1908-07-02

Mr. GAUVREAU asked :: (Translation.)
1.	At the time of the reported suspension of Mr. J. U. Gregory at Quebec, who was the Shipping Master and who was his assistant ?
2.	Did Mr. J. P. O'Brien, of the Marine Stores, occupy the position of assistant ?
3.	Who recommended Captain Chas. Koenig for the position of assistant ?
4.	What are the other positions in the Marine Service held by the said Captain Koenig ?
5.	What salary is attached to each of such positions ?
6.	Did Captain Koenig reoommend a new division of the position of Light Inspector ?


Mr. PUGSLEY.: If so, when, and in favour of whom ?


Hon. L. P. BRODEUR (Minister of Marine and Fisheries):: (Translation.)
1.	Mr. J. U. Gregory was the shipping master, and 'Mr. J. P. O'Brien his assistant ?
2.	Yes. Owing to his duties as storekeeper, Mr. O'Brien found himself unable to fulfil the duties of shipping master, and he was in consequence permitted to resign.
3.	The Department of Marine and Fisheries.
4.	Captain of the steamer ' Druid,' the property of the Dominion government. Besides, he has charge of the inspection of lights and buoys 'between Portneuf and Father Point.
5.	Captain Koenig gets from the department for his services, $150 per month. The only remuneration of shipping masters are dues allowed to them in connection with the performance of their work. The remuneration oif their assistants is a matter of agreement between both officers.
6.	Yes. On April 28, 1908, he made such a recommendation, towards the filling of the position of inspector of lights in that new division, but without mentioning any name. The matter has not yet been taken up by the department.


DREDGING CONTRACTS, ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK.
Mr. BENNETT asked :: 1.	What contracts have been made with the Dominion Dredging Company for work at port of St. John, New Brunswick, what is the date of each contract, and what is the price of each class of material in each case?
2.	What quantities of class have been removed in each of these contracts respectively ?
3.	What amounts of money have been paid to the company?
4.	What was the duty paid by the Dominion Dredging Company on the dredge employed on these works?
5.	Were the several contracts let by tender? If so, who were the tenderers in each case and what were the figures?


William Pugsley: 1 and 5. Contract was entered into with the ' Dominion Dredging Company ' to do work at Rodney Slip and Intercolonial Railway West Berth at prices of Mayes' contract for Rodney Slip, which were secured by a public call for tenders.
Contracts were signed, for Intercolonial Railway west berth, on December 4, 1907, for Rodney Slip, on January 11, 1908. Prices of both contracts were as follows :
Class I, solid rock, $19.90; class II, stones,

less than 2 yards, not less than half yard, $5.60 ; class III, all other materials, 90 cents.
2.	At Rodney Slip : class I, 990 c.y.; class II, 56 c.y.; class III, 356,534 c.y.
At Intercolonial Railway, west berth: class I, nil.; class II, nil.; class III, 36,960 c.y.
3.	On work at Rodney Slip, $340,895.20 ; on work at Intercolonial Railway berth, $33,264.
4.	The Minister of Customs has furnished me with the following information for the House : The Dominion Dredging Company has paid $26,375 customs duties on dredge used at St. John, N.B., since first of June, 1907. This answer however is not to be understood as furnishing a precedent in future inquiries, as it is not usual to disclose the amounts of duties paid by individual importers at the custom house.


MARINE DEPARTMENT-PAYMENTS TO GEO. T. MERWIN.
Mr. TAYLOR asked :: 1.	How much money was paid by the Marine and Fisheries Department to George T. Mer-win in the fiscal year ending March 31, 1908?
2.	How much has been paid to Geo. T. Mer-v, in by the department from March 31, 1908, up to the present time?
3.	How much has been paid by the Marine and Fisheries Department to F. L. Brooks & Company in the year ending March 31. 1908?
4.	How much has the department paid to F. L. Brooks & Company during the current year ?


Hon. L. P. BRODEUR (Minister of Marine and Fisheries) :: 1.	A total of $12,630.21, of this amount $7,637.50 was paid for goods ordered prior to year 1905-6. The balance $4,992.71 covered spare parts purchased in order to keep lights previously purchased from George T. Merwin in operation.
2.	Nothing.
3.	$97,121.50. This amount was mostly in payment of apparatus for which tenders had been asked and on which F. L. Brooks and Company were the lowest.
4.	Nothing.


DREDGING AT TATAMAGOUCHE.
Mr. STANFIELD asked :: Has the government received from the inhabitants of Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, a petition asking to have the harbour dredged at that place ? If so, is it the intention of the government to comply with the petition?


William Pugsley: Yes ; the matter is under consideration.
NICOLET POST OFFICE-SUPERINTEND- * ENT OF WORKS.
Mr. BERGERON-by Mr. Taylor-asked:
1.	Is Mr. Solomon Rivard still employed as superintenent of works at the Nicolet post office?
2.	If not, when did he cease so to be ?


Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public "Works) :: 1.	No.
2.	June 1, 1908.


EMPLOYMENT OF JOHN O'SHAUGHN-ESSY.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. BERGERON-by Mr. Taylor-asked:
Is Mr. John O'Shaughnessy in the employ of the government in the district of Nicolet? If so, what is his work?
William Pugsley: Yes ; he is foreman of construction of storehouse on Nicolet wharf.


WHARF AT HOWARD'S CAPE.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. LEFURGEY-by Mr. Taylor-asked:
1.	Was a petition and chart received for the construction of a wharf at Howard's Cape, Prince county, P.E.I., and on what date?
2.	Did the government make any investigation or survey? If so, when?
3.	What is the intention of the government with regard to the construction of this work?
William Pugsley: No petition or chart asking for the construction of a wharf at Howard's Cape was ever received by this department. Resident engineer states a wharf was partly built either by local government or by private parties some twelve years ago which was swept away by ice during the following year.


NORTHWEST AND GOLD DREDGING COMPANY.
Mr. SINCLAIR asked:: 1.	How many leases to dredge in the Saskatchewan river for minerals were acquired either by grant from the Crown or assignment by the Northwest Gold Dredging Company in, the years 1900, 1901 and 1902?
2.	What are the names and addresses of the original lessees, the number of miles of said river leased to each applicant, and also the amount paid to the Department of Mines by each applicant ?
3.	If said leases were transferred, to what person or corporation were they transferred, and for what consideration?
i.	How many miles of this submerged bed of the Saskatchewan river were acquired by assignment or otherwise and registered in

the Department of Mines by the said Northwest Gold Dredging Company in the years 1901-1902?
5.	What are the names and addresses of the president, managing director, vice-president and secretary of the said Northwest Gold
Dredging Company for the years 1900, 1901 and 1902?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior) :: 1. Forty-eight (48).
Name of Lessee.	Address.	Number of Miles.	Amount paid.
		10	$ cts. 214 50
		10	214 50
		10	m 50
		10	214 50
		10	214 50
		10	214 50
		10	214 49
		10	214 48
			107 24
		5	107 24
		10	214 48
		10	214 04
		10	212 32
		10	212 32
		10	212 32
		10	212 32
		10	212 32
H. Webb		Sparks St., Ottawa		10	212 32
		10	212 32
W. F. Powell	Police Station, Ottawa	10	527 26W H McAuliffe 	10	212 30G. H. Rogers	Bank St., Ottawa	10	212 3010	212 2610	212 2410	212 245,433 813.	Northwest Gold Dredging Company, Limited. No consideration mentioned.4.	Approximately 240 miles.5.	During the year 1900-1 the officers of the Northwest Gold Dredging Company appear to have been : Hon. Geo. E. Foster, president of the hoard and managing director, House of Commons, Ottawa ; J. W. McRae, vice-president, Elgin street, Ottawa; Dr. W. H. Roughsedge, secretary, Sparks street, Ottawa. For the year 1901-2 the officers would appear to have been : Hon. William Owens, president, the Senate, Ottawa ; Dr. W. H. Roughsedge, secretary-treasurer, Sparks street, Ottawa.


HULL CUSTOMS IMPORTS.
Mr. MONK asked :: What was the total amount of imports registered at the customs port of Ottawa for delivery in the city of Hull in the fiscal years 1906-7 and 1907-8, respectively, and whether in bond or otherwise?


Hon. WM. PATERSON (Minister of Customs).: I am told that it will take some time to prepare the answer to this question; so that the question can either stand or, if it is dropped, I would hand the information to the hon. member when it is ready.


Mr. SINCLAIR.: 


Frederick Debartzch Monk: If my hon. friend will hand me the information, I will drop the question.
Question dropped.


HULL POST OFFICE.
Mr. MONK asked :: 1.	What was the total revenue from all sources of the Hull post office for the fiscal years 1906-7 and 1907-8, respectively?
2.	What was, respectively, the total amount of money orders and postal notes issued and paid at said post office for the fiscal year 1907-8?
3.	What is the total amount of money deposited in the savings department of the said post office?
i. What are the annual charges against said, post office, including salaries, commission, maintenance, &c. ?


Hon. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX (Postmaster General) :: 1.	Total revenue 1906-7, $7,639.15 ; total revenue 1907-8, $8,224.66.
2.	Amount of money orders issued 1907-8, $36,972.02 ; amount of money orders paid 1907-8, $47,416.28 ; amount of postal notes issued 1907-8, $235.37 ; amount of postal notes paid 1907-8, $4,033.24.
3.	$215,714.02.

4.	The postmaster is not paid any regular fixed salary, but receives a commission upon the legitimate revenue of his office, in return for which he is obliged to furnish all necessary clerical assistance. Under this arrangement the postmaster received for the year ended 31st March last, by way of salary, $2,465 ; for box rents, $115 ; for night allowance, $60 ; for forward allowance, $7 ; for commission on money order, savings bank and postal note business, $393.92 ; total, $3,040.92. The office being kept in a government building, its maintenance falls under the jurisdiction of the department of Public Works.


PRODUCTION OF LEAD.
Hon. GEO. E. FOSTER (North Toronto).: Before the orders of the day are called, I would like to call the attention of the Finance Minister to a statement that he was kind enough to hand me. I think this statement does not show what I wanted to get at, namely, the total production of lead by each of these lead producers. I rather think it only mentions the amounts they return for bounty. There are some years in which there is no production mentioned and no bounty paid ; and I imagine that in those years, as the producers made no claim for bounty, they gave to the government, and the government have included here, nothing as the production of lead ; or am I to understand that in the years in which there is no claim there was no production of lead ?


Hon. W. S. FIELDING (Minister of Finance).: As it is a matter that concerns the Department of Trade and Commerce, I do not want to speak too definitely; but my impression is that the absence of any payment of bounty would not imply an absence of production, but would mean that owing to the high price of lead no bounty was claimed. If it does not mean that, I cannot give the explanation. I think it is safe to say that whenever there was a production of lead, the bounty would be claimed, unless it was that by reason of the high price of lead the bounty could not be claimed.


George Eulas Foster: What I want to get is the actual production of lead in each of these years.


William Stevens Fielding: I will endeavour to get that.


THE FRENCH TREATY.
George Eulas Foster: 
William Stevens Fielding: I gave the list after communication with the imperial authorities, and I presume those are the countries, though I would not like to speak definitely. The hon. gentleman is aware that these claims arise under very old treaties, and there has been sometimes a difference of opinion as to whether or not a given treaty applied. That is why I hesitated to give any definite statement until we obtained from the imperial authorities up to date such a statement as was obtained and presented to parliament. We have no further information with reference to the ratification of the French treaty. Our knowledge is that which is in possession of the public through the press, that is, that the treaty lias been approved by the French chamber of deputies, but not yet by the French Senate. We are aware that there has been some objection raised on the part of particular industries in France which think that they are adversely affected by the treaty, and the matter is reserved at present for further consideration. We have no information beyond that.


George Eulas Foster: Does the Finance Minister know whether or not the French senate has adjourned or prorogued?


William Stevens Fielding: I have seen it stated that they are to adjourn to-day, but I am not in a position to say whether that is correct or not.


MANITOBA BOUNDARIES.
Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: A measure was announced in the speech from the Throne for an extension of the boundaries of Manitoba. Recently several other measures, not mentioned in the speech, have been announced by the Prime Minister in reply to inquiries by myself. We completed seven months of the session Saturday last, and I would suggest that all the legislative measures of the government should have been before the House long since. When may we expect all other pieces of legislative enactment to be laid before the House?


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: It is quite true that in the speech from the Throne a measure was announced for the extension of the boundaries of Manitoba. But since then the Manitoba legislature has adopted a memorial to this House asking that when

the boundaries are changed the financial conditions 'will be changed also and the province of Manitoba be dealt with on terms similiar to those given the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. This introduces a new feature to which the government are giving serious attention, and we shall not be in a position to give the information asked ifor until Monday next.


DOMINION ELECTIONS ACT-AMENDMENT.
[Stage Direction]
House resumed adjourned debate on motion of Mr. Aylesworth for the second reading of Bill (No. 115) to amend the Dominion Elections Act and the amendment of Mr. W. J. Roche (Marquette) thereto.
Mr. H. H. MILLER (South Grey).: It is now some time (since we last discussed this Bill, and there have been many rumours as to what has taken place in the interim and what is about to take place. The discussion has been very largely upon the Bill as it is likely to affect Manitoba, and I understand, from what I have read in the press, that there have been some negotiations, the result of which I do not yet know. That being the case, I purpose confining whatever remarks I may have to make largely to the Bill as it affects the unorganized portions of Ontario. It was somewhat gratifying to find my hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) admitting that there was much in this Bill of which he approved. He said that he approved entirely sections 2, 3 and 19; that he approved the object of sections 18 and 21, but thought the provisions inadequate, and he commended also section 11 in so far as it goes. It seems to me that the hon. gentleman and those behind him would have found still more to be satisfied with had they approached the consideration of this measure without that degree of suspicion which has characterized their treatment of it. On page 8123 of ' Hansard ' I find that the leader of the opposition said:
Although I do not desire to take any hut a reasonable attitude with regard to the Bill, I do submit to the Prime Minister and this House that we are entitled to treat this Bill exactly as if it provided in terms, and not merely in intent, that no person, other than a supporter of this government, shall be elected either in Manitoba or British Columbia. . . . But so far as concerns those provisions of the Bill which take away the secrecy of the ballot and provide for an unjustifiable interference with the voters' lists in British Columbia and Manitoba, I for my part will give them as strong and vigorous an opnosition as my physical strength and energy will permit.
The discussion that followed ought to have convinced him that there are some reasonable grounds for some change in the methods of preparing the voters' lists in Manitoba. But I would infer from the hon. gentleman's determination to oppose the Sir WILFRID LAURIER.
Bill with all his physical skill and energy as regards its application to British Columbia and Manitoba, that he had no very great objection to its provisions regarding Ontario.
The hon. member for Prince Edward county (Mr. Alcorn) said-see page 8173 of 1 Hansard ':
I need not observe that the present Bill absolutely departs from the principle laid down in the extracts I have read and does so because Manitoba and British Columbia are now Conservative. This government insists on having lists made, in the words of the premier, by its own henchmen and parasites who feed on him.
I do not know why the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) quoted those words as having been uttered by the First Minister, I do not find that they were, and I do not think they were. I do not believe that the First Minister referred to the preparation of the lists in any way by the henchmen and parasites of this government. But I find that the objection of the hon. member for Prince Edward is largely to the provisions of the Bill affecting Manitoba and British Columbia. I find that what he objects to is the making of voters' lists by partisan appointees, and I would conclude that should the suggestion be made that the lists be prepared, not by the appointees of any party, but by the judges of the land, the objection of the hon. member will disappear. I have heard some doubts expressed as to what suggestion really had been made by the First Minister. For my part I have never been in doubt as to his position. On page 8574 of ' Hansard ' the right hon. gentleman said-in reply to the hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Roche), who put to him this question :
The right hon. gentleman has not answered my question. Will he point out abuses committed by the registration clerks and unfairness towards their opponents?
To this question the right hon. gentleman replied as follows :
I have only to refer my hon. friend to the speech of my hon. friend from Selkirk (Mr. Jackson), to the speech of my hon. friend from Portage la Prairie (Mr. Crawford), and to the speech of my hon. friend from Lisgar (Mr. Greenway). These are the evidences that 1 have. I have to say this to my hon friend. He will take my suggestion for what it is worth, he will accept it or not acept it, but I think we should have a fair basis upon which to prepare the lists for the elections, without any suspicion on the part of anybody, if the lists are prepared altogether under judicial authority.
These were the words which the First Minister spoke on the 12th May last. On the same date my hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) put this question :
Has the right hon. gentleman mapped out, or has he in mind, any modus operandi by

which his new lists will be made altogether under judicial authority?
And the Prime Minister replied :
I think so. I think we will be prepared to do so at the proper time when we are in committee.
So that the suggestion of the leader of of the House on the 12th of May was that the preparation of these lists in all the provinces affected by the Bill, should be entirely in the hands of the judges of the land ; and notwithstanding all the objections made and doubts expressed, I am convinced that what all the members' of this House desire is to have its lists honestly and carefully made. The object which we desire is well expressed in the language of the Hon. Edward Blake quoted in this House recently by the hon. member for Prince Edward County (Mr. Alcorn). Mr. Blake speaking, at the time of the introduction of the Franchise Act, said :
Now, I want to know whether it is not of the last consequence to insure a true representation of the people, that we should have the lists as full as possible, and the people placed thereon with as little trouble and expense as possible, and as little doubt and uncertainty as possible, as to who have the right to be placed on the lists and who have the right to vote.
As I have pointed out, the hon. member for Prince Edward County has said, as many others have said in introducing this Bill we are seeking to depart from the principle to which we formerly adhered, that is the principle of having the lists made by the provinces. This contention is not well supported ; I do not think that there has been any attempt, in the introduction or discussion of this Bill, to depart from the principle to which the Liberal party have always adhered.
Let me requote some of the quotations of the hon. member for Prince Edward County by which he endeavoured to support his argument that we are departing from the principles to which before we had adhered. One of his quotations were the words of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, then Mr. Fitzpatrick, a member of this House. Mr. Fitzpatrick in supporting the repeal of the Franchise Act used these words :
In view of the fact that our desire is to obey the imperative mandate of the people, in view of the fact that our desire is to rid the people of this country of this incubus in the form of the Dominion Franchise Act, an Act which has cost us in the years it was in operation over $2,000,000, an Act which has not been revised for the last four years and that hon. gentlemen opposite dare not revise, because of the expense incurred in that revision, in view of these facts, we are justified in carrying out our promise to the people and in endeavouring as far as possible to place the making of the lists under the control of the people themselves, thus proving that the 371
Liberal party have and always had confidence in the people, as distinguished from hon. gentlemen opposite, who, because they did not trust the people, wanted to keep the control of the lists in the hands of officials appointed by themselves.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, in using these words, was arguing against the Franchise Act because of its great expense to the people, not because of its unfairness. That Act may have been fair or it may have been unfair, the lists may have been right or may have been wrong, but those were not the grounds of Mr. Fitzpatrick's objection, he objected to the Franchise Act because of its great expense and because owing to its great expense we had very infrequent revisions of the list. Mr. Fitzpatrick was then advocating lists the basis of which would be the municipal lists that were framed and made by the municipal councils of the country.
Mr. Blake, at the time of the introduction of the Franchise Act in this House, spoke thus :
The local authority-in my province, at any rate; I know not whether in the others-provides you a list now; they provide you a printed list; they provide you a revision, a framing of it by the municipal officers elected by the people, a revision by the judicial officers you appoint yourselves; the judicial officers that you appoint here, the county court judges. They give you your list, complete, framed and revised, revised finally by judicial officers appointed by the authority of this legislature. There is the system. And you are going to take upon yourselves the publio expense of framing lists and printing them yourselves, and you are going to impose the private expense on individuals which is involved in the carrying out of this double franchise.
There we have the Hon. Mr. Blake adhering, it is true, to the principle of provincial lists, but It is not because they were provincial lists, but because they were based upon the municipal lists that were carefully made and prepared by the people of the municipalities, regardless of party feeling.
The right hon. Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), speaking in this House at the time of the introduction of the Franchise Act, said :
I submit to the sense of the House that this measure is an invasion of popular rights. Hitherto the voters' lists have been prepared by the people themselves. The assessment rolls have been prepared by the people themselves through valuators appointed by the municipal councils. The lists have been prepared by the people themselves through the secretary-treasurer appointed by the municipal council. The lists have been revised by the people themselves through the municipal councils. This system, so far as I know, has worked satisfactorily and well. Now it. is proposed that there shall be a change. What reason is given for that change? Why should this right he taken from the people?


Henry Horton Miller: And I call the attention of the House particularly to this argument, which I think is very false and incorrect:
As a matter of principle what difference can there be between preparing a list by officers appointed under an Act passed. by the representatives, of the people in their legislature for the making of a list from an assessment roll, as in Ontario, and the preparation of a list produced by certain officers appointed by the executive under another Act of the legislature of Manitoba, representing the people of that province? They are both the Acts of representatives of the people.
Now in the first place I take exception to the position of the hon. member for Prince Edward County (Mr. Alcorn) when he described the municipal lists as being extremely faulty. I-think the lists prepared by the municipal councils and the municipal assessors are usually very carefully, very correctly and very honestly made. In my own riding I have taken a municipal list prepared by the assessor and by the municipal council, and printed by the municipal clerk, I have taken the list of a whole township and have gone carefully over it, and into every polling subdivision and have consulted my friends with the result that I have found that in the whole township there have not been more than two or three names that could properly have been added or that should have been left out. I have found perhaps that two or three names of voters who would have voted on the opposite side, have been onrtted ; but I have concluded that the list as made by the municipality and the municipal clerk was so correct that it was not worth while to go to the trouble of putting the municipality to the expense of a revision before the judge. I take exception again to the argument of the hon. member for Prince Edward when he asks what is the difference between a list prepared in that way by a municipal council under the Act of the legislature, and a list prepared by appointees of the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Now, Sir, there is a very wide difference, and a very important difference. Let the voters' lists of the municipality be prepared by appointees of the government. Those appointees will of course be partisans, they will be supporters, and usually earnest supporters, of the party in power. Let them be ever so honest, they will be influenced by their political bias, by their political prejudice, by their political inclinations, at least to the extent that in every case the party in power will have the benefit of any doubt there may- tie, of any uncertainty that may exist. But on the other hand, take a list made by the municipal council. You have in the first place the list made by the assessor from his assessment roll. It is to the interest of every person that the name of every property owner be placed upon the assessment roll, otherwise you cannot assess his property.

The assessor goes from house to house, and visits the home of every man, of every resident. That man has the opportunity of seeing that his own name is entered upou the assessment roll, he has the opportunity of seeing, if he has sons that are twenty-one years of age or over, that their names are entered upon the assessment roll. If he has a tenant, or a man working for him, who is entitled to vote, he has an opportunity of seeing that the name of that tenant or of that employee is placed upon the assessment roll, and if it is placed upon the assessment roll it must perforce be placed upon and appear on the voters' list. Then, as the assessor goes through the municipality from house to house and home to home, every man has the opportunity of seeing whether his neighbours' sons and his neighbours themselves, over the ground the assessor has travelled, appear on the list. Then when the assessors roll is complete it is submitted to the municipal council. We have the municipal council composed of a number of men who are not there because of the political party to which they belong, but who are there representing their municipality irrespective of their political leanings, and in nearly every municipality you will find representatives in the council of both political parties, oftentimes pretty evenly divided. In every case the municipality has its municipal court of revision, the whole council is constituted a court of revision, and they revise the lists every year. Now every member of the council is present when the municipal list is revised. Every member of that council, in most cases, expects to be a candidate for municipal honours the following year. His principal object, his principal desire, is to see that every possible voter in his district has [DOT] his name placed upon the assessment roll and the voters' list, because that municipal councillor knows that in the following year his support will come to him as a municipal candidate, not because of the political party to which he belonged, but his support will come from the district or locality in which he may reside. I have known more than once enthusiastic Conservatives at the Court of Revision putting on the names of Liberal voters, not because they were Liberals, not because of the way they would vote at a parliamentary election, but those Conservative candidates for municipal honours have put upon the voters' lists men who were Reformers who were opposed to them politically, because they knew that at the municipal election they would be their supporters. So I say there is all the difference in the world between a voters' list prepared by the nominee of a political party and a voters' list prepared by the municipal council.
Now let us look at the Ontario law as it stands to-day. The law so far as the unorganized territories are concerned is not to-day as it was in 1907. Look at the 3714
Voters' List Act for the province of Ontario, chapter 4 of the Ontario Statutes of 1907, we find that part 3 of that Act relates to voters in unorganized districts, and section 57 says :
The Lieutenant Governor in Council may appoint enumerators whose duty it shall be to prepare biennially the voters' lists for those parts of the province without municipal organization.
So under the Ontario law we did have a provision for the preparation of voters' lists every second year.


Mr. BRISTOL.: Does the hon. gentleman say that is the law which exists to-day?


Henry Horton Miller: I say it is not the law as it exists to-day. It was realized that the preparation of the lists every second year might not meet the requirements under all circumstances, and there was a subdivision to section 59, subsection 2, which read in this way:
Provided that the Lieutenant Governor in Council tnay by proclamation direct that the voters' lists for those parts of the province without municipal organization or for any specified electoral district, shall he prepared at an earlier date than that herein directed, and shall so direct when an election is about to be held and the lists to be used thereat would otherwise at the date of such election be more than one year old.
That provision was not sufficient, because no provincial legislature could tell when there would be a Dominion election. So that Act was changed by the Statute Law Amendment Act of 1908, assented to on 14th April of the present year, that is chapter 33 of the Ontario Statutes of 1908. Section 8 thereof substitutes new sections 57 and 59, and the new section read thus :
The Lieutenant Governor in Council may appoint enumerators whose duty it shall be, unless such preparation is suspended by proclamation as hereinafter set forth, to prepare annually the voters' lists for those parts of the province without municipal organization.
Section 59,
So soon as may be convenient after the first day of June dn each year, but not later than the first day of July, unless the preparation of lists is suspended by proclamation as hereinafter set out, the enumerator shall cause to be posted in a conspicuous manner throughout those parts of the territory for which he is appointed at every public and separate school house, and at every statutory polling place, and at every other place which may be directed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, a copy of this part, and one or more printed notices in accordance with form 21; and the enumerator shall attend at the time and place mentioned in the notice.
But I desire to call particularly the attention of the House to subsection 2 of section 50, and that section reads as follows :

Provided that the Lieutenant Governor in Council may by proclamation direct that the preparation of voters' lists for those parts of the province without municipal organization or for any specified electoral district may be suspended for any year, and on such proclamation being issued no such voters' list shall be prepared during that year.
So that while, in the first place, there does appear to be a regulation ifor the preparation of the list annually, there is immediately following a subsection which says that the Lieutenant Governor may, in any year or years, proclaim that there shall not be a list prepared. The effect of that is that there may be a suspension for one year, for two years or for three years, and it is quite possible that under the Ontario law there may not be the preparation of a new list more than once in four years instead of a preparation of the list year by year. If that province fails to provide a list annually then the preparation of the list by that province under the present law cannot be satisfactory. It cannot be satisfactory for a Dominion election, either for a general election or a by-election in any of the constituencies. It is highly important that these unorganized districts, as well as in the organized districts, the voters' lists shall be carefully prepared without any undue haste. I would like to point to the state of affairs as it existed in Ontario at the time of the provincial election on the 8th day of June last, and I think I may safely conclude that the provincial government is not likely to take any greater care in the preparation of a list for a Dominion election than it would in the preparation of a list for its own provincial election. Yet the fact is that so hurriedly were the lists prepared in the unorganized parts of Ontario for the election, which took place on the 8th day of June last, that the revision was not completed in many of the constituencies at that time.


Mr. BOYCE.: In what constituencies and in what polling subdivisions were these lists not completed?


Henry Horton Miller: I can answer my hon. friend best by telling him what the source of my information is. I have been informed by hon. members, not only upon my side of the House, but upon the side of the House upon which my hon. friend (Mr. Boyce) has a seat, that in some polling subdivisions in the constituency represented by my hon. friend from Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) the revision^ of the lists was not completed at the time the election took place.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: What are those polling
subdivisions ?


Henry Horton Miller: I do not think it makes any difference what the polling subdivisions are so long as the fact remains that there were polling subdivisions in which


Henry Horton Miller: the revision was not completed at the time the election took place. I will ask the hon. gentleman whether he does not know it, and if he does not know it I will call upon another hon. gentleman sitting upon the same side of the House as the hon. gentleman to confirm what I say.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I understood the hon. gentleman was making the statement of fact within his own knowledge that the lists in certain polling subdivisions in certain districts in Northern Ontario had not been completed at the time when the election took place, and I wanted him to give us the polling subdivisions in which that condition existed.


Henry Horton Miller: In certain polling subdivisions. I say so now upon the authority of one of the hon. gentleman's colleagues in the House, as well as upon the authority of an hon. gentleman on my side of the House representing that constituency.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Will the hon. gentleman state the name of the colleague of mine who gave that information?


Henry Horton Miller: I will privately.


Mr. W. WRIGHT.: As I happen to be the only colleague of the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce) of the political stripe to which the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) alludes, I beg to say I never made any such statement.


Henry Horton Miller: I will ask the hon. member for Muskoka (Mr. Wright) a question, whether or not he does not know that in certain polling subdivisions of the Rainy River district the revision was not completed before the election took place ?


Aaron Abel Wright: I certainly do not know it.


Henry Horton Miller: Then we will have it upon other authority, although I am sure that the facts are as I have stated them.


Mr. TAYLOR.: Who is the member on this side of the House who gave you the information?


Henry Horton Miller: The hon. member for Muskoka, in a conversation, which was not a private conversation, said to me that there were polling subdivisions in the riding represented by the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) in which the revision of the lists was not completed at the time the election took place, but he said that it was only in a few polling subdivisions.


Aaron Abel Wright: As the hon. gentleman puts it up to me, I think I may be allowed to give my statement of what took place in a private conversation between the hon. gentleman and myself. It was simply that I believed that the hon. member for Rainy River had made the com-

plaint that there was not sufficient time allowed to make an appeal to the judge. The law allows the lists to be completed without an appeal to the judge. If no appeal were put in the lists would become complete and could be legally used in the election. I believe that he made the complaint that they had to give up the opportunity of making an appeal in order that the lists should be completed and could be used in the election.


Henry Horton Miller: I am not endeavouring to play upon words. If these are the facts as stated by the hon. member for Muskoka,
I am quite prepared to accept his statement that it was impossible to put in an appeal.


Aaron Abel Wright: I am stating that this is the complaint of the hon. member for Rainy River.


Henry Horton Miller: It was not in any way denied by the hon. member for Muskoka.


George Eulas Foster: As I understand, the hon gentleman (Mr Miller) takes back the statement he made in reference to my hon. friend for Muskoka (Mr. Wright)?


Henry Horton Miller: Not by any means.


George Eulas Foster: I think, Mr. Speaker, that he should. My hon. friend denied making the statement, and I think the hon. gentleman should take it back.	.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Take -it back.


Mr. SPEAKER.: Order. I did not hear the hon. member for Muskoka make any such denial of the statement made by the hon. member for South Grey. He made an explanation which did not go to the length of making a denial of the statement of the hon. member for South Grey.


Robert Laird Borden: The remarks of my hon. friend for Muskoka may have escaped your hearing, Mr Speaker, because I understood my hon. friend to distinctly deny he had made such a statement.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: If the hon. gentleman made that statement I certainly did not hear him.


Aaron Abel Wright: I will make my denial a little more explicit. I never said to the hon. gentleman that the lists were not completed in the subdivisions in Northern Ontario. [DOT]


Henry Horton Miller: I will not hesitate to accept any explanation made by the hon. member for Muskoka.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Then, would the hon. gentleman now state the source of his information?


Henry Horton Miller: I have stated it. If there is any misunderstanding between the hon. member for Muskoka and myself, I certainly have no hesitancy in accepting his explanation as he gives it to-day, and I quite accept the facts as he states them now.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I do not want to interrupt the hon. gentleman, but I would like to ask him if he will tell us whether he complains of any irregularities in the making of the lists in other constituencies than Rainy River?


Henry Horton Miller: I do not desire to rest my case upon any such proof or evidence. I think I can prove from the Act itself that the method of preparing the lists in Ontario is not only not what it ought to be, but I will give proof of the insufficiency of the Act as it is to-day from the hon. gentleman's own mouth and from his speech recorded in ' Hansard,' and which that hon. gentleman made in this House in May last.


George Taylor: By twisting and turning
It?


Henry Horton Miller: Not by twisting or turning anything but by quoting from ' Hansard ' which cannot be twisted or turned. Section 59 of the Act of 1907 says that the enumerators shall between the 1st of June and the 1st of July, that is not earlier than the 1st of June and not later than the 1st of July, post notices. Section 60 of the Act of 1907 says that the enumerators shall begin making the lists not less than 30 days after posting the notices. I believe that has not been changed or altered in any way. I think that as the Act stands to-day as amended, the enumerator has still to give 30 days' notice of his intention to frame a list. Section 62 of the Act of 1907 says that the voters' list shall be made in separate parts and that the name of each voter shall be placed:
In the part, the polling place of which shall be most convenient for him.
In the organized sections of Ontario the name of every voter must be placed on the voters' list within the boundaries of the polling subdivisions in which he resides so that there can be no doubt about the polling subdivision in which a man's name ought to be placed. But in the unorganized districts it is left for the voter, as I understand it, to choose in what polling subdivision or in what ' part ' his name shall be placed, not alone because of the locality or the boundaries within which he lives, but because of the convenience by which he may himself reach the polling place. And, the voter has the right to appeal to the judge and have his name taken from one polling place and put in another if in his opinion it would be more convenient for him to reach the other place. That is an added reason why there should be every opportunity not only for the voters' list to be properly made but for the list to be published and properly circulated before the judge holds his court of revision.	.

I want to point to section 15 of the Act of 1907, which, applying to the organized part of Ontario, says:
Any voter whose name is entered on or who is entitled to have his name entered on a list for a municipality shall have the right for all purposes of this Act, upon giving notice in writing within thirty days after the clerk has posted up the list in his office, to apply, complain, or appeal, to have his name or the name of any other person corrected in, entered on, or removed from the list for the municipality.
So that under the Act of 1907, in the organized part of Ontario there is 30 days after the completion of the voters' list given for an appeal to the judge to have any name added, changed or stricken off. In the Act of 1907 there was the same length of time (30 days) given in the unorganized part of Ontario. Under section 65, subsection 4, the proceedings in respect to such appeals shall be as nearly as may be the same as in appeals in part one, which would give the same 30 days for appeal in the unorganized portions as in the organized portions. But if you turn to the' Act of 1908 you find that a very important change has been made. Section 11, subsection 2, of the Act of 1908 says :
Subsection 4 of section 65 of the said Act is amended by adding the following words: ' Save that the time within which notice may be given of any complaint or appeal to be made to the judge with respect to the voters' list, shall be fifteen days after the enumerator has posted up the list.
This then appears to be the fact: that under the Act of 1907, in the organized portions of Ontario there is 30 days given for appeal after the completion of the list; that the same provision existed for 30 days delay in the unorganized part until May, 1908. By the Act assented to in 1908, the 30 days was reduced to 15 days. Now, I ask the consideration of the House to this point: That if in the organized portions of Ontario where we have municipalities seldom more than 10 miles square, where the country is thickly populated, where there are good roads and easy methods of communication, if 30 days was not too long a time to allow there for an appeal against the list as made by the municipal officer and municipal council, why should the time have been reduced to 15 days in the unorganized sections of the province ? In the unorganized sections where the ridings are great in extent, where the population is sparse and scattered, where the roads are bad, where the means of communication are not good, where they have probably poor mail facilities, where they have oftentimes no telegraph or telephone connection; for what reason was the time for appeals reduced from 30 days to 15 days?


Henry Horton Miller: 


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Would the hon. gentleman consider that 6 days for an appeal was not too little where the lists were made without any notice whatever?


Henry Horton Miller: I know what the hon. gentleman refers to, and I will answer him that I think six days was too short a time. I have argued that if 30 days is not too long in the organized portions of Ontario surely it should not be shortened to 15 days in the unorganized portions, and the hon. gentleman then wants to know if 6 days is not also too short a delay. He refers to the preparation of the lists for the last Dominion election in 1904 in the unorganized parts of Ontario. I will admit that in 1904 there was a too hasty preparation of the voters' lists in the unorganized parts of Ontario for the Dominion election, and I will admit that the time for appeal was not as long as it should have been. I argue in this way: That if there has been a hurried making of the lists with unsatisfactory results in the provincial elections under provincial appointees, and If there has been too hurried a preparation under the Dominion authorities for the Dominion elections, I argue that surely it is time for a change in the system and a change in the method of making the voters' lists.
Under section 21 of the Act of 1907, in the organized parts of Ontario if there was no appeal within 30 days against the list as made by the municipal council and by the clerk, the list would stand and the judge would be compelled to certify the list as it left the hands of the municipal clerk, and by section 66 of the Act of 1907 it was the same in the unorganized parts of Ontario, namely, the voters' list as made by the enumerator if not appealed against in 30 days was allowed to remain and could not be changed. But the Act of 1908, by section 12, changes that and now unless there is an appeal made against the list as framed by the enumerator within 15 days, then the list stands and is incapable of being changed. Now, I have said that 30 days was not too long and that when the provincial legislature in 1908 reduced the time to 15 days it made a change which was absurd, which was wrong in principle, and which makes it impossible to have a proper list under the Act. In support of my contention I will quote the words of the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie (' Hansard,' page 8208) :
The hon. gentleman (Mr. Boyce) was speaking on the 6th of May in reference to that Act, but he seems to have been unaware at that time of the fact that a material change had been made in the law by the Ontario legislature, and the words which the hon. gentleman used on that occasion were these:
And what about appeal? Surely it was only fair to allow the time for appeal which was

allowed under the Ontario law-thirty days? It was little enough, as I can testify, for I have lived in that country for twenty-three years-little enough, and it has always been found that the time was short enough.
If the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie upon the 6th of May last considered that thirty days was not too long, I ask him whether he is to-day of the same opinion. If to-day he considers that thirty days is little enough time, how can he stand by the Ontario Act which only gives fifteen days ? Perhaps the hon. gentleman will answer that question ? I find that he is not so ready to talk just now as he has been on other occasions. Section 65 of the Act of 1907 says :
There shall be an appeal to the judge in the same manner as elsewhere in the province, and the judge shall attend to hear the appeals at such places as may be convenient for the parties concerned and shall give due notice thereof.
Subsection 3 of that section says :
ity upon the enumerator, because he becomes practically the man who makes the list; and this being so, it is of the utmost importance that an honest and fair man be appointed, and not a partisan. We heard a great deal in the discussion of the Manitoba end of this question, of the thin red line. My own opinion is that a great many unfair and incorrect statements were made as to the thin red line-that there was a great deal of thick, black lying about the thin red line, and many hon. gentlemen made statements about it that were not to their credit, t agree with the moderate words used by the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) in making reference to the thin red line. That hon. gentleman, in addressing a question to the other side of the House, said this :
Does the hon. gentleman think that the fact that Mr. Leach was the organizer of the party was enough to create a want of confidence in what was done on the part of those on the other side, and does he not think that it is very desirable to avoid that?
At least thirty days' notice of the hearing of such appeals shall be given by publication in a newspaper published in the county or district, and by posting, as required by section 59 of this Act.
If that subsection had been allowed to remain as it was, I think thirty days would have afforded a fair and reasonable time for advertising the judge's court of revision; but when in 1908 the legislature of Ontario reduced that thirty days' time to ten days, they did not allow sufficient notice for the unorganized districts, where newspapers are not published except in towns widely apart, where mails in many instances are not delivered more often than once a week, where the roads are bad, where in many places there are no means of communication either by telegraph or telephone. I ask what was the object of the Ontario legislature in reducing the time of appeal from thirty days to fifteen days, while they le'ft it unchanged in the organized districts, and in reducing the time for advertising the judge's court of revision from thirty days to ten days. I never heard any complaint that the time was too long when thirty days was allowed for appeal and thirty days for advertisement; and if there was no complaint, I ask again, why the time was reduced ? Perhaps the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie can answer the question.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does the hon. gentleman know that the time was reduced with the consent of the leader of the opposition in the Ontario legislature ?


Henry Horton Miller: I do not think that makes a particle of difference, and I do not think it can be proved that it was so. The reduction in the time for appeal and in the time for advertising the court of revision certainly places a great deal more responsibil-
I say I can quite heartily agree with these words. I quite agree with the words of the Prime Minister that it was imprudent and unwise to commit to Mr. Leach the work that was done by him. I do not think there is any evidence that Mr. Leach purposely disfranchised a single voter ; but I think it probable that in some instances he conveyed information to the members of his own party that he did not convey to members of the other party. I think that much might be admitted. I say I quite agree with the words of the hon. member for East Grey, and I say that it is just as necessary in the unorganized parts of Ontario to appoint men to make the lists who shall not be partisans, either of one party or of the other. The hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) gave us an instance of one man who in the last revision of the lists was appointed enumerator in one of these unorganized districts of Ontario. He said that Mr. Hogarth, who was appointed enumerator, was either an employee or a business partner of Mr. Carrick, who was the Conservative candidate in the constituency.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does the hon. gentleman say that Mr. Hogarth was appointed enumerator at the time that Mr. Carriek was a candidate ?


Henry Horton Miller: I have not said so, but I will ask the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie what was the case ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The fact is that Mr. Carrick was not a candidate at the time that Mr. Hogarth was appointed and had no intention of being a candidate.


Henry Horton Miller: Will the hon. gentleman please tell us how he knows what was the intention of Mr. Carrick, and how long

afterwards Mr. Carrick became a candidate ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I can answer my hon. friend in this way, that if he had been more careful in getting at the facts than he has been in making statements in this House, greater progress would have been made. I can tell my hon. friend that he .is absolutely wrong in bis facts.


Henry Horton Miller: My hon. friend admits the appointment of Mr. Hogarth as one of the enumerators, because he has not denied it. He admits that Mr. Carrick was a Conservative candidate. He has not denied that Mr. Hogarth was either the employee or the-business partner of Mr. Carrick.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I do not know about that.


Henry Horton Miller: The hon. gentleman has said that Mr. Hogarth was appointed enumerator at a time when it was not the intention of Mr. Carrick to be a candidate. I would ask the hon. gentleman how he knows that ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: If the hon. gentleman is so curious, I will tell him that I have Mr. Carrick's word for it.


Henry Horton Miller: The hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie has corroborated my statement that Mr. Hogarth, the enumerator, was the employee or the business associate of Mr. Carriole, whether or not at the time it was the intention of Mr. Carrick to become a candidate. The hon. member for Rainy River further stated that at the time Mr. Hogarth performed his duty as enumerator, he was acting as political agent for Mr. Carrick. Perhaps the hon. member for Sault Ste Marie will deny that. It has been said by the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) that when this partisan enumerator, Mr. Hogarth was making out the lists for the riding, he was acting as the nolitical agent of Mr. Carrick, the Conservative candidate.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I would ask the hon. gentleman to substantiate that.


Henry Horton Miller: I have given the statement as coming from the hon. member for Rainy River.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. member for Rainy River has made many statements which are far from being corroborated.


Mr. CONMEE.: I can substantiate the statement the hon. gentleman (Mr. Miller) has just made. Mr. Hogarth was appointed enumerator at the very time he was canvassing for the nomination of Mr. Carrick.


Henry Horton Miller: I should think that the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule) will be quite ready to express the same opinion with regard to Mr. Hogarth's appointment that he did with regard to the handing over to some extent of the voters'


Henry Horton Miller: lists for revision in Manitoba to an organizer of the Liberal party. Would he not with his former fairness apply to the appointment of Mr. Hogarth the remarks he did in the other case, and I would ask in his words : ' Does the hon. gentleman not think that the fact that Mr. Hogarth was the party organizer of the party and the political agent of the Conservative candidate was enough to create a want of confidence in what was done on the part of those on the other side, and does he not think it is desirable to avoid that ? I think that the hon. gentleman would not hesitate to put the same question on this occasion. You can readily understand, Mr. Speaker, that in the unorganized district of Ontario, it is most important that the work of the enumerator, which is the foundation work, should be honestly done. In an unorganized district should an assessor once in a while make a careless or erroneous list, the consequences are not so serious. He is acting in a territory ten miles square, where everybody knows the facts and every one has full information concerning his neighbour, and any wrong done can be easily remedied. But in a riding such as Rainy River, running some 600 or 700 miles east and west and reaching as far towards North Pole as white man has ever located the work of revision is exceedingly difficult. I am told that the revision of the lists in any unorganized district of Ontario costs many thousand dollars, and I understand that the great expense of revision makes some members hesitate having a new one made necessary. The revision of the lists being so difficult and expensive in those ridings makes it all the more important that the work of the enumerator, which is the foundation work, should be carefully and honestly done and without undue haste. The revision of the lists is expensive and difficult because of the great extent of the riding and because many of the men are away in the mines and lumber camps. In an unorganized district names can be handed in, vouched for by affidavits of other people acquainted with the facts; but in the unorganized district, where there are many more new names and men live long distances apart, it is difficult to obtain affidavits proving the right of other names to be on the list. Further many of the settlers in the unorganized districts are poor, they have to work f-rom day to-day to make a living, and they cannot afford the time to go long distances in order to have their names placed upon the list.
In conclusion I want to quote the words of the hon. member for Muskoka (Mr. Wright), and I am sure he will endorse the position I take when I say that the best and fairest way is to have the lists made entirely under the supervision of the judges. On May 11, page 8535 of ' Hansard,' he said:
If there is anything that ought to he done straight and clean and honest, it is the com-

pilation of the voters' list, so that every man who is entitled to it should have the privilege of putting his ballot in the box and having it counted for the candidate for whom he wishes to vote. In this matter I would not countenance any crooked work for any party, and I do not believe the judges of this country would lend themselves to anything of that kind.
I am glad the hon. gentleman has confl-dence in the judges. I believe that his confidence is shared by every member of this House and by the people of this country. I quite agree with my hon. friend when he said :
I have every confidence that they would do what is fair and right, and I think provision should be made that nobody but a judge should be the final arbitrator to decide what names should be put on or taken off the list of voters. We ought not to leave such a matter 'in the hands of any man that a government-whether the government of Manitoba or the government of Ontario or this government-may choose to pick out for the man of his choice. There are other men who are under obligations to the party who appoint them, and who know that they will get a fat office if they do the dirty work of the party, we shall never have a clean election. Let it be done in a way that will bear the light of day; let it be left to the judges, and let us see that ample time is provided for every man who is entitled to vote to have his name put on the list, and then let us see that he is properly safeguarded in exercising his right to go to the poll and cast his ballot for the man of his choice.
I commend these words of the hon. gentleman. He has the most ample confidence in the judges. Not only the final revision but all the work of revising and making the lists in the unorganized parts of Ontario should be done, not by partisan appointees of either the Dominion or provincial government, but by the judges. These matters should be left entirely in their hands.


Aaron Abel Wright: How does the hon. gentleman justify the provision in section 1 ? How does he think all this work can be done between the issue of the writ and the date of the Dominion election ? All this machinery he has discussed, all this period of time he considers necessary-how does he think all that work can be done inside of thirty days or less ?


Henry Horton Miller: I agree with the hon. member for Muskoka that that cannot be done after the issue of the writ. But the
suggestion is that the lists shall be made every year, in which case there will be no necessity for the making of a list after the issue of the writ, for it will be made annually and sufficient time may always be afforded.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Are you speaking for the government ?


Henry Horton Miller: For myself. One word as to clause 17 which reads as follows :
17. Section 173 of the said Act is amended by adding at the end of paragraph (c) the following proviso:
Provided, however, that no ballot paper shall be rejected on account of any writing, number or mark placed thereon by any deputy returning officer.
That is one section to which my hon. friend the leader of the opposition made most strenuous objection. He was going to exhaust his physical strength, he said, in the effort to have it changed. (Many members have spoken strongely in favour of the secrecy of the ballot. One would think that clause 17 directed the returning officer to make some mark on the ballot which would reveal the identity of the voter. But it does nothing of the kind. I am as strong a believer in the secrecy of the ballot as any one in the opposition. A very large number of voters believe in a secret ballot but also a large number of others, perhaps the largest number, do not care who knows how they vote. A very large majority of the voters go to the poll and mark their ballot, and every one knows how they vote. They do not desire to keep their vote secret and care not who knows. I believe however in the secrecy of the ballot. I believe that those men who do not want to have their votes known should have that secrecy respected. But every man, whether Liberal or Conservative, desires to have his ballot counted as he marked it. I think it is safe to say that everybody is of that mind. It is unfair to the voter who at considerable trouble to himself has gone to the polling place and marked his ballot, that his ballot shall be destroyed and set aside because of the dishonesty or carelessness or neglect of any other man. It is not only unfair to the individual voter but it is oftentimes equally unfair to every other man of the same political party within the riding, because, if by the dishonesty or carelessness or neglect of a deputy returning officer a dozen more or less ballots are made illegal and set aside, and should this effect the result of the election then, not only have these dozen ballots been destroyed but every man in that riding who has voted for the same candidate has lost his vote just as much as the dozen men whose ballots were interfered with. It is unfair to the candidate who has perhaps spent his time, and of his money, and who may have sacrificed his health to run an arduous election campaign, to have, by the stupidity, dishonesty or neglect of any man, all his labours frustrated and the seat given to the other candidate contrary to the intention of the majority of the voters.


Mr. LANCASTER.: The seat is not given to the other man according to the decision

of the Supreme Court. There has to he a new election so that the voters will have a chance to again vote for their candidate.


Henry Horton Miller: While that may be true, the hon. gentleman will remember one case in the county of Wentworth where the minority candidate did obtain his seat.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: But the court ordered a new election and a new election was held.


Henry Horton Miller: After the other man had held the seat for some little time.
. Mr. LANCASTER. He did not take his seat in the House at all.


Henry Horton Miller: Probably as to that I may be wrong and I thank the hon. gentleman for correcting me, but nevertheless it is unfair-perhaps not to the same extent but to a great extent,-that by the dishonesty or stupidity of the returning officer a new election is made necessary to the great inconvenience of every voter whether Liberal or Conservative in the riding. It may be too that one of the candidates in the first contest may have become exhausted physically, or crippled financially, or that for some other reason he is unable to enter the second contest, and consequently all the evil results I have spoken of may follow from the carelessness or dishonesty of the deputy returning officer. I point out again that this section of the Act does not authorize any deputy returning officer to place any mark upon any ballot. It has been said that the general provisions of the election law impose a heavy punishment upon any deputy returning officer who will place a mark upon a ballot by which the identity of- a voter may be revealed, and I say without hesitation that if the law as it stands to-day does not sufficiently provide for such punishment the law ought to be amended so that it would provide for the infliction of a heavy penalty on the deputy returning officer who by design marks a ballot so that the identity of a voter shall be revealed. I have now discussed clause 1 as it refers to the unorganized districts of Ontario, and having referred briefly to section 17, I shall make no other reference to any other part of the Bill which I think may be best considered in committee.


James Conmee: I desire to offer a few observations-


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman has already spoken.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: If the hon. member has spoken upon the amendment he cannot speak again.


James Conmee: I have not spoken on the amendment.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: 


Mr. AYLESWORTH.: The hon. member
for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) immediately preceeded the hon. member for Marquette who moved the amendment.


James Conmee: I shall not take up much time of the House in discussing the principles of the Bill as I have done that on a former occasion, nor shall I discuss at any length the motives of the provincial government in making the changes to the law which they did make. I shall point out the facts and I shall refer more particularly to the riding of Thunder Bay and Rainy River with which I am most familiar, but I believe the same conditions or nearly the same conditions obtain in a .majority of the ridings in the new section of Ontario. Mr. Speaker, on a former occasion in the House I said that the time allowed would not permit of the preparation of proper lists or for an appeal against the lists if the Ontario elections were to be held upon a certain day. When I spoke then I was not certain that the elections would be held on the 8th of June but that afterwards turned out to be the date and the statements I made on that occasion have been verified by the facts. The elections were held on the 8th of June and I again assert that the lists were illegal lists; that there really was no list and ho justification for the course adopted so far as that riding was concerned. I have the Act here but I shall not detain the House by reading the sections of it to which I refer, however, as to the provisions of the Act I have no less authority than the hon. member for Sault St. Marie (Mr. Boyce) who when he spoke on a former occasion in the House told us that the law provided that appeals may be taken to a county court judge and that the county court judge could not fix less than 30 days after the enumerator had posted his list for the hearing of the appeal under the statute of 1907. My hon. friend (Mr. Boyce) argued very strongly and at great length that 30 days was short enough, and I agreed with him then and I agree with him now. The facts are that after the list is posted up by the enumerator you have to find out whether he has included the names of those who are entitled to be put on the list, and in a new country like northern Ontario it practically means another revision of the lists, for you have to go over the same ground the enumerator has gone over, and if you do not, then when the election comes on you will find that a large number of names that should have been on the list are omitted and that a large number are on the list that should not be there at all. Now I could take up a good deal of time in showing that the lists recently prepared have on them a large number of names who are not entitled to be on. I make this statement, that names are put on in one riding, a large number of

whom reside in another riding. That may have been an error, I do not say it was deliberately done.


An hon. MEMBER.: Where was the polling place?


James Conmee: Kaministiquia. They were in Fort William division, not in the Port Arthur division. Their place of residence was in the other riding altogether. The Kamanistiquia poll is in the riding of Port Arthur, and perhaps seventy-five of them altogether was put on the list.
I am not contending that that was done purposely, but I have heard men say that it was. But I think I am correct in stating that a considerable number of them voted, and notwithstanding that some of them were challenged they voted. I know of another case where, if my information is correct, a large number of men were put on the list in the mine centre or that vicinity. They were only a few days in the country and they were not Canadians at all. The scrutineer on the other side cautioned them that they were subject to punishment; he swore a lot of them, and over 40 of them voted notwithstanding that they knew they were not entitled to vote. Certain other parties said ; Poll your vote, and we will see you through.


Mr. SAM. HUGHES.: Was this in a Dominion election?


James Conmee: In the last provincial election. But the same conditions might arise if he were compelled to go to vote upon that list.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Does not the hon. gentleman know that that sort of thing happens all over Canada? There will be accidents under every regime.


James Conmee: To a certain extent there may be, but it is a very unusual thing for men to be put on a voters' list in one riding who reside in another riding. I am only showing that the list is defective. I could give many more reasons. Now, I state that there has been no appeal. Why? In the first place the law of 1907 provides that a list shall be made biennially. There was a two years' suspension of that, which expired some time in February last. Under that law the provincial officials were bound to make a list. The dutv of the enumerators is to prepare a list commencing not later than the 1st of July in each year. They could not do that in this case because the list had been suspended for two years, but they were bound to commence after that time had expired. Why didn't they commence the list? I can only say that they did not commence the list because they were not instructed. The blame may lie on the government themselves. But certainly they did not commence the list in February ; they commenced it in March. They commenced under the law of
1907, which provides for 30 days after the enumerator has posted his list.


Robert Laird Borden: By what authority does the hon. gentleman say they were commenced in March?


James Conmee: Of my own knowledge.


Robert Laird Borden: Is he speaking of the six ridings?


James Conmee: I am speaking of the riding of Thunder Bay and Rainy River.
I know of my own knowledge that the enumerators were out in March.


Robert Laird Borden: Does he say that before March there were no enumerators at work in that riding?


James Conmee: I do not say that there were none before that, but that came to my knowledge some time in March.


Robert Laird Borden: What then is the hon. gentleman's point?


James Conmee: My point is this, that the enumerators proceeded under the law of 1907 until the list was about half prepared, in several divisions of that riding, then the law of 1908 comes in and cuts that law out. Instead of thirty days it is cut down to fifteen so far as the enumerators are concerned. The time to appeal to a judge instead of being thirty days, will only be ten days.


Mr. ALCORN.: The hon. gentleman is mistaken, it is 15 days.


James Conmee: I am not mistaken, I have the Act in my hand. It is 15 days after the enumerator has posted his list.


George Oscar Alcorn: The hon. gentleman' said 10 days.


James Conmee: I did not say 10 days, the hon. gentleman was not listening to my argument. I say there are 15 days for the appeal after the enumerator has posted his list; if you appeal to the judge he may fix only ten. I have the Act here, fifteen days are given after the list is'posted up by the enumerator. Now, there is where an injustice has taken place. After the lists have been prepared on the basis of 60 days, the 60 are cut down to 20 days. Those who knew the law of 1907 would have had time to put in their appeal if the list had been prepared according to the law upon which they were proceeding at first. But a new law comes in and cuts that out, and then they had fewer days to act. There is this further objection after that law did come into effect. I want to ask any hon. gentleman opposite if he thinks the average elector, one in fifty of the electors of that riding, knew anything about the law of 1908 when it first came into force. Let me say this to the House, the law was not an amendment to the Election Act, if it had been, it might have come to the knowledge of some electors. But that was not the case. These two provisions I have

referred to were embodied in the Statute Law Amendment Bill as I understand it as an afterthought placed in the Statute Law Amendment Act. Now, I know for a fact that no elector could, on the day of the election, on the 8th of June, secure the Act.


George Oscar Alcorn: The kon. gentleman is not correct; that is not in the Act.


James Conmee: My kon. friend does not know the Act. If he will look at it he will find the sections referred to are not in the Election Act. They are in the Statute Law Amendment Act now as reprinted, the sections are in the Voters' List Act.


George Oscar Alcorn: They were put in the Consolidated Act.


James Conmee: My hon. friend can call it the Consolidated Act if he pleases, but it is the Act that is passed every year at the end of the session, as the Statute Law Amendment Act, and no elector thinks of going to find an amendment to the Voters' Act there. In my riding there was not a lawyer on the day of the election who knew anything about it. The average elector could not get advice ; he could not find the law ; it was not in existence, it was not where he could lay his hand on it. The lawyers throughout my riding, I went to several of them myself, and not one of them knew anything about it.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does my hon. friend say that he did not know it at the time ?


James Conmee: I did not know it except from the newspaper reports.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I have my hon. friend's speech delivered on the 6th May in which he refers to criticism of the amendment.


James Conmee: I did. I referred to that, but it was only as a rumour. Did my hon. friend have a copy of the law on the 8th June?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I do not know that I had.


James Conmee: I do not think the hon. gentleman had. If he had he was favoured. We could not get it. I will go farther and say there was not even fair dealing in that.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does my hon. friend not say that the notice of this amendment was published before the 6th May in the Port Arthur newspaper to which he referred in the House on the 6th of May ?


James Conmee: Certainly. I say so now but it was nothing but newspaper report. Does my hon. friend take the law from the newspapers ? Does he expect voters to go and enter an appeal upon an article published in a newspaper ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: There was sufficient law to justify my hon. friend as a member of the House in prophesying that no election would be held in any of the new ridings in Mr. CONMEE.
Ontario because of the change in the law and the irregularities of the list.


James Conmee: Quite correct; there was enough iu the newspaper report to justify that argument, but there was not enough to enable any elector to take an appeal against the voters' list.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: My hon. friend, after reading the account of the amendment which was published in the Port Arthur ' Chronicle,' said that he believed the statement was substantially correct and he went on to argue upon that proposition that the elections could not be held by reason of the shortness of time.


James Conmee: It is probable that that is correct, but would that justify an elector-in entering an appeal or did that provide the machinery for an appeal ? I am not discussing the question. I say it was a matter of newspaper report.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Surely, if it justifies one thing it justifies another.


James Conmee: No, it does not. Not only was the right of the electors taken away by the new law which cut the time down from sixty days to twenty, but there was no law, no machinery provided or any means placed at the disposal of the electors or even at the disposal of the legal advisers of the people by which they could avail themselves of the law in that respect.
At one o'clock, House took recess.
House resumed at three o'clock.


James Conmee: At one o'clock I was speaking of the voters' list in the province of Ontario in the territory without municipal organization. 1 had pointed out that the list as prepared was not a fair list and that to secure a fair list other machinery would be necessary. I had pointed out very grave defects in the manner in which the lists were prepared in these particular cases. In the first instance the Ontario law provides that there shall be a notice or proclamation with regard to the preparation of the lists, and I am informed and believe that no such proclamation was issued and that no notice of any kind was given to the public. I know for a fact that the enumerators had been preparing the lists for some sections for 'three or four weeks before any of the Liberals in the locality were aware the work was going on. Another objection was that all the enumerators were extreme partisans nominated by the prospective Conservative candidates, and were I to use the language of gentlemen on the other side in regard to that I might describe it as a very grave wrong. Another objection is that in some instances the enumerators posted the lists in an outside riding fifty or more miles from the place of residence of the electorate

interested, and I have evidence here of that very grave wrong-doing. The law provides that the lists shall be prepared as nearly as may he under the same rules, regulations, and procedure, so far as practicable as the list is prepared in the municipality, and the clerk of the municipality is required to posit up his list, and the voter has thirty days within which to examine the list and appeal. Would it not be absurd if a municipal clerk were to go to another municipality fifty miles away to post his list and claim he bad given proper notice. I have the list here which was prepared for the Silver Mountain division and there is a notice on it which says : This list was posted up in the enumerator's office at Port Arthur on the 5th day of June, 1908. Silver Mountain is in the Fort William riding more than fifty miles from Port Arthur, and it is extraordinary to conceive how the voters could take advantage of their right to appeal within fifteen days under such notice. So far as I know this list may have been sent to the locality but I am not aware of it. I have been told by some of the electors they never knew there was such a list until the fifteen days had elapsed, but how that may be I am not prepared to say.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does the hon. gentleman say that a copy of that list was not posted in the polling subdivision ?


James Conmee: X have just explained that I was not saying so as a matter of my own knowledge.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman does not say the list was not posted in the proper place ?


James Conmee: I say there is no evidence so far as I know of its having been posted. It might have been posted but that has nothing to do with my argument, and after I had made that statement it was unnecessary for the hon. gentleman to ask the question. Some hon. gentlemen stated in the House to-day that it was not true that the list had not run the full time for appeals previous to the day of polling, but this list here is proof, because it says it was posted in the enumerator's office on the 5th of June and the election took place on the 8th of June. Therefore there can be no doubt that in that particular case-and I have other similar cases here-there was not time to appeal and the list was absolutely void as a proper list on which to hold the election. If hon. gentlemen opposite have the curiosity to see these lists I shall be glad to send them over. Another objection is that the enumerators started to prepare the lists under the law of 1907, and that the law of 1908 came into operation before the list was completed. And in view of the fact that the time for appeal was reduced under the amended law the electorate were deprived of rights which should have
been preserved to them. They were taken by surprise and as a result a proper list could not be prepared. But a more serious objection still is in the fact that the law of 1907 provided thirty days for appeals after the list was posted up by the enumerator. The law was that when the list had been posted up for the time required and the lists printed, then that was the list against which an appeal could be taken. In this instance I think the law has not been changed in that regard. The procedure has been changed, and, I am informed, by instructions from the government at Toronto, those instructions being that each polling subdivision should be dealt with by itself, and that the fifteen days should run from the posting up of the list of each particular subdivision, and that unless it was appealed against within the fifteen days, the list of that polling subdivision became a legal list, and appeals from it were refused afterwards. That is, I believe, the view held by the enumerators who prepared the list. Under the list as prepared and posted previous to the coming into effect of the law of 1908, even if that law had reached the knowledge of the electors, as it did not until long afterwards, the fifteen days in some cases had elapsed, and there could not be any appeal. Sui ely it will be admitted that that was not fair. That involves, in the riding to which I refer, perhaps fifty per cent of the people. I do not think I need take up the time of the House to go over the sections to show that that is not what was contemplated by the Act. The list to be appealed against is the entire list. That has always been the practice. The list was never prepared before in the manner which I have described; nobody ever heard of it; nobody was prepared for such a procedure, and therefore everybody was taken by surprise and at a disadvantage. The statute says that the list shall be the whole list. The appeal is to lie, not against each subdivision of the list; that would involve fifty appeals in the case to which I have referred. It is quite clear, under the form of notice given by the judge under the Act of 1908, that it was one list, and not forty or fifty divisions of the list, that was contemplated by the statute. This notice, form 24, is in these words:
Take notice that the undersigned will be in attendance at	at the hour of
on the day of	to hear appeals with
respect to the voters' list for the electoral district of	.
I do not think it could be properly contended that fifty divisions of a list could possibly have been in the minds of the framers of this Act, for all the other forms are to the same effect, while there are a large number of sections of the Act which sfiow clearly that it is a complete list that is referred to. It is beyond dispute that the procedure in the municipal!-

ties show that it is the entire list against which an appeal may be taken, and not a subdivision of a list. If that is so, the statute has been violated in nearly every case. Another objection, which I think is of importance as sufficient to show that this list has been ill-prepared, and that the people have been deprived of their rights under it, lies in the fact to which I have already referred, that the list was posted on the 5tli day of .Tune. That shows that there could not be any appeal against it. Now, I want to meet any objection that might be raised to that part of my argument. For instance, it might be claimed that I or any elector might take an appeal. I do not know that it would be open to me to take an appeal, because by referring to form 5 of the Act it will be seeu how difficult is to take these appeals. The procedure is there set out pretty elaborately. The party taking the appeal, I assume, must be an elector in the division or in the unorganized territory. An elector in an organized municipality would have a right to take an appeal in that municipality. I do not suppose he would have a right to take an appeal in an unorganized territory of which he was not an elector. Therefore to get an appeal you have to go out to the district where the electors reside, which in some cases is a long distance-from 100 to 150 or even 200 miles from the centre where the appeal would be lodged with the judge who might be called upon to act. Then I point out that as to the portions of the list already prepared, the new law cut in and took away the right to appeal which formerly existed because the time had elapsed or was about to elapse. Then, as to the list to be prepared after that law came into force. I still point out that even if the electors had a knowledge of the fact-not a newspaper report; I do not think it can be contended that a reference in a newspaper constitutes a legal or proper law that can be taken notice of in the way of an appeal; even if they had the notice, under tl\e machinery necessary to put the law in motion, the time is entirely inadequate and unfair. The whole argument of my hon. friend from Sanlt Ste. Marie, in his recent speech, found fault with the time, which in one instance I think was four! days shorter; but the difference as between six days and ten days would not be very great. Now, you have to go and And the elector; you have to give his name and age and all the other particulars about him; you have to find upon what list he is, what are the grounds of his being entitled to be upon the list; and, on the other hand, you have to find what are the names and post office addresses of othej parties whose names are on the list, and on what grounds you propose to exclude them from the list. All this is to be filed with the judge previous to the time of the appeal, and within the fifteen days allowed.


James Conmee: 


Aaron Abel Wright: I would like to ask the hon. gentleman upon wjiat clause of the Act he bases his assertion that the appellant must live in the unorganized territory?


James Conmee: On form 5 and on the general terms of the Act; and I am quite sure that I am right, because a case has been decided in the courts on this point ip which the courts held that the appellant must be a resident of the polling division in which he is making the appeal.


Aaron Abel Wright: Under this new Act?


James Conmee: Oh, no, this Act is not yet in force. The sections of the Act to which I am referring are in the Act of 1907. The new sections would have nothing to do with the procedure in an appeal. They have only shortened the time. They have made some changes in the procedure in preparing the lists, but no changes, so far as I know, in the action of the court in dealing with the case after the court becomes seized of it. If the hon- gentleman will take the trouble to read the form given for the appeal he will see that all I have stated is quite borne out. I submit that that procedure cannot be satisfactorily carried out under the provisions of the Act as it stands.
But I wish to go a step further. Suppose we throw away that contention about this particular list, I think I have given facts enough to show that this list was prepared in violation of the rights of the electors, and never should have been forced on the electors in any section of the country. But to drop that part of the argument, what position would we be in if we did not pass this or some other Bill of this nature? If our election comes on when the lists are more than a year old, we are restricted to the machinery of the present law which experience proves to have operated badly. I think the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce)-though I by no means agree in everything he said-was warranted in making a strong complaint reg rdiug the operation of the present law. Does the hon. gentleman want that sort of thing repeated? If he does not, will he point out how, under the present Act, it can be avoided? But suppose an election comes on when the lists are not more than a year old, do hon. gentlemen think it fair that the election should be held on lists prepared under the conditions I have pointed out?


Aaron Abel Wright: I deny emphatically that there was anything wrong with the lists in the riding I represent.
Mr. CONMEE My hon. friend represents a pretty old riding and has not more than a township or two which would come under the new clause. If he has any unorganized territory, it is very small and but few electors are affected. But in my riding the Act affects thousands of electors and also in Nipissing. I submit that it would be un-

fair to force these lists in such ridings upon
the electorate in any election. Then if we ignore the demand altogether and decide that the election shall be held on these lists -these stuffed lists against which there could be no appeal ; lists which were not municipal lists, but made by partisans in violation of section after section of the Act-we shall be deliberately preventing the will of the people from making itself felt. There is nothing in the provincial machinery to remedy this because the Act of 1908 takes away the former right enjoyed by the electorate. It cuts the time down to fifteen and ten days and you cannot in that time have a fair list, I do not care who prepares it. The provincial authorities have the right, notwithstanding they have a list, should the Dominion elections go on to-morrow, to order a new list. They might appoint strong partisans and prepare a list in violation of the rights and liberties of the people, under the Franchise Act, as they did before. I do not want to be understood as holding the opinion that they would. I do not hold it altogether. I think that some of the errors may have been unintentional but others were intentional. I am not called on to go into the reasons for this inequality and wrong in the preparation of the lists. But on the 8th June the Liberals were forced to accept these stuffed lists or take an appeal. But in the latter case, the Liberal candidates would only have been thrown over to a by-election, which would have been equally unfair. No man ought to be placed in that position by the action of any government.


Aaron Abel Wright: Would that be any more unfair iu Ontario than in Quebec ?


James Conmee: I think that is unfair anywhere. If there is a reasonable opportunity to hold the elections on the same day, it would not be fair to hold them on different days, no matter in what province that might be done.


Aaron Abel Wright: The hon. gentleman complains about the want of time, what would he suggest as the time necessary to properly compile the lists in new Ontario ?


James Conmee: In my opinion I would give thirty days to the entire list-not the divisions of the list against which I have been complaining. After the enumerator in the unorganized sections had prepared his list and printed and distributed it, then thirty days should run for an appeal. After those thirty days there should be thirty days for the judge to hold his court.


Aaron Abel Wright: How much for your primary appeal from the enumerators ?


James Conmee: Thirty days.


Aaron Abel Wright: Two periods of thirty days each.	i


James Conmee: That would be my idea.


Aaron Abel Wright: Then there would be the additional time used in printing and the time required by the judge to insert his advertisement.


James Conmee: After the enumerator posts up his list and allows his time, he should have the list printed and prepared for distribution. That has always been done with regard to the new lists. The hon. member shakes his head.


Aaron Abel Wright: I think I know just as much about it as the hon. gentleman.


James Conmee: Perhaps in the hon. gentleman's district. Then I would say the enumerators in his district are not quite as up to date as they are elsewhere.


Aaron Abel Wright: The enumerators in Algoma are as correct and up to date as any in Canada.


James Conmee: I have to take my hon. friend's word for that because I know nothing to the contrary, but it is not quite courteous for the hon. gentleman to impugn my statement because I know that has been the practice. The sheriffs were the enumerators. In my riding for the last couple of elections while I was in provincial politics, Sheriff Thompson was the enumerator, and I know he had his lists all ready as soon as the time was up and he would not give any one a list before.


Aaron Abel Wright: Do you mean he had the list printed when the last court was held ?


James Conmee: I did not say when the last court was held.


Aaron Abel Wright: When would he get
them printed ?


James Conmee: He could have them all set up in the printer's office and have them struck off as soon as the time for an appeal had expired. He does not need to wait until his last court is held to have the list printed.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Out of wffiich 30 days would he take that time ?


James Conmee: My hon. friend is arguing against himself. In this last preparation of the lists directions came from the Attorney General at Toronto not only to regard each polling subdivision as a list but saying that after the fifteen days ran, they should have them printed and have the judge sign them, which they did. That did not make them any more legal because they were in violation of other sections of the statute.
The point I am making is that under the Ontario Act of 1908, you cannot have a fair list in an unorganized territory, whatever it may be in one or two ridings ; you cannot have it in Nipissing or Sault Ste. Marie or Rainy River, because the time is not afforded to have it. You might send an

army of men but I submit you cannot have an intelligent and proper appeal to protect the rights either of the electorate or of a political party under the provisions of the statute as it stands to-day. The condition of that list is certainly such as to call for a strong protest from every - man of any political faith.
Hon. gentlemen opposite have contended that they want only a fair list. We proclaim that we want only a fair list. If that is true why not take the opportunity to make a fair list ? An offer has been made in this Bill to have the judges prepare the lists, appoint the enumerators and conduct the machinery, revise the list and hand it out in a fair manner. If hon. gentlemen are not willing to accept that, where does it place them ? It places them in the position that having obtained the list by misrepresentation-I shall not use a stronger word- by a violation of the statute and the natural rights of the electors that gives them an advantage, they want to force that list upon their opponents, irrespective of either law or natural justice. The hon. member said that you can appeal against the lists ; and if they are contrary to law you can have them made right. Who will put them right and how long will it take ? Who will put up the money to fight a contest against the provincial government ? I submit it is not a fair proposition. The fair thing to do is here, to-day, to take this Act and if it is not what I think it is, a fair Act, to make it a fair Act and put it in force in order that when the elections come on we will go with confidence to the poll, believing that every man who was entitled to a vote is on the list and that no man has been struck off the list because of his party or other reasons to give an advantage to any candidate. That is the kind of list we want and if hon. gentlemen are not willing to accept it they must assume the responsibility for rejecting it.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: To what other polling subdivisions, if any, besides Kaministiquia would you refer to specifically as being open to objection in regard to the making up of the lists ?


James Conmee: Since my hon. friend puts his question in that way, every polling division in my riding. There is not a legal list or a proper list, I say it is a stuffed list in every polling division, but I do not say that tie same conditions exist in all divisions as at Kaministiquia and some other places.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I had not intended and did not think it was necessary for me to offer any remarks upon the ' amendment before the House, on the second reading of this Bill. The debate on the second reading was adjourned by my hon. friend from South Grey (Mr. Miller) on the 18th day of May and here Mr. ( UNMEE.
on the 2nd day of July, after what we believe to be a period of negotiations, we come down to the second reading of this Bill. The Prime Minister allows the hon. member for South Grey to resume the debate on the second reading of the Bill without offering any comments, without giving the House any information whatever as to the reason of the delay that has taken place, to which the government has been a party and of which it has been the cause. He allows the hon. member for Thunder Bay and Rainy River, to resume the debate on this amendment and to discuss every particular of the Bill itself, not confining himself to the amendment although he had spoken once upon the Bill, and explaining why the section as originally introduced should be passed and why there should be necessity for a remedy although the hon. gentleman had at very great length given the very same arguments before in speaking of this Bill.


James Conmee: I did not make any representations that the Bill should be passed in its original form either when I spoke last or this time. In my previous speech I pointed out some sections in the Bill which required amendment. The hon. gentleman is not justified in quoting me as he has done.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: What I mean to say is this, that for over a month past my hon. friend has been circulating throughout this country literature and rumours to the effect that the opposition has been obstructing the business of this House. He keeps silent while he professes to be negotiating, according to a statement he made upon the second reading of the Bill, to amend the clauses of this Bill in a manner which will suit the interests of the majority of the members of this House. And when the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) has completed his address, an address of two hours, the right hon. gentleman leading the House sits silent while the hon. member for Thunder Bay and Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) expatiates, not upon the amendment-not one word about Manitoba to which only the amendment refers-but he expatiates on the iniquities committed in making up these lists which have called for some interference on the part of this parliament. I did not expect it would be necessary to say anything at all upon the second reading of this Bill. But it does seem to me that it ill becomes the right hon. gentleman to complain that the opposition has been obstructing the business of the House while he himself demonstrates, on the resumption of the second reading, that he is in exactly the same position as he was on the 18th of May.
Now, a word with regard to what has been said by the hon. member for 'South

Grey (Mr. Miller) and the hon. member for Thunder Bay and Rainy River (Mr. ICon-mee). We are always pleased on this side of the House to listen to advice, especially when it comes from so eminent a quarter as the hon. member for South Grey with regard to the legislation that is adapted for the unorganized districts. The hon. member for Rainy River asks us what remedy there is in case a provincial list is more than one year old, what remedy there is if this Bill does not become law? There was a remedy, as my hon. friend knows right well, in 1904, and it is a little late for my hon. friend, after being elected by a majority of 500 or 600 in those same bush polls made up of illegal lists, to come down to this House now and say: Those lists made up in the unorganized territories, by which I profited, were irregular and improper lists, and I think any one is justified in raising objection to them. Did any one hear any objection from the hon. member for Thunder Bay until now when he wants something better?


James Conmee: The hon. member is mistaken about any such lists being prepared in the riding of Thunder Bay. There was ample time for an appeal. As a matter of fact, if he will go to the Secretary of State's office he will find that Judge Fitzgerald sat 21 days hearing appeals. Nobody complained of the lists after they were finished.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: As a political juggler the hon. gentleman cannot be surpassed. When he made his speech on the 6th day of May he absolutely denied that any such lists were made up in his riding. I will read what he said on page 8229:


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does the hon. member say that the lists were not made up in his riding under the law at the last election?


James Conmee: Yes, I have made that statement.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I am very much surprised to hear it.


James Conmee: I was the candidate, and I have no knowledge of any lists being made under Dominion officials.
The next day the hon. gentleman rises in his place and is compelled by his line of argument to say : Yes, yesterday I was mistaken, there were lists made up in my riding under the orders in council which have heen complained of. Yet those are the lists which my hon. friend now says were improper and improvident, and which I was justified in complaining about. There was only one order in council providing for the preparation of lists in all those northern Ontario ridings, and if they were bad in West Algoma they were bad and unjustifiable in Thunder Bay. My hon. friend can recollect the facts when he finds it convenient to do so. He will find there was one order in council dated the 25th of August, 1904, the one under which all the 372
voters' lists were made up, and under the authority of which all the enumerators were appointed, and some of them in Thunder Bay and Rainy River, I have no doubt, pursued the usual practice.


James Conmee: I wish to correct the hon. member. In pointing out that the lists were prepared under provincial machinery, I am not arguing with him as to whether there were one or more orders in council. That does not touch the point at all. The order in council was acted upon in the riding I refer to early enough to give ample time. There was no complaint upon that score. The order was not acted upon in his riding, according to his statement. I do not complain of the lists in my riding, I only referred to the complaint of my hon. friend. I take him as an authority. If he wishes to destroy his own argument I have no objection.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Then my hon. friend says there were no such lists made up in his riding, although he contradicted that assertion the next day.


James Conmee: No, my honoured friend quotes me wrong again.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman asserts, and contradicts, and asserts again so often that I cannot make out what he means.


James Conmee: I would rather make the assertions myself than to allow my honoured friend to make them. I stated to him that there was no appeal. He has quoted me wrongly. I stated there was no appeal in my riding. I was mistaken in that. I found upon examination of the records in the office of the iSecretary of State that there was an appeal, that in one of the Thunder Bay divisions there was an appeal, the judge sat 21 days hearing an appeal. In the Rainy River division there was no appeal. That is what I had in my mind at the time I spoke.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: My hon. friend is not satisfied with the law as it exists. My hon. friend was satisfied in 1904 with the law as it then existed, although in 1904, as he knows perfectly well, no provincial lists had been made up since prior to 1902 and there was no list there that was not one, yes, two years old. The law then was good enough for my hon. friend. The lists were made up under that law and that law is on the statute book to-day. My hon. friend says : What are you going to do if there is not a provincial list in force which is not over a year old ? What I have to say is that I do not retract one of the complaints I have made in the House in the last few years in which I was so abundantly justified and I am glad of the hon. gentleman(s endorsation in that respect. Take that law as it is, apply it to the conditions as they



are found to exist, namely, give time for the making up of the lists under Dominion authority, make your time for appeal sufficient, make your time for enumeration sufficient and then you will have a condition of things that will meet any contingency which may occur from time to time instead of fastening upon a portion of the province of Ontario, as the right hon. gentleman proposes to do, a law for all time that is an unjust and unfair discrimination against that part of the province. I tell him, as I tell this House, that not only that portion of Ontario but every portion of Ontario will resent and resent very strongly indeed the action of the right hon. gentleman in this respect. It was a very extraordinary circumstance, Sir, that prior to that little event that happened on June 8 it was whispered around that the right hon. gentleman was not very keen about that part of the Bill which dealt with the northern part of Ontario. It was said that the increase in the representation of the provincial legislature of Ontario would give a great many seats to members in his own party in that part of Ontario and great events were looked for. The result of the election on June 8 was that there were eleven contests held in northern Ontario and eleven supporters of the Whitney government were elected with a Conservative plurality of about 4,000. Since then the right hon. gentleman has been very keen to have the law fastened on northern Ontario to punish the good people of those constituencies for having been so audacious as to express their opinion in favour of the good government of the Hon. J. P. Whitney. The people of Northern Ontario and of Canada will resent that discrimination and resent it very much. I would invite the right hon. gentleman to mature consideration of this step before he goes on with it. If he is to fasten these lists upon northern Ontario he must assume the responsibility for doing it and I desire, as a representative of northern Ontario, to protest most strongly against such a proceeding.


Henry Horton Miller: When the hon. gentleman speaks of discrimination what does he think the people of Canada will think of the discrimination of the Whitney government which gave thirty days for appeal in the organized parts of Ontario and cut It down to fifteen days in the unorganized parts ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: If my hon. friend will pardon me for answering an obscure question in this way I would say very shortly that the hon. gentleman's question was answered on the 8th day of June, 1908. Sections 7, 8 and 9 of the law as it exists to-day provide that the voters' lists in any unorganized district are not prepared at regular intervals but at such times as may be fixed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or by order in Council. This government may appoint enumerators and may do ail the necessary acts in conformity with the law of the pro-Mr. BOYCE.
vince of Ontario under which the voters' lists are supposed to be made up and may carry out to completion, by the appointment of its own officers, the machinery of the provincial law. It is not the principle of that enactment that I have complained about but it is the manner in which it has been carried out. What I complained about was that while the statute requires that the provincial law shall and must be obeyed, it was not obeyed, carried out or conformed to in one particular. Therefore I say that if the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) had desired to be just and reasonable in this matter, if he had looked at the enactment as it was and as it appears, an enactment which will meet, for the time being, any contingency that exists, he would have offered to this House a very useful suggestion. But, as I said before, as long as he was a member of the Ontario House, as long as his friends there were making up the lists in the unorganized territories, as long as the sheriffs were appointed upon his nomination or by reason of his influence and as long as the deputies were appointed by the sheriffs upon his nomination, there were no better lists, nobody thought of complaining and if any one nad ever had the audacity in the legislature to complain about irregularities no voice would have been louder and no wrath would have appeared more righteous than those of the hon. gentleman. But, a change has come over the spirit of my hon. friend's dream. He suffered from a nightmare on June 25, 1905, when the whole control ot the lists was changed. No one can change quicker in his ideas than the hon. member and just as soon as the government changed my hon. friends ideas of the proper method of making out the voters' lists changed also. Although the legislative authority of Ontario was, in the time past and before that important date, a very excellent authority to make up these lists, in fact, the only authority which should make up these lists in any part of the country, now he says that the result of the working out of the same statute under a different government is fatal to the best interests of the people. How careful he is to conserve the lights of the people ! How jealous he is of the people's interests being trampled upon ! IIow careful he is to preserve them from any interruption or interference ! Is there an hon. gentleman in this House who has ever heard a cry from the northern districts that the lists were irregular except the roar of the non. member for Thunder Bay ? In so far as I have learned, and I have made careful inquiry with regard to the lists, far more careful inquiry than possibly my hon. friend will give me credit for, there is not one single complaint about the making up or revision of these lists, nor has it been charged that the manner of preparing these

lists lias affected the validity of one vote cast at that election. So much for my hon. friend. But, he was not long in ignorance in regard to how these lists were made up. My hon. friend conserves greatly the interests of that part of the riding. There was a gentleman to be elected mayor of Port Arthur, my hon. friend went up there, stayed there, appealed to the people and was on the hustings in order to secure the election of one of his own political complexion. The result was that my hon. friend's efforts were not as availing as they might have been because by the largest majority Port Arthur ever gave a gentleman who now occupies a seat in the legislative assembly in Ontario was elected mayor of Port Arthur Again Mr. Carriclr was the candidate in the provincial election, and my hon. friend (Mr. Conmee) left this House to go there and try and defeat Mr. Garrick on these very lists, but once more Mr. Carrick was successful. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Conmee) went on the platform and he told them the same story as he tells us, but he told it with more license, because he was not on his responsibility as a member of the House of Commons. He told the people of Port Arthur that these lists were made up in the back office of Mr. Garrick's building, that they were made up by his partner, that they were absolutely spurious,, that nobody had the right to appeal, that they did not represent the voters in the constituency and, with his thunderous persuasive eloquence, he called upon the people to vote the government out of power that would consent to such fearful malpractice. The answer of the people was that they elected Mr. Carrick with a majority of several hundred. After the manner in which the people of his constituency have turned him down, it is little wonder that he comes back to this House and tries to hold up the public business by insisting that if the provisions of clause 1 of this Act are to be applied to any part of the Dominion they must apply -to the constituency he represents or else, as he says : Where am I? He has had two warnings, and he knows what the third will be. He is nervous and suffering, and therefore he comes before us to tell us a lot of stories about irregularities in the making up of the lists. The hon. member for South Grey could answer ime that he heard some one else say there were Irregularities, but I am afraid it was the member for Rainy River who whispered in his ear. And when I cornered the member for Rainy River by asking him to name one polling sub-division other than the Kaministiquia, he answered, with a wave of his hand : Oh, they are all wrong. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Conmee) knows it is dangerous to be specific, and hence he evaded the question I put to him. On May, the 6th, the hon. gentleman (Mr. Conmee), speaking in this House, said (' Hansard,' page 8233) :
372$
Some time ago I gave my^ opinion to certain members of the provincial legislature that there was no intention on the part of the Ontario government to hold the elections in the new ridings on the same date as they would be held throughout the province. Mr. Whitney was cornered by the leader of the opposition and he made the statement that the elections would be held on the same date*
Now, listen to this prophet:
I ask hon. gentlemen to take note, I give my opinion for what it is worth, that the election will not be held in the new ridings on that day, Mr. Whitney to the contrary notwithstanding.


James Conmee: Read more of it.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I shall :
They will discover that irregularities exist, that the lists are not proper, and will find ways and means of holding these elections after the day fixed for the general elections.


James Conmee: If the hon. gentleman reads he will find my further statement that they would either have to postpone the election or hold it on lists without an appeal.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I will read till the hon. gentleman thinks he has had enough and tells me to stop.


James Conmee: Go right on, and if you do not get light you are quite dense.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I continue to quote from the remarks of my hon. friend :
I have it from very good authority, from a gentleman I believe to be in the confidence of the Conservative party that such is the intention, and I leave hon. gentlemen opposite to deal with their own friends in regard to that matter.
It would be a great feather in his cap if Mr. Whitney's word, given in the legislative assembly, should be disregarded and the elections postponed ; the hon. gentleman (Mr. Conmee) would have desired nothing better. But notwithstanding his prophecy, the elections in all the eleven constituencies of New Ontario were held on the 8th day of June, a day that my hon. friend will not soon forget. Now, in order that Mr. Whitney's word might be kept, there was in Kaministiquia a list containing 78 names which was not completed.


James Conmee: That list was completed.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The election was to be held on Monday and an appeal against the list was tiled with the enumerator on the Friday night preceding. That list containing 78 names was the only list that was known to be irregular, and the government was face to face with the question whether they should proceed with the election and allow as many of these 78 to vote as could take the oath, or whether there should be a breach of the understanding on account of this unavoidable circumstance and the elec-

tion postponed. Now, which was the better course? The validity of that list was not affected one bit by the holding of that election, and nobody knows it as well as my hon. friend.


James Conmee: The hon. gentleman is mistaken about the appeal. There was simply a letter written to the returning officer telling him that he was subject to a penalty if he allowed these people to vote. The time had run for that list, but I have five or six lists in my desk-


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Give me the names.


James Conmee: 1 cannot remember them all, but there are quite a number of lists for which the time had not run-Whitefish. North Lake, Conmee township.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: There were 78 names on the Kaministiquia list, and had it not been for the appeal (and there was an appeal) that list would be certified on the following day. It was not certified on the following day, and feeling that less injustice would be done, the election was held upon that list. And let me tell the hon. gentleman (Mr. Conmee) that members of his own party who were engaged in supporting the Liberal candidate were consulted with regard to that step, and they concurred in it and approved of it.


James Conmee: I never heard of anything of that kind.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman differs from his party and from every one else when his own seat is affected.


James Conmee: The hon. gentleman is misinformed about that.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: No, I am not. I have made very careful inquiry, and I am not speaking at random. The hon. gentleman cannot say how the voting on an uncompleted list in a provincial election in Kaministiquia could affect the validity of that list for the purpose of a Dominion election. Everybody knew what the procedure was for appeal, because there were appeals put in, and notwithstanding the holding of a provincial election, those appeals were dealt with.


James Conmee: There has been no appeal dealt with in the Thunder Bay district. My hon. friend is absolutely wrong.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: With the utmost deference to my hon. friend, and knowing that he is never mistaken in any statement he makes, either in this House or out of it, I yvill ask him what court sat at Port Arthur on the 29th of May?


James Conmee: There was no appeal against the entire list What object is there in holding an appeal after the election is over?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: What election?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: 


James Conmee: The provincial election.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: But it is the Dominion election which is to be affected by that appeal. If the provincial (election was held before the time for appeal had expired, surely the only argument was that the list for the purpose of that election was improper. The list was dealt with just the same as if that election had never been held. Appeal dates were appointed, and if there were no appeals against the list it was because there was nobody to appeal. Surely my hon. friend is not going to draw from the fact that nobody appealed the inference that anybody was deprived of his right to appeal. The fact of the election having taken place did not prevent the fifteen days running on. My hon. friend knows that the list has been certified all through that riding-examined by the judges, examined on appeal, and finally certified-and that to-day under the Ontario law a complete list stands there.


James Conmee: I know the contrary. I know that the list never has been revised. There has been no appeal against the list that has been disposed of.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I have seen the certificate of the judge and the letter of the judge to that effect.


James Conmee: I say there has been no appeal against the list. The only appeal that was ever taken was an appeal taken at my instance in those five or six divisions that I have been speaking about. What has become of them I do not know. I want to answer my hon. friend if he will allow me. He asks why appeals were not taken to protect the Dominion list? I answer that the appeals would have been taken but that the candidates in the 1 ical election took the position that such action would only play into the hinds of the Conservative candidates and throw the election over a by-election contest.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Now the House is let into the true secret that where the peoples' interests were concerned and where an appeal might have been taken for the advantage of the people, my hon. friend preferred to have a grievance rather than the remedy for the people-a grievance which he could bring down to this House and cast at the feet of the right hon. gentleman who leads this House, and say for this reason I must have this law applied to Northern Ontario. Now we know where the hon. gentleman stands as a public man. We know why my hon. friend has now a frenzied desire for a new list in the north. He did not always have that desire. He was well satisfied with the list we had in 1904, and I leave it to the judgment of the right hon. gentleman who leads this House whether upon such a picayune, paltry, prejudiced complaint, absolutely without real foundation, when ventilated and analysed,

my right hon. friend can find any ju tifica-tion for departing from these principles which he proclaimed so loudly and so boldly in years gone by, and take away from the province of Ontario, or the sir all st portion of the province of Ontario, the right it has to make its voters' lists for its own people. Now the situation stands as it was. Lists were compiled under the law of the province of Ontario in the northern constituencies, and there is no complaint against them except the complaint of my hon. friend from Rainy River. Is my right hon. friend not satisfied that they were reasonably good lists ? Did he take pains to ascertain whether in previous elections there were any mistakes or inadvertences in the making up of the lists in settled communities in any part of Ontario? If he did not. why should he listen now to my hon. friend's groanings about something which has taken place on lists, which something has now been cured and which lists have been finally revised? How have the lists been made up? Was there anything irregular about making them up? My hon. friend from Rainy River says there was, and the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) says that the hon. member for Rainy River says there was, and therefore it must be true. What was. it? That an enumerator was appointed who happened to be in ti e office of a gentleman who to my know'edge had no thought whatever of becoming a candidate at the time this man was appointed. A government inquiry shows that at the time that enumerator was appointed a proclamation was issued and was posted. I offer that in contradiction to what my hon. friend says.


James Conmee: I contradict it now. I say no proclamation was issued. I inquired from the clerk of the peace and from the judge of the district and I found that no proclamation was issued.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: My hon. friend said that no proclamation was posted in these outlying districts because he did not sea it; that is what it amounts to. Whatever charges of irregularities there were, were confined to one polling subdivision, and they were investigated and found to be unfounded. The list for that one subdivision had to be left open or the election postponed. With regard to the appointment of this enumerator, if it was unfair to appoint him why did not the people object? They did not object to his appointment; they approved of it. The Liberal Association of Port Arthur approved of it. They met and considered the situation and nominated from themselves two stalwarts of che party to go around with this man, to watch him, to check his work, to watch the interests of their party and to attend to all matters connected with the making up of the lists. My hon. friend knows that, but he did not mention that as a detail. If
that was so, surely my hon. friend has no reasonable cause to complain or to expect the right hon. gentleman to put him in a position to overcome the majority of something like 2,000 against him in his own riding, as shown by the provincial election. That is the whole grievance.


James Conmee: I deny it emphatically. The hon. gentleman has quoted a number of things which he claims I said at Port Arthur, not one of which is true.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman's own staunchest supporters in Port Arthur will endorse my statement. He himself knows that this matter was before the Liberal Association at Port Arthur. These men were engaged, they did go around with the enumerator and check his work and report to the Liberal Association at Port Arthur, Surely when the enumeration was done by the government's appointee, and when into every polling subdivision watchful experienced men appointed by my hon. friend's party went with him to check his work, the hon. gentleman can have no complaint. Or if he has any, it can only be against his own partisans. What, however, the hon. gentleman wants is a grievance against the Ontario government, something which will justify him in his appeal to the right hon. the First Minister to provide a means by which he can bolster up his own situation. The hon. gentleman has posed in that district for many years as the great political head. He is in all things, municipal, legislative and federal-he is a sort of poo-bah or panjandrum up there. He dabbles in municipal politics, in local politics and Dominion politics. Here is a case in which, after endeavouring to pull the wires in the legislative avenue, he finds that by some mistake he pulled the wrong wires, and he views the cataclysm of the 8th June in liis riding with so much alarm that he conjures up this imaginary grievance and implores the First Minister to provide a remedy.
He says that the lists were not made up honestly. That is an easy statement to make, but there is not one word of truth in it. Not alone was the enumerator watched, not only was he upon his oath, but I know him to be a gentleman of honour aud rectitude who would not stoop to such a low level as to violate his oath of office.
As regards the cutting down of the appeal to fifteen days in the unorganized districts, the lament of the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) on that point was very pathetitc. In a paroxysm of grief, he said it was preposterous and absurd. Well, who proposed it? No less a personage then the Hon. A. G. Mackay, leader of the opposition in the local House at Toronto. Fer-haps my hon. friend was one of those who so strongly felt that some of the propositions of that hon. gentleman were preposterous and absurd, that he voted against him on the 8th June. But he must bear in.

mind tliat when Mr. Maekay, in Toronto, came to view the situation in the north, he saw that it would be necessary, in order to hold the general elections there on the same day as elsewhere, to shorten the time of appeal.


James Conmee: I have heard the Hon. A. G. Maekay strongly deny that he ever made any such suggestion.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I have heard the hon. gentleman himself deny many things.


Henry Horton Miller: If Mr. Maekay did make such a suggestion, he was simply choosing of two evils the lesser. He preferred to reduce the time rather than have the elections in the northern part of Ontario subsequent to the elections elsewhere. But I do not know that Mr. Whitney was obliged to accept that suggestion. Would the hon. member for Algoma (Mr. Boyce) let me put him a question? I ask him what he thinks of the reduction of the time for appeal from thirty to fifteen days in the unorganized districts while in the organized it remains at thirty?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I have given my opinion in many respects.


Henry Horton Miller: But as to this.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I would be obliged to the hon. gentleman if he would allow me to proceed without Interruption and let me explain in my own way. I propose to give my own reasons though not at the exact moment he indicates.


Henry Horton Miller: I am afraid you will forget.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I am not one of those who forget. The hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) cited the posting at Silver Mountain, and no doubt all these instances have been submitted to the First Minister as reasons why these lists should not be used. My hon. friend said that the posting for Silver Mountain poll took place at Port Arthur, but when asked if it also took place at Silver Mountain, he said hq.did not know.


James Conmee: What I said was that the enumerator posted the list in his own office in another riding altogether.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Exactly what I say. But the hon. gentleman does not know that the list was not posted in the place provided by the law and where I have no doubt it was posted.


James Conmee: My hon. friend does not know that it was. My information is it was not, but I do not know from personal knowledge.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: No doubt the statement of the hon. gentleman to the Prime Minister was that the list for Silver Mountain was posted in another constituency, and he has - Mr. BOYCE.
not a word on which to ground such a statement. He complains about partisan enumerators. But these enumerators are appointed under the statute, and there wavs no objection against them until now. He complains that the time was cut down to fifteen days. The time before was thirty days for enumeration and thirty for an appeal, but this included fifteen days notice of the time during which the court was to sit. This thirty days is reduced to fifteen and thirty cuts down the time of appeal by five days although I did say the time for appealing and making up the lists in these unorganized districts was altogether too short. At the same time the preparation of the lists in eleven ridings has demonstrated that the work was done regularly, methodically and completely within the respective periods and that it was from an inadvertence over which the government had no control and not from want of time that the irregularities complained of arose. Possibly thirty days, as under the old law, was preferable and it may be that Mr. Whitney regrets that he was so generous as to give way to the suggestion of the leader of the opposition in the legislature. He had either to give way to that or be held up before the people as desirous of doing something unfair and holding elections in the north at a time subsequent to the general elections, thereby getting an advantage in eleven constituencies.


Henry Horton Miller: I did not understand how the hon. member made out that the time was only cut down five days.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: If my hon. friend will excuse me ; he can read it in ' Hansard ' and figure it out for himself, and then speak in committee.


Henry Horton Miller: I think you are wrong, that is all.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: We have in those constituencies eleven valid lists duly prepared, under the Ontario law as it stands to-day and duly certified by the judges. Does the right hou. gentleman believe in following the provincial lists where they can be followed ? If he does he has an opportunity to follow the principle which he has announced. If he desires to avail himself of the petty excuses offered by the hon. member for Port Arthur, which when analysed are reduced to nothing but the desire of my hon. friend to save his seat by adding the names of voters who come in at the last moment, in the face of the deluge of the 8th of June in his riding, if the right hon. gentleman is swayed by expediency rather than by principle, he will adopt (he suggestions of my hon. friend (Mr. Conmee) ; but if he looks into the question himself, if he will take the word of the government of Ontario or the certificate of the judges as to the existence and regularity of these lists, he will be prepared

to adhere to the principle of provincial lists which he has so long advocated.
The hon. member for Grey (Mr. Miller) has said that the making up of the lists may be postponed by proclamation. Supposing they are, supposing that for any one or two or three years the Ontario government does not make up lists, what better machinery has my right hon. friend for making up the lists than we have at present, provided he will see to it that the law is administered honestly and with due regard to the abuses of the past and the cautions and words of warning administered to him by two of his friends. He has a remedy now, the lists are ready and complete. If an election should be held when the lists are more than a year old, the hon. gentleman has simply to operate under his statute, to see that the law is honestly administered, that the lists are up to date and properly prepared.


George Oscar Alcorn: I had no.t intended troubling the House at this stage of the Bill with any further remarks, but I desire to answer some of the observations made by the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) during the course of his remarks this morning. He quoted from certain statements of my own at an earlier stage of this debate with a view of showing that in his opinion I was mistaken in saying that the voters' lists in Ontario, having a municipal origin, are not as correct as those made under a system of registration. I think he differed from that. He contended that the Ontario lists owing to their municipal origin, were absolutely correct or as correct as it could be expected lists could be made. I do not wish to spend any time discussing that point because it is a matter of opinion. As the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) has stated this, I wish to meet it with a concrete case, the proofs of which I have under my hand at this moment. In my own county we have ten municipalities. I have examined the corrected voters' lists relating to the revision of the lists in that riding last fall, and I find that the names struck off and added to that list amounted to no less than 759; 533 were added and 226 struck off. This total is largely over 10 per cent of the voting force of that county. To show that it was no sporadic affection but that it was general throughout the county I shall spend a moment giving the figures, which were as
follows:		Struck
Polling subdivision.	Added.	off.Sophiasburgh	. .. 32	41Hallo well	. .. 34	19North Marysburg	. .. 13	13Athol	. .. 9	14Wellington (incorporated	vil-	lage)	... 37	13Hillier	... 18	13Bloomfield	. .. 11	5Ameliasburg	... 24	39South Marysburg	. .. 21	13Pic ton	... 334	46
I give these figures and make this statement for the purpose of showing the right lion, gentleman that the method of making the lists in Ontario is not superior as a method to that .pursued in other portions of the country.


Wilfrid Laurier: Were these names added and stricken off on appeal before judges ?


George Oscar Alcorn: By the judges on appeal.
I think the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) is perfectly aware, as every gentleman from Ontario must be, that in the vastly greater proportion of instances municipal elections in Ontario are conducted upon party lines, and that one of the first nets of the newly elected municipal corporation is to appoint an assessor. That assessor makes his assessment under the statute, and places the names of those whom he assesses upon the assessment roll. That roll is then on a certain day returned to the municipal clerk. That municipal clerk cannot go outside the four corners of that assessment roll in making up his voters' lists, he can only put on those names which he finds on the assessment roll. As the law is now, part of the duty of the assessor is to put on the lists the manhood suffrage voters in the municipality. But we all know as a matter of fact that the assessors do not do so, and that three-fourths of the work done upon the revision of the lists before the county judges, consists in putting on and taking off, or rather changing the position in the municipality of, the hired men throughout the country under the manhood suffrage vote. I give that as a concrete instance of the failure of the municipally compiled lists to obtain the accuracy which the hon. gentleman thinks they have attained.


Henry Horton Miller: Will the hon. gentleman
allow me ?


George Oscar Alcorn: Let me complete my argument. I say as a matter of opinion, based upon some years of actual work, that the municipally made lists, so far as they are municipally made under the Ontario law, are as faulty as lists made by any other method that I know of. The lists made by registration in Manitoba are the best and most accurately made lists we have in Canada.


Henry Horton Miller: I wish to say this-[DOT]-


Robert Franklin Sutherland: If the hon. gentleman
desires to ask a question, and the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Alcorn) sees fit to answer it, well and good. Otherwise he cannot make a new speech.


Henry Horton Miller: I only wanted to make a statement by permission of the hon. gentleman.	i


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If there is no other member to address the House before this motion is put I desire to say a word.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: I understand the hon. member desires to address the House before the other member exercises his right to reply.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: In bringing this somewhat lengthy debate to a close I shall not attempt to reply in detail to the greater part of what has been said with reference to this subject by hon. gentlemen opposite.
. The debate has now extended oyer some ten days of the actual sittings of the House, and more than thirty different speeches have been addressed to you on both sides relating to this subject. There has been therefore a pretty thorough discussion, and I cannot hope to contribute anything new or additional to what has already been said by those who preceded me. I want however to reply to some of the statements that have been made, to take exception to some, and to call attention to others. At the outset, I wish to point out what seems to me a difference between fair criticism of any measure which is introduced for consideration in this House, and aspersion of the motives of the member who introduces it, aspersion that I think I would be fully justified in characterizing by the stronger term of abuse. Since this Bill was prepared and put before this House I have been subjected personally to a great deal of what could be termed nothing else than absolute abuse on the part of newspapers politically opposed to the party to which I belong. So far as the newspapers are concerned I am fortunate, I think, in having become, during the short time I have been in public life, entirely callous ; at all events, I have nothing to say by way of answer or even by way of deprecating newspaper attacks. But when those same attacks, and, in substantially often the same language, come to be repeated by hon. gentlemen who have seats in this House, and I not having the advantage of hearing the things said, read them the next day, it certainly assumes a somewhat different aspect. That has been literally the experience that I have gone through while this debate has been going on. To that sort of thing I shall not attempt any reply. I shall do no more than refer to the feeble attempts of more than one hon. gentleman opposite to repeat newspaper wit upon the title of the office, which for the time being, I happen to fill, and to call names about the matter, as if the calling of names would do service in the place of argument.
Now, with regard to the criticisms that have been made of this measure, I have not very much to say, because there has


Henry Horton Miller: been really very little of actual criticism. Such as there has been, I think, has proceeded either upon a misapprehension of the provisions of the Bill, or upon what has certainly been worse in some cases, actual misrepresentation. I shall say a word first with regard to the last section of the Bill which has been singled out for animadversion in more quarters than one. I do not know whether to call it misapprehension of the meaning of the section 01* to call it misrepresentation, when I find the fact to be that that section is attacked because, it is said, it in terms permits and was intended to permit corrupt subscriptions to be given to party funds by a company that might be formed for the purpose. I am not able to follow the workings of the mind which would consider this section as authorizing anything of the sort. The section as framed is intended to restrain, and in terms does restrain and forbid contributions on the part of an incorporated company, not only for the collection of funds, but for any political purpose.
. company or association other than one incorporated for political purposes alone, shall, directly or indirectly, contribute, loan, advance, pay or promise or offer to pay any money or its equivalent to, or for, or in aid of, any candidate at an election, or to, or for or in aid of, any political* party, committee or association, or to, or for, or in aid of, any company incorporated for political purposes, or to, or for, or in furtherance of, any political purpose whatever, or for the indemnification or reimbursement of any person for moneys so used.
In framing that clause I was not able to find any more sweeping language to cover the practices I intended to prevent. By this Bill I intended to prevent, if it should become law, any further political contributions in this country on the part of any incorporated company or association, not alone to the election fund of the campaign, or to the candidate himself, but for any political purpose. Having that object in mind and saying that in terms in the clause I have just read, I was face to face with the situation of the legitimate political subscription, for legitimate political purposes, for the attention which is necessary to the voters' lists, for the purpose of printing literature which it is proper to circulate through the country and for the political purposes for which money is required and used by every person, I suppose, who engages actively in political life. It was within my knowledge that such things were managed in the province from which I come by an association of politicians having the same political views, belonging to the same political party, individuals contributing to the common fund which was managed by an association incorporated for that express purpose. The Ontario Liberal association does its business under letters patent issued

for the purpose and constituting it, not a company for commercial gain, but a corporation by virtue of a general Act of parliament. Its members associated together for political purposes are engaged in legitimate political work. It never occurred to me for a moment that any one would wish to prohibit or prevent that sort of political work. The books of the association, the treasurer's reports to its members, the returns which are made, as required by the general Act, are matters, which, if not absolutely public property are at all events in the position of readily being made public. They have been matters frequently of Investigation before the judges in the courts in election protests in the province of Ontario and they are matters with respect to which no one, I presume, would wish to legislate adversely. Whether or not the same system is adopted in other provinces, whether or not that system is adopted by our friends, the enemy, I am quite unable to say ; I know nothing on the subject, but I do say that whatever political party adopts such a means of doing its legitimate political business is doing nothing which ought to be in any way against the law, or which, I should suppose, any one in the country would wish to strike at. For that reason and for that reason alone I introduced, in framing this clause, the exception ' other than a company or association incorporated for political purposes alone,' I did not mean to include in the exception a company that was incorporated for the purpose, incidentally it might be said, of political action, but for the purpose of the private gain of those who formed such a company ; certainly not a company formed for the purpose of carrying on a newspaper of a political character or any purpose other than an express political purpose alone as distinguished from a commercial purpose of any kind.
That clause has been vehemently attacked in many quarters. Not so much attention has been paid to it in this House, but several lion, gentlemen, in addressing the House, have referred to that clause as one calculated to permit political contributions of an improper character to be made by a company incorporated for that purpose. There is no permission given by the clause at all. We have at the present time no kind of restraint upon the operations or contributions of any ordinary company for political purposes. Commercial companies are at the present time in precisely the same position as individuals, as free as individuals are to make their contributions to a campaign fund if they please, and I am authorizing nothing by the proposed clause. I am simply saying that political contributions of any character by an ordinary company shall be prohibited. I am proposing to except from the operation of the clause associations which have a purely political character. I think that if kon. gentlemen had given a little more attention to what
the clause they attacked does state and what the present law on the subject is we should have spared the comments that have been made on this question and to which I have referred.
Now, with regard to the other sections of the Bill which have been specially discussed-the 1st section and the 17th section -I have something to say with respect to each. I have been a good deal criticised- I do not make any complaint of it-it was proper criticism if it was well founded

because of the fact that I should have said too little in introducing this Bill and too much in moving the second reading. That only illustrates the impossibility of pleasing everybody. iMy idea was, in moving the first reading of this Bill, that if the general provisions of the Bill were outlined, if there were any sort of brief statement of what the general purpose of the Bill was, sufficient was done. It was not. an occasion when a debate was likely to take place, the Bill was to be circulated among hon. members, it was in print and it was public property. But, notwithstanding that, I have been spoken of as though I had deliberately attempted to delude this House, to keep it in ignorance and to keep secret some of the salient features of the Bill bcause all of the minute details were not explained or discussed in what I said on that occasion. That criticism might as well have been left unmade because surely no one supposes that any one would think a Bill which- was public and circulated among members could contain provisions that would not be seen and that would not be at once considered and discussed.
With reference to what I said in moving the second reading of this Bill let me remind you, Mr. Speaker, that at the very outset I stated that I intended to confine my observations substantially to the first clause, leaving the other features of the Bill for discussion in committee and that I took that course because the first clause was the one which, up to that time, had been the principal subject of discussion in the newspapers for the month or six weeks during which this Bill had been before the country. When we come to the objections which have been made to the first clause of the Bill at it stands before the House for consideration I think it will not be difficult to dispose of them in turn in a few words. It was complained, in the first place, by a large number of gentlemen who addressed the House on this subject, first by the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. R. Tj. Borden) and afterwards by several hon. gentlemen who followed him that this Bill was exactly the same as the Bill prepared, it was said, by the leader of the opposition, in 1901. looking to the general elections of that year. That hon. gentleman said in his speech on the 5th May last :
Every one understands pretty veil what the real object of this Bill is. It is exactly the

same Bill that was prepared in 1904 which, at that time they were afraid to bring down to the House. They have screwed their courage to the sticking point on this occasion and have brought it down.
And, before the conclusion of his remarks, he said (' Hansard,' page 8123) :
But when we realize that it is precisely the same Bill as that which it was intended to introduce in 1904. and when we know that the proposed introduction of that Bill was the signal for the intimation to the Liberals of Manitoba in the spring of that year that they need not pay any attention to the lists because there would be no lists prepared by Dominion officials for the election of that year; when we realize that the interference with the lists of the province of Manitoba and the province of British Columbia is altogether unauthorized and unjustifiable; and when we realize that my hon. friend the Minister of Justice put it very frankly this afternoon when he said that' the lists prepared under the Manitoba statutes were not very acceptable to some members of the Liberal party in that province; when we realize all this, we cannot treat this measure otherwise than as an intensely partisan one.
Now, what is the fact in that respect? In the first place, it turns out that the document which the hon. member for Macdonald placed upon ' Hansard ' was not, as stated by the leader of the opposition, of the year 1904, looking to the general elections of that year, but was of the year 1903, and it had no reference upon the face of it to any particular election or to the elections which have been referred to by the leader of the opposition. And not only is that the case but when we come to see from the pages of ' Hansard ' the provisions of the Bill referred to, the slightest examination of them demonstrates at once that they do not in any degree resemble tbe provisions of the Bill now under consideration. The whole principle of the preparation or revision of the lists which is provided for in the respective Bills is different. Every detail is different. The Bill of 1903 was intended to provide for the preparation of lists de novo ; the preparation of the lists without' regard to the provincial law ; an independent preparation of lists for the purpose of the Dominion franchise without any reference to what the previous or existing provincial law on the subject might be. The provision of this Bill, on the contrary, is of an absolutely different character. This first section expressly provides that the preparation of the lists shall take as its basis the existing provincial lists. No man's name on the provincial list was to be dropped unless it appeared that he was not qualified, or no longer qualified, to vote within that electoral district. It would not be necessary for any person whose name was already upon tile provincial lists to busy himself to see that Ins name was put upon the list to be prepared under this first section. If Mr. AYLESWORTH.
his name were on the provincial lists it would remain, as they were to be revised under this provision, unless it was struck off by reason of the fact that he was no longer qualified to vote in that electoral division. That, at the outset, is a very substantially different thing from the preparation of tbe lists de novo. But more radical is the difference when you look at the provisions of the Bill as read by the hon. member for Macdonald and comparing them with the provisions of this Bill see that under this Bill the revision or preparation of the lists was to be in strict accordance with the provisions of the provincial law, not adopting any new method, but simply following, in its entirety, so far as such provisions could be made applicable, the existing provisions of the law of the particular province in which the preparation or revision was to take place. Not only are there these radical differences in the whole principle of the Bills in question, but there are equally differences of detail throughout. And how any one who had taken the trouble to read the two Bills could speak of them In tbe language I have quoted as exactly the same, is entirely beyond my comprehension.
Now, the fact in regard to -this Bill is simply this. Several hon. gentlemen have done me the honour or dishonour-I do not know which they intended it for, and I do not particularly care-to say that this Bill was not of my preparation, that there was behind the scenes some master hand which simply pulled the wire, and that this Bill was prepared at the dictation of some one else than any member of tbe cabinet. This Bill, as drawn, is my own handiwork. I prepared it with my own hand, I wrote ou| every word of it with my own pen, and I take the fullest responsibility for it; and I am prepared, anywhere, any time or any place, to defend it as a measure the provisions in which are entirely proper and in tbe circumstances entirely just. And I wish merely to say this further, that I have never to this day seen, and I have never until this debate, so much as heard of the Bill which was read by the hon. member for Macdonald. I know nothing whatever of it except what I read of it in the pages of ' Hansard.' I wish to say further, in regard to the allusions that have been made in the way I have described, to sinister influence on the part of the member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton), that this Bill was prepared by me without any kind of cooperation or, for that matter, any kind of previous discussion with the hon. member for Brandon, and that, so far as that hon. gentleman is concerned, he had no more part or lot (indeed, not so much) in the preparation of this Bill or in the inspiration of it than his colleagues from the province of Manitoba had, these gentlemen who have addressed this House and, to my mind, fully demonstrated the propriety and

the necessity for legislation of this character.
Now, it is said that this legislation is aimed at the province of Manitoba. That is a statement not difficult to make if one disregards all the circumstances of the case. But the fact is, as I stated with care at the time I moved the second reading, that this measure is designed to apply, and upon its face does apply, to the whole of the Dominion of Canada except such portion of the Dominion as prepares its voters' lists with the assessment roll as their basis and at the hands of the municipal authorities. I pointed out carefully on that occasion what is the undoubted fact: That west of the line dividing Manitoba from Ontario the system of preparation of voters' lists in each province is by registration, while east of that line (with the exception of the unorganized territories of Ontario and Quebec) the whole system of preparation is by the municipal authorities and based upon the assessment roll. This Bill was drawn intending to apply, as upon its face it does apply) to the whole Dominion of Canada which does not base its voters' lists upon the assessment roll and does not have them prepared by the municipal authorities. There was no occasion to mention Alberta. Saskatchewan or the Yukon, because there is upon our existing law special provision in the lines of this very Bill for the preparation of the voters' lists in these provinces. But, with the exception of these provinces already provided for, this Bill applied and was intended to apply, not to Manitoba alone, not to British Columbia alone, and not to any other portion of Canada alone, but to the whole of Canada which was not already provided for in the existing law.
Then, it was said that this measure was unworkable-that after the writ for any election Issues there is not time within which the list to be used in that election may be prepared or revised. That would be a perfectly legitimate objection to the provisions of this Bill if it were well founded in fact; but that objection is based on the entire ignoring of the distinct language of the Bill, which is that either after the writ issues or at any time when the Governor in Council so directs, this work of revision may take place; and in practice, with a provision of that character, does any one suppose, unless in a case of necessity, where there had not been previous revision or preparation of the list, or where some by-election came on unexpectedly, or where for some other reason the revision of the list in any particular constituency had not taken place, there would have been a single instance in which that preparation and revision would have 'been deferred until the writ for the election had actually issued ? There is between the issue of the writ and the voting day a period of no fixed time, but ordinarily six weeks, or at the very least five weeks. Now, if we refer to what has actually taken place in the province of Manitoba, we will find that in the depth of a Manitoba winter-a contradiction of the things which were pointed to by the hon. member for North Toronto as being the most absolute answer to the possibility of this Bill being worked out-the Manitoba government prepared for their general elections of 1907, and conducted to its completion the preparation and revision of their list, or what they called the revision, 'within the limit of thirty-six days. That revision was completed for their voting day early in March. It was begun by their proclamation issued thirty-six days *before. If that province, for the purposes of a provincial election, could successfully carry on, under the provisions of its provincial Act, that revision in thirty-six days, I do not know what is to prevent any other government adminstering precisely the same law and accomplishing exactly the same work in exactly the same period of time. Therefore I say they have proved the practicability, though it may not be a desirable thing, to have every term of this clause complied with between the issue of the writ and the actual polling.


Mr. W. J. ROCHE (Marquette).: Does the Minister of Justice say that the lists for the provincial election of 1907 were prepared in the winter of 1907, in the month of March?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I stated that in the winter of 1907 the government of Manitoba prepared those lists for the election of March, 1907. That was not a new preparation for the whole province, but it was a revision for the whole province.


William James Roche: No.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The hon. member for Marquette shakes his head, but my information is that it was an absolutely new preparation for the cities of Winnipeg and Brandon and a revision for the whole province.


William James Roche: No. The lists for the whole province were based on the revision of 1906. The lists for Winnipeg and Brandon were prepared anew.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: My hon. friend, of course, is better informed on the subject than I am. I am speaking in regard to what I am told. It is a subject in regard to which I have no knowledge of my own. But the circumstance, to which I understand the hon. member for Marquette takes no exception, that there was actual preparation of tlie lists from the beginning for those large portions of the province comprised in the cities of Winnipeg and Brandon, demonstrates the fact that it is surely possible to allow the delays for which the statute provides, and yet to get the lists completed in time to use them for election day. However, we need not spend time in discussing that-I merely advert to it in

answer to the objection which has been made-because this Bill plainly provides that the revision may take place at any time when the Governor in Council directs, whether before or after the issue of the writ.
It has been also urged as an objection to this clause, or criticism of it, or indication of what is called its nefarious and iniquitous character, that there is no provision whatever in it for any appeal. All the adjectives of an objectionable nature to be found in the dictionary have been hurled at this offending or unoffending clause, and one of the great reasons which hon. gentlemen allege is that there is no provision in it for any appeal from the work of the enumerator. Well, Mr. Speaker, I am in the judgment of any hon. gentleman in this House, any legal gentleman at any rate, or any judge in the land, whether any interpretation can be given to the provision of the second subsection except that an appeal exists. The provision of the second subsection is that 4 in the preparation of such lists '-and preparation includes everything from the be-visions of the laws of the province-' the provisions of the laws of the province regulating the preparation and manner of revising and bringing into force the provincial voters' lists shall be followed and observed.' What meaning do you give to the words ' manner of revising ' if you argue that in spite of the *presence of these words in the clause, there is no provision in it for any appeal whatever? What else is revising? An appeal is a step in the revision of the list, and when a list is finally revised it is because all appeals in regard to it have been heard and disposed of. If no appeals be taken, the list becomes finally revised by mere lapse of time; but there is no other manner of revising, I venture to say, known to the law or possible of being suggested, than the hearing of appeals whenever appeals lie; and my intention was-and I think that intention was to the full carried out-to provide on the face of this Bill for whatever the appeal might be under the provincial system.
Then, my hon. friend from Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn), in at all events not a very brief speech, has eulogized with great emphasis the provisions of the provincial law, both in the province of Ontario and in the province of Manitoba. I tried to point out when addressing you before, that the provisions of these two statutes were essentially different. I indicated the provisions of the Ontario statute, with which I am more familiar, and tried to point out that in many respects they were somewhat better calculated to obtain a just and impartial list than those of the Manitoba law. But I added that just because it had always been one of the political principles of the *Liberal party to adhere to the provincial lists, except in the case referred to in the debate unon the Bill to repeal the Dominion Mr. AYLESWORTH.
Franchise Act-just for that reason we were here adopting the provincial laws in each province and applying them in their entirety. Accordingly this Bill is prepared solely and entirely in that view, that whatever the provincial law may be and although that provincial law may be from time to time amended, its provisions are to be followed in the preparation of the lists under this clause. If these provincial laws in Ontario and Manitoba-two of the provinces mentioned out of the four in this Bill

are so entirely admirable, as the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr. Alcorn) pretends, I am not able to understand how this measure, which proposes to adapt entirely the provisions of these laws for the preparation of the lists from time to time, can be of the character the same hon. gentleman describes. I have not at any time offered criticism or objection to the provisions of the provincial statutes except to the extent I have indicated in preferring one provincial statute to another. We have these legislatures passing such laws in this respect as to them seem good and proper. Taking those as they stand, if honestly and impartially administered, no one can make reasonable objection to the lists prepared under them. But there has been, whether rightly founded or not, very considerable exception taken to the manner in which they have been administered ; and that exception has not been restricted to the one province alone but has been applied to the four in greater or less degree. So far as the province of Quebec is concerned, my hon. friend from Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) thinks there is no grievance. But it seems to me that while his constituency might not be affected, the answer made by my hon. friend from Montcalm (Mr. Dugas) was conclusive. He demonstrated and so did the hon. member for Wright (Mr. Devlin) that in the constituency, at all events, which he represents, there are grievances which might well warrant legislation either by the province or by this parliament.
Coming to the westernmost province, the speeches made by the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Galliher) and the hon. member for Caribou (Mr. D. Ross) have amply demonstrated that however imperfect the law may be under which the lists in that province are prepared, there is absence of any great dissatisfaction and that this is due to the straightforward and fair manner in which the provisions of the law are construed and worked out. As these hon. gentlemen pointed out, by consent both sides agree to practically ignore the provisions of the statute and play the game fairly.
But the same state of things cannot be said to exist in Manitoba or Ontario. I have not merely the speeches made by hon. gentlemen from' the prairie province but the speech we have had to-day made by the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee)

as evidence that the.condition of things in Manitoba and Ontario, so far as the preparation of the actual voters' lists is concerned, is anything but satisfactory. We have the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) telling us-and it is manifest upon the data he gives and the papers he produces-that the list in his riding to-day is one which has not received any sort of judicial revision. That is the list upon which the provincial election of three weeks ago was decided, and it is the list upon which must be contested the Dominion election in that riding, should it take place before the month of June next. And if it be the fact -as I take it indubitably to be-that there has in reality been no revision by any judge of tie list upon which the Dominion election would have to be contested is that not a circumstance in respect of which this House is not only competent to deal but undoubtedly ought to deni ? It is the list for the purposes of the Dominion election which is in question-the list in nn unorganized territory, a list prepared without reference to assessment rolls, if there are places in that constituency which have assessment rolls ; a list prepared under a system of registration and with regard to which, by reason either of ignorance of the provisions of the law or of the recent date at which it was passed, or because the list was prepared in parts, instead of being the one list certified upon the one day, there has not been an opportunity for appeal or for that revision before the judge which the law contemplates. My hon. friend (Mr. Conmee), who stated that he spoke with knowledge of the conditions in his own constituency, said that he was also aware, from information given him by other members who represent other ridings in New Ontario, that like conditions existed in their ridings. And so far as the receipt of letters can make any one aware of the facts, I am aware of this myself. If there is any truth in the statement made in letter after letter which I have received on this subject from different parts of New Ontario within the last six weeks, the lists which exist in those ridings at present are lists so prepared that no fair minded man ought to ask his opponent-no matter to which political party he may belong-to run his election upon them. I say then that _ without reference to the province of Mani-' toba, which has for some reason or other cut the principal figure in this debate, a state of things has been shown in this House which to my mind establishes the necessity for legislation on our part of some character or other to provide lists that will be measurably satisfactory and will be impartially prepared for those portions of Ontario situated in the unorganized territories and for the province of Manitoba, without speaking especially, for the moment, of either Quebec or British Columbia.
With regard to the province of Manitoba I am not going at this date in the session and after the time that has been taken up over the affairs of that province to seek again to beat out the old dust heap in re-, gard to the circumstances spoken of as the thin red line. I shall not refer to those circumstances with any fulness of detail or to the circumstances which were detailed particularly in the speeches of my hon. friends from Selkirk and Dauphin in regard to the manner in which lists in that province have, in the past, been revised. I have not tried to check over those statements ; but certainly they were categorically made and were backed up apparently by evidence of a documentary character, though many of them were with equal definiteness denied from the other side of the House, and I have no doubt, as I said when speaking six weeks ago on this very point, that it would take a judicial inquiry to establish in any individual case what the facts in truth may be. Enough, at all events, has appeared to demonstrate that there is great dissatisfaction and that that dissatisfaction extends to the minority in that province, a minority provincially which is represented in this House by a majority of more than two to one seats. If then we have a condition of intense dissatisfaction on the part of a substantial minority, if not of an actual majority of the people of that province with the lists as they exist upon which the elections for this Dominion House have to be contested, is it not a case for legislative interference ? To my mind it certainly is and if it is a case for legislative interference, I am not able to perceive any the least unfairness, speaking politically or otherwise, if the law which is framed by the provincial authorities of the one political party is taken and administered in exactly its terms by the opposite political party. If the law is a good law, if its provisions are righteous, then there ought to be no difference which political party administers it. If the result of the administration of that law is unsatisfactory it must be because it is not being administered satisfactorily and if the objection of one political party is strong to that law being administered by its antagonists, you cannot be surprised if there is exactly the same objection to the administration of the law by the opposite political party. I drafted this measure with the idea in mind that if these laws in any particular province which was affected by this measure were in an unsatisfactory condition, or if they were in any of those provinces being administered to the detriment of the opposite political party, the very circumstance that for Dominion purposes the exact opposite was to take place would be the first incentive to make amendment and correction. I do not know any-

tiling which would be better calculated to bring the average human being Ito his senses if I may use the expression without any Intention of offence than that he should .have administered to him or to his political friends exactly the same measure that he is meting out to his opponent. He would then, at all events, be in a position to appreciate whether or not he was acting fairly in playing the political game. So far as the province of (Manitoba is concerned, we have all heard the remarks which were made by the hon. leader of the House, (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) when he addressed it on the 12th of May last. He referred specifically to what had been said by the hon. member for Marquette (Mr. W. J. Roche) as to the kind of law or the provision of law which would be satisfactory. X think he did not call attention to the circumstance that substantially the same thing had been previously said by the hon. the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden). I find that the hon. leader of the opposition said on the 5th of May at page 8114 of ' Hansard ' :
The Minister of Justice tells us in the first place that some provision must be made for allocating the voters in cases where the boundary between two electoral divisions cut in two a local subdivision. I have pointed out there is already provision in section 25 of the statute to that effect, and that that provision would be presumably sufficient if there ware honest returning officers desiring to perform their duty according to the law. In case there should be any suspicion of interference it might possibly be a prudent course to provide that revision should not be made by the re- . turning officer himself but should be made by an independent authority-the county court judge-and I do not think any one in this country would have very much objection to a proposal of that kind.
And in concluding his speech on that occasion he said at page 8119 :
It should be borne in mind, in the second place, that any such difficulty can only be properly met, as that difficulty appears to me, by providing for the allocation of the electors by the county court judge upon some such principle as that contained in the Manitoba Act to which I alluded to-day.
So that the distinct statement appears in those two passages of the speech I have referred to that if there be allocation of the names by the county judges that disposition of the difficulty, so far as allocation is concerned, would be satisfactory and that disposition of the difficulty would of course put an end altogether to any probability of repetition of the thin red line prosecutions or anything of that character.
The same thing substantially is said by the hon. member for Marquette (Mr. W. J. Roche), possibly a little more distinctly, at page 8321. He says :
I tell the Prime Minister candidly that if he wants to prevent a recurrence of the careless-Mr. AYLESWORTH.
ness of transferring names, and if he wants to prevent the disfranchisement of electors by means of transferring where there is overlapping, the only thing he has to do is to adopt the provision of the provincial Act and employ a county court judge to do that dividing. That will get over every complaint that has been made and it will obviate the necessity of the thin red line. Let the county court judge do the transferring where there is overlapping, let him appoint each one of these separated places as a separate polling division in each Dominion constituency, let the judge name a separate polling division as the provincial Act enacts, let him do the dividing of the lists and there will not be a single complaint from Grit or Tory in the province of Manitoba.
The bon. leader of the House (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) closed with that proposition, he did so as he said after consideration, after consultation and he did so, so far as I am concerned, with my full consent-whether that consent proceeded upon conviction or upon the persuasion of my honoured leader does not signify. At all events, I am quite prepared, and I have no doubt every member on this side of the House is quite prepared, to adhere to the proposition which was made on that occasion by the right hon. leader of the House.
With regard to the allocation of the names and the distributing of voters to their appropriate polling subdivisions, it is manifest that it cannot be done by the judge unless that judge has also power to define and establish the polling subdivisions. Under the law as it stands apart altogether from the proposed amendment-under our present election law, the polling subdivisions are either those which have been established for the purposes of a provincial election, or those in which any changes are made by the returning officer for Dominion purposes after the writ for the Dominion election has reached his hands. If the allocation is to be made by a judge, it could not be made until after the writ issued and until after the exact limits of the various polling subdivisions in any particular constituency had been defined by the returning officer, in case those which had been established for the purposes of a provincial election, were not being observed in their entirety. In these circumstances, if the judge is to distribute the names, and to do it to the satisfaction of everybody, do it openly, and do it as a mat- ' ter which may be debated before him. and with regard to which any one who objects to the proposition will be heard, there ought to be ample time, and there ought to be a provision whereby the judge could do that work, if it was thought desirable to do it, before the writ issued at all. There can be in these circumstances no reason why the establishment of the polling subdivisions into which every Dominion riding must be cut, should not be made by the judge as well. In the main, no

doubt the judge would take unless there were good reason for not doing so, the polling divisions as established for the purposes of a provincial election. If there was any substantial reason for varying those limits in any way, the judge ought to have that power, and the judge is precisely the impartial functionary who is better qualified for that work and more likely to give satisfaction in doing it than any returning officer or any political official could possibly be.
In view of these circumstances, and in view of what was stated on the occasion I refer to by the leader of this House, I shall say now, in moving the second reading of this Bill, that I am prepared, when it reaches the committee stage, to move the adoption of a clause in substitution of the first section as it here appears, and that clause will provide that what shall take place with regard to the province of Manitoba is this :	In certain defined months,
whatever months are thought to be the most convenient of each year, there shall be constituted a committee of one or three, because I thought an odd number was better than an even number, from among the county court judges of the province. There are seven county court judges at the present time in the province of Manitoba, of whom three are for the city of Winnipeg. I propose to present to the committee a clause, which will provide that these seven county judges shall meet together upon a day to be fixed by the senior judge among them ; that they shall then assign to each Dominion electoral district in the province of Manitoba a committee of their own number consisting of either one judge or three, as may be thought in each particular case the more desirable, leaving that entirely to the judges themselves, and that that committee, consisting of one judge or of three judges, shall, in and for that particular Dominion riding, establish the local polling subdivisions which shall be used at the then next Dominion election in that riding, and having so established those polling subdivisions, this committee shall proceed to assign to each of the polling subdivisions the voters who ought, according to their residence, to vote there. That will be work of a judicial character; that will be work in regard to which every person will have a right to attend, and in regard to which any one who objects to the poll to which he is assigned to vote will have the right to be beard. The judge, or the three judges, in doing that work is to take, or are to take, the provincial lists, revised as the last final revision then stands, and simply to allocate and distribute those names among the several polling subdivisions of that particular riding for which such committee was appointed by the general board.
In proposing that substitute for this section so far as the province of Manitoba is concerned, I am not for a moment losing
sight of the fact that it is substantially a departure from the proposition as it appears on the face of this Bill now under consideration. This Bill proposed that that work and the work of preparing the lists Should be done, as it is done to-day in that province, by enumerators appointed by the government, by enumerators who would, therefore, very likely be political friends of the government which appointed them, and enumerators who would, therefore, very likely in their work not please the opposite political party. That feature of this Bill is entirely eliminated, simply because I adhere entirely to the proposition, or to the closing with the proposition, whichever you may call it, made by the hon. leader of this House in his speech to which I have referred. He stated then that he was prepared, speaking for the government which he leads and for the party which he leads, to take the preparation of the voters' lists entirely out of the hands of government appointees and to put it entirely into the hands of the judges, to put it above the reach of political influence. If he is prepared, speaking as the leader of his political party, to take that course, and if I am following him in stating now that I propose when this measure reaches the committee stage, to present amendments of that character, I think we are setting before the various provincial governments of this country who control the preparation of their own voters' lists an example which, to say the least of it, they well might follow.
Speaking for myself personally, I have been influenced very largely in yielding to the views of my honoured leader in that respect, by the circumstances with which we have been, since this debate began, made acquainted from the columns of the party press, that steps have been taken recently by the government of Manitoba to remove to a degree the objections which have been made to the manner in which the provincial statutes of Manitoba on this subject have in the past beeu administered. I am influenced very much indeed by the fact that there seems to have been a step taken which it is hoped, at all events, will make the preparation of these, lists less objectionable if it does not altogether remove the objections which hon. gentlemen from that province have in the past made to the manner in which these lists have been prepared. At all events, it is something the effect of which we can at least afford to await and see. This parliament retains under its control to-day, as it has always retained, the right to dictate its own franchise and the right to direct in what manner its lists of voters should be prepared throughout the Dominion, and if experience demonstrates that, in fact and truth, there has been no betterment of the conditions in Manitoba which have been detailed by hon. gentlemen from that province in this House, this par-

liament, or the parliament which succeeds it, has it iu its power at any time to redress the wrong. Under these circumstances, speaking for myself, I am content to abide by what the leader of the House has said and to limit, in the province of Manitoba, the amendments which we are seeking to make to the establishment of the polling subdivisions and to the allocation of the names in these divisions in the manner I have described, adopting and accepting, for the present at any rate, the lists of voters as prepared under the provincial law and by the provincial enumerators and authorities.
Now, Mr. Speaker, with regard to the province of Ontario a somewhat different state of things exists.
At six o'clock, House took recess.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: When you left the chair, Mr. Speaker, I had spoken with reference to the position of the province of Manitoba as it now stands and was intending to say a word or two more with regard to the different situation obtaining at present in the province of Ontario. The hon. member from Rainy River has pointed out the position in which the voters' lists would stand in the constituency he represents if an election for this House were to be had in that riding at any time within twelve months from the month of June just passed. But possibly an even more important consideration is furnished by the circumstances to which he referred when addressing the House upon the main motion on the 7th of May. He pointed out then facts which were not controverted, which have never been so far as I am aware contradicted, and which I presume are incontrovertible as establishing the nj anner in which in his own constituency and under the present Ontario Registration Act these voters' lists were being prepared. In the city of Fort Wil-ilam, he told us, that one of the persons who had been selected as enumerator was some one who was not known beforehand as being intended to be appointed, and who actually started upon his work and had proceeded with it for a considerable distance before those of the opposite political party knew that he was engaged upon that work at all or that he had been appointed to be an enumerator. When investigation came to be made into the place or places where this gentleman had posted up the notices that the statute required to be given, it was found that instead of their being posted up in such public places as might have been expected, Instead of their being posted upon the door of the school house or post office or any other public building, the only notices that had been given were posted on the door of the enumerator's own house, and that, excepting for that kind of pretended Mr. AYLESWORTH.
compliance with the requirements of the law no one in the county (unless it may be the man's own political friends), was aware that he was entrusted with the duty of preparing voters' lists at all. Lists started in that manner in the town of Fort William and prepared by an official of that character and with purpose and intent such as is indicated by his actions, were accompanied in the adjoining city of Port Arthur by the appointment of an enumerator who was the bookkeeper or business partner of one of the candidates at the then approaching election.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Will the hon. gentleman allow me? I protest most strongly against his statement of facts. The Minister of Justice is taking advantage of an infirmity with which we all sympathize, but he has no right to listen only to one side of a statement of fact and to ignore the other side-


Robert Franklin Sutherland: What is the point of order to which the hon. gentleman (Mr. Boyce) raises?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The point of order is that the Minister of Justice is mis-stating, or stating only half the facts.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: That is not a point of order.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The description of what took place and to which I have been alluding will be found in columns 8249 and 8250 of ' Hansard ' in remarks made on the 7th of May, by the hon. member for Thunder Bay and Rainy River. He gave the name of the man to whom he was referring; he gave the name of the candidate, he stated that the enumeration for the city of Port Arthur was in the hands of a man whose office was the same as the office of the candidate, who was either his business partner, or his bookkeeper, or agent connected with him in a business way in some capacity of that nature. I was proceeding to say the Ontario Act carefully declares that no person in whose office the lists require to be deposited shall act'ln this capacity of enumerator. What could be the purpose of such a declaration unless it be to ensure that there shall be at least that degree of fairness and impartiality in the person by whom the enumeration which is to be the basis of the lists is going to be made. And if we find in such an important centre as the chief places of the riding the hon. gentleman represents, lists prepared in that sort of way under the Ontario statute passed only at the recent session of the legislature, and if we find coupled with these various lists so prepared that whether by accident or by design all right of appeal is cut off to those who would wish to appeal, and that these lists stand to-day as lists which have not had in any respect whatever the work of the judge in the way of revising or hearing objections to them, a clearer case it would be difficult to find for

legislative interference. In those circumstances even if there were no complaints whatever from other ridings in what is called New Ontario, I certainly should be prepared to maintain the propriety of applying to that section of this Dominion the provisions of this section of the Act as they are drawn. But, tas I said before there are numerous complaints. I have many of them personally from men in whose statements I have every confidence complaining and complaining bitterly of the partisan and utterly unfair manner in which, in other constituencies in that part of Canada, the lists that now exist have been prepared. I am told that in one of the ridings the enumerator refused to go to a settlement where there was an overwhelming preponderance of voters of the adverse political party. These men have not their na ihes upon the existing lists simply because it would have required a long journey, a difficult journey and possibly a fruitless journey to have found the enumerator and to have got their names recorded.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Would the hon. minister permit me a question ? He has referred to some complaints that have been made with regard to irregularities in these lists; would he have any objection to place upon the table of the House the names of the polling subdivisions in which these alleged irregularities have occurred?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I have seen statutory declarations confirming the truth of what I have stated. I have not these declarations in my possession but they can be produced at any time they are required.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: What about the letters the hon. gentleman mentioned?


Some hon. MEMBERS: Order.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The Minister of Justice is referring to some written documents and I ask that they be laid upon the table of the House.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Order.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: If the hon. gentleman desires to ask a question it is within the privilege of the hon. member addressing the House to permit him to do so or not.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I asked a question and got no answer.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The hon. member cannot compel an answer to his question. It Is in the discretion of the hon. gentleman who is addressing the House to answer a question or not to answer it.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Unfortunately the hon. minister did not hear my question; it came to him second hand.


Mr. DUNCAN ROSS.: The hon. gentleman did not ask a question.
373	'


Arthur Cyril Boyce: I asked whether the hon. minister would have any objection to laying on the table of this House the letters to which he referred.


Mr. AYLES  WORTH@: I certainly have no objection to answering any question put to me that seems to call for any explanation or that indicates that anything I have said is liable to a misunderstanding. But if an interruption is made without the object of getting information, but with some other indirect object, it seems to me that it is not in accord with the rules of the House that the floor should be given way for any such purpose. With regard to the intimation which I understand was made by the hon. gentlemen that the letters or declaration to which I have referred should be laid on the table of the House, I have only to say that those letters are in my possession, and I have no other objection than the circumstance that they came to me, not officially, but as ordinary business or private correspondence, to producing them at any time or in any place. With regard to the declaration which I have alluded to, I have already stated that it is not in my possession and never has been except for the length of time that it took me to read it. I was proceeding to say that these things are evidence, not of the truth of the statements which have been made to me-I am not presenting them in that way in the least degree ; but they are proof of dissatisfaction existing, and every member of this House must be his own judge whether or no there is reason for that dissatisfaction. To my mind, there does exist ample reason to justify legislation in regard to it. Other members of the House have just as good a right to make up their minds in respect to these matters as I have: and I desire to leave every member of this House perfectly free to vote in that respect in accordance with his convictions.
Now, if the statements made by the hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Conmee) with regard to occurrences of the last two or three months are true-and in regard to them we have the word of a member of this House-it seems to me there is in these circumstances alone ample justification for legislating, and for legislating in the lines if not in the identical words of the measure which has been introduced into this House and which stands for consideration. But in regard to the application of that measure to the province of Ontario, as in regard to the application of it to the province of Manitoba, the suggestion is made from the other side of the House that it would be a perfectly fair and perfectly unobjectionable proposition to leave these things in the hands of the judges. That suggestion has been acceded to by the right hon. leader of this House, and, so far as I am concerned, tnere is an end to that matter. Accordingly I am prepared, so far as the unorganized



portions of the province of Ontario are concerned, to propose, as soon as this measure reaches the committee stage, a modification of the first clause to that effect. I do not wish that there should be any misunderstanding in regard to the nature of that proposal, and I state in outline its leading features. For the province of Manitoba I intend proposing, as I have stated, that the allocation of the names and the subdivision of the ridings into polling subdivisions shall be assigned to one or to three judges, as 'the judges may think the circumstances of the particular constituency require. For the province of Ontario I intend proposing that in the same way there shall be constituted in each riding a committee or a board, whichever you please to call it, of three judges of the district courts. The unorganized portion of the province of Ontario has for its civil business a staff of judges, not in every respect in the position of the county court judges of the remainder of the province, but judges of district courts. The district court has a somewhat more extensive civil jurisdiction than the ordinary county court of the older and settled portions of the province. There are in all, I think, nine district judges in the portion of Ontario which consists wholly or in part of unorganized territory. Two new courts have been constituted by the local legislature in that territory, but the judges of those new courts have not yet been appointed. The proposition which I have sketched, and which I intend presenting to the committee when this measure reaches that stage, is a proposition that in each one of the ridings in that territory there shall be formed a board of registration; that that board shall be made up in this way-the senior judge of the district court for that riding, or the senior of the different judges, if there is more than one court, shall constitute one of the three members of that board, and he-not the government-shall select two colleagues from the district courts nearest to his own, and the three so selected shall constitute a board of registration for that riding. This board shall prepare the lists. I do not mean that the judges shall themselves do the actual work of going about from hamlet to hamlet to register the voters, though there will be nothing to prevent their doing so if they wish ; but that the judges shall appoint as their substitutes enumerators, whom they shall select, and who will do the work of enumerating under the direction and supervision of the three judges themselves. These enumerators, when they have prepared their lists and made their returns in accordance with the provisions of the provincial law, shall leave those lists in the hands of this board of registration, which shall hear ail appeals from the work of its enumerators, and shall finally revise the lists. The lists so revised they shall allocate to the proper polling subdivisions Mr. AYLESWORTH.
and shall return to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery as the lists for that riding for the next Dominion election. I have prepared that scheme in outline, based upon the language of the speeches to which I have referred, and to carry out the proposition and the acceptance of that proposition, as a method of preparing the lists and allocating the names that would be acceptable to Grit and to Tory alike and would be free from every objection ; and I think it is a new departure in the history of politics in this country, at any rate in the history of the preparation of voters' lists in this country. In all the settled portions of the Dominion-in the maritime provinces, in Quebec and in the older parts of Ontario-the work of the municipal assessor is taken as the basis of our electoral lists. In the province of Ontario, at any rate, I think it is impossible to find any municipal officer who is not a member of one or the other of the two political parties ; I have no doubt that the same thing exists in the maritime provinces and in the province of Quebec ; so thait, although you have a voters' list made up under municipal officers, you have none the less the work of a man who has possibly been chosen for his municipal office simply because he happens to belong to the political party which, for the time being, is in authority in that municipality.
These lists, prepared as I have said, will at all events give opportunity of the fullest and fairest character, not only for the work of registration by the enumerators whom the judges may select, but also for the hearing of all appeals any one may desire to make from whatever the enumerators may do. The time when the work shall be done is something which may well be left to the discretion of the judges themselves. The proposition I intend making is that the work shall be done between the first August and end of October each year, unless in any particular year, when for instance no one has any expectation whatever that an election will take place for this House, the Governor in Council may dispense with the necessity and expense of doing it at all. That in outline is what I intend so far as the provinces of Manitoba and Ontario are concerned. With regard to the other two provinces mentioned in the Bill, I have already indicated everything I have to say. The province of Quebec is possessed, according to hon. gentlemen on this side, of a considerable extent of unorganized territory, in which at present there are no voters' lists, and the people who live in those districts do not vote either for the provincial legislature or this House. That seems to be an anomalous condition. My hon. friend from Wright county (Mr. Devlin) said something about the number of such persons who were residing within the limits of his constituency. The number was considerable. And attention is called

to the fact that, not merely In Wright and Montcalm and the other counties alongside Montcalm, which extend into the northern or unsettled portions of the province, but in the ridings of Gaspd and no doubt of Chicoutimi and Saguenay and other portions of the province, there are possibly many colonists who, under the present system, have no means of gettng a franchise-on attention being called to that fact, no doubt the provincial legislature will at once provide a remedy.
With regard to British Columbia, no such necessity exists. There appears to be no portion of that vast province in which there is not a voters' list. The men who represent that province agree in saying that there is no complaint. On either side of polities they prepare the lists just apparently as they carry on their elections without the most strict regard to all the legal technicalities but each side giving the other, by tacit understanding and a common consent, fair play in the matter. In that way they have worked out matters to their own satisfaction. And I am quite prepared to leave them in that position and limit the operation of the section, amended as I have indicated, to the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba.
Before I finish I want to say something with regard to the other contested section of this Act-section 17. No provision of this Bill has been, both intentionally and unintentionally, misrepresented to a greater extent. Wlien I speak of intentional misrepresentation, I have- in my mind newspaper articles which abundantly show that their writers knew better than they wrote. X speak of unintentional misrepresentations because I have seen it on the pages of ' Hansard,' in looking over the remarks of hon. gentlemen who evidently cannot have understood the purpose or the scope of this clause.
In moving the first reading of this Bill I stated, as clearly as I was able, the purpose and the reason for this clause. I alluded then to two notable instances in the history of elections for this House in the province of Ontario, in which the need of such a provision was very manifest. In the East Hastings election, thirty years ago, we had an instance of what was exactly, almost in minutest detail, repeated in 1904 in the county of Wentworth. The East Hastings case is one which impressed itself especially upon my mind. Every man, I suppose, no matter what his calling, remembers his first crop, if he is a farmer, his first case, if he is a doctor, his first brief, if he is a lawyer. I began to practise law in August, 1878, and a month later came the election of September. 1878. The candidate in East Hastings, who had the majority, happened to be a close relative of my own. I was specially interested in his election. He received a majority of some 20 or 25 votes. There was a recount, and when the ballots came to be counted there were two 373}
polls, at each of which the deputy returning officer had put on every ballot a number to correspond with the number against the voter's name in the poll book. The county judge held that he was powerless to count those votes. He had no doubt that they were honest votes; nobody doubted that. Everybody was convinced that each deputy returning officer, in ignorance of the requirements of what was then a somewhat new Dominion law, had put those numbers on, in confusion between the system of voting by ballot in Ontario and the system which obtained under the Dominion Elections Act in the same province and throughout the country. The county judge found that he was powerless to count those ballots and the result was to award the seat to the minority candidate. An election petition was at once filed and the matter was brought before a judge of the high court. That judge found himself equally unable to do justice, but he said he would cut the knot, whether he had the authority or not, by ordering a new election. The man therefore who was the choice of the people and honestly elected was deprived of his seat, and some 150 voters on each side were deprived of their votes simply by reason of the mistake of two election officials. That was the first case of any consequence in which I was concerned after I commenced practice, and it made very possibly on that account a specially strong impression on my mind. Ever since it has seemed to me most glaringly unjust that parliament should deliberately leave in the hands of deputy returning officers the power to annul the election in any constituency by making a mistake of that character. Is it not perfectly manifest that what was done in East Hastings thirty years ago-an honest mistake-and which was done in Wentworth, also by honest mistake, might be committed through fraud in the next election ?
Is it not perfectly manifest that, subject to the punishment which the law provides for malfeasance in office, any deputy returning officer has it in his power if he pleases, unless you pass an amendment of the character I have drawn, to thwart at pleasure the will of the constituency in which he acts. Surely wherever there is a close election nothing more is needed than that you give to your deputy returning officers power to spoil the ballots by putting upon them numbers if they see fit. The whole scope and intention of this proposed amendment is that ballots which may be marked on purpose by a deputy returning officer in order to spoil the votes shall, none the less, be counted and that that fraudulent deputy returning officer shall be balked in his fraud and not allowed to thwart the will of the people as honestly expressed at the poll. And yet this measure, a measure which upon its face is plainly limited to a writing or a number or other mark of identification put upon the ballot by the deputy return-

ing officer and which is plainly limited to the act of the official, has been represented throughout the length and breadth of this country as a deliberate attempt by this government to provide a means whereby their officers may without punishment be allowed to ascertain the manner in which any voter marks his ballot and may lend themselves to the purposes of the fraudulent corrupter of the constituency in providing a means whereby he may know whether or not the voter he has bribed has, in fact, marked his ballot in accordance with the money he has received. In that respect let me point out that whatever the law is before this amendment is passed, whatever the law is to-day, that and exactly the same law still remains if this amendment is passed. It is now an offence of a very serious character to pay or to offer to any elector money to influence his vote. It is equally an offence of a serious character, punishable by fine and Imprisonment, for the voter to lend himself to any such scheme, to enter into it or to make any collusive arrangement in regard to his vote. The statute to-day forbids any voter to show his ballot after he has marked it or to indicate by any means, while in possession of that ballot, for which candidate or in what manner he has marked his ballot or cast his vote. That law remains exactly where it was before this Hill was introduced. No one has proposed, certainly I have not proposed to make any' the slightest alteration in it. More than that our election Act now provides severe penalties upon the man who tampers with a ballot, who does anything whereby the legal effect of that ballot will be interfered with Section 255 of the existing Dominion Elections Act provides :
255. Every one whofa) forges, counterfeits, fraudulently alters, defaces, or fraudulently destroys a ballot paper or the initials of the deputy returning officer signed thereon; or
i(sr) being a deputy returning officer, fraudulently puts otherwise than as authorized bv this Act, his initials on the back of any paper purporting to be or capable of being used as a ballot paper at an election; or
(h) with fraudulent intent, prints any ballot paper or what purports to be or is capable of being used as a ballot paper at an election: or
. (j) attempts to commit any offence specified in this section; is guiltv of an indictable offence and shall be liable, if he is a returning officer, deputy returning officer or other officer engaged in the election, to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars and not less than three hundred dollars, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years and not less than one year, with or without hard labour, in default of paying such fine, and, if he is anv other person, to a fine not less than one hundred dollars and not exceeding five hundred dollars, or to imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years and not less than six months, with or without hard labour, in default of paying fine.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: That provision of the election law stood on the face of the statute-book when this Bill was introduced, and it provided these severe penalties which are not in the least degree mitigated by anything that can be found in this statute against the individual who does any of these things. Under these circumstances I must say it was with some astonishment that I found the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) in his speech on this subject using language of the following character at page 8116 :
The hon. member for Rainy River (Mr. Con-mee) said a few words the other day on this subject. He glossed it over. All you would have to do, he said, is to provide a penalty for the returning officer who would be guilty of such practices. But what struck me was how significant it was that the Minister of Justice should have inserted this provision without at the same time providing a severe penalty for the returning officer who would [DOT] mark ballots so that they could be identified. Either the hon. minister was careless or else it was his intention to facilitate the marking of these ballots. I think it would have been very much better if, instead of providing for the marking of ballots by the deputy returning officer-
As though this authorized it instead of providing that the will of the voter should not be defeated by such conduct:
-he should have provided a penalty to be inflicted upon those who wilfully marked ballots in that way, and thus put a stop to some of the bribery and corruption which is now being practised.
As I have pointed out the hon. gentleman should have turned to this section of the Dominion Elections Act to have seen the penalty which for years has been upon the statute-book providing for the punishment of any man who tampers with the ballot or puts upon it any mark by which its validity may be destroyed or affected.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: How does the minister understand that that section bears out his argument? It specifies three things, neither of which is the matter in question.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I perfectly agree that is a provision against the man who commits a crime, and that to establish liability to the punishment provided by section 225, of course there would have to be shown that intention to do wrong which is an essential ingredient in any crime.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: The hon. gentleman does not quite understand me. I say that language does not cover the case of one who even intentionally puts an extra mark upon a ballot. That is not fraudulently altering a ballot, that is nothing of the kind described in the language read by the hon. gentleman. More than that, I do not understand if this amendment passes, it would be an illegal thing to do it.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I have not made myself clear. The hon. gentleman seems entirely to have missed the point that I have been trying as vigorously as I am able to emphasize. I am at the moment dealing with what was said by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake), namely, that instead of legalizing, as he puts it, instead of authorizing the wrongful destruction of a ballot, whether inadvertently or deliberately, I should have set myself to providing some punishment for doing that thing. Now I am saying that there was punishment already provided, there was severe punishment whenever it was a criminal act. There never was intended to be any punishment, and I am not proposing to punish a man who does it unwittingly.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: What I am saying is that the offence is not what the hon. member for Qu'Appelle is talking about. The minister enumerates three classes of things neither one of -which is the putting on the ballot of a mark which identifies the voter, and the hon. gentleman's statement would not make the act unlawful.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If the deputy returning officer, honestly doing his best to carry out the provisions of a somewhat complicated method of voting, has unwittingly made a mistake in judgment, has honestly, thinking it to be his duty, put numbers on the back of a set of ballot papers, not discriminating between one voter and another, but putting a similar number on every ballot cast at that poll, it seems to me it would be a monstrous thing to propose that that man should be made liable to imprisonment, or even to a penalty for doing a thing which he never dreamed of doing dishonestly, but which was at most but an error of judgment on his part.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Does not the hon. gentleman see that if his amendment passes it ceases to be an illegal act to do the very thing that he says the Act is providing against ? There can be no wrong done because (the man is not deprived of his vote. Supposing he did it intentionally, the section which the hon. gentleman quotes does not meet the cause, it is not a destruction of a ballot, it is not forgery.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If my amendment passes it is going to prevent it, because it is going to destroy all object on the part of the man who fraudulently seeks to destroy a ballot, it is defeating the purpose of that fraudulent deputy returning officer who may put a number on the ballot, and who may, as the law stands at the present time, at the peril of punishment it is true, but still quite effectively, destroy every adverse ballot cast at his poll by putting a number on the back of it. I am proposing to prevent that man having his will with the electorate. I am proposing to prevent an honest
vote being destroyed at the will of any official, or by the mistake of any official. Now I have read what the hon. member for Qu'Appelle said with reference to the better manner in which he thought I would have been employed, and to the significance which he found in the circumstances that this measure had been presented without any provision for a penalty. I have read to the House section 255 of the present law, which provides a substantial penalty; and I now ask the member for Qu'Appelle to look at the Bill he was discussing, and which I would suppose he had studied before he made his remarks, let him refer to section 20 of that Bill and see there the heavily increased penalties which are attached to any infraction of section 255. Section 255 as it stands, and irrespective of the amendment I have framed in this Bill, provides as the maximum penalty upon a deputy who may do this, $1,000 and not less than $300 as a fine, and imprisonment in case of default in paying the fine. I propose that any such man shall be visited with punishment of this character, shall be disqualified from voting at an election for a term of eight years thereafter, that he shall be guilty of an indictable offence, and liable, if he is a deputy, to imprisonment without the alternative of a fine, for a term not exceeding five years and less than one, with or without hard labour. I propose to increase measure-ably the punishment, to do away with the provision for condoning such offence by the payment of money, and to make it a criminal offence that will land the man who is convicted of it in the penitentiary for the possible term of five years. I am perfectly content to make the punishment heavier. No man in this House has any sympathy with the election official, or with the man who is not a u election official, who will try, much less succeed, in thwarting the intentions of any voter by destroying that voter's ballot. Every man in this country, regardless of his politics, every citizen I believe who is worthy of the name, regards with scorn, with contempt and with aversion, the man who would be guilty of any attempt to destroy a ballot that was honestly cast. I am perfectly indifferent how severe the punishment is which parliament chooses to impose upon the man who does that thing. But what I contend for, and what I say the circumstances of this country demand, is that the ballot -which is honestly marked shall be counted, regardless of the way in which that ballot, after it leaves the hands of the voter, may have been dealt with by the deputy returning officer. I am not willing that we should have our elections in this country at the mercy of the officials who hold them. Those who may be honest now may be dishonest next, and they would, by the law as it stands, have it absolutely in their power to turn the result in a constituency

one way or the other. Why, what have we seen within the last month ? We have seen certainly not less than three elections in the province of Quebec depending upon just this thing ; we have seen one at all events in the province of Ontario, the result dependent entirely on the view the. judge takes of the inadvertence, or ignorance if you like to call it so, stupidity would he the strongest word you could properly apply to it-of the deputy returning officer. Does any man in this country charge that the deputy returning officer in Stormont, who was, I presume, politically opposed to the candidate who suffers by his mistake-does anybody charge that that man purposely left the number on the counterfoil attached to the ballot in order to destroy the ballot ? 1 have never heard any one suggest such a thing. Is it right then that the will of the constituency should be left to be determined by accident, or whether every deputy returning officer is sufficiently acquainted with the law to prevent a mistake of that character ? Think of the class of men from whom your deputy returning officers have to be selected. Remember that in every riding in this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you probably need from thirty to forty deputies just such as you are able to get about the streets, or about the farms of the different localities for which they act.
You cannot get lawyers, and I do not know that you would be better off if you had lawyers. You have to get men of the best intelligence you can secure, who are fair minded, honest intentioned men and who go there for the purpose of carrying out the law as well as they can understand it. A pamphlet is put in their hands containing hundreds of sections and containing dozens of them with reference to their duties at the poll. They have perhaps a week at most to read up what their duties are under the statute, to try to find out what they must do, and it would be an extraordinary thing if they did not make mistakes, and if now and then these mistakes did not affect the ballots cast at the election, just as in the case of Stormont and St. Hyacinthe where a number of ballots were thrown out, and as in the case in one of the ridings in Montreal and In a riding across the river where, if the result was not altered, the majority was very seriously affected by the subsequent examination of the ballots by the court. These are perils and it is the business of parliament so to legislate -that such dangers shall be avoided. I have tried thus far to discuss this section apart altogether and I think it ought to be looked at apart altogether from any question. of political prejudice or political difference. It may damage one political party to-day and it is just as likely to damage the opposite party to-morrow. It is not, as I can see, a political question, and under these circumstances it has been Mr. AYLESWORTH.
with a great deal of astonishment that I have seen this subject treated, not merely in the Conservative newspapers, but in the debate in this House, as though it had been a political question and as though there was some effort on the part of the government and on my part in framing this clause to secure a political advantage. I am not able to see where that political advantage would fall. It is not introduced to advantage one political party any more than the other, and to my mind there is no political advantage or political consideration in it one way or the other. Certainly I read in the newspapers and I heard in this House with considerable astonishment the effort to attack this clause and to attack me as the proposer of it in view of several matters to which I wish to refer- in view, first, of the fact that this identical provision appears in the Bill introduced by the hon. member for Prince Edward county (Mr. Alcorn). That Bill, when it was introduced, was applauded by his political colleagues in this House and was supported by him in his speech in which he advocated this very provision of the law upon the very lines by which I am endeavouring to support it to-night. That speech and that measure were praised to a very high extent by the political newspapers of the province which support the party of the hon. gentleman. That provision, when introduced by him, seemed to be one which commended itself to the fullest extent to his political associates both in and out of this House. His Bill had its second reading without objection, but when my Bill containing this identical provision is proposed for its second reading, man after man, including the hon. gentleman himself, stands up and condemns it in toto. I can only account for it by the circumstance that these hon. gentlemen were either influenced by the political newspapers to which I have referred or else they sought in the light of the political articles which had appeared in these newspapers to secure a political advantage in taking the sharp turn they did take in that respect. The hon. member for Prince Edward county sought to excuse himself for making an absolute volte face. When he came to speak in the debate upon the second reading of this measure which I have introduced he endeavoured to explain how his views had changed and why it was although he himself had only a few weeks before proposed and advocated this very thing he now thought it would bring about the greatest possible harm to adopt anything of the sort. Hon. gentlemen opposite vied with each other in their effort to impress the country, or impress themselves, with the view that there was some hidden evil in this provision, that it would be to the last degree injurious to the true interests of the country to adopt it. I shall not delay the House to read at any length,

but let me point to one or two of tlie expressions that fell from different speakers In the course of the debate with reference to this proposition. The bon. leader of the opposition says that this clause does away entirely with the secrecy of the ballot, and he even goes the length of saying that under this clause the voter might write his name upon the ballot If he pleased. That X may do no injustice to the hon. gentleman, X shall quote exactly what he said on the 5th May last as reported at pages 8104 and 8105 of the unrevised ' Hansard ' :
So far as section 17 is concerned, it does away entirely with the secrecy of the ballot. And I, for one, am absolutely opposed to any such provision.
As I have pointed out, he offered not the slightest opposition to that when it was propsed by his follower, the hon. member fpr Prince Edward county.
The guiding principle of the Dominion Election Act has been the secrecy of the ballot, giving a knowledge on the part of each voter that, when he marks his ballot, either for one candidate or the other, his choice will remain a secret within his own knowledge and not to be disclosed. When we find the Minister of Justice proposing to amend the Dominion Election Act by adding thereto the following words:
' Provided, however, that no ballot paper shall be rejeoted on account of any writing, number or mark placed thereon by any deputy returning officer/	...
-we are face to face with this situation: that when it is desired that the vote of any particular elector shall be known, and the manner in which he marks his ballot shall be known, the deputy returning officer can mark upon it, ' This is John Smith's ballot/ and that will be an absolutely good ballot. I see no justification for any such amendment to the law as that.
After his description of what might be done by the deputy returning officer under this provision, several other speakers follow him in the contention that this will enable any man who has bribed another, or who is bribed by another, to arrange with the deputy returning officer that his particular ballot shall be identified by the deputy returning officer so that it shall be known whether or not the person bribed has earned the money which has been paid to him for his vote. The hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce), following his leader and adopting his view of this section apparently from the description of it which I have read, proceeded to say in so many words, at pages 8225 and 8226 of * Hansard,' that this provision would enable a man who was bribed to put a mark of identification on the back of his ballot. He went a step further. He disregards altogether the words of this clause that refer simply to a number or mark placed on the ballot by the deputy returning officer and boldly takes the responsibility of saying that this will enable a man who is
bribed to put a mark of identification on the back of his ballot and have that ballot counted. Well, of course there is nothing of that sort in the clause. The hon. gentleman practises law in Ontario; I would have left without notice his observation if it had not been that just as one thing seems to lead to another I found the hon. member for Beauharnois (Mr. Bergeron), in whose sincerity I have every confidence, apparently misunderstanding the provisions of this section and thinking it was a provision which would admit of exactly that sort of thing being done, he said,
' Hansard,' page 8954 :
Suppose a hundred or two hundred men lose their votes, it is very unfortunate, but if you pass this Bill with clause 17 in it, the result will be still more unfortunate. A man will say, how much will you give me for my vote? -$5-How can I know that you voted for me?
I will make such and such a mark on the ballot.
Surely the hon. gentleman (Mr. Bergeron) was either forgetting at the moment or was uot appreciating that the clause extends only to the act of the deputy returning officer. The hon. gentleman continued :
How can I know that you voted for me? I will make such and such a mark on the ballot. The deputy returning officer, who is a partisan, and the clerk of the poll, who is also a partisan, find this promised mark on the ballot, and the voter gets his $5.	.
And the hon. gentleman thought that any provision of the law which would permit of that was a bad provision, and I fully agree with him, and if the hon. gentleman understands this clause as meaning any such thing he was perfectly right in opposing it as vehemently as possible. But that would naturally arise in his mind when we have the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce) using that very language, though he is a lawyer, and though presumably he had read and examined the clause he was discussing. In this provision of the law there is nothing of the kind the hon. gentlemen have assumed, but quite the reverse.


Robert Laird Borden: I presume the hon. gentleman is including me in the remark he has just made. Might I inquire whether a ballot would not be good under this provision if the returning officer marked on it: This is John Smith's ballot?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: To answer the question categorically, I say : Yes, it would. If the deputy returning officer put that mark on inadvertently it would be an improper thing for him to do, and he ought not to be in a position to spoil the ballot; but if he put that mark on purposely, which he must of necessity do if he wrote a phrase like that on it; if he put that phrase on the ballot intentionally and in collusion with the voter, then certainly the

ballot could not be counted. The whole purpose and intention of this provision of the Act was to make it impossible for the voter, without destroying his ballot, to mark his own ballot so that it could be identified ; the intention of the Act was to put that penalty upon the voter if he himself put a mark of identification upon the ballot. I am not saying that without consideration ; I am saying that upon the very language of the law and upon the plain intention of the law. The purpose of this Act was secrecy ; the purpose of this Act was to prevent the voter making known his own vote. This Act carefully provides that no man may show his ballot after it is marked :
Section 221. No voter shall, except when unable to read or incapacitated by blindness or other physical cause from voting in the manner prescribed by this Act, show his ballot paper when marked to any person so as to allow the name of the candidate for whom he voted to be known.
Of course, you could not prevent a voter going out of the booth and declaring for whom he has voted. I have heard it much debated whether, if a voter should say : I object to going behind a blanket to mark my ballot, I am not ashamed of my candidate and here is my ballot and I will vote here in presence of every man at this poll ; whether or not the deputy returning officer could reject that ballot. I have never heard it decided. This clause says no elector shall do that kind of thing, but is there any provision in the law which authorizes a deputy to say : I will not receive your vote. I cannot find any. I have myself done it, I have known of it being done, and I can readily understand it being done by many a man who will not go in secret to mark his ballot, which he would prefer to cast openly. He says : This provision of secrecy is introduced for my benefit; I choose to waive it, and I choose to mark my ballot in the open light of day. I think he could demand, as a right, that the deputy should take that ballot, although he may have exposed himself to a penalty by his infraction of this clause. But if any man puts upon his own ballot any mark of identification, or if he puts upon it, through the hand of another, through collusion and agreement with that other, some mark by which that ballot can be in any way identified as the one he cast, he avoids his own vote. And it was to meet a case of that kind that this statute was passed, stating that the ballot upon which such a.mark of identification appeared should be rejected when the count came at night. Perhaps hon. gentlemen will consider that I am rather dogmatical in making this statement, but I am not without warrant. Every voter has put before him at the polls, when he goes to cast his ballot, a printed form of instructions prescribed by statute to guide him as to the


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: manner of marking his ballot. This schedule of the Dominion Elections Act has printed upon it that it is circulated by authority, and under the law it must be posted up in every polling booth, so that every man who comes to vote can read for himself how he is to mark his ballot. And what does that form tell him? He does not come there with a copy of the statutes In his pocket; in nine cases out of ten he has never seen the statute, but he sees printed before his eyes, by authority of this parliament, the directions which are to guide him, and which say :
If the voter votes for more candidates than he is entitled to vote for or places any mark on the ballot paper by which he can afterwards be identified his vote will be void and will not be counted.
That is what the voter is told and that is what the law says to him as it stands to-day by the voice of its judges. But the law also says to him : If the deputy does it, not if you do it, but if the deputy does it without your knowing it your vote is liable to be spoiled. To my mind that is such an inconsistency on the face of our statute book that for the sake of decency if nothing else this parliament ought to amend the one or the other. This parliament ought not to put before the voters of this country directions as to the manner of voting, sanctioned by the legislative authority, which directions are but a delusion and a snare if you allow the law to remain as it is, and if you prevent those voters having their ballots counted in case they mark them in accordance with those directions. The whole case for consideration here is not whether or no you will weaken the safeguards which the law casts around the sanctity of the ballot by the punishment which it imposes on the man who tampers with it. Nobody is proposing to weaken those safeguards. On the contrary, as I have pointed out, this measure proposes to strengthen them, to make the penalties more severe. The question is not whether or no you will weaken those safeguards, but whether or no you will allow a deputy to do those things, whether you will inflict on an innocent man punishment for that in which he has no part, and allow his vote to be cancelled by the action of some person put in authority over him and over whom he has no control. Simple justice to the individual voter calls for an amendment to the law apart from the effect it has had in many recent cases. The simple justice that honest ballots ought to be counted and ought not to be cast out at the will or the whim of an honest or dishonest returning officer, demands that this amendment to the law should be made.
Now, I want to read a few words from what has been said on this subject by the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster). At pages 8583 and 8584 of ' Hansard ' we

find some pretty strong language from that hon. gentleman with regard to this proposition. After reading the clause, he said :
That is as wide as it can he made. It covers any kind of combination or series of combinations. It opens the way for the purchase of votes, because it provides a method by which the vote can be identified.
Fancy such language-' it provides a method by which the vote can be identified;' in other words, it authorizes and legalizes it, instead of penalizing it; that is the plain meaning of the statement.
Any deputy returning officer of the calibre of hundreds of deputy returning officers of whom we have had experience in this country, under that plenary power, make it possible for the party that he stands in with- and he is a partisan appointee-to make the<r negotiations upon the basis of absolute certainty and to have the ballots marked so that they can be absolutely identified and that payment can be arranged for with absolute c< rtainty that it can be known whether the goods are or are not delivered. The very fact that this provision is in the Bill will raise fear in the mind of every dependent, of every poor man who would rather conceal the way in which he votes, the man who labours for a corporation or for a master who would try to influence his vote-that there is no use, that it is impossible for him to escape, that his ballot will be identified and the way in which he votes will become known. That is the first thing. But the second thing is what I have spoken of, that it opens an organized, trustworthy and certain method of clinching the wrongful negotiations, that take place for the purchase and sale of votes. My right hon. friend says that the minister has been unduly criticised. What criticism could there be? The minister himself never opened his mouth upon it, he did not explain it, his explanation is in the clause and the clause I have read. I
I would have thought that even the hou. member for North Toronto, with * Hansard ' before him, if he had not his memory to appeal to, would have hesitated before making such a statement in the hearing of hon. gentlemen in this House, and with the echoes scarcely died away from these walls of sentence after sentence of explanation given of this clause on the motion for the first reading of the Bill. In the face of all the explanation that I was able to make of it, in the face of remarks of identically the same character as those I am making to-night, the hon. gentleman chose to say that I presented this measure to the House without opening my mouth upon it, that I did not explain it, that the explanation was in the clause. Well, Sir, I shall not delay to repeat the explanations which I made; but I want to call the attention of that hon. gentleman, and I want to call the attention of his colleagues in this House, to a circumstance which I suppose he was ignorant of, and which I suppose the newspapers which support them are either ignorant of in their animadversions on this proposition
or have thought that the people of this country will never know, namely, that at the recent session of the legislature of Ontario, no longer ago than the 14th of April, 1908, the Elections Act of the province of Ontario was assented to, containing that'identical provision. Section 114 of that Act declares :
In counting the votes the deputy returning officer shall, reject all ballot papers (a) which have not been supplied by him, (b) by which votes have been given for more candidates than have been elected, or (c) upon which there is any writing or mark by which the voter can be identified other than the number placed thereon by the deputy returning officer in the case provided for by section 108; but no word, letter or mark written or made or omitted to be written or made by the deputy returning officer on a ballot paper shall void the same.
This is a righteous provision of the law; it is a good law; it is a law that ought to be maintained; it is a law which will, I think, prevent the honest mistake made by the gentleman whom the hon. member for North Toronto would stigmatize as a partisan, the deputy returning officer in Stormont, from electing the candidate who presumably would be the man of his choice. If the Ontario law was in the same condition in this respect as ours, the will of the people of Stormont might be thwarted by the action, whether honest or dishonest, of any deputy returning officer who was opposed to the candidate who had the majority of the votes at that election. I think it was a proper thing for the legislature of Ontario to pass a law of that sort. They were not passing it for the first time. It had been in the statutes of Ontario before their day, and they were re-enacting it because they knew it was right; and in the face of their action in so endorsing that provision of the law, it is extraordinary that the hon. member for North Toronto would stigmatize this clause when introduced by a political opponent, in the language which I have read.
Let me point to what was said by a learned judge, an upright judge, a judge in whom hon. gentlemen opposite will certainly have every confidence. Sir William Meredith, the present Chief Justice of Common Pleas for Ontario, was, in the days before he sat upon the bench, a gentleman to whom the Conservative party in Ontario looked up as a leader. Sir William Meredith, in discussing our law as it stands, said in the Wentworth case, no longer ago than 1905, that it appeared to him most unjust that any elector who has complied with every requirement of the law as to the manner in which he shall exercise his choice of a member of parliament, should be subject to have his vote destroyed by the improper or erroneous action of an election officer inx dealing with his ballot paper. It was most unjust, he said,

that the courts should be bound to construe the law so as to lead to that result. Sir William Meredith struggled hard, in his judgment, to prevent the result to which he was forced in that Wentworth election case, because it was admitted that the candidate who had the majority of votes, was the honest choice of-the constituency, and that it was simply by inadvertence and error on the part of a deputy returning officer that the will of the people was prevented from having its way. On the petition, which was tried in Hamilton before Chief Justice Meredith and his colleague Mr. Justice Teetzel, they took the view, which they regretted they were forced to take as a matter of law, that these ballots could not be counted. They spoke of the hardship of the case. They were convinced that these were honest ballots, but the chief justice pointed out that it was for parliament to change the law, if it saw fit, but the courts were bound to go by the law as it stood. That case, which is reported in the ninth volume of the Ontario law reports, was taken to the Supreme Court of Canada and argued before a bench of five judges. Two judges of the Supreme Court, Justices Idington and Sedgewick, used as vigorous language as can be imagined iu arguing that in spite of the absence of any provision for the counting of such ballots, they ought to be counted; that the decisions of the judges to the contrary in the lower courts, by which Sir William Meredith felt himself hampered and bound, ought to be swept away because the law never intended to avoid an honest vote. So that two judges of the Supreme Court of Canada were prepared to go the full length of saying that, even in the absence of any provision for the counting of these ballots still, -when the vitiating mark was not made by the voter 'himself or with his consent they ought to be counted. The other three judges felt themselves bound by precedent, and the result was that Mr. Sealcy, who was elected in 1904. a member of this House, was prevented from taking his seat simply because a deputy returning officer-who was friendly enough to him and honestly intended carrying out his duty according to the law- made the mistake of putting a number on the back of every ballot.


Mr. LAKE.: Would the minister say whether the number or mark deliberately placed on the back of a ballot by a deputy returning officer is a fraudulent alteration or defacing of the ballot? And if so, which of the two is it?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: A couple of weeks ago my hon. friend from Kootenay (Mr. Galliher), when addressing the House said, what I would like to repeat, that he did not think any man addressing the House should be liable to cross-examination. I shall be very glad in committee to answer any questions put to fee; and if I do not catch ex-Mr. AYLESWORTH.
actly the point of the hon. gentleman's question now, I shall find it in * Hansard,' and reply to it in committee. The' word ' efface,' I take it, would surely include the making of any mark which would vitiate and annul the ballot. If any man does an act which vitiates the ballot by writing on it, that would be included under the head of effacing or destroying or possibly both ; and that, if done wilfully, is undoubtedly an indictable offence.


Richard Stuart Lake: Section 17 distinctly states that such marking shall not destroy the validity of the ballot. How, therefore, can it be considered a fraudulent defacing of the ballot?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I am sorry that I cannot catch what the hon. gentleman says, but I hope to be able to answer his inquiry later.


Robert Laird Borden: The hon. gentleman will have opportunity to answer in committee. The hon. minister has said that a certain clause in the statute would cover the placing of a mark of identification on the ballot and that the person who placed that mark on it would be liable to a certain penalty. He is asked which words in that particular section of the statute would cover this. It is a question I intended asking later on myself. The only words applicable are the words 'alter or deface'; and I was anxious to ascertain whether the hon. gentleman thought that either one of those words would cover the placing upon that ballot a mark of identification


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I wish to say just one word to make clear what possibly may not have been clear, but what I am anxious should not be misunderstood. Wherever a ballot might appear, at the close of the poll, marked with such words, for instance as ' this is John Smith's ballot '-if those words 'were written by the voter himself, that 'would avoid his ballot.


Robert Laird Borden: I did not allude to its having been made by the voter.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I am quite aware of that, but I am alluding to it as a foundation for what I want to say. If a voter himself puts that writing on his ballot, lie thereby, by his own improper act, avoids his own ballot and has no one but himself to 'thank for losing his vote. A fortiori is that the case if he writes these words as the result of some previous collusive arrangement or allows or procures that to be done by some one in his stead. If he has previously arranged that he will himself write those words upon the ballot, of course his ballot falls. Equally, if he had previously arranged not that his own hand shall do it, but that the hand of some one else shall do it, then, upon the principle that what a man does by another is the same as [DOT] though done by himself, the

act of writing those words by any one whom he agreed should do it, whether the deputy or any one else, -would avoid the ballot. So, if you find at the close of the poll a ballot endorsed in the writing of the deputy returning officer this is John Smith's ballot,' if that was done collusively and with the connivance and consent of Smith, by authority of Smith, that ballot *is avoided, and cannot be counted, by Smith's own act.	But, it is a different thing
if those words appear on a ballot paper at the close of the poll in the handwriting of the deputy, not by reason of any collusion, but by the deputy's own stupidity, if you like, for it could not be done unwittingly ; suppose the deputy, when the ballot has come back to him from the voter, has written upon the back of it, because everybody at the poll thinks he ought to for some reason, the. words in question, then I say that ballot ought not to be avoided. Many extraordinary things happen at the polls. Suppose there has been an objection to a vote, somebody says that the voter is not a British subject, or not of age, or any objection you like, but that he has no right to vote. The man is sworn and gets his ballot paper and proceeds to mark it. While he is behind the curtain marking his paper discussion arises between the agent for one of the candidates and the officials as to what they should do about the thing, and, after debate, the Solons at the poll come to the conclusion that the deputy ought to write on the back of the paper ' this is John Smith's ballot ' so it can always be followed if it should turn out that Smith in fact had no right to vote, and pursuant to this resolution of all hands in the country schoolhouse the deputy honestly writes that on the ballot. Smith has gone, he thinks he has voted and has a valid right to vote, and has honestly marked his ballot, but the deputy, pursuant to that ar-*ragement or convention of all parties at the poll, honestly writes on the back of the paper ' this is John Smith's ballot,' it never was intended that should avoid it, it ought fuot to be avoided, it is not fair to Smith, and if you do reject that ballot because the deputy has honestly made that mistake, you simply put it in the power of a dishonest man to do the same thing at the next election. ,
I have pointed out what I think is manifest, that if you put in the law that notwithstanding the fraudulent act of a deputy who tries to "destroy ballots by numbering or marking, none the less the ballot shall be counted, you remove at once the inducement to that deputy to commit fraud, and to that extent secure the honest voter against the act or intention of a dishonest deputy.
The hon. member for Beauharnois (Mr. Bergeron) put the case in his remarks that a deputy could, by collusion, arrange with
a voter to do a thing of this sort. Let me say that a deputy who was as fraudulently inclined as that would not likely be so clumsy as to make any such arrangement. The vagaries of voters are numerous enough. Any one who has gone over hundreds of ballots will witness the most extraordinary variations in the manner of marking, honest variations, but he will find many other tilings that are, to say the least of it, suspicious. I think I have had probably as wide an experience in the examination of ballots in the courts and recounts as falls to the lot of most men. I am quite sure that at the lowest computation there have passed through my hands and been examined, both on the front and on the back, not less than 200,000 ballots marked at provincial or Dominion elections, and I have seen, not only the most extraordinary things, but the most suspicious things, and things which it is perfectly impossible to prevent, things which, in my judgment, could only have been intended by the deputy to furnish a means whereby he could identify some particular voter. In the average poll, in country places at all events, there are only a few votes, comparatively speaking, which any one is interested in identifying. Suppose there are 200 men to vote, there will not be more than a dozen, ordinarily, that the deputy, if he is a local man, will care particularly to know how they marked the ballots. * He will know beforehand how the other 188 are going to vote. Everybody in the community will know. Suppose any voter comes up to cast his ballot, and the deputy thinks he would like to know how the man is marking it, will he do any such crude thing as to write, or put a number, or identifying mark on the ballot? If he is the kind of deputy I have met with by handwriting, this is something like what he will do : Suppose his initials happen to be A.B.A., and he has on 190 out of 200 ballots, made his A.B.A., with three capital letters, and on the other one has made the two A's small letters, it is a circumstance that will at least attract attention when you are examining a couple of hundred ballots and find only one with the initials written in that way. I have seen that in the case of the initials A.M., where all day long, except in the case of one ballot, the 'M' was made like a capital ' M.' That was the habit of handwriting of that particular man, but on some particular ballot a small ' m ' was made. There are innumerable variations of this kind of 'practice. As many variations can be made as a deputy can carry in his mind. If he has three initials, if his initials are A.B.A., he can make the first ' A ' a capital and the other a small letter, he can make the first initial a small letter and the other a captal, he can put one dot between the first ' A ' and 'the ' B,' and between the ' B ' and the second 'A' he can put two dots like a

semi-colon ; lie can ring the changes on as many ballots as he can carry in his memory-and it is done, I have seen it done, literally hundreds of times in almost as many counties in Ontario. But as long as you find such trifling variations-and 1 have taken plain cases-as long as you find some little thing, some peculiar method of finishing a letter, or a man's initials with a curl up or down, no human being could say, and no jury could be found to say, that it was done designedly, that there was a deliberate intent to identify, although you might be more than suspicious of it. I am merely pointing out those things to show that no system of prohibition you could devise will prevent a deputy who wants to find out how a particular man has voted, from finding it out if he wishes. It is illegal to do so, it is wrong to do so. But when the deputy takes my ballot from my fingers he can feel, if he chooses, between his thumb and finger whether I put my cross opposite the name of the candidate at the top of the ballot or at the bottom. He can put his thumb between the folds of the ballot and a glance of the eye will show him *where the cross is placed. He can identify the ballot in a hundred different ways, two or three of which I have outlined in the illustrations I have just used. Now, this law does not affect that one way or the other. This law does not intend to legalize, or authorize, or empower a deputy to do an illegal thing, absolutely the contrary. I am proposing to increase, not to diminish, the penalty upon the wrong-doing deputy, but I am not proposing, if I can help it, to put upon the innocent, the honest, the right-minded voter the penalty of having his vote destroyed without the least fault of his own. If he is in fault, if he contributes to it, I am the ' not ' content that his vote should go. That will happen irrespective of this law. But unless you pass an amendment of the character I am proposing, you leave the Dominion election law in a condition in this respect different from what I submit is the more enlightened provision in the provincial Act, and you will have your elections liable to be vitiated either by the stupid but honest deputy today or by the wilfully dishonest deputy tomorrow.


Robert Laird Borden: Might I ask the Prime Minister whether the amendments which have been described by the Minister of Justice are the same ones a copy of which he has been good enough to furnish me?


Wilfrid Laurier: Yes.


Robert Laird Borden: I would suggest to my hon. friend from Marquette (Mr. W. J. Roche) that as the controversial matters in respect of the Manitoba lists and the British Columbia lists, to which his amendment was directed, are obviated by this Mr. AYLESWORTH.
proposed amendment of the Minister of Justice, that my hon. friend's amendment to the second reading might be withdrawn.


William James Roche: In deference to my leader, and in view of the statements made by the Mia is ter of Justice, and inasmuch as my amendment was only directed against the discrimination to which the province of Manitoba and the province of British Columbia were subjected, and as the statement of the Minister of Justice clears up that discrimination, I withdraw the amendment.
Motion (for second redding) agreed to on division, and House went into committee on the Bill.
On section 1,


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I move to substitute for section 1 the following :
1.	Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein contained, voters lists for the portions of the province of Ontario which consist of territory not municipally organized, shall be prepared during the months of August, September and October.in each year, unless the Governor in Council by proclamation directs that the preparation of such lists for any specified electoral district or districts be dispensed with for any year, or be had during other months of any year.
2.	For the purpose of preparing, revising and giving effect to such voters' lists, there shall be a board of registration for each electoral district which is composed wholly or partly of such territory not municipally organized.
3.	The judge of the district court having jurisdiction in such electoral district or some portion thereof, or where there is more than one such judge, the senior of such judges, together with two other judges to be selected by him from the judges of district courts next adjacent to his own, shall in each case form such board of registration.
4.	Such board of registration shall appoint
for its electoral district as many enumerators as may be necessary, and it shall be the duty of such enumerators, under the _ supervision and in accordance with the directions of such board of registration, to prepare the voters' lists for those parts of the province without municipal organization in such electoral district, and the Governor in Council may confer upon each enumerator so appointed any powers necessary for the discharge of his duties.	.
5.	In the preparation of such lists the provisions of the law of the province regulating the preparation and manner of revising and bringing into force the provincial voters' lists in the like cases, shall, as far as possible, be observed and followed, but the revision of the said lists shall be had before the board of registration who shall hear all appeals from the said enumerators, and no person whose name is not included in the voters' lists so prepared and revised shall be entitled to vote.
6.	The board of registration shall define and establish the polling divisions into which, for the purposes of the next following Dominion election, the electoral district or portion

thereof for which such board is constituted shall be divided, and the names of the voters on the lists prepared and revised as aforesaid shall be distributed among such different polling divisions so that each voter shall be assigned to his proper poll.
7.	Where, within one year prior to the date of the writ for an election in any electoral district composed wholly or partly of such territory not municipally organized, voters' lists for any such territory have been prepared under the provisions of this section, such lists shall be used for such election, and new lists shall not be prepared therefor,
8 It shall be the duty of the board of registration forthwith, after the completion of the revision of the said lists, to transmit to the clerk of the Crown in Chancery, by registered letter, a statement and description showing the limits of the polling divisions so defined and established, together with a copy of the voters' lists so finally revised, certified under the hands of the members of the said board, and the provisions of sections 13 and 14 of the Dominion Elections Act shall apply to such certified copy.
9.	In the province of Manitoba the several judges of the county courts shall constitute a board, of which a majority shall be a quorum, and which board shall, during the month of July in each year, meet in the city of Winnipeg on a day to be named by the senior of such judges, and appoint for each Dominion electoral district in the said province a committee of one or of three of such judges, and such committee shall thereupon proceed to define and establish the polling divisions into which, for the purposes of the next following Dominion election, the electoral district for which it is appointed shall be divided, and shall distribute among such different polling divisions the names of the voters entitled to vote in such electoral district as such names appear on the last revised lists of electors for the several provincial electoral districts in the said province, so that each voter shall be assigned to his proper poll as established for the purposes of such Dominion election.
10.	It shall be the duty of each such committee forthwith after the completion of such distribution, to transmit to the clerk of the Crown in Chancery by registered mail a statement and description showing the limits of the polling divisions so defined and established, together with a copy of the lists of electors as so distributed among the said polling divisions, certified under the hands of the members of the said committee, and the provisions of sections 13 and 14 of the Dominion Elections Act shall apply to such certified copy.
11.	The Governor in Council may, by proclamation, direct that the calling together of the said board and appointment of such committee for any specified electoral district or districts, be dispensed with for any year.
12.	Each enumerator for preparing, and each judge for revising, the said lists, or doing any of the work above described, shall be entitled to be paid for the time during which he is actually engaged therein, the sum of 85 per day, together with his necessary disbursements for travelling. The expenses of preparing and revising the voters' lists and distributing the names tbereon as herein described, shall be paid out of any moneys which may
be appropriated by parliament for that purpose.
It has oecured to me that while I am necessarily familiar with the proposed clause which you, Mr. Chairman, have just read, from having drawn it, Is hardly possible for hon. gentlemen to carry all the details of a more or less complicated scheme in their minds, simply having heard it once read, and it perhaps would be better to leave this clause until it can be printed and distributed and proceed with the consideration of other clauses of the Bill.


Mr. K. L. BORDEN.: I will be very happy to fall in with the suggestion, but before leaving that clause there are just one or two observations which I desire to make in answer to a portion of the remarks of the hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) on some of the clauses and more especially on this section. It seems to me a rather remarkable course that when it was possible to have got into committee on this Bill within fifteen minutes after the House opened this morning, the whole of this day has been spent, in a discussion more or less irrelevant, upon the second reading at a time when we are anxious to bring the work of the session to a close. Why have the government wasted time to-day in beating over matters that have been beaten over in this House day after day and in discussions, which, if they were of service at all, could have taken place after we had got into committee upon this Bill. However, the government are masters of their own actions in that regard and if they desire to obstruct the business of the House it is not possible for hon. members on this side to prevent it.
As far as the proposal with respect to Manitoba is concerned, my hon. friend the Minister of Justice took occasion to state, in the course of his remarks, that the Prime Minister, on the 12th day of May last, had fallen in with the proposal made by my hon. friend from Marquette (Mr. W. J. Roche) and myself with regard to the whole of tlie matters that are dealt with by this amendment. So far as I understood the hon. gentleman, he declares that his proposal, which has resulted in our going into committee, was the proposal made by the right hon. leader of the House on the 12th May last. I thought I thoroughly understood the right hon. gentleman's proposal by pretty frequent conversation with him on this subject during the past five or six weeks, and if the right hon. gentleman intended, on the 12tli day of May, what the hon. Minister of Justice now says he understood him to intend, all I have to remark is that it is absolutely a surprise to me. The matter is hardly worth while seriously debating because any one who looks at the Prime Minister's speech on the 12th day of May last can see for himself that the right hon. gentleman dealt with two distinct subjects which the

Minister of Justice this evening and this afternoon, in his speech of three hours and a half, has done his utmost to completely confuse. There were two matters dealt with by the Prime Minister in his speech. One was his acceptance of our proposal. Our proposal was, and w'e have never swerved from it, that instead of the allocation of the voters' lists in pny bisected polling division being made by the returning officer it should be made by a county court judge. We have never gainsaid that, but the right hon. gentleman went on immediately after in his speech and said, as I understood him and as a perusual of ' Hansard ' will bear out, that there was something more required than that, namely, the making of new lists. I will not quote his language. It is there in ' Hansard ' for any man to examine and read for himself. If the right hon. gentleman meant what the Minister of Justice says to-night he did mean, all I have to say is that we have been wasting a great deal of time over this matter during the past five or six weeks. I am not making these remarks in a censorious spirit, but I think they are due to the House and due to myself. If I had had any idea at all that the Prime Minister meant what the Minister of Justice says he did mean on the 12th May, there would have been very little difficulty so far as this part of the Bill is concerned, except, of course, in regard to the northern district of Ontario to which I will allude in a moment. The amendment of my hon. friend from Marquette would have been withdrawn in one moment if we had had any such assertion as that which the Minister of Justice gave us this afternoon.
In so far as the government's proposal with respect to the polling divisions in Manitoba is concerned we have not the slightest objection to the allocation of the voters' names, but I will suggest to the right hon. gentleman when we come to the consideration of that particular clause, that, as	respects the polling
divisions in Manitoba, I think a little more discretion should be given to the county court judges. The right hon. gentleman and every hon. gentleman in this House will understand, that, except in so far as Is really and essentially necessary, it is an undesirable thing to interfere with polling divisions. Men are accustomed to vote within a certain polling division. They are accustomed to vote at a certain ' place. As far as it may be necessary, in respect to a bisected polling division, to make any change I frankly and thoroughly admit that such change should be made and that the county court judge is the proper person to make it, but in so far as any change is not necessary and in so far as polling divisions may properly be left as they are at present, I think every hon. gentleman in this House will at once Mr. R. L BORDEN.
concede that it would be extremely inexpedient to make any change and that a change would be accompanied with a great deal of inconvenience to the voters and perhaps with a loss of their franchise in some cases.
Coming to the proposal of the government with regard to the northern districts of Ontario, I was struck with one remarkable feature of the observations of the Minister of Justice. In support of his proposal to discriminate against the province of Ontario alone, he was able to quote the remarks of the hon. member for Rainy River, certain letters which he did not produce and which he says he cannot produce because they are not official, and certain statutory declarations which he has read but which are not in his possession. He freely admits, I noted his words, that he does not put these forward as evidence, and therefore there is no evidence before the House in support of his proposal. He declares there is dissatisfaction; he says that he does not desire any other member of this House to be bound by his opinions and that every member- without any evidence, mark you, on which to form an opinion-is at perfect liberty to vote just as he pleases on this proposal. Now, Sir, if hearsay statements bandied across the floor are to be deemed sufficient to justify the parliament of Canada in putting its finger upon every polling division in this country whenever w'hat the Minister of Justice calls dissatisfaction exists, then the parliament of Canada will have very little business to transact other than dealing with such complaints from all parts of Canada. The whole proposal of the government in the first instance was, and their present proposal with regard to northern Ontario is, paltry, meddlesome, and pernicious to the last degree. After we have handed over the fixing of the franchise and the preparation of lists to the various provinces of Canada under the policy laid down years ago by the Liberal party, are we now to take this^ polling division and that polling division and the other polling division and to say that because complaint comes we will submit these complaints to the parliament of Canada week after week and month after month to the detriment of the despatch of important public business ? Shall the parliament of Canada, to use a common expression, occupy its time in poking its nose into every polling division throughout Canada whence a complaint arises ? One would suppose that such was not only an unstatesmanlike, but a perfectly mad proposal. The result would be that when the conservative party comes to power it will be asked by its friends in Quebec and Nova Scotia to go into every little polling division in these provinces, and because there may happen to be some irregularities in the preparation of the voters' lists to revise the lists for the whole of these provinces upon such a flimsy excuse.

Let us look at the proposal of the government in Its true aspect. They declare that there have been some irregularities in the constituency of Rainy River and because of that they propose to revise the lists for all the northern Ontario constituencies. Why, they might as well propose to parliament to revise the lists of every other constituency in Ontario for the same reason. Further, I understood the Minister of Justice, because of some alleged irregularities in the lists, to charge maladministration of the law. He was not slow to make that deliberate charge against the government of Ontario which has just been returned by the greatest majority of supporters in the legislature and the greatest majority of the popular vote ever known in that province. He charges such a government with deliberate maladministration for partisan purposes in connection with the voters' lists. He has charged that a particular officer appointed to revise the lists was so appointed because he was in the employ of one of the candidates, and that I shall deal with later. So far as I understood the Minister of Justice his charge was in respect to maladministration which he says has taken place during the present year, and which I said affords absolutely no justification for placing a permanent black mark upon the statute book against the province of Ontario. It is not to remedy the grievance which the Minister of Justice speaks of that this legislation is to be put upon the statute-book ; it is to be placed there as a permanent enactment for all time in respect of the province of Ontario and the province of Ontario alone. And the justification for it is alleged to be some irregularities which have occurred in a particular year in certain polls of one county when ten times as great irregularities could be found in any other province of Canada. The Minister of Justice had to admit in the end that he is relying on hearsay statements, and it would have occurred to me that if this government had the slightest regard for proper constitutional dealing, it would- instead of relying upon these letters which cannot be laid upon the table, and upon these statutory declarations which are not in the hands of the Minister of Justice-* asked from the Ontario government a plain, truthful and unvarnished statement as to all these stories. The right hon. gentleman has some knowledge of the premier of Ontario ; he has had official intercourse with him for some years ; has he so little confidence In the honesty, fair dealing, honour, and integrity of Mr. Whitney as a public man as to believe that Mr. Whitney would not have given him a perfectly straightforward and truthful account of any irregularities, if irregularities there be, in the preparation of these lists ? Instead of that, this government goes behind the back of Mr. Whitney and of his colleagues and behind the back of the
officials of the Ontario government, and asks the parliament of this country to place upon the statute-book an enactment, which can only be intended as an insult to the government of Ontario and its administration of the law. One of the greatest grievances both of the Minister of Justice and of the member for Rainy River, was that Mr. Hogarth who was appointed enumerator, was in the employment of Mr. Oar-rick, one of the successful candidates at that election. Does the member for Rainy River declare in this House that Mr. Hogarth was appointed enumerator when Mr. Oarrick was a candidate ?


James Conmee: I say he was appointed when he was out canvassing for the nomination of the Conservative party for Mr. Carrick, and when everybody knew he was doing it.


Robert Laird Borden: Does the hon. gentleman know that of his personal knowledge?


James Conmee: I make that statement believing it to be true from my knowledge of the facts.


Robert Laird Borden: I make the statement that I do not believe it to be true, because I have Mr. Carrick's statement to the contrary.


James Conmee: I want to say that I live in that community, that I know Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Carrick, and that I know that Mr. Hogarth was out in the field canvassing for Mr. Carrick as a candidate before he was a candidate.


Robert Laird Borden: If Mr. Hogarth had been out canvassing for Mr. Carrick before he was a candidate


James Conmee: I am not saying' that there was anything wrong in it. He had a right to canvass for Mr. Carrick if he wanted to.


Robert Laird Borden: If there was nothing wrong in it, I fail to see the point of my hon. friend's reference to it.


James Conmee: What was wrong was to appoint him an enumerator.


Robert Laird Borden: I suppose that if he was canvassing for Mr. Carrick when he was appointed enumerator, he would cease to canvass for Mr. Carrick as soon as he was so appointed. But let us look at it for a moment. As a matter of fact a man by the name of Ashforth had been appointed as far back as December last. Mr. Ashforth did not receive his papers for some little time, because through some inadvertence the papers sent to him for the discharge of his duties were sent under the name of Gartforth. When he did recei 7e the papers, he was not very active, and it was reported to the government that the lists were being neglected. Wjjat did the government do? They dismissed him at once, and in March they appointed Mr. Hogarth

and Mr. Cummings, who divided up the district which Mr. Ashforth was to attend to, and proceeded to deal with the lists as rapidly as they could.


James Conmee: Will my hon. friend permit me for a moment? They dismissed Mr. Ashforth, not upon the grounds which the hon. member has stated, but upon other grounds. But be that as it may, why did they not dismiss Mr. Hogarth? Mr. Cfir-rick went to Toronto, and stated on the platform that he had tried to get Mr. Hogarth replaced, but the government refused to do it.


Mr.   R.@: Li. BORDEN. I will give my hon. friend satisfaction in regard to that in one moment. He is very fond of throwing his head back and indulging in the comprehensive smile which I now see upon his face; but I assure him that I am thoroughly in earnest. Suppose Mr. Hogarth had been appointed in December, and in the following April or May had finished three-fourths or seven-eights of his work, and then Mr. Carrick, in whose employ he happened to be, was nominated as a candidate, what would the Minister of Justice think of that, and what remedy would he propose ? Can you foresee in December that Mr. Carrick is to be a candidate in May ? What are you to do about it ? There is no time to appoint another man to do the work. Are you to throw' aside the lists for the whole district ? That apparently is the view of the hon. gentleman. Mr. Hogarth began his work in the latter part of March.


James Conmee: He was not appointed in March at all.


Mr.   R.@: Ii. BORDEN. He was not appointed in March?


James Conmee: I do ngt know when he was appointed.


Mr. NORTHRUP.: Might I suggest that if the hon. gentleman would tell us only what he does know, hq would not take one-tenth of the time he does.


Robert Laird Borden: Here is ari\ official statement of the government of Ontario, and the House will have to choose between that and the statement of the hon. member for Rainy River respecting a matter as to which he confesses he knows nothing:
The enumerators for the making of the voters' lists in territory without municipal organization were appointed by a general order in council dated the 18th day of December, 1907. At this time J. Gartforfh was appointed to make the list for the old district of Port Arthur and Rainy River. The work was not commenced at Port Arthur, and it was afterwards found that the name of the enumerator had been received by telegram as J. Gartforth, while it should have been J[DOT] Ashforth. On the 6th day of January an order was passed correcting the name and appointing a separate enumerator, Frank Stain, for the Fort Frances district. It was supposed bv Mr. R. L. BORDEN
the department that there was no further difficulty ; but in March it was found that Ashforth was apparently incompetent and incapable of doing the work, an on the 25th day of March his appointment was cancelled, and he was instructed by telegraph to hand all papers and money to Mr. Donald Hogarth. On the same date Mr. Donald Hogarth was appointed enumerator for the east part of the riding of Port Arthur, and Thomas Cummings was appointed enumerator for the western portion. Both were instructed to see Mr. Langworthy, the Crown attorney and the clerk of the peace, for advice.
That is an official statement from one of the ministers of the Ontario government to whom I applied for information on the subject.


James Conmee: I do not think that statement touches the point I raised at all.


Robert Laird Borden: I do not know what the mental condition of my hon. friend is. I stated that this man was appointed in the latter part of March and he immediately arose in his seat and flatly contradicted me.


James Conmee: I understood my hon. friend to speak of the time the man commenced to act as enumerator. I was not speaking of the time he was appointed.


Mr.   I@: I cannot always understand what my hon. friend is talking about; I can only take what he says. When I made the statement my hon. friend immediately rose in his seat and flatly contradicted me, and I have read an official statement showing that he was wrong. Mr. Carrick, for the very reason that my hon. friend from Rainy River might be expected to use the arguments and make the insinuations that he has made here to-day, asked the Ontario government to cancel Mr. Hogarth's appointment as soon as Mr. Carrick became a candidate, and the Ontario government declined to do it for the reason that there had already been a great deal of delay by reason of the inaction of Mr. Ashforth and by reason of the fact that the appointment of another enumerator would throw the lists into confusion. Yet it is on trifling grounds of that kind that the Minister of Justice asks this parliament to take up day after day in the discussion of this matter and to prepare lists not for the polling divisions involved, but for six constituencies in the unorganized portion of Ontario. It seems to me that no greater absurdity could possibly be suggested. If there is any wrong in the northern district of Ontario in respect of which this parliament ought to interfere, that wrong should have been made the subject of inquiry as soon as it was discovered and as soon as it was intended that parliament should take any action in regard to it. That parliamentary inquiry should have been preceded by an application, in all courtesy, to the Ontario government asking them for their version of the matter. But no such

application or inquiry was made. And upon statements which my hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) properly characterizes as hearsay, and which are not evidence, this parliament is invited to enact a legislative provision for all time to come by which, not the province of Ontario and the legislature of that province, hut the parliament of Canada, shall provide lists for the unorganized districts. If that is the policy of the government, all I have to say is that it does not commend itself to mj< judgment.
Of course the absolute absurdity of the whole contention of the Minister of Justice can be illustrated in a dozen different ways. It is illustrated by the fact that this Bill, providing for these lists in Northern Ontario, was introduced into this House on the 19th March, 1908-long before any of the alleged facts occurred which are put forth by the Minister of Justice as showing the necessity of this measure. The government had decided to make up the lists in Northern Ontario


William Barton Northrup: That was foresight.


Robert Laird Borden: I think it was the most remarkable instance of foresight that has occurred in the history of any government. The Minister of Justice occupied three hours to-day in justifying, by circumstances and considerations that arose months later, a Bill introduced on the 9th March. That demonstrates beyond all question the sincerity of niy hon. friend in the arguments he made this afternoon. On many occasions we have found the government very backward with their work. We have discovered, after seven months of session, that they have not brought their measures down. But this is the exact converse. Long before the circumstances occurred which would justify any action, the government introduced their measure, and had it all ready in anticipation of these circumstances. I do not think it is necessary to say much more after placing that consideration before the House. It lightens up the whole situation.
The real object and motive of the Bill is pretty well known and understood. The Transcontinental Railway is going through a number of these northern ridings. It is considered very desirable indeed that as many as possible of the men working on that railway and in the employ of contractors, who are in the employ of the commission under the control of the government, should be put upon the list and their votes utilized on the day of election. Therefore, long before the alleged facts had taken place, which are urged in justification of this measure, the government introduced it. And this measure is being persevered in now on [DOT]grounds none of which existed at the time it was introduced. When we take these circumstances into consideration, there can-374
not be much doubt of the reason why the government have seen fit to persevere in tliis measure.
One would have supposed that, upon fair consideration of the whole subiect, the government might have reasonably come to a different conclusion. In every province, whether the lists are based upon the assessment rolls, and made up by municipal authorities, or not, there are undoubtedly very numerous irregularities. The lists contain names of men not entitled to vote or omit names of those who are. In every province that occurs over and over again to the extent of hundreds or even thousands of men. Under these circumstances the fact; even if it had been substantiated, which it is not, that some men were left off in one, two, three or four polling divisions in unorganized districts in Ontario is no excuse or justification for the interference of parliament. If the government propose to sit as a court of appeal on every detail and provision of the provincial law, if parliament is to sit as a court of appeal in respect of every trifling irregularity in every polling division throughout Canada, we shall have on our hands more than enough work to keep us busy from one end of the year to the other. We must adopt one of the two courses. We must leave these matters to be dealt with by the provincial authorities, relying on the belief that men invested with responsibility and authority will see that the law is fairly reasonable and just and carried out in a fairly reasonable and just way. If we are not satisfied with that, there is only one other course to pursue, and that is to revert to the old system which prevailed under Conservative administration and make up for ourselves, by judicial revision, the electoral lists for the whole Dominion. One or the other of those courses would be the only reasonable one for the government to take. It seems to me most pernicious and inadvisable that parliament should waste week after week and month after month looking into' every polling division, looking into every trifling detail and bringing about friction, hard feeling, and a sense of injustice on every occasion when interference of that kind is attempted, as it will often be attempted by persons on either the one side or the other. Do not imagine that Conservative partisans will be backward in the future in claiming their right of revision in provinces where a Liberal government may hold the reins of power. It would be against every experience of human nature to believe that would not occur. You should not create any such precedent, a precedent as unstatesmanlike as it is pernicious. The only fair and proper course is to leave the matter to the provincial authorities or else take it wholly under our own control and prepare the lists for ourselves.


Rt.   H@: My hon. friend opened his remarks by saying that the whole of this day had been wasted and that if, the statement made at the end of the debate had been made at the beginning, the House would have gone at once into committee and then the discussion might take place. Well, it matters not whether the discussion took place with the Speaker in the chair or in committee, I think that it has been very important and that the speech from my hon. colleague the Minister of Justice has been most luminous. I have only to say that I think members of both sides of the House will agree that the observations offered by my hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) in explaining the position he had taken on this question and answering objections are very much to his credit and have cleared away much of the obloquy which has been cast upon this Bill.
In regard to the new question now engrossing the attention of the House I have to observe to my friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) that I do not think he has been at all fair in his observations. My hon. friend the Minister of Justice has stated that he conceived and drafted this measure upon a broad basis, a basis which applied to every part of the Dominion where electoral lists are not made upon municipal assessment; that is the province of Manitoba, the unorganized districts in northern Ontario and northern Quebec, and the province of British Columbia. He would not interfere with any list made in a province where the lists are made upon municipal lists. The lists in these provinces he left to the operation of the municipal law such as it is. * But in the northern portions of Ontario and Quebec, the province of Manitoba and the province of British Columbia, where the lists are not made upon municipal assessment, he did introduce this measure. That is the reason of the legislation which has just been censured by my friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) so far as it applies to Ontario. It is not a fact that it is based as stated by the leader of the opposition simply on the fact that there have been irregularities; they came as an accompaniment. In the unorganized portion of northern Ontario the lists are not made on municipal assessment. The same principle applies to the province of Manitoba, to the province of British Columbia and to the unorganized portion of Quebec. This is perfectly logical, perfectly intelligible and well understood by everybody. But we know that in matters of legislation what is logical is not always the most practical way of legislating, and when we came to legislate, to apply the legislation already conceived and to carry it into effect in view of the strong opposition, the determined opposition offered by gentlemen opposite to some portions of the legislation, for my part I thought we should do something to Mr. R. L BORDEN.
meet the views of our opponents. Whether I was wise or unwise is a question

perhaps I was not altogether wise, in view of the manner in which our action is accepted today, but at all events that was the view that impelled me to act as the government have acted. I was here in the session of 1885 when the Conservative government forced upon the parliament of Canada what was known as the Franchise Act. I happened to sit in the minority and I remember very well that the feeling was deep in our hearts that upon that occasion the majority abused the power of their numbers, to force upon us legislation that we thought was unfair to the minority. My convictions were made upon that occasion and now that we have the majority on this side, certainly so far as I am concerned, being the leader of the party, I do not wish that the majority should abuse its power in order to tyrannize over the minority.
Mr.-SAM. HUGHES. What are the minister's views of his course in 1885 ?


Wilfrid Laurier: The same as then, that thet majority abused their power to force their views on the minority. But on this occasion, although we would be within our rights in applying this to the province of Manitoba, after all there are some reasons why we should not do so. So far as' the unorganized part of Quebec is concerned, I ascertained from the local authorities that they had not thought it advisable to have any registration in the unorganized portion of the province. There are some settlements there so small and scattered that the provincial government thought it well not to interfere with them, and not to bring in any machinery except what might be in the municipal authorities in order to bring the unorganized portion of Quebec into the electoral lists. If it was good for the province I thought it was good also for us, and we did not insist.
So far as British Columbia is concerned, we learned from the discussion here that although the provincial legislation is not very satisfactory, though it is weak and deficient in many respects, yet it is satisfactory to the people of British Columbia, the two parties in the community are satisfied and agreed and if they are satisfied we should be satisfied ourselves. Although the legislation might be improved, though it was not entirely satisfactory, though it was deficient, still if it satisfied the two parties in the province there was no reason why we should interfere with legislation and we did not.
Coming to Manitoba, in that province things are different. There has been, as was stated here in the original debate, -a great deal in that province of which the majority there have a right to complain; but so strong am I in my conviction that the legislation of the provinces in this matter should not be interfered with except upon not necessity alone but dire necessity,

that I was satisfied for my part to tell my friends from Manitoba that if the local government would come down and give them another revision, give them another opportunity of revising their lists, they should be satisfied with that, at least for the present; and this having been done by the government of the province of Manitoba I thought that we should not persevere. Therefore the measure as it applied to Manitoba was amended. I repeat that I am not quite sure that I was wise in that. Perhaps my friends will reproach me for having acted as I did, but at all events I acted in good faith. I thought we should have, if possible, another revision from the government of Manitoba, so that we might be spared the necessity of interfering by our legislation in order to have justice done to the minority in that province. The experiment has been made, I do not know if it has succeeded. I shall know later whether I acted wisely, but I have to say to my friends from Manitoba that if the experiment which I thought it advisable to make is not successful, if the provincial government give them no measure of relief and leave them as they were, without having the lists well prepared, enabling them to have their friends placed upon the list where they should be on and power to remove those who should not be on, then it shall be the duty of this government at another time to exercise the power which has been vested in them. I repeat what I have said on many occasions: It seems to me that we had better leave these matters to the provincial authorities, although of course we must always exercise the power which has been reserved to us, that if on some occasion we think there is an abuse of the minority by the provincial authorities it becomes the duty of this government to interfere by legislation and to see that justice is done. That is a reason of the attitude we have taken on this occasion, that is the reason of the amendment which has been drafted by the Minister of Justice and placed in hands of the committee. We will not interfere with the unorganized portions of Quebec, we will not interfere with the province of British Columbia, we will not interfere with the preparation of the lists in the province of Manitoba, we will interfere only in order to have the allocation of voters in that province made by judicial authority, and to this, as I understand, everybody is agreeable.
I will be asked : If you agree to this principle for all the provinces, in British Columbia, in Manitoba, and in Quebec, why do you not accept the same principle also in the unorganized portions of the province of Ontario ? The reason is obvious. The reason is not as has been stated by the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) simply because there have been abuses in the preparation of the lists in Ontario. That perhaps might be a sufficient reason but it 374$
it not the reason which has decided us ; the reason has been stated by the Minister of Justice in his remarks this afternoon, although it was ignored by the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden). I have to state further that at this moment there stands upon the statute-book of this parliament a provision to deal with the unorganized portion of the province of Ontario. I have only to call attention to the Dominion Elections Act, chap. 6 of the revised statutes, sections 7 and :
7.	Where, under the laws of a province, the voters' lists for any provincial electoral district or division or any of them are prepared not at regular intervals, but at such times as are fixed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or some other provincial or local authority, or only from time to time for the purpose of a general or other election in immediate contemplation, the last preceding voters' lists so prepared shall be used for the purpose of any Dominion election in the territory comprised in such provincial electoral district or division, or the parts thereof for use in which they were prepared, if such lists have been prepared not more than one year before the date of the writ for such Dominion election.
8.	In case the lists mentioned in the last preceding section have been prepared for more than one year, new voters' lists shall be prepared, and the Governor in Council may, for the purpose of preparing and giving effect to such new voters' lists appoint all necessary officers and confer upon them all necessary powers.
Now, I ask, to wbat part of the Dominion does this provision apply, that the Governor in Council shall have the power to prepare new lists when they are more than one year old? Sir, if you take the records of this House and the records of the last election, you will find that the only part of the Dominion of Canada where this provision applies is that part where it was applied the last time, that is to say, in the unorganized portions of the province of Ontario. At the last election we had to apply the powers which were vested in the government by section 8, and by order in council to appoint a revising officer to prepare the lists. Where ? In the unorganized portions of the province of Ontario, not in Quebec, not in Manitoba, not in British Columbia, but in the northern sections of the province of Ontario, where there are no municipally organized districts, and where there are no regular lists. Now, I call attention of the hon. gentleman to this fact, that in the unorganized portions of the province of Ontario there are no regular lists. It is provided for by the last statute that enumerators can be appointed to prepare those lists, and it is provided at the same time by this last amendment that these lists can be dispensed with. Subsection 2 of section 8 of the Statute Amendment Act, 1908, provides as follows :

Provided the Lieutenant Governor in Council may, by proclamation, direct that the preparation of voters' lists for those parts of the province without municipal organization or for any specified electoral district may he suspended for any year, and on such proclamation being issued no such voters' lists shall be prepared during that year.
This is not a new law, I understand it has been in existence for many years, and if my information is correct, there has been no voters' list prepared for the unorganized portions of Ontario since the last election that took place in 1905. There was none made in 1906, or 1907, hut this year, when a new election was coming on, a new list has been prepared. When we had an election in 1904 we found there had been no lists made there for more than a year, perhaps two years, and the necessity was placed upon us to use the powers I have just read, given in chapter 6, section 8, of the Revised Statutes of Canada, to appoint enumerators and to have lists prepared during the campaign. Now, I ask hon. gentlemen opposite : Is that a satisfactory condition of affairs? The hon. member for Algoma West (Mr. Boyce), in the debate some time ago, said that the revision which had taken place upon that occasion under our own enumerators had been very unsatisfactory. He said that in many cases it was fraudulent. It may have been, but I do not believe it was. At all events, it was unsatisfactory. Now, it must be apparent to every man that if you have to prepare electoral lists during the heat of a campaign the result will not be as satisfactory as when they are prepared under normal conditions. The hon. member for Algoma West said that he had been put to a good deal of trouble in that revision to get names removed from that list which ought not to have been put on, and that he got no less than 700 names removed by judges.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: That was in carrying out the law.


Wilfrid Laurier: My hon. friend admits this was not satisfactory. He complained that the lists had been prepared during the campaign, and this is what he wants to avoid, and what we want to avoid, by the present legislation. Tne present method of making the lists is not satisfactory to him, nor is it satisfactory to me ; we do not want the revision to be made during the campaign. We want the list and the revision to be made, not when an election is going on, but under normal circumstances. This year, what has taken place? A new election has been held in the province of Ontario, and we have heard from hon. gentlemen opposite that the result is an indication of what is in store for ourselves. I do not attach much importance to that argument, still, if hon. gentlemen opposite can get any comfort Sir WILFRID LAURIER.
out of it, they are welcome to it. We shal1 see in due time what the result will be. One thing is certain, a revision had to take place during this very campaign, and this revision was not satisfactory to my hon. friend from Rainy River (Mr. Conrnee). it was not satisfactory to my hon. friend from Nipissing (Mr. McCool), it was not satisfactory to other hon. gentlemen. It has been stated that this revision was made by partisans. But whether it was made by partisans or not, does it not strike every intelligent man that if you have electoral lists prepared during the heat of a campaign you cannot expect to have them prepared with the same measure of justice and fair-play to all parties that you would get if they were made in ordinary times? This is our reason for proposing the present Bill and the amendment that has been submitted.


George Oscar Alcorn: Will the right hon. gentleman repeal that provision if the present Bill passes?


Wilfrid Laurier: What provision?


George Oscar Alcorn: The provision to which he has just referred.


Wilfrid Laurier: That is the ,'ery object we have in view, to repeal it and to substitute another form of revision. I do not care any nlore than the hon. gentleman to have this revision made during an election campaign, I prefer that it should be done regularly from year to year, as it will be if this Bill becomes law. The amendment in our hands proposes to do it in this way :
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein contained, voters' lists for the portions of the province of Ontario which consist of territory not municipally organized, shall be prepared during the months of August, September and October in each year, unless the Governor in Council, by proclamation, direots that it shall not take place.
That is what we propose, that Instead of having this reserve power placed in our hands simply to order a new revision when, by the negligence of the provincial authorities, no revision has taken place, we take power to frame these lists ourselves and to have them made by our own machinery. Now, if there was the same condition of things in the unorganized portions of the province of Ontario as there is in every other part of the province, we would not insist upon this legislation. But it is because, in the unorganized portions of that province, there is no regular system for the preparation of the lists and we are forced to legislate and to provide for one, to provide that there shall be at all times machinery of our own to prepare lists in the unorganized portions of Ontario. Therefore, I hope it will satisfy my hon. friend from Prince Edward county when I say to him

that we have no intention of having two laws, but that one law will certainly repeal the other.


George Oscar Alcorn: It does not repeal it now.


Wilfrid Laurier: I think it will repeal it by implication if not otherwise. If it does not repeal it by implication then we repeal it by statute. I cannot conceive that if we have the power to legislate as we do by this Bill we should not have the power to repeal the other law. These are the observations that I have to offer the committee on the legislation that we now propose. It is unfortunate that this Bill has been received in the manner in which it has. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition said that we must not imagine that Conservative governments would be remiss in favouring their own friends. '


Robert Laird Borden: I beg my right hon. friend's pardon. I did not say that.


Wilfrid Laurier: I understood my hon. friend to say that.


Robert Laird Borden: What I said was that if the government set this precedent any Conservative government would be called upon by their partisans to do the same thing and it would be as bad if it were done by a Conservative government as if it were done by a Liberal government.


Wilfrid Laurier: I am quite willing that we should be judged by our own acts. If a Conservative government should be bound to do what we have done upon this occasion, that is, not to interfere with the legislation of any province where legislation exists, not to interfere with Manitoba, nor with British Columbia, but simply to insist upon having legislation where admittedly legislation is necessary, I think we would have nothing to fear from any Conservative administration however badly disposed it might be. On this question I think we perhaps have gone further than we should have gone in order to meet the legitimate grievances of hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House. There is no question with regard to which those who are engaged in political strife are so easily aroused as the question of the preparation of the voters' lists and the franchise, and we have gone as far as we have on this occasion to satisfy the legitimate anxieties of our friends on the other side of the House. I know what it is. I was in the minority myself and I can appreciate the feelings of hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House, but it does seem to me, in view of the whole history of this debate, that hon. gentlemen opposite have no reason to complain of the treatment they have received at the hands of the majority on this occasion. The majority has been generous to hon. gentlemen and in this last stage of this debate it seems to me that with reference to the province of Ontario, in so far as this legislation goes, where admittedly legislation is necessary, we were entitled to better treatment than we have received at the hands of the opposition. But, I do not complain of it. That is their own business. The legislation that we are now proposing for the province of Ontario is absolutely necessary if we are to avoid the condition of affairs that existed in 1904 at the time of the Dominion elections and the condition of things that existed in 1908 at the time of the provincial elections.
*


Robert Laird Borden: Mr. Chairman, I do not desire to prolong the discussion on this section, inasmuch as the Minister of Justice has suggested that it can be discussed to greater advantage when the House is thoroughly familiar with the purport of the proposed amendment, and I should have added a moment ago that I did not discuss section 17 at all because, of course, a discussion of that would not be proper at this juncture.
I thought that I had better defer any observations thereon until we came to that section : therefore I did not attempt to answer the argument of the Minister of Justice with regard to it. Just one word with regard to section 7 of the Dominion Elections Act. The right hon. gentleman has referred to that section. That section is as follows:
Where, under the laws of a province, the voters' lists for any provincial electoral district or division or any of them are prepared not at regular intervals, but at such times as are fixed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or some other provincial or local authority, or only from time to time for the purpose of a general or other election in immediate contemplation, the last preceding voters' lists so prepared shall be used for the purpose of any Dominion election in the territory comprised in such provincial electoral district or division, or the parts thereof for use in which they were prepared, if such lists have been prepared not more than one year before the date of the writ for such Dominion election.
Shortly stated, what that section means is this : If there is an unorganized part of the country where there are no regular lists and if the lists have been prepared under the provincial laws within a year, you are to use them; if not, the Dominion government is to prepare them. My right hon. friend does not propose to amend that section along the lines of the amendment which was read by the hon. Minister of Justice. What that section provides is that the provincial lists shall be in force for these districts if they are not more than a year old. If they are more than a year old, then, for the reason that many persons whose names are on those lists should not appear there and that many other persons whose names are not on the lists should be included, the Dominion government prepare new lists. If the right hon. gentleman had taken section 7 and amended it by providing for a judicial revision and all the other details which he

has proposed in this amendment no one would have said a word.
I do not agree with the right hon. gentleman that I have taken any unfair attitude. I have endeavoured to support my course by what I conceived to be fair and legitimate argument. What the right hon. gentleman proposes to do by the amendment which he has introduced is to disregard the provincial lists even if they are only three months old in these particular districts. That is wh%t I complain of. That is the. proposal and it departs in that most essential particular from the provisions of section 7. Under section 7 if the provincial lists in the district are not more than a year old we use them. If they are more than a year old we do not use them. Now, the right hon. gentleman proposes to-day, in regard to the unorganized districts of Ontario, even if the provincial lists are only three, four, five or six months old, to absolutely disregard them and make new lists. I will not occupy the time of the House further in discussing the matter.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER.: Section 1 stands.
On section 3-nomination paper to state address of candidate for service.


Robert Laird Borden: This is one of the clauses upon which I congratulated the Minister of Justice at the time the Bill was introduced or upon its second reading. I believe it is a thoroughly good provision. I appreciate it as a step in the right direction whch should have been taken long ago. But there is just one observation I would like to make in regard to it. Suppose, through inadvertence or otherwise, the address is omitted from the nomination paper, then you will have one of two results- either the nomination paper will be invalid or there will be no address. I would hardly suppose it would be designed to make the nomination paper absolutely invalid. In the case where the address has been inadvertently omitted if the nomination paper is invalid any person desiring to contest the election is exactly in the same position as he is at present. I would suggest that the section be amended by providing that the omission of such an address should not invalidate the nomination paper and that in case the address is omitted some other address-say the address of the returning officer or of an officer of the court-should be regarded as the address of the candidate for the purpose of serving protest. It seems to me that would improve the section although even as it is I thoroughly appreciate it as a step in the proper direction and I am prepared to support it in its present form.


Edmund James Bristol: Those who have had experience in serving election petitions know that a candidate who may not wish to be served may give an address which would be


Robert Laird Borden: very inconvenient. Why should he not be obliged to give an address in his constituency ?


Mr. AYLES  WORTH@: The change proposed by the leader of the opposition would seem to be covered by the general saving clause, section 314, which provides that omissions or mistakes which are not material shall not invalidate an election. It is possible some penalty should be imposed upon a candidate who omits to give such an address. We are providing in (the next section for an amendment to the form, and these forms are very carefully followed so that the attention of every candidate will be directed to the necessity for this. As to the point raised by the hon. member (Mr. Bristol) I would think it sufficient if the address were anywhere in Canada, because it is not infrequent in other provinces, although it is in Ontario, that a candidate should not be a resident in his constituency.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Section 14 enumerates and particularizes certain things that shall not make an election invalid and it says that no election shall be declared invalid : By reason of non-compliance with the provisions of this Act, of the taking of the poll, or the counting of the vote, or by reason of any want of qualification in a person signing the nomination paper, or by any mistake in the use of the forms. I should think the judicial interpretation would be that if a matter which is required to be done is not included within these excepting words, it is intended its omission should invalidate the election. No harm can be done by inserting the amendment of .the leader of the opposition. I quite agree with the hon. member (Mr. Bristol) that if a man runs for a constituency for the purpose of that election he should have his address in the constituency. It is for the voters to say whether the candidate should be a resident of the constituency, but there Is no hardship in making him give an address in the constituency until all matters connected with the election are concluded. I move to add the words :
But the omission to give such an address shall not invalidate the election.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: To insert such a provision is tantamount to telling every candidate that he can comply with the section or not just as he likes. Section 314 provides that an election shall not be declared invalid by reason of any mistakes in the use of the forms contained in schedule one, and surely an unintentional omission to give the address would fall within that general language.
To show how generous a construction has been given to a clause of that character, let me remind hon. gentlemen from Ontario of the case of the East Simcoe election heard some years ago before Sir Matthew

Cameron and Sir John Boyd, in -which the nomination had not taken place at the hour prescribed by the statute. The people and the candidates were coming to the nomination, hut could not get there owing to the train haying been blockaded by snow. The returning officer, who had gone there the day before, opened his proceedings in some shape or other, but there was no nomination made until, I think, three or four in the afternoon, when the people got there. After the voting was over a petition was presented against the successful candidate, and among other objections to the validity of his election his abjection was taken. It did not prevail. My memory is that Sir Matthew Cameron was of opinion that it would have been fatal but for the saving clause. I have not been able to put my finger at the moment on that saving clause in the Ontario statute. The objection had no relation to the casting of the _ ballots or anything in the way of counting the votes. Nothing had occurred to infringe on the general principles of the Ontario statutes under which the election was carried on.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: That would come clearly within the exception as to the taking of the poll. That is well covered by the language on which the hon. gentleman now relies, ' A mistake in the use of the form contained in schedule 1 of this Act.'


Mr. AMES.: It seems to me the section will have to be made a little plainer than simply to provide that the paper shall state an address. It leaves to the candidate the option of selecting any address he sees fit, not necessarily the address -of his residence or place of business. For instance, in my own case a perfectly valid address would be in care of Ames, Holden & Co., Vancouver, B.C., but any person wishing to serve notice upon me and finding that as my address might fail to do so in time.
iMr. BRISTOL. Is there any penalty provided for a candidate failing to give an address?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: No.


Edmund James Bristol: Does the hon. minister not think that it would be wise to provide a penalty in the Act and also to make the address in the constituency where the candidate is running ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I have no objection to a penalty, though I would not have thought it necessary. But I do think it would be a mistake to limit the address to the constituency. The whole object of this provision is to facilitate service. Under the present law every elected member forces a petitioner to come to him. Is it asking a petitioner to do too much, though he may have to go to some part of Canada that is 100 miles or 1,000 miles away ? Take a practical case. We have heard that
an hon. gentleman, formerly a distinguished member of this House, may possibly be a candidate in a Nova Scotia constituency in the coming election, though he lives in Vancouver. I cannot see why he should be compelled to give an address in his constituency in Nova Scotia when he resides in Vancouver. Surely it would be imposing no very heavy obligation on any petitioner who wished to attack his election to serve him at his place of business, though that might be on the other side of the continent. It would only necessitate sending the papers to the sheriff.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Under this provision a man might give his address at Fort Churchill and go to the United States, and the papers could not be served, though Fort Churchill is in Canada.


Edmund James Bristol: As the time for serving a petition is limited, why should a man have to chase across the continent to serve it?


Herbert Brown Ames: It might be sufficient to add the words :	' which shall be his regular
recognized domicile in Canada.'


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The present method of serving under the Controverted Elections Act is as nearly as possible in the manner in which a legal summons is served in civil matters or in such other manner as is prescribed. In some of the provinces there is already provision for substitutional service by the rules of court promulgated under the Elections Act. That is a matter in the hands of the judges. As to the suggestion that some candidate might be moved to give an absolutely or comparatively fictitious address, it does not occur to me' that that is a practical difficulty. If a man did that and it was shown to the court, the court would find a means of service. At all events, it would only leave the candidate pursuing such a course in the position that he is in to-day.


George Oscar Alcorn: A practical point that suggests itself is the very improbable case of a returning officer inadvertently noting the business address of the candidate on the nomination paper, keeping it in his pocket until the necessary time had elapsed and then declaring the other man elected by acclamation. It seems to me that the section should contain some provision so that the returning officer would have no ground for so doing.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: We cannot guard against the possibilities of what returning officers may do. Not many years ago there was a proceeding in the courts of Ontario because the successful candidate was not returned by the returning officer, who made a special return stating that the candidate had made the deposit by cheque instead of by cash. That is a subject for litigation. Tnat is all you can say about any case

which arises and which nobody could foresee.


George Oscar Alcorn: That was hardly a parallel case. That was ringing the changes upon certain words and defining -what a legal deposit might be. The case I am presenting would be rightly provided against by adding to the clause the words 'the absence of an address should not be ground for refusing to receive the paper as a nomination paper.'


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: Is there any more necessity for such a provision than for providing that the omission of the residence or description from the nomination paper should not be reason for the returning officer to refuse to act upon it? We cannot make legislation that will apply to everything conceivable some men may do We
cfesn0t p0Ssibly cover a11 these contingen-


Herbert Brown Ames: I would like to know whether tins passage, as it is drafted, would mean that no other address could be used for the iP0UvK'SfS f service? To-day my address is Montreal ; and if I am to be served with a protest, the service will have to be made at my residence. But if this should become law and I should give another address, sav at Vancouver, would it exempt me from ail danger of being served at Montreal?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I would think surely not. Of course, this question of service is entirely for the courts to decide Personal service anywhere within the dis-tiict is the very best service. There is nothing in this section of the countrv It merely furnishes an alternative method in order to facilitate service.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I do not know whether I quite understand the Minister of Justice, but so far as I can understand 16 agrees that to omit this address should not invalidate the election. It seems then somewhat illogical to contend that if you put in a clause such as I have suggested any harm will be done. If the Minister of Justice thought that ought to invalidate an election, I could understand his objection ; but when he admits that it ought not to invalidate the election should that address be left out, there ought to be an amendment in the way I have moved or amend section 314. Perhaps a more skilful diaftsman would amend section 314 so as
a fUa ie lt cover this, which was not in the Act when section 314 was drawn.
AYLESW ORTH. Those questions are all for the consideration of the committee, and I have no rigid view. We have had complaint in the past of the difficulty of effecting service, and that was one of the questions considered by the special committee appointed two years ago. After a considerable discussion, this suggestion was made as possibly the best for meeting the Mr. AYLESWORTH.
difficulty. If this committee thinks it would be better to substitute the service upon an election agent, well and good. I would think it more likely the election agent might disappear when wanted than that some place would vanish.


Charles Marcil: The question is on the amendment to add to the section the following words : ' but the omission to give such address shall not invalidate the election.'
Amendment negatived.


Edmund James Bristol: I would move to strike out the word ' Canada ' and say instead 1 within the electoral district to which it relates.'


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I do not think that would be desirable. It is putting too restrictive a condition altogether on the elected candidate, and the elected candidate is entitled to some consideration. If we are going to dispense with personal service, surely the candidate ought to be allowed to select the place within Canada where he would elect to receive service. We have a number of members in this House residing in Toronto and Montreal. Why should they not be served at their regular business office instead of being forced to name a place in their constituency, where the services might or might not come to their knowledge?


Edmund James Bristol: This Bill does not require them to be at their regular business office, but their address may be any place in Canada. My hon. friend has had experience in the serving of petitions, and possibly he will admit that the respondent ought not to be put to expense In chasing the candidate-elect all over the country. You should make this something definite, and make the address his regular place of business.


Mr. OWEN.: One would think that when a man receives his nomination as a member for parliament, he is a moving caravan and has no regular place of abode. I think it would be only necessary to compel him to give his proper home address.


Herbert Brown Ames: I would move to add after the word ' address ' the following words :
Which shall be his regular domicile within Canada.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: 
Herbert Brown Ames: Then I would move to insert the word ' address ' in the eighth line :
Which shall he his regular place of business.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: The hon. gentleman proposes that this address shall be the regular place of business of the candidate. Has every member of this House a regular place of business ? I may say I would not like to answer for some of our gentlemen at large. Some perhaps would prefer their club as their address at which they should receive papers left for them. Is it not manifest that any restriction upon the scope you give the candidate is undesirable. You force him to name some particular place which is for him a place where papers can be left which shall be irrefutably presumed to be delivered to him. Ought he not to have latitude in defining the place ? I think each man should be free to choose the place for himself.


Herbert Brown Ames: If this section passes as it is, will there be anything to prevent me giving as the address here specified, Dawson City, Yukon ?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I think the hon, member for the Yukon would very properly give an address of that character. But if the hon. gentleman is content to have it assumed that any paper delievered at that address was personally served on him he would repent quickly.


Herbert Brown Ames: It seems to me it would be the 'simplest matter in the world for me to give an address in the Yukon and then to go travelling for a year. I could not be personally served and the only other service would be Dawson City. It would mean I would be absolutely inaccessible.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: If the court saw a man who indubitably did not live in the Yukon had given an address which was not an honest one, then if the petitioner was able to prove that he had complied literally with the direction of the candidate by mailing in a registered letter the petition to the address given, I suppose that the court would hold that the cor sequences were upon the
head of the candidate who had the opportunity of giving a real address and so to have secured that these papers should reach him at the earliest possible moment. Is it not manifest when you consider the consequence of giving this address that there is the strongest incentive to every candidate to give a proper address and prevent the papers being served on him without his knowing it ?
Amendment negatived.


Robert Laird Borden: The section is designed to facilitate service, and I would be sorry to have it passed in such form as to have the contrary effect. The minister seems to think it requires a real address. There is not a word in it which would give the court any power if a fictitious address were given. It does not provide for mailing a copy of a petition but for leaving it. An election is held in a particular election district, the candidate is associated with that district, in 99 cases out of 100 he resides there. What is >the objection to confining this address to the electoral district ? There might be a few cases in which slight inconvenience would arise but I would not think they Would be serious. Take the extreme eas*e of a candidate residing in Vancouver and being a candidate in Nova Scotia. He gives his address within his constituency in Nova Scotia, and leaves directions at that address that communications left there shall be transmitted at once by telegraph. We do not want to be obliged to go to court to find out what can be done under this clause, we want to make it absolutely plain and certain, if we touch it at all.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: In framing the clause I had in mind the possibility of a man simply giving his post office. Supposing he lived at Podunk or some other comer where there was only one house, I do not see any reason why he should not give that address if he was content with it. I thought it was desirable that the provision as to service should be just what it is here, that is, the leaving of the document at that address. If any man chooses to say: My address for service is the city of Toronto, then I think his direction would be complied with by an officer of the sheriff leaving the paper for him at the city post office in Toronto. You ma,y provide that the paper shall be sent to him by registered mail; you will then preserve evidence in the records .of the post office that it has reached that office, or if it has been delivered to some one else, then to whom it was delivered. In matters of such particularity as the service of legal papers it is customary to preserve evidence in the form of an affidavit or a statutory declaration by the person who has actually done the thing which constitutes service. An address means either a building

or the post office generally, and if a candidate chose to say: My address Is Smith's Corners, the service would be effected by delivering it at the post office belonging to that place.


Edmund James Bristol: I understood the minister to say that he proposed to provide for some penalty in that clause to make it effective.
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. In my own mind I had thought that the consequences were a' sufficient penalty. Does my hon. friend mean a penalty for omission to give any address?


Edmund James Bristol: Yes.
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. That is not provided for. I thought the consequences would be sufficient, because it would be a serious thing for the candidate if papers are not delivered to him. Does the hon. gentleman think there ought to be a money penalty attached? 1 would make no objection to saying that if the candidate fails to insert this in his nomination paper, he shall be liable on summary conviction to the payment of a fine. But I ask hon. gentlemen to remember that many of us may possibly find ourselves in this predicament.
On section 5-enumerators in Yukon.
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. With a slight variation, this is a repetition of the existing law. The section as it stands in the present Act provides that the chief justice or the senior judge, as the case may be, shall forthwith appoint an enumerator in each polling subdivision to make a list of the electors. The only change is that, instead of appointing only one enumerator, he shall appoint such number as is necessary. But I think we can change that language with profit. When this section was drawn last November there was a suggestion that a chief justiceship for the Yukon should be created. No such legislation is in contemplation. There is no chief justice in the Yukon at present, and it would be time enough to amend a clause of this character at some future date by inserting the word ' chief justice,' if a chief justiceship for that territory should be created. I will propose therefore that the clause should now read :
In the Yukon Territory, the returning officer shall, immediately upon receipt of the writ, notify the senior judge-
Instead of the ' chief justice of the territorial court ' at the end of the second line,
-of its receipt,-
And then I would strike out down to the word ' senior judge ' in line 30, striking out the whole of line 29 and the latter part of line 28, so that it will read :
-or if the senior judge

gtrike out ' as the case may be.'


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: -is, by reason of illness or absence from the territory or other cause, unable to act, the judge next in seniority

gtrike out * as the case may be, and the chief justice or judge '
-on being so notified, shall forthwith appoint such number of enumerators as are necessary to make a list of electors for each polling division.
On section 6,-notice posted up by enumerators.
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. The first subsection is simply a repetition of the existing law, but we apply it to each enumerator, instead of as it now stands in the existing statute, to the one enumerator and we apply it to each polling subdivision instead of as it previously read to a particular polling division. As to the second subsection it differs from the present law. The present law provides what the hours of attendance shall be. That provision has been incorporated in the main section. The hours are the same as provided by the present law. As to the subsection in the Bill under consideration, the Bill only differs from the present law in that in such notice the time and place of the revision are to be designated.


Mr. BERGERON.: What are you doing with clause 46 of the old Act which speaks of ' each such enumerator ' ?
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. Section 46 is not interfered with.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: It reads very badly because there is only one enumerator mentioned in the old Act.
On section 8,-posting up of lists in Yukon.


Robert Laird Borden: Is there any change?
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. In section 48a there is an error. The word ' before ' in the 4th line of 48a should be ' after.' It says that he
Shall write at the foot of each list and close before the last name thereon.
It should be ' after.'


Robert Laird Borden: Is there no other change from the present law ?
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. Section 48a is entirely new. I propose to change the word ' to ' to the word ' after ' so as to make it read: 'and close after the last name,' instead of ' close to the last name.'
On section 12,	-
Mr. AYLEgWORTH. This clause was recommended by the special committee and I certainly think it is in the interest of propriety.
Mr. BERGERON, ghould there not be a penalty attached to this clause in case the

returning officer does not comply with the law?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: There is a general clause providing penalties in cases not otherwise provided for. We can let this clause stand.
On section 22,


George Oscar Alcorn: X would suggest that the words ' bill posting ' be inserted after ' printing ' in the last line.


Mr. AYRES WORT  II@: I think that would be covered by the general word ' advertising ' which includes everything in the way of publication.


George Oscar Alcorn: It is not generally so understood in the country.


Mr. CRARKE.: Is it intended to make the expenses of halls, expenses which the candidate may pay otherwise than through an agent?	[DOT]
Mr. AYLESWORTiH. That question has frequently been propounded to me. I do not know whether II am a very safe guide, but I can say that I have myself done it in two election campaigns. I cannot see that it is any infraction of the present law for a candidate to pay a proper amount out of his own pocket at the time for the hall or room in which a meeting is held. I returned the item to my agent as an item of personal expenditure and I am not aware of any provision in the existing law under which conduct of that nature would be an infraction. My hon. friend will observe that in the clause as now framed this item of expenditure is grouped with the personal expenses of the candidiate, and the maxim noscitur a sociis would eanble the candidate to do with respect to halls or rooms exactly what he would do in respect to his own actual personal expenses, that is, put his hand in his pocket and pay them without reference to the agent.
Progress reported.
Sir WIRE RID RAURIER moved the adjournment of the House.


Frederick William Borden: The same business to-morrow?


Wilfrid Laurier: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 12.18 Friday.
[Stage Direction]
Fbiday, July 3, 1908.