1908-05-07

INSURANCE COMMISSION.

Mr. A. C. MACDONELL (South Toronto).: Mr. Speaker, with the permission of the House, I beg to move :

That the clerk of the House be authorized to remove from_ the file of exhibits of the Royal Commission on Insurance, exhibits Nos. 381, 383 and 385, the same being Dr. Elliot's report, Mr. Pipe's report and Mr. C. W. Macdonald's report, and return the same to the owners of the said reports, the Commercial Travellers' Mutual Benefit Association; certified copies of the said exhibits 381, 383 and 385 to be filed in place of the said exhibits among the exhibits of the said commission.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: Explain.


Angus Claude Macdonell: These are three exhibits that were filed with the Royal Commission on Insurance in the city of Toronto. They are actuarial reports of the three persons mentioned in the motion. They were filed, by the Commercial Travellers Mutual Benefit Association who own them. They now require these originals back in their po-session and they ask the House to allow them to have these returned to them, they depositing certified copies in their place with the clerk of the House. The clerk of the House has now certified copies in his possession which he is willing to retain in lieu of the originals.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Mr. BLAIN-by Mr. AY. J. Roche-asked;
What amount was paid each year for the three years previous to the repeal of the Superannuation Act and the amount paid each year under the Retirement Act?
Right Hon.   S@: The Act to provide for the abolition of the Civil Service Superannuation Act and for the retirement of members of the Civil Service (chapter 17 Statutes 1S9S) came into force on the 1st July, 1898.
The amount paid on account of superannuation each year for the three years previous to that date was :
1895- 6	$311,231 79
1896- 7	 307,792 66
1897- 8	 340,185 67
The amount paid each year under the Retirement Act was :
1898-	9.. .
1899-	1900.
1900-	1.. .
1901-	2.. .
1902-	3. . .
1903-	4.. .
1904-	5.. .
1905-	6.. .
1906-	7.. .
1907-	8. . .


$ 6,434 88 1,755 69 4,195 56 2,750 02 4,986 84 8,837 24 8,138 61 11,260 76 12,206 68 15,178 21 EXPERIMENTAL FARMS.
Mr. LAPOINTE asked :: In which provinces are the new experimental farms for which an appropriation of $40,000 is placed in the estimates for 1908-9 to be established?


Hon. SYDNEY FISHER (Minister of Agriculture).: The Department of Agriculture is now negotiating with the governments of the provinces of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia with regard to experimental farms, and it is also considering applications from various parts of the province of Quebec, the province of Saskatchewan, and the province of British Columbia. It is hoped that some or other of these establishments will be arranged for this coming season.	.


ST. PETER'S INDIAN RESERVE.
Mr.  W. J.@: ROCHE (Marquette) asked ;
1.	Has a petition been received by the_ government from the Indians of St. Peter's reserve, Manitoba, in reference to the holding of an election for chief and councillors?
2.	Is it necessary to receive the consent of the government before such an election can take place?
3.	What is the term of office they are elected for, and when does the term of the present chief and councillors expire?
4.	Will the surrender of the St. Peter's reserve interfere with the holding of their election ?	,
5.	What reply, if any, has been made by the government to the petition?


Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior) :: 1.	Yes ; a petition, dated 7th of January, 1908, has been received from the Indians of the St. Peter's reserve in reference to the holding of an election for chief and councillors.
2.	It is considered necessary that the consent of the government should be received before such an election can take place, as the Indians of the St. Peter's band are not legally entitled to an election, the elective system, under section 93 of the Indian Act, not having yet been applied to that band by order in council.
3.	Although,. as stated in answer No. 2, the elective system has not been applied to the St. Peter's band, those Indians have been allowed to hold an election every three years. Consequently, the last election having been held on 4th of July, 1905, the present term would naturally expire on 4th of July of the present year (1908).
4.	NO ; as the surrender has already been taken.
5.	On the 16th of January, 1908. the Indian commissioner was reminded, with reference to the petition referred to, that the elective system under section 93 of the Indian Act not having been applied by order in council to any Indian band in Manitoba,

the Indians of St. Peters have no legal right to that system, but that on the other hand, as they have for a long time been allowed the privilege of holding an election every three years, they might now consider that they have a moral claim to the privilege ; but that, as it was then five or six months before the usual date of holding the election, there was time for further consideration of the matter.


QUEBEC BRIDGE COLLAPSE.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. ROBITAILLE-by Mr. Armand La-vergne-asked :
1.	What are the names of the parties who formed the coroner's jury investigating the Quebec bridge collapse?
2.	How many and who of these gentlemen are shareholders of the Quebec bridge?
3.	Upon what were the jurymen expected to report?
4.	How many men were killed and injured?
5.	What was the verdict of the coroner's jury ?
Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals).: The government has no information about this matter.


MR. PETER LYALL.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. FOWLER-by Mr. Daniel-asked :
1.	Is the Peter Lyall, who presided at the banquet to Horn Wm. Pugsley in Montreal, the same man whose firm some days later secured the contract for the erection of the National Transcontinental terminal at Winnipeg?
2.	Is the said Peter Lyall the same man who locked out the workmen on Young Men's Christian Association building in Ottawa, for the erection of which he or his firm is the contractors ?
George Perry Graham: The reply to this question scarcely comes within the purview of the government, and I submit that the source of information is as open to my hon. friend as it is to me.


DOMINION ARSENAL.
Mr. WORTHINGTON asked :: 1.	Is the Dominion arsenal or cartridge factory, or any portion of the building or buildings, situated on any part of the land leased to the Ross Rifle Company at Quebec?
2.	If so, has any correspondence or communications of any kind taken place between Sir Charles Ross or any official of the Ross Rifle Company and the government, or any member or official thereof, in regard to the same, and what was the nature of the correspondence ?


Hon. Sir FREDERICK BORDEN (Minister of Militia and Defence) :: 1. Yes, one small building, the Fulminate Factory, Is situated on the land under lease to the Ross Rifle Company.


Mr. OLIVER.: 2. There has been no correspondence other than that included iu a return to an order of the House of January 23, 1907, for copies of all documents and correspondence concerning the erection of the Ross rifle factory on the Plains of Abraham, Quebec; which return was laid on the table of the House on Thursday, March 14, 1907.


QUEBEC TERCENTENARY.
Mr. WORTHINGTON asked :: 1.	Have any regiments, city or rural, of the Canadian militia, intimated in any way to the government or Department of Militia and Defence their unwillingness to attend the Tercentenary celebration at Quebec, under the terms laid down in an order issued by the Department of Militia and Defence governing such celebration? If so, what has been the nature of the protests?
2.	What regiments have signified their intention of not taking part in the celebration or protested against the terms of the order?
3.	Has the government or the Department of Militia and Defence under consideration better terms of payment for troops taking part in the celebration?


Right Hon.   S@: In view of the fact that nothing has yet been definitely settled as to what regiments will be mobilized at Quebec, at the time of the Tercentenary celebration, it is undesirable in the public interest that this question should be answered at present. Full information will be communicated to the House when arrangements have been completed.


BRITISH COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEAL.
[Stage Direction]
On the order :
Resolved, that in the opinion of this House it is expedient to make provision for the payment of annual salaries to judges to he appointed to the Court of Appeal in the province of British Columbia, as follows:-
The Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal, $7,000.
Three Justices of Appeal, each $6,000.
Hon. A. B. AYLESWORTH (Minister of Justice).: I ask the permission of the House to withdraw this notice of motion with the intention of resuming it in a slightly different form


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. J. G. II. BERGERON (Beauharnols).: Before the orders of the day are called I rise to a question of privilege. In a paper published in Quebec, the ' Le Soleil,' which passes to be the organ of the government.


Wilfrid Laurier: Passes ?


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: There is an article published in this paper which I looked upon as humorous but it might he taken seriously by the readers of that paper and to that article I want to call the attention of the House. It is a long article, but to save time X will translate a summary of its contents:	It says that on the motion made
by the leader of the opposition last Thursday which was directed against the Minister of Marine and Fisheries because he is a French Canadian, all the Conservative French Canadian members except one left the House so as not to vote, and it would imply that they left because they dissented from the motion of the leader of the opposition. The article also says that I spoke upon the question although I did not vote. I want to say that I did not vote because I was engaged outside of the House, but I was paired with my hon. friend from Belle-chasse (Mr. Talbot) and if I had been here I would certainly have voted for the amendment of the leader of the opposition.


Mr. ARM AND LAYERGNE.: I am glad the hon. gentleman from Beauharnois brought this matter to the attention of the House because I intended to do so myself when I had the article translated.


Mr. SPEAKER.: Is the hon. gentleman
rising to a question of privilege ?


Louis Lavergne: Yes, the same question of privilege as that brought up by the hon. member for Beauharnois. The article says that X also shirked the vote because an attack was made on Mr. Brodeur as being a French Canadian and that therefore I did not want to vote. I have to say that I did not vote because I did not want to vote, but at the same time I want to say that I have no belief in the statement that the Minister of Marine and Fisheries was attacked because he is a French Canadian. I certainly disapprove of the article in ' Le Soleil.' Here is a paper which is trying to raise a racial cry in the province of Quebec


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The hon. gentleman Is proceeding to criticise the general course of a newspaper and that is hardly a proper subject for discussion on a question of privilege.


Louis Lavergne: I have pointed to the allegation in the article and I desire to state my position.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: What is the question of privilege that the hon. gentleman desires to speak to.


Mr. ARMAND LAVERGNE.: The question is that the article is false and I want to show it is.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: There must be something personal to the hon. member in his capacity as a member of the House to entitle him to speak to a question of privilege.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: My name is twice mentioned in the article and that makes it personal. I wish I had the article here so that I could read it to the House.
I think I have the right to bring to the attention of the House any attack made by a newspaper or any campaign made by any newspaper in any part of the country. This newspaper has been trying to raise racial prejudices


Robert Franklin Sutherland: The hon. gentleman is not taking the proper course to discuss a question of this kind. If there has been something said which the hon. member thinks reflects upon him and which he desires to explain or controvert or deny, he is quite within his rights in discussing that as a question of privilege, but he cannot in this way proceed to discuss the attitude of a newspaper on any question.


Mr. TALBOT.: The hon. member admits it.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: I thought I could explain a newspaper article in which I was referred to by name.


Robert Franklin Sutherland: There seems to be at times quite a misapprehension in the House as to what a question of privilege is.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: Therefore I do not know when I can bring the question before the House, if it is not a question reflecting on a member.


Wilfrid Laurier: Going into Supply.


Mr. BUREAU.: ' Le Soleil ' accuses you of not voting and you admit it.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: I said I did not vote.


Jacques Bureau: It said you shirked the vote and you admit it.


Armand Renaud La Vergne: I admitted that I did not vote.



QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE-MR. MONK.

Mr. F. D. MONK (Jacques Cartier).: Speaking on the question of orivilege, I understand that I am mentioned in ' Le Soleil ' in practically the same manner as my hon. friend from Beauharnois (Mr. Bergeron). I do not often read ' Le Soleil ' because I find it contains news generally three weeks old, but if I am so mentioned I desire' to express my protest. I was paired that evening with my hon. friend from Hants (Mr. Black) and I do not take much stock, and I do not think any one in my province does, in this racial question or the racial character of the attack on the Minister of Marine and Fisheries, because it is too ridiculous.

799$



QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE-MR.

Mr. BOYCE.: I also wish to speak on a question of privilege and I am sure tlie House will agree that if I can deny successfully the statement made by the hon. member for Thunder Bay (Mr. Commee) I am justified in rising at this time. I am not objecting to any reasonable criticism of that hon. gentleman, but when he accuses me openly on the records of misleading the House, I think that is too serious to pass without comment. In his concluding words the hon. gentleman said :
Now, I think thap my hon. friend (Mr. Boyce) did not do himself credit, I do not think he advanced his standing in this House or in the country, by the course which he pursued this afternoon in one particular. He repeatedly stated that the revising officer was a servant of the Ross government, an appointee of the Ross government.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly object to that statement and In order to justify myself in the eyes of the House, the country and of my hon. friend from Thunder Bay and Rainy River (Mr. Conmee), who I am sure will be able to set the matter right, I shall relad what I did say. At page 8209 of ' Hansard ' I said :
Now I will refer to the result of that appeal. ' The appeals were directed against 513 names, and instead of having the senior judge of the district to perform his usual functions with regard to those appeals, we had a board of* two. You see the sinister motive of that. Instead of having one judge whose duty had been for years to revise these lists, who knew the law, who knew what the qualifications were, who knew all the tricks of getting men on the list and making an improper list, who was the one man who was competent to sit on these lists, this government deposed him and got two. And why two? So that in case of a disagreement the names should stand on the list. That is the law. If Judge O'Connor differed with the police magistrate with regard to the right of John Jones to be on the list, and the judge said he had no right to he there, and the magistrate said he had a right to be there, he is there, and his name remains on the list.
I do not think I could have put the matter more fairly or more fully. I thought that I had occupied sufficient time to make myself plain, and I strongly protest against being accused, under those circumstances, of misleading the House in that particular.



RESIGNATION OF MR. GOURDEAU.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. R, L. BORDEN. Before the orders of the day are called, I beg to make an inquiry of thf government respecting two statements which I cannot quite reconcile. On the 1st of April the Prime Minister, referring to the Department of Marine and Fisheries, made this statement:
Frederick Debartzch Monk: 
Wilfrid Laurier: In the absence of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries I can only say that I understood it to be the case that Mr. Gourdeau had tendered his resignation and had asked for superannuation. I have not seen the resignation myself, but I understood from conversation with my colleague, that he had tendered it asking at the same time for superannuation, and that while the minister had agreed to his resignation the matter of superannuation was under consideration. I understand also that he has in the meantime asked for leave of absence. But the information which I obtained was simply from conversation with my hon. friend the Minister of Marine. I cannot see at the moment if there is a real contradiction between the two statements. I will have to look at them.


Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: In one place it was stated that the resignation had been twice offered.


Wilfrid Laurier: That is what I understood.


Robert Laird Borden: The minister yesterday said the resignation had not been tendered.


Wilfrid Laurier: If that be so. I have been misinformed. I will have to inquire about it.



SPRING FLOOPS.

Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: Has the Minister of Marine sent an engineer, as he promised the other night, to examine the broken dam at Valleyfield, and if so, if a report has been received from that engineer ?


George Perry Graham: An official of the Railways and Canals Department has visited the scene of the trouble to give instructions to

make all repairs that could possibly be made under tbe circumstances.



POLICING GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC LINE.

Mr. FOSTER.: Might I ask what policy is being pursued in the matter of appointing police magistrates or persons to carry out the law against the sale of liquors along the line of the eastern extension of the Grand Trunk Pacific ?


George Perry Graham: I am not sure whether that would come under my department or under the Justice Department.


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I understand the inquiry to be what provisions have been made for the enforcement of the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquor along the line of the Transcontinental Railway. In reply I have to say that at some period-I am not certain as to the time, but more than twelve months ago-a proclamation was issued covering the strip of territory on either side of tbe line from Quebec to Winnipeg, through the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. Mr. W. A. Quibell was appointed police magistrate for the portion of that territory extending from Winnipeg to the boundary between Ontario and Quebec. Mr. Lucien Pacaud was appointed police magistrate for the portion of that strip through the province of Quebec. Subsequently, upon the construction of the line between the Quebec bridge and Moncton being undertaken, a similar proclamation was issued constituting a belt of territory. I think ten miles in width, on either side of the line from the south shore -of the St. Lawrence, to the city of Moncton, a territory within the provisions of the statute. The same gentleman, Mr. Pacaud, was appointed magistrate for so much of that belt as is within the province of Quebec. Recently the appointment has been made of a third police magistrate for the portion of that belt in the province of New Brunswick. The gentleman appointed is Mr. Farris, of White's Cove, New Brunswick.


Mr. SPROULE.: Has that police magistrate the power to try any other cases except in connection with the sale or distribution of liquor?


Allen Bristol Aylesworth: I cannot reply categorically without referring to his commission. My impression is he has all the powers of two justices of the peace.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: Might I ask the hon. gentleman to bring down the commission?


George Eulas Foster: Will the Minister of Railways bring down one of these commissions? That will give us the power.


George Perry Graham: I will bring down a copy.


Mr. J. D. REID.: Do they sell liquor on the Intercolonial Railway?


George Perry Graham: The Intercolonial Railway does not sell liquor. One of the difficulties, so other railway companies tell us, in managing the cafe department of the Intercoloniaf Railway, is that all others make a large profit out of that part of their business while the Intercolonial Railway does not sell liquor and is consequently deprived of that profit.



REPRESENTATION OF VETERANS AT TERCENTENARY.

George Eulas Foster: Has the Minister of Militia made any progress in connection with the request made to him by the Prime Minister and supported by myself in respect to the war veterans of Canada having representations at the Tercentenary celebration at Quebec?


Sir FREDERICK BORDEN.: I am communicating, as was suggested by the First Minister, with the commission. In the meantime I would like to say that whatever is done in a military way at Quebec is proposed to be done out of the vote for the active militia for annual training. I do not see how it would be possible for the Militia Department to spend money in the particular way mentioned. I have read the letter which my hon. friend sent me from Mr. Collins, representing the veterans. I would like to say that although the veterans paraded most creditably at Toronto' before the Prince of Wales, then Duke of York, it did so happen that that was done without any expense whatever, because it was only the veterans in the city of Toronto and vicinity who piaraded. When I receive an answer from the commission I will communicate it to the House.



DOMINION ELECTIONS ACT-AMENDMENT.

[Stage Direction]
House resumed adjourned debate on the motion of Mr. Ayleswortli for the second reading of Bill (No. 115) to amend the Dominion Elections Act.
Mr. JAMES CONMEE (Thunder Bay and Rainy River).: At six o'clock yesterday I was making some remarks with respect to the Bill before the House, and I may refer for a moment to the remarks which have fallen from the hon. member for Algoma (Mr. Boyce). He thinks that in the remarks I passed upon him yesterday he was somewhat misrepresented. I desire to say that I had no intention of misrepresenting him, and I thought that I stated fairly his position, and it is within the judgment of the House as to whether the remarks I made were quite justified. The hon. gentleman throughout his speech referred to the revising officer as Mr. Quibell. He mentioned the name of the judge on two occasions- one when he read the order appointing the

enumerator, and again when I asked him if Judge O'Connor was not one of the enumerators. Generally speaking the hon. gentleman, whether he noticed himself doing so or not, did refer to the revision being entirely in the hands of Mr. Quibell, and when an hon. gentleman opposite said: 'An official of the Ross government,' my hon. friend assented. Under those circumstances I do not think that the remarks I made were out of place. But I do not wish to tie the hon. gentleman down to that. I am quite willing to accept his explanation that such was not his intention.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does the hon. gentleman think that anything I said warranted his accusation that I had misled this House?


James Conmee: I think so. I am in the judgment of the House as to that. I do not say that my hon. friend did it intentionally, but that was the impression his remarks gave me, and if any one is responsible, it is my hon. friend. I wish to say that Judge O'Connor, who was appointed revising officer in my hon. friend's riding, is the junior judge of that district, and Mr. Quibell was associated with him in that revision. As these courts are so conducted throughout Ontario, both officers sit together at times. My ho::, friend shakes his head. It is quite possible that in the hurry of the election to which he refers they divided the work. But .1 say that, generally speaking, they sit together.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Will lhy hon. friend (Mr. Conmee) allow me a moment ? I can set him right, I think. It is under the manhood registration Act that there is a board of appeal judges, but under the Ontario Voters' List Act there is only one appeal judge, and that is the district judge.


James Conmee: Unless two are appointed.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: They are appointed by statute, the district judge is persona designata under the statute.


James Conmee: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Boyce) is speaking of the Ontario Act.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Of course, that is the Act I was speaking of.


James Conmee: But this was not under the Ontario Act, this was under the Dominion Act. I am not going to argue whether my hon. friend (Mr. Boyce) is technically correct or not ; I am dealing with the impression given me by the language of the hon. gentleman, and I am in the judgment of hon. members as to whether I understood his remarks or not. I do not think mv hon. friend has any complaint to make with regard to Judge O'Connor. Judge O'Connor is a Conservative. I think he is a competent man to conduct such a revision. I think also that Mr. Quibell is a competent man to conduct such a revision. I do not think the hon. gentleman has made out Mr. CONMEE.
a case against either of these officers. The hon. gentleman found fault on the ground that Judge Johnston had not been made a revising officer while Mr. Quibell was appointed to that duty; and he said that Mr. Quibell was an appointee of the Ross government, the inference suggested being that he was a partisan more or less.	My answrer is that, if the hon.
gentleman will canvass his own town of Sault Ste. Marie, he will find that the majority will say that Mr. Quibell is less partisan than the hon. judge to whom he made reference. Mr. Quibell, who has been referred to, was not an official in the ordinary sense of the word. He was a police magistrate, and therefore quite a competent person to be appointed to the position of revising officer.
Now let me point out to my hon. friend the difference between the system followed by the Ross government, and the Liberal government, when in power, and that followed by the present government of Ontario. I made some complaints yesterday of the manner in which the voters' lists are now being prepared in the riding which I represent in this House. The course follow'd by the previous government was to appoint as enumerators in charge of making up the lists, certain officers,-the sheriffs were appointed, as far as I know, and they are responsible officers. But what do the hon. gentleman's friends in power in Ontario, do to-day ? They do not appoint the sheriffs for this work, but they choose the strongest partisans. My hon. friend talks about ' ward heelers,' meaning thereby, I take it, the most extreme partisans. Well, the most extreme partisan in the town In which I live has been appointed the enumerator. And this gentleman Is the agent of the Conservative candidate, so that the enumerator's office and the office of the Conservative candidate are the same. I have here a newspaper-to be fair I must say that it is a Liberal newspaper, but I give its statement to the House because I believe it to be true. I will not give the name, but it states, concerning this enumerator that he is well known to be very active in politics and is the agent of the Conservative candidate, that his office is the office of the Conservative candidate, that he will not deny that he is the employee or partner of the Conservative candidate and that he is actively advocating the interests of the candidate during the time he is acting as enumerator in the riding.	Of course, I
know, my hon. friend (Mr. Boyce) is not responsible for all this, I merely point it out to show the spirit that exists. It is about time, ,1 submit, that some law was passed to correct these evils, some system adopted better than the system we have. If the yesterday's argument of my hon. friend pointed to anything, it was to the fact that the existing Dominion law in regard to the preparation of these lists was defective. He

made out a very strong complaint against it. But, if this is so, I would ask him why he is not prepared to join in improving the law by enacting desirable amendments ?


Arthur Cyril Boyce: With the hon. gentleman's permission, I would like to ask a question, as I do not wish to misunderstand him. Do I understand him to say that the enumerator appointed by the Ontario government is an employee or partner of the government candidate there ?


James Conmee: Yes.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: And does the hon. gentleman say this from his personal knowledge, or does he merely give what this newspaper says ?


James Conmee: I believe it to be the case.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman has not read the name. I happen to know the name of the gentleman appointed there ; it is Joseph G. Ashford.


James Conmee: That is right. I am glad the hon. gentleman mentioned it, for I can tell my hon. friend (Mr. Boyce) ail about it. Joseph G. Ashford was appointed enumerator, but never acted, never was called upon to act. And why ? Because he is an honest man; he is a Conservative, but a straightforward, honest man. And I stated to some of my friends when Joseph G. Ashford was appointed, ' They will never let him act, for he is not the kind of man the machine can use.' And they never did let him act; they held him back ; they never gave him instructions. One of the enumerators, Mr. Eool, completed his list, and yet Mr. Ashford never got instructions to go on. Later, Mr. Hogarth-I will give the name now-who is employed as book-keeper and office man of the gentleman who has been nominated by the Conservative party, whether he is in partnership with him or not I do not know, has been appointed the enumerator and another man with him, whose name I have not before me, but, in any case, it is not Mr. Ashford. Had Mr. Ashford carried out the work of making these lists, I venture to say there would be no complaint and no occasion for appeal, as he would have done what was fair. But what did they do at Fort William ? If my hon. friend wants to force me into a discussion of this question, I have no objection to discuss it, but I am sure that, when we are through, he will have a worse opinion of his friends in Toronto than he has now. I do not like to mention the names of men who are not here, so I will not give this gentleman's name.-The enumerator appointed at Fort William started out in his work. He was a man that did not have a wide acquaintance, he can hardly be spoken of as a well-known man. Well, the law says that the lists should be posted up at every schoolhouse and every separate schoolhouse, but, in this unorganized territory, there are no schoolhouses-or very few and at great distances apart. In any case the facts are, that this gentleman had posted up his lists, that thirty days had elapsed after he had posted them up and that he had gone out on his second round holding his courts, before any Liberal knew anything at all about it, or had any idea that any lists were being prepared. There were no" advertisements in the papers, no notices that really conveyed the information. When the matter was inquired into it was found that this gentleman had posted up on the door of his residence a notice that he was posting up the lists. Well, nobody thought of going to this man's house to find out. Nobody knew' that he -was the enumerator. Nobody knew that he was doing anything, it was entirely in the dark. That list has been completed a considerable time ago, I have a copy of it. Yet Mr. Ashford never got instructions to go, and why, I leave it to my hon. friend to say. I gave an opinion last night that I did not believe there was an honest intention on the part of the powers that be at Toronto to hold elections in those ridings on the same day, and leave it to my hon. friend to judge what v'as meant by holding back Mr. Ashford and then supplanting him by another enumerator who was clerk and agent of the candidate. What I said yesterday I repeat, that in my opinion they cannot hold the elections on the 8th of June, if they have a proper list. The Liberals are up against this difficulty, that they have either got to accept the lists such as they are with out an appeal, or they have got to run the risk of having the elections thrown over and having by-elections, which always places the party in apposition at a disadvantage. I submit that is not fair, and I submit that that is a justification for this Bill we are considering. This Bill is brought forward in order that there may be proper machinery, that there may not be that haste my hon: friend complained of so bitterly yesterday. He says the Bill provides that the list is to be prepared just as the previous Act did. That is not quite correct. It does say that the preparation of the list may be made by order in council after the writs are issued, but it goes on to say that the order in council may be passed at anj time. Now I submit that if the government are charged with the responsibility of preparing the lists, it is reasonable to assume that they will give proper time. The last time the proceeding was new. I was informed, I do not know how coreetly, that they did not discover that it was necessary to make these lists, that it was not known that certain of the provincial lists would be more than a year old, early enough to afford more time and that it was advisable to have recently prepared lists in order that there might be a fair representation of the electors, and that those who were en-

titled to vote might have an opportunity of voting. Therefore there was perhaps some haste the last time. In the riding I represent, I stated yesterday, that I did not think any revision took place. I find on inquiry that I was mistaken ; there was a revision in the Thunder Bay district, but there was no revision, or no appeal at all events, in the Rainy River district. There appears to have been an appeal in the Thunder Bay district. Just why that was so I cannot now remember, but I have no doubt it was because our Conservative friends, knowing they had a judge who was a little extreme in his political leanings

I think the hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Barker) knows the gentleman to whom 1 refer-thought that it would be a good thing to have an appeal and a revision, and therefore they did so. I am not finding fault with that, I am only calling the attention to it of the hon. member for Algoma.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: The hon. gentleman says that under this Act that evil will be remedied. I say that under subsection 1, when the writ is issued the proclamation can go out for making the voters' lists. I would ask him to state how that would permit the Ontario law being complied with which requires sixty days to make up the list and allow appeals ?


James Conmee: 
Arthur Cyril Boyce: That is in the examination which I quoted, I did not conduct that examination.


James Conmee: Then I will have to direct my remarks to the man who did. Somebody conducted this examination on behalf of my hon. friend. But my hon. friend fathered it; he approved of it for he read it to us yesterday as a condemnation of the Bill. I do not see how he can escape. If he repudiates it now' I will give him credit for having good common sense for once.
Q. Do you know any of the people in that township?-A. No.
Again :
You have never been there.
Again :
Are you personally acquainted with any of the voters?
Again :
What are they doing?
Again :
Do you know what they went up there to do ?
Again :
And on the whole list there are only some three or four men whose names you recognize?
Again :
And all the men in that list are working in McFadden & Malloy's camp?
Again:
And there is not a single farmer or settler or anything other than a lumberman whose name is on that list?

Again:	-
And in that list there is not a single farmer nr settler put down?
Again :
And there are none such there that you know of?
Again :
Nothing but a wood road from Garden river ?
Continuing the same line of questions :
Q. Whose camps are those in the township of Curtis?-A. Miller & McCool.
Then my hon. friend directs his remarks particularly to my hon. friend from Nipis-sing (Mr. McCool). What are we to infer from these questions ?-that the gentlemen who were labouring in these camps were not entitled to the franchise, are not many of them farmers' sons very largely and the residents of towns and villages, some of the very best citizens of this country, men who compose largely our volunteers and who, if we were involved to-morrow, would perhaps be the first upon the firing line. Are they to be deprived of their votes, or are they to be belittled in the manner in which they are in these questions ? Does the hon. member want this House or the country to understand that because that kind of a man was trying to get his name on the list and was trying to poll his vote this government is to be condemned and this measure is to be defeated because they gave him the opportunity ? Well, X will leave that for my hon. friend to reflect upon.
Now, I wish to discuss for a moment another clause of the Bill. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) took strong exception to clause 17 on account of the words in the section that a ballot should not be rejected because of any writing, number or mark placed thereon by any deputy returning officer. The hon. member went on to make a strong statement and he said that:
-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 J ohn Smith's ballot,' and that will be an absolutely good ballot.
I differ from my hon. friend in that regard. I can hardly believe that he was in earnest. Does he really believe that the returning officer can write such a declaration upon the ballot, that it would be permitted, that he could escape punishment and that the ballot would be held to be a good ballot ?	.


Robert Laird Borden: What can he write upon it ?


James Conmee: He cannot write anything upon it. I do not think my hon. friend believes he can write anything upon it.
Mi\ BOYCE. What does the Act say ?


James Conmee: The Act does not say so.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: Does it not say any writing 1


James Conmee: It is not to be construed in that sense. It means any inadvertent word or mark.


Arthur Cyril Boyce: If my hon. friend would read the Act


James Conmee: I have read the Act.


Mr.  R. L.@: BORDEN1. I did not see that the word ' inadvertent ' was used in the section.


James Conmee: I did not say that it is. but I say that any person reading it and exercising ordinary judgment, such as the hon. gentleman usually does, would read it in that way.


Robert Laird Borden: If it means that would it not be better to say that ?


James Conmee: Well, if it meant that or if that was the intention, but I cannot argue it on that ground because I cannot assume that that was the intention. We are face to face with a difficulty as the hon. gentleman has stated. What is the difficulty ? The difficulty is to get a secret ballot. I claim that this is a secret ballot. I want to point out to my hon. friend that there is a very great evil existing. I do not think he is so innocent that he does not know of hundreds and thousands of ballots have been destroyed in this country because a mark was put on them. Now, is that right ? Is it right that the returning officer should have it in his power to make a mark upon his ballot and disfranchise my hon. friend. Suppose he went into a polling booth and a returning officer chose to put a mark on his ballot with the result that his ballot would be thrown out ? There is an abundance of evidence that this has been done, that it has been done to a very large extent and done by friends of the hon. gentlemen opposite. I think I can give him a little piece of evidence about that. If I am not mistaken there is a name, or two, here that some of my hon. friends will recognize as soon as it is mentioned. The manner of conducting elections heretofore under the Franchise Act, even at the time when the lists were prepared by the revising barristers when the party of the hon. gentlemen opposite were in power, was most unsatisfactory. A great many frauds were committed, thousands of ballots were destroyed and thousands of men were disfranchised because of the dishonesty or carelessness of the returning officers. The object of this section is to do away with that evil. If hon. gentlemen say that the remedy is worse than the evil that is a matter for discussion but it is not fair criticism to argue that any officer could deli-

berately make a mark by which any man's ballot could be Identified. If that is not a criminal act at the present time, it would be our duty, in passing this Act, to make it so and put a stop.to that kind of work in elections. I think that hon. gentlemen opposite will remember Mr. Freeborn who has a history in the province of Manitoba. He went to that province and gave certain instructions, and I shall not detain the House to narrate his exploits in the Manitoba elections, but they were aired in the court and this gentleman was punished for wrong-doing in the election in that province in regard to how ballots might be destroyed by a little lead pencil fastened under the finger nails with beeswax, how a mark upon the ballot made when the scrutineer's eyes were not on him would spoil a ballot, and how marked ballots for the Conservatives could be substituted for Liberal ballots when the boxes were taken home. Now, I might make a comparison between the number of spoiled ballots in the elections of 1896 and the number of spoiled ballots in the election of 1900, and it will be remembered that the election of 1896 was conducted under the Conservative government and the elections of 1900 under the Liberal government. Here are a few of the results as to spoiled ballots.
Spoiled ballots.
Durham East	
Elgin East	
Essex North	
Grey North	
Hastings East	
Hastings West	
Huron South	
Kent	
Kingston	
Lambton West	
Lincoln and Niagara	
London	
Middlesex South	
Muskoka and Parry Sound..
Perth South	
Prince Edward	
Russell	
Simcoe East	
Victoria South	
Waterloo South	
Wellington South	
Wentworth South	
1896.	1900.
. 591	6
. 99	32
. 96	38
. 125	37
. 70	25
. 80	27
. 70	8
. 189	47
. 215	33
. 70	19
. 135	47
. 296	47
. 100	23
. 175	58
. 129	14
. 115	25
?0	22
. 9.3	23
. 78	29
. 164	28
. 101	31
. 304	50


Mr. BLAIN.: May I ask the hon. gentleman who spoiled all these ballots?


James Conmee: That is just what I am leading up to. I will tell my hon. friend who spoiled them. I will not say the deputy returning officer spoiled them all, but I ask my hon. friend if he believes that this number of ballots was spoiled by the electors.


Richard Blain: I would suppose so.


James Conmee: Well, the hon. gentleman is more innocent than I thought he was. Perhaps he has not the experience in elec-Mr. CONMEE.
tions that I thought he had. I submit that the disparity in spoiled ballots between 1896 and 1900 is too great to lead to the assumption that these ballots were accidentally spoiled. I think any one will admit that. Now, there is a case in Wentworth I think, where for the want of the initials of the returning officer a member lost his seat in this House, a new election had to take place, the courts had to be appealed to, and all kinds of difficulty occurred in connection with the ballot papers. I have not studied very closely the Bill before the House, but I submit that the franchise law of this country should enable every man who wants to cast an honest vote to do so without it being in the power of any officer whether honest or dishonest to spoil his ballot and disfranchise him. I do not need to argue that evils exist in our elections. A man can draw upon his imagination, and he can assume that all kinds of trickery and- to borrow a word from my hon. friend from North Toronto-all kinds of deviltry may enter into these elections.


Mr. PATERSON.: Did you say that ?


George Eulas Foster: It is an expressive word.


James Conmee: If I wished to take up the time of the House I could go on to show county after county where friends of the Conservatives have perpetrated irregularities and worse; and where the courts have pronounced in the most decisive manner against the acts done by them. Take the case of South Ontario where Mr. Smith admitted he had expended $1,200 for bribery and when his solicitor remarked to Mr. Justice Osier that Mr. Smith's evidence was candid, the reply of the judge was that it was brazen; and the judge condemned in the strongest manner Mr. Smith who was an ex-Conservative member of this House. I do not pretend to say that there have not been Liberals here and there who have misconducted themselves in elections, for we know that men will go to greater extremes in these times than under ordinary circumstances, but I do say that the records of our courts show that more Conservatives than Liberals have been unseated for corruption. So that our friends have not such great honour to take to themselves in that regard. I believe that a case for the passage of this Bill has been made out. The hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Bole); has shown us that 400 men were disfran ' chised by the manipulation of the officials.'; I do not know just who is responsible fob that but it seems to me that the responsibility rests largely on the administration of the province of Manitoba. We have seen from the records the very great evils! that have grown out of the present system. There is the fact of the preparation of the. lists at the present moment, in regard to! the provincial elections, in the unorganized territories in Ontario. My hon. friend will

hear more about that later on. There is the case as against the operation of the present law which was made out by the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Boyce). He makes the strongest complaint against it, that the time was not sufficient, that there was not that responsibility which there should have been, and in other ways that great injustice might have been done on that occasion. I think the hon. member was fairly successful in showing that there was a delay, but he did not state to the House, whether he believes it or not, that the revising officers did not act fairly, that names were improperly inserted or that men were left on who should have been struck off.
I wish to say something about another election to which our hon. friends are fond of referring, that in West Elgin. It seems there was something wrong there. I am not condoning anything that was wrong in West Elgin or elsewhere, but let me say that there is a black page in our history and in the records of the courts in connection with the King's county election in Nova Scotia. That was the greatest piece of political wrong-doing to be found on our records. It will always be a black page in the history of the Conservative party because it was not the work of a few misguided individuals at the time of an election in a particular constituency ; it was the leaders of the Conservative party in this House who, by deliberate action, unseated the man who had a majority of 160 and for two sessions or more kept in the seat the candidate who had been defeated at the polls by that large majority. If the records of this country show anything, to use the words used yesterday, of such enormity as that, I have yet to learn of it.


Robert Laird Borden: I never heard of that in King's county, N.S.


James Conmee: I may have made a mistake, it should have been King's county, N.B. Perhaps the hon. member would like to make a little lawyer's quibble about the name of tire place.


Robert Laird Borden: There is everything in a name.


James Conmee: I do not blame him a bit for wanting to escape from it. I do not know whether he was responsible for it or not but if he was he is all the more to blame. I have here the record of that case.


George Eulas Foster: I think the hon. member must lay on the table of the House the document from which he is about to quote.


James Conmee: I have no objection to giving my hon. friend the document if lie wishes to see it. It may do him good, he may have forgotten. Perhaps he would like to have this other document laid on the table as I am now referring to an election
in Algorna between the Hon. William Macdonald and S. J. Dawson in 1892.


Mr. HAGGART.: Ob, oh.


James Conmee: I notice the hon. member for Lanark (Mr. Haggart) is amused. He thinks that is going back a long way. Perhaps it is, but we have- to go back, our honoured friends have had no chance for this kind of rascality of late. They are just as willing, I believe, as they were then. I do not think, my hon. friend has repented, if he has I would be glad to know it. I do not see any hon. gentlemen opposite sitting in sackcloth and ashes because of their sm.s of the past.
I shall repeat a statement I made in the legislature a good many years ago in re-to that election, that the conduct of* that election was one of the greatest outrages that could be perpetrated upon the rights of the citizens of any electoral district. What was the condition ? The contractors had control of the trains between Winnipeg and Port Arthur. On the west end of the line there was a contracting firm, Manning, Macdonald & Company. On the east end, there was a company, Purcell, Ryan, Genty & Marks. The election came on and these contractors would not permit any scrutineers to go on the trains. There was no such thing as a list up there, that would have been too much trouble. The i eturning officers were taken up, the navvies were gathered tip,-and they polled them first at one polling booth and then at another, oyer and over again. One persistent man did turn up as a scrutineer at one of the polling booths and as he was asserting his rights and there was some difficulty in getting rid of him, they adopted another plan * they picked up the poll books and the returning officer, they put the returning officer on the train, left tne scrutineer at the booth alone and went to another camp and polled the votes,up there. But that is not all, they resorted to the old practice of the Conservative party. At Rat Portage, now Kenora, they brought in about 300 men who formed a circle around the poll and unless the voter was going to vote Conservative he did not get through the circle. The only wav the Liberals got their vote in was by forming in bodies and forcing their way through That was under the auspices of Manning, Macdonald & Company. I think the hon member for Lanark (Mr. Haggart) could teli the House and the country who comprised that company, it was stated that he was a member of it. I do not, of course, pretend for a moment that he had anything to do with this affair at Rat Portage, in fact I know he had not and that he was not there: but the fact remains that these were the tactics used on that occasion. That is not, I admit, an argument much in favour of the passage of this Bill.

Some lion. MEMBERS. Oil, oh. _


James Conmee: Or against it. What I want to point out is that if my hon. friends wish to attack administrative action and wrong-doing of this kind in the past, they must remember that they are not invulnerable, they are living in a glass house. Just as much if not more scandal can be directed to my hon. friends than can be directed to this side of the House. I submit that sufficient grounds have been shown to warrant the passage of this Bill. There is a sufficiently strong manipulation of wrong conditions of affairs to warrant the passage of this Bill. In the western provinces there are no lists at all prepared, and nobody has so far contended that there should not be lists there. In Manitoba, the manipulation [DOT]of the lists under the present local government justifies our interferences. In Ontario I submit the same condition exists. Then there is the desirability of recently prepared lists. Under these circumstances, therefore, the enactment is, in my humble judgment, perfectly justifiable. I do not say that the law as submitted is perfect; I have only glanced over it slightly, but I say that an enactment of that kind is timely and necessary, and when the measure comes before the committee, no doubt the minister who introduced it will be quite prepared to accept any reasonable amendment. I can only say that . I hope hon. gentlemen will realize that the Bill is not intended to place power in the hands of any set of officials and enable them to do wrong. But of course if the returning officer is dishonest, if the scrutineers will violate their oaths of office, if the men appointed to conduct the poll will perjure themselves, no ballot system you can devise will be perfect. I do not know what machinery you can devise which will make men honest, and hon. gentlemen opposite assume that the officials appointed are bound to act dishonestly. I submit, however, that the record of the Reform party in Ontario has been such that as a whole the elections conducted under their administration have been honestly conducted-that they have been purer under Liberal than under Conservative administrations. And I have sufficient confidence in the present government to believe that if this Bill be passed and the machinery provided by it put in motion, we shall have much better opportunity for free voting than we would otherwise. I cannot conceive that any administration would fail to use every precaution to see that the Act is fairly administered and that above all things there is a fair and equitable arrangement for getting voters upon the lists and having the lists revised by independent officers, against whose conduct there can be no ground for fault-finding. That is the condition of things which -we ought to have, and which I think we will have when this enactment comes in force.


James Conmee: 


Mr. WILLIAM J. ROCHE (Marquette).: I have followed with great interest the various speeches delivered on this Bill-presumably on this Bill-by the members on the government side and have listened in vain to find them point out any provision in the Bill before us which is going to remedy the grievances which they claim now exist in connection with [DOT] the preparation of the lists, more especially in British Columbia and Manitoba. Thus far I have failed to find that any hon. gentleman on the government side has pointed to one expression in any section of the Bill now before us which will in any way remedy those grievances, and we must only conclude that they are largely the figments of their own imagination. I have failed either to find out myself within the four corners of that Bill any remedy for those so-called grievances. The hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Conmee) might himself have discussed that Bill with possibly some advantage to the House had he felt so inclined. Of course, he accused my hon. friend who preceded him (Mr. Boyce), and who had pointed out fraudulent practices in connection with the preparation of the lists in unorganized districts of Ontario, especially his own constituency, of having made statements which he could not back up with substantial proof. Surely, he asked, if all this crookedness had taken place I would have been aware of the same. Well, I am confident that the hon. gentleman is pretty well acquainted with anything of that character which has taken place, but there may possible have been on some occasions some things that may have escaped his observant eye.


James Conmee: The hon. gentleman is quite mistaken. The remark I made was that I was not aware of any wrong-doing with regard to the revision of the lists in my own riding.


William James Roche: Then the hon. gentleman was aware of the other wrong-doing referred to ?


James Conmee: Not at all, I did not make any remark with regard to that. The hon. gentleman has quoted me wrongly.


William James Roche: That was the impression he left on this side at any rate. Nor can I see any provision in this Bill to prevent any member of a local legislature resigning his seat, or at any rate handing in his resignation, for the purpose of contesting a Dominion election, and then after having been rejected by the people in that election returning to the local legislature* acting in collusion with the powers that be, and having his resignation not acted upon and being thus dispensed from submitting his candidature to the people again. That is a serious omission which I am sure the hon. gentleman regrets very much. Nor do I see any provision which will prevent a member slipping out

[DOT]of the House when question time comes on and embarrassing questions may be asked with reference to a certain guarantee in connection with the Soo district, out of which contractors are supposed to be paid.


James Conmee: I rise to a point of order. I think the bon. gentleman has referred to myself. If he has, his statement is untrue, and I want him to withdraw it.


William James Roche: I have not said anything about the hon. gentleman. I said that there was nothing in this Bill to prevent any member slipping in and out of the House to avoid embarrassing questions.


James Conmee: It is clear that the hon. gentleman was referring to myself, and I ask him to withdraw the statement.


William James Roche: If the hon. gentleman desires to take it to himself, I cannot prevent him. He has seen fit to bring in the name of Mr. Freeborne who has visited Manitoba. I am not here to defend the character of that gentleman, but whatever his character may have been prior to his alliance with the Liberal party, it certainly did not improve afterwards. During the elections in 1896 in Manitoba, acting in concert with one of the deputy returning officers, a Mr. Saunders, he tried to levy blackmail on the Conservative party and failed. And when he was arrested, who was his bondsman? It was Mr. J. G. Rutherford, the Liberal candidate, who went bail for this person of such very low character as depicted by the hon. gentleman.
It is true, he was wise enough to withdraw his bond prior to the bringing of Mr. Freeborn to trial. This same gentleman who had been so closely connected with the Liberal party was accused in the city of Winnipeg of having surreptitiously taken certain articles to himself out of a wholesale drug firm, and was allowed to leave the country -in fact advised to leave the country- with the intimation that if he did so no proceedings would be taken against him by the government led by the present member for Lisgar. I think it comes with a very bad grace from a gentleman who has been supporting the Ross administration in the legislature of Ontario to bring up in this parliament anything about ballot-switching, pencil-lead-under-the-finger-nail and that kind of thing. It was these notorious practices in Ontario that turned the Ross government out of power. They actually had training schools of experts in ballot-switching, ballot-box stuffing, ballot manipulation of every kind ; they had men whose duty It was, on the eve of a political contest, to move about from constituency to constituency to train the deputy returning officers in the very practices enumerated by the hon. gentleman. And it was because of these practices that the rightous indignation of 254
the people of Ontario at last rose to flood light, straightforward Liberals joining with Conservatives, and swept that government from power. I am sorry to see the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) is not in his place. But it is a practice of that hon. gentleman, after relieving himself of a speech in the House, to immediately leave his seat and seldom appear for the next week for fear of being set face to face with his own assertions. He did that on the occasion when the voters list question was up in this House a few years ago. And he is doing the same thing now. I should be glad if he were in his place, because there are certain questions I would like to put to him. There are certain transactions of his own when he was leader of the government of Manitoba which I shall discuss whether he is present or absent. His speech on Tuesday was largely a series of reckless assertions, absolutely unfounded in fact. His daring was only surpassed by that of the hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Bole) in accusing the hon. member for Prince Edward (Mr, Alcorn) of having filled pages of ' Hansard ' with quotations and then himself going on with, not the same kind of quotations, but quotations bearing falsehood on their face, quotations that he should have been ashamed to read in this House-quotations that I mean to refer to before I take my seat.
Now, I would like to ask the government what particular reasons have thus far been assigned by either the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) or any of his colleagues why this Bill should become law ? Why disturb the existing condition of affairs, especially in the province of Manitoba? What particular motive have they? What animates them in this driving at the province of Manitoba ? It seems the same old practice of this government is to be repeated. Ever since this government came into poiver, the little province of Manitoba has been subjected to indignities ; and, to cap the climax, they are bringing down this nefarious measure, which, I say, and have no hesitation in saying, meets with the condemnation of honest Liberals of that province, as well as of Conservatives. You will search in vain in the speech of the hon. Minister of Justice-who, more properly should be designated the Minister of Injustice-for anything to show the real object of this Bill. There was not a word about that. The hon. gentleman said it was introduced to prevent the recurrence of the * Thin Red Line ' transactions which took place in Manitoba in the elections of 1904. He said that there was overlapping of certain constituencies and that this Bill was designed to remedy the difficulty. But there is not a line in this first section which refers to the overlapping of constituencies ; that is dealt with in an entirely different section. The Minister of Justice did not, by one sentence or one word, refer to the


Mr. S. J. JACKSON.: Does the hon. gentleman say that on last year's list the post office address of every man is given?


William James Roche: I have the list here, one after another.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: It is only those who are added.


William James Roche: Well, the revision took place last year.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: Only those that were added, though.


William James Roche: You do not want those given who were taken off, do you ? Look at the additions and the subtractions. We have now almost a complete list, a complete new list. The hon. member for Lisgar dwelt on that subject yesterday ; he said our list was so many years old. But looking at all the additions subtractions that have been made last year, the year before and this year again, we will have almost a complete new list.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: Not one-tenth of them.


William James Roche: I do not think the hon. gentleman has examined the list very closely. Now the Minister of Justice has stated as a reason why this Bill should pass, that we have in Manitoba ten constituencies for the Dominion and forty constituencies for the provincial legislature, and that there must be of necessity overlapping. Did not this occur when the Franchise Act of 1898 was adopted, only more so ? Then we only had seven seats for the Dominion, but we had forty provincial constituencies all the same. Do not they have the same thing in British Columbia ? Do not they have the same thing in the province of Ontario ? You will find overlapping in the old province of Ontario, you will find it in the constituency of West Hastings, you will find it in the city of Toronto, you will find it in Hamilton. If you are going to use that as an argument for new lists, then you would have to apply it to almost every province in the Dominion. Why then do you single out Manitoba ?
The Minister of Justice stated that the trouble arose from the registration districts in the province of Manitoba, that these differ from the polling subdivisions, and that therefore there would of necessity have to

be a dividing of the lists, and of necessity some errors would creep in. Even that which he claims to have existed formerly, and which he failed to say does not exist to-day, has been done away with. The registration districts, in almost every instance, admitted by the Minister of Justice, were coterminus with the polling subdivisions. To-day we have no registration districts as provided for originally, but the registration takes place according to the provincial polling subdivisions. So there can be no grievance whatever on that score, no excuse whatever for an Act of this character.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I propose for a few minutes to refer to the provisions of the Act as it was when the present government came into power in Manitoba, and compare it with the provisions of the Act as they exist to-day. How were the lists prepared in days gone by when the hon. member for Lisgar was premier of the province ? In the first place, there were registration clerks, partisan appointees of the government, just as this government intends to provide partisan officials to revise the lists if this Bill becomes law. Who were those registration clerks ?' Were they the very best men that would be found in the various local subdivisions ? Not at all. They were men selected because of their party services. They were selected because they were the political henchmen of the government and some of them had to fly the country for the country's good. That is the class of men they selected to act as registration clerks in the various subdivisions of that province in days gone by. They also took the power of appointing revising barristers who were members of the Liberal party sent out to the various constituencies and they did not even have to take an oath that they would discharge their duties faithfully and well, but they went out through the country and acted in the most arbitrary manner in many instances-1 will not say in all because there were amongst them some straightforward men and they afforded some few exceptions to the general rule. Brit the government of the day had the lists prepared entirely by these registration clerks and revised by their own revising barristers. Now, the registration clerk of that day differed from the registration clerk of to-day in this way:	The registration clerk then
prepared or made up the lists. The registration clerk to-day does not do anything of the kind.' I am going to prove that before I take my seat. The registration clerk, under the law as it formerly stood, had to take the last provincial list, the last Dominion list and the last municipal list and from these compile a new list. The power was given to him to compile a list but it was under a later provision in the law that he did his funny work and which enabled him to avail himself of ' such other informa-Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
tion as he can secure.' He was to take these various lists and ' such other information as he could secure ' to make up the new lists. How did that work out ? He took the provincial list, he took the Dominion list and he took the municipal list, lie put down the names of those whom he pleased and men who had been old resident-ers, men who had voted in municipal, provincial and Dominion elections for years were left off the lists by the various registration clerks in different constituencies. The registration clerk could not be punished for doing that. He did that and in my own constituency my experience was this :	I
handed in a statutory declaration stating that the names of certain qualified electors should be included in the list and notwithstanding the fact that these sworn declarations were put in in some instances the names were left off. The law provided that parties desiring to add new names to the lists could do so by submitting statutory declarations. How in practice, did it work out ? A liberal could go and hand in a list of names as long as your arm without accompanying it by a single statutory declaration. I know that of my own personal knowledge. When these hon. gentlemen claim that we have not sufficient courts of revision, there being only one court of revision in each constituency, I may tell them that there was only one court of revision in my constituency in 1899 and that there were not as many registration booths as we have to-day under the Roblin Act. The registration clerks took the lists handed in by the Liberals and the Liberal candidates and they put the names on the voters' lists without asking for any sworn declaration whatever, but the name of no Conservative could be got on those lists without having it accompanied by a sworn declaration, and, in some instances, even then we could not have names put on. A revising barrister, a lawyer from the city of Winnipeg held the court of revision in my constituency and, having tried to have certain names put on and these names having been left off, I asked an explanation from the, registration clerk. I said : Was it not your duty to take the last lists, to compile your lists from these and to take any statutory declarations that were handed in ? Yes, he said, but the Act also told me that I was to secure any other information I could. I said : Where did you get this information ? I pointed to the Liberal candidate and I added : There is the author of the information you got and you took this gentleman's word that the persons whose names we had tendered were not qualified electors before you would take a statutory declaration. The revising barrister had to condemn this proceeding in my presence and in the presence of the Liberal candidate and other members of the Liberal

party. He could secure any other information! the Liberal candidate, or some of his friends, would tell the registration clerk that certain of these names should be left off and he left them off ignoring the statutory declaration. That is what we were up against in days gone by and still the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) rises in his place in this House and, in stentorian tones, condemns the administration of the present Act and condemns the Act almost iu its entirety. The revising barristers of those dnysi were, with a few. exceptions, partisan officials, largely Liberal lawyers, sent out from the city of Winnipeg, or from some other portion of the province.


An hon. MEMBER.: Was there no appeal ?


William James Roche: No, there was no appeal whatever, the revising barrister had the last say and once these names were on the list it was almost impossible to get them off, loaded up as the lists were with fictitious names and loaded up with names of men who were in many instances non-existent. Why, when you went up against the revising barrister what did he say ? Have you served notice on these men that you are appealing against ? -and if we could not prove that we had served notice on a man who did not live in the constituency at all, or on a man who was non-existent, if we could not prove that these people had received personal notification that an appeal had been taken against them, the revising barrister would not strike them off the list. So you see what a difficult proposition it was to get names struck off when once they were on the list. The elections of 1892, of 1896 and of 1899 held in the province of Manitoba were all on lists of that kind. No wonder that the Conservative party were in the minority on each occasion ! The Liberals of Manitoba carried those elections upon those three occasions with stuffed voters' lists and yet the hon. gentleman who was in power when this system was in operation comes here and condemns the present method which is as fair to the Liberals as to the Conservatives, a fact which will be testified to by the honest Liberals in the province of Manitoba. Why, Sir, in the province of Manitoba in the year 1899 what do you suppose it cost the Conservatives to purge the lists ? We set out with the idea that we would have clean lists in that province at all costs and thousands and thousands of dollars were spent by the Conservative party in order to purge the lists that were made by these registration clerks. One gentleman in public life in Manitoba has estimated that it cost the Conservative party, >
in 1899, $30,000, which appears a fabulous sum but I can readily understand why such an amount of money had to be spent in srder to secure
evidence to get the names of qualified electors on the lists and to secure the removal of names improperly on the lists. During that time how many names do you suppose were struck off by the Conservative party at the courts of revision notwithstanding the difficulties that we encountered ? No less than 5,446 names were struck off at the various courts of revision after the lists were made up by their registration clerks and they at the same time knocked off 1,925 names. What a wonderful difference that was ! No-wonder that we were in opposition for so many years when voters' lists prepared in the manner I have described were used at the elections and when we did not conduct ourselves with so much energy at the courts of revision as we did upon that occasion. I will give an instance of how it resulted in one constituency. In the city of Winnipeg, the Liberal registration clerk was supposed to take the last lists and take the names of all those who were qualified electors in compiling the new list. It happened that in the employ of the Ogilvie Milling Company there were thirty-three men and that in compiling the new list the names of thirty of these employees were left off and the names of three employees were placed upon the list. The three were Grits and the thirty were Conservatives. The thirty Conservatives were left off out of thirty-three employees and when the registration clerk was taken to task and asked before the revising barrister for an explanation of how he got these three names and how he excluded the thirty he had to admit that he took an old scrutineer's book which had been marked in favour of the Liberal candidate at the previous election. That is the character of their Act. It permitted them to take not only the municipal, Dominion and provincial lists but also to take scrutineers' books as they had been marked in favour of a Liberal candidate and to use them in the preparation of the lists. I am going to read to you what took place in the constituency represented by the present member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows):
In that constituency there were I presume more flagrant practices than in almost any other constituency. The Conservatives brought the matter to court but the court decided it had no jurisdiction. On two occasions at least in that constituency they loaded up the voters' lists, and on one occasion they brought in railway navvies who were not competent to vote according to law, and it was impossible to get these names off. The Conservative organizer was sent out to examine into the condition of things that existed in that constituency and what did he find ? He was interviewed when he returned to the city of Winnipeg and I will read an extract from the * Winnipeg Telegram,' of May 24, 1899 to show the practices in that constituency.

W. H. Hastings, the organizer of the Liberal-Conservative party, returned to the city last evening from Dauphin, where he had been called by the local leaders of the party to confer regarding the remarkable course taken by the registration clerk of that district in preparing the local voters' list. Mr. Hastings was seen by a representative of the ' Telegram ' and asked for a statement regarding the causes that have led the Conservatives of that district to object to the action of the clerk, and in reply stated that he had gone to Dauphin at the express request of' the party there to ascertain the exact state of affairs, and, he continued, r while I expected to hear that the clerk had acted in partisan manner in the preparation of the lists, I did not expect to hear of such outrageous conduct upon the part of a public official, acting in direct contravention of the statutes under which he was appointed; the partisan conduct of this official was, judging from the reliable information I received, of such a nature that the Conservative party of that district will not rest until they have obtained or at least gone to the extreme limit iin endeavouring to obtain, from the courts of the province, a decision which will place them in a position to get something like a fair and honest list for that district.
' Abundant evidence can be produced,' Mr. Bastings said, ' to show that the clerk when he first opened -his office, made a start at making up a list, but after working on it, at short -intervals, for a couple of days, he suddenly ceased working, and with the -single exception of one day, when he added a few more names, the list remained in that unfinished, almost unstarted condition, at midnight on May 16, when he announced the list closed. Evidence can -also be produced to prove that the clerk -put in his time, during office hours, reading novels and absolutely refused to add names to his list, even when the sworn applications were handed him and requests made to place the names upon the -list. It can also be shown that when parties called at his office and requested to have their names added to the list, he would ask the party if his name was on either the last local or the last municipal list, and if he received an affirmative answer he would say to the party " all right, your name will be on the list," but he did not upon such occasions, -search such local or municipal lists to ascertain whether such name was on or not; he did not enter the name of such applicant upon the list, did not take applications from them, and made no notice or memorandum regarding such person's request.
' It can be proven that upon one occasion a qualified elector demanded that the clerk add his name to the list and upon the clerk refusing to do so, the elector intimated that he would stay until his name was added, to which the clerk replied " If it was four o'clock I would throw you out of this office." Another party, living in the town of Dauphin, made personal -application -to have his name added, and told the clerk he did not want any mistake made in regard to the matter, as he had been left off the list upon two previous occasions. In reply he was politely informed by the clerk that he was sure his name would he on all right, as Sandy McPherson was making up the town list and Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
would, no doubt, put his name on; but the clerk made no entry, took no application, or gave the party any further satisfaction than " the town list was being made by Sandy McPherson." McPherson, by the way, was the registration clerk four years ago, and made himself famous at that time by spending'the hours from 4 p.m. until -midnight of the last day for receiving applications secreted in a hay-mow, in order, it is said, to avoid meeting Conservatives who might h-avt - me sworn applications to hand him.
Mr. Hastings stated several otner questionable movements, one of which was that the clerk made no attempt during office hours to make up a list, except as previously mentioned, and he publicly stated that he would not make up a list until after May 16, and in the meantime all he would do was to -receive applications from those who wished to file such with him. He kept all applications filed with him in a large tin box, and every night this tin -box, or the contents thereof, were taken over to the office of the local member, Mr. Burrow-s, where the Grit committee met in nightly conference. Further -that the Liberals put in no formal applications with the clerk during office hours from -the time the office opened until three minutes to midnight on the last day, when a large bundle, alleged to have been a bundle of applications, were handed to the clerk. The Conservatives present demanded the right to inspect this bundle to ascertain if it contained applications or not, but the clerk refused this request and placed -the whole bundle with the applications that had been previously filed by the Conservatives, and a very few that had at intervals been made out bv the clerk. At 12 o'clock midnight he declared his list closed, when asked ' where is your list ? ' he replied placing his hand upon the bundle of alleged applications filed with him three minutes previously, and said 'this is my list.' On the 17th of May, Mr. Hastings said the clerk removed his office to another building and obtained the services of four well-known Grits and started,to work making out a list and they are still employed upon -that work. The clerk handed over each day's work to the printer, but the Conservatives are not allowed to inspeot'the work, nor do -they know who is -on or who will he left oil. What he will attempt to impose upon the district of Dauphin as the printed copy of the list of electors, continued Mr. Hastings, is unknown. In fact, one of the men he has employed, when asked what they were doing, replied that they were making up the voters' list now, while the clerk himself has publicly stated he did not intend to make up his list until after May 16.
The -action of the clerk in this district had been -such that the Conservatives of Dauphin will not submit to it in silence, and Mr. Hastings intimates that an action will, without doubt, be taken by them to have the whole list -set aside, -and from the result of this action the public will be able to judge whether there is anythin? like fair play and justice to be had in the preparation of a voters' list under the Manitoba Election Act, which has been [placed upon the statutes by the Greenway government, especially when a clerk makes up his mind, as the Dauphin clerk evidently d-id, that Conservatives or in-

dependent men should not be endowed with the privilege of exercising the franchise.
That is the manner in which these lists are made up during the time of the Greenway regime.


Robert Laird Borden: What year was that.


William James Roche: In 1899.


Mr. BURROWS.: Was not that list printed and published and was it not revised afterwards ?


William James Roche: Certainly, and as I said a few minutes ago the lists were revised by Liberal revising barristers and the lists were so loaded up with fictitious names that it was impossible to get them off.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Was not the list published and a court of revision held ?


William James Roche: I am not denying there was a court of revision held presided over by a Liberal partisan, but it was impossible to serve many of these men with these notices because they were non-existent and could not be found.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Was ever a complaint made by any citizen of Dauphin against that list as not being a fair list ?


William James Roche: I am sorry I have not the list that was .made out the next year because the House would see the vast difference between the two lists and the hundreds of names that were struck off that list to purge it and make it right.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: When the election took place I had 103 majority in the town of Dauphin, and there was no complaint made about the list and there was no reason for any complaint.


William James Roche: There was so much complaint that in 1899 the provincial legislature annulled that list, and there was a special revision in which there were hundreds of names stricken off that list. The hon. member for Lisgar stated yesterday that what he termed certain grievances which he enumerated should be wiped off the statutes, and I say that any law that would permit the kind of thing I have here referred to should be wiped off the statutes. Hugh John Macdonald pledged himself all through the province in 1899 that one of the first acts of his administration would be to wipe out the Franchise Act and Hugh John Macdonald, honourable man that he is, kept his word and did so the first session. This was not condemned by Conservatives alone. There was in the legislature at that time a gentleman named Fisher. Who was he? He was a gentleman who had contested South Perth, Ontario, on at least two occasions as the Liberal candidate, a gentleman who for a long time was president of the Provincial Liberal Association of Manitoba,
a gentleman who broke away from his party in the legislature because of just such transactions as this. When this law was being placed on the statutes, he condemned it and termed it a 'monstrosity of monstrosities. That expression came not from the lips of a Conservative but from the lips of a friend of hon. gentlemen opposite. There is a plank in the platform of the Liberal party dealing with the franchise which I wish to place before the House. That plank, adopted in the year 1893, in convention assembled in the city of Ottawa, reads as follows :
Oppose the Dominion Franchise Act-favour the Provincial Franchise.
That the Franchise Act since its introduction has cost the Dominion treasury over a million of dollars, besides entailing a heavy expenditure to both political parties;
That each revision involves an additional expenditure of a further quarter of a million;
That this expenditure has prevented an annual revision, as originally intended, in the absence of which young voters entitled to the franchise have, in numerous instances, been prevented from exercising their natural rights;
That it has failed to secure uniformity, which was the principal reason assigned for its introduction;
That it has produced gross abuses by partisan revising barristers appointed by the government of the day;	_
That its provisions are less liberal than those already existing in many provinces of the Dominion, and that in the opinion of this convention the Act should be repealed, and we should revert to the Provincial Franchise.
I defy any hon. member of this House who has any regard for his word to go over, plank by plank, the platform adopted in 1893 and point to one single plank that has been implemented by way of legislation in which they have kept their faith with the people save and except the Franchise Act. and now they are going to break that, they are bringing in an Act to pai-tially abolish it. Their supporters, especially from the west, were really astonished that they should have attempted to implement this one plank of their platform by legislation and to keep faith with the people even in one instance. I shall quote an expression of opinion from a leading public organ in regard to the Franchise Act of Manitoba of years ago. I quote from the ' Free Press ' of Winnipeg before it came under the sinister influence of the ex-Minister of the Interior. In the issue of July 11, 1892, I find :
The registration clerk at Morris has compiled a fraudulent list in the interests of the government, most probably at the direct instance of the government, and doubtless in the expectation that his rascally work would be aided and abetted by the revising officers. The registration clerk in Beautiful Plains in suspicious harmony with the action of his Morris confrere has deliberately refused to enter a large number of names that have been lawfully

tendered him. Names by the scores have been left off the lists of the three Winnipegs through the arbitrary action of the registration clerks, and others put on that it is alleged had no right to be registered. There have been frauds of a similar nature in other constituencies. It is expected that the opposition will quietly submit to the outrages. Is there any great sin in raising a clamour over the frauds themselves, or the men who are guilty of them?
These registration clerks, who are appointed to perform the necessary clerical labour in preparing the lists, are assuming the functions cf revising officers and deciding for themselves what names shall go on. They are doing this, not because they believe they have the right of judgment in the matter, but because if they were not to do it, there would be no opportunity to play their tricks and bedevil the lists. They are forced tq^ take upon themselves the authority of revising officers, in addition to their own, in order that they might decide against the reception of names now and again, in order to weaken the enemy. If the lists are to be stuffed and otherwise manipulated, it must be done in the preliminary stages of registration. Clerks who are up to what is expected of them must therefore, refuse applications, even if attested by affidavit, while there is absolutely no check whatever, except their own consciences, to the addition of improper names. Such work as this could not be left to the revising officers. The lists must he doctored before they reach the courts of revision, lienee the necessity for unscrupulous clerks, who do not hesitate to usurp the functions of a court, supposed to be for the purpose of insuring honest lists.	_
The Act never contemplated that discretionary powers, such as have been exercised, should be given the registration clerks. Their duty is to enter all names known to themselves as duly qualified electors, and to receive and enter all applications supported by affidavit.
Should there be any errors in the preparation of the lists, the work of rectifying them belongs to the revising officers, who are appointed for that sole special purpose. This is the plain meaning of the Act, and it is impossible that registration clerks or any others can mistake it. The fact therefore, that clerks have gone out of their road to doctor the lists, is evident of fraudulent intent.
Let the opposition everywhere he vigilant against these frauds. It is an outrage they should thus be forced into the defence of their rights-rights that should never be assailed but so it is, and until better methods prevail, they must make the best of it. Should there be the least disposition on the part of the revising officers to refuse them the amplest justice then if they be men determined not to be trampled on, they will know how to protect themselves. Fraudulent lists must be purged. Let the cost be what it will.
This was the impression at that time of the ' Free Press,' then an Independent paper, not the slavish organ it now is of the present party in power.
On Jane 13, 1892. that same paper published with big headlines the following warning :


William James Roche: 



ALARMING.

[Stage Direction]
The number of electors left off the lists in the Winnipegs is simply alarming. Immediate attention is necessary if you wish to vote.
In the ' Free Press ' issue of June 14 a list of electors left off in South Winnipeg, a gg regrating 500 names is published.
In the issue of June 15, Winnipeg Centre list is published showing 750 names left off the list.
In the issue of June 16, Winnipeg North lists are published, showing 500 names left off, or aggregating 1,700 names left off the lists of the issue of the three Winnipegs.	[DOT]
I bare other extracts of a similar character did I wish to impose them upon the House, but I shall not do so. I hare here, howerer, some of the results of the revisions that took place in 1892, 1896 and 1899 for each separate constituency. After the revision had been made in 1892 by registration clerks appointed by the Greenway government there were added at the Court of Revision 1,637 names and there were struck off 1,875.
In the revision prior to 1896 there were added at the court of revision after the returns had been completed, 2,008 names and there were struck off 1,180. In 1899, the year when I say it cost the Conservatives of the province such a great deal in order to purge the lists, there were struck off 5,446 names and added 1,195.
Take the small local constituency of Beautiful Plains and we find that between those added and those struck off there were 107 names. In Birtle, in my own constituency, in 1899 there ivere, between those added and those struck off, 196, and having got a clean list by the expenditure of a great deal of time, labour and money the Conservative party attained the position it should have reached seven years before if it had had similarly purged lists.
In Gladstone there was a difference of 223 names; in I-Cildonan, a difference of 135; in Ivillamey, a difference of 159 names; in Lansdowne, a difference of 210 names;
In Lome	 170
Minnedosa	 126
Morgan	 179
Morris	 198
Mountain	 170
Norfolk	 171
Rhineland	 139
Rockwood	 185
Turtle Mountain	 153
Virden	 318
Winnipeg Centre	 1,119
Winnipeg North	 692
Winnipeg South	 967
Woodlands	 325
These are a few I have selected out of many to show the large amount of work required to be done in adding on names and striking them off at these courts of revision and checking the lists prepared at that date. In North Winnipeg, where there are 3,654 names on the list, attempts were made to put on 649 or one for every

five. In South Winnipeg, -where there were 3,636 on the list, attempts were made to add 50o bogus voters or one for every three and a fraction. In Winnipeg Centre there were 3,923 names on the list; 971 were struck off as fraudulent, or one bogus vote for every four and a fraction bona fide votes.
So you will see the character of the lists in force in all these districts when the present administration came into office. Let me compare the method of preparing the lists with the methods of to-day. When the new Act was adopted by the Conservative administration at the outset the government appointed the judges as a board of registration. There were five county judges appointed by this government. These judges formed the board of registration and they appointed all the registration clerks and all the revising barristers. The government had absolutely nothing to do with naming one registration clerk or revising barrister. That was the Act placed on the statutes immediately after the Conservative government took office. Whom did the judges appoint? I have here a list of the revising barristers they appointed, and I find that they appointed nineteen Conservatives and sixteen Liberals. Did you ever hear of a Liberal administration in that province appointing such_ a number of Conservatives as their revising barristers ? Did you ever hear of them appointing one Conservative as registration clerk? Why, the government placed the power entirely of preparing the lists in the hands of the judges and these judges appointed the registration clerks and revising barristers. They took five constituencies themselves, and for the other thirty-five they appointed nineteen Conservatives and sixteen Liberals. Let me give you some of the names. They appointed Mr. H. A. Robson, a man I am well acquainted with, a strong Liberal. They appointed T. C- Hartley, of Winnipeg, for the electoral division of Cypress. For Deloraine they appointed Mr. P. A. Macdonald, of Winnipeg. For Gilbert Plains they appointed Mr. D. A. Macdonald, of Portage la Prairie, now a judge on the bench of that province. For Hamiota they named Mr. S. E. Clement, of Brandon. For Kildonan and St. Andrew they named Mr. T.'G. Mathers, of Winnipeg, now judge of the province. For Lakeside they named Mr. D. W. McKer-char, of Winnipeg. Manitou, Mr. W. F. Ellis ; Minnedosa, Mr. J. G. Harvey, of Dauphin ; Mr. Harvey was then an, ardent supporter of the bon. member for Dauphin, but has seen the error of his ways and has gone back on him. For Norfolk they appointed Mr. J. H. Haverson, of Carmen ; St. Boniface, Mr. T. Seton Ewart, of Winnipeg ; South Brandon, H. H. Goulter, of Vir-den; Turtle Mountain, T. L. Metcalf, of Winnipeg ; Virden, E. Henderson, of Brandon; Winnipeg North, G. H. West, of Winnipeg. These are samples of the revising barristers appointed under that Act as administered by the Roblin administration. It has been said that there was no annual revision at the time the Franchise Act of 1898 was in vogue and the lists prepared in Manitoba. That is very true. The government of that province came to the conclusion that having once started out with a basis of a list compiled by honest officials, having divested themselves of every power and placed it in the hands of the judges and having once got a clean list -because no one could get on that list without taking the sworn declaration-they thought it would be a hardship to require these people afterwards to come up personally and be sworn again. The Act originally provided that these people who had been old residents and once registered should be compelled to come forward at the next election and register again. The government amended the Act so as to provide an annual revision and allow those once registered to remain on the list unless they became disqualified by removal or otherwise. No one could get his name on the list unless he made a sworn declaration. That is the law at present. You can find that in the ' Gazette.'
Samuel Jacob Jackson: Give a list of the Liberals revising the lists at present.


William James Roche: They are not appointed.
.	J' JACKS0N- They are in the
' Gazette.'


William James Roche: No, I have the ' Gazette ' here.


Mr. E. J. JACKSON.: I mean the registration clerks.


William James Roche: Notwithstanding the present Act provides that the revising barristers shall be the judges or shall be appointed by the judges, iu practice the last two years the judges are doing the work entirely and did it last year. Here are the questions which have to be answered before a man gets his name on the provincial voters' list:
1.	What is your Christian name, surname,
of residence, occupation, and post office address? (Street and number to be given if possible, if in a city, town or incorporated village. If in a rural locality, section, township and range, parish name and lot or other description to be given).
So that there is no trouble identifying an elector after he subscribes to a list of that character.
2.	Are you of the full age of 21 years?
3.	Are you a British subject by birth or naturalization, and which ?
** Have you resided in the province of Manitoba for one year prior to the date of

this your application to be registered an elector within this electoral division?
5.	Have you resided or had you your chief place of abode in this electoral division for a continuous period of three months prior to the date of this your application to be registered an elector within this electoral division?
6.	Are you in any respect disqualified from being registered an elector in this electoral division under the Manitoba Eleotion Act ?
7.	Do you now reside in the electoral division for which you apply to be registered an elector? On what premises do you reside?
8.	Is your name at present on the list of electors for this electoral division ?
9.	Have you applied for and been registered
an elector in any other electoral division in the province during the current period of registration?	.
10.	Is your name on the list of electors for any electoral division in the province? If so, give the name.
X	, do solemnly declare
that the foregoing answers in writing to the above interrogatories are true and correct in substance and in fact, and I make this declaration conscientiously believing it to be true and knowing that it is of the same force and effect as if made under oath and by virtue of the Canada Evidence Act, 1893.
That is sworn to before the registration clerk and there are present in that registration office representatives of the Liberal party who inspect every one of those declarations and can have an appeal ready in case they do not consider the man is telling the truth. So that it is impossible for any one to get on the list at present without committing perjury.


Mr. ARMSTRONG.: Will the hon. gentleman say what becomes of the applications ?


William James Roche: These are sent to the revising barrister, to be passed upon. For, recollect, the duties of the registration clerk are purely clerical. He accepts the sworn declarations and transmits them to the judge, who is the revising barrister, and the revising barrister passes upon each and every one before the name can be placed on the list. If it is appealed against, the parties have to be notified in order to be present at the court of the revising barrister.


Mr. AMES.: Is the sworn application taken in the office of the registration clerk?


William James Roche: Certainly, right in the presence of the representatives of both parties. And how does that work out ? Why, both parties are on an equality. What advantage has the Conservative party over the Liberal party in getting names on the list ? Every man must put in his sworn declaration, be he Conservative or Liberal. There have been no charges against the registration clerks since this Act was placed on the statute-book.


William James Roche: 


Theodore Arthur Burrows: What about the three men at Morris put on without a declaration ?


William James Roche: The hon. gentleman (Mr. Burrows) has been drawing his inspiration from a very polluted source. He has been reading the editorial utterances of the Manitoba 'Free Press,' than which there is no more unreliable organ in the Dominion of Canada. Now, what is this case to which the hon. gentleman refers ? There is a provision in the Act-I cannot quote it as I have not it under my hand at the moment-that, in cases of unavoidable absence or illness, of a party a declaration may be made on his behalf by another


Theodore Arthur Burrows: It must be a sworn declaration.


William James Roche: Yes. A Mr. Parker handed in the names of three neighbours, bona fide electors, who were unable to be present-put in a sworn declaration-


Theodore Arthur Burrows: No.


William James Roche: He himself has shown, by letter that was published. that he filled out the wrong form. He is a farmer and not acquainted with the technicalities of the law. The registration clerk accepted the declaration. Of course, the names were not put on the list until after the judge passed upon them. They were transmitted to the judge. And what happened at the court of revision presided over by Judge Prudhomme ? The Liberal lawyer appeared there and took the ground that these men should not have their names on the list because the proper form had not been filled in.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: There was no form at all.


William James Roche: I think the hon. gentleman (Mr. Burrows) has not read all the correspondence. I have seen a letter written by Mr. Parker and published in the newspapers stating that he had put in an application, but it was on the wrong form. The judge asked the Liberal representative there. * Are these men qualified electors ?' And the lawyer had to admit that they were.' The judge said, ' I will not allow any technicality to disfranchise them.' So, it was the judge who placed them on the list, and not the registration clerk ; for, as I have said, the duties of the registration clerk are merely clerical. These applications were handed in to the judge, who. when the evidence was adduced, declared that he would not allow a mere technicality to prevent the placing of the names on the list.
Now% let me draw attention for a few minutes to the provision of the law as to the parties who may be present at the registration. I do this to show that one party has

equal facilities with the other. Here is the section :	.
Who entitled to be present at registration sittings.
28. The following persons shall be entitled to be present at sittings of the registration clerks for the purposes of this Act: (a) The ! candidate or candidates at the last election for the electoral division;
(b)	Any person who considers himself to be a prospective or probable candidate at the next ensuing election to be held in the said electoral division;
It is pretty wide.
(c)	Any person desirous of being present as a spectator; provided that no more than twelve persons, other than the persons mentioned and officers in attendance, shall be entitled to be present at the same time;
(d)	The registration clerk shall strive as far as possible to allow the representation of all political parties in the place or places of registration to be fair and equal.
And that is exactly what is followed out in practice. One political party is exactly on an equality with the other ; there is no discrimination in favour of the Conservative as against the Liberal party. The hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) stated that, when the registration Is over, the only notice given is that the registration clerk walks outside and tacks up the list at the door of the registration booth. But the torn, gentleman did not state the whole case. There are the representatives who look after their several parties and can notify any who are interested of alleged omissions from the list. In addition to that, certified copies are furnished to all people applying for the same by the registration clerk. These facts the hon. gentleman did not bring out. Moreover, a severe penalty is imposed on the registration clerk for any violation of the provisions of the statute. No fault has been found by the people of Manitoba, or by anybody except disgruntled politicians whose term of office is drawing to a close and who seek to rob the Conservative party of their franchise by enacting the unjust law here proposed. I say that no fault has ben found with the provisions of the law. During the last provincial campaign I had the privilege of speaking on platforms in four different constituencies in Manitoba, and I can say here, on my honour, that in not a single case did the speaker representing the Liberal party on any of these occasions make one complaint against the Manitoba Franchise Act. Do you suppose that this Act could be open to the objections which these hon. gentlemen try to persuade the Prime Minister and this parliament that it is open to without the Liberal party making the most of it in a provincial contest ?
" hy, their leader, Mr. Meikle, who is expected to oppose your humble servant at the next election, stated in his place in the legislature that he was willing to admit that
the present lists, as prepared under our provincial law, were the cleanest lists we ever had in the province of Manitoba. Hon. gentlemen opposite cannot deny that. I am sorry the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laur-ier) is not in his seat, for I feel sure that, to use a colloquialism, he has allowed these gentlemen to stuff him with a lot of declarations that they cannot substantiate. Let him appeal to Mr. Meikle for his opinion. The only complaint that Mr. Meikle made was that, from a provincial standpoint, it was too expensive to have annual revisions. But the people of Manitoba are not complaining of the expense ; on the contrary they are satisfied with the law and with the government under which it was enacted. On the other hand, during my visit at Easter I did not find a single Liberal who upheld this Aylesworth Bill, which is introduced to perpetrate such great injustice.
At six o'clock. House took recess.
After Eecess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


William James Roche: At six o'clock I was comparing the Franchise Act as it stood on the statute-book prior to the advent of the Conservative administration of Manitoba with the Act as it exists today, and I was also dealing with some objections offered by some of the Liberal members of this House to the provisions of the existing Franchise Act. I have to come all the way down to Ottawa, hundreds of miles from my adopted province, to learn of the serious drawbacks and serious objections that exist in the minds of some of these hon. gentlemen in reference to that Act. It seems very strange that, though session after session of the Manitoba legislature has been held since the adoption of the present Act, on no occasion have the Liberals of that body been noticeably active in offering a single amendment to that Act. Now, it is a poor tribute to the intelligence of the Liberals in the legislature of Manitoba that, if all these grievances and all these faults existed in this Franchise Act, the local members should not have bestirred themselves and have taken at least some action in order to remedy those grievances and those complaints which the Liberals of this House are now making in regard to that Act. On the contrary, the only objection that has been urged, the only fault that has been found so far, has been by a gentleman named Campbell, who represents the constituency that the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) represents in this House, and he put his foot in it so badly that I do not think that he will try it the second time. He charged that certain names that were struck off at a court of revision were afterwards found on the list

and lie accused the government of being a party to this fraud. But when the original list was produced on the table of the local House it was found that his charge was absolutely without foundation; that the lists had been revised by Judge Ryan at Portage la Prairie, a gentleman who possesses the esteem and the respect of Liberals as well as Conservatives in that province; nobody could impeach that gentleman's honour, and Mr. Campbell had to retract his statement and Apologize to the House.
Now, we are told by the hon. member for Lisgar that the time for making up these lists under the existing law is entirely too short, that there is not sufficient time allowed for registration and not sufficient time allowed for the court of revision. All proclamations, according to the present Act, have to be issued by the 1st of May in each year; these proclamations mentio'n the dates and places where the registration is to be held. Ten days' notice at least must be given by the proclamation before the first court of Revision can sit. They sit for a number of days in each constituency, every facility is afforded at every registration booth, and then at least five days must elapse between the last day of the registration court and the sitting of the court of revision, that is the minimum time. Now, if the Liberals have any grievance whatever, they may select one or two isolated cases where there is a short time given between the last day of registration and the first day of the court of revision. But if you take the ' Gazette ' as published on the 25th April, 1908, you will see that out of 37 rural constituencies in that province, but three provide for less than ten days. Moreover, it is not as essential that there should be so long a time between the courts of registration and revision under our laws as it was under the law which existed prior to 1900, because at that time, as I have pointed out, the registration clerks practically made the lists. Under the present law the registration clerks do merely clerical work, accept sworn declarations and pass them on in the presence of the Liberal representatives at the courts of registration, to be passed upon by the different judges at the courts of revision. Ten days, I say, must elapse before the first court of registration is held, and then after they are over, at least five days must elapse before the first court of revision is held. The hon. member for Lisgar selected an isolated case in the constituency of Springfield, within the Dominion constituency of Selkirk, and he said: Here is a large constituency, and there is only one court of revision provided and that eourf sits six days after the last registration sitting. He left the impression, or endeavoured to leave the impression, that that was the general rule, the general practice, that there were only six days in each constituency of that pro-Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
vinee, and that they only had that time to make an appeal. But I have here the Manitoba * Gazette ' Of April 25, 1908, and it contains all the courts of revision and all the registration courts. X have looked through it and counted the number of days allowed for registration in each individual constituency and the time elapsing between the last day of registration and the first day of the court of revision, and I am going to read to you in each constituency the time elapsing between the two. In the constituency of Arthur there are 8 places for registration. Arthur is a small constituency. Many of those constituencies are small and compact and do not require many registration booths and do not require more than one court of revision. There are eight places to register in Arthur, and the interval between the last day of registration and the first day of revision is 24 days, not 6 days as the hon. member for Lisgar tried to make you believe. Then there is the electoral division of Assiniboia, with 10 places for registration, and 20 days of an interval within which they can get their appeals in. Then there is the constituency of Avondale a small constituency, with 6 places to register in and 24 days of an interval, not 6. Now, here is one where I am willing to admit there may be a grievance. The hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Crawford) may have a grievance, and it is in connection with his own local constituency.
I will point out exactly what occurs there. In the constituency of Beautiful Plains there are 9 places to hold registration courts and there is only 3 days interval between the last day of registration and the first day of the court of revision. But, Mr. Speaker, in that constituency, in the principal town, Neepawa, with only about two thousand of a population, they have three days of registration given them. But the representatives of the Liberal party are present to see every application sworn to and handed in to the registration clerk. They can take the names that they object to and appeal them; they can object to none that are handed in' unless they can prove that the party had perjured himself. There are only three days of an interval, but, as I have said, there is not the necessity for the same length of time for appeal. Now, Sir, I am willing to pledge my word as a member of this House, and I think any colleagues from Manitoba will assist me in saying that, feeling that is one instance in jvhicb there should be more time, we will do our best, acting in concert with our Liberal friends in the province of Manitoba, to have that time extended, and I am confident that oversight, for it is only an oversight, will be rectified. Hon. gentlemen on the other side, because they can show one or two isolated instances in which the time may be a little short for appeal, notwithstanding there is not the same necessity for appeal that there was in the days of the



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Greenway regime, hold that up as an example of a grievance, just as if one swallow made a summer.
In the constituency of Birtle, in my own constituency of Marquette, there are six places of registration and twenty-three days interval between the registration court and the court of revision. In Carillon there are eleven places of registration and nineteen days interval between the two courts. In the constituency of Cypress there are twelve places of registration, two courts of revision and there are intervals of nineteen and twenty days. In the electoral district of Dauphin there are fourteen places of registration and twelve days of an interval between the last day of registration and the date of the court of revision, and there are two days of registration in the town of Dauphin. In Deloraine there are. ten places of registration and twelve days of an interval between the two courts. In Dufferin there are fourteen places of registration and thirteen days of an interval. In Emerson there are twelve places of registration and fourteen days of an interval. In Gilbert Plains there are no less than 21 places of registration. Why 1 Because it is a very large constituency with outlying points though not thickly populated ?-and every opportunity is afforded the people to register. There are twenty-one places of registration and sixteen days of an interval before the meeting of the court of revision. In Gimli, in the constituency of Selkirk where there are a large number of those foreigners that the hon. member for Lisgar stated that we, on our part, were most anxious to disfranchise and to prevent from registering, there are no less than twenty registration courts open from May 18 to June 8 and two courts of revision. In this constituency in which so many foreigners are located whom we are so anxious to disfranchise, according to these hon. gentlemen, they have two courts of revision sitting on June 16 and June 23. In Gladstone there are twenty places in which the electors may register and they have eight days of an interval between the two courts ; Hamiota eight places to register and twenty-eight days interval ; Kildonan and St. Andrew's also in Selkirk thirteen places to register and an interval of fourteen days and the most northern court is in township 39 range 3 and there are only fourty-four townships in the whole province. This is within thirty miles of the extreme northerly bounds of the province. In Killarney there are seven places to register and fourteen days of an interval. In Lakeside there are nine places to register and eight days of an interval.
Mr. ALCORN.: These registration courts are not all held on the one day ?


William James Roche: Not at all. They are held on successive days from May 10 to the end of the month.


George Oscar Alcorn: So that the people will have a much longer time in which to appeal than the actual interval between the meetings of the two courts.


William James Roche: The people have a chance of appealing for a week prior to these four, five, six or any other number of days as the case may be. In some instances they have upwards of a month in which they can get their appeals in. I am only quoting the minimum time from the last day of the sitting of the court of registration until the first day of the court of revision, but from the first day of the registration they have at least a week longer than the time I have given.


Herbert Brown Ames: I would like to ask the hon. gentleman if the order followed by the revision judge is the same as the order followed by the registration clerk ?


William James Roche: I am not quite sure of that. One of the reasons why the interval in Beautiful Plains and one or two other constituencies may appear short is, that, as I understand, it is the intention to have county court judges to act as revising officers without calling in any lawyers whatever and they have found a little difficulty in making the dates to suit their own engagements and therefore there are one or two instances in which there is a shorter time than would otherwise be allowed. In Lansdowne there are twenty-one places of registration and twelve days of an interval between the last day of registration and the first day of the court of revision ; La Verandrye, nine places of registration and thirteen days of an interval ; Manitou, eleven places of registration and seventeen days of an interval ; Minnedosa, eleven places of registration and sixteen days of an interval ; Morden, ten places of registration and twenty-five days of an interval between the last day of registration and the first day of revision ; Morris, seven places of registration and twenty-five days of an interval. In Mountain, a local constituency within the district of Lisgar, there are eleven places of registration and two courts of revision. The hon. member for Lisgar was not fair enough to quote an instance in his own constituency, but he went to the constituency of the hon. member for Selkirk in order to get an extreme case to lend point to his argument. But, he did not take a case within his own riding in which there is a preponderating Liberal vote. There are two courts of revision and fourteen and twenty-one days respectively of an interval between the last day of registration and the first day of revision. In Norfolk, which is in the constituency of Portage la Prairie, there are nine places of registration and the hon. member cannot find fault in this case because there are twenty-eight days between the last day of

registration and the first day of the court of revision. In Portage la Prairie, the town practically, there are three places of registration and fifteen days of an interval in which they can get their appeals in. In Rhineland there are five places of registration and thirty days of an interval ; Rockwood, twelve places of registration and fourteen days of an interval. This is also in the constituency of Selkirk. In Russell there are fourteen places to register and seventeen days of an interval. In St. Boniface, represented by the hon. member for St. Boniface, in this House, (Mr. Cyr) there are ten places of registration and twenty-one days in which to get their appeals in. In South Brandon there are nine places of registration and twelve days of an interval. In Springfield, and this is a case quoted by the hon. member for Lisgar, there are eleven places of registration and six days between the last day of registration and the first day of the court of revision. They have in these eleven places of registration from May 21 until June 6. In Swan River there are eight places of registration and ten days of an interval :	Turtle
Mountain, ten places of registration and thirteen days of an interval ; Yirden, seven places of registration and sixteen days of an interval and these registration clerks sit in their offices from 9 o'clock in the morning until 12 o'clock at noon and from 1 o'clock until 6 p.m. and in the cities they sit after 8 o'clock in order to accommodate the workingmen who cannot lose the time to go and register during the day. So that, of these rural constituencies in only three of them is the interval below ten days as a minimum and it runs all the way from that to thirty days and upwards. I do not think that hon. gentlemen have very much to complain of in reference to the time in which they can get their appeals in.
Now, the hon. member for Lisgar has complained, and, I think unfairly complained about the action that was taken by the clerk of the executive council, I presume, who, with a revising barrister, in 1903, held an adjourned court of revision. The names were printed in order to allow the Liberals an opportunity of fighting or testing the case in the court if they desire to do so and because these names were not allowed to go on the corrected voters' lists he denounced the parties to that action. Let me explain what occurred on that occasion. The judges constituting the registration board appointed sixteen Liberals and nineteen Conservatives and they appointed a very strong and active partisan, Mr. Heap, of Selkirk, to revise the lists in this particular constituency. The commission issued to Mr. Heap limited his jurisdiction to a certain date.
He held his court of revision at the time and place stipulated in the proclamation ; he completed his labours and he then took Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
it upon himself illegally to adjourn the court of revision to another time and place, the time being beyond the date fixed in his commission. He had no authority to act as revising barrister after the date of his commission had expired and he was informed by Judge Walker, chairman of the registration board, that he was acting contrary to law, and judge Walker notified the government that this court of revision was taking place illegally. Some twenty names were put on the list by Mr. Heap after his commission had expired but all of those were not the names of Liberals b5r any means. Mr. Heap held his court of revision contrary to the direction of the judge and the government had nothing whatever to do with it. I have already shown in this House that Judge Walker did not sign the same certificate for these illegal lists that he signed for every other revising court in the province. He did not certify as he did in the case of the others that the list of electors was legal and held under the authority and power of the statute, but he gave a certificate merely stating that these names were added at an adjourned court of revision. These names did not appear on the list on polling day and rightly so and if the Liberals thought they had a case they could have tested it in the courts, but none of them attempted to do so. Now, I regret to say that so many Liberals in this House are ignorant on the question of the Manitoba electoral lists and the reason is that they will not stay in their places in this chamber and listen to the truth. They have whispered into their ears by some of their friends from Manitoba, statements that cannot be substantiated. They have been told, as if it were a practice, that electors have been standing at the door of the coivrt of revision and that when the hour for revision expired by law the revising barrister closed his court and allowed those men to be disfranchised. I challenge them to point to one single partisan act on the part of a single revising barrister. In the case of the court of revision presided over by Mr. Bonner, a lawyer of the city of Winnipeg, it was the judges and not the government who appointed Mr. Bonner. Only a very short time prior to that Mr. Bonner was an ardent Liberal. Mr. Bonner held his court and the law read that he should hold his court up to a certain hour and when the hour expired he took it upon himself to close the court although there were quite a few present, and mark vou it is safe to say that there were not any more Liberals than Conservatives waiting. He did not discriminate against one party or the other and even the ' Winnipeg Free Press' has not had the hardihood^ to accuse Mr. Bonner of having acted in a partisan manner. But, the government of Manitoba have taken precautions that such a thing shall not occur again. The

prme minister of Manitoba has time and again invited the Liberals to point out any defects in the law or to suggest any improvements and that he was ready to place on the statute-book any thing that would improve the election law or that would meet any contingency that could possibly arise. The government did not approve of Mr. Bonner's action in interpreting the law so strictly and at the very nest session they brought down this amendment:
The registration clerk shall receive all applications of electors for registration, the striking off of names of electors from the list and for the correction of names on the list, who are present for that purpose at the time fixed for the conclusion of the registration sittings, notwithstanding that such applications are in point of fact received by the registration clerk after the hour of closing the registration sittings aforesaid.
Therefore, if the time arrives for the closing by law of the registration court and there are any electors present the law compels him now to prolong his sittings until each and every one of those present has the privilege of registering, and a similar provision applies to the court of revision.


Wilfrid Laurier: What statute is that ?


William James Roche: I am not certain whether it is the amendment of 1904 or the amendment of 1903.


Mr. CRAWFORD.: Did the hon. gentleman complete the reading of that clause ?


William James Roche: I read it to the end and I will read it again. This appeared in the ' Manitoba Gazette ' of February the 20th, 1904.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Where do you find that provision with regard to the court of revision ;


William James Roche: I have not the section at hand now but I will find it. I therefore say that if the Liberals had any grievance in reference to Judge Bonner's court of revision that grievance cannot occur again, and that was the only isolated case that occurred in connection with the revision of the lists throughout Manitoba. That was several years ago and no fault has been found with the annual revision since.
I repeat, that last session the prime minister of Manitoba told his opponents that if they had any suggestions to make in reference to the perfection of the present law he would be only too willing to adopt such suggestions, and yet not an amendment was brought in by a single member of the Liberal party in Manitoba. I am afraid the Prime Minister is not being well informed by his supporters in this matter. Let him apply to Hon. Charles Mickle, leader of the opposition in yie local legislature, who is on record as having stated that our present
lists in Manitoba are the cleanest we ever had in that province.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: In what year did Mr. Mickle make that statement ?


William James Roche: About two or three years ago, and our law has been very much perfected since then. He was twitted with it in the legislature not later than last session and had nothing to retract, the only fault he found was the expenditure from a provincial point of view involved in the annual revision. But, as I said, the people of Manitoba do not begrudge a fair expenditure on their voters' lists, in order to have it purged from dead men, non-existant individuals and those not qualified to be on the list. Here is the section that I wish to quote to the hon. member for Portage la Prairie, section 11 of the Maui-. toba Elections Act, chapter 52 :
The revising officer shall also receive and deal with the applications of all persons to be registered as electors who shall be present at the time fixed for the closing of the court of revision notwithstanding that the time so fixed shall have elapsed.


Wilfrid Laurier: Is that the statute of 1904 ?


William James Roche: This is the Manitoba Elections Act, chapter 52, with all amendments down to 1906. Hon. gentlemen opposite were trying to harp on the question of the hours during which the booths were open simply because there was an isolated case of trouble in connection with Mr. Bonnar's court of revision. There the hours are set and the appeals are necessarily few when every man who wrongfully gets his name on the list must commit perjury to do so. If the hours are not long enough they are extended by the statute I have just read. The hon. member for Lis-gar (Mr. Greenway) has stated that there are many names on the list that should not be there, and that many names that should be there were omitted, but he failed to mention any of these names. He was challenged to do so by the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden). He stated that he had been in that province for 30 years and knew almost every individual voter and yet he could not name a man who had been left off the list in his own constituency or one who had been improperly placed on it. He was going to do so but failed, and if he were here I would challenge him again to name one individual wrongfully left off or placed on the list. If he gives such a name we will find out whether or not he is correct.
The hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Burrows) struck a mare's nest. He thought he had discovered three names that had been put on the wrong form and which the judge stated were names of qualified electors, adding that he was not going to allow any legal technicality to interfere with their

franchise. He thought if he could only show that these three were put on wrongfully, his case had been proved.


John Crawford: The fact is that when these names were objected to the judge asked the Liberals if the men had been notified that they were to be objected to. On being answered in the negative, the judge said they were illegal, but that he could not strike them off without notice.


William James Roche: The judge asked the Liberal representative if they were qualified electors, if they were entitled to vote, and the Liberal representative had to admit that they were. Then said the judge, I am not going to see the men disfranchised, I waive all formalities. But who was to blame for putting them on the list ? The registration clerk did not put the names on the list, he took their declarations handed in by Mr. Parker, transferred them to the revising barrister and Judge Prudhomme put the names on the list. If anything is wrong they must blame the county court judge, the very men whom they want to revise the list under the present Bill. It seems very strange that names could be improperly placed on or omitted from the lists. Where were the Liberals 1 They had the privilege of having representatives at the revision booths. Their representatives were there, every one who was put on had to hand in an affidavit. How did they come to allow these men to hand in false affidavits ? Why did they not appeal and have them struck off. The statements are ridiculous and the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) was indulging in generalities, he could not give a specific case.
But the hon. member for Lisgar excelled himself when he found fault with the qualifications under the present Franchise Act of Manitoba. He said :	I take my stand
as against insisting on 12 months' residence in Manitoba before allowing a man to vote. Consistency thou art a jewel! Who placed the qualification upon the statute ? The Conservative government went out of power in 1888. Under them 6 months' residence in the province and one month in the local constituency was all that was required. The hon. member kept that on the statutes of the province until 1894. He assumed office in December, 1888, but maintained those' qualifications up to the year 1894, and when I find in the statutes of Manitoba of that year, an Act to amend the Manitoba Elections Act, assented to March 2, 1894.
Seotion 12 of chapter 49 of the Revised Statutes of Manitoba, being the Manitoba Election Act, is hereby amended by striking out paragraph (d) thereof, and by substituting therefor the following:
(d) who is, at the date of the issue of the proclamation appointing the registration clerk and has been for three months

Not one month


William James Roche: -immediately prior to the said date, a resident of and domiciled within the said electoral division and has been for one year immediately nrior to' said date a resident of and domiciled within the province.
Not six months as he found it when he came into power, and this is the statute that has been on the statute-book ever since, this is the law that exists to-day ; it has been perpetuated by his successor, and yet the hon. member, forgetful no doubt in his old age of what he did when he was Prime Minister of Manitoba, comes here and condemns the provision requiring 12 months residence in the province.
The hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Bole) is also out of his seat. Well, he is seldom in his seat but when he does come I am very sorry he does not acquit himself a little more creditably than he did on the occasion of his last speech. He devoted a considerable portion of his time to quotations, read, ing some unpronounceable names and affidavits, which affidavits bear on their face the impress of untruth. I am surprised that the hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Bole) who has always been looked upon as a respected resident of that city, should come up here and read those affidavits. He even expressed regret that he was forced to do so by reason of the fact that he was a representative of the city. He gave that as an excuse for reading a lot of untrue and scurrilous evidence against residents of Winnipeg who are eminently respectable- evidence intended to smirch their character. By this evidence these men of high repute are accused of having been accomplices in fraudulently putting on names on the voters' lists or causing to be secured false naturalization papers and having them rushed through the county court for the purpose of naturalizing Galicians and other foreigners, not in the country long enough to take out their naturalization papers, thus implicating the clerk of the court in the fraud. While on the one hand he contends that these are the very people the Conservatives want to disfranchise, on the other he trots out those spurious'affidavits in order to prove that the Conservatives were so anxious to get their names on the voters' lists that some of the Conservative officials even descended to making themselves accomplices in this wrong doing. I caught one name-the name of Rudneski. I had heard that name before. I had met the gentleman bearing that distinguished name. At one time he was associated with the Conservative party as a worker among his fellow countrymen. While with the Conservatives, I never heard that he had been guilty of any wrong doing. He was then engaged in legitimate work. But no sooner did he sell his services to our opponents than his descent began in the moral scale. What do we find ? I knew that he had been accused in Win-

nipeg by his fellow countrymen and in my own constituency of some very grievous wrong-doing. The story was circulated in Marquette when he went among his countrymen to help in the Conservative cause- the story was circulated by the Galicians who supported the Liberal candidate, that prior to coming to this country this man had been guilty of wife murder in his own country. I do not know whether there was any truth in that story or not, but that is what his own fellow countrymen said against him. I am not going to vouch for the accuracy of it.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


William James Roche: But here is something that X will vouch for. I know, as a matter of fact, from reputable citizens of Winnipeg, that he has been guilty of crimes something like those for which Philip Wagner was convicted, that he has defaulted his countrymen right and left, that cases have proceeded against him, that he has been in jail accused even of forgery, and that to-day he is a criminal who has fled this country. In order to refresh my memory and have something to substantiate my statements, I telegraphed to Winnipeg to Mr. Rogers, who was acquainted with that gentleman.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: He is not a very good authority.


William James Roche: He is just as good as the hon. gentleman. If the hon. gentleman, who makes sneering reflections upon him, bore as good a character himself, he-would not be quite so ready to interrupt. It is not likely this telegram would be sent me by Mr. Rogers unless there was truth in it. I will read it for the edification of the hon. gentleman and his colleagues.
Winnipeg, May 7, 1908. To W. J. Roche, M.P., Ottawa.
Rudneski served considerable time in the common jail here. Had to skip the country last year.
Is there anything in that which the hon. gentleman can contradict ? If so I would like to hear it.
Rudneski made by himself and others eight affidavits and sold the .same to George Walton, Liberal organizer, for $25. I hold the original oheque.
Does the hon. gentleman dispute that ?-
I hold the original cheque given by Walton to Rudneski in payment of those affidavits. The same will be published in to-night's paper. The original cheque will be mailed you at Ottawa. Do not lose cheque as I want to get it cashed some day. Affidavits from all the parties named by Bole or Rudneski will appear in to-night's or to-morrow's paper to show that statements made by Bole or Rudneski are absolutely false. Insist on Bole
reading the other five affidavits for which Rudneski was paid by Liberal organizer.



R. ROGERS.

[Stage Direction]
These hon. gentlemen thought they had discovered something fine when they trotted out those affidavits made by those Galician residents of Manitoba. But anyone reading them would see that they bore on their face the impress of untruth. Here is something that will appear in the public press of Winnipeg to-morrow ; and if Mr. Walton finds he has a libel action, he will have the opportunity to enter the courts against the author of that telegram or the authors of the affidavits published in the city of Winnipeg. This is the character of the evidence which has been read in this House in order to try and influence the Prime Minister and his associates and induce them to inflict upon us this Aylesworth Bill calculated to deprive the Conservatives of Manitoba of their franchise. Why the very thing incorporated in those affidavits, the charge of illegally naturalizing hundreds of foreigners who are not long enough in the country, is the very thing these hon. gentlemen themselves were guilty of at the last election. If my memory serves me correctly, we had some of those men in court for having got some of the poor deluded Galicians, who were not long enough in the country to understand our laws, our custom^, our institutions, out language-for having got them naturalized and they had to answer for that in the court. When I was at home during the Easter holidays the very thing they accused us of having done in these by-gone days is what I heard they were doing very recently throughout the Galician colony. They were getting out naturalization papers, getting blanks signed in some cases, getting these foreigners to sign affidavits of the contents of which they were ignorant, so that the very thing they charge against the Conservatives in those spurious affidavits, they are doing themselves at present.
It seems to me very strange that this provincial law, which is held up to so much odium, is the law which the Minister of Justice says he follows out in its entirety' in the revision of the lists as provided for in his own Bill. After denouncing the provincial law as unfair in every particular, they are going to follow it in its entirety. The hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) also referred to another matter, and I marvel at his ingratitude. He referred to the placing on the lists the names of some seven electors who had been left off the lists at one time. But before going further, I wish to say further in connection with the Rudneski affidavit.
It seems strange, as the hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Boyce) stated, that this affidavit should be in possession of the hon. member (Mr. Bole) for twelve months and
revised edition
[Stage Direction]
that lie should wait until he got to Ottawa aud read it in this House in order to prejudice members against the law existing in his own province. Mr. Walton, the Liberal organizer, the gentleman accused in this telegram of having bought these affidavits for $25 had not the manliness, or rather I should say he was too manly, to utilize them.' And he is a member of the legislature and was there during the recent session, yet he did not mention or read these affidavits in the legislature where he could be met by the premier, and others who are in possession of information to controvert them. He could not do it; he was ashamed to. I have no doubt he felt that this was $25 wasted. But he transferred these affidavits to the hon. member for Winnipeg (Mr. Bole), who is now a resident of Montreal, and is not to receive renomination in his present constituency, that that hon. gentleman might do work to which Mr. Walton would not stoop to do in connection with his legislative duties.
Now, the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) spoke about the Balsam Bay electors. He said, referring to the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) :
X. The hon. gentleman said that this Manitoba government which takes such care of the voters was good enough upon one occasion to solemnly pass an Act of parliament to place certain individuals upon the list in order that they might vote. Well, I have that Act here. An election was coming on and I suppose somebody suggested that perhaps they were going to be shy a few votes in that county and they had better make a few.
That is, the Conservatives were going to be shy a few votes and they were going to make votes by legislation.
2.	Now, this was a premeditated mode of doing business and I am going to show how they made the voters. I am told in reference to this, but I do not know as to the truth of it, that the registration clerk had omitted to put 25 names on the list, but there are not 25 mentioned in this Act of the legislature.
This he reads, and proceeds as follows :
3.	And the names were added and somebody went to try and find them and they could not, and the only time they had ever been seen was upon polling day.
Now what is the history of that ? There is a point called Balsam Bay, on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg. A court was held there for the registration of electors. Balsam Bay is an outside point and it was difficult to find a man competent to discharge the duties of registration clerk. A man whose name, if I remember well, is Gilbert Dennett, was selected. There were 26 who applied to have their names placed on the list, handing in the regular applications, and being personally present. For some reason or other, Mr. Dennett misinterpreted his duties under the law-not with any criminal Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
intent, I believe-at any rate, he refused the applications and did not place on the register the names of these 26 men. In addition to this, there were seven others present who did not hand in any applications after these 26 had been refused. The Liberals heard about this, and they sent a man, a Mr. Campbell, to Investigate the condition of affairs. He stated in a letter to the Manitoba ' Free Press ' the facts as he had found them-that 26 names had been handed in, but the registration clerk had failed to put them on the register. When the court of revision was held, presided over by the judge, the Liberal-Conservative lawyer and the Liberal lawyer were there to represent their several parties. The formal applications of these 26 men were handed in. Not a man of them was present at the court of revision. Every man of them could have been leghlly kept off the list if Mr. Hastings, the Liberal-Conservative lawyer, had chosen to exercise his right of objecting. But he did not exercise that right. He knew that the registration clerk had not done his duty. And here is what took place, as I am told by the gentleman who appeared at the court:
I inclose you herewith a clipping from the Manitoba 'Free Press/ of June 16, 1906, in reference to the Balsam Bay poll of the Kil-donan and St. Andrews district, in which Mr. A. C. Campbell, the commissioner who went out to Balsam Bay for the Liberal party to secure applications, makes a statement showing that by the action of Mr. Dennett, the registration clerk, seven names were left ofi that polling subdivision and he also makes the statement that these seven parties were all Liberals.
Not a Tory among them. But the Conservative government were not looking for a few votes ; they did not need them.
This vertifies the statement made by Mr. Campbell, the attorney general, on the floor of the House the other day and also the statement of facts which I wrote you fully about and for this Act regarding the passing of the special Act in the session of 1907, to place the names of these seven men upon the voters' list for that electoral district. From my previous information to you I stated that there were some fourteen or fifteen applications made which I consented to allow their names to be placed upon the voters' list as aforesaid, but Mr. Campbell in his statement inclosed herewith says there were twenty-six such applications and I have no doubt Mr. Campbell is correct in that assertion and therefore the number of names I consented to let on the list at the court of revision that day, instead of being fourteen or fifteen was twenty-six.
The Liberal-Conservative representative raised no objection. He knew that the registration clerk should have placed these names on the list. And, though not a man of them was present as required by law, Mr. Hastings said, ' We do not want to disfranchise these men ; put on their names.' And they were put on.
Samuel Jacob Jackson: Does the law justify that ?


William James Roche: No, it does not justify that. But Mr. Dennett had exceeded his jurisdiction, and are you going to wipe off thd statute-book every law merely because you find one man appointed under it who fails in his duty ? But Mr. Dennett met his punishment, for the provincial government refused to pay him a single cent for the work he had done at the registration court. They did not treat him as this government treated Leach, they did not give him a place worth $3,000 per annum. He had done wrong, and they refused to pay him a single cent, and he met with a very severe reprimand for having done an unwarranted thing. But the point is that not a man was disfranchised. The prime minister of that province, speaking on the public platform in my own town, declared that, notwithstanding that these men were not present at the court of rev'sion, and notwithstanding that they had not made application, they should not suffer any injustice. Mr. Campbell, the Liberal commissioner, had reported these men were Liberals, that they were present at the registration court and had not applied because others were refused. It was for this reason, Mr. Roblin explained, that he had a statute passed, placing the names of these seven men on the list. Did you ever hear of Mr. Greenway, when prime minister of the province passing a special Act to do justice to an opponent ? On the contrary It would take a large volume to hold the names of those who were disfranchised by the operation of the law under Mr. Greenway as-premier of that province.
And now, I come to a discussion of the 'thin-red-line.' We are not afraid to discuss this, as the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) seemed to think we should be. What does the ' thin-red-line ' mean ? The voters' lists sent by the clerk of the Crown in Chancery to the various returning officers in Manitoba previous to the last Dominion election were mutilated, and mutilated illegally, and scores and hundreds -how many it is impossible to say*-of Conservatives were disfranchised by Leach and his associates through the mutilation of these lists. Now what had they to do ? The Dominion Act provides that where there is an overlapping of constituencies the returning officers should have power to divide the lists, but only in those places, and in no places in the interior. That is the Dominion Act, section 25, and I will read it:
Where any provincial polling division, as constituted at the time of the receipt by the returning officer of the writ for an election lies only partly within the electoral district for which such election is to be held, the part thereof within such electoral district shall, for the purpose of that election, form a separate polling division, or it may be attached by the returning officer to an adjoin-255$
ing polling division, and the returning officer shall, as soon as possible after the receipt of the writ, prepare from the existing voters' lists a separate voters' list containing the' names of the persons entitled to have their names placed on the list for such part of such polling division.
There was the statute under which the returning officers were supposed to act. But did the returning officers do this ? Where they did that, Mr. Speaker, there has been no complaint from the representatives of those constituencies. But whom did they transfer their lists to ? To the Liberal organizer. Does the statute say that the returning officer shall hand over his voters' lists to the organizer of a political party ? Not at all. And still we have this Minister of Injustice trying to make this House believe that it was perfectly justifiable on the part of the returning officer to divide and carve up the list among the constituencies and hand them to the Liberal organizer, who employed a staff iii some rooms in the McIntyre Block in the city of Winnipeg, doing that work for weeks, mutilating the lists. He did not confine his operation to the border constituencies where there was an overlapping, but he went throughout the length and breadth of the province, disturbing many polling subdivisions in almost every local constituency. Why, I venture to say that in the polling divisions, two-thirds of them were not border divisions at all, were not in border constituencies at all. Let the Prime Minister or his Minister of Justice point to a single provision in the Act which will empower the returning officer to interfere in any way with polling subdivisions save those that are border subdivisions where there is overlapping. If the hon. gentleman can do that, then there will be some force for his contention, but it is impossible for him to do it. Now, let any person who has any reputation as a lawyer on that side of the House read from any statute of this parliament anything that will justify an interference with the lists in other portions of the constituency except those where there is overlapping.
Now, Mr. Leach was the Liberal organizer for the province. He had been a strong party man. He had a staff working for months prior to the election, giving out what he called canvassing books, sending out duplicates, carving out the province, getting reports from his agents throughout the province. and in accordance with these reports he set out certain polling divisions differing from those used for holding the provincial elections. When these lists were returned to the returning officer it was found that scores and hundreds of names were scored out by means of the thin red line. not. as I say. confined to border constituencies, but two-thirds of them were polling divisions within the limits of the local constituencies. We are told that it was a necessity to do

tills. Not a Liberal on that side of the House has tried to leave the impression upon this House and the country that the interference took place in connection with polling subdivisions in the interior of these local subdivisions. Their whole argument was to leave the iirpressicn that only because of overlapping was there any necessity for the thin red line, and that the thin red line was operated only in those particular instances. I challenge anybody to prove that it took place only in those border constituencies. In my own constituency there was very little overlapping, just a small portion of three municipalities, one of which is-in the unorganized district. And still there was 1,900 names through which the red line operated. I am not going to say that those 1.900 names were absolutely disfranchised. It was impossible for me to tell.* We did not have an investigation in the constituency of Marquette, and why? I knew the returning officer was an honourable man, he was a personal friend of my own, and he himself could not stoop to anything of this character. Where he erred was in transferring, by the direction of somebody, the voters' lists for the constituency to the Liberal organizer. The latter did the work, he did the disfranchising. I entered my objection to having that gentleman arrested with the other returning officers, because I knew that personally he was not responsible for the operation of this red line. Now we will take an Illustration. Some of these gentlemen say,"Oh, but there is no oomplaint from Brandon, the Minister of Justice says there is no complaint from Dauphin, no complaint from Portage la Prairie. The Minister of Justice stated why there was no complaint in Dauphin, because there was no election, it was acclamation. The member for Dauphin is very astute, he knew he had not the ghost of a show had his election come on on the regular election day; therefore he pulled the wires with his brother-in-law, the member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton) and got the cabinet to postpone that election a week. But I venture to say, and I think tli >
'Titmv will show that my prophecy is correct, that the member for Dauphin will not be a candidate at the next election for Dauphin if it is held on the general election day. I say there is one abuse that is not provided for by this Act; all the elections should be held on the same day. There is no provision in this' Act to prevent anything of the kind, and unless the member for Dauphin succeeds again in having his election postponed, and he pretends that the returning ooffieer has not sufficient time to post up his proclamation, he will not be a candidate for that constituency.


Theodore Arthur Burrows: Is it not a fact that part of the county of Dauphin never had an election that was not deferred until after the date of the general election ?


William James Roche: 


William James Roche: The constituency of Dauphin is a pretty large constituency, and I am willing to admit tint., the present government postponed that election one week, following the precedent of their opponents. But I am not justifying that at all. Admitting for the sake of argument that in Dauphin you cannot get around in the one week to post up the proclamation, cannot that be remedied ? Because the provincial government under Mr. Greenway or Mr. Roblin has postponed this election, is that any reason why we should do it ? In 1896 when that whole constituency was in Marquette, when I was a candidate, the election was held the same day. Now the Minister of Justice said in reference to myself that all the complaint I had was about ten men in my constituency who had not been disfranchised, but who had been transferred to another list-as if that was all the fault I could find. Now here is what the Minister of Justice said :
The hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Roche) though he spoke in general' terms, made the charge, so far as anything specific was concerned, simply that ten names in one polling division had been put in the wrong township. The hon. members for Brandon, Winnipeg and Dauphin made no complaints whatever; and there could be no oomplaint in Winnipeg or Dauphin, because in Dauphin, the election took place by acclamation and in Winnipeg there was no readjustment because the bounds were conterminous between the one constituency and the other.
So that we have seven of the ten Manitoba constituencies accounted for at all events by their representatives in this House on the occasion to which I have referred. And the aggregate of the oomplaints from those seven constituencies was twenty votes-twenty men misplaced, not twenty disfranchised, but twenty put upon the lists in a wrong polling subdivision or a wrong township.
Now, the impression that the hon. Minister of Justice intended to convey by that was that that -was the only grievance we had to complain of in the constituency of Marquette. Why did I take these ten names ? He took that expression of mine from ' Hansard ' of May 30, 1905, when I spoke as follows :
In my own constituency, the returning officer is an honest, straightforward man, a fellow citizen of mv own. He is above doing anvthing of a dishonest character. But he received instructions from some person. The law states that a returning officer shall prepare, or oause to be prepared, a list which be shall supply to the deputy returning officers and which he shall certify as correct. Did the returning officer for the constituency of Marquette do that? No. My agent waited upon him and saw the lists brought into his office and unpacked. He saw the red line scored through the names and asked the returning officer what explanation he could give of it. The returning officer admitted candidly that he did not do it. My agent asked where the lists were prepared in this way,

and the returning officer answered that he presumed that they were erased in Winnipeg. My agent called his attention to eleven names in a certain district -where the voters were wrongly described.
And this district was known to the returning officer because it was in the immediate neighbourhood of my own town. Scores and hundreds of names-1,900 names, as I said a few minutes ago-were erased by this thin-red-line operation, but in this particular district the returning officer knew each of these men and that is why his attention was called to it.
For instance, a man living in township 15, range 17, was given as township 16, range 17. And, because of that, red lines were scored through the names. Of eleven names thus wrongly described, ten were those of Conservatives, and all had been scored out. One was a Liberal, and there was no red line through that name

Of the eleven names wrongly described ten were scored out and the ten were Conservatives. One was a Liberal and notwithstanding the fact that he was wrongly described he was permitted to vote under this description.
-although the description was wrong as in the other cases. My agent asked the returning officer: How can you certify these lists to be correct as required by law? And the returning officer answered: I will take good care not to do anything of the kind; I will write ' certified,' not ' certified correct.' And, if you will look at the Marquette list, which I moved to have laid on the table, yoi'. will find that that is the way it is certified. It was a quibble, I grant you; hut the returning officer would not take the responsibility of certifying the lists to be correct, because he knew that they were not correct. These lists were scored before they came into his possession and scored in the office of the Liberal organizer in Winnipeg.
It was by that quotation that the Minister of Justice attempted to show that that was the whole source of complaint in the constituency of Marquette. It would he impossible, without getting all the voters' lists from the various deputy returning officers, to show to what extent the lists were tampered with. In the investigation which took place into the way in which the thin red line operated it was impossible in many Instances to get the lists. They were destroyed. They were not returned. The deputies mutilated them and destroyed them. They did not return them to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. So, we were face to face with serious difficulties in endeavouring to prove our case by reason of not being furnished with the lists. But we did manage to get hold of the list in connection with the Beausejour poll. What took place at the Beausejour poll ? This was not a border poll, so that the difficulty which hon. gentle1- n opposite state existed in
harmonizing the boundaries of provincial and Dominion constituencies did not exist. It was within the provincial constituency of Springfield and the provincial constituency of Springfield was entirely within the Dominion constituency of Selkirk. There was no justification for striking off the names. But. no less than forty-one names were scored out by red ink. Of those forty-one, twenty-three were not transferred to any other list.


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: They were disfranchised ?


William James Roche: They would have been if something had not taken place at court. They were not transferred to any list. They were scored out of the lists applicable to their home polling subdivisions where they had been accustomed to vote. They were old residents, and men who had been qualified to vote. Twenty-three out of the forty-one absolutely appeared on no list at that poll. We got the list for that poll and that is the reason that we were able to prove this case. The Minister of Justice rises up in his place in this House and tells us that it was merely transferring voters from one poll to another, but we proved that twenty-three out of forty-one were not transferred to any other poll. Of the twenty-three, eighteen were pronounced Conservatives. What happened ? These men appeared at the poll to cast their votes. They were refused ballots. The deputy returning officer stated that his instructions were to give ballots only to those whose names were not scored out. These gentlemen had their names scored out. They hung around the polling subdivision and almost raised a riot. They kept their places all day until about four o'clock in the afternoon and then, becoming desperate, they tendered their ballots and insisted on the deputy receiving their ballots and it was only when be was threatened with the demolition of the polling booth that he consented to receive their ballots and he did receive them and put them in a separate envelope. These eighteen Conservatives, as I say, actually had to threaten the deputy returning officer with violence befox-e he would accept their ballots. He accepted them and put them in a separate envelope and made a separate return. When these eighteen ballots were counted that evening sixteen of them were marked in favour of the Conservative candidate and one had to poll his vote as an agent on certificate. That is the case that the Minister of Justice referred to. He said that no harm was done, that this man had voted at his own poll and that the only difference was that he had to vote on certificate as an agent. Of the two voters who marked their ballots in favour of the Liberal candidate one afterwards admitted that

he had marked his ballot in mistake for the Liberal candidate. The other ballot was marked by a gentleman from Toronto who came in at the last hour to cast his vote and had not time to go to a more distant poll. Of these eighteen ballots, sixteen were marked in favour of the Conservative candidate, one was inadvertently marked in favour of the Liberal candidate and one voter had to mark his ballot as an agent of the candidate. That would have been shown to have been prevalent at many polls if we had had the time and the opportunity to prove it, and if we had had the assistance from this government that we were entitled to have, they being responsible for the prosecution of these cases.


Robert Laird Borden: What reason or pretence of reason was assigned for interfering with the lists in polling divisions which were wholly within the boundaries of a federal electoral district ?


William James Roche: There was absolutely no reason or pretence whatever except that these gentlemen thought they had a perfect right to go on and mutilate the lists without warrant, and they had no warrant at all. The Dominion Election Act provides that they shall adopt the provincial polling subdivisions. I have here the Act. The Dominion Election Act, chapter 6, section 24 provides that:
The polling divisions shall, except as herein otherwise provided for, be those established by or under the laws of the province for the purposes of provincial elections within the territory comprised in the electoral district tor which the eleotion is held.
So, in the face of the statute these returning officers, or at least, Mr. Leach, acting on behalf of the returning officer, mutilated, divided up, carved up the lists for the province of Manitoba notwithstanding that the provision of the statute is that they should adopt the provincial polling subdivisions. Had they adopted the provincial polling subdivisions there would have been no ground for complaint save in these border constituencies, and I have no doubt that matters could have been arranged to the satisfaction of everybody. The hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Crawford) says that there was no complaint in his riding. Why ? Because Mr. Leach did not mutilate the lists. He did not transfer the names ; they had a returning officer who did that work and if what the hon. gentleman states is correct, I presume he did it iho.nourably. We are told there were piio complaints in Brandon and elsewhere, and why ? Mr. Leach himself swore he did not touch either of these constituencies. It is only where the returning officers handed over their lists to the Liberal organizer, and this is significant and certainly not accidental- it is in these cases that the lists were work-Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
ed to the destruction of the Conservative electors and to the disfranchisement of no doubt hundreds of voters in that province. No better argument could be used as to there being no necessity whatever for interference with the present provincial law than this very fact. Had the returning officers discharged their duties, as the hon. member for Portage la Prairie says his returning office did, there would have been no ground for complaint. If these polling subdivisions overlap they might have an opportunity there of getting in their funny work, but had the government itself in that instance followed out the law as it is in Manitoba to-day there need be no trouble in that respect.


George Oscar Alcorn: Was not this matter of the cutting and carving of the lists in the polling subdivision passed on by the Court of Appeal in Manitoba?


William James Roche: Yes, I will deal with that in a moment.


Robert Laird Borden: Might I ask the hon. gentleman (Mr. Roche) whether or not any notice was given to the Conservative candidates or organizers when the lists were being mutilated in this way?


William James Roche: No, absolutely no. And where Liberals were transferred they took mighty good care they sent out information to them in order that they might know where, to vote, while the Conservatives were absolutely ignorant of the fact until election day, and even then they were unable to find out where they were transferred to. And while throughout Manitoba there were a large number- no doubt hundreds, but how many it is impossible to say-absolutely disfranchised by reason of being left off their lists and by reason of being taken off their own polling subdivision and not transferred to any other, still there were a greater number who were disfranchised by reason of their being transferred to other lists, 10 or 15 or 20 miles from their own home so that they did not know where to vote.
The Minister of Justice stated he was quite confident that there were not more than 100 disfrachised in the province of Manitoba. It is strange that we who reside in Manitoba have to come to Ottawa to learn that from the Minister of Justice. I certainly would not undertake to vouch for the number of electors that were disfrachised ; I do not think I could come mithin several hundreds of the number if I made a guess, but the Minister of Justice sitting down in Ottawa knows all about it and he can tell almost to a man the number who were disfranchised. How he can make such a statement as that is past my comprehension. No doubt he got his information from his supporters who know just as little about it as he does. I have

here a facsimile map of the vote held at Beausejour at poll No. 9. This map is marked in sections and the * X ' on the section represents the names left on the list and the * O ' represents the names taken on. Mixed in one with another on the same section you will see six voters, and perhaps four of them will be taken off and two left on, and the four taken off were Conservatives. Does any one suppose that was accident? If they say it was by accident they may tell it to the marines. No intelligent man will believe it. There does not seem to be any particular method in striking off the names except the method of selecting the Tories and taking them off the list. I will pass this around for the inspection and information of hon. gentlemen, so that they may see that on one section of land there would be four residents, two of them Liberals and two of the Conservatives, two transferred, two not transferred-and those that were disfranchised were the two Conservatives. Can the Prime Minister uphold such a thing as that? I am sure his supporters have not told him one-half the nefarious transactions in the holding of that election. Well, these officials were arrested and after the preliminary investigation they were sent up for trial. At the first trial the judge threw out the charge on the technical ground that the words ' wilfully erased ' were not inserted in the charge, and he stated that had to be proven, and so a different procedure had to be taken. It came before Judge Perdue and Judge Perdue after hearing counsel withdrew it from the jury again on technical grounds as to what constituted a voters' list. An appeal was taken from Judge Perdue's decision and it came before' the full court consisting of Judge Kichards and Judge Phippen. I told in my hand the judgment of the full court, and I will read it to the House. This is it:
When the returning officer appointed to hold a Dominion election for an electoral district in Manitoba, selects one of the copies of the lists of voters sent to him by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery pursuant to section 21 of the Dominion Elections Act 1900, as the one which he will certify and forward to the deputy returning' officer as required by section 41 for use at one of the polling subdivisions, that copy so selected becomes a voters' list within the meaning of section 503 of the Criminal Code 1902, and it is an offence under that section for the returning officer wilfully to erase names of voters from it, either before or after he certifies it and forwards it to the deputy.
That was the point on which Judge Perdue withdrew the case from the jury.
Such returning officer has no authority under the Dominion Elections Act, 1900, to create a voters'list upon which the election is to be held, or, under sections 22 and 23 of the Elections Act to make a new division of a constituency into polling subdivisions and rearrange the names of the voters for each when there are
in fact polling divisions already established and used at the last provincial election for the same territory, whether or not such polling divisions had been erected in strict accordance with the requirements of the provincial statutes. The returning officer who wilfully makes such erasures from the voters' lists cannot escape punishment on the ground that he had to make them in consequence^ of having made new polling subdivisions which he had no authority to make. The fact that the heading of the list of voters in question used the words 'registration district No. 3,' instead of ' polling division No. 3 ' did not justify the returning officer in believing, if he did believe, that there were no polling divisions, since the territory of No. 3 was correctly described in the same heading.	_	_
The court having held that the trial judge had erred in withdrawing the case from the jury and directing a verdict of not guilty, ordered a new trial. .
There is the court of appeal distinctly pointing out that this returning officer had no business whatever to violate the Dominion Elections Act in the manner in which he did. If they had complied with the law there was no possible justification or excuse for adopting the method of dividing the list in order to conform to this new policy of subdivisions. I would read a few words from the argument that followed. Judge Richards stated :
The contention for the defendant is that, under section 22 of the Dominion Elections Act, a returning officer is required or permitted to fix the limits of polling divisions, and necessarily therefore to deal with the lists of voters sent him by the clerk of the crown in chancery by so altering them that they shall suit the limits of the divisions that he so fixed.	.
I find myself unable to accept that view. Section 22 only requires, I think, that returning officer to get the documents or papers (other than voters' lists) named in that section, for the purpose of ascertaining what the already established polling divisions are.
Further on, Judge Richards said:
It was admitted by defendant's counsel on the argument that the defendant did in faot, by his proclamation under section 16, alter the area of the polling division to which the list which he is charged with altering applied. He took off part of the area and. added territory not previously in the division.
It was argued that, even if he had done that wrongly (as it seems to me that he did) it, nevertheless, became necessary as a result of that alteration that he should alter the list so as to make it correspond with the new limits, and that such latter alteration thereto became his duty and that as a result he could not lie punishable for making it wilfully, but that his only liability, if any, would be for the alteration of the area of the. division.	,	,
The contention, if sound, would imply that, because he committed a breach of the law, which he should have known would necessarily cause him to commit a further breach, he is not to be responsible for committing the

second breach. If that were good law, then if statutes forbid changes in the divisions and also forbid changes in the lists, but provided penalties for the latter offence only, a returning officer who wished to alter the lists to favour a candidate could do so with impunity by first deliberately altering the divisions and then justifying under such last named alterations when charged with having changed the lists.
, Where a man commits a breach of law knowing that it will necessarily involve his committing another breach, and he does also commit that other breach, it seems to me that to the extent to which the law provides penalties for such breaches he is liable to punishment for either, or for both of them.
In this he was supported by Judge Phip-pen iu the following words :
It is now argued that the returning officer may disregard these conditions and of his own judgment, under section 23 of the Dominion Elections Act, declare ' that under the laws of the province there are no polling divisions for the purpose of provincial elections/ and then proceed to create divisions and prepare new lists.
I do not think the statute will bear any such construction. To my mind parliament never intended returning officers, appointed and acting in the heat of an election, to be the final court of appeal and to determine such delicate matters in the absence of the parties and with no provision for their being heard. Such questions can be settled only by the courts, then all parties will at least have an opportunity of being present. There were polling divisions in fact for the purpose of provincial elections, and beyond that the returning officer had no authority to inquire. It was not his business to reject that which in fact existed because of supposed illegality in its creation. I am, however, inclined to the opinion that these polling divisions were such in law as well as in fact.
I would therefore answer the questions stated in the case as follows: In my opinion the learned trial judge did not properly withdraw the case from the jury, nor did he properly direct a verdict of ' not guilty ' to be entered.
There is the decision of the court of appeal and in the face of that the Minister of Justice declared that somebody had to do this dividing, that it was necessary that it should be done, and why then do we condemn them for the operation of the red line ? The provincial government used the black line. Who used the black line ? The judges of the province of Manitoba are commanded by law to make the division where there is overlapping or a new registration requiring the division of the lists. That work by the provincial law is to-day in the hands of the county court judges, any judge to be named by the Lieutenant Governor in Council and to that judge is assigned the duty of making a division. It is not left to any returning officer. Which is the fairest law, the present provincial law leaving this work to the judges or the


William James Roche: proposed law which we are now discussing? In connection with this red line business Mr. E. L. Howell appeared to defend the culprits, R. E. A. Leach and his associates, and he stated that he appeared there on behalf of the Dominion government. Fancy these men, who had been guilty of this act as evidenced by the decision of the court of appeal, who had disfranchised the Conservative electors by the score and by the hundred, being defended by Mr. F. L. Howell, of Winnipeg, who stated that he was there at the instance of the Justice Department of this government. How different were their actions in 1896 when they caused the arrest of a number of innocent deputy returning officers in Macdonald, where there were supposed to be unwarrantable trafficking with the polls and disfranchisement of Liberal electors. Did the provincial government there, although a Liberal government, spend any of their money ? Not at all, they called on their friends here and this government spent nearly $10,000 without securing a verdict against any one of them, in hunting down the supposed criminals. But in this case they sent their legal representative in Winnipeg to defend the culprits who had been guilty of disfranchising their Conservative opponents.
I quoted a while ago the statement that under the provincial law the judges have to do the dividing of the territory and of the lists. Here is the statute for that:
In the event of territory comprised within or partly comprised within an electoral division being changed and included in another electoral division, or other electoral divisions, whether newly created or not, a judge of one of the county court divisions of the province, to be nominated and appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, shall subdivide the names appearing on the list of electors as so finally revised, according to the altered boundaries or limits, and make a complete list of electors for the electoral divisions affected, as aforesaid, and appropriately divide the names of electors and allot the territory between suitable polling subdivisions as shall in the opinion of such judge be just and equitable.
Is that not a fair provision to have the work done by the provincial judge of Manitoba, taking it out of the hands of the returning officers ? By this It is possible to judge which law Is the more fair.
Some returning officers were arrested. One of them was named Duggan-and by the way I cannot congratulate the government on the superiority of the gentlemen whom they selected in some instances at any rate, to act as returning officers. This gentleman's training, however reputable he may be, has not been such as to win the confidence of the electors of that constituency. Mr. Duggan, some time before he was selected, was a clerk in a hotel kept by his brother in Selkirk,


Samuel Jacob Jackson: That is not correct.


William James Roche: That is in the evidence, anyway.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: It is not.


William James Roche: I think it will be found that I am right. The hon. gentleman once before contradicted me. I referred to Mr. Duggan as a bartender at one time. He had been bartender, but some time prior to his appointment he was clerk in the hotel, and the hon. gentleman admitted that in a speech a few sessions ago.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: That statement is not correct.


William James Roche: We will look up the evidence and see whose memory is the best. What was Mr. Duggan?


Samuel Jacob Jackson: Go ahead and tell It.


William James Roche: In what capacity was he acting prior to being appointed?


An hon. MEMBER.: Was he a bartender?


Samuel Jacob Jackson: No, he was not.


William James Roche: Duggan gave some evidence. I have not got the evidence, but have a portion of it. He was the returning officer for Selkirk. It was he who took the proclamation to Mr. Leach; it was he who took the voters' lists to Mr. Leach to have them fixed in accordance with the new alterations, and he was brought before the court and gave a certain amount of evidence. We shall see the character of this evidence, as I propose to read some of it :
Q. Did you supply any one with a copy of the lists as altered?-A. No.
Q. Did you show anybody a copy of the lists as altered?-A. No.
Q. Did you know where the Liberal com mittee got their copies from?-A. I do not.
Q. Are you prepared to swear they did no, get them from you?-A. They did not.
Q. You have told us that you did not look over those lists you received nor check them over in any way-
That is the lists he received from Mr. Leach.
Q. So you cannot swear whether a number of electors were not left off altogether?-A. I could not.
Q. There might have been for all you know? -A. There might have bean.
Q. There might have been 100 struck off or 500 and not put on any other list and you would not know anything about it? Is not that the fact?-A. Yes, I did not check them up.
Here is a returning officer who certified to this list as being correct. In the face of the declaration of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth), who states that there
were not over 100 electors disfranchised iu the whole province of Manitoba, here is a returning officer who swears that there might have been 500 names struck off that list and not put on any other and he did not know anything about it.


Mr. E. M. MACDONALD.: Why did the Attorney General of Manitoba enter a nolle prosequi in this particular case?


Mr.  W. .T. ROCHE@Marquette: I am coming to that.
Q. And that is the conclusion to draw from the fact that you did not check them over. You cannot tell whether 500 were disfranchised or not owing to the alterations?-A. I could not swear.
Q. And yet you as returning officer certified to the correctness of the list you issued?-A. Yes.
That is the kind of returning officers this government appointed. Whether there were 100 or 500 disfranchised, they certified to the list without knowing about it, but the Minister of Justice (Mr. Aylesworth) knows to a man almost how many were disfranchised in the whole province.
Mr. Leach was also sworn. He said at the investigation that he was the chief organizer of the Liberal party.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: Give me the names of any men outside of the few who were disfranchised.


William James Roche: Give me the various voters' lists, some of which are here in the office of the clerk of the Crown in Chancery, and give me the lists that were destroyed by your deputies and I will show you.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: That is no answer to my question.


Mr. STAPLES.: I can give the hon. gentleman twenty-eight of them.


William James Roche: I went to the clerk of the Crown in Chancery and asked to be allowed to peruse some of those lists, and he admitted that many had not been returned at all. Where are they? They were destroyed no doubt by the various deputies lest they might be incriminated, and now, four years afterwards, the hon. gentleman challenges us to give the names of the men who were disfranchised.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: I am just following your leader's example. He is a great man" for challenging to give names. I will give some to-morrow.


William James Roche: During 1904 Mr. Leach was chief organizer for the Liberal party. In the summer of that year he had been doing organization work in connection with the voters' lists for the Manitoba constituency. He had been doing the work of preparing the lists for the committees, copying in the books the reports, preparing a different division of the polling districts

from those mentioned in the registration papers. Some time before the election and before the writs were issued, he was making arrangements for having the lists in the elections different from those used in the Dominion elections. He was asked:
Q. What were the methods of arriving at the lists which were used?-A. After planning cut what we thought would he suitable polling subdivisions, we prepared lists to conform with these divisions.
Q. Who were present while you were doing that work? I presume you were not personally doing the work yourself? Did you supervise the work?-A. I directed it.
Q. Who were the persons actually doing the work?-A. Mr. Neighorn was chiefly charged with the responsibility.
b He goes on to say that he did not touch either the Brandon, Dauphin or Portage lists. That is the reason these gentlemen had no complaints coming in. Mr. Leach did not have the opportunity of disfranchising in connection with these lists. But with these exceptions, all the lists in the other constituencies were prepared under his supervision. On being asked regarding the secrecy of the operations, he gave evidence as follows :
Q. You Carried out the work in the same way as the rest of the work in this office-in such a way that information as to what was being done did not go outside, as far as you know?-A. It did not get outside.
Q. Except to the Liberal organization and the persons you thought entitled to the information?-A. We did not take any pains to notify our opponents.
Q. But you took good care to keep your work from your opponents. You were doing your work as effectively as possible?-A. It turned out to be effective.
This is the Leach who flaunts the operation of the thin red line as having done its work very effectively in disfranchising the citizens of that province. The Liberal organs of Manitoba have been writing up articles to supply these gentlemen down here with material for this discussion. The authority is a very poor one, but let me give you the very best that the 'Free Press' can say

not that I agree with its conclusions, because I entirely disagree with them, but to show the very best face that can be put upon these proceedings :
Free Pr.ess, February If, 1908.
On the whole the work was done in 1901, in view of the limitations of time, with creditable acouraoy. In practically only three constituencies were there any real grounds of complaint. There were clean lists in Winnipeg, Souris, Dauphin, Marquette, Brandon and Lisgar.
I beg to differ. There were not clean lists in Marquette or one or two other of those constituencies, but where there were clean lists is where Mr. Leach did not have the opportunity of using the red line.


William James Roche: In the constituencies of Macdonald, Selkirk and Provencher there were, in some four or five polling divisions, undoubtedly irregularities.
What a mild term !
Whether these were wilfully done or not has never been established. The points at which names had either been carelessly transferred or unintentionally dropped

As, for instance, where there were 41 names scored off the list 23 of which did not appear on any other list, of which 18 were the names of Conservatives-that was merely ' careless transferring.' Of course, it was quite unintentional-but it was significant just the same.
-were Beausejour, St. Boniface and Miami. There also appears to have been some trouble at Poplar Point, although no attempt has ever been made to state the facts as to these cases.
The article goes on :
It can, however, be said that at the outside not more than forty or fifty parties lost their votes

This was stated by the hon. member for Lisgar and will be stated by other hon. members on that side. This is their authority for that statement.
-'and that with the possible exception of Provencher, the results of the Dominion elections were in no wise affected by these mistakes.
Here is an acknowledgment that a gentleman sits on the Liberal side of this House representing a constituency-Pro-vencher-that was stolen from the Liberal Conservative candidate. Here is the admission of the Liberal party organ that that constituency at least was stolen from the Conservatives. Their candidate had a majority of only 10, and in St. Boniface alone there were 25 Conservatives who were disfranchised, more than double enough to wipe out the Liberal majority. And this is the kind of argument that these hon. gentlemen put up to bolster up their case.
I am just reminded, in connection with the duplicate list, that Mr. Leach swore he was provided with only one copy of these lists by those whom he had in his employ. But he is distinctly contradicted by Neighorn who did the altering of the lists. Leach swore that he left it with Neighorn, and Neighorn swore that he made a duplicate list and handed both to Leach. And, no doubt, the duplicate was sent to his political friends to notify them where they were to go to poll their votes.
Now, I am asked by the hon. member for Pictou, ' Why were these cases dropped ?' What have we read in the Liberal press ever since this question arose in 1904 ? Persecution ! Persecution on the part of the provincial government of Manitoba against these poor officials who had done nothing wrong. So it has been stated, but I do not

think they will state it again. We were told that these officials were being persecuted. They were taken from court to court until they were brought to the court of appeal. And there it was decided that they were wrong, that they had no right to make these new polling subdivisions, and no right to treat the lists as they did. What was the use of going on when there was a decision of that kind, in the face of which "such actions cannot be repeated. Had we gone on, the charge of ' persecution ' would have been hurled still more viciously against the Conservatives. But another reason why these cases were dropped was that the Dominion government had turned this into a political question by sending Mr. E. L. Howard to represent the party in these *cases. Would it be possible to get a jury that would not be a political jury with the Dominion government defending the accused ? X think this is a sufficient answer to the hon. member for Pictou. Had the cases gone on we should have heard much more from the Liberal representatives and the Liberal press the accusation that we were persecuting these returning officers. In fact the Minister of Justice admitted as much by stating that if the present law were left in force, it would be impossible to get men to act as returning officers in future. But, as the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) rightly stated, that any returning officer who discharged his duty faithfully and well in accordance with his sworn declaration need not fear the law,-if he does his duty he has nothing to fear. Now, why were the lists in the constituency of Selkirk handed to Leach ? Mr. Duggan had been a resident of the constituency for fifteen years, and must have been much better acquainted with the constituency than Leach, in fact, Leach had no local knowledge of the constituency. Mr. Duggan, if he had an education and was a proper man to act in that capacity, having been a resident for so long, should have been able to do the work himself.
Now, what became of these gentlemen ? In the first place, we have Leach appointed to a position by the Minister of the Interior-not the present Minister of Interior. Leach carried on this work for the election in December, 1904. He was in charge of the province of Manitoba as organizer. The hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton) was Minister of the Interior at that time. Mr. Leach was a confidential friend of that hon. gentleman, and, after perpetrating these gross frauds he was rewarded by being appointed to a position under the Crown the salary of which was $3,000, if I mistake not To-day he is on the pay-roll of this government, acting in the capacity of inspector of land offices. Mr. Neighorn, the chief man in charge, has also been rewarded by being made, I believe, private secretary to the chairman of the Transcontinental Commission. Mr. Ayotte, the returning
officer for Provencher, has been rewarded with a place as immigration agent in the United States where he draws a salary the amount of which I have forgotten. He is pensioned upon the people of this country for his services to the Liberal party on that occasion, and McLeod was similarly rewarded with a government position. Each and every one of these men is to-day on the pay-roll of this country; instead of being punished for their nefarious transactions, they have been rewarded by this government in accordance with its well-established practice.
Now, this action of the government in trying to force this Election Act upon us is an evidence, a confession of the pitiable weakness of their position with the western people. As I have already said, the government fear a free and untrammelled verdict of the people. They have placed imposition after imposition upon the little province of Manitoba ever since they came into power. For reasons best known to themselves, they have been punishing that little province until now we have the crowning iniquity of endeavouring to throttle the franchise of that province. I can tell the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) that he is not going to improve his reputation with right-thinking people, Liberals as well as Conservatives, by this measure, for it is resented by the people of the west, but especially of Manitoba, irrespective of party. This measure is an acknowledgment that the government cannot hope to carry Manitoba without resorting to loaded lists. Sir, the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Greenway) when prime minister of the province, ran elections in 1892, 189G, 1899, and he never once ran an election without loaded lists. And to-day, because the lists in that province are absolutely as fair to one party as to the other, that hon. gentleman and his colleagues in this House-every one of whom has sat in the legislature behind him as premier-demand that the same handicap should be placed upon their opponents in Dominion elections.
Talk about the list being unfair. I picked up fio-day the ' Winnipeg Telegram ' and what do I find ? You would not find this in any Liberal organ in any (province of the Dominion of Canada, unless they were perfectly sure of their ground. This paper offers a bonus of $25 for every case that can be found of a man who has been improperly left off the list during this coming revision. The ' Telegram ' offers a bonus of $25 to any man who can substantiate before an impartial judge that he has appeared before a registration clerk in the coming revision this month, or next month, who is qualified to get his name on the list, and who has been refused. And who do they select for the judge ? The Hon. Charles Mickle, leader of the Liberal party in tne local legislature of Manitoba. Here is the 1 article in that paper :

There is not another province in Canada that can show such a record in the administration of its election law. There is no partiality in the administration of Manitoba's election law, for the simple reason that the system makes the elector independent of officials and renders partiality obsolutely impossible. The ' Telegram ' is confident that the fairness and impartiality which have characterized previous registrations in the province of Manitoba will characterize the registration which is about to be held. It is so confident that the electors of the province, irrespective of party sympathies, will be dealt with fairly that it makes the following proposition :
The ' Telegram ' will pay the sum of $25 to any elector in the province of Manitoba who is not already on the voters' lists who is refused registration if he applies in the regular manner and is legally qualified to vote under our law. Should any claim or claims bo made under this offer each case to be referred to Hon. C. J. Mickle, leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition in the Manitoba legislature, from whose decision there shall be no appeal. Should any award be made, one half the amount is to be paid to the elector who has been refused registration and the other half to the Winnipeg General Hospital.
I ask the Prime Minister, is it reasonable to suppose that any person holding a responsible position would make an offer of that kind if he did not feel absolutely sure of his position, absolutely confident that no such case can be found ? Under the existing law both parties will be at the court of revision, each party will have an equal chance with the other, and I say it is absurd to suppose that these charges of unfairness can be substantiated. But that is not all. Information came to me to-day that this offer is going to be followed up by another to the effect that if it can be shown that any elector was unjustifiably kept off the list at the last revision, having complied with the law in every respect, or if he was improperly left off the list, or if anybody was improperly struck off the list -and I desire to emphasize this, because no registration clerk in the province of Manitoba has power to strike a single man off the list the judge may do so, the revising barrister-I believe that to-morrow's ' Telegram ' will say that if it can be shown that any one was disfranchised improperly last year, they will pay $25 for every such case, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier himself shall he the judge. Now I think our Liberal friends, Instead of indulging in declamations and reckless assertions, should come down to hard facts, and give us specific cases if they are able to do so.
Now it has been stated that in 1904 Mr. Sifton endeavoured to pass an Act similar to this. So he did. The Prime Minister knows that. He knows that an Act was hatched, was printed in fact, but it never saw the light of day so far as this parliament is concerned, strangled almost before Mr. W. J. ROCHE.
it was born, by reason of the fairness of the predecessor of the present Minister of Justice. The present Minister of Justice, "though, will strike an opponent below the belt, he will stoop to do things of this kind that his predecessor in office would not resort to. He came into parliament with a great reputation as a legal authority ; as a politician he has proved a huge failure, hut as a partisan he has proved a splendid success. He is making for himself a reputation that certainly is not enviable west of the great lakes. In 1904, as I say, Mr. Sifton hatched an Act and told his friends never to mind a revision ; I am going to introduce an Act, he told them, that will take the lists entirely away from the officials of the local legislature, and we will have our own officials prepare the lists. It was because of that that the Liberals in Manitoba did not become active in connection with the revision of 1904, and hence they had to resort to the thin red line, they had to make it up iu some way, and they endeavoured to do it by that method. Now what does this Bill provide. There is a very significant clause here, subsection 2, which reads:
In the preparation of such lists the provisions of the laws of the province regulating the preparation and manner of revising and bringing into force the provincial voters' lists in the like oases shall as far as possible

Very significant words in the light of past experience.
-be observed and followed and no person whose name is not included in the voters' lists so prepared and revised shall be entitled to vote.
What do I mean by saying, ' In the light of past experience ? ' We had a by-eleetion in the constituency of Lisgar in 1901. The then representative, Mr. Richardson, was unseated, and a by-election was held in consequence. The provincial voters' lists were upwards of one year old. The Dominion law provides that when the lists are upwards of twelve months old, the Dominion officials shall make up lists of their own, a law with the identical words in it, following as far as possible the provisions of the provincial law. What did they do ? At that time the judges constituted the hoard of registration as they do now, the five judges of the province of Manitoba. These five judges had the power to say where the registration booths should be placed, they had the naming of the registration clerks, they had the naming of the revising barristers, the government had not a single word to say in either of these respects, either in placing the registration booths in the different districts, or in appointing the registration clerks, or in naming the revising barristers. The government had not the slightest thing to do with all that. Did this government follow out

the provision of that law ? They could have done so, but they ignored it. What did the late Minister of the Interior do ? He appointed a gentleman named, I think, Alexander McLeod, a strong Liberal partisan, and they constituted him a board of registration instead of the judges under tlie provincial law. Was that fair towards their opponents ? They ignored the provincial law entirely. Now it was not impossible to have taken these judges as the provincial law required. But they appointed this Liberal lawyer and gave him all the power that the provincial law centred in the judges. He designated where the registration booths should be, and placed them in the most inconvenient places for the Conservatives in that constituency. He appointed the registration clerks every man of whom was a partisan Liberal, and he appointed the revising barristers, not one of whom was a Conservative. These gentlemen claim that under the present Act all the registration clerks are Conservatives. Hoes this Aylesworth Bill provide that there shall be a Tory appointed to revise the new lists ? Do you suppose that it worked a hardship ? Is it wrong to have a Tory appointed as a registration clerk and is it right to have a Liberal ? Alex. McLeod appointed partisans as his officials. The Liberals appointed revising barristers of their own political faith, and they appointed registration clerks, partisans of their own. They ignored absolutely the provisions of the law. Hence, I say these words, ' as far as possible,' are utterly meaningless, and that with the provision of the present Act w'e would just see a repetition of what we did see in connection with the Lisgar election of 1901.
I wish to anticipate one or two things that no doubt will be said and to refer to one or two things which have been said by the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Crawford). He made a speech prior to the Christmas holidays in connection with the voters' lists and he made several accusations in connection with the revision of the lists' that are absolutely foundationless, as I have already proved, in connection with the Balsam Bay revision where seven names were left off. At page 348 of ' Hansard ' the hon. member for Portage la Prairie referred to the official voters' list of the district of Rockwood and he complained of the fact that 90 names had been struck from the voters' lists of polling subdivision No. 1 of that district and some 45 names left on. He made the bold statement that if the act had been done by a Grit he would have been put in the penitentiary, but as it was done under Tory instructors every man got scot-free. As a matter of fact the striking of those names off that polling subdivision was done by Judge Meyers, a gentleman who represented the Liberal -cause in the constituency in which I
have the honour to reside for many years and who was an ardent Liberal politician. He was the judge appointed. He did noting illegal. Why ? Because the district was divided by the redistribution and he had to divide the lists. Under the provincial law it was referred to a judge. Judge Meyers divided it and yet this hon. gentleman states it was done by a Tory and that if it had been done by a Grit he would have been placed in the penitentiary. Surely the hon. member for Portage la Prairie does not want to put Judge Meyers in the penitentiary for carrying out the provisions of the law. There was no more ardent admirer of his than the hon. member for Porta., e la Prairie in days gone by. He was appointed by this government. He did so under the powers given him by Act of parliament coupled with an order in council. The order in council is right here under my hand appointing Judge Meyers. I have a certified copy of that order in council in my possession. The Act which gave the judge authority to strike these names off the list is chapter 23 of the statutes of Manitoba, 1806, section 7 and subsection 4 coupled with an order in council, No. 11465. The changes in the voters' list for the electoral division above mentioned were occasioned by the fact that the boundaries of these electoral divisions were changed by chapter 11 of the statutes of Manitoba, 1907. And by a perusal of subsection 4, section 7, chapter 23, statutes of Manitoba, 1906, it will be seen that provision is made for changes in the revised voters' lists by a judge in the county court of the province to be nominated and appointed by an order in council whenever the territory comprised in an electoral division has been changed ; so that, in making changes in these electorial divisions, Judge Meyers and Judge Ryan, in another district, were each acting within their . jurisdiction and in accordance with the law.
At page 349 of ' Hansard ' it will be seen that the hon. member for Portage la Prairie said, in reply to a question of the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Bennett), as to whether these names had been struck off in open court ' no court, they simply did it on the side and it was all right.' I tell you that it was done in open court and that it was done by Judge Meyers acting within his jurisdiction according to chapter 23 of the statutes of Manitoba for 1906, to which I have already referred. Then, again, at page 349 of ' Hansard,' it will be seen that the hon. member for Portage la Prairie made this statement :
They take from one electoral division and add to another, hut they fail to make the necessary provision for the correction of the voters' lists.
This is as unfortunate as the statement that he made previously that these names were ' not struck off in open court but simply on the side and It was all right,' be-


Joseph Gédéon Horace Bergeron: And they are all Liberal judges.


William James Roche: The government need have no fear of the judges because they are all appointees of the Do-

minion government. If the Frime Minister acts on my suggestion which is a fair one, it will do away with the necessity of introducing such a Bill as this which perpetrates a rank injustice on the people of the west.


George Oscar Alcorn: And the voters could be notified of where they are to vote.


William James Roche: Yes, and at the same time the people could he notified and know at what poll they should vote. The Minister of Justice told us the other day :
We are not only adopting the provincial lists in their entirety as the basis upon which revision and appeal takes place but in addition we follow completely the provincial method of preparing and revising the lists.
But this method has been condemned by the hon. gentlemen opposite and yet the Minister of Justice says they are going to follow completely the provisions of the provincial law and to adopt the provincial lists in their entirety.
And the lists are made in accordance with whatever laws the provinces choose to enact for their own purpose, as was the intention when the statute of 1908 was passed. That is an outline of the first clause of this Bill.
And yet hon. gentlemen opposite get up and denounce the present method of compiling the present lists in Manitoba, and their own minister says he will adopt these lists in their entirety, in order to have a revision. But the whole object and the whole motive behind the Bill is to have the preparation of the lists pass into the hands of partisan officials of this government. That is the whole secret of the Bill and from our experience of the past we know just exactly how much fairness we can expect from those gentlemen in the preparation and revision of the lists.
I shall not discuss the provisions of the Bill as it affects other provinces, but as was justly pointed out so far as it relates to the unorganized districts of Ontario and Quebec it would work out in practice that all the navvies working on the Grand Trunk Pacific, who are under the influence of the contractors who are in turn under the influence of the government, would be placed upon the list and would be polled holus bolus in favour of the Liberal candidates. At any rate that is the object and intention of the Bill. The hon. member of Winnipeg (Mr. Bole) stated that there was an educational test in Manitoba which necessitated the voter being able to read the Manitoba Act in one of several languages, and lie told ns that was designed to disfranchise certain foreigners. But, at the same time he told us there was a clause in the Dominion Act by which they were going to vote the Galicians and, he said : I am going. to poll the Gallician vote. He spoke about them as if he was herding a lot of cattle ; he told us that he was going to poll the Galician vote. Yes, that is the way they did it in my own constituency. They had their homestead inspector, they had their interpreters, they had a Mounted Policeman all the way from Regina standing at the door with his side arms, and we know what influence that had on Galicians who were practically serfs in their native country. We had them standing there threatening them that they would have to serve in the army if they voted Conservative and that they would have their homesteads taken from them. The Galician interpreter was arrested with $600 in $2 bills in his pockets starting out to influence the voters on Sunday morning and he and the $600 were tied up during election week. The member for Winnipeg told us that he was going to poll the Galicians, they are not going to have much to say in it themselves, but he is going to vote them just like so many cattle. Now, this provision for voting the employees on the Transcontinental railroad is quite apparent, and although it is only a blind to put it in this Bill I am glad in one way it is associated with this outrage on the province of Manitoba. We have had an overture made to drop the unorganized territories in Ontario and Quebec and to drop British Columbia from the Bill, but the object is to get at Manitoba. They simply associate the other provinces with us in the Bill so as not to make it appear so transparent, but the overture made shows exactly the animus by which they are influenced.
I throw out a warning to the Prime Minister. I tell him that he has no idea of the feeling that has been raised in the west by the introduction of this Bill. I was surprised on a recent visit to my province to find no Liberals justifying the Bill, while every Conservative condemned it. The fair minded Liberals will not stand for it, and I tell the Prime Minister he is being misled, if he believes what his supporters have told him that there is any outcry in Manitoba against the method of preparing the prorfn-cial lists under the present provincial law, he will find many honest Liberals in that province to tell him otherwise. Why was it that the Liberal candidates throughout the last provincial campaign had scarcely a word said as to the method of preparing the voters' lists ? I never heard the thing discussed in the four constituencies I had the privilege of speaking in. The Prime Minister has no idea of the bitter feeling that has been engendered in Manitoba by this Bill, and it will not redound to his reputation for fairness as a statesman to force upon an unwilling province an Act of this most objectionable character. At the worst it will invite retaliation. I am not going to say that the provincial government will retaliate, but I do know that when the provincial government came into power and



S075 COMMONS

[Stage Direction]
when Hugh John Macdonald wiped out that Greenway Election Act which was described by Mr. James Fisher, an independent Liberal, as a monstrosity of monstrosities, there were a great many in the province of Manitoba who thought it was a mistake to repeal the Greenway law for they claimed it should be retained so as to give the Liberals a dose of their own medicine and let them know what it was to run an election under such an Act. If this Bill is forced upon an unwilling opposition in this House there may be a temptation to retaliate, and if so the last state of the Liberals in that province will be worse than the first, for to-day they are disunited, disintegrated, unable, to secure a seat for their outside leader, and with their inside leader endorsing the voters' lists as at present prepared in the province of Manitoba.
Without any investigation this Act has been introduced. The leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) has made a challenge. I wmuld like to see that challenge accepted. If they are going to force on Manitoba the making of voters' lists by Dominion officials, why should that not be done in other provinces if it can be established that other provinces have voters' lists and Franchise Acts far more unfair to political opponents than those in Manitoba? We have never had any investigation into this question, and the leader of the opposition has stated that if an opportunity is afforded he will bring forward two voters disfranchised in Nova Scotia by means of the operation of the Franchise Act there to one in Manitoba. This being the case, why should we be forced to accept such a Bill as this without any investigation? It is unjust and unfair and as a Manitoban I protest. I go still further. I do not wish to use words that may be interpreted as a threat, I do not desire them to be interpreted in that way, but I say, as has been said by other hon. members, that the opposition would be justified in refusing a dollar of supplies to carry on this government until that obnoxious measure is withdrawn. The First Minister knows the constitutional privileges which an opposition hi ay utilize to fight for what they consider their rights. He has occupied that position in days gone by. He objected to the Franchise Act of 1885 with all the resources on which he could call, and I say It Is impossible for an opposition here to calmly submit. There is a limit to the forbearance and we would be justified in refusing supplies until that Bill is modified to the extent of having the obnoxious provision relating to Manitoba and British Columbia withdrawn. There has been no complaint by any members from British Columbia as to the voters' lists there. The clauses which relate to the unorganized districts of Ontario and Quebec fall within the same category. I, therefore, feel in duty bound to move the following amendment :
William James Roche: That all the words after the word ' that ' in the proposed motion be omitted, and the following substituted instead thereof:
This House affirms that the Dominion Elections Act should be effectively amended during the present session in order to prevent corrupt practices and ensure honest elections, but that the discrimination against the provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia created by the first section of the proposed Bill is not founded upon any inquiry, evidence, report or sufficient information, is a radical departure from the principle of acceptance of provincial voters' lists and is invidious and unjustifiable.


John Crawford: Mr. Speaker, the closing remarks of the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat are almost sufficient, without any other reason, to make every honest Liberal and possibly every honest citizen of this country seriously consider the situation. The closing remarks of the hon. gentleman's speech were practically a hold-up for this House and a challenge for the Liberals of this country. In fact, his entire speech was along the line of trying to prove that the Conservatives were more honest tbaii the Liberals; that idea underlay his whole argument. I shall not follow his remarks in detail, but I would say to the Prime Minister that he need not be the least alarmed as to the feeling in Manitoba towards this legislation. I can assure the Prime Minister that this legislation has the warmest kind of support from the majority of the people of Manitoba.
I shall refer to some of the opening remarks of my bon. friend and leave it to the House to judge whether we may accept any part of them as being in keeping with the facts. He referred to certain work that was being done in connection with registration in Manitoba at the present time; be tried to make out that fair and liberal treatment was meted out to the people there with the exception of one or two cases. But in reading the order in council in regard to the situation and the time given for work in connection with the revision of the list, he did not keep in touch with the facts. In speaking of Beautiful Plains he tried to read from this order in council that there were four clear days between the closing of the registration and the revision, while there were only three. In the Gladstone division he claimed there were twelve clear days, while there were only eight. If the rest of his statements are no nearer the truth than that, the House will not put very much credence in what he says.
- Mr. STAPLES. Will you be satisfied that your grievance is remedied if the time is extended in the particular places you have in mind ?


John Crawford: I shall be better satisfied than I am to-day but not completely satisfied, because I am convinced that if

this agitation were not on here to-day, if this legislation were not before the House, I would not be getting a promise of that kind.


William D. Staples: Will the hon. gentleman allow me ? Who fixes the dates for the courts of revision ?	.


John Crawford: The Lieutenant Governor in Council-the political machine of the province of Manitoba. It is not the judges, as our Tory friends throughout the country would lead the people to believe. The judges have no control over the courts of revision as to fixing dates.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: The hon. member for Marquette said it was the judges.


John Crawford: There were only eight clear days in Gladstone and three in Beautiful Plains.


William James Roche: The last date for the court of registration in Gladstone is May 28, and the court of revision 9th June. Can you make eight days out of that ?


John Crawford: I will read it and show the hon. gentleman he is not correct.


William James Roche: I am quoting from the ' Gazette.'


John Crawford: June 1, for the court of revision in the electoral division of Gladstone ; in the town hall of Gladstone on June 9. In all eight clear days. The hon. gentleman said to-night there were twelve days.


William James Roche: In justice to myself let me point out that the latest court of registration is usually that at the foot of the list. The last notice of the registration clerk at the foot of the list is usually the last court of revision, and in this case it was set at the 28th May. But I notice that above there was a court of revision advertised for June 1, which I overlooked. I took the notice at the foot of the list as being the last court.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: You will have to revise the rest of your speech.


John Crawford: In connection with the proposed legislation I do not think there is any better evidence this House can have for the securing of something along this line than the fact that throughout the country, for the last four years, mere have been hurled at the Liberal party statements of the most extravagant kind imaginable as to what they did in the elections of 1904. The discussion here up to the present has gone to prove that we have an undesirable condition of affairs in connection with the conduct of the elections in Manitoba and that there is need for some remedy. I have spoken on this question every session since the election of 1904 and have taken the 256
position that the conditions surrounding the running of elections in the province of Manitoba are such that we ought not to tolerate. A great part of the long speech we have just heard was spent on a comparison between the Greenway legislation and that of the Roblin government, trying to prove that the latter was better than the former. But so far as we on this side are concerned, that is not an issue because in this Bill we adopt the legislation of Manitoba. And while I do not approve of the Manitoba law in its entirety and propose to show where I take exception to it, the greatest trouble we have in that province lies in the administration of the law. The provincial government have taken full conu-ol of the administration of the law. No official or judge has anything to say as to how that law shall be administered. The full control is taken by the executive council.


Mr. LANCASTER.: Do not the judges revise the lists ?


John Crawford: Only on the direction of the executive council and only during the hours fixed by the executive council. Let me give you an idea how that works out. In the Beautiful Plains division where I live, the necessary time is not provided to make a proper revision of the list. The time allowed by the executive council of Manitoba to revise the list is five hours in a day from 1 to 6 o'clock p.m. Only during those hours can the judge act in connection with the revision of the lists. Is that fair ? The hon. member for Marquette (Mr. W. J. Roche) complained bitterly of the conditions under the Greenway Act and he referred to Beautiful Plains, where he said the list was stuffed to the extent of 107 names. But what was the condition last year ? There wei'e almost 600 names to be adjusted in connection with that list in that same division last year. We succeeded in striking off 319 names and adding 184. How does that compare as against a list stuffed with 107 names ? And how did we get this adjustment ? Was it by law ? Not at all. We had to meet our Tory opposition independent of the courts, and only at the will of our opposition friends did we succeed in getting any of those names off. If we had gone into the courts and argued, we would not have got 10 off. And after getting those few adjusted in that amicable way, there were 75 or 100 more that should have gone off but on which we could not agree. That is the kind of administration we are getting in Manitoba. The condition is not endurable and does not compare in any way with the conditions under the Greenway legislation of some years ago which is so condemned by our Tory friends.
In connection with this whole matter, I am satisfied that the people are tired of the situation. I am satisfied that the people, particularly in the province of Manitoba,



are tired of hearing about those 9,000 names which were disfranchised by the red line. They are tired of hearing about what was done, or supposed to be done, in the way of irregularities in 1904. I know that the Liberals of Manitoba are convinced that the law for running Dominion elections is bad and they want to have better arrangements. I am satisfied that our Tory friends came to the conclusion that the situation is not right, as proven by the fact that, for three or four years, they have had charges standing against Dominion officials and they have spent thousands and thousands of dollars of our money trying to secure convictions and finally quit the job without succeeding. They must have come to the conclusion that the situation is bad and that there should be some remedy for it. I think that is the conviction of the honest-minded people of this country generally. Now, if the law is in such a shape that wrongs of that kind can be committed, 1 think it is up to this government to provide such legislation as will prevent such wrongs in the future. On the other hand, there should be some law that would provide for the protection of these officers. If these acts were legal acts, acts that it was proper for these officials to do, I think this country should give them protection ; something should be done for these people who have been persecuted and hounded for the last four or five years. I take the position that no wrongs were done, but that, in adjusting the lists, of 1904 as they did, the returning officers did what they had a right to do. And what I take exception to here as mentioned by my hon. friend from Marquette (Mr. W. J. Roche) that when some of our Tory friends did the same things of which complaint is made against Liberals, they were not prosecuted by the authorities of the province ; they were allowed to go scot free while the Liberals were hounded. I think we want to get something that will get us away from this whole trouble and agitation.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Before the hon. gentleman leaves that point, will he allow me to ask him a question ? He belongs to Manitoba, and I want to understand the situation as a citizen of the Dominion. I think he said there was a hardship in these judges not having time to revise the lists. Will he tell me of any case in which a judge refused to adjourn a court to another day when he was not through with this work ?


John Crawford: I can tell him that Mr. Heap


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I do not want to know about him.


John Crawford: He was sitting as a judge and had the powers of a judge so
far as his work was concerned-


John Crawford: 


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I do not care about Leach. There are judges in Manitoba, and the hon. gentleman knows what a judge is. And these judges are reputable men.


John Crawford: I am speaking of Mr. Heap.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I would like the hon. gentleman, if he will, to answer my question. I am talking about the judges of the province of Manitoba. He said that there is not time for them to do their work. I ask him, can he give an occasion where any of these judges who did the revising refused to adjourn a court when he was not through with the work of revising ? If he cannot tell me that, I would like him to say so.


John Crawford: The order in council is imperative, and where a judge adjourns his court for the purpose of placing men on the list who were not on, the attorney general of the province took the position that it was an illegal act and he took those names off the list-at least approved of the taking the names off.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Will the hon. gentleman kindly tell me what was the name of the judge when it did happen ?
Mi\ CRAWFORD. Mr. Heap was the revising officer. Now, in connection with the working out of the situation in Manitoba in the last election, I take the position that the returning officers did their work and did it as they had a right to do. But, at the same time, I must say that they were put in a position which they should not be asked to occupy. Section 24 of the Dominion Elections Act provides :
The polling divisions shall, except as herein otherwise provided, be those established by or under the laws of the province for the purpose of provincial elections within the territory comprised in the electoral district for which the election is held.
Now, in the situation as it existed in 1904, in Manitoba, there were no polling divisions established by law.


William James Roche: The judge in the court of appeals said there were.


John Crawford: I challenge any hon. gentlemen opposite to show and define any polling division established in the province of Manitoba by law.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: I would accept the challenge and say I defeat the hon. gentleman by quoting the fact that the court of appeal of the province of Manitoba said that there were-and that is pretty good authority.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Chief Justice Howell, of the court of appeal of Manitoba, before the special committee two years ago, made the statement made by the hon. member of Portage la Prairie (Mr. Crawford).



- Y, 1908

William James Roche: And lie was overruled by bis colleagues.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: His judgment was appealed from and overruled, and he-


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: He was not overruled at all.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: He was overruled by the full coui't, and my hon. and learned friend (Mr. E. M. Macdonald) ought to know that.


John Crawford: I make that statement and I have yet to find out that any poll was so established. I have read the evidence taken before the committee, and even If you take the statement made by the hon. member for Marquette, you will see that they do not say there was a poll established.


William James Roche: Certainly they do.


John Crawford: No, they say that If it did exist the officer had a right to do so and so.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: They said it did not exist.


John Crawford: No, they did not. The position in which the returning officers were placed when they were called on to carry out the election in the province of Manitoba was this :	I have here before
me the lists of Manitoba, nearly all of them, and you can go over these lists from one end to the other and there is not a polling division mentioned throughout the lot-they are all registration divisions, and there is no evidence anywhere that the returning officer could show in any shape or form that there existed a polling division anywhere in the province of Manitoba. That being the case, I take the position that the returning officer did perfectly right in creating his own polls as he saw fit. And that was done. Some of these lists were less suitable for polling divisions than others. Let me cite a case from my own division in which there was no formal allegation that there was any disfranchising by the ' Thin Red Line ' notwithstanding Hon. Robert Rogers, who has been quoted here to-night, said that there were 1.395. I will cite one instance in my own experience. I have possibly one of the most favourable divisions for establishing polling places in the province of Manitoba. Here are two townships and a half in the provincial constituency. At one end there is a town largely Grit, at the other end there is a town that is largely Tory. These are all put into one poll, and the Grits are forced to go from their town twelve miles to the other town to vote. I think the returning officer under those conditions would have the right to divide that poll and make it convenient for the voters. I think the poll is numbered 44. Under such conditions I think the returning officer was justified 256i
in doing everything he did do, and he should not have been subjected to prosecution. The hon. member for Marquette said to-night that no one had been prosecuted for making a division where there was an overlapping of polls. Now, I have here a map showing a case where there is an overlapping of one polling division into the counties of Lisgar, Macdonald and Souris. I have here the federal electoral list. The division is called the provincial electoral district of Mountain, registration district No. 5 ; 41 names apply to Souris, 6 to Lisgar and the balance to Macdonald. Yesterday with the clerk of the Grown in Chancery I checked over this list with the lists that were used at the election by the deputy returning officers in those three polls, and I find that every name was on these lists that were used in that election. But what happened? The returning officer was arrested and prosecuted for dividing that list to suit the circumstances of the case. Mr. Leach, the organizer, was also arrested in connection with the same matter. I am satisfied that so far as the polling divisions are concerned the returning officers were justified in what they did. I have here the lists that are supplied to the returning officers for the electoral division of Portage la Prairie. On those lists there are about 13,000 names, and of those 13,000 names, 4,244 do not belong to the division of Portage la Prairie, and these of course can be put to one side. Then we have in round figures 7,000 names that belong wholly within the territory of the division. Then we have of those that lie partly within the division and partly outside the division names to the number of 1,494, of which 556 are within the bounds of the federal division of Portage la Prairie and 938 outside. Now, here is where the trouble comes in. There are 11 polls that overlap, as shown on a map that I will lay on the table of the House. In poll No. 8 in Beautiful Plains there are 49 names that belong to Dauphin and 145 that belong to Portage la Prairie. In the Gladstone district there are two polls overlapping, in one of which 21 belong to Dauphin and 21 to Portage la Prairie; in the other poll, 15 belong to Dauphin and 38 to Portage la Prairie. In Lakeside there are 90 votes in Macdonald, in poll No. 4, and only 1 in Portage la Prairie. To get a man on list No. 4 for that district you would have either to strike off 90 names and leave the one on, or attach it to some other poll. In poll 3 there are 112 names in Portage la Prairie and 123 in Macdonald. In the original division of Portage la Prairie that overlaps, there are 93 votes in Portage la Prairie and 63 in Macdonald. In Cypress there is a poll overlapping which has 46 names in Portage la Prairie and 164 outside. In South Brandon there are two polls that overlap. In one poll there are 63 in Brandon and 3 in Portage la Prairie ; in the other there

are 34 in Brandon and 56 in Portage la Prairie. In Norfolk there are two polls that overlap. In one there are 86 in Brandon and 17 in Portage la Prairie ; in tlie other poll there are 111 in Brandon and 24 in Portage la Prairie. Out of 556 names there are 123 on these lists in polls that overlap of persons who have not fixed residence, and you cannot tell whether they belong to Portage la Prairie or to Dauphin by looking at the lists.
There is no judge or returning officer who can in any way locate and distribute these names unless he goes to the place and takes evidence. I am surprised that in so far as this particular division is concerned we got off with as little trouble as we had in that election and the reason that things worked out as smoothly in regard to the matter as they did was that all those who were on these lists that had not the proper qualification were left in Portage la Prairie whether they belonged there or not. In regard to the situation and how it works out you will find that in the division of Portage la Prairie there are parts of seven local provincial constituencies and not one whole one. If you want to see a gerrymander, or see a division made to suit political purposes, just look at the constituencies which form part of my division. They run in all kinds of shapes. In every one of them there is more or less trouble in adjusting matters. I took the trouble to go into the situation in so far as the polling subdivisions were concerned, and the working out of things by the returning officer in the Portage la Prairie federal division in the last election. I found that in some of the polling subdivisions for provincial purposes there was only an average of 100-5, but, as arranged for' federal purposes there were 114 people to each poll, and it was a much more convenient arrangement. Everybody was conveniently provided for and nobody had more than six or eight miles to travel to cast his ballot. In connection with the working out of the election law in the province of Manitoba, let me say that our political opponents take the position that at no time has there been any particular exception taken to the preparation and revision of the voters' lists. The hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Roche) is pleased to quote as frequently as possible the position which the Hon. Mr. Meikle took with regard to this election law7 that we have in Manitoba. The way that the hon. gentleman makes the statement misrepresents the facts and misleads the House from the fact that the law that Mr. Meikle referred to has no more semblance to the law that is in existence to-day than a black cat has to a white one. The law that Mr. Meikle referred to was the first law passed by the present government when it came into office in 1900 or 1901. That law Mr. Meikle, I think, approved of, and I am prepared to-night to say that the Mr. CRAWFORD.
provisions of that law met my views more completely than any other law that I know of witli reference to the preparation of the voters' lists. It was practically independent of any political or partisan manipulation; it was free from it altogether. But, that did not suit our Tory friends. They only had one registration under it, that registration was practically fair to all parties, but they could not stand for it and at the very next sitting of the legislature they wiped the whole thing off the statute-book. From section 21 to section 99 of the Act was repealed, entirely doing away with the situation which then existed and placing the preparation of the voters' lists completely in the hands of the executive council of the province, making it purely political and purely under the manipulation of the political machine in power, which was a much worse condition than existed under the legislation of the Greenway government which they declared to be so iniquitous. What is the difference between the two laws ? We find that in regard to the preparation of the lists, as provided for by the Greenway legislation, in so far as the appointing of registration clerks is concerned, the two laws were practically the same. The executive had authority to name the registration clerks and provide for the working out of the registration. There was ample time given, fixed by statute, far more than was given by the present order in council, for the registering of the votes by the registration clerk. Then after the registration clerk did his work the statute fixed a time for the court of revision, not a time for the sitting of the court of revision, but a time in which the court of revision could not sit. The Act provided that when the work of the registration clerk was finished the court of revision could not take place within six weeks. Six- weeks had to elapse from tHe compilation of the list by the registration clerk before the court of revision could be held. Then, what followed? As soon as the registration clerk had finished his work he had to get a complete list of the electors printed as prepared by him. Then, before the court of revision could be held these lists had to be posted up in many places throughout the country, in the school-houses and post offices and they also had to be sent to many officials. Section 22 of the Election Act of 1891 provided that a copy of the list had to be posted up in the following places in the electoral division:
(a)	Every county court office;
(b)	Every post office;
(c)	Every public school house;
(d)	Every municipal hall or office;
And shall mail to the following persons each fifteen copies thereof:
(a) The member for the legislative assembly for the electoral division last elected ;


(b) The defeated candidate for the electoral division at the last election;
And one copy to each mayor, reeve, _ councillor and alderman in the electoral division.


Samuel Jacob Jackson: That was before the revision.


John Crawford: That was before the revision. In connection with that law the people had ample time to examine the lists to see whether their names were on, or what names were left off and then there was a reasonable time allowed to appeal, a sufficient time granted to give the people every opportunity to have a complete and fair list. But, what are the conditions of this legislation that hon. gentlemen say is all right and should not be interfered with at the present time ? There is no time fixed by statute as to how long a time shall intervene between the registration and the sitting of the court of revision. This whole power is vested in the executive council and they can manipulate it according to their own sweet will. Here to-day in my own district, at my own home, where I live, in Beautiful Plains, the full time allowed for compiling and revising the whole list, where there are hundreds of names changed, is only sixteen days. In Gladstone, which is 100 miles long, the time allowed is only seventeen days. There is no comparison at all as to how the system is worked out under the Acts of Greenway and Roblin and his associates. IVe have in this proposed legislation practically decided to accept the situation so far as the law of the province is concerned and we can give sufficient and reasonable time for that work. I would say, however, that it would please me much if we could adopt the Act of 1902 of the Roblin government which places in the hands of the judges complete control of making the voters' lists, including the appointment of registration clerks. That is the kind of legislation I. would like to see so far as the preparation of the voters' lists is concerned


Edward Arthur Lancaster: That is not the legislation before the House.


John Crawford: No.


Edward Arthur Lancaster: Are you voting for or against the legislation before the House?


John Crawford: The legislation of 1902, to which I have referred, would please me much better than any other proposed. We have got to have something of this kind and the present Bill will meet the requirements if we cannot get anything better.
I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned.
On motion of Sir Wilfrid Laurier the House adjourned at 11.30 p.m.

[Stage Direction]
Friday, May 8, 1908.