1911-03-09

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)

[Stage Direction]
* Mr. MONK:
1.	Under what conditions does the Post Office Department grant free delivery of mail matter in towns and other localities?
2.	What localities in the.province of Quebec at present conform to these conditions and enjoy free delivery of mail matter?
3.	Has the department granted free delivery in any locality which does not conform to conditions it has established? If so, in what cases ?
Mr. LEMIEUX:: 1.	Free delivery is established in places where the population is 12,000, and the revenue is $20,000.
2.	Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke.
3.	Yes. Free delivery has been established at St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, Three Rivers, Quebec, and Hull, Quebec.


WEST INDIES STEAMSHIP SERVICE.
Mr. CROSBY:: 1.	What arrangements are being made, if any, for steamship communication between Halifax and the West Indies?
2.	As the present contract expires shortly, when will the tenders be asked for the new service?
3.	What specifications will be placed before the public regarding boats for the service?
4.	What will their passenger accommodation and freight capacity require to be, and what will be the speed required of the boats?
5.	Has the government decided whether we are to have a weekly or tri-weekly service instead of the present service?


Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: 1 and 2. The government is awaiting a call for tenders which the British government, who will pay half the subsidy, has informed the Canadian government will be issued simultaneously in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the British West Indies.
3 and 4. Adequate passenger and freight
accommodation will be required, and tenders, including speed, will be considered upon their respective merits.
5. Alternative tenders will be asked as to frequency of the proposed new service.


ESCOTT POSTMASTERSHIP.
Mr. TAYLOR (Leeds):: 1.	Who is the present postmaster at Escott, in the county of Leeds, province of Ontario?
2.	What was the date of his appointment?
3.	Who was the postmaster at the said office
up to the appointment of the present incumbent, and how long had he occupied the position?	.	_	_
4.	Was the retiring postmaster dismissed, or for what reason was he discontinued?
5.	Under whose representations, and at whose instance was he so retired?
G. Had any complaint as to incompetency to discharge the duties of the said office been made against the retiring postmaster or his assistant? If so, what was the nature of such complaint, and by whom was it made?
7. Is the government aware that the postmaster who has been retired is said to be an old man, a cripple, and a man who was in need of the income derived from the position he occupied?


Mr. LEMIEUX:: 1.	Mr. F. T. Hutchison.
2.	January 27, 1911.
3.	Mr. George Dowsley, since December 1, 1891.
4.	5 and 6. It having been brought to the attention of the department that the postmaster was not giving his personal attention to the duties of the office, inquiry was made in the matter, and the inspector reported that the postmaster had not attended to the duties of the office for a long period. He farmed the office out to several persons in succession, and it was learned that the person then in charge of the office was obliged to vacate the premises. As the present location of the office was considered to be wholly satisfactory and very convenient, and it would not be in the public interest to have it changed, and as the postmaster was unable to give any attention to the duties of the office, it was deemed advisable to place the office in charge of some one who would keep it in the same premises and give it his personal attention.
7. The department has recently been informed that this is the case.


IMPORTS OF MEATS, CHEESE AND BUTTER.
Mr. TAYLOR (Leeds):: .
1.	How many barrels, boxes or packages of pork, beef, mutton, lamb and cheese have been imported into Canada during the months of October, November and December, 1910, and for the months of January and February, 1911?
2.	What was the weight and value thereof, and the countries from which the same was imported?
3.	What was the number of pounds of butter and number of dozens of eggs, and the

value thereof, and the countries imported from, for the month of February, 1911?


Mr. PATERSON:: ,1. The department has no record of the number of barrels, boxes or packages of pork, beef, &c., imported, the quantity in ' pounds ' simply being shown.
2. The quantity and value of pork, beef, mutton, lamb and cheese imported into Canada, by countries, during the months of October, November, December and January was as follows:
Bacon and Hams, Shoulders and Sides.
-	Country.	Pounds.	Value.October, 1910.. .	Great Britain...	24	8 5United States...	812,893	139,483China 	271	15Hong Kong. ...	100	8November, 1910.	Great Britain...	420	90United States...	299,258	54,312Belgium... .	35	12Hong Kong	455	23December, 1910.	Great Britain...	74	18United States. . .	234,408	39,716New Zea'and...	20,304	2,894Hong Kong	741	50January, 1911...	Great Britain., .	50	13United States. .	223,392	31,240Hong Kong	515	28Japan 	62	4
Beep, salted, in barkkls.
October, 1910....	United States. .	247,301	17,511 18,933November, 1910.	United States. ..	271,408	December, 1910	United States ..	134,092	8,630Newfoundland...	1,255	151January, 1911...	Great Britain....	7,902	702United States	92,944	6,255
Mutton and Lamb, fresh.
October, 1910....	United States	76,027	7,046Australia	217,206	15,766November, 1910	United States	33,760	3,251Australia	103,909	12,341December, 1910..	United States....	71,720	6,063Australia	179,470	11,880January, 1911...	United States	54,665	5,027Australia	157,927	10,371Pork,	Barrelled, in Brine.	October, 1910...	Great Britain. ..	2,5GS	304United States...	1,121,100	114,523China	60	4November, 1910.	United States. .	824,265	85,189Hong Kong.. ..	1,855	131December, 1910	U nited States...	407,820	45,582Newfoundland ..	2,910	322China	291	25Hong Kong	3,499	216January, 1911...	Great Britain....	45,000	5,919United States...	852,135	83,072Hong Kong	302	19


George Taylor: Other Meats, Fresh.
-	Country.	Pounds.	Value.October, 1910.. .	United States... Australia	59,596 6,480	s 7,774 140November, 1910.	United States...	27,019	4,028December, 1910.	United States... Australia. 	42,350 800	5,303 97January, 1911...	United States... Australia	29,397 11,902	4,520 595
Other meats, salted.
October, 1910. .	United States.. .	58,941	8,191Hong Kong	4,831	323China	860	57November, 1910.	United States.. .	22,701	3,187Italy	031	179P ranee	220	81China	1,481	105Hong Kong	950	66December, 1910.	Great Britain... .	554	144United States...	25,590	3,645Hong Kong	3,071	240Newfoundland ..	900	93January, 1910...	Great Britain....	36,800	2,228United States...	22,538	3,u37Hong Kong	200	10China	200	12
Cheese.
October, 1910...	Great Britain...	8,967	1,774United States...	21,716	4,234France	15,879	3,158Italy	72,709	16,378Belgium	14,489	210Switzerland	30,197	5,254Holland	2,400	397Germany	1,960	391November, 1910.	Great Britain....	10,161	2,270United States...	19,539	3,708France	22,482	4,754Italy 	23,224	4,320Switzerland	36,317	6,755Germany	18,449	3,141Belgium	963	123December, 1910.	Great Britain-...	5,184	1,300United States...	20,274	3,961France	44,559	12,173Italy	66,775	8,878Austria-Hungary	3,439	427Turkey in Asia..	850	40Switzerland	31,873	5,717New Zealand....	260	32Holland	3,543	443January, 1911...	Great Britain....	979	254United States...	18,261	3,418France	1,810	517Italy	18,280	3,153Turkey in Asia..	538	42Switzerland	33,519	6,238
Note-Figures for the month of February will not be available for ten days.


METEGHAN RIVER FORESHORE LOTS.
Mr. JAMESON:: 4. Have any grants of foreshore lots at Meteghan river, Digby county, been made by the government since 1896?
2. If So, when and to whom were such grants made, wihat prices were paid, respectively, and what were the dimensions of the respective lots?


Mr. BRODEUR:: 1.	No.
2.	Answered by No. 1.


BRIER ISLAND LIGHT.
Mr. JAMESON:: 1.	Has any application been received from
the keeper of the Brier island light for (the erection of a new light?	_
2.	If so, when was such application received, what steps have been taken in the matter, and what is the intention of the department a3 ito the erection of a new house?


Mr. BRODEUR:: 1	and 2. Light keepers, Brier island, under date 3rd April, 1905, asked permission to occupy dwelling erected for fog alarm engineer, and failing that, he requested repairs to old dwelling. An application was received through Mr. A. J. S. Oopp, M.P., from keeper, dated 17th March, 1906, for repairs to old dwelling. Repairs were effected. Under date 12th February, 1911, the agent of the Marine Department, Halifax, recommended that a new dwelling be erected for the light keeper. This matter is receiving consideration.


Mr. JAMESON:: 3.	What was the salary paid to the light-keeper at Brier island at the time of his appointment in 1901 ?
2	What increase has since been made, if any, when, and what salary is he now paid?
3. When was the last general increase in the salaries paid ito lightkeepers, and what is ithe intention of the government as to a further increase in said salaries?


Mr. BRODEUR:: 1.	$400 per annum.
2.	Increase of $60 from April 1,	1908.
Present salary $460 per annum.
3.	Increase dated from April 1, 1908. It is the intention to increase lightkeepers' salaries generally.


PERSONAL EXPLANATION-MR.
Mr. W. M. GERMAN (Welland).: Before the orders of the day are called I wish to make a statement explanatory of the vote
that was taken last night on the amendment moved by the hon. leader of the opposition on going into Committee of Ways and Means. When you Mr. Speaker, left
the Chair at six o'clock the position of things was such, that as I apprehend every hon. member of this House had no idea that the vote would be taken immediately after your taking the chair after the dinner hour, at least I, with several others, had no such idea. I reached the House about twenty minutes past eight, and came to the door just as you, Sir, had finished putting the question, and being too late to vote on the question I followed the usual rule, and did not attempt to enter the Chamber. But I wish to place myself on record, Mr. Speaker, that had I been here I would have voted for the amendment of the leader of the opposition, and if it were possible I would like my vote so recorded. I think it is due to myself to make this statement, and I am glad to have an opportunity of doing so.


APPOINTMENT OF COLOURED PERSONS TO CIVIL SERVICE.
Mr. DANIEL.: 
Louis-Philippe Brodeur: This is the first time the matter has been brought to my attention, and I know nothing about it. Had my hon. friend given me notice of the question I would have made inquiries.


John Waterhouse Daniel: I thought the minister might have seen it in the morning paper.


Mr. REID (Grenville).: I draw the attention of the Prime Minister to another case where a coloured gentleman who was at the head of the examination list for the Census Department, instead of being put in that position was given an inferior position by the Minister of Agriculture, looking after the black Minorca hens on the farm. I trust the Prime Minister will not allow that kind of thing to spread throughout the departments.	.


Wilfrid Laurier: I never heard of it.


RECIPROCITY-STATISTICAL INFORMATION.
Mr. BORDEN (Halifax).: Before the orders of the day are called I wish to mention to the Prime Minister that very important and valuable statistics have been brought down to the Senate of the United States, compiled I believe by the Statistical Department or the Tariff Board, and that we seem to be entirely without similar information in this House. I have not had an opportunity of looking over all of this pamphlet which I received only this morning, but it seems to give a great deal of information as to industrial conditions, as to wages, and more than that as to the price of commodities in both countries. I would ask whether or not any information of a similar character is available here, and if so, whether it is the intention of the government to lay it on the table of the House?


Mr. FIELDING.: I have not seen the pamphlet in question. The United States government has a tariff board which is at all times gathering information more or less relating to tariffs. There is no similar organization here. Whatever information has been available in reference to the reciprocity matter has already been placed before the House.


John Dowsley Reid: There has been none.


William Stevens Fielding: I differ from my hon. friend on that; we are each entitled to our opinion.


Robert Laird Borden: Perhaps I have overlooked it, but I would ask whether any information has been submitted, with regard to wages, price of commodities and things of that kind.


William Stevens Fielding: One hon. gentleman in debating the matter in the House referred to information to some extent of that character which will be found in the book of the Minister of Labour which is accessible to us all. The question of prices was dealt with rather fully and statistics brought down by the Minister of Agriculture. There is no other information available.


BRITISH NATIONAL SONGS.
Mr. HUGHES.: I understand that a gentleman named Armstrong is a member of the commission on technical education which is now in the city. I wish to ask if any inquiry was made as to the stand taken by Mr. Armstrong in the west a short time ago in relating to the singing of British songs in the schools. Did any one catechise this gentleman as to what he meant by his statement in that regard.


John Dowsley Reid: 


Wilfrid Laurier: So far as I know, nobody has catechised Mr. Ann-strong as to the opinions he expressed in the west or elsewhere, nor do I believe that it is a matter on which he should be catechised. Mr. Armstrong is an independent citizen, he happens at present to be a member of a commission and I do not think we would have reason to question him as to his private views.


Robert Laird Borden: Were the remarks made by him when he was discharging his duty as commissioner, or were they made by him outside altogether of his official functions? That is an important consideration, The Prime Minister says that, being a citizen of this country, he has a right to express his opinion.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


Robert Laird Borden: That is entirely correct, but the situation may be altered a little if he expresses those opinions in the course of his duties as a commissioner. I would like to know if the Prime Minister has any information as to that?


Wilfrid Laurier: I have no information as to either that or the other fact. I shall have the matter looked into.


Samuel Hughes: I asked a question at the time. It was in the official discharge of his duty. He had a number of gentlemen before him. and it was he who volunteered the statement that he did not want the intrusion of any British songs on these dear, good people from the United States. I subsequently ascertained that the people from the United States had never directly or indirectly objected to the British songs, but that Mi*. Armstrong had objected, and had raised the point that British songs like ' Rule Britannia ' should not be sung, but that they might sing Canadian songs. A gentleman like that is not fit for a commission.


Mr. MACDONALD.: I happen to know the Hon. Mr. Armstrong, the gentleman referred to. I know that the sentiments attributed to him in that newspaper report are entirely unworthy of the sentiments he entertains. I had an opportunity of speaking to him, and he stated that the newspaper report was absolutely untrue.


Samuel Hughes: Why did he not contradict it?


Mr. SPEAKER.: The point cannot be discussed now.


Samuel Hughes: I am asking a question.


Sir FREDERICK BORDEN.: Probably he did not think it worth while.


APPOINTMENT OF CENSUS OFFICIALS.
Mr. BLAIN.: What is the policy of the Department of Agriculture in respect to the selection of census commissioners and enumerators, and on whose recommendation are these appointments made?


Mr. FISHER.: The policy is to secure the appointment of efficient, trustworthy people and to get such information as will lead to such appointments. The appointments are made on the recommendation of the minister, based on information acquired by him.



WAYS AND MEANS-INFORMATION RE RECIPROCITY AGREEMENT.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. FIELDING moved that the House go into Committee of Ways and Means.
['My hon. friend is quite welcome to have it to-morrow, or every other day of the session. If he thinks there is anything more in the speech that is of advantage to him, he cannot be prevented from putting it, in the proper way, on the record. But I do not think it fair that I should be asked to sit down that the long speech of the hon. member for East Hastings may be read into my own.\nIt is growing late, and as it is impossible for me to finish my observations this evening, I move that the committee -rise, report progress, and ask leave to sit again.\nProgress reported.\nOn motion of Mr. FIELDING, House adjourned at 11.48 p.m.', '\n\nFriday., March 10, 1911.']
John Dowsley Reid: I wish to revert to the question of information respecting these tariff resolutions. The Minister of Finance brought down a little pamphlet showing the alterations that would be made if this agreement went through, but outside of that there is practically no information that we can get unless we go to the several blue-books that are brought before this House annually. What is the result? The result is that members on both sides of the House derive their information from blue-books, and contradictory statements are consequently made, so that the public are not sure who is right. Why should we not have supplied by the government full and definite information such as the House at Washington had when these matters were placed before them? The refusal of the Minister of Finance to furnish such a statement convinces me that the minister does not want to give the public the information necessary for them to judge whether or not this is a correct bargain. Why should the minister try to blindfold the people, or not to give information? In making his announcement, the minister did not inform us as to the other favoured nation countries that -would enjoy the benefit of this agreement, but when the member for South Ontario asked what other countries would be affected the answer was such that the pe'ople could read it either one way or another, and a newspaper in eastern Canada quoted that statement to show that statements made in this House that other countries would have the benefit of this arrangement were not true. We must see the effect of every change in each item on the different parts of the country. The Minister of Finance deliberately, and, I might- say, if it were within parliamentary rules, wilfully tried to keep information back to prevent us properly enlightening the people of this country. I, as a member of this House, demand as a right that we should receive this information. I think we are entitled to it. and if the minister
wants to get these resolutions through in any kind of reasonable time, if he'will give this information he will get them through a great deal quicker than by holding back this information. We should have the amount of imports and exports of each of these items, and we should also have the exports from other countries, with the rates of duties, prices, &c. If the minister thinks that he can drive these resolutions through by blindfolding the people he is making an awful mistake. I am going to get this information; if we cannot get it one way we will have to keep at it until we do. The minister must give us the information in his possession, and if he will not give it in pamphlet form, so that we can read it intelligently, he will have to give it in the House. That is what he is paid for by the people of the country, and he has to do it. I will do my duty in seeing that he does do it.


George Taylor: The Prime Minister, in making his speech two days ago, referred to the fact that we, by this bargain that has been made by the United States, have admitted some countries under some old treaties. He made very light of these old treaties. He did not inform the House that by this bargain he admitted Great Britain and the British possessions as well as these foreign countries into this market, and that by this arrangement he had lowered the protection to the farmers on the great part of their products. He has not brought down any information to us, but I have asked a few questions on the Order Paper, and I wish to read a list of some of the articles produced in this country that have been brought in even with the present rate of duty, which the minister wipes out altogether on some lines and reduces on others. I asked the following questions:
1.	How many barrels, boxes or packages of
pork, beef, mutton, lamb and cheese bave been imported into Canada during the months of October, November and December, 1910, and for the months of January and February. 1911?	J
2.	What was the weight and value thereof, and the countries from which the same were imported?
3.	What was -the number of pounds of butter and number -of dozen of eggs, and the value thereof, and the countries imported from, for the month of February, 1911?
The minister gave an answer covering all these months except February, the figures for which he says will not be available for ten days, but we have been given some figures, and by these I find that in October, 1910, there was imported into Canada of pork, beef, mutton, cheese:
Lbs.
.From Groat Britain	 24
United States	 812,893
China	 271
Hong Kong	 100

In November, 1910:
Lbs.
From Great Britain	 420
United States	 299,258
Belgium	 35
Hong Kong	 455
I want to pick out a few of the principal items. Take mutton and lamb, in October, 1910, the United States sent us 76,027 lbs. and Australia 217,266 lbs. Australia is one of the countries which, under this proposed agreement, will get the benefit of the reduced tariff; and yet, in the face of the high tariff at present existing, that country sent into Canada in October, 1910, 217,000 lbs. of mutton lamb, in December, 1910, 179,470 lbs., in November 1910, 163,909 lbs., in December, 1910, 179,470 lbs, and in January, 1911, 157,927 lbs. But these products are now to be allowed in at reduced duty to the detriment of Canadian farmers.
Take pork barrelled, in October, 1910, the United States sent into Canada 1,121,100 lbs., China 66 lbs.; in November, 1910, the United States sent 824^265 lbs., in December, 1910, 467,820 lbs., Newfoundland 2,1)16 lbs., China 291, and Hong Kong 3,499 lbs. These are all to be allowed in at a reduced tariff, under this proposed treaty, to the great injury of the farmers of this country.
Take cheese, another one of the most important products of the farmers of this country. The imports of this into Canada was as follows in October, 1910:
Great Britain	 8,967
United States	 21,716
France	   15,879
Italy	 72,709
Belgium	 1,489
Switzerland	30,197
Holland	 2,400
Germany	 1,960
These were the imports during October last, yet the right hon. the Prime Minister with a wave of the hand, says that these countries export nothing to Canada of the articles mentioned in the schedule of this agreement. Why, here we have a list from the Customs Department as long as your arm of the articles which have come into Canada from these countries even in face of the high duties; and under this proposed agreement they will come in free, by virtue of the favoured nation clause, from all these countries, as well as from the United States. Take our imports in November, 1910. In the month we imported as follows:
From Great Britain	 10,161
United States	 19,539
France	 22,482
Italy	 23,224
Switzerland	 36,317
Germany	 18,449
Belgium	 963


George Taylor: And in December we imported:
Lbs.
From Great Britain	 5,184
United States	 20,274
France	 44,559
Italy	 66,775
A ust.-Hungary	 3,439
Turkey in Asia	 850
Switzerland	 31,873
New Zealand	 260
Holland	 3,543
Yet the Prime Minister says that these do not amount to anything. These were allowed into Canada under the present tariff, but after this proposed arrangement comes into force they will be let in practically free. Then take our imports in January, 1911, of cheese:
Lbs.
From Great Britain	 979
United States	 18,261
France	 1,810
Italy	 18,280
Switzerland	 33,519
Turkey in Asia	 538
The products of all these countries are henceforth to be allowed into Canada free because we are to get a free market with 90,000,000 people, and these 90,000,000 people are to get a free market with 8,000,000, but they have three times the quantity of goods to export that we have. Yet the right hon. the Prime Minister tells us that the shipments from these countries I have mentioned will not amount to anything under the favoured nation clause.


William Paterson: Give the values. You will find them in the list.


George Taylor: I have not added up the totals. But let me just give one value, namely pork, $114,523.


William Paterson: From what country?
Mr.	TAYLOR	(Leeds).	The	United
States.


William Paterson: That alters the case.
Mr.	TAYLOR	(Leeds).	The	total
amounts to over $1,000,000,	but I have not
had time to add them up.


William Paterson: Of that amount, how much would come in under the favoured nation	clause?
Mr.	TAYLOR	(Leeds).	The	United
States is made a favoured nation as well as the others. Before to-day these people had to pay a duty on this pork, yet in the face of that duty they sent it into Canada to the injury of our farmers, and under this agreement they will send in considerably more, and my hon. friend will find how the farmers will resent this policy at the next elections.

WAYS AND	MEANS-RECIPROCAL



[Stage Direction]
House again in Committee of Ways and Means.
Mr. MILLER.: When the committee adjourned last night I was making the argument that an arrangement, to be of lasting benefit and permanent, must be a bargain that will give advantages to both sides. Let me give one or two instances to show how the benefits, undeir the proposed agreement, will accrue both to the United States and Canada. Some time ago I read an address to the right hon. the Prime Minister in pamphlet form against this proposed arrangement, and in that address I noticed particularly some words spoken by Mr. Wm. White, vice-president of the Canadian Pacific railway. Mr. White said:
That the Canadian Pacific railway has had to purchase in Winnipeg for their dining cars chickens from Chicago, and were also importing cream from the United States.
I suppose it is fair to presume that if the Canadian Pacific railway had to buy poultry and cream for use in Winnipeg from the United States, other residents of Winnipeg had to do likewise. This we can readily understand because we know that the farmers around Winnipeg are not engaged in raising dairy products, but rather in growing grain and feeding stock. Had there been no duty, the Winnipeg people would have been able to get their cream and poultry from the United States at so much less. But, Sir, at the very time when the people in Winnipeg were finding it to their advantage to buy poultry and cream in the United States, the farmers of Ontario and Quebec were selling their cream in large quantities to the people of the United States just across the border. The people of the province of Quebec sold in the United States last year, even with a small duty in the way, cream to the value of nearly $1,000,000; and the dairymen of Ontario shipped cream to the United States last year to the value of between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Then, the removal of the duty on this item of cream would be to the advantage of the United States farmers who sell cream and also to the advantage of the Canadian farmers who sell cream as well as to the Canadian and American consumers of this article. Let me mention another similar ease . I have here a brief account, which appeared in the Montreal *' Gazette ' February 4 last, of a meeting of the Boston Fruit and Produce Exchange, held the day before. It says:
The members of the Boston Fruit and Produce Exchange voted to petition the Massachusetts senators and representatives in Congress to support to-day the Canadian reciprocity agreement. A resolution was adopted declaring that the members heartily commend the terms of the agreement. The resolution points out that thousands of barrels of apples are yearly shipped from Canada to Europe, and expresses the belief that if free trade is established Canadian producers will ship their apples to the middle west, leaving a large portion of the foreign trade to New England farmers.
This is a declaration by the practical fruit growers of the eastern states, that, if this agreement were in force, they would find a better market for their apples, without the competition of Canadian fruit growers, in the markets, of Europe, and that the Canadian apple grower would find a market fop his fruit in the middle states, thus benefiting the producers of apples in both places, and not raising the price to consumers in either country, but probably having the contrary effect of reducing the prices. The hon. member for North Toronto argued, and several other hon. members have made the same argument, that the reciprocity secured under this agreement will be largely a sectional, occasional reciprocity. The hon. member (Mr. Foster) instanced hay, as an illustration. He said when, in case of drought or for other cause, hay was a short crop in the United States, the Canadian crop of hay would find a market across the line. But he said that if, under such circumstances, the United States required our hay, they would buy it and pay the duty. But he pointed out-and to some extent he was right-that, under this agreement, we not only obtained a market in the United States, but that we give a market in Canada to the people of the United States. This arrangement, in exceptional years and under exceptional circumstances, will have the tendency to regulate prices and to prevent the prices being exorbitant in any part of either country. For instance, I remember, and other members of the House I am sure will not have forgotten, that in 1895 and 1896, in the western part of Ontario, and also extending into the Kingston district and other parts of eastern Ontario, long-continued dry weather caused hay and straw to be very short crops. If, in these two years, we had had no duty upon any hay coming into Ontario from the United States, it would have been a very great benefit to the men who owned cattle on this side of the line at a time when many cattle perished in Canada because of lack of food. The hon. member for North Toronto argued, and others have followed him in this argument also, that the advantage we shall obtain will be a fitful and constantly-changing advantage. Let me read what the hon. gentleman said as to this:

Reciprocity, I think, has this as a prime condition-that it shall be between two countries, each producing a surplus, but a surplus in a different line of articles, and each wanting articles of which the other's surplus is made up. More than that, for ideal reciprocity, this should not be a mere occasional surplus, but should be the result of fixed conditions of climate, soil, and so on, that will make the surplus permanent. Two countries that show ideal conditions of reciprocity in trade would be the West India islands and Canada. The West Indies produce a surplus of tropical fruits, of which we produce none. But they produce absolutely no dairy products, none of the food products of the temperate zone, of which ire produce a great surplus. These are examples of two countries between which a reciprocity trade arrangement could be made with great profit. In the same way, reciprocity between us and Great Britain is possible in lines or articles which will readily suggest themselves to the minds of lion, members. But in the case of the arrangement we are now discussing, you are trying to establish reciprocity between two countries, each of which has a surplus, and a surplus of exactly the same products. With the exception of cheese and fish, the United States of America has a surplus of every article which goes from Canada, under this arrangement, into the United States. And not a slim surplus, but in every .respect a substantial surplus, and in some respects a very large surplus.
The argument, then, is that in Canada our farmers export to Britain products of
the farm; the farmers of the United States export the same thing to the same market and, as they are growers of like produce, and exporters to the same market, this arrangement cannot be of any permanent and steady advantage to Canada. Sir, that is not the case. I will aJdmit, as everybody must admit, that at the present time, the United States is exporting large quantities of certain lines of faTm produce. But I argue-and I can substantiate my argument-that the surplus of the United States is very rapidly decreasing, and it will not be very long until that country has no surplus of farm produce to export. My hon. friend from North Grey (Mr. Middlebro) helped me in substantiating this argument.	He quoted from the
speech of Congressman McCall, who introduced this resolution in the United States Congress, as saying:
The Canadian surplus of wheat is steadily increasing; ours is steadily diminishing.
That is the fact as to wheat, and it is equally true as to almost every other farm product that the United States is to-day exporting. Let me quote some figures in proof of what I say. I will not go further back than the year 1906, but I give the figures from and including that year, showing the United States exports of farm produce in certain lines:
1906.	1907.	1908.	1909.8 42,081,170 630,998 S04.090 24,310,038 6,430,446 4,697,742 22,063 1,261,412 4,922,913	8 34,577,392 309,440 750,242 26,367,287 1,615,808 3,740,212 107,956 1,143,886 2,429,489	8 29,339,134 307,202 589,285 20,339,377 2,467,895 3,213,480 106,470 1,551,450 1,407,962	8 18,046,976 144,605 365,155 12,698,594 1,645,822 3,438,048 34,319 938,025 1,268,210
Sheep	 Fresh beef		 Canned beef		 Salted and pickled beef			 Otherwise cured beef	 Fresh pork					
				
My hon. friend from East Grey (Mr. Sproule), and, I think, also my hon. friend) from North Grey (Mr. Middlebro) argued that, while the United States was not exporting as much in live cattle to-day as it did a few years ago, it was exporting chilled and frozen meat in larger quantities than formerly. But the figures prove exactly the contrary. But, Mr. Chairman, if we desired any further evidence as to the falling off in the exports of farm products from the United States, let me refer you to the British Journal of the Board of Agriculture. Speaking of the matter of bacon, this report says that there was a great falling off in the export of bacon from the Mr. MILLER.
United States to Britain in the year 1910. There was exported in that year only 1,307,000 hundred weight, as compared with 2,858.000 hundred weight in 1908. Speaking of the matter of cattle, the above report says:
The past year has seen a further decline in the number of live cattle imported into the United Kingdom, the number received being less than in any year since 1877. Only two countries (apart from the Channel islands) participate in this trade, namely, the United States and Canada, and the diminution in the export is no doubt attributable to the increased demand for cattle in the United States.	i

Then as to the matter of cheese just referred to by the hon. member for Leeds, this journal speaking of the imports of this item, says:	,
The supply of cheese showed a small increase, Canada maintaining its position as the principal exporter. An increase is noticeable in the receipts from New Zealand, while those from the United States have now become of little importance.
Speaking again of flour, this British journal says:
The receipts of flour were less than in 1909, owing to a further falling off from the United States.
Then speaking of the British imports of oats, the journal says:	-
Germany furnishes 2,822,000 hundredweight, while the imports from the United States were insignificant.
iSo we see from this British authority that the imports of Britain of farm products from the United States is very rapidly decreasing. Let me quote from another authority, I quote this from an address delivered by Professor Cyril Hopkins of the University of Illinois. This address was delivered by Professor Hopkins on the 15th of June last, to an association of bankers in the state of Illinois. Professor Hopkins, speaking of the very matter to which I am referring, the rapidly decreasing export and the rapidly decreasing production of food stuffs in the United States, says this:
If we take two five year averages in relation to our exportation of corn and wheat, the two greatest sources of food stuffs in the United States, taking the average for the last five years in the old country, and compare that with the average of the last five years up to the present time, we have figures that are pretty reliable, and exportation products are weighed, and not guessed at, as you know. The products that go out of the country are determined with a high degree of accuracy. The report on crop statistics within the United States is an estimate, but the exportation is not an estimate, it is weighed product. We find by comparing those two five years averages that the exportation of wheat from this country decreased from 37 per cent to 17 per cent of our total production, over a ten year period. We find that the exportation of corn decreased from 9 per cent to 3 per cent of our total production during the same period. Now, those two sets of statistics ought to mean a good deal to us. Our population has been doubling every thirty years for the last century, and the increase is being maintained at nearly the same rate, so far as we can learn yet. And our exportation has decreased until at the present time we export almost no food stuffs compared'with what we produce in America.


Mr.   W@: Brown, president of the New York Central lines, in an address delivered to the Railway Business Association on the 10th of last November, said:
If our decrease in exportation continues, and if our increased consumption continues, 156
as. compared with our production, before the middle of the next decade the great exporting grain elevators in the sea-board cities will stand empty, and this country, like those of the old world, will be looking for a place to buy the necessities of life.
Now, Sir, these figures mean something to us, as they mean something to the people of the United States. They mean to us that Canada will have an increasing market for her farm products in the United States as the years go by. These figures mean not only that we will have an increased demand for our farm products in the United States, but they mean that the arrangement we are now entering into will be a permanent arrangement. For, Sir, as the years go by, and the United States are less able to produce within their territory the food with which to feed their own people, they will not be so unwise as to cancel an arrangement that enables them to buy food for their people that they will be unable to produce themselves.
Sir, if we will refer to the very able speech made in this House a few evenings ago by the hon. Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Fisher), we will find that we are just beginning to cultivate the soil of Canada. We will find that there is only a small fractional part of the fertile lands' of our northwestern country that has yet been disturbed by the plough. In the years shortly to come we will be producing in Canada a hundred times more farm products than we are producing to-day. But that is not the condition in the United States. Professor Van Heis, of the University of Wisconsin, has recently written a book upon the conservation of the natural resources of the United States; and Professor Van Heis writes as follows:
It is not so many years since we heard the song ' Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm.' The better part of the public domain has now passed to private parties, and during the closing years of the nineteenth century the land hunger of hundreds of thousands of the citizens of the United States was for the first time unsatisfied.
The hon. member for North Toronto in discussing the matter of natural resources felt justified-and I will not say that he was wrong-in considering the people that are to live in this country a thousand years hence. If any hon. member of this House, in considering the question of the preservation of our resources, is wise in considering the people who shall live in this country a'thousand years hence, then surely we are not less wise in considering what shall be our condition ten or fifteen years hence. It is a matter of importance to secure a trade with the United States that will be of great benefit to us at once and of immensely greater benefit to us in ten or fifteen years hence.


Richard Blain: Has my hon. friend the figures of the United States production of wheat in 1908, 1909 and 1910 before him?


Henry Horton Miller: No, I have not, but I have given to my hon. friend and the members of the committee the figures of the exports. I have given them the statement that their surplus is decreasing very rapidly year after year.


Richard Blain: The production of wheat in the United States in 1909 was 713,000,000 bushels and in 1908, 648,000,000 bushels, an increase in one year of 65,000,000 bushels.


Henry Horton Miller: Yes, but if my hon. friend will take a number of years he will find that the production of wheat in the United States has not been increasing although an increase may be shown by taking an exceptional year. I have pointed out that in one or two other instances the hon. member for North Toronto contradicted his own argument. Let me give the members of the committee a further contradiction, and a very distinct contradiction by that hon. gentleman. He has argued that as Canada is exporting farm products and as the United States is exporting farm products the people of the United States will not require the products of Canadian farms. Then the hon. member for North Toronto in the same speech quotes the following language from President Taft. He says:
And President Taft, in his message to the United States Congress, says that what the United States must set .itself to do is to increase its exports on the line of manufactured goods. That is its future. It eannet expeot to make large exportations of food and other products. What we want, he says, is ran material close at hand; what we want is cheap foodstuffs so far as we can get them from the northern country in order that we may he better provided and furnished for this .increased product and increased export of the industries of this country, in which cur future lies in our record of the world trade.
If any hon. member of this House, whether upon my own side or the other assures me that the United States will not want to buy our farm products, but on the other hand, quotes to me the words of President Taft who says that the people of the United States will want to buy our farm products, I prefer to take the statement, and the opinion of the President of the United States. But, then, Mr. Chairman, there is the mournful argument of Canada becoming the backyard of the United States. I quote from the Toronto ' News ' the following clipping from a speech of the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sift on). The Toronto ' News ' gives prominence to this statement of the hon. member. It is printed in large black type and the item is headed ' Backyard of Chicago: '


Henry Horton Miller: I cannot tell you how 1 feel about this country being made the backyard of the city of Chicago-Hon. Clifford Sifton.
Sir, I happen to own a little backyard behind my own residence, and if somebody will find in that back yard a gold mine or a diamond mine that will make me Tich I will not be particular if you call it a backyard or what you call it. That argument has been made by a great many persons. The states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and the other western and middle western states were once in the same way the backyard of the Atlantic manufacturing states of the American union. But while they were in the same sense the backyard of the manufacturing states of the union they grew farm products which they shipped and sold to the manufacturipg states (of the union, and with what result? While they were thus the backyard of the manufacturing states of the union, the land in these states to which I have referred, which was wrorth $5 or $6 per acre forty or fifty years ago, is worth to-day $100 or $200 an acre simply for agricultural purposes. You may call the western plains of Canada, you may call the farms of Quebec, of Ontario, of the maritime provinces, backyards if you like, but if you can make the value of these backyards $100 or $200 per acre for growing food products that shall be sent to the very same markets to which these western states that I have spoken of have sold their farm products, if the result will be the same-and who will say that it will not be-then I say that the backyard argument has no force at all. Sir, I have said that these states of Illinois, Indiana, and other western and middle western states became prosperous and their lands increased in value while they grew food products for the manufacturing states. But while they were growing these, food products they became manufacturing states as well, and they built up within their territory such cities as the very city mentioned by the hon. member for Brandon, the city of Chicago, a great manufacturing city, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Omaha, and all the other large manufacturing cities that are now situated in _what was once a purely agricultural district of the United States. The same thing will be true of the western plains of Canada, and the same thing will be true, even more largely than it is true to-day, that as the farmers of the several provinces of Canada prosper, grow wealthy and add to the value of their soil, by cultivation, as their prosperity increases, as the value of their property increases, and as the population of these districts increase they will build up flourishing manufacturing cities and centres. and will not deserve, as they do not

now deserve, the term of backyard to the United States.
I am told that under this agreement the railway interests will suffer. Well, Sir, I take it that the railways of Canada were built for men, and not men for the railways. If either has to suffer, Canadian railways or Canadian men, then I liefer to let the railways suffer, but I do not think there is any evidence at all that the Canadian railways, upon which vc have spent a great deal of money, which have done a useful woik for Canada, and which are doing it well, will suffer as a result of this agreement. My hon. friend from Humboldt (Mr. Neely), in a speech which he made in this House, pointed to the fact, as other hon. gentlemen have since done, that the Canadian Pacific Railway stock is soaring to-day, that Canadian Pacific railway is worth $25 per share more than it was when we began to discuss this resolution. What does that mean? It means that Canadian business men, that United States business men, that the business men of the British Empire and the business men of Holland, in all of which countries Canadian Pacific Railway stock is held, have not one single bit of confidence in that argument, and do not attach any importance to the statement that Canadian railway interests will suffer by this proposal. My hon. friend from South Wellington (Mr. Guthrie) quoted the opinion of Sir Donald Mann as to the effect of it upon the large railway line in which he is interested. We have had a woeful letter from Sir William Van Home.


Mr. BRADBURY.: Does the hon. gentleman, say that Canadian Pacific Railway =tock has advanced $25 per share since we started the discussion of this question?


Henry Horton Miller: That is what I did say. I think that Canadian Pacific railway, when this resolution was first spoken of, was about 185; to-day it is worth 214.


George Henry Bradbury: I would like to say to the hon. gentleman that he is entirely mistaken.


Henry Horton Miller: I will not dispute with the hon. gentleman as to the exact figures, but he will admit that Canadian Pacific railway stock has very rapidly increased in value since the resolution was introduced into this House.


Mr. LALOR.: That is hedging the question.


Henry Horton Miller: I have referred to the dcleful letter of Sir Wm. Van Horne, and in contradistinction to that let me quote what was said by Mr. Thomas Skinner, the English director of the Canadian Pacific railway, as published in the Montreal ' Gazette ' of the 4th of February:
Thomas Skinner, the English director of the Canadian Pacific railway, in an interview confesses that he views the agreement with mixed feelings. If ratified, he said, the -agreement would have a disturbing effect on the Transcontinental railway, but the growth and development of the northwestern provinces of Canada were so great and rapid that he had no misgivings that this would more than meet the change arising from the agreement. On the whole, Mr. Skinner thonght this agreement advantageous to Canada, and though politically somewhat dangerous he was perfectly confident of Canada's loyalty to the -mother country.


Mr.   J@: Hill was speaking a few months ago as to the present condition of United States railways, and he said it would take an immediate cash expenditure of six billion dollars to put the American railways in such shape as that they could prpperly carry the traffic there is for them to carry. And such will be the condition of Canadian railways. As Mr. Skinner has said, with the development of our western country, all our present existing railways would be overtaxed and we would have to have new railway lines. It has been urged by some, and I think it was stated in the letter of Sir Wm. Van Horne, that Mr. Hill's roads have now their noses resting on the international boundary line ready to cross into Canada and take Canadian trade to the south. But I would ask Sir Wm. Van Horne at how many places does the Canadian Pacific railway cross the international tine for the purpose of carrying trade from Canada into the United States? Hon. members on the other side, and opponents of this measure in the country have a great deal of concern as to our natural resources. The member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) says:
That is the policy shining out in every line and article of this proposed agreement. The United States knows what it is after. With a tariff wall against the world, desiring to preserve its own unused natural resources so far as it oan, dipping into the natural resources of Canada so far as it may be able to, fortifying itself by the conservation of its own and by the destruction of ours, making itself -the great manufacturing country of the world and increasing its wealth and its power in that way.
Sir, the hon. member for North Toronto was wise enough not to argue that we in Canada have any control whatever over the United States tariff. Fcr many years rough sawn lumber has been admitted free of duty from the United States into Canada, and I do not know that we ever had a custom tariff on lumber entering this Dominion. Every member of this House must realize that the United States have quite as good a right to place lumber on their free list as we have to keep it on our free list, and if the United States have the right to place lumber on their free list then they have the right to place on that free list

every other natural product rve have in Canada. But the member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster) made this argument. He said:
If this, agreement goes into force, a year from now this government may find, and the Conservation Commission may advise this government that certain of our natural resources should not be exported except under such and such conditions, or that they ought not to be exported at all, or that such of them as are made should be made under regulations and made in this country alone. As we are now we have a perfect right, to pass that legislation; we have given bonds to nobody.
That is a perfectly fair statement of the case; that while this parliament has no right whatever to interfere with the tariff of the United States we have the power, and if we choose to exercise it the right to impose export duties or to prevent or impede export of any of our natural resources. But while we have that power and right I will ask the member for North Toronto and every other member on that side of the House whether they think they would now, or in one year, or fifty years hence, advise the Canadian government to take that action. Sir, that is a game at which two can play. I do not think it wise for us to provoke such a war as that. If the government of the United States, of their own initiative, should prevent the export of their raw products it would be our part as men to meet them and checkmate them, and act as independently as they; but, Sir, the United States are not making any attempt to pass any such legislation, or to in any such way restrict the export of their natural resources. I have quoted from the work of Prof. Van Heiss on the conservation of the natural resources of the United States, and in that work he advises that it might be best for the United States to prohibit the export of many of their minerals especially, and other of their raw materials. And what would be the consequence? As I go through my own province of Ontario I find Ontario builders using Georgia pine. I have no doubt we could get along without that particular kind of lumber, but our builders use it because they find it convenient and profitable to use it. Canadian furniture manufacturers use large quantities of oak imported from the United States and not grown in Canada.
Last summer I was at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in the very large works of the Iron and Steel Company there. I saw their vessels bringing in United 'States ore which they mixed with Canadian ore to produce a better product. Their vessels were also bringing in immense quantities of United States coal, not obtainable in Ontario. How would this company, paying wages to many hundreds of workmen in Ontario, and other Mr. MILLER.
similar Canadian concerns, exist with the United States prohibiting the export of its raw products? I go through the cement factories in the province of Ontario and I find them using United States coal and United States coke. I ask the members of this House who have knowledge of the sub-,ieet how they think these Ontario cement companies could continue their business if they were deprived of the use of that coal and coke? In different parts of Canada there are large cotton factories, and we cannot grow cotton in any part of Canada, and if the United States prohibited the export of cotton these mills would have to shut down. Last night my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Lloyd Harris) said it ought not to be the policy of Canada to permit the export of unfinished products, but here are several instances in which the United States does permit the export from its territory to ours of raw products, so that we may make the finished article. Also, in the case of imported corn from the United States; the hon. member (Mr. Lloyd Harris) would not permit the Canadian farmer to sell his low grade wheat or barley, but would compel him, by legislation, to feed it to his stock on the farm. But the Canadian farmer to-day is importing corn grown in the States, just because the Canadian farmer finds it many times the cheapest food he can feed to his animals. The natural resource of which we are in the greatest danger of being deprived is our timber, and I would call attention to the fact that in 1899, three years after the Laurier administration assumed the care of the business affairs of Canada, they established a forestry branch, and through our Canadian forestry branch we are now encouraging the planting and preventing the annual loss of more timber than we are likely each year to export to the United States. Let me point to another contradiction in the speech of the hon. member to whom I have so often referred. The hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster), after pointing out that the Canadian government is thus encouraging the depleting of our national resources, then argues that the United States would have reduced their tariff any way whether we had taken any action or not. He says:
That insurgent force that swept the Republicans out of power was pledged to a diminution of the tariff especially on food stuffs. The Republican party in that position, the Democratic party were pledged to a revision downward of the tariff especially on food stuffs. It was known by all men that the coming Congress soon to go into power would deal with that matter and it was known that it would deal with it in the line of taking off and diminishing duties especially upon natural resources and food stuffs. No one csn deny that.
If no one can deny that, and no one has denied that the United States would have

so reduced or taken off the duties, then how can any man blame this government for what it is said the United States would have done anyway? I do not know whether the United States would or would not have done so, but that is the argument that is made by our friends on the other side and they cannot argue along both lines. We have heard a good deal of the word trustees and our friends opposite have argued that we, the people of this day, and especially the government of this day are the trustees for the Canadian people, and that as trustees we ought to preserve to the people of Canada the natural resources of our own Dominion. Sir, if we are trustees in 1911 for the people who shall live in Canada a thousand years from now, was not the hon. member for Korth Toronto equally a trustee of the Canadian people in 1891, was not Sir John Macdonald equally a trustee of the Canadian people in 1891, and was not Sir John Macdonald equally a trustee of the Canadian people in 1871, when he proposed just such an agreement as this? And Sir, will it make any difference to the people who live in Canada one thousand years from now whether such a bargain as this was made in 1911 or in 1891?
I have -spoken of members blaming the government. It is the business of the opposition to blame the government, and they are very diligent in exercising that function. The leader of the opposition, in the speech which he made on the 26th of January, blamed the government, and particularly the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Customs, for what he termed their surrender last year, in 1910. The language of the leader of the opposition was as follows :
The negotiations, in short, (that is the negotiations of this date) are a sequel to the surrender which this government made last year. I am, at the same time, of the opinion that if they had resisted firmly the government of the United States would never have imposed this maximum tariff against Canada.
That is the opinion of the leader of the opposition. It is the opinion of a political partisan, as we are all political partisans. If I expressed a contrary opinion that would also be the opinion of a partisan. But as to the negotiations in question let me quote the opinion of a man who is not a partisan; I refer to a work recently published by Professor T. W. Taussig, Henry Lee, professor of economics in Harward University, entitled: ' The Tariff History of the United States '. Professor Taussig, speaking of these very negotiations, says:
Negotiations with Germany and France led to some relaxations of their duties and regulations as to American products; and, in true mercantile spirit, these were held forth as great gains to American industry, and inferentially as causes of detriment to the foreign countries concerned. Negotiations with Canada led to but the slightest concessions. That country refused, as already stated, to modify her regulations as to wood pulp, or to make any changes of moment in her general tariff system. Some minor changes were secured, which enabled the administration to make a respectable show of having gained something in the way of lower duties; and a tariff war, which at one time seemed probable, was averted.
The statement of Professor Taussig exactly agrees with the statement of the Minister of Finance that President Taft was friendly to Canada, that he did not desire to impose the maximum tariff, that under the circumstances there was nothing else left for him to do, and that a tariff war was inevitable unless we afforded President Taft some shadow of an excuse that might enable him to avert that tariff war and by making slight concessions, termed by Professor Taussig minor concessions, we made changes that did no harm to any man in Canada, that did no good to any man in the United States, so far as the economic aspect was concerned, but that gave President Taft the excuse he desired to avert a tariff war, which I am sure every man in Canada, whatever his politics, would say, would have been unwise and would have been a calamity.
Now, Sir, I come to the attitude towards this proposal of our Canadian manufacturers. The manufacturers of Canada are making a very strong appeal to-day. They made a very strong appeal to Sir Wilfrid Laurier and we found that appeal in the Montreal ' Star ' a few weeks ago. That article which first appeared as a paid advertisement in the Montreal ' Star ' has since then appeared as a paid advertisement in many other newspapers. We have had articles in the Canadian ' Century ', and articles clipped from the Canadian ' Century ' have appeared in the local press from one end of this Dominion to the other, also as paid advertisements. The Toronto ' News ' has contained editorials and other articles in opposition to the treaty and let me read a part of a circular dated February 8, that was recently sent to an Ontario manufacturer from the office of the Toronto ' News: '
We are devoting considerable space daily, both in our news columns and editorially, to this question, and we have taken the liberty of placing your name on our mailing sheets for one month. No charge will he made for the paper, hut we hope you will be able to find time to read it each day.
I was lately in an Ontario factory, and in the office of that factory I saw several hundred pamphlets, neatly and attractively bound, containing speeches in opposition to this proposal, delivered by Mr. Russell. These were sent out by hundreds not only to this factory but, I suppose, to every factory in Canada for free distribution among the workmen in the factories. By these

means and by expending many, many thousands of dollars in printer's ink, and paid advertisements, the opponents of this proposed agreement have sought to create and have for a little while created a public opinion in opposition to this proposed arrangement. Let me say that this public opinion that has been created by the expending of so many dollars in printer's ink and newspaper advertising is but a temporary public opinion, it is frothy and on the surface and will not have any lasting effect in influencing the judgment of the Canadian people.
Nowr, Sir, I have not the slightest prejudice against Canadian manufacturers. We have in Canada great natural resources. We have great forest wealth, we have great mineral wealth, and there is no country in the world with greater water-powers. But we have something better than forests and mines and water-powers, we have men of manufacturing skill and ability, of business ability and of commercial enterprise. We have men of inventive genius, and,
I am glad to say, of large capital, and there is no reason why Canada should not become a great manufacturing nation. My hon. friend from Hastings (Mr. Northrup) I think it was, said yesterday that no one could intelligently argue this matter without putting the manufacturers on one side and the farmers on the other. In that I do not agree with him. In my opinion, if this arrangement will benefit the farmers, it will also benefit our manufacturers. I have no patience at all with those who call manufacturers thieves and robbers, who say that they are parasites preying upon the people. I respect a man, be he manufacturer or farmer, who is doing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, and helping to build up this country. Some manufacturers are charged with being selfish and no doubt they are, just as are some of our farmers, and some of our members of parliament; and it may be that the manufacturers, through the manufacturers' association, occasionally give prominence to their selfish instinct. But while we require revenues for the building up of our great public enterprises-for the building of the Hudson Bay railway, the Georgian Bay canal, the Grand Trunk Pacific, the Welland canal, for the extension and improvement of our rural postal system, for everything necessary to develop this great country-while we require revenues for these purposes, I believe it will be the will of the Canadian people, for many generations at least, that a large part of this money shall be raised by means of a customs duty. While this is the case, we ought to Tegulate our tariff and collect our duties in such a manner as will afford reasonable protection to the manufacturers and other industries throughout the limits Mr. MILLEE.
of our Dominion. But where or how, under this proposed arrangement are manufacturers hit? If I refer again to the Toronto ' News,' and its report of the speech of the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Sif-ton), and if I were to accept his statement, I might be led to conclude that our manufacturers are being hit. Well, I have great respect for the hon. gentleman, and that respect is not diminished because he has chosen to leave his party on this occasion. That is the right of every one sitting on either side of the House. I remember the time when, in his palmy days, the hon. gentleman had a good deal of influence in Canada; I remember when .the name of Sifton was one to conjure with, but I do not agree in everything he said a few evenings ago. I find in the Toronto ' News ' this quotatioin from his speech:
Let me enumerate what I think will be a few of those effects. Some industries will be destroyed, there can be no doubt about that. What reason can be given for drawing your pen through an item of the tariff and shutting up an industry which is not accused of combining as against consumers, which is not accused of charging illicit prices or of any other evils; what reason can there be for selecting that industry and wiping it out of existence I cannot see. I am bound to say that it does not appeal to my common sense.
In reply to this, I will say that had my hon. friend made his customary use of his common sense, he would not have indulged in any such language. He said that some industries will be destroyed. What industries? What reason had he for stating this? He asked what reason can be given for wiping an industry out of existence? Well, I cannot see that any industry will be wiped out of existence under this arrangement. What manufacturing or other industry will even have its profits lessened by this, proposed arrangement?


Richard Blain: What about the salt industry?


Henry Horton Miller: That is not a fresh question nor is it a large industry. The manufacturers themselves do not go nearly so Ear as my hon. friend from Brandon (Mr. Sifton) did. I have referred to the appeal to Sir Wilfrid Laurier which appeared some time ago in the Montreal Star. In that appeal the ' Star ' says:
So they disarmed suspicion by not betrayin'* any great greed in 1 taking, and then deftly secured the assent of our representatives to a * gift ' of such far-reaching effects that it engulfs our commercial independence and endangers our national existence.
Thpn the 'Star' says in that appeal:
Oh! but the tariff on manufactured goods remains, it may be said, for the present it does.

The manufacturers therefore, admit that they have not been hurt and the tariff has not been changed in any way to do them injury. Evidently, the troubles that afflict our manufacturing friends are not real but imaginary. I do not believe that our Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) has the slightest intention of making any bargain that will operate to the detriment of any manufacturing concern in this Dominion. I believe further that hon. members on this side would not support the government in any attempt to do material injury to Canadian manufacturers. In my opinion the manufacturers of Canada will be helped by this agreement. They will be helped in this way. As you help the farmers, as you more thickly populate our western country, as vou give the farmers better prices and better markets for this produce, you make them better purchasers of manufactured products. In helping the farmer, you enable him to buy more manufactured goods and of better quality and pay better prices.
My hon. friend from North Toronto (Mr. Foster) referring to the American newspapers said:
To-day, when I read the American papers and scan the American speeches, and look at the American arguments, I do not find that they are saying very much as to the employment of American capital in the establishing of American industries in Canada. In the past and present condition of things we have noticed that as a factor, and a very important one, in the development of this country. It is stated, and I think without doubt, that at least $226,000,000 have been transferred in equipment and plant from factories in the United States towards the establishment of branch factories in the Dominion.
My hon. friend did not of course find it possible to read all the American newspapers, and I would draw his attention to the South Bend ' Tribune,' published in South Bend, Indiana, on the 30th of January last. This gives an account of an interview with Mr. Oliver, who is at the head of the largest plough works in the wide world:
According to Mr. Oliver, the reciprocity measure introduced in Congress last Thursday does not affect his concern to such an extent that he should show more than passing interest in the legislation and consequently the plans of the Oliver industry relative to Hamilton will not be changed in the slightest degree. Should the measure as now constituted become a law the duty on ploughs would be lessened only from two and one-half to five per cent, the intention being to reduce tbe tariff from 171 and 20 per cent to lb per cent. This charge it appears is too small to warrant the Olivers altering their plans at Hamilton
'The reciprocity treaty does not affect us,' said Mr. Oliver, 'and there is absolutely no truth sent out in the report from Ottawa
that we have ordered work stopped on our Hamilton plant. We will go ahead with all our plans in the spring and rush our factory to completion. The proposed change in the tariff on ploughs is so small as not to affect us.'


An hon. MEMBER.: Hear, hear.


Henry Horton Miller: I agree with every member -of this House and every citizen of Canada that we like to see American capital brought in to establish industries in this country. But, if I am to make a choice as between a large factory built in Canada with United States capital, and a large factory built in Canada with Canadian capital, I will every time choose the latter. And why? Because every manufaicturing establishment is built to secure to the owners a net profit. In the case of a factory backed by American capital it is true, money from outside will be spent in erecting the building and paying wages, but the net profit from that American institution will be taken to the United States to further develop that country, while in the case of the factory built with Canadian capital, the net profit will remain in Canada foi the development of onr own country.
Sir, on a recent visit to my own Ontario town of Hanover, I found that the Knech-tel Furniture Co., was about to construct a new factory to build a new line of goods. I was informed also that the Spiesz Furniture Co. was preparing to build, next year, a large addition to its present works. The Hanover Specialty Works are making plans for a large extension of their plant. And it was rumoured on the street, whether truly or not, I do not know, that Mr. Ball, who was my opponent in the last election and will be my opponent in the next election should I run again, is intending to build next summer a large addition to his factory. In Neustadt, another town in my riding, six miles south of Hanover, a large chair factory that is in operation there intends to construct a large addition to its works. Also the Durham Furniture Co. in South Grey intend greatly extending their works next year. And this sort of thing is not confined to the towns of South Grey alone, but applies to every other manufacturing town in the province of Ontario.


Richard Blain: If I may be permitted, would the hon. gentleman (Mr. Miller) state whether the manufacturers he has referred to are in favour of this trade arrangement or not?


Henry Horton Miller: I will come to that, and I will tell my hon. friend (Mr. Blain) exactly what they say about it, most of them. What does this development of manufac-

turers show? Whatever may be the effect upon United States (manufacturers, the Ontario manufacturers who fully understand the situation, a/re not alarmed by this agreement, nor do they believe that it will cripple their business or lessen their profits. But there are other factories in Canada that will be helped by this agreement. I refer to the barns, the stables and the silos of the Canadian farmers. I refer to the tile-draining that is to be put down by the Canadian farmers. I say that the Canadian farm is a Canadian manufactory and is manufacturing products that bring greater wealth to the Dominion than do even the products of the factories which we usually call factories.
Is it true that United States manufacturers are in doubt to-day about coming to Canada to start branch factories here? If they are timid, why are they timid? The blame is not to the government, the blame is not to the friends of this measure; but the blame is to the opponents of this measure who are creating a panic by their unfounded cries and unreasoning alarms; these are the men who are keeping American capitalists from investing their money in this country.
Speaking of the Oliver Plough Works brings me especially to the matte: of agricultural implements, concerning which we heard a great deal from the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Harris) last night. Now, I would like to know where our hon. friends on the other side really stand as to this matter of agricultural implements?


Francis Ramsey Lalor: Where do you stand on that question?


Henry Horton Miller: I am always willing to tell the hon. member where I stand. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Borden, Halifax) speaking in this House on the 26th January, and referring to the' reductions proposed to be made on agricultural implements, said that he did not believe the change proposed would yield the slightest iota of relief to any farming population in this country. At that time, he appeared to think the occasion demanded relief, but said that the reduction of two and a half per cent and five per cent was not sufficient relief. I remember when, a couple of years ago, the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Schaffner), a Conservative, introduced a resolution in this House to reduce the tariff on agricultural implements to ten per cent. But my hon. friend the leader of the opposition, who to-day tells us that a reduction of two and one half per cent and five per cent following a similar reduction made two or three years ago, will not give sufficient relief, when the hon. member for Souris, two years ago, moved his resolution to reduce the Mr. MILLER.
duty to 10 per cent, voted against that resolution. If he thinks two and half per cent to five per cent repeated is not sufficient reduction, and if be thought that the 10 per cent reduction proposed by the hon. member for Souris is too much, I would like to know where he stands.


George Henry Bradbury: I would like to know how the hon. member himself voted on that resolution.


Henry Horton Miller: I will tell my hon. friend (Mr. Bradbury) frankly that I voted the same w7ay as his leader (Mr. Borden, Halifax) did, and I would so vote again. If hon. members ask how I voted, and what I think of the duty. I reply that I think, exactly as the ' Farmers Advocate ' does upon this subject. The ' Farmers Advocate ' is, perhaps, the leading farm journal published in Canada. It welcomed some reduction in the duty on farm implements, but said in an article on this very subject:	It is hardly fair to single
out any one industry for 'Sacrifice. And with that I quite agree. I quite agree in the policy of a reasonable reduction, but I do not think it would be right to single out that interest and make a sacrifice of it. The hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Harris) last night, said:	If this government is to be opposed to manufacturing in Canada, I will have to remove myself from Canada.
Well, the hon. gentleman need not remove himself, even though the company to which he belonged a little while ago did remove a large part of its capital from Canada to the State of New York. The Massey-Harris Company, of which my hon. friend from Brantford (Mr. Harris), for whom I have great respect, is a member, has made a very large amount of money in manufacturing in Canada a very good class of agricultural implements. With the money they made from Canadian farmers they recently purchased in Batavia, New York, a plant that cost them, I think, something more than a million dollars- several millions, I am informed. That was before this proposal had been made, before my hon. friends the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Customs had gone to Washington, or had thought of going to Washington. I think that the government of Canada had a fair warrant and a good reason for making a slight reduction in the duty on agricultural implements when they saw the evidences that appeared about them on every hand. If a Brantford agricultural implement manufacturing concern can take its capital and compete in the United States against its United States rivals, without even one per cent of protection, surely they can compete, as Mr. Oliver says, they can in Canada, with a protection of fifteen per cent. Then let me

say that in the very city from which the hon. member for Brantford comes, the Cockshutt firm, manufacturing ploughs, have for some time been sending Canadian ploughs into the United States and Selling them at a profit in large numbers, in spite of the duty they have to pay.
Sir, I do not know where the opposition stands in the matter of agricultural implements and the duty thereon. I do know what the government has done. The government reduced the duty from two and a half to five per cent two or three years ago, and they have reduced the duty again this year, or will by this proposal, a further two and a half to five per cent. If any one were to ask me what is the position of the Hon. Mr. Borden on this question I would say: Well, I do not know. If a manufacturer asked me if I thought that Mr. Borden would be an advocate of a greater reduction, I would say: Well, by his speeches in the House I would think that he would. But if a farmer should ask me what Mr. Borden would have done, I would say: Well, by the vote he gave upon the resolution of the hon. member for Portage la Prairie, I would think that he would be opposed to any reduction. I do not know, I am sure, where he is, because he seems to speak in one way and vote another.
Let me now touch upon the question of loyalty. The poet Cowper, in his poem, I believe it is in ' The Task,' says :
Patriots ,are grown too shrewd to he sincere,
And we too wise to trust them.
Dr. Johnston said:	'Patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel.' Sir, I do not believe that all are insincere scoundrels, who, in this day, are crying loyalty and waving the flag, but some of them are. I say there are men who are loyal to-day for financial gain, that there are other men to-day who are loyal for political profit and advantage, and I say further, that there is another class of men who are loyal to-day, really and sincerely loyal, but who are nervous and frightened by the panic that our friends of the opposition endeavour to create. I say further that he who will readily wave his country's flag for material gain, or for political advantage, will not always be the last to trample it in the dust for a like consideration. Let us not make too cheap the flag for which our fathers fought, some of them, and for which we would be willing to fight again. We are all loyal on both sides of the House, Grits and Tories in Canada are loyal, and let us not talk or speak otherwise. Sir, the agriculturists in Canada-and my hon. friend from Lambton, if he were here, would agree with this-know that some years ago the British government imposed on Canadian cattle what is called the embargo. We
know that the British government years ago. by that embargo, barred out live cattle. They did it to protect their own agriculturists, and they maintained it to protect the British farmer and the British breeder of livestock. Sir, we do not quarrel with them; we do not say that the people of Britain are not loyal because they do that; but we do say that if the government of Britain seeks to protect its cattle raisers and cattle breeders by imposing and maintaining that embargo, they are far too fair and generous, and far too sensible, to blame the Canadian government for endeavouring to protect the interests of Canadian farmers as they do under this agreement. My hon. friend opposite asked me about the manufacturers in my own town. Let me read him a letter from a German Canadian manufacturer in the riding of North Waterloo. This man says:
I still have confidence that the future of this great country of ours is safe in the hands of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his followers at Ottawa, and I believe the Liberals of North Waterloo-which is a large manufacturing district-'feel the same as I do, that the reciprocity agreement with the United States will be a good thing for Canada as a whole. I do not for a moment believe in the blue ruin cry, and that Canada, by entering into a freer trade arrangement with our cousins to the south of us, will in the end become part of that country. The German-Canadians of North Waterloo will remain loyal to the British Empire no matter if we have free trade with the United States or a high tariff wall. Annexation has nothing whatever to do with this undertaking.
Sir, I commend these -words of a German Canadian, whose fathers and forefathers spoke not the English language; I commend the loyalty of this German C.anadian to my friends of the opposition, of British parentage, whose fathers came from the old land. The letter of this German Canadian expresses, I believe, the sentiments and the feelings of German Canadians generally. and I say that the loyalty of this German puts to shame the fears and anxieties of our British Canadian friends on the other side of this House. I see before me on the opposition benches men who are engaged in agriculture, men who are engaged in businesses of different kinds, and I ask if there is one of them who will to-day admit and confess that if he sella in the United States market an article for which he can find there a higher price than he could anywhere else, will that make him less loyal? Will it make him feel like severing the ties that bind him to the British flag? If any hon. gentleman opposite can purchase an article he desires in the United States market to better advantage than he can purchase it in any other market, will it make him less loyal? If there is such a member on the opposite benches, I would like him to stand up for

a moment that we may gaze upon him, and see what manner of man he is. Not one Conservative in this House, not one opponent of this agreement in this House, will make any such admission as that. I say ask them how these men dare to insult the people they represent, how they dare insult the people of their constituencies, by thinking for a moment, by saying with their tongue, that the men whom they represent are less loyal than they themselves?
Sir, I say that this trade arrangement will help the farmers of Canada, and with this argument I close my speech. The opponents of this measure say that the hon. the Minister of Finance and the hon. the Minister of Customs ought to have shown in greater detail what will be the results of the working out of this proposed agreement. It is impossible to give statistics that any one can say will turn out to be correct, because this agreement will affect different parts of Canada in different ways, and it will affect Canada differently in different years and under different circumstances. We are like a man whois looking out for an opening for his business. He goes to a place where everything would indicate that there is a good opening. He cannot tell what his first year's sales will be, and what his second year's sales will be; but he says: The conditions appear to be good, and I know that I can do a good business here, and here is where I am going to locate.
Now I know that the hon. member for North Toronto, when he was Finance Minister entertained the House and the country oftentimes with very neatly compiled and tabulated figures which he called statistics. They might better oftentimes have been called guesses and my hon. friend was frequently a bad guesser. My hon. friends opposite, say that this agreement will not benefit the farmers, but I say, Sir, that it is worth noting that there is not a Canadian farm paper published in any province in Canada that is devoted to the interests of agriculture, that as not upholding this agreement, and is not in favour of its being completed. The hon. member for St. Antoine, Montreal (Mr. Ames) says that you cannot protect the manufacturers of this country and not protect the farmers, that if you do not protect the farmers, they will demand, and you will have to yield to their demand, that every vestige of protection be taken from the manufacturer." I can understand that you can protect the Canadian manufacturer to some extent and to a great extent, it may be, but I say that a protective tariff upon food stuff would be just as much _use to the Canadian farmer as a coon skin coat would be to the hon. membeT for St. An-Mr. MILLER,.
toine on a July day with the thermometer at a hundred in the shade.
This agreement will give to the Canadian farmer additional markets. It will not deprive him of one single market that he has to-day. We grant subsidies to-day to steamship lines running to every distant part of the globe, and if we do all that, surely we cannot justify it and refuse to make every effort to trade with our nearest neighbours. Let me read to you- and I will not weary you with long figures -a statement of the subsidies we are paying to-day to assist steamship lines Tunning to these several different countries:
France, at the rate of $100,000 per annum for 18 voyages, not to exceed $133,333.33	$100,000	00New Zealand	
50,000	00Australia	
180,509	00Mexico (T. H. Worsnop)	
50,000	00Mexico (Elder, Demspter & Co.)..	125,000	00China and Japan	
48,666	66South Africa	
146,000	00West Indies and South	America..	79,500	00Cuba	
25,000	00Jamaica	
13,800	00Newfoundland (Reid, Newfoundland Co'y)	
18,000	00Newfoundland (Pickford	& Black).	4,000	UOVictoria (San Francisco)	
3,000	00
Making a total in steamship subsidies to countries other than Great Britain of $843,475 a year. In addition to these annual subsidies to steamship lines, we have trade commissioners in the Argentine Republic, Australia, British West Indies, China, Cuba, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Mexico, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South Africa and Canadian commercial agents in Jamaica, Trinidad, Bahamas, Colombia and Norway. In addition to paying the salaries of these trade commissioners and commercial agents and the expenses of their offices, we also, through the Department of Agriculture, maintain at very great expense, Canadian exhibits wherever there is a large world exhibition in any part of the globe. We have had exhibits in Japan, Belgium, Italy, Scotland and other countries. Not one single member of this House has made any objection to the payment of these steamship subsidies, not one member of this House has made any objection to the establishing of these commercial agencies, not one member of this House has made any objection to the expenditure for the making of Canadian exhibits. The hon. member for Brandon was a member of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's cabinet when these steamship subsidies were agTeed to, when these paid agencies were established, and yet the hon. member for Brandon, while he was a cabinet minister and since he was a cabinet minister, has made no ob-

jection whatever to any of these expenditures. Now, Sir, if it be common sense, if it be good business to pay out these tremendous sums of money for steamship subsidies, for trade agencies and to maintain Canadian exhibits in different parts of the world, why in the name of common sense is it not good business, is it not good economy, is it not good politics, to make every possible effort, although without that large expenditure, to trade with our nearest neighbours, especially as our nearest neighbours are a very populous and wealthy people, who can afford to buy and pay good prices for that which we produce and that which we have to sell?
I have said that this agreement will benefit the farmers. My hon. friends opposite endeavoured to make a point against my right hon. friend the Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) yesterday, by saying that he had referred to the grain growers and the fruit growers of Canada as wolves. He did nothing of the kind. Sir, my right hon. friend the Prime Minister saw wolves nearer to him than the fruit growers or the grain growers of the west. He saw wolves sitting on the opposition benches and their wails and cries and how-lings have been heard now for many, many weeks.


An hon. MEMBER.: A few over there, too.


Henry Horton Miller: Well no, there are no wolves, but	there are for the moment, some two or three sheep in wolves' clothing. 1 have said that the proposed trade arrangement will increase the price of wheat to the farmer in the west. That has been denied and it has been argued the other way. A few years ago a personal friend of mine, who was in the employ of the Customs Department, had just come down from doing duty along the southern line of Saskatchewan and the international line between Manitoba and the United States. That gentleman told me when he came back to Ontario, that a great many Canadian farmers living near enough to the American line, were smuggling their wheat from Canada, and selling it.to the United States elevators in Dakota. Why? -not because the price of wheat was quoted higher on the American market than on the Canadian, but because dishonest Canadian elevator men were falsely grading their wheat and the Canadian prairie farmer was obliged to sell wheat that was really No. 1 at the price of No. 2 or 3 because it was given a lower grade by the elevator man, while by smuggling his wheat across the line the Canadian,, farmer escaped the false grading and got 10 or 12 cents a bushel more for his wheat on
the American side than he could get on the Canadian side. I leave it to hon'. members from the west to say whether or not this practice has been pursued by the elevator combine.
The hon. member for St. Antoine, Montreal, said that this agreement would destroy the identity of our exports. It will not destroy the identity of our exports. The hon. member for St. Antoine, Montreal, is a manufacturer of boots and shoes. He knows that there are some men, whether they are right or wrong, who prefer an American shoe to a Canadian shoe, but they will not buy an American shoe, simply because they know it is an American shoe. They realize that there are good American shoes and there are very inferior American shoes. The Canadian buyer, who wants an American shoe, wants one with a brand or name on, that he knows is the brand or name of a superior shoe. So, if any of my friends desire a bottle of English pickles, it will not be enough to know that it is an English pickle; they want to know if it has the label of Crosse & Blackwell, which is an assurance that it is a superior article. The Canadian shipper of superior Canadian product gets a good price in the British market, because of the individual brand that his produce bears when he exports it.
It is said that this arrangement will destroy the market of the Ontario and Quebec horse breeder in the Canadian west. Well, I do not believe that. At present, and may be for a few years to come, the Ontario and Quebec horse breeders will have a market in the Canadian west, but how long will that continue? We know there is no country in the world better adapted for the raising of horses than the prairies of the west, and we know that the farmers there are paying a great deal of attention to the industry, and it will only be a few years when the Canadian west will have horses to sell rather than horses to buy. And then, how important will it be to the horse breeders of Ontario and Quebec, and of Canada generally to have the advantage of the tremendous markets afforded by the large cities of the United States. This arrangement will benefit the raiser of Canadian cattle and Canadian lambs. It will also benefit the man who raises barley in Canada. The hon. member for North Grey (Mr. Middlebro) and the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Lloyd Harris) told us that the Canadian farmer ought not to sell his barley and low grade wheat, but rather feed it to his stock. Well, while these two gentlemen may be good business men and while the one may be a clever manufacturer and the other a clever lawyer, I think it would be better for them not to oblige the Canadian farmer by legislation to do anything he does not wish to do writh the pro-

duce he raiseg. I think we may give the Canadian farmer credit for having enough intelligence to know whether it would be better for him to sell his grain or to feed it.
I would remind these two hon. gentlemen that possibly the Canadian farmer would have enough business ability and intelligence to realize that it is to his profit to sell his barley, and to buy American corn with the money he gets, and feed his animals just as well with the com, and have a good cash balance left in his pockets besides. My hon. friend from Leeds (Mr. Taylor) spoke of the purchase by Canada of United States cheese, and he pointed out that Canada buys cheese from Britain and some of the countries of continental Europe, but the hon. gentleman knows that the cheese bought by Canada is not similar to the cheese that Canada produces.


George Taylor: I do not know anything of the king, and neither do you.


Henry Horton Miller: If my lion.- friend (Mr. Taylor) will go to the dinner table of the House of Commons restaurant and ask for some of the cheese of continental Europe he will learn something that for many years he has neglected to learn. A prominent business man of Brockville told me the other day that a farmer of the county of Leeds came to his office and said: I have been all my life a Conservative, but do you see yonder across the St. Lawrence river the American town of Morristown, from that town runs a cold storage train every day down to New York city and that train carries cheese, and butter, and milk, and cream, fruit, and meat. All the products of my farm would be worth more money to me loaded on that cold storage train (if there were no duty in the way) than they would be in any part of the world. And this farmer said:	Sir
Edmund Walker through his banking institution may take in hundreds of thousands of dollars of the hard earned money of the farmers and other toilers of Canada, and upon one-third of it pay no interest, and on the other two-thirds pay three per cent interest, and he can take that money down to the same city of New York and lend it to United States stock speculators at the rate of 25 cents per annum, so that his banking institution may pay a dividend of 16 per cent per year, and Sir Edmund Walker will still be a loyal Canadian and lecture me upon my lack of loyalty, but if I send a calf across the St. Lawrence river and sell it in Morristown for $6 more than I can get for it in Brockville I am accused of disrupting the British Empire.


George Taylor: Name that gentleman.


Henry Horton Miller: I do not choose to name him.


Henry Horton Miller: 


George Taylor: He is an imaginary man.


Henry Horton Miller: Not at all. I will tell my hon. friend in private who the prominent business man is, and I will tell him further that before he left the office that farmer said:	I will never cast another Tory vote
while I live.
Mr. StANFIELD. What bank in Canada pays 16 per cent?


Henry Horton Miller: That is the story as this man told it to me, but my hon. friend can look at the report of .the bank with which Sir Edmund Walker is connected and he will probably find that if it does not pay 16 per cent it earns 16 per cent. Now, in discussing the fruit question, I shall refer principally to apples, which taking the Po-minion over is the fruit of greatest value and greatest profit. In the Portland ' Oregonian ' of the 4th of February, these figures are given by Mr. E. H. Shepard, a man of experience, the editor of ' Better Fruit ', a paper which is published on the Pacific coast:
A few statistics which are pertinent and to the paint are given below; statistics trem the year 1896 to date, covering the United Stmt as nnnle cron:
Year.
1895		
1896		
1897		
1898		
1899		
1900		
1901		
1902		
1903		
1901	
1905		
1906		
1907		
1908		
1909		
1910	(estimated)
Barrels.
60.540.000
69.070.000
41.556.000
28.570.000
37.560.000
47.960.000
26.970.000
47.652.000
45.000.	000
45.300.000
23.500.000
38.000.	000
29.069.000
25.500.000
25.415.000
23.825.000
Does this look like over-production?
Bear in mind that with the decreasing apple crop, and this decrease is principally in the east and west, there is an increasing population, and President Kerr of the Oregon Agricultural College in an address last year at the Commercial Club in Portland, made the following statement, _ and I am sure I quote him correctly: 'During the last 30 years the consumption of fruit has increased nve times as rapidly as the population of the United States.'
Here we have the population of the United States increasing very rapidly, but notwithstanding, the product of apples in 1896 was 60,000,000 barrels, and in the year 1909 it was only 25,000,000 barrels. In view of this increased population and decreased production of apples surely the people of the United States will consume their own product and buy many many millions of barrels of apples from Canada as well. I have quoted an opinion from British Co-

lumbia, but let me quote an opinion from my own county of Grey, and particularly that part of it represented by my hon. friend from East Grey.


Mr. BURRELL.: Did I understand the hon. gentleman to say he quoted an opinion from British Columbia?


Henry Horton Miller: man who toils and labours in his factory.
If a Canadian farmer once in a while be enabled in this day to ride in his automobile as the Canadian manufacturer frequently and habitually does, why need we all gaze in astonishment as though we were gazing on an eclipse of the sun, and by the way it seems to have come to this that the man in the automobile, the man who dwells in the palatial summer cottage, is arraying himself on one side while the remaining Canadian citizens are arrayed on the other. The hon. member for Ea,st Hastings (Mr. Northrup) objected to this.
I say it is not the government who are making this division, it is the man who rides in the automobile, who dwells in the palatial summer cottage, who by his lack of common sense is creating that division today.
Sir, the member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster)

Some hon. MEMBEES. Oh.


Henry Horton Miller: Then I will delay what I have to say and give my friends time to get their breath, "j say unis is an agreement that can at any time be cancelled. We may try this agreement for one year or for five years, and if it does not work to our satisfaction there is nothing that binds us to continue it. The Canadian government have not signed or sealed any agreement, nor has any member of that government, and that is probably the reason why Mr. Harry Corby who lately was a Conservative member in this House, and is to-day a contributor to the funds of the Conservative party, says that he believes this proposal is a good thing and something that we ought to try.


George Taylor: Have you authority for that?


Mr. LANCASTEE.: Does he know more about the funds of the Conservative paTty than he does about the funds of the Fielding testimonial?


Henry Horton Miller: I have stated what I believe to be the truth, and the hon. members have not denied it. This is also perhaps why Mr. Haultain, leader of the opposition in Saskatchewan, says he agrees that this agreement should be passed and will give it hearty support.


Mr. WILSON (Lennox).: I have reason to believe that Mr. Corby never made that statement. I am told he denied it and if Mr. Northrup was in the House he would say the same thing in stronger language.


Henry Horton Miller: 
Richard Blain: My hon. friend overlooked my question which he promised to ap-swer. He was dealing with the manufacturers of canned fruits.


Henry Horton Miller: I am glad my hon. friend has reminded me of this omission. Weil, I went into the office of one of these manufacturers and he said to me: I have not had the opportunity to study this whole question, but when I heard the opponents of this agreement use the silly loyalty and' annexation cry, I made up my mind that if they had any good argument they could use, they would not resort to any such a silly cry as that.


Mr.  A. S.@: GOODEVE (Kootenay) Ido not propose, Mr. Chairman, to follow my hon. friend from South Grey (Mr. Miller), in all his ^ wanderings. My hon. friend told the House that on this side they were all sheep, and in so doing he reminded one of that famous text about the sheep that had gone astray. Nor do I think it necessary that I should follow him throughout his arguments because if they are all based on the same foundations as two or three statements he made in the course of his speech, referring to the Canadian Pacific Railway stock, he said it has gone up $25 peir share from the beginning of this discussion to the present, they are built on false foundations. Well, as a matter of actual fact, the price on January 26 was 209 and on March 8 it was 213} and it had touched 214, so that its greatest variation was four points.


Henry Horton Miller: I did not refer to January 26 but to the time when the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Customs went to Washington.


Mr. GOODEVE.: Again my hon. friend said that the banks were paying 16 per cent, but I have not heard of any bank
in Canada paying 16 per cent. He further read from an authority which he said was in British Columbia, but when questioned by my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo (Mr. Burrell), he said it was from Port land, Oregon.


Henry Horton Miller: In fairness to myself I should remind my hon. friend that at the beginning of the quotation from that paper, I said it was from Portland, Oregon. I did inadvertently afterwards say it was from British Columbia, but I did not make any endeavour to deceive anybody.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Well, I have just taken these three instances so that the House will have an idea how much weight it should attach to the argument we have had during the last three hours and a half.
I do not propose either to follow the hon. Minister of Mines (Mr. Templeman) through all the details of his argument. He brought down quite a sheet of recommendations from the various liberal associations in British Columbia regarding this agreement to which we need not attach much weight. One from the Agent Genera) in London of the British Columbia government, Mr. James Turner. The hon. minister quoted from a letter which Mr Turner has written with reference to the effect this proposed pact would have on the fruit industry of British Columbia. I tried to find the newspaper from which my hon. friend quoted but found it removed from the files in the library. But taking the quotation as correct, all I can say is that the comment made by Mr. Turner in London was what one would expect under the circumstances. Mr. Turner was representing British Columbia, and he felt that it would not be fitting for him to state that the fruit industry of that province was not able to compete with that industry in any other part of the globe, so he endeavoured to make the best of the situation. But looking after the files of the standard of empire, I found another opinion of our agent general in London, and this is what he said in effect:
There is not the slightest doubt that the ultimate effect wiill be to divert the great bulk of Canada's food supplies to the United States, and that he believes that the preferential soheme, as outlined by Mr. Chamberlain, is the only possible way to overcome the serious effect of the new agreement on Canadian relations with the mother country.
It is my intention very briefly to discuss what, in my opinion, are some of the reasons which have brought about this ill-considered, unexpected and almost complete reversal of the fiscal policy of Canada, which we have had during the past 45 years. It is true that from time to time there have been requests for readjustment



came to the parting of the ways, and with your permission I would go back and review one or two other incidents in order that you may better understand the attitude of the two' parties. In 1870 when the question of taking British Columbia into the confederation arose in order that we might have this outport on the Pacific which some men to-day are endeavouring to force into a closer relationship with the nation to the souths the same men then said that the cost of securing the trade of British Columbia for Canada would be too great, that the province was not worth it. British Columbia was then separated from the rest of the confederation by at least two thousand miles of unknown territory, then, largely a wilderness. There were a few isolated settlements here and there along the Red river. There was between the east and west the Rocky Mountain range. On the Pacific coast there were a few settlements. One of the conditions under which British Columbia agreed to enter into the confederation was the building of a transcontinental railway. It was absolutely essential, if she was to trade with the rest of Canada, that that undertaking should be completed. When the hon. the Minister of Mines (Mr. Templeman) was speaking the other day, almost his first words were that he remembered the time when there was no trade east and west with the province of British Columbia, but when all the trade-* all the trade,' and he repeated it-was north and south, and he seemed to be proud of it. Well, Sir, there were men in those days as there are men to-day, who were turning away from the promised land, and looking back [DOT] to the flesh pots of Egypt, men who preferred to trade north and south rather than east and west. There were men in those days, on that side of the House, who said the task was too great for the people of Canada to undertake. They said:	Even though we
succeed in this vast undertaking the results will not be worth the while. They said British Columbia was nothing but a sea of mountains.
But, Sir, we are glad to say that the same spirit of Anglo-Saxonism, the same spirit of British statesmanship, that animated the Liberal-Conservative party of that day when they gathered together to bring about confederation, that same spirit animates the Liberal Conservative party to-day. The building of that road was indeed a huge and difficult task. You must remember that not only had we to build the road, but we had first to take population into that wilderness before any natural products could be secured to bring out on the road. But there were men then, as there are now, who were ready to undertake the task; they knew that if they sowed in the evening they Mr. GOODEVE.
would reap a harvest in the morning. But there were other men who said: You have burdened this country with an enormous debt, you are assuming large obligations, but you are not getting the results which you expected. And so we find these same hon. gentlemen to-day, opposite always ready to complain, always ready to find fault. But at the same time we find also the broad-minded men of Canada coming to the fore. Now the time came that one of those crises that come to all nations, came to Canada, as it has come to every nation in the world, when there was a world-wide depression in trade, when we found our farmers working unprofitably early and late, when we found these scattered villages along the frontier of this enormous territory for four thousand miles, when we found many of our mechanics without work. Then the same men who were trying to build up Canada stepped into the breach and they said:	If we are
to become successful in building up a nation we must round out the country, we must build up our industries and our factories; and so they fought the great fight we are fighting to-day, and they adopted the principle of a National Policy. How did they do it? By one or two men in a dogmatic way bringing down a resolution and asking this House to support it, without consulting the people at all? No, but they formulated a National Policy, which was discussed" freely and frankly in the House; it was discussed on every platform in Canada, it was discussed in every news paper in Canada, and finally they issued a manifesto to the people of Canada, relying on their sound sense and good judgment, and the result was that they were returned to power on the great question of a National Policy. Sir, that day there came a change into the affairs of this great Dominion of ours. The small and scattered villages lying along our shores grew from villages into towns, and from towns into cities. Everywhere we saw the smoke and steam of industry and heard the sound of the hammer. We gradually evolved a home market for our people, and those farmers who heretofore had been complaining, and justly so, of lack of a market commenced to ' sell their home products to the artisans, labourers and mechanics in these growing towns. The result is that gradually but steadily they removed the mortgages from their farms and there grew up confidence in the power of the people of Canada. They felt that this was the policy for them, that no longer would they look to the nation of the south, that they were able, as their fathers had been before them, as the great pioneers and colonizers of the world, to build up their own national life and so they continued along that line.
At six o'clock, House took recess.

After Recess.
House resumed at eight o'clock.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Mr. Speaker, when the House rose at six o'clock I had briefly traced the history of this country from tfle date of the union of the scattered provinces under one political constitution. I had mentioned the taking in of the outposts on the Pacific coast and the binding together of these provinces from Nova Scotia to Vancouver by a great transcontinental railway. In each of the three great crises of our history since then there rose up broad-minded Canadians, men who put principles above partyism, men who were prepared to sever their party ties and affiliations in order that they might do what they believed to be in the best interests of true Canadian nationalism. I am glad to learn that at the present hour, when we have arrived at another crisis in our history, there are still great Canadians, men in all walks of life, who are prepared to look on this question from a broad national standpoint, men who are prepared to absolve themselves from their party allegiance to further what they believe to be the welfare of our country. I have said that I would deal with this question from the point of view of the statement made by the President of the United States, and in order that we may understand what President Taft meant by that statement I shall read it, with its context, and I shall also read the opinions of other men who are in a position to speak on this subject. President Taft said:
The identity of interests of two peoples linked together by race, language, political institutions and geographical proximity offers the foundation. The Dominion has greatly prospered; it has an active, aggressive and intelligent people. They are coming to the parting of the ways. They must r-con decide whether they are to regard themselves as isolated permanently from our markets by a perpetual wall or whether we ore to be commercial friends.
In connection with those words of the president in his message, let me read the opinions of others who are in a position to interpret the meaning of these words and the meaning of this reciprocity pact with the United States. Mr. McCall, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, said:
The benefits to us would he enormous, if we could sweep away all tariffs between the two countries. It would have the effect ou our trade of another Louisiana purchase.
Again, in the closing paragraph of his report:
. The Bill takes a long step towards establishing for this continent and North America a policy of unrestricted trade and commerce.
157i
Senator Sherman made use of these words:
Now, Mr. President, taking a broader view of the question, 1 submit if the time has not come when the people of the United States and Canada should take a broader view of their relations to each other than has heretofore seemed practicable.
Since the conquest of Canada by Great Britain in 17113, she has been a concir.eous warning that we cannot he at peace with each other except by political as well as commercial union. Canada should have followed the fortunes of the colonies in cue American revolution. The way to union with Canada is not by hostile legislation, not by acts of retaliation, hut by friendly overtures. This union is one of events that must inevitably come in the future. The true policy of this government then is to tender freedom in trade and intercourse, and to make this tender in such a friendly way that it shall be an overture to the people of Canada to become a part of this nation.
Lord Milner said:
Nothing one says can make things any better. It is idle to shut our eyes to the fact that the proposed treaty, like that already concluded with France, must tend to diminish British preference, and is, to that extent, detrimental to the policy of closer union.
Lord Strathcona, one of Canada's greatest statesmen, made use of these words:
The Canadian ministers allowed themselves to be hypnotized by the brilliance of the American offer and have fallen into a trap. Imperial preference is more urgent than ever.


William Stevens Fielding: Would my hon. friend give me his authority for that quotation?


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: It is a cable in the Canadian press despatch, dated London, February 3.


William Stevens Fielding: I am quite sure Lord Strathcona would not use these words.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Well, there is the press despatch. The Minister of Finance seems to object to my quoting these words, but there are many equally strong and even stronger statements on the subject.


William Stevens Fielding: I was not objecting to my hon. friend reading it; I merely interfered, as I thought, on behalf of Lord Strathcona. who, I think, has been misunderstood. That was my only object.


George Taylor: The sentiment is all right anyway.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: In the * Congressional Record,' one of the senators from Wisconsin is reported to have said:
There is not a citizen of the United States who would raise his voice against the admission of Canada to the Union, ttas biinging about almost the identical conditions to be achieved by this treaty.

Can anything be more emphatic; could anything be stronger as to this man's idea of the meaning of the treaty? I have quoted the remarks qf a western senator, and I now take the following extract from the speech of Mr. Young, of New York, an eastern senator:
Fifty years hence the population of the United States will probably be 200,000,000 and the American people will cross the border in steadily increasing numbers, so that the population of the Dominion is likely to be made up largely of Americans, possibly a majority, and who can tell what may come through the friendly relationship with the mothc :[DOT] country of both the United States and Canada? It seems as though in the course of time-it may be 50 years, it may be 100 years, but ultimately-that the American continent will be one people, living under one flag, and by her influence, bring about amity throughout the world which is the desire of all thinking, God-fearing men.
There is another opinion as to what this reciprocity treaty will lead to. I will now quote a man, who, under the peculiar constitution of the United States, occupies an almost similar position to that of the Premier of Canada. I refer to the Speaker of the new House of Representatives, Mr. Champ Clarke. It is true that Mr. Clarke has been cited before, but we cannot impress on the minds of the people of Canada too often what he says was intended by this reciprocity pact. Mr. Clarke spoke, not in a joking way, I assure you, but as a shrewd, capable, careful legislator, a man who occupies the highest position in the American Congress:
I look forward to the time when the American flag will fly over every square foot of British North America up to the North Pole. The people of Canada are of our blood and our language. If the treaty of 1854 never had been abrogated, our countries would be much further advanced than now towards this end.
In that particular I agree with Mr. Champ Clarke, and you will remember that I have already said that in my opinion the abolition of that treaty was a blessing in disguise and has done much towards the upbuilding of the great country we have to-day. Mr. Martin, of South Dakota, interrupted and said:
Will the gentleman favour the abrogation of our tariff law entirely so far as Canada is concerned, and make free trade on all products?
Mr. Clarke-By taking Canada in to become a part of the United States-Yes.
Then Mr. Norris, of Nebraska, asked:	As
I understand it, the gentleman favours the Bill for at least one reason, that it will have a tendency in the end to bring Canada into the union?
Mr. Clarke replied-Yes, I have no doubt about that.
Now mark, the statement is here made that he favoured the Bill for one reason, Mr. GOODEVE.
and what is the one all-compelling reason that influences this man, who occupies such a high position in the United States, viz., to bring Canada into the American Union? His one all-prevailing reason is that it will have a tendency to, in the end, bring Canada into the American Union. Now, Mr. Chairman, if that should be the result of this treaty, and honestly and sincerely I fear that is its tendency, then I would like to ask every Canadian throughout the Dominion if they are in favour of such a thing? In that connection I would like to cite a statement which has not yet been published, and which should have the greatest possible weight with this government, with the Finance Minister, and with the Minister of Customs. It is the statement of a man who was a Liberal and a free trader, a man who did more than any one man in the great British Empire for the building up of that empire, a man who almost unaided and alone has brought an entire Dominion under the Union Jack. I refer to the late Cecil J. Rhodes, of South Africa. The words of Mr. Rhodes are almost prophetic. When I read them a few months ago I never expected they would apply as they do on the present occasion; I never looked forward to the time, and I hoped I never should see it, when these words would have the bearing on our country's position that this pact gives to them. On the 8th of May, 1891, Mr. Rhodes wrote a letter to Sir John A. Macdonald, and in it he said:
Dear Sir,-I wish to write and congratulate you on winning the elections in Canada. I read your manifesto, and I could understand the issue. If I might express a wish, it would be that we couid meet before stern fate claims us. 1 might write pages, but I feel I know you and your politics as if we had been friends for years.
The whole thing lies in the question:
And note this:
Can we invent some tie with our mother country that will prevent separation? It must he a practical one, for future generations will not be horn in England. The curse is that English politicians cannot see the future. They think they will always be the manufacturing mart of the world, hut do not understand what protection coupled with reciprocal relations means. I have taken the liberty of writing to yon, and if you honour me with an answer I will write again.
Yours,


C. J. RHODES.
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It is a marvellous thing and it appealed to me as a young Canadian. Fancy those prophetic words, and think of a man who has done so much for the empire. He asks! Can we invent some tie with our motheT country that will prevent separation; it must be a practical one. Now take the explanation given by Rhodes himself of what he meant by a practical one. He says

that he is both a free trader and a Liberal and he presses this not only in his words but in the message he gives. He says he is inclosing a cheque for £5,000 to assist the Liberals in the election at that particular time. He says further:
The labour question is an important one, hut deeper than the labour question is that of the market for the products of labour, and as your local productions can only support about six millions of people, the balance depends upon the trade of the world	
If you had had statesmen you would at the present moment be commercially at war with the United States, and would have boycotted their raw products until they came to their senses.
I ask the House, is that not a marvellous prophetic utterance. He says:
If you had had statesmen yon would have boycotted their raw products until they came to their senses, and I say this because I am a free trader.
Later on he says:
I.am horrified by Morley's speech on Egypt
You know what that speech was, Morley was willing to let Egypt go, he was not willing to shoulder the burdens of the empire. And see what this great statesman says:
If you think your party hopeless, keep the money, but give it to some charity you approve ef. It would he an awful thing to give my money to breaking up the empire.
Mr. Chairman, I fear, and I say it in all sincerity, that we have reached that jioint to-night that was certainly the position when the commercial war was brought on in 1891. This letter was written in the fiscal year 1891 and those were the words of this statesman. He made these remarks after discussing 'the whole question, he feared it might mean the breaking up of the empire and he said: It would be an awful thing if I should be a party to the breaking up of the empire.
I appeal to yon and to every member of this House having the interest of Canada at heart, looking back at her history for the last 150 years, realizing the difficulties we have come through, that we should he careful before casting our vote on a question of this nature. Who of us has not -stood on the ocean shore? We have watched the waves as they come and go, coming in nearer, nearer and again receding and it has been difficult for us to say at times whether the water was rising or receding. Thus it has been with the history of Canada. There have been times in the history of Canada wheq the tide of trade, the tide of commerce and the tide of prosperity has risen and come near, and again there have -been times of trade depression when the tide seemed to recede, and finally,
like these waves of the ocean, have come in those mighty waves of prosperity until we of all nations of the world have been prosperous. Our banks, our saving banks, our trade, our commerce, our workmen, out artisans, everybody has been successful and prosperous and just when this tide of prosperity is at its very height, like a bolt from the blue, without mandate, without consultation with the people, without consideration of the requirements of .this country of ours, without asking or seeking that they might be guided in this great undertaking, in the reversal of this policy, they have cast this holt, upseting, endangering and interfering unless we check it now, retarding the wonderful development that we have made up to the present time.
I have endeavoured very broadly to lay down the foundations from which we are to discuss this question, and I would like to discuss one or two _ of its economic phases'. Before I do so, will you permit me to puncture three or four of the free trade air bubbles of my hon. friend from Red Deer? The first argument he advanced will he found at page 4239 of 'Hansard.' When he was describing the wonderful prosperity and progress of the manufacturers of Great Britain, he took as his best illustration of that progress the great manufacturing establishment of Lever Brothers, the head of the Sunlight Soap works. He said they had built up such a great industry in this line that it was one of the largest in the world, and he attributed that result to free trade; but he ended by saying that they had branch factories in the "United States, in Germany, in France, in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Australia and in Canada. Did the hon. member stop to say why they have factories in all these highly protected countries? Would they have built a branch factory in Canada had it not been for the duty and the protective tariff on soaps in this country? That little factory here in Canada to distribute this great product employs several hundred hands, who in turn make a home market for the very agriculturists to whom my friends were referring. We have the home market of the masons, the bricklayers, the carpenters, who erected these buildings. We have the home market of the mechanics, who built and installed the machinery in that factory. Carried to its logical conclusion, all of that trade, all of that home market would be still in Great Britain had it not been for the protective policy adopted in Canada in 1878. What would we have had? The farmers for whom he was speaking, would have simply had the price of their wheat less the_.cost of carrying in competition with the surplus wheat of the entire world and the British
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workmen would have formed the home market for the products of the British agriculturists and thus we break the first free trade bubble of my hon. friend.
I now come to the second argument. He referred to intensive farming. He referred many times according to the habit of hon. gentlemen opposite, to the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster). I find, however, that they invariably - fail to answer the arguments advanced by that hon. gentleman, and it was so in this case.
Here is what he says at page 4240 of ' Hansard: '
Intensive farming was subject which I had hardly expected to hear my hon. friend from North Toronto growing eloquent upon. He did, however, seem to hint that intensive farming would be hurt by this reciprocity arrangement. He did not give any facts to support that idea.
Then he goes on to quote Cobden as usual, and he ends iip as follows:
In free trade Britain to-day-if I am wrong, the Minister of Agriculture will correct me -33 bushels of wheat to the acre are grown on the average; in protected America the average is 14 bushels to the acre, and in Canada, with our virgin soil, it is only 17 bushels. What is the matter. I ask my protectionist friends, with little Britain as a country where intensive farming is carried on under free trade?
And my hon. friends opposite actually cheered him. I would ask any man is there absolutely .any argument in all this, anything but a mere statement of fact, a mere statement of the fact that in Dakota they raise 14 bushels of wheat to the acre, and in our Canadian Northwest 17 bushels to the acre' while in Great Britain they raise 33 bushels per acre? But let me give the argument which my hon. friend failed to make. If there be any logical deduction to be made from these facts it is this. It is that the Dakota farmer has robbed his soil of its fertility and destroyed its value and that the Canadian farmer in our Northwest is rapidly following in his footsteps, whereas the farmers of Great Britain, by keeping their by-products at home and feeding them to their stock, have enriched and increased a hundred-fold the value of their land. That was the argument made by my hon. friend from North Toronto (Mr. Foster), and that is the argument which my free trade friend (Mr. Clarke) failed to see. And so I have pricked another of these airy bubbles.
But a little later at page 4246 of ' Hansard ' my hon. friend said:
This empire has grown up on the basis of absolute freedom of its component parts. Would you have us repeat the experiment that Great Britain tried with her American colonies and which lost them to the empire? Was it not this very mistake of mixing up Mr. GOODEVE.
trade relations with politics? Was it not that which led George Washington
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My hon. friend is fond of quoting Cobden and these other men who are long past and gone.
*-to advise his countrymen so earnestly not to become entangled with the politics of foreign nations? Now, the rule in Britain is to make her own tariffs, and what is good for Britain is good enough for Canada.
And again we heard the cheers of my hon. friends opposite. Why, if there is anything in it, that is the very argument we have been endeavouring to put forth on this side of the House ever since the day this proposed treaty was brought down. We have been urging that we should make our own tariff, free from the politics of the United States, free from their influence, and free from any complications with that country which must eventually lead to trouble and disorder.	.
Again we break the third bubble of my hon. friend the free trader.
As a fourth argument he said:
What are tbe facts? Mr. Cobden, in a speech which he delivered after the repeal of the corn laws, drew attention to the fact that the most notable thing after the repeal of tho-e laws was the improvement of agriculture in Great Britain.
Well, it is one thing to make an assertion and another to prove it. Let us see if there was any improvement in agriculture in Great Britain. I have here extracts from an expert report on the agricultural conditions in Great Britain. They are in newspaper form and not tabulated, but I shall give some of the results:
In 1873 Great Britain had 3,670,259 acres under wheat. Whereas in 1908 she had only 1,664,860 acres under wheat. During the same period her acreage under barley has shrunk by 750,119 acres; that under beans has shrunk by 401,203 acres; that under peas has decreased by 156,824 acres; that under potatoes has declined by 264,598 acres; that under turnips has shrunk by 641,850 acres.
During the last fifty years the number of agricultural labourers in the United Kingdom has decreased by more than a million.
Ireland's acreage under wheat has shrunk from 743,871 acres in 1847 to 43,600 acres in 1909. Ireland's agricultural labourers decree sed from 850,100 in 1851 to 212,200 in 1901.
The agricultural area of Germany is only about one-third larger than is the agriculture area of the United Kingdom. Yet for every single sack of bread corn, produced in Great Britain, Germany produces ten sacks for every ton of potatoes produced in Great Britain, Germany raises seven tons; for every pig raised in Great Britain Germany raises six pigs. Free trade has ruined the agriculture of Great Britain and especially that of Ireland.
Free Trade Accused.
Since the introduction of free trade, about twelve million British people, a population

larger than that of Scotland, Ireland and Wales combined, have left the United Kingdom. Tho population of Ireland, which came to almost nine millions when free trade was introduced in 1846, has declined to about 4,300,009 at the present moment. Many of the British manufacturing industries have experienced a similar decline. Between 1851 and 1904 the workers employed in the British silk industries have decreased from 130,723 to 30,184.
And note this:
On the other hand in the United States, under protection the workers employed in the silk tiade have increased from 1,723 in 1850 t>
79,601 in 1905.
Thus in the United States, under its high protective system which my hon. friend so strongly condemns, the silk industry made marvellous progress. This was a new industry in the United States. Britain had had a long start, Britain had her silk mills well established and was supplying the markets of the world, yet the workers employed in the British silk industries had decreased from 130,000 to 30,000. On the other hand the workers in the silk mills in the United States had increased in numbers from 1,743 in 1850 to 79,601 in 1906. I do not think I need labour that argument any further. These are authentic statistics showing the results of free trade in Great Britain; and as one hon. member on the other side pointed out the other evening, there is probably no country in the world where there are more people living upon charity than in the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland.
I want to' give another evidence to my hon. friend because I want to prove very fully this particular argument I am making:
A Gratifying Comparison.
In ten years from 1898 to 1908, the commerce of Canada has increased 88-14 per cent, and that is a greater increase than any other country in the world with the exception of the Argentine Republic, which shows an increase of 164 per cent. The increase in the commerce of the United States for the same period was 55-19 per cent, while that of Great Britain was 37-81 per cent.
I think that is a conclusive proof that the bubble I have referred to, bubble No. 4, is completely exploded.
He made one other argument, and it also was based on what had been said by my hon. friend from North Toronto. He made quite a pretty figure on the ' preference wax doll.' Well, the hon. member for North Grey (Mr. Middlebro) has so effectually melted this wax doll that therf is not even the smell left-so it is not ne cessary to deal with that argument fur ther. Having dealt with the only pointf he has made, I will now leave him in his lonely furrow, and pass on to the hon
member for Carleton, N.B. (Mr. Carvell). That hon. gentleman went out of his way to scold the banks for paying the farmers only three per cent interest, forgetting that this was brought about by the government he supports reducing the interest paid in the government savings banks on July 1st, 1897, from 34 per cent to 3 per cent. The hon. gentleman (Mr. Carvell) quoted many statistics in regard to his own province. But, when questioned by the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Meighen) he did not seem to be quite sure of what his statistics meant. I would only remark to the hon. member for Carleton that I know of no two things on which so many false doctrines are built up as the misuse of statistics and the misuse of the scriptures. Let me give one illustration. The hon. gentleman took the trade returns in potatoes, which, he said, was one of the important points-and hon. members will recollect that I pointed out that the hon. Minister of Finance had brought back free potatoes for the maritime provinces. And, after quoting certain figures, the hon. member for Carleton said,
' This is a complete history from the Canadian standpoint, of the exportation of potatoes to the United States up to 1910.' Now, I took the trouble to hunt up the figures of the imports of potatoes into Canada from the United States for six of the years covered by the quotation of the hon. member for Carleton. In his discussion of the matter, the hon. gentleman said that there had been only one year during his lifetime when potatoes had been lower in the United States than in the maritime provinces. Now, I have put the figures as given by the hon. member and printed in ' Hansard ' alongside the figures of the Trade and Navigation Returns showing the imports of potatoes for these six years. And I find the remarkable fact that, for four of the years that the hon. gentleman himself selected, we imported more potatoes into the Dominion of Canada than we exported. In other words, we are throwing open the market of Canada to the United States, and no doubt the whole country will realize before they get through with it that this Canadian market in agricultural products has been exposed to competition from every agricultural country in the world. Here are the figures:
	Potatoes	Potatoes
	exported	imported
	to the	from
Year.	United	United
	States.	States.
	Value.	Value.
1905	$ 18,301	$179,8531906	128,363	131,8911907 (9 months only)..	4,250	72.2841908	15.459	203.0181909	251,907	129.0011910	345,903	182yl60
What does this prove? It proves simply the doctrine we laid down in the beginning: that there are bound to be times, along the border of four thousand miles long, when their local fluctuations will cause the advantage to be now on this side and now on that. What, then, is the argument that follows? Why, it is that we must deal with these questions from the broad national standpoint, considering, not local conditions, but the good of Canada as a whole. It is absurd to deal with a question of this nature along narrow lines. The hon. member for Leeds (Mr. Taylor) read to-day in this House a statement which completely refuted the allegations with regard to the prices of butter and other agricultural products. I intend to deal with that more fully a little later on. In dealing with this question of the importation into Canada of agricultural products from the United States, I would like to quote a gentleman who, in 1903, was secretary of the Minnesota branch of the National Reciprocity League. He made an exhaustive study as an expert on behalf of this league, taking evidence on the whole question. Let me give some of the facts he gathered:
Our farmers should understand that in opening; up our markets to Canada's natural products, we are also getting a big markot there for our natural products. We hear very much about how the agreement is inimical to the interests of the barley raisers, but our attention has not been called to the fact that last year we exported 164,000 bushels of barley to Canada and paid thereon a duty of 15 cents a bushel. Canada removes this duty under agreement. Last year our farmers shipped 7,680 tons of hay to Canada
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This is the very argument the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller) was trying to make this afternoon, and here is the expert answer:
-and somebody paid a duty of $15,360 on that hay. Last year Canada bought 215,000 bushels of potatoes from us, and a duty of $13,000 was paid thereon. Of other fresh vegetables, Canada bought from us last year $652,000 worth, and had to pay on them tariff taxes of $195,000. Of apples alone
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This is another argument of my hon. friend from Carleton, N.B.:
-Canada bought last year from us 59,071 barrels, and the duty thereon was $24,000.
These apples will come in absolutely free under this arrangement, and then where will this market be to which my hon. friend refers?
Canada bought from us last year several thousand head of cattle, 121,000 horses, 104,000 sheep and 24,000 other live animals', and a vast quantity of poultry, the total duties levied on which amounted to $175,000. All of these now go on the free list, and the Canadian market for them is to be as nn-Mr. GOODEVE.
trammelled as the market in any part of the United States.
While meats are not placed on the free list, the reductions offered by Canada are so sweeping that there must inevitably be an immense increase in our exports of such products to Canada,
Then he goes on giving statistics. We have had so many statistics read in this House that I dislike to weary the House by reading any more; yet it is necessary to do so in order to make clear our arguments. He says:	'
What this means to our market for meats can be inferred from the fact that last year the imports of these articles from the United States into Canada wore so enormous that the total duty collected by the Canadian government amounted to more than $600,000. The amount of the duty Canada remits on these products-based on last year's figures-will be almost $400,000. Last year Canada imported 750,000 dozen eggs from the United States, and paid a duty of $23,000 thereon. Eggs go on the free list now.
So I could go on all through the list of agricultural imports into Canada. Thus we see how strongly this arrangement is going to work against the interests of the agricultural classes of Canada. Now let me for a moment refer to the trip west of the right hon. the leader of the government. He spoke at Nelson, British Columbia, in the district of Kootenay, my constituency, and was reported in the Daily ' News '. Speaking of myself he said:	' He is a
Tory, that is all the reproach I have to make against him, but it is a very serious reproach Well, I am glad I do not look upon it as such. He went on to say:
May I be pardoned if I go one step farther and say that in other respects the people of this section of British Columbia did not consult their best interests. Why how old is this city? Ten, fifteen years at most. This town ®>wes its existence largely and its prosperity certainly to the policy of the government, which by the grace of God and the will of the Canadian people has been at the head of affairs for the last fourteen years at Ottawa. How so? Well sir, three things have characterized the policy of this government. Transportation, immigration and their fiscal policy. In all these things I claim that the policy of the government has largely contributed, not only to the existence but still more to the prosperity of this city and all the cities of the Kootenay valley.
Here the leader of the government makes the claim of building up all the cities of the province of British Columbia. He also claims credit for his fiscal polity. Now, I want to show the right hon. gentleman what the people of Nelson think of this marvellous fiscal policy of his, which he claims has built up the entire province of British Columbia. The night this treaty was announced by the press despatches, the people of Nelson, not waiting to write, realiz-

ing the gravity of the situation as it would affect that district, immediately called a meeting of all classes of the community, regardless of politics. The fruit growers of that district met and passed this resolution, which they sent by telegram:
A meeting of fruit growers this district here to-day, following resolution unanimously passed: Whereas the fruit growers of the Kootenay have invested heavily in developing orchards, relying upon the government of Canada to maintain existing tariff conditions as affecting their products, or in case of any modification affecting fruit to benefit to an equal rate by modification of the tariff on other articles affecting the cost of production of fruit; and, whereas the cost of production in this district is increased by the fact that labour and all supplies are higher by reason of a generally productive tariff and of the distance from eastern Canadian manufacturing centres than it would otherwise be; and, whereas, the industry being as yet in the early stages of development in this district, the costs are higher than in the older established districts in Washington and Oregon, from where the fruit comes into competition with ours, while there is nothing in the proposed reciprocal arrangement to reduce the cost of production; and, whereas, the proposed reciprocity arrangement with tile United States would remove the protection which we now enjoy and would doubtless lower the net profit (taking as an instance on our apples by the amount of the present duty, viz., 13 cents per box); and, whereas, our orchards have been planted with varieties more suitable to the Canadian markets, which are our best market, under our tariff system, and it would be impossible for us to take advantage of the market for special varieties of fruit in the eastern cities of the United States which would be opened to ns by the reciprocity arrangement, without in most cases sacrificing existing orchards and developing new ones; and, whereas, we do wot consider it wise or safe to develop orchards requiring years of labour and large expenditure, depending upon a condition which might be terminated at any time by a foreign power; and, whereas
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Now note this, because I consider it is an absolutely proper and common sense way of looking at the question. This is not a pro forma resolution passed to bolster up the government, it is a declaration of men whose very bread and butter are at stake. And what do they say:
-there is no compensating benefit to ns in the proposed reciprocity arrangement, and the result will be injurious and unjust to us; therefore, be it resolved that we, the fruit growers of the Kootenay in mass meeting assembled, do protest against the proposed reciprocity arrangement as regards fruit being put into force, and do respectfully request the government of Canada not to make such reciprocal arrangements regarding fruit at this time.
Have wired this to Minister of Customs, kindly hand on our behalf copies to Finance Minister, Senators Templeman and Bcrstock and Burrell; other resolutions by mail.
I immediately had copies of this resolution made and forwarded to the parties mentioned, from whom 1 received replies saying they had received it. Now, Sir, look for a moment at this remarkable situation. These men, whose means of livelihood were absolutely threatened, wired down to their representative, as they had a just right to do, asking me to endeavour to protect their interests. And what was the result? Why, if I am to take the answer of the leader of the government to the fruit growers of Niagara district; 'It is too late'. Did you ever hear of such a thing, Mr. Chairman, at any time of your life? I ask you if that is a constitutional method of procedure? No one can be heard. Who are the people of this country? They are not the government. As I said before, the government stands for the whole people, it means the people in this democratic country of ours, and- no two men. and no set of men, have any right to put the country into this position. Having forwarded their message to the gentlemen they mentioned, I was forced to write back to them: ' I am utterly helpless in the situation '. I appeal to you, I appeal to any one in this House, if that is a democratic form of government. Now we have two additional resolutions which were forwarded to me by mail, and here is one:
Moved by N. Wolverton, seconded by C. F. McHardy,		
Whereas various fruit pests exist m the United States of which we are fortunately free, and,	.
Whereas the diseased and hence inferior fruit from the United States is our worst competitor,
Therefore he it resolved that this assembly of fruit growers of the Kootenays earnestly petition for such a rigid inspection of imported fruit as exclude all defective fruit.
Now let me explain that to the Minister of Finance who negotiated this treaty. We have in the province of British Columbia fruit inspectors on whom we spend large sums of money annually. I have seen in my own town, box after box of apples that came from Washington and Oregon, burnt by the fruit inspector because of their diseased condition. This is what makes every British Columbian proud of the fruit industry of that province, the superior quality of our fruit to that grown south of the line. I myself have walked, ridden and driven hundreds of miles through the beautiful valleys in the very district here referred to. The Prime Minister himself went through that region, and in beautiful language described its beauties and wonders. Yet he comes down here, and with one fell blow is about to destroy the livelihood of those people.
What is the position? I have gone there and I have driven through those remarkable orchards. One thing that strikes a man from the older settled parts of Can-
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ada or the United States is the absolute freedom from disease of our fruit there. It is marvellous to see the thin skin of the fruit. Any man who has been accustomed to the older orchards will be immediately struck with the marvellous freedom from disease of any kind when he sees the pear, plum or apple trees there. The skin of the peaches is absolutely transparent, the fruit is perfect to look upon, and yet I regret to think that fruit is to be allowed to go and come by the removal of this tariff. I see my friends smiling. Of course, we can continue to have our inspectors there and we shall continue to have them, but I say that it is the part of this Dominion government to assist us with regard to that question. Now, Sir, I would like to read another resolution passed by a board of trade-a public, non-political body -with regard to the efiect of this treaty. In passing, let me say that it is a remarkable thing that the Minister of Inland Revenue, in reading those resolutions in favour of this proposal, which he had to admit, in answer to a question from this side of the House, were all from Liberal associations, failed to read this resolution. We have been inquiring day after day and the government are failing to bring down information with regard to the other side of the question.
William Stevens Fielding: Has not the information that my hon. friend quoted been brought down? The papers which he states he has, have been brought down.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: I have not seen them yet, but this resolution was not quoted by the Minister of Inland Revenue.


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend says information has not been brought down. He was good enough to send me a resolution received from his constituents and if that is not in the return before the House, and if he does find it is not there, then it is a mistake, and I will see that it is corrected.


Mn GOODEVE.: Then, I will gladly apologize to the Minister of Finance, because I wish to make no unfair statements My hon. friend from New Westminster (Mr. Taylor) informs me that the resolution was brought down two days ago, although it was received over a month ago. Now, I will read the resolution of the Nelson Board of Trade:
Moved by F. A. Starkey, seconded by W. B. Farris, that in the opinion of this meeting the proposed reciprocal tariff between Canada and the United States is one of the most important questions that has come before the people of Canada, and in view of the fact that British Columbia has the prospects of great future industries in fruit-growing, min-Mr. GOODEVE
ing and lumbering and that sufficient time has not been given the people of this province to carefully consider all phases of this great question and they are not in a position to know what effect such a tariff would have on the industries of British Columbia, therefore, the government should give further time to the consideration of this question, and that a special investigation should be made as to the effect that this tariff, if passed, will have upon the future development of British Columbia. Carried.
I would like to know how hon. gentlemen feel with regard to the resolution they voted down yesterday in which wre asked, in the very language of this resolution, for more time to consider the question. I have anotheT resolution which was wired to me by the Creston Board of Trade. Creston, in my opinion, is quite equal to the celebrated Okanagan Valley. It is at the head of Kootenay lake and they have made a wonderful success of the cultivation of fruit at that place. I know in one instance personal to myself, of a man who squatted there without a dollar and who took off, in 1908, $1,275 per acre in strawberries and, in 1909, $1,400 per acre. I think this is one of the best parts of British Columbia. Here is a resolution from their Board of Trade:
Creston, B.C., Feb. 2, 1911.
A. S. Goodeve, M.P., Ottawa,-Following resolution passed by this Board. Kindly pass on to Messi's. Burrell and Bostock: Whereas proposed reciprocity agreement introduced by Sfi. Fielding will inflict severe blow to fruit and lumbering interests of province without giving any equivalent, and whereas the fruit industry is in its infancy and requires fostering, and whereas fostering these industries of vital importance to welfare province, and whereas proposed agreement would imperil capital investment of those interested in this industry, now be it resolved that this Board strongly condemn proposed agreement as far as applied these industries.


CRESTON BOARD OF TRADE.
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I have here a personal letter from a fruit grower, Michael Phillips. He sends me a long letter in which he sets forth similar reasons why this proposal should not be adopted. I have also a resolution from the Victoria Incorporated Co-operative Fruit Growers' Association, Limited, which reads as follows:
That we, the directors of the Victoria Incorporated Co-operative Fruit Growers Association, Limited, hereby view with alarm the contemplated removal of the duty on American fruits, as explained in the daily press, under the proposed reciprocity agreement between the Canadian and American governments, and believe that such abolition of the tariff on fruits will greatly retard and depreciate, if not utterly destroy, the fruitgrowing industry in British Columbia.
I have a similar resolution from the Central Farmers' Institute, a public non-political body representing the whole province,

the resolution having been sent here by the deputy minister of the province. It is as follows:
Resolved, that the Central Farmers' Institute views with- alarm a movement recently advanced by the grain growers of the prairies for reciprocity in natural products with the United States, as such an adjustment of the tariff would be of material disadvantage to the horticultural industry of this province, and this meeting is strongly of the opinion that not only should no reduction of duty on fruit be permitted by the Dominion government, but that immediate steps should be taken to place our duty on a parity with that of the United States, wihiioh in several instances is considerably higher on various kinds of fruit than ours.
Further resolved, that a copy of this resolution he sent to the Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the lion. Minister of Customs, the hon. Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. R. L. Borden, and the several representatives of British Columbia and constituencies in the Dominion House of Commons and members of the Senate from this province. Carried.
I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant,
W-M. E. SCOTT, Deputy Minister.
I have also a resolution which I think has already been put in by my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo, from Nanaimo. Now then, I just wish to say a word or two, because this aspect of the question has been fully and fairly dealt with by my hon. friend from Yale-Cariboo. The right hon. leader of the government took credit for building up and developing this particular district; yet, by the carrying on of this pact they will retard to a very great extent its further development. I do not wish to be placed on record as saying that we will be utterly ruined, because I believe that the free spirit of these western Anglo-Saxon people will rise above every difficulty and obstruction, but I do claim that the Dominion government should not do anything that will retard in the slightest degree the development of this great industry in that district.
That particular district needs special nursing, for the reason that these are small valleys scattered along a series of very beautiful lakes, and there being the difficulty of getting a very large acreage in one district the transportation problem becomes acute. There is also the fact to be found in all new countries that it is difficult for the people to get together to find a particular kind of fruit that is best located for a particular district, and along that line the provincial government is spending a large sum of money. They have established numerous experimental stations which become necessary because the conditions of soil and climate vary "very materially within a short distance owing to air currents and the influence of
the varying altitudes. All these are difficulties which icall for special sympathy, special aid, and special assistance but instead of rendering us that sympathy we have received no consideration from this government. I shall not labour that argument because it is very ably presented to the House by my colleague (Mr. Burrell), and I shall briefly sum up the reasons against this arrangement, taking as my basis the many resolutions that have been received, which on examination will be found to be not exaggerated in any way.
This arrangement will be most detrimental to the agricultural Interests of our province, and will be a disastrous blow to the fruit growing industry if carried into effect.
1. The result of prices obtained by fruit growers for the past four year's crop has shown very small profit over the cost of production, owning to keen competition from the American States. 2. Western American growers can secure their labour for orchard work fully 25 to 30 per cent cheaper. The cost of material, fruit boxes, wrapping paper, &c., is quite 25 per cent cheaper in the American States. 3. The cost of production of a box of apples to the grower in the foregoing States is approximately 40 cents. It costs the British Columbia grower, owing to the causes advanced, from 60 to 65 cents. 4. The present duty on a box of apples is 13 cents. It will thus be seen that the duty as now imposed is not nearly sufficient to compensate for the cheaper labour and material which the Americans have. 5. By the removal of duty imposed on American fruit entering Canada under present conditions, the American States will be able to undersell British Columbia in the markets of the middle west, as also in the home market. 6. Large sums of money have been invested by land and irrigation companies and private individuals in developing the fruit industry of the province, and their interests should be protected. 7. The provincial government has spent a considerable amount of money in recent years in ' advertising the fruit growing possibilities of the province, and have thereby attracted men with capital who have planted out lairge areas in fruit. 8. If the proposed tariff agreement becomes effective, a cheek will be put on men with capital coming to our province, thereby materially retarding the exploitation of our agricultural and fruit lands. '9. We have been struggling during the past ten years under somewhat adverse and difficult circumstances to develop our fruit industry, thereby bringing a yearly increasing revenue to the province. Abolition of the duty at present imposed means fiercer competition from the American States and we receive in return absolutely no
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equivalent advantage. 10. The great fruit growing districts of the interior, wheire fruit growing has been made a speciality, will receive a serious setback if the present duties are abolished, and this will result in a lowering of land prices all round. 11. Men who have settled in ouir lands, putting labour and capital into them, and thereby developing our agricultural resources, should be protected. 12. The problem in British Columbia at the present time is that of settling our lands, and thus developing our agricultural and fruit industries. Too much of what should be produced in the province is imported from the United States, and this is increasing each year. Any course of action such as the proposed tariff agreement, which will discourage land settlement, is against the interests of the province, and should be strongly opposed. 13. An agreement which has been advanced by those in favour of a free interchange with the States, is that British Columbia will secure cheaper fruit, and that it will not interfere with provincial grown fruit. This is not correct, as our principal competitors are the States of California, Oregon and Washington, whose fruit comes into the market practically at the same time. As a matter of fact, it comes into the market shortly beforehand, and this consequently lowers the price for British Columbia fruit arriving immediately after. 14. It will divert interprovincial trade between the eastern provinces of Canada and British Columbia to the States, thus sending money to the American side which, as loyal Canadians, we would wish to see stay in our great Dominion. 15. It will materially affect traffic on our own transcontinental lines, by diverting a portion of such traffic to foreign railways. 16. It will be a setback to imperial preference, and federation of the empire which we all, as component parts of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, look forward to in the near future. 17. It is altogether a one-sided arrangement. Wre gain practically nothing, and lose much. 18. Let well alone. Our Dominion, and British Columbia in particular are entering on an area of unprecedented prosperity. Capital to develop our great natural resources is pouring into the country. The tide of immigration has set our way, and under existing conditions our future is assured.
The following figures furnished by the Inspector of Fruit Pests regarding imports into the city of Vancouver, are interesting. There were 79,388 boxes of apples imported; 14,367 of pears; 14,186 of plums; 655 boxes of prunes; 64,702 boxes of peaches; 12,699 of apricots; 473 boxes of crabapples; 25 boxes of quinces, and 11 of nectarines. These amounts would represent 206 full carloads of fruit of ten tons each. When you con-Mr. GOODEVE.
sider the other cities of the coast, and the interior, one realizes what a very large amount of fruit crosses the American side into our local markets. The present proportion of fruit marketed by British Columbia in the middle west does not reach 25 per cent of the total amount sold there.
Now, just a citation from the budget speech of the Minister of Finance of the province of British Columbia which was submitted to the legislature a few days ago. It will be interesting to every member of this House, as it is to every Canadian who is interested in the. development of our western provinces. It is rather a remarkable statement. I may say that the Minister of Finance in introducing this subject gave the source from which he took his figures and like our own Minister of Finance he explained that it was difficult to get statistics of that nature bearing on agricultural products, but he took his information from the railroads and the express companies, and he had his figures rechecked, and he says he thinks he can safely say that they are at least approximately accurate. The provincial Minister of Finance finds that for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1910, British Columbia produced $14,399,000 worth of agricultural products and there were imported into that province $14,962,904 worth of the same products. It will be noted that the province imported approximately the same amount as she produced. Now I appeal to every member of this House, and particularly to the members from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We have here an interprovincial trade with British Columbia of over $14,000,000 consisting of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, poultry, butter, cheese, milk, bacon, meat, lard, pork, fruits, vegetables, eggs, honey, hay and grain; all of which can be raised in the -western prairie provinces, and can be exchanged for the fruit of the province of British. Columbia, because as we know the prairie provinces do not produce fruit. And yet at one stroke this interprovincial trade will be very materially injured if not practically ruined, temporarily at any rate. So much for the local side of that question.	_
Thus far I have been dealing rather with the sins of commission of this government, and if they have done many things that they ought not to have done I may say that they have also left undone many things that they ought to have done. When the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Customs were down at Washington, did it not occur to them that there was something else they might have offered from the province of British Columbia in exchange for this free fish instead of our fruit industry? It did not occur to them that last year, in this House, we very properly voted $50,000 for experimental purposes to discover a way of treating the zinc ores of that province. Did they not realize, be-
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cause they have the statistics, or could get them from the Minister of Mines, of the enormous value of those zinc ores in British Columbia, what it would mean to the Dominion of Canada if we had a successful treatment of those ores? They must have known, or should have known, before going into a question of this kind, of. what immense value that would have been to this great district, with its newly developed, complex, mixed lead and zinc ores. Yet I find no reference in this treaty to these ores. Under the Dingley tariff ore was admitted free to the United States, but under the Payne-Aldrich treaty of 1909 the duty on mixed zinc and lead ores carrying over 25 per cent of zinc was one cent per pound on the zinc contained in the ore. There were certain reductions from this on ores carrying less than 25 per cent of zinc. As a matter of fact, the class of ores we have in that province are such that we could not export any that did not carry the amount set forth, so for practical purposes on all we can export the duty will be one cent a pound under the Payne-Aldrich tariff. In consequence of that, we deal only with that duty. The reason given for the imposition of this tax under the Payne-Aldrich tariff was that they were in competition with the zinc ores of Mexico, where they had low-priced coolie labour, and that this was being done on behalf of the American miner. I would call the attention of the minister to the way in which the Americans guard the interests of their miners, their workmen, their artisans and mechanics. The reason advanced did not apply in any particular to the province of British Columbia, because, as I will show you, not only do we pay as high wages as the Americans, but better wages. The British Columbia miner receives 50 cents to a dollar a day more in the zinc districts than the miners receive in the zinc districts of the United States. This refers to New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin. It is to be noted that considerably more than two-thirds of the zinc in the United States comes from New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin, and in none of these states are the wages paid as high as in British Columbia. The 'Engineering and Mining Journal' of January 11, 1911, page 25, says that the wages of miners in Wisconsin were $2.50 a day, and of muckers $2 a day. The muckers in British Columbia get $3 a day of 8 hours. It is necessary for the Canadian producers to sell their zinc ores in the United States, or ship them to the United States for smelting in bond for sale in Europe: there is no other way in which we can treat one pound of those zinc ores. So they are absolutely lying idle. If the Minister of Customs was in his place I would call his attention to an argument he made in this House, when he said: Do the people of Frontenac county want their iron
ores, forsooth, to remain in the ground, because, possibly, at some future time their great-great-grandchildren might take them out? Let me give him his answer back and ask him: Do the people of British Columbia want their zinc ores to lie idle in the ground, because, possibly, their great-great-grandchildren may take them out? Yet neither hon. minister gave any attention to this great industry. The production of zinc ores in the United States, Mexico and Canada has been as follows:
1906.	1907.	1908.	1909.Tons.	Tons,	Tons.	Tons.United States.. Mexico 	
Brit. Columbia.	905,000 89,000 600	903.000 109.000 1,100	838,000 66,000 6,100	1,000,000 100,000 10,000
We produced these amounts notwithstanding the fact that we have to fight against this duty and to go to foreign zinc smelters to have our ores treated, to send them through in bond, and to pay all expenses and send them to the European market. Did it not occur to either minister that they might fairly and justly ask the United States in adjusting their tariff to remove that duty? The Americans themselves now want it removed, and I feel satisfied that if the ministers had merely suggested it it would have been done at once. The unpopularity of the zinc tariff in the United States is shown by the following comment of the ' Engineering and Mining Journal' of January 7, 1911:
The results of 1910 showed that the tariff on zinc ore has not benefited the miners, the prices of zinc and zinc ore having averaged no higher than formerly, while it harassed the smelters. Thus it has helped nobody and has hurt somebody.
There is this difference in regard to lead. The government of Canada gave a bounty of $5,000,000, and very properly so, as they did in the steel bounties, and if it were not for that bounty, under the conditions we have in the United States, it would be impossible to operate our lead mines. As a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the zinic mines we cannot operate at all for the reasons I have stated. That is one of the sins of omission, and so it is in regard to this whole question. The more we see of it the more we find that they seem to have given it little attention and not to have studied it in all its relations. I would like even now, under the circumstances I have placed before the minister, to see the minister endeavour in some way, without putting it into this compact, if they are bound to force it through, that
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some arrangement is made whereby that duty could be removed from the zinc orej of Canada. The smelters themselves on the other side, as set forth by the ' Mining and Engineering Journal,' are quite prepared to bring their influence to bear in that direction.
A word in regard to lumber. Let me say frankly it is a difficult question to deal with, or to argue about. You see the difficulties here. Our government had already removed the duty on lumber, and the result is that our markets, particularly our western prairie markets, have been flooded with the surplus products of rough lumber of the western United States. I was talking to a lumberman in this House to-day, and any lumberman will tell you that there is invariably a surplus of rough lumber at any mill. It is like the rough meat. The packers will tell you to-day that the reason of the high prise of meats is because they can only sell the choice cuts. It is the same with the lumber industry. The Americans had plenty of rough lumber, which it was often difficult to dispose of, and whenever there was a glut in their own market they dumped it into the prairie provinces of our northwest. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) knows that delegation after delegation of lumbermen brought pressure on the government to have a duty put on, but he said thev could not do it in the interests of the prairie provinces. Well, I am not here to discuss that question, but I am only saying that the supposed advantage given by the Americans in taking the duty off lumber is of no benefit so far as British Columbia is concerned. The Americans always have plenty of rough lumber, and it is impossible to send ours into their market and compete with it.
Mr. SMITH (Nanaimo).: Will my hon. friend tell the House who took the duty off rough lumber?


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: The Conservative gov. ernment took it off in the interests of the prairie provinces when the settlers came into these provinces in the early days. At that time the great spruce areas in that district north of Edmonton had not been opened up; at that time we had not developed the lumber industry in British Columbia to the same extent as to-day. Neither had we the same transportation facilities, and so the Liberal-Conservative . government, as it has always done in dealing with these tariff questions, took off the duty in the interests of the people at large.
Let me now give you an extract from a letter written by Sir William Van Horne. In that letter he quotes what Senator Beveridge said with regard to the point I have made. Sir Wm. Van Horne quotes Senator Beveridge as saying:


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: 
Mr. MARTIN (St. Mary's).: What is the name of that gentleman?


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: I think that is an entirely private matter but the hon. gentleman can take my word. I would be very glad however to give him the name person-nally after the adjournment. I may say, however, that he is a gentleman who I am sure would command the respect and confidence of my hon. friend.
I have here a photograph which I would like the House to see in connection with a letter sent to the Minister of Finance by the Western Canada Bag, Envelope and Box Board Company, to protest against this proposed arrangement. This is a picture of a new building in the process of
erection in the constituency represented by my hon. friend from New Westminster (Mr. Taylor) for making coarse paper, roofing paper, felts, box boards, &c. In their letter they say:
If the reciprocity agreement, so far as it pertains to building paper, roofing paper, sheathing, &c., is adopted as proposed, it will positively kill this industry and prevent the operation of the plant.
Here is a letter which they sent me to show the impossible position in which they will be placed:
I take the liberty of enclosing herewith a copy of letter which we have just forwarded to the right hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier in reference to the removal of the duty on building, roofing and sheathing paper, deadening felt, carpet lining, box board, &c. We are also pleased to enclose herewith a photo taken sometime ago of our plant which is now under course of erection at New Westminster and which we wish again to emphasize we will be unable to operate if the proposed reciprocity agreement is adopted.
A copy of that was sent to the minister, and here is the letter to the Prime Minister himself:
The Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
Premier of Canada,
Ottawa, Ont.
Honourable Sir,-In reference to the communication which we addressed to you under date of February 9, protesting against the removal of the duty on building paper, roofing paper, 6heathing, deadening felt, box board, &e., we wish to say that- the removal of the duty on the above products will have such a vital and disastrous effect upon our industry, that we take the liberty of suggesting, that if in your opinion you deem it advisable, we shall be pleased to come at once to Ottawa in order to present all information direct to you, as to the exact manner in which the proposed treaty will seriously and permanently affect us.
Yours respectfully,
W. C. Bag, Envelope and Box Board Co., Ltd.
(Sgd.) GREELY KOLTS, President.
Now, again, I say I do not wish to reiterate. But isrnot this an awful thing? We in British Columbia have been offering all kinds of inducements to capitalists to establish industries to. work up the millions upon millions of tons of pulpwood that we have in our province. I was myself a member of a Royal Commission to inquire into the handling and conservation of our whole timber resources, and I could occupy this House for hours on that subject alone. We have done everything possible to induce capitalists to establish these industries. We have not only these great supplies of raw material, but we have, as hon. members know, the finest water-poweTS in Canada, and also the coal, and we are there at tidewater. Yet, in the face of these advantages,
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it has been impossible to get men to go in and start these mills. And to-day we are just beginning. The difficulties of the situation have been set forth here to the Minister of Finance. In the United States the mills have a population of five millions of people immediately surrounding the mills, and forming their home market, while in the province of British Columbia, there is a population of only 300,000. And these people whose letter I have quoted say: If necessary, we will come to Ottawa, not to ask favours, but to explain to the minister. And they get the same answer- ' Too late.' I say it is an awful thing! Why did not the government consult the people of this country? Let me bring this case home to people here-and I am not going to labour the argument. Here we areTn the city of Ottawa. Suppose _any newspaper to-morrow were to suggest the taking awav of the pulp paper industries of Hull, the Eddy and the Booth mills, wiping out the opportunities of employment for the people, but leaving the farmers and owners of pulpwood free to send their wood direct to the United States. Now, I ask: Is there a man, woman or child in Ottawa who would vote in support of that proposition. Yet, that is exactly the position in which we stand in British Columbia. We have all the conditions there for the inception of a successful industry, and we have the capital ready to embark on the enterprise. And yet the minister is prepared by this pact to wipe out the factories we see in imagination and even the one already started, "a photograph of which I have shown. I say again, is not that an awful thing? I am amazed that we should hear from the hon. member for South Grey (Mr. Miller), and even from a minister of the Crown, references to the difference between the automobile owner and the labourer. I say that we are all labourers in Canada, and the man who does something to build up the industries of Canada is deserving of the respect of every man-and I venture to say he receives respect from the vast majority of our people. Every true labourer is working for the good of this great Dominion of ours. I say all honour to the men who, starting with onlv their brains and their hands, have succeeded in building up industries here in Canada. If they have got wealth, I say, God speed and prosper them, for they have helped to build up this Dominion. I would be the last man to destroy these industries. I hope that there is no man in Canada whose vision is so limited, whose sight is so obscured that he would vry by any such argument to sow the seeds of dissension amongst our people. Now, I do not know whether I should go on with these matters-


Some hon. MEMBERS: Go on.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: 


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: I would like to deal with several other subjects in the same practical everyday way. I have briefly touched the main points on the lumber and pulp question. I could cover ' Hansard ' with the representations of these industries of our province, but I will pass on to deal with other matters that interest every man in Canada. The other day I read a paragraph in a newspaper giving facts which struck me, as having a vital bearing on this question. They were all the more important because they were given by one who had no thought of the particular question that is now before us. This item told of Mr. W. S. Workman, of the City Line, speaking at Glasgow on cheap sea-carriage, and the probable effect of oil fuel. Evidently, this gentleman is the manager of one of the large steamship lines in Glasgow, and he was dealing with the outlook of ocean transportation, pointing out that when oil fuel comes into use in vessels, the carrying capacity of the vessels will be materially increased. He gave the number of vessels on the stocks in the different shipbuilding yards of the old country that were to be equipped with the means of using oil as fuel, and went on to show how this would reduce the cost of carriage. This newspaper says that Mr. Workman-
-pointed out that soya beans are brought all the way from Manchuria, a distance of 11,000 miles, for 30s. per ton, while the freight on grain from Glasgow to London is from 10s. to 12s. per ton. Oil, again, is carried from New York to Japan, a distance of 14,000 miles, for about 22s. per ton weight. But the thing comes nearer home when butter, meat, and tea are the subject of examination.
Mr. Workman points out that last year no fewer than 36,000,000 pounds of butter came to us from New Zealand at a freight of only id. per pound, and 3,356,000 carcases of lamb at the same rate per pound. While, too, a pound of tea can be posted to any part of the country for 3d., the shipowner brings it all the way from India for id. per pound, and pays Suez Canal dues into the bargain.
He goes on to argue that when the new vessels are put in commission even these low rates of freight will be reduced. What does that mean? The hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Harris) gave the statistics last night, and I do not need to repeat them. All these twelve agricultural countries that are put on the free list by this pact will be in competition with us, not only in the markets of the world, but absolutely in our own markets, right here in Canada. This fact is brought home to us by the information that we get from this absolutely independent and correct source.
Now I want to read a little history of Argentine, and show how that works out. Here is a letter that was handed to me and that illustrates the argument I am making:


Replying to your letter having reference to the importation of chilled meat into Canada under the proposed new reciprocity duty of li cents per pound.	.
We regret very much that we are unahle to give you any figures which would indicate the present price of beef in the Argentine. We hope to be able to do so !n the course of the next few days, when we will write you further.
At the present moment there are 1,500 New Zealand (Canterbury) or Australian lambs on the way to Canada.
1,500 New Zealand lambs on the way to Canada. This is official:
The owners, of course, are figuring on bringing these in paying a 3 cent duty (2 cent preference toVNew Zealand), and selling them in the eastern provinces at just a little better than the price ruling for Canadian lambs. If the duty now 3 cents was reduced to 1} cents it would mean that the Canadian market would have to reduce or decline 1J cents to meet the differential.
Last winter quite a few New Zealand lambs were brought in by the Pacific Coast, and we are informed were sold as far east as Winnipeg.
The lot we have referred to as now on the way to Canada is coming via London, and will arrive at St. John, so that as far as this country is concerned we will be equally affected in the east and in the west by the reduction of this duty. To-day choice young New Zealand mutton, 35-50 pounds, average, are selling in London for about 6 cents, freight and storage f cents, duty 1J cents, proposed, net cost per pound here 7f cents per pound.
Canadian stock of the same class and description is now bringing in from 9 cents to 9J ce*ts in Montreal.
Yet men will stand up in this House and say that it is absurd to talk about the 'competition of Argentine, New Zealand, Denmark, and all these other agricultural countries. I have shown you the actual facts of the present position. Now I want to give you another fact:
Prom the point of view of the manufacturer of meat food products, two facts in connection with the proposed reciprocity movement are not, we think, sufficiently well known.	.	.
There is in Canada a meat inspection law which requires that all meat to be shipped out of the country or to be shipped from one picvince to another shall have passed a post mortem inspection, and shall have been prepared in a proper and sanitary matter. This law co-operates with similar legislation in the United States, and recognizes the inspection certificate of the United States government when attached to the product. This means that American product can come into Canada, into any province, and be reshipped from that province to any other province.
The United States has a similar law, but they do not recognize the inspection certi-cate of the Canadian government, so that while it might seem to an ordinary observer 158
that the Canadian packer would have at his door, under this proposed reciprocity agreement, a very large market on which he could sell some finished product, yet, on examination, this market is found to be absolutely blocked-as small packers in the United States who do not operate under government are few and far between

That is just like the case when they let us have free .fish and put a duty on the cans; it is something similar. Under their law they have a right to keep them in quarantine for thirty days, and you will see what that means:
-while those who do not operate under government inspection could not handle the products of Canadian. packers, because their government will not recognize the certificate of inspection of the Canadian government, and would not allow products so marked to enter the United States inspected packing houses, nor could it be 'shipped from one state to another.
Here I am minded to ask the question, is that reciprocity? I think jot. It is the old jug-handled policy over again, the same old thing I heard of as a boy:
The other point we wish to mention particularly is the stand taken by the Department of Agriculture in regard to the importation of American hogs. The department considers these hogs are not of a sufficiently healthy type to be allowed to come into Canada except after quarantine of sixty days. This would make the import of American hogs impossible-comparatively small packing houses require at least 1,000 per day-to bring in hogs from the United States at the present time would necessitate 60,000 hogs held up in quarantine and a perpetual investment of say $1,000,000 for live stock, which could not bo used for two months from date of purchase. This would be a hardship no packing house could exist under.
Now just another item in regard to butter. I hold in my hand an original telegram absolutely authentic:
Monday, Chicago, March 6,
Lang Racking Co., Mill St., Montreal, ofler 300 tubs or less, June or Sept, storage, creamery 09 pounds ash tubs, medium colour and salt, our score 90 points, 18 cts., Chicago.
P. H. WEAVER & CO.
That butter could be laid down in-Montreal at 184 cents, American butter: I find that the price of a similar quality of butter in Montreal is 24 to 25 cents, and here is-a bona fide offer in the ordinary course of daily business of 300 tubs at a price that would lay it -down at 18J cents. I ask the Canadian farmer what he >
thinks about that kind of reciprocity. Does he consider that his interests have been protected in this matter? Here is another quotation from the New York 'Commercial,' of February 14, 1911:



The total exports of butter from Canada t,o Great Britain in 1909 were 5,353,770 pounds and to the United States 92,468 pounds. The latest available figures for the United States are contained in the census reports for 1900 when New Tort state alone produced upwards of 70,000,000 pounds and the aggregate production of the entire United States was more than a billion pounds.
All this billion pounds of butter comes into competition with the dairy products of the agricultural people of Canada. And here is what they say:
In the year 1909, we imported from Canada less than 100,000 pounds of butter, Canada imported from this country 473,805 pounds. Now when Canada removes her four cents a pound duty upon this product who can measure the amount of butter that this wider market will create for our own farmers? It will be our butter that will be flooding the Canadian market instead of this country being overwhelmed with the Canadian ar-
The egg statistics are equally illuminating, in 1909 Canada's total exports of eggs amounted to about 552,000 dozen, the amount coming to this country being about 52,201 dozen. In tbe same time her imports of eggs aggregated 1,136,120 dozen, so that it appears the country bought twice as much as she exported. The Canadian duty on eggs amounts to three cents a dozen, and with this duty removed the burden is on tbe political farmer to show wby be would not be benefited by this greater market instead of being injured by competition.
And so I could go on all through these statistics. All these favoured nation countries are highly protective, yet we have given the absolute freedom of out market to these twelve countries. No wonder the Finance Minister hesitated to give that information to us.
I think that if I had gone down and made a bargain of that kind I would have been very loath to tell the people about it. It has been said over and over again that Argentina will have no effect on our trade. We have had so many statistics quoted to us that I will not weary you with statistics, but I want to give one or two concise arguments that are based on these statistics and that I know are absolutely correct. I hold in my hand an intensely interesting article that I read several months ago from the ' Journal of the Royal 'Society of Arts, published in London, and dated December 10. When first I read it I had no idea of this treaty coming on. There is an article written for this society by one Campbell J. Ogilvie. It is a most intensely interesting article and covers the whole history of the growth of the agricultural production of Argentina, beginning at the beginning, it is full of illuminating statistics, it contains documents and maps, and it is absolutely accurate. I find that until 1876 Argentina imported wheat for home consumption.


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: Argentina exported wheat and food products to Great Britain in 1908 to the amount of one-quarter of the total food products imported into the United Kingdom. Yet that market is absolutely in competition with this market, as I have shown by the transportation route, by the prices and by l the conditions. Now, let us see what Argentina says. The people there are alive to the situation. This subject is so broad that one could take a single phase of it, occupy this House for several hours, and occupy it well, in placing this argument before it. But here is the summing up. After pointing out that they send 25 per cent of the total food products into the United Kingdom and that the United States sends in 33J per cent, the writer of this article says:
The lesson shown her is one worthy of attention. We see that Argentina supplies England with one-fourth of her imported food, and the United States of America supplies nearly one-third. Therefore, it behooves both England and Argentina to see that America does not so manipulate things that she acquires the control over our meat and food supplies.
If it behooves Argentina and Great Britain to see that America does not acquire control over their meat and food supplies', how much more does it behoove the Dominion of Canada to see that America does not acquire control over that trade? Yet, in that connection, what are the facts? I can prove to you by the documents here that that is the exact position and the effect of this treaty. Let me quote again Sir George Ross in regard to it.
We must not forget that the mere exchange of certain articles may involve a great deal more than appears on the surface. For example, to. abolish the duty on wheat on both sides of the line looks fair, but to accept an ofier of that kind pure and simple would, in my opinion, be a poor bargain for Canada. I believe tbat tbe longer tbe American tariff of 25 cents a bushel on Canadian wheat is maintained the better for us-Canadian wheat has now a distinct place in the British market; if the market of the United States were freely opened it would be impossible to maintain its identity in passing through American elevators, and Canada would be the loser to tbe extent of any reduction in price.
Following up the contention of Sir George Ross, I want to read from an official document the statement of the Hon. Philander C. Knox, who made this bargain with the ministers from Canada. What does he say with regard to that?
In providing for free wheat we also take into account the facilities which the United States possesses for handling a part of tbe surplus of Canadian crop and thus preventing the demoralization of prices which results through the dumping of large quantities upon the European markets, where tbe world's price

is fixed. The free admission of grain from Canada thus meets the present situation,,and provides against future contingencies when the Canadian surplus becomes greater by placing the control in the hands of our own grain-growers.
I especially call your attention to that. Mr. Knox says that
The free admission of grain from Canada provides against future contingencies when the Canadian surplus becomes greater by placing the control in the hands of our own grain growers. They have no cause to fear a demoralizing influx under the conditions which will result from the reciprocity agreement.
He says fairly and unmistakably in that paragraph that the result of this agreement willl be to place control of Canadian grain absolutely in the hands of American elevator companies. To show that that is a fact here is what the * Northwestern Miller' says:
The disposition of Canada's surplus is a question upon the answer to which depends the future, not only of the milling interests of the (American) Northwest, but indeed of the United States. Should this surplus be shipped abroad, it must inevitably mean the destruction of the American export trade, the shifting of the American milling centre, the gradual decline of the American milling interest to a purely domestic basis, and its ultimate retrogression to a comparatively unimportant place in the list of large American industries. . . . The miller who is able to grind this enormous (Canadian) crop will be the miller of the future; and, where he is, there will be the great mills of the world.
I commend that to the grain growers of the Northwest, but I shall prove it by the farmers' delegations themselves' because I want to take their authority. Here is what they say as quoted from the official document :
All we have said in regard to the elevators at Fort William and Port Arthur, applies equally to elevators that must be constructed in the near future at Hudson's bay and particularly at Pacific coast terminals. The reasons are even more urgent in respect to the Pacific coast than have been advanced for acquiring those at Fort William and Port Arthur. The reasonable and logical way for the grain produced in Alberta and even in the western portion of Saskatchewan to find its market is via what has been termed the * western route.' The western development that is bound to take place in British Columbia in the next decade, assures us that a very large portion of the farm products of Alberta will find a market in this province.
Yet, this pact would force British Colum bia to give its $14,500,000 worth of agricul tural products not for the wheat of Alberto but for the wheat of Washington, Oregon and other American states. But they sak more than that. Mr. Richardson, speaking 158*
on behalf of the grain growers, page 25, said:
1 noticed a statement in a newspaper some time ago that it might be good policy to adopt the Minnesota law. Gentlemen, I think our trouble is all from Minnesota. All the wrinkles, all the knowledge gained in 35 or 40 years of elevator terminals there has been brought to Canada and used in Canada. We were doing much better before the Minnesota people came in. Do not let us go there to look for help. Surely, we are able to help ourselves.
So say I. But that is not all.
I think that our No. 2 Northern to-day is equal to Minnesota No. 1 Northern. 1 think that if I were to lay these two grades down before a miller in New York State, he would give ours the preference. Now, we want to keep it that way; we do not want to weaken our grades. I have always said that we have the best climate, the best people, we can raise the best wheat, and we have the best waterways, let us keep on doing. We are a great country, and we can a fiord to buy these terminal elevators.
He is asking for terminal elevators, but I say the whole argument bears out what the Hon. Philander C. Knox says, what Sir William Van Horne, in his letter, says, what Sir George Ross says, what Mr. J. J. Hill says and what I do not hesitate to say. Mr. Hill has demonstrated a fact which I always believed, namely, that it is not the tariff that has made the difference in the prices of grairt products in the west; that it is due to local conditions of transportation and matters of that kind, and he has proved that beyond all question, by the fact that there is a greater difference in the price between the various states of the union, than there is between the prices in western Canada and the prices in the western states. The position is that if we remove this tariff as the agreement proposes, then the American millers will get in our No. 1 hard northern wheat, mix it with the softer, inferior grain, skin it down as the technical term is, and it will go out to the Liverpool market as No. 1, but barely passing that grading, and it will take a reduced price. The very argument that the millers present for government owned elevators, will be absolutely out of the control of Canada, and it will reflect back on the Canadian farmer, and instead of getting a higher orice, he will get a lesser price. There is i blue-book issued by the Dominion government giving the case of the Manitob" "armers and when you look at their case, md look at what the government has *iven them, you will see that the western uen have literally asked for bread and bey have been given a stone. I have here i letter received by the leader of the oppo-

sition which is very apropos of the situation, and which reads:
Montreal, March 2, 1511.
E. L. Borden, M.P.,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, Ont.
Bear Mr. Borden,-If the Hon. Mr. Fisher is correctly quoted in the Ottawa 'Citizen' of the first instant, lie made a statement to the effect that I had succeeded in getting a reso-1 inti on passed by the Montreal Hoard of Trade condemning -the pro-position before the House, but that two weeks later the 'loyal and imperial Board of Trade of Montreal rescinded that resolution, realizing that the Canadian millers would not Ire injured; inasmuch as they realized that the same agreement opened up to them for their flour a market of ninety millions of people.'
This sentiment apparently was cheered in the House.
I seconded the resolution brought before the Board of Trade by the council at the annual meeting on February first last, and this resolution has not been rescinded. It has been presented bo Sir Wilfrid Laurier in ics original form.
I am not aware of any Canadian millers realizing that by the proposed agreement a market of ninety millions of people to the scuibh of us would he opened up for their flour products. The fact stands out preeminently that the Americans, as mentioned in my recent letter which appeared in the press, maintain a duty on Canadian flour entering their market of 50 cents a barrel and 121 cents per hundred pounds on by-products, or $2.50 per bon.
Surely the Hon. Mr. Fisher was aware that in the agreement now before the House there is a prohibitory duty on both flour and by-products entering the United States from the Canadian miller.
Also as reported in last night's 'Star,' the Hon. Mr. Fisher mentioned my name, that I had headed an article which appeared in the press lately, 'Preserve the Integrity of the Empire,' and stated that he would rather substitute the words, 'Preserve my Preserve for the Benefit of Mr. Meighen,' that the free trade policy would interfere with the monopoly enjoyed by the millers in the northwest in purchasing wheat from the farmer.
The millers are purchasing their wheat in the open market in competition with the Wheat buyers of tbe world. There is no monopoly. I deny tbe assertion that the company I represent is in any combination with any other milling company or private individuals for purchasing wheat either high, or low, or uniform. We run our own business quite independently.
Therefore, the Hon. Mr. Fisher has made quite a mistake in stating that I am striving to preserve a monopoly in the northwest in purchasing wheat.
If his theories are correct, that the arrangement now before the House will give the farmer _ a higher price for his wheat, thereby raising the value of farm lands enormously and also enhancing the value of timber lands covered with a crop of puly wood, then I will inform the Hon. Mr. Fisher that my holdings of farm lands west of the Great Lakes and of timber lands covered with a crop of pulp wood east of the lakes, even at Mr. GOODEVE.
their present value without any alleged enhanced value on account of reciprocity or the trade agreement with the United States, are ten times larger than my interests in the milling business of which I am president.
Therefore, according to the^ hon. gentleman's theories, I am working decidedly against my own interests in opposing the agreement.
I take my stand, however, against the present agreement from national and imperial and commercial grounds, entirely apart from prospective values of the properties in which I a.m interested.
Is it asking too much of you to have a member on your side read any portion of this letter in the House when you may think it favourable, and make my denial as public as the remarks of the Hon. Mr. Fisher have been made, as I believe it is not customary for a member of the House to use the name of a private individual as mine has been used by the Hon. Mr. Fisher.
Yours faithfully,


EOBEET MEIGHEN,
[Stage Direction]
President and managing director Lake of the Woods Milling Co., Ltd.
' I have here an official statement containing a message from the president of the United States, entitled, ' Reciprocity with Canada,' transmitting in response to Senate resolution of February 23, 1911, a report from the tariff board relative to various commodities proposed in the Canadian reciprocity measure,' and I shall quote from this, as they bear on my argument, some figures. The prices on February 11, were as follows:
- .	Chicago, 111.	Toronto, Can.	Montreal, Can.$ $	$	$ $No. 1 beef carcass	
9 50	9 50	9 50 10 75No. 2 ii .	. . 8 00 8 50 9 00	9 00 12 00	
6 00	9 00	8 00 8 50Pork	10 00 12 50	10 50	12 00 13 00
On page 112, this report says:
With the increase of population^ dairying is year by year becoming a more important industry in both countries, and in many sections of onr north central states, where beef making or sheep rearing were once in vogue, dairying, with its logical attendant industry of pork making, is rapidly extending. The lack of corn, the existence of a well-established dairy production, and the availability of suitable forage has led to the introduction of another agriculture speciality in which Ontario excels, to wit, the breeding and rearing of bacon pigs as contrasted with the heavy corn-fed lard hog of our middle west.
Coining to the general matter of meat production, we find that Ontario figures more as a breeding ground for animals of the beef and mutton types than as a commercial fac-

tor of special importance in the actual marketing of meat on the hoof.
Here is used the very argument I used the other day at Brockville, that our farmers in Ontario, particularly during the last 25 years, have gradually developed a class of hog which produces the best bacon in the world. It is a hard grain fed hog, and there comes into competition with it the soft corn fed hog pf the United States which is sold at a lower price. Today, in my own town of Rossland, our lumbermen and miners buy the American hog at a cheaper price than they can purchase Canadian raised pork, and that is the situation all over the country and it is stated here officially in this United States report.. One other statement, and I have done with these statistics. This I also know, because several of my friends have been fortunate in making a fortune in dealing along this line.
6. Live Stock.
The accompanying table gives a comparative view of the number in 1909 and the value in 1910 of live stock.
Prices of horses range from $106 to $125 per head in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota the range is from $111 to $126, and in Montana, Idaho and Washington from $80 to $108. In eastern Canada prices of horses range from $107 to $139 per head, while in western Canada the range is from $107 to $156. In the great agricultural states of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa prices range from $120 to $124. In all the Canadian provinces except Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and Nova Scotia the prices are higher than in any of onr states.
Prices of dairy cows range from $33 to $39 a head in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota the range is practically the same. In the western border States of Montana, Idaho and Washington the range is from $41.80 to $46.50. In eastern Canada prices of dairy cows range from $32 to $48 and in western Canada from $39 to $41. The highest Canadian price quoted is $48 in Ontario as against $46.50 in Montana, the highest American price. I
I have endeavoured to make a fair argument, taking all my statistics from official sources. I think J have shown that in every particular this compact, if carried out, will work to the detriment of the agricultural classes of the people of Canada both east and west.
That is undoubtedly the case, and I think I have proved the case. I have proved that it will work very detrimentally to the interests of the mechanics, artisans and labourers in every part of Canada. Over and above all that is the fact that from 1763, from the treaty of Paris, when this country was ceded to Great Britain, we, under the aegis of the mother country, have built up this great empire. We have occupied the whole of the northern half of the northern portion of this continent of America. Under her care and protection, through the assistance of her money, we have developed this country until we have one of the greatest inland carrying waterways in the world to-day. We have three great transcontinental railroads about to be completed; we have, as I pointed out before, a through route between three great continents. Then I ask you, as loyal Canadians, whether you, at one fell stroke, at the dictation of two men, or thirteen men, or any body of men, without consulting the interests of the people of Canada, without hearing their views on the matter, will cast aside those traditions that have made up a great Canadian people, so that the eyes of the nation to the south are turned upon us. the eyes of the whole world are turned upon us, the mother country is looking to this young giant at this time to assist her in building up that great empire to which Cecil Rhodes has referred in such splendid language. I looked to-day for a quotation, which I have mislaid, from one of the great American magazine men, who spoke before the Canadian Club, Mr. S. S. McClure. I wish you would remember those words of patriotism and faith. He says: There has been nothing in the history of the world that has stood for the civilization and advancement of nations in religion, morality and freedom like the great, mighty Union Jack. He, an American citizen, made use of these words. I ask you, then, as members of this House of Commons of Canada, are you going to cast aside all these traditions, are you carelessly and thoughtlessly and without due consideration to lose all the efforts of the last 150 years? ' I think not, I think that to-day, as in the earlier days, in those other three times, when we came to the parting of the ways, in 1867, in 1870, in 1878. if Canada, in 1911, is left to herself the better judgment will prevail and we will stand as we have ever stood for an independent Canadian nation within the British Empire; we will stand to carry out the great destiny that has fallen upon us. Thus we would be doing the duty that those who have gone before have left to us and those that come after will realize that at least this House, this parliament of Canada, has stood for the best interests that go for the making of a nation.
Mr. D. D. McKENZIE (North Cape Breton).: Mr. Chairman, we have listened for quite a long time to the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Goodeve), biit I regret to say that I did not hear anything new during his three-hour speech. He has told us that he did not want to put anything on ' Hansard ' that was there already. Of course, that is a matter of judgment for himself, but I venture to think that he has.

put very little on ' Hansard ' that has not been put on ' Hansard ' quite a number of times already. The hon. member spoke about making arguments and backing them up. The hon. gentleman is a lawyer, and I volunteer if there is any characteristic of a lawyer at all it is that he has a keen sense of what argument is, and I am sorry that the speech of my learned friend was not-


Arthur Samuel Goodeve: My hon. friend the Deputy Speaker knows I am not a lawyer; I am only a plain, ordinary, business man.


William Stevens Fielding: He is not guilty to that extent.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: I am glad he has made that explanation, for I was sorry for the sake of the profession that it would require so many words from a lawyer to put forward the very meagre ideas that were brought forward before this House. There are very few things in my hon. friend's speech that are really of importance and serious. He says that this agreement, if it goes into force, is going to stagger and break up our relations with the mother country. If that is true it is a very serious matter. He makes another charge against the members of this government, who have made the agreement, that they bound us hand and foot to the American government and sacrificed our autonomy, so that we will have no control whatever in future over the making of our own tariffs. That is another very serious charge. He made another statement that this compact was holding a club over the heads of the different provinces of Canada in respect to the question of pulp wood. That is another charge made by the hon. member, which, if true, is very serious. There is nothing better in cases of this kind than to go right to the very source of the matter and find out what is in this agreement to corroborate. or to carry out, or to sustain the statements made by the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Goodeve).
On the question of being tied hand and foot and our autonomy being hampered in any way let us read the fourth paragraph of the agreement as set forth apd signed by the Canadian plenipotentiaries. Will any ordinary man, whether in this House or out of it, say that there is anything in that paragraph to back up the statement made not only by the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Goodeve) but by the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden) and the hon. member for North Toronto (Mr. Foster)?
The only allusion to that phase of the subject is to be found in section 4:
4. The governments of the two countries having made this agreement from the conviction that, if confirmed by the necessary legislative authorities, it will benefit the people on both sides of the border line, we may rea-Mr. McKENZIE.
sonably hope and expect that the arrangement, if so confirmed, will remain in operation for a considerable period. Only this expectation on the part of both governments would justify the time and labour that have been employed in the maturing of the proposed measures. Nevertheless, it is distinctly understood that we do not attempt to bind for the future the action of the TJnited States Congress or the parliament of Canada, but that each of these authorities shall be absolutely free to make any change of tariff policy or of any other matter covered by the present arrangement that may be deemed expedient. We look for the continuance of the arrangement, not because either party is bound to it, but because of our conviction that the more liberal trade policy thus to be established will be viewed by the people of the United States and Canada as one which will strengthen the friendly relations now happily prevailing and promote the commercial interests of both countries.
I ask you what there is in that section to support the very serious charge made against this government by that hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Goodeve). Let us see how that compact is understood by the United States government. Mr. Knox, Secretary of State for the United States, tells us in his letter, and that letter shows that they understand the pact exactly as it is expressed. He says:
Department of State, Washington,
January 21, 1911. The Hon. W. S. Fielding, and The Hon. William Paterson,
Washington.
Gentlemen,-I have the honour to ack-knowledge the receipt of your communication of this Mate in relation to the negotiations initiated by the President several months ago for a reciprocal trade arrangement between the United States and Canada, in which you set forth and ask me to confirm your understanding of the results of our recent conferences in continuation of these negotiations.
I take great pleasure in replying that your statement of the proposed arrangement is entirely in accord with my understanding of it.
There it is set forth clearly and distinctly by our plenipotentiaries that no such binding, no such tying up can possibly be the result of this agreement. The plenipotentiaries of the United States, speaking on their own behalf and on behalf of the President of the United States says he understands the agreement precisely as it is expressed by our plenipotentiaries. There can therefore, be no such binding or trammelling of our rights or interference with our autonomy. I submit, therefore, that the charge made on that point is without foundation so far as the agreement is concerned, and we have nothing else to draw upon but that agreement as submitted to us. A very serious charge was made by the last speaker (Mr. Goodeve), namely, that we were interfering seriously with the autonomy of the provinces and were putting a club in the

hands of the people of the United States by which they might force our provinces into sending pulp wood free of duty into that country. I submit that that charge is just as unfounded as the other. Paragraph 10 of the agreement deals with that point. It is well the people should know exactly what the agreement is and what foundation there is for such serious charges as are made by gentlemen who are opposed to this arrangement
10. With respect to the discussions that have taken place concerning the duties upon the several grades of pulp, printing paper, &c.- mechanically ground wood pulp, chemical wood pulp, bleached and unbleached, news printing paper and other printing paper and board made from wood pulp, of the value not exceeding four cents per pound at the place of shipment-we note that you desire to provide that such articles from Canada shall be made free of duty in the United States only upon certain conditions respecting the shipment of pulp wood from Canada. It is necessary that we should point out that this is a matter in which we are not in a position to make any agreement. The restrictions at present existing in Canada are of a provincial character. They have been adopted by several of the provinces with regard to what are believed to be provincial interests. We have neither the right nor the desire to interfere with the provincial authorities in the free exercise of their constitutional powers in the administration of their public lands. The provisions you are proposing to make respecting the conditions upon which these classes of pulp and paper may be imported into the United States free of duty must necessarily be for the present inoperative. Whether the provincial governments will desire to in any way modify their regulations with a view to securing the free admission of pulp and paper from their provinces into the market of the United States, must bo a question for the provincial authorities to decide. In the meantime, the present duties on pulp and paper imported from the United States into Canada will remain. Whenever pulp and paper of the classes mentioned are admitted into the United States free of duty from all parts of Canada, then similar articles, when imported from the United States, shall be admitted into Canada free of duty. I
I submit that nothing could be plainer or stronger than the statement there made by the Canadian plenipotentiaries. And that statement is that there is no desire to interfere in the slightest degree with the full powers of the provincial authorities to deal with this question. If the provinces, which now have those regulations, wish to continue them, there is nothing to prevent their doing so. And if any other province sees fit to make such regulations, there is nothing in this compact to interfere with that right in the slightest degree. I submit, therefore, that there is not the slightest ground for these two grave charges made by the hon. members opposite in con- nection with this agreement.
A further charge made is that this agreement is going to strike at the loyalty of the Canadian people, that it will switch them off from their attachment to the mother country, and make them Americans. Well, the quotation I am about to make from the report of the British ambassador to Washington will no doubt be accepted by the people of this country, and his opinion is very much stronger than anything I could say. What does Mr. Bryce say on this point. I suppose it would be quite unnecessary to give any certificate of character to this witness, as to the force of his observations or his credibility. But, in case there might be, I will read what was said about him in this House a couple of days ago by no less a personage than the' hon. the leader of the opposition (Mr. R. L. Borden, Halifax). That hon. gentleman said:
The Minister of Marine and Fisheries ha9 stated that some people in this country had apprehensions as to what might be the result when Mr. Bryce was named the British ambassador at Washington. So far as I am concerned, I have heard of none of these apprehensions and know of no one who entertained them, unless it be the Minister of Marine and Fisheries himself. I believe that Mr. Bryce has acted conscientiously and with ability and energy on behalf of the interests of the mother country and of Canada throughout the course of these difficulties at Washington.
That is the man whose evidence I wish to put before the House in connection with the charge of disloyalty to the interests of the Canadian people as alleged in connection with the negotiations of the agreement which is now undeir consideration in this House. This is the despatch:
London, March 8.-Ambassador Bryce's reports to the foreign office on the subject of the United States-Canada reciprocity negotiations were issued in a white paper this evening. The most interesting communication is under date of January 22, the day following the conclusion of the agreement. In this the British diplomat says:
This is the part I particularly wish to bring forward in answer to my hon. friend from Kootenay:
As at present advised, I am disposed to believe that British interests are not to any appreciable extent prejudiced. No opportunity was lost in the course of the negotiations of reminding the Canadian ministers of the regard which it was right and fitting that they should have to the imperial interests. The arrangement still rests in reality on a growing realization of the fact that a high tariff wall between contiguous countries whose products are economically interchangeable is an injury to both and opposed to sound fiscal principles. In so far as the arrangement oversteps this basis it is probably influenced and will at any rate be publicly justified and defended in the United States, by the traditional policy of the United States of pro-

moting close economic relations with the states of the western hemisphere.
That such a policy is not counteracted by and does not check the rapidly growing sense of national consciousness and international importance in the peoples of those states has of late been abundantly proved.
No more in Canada than in the republics of Latin America to which the United States government has sought to extend its panAmerican propaganda, does there seem a likelihood that a freer interchange of commodities will lead to closer relations of a political kind.
That is the opinion expressed by the right hon. gentleman who occupies the very high and honourable position of Ambassador from His Majesty's government in Great Britain to the United States government at Washington. He is responsible for advising his government and his King as to effect this agreement is likely to have upon the attachment of this nation to the Crown. If it has any tendency to break up our loyal connection with the Crown of England, it would be the duty of this man, his special duty, to so report. He .reports to the very contrary. Therefore, I think the people of Canada, and the people of the British Empire generally, will accept the opinion of so notable a representative of the British nation as Mr. Bryce in preference to any opinion that may be expressed by gentlemen in this House who cannot be expected to have such a wide knowledge of the subject in hand as did the gentleman whose business in particular it was to hold close supervision over this question.
I do not propose to follow any further the observations of my hon. friend from Kootenay. As to whether the interchange of products between this country and the United States is a good thing or a bad thing, I am not in a position to say with any authority. I do not profess to be an exnert in questions of trade. But, as an ordinary individual having ordinary knowledge of the commonplace things that govern trade. I should suppose that this arrangement ought to be a good thing. I believe it is a good thing; and for that reason I intend to support the motion before the House. A great deal has been said, and I suppose a great deal more will be said hereafter, to show that the men we sent to Washington were not fully equipped for the very important business thev had in hand. All I have to say is that, if we are to enteT up6n any agreement at all with a foreign country to extend our trade and better our conditions, in this case we did the very best we could In the party to which I belong, I cannot put my hand upon a better enuipped set of men than those we sent to Washington. The Minister of Finance "(Mr. Fielding), has been for thp last thirty years in train-Mr. McKENZIE.	i
ing in this line of work. For the last fourteen years he has held the position of Minister of Finance of the Dominion and for fourteen years before that he was Prime Minister of Nova Scotia, having charge of its finances. Since he took charge of the finances of the Dominion, he has on two occasions carried on inquiry all over the country on fiscal questions including every subject that possibly could come under consideration at Washington. He was assisted by the Minister of Customs (Mr. Paterson), a man of almost the same length of training and of immense experience. And these gentlemen had two experts at their elbows. I submit that the Dominion of Canada was as well represented as we could hope it to be-we had no better men. I feel about sending the Minister of Finance to Washington much as the English people felt when they sent their best man to command in the Boer war. They had sent one general after another into the field, and at last they brought forward the veteran, Lord Roberts. We felt that we were in the last ditch, that we had strained every nerve, and that if Lord Roberts could not do the trick we had no one else to send. That, I believe, is the wav the people of Canada felt about the negotiations at Washington-if the Minister of Finance could not succeed, we had nobody else to send who would better the situation. I am satisfied that the Canadian people, at all events the friends of the government and those who can approach this question without bias, will be satisfied that the very best thing had been done for the Dominion of Canada and that the future operations of this agreement will show that the best agreement of a commercial kind for the Dominion of Canada has been made that ever was entered into between this country and any foreign nation, and that another wreath will be placed upon the head of the Minister of Finance as the man who has ably looked after the affairs of this country and in whom the people of this country have good reason to place implicit confidence.
Now, Sir, I cannot understand why it should be a bad thing for us to make a trade agreement with the United States. It will not be said by any person that we should not trade wherever wre can do so-profitably. It will not be said by any person that when we have seven or eight million people alongside a nation with 90 million we should not trade with them, particularly when it is taken into consideration that we have just as great and just as productive a territory as they have, that our object is to grow and become just as large as they are. It must be admitted that our ambition is to grow, and expand in

every direction. I would like to ask those hon. gentlemen who oppose this agreement and ask us to let well enough alone, how they propose to reach that high state of nationhood which all patriotic Canadians have in view. Therefore, if it is right and proper that we should seek expansion of trade, where can we more reasonably hope to obtain it than with our neighbours alongside of us? I think it will be admitted that the 90 or 100 millions of people in the United States, are good customers. They are men largely of our own blood, speaking our own language, having our own high ideals, and they are prepared to use anything that we can supply to them. I think it is admitted that there is abundance of room in the American market for anything we have to sell. We are a new country, and we are not exporting largely the finer class of manufactured goods, but we are exporting largely the products of the sea, of the farm and of the forest. I think it will be admitted that there is abundant room in the United States for the sale of all these articles. If that be true, and if the American people are. willing to buy and to pay the price we ask, can there be any serious objection to trading with them? I submit there is none.
Now, Sir, another objection that is put forward by the opponents of this agreement is, that it will undermine the loyalty of the Canadian people to the British flag. It would seem that if we can assure our Conservative friends that there is no danger in that direction, they would be quite willing to allow this agreement to go into force. We are already dealing with the United States in exports to the extent of something like $114,000,000 per year. For many years we have been doing a profitable trade with the United States, and as a consequence, I do not think there is the slightest trace of disloyalty in the Canadian people. We are also importing into this country something like $250,000,000 worth of goods, and I submit there is not the slightest trace of disloyalty in the Canadian people in consequence of that trade. Now if we can do this enormous trade that we have done in the past without any harm to our loyalty, is it reasonable to suppose that a still larger trade with our United States neighbours will have any such effect? Who can really argue, that a much large trade with them than we have been doing, will have any effect upon our loyalty to the Crown to which we owe allegiance? I say it is a sad reflection on the Canadian people that any person should talk in that way. Where are our Conservative friends going, to find those disloyal people of whom they talk so much? Are they going to find them in British Columbia? I guess not. The people of British Columbia pride themselves on their English origin and their English ideas. Are they going to find these disloyal people in the province of Alberta? There are no such men in that province. Are they going to find them in Saskatchewan or Manitoba? Certainly not. Are they going to find them in the great and loyal province of Ontario? No one supposes for a moment that there are any in that province. Are they going to find them in Quebec? We never heard of any. The people of Quebec have stood their baptism of fire and showed their loyalty to the British Crown more than once. It is not likely that the sale of an ox, or a cow, or a barrel of potatoes, or a ton of hay, by the people of Quebec to the United States, is going to vary that loyalty which has stood the test for 150 years, and no more strenuous circumstances are likely to arise again. In New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, I am sure the people have ptoven their loyalty and their love for the old flag for nearly 200 years, and they are not going to change now.
Now if these things be so, and we can find no trace, no seed of disloyalty in this Dominion, where is the danger of having the fullest and amplest trade with our neighbours? Is there any danger in giving a man who has wheat to sell an opportunity to sell it in England, to sell it in Canada, or to sell it in the .

United States? Have not our people a right to trade to any extent with any of these countries? Have not the men who raise wheat in the Northwest a right to sell it in Winnipeg, or in Montreal, or across the border, wherever they could get the best price? No one will make the assertion that the Canadian farmer is incapable of competing with the American farmer, or any other man on earth, in the production of grain. He has the capacity to bargain for the sale of it, he has the capacity to arrange for its transportation. If that be the case, if we have the transportation facilities, and if we have the products, why should we not seek a market for them? If the English market is open to us to-day, and if it is the best, surely we have common sense enough to hold it. If we can get more money for our wheat in the Canadian market, surely we can trust the Canadian farmer to sell it in Montreal, Winnipeg or Toronto. If he finds that he can sell his wheat in the United States to better advantage than in the Canadian market, whose business is it to interfere with him? Is it not the duty of this government to place the widest possible market at his disposal? That has been the theory of the Conservative party as well as of the Liberal party for the last forty years, at all events, ever since confederation. There has

been no party in power or in opposition in Canada that has not been favourable to better trade relations with the United States than we could usually have.
There is a great cry that we have no mandate to make this agreement. If this is a good bargain, if it is a good proposition for the Canadian people, if it is a good thing for the farmer, for the lumberman, for the men who have manufactured goods to sell, if it gives the manufactured article any advantage, is the manufacturer or the farmer going to say to the Canadian plenipotentiaries : True, I can sell my wheat, my horses, my sheep, or my goods better, but I do not think I will take advantage of this agreement because you had no mandate from the people when you made it. That would be carrying the matter to an extreme absurdity, and I am reminded of a story of the man who was so extremely strong on the eight-hour law that he allowed himself to drown after he had been eight hours in the water rather than transgress it. He said that he would not break the eight-hour law, but that he would rather die in the water than try to save himself he had struggled for eight hours. That is a very extreme case, but it would appear to me that the farmer, or mechanic, or lumberman who wished to find fault with this agreement by saying that there was no mandate would be in the same class as the extraordinary man who would not save his life, after he had struggled in vain for eight hours.	.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I wish to pay a little further attention to some observations that were made about the prosperous condition of this country, and before I reach that I wish to say something about the province of Nova Scotia, and the coal question. I suppose the coal industry is the largest of any one industry in Canada. The coal industry of Nova Scotia has a capital invested in it of something in the vicinity of $100,000,000, it has 10,000 or 12,000, possibly more, men directly dependent upon it, and for us in Nova Scotia the coal question is a very important one indeed. At the same time, we realize that we are part and parcel of the country, that it takes all kinds of people to make a world, and that all manner of agreements, give and take must be made in order that we shall get along peaceably and harmoniously the one with the other. That being the case, and knowing that there must be revenues raised in this country and that the consumer must also be taken into consideration, the consideration of this question all manner of agreements, give and take, must be made. Speaking as one representing the coal industry of Nova Scotia, while we would like to have seen the duty remain as it was, and while we think it would have been perfectly Mr. McKenzie.
justifiable to let it remain, we are content to take our share of the burden of taxation upon the people, and if eight cents a ton has been taken off that coal we must put up with it, and do the best we can. I think that with the fair start the coal industries have made, with the standing they have attained nQw, and the character of the article that we are producing, we will be able to stand the strain that may be cast upon us by reason of this reduction. However, I notice in a paper published in Sydney that it is cast up to the premier of Nova Scotia, and my hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) that they have never done anything for the coal trade, and that they have always been trying to hurt it. I want to state that in so far as I can learn there is nothing on record in the history of the Conservative party that would indicate or in any way satisfactorily prove that they have ever done anything for the coal industries of Nova Scotia. The coal industries of Nova Scotia have a history, and that history shows that nothing was done for them worthy to be mentioned by the National Policy. Our friends speak of the National Policy as the only thing that they ever produced that is worthy of praise or mention. What is this National Policy? A stranger coming into this country would think that it was some great, herculean act performed by the Conservative party of that day that had brought about the greatest possible amount of prosperity and expansion in this country. What does it amount to? Before the adoption of the National Policy in 1879 we had a tariff of 17i per cent, and the Conservative party raised that to something around 25 per cent. That is all that the National Policy is, nothing else; no great statesmanship about it, no great difficulty about raising a tariff from 17J to 25 per cent, or a little higher, or as high as you like. There is nothing wonderful about it. That is all the National Policy is, and what has it done for the coal industry of Nova Scotia? I am talking here in the presence of members of this House, what I say will go before the coal owners of Nova Scotia and the people I represent. Talking, therefore, in this place and subject to criticism, I submit, Sir, that while the coal industries of Nova Scotia had nothing to go- upon but the National Policy it was simply dragging along, and starving. You will find the Halifax 'Herald ' of September, 1906, reporting that in those days of the National Policy coal was simply capable of giving half time and half pay to its people, and that it was on the ragged edge of poverty. That is the way that paper speaks in an article written by Mr. Milner who professes to be an authority on the coal question. From 1878 to 1893 we had nothing in Nova Scotia, but the National Policy in

so far as the coal industry is concerned. During the whole of that period the highest year's output in the Island of Cape Breton was only 700,000 tons-a very small output and produced by half time and half pay, according to the Halifax ' Herald.' In those days the hon. gentleman who is now the Finance Minister was the Prime Minister of Nova Scotia. He came to the conclusion that something had to be done, and that an improvement ought -to be made in the conditions of affairs in Nova Scotia. He set about bringing American capital into Nova Scotia for the purpose of improving the conditions of the coal trade.
What happened in these days is just what is happening in this House to-day. He was met with the most strenuous opposition from the Conservatives in the local legislature; he was told that what he was doing would reduce the thousands of miners of Nova Scotia to the position of serfs, depriving them of their manhood and liberty; that they would be subject to the combines and riionopolies of the United States; that the Americans were purchasing the Cape Breton mines to close them down and that ruin would follow. Any one who reads the speeches of the then leader of the opposition in the local House, Mr. Cahan, will realize that I am not overdrawing the picture. In the face of all that, the Hon. Mr. Fielding, then Prime Minister of Nova Scotia, went on with the agreement, and as a result $30,000,000 or $40,000,000 of capital was invested in this industry, and where we were then exporting 700,000 tons of coal per annum we are to-day exporting over 5,000,000 tons, and the towns and hamlets which had then a population of two and three thousand are to-day cities of twenty thousand people. Where we then had many disjointed companies with small mines we have to-day this magnificent development of the Dominion Coal Company, and the Dominion Steel Company, and the Tar and Chemical Company, and the cement companies and others, none of which would be in existence were it not for the policy laid down by the Hon. Mr. Fielding, who was then in charge of the destinies of Nova Scotia. At that time, Senator MacKeen, who was then a member of this parliament, and whose Conservatism will not be questioned, because he vacated his seat in this House to make room for Sir Charles Tupper when it was found necessary to bring him back into politics to try and redeem the fortunes of the Conservative party; Senator MacKeen, because of the character of the Tory opposition to this great scheme, found it necessary to write, in the interests of Nova Scotia and of Canada, as follows: I
I believe that legislation by which alone it was possible to bring capital in/bo the country for the development of our coal and iron industries to an extent far beyond the capacity of Great Breton capitalists to invest, is, and must be, for the good of the whole province, and should not be condemned but encouraged by every one having an interest in the prosperity and welfare of our country.
I have no sympathy with parties who, prompted by political passions, deliberately denounce measures which, if successfully carried out, must result in public good; and such a course seems to me to say very little for the intelligence of those persons who pursue it.
They still hold them and with the exception of two small mines which could not be worked to a profit, they are working more vigorously than ever. A company which only purchases indues in order to close them does not commence to build forty miles of rail-read at a cost of upwards of half a million dollars and push the w'ork forward with the utmost despatch. Nor does it entirely rebuild a large shipping pier at a further outlay of nearly $300,000, and this is what the Dominion Coal Company are doing with the railroad from Bridgeport to Lonishurg, and with the old international pier. Surely this alone would by all reasonable men be accepted as a sufficient contradiction to this mean slander.	_
Depend upon it, this company has come to stay, and the above facts should effectually silence those cavillers who for purposes of their own have tried to arouse the fears and stimulate the hostility of the miners of Cape Breton by falsely alleging that the policy of the company would deprive them of employment in the future.
I think those who seek for any reason to stir up opposition to a company which has introduced such an enormous amount of capital into the island, and which is laying itself out to provide employment for a far greater number of miners than are at present employed in the industry, is no friend to the inhabitants of Cape Breton, and fails altogether _ to appreciate the important consequences which I firmly believe will follow the establishment of this concern.
That was the language Senator MacKeen used under conditions which to my mind were very similar to the conditions which exist to-day. We were then in Nova Scotia bringing about a new condition of things, we were getting more capital into the country, and the Conservatives told us as they are telling us to-day: leave well enough alone, what we have we hold, don't do anything for the advancement of this country but just stand where you are. Well, the Liberals went on with their policy in Nova Scotia and development and progress followed, and it was due not to the National Policy but to what is known as the Whitney legislation and the enterprise and foresight of the Minister of Finance, who tonight leads this House. Our Conservative friends have criticised the representatives from Nova Scotia in this House because we are willing to agree to a cut of eight cents a ton on the duty on coal and-they tell us what marvellous things they would do for

us if they had control. There is no better means of arriving at what people would do if they had the power than to take what they say when they are out of power, and, when a few evenings ago the leader of the government spoke upon this very important question, the member for North Simcoe (Mr. Ourrie) was put up as the representative of the opposition to reply to the First Minister. We have a right to assume that the leader of the opposition did not put up the hon. member for North Simcoe without some consideration to answer the most important speech that will be made on this great question, and which was delivered by the Prime Minister, who was listened to with greater interest on this question than would be any other man in the country. I suppose the leader of the opposition did not mean any discourtesy to the Prime Minister when he put forward the hon. member for North Simcoe, on the contrary I would expect that the hon. gentleman submitted to the leader of the opposition what he was going to say, . and that anything he did say on so grave an occasion had the full sanction of his leader. On the question of protection foT coal this is what was said by the hon. member for North Simcoe, who represented the leader of the opposition on that important occasion:
If Nova Scotia continues to send such men to this House, and there is no doubt from the signs of the times that there will be a change in the next parliament, I for one, staunch protectionist as I am, will have to consider whether it is worth while for the rest of the country to grant a duty of 50 cents a ton to Nova Scotia on coal and a bounty on her steel.
That is the threat which is held over our heads by the gentleman who spoke for the opposition in answer to the speech of the Prime Minister. Later on, I think it was yesterday, another front bencher of very high standing I suppose in the Conservative party, evidently very close to the leader of the opposition, and, I presume, when talking on trade questions, voicing the ideas of that hon. gentleman; I refer to the hon. member for Hastings (Mr, Northrup), spoke on the question of protection to coal, and said:	,
We only bear the duty on coal and iron in consideration of a ditty on our products, and since that was the direct bargain made in 1878 and renewed since, as you have broken the bargain, and removed our duties, we will insist that the duty on coal and iron he removed in order that justice may he done.
That is what we have to expect if our friends on the other side should come into power, and .1 submit, Sir, that on the question of coal, as I have already explained, whatever is done to-day in the province of Nova Scotia, whatever strides the industry has made, have been made, not because Mr. McKENZIE
of any assistance or support received from the national policy, as I have pointed out that during the ten years of the national policy the great property now known as the Dominion Coal Company coal areas, and that of the Nova Scotia Steel Company across the water, together only produced 700,000 tons of coal, whereas to-day the same properties are producing, under the new legislation, something over 5,000,000 tons, all brought about by what is known as the Whitney legislation, a new departure from the old road, in which we travelled for 20 years before that departure was made. I submit that the occasion was much like the present, and that we in Nova Scotia followed the Premier in those days and followed him to success in the teeth of the most vigorous opposition the Conservatives could make to the project. I submit we have a perfect right, and we are bound, I think, to place every confidence in the scheme that the Finance Minister has set before us to-day, believing that the same results will follow.


Richard Blain: When was the duty put on soft coal?


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: A duty was put on soft coal as far back as 1870 or 1871. It was taken off by our Conservative friends when they were in power before 1878, and in 1878 it went on again, but my submission is not that the Conservatives put the duty on or took it off; I am arguing, and I think successfully, that the duty was not sufficient and did not give any impetus to the coal industry in Nova Scotia, and the standing of the coal industries in Nova Scotia to-day is not due to the national policy, but to the Whitney legislation introduced and carried forward by the Hon. Mr. Fielding, then Prime Minister of the province of Nova Scotia. I said, further, that the cry then was to be satisfied with what we had and go no further.
There is one thing more that I propose to say in connection with this matter while we are answering the charges made against us by the Sydney ' Post ' on thfs coal question. They say that the Minister of Finance and the Premier of Nova Scotia were always the enemies and never the friends, and that the duty was, of course, the saviour of that coal question, and that were it not for the duty the death knell of the coal industry in Nova Scotia would have been struck long ago. What did Sir John Macdonald say about the coal duty when we in Nova Scotia were told by the Conservatives that we could not get along without the coal duties, but that every miner would be thrown out of employment, that the pit mouths would be closed if the duty was taken off? On the 30th day of July. 1890, in the midst of this condition, and when our Conservative friends were holding forth that the only

friends of this industry were Sir John Macdonald and his government, he writes this letter to an American gentleman of high standing in the cabinet of that day:
My Dear Sir,-In answer to your esteemed note of this day, I desire to say that I am fully assured that the parliament of Canada will he ready to take off all duties on coal, ores and lumber imported from the United States whenever Congress makes these articles free of duty. The Canadian government has already ,aufchorized_ Sir Julian Pauncefote to state to the American government that they will be prepared to take off the export duty on logs whenever Canadian lumber is admitted into the United States at the reduced rate of one dollar per thousand board measure. You are at liberty to show this to the members of Congress and the President as you please. It should not, for obvious reasons, be published in the press or quoted in Congress. In the United States Tariff Act prevision might be made for making the above-mentioned articles free whenever they are made free by the Canadian parliament.
I remain, my dear sir, faithfully yours, (Sgd.) JOHN A. MACDONALD.


Mr. LENNOX.: I would call my hon. friend's attention to the fact that a few moments ago he referred to the hon. member for East Hastings as saying:
We only hear the duty on coal and iron in consideration of a duty on onr products and since that was the direct bargain made in 1S78 and renewed since, as you have broken the bargain, and removed onr duties, we will insist that the duty on coal and iron he removed in order that justice may be done.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: That is exactly what I quoted.


Haughton Lennox: The hon. member quoted that as being a statement made by the hon. member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup) as a proposition that he advanced. That was not fair to the hon. member for East Hastings. I think my hon. friend intended to be fair, so I will read what the hon. member for East Hastings said leading up to this:
I warn the Finance Minister that if he is as regardless of his own province as he apparently is of the Dominion as a whole, the farmers whom he lias selected as the particular objects of his animosity, who, of all people, are to be deprived of protection, whose markets are to be given not to the United States hut to the world, I warn that hon gentleman that if he really is true to his newly found and oft-professed although rarely aoted-up-to belief in the doctrine of protection, the day is not far distant when the farmers of Ontario will say: We only hear the duty on coal and iron.
And then follows the quotation which the hon. member read. My hon. friend (Mr. McKenzie)-


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: Is my hon. friend going to break into my speech?


Haughton Lennox: I do not wish to. I am only calling the attention of the hon. member to the fact that the hon. member for East Hastings was not giving that as a statement of the attitude he or any member on this side would take, but merely as what the farmers would probably say as the result of the Finance Minister's action. I think it fair to say that.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: The hon. member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup) stated positively what he believed would happen, and to this he gave the force of his opinion, whatever that may be woTth.


Haughton Lennox: That is not fair.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: I do not wish to have patch work made of my speech by quotations of this kind.


Haughton Lennox: I submit that that is not fair, and as a question of fact-


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER.: The hon. gentleman cannot interrupt except with the permission of the hon. member for North Capp Breton (Mr. McKenzie).


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: I have granted, I think, all that can fairlv be expected of me in the way of interruptions.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: The hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) must resume his seat. There is a well understood rule that whenever the Speaker or the Chairman has occasion to rise to order, any hon. gentleman who is endeavouring to address the House, must stop speaking and resume his seat. The hon. member knows the rule. The hon. member for North Cape Breton has given way to the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox) for a considerable length of time, and now he objects to do so any longer. Therefore, the hon. member for South Simcoe has not the right to interrupt unless he rise to a point of order.


Haughton Lennox: I rise to a point of order. I do not propose to take a lecture from the Chairman in a matter of this kind.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: The hon. gentleman must Tesume his seat. It is not permitted to criticise the action of the Chairman. That will not be allowed unless the House itself will change its rules. If the hon. gentleman has a point of order to raise, he must raise it concisely and distinctly and specify the point he raises, but he cannot be allowed to criticise the action of the Chair.


Haughton Lennox: I rise to a point of order, perhaps two points of order. One is that when I am speaking, and am in the midst of a sentence the Chairman has no more right to interrupt me than has any one else.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: On that point I rule that the Chairman has the right to intervene at any time any hon. member is out of order, and if the occasion requires it, will do so.


Haughton Lennox: The next point I wish to raise is that the statement made by the hon. member for North Cape Breton (Mr. McKenzie) is not correct as a matter of fact.


William Stevens Fielding: That is not a point of order. My hon. friend knows that.


Haughton Lennox: And therefore I have a perfect right to call the attention of the Chairman to the fact that the hon. gentleman who has the floor has misstated a matter of fact. I wish to proceed now to point out in what respect the hon. gentleman has misstated the fact.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: The hon. gentleman has not the right to correct any misstatement of fact made by an hon. member unless it brings into question his own word. In such a case, he may deny the accuracy of the statement affecting himself personally, and have the words withdrawn, but he is not at liberty to interrupt an hon. member who has the floor because he believes that that hon, gentleman is making a statement which is not correct.


Haughton Lennox: I wish to appeal from your ruling, Sir. The point I wish to make is this


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: If the hon. gentleman wishes to appeal from my ruling he has the right to do so, but he has not the right to debate it. My decision has been given. If he desires to appeal from it, I shall refer his appeal to the House through Mr. Speaker.


William Stevens Fielding: I would ask my hon. friend not to press his appeal. On reflection I am sure he will see that an interruption can only be allowed by consent. I do not suppose he is anxious that we should have appeals in points of order, and I would ask him not to press it.


Haughton Lennox: I suppose I have the right to state what my point of order is. It is this. The hon. gentleman, in dealing with the statement which he attributed to the member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup). misrepresented what was said by that hon. gentleman. I am quite pre-Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER.
pared to assume that he did so inadvertently, but I desire to call attention to the misstatement of fact, and I submit that under the circumstances, as a member of this House, I am entitled to have that misstatement made right by appealing to the records of the House. But I understand that you, Mr. Chairman, hold that I have not the right to do so. If that be the case,, with the greatest respect to you, Sir, and the Minister of Finance, I propose to prosecute the appeal.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: The committee will now rise in order that I may report to the House with the Speaker in the Chair, the point of order taken and the ruling I have made, namely, that no hon. member has the right to interrupt an [DOT]hon. gentleman who has the floor for the purpose of denying a statement of fact not personal to himself or affecting his own words.
The , committee rose and the Speaker took the Chair.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: The hon. member for South Simcoe, Mr. Speaker, having claimed the right to interrupt the speech of the hon. member for North Cape Breton in order to correct a statement of fact not affecting himself, and permission being denied by the hon. member for North Cape Breton, the Chairman decided that the hon. member for South Simcoe was not entitled,- under the liules, the privilege of so interrupting. Thereupon the hon. member for South Simcoe appealed from the ruling of the Chair.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: The question is shall the ruling of the Chair be sustained.


Haughton Lennox: Before you put that motion, Mr. Speaker


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: No debate can be allowed on that motion.


Haughton Lennox: I do not wish to debate it. What I wish to say is that the reference made is not, in my opinion, a true and correct summary of the position.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: I am sorry, but I have to take the statement as given me by the chairman.


Haughton Lennox: I wish to enter my protest in that way.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: Perhaps I might be allowed a word. If in writing it, I have not correctly reported the position, I would be very willing to- ask that the hon. gentleman be allowed to correct me.


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: If the chairman wishes to correct his report, that is another mat-

ter. I have to take the statement as made to me by the chairman.


Haughton Lennox: I wish to explain, Mr. Speaker, but I realize that it would not be in order for me to rise while you are standing-


James Kirkpatrick Kerr: There is the difficulty. Under the rules no debate is allowed on this motion. The question is: Shall the decision of the chairman be sustained?


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and decision sustained.
The House again resumed in Committee of Ways- and Means.
Daniel Duncan McKenzie: I am sorry that there should be any such interruption or difficulty. I should expect fair treatment from the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox), but I am interrupted by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Campbell) in characteristic style

	*


Mr. CAMPBELL.: I rise to a point of order. I absolutely object to being referred to when I am not interrupting. I did not speak to the hon. member (Mr. McKenzie) who has the floor. I made a remark to the hon. member for South Simcoe (Mr. Lennox), and suggested that he hand ' Hansard ' to the gentleman who has the floor so that he could correct himself, if he had made a mistake.


Gilbert Howard McIntyre: Evidently, a mistake has been made; but there is no point of order.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: It is my experience in addressing this House to be interrupted by the hon. member for South Simcoe. I presume he does not do it with malice aforethought. But he seems to fall into the habit of interrupting me frequently, and, I believe, without sufficient reason. However, I do not object very much, but I wish to put myself fairly before the House and the country. I quoted remarks in ' Hansard ' complete in themselves, made by the hon. member for East Hastings (Mr. Northrup). I could not put his whole speech again on ' Hansard.' I did not garble the paragraph, but quoted it complete. To put myself right before hon. members, I will quote it again. I do so for the purpose of showing that the coal duty has no friends among the Conservative party. These are the words of a gentleman in good standing in the party on the left of the Speaker. I submit that he is a man who takes a very active and prominent part in the debates of this House, and seems to be regarded by his friends as an authority. When he speaks on a question of this kind, we his opponents have a right to believe that he is stating the view on the trade question of the party to which he belongs. His words are:
We only bear the duty on coal and irori in consideration of a duty on our products and since that was the direct bargain made in 1878 and renewed since, as you have broken the bargain, and removed our duties, we will insist that the duty on coal and iron be removed in order that justice may be done.
That is word for word as it is in ' Hansard.' The difficulty with my hon. friend from South Simcoe is, that he wishes, evidently, to put on ' Hansard ' the whole of the speech of the hon. member for East Hastings in the midst of my speech.


Richard Blain: Will the hon. member (Mr. McKenzie) permit me a word? I would not interrupt without permission.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: I am willing to>
be asked a question, but I do not wish, if I can avoid it, to have more of somebody else's speech in the midst of mine.


Richard Blain: The point is that in the very next sentence the hon. member for East Hastings gives his own opinion, I am sure my hon. friend has overlooked that.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: All that has been put on record by the hon. member for South Simcoe.


Richard Blain: I understood it was not. That is the very point of contention. I am asking my hon. friend (Mr. McKenzie), with his permission, if he will allow the opinion of the hon. member for East Hastings to go on ' Hansard,' in conjunction with the statement made. If he is unwilling, I will not press it.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: A good deal of the speech has been read by my hon. friend from South Simcoe, as much as I thought was fair to be interlined in my own speech.


Haughton Lennox: We will have it to-morrow.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: My hon. friend is quite welcome to have it to-morrow, or every other day of the session. If he thinks there is anything more in the speech that is of advantage to him, he cannot be prevented from putting it, in the proper way, on the record. But I do not think it fair that I should be asked to sit down that the long speech of the hon. member for East Hastings may be read into my own.
It is growing late, and as it is impossible for me to finish my observations this evening, I move that the committee -rise, report progress, and ask leave to sit again.
Progress reported.
On motion of Mr. FIELDING, House adjourned at 11.48 p.m.



Friday., March 10, 1911.