the House I would have supported the proposition very strongly, because I believe that a small head-tax would recoup us a good deal of the expense to which

the country is put on account of immigration. The hon. gentleman will find that in the United States not only do they impose a head-tax, but that they have increased year by year, and yet every year have had a larger immigration than the year before. The reports of the superintendent general of immigration of the United States are all in the same direction-that the imposition of a head-tax has not prevented the coming in of immigrants, but, in the United States, this tax enables the authorities to meet every single dollar of the immense expense occasioned by immigration inspection and management aud have a handsome surplus at the end of the year. I think that if our government had that power it would be necessary for the government to consider whether it ought not to use that power, at least to some extent. The position in the province of Quebec is this- and I think it must apply to every province that has ocean ports : the serious, earnest immigrant who intends to settle on the land, as a rule, goes through our province to the west, and this is the tendency with the large crowds of immigrants who arrive during the summer months. But the worthless immigrants and the malefactors - for there are many of these who come- stay in the large cities. It is an absolute affliction in the city of Montreal, the number of immigrants who, when they land, stick in the city and become criminals there. My hon. friend will find, if he seeks information from our magistrate^ and even from the judge of our higher criminal courts, that most of those who have, in the last few years, before these tribunals for serious offences, such as assault and murder, are immigrants. These cases are far less frequent in the Northwest. Those who observe the movement tell me that the farmer and the farm labourer who settle on the land, come in through the ocean ports and go thence into the interior. Under those circumstances I think the imposition of a head-tax would deter, not the immigrants who are useful, but those who come out here either because they are sent away or helped out of those countries or those who come here to pursue a career of crime.
1 would like to say a word in regard to Fiench immigration. As I have already mentioned in this House, there are parts of France where we can get an excellent class or immigrants, men of good reputation, who would settle on the land. I mentioned at that time that from the southern ports of France there had gone out to tiie Argentine Republic last year over 17,000 immigrants, from Bordeaux and some other southern ports. They make excellent farmers and law abiding citizens. Under the laws of the Argentine Mr. MONK.
Republic they are not admitted unless they can show by documentary evidence that they have an absolutely clean record in their own country, and every one of those 17,000 immigrants carried to the Argentine Republic a livret such as almost every citizen of France has to carry in his pocket, showing exactly what his record has been. The fact that they were admitted into the Argentine Republic shows that they were men who would make very excellent settlers upon the land. I think it would be well if my hon. friend would call the attention of Mr. Geoffrion, for instance, to the fact of these settlers leaving France last year. Although it would perhaps be a sacrifice to Mr. Geoffrion to leave Paris for a few weeks, I think he could'do more useful work in those provinces of France from which this class of immigrants remove.


Mr. LEMIEUX.: I am glad m.y hon. friend (Mr. Monk) has again brought up the question of French immigration, and has discussed it in so friendly a spirit. The hon. gentleman referred to the relatively large number of immigrants who annually leave the southern ports of France for the Argentine Republic. It is quite true, a large number of immigrants leave, not only the ports of Bordeaux and Marseilles, but all the Mediterranean French ports, for South America. For many years France has had a commercial treaty, with that republic, and there are in Paraguay, for instance, in Uruguay and on the La Plata river, as well as in the Argentine, large French settlements. But we must bear iu mind that the reason of this large tide of immigration from the southern ports of France to South America is that there lias been for years a number of lines of steamers established aDd subsidized by the French government aud by the southern republics, and where you have a subsidized line of steamers you can trace out the emigrant. Last year I read to the House, and this year again I have seen in the library, exhaustive statistics in regard to French immigration. We are told that thousands and thousands of French immigrants leave the soil of France every year for South America and for the United States. Last year the figures were given in this House, and I think they showed that there had been 50,000 or 60,000 immigrants leaving France for South America and the United States. Well, Mr. Chairman, these are not by any means all French people that leave the southern ports of France, a great many of them are Italians, Spaniards, Swiss, Syrians and Greeks, who come from their respective countries to Marseilles and Bordeaux where they take ship to cross the ocean. My hon. friend knows that the two largest ports whence Italians emigrate are Naples and Marseilles. Mar-

seilles, in fact, is one of the largest French ports in Europe, coming second after Liverpool. As a matter of fact, however, the French do not emigrate in large numbers. The other day I was reading a book on Immigration to the United States of American, and I was surprised to learn that during the last ten years the French immigration to the United States hardly amounted to two per cent of the total immigration. There are some Frenchmen who go to New York, and especially to New Orleans, and a few go to San Francisco and Chicago. According to a statement made by a noted French writer, Le Comte d'Avenel, whose book, no doubt my hon. friend has read, most of the French immigrants coming to the United States are professors, artists, waiters, and so forth. I am pleased to say that it is from France that the art-tists and professors chiefly come who go to the United States.
Now, Mr. Chairman, my hon. friend suggests that our agents in Paris should visit some of the most desirable districts in France, and he has mentioned a country which is inhabited by that famous race, the Basques. I am pleased to inform my hon. friend that Dr. Brisson, who has taken a great deal of interest lately in French emigration to Canada, returned a few weeks ago from that region specially inhabited by the Basques, accompanied by two or three hundred of them, and I am sure they will make good settlers on our farm lands.
My hon. friend knows also that in France it is quite difficult to publish anything which might induce immigrants to come to Canada. There has been a standing law since 1861 or 1862, issued under the French empire of Napoleon III, prohibiting any display of advertisements or any inducement to people to emigrate from the country. The reason is quite obvious. In France the birth rate has decreased instead of increased. It is an appalling fact in France to-day that with the exception of the large centres, such as Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux and in most of the departments, with the exception of the northern departments, the birth rate has decreased very materially. The French government from the economic and national point of view cannot help our agents in carrying out the policy of sending emigrants to Canada or to any other country. That law of 1862 is an edict of the Emperor Napoleon III prohibiting any agents from carrying on any propaganda and inviting the prefects to report immediately or to arrest, if need be, any agents trying to send emigrants to foreign countries. That law has not been applied very severely but it is still on the statute-book of France. My hon. friend was speaking a moment ago of Mr. Wiallard, one of our agents in France. I have read some of the letters that Mr. Wiallard has sent to the Department of the Interior. I had many
conversations with him when I was in France two years ago and since that time I have been in correspondence with him, as has my hon. friend, the -Speaker of the Senate, who is a personal friend of Mr. Wiallard. Again and again Mr. Wiallard has remonstrated and stated that if the number of emigrants from France to this country was not larger-it has increased very materially the last ten years from practically nothing to 1,600 per year-one reason was that they could not publish in the papers any advertisements in order to give Canada as good a show as possible. He said that he was obliged to be constantly on his guard because he might be remonstrated with by the authorities. My hon. friend knows that Mr. Wiallard is a Frenchman by birth but that he became a Canadian thirty-five years ago. He married a Canadian, his family was born and brought up in Canada and he is interested in seeing that as many as possible should come to Canada of a desirable class. He is personally an able gentleman, a hard worker and a very good agent. In order to dispel from the minds of hon. gentlemen, especially those coming from the province of Quebec, any erroneous idea which they may have, let me state that by tlie present Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) and also his predecessor we have been treated with very great fairness indeed on this question of French emigration. Through the Hon. Mr. Sifton we have been able to secure the appointment of Mr. Foursin-Escande of the Canadian Bureau of Paris. Mr. Foursin-Escande was brought to this country twenty-five years ago by the late Sir Adolphe Chapleau. He established in the far west several French settlements and I am informed by some of the clergymen whom I know and by some of my hon. friends who represent in this House western constituencies that the French and Belgian settlements in the wast are most prosperous Wo have obtained from the present Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) the appointment of Messrs. Geoffrion and Montpetit.'. I am free to speak of the ability -and special fitness of these two gentlemen because my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) knows them personally and knows them well. Both have been his students and have been following his lectures as a professor in Laval Uuiversity. He knows that Messrs. Geoffrion and Montpetit are specially fitted for the positions which they occupy in France. Messrs. Geoffrion and Montpetit are travelling from one department to another in France giving lectures. My hon. friend knows that these lectures have certainly produced good results. .Tust a word to explain to the House that the department, the head of the department and his subordinates have been very fair towards French immigrants. At my request and at the request of my hon. friend the


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Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Bro-deur), they have not only doubled but trebled the number of pamphlets and books on Canada and Canadian resources and the Northwest published by the department and issued every year. Very interesting pamphlets on the country have been issued in French and distributed broad-cast in France through the instrumentality of Messrs. Geof-frion and Montpetit, Wiallard, Foursiu-Escande and Fabre.
My hon. friend is probably aware of the campaign which is being waged at present in France against all immigration. There seems to be an increase of bitterness on the part of certain Frenchmen against the emigration of their own kindred to any other country. My hon. friend must have read some very bitter articles published recently by prominent Frenchmen, among others a sensational article written by Senator Del-pech and another written by Mr. LaBroue, a member of the French assembly.
Mr. W. F. MACLEAN.: France may some day send her agents to Canada to repatriate these immigrants.


Rodolphe Lemieux: If we increase at the same rapid rate we have in past years, we may some day be able to replenish the population of old France. The Department of the Interior has willingly though cautionsly done its best to encourage desirable immigration from France and the returns show that proportionately we receive a larger number of French immigrants than do the United States. My hon. friend (Mr. Monk) also said that Quebec should have the same opportunity as other provinces to retain desirable immigrants for farm work. I may say that at the close of last session we appealed to the Minister of the Interior and he has made the same arrangement for Quebec and for the eastern townships as was in effect with regard to Ontario. Each county can appoint an agent whose name is sent to the immigration authorities at Ottawa and that agent is authorized to meet the incoming steamers and to select a number of immigrants according to the need for labour in his county. Many of the counties in Quebec, (among others the county of Jacques Cartier) have availed themselves of this arrangement made by the Minister of the Interior. I agree with my hon. friend that we should encourage desirable immigration from France, and I believe that we caD get excellent settlers from the country of the Basques, from Normandy, from Poitou, from Anjou, and from Brittany. But the work must be done in a manner which will not embarrass the French authorities.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The Postmaster General is mistaken when he says that the immigration from France to the American continent, to which I refer, is composed of Italians. As a rule the Italians ship from Nap-Mr. LEMIEUX.
ies and Genoa but there are some who sail from the French ports. When I spoke of the 17,000 immigrants who left from Bordeaux, from Arcachon, and from another French port I did not refer to the Italians. From these three ports 17,000 Basques went to the Argentine Republic in 1907. The Year-book for the present year states that in 1905 there were 94,098 Frenchmen in the Argentine and in 1900 there arrived there 127.000 Italians, 79,000 Russians, and 3,698 French from France.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Will the hon. gentleman look at the trade returns between France and the Argentine.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I do not think France subsidizes any steamship line to the Argentine Republic but if she does then the Minister of Marine was doubly wrong when he gave $200,000 a year to subsidize a direct line between Canada and France without having asked the French government to pay a portion of that subsidy, in view of the fact that it is stated they subsidize a line to the Argentine republic. The statement of the Postmaster General in that regard was a condemnation of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries as a negotiator. I would not like the Postmaster General to infer that I have any special grievance against Mr. Wiallard or Mr. Geoffrion. I know these gentlemen very well and I would not like to reflect on them but still we must express our opinions in this House on such an important matter as immigration without respect to personal friendship. Mr. Geoffrion is a charming and very talented young man but I would never dream of entrusting him with the work of an immigration agent. The same may be said of Mr. Montpetit. The Postmaster General knows that Ml'. Foursin-Escande is too old and infirm to engage in any active work of that kind. The Postmaster General has stated that we are not permitted to conduct an immigration propaganda in France. If that be so how is it that we have four immigration agents in that country and that we cover France with pamphlets and advertising matter just as we do countries where there is no prohibition ? The Postmaster General says we must do it with certain caution, but if the laws of France be against that work he knows Frenchmen well enough to know that it would not be tolerated for five minutes. If there is a country in the world where the eyes of the police and of the secret agents of the government are upon you, it is France, where the government watches the action of every individual in every minute detail. The information which I have from competent men is that there is no impediment whatever to an immigration propaganda being carried on in France. It is a long time since Napoleon III disappeared, and I think the law to which my hon. friend has referred has

been abrogated or has fallen into disuse. An agent of the local government has just gone to France from Montreal, at a cost of $5,000, to get servants of every description, and he has publicly advertised his mission. If there were a law in France against that kind of work, does my hon. friend think these operations would be possible ? I think not. How is it that the Minister of the Interior has never taken the trouble to ascertain definitely whether the laws of France allow that kind of work or not ? It is my belief that there is no law against it.


Louis-Philippe Brodeur: Oh, yes, there is one, When I was in France I got a copy of the law, and I will send it to my hon. friend.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I would like to see it, because I do not think there is such a law that is put into operation.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Although the test of the law has not been sent by Mr. Wiallard, he refers to it in his last report, where he says :
In regard to the question of publicity, as we have already said elsewhere, we cannot make a very active propaganda by means of the press, as is done in England and in the countries where no prohibitive law exists; we enjoy, however, a certain liberty in this respect, of which we shall know how to take advantage, as we have done before. Newspaper articles, distribution of pamphlets having only an historic, geographic, or economic character, and consequently not giving rise to any objection on the part of the authorities, notices drawing the attention of the public to the existence of the office of the Commissioner General for Canada, always ready to give official information as to the advantages ofiered to certain classes of emigrants; such are the means we have employed up to now and which we count on using further and on a larger scale, to accentuate still further and to increase the favour which our country enjoys in France.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: This of course does not give us any information as to the real state of the law. It is quite possible that there exists in France some prohibition against actually seducing a man out of his own country and taking him abroad. There are several countries in Europe where it is not allowed to induce a man by false representations to leave the country and go to another country. Rut this is a different matter, and Mr. Wiallard's opinion as to the extent to which the law goes in France is worth nothing. It is surprising that none of these agents that we have in France should have sent a report, giving us the exact state of the French law on this subject. If it is forbidden to carry on any propaganda in France, why are we spending thousands of dollars every year to maintain agents for the purpose of carrying on that propaganda? My hon. friend says we are doing it cautiously. Well, I must say that I do not like that way of doing things. It reminds me of the mysterious contract
with the North Atlantic Trading Company, under which we paid thousands of dollars to agents for the purpose of carrying on a propaganda, and when we wanted to have the names of those agents, my hon. friend, the incarnation of Liberalism in the province of Quebec, voted that we should not have their names and applauded when his leader, the Prime Minister, expressed a fear that they might commit suicide if they were discovered. Does my hon. friend think there is any danger of our young and jovial friend Mr. Geoffrion committing suicide? Oh. no. I entirely approve of the system they have in the United States, and I venture to think, without being a prophet, that we shall have the same system here before long. They forbid all immigration propaganda. They do not spend a single cent to employ people in foreign countries to induce other people to come to the United States. They have never for a single moment entertained such a policy. They consider it undignified. They make their country and its progress known by judicious advertising at world exhibitions, and I venture to say that the United States as a country of settlement is much better known in France than Canada is. So that for my own part I do not at all approve of the system of having immigration agents anywhere. But if we have them in France, we ought to act openly with them. If there is a law there forbidding them, we ought to withdraw them. We pay a considerable sum for these agents, and we ought to know the work they are doing. The fact that they are residing in Paris does not satisfy me that they are employing their time continuously for the purpose of advancing the cause of immigration.


Mr. LENNOX.: My hon. friend knows that their work is not confined to Paris. The office of Mr. Fabre is in France, but these agents go into different provinces to do their work, returning on Saturday1 night to Paris.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: My hon. friend knows that Mr. Wiallard has his residence and his office in Paris. I do not know whether Mr. Geoffrion resides in Paris or not. I assume that he does, from those very interesting letters w7hich he has been sending to the French papers in Montreal, which are dated from Paris, and from which it abundantly appears that his excursions into the provinces do not necessitate his being absent from Paris very long; and in Paris there is not very much immigration work to be done. What alarmed me most in my hon. friend's statement was the announcement that we were going to have immigration agents in each county in the province of Quebec. Is the system which has existed in the province of Ontario of having agents in each county going to be duplicated in the province of Quebec?


Rodolphe Lemieux: Certainly. -


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I am not aware that those agents have been a success in Ontario, and I am afraid that the system will not work much better In Quebec.


Rodolphe Lemieux: The farmers of Ontario are very much pleased with It.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I do not think it has served the purpose for which it was established. It was established for the purpose of enabling certain political friends of the government in Ontario the opportunity of making a little money.
. Mr. OLIVER. Will my hon. friend tell me the source of his information that the system of distribution agents in Ontario has been a failure?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I have seen in the papers a very severe criticism of the system, and one of those agents, I think, was arrested and is being prosecuted in Ontario. I am against all this kind of immigration expenditure. In- Ontario it has been resorted to for the purpose of giving encouragement to political friends, and I have no doubt whatever that if the system is now introduced in Quebec, it is for the same object.


Frank Oliver: Does it encourage my hon. friend's political supporters to prosecute them?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: When they are caught with their hands in the cash box, they have to be brought to justice. I think if we were to prosecute all those who waste part of that million and odd dollars spent on immigration, the minister would be kept very busy indeed. We have agents in the eastern townships, and my hon. friend has consented to add to the number by appointing agents in other parts in the province of Quebec, and he consented to do all this because of representations made to him by gentlemen on his side that he must do to the rest of the province of Quebec what he has been doing so abundantly for Ontario the past year or turn. I do not think he will deny that.


Frank Oliver: What evidence has my hon. friend of this aggressive attitude on the part of the province of Quebec ?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: It is very difficult to give evidence on that point. It is, in that respect, like many other things everybody speaks of, which we hear about in the corridors of this House, which we see hinted at in the organs of hon. gentlemen opposite in the province of Quebec, but if we arVasked to do, as we are asked every day in the Public Accounts Committee-if we are asked to produce the best written and absolute proof, such as is required in a court of justice, of course we cannot do it. But there is no one in the province of Que-Mr. MONK.
bee who has any doubt about what I have asserted.


Frank Oliver: My objection was to the assertion of my hon. friend that it required an aggressive attitude in order to bring to my mind a case of injustice, if one should exist.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: My hon. friend the Postmaster General said last year that there was no immigration from France. I am glad to see him back here so that I may remind him. He said last year that it was useless to seek immigration from France because Frenchmen do not emigrate.


Rodolphe Lemieux: My hon. friend must not put words in my mouth which I did not utter. I have no hesitation in saying that of all the countries of Europe, France is probably the one which sends the fewest emigrants to foreign countries. I base my opinion on all authorities who have written of late on the subject, and my hon. friend knows perfectly well that such is the case. But I am in favour of desirable French immigration. It will come in a limited number, but if we can capture that limited number, so much the better. We are doing our best in that respect, and we have met on this side of the House from the hon. gentleman who is at the head of the Department of the Interior, and we also did from his predecessor, much sympathy and the best encouragement possible.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I notice that my (hon. friend is very generous in the praise he bestows on the Minister of the Interior. He even went so far as to praise the previous encumbent of the office.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I am only stating the truth. And I am saying this because my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) and his immediate predecessor have been greatly misrepresented in the province of Quebec as being deadly opposed to all French immigration. Why should they be ? As a matter of .fact they have not. We have received from both the best possible encouragement ; but even with the best possible encouragement, as I said last year, we cannot expect a very large flow of immigrants from the country of our ancestors.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: That eulogium of the previous minister is very significant ?' A|re we to infer that he is coming back ? My hon. friend will remember that when the previous minister (Mr. Sifton), towards whom he is so generous to-night, resigned, my hon. friend's organ in Montreal made a terrible attack on him ; and among other accusations was this very one, which no doubt emanated from my hon. friend or his neighbour the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Brodeur), and which went to say

that he had been bitterly opposed to all French immigration ever since he was made head of the Department of the Interior.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I never realized how apt is the good English expression ' a fig-menlt of the imagination.' This is indeed a figment of my hon. friend's imagination.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: My hon. friend knows very well what appeared in his organ in Montreal.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I have no organ there unfortunately.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: He has a very noisy and turbulent organ in Montreal, and at the time attacks appeared in it, emanating either from my hon. friend or his neighbour the Minister of Marine and Fisheries, who both inspire that organ, and the gravamen of these accusations, which appeared every morning against the ex-Minister of the Interior (Mr. Sifton) at that time, was that the government were obliged to get rid of him because he was so much opposed to French immigration. Now my hon. friend tells us that he noticed at all times how friendly that hon. gentleman was to that particular branch of the service. My hon. friend says that there are not many emigrants who leave France. That is not what Le Yicomte d'Avanel says. My hon. friend has just referred to that eminent writer.


Rodolphe Lemieux: He deplores the fact that so few Frenchmen avail themselves of the immense opportunities which are to be found in the western states.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: What he deplores is that they have not taken their share in the immense prosperity of the west.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Hear, hear.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: And I would infer from his remarks that Frenchmen have not been conspicuous in the development of the west, but I would not infer that they had not emigrated in fair quantities. Another thing remarkable is that he does not point out that there is any law against French emigration. My hon. friend will remember that quite lately in an article in ' La Revue des deux Mondes,' one of the leading French periodicals, written by one of our French lecturers in Montreal, on French emigration-although there are many inaccuracies in his article-he does not refer in any way to the laws of Franee as being opposed to emigration from that country. My hon. friend was mistaken in saying that there were more immigrants came from France to Canada than came from France to the United States.


Rodolphe Lemieux: In proportion.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The proportion of immigration is much larger from Italy, Russia and 313
Germany. But my hon. friend would be astonished, if he took up the four last reports of the immigration commissioner of United States, to see by the valuable compilations of statistics there, how many Frenchmen have migrated to the United States. As a practical conclusion, I would like a statement from the Minister of the Interior that we are to have more extended reports from Mr. Wiallard and his associates in the future. The report given in my hon. friend's return covers scarcely two pages and is in such general terms that it merely conveys no information whatever of a valuable kind.


Mr. LAKE.: I see that this same amount of $200,000 was appropriated for this service in 1907-8. But in the Auditor Generals' Report, I cannot find any distinction between the salaries under this head and other expenses. How much was actually spent in salaries last year ?


Frank Oliver: The whole vote was expended, $200,000.	.


Richard Stuart Lake: But did $200,000 cover all the salaries of the agents and employees in Canada, Great Britain and foreign countries ? Or was it necessary to get a further sum from some other source ?


Frank Oliver: There are some other things besides that are paid out of contingencies.


Richard Stuart Lake: Under what authority is the minister able to pay salaries out of contingencies ? I want to know exactly what was spent last year under this item of the estimates, and from what sources the money came and by what authority ?


Frank Oliver: I say that the sum spent under this item is $200,000.


Richard Stuart Lake: But I want to know the sum spent on this service : 1 Salaries of agents and employees in Canada, Great Britain and foreign countries.'


Frank Oliver: The information is not arranged just in that way, but I may be able to give the answer in a few miuutes.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Has the minister with him the list of booking agents in France to whom we have given the privilege of earning this bonus 1


Rodolphe Lemieux: Currie & Son, Hernu & Perron and Pitt & Scott. Each agency has ten subagencies in France, making thirty subagents who are working in our interest.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I can scarcely understand that. For, the evidence we had before the committee on immigration led me to believe that we had only three certified or authorized booking agents in France.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Bnt they have subagents.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Carried.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: But we find that in the British isles, every hooking agent must take out a license, and every licensed booking agent in the British Isles has the authority of this government to earn the bonus. And there are hundreds of them.
I hear some hon. gentlemen crying * carried.' Perhaps the subject of immigration does not interest them. But it interests us, and the subject ought to be examined somewhat carefully before we vote a million dollars for the service. We are entitled to get information, even if somebody is driven to commit suicide.
I say that, in England, every licensed booking agent is the authorized agent of this government. He receives circulars showing the advantages he may reap by selling tickets to Canada to get the bonus. In France, there are only three agents. If it is a country where it is worth our while to recruit, why do not we have a sufficient propaganda ? What is the use of having three booking agents in Paris, if, as the hon. Postmaster General (Mr. Lemieux) says, the really good immigration is to be found in the Basque provinces or in the Norman country ? Why not have your booking agents in Rouen, in the centre of Normandy ? And if the Basques are good immigrants, why have not you booking agents in the cities of that region ? Why have not Mr. Wiallard and these other gentlemen whose salaries we are paying, taken an interest in this matter ? If this system of $5 a head and $2 for babies is a good system, why not carry it out in a proper way, in every country in which we think it worth while to carry it on at all ?


Frank Oliver: The booking ageut, both in England and in France, is licensed as my hon. friend (Mr. Monk) has said : The booking agent may have a number of subagencies. For instance, my hon. friend has heard of the booking agency firm of Cook & Son, in England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Holland, and, I suppose, every other European country. These people have numerous agencies throughout the British islands, to say nothing of the continent, but it is the firm of Cook & Son that is responsible to the British government for all these agencies. In France, there is the firm of Pitt & Scott, which has subagencies in all parts of the country. But it is the firm itself which puts up the security witli the French government and is responsible to the government for the conduct of those agencies. Because there is only one firm of Pitt & Scott, it does not follow that there is only one point at which that firm sells tickets to Canada. There are three firms in all with which we Mr. MONK.
are doing business in France, and each of these has subagents. We do not deal with the subagencies, but with these firms, because we believe them to be reliable firms, firms who will not get us into trouble with the French government or deal improperly with the immigrants. They are responsible people, as we understand it. Whatever is being done is done in the open light of day, and will be. We believe that by dealing with responsible firms we are achieving a measure of publicity which we could not achieve in any other way at the same price. With regard to the inquiry by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake), there is a contingency vote out of which we paid last year about $7,000 in salaries. I cannot give a detailed statement of the balance of the contingency vote, because it was out of this vote that we pay the detention hospital charges, which charges are recouped to us, in many cases, by the steamship companies.


Richard Stuart Lake: Am I correct in assuming that the $207,000 will cover all the salaries of last year?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


Mr. W. J. ROCHE (Marquette).: Is a bonus still being paid on Galicians coming to this country?


Frank Oliver: No. we have no booking agencies operating in Austria-Hungary.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: At one time the government gives one explanation and at another time a totally different one. When this question of paying bonuses was discussed, my hon. friend stated, and the superintendent General of Immigration stated at that time in an interview he gave to the ' Globe ' newspaper, and we by no means paid this bonus to anybody who sold a ticket to an immigrant for Canada. There had to be a selection, and if a man was found qualified he got an authorization from this government, and that man alone could receive the bonus. Now what are the facts as revealed to us this evening? They are quite different. Every booking agent in the British Isles can earn a bonus, there is no special authorization of any kind given. The mere fact of the booking agent receiving the little package of circulars in which this bonus system is made known to him, constitutes his authorization. Therefore every booking agent in the British Isles who has a license to sell tickets is ipso facto authorized by this government. That admission was made by the Superintendent General of Immigration before our Committee on Agriculture. Now on the continent it is different. I saw by the evidence given before the Agricultural Committee, and by the documents of the committee, that we had three booking agents in Paris. It now turns out by a statement which seems to

have no foundation-1 mean to say that it does not seem to result from anything that has been put before this House-that through these three agencies in Paris we extend our ramifications for bonus all over France. Is that the case? Are these men at the sub-agencies, whose names are not known to us, authorized to collect a bonus? We had a statement previously that only the man who is examined, found qualified and specially authorized by this government, would get the bonus. Now to-night we are told that there are over forty agencies throughout France.


Frank Oliver: I do not think that any number of sub-agencies in France was mentioned.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The Postmaster General said that each of these three agencies had ten sub-agencies. Where did the hon. gentleman find that out?-because we had the testimony under oath of the head officer of the department in the Committee of Immigration that we had three agents, and their names were given.


Rodolphe Lemieux: When was that evidence taken before the committee?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: A few days ago.


Rodolphe Lemieux: There is no discrepancy between the statements. There are three large firms in Paris, Pitt & Scott, Currie & Son, and Hernu & Perron. Hernu & Perron have their central office in Paris, just in front of the Canadian office, Rue de Rome. It is well known that they have sub-agents in every large city of France. I saw the names published this summer. Take the Cooks, for example. A firm like the Cooks has an agency in every city and every town of France.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Does the hon. gentleman pretend that if Cooks in London are our authorized agents, all Cooks' sub-agents can earn the bonus?


Rodolphe Lemieux: I say that those three agents get the premium, and they are interested in getting as many as possible from the different suboffices all the same. They will get the premium on every immigrant they bring from any portion of France, not only from the place where they have their central office. They have agencies all over France. A firm like Hernu & Perron has agencies at Bordeaux, at Marseille, at Dunkerque and at Havre, in fact in every large port of France, and the whole staff of every sub-agency is working for the central agency in Paris.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I pretended that was the case when I discussed the motion for the abolition of the bonus, and my hon. friend the minister sternly denied it. He said that we only had agents specially authorized. The Postmaster General says that 3131
Cook & Company are the greatest booking agents in Europe; and he says that Hernu & Perron in Paris have sub-agents everywhere. Therefore the sub-agents are entitled to earn the bonus.


Rodolphe Lemieux: No, I hope the hon. gentleman is not playing upon words. I say that these immigrants which are being gathered by the sub-agencies of Hernu & Perron, entitle Hernu & Perron to the premium on those immigrants. Whether they are gathered by Hernu & Perron in Paris, or whether they are gathered beyond Paris by the sub-agents, it is the firm of Hernu & Perron which gets the premium.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: That is what I argued at the time. Now what is the consequence of the minister's statements? Cook & Sons in London, Cook & Sons in Glasgow, and Cook & Sons in Aberdeen are authorized agents entitled to collect the bonus. Now surely their sub-agents are in the same position, and they earn the bonus also.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Hernu & Perron's agents are paid by them, not by the government.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Therefore it follows that Cook & Sons agencies all over the continent of Europe, wherever the bonus is authorized to be paid, earn the bonus. Does the Minister of the Interior admit that the proposition of the Postmaster General is well founded?


Frank Oliver: I will try again to explain the situation. My hon. friend has said that Cook & Sons in the British islands are entitled to the bonus under certain conditions as other booking agents in the British islands are.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: They are authorized to collect the bonus.


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend says that they are allowed to collect the bonus.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Because ail licensed agents are.


Frank Oliver: As a matter of fact all licensed agents are not because for cause we refuse to deal with certain booking agents.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: If they rob you, of course, you do not deal with them.


Frank Oliver: Not only if they rob us but if they do not act properly we refuse to do business with them. But as a rule what my hon. friend says is correct, that licensed booking agents in Great Britain and Ireland are entitled to secure the bonus under certain conditions. That condition prevails in the British Isles because there is no restrictive law agaiDSt immigration, but, on the continent of Europe, because of the restrictive laws, we do not make a general.

automatic arrangement with all booking agents. We only deal with those whom we consider reliable and satisfactory. We select in those countries the agents whom we will do 'business with. In the British Islands we select those whom we will not do business with. Cook & Sons are not those whom we have selected to do business with in France or on the continent.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: It seems that it is very difficult for me to make my reasoning clear to the hon. gentleman. We have agents in Faris to the number of three ?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: They have sub-agents all over France and when these sub-agents book emigrants to Canada the head office collects the bonus ?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: We have Cook & Sons in London and when Cook & Sons book an immigrant to Caanda they collect the bonus ?


Frank Oliver: Cook & Sons in the British Islands but not Cook & Sons in France, Belgium, Holland or anywhere else on the . continent.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Why not ?


Frank Oliver: Because we have no agreement with Cook & Sons.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: You have no agreement
with Hernu & Perron. Your arrangements are the same as you have with your English agents. You have no special arrangement differing from that which you have with your English agents.


Frank Oliver: They are appointed by us as our agents. They are selected by us to act as our agents just the same as we select certain agents in Great Britain to act in Great Britain for us.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The hon. gentleman is simply playing on words. There Is no appointment and my hon. friend knows it.


Frank Oliver: I will not continue the discussion with the hon. gentleman as a matter of argument but I want to state to him as a matter of fact that we do not pay Cook & Sons a bonus on each immigrant booked by them from France.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Well, there is no appointment of agents. When we were put under that impression some weeks ago it was entirely erroneous unless you call an appointment the fact of giving a booking agent three or four circulars in which it Is shown that he can obtain the bonuses by booking to Canada railway navvies, farm labourers, farmers, and domestic servants. Does the Mr. OLIVER.
mere fact of our immigration agent giving the booking agent these circulars constitute his appointment? Hernu & Perron and Currie & Sous in Paris have the same appointment as the booking agents in the British Islands in that they get these circulars in which it is shown that they can get $5 or $2 a head for immigrants of a certain class. We' pay a bonus, under the terms of out-order in council to immigrants from Galicia. The order in council covers German Galicia ?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: And Russian Galicia ?


Frank Oliver: Sure.
Mi*. MONK. But my hon. friend says that wb do not pay any bonus because we have no booking agents there. What I want to know is this : Cook & Sons have agents all over Galicia and in all those countries ; supposing they get their immigrants booked through Cook & Sons in London what is to prevent Cook & Sons of Paris from claiming the bonus through Cook & Sons in London ?


Frank Oliver: Our arrangement is that the booking agent can only claim bonus on a citizen of the country in which he is a booking agent.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I say that there is no such indication in their appointment whatever. If I can be shown that there is I will retract that statement.


Frank Oliver: Our circular to booking agents makes that distinct statement for the very reason that my hon. friend has suggested to the House.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: There is a suggestion in the circular that the bonus is paid to the booking agent himself and not to any subagent. I remember that suggestion but that is not what the Postmaster General has told us this evening.


Frank Oliver: The circular most distinctly points that out and it is in the circular for the definite purpose of preventing what my hon. friend suggested a little while ago-a booking agent say, in Antwerp, collecting commission on an immigrant from some other country than Belgium. A booking agent in Antwerp can only collect commission upon people of Belgian citizenship.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Has my hon. friend a circular with him ?


Frank Oliver: No, I am not able to give the hon. gentleman evidence of that fact but that is the statement as I remember it iu the circular. However, that is the administration for the very obvious reasons

that he has already placed before the committee.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Of course, if it is in the circular we can find it, but my recollection of the circular is that it forbade the right of a booking agent to get the bonus through any other person whatever.


William James Roche: The hon. Minister of the Interior said a while ago, in answer to my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk), that he was of the same opinion regarding paying bonuses that he held a few years ago. Well, that may be so, but if so the minister has changed his method of expressing his ideas because, as far as my recollection goes, and I think I have refreshed my memory by reading the hon. gentleman's speech, he denounced in toto the bonus system in the old country. He declared distinctly that the payment of bonuses to the steamship companies and the payment of bonuses to permanent agents in the old country was money worse than wasted, and the only feature of the immigration policy he did not condemn was the sending of farm delegates from Canada to the mother country. I understand the Minister of the Interior has continued sending delegates to the old country to whom he pays $100 per month and expenses. Probably some of these farm delegates have induced immigrants to come to Canada, but some of them not being practical farmers themselves proved of doubtful benefit to the country. Some were clergymen, some residents of towns who knew nothing about farming, but they had a nice jaunt at the expense of the government and a salary of $100 per month besides. Can the minister give me the names of the farm delegates who were sent to the old country in 1907 ?


Frank Oliver: About 20 were sent but I am sorry I have not the names at hand.
I will give them later.


William James Roche: Were they selected from each province in the Dominion ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, except from the maritime provinces.
. Mr. W. J. ROCHE. Has the minister any figures to show the number of immigrants which each delegate has induced to come out ?


Frank Oliver: It would be impossible to give the result of their work in the actual number of immigrants who came here. We get a report from the delegate showing in such detail as may be where he has been and the means taken by him to present the advantages of Canada to the British public. We expect that the presentation of the ad-1 vantages of Canada by a credible representative will have an effect beyond the mere1 fact of his presence, and that at a later date people will come to Canada who have been influenced by him. My hon. friend will agree that it is not the man who is most easily moved to emigrate who makes-the best settler ; possibly the man who is slowest to move is the better man after we secure him. True we may have made' mistakes. We desire to give a reasonably fair and equal representation to the various provinces with a special preponderance to the prairie provinces. We have to get men as we can, and I am sorry to say the selections have not always been entirely the best. But taking it year by year and considering all the circumstances the system is thoroughly justified by its results. We have been able by this means to bring the agricultural advantages of Canada directly before the population of the British Isles in a way that we could not otherwise do. Our eiforts are particularly directed to get people who will settle on the land and the difficulty in former years was that the advantages of Canada had been brought prominently before those who were not fitted to take advantage of our conditions. So far as we have been able to follow, the work of the agricultural delegates it has been eminently satisfactory, and those who have come as a result of their mission have been in the majority of oases the very people Canada wants and is quite willing to spend money to get.


William James Roche: Have the labours of the delegates been confined to the British Isles ?


Frank Oliver: One has gone to France, one to Belgium, and one or two more will go.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: Who went to Belgium ?


Frank Oliver: Mr. Morel.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What time of the year was he sent ?


Frank Oliver: November or early in December.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: Was he a native of Belgium ?


Frank Oliver: Yes.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What qualifications must these men possess ?


Frank Oliver: We have to do the best we can, but the qualifications we ask are that the man shall be an actual farmer, that he shall be a successful farmer, and if possible a native of the country to which he goes.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: I suppose he must have farmed on the prairie for a time ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, he must be a man who has made a success of practical farming in this country.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What is the policy of paying the farmers ?


Frank Oliver: Last year we sent them immediately after the new year, to remain three mouths, and we paid them $100 a month and their expenses during their absence from home. We found, however, that the season was rather short, because these men, being engaged in practical farming, had to be at home on their places early in the spring. So that this year we tried to get them away in December. The period is three or possibly four months.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: I feel a little sensitive on this point of immigration from Belgium, because I made efforts last fail to get a very successful farmer in my constituency, Mr. Hardy, of Hartney, sent there, and after trying for two months, I found that he could not be sent. I think that one of the important qualifications of these men is that they must be Grits.


George Perry Graham: They are the people who talk well of the country.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: They have always a pleasant smile. Who went to France ?


Frank Oliver: I am sorry that I am unable to give the name of the man who went this year. The delegate who went last year was Mr. Vauriot. Both of them wTere from Manitoba.


Mr.  W. J.@: 'ROCHE (Marquette). How long has the system of paying $100 a month been in vogue ?


Frank Oliver: I cannot say at the moment when it was made a system. It has been the practice ever since I have been in the department, and I think some time before. At first I think there was a system of sending what were called returned men, that is to say, men who had come from the old country a few years before and who wished to make a visit home. They were given a free passage back or some slight assistance in that way. But it was found that that was not satisfactory, and it was decided that if we were to get good service we would have to send men whose time was worth something to them, that is, men in actual business, who could not afford to go simply for fun, and we had to pay them something as a salary, so that they could provide for filling their places at home while they were absent. They were placed at the disposal of our regular agents, to go and come and give their services as they were required. Although that appears to be more costly than the other way, we believe that we get more value for our money.


William James Roche: The reason I ask that question is that about a year ago I met one of these returned farm delegates on a political platform. The preced-Mr. OLIVER.
ing speaker had twitted him with having received a considerable amount from the government as a delegate, but he rather repudiated the idea and posed as a philanthropist, saying that he had only got his expenses. However, I find in the Auditor General's Report that even this gentleman is down for $100 a month ; so that he must have had a slip of the memory. I wish to ask the minister if the government has been assisting any needy settlers in the province of Manitoba within the last year by buying provisions for them ? If so. in what portion of the province do they reside, who made the request, and what quantities of provisions were dispensed ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, it has been unfortunately necessary this year to provide some assistance in what are called the Toulon and Gimli districts in the eastern part of the province. That is the only part of the province where it has been necessary to give assistance.


William James Roche: What did the provisions consist of ?


Frank Oliver: I could give the hon. gentleman a complete return. The principal supply was flour, in addition to which there were some small articles which were absolute necessities.


William James Roche: What security has the government ?


Frank Oliver: We have taken a lien on the homestead as security for the advance.


William James Roche: Who was it made the request for assistance ?


Frank Oliver: A petition was received from the locality, and the case was investigated by our officers, and it was decided that it was a proper action to take.


William James Roche: The minister would not object to bring dowu that petition ?


Frank Oliver: Oh, no.


William James Roche: The reason I ask about this is that I saw an article in a newspaper of the district in which these provisions were distributed, stating that it was felt by many that while there may have been a few deserving families requiring assistance, advantage had been taken of the distribution by some of the government agents there to get a hold on these people, and to use this distribution, like the distribution of seed grain, as a political lever. It was" reported that the advances were held back until an election was on, and that they were then used for the purpose of influencing votes. In the method of distribution of this flour among the Galicians and other foreigners the object seems to purchase their votes in that

way. Let me read an article which appeared in a Selkirk paper :
Surely the elections are not very far distant. They are casting their shadows before them in the shape of three or five carloads of flour sent by the government for the foreigners at Gimli and Winnipeg beach. These people are getting too wise to be inveigled in this way, as they find out it is to be charged up against them when they receive the patents for their lands, or in other words they are expected to pay for their own election bribes, and many of them are refusing to take any of it. It looks like another election dodge such as was acted upon at the last provincial election when innumerable patents were granted to those who had complied with the requirements and the duties of a homesteader on condition that they cast their votes for the Liberal candidate. The game was to hold off granting these patents until election times and then to convince the foreigners that it was a gift if they put up the goods on election day, although they were entitled to these patents some time before.
According to that article inducements in the shape of distributions of flour were held out to those who were really not in need of it in order to get their votes. I am aware that there has been purchased from the Lake of the Woods Milling Company some $870 worth of flour, distributed amongst those foreigners, to say nothing of over $400 worth got for the same purpose from the Ogilvie Milling Company, and a good many of these foreigners repudiated the idea that they were in need at all. No one is going to condemn the distribution among needy settlers, but there were comparatively few that required this distribution. Whatever truth there may be in this article, those in charge of the distribution will be better able to tell. Who did distribute this flour?


Frank Oliver: Having seen probably the same article my hon. friend has read, we had a further report made, and will be able to present the whole of the facts to the House to-morrow, as well as the names of the officials who made the distribution.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: When was it made?


Frank Oliver: In January and February of this year.


Mr. BARR.: Among the Canadian immigration agents appear the names of a large number of officials at Ottawa, such as Mr. Bryce, Mr. C. H. Beddoe, Mr. Dan McGillicuddy, and others. Are they paid as agents $100 per month and expenses besides their usual salary, and how long are they kept on the other side?


Frank Oliver: Dr. Bryce is the chief medical officer of the department. He has charge of the hospitals and of the examinations for medical fitness at the ocean ports. He is also medical officer for the Indian Department. Mr. Beddoe is chief accountant for the Interior Department. As such he went to Europe to investigate the accounts of the North Atlantic Trading Company and was paid his travelling expenses in that connection.


John Barr: Two hundred and ten dollars are charged for his expenses in that connection. One would judge from the Auditor General's Report that all those mentioned went to Europe. Mr. W. W. Cory obtained an advance for travelling expenses. Dr. Bryce also appears in the list of Canadian agents of immigration and was paid $450 expenses. Then I think my hon. friend to the left must have been mistaken when he said they must all be Reformers, because I find in the list the Hon. Frank Oliver $2,900 for travelling expenses. We always looked upon him as an Independent.
I suppose he went to the old country also.


Frank Oliver: The gentlemen whose names have been mentioned receive a good deal more than $100 a month, and these expenses are in addition to their salaries.


John Barr: How long would they remain in the old country?


Frank Oliver: The farm delegates remain generally about three months. Dr. Bryce did not go to the old country. Mr. Beddoe went to Amsterdam in connection with the North Atlantic Trading Company's contract, and I think he remained there three or four days. I was absent some seven months from Canada.


William James Roche: Mr. Smith, formerly of Winnipeg, head of the immigration branch there, was transferred to the old country and Mr. Bruce Walker brought over in his place, but why was the transfer made, and what are their respective salaries?


Frank Oliver: The salaries are the same in both cases, $3,000. Mr. Smith was getting $3,000 in Winnipeg and Mr. Walker $3,000 in London, with $600 living allowance in addition. Mr. Walker desired to change his location on account of the health of his wife with whom the English climate did not agree, and Mr. Smith desired to change his on account of the health of a member of his family with whom the climate of Manitoba did not agree.


William James Roche: I desire to bring to the attention of the minister a matter which is mentioned almost every session, but which will stand repetition particularly upon the eve of an expected election. I refer to the part that immigration and other officials of the department are taking in politics. Notwithstanding that this parliament unanimously passed a resolution a few years ago-acquiesced in by the minister-declaring that no civil servant shall take part in elections, I received 1 information from numerous sources that the

98.71
hon. minister's officials are taking an active part in elections at this moment. During the past few weeks, a Galician interpreter connected with the Interior Department, is making a house to house canvass in the Galician colony in my constituency. This took place last election and has taken place at intervals since, and the same is now going on. The expectation is that he would get a number of these people naturalized- and that is another thing, commissioners appointed under the Naturalization Act passed by this parliament, have been going there taking their naturalization papers and rounding the people up together to get them registered, and taking a very active partisan part in politics. When I was coming through Winnipeg, a month or so ago, I heard that two or three officials had been amongst the foreign population in the northern part of Alberta and iSaskatchewan. I am sure that the minister, personally, would like to see the mandate of this parliament obeyed, therefore, I call this matter to his attention. But immigration agents and others do not of their own volition and without some instruction from their superior officers, carry on such work as this. The minister may not be cognizant of it, but some of his officers must be, and they must have taken it upon themselves to direct these immigration agents to take this active part in politics.


Frank Oliver: Can the hon. gentleman give me the name of the interpreter of whom he speaks ?


William James Roche: Of course, the old stand-by is always there, Philip Harvey. But he is not the one I speak of as being in my own constituency at the present time. I have not under my hand the letter telling about this man, but my recollection is that his name is Genik or something like that. I can let the hon. minister know.


Frank Oliver: I would like to have the name. I have already said in this House, and I say again, that I do not think the government stands to profit by political activity on the part of its employees; and, so far as I am concerned, I object entirely to that activity. I have addressed a letter to the employees of the department warning them against taking an active part in politics. I should be very glad to have information from any of our friends on the other side in regard to improper activity on the part of our officials, and I will find out whether my instructions can be carried put or not.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What is the penalty ? No doubt, the minister is sincere in this, and yet, though we bring the matter to the attention of the minister, these officials still go on as before. What does the minister do when he finds that his instructions have been disregarded ? I have already referred Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
in this House to cases of which I know. I can give names to-night if necessary of public officials whose principal occupation is canvassing for elections. The minister says he would like information, but, if he is given the information, what penalty will he inflict? Will he dismiss the official ? There is no doubt of the facts-these men in Manitoba, in the Northwest and in British Columbia are continually canvassing for election.


Frank Oliver: The only penalty we can enforce is dismissal from the service. Of course, that would not be done without careful inquiry, and our friends opposite would not expect us to dismiss a man unless the eivdence is clear. Certainly they wpuld not expect us to dismiss him on mere report. That is why I said I would like the name and occasion, so that I could bring the matter fco an issue. And, of course, lion, gentlemen opposite may be to some extent mistaken and may believe that certain action is taken when it is not taken. I suppose they will admit that there is a possibility of even themselves being somewhat biased in their view as to the action of officials. It has been absolutely necessary that our officials in connection with immigration should visit many settlements during the past winter. As, for instance, we had to give relief to some people in the northern part of Manitoba, giving certain peonle seed grain


William James Roche: Did you have to give seed grain in Manitoba ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, in some of the unorganized parts of the province in the north, we distributed a little seed grain. The Manitoba government, of course, had full charge in all organized municipalities, acting through the municipal organization. But in the territory which is not municipally organized, in the northern country, there is no provision made, and we had to give a small amount of seed grain taking liens on the homesteads. Throughout the other provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, where there was a general distribution, of course it was necessary that the services of our officers should be very generally used that the occasion might be met as fully as possible. Hon. gentlemen opposite may perhaps admit that it may turn out that they have been charging to political activity that which was a necessary act in the ordinary transaction of the business of the department.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: The minister did n;ot quite understand the drift of my question. Under what authority does this government distribute seed grain in the unorganized parts of Manitoba ? The Bill applied to Alberta and Saskatchewan.


Frank Oliver: Under the same authority as that under whihc we gave relief of the new settlers in the vicinity of Toulon.


William James Roche: Was there any appropriation ?


Frank Oliver: No. There is a vote for contingencies which has always been at the disposal of the Immigration Department to meet such cases, and where the amount is not large it is met under that vote. Last year, of course, we had to have a vote of $30,000 to meet the special conditions which existed southwest of Saskatoon. In ordinary years, we are able to meet any cases which may arise out of the vote for contingencies, but this year we were not able to do so. .It is out of that vote that we are allowed to give the relief that we did give at Toulon, in the northern part of Manitoba, and in Saskatchewan.


Richard Stuart Lake: When the minister is bringing down the information he has promised in respect of the special relief, I would ask him to include all the places he has mentioned, and also to bring down information in regard to repayments of relief given in the past.


Frank Oliver: There will be no difficulty in bringing down the information in regard to relief given during the past winter, but it would take a considerable amount of research to make a return of repayments that have been made from time to time, because no separate account has been kept of them.


Richard Stuart Lake: All I wanted was a general idea as to how the money was collected, and to what extent it was being repaid.


Frank Oliver: There will he no difficulty about giving a general idea.


Richard Stuart Lake: In regard to officials of the government taking an active part in elections, I would suggest to the minister that he could at least furnish them a strong excuse for abstaining from taking part in elections by putting a clause in the Election Act inflicting a penalty upon any man who takes an active part either on one side or the other.


William James Roche: Genik, the interpreter that I mentioned, was engaged in the municipality of Rosthern where no seed grain was distributed, and consequently there was no excuse for his being there at that particular time. Even had he been engaged in that particular occupation, it was long past the time. The reason why I think it was this man that I refer to, is that one year ago when the provincial elections were going on he was engaged in the same work. I was in the constituency and he was pointed out to me. I know he has been actively engaged in the past, and I think it is the same one.


Frank Oliver: Would the hon. gentleman give me the name, whoever he was ?


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: I see in the Auditor General's Report the name of L. B. Cochrane, Medicine Hat, who gets $75 a month as immigration agent. Is he engaged in any other occupation ?


Frank Oliver: He is also sub-land agent at Medicine Hat.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: Is he not a merchant ?


Frank Oliver: His son is a merchant.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: I think he is head of the firm.


Frank Oliver: That would not necessarily interfere with his employment as a subagent. Almost invariably the persons whom we employ as sub-land agents have some other calling or profession.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: A man who gets $75 a month should spend most of his time in the service of the government, without engaging in mercantile pursuits.


Frank Oliver: So far as my knowledge goes of Mr. Cochrane, whatever his other interests may be, he does spend his whole time in the capacity as immigration agent and sub-land agent.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: Is there more than one medical health officer in Winnipeg ?


Frank Oliver: Only one.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What is the duty of the inspectors ? I see one, Thomas Cory, of Gladstone, inspector, receiving a pretty large salary. What would be his duties?


Frank Oliver: He is an inspector of British immigrant children, and his salary is provided by the imperial government, under an old arrangement in regard to the immigrant children. We pay him and two or three other inspectors, and we are recouped by the British government. This gentleman resides at Gladstone, and wherever any of these children are located he has to inspect them and report on their treatment.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: I see another item about a party of Scotch ploughmen. Give us a little explanation about that.


Frank Oliver: What does the Auditor
General's Report say ?


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: Expenses in connection with a party of Scotch ploughmen, $110. [DOT]It does not say to whom the money was paid. It may have been paid to Robert Adamson, in Winnipeg.


Frank Oliver: Mr. Adamson some years ago busied himself in going over to Scotland and engaging ploughmen, and bringing them out to the prairie provinces. But

he has not been in that employment for the past three years. I presume the amount of the hon. gentleman finds there is payment of some balance due on former work.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What did these Scotch ploughmen do ?


Frank Oliver: They are immigrants, and they engage with farmers in the west. I understood that the men brought out by Mr. Adamson were of a particularly desirable class.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: I don't say they were not. The way the item appears here, I do not know whether it means that they were brought out to teach the farmers how to plough.


Frank Oliver: Mr. Adamson went over to Scotland and went into the agricultural districts to get in touch with men who were practical farmers, and men who were ploughmen employed on farms. He brought out ten or twenty of them, and accompanied them to the west and placed them with farmers. They were ordinary Scotch immigrants.


Mr. MORIN.: I would like to tell the minister that when I was on the train going from Montreal to Sherbrooke, at Christmas, I met a man whose name I forget, but I think he came from Moose-jaw. He told us that he had been living in the west for twenty years, and was on his way to Scotland to see his friends. He said to us : 'I am not very rich, and a friend of mine came to me and said: ' What will it cost to go to Scotland ?' He told him what it would cost. Well, he says, I will help you.' He said that he went to a man at Moosejaw and this man got him appointed an agent to go to Scotland. He said : The government pays my fare from Moosejaw to Scotland and back again, it pays all my expenses, it gives me $2 a day for my time, from the time I leave home until I get back, and if I get some immigrants to come out with me, I will receive .$2 per head. I heard him say this on the train. He was a Scotchman probably 50 or 55 years of age and he said he had been supporting the government all .his life and it was time he should get some benefit.


Frank Oliver: I guess he was a Scotchman.


William James Roche: In the Auditor General's Report, page L-29, I see the name of Martin Jerome, Winnipeg, and that he is down for $100 a month or in all $680.64. Martin Jerome comes within the category, I understand, of an active politician. He was a delegate to the Liberal convention in Provencher two months ago, and he was ballotted for in opposition to Mr. OLIVER.
the hon. member for Provencher (Mr. Cyr). He seems to be at all the Liberal conventions. He is a very active politician and still he is drawing $100 a month. Then, I see the name, on the same page, of Mr. Thomas McNutt, of Saltcoats, seven and a half months at $125 a month, $937. I have nothing against Mr. MacNutt personally. He is speaker of the Saskatchewan legislature and a most active politician. He could not occupy the position he does as a member of the legislature without being one, and still his name has been figuring in the Auditor General's Report for many years past. I think both these gentlemen come within the category of active politicians, and still they are employees of this government in contravention of the rule laid down by parliament.


Frank Oliver: Mr. Jerome is not now in the employ of the department.


William James Roche: Since when?


Frank Oliver: Some time last fall he ceased his connection with the department.


William James Roche: What about Thomas MacNutt?


Frank Oliver: Mr. MacNutt is well known as an old-timer in that locality and he has been employed, not on salary, but from time to time at a per day payment.


William James Roche: He is down here for $125 a month.


Frank Oliver: At any rate his engagement is not, as I recollect, an engagement at a yearly salary. I am not at all sure what objection there may be to the employment of Mr. MacNutt, but I have always understood that he was a man who stood very well in the community and, although a member of the local legislature, he -was not considered an active or offensive politician.


William James Roche: I think he is an active partisan or he would not be where he is.


Robert Laird Borden: Who is the superintendent of the Halifax detention hospital?


Frank Oliver: Malcolm Chisholm.


William James Roche: At page L-25 of the Auditor General's Report there is an item for the North Atlantic Trading Company of $24,333. Is that the final payment? Does that cover all the arrears?


Frank Oliver: No, that is not the final payment. The final payment is $36,901.50, paid during the year 1907-8.


Richard Stuart Lake: Was the renewal of the bonus on European immigrants a consequence of the cancellation of the contract with the North Atlantic Trading Company?


Frank Oliver: To some extent it may be said to have had a connection with that. The agreement with the North (Atlantic Trading Company was brought to an end on November 30, 1906. From that time on there was no bonus paid on immigrants coming from Europe. It will be remembered that the North Atlantic Trading Company agreement did not provide for bonus on immigrants coming from Belgium or France, but only from certain other countries of Europe-Holland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia. After the 30th November, 1906, there was no special inducement for immigrants from any part of Europe. It was thought advisable in the early part of 1907 to adopt in a measure the regulation that prevailed in the British Islands with regard to dealing with European immigration, with the restriction that instead of dealing with ail booking agents we only would deal with the booking agents selected by us in such countries as we 'might feel safe in selecting. That brought France. Holland, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Austro-Hungary and Switzerland all under the same provisions as those which existed in England with two exceptions. One was that the bonus was only half what it was for a British immigrant and the other was that we only paid it to selected booking agents instead of to booking agents generally. That system ran on for nearly a year and it was found that it seemed to produce very little result. We found that we were not securing very many of the class of immigrants that we wanted to get and we thought it would be fair to increase the bonus to the same amount as that paid on British immigrants. That is the position as it stands now. Had the North Atlantic Trading Company's contract not been cancelled the present system of bonus would not have been instituted, but this has followed the cancellation of the agreement with the North Atlantic Trading Company. There are some very radical differences between the two arrangements. With the North Atlantic Trading 'Comany there was only nominal restriction as to the classes of immigration. Now the restriction is very definite and strict. Therefore the number upon whom the payment is made is very small. The North Atlantic Trading Company agreement covers all the countries mentioned except France and Belgium. In Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Switzerland we have not yet been able to arrange for booking agents. We have booking agents in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. In these countries we have an arrangement with select booking agents as to the payment of a bonus on the same conditions that we pay the British bonus. A booking agent can only collect bonuses in respect of citizens of the country of which
he himself is a citizen and in which he is operating.


Richard Stuart Lake: Since the cancellation of the North Atlantic Trading Company contract no bonuses have been paid to immigrants from countries where there are no select booking agents. Has there been any considerable failing off in the immigration from these countries in consequence?


Frank Oliver: I am rather inclined to think there has, but I cannot say definitely at the moment.


Richard Stuart Lake: I suppose the government will keep careful watch to see whether the bonus system is productive of any increase in immigration. The order in council provides for the payment of the bonus upon navvies or miners who have signified their intention of following farming or railway construction in Canada. Is it sufficient that a navvy should make the mere statement that he intends to pursue farming when he gets to Canada ?


Frank Oliver: The navvy or miner gets no benefit himself from the bonus, and he has no object in making a mis-statement as to his intention. We accept the statement of the booking agent in the old country, and if the statement of the booking agent tallies with the^statement of the immigrant to the agent at our port, the booking agent is entitled to the bonus. But, we are able by our system here to a very great extent to trace our immigrants and if we find that the immigrant does not follow farming we make a deduction of the amount of the bonus from the next payment due to that booking agent. If we find the booking agent has entered into collusion with the man in order to improperly secure the bonus we cease doing business with that agent.


Robert Laird Borden: What is the object of advertising in the Christmas numbers of a great many papers.


Frank Oliver: We think it a very satisfactory way of bringing the advantages of Canada before the notice of desirable immigrants. These papers publish a special issue in which the advantages of a particular part of the country are written up, and we purchase a portion of that special issue for distribution through our agencies to the desirable classes. In other cases a newspaper will get out a special issue the circulation of which will be very large and we sometimes advertise in that paper.


Robert Laird Borden: What I could not understand precisely was what advantage it was to advertise in a Canadian paper, which presumably is almost entirely circulated in Canada, and could have little or no influence in promoting immigration from foreign countries.

98)60


Frank Oliver: That is true, but the special number of the ' Globe ' in which we had this advertisement was not a part of the regular issue of the ' Globe ' or sent to its regular subscribers. It was a special issue offered for general sale, and we thought that it was a very creditable representation of Canada, and would be used to a great extent by people who, though living in Canada, have interests in the United States or in England, and who would send copies to their friends in those countries, thereby bringing before them the advantages of Canada.


Robert Laird Borden: I was not alluding more to the Toronto ' Globe ' than to a great many other papers. It seemed to me to be a very indirect way of reaching people abroad. I can understand the purchasing of a large number of copies of a particular issue of some journal and sending them abroad. That is simply another form of immigration literature ; but it does not seem worth while for the department to advertise in these Canadian papers unless it takes some means of assuring the sending of copies of the advertisement abroad. Coming back to special issues of newspapers, have they been pretty thoroughly distributed ? Some time ago the statement was made that a large number of copies of the Halifax ' Chronicle ' which had been purchased, not by this government, but by the Nova Scotia government, had been lying in London for some time and that storage was charged on them. Has anything of that kind occurred under this department ?


Frank Oliver: I could not say. I think it would be inexcusable if it did. We have plenty of means of distributing these papers. If there was such a ease, I do not pretend to offer the House any excuse for it.


Richard Stuart Lake: I understand that some time ago the minister ordered the distribution of a million copies of the Winnipeg ' Free Press,' and that reports came from the United States to the effect that a large number of copies were lying in the post offices because there were apparently no such individuals as those to whom they were addressed. Is the minister continuing to order these very large editions of the Winnipeg ' Free Press ' or other papers ?


Frank Oliver: The edition my hon. friend speaks about was gotten out some years ago.


Richard Stuart Lake: I think two years in succession.


Frank Oliver: Since I have occupied the position I do not think we have had such an issue as my hon. friend speaks of. In the annual report there is a list of the special editions we have purchased during the Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
preceding year. The largest is one of 36,000 copies of the 1 Northwestern ' a German paper published in Winnipeg.


Richard Stuart Lake: Where did they go ?


Frank Oliver: They were distributed chiefly among our agencies in the United States. One of the most successful features of our immigration Horn the United States is the German immigration, and I think we have had good value for the money expended.


William James Roche: An enormous amount of money is expended for printing and advertising, a great deal of which seems to be spent in the way of subsidies to party papers. Winnipeg seems to have fared very well in this respect. The Winnipeg ' Canada ' got $591.99, the Winnipeg ' Canadian Hungarian,' $426, the Winnipeg * Loberg,' $1,280, the Winnipeg ' Nordwestern,' $807, the Winnipeg ' Stavel ' Company, $2,214 ; and some of these payments were not at all for special editions, but simply for copies of regular editions. The Toronto ' Globe ' got $10,281, the Halifax ' Chronicle,' $1,132, the Ottawa ' Free Press,' $3,285, the Saskatoon * Phoenix,' $300. Not only have large amounts been paid to newspapers, but any person who has had a fad for getting out any particular article can sell it to the government for immigration purposes. For instance, the Rev. Dr. Bryce, of Winnipeg, got out a book entitled ' Everyman's Geology,' and the government purchased 5,000 copies and paid him $887.50. I do not know what particular influence that book would have in inducing immigrants to come to this country. I have not seen the work, but I know that the Rev. Dr. Bryce has got out several books, and has a faculty of unloading them on the government and the public at very remunerative rates. Rand, McNally and Company, of Chicago, got from the government last year no less than $23,355. No doubt the atlas they got out could not be got out in Canada; but surely some of the printing done in Chicago could be done in Canada. These are only a few items. There is an enormous amount of money paid out for printing and advertising, and I do not know that we have a sufficient return for the outlay. The regular issues of a great many of these weekly papers are of no particular use in the way of inducing immigrants to come to Canada, and a great many of the payments to them are only subsidies.


Mr. STAPLES.: In nearly every little local paper favourable to this government throughout the western country you will find advertised the homestead regulations. What does that insertion cost?


Frank Oliver: 
William D. Staples: I have learned for the first time that there is a distribution of seed grain throughout Manitoba. Where has that been distributed?


Frank Oliver: The distribution is only in that part of the northern section which is not organized into municipalities. The amount distributed was to the value of about $5,000.


William D. Staples: In what township and range and who were those who received the grain?


Frank Oliver: I have not got the information but there will be no difficulty in giving it. I have already said that we would lay it on the table.


William D. Staples: What was the nature of the grain distributed?


Frank Oliver: Principally oats.


William D. Staples: Where purchased?


Mr. S. J. JACKSON.: Mr. Castle informed me a short time ago that he purchased a large quantity of oats in Prince Edward Island and also in Scotland and was selling them at 85 cents a bushel.


William D. Staples: Who got the seed grain?


Samuel Jacob Jackson: I do not know, but no one got any in my district.


Mr. HERRON.: Some years ago I was told that when foreign immigrants landed in the locality of a land office, the agents had instructions to hire teams and give assistance in that way to foreigners who wanted to examine the land, but that they were not allowed to do the same for immigrants from the British Isles.


Frank Oliver: The rule is that if a settler looking for land desires to engage one of the land guides, the settler has to pay the guide for the use of the team. We pay the guide ourselves $2 a day. and that is paid irrespective of the nationality of the applicant.


John Herron: I was told by a subagent that he had instructions to do that for foreign immigrants only.


Frank Oliver: The subagent had no warrant for any such statement.


William D. Staples: I see in the Auditor General's Report that the government have purchased blankets at $6.50 and $7.50 a pair. That appears pretty expensive. What are those used for?


Frank Oliver: They have to be purchased for the immigration sheds and hospitals.


William D. Staples: Were they bought by tender?


Frank Oliver: Whom were they bought from?


William D. Staples: From Craig & Company, Winnipeg, according to the Auditor General's Report.


Frank Oliver: They were not bought by tender.
Expenses of deporting undesirable immigrants, $2,000.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: How many did you deport last year ?


Frank Oliver: I am informed that since the Medical Act went into force, in 1902, we have deported 1,400.


William D. Staples: From what part of Canada have they been deported ?


Frank Oliver: From all parts. Wherever a complaint has been made we have always acted upon it.


Richard Stuart Lake: Are they sent from the port of entry, or from any part of the country?


Frank Oliver: The Immigration Act provides that any person who, within two years of his arrival in Canada, becomes subject to certain disabilities, if complaint is made, can be deported on a certain course being taken.


William D. Staples: Under what regulations are they deported, and from whom must the information come ?


Frank Oliver: The Act provides that, where there is a municipality, the information shall be laid by the clerk of the municipality; elsewhere, the department may act through it own officers. Where there is a municipality we prefer to act on a recommendation or wish of the municipal authorities.


Robert Laird Borden: Does the government bear the whole expense of deportation ?


Frank Oliver: The law provides that municipalities may be required to share the expense, but, in practice, either the transportation company or the Dominion government bears the expense. I do not think we have had one case in which municipalities have borne a part of the expense.


Robert Laird Borden: I may be mistaken, but I have some recollection of a speech made by the provincial secretary of Ontario in which it was shown that considerable expense was incurred by that pro-

vince for deportation. But probably I am mistaken.


Frank Oliver: I think It was probably on account of the presence of undesirables.


Robert Laird Borden: There was that but I thought there was the other also.


Frank Oliver: I think not.


Richard Stuart Lake: Can the minister give any idea of the proportion deported by nationalities, showing from what countries we get the desirable and from what country the undesirable immigration ?


Frank Oliver: We have not it worked out in that way, and I do not think the result would really give the information my hon. friend desires. It is somewhat dangerous to rest simply on the doctrine of percentage when it comes to a question of the desirability of a number of immigrants.


William James Roche: What disposition was made of the Doukhobors who were taken back to Saskatchewan ? I understood that the provincial government protested to the Dominion government against their return there. Are they being looked after by the provincial authorities, or has the government here any responsibility in the matter ?


Frank Oliver: I think I explained on a previous occasion that the position taken by the government is that these people are not immigrants and are outside the immediate control and responsibility of this government. My information is that these people are being dealt with by the provincial government, although i have no definite information on the subject.


William James Roche: Has the provincial government sent in any protest or request in the matter ?


Frank Oliver: We have had some communication with the provincial government on the subject; but the position that we took was as I have stated. The law is perfectly clear that, up to a residence of two years in the country, immigrants are under the authority of this government, but, after that, we have no authority over them. It is not a matter of dispute or argument but a matter of fact.


William James Roche: As I understand it, they are being looked after by the Mounted Police. Is not this government in control of the Mounted Police.
Mr. OLIVER, There is a dual authority there. The organization of the force is under the authority of this government, but the force is employed at the jnstance and under the legal authority of the provincial government. So, any duties the Mounted Police may be discharging in Saskatchewan Mr. R. L. BORBEN.
in regard to these people are at the instance and under the authority and direction of the provincial government.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: For what reasons may people be deported ? Because they become a public charge ? Is that the only reason ?


Frank Oliver: That is one reason. Another is insanity, conviction of crime, or disease.
Mr. SCHAFFNER, Was application made by the city of Toronto recently for a number of young men to be deported ?


Frank Oliver: Last month, something over a hundred men, Bulgarians and Macedonians, were deported from Toronto on complaint of the city that they had become a public charge.


William D. Staples: Up to a certain period, immigrants would have to be looked after by the municipal authorities, and it costs them considerable to communicate to this government and have the undesirables deported; Does the government reimburse the municipalities what they have paid ?


Frank Oliver: No.


John Herron: From the information we received before the Immigration Committee from the superintendent general, it would appear that there was not sufficient precaution taken at the port of entry to examine these immigrants for disease or anything else which would disqualify them for entry. I believe the information was to the effect that a medical officer would examine 400 immigrants in an hour. Now .it must be an impossibility to make any proper examination of an immigrant in so short a time in order to discover whether he should be admitted under our laws. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why we have had to deport so many. We receive a good deal of information in that committee that would be of advantage to the government in dealing with immigrants, for instance, with regard to the relations between the booking agent and the immigrant. It would seem to me quite natural that when the booking agent and the immigrant meet together the agent should suggest to the immigrant how to answer certain questions, establishing a collusion between them. There also appeared to be a lack of medical supervision at the ports of entry.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: It would be interesting if the minister would explain the system of inspection of immigrants who come to Halifax, for instance, in the large ships.


Frank Oliver: A choice has to be made between care and speed in the inspection

of immigrants at the port of entry. At the present time, in the case of the Canadian Pacific Railway boats, the medical officer boards them at Rimouski, and he has the opportunity of looking over the passengers during the trip to Quebec, that is about twelve hours. In the case of the other boats that arrangement has not yet been made, but it appears to be a desirable arrangement and will be extended to all the boats, as all the boats that come to Quebec land at Rimouski. When a vessel lands at Quebec, if the examination has not already been made on the boat the medical officers make an examination of the first and second class passengers immediately. Then flie third-class passengers are landed at the detention sheds and are passed under review as rapidly as possible. If the officer has reason to suspect any physical Imperfection in an immigrant, instead of stopping the line of immigrants until this person has been fully examined, he is sent to the waiting room, and when the main body of passengers have been examined, then the suspected cases are taken up and examined more fully. This gives every reasonable opportunity to the medical man to make a thorough examination. Unless he is absolutely satisfied that the immigrant is all right, he can hold him back and give him a special examination without detaining the great body of passengers. If, after having made the second examination, he finds that his suspicions are confirmed, he may either send the passenger to the hospital or send him back to the country whence he came. When we consider the large number of immigrants who have come out during the past four or five years, we have very little reason to complain of inefficiency in regard to our medical inspection. Just to show that the inspection at the port is to a considerable extent effective, since the Medical Act has gone into force there have been detained in the way I have mentioned at ocean ports 16,000 people and of these over 3,000 have been actually excluded ?


Oswald Smith Crocket: In how many years ?


Frank Oliver: Six years. When you consider the large number of immigrants who have arrived during that time, and when you take the number of deportations and the number of instances where deportation has followed detention, I think it is fair to say that the medical inspection at the ports has been fairly efficient and is becoming more efficient and that there is a reduction in the number of undesirables since the Immigration Act of two years ago was passed which provided for deportation. Before that we did not have the authority to deport. Once the immigrant was landed and entered into Canada we had no authority to send him out, but since the Act providing for deportation came into force there is really very little purpose in an immigrant who is physically unfit attempting to pass the inspection, because even if he does pass the inspecting officer he can be picked up at any place throughout the country within two years and sent home. This deportation provision of the Act is a very drastic provision. It is really heart breaking to enforce it in many cases but it is the only effective way of preventing undesirable immigration. I have every confidence that the deportations which have taken place within the past year or two will have a very manifest effect in checking physically undesirable immigration.


Oswald Smith Crocket: How many have we deported in the past two years after passing the port of entry?


Frank Oliver: 1,400 have been deported.


Oswald Smith Crocket: After passing the port of entry?


Frank Oliver: Yes, that includes people who had come in for two years before. That included four years immigration.


Robert Laird Borden: Was the Act applied to people who had come into the country before it was passed ?


Frank Oliver: The Medical Act which purported to exclude these people went into force in 1902, but the Deportati-on Act of 1900 gave us authority to deport those who should have been excluded.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What about the bonus paid to immigrants who were deported ?


Frank Oliver: In all such cases we charge that amount against the booking agent and deduct it from any future payments that may be made t;o him. If we find he has not been acting in good faith we discontinue business with him.


William James Roche: Does the minister not think that if these immigrants had to produce a certificate of health prior to embarking from the country from which they came it would save a great many of these heart-rending scenes that he speaks about? If they had to undergo a strict examination prior to getting on the vessels by reliable medical men it would save a great deal of trouble and sorrow and avoid the hardships which these people have to endure in travelling thousands of miles to and from their own homes.


Frank Oliver: That is something that looks very good on the face of it, but it is not feasible when you come to deal with it. There is just as much difficulty in dealing with the medical examination of immigrants on taking the steamer as there is in

dealing with them on the immigrant leaving the steamer. These people do not live where the steamer sails from. They come from a distance to take that steamer, they come intending to take it immediately and delay at the point of embarkation is just as difficult, in fact it is more difficult to deal with, than delay, at the point of debarkation. Of course, it would be an advantage if that could be done, but there is just the same difficulty in doing it and by only making a medical examination at the port of debarkation the responsibility is thrown absolutely upon the steamboat company. We believe that in the end we will get better results by putting it up to the steamboat company that they shall only carry people who can pass our medical examination. The steamship company do not like to take people back at their own expense. We believe that we will have a more effective check by checking them at the port of debarkation than at the port of embarkation because if they were examined at the port of embarkation the steamship company would be relieved of responsibility.


Robert Laird Borden: Do the steamship people make a medical examination themselves ?


Frank Oliver: They purport to make a medical examination themselves but it is simply for the purpose of assuring themselves that there is little or no danger of anything occurring during the passage. That is not good enough for our purpose.


Robert Laird Borden: One would suppose that if there is a certain danger of their being put to the expense of taking a large proportion of the immigrants back they would make a medical examination of the same character as that to which the immigrant is subjected on his arrival here.


Frank Oliver: That is our object, and I believe we are in the way of attaining it.


Richard Stuart Lake: Could you not induce the shipping companies to a frame of mind which would lead them to require medical certificates at the port of embarkation ?


Frank Oliver: We are probably getting them to that frame of mind by compelling them to take the immigrants back.


Robert Laird Borden: Does the United States make a medical examination at the port of embarkation ?


Frank Oliver: Yes, at southern European ports, but not at British ports.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: If immigrants have been in this country for a year and six months are the steamship companies responsible for their return ?


Frank Oliver: 


Frank Oliver: We think it unfair to hold the steamship people responsible for more than a year after the arrival of the immigrant, but if an immigrant were here for over a year we have an arrangement with the steamship companies to take them back at a charity rate which we pay.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: What is that rate?


Frank Oliver: Fifteen dollars across the Atlantic.


William D. Staples: Do the booking agents go through the rural districts soliciting immigrants?


Frank Oliver: Generally they advertise their business, and I understand that a few of them do make such a canvass.


William D. Staples: If these agents go to the homes of intending immigrants the medical examination should be made at the originating point. A responsible medical officer in the district should give a certificate which would be presented to the booking agent and*by him to the steamship company. This would save a great deal of trouble to the government and a great deal of distress to immigrants who may be sent back. For what disease is the majority of these immigrants deported? I understand that trachoma is very prevalent and that the disease is spreading and is incurable.


Frank Oliver: I have heard it said that the disease is incurable and I have also heard it is not difficult to cure. In the hospitals which have been established at the ocean ports we give treatment for it, and in a very large number of cases there is said to be complete recovery.


John Herron: Who can tell whether an immigrant is or is not a farmer so that the booking agent is entitled to the bonus? To my own knowledge men who professed to be farmers knew nothing at all about the business, but no doubt the bonus was paid on them.


Frank Oliver: I have already gone oyer that question twice to-night, but for the information of my hon. friend I will go over it again. The booking agent makes his claim, stating that the immigrant has represented himself thus and so to him. That claim is checked against the statement made by the immigrant to the inspecting officer at the point of landing. The ship's manifest shows the name of the immigrant, so that the chain of identification is complete. If it is found that the statement of the immigrant accords with the claim of the booking agent, there is a prima facie case for the payment of the bonus. However, the department has an opportunity of knowledge in regard to the subsequent movements of the immigrant, which is fairly
*98*39

accurate; and if it is found on inquiry that a man in regard to whom a bonus has been paid has not followed the occupation he declared his intention of following, the amount of the bonus is deducted from the next payment to the booking agent. That is not an infallible check, but I think that the statement of homestead entry made upon thle lands in the Northwest generally, in proportion to the total immigration, fairly well bears out the belief that we do not pay bonuses on more people than the booking agents are really entitled to receive payment upon.
Some resolutions reported.


FIRST READING.
[Stage Direction]
Bill (No. 179) to incorporate the Synod of the Diocese of Keewatin.-Mr. MeCraney.
Mr. FIELDING moved the adjournment of the House.
Robert Laird Borden: Are you to take Supply to-morrow?


William Stevens Fielding: We shall continue with the estimates of the Minister of the Interior, and later, if opportunity offers, we will take up those of the Minister of Railways and Canals.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, House adjourned at 12.20 a.m., Friday.
[Stage Direction]
Fbiday, June 5, 1908.