1909-03-18

FAIRY LAKE RESERVE.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. JAMESON-by Mr. Rhodes-asked:
1.	Is the Fairy Lake Indian Reserve, in the counties of Annapolis and Queens, N.S., under lease to any person or persons? If bo, to whom, what is the date of the lease, the terms of lease and the rental?
2.	What revenue, if any, was derived from this land annually during the five years next previous to date of lease?
3.	Upon whose recommendation was lease granted ?
4.	Has permission been given to cut the timber on the reserve? If so, is such cutting going on?
Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior):: ,	.
1.	Yes. The lease is dated the 5th of June, 1908, to C. W. Mills, and is for a term of 25 years from the 1st of May, 1908, at an annual rental of $30, for camping purposes.
2.	None.
3.	On recommendation of the local Indian agent.
4.	No.



QUESTIONS.


Mr. RHODES asked:: 1.	How many men are employed as officers and crew of the government dredge ' Northumberland ' ?
2.	What are their names and places of residence?
3.	On what terms are they severally employed ?
4.	If in the service of the government, where are they at present employed?


Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works) :: 1	and 4. At the present time there are only six men employed repairing and outfitting the dredge for the coming season. They are working at Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia.
2	and 3. Their names and the terms of their employment are as follows:-
U. H. Lyons, captain, $100 per month; J. Ledingham, chief engineer, $90 per month; H. Allen, second engineer, $80 per month; F. Rush, operator, $80 per month;
G.	Hunter, oiler, $35 per month; H. Oaks, fireman, $35 per month.
When employed by the government their residences were given as follows:-
U. H. Lyons, Barrington, Nova Scotia; J. Ledingham, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia;
H.	Allen, St. John, New Brunswick; F.
Rush, St. John, New Brunswick; G. Hunter, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia; H. Oaks, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.	i
The department has no record of their Mr. BARR.


USE OF DISRAELI WHARF.
Mr. LENNOX asked:: 1.	How many vessels carrying passengers or merchandise regularly called or landed at Disraeli wharf during the navigation season of 1908, and called or landed at all during the season; what were the names of these vessels and of what tonnage were they?
2.	What vessels, boats or craft of any kind called or landed at or used the said wharf during said season, and to what extent was it used?
3.	What is the area of the lake called Lake Aylmer into which the stream passing under Disraeli wharf empties?


William Pugsley: 1,	2 and 3. As no wharfinger has yet been appointed to take charge of this wharf, there are no records in the department to show the exact number of vessels which called or landed at Disraeli wharf during the navigation season of 1908. The resident engineer reports on March 16 that after inquiry he finds the following boats called during last season: the two steamboats of the Brompton Pulp Co., of 14 horse-power, called No. 3 and 4 respectively; the ' Francis ' and the ' Coursier,' 35 and 40 feet long respectively, 12 horse-power each; the ' Strathford,' 10 horse-power; the ' Garthby,' 4 horse-power; the 'Borden, 15 horse-power, and the ' Laurier,' 5 horsepower. All these boats land passengers, lumber, produce and general merchandise.
According to Lovell's ' Gazetteer, Lake Aylmer is about eight miles long and three miles wide.


BOAT HARBOUR, SKINNER'S COVE.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. MADDIN-by Mr. Rhodes-asked :
1.	When was the work of Boat Harbour,
Skinner's Cove, Picton county, Nova Scotia, commenced?	_
2.	How much has the expenditure been in each year since the work was commenced?
3.	What is the total expenditure to date?
i.	Is the work completed?
5.	What further sum, if any, is to be expended to complete?
Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works):: 1.	1st June, 1905.
2.	1904-05	$3,225	141905-	06	
7,763	951906-	07	
1,759	911907-	08	
822	371908-	09 (to date)	
2,433	453.	$16,004.82.4.	No.5.	$6,000.


IMPROVEMENTS AT ST. JOHNS, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. MONK-by Mr. George Taylor-asked :
1.	What is the nature of the improvements being carried out on the Richelieu river at St. Johns, province of Quebec, what is their object and what is the estimate of the total cost?
2.	Who prepared said estimate?
3.	What is the object of the office opened at St. Johns, province of Quebec, last autumn iD connection with said improvements?
i. How many are employed in said office and what is the cost per day of said office?
Hon. WM. PUGSLEY (Minister of Public Works):: 1.	(a) Dredging, blasting and construction of a movable dam. (b) To prevent flooding and improve navigation. (c) $185,000.
2.	Engineer J. L. Michaud.
3.	It was intended to let the dredging by contract, but the tenders received were so high that the department decided that, by providing its own dredging plant, the work could be done more cheaply; therefore an engineer was placed in charge, with an office at St. Johns. The latest reports received show that, in doing so, a considerable amount of money has been saved.
4.	Paul Paradis, engineer in charge, $1,900 per year, $5.20 per day ; Albert Gosse-lin, assistant engineer, $3 per day ; Edmond Papineau, rodman, &c., (temporarily employed on surveys), $2.50 per day; rent of office $20 per month, 67 cents per day; total per day, $11.37.


COLD STORAGE SHIPMENTS.
Mr. SPROULE asked :: 1. What amount of produce of the following lines has been shipped to Great Britain
nr other countries in cold storage, or cooled air chambers, during the years 1907 and 1908: apples, in barrels or other packages, pears, plums, tomatoes, grapes, fresh meat in pounds, fowl, fish, butter, eggs and cheese?
2.	To what country or countries were they shipped, and what was their condition on landing ?
3.	What system of cold storage is principally in use on the steamships carrying such produce?


Hon. SYDNEY FISHER (Minister of Agriculture).: This answer will be too long to Tead in the House and I would ask to have the question stand as a notice of motion.


Mr. SPEAKER.: Stands as a notice of motion for a return.


SOUTH AFRICA VETERANS' WARRANTS.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. EDWARDS-by Mr. Geo. Taylorasked :
1.	How many warrants have been issued to veterans on account of services in South Africa?
2.	How many homesteads have been issued by virtue of such warrants?
Hon. FRANK OLIVER (Minister of the Interior):: 1.	5,500 warrants issued by the Minister of Militia and Defence.
2.	4,993 land certificates issued by the Minister of the Interior, of which 230 have been located on homestead land, up to the last returns received in the department from the land agencies.



PURCHASE OF SUPPLIES FOR MARINE AND FISHERIES DEPARTMENT.

Mr. FOSTER.: Might I call the attention of the Finance Minister to question No. 9, and ask him if he can have that facilitated so that we can get the answer tomorrow, if possible?


Mr. FIELDING.: I will see the Minister of Marine and Fisheries later in the day on that subject.



SUPPLY-DEFERRED ELECTIONS.

['We contemplated proceeding with the loan resolutions of the Grand Trunk Pacific, but as some information desired by hon. gentlemen opposite is not quite ready, we will postpone that matter until Tuesday. To-morrow the House will be moved into Committee of Supply, and the estimates taken up. I move that the House do now adjourn.']
Hon.  W. S.@: FIELDING (Minister of Finance) moved that the House go into Committee of Supply.


Mr. MARTIN BURRELL (Yale-Cariboo).: I beg to move in amendment
That all the words after ' that' be struck out, and the following words be substituted therefor:
This House is of opinion that for the purpose of enabling the electors to exercise the full rights and privileges of their franchise, the general elections should be held on the same day throughout all the provinces of Canada.
In introducing this subject dealing with deferred elections in Canada, I do so be-



cause I have had it impressed upon me that it is a duty I owe to my constituents, and I believe in a larger sense to a considerable portion of the people of Canada. I am endeavouring to introduce the question in such a way as that it will not mean in any sense a want of confidence in the government. In its broadest aspects I need not say that the matter is hardly controversial, the amendment simply enunciating a principle the soundness of which will be admitted by both sides of this House, and which I trust the government will be able to see their way to accept. In dealing with the question of the franchise we are dealing with a matter which is vital to the whole system of democratic and representative government. Underlying all democratic government is the basic principle that the source of political power is the people. It is true that this principle has been weakened, or distorted, in practically working oat the transfer of power from the people to the delegates or representatives who finally wield that power. The process is very imperfect in most communities; and in passing I am free to confess that if the system of transferring such power were adopted which was recently so ably expounded in this House in a scheme of proportional representation, it might achieve far more satisfactory results than those we obtain under our present system, it would greatly strengthen the personnel both of the government and of the assembly, and would form a more faithful reflex of popular opinion. But sir, imperfect as our present methods may be, and imperfect as the results we want to achieve may be, yet in a very real sense the basis of political power is the suffrage, and anything therefore which touches the character of the suffrage, or the franchise, and its exercise demands, and I think will receive the thoughtful consideration of this House. Many hon. members who are present, representing as they do the people in the parliament of Canada, are doubtless familiar with the long struggles for constitutional power and for a more faithful expression of the public will, which took place in Great Britain for hundreds of years, and which is yielding to-day such beneficent and far reaching results. Gradually the scope of the franchise has been extended and widened. Many timorous people fear the results of its development, but they have got to adjust and reconcile themselves to the great movement which is leading, in nearly all cases, to a government by the people and for the people.
Now, Mr. Speaker, my belief, not only in the value of the franchise, but in the necessity of every man exercising his franchise in the true spirit, is the reason for introducing this amendment to-day. To my mind the time has arrived for the abolition of deferred elections throughout Canada. Nor do I believe, to use the words of the amend-Mr. BURRELL.
ment, that the full rights and privileges of the franchise can be exercised or enjoyed by many thousands of people who are no* permitted to take part, who are not per mitted to raise their voice in helping to decide the great issues before the country in a general election. Under the attendant circumstances of a deferred election the franchise is crippled, is robbed of half its value, and by so depreciating its worth we are doing something we have no right to do, namely, we are lessening and weakening the interest which thousands of Canadians have to-day in the public affairs of the country.
Now the suffrage has been defined by one authority as a ' voice given in deciding a controverted question, or in the choice of a man for an office of trust.' By another high authority the subject has been defined as follows:
A voice or an opinion of a person in some matter which is commonly to be determined by a majority of the voices or opinions of persons who are empowered to give it.
Judge McCreary, in his treatise on the American law of elections, remarks:
In the United States the object of the suffrage is twofold: first, to select representatives of the people for their government; and secondly, to determine the will of the people upon such questions as may be submitted to them.
Now Sir, it will be noticed that in each of these definitions it is conceded that the one great value, the one great power of the suffrage, is that its exercise may enable the holder to perform a duty, and to perform his share in deciding great controverted questions. I am not taking the ground in this argument that in a vast and sparsely settled country like Canada all deferred elections in the past have been totally unjustifiable, but I am taking the ground, and I want frankly to express to this House the ' conviction, that in so far as their having any voice in deciding the great controverted questions before the country, the 30,000 or 40,000 electors in the constituencies where the elections have been deferred, have been, I may say, absolutely, disfranchised.
Now let me give you an illustration. I had the honour, and the very arduous task, of contesting an election in Yale-Cariboo, B. C., in 1904. The great question at that time before the country was, as hon. gentlemen all know, the Grand Trunk Pacific project as put forth by the government. For six months I had to campaign through the whole of that country, and campaign practically on the great issues concerned in that one great transportation problem. But towards the close of that campaign I found that I was out-manoeuvred by the government postponing the election, because when the general elections

came round, that whole question was settled and the government was sustained by a majority of something like 66. Absolutely nothing more was to be said. For three weeks I had to face the people in that constituency practically with no programme at all, because this great question having been settled, there was a grievous lack of interest throughout the constituency, and certainly the voice of the people so far as that great question was concerned, was absolutely stifled. It means, practically, disfranchisement and it certainly also means apathy on the part of a large number of electors. It is injurious to the welfare of the state and it is an injustice to the individuals who compose the state. It is necessary that elections should, if possible, be held on the same day, and I think I can demonstrate to this House that it is possible to hold them on the same day. and that there are no sufficient reasons why elections should be deferred in a country like this.
It may be retorted by some hon. gentlemen that election to the mother of parliaments in England are not all held on the same day. I need only point out in reply that the history and traditions of that country are entirely different, that the members are not concerned in appropriations for great public works, and that for a variety of reasons which I might point out, the case of England is not analogous in any way to that of this country. I have had the opportunity of discussing this question with public men of various shades of opinion in the old country, and I have found that there is a steadily increasing sentiment that they are coming to the point of one man one vote, and that elections should all be held on the same day. But let me turn from general argument to particular cases. I do not propose to deal with the question as it affects the province of Quebec as others are more familiar with that great province than I am, although I believe that the conditions attendant upon the postponement of elections are the same and that the same arguments will apply with equal strength to Quebec as to British Columbia. But I want to refer particularly to my own province and to deal with the various arguments advanced for the postponement of elections in that province. In 1904 there was the creation of a number of constituencies by the subdivision of larger constituencies. At that time Mr. Fitzpatrick was the Minister of Justice and he discussed the question of deferred elections. He proposed to defer the elections in a number of constituencies not only in British Columbia but elsewhere. The old constituency of Burrard was to be divided into Vancouver and Comox-Atlin. The constituency of Yale-Cariboo-Kootena.v was to be divided into Kootenay and Yale-Cariboo. In Ontario the constituency of 891
Algoma was to be divided into east and west Algoma and there was also the question of the constituency of Nipissing. In dealing with the arguments which were advanced at that time, arguments that were chiefly founded upon the impossibility of reaching all parts of these ridings in the statutory time to enable the elections to be held on the same day as the elections in other constituencies, Mr. Fitzpatrick spoke as follows and this seems to have been the whole force of his argument:
Why should any group of men be deprived of their right to vote? Is it not fair to say that if the conditions existing at the time the elections are held are such that any important group in the community may be deprived of the right to vote that the returning officer shall have power to postpone the election in order to give them the right to vote?
The hon. leader of the opposition at that time, and also at a later date, made some observations and I will quote his exact words:
There should be very strong, in fact, imperative necessity before any election is postponed.
With this I think we shall all agree.
He was referring to the province of Ontario, and he added that provincial elections were held on the same day in those ridings and that was a cogent reason for not postponing the federal election. Fortunately there were in the House at that time not only Liberals but Conservatives who were strongly interested in these Ontario constituencies. They knew their exact conditions, they were anxious to ensure the full value of the franchise to every elector and they put up all the arguments they could and showed the minister exactly what the conditions were. The result was that the minister dropped one after another of his proposals first in East and West Algoma, and then in Nipissing, conceding that the principle was right to hold the elections on the same day, if the conditions made it possible. I shall turn now to British Columbia and I shall quote his words again. The Minister of Justice said:
As to the province of British Columbia I would ask the members from that province tc explain the conditions there.
Unfortunately, there was in the House at that time no one familiar with British Columbia, or with British Columbia conditions, except the Liberal members and, Sir, I am absolutely within the truth when I say that in the case of my own constituency especially the reasons put forth during that debate were inspired by the knowledge that my opponent wanted a deferred election because he recognized the impossibility of winning in a fair and even fight. It was an

by-election, the result of which was that the Minister of Inland Revenue obtained a seat which he now occupies, there was no knowledge of an election to be held. There was complete darkness on the subject so far as the formation of public opinion went. I do not wish to suggest for a moment that there was not a certain amount of knowledge as between my hon. friend (Mr. Templeman) and the gentleman who resigned his seat that he might take it and also a few of their faithful friends. But, so far as the great public was concerned, there was no knowledge of an election coming on in that constituency, and I believe it was a matter of some doubt as to which constituency would be the best hunting ground for my hon. friend. This makes it all the more reasonable and natural and necessary that the election in this great district of Comox-Atlin, which district was so graphically described by Mr. Macpherson, should have all the notice that could possibly be given. But what happens? Let me turn to a series of questions I asked the government on the subject of the Comox-Atlin election. I refer to ' Hansard ' of February 8, where it will be found that I put these questions:
On what date was the writ issued for the vacancy in Comox-Atlin?
What date was fixed for nomination and what date for polling day?
Who is the returning officer, and where does he reside?
Was such returning officer advised of his appointment by telegram?
Was he by telegram instructed to prepare the proclamation before the writ coull reach him? If so, by what minister or official was the communication sent?
The answers I got to these questions were these:-That the writ was issued on 22nd of January, 1909; that the returning officer fixed the date for nomination and election, and the government therefore had nothing to do with it. (Of course, it is certain, that the Minister of Inland Revenue-Mr. Templeman-would have a good deal to do with it), and that neither the Secretary of State, nor Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, nor anybody in authority had sent instructions by telegram. Now, let us examine this statement for a moment. The nomination in Comox-Atlin took place on Feb-bruary 8, and election day was fixed for February 20. So, from the time the writ was issued in Ottawa until the date of election there was a total of 29 days, or nine days less than the time allowed for the general elections. We are told by Mr. Macpherson, as I have pointed out, that this is the most difficult of all constituencies, that one would need a flying machine to reach speedily these places where some of the voters reside. Now, it seems to me the government must take one horn of the dilemma or the other. They have either Mr. BURRELL.
proven by their action in this case that it is possible to hold all elections on the same day, or they have deliberately in the case of Comox-Atlin, disfranchised absolutely those whom the Minister of Justice described as groups of men whom it would not be right to deprive of their vote. Now, one further word in connection with this answer given by the government. The Secretary of State (Mr. Murphy) said that no telegram had been sent 'by the Secretary of State or by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, or, so far as I am aware, by anybody in authority.' Let us see, for a moment, how this thing works out. I have maintained, and still maintain, that, if any doubt were shown to exist of the possibility of holding the election in any constituency in British Columbia on the same day as in the rest of Canada, by sending out the writ by wire you would save practically seven days. However, we were told that this was not done. I am going to try to see what happened in Comox-Atlin. The writ was issued on January 22. It would take, as every one knows, at least seven days, and I am not sure but that, as the returning officer resides in Prince Rupert, it would take more for the writ to reach him. Even if he had come to some nearer point he would not receive the writ until January 29. He had fixed the date of nomination on February 8. But section 87 of the Dominion Elections Act provides:
Such proclamation shall be posted up in all the electoral districts at least eight days before the day fixed for the nomination of candidates, neither the last day of posting it up nor the day of nomination being reckoned.
That is, the proclamation would have to be posted up in Comox-Atlin on January 29. But the writ was issued on January 22, and if no telegram was sent, as we have been told, it would reach the returning officer only on the 29th, and he had no time to prepare the proclamation and send it out all over Comox-Atlin. We are driven by the logic of the facts to the conclusion that the gentlemen concerned did send that writ by wire, in spite of their statements.
I wish to deal for a moment with another aspect of the question of deferred elections I have already said that the case of England is different from that of this country, and it certainly is. To some extent, in a new country like Canada, a country in the making, a country which deserves and demands incessantly enormous appropriations for public works, we can understand that any great appropriations that the government will promise must necessarily have great weight in influencing constituencies, if the people are convinced that those who make the promises have the power to perform. This is appealed to by all parties; whatever party is in power gets into the habit of promising certain things. In the general election, there is some degree of

uncertainty whether the party promising will have the power to perform. But in a deferred election such as that of 1904 and 1908, when the government was returned by a substantial majority, appeals making these promises, when made by those in power and able to perform were made with almost irresistible force to the minds of people in a new country. Take as an illustration the election of 1904 went to show that every man who desires the growth of this country on progressive lines should favour the abolition of all deferred elections. In 1904, the present government was returned by a majority, if I remember right, of 66. Elections had been held in British Columbia, and all had gone Liberal. Other elections were deferred. For the last three weeks in that campaign, almost singlehanded, I was confronted by about fifteen of the most prominent Liberals in the west. My ammunition, the Grand Trunk Pacific matter, had gone, and I simply had to appeal to the manhood of the electors, to the danger of big majorities-an appeal which after all had some foundation in reason as we have since found out-and ask them to judge the election on its merits. With what argument was I met? Simply with the big stick argument. On my platform, in my own town of Grand Forks, we had some very distinguished gentlemen. We had Mr. W. W. B. Mclnnis, late Governor of the Yukon and later the defeated candidate in Vancouver, who thundered against the folly of electing a man who was going to Ottawa to oppose the government and who consequently could get his constituency nothing, when they might elect a man who could get them everything they wanted. We had there also another distinguished gentleman, the Minister of Inland Revenue, Mr. Templeman, who was kind enough to say nothing to me personally, except what was pleasant. He said I was a very decent fellow, but he nullified that admission by asking: What is the use of sending him to Ottawa if you want the needs of your district attended to? So effective was that argument with a, great many people-and one is not inclined to condemn them altogether-in my own town -so effective was the argument expressed with all the earnestness and the eloquence of the hon. minister and the propspect he held out that they were going to get a new pest office and a lot of otheT things if they only elected the government candidate - that the opposition candidate was left behind. But what have the people got after their four years' waiting? All they have got is a post office site, and they got that six days before my election last November The argument used over and over again with deadly, crushing effect-and used not only by speakers who might not be considered responsible men, but also by prominent public men, was that politics were only to be used for what could be got out
of them. Their motto was that expressed in the familiar words of Hosea Biglow.
It ain't by principles or men My prudent course is steadied;
I scent which pays the best and then Go into it bald-headed.
When our friends went over to the neighbouring riding of Greenwood we had there most extraordinary exhibitions. Again the Minister of Inland Revenue went on the platform and among the things he said- he will correct me if I am wrong-was this, that if the people saw fit-and he was sure they would-to return a supporter of the government, in the person of Mr. Ross, he, the minister, would probably consent to come and spend three weeks at Greenwood and give the people during that time the light of his countenance.


Mr. TEMPLEMAN.: My hon. friend's last statement as to what I said was no doubt a jest. But a moment ago he said that at some place in his constituency I had pointed out to the electors that it was useless to send my good friend to Ottawa because he could not get anything for the people. I challenge him to produce any evidence that in any one of the meetings in his constituency at which I was present I ever uttered such a sentiment.


Martin Burrell: Of course if my hon. friend assures me of that, I have, in a parliamentary sense, to accept his assurance. But I want emphatically to say that I am not quoting my own personal friends, but from friends of the hon. gentleman in Grand Forks.


William Templeman: I am astounded. I was never in Grand Forks at a public meeting.


Martin Burrell: Does the hon. gentleman say he was not in Grand Forks ?


William Templeman: I have not been in Grand Forks since I passed through going to the west with my deputy minister, visiting some of the mines, and no public meeting was held then.


Martin Burrell: My hon. friend will pardon me when I suggest that I am speaking of 1904.


William Templeman: I beg pardon.


Martin Burrell: I hope my hon. friend will understand that I do not want to strike a single blow below the belt in anything I say. I specifically stated that I referred to 1904, when I am convinced the hon. gentleman did go on the platform and take the line of argument to which. I have drawn attention. The remark I made about his paying a three weeks' visit to Greenwood may be dismissed as a light matter, but he certainly did go on the platform at Grand Forks and other portions of my constitu-

ency and deal in that line of argument. Let me quote here what my opponent did say on the platform at Greenwood two nights before the election. I do not like to refer to him, as he is absent, in any way. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Nothing but good of the dead, and of course, Mr. Ross is politically dead; and if I refer to what he said, it is because it vindicates my line of argument. I was on the platform at Greenwood, at a meeting of my own and extended to my opponent every courtesy and opportunity to speak. To my amazement he took the direct line of argument and said, in so many words that if the people wanted to get anything for their constituency, public works or anything of that kind, they could not get it by sending an opponent of the government to Ottawa, but should elect a man who supported the government. And I told Mr. Ross then that while I had heard that kind of doctrine occasionally spoken in private, that was the first time I had heard a man brazen enough to go on the platform and pTeach it in public. If my hon. friend (Mr. Templeman) had gone through so bitter, exhaustive and up-hill campaign as I had to go through in 1904, he would have felt sympathy for any man placed in the position in which I was; and in spite of every one of the influences attendant upon a deferred election, the majority after all against me was only 161. I am glad now to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the loyal and unselfish efforts of those men all over my own constituency, who had absolutely nothing to gain but who felt that thy had a duty to perform and supported our cause to the last hour.
Let me refer again to the recent deferred election when we had the powerful influences of the government brought to bear against the man unfortunate enough to face a deferred election. We had in 1908, my hon. friend opposite (Mr. Templeman) speaking on the platform in my constituency, but the people did not attach so much weight to his speeches this time for an obvious reason. We had some other very distinguised gentlemen of the party opposite on the stump there. We had the Hon. Walter Scott, premier of Saskatchewan, my distinguished friend the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Oliver, other gentlemen from Alberta and a great many prominent men from British Columbia, who all concentrated their efforts to secure my defeat and the defeat of the other Conservative candidates.
Now. take the case of the Minister of the Interior-and again I, of course, dissociate myself from anything personal in these remarks, I am simply dealing with these matters with reference to the principle at stake. I am sure the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) will not deny being present at that meeting and saying Mr. BURRELL.
such things, because I have here a copy of the the ' Inland Sentinel,' published at Kamloops on October 30, 1908. This paper is a recognized organ of the Liberal party in the interior or at all events in the Kamloops district. This copy contains a very careful report of the speech of the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Oliver) from which I shall read an extract. The minister spoke as follows:
The people of Canada had said at the elections just held that they favoured the Liberal policy of development. That question is settled; the Liberals are in power and whichever way the people of Tale-Cariboo may go will not affect that fact. But the people of Yale-Cariboo now have to decide whether they favour western development. If they do they will vote for Mr. Ross; if they do not want western development then, of course, they will vote for Mr. Burrell and the government will be guided by the opinion so expressed. He pointed out that the influence of a member of parliament is measured-[DOT]
I am sure that members on both sides ought to sit up and take notice of this doctrine,
-by the vote he receives and the larger the majority given a member, the greater is his measure of influence in obtaining concessions from the government.
If I may apply that remark in its very broadest sense, then I trust the Minister of the Interior will remember how large my own majority was.
But upon that speech a leading article is based in this same paper. This article reads in part:
So far as deciding whether Liberals or Conservatives shall govern: the elections, the fight in Canada is finished and the people of the country have voiced their desire for a continuance of the policy of the Laurier administration. The fight in Yale-Cariboo is still on and will not be over until November 12. The question before the electors of this district is this: Now that the Dominion has placed the Liberals in power again, will the interests of Yale-Cariboo be best served by sending to Ottawa as its representative a man opposed to the government or a man friendly and whom the government regard with friendly eyes? There are many public works needed in this great district; who is most likely to get from the government the necessary appropriations to carry out these works? Will the opinion of Mr. Burrell be more likely to prevail with the government as against that of Mr. Ross? After all, that is the question the people of this district have to answer. If they wish to have the government carry on works in this district necessitating large expenditures, they can best show that desire by returning Mr. Ross at the head of the poll by the largest possible majority.
That is the way the matter is looked at out there. We now come to the Vernon district. I have here the semi-weekly ' Okanagan,' the Liberal organ in the great Okanagan country, dated November 4. It

contains a report of a speech of the minister in that city. Here is a phrase.
Western Canada has been the great work of the government; and to a great extent, this good city of Vernon and the beautiful settlements throughout the Okanagan valley are evidences of the success of the government's policy in the last 12 years.
If one had time it would be easy to show that for every inch of development in that valley due to the guidance or assistance of this government, there are a good many feet of development due to the assistance of the provincial government. However, I wish to deal with a leading article in this newspaper, which says in part:
Mr. Ross has, however, kept before his mind the highest, the best ideals of his duty to his constituents as a whole, and to say he has been pre-eminently successful in pressing upon the government the rights of this immense constituency, is doing him scant justice. . . During the years of Conservativs rule, practically nothing was done for this constituency in general or the Okanagan district in particular. Now we have an excellent telephone service to almost every part of the district.
I am sure hon. gentlemen opposite will be glad to know that because there seemed to be some doubt some time ago as to whether there was a government telephone in existence. This particular government telephone service was put into operation just prior to my election campaign of 1904, and achieved the results intended. There were also very busy operations in the extension of this system just prior to the election of 1908. The article proceeds:
The mail service has been improved a hundred per cent. Bublio buildings in keeping with the growth and importance of Vernon and other towns are being built.
I shall deal with that remark and sbow what bearing it has on this whole question of deferred elections. The paper claimed and my opponent claimed that the government was doing a great deal for this particular constituency. It had waited, it had the promise of this public building, although this article assumes that the building was being constructed. I have here another copy of this same paper dated October 21.
This town has a population of 3,500 and a customs revenue of $35,000. It had waited for a public building for a long time and then on October 21, there appeared an advertisement calling for tenders for a public building. A remarkable thing is that the tender dated at Ottawa, October 20, 1908, asking for tenders for the construction of a public building at Vernon appears in this British Columbia paper the next day. The full tender and a beautiful cut of the building are published. There are also references to the advertisement. I call to
your attention the picture of this magnificent building for which tenders were called shortly prior to my election. The article is headed in large type.
Tenders are wanted for new post office. Will cost between $30,000 and $40,000.
As will be seen by advertisement in another column, the Department of Public Works is calling for tenders for the new post office and customs house to be erected in this city. . . The new structure will be three stories In height, and will be of brick with stone facings. It is estimated that it will cost when completed between $30,000 and $40,000 and will be a credit to our city. One thing is certain, it will be much superior to any public building in Vernon if not in the interior.
The ' Okanagan ' has obtained a photograph of this latest evidence of the progressiveness of the Laurier administration, which is reproduced below. The people of Vernon should know who to thank for this handsome structure. By dint of hard work and by constantly representing to the department the needs in the city of a building of this kind, our representative in the last Dominion parliament, Mr. Duncan Ross, succeeded in having provisions made whereby the same could be erected during the coming year.
They wind up by saying:
It will be a credit to our beautiful city, to
the government which built it and to Mr. Duncan Ross, our representative, who, by his untiring efforts secured the same for us. This is only one of his many good works for his district, and he is deserving of the thanks of the community.
You can understand that when one is fighting the battle of his party on the questions of the day, in so far as he can in a deferred election, to encounter something of that kind does infuse a certain amount of bitterness into a man. He thinks it is reasonable to ask his opponents to conduct a fair fight. I do not think that sort of thing is justified and the extraordinary thing is that although we have this as an evidence of the latest phase of the progressiveness of the Laurier administration, and although the promise was not repudiated, yet, in spite of all, after the elections are over, lo and behold there was no magnificent structure, there was no post office at all.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I may point out that all this appeal had no effect so far as my opponent's wishes went, and for various reasons. One of the reasons why my opponent was not returned to this House was the reason which is the basis of my whole argument, namely, that the people of the western constituencies, regardless of party shades of opinion, had absolutely no use for deferred elections; they did not believe they were justified by conditions, and they did' not believe they were justified by the facts, but they did believe that fair-play and a fair fight should be given, and should be the practice adopted by the government.

Now I want particularly to appeal to the Prime Minister, who from indisposition, I regret is not in his seat to-day, because I know that the Prime Minister, and I believe the other ministers as well, are not opposed to holding the elections on the same day if they knew there are no reasons for deferring them. The Prime Minister has certainly expressed that view. I have shown that in the case of Comox-Atlin not only was there no necessity for deferring the election more than 12 days after the nomination, but the government have cut the ground from under their own feet by doing it in less time than was given in the general election. I see no valid objection indeed to a longer time being given to the whole country, a period say, of six weeks after the issue of the writs before the general election. I believe then that not only could all the elections be held on the same day in all the provinces, but that the election could be held in the Yukon on the same day as well-but on that point my hon. friend representing the Yukon (Mr. Congdon) can speak with better authority. One of the objections raised to having a longer period before elections is that the country is too long a time unsettled. I would ask if there is any valid objection to such a proposition? After all, we in the larger constituencies who have to campaign something like four, or five, or even six months, cannot quite sympathize with that view. There is a great deal to be said in favour of a fixed term for holding elections, such as they have in the United States. Although a fixed term would perhaps involve quite a constitutional change, I believe that if we adopted a fixed term it would do away, as it does in the United States, with a great many of the evils to which I have referred. Of course hon. gentlemen opposite will retort to that argument that the form of the elections would not be so representative, the form of government would not be so representative as is ours, and they will argue that on any great question in the United States a fixed term for the elections does not allow so well for any rapid change in public sentiment. It is all very well to argue that way, it is right in theory, but how does it work out in practice? I may say that in many parts pf Canada, although the theory is that our government being able to appeal to the country at any time is therefore more representative than it would be if elected at a fixed period, the custom is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Let me give you two instances. If there was ever a case in the political history of Canada where, if this government was to be a reflex of popular opinion or wished to ascertain the public pulse and the public sentiment on big questions, and that therefore they were justified and compelled, in virtue of being a representative govern-Mr. BURRELL.
ment, to find out what that sentiment was- if, I say, there were ever any occasions in which that theory should have been put into practice, it was on two notable occasions, when, in fact, it was entirely ignored, one was the Autonomy Bill, in regard to which the voice of the people was never heard until afterwards, and the next was this very question of the Grand Trunk Pacific. We know very well that that great measure was never referred to the people. It was brought up in the third session, and then there was another short session for the purpose of ratifying better terms for the company, but in neither case was the question referred to the people at all, until after the measure was passed, and when the people would have been placed in the position of repudiating a contract entered into by the government.
In quoting these two instances I am free to admit, that the argument will apply to all political parties alike, in greater or in less degree, and that unfortunately at these times statesmanship is merged in political opportunism, and is trying to get snap verdicts, because unfortunately those are times when all are for the party and none are for the state. Now I would like this point to be seriously considered. We in the larger constituencies are kept necessarily in an unsettled state for a very long time, some of us for months. As a matter of fact, the country generally knows fairly well that, an election is coming on. If I wanted to give you proof that the country does know that elections are coming on, I need only read a portion of a letter that I have in my hands which was written by the Prime Minister of this country to my opponent as long ago as the 21st of March, although the elections did not come on until October 26. This letter I may say was written to the secretary of the Liberal Association of Yale-Cariboo, and this is the tenor of it:
Ottawa, 21st March, 1908.
My Dear Sir,-I understand that a convention is called for the purpose of selecting a Liberal candidate in the district of Yale-Cariboo. It is an encouraging sign to see that the Liberals in your district are thus getting ready for the contest. The loyalty and enthusiasm of the Liberals of the west have always been an inspiration and an encouragement, and I feel sure that my friends in Yale-Cariboo will see that so far as they are concerned there will be no breaks in the ranks of the solid seven from British Columbia.
The result was a somewhat ironical comment on the letter. It winds up:
It is not for me to interfere in the choice of the electors; that is a matter as to which they must be left absolutely untrammelled. If I may, however, be permitted to express a wish, I can assure you that no man could be more acceptable to myself and to the Liberal members of the House of Commons than our

friend Duncan Ross, the gallant sitting member.	.
Yours very sincerely,



[Stage Direction]
I merely adduce this letter to show that after all, if there is any objection to the government giving six weeks before an election on the ground of unsettling public sentiment, public sentiment is really unsettled for a much longer period. Another illustration. Every hon. gentleman in this House knows that after a second session there is a possibility of appeal to the country, after a third session that possibility and that unsettlement are increased, and after a fourth session the country is getting still more unsettled as the inevitable election draws nearer. So there is no reason in the argument that a longer term would unsettle the country, or that it would be inadvisable to give six weeks or two months that the people might have full time to discuss the great controverted questions that agitate the country. I am persuaded that the unsettlement would not be objected to by the members of this House, or by the people of Canada, if it would prevent the wiping out of deferred elections the disfranchisement, practically, of 30,000 or 40,000 of Canadian electors.
In closing my remarks let me 'quote a few words from a well known writer, in which he arraigns our political system as it is conducted at the present time:
In political life there is no rest or peace possible. Every one is either fighting or hiding in ambush, lying, listening, hunting for trails, or removing traces of his owi; sleeping with one eye open and his gun in his hand; looking on every one he meets as an enemy, his hand against everybody and everybody's hand against him ; slandered, traduced, badgered, provoked and wounded- in short, he must live like a redskin on the warpath in a trackless wilderness.
I am sure that any hon. gentleman in this House will feel the tragedy of public life as it is depicted in that passage. We can thank God that there is a brighter side to the picture; otherwise the burden on those who are taking up this life with a sincere desire to do something in-the interest of our country, would be unbearable. But, we want to better the conditions and every man who wants honestly to better the conditions in Canada will willingly accept the unbiased verdict of the people whether it places him in a seat in this House or puts him out. I believe that I have shown that it is feasible and that the time for the abolition of deferred elections has arrived. I believe that the manifest evils of deferred elections have been abundantly proven, and I trust that the government," in spite of its natural desire for power, will see its way to adopt the full letter and spirit of this amendment and that we can all join in the abolition of deferred elections, which after all is a plain matter of justice to individuals and is necessary to the betterment of political conditions throughout the whole country.
Mr. F. T. CONGDON (Yukon).: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has introduced this amendment (Mr. Burrell) told me some days ago that he proposed to direct the attention of the House to the matter of deferred elections and if there is any member of this House who is interested in deferred elections I think it will be generally conceded that it is the representative of the Yukon. Not only in this parliament, but in a former parliament, the member for the Yukon, by reason of deferred elections, was obliged to wander around the corridors of this building very much like a dismembered spirit seeking admission to the Elysian fields and only securing it after a long wait. When the hon. gentleman announced to me that he intended to introduce this subject, I expressed the greatest interest in it and I added that I hoped he would bring it before the House in such a manner as would enable the House to arrive at a practical solution of the difficulty that presents itself. I do not know whether the hon. gentleman is aware of the fact but the amendment which he has proposed to the House has eliminated altogether the question of elections in the Yukon from the consideration of this matter, because, as I understand, it is limited purely to the provinces and the Yukon is not yet a province of the Dominion.


Martin Burrell: I did that for the reason that as I was not thoroughly familiar with the conditions of the Yukon, it might perhaps be difficult for me to include it in the amendment, but I spoke of it and I specifically said that I believed it might or it would include the Yukon. However, I desire to say that I am entirely in sympathy with the abolition of deferred elections in the Yukon.


Frederick Tennyson Congdon: At all events the resolution will work no cure for the Yukon and will work no such cure as is desirable possibly for any of the other constituencies. The matter of these deferred elections is not a matter of fair play or justice; it is simply a matter of geographical considerations, and if it is possible that the election in any constituency can be held at the same time as the elections _ generally throughout Canada I think it will be conceded by both sides of the House that it would be desirable that it should be so held. With regard to the Yukon, when the hon. gentleman mentioned the subejct to me, it did seem to me that there might possibly be some practical way of holding the election in that constituency at the

same time as the elections in the rest of Canada, and no one, I am sure, in the Yukon -will be better pleased if that result can be arrived at than I will be, because, undoubtedly, there is always a very much greater interest when the result of the election does not merely mean the selection of one man or the other but may possibly mean the determination of the fate of the government. I have looked over the various periods allowed since 1874 between the date of the issue of the writ for a general election and the date of the nominations for general election, and I think it must be generally admitted that these dates selected, partly by one political party and partly by the other, are fair indications of the periods which should elapse between the issue of the writ and the election. I find that in 1878, twenty-four days elapsed between the date of the issue of the writ and the date of the nomination; in 1882, 26 days; in 1887, 29 days; in 1891, 22 days; in 1896, 53 days; in 1900, 22 days; in 1904, 28 days, and in 1908, 31 days. So that these figures will give an average period, which I think is a reasonable period for a general election throughout Canada, of thirty days between the date of the issue of the writ and the date of the nomination. Now, it simply comes down, in my humble judgment, to a question of whether, in these various constituencies in which the elections are now deferred, it is possible to hold the elections within that period, allowing thirty days between the issue of the writ and the date of the nomination. I had thought at one time, considering the period of thirty-eight days which elapsed between the date of the issue of the writ and the holding of the last general election, that possibly in the Yukon it would be possible to hold the election within that period. It certainly would not be possible under the existing Act, but with the permission of the House I propose later to introduce some amendments to the Dominion Elections Act with the view of shortening time. The present Act does not contemplate at all possibility of an election in the Yukon concurrent with other elections. Under the Act it is absolutely essential to allow twenty-one days for the writ to reach Dawson from Ottawa. I think that period might be greatly shortened by making provision for telegraphic communication on this subject, as also there might be provision for telegraphic communication in other regards. But, as there needs to be a difference between the issue of the writ and the general election of somewhere about forty days, it is, in my opinion, utterly impossible to bring on the election in the Yukon at the same time as other elections. I can only say that in regard to this I would be most anxious that the election should be held there on the Mr. CONGDON.
same day, but it comes down simply to the question of whether the House deems it advisable, and will pronounce itself to be of that opinion when the question is brought before it in a proper way that the Elections Act should compel a longer period than that which at present elapses between the issue of the writ and date of a general election.


William Stevens Fielding: Mr. Speaker, the principle of simultaneous polling is one which has been accepted in Canada for a very long time and I suppose we can accept it as a general principle. Strange to say, it is not so accepted in the mother country to which we usually look for our example, and I do not know that any very good reason can be given why it has not been adopted in the United Kingdom. There the conditions of transportation, the density of population, the means of communication by mail and telegraph all seem to make for the convenience of simultaneous elections. For reasons which seem to them sufficient that method has not been adopted, while we in Canada, with the many disadvantages in the way of communication, have, for a long time, found it possible to carry out that principle with very few exceptions. With our geographical conditions it might very well be expected that there should be occasional exceptions. In the resolution which the hon. member for Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell) has put before the House he does not leave room for any exceptions whatever. I think we will all agree that as time passes and as distant places in the Dominion are brought into easier communication, as the population becomes thicker, and as the facilities for communication become better, we will be able from time to time to drop out some of those exceptions and apply the general principle of simultaneous polling, perhaps to some of the constituencies in which to-day we have deferred elections. My hon. friend, however, makes the general statement and declaration that there shall be no exceptions. He will take no account of any geographical conditions. I have not the knowledge of British Columbia which my hon. friend (Mr. Burrell) has nor am I familiar with the topography of the several constituencies in which elections are now deferred, or the transportation facilities available within them, but I am advised on good authority that even to-day it would be difficult to adopt without any exception the principle which the hon. gentleman has embodied in his resolution. Therefore, it would not be wise for the House to adopt the resolution, even though the general purpose my hon. friend has in mind might commend itself to us. I am obliged to take exception to the resolution on another ground. I was rather surprised to find my hon. friend (Mr. Burrell) stating that this

was not to be regarded as a vote of nonconfidence, because if the hon. gentleman desired to move non-confidence in the government, the procedure he took would be the most effective for his purpose under our parliamentary practice. If we assume for the moment that there is need of reform in this matter then the question comes as to which is the best procedure to accomplish that reform. The hon. gentleman might have introduced a Bill striking out these exceptions from our Elections Act, or he might have put on the Order Paper a notice of motion-as my hon. friend (Mr. Monk) aid with regard to a matter which he considered for the public welfare-a discussion of which would have opened up the whole subject and probably laid the basis for the introduction of an amendatory Bill. The hon. gentleman has brought this motion as an amendment to Supply, so that the House is confined to a consideration of the words of his motion and these words only, without being able to offer an amendment. Under the practice established in parliament his motion moved in this way must be regarded as practically one of non-confidence. I regret that the hon. gentleman-for whom I have the highest respect as a new member and an old friend-should have taken the wrong way to bring about a reform which in his mind he thinks necessary. I do not for the moment say there is no room for change; I do not say that the experience of the last few years may not have shown that some of these exceptions in the Elections Act might be removed without inconvenience, but since my hon. friend offers his suggestion in the form of a non-confidence motion I am obliged to ask the House to not approve of it.


Mr. F. D. MONK (Jacques Cartier).: I could not help thinking, while the hon. gentleman (Mr. Fielding) was speaking, of the lines:
On forms of government let fools contest
What s best administered is best.
because my experience in this House tells me that in many instances supporters of the government of the strongest dye have proposed amendments to Supply and have had public questions discussed in this form, and then we have seen occupants of the treasury benches arise and gracefully accept these motions. I remember that a supporter of the Minister of Finance, who now sits on the bench of Nova Scotia, moved an amendment to Supply in exactly the same way as did my hon. friend (Mr. Burrell) this afternoon, and I think my memory does not fail me when I say that the Minister of Finance himself, speaking for the government, declared that the amendment would be accepted.


William Stevens Fielding: Probably it was a very good motion.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: That is just the point. The government certainly does not regard all the amendments to Supply as motions of non-confidence, but I suppose it depends to some extent on the political complexion of the hon. gentleman who moves the amendment. For my part I think the1 procedure adopted by my hon. friend (Mr. Burrell) is quite appropriate to the ventilation of this grievance. He has brought before the House a long standing grievance, and I trust that after the very eloquent appeal he has made the government will take steps to end an abuse which has become intolerable all over the country. I rose merely to speak of this grievance as we experience it in the province of Quebec, where we have not the spirit of resistance which the people of British Columbia apparently have. We have in the province of Quebec the counties of Gaspe and Chicoutimi, which since confederation have been practically disfranchised by the system of deferring the elections in them. I do not say that at one time, because of the lack of communication within these counties, it may not have been necessary to defer the elections, but that day has oast. It might be necessary in these counties to notify the returning officers a few days before the other returning officers were notified, but surely there could be no objection to that. The turmoil of a general election begins months before the day of nomination, and even if it were necessary to notify by telegram the returning officers in these counties the same day that the writs were mailed to the other returning officers, there would be ample time to have the general elections in Gaspe and Chicoutimi on the same day as the others. These two Quebec counties require public works, and post offices and government aid in one way and another, and so for twenty years it has been an understood thing that they would elect supporters of the government. In these counties they wait until the result of the general elections is known all over the country, and then they proceed as it were pro forma to the election of a government supporter.


Mr. TALBOT.: Is that what happened in British Columbia this year?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: In British Columbia they seem to take a different view, and that is why I spoke of the independence of the electors of that province. It is well known by those who take an interest in politics in Quebec that no serious candidature is offered in Chicoutimi and Gaspe until it is ascertained what party has been returned to power. These counties as I have said require public works and aid from the government in a multitude of ways, and under the shameful system of patronage, which is the bane of this country.

they can only get these necessary public works if they are represented by supporters of the party in power. I apply that to all parties. And that is the way the electors of these two counties have been obliged to proceed ever since confederation. Is this necessary P Is there any reasonable ground why the electors of these two large counties should not enjoy the franchise exactly as it is enjoyed everywhere else in Canada-perfectly independent electors to select to represent them in parliament an absolutely independent man. I say we have had conclusive reasons this afternoon why the present system should be abolished. I did not hear what was stated by my hon. friend (Mr. Congdon), representing the Yukon, but I understand that the rule could be made to include the Yukon also. After all, there are a great many people-and I am one of them-who think we should have the general election on a fixed day, without interfering with the prerogative of the Crown to have a dissolution when that is necessary. I think it would be far less unsettling to the country than the present system. At any rate, if the old custom is to be continued and a dissolution must proceed from the government, I do not see any reason why we should continue to persecute- because it is nothing else-a certain class of our electors.


Hon. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX (Postmaster General).: I protest as vigorously as I can against the statement made by my hon. friend (Mr. Monk) that since confederation the county of Gaspe has been practically disfranchised. It certainly has not been disfranchised, if I have heard correctly the very severe criticisms during the discussion of the estimates in this Chamber. The county of Gaspe, as a matter of fact, has been represented by the true representatives of its people. There is in Gaspe a strong opposition; I have been favoured with it ever since 1896, and I have had to fight for my life at each election. But the hon. member (Mr. Monk) is not well informed concerning the peculiar geographical position of the county of Gaspe. Should a dissolution take place at this moment, or had a dissolution taken place say a month ago, it would not have been humanly possible to hold an election in Gaspe. This applies even to the mainland. We have there a stretch of 250 miles of coast without railway facilities-that is, the railway is under construction but, even when it is finished it will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of the case. In the course of this stretch of 250 miles of coast there are twenty-five or twenty-six rivers, some of them quite large, to cross. Unless the returning officer had the use of one of the government steamers to carry the ballot boxes, posters and other supplies necessary for the election, he could not Mr. MONK.
cover the ground within the period allowed for the general election.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Do I understand the hon. gentleman to say that on the mainland the ground cannot be covered within the period?


Rodolphe Lemieux: On the mainland it can hardly be covered within a month-that is if the returning officer does his duty, chooses the polling booths, posts his proclamations, delivers his ballot boxes and so on, unless he divides the work with other people. There are three municipalities in the county of Gaspe. We have three court-houses, three jails,-they are always empty, I must say-and all the machinery of three municipalities. It is an immense territory. My hon. friend (Mr. Monk) has visited only that section of the coast which is frequented by the tourists in summer; but the other section, the portion traversed by. what is called the maritime road is very hard to cover at any season of the year. But this is only the mainland. We have also the Magdalen Islands, one or two hundred miles distant from the mainland. At this season of the year, you simply could not hold an election on the same day as a general election-unless you wired the proclamation, the instructions to deputy returning officers and so on. But, even so, what about the ballots ? There is no printing establishment on the Magdalen Islands; would you favour the system once followed in the county of Chicoutimi, where a match box was used as a ballot box, and the ballots were not printed but written by some of the officers ?
Mr.'MONK. If the law were amended so as to permit the instructions to be telegraphed to the Magdalen Islands, what possible difficulty would there be in holding the election on the same day as elsewhere?


Mr LEMIEUX.: Does not the hon. gentleman see that that is a system open to very serious objection ? The date might be telegraphed wrongly. There might easily be an error in wiring the name of one of the candidates. It certainly is not a proper way of holding an election to wire the instructions, the names of the candidates and so on.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I only urge that point because I have taken the trouble to inquire of people who reside not only there but lower down the river, and I am informed that there is no obstacle to holding the election in Gaspe on the same day as elsewhere.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I have pointed out what seem to me very serious difficulties. II we had nothing but the mainland to consider, when the railway is completed from Pas-pebiac to Gaspe, the territory can be covered easily within the election period, but,

so long as the Magdalen Islands form part of the county it would be impossible to cover the whole county within the time at certain seasons of the year. At the last election-I was not there on the day of election, but I am aware of the fact, the returning officer had the use of two of the government steamers for the delivery of the ballot boxes on the Magdalen Islands and the mainland.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The hon. gentleman knows that they are not always used when necessary.


Rodolphe Lemieux: In this instance they were used because it was necessary in order to hold the election on the day fixed in the proclamation. Now, this point is not a ground of complaint on the part of any of the parties in Gaspe. Before 1896, and since, the two parties have admitted that the election cannot be held in Gaspe on the same day as elsewhere. Nor is this regarded as a grievance in that constituency. I repeat that the county has not been disfranchised. Ever since confederation there have been the two parties, well organized in that county. The county was Liberal when hon. gentlemen opposite were on this side. It so happens that the county has been Liberal ever since 1896, but that does not mean that it has been disfranchised. As regards Saguenay and Chicoutimi, the hon. gentleman is in error, because in the last general election the polling took place there on the same day as elsewhere.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: But the law allows a deferred election.


Rodolphe Lemieux: If the election had taken place in winter, I suppose it would have been impossible to have the polling there on the same day as in the rest of the Dominion.


Mr. R. S. LAKE (Qu'Appelle).: I just wish to point out that the only objection which appears to have been taken on the government side to the amendment moved by my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo is that this resolution is an amendment to the resolution to go into Supply, and that this makes it impossible for the government to accept. That attitude was taken both by the Minister of Finance and the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Congdon). The latter gentleman went further and expressed his approval of the general principles embodied in the resolution. I wish to point out that the government has accepted amendments to the motion to go into Committee of Supply. I myself moved such an amendment in 1905 on a motion by the Finance Minister to go into Committee of Supply, and my amendment was accepted by the government and adopted. Therefore the objection urged by the Minister of Finance
to the adoption of this resolution has no sound foundation.


William Templeman: of nomination two weeks before the nomination for the general election. The writs for the late by-election were issued in Ottawa on the 22nd and were received by the returning officer, I believe, on the 27th, and there were 12 days between the nomination and the polling day. These 12 days were too short. If we had had a contest, it is absolutely certain that in respect to at least half a dozen of the most remote polling places, the ballot boxes would never have got there.


George Eulas Foster: Did they get there?


William Templeman: There was no poll. The election was by acclamation.


George Eulas Foster: Was any preparation made to get them there?


William Templeman: Yes, it is after all a simple matter of distance and transportation and distance. There nomination was held on February 8. The polling was by proclamation fixed for February 20, and the proclamation was sent to the remote polls by wire. There are polling places such as at Telegraph Creek, on the Skeena river, Aldermere, some 60 miles away, east of Hazelton on the Skeena river, and Cape Scott on Vancouver Island, where there is only monthly communication by steamer. It will be easily understood what our difficulties would be in getting ballot boxes after a nomination to those places within that time. I believe that twelve days is too short. However, the election was by acclamation, which was fortunate, because otherwise in a number of polling places the electors would have been disfranchised. Take Telegraph Creek where there are perhaps forty electors. The returning officer had three government steamers at Prince Rupert on nomination day for the purpose of hurrying the ballot boxes off for distribution to other places. We purposed having a steamer go to Wrangle. There were dog teams at Wrangle to take the boxes in to Telegraph Creek, and I was assured by gentlemen who knew the country and all the difficulties, that it was not possible to 'make the trip in less than eight or ten days, and if the conditions were unfavourable it could not be done in that time. To Atlin of course communication is much easier, but on the western coast of Vancouver Island there is only a weekly steamer in some parts and in the north a monthly steamer. In many polling places on the mainland, such as Bella Bella and Bella Coola, steamers call only once a month. In all these cases special arrangements would have to be made for the delivery of the ballot boxes. Aldermere is a polling place 60 miles east of Hazelton, and it would have been probably imposible if we had had an elec-Mr. TEMPLEMAN.
tion on February 20 to have delivered the boxes there in time. Thus it is necessary that the returning officer should give ample time to permit the ballot boxes to get to their destination in Comox-Atlin. I do not think that any member desires to have a postponed election. For my part I do not, and as a representative of the most difficult constituency in Canada in respect to transportation facilities I would be willing to support the proposition in the resolution if it can be shown to be practical to carry it out.	_
I cannot say anything about Yale-Cari-boo. It is twice the size stated by my hon. friend, but I admit that the northern portion is still uninhabited. However, with the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific within a year or two it will be necessary to establish a number of polling places 200 or 300 miles farther north than we now have them. Even in respect to Yale-Cariboo, great difficulties would be met with in attempting to hold the election on the same day as the other elections. These arguments do not apply to Kootenay and I believe that in future the election in Kootenay could be held on the same day as the general election.


Mr. W. W. RUTAN (Prince Albert).: Mr. Speaker, as many references have been made to the constituency which I have the honour to represent, I wish to explain the position there. I am in the same position as the hon. minister (Mr. Templeman), it would be impossible to hold the elections on the day of the general election unless the law was so amended that there would be a longer interval between nomination and election. I know that the returning officer in Prince Albert was willing and anxious to have the election in that constituency on the same day as the general election, but when he went' into details and found that we have polls 500 miles away from the City of Prince Albert which would have to be reached by dog train and boat and portages, he found it would be quite impossible. The original arrangement was to have the nomination on October 19 and the election on October 26. The nomination would close at two o'clock on October 19, and then all the ballots and the notices of election would have to be printed, the boxes prepared and the deputy returning officer and poll clerk would have to start out for the northern polls. We have polls at Beaver Lake, Cumberland House, Pas Mountain, Lac La Rounge, Montreal Lake and Pelican Narrows, all of which are from 250 miles to 500 miles distant. It took two days and two nights from noon on the nomination day to print a sufficient number of ballots to supply these polls. The officials then started on their trips and I do not think any hon. gentleman will contend that a man would have physical strength to make such trips as I have mentioned, and

hold the election within five days, as they would have to do to hold the election on the following Monday. These people living in the northern districts claim the same right of franchise as we do. Consequently it is unfair for any one to expect that the elections could be held on the same day and I do not believe our friends on the opposition are sincere in expecting this will be done under the circumstances. It was said by the opposition press that I had gone in with the returning officer to steal Prince Albert. I wish to assure hon. gentlemen in this House that that statement is untrue and utterly unfounded. I told the returning officer that if there was any way possible I would much prefer to have the election on the same day as in the rest of the Dominion, and as a proof of that desire, when the election was deferred, in place of having the nomination day after the election in the rest of the Dominion, it was placed on the day that the other elections were held so that we would not know anything about the result in the rest of the Dominion. Thus there was no chance of taking an unfair advantage of the necessary deferring of the election, as the news of the results in the rest of Canada could not reach these distant polls before the voting took place. It was used as an argument against me throughout the constituency that this was done for the purpose of gaining the election. It does not seem to me that this statement was sincere on the part of the opposition for the very reason that the great argument used by my opponents before notice of the deferring of the election was given, was that the government was about to be defeated, that the Conservative party would be returned to power. Consequently it seems to me that if there was any advantage to be gained by the deferring of the elections it was as great on one side as on the other, especially as the nomination was held before the result of the election in the rest of the Dominion could be known.


Mr. A. S. GOODEVE (Kootenay).: Representing a constituency in which there was a deferred election, I wish to say a few words. I feel that the ground has been thoroughly gone over, and that the arguments advanced by the hon. member for Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell) have been very logical. I am pleased to see that all the members who havie followed him have agreed to the principle of the resolution that has been moved. Several speakers, while agreeing with the principle of the resolution, have given various reasons why, at this particular time, they should not support it. First, the Minister of Finance took the ground that to vote for this motion would be equivalent to voting want of confidence in the government and he pointed out that that had never been done.


William Stevens Fielding: No, I did not say that.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: He said it could not be done without a vote of want of confidence in the government. Now I desire to say that I have a record of a number of resolutions that have been moved by the opposition on going into Supply, and which were accepted by the government:
Amendments to supply adopted by government.
Votes and Proceedings, 1899, page 362, Tup-per, responsibility of political heads.
Votes and Proceedings, 1900, page 234, Russell, preferential trade.
Votes and Proceedings 1901, page 288, Davis, Canadian Pacific Railway test case.
Votes and Proceedings, 1902, page 421, Bou-rassa, embargo cattle.
Votes and Proceedings, 1903, page 125, Costi-gan, Home Rule.
Votes and Proceedings, 1905, page 782, Armstrong, cold storage.
Votes and Proceedings, 1905, page 954, Lake, civil servants and elections.
Votes and Proceedings, 1908, page , Borden, access to original documents.
In all these cases the amendments were accepted by the government, and in no case were they considered as motions of want of confidence in the government. That being apparently the only argument advanced by the Minister of Finance, I trust that he will now be able to accept this resolution and ask his supporters to accept it. In regard to the question raised by the hon. member for the Yukon (Mr. Congdon), all his arguments were in favour of the principle of the resolution, his only complaint seemed to be that the Yukon was not included in this resolution. The explanation made by the mover of the resolution was that, not being familiar with the district of the Yukon, he thought it inadvisable to include it in the resolution. But I am sure that the member from the Yukon, agreeing as he does with the principle of the resolution, can vote with us on this question, and it would be an easy matter, when the Bill is drawn up, to include the Yukon. So much with regard to the arguments that have been Taised by our friends on the government side.
Again, the Minister of Inland Revenue, in referring to the district of Comox-Atlin, nointed out that the time at present fixed for the general election was not long enough for the constituency which he represented. But as was shown by the actual dates given by my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo, in the recent general election the actual time elapsing between the issuing of the writ and the polling day was 38 days, whereas in the by-election, as stated by the Minister of Inland Revenue, there were only 29 days. He himself stated that the writ was issued on the 22nd of January, was received by the returning officer on the 27th of January, and the nomination took



place on February 8. Now if we turn to the Elections Act, we find that it requires that the proclamation shall be posted eight clear days, not including the day of posting or the day of nomination, before the nomination can be held. If we had eight clear days to the day when the minister himself says the returning officer received the writ, namely on the 27th of January, you will see there was not sufficient time given, only two days were given. Again we find that in the Tecent 'campaign, if we may believe the public press, he himself stated that he was in favour of this very district of Comox-Atlin having no deferred elections; so he has practically pledged himself to our proposition.


William Templeman: I stated at Prince Rupert what I have stated here to-day. I pointed out the difficulties and the impossibility of holding the election in Comox-Atlin on the same day as the other elections.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: I accept the hon. gentleman's correction, but I understand that he made the stipulation that it would be necessary to have further time if they were to have it on the same day. I want to point out that we can fairly ask for the support of members on both sides of the House, inasmuch as we are only asserting a principle ; the details can be worked out in a Bill when it comes up for consideration. Now in regard to my own district of Kootenay which I have the honour to represent, let me point out that the people on both sides of politics in that great district are strongly of the opinion that there should be no deferred election in that district. I can advance no better argument than the statement of the Liberal candidate himself in the recent election. When he was nominated some months before the general election, he stated in his address accepting the nomination of the convention, that on no account would there be a deferred election in the constituency of Kootenay. When interviewed by the press, he again Teiterated his opinion that the principle of deferred elections was vicious in principle and unfair in practice, and for that reason he assured the people of Kootenay that there would be no deferred election in that district. But he went further than that.	When I was nominated by the Liberal-Conservative party in convention, the Liberal candidate wrote me a personal letter of congratulation, and again reiterated the statement he had made in public, that in no event would there be a deferred election in Kootenay, but they would fight it out in a fair field. But, Sir, what was the result? We find that notwithstanding the statement made by the Liberal candidate, both to his own party and through the press to the public, and again Mr. GOODEVE.
personally in writing to me over his own signature, as the campaign wore on, and there seemed to be in the minds of the people a general feeling that the government would not be supported, at least in the western provinces, and particularly in the district of Kootenay, his committee urged upon him over and over again the necessity of deferring the election. And what was the argument advanced by the committee for deferring the election? It was the argument that has been advanced by the hon. member for Yale-Cariboo in debating the evil of deferred elections, it was the argument that his only hope of carrying that seat was by deferring the election when, if the government should be returned to power, they would have the influence and the prestige of a victorious government to elect him. The result was that the attitude taken by his committee forced him to consent to deferring the election. In our campaign, both the Conservative press and myself on the public platform, gave the Liberal candidate credit for the attitude he had taken up at first. We felt that he had taken a statesmanlike and manly attitude in regard to this question, which was a burning one in that portion of the province. In every case where we spoke, and in every case through our daily papers, we gave him credit for that attitude. But the very first night when we had a meeting, and were both standing on the same platform, when we knew that the committee had urged upon him the necessity of deferring the election, I took occasion to express the opinion that they had taken an unfair advantage in the middle of the contest, in other words, that after they had agreed to certain conditions and we had accepted these conditions, it was not fair that they should then back out and place upon us a handicap. I may say that the audience agreed with me that the action of the committee was most unfair. Now I do not mention this matter for the purpose of ventilating any incidents of that campaign, but merely for the purpose of showing how unfairly deferred elections may be made to work against the opposition candidate. On that occasion the Liberal candidate asked my permission to address the audience, and he stated over and over again that as far as he was concerned he was still of the opinion that it was unfair and unjust to the district of Kootenay to defer the election, and he disclaimed any personal responsibility for it, and threw it all upon the government. He went further, and said on the day 1 was nominated that he had written down to those in authority at Ottawa and assured them that he had given his pledge that there would be no deferred election. On that ground he asked them that the writ be issued at the same time as the writs were issued for the general election.
When the writ did not come in time he
2853 MARCH 18, 1909 2854	
telegraphed them again saying that his personal and public honour was pledged to having the election on the same day and urging them to forward the writ. He said that notwithstanding that the writ was not issued in time to enable him to have the election on the same day, the argument being that there was no opportunity, when, as a matter of fact, the government themselves held back this writ against his wishes in order that they might have the advantage in that particular constituency of a deferred election. What is the feeling of the people of British Columbia in regard to this matter? Let us look at it from two or three phases that have not been mentioned. We have in this House 221 representatives from every portion of the Dominion and out of these 221 representatives there are seven from British Columbia, one at least of the greater provinces of this country. Of these seven representatives we had no less than three deferred elections, or, in other words, three sevenths of the entire electorate of British Columbia were practically disfranchised by deferred elections. I say that it is no wonder that the people of British Columbia felt indignant at the treatment that they received at the hands of this government. It is no wonder that they felt that they would resent such an injustice to them and to their province. That is one of the chief causes that led to the opposition to the government. But, there is another question that, it seems to me, enters into this. I believe that in deferring the elections in these various districts there is committed an injury to each particular district in which these elections are held. Let me illustrate: In Kootenay, which I have the honour to represent, as you know, in addition to the great mining industries that we have there, we have, in recent years, learned that the great valleys surrounding our lakes are suitable for fruit culture. Boards of trade and individuals have spent large sums of money in advertising the natural resources of that particular portion ot British Columbia and of its adaptability to horticulture. They have sent these advertisements all over Canada, to the old country and to the United States. They have been advertising these resources and the chief argument thej have advanced in regard to them was thai not only were these districts capable of growing all kinds of fruit of the best quality but that they were also close to the _ mar ket, that they had good railway facilities which would enable them to reach theii natural market, the prairies to the, east Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta Under these circumstances they were offer in<* inducements to people to come in ther< and settle the land. What was done? Jus at the time when Canada was engaged n a general election, when every newspape 90}	was devoting its front page and its editorial jolumns to the contest that was going on, just when the eyes of the mother country were focused upon the contest between the two great parties for the control of the affairs of this Dominion, it was announced that in certain portions of the province of British Columbia our means of communication were so backward that it was impossible to issue the writs and hold1 the elections on the same day as they were to be held in other parts of Canada. It did more harm *to the district of Kootenay and those portions of British Columbia in which we had deferred elections than will be offset by many years of hard work and a large expenditure of money. I do not hesitate to say that the people of these districts resented the position taken by the government with regard to these deferred elections. They felt that they had been dealt an unjust blow. They felt that all the work that had been done for years was undone by the position which these hon. gentlemen took with regard to this question. As to the position with regard to British Columbia I venture to say that it applies largely to other portions of the Dominion. In addition to the arguments which have been so logically advanced by my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell) I can only add that we have been unfairly dealt with in regard to advertising the great natural resources of that part of the Dominion. The time has come when we must show to the world at large that we have such good means of communication that all portions of the Dominion can be reached by the writs within the statutory time. It is a very important matter and one that affects every one of us. The country has spent large sums of money in making known its resources to other parts of the world. You find that the Minister of Agriculture and Minister of the Interior have spent large sums of money with regard to immigration and agriculture, advertising the great natural resources of the country and sending out agents at great cost, and yet, just at the time when a general election comes on, just at a time when we have an opportunity of advertising Canada, certain sections of the country are picked out and are un-fairlv dealt with by having it announced to the world that they are in such a backward position with regard to transportation facilities that elections cannot be held within these districts at the same time as they are held in other portions of the Dominion. I do not intend to take up the time of the House any longer with regard to this question. I believe that it has been fairly dealt with and I can only say t that this is not a resolution that has any i party advantage or object in view. I think * we have shown that the time has arrived


Mr. RALPH SMITH (Nanaimo).: Although not myself the representative of a constituency in which deferred elections are held, as there are three constituencies ln, "e province *n, which that principle is adopted, it may be neecssary for me to give mv opinion on the question which is under discussion. Last session, when the question of deferred elections in British Columbia was being considered, like mv [DOT] fmiend,the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman), I thought that it might be possible to provide for having the election m the Kootenay district on the day of the general election. But, I had very grave doubts from the knowledge I had *fbrtgard t? Yale-Cariboo whether that wouid be possible there. I was absolutely certain that without some very serious change in the General Elections Act which \vould involve every constituency in Canada, it would be utterly impossible to provide for the Comox-Atlin district as the hon. minister has described to the House From the days of confederation in Canada, and owing to its peculiar and extensive geographical conditions, it has been considered necessary, on the part of both parties, that deferred elections should be neld. In England, as m- hon. friend from Yale-Canboo (Mr. Burrell) said, with its Mr. GOODEVE.	.
large centres of population, it has been considered necessary at certain periods to have deferred elections. The peculiar geographical conditions of Canada has necessitated all governments since confederation to defer the elections in certain constituencies.


Martin Burrell: Do I understand the hon. gentleman to say that I contended that geography had anything to do with deferred elections in England? Surely he knows that the elections are not held on the same day in England because of the basis of the franchise which gives a man the right to vote in several constituencies where he is qualified?


Ralph Smith: I was stating that the conditions in this country gave far more reason for deferring elections than do the conditions in_ England. At all events all political parties since confederation have followed the same policy in that respect. My hon. friend (Mr. Burrell) based his whole argument against deferring elections on the beneficial results which he said would accrue to the candidate support-mg the party in power, but no stronger refutation of that argument can be found than the living presence of the hon. gentleman in this House. If the voters elect a man because he has charge of the flesh pots and can distribute them, and if a deferred election gives a government supporter great advantages in this respect, then the hon. gentleman would not represent the people of Yale-Cariboo in this House. The c ^ H^ritleman said he preferred the system of having the general elections on a fixed date which incidentally of course would mean that each parliament would be elected to sit for a specified and fixed term. Well that is a proposed change in the British constitution which I am not prepared to subscribe to.


Martin Burrell: I did not say I preferred that system ; I merely said there were arguments in favo uf of it ;as there were arguments against it.


Ralph Smith: Under the principles of the British representative constitution which we have incorporated into the constitution of Canada, the people of this country can at any time they find good reason for doing so turn out the government in power. Seven days after they have voted to put a certain party in power, they may, under :thq elasticity of the British system turn that party out of power again; but, under the United States system, which is less democratic, they elect their representatives for four years, and for four years whether the policy of the Congress may be approved by the people or not, the men so elected remain at the head of the nation. I am entirely opposed' to that

system. Now, as to deferring elections, I agree that so far as it is possible we should hold all the elections in Canada on the same day. The hon. gentleman calls upon me to vote non-confidence in the government because they have, as all former Canadian governments have, deferred elections in certain constituencies Well, even supposing the government is wrong in that, surely we can find a remedy without voting against a good government which in other respects has done so much to advance the material interests of the people of this country. Even though I should disagree with the government in regard to one particular item in their policy, and that certainly not a very important one in comparison with others, I would be very loth indeed to Vote against them on all questions because I might disagree with them on one point. I believe this debate will have a tendency to influence this government, and all future governments, to reduce the number of deferred elections to the narrowest possible limit. I said a year ago in this House that I believed it was not necessary to defer the election in Kootenay. My hon. friend from that constituency (Mr. Goodeve) has told us that tbe government candidate denounced the provision for a deferred election and stated in his election address that he preferred that the election should be on the same day as the general elections and we are told that on account of the alleged unnecessary and unreasonable deferring of the election a great many of the voters in these British Columbia constituencies voted against the government. It is quite evident, if this be true, that the Liberal party had no political motive in having a deferred election. If the Liberals of these districts and the government candidates for these districts were against deferred elections, how can my hon. friend say that there was any political motive in holding the deferred election? I believe the people of these constituencies generally do think that provision could be made to have the elections on the same day. Personally, I think it would be very difficult in Yale-Cariboo; it may be possible in Kootenay; I think it is impossible in Comox-Atlin. I am convinced that there are geographical conditions because of which, unless there is a very radical change in the law, it will be impossible to apply the rule of simultaneous elections in some of the constituencies for some years to come.


George Eulas Foster: ' It certainly is interesting to note that two very intelligent men on the other side of the House, the Minister of Finance, (Mr. Fielding), and Mr. Ralph Smith (Vancouver), could have persuaded themselves that they had convinced each other that this was a vote of want of confidence. If the hon. member for Vancouver
was convinced by the argument of the Minister of Finance that this was a vote of want of confidence, does he accept the necessary conclusion that every amendment to Supply is a vote of want of confidence and that to vote for such an amendment is to vote against the government?


Ralph Smith: I would ask the hon. member (Mr. Foster), in return, if it is possible for me to have my views expressed in the form of an amendment to this motion.


George Eulas Foster: That is not the point. The hon. member (Mr. Ralph Smith) said that one of his reasons for not wanting to vote for this resolution was that he does not want to turn out a good government, notwithstanding the fact that, so far as the proposal in that amendment is concerned, it ought to be carried out if possible. The Minister of Finance rather surprised me by making the statement in the categorical way he did. He not only said this was a vote of want of confidence, but that the only method by which a vote of want of confidence could be moved was by amendment to a motion for Supply. I do not think he really believes that.


William Stevens Fielding: It is the most common way.


George Eulas Foster: But the minister did not say that; he said it was the only way, and he called upon his supporters, in as clear terms as he could use, to vote against this amendment because it was a motion of want of confidence. My hon. friend from Kootenay (Mr. Goodeve) has cited seven or eight instances of amendments to Supply accepted by the government and carried unanimously, some moved on the government side, and some moved on the opposition side. Such instances occur almost every session.


Mr. LENNOX.: We had two last session.


George Eulas Foster: Yes, we had two last session as my hon. friend (Mr. Lennox) observes. Common sense is against regarding such an amendment as necessarily a vote of want of confidence, and all parliamentary practice is against it. A motion of want of confidence is defined by what the motion itself contains. If my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell) were to move that the administration of the Minister of Finance had been corrupt and wasteful and therefore unworthy of confidence, that would be a clear motion of want of confidence, and it would not make a bit of difference whether it was moved in amendment to Supply or as an independent motion. I quite agree that, if the ministry wish, they can declare any motion to be a motion of want of confidence, and call upon their followers to treat it as such. In such a case it is for the independent minds behind the

Treasury benches to decide whether it is a vote of want of confidence or not and also how they shall declare themselves Concerning it.
Another point that has been made is that the amendment should not be passed because there are details which would make it impossible to carry it out except after amendment of the law. As my hon. friend (Mr. Goodeve) has pointed out, this is simply the declaration of a principle, a principle which has been accepted, in the main, by the Minister of Finance himself, by the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman), by the member for Nanaimo and by all the others who have spoken on the other side of the House. As this is merely a declaration of principle, if there are details to be arranged in' order to carry it out, those details can be considered after. This would be a mere expression of opinion of the House, an in* struction to the government, that the principle ought to be carried out; it would be for legislation to come in afterwards and make the merely mechanical re-arrangements with respect to time and distance to carry the principle into effect.
But I wish to call attention to an argument upon which the hon. member for Nanaimo seemed to plume himself a good deal. He said that the hon. member for Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell} was a living demonstration that the position he took was not a valid position. It is true, I suppose, that dynamite exploded in proximity to a man is apt to damage the man. It is also true that a case may be found where the discharge has gone in another direction, so that the man, though apparently in imminent danger, has escaped damage. Would the hon. member (Mr. Ralph Smith) contend that because, in one case the man had escaped, that that was an argument against being careful about leaving dynamite around where it may explode when some unoffending citizen of this counary is near at hand? That was an argument used by my hon. friend from Vancouver which did not do him justice. He can make better arguments than that. But he has been up against it this afternoon; in order to find a reason to vote for the government he had to have recourse to an argument like that. If, now and again, a constituency rises superior to the influence of a deferred election, if a constituency, outraged by the continual application of this method decides that it will take the bit in its teeth, and, government or no government, will vote emphatic denial of such a principle, can that be considered an argument in favour of deferred elections? Because that happens now and then, is it an argument that you can use those things and should use them, and that the abuse should not be taken away. But the thing underlying that, and my hon. friend knows Mr. FOSTER.
it well, is this: is it proper, when it is not necessary to have a deferred election, for the government to defer it and thus better use the kind of argument used in these constituencies. That is the principle which is under it, and my hon. friend is too intelligent and straightforward to stand for a thing of that kind. But what does he think of the action of his own government? The two candidates, Liberal and Conservative, who knew their constituency, who knew their geographic limitations, came to a compact and agreed that they did not want any deferred election but a fair, straight combat in the ring without any handicap. The Liberal candidate both wrote and wired his government to give a square contest on the day when everybody else was casting his ballot in the Dominion. But your Finance Minister and your Prime Minister, whom you do not want to turn out and censure, rode rough-shod over him and said: You shall not have a fair fight, but we will put a handicap in your favour, and will do it by means of a deferred election. There was not a word of reprobation of an act like that by my hon. friend. He is so anxious to stand at the back of the Minister of Inland Revenue and support his loins, his arms, his shoulders and his head, that he would not reprove the wrong action for fear he would cause some damage by imputation to that heaven-sent minister.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


George Eulas Foster: When the House rose I was dealing with some arguments adduced by the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Ralph Smith). I always listen with pleasure and interest to what the member for Nanaimo (Mr. R. Smith) says. He is a man of wide experience, a man who thinks for himself and who appears to be exceedingly well informed on a wide range of subjects. I have heard him make most excellent arguments in this House. Of course it is difficult for a man to make a good argument if he has a poor case, and I attribute the weakness of his argument this afternoon to the poor case he had to defend. The member for Nanaimo (Mr. R. Smith) has won his spurs. He has conquered his constituency, he has kept it after conquering it; in many a hard fight he has proved the winner. After the election of 1908 he came here with his spurs on. I cannot say quite the same of the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman). The Minister of Inland Revenue did not quite win his spurs in the same way as the member for Nanaimo. It strikes me that some years ago there was something of a deal by the transference to the Senate of a par-

ticular person to give him a seat in this House and enable him to enter the cabinet. He entered the Cabinet without portfolio, but afterwards became a full-fledged minister. In the election of 1908, like many another good man, he went down before the wrath of the people and he is now here by virtue of another arrangement. The el-elcted member for Comox-Atlin, the man who fought the contest, who stood at the polls and took the battle upon him, came out victorious and came here as a full-fledged member of this House. It seems that there must be sacrifice somewhere and in some way or other the sacrifice was accomplished and the Minister of Inland Revenue, by way of Mr. Sloan, sits in this House to-day. So I say that for a man who has won his spurs in many a hard fought battle, who has fought consistently and always in his own consituency. it must come a little hard and it must be from a high sense of public duty that he stands so loyally to the back of the minister and his colleagues. The member for Nanaimo (Mr. R. Smith) I think has good cabinet material in him, he had won his position and might well have looked for preferment when preferment was possible; but instead of that the member for Nanaimo is not recognized and a deal is made by which the Minister of Inland Revenue gets into this House. I was interested this afternoon when the Minister of Inland Revenue was making his argument. He told the House plainly that if there had been an election contest in Comox-Atlin large numbers of electors would have been disfranchised. Did the minister have it so arranged that he knew from the first there was going to be no election. Suppose that, contrary to his supposition, if he had any in that respect, some obdurate man had been found in Comox-Atlin who would have stood at the polls and have forced a contest; by the admission of my hon. friend himself a large number of people in Comox-Atlin would have been disfranchised. By whose action? By his own action. Before he left Ottawa he and his government had arranged exactly what time should be given and they so arranged the time that if in the natural course of things there had been an election a large number of residents and electors in his own constituency would have been disfranchised. Myhon. friend this afternoon deplored anything of the kind. He is in favour of deferred elections lest perchance somebody in a constituency shall be disfranchised and yet he and his government set the whole machinery into operation by virtue of which, if there had been an election, hundreds of his own constituents would not have had a chance to vote. The only supposition that will reconcile the minister's actions with his expressed desire that no one should be disfranchised, is
that from the first, when fixing the dates and arranging the machinery, he had a pretty good idea that there was going to be no_eiection.
Now we come to the argument of the Postmaster General (Mr. Lemieux) who declared that in Gaspe it was physically impossible to hold the elections on the same date as the general elections, provided all the machinery was exactly as it is now. What were the arguments he used? Two hundred and fifty miles of an extension, but that is not insuperable in these times and finally the Postmaster General himself admitted that it would be possible to hold the elections on the mainland of Gaspe on the date of the general election, but he thought it might not be possible, under certain circumstances, on the Magdalen Islands. Yet the Magdalen Islands have complete telegraphic communication with the mainland. He was afraid there might be some possible mistake in a date in transmitting the telegram to the Magdalen Islands. It is the simplest thing in the world to have a telegram repeated so that _ the man sending it knows that it is received exactlv as he sent it. Thus, by his own admission, it would be possible to carry out the general law. What is the kernel of the whole matter ? It is the urging of a lot of technical and easily removed objections in order to retain a system which it is acknowledged by all should be abandoned if it is possible to do without it. _
Now on the cne side, what is it? Technicalities, geographical difficulties, mechanical difficulties and the like of that; on the other side, an acknowledged grievance an acknowledged disability, an acknowledged bad method. Will any one stand up in ohis House and aTgue for a single moment that a deferred election is fair between man and man as candidates in a contest? I do not think any one will. In a contest where the whole Dominion is engaged upon public issues, public men on each side go into the contest and they have a fair field so far as it can be given to them. Each one has the right to argue and instil into the minds of the electors that his party is the best party, has the best methods, and will likely rule the country for the next four or five, years. Each stands on a level. It depends on the men which of the two shall be the better persuader of his audience. But when you put a deferred election on, and you have the issue already decided in the Dominion, and it is no longer a question as to which party shall be in power for the next five years, no man*can say that it is a fair fight as between man and man. Don't we believe in fair fighting? _ Whatever government is in power, does it want to keep in power by unfair fighting? Does it want to load the dice? Surely not. Then I say I that one of the great evils of a deferred elec-

tion is that it does not play the game fairly, it handicaps one man in favour of another, and he the nominee of the government.
I say it is not only unfair between man and man but it is unfair between party and party. Go into a general election contest, even though we use those methods which we deplore, suppose the government candidate says: If you want public works in your constituency you had better elect me, for my party is going to be in power. The man who listens to him looks up in his face and says: Well, that is yet to be tested, you don't know, and we are not at all sanguine that your party will be in power. The candidate on the other side gets up and says: Vote for me, for my party, and for my party's policy; and he meets the argument of the other man by saying: I believe that my party will be in power, and that consequently we will have rule in the Dominion for the next four or five years. You put the two parties on as fair and equal footing for the fight as you can. But make it a deferred election, and what do you do? You handicap one party entirely, so far as you can, you read it out of any chance or hope of being successful in the election contest, because they are up against an issue which is decided already in the country. So it is not fair between party and party. I hold that no matter what a party may gain by that kind of thing, in the long run it loses if it offends the principles of fair play and just warfare as between the two great parties in the country. Some time or other it will come back on them. It hits first one party and then another, if it is carried on. But it is not good for either party. .
But there is a higher issue than that. It defrauds the elector in the deferred constituency of any chance of deciding the public issues of the day. What is the whole theory of our free and responsible government? It is that by aggregating the units of voices throughout the whole country you get a proper conclusion as to the policy which shall rule the country. Is it not essential, then, that the contest should be carried on under conditions which give to each man a chance to have a voice in deciding the final issue? Your deferred election takes away that chance from the man in the minority party, and the moment he presents his policy he is told, the issue is already decided, and you have a matter of public policy in which the voter has no chance at all to decide what it will be, it has already been decided, and it is a dead issue in that constituency. Now what is the effect of that? What do we want in this country, dead constituencies or live constituencies? Is it best that we should have the finest spirit, is it best that we should have the liveliest and keenest discussion, is it best that we should have the energies of all the electors devoted to the solution of ques-Mr. FOSTER.
tions that come before them? Evidently so. But by the deferred election you destroy that liveliness, you destroy that independent participation, and you throw a dead issue into that constituency, and consequently you do what militates directly against public spirit, and the better public life of that constituency and of the country at large. It is not right, and it is not expedient. It is not right, because it deprives the elector of his proper position; it is not expedient, because in the long run it discourages public spirit and is a disadvantage to the country.
Well, then do we agree upon that? I ask the Finance Minister, in the way of reasoning this out, do we agree that it is not a desirable thing to go into any con-situency and to try to get a vote by the bold promise of public works and of public patronage? No man, I think, will get up in this House and argue on that brute idea. He will hedge about it, even though he believes that he or his party will use that kind of an instrumentality, he will not advocate it baldly and boldly. The issues of the day, the discussion of these great public issues, the great public policies, the interests of the country at large, these are the things which should be discussed in the election, and to leave those aside and to replace them by, or give greater prominence to, the brute arguments and promises of what the government will do in the bestowal of money, and franchises, and public works, and that kind of thing, debauches the constituency. It is a course which is deleterious, nobody can stand up in this twentieth century, and go in for and advocate that sort of thing. But your deferred election gives force and power to that argument. The two men on a platform in a general election have a fair show, neither can say that his party is in, or that his principles will triumph. But in a deferred election a government is in, that government has the patronage, that government dispenses the money- Vote for me, or you will get nothing for your constituency in any way, shape or form. That is the bald argument used over and over again. It is used with tremendous force when all are fighting on the same day, it is used with tenfold more force when you defer an election and you give to one party or to one candidate pcwer to say: ' We are in for five years, we dispense the patronage, we build the post offices, we appoint the officers, we do all that sort of thing, and you will not get a smell of patronage unless you vote for me. The government will be kind to its friends.*' My good natured friend the Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham), says that is human nature, and that every party will always be more favourable to its friends. Another puts it in a different way.

and so we have it. But when it is put so baldly as that, and in a deferred election, even my good natured and human friend, the Minister of Railways, would, I think, rather balk at that kind of a statement in its bareness and its foulness, I do not think he would stand at the back of that. Therefore, I say that the deferred election is the enemy of the country, of the commonwealth, of good public life, because it gives the greatest possible force to the worst kind of arguments, the argument of patronage, when a man says, 'I belong to the party which is going to exercise this patronage for the next five years, make me your man and I will get these expenditures in your constituency.' What have you on the other side? You have, on the other side, simply what has been urged here this afternoon, that there are geographical difficulties in the way. You will have to use the telegraph; in some cases you will have to send couriers out; in other cases you will have to have this, do this and that as a mechanical expedient in order to expedite the work to have everything made ready for the decision on polling day. What are these things?-simply technicalities, little mechanical difficulties which, if it were determined that the principle shall triumph, we are abundantly able in half an hour to meet by legislation. The hon. Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman) has shown how it can be met in Comox-Atlin and he has held up Comox-Atlin as a conspicuous example of a large and unwieldy constituency. That situation can be met by making the proclamation two weeks in advance. We are competent to meet that by legislation. It is the easiest possible thing in the world to do. If we want to establish this principle we can easily smooth out all these little mechanical difficulties and put the matter where it ought to be. But, remembering the illustration given by my hon. friend (Mr. Goodeve), I am afraid that the real reason why the deferred constituency is kept is that the government itself is favourable to it and does not want to relinquish the hold it gives. It will not hurt us to give that illustration once more before I stop talking on this phase of the subject. What was it? The Liberal candidate in Kootenay wanted no deferred election, the Conservative candidate wanted none, and the two, like brothers in a good, square, fair fight agree that there should be none. What happens?-the candidate of the government wires to the government; 'I want the election on the regular day.' He writes to the government:	'Please set the election
on the regular day.' The government do not. Why not? Not because it is not feasible or practicable, but because it wants to handicap the man who is opposed to it and give an advantage to the
man who is running in its interests. So long as that is the spirit of the government no wonder the Minister of Finance strains every constitutional and reasonable principle and declares that an amendment like this involves a vote of want of confidence and calls upon his followers to vote against it. No wonder that my self-sacrificing friend from Nanaimo (Mr. Smith) treats it, on the ipse dixit of the Minister of Finance, as being a vote of -want of confidence and says:	'I do not want to turn
out this good government: better a thousand deferred elections and all that they involve than that this government that I support should go out.' There it is. It is up to parliament just now to say whether or' not we will adopt the principle which we all believe to be correct and then set ourselves to smoothing away the difficulties in the way of carrying it into actual practice, or whether we .will go on in the old wav. the way which accentuates the difficulties that we are strong enough to overcome now in the political life of Canada.


Mr. W. H. WHITE (Victoria, Alberta).: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of interest to the discussion on both sides of the House on the question of deferred elections. According to the speech made by the hon. member for Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell) one would imagine that it was a Conservative candidate who in all cases suff.ered by deferred elections. I happen to represent a constituency in which I was the sufferer, and not only that, but a large proportion of the constituency was disfranchised by reason of the fact that the election was not deferred. I may say that although the member for Yale-Cariboo may think that he put the question, as it appeared to him, fairly, it must be remembered that there are other places in Canada as well as Yale-Cariboo. There are districts probably as large and just as hard to get over as the constituency my hon. friend represents. I have the honour to represent a constituency extending from the city of Edmonton to, you may say, the North Pole. I wish to inform the House that although there is a large settlement north of the Athabaska river there was no poll in my constituency north of that river. Some hon. gentlemen might think that there was a desire on the part of the Liberals in the late election to act unfairly and that there was some motive for not placing a poll north of the river, but, I want to point out that the district of Athabaska is represented in the Local House at Edmonton by a Liberal. He was elected by acclamation. I think I know the people in that country probably better than any man in the House, if not as well as any man in the Northwest, and I do not know the name of one Conservative north of that

river. I know that there are over 300 votes in. that region and that we only had to place a poll there to secure those votes. The Liberal associations at Fort McMur-ray and Fort Smith applied for a poll but the government did not see their way clear to establish one although I, as the rep-presentative of the party in the recent contest, was very anxious to have one placed in that district. We could not get it and the result was that a large portion of the constituency was disfranchised. I would be sorry to see this occur again. I hope that in the next election these people will have an opportunity of casting their votes. Unless there are great changes which we do not now expect, such as the extension of railways into that north country, when the next election comes on these people will be in exactly the same position as that which they occupied in the last election. I think it is unfair that such a large proportion of the electors should be disfranchised and I am therefore very much opposed to the resolution doing away with the deferred elections while there are voters in remote corners of any constituency who do not have an opportunity to vote. My opponent in the late election was very anxious with regard to this matter. His agent approached me and said he hoped they would not place any poll in that country. His agent tried to make an arrangement with me which, of course, I had no authority to make, his reason being that it was impossible to go up there. If a poll had been placed there I would have had a great advantage over my opponent. The local member who .is a friend of mine would have looked after my interests there while my opponent had no chance of sending anybody in and I would undoubtedly have secured the_ vote. If these people are disfranchised in the next election I do not think they well be very well satisfied, I do not think they should be, and I promised them that I would do all in my power to secure to them in the next election the opportunity of casting their votes the same as the voters in any other part of the district. I have only to add that I will vote against the resolution in the interest of constituencies which would suffer if there were no deferred elections.


Mr. W. E. KNOWLES (Moosejaw).: Mr. Speaker. I shall endeavour to make my remarks fittingly brief, and in the first place I shall touch upon the observations made by the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster). The major part of the hon. gentleman's speech was devoted to jeering at the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Smith), and at the hon. Minister of Inland Revenue. He takes exception to the manner in which the Minister of Inland Revenue finds a seat in this House.


William Henry White: It is true that the hon. gentleman (Mr. Templeman) was defeated by a narrow majority at the recent elections, and it is also true that he was defeated by most despicable means. I for one who support the government am here to say that when we remember the means by which the Minister of Inland Revenue was defeated, he has not the slightest fallen in our estimation, but on the contrary we think the more of him. It is true, as the hon. member for North Toronto has said, that in 1906 the Minister of Inland Revenue found a seat in this House because of a vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Riley, now a senator. The people of the city in which the Minister of Inland Revenue lives were glad to elect him on that occasion and they would have been glad to have elected him on the 26th of October last if _ they had not been misled and deceived. But, when we look at the records of how the Minister of Inland Revenue has found a seat in this House and of how the hon. member for North Toronto has found a seat here, I do not think the comparison is very much to the credit of my hon. friend from North Toronto. I had rather be in the position of the Minister of Inland Revenue who found a seat in the city in which he lived for many years and of which he is one of the pioneers, known and respected, than be in the position of the hon. member for North Toronto who, I am informed, started his political career in a place called the County of Kings in the province of New Brunswick down by the sea. I am told that from there he went to another county ; he wandered to and fro on the earth, and he found a lodging place in the county of York


Mr. AMES.: Mr. Speaker, I ask, has this anything to do with the question before the House.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Sit down.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: Order. I will hear the hon. gentleman on the point of order.


Herbert Brown Ames: I ask has this anything to do with the question under consideration?


William Stevens Fielding: I submit that it has as much to do with it as the speech of my hon. friend from North Toronto.


George Eulas Foster: You don't mean that.


William Stevens Fielding: I do.


Herbert Brown Ames: My point of order is that the remarks of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Knowles) are not pertinent to the subject under discussion, and I ask your ruling.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: The motion is that the House go into Committee of Supply, and on that motion considerable latitude is allowed. There is an amendment relating to deferred elections, and as I have allowed considerable latitude to the mover of that

amendment I think I would not now be justified in restricting the scope of the debate.


William Erskine Knowles: My hon. friend (Mr. Foster) next went to the city of St. John, and he again was a candidate. There was no doubt good reason why he left the county of York, but there was no good reason evidently for his going to St. John, because he was defeated there by the late Hon. Mr. Blair who polled an overwhelming majority. Then, my hon. friend (Mr. Foster) went forth wandering to and fro on the earth, seeking whom he might


An hon. MEMBER.: Devour.


William Erskine Knowles: Seeking whom he might represent, and in the course of time he came to the riding of North Ontario, in the old province of Ontario. He ran against a young man, a little more than out of his teens, and my hon. friend (Mr. Foster) with all his record behind him-I don't say because of his record, but perhaps I may be more courteous and say in spite of his record-with all his experience, with all his ability, with all his prestige as a prominent member if not the leader of the once great Conservative party; he went down to defeat before this boy, George Grant. My hon. friend (Mr. Foster) tried again at the general election of 1904, and he went to that citv of Toronto where even the hon. gentleman can be elected, since he is a Conservative. I will admit this with regard to my hon. friend:	He may be
against deferred elections because he experienced great deferring of his own election on that occasion ; time after time for four years his election was deferred_ and the. expression ' deferred election ' is, I have no doubt, one which makes the hon. gentleman anything but pleasant. Let me remind the hon. gentleman that while he was a member of the Conservative government, I think for some _ eleven years, there was a general election in 1887, another in 1891, and another in 1896. During all this period the hon. gentleman was a prominent member of the Conservative government, a clever member, and I have no doubt a worthy member so far as I have any knowledge. But in each of these three elections the government of which the hon. gentleman was a member were responsible foT deferred elections, and for these he must share the responsibility. It it only fair that I should say that he has by supporting the policy of the government of which he was a member admitted that deferred elections are not in theinselves wrong, but are necessities, and justifiable under certain circumstances, or else of course he would not have supported his government. I have before me the Consolidated Statutes of Canada for the year 1886, and I find set forth in the Elections
Act a list of constituencies in which there should be deferred elections and these constituencies are the electoral district of Al-goma, the electoral district of Gaspe, the electoral district of Chicoutimi and Saguenay, and would the House believe it, every one of the electoral districts in the province of British Columbia. That is the law which was in force when my hon. friend was a member of the government, and it is only fair we should come to the conclusion that to-day he cannot consistently lay down the policy that deferred elections are in themselves never justifiable. Mv hon. friend (Mr. Foster) referred specially to the fact that Mr. Smith Curtis, the Liberal candidate in Kootenay, was desirous of having the election upon the same day as the other elections throughout the country. My hon. friend told us twice that the two candidates were desirous of standing up like brothers in a friendly fight, and say to each other:	'We
will have nothing mean, we will fight thi3 thing out fair.' By that, of course, he implies that the government endeavoured in the province of British Columbia to use underhand methods, and I have no doubt he in some way endeavoured to cast the asperations on the Liberal party for the manner in which they fought the elections in that province:	I want to say that we
have no need to sit at the feet of gentlemen opposite to learn how to conduct elections in British Columbia. It has been stated by some gentlemen that because an election is deferred, there is therefore a greater probability that the people will be unduly influenced to vote for the party in power. To my mind that is not a compliment to the people of British Columbia. The hon. gentleman from Yale-Cariboo has said that in England it is different because conditions are different, and that the electorate there are not susceptible to the influence of the government in power. I think that on reflection the hon. gentleman will withdraw^ the invidious comparison as between his own constituents and the voters in the British Isles because I believe it will be found that the electors of the Dominion of Canada and the electors of British Columbia are just as competent to give a fair and unprejudiced vote on political affairs as are the voters in England, Ireland, or Scotland.
Only one case can I recall in which the people were ready to lay aside their allegiance to the principles of their party and support the Liberal party because it was in power, and that was the case of the Te-cent by-election in which the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman) was elected. On that occasion, we found the Conservatives of Victoria, we found the Conservatives of Vancouver, so disgusted 1 with the election methods of their party

last October, that they came out flat-footed and said: 'To show that we are ashamed of this system by which our party has disgraced us, let us call for the withdrawal of the man who has been put up in Prince Rupert. True, we elected Conservatives in October last, but we did so because we were deceived by forged telegrams, but now we know better.' And the result was that against his own -wishes, and by the influence and pressure of the Conservatives in Victoria and Vancouver, he was withdrawn from the contest. And so these people to that extent, redeemed themselves and paid this compliment to the hon. minister. The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) tried to make is appear that the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Ralph Smith) had, so to speak, swallowed himself on this question. The hon. member for Nanaimo does (pV require that I -should hold any brief for him. He has been many years in this House, and. no member of this House is held in higher esteem. He is not the man to disguise his principles, nor can he fittingly be made the subject of such remarks as those of the hon. member for North Toronto. My hon. friend {M Foster) also jeered at the hon. member for Nanaimo because in this instance he had been loyal to the Minister of Inland Revenue-'this heaven-born minister,' as the non. gentleman said, with some sarcasm,
I suppose. I will admit-nay, I will claim - that it is quite possible "that the hon. member for North Toronto may not be able to understand loyalty to colleagues nor to the minister; we have heard of the 'nest of traitors.' To him, it may be a passing mystery, which he can only treat sarcastically as something that he cannot understand, that the hon. member for Nanaimo and other Liberal members who support this government have in their hearts an honest loyalty to the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman) as to every other member of the ministry. My hon. friend (Mr. Foster) was greatly exercised about the power of patronage-that the poor innocent elector should be misled or unduly influenced by the expectation that, since a certain party is in power certam things will be done. That is something that would never be practised by the hon. member for North Toronto while in "'is House. Does he remember a trip -that he made to Prince Edward Island? Did he ever hear of the building of a tunnel to Prince Edward Island? I am not going into the merits or demerits of that remarkable construction that was proposed; but I will say that I do not think it is any worse for candidates to say frankly to their electors that if they are returned to parliament their constituents will have the sympathy and ear of the government in presenting their petitions, than to hold forth to the people Mr. KNOWLES.
of Prince Edward Island the prospect that if the leader of the opposition is brought into power a tunnel will be built. I am not saying that I defend this style of electioneering, at all, but I say that the first of these is better than the other.
With regard to the specific matters that have been spoken of, if I understand my hen. friend from Yale-Cariboo, he himself admitted that it would require twelve days to'Teach certain parts of his district. I submit, there can be no justification for disfranchising these people who are twelve days' journey removed from the centres of population. These people have all the rights of franchise that people living in the city of Vernon have, or in the town of Grand Forks, or in the city of Kamloops, or in the city of Nelson. The principle which he himself declared for, this afternoon, the principle that nobody should be disfranchised, should cause the hon. gentleman to rise to-night and vote against his own motion, because he himself has shown that to do away with deferred elections means that you must disfranchise many hundreds of people in this Dominion. I think we had that very clearly demonstrated this afternoon by my hon. friend Lorn Prince Albert (Mr. Rutan), whom I am very happy to see here. That hon. gentleman has demonstrated to this House that in his own riding there are seven polls where 228 votes were cast, which are from 250 to 500 miles from the city of Prince Albert, where, of course, the returning officer would almost necessarily live. That journey is made partly by pumping a hand car to the Pas, partly by portaging, and by hundreds of miles of canoeing up stream. That journey cannot be made in one day less than two weeks. And, away up there, there are about 250 people who have as much right to vote as the people of Prince Albert have. I was for ten days occupied in assisting my hon. friend from Prince Albert in that election, and I never met a single Conservative who seriously said there was any injustice in that deferred election. On the other hand, Conservative after Conservative admitted that it would have been an injustice and an outrage that these 228 votes should not have been cast, for the people in those remote sections had as good a right to cast their ballots as the people in the centres. We are not afraid of the polls in the cities nor those far removed. We say: 'Let all the people in all parts of the country have the opportunity to exercise their franchise.' Another illustration is that in the Dominion constituency of Edmonton there are two local provincial constituencies, Athabaska and Peace River. In the recent general election, because they did not have deferred elections, in the provincial constituency of Athabaska only_ one poll was held, and in the provincial constituency of Peace River, not

a single vote was polled, poll was held, or vote cast, because these British subjects were too far removed from the place of polling, and therefore could not exercise their franchise. In my own riding there were nine polls that could not be held, and were not held. If they had been held, I think, beyond question, I should have had a majority of 150 more. I do not say that to boast, but lest any person should think that there was purpose in not holding these polls. I see my hon. friend laughing sarcastically. My majority was over 1,000, so that I would not have been in danger even had these polls gone against me. If we had had a deferred election these votes would have been _ polled. The application of the very principle which my hon. friend (Mr. Burrell) asks this House to adopt, resulted, in the riding of Edmonton, in the disfranchisement of two provincial constituencies, and in my own riding it resulted in the disfranchisement of at least nine polls. There was one poll where they made their own ballot box, and their own poll, and cast seven solid Liberal votes. They wanted to vote for good government, but they had not the chance. Therefore I say that the people living in the outlying parts of the prairie should be protected; and instead of the hon. member for Yale-Cariboo (Mr Burrell) and his associates in this debate endeavouring to further take away from that franchise, they would be much better employed if they would take better precautions to prevent the disfranchising of these electors.
Instead of having to apologize for the vote I propose to give, I should, if I voted for the principle contained in this resolution, be absolutely wrong. Let us bear in mind the circumstances and conditions which existed when the decision was arrived at to have deferred elections. It is well known that if a person is charged with wrong-doing, you must consider his conduct from the view point of the circumstances at the time he did the alleged wrong. It is said that we did wrong in deferring the elections. Before deciding, let us consider what were the circumstances which induced the government to defer them. According to the argument of hon. gentlemen opposite, the decision to defer the elections could only be wrong if thereby the return of the government was rendered more likely than its overthrow. But which was the more likely at the time ? My hon. friend the leader of the opposition, in an interview which he gave the press a few days before the general election, said that they would be a repetition of the general elections of 1878. Surely then he must have been convinced that the deferring of certain elections, if the result was to be in favour of the government, would have the effect of returning the Conservative candidates, since the general
elections were to be a repetition of those of 1878 and the Conservative party be in power. The offense must be judged from the view point of the circumstances that existed at the time the wrong was committed; and since the circumstances then pointed to the overthrow of the Liberal government and party, the Liberal party stood to lose and not to gain by deferring these elections, and therefore the deferring of them was a kindness done the opposition, because after sweeping the country the opposition could come in and gather a few more crumbs.


Mr. G. H. BARNARD (Victoria, British Columbia).: It was not my intention, Mr. Speaker, to take any part in this debate until I heard from the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Knowles), He saw fit in his wisdom to dilate upon the circumstances of the election in the city of Victoria and to cast some animadversion on the Liberal-Conservative party in respect to that election and to profess a great deal of sympathy foT the Minister of Inland Revenue over its results. Hon. gentlemen opposite have, during the present session, seen fit on more than one occasion to refer to that election in terms in themselves somewhat amusing, and for my part I was perfectly content they should so amuse themselves if they saw fit. It was not my intention or desire to lay before the House the facts concerning the career of the hon. Minister of Inland Revenue, (Mr. Templeman), as regards elections in the city of Victoria, so long as hon. gentlemen opposite confined themselves to their little, pleasantries. But when they take part in a serious debate and raise that question in a wholly irrelevant manner, it seems to me high time that I should say something on the subject.
As regards the incident referred to by my hon. friend (Mr. Knowles) I had nothing to do with it, and am as innocent of any connection with it as the hon. gentleman himself. To be absolutely candid, I have probably more reason to regret it than has the Minister of Inland Revenue, for the very good reason that had I been defeated, I had no one to whom I felt called upon to make explanations, but my hon. friend the minister, I have not the slightest doubt, found that little incident very comforting to him when explaining to his chief how the government candidate came to be defeated in the city of Victoria. At the same time, I deny that that particular incident had anything to do with the result in that city.


Some hon. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.


George Henry Barnard: Hon. gentlemen opposite may laugh, but let me just read to them a

few lines which I find in the Parliamentary Companion. I do not expect them to take my word for anything, but would like to read something which no doubt they will not hesitate to believe. Let me quote from the 'Canadian Parliamentary Guide,' this biography of the hon. minister:
An unsuccessful candidate for House of Commons at general elections*, 1891, at byelections of 1896, and at general elections in 1896. Called to the Senate, November 18, 1897.
Now that same hon. gentleman, when canvassing in the constituency of Comox-Atlin, held a meeting in the town of Aberni in that constituency, the other day. Some remarks were made on the platform regarding the same incident of which I am now speaking, and he was challenged and refused to deny that he had not stated in the city of New Westminster, where he was campaigning in the interests of the opponent of the present member for New Westminster, that the Asiatic question was not an issue in his own constituency at the general elections in October last. Furthermore, with regard to that particular telegram, I may say that I was perfectly satisfied with the situation and never asked for that telegram. I never wrote any one here to give me any declaration on that matter. On that question the issue was clear cut between the two parties. My leader told us he stood for a certain line of policy, and on the other hand we had a declaration from various members of the cabinet on a totally opposite line. There was therefore absolutely nothing for the Conservative party to gain by sending to Ottawa for any further declaration of policy.
What was the position with respect to that election. The Minister of Inland Revenue was in the Senate, and a minister without portfolio. In 1906, a by-election was held owing to his retirement from the Senate and to the sitting member. Mr. Reilly, resigning his seat in this House and taking that of the minister in the Senate. My hon. friend came to Victoria and ran a by-election and was elected by a majority of 800. Prior to that time, during the general election of 1904, the Minister of Inland Revenue posed as the leader of the Liberal party in the province of British Columbia. He stumped British Columbia from end to end, with the result that seven Liberal members were returned from that province and no Conservative. Of course the party which he led were very much pleased. They gave him a banquet in Victoria. All the Liberals of British Columbia attended that banquet; they dined and they wined and burnt incense in tremendous quantities at the shrine of the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Temple-man). He was the great man, the man who Mr. BARNARD.
had brought them out of the wilderness and had given to the Dominion government that solid following of seven. He was the great man in British Columbia. That is the man whom I, an untried candidate for parliamentary honours, had to go up against in the Dominion election. Hon. members opposite talk about that telegram altering that election. I would ask any of the ministers what effect such a telegram as that would have if published in their constituencies at the last moment? Would the Minister of Railways go down to defeat on a question of that kind? Was he in such a position that it would defeat him? Why did it not have the same effect on the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. R. Smith)? The same paper that circulated the telegram in Victoria has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the constituency of Nanaimo. What difference did it make to him? If the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman) and his party had had the confidence of the people of British Columbia, not one telegram nor fifty of that or any other kind should have made any difference. Before the Saturday night before the election when that telegram was first produced to me and read by me at the close of the meeting, the minister, if he was worthy of his position in the government, should have had me beaten by 500. The trouble was that the people of British Columbia were at issue on not only the Asiatic but on many other questions, with* the Dominion government. That particular incident of the telegram had absolutely nothing to do with that election and I think the Minister of Inland Revenue (Mr. Templeman) knows it himself.
My hon. friend who has just taken his seat (Mr. Knowles) said something about making the ballot boxes in his own constituency. We have heard of ballot boxes made by the friends of hon. gentlemen opposite before; we have also heard of special trains. I think that if hon. gentlemen opposite wish to make what are practically personal attacks on members of the opposition, they should first look at home and take the beam from their own eye.
House divided on amendment (Mr. Burrell).
YEAS:
Messieurs
Ames
Armstrong,
Arthurs,
Barnard,
Barr,
Beattie,
Blain,
Blondin,
Bordon (Halifax), Boyce,
Bradbury,
Broder,
Macdonell,
McCall,
Maddin,
Magrath,
Marshall,
Middlebro,
Monk,
Nantel,
Northrup,
Owen,
Paquet,
Parley,
2877 MARCH 18i 1909 2878	
Burrell, Porter, Campbell, Price, Chisholm (Huron), Reid (Grenville), Crosby, Rhodes, Crothers, Roche, Currie (Simooe), Russell, Daniel, Schaffner, Doherty, Sharpe (Lisgar), Donnelly, Sharpe (Ontario), Edwards, Smyth, Elson, Sproule, Poster, Stanfield, Fraser, Staples, Goodeve, Stewart, Haggart (Winnipeg), Taylor (Leeds), Henderson, Taylor (New Wcst-Herron, minster), Jameson, Thornton, Kidd, Wallace, Lake, White (Renfrew), Lalor, Wilson (Lennox and Lancaster, Addington), Lennox, Wright.-69. Lortie,
 NAYS: Messieurs Allen, McCraney, Beland, MoGiverin, Bickerdike, Molntyre (Perth), Black, McKenzie, Borden (Sir Fredk.), McLean (Huron), Boyer, McMillan, Brodeur, Major, Brown, Marcile (Bagot), Calvert, Martin (Montreal, St. Carrier, Mary's), Carvell, Martin (Regina), Cash. Martin (Wellington), Champagne, Mayrand, Chew, Meigs, Chisholm (Antigonish), Michaud, Chisholm (Inverness), Miller, Clark (Red Deer), Molloy, Clarke (Essex), Murphy, Congdon, Nesbitt, Conmee, Neely, Currie (Prince Edwd.) Papineau, Delisle, Pardee, Demers, Parent, Devlin, Paterson, Dubeau, Pickup, Ecrement, Proulx, Emmerson, Prowse, Ethier, Pugsley, Fielding, Rankin, Fisher, Reid (Restigouche), Fortier, Riohards, Fowke, Rivet, Gauvreau, Robb, Geoffrion, Ross, Girard, Roy (Dorchester), Gordon (Kent). Roy (Montmagny), Graham, Rutan, Harris, Savoie, Harty, Schell, Hodgins, Sealey, Hunt, Seguin, Knowles, Sifton, Kyte, Sinclair, Lachanoe, Smith (Middlesex), Lanctot (Laprairie- Smith (Nanaimo), Napierville), Smith (Stormont), Lanctot (Richelieu), Sutherland, Lapointe, Talbot, Lavergne, Templeman,	LeBlanc, Tobin, Lemieux, Todd, Loggie, Turcotte (Nicolet), Lovell, Turcotte (Quebeo Low, County), Maclean (Lunenburg), Turgeon, MacNutt, Turriff, McAlister, Verville, MoCoig, White (Victoria, Alta), McColl, Wilson (Laval).-115. PAIRS: Messieurs Ministerial. Opposition. Law, Hughes, Tolmie, Maclean (York, S.), Guthrie, Clare, Aylesworth, Osier, German, Barker, Molntyre (Stratheona),McCarthy, McLean (Sunbury), Sexsmith, Bureau, Crocket, Gervais, Worthington, Beauparlant, Bristol, Dugas, Forget, Gladu, Thoburn, Maodonald, .Meighen, Laurier (Sir Wilfrid), Haggart (Lanark), Warburton, Cowan, Oliver, Lewis, Stratton. Gordon (Nipissing). Amendment negatived, and House went into Committee of Supply. iSaguenay river, dredging and other improvements, $30,000. Mr. PUGSLEY. When the Committee of Supply last rose we were discussing item 143, $30,000 for dredging the Saguenay river and other improvements. I suppose the committee is now ready to adopt the item. Mr. BLAIN. I would like the minister to slate how much of this amount is for dredging and how much for improvements. Mr. PUGSLEY. I think this is all for dredging. Mr. JOSEPH GIRARD. (Translation.) Mr. Chairman, before we discuss this item for dredging the Saguenay river and other improvements, I beg leave to introduce some explanation about the discussion which occurred yesterday and last Friday, in my absence, and to which I have not been able to answer. I am greatly concerned at believing that in the understanding of some of my colleagues, who spoke chiefly yesterday, they could entertain a personal animosity towards myself, which I would be unable to explain. Last year about July 15th, the question of the piers built at Riviere du Moulin, was brought up before the House. I was satisfied that I had at the time thoroughly explained the matter, and understood that no further reference would he made to it. I see in yesterday's ' Hansard ' that some hon. gentleman on the other side, in referring to this matter, seemed greatly exer-

cised because the government at a certain date had contributed to the cost of construction of what has been termed a municipal bridge; and some even went so far as to attack the officials who were consulted on the matter and reported favourably as to it. Furthermore, there was handed to the minister and to hon. members a photograph prepared expressly for the purpose of deceiving those who are ignorant of the circumstances, and an effort was made to satisfy the present minister, who was not at the time entrusted with the management of the Public Works Department, that his predecessor in office had been under a false impression directly after his officers, or indirectly by myself.
Well, I may be allowed to refer to the explanations which I gave to this House last year on July 15th. The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) commenting yesterday on some photographs which had been exhibited, made in regard to responsible officers criticisms to my mind totally unwarranted. Let me remind him of some photographs which I laid before this House last year showing the piers of the bridge at Grande Decharge, Lake Saint John, the building of which he himself authorized when Finance Minister in 1894, at the request of his colleague, the Hon. Mr. Ouimet, then Minister of Public Works, an achiev-ment of which he was quite proud, as a means of making friends in my district. If the Conservatives deemed it right and equitable and honourable to appropriate moneys from the federal chest for the building of piers as part of a bridge to help along colonization in the Lake Saint John district, a work wholly of provincial interest, is this government to be condemned for having done this very thing, admitting that they have done so, which I deny. True, this government have allowed the appropriation as made to appear openly in the public accounts; while, as evidence of the help contributed towards the building of that bridge in Lake St. John, the Department of Colonization at Quebec was called upon to give a voucher under the signature of Mr. Dufault, deputy minister, acknowledging the receipt of $2,000 as grant towards the building of the bridge.
If those hon. gentlemen who have criticised so loudly yesterday were to come to Chicoutimi and repeat their utterances, thev might be surprised at the warm reception they would have at the hands especially of the farmers who signed the petition requesting that these works be undertaken and setting forth reasons in support.
I am aware that my hon. friends on the other side have had pointers from outside in regard to this matter. Let me tell them that they have made a grievous mistake in Mr. GIRARD.
taking a certain Simon Lapointe, who approached some of them a couple of weeks ago as the authorized representative of the Conservative party in my constituency. Had they inquired before speaking, they might have found out that this very gentleman who poisoned their ears, is merely repeating slanders which others of the same kind, urged by personal spite, thought they might safely spread through the county, vilifying in the most atrocious terms the good name of public officers of the government, and my own, branding us as thieves, perjurers, and so forth. To their great surprise, as soon as the elections were over, some of them, and particularly the said Simon Lapointe, were summoned before the courts to answer for their conduct. Most of them promptly signed papers taking back all they had said; but Lapointe thought fit to let matters follow their course, and he now comes under the cover of hon. members whom he has supplied with information, though not allowing his name to be used, and attempts to vindicate himself by casting aspersions on the leading officers who objected to be made tools of by himself and his gang, a proceeding which is the more cowardly seeing that these officers are debarred from appearing on the floor of the House and defending themselves against these sneaking enemies.
If hon. members on the other side who have opened this discussion think they have thereby helped to make their party popular in my district, they are sadly mistaken. This they will find out by inquiring from the recognized leaders of the Conservative party in my constituency, whom they know, and appreciate no doubt, and whose names, I am confident, have never appeared on any of the documents which they have had or have, or will likely ever have in their possession.
I notice in his seat the hon. member for Quebec West (Mr. Price). I may say that I infinitely regret for the sake of his prestige among his numerous friends inhabiting my constituency that he should have thought fit to countenance this farce. True, this woodwork to which he referred and which is still in existence, was put in originally by Price Brothers. Nobody denies it or has ever thought of denying it. But if my hon. friend is conversant with the history of his firm, to the same extent as are the people of Chicoutimi, he will be bound to acknowledge that this woodwork was put in at the time in order to prevent the washing away by the waters of the Saguenay, and through the action of frost, of the strip of land which it incloses; and as a matter of fact, wherever the old woodwork is broken down, the shore is eaten up from year to year through the action of

those two factors I have just mentioned. In the near future, these old protection works have fallen to pieces, it will be necessary to renew them; otherwise this piece of land will be washed out in the same v.ay as higher up along the course of the river, the most fertile lands of the parish of Sainte-Anne are yearly being eaten up by the waters of the Saguenay.
As further evidence of the beneficent and effective part played by the government on that occasion, I may state that while, in 1904, there was a large majority of votes polled against me, both in the town and parish of Chicoutimi, in 1908, there was a large majority of votes polled in my favour, although during the election strenuous efforts had been made in Chicoutimi by the Lapointe gang, with a view to securing the express condemnation of the policy pursued by the government in the shape of a large hostile vote which was loudly announced in advance.
The pier referred to was built at the request of the citizens of Chicoutimi, who forwarded a petition bearing numerous signatures of farmers and leading business men of the locality, and urging that the building of such a pier would be a safeguard for years to come, and the beginning of a great work destined to replace the wooden structure previously referred to. The officers of the department have taken the same view; and I contend that no hon. member in this House has the right to insinuate that the minister, the government and the House have been basely deceived in this connection, and that accordingly the officers of the department have acted wrongly. The department deserves credit for the building of this pier both as a work of art and utility, and as time goes by, it will be found, and before long, perhaps, that the insinuations of party politicians in this connection have no foundation in fact, and were inspired by motives other than public interest.
In conclusion, I return to what I said a while ago. Even admitting that this pier was built expressly to support a bridge, I cannot conceive why hon. gentlemen on the other side should flush with virtuous indignation, seeing that when they themselves were in power, they acted exactly in the same manner and instructed their agents to make the most of it in the interest of the party, for they were satisfied it was a meritorious deed, and so it was. Now, if in 1894, it was all right to act in that way, why should it be wrong in 1908? There is no sense in having double weights and double measures, even in politics. The country may reap actual benefit from a fair criticism of a government's policy; but such
criticsm, if it be unfair and carried on in a partisan spirit is always injurious.
It is desirable, to my mind, that the necessity for public works should be gauged according to a variety of circumstances, and that the government should be at liberty to help on the development of sparsely settled districts as well as that of large towns and cities. We are called upon each year to vote large sums of money for the city of Montreal, the city of Quebec, and so forth. We appropriate millions towards the development of these important centres. If among the people inhabiting these cities, there were individuals or gangs similar to those met with in Chicoutimi, who would pry into the details of these large items of expenditures, in the hope of discovering something improper, it would be an allround source of trouble and misfortune. Will my hon. friend from Saint-Antoine maintain in this House that the large expenditure of money made by the city of Montreal or by the city of Quebec could bear such severe scrutiny and unfriendly criticism as that indulged in as regards Chicoutimi? Would not such an inquiry cause the blood to curdle in the veins of so virtuous a man? Cheerfully does the House vote from year to year enormous sums towards the development of the larger cities such as Montreal and Quebec; and heretofore there has been on complaint that the House has been deceived; for we have not been called upon to listen in that connection to such petty discussions as that which has taken place yesterday. Such has been the trend of affairs since confederation be it under Liberal or Conservative rule.
My hon. friend from North Toronto, who felt so indignant yesterday, must have been apprised of the instructions given, in 1894, under the signature of the Hon. Mr. Ouimet, Minister of Public Works, for the building of two miles of a colonization road as an approach to a non-existent wharf. It seems to me that if he was in the right yesterday, he must have been previously terribly in the wrong, and his protest loses thereby a great deal of its weight.. I Tegret having to recall that circumstance, which he is unable to deny, but I have been constrained to do so. There is one important fact which strikes me in connection with this whole affair, and it is this: that informer Lapointe who is spending all his energy in ill-directed efforts to acquaint the opposition as to the state of affairs in my contitu-ency, never thinks of mentioning an extraordinary attempt at robbing the public chest, engineered by the gang, and whereby $30,000 were to be secured from the government as the price of what was called the booms of the Chicoutimi Pulp Company on the Rivef Saguenay, which booms were not



worth five cents to the government, as the hon. member for Quebec West is aware.
It was a downright fraud intended to benefit a select few only. Had the resident engineer and the chief engineer of the Public Works Department allowed themselves to be swindled out of that report, which at a certain time it was expected that they could be forced to do, in order to recommend that fraud, stupendous as was the transaction itself, these gentlemen would probably not have been treated as they were yesterday for acting conscientiously and in the public interest. The pack of boodlers who are hounding them with such hatred and cause them to be vilified before this House by well-intended members, who do not know them, would more likely perhaps leave them alone, while they busy themselves feasting upon the plunder. But the public interest of the county would have been sacrificed, and public opinion probably would not have approved of them at the last general election.
, Now, I come to a purely personal matter, upon which I am loath to give explanations. This matter is all the more personal to me that I am at a loss to find out how it is that my hon. friends have suddenly discovered in the public accounts that, without previous intention or knowledge, a crime had been committed merely because one L. P. Girard had received certain sums of money, a few dollars perhaps, for services rendered the Department of Public Works ; that things have gone so far as to raise a suspicion upon the fitness of that person to carry out the work confided him, and to insinuate, to say the least, that unless that man were my son, he would not have been employed. I may be allowed to state that this charge can hardly be explained, unless it be that personal motives have actuated those who proffered it. It is all the more inexplicable that the payrolls of the Civil Service are crowded with the names of fathers, brothers, sisters, sens, cousins, step-sons, and other relatives of members of parliament, nay, of ministers, that this has been going on under all governments, Tory and Grit alike, and that nobody ever found fault with it. Why should my son be the object of such strong condemnation ? Why should he be signalled out among the throng of others, unless it be for personal vengeance, which, I am willing to admit, is not shared by my colleagues, but necessarily emanates from outside, and under the inspiration of the same crowd that I branded a while ago, and whose voice fortunately my colleagues have echoed in this House. Things have gone so far that aspersions of such a personal character have been cast upon me that I will not take them up. * I am quite willing to admit that I am not* a great manufacturer from the city of Montreal, Mr. GIRARD.
that I am not a millionaire, but I challenge every one of those who spoke yesterday on that question, to overpoise me by one single ounce in the great balance of rectitude and honour. My hon. friend from St. Antoine (Mr. Ames) may be wealthier than I, he may own a million, which I will never own, but as far as honour and respectability are concerned, I boast of as much wealth as he will ever have. My son, I think, worked three times for the Minister of Public Works. He was first a student at the seminary and then in the law faculty at the university. Each time he was regularly and honestly appointed by the Minister of Public Works, and not in any sneaking way by the resident engineer and myself, as was insinuated. He was one of a group of young men who were regularly appointed by the minister to conduct surveys in my district, surveys which the department needed to acquire information in answer to a great many demands by residents of the districts. Salaries were uniform for the whole staff and were fixed by the department and the minister. It has been customary, I think, for a great many years past, to help students, whoever they may be, during holidays, by teaching them piactical life and getting them used to the hardships and struggles of life, and this by having them share in some of the government works. And I thought it proper for me, without humbling or depreciating myself, especially in the light of so many precedents, to have my son benefit of this current practice.
That is what the Conservative party had done, and which is still being done by the Liberal party without anybody generally finding fault with it. As I said before, every time my son was employed, the responsible minister duly appointed him, and never to positions which he could not honestly and conscientiously fulfil with as much advantage for the minister who had so appointed him as if he had been replaced by others. I have neither shame nor. regret for what I have done, and I don't think I will ever have to repent for it. If any one thought yesterday that he was justified in suggesting anything wrong in connection with my son's appointment, I may be allowed to tell those colleagues of mine that there is as much honesty right here as can be found in them, not excepting even the hon. member for St. Antoine and that each of us individually has far more than the crowd which kept them posted in this matter.
Before I resume my seat, Mr. Speaker, let me claim for my constituency, which is the largest, the youngest and the less developed in the whole Dominion, all the advantages which it is entitled to from the government and from this House. The electors of my county don't raise their voice when millions upon millions of money are appropriated for works in the large centres

of population, such as Montreal and Quebec, for instance, but they regret every time to hear from the representatives of those cities such criticism as will stay their progress. The government of the day has given them their full measure of fair play, and I hope they will keep on treating them in the same manner in the future. I trust I shall have the support of the hon. member for Quebec West (Mr. Price), who is the leading manufacturer in my county and one of my electors, every time the question of improving the situation of the population I represent, both in large and in small matters, shall be up for our consideration.


Mr. P. E. BLONDIN. (Champlain).: (Translation.) Mr. Speaker, as I was instrumental in bringing out this rather irate answer of the hon. member for Chicoutimi and Saguenay (Mr. Girard), by putting that question the other night, I think certain explanations are due. In looking up the public accounts, the name of L. P. Girard was met with, and, as was our duty, _we thought we should ask for information. Unfortunately the information was of such a nature as to open up our eyes and to make us challenge the fitness ,of that employee, who did not seem to possess the qualifications generally expected from one in a similar position. Let me assure the hen. gentleman (Mr. Girard), that he is completely wrong in thinking that we were moved by sheer animosity in acting as we have done. I have not got the pleasure to be acquainted with his son, but I may say that all my sympathies are given to the students, to those young men who, during their holidays, try to spend their time in a useful manner. I will say moreover, that far from blaming the government for employing them, I think he is acting wisely in helping them. But it might be expected at least, that when such young men are called upon to superintend public works, they should possess sufficient qualifications to tally up to the usual amount of work expected from an ordinary employee. It is all very well for the government to entrust the superintendence of such works to students, but inasmuch as public documents do not specify that such men were competent to discharge their functions, no one need be surprised if more information was asked for.
I will not protract this discussion, but 1 am sorry that my hon. friend (Mr. Girardl has seen fit to speak so long, not to show that the information asked for was not proper, but simply for the purpose of casting aspersions upon men who are no more in this House, and others, who are still here, a speech the propriety of which I utterlv fail to see. If I were to take up only three minutes of the time of the House, while my hon. friend took up twenty-three minutes, I should be afraid that the government papers would, to-morrow, charge the 911
opposition with unduly obstructing the proceedings in supply. Even if he had not made those remarks, I can assure the hon. gentleman that he and his son would have lived just as high, in my estimation. Those observations do not in the least alter the facts. We are here to seek from the government all the information and explanations which arei required by the public before voting any supplies. That is the position I took when I put that question the other day, but unfortunately I find that it aimed at one of my hon. friend's sons.


Mr. GIRARD.: (Translation.) I will point out to my hon. friend (Mr. Blondin), that the long speech to which he takes exception in my case, still falls short of the lengthy discussion which took place yesterday on this subject, and which I find recorded in ' Hansard.' I may also tell my hon. friend that it was not he whom I aimed at in my remarks, because this is the first time I heard him on this question. ' Hansard ' does not mention him in yesterday's debate.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: (Translation.) The hon. gentleman must have read hurriedly.


Joseph Girard: (Translation.) My hon. friend desires that students should be helped, provided they are fit for the work they are entrusted with. The officers of the department will tell him that every surveying party which my son went with has made satisfactory reports to the minister who hired him. I live at Lake St. John since 1880. I remember that there arrived at my door on the shore of the lake, a party of federal prospectors, made up of a dozen men who spent five or six months at work during the nice season, makinig a large consumption of strong liquors-to favourably impress the public, I suppose-and then returned to their respective homes in the fall, without finding any possibility of making a report to the minister who had hired and generously remunerated them. Were they better qualified than my son ? I ask the question. These are notorious facts ; they can be ascertained from the officers of the department here present. However, there were no pointed criticisms, to my knowledge, in the House on the matter ; there were no indignant protest, such as this ; there were no such malignant insinuations as those that were thrown out yesterday. This is a small matter of history which will in the future teach some that it is better to make sure before talking. Wherever went my son, the country got the worth of its money. Wherever others have gone, the country lost everything.


Mr. BLAIN.: I asked a question which I would be glad if the minister would answer.


William Pugsley: It is intended to expend the present vote entirely in dredging operations upon the Saguenay.


Richard Blain: Will you strike out the other improvement?


William Pugsley: No, there is no objection to our leaving that, but this is entirely for dredging.


Herbert Brown Ames: The other, night the minister promised to have a statement prepared for us as to the local expenditures in the counties of Gaspe and Bonaventure. Has that statement been prepared yet?


William Pugsley: No, I am sorry it is not ready; it is being got ready as quickly-as possible, and as soon as it is completed I will lay it on the table.


George Eulas Foster: I asked the minister the other day when we were on this item if he would bring down the report of the engineers in reference to the work.


William Pugsley: I have not that here tonight. It was some time ago and the papers had been removed from the chief engineer's office and had been laid, aw'ay, the matter having been disposed of. But I may say that the record has been found of the different papers. It appears that there was a report from the resident engineer which was approved of by the chief engineer, but my hon. friend wants to get the report itself. I am trying to get it and I will lay it on the table as soon as I receive it. If this item is carried I think we might take up the Clarke City item and have that disposed of, because the question with regard to Mr. Girard arises with respect to Clarke city.
Clarke city (Seven islands)-wharf improvements, $4,600.


William Pugsley: I do not know that I have anything further to say to the committee on that. I read the correspondence with Mr. Tache last evening.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: I merely wish to crave the indulgence of the committee for a short time. I did not have the advantage of being present when the several items connected with river improvements in the province of Quebec came up for consideration. But I would say to my hon. friend from Chicoutimi and Saguenay (Mr. Girard) that I listened to his protest with a great deal of attention and in so far as what was done on this side of the House was calculated to shock my hon. friend's family feelings, I am perfectly certain that there could have been no such intention on the part of any hon. member on this side of the .House. I think he might take our assurance as to that. At the same time my hon. friend must not forget, because he is an old parliamentarian of very varied experience, that as was very clearly pointed out by my hon. friend from Champlain (Mr. Blondin), our duty is to look into and find out the reason, why and wherefore of every expenditure. If, in the examination of an expendi-


William Pugsley: ture, we come across a name which happens to be associated in the county with the name of the representative of that county surely my hon. friend will not pretend that we are precluded from applying to such a name ordinary criticism. If he happens to be the son of the representative and nothing of an injurious character is levelled against him or his father we have absolutely the right and the duty of inquiring into the qualification of that person, and perhaps the duty is upon us of inquiring with more care than we would in the case of an ordinary person. That is the way I view it. I was not present at the discussion to which my hon. friend refers, but I caught enough of the protests of my hon. friend to lead me to believe that there was nothing in connection with that incident but that particular criticism. I can understand the feeling of the father towards his son going through a course of science and that he feels hurt at any criticism whatever no matter how absolutely just it may be. I think my hon. friend knows us well enough to feel assured that nobody here enters upon that field of criticism with the desire of satisfying a personal animosity against himself. There is no man in this House, I am sure, who would be less likely to be the object of such animosity than my hon. friend himself.
Now, I wish to come to the more general question of river and harbour improvements. What I find in my experience in this House in regard to the province of Quebec is this:	We have before us this
evening, and we have had for the past twelve years, a number of items of expenditure for harbours and rivers in Quebec. Up to 1900 I, like others, proceeded to criticise these expenditures. There wa3 then before the country no complete scheme for the solution of the problem of transportation. Since I have been sitting in this committee during this session I have heard time and again ministers stating-the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham) so stated two or three days ago-that this is the vital question, that this is the question above all others which we must solve and promptly solve. Since 1904 we have had the Teport of the very ablest men in this country in regard to the solution of the problem, a report that has not been called in question on either side of the House, and which has been referred to in approving terms by the government time and time again. That report dates back now four years and it contains a plan of improvements necessary and urgent from one end of the country to the other. Before that report was presented I referred with others to the necessity of certain works. What happens? You may criticise a wharf in some small place on the River St. Lawrence. I will take an example, although it is very risky work to do so. I will

take the wharf at St. Sulpice, near Montreal, and I will criticise moderately but legitimately, giving reasons for my opinion of that public work. The very next thing which the member for that county does is to give the largest degree of publicity to my criticism throughout his county. He holds meetings, denounces the opposition and points out that you have singled out this small public work, costing $8,000 or $10,000, out of animosity to the county and for the purpose of doing as much injury as possible to the county and to your own province.
I need not say that in past years my experience has been that there was a regular complicity on the part of government supporters to do as much injury as they possibly could in this way. There is another truth, and I have stated it time and again here and I will repeat it in the hope that it may obtain some publicity; I say that the member of parliament who gives no sign of existence in this House, who does not go througn the drudgery that most of us go through every day, who apparently takes no interest in what is being done for the advancement of the public business of the country, such a member undertakes as a rule to atone for that lashes on his part by endeavouring to obtain public works for his country so that he may claim that he has done something valuable and durable for his constituents. Look through the estimates any year and you will find confirmation of this. Such a man goes back to his county and he says he has done a great deal to execute the mandate that was confided to him because he has obtained a post office, or a wharf where there is no water. And what kind of a bill does the country have to foot on account of that tendency in our political life? We paid last year nearly one million dollars for works which did not advance us one single step toward the solution of the transportation problem to which I consider the country is pledged. This year we have half a million dollars spread over fifty items for improvements in the province of Quebec. I do not criticise them in detail for the reasons I have stated, but I say that the province of Quebec at the present time is more interested than any other province in the carrying out of the recommendations embodied in the report of the Transportation Commission. The Minister of Public Works tells us he is interested in that problem, and I wonder why a man like him will continue on in the same old rut that was followed, I admit, by all previous governments, although in those former days the question was not as vital as it is to-day. I wonder why the Minister of Public Works does not turn over a new leaf and begin to practise what he preaches. The report of that Transportation Commission deals with the solution of the problem from British Columbia to the Atlantic
ocean and Mr. Reford and the gentlemen associated with him on that commission, men competent beyond all question to form an opinion, stated that the port of Montreal, and the port of Quebec, and the port of St. John, and the port of Halifax should be made free national ports. They reported that it was essential that Quebec and Montreal should be immediately placed on a national basis. Here is St. Sulpice which is some distance below Montreal, and surely the district for miles around there is immensely more interested in the nationalization of the port of Montreal than in the construction of a two-penny half-penny little wharf. There are twenty counties around there which are enormously more interested in the construction of the Georgian Bay canal than they are in these small works which are invariably undertaken to please a contractor or to carry out some parochial scheme which really has nothing to do with the general interest of the surrounding country. In Montreal-and I do not speak of my own division but of Montreal and the country tributary to it extending half way down to Quebec-what is our position. We have never received a dollar from the government for the port of Montreal. True, there was a wharf built when Mr. Tarte was minister; and we have excellent harbour commissioners, but our hands are tied and we cannot go a step farther towards nationalizing the port.	And, in Montreal this year we
are going to do a thing which is exactly the contrary of what thev are doing in the United States ports; we are going- to load the port with a new burden of increased port dues in direct opposition to the recommendation of the commission of 1904, and in direct opposition to the policy pursued in the ports of Boston, Portland, New York, and Newport News, in the latter of which they are actually paying a premium to bring the traffic there. Quebec has never paid the interest on its harbour debt. It is a very important port and the people of Quebec are sending a deputation to Ottawa to lay before the government what I am now laying before the committee. The Transportation Commission reported that it was essential and urgent that we should have a dry-dock in Montreal. We have room for a dry-dock there without expropriating any property; a plan was approved by the then Minister of Public Works some years ago, but there is still no dry-dock in Montreal and our shipping is immensely hampered as a consequence. In Quebec there is no dry-dock to accommodate large vessels. A few years ago the ' Bavarian ' was salved, but she could not be kept afloat and she was hopelessly lost because not being in a condition to face an ocean voyage to an American port there was no dry-dock in which she could be repaired. Surely all these questions must ap-

i'.eal to the government. I believe if such a policy were laid before the electors of the province of Quebec in its true sense they would endorse the immediate execution of these national schemes, including as they do works which are of great moment not only to the province of Quebec but to all western Canada. We had immense shipments of grain from Montreal last year, but they could not be handled economically because the port of Montreal was not as well equipped as American ports which are its competitors. For the reasons I have stated I do not like to enter into a criticism, beyond requiring knowledge and information, of the separate items. The result to-day is that you are denounced as being against improvements in the province of Quebec. And, let the committee notice, that I do not say that any of these works is absolutely useless. There are about fifty of them. I could point out about one hundred and fifty more where bridges, wharfs, some little dredging in a river to make it navigable for batteaux would be useful and pleasant for the people. So it is difficult to say that these works are absolutely useless, although inquiry I think, will give us the information that they are carried out in a most expensive way. But I base my criticism on a higher ground, and say that at the present moment in the province of Quebec, instead of spending from $1,000,000 to $1,-
500,000	on these -small isolated works, it would be ten thousand times more beneficial to the people if we explained to them the expert opinion of the transportation problem in Canada, and why it is we must cease these small expenditures here and there and endeavour to place our province on a proper footing in Tegard to transportation.


William Pugsley: I was wondering if 1 heard my hon. friend (Mr. Monk) aright, when he intimated that he was afraid to criticise these items lest this might be made a ground of attack upon him in the different constituencies. He will pardon me if I say that that is not what I would have expected from him as an old parliamentarian and a man of courage. I would have supposed that he would venture to do what he thought right, irrespective of local feeling or prejudices which might arise in regard to his conduct. I understood him to say that all he would venture to do would be to speak in a general way in criticism of these items, without venturing to call the attention of the committee to any special item of expenditure as being, in his opinion, not in the public interest. In my opinion, that is what our hon. friends opposite ought to do, if they think these votes ought not to be asked from parliament. If the hon. gentleman observes in these items any public work which be thinks ought not to be con-Mr. MONK.
structed in the public interest, I hold it is his duty to point that out to the committee. I would be prepared to justify the expenditure, and I say now to my hon. friend, that so far as I am aware, there is not a single public work in the province of Quebec" for which we are asking an appropriation which cannot be well justified. I am afraid that my hon. friend looks at the question of appropriations too much from the standpoint of the city in which he happens to reside. To the hon. gentleman the city of Montreal is everything, the development, the building up of that great city is everything, and he would be willing to have all the public moneys expended for the benefit of that city and other great cities, although the smaller communities in the various parts of Canada were utterly and absolutely neglected.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Perhaps the hon. gentleman (Mr. Pugsley) will allow me to ask him in connection with what he is saying, why the government does not carry out the recommendations of the Transportation Commission in regard to the naturalization of certain ports?


William Pugsley: The government is carrying out, just as rapidly as it can reasonably be done, the recommendations of the Transportation Commission. But let me say that, as one member of this government, and as having to do with the administration of public works, I fail to see that all other sections of the country should be sacrificed for the benefit of these great ports which are part of this great transportation system. What was the recommendation of the Transportation Commission? It was that the ports of Fort William and Port Arthur should be improved and made capable^ of rapidly assisting in the transportation of the products of the west to the eastern sections of Canada and the Atlantic seaports of our country; it was that the canal system should be deepened, that the port of Montreal should be improved, as also the ports of St. John and Halifax, and, on the Pacific coast the ports of Victoria and Vancouver.
Now, let us commence with the west and see what the government is doing. On the Fraser river, we have a powerful dredge that has been working there for some time, and another dredge in the harbour of Victoria. Within the last few months we have purchased two as good dredges as are to be found in either the Atlantic or Pacific waters of the United States. We have the * Ajax,' a very powerful dredge, and lately we purchased in Germany* a suction dredge of the most superior character, one capable of dredging to the extent of 1,000 cubic yards per hour-a thousand per cent greater capacity than the average dredge we have had working before this, a dredge with enormous capacity and one which will enable

us to do splendid work. Our idea is to make the Fraser river a great ship channel up to the city of New Westminster. We are dredging the approach to the harbour of Victoria, carrying out a definite scheme of improvement of that harbour with which the people there are well satisfied, as shown by the manner in which they expressed themselves though their board of trade and otherwise in appreciation of the work we are carrying on. In Vancouver we are entering upon the work of improving the harbour. This has not been necessary in the past, because the traffic was not congested as it has since become. We are putting on a dredge to improve the entrance to False creek, a very important part of the harbour, and we are having an examination made of the Narrows, the entrance to Bur-ard inlet, and also of the Parthia shoals and some other shoals which require to be removed. Now, coming eastward to the western shores of Lake Superior, we find that this government is to-day spending millions to make Port Arthur and Fort William capable of accommodating larger vessels which ply upon the lakes, so that the traffic of our country may be handled with as great facility as traffic is handled at Duluth. Coming eastward to the eastern shore of Georgian bay, you will find that the government, in conjunction with the two great railway companies, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific, is developing the new harbours of Tiffin and Victoria. The railway companies are building new lines of railway almost as level as this floor, in order to divert the traffic which now goes to Buffalo and through United States ports to Canadian ports and through Canadian channels, spending on these railways no less than $50,000 to $60,000 a mile. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Monk) will see, if he looks at the estimates, that large appropriations are made for the dredging of these ports of Victoria and Tiffin, and he will see that for Port Arthur and Fort William the magnificent sum of $600,000 is appropriated for the carrying out of this part of the great transportation scheme which the commission has recommended to the government. Now, if he comes to the port of Montreal he will find that very recently the government has expended upwards of $1,000,000 on the new pier there, and also that we are lending to the Harbour Commission of Montreal money for the purpose of carrying on vast improvements there and lending at the low rate of 3 per cent. Coming to the Atlantic sea-board, you find that so far as the port of St. John is concerned, this government has departed altogether from the policy of its predecessor, which was that no work should be done by the government in the harbour of St. John unless immediately connected with the Intercolonial. Last year the expenditure of this government at that port amounted to three-quarters of a
million. And if he will look at the estimates he will find an appropriation of $500,000 for the coming year, to carry on the work necessary to make St. John one of the great winter ports this also being a part of this great scheme of transportation. If he will go to the port of Halifax he will find great improvement there in connection with the terminus of the Intercolonial Railway. And if he will go to Quebec, he will find that we are engaged there upon works for the purpose of providing ocean terminal facilities, which will run into $2,000,000 or $3,000,000, before we get through with the very large scheme we have undertaken. If he will visit the south shores of the St. Lawrence at Levis, he will find that we have purchased there a property capable of being made into a splendid depot for our terminal, and we have an item in the estimates of $400,000 for the purpose of completing the purchase of this property and beginning the making of improvements. All along the line from the Pacific to the Atlantic, we have been moving forward to the accomplishment of the ideal which this commission had in view and recommended to the government; but while doing that, are we to sacrifice all the other sections of the country? Are we to refuse to give to the people living along the St. Lawrence in small towns and villages the accommodations in the way of wharfs and dredging which they require and the ordinary conveniencies of transportation? Let my hon. friend not forget that the trade problems of this country do not simply concern the great ports and the people inhabiting the large cities, but also the people living along the St. Lawrence and on the shores of our great lakes and the lakes and rivers of the maritime provinces, as well as the people of British Columbia, who live not alone in Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster, but in Nanaimo and on the west coast and in many small harbours along the coast. All these people in all these sections are doing their part in contributing to the business of the small towns and cities, and these in turn are doing their part in building up the great cities of Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, St. John and Halifax. Therefore, so far as I am concerned, whilst giving attention to this great transportation problem, I am not prepared to lose sight of what might be called the smaller transportation problem, but still one which concerns many thousands of people. Take this item of St. Sulpice, and it is the only item to which my hon. friend ventured to refer. He says it might be criticised. The amount we are asking for is to repair a wharf 25 miles below Montreal, which was built by the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company and which has got sadly out of repair. The people are asking us to put it in repair. That is a place of some 700 to 800 people,

principally farmers, who send a good deal of produce from there, and it would be a great loss to them if the steamers were not able to call at that wharf. We are putting that wharf in repair in order that steamers may call there and the farmers get the accommodation to which they are entitled.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: My hon. friend has given a glowing description of public works generally, but the simple question I put him he has not answered. I asked why the government had not carried out the suggestion of the Transportation Commission, which called for the nationalization of the ports of Montreal and Quebec, and the building of two dry-docks, one in Montreal particularly and generally the completion within as short a delay as possible of the improvements upon the St. Lawrence route. My hon. friend says they have spent a great deal at Port Arthur and Fort William. I say that the government has not even at these points carried out the urgent recommendations of the commission which required that the government, without any delay should expropriate the water front. That was the first recommendation.


William Pugsley: At Fort William?


Frederick Debartzch Monk: The hon. minister has not answered my question. I come now to the particular instance to -which I referred. I did not state that a wharf could not be of some use at St. Sulpice. What I said was that the county in which St. Sulpice is situated and the neighbouring county were intensely more interested in the carrying out of the practical suggestions of the commission, such as the nationalization of the port of Montreal and the immediate construction of the Georgian Bay canal. These two works are of infinitely more use and benefit to St. Sulpice than the construction of a wharf. My information is that there was a wharf built by the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company, which does service in that locality and has done so more than half a century. Why should we interfere? Was it most urgent to make the wharf 15 feet wider? Was that as urgent as the other works to which I have referred? It was made 15 feet wider and the stones were used from the old wharf belonging to the Richelieu Company to fill up an "additional 15 feet. The work was not done by contract. If it had been, it could have been done for $3,800, but it was done by days' work, and I think we have got to pay about $7,000. Was the old Richelieu wharf purchased?


William Pugsley: It was.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: There was great dissatisfaction at St. Sulpice at the wharf being where it is? These 800 people, to whom the minister referred, were greatly dissatisfied because the wharf was not at the right


William Pugsley: place, and in order to make things square all round, the mayor was appointed to oversee the work at $5 per day, although he knows nothing about it. He was, however, an influential man.


William Pugsley: My hon. friend is only some 800 per cent out of the way. It was $3 instead of $5.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: Is my hon. friend absolutely sure ? I think I am nearer the right figure than he.


William Pugsley: I am sure the hon. gentleman is astray.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: We want a competent man. It is not because a man is influential or is a mayor that he is particularly qualified to do the work. The wood was not called for by tender and nothing appears to have been done by tender. The wood was bought from a stone merchant, a very influential and important man to conciliate. Was it bought by tender ? I doubt it very much. That is what I have to say about the St. Sulpice improvements. I say that these people are more interested in the large works projected for transportation than in this little work for local convenience. The minister has multiplied words but he has not answered my question, why have the government not nationalized and made free the ports of Montreal and Quebec, when the Americans are competing successfully for our traffic making their ports free, equipping them for traffic and in some cases giving bonuses to the traffic?


Mr. J. P. TURCOTTE (Quebec Centre).: (Translation.) Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Jacques Cartier has declared repeatedly, to-night, that nothing had been done about dry docks at Montreal and Quebec. He even said that there was no dTy dock at Quebec.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: (Translation.) I beg pardon, I never said that. I did say that the dry dock at Quebec could not hold such large ships as the ' Bavarian,' which had coused the complete wreck of that ship.


Joseph Pierre Turcotte: (Translation.) There is a dry dock at Quebec, which was built by the Liberal party as we all know, which cost a considerable sum of money, and has been in use until lately. Everybody knows that such undertakings are very important and cannot be brought to completion within a day's time.
I expected the hon. member for Quebec M est (Mr. Price) would contradict the statement made by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk).
I am well aware of the fact that pressure is being brought to bear upon the government in order to induce them to comply with the wishes of the hon. gentleman. But

there is many a slip between the cup arid' the lip and the hon. gentleman will have to wait till the country is wealthy enough to accomplish the dream which haunts his sleep. When his friends were entrenched in power, they neglected to make those improvements. Public money was squandered in the port of Quebec, and that expenditure gave rise to public scandals. But it was the people's money that was spent, when those millions were being squandered, and thrown into the waters of the St. Lawrence, and what was the outcome? As all the hon. gentlemen know, it was those scandals that brought about the downfall of the party then in power
I may say that a strong agitation is being carried on by the interested parties both in Montreal and in Quebec, with a view to securing the building of dry-docks large enough to meet the actual requirements of trade. Influential delegations from Montreal and Quebec have waited upon the government and have had interviews with the right hon. the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Works.


Frederick Debartzch Monk: With what results?


Mr. TURCOTTE. (Translation).: The matter has been thoroughly discussed. On the part of the government there was no such answer given as ' non expedit,' that is to^ay, nothing to show that the government were unwilling to take action. What was stated was that owing to the financial situation, and the vast public works that were being constructed, although the proposal was worthy of consideration, it was not deemed advisable for the present to start works the necessity and urgency _ of which are fully acknowledged but which could not be constructed within a short time.
All along the shores of the St. Lawrence, chiefly between Montreal and Quebec, vast improvements have been carried on; other great works are being constructed or will be resumed, during the next season. It is in the interests of Quebec and Montreal that the steamer 'Montcalm' is now busy dredging the channel between those two; cities, in order to have the river opened up to navigation earlier in the year. Those' improvements call for large expenditures which are incurred, no doubt, in the public interest, but more particularly in favour of the county which the hon. member for Jacques Cartier thinks has been sadly neglected by the government.
I do not think there has been any such neglect either in that part of the country or elsewhere. Such sweeping criticisms are calculated to lead astray public opinion and fool the people into believing that we are remiss in our duties. My hon. friend from Quebec West is well aware that such is not the case. He knows that within twelve or
eighteen months, the government are going to place at the disposal of the Minister of, Public Works with the consent of parliament the appropriations required to complete the necessary and urgent improvements in the harbours of Montreal and Quebec.
River St. Francis, St. Francis du Lac, on west side of river, $4,000.


Mr. DOHERTY.: Could the minister
give any information as to the extent to which the river is navigable at this point and the amount of navigation there is?


William Pugsley: I am not sure as to the depth of water, but my information is that there is considerable traffic between this place and Montreal. I suppose it would be by one of the Inarket boats. I am not able to give my hon. friend the information which I suppose he would desire as to the depth of the water.


Charles Joseph Doherty: Is the minister in a position to say that there is water enough for any boat to run for more than perhaps a month in the spring time?


William Pugsley: If the hon. gentleman asserts from personal knowledge that there is not, I will take his statement.
Mr. DOHERTY I am not asserting it; I am asking the minister for information.


William Pugsley: I am not able to say.


Charles Joseph Doherty: It seems to me that is a matter on which we should have information before voting money.


William Pugsley: This is to complete the work. If this were a new work I would have the details but I have not. It is to go on with the work to completion.


Charles Joseph Doherty: I cannot make any personal statement but I have information that seems to me to be reliable that it is not possible for any boats to get to that wharf except for about a month in the spring time.


Mr. GEORGE TAYLOR.: What county is it in?


William Pugsley: Yamaska.


George Taylor: How much is the wharf going to cost?


William Pugsley: The total expenditure outside of the dredging will run up to about $15,000.


George Taylor: Is it possible for the minister to spend $15,000 where there is no navigation except for about a month in the spring?


William Pugsley: There may not be navigation for deep draft vessels, but there is navigation for market boats.


Charles Joseph Doherty: The minister has asked me if I had personal knowledge of the

matter. I think it is a fair question to ask him if he is in a position to affirm that there is any navigation there for more than one month in the spring?


William Pugsley: My hon. friend will see that it would be necessary for me to look up the files of the department to get that information. If this were a new work for which I was asking parliament to make an appropriation, I would have fortified myself with the reports of the engineers. But this is to continue a work to which parliament is already committed, and to which I presume parliament committed itself with all the reports before it at the time.


Charles Joseph Doherty: Would it be asking too much of the minister to fortify himself with that information for the benefit of the present parliament?


William Pugsley: I will be glad to do so.	,


Charles Joseph Doherty: I think we ought to have the information so as to see the result of the fortification.


William Pugsley: We have to finish the work already begun. But I will get the information and lay it on the table.


George Taylor: How much is the minister asking for to complete?


William Pugsley: About $4,000.


George Taylor: We had an item up last night where there was no navigation. This appears to be something in the same way.


William Pugsley: There is no suggestion of a bridge here.


George Taylor: I think we had better have the information before passing the item.


William Pugsley: I may say to my hon. friend that there is an item in the supple-mentaries for the current year, upon which he can discuss this item, and in the meantime I will bring down the report.


Herbert Brown Ames: Will the minister at the same time bring down a report in reference to the dredging that is done there in the same river?


William Pugsley: I will make a note of it and have it brought down.
River St. Jacques (Laprairie)-ice piers near mouth on River St. Lawrence, $1,000.


William Pugsley: This is under contract, and the item is to pay the balance of the contract.


George Taylor: Any bridge being erected on these piers?


William Pugsley: No. It will protect a bridge, but there is no bridge to be built on these piers.


Charles Joseph Doherty: 


Herbert Brown Ames: It is to prevent the bridge that crosses a small river from being damaged by the spring floods.
River St. Maurice-channel between Grandes Piles and Le Tuque, $15,500.


Herbert Brown Ames: What does the minister intend to do with the dredging plant on the St. Lawrence this year ?


William Pugsley: This amount is to continue the plant at work for the removal of boulders and improving the river generally.
River Yamaska-landing pier at St. Michel d'Yamaska, $4,500.


Charles Joseph Doherty: With regard to this wharf, will the minister furnish the same information we asked for in the other case?


William Pugsley: Yes, I will get that, and it can be discussed at the same time with the other.
St. Alphonse (de Bagotville)-addition to wharf on south side, $25,000.


Herbert Brown Ames: I want to take occasion on this item to say a little more upon the matter of improvements in the county of Chicoutimi and Saguenay. The hon. member (Mr. Girard) who spoke earlier this evening, was greatly grieved because he was under the impression that we made this subject a matter of personal animosity towards himself. Now I wish to assure the hon. member that so far as I am concerned I have absdlutely no animosity towards him, nor am I attacking certain items of expenditure in his county through any reason that his personality has anything to do with. I think it. is hardly fair for a member of this House to put on a sour face and to consider himself persecuted, greatly wronged and injured if members on the opposition side of the House, in fulfilling their duty, which they are sworn to perform, and in exercising their right of criticism, happen to find occasion to criticise the government and the officers of the government in respect to any item. It was no defence for the hon. member to say that these various expenditures in the county of Chicoutimi and Saguenay had the approval of the Conservatives of the county; for certainly I for one wish to go plainly on record here that whether Conservatives or Liberals in any county in the Dominion are in favour of an expenditure which I may consider to be illegal and illicit, my criticism of it would be just the same if every Conservative in the county was in favour of it. We have no objection to a county having spent in it federal money for strictly federal purposes when there has been presented in this House a statement which parliament accepts, and on which parliament votes money, and when that money is being spent as parliament agreed and intended it should be spent. Now in respect to this place, St.

Alphonse de Bagotville, we can quote another little piece of history on a par with that which we discussed in connection with the River du Moulin, another case in which the ministers have from time to time given incorrect information to this House, and in which the records of the departments have given an incorrect impression, and in which money has been voted and expended in a different way altogether from what parliament intended. An item came up in 1905 for an expenditure at St. Alphonse de Bagotville. This is the way the item was presented in the estimates :
St. Alphonse wharf-removal of rocks from approaches, $1,000.
Mr. Hyman, who was then Minister of Public Works, made this statement :
This is a large parish, and it is a small amount of money, $1,000 merely, to he spent for improving a channel.
The item passed on that recommendation. Next year the Minister of Finance had charge of the estimates, and he had an item like this in the estimates :
St. Alphonse de Bagotville, wharf repairs, $1,000.
And Mr. Fielding said:
This is to build piers in connection with the repairs to the wharf and to remove boulders from the approaches to the same. There is $1,000 in the main estimates and the total cost will be $2,000.
Evidently Mr. Fielding was under the same impression as Mr. Hyman. When the Auditor General's Report came out and showed how this money was spent this is the way the item appeared.
St. Alphonse de Bagotville, removal of rocks from approaches.
When the pay-rolls were brought down this is the way the pay-rolls read:
To remove rocks from approaches.
The explanation of Mr. Hyman and that of Mr. Fielding showed plainly that what they thought we were voting the money for was to remove the rocks from the channel and make it possible for the boats to get to the wharf. That would have been a perfectly legitimate federal expenditure. In several successive years this House was called upon to vote money for this purpose. How was that money spent? St. Alphonse de Bagotville is a town which lies at the southern end of Ha-Ha bay. The wharf has been built out into deep water, it is close up to the town of St. Alphonse de Bagotville and serves the purposes of the people of that town. I have been there and I know what I am talking about. There is a wharf to serve the purposes of the people in the town and they use it to get up the Saguenay and to keep in touch with Quebec and Tadousac.
But on the other side of the bay half a mile from where the wharf is situated there is a ridge of land that runs down into the sea and on the far side of that ridge of land there is a little hamlet called Anse a Benjamin. The people who live over in that settlement were anxious to get a road built to the wharf. They had, for a number of years, been trying to raise money to build that road. They had put some of their own money into the road, but it was necessary for the road to go up a hill 250 feet high and go down the other side. They wanted a cliff road built which will be practically a level road from Anse a Benjamin to St. Alphonse de Bagotville. They got these thousands of dollars spent year after year in blasting the rock from this road which the people of the municipality should have built for themselves. It was charged as ' removal of rocks from approaches ' and Mr. Fielding and Mr. Hyman thought it was to take out rocks in the channel to the wharf The Auditor General's Report and the pay-roll conveyed the impression that it was to take out rocks from the channel. As a matter of fact it was to build a road to a wharf that , we had_no right to build, it was not a proper federal expenditure, but it was an, expenditure which was undertaken by the people themselves, and they, having been able to get the member interested and having got the local engineer to send in a favourable report, it was built with federal money. I have photographs of it and I will be glad to send them over to the minister. He will see where the road is blasted out of the rock although this expenditure is charged to the removal of rocks from approaches.


William Pugsley: Does not my hon. friend know that at St. Alphonse de Bagotville there aTe no rocks in the channel, that the water is very deep and that it is a place to which ocean vessels can come? I am surprised that my hon. friend should have misunderstood what the vote was for. He must have known that it was to remove rocks and make an approach to the wharf by the land.


Herbert Brown Ames: The minister says ' to be spent for improving the channel.'


William Pugsley: Well, Mr. Hyman was evidently misinformed. He is not the first man who has been misinformed.


George Taylor: I am simply surprised to see the minister get up and attempt to justify this expenditure. We voted that money for the purpose of improving navigation and yet, according to the statement of my hon. friend from St. Antoine (Mr. Ames), it has been expended for the building of a road. I would like my hon. friend to send those photos over to the minister and ask him to justify

the statement he made to the House when he asked us to vote this money.


William Pugsley: I can understand that on some occasions the minister might be misinformed, and I know that since I have been minister sometimes some items go through very quickly. Hon. members sometimes are not as careful about millions as at other times they are about a fifty cent piece.


George Taylor: We took the minister's statement as being true but we were evidently misled by him.


William Pugsley: Evidently if the minister made that statement he was under an erroneous impression, but there was nothing in the item itself which would lead to the impression that it was to dredge out the channel because it says that it was to clear out rocks from the approach to the public wharf. It is not at all an improper expenditure to make a road leading up to a public wharf for the accommodation of the public. That has been done very frequently. The department has always made it a practice to buy the right of way to a public wharf and to improve it. There are several cases which have come under my own supervision in which I have given directions as to the approaches to public wharfs. Otherwise the wharf would be of no use. If you build a wharf you must reasonably provide an approach to it so that the public can use it. I do think that my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) ought not to be too critical with regard to an expenditure like this which was undertaken to make an approach to a wharf to give people free access to such transportation facilities as they have. They have no railways there. People in other parts of the Dominion enjoy the convenience of railways. When they go to the railway to take the train, they have a station and they can go into the waiting room and be comfortable, but in this particular locality the people, in winter time, are completely shut out from the larger- cities and in the summer time they have to depend entirely upon steamers to get their produce to market, and to go to the cities of Quebec and Montreal and other places. It was a small expenditure of $2,000.


Herbert Brown Ames: Nearly $4,000.


William Pugsley: The people of that place ought to have some accommodation and I do not think this expenditure is out of the way. I am sure that my hon. friend will not suggest for a single moment that either Mr. Hyman or Mr. Fielding intended to make a mis-statement to the committee because if they had asked for that vote for clearing out a roadway the committee would have granted the appropriation just as readily as though they had thought it was for another purpose.


George Taylor: 


Herbert Brown Ames: I do not say that either Mr. Fielding or Mr. Hyman deceived parliament, but I do say that both of them were deceived by the representations that were made to them and I do say that parliament was deceived by the representations made to them. I admit that it is not a very large sum but the question is one of principle. We are deliberately being deceived in reference to these different expenditures. In this particular case, if the minister had come to us, laid down a plan and said that this money was to be expended in building a road three-quarters of a mile away from the wharf, where the wharf was right opposite _ a thriving town and thoroughly accessible to the right of way I doubt if the committee would have sanctioned it, especially as there was no more excuse for building that road three-quarters of a mile away than there was for building any other road in the county of Chicoutimi. If the minister had said: I want to build a road along the opposite side of the bay in order to connect the two hamlets do you suppose that parliament would have agreed to it?


William Pugsley: Was it not to enable the hamlet to get to the wharf?
i Mr. AMES. It was to enable the hamlet to get to the town. Where ninety people go to the town ten people go to the wharf. It was purely to enable the people to get from the federal government what they should have done for themselves. If you had asked this House to vote that money for that purpose I guarantee you would not have got it. With that photograph in his hand, do I understand that the minister says blandly that we would have done that work for these people if they wanted it? Of course, if the minister establishes that principle then we can have no confidence whatever in the votes he proposes.


William Pugsley: After looking at that rocky shore and looking at the approach to that wharf there I say that I believe parliament would have granted this appropriation. Look at the rock-bound shore; you would not want the people to climb down the rocks, you would say at once:	Give
them a road to the wharf. These photographs afford the strongest argument for that roadway.


Joseph Girard: I do not remember what explanations were given to the House when this appropriation was first asked, but I do know that petitions for this work were sent to me to be presented to the government. I can tell the hon. gentleman that this approach was made to get to the wharf and not to get to the town. I live in that district and I know the conditions well, and as my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) has been there once or twice in his life he no

doubt has noticed that just in front of the St. Alphonse wharf the water is about 150 feet deep and surely there would be no necessity for removing boulders there. But there is an immense hill there which prevents the people getting to that wharf and the farmers of the vicinity instead of using the St. Alphonse wharf found it better to drive, many miles out of their way to the Chicoutimi wharf. Under those circumstances the government agreed to build an approach to the wharf.


George Taylor: Call it a road.


Joseph Girard: Call it what you like; it is an approach to the wharf. Let me ask my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) if it is worse to make this approach to the St. Alphonse wharf which was built, than to build three miles of a road as an approach to a wharf which did not exist at all as the Conservative government did.


William Pugsley: In what year?


Joseph Girard: About twenty years ago. When Mr. Ouimet was Minister of Public Works he contracted for the construction of three miles of road to help the settlers in canton Taillon, and nobody growled in this* House over that; no one came here. and pretended to be very much scandalized. I am much surprised that what hon. gentlemen opposite advocate to-day differs so widely from their own practices when they were in power. The difference between this government and the Conservative government is that the Liberal government built an approach to a wharf at St. Alphonse where there is a wharf actually in existenec, and the Conservative government built an approach to a wharf at Taillon where there was no wharf at all. I understand that my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) is fond of taking photographs.


Herbert Brown Ames: And I use them to good purpose.


Joseph Girard: I hope so, but I regret very much that the only place he seems to be in the photographing business is in the Chicoutimi district.


Herbert Brown Ames: I have lots of others.


Joseph Girard: I believe if the hon. gentleman is honest he will tell us that he does not bring this matter up on his own initiative; he knows very well that somebody else is at the bottom of it, who I can tell him is not a friend of his although he may think he is. I register my protest against that. These people have not courage enough to authorize the hon. .gentleman to give their names here when they come hypocritically attacking the government and myself and trying to make the House believe that nothing but crooked business is done in my district, and that the government is always wrong when it
does anything for my constituents. I am glad the hon. gentleman declared that he had nothing personal against me.


Herbert Brown Ames: Nothing personal against you at all.


Joseph Girard: I want the hon. gentleman to understand that he is the instrument of some one who has personal malice against me, and I would remind him that of all those employed by the government on that work the only name to be selected was that of my son. How did my hon. friend get on to that unless some one pointed it out to him? Does not that show personal malice? I know very well that the hon. gentleman never himself knew that L. P. Girard was my son, but I know that Mr. Lapointe came here to give him the information to try to make trouble for me. I invite the hon. gentleman to inquire about Mr. Lapointe. I know what kind of a man he is, and I know he is making all that trouble because he has now suits in the courts against him because during the election he attacked the government and he attacked myself and he attacked the employees of the government and called us all robbers. He now has got himself into a corner and he wants to try and save his own skin by attacking me. I thought my hon. friend (Mr. Ames) was so high that he would not descend so low as to bring such matters before the House.
Ste. Anne des Monts, harbour improvements at mouth of Grande riviere, Ste. Anne, $2,500.


Mr. PRICE.: What is the explanation of this?


William Pugsley: This is to construct certain works at this point and if the object is accomplished it will make quite a safe and commodious boat harbour for small vessels in that part of the St. Lawrence. The total estimated cost is $17,750, and this I think will complete the work.
St. Fulgence wharf, $1,000.


Herbert Brown Ames: How much more is going to be spent on this wharf?


William Pugsley: This is to complete.


Herbert Brown Ames: Does the minister state definitely that this will complete the work?


William Pugsley: The minister states that just as definitely as one can relying upon thoroughly competent engineers; oh, yes, this will complete.
St. Jean des Chaillons wharf, including dredging, $3,500.


Herbert Brown Ames: When was that work commenced ?


William Pugsley: About eight or ten
months ago.


Herbert Brown Ames: That is, it began about June ?


William Pugsley: Yes.
Mr. AMES'. When was it discontinued ?


William Pugsley: This is to make further provision for the work which includes dredging in front of the wharf to clear away the spoil material removed from the St. Lawrence ship channel, apparently dumped there through the carelessness of those operating the dredges. A depth of only ten feet of water has been left at a distance of 85 feet north of the new structure, where there was a depth of over 16 feet. We are also prolonging the side wharfing commencing at the foot of the cliff, and constructing on its slope a retaining wall of open-face cedar crib-work to prevent the earth and trees from sliding into the river, and obstructing the present roadway leading down to the wharf.


Herbert Brown Ames: The minister has not answered my question. He says the work began ten months ago. When did it cease ?


William Pugsley: I can tell the hon. member (Mr. Ames) the work that has been done, but I cannot tell the exact date when it was discontinued. I suppose it was discontinued at the close of the season. The work done during eight months included building about 110,000 feet Of open-face cribwork of which 160 feet in length of side of the wharf averaging 6 feet high, 30 to 33 feet wide on 137 feet and 18 to 20 feet on 23 feet. Of the protection wall there was built 99 feet in length by 12 feet in height, and partly filled up with stone ballast to secure its stability. To overcome the steep elevation of the hill, ascending towards the public highway, a crib of openfaced work was erected on the east end of the wharf, its dimensions at base being 29 x 33 feet rising up to 29 feet with 2J feet batter on side, giving it a 24 foot square platform on top, extending and working backwards into the cliff as it worked upwards. A trestle roadway of 76 feet by 24 at platform and 44 at upper end is to connect with road on hilltop.


Herbert Brown Ames: What I want to know, if the minister can tell me is, when this work commenced, and when it ceased. Here is a case where the county is not getting justice, if my information is correct. Instead of opposing this work, I am asking that it be gone on with in earnest. If my information is correct, this work was commenced about a week before the provincial general election-that is it was commenced on the 1st of June. And, as soon as the elections were over, say on the 10th of June, the work was discontinued. Again it was taken up a short time before the Dominion elections in October, and when they were over it was again discontinued. The work should be taken up and finished, Mr. AMES.
instead of being gone on with only when there happens to be an election.


William Pugsley: I think, perhaps, the hon. gentleman (Mr. Ames) has in mind the work on the roadway. During the harvest season it is hard to get labouring people to leave their farms, but later in the season they could easily go on with this work. It happened, perhaps unfortunately, that the elections came on shortly after harvest, when the men could leave their farms without disadvantage. But I think that what the hon. gentleman says would not apply to what might be called the wharf work, which I think, went on pretty continuously. The hon. gentleman, then, agrees with me that it is a very necessary work, does he not?


Herbert Brown Ames: The hon minister (Mr. Pugs-ley) pays the climate of Quebec a great compliment when he suggests that the harvest season commences on June 10, and that it was necessary to take the men off the work on the roadway two days after the election.


William Pugsley: I was speaking of the harvest in August and September.


Herbert Brown Ames: The minister had better try to get another excuse; this one is very thin.


William Pugsley: Strange to say, at this moment, I cannot do better than that.


George Taylor: Perhaps the hon. minister will bring down the pay-sheets when he brings the other information.


William Pugsley: I will bring everything; I will get an ox cart and bring everything down.


Herbert Brown Ames: Here is a case, where again, you are playing with a public work, taking it up when a provincial or federal election comes on, doing a little work, and then dismissing the men when the election is over. If the work is worth doing, do it; if it is not worth doing, do not make a pretense of doing it merely because an election is coming on.
St. Nicholas-repairs to wharf, &c., $2,850.


Herbert Brown Ames: Is the St. Nicholas wharf leased, and if so, to whom, and at what price?


William Pugsley: I have no record of any lease.


Herbert Brown Ames: In the Auditor General's Report the minister will see it stated that it has been leased at $25 a year. To whom?


William Pugsley: That would be by the Department of Marine and Fisheries.


Herbert Brown Ames: Did we build it with a view to leasing it to some one? If so, to whom?


William Pugsley: As my hon. friend, perhaps, knows, my department does not col-

lect revenue for wharfs, but if we transfer to the Department of Marine and Fisheries, it collects tolls, or, it may perhaps give relief from tolls-I am not quite sure. If there were any lease, it would be a matter entirely in the Marine Department. I have no knowledge of it.


George Taylor: There was $3,000 voted last year.


William Pugsley: Yes, this is a revote of $2,850.


George Taylor: What was done with the $150?


William Pugsley: There was a little work
done.


George Taylor: At election time ?


William Pugsley: There was some planking done with that.


Herbert Brown Ames: The question to my mind is whether we have built that wharf in order that it might be leased to private parties, and in that case whether the public still have rights to the wharf?


William Pugsley: The public have complete rights on the wharf. It is against the policy of the government to give exclusive privileges to any one.


Herbert Brown Ames: Was the expenditure incurred in order to lease it to some party at $25 per year ?


William Pugsley: Where does my hon. friend get that information that it is leased ?


Herbert Brown Ames: In the Auditor General's Report.


William Pugsley: If my hon. friend will look closer, he will see that that is simply the revenue derived from the steamboat company which, instead of paying tolls on goods landed at each trip, pays an annual charge. The wharf is open to all who wish to use it.
Sorel-deep water wharf, $86,000.


William Price: Is that the wharf which turned over last summer ?


William Pugsley: No, the wharf which turned over was built some years ago. We are rebuilding the wharf but upon a different design, and after making very careful examination of the bed of the river, we are quite satisfied the wharf we are now building will stand. The sub-soil there is very shifty in its character, there is a good deal of quick sand, and having tested the foundation, we are building a different substructure altogether.
Some resolutions reported.


George Taylor: What business to-moT-row ?


William Stevens Fielding: We contemplated proceeding with the loan resolutions of the Grand Trunk Pacific, but as some information desired by hon. gentlemen opposite is not quite ready, we will postpone that matter until Tuesday. To-morrow the House will be moved into Committee of Supply, and the estimates taken up. I move that the House do now adjourn.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 11.45 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, March 19, 1909.