1914-01-27

[Stage Direction]
Air. J. A. M. AIKINS (Brandon) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 28, to amend the Dominion Lands Act. He said: The present Dominion Lands Act approves of the principle and the policy of the complete alienation of water-powers, lands connected with water-powers, coal lands, coal, oil, quarry lands and gas lands from the people, and, I submit, to the detriment of the people. The purpose of this Bill is to prevent such alienation. I understand that it has been the general practice of the department in recent times not to alienate these lands, but to lease such lands under certain regulations made by the Governor in Council. But the regulations concerning the water-powers appear to me to be of such great importance that they ought to be first approved by Parliament before goina into operation, and amended only at the will of Parliament. Moreover, the statute as it now stands authorizes the homesteading and pre-emption of such lands, so that when
the homestead conditions have been complied with and the rights of pre-emption arise, the surface rights become severed from the sub-surface rights, to the detriment of the owners of the sub-surface rights, and will prevent the profitable working of these rights. The purpose of this Bill is to remedy these defects.
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. HENRY H. STEVENS (Vancouver) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 28, to amend the Money Lenders Act. He said: The present Money Lenders Act applies a limitation to the rate of interest to be charged on loans the principal of which is under $500. The intention of this Bill is to extend this limitation to all loans. Another proposal is to reduce the rate of interest from 12 per cent to 10 per cent. Another feature is an amendment to the interpretation clause describing what a money lender is and making the clause-clear.
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. FRANK COCHRANE (Minister of Railways and Canals) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 30, respecting the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company. He said: This is to extend the time for the' completion of the prairie section of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first, time.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. FRANK COCHRANE (Minister of Railways and Canals) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 31, respecting the National Transcontinental Railway. He said: The other Bill was for the extension of the time by Order in Council. This is to authorize the Governor in Council to extend it from time to time by Order in Council.
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. DAVID O. LESPERANCE (Mont-magny) moved for leave to introduce Bill
[Stage Direction]
No. 32, to repeal the Act respecting the 'Naval Service of Canada.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Explain.


Mr. LESPERANCE:: This is a Bill to repeal the Naval Service Act passed by the late Administration in 1910.


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

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day being called :
Hon.. H. R. EMMERSON: I wish to ask the Postmaster General if some improvement can not be made in the method of transmission of mails to the eastern provinces. At present, if a letter directed to any point between Montreal and Moncton, or beyond Moncton, inclusive of Halifax and Sydney, is mailed in this city after three o'clock in the afternoon, it goes to Montreal by the afternoon or night train, remains there all the next day and then goes over	the	Intercolonial railway
or the Canadian Pacific railway by the night train which leaves Montreal for points east. This mail matter should not be held twelve hours in Montreal. Letters mailed here in the evening should connect with the Maritime mail which leaves Montreal at 8.30 the next morning, thus reaching their destination in the eastern provinces fully twelve hours earlier than under the present arrangement. I have repeatedly brought this matter to the attention of my hon. friend and of his predecessor in office. This has been going on for a number of years, and it seems to me that it is time a remedy was applied. The mails are held in Montreal in order to be sent over the Canadian Pacific railway to the eastern provinces; they should go over the Intercolonial railway by the morning train, thus avoiding delay.
Hon. L. P. PELLETIER (Postmaster General) :: The hon. member for Westmorland called my attention to this matter the other day, and I thought he was right. I brought the matter to the attention of my deputy. At first sight he thought that the hon. gentleman was wrong in his statement of facts, but I told him that my hon. friend was sure of his facts. I asked him to look into the matter so that I might be able to give the hon. member for Westmorland a proper answer. Since then Dr. Coulter has been unwell, and that is the reason why my hon. friend has not yet received an answer.



THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH.


[Stage Direction]
Consideration of the motion of Mr. H. F. McLeod for an Address to His Royal Highness the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, and the proposed amendment thereto of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, resumed from Monday, January 26.
Louis-Philippe Pelletier: In the first place, Mr. Speaker, I desire to offer my congratulations to the hon. member for Rouville (Hon. Rodolphe Lemieux) for the marked difference which I observe between his speech of yesterday and some of his former speeches during the last two sessions of Parliament. Every one will remember that my hon. friend was very angry at times during the last session and the session before; that gentlemen outside of this House of the highest respectability were traduced by him on the floor of this House without their having an opportunity to reply, and that ministers and members of the Government were very severely attacked. Evidently my hon. friend has adopted a new course of procedure. He discussed public questions yesterday from a public point of view, quoting at length from economists and Blue Books, and making an argument which was in no way a personal one. If he will not refuse them, I think that congratulations are in order. Perhaps my hon. friend has become wiser, but I have no doubt that the recent election in Chateauguay has had a quieting effect upon him. I shall endeavour to follow my hon. friend's course, and try to discuss public questions from a public point of view.
The hon. member for Rouville, in the beginning of his speech, expressed the hope that the hon. member for Dundas (Mr. Bro-der) having made such a witty speech, would be promoted to the Senate; he wished him God speed in that respect, and hoped that the day might soon arrive. In the next breath, however, my hon. friend, with remarkable lack of logic, told us that we should not appoint any more members of the House to the Senate, thus invalidating the wish to which he had just given expression in regard to the hon. member for Dundas.
I am going to pass very quickly over the preliminary remarks of the hon. member, because, as I said last night when I moved the adjournment of the debate, I do not intend to speak for three or three and a

half hours. The hon. gentleman next referred to the spoils system, meaning the dismissals made by the present Government. In that respect I desire to say that before the Government of my right hon. friend came into power in 1896, the dismissal of public officials had not amounted to very much. The Mackenzie Government and the Sir John A. Macdonald Government had not indulged in the dismissal of officials to any considerable extent. But in 1896 there was a debauchery of dismissals in all the branches of the public service and the example then set by the preceding Government was such that our own friends thought it was only fair that the people who had been thus unfairly and unjustly dismissed should be reinstated in their places and that the policy which had been followed in that respect by the preceding Government should be followed by our Government. Human nature is human nature, and when our friends all over this country witnessed the dismissals en bloc which had been made on the Intercolonial, in the post office, almost everywhere in the public service, it was only fair and natural that these people should ask us to follow that policy. After these dismissals had taken place and while they were still taking place at the hands of the late Government, the House of Commons passed a resolution, moved by Mr. Lake, who was then a member of this House, defining the conditions under which these dismissals should take place and saying when they should take place. This motion, after debate, was accepted by the right hon. the leader of the Opposition, who was then Prime Minister, and it was agreed to unanimously in this House. I say that this having been accepted by both pai'ties as the policy to be followed in that respect, the present Government were quite right in acting along the lines of that policy as outlined in this motion by Mr. Lake. That is what we have done and when our hon. friends say that we have made dismissals, I say that we have made them under those conditions and on those lines; and so long as the public service is improved in that respect, so long as new governments come in and are in the position in which we are ourselves, I think that, with the example set in 1896 and the following years, it is unfair for our friends on the other side of the House to tell us now that we should not have done what they themselves have done as being the right thing under the circumstances.
Whilst in the one sentence we are told that we are making too many dismissals, we are in the next told that we do not make enough. I was told on the floor of the House by the hon. member for Edmonton (Mr. Oliver) the other day that I should have dismissed one of the most important officials in my department. I was told last year that my Deputy Minister, even, had so exercised his duties that he ought properly to have been dismissed. On the one hand we are told that we have dismissed too many and on the other hand we are told that we should dismiss more. The middle course is the right one. I do not think we should dismiss people simply because they have been appointed by a preceding Government; but if these officials come within the four corners of the resolution moved by Mr. Lake and adopted by my hon. friends I do not think that the hon. member for Rouville (Mr. Lemieux) or any other member of the House has a right to tell us that we have adopted the spoils system.
The next argument made by the hon. member for Rouville (Mr. Lemieux) was that the Finance Minister was wrong in stating that money had become easier, that the banks were lending money very freely. He said that if this was true in Ontario and the other provinces, money was not as easy in Quebec as elsewhere. En passant, I might say that if we are to believe certain reports which are published in a certain newspaper now, money is pretty easy in Quebec. But then, joking apart, I know as a fact that in the province of Quebec, as elsewhere, money is much easier than it was and we are certainly on the eve of the day when we shall see the business of this country restored to the place where it was several months ago.
We were told by the hon. member for Rouville (Mr. Lemieux) yesterday that there were some very bad things which might be expected in the Redistribution Bill and he insinuated or rather said that the hon. member for St. Antoine division of Montreal (Mr. Ames) and myself had been conspiring about this and had been preparing some kind of a redistribution which would rot be fair. Let me tell my hon. friend that he is mistaken in his facts. We were told that Sir John A. Macdonald brought in a Bill which my hon. friends called a Gerrymander Bill; that it was all wrong, that Ontario was carved in a certain way in order to gain political advantage; but

that, on the other hand, the right hon. the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) adopted an entirely different method and came before Parliament with an absolutely fair proposition. That was *o present the Bill, leaving the schedules in blank, refer the Bill to a committee of the House and then adopt what my hon. friend said was the unanimous opinion of the House about the redistribution which should take place. I want to inform my hon. friend that what he said about that was not exactly right. I looked up the debate and I find that the report of the committee was not a unanimous report; without going very far it will suffice to quote what the right hon. the leader of the Opposition, then Prime Minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), himself said and which I find in the debates of 1903, September 9, at page 10852. He said:	.
So far as I have read it, I will approve of the disposition of the representation as made by the report of the majority until I am shown by the discussion that I am wrong.
Now, those are the facts. My hon. friend from Kouville said that the principle of district boundaries was a sacred principle which should be kept in all cases, and he told us that under the Bill of 1903 that principle was respected in all cases. I have before me the Bill of 1903, and I find that in no less than twelve cases in the province of Quebec alone, parishes and townships were taken from one county and placed in an adjoining county. It is useless for my right hon. friend to say no, because I have the Statute right here in my hand.
The parish of I.avaltrie shall be transferred from the electoral district of L'Assomption to the electoral district of Berthier.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: That is not
a transfer from one county to another.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: The parish of Laval-trie was taken from one county and put in another one.
The Indian village and 'reserve of Caughna-waga is transferred from the electoral district of Chateauguay to the electoral district of La Prairie and Napierville.
The parish of Lacolle shall be transferred from the electoral district of Mississquoi to St. Johns and Iberville. The parishes of Notre Dame de Stanbridge and Notre Dame des Anges de Stanbridge shall be transferred from St. Johns and Iberville to Missisquoi.
That is another one. There is a case in point and my right hon. friend will remember that this was done in order to try and defeat the Conservative candidate in Bagot.

The parish of St. Pie which gives a majority of 200, was taken from the county of Rouville, where the Liberal majority was supposed to be all right, and transferred to Bagot in order to make sure of electing one of the supporters of my right hon. friend. The parish of St. Marcel was transferred from Bagot to Richelieu. The parish of Ste. Helene was transferred from Bagot to the district of Drummond and Arthabaska. Everybody knows why that was done. The parishes of St. Guillaume d'Upton and St. Bonaventure d'Upton were transferred from Drummond and Arthabaska to Yamaska. The parish of la Visitation de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie was transferred from Drummond and Arthabaska to Yamaska. The parish of Ste. Flore was transferred from the district of Champlain to the district of Three Rivers and St. Maurice.


Wilfrid Laurier: I	affirm
here that all these parishes, with possibly the exception of Ste. Flore and St. Guillaume were transferred back to their proper places according to their county limits. Lavaltrie, which had been from 1854 part of Berthier was, by the Act of 1892, made a part of l'Assomption. St. Pie, which had been a part of Bagot was in 1892 put into the county of Rouville. All the changes of 1892 were put back to the counties to which they belonged with the possibly exception of Ste. Flore and St. Guillaume. In 1873 St. Guillaume was placed for judicial and also for local electoral purposes in the county of Yamaska. So that in mentioning all these changes, my hon. friend only affirms the principle which we stand for and which is the principle of adhering to municipal and county boundaries.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: The municipal boundaries had been fixed by anterior legislation in so far as this Parliament is concerned. My right hon. friend found these parishes in certain counties and he took them from those counties in order to put them into other counties.


Wilfrid Laurier: They were put there by the Redistribution Act of 1892, and we objected to that.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: Yes, and we shall see with what result. I am not on my feet at this moment to tell my right hon. friend, or this House, that we intend to proceed in this or the other way; that is a matter which wrill be decided later on.


Wilfrid Laurier: I am speaking of the past only.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: But I am going to
speak of the future for a minute. Nobody has said that I know of that we shall not refer this Bill to a committee of the House. Nobody has said that it will not be done, and I only ask my hon. friends to wait until the Government has moved in this matter and not bring in their reproaches before that method which the Government may adopt has been adopted. We have been told that the method of presenting a Bill with blank schedules is the proper way. I do not say that it is or is not, but let us not condemn the Government in this respect before the Government has moved at all. The reproaches will fall flat if perchance the Government were to move on the same lines as my right hon. friend himself did when he was Prime Minister.
I would like to call the attention of the House to a very important fact in so far as my province is concerned. I have just stated that certain parishes were taken from the counties to which they belonged and put into other counties. I would like to put before the House a few facts in this respect as far as the province of Quebec is concerned. For the last ten years, before the election of 1911, every one knows that the representation in the House of Commons of the province of Quebec was, as far as the Conservative party was concerned, reduced to a very small number. In 1904 the Conservative party had in this House eleven members and the Liberal party had fifty-four; in 1908 it was practically the same thing. In 1911 it was twenty-eight to thirty-seven. Let us see how that works out. The total Liberal vote in Quebec in 1904 was 147,239. The total Conservative vote was 109,821. In 1908 the total Liberal vote was 153,393. The Conservative vote was 129,364. In 1911 the total Liberal vote was 164,274, and the total Conservative vote was 159,292. If the redistribution of the province had been arranged in order to give fair play to both political parties there, instead of having eleven members for the Conservative party in 1904 and in 1908, the Conservative party would have had twenty-seven members and the Liberal party would have had thirty-eight. In 1908 the Conservative party would have had twenty-nine members and the Liberal party thirty-six, and in 1911 the Conservative party would have had thirty-two members and the Liberal party thirty-three.


Mr. PROULX:: What about the Nationalists in 191IP


An hon. MEMBER:: Where is Bourassa?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: We will come to
Bourassa by and by, but we will stick to this for a moment. I am not going to be taken away from my subject because somebody may speak of Bourassa. I am making a point and I think it is fair that I should be allowed to continue it.


Edmond Proulx: But you forget one party in 1911; there were three parties in 1911.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: I think I have forgotten more than the hon. gentleman ever knew. If you take the vote of 1904 and add up the Liberal vote with the Conservative vote it will give you 257,060. Then, if you divide that by the number of counties -sixty-five-you have a unit of 3,955, and as a result, if you take that unit and multiply it by the number of members which we should have had you have the test. To-day, in the province of Quebec, the counties are arranged in such a way that where we should legitimately have had twenty-seven members we had eleven, and where we should have had twenty-nine we had twelve.


Mr. GRAHAM:: Has the hon. gentleman the figures for Ontario?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: I have not, but I have looked for my own province because we have felt the pinch in Quebec.


George Perry Graham: We have felt the other
pinch in Ontario.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: I do not know how
well-founded may be the complaint of the hon. member, but at all events, if there is a bad case in Ontario that does not help to cure our bad case in Quebec. In view of these facts, I ask: Is it fair that one of the political parties in the province of Quebec should only 'have one-third of the representation it is legitimately entitled to? I may say, and I think I can speak for the whole Government, that we do not want to and do not intend to place such a Redistribution Bill before this House as will deserve to be called a gerrymander, but, on the other hand, our desire is to have a fair redistribution measure which will do justice to all parties. The facts I have given have been known for years in the province of Quebec and I am sure that both political parties will agree that the existing state of things should not continue. There may be complaints in regard to Ontario, as the

hon. member for South Renfrew (Mr. Graham) says, but when you remember that out of 73 members from that province, 60 were elected to support the Government, there cannot be much necessity for a gerrymander in face of such clear proof of the political sentiment of the whole province.
I join issue with my hon. friend from Rouville in his remarks with reference to transportation. He stated that under the Liberal Administration the crops of the western farmers were removed promptly to market, but I can tell him that one of the very first things the Conservative Government had to do when it assumed power in 1911 was to attempt to remove the congestion in freight traffic for which the Liberal Government was responsible. There were millions of bushels of wheat on the prairies which could not be moved to the head of navigation, and the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster) devoted much time and care and attention to remedy the evil conditions which we inherited from the preceding Government. Then in 1912, the hon. gentleman, with his well known ability to take care of such problems, succeeded in having the transportation of produce from the West handled with such promptness as to elicit the commendation of every member of the community. With reference to the question of unemployment in the country, I regret that hon. gentlemen opposite seem to desire to make as much political capital out of the existing situation as they can. It is unfortunate for the country that this should lie made a political question, and that instead of all joining hands to provide a proper remedy, men of standing in the House of Commons, should on the public platform, seem to take delight in telling the people of the world that we have 100,000 unemployed in Canada. With all due respect, I say that such a statement has not a- particle of truth to support it. When this assertion was first made, a newspaper in Montreal took the trouble to get into telegraphic communication with all the important centres in Canada, with the result that the total unemployed in the whole Dominion was found to be 17,000 or
18,000	instead of 100,000, We all know that the unemployment is not due to any question of tariff or of free food or anything like that; we know that 5,000 men were laid off by the Canadian Northern Railway Company when its line was completed between Sudbury and Port Arthur. We know that when the work on the Canadian Pacific railway between Toronto and Ottawa was completed a large number of men were laid

off; and we know that when certain construction was finished on the Canadian Northern between Toronto and Ontario and on the Transcontinental as well, men were thrown out of employment. But that is an ordinary and natural condition, and it is not a thing out of which any party should seek to make political capital.	[DOT]


Mr. MURPHY:: Has the hon. gentleman the number of unemployed from any government source?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: No, but we have in this Montreal newspaper the statement of the mayors of cities and of the presidents of boards of trade throughout Canada, and I should think they know much more about that matter than we do. I accept their word as representing the true facts. Then, the hon. member for Rouville has referred to the number of unemployed in the city of Quebec, and he has stated that if the Government works were not going on there, there would be a great many people without work. In the first place, I direct the attention of the House to the fact that if we have succeeded to a certain extent in affording employment on Government works in Quebec to so many people during this rigorous winter, that would not have happened under the late Government by whom Quebec was entirely ignored. I regretted to hear the hon. member speak of people being out of work in Quebec on account o'f what he called a lockout in the shoe trade. Surely the hon. gentleman must see that it is absolutely unfair to accuse the Government for what has occurred in that respect. There is an unfortunate condition in the shoe trade in Quebec, a condition which every citizen of Quebec and every Canadian regrets. There are about 3,000 men and
3,000	girls employed in the shoe factories out of employment, and that is a matter of deep regret to me as it is to every true Quebecker, and as it should be to every true Canadian.
But when we come to examine the reason for that, it seems unfair and unjust to bring before the House this fact as one showing a lack of good administration on the part of the Government. The unemployed shoemakers in Quebec are not idle,, the factories are not closed, because of political conditions. Every one knows that a serious conflict has been going on for years in Quebec between the shoe manufacturers and their workmen. There has been strike after strike, and it has now come to a point where one of the contending parties has resolved that this matter

shall end, and forever. The men quit work because one of their number was dismissed, or because his job was taken away from him and given to somebody
4 p.m. else. The men left the factories in a body. Later they desired to come back, but when they did so the manufacturers told them: We have had so much trouble in the past that we are determined to settle this question here and now. If you want to resume your positions in our factories, you must sign an agreement binding yourselves to obey the rules and the bylaws which are established for the proper working of the factories. One and all the men refused to sign that agreement and went home.
I am not entering into any controversy as to who is right or who is wrong in this matter. In this case, as in many other cases, they might try to come to terms. It is out of my province, however, to discuss that phase of the question; but I say that these men are not out of work in Quebec because^ they are forced out of it by political or any other conditions, except that they are at war with their employers, and they want to win that fight for their union, whereas on the other hand the manufacturers want to win the fight for their union. These are the facts, and I hope and trust that the hon. member for Rouville will not have it spread broadcast throughout this country that this local trouble between manufacturers and workmen is one attributable to the way in which Canada is governed at the present moment.


Mr. BELAND:: How many men are out of employment now?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: Between 2,500 and
3,000	in the shoe trade alone.


Henri Sévérin Béland: How many factories are closed?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: Fifteen to seventeen.


Mr. GAUVREAU:: Can the hon. minister explain why the manager of the Intercolonial railway at Riviere du Loup, some days ago, dismissed 23 employees in the winter time without even a day's notice?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: I am sure my hon.
friend will admit that it is hardly fair to ask a Postmaster General what has been done in the Department of Railways a few days ago, without giving any notice of his question.


Charles Arthur Gauvreau: You are the minister of the district. You must know what is going on there.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: If my hon. friend will give the usual notice of his question, it will be answered.
The hon. member for Rouville referred to the dispute in connection with the United Shoe Company. He went so far as to say that the United Shoe Company was a combine; that it had heen declared a combine by a board of arbitration, and that because these people had friends in the Government, had friends at court, nothing had been done in the matter. This is a most unfair statement of the case. I do not intend to enter into the particulars. At a later period my hon. friend and colleague, the Minister of Labour (Mr. Crothers) will do so. Suffice it for the moment to say that there is not one tittle of foundation or evidence for the statements made by the hon. member for Rouville in that respect. A board was appointed and found that the United Shoe Company was a combine, and that company was given six months in order to change the conditions of the leases which they had with the shoe manufacturers. The law says that, when a sentence has been passed by the board, if the manufacturers continue so to operate, they are liable to have an indictment brought against them before the court. The hon. member for Rouville said to us yesterday:	How is it that these men' are
not paying a penalty of $1,000 a day? I desire to call the hon. member's attention to the fact that the United Shoe Company, after the board's decision, as a matter of fact changed the conditions of their leases; and that when the leases were changed they either obeyed the order of the board or disobeyed it. If they have disobeyed the order of the board, that is a matter for further adjustment and adjudication; but, as a matter of fact, the leases were changed within the time allowed by the board. Consequently, I think the hon. member for Rouville will have to withdraw his statement that the United Shoe Company were not condemned to pay $1,000 damage a day because they had friends in the Government and friends at court.
The hon. member for Rouville said: True enough, we had bad times and unemployment in 1907-8, but we then did a great thing; the Minister of Finance of that time, seeing the bad times, came before Parliament and made a big cut in the Estimates of the current year. My hon.

friend believes that to be the act of a big man. I do not. If, without impairing the credit of the country, in view of the good administration of the affairs of the country at a time when there is tight money, at a time when there is uneasiness in business, you can see your way, not to cut down public expenditure, but to leave it as it is, so as to give money to the people and to give employment to the people, I think you are a bigger man than if you cut down public expenditure.
We have been told by the hon. member for Rouville that he had heard the hon. Minister of Finance, one of the noble eighteen, say that he was not going to do the same thing as his predecessor had done in that respect. Whether the hon. Minister of Finance is one of the noble eighteen or not, I am prepared to say that we feel pretty safe under his direction and management of the finances of this country. I think the hon. Minister of Finance has been a safe pilot. He has been able, with his big mind and farsightedness; to tell us . all that is happening now; and when he tells us that at the present moment we are practically out of our difficulties, I for one trust him	and think he	will be	right	forthe next few months as	he was	when	he
foretold us what is happening to-day.
We have been told by the hon. member for Rouville that we are not taking care of the port of Montreal as we should do. If my hon. friend will look at the statutes of last session and the statutes of the year before, he will find there that we have given the Harbour Board of Montreal everything they asked for, and that the money has been spent under the direction	and control	of the	Department of	Marine and	Fisheries in	a
most proper and efficient manner. Now, I am from Quebec, but I make the humble claim that I am not a small Quebecer. Montreal is the metropolis of Canada. As such, her port and her facilities should be improved; and, moreover, they are being improved, with public money if you like, but money that is advanced by the Government and on which they pay interest, and pay that interest faithfully and well. We heard the right hon. leader of the Opposition say at a meeting-I think it was in Joliette-that the city of Montreal had not been properly treated so far as its connection with the Transcontinental railway was concerned. This argument has not been repeated in this House, and I have not heard from any representative of Montreal any comt*lr. Pelletier.]
plaint in that respect. Every one knows that the Transcontinental railway was begun in 1903 or 1904, and in the ten years since that time there has been no connection to link the commercial metropolis of Canada with the Transcontinental railway. Apparently the city of Montreal, at least a great part of the city of Montreal, thought that no reproaches should be made to the late Government on that subject, for if you will look at the election returns you will find that the majority of seats in the city of Montreal were carried by our friends of the Liberal party. Now, I wish to say here-because I have read something in the newspapers which calls for the remark from me-that if this Government and the commercial metropolis of Canada think that metropolis ought to have some connection with the Transcontinental, I for one will not stand in the way, but will cordially approve of anything that can be done in that respect, not as. a Quebecer, but as a Canadian who desires to further the interests of Canada at large.
Now, Sir, about what my hon. friend said for the port of Quebec. Whilst I say let us do what is right for the port of Montreal, I say, at the same time, Providence has given us in Quebec one of the finest ports to be found in the world. But this port has not been equipped so far. Though the city of Quebec has been represented for years by members of the Liberal party in this House, there is not to-day- there was not before we came into power- accommodation of berths for more than three ships in the great port of Quebec. I have asked my colleagues, the members of this progressive Government, to have both ports equipped. There is no reason for rivalry or jealousy on the part of either Montreal or Quebec; for, if we are not disappointed in the clause which the late Government put in the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway contract, and which may be interpreted to mean that the Grand Trunk Pacific may carry our trade to the United States-I say if that clause does not have that bad effect, there will be enough to make trade for the two great ports of the St. Lawrence during the summer navigation. And I hope that when these ports are equipped as they ought to be, we shall be able to attain the result we have in view and have it as the policy of all Canadians, Conservatives and Liberals alike, to have our trade carried to Canadian ports in Canadian bottoms and handled by Canadian labour.


Henri Sévérin Béland: Will the Minister kindly state how many more ships will find accommodation after the works in Quebec are completed?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: At least seven or eight as against three for the last twenty years.


Henri Sévérin Béland: Did any company complain of lack of accommodation under the late Government?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: When we came into
power one of the first things I was asked was to try and have some accommodation in Quebec, because as was said by those who dealt with the matter, our company would like to send our ships there, but we cannot find any berths or accomniodation.


Henri Sévérin Béland: What company was that?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: I would not like to
give names; but the hon. gentleman will learn these names when the accommodation is created. And as he is a good Quebecer, when he sees the ships there he will know their names.
I would like to say a few words in passing about the Georgian Bay canal. Our friends on the other side have begun all of a sudden to be very strong on the Georgian Bay canal, they are enthusiastic about the Georgian Bay canal.


Mr. LEMIEUX:: Bullish.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: They were rather bearish when in power, but now they are not bears but have become brills. The hon. member for Rouville told us that the Georgian Bay canal was not started at once because, forsooth, the southern part of Ontario was opposed to the wishes of the northern part of Ontario, and also to the wishes of part of the province of Quebec in this respect. Well, Sir, this should not stand in the way. If this work is a good work, one which is in the general interest of Canada, the fact that one section of the country would not like it would not stop this Government from completing it. The question whether this is a work in the general interest of Canada is the only one that would be considered. Sir, this is a work of great magnitude. We are told by men who know something about it that this enterprise, which has been looked into from an engineering point of view, ought to be looked into now from a commercial and a financial point of view before we embark upon any such large expenditure. Some people say that in a commercial and business way the canal cannot be made a success; others 14
say it will be a success. Under the Circumstances, the Government have come to the conclusion to adopt the only logical and practical course that it could adopt, and that is to have this question carefully looked into and a report made by thoroughly qualified men.


Wilfrid Laurier: There are so many commissions already.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: But I can tell the
right hon. gentleman (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) that the men whom we have in mind for appointment to that commission are men who will act for Canada and without salary in that respect. Their only object will be to help this Government in coming to a wise conclusion on this subject. I cannot give names now, but I think it is but a matter of days before we shall be able to tell the House the personnel of that commission.
It may be taken for granted that the people of the West-the people of Winnipeg, for instance, because Winnipeg is the great distributing centre of western Canada- should have some interest in this matter, and that this portion of the country, as well as Montreal and other important Canadian centres, will be represented on that commission. At all events, the Government, as the hon. Minister of Public Works has said, have been looking into the matter, and will try to find the best men, being guided by whatever will be in the best interests of Canada at large.
The hon. member for Rouville has said that certain things which took place in the county of Chateauguay were very bad. The right hon. leader of the Opposition, during the Debate on the Address, I think, said that the county of Chateauguay had been robbed from hon. gentlemen opposite. I do not think that we should accept with a great deal of anxiety the declaration made by my right hon. friend in this respect. Last year, during the debate on the Address, reference was made to another election robbery, and it was a matter of such public shame that the right hon. leader of the Opposition thought fit to move an amendment to the Address, which read as follows:
We Peg to represent to Your Royal Highness that in the elections of Macdonald and [DOT] Richelieu there were practices' calculated to terrorize and corrupt the electorate, which were connived at by your ministers and which deserve the censure of the House.
Now, some things have happened since then. When the trial took place, what became of the awful charges made in connec-



tion with the election in Macdonald? In that election, as in the Richelieu election of 1911, the sitting member admitted that certain errors had been made by some of his friends, the election was annulled, and that was all. Where was the terrorizing? Where was the proof of the operations of election thugs and of the other alleged irregularities in connection with the Macdonald election? No proofs came to light. The election was annulled without any scandal, and the same good man was reelected by a majority of over nine hundred, his majority at the preceding election having been seven hundred and fifty. If the robbery which hon. gentlemen allege to have taken place in Chateauguay is of the same nature, I am sure my right hon. friend will be compelled to acknowledge that in his motion last year he went too far; that he made certain accusations against members of the Government without having the facts before him, and that he failed to substantiate them. I fully realize that the result of the Chateauguay election was not very agreeable to our friends on the other side of the House.


Mr. LANCTOT:: What about South Bruce?


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: I will come to South Bruce in a moment. When my right hon. friend told us that he had been robbed, I said to myself: Evidently some awful things have taken place in the constituency of Chateauguay. It may be that stuffed ballot boxes had been used, as they have been used in the past under a Government which was not a Conservative Government. When I heard this loud complaint, I could not help remembering Hastings, Brockville, West Huron and the Minnie M. But when the facts in connection with this matter are brought out in the courts, I am afraid that my right hon. friend will be somewhat disappointed, and that the persons against whom proof of irregularities is offered will not be those to whom my right hon. friend referred the other day.
We are told that a pamphlet was distributed in Chateauguay county, and that in that pamphlet the people of the constituency were told that another judge, Mr. Audette, a Freneh-Canadian, had been appointed to the -Exchequer Court. That was true; what lulAm do hon. gentlemen find in* that? Does the hon. member for Rouville criticise that appointment? He does not, and will not. Since this Government came into power, Liberal speakers and the Liberal press day after day have said: 'What is the Borden Government goins to do for

the province of Quebec?' When we had the great leader of -the Opposition as our Prime Minister, the province of Quebec was all right, but now with these awful men, Borden and Rogers, in power, what is going to become of our poor province? The newspapers throughout the province of Quebec have been saying: Just look at that; we had a Minister of Public Works from Quebec, but now the present minister is not a Freneh-Canadian; our compatriots and their rights have been trampled upon. What do hon. gentlemen see in that circular which was read by the hon. member for Rouville yesterday? They see a copy of the Estimates voted by Parliament, showing that the province of Quebec received a fair appropriation of public money. Was it a crime to place this before the people of Chateauguay? If hon. gentlemen on the other side of -the House had never committed any greater political crime than this, we should have little complaint to make. It has been said also that we told the people of Chateauguay that the Prime Minister of this country was a .friend of all races and nationalities. Is that not true? Has not the Prime Minister of -this country risen mightily in the estimation of the people of Canada? Has he not made good? Having been in power only two years, is his name not written in golden letters in the history of this country? Has he not endeared himself to every Canadian? Yes, Sir, he has, and we have the right to say so to the English-speaking as well as to the French-speaking people of this country. This is the crime we have committed in Chateauguay-that of telling the truth.
One of my friends on the other side asked me to speak of South Bruce; let me see what kind of literature -was circulated in that constituency and what kind of appeals were made to the electors. Some were funny; some were anti-Canadian, and some, as usual, appealed to the prejudices o.f race and religion.
You will permit me to read the funny part in the first place. The hon. gentleman who now sits as member for South Bruce (Mr. Truax) made a speech during that election at Pinkerton, and a shorthand reporter was sent down to take notes of what he said. I shall not quote his speech at length, but shall content myself by placing a few sentences before the House. This is the way the campaign started:
I went down to a German wedding: in Carrick and enjoyed myself. A few days after I was told I was drunk, I had a girl sitting on my knee. Well, you know, I am fond of females

all right at any time, but for the last ten years I have not enjoyed their company as I used to.
This "was on the public platform. (Reading):
I played cards and such as that and had a dance, and as long as I like I will do so.
I think every one will admit that this was not quite enough to elect the hon. gentleman, and so something else had to be found. My hon. friend from South Bruce (Mr. Truax) was complaining that Conservatives were going in great numbers into the constituency and that he was lighting them alone, single-handed; but we read in another column of the paper reporting his speech that the hon. member for Welland (Mr. German), the hon. member for Lambton (Mr. Pardee), and many others of the stalwarts of the other side were advertised to speak at different meetings in the county, and then my hon. friend from South Bruce (Mr. Truax) took some courage and thought he would leave the question of the dance and the girls alone and would speak on other subjects. What do we see? Let me read to you here a circular which was distributed all over the county of Bruce and find what the hon. member himself did as a candidate in a Canadian constituency and a part of the British Empire:
Walkerton, Oct. 13, 1913.
Dear Sir,-Accompanying this letter you will And an exact copy, in part, of a speech delivered in Vancouver on August 17, 1912, by the Hon. Sam. Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defence in the Borden Government. Premier Borden has never repudiated that speech or any part of it, so we must conclude that the Hon. Mr. Hughes spoke that way on behalf of the whole Borden Government. Read the speech carefully.
The report is taken from the Globe, of course, and was annexed to that circular.
Read the speech carefully; note particularly the parts in larger type referring to Germany and also remember that shortly after this speech was made thp Borden Government tried to force a vote of $35,000,000 through Parliament to send to England. The Hon. Mr. Hughes said the peril is very direct and Germany must be taught a lesson. Was this vote of $35,000,000 for the purpose of teaching Germany a lesson?
That is a question put by the hon. member.
Mr. Cargill is the candidate of the Borden Government, and therefore a supporter of this naval policy. If you think the Fatherland-
That is Germany

-is a peril to Canada that must be taught a lesson, vote for Cargill; if, however, you would prefer to continue the present cordial relations 144
existing between the Fatherland and Canada and to have a national and industrial peace and tranquility and the spending of Canadian money in Canada, give me your vote.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: man people of this country in a certain direction in order to win a by-election in this country of ours. Well, Sir, we have come to that. And we hear the hon. member complaining because we have told the *truth to the electors of Chateauguay about certain facts, and there he is, with his friends, convicted to-day of taking on the public platform a stand which I do not hesitate to say any true Canadian ought not to approve, and, if it was Parliamentary, I would say any true Canadian ought to be ashamed of.
But that is not all. We have heard a good deal about this victory in South Bruce, but let me tell you that in that fight our friends thought fit to appeal to the German voters. In presenting that Bill to the House this Government had absolutely no intention of hurting the feelings of the German people who live in Canada. We thought we had a duty to perform towards the mother country, and I do hope that the German people of this country, though they were led astray by this appeal in the last by-election, will understand that whilst in Canada we form part of the great British Empire, at the same time we have for the German people the respect which that great nation is entitled to, and that our action was not in the direction of offering any insult to them but was simply a manifestation of our desire to do our duty to the great empire of which we form a part. Germans have been coming into this country, and they are coming all the time. I know a part of our western country right now where over 12,000 acres are being colonized and broken by people coming from Germany. I say, as one of the members of this Government: Welcome to these good people; let them come here, make homes for themselves and become citizens. If the French-Canadian people in my province and other parts of Canada have played a not inconsiderable part in bringing about the entente cordiale, the understanding between England and France, I hope that the German people in this country may be numerous enough at a given moment to exert such an influence as not only to prevent strife, but to do their utmost in order to bring about lasting peace between England and Germany.
But that is not all. Appeals to prejudices were made in South Bruce. We know that there are a great number of Irish Roman Catholics in South Bruce. The hon. the member for Russell (Hon. Charles Murphy) went to South Bruce and told the Irish Catholics that there was no reciprocity in the last election, but that the election was

carried by the Conservative party on the Ne Temere question.


Mr. CARVELL:: So say we all.


Louis-Philippe Pelletier: Ah, these gentlemen will never acknowledge their defeat. Then we had this good Irish Roman Catholic, the hon. member for Russell, going to his coreligionists in South Bruce and telling them that the Conservative party had promised to bring in a Bill to render the marriage law uniform in this country. Who has made that promise? He says these things for what purpose and with what object? These are the facts. They sent broadcast a certain newspaper published in the city of Toronto, in which there happened to be printed an attack on the Roman Catholics, and they said: This is a Conservative paper, look at the awful headlines which are here directed against the Roman Catholics ! That was sent not amongst the English Protestants, but it was sent amongst the Irish Catholics. I think this is striking below the belt. Both elections might well be compared, and if they are I think all the advantages of the comparison will be on one side.
Now, I would like to ask: What has become of free food ? This was a fine baby which was born in Hamilton and came into this world amidst a big blare of trumpets. The gentlemen who offered that baby to the public made me think of the great Napoleon when a son was born to him; he showed it to all Europe and said: This is my son. This thing took place at Hamilton. The next time we heard of the baby was in Montreal at the Fielding banquet. Half of the poor, little tiny thing had become impaired to such an extent that it was practically out of sight, and the hopes for its full recovery were not strong. As a matter of fact, Sir, the baby died during the trip from Montreal to Ottawa. The right hon. leader of the Opposition forgot to throw a few well-deserved flowers, when he spoke on the debate, on the premature little corpse. He did not even refer to it. That was most unkind. It might have been made the subject-matter of an amendment to the Address, after the great flourish of trumpets with which this free food baby was introduced to our notice. If it was not a catch-word, if it was a serious policy, we had a right to expect that it would be embodied in an amendment to the Address. But none of that; it was buried somewhere in a snowbank.
The hon. member for Rouville (Mr. Lemieux) who believes in miracles, tried

to galvanize the little corpse last night, but he said he was only speaking for himself and that he was not committing anybody else to his views. I am sure of that, but then he still believes in it. The hon. member for Rouville has an abundant faith. Even if the father of the newly-born policy has discarded it, the hon. member for Rouville, who was so enthusiastic when he saw the baby come into this world, still thought that there was something in it. But surely the hon. member for Rouville ought to have consulted his friends, because the people in the province of Quebec will now say: Look at the hon. member for Rouville; he believes in free food. I should think that it would be better for my hon. friend to put himself in accord with his leader in that respect, and if we do not hear of free food now from the right hon. leader of the Opposition perhaps the hon. member for Rouville may drop it also. At all events, that is only a suggestion, and I have no doubt it will be taken into my hon. friend's serious consideration.
Now, I just want to say this one word further: Free food means a reduction in the price of produce paid to the farmer. If you want to have free food you may go and tell them that in the cities, but I * would invite you to say so before the producers, the farmers of this country. That is where the test comes; that is why the child did not live. My right hon. friend found that the baby had horns, a most unusual thing for a child. And then he dropped it like a hot potato. My hon. friend did well; he saw there was no use humbugging the people by telling the consumers in the cities that reciprocity would lessen the prices of the articles they consume, and at the same time telling the farmers in the country that they would get a higher price for their produce. That story lasted until the evening of the 21st of September at five o'clock and then it burst.
I wonder why hon. gentlemen opposite attempt to revive it now. I represent a farming community and on behalf of the farmers in my county who till the soil, I say that they have just as good right to be protected in their industry as have the manufacturer and the artisan. If gentlemen opposite are going to reduce the cost of living to the consumers in the cities, will they please tell me how they can do that without re-du ing the prices at which the farmer sells his products, leaving aside for the moment the question of the middleman. We were told last night by the hon. member for Rouville (Mr. Lemieux), that our country was being drained by the people of the
United States who came here to buy all our farm products; but if the people of the United States come to Canada to buy farm products and pay the freight on them to get them to their country, is not that proof that the price of these articles is higher in the United States than it is in Canada. Who can gainsay that principle? In the back townships of the province of Quebec for the last 15 years the farmers have been told when they had a fine crop of potatoes or anything else, that it was all done by Laurier, and the right hon. gentleman did not deny it very much; he simply suggested he was in partnership with Providence. The great trouble in this country is that our farmers' sons are leaving the farms for the cities, and, are they now going to be told that they must sell their farm products at a lower price than hitherto, thus encouraging them further to leave their occupation as tillers of the soil. For my part, I do not believe that to be sound doctrine. Of course, we all understand that this idea was thrown out as a 'ballon d essai,' to see how it would catch on with the people, but our friends opposite realize now that it would not float, and so they are looking for some other cry. Just imagine the incongruity of what we recently saw when we had our hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Macdonald), a good protectionist to a certain extent, making a joint tour in his county with my hon. friend from Red Deer (Mr. Clark), who is The apostle of free trade. That joint tour was a good sample of the contrast there is between the diverse policies enunciated by members of the Opposition in this House.
On the question of the navy, I shall not speak at great length, nor do I think it necessary to do so at the present time. I was much impressed by the statement made by the right hon. the leader of the Opposition in this House a short time ago, to the effect that what was going on now with regard to the navy was inspired in the interest of the armour plate makers of the world, meaning, of course, that the Conservative party was acting in the interest of the armour trust. But I would like to point out with some emphasis, that the right hon. gentleman, when he spoke in Chateauguay and elsewhere, and complained so much of our naval policy, forgot to repeat the speech he made in this House last year, setting forth his naval policy. I went to Ormstown in the county of Chateauguay and before I spoke I was told by some respectable electors that the Conservatives had a very bad naval policy and they de-

sired me to explain it. I asked them if Sir Wilfrid Laurier had told them about his policy and the answer was', as the fact is, that he did not speak very much about it. Well, perhaps that is one of the things, so far as the Liberal party is concerned, as to which the past should bury its dead. But I would point out to the people of Canada that if there are any in this country who can be accused of a desire to help the armour plate trast, it is surely the men who want to build two fleet units, and not the men who want to build simply three ships. I want my right hon. friend to think over that situation, and to tell the people of Canada, as the fact really is, that the men who would give most work to the armour platers are the men who want to build the biggest navy. With these few considerations as to the navy I shall pass on.
The hon. gentleman from Kouville (Mr. Lemieux) has ceased to be a protectionist, and he seems to be very much concerned about the duty on agricultural implements, but it comes with very bad grace from him and his friends to talk about what reciprocity would have done for the farmer in the matter of agricultural implements, when we all know, as a matter of fact, that reciprocity did not purport to do very much in that respect. The hon. gentleman from Kouville has a way of his own in grappling with the tariff question, and in order to explain his attitude I shall quote these words from his speech of last night:
But, Mr. Speaker, when protection is con-[DOT]cerned, you can always make an argument when you wish to fasten and tighten around ithe neck of the farmer the collar of serfdom.
These are big words. Later he said:
It is useless to mince matters. It is just as well to speak plainly and honestly to the privileged classes who since 1879 have been enjoying their privileges.
Now, what does that language mean? Here we have the hon, member for Kouville stating ^hat since 1879 the collar of serfdom has been around the necks of the farmers, and that privileged classes have been protected during these many years. But the hon. gentleman was 15 years in power, and he is to-day the self-confessed perpetrator for 15 years of this crime, if crime there is. That is the sort of argument we have from hon. gentlemen opposite about protection. They pretend to say now that protection is a bad thing, but they know right well that they would not have attained power in 1896, and they would not have retained power for a year, 
if they had touched the principle of protection, which is a sacred principle in this country. And how did they get to power? As was pointed out by the right hon. Prime Minister the other day, the right hon. the leader of the Opposition was denouncing protection as bondage and slavery in Winnipeg, when at the same time he was writing a letter to Mr. Bertram, a manufacturer, in which he pronounced himself a protectionist. Is that the way to deal with a great question in a country such as Canada? I do not think it is. I do not think so. When the hon. members of the late Government adopted protection, they continued the system of protection, not because they liked it, but because, that great broad-minded man who inaugurated protection in this country in 1879 forced them, even from his grave, to follow that policy themselves.
After the elections of 1908, I heard a remark made which I thought was a very apt one. A good old Conservative was putting the question:	'Well, we have
been defeated again; do you expect that we shall ever get back into power? ' A man who heard him ask this question said:
' Now, boy, you wait and you will see this Government fall to pieces when Canada is in danger.' That man was a prophet. When the right hon. gentleman (>Sir Wilfrid Laurier) departed from protectionist principles, which had been adopted in this country, and tried to fasten on this country the reciprocity pact, Canada was in danger, and then occurred the predicted fall.
If we are to j'udge by the hon. member for Kouville, our good friends have now evidently become free traders-free traders in opposition, protectionists in power! They dance the tango free trade when in opposition and the turkey-trot protection [DOT]when in power. We do not believe in doing that. We have been protectionists in opposition and we are protectionists in power, because we want this country to have a stable fiscal and financial policy, so that the people may know where they are and where they stand with the Government of their own country.
5 p.m. We have been asked what we intend to do in order to solve the temporary difficulties which exist in this country. I have taken up too much of the time of the House already, but I will discuss the matter very briefly. We have appointed a commission which is looking into the matter. In this respect we are not very far from one of the propositions laid down by the right hon. gentleman him-

self when he said in Montreal that his free food policy, which was born in Hamilton, had to be taken care of in some other way, and that if he had been in power he would have appointed three of his ministers to traverse the country as a commission to look into the matter. Well, we have appointed a commission. So far it is not so bad; but while the commissioners are working on this, we believe that the great evil in this country is that, in the past, agriculture has not been taken care of as it ought to have been. The other day I heard one of the members of this House make a very apt remark. He said that before this Government was in power, the people of this country were not very sure whether they had a Minister of Agriculture or not. Our friend and colleague (Mr. Burrell), with the consent of the Government, has started a new policy of educational instruction for the farmers, and this will go far towards relieving present conditions.
There is another thing that this Government has done. Our policy as to highways would also have been of great service to the farmers of this country. Of course, we know what has happened. I shall not discuss that at any length. Another thing we have done, is to give a post office to every farmer at his door; that is, to make rural mail delivery which was only under contemplation when we took office, an accomplished fact.
There is one thing more which, if it is properly understood, will accomplish a great deal towards bringing the consumer and the farmer together; that is, parcel post. I am glad to say that parcel post will be an accomplished fact in 'Canada on the 10th of February next. We have been working at it in the department for months. We have the problem pretty well in hand now, and whilst we are working so hard in order to give to the public this boon which I think will bring- together the consumer and the farmer. I hope in a couple of days, if not to-morrow, to lay before this House the regulations which have been adopted, and which will be distributed in order to inaugurate that policy. I think this is one -of the things which should have been acknowledged on the other side of the House as one of the means which this Government is taking to meet present conditions. This Government has been thinking of the people, of doing something for the people. This is one of the things to which we have devoted a great deal of
time and attention, and I think we owe it to our people as a mark of gratitude for the token of confidence which they gave to us on the 21st of September, 1911.


Mr. D. D. McKENZIE (Cape Breton N.):: Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that the House has listened with a great deal of attention to the address of the hon. the Postmaster General (Mr. Pelletier). The conditions of the country to-day from the Atlantic to the Pacific are such that the people, not only in this House but outside of it, will listen with interest to any speeches made by any members of the Government. I am sorry to say that, so far as any remedy or any hope of a remedy for the distressing conditions which exist in the country to-day is concerned, we have listened in vain to the hon. member of the Government who has addressed this House this afternoon.
His manner of dealing with big questions reminds me of the story of a doctor who was called in to treat a man who had pneumonia. The extraordinary course was taken by the doctor of throwing this man into a tub of freezing water, and when friends of the patient asked him in alarm: 'What do you mean by throwing that man into a tub of cold water?' the doctor said: 'Well, I understand it is pneumonia that he has got; I do not know how to treat pneumonia, but after he is thrown into the tub he will take fits, and I am a devil on fits.' It seems that the only position in which the hon. Postmaster General excels is in dismissals, and he will get away as quickly as possible from discussing public questions in order to get back to his den and his dismissals. The hon. Minister touched lightly on the question of dismissals. No doubt he had a right to touch lightly on that subject, and to pass away from it as quickly as possible. I understand that a return was brought down yesterday, which has not yet reached the members, in which the department of the hon. Minister is given credit for having, within the last two years, aye, in less than two years, dismissed 650 postmasters and 450 other employees of his department. That, Sir, is the record of the department which is presided over by the hon. gentleman who just addressed you. And, while he has no money for the payment of postmasters, while he has no money to increase the salaries of postmasters, as he has been promising for the last two years, it appears from this return, or from one that is closely

connected with it, that between the 10th of October, 1911, and the 26th day of May, 1913, he found money enough to spend on his beheadings, $18,268.46. That, Sir, is the laudable course taken by this exponent of Government policy who addressed us this afternoon. And, so far as actualities are concerned, nothing else has been done in that department that tends in the slightest degree to the advancement of the general condition of the people of this country. We are told that the course taken by the late Government led to the course taken by the Government of which the hon. Postmaster General is a distinguished member. I submit that the resolution which he quoted this afternoon is no basis at all for that course, and, properly construed, never was intended to cover the dismissal of such officials as have been dismissed since this Government came into power. I submit that that resolution, the Lake resolution, so called, properly construed, could not justify one-tenth of the eleven hundred dismissals which have been made by the Postmaster General. That resolution, moved by Mr. Lake, who was then a member of the House, was explained in a speech made by the mover at the time. He complained of the fact that officers of the Government in the northwest who were paid high salaries and who ought to give all their time and attention to Government business, were giving their time and attention in fact to political matters, and this, he said, ought to be stopped. To that line of action the Government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier gave consent, they agreed that men of this class, men paid high salaries, should devote their whole time to the business for which they were paid and not to politics. But does the Postmaster General say that he has confined himself to the class of people referred to in that resolution? He has gone further with his axeman business and his beheadings than any other minister in this country has ever gone before. It has never been known before in this country that mail contractors, poor, honest men, who have put in tenders for carrying the mail and have honestly obtained their contracts, and, obtaining their contracts, have spent their money to provide vehicles and other equipment for the purpose of carrying those contracts into effect, have been beheaded, their contracts cancelled and given to others. That is a line of action for which the Postmaster General can find no precedent in this country, or any other country in the world. That is the charge I lay at his door a charge which he cannot and will not answer, so far as I 
can see, and which, certainly, he cannot deny.
He passed on from talking about dismissals and talked very glibly and very fluently indeed about these wonderful election scandals that he seeks to bring before this country. He passed very lightly over Chateauguay and came to the county of Bruce. He read some nice descriptions of certain convivial meetings which, he said, the hon. member who represents South Bruce (Mr. Truax) had attended in certain parts of that county. We are not aware whether the Postmaster General has any tendency or any regard for these convivialities with the fair sex-we have no evidence of it so far as the census of this country is concerned. But, Mr. Speaker, we, in this country, are now confronted with great questions, with questions involving the interests of the hundreds and thousands of men out of employment, as admitted by the hon. gentleman himself. I submit that that all-important matter was treated altogether too lightly by the hon. gentleman who has just addressed us, and from whom we had a right to expect a statement of some line of policy to be inaugurated by the Government of which he is a member. He spoke flippantly, as I said before, of the free food question. Will the hon. gentleman say that the farmers of this country are down to the point where 60 cents a dozen is the best they can do in eggs, 40 cents a lb. the best that they can do in butter, 25 cents or 30 cents a lb. the best that they can do in beef? Does the hon. gentleman say, or does this Government say, that we must not touch this holy structure which he calls Protection, and that no remedy whatever is to be afforded for the people? The theory of protection has always been that local competition would prevent high prices. I ask the Government if they stand now by that theory and determine to afford the people no remedy notwithstanding such prices as those I have just quoted. I submit that when it comes to prices of that kind the evidence is overwhelming that competition is not there; and I submit that if we can bring in supplies from outside it is the duty of this Government, it is the duty of whatever party is in power, to apply that remedy. I feel sure that those people in this country who are not able to furnish sufficient food for their children and for the proper maintenance Of their families are looking for a remedy, and it is not encouraging for them to listen to the speech of the Postmaster General who, we have a right to believe,

represents the Government, and who tells us that this sacred structure of Protection must not be touched, that wherever the remedy may come from, it is not to come through any change of this structure. We listened a few days ago to a speech from the hon. Solicitor General (Mr. Meighen). He rather hinted that the revision of the tariff would come, that something would be done in the interests of the people who to-day are paying too high prices by reason of protection, and that he would be a party to doing something for the alleviation of the condition of the people. But if the speech of the Postmaster General is to be taken as an indication of what hon. gentlemen opposite propose to do, the Solicitor General has not very much to hope for, so far as any action on the part of the Government is concerned.
Passing on from the food question, the Postmaster General told us that he would not dwell at any length upon the matter of the navy. He was pleased to talk about dead bodies and dead babies, and probably thought that he was painting a very clever picture for the members of this House; but let me remind him that if he wants to engage in body-snatching or grave digging, he will find a very suitable corpse, so far as this Government is concerned, in the naval question. I would remind him of an incident of ancient or sacred history, wherein a certain great and noble personage suggested that he should go to a certain grave, whereupon he was told not ta go, because * by this time what is in the grave stink-eth.' I wish to remind the Postmaster General not only that the naval question is dead, but that it is in its grave, and has been there so long that it stinketh. I am not at all surprised that he wishes to get away from it as quickly as possible.
The Postmaster General grew eloquent in telling the members of this House and the people of this country how much we should admire the actions of the Prime Minister of Canada. Let me ask him, or any member of the Government to show me any act of constructive legislation brought forward by the Prime Minister from the time that he took office down to the present, except the Naval Bill? Has he as Prime Minister produced anything else since he took office? I advise the Postmaster General, and every other member of the Government, to look upon the only fruit of his labour, this dead body to which I have alluded, and which will never again be resurrected to appear in
the political life of flat Dominion of Canada.
It is not necessary for me to deal at any greater length with the speech of the Postmaster General, who has simply reiterated an old, old story. He has simply gone over the same old ground; he has told us nothing new. Of course it is delightful to an old Scotchman like myself to observe the striking and radical changes Which appear to have come over the hon. gentleman, and to witness his advocacy of true patriotism and of true loyalty to the King, the old flag, and the old land. I deem it no credit to myself to be loyal; I have no reason to be anything else. I am willing to concede to any man whose parents were born in another country the right to love 'his native land, but in his doing so there is no reason why he should be less patriotic to the flag under which he lives. There are conditions which make it ridiculous for a man to put forward his great pride and patriotism. It is only a few years since the Postmaster General took upon himself the duties of the position which he now occupies. This he did not because he was an out and out patriot; not because he was an advocate of a British navy, British protection and British advancement throughout the world, but because he had the negative qualifications; because he advocated ' not a man, not a dollar, nothing for the British flag; we are tired of it; it is not the symbol of liberty in this country-we had to put holes through it a few years ago to breathe the air of liberty.' That, Sir, is an indication of the company in which the hon. gentleman was found when the present Government came into office, and that is the company in which he may be found to-day. He came into this House under the leadership of a gentleman who made no bones of what his position was; a gentleman who occupied a leading position in the Cabinet.
That hon. gentleman, who represents the county of Jacques Cartier (Mr. Monk) in the province of Quebec, was brought in here as one who was qualified for the position of Nationalist leader in this House. But when hon. gentlemen opposite did not get everything they expected, that leader left the Cabinet, and his going was an evidence of the fact that his policy was not a man, not a dollar, no navy-nothing whatever for the advancement of British institutions in this country. The hon. Postmaster General should have submissively and quietly walked out after the hon. member for Jacques Cartier, because if he had not walked ahead of him coming in, he would

never have occupied the position he holds to-day. We are told that the lion. Postmaster General is a great loyalist and patriot, and that we have but to inquire into his past history to find out how much justification there is for his holding his present position. The hon. gentleman spoke about how [DOT] much he forgot; it is perhaps pleasing for him to realize that people will forget, for if his political record is not forgotten it is doubtful if he will ever again grace the benches of this House. At the last local election in the province of Quebec he pledged his political life to the people there, and asked them to support a candidate of his choice. But he was practically drowned out of existence; there was a ten to one vote-against his man-and then he was going to resign. But of course he did not do so. As long as there is any salary attached to his position, there is no danger of the Postmaster General resigning. The hon. gentleman was pleased to give us a dissertation upon good manners and parli-mentary etiquette, but I think that his reply to the hon. member for Prescott (Mr. Proulx) was not what 1 would regard as a proper answer for a big man, occupying such a responsible position, to make a respectable member of this House. The hon. member for Prescott simply said:
' You have forgotten a certain condition of affairs;' whereupon the bar-room answer was given; the police court cleverness was employed, and the Postmaster General said:	' I have forgotten more than the
hon. gentleman ever knew.' That, Sir, is an example of the good manners of a Minister of the Government. I submit that it is anything but good manners, and it shows the peanut-political methods of the hon. Postmaster General. I had no intention of devoting so much attention to the speech delivered by the Postmaster General (Mr. Pelletier), as I had a few observations of my own to make on these *questions.
Speaking in this House a few years ago, since this Government came into power,
I znade the remark that I had hoped and believed that notwithstanding the fact that we had bad times and bad conditions when the Conservative Government was in power before, conditions had risen to such a high state during the fifteen years of the Laurier Government that the new Government could not, by any mismanagement on their part, bring the country back to the old conditions. I am sorry to say that I gave them more credit than they were entitled 
to in one way, or perhaps I did not give them credit enough. I did not give them sufficient credit for their ability to wreck the ship of state and bring it to the disastrous condition in which it is to-day, as compared with the happy conditions in which matters were found in 1911 when the Administration of Sir Wilfrid Laurier handed over the reins of power. We handed over the reins of power after fifteen years of the most magnificent development that has ever taken place in any country. We found this country, Sir, when the right hon. gentleman who to-day leads the Opposition assumed office, in financial distress and storm. We found the same stagnation and standstill in financial and commercial matters extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific that we have to-day. We found that the Minister of Finance at that day was struggling to make one hand wash the other, struggling and in distress, getting every dollar he could from every source, legitimate and otherwise-I suppose legitimate-that could be gathered into the treasury; and with all that, and with the public service of the country depleted and starved, the only condition he could present, even in an election year, was a deficit approaching one million dollars. That was the condition that existed in 1896 when the Laurier Administration took charge. What has followed, Sir? The sun that set in adversity rose in prosperity. The moment the Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier took charge of the affairs of this country and his Government assumed office-and that must be admitted to have been one of the ablest, if not the ablest, Administration that was ever constituted or formed in this country-everything budded forth and everything went forward with a bound to the prosperity which has continued for the fifteen years we were in power. We were told that although we had been saying we had surpluses, we had not had any; we were told that the moneys which appeared upon our books from year to year as a magnificent surplus were simply a paper surplus and that we did not have the money. We were told we were preventing proper investigation into the affairs of the country and that we were concealing something and that things were far from what they ought to be, that we had a dark lantern brigade and other institutions preventing inquiry. But the time came when, according to the rules of government we have in this country, a change took place. It is well, perhaps even if disaster should follow, that the people

should have a right to rule. I am not complaining about the change of government, but I am submitting that when the change did come, when the Government of the day had power to inquire into every condition which prevailed during the fifteen years we were in power, they had the opportunity of making good the statements which they had made that our surpluses were simply paper surpluses, they had a right to make good the statement that we were hiding behind dark lantern brigades the doings and actions of the Government. What did they do ? They had the right to inquire. They never did inquire, or if they did they found nothing. When it came to delivering over a statement of the surplus, we handed them over $39,000,000 of clean cash; everything was squared up and a clean Administration gave up its books in a most magnificent manner. The Finance Minister himself after making the most thorough search- and we may be sure he would have been glad to find any fault-had- to come down and say that the conditions of the country were splendid and that the book-keeping, as handed over to him, was most magnificent and that he had nothing to say, that the money was there, he had counted it and found some $39,000,000 was there. That, Sir, is the condition in which we handed over the finances of this country to the incoming Government and that is the condition which, after two years, they have been able to bring to the state of financial crisis through which we are going to-day. I submit that when I made the statement that I thought they could not bring the country to this condition in such a short time, I am sorry that I miscalculated the capacity of the present Administration in bringing these matters to the very state .and conditions in which they are to-day.
I wish to call the attention of the House for a moment to the speech of the hon. Solicitor General (Mr. Meighen). I have had the honour of sitting in this House with the Solicitor General for some years. I have always watched his career with considerable interest and have looked upon him as a clever young lawyer; I have certainly no fault to find with his promotion to the position which he occupies to-day. I have just one fault to find; I think that we in the great province of Nova Scotia should have got this position, we in that province have always been accustomed to be represented in the Cabinet by at least two ministers. I submit that today we are not, as a province, represented in the Cabinet at all. The Prime Minister
is representing every province; not this Prime Minister but every Prime Minister is supposed to be the representative of each province in the Cabinet, regardless of the province from which he may come or for which he is elected. For that reason I submit that the great province of Nova Scotia is not, as such, represented in the Cabinet. We have about the same population as the province of Manitoba and I think we have reason to complain when they have practically three ministers from the province of Manitoba and we should at least have one from the great province of Nova Scotia. It is not because we did not use to have talented men from that province. We have given this country three premiers and two distinguished ministers of justice. We have given this country in the early days as a minister of justice, the late Hon. James Macdonald, a man of great fame as a lawyer and as a jurist in his own country. We have given you as minister of justice the late revered Hon. Sir John Thompson. As prime ministers we have given you Sir Charles Tupper, Sir John Thompson, and the present distinguished head of the Government (Mr. Borden). Therefore it cannot be said that we were used to be without talent in the province of Nova Scotia. But I am sorry that we have fallen on evil days and on evil times, that to-day while it is true that we have nine members representing the province of Nova Scotia supporting the Government, it is reported, whether it is true or not I do not know, that the Prime Minister stated to his friends that he would like to give the position of Solicitor General to somebody from that province of Nova Scotia, we were entitled to it, but he was sorry to say that, while we sent here considerable raw material, there was nothing really from which he could venture to make a solicitor general.
If we go over the list we find that we have from Cumberland a lawyer, from Hants a lawyer and from Annapolis a lawyer. We have this semi-ready from Kings. Out of this outfit it appears that the Prime Minister found it impossible to make a selection, and he decided not to give us a Nova Scotian for a solicitor general. Mr. Speaker, upon that ground I am sorry that I must give way and say that after all it was well that the boss of the Administration should have his way, and that the third man should come from Manitoba and no one at all from the great province of Nova Scotia, except the Prime Minister, who is participated in by the other nine

provinces just as well as by the province of Nova Scotia.
I pass on to say something on the speech of my hon. friend the Solicitor General (Mr. Meighen) in connection with the Roads Bill. There is such a thing as a man getting too big, there is such a thing as a man thinking beyond his powers. The legerdemain artist, the juggler is too big and too strong. I use the word 'juggler' without any disrespect for the capacity and power of the Solicitor General. There are men who go on the stage and make their living as jugglers. They throw their hat on the table and take rabbits, cats, rats and all sorts of things out of the hat. They are not in the hat, but it appears to the onlookers that they are. The Solicitor General has developed great strength along these lines of jugglery, but he went a little too far the other night. He went on to say that this is a Bill that anybody could deal with, having nothing to do with money at all. That was one of the rabbits he took out of his own hat. Then he gave it a twist, and it became the liveliest kind of a money Bill you ever saw, and nobody could dare touch it. It was too sacred, just like the policy of protection in the opinion of my hon. friend the Postmaster General. Nobody can put unconsecrated hands upon it because it is a money Bill. But I think that the Solicitor General has gone a little too far. He has tried to convince honest men and men of some experience of things which are really not true. He has attempted something which is really far beyond his powers. This Bill, which he wants the Senate to steer clear of, not to touch and to leave alone for the reason that it is a money Bill, is not a money Bill, and when the question was put to him he had to acknowledge that it was not. I can remember distinctly when the discussion was on that the right hon. Prime Minister stood up in his place and advised the members of this House, on the authority of the Prime Minister, that a resolution was not necessary. The Bill passed this House on the distinct understanding that it was not a money Bill. Therefore, if that was the case, and I believe it was, what right had the Solicitor General to say that when it got to the other branch of Parliament it was a money Bill or a Bill which required to receive the attention of this House only and could not be qualified or touched in any way by the hon. gentlemen in the other Chamber?

Another strong reason given by the hon. Solicitor General why they should not touch this Bill was that legislation would have to be passed by this House following every step of the money from the time the expenditure was suggested until it got to its ultimate destination, and that the power of this House had to be exercised over it until that was done. I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that this is a very sound principle, but I might remind the Government and the hon. Solicitor General that we have had, within the last two years, several large votes of money made by this House and not for public works as the term is understood. No legislation passed this House enabling the Government to follow these moneys to their final destin ation. I want to ask the Government and my hon. friend the Solicitor General what about the $15,000,000 that passed this House last year to be paid over as a bonus and a gratuity to a certain corporation'in this country known as Mackenzie and Mann? They paid that $15,000,000 out of the moneys of this country. We voted against this, we wanted to have it done in a business way and as a business transaction, but we were outvoted by the majority on the other side of the House, that money passed out of sight, and we know not where it went, we know not what was done with it, and there is nobody under the sun that can be called to account to tell this House where the money has gone. Where is the high-sounding principle laid down by the hon. Solicitor General that we must follow this money to its destination? The Ontario Government came to us with a proposition which was the most absurd that I ever heard of, asking for a subsidy for a railway that had been built for years, that was making money, that was putting $500,000 or $600,000 a year into the treasury of the province of Ontario. They asked for $2,000,000 of money to be paid over to that Government. That $2,000,000 of money was paid to the Ontario Government and it went out of sight. We do not know where it went. Where is the principle of the Solicitor General that we must have legislation to follow these moneys to their destination and know what becomes of them? There is nothing of the kind. The same thing happened in the case of the province of Manitoba. Four million dollars was voted by this House and passed over to the treasury of the province of Manitoba in 1912, and there is not a line of legislation to enable us to follow that money and see what has become of it. What becomes of the idea that the Senate should

not touch this Bill, because, forsooth, this provision was not in it and it was necessary to follow this money that was to go on the roads of this country if it ever went. According to the Solicitor General, because this legislation was necessary, this Bill was not to be touched by the Senate except by the consent and goodwill of hon. members of this House. I submit that that is not the reason, that it cannot be the reason, for, if that were the reason the same principle would have been applied in the cases that I have mentioned in which $2,000,000 was paid to the Ontario Government, $15,000,000 to Mackenzie and Mann, and $4,000,000 to the province of Manitoba. That principle would have applied if the statement of the hon. Solicitor General represented the true reason. The reason was, of course, that the Government wanted to have a string on this money, wanted to control it, for the very good reason that has been made plain by my hon. friend from Guysborough (Mr. Sinclair). My hon. friend from Guysborough, speaking in this House the other night, made reference to one of the reasons which has been controlling or moving the Government in placing this money within their own reach. The hon. member said on that occasion that he was not in South Renfrew at the time of the election, being the first by-election after this Government came into power, but he quoted from a Conservative newspaper, published in the riding and called the Renfrew Journal, the report of a speech made by the hon. Minister of Customs (Mr. Reid), on the occasion of that by-election. The report of that speech is as follows:
Dr. Reid turned his attention to the good roads movement advocated by the Conservative Government at Ottawa, and the bald way in which he handled his topic disgusted all decent men who looked for something higher than this kind of talk from a Cabinet minister. The burden of this part of Dr. Reid's speech was that South Renfrew should vote for Dr. Maloney and the Borden Government would then spend money in this district for good roads.
I submit that when we come to the last analysis of the purpose of this Roads Bill, we have to take the view of it, given by this spokesman of the Government, a few days after the Bill was introduced. I remember well when the Minister of Railways brought in the Bill it was in the midst of the South Renfrew election. It would be unkind to say the measure was launched for the purpose of influencing that election, but there was at all events, as the Minister of Finance would say, a synchronism. However the moment the Bill was introduced the Minister of Customs declared to the. people of South Renfrew what they would get if they did one thing and what they would not get if they did the other thing. The Government have dropped the great navy question; it is not only buried but it is malodorous and they fear to go near it, but this Roads Bill seems to be the darling of their hearts, and they take it to bed with them and they cuddle it and fondle it. They are making the people believe from Vancouver to Scutari that this money will be applied to roads running along the lines of the different settlements and concessions, and that it is a mortal sin that the Liberal party are standing in the way.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: They are only trying to make the people believe that.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: Yes, the Government are trying to make the people of Canada believe that these roads will go all over the country. It reminds me of the story of an old farmer who bought a pig in Amherst and was driving him to Truro, and he was met by another farmer who said: You are taking the pig to Truro, but the owner of the pig replied: For goodness' sake don't let the pig hear you, because he thinks he is going back to Amherst, and if he hears he is going to Truro I'll have an awful time with him. And so, as the old farmer was trying to deceive the pig, the Government are trying to deceive the people of Canada by making them believe that this money will be spent on every foot of road in every county in Canada. But that is not the case, as I can prove from statements made by the spokesmen of the Government. That is a bold charge for me to make and I would not make it if I did not have the evidence. This Government is represented in the Senate by a Minister of the Crown, and what the Government leader in the Senate says is equally binding on the Government as if it were said in this House by the Prime Minister himself. If I can prove that the Hon. Mr. Lougheed, the leader of the Conservative party in the Senate, has declared that this money is not to be expended in the general way that road moneys are expended, then I suppose you will believe it. The constitutional argument was made by some gentleman in the Senate that this money, if voted at all, would be voted in contravention of the terms of the British North America Act, and in support of their contention they pointed to subsection 10 of seclion 92 of that Act. That section

enumerates the many things over which the provincial governments and legislatures have exclusive jurisdiction, and, amongst others, it mentions:
Local works and undertakings other than such as are of the following class.
One of the gentlemen who took this constitutional objection was contending that this subject being exclusively within the jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures, it could not be dealt with by this Parliament. The Hon. Mr. Lougheed is a lawyer of many years experience and a gentleman of good standing in his profession, so that he was not to be taken by surprise on a question of this kind, and he made the answer of. a constitutional lawyer to the objection which had been taken. He said: You are mistaken entirely; this does not come at all within the class of works you speak of; you say this should not be done because it is ' local works and undertakings in the province '; it is not that at all and your point is not well taken. Now, if these roads are to be built from A to B and from B to C all along the different concessions, as roads are usually built, then nothing could more fully come within that definition of local works appertaining to local matters. But the leader of the Senate got over that, and said that was not the intention at all.
At six o'clock, the House took recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: When the House rose at six o'clock, I was endeavouring to show, from the argument of the hon. leader of the Government in the Senate, that the Boads Bill, so-called, was not a matter calculated for' the general improvement of the roads of the different provinces, but was a Bill that was intended for interprovincial roads. I was pointing out, following the argument of the hon. leader of the Government in the Senate, (Hon. Mr. Lougheed), when he was answering the contentions made by Senators made in the same Chamber, that this Bill was a trespass upon provincial rights. The hon. Senator, representing his own views and the views of the Government of the day, was setting forth that this was not in any sense a trespass upon the prerogatives and rights of provincial governments, but was absolutely and fully within the powers of this Parliament. He was arguing that the Bill, wrhieh he was then supporting as a Government Bill in the Senate, came not within' subsection 10 of section 92 of the British North America Act. but within sub-
[Mr. McKenzie. 1
sections 'A,' ' B ' and ' C ' of subsection 10. Subsection 10 itself gives to the provinces, absolutely and exclusively, local works and undertakings other than such as are of the following classes:
(a)	Lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, telegraphs, and other works and undertakings connecting the province with any other or others of the provinces, or extending beyong the limits of the province:
(b)	Lines of steamships between the province and any British or foreign country:
(c)	Such works as, although wholly situate within the province, are before or after their execution declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the general advantage of Canada or for the advantage of two or 'ore of the provinces.
The hon. Senator was contending that this . Boads Bill came within the scope and purview of subsection 'A,' ' B ' and ' C ' or some one of them, and was within the powers of this Parliament and not subject to the criticisms set forth by the hon. gentlemen who were contending that this was a trespass or an imposition upon the rights and prerogatives of provincial legislatures. In support of his contention the hon. Senator spoke as follows:
If hon. gentlemen will look at the preamble of the Bill they should come to a different conclusion than that which they apparently have arrived at as the object of this Bill. If they will observe the language of the preamble of the Bill they will find that this is not a local undertaking. This has not for its object the improvement of the roads in a particular municipality, or group of municipalities. It is not intended for a moment that this assistance should be given to the ordinary highway in a local sense.
Then I direct the attention of hon. gentlemen to the first clause of the Bill in which this is entitled the Canadian Highways Improvement Act. A proper distinction should be drawn between the Bill and the meaning which hon. gentlemen are disposed to attach to it. Hon. gentlemen seem to think that the Government of the day in its generosity has suddenly come to the conclusion that municipalities should be helped and that the provinces should be helped only so far as the development of local highways is concerned. But there is a larger object than that in view. The Government has the object in view set out in the preamble of. the Bill. I maintain that while-highways in their local sense are peculiarly provincial undertakings, that this is more than a provincial undertaking. This is an interprovincial and national undertaking and does not come within that class of cases referred to by my hon. friends, and particularly the hon. gentleman from DeLorimier, who cited to us last night section 92 of the British North America Act, in which he sought to bring this undertaking under subsection 10 of section 92, and within the language ' local works and undertakings.'
That is the clean-cut argument of the hon. the leader of the Government of the Senate.

If we are to understand the English language at all and to understand the application which the hon. gentleman makes of the provisions of subsection 10 of subsection 92 of the British North America Act, he makes it very clear and distinct, and shows it in a manner that cannot be controverted, that he puts himself within subsections ' A,' ' B ' and ' C ' of subsection 10 ' of section 92, which give this House power to deal with interprovincial matters, such as steamship lines, roads between provinces and railways and canals which extend beyond the limits of any one particular province. He says that this Bill has for its purpose a work of that character. I want to point this out to hon. gentlemen in this House, who are arguing that the Government in its generosity came down with a Bill in order to assist the different sections of roads in different counties in the whole Dominion of Canada, and that if any obstacle is thrown in the way of this Bill it is an obstacle thrown in the way of the different roads up and down the different constituencies in the Dominion. If I should on my own authority tell hon. gentlemen supporting the Government, that this was not the purpose of the Bill, they would sneer and laugh at my statement; but I am not obliged to rely upon my own statement. I have here in black and white, and in such a way that they cannot escape from it, the authoritative statement of the Government. That being the case, I submit to the House and to the country that, when any hon. gentleman tries to make out that this is a Bill that enables the Government to borrow money for the purpose of improving the highways generally, the people do not understand it so, and anybody who says that it is, is endeavouring, intentionally or otherwise, to deceive the people, for such is not the purpose and object of the Bill. I venture to think there is not a responsible member of the Government who, in view of the speech of the leader of the Senate, will undertake to say to the contrary. If so, they must revise these statements, revise their policy and acknowledge at once that what the leader of the Government in the Senate says is not to be relied upon as a true indication .of what the real purpose of the Government is. This is another evidence of the fact that the trusts, combines and-millionaires have such a hold upon this Government that they not only provide the ways and means by which they become millionaires, but they must also provide for their junketings, great
white way from the Foothills to Halifax and possibly from Halifax to Sydney. No one road from the Foothills to Halifax could by any possibility be of any great use to "the ordinary farmers along the thousands of miles of it on either side. That is said to be the purpose of this Bill, and, in that case, whether it went through or not it could not be of great importance to the farmers of this country. It is not only fair but it is most eminently desirable that the people of this country should understand what the purpose of this Bill is and should not be deceived by the Government in regard to it.
However, it is far from being the desire of any hon. member on this side of the House to throw obstacles in the way of money being provided in a legitimate and proper manner for the purpose of improving the highways of this country. But I am sure that you will agree with me, Mr. Speaker, and so will other hon. gentlemen in this House who properly understand the conditions, that it is better for us to have even bad roads than to have in our country a legislation and a Government that will absolutely disregard the rules of the constitution under which we live. If it is necessary in order to improve the highways of this country, or to give more money to the local governments for any good purpose, I hope there is plenty of scope within the constitution for us to do so. It has been admitted by the Solicitor General that we could not pass this money over to the. provinces without legislation being enacted for that purpose. He admitted that it was in contravention of the constitution to do otherwise-that roads were a subject particularly within the constitutional powers and rights of the provinces, and that we could not pass money over to the provinces without getting an Act of Parliament enabling us to do so. That being the case, I submit it cannot be done at all under the constitution. It means that you are endeavouring to pass a law in this Parliament which this Parliament has no authority to pass. The constitution provides that there are certain laws that can be passed by this Parliament and certain laws that can be passed by the legislatures of the different provinces. If legislation with regard to roads does not come within our constitutional powers whence do we get the powers to pass such a law? And if we are able to pass legislation with respect to roads, this being one of the things under the jurisdiction of the provinces, what subject can be said to be safe within the powers of the

provinces? Is there any subject allocated to the provinces exclusively by section 92 of the British North America Act that can be left undisturbed, if by an Act of this Parliament it can be taken away and all obstacles dealing with it removed? According to Senator Lougheed, the leader of the Government, this does not come within subsection 10, and he admits that if it did we could not deal with it. He says it comes within clauses (a) (b) and (c) of subsection 10 of section 92, and therefore we have power to deal with it. The Solicitor General did not agree that it came under clauses (a) (b) and (c) but says that we remove all doubts by passing this legislation which he thinks should be sanctioned by the Senate. Under section 92 of the British North America Act sixteen or seventeen different subjects, each one of importance to the people who live in the various provinces, come exclusively within the jurisdiction of the provinces. But the Solicitor General comes to this House with a constitutional heresy and tells us that all that is necessary in order to give us the power exclusively to deal with this subject of roads is to pass legislation in this Parliament. I submit that if that be the case, the British North America Act, so far	as it	giving protection to any particular province is concerned, is mere waste paper.
. And I submit to those who think that under section 93 of the British North America Act they have some protection in respect of questions of education in this country, who think that th'e provinces have exclusive rights to deal with education, that in order to keep these rights secure they will have to do away with the constitutional learning of the Solicitor General, for he says that in order to get over that difficulty all we have to do is to pass some legislation and then deal with any of these subjects just as we think proper. Without labouring with that point further, I submit that when the Government of the day comes down with a policy stating in a proper way that at the time of Confederation sufficient moneys were not allowed the provinces for the different public works, one of them being the roads and bridges of the provinces, and when they ask us on this side to vote moneys for the subjects which come exclusively within the powers of the province, we certainly will gladly give our /assistance for that purpose and will vote the moneys to be properly allocated in that regard. The 
proper machinery provided by the constitution of this country will deal with these moneys, and there will be no trouble about it. This is nothing more or less than an increase of public moneys to be given to the provinces for this particular purpose. At different times and on several occasions large amounts of money additional to the amounts first provided have been granted to the provinces, and there has been no string attached to them, as the Government of the day wants to do in the case of this money; but each one of the provinces dealt with that money with its own machinery and in its own way. If it is necessary that more money should be given to improve the roads, and if we have the money to give, there is no reason why a properly thought-out plan should not be carried into effect. This is the money of the people. Do not let any one think for a moment that it is like the manna in the wilderness. This money is not provided by the Government exclusively. The people themselves provide it-there is no other source from which it can come.
If it is to be sent back to the people of the provinces, let it be sent to the proper authorities and handled through the proper channels. If this is done-and I have no doubt that some day it will be done-then there will be no opposition from this side of the House, because the people who spend the money will be answerable to the provinces, and the letter of the constitution will be properly adhered to. The action taken by the Government in the South Renfrew election is the chief objection we have to the appropriation of this money in the way proposed by the Government, and this objection we shall continue to have; we do not want to see the money of the people-the money of the people, I say, not of the Government-taken and used by the Government for purposes of political advantage. I am sure that the people of Canada are not so lacking of a sense of propriety or so devoid of a realization of what is meant by constitutional government as to condemn the Opposition for contending that this improvement to roads, if improvement it is to be, shall be carried out in a proper and constitutional way.
It was argued by the Solicitor General that we were stultifying ourselves in voting for the Agricultural Bill and refusing to vote for the ' Improvement to Highways Bill,' and that we were flying in the face of any constitutional argument we might make against voting for the latter. I sub-

mifc that the two measures are absolutely separate and distinct, and that there is a great difference between voting for a measure for agricultural purposes and voting for a bill which provides for the improvement of roads. Section 95 of the British North America Act reads:
In each province the legislature may make laws in relation to agriculture in the province and to immigration into the province; and it is hereby declared that the Parliament of Canada may from time to time make laws in relation to agriculture in all or any of the provinces, and to immigration into all or any of the provinces; and any law of the legislature ' of a province, relative to agriculture or to immigration, shall have effect in and for the province, as long and as far only as it is not repugnant to any Act of the Parliament of Canada.
There is a clear-cut authority, full and ample, giving this House the constitutional right to pass laws in reference to agriculture, and the voting for the Agricultural Bill does not in the slightest degree interfere with our opposition to unconstitutional legislation. The use of such an argument is vain, and scarcely worthy of the acute mind and careful reasoning of the Solicitor General.
One great point which is urged against us is that we are depriving the farmers of the country of the benefit of expenditure for the purpose of improving their roads, and that the roads used by the farmers who travel from their homes to adjacent towns or elsewhere were to be improved by the appropriation of this money. I think I have proved clearly and satisfactorily out of the mouth of the Government that such was not the intention of the Bill, and if the money were voted a thousand times, not one dollar of it would be expended in that way. That is the point I particularly wish to make; I desire to show the people of the country that they are being fooled or deceived by the Government and its supporters when such arguments are made.
Following the speech of my hon. friend the Solicitor General a little further, I wish to deal with that part of it in which he touched upon the tariff. Evidently the tariff is a subject which is not receiving harmonious treatment at the hands of the Government. I am quite aware that the Solicitor General has not the rank of a Cabinet Minister, but at the same time, if I have been capable of observing what has been going on during the last two years, he is in close touch with the present Administration, and knows well what is going on in the inner circles of Government. In his speech he gave us to 15
understand that tariff revision is in prospect. For my part, I do not know whether or not there is any tariff revision in prospect. The present Government came into power under particular and peculiar circumstances. They came into power by preaching the doctrine, so far as the trade of this country was concerned, of ' leave well enough alone; do not touch the trade conditions of the country, for they could not be better.' But we never heard that the leader of the Government ever went back upon his old theory of adequate protection. Dear only knows what' adequate protection' means. I understand that there is a new dictionary in process of compilation which will contain something like 450,000 words, and possibly in that new dictionary we may get a definition of 'adequate protection.' However, the Prime Minister promised the trusts and combines and mergers that if he and his party got into power, this policy of adequate protection would be carried out, and their interest protected. It is said, and I believe on very good authority, that the present Minister of Finance was admitted into the Cabinet because he was in a position to act as the trustee, representative, apostle and disciple of that doctrine as far as the trusts, mergers and combines were concerned. There is no other good reason why the capable Minister of Finance of former years should have been passed over and the position given to a gentleman who had not even won his spurs, and who knew nothing about politics. There must have been some underlying scheme by which he was to represent those who put up big money in order to bring the party back into power. Certainly I do not wish it to be hinted that I have had a desire to make any personal remarks about the Minister of Finance, but in carrying out this contract oi putting up the tariff sky-high, and .continuing the policy of ample or adequate protection, he has, to use a vulgar expression, taken cold feet. He is afraid to do it, and it is likely he will not do it-* I am afraid he will fall down on the job. But he is holding on to the only cry that is left to him of leaving well enough alone. Nobody knows whether the Government will touch the tariff or not. Hon. gentlemen opposite used to complain that the Fielding tariff was not satisfactory. It was satisfactory to us, it has brought prosperity to the country from end to end, and for the present we have no evidence why it should be interfered with. It wquld seem to me that it will remain as it is until the affairs of the country are once more given into the



master hand of the right hon. gentleman who leads the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) who will make any changes that will be needed in it. . I am sure that as things are going to-day there is no evidence that anything will be done by the present Administration. They are afraid to touch the tariff, they do not seem to understand it and therefore they will let it remain as it is. I must say, speaking for myself and the part of the country from which I come, that the Fielding tariff, the Fielding Administration has brought magnificent results in our part of the country. Magnificent steel, iron and coal industries grew up and were fostered under the administration of my right hon. friend and I would be loath indeed to tamper in any way with the trade policy in any way that would directly or indirectly interfere with these magnificent industries that have grown up and prospered under the administration of my right hon. friend. I am sure that such a departure would be far from any idea that he has of administration to-day, that he would do nothing that in any way would hamper or retard the advancement of these great industries.
I wish to call to the attention of the House the Mosaic vision of the Solicitor General in his speech the other night when he was dealing with the tariff. I do not know whether he understands this, but I believe he did. He said:
When it is made

That is, the change in the tariff.
-I, as associated with the Government, will do one of two things-I will accept full responsibility for the tariff as promulgated in that revision, or if I cannot do so I will sever my present association with the Government. When the tariff is revised, free wheat, agricultural implements and all other such matters will be fit and proper subjects for discussion. And I will be right in at the death; the hon. gentlemen's curiosity shall be satisfied to the limit
I submit to you that if the people of this country are watching for light upon the probable or prospective course of the Government from this declaration of the Solicitor General they will find it rather vague. The coal interests, the steel interests, the wheat interests, the lumber interests, the fishermen and the farmers of this country are watching the trade policy of this Government. There is one consolation, that whenever the day comes that this present Government will deal with the question, when the clammy sweat of death has come over the question, when i't is making its last kick, the Solicitor General will be

there, he will be there at the death. I want the great interests of this country to try and figure out for themselves what consolation they can gather from this.
When the tariff is revised free wheat, agricultural implements and all other such matters will be fit and proper subjects for discussion and I will be right there at the death.
I have heard a great many proclamations, I have watched politicians for the last thirty years and I never in my life saw any proposition so vague, so indefinite as this. The Solicitor General evidently knew what the attitude the Postmaster General was because the Postmaster General says that the tariff is a sacred temple, that it is a holy of holies into which even he could not enter at all and he takes care to say nothing about it except that it is a holy thing, that is all he will tell us about it, it is a sacred thing. His profession and calling and training does not enable him to go near it. He has heard of a certain mount in olden days which if a man put his hand to it fire issued forth and he was destroyed; he has heard of a certain ark which if a man touched he fell dead; and he regards sacred things as matters which he had better keep clear of. He tells us that the Solicitor General himself understood it in that way because if he touched it he would only be there at the death. So this idea seems to run through them all that it is a question of death the moment they touch this tariff. So, therefore, the people of this country may die without food, die without whatever is necessary for them, but this Cabinet, this Solicitor General at all events and the Postmaster General, have understood that this is a sacred structure, a sacred thing, and life is dear to them and they will not put unholy hands upon it. I suppose it would be dangerous for me to think of putting any interpretation on the speech of the Solicitor General because I have rather the reputation of being a Bible student and I find in the Bible that cursed is he that addeth to it or taketh from it. I will not add to it or take from it, but I will endeavour to make it clear to the people that there is going to be a sacrifice, blood is going to be shed and at that death the Solicitor General will be there and the Postmaster General will be looking on, at a safe distance.
Passing from that question 1 come to the passage that I read from the Address of His Royal Highness:
It gives me great pleasure to be able to congratulate you upon the remarkable expansion of Canada's trade with other countries in the past fiscal year, during which our total trade far exceeded that of any preceding year.

No doubt that is the contribution of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster) to the Speech from the Throne. He has no doubt done much to extend the trade of this country. The local Tory press in the part of the country I come from told us about the wonderful travelling of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. They told us that he travelled thirty-five thousand miles. That may be quite true, but I am sorry to relate that we have been given no result whatever from the travelling of these thirty-five thousand miles. If the hon. gentleman was only paid the ordinary constable fees of ten cents a mile it would cost this country considerable to meet his expenses. But, I am sorry to say that if we only paid him constable's fees there is no return whatever that would justify the venture of having sent him on those trips. It seems to me extraordinary that an old and trained veteran like the Minister of Trade and Commerce should go up and down this land, as he did in 1911, telling the people to have no truck or trade with the people across the line, that it was going to upset everything that was established in this country if any article whatever should pass over the border. Over the border, within sight of some of our towns and villages, is a population approaching closely to 100,000,000 people, a people of our own race, largely speaking our own tongue, observing our habits and customs, living much like ourselves and having that which could be traded satisfactorily and profitably with us. We are told that we should not have any trade with them, but the Minister of Trade and Commerce is sent by the present aggregation, which calls itself the Government of this country, on a fool's errand, 35,000 miles away to find trade. We have heard of men being sent upon a fool's errand. I will not say that the hon. gentleman would be on a fool's errand, but it is as much like it as one herring is like to another.
The hon. gentleman himself used to tell us in the discussion on reciprocity that the Hon. Mr. Fielding could never forget his barrel of fish and his coal hod. We have fish in abundance in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia, we have unlimited supplies of good coal, and if Mr. Fielding was always watchful as to the interests of the fishermen and watchful of the coal interests of the province of Nova Scotia, I am sure that no fault could be found with him. We have in the whole Dominion, exports in abundance of coal, fish, lumber, wheat and manufactured products. Let me ask 15J
the Minister of Trade and Commerce: Did you find any place where you could sell coal at the end of anywhere along the 35,000 miles ? The answer must be no. Did you sell any lumber ? No, not a foot. Did you sell any fish ? No, they do not take fish at all; the Chinamen do not eat fish-cats, dogs, rats, and that sort of thing, and there would not be any great demand that I could promise to supply. Did you sell lumber ? No. Potatoes ? No. Any manufactured articles ? No, because they do not wear any manufactured goods out there. That is the report that must be brought back to us here.
I shall wind up my reference to the condition of the hon. gentleman's report on his trade mission by the story of a coloured man who was a boss at a certain steel works. He had three furnaces to look after; he had furnace No. 1, furnace No. 2, and a locomotive to take care of. Each morning he had to report to his boss what had gone on during the night. One morning he came back and reported that furnace No. 2 was making white iron, which is worse than doing nothing. He said: We burned the bars out of No. 1 at four o'clock this morning, and at twelve o'clock at night we put the locomotive off the track; everything else is all right. That is the situation. This poor coloured gentleman had only three things to look after. In one furnace they burned the bars out, the other was making white iron, and the locomotive went off the track, but everything else, he said, was all right.
We have a certain number of things to export from this country-coal, lumber, fish, manufactured articles and wheat. We ask the hon. gentleman: Did you find any trade or any place where we can sell these things ? The hon. gentleman must say: No, but everything else is all right. That, Sir, is the condition of trade in so far as its expansion has been brought about by any effort of this Government.
Now I come to another point. There is a paragraph in the Address which reads as follows:
In connection with the highly important subject of transportation of our products, the provision of adequate terminal facilities at our great national ports has received and is receiving the attention of my advisers.
This is the question that comes close to home, and I want to touch briefly upon the situation in my own province and county in so far as the policy of the last Administration is concerned as compared with the policy of the present Administration. We are told that much is being

done for the development of terminal facilities at ocean ports. We have on the Atlantic coast in Canada some very excellent ports. We have the port of St. John, the port of Halifax, and the port of Sydney and North Sydney. We have three good harbours particularly. We have many others. I am not a Halifax man, and therefore I think that I can say that they have a good port at St. John, although perhaps a Halifax man might say differently. The port of St. John is good enough, at all events, for our good friends, Mackenzie and Mann, to take their steamers away from Halifax and send them to St. John, not because the port is better but because of a political end to be served. In the port of Halifax large expenditures of money are being made. We do not begrudge them at all. At the port of Sydney, at North Sydney, and the great port of the steel works, on the other side of the water, not a dollar has been expended. We had a promise from the outgoing Administration to build a magnificent terminus at North Sydney. We had the Intercolonial railway changed from its old route and brought around to the port of North Sydney for the purpose of making it a magnificent terminus for the Intercolonial, as we thought. But what do I find? I am sorry that the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Cochrane) is not in his seat. We find that, although I myself and others had been able to induce the preceding Government to make this change and to bring this road from the wrong place to the right place in order to get the harbour at the proper angle and at the proper depth of water, the present Minister of Railways and Canals has ignored our protest, and that, after all the expenditure we have gone to to change this road, he is advising doing the trade of this port without touching this magnificent harbour at all except by means of the old, inadequate terminus constructed a number of years ago, and which is quite unequal to the present necessities. If the statement is true that the Government is making a large expenditure at the terminal port, why is it that the expenditure of a few hundred dollars is going to stand in the way of making one of the big outstanding ports on the whole Atlantic coast of Canada a fit and proper place for the handling of the business of this great country? I protest against it, I will protest against it always, and I say to this House and. the Government that as I have 
fought the change before, when the day comes I will fight it again, and will never give this question a rest until the right thing is done. I will stand by the principle that nothing is settled until it is settled right, and the terminals of North Sydney will never be settled right until they are put into the proper place, and that magnificent port comes to its own in so far as Government improvement is concerned. Under the administration of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, we were given not only the promise but the actuality of a railway in the county of Victoria, extending to the capital of that county and through the heart of the county down to the placid waters of the harbour. When the Liberal Government went out of power we had the money voted for that project and we had the contract let. But then, this chilling blight came on; the Conservative Government came into power; the contract was cancelled, and, so long as this Government remains in power farewell and forever to any improvements in that county. The Laurier Government were to build railways through the counties of Halifax, Guysborough, Pictou, and Victoria, but with the exception of that part of the railway which traversed the county of Halifax, the Conservative Government discontinued the scheme and left us helpless. I submit that was not a fair deal; it was not what you would expect of a man of the proportions and ability of the Prime Minister in dealing with a big question of this kind; it was not fair for him to build the railway through his own constituency and leave the other constituencies, equally important, without railway communication. I appeal to the Government now, and it is not yet too late, to place in the proper location the railway they are now building. This is not a local question; it is a national question. It is not contended that the public works undertaken at Halifax are of local importance, nor should works undertaken in the great port of Sydney and North Sydney be considered as anything but national works. The trade with Newfoundland, which is all landed at Sydney, is one of the largest assets of the Intercolonial railway, and why should not the Government of Canada provide proper facilities for handling that trade? I venture the prediction that whoever is living twenty-five or 9 p.m. thirty years hence, if that toad is left where they propose to leave it to-day, will regard it as an act of madness that it was not continued to the

great port of Sydney. These questions are not receiving the attention they deserve from this Government. I trust the day is not far distant when the men now in office will be hurled from power, and when we shall again see an intelligent Government with a policy which will develop the counties of eastern Nova Scotia and every other section of Canada which is not receiving fair treatment to-day, and which will -take measures to bring in touch with the pulsation of the commercial centres of the Dominion and the outside world, the fertile and productive regions in my province now neglected and held back. I fail to see any of the great things which gentlemen opposite tell us this Government is doing. If the-people of this -country had servants who were stupid they might put up with them, but when incapacity is added to stupidity I do not think the people will long stand for it. We have evidence of the incapacity, the stupid blundering, in many cases the insincerity and possibly dishonesty of this Government, whether that be known to the heads of the departments or not. I have no doubt the day is not far distant when the -Government, Solicitor General and Postmaster General, and everybody else who has anything to do with it, will, to use a poetic but pe-rhaps not elegant expression: turn their toes up to the roots of the daisies; and then, the people of Canada will have done with them. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for this opportunity of presenting my views on these -questions to the House and to the country.


Mr. W. H. BENNETT (Simcoe East):: I can congratulate the hon. gentleman from Cape Breton (Mr. McKenzie), in this, that he has dispelled some of the gloom caused amongst his friends when they read the Montreal Daily Mail this morning. His merry quips and his ancient stories have been somewhat refreshing, and even the fine old crust on them does not much detract from their interest and their amusement. If the hon. gentleman had delivered his somewhat lengthy speech in his own riding, I have no doubt little importance would be attached to it, because of the fact that there is to-day in that part of the country as elsewhere, a certain amount of depression which all of us would like to see disappear. I am not going to say that Canada is as prosperous to-day as it has been for the past two or three years, for no man can expect enormous expansion to continue, year in and year out, without a check. In recent years railway building in Canada has proceeded with unexampled rapidity, and an enormous number of men have been employed in construction work on the Canadian Northern railway, the Canadian Pacific railway, and the Transcontinental railway. Many of these enormous undertakings of the railway companies have now been brought to a conclusion, and hence it is that a number of workingmen have been thrown out of employment, with the result that every industry in the country has been more or less affected. An hon. gentleman opposite the other day, speaking of the high cost of living, said that canned goods were higher in price than ever before, but if that hon. gentleman had only known what the real facts are, he would have had to admit that canned goods are cheaper to-day in Canada than they have been at any period during the last five years. That fact cannot be gainsaid, because there are hon gentlemen on this side of the House who are engaged in that industry and can vouch for it. Follow the line of construction of any railway in this country, and you will find the route marked with empty tin cans, which contained the food supplied to the men in the construction camps, and due to	the completion of	these	railways,	the	men	are	out of	employment	and	there	is	not the	demand
for canned goods there once	was.
But these hon. gentlemen, instead of coming to Parliament as representatives of the people and endeavouring to ameliorate conditions, are doing what? Endeavouring to black-eye Canada in every part of the world, and the greatest sinner of them all is the right hon. the leader of the Opposition. That right hon. gentleman should have made sure of his facts before he started out to black-eye Canada, as he did the other night. He wishes to have it heralded from one end of Europe to the other that poverty and destitution are stalking throughout Canada, and never has the right hon. gentleman turned over on his tongue a more delicious morsel than when he said the other night: 'Well, hard times are here.' The right hon. gentleman has been in power in this country, and at that time what had his policy to do with the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway between the city of Toronto and Ottawa, or the Canadian Northern railway except in this, that his Government with the most lavish hand was handing out bonuses at all times and at all seasons? Yet these gentlemen are complaining to-day when this Government is doing what any government should do in a time of stress.

when it can well afford to discount the future and endeavour to meet the requirements of the people by placing before them for construction public works that are absolutely necessary with the future prospects of the country.
My hon. friend who has just resumed his seat, in a very small portion of his speech, appealed to the Government not to interfere with the duty on iron. There is no portion of the hon. gentleman's speech which will be appreciated where he lives more than the small reference which he made to the duty on iron in this country. I regret that the hon. gentleman did not devote all his time to discussing the iron question in Canada to-day, one of the greatest questions before the people of Canada, not only for the present	but for the	future. Theother	day Senator Colonel Mason moved the adoption of the Address. Colonel	Mason	is a	well	known
figure in the commercial life of Canada. He is president of one of the leading banks, and it was a worthy comment made by him that despite the fact that our imports are about $700,000,000, nearly one-fifth of all our imports are made up of iron and iron products. What has this country been doing for the last ten years? Endeavouring to develop the iron industry. Go in what direction you will and you will find that attempts have been made in towns, in cities, to build up what should be the greatest industry in any country, the iron industry, because it enters into so many manufactured goods.
What has Germany done in that respect? I read in a handbook to-day that whereas in 1888 only 2,750,000 tons of pig-iron were produced in Germany, by a beneficent, by a proper and by a wholesome policy of protection, in 1912 the production had increased to the enormous extent of 17,852,000 tons. Where is Canada to-day? What has she been doing on this iron question? When our friends were in power, they assured the town of Port Arthur that they would be in a position to develop the iron industry in this country. They paid out of the public coffers of Canada a bonus to the extent of ?200,000 for a railway to lead up to the iron mines. $2,000,000 was then invested in an iron plant. The city of Port Arthur, depending on their assurance that a fair protection would be accorded to the iron industry, bonused the concern to the extent of $200,000. The town of Midland a few years ago gave a bonus of $50,000 to an industry in that town. Why? Because they

believed that the policy of the country would be one of protection to the iron industry. The same thing has gone on in other parts of Canada as well as in Ontario. I go down to Gloucester, N.B., The Government bonused in that county to the extent of $200,000, a railway to lead up to what is probably one of the richest iron mines in the Dominion of Canada. Surely when they have invested their money in a mine, when they built their railway, and when the Government granted the bonus that was granted, they expected that in due time there would be such a policy of protection to the iron industry that not only would the mine be developed, but that a large industry would be placed there for the production of pig iron. What has happened? There is this mine in New Brunswick with its enormous wealth of pig iron lying idle, and five or six hundred men who would be engaged in mining it are out of employment and no smelters have been built.


Mr. MACDONALD:: Is that the Canadian Iron Company's property?


William Humphrey Bennett: That is one of theirs. I can go into the province of Nova Scotia, rich in ore and coal. How is the iron industry in that country to-day? I read the following in The Weekly Sun:
In Nova Scotia too, blast furnaces are likely to close down for some weeks and collieries in that province will almost certainly follow suit. The United States iron trade is suffering as well. Across the line it is reported that a million iron workers are idle.
What is the result of the stagnation of the iron trade in the United States? The result is that the American people engaged in this line of industry are to-day dumping into Canada what available pig iron they may have, trying to find a market for it here, because they have heard that most of our local smelters are shut down.
What is the condition of the iron industry in Canada? Hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House the other day made it plain that this Government should, before there was any change or any abatement in the trade of the country, take time by the forelock and make provision for it. If that is a charge at the door of this Government, how -much more so was it a charge at the door of the late Government, because under their policy there was a scheme or plan by which the bounties to iron were given, on a sliding scale it is true; but it is well known that under legislative enactment the time would come when they would be ended

and that measure of protection or bounty would be taken off iron, and it was the duty of the Government to increase their tariff duty on iron so as to protect it for the the future.
The duty on iron is $2.50 per ton, that is under the general tariff. Under the British preferential tariff it is $1.50 per ton. Last year we imported from the United States $3,000,000 worth of pig iron at the uniform price of only $13 per ton. Let me call the attention of the House to this fact, that the lower the price in the States of pig iron imported into this country, the higher the duty. For instance, suppose the price were $20 per ton. The duty being $2.50 per ton would be nearly 125 per cent; by reason of the fact that the price ruled so low, namely, $13 per ton, the duty would be nearly 19 per cent. I am free to admit that here in Canada we have conditions which make it more difficult for us to cope with the people of the United States in the production of iron. In the first place, the climate is against us. The rigours of our winters are against the employer who hopes to get out of his employees as much as they could give under different conditions. Ore cannot he handled, coke cannot be handled, nor can any of the articles that go into the composition of iron, with the inclement weather we have in this country as compared with the United States. In the next place, we have not the field of labour to draw upon that they have. With the huge coloured population the United States have, how cheap labour is in that country. And, worse than that, so far as Ontario is concerned, every pound of coke that we use, we must draw from the United States, thereby incurring a large cost for railway carriage. For these reasons, and with the knowledge of these facts, it is easy to understand the odds we must face. And neither this Government nor the last Government can deny that these facts have been from time to time brought to their attention and they have been urged to take action before the crisis was reached that has been reached in our iron industry.


William John Macdonald: Will the hon. gentleman tell us why this Government has done nothing for this industry for the last two sessions ?


William Humphrey Bennett: The question is a fair one. All I can say to the hon. gentleman is that I believe that had there been unanimity in this House and no effort to make
political capital out of the question, something might have been done for the iron industry, to the benefit of Canada as a whole.


Mr. NESBITT:: The hon. gentleman
speaks of it as being one of our disadvantages in iron manufacture that we have not the coloured labour. Would he say where the United States Steel Corporation, the Pittsburgh people, use coloured labour?


William Humphrey Bennett: I suppose the hon. gentleman does not imagine that the Pittsburgh labour is coloured labour. But I did think that he knew that in Birmingham, Alabama, and other points hundreds of thousands of tons of pig iron are made by coloured labour and that iron comes into competition with the Pittsburgh iron.


Edward Walter Nesbitt: I would like to tell the
hon gentleman that the United States Steel Corporation are the largest makers of pig-iron in the United States, and they do not use coloured labour.


William Humphrey Bennett: They are not the only
manufacturers of iron.


Edward Walter Nesbitt: No, hut they are the
largest.


William Humphrey Bennett: I do not contradict that. But the Pittsburg people have the advantage of having coal close at hand, and that, no doubt, to some extent, offsets the advantage of the coloured labour in the South. Now, the pig-iron output of this country in 1912 was 917,925 tons, of a value of $12,307,000. At that time we had employed in the blast furnaces 1,778 men. I do not know how many there are to-day. But L must say I think these figures that I have taken are in error, because if I am correctly informed, the blast furnaces at Sydney employ probably 3,000 men, and even more. I am not here to complain only of what the prior Government did, I am here to complain of what the present Government is doing and what hon. gentlemen on both sides of the House are doing, or rather not doing, when they fail to come to the rescue of this, the biggest industry in Canada, an industry which might be made greater than it has ever been simply by correcting the mistakes made by the past Government, which mistakes are being continued by the Government of to-day. On this subject I speak feelingly, on this subject I speak in earnestness. For I know what the iron industry means to a town. I live in the town of Midland. I saw it first a struggling lumber village. I saw two iron furnaces come to

that place and employ from 400 to 600 men. I saw splendid streets opened and houses filled with the families of men who drew their $2 and $3 and $4 a day. And at one fell swoop I saw these industries closed and the men scattered to the four winds of heaven. And I come here to find a Parliament that occupies its time with resurrecting bygone issues that have been controversial for twenty years instead of coming to the rescue of one of the greatest industries of the country, when that rescue could be effected by the two parties being united in the work.


William John Macdonald: Why has not the Government moved in the matter? They have the responsibility.


William Humphrey Bennett: If I can move them, I certainly will do so. I am sorry if I have not shown the hon. gentleman that that is what I am trying to do. And I hope he will speak from his place on this question and that he will implore the Government, as I am imploring it, to take action.
Now, I come to another matter in which Canada stands at a disadvantage with respect to the iron question. Not only on the question of pig iron are we handicapped, but on the question of what is known as scrap iron as well. Scrap iron is used in conjunction with the ore in all the smelters; I have seen it used in Midland, and it is used elsewhere. Last year we imported from the United States no less than 54,000 tons of scrap iron. The duty is only $1 per ton, and as the price is about $14 a ton, the duty is about 7 per cent. I am sorry the Minister of Finance is not in his place tonight, because I should wish to address myself to him particularly in regard to one matter in relation to which the iron duties are of the greatest importance. A few years ago, before the change of Government, in answer to the request and demand of the agricultural implement manufacturers, and at an evil moment for the iron industry in this country, Hon. Mr. Fielding made the concession of reducing the duty on agricultural implements. The duty was reduced on mowers, reapers, harvesters, binders and attachments from 20 per cent to 17J per cent. At the same time, the raw material was admitted free of duty. That was a greater concession to the manufacturer than he had enjoyed before [DOT] in having 20 per cent duty on the manufactured goods. For, while his duty was only decreased 2i per cent, he was given permission to import his materials

duty free. This concession, it was claimed by the iron people, was manifestly to their disadvantage. I am not here to say to what rate these duties should be increased, but I am here to call the attention of the House to the certain important facts. We are bringing into this country the enormous amount of $140,000,000 worth of iron and iron products, as I have stated, and as was shown by Senator Mason. We have iron in our mines; we have coal in our country; we have subsidized railways to all these different mines; and towns and cities have expended thousands upon thousands of dollars in bonuses. It is high time the Government should awaken to the emergency, and high time that both sides joined in backing up the Government in making such changes in the tariff that the smoke may again issue from these smelters, that other smelters may be built in the country, and that all the other advantages may be gained that follow in the wake of this great industry. In Ontario we talk much about the advantages of cheap power. It has been demonstrated in Germany, where they have the coal, and have used that coal to make coke, that the byproducts of the coke amount to enormous sums. Why could not we have this industry with its by-products and all the wealth which would thereby be created? And from gas issuing from the coke ovens power would be produced at cheaper prices than those at which electrical energy can be sold.
I know it will be argued by some persons that if you increase the duties on iron a monopoly will be created. In answer to that, I have only this to say: We have here in Canada laws against combines. If a combine is made in restraint of trade or to unduly enhance prices, let that law be enforced, and that will have the effect of bringing prices down. After all has been said and done, the amount of iron that enters into the manufacture of one of these implements is but a mere bagatelle; I am assured that in the ordinary reaper or mower only about $3.50 worth of iron is used, so that no very great excess of price would be engendered. Take the case of malleable iron. We imported from the United States last year upwards of $2,000,000 worth of malleable iron, paying duty at the rate of 27J per cent. We have malleable iron industries in this country, and they too might manufacture what is necessary for the requirements of

Canada. I do hope the Government will take this matter into their serious consideration, and that such changes may be made in the tariff as will result in the opening up of the iron industry, thus developing the mines, creating traffic for the railways and giving employment to thousands of men who cannot be employed in this country and who must be driven out of Canada altogether unless aid is given to this industry at once.
During the debate more or less has been said in regard to the matter of transportation. My hon. friend the member for West Huron (Mr. Lewis) addressed himself to the House the other afternoon on the question of the losses on the Great Lakes during the past few months. Every hon. gentleman within the sound of my voice knows what happened on the occasions referred to. Two hundred and fifty valuable lives were lost. Insurance companies can compensate the owners of the vessels which were lost, but no power can compensate the families which have been blighted with sorrow and which have had their breadwinners taken from them. I want to say here that a great deal can be done in Canada by the Government of the day in the way of preventing the occurrence in future of such catastrophies. The Government has to-day announced the policy of expending a large sum of money on what is known as the French River section of the Georgian Bay canal. A glance at the map will point out to any hon. gentleman that the mouth of the French river is at the north end of Georgian bay, near Mani-toulin island. A large amount of money- I shall not charge my memory with recalling how many millions-has been expended on enlarging channels north of Manitoulin island, and it would need the expenditure of but a few additional millions to provide a channel from Port Arthur and Fort William through the Sault canal and north of Manitoulin to all Georgian bay ports,. When I tell the House that last year, out of
80.000.	000 bushels of grain-I am referring to wheat alone-which were shipped from Fort William, over one-half that quantity was delivered at points on the Georgian bay, it is fair to argue that by a [DOT] better system of routing, not only 40,000,000, but
80.000.	000 bushels might be taken that way. The Georgian bay ports serve a number of routes. While 80,000,000 bushels of grain may come from our Canadian Northwest and be delivered from Fort William at different points, the bulk of that amount does not by any means go by way of export either through New York or Montreal. A
large proportion, I should say fully 50 per cent of it, is consumed in Canada, and therefore, through the different ports on the Georgian bay which are reached by the Canadian Pacific railway	and
by the Grand Trunk railway, this grain could be distributed throughout the different provinces of Canada. In addition to that a large portion of the grain from the north western states goes to the eastern and northeastern states via this route. This grain can be delivered from Montreal to eastern and northeastern states as cheaply as it can be delivered from the port of Buffalo, therefore it should be the object of the Government, by all possible means, to endeavour to divert that trade into the channels to which I have referred, and prevent its going to Buffalo. We are building up in Canada a large marine trade. Hon. gentlemen who do not live near the Grand Lakes have no conception of the immensity of the trade that is done to-day on these lakes; less have they any idea of the size of the vessels engaged in that trade. When I tell hon. gentlemen that in these Georgian Bay ports during the season of navigation they can see vessels carrying half a million bushels of grain of the value of half a million dollars, involving a total investment, including cargo, of $1,000,000, it will be at once apparent to them that a large and increasing trade is being done. If we are to carry that trade through Canadian channels, then the result will be the building up of a Canadian fleet, the giving of employment to Canadians on the vessels, and the grain in turn will be carried over Canadian railways. What avail is it to Canada if forty million bushels of grain are placed in American bottoms at Fort William, carried to Buffalo on American railways, and transported to the city of New York? That is no benefit to Canada at all; it does not leave one cent in the country. But if by the means I have indicated you can transfer that forty million bushels of grain to ports on the Georgian bay, hand it over then to the Canadian Pacific railway and to the Grand Trunk railway, and to their many branch lines and direct connections to New York and other United States ports, you would give to' the Canadian railway companies a large amount of trade. We are handicapped in Canada in respect of this carrying trade. There is no doubt about it that when the port of Montreal is closed we are under the disadvantage of a severe handicap. I believe, as I was informed very credibly a short time ago, that the Canadian Pacific railway

recently made this arrangement : they carried to the Suspension bridge ten million bushels of grain, which was then handed over to the New York Central railway to be carried down to New York for export to England and other European countries. What did that mean? It .meant that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company were better satisfied to have the profit that would enure to them by the carrying of the grain from Fort William to the Suspension bridge than to carry it to Halifax or St. John, N.B. What is to be done to -better these conditions? In the first place, the great handicap exists at Montreal, because the grain trade is not in full force and in full volume until the port of Montreal is on the point of closing up for the winter. The port of Montreal is invariably closed on November 26 or 27, and it is just about that time of the year that the grain is being pushed forward in the greatest volume. The result is that these large United States freighters, capable of carrying half a million bushels, come to Fort William, load up there-because it is no contravention of the coasting laws to ply between a Canadian port and a United States port-go down to Buffalo, tax the elevator accommodation there to its uttermost and those that cannot be accommodated become floating storehouses, until the grain can be unloaded later. Canada thereby lost last year the carrying by Canadian vessels and Canadian railways of the immense amount of 40,000,000 bushels of grain. This Government has now embarked on what to my mind is going to be a damaging project: the deepening of the Welland canal, but that is a matter of Government policy. No word of mine can stay it now, and I only hope and trust that it will not be a mistake. But if the vessels of the United States were able last year to come to our Canadian ports at Fort William and Port Arthur and take 40,000,000 bushels of grain from there to Buffalo, when the Welland canal is deepened to 25 or 30 feet, and will accommodate these large lake freighters, will they not be able then to take another
40,000,000 bushels of grain to Oswego, which i3 a shorter rail haul than to New York from Buffalo? Are we going to build up a merchant marine fleet in Canada? We are trying to do it. My hon. friend the hon. member for West Toronto (Sir Edmund Osier) is one of the owners of a large line of freighters on the lakes. To-day they are building-and I am glad they are doing so, because it gives that much more employment to Canada, and increases Canadian 
tonnage to that extent-an immense barge capable of carrying 10,000 tons. In the shipyards at Port Arthur the company commonly known as the Richelieu Amalgamated Company is building a huge barge capable of carrying some 10,000 tons.
And to-day in the town of Sarnia there is a vessel receiving her finishing touches, one of the finest vessels on the lakes, I suppose she will be the Empress of the Great Lakes, outstripping in stability and grandeur anything on the American side as a passenger steamer. While capital in this country is being invested along these lines to build up the trade of the country, why should not Canada, through its Parliament and its Government, take steps to prevent the trade from slipping from Canadian channels and being diverted into American? I believe it can be done but it can only be done- by closing the doors before the horse is stolen. I am not addressing myself to this matter from a local point of view at all. I live in a section of the country which has risen to what was prophesied years ago that an enormous quantity of grain would be carried through that point. Twenty years ago when the late Mr. Hays paid his first visit to Midland, when I went with the mayor to call on him as an act of courtesy, he said that when the Grand Trunk had their line completed through to Montreal with better grades they hoped to be able to carry not only Canadian grain to Montreal but also to carry a large portion of the American grain. And what has the foresight of the Canadian Pacific railway done? Grades were against them, distances were against them from Owen Sound to Montreal. At a cost, of $5,000,000 or $6,000,000 they, without any government subvention, built a line from their own town of Port McNichol across to a point near Peterborough, eliminating grades, making a perfect roadbed, and to-day you can see a train moving out loaded with 60,000 bushels of grain. In consultation with a leading official of the Canadian Pacific railway I was told that they hoped not only to carry through the Canadian channel, by Canadian vessels and by Canadian railways, the grain of the Canadian northwest to an immense extent, but to go right into Duluth and take the grain away from the American vessels and railroads, grain intended for distribution to the eastern States and also all through Canada. What is the handicap at Montreal? I do not live in Montreal so I do not know the facts, but if I am correctly informed, and I think I am well within

the mark, ocean vessels were lying in Montreal for twenty days at a time and Great Lake barges lay there from ten to twenty days at a time. Why? Because there was not sufficient elevator accommodation. I do not believe it is the business of the Government or of the country or that it will ever he the business of private capital to build such elevators simply for the purpose of storing grain but if they could keep a perpetual stream of grain passing through they could make money but they cannot keep them there perpetually or for a great length of time simply for the storage of grain. What to my mind must be done is to secure better ocean rates from Canada to the Old Country. That matter has been placed before the Government. It has had a sympathetic hearing and that is all. Why cannot this Government engage in the institution and forming of an insurance business for lake freight and ocean freight in this country? If our vessel interests on the Great Lakes and on the ocean are unjustly discriminated against by the American and British companies let this Government form itself into a business proposition and give to the vessel interests of this country such rates of insurance that they will be able to compete with the out-going freight on vessels from New York. This matter should commend itself to the Government at the very earliest day. We have great advantages in this country to develop that trade to go by the north shore of Manitoulin island and by these two great railway systems and ports on the Georgian bay. When I speak of these two great railways let hon. gentlemen consider that the Grand Trunk have not only one line of railway from the Georgian bay but two because they own the railway from Depot Harbour, so the Grand Trunk have two lines by which they can carry the grain to the northeastern States as well as to our own Canadian ports or even to New York itself. If there is danger of accident and catastrophe on the Great Lakes, if they occur on the four lakes, Ontario, Erie, Superior and Huron, surely they will be minimized if the trade only has to run the length of one lake and if the danger is minimized surely the insurance can be kept down. If you discuss this matter with a vessel man he will say there is a uniform rate of insurance whether to Buffalo or Georgian bay ports. In the first place Canada has a great advantage or should have over the United States in the matter of insurance in this
that, while I have never seen a compilation of figures, I think I am well within the mark in saying that insurance companies, prior to last year when the catas-trophies occurred on lake Huron, paid more insurance losses for collisions between Sarnia and Detroit than on all the lakes put together. Why is that? Because there are narrow places and you see the huge vessels going up and down-and I think I am within the mark when I say every five minutes a vessel passes up or down-in the fall of the year when there may be snowstorms or heavy fog there are a great many collisions and as a result a great deal of money has been lost by the insurance companies. More than that every vessel that goes to a point on the Georgian bay will make three trips there as against one trip to Buffalo. Surely that is a manifest advantage when you consider the size of a boat carrying 500,000 bushels of grain where the rate may be as high as 3 cents a bushel. There is a saving of two trips. Then there is another question of importance and that is that by our route there is no detention. Reading the vessel reports you will often see a whole fleet delayed at lake St. Clair or some other narrow point by reason of a heavy fog when there is no possibility of moving forward and they all come to a halt for fear of accident. I believe that this country and this Parliament could well address themselves to the task of discussing a matter of this kind. It is not a purely local matter, it is not even a provincial matter, it is a matter of great importance to the whole country. Surely it is a matter of importance to the farmer of the West if he can lessen his freight rates and to the manufacturer in the East if he can carry back his manufactured goods at a lower rate. I wish that hon. gentlemen in this Chamber would visit some of these ports on the Great Lakes and see the possibilities there are there for the development of the carrying trade of the country. The Canadian Pacific railway alone employ over 75,000 men and, taking four per family, that means the up-keeping by that company of a population of 300,000. The Grand Trunk railway must have almost a similar number and therefore it is to our manifest advantage that the railway interests of this country should be advanced so that the Canadian Pacific railway will employ not 75,000 men, but double 75,000 and every other company may be increased proportionately. I am addressing myself to these two matters because they affect the part of the community to which I belong and from which I

come, and the people of my constituency are deeply interested in this whole question. They are vitally interested in the two questions. I think I can fairly say that the iron industry, affecting as it does every province of this Dominion, has made the province of Nova Scotia, and I ask hon. gentlemen where would the province of Nova Scotia have been to-day had it not been for the development of the iron industry? Where would the thousands of young men in this province have been? Certainly not in that province where they have passed into the ranks of mechanics and artisans of a high grade. This industry has affected the development of the whole country. Why, therefore, not develop in New Brunswick, where they have those splendid areas of iron ore, a large iron and steel business? Why not develop these industries in the province of Ontario, where we have large iron deposits? Go into the county of Hastings, and you will find that they have them there, go to Port Arthur and Fort William, and you will find that they have them adjoining those cities. Let us spend our energies and bring our arguments to bear upon the Government in order that this iron industry may be developed. The coming into the Chamber of the hon. member for Welland (Mr. German) reminds me of the fact that within the past year a smelter has been established at Port Col-borne. This should be backed up. The duty on pig iron should be raised to such an extent, in my opinion, whether it should be 55 a ton or $6 a ton, that the Canadian market would be guaranteed to the Canadian producer of pig iron, with the result that this great industry would give employment to thousands of men in this country. Open up and develop the mines and keep within our own borders the wealth that is now going to the neighbouring republic.
I am not going into many of the other questions that have been discussed. They will be discussed, no doubt, on the Budget. I am a believer in this, that we here in Canada have been galloping at too fast a gait. We have had too much' gambling in the Northwest in lands. Go to any town in the province of Ontario, and what is the statement that will be made to you? Men here are hard up by reason of the fact that they have been making payments on land in the Northwest. With all my friends who have come down from the Northwest, it is all one and the same story-they have been indiscreet, they have got property rich, they have been buying lands very freely, and as

a consequence they have not been able to pay their agricultural implement and store bills. But these things are all going to level themselves up. This country is only on the edge of its development. I saw it stated the other day by Mr. Michener, the leader of the Opposition in the Alberta Legislature, that in Alberta only two per cent of the arable land is under cultivation. I have heard the statement made, and I believe it is within the mark, that the province of Saskatchewan has less than ten per cent of its arable land cultivated, and the old province of Manitoba still has large areas of land that have not been taken up. What does it mean to Canada, to us here in Eastern Canada, who have felt the throb of development in the building up of our industries and factories as a result of the settlement in the West of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of farmers? When there comes a production from that western country, not of 200,000,000 bushels, but of ten times 200,000,000 bushels of grain, and when Canada has three great Transcontinental railways in full operation, it will mean everything not only for Eastern Canada but for Western Canada. Let hon. gentlemen on both sides of the House look before them and see what is going on in this country. Look at the railway construction that is being commenced to-day, the branch lines in the Northwest. True, in old Ontario-we are not having new lines of railway constructed such as we had in years past. We are having dry docks built at Vancouver and at Sault Ste. Marie, and there is an expectation of others being built at different points. We are having grain elevators constructed; a new one is being built for the Canadian Pacific railway at Port McNiehol. In the West we see indications that flour mills are to be erected in anticipation of the flour traffic westward by way of the Panama canal. VVe have the ship-building industry that I have referred to before. On all sides we see the prospect of the coming to Canada of thousands of people. Not only from Great Britain and from Europe, but from the United States the tide of immigration has set in for Canada. We are the only country in the world to-day that has unbounded areas of land to give free to the man who wishes to come in and become a citizen of this great country. Let the beacon lights of Canada for years to come be hope in Canadians and faith in Canada.


Mr. W. F. MACLEAN (South York):: Mr. Speaker, I must compliment the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. W. H. Bennett) on the excellent speech he has made. I have heard him speak in this House quite a number of times when he was formerly a member, and since he became a member recently, and I must say, after listening to the speech he made to-night, at the same time not wishing to cast any reflection upon the speeches of hon. gentlemen who preceded him, that we should have more of these speeches in this debate and in the House.
With the example before me I am going to try and deal with one or two questions that should be of practical interest to the country, and I propose to do it in a very short time. I was attracted and much pleased with the announcement made by the hon. Postmaster General (Mr. Pelletier) this afternoon that we are at last to have parcel post in this country. There is a saying in the Bible that bread cast upon the waters will return after many days. Some of us have cast bread on the waters of this Parliament in favour of parcel post, and we see a realization of our hopes in the coming back of the bread on these waters now. While it may be said that progress is slow in this country, still we are always making some progress, and I congratulate the hon. Postmaster General on the announcement this afternoon that at last we are to have parcel post. I hope he will make his experiment on the largest possible lines, that he will take heart from the splendid success of parcel post in the United States, and that when he introduces the system next month the terms will be liberal, the service will be wide, and that the benefits will be appreciated in every portion of the country.
It is our privilege in the debate on the Address to bring up general topics, or topics of interest to various sections of the country, and I hope that privilege will long continue. I propose to-n'ight to refer to two or three things, but before doing so I would just like to lay down two underlying principles that I think are now recognized more or less by all Canadians. The two things that strike one most in a review of the history of Canada are, first, the long struggle to obtain self-government in this country as against the mother land. That took years and years. It required over a century of effort to obtain anything like self-government in this country, but we have it to-day, and we look upon it as the
most valuable thing we have under our system of government-namely, the right to manage our own affairs absolutely independent of the mother country. That, to my mind, comes up perhaps in connection with the question of naval defence, and I may be permitted to refer to that a little later on. There is another great underlying principle in connection with our country which is perhaps not recognized by all of us, but which must he recognized virtually by most of us, and that is that if we have achieved our political independence in this country as against the mother country, and if we have self-government, we have also achieved another great principle, and that is complete independence for Canada to control her fiscal policy independently of the United States. That took a long while to achieve, and the right hon. gentleman in a way was perhaps not opposed to it, but he did try to develop in this country the idea of commercial union, and later on reciprocity, and his experience must now demonstrate to him that while, as I think, he has the interest of this country at heart, the thing he thought to achieve in the way he thought tc achieve it was against the wishes of the majority of the people in Canada who are determined above all, not only to have political independence and to uphold selfgovernment as against the mother country, but determined to uphold the principles of being absolutely independent of the United States in the matter of their fiscal tariff. I do not cast any reflection on the right hon. gentleman for maintaining that position because we know that, Ephraim came down to history because he was wedded to his idols, and the right hon. gentleman may go down to history for his fidelity to his views.
My conception of Canadian history is that it teaches the two great principles of the right of self-government and the right to form our commercial and fiscal policy independent of the United States, and that Canadians are going to assert those princi-iles under every circumstance. In connection with the debate on the Naval Aid Bill, it was a matter of regret to me that suggestions were made in this House which looked to the abandonment of the idea of absolute self-government and of Canada being mistress of her own destinies.
I come now to matters of direct and present concern. We have had a great deal of what we call national policy in this country; we have had national policy in the interest of the manufacturers

and for the encouragement of home industries of all kinds; we have had national policy in the matter of railroad building and we have spent immense sums of money and incurred enormous liabilities in that respect; 10 p.m. and last session we had what perhaps might be called national policy with regard to banking, because we passed a law which was thought to be in the interests of the banking institutions of the country, and with which they are satisfied. But, Sir, the day has come when we must have a national policy for the farmers of Canada, and I now demand a national policy for the farmers of the Canadian Northwest in the direction of the abolition of the duty on wheat, so that these farmers may get what they want in their own interest. The farmers of the Canadian West want free wheat for two reasons: first, because they say they can get a better price for their wheat in the United States, and, secondly, because they contend they get better freight rates for the wheat they export to Europe if they send it by the American railroads. I believe it has been established that the price of wheat is better on the average in the American market, and that the railroad rates in the United States to-day are more favourable to the producer than are the Canadian railroad rates. These two things having been established, it is our duty in the interest of the farmer of the great west to withdraw the duty on wheat and thereby secure the entrance of Canadian wheat into the United States. It may be charged that in this I am abandoning my views with regard to protection. I do not know that I am, but if my views or if anybody's views on the subject of protection happen to be wrong or happen not to suit the requirements of to-day, then it is well that these views should be modified. But I think I will be able to show that I will have to abandon very little of my protectionist views to secure a great benefit for the farmers of the West. It has been said that free wheat would be detrimental to the Canadian railways and detrimental to the Canadian millers. I purpose answering that later, but in the meantime I say that I do not wish it to be thought that the Canadian millers are dependent on the legislation of the United States to keep their milling industry in this country. If it is necessary to keep the milling industry in Canada, I say now that we will have to find some method of our own to do so. If the Canadian farmer in the West-and he is now up against it, and we all admit he f.Mr. W. P. Maclean.]
is up against it, and he has had a hard time with stringent money and discouragement of one kind and another-if the Canadian farmer in the West is suffering, then it is our duty to come to his relief and to. give him the benefit of this American market where the prices are better, and to give him also the benefit of cheaper transportation over the American railways.


Mr. J. E. ARMSTRONG:: Would the hon. gentleman be good enough to tell us how much was the price of wheat in the United States higher than the price in Canada during each month of the past year? The hon. gentleman might also tell us to what extent freight rates are lower in the United States than they are in Canada?


William Findlay Maclean: If the hon. gentleman wants to have that question answered, let him go to the farmers of the Canadian West.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: That is not an answer.


William Findlay Maclean: That is quite a
sufficient answer. I have watched the progress of the agitation; I have seen it dis cussed in the newspapers; and I think the farmers of the West know what is good for them. Am I to understand from the hon. gentleman that the price of wheat is less in the United States than it is in Canada?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: During a large portion of this year it was.


William Findlay Maclean: How is it then
that shipments of wheat are going from Canada to the United States now and paying the duty? It may be that at times the price was higher in Canada, but what I say is that on the average the price is higher in the United States. We have the resolutions passed by the farmers themselves, and my hon. friend will not dispute that the farmers who have the experience know what they are talking about. Anybody who has read the long and careful investigation made by the Winnipeg Free Press in regard to freight rates in the West, must admit that a case has been made out that rates are lower on American railways, and that the price of wheat on the average is better in the Canadian market. It is our duty to do something for the farmer. Other hon. members have made speeches to that effect.


Mr. EDWARDS:: Do you mean farmers or wheat growers?


William Findlay Maclean: I will say wheat growers. The man who grows wheat is a citizen of this country and requires our protection. Of course, I would like to see him a mixed farmer, and the way to make him a mixed farmer is to show him that he is getting the best price for his wheat. Mixed farming is coming in the West, and a better system of farming is coming in Ontario. But to-day the farmers of the West are more or less discouraged. If I can believe the letters which I get, and all that I read and hear, and the resolutions that are passed, I know that the people who are asking for relief are the farmers of the West, and they are asking for relief in regard to railway freight rates and the price of wheat.
I come now to the question as to whether the railways will be injured or not and whether the millers of western wheat will be injured or not. A great cry has gone forth that they will be. It is also put forward that the eastern wheat grower will be more or less injured if we have free wheat. After analysing most of these statements, and I have got some capacity for getting at the truth of a statement, I find that this cry of free wheat is almost altogether from the railways of this country and partly from the milling interests of this country. Canadian railways can carry that wheat for less, and the moment they have the competition of the American railways they will come down to American rates, and they can keep their freight if they wish to.
The same is the case with the millers. Do you mean to tell me that Canadian millers, with their mills almost at the seat of production of the wheat, cannot compete with the American millers? I say that they can; I say that they are ready for the business. Of course they would like to keep the monopoly they have to-day in regard to wheat milling in this country, and they have got a great monopoly. They are well linked up together and are in a position, by reason of their monopoly and the association of the railways, to keep down the price of wheat. Thus in two ways the Canadian farmer will benefit. They will benefit by the competition of American railways and they will benefit by the fact that the millers will have to come up to the mark and give them more for their Canadian wheat if they want to grind it in their mills. If I thought for one moment that the Canadian mills would be in danger, I as a life-long protectionist might be inclined to listen to their views, but I have made a full investigation of the matter and, to the best of my mind, the Canadian railways, can stand a reduction in Ihe
freight rates, and the Canadian mills can stand the competition and can give more for the Canadian wheat and can still keep the business.
In connection with that, there is also the question of the offal from grinding grain, for the purpose of feeding stock. The farmers of the West ought to go more into mixed farming. They ought to abandon that business of being merely wheat growers and become out-and-out farmers. They ought to feed the offal of that wheat, ground in Canadian mills, to Canadian cattle. In that new national policy for the benefit of the farmers, which I think we ought to have in this country, we cannot too soon come to the idea that we must stop slaughtering our young cattle, and that we ought to use all the offal of the wheat ground in Canadian mills for feeding live stock on Canadian farms. There is a good national policy for the farmers, and I am for it, and it is because I am for it that I am making this statement to-night.
My hon. friend from Frontenac (Mr. Edwards) says:	Oh, we may lose this
cattle-feeding business in this country; our cattle will all go over to the States, and our bran and shorts will go over there, and the Americans will feed it to our cattle. Then so much the worse for Canada. If it has that tendency, then under that principle, which I asserted here previously this evening, that we have the right to make our own fiscal policy and be independent of the United States, it is for us to do it here. If it is found that the millers of this country cannot grind our wheat under the competition of the American railways for the freight, then it is up to this Parliament and to the Conservative party now in power and to the party which opposed reciprocity two years ago, to make a national policy in this country such that it will keep this business heTe. We should not depend for the retaining of that business upon fiscal legislation passed by the United States. That is my idea of a national policy and that is my idea of what Canada ought to stand for.


William Cameron Edwards: How?


William Findlay Maclean: I can keep the milling industry here by a bounty on milling. I can frame up a policy that will encourage the growing of live stock in this country.


William Cameron Edwards: Would you have a
bounty for that too?


William Findlay Maclean: I do not know whether I would or not. I am not against giving bounties; I was born that way. I hope the hon. gentleman is not taking the posi-

tion that the national policy for the encouragement of home industry in this country ought to be based upon the legislation of the United States. That is what it comes down to. If it goes abroad that this Canadian Parliament is looking to the United States duty on wheat to keep their industries at home and to encourage their home industries, President Wilson will be down to-morrow with a Bill taking off the duty on wheat, whether we care to do anything or not. That is what we are up against. Most likely he will do it, but in the meantime, do not let the Canadian farmer of the West suffer from present conditions. Take the Canadian farmer out of bondage, and he is in bondage to-day to the railways and to the mills. When I shy that the railways can stand a reduction in their freight rates, let me give you the instance of the enormous wealth of the great Canadian Pacific railway in this country. Can any Conservative member stand up in this House and say that he justifies our present railway policy, which is a discrimination in Canadian freight rates as against the Canadian West. The whole country paid for these railways or for the most of them. We passed the legislation and we are here to pass legislation, the result of which will be fair treatment throughout Canada. And, though we have been passing legislation dealing with railways for twenty-two years since I first came here, and long before that, I have never yet heard the voice of the man I would like to hear declaring on behalf of the West: We refuse to let any legislation go through this House until the principle of equality of freight rates in this country is inscribed in the Statute Book and not left to the Railway Commission. Who is there, who claims to be a Canadian and says he believes in fair railway rates and equality of treatment, who could justify the discrimination that has been put upon the West, that stigma that has been put upon them that although they pay their share of the customs duties and of everything else in this country, for some reason they, for all time, are to pay railway rates that discriminate against them. I contend that the Canadian Pacific railway has in its charter to-day a condition under which it ought to give lower rates to the people of the West. If you tell me that the Grand Trunk Pacific or the Canadian Northern railway, who are coming into the field, could not stand the reduction in rates that the Canadian Pacific railway would stand; I would reply that some kind of national policy should be devised that 
would help them out for the time, and that the people of the West should not be allowed to continue under this unjust and unfair condition of railway rates. Nobody has ever justified it yet. The Railway Commission may be trying to justify it, or may be trying to wipe it out. My contention is-and I will stand by it every day in the week-that the time has come for equality of railway rates as between the East and the West. I contend that the farmer of the West is entitled to the best market for his wheat and to the lowest possible freight rate. I know just what the people of the West want, I have no doubt about it; and I am here to-night to urge the Government when considering their tariff, and in any changes they may have to announce in connection with the Budget speech - especially in view of their statement in this debate that the interests of the farmers of this country is to be their first concern *- to give consideration to the prayer of the farmers of of the West that they may be given free wheat in order that they may get better prices, and also given equal freight rates with the East. I may have to discuss this question at a greater length on a subsequent occasion during the present session. But I think I am doing a very practical service to the country by bringing the subject forward and giving -what I think are sufficient reasons for the position I have taken.
Now, I wish to deal briefly with another question that I have raised pretty often in this House, and that is the capitalization of railways. That question has been brought to our attention again by the action of the Canadian Pacific railway in its last issue of capital. I have heard very prominent men in this House, especially lawyers, and more especially ministers of justice, say that the question of capitalization is of no interest to the people, that it does not matter to the people what capital the railways issue. Will anybody look at the United States today and see what has taken place there in regard to the over-capitalization A railways, see how the New York and New Haven and Boston and Maine roads have been wrecked and reduced to absolutely non-paying propositions by reason of over capitalization, and repeat here again the statements I have heard made in this House by men in high positions supposed to be authorities on this question? Over capitalization is a curse; it is against the public, against the State, against the railway itself. But the air is clearing in the United States. A statement was made there the other day by the Presi-

dent of the United States which, I think, settles the question for good. I heard the other day that our Minister of Finance was considering the question and would perhaps issue a commission to ascertain the facts in regard to the capitalization of railways. I do not know whether I am correct in saying that, I merely heard it incidentally. But we do not want any commission after the lucid deliverance that was made by Mr. Wilson when he addressed Congress the other day. I will read his words:
In the second place, business men as well as those who direct public affairs now recognize, and recognize with painful clearness, the great harm and injustice which has been done to many if not all of the great railroad systems of the country by the way in which they have been financed and their own distinctive interests subordinated to the interests of the men who financed them and of other business enterprises which those men wished to promote.
The country is ready, therefore, to accept, and accept with relief as well as approval, a law which will confer upon the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to superintend and regulate the financial operations by which the railroads are henceforth to be supplied with the money they need for their proper development to meet the rapidly-growing requirements of the country for increased and improved facilities for transportation.
We cannot postpone action in this matter without leaving the railroads exposed to many serious handicaps and hazards; and the prosperity of the railroads and the prosperity of the country are inseparably connected.
The time has come when we must regulate the capitalization of the railroads and other corporations of this country. Overcapitalization has been a curse. I say, it has wrecked railroad after railroad in the United States. Attempts have been made under State laws to regulate the capitalization there. Wherever this has been done the benefits have been substantial and the results have been greatly appreciated by the public. But the time haa come in regard to railroad corporations when the federal authority must control the issue of capital. And the wise thing for us in this country as I have often contended in this House- and both parties are to blame that it was so, and the worst thing ever done in that thing in this country, I have often contended in this House and both parties are to blame for it-was the way we allowed the Canadian Pacific railway to issue stock on which a high dividend had to be paid, against an issue of bonds which would have been sufficient for all their purposes. I hope and trust that in the new Railway Bill which is to come down, I do not know whether it is mentioned in the Speech from 16
the Throne, but I have seen it stated in the newspapers that such a Bill was to be introduced-there will be a section vesting the control of capitalization of railways in the Railway Commission. I hope the Minister of Railways will also put on the statute book a principle of equality of freight rates in this country. It is a principle that Parliament must settle. It is absurd to say that such a principle must be left to the Railway Commission. If the assertion of the principle means that freight rates may have to go up a little, if we put the principle on the staute books, it will be the duty of the Railway Commission to adjust the rates all over the country so that there may be equality. I want to see the man rise in this House who will say that, notwithstanding that railways cost no more to build and to run in the West than in the East, there should be higher prices in the West than in the East. If the feeling in this House is, as I believe it to be, in favour of equality of freight rates, then that should be put on the Statute book and not left to the unsafe action of a Railway Commission.


Wilfrid Laurier: I am largely disposed to agree with what my hon. friend says about over-capitalization, but he said that it was over-capitalization that had brought the Boston and Maine railroad to its present condition. Can he explain that?


William Findlay Maclean: Yes. A man died recently in the United States, having first made a confession of faith and of his belief in the Christian religion. If any hon. gentleman will refer to recent issues of the New York World he will see it plainly set out that the late Mr. Morgan and Mr. J. D. Rockfeller were at the bottom of a scheme for buying up all kinds of trolley, steamship, or subsidiary lines at the rate of say $8,000,000 each, and the next minute selling them to the New York, New Haven and Hartford railway or the Boston and Maine railroad for $25,000,000. The shareholders of the big road, many of whom are poor people of New England, can ill afford to be looted by schemers unloading such [DOT] worthless propositions and getting four times what they pay for them in paid-up stock of the great company. That is the way it is done, and it can be done here. The President of the United States now says, in the presence of Congress, which will carry out his wishes, that within a very few weeks no railway shall issue any securities without first receiving the approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission. And we want that



here. It is provided by Act of Parliament in some way that the Canadian Pacific railway shall consult the Governor in Council in regard to some of their issues, but they have not done so, and they have gone round the corner and put out this note issue. I do not believe they wanted the money, but they wanted to do some melon cutting for the benefit of their shareholders. I do not think it has been a very successful issue; something has happened since these melons were cut by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and it is this: The net shrinkage in Canadian Pacific securities since this melon cutting began,-having regard to all the issues that have been made since-is $150,000,000. It has been ascertained by the investors in these securities that this cutting of melons and unnecessary enlargement of stock is not a good business transaction for that railway. I want to see legislation in this country providing that all our railroads, large and small, must subject the issue of their securities to the control of some responsible body. It is in the public interest that they should be so controlled, because the increasing of the issues is done with a view to imposing greater burdens on the people. That has been established and admitted on all sides, and you will see legislation in the United States this year in that direction.
We have entered upon a policy of great expenditure in the way of ports and terminals in this country. We are to make Montreal a great terminal port, and the same may be said of Quebec, St. John, Halifax, and I think I heard an hon. gentleman say this afternoon that he hoped Sydney would be included also.


Mr. ROGERS:: What about Vancouver?


William Findlay Maclean: take care of their own issue and he ready to pay depositors who call for their money The day has come when bank notes must be withdrawn in this country and national notes must take their place, and we can give these banks a better currency and give it to them on deposit at 2 per cent, and they will make more money out of that than from their own issues. If they can re-discount there will not be a bank that will be afraid to extend its credit to its customers; it will know that we have the system of one great national bank in this country doing the business of the *country in the way of re-discounts and issuing of national notes. They can get relief immediately there. The other thing is that the Government of the United States to-day is a partner in the banking business of that country, and the profits over a certain point are to be shared with the country; and the banks in the United States, and the President of the United States and the Government of the United States will hereafter have a say, as the Government of France has a say, and the Government of Germany and the Government of every country in Europe, with the exception of Great Britain, has a say in the rate of discount that prevails in the country. It would be a' good thing	for the farmers
of the West if somebody here in actual authority had something to say about the rate of interest which the banks have been charging out there. There is another discrimination put on the people of the West; 10 per cent interest is the rule out there because we have permitted higher freight rates to be charged the farmer in the West than are charged in the East, and the farmer of the West, I am afraid, will have to put up with it until he rises and says it has got to stop. We must have in this country the improved system of banking which they have in the United States and in all Europe, and we cannot have it too soon. If there is a money stringency here now there will be another stringency subsequently and this will often occur. The way to head off a money stringency is to have a means of credit, a flexibility in the currency of the country by the system of rediscounts controlled by the state and the use of national notes, sufficiently secured by gold and other reserves of the nation; and when you have that there cannot be a money stringency such as we have had in this country, and such as they have had in the United States. The proof of it is this: A short time ago UMr. p, Maclean.]
when the banks of the United States were prepared to take advantage of the American people by reason of the stringency, the present Secretary of the Treasury, a very progressive man, Mr. McAdoo, said: ' I have $500,000,000 of the nation's money, and I will lend it to any bank.' The rate of interest that was threatened was never put into force, money got plentiful and money will be enormously plentiful in the United States by reason of that improved banking system. When we dealt with the organization of banks last session we did not deal with the question of currency. We absolutely neglected it and if we want to bring the country back to prosperity we have to revise our currency laws.' The nation must have a lot to say in regard to banking and must make provision for rediscount, for a plentiful supply of national notes properly secured by gold reserves. If we do that we will do something to help and benefit this country. The banks to-day, under the present system, cannot find the currency necessary for this country and that was the reason for the subterfuge that was adopted last year of creating a gold reserve in Montreal. Any one who wishes to see that it was only a subterfuge and has not increased the currency should read an editorial in the Montreal Telegraph of a few months ago written, I imagine, by the late Minister of Finance. I read that article with great interest. It confirms my views and I wish to say that the currency question is another question that has been absolutely neglected in this country for years and years. We have been working under an old system, so have the people in the United States; but they have instituted reforms in this respect, they have shown the way as they are showing the way to us now in a great many things. If you wish to see progressive legislation here you have to look for it in the United States and in England. The greatest progressive legislation is going on in the United States. The people there were awakened some years ago. They had been brought up to believe that they had the greatest government and the greatest constitution in all the world.
The fathers of their constitution were treated as fathers of the church are now treated by good churchmen. When you come to an actual investigation, their constitution amounts to very little and great monopolies and very unfair things were permitted under it. There was child labour in that new country and there were slums all over the United States. Nearly everything was found to be bad, the Government was bad, the constitution was archaic.

But the people started to read books on political economy, and the magazines started to discuss these questions in a way that the public press had neglected. The attitude ot' the public press towards a great many of these questions has been surprising. I have been identified with the press for quite a while and I still say this, that a newspaper has no right to assert that it is possessed of the gospel unless it is the true gospel that it preaches. Newspapers think they have a divine right and, but if you investigate the history of the United States for the past thirty years you will find that the newspapers have been gradually going against the people and that the magazines have come to the relief of the people. The people began to read these books on political economy and as a result to-day there is a wave of political reform in the United States. They are making a degree of progress in that direction that may well attract our attention. They are older than we are and they have had more experience than we have. They have reformed their laws in regard to banking and they are reforming their laws in regard to the capitalization of railways. The Railway Commission has come to the relief of shippers and farmers from one end of the United States to the other. I see the right lion, leader of the Opposition laughing; perhaps he thinks this is a new doctrine.


Wilfrid Laurier: No, I quite
agree.


William Findlay Maclean: Perhaps he thinkB
that I am a disciple of his. I hope he will be a disciple of mine and follow me.


Wilfrid Laurier: We will exchange views.


William Findlay Maclean: Having dealt with the banking law, I come now to the question of the cost of living. This is a great question in this country. It is true that the cost of living has greatly increased and it is true that, in a large measure, that cost of living is due to the methods by which we distribute the necessities of life. I know districts in many cities where there are rows and rows of stores that seem to be distributing the necessities of life. It seems to me that some system of co-operation could be devised whereby that distribution, instead of costing, as it often does, forty and fifty per cent of what the producer gets for his goods, and in some cases double that amount, could be more satisfactorily and economically taken care
of. It is true that the middleman, the cold storageman, the combine and one organization and another, are taking an unfair advantage of the people. We have got to remove these things and deal with this question in this House and in the local legislatures in such a way as to reduce the cost of living.
It is also true that our farmers are not producing enough on the land. I have watched the Canadian farmer in various places for quite a number of years, and the opinion I have come to is that he is more or less attracted by the lure of the cities and he wishes to go to the city. It is also peculiar to farming on this continent, or at least on portions of this continent, and especially so in Canada, that farmers are trying to get through by raising as little as possible. It seems to be the idea of a great many farmers to raise as little as possible. If we are to have a National Policy for the farmers of this country, we must try and encourage them to raise much more than they raise now, and in some way to offer them a better price by making an immediate connection between them and the consumer and at the same time giving the consumer a lower rate. If my right hon. friend, in his anxiety to give us free food, will devise a scheme on that line, he has a good cry and he will get lots of men to join the army. But he has to put it on-the basis of some system of co-operation and control, in order to get our people to-raise more produce on the land, and he has to devise some means by which to get this produce into the hands of the consumer at a price less than that which he pays now but at a better price for the farmer, cutting out this middleman business and benefiting both parties to the bargain in that respect.
What is the policy which we require in connection with farming in Canada to-day 1 We have to have a great big farming policy because we must deal, not only in the Dominion, but in the various provinces, and in the West especially, with this farming problem. It takes a big National Policy to cope with the weed pest in the Northwest, and it takes a great big policy to deal with the draining proposition in my own province of Ontario. With a system of drainage and a system of good roads in the province of Ontario - you can take three weeks off the winter in the fall and you can take two weeks off the winter in the spring in so far as the farmer is concerned. I have seen farm after farm in the province of Ontario where work stopped largely because of bad roads and lack of drainage. There has


William Cameron Edwards: Would the hon. gentleman consider the eight-hour day a factor militating against the farmer?


William Findlay Maclean: It may militate against him a good deal, but he will have to deal with it. One of the troubles of our farmers is that they have to be educated to understand that it pays to employ a competent labourer, and to pay him good wages, and to give him a house on the farm to live in. I know farm after farm in this country where there is no accommodation for the so-called hired man.


William Cameron Edwards: Would you consider the eight-hour day a disability on the farmer?


William Findlay Maclean: I do not know whether it is or not. I believe it will be some time before it becomes a real factor, and then it will have to take care of itself.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: When that does come
about the consumer will have to pay more for the product.


William Findlay Maclean: No doubt it means, that in the end it will come on the public in some way. And, if the people believe in an eight-hour day for the mechanic, the people will have to believe in an eight-hour day for the farmer, unless of course the farmer cultivates his own land, and that is one reason why I want to see the farmer and his family till the soil themselves and engage in somewhat intensive farming of a small area rather than waste energy in cultivating large farms.
I will only say one or two words on the navy and then I am finished. I am sorry that Canada occupies the position she does to-day on this question. It has been a sore question for our people. We do not stand as well as we ought to stand in the eyes of the world because we failed to deal with that question. I am not going to cast any reflection on any one, but I will come back to my hero worship and I will read what Woodrow Wilson said a few days ago in regard to public questions:
Legislation has its atmosphere, like everything else, and the atmosphere of accommodation and mutual understanding which we now breathe with so much refreshment is matter of sincere congratulation. It ought to make our task very much less difficult and embarrassing than it would have been had we been obliged to continue to act amidst the atmosphere of suspicion and antagonism which has so long made it impossible to approach such questions with dispassionate fairness. Constructive legislation, when successful, is always the embodiment of convincing experience and of the mature public opinion which finally springs out of that experience.
An air of suspicion and distrust was created in this country with regard to Canada's action in the matter of naval aid to the mother country. I am not going to say who was responsible for that, but I do regret it. Every Canadian outside this House regrets that that question was approached in an atmosphere where distrust and suspicion prevailed. Why did it get into that state; why did that miserable atmosphere surround that question? I know it was not due to anything that occurred in our province, because if there is anything that we in Ontario think well of it is of our duty to the empire, and if there is any place where public opinion prevails in this country, it is in the neighbourhood of what used to be called the head of lake Ontario. We who live up there-and who sometimes have so little to say in regard to the government of this country-we try to think well of the great public questions and we have in the past in some measure furnished some ot the best political thought for Canada; we have not brought in that atmosphere of suspicion and distrust about this question. We have not got there that atmosphere of suspicion about this question. I do not for one moment say that that atmosphere originated in another quarter in this country. If I was to say that some of it came from Montreal, the last thing that I would

say would be that it in any way came from my compatriots the French people of the province of Quebec. I am not saying that, because if I can trace that unfair atmosphere and that atmosphere of suspicion, I would trace it to certain influences that speak the English language, that speak through the newspapers and that have had a double-faced policy in regard to this question. Now we have had that atmosphere of suspicion, that atmosphere of distrust, surrounding this question. Is it not possible for this Parliament and for this country to get together, and with a clear, pure atmosphere of patriotism and a recognition of our duty to the mother country to do something in the direction of a money grant that will show where our heart is with the old land?
I am not going to pass any reflections upon the past. If we can get the atmosphere cleared up, insignificant as I am, I will be prepared to-morrow to undertake the responsibility of securing a standing vote in the House of Commons and in the Senate of Canada for a large and substantial grant from the Parliament of Canada to our mother country, as a recognition of our duty to stand by her in the matter of imperial defence.


Mr. A. VERVILLE (Maisonneuve):: the statements I had seen in the press, I took it upon myself to get an official report.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Is that a forged telegram?


Alphonse Verville: It belongs to the House. What has happened in Vancouver seems to have happened in other cities. Every one now is crying for work-they are not crying for bread but for work. This situation seems to prevail in every part of Canada. It has been the privilege of our Minister of Labour (Mr. Crothers) to travel through this country during the summer. Of course he was in British Columbia, and probably later on we may hear his report of the immense amount of good he did during his trip to the coast. Also we may have his report as to the real conditions existing in the Maritime provinces. I see 'by the papers that he was in Sydney, and is quoted to have said that conditions there are all right, everything harmonious. I do not quite agree with the hon. gentleman. I have been there myself. But I happened to be with the other crowd-with the crowd that were in need. Probably that is why I have not the same information.


Rodolphe Lemieux: How many are unemployed in Montreal?


Alphonse Verville: Is is very hard to state the exact number, and I will tell you why. At one time of the week the number is very large and another it is less, because they are working short time in places. Only last week one large engine works in Longue Pointe, because of lack of orders laid off, I do not know for how long, about 1,700 men. The laying off of 1,700 men means that the purchasing ability of these people diminishes at once by seventy-five per cent. When it is said that there is over-production of manufactured goods, we must bear in mind the fact that there must of course be overproduction when there is no demand. It is said that conditions are very good in the country at the present time, and that the farmers are prosperous. They are, but the reckoning will come, and perhaps in a couple of months. We must not expect that when the demand in the cities suddenly ceases the farmer will be immediately affected; in a few months he will be unable to sell because the people have not the money with which to buy his goods. The farmers will feel it the more keenly because they have to purchase a great many things which they do not produce themselves. The hon. member for Dundas (Mr. Broder) said the other day: Why don't you 
leave things in the old way? Yes, why should we not use candles instead of electric lights? We must not be against progress. It is impossible to expect the farmer to build his own carts and wagons, make his own harness and shoes; he has to buy all these things, and they amount to a great deal. The farmer is heavily taxed on the goods which he is obliged to purchase. I observe from the memorial of the grain growers of the West that the farmers are learning that it is imposs3ible that this condition should continue very long. I know that the present Government are bound to a policy of high protection. I do not blame them, because the people, when they put them where they are, said: you are to increase the tariff, if possible, instead of lowering it. It was said during the last election campaign that if reciprocity passed the doors of the manufacturers of the country would be closed to the workingman. Reciprocity did not pass, and the doors are closed, and this shows, that, if reciprocity had passed, the doors of the manufacturers would be open at the present time.
Some hon. gentlemen have said that the mode of living has a great deal to do with the increase in the cost of living. Sometimes workingmen live in luxury; they buy too many things which they could get along without, and they forget the amount of money they have to pay for these things. Let us see, however, whether the use of these luxuries is against the interests of trade. The hon. member for Dundas spoke the other day about automobiles. I hope and trust that none of the members of this House believe that the workingmen buy automobiles. I would not begrudge a businessman the possession of an automobile, because the raw material that enters into its construction amounts to very little; it is all labour; and if it is all labour, it is not what you would call a luxury. But if I happened to see a diamond in the same house, I would say that that is a luxury, because there is no labour attached to it. It had been said also that the working people do not need to dress so well. Probably it would be better for them if they did not, because they would be enabled to save more money. Why is it that I have to pay $10 more for a suit of clothes in Canada than in England? I have no objection to the proprietor of a woollen industry getting rich, but I do not want him to get rich at my expense. It is a fact

that on the other side of the water you can buy for $15 a suit of clothes for which you would have to pay in Canada $25 or more. But, it is said, labour is cheaper over there. The labour on a suit of clothes amounts to $1, and that is the difference as far as a suit of clothes is concerned, between the cost of labour in Canada and the cost of labour in England. I claim that this is wrong, and that some kind of a readjustment should be made. I claim also that, as regards the necessities of life, the Government should take steps to furnish cheaper food to the masses of the people of Canada. The people are not asking for bread, they are asking for work, but if they do not get work, of course they must have bread. Last year I made a prophecy with regard to conditions this year which has been fully realized, and no one who studies these great questions from an economic standpoint can fail to know what is going to happen. I do not claim to have any professional knowledge of the matter, or to speak from the standpoint of a student of political economy; I speak merely from a practical point of view. There are many people in the country to-day who do not know how much they can buy for a dollar, and that is one of the great questions in the country at the present time. That condition should be alleviated, and I submit that as legislators we shall be responsible for whatever may happen in the cities, towns or villages wherever there is a working population.
It has been said by some hon. gentlemen that the cities were attracting the rural population, and of course this is due to the fact that there are too few hands on the farm to do the work. The people in the country urge that there are too many attractions in the cities for the men, but have you ever seen a municipality that had anything in the line of water-power that was not willing to pay a large amount to a big industry to induce it to locate in their district, and thus take the people off the land? The people of the country are anxious in many cases to pay a bonus, whether there is water-power or not, for the purpose of having near them an industry which may employ perhaps one hundred hands, male or female. In this way the sons and daughters of the farmers are induced to leave the farm and work right there in little town or village, as the case may be. It may be that the municipality is willing to pay $25,000 or $30,000 to an industry that is not worth $10,000. I claim that the people of the country are just as responsible for thie
influx of population to the city as the people of the city are. Those who are responsible are the large manufacturers who are so anxious to have a large number of men whenever they have a call for employment. They sometimes want to have, if possible, three or four men for each job. The people who come from the country to the city and get out of employment are at the mercy of the civic authorities, as has been shown by a telegram produced tonight with regard to Vancouver. The same may be said with regard to Toronto, Montreal and other cities. That is the real situation, and my last word is to ask the Government to do something effective immediately, not to wait for the report of the commission, for we really know now what the report of that commission will be, as we know what the economic conditions throughout the country are. But that report will not relieve the sorrows now existing in large cities and towns, and I ask the Government to do something immediately, either in the form of large public works in different cities or in the immediate reformation of the tariff, so that the working men throughout the country may receive some benefit and be able to support the cold weather of the present winter.
The House divided on the proposed
amendment of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

TEAS : Messieurs
B61and,
Bickerdike,
Boivin,
Bourassa,
Boyer
Brouillard,
Buchanan,
Cardin,
Carvell,
Charlton,
Chisholm (Inverness), Clark (Red Deer), Delisle,
Demers,
Douglas,
Ethier,
Fortier,
Gauthier (St.
Hyacinthe),
Gauvreau,
German,
Graham,
Hughes (Kings, P.E.I.),
Kyte,
Lachance,
Lafortune,
Lanctot,
Lapointe
(Kamouraska), Laurier (Sir Wilfrid).
MacNutt,
McCoig,
McCarney,
McCrea,
McKenzie,
McLean (Sunbury), McMillan,
Marcil (Bona venture), Marcile (Bagot), Martin (Montreal,
Ste. Mary's),
Martin (Regina), Michaud,
Molloy,
Murphy,
Nesbitt,
Neely,
Oliver,
Pacaud,
Papineau,
Proulx,
Reid (Restigouche), Robb,
Ross,
Seguin,
Sinclair,
Thomson,
(Qu'Appelle),
Tobin,
Truax,
Turgeon,


Mr. PARDEE:: I was paired with the right lion, the Prime Minister; otherwise I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. GUTHRIE:: I was paired with the
hon. member for Lincoln (Mr. Lancaster); otherwise I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. CARROLL:: I was paired with the hon. member for Kings, N.S. (Mr. Foster); otherwise I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. DAVIDSON:: I was paired with the hon. member for Antigonish (Mr. Chisholm) ; otherwise I would have voted against the amendment.


Mr. CARRICK:: I was paired with the
hon. member for St. James division, Montreal (Mr. Lapointe); otherwise I would have voted against the amendment.
On the question: shall the main motion be adopted.


Mr. D. B. NEELY (Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, as the hour is somewhat late and I did wish to make some remarks on the Address, concluding with an amendment which may provoke more or less discussion, I would beg the consent of the leader of the House to my moving the adjournment of the debate.
Hon. GEORGE E. FOSTER: I had understood that there was some arrangement between the whips, agreed to by both sides of the House, that the Address would be disposed of to-night.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


Mr. FOSTER:: That certainly was the
impression we had on this side of the House and I had heard nothing to the contrary until the hon. gentleman rose to his feet. Of course, it means that if it is to proceed now the arrangement which was made falls to the ground. That is a bad thing for this one arrangement but it is a much worse thing for the possibility of arrangements in the future. I should like to invite my right

hon. friend's attention to what was the understanding on this side and see what can be done about it.


Wilfrid Laurier: I am surprised to hear that there was an arrangement of that nature. I never heard of it. I do not think that any such arrangement has been made. I do not know but that an arrangement had been made to finish the debate on the present amendment, but I know of nothing beyond that.


Mr. STANFIELD:: To clear up this matter I would say that possibly there has been a little mistake. My understanding was that the vote was to be taken to-night. Perhaps I took too much out of that in accepting it to mean that the Address was to be settled.


Mr. SPEAKER :: Mr. Neely moves,
seconded by Mr. MacNutt, that the debate be now adjourned.


George Eulas Foster: While I have been
disappointed, and I am sure gentlemen on this side have been disappointed, at the statement which has been made, I presume that the motion which was made by the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Neely) means that there wili be a more or less extended debate on the amendment which he proposes to move. Under these circumstances I do not think it is best for us to beat our heads against a stone wall and remain for the small hours of the morning, but I would like my right hon. friend to give some intimation as to what time he thinks this discussion upon the Address may come to an end.


Wilfrid Laurier: We have no desire on this side of the House to prolong the discussion, but some of our friends want to speak on the question. I do not think the debate will be very much prolonged but I will not bind myself to any time. I would observe that there should be no misunderstanding between the two sides of the House especially in regard to anything that is agreed to by the hon. member for Colchester (Mr. Stanfield). I would take his word under any circumstances and I would be very glad myself to give him every opportunity in the same way. If my hon. friend from Colchester tells us that he understood that the debate was to be closed to-day I would agree at once, but surely there must be a misunderstanding.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned.
On motion of Hon. George E. Foster, the House adjourned at 12.05 a.m. Wednesday.
Wednesday, January 28, 1914.