1909-03-30

Mr.  A. C.@: MACDONELL (South Toronto) moved for leave to introduce Bill (No. 113) to amend the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, 1907.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Explain.


Mr. MACDONELL.: The Bill which I have the honour to introduce is a short one. It seeks to remove some of the imperfections and inaccuracies of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1907, which have been revealed during the two years in which the Act has been in operation. The amendments are, very shortly as follows: The Bill seeks to amend section 15 of the Act which is a section dealing with the procedure for the reference of disputes to boards and the manner in which the application to the board must be made. The amendment seeks to put the men in the same position in regard to the notice as the employers are under the Act as at present. The Act as at present requires, in the case of the men making a demand for a board, that they shall have convened meetings and obtained authority to enable their officers to say that a strike has been decided upon in the absence of their demands being acceded to. This amendment seeks to make it unnecessary to hold these meetings for the purpose of authorizing the officers to make the necessary declaration. It is reported that a very great deal of time is wasted and that in certain cases thousands of dollars are unnecessarily expended by the men being convened and holding these meetings at which the required authority is obtained. The amendment seeks to put the men on the same basis as the employers in that regard. The second amendment is simply desired to increase the compensation awarded to the members of a board of conciliation. It has been manifest during the reference of disputes to boards which have taken place under the Act that the board sits sometimes almost day and night continuously. It sits well into the night in
order to accomplish a settlement, and the amendment proposes to increase the compensation from $15 to $25 a day and to put all the members of the board on an equality with regard to compensation. The chairman now receives $5 more than the other members. As all the members of the board perform practically equal service and as they all sit the same length of' time it is believed that the compensation shall be identical. Then, the Bill seeks to amend section 57 of the Act in some important respects.
That section is the section requiring the condition of the parties to remain unchanged pending proceedings before the board, and it also requires that employers and employees shall give at least 30 days notice of an intended change respecting conditions of employment in the matter of wages or hours. It is confined to disputes arising in connection with wages or hours, but the Bill extends so as to make it include any intended change with respect to any condition of employment. If this amendment carries, the notice will not only require to be given with respect to changes desired by either party with respect to wages or hours, but also as to any other condition of employment; it being felt that many others of the conditions of employment are just as important to the parties concerned. Section 57 is also sought to be amended by compelling the party who gives the notice to apply for a board of conciliation in the event of the other party not accepting the contemplated change, so that whether eitheT employer or employee seeks to alter existing conditions of labour by making some change and gives notice to that effect, if the other party does not acquiesce then the onus of obtaining the board is on the party who seeks to make the change and has given notice. As the law at present stands it permits either party to do that and it has not been found that it works altogether equitably. I think myself that the onus, as in the case of every other dispute, should be cast upon the party who gives notice of the change. Then again section 57 says that where a dispute has been referred to a board, until the dispute has been finally dealt with by the board neither the employers nor the employees affected shall alter the conditions existing with respect to wages and so forth. The change contemplated by the Bill is intended to prevent a change in the conditions of labour taking place at any time after the giving of the notice. At present the section permits the employer or employee to change the conditions after the notice has been given and before the board has been appointed. The parties are practically at issue when the notice has

been given and it is felt by many that after notice has been given and when the parties are practically at issue, no change in the conditions should be permitted until the dispute is dealt with and disposed of by the board. At present changes can take place at any time before the board is constituted, but this amendment will cover the whole period of time and prevent any change in the conditions of labour taking place between the initiation of the notice and the final disposition by the board.


Mr. FIELDING.: As the hon. gentleman read his Bill I would be inclined to think it comes within the prohibition respecting money Bills. I understood the hon. gentleman to say it would increase certain allowances and expenditures. We can see as to that before the Bill reaches a further stage and I do not wish to press the point now.


Angus Claude Macdonell: The minister is quite right with regard to one section of the Bill.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

Mr. A. B. CROSBY (Halifax).: Before the orders of the day are called I desire to ask the Minister of Agriculture if he has received any communication from the commercial committee of Halifax, a body composed of members of the city council and of the board of trade, with regard to the establishment of a cold storage in that city. I understand that a communication has been addressed to the minister inclosing a resolution which asks the government not to take up the question of cold storage with any company until the commercial bodies of the city of Halifax have approved of a charter which they consider will be in the best interests of the city.


Hon. SYDNEY FISHER (Minister of Agriculture).: I have received a communication from the board of trade of Halifax as well as other communications from that city and from various persons in Nova Scotia in regard to this matter. The communication from the board of trade requested me not to come to any conclusion unless the board of trade of Halifax approved the company. I replied that I could not pledge myself to that, but that any recommendation from such an influential body as the Halifax board of trade would receive every consideration from me before I arrived at a decision.


Adam Brown Crosby: My understanding is that they desire to have an opportunity of approving of the charter, not of the company.


Sydney Arthur Fisher: I did not understand it so.
Mr. MACDONELL



RAILWAY CROSSINGS IN THE WEST.

Mr. WILBERT McINTYRE (Strathcona).: I wish to ask the Minister of Railways whether he has received any representations regarding the width of the openings at private railway crossings? As Die minister is well aware there will come into being hundreds of such crossings in the west this year. The Act provides that the maximum width of such openings shall be 16 feet but the fact is that a great deal of the farm machinery now used in the west cannot pass through such an opening. It is contended that the maximum width should be 18 feet. In view of such representations I would ask if the minister intends to bring in legislation to remedy this defect in the law?


Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways).: I have just received a communication from the chief of the Board of Railway Commissioners with reference to this matter but I have only had time to glance over it. I should judge however from the communication that legislation in this respect is not necessary. With his usual practical turn of mind the chief commissioner has already prepared a draft order with reference to the width of openings at crossings, and fences, and gates, and other matters in connection with the railways in the west in particular. This draft order he is sending out to the different railways and he will give those interested an opportunity to be heard at a meeting of the board in Ottawa in May next. I think it is quite safe to say that the order will provide that the openings shall be at least 18 feet wide.



DEPARTMENT OF MARINE AND FISHERIES INVESTIGATION.

Mr. R. L. BORDEN.: I would ask the Prime Minister *whether he will be able to carry out what was understood on Wednesday last when he said that he would place his policy in connection with the report of Mr. Justice Cassels before the House not later than to-day.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER.: The order in council has just been placed upon the table.



DISMISSAL OF INTERCOLONIAL EMPLOYEES.

Adam Brown Crosby: I wish to ask the Minister of Railways whether he has heard anything about the dismissal of a number of freight handlers in the city of Halifax and if so would he state why they have been dismissed. I am credibly informed that after the dismissal of these men some of whom have been engaged on the Intercolonial Railway for the last five or six years, others were taken on in their places.


George Perry Graham: I have heard nothing of it except what appeared in the newspapers.



GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC LOAN.

Hon.  W. S.@: FIELDING (Minister of Finance) moved that the House go into committee to consider the following proposed resolutions:
Resolved, that it is expedient to authorize the Governor in Council to advance by way of loan to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company a sum not exceeding ten million dollars for the purpose of aiding the company in the completion of the construction of the prairie section of the western division of the National Transcontinental Railway, the sum so advanced to bear interest at the rate of four per centum per annum, payable half yearly, and to be repayable in ten years from the time the loan is made, or if advanced in instalments, then in ten years from the time the first of such instalments is so advanced; and to provide,
That such sum, whether advanced in one or several instalments, shall be advanced upon the pledge of an issue of bonds, bearing interest at the rate of four per centum per annum, payable half yearly, to be made by the company as collateral security for the payment of such sum and interest, the principal amount of the bonds received in pledge to equal the sum advanced, such bonds to be secured, subject to any prior lien or charge, by a mortgage, or deed of trust by way of mortgage, of the prairie section, and of the undertaking, equipment and property, tolls, rights and franchises of the company in respect of said section, and to be guaranteed as to the payment of the principal and interest thereof by the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada; the form and provisions of such mortgage and of the bonds to be secured thereby, and of the guaranty thereof by the Grand Trunk Railway Company, to be substantially, as set forth in the schedule of the Act to be founded on these resolutions;
That His Majesty, in the event of default in the payment of half-yearly interest, or in default in the payment of the principal sum advanced under the provisions of such enactment, in addition to and without prejudice to any right or remedy against the company in respect of such default, and in addition to and without prejudice to any right or remedy His Majesty may have as pledgee of the whole or any part of such bond issue, shall, for the purpose of remedy, be deemed to be the holder of such bonds and entitled to all the rights and remedies available to bondholders arising according to the terms of such mortgage when default is made in payment of interest or principal of such bonds; and that default in payment of interest on, or principal of, any advances made under the provisions of such Act, shall be deemed to be default in payment of the interest on or principal of such bonds to the amount accrued thereon according to the tenor thereof;
That the Governor in Council may, in addition to the sums now remaining unborrowed and negotiable of the loans authorized by any Act of parliament heretofore passed, raise by way of loan, in accordance with and under the provisions of that portion of chapter 24 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, relating to the public debt, and the raising
of loans authorized by parliament, such sum or sums of money not exceeding ten million dollars, as may be required for making the advances contemplated by these resolutions.
He said: Mr. Speaker, the object of this resolution i3 to authorize the government' of Canada to loan to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, upon what is deemed to be adequate security, a sum not exceeding $10,000,000 to assist the company in meeting the unexpectedly large increase in the cost of the prairie section of the railway. It should be clearly understood that this resolution does not contemplate any change whatever in the contract between the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company and the government. It is rather in the nature of a banking transaction. It is proposed that the government shall become the bankers of the company, to lend it this sum of money, which no doubt the company could raise, largely if not wholly, in the ordinary way in the money market, but which in present conditions it would probably be obliged to raise under circumstances involving a considerable sacrifice, which would not be to the advantage of the company, the enterprise or the Dominion at large.
The Transcontinental Railway, beginning at Moncton in New Brunswick, at a point1 of convenient connection with our Atlantic ports, runs westward to the Pacific at Prince Rupert in British Columbia, a distance approximately of 3,560 miles. The eastern division of this line, extending from Moncton to Winnipeg, is a fraction over 1,804 miles. That division is being constructed by the government through the instrumentality of the Transcontinental Railway Commissioners, and is ultimately to be leased to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company. The resolution which I have the honour to present to the House does not in any way relate to the construction of that eastern division. The western division, extending from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert, a distance of 1,755 miles approximately, is being constructed by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company with the assistance of the government in the way of certain guarantees. This division is divided into two sections, known respectively as the prairie section and the mountain section. The financial arrangements respecting these two sections are somewhat different, and therefore it is of importance to note the point of division between the two. As respects the prairie section, the government guarantee the funds for the company to the extent of three-fourths of the cost, provided, however, that the amount shall not exceed $13,000 per mile. In the case of the mountain section, the government guarantee the bonds of the company to the extent of three-fourths of the cost, whatever it may be. In view of this difference in the financial arrangements as to the two sections of the western division,


Robert Laird Borden: When was that estimate made?


William Stevens Fielding: At the time the mortgage was prepared-July, 1905. It was estimated for the purposes of the mortgage. There were thus available for the road the proceeds of the government guarantee, $11,908,000, and the proceeds of the Grand Trunk Railway guarantee, which realized $9,601,926.30. There was thus available for the prairie section from the two sources $21,509,926.30. This provision was equal to $23,482 per mile for the 916 miles of prairie section as ultimately defined. If the road had cost no more than $23,482 per mile there would have been no need for any further assistance.


Mr. FOSTER.: What is the par value of what produced that $21,500,000?


William Stevens Fielding: In the case of the government guarantee, it is not a question of par value. We are bound to give a guarantee which will pi educe $13,000 per mile; but in the case of the Grand Trunk Railway guaranty, they had to issue bonds and sell them for what they would brifig on the market.


George Eulas Foster: What I wanted was the amount of bonds which realized those proceeds.


William Stevens Fielding: ance required to complete it. The company's statement as to the cost of the road was referred to the government engineer, Mr. Col-lingwood Schreiber, and his report was ab-'tained. His estimate of the cost of the t>rairie section was somewhat larger than that of the company. The company's estimate, allowing for value of construction equipment, gives the cost per mile at $34,059. Mr. Schreiber's estimate, making the same allowance, gives $34,943 per mile. There is thus hut a slight difference per mile between the two. The balance required, according to the company's estimate, is a total of $9,688,425. The balance required, according to Mr. Schreiber's estimate, is $10,497,522. We take the loan of $10,000,000 as being substantially in accordance with what these figures show as the amount required to enable the company to finish the prairie section. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, of course, is bound to [DOT]produce the balance required over and above the guarantee of the government. While it is correct, as stated in Mr. Hays' 'letter, that reference is made to three-quarter's of the cost of the road, it is also a fact that there is a distinct limitation put upon that cost to the government, as respects the prairie section, because it is stated that the amount to be raised from the guarantee should not be more than $13,000 per mile, and, whatever may be required in excess of that, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company is bound to obtain and the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada, the parent company, is bound to assist in raising.


Robert Laird Borden: Before the hon. gentleman (Mr. Fielding) leaves that point, I would like to ask a question, as I have not followed with complete understanding the figures which he has just given. If he will refer to page 1 of the information brought down, he will observe that the prairie section has been financed up to the present time in this way:-
$10,335,482.91, proceeds of 3 per cent bonds guaranteed by government on account of $13,000 per mile;
$9,601,926.30, proceeds of prairie section Railway Company ;
' A ' bonds guaranteed by Grand Trunk
$7,094,044.30, advanced by Grand Trunk Railway Company;
Total, $27,031,453.51.
As well as I can understand, about $5,000,000 is required to finish the prairie section.


William Stevens Fielding: No.


Robert Laird Borden: The prairie section will cost $32,000,000, of which $27,000,000 has been provided including the advance by the Grand Trunk Railway Company.


William Stevens Fielding: It is contemplated that the Grand Trunk shall take out of this Mr. FIELDING.
the amount which it has temporarily advanced. It is the Grand Trunk's money and not the money of the Grand Trunk Pacific. I think he will find that, according to the estimates of Mr. Hays and Mr. Schreiber, which are substantially the same, the latter being a little the higher, there is need of $10,000,000 to enable the Grand Trunk Pacific to finish the prairie section. But, of course, that includes the repayment to the Grand Trunk of the amount temporarily advanced.
As I have stated, it is clear that the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada, the parent company, is bound to provide this money by its guarantee; the government's obligation is distinctly limited to the $13,000 a mile, and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company and its parent company the Grand Trunk Railway Company, took upon themselves the risk of the increased cost of the road. That is the letter of the contract, and, if we wish to insist upon that, we can say to the Grand Trunk Pacific Company and to the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada: This is your obligation, you must raise the money as you find best. But while that is the letter of the law, we think it would be unfortunate if the company were forced to issue securities to raise the money at a time when, in all probability, the securities would have to be sold at a sacrifice. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is a new enterprise, and, like all new railway enterprises, its own particular credit is limited. The expectation is that, as in the case of other great enterprises, as time goes on and traffic develops, it will have a credit of its own. But every such enterprise has but little credit at the beginning and must rely upon other assistance. It is felt that, if the Grand Trunk undertake to issue these bonds themselves, they will be obliged to sell them at a considerable sacrifice. It is undoubtedly true, as stated in the letter of Mr. Hays, that, as respects securities of this character, the money market is not in a favourable condition; and if we insist that the company shall float these securities themselves, they will undoubtedly have to issue them at a price very much below par. Securities of a similar character-that is, Grand Trunk Pacific securities guaranteed by the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada-have recently been issued in London at a price of 90, and, if you take the charges for financing off that, I presume the result to the company was somewhat below 90. We think it would be a pity if the company should be forced to issue such securities at that price. We have faith enough in the enterprise to believe that, if the company is helped, at no distant day these securities will be worth par. And so, though the money market in England may

not give that value now, we propose to become the company's banker, to receive these bonds which they propose to issue at par value and lend them that amount at four per cent. We do not disguise from ourselves the fact that, in doing this, we are giving the company substantial help. Not, we believe, a money loss, but we are lending them the credit of the government in a manner useful to them. The securities will ultimately have to be repaid at par, but at present they would not realize par. The company will pay us four per cent. We have, in a recent transaction, paid a shade above four per cent for money, so, the statement of Mr. Hays that we might lend them our credit and not suffer loss may be open to criticism. Therefore, we admit that, in giving the company the benefit of this loan, we are taking at par a security which they could not float at par and giving them the benefit of four per cent though they themselves could not borrow at that rate, and the government has recently had to pay a little over four per cent.


Mr. HUGHES.: In the estimate of $34,000 per mile by the company and the chief engineer, does that include rolling stock and other equipment?


William Stevens Fielding: No, there is a special issue of bonds for equipment.
It will be remembered that, in the early days of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company >
somewhat similar conditions arose I here were periods when, great as seemed to oe the prospect of that enterprise, the money market did not view it with great favour; and application was made to the government and the government granted assistance. That assistance helped to tide over a difficulty that the company had but after a period of years, the result showed that parliament had acted wisely in granting the aid. There were differences of opinion at that time, but, no doubt, looking back over it to-day the men who did not approve of the loan at the time would be free to admit that the loan had justified itself. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company were helped over a difficulty, the road was completed, and as soon as it was in a position to establish its traffic, its credit began to improve, and, as a matter of fact, the company repaid the loan to the government before the money came due. We have every reason to hope that that will be the experience of this new enterprise. The prairie section has been generally recognized as a profitable section. The more expensive part, the mountain section, and the more difficult sections of the eastern division, are, with all their merits, not so profitable or so promising as an investment as the prairie section. We are lending this money with a special security on the prairie section and for the purposes of
the prairie section entirely. We have every reason to believe that that section will, at a very early date, prove a profitable section, and we have an abiding faith that we will not risk seriously the credit or the money of Canada in lending this company $10,000,000 under such conditions. We get for it, first the promise to pay of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company. I frankly admit that that in itself, at this moment, is not of the utmost commercial value. As I have already stated, any new railway company, in the early stages of its enterprise, would not find that its credit of that character ranked very high. We take a mortgage from the Grand Trunk Pacific upon the property. That mortgage is not one of high rank; there are several other mortgages before it and I do not attach the greatest importance to the mortgage itself as a security, although it has some value.


George Eulas Foster: What does that mortgage cover ?


William Stevens Fielding: It covers the prairie section. The whole transaction applies to the prairie section. The first mortgage on the prairie section, as on the mountain section, represents the government guarantee, so that the government already holds the first mortgage on the prairie section. There is then a second mortgage which represents the aid already given by the Grand Trunk Railway Company through its guarantee, and then there is the lien created by the statute to make provision for the equipment. All these will have priority over the new mortgage we are to take under this Act. A question was asked in the House as to the standing of this mortgage and I said at once that so far as the mortgage was concerned, it would necessarily be an inferior security.


George Eulas Foster: Does this mortgage include the Grand Trunk Pacific road, its equipment and everything ?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes as respects the prairie section and also the equipment of the whole western division. The first mortgage is practically held by the government through a trust company for the government guarantee. The second is held through a trust company by the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for its iown guarantee. Then follows the equipment lien and then will come the mortgage which we propose to take to secure this loan. Therefore so far as the mortgage is concerned, I do not Tegard the security as, at present of very great value.


Mr. AMES.: This mortgage is on exactly the same things as the first two, on the property of the whole undertaking.


William Stevens Fielding: The equipment lien is on exactly the same property as the two

prior mortgages. It is not secured by special mortgages but by a lien created by statute.


George Eulas Foster: Does our mortgage have
the remaining equity in everything ?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes as Tespects the prairie section. As I said I do not personally attach much present value to the mortgage security. There will come a time in the development of that property when the mortgage will become of value. For the present there are other mortgages ahead.


Herbert Brown Ames: Is the- amount of money raised, say on the second mortgage, differentiated as between the prairie and the mountain section or does the entire amount rest on the whole road?


William Stevens Fielding: It is one common mortgage on the western division, but a portion of it is specially assigned to the prairie section, so that only that much can be applied to the prairie section, but the mortgage is on the entire western division.


Herbert Brown Ames: Would not the entire mortgage on the western division have to be paid off before the third mortgage would rank on the prairie section?


William Stevens Fielding: I think so, but the mortgage says that only this specified, limited sum of the proceeds of the mortgage can be applied to the construction of the prairie section. But it is a common mortgage over the whole western division and the hon. gentleman's view is, I think, correct.


Mr. JOHN HAGGART.: Does the undertaking of the Grand Trunk Pacific cover that section of the road built to Lake Superior, or is that separate?


William Stevens Fielding: The Lake Superior branch is quite a separate transaction; the guarantee does not apply to that and it in no way relates to that transaction.


Mr. NORTHRUP.: Do I understand that the government, in making this advance, is under the belief that the Dominion of Canada has the first mortgage under the transaction of 1903-4?


William Stevens Fielding: First mortgage on what?


William Barton Northrup: On the prairie section of the road.


William Stevens Fielding: Surely they have.


William Barton Northrup: Surely not.


William Stevens Fielding: The government-guaranteed bonds are certainly the first mortgage on the whole western division.


William Stevens Fielding: 


William Barton Northrup: So my hon. friend understands.


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend understands differently?	[DOT]


William Barton Northrup: I do not think there is the slightest doubt about it.


William Stevens Fielding: 
Herbert Brown Ames: How many partners will we have in this second lien and what would be their interest therein?


William Stevens Fielding: I have not the list here; the Canada Atlantic guarantee, I think, is the chief one, but there are one or two others. If the debate should be continued I would endeavour to ascertain more precisely. This mortgage does not rank above these, it merely ranks with them.


George Eulas Foster: That is to say that the settlement between the government and the company is based on these rentals?


William Stevens Fielding: The company have not strongly contended that. They have so stated in conversation to one of our officers, but I am advised that it is a matter of doubt and I do not wish to be positive. The amount is not very large.


Mr. MIDDLEBRO.: I noticed in the statute of 1892 that the borrowed capital of the Grand Trunk Railway Company is put at $91,862,737, and that this capital is described as follows:
Four per cent guaranteed stock________$25,402,996
First preference stock	 16,644,000
Second preference stock	 12,312,666
Third preference stock	 34,884,535
Ordinary stock	 991913*000
I had a question on the Order Paper the other day with the view of ascertaining which, if any, of these classes- of stock would have preference over this guarantee. Would the minister inform me which, if any, have preference?


William Stevens Fielding: 
Herbert Brown Ames: Do I understand that this sum will be available to divide up between ourselves and all the other guarantors on the same basis if it were necessary to secure the interest on these guarantees?


William Stevens Fielding: No, I am advised that the situation is better than that; that all the other guarantees were provided for and that this amount would have been available to pay our guarantee if this proposed legislation had been in operation in any of the years which I have mentioned.


Herbert Brown Ames: Together with the others?


William Stevens Fielding: not rank high, its general credit does stand high. Though, like other railways, it has had a bad year there is every reason to believe that, with the revival of prosperity that we all feel is close at hand, our railway companies, as well as others, will share in that prosperity and that the various securities of the Grand Trunk will occupy a better position. I feel the utmost confidence that in lending our credit to the Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific at this moment, we are helping them in a time of need, we are taking an exceedingly Small risk and it is much better in the interest of the country, in the interest of the National Transcontinental Eailway, and in the interest of the credit of Canada, that the government should show their faith in this enterprise and lend them this money, taking their bonds at par, rather than that we should allow these bonds to be thrown on the market and sold at a sacrifice price. Holding these views, the government ask the House to ^ accept this resolution and the Bill which will be founded upon at a later stage.


Robert Laird Borden: Mr. Speaker, I thoroughly understand that parliament and the country are committed to this enterprise by the action of parliament in 1903 and 1904 and by the verdict of the people in 1904 when this contract, or the proposition to build this great railway, was submitted to the people of this country. Therefore, I agree that the enterprise must be carried out. Enormous sums have already been expended and it seems to me that the only question to-day before parliament is as to the terms and conditions upon which this enterprise shall be brought to completion, if those who undertook it in the first instance are not prepared to carry it out upon the conditions which were then entered into and which were embodied in two separate agreements and two separate Acts of this parliament.
Before considering that a little I think it would not be amiss that I should refer very briefly indeed to what has transpired since my right hon. friend the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) came down to this parliament on August 30, 1903, and told us that time would not wait. The enterprise of building a transcontinental railway across this continent is a great enterprise and an enterprise worthy of the people of Canada if conceived in wisdom and carried out with integrity and business ability. But this enterprise seems to have been conceived in haste, moulded for political purposes and conducted with the wildest extravagance and folly. I would not say to-day that every representation made to parliament and to the country by i the government in the initiation of this en- I terprise has been falsified by the events; 1 I could not say that, because in a great | Mr. FIELDING.
many instances the event has not yet happened and thus the promise could not yet be falsified, but to the extent that the event has transpired it would be very difficult for any member supporting the Liberal government to put his finger upon one representation made to parliament and to the people that has been borne out by any event which has so far come about. What was the great burden of the song that the Prime Minister sang to this parliament on the 30th day of August, 1903. He said:	There was great
haste; time would not wait; pray heaven it be not too late already. And why all this? Because he saw fit to represent- and I do not think he was patriotic in_ that -that the people of this great Dominion were absolutely at the mercy of the United States in respect to the bonding privilege. Page after page of 'Hansard' is taken up by the right hon. gentleman in picturing the woes and the evils and the disasters that would fall upon the people of Canada if that bonding privilege were repealed, and he declared that in his opinion at least we might any day expect its repeal. Six years have passed and in the interim, as the right hon. gentleman well knows, we have not heard the slightest whisper or word about the repeal of the bonding privilege, and so it is that two-thirds of the speech which the right hon. gentleman then made before this parliament in reference to this matter stands as mere idle wind, designed as an excuse for undertaking this enterprise in such haste and with such want of consideration.	_
There was another statement which the right hon. gentleman made in parliament and out of parliament, and that statement was that this railway was designed to open uo and develop the great northern regions of Canada. Let me quote from the recital of the agreement embodied as a schedule to the statute of 1903 and bears date July 29, 1903: ' I will omit the immaterial words:
Whereas it is in the interest of Canada that a line of railway designed to secure the mo it direct and economical interchange of traffic between Eastern Canada and the provinces and territories west of the great lakes, to open up and develop the northern aone of tnq Dominion, to promote the internal and foreign trade of Canada and to develop commerce through Canadian ports, should be constructed and operated as a common railway highway across the Dominion from ocean to ocean.
Observe the expression ' to open up and develop the northern zone of the Dominion.' That idea was developed by the right hon. gentleman all through his speech. He said it was a railway to be built bv way of the Pine river or Peace Eiver Pass to open up the rich prairies in that country. Well, if you look at the maps placed before us you will see that that railway has been built from 100 to 150

or 200 miles south of the location which was pointed out by the rigjht hon. gentleman in his speech to this House. It is not 100 miles or 200 miles south of that location all the way, because of course it was to touch at Winnipeg and at Edmonton,; but how far does it go south of the Peace River Pass and the Pine River Pass, and to what extent does it open up any northern zone of Canada which at that date was not supplied with a railway. I understand of course that it runs through the northern portions of Ontario and Quebec, but that was not what the right hon. gentleman had in mind because he explicitly mentioned the rich prairies of the west which would be found in that northern zone through which the railway was to run. On many occasions did he use expressions both in this House and out of the House which are exactly in line with my contention. He told us that the railway was to touch Winnipeg and once more plunge into new territory; he told us that the railway from its commencement to its end in addition to being a trunk line would open up millions of acres of productive land; he told us that the railway would run north of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories and the mineral regions of British Columbia; that it would go over the route suggested by the Halifax Board of Trade, (which as I understand was north of Lake Winnipeg); that it would open up our hinterland and give breadth as well as length to Canada, and, that except at the terminal points it would be at least 30 miles away from any existing railway. As reported in 'Hansard" 1903, page 10415, he told us that the Grand Trunk Pacific must be at least 30 miles from any existing railway or from any railways that had been located. But, Mr. Speaker, look at the map of this railway and the maps of the other railways laid upon the table of the House, and you find that for miles and miles the Grand Trunk Pacific runs within a stone's throw of two other great transcontinental railways which were amply assisted by this parliament before this railway was ever thought of or spoken of.
The right hon. gentleman told us there were mountains of information with respect to every matter connected with this National Transcontinental Railway; and, inter alia, he stated that the mountain section would be 600 miles long and would cost $18,000,000. The result is that the mountain section is 836 miles long and his own engineer to-day estimates that it will cost $67,056,000 or nearly $50,000,000 more than the right hon. gentleman told us it would cost. The mountains of information in that respect seem to have been singularly deficient, and I think my right hon.
friend will himself be the first to admit it.
Then again the right hon. gentleman told us:
The surplus for this year (1903) will provide for the construction of this read from Monoton to the Pacifio.
Well, the end of this financial year now approaching sees the debt of this country increased nearly $50,000,000 and the railroad is not one-third completed.
But there were further mountains of information. The right hon. gentleman said:
We can abridge the distance between Monoton and Levis by from 120 to 140 miles.
What is the result? The distance from Moncton to Levis by the Intercolonial Railway is 488 miles and the distance by the Grand Trunk Pacific is now estimated to be 459 miles, or a net saving of 29 miles between Moncton and Levis and the estimated cost is $29,176,420, so that the saving in that distance over the Intercolonial Railway has cost us exactly one million dollars per mile.
Then, my hon. friend the Minister of Finance availed himself of these mountains of information and he said:
The road from Moncton to Quebec would cost $12,569,000, the road from Quebec to Winnipeg would cost $51,625,600; the interest during construction would amount to $7,031,975, making a total of $71,156,975.
My estimate of $75,000,000, without interest, he declared to be excessive by $10,875,000. The result to-day is that the government admits that the railway from Moncton to Winnipeg, including interest, will cost not less than $124,403,000. It must be apparent to the right hon. gentleman, in view of these results as compared with his predictions, how exceedingly valuable were his mountains of information, and how true a prophet he was as to the cost of this railway to the people of Canada. There were some otheT predictions heard and some other criticisms put forward with regard to this road to which I may allude a little later on. For the present I will only say that one need not be surprised in the future it those predictions shall be fulfilled in as great a measure as the predictions to which I have already alluded and certain others to which I propose now to allude. _
My hon. friend the Finance Minister the great financial authority of the government, was not quite content to estimate the cost of the mountain section at the sum of $18,000,000, at which it had been fixed by his leader, but he did fix it in 1904, a year after the Prime Minister's estimate of $18,000,000. He had the experience of nearly a year to guide him to an accurate estimate, and he ffave us on this side of the House, as he said, the benefit of the doubt. My hon.



friend from Hamilton (Mr. Barker) had estimated the cost of the mountain section, including interest, at $56,000 per mile. The Finance Minister assured the House that was excessive. He said he was prepared to accept it under protest, but only under protest. At that estimate he said that the mountain section, 480 miles in length, would cost $26,880,000, or $40,000,000 less than that announced by the government to-day as the present estimate of the government engineers. And that was a pretty relevant statement, because he was basing upon it the amount of money which the people of this country would have to guarantee in respect of that mountain section, and he was also basing upon it his estimate of the amount of money, as interest on that guarantee for seven years, which would be paid by the people of this country without recourse. He estimated at less than $27,000,000 that which he now tells us will cost more than $67,000,000, upon three-fourths of which we shall pay interest for seven years without recourse. And so he assured the parliament and the people of this country that our guarantee on the mountain section would not exceed $21,000,000, yet according to the estimate brought down today, the guarantee which must be given by the people of this country in connection with the mountain section will be at least 150 per cent more than the amount which he named.
In 1903 he told us the same story about the surplus. He said, as reported in ' Hansard ' of that year, at page 8589:
If you had a surplus of $13,735,706, ... if you take that sum and give it to a trust company ... to invest at 3 per cent per annum, payable half-yearly.. they could pay every cent of obligation.
He will not say that to-day; he will not say to-day that double that sum would do it. Mr. Paterson said:
The cost to this country would he about $13,000,000 or $14,000,000. The Finance Minister made a careful actuarial calculation and showed that $13,000,000 or $14,000,000 paid out in instalments for twelve years would pay all the cost.
My hon. friend the member for Brandon (Mr. Sifton) went further than any of then: in this regard. He said that the Finance Minister had absolutely proved it, provided the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company and the Grand Trunk Railway Company carried out their agreement. These are his words:	i	i j
My hon. friend the Finance Minister-and I may perhaps ask that particular attention he given to this phase of the question, because I think it is the most important in the whole discussion-my hon. friend the Minister of Finance took the provisions of this contract in so far as they relate to the financial features and he went over it from end to end.


Robert Laird Borden: He made a close, and a careful and an exact calculation as to the amount of money which we should have *o pay if the Grand Trunk Pacific carries out its contract.
Hon. gentlemen have already observed how close and careful and exact the conclusion of my hon. friend the Finance Minister has proven to be. The hon. member for Brandon, who was then speaking as a member of this government, who was put forward in support of this agreement on every available occasion, and who perhaps made as strong and powerful a defence of the terms of the contract as was made by any hon. gentleman on the treasury benches, continued as follows:
That was the nature of the calculation which was made by the Finance Minister. If the Grand Trunk Company carries out its contract, then there is no escape from the conclusion which was placed before this House by my hon. friend. You cannot get over it by laughing, you cannot meet the argument by jeering at it. There is only one way of meeting the argument that he presented to this House, and that is by showing that that Grand Trunk will not be able to carry out this contract. That is the only way you can meet it. If the Grand Trunk Company carries out its contract then we will have to pay just what the Finance Minister said, not one dollar more and not one dollar less.
My hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals (Hon. G. P. Graham) spoke on this subject in 1908. I am quoting from his remarks as found in ' Hansard,' at pages 12673 and 12674; and listen to the difference between the story of 1903 and 1904 and that of 1908. The Minister of Railways and Canals was trying to use the same argument about the net amount of cash which the country would have to pay out. This is the way that hon. gentleman expressed himself in 1908:
The only burden that lies up'on this country for this railway from Moncton to Winnipeg is a total of $26,850,676 of interest that will accumulate during the first seven years of the lease to the Grand Trunk Pacific.
He was speaking, you will observe, not with the whole railway enterprise at all, but simply with that portion which lies between Moncton and Winnipeg. My hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham) made this further comment and statement:
The increased cost is due chiefly to two reasons :	first the greater cost of material and
labour, and second the improved standard of the road.
I have heard a good deal about the improved standard of this road and have been at a little pains to ascertain what the Minister of Finance was speaking about when he made this calculation in 1904. I asked him. as will be found on page 3630 of ' Hansard ':


Robert Laird Borden: Are these estimates for a four-tenth per cent grade?


William Stevens Fielding: They are estimated upon the larger sum of $35,000 per mile for the section from Quebec westward and $31,250 per mile for the section from Quebec to Moncton, ton.


Robert Laird Borden: Has the hon. gentleman any report of any engineer which says that the line can be built for that sum with a four-tenth grade?


William Stevens Fielding: No, but I have the statement of a very eminent engineer that the allowance made of 25 per cent above the first figure was a fair and reasonable allowance for that purpose.


Robert Laird Borden: Was that the Deputy Minister of Railways?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, Mr. Schreiber.
It appears that the estimate of $35,000 per mile, the Finance Minister arrived at by adding 25 per cent to $28,000 per mile, and the estimate of $31,125 per mile he arrived at by adding 25 per cent to his estimate of $25,000 per mile. I find that these, according to the view of the hon. gentleman at that time, were sufficient to provide for a four-tenth per cent grade. Therefore, my hon. friend the Minister ol Railways, in assuming there is any change, so far as grade is concerned, does not seem to have very carefully examined the statements of his colleague made in 1903-4, and that reason cannot be put forward as a legitimate one for the enormous cost entailed on the people of this country.
We had another representation to the people. The government would not allow the Grand Trunk Railway to part with their title to the $25,000,000 of common stock according to the agreement of 1903.
They said that to do so would be dangerous and that the interests of the country were being safeguarded by a position which made it necessary for the Grand Trunk Railway to hold that stock during the whole term of the lease. It would be absolutely unsafe and dangerous to permit the company to part with that stock because there might be speculation in it. Well, what transpired? The following year the government modified the contract at the request-I might say at the dictation-of the Grand Trunk Railway, and did in 1904 what it had declared to be fatal in 1903.
We were told in 1903 that the bargain was an excellent one for both parties. The Grand Trunk Pacific was behind it and would certainly carry it out. I shall not weary the House with many quotations in that regard but I shall give a few. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance was particularly emphatic. He said, referring to the Grand Trunk Railway :
We have not been content that they shall stand behind it. We have required, and they have readily consented, that they shall be in it and of it and form the whole thing.
But to-day we are met with the modest request that we shall furnish $10,000,000 1131
for the construction of the prairie section, $7,000,000 of which is to go to repay the Grand Trunk Railway for their advances, although that same company is in it and of it and forms the whole thing. Well, one is not startled by the modesty of the request, to say the least. I do not imagine that any non. gentleman m this House will be startled by the modesty of a request such as that, but it is exactly the request which my hon. friend the Minister of Finance is placing before the House in the motion he has submitted to us today. Further on I find him saying:
However, without reviving a previous discussion, I may say that this is what the Act requires, and that they have assured us that they are prepared to do what the Act requires.
The hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sif-ton) then Minister of the Interior, said:
It was a clear, distinct and unambiguous contract with a responsible company.
The Minister of Agriculture said:
Sir, we make a clear cut proposition embodied in a contract, signed and sealed with a reputable corporation of great, resources which is going ahead with this project as rapidly as possible.
And the then hon. member for North Norfolk (Mr. Charlton) who was put forward to answer the ex-Minister of Railways, Mr. Blair, who had recently resigned his portfolio because he differed with the government regarding its policy in this connection, said:
We have the entire strength, resources and character of the Grant Trunk Railway behind the Grand Trunk Pacific. The two are united together.
And last, but not least, ifiy right hon. friend the Prime Minister, said:
I do not deny that the Grand Trunk Railway is at the bottom of this enterprise. It cannot default on the eastern part, because if it does, it defaults on the western part. It cannot default on one part without defaulting on the whole. Therefore we hold them tight to their bargain, and they cannot deviate from it.
My hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) was good enough to tell us to-day that this proposal of his does not in any way alter or interfere with the contract made in 1903, as modified by that of 1904. Does it not? Let us look at it. If the contract of 1903, as modified by that of 1904, were carried out, the Grand Trunk Railway would be obliged to guarantee bonds for the prairie section to an amount which would realize between $20,000,000 and $21,000,000; but after this resolution passes the House, will there be any necessity for the Grand Trunk Railway to guarantee bonds to that amount? Mv hon. friend the Minister of Finance knows very well they will not then be under the "necessity of carrying out that

part of their contract. Therefore, while it does not formally or technically alter the terms of the contract, it does, in fact, and in substance, modify it exactly in the way I have pointed out.
We were told by the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir Richard Cartwright), who was in the House at that time, that it was really a good bargain. He said:
I believe a really good bargain may be one which is -to the advantages of both parties. I think that this is notably an instance of this sort.
It was a bargain to the advantage of both parties-that was in 1903. It was still more a bargain to the advantage of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Grand Trunk Railway after the modification made in 1904. Let us look at those modifications. I shall not refer to those of a minor character but only to the more important. In 1904, the government came back for further amendments, which, among other things, provided for an increase of guarantee on the mounain division so that we should guarantee three-fourths of the cost, no matter what it might be. Our guarantee up to that time had been limited to a cost of $30,000 per mile. They gave to the Grand Trunk Railway, as I have already mentioned, the power to dispose of the common stock, notwithstanding the declared policy of the government in the previous year against any provision of that character; and they extended the time for the building of the road by three years. No very formidable reasons were advanced why these modifications should be made. My right hon. friend did mention, and he devoted a very considerable portion of his speech to matters of this kind-that on June 15, 1671, wild roses had been found blooming at a point 200 miles distant from the location of the road as now fixed. It was also very frankly stated in the House at that time that the Grand Trunk Railway Company would not accept the first agreement and we were therefore obliged to modify it; the Grand Trunk shareholders would not approve the agreement as it was and therefore concessions had to be made. So we ratified the modifications by a vote of the majority of this House and the contract went into effect some time in 1904. We on this side characterized the terms of this agreement as absolutely insufficient to prevent the Grand Trunk Railway Company from carrying its traffic to Portland as it had done in the past. The Prime Minister had said during the debate, I think in 1904:
We cannot undo the past altogether; Portland has been made the winter terminus of the Grand Trunk Railway Company. I do not expect that they are going to abandon what they have.


Robert Laird Borden: Later on in the same debate he said:
I have read his (Mr. Borden's) speech carefully, and I must say-it may be my fault, and I shall be glad to be illuminated-if he will explain how, having brought the freight from the west of North Bay, he can send it on to St. John and Halifax, over the Grand Trunk, I will be glad to hear him.
I should think there would be about as much prospect of sending it to St. John and Halifax as there would be after the Grand Trunk Pacific had brought it to Quebec, within striking distance of Portland where all their great interests lay. But I am not so much concerned with arguing out that old matter. I want to emphasize certain remarks delivered by my hon. friend the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham) in this House during this very session. He said:
We have, it is true, an understanding and agreement with the Grand Trunk. But the Grand Trunk has its own connections to Portland, and will shortly have connections further east. And while it will live up to its agreement with us, it does^not give the Intercolonial Railway a pound" of freight that it can get out of giving to that road; it gives as much as it can to its own line and carries it to Portland.
It must not be forgotten that the Grand Trunk Railway took good care that it should not be bound by a single one of those provisions which are contained in the agreements of 1903 and 1904. It did not become a party to these contracts. We pointed out then that without infringing one line or one syllable of either of those contracts the Grand Trunk Railway Company could send out, and we believed it would send out, an army of canvassers all through the great west of this country who would take good care that the very great majority of the orders routing freight over this railway would route it so that it would go to Portland and not to St. John and Halifax; and this parliament cannot lay its finger upon the Grand Trunk Railway Company or the Grand Trunk Pacific Company if that is done. When a minister of the Crown, the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr Graham) has told us very frankly that it is not only the interest but the absolute intention and determination of the Grand Trunk Railway Company to send its traffic to Portland in the future as it has done in the past, can we plume ourselves upon the assurance that in the contracts of 1903 and 1904 we have, after all, any guarantee of that which was placed before parliament as the crux and essence of this enterprise, that the great trade of western Canada should be gathered up and sent to our own maritime ports in eastern Canada. Well, Sir. time will tel] vvho is right and who is wrong; whether hon. gentlemen on the

other side of the House, now sitting on the treasury benches, to the great misfortune of the country, were correct in their predictions or whether we were correct in our criticisms. Time will tell ; no one of us can determine that with absolute accuracy to-day.
Let me refer to the action which this government has taken in carrying out this contract along general lines. The statute of 1903 provided that this road should be built under the management and direction of a commission to be appointed by this government. The government of the United States then or not long afterwards proposed to engage in a great enterprise of its own, the building of the Panama canal. That government took the same course in one respect that this government took, it decided that the Panama canal should be built under the management and control of a commission appointed by the executive of the United States government. Every one knows that the value of a commission, the value of the work it can do, the value of the services it can render to the people of a country, depends almost entirely upon the experience, the character and the ability of the men who constitute that commission. I desire to utter no word against any member of the commission appointed by the government as a citizen of this country, but I am perfectly within my rights as a member of this parliament, in pointing out to the House and to the people of Canada, as I do point out, that not one of those men had the slightest iota or atom of experience in respect to the important work in which they were to engage as a commission. If I desired any work to be performed in the respective spheres in which these gentlemen had been engaged up to the time of their appointment, I might very probably go to one of them. If I had desired advice in respect of a matter of law of the great province of Quebec, I very likely would have gone to the firm of which the chairman of that committee, Mr. Parent, was at one time a member. I am not here for the purpose of casting any discredit unon Mr. Parent, either in his public or professional career;
I am here to point out that, so far as railway construction is concerned, Mr. Parent had absolutely no experience whatever, and the government ought not to have appointed him to be chairman of that commission. If I desired information as to the law of Nova Scotia, or desired a suit to be taken on my behalf by some member of the bar of that province, I might go to my friend Mr. Mclsaac, who is a lawyer and who has had a public career. But every one knows that he had no experience in railway construction, and therefore ought not to have been appointed to the position to which the government
appointed him. If I desired to be instructed in the manufacture of stationery and corsets, I might go to Mr. Reid, who was appointed a member of this commission, but I would not think myself constrained to go to that gentleman for advice in connection with the construction of a railway. And, if I desired information as to the purchase of grain, or in connection with agricultural pursuits, I should, no doubt, get valuable advice and counsel from Mr. Young, who was also appointed a member of that commission, but I have yet to learn that Mr. Young had any important advantages in the way of experience which should have qualified him in the eyes of this government to be a member of that commission.
Well, Mr. Speaker, we all know why these men were appointed. We know that they were not appointed by reason of their experience, but by reason of the partisan service or supposed partisan service that they had rendered to the Liberal party. That goes without saying.
Now, what course did the government of the United States take in a similar matter? My right hon. friend (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), before 1896, was wont to point out the errors and evils of administration in the United States, and the defects of their system of government, and to bewail the fact-he stated it to be a fact- that the methods which had prevailed in the United States were becoming prevalent in this great Dominion of Canada under the wicked rule of a notorious Conservative administration. That was the song the ringht hon. gentleman sang in those days. Well, let us look at the record in the United States as contrasted with the record in Canada, and then let any hon. gentleman in this House, follower of the Liberal party though he be, stand up in his place and say that he is proud of the comparison between what the government of the United States did and what the government of Canada did in this regard. On February 29, 1904, the President of the United States appointed an Isthmian Canal Commission of seven members, who were duly confirmed by the Senate on March 3. The commissioners were John G. Walker, a rear-admiral of the United States navy, on the retired list, who had been at the head of former canal commissions for the purpose of investigation and report; George W. Davis, a major-general of the United States army, on the retired list; William B. Parsons, an eminent civil engineer, of New York; William H. Burr, Professor of Civil Engineering in Columbia University, N.Y.; Benjamin M. Harrod, formerly city and state civil engineer, of New Orleans, Louisiana; Carl E. Grunsky, civil engineer,

of San Francisco, California, and Frank T. Hecker, a civil engineer, of Detroit, Michigan. Rear-Admiral Walker was made chairman of ;the commission, and General Davis was appointed governor of the canal zone. Dominic I. Murphy, of Washington, D.C., was engaged as secretary to the commission, and Charles E. Magoon, an eminent jurist, of Lincoln, Nebraska, as general counsel. Later, the government of the United States, through causes into which I need not enter, found it necessary to reorganize that commission. And they did reorganize it. A new commission was appointed, consisting of Theodore P. Shonts, of Illinois, a civil engineer and railroad president; Charles E. Magoon, of Nebraska, a distinguished jurist, who had been legal counsel to the old commission and, before that, law officer of the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department; John F. Wallace, a civil engineer, who had been chief engineer under the old commission, and who had had much experience in railroad and canal work; Mordecai T. Endicott, a rear-admiral of the United States navy on the retired list, who had been chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks in the Navy Department, and had been a civil engineer before entering the navy; Peter C. Hains, a brigadier-general of the United States army on the retired list, who had been educated at West Point, had served with distinction in the civil war, and had been identified with many important harbour works and other engineering undertakings of the government; Oswald H. Ernst, a colonel in the United States army, who had been educated aj West Point and had served with distinction in the Engineering Corps, and Benjamin M. Har-rod, of Louisiana, an accomplished civil engineer, who had been a member of the former Canal Commission.
Well, there are the two methods. In the sober judgment of this House, which is the best method in the interest of the people of this country? Can there be any doubt about it? Can any hon. member say, upon his conscience, that the course which this government carried out in the constitution of this commission was really a course in the best interest of the people?
Now, the Grand Trunk Railway Company is here for better terms. That is what it amounts to. It is here practically for a modification of the contract of 1903, which has already been modified, in 1904. We are asked to provide a very large proportion of the financial support necessary for the construction of this western division. I will send across the floor to my hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Fielding), Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
a statement that embodies a rough calculation-I do not pretend that it is accurate in every respect-of what the country is contributing and what the Grand Trunk is contributing to the western division.
The country contracts to guarantee the interest upon the prairie section, 916 miles long, at $13,000 a mile, or a total guarantee of $11,908,000. The mountain section, roughly speaking, is estimated to cost $67,000,000. Now, if you should issue bonds bearing 34 per cent, interest at 90, sufficient to afford a sum of $67,000,000, you would find that the total bond issue would amount to $73,000,000. Seventy-five per cent of that which we have undertaken to guarantee would amount to $54,750,000, or a total amount to be guaranteed by the people of this country of $66,658,000. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance will observe that in making an estimate of $13,000 a mile, I have not taken into consideration that the contract provides, as he stated this afternoon, that an amount must be guaranteed which will actually provide $13,000 per mile. I have not taken that into consideration, nor have I taken it into consideration in estimating the amount of the guarantee by the Grand Trunk Railway Company; so that my calculation may require some [DOT] litle modification in that regard, but nothing very material. Well, then, the proposed loan which the Finance Minister now asks the House to. sanction amounts to $10,000,000 and our liability with respect to that is, of course, as great as our liability with respect to any of these guarantees. As a matter of fact, we have less security for it than we would have for the guarantees which have been alluded to. The total therefore in the shape of loans and guarantees would, roughly speaking, be about $76,658,000. Then, in addition to that, we are bound to pay interest without recourse for seven years upon the bonds which we guarantee with respect to the mountain section. The interest on $54,750,000 at 34 per cent for one year amounts to $1,916,250, which amount, multiplied by seven, makes $13,413,750 as our actual cash contribution towards the building of the western division.


George Eulas Foster: At what interest rate?


Robert Laird Borden: I am estimating it at 34 per cent, and I am putting the bonds at 90. That is a matter of conjecture and it may be that my hon. friend the Minister of Finance may find some fault with my calculation in that regard. I do not know as much about the probable figures as he would know, and I would be ready to defeT to his superior judgment in case he thinks the calculation I have made is not upon a fair basis.

Now, the Grand Trunk Company would, in the ordinary course, contribute a guarantee of about $20,500,000 towards the prairie section, but I would assume that their guarantee in that regard would be cut down by the proposed loan of $10,000,000, which would diminish it to $10,500,000. If our guarantee upon the mountain section amounts to $54,750,000 the guarantee of the Giand Trunk Railway Company will amount to one-third of that, or one-fourth of the whole, which would be $18,250,000. So that the total amount contributed by the Grand Trunk Rail-way Company for the western division would amount, as I estimate it, roughly speaking, to a guarantee of bonds of $28,750,000. The figures are as follows :
WESTERN riVISION.
Country contributes.
Prairie section, 916 miles at $13,000=$11,908.0)0
Mountain section, $67,000,000
Bonds at 90 p.c.,$73,000,000. .75 p.c.= 54,750,000
'	$66,658,000
Proposed loan	 10,000,000

Cash payment interest for 7 years... 13,413,750
One year = $1,916,250

Grand Trunk contributes.
Prairie section	$10,000,000
Prairie section	$10,500,000

Now, I estimated last year that the eastern division would cost the people of this country not less than $180,000,000. If I were to make an estimate to-day I would be inclined to increase rather than diminish it. The western division, roughly speaking, will cost $100,000,000. So you have altogether an expenditure of $280,000,000 upon this road in one way and another. This does not include the seven years' interest which we are to pay without recourse in respect of the mountain section. In the first place you have, on the western division, the government of this country contributing a bond guarantee and a loan amounting in all to $76,658,000, and making an actual cash contribution of $13,413,750, and you have the Grand Trunk Railway Company contributing a bond guarantee, roughly speaking of $28,750,000.
Now] take the whole road. As far as the whole road is concerned its probable cost will be about $280,000,000. Of that this country provides in cash contributions or by bond guarantees about nine-tenths, as I estimated in 1903-4, and the Grand Trunk Railway Company contributes about one-tenth and that in the shape of a bond guarantee with no cash contribution. That, then, is the proposition which the government makes to us to-day.
Let us now look for a moment at one item in connection with the information that the hon. Minister of Finance has brought down. When the Prime Minister asked us in 1904 to depart from the terms of this contract as it had been agreed upon in 1903 by those representing the Grand Trunk Railway Company with respect to the stock issue, and when he asked us to permit the Grand Trunk Railway Company to dispose of the stock, what was the reason assigned? In case my right hon. friend has forgotten I will remind him of the view which he took at that time. I will read from his remarks at page 2483 of 'Hansard.' He said:
The reason for inserting this condition ofthe contract last year was that we wished to prevent speculation in the stock. Well, Mr. Chairman, the Grand Trunk Railway Company must raise money to carry out this enterprise. They cannot build the section from Winnipeg to the Pacific coast simply upon the guarantee of the government, for that will cover only three-quarters of the cost of constructing this part of the road. And then the equipment of the road is also to be raised from the public, and there are only two manners in which that can be done, either by the issue of bonds, or raising money on their stock. The methods we have adopted will enable them to go into the money market and obtain some money with which to carry on the work.
To the same effect was the language which is to be found at page 3037 and 3038 of ' Hansard,' and which emanated from the then Minister of Justice, now Sir Charles Fitzpatrick. Speaking of the bond issues which the Grand Trunk Railway Company must guarantee he said:
Can it be expected that it will realize more than 80? Where is the amount required to make it up to 100 to come from? It can come out of nothing but the company's capital. Where are they to obtain money to provide, for instance, for terminal facilities, and to provide the thousands of miles of branch lines which they have to construct? Where is that money to come from except from the $45,000,000 of capital ?
The Minister of Finance, although not in such explicit terms, presented the same view to this House, namely, that the Transcontinental Grand Trunk Railway Company must be permitted to depart from the contract of 1903 and be empowered to dispose of its stock in order that it might, by means of the sale of its stock, obtain the money to carry out its enterprise. The position to-day is exactly what we predicted in 1904, and every dollar of that $25,000,000 of common stock has been handed over to the Grand Trunk Railway Company for a purely nominal consideration. By the agreement, submitted to us to-day the Grand Trunk Railway Company have become possessed as absolute holders of $25,000,000 of the common stock of the Grand Trunk Pa-

cific, and so far as cash is concerned they have given as consideration for it just about $200,000. And that is sought to be justified by the printed information which the Minister of Finance has brought down, and which at pages 14 and 15 recites the aid given by the Grand Trunk Railway Company to this enterprise, and provides as follows :
2. The Pacific company will forthwith issue, as paid up stock, shares of the common stock of the Pacific company of the par value of $23,908,000, making with the shares described in the schedule hereto a total of 249,000 shares of the par value of $24,900,000, and will allot and hand over the same to the Grand Trunk Company or their nominees, and that such issue and allotment of stock shall be binding upon the Paoifio company and that such stock shall not be assessable for calls.
The position therefore is that the Grand Trunk Railway Company, providing $28,000,000 of the bond guarantee out of a total cost and expenditure of $280,000,000 which this road will entail, are to receive for that assistance so given $25,000,000 or thereabouts of the common stock of the Grand Trunk Pacific, and, the people of Canada providing the balance, or nine-tenths of the whole expenditure and guarantees are to receive absolutely no share whatever in the future profits which may result from this enterprise, when, the mere influx of population and the progress of the country shall have made this $25,000,000 of common stock worth 100 cents or perhaps 150 cents on the dollar.
Under these circumstances I conclude by saying to the Prime Minister and to his Minister of Finance: You have stated in considerable detail and with the utmost frankness what you propose to do for the Grand Trunk Railway Company which has assisted this enterprise to the extent I mentioned ; but will you tell us, having regard to the $250,000,000 or the $260,000,000, which the people of this country are putting into this enterprise either in cash or bond guarantee, what are you going to do for the people of Canada? Surely it is reasonable that we should know that. I say to the right hon. gentleman and to his Finance Minister: You have told us what you are going to do for the Grand Trunk Railway Company, will you please tell the House and the country what you propose to do for Canada?


Mr. FRED. F. PARDEE (West Lambton).: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with attention to the pessimistic remarks of the leader of the opposition, but I am bound to say that I have not been able to discover whether he is in favour of the Grand Trunk Pacific enterprise or against it. I should rather think he is not in favour of it, although when in 1903 this project was first proposed , Mr. R. L. BORDEN.
to parliament the unanimous opinion was that another transcontinental line was necessary, the only difference being as to the question of the route, the government proposing one route and the opposition an-other. In view of the very vigorous policy of immigration which had been carried on, settlers were flocking into the western country at a rate greater than ever before, and in the year 1903 became an absolute necessity, as all conceded, that there should be another transcontinental railway. If such a railway was necessary in 1903, how much more necessary is it not in 1909, irrespective altogether of any question of cost. We hold out inducements in all parts of the world for immigrants to settle in the west, and we have rich and fertile lands to offer them. It is a mere axiom to say, that no country can be great without population, and having population it follows that you must give them ingress and egress to and from the country and that you must provide facilities for the transportation of their products to the market. What was the position in the Northwest in 1903? By reason of the insufficiency of the transportation facilities the crops were lying rotting in the fields.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: That is a positive fact. The crops were there, they could not be moved to the market and as a corollary the stores of the merchants were empty because the crops being unsold they could get no money from the farmers to enable them to purchase goods.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: 
Totals .. ..: "	81,859 904
1908.
50.269.000
44.711.000
17.093.000
Total	$650,793,131
Or our total trade in 1908 exceeded that of 1903 by $175,787,650. Our revenue for 1908 was $96,000,000, as against1 $66,000,000 , in 1903, and I wish to point this out that in 112,073,000 ' 1903 the crops, although cut, could not be

harvested, and consequently lay on the ground and came to no good. But at the end of February, 1909, the crops in the hands of the farmers of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were as follows:
Wheat, 17,391,000 bush., or a percentage of 18 -93 Oats, 44,125,016 bush., or a percentage of 45 -93 Barley, 7,722,000 bush., or a percentage of 33 -68
Could anything more than that set of figures emphasize the fact, that in so far as this country is concerned, transportation is an absolute necessity?


Mr. SCHAFFNER.: Does the hon. gentleman mean to say that grain was in the hands of the western farmers on that date in February, because there were not transportation facilities to get it out?


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: Very largely.


Frederick Laurence Schaffner: The hon. gentleman is absolutely mistaken.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: Well, I am not in accord with my hon. friend. A very great portion of that amount would have been marketed had there been transportation facilities to carry it out. There is just one more set of figures I desire to give the House, and that is the acres under cultivation in the prairie provinces in 1903 as compared with 1908. In 1903 there were under cultivation 4,576,200 acres and in 1908, 10,000,000, or more than double. These figures show that although hon. gentlemen opposite argue, as the hon. the leader of the opposition has done, that this great national work was conceived in haste and carried out for political purposes, there is not one iota of evidence to substantiate that argument. Instead of being conceived in haste this enterprise was fully considered by the government and its pros and cons gone into on every side. How hon. gentlemen opposite can claim it has been made a political factor, is something I cannot understand. Why should it be a political factor, except in this sense that the people are willing to give credit to any government which will show sufficient courage to carry out a great national undertaking irrespective of the carping of a few? The people appreciate what the National Transcontinental Railway may accomplish, provided it be given a fair chance and not be hampered at the outset. Take that section which runs through the northern portion of Quebec and Ontario. Has any one so absolutely little faith, after what we know that northern country has produced, as to say that when the northern portion of the province of Quebec has been exploited, wdien it has a population which can develop its minerals and forests, when it has populous centres this railway will not be a benefit to the whole community? can only test these matters by comparison. We know that a few years ago the little province of Ontario Mr PARDEE.
projected the railway known as the Temis-kaming and Northern Ontario Railway. What was the stand taken by the doubting Thomases of the opposition party in the Ontario House at that time? Did they approve of the work? Did they say go and develop this unknown country? Were they satisfied with the surveys? No, they said that the railway ought not to be built. But the government of that day, under the hon. Geo. W. Ross, had the courage and patriotism to build it. That railway, built for 250 miles, has cost the people of Ontario $15,000,000. But just consider what it has done for that northern country. It has opened up a mineral country the greatest in the known world. Is there any one who will say that the people of Ontario made an unwise expenditure when they built this road? Or will hon. gentlemen opposite be strong enough to say that they were wrong and that we were right? Probably the same coniditions prevail with regard to our National Transcontinental line. Take that line from Lake Abitibi right across to the eastern boundary of Manitoba, and what do you find?
We know,' from the surveys that were made for the purpose of affording information to the Ontario government, that practically along the whole line that railway skirts a mineral ridge. Who can tell what that may contain? That great north country was not put there for nothing. It is found that, in so far as men have exploited it, it has yielded us more riches than any other portion of the country has yielded in the same time. Why should not the same thing take place here? This railway skirts the sixteen million acre belt of clay that is as good land as lies out of doors. And, if you take this land even as worth only $1 an acre, in its raw state and without any of the advantages of civilization, are you not well repaid? But there is one thing we have not taken into consideration in regard to this line and in regard to that portion of the country through which it runs from Abitibi to the eastern boundary of Manitoba, and that is that along that line there are pulp-wood forests estimated to contain 300,000,000 cords of wood. Take that even at the low rate of $2 a cord, and how much have you done to open up a vast field of profit for the whole Dominion and especially for the province of Ontario? So, I submit, as I said in starting, you must not consider one portion of this line alone, but must remember that every portion is indissolubly linked with the others, that	the work	is	in every sense
a national undertaking and benefits one portion of Canada as much as another. Even if you take the line in the older portions of Ontario and Quebec, you find that it opens up trade, that is

bound to go to manufacturing centres and must inure to the great benefit of the manufacturers of the whole Dominion. So, with the figures we have showing the tremendous increase in every way that' has taken place in the Dominion of Canada, the government of the Dominion was absolutely justified in projecting the National Transcontinental Railway; they are justified in every possible way in giving it such aid as is necessary for its completion. They are not only justified on the figures, but they have received two absolute mandates from the people of Canada, which they are bound to carry out.
At six o'clock, House took recess.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILLS.


[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 94) respecting the Cedars Rapids Manufacturing Company.-Mr. Boyer.
On section 1:
Mr. PUGSLEY moved that the word 'fourteen' be struck out and the word 'eleven' substituted, so as to make the extension to 1911 instead of to 1914.
Motion agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill (No. 801 respecting the Kootenay and Arrowhead Railway Company.-Mr. Geo. Taylor.
Mr. GOODEVE moved that section 1 be omitted' and the following be substituted therefor:
The Kootenay and Arrowhead Railway Company shall, within two years after the passing of this Act, construct 15 per cent of the mileage of 'the unconstructed portion of the railways which it was authorized by section 7, of chapter 70, of the statutes of 1901, to construct and shall complete the said railways and put them in operation within five years, and if the said fifteen per cent of mileage is not so constructed, and if the said railways are not so completed and put in operation within the said periods respectively, the powers of construction conferred upon the said company by parliament shall cease and be null and void as respects so much of the said railways as then remain uncompleted.
Mr. PUGSLEY.: What is the difference between the amendment and the section in the Bill?


Mr. GOODEVE.: This amendment is the usual clause adopted by the Railway Committee, but instead of putting 15 per cent of the capital it inserts 15 per cent of the mileage. The reason for that in this particular Bill is that a portion of the road has already been constructed.
Section as amended agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.



GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC LOAN.

[Stage Direction]
House resumed consideration of the proposed resolution of Mr. Fielding with respect to a certain loan to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company.
Frederick Forsyth Pardee: When the House rose I was endeavouring to point out the great resources of the northern portions of Ontario and Quebec and to show by figures that there were such resources there as would warrant any railway company being projected through that portion of the country and I pointed out further that owing to the fact of the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway having been built great mineral resources had been opened up and that it was impossible to predict whether that with the construction of the National Transcontinental Railway through the northern portions of these two provinces many Cobalts and many Gowgandas would not be discovered.
If this should be so, and no one can deny the fact, surely this country could not have been placed there for no possible good whatever, surely there must be mineral resources hidden in other portions of it, and if these mineral resources are hidden they ought to come out. They will only come out when a railway is put through there, because, as we know, civilization follows the railway and we have to-day, as hon. members of this House are aware, in the Railway Committee, a Bill in which a charter is asked for a railway from a place called Ville Marie, on the border between Ontario and Quebec, northward to connect with the Grand Trunk Pacific. It is only an evidence that people of these northern portions are opening up that country and are willing to go on and invest their capital to build railways and there is no reason why, if that portion of the country turns out to be as highly mineralized as other portions have been found to be there should not be as many railways as there are in the older portions of Ontario and Quebec. These are things that we have to look at. We have to take into consideration the resources of the country and we have to take into consideration the opening up and laying .bare of these resources. I just wish

to say, along these lines, in recalling a precedent in this country of some years ago, undoubtedly within the recollection of many hon. members sitting m this House, that the Canadian Pacific Railway was projected by a* corporation which is now perhaps the greatest corporation in the civilized world. It had its conception and birth in this House of Commons. At the time it was projected and at the time it was partially put through, what happened in so far as what was given to that railway was concerned? There was given to that railway $25,000,000 in cash and millions of acres of land. I have endeavoured to show by figures that in 1903 the resources and production of this country were vastly different from what they were m 1908. How much different were they when the Canadian Pacific Railway was first projected? Then it was that the west was absolutely or practically unknown; then it was that we knew not what we had west of Lake Superior; then it was that west of Lake Superior we had from 20,000 to 30,000 of a population, and then it was that in British Columbia we had a population of whites numbering about 10,000 souls. I pay this tribute to him when I say as a Canadian that Sir John Macdonald was the very personification of that Canadianism that was in him when he stood behind that project. Although it was objected to, not wisely objected to as we know by after events, he stood behind that project, he showed the faith that was in him and the Canadian Pacific Railway has gone on until it has become the very greatest corporation on earth. I say to this country and to the House of Commons, that there is no reason why, with the development that' is taking place in that western country and in those portions of the Dominion that have not yet been exploited, the Grand- Trunk Pacific should not be just as great' a corporation and should not enure just as much to the benefit of Canadians as the Canadian Pacific Railway. That, to my mind, is the way that this project should be looked at. Twenty-five millions in cash and millions of acres of land were given to that great corporation. The Canadian Pacific Railway started and the Canadian Pacific Railway met the same fate as every enormous undertaking must and will meet, I venture to say, for many years to come; aye, practically for all time to come. Estimates were made, estimates were brought down, work went on but the estimates were not complete and what happened?-simply what is happening to-day in the case of the National Transcontinental Railway, although not to such a great extent. The Canadian Pacific Railway found that obstacles, arose; that their estimates had not been sufficient; that they could not complete their work without aid from the Dominion of Canada and they came to this parliament and asked Mr. PARDEE.	.	.
for a loan of $30,000,000. That was in 1885, and again I say the conditions then, proportionately speaking, were absolutely not to be compared with the conditions that at present exist and have existed for some years past in the Dominion of Canada. Yet, there was no hon. gentleman on the other side of the House that did not rise in his place and say that in so far as that $30,000,000 loan went it should absolutely be given to that railway for the purpose of carrying it to completion. They gave good and cogent reasons for it. They said that the $30,000,000 should be granted, and the $30,000,000 was granted with the result that the great Canadian Pacific Railway was completed and it stands to-day a monument to Canada. What did Sir Charles Tupper, a gentleman whom hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House revere and honour, have to say in so far as the Canadian Pacific loan of $30,000,000 was concerned? Speaking in 1884, as reported in ' Hansard ' of that year, vol. 1, page 105, he made these remarks:
But while they do not ask the House to give them a single additional dollar, they ask us to use the credit of this country, to obtain the means of accomplishing this great national work by the end of 1885, and that without imposing the slightest shadow of a shade of additional burden upon the government, or upon the country for the repayment of every dollar by tho time the contract was to be completed, 1st May, 1891. I say that this is the position in which they are-honourable gentlemen opposite will not controvert the soundness of that position, we should not hesitate a single moment in giving that measure our support.
That is what Sir Charles Tupper said. Then let us see what was said by an hon. gentleman who now sits in this House and who represents the constituency of North Toronto (Mr. Foster), and let me say that the conditions are absolutely on all fours to-day with those which existed in 1884. As reported in ' Hansard/ vol. 1, 1884, page 242, that hon. gentleman said:
Let us suppose that the hon. gentleman who sits in his seat before me, smiling so complacently, should engage a contractor to build his house, that the contractor had started upon the house, that he had made his plans and calculations for raising money, but found when the house was three-fourths completed, that his plans had some how or other not turned out as he anticipated-suppose he came to the hon. gentleman and said, Sir, you see the amount of material I have, the amount of property I possess, I want an advance of money from you, of a loan of so many thousand dollars. I have property good and realizable to the extent of five times the amount, and, if you will give me that loan, I will finish the contraot in two months instead of eight, and I will pay you a percentage on your money as large as you can get elsewhere-would the hon. gentleman be justified in stating to his neighbour that this contrac-

tor was down on his knees before him asking for money? I think not, and I take it that tins is an exactly similar or nearly similar case m point.
There we are. We are asked here, as I submit, _ for a loan on sufficient security. The policy of the government was submitted to the people, the people said build the read as quickly as possible, and, in order to carry out that mandate, this loan is being asked for. The cases are identical Then again what did the hon. member for N.0T,tb^ Toronto say, as reported at page 243 of 'Hansard,' 1884, vol. 1:
What he meant to say was this, that the Conservative party in this railway policy had a record which had gone before the country and that record should not be falsified by their not carrying out, to the very letter, the idea with which they started, and with which they went before the people. What was that policy t The policy of the Liberal Conservative party has been: a railway-a railway on Canadian territory-a railway completed just as quickly as it possibly can be completed.
Agam I say the cases are absolutely on all fours, and we are simply, if it can be put m that way, proving our case out of the hon. gentleman's own mouth.


Mr. GEO TAYLOR.: Would the hon gen-repTyT kmdIy read what hia leader said in


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: I am not particular] S1?"?, about that. The hon gentlama had better take his medicine as it comes it will do him good.


George Taylor: I was House then and I took my medicine.
in the


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: an ornament to the $30,000,000.
T*3 right; you are the House; you voted for


Mr GEORGE TAYLOR.: And your leader voted against it.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: Further on the hon. mem ber for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) said:
Iff have an honourable and honesl right to state that the Conservative party has a policy and a record in this respect, a policy in favour of building this Transcontinental Kadway as soon as it possibly can be built, and that the Conservative party by the vasi majority by which it was returned in 1882 has t*en sent here commissioned to carry out that the.y would fail in their dutv to this House and to the people who sent them here by such a majority, if they did not carry out that idea with all the speed and prompt-noss compatible with safety and security.
Let me quote further from his remarks along the same line because I think they are worthy of being known to the House at this juncture. Speaking of the fact that the proposed legislation to give a loan to the Canadian Pacific Railway had been before the country for a month or so,
hon- member for North Toronto said-( Hansard' page 243, 1884;:
For nearly two weeks that idea has been before the country.
So has this idea been before the country and for more than two weeks.
For nearly two weeks that idea has been before the country,-and yet I challenge the hon. gentleman to point to the record of a single publio meeting which has been called to protest against the proposed action of this government. I say that is proof conclusive that the publio mind has settled down to acquiescence in these proposals. Before his argument can have a feather's weight with the country or this House, the hon. gentleman will have to get up an agitation outside the party press, and show a spontaneous uprising of the people here and there throughout the country in protest against these terms.
And this resolution which to-day has been introduced by the Minister of Finance has been before the country for many days, the terms of it have been perfectly well known, there has been no uprising by the people in any section of the country against it; on the contrary there has been acquiscence in this proposal because the people think today as they did on the 26th day of October last when they gave a mandate to the government to carry the Grand Trunk Pacific t" completion. Again, speaking at page 247 ' Hansard,' the hon. member for North Toronto said :
Then there was a hostile spirit. It was expressed in what way? It was exhibited by hostile combinations of rival roads in the great stock markets of the world. It was shown in hostile articles which were written from this country to American papers, and in telegrams sent from this country to American papers, and in cablegrams sent to the old country. In these and a hundred different ways, the fact is as clear as the sun at noonday that there were hostile combinations, that there was hostility both at home and abroad, and that this hostility must have had, and did have, an effeot on the securities and assets of the company. Sir, is the second contention a reasonable one-that there was a shrinkage of values generally throughout the country, and a demoralization and fall in the value of stooks. Looking ,at these points, I say it is a reasonable contention on the part of the company that they were prevented from realizing many of these assets by the demoralization of the stock market, and shrinkage of values.
Sir, the argument advanced by the member for Toronto then is equally applicable to the conditions to-day. Who will deny that during the past year there has not been shrinkage of values; who will deny there has not been a falling off in the values of stock; who will deny that the English market is not glutted with securities, and who will deny, say, that many hostile influences have not been exercised against the Grand Trunk Pacific. These are things that should be and must be

taken into consideration, and I believe the people will weigh them carefully and endorse the policy of the government as now presented to parliament. Exactly the same arguments can be advanced in favour of this ten million loan to the Grand Trunk Pacific as our Conservative friends advanced in support of the thirty million dollar loan to the Canadian Pacific Railway, and further, Canada is to-day a thousand-fold better able to stand a ten million dollar loan than in those other days she was able to afford a thirty million dollar loan. In view of all this there ought to be no hesitancy whatever on the part of members on both sides of the House in declaring: Here is a great-national undertaking; here is an undertaking which, if we are to take the precedent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is bound to enure to the benefit of the whole people of Canada; let us carry it to completion, let us crown this great undertaking with success. In view of the surprising growth and the great prosperity of this country there ought to be no caviling at the proposition which the government makes. Here is Canada on the northern half of the North American continent with 50,000 more square miles of territory than the United States possesses, with an energetic and industrious people and a fertile soil, and why need we fear? One hundred years ago the United States of America had about the same population and about the same per capita indebtedness as we have to-day. They had faith in their country; they kept pace with the march of events, and to-day the United States has a population of 80,000,000 and is one of the richest countries on the face of the earth. The people of the United States had faith in their future, and Sir, if we have confidence in our destiny I have not the slightest doubt but that long before the century closes Canada will have 80,000,000 people tilling her fertile soil and developing her unlimited resources. We Canadians are a hardy Tace, we are a vigorous, intellectual people, why should we fear comparison with the people to the south. I say in all sincerity and earnestness that in our broad Dominion we have everything which is calculated to contribute to greatness in a nation, and- why then should we retard our progress, why hang back when every interest calls on us to take a leading rank amongst the greatest nations of the world. Is a paltry ten million dollars distributed over the whole Dominion of Canada to make us wince?


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh.


Frederick Forsyth Pardee: Hon. gentlemen opposite may jeer if they wish, but in a few short years their minds will expand and they will then realize the fallacy of their Mr. PARDEE.
policy of to-day. The west calls for development; the west demands that the men of the east should have confidence in its future, and this government is ready to respond to that demand. Not so long since I heard an hon. gentleman who is now sitting not far from me, say that Canada had pushed herself forward into the front rank of nations, that never had a country a better stage setting than ours, that we wrere actors upon that stage, and that our country called on us to play our part well. And if we lift the curtain of the stage on which we are playing we can see the illimitable resources we have in this country, and to what large extent their development depends upon the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
You start in the province of New Brunswick; you come up through those magnificent stretches of northern Quebec which may hold untold millions; you go through the northern portion of the province of Ontario, half way to James bay, where you bring into mercantile use those marvellous resources with which Ontario is known to be endowed; you go on to the great province of Manitoba and through to the wheat and cattle country of the western provinces, and on into British Columbia with its magnificent timber, minerals and fisheries. There you have an all-British railway from coast to coast, opening up perhaps things we know not of; and if we show the people of the old world just what we have in the way of rich resources, we may be sure that millions will teem to our shores. Then we shall in very truth be a nation. But I wish to say this, and say it emphatically, that if we would populate this country with millions, we must show to the world at large that we are fit to be nation builders by carrying on great national works such as the one under consideration to-night.


Mr. W. F. MACLEAN (South York).: 
Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


William Findlay Maclean: The hon. Minister of Railways and Canals may jeer and laugh, but I know Mr. Russell, and there is no better citizen or a man more in touch with the people of Canada than Mr. Joe Russell of East Toronto. I beg to move in amendment:
That the said resolutions be amended by the addition of the following:-
And be it further resolved that in order to-have still further security for its commitments, and to absolutely control and own a national transcontinental railway system, parliament is hereby authorized to purchase the controlling share of the Grand Trunk Company's common stock.


Mr. SPEAKER.: I think this should be moved in committee.


William Findlay Maclean: In that case it can stand. I want to give the Prime Minister the opportunity of considering whether he will accept it or not.


William Barton Northrup: I had no intention, Mr. Speaker, of taking part in this debate when it began, and my only reason for doing so now, is the extraordinary statement made by the hon. the

Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) this afternoon, in proposing this loan of $10,000,000, that Canada already had a first mortgage on the property of the Grand Trunk Pacific. When he made that statement I felt it was due to myself and this House to call attention to the danger we are under of making most extraordinary and improvident loans when a gentleman, occupying the responsible position of Minister of Finance is so little acquainted with the nature of the securities given in return as the hon. minister evidently appears to be. The honesty of the Minister of Finance nobody on this side questions and his sincerity in this matter I do not for a moment doubt, but this statement of his is only an additional proof of the extraordinary amount of misconception, misunderstanding, ignorance or something worse which has been developed from the mountains of information that the right hon. the Prime Minister promised us. From the inception of this scheme down to the present, it has been impossible to find any minister who appears to have had the faintest conception, when addressing this House, of the nature of the transaction he asked us to ratify. When the Bill was first introduced., the Prime Minister took occasion to criticise a remark of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, and gave as one of the reasons for building the road his desire to refute Mr. Carnegie's assertion that Canada was ice-bound because her harbours were sealed during five months of the year. That, said the right hon. gentleman, is not the case, that is not the difficulty, but the trouble is we have no railways to reach our harbours. Ordinary mortals were under the impression that we had a railway running to Halifax and to St. John, and that these were winter ports, yet the right hon. gentleman gave as a reason for our undertaking this extraordinary project, the alleged fact that we had no railways to our harbours in the winter season and that therefore we had to build a railway from the Pacific coast to the town of Moncton. No one had before heard Moncton described as a harbour. Shortly afterwards when we were discussing the various schemes for Taising the money required, the then Minister of Justice (Sir Charles Fitzpatrick), one of the ablest men in Canada, pointed out that, in addition to the moneys required to be raised for ordinary purposes, we would have to borrow money for certain other things and among them the building of the telegraph system for the Grand Trunk Pacific. But one had only to turn over the page to see that the statute provides that in the list of expenditures, allowed as construction expenditure, was the building of telegraph lines, so that the minister's whole argument to justify the raising the large amount required dissolved into thin air. Without enumerating other instances-and many might be given-I Mr. NORTHRUP.
am justified in saying this afternoon that when my hon. friend, the Minister of (Finance, told us that Canada has a first mortgage on the Grand Trunk Pacific as security for our guarantee of its bonds, we are justified in saying that there does not seem to be any great improvement, in one respect at least, in 1909 over the surprising state of affairs that existed on the opposite side in this House in 1903 and 1904.
I suppose there can be no difference of opinion as to what a first mortgage and a second mortgage mean. I take it for granted that every one understands the difference between the two. If one gentleman here had a first mortgage and another had a second on a piece of property and the property was insufficient in value to pay the two, there would be no doubt in the mind of the holder of the second mortgage as to the difference between his security and the other. In ordinary business transactions, a first mortgage has rights paramount to the second. Its holder is at liberty to sell out the property regardless of the interests of the second mortgage and is entitled to be paid a hundred cents on the dollar before the second mortgage can get anything. Is that the case with the security which the Grand Trunk gave the government? When the statute was passed in 1903, it was provided that a first mortgage should be given the government, and I take it for granted that the government received the first mortgage and the Grand Trunk Railway the second. I take it for granted that the government received a first mortgage for the 75 per cent it guaranteed and that the Grand Trunk Railway received a second mortgage for the 25 per cent which it guaranteed. But although that is what was done in 1903, that, and a good many other things, did not stand in 1904. When in 1903, in the debate on the agreement then submitted to the House, point after point was urged against it, which hon. gentlemen opposite were unable to answer, they sheltered themselves behind the statement that the agreement had been duly signed, sealed and delivered and consequently it could not he changed. That answer was taken by hon. gentlemen opposite as a justification for voting down every suggestion made from this side even when they had to admit that it was made in the public interest. But when another session came around, it turned out that although the people of this country were bound by the original agreement, the Grand Trunk Railway were not. They refused to accept this agreement so , solemnly made and executed and came back ' and demanded its revision. And in compliance with their demand, the statute of 1904 was passed, entirely revolutionizing the position of both parties under the agreement of 1903. It would be well, therefore,

for hon. gentlemen opposite to further study the Act of 1904 and see how far the engagements made in the statute of the previous year were altered by it. The first change made in 1904 was a change providing that the government, instead of guaranteeing 75 per cent, were to guarantee sufficient bonds to realize 75 per cent. Then a change was made in the mountain section; and although we are only discussing the prairie section, it is necessary to refer to the change made in the mountain section, because by one clause of the Act, the mountain section is so incorporated with the prairie section as to make them for certain purposes one and the same. By clause 32 of the statute of 1903, the government was to pay the interest on the mountain section of the bonds to the extent of 75 per cent for seven years. The next three years the company was to pay the interest; but if it was unable, it could, at the end of the ten years, capitalize the interest and give bonds for the amount running over forty years. Then after this period of ten years the company was to begin to pay interest. When this Act was passed in 1903, the government had the first mortgage and the Grand Trunk Railway the second. But when we look to the Act of 1904, we find these extraordinary provisions:
Notwithstanding anything in the said contract contained, the government shall not exercise any rights in respect of possession, foreclosure, or sale by reason of non-payment of interest by the company under the thirty-first

that is one that relates to the prairie section.
thirty-second

that is one that relates to the mountain section.
or thirty-third

that is one that deals with the bonds after the expiry of ten years.
paragraphs of the said contract or under all or any of them, unless and until there shall be suoh default to the extent in the whole sum equal to five years of such interest, as the company is not relieved from payment of or permitted to defer or capitalize by the provisions of the said paragraphs.
So, we find that, for the first seven years, they are not bound to pay the interest; for the next three years they can pay or capitalize as they choose; at the end of ten years, the payment of interest is to begin. But the government is not allowed to take a single step to enforce the payment of interest until after five years more have elapsed. So, here you have two mortgages, a first and a second. But the rights of the first mortgagee are held up for fifteen years, during which time he is absolutely helpless, while the second mortgagee has the right to exercise 114
any powers he enjoys under his mortgage. Will any man tell me that if one person holds a first mortgage and another holds a second mortgage, and the one holding the the first mortgage has no standing for the enforcement of his claim until after the end of fifteen years while the second mortgagee can sue or put in a receiver, the first mortgage is better than the second? But that is not all, for, when the government can at last move, after the expiry of fifteen years, what can they do? Clause 7 provides for this. Let ns see what they can do:
In case of such default being made by the company in respect of the interest of the said bonds so guaranteed by the government as would, under the provisions of the said contract as amended hereby, entitle the government to take possession of the said western division, or to foreclose or sell the same, the remedy of the government shall, notwithstanding anything in the said contract contained, be the taking possession thereof by and through an avent or manager to be appointed as hereinafter provided, whose powers and duties shall be to manage and operate the said western division, to receive all the tolls and revenues thereof, to pay thereout working expenses as defined by the Railway Act, 1903, including the expenses of suoh management or agenov, and to distribute the surplus tolls and revenues, after payment of such working expenditures, pari passu between the government or other holders of the bonds secured as provided by paragraph 35 (a) of the said contract and guaranteed by the government and the holder of the bonds secured as provided by paragraph 35 (b) of the said contract and guaranteed by the Grand Trunk Railway Company, in the proportion of seventy-five per centum of such surplus tolls or revenues to the holders of the former issue of bonds and t wen tv-five per centum to the holders of the latter issue.
And though the government had guaranteed 75 per cent and the Grand Trunk 25 per cent, it has to wait fifteen years before it can claim this right of sharing pari passu with the other. Now, would any business man, except the Minister of Finance, .ever dream for a moment of saying that that was, in fact or in law, a first mortgage? The holder of this so-called first mortgage is tied hand and foot, while not the slightest obstacle is placed in the way of the second mortgagee. So there is nothing to prevent the agent operating the Grand Trunk Pacific -and it would not be too much to assume that he would not be painfully hostile to the Grand Trunk-paying every dollar he could rake and scrape on the bonds guaranteed by the Grand Trunk. It may be that the Grand Trunk Pacific will have paid off seventy-five or ninety per cent of the bonds due to'the Grand Trunk, then, when the receiver came in and paid these pari passu with those of the government, in a year or two all the Grand Trunk bondholders would have received all their money and the government bondholders practically nothing. Therefore, it is not accurate to say that the



government of Canada holds a first mortgage to secure the seventy-five per cent that we are bound here to guarantee.
A great deal has been said, and especially by the last speaker, concerning the loan made by this country to the Canadian Pacific Railway years ago, and an effort is made to withdraw a similitude between that case and this as proving the propriety of this transaction. Before I go into that to show the nature of the Canadian Pacific Railway transaction, let me show what the Grand Trunk Pacific offers to-day. It comes to this House and to the people of this country, through the government, and asks for a loan of $10,000,000. It does not ask this as a right. True, it is sometimes said that the faith of Canada is pledged to this contract, and where the faith of Canada is pledged we must make good-no man on the other side of the House will subscribe to that view more readily than I. But is the faith of Canada pledged? We know that the government not only declined to increase the amount, but they limited it to $13,000 on the pTairie section and to a certain other amount on the mountain section. They have carried out their part of the contract. The Grand Trunk Pacific come now and ask for a loan of $10,000,000. On what security? They offer their own bond. From the statement placed in our hands by the Minister of Finance I gather that they have $5,200 altogether paid for stock. My hon. leader (Mr. R. L Borden) said it was $200,000. But, looking at page 16 of the statement brought down by the Minister of Finance, taking this list of subscribers, the largest of them $400, and I make out that $5,200 in cash has been contributed by the owners of this great company to build a transcontinental line. With that cash capital at their back, the Grand Trunk Pacific comes and asks for a loan on their own bonds. But something more-they offer the guarantee of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada. As my leader pointed out, we heard a great deal five years ago about the marvellous advantage to this country of having the Grand Trunk in and over, through, under and around this great undertaking. Ajnd now it all comes down to this-that they will give their guarantee to back the guarantee of the road which, as I understand, has $5,200 of stock paid up. What is the position of the Grand Trunk ? I see by the statement of the Minister of Finance that it has advanced $7,000,000 to this company. If the Grand Trunk has advanced $7,000,000 and we are to pay it back, consider the impudence of the Grand Trunk Pacific, egged on and led on by the Grand Trunk, asking us to advance $10,000,000 more, in order to give the Grand Trunk which owes us between $30,000,000 and $40,-Mr. NORTHRUP.
000,000, a return of this, sum of $7,000,000. Is there any greater height of impudence than this? If the Grand Trunk ever had $7,000,000-and I hope I may be excused for being somewhat sceptical on that point -why does not the government take steps to collect some of this $30,000,000 or $40,000,000? Why not begin, for instance, by collecting the paltry $21,000 owed by the Grand Trunk in relation to a railway in my own riding to which I called attention a year or two ago? The government, knowing perfectly well that the Grand Trunk Railway improperly, dishonestly, obtained $21,000 of the money of the people of this country, in a position to sue and make them refund the money, sat there and did nothing. Even since the knowledge came to them that the Grand Trunk had $7,000,000 in its coffers to lend to other corporations the government have done nothing. What are we to expect of this government, if it should be in power a couple of years hence, if default is made on this $lu,000,000. How can they be expected to collect $10,000,000 from their lord and master when they will not even collect $21,000? I do not know the facts, but I saw a statement in the press that the Canadian Pacific Railway had lent the government $5,000,000, that is that they had bought debentures to that amount. If that be true it is certainly extraordinary that our government, who we know have not $10,000,000 in their strong box, should go to the Canadian Pacific Railway and borrow $5,000,000 in order that they might give it to their old friend the Grand Trunk Railway.
As I said, comparisons have been drawn between the bargain made by a former government with the Canadian Pacific Railway and the bargain now proposed to be made by this government with the Grand Trunk Pacific. What did the old Conservative government get as security for their loan? They had a railway to which they had given an immense amount of constructed railroad costing some $30,000,000, they had given 25,000,000 acres of land, and $25,000,000 to the Canadian Pacific Railway and a railway over 1,100 miles in length was in operation. The Canadian Pacific Railway came to the government and asked for a loan of $30,000,000. They offered-
As security for the repayment of the said loan, with interest as aforesaid, and as additional seourity for the payment of the said sum of seven million three hundred and eighty thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars and interest falling due on the seventh day of November, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight, the government shall have a first lien and charge,

that is what the Conservative government got in those days


upon the entire property of the company, real and personal, now owned or hereafter to be acquired or owned by them,

Every dollar's worth of property to be acquired by the expenditure of the $30,000,000 to be borrowed was to become the property of the government by way of securityincluding their main line of railway, the extensions thereof, their branch lines of railway, the whole of their equipment, rolling 6took and plant and all their steamers and vessels, and also upon the land grant of the company, earned and to be hereafter earned; saving always, however, the rights of the holders of the existing mortgages on the extensions of the line of the railway from Callander to Brookville and Montreal.
With these exceptions everything the Canadian Pacific Railway had and were thereafter to acquire would, if the country would put up the $25,000,000, be given as security to the government. But more than that let us turn to clause 8:
Until the payment in full of the indebtedness of the company to the government with interest, all moneys earned and to be earned by the company as postal subsidy and for transport service shall be retained by the government and shall be applied first on account of the interest to become due from time to time upon the indebtedness aforesaid hereby authorized, and then to the payment of the principal.
Thus it will be seen that at that time ample security was given by the Canadian Pacific Railway when it asked for a loan of $30,000,000.


An hon. MEMBER.: And the directors
gave security.


William Barton Northrup: I have heard it stated that the directors gave a personal guarantee but I have no knowledge of that and do not wish to speak of anything which I cannot affirm with a fair degree of accuracy.
In view of this difference in the position of the two companies it seems to me that we ought to lay aside all this high fallutin' comparison between things that in no way resemble each other and try to get down to business. What is the use of telling us that the crops in the west require to be moved, that they are rotting on the ground, and will be lost if this railway is not completed very shortly, when we all know the reason for the non-completion of the railway before this time was that the government interfered and would not allow the Grand Trunk to build the road where they wished to! If there is to be any blame, if there has been any suffering, any loss to the country through the crops not being moved, let the supporters of the government lay the blame where it rightly rests, on the government who, when the Grand Trunk Railway Company applied for a charter to build from North Bay to the Pacific coast, compelled 114}
them to change the eastern terminus. I was rather amused when the last speaker, after quoting the Canadian Pacific Railway loan as a parallel instance and an unanswerable argument in favour of this loan, referred to the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway which he claimed to be another parallel case. What are the facts in regard to the Temiskaming Railway? It is rather odd but the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway starts from North Bay where the Grand Trunk wanted to start the Grand Trunk Pacific, and to have the cases parallel the Grand Trunk Pacific should have been built from North Bay on to the Pacific coast and should not have been diverted to Quebec.


Mr. TALBOT.: Were they not relieved of that obligation to build from North Bay to Winnipeg?


William Barton Northrup: Certainly, to their great regret and to the loss of the country, at the request of my hon. friends opposite. If the Ontario government had followed the plan of this administration in the construction of the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway, they would have started to build it from Toronto. They would have built it through the constituencies at any cost. But no, they started to build from North Bay, going only where they had a reason for going. Had they any reason for going where they did? The last gentleman who spoke (Mr. Pardee) said that Mr. Ross never signed a contract until the surveys had been made. When the surveys had been made and the wealth of minerals and timber had become known to every member of the legislature, and with the full understanding that the objective point was James bay to give an outlet to Hudson bay, picking up enough timber and minerals in the intervening country to make the road pay, and after ample surveys, the government stepped in and constructed the road. No one can compare that with the hop, skip and jump course of this government in 1903. We all remember that we came here led by the advertisement in the 'Canada Gazette' to believe that we were to be asked to give assent to the construction of a road from North Bay to the Pacific ocean. When that application came before the committee, it was changed, at some one's request, to an application to build to Quebec. We all remember Sir Charles Rivers Wilson and Mr. Hays appearing before that committee with the government supporting them in the desire to build a great trunk line of railway from Quebec to Winnipeg,-and the hon. member for Belle-chasse (Mr. Talbot) was one of the most obstinate opponents of the original suggestion to build from North Bay to the west.


Mr. CONMEE.: Does the hon. member now argue that it would have been better

in the interests of this country if that road was built from North Bay instead of where it is to be built?


William Barton Northrup: My hon. friend has a perfect right to ask questions and I will answer him to this extent, that it is beyond all peradventure-and the application for $10,000,000 in addition to the indebtedness and liabilities we have incurred is a proof- that it would have been far better for this *country if the government had held its hand and allowed the Grand Trunk to build the road as they wished, from North Bay through to the Pacific Coast, so that long ere this the crops would have been hauled out of the great Northwest over that road. If my hon. friend knew as he should have known, that all the government was asked to give was the ordinary bonus of perhaps some $13,000,000 or $14,000,000, and that in consideration thereof the Grand Trunk Pacific had offered to hand over every pound of freight from the west to the Intercolonial Railway at Montreal, then I think my hon. friend will admit it would have been better for the country had the project been accepted. The more closely we look into the comparison made by hon. gentlemen between this scheme and the Canadian Pacific Railway project, the more remote the two schemes seem to be from any resemblance or propinquity to one another. The Minister of Finance says that the government in this case is acting as a banker. If he means they are acting as the manager of a bank would act, I agree, but if he means as a banker in the sense of putting up the cash I would be inclined to say that the railway is coming to the people of Canada and not to the government for this loan. This is a pure business proposition. It is impossible perhaps to discuss such a question entirely without party sentiment, but I regret that that is the case if it is the case, as this is an important national question, and we ought at least to try to discuss it on its merits.
If any hon. gentleman opposite really believes it is in the interest of the country, after weighing the facts and arguments, he has a perfect right to support the resolution. But if, on the other hand, any hon. member of this House, I care not on which side he sits, honestly believes that it is not a business proposition-and that is the ground upon which the hon. Finance Minister laid it down before the House- if any hon. gentleman opposite says that this is not such a proposition as a banker should accept, then, I do not think he is doing his duty to himself, and he is certainly npt doing his duty to this country, if he vot.es for that loan believing it to be wrong. Supposing now that we were to put ourselves in the position of bankers for a moment-and it would be rather a pleasant supposition for each of us to think of a needy mendicant coming to us and asking for a loan of Mr. CONMEE.
$10,000,000-let us see what inquiries we would make before we advanced this amount of money. Supposing the railways came to the people of Canada and asked for a loan of $10,000,000; would it be untrue if the people said: 'We are very sorry but we have not $10,000,000 to loan?' It is customary for bankers, when they have not the money, to go out and borrow it at a higher rate of interest to loan it to another man? Is that the custom? If this is a Conservative attack on a government scheme, I would ask calmly, is that the custom of bankers and would bankers say that it is good business? If a person came with ample security and said that he wished to borrow $10,000,000, if the bank had not $10,000,000 and if the banker had been trying to borrow many millions of dollars in the past year and was only able to borrow forty per cent of what he wanted in the markets of the world, does it strike any one as a business proposition that the banker would entertain any such project? We will suppose that the banker was good natured and, like some other bankers, wished to do business regardless of whether the business was profitable or not, and he undertook to raise $10,000,000 and to lend it to you at four per cent; would that be considered a business transaction? What is your security? First the security of the Grand Trunk Pacific and then the guarantee of the Grand Trunk Railway Company which owes the country millions and millions of dollars, which has not paid a cent which it does not have to, and which has not paid its preference bonds. Would not Miss Canada be apt to say to the members of the government who have been introducing this deputation: 'You have been here before with these same gentlemen; I will just look up my notebook and see what you told me upon the other occasions when you were here and see if you knew then what you were talking about.' Supposing that Miss Canada turned up ' Hansard ' and saw what these gentlemen had told her when they came to her in 1903. Every supporter of the government must believe that if Miss Canada were acting intelligently, if she knew nothing about this transaction except that the members of the governjnent had come and asked for a loan, and if she wanted to see what was their business capacity she would say to them: 'We will see how your promises in the past have been fulfilled.' It is only fair to say that the fulfilment of these promises would justify their loan. Miss Canada would say: 'It is true you gave us a lot of promises in 1903, but I will look at the statute-book and see what I have of them there.' She looks at the statute-book and finds that what was pledged to Canada in the form of contracts and in other ways was, in 1904, blotted out of the statute-book of Canada. Would not Miss Canada be likely to receive with suspicion a proposition from gentlemen who came so

accredited? But the Minister of Finance, in laying that proposition before her says: 'Oh, Miss Canada, you should not be afraid of us; look carefully into the section and you will see that you have your first mortgage on this great system of railway.' And then, when Miss Canada looked in and saw that she did not have a first mortgage, that she had not a first class mortgage, that she did not have a mortgage that any lawyer in Canada would take for any client, except the Laurier government, would she not be justified in declining with thanks to enter into such a bargain ? But then, the Minister of Finance may say that they have a statement showing the large amount of money that has been spent by this virtuous corporation. They show that $8,000,000 has been put into rolling stock. Would it strike Miss Canada as being any certificate of business integrity, of business ability on the part of this insolvent corporation, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, which seeks to borrow $10,000,000, that it had put $8,000,000 into rolling stock for a road that had not been opened? Does it strike one as a business transaction? When we find that the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, which has no money, which is getting all it can get out of the Grand Trunk, has spent $8,000,000 on rolling stock and loaned that rolling stock to the Grand Trunk Railway Company at 4 per cent, when we remember that the lifetime of rolling stock would not at the most be more than fifteen or twenty years, and when	we find	this insolvent corporationpaying its debt back to its friends the rich no less poor corporation in this way, we can judge whether it is a transaction that would appeal to any business man	in this	country.	Do you	thinkMiss	Canada would be	inclined to	treatwith	such a	company	as that ?	MissCanada might well say:	'I wonder if everything has been honest and square about this road from the beginning to the end? You gentlemen are coming here for $10,000,000, and it is a case of your honesty or nothing.' This corporation is honest or dishonest. It is not for me to say which. No honest man objects to letting his books be looked at. No honest man who wants to borrow money is ashamed to show where the money that he has already borrowed went.
Will the right hon. Prime Minister say that the Grand Trunk Pacific are so secure in their honesty, so proud of their expenditure that they are willing to allow their books to be looked into? Many hon. gentlemen in this House remember that when we took evidence before the Public Accounts Committee we found that it cost a Grand Trunk official thousands of dollars to come from Montreal to Ottawa although he travelled in his private car and probably lunched at the Rideau club and paid his
bill at the end of the month? We remember how thousands were paid to lawyers in the city of Ottawa, we remember how $150,000 were spent before the charter was granted and although the evidence before the committee showed that the Grand Trunk had charged this amount against the Grand Trunk Pacific, and that when they were asked for the vouchers they preferred to allow such items as $30,000 or $35,000 to go by the board rather than show the vouchers in reference to them. In addition we remember the fact that supporters of the government refused to allow gentlemen on this side of the House to probe these accounts in order to find where this $150,000 went. If any men or any company were to come and ask for a loan and knowing that they had made charges in their books, that they had rendered their accounts, that these had been submitted to an auditor and that when the auditor had asked for vouchers they had voluntarily withdrawn thousands and thousands of dollars rather than show their vouchers. I would like to ask the Premier himself if he would not insist upon a proper audit of their books before he advanced any money? We have had rumours throughout the country. My attention has just been called to the fact that after they had withdrawn the vouchers the evidence before the Public Accounts Committee showed that they had carefully burned them. At all events, these vouchers were recalled, the Grand Trunk Pacific were willing to forego the payment of their accounts, the vouchers were destroyed by the order of an officer of the company and when the Public Accounts Committee tried to secure the presence of an officer of the Grand Trunk Railway Company who could have told us about these matters he started for the Mediterranean on the first train and the man they sent up knew nothing at all about them. I think that the right hon. gentleman, if he himself were aware of such facts, would be inclined to be sceptical about advancing any more money if it is a business transaction as the Finance Minister says it is, and we are looking at it as bankers and asking ourselves if we can in justice to the country make such a loan. There have been rumours in the country and there has been evidence given in the Public Accounts and other committees which would lead people to think that neither on the government division nor on the western division has the road been economically constructed. Is there a single man in this House that believes that the fcuilding of a prairie road would cost $36,000 a mile. Why, Mr. Hays ought to be flayed alive; the government ought certainly to discipline him for daring to taunt them as he did when he writes about the

improved character of the road, when we remember that the justification given by the government originally for the high estimate of cost was that they were going to build a road equal to the Grand Trunk between Montreal and Toronto which is universally admitted to be one of the finest pieces of railroad on the American continent. There cannot be any improvement on the character of the road which was guaranteed when the original money was advanced, and therefore I call the attention of the Prime Minister to the fact that Charles M. Hays when he gives that as a reason is telling something he knows is not true, just as well as he knows of the burning of the vouchers and the refusal to show the accounts.
There is another feature in this: The Grand Trunk is mainly owned, I believe, in the old country. I am sorry, and every Canadian must be sorry, that the investment of the original Grand Trunk shareholders has turned out so badly. But does the government think it has any right to run the risk of making the position of the shareholders more desperate than it is, by lending money to a company that has so thrown away money in construction that when it comes to begin operations there will be such a burden of interest that the rates they will have to charge for transportation of freight and passengers will put them out of business in competition with other better managed railroads? Will not the last end of the English investors be worse than the first? Could anything be more calculated to injure the credit of Canada in the old country than to have our government hand and glove with a corporation that has not kept its word, that is so grasping that it wants everything in sight, that is so determined to make something out of nothing that without having put up anything themselves, they have walked off with twenty-five million dollars of the common stock of this railway? That stock is worth something or it is worth nothing; if it is worth nothing what are we to think of these gentlemen who perpetrate what I might cal] petty larceny in taking a worthless stock, and, if it is worth something, why should not the country have control of it in view of this advance of ten million dollars. It has been said that this road has gone so far that it must be completed. What has that got to do with the question now before the House. Here is a railroad which made certain promises in 1903 and which broke these promises one after another in 1904, and we paid the bill. Here is a road that made certain other promises in 1904 and which has been breaking them religiously, consistently, and persistently ever since, and which now comes and asks for ten Mr. NORTHRUP.,
million dollars, the first of probably half a dozen more ten millions for all we can tell. What guarantee can we have that a corporation that has deceived us every time up to date is suddenly going to reform and lead another and a better, and to us, a more satisfactory life. It seems to me, Sir, that after all the proposition is a simple one. We on this side of the House wish to preserve the credit of Canada, to do everything that is proper to attain that end, but when an insolvent company comes to us and says:	'If you
don't advance us ten million dollars the work will fail,' I would answer: 'Are you the only company in the world; are you the only people who can build a railway; are we absolutely dependent on the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Grand Trunk that we must put our necks under their heels and let them crush us into the ground? No, if you cannot build it somebody else can.' Sir, there is nobody in this country so poor or so simple or so ignorant that if you give him one hundred per cent of the cost of a railway he cannot build that railway. And when you think of a company which has been given one hundred per cent of the cost of construction, and then think of its magnates cooly and deliberately buying the town sites all along the line at $3 per acre, and when you think of them holding up municipality after municipality and saying they won't put their yards or their tracks here or there until blackmail is paid, when you find all this on top of the 100 per cent of the cost of the road we have given to them, are we to be blamed if we are a little suspicious of the honesty or the business capacity of the company that in face of all that comes and asks us as a first instalment for ten million dollars more?
Now, Sir, if on the prairie section, which every one will admit should be enormously less expensive than the mountain section, calculations were so far astray that they were ten million dollars out, who will dare to say they can build the mountain section for the sum they promised. Is it not a moral certainty that this is but the beginning of the end; is it not certain that this government will find they have an old man of the sea on their shoulders who every year will be here kicking for another ten millions or twenty millions? Why the day may not be far distant when we shall be thankful that the Grand Trunk Pacific will let us off for ten millions a year when they reach the mountain section. If that is to be, why should we not as a business transaction apart from all sentimental feeling, say to this company: ' There are other companies that can build this road; you have

had the grandest opportunity any company ever had in this world, first to build the road and next to make a fortune for everybody in connection with it; you failed utterly in the first, though rumour says you succeeded admirably in the second, after all the advantages you have had.' Then, would it not be the common sense view, would it not be the view of the man who has confidence in Canada and Canadians to say: 'If you, mainly foreigners, have fallen down, we have have good native Canadians who have the brains and the brawn to build that road and we will see it is built whether the Grand Trunk Pacific Company turns another sod or not.'


Mr. W. M. MARTIN (Regina).: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a good deal of attention to the speeches delivered by the leader of the opposition and by the hon. member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup), but I have failed to discover whether these gentlemen are in favour of this loan or opposed to it. The fact is, Sir, that the interests of all Canada and the interests of western Canada in particular demand that this loan shall be granted by the government to the Grand Trunk Pacific in order, if possible, to complete the prairie section from Winnipeg to Wolf creek before the end of the present year. The transportation problem is the most important we have to deal with in Canada to-day, and it is of supreme importance to the west. There are settlers in that country cultivating land who live as far as 100 miles from a railway, and these men for whom we should have consideration cannot possibly make the profit out of their industry which they should. The hon. member for East Hastings stated that there have been some discreditable disclosures before the Public Accounts Committee, and although I was not here last year I presume that statement is on a par with the statements made throughout the length and breadth of Canada by hon. gentlemen opposite during the last campaign. I presume it is about as true as the statement of the hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) who went throughout the country telling what was absolutely untrue with regard to our western timber lands, and carrying with him his little magic lantern, taking upon himself to teach the people of the west what they should do with respect to their resources. If I remember correctly, the hon. leader of the opposition made a statement that the building of this road had been conceived in haste. I want to say that the people of western Canada are of the opinion that the building of the road was not conceived hastily enough. We think it ought to have been conceived three or four years sooner than it was; and if hon. gentlemen will take
the trouble to inquire in western Canada, to read the papers there, and even to read 'Hansard' of those days, they will find that the opinion was unanimously expressed throughout that country that there was absolute need for another transcontinental railway. I have here copies of two or three resolutions which were passed in western Canada in the years 1901, 1902, and 1903; and I want to call the attention of this House to these resolutions to show the incorrectness of. the statement of he hon. leader of the opposition, that the building of this road had been conceived in haste. The 'Regina Leader' in 1903 said:
For many weeks past first one merchant and then another has in vigorous language, drawn the attention of the ' Leader ' to the fact that the condition of railway traffic in the west is continually getting worse. The situation last year was had enough, when for days and sometimes weeks, merchants were completely out of certain lines of goods because the railway could not get them in. This year it was infinitely worse, for many business houses have been completely sold out of certain lines for weeks and months, notwithstanding the fact that their orders were placed in plenty of time and the goods promptly shipped by wholesalers in the east.
If that was the condition of affairs in 1902, it was equally so in 1903; and I speak from personal knowledge when I say that it was equally so during the years that succeeded. The legislature of the Northwest Territories in the fall of 1902 passed the following resolution, which I believe was forwarded to the Governor in Council at Ottawa:
The prospective increase in the volume of traffic, which largely increased cultivation and settlement of lands in these territories will gradually create, will further tend to congest ti affic between these territories and the provinces to the east, and unless it is held desirable to divert pant of the traffic through foreign channels, adequate facilities for transportation must be immediately provided. That this assembly does therefore humbly pray that Tour Excellency may be pleased to take such action as may be necessary or expedient to insure that the people of these territories are provided with an efficient transportation system as contemplated by the contract made between the people of Canada and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.
With respect to the question whether or not cattle and grain produced on the western prairies were being diverted through American channels, I may say that I know of my own personal knowledge that cattle have been driven by farmers in Saskatchewan across the boundary line into the states of Montana and Dakota to be shipped on American trains; and thousands of bushels of wheat have been drawn during the past year by farmers in the southern portion of the province of Manitoba across the boundary and shipped by American

lines. The hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) informs me that 150,000 bushels of grain from the southern part of his own constituency were drawn across the boundary and shipped by American lines during the past year. I could give you other expressions of opinion in regard to the need of more railway facilities in the northwest prior to the time of the making of the contract with the Grand Trunk Pacific. Here is a statement made by Mr. Wm, Whyte, the present vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, made in 1903, when the Grand Trunk Pacific contract was under discussion:
There is lots of room for the Grand-Trunk Railway in the Northwest. 1 am glad to hear they are coming. You must remember that the Grand Trunk Railway is a national road and it is far better to have it than an American road. If the people of the east had any idea of the rapidity with which the country is settling out there, they would not be surprised to hear me say:	'There is room for
the Grand Trunk Railway and others as well/ The conditions of affairs has completely changed even since a year ago. The traffic is not only abnormal east-bound but also west bound. It is this fact which has simply ren dered it impossible to handle the crop with the despatch which was necessary.
I could give you statements to the same effect from other western papers. The Winnipeg Telegram ' and the Toronto ' Mail and Empire ' agreed that another transcontinental railway was necessary. In the face of these facts, I was somewhat surprised, as a resident of the western provinces, to read at that time statements by prominent members of the Conservative party in this House that they were absolutely opposed to a third continental railway project.


Some hon. MEMBERS: No, no.


William Melville Martin: If hon. gentlemen will permit me, I will quote from 'Hansard' statements made by prominent members of the Conservative party to that effect. I must say that it did occasion a good deal of surprise to residents of the vicinity in which I reside to find that there were men in the House of Commons so absolutely ignorant of western conditions as not to know that we were so hampered for the lack of transportation facilities that every farmer lost possibly an average of 10 cents a bushel on his grain because of that lack, as he is doing at the present time and will continue to do, so long as adequate transportation facilities are lacking.


Mr. WRIGHT.: May I ask the hon. gentleman this question: when he speaks of farmers drawing their grain across the boundary, does he mean to give this House to understand that they will now draw it up to the Transcontinental Railway?


William Melville Martin: If my hon. friend knows anything about railway transporta-Mr. W. M. MARTIN.
tion in the western provinces, he'knows that every railway built must necessarily relieve the tension that exists.


William Wright: I know that the building of the Transcontinental Railway will not cure the difficulty he refers to.


William Melville Martin: The hon. gentleman will have plenty of time to reply in a few moments. I want to refer, for instance, to what was said by the hon. member for East Grey (Mr. Sproule), who I am sorry is not in his seat at the present time. Referring to 'Hansard' of 1903, vol. 4, at page 8761, that hon. gentleman spoke as follows:
Let us examine for a short time the reasons they give to justify this undertaking. The first is the urgent need of the west for increased facilities to handle its grain. Now, this brings up the question whether such urgent need in the west exists to-day. Where is the urgent need for this new railway in the west, a need so urgent, as the Premier says, we cannot wait another day, another hour, re cannot put it off till to-morrow, we have not a moment to spare; and he expressed the hope that we had not waited too long already. Now this suggests the question, how are the products of that country handled to-day? Is there such urgent need at the present time? I do not think so. If we look into it carefully, I am sure we will not come to that conclusion.
That surely is a definite enough statement in opposition to the main project of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Another statement made by the same hon. gentleman, in the same volume of 'Hansard', at page 8770, was as follows:
I have said that the sentiment of the country. in Ontario at least, is against the subsidizing of railways largely in the future. Has the government had any mandate from the people to put through this project? No. I challenge the Prime Minister to-day to dissolve this House and go to the country upon this scheme. Dare he risk it? If he should do it, and if the people should return him to power, then he may carry out his scheme and 1 shall not offer any objection.
At page 8775 of the same volume, the same hon. gentleman denounced the project in the following very strong terms:
Let them ask themselves whether they will be justified in endorsing that undertaking, that baby policy, that monstrosity of politics, that has been launched upon the world in connection with this scheme. When the people of Canada have digested this policy properly I am quite sure what the result will be. Sir, once more I dare the government to dissolve this House and appeal to the country to-day. Dare they ask a mandate from the electorate for this heavy undertaking? They dare not do it, I challenge them to do it.
As far as the province of Saskatchewan is concerned, the main issue discussed in the election campaign of 1904 was the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific. Did the

people endorse that scheme? There can be but one answer to that question. One of the main issues discussed by the people during the election campaign of 1908 was the Grand Trunk Pacific project. Did the people endorse it in 1908? I venture to say that there were two Liberal votes cast in that province endorsing the Grand Trunk Pacific for every vote cast against it.
Let me refer to what was said by the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) in the session of 1903. I am quoting from 'Hansard,' page 8810. He said:
Go where you will, and the preponderating voice, the overwhelming voice will be, when the scheme is fully understood, an absolute condemnation of this measure.
Well, since this statement was made, I have heard hon. gentlemen opposite speaking in western Canada on political subjects, and I never heard one of them condemn the Grand Trunk Pacific project. The reason is obvious. They knew they were in a country where the people were all in favour of building the road and recognized it as an absolute necessity. I challenge any Conservative member from the west in this House to say he is against the loan of $10,000,000 to pay for the completion of the prairie section. I challenge the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Lake) to say that he is adverse to that loan for the completion of the prairie section of the Grand Trunk Pacific. I challenge any Conservative member from Manitoba to say that he is adverse to that loan. They dare not oppose it. There would not be a Conservative returned in Manitoba at the next election if they took that position.
I do not intend to take up any time of the House discussing the securities which are being obtained by the government from the Grand Trunk Pacific. The majority of members from the west have sufficient confidence in the growth of Canada in the next few years to believe that the Grand Trunk Pacific will be a huge success and be able to pay back all money borrowed by it from the government.
The hon. member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup) drew some comparisons. He called the Grand Trunk Pacific an insolvent road, and contrasted the securities got from that road with those we got from the Canadian Pacific Railway. Well, all the security which the Canadian Pacific Railway eculd give to this country was the land and the money and the six hundred miles of railway given to that company by the Conservative party. This government took certain precautions before deciding do grant this loan to the Grand Trunk Pacific. As appears by the papers laid on the table, a request was made for the loan by Mr. Chas. M. Hays on behalf of the Grand Trunk Pacific. At that particular time, Mr. Hays submitted a statement- showing the actual cost of the western section and "the amount
of money put into it up to the present. The government took the trouble to have their own engineer, Mr. Collingwood Schreiber, go carefully over the figures and report as to whether this statement of Mr. Hays was correct or not. He reported that it was. As regards the security, I am content to leave that matter in the hands of the government. Any man who has any confidence in the growth of Canada cannot fail to admit that we are bound to grow to such an extent in the next few years, that the Grand Trunk Pacific cannot help but be a success and pay back any amount borrowed by it from the government to build the prairie section.
Look at the position which the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta occupy as contrasted with other grain producing countries. Every one admits that Canada is bound to become possibly the greatest wheat producing country in the world. One of our greatest competitors is the Argentine republic. How does the Argentine republic compare with Canada in the matter of transportation facilities ? The republic has something like 240,000 square miles of area and 8,000 miles of railway. It is said that the average Argentina farmer is 10 miles distant from a railway. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, the total area is
300,000	square miles, and we have_ 2,800 miles of railway. And the average distance of the average farmer from the railway is much greater than 10 miles. It costs the average Argentina farmeT two cents or three cents a bushel to get his grain to the initial shipping point and it costs the average farmer in Saskatchewan six cents or seven cents a bushel. It costs the Argentina farmer 16 or 17 cents a bushel to get his grain from the initial shipping point to the Liverpool markets, and it costs the Saskatchewan farmer 30 cents a bushel. How can the farmers of our country compete in the European market when they have to pay rates of that description? The only solution of the difficulties under which the producers of the west labour is to get railways into that country. Every railway must necessarily relieve a certain amount of traffic handling by other companies and assist more and more our farmers each year in getting their crops promptly to market and obtaining the best market prices.
One more point, and this is a matter which affects particularly the western grain producer. According to the best authorities I have been able to consult, one of the difficulties our farmers have to contend with, in shipping their grain, is the spread between the track price and the street price on the western wheat market. Take the markets in any locality, as soon as a farmer has his grain loaded on a car, he gets what is known as a track price.

But if he has to put his grain into an elevator, he,gets the street price, and the difference between the two is something like 30 cents a bushel. Let me point to the evidence taken before the Grain Commission last year and Sir Bichard Cartwright. You will find that the farmers who appeared before Sir Richard Cartwright said that in some instances they knew the spread to be as high as 30 cents a bushel. What is the cause of this spread. The late Mr. Drink-water said it was the difficulty in getting cars.
If I wished to take the time I could read extracts from the statements made; but the consensus of opinion was that this difference in price, which is a total loss to the western farmer, was caused by the difficulty of getting cars. And railway men and elevator men went so far as to say: Give us cars and we will reduce the spread to three cents a bushel. Take a production of 100,000,000 bushels of grain, and suppose you save seven cents a bushel to the western farmer, you have there a saving of $7,000,000 per annum; save ten cents a bushel and you have a saving of $10,000,-
000.	I do not mean to say that the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific will do away with all the difficulty, but I do say that the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the building of branch lines by the Grand Trunk Pacific and the other railways will alleviate the conditions to a very great extent.
I might go on and give reasons why I approve the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific through western Canada, and to point out many provisions in the contract which are decidedly in favour of the people of Canada and of the west in particular when you compare them with those of the contract for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway with its iniquitous tax exemption on land, rolling stock and roadbed placed, as a burden, upon that western country by the late Conservative government. I do not intend to take up time to deal with these questions, but I -may say a word with regard to what has been said concerning the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway. I am informed on good authority that the riches of the Cobalt district were only discovered through the actual construction of the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway, that before the railway was constructed the mineral wealth was not known. That being the case, it is not unreasonable for us to believe that the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific will open up new wealth yet undreamed of. In the great northland we believe that there is territory which, when opened up, will yield great wealth. If the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway has opened up so rich a new territory for this province, we are justified in believing that the Mr. W. M. MARTIN.
National Transcontinental will open up northern Ontario and the northern parts of the west as well.
I approve of a loan being made to the Grand Trunk Pacific to aid them in the completion of the line, because it means railway competition in the west in a measure we have not at the present time. It means increased railway transportation facilities. It means reduction of freight rates-where there is competition we must have reduction. It must assist in placing Canada in a favourable position in the European market. It means the completion of a great national undertaking tending to promote national development, national expansion and national solidarity.


Mr. J. W. MADDIN (Cape Breton South).: The resolution before the House has for its object the handing over to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company of a sum of $10,000,000 for the purpose of completing the prairie section of the transcontinental line. The object sought is, in effect, to make the government of this country bankers for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway to the extent of this sum. It is a unique position in this country; there is only one partial parallel to it in our history, and that was when the government of this country granted assistance in a somewhat similar manner Jo the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1884. Some hon. members have suggested that hon. members on this side were opposed to the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. I submit that hon. members on this side of the House will be found as faithful to their obligations in respect of public contracts as hon. members on the government side. There is no member on this side who does not feel that the people of Canada are bound by this contract and wedded to it, and they will favour the carrying out of the contract in full. There is no member on this side who is opposed to carry to its fullest completion the building of this railway. There may be a difference in method, but there is no member on this side of the House who has offered any suggestion that will delay the completion of this road for a fraction of a day.
The hon. member for West Lambton (Mr. Pardee) in his remarks this afternoon pointed out, as a precedent for this position-and sc did the mover of this resolution-that in 1884 the Liberal-Conservative government had advanced the sum of $30,000,000 to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The member for West Lambton said that the resolution now before the House was 'on all fours '-to use his own words-with the resolution brought down by Sir Charles Tupper in 1884. I take issue with the hon. member when he makes that statement. There is little or no similarity in the circumstances of 1884 and those of 1909 with regard to these railway lines. Let us look at the preamble of the Act of 1881 by virtue

of which the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was incorporated:
Whereas by the terms and conditions of the admission of British Columbia into union with the Dominion of Canada, the government of the Dominion has asssumed the obligation of causing a railway to be constructed^, connecting the sea-board of British Columbia with the railway system of Canada.
Until British Columbia entered confederation, we had no outlet on the Pacific seaboard. The American boundary line came down from Alaska, running along a great part of the Pacific coast, and there was only, proportionately, a small strip of the Pacific coast on British soil. It was necessary, in order to reach British dominions beyond the Pacific that British Columbia should be induced to enter Canada. And one of the inducements offered was that a railway would be built from ocean-to ocean. As one hon. member pointed out, there was then a p jpplation of less than 20,000 white people between Lake Superior and the Rocky mountains, and less than 11,000 beyond the Rocky mountains in British Columbia. The hon. member (Mr. Pardee) asks us to have faith in our country and in the resources and wealth of our country. I may tell my hon. friend that there were found among the pioneers of this Confederation in 1881 men who, under circumstances that called for deep faith, undertook the building of a railway of greater magnitude than that which is sought to be built at the present time.
The leaders of the old Conservative party were never lacking in faith in their country and the hon. member failed utterly in his attempt to draw a parallel between the resolution of 1884 and the resolution now before us. I have spoken of the population of the Northwest in 1881 when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built. At that time the Liberal leaders then in opposition in this House said it was folly to undertake to build a railway through that country, that it contained nothing but buffaloes and wild Indians, and that a railway through it would not pay for its axle grease. The Canadian Pacific Railway commenced the work of construction. The government built the eastern part of the road at a cost of $28,000,000 and gave it to the Canadian Pacific Railway, they gave them a grant of $25,000,000 and 25,000,000 acres of land The railway was to be finished by May 1, 1891. In 1884, Sir Charles Tupper moved a resolution in the House to grant to the Canadian Pacific Railway a loan aggregating practically $30,000,000. What were the circumstances? The promoters and stockholders of the Canadian Pacific Railway had then spent $10,000,000 of their own money. Of their $100,000,000 of capital stock they had sold $65,000,000 and had thus raised
$63,000,000, every cent of which had been spent in the work of construction. They had then used the subsidies and had sold more than three million acres of the land grant given to them by the government. They had left on their hands stock to the value of $35,000,000 and more than 21,000,000 acres of their land grant in the west. Sir Charles Tupper in moving the resolution in 1884, submitted to the House a statement prepared by the Canadian Pacific Railway setting forth the amount of money expended, the amount of railway completed, and showing resources from which this money was derived, demonstrating to the satisfaction of the House that the moneys which had been raised from the sale of the stock of the company had been used in the construction of the road. As a matter of fact they had then not less than 1,370 miles of road completed and actually running, notwithstanding that it was only three year3 from the time they had entered into the undertaking. They were not obliged under their contract to finish the railway until May 1, 1891. Before submitting that statement to parliament, Sir Charles, Tupper sent two auditors to Montreal, Mr. Colling-wood Schreiber, now chief engineer of the Grand Trunk Pacific Company and Mr. E. Miall, to make an examination of the books and vouchers of the Canadian Pacific Railway in order to satisfy themselves that the report submitted by the Canadian Pacific Railway to the Minister of Railways was a true and correct report. The minister instructed these gentlemen to make such a close and accurate examination of the accounts as a business or banking concern would require before advancing or loaning money or entering into a partnership with a reliable business firm. The books of the company and the company's auditor and his staff were placed at the disposal of these two auditors. After a careful examination they certified the statement submitted to the minister to be correct.
Then it was shown that with the depression existing at that time, the railway presumably having no great future before it, the prospects not being very bright that the railway would ever be a paying concern and that the railway had received financially a black eye in the English money markets, that cablegrams and letters had been sent to the English money markets which affected the credit of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It must be remembered that the Canadian Pacific Railway did not have freight lying at the side of the track with which to begin earning dividends when the road was completed. You will see the vast difference between it and the Grand Trunk Pacific to-day. The Prime Minister in proposing the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific urged

that whilst Canada had a sufficient number of open harbours, it had not enough railways to carry the freight to those harbours, and so it was proposed to build this great national highway. This railway was designed to go from coast to coast. It was submitted by the Liberal party in 1903 that the Grand Trunk Pacific would follow along the coast of Lake Superior and would seek a northerly route from that point, thereby opening up a new and heretofore untouched portion of Canada. What do we find in fact? From Port Arthur to Winnipeg the Grand Trunk Pacific practically parallels the Canadian Pacific Railway. From Winnipeg to the Rocky mountains it is at no time more than 100 or 150 miles distant and for much of that distance it is only from two to four miles distant from the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. To the north of it lies the Canadian Northern Railway which was built through the industry and business capacity of Messrs. Mackenzie & Mann, with merely the government subsidies. To the south of it lies the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the day the Grand Trunk Pacific is completed the freight is there for it to move. In 1884, when Sir Charles Tupper's resolution was before the House, the condition confronting the Canadian Pacific Railway was that when they completed their line their first freights out into that country were to be the immigrants and farming materials for the breaking of the soil to commence to raise the first crops to be moved. No such condition obtains with regard to the Grand Trunk Pacific. Their routed freight is lying there.
When the Prime Minister spoke of having this railway reach more of our seaports did he forget that before the Grand Trunk Pacific was undertaken we had a railway running into Vancouver, and into Quebec and Montreal on the St. Lawrence, that we had the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Intercolonial Railway running into St. John, that we had the Intercolonial Railway running into Halifax and Sydney, and that with railway connection via the Intercolonial Railway between Louisburg and Halifax on the Atlantic, and Vancouver on the Pacific, we had outlets all the year round with the existing railways.
But, what is proposed to be done by the Grand Trunk Pacific Company? They wish to have the building and owning of this railway out to the Pacific coast in order to have a feeder from the west and from the prairie provinces for the eastern section of their road. They have an object in view. They have as their Atlantic seaports the towns of New London in Connecticut and Portland on the Atlantic seaboard and the object in view of this railway company is to run in between the Canadian Northern on the north and the Mr. MADDIN.
Canadian Pacific Railway on the south, grasp the freight that is routed by these two lines and which would carry it to a Canadian seaport and translate it to the American seaports of the Grand Trunk Railway Company. If that be the object of the Grand Trunk Pacific it is nothing short of treason to this country that our own seaports should be robbed of the freight from the prairie provinces. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company had exhausted their resources, they had spent $10,000,000 of their own money, they had spent the proceeds of the sale of $65,000,000 of their stock, they had spent the money derived from the sale of over 3,000,000 acres of land, and every dollar was invested in the road and they had 1,370 miles in actual running order. There was a depression in the money markets of the world. The depression was not, however, even in the minds of the people at that time, of such a character as to seriously interfere with the Canadian Pacific Railway living up to their actual original contract. There was! nothing apprehended at that time that would interfere with the Canadian Pacific Railway completing their road on the 1st May, 1891. But, rather than go into the money market with their bonds at that time they proposed to surrender to the government the stock which they held and that portion of the railway that was completed, upon which there had been expended $63,000,000 from stock as well as the government subsidies paid up to that time. This was offered as a guarantee for the repayment of the sum which was asked to be loaned. One of the strongest considerations that moved the Liberal-Conservative party in 1884 to grant $30,000,000 to the Canadian Pacific Railway was that the railway would be completed in 1886, five years earlier than the contract called for. This railway was actually completed in 1886. What do we find in regard to the Grand Trunk Pacific? They were to have had their road completed by the 1st of December, 1908. Up to the present time we find, by looking at the returns handed down the other day by the Minister of Finance, that the amount of railway completed at present is 667 miles from Winnipeg to Wainwright and it is completed and working under construction, not absolutely completed but working under construction. After over five years of operation by this Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company they have not one single mile of that railway completed and passed by the government engineers. They are operating, it is true, 667 miles under construction, but they have not one single mile of that road completed, whereas the Canadian Pacific bad 1,370 miles of railway completed be-

sides 239 miles of branches and 160 miles north of Lake Superior, which was very heavy work, was almost completed. The result was that the road was absolutely completed in 1886. In 1884 the Canadian Pacific Railway came to the government not pretending to be in the embarrassed condition that the Grand Trunk Pacific is in. All they said was that if they could get an advance of this money they would complete the road five years sooner than they had promised to do it. Bear in mind that time was an essential element entering into the contract at that time. When the people of Canada undertook to build the Canadian Pacific Railway the American transcontinental railway companies looked upon the undertaking as a huge joke. They did not think it would be possible for the people of Canada to finance and build a railway across the continent, but as time rolled on and and they saw that the work was being carried on they began to be apprehensive that they would have an active competitor in the Canadian Pacific Railway and it was they who were principally responsible for stampeding the stock of the Canadian Pacific Railway and making it hard for them to sell the last $35,000,000 of it. The railways of the western states thought that the Canadian Pacific Railway would be an important competitor of theirs and the Union Pacific sent out agents to canvass the country and get pledges of freight from Canadian territory for the American railway lines. It was of paramount importance that this railway should be finished five years earlier than the time specified in the contract in order to get Canadian freight routed over the Canadian route and brought eastward to the Atlantic sea-board. As a security for this loan in 1884 the Canadian Pacific Railway handing over absolutely all they were owners of in the world. I quote from the remarks of Sir Charles Tupper at this time. He said:
If there is default in payment of interest or prmapal, if by the 1st of May, 1892, every dollar of interest and every dollar of prin-oipal is not refunded to the government of this advance, they (Canadian Pacific Railway Company) propose that we shall become at once the possessors of the entire property of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.
I ask hon. members of this House to compare the conditions that obtained in 1884 with the conditions that obtain in this year-1909. As my hon. friend from East Hastings (Mr. Northrup) has pointed out this evening this government is not in a position to become bankers for the Grand Trunk Pacific. The Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific are so wedded together financially, by contract and otherwise, that they are, for the purposes of this resolution, inseparable, and I submit that our relations in the past with the Grand Trunk Pacific have been of such a character that we cannot accept from them in good faith the representations which they have submitted to this House at the present time. As far as has been made known to this House no steps have been taken by the mover of this resolution or any one upon the government side to verify the statements submitted by the Grand Trunk Railway. These two companies are practically inseparable and the people of this country should not undertake to be their bankers on such poor security as is being offered at the present time. Since this House opened on the 20th January last it has been a common thing, when estimates were being put through, to be met by minister after minister from the different departments with the complaint that the finances of the country were in such a condition that much needed as many public works were they were unable to undertake them at the present time. In New Brunswick and Nova Scotia important railway undertakings have been laid over by the government on the pretense that the country has no money. And if we cannot afford to spend a few hundred thousand dollars on important public works, what grave reasons are there why we should place ourselves under an obligation to plunge into the money markets of the world for ten million dollars to tide
company over The financial
the Grand Trunk Pacific their financial difficulties, statistics of Canada show that there are $400,000,000 belonging to the depositors of Canada in the various banking institutions of the Dominion, and I would like the Minister of Finance to tell me if any financial concern in Canada would advance one million cents on the security offered by the Grand Trunk to the government. I think not. We have been told by gentlemen opposite that the country endorsed the policy of the government in 1904. It is true that while approving in a general way of the construction of the Transcontinental Railway the Conservative party took issue with the government as to the best means to accomplish that end, and in a sense that became the main issue before the people. But the right hon. the Prime Minister on every platform assured the people solemnly that it would not cost them one dollar more than $13,000,000 to build the transcontinental railway from ocean to ocean, and the people took him at his word and endorsed his administration. But now these same people realize to t.heir great discomforture that the road is to cost $250,000,000. So long as Canada remains a borrowing country she must live religiously up to her public contracts, but every contract we have made with the Grand Trunk Pacific from 1903 down to the present moment has been flagrantly broken by that company. It was

improvident on the part of the government to enter into the contract of 1903; it was improvident on the part of the government to have changed that contract from time to time; it is improvident on the part of the government to do what they now propose. The contract with the Grand Trunk Pacific Company was conceived in unwisdom, conducted with unparalleled extravagance and improvidence, and we are now reaping as we have sown. The government has pledged the credit of Canada to relieve the broken fortunes of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company until we have now invested in this concern not less than $200,000,000.
We are meeting with the fate of the gambler who foolishly only buys stock on margin and who must buy out the stock if he is not to be ruined. Why not let Canada buy out the stock of the Grand Trunk Pacific Company without risking any more margins on it? I say, Sir, that _we _ can consistently live up to our obligations with the people of the west and the 'people of the east by saying to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company: * Every contract we have made with you, you have flagrantly broken; your contractual obligations with us are at an end, give us your vouchers for the money expended by you and we will pay you every dollar you have put into the enterprise, hand us over the railway and we will build it ourselves.' Anyway, if the country is to pay nine-tenths of the cost of construction, why should not that railroad become a national asset of the people? I would go further and say, that after we have completed the railroad, if need be we could hand it back to the company to operate, always providing certain restrictions with regard to the routing of the freight in order to preserve our Canadian seaports. In view of the disclosures made in the Public Accounts Committee with regard to the item of $162,000, and as to which the vouchers were subsequently burned, the government and the people of Canada should hesitate before advancing ten million dollars more to such a company. In the estimates brought down by the Minister of Finance it is shown that a further sum of forty-eight millions will be required, ten millions of which are being asked now. Why does not the Minister of Finance muster up courage enough to ask parliament for the full sum at once? Is it pretended that the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company can raise the forty million dollars more which is required to complete this road; is it not common sense to suppose that if they were financially in a position to do that they would not now be knocking at the door of the government asking for this money? I regret to have to think that this is not the last ten millions that will be demanded. What guarantee have we that the Grand Trunk Pacific can finance the other forty millions estimated Mr. MADDIN.
as required to complete the mountain section? Failing to get a satisfactory answer to that question, we discharge them from any further obligations with respect to this road, and assume the obligation of finishing it, and do it promptly, for the people of Canada. Let us lease it to these people, but let us build and own it ourselves.
The hon. member for West Lambton (Mr. Pardee) said that the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) was wont to say that a great stage had been prepared for Canada and that we were the actors upon it; and he went on to ask, shall we raise the curtain and proceed to act, or shall we halt for a paltry $10,000,000 ?_ I would say, Mr. Speaker, that he might raise the curtain and show us vouchers for the expenditure of all the moneys that have been raised by the sale of stock, or all that have been paid bv this government by way of subsidy. He might show to the satisfaction of this House that these moneys have been spent legitimately for the purchase of right of way, for railway material or railway construction, and that there are no vouchers that_ they will be ashamed to show or be obliged to go and burn.
In conclusion I have only this to urge. Hon. members on this side of the House are as anxious for the hasty completion of this road as hon. members on the government side of the House; and it is, as I conceive, the duty of this government to cut loose from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, that company having violated every contract that it has entered into up to the present time, and take possession of the road, reimburse those people for every dollar they have spent on it, with interest up to date, and complete the road ouTselves and own it as a national asset for the people of Canada in the future


Mr. J. G. TURRIFF (Assiniboia).: Mr. Speaker, as this is a matter that affects to a very large extent the province from which I come, I would like to take ten or fifteen minutes to express to this House and the- First Minister my complete sympathy with the action that the government is taking at the present time. I do not think it is worth while to spend half an hour or an hour, as some hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House have done, in discussing the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. We all know that the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a necessity, and we all recognize-I believe every member on the other side of the House just as much as members on this side-that the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific is just as much a necessity to-day, and was when it was undertaken, as the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was at the time it was.

undertaken. If that is the case, why waste time discussing the advisability of the construction of these roads? What we have to deal with to-night is the motion before the House-the advisability of making a loan of $10,000,000 to enable the Grand Trunk Pacific to complete the prairie section of the road in a better manner and with less strain on their credit and with more credit to the Dominion of Canada than it could be completed in any other way. That is the point we have to deal with, and I would ask if any hon. member on the other side of the House would say that that money should not be advanced to the company to enable them to complete the road? I do not believe, when it comes down to the fine thing, that any hon. gentleman on the other side of the House will take the position that we should not make the loan to enable the company to complete the prairie section, and to complete it before the end of the current year. What does that mean? It means that if the prairie section of the road is completed during the present year, the section between Fort William and Winnipeg will be completed also, so that by the time the next crop is ripe, we shall have a third outlet for the season's crop to the lakes. It was pointed out by the hon. member for West Lambton (Mr. Pardee) what a great advance had taken place in the country during the last five years, since the inception of the Grand Trunk Pacific. If that line was a necessity then, and no one will deny it, it is doubly a necessity at the present time. It is all very well for gentlemen who live m the east to criticise the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific; but we who come from the west and who represent men living thirty or fourty miles from a railway, know that the advent of another railway in the country means an increase of transportation facilities, because the construction of the main line of the Grand Trunk Pacific means the construction of feeders through all parts of the grain-growing districts of the prairie provinces, and every one of these branch lines will bring railway facilities to hundreds of men who haven't them now.


Samuel Hughes: Will the hon. member please give the House the names of a few points east of Edmonton thatt are even twenty miles, much less thirty miles, from a railway?


John Gillanders Turriff: I would like to inform the hon. gentleman that the whole country does not lie east of Edmonton. There are parts of the country a thousand miles from Edmonton which are in dire need of railway facilities at the present time.


Samuel Hughes: Will the hon. gentleman name a point west of Edmonton that is
going to be touched by this railway that is not now within ten miles of a railway?


John Gillanders Turriff: There is a great stretch of prairie country between Winnipeg and Edmonton, 800 or 900 miles in length and 300 miles in breadth, that is greatly in need of railway facilities. Fifty or 100 miles west of Edmonton you get into a different kind of country. You are in the foothills of the mountains, but it is a different country from the country to the south, where the Canadian Pacific Railway passes through the mountains. You are in a country where the mountain ranges are lower and the valleys wider, and where there are hundreds of settlers on farming lands to one along the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. So that in running the main line of the Grand Trunk Pacific through that country, you are running it through a country that will yield largely of farm produce, as well as of timber, minerals and fruit.
The Grand Trunk Pacific is a necessity, and a great necessity. I am not going to take up time considering the securities that we are going to get for this loan. All I need to do is to point to what, the hon. leader of the opposition said this afternoon. He spent some time criticising the securities the government were getting for the advance of this $10,000,000, and how did he wind up? By saying that, the common stock of the Grand Trunk Pacific was worth from 100 to 150. If the common stock is worth 50 per cent above par, there is not much danger of our not getting the interest on the bonds for the money advanced to help to complete the construction. Is there any man in this House or out of it, who has knowledge of that western country, who will say that a road built over the line of the Grand Trunk Pacific, with all its branches in that country, the greatest wheat producing country in the world, and in the great farming valleys of British Columbia, with their vast timber and mineral resources, will not earn interest on the cost of construction? When the road is built through British Columbia, through the great farming valleys and vast timber resources of that province, will any man in this House say that it will not earn interest on its cost?
Hon. gentlemen opposite have criticised this road from the point of view of its cost. Let me say that if a mistake was made some years ago, when the government made an estimate of its cost, I am very glad that mistake was discovered and rectified before the road was built and that a road is being built which, when completed, will be the finest on the continent, and not such a road as the Canadian Pacific Railway con-stiucted, when they built their main line, and as the Canadian Northern is constructing. We are having a road built which will stand for hundreds of years. Look at what is taking place to-day both on the

Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian Northern. We were told in the Railway Committee this morning that the Canadian Pacific is spending $18,000,000 on its road. But the great bulk of that is being spent on the main line in cutting down grades and straightening out curves. Why is this expenditure _ being made? _ Because the company was in such a position that it could not haul freight cheaply. Every one knows that in building a road now, great attention is paid to the road bed and the grades. The Grand Trunk Pacific are constructing a road superior to any transcontinental line that has yet been built and are getting a maximum grade of four-tenths of one pei; cent. What does that mean? I have here a comparison of what that grade, which the Grand Trunk Pacific will have from Edmonton to Prince Rupert, will enable one engine to do compared with what is being done by one engine on other transcontinental roads. I saw the complete figures given by Mr. Hays in one of the newspapers, but in that paper, which was friendly to the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Canadian Pacific Railway figures were left out, so that I cannot give an exact comparison. Here is what an engine will haul on the Grand Trunk Pacific when completed. It will be able to haul over the worst grade between Edmonton and Prince Rupert 2,041 tons. What is done on transcontinental roads in the United States? An engine on the Great Northern hauls 572 tons, on the Northern Pacific 572 tons, also on the Union Pacific, and on the Santa Fee Railway 376 tons. With the grades existing on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway up to a year ago, the amount that an engine could haul was less than 200 tons. So that it is advisable, when making a road bed, to get the grades right and spend whatever money is necessary, rather than have to change your grades, location and curves after the road is built. Hon. gentlemen opposite talk about what the Canadian Pacific Railway has cost. There is no man living who can tell what that road cost. You cannot tell what we have paid, and no one can tell what we will pay, because we are paying to-day for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway and will continue to pay for many years to come. What about the exemptions from taxes for all time to come on their lines? What about the 10,000,000 acres of land which they hold at present, the patents for which are in their pockets and on which they are not paying a cent of taxes? That is what we are paying to-day and what we will continue to pay so that we cannot compute what the Canadian Par Mr. TURRIFF.
cific Railway has cost us. And while the Canadian Pacific Railway got millions of dollars and millions of acres of land, the Grand Trunk Pacific do not get any bonus or subsidy except the interest on the cost of capital during construction. Whatever else is advanced they have to pay interest on. I thought myself that the government had driven too hard a bargain with the Grand Trunk Pacific especially when we consider that it will have to compete with the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was practically built by the government, and with the Canadian Northern which has been built by subsidies from both the federal and local governments. The Grand Trunk Pacific has not been treated nearly as favourably as either of the other transcontinental roads.
I do not think that our hon. friends opposite need be in the least degree afraid of the Grand Trunk Pacific not being able to pay back this money. Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan said some years ago that anybody who took the bear side on the United States market would eventually go broke. Well, anybody who takes the bear side on the market against Canada will meet with the same fate. No one can tell w'hat the future of our western and our eastern country is going to be. The Dominion is just beginning to grow. A moment ago we heard an hon. gentleman talk about the Grand Trunk Pacific borrowing $10,000,000 from the Dominion of Canada just when we are in an impoverished condition, and in the very next breath he told us that there are $400,000,000 on deposit in the banks of the people of Canada. Does that look as if the country was impoverished? Not at all. The country was never in better shape than it has been for a number of years past.
As to the necessity for this Toad, I might point out that in all parts of the country every year there are freight blockades. Two years ago we could not get cars to haul coal and wheat. A friend of mine in Medicine Hat had a lot of cattle to ship and he drove in two hundred or three hundred head, and kept them around Medicine Hat two months without being able to get any cars to shin them in. He had to take them back to his ranch and during the hard winter he lost three or four thousand dollars worth. In the face of that condition of things, will any one say that this road is not a necessity? The question is, as I said before: What is the best way? I claim that the government has taken the proper course in lending the money. We lend it for a period not exceeding ten years; we shall get as much interest as it costs us; and we shall get our money back. Something was said by the hon. member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup) about the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Grand Trunk being bankrupt. Where would the Canadian Pacific Railway have been in 1884, when Sir

Charles Tupper came to this House for a loan of $30,000,000 if that sum had not been advanced?


Herbert Brown Ames: They gave security.


John Gillanders Turriff: Yes, they gave simply what the government had given them, the completed road, and 25,000,000 acres of land. Will any hon. member point out what else they gave? Hon. gentlemen opposite need not be a bit alarmed about the Grand Trunk Pacific being able to pay back this money and pay it back before the ten years' term is up. At the present time, the Grand Trunk Pacific have 670 miles in operation. This road may not have been finally accepted by the government, but for months the Grand Trunk Pacific has been running trains over that line from Winnipeg to Drinkwater. The Grand Trunk Pacific has a much greater mileage in proportion to the amount it is borrowing than the Canadian Pacific Railway had in proportion to the amount it borrowed. If the Grand Trunk Pacific does cost a considerable sum of money, we will get the interest of the money, and as we only guarantee the bonds on three-quarters of it, the country is absolutely safe.
Representing, as I do, a western constituency, I want to say to the House and to the government, that the west at all events, is right behind the government in this matter. The people of the country endorsed the leader of this government on this question in 1904 and again in 1908. and I want to tell my hon. friends opposite that they will endorse him when he goes to the country again either on this or any other question.


Mr.  H. B.@: AMES (Montreal, St. Antoine) moved the adjournment of the debate.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. FIELDING moved the adjournment of the House.
George Taylor: What business does the leader of the House intend to take up to-morrow ? Second, are we to expect the Budget before the Eastei holidays ? And third, when will the holidays commence and end?	-


William Stevens Fielding: As to the business for to-morrow, as we are on the eve of a new fiscal year, it is very important that we should facilitate the voting of such supplies as are needed at the beginning of the year. We propose, therefore, to take up to-morrow a number of items in the main estimates and ask the approval of the House, first, probably some items of the Civil Service, but there are a number of services for which 115
appropriations are needed at the beginning of the year. We shall endeavour to select these items, and give precedence to them to-morrow, and, if necessary, on Friday. As soon as a number of these items have been passed in Supply, we shall take concurrence and ask the House to pass a Supply Bill.
As regards the budget speech, it was contemplated to bring it on before the recess, but as this debate has intervened, and as it is desirable to close it up, the budget speech will have to stand over until after the holiday.
As to the third point referred to by -the hon. gentleman (Mr. George Taylor), I think the intention is to ask the House to adjourn on Wednesday. As to the date when it will resume, I would prefer to ask the Right Hon. Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) to-morrow. I think, probably, the adjournment will be moved on Wednesday,


Herbert Brown Ames: Will the Bill with reference to the Grand Trunk Pacific immediately follow on adoption of the resolution ?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, and, if it will facilitate the discussion, the House might pass the resolution in committee and leave the further discussion to take place on the Bill. However, in that respect, we are in the hands of the House. For the present, we shall proceed along the lines of to-day.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 11.10 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, March 31, 1909.