1916-02-23

REPORT.

[Stage Direction]
Report of the Secretary of State for External Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1915.-Sir Robert Borden.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. PUGSLEY (for Mr. W. M. Martin) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 38, to amend the Criminal Code.
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

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

Mr. MACDONALD:: 1.	How many men have been taken from other railways and placed in positions, with $900 a year and over, on the Intercolonial railway between April 1, 1913, and December 31, 1915?
2.	What are the names of the men so employed ?


Mr. REID:: 1.	There are eighteen such men now' in the employ of the Intercolonial Railway.
2.	Engineering department: C B. Brown, A. T. McDonald, F. S. Wilkins, G. C. LSght-ner, L. H. Robinson, A. D. W. Cuthbert, James Pullar, II. T. Rhul, L. Broussean, T. L. Landers, G. C. Perkins, A. H. Jones, J. E. Long.
Operating department: J. K. McNeillie, A. C. Barker, William Charles Roberts.
)

Traffic department: C. A. Hayes.
Mechanical department: George E. Smart.


HORSES FOR FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
Mr. HUGHES:: 1.	Where is the French Government purchasing: horses in Canada?
2.	What are the names and addresses of the parties representing the French Government in the matter?


Sir ROBERT BORDEN:: 1.	The Government has no official information-on the subject, but understands from advertisements appearing in the daily (press, that purchases are being made in various parts of Canada.
2.	The Government has no official information on the subject, except that the Hudson's Bay Company is the official purchasing agent for the French Government in Canada. No information is available as to whether their duties comprise the purchase of horses. Information can doubtless be obtained from the French remount officers, who, according to advertisement, are to be in Ottawa during the whole of the present week.
102ND BATTALION.


Mr. CARVELL:: 1.	Why is the 102nd Battalion, the men for which are mostly being recruited in the upper county or the mainland of British Columbia, to be mobilized at Comox?
2.	What is the additional cost to the country of transporting these men to Comox?
3.	How long will they be trained there?
4.	What is the total precipitation per annum at Comox, as given by the Meteorological Department?
5.	How is it divided throughout the year?


Sir SAM HUGHES:: 1.	On the recommendation of the District Officer Commanding Military District-No. 11.
2.	Cannot be estimated. In most cases, men were en route to the front.
3.	Until they are moved into concentration camp or overseas.
4 and 5. This information is given in reports.


SOULANGES CANAL-STONE FOR PIER.
*Mr. BOYER:: 1.	How many tons of stone did the Gover-ment purchase for the construction of the pier at the head of the Soulanges canal?
2.	What price per ton was paid?
3.	How many tons were purchased from Philias Dore, of Valleyfield?
4.	What price per ton did he receive?
5.	By what method of transportation was such stone conveyed to the works?
6.	How many boats, scows and men were employed in such transportation?
7.	How many days were required for the transportation of such stone?
8.	What was the daily cost of such work?
9.	What amount has Philias Viau received so far?
10.	What amount is still due him?


Mr. REID:: 1.	5,775 tons.
2.	$1.20 per ton on scow at Valleyfield.
3.	5,775 tons.
4.	$1.20 per ton.
5.	By Government-owned scows and tug -the Carillon.
6.	Two scows, one tug, six men.
7.	Transportation at the rate of one trip per day for 52 days. Each trip consumed about two hours.
8.	$2.35 for fuel and oil. No charge made tor crew and tug which did the hauling, while the dredge she was attending was loading her own scows and otherwise would have been idle.
9.	Nothing has been paid Philias Viau.
10.	Nothing. '


GUARDING AN INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE.
Mr. MICHAUD:: 1.	What arrangement has been made -with the United States of America for supplying sentries for days and nights in watching the International railway bridge between Van Buren, Maine, and St. Leonard, N.B.?
2.	Is the Government aware that these sentries are being accommodated in American cars? If so, who has ordered said cars for our Canadian soldiers?
3.	Are the United States of America paying Part or the whole expenses to watch the said bridge?


Sir SAM HUGHES:: No arrangements have been made with the United States of America, but, on request of the president of the Bangor and Aroostook Railway Company, a guard,was furnished by the Militia Department, the company agreeing to furnish the housing accommodation of this guard, and no complaint was ever received.


SWIFT CURRENT POST OFFICE SITE.
Mr. W. M. MARTIN:: 1.	Has the Government purchased any property in the city of Swift Current for a post office site?
2.	If so, what is the description of such property?
3.	What was the date of such purqhasq, and what was the price paid for such property?


Mr. ROGERS:: 1.	Yes.
2.	Lots 19 and 20, block 55.
3.	31st March, 1914; $25,000.


CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY SUBSIDIES AND GUARANTEES.
Mr. JAMESON:: 1.	What is the tqtal sum of money paict out of the federal treasury by way of subsidy to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company?
2.	How many acres of land have been granted by the federal Government by way of subsidy to said company??
3.	What amount of bonds or other issues, if any, have been guaranteed by the federal Government on behalf of said company?


Mr. BLONDIN:: 
CANADIAN NORTHERN RAILWAY SUBSIDIES AND GUARANTEES.
Mr. JAMESON:: 1.	What is the total sum of money paid out of the federal treasury by way of subsidy to the Canadian Northern Railway Company?
2.	How many acres of land, if any, have been granted toy the federal Government by way of subsidy to said company?
3.	What amount of bonds or other issues have been guaranteed by the federal Government on behalf of said company?


Mr. BLONDIN:: 
GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY SUBSIDIES AND GUARANTEES.
Mr. JAMESON:: 1.	What is the total sum of money paid out of the Federal Treasury by way of subsidy to the Grand Trunk Railway Company?
2.	How many acres of land, if any, have been granted by the Federal Government by way of subsidy to said company?
3.	What amount of bonds or other issues, if any, have been guaranteed by the Federal Government on behalf of said company?


Mr. BLONDIN:: 1.	For Victoria Jubilee bridge, $500,000.
2.	None.
3.	No bonds or other issues have been guaranteed by the Federal Government for the Grand Trunk Railway.


DR. FERGUSON.
Mr. COPP:: 1.	Is Dr. Ferguson, of the city of Moncton, in the employ of the Canadian Government railway?
2.	If so, in what capacity is he so employed?
3.	If he is so employed, when did he get his appointment?
4.	What salary does he receive?
5.	Is any allowance given him for expenses over and above his salary? If so, how much?


Mr. REID:: 1.	Yes.
2.	Chief medical officer.
3.	May 10, 1915.
4.	$2,500 per annum.
5.	Yes, actual expenses when travelling on railway business.


SUPPLIES FOR THE 106TH REGIMENT.
Mr. MACDONALD:: 1.	From whom were tenders called for the supply of milk to the soldiers of the 106th Regiment, billeted at Pictou, N.S. ?
2.	What were the prices from each tenderer?

3.	What were the prices received from each tenderer for meat, groceries and coal, respectively, for the use of such soldiers?
4.	To whom was the contract awarded in each case?


Samuel Hughes: 
POWDER MILK.
*Mr. J. J. HUGHES:: What quantity of ftiilk can be made from a pound of powder milk?


Samuel Hughes: I really have no way of judging. I presume it would depend on the quantity of water.


Samuel Hughes: Powder milk costs 14J
cents a pound, and I want to know whether it is as cheap as liquid milk.


Samuel Hughes: We are trying to
get a scientific answer to the question.


Samuel Hughes: I want a practical
answer. Let the question stand.


Samuel Hughes: Does the hon. gentleman wish the question to stand?


Samuel Hughes: Yes, if I can get a practical answer.


Samuel Hughes: The only answer 1 can give is, "Add water."


COMMUNICATION BETWEEN EUREKA AND NEW GLASGOW.
Mr. MACDONALD:: 1. Have any requests been received by the Railway Department with reference to provid-
66i
ing better accommodation for the people of Eureka, county of Pictou, in going to and from the town of New Glasgow?
2. If so, what action has been taken in regard to the said request?


Mr. REID:: 1.	Yes.
2.	The matter is being inquired into at present.


SUPPLIES FOR 40TH BATTALION.
Mr. MACDONALD:: 1.	Were any tenders called for the various supplies required for the men of the 40th Battalion, quartered in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, in 1915?
2.	If so, from whom were, they asked ?
3.	To whom were the various contracts awarded?


Sir SAM HUGHES:: 1. B Company of the 48th Battalion, stationed at New Glasgow received an allowance in lieu of rations. Therefore, no tenders were obtained or contracts made by the department.
2 and 3. Answered by No. 1.


UNOPPOSED MOTIONS FOR PAPERS.
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Mr. Edwards.-For a return showing the amount paid out for new buildings and repairs at the Royal Military College and at Fort Henry in each of the years 1912, 1913, 1914 and 1915; to whom the money was paid; the amount in each case; what portion of the work was tendered for; and the amount of each tender submitted.
Mr. Lanctdt.-For a return showing the number of permanent employees in the Department of Inland Revenue in 1915-16; the number there will be in 1916-17; the amount paid in salaries for temporary employees in each of the following years:	1912-13,	1913-14,	1914-15,
and 1S15-16; and the names of the temporary employees and dates of their appointment, respectively.
Mr. Macdonald.-For a return showing the names of all shell inspectors employed in and about the Nova Scotia Steel Company, and the other factories producing shells at New Glasgow, in the county of Pictou.
Mr. E. Lapointe.-For a copy of plans, profiles, reports, correspondence and all documents concerning the construction of a viaduct at Amqui, on the Intercolonial railway, at the place called Traverse Dube, Dub6 Crossing; also of the plans of properties belonging to the Intercolonial railway at Amqui, and of the land leased to the municipality of Amqui, with a copy of the lease affecting such land.
Mr. E. Lapointe.-For a copy of all reports and documents concerning the surveys made by the Federal Government during the autumn of 1914 of Lake Matapedia and the river of the same name down to the village of Amqui.
Mr. E. Lapointe.-For a copy, of all documents, correspondence, reports, etc., concerning the dismissal of ,T. B. Levesque, of RiviSre Ouelle, as steward on the steamer Champlain.
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Mr. E Lapointe.-For a copy of all documents, reports, correspondence, etc., relating to the changing of St. Eleuth£re station on the National Transcontinental railway.
Mr. E. Lapointe.-For a return showing the names of all persons who worked at the repairing of the wharf at RiviSre Ouelle during the summer of 1915, with a statement of their occupations and the amount paid to them, respectively.

[Stage Direction]
On the notice of motion:
Mr. Pugsley: Proposed resolution: That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that the Government should promote legislation to amend the Dominion Elections Act, so as to provide that upon any province of Canada enacting legislation giving women the right to vote for members of the provincial legislature, such women as are on the provincial voters lists, or as are otherwise entitled to vote for members of the legislature in such province, shall also, unless otherwise disqualified, have the right to vote at elections for members of this House.
Mr. PUGSLEY:: Unless the Government desire the order to stand, I should like to proceed.
Mr. ROGERS-:	Would my hon. friend
let this resolution stand for to-day? Certain other arrangements have been arrived at between the whips.


William Pugsley: Very soon there may be elections in the province of Manitoba, where they have passed a law giving women the right to vote. Under the Dominion Elections Act it is very doubftul indeed whether women could vote at elections in Manitoba for representatives of the federal House. Women are expressly excluded from voting in Dominion elections in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta; it is desirable, I think, that this should be made clear. Perhaps my hon. friend will say that there will be another opportunity of bringing the resolution up.


Mr. ROGERS:: I think there will be no
doubt as to that.
Notice stands.


REGIMENTAL BANDS.
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Hon. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX:: Would the Minister of Militia inform me what are the regulatiohs governing the various battalions in respect to the formation of bands? I am the president of the Civilians' Committee of the 163rd, the new battalion being formed at Montreal, and I have been asked to urge on the Government the necessity 
of having a band for that battalion. I know that in several cases the citizens have subscribed funds for the purchase of instruments, but I wish to know if the de-ipartment grants any help towards the maintenance of a regimental band. I am told that in this new regiment we have all the elements for the formation of a band, but they would like, if possible, to get the instruments from the Government.


Samuel Hughes: The rule is that we furnish bugles and drums for the bugle bands of the different regiments, but regiments wishing brass bands furnish the instruments themselves. They have done that all over -the country. I wish to add my tribute of appreciation of the work Which our good friend from Rouville (Mr. Lemieux) is doing in connection with the formation of this new battalion. I understand, as he has suggested, that among its members are men with all the qualities of good bandsmen, and also all the qualities of good fighters.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I thank my hon. friend for his answer.


QUEBEC JUDICIAL VACANCY.
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Rodolphe Lemieux: I have received a telegram from some members of the Bar of Montreal asking if the Government have decided to appoint a new judge there. There has been a vacancy on the Bench in Montreal for over a month now, and the business at he court house is very congested. The barristers and the judiciary would be more than pleased if the Government would come to a decision and appoint a new judge.


Robert Rogers: I think my hon, friend asked this question the other day, when the Minister of Justice was present. As I understand, the answer of the Minister of Justice was, in effect, that he was giving the matter consideration, and that he hoped to be able to reach a conclusion in a very few days.


ENLISTMENT OF CIVIL SERVANTS.
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the day:
William Pugsley: I wish to secure some information from the Minister of Militia in reference t-o Civil Service enlistment. We have been informed by the Government that since the first of November last young men in the Civil Service who enlist are allowed the difference between the pay

which they receive as military men and their salaries as members of the Civil Service. I am informed that members of the Civil Service who have entered the service since the war began, that is, during the past eighteen months, are deprived of this privilege. I wish to know if that distinction is made and, if so, the reason for it. It is a matter of great interest to members of the Civil Service, particularly those who have joined the Service since the war broke out. I am unable to see why any difference should be made in the treatment of the two classes of civil servants, but I am told that such is the case.


Samuel Hughes: The rule in force is that members of the Civil Service who enlisted in the army prior to the 1st 'of November last draw their salaries as [DOT] civil servants and also their pay and allowances as soldiers. Those who have joined the colours since the 1st of November, 1915, receive their military pay and an additional amount which brings it up to the amount of their Civil Service salaries, if their salaries in the service were larger than their military pay. I am not aware of the existence of any such rule as my hon. friend has referred to, and I do not think that young men who have joined the Civil Service since the war broke out are des-criminated against as he has suggested. I will look into the matter and give my hon. friend further information.


William Pugsley: My information comes from two different sources, and I am satisfied my hon. friend will find, on inquiry, that there is ground . for the statement which I have made.


Samuel Hughes: I will look into it.



QUESTIONS OF PRIVILEGE.


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On the Orders of the Day:
Robert Rogers: Mr. Speaker, I desire to rise
to a question of privilege. I have been informed by some members of the press this morning that there is a bulletin outside some of the newspaper offices to the effect that the Hon. Mr. Calder, a member of the Government of Saskatchewan, stated in the Legislature yesterday that I was the instigator of certain charges that are being preferred against members of the Government, of that province. What I wish to say is that if such a statement has been made .it is absolutely untrue. I am informed further
that a statement has been made that I approached Mr. Calder a few months ago in respect to arranging the withdrawal of the charges against the ex-ministers in the province of Manitoba. Let me say that if Mr.-Calder has made this statement, which I very much doubt, it too is absolutely untrue.



LIEUT.-COLONEL JOHN CURRIE, M.P.

Samuel Hughes: I ask the indulgence of the House to rise to a question of privilege. In to-day's Hansard, I find in the excellent speech delivered yesterday by the hon. member for North Simcoe (Mr. Currie), that he referred to his non-recognition in the way of distinction or honours for his very excellent conduct at the battle of St. Julien. He said:
If anything has been said or done since to my injury, there are only two men who stood between me and any decorations that might have come to me, or any " mention in despatches," and these were General Alderson and the Minister of Militia here. One was six miles back of the line all through the fight, and the other was attending to his duty in Canada, about 1,800 miles away.
I may point out, Mr. Speaker, that the command and administration of affairs at the front are absolutely independent of Canada, or, for that matter, of Great Britain. They come under the direction of the Field Marshal, or the General Officer Commanding the forces at the front. In regard to decorations, the hon. member for North Simcoe has as much to do with them as I have. I was not in the field, and therefore was in no position, other than from hearsay, to make a recommendation, even supposing I had the right to do so. Every one will admit that it would be a great presumption on the part of any one who had not been in the field, and who was not familiar with the actual operations, to interfere in the sense of making any recommendation. I may say that I have had a great many requests from young fellows, brave young fellows too, to make recommendations, but it can be easily understood that it would be altogether out of place for me to attempt anything of the kind. I was speaking with one young gentleman who won the Distinguished Service Order at St. Julien, and he remarked to me that he felt ashamed almost to take it, because out of the 4,000 men in his brigade who took part in the fight, he felt that 3,999 had earned it just as much as he had. The fact that a soldier, or an officer, does not receive recognition does not signify that he has not done his duty.
I may say, since the hon. member for

North Simcoe himself referred to the matter, that rumours have been going round as to his conduct in the field. Personally I do not pay any heed to rumours, and I may observe that at every opportunity I have had of mentioning his name I have stated that Colonel John Currie, commanding the 48th Highlanders, 15th Battalion, Overseas Forces, had, so far as I could find out, done his duty fearlessly and well. There were two rumours current. One had it that he bad been found during the fighting in the rear of the British division, a considerable distance away from his regiment. If that rumour were correct it would require some explanation, but Colonel Currie was not there. Brigadier General Curry, who had a perfect right to be there, was there looking for reinforcements from the British division to help in the fight. General Curry had a perfect right to be there, because it was his duty to look for reinforcements.
Another rumour connected with that fight was that-I forget whether it was on the second or on the third day-Colonel John Currie was back in the rear of t'he Yser canal, behind Ypres. I investigated this rumour, and found that he was not in Ypres until 4 o'clock, or thereabouts, on the afternoon of Saturday, and that the officer referred to was again Brigadier General Curry, who was back, as was his duty, to consult General Alderson in the , matter of getting orders for holding t'he position.
With regard to a recommendation, I took the matter up with General Turner, on two occasions verbally, and on one occasion in writing. Without suggesting that I was interfering in any way, I asked, as I had a right to do, for a report on the matter, and I inquired if he could give any reason why Colonel John Currie, if he was entitled to recognition, had not been given it. I have not yet received an answer to either of these requests. I have nothing to say further than this: that every one who [DOT]knows Colonel John Currie believes that he is a thorough soldier, brave, and fearless, and one who performed his duty fearlessly and well on that occasion. So far as in me lies, I have endeavoured throughout this struggle to confine myself to my own part of the game. As I have said, the command and administration at the front are entirely under the direction of the Field Marshal or General Officer Commanding the forces, and that is as it should be. Every one will admit that for politicians, minister of militia, or any one else to interfSir Sam Hughes. J
fere in the matter of giving a decoration to this man, or an order to that man, would be entirely subversive of discipline, and of the best interests of the service.



FREE WHEAT.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Wednesday, February 16, consideration of the proposed resolution of Mr. Turriff:
That in the opinion of this House, in order to secure to the farmers and people of Canada the advantages of the American market for wheat products and potatoes, steps should he taken at once to put these articles on the free list in the Canadian Tariff.
Hon, ROBERT ROGERS (Minister of Public Works):	Mr. Speaker, when the
House rose at six o'clock on Wednesday last I had just made a passing reference to ' the very abnormal premium being paid today on Canadian wheat available for immediate shipment from Atlantic seaports to the United Kingdom, or to France, or to Italy, or to Belgium. I did not then have the opportunity of making an explanation of the circumstances which have brought about this favourable condition of affairs, and before doing so to-day perhaps I will be permitted to say a word or two in respect to certain statements that have been made regarding comparative prices in the Canadian market at Winnipeg and Fort William, and in the American market at Minneapolis and Duluth. Let me begin, Sir, by saying that it is impossible for even the most experienced trained man in the trade in this country to be able to make an accurate statement by way of a comparison of prices between those different markets, for the simple reason that the conditions in the two countries are entirely different. We have at the markets of Winnipeg and Fort William, the same conditions that obtain throughout the rest of the Dominion where wheat is being traded in. We have adopted and we maintain a high standard of grading, and under this high standard our grain trade is carried on. But, the conditions are entirely different on the other side of the line. They not only have their grades but they also have their sample market, a condition that, in my humble judgment, carries with it an advantage to the grain producers of that country. I feel now, as I have always felt, that the farmers of western Canada have suffered to a very considerable extent by reason of the fact that v,e have no sample market. Shortly after I came to this House I had the pleasure, in company

with the rest of my colleagues from the province of Manitoba, of waiting upon the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir George Foster) to press upon him the desirability of the establishment of a sample market. I felt that I was justified in this by reason of the fact that for years previously I had been listening to the Grain Growers' executive of that province urging upon myself, and upon other public men in the province, the necessity and desirability of a sample market. The Minister of Trade and Commerce gave heed to our request, and came down to this House and secured the necessary powers to carry it into effect. But, strange to say, no sooner had we reached this point, than this very same Grain Growers' executive appealed to the Minister of Trade and Commerce not to establish such a market. If we have not a sample market in western Canada to-day, the executive of the Grain Growers' Association is responsible and blameable.
On the American side they not only have a sample market but they have adopted methods of their own, resulting in what is called picking the grades. I perhaps might explain that the grain dealer who is receiving wheat has his own man look at a lot of wheat which has been graded, say No. 1 hard, or No. 1 Northern. This man will say: that will go into such and such a bin-it is a very good No. I Hard, or No. 1 Northern, as the case may be. The next car will be graded by the same person who will put it in bin No. 2, by reason of the fact that he does not consider it quite as good a sample as the car he has placed in bin No. 1; and the same thing will occur all down the line with respect to four or five different grades. That is what they call picking the grades in the markets at Minneapolis and Duluth. When these grades are picked over, the prices quoted in Minneapolis for a specific grade of No. 1 Northern vary at times as much as ten cents per bushel, while in Canada we have one definite standard for each grade, and our grading is maintained at that high standard, and therefore each grade, as fixed by the inspector, carries one and the same price. But these conditions are entirely different upon the American side, and by reason of that fact, it is impossible, for any member of this House, or any experienced grain buyer in the country, to make an accurate comparison of prices as between the markets at Winnipeg and Fort William and the markets at Minneapolis and Duluth.
To return to the question of the abnormal ' premium being paid on Canadian wheat to-day, let me first of all acknowledge that a portion of it is probably due to the war conditions under which our great . agricultural capabilities have become so universally recognized in the wheat markets of the world; but it is probably more largely due to the fact that we have maintained in Canada a very high standard of wheat grades, and that we have traded under these standards for many years past. Because of the methods pursued by the grain trade of the Dominion, as compared with the methods employed in the United States, where they pick and lower their grades, a great advantage has come very recently to the grain producers of western Canada. In order that the House may understand the correctness of this statement, I shall quote from a supplement published by Broomhall's Corn Trade News of Liverpool, dated January 4, 1916, about six weeks ago. This paper, as every person in Canada who knows anything about the grain trade will understand, is published at Liverpool, and is the leading publication of the United Kingdom in connection with grain and flour. This Supplement contains a statement prepared by the Corn Association of London, with the co-operation and support of the corn associations of different parts of the continent as well. These united associations of the corn and grain trade of the United Kingdom and of the continent, prepared this statement for Broomhall's Supplement. Dealing with the conditions with which they were concerned as the purchasers of large quantities of wheat from various countries for consumption in Great Britain, they were very anxious to make a wide, a comprehensive, and a clear statement, and therefore they dealt fully, not only with their own conditions, but with the conditions in the United States and in Canada. Having prepared this statement, they waited upon the American Ambassador in London and made the request of him that he transmit it officially to the United States Secretary of Agriculture at Washington.
This statement contains a general review of the grain trade, and as it is rather long I will trouble the House with only such portions as relate to the United States and the Dominion of Canada:
Concerning United States Wheat Shipped from Atlantic and Gulf Ports.
For many years, European buyers of United States grain shipped from Atlantic and Gulf ports, have expressed grave dissatisfaction with the conditions of trading in respect of the qua-
[Stage Direction]
lity of grain exported on Certificate. Matters have now reached a climax. According to the rules governing the inspection of grain in the State of Illinois-
" No. 2 Hard Winter Wheat shall Include all varieties of Hard Winter Wheat of either or both light and dark colours, dry, sound, sweet and clean, and may contain not more than 25 per cent of Soft Red Winter Wheat, and weigh not less than 59 pounds to the measured bushel."
Large quantities of No. 2 Hard winter wheat, 1915 crop, Chicago inspection, have been sold and shipped in the last few months. A very large proportion of this wheat was neither dry, nor (sound, nor sweet, nor did it weigh 59 pounds per bushel, nor even was it in any degree hard on its arrival in this country. Evidence in support of these statements is provided in Appendix A accompanying this communication.
This is what they have to say in regard to Canada, and I am sure it will be of interest to hon. members of this House and the country generally:
Prior to 1912, serious complaints were made against Canadian grading, but the Dominion - Grain Act of 1912 and the administrative ar-'rangements ancillary thereto, have effected very great improvements so that all European buyers have now confidence in Canadian certificates, and though a great number prefer trading on sample or on standard, they acquiesce in the system of grading and its concomitant " certificate final," as established by Canadian law and carried out by Canadian practice. Therefore in this brief historical review no mention need be made of the communications between European buyers and Canadian representative bodies.
One very important fact which has greatly enhanced the reputation of Canadian grading is this. Both in the United States and Canada a large proportion of the crop is sold before it is reaped. The buyer should be in a position to rely upon the grading rules current at the time the deals are made; in other words, the grain when it is reaped should be graded on its intrinsic merits according to rules which should not be changed from season to season. Canadian law and practice embody this principle. When the weather has been bad during harvest in Canada and the quality of the crop has therefore been depreciated, the statutory grades have nevertheless not been changed, and buyers have obtained grain of the quality they expected and had a right to expect.
With regard to trading in the United States, they say:
The merits or demerits of a system of grading are not ascertained on a crop harvested under favourable conditions. Between the crops of 1908 and 1914, trade with European buyers in United States grain languished. Then came the exceedingly favourable harvest of 1914, and an exceedingly large trade in United States grain, due, among others causes, to the fine quality of the Hard Winter wheat. Even then there was cause for complaint as to irregularities in grading, of which evidence is provided in Appendix "A", but on the whole buyers were satisfied. In that state of mind they made large purchases of the 1915 crop, 
and it is important to note that the first arrivals of that wheat were satisfactory. Attention is called to a sample included in the set sent herewith, drawn from a bulk specially certified as New Crop. Such wheat would today command a ready sale on our markets for millers in the United Kingdom much desire to keep such wheats in their current mixtures, and doubtless the quality of these early arrivals induced buyers on this side to greatly increase their purchases. By the later export of grossly inferior and improperly graded wheat, some United States shippers have secured an immediate advantage, for the system of grading and trading on " certified final " appears to protect them from loss of monetary advantage on contracts then existing but the loss of good repute is serious and deplorable. Buyers cannot be fleeced with impunity. A buyer suspicious and unwilling, cannot be a satisfactory source of profit to the seller. For past years Canadian wheat has realized substantially higher prices in European markets than the corresponding grades of United States wheat, and the climax has now been reached in this further sense, that European buyers are restricting their present purchases of graded wheats almost exclusively to Canadian produce.
What more favourable condition than that could we wish to have in Canada? This favourable condition is not only cited by the Corn Associations of the United Kingdom, but is reflected in the markets of Italy, France, Belgium, and of all other countries in which our wheat comes in competition with that of the United States. This, to my mind, is Canada's great opportunity. That the grain producers of Canada have reached the goal to which they have been pressing year by year, steadily if somewhat slowly, is proved by the statement of the Corn Associations of the United Kingdom: that future European purchases will be made almost exclusively in Canada, for the simple reason that European buyers like our wheat and flour, and the way in which we handle the business. That is something of which we can be justly proud; and that is the reason why, within the past thirty days, the Canadian grain merchant who has had wheat at the Atlantic sea ports, available for immediate shipment to the markets of the world, has been able to sell his grain at a high premium. Would it be wise, now that ,we are in sight of this commanding position in the English market, to adopt the resolution before the House, and have our wheat go through American channels, and run the gauntlet of their methods of grading and trading, as described in the report I have just read to this House? Furthermore, in my judgment *it would be a mistake for us to be entangled in any international agreement which might recoil on us in our preparations for the

blessings of peace at the close of this war. For who will deny that, so long as this war continues, the Canadian producer will enjoy the position of advantage he has had during the last sixty days in the markets of the world? In my humble judgment, no class of people will profit more by the present conditions, as described by the corn exchanges of Great Britain, than the producers of grain in the prairie provinces of Western Canada.
The same conditions obtain with respect to flour. Our exports of flour to Britain have been steadily growing year after year. I quoted the other day from the report of a commission appointed by the Government of Saskatchewan, to show how trade was increasing in the United Kingdom, and I would like to again draw the attention of this House to the opinions of that commission :
Canada's Increased Share of United Kingdom Imports.
It is of value to note the increasing quantity of Canadian exports of wheat and flour to the United Kingdom in the face of fairly constant aggregate annual imports of wheat by that country. The wheat imports of the United Kingdom are 196,000,000 bushels annually. This amount does not vary more than 8,000,000 bushels either way from year to year. During the five years ended March 31, 1907, Canada's wheat exports to the United Kingdom averaged
23.763.000	bushels annually. During the next five years, ended March 31, 1912, they averaged
49.893.000	bushels. For the corresponding periods Canada's flour exports to the United Kingdom averaged annually 750,000 barrels (representing 3,375,000 bushels of wheat) and
1.652.000	barrels (7,434,000 bushels) respectively of total imports of the United Kingdom averaging annually 6,646,000 barrels. Thus Canada already supplies rather more than one-fourth of the United Kingdom's wheat and flour imports. Roughly speaking, in these increases, Canadian wheat is replacing Russian wheat and Canadian flour is replacing United States flour. Whether the Canadian miller could continue to compete so successfully with the United States miller were the United States' duty taken off Canadian wheat is a question that only the event can prove. The commission sees no reason why in view of the protected home flour market he enjoys he would not be able to compete successfully.
Here we have a statement, made over a year ago, that Canada was supplying one-quarter of the flour that was being imported into Great Britain. I shall surprise this House, I am sure, when I state that whereas at that time we were exporting to Great Britain a little over 1,500,000 barrels of flour, we are exporting this year 3,500,000 barrels. The report of the commission goes to show that Canadian flour is replacing Russian flour in the British market, but we have the statement of the corn exchanges
that the wheat produced by the Canadian farmer is almost entirely replacing the wheat of the United States, which has been our competitor for so many long years. This Saskatchewan commission states that the producers in Great Britain like our flour and wheat, and also like our methods of handling them. If the Canadian farmer sees any advantage in having his wheat milled in the United States, or if the millers of the United States see any advantage in grinding Canadian wheat, there is nothing in the world to prevent that being done. It will only cost them one dollar for every thousand bushels of wheat they deal with.
What would happen, Mr. Speaker, were we to adopt the resolution of the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) to allow our wheat to go into the United States markets to engage in the mixing process that has practically ruined their trade in the markets of the United Kingdom, according to the authorities I have read? At best, it could have the effect of using but a small proportion of our good wheat, and that wheat would be mixed with a large volume of the poor wheat of the United States, and then our wheat and our flour would have to come into competition with this product in the markets of the" United Kingdom. I ask you, would that be fair either to the Canadian farmer or to the Canadian people as a whole? Let me point out that the effect which this resolution would have on our whole crop is indicated by the following :
The want of uniformity in the system of grading must result in a lowering of the value of the whole crop, for buyers naturally base their prices on the poorest quality they may receive. Separate grading by the different ports tends to lower the grades in an endeavour to secure trade.
That is exactly what would happen to us should we adopt the resolution befbre the House. We should also lower our grades, and should have to meet the form of mixing employed in the United States. We have to-day a position of great advantage with our wheat, a position which we have won gradually by our own efforts.
Beyond question of doubt all these conditions justify us, having in view the interests of the farmers themselves, in rejecting this resolution, and thereby permitting these favourable conditions to continue.
The farmers of Western Canada have carried on their industry in a manner that has won for them a position of vantage and of respect. At the outbreak of the war, heeding the call of the Allies for increased production, they planted an .unprecedented
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acreage of wheat. They have been blessed with an abundant harvest, and I am sure that next year they will do again what they have been able to do in the year that is past. They recognize their duty in this great struggle, and they are performing it faithfully and well. While we shall ever acknowledge our great and lasting appreciation of the devotion and self-sacrifice of our gallant sons who have gone to defend our freedom and our liberty on the field of battle, we should not forget that "peace hath her victories not less renowned than war." Those who remain at home to till the soil in order that an abundant harvest may be obtained, and in order that the staff of life may be sent to England, France, Italy, and Belgium are performing a service for civilization no less important, though, of course, less spectacular, than that which is being performed by those who are engaged in the fight. At the close of the war no class of the community will be more interested in the lines upon which the peaceful development of the world may proceed than will the grain growers of Canada. A certain sentimental benefit will come to them, in addition to the special position of vantage which they occupy today. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, it is our plain duty, having in regard the best interests of the Canadian farming community, to adhere to our good old traditional policy of keeping Canada for the Canadians. Doing this, we shall have more reason to hope that at the conclusion of the war we shall be able to supplement that advantage with an allied policy of preference within the Empire.
We have in the prairie provinces something like 300,000,000 acres of the best land in the world, of which less than 20,000,000 acres are as yet under cultivation. These facts will cause the House to understand at least in some degree the great possibilities o.f the prairie provinces. It is our duty, I submit, to protect our great inheritance in the prairie provinces, and to build these provinces up, as Ontario, Quebec, and the older provinces have been developed.
It is true that we are confronted with the great problem of immigration, which is inseparably connected with the welfare of the grain producers of Western Canada. A vigorous and determined immigration policy will have to follow the conclusion of the war in order that all the advantages possible may come to Western Canada. The quotations that I have made in respect of the grain trade of the United Kingdom are

clear and unmistakable evidence of the fact that the grain producers of Western Canada are the first in line to secure those material advantages and compensations which will follow the conclusion of the great conflict in which we are engaged. Indeed, the war has caused the agricultural capabilities of our great western country to be recognized by the opening up of every port in the United Kingdom Italy, France and Belgium for our grain. Coupling a vigorous immigration policy with the sentimental inclination of our people towards the welfare of their own country, and of the Empire and its Allies, we may reasonably expect a large influx of immigration upon the happy restoration of peace. Indeed, the unrest bred amongst the warring nations, the severance of family and business ties, the ruin which has been wrought, cannot but tend to increase the tide of immigration. Even the local pessimist, recently described as a person who, given the choice between two evils, promptly takes them both; even such a soured extremist must agree with Lord Derby, who has just been in close contact with the British masses, in his statement: that after the war there will be a tremendous rush to the British colonies of young men who are soldiers at the front. You will never get these former clerks and others from the middle classes to remain in Great Britain when peace comes. We in Western Canada appreciate Lord Derby's words; we believe that the fulfilment of this prophecy will bring untold advantage to that portion of Canada, the people of which at all times, and never more than to-day, recognize their duty not only to their own provinces, but as well to the whole of the Dominion. Next to winning the war, the first thought of Canadians everywhere, whether they be farmers, merchants, bankers, lawyers, manufacturers or politicians, should be given to the great task of assisting to protect Canada from the financial, industrial and commercial consequences which the devastation of this war is bound to let loose upon mankind. To my mind the great and pressing question for us in Canada is how to fortify our country against these conditions. In meeting them, we shall have to compete not so much with belligerent nations as with neutral countries that are not absorbed, as we are, in the great task of winning the war. These neutral countries have already begun to prepare for peace. Some of them are enjoying fabulous prosperity to-day through their legitimate

and friendly activities in connection with the war. I make no adverse criticism of this; for these countries I have, on the contrary, many \yarm words of gratitude. But the inevitable effect of this condition is that these countries take, what we may without critical intent call, the prosperity-promoting view of the war. They are free, as we are not free, to study carefully how profits may be extracted from this colossal tragedy.
Therefore, we should be very careful in any step that we may take, in order to make sure that we do not let them beat us in the discovery of how best to profit by the novel conditions which will follow peace. It will be no trivial matter for Canada to be so beaten, no small question of losing a little trade; it will be a matter of life and death for this country. Would it be wise for us to commit an act which would have for its purpose the denuding of our railways of their traffic. We have erected a great railway framework in this country for a prolonged period of progressive population. When we courageously and optimistically launched our vast railway project, belting the continent with three transcontinental lines, we were not calculating on legislating to divert their traffic to American lines; we were calculating not alone on feeding those lines with the produce of our present population of seven millions or eight millions; we were calculating, and calculating with reason, on a CQntinuation, with marked increase, of our then immigration boom, and we saw the mighty tidal wave of immigration sweeping into this country from across the Atlantic and from across the American border, and we wisely prepared for it. Moreover, the West, and especially the grain producer of Western Canada has realized, and he realizes more than ever to-day, that we must undertake to educate the manufacturers of this country. We are often told that the manufacturers control Parliament. This is a chance for us to show that we can give the lead to the manufacturers. They are busy men, too busy often to look into new opportunities or to experiment in new fields. I claim [DOT]that we have in Western Canada the greatest opening, the greatest field, for manufacturers and industrial development that is to be found in any part of the civilized world. So this Parliament should step in and subject our manufactured imports to the closest scientific analysis, and discover just what prevents every one of them from being made ini Canada. Canadians are
quite as well able as are any Europeans or Americans to manufacture the articles we require, and in no place are conditions more favourable for manufacturing than they are in the Prairie Provinces. We have there in many 'forms an abundance of raw material, of natural products, of cheap power, and of capable labour; and there is nothing too difficult, or too intricate, for us to undertake. It would not be too forehanded for us to import industrial instructors when necessary. We want for Western Canada an informed industrial leadership, a skilled industrial population, the best of both in the world. We should know exactly what the articles are that we buy in foreign markets, and we should have workmen to make them for us, and we should pay them handsomely. Let us mandfacture these things at home, let us keep that money in our own country. That is the policy, and it is the only policy which to my mind is capable of ensuring [DOT]a brighter and1 greater development in the 'Prairie Provinces of Western Canada. You will tell me that is the old Protection argument. That is just what it is; it is Sir John Macdonald's National Policy brought up to date; and it is what I propose, and what I believe he would propose if he were here to-day and saw the wonderful opportunity that peace is going to bring to our Dominion.
Therefore in view of those favourable conditions, conditions that have been created in a great measure during the last sixty days, as laid down in the very important statement given out and transmitted by the united corn exchanges of the United Kingdom and the continent, through the American ambassador to the Government of the United States, I say that we should appreciate the advantage of our position and that we would fail in our duty, especially to the farming community of Canada, and more especially of Western Canada, if we did not reject the resolution of my" hon. friend the member for Assini-boia (Mr. Turriff), in which he proposes to divert our wheat into American channels as much as possible and thereby allow it to become mixed With American wheat, in which case we would have to go over again all the work that we have done in the past to establish our own transcendent identity in the markets of the world. To-day we are absolutely masters of the situation, so long as we continue to maintain our high standards and in the future to carry on our business in the efficient manner it has been
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carried, on in the past. If we act in this manner we shall be doing that which is best in the interests of the farming community of Western Canada, and I therefore hope, in view of the changed conditions, that my hon. friend from Assiniboia will withdraw his resolution and allow the matter to stand in its present favourable condition.
Mr. ROBERT CRUISE (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, as I come from a constituency in Manitoba composed mostly of agriculturists, I feel I would not be doing my duty if I did not say a few words in favour of this resolution. A great deal has been said for the resolution and a great deal against it, but the one fact remains, and we cannot get away from it, that the farmers of this country are demanding the free admission of their wheat into the United States.


Mr. BURNHAM:: Not the farmers of Ontario.


Robert Cruise: When I say wheat I mean wheat and the products of wheat; I do not wish to be misunderstood. It does not make any difference what arguments hon. gentlemen put up, the farmers of Western Canada have made a study of this Question and they are determined to have free wheat from some Government. If this Government do not concede their wishes some other Government will. The Minister of Public Works (Mr. Rogers), when speaking on this question last Wednesday, took a very different view from that of the Minister of Finance, and I am prepared to take the statement of the Minister of Finance rather than that' of the Minister of Public Works. The Minister of Public Works argues that the Canadian farmer gets more for his wheat than the American farmer. The Minister of Finance has quoted statistics which he has caused to be compiled by his department to show that the American farmer gets more, for his wheat than does the Canadian farmer. I shall read what both hon. gentlemen said and leave it to the JJouse to judge between them, and to take the word of the Minister of Public Works or of the Minister of Finance as they prefer. The Minister of Finance said:	'
Since last September I have caused statistics to be gathered, and the spread in price has been from three to eight cents a bushel, or even more, in favour of the American market.

That is the statement made here by the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Public Works said:
Come with me to New York, and you can stand on the docks and see Canadian wheat going to,Liverpool at a price representing from twenty to twenty-five cents a bushel more than wheat from the United States.
Mr. Oliver:	Did the Canadian farmer get
twenty-five cents a bushel more for it?
Mr. Rogers: The Canadian farmer is getting a good deal more for his wheat this year than the American farmer is getting for his, notwithstanding the statements' made by hon. gentlemen opposite. The extravagant statements they put forth do not agree with the facts. Every person knows that in trading in wheat there is no wide margin for the trader, for there are too many in the business and the profit is limited by competition. The fact is that Canadian wheat commands a price at at the American seaboard of from twenty to twenty-five cents a bushel more than the American wheat. That is one of the reasons why I say this House would fail in its duty to the farming community of Western Canada if it did not reject the resolution of my hon. friend.
Thus we have diverging statements of both hon. gentlemen in connection with the price of wheat, and I leave them with thq House and the country. I prefer, as I said, to accept the statement of the Minister of Finance. We in Western Canada all know that the price on the American side is much higher than the price on the Canadian side. Another point that should be enlarged on is, that the Canadian grades are so much higher than the American grades-and the quotations are always made on the grade- that if we take into account the difference between the grades, the Canadian farmer loses considerably more than the difference in the price quoted, as his wheat would grade higher in the United States than in Canada. I shall read a letter which I have received from the vice-president of the Grain Growers' Grain Company. I do not believe there is any fairer minded man in the western country than this gentleman. He used to be a strong Conservative; to-day he has no politics, he is independent. He writes:
I am proud of the fight that I see some of your men put up for free wheat. To my mind the most important thought so far as free wheat is concerned is that so many of our able men contend that when at times they find the Winnipeg prices are equal to those of Minneapolis and Duluth come to the conclusion that under this period, free wheat would be no benefit to the wheat producers of Canada. This is an awful dream, for where they seem to miss their cue is in the fact that Winnipeg prices may be equal to that of Minneapolis and in their opinion would go to show that the Canadian farmer was getting as great a price as the Dakota or Minnesota farmer. This is

truly a great dream, for the reason that Manitoba 1, 2, or 3 Northern on an average contains 5 cents per bushel, wheat based at $1 per *bushel, the same milling value for the Minneapolis or Duluth grades.
The explanation is that after the Manitoba farmer cuts 100 acres of the finest Red Fife Wheat and when it goes into shock it is the finest 1 Northern Wheat, but because of climatic conditions coming before it is threshed it has ^become bleached and therefore our inspectors according to the Canadian Act or Inspection Act are obliged to place that wheat down into 2 or 3 Northern, while for milling values it is not reduced in any particular. This has been proven by chemical and scientific tests, that not once in ten years has the average of this wheat been affected by climatic conditions so far as market valuation is concerned. But when we go over into Dakota or Minnesota we find that the 100 acres of wheat cut under the same conditions and after it has gone into shock is number 1 Hard Wheat, but by climatic conditions it has lost its colour, yet when that grain reaches the Minneapolis Sample Market and governed under the Minneapolis Grain Act, we find that while the grain has lost its colour it is still No. 1 Northern and the farmer in Minneapolis and Dakota gets from 3 to 7 cents a bushel more for that same wheat than can be obtained in the Winnipeg market. The Inspection or Canadian Grain Act reads that No. 1 Northern shall contain 60 per cent of Hard Red Fife Wheat and the Minneapolis inspection demands that No. 1 Northern shall contain 60 per cent of Hard Wheat. Now ' there is only two words difference in the reading of the two Acts, but those two words have cost a loss to the Western farmers of not less than 5 cents a bushel when the average is taken on high grade and low grade wheat.
There is only one remedy to this situation and that is " let down the bars to the South " and that means freedom If you show me a man whose blood does not properly circulate through every member of his body, then we find a man who is not in a sound and healthy <x>ndition. So with the western country whose life blood is wheat, and should obstruction be placed in such a way that that life blood does not properly circulate, then we have an unsound and unhealthy country.
Another matter I would like to point out is that the large milling institutions get the advantage of this .unfair condition and no other people can. For the reason that they can grind their grain and it is only the men who grind the grain that can participate in the loss to the farmer.
This is a letter from the vice-president of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, who has been a member of the Grain Growers'
. Association and of the Grain Growers Grain Company ever since they were organized. No man understands the wheat condition better than he, and when a man of his stamp forgets party and stands for free trade in our agricultural products, I think hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House should take note of it, and accede to the reasonable request of the farmers.
There was a point in the speech of the Minister of Public Works to which I would like to make reference. He stated in connection with the Grain Growers' Grain Company, that they were the largest grain dealers in Western Canada. I will read his words, as I do not wish to misquote him:
Will he say that Grain Growers' Grain Company are crucifying the farmers of Western Canada, for they are to-day the largest dealers and exporters of grain in the Dominion of Canada? They have shipped, I believe, something like 100,000,000 bushels of wheat.
I wish to inform the Minister of Public Works that he could not have been very well posted in the dealings of the Grain Growers' Grain Company. Speaking to the president of the Grain Growers' Grain Company some time ago, I happened to inquire as to the volume of business which they were doing, and he told me, and his information shows that the statement of the Minister of Public Works was far from the mark. I took the trouble to wire to the president, and I will read his reply:
Winnipeg, Man., February 22, 1916. Robert Cruise, M.P.,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, Ont.
Replying your inquiry companies last annual report shows that for crop year ending August thirty-first nineteen fifteen company handled about nineteen million bushels, year before thirty million on much larger crop. Present this year we expect handle forty million. Exporting is done through grain growers' export company which is controlled by Grain Growers Grain Company. Last year about (nine million bushels Canadian grain this year we expect to do thirty or thirty five million.
T. A. Crerar.
That is the statement of the president, of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, showing that they have never handled more than 50,000,000 bushels of wheat.


Mr. MEIGHEN:: Does the telegram state how much American grain they exported? I understand their export business covers both countries.


Robert Cruise: It does mot mention American grain at all; it simply says that last year they exported about 9,000,000 bushels.


Arthur Meighen: Their export trade is the larger part of their business.


Robert Cruise: The telegram says:
We expect to export this year thirty-five million bushels.


Arthur Meighen: The annual statement shows that their American business ex-

ceeded their Canadian business by many millions.


Robert Cruise: Even supposing the American business exceeded the Canadian business, this telegram shows that last year they only exported 9,000,000 bushels, and that this year they expect to export
30.000.	000 or 35,000,000 bushels.


Arthur Meighen: Canadian?


Robert Cruise: That is a long way from the statement of the Minister of Public Works, that they handled 100,000,000 bushels.


Robert Rogers: They probably did handle
100.000.	000 bushels, but did not export it all.


Robert Cruise: According to the telegram they exported only 9,000,000 bushels. The hon. minister stated that the company exported 100,000,000 bushels of wheat, and I raised this point because the minister criticised members on this side of the House for not making accurate statements, and I wished to point out that he himself did not stick exactly to the mark. The aigument that is put up against this proposition is that if we get the American markets opened up to us, the milling industry of this country will be destroyed, 'and the railway companies will suffer.
I would like to deal with the milling 'industry for a few moments. We are told, 'and we believe the statement of the Minister of Finance, that the millers, in the 'United States can import our wheat ipto the United States without any duty, ex cepting one dollar on one thousand bushels. That puts the American miller on the [DOT]same footing as the Canadian miller, bo far as the exporting of our flour to the market of Liverpool is concerned. If the millers of Canada can buy our Canadian wheat, ship the flour to Liverpool or to the markets of the world, and compete against the American millers in those foreign markets, why can they not compete in the home market? There is no argument in that against this proposition. Any man who says the Canadian millers cannot compete against the American miller is a small Canadian, because our Canadian millers are as bright, as smart and as capable of milling wheat as cheaply as the American is. We have water powers, we have any amount of coal, the millers have railways at their doors, and there is no reason why they cannot manufacture flour and sell it as cheaply as the American milling company can. In connection with the railway companies, we
IMr. Meighen.]
are told that if the American markets were thrown open our grain would go south.


John Hampden Burnham: Would the hon. gentleman be kind enough to say why he argues and special-pleads so strongly for free wheat only. If he has a broad idea of the question, why does he not include everything and give us all a fair show?


Robert Cruise: That question should be
addressed to the Minister of Public Works, because in 1911 the whole question of agricultural products was involved and my hon. friend then opposed this proposal along with other hon. gentlemen. They waved the flag, and denied the farmers that which the farmers believed would be in their interest.
As to the railways, I do not believe that this would hurt them to any great extent. The great reason why the farmer wants the American market thrown open is that he may have competition for his wheat. We have not the competition in Canada to-day that we should have. We have a high standard, and it has proven that the man who ships Canadian wheat to Liverpool gets seven or eight cents a bushel more for it than the American shipper gets for his wheat. But the farmer does not get that advantage when he sells his wheat. If he had more competition the farmer would doubtless get a much higher price for his grain. I am one of those who believe that the railway companies will reduce their freight rates, that the companies that handle our grain will handle it on a smaller margin/ and that the grain will go east over our Canadian routes instead of going south. Probably a portion will go south, but not to any great extent.
We recall the fact that last year the hon. Minister of Finance (Sir Thomas White) advised the farmers to produce more. Every farmer in Western Canada responded to the appeal of the Finance Minister by ^cultivating every acre of land that he oould cultivate. A large number of fields that the farmers intended to summer fallow were ploughed and put into grain in order to produce as much as they could. The result has been that this year we have
335,000,000 bushels of wheat. The point I want to make is that the farmers have done their duty; they have produced every bushel of wheat that it was possible for them to produce with the help of Providence. Have the Government done their duty towards the farmers? There is a large quantity of grain in Western Canada to-day which cannot be got out. When I was

going to Vancouver some months ago I saw from the ear window grain in 'bins on the field, and that wheat will spoil if the farmers do not get a market for it.
We were told last summer the right hon. the Prime Minister (Sir Robert Borden) went to England to secure transports to ship our wheat over. We find that we are short of transports. I do not propose to criticise the Government on that point, nor do I propose to criticise the British Government. If they think it is more advantageous to them to take over munitions of war than wheat, that is their business, and I have no criticism to offer. But the criticism I have to offer is that when our market is closed to us for lack of transports, and when buyers on the other side of the line are ready to take the wheat, the farmers are unable to sell it to them notwithstanding that the elevators at Port Arthur, Fort William, and interior points 'are full.
The Government have claimed that the war has raised exceptional conditions. I claim that they should meet these conditions and grant free wheat to the western farmer until the war is over. There was a pamphlet prepared by the secretary of the Grain Growers' Association some time ago.
I do not like to weary the House, but I would like to read it. It shows the number of bushels of wheat that the Canadian farmer has to give more than the American farmer when he goes to buy some machinery. It says:
These comparative prices are more eloquent than words in illustrating- the loss western farmers sustained from being denied access to the markets of the United States for their grain. If, however, instead of making the comparison in terms of dollars and cents, the comparison was * made in terms of bushels, that is, in the terms of the purchasing power of a bushel of grain, the loss would be even more striking. Had the reciprocity agreement been accepted, many of the staple commodities that are used on the farm, such as cement, coal-oil, lumber, farm implements, etc., which are cheaper in the United States than in Canada,' could be secured at a lesser price. The Canadian farmer would also receive a higher price for his product, and farmers would necessarily have to exchange less grain to secure the required articles.
A farmer in central Manitoba recently bought an American made gasolene traction engine, for which he paid $2,700. A Dakota farmer a short distance south of him could secure the same engine for $2,400, the difference being the duty. A neighbour of his bought at the same time a Canadian-made engine of the same capacity and at the same price. The farmer who bought the American-made machine put the extra $300 into the Canadian revenue to help pay the cost of government. The farmer who
bought the Canadian machine put the $300 into the manufacturer's till and no one was benefited except the manufacturer.
At this point I would like to ask the Minister of Public Works who is the more loyal, the farmer who buys American machinery or the farmer who buys Canadian machinery?


Robert Rogers: The farmer who buys
Canadian machinery, of course.


Robert Cruise: I understand the Minister of Public Works believes that the farmer who buys Canadian machinery is the more loyal. If a Canadian farmer buys an American threshing machine and pays $300 in duty that money goes into the coffers of the Canadian Government, and benefits the country to that extent, whereas, if he buys a Canadian threshing machine the $300 goes into the pocket of the Canadian manufacturer and nobody gets any benefit whatever except the Canadian manufacturer. I am very glad to have that question answered by my hon. friend. We know now who is the loyal farmer. If every man bought Canadian goods where would the revenue come from?


Robert Rogers: We would be so rich we would not want any revenue then.


Robert Cruise: As already stated in a previous article, \.ne average difference in the market prices of wheat between Minneapolis and Fort William since the 1st of January-
No. 1 Nor., 10 cents per bushel.
^ No. 2 Nor., 11 cents per bushel.
No. 3 Nor., 13J cents per bushel.
No. 4 Nor., 18 cents per bushel.
Taking the price as of the 1st of June, the Manitoba farmer would have to give 2,608 bushels of No. 1 Nor. wheat in exchange for his engine, while the Dakota farmer could get his for 2,122 bushels, a difference of 486 bushels in favour of the. Dakota farmer. Of No. 4 wheat the Manitoba farmer would have to give 3,176 bushels and the Dakota farmer 2,243 bushels, a difference of 933 bushels. Of No. 3 oats a Dakota farmer would have to give 4,752 bushels and the Manitoba farmer 6,750, a difference of 1,998 bushels. 2,085 bushels of barley would secure a machine in Dakota while it took 4,150 bushels of No. 3 barley to secure the same machine in Manitoba. 2,085 bushels of barley in Dakota would he equivalent to 4,150 bushels in Manitoba in the purchasing of a gasolene engine. That difference exists in almost everything the farmer buys for his home and his farm. The difference in the grades in the two markets would make up for the excess freight rates that the Canadian farmer would have to pay to get the United States market. In wheat and oats the Manitoba grades are fully one grade higher than in Minneapolis, and what is more marked difference in oats is the weight


Mr. ALEXANDER MORRISON (Macdonald) :: Mr. Speaker, the question of free trade in wheat between Canada and the United States has been the subject of a good deal of discussion in this House, in this and in former sessions. I therefore do not purpose at the present time to enter at length into the merits of the question. There is another and more important reason why I do not consider the present an opportune time to pass such legislation as is proposed in the resolution before the House. Last year the Government, through its Department of Agriculture, started a propaganda among the farmers for increased production: "Patriotism and Production" was the slogan. The object of that propaganda, I take it, was that the farmers of Canada might produce the largest possible amount of foodstuffs, to have them available for the use of the Empire during this war. The farmers of Canada responded in no uncertain manner to that appeal, and, with the blessing of Providence on their efforts, they produced the largest crop ever'produced in the history of our country. I hold that it
is the duty of Canadians to conserve what surplus we may have, over and above our own requirements, so that it may be available for the requirements of Great Britain and her Allies. It has pleased the great republic to the south of us to keep out of this conflict now raging in Europe, yet it cannot be denied that on more than one occasion diplomatic relations between that country and Germany have been strained almost to the breaking point, and no man can say that the United States may not yet be forced to take up arms in defence of its own national honour. Therefore, if the legsilation asked for in the resolution before the House were passed, and if sveral millions bushels of our Canadian wheat were to find its way into the United States, as it probably would, it might cease to be available for Great Britain and her Allies.
The Grain Growers Grain Company has been mentioned several times during this debate, and it might not be out of place for me to say a word or two about that institution. Hon. members generally may not know that the Grain Growers' Grain Company is an offshoot of the Grain Growers' Association, which association was organized some years ago. The producers felt that they were not receiving proper treatment from the Grain Exchange in Winnipeg, and they believed that if they had their own commission house they would be able to derive full benefit from the marketing of their grain. That asociation was formed and, I believe, did good service. After a few years they felt that if their powers were enlarged and they were given the status of a buying and exporting company, they would be of still greater service. Shares in the company were sold throughout the three Prairie Provinces I believe, and the company was organized. I have no doubt that the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff), the hon. member for Dftuphin (Mr. Cruise), and probably the hon. member for Saltcoats (Mr. MacNutt) are shareholders in that company. They do not deny the soft impeachment, so I take it that I have correctly stated their position. The hon. member for Assiniboia shakes his Head. However, the company was started in good faith, and it was expected that it would be a just and equitable^ middleman between the grain growers and the consumers. But it has developed that the company is just on the same footing, and doing business on the same basis of profits, as any other firm on the Grain Exchange in Winnipeg. The


James Joseph Hughes: Mr. Speaker, this is not by any means merely a western question; it is as wide as the Dominion of Canada. The farmers who ask for this legislation are not desirous of db-taining privileges or favours; they do not ask for legislation that will enable them to take advantage of any other part of the community. They simply ask the privilege of trading with their neighbours to the south: of exporting a commodity which they cannot otherwise sell.
The Minister of Finance told us in his Budget speech that it was desirable to increase the exports of the country. The Government are expending large sums of money in establishing commercial agencies in different parts of the world, and in subsidizing steamship services to enable us to trade with distant countries; yet they refuse to extend to the farmers of Western Canada the privilege of trading with their nearest neighbours. 'The hon. Minister said that if the legislation asked by this resolution went into effect the price of wheat in the United States would drop to the price in Winnipeg; and therefore we would not ship any to the United States. Then he argued that the exportation of wheat to the United States would injure our transportation lines and the business of our Atlantic ports. He stated also that if legislation of this kind were enacted, the milling industries of Ganada would be seriously injured, perhaps destroyed. Then

he quoted approvingly a New York journal which stated that tif this legislation went into effect the beneficiaries would be the Canadian and American millers. I cannot quite understand how the proposed legislation could do all these things. The essential weaknesses of the Government's position appear to me to be revealed by the arguments of the Finance Minister and the Minister of Public Works on this question.
The resolution asks for the removal of the duty on wheat and wheat products. The- duty on flour is sixty cents a barrel. I believe that the annual consumption of wheat in Canada is about ,50,000,000 bushels, which would mean about 10,000,000 barrels of flour. The millers of Canada sell their flour in Liverpool from fifty to seventy-five cents a barrel cheaper than they sell it in Canada; the consumers are obliged to pay the millers of Canada from $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 in excess of a fair profit-as I presume they have a fair profit on what they export. The Minister of Public Works said this afternoon that the millers' have exported 3,500,000 barrels of flour, meeting the competition of the world-of the American millers and of those of the Argentine Republic-but they cannot meet competition in Canada. The consumers of Canada, I say, have to pay from fifty to sixty cents a barrel more for flour, or from $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 a year, than they would if this competition existed. Should that condition be allowed to exist? I understand
that	with the western	farmer	itis	a question not	SO	much	ofthe	price he gets, as	of	the neces-	sity	for his selling	his	wheat	atany	price. In order	to	have	a
steady market it is important to have a large market. It is feared that tens of millions of bushels of wheat will rot in the fields of Western Canada if no market is found for it while the people of Eastern Canada are paying abnormally high prices for flour. Is that a condition of things that ought to exist in Canada? Is that a condition of things that the Government are unable to grapple with? The wholesale price of flour in Canada to-day is very high; in Montreal it is about $7 a barrel. By the time the flour reaches the consumer, the price is $7.60 or $7.75 a barrel, which is an unusually high figure. The retail price of second grade flour by the time it reaches the Maritime Provinces is about $7.50 a barrel; yet in the western part of Canada there is danger that when the warm weather comes large quantities of wheat will rot 674
in the fields. Surely the Government can grapple with this condition.
The Minister of Finance said the other day-to me it was a strange statement- that even though such legislation as this should result in advantage to the Canadian farmers, that advantage might not continue; therefore he would vote against the resolution. That is to say, we should not trade profitably to-day lest we may not be able to trade profitably to-morrow. We would never make any trade at all if we acted that way. No business man acts that way, the. Minister of Finance himself would not <act 1 that way in connection with his own business.
Speaking on this subject the other day, the Minister of Finance referred to the matter of potatoes, in which people of my province, and of other provinces of Canada as well, are deeply interested. He opposed the removal of-the duty on American potatoes because it would be no advantage to us. He read tables to show that in 1914-15 the price of potatoes in Sydney and Halifax was higher than in the United States. And do you know what the Finance Minister did? He quoted the retail price of potatoes in these two cities of Sydney and Halifax, and compared it with the price the farmers received in the United States, which was even less than the wholesale price-end he built an argument on a statement of that kind, and he told us he was viewing the matter in a calm and judicial spirit. I wonder what kind of a statement he would make if he were considering it from a political point of view. Then, too, he quoted prices in Canada last year, when it is well known to everybody that we had a crop failure in potatoes, and the price was abnormally high. Very rarely do we have suc'h a failure in the potato crop in this country, perhaps not once in twenty years. But we had that unusual condition of things last year; the crop failed all over Eastern Canada. If we could get potatoes from {he United States this year the consumers of Canada would bring in potatoes from the United States which would be a great advantage to us. The Government has power by Order in Council to remove the duty or to suspend it 'temporarily. If they will not remove it permanently at least they should remove it temporarily this year. We had an exceptional condition of things in Prince Edward Island. As I have said, out crop there was a failure to such an extent that the farmers will

find it very difficult to obtain potatoes for seed this year. Last year, when a similar condition prevailed in Western Canada the Government very properly came to the rescue of the farmers and provided, or assisted in providing, seed wheat. I would strongly urge the Government to take into consideration the conditions in Prince Edward Island, and to see if they cannot assist the farmers there in obtaining seed potatoes this year, because if something along that line is not done, if neither the provincial nor the Dominion Government take the question up, it is very doubtful if the farmers will be able to obtain seed potatoes, and some of the ground will be left unseeded. So I would strongly urge that under these conditions the Government should seriously consider at least the suspension of the duty on American potatoes, if they will not remove it permanently. There is no doubt that the American market for potatoes would be of great advantage to us if we could get it. The Reciprocity agreement gave us a monopoly of the American market in posatoes, but we turned it down. When President Wilson took office and the Underwood Tariff came into operation, it reduced the duty on potatoes to every country in the worid. The consequence was that large quantities of potatoes began to come in from Europe, from Great Britain and Germany, and the American people became alarmed lest the dreadful disease known as canker, which is prevalent in Europe, might be introduced. They held a convention at Washington to take the matter into consideration, and the Canadian Department of Agriculture sent Dr. G. Giissow down there to tell them that Canadian potatoes were diseased and ought to be excluded. Men were sent by this Government to Prince Edward Island in 1912, with the title of professors or scientists attached to their names, and the object was to find disease in the^ potatoes to sustain the action of the Government in making such representations to the American people, and of course they found the disease. I shall simply point out to the House the way those gentlemen acted. Two of those men in 1912 went to the cellaT of a farmer, Robert Stewart, of Brudenell, a potato groVer. They found disease in his potatoes'and they advised him that he must not under any consideration use those potatoes for seed. He paid no attention to what they said, he knew that his " potatoes were not diseased, but were the 
same as they had been for forty years, and so he planted those same potatoes for two successive years. Tivo other professors came ailong last autumn and gave him a clean bill of health. )His was the only farm in the neighbourhood that had no diseased potatoes. Disease was found in our potatoes because gentlemen were sent there to find it, and representations of mat kind were made to the American Government. The Minister of Agriculture became alarmed and he and Dr. Giissow have since been trying to prove to the American -Government that there is no disease, or that it is of very harmless character. But the consequence is that an embargo was put on Canadian potatoes which prevents * us having access to the United States market, and we have to thank the Canadian Government for it.
Under these conditions I say that there is no reason in the world why this motion should not carry. The western farmers are not asking favours; if they came here asking favours, probably they would be better received. They are asking simply to be allowed to increase the exports of the country, asking to be allowed to sell their surplus products wherever they can find a market for them. I repeat they are not asking for any favours or privileges, not asking for legislation to enable them to put any burden upon any other class of the community; and yet they are denied, they are turned down. The Government has set up the idol of protection and will not touch it-everybody must bow down and worship it. It is a serious condition of affairs when a Government will not listen to an argument of that kind, when the Government's position has to be supported by such self-contradictory arguments as the Minis-7 ter of Finance made the other day. The Minister of Finance is an able man, and if he had a good cause he would not have had to make arguments of that kind. This shows the essential weakness of the Government's position in this matter. But they do not seem to be open to reason or to argument, and I suppose the farmers will have to put up with the consequences of the disadvantages under which they are labouring at the present time. I make these representations to the Government in all earnestness, and I think they ought to receive consideration.


Mr. H. BOULAY (Rimouski):: (Translation.) I had not intended to take part in this debate, but as our friends opposite keep harping on this question of free wheat,

I take it to be my duty to express thereon s few ideas. Enough days and weeks have been spent on the subject during the last five years, that" the discussion in my opinion, ought to be considered closed.
All the points of the question have been sifted again and again and all its aspects scrutinized, and from all the twaddle what stands out clear to me is that the western members are using the question as an electoral war-horse. They take it up as a good means of boosting their case and ensuring their re-election.
A while ago one of the western members attacked the Government for not giving the farmers all the help they were entitled to. Yet, if any people should grumble against want of solicitude on the part of the Government, surely not those farmers. Every time they are the victims of some slight mishap, a drought or a frost, they appeal to the Government and immediately millions of dollars are put at their disposal to enable them to tide over the crisis. Our eastern farmers have not the same recourse. If the harvest is bad, or they suffer from frost, they have to shift for themselves without any one coming to their aid. Of all farmers who have no reason to grumble, those of the prairies are first, for the Government is lavish in its favours to them.
The same orator complains that agricultural implements were not allowed to be imported free of duty from the United States, he claims the tariff in that respect is detrimental to them, and in support of his contention he maintains that the higher price paid for the same machinery in Canada than obtains across the border is disadvantageous to the farmer, that it is in fact money taken from the purse of the farmer and given to the manufacturer. So be it, but, in my opinion, when the hon. member further stated that only the manufacturers reap the benefit of the tariff, he is clehrly mistaken. The workmen also find it to be their benefit. It must not be forgotten that in those manufactories are to be found workmen to whom the tariff is a benefit in the form of employment. Granted even that an article be something higher in "price in Canada than it is in the United States, it seems to me that if the western people were good patriots, they would not begrudge this slight sacrifice to allow Canadian workmen-to find his sustenance in this, our common country. After all wtp are not an agglomeration of two or three Canadas, but we form an entity destined to live as a whole in this country,
and no section ought to be indifferent to the necessities of another section.
There is another subject I would call to . the attention of my hon. friend from the West. We have, out of the public treasury, built for their use, at fabulous cost, three railways, designed to move their harvest and bring their produce to the Canadian harbours to be thence shipped overseas.
We are now building also, at their request, a request made to the late Administration and repeatedly pressed upon the present Government,1-a burdensome railway, tne Hudson Bay railway, to afford them a shorter route to the European markets. I would like to know the bottom reason for those railroad constructions. Why are we wasting so much money on the Hudson Bay road-built only for the benefit of our western countrymen, since neither Ontario nor Quebec nor the Maritime Provinces can utilize it; why waste so many millions for those western farmers, if those gentlemen are bent on dealing on the American market? Is that fair? Let them insist with the Government that a stop be put to that useless expenditure on the Hudson Bay railway. It might be after all to the country's advantage to abandon those undertakings and allow the western people freedom of trade with the United States. One of the previous orators stated that in the West the farmer made no money, it appears to me there is not much patriotism in coming here to make such a declaration. If in the West the farmers do not make money, why then ask so much for colonization, why all this propaganda to draw settlers to a region where results are so deceptive?
I, however, have it in my mind that the farmers of the West coin money much more freely than in the East. Had I spoken in the stead of the hon. member I should certainly not have delivered myself of such a remark, because it is not in the interest of his province. We ^11 know that for the most part the western agriculturists are well-to-do and that many of them become rich with much less pains than our eastern farmers.
Such are the few remarks I wished to make. I make them without acrimony and in the best possible intention, so that our friends from the West may realize that they should not be parties to these unhealthy agitations, that they are not the only inhabitants of this country, but that on the contrary, they have to live in close community with the other parts of Canada, and

that their first thought should-be the general interests of the country, and not those of a particular section.


Mr. LEVI THOMSON (Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, I have followed this debate very closely. The Minister of Finance and the hon. Minister of Public Works appeared to be under the impression that what we lack in the West is information, and they undertook to supply us with information. But from what I heard and have read of their speeches, there is not a bit of information in them; their statements are as stale as yesterday, or as a year ago yesterday. If they would just take the trouble to attend some of the western grain conventions they would learn something. I know that my hon. friend the Minister of Public Works would learn more there in five minutes than he could ever learn from his study of the speeches of the Minister of Finance. The men in the West know their subject from top to bottom, and all I can say is that, if these hon. ministers have given us all the knowledge they possess on the subject, they know very little about it. The men whom they undertake to inform could give them lots of information which I think would be useful to them if they would heed it, but the trouble is that they do not want to listen to the western farmers; their desire is to know what the protected interests want; it is in these they are interested.
I desire to refer to one remark made by the hon. member for Macdonald (Mr. Morrison) in what I believe was his maiden speech. He said that we should hold this grain for Great Britain and our Allies. Is there any necessity for that? I expected some such argument would be sprung by some one; it is along the lines of some of the arguments, or what we call arguments, advanced by the hon. Minister of Public Works. But apparently even he thought little of it, and shifted it to the shoulders of his friend from Macdonald. Supposing we shipped 50,000,000 bushels of wheat to the United States, would they not ship a corresponding amount of grain to the Allies and Great Britain? I do not think it can be denied that the Allies would not get a bushel less.
Mr, MORRISON:	I desire to correct
the hon. member. What I said was that no man could tell when the United States might be involved in war, and if the resolution before the House were passed, and several millions of bushels found their

way into the United States with the United States at war, that grain might cease to be available for Great Britain and her Allies. -
TdT. THOMSON: Does my hon. friend think that there is a probability of the United States entering the war on the side of Germany? If the United States enters the war it is much more likely to be on the side of Britain and her Allies, and if the United States became one of Britain's Allies, it would supply her, for the United States would be exactly in the same position as the other Allies. I do not think I need go any further into that argument.
We have had something suggested about possible British preference. This possibility of a British preference has been dangled __ before our eyes ever since I entered this House, and probably for ten years before that. This preference ihas always been just coming, and we have always been told that we must pass legislation with that in view. My opinion is entirely different in regard to that. When we aTe passing legislation in this House, we must pass it with a view to the circumstances that at present exist. If there should be a complete change in those circumstances, then we would consider the question of amending or changing our legislation. If circumstances should arise which would make it injudicious for Canada to have free entry for her wheat into the United States, we could easily Tepeal the enactment. We have been told over and over again that this is not a permanent policy. It is objectionable to hon. members opposite because it is not permanent, and it is also objectionable to them because it is permanent. They want to have it both ways, and they can only have it one way. The Minister of Public Works was a little rash to-day, I think. He tried to answer a question which was put to him by the hon. member for Dauphin, and which was also put to the Prime Minister and to the "Minister of Finance, but which they did not answer. In my opinion, they were wise in not answering. But my hon. friend the Minister of Public Works was not so wise, i and he told us, at least by inference, that it was more loyal to put money into the pockets of the manufacturers of Canada than into the revenue of the country. I disagree with my hon. friend, but I will leave it at thatr I do not think he will find many people in Canada to agree with him.
As I have said, I listened with care, and have read with care the speeches of the

two ministers who have spoken on the question. I am sorry to say that I am not disposed to consider very seriously the speech of the Minister of Public Works, because I do not think he gave his speech to us seriously; I do not think he was serious for a moment. We were told by the Conservative papers in the West that the minister was working day and night trying to get his colleagues to accede to this proposal of free wheat.


Robert Rogers: I do not think so.


Levi Thomson: My hon. friend cla .ms to be an expert in winning elections, but apparently he is not ah expert in winning his colleagues over. He has been a dead failure, so far as free wheat is concerned. We were told that when he went out West he had an open -mind on the subject, but he came back to Ottawa and apparently read an old speech of the Minister of Trade and Commerce which closed his mind, and then he heard the speech of the Minister of Finance the other day, and that put the locks and bars on it. He has no opinion of his own. He may win'elections, but he cannot carry his colleagues with him. They make a perfect tool of him-perhaps I should not say perfect, because I think he is a very imperfect one. I am always disposed, however, to take the Minister of Finance seriously, and I think most members of the House are. I read his argument very carefully, and I desire to make some brief references to it. I understand it is desired to take the vote to-night, and therefore I shall be as brief as possible, though I shall have to leave out some of the matters to which I intended to refer. The Minister of Finance acknowledged that the corresponding prices in the United States market are, on an average, better than our own. I gather that he is willing to admit that there might be some slight advantage to us in the matter of prices, but apparently he thinks that the disadvantages would be so great that it would not be wise to accede to our request. Before I leave the Minister of Public Works I should like to call attention to this remark in his speech:
I am sure that no hon. member in this House would say that the provision in the Underwood tariff giving us free access to the American market, on certain conditions, was made for the purpose of giving the Canadian producer of western Canada any special advantage.
I quite 'agree with that, but my hon. friend falls into the error which many people fall into, who think that if there is
any advantage to the other man there must be a disadvantage to them, and that if somebody else loses they must gain. If I want to buy anything I want to buy in such a way that both the buyer and the seller will gain, and if I want to sril I try to sell in such a way that both the seller and the purchaser will gain. I would not regard myself as a good citizen if I did otherwise. The same thing is true in regard to nations. He goes on to say:
It, therefore, becomes our special duty to give this question most earnest and careful consideration, in order to ascertain whether there is justification for the statement that the acceptance of this proposal would carry with it advantages to the farming community and to the people of Canada generally.
That is very grand, but I am very Sony that my hon. friend departed entirely from that high plane which he had set up for himself during his speech. He did not follow the principle that he was laying down.
I do not think that he, himself, imagines that he did. While the Minister of Finance was disposed to admit that there will be some gain to the Canadian farmer in the matter of price, he wanted to ease off that admission as far as he could and he carefully hand-picked some quotations as to the relative prices of grain and, after handpicking them, he carefully avoided any reference to cash prices. All his references were to futures. I am glad to see that the Minister of Finance is now in his place because I want to bring this matter to his attention. I say that after hand-picking quotations he goes on to try and ease off bis admission as to the difference in price between Canada and the United States and confines himself entirely to futures. The .farmers of the West are not dealing in futures. I have grown and sold quite a number of bushels of wheat in my life but I have never sold or bought one future, and what I say of myself is true of almost all farmers of the West. A few of them deal in futures and in May delivery for speculation just the same as my hon. friend might speculate if he felt like it, but when he confined himself entirely to futures and ignores cash sales, he shows, what is true of the whole ministry, that he is not thinking of the farmers, but of the speculators. The speculators are the men whose interests they are looking after and not ours.
I am quite prepared to agree with my hon. friend on some things and one is that you cannot absolutely say what the effect of any special legislation will be. You cannot tell absolutely what the effect of

this proposed legislation will be. You cannot tell precisely and mathematically what the effect of any legislation will be. Let me offer you one illustration of that. This is for the purpose of stating a general principle although we cannot say that it is on all fours with the present case. Supposing my hon. friend had a water trough, a foot deep, a foot wide and perfectly level. He places sufficient water in one end to fill half of the trough one foot high; he places sufficient water in the other end to fill that half of the trough six inches high. You then get an argument in regard to the matter which would lead one to believe that in the opinion of these gentleman the water throughout the entire length of the trough would rise to 12 inches or drop to six. My hon. friend knows' that neither of these things occur as a matter of fact. But he says that in trade matters this is the case and he chooses whichever side suits him; that is the trouble. While ' you can mathematically ascertain where the water will rise you cannot, as a matter of mathematics, tell exactly what the price of wheat will be if this legisla-5 p.m. tion is passed, or what the absolute effect will be, but you can conform to general principles.


Mr. WRIGHT:: What would happen if
* both ends of the trough were equally full.
Mr. [DOT] THOMSON:	What does the hon.
gentleman say?


William Wright: What would happen if
both troughs were bulk full?


Levi Thomson: I am not talking about both troughs, but about one trough. If they were equally full, they would remain . equally full, but I confei = that I cannot see what the point of the hon. gentleman's question is. If my hon. friend will be kind enough to tell me I would be very much obliged to him.


John Hampden Burnham: The hon. gentleman
(Mr. Thomson) said that he could not do this thing mathematically and then he proceeded to demonstrate that he could.


Levi Thomson: Perhaps I do not speak plainly enougn or perhaps my hon. friend has not been listening, because he would not have made that rernanr if he had been. I would advise him to read what I have said and pay a little attention to it, and use his brain power, of wl ich he has enough. He has sufficient understanding to appreciate what I have said, and I do not think
rMr. Thomson.!
I need go over it again. However, I have sometimes said that we would feel rather offended if my hon. friend were in the House and he did not interrupt us in his good-natured way. We are always very much pleased to receive his interruptions, as they are invariably good natured. The Minister of Finance truly says that supply and demand rule this question. That is quite right. However, he proceeds, as plainly as he can, to contradict that afterwards. He says that the export price will govern the price. I do not know whether my hon. friend confines the meaning of export price to .prices that we receive for grain shipped across the Atlantic. If he does he is entirely mistaken. If he means the whole of the export, wherever it is, he is right. I think my hon. friend will agree that the more outlets you have the better and the steadier your price will be. The law of supply and demand affects that. The better the demand there is for the amount of stuff we have to ship, the better and the steadier will be the price. My hon. friend apparently puts on his silk gown while he is in the midst of his argument. He does not mean to keep the farmer's togs on all the time; he becomes a lawyer, and he says a great deal to us about the necessity of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as we are required to do in the courts of law. I think that is a very good piece of advice to give us, but it would have been a very good piece of advice for himself to have taken. He should have applied that advice to himself before he began talking about the local demand in the way he did, and before he told us that the quotations he was giving had reference to the same grades. As a matter of fact, his remarks in regard to the local demand in the United States were entirely misleading. His remarks with reference to the same grade were also very misleading. He was comparing a grade of No. 1 "Northern Canadian with a No. 1 Northern United States, and 'he said that these were the same grades. That is as much as to tell us that because one man is named White, and another man is named White, therefore it is the same man. Let me quote what the requirements are-I think this has been quoted m the House before-of No. 1 hard in Canada and No. 1 hard in Minneapolis:
Canadian No. 1 Manitoba Northern wheat shall he sound and well cleaned, weighing not less than 60 pounds to the bushel, and shall be composed of at least 60 per cent of hard red Fife wheat.	*

No. 1 Minneapolis spring wheat shall be dry, sound, sweet and clean, may consist ot the hard and soft varieties of spring wheat and weigh not less than 57 pounds to the measured bushel.
My hon. friend would hardly claim that wheat which must weigh sixty pounds to the bushel, and contain sixty per cent of hard Red Fife, is of the same grade as wheat that requires to weigh only fifty-seven pounds to the bushel, and contains merely a percentage of hard wheat. I presume my hon. friend is well enough versed in the grades to know that the nearest comparison between Minneapolis and Fort William higher grades is No. 1 Hard Minneapolis and No. 2 Northern Fort William. Between those two grades there is very little difference, but the spread in price averages considerably oveT five cetnts a bushel. It is obviously unfair, to compare No. 1 Minneapolis with No. 1 Fort William, and what is the use of my hon. friend lecturing us to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when he speaks of these two distinctly different grades as if they were exactly the same.
I think the House will agree that the hard wheat we grow in the West is the best in the world, but, it does not bring the best price in the British market. Why is that? I have heard the reason advanced that it is because we ship all our wheat over there at the one time. That reason is not sound, because on looking over reports of past years I find that the very same condition existed when we were not shipping wheat at all. Only one reason for this condition, suggests itself to me: We are shipping more of our hard wheat than Great Britain requires, and we are glutting their market. If any hon. gentleman knows of any other reason I shall be glad to hear it, for I am anxious for information. At the same time, there is a tremendous demand in the United States for our hard wheat. We may take it for granted that the taste of Canadians and' Americans demands a greater percentage of hard wheat than does the British taste. Canadian millers want nearly all hard wheat in their flour; British millers do not require nearly so large a percentage. It is quite plain from the grades that the United States is not producing anything like so good a quality of hard wheat as we are. The reason we have high grades in this country is because we have a high-grade wheat, and in the United States they have not these high grades, because their wheat is not of such a high quality. Their No. 1 hard has to contain only fifty per cent of
hard wheat, and that not necessarily hard Red Fife; whereas our second grade No 1 Northern has to contain sixty per cent of hard Red Fife.
The Finance Minister has spoken of the demand in the United States for our wheat, as a local demand. I would tell him that that local demand extends over the whole of the United States. I have been told by gentlemen who have lived in the south that the bread they got there was not nearly so good as what they were used to in Canada. There was not enough hard wheat in the flour; the United States does not produce enough hard wheat to supply the demand, and they have to use soft wheat flour in making the bread. In one sense this demand in the United States is a local demand, as the Finance Minister says, because the United States is a locality; it is equally true that the European demand is a local demand, for Europe is also a locality. If the demand of the United States, with its 100,000,000 people, is a local demand, how much more of a local demand is the demand of Great Britain with its 45,000,000 people? If one is a local demand, surely the other is. American millers need our hard wheat to mix with their soft, and that is why free wheat and free wheat products would be a benefit to our farmers. The United States demand would increase the price to our farmers.
What would be the result if, instead of sending all our hard wheat to Britain, we sent a portion of it to the United States, and the United States sent to Great Britain the soft wheat which the British market requires? We should find that the British market would want our hard wheat. If you search back far enough in the English papers you' will find that at one time Western Canada wheat commanded the highest price in the world, and I say that we should reach that point again if we limited our export of hard wheat to Britain. At the present time we are sending over far more than they require; we have glutted the market, and the price has dropped.
Just a word in regard to our milling friends. I think I speak for the western farmers when I say that we do not wish to injure the millers if it can be avoided. If legislation were passed that would prevent our milling friends from declaring fifty and sixty per cent dividend on their stock, watered and otherwise, and would allow us to get a little more than four or five per cent on the capital we have invested in the West, I do not think it would

be a bad thing for the country at all. Certainly the millers could stand it, according to their own figures. The Minister of Finance tells us that the United States has a milling capacity of	1,000,000
barrels a day, while Canada's capacity is 100,000 barrels a day, or just one-tenth the capacity of the United States. If that is so, we are better supplied with milling facilities per head of population than is the United States. The hon. gentleman will not claim that we have one-tenth of the population of the United States, and yet we have one-tenth of its milling power. That being so, why cannot our mills take care of themselves, especially when our millers pay less for wheat than the American millers pay and sell their flour at a higher price? That state of affairs, I may remark in passing, may account for our having more milling capacity according to population than the United States. But we are told that it would injure the milling industry of Canada to have such legislation passed as is proposed by this motion. The mills of Canada, in the financial year ending 31st March, 1914, exported flour to the value of a little over $20,500,000. That flour was sold in open competition with the mills of the United States and of the world. If our mills can compete in other countries with the mills of the United States, surely they can compete at home. In shipping abroad they have no freight advantages while in the home market they have. The amount of flour exported from Canada is increasing, being probably $25,000,000 or more this year, in addition to which they ship about $2,000,000 worth of bran. That does not look as if the Canadian mills could not compete either in flour or in bran with the mills of the United States.	.
The Minister of Finance makes a great deal of the point that this proposed legislation would lack permanency. Can the hon. gentleman point to any legislation that is permanent? Even the British North America Act, the most permanent of our laws, has been amended, and we are now seeking to amend it again. You cannot have democracy and have permanency of legislation, for the people must always have the right to change their laws. The hon. gentleman said that the Canadian millers could not export to the United States because there is no " permanency '' in the legislation. Well, would not that apply the other way just as well? The argument of lack of " permanency "

would operate against the American miller exporting to Canada, just as it would operate against our millers exporting to the United States. It is quite true, as the hon. minister has said, that in this matter we depend upon the legislation of another country, but that is true of every country in the world that makes a trade treaty. What guarantee have we that the French people will not put an end to the trade treaty between that country and our own?


Mr. MICHAEL CLARK:: And there is
the treaty with the West Indies.


Rodolphe Lemieux: And the treaty with
Japan.


Levi Thomson: Yes, they, are all in
the same category. Now, there is one other matter that I wish to emphasize, though it has been called attention to by other speakers, and that is that we farmers of the West are not asking any favours. We want no advantage over any other producers on earth. We believe that we can compete with the 'American farmers or any other farmers. We believe that we have the land and that we have the men. I could not say that we desired to avoid . competition without saying either that we had not the land or that we had not the men, but I am not prepared to admit that the United States has any better farmers or any better land than ours. We simply ask for an opportunity to market our products wherever we can find a satisfactory [DOT]and profitable trade. If the American farmer can come across and undersell us, let him do so. If he can undersell us in oats or in anything else, let him do so. All we ask is a fair field and no favour. Quotations have been made from newspapers intended to prove that probably there would be no advantage to the Canadian farmers in the arrangement that we are asking for.	But these same newspapers, in 1911, told us that there could be no advantage in selling our live-stock free of duty in the United States. I recall particularly the case of one newspaper published in western Canada.
That paper had fought tooth and nail against reciprocity, its chief argument being -that we could not possibly get any advantage from reciprocity so far as live stock was concerned. One year after the Underwood tariff came into effect that same paper admitted that we were getting two cents a pound more for every head of cattle that we were selling. Certainly they overstated the figure, but it is

a fact that there was a substantial increase.
We are asking for no favours; give us fair play, and nothing more. Give us a chance to deal freely and openly in the markets of the world. If legislation of this kind is passed, benefit will accrue not only ' to the farmers of the West, but to the consumers in the East as well-to every man who wants to buy a pound of flour. It Is admitted by all that the price of flour is lower in the United States than it is in Canada. The reason why objection is made to free wheat is that the Canadian miller would have to sell his flour cheaper in Canada than he has been selling it in the past. What would be the effect of that? Every labouring man in Canada would get his flour cheaper, his bread cheaper, his living cheaper. Is that not worth while?


Mr W. F. MACLEAN (South York):: It is my intention to occupy the House only a few minutes, as I understand that a vote is to be taken at six o'clock. Our greatest poet has said that "nice customs curtsey to great kings." Among the nice customs may be included the tariff custom, and the great king to which the tariff custom must curtsy is democracy. The democracy of the Canadian West to-day is demanding free wheat. I have followed the discussion of this subject closely for many years; I have read the papers of the West; I have heard speeches; I have read the proceedings of all the farmers' conventions. The demand in the West now, as I see it, is that the people there shall have a wider market for their wheat. Surely if they have not now a market sufficiently wide this Parliament, representing the Canadian people, should not prevent the accruing of that benefit to the agricultural population of the country, especially the West. They simply ask for an opportunity to sell their surplus wheat in every possible market. Their doing this would not be against the interests of Canada; it would make these people richer and increase their ability to buy Canada's products, because they would sell their wheat at better prices than they get now. I believe in a national policy for Canada; I have in my time made some sacrifices in the matter of national policy. The argument that was made by the Minister of Public Works this afternoon was a first class argument in many respects. The hon. gentleman said tnat he wanted to maintain the National Policy. But do we go to the United States to maintain our National Policy? The United States could
destroy the whole structure of that policy as it was outlined this afternoon if they saw fit to withdraw the duty which they now impose upon our wheat. The probability is that the Democratic party, soon to go to the country in a presidential election, will have in their party platform a proposal to abolish the duty on wheat. If they do this where will our national policy go then? We have got to have a national policy that will preserve traffic for our Canadian railways, if possible; we have got to have a national policy for our millers. But if we are consistent national policy men we ought to work that policy out by depending not upon the temporary or incidental legislation of the United States, but upon our own legislation. The British market, which we now have, is a good market. If we want to help the millers why not adopt the principle of the National Policy in regard to, say, a bounty on production, or, better still, by nationalizing our railways, transportation lines, ocean steamship services? Then we should be able to keep the British market, and hold it against any competition. The United States for the time being has put a tariff on wheat coming from Canada. They may take that duty off, and we can do nothing to keep that market for ourselves. After studying this question as well as I , could, I have come to the conclusion that we should not resist the voice of the people of the West when they ask for the right to sell their wheat in every possible market. We will make them better farmers, and we will make them better consumers of Canadian goods if we keep them in good temper, and give them an opportunity of making more money than they are making to-day The impression that I gained after a comparison of prices was that, on the whole, the price of wheat in the United States has been better than the price in Canada, and that the millers of Canada have at times not given as much as they could have given for Canadian wheat if the Canadian farmers had been able to sell in other markets. I have no prejudices in this matter; I have tried to consider it carefully, and that is the impression that has been made upon me. If we wish to make the West prosperous and contented, we ought to give the farmers of that country the benefit of free wheat. The West must be made to stand on its own feet, and you will never get it to do that if you restrict its freedom in the matter of selling a great product of which it has a large surplus. If there were any national reason why we

should prevent our own people from getting the largest possible returns from the sale of their wheat, I should not be prepared to support the motion. But I can see no national reason why we should restrict the Canadian farmer in the marketing of his great surplus of wheat.
As to the millers, I have this to say-the Minister of Finance is now proposing a tax on the profits of the business community of Canada in order to help pay for this great war, and the millers will have to pay a large share of that tax. The millers have been most successful in their industry. As between the miller and the farmer, it cannot be said that the miller has not had the best of it. As between the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian West, it cannot be said that the farmer has had the best of it. The railways and the millers have had the best of it so far, and the Canadian farmers in the West are seeking some relief, some betterment of their condition. We may not even now be able to give them that relief, because, no matter what we may do, the United States may put up the duty against us. Of a certainty I see no relief in that direction. But' there is an opportunity to improve the conditions by taking advantage of legislation that already exists on the statute book of the United States. Looking at the matter in the calmest possible way, after having studied all the circumstances connected with it, I have reached the conclusion that it is not along the lines of national policy that we should restrict the farmers of our West in their -getting the best possible price for their grain. On the contrary, we ought to help them get the best possible price for their grain, and try to make the West not only a great grain growing country, but a great mixed farming country as well. Give the West an opportunity to work out its own salvation, and do not encourage it in nursing grievances. If we wish to improve the condition of our railways and our millers, we should do as I thought this House intended to do; as I thought the Conservative party intended to do two or three years ago-remove these grievances, the expression of which has been found in the House, in the press, on platforms in every direction. The sooner we get rid of the grievances, and give the farmers of the West what they ask for, the better it will be for the progress and development of the country.


Arthur Meighen: There are only a few minutes

left within which, according to the arrangement made to bring this subject to a vote before six o'clock, to express my view upon the motion. One would indeed be blind who came from the Canadian West and failed to realize the scope of this subject and the place it occupies in the minds of the people of the three Prairie Provinces. The matter arose as a political question some five years ago; I do not think its origin antedates that time. It formed part of the great reciprocity issue of 1911, and as such the people of Canada passed upon it.
Since that time it would be idle to contend that it has been eliminated from the-political horizon. It occupies its place there still and is a subject of political discussion,, and is likely to be for some time. I respect the views of the men who have advocated the affirmative side of the resolution, including the hon. member for York (Mr. W. F. Maclean). I only note with reference to tne speech of that hon. gentleman that while he established quite clearly that there was what might be called a political grievance, and while he, at all events, established his own conviction that the Conservative party as a party would make a stroke of political strategy to its advantage by removing this question out of the way, he said little or nothing that would even indicate that he was himself convinced that there was anything to the subject except what was of a political, and not of an economic character. I have always believed, and never more than now, that at least ninety per cent of this free wheat issue is purely political, while, for the other ten per cent, it is economically unsound. We on this side have been charged in this House, ever since I have been a member of it, and with increasing emphasis since we arrived in power, with being allied with big interests in this country, with being blind to the cause of the farming community and unresponsive to their cries. I must say the repetition with which this subject has been advanced has been so monotonous as to become almost nauseating; and to hear it now propounded with the same earnestness, apparently, as it was in years gone by, after the Budget proposals of this year, is to make one almost justified in charging insincerity against hon. gentlemen opposite. We hear it said by hon. gentlemen opposite in relation to this very subject: You listen to the cry of the manufacturers; you listen to the cry of the railroad; you listen to the cry of the am-

munition maker; but you never hear a word that the farmer utters; you arrange for cheap rates on ocean traffic for the shell manufacturer, but you never bother about the farmers' products in any way whatever. The hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff), with just the same assurance and the same positiveness that he displayed in relation to every other phase of the subject, told us we had been instrumental in robbing the western farmer of thirty or forty million dollars because we had not reduced the high ocean freight rates. 1 am free to admit that we are as justly chargeable with taking thirty million dollars from him because of the high freight rates as we are chargeable with taking twelve and a half million from him by virtue of his not having access to this illusory American market. Thirty millions from him because of high freight rates! Have hon. gentlemen seen the freight rates *charged to the exporter of farm products from the United States? I have them before me in the Northwest Miller. I do not know whether hon. gentlemen opposite concede that as an authority or not, but it is published by the millers of Minneapolis, who are persona grata with hon. gentlemen opposite, much more so than aTe the millers of Canada. The figures I have before me indicate that the American rates have averaged higher than the Canadian rates, and that the American farmer has had to pay.at least the rates that we have had to pay. Through the efforts of this Government we were successful in arranging for the transport of supplies purchased by the British Government in vessels requisitioned by the British Government and placed in charge of one named by us. The history of that work and its success has been stated to the House by the Minister of Marine, and I do not know whether it is from his statement or from what, that hon. gentlemen have got the idea that we have been very partial in that regard to the manufacturer of shells. As a matter of well ascertained fact, over seventy-eight per cent of the goods that went on the vessels that were so secured and so requisitioned, were products of the farms of Canada. I have before me a letter from the director of transport, written to the Prime Minister of this country, and written, judging by its introductory words, because he had noted these extraordinary statements made earlier this session by the hon. member for Asisiniboia. The director of transport says:
If, as I understand, Mr. Turriff alleges that the Government in its overseas arrangement has favoured the manufacturer to the disadvantage of the farmer then the answer is simple and may he found in the statement on file in the Naval Department showing weekly requirements of the War Office, (copy enclosed for easy reference) and also on page 2 of the memorandum attached to the recent Order in Council having reference to this department.
War Office requirements call for a movement of 35,900 tons per week, representing 2,282,000 cubic feet ocean space.
Of this total, 1,787,000 cubic feet is represented by the products of the farm (oats, hay and flour). The oats and wheat are grown in the West; and of the hay shipments over twenty thousand tons are now being compressed at Calgary for movement overseas. Of the balance, (495,000 cubic feet) 175,000 cubic feet is absorbed by ammunition, shells, forgings, etc., 40,000 by miscellaneous manufactures, and 280,000 by railway equipment.
In other words the available ocean cubic feet space is subdivided as follows:
Per cent.
Products of the farm	 78'31
Railway equipment	 12'27
Munitions, shells, forgings, etc. 7'67 Miscellaneous	 1"!5
Thus it will be seen that 7-67 per cent is the huge proportion of space secured on these vessels, requisitioned by the British Government at the request of the Government of Canada, for the accommodation of shells, etc.
Coming moTe directly to the free wheat and flour issue, I frankly admit, first of alll, .that -it is a matter that concerns very vitally the farmers of the West. That is to say, they are very directly interested in it. It concerns what forms the major part of the product of their labour, and their investment. But I cannot agree, and I_do not think any mind that is honest with itself can agree, that the question of ' whether or not free wheat and flour are made a fact by legislation of this country is a question that concerns the farmer alone. Although the wheat is the product of the farmer and of the farmer alone, flour Is the product of the farmer and of the miller of this country; and in both products, wheat and flour, all our transportation interests have also a very vital concern. Were I to limit the interest in this question to those directly and indirectly concerned with transportation, with milling, and with farming, I should be too confined in my reference. The whole people of Canada are concerned, and concerned vitally, with the question of whether ox not we place wheat and flour on the free list. Everybody has an interest in it, because it goes to the very Toot of the trend of out legislation; and if we take this step, then there

are other steps with which we must logically follow, and if we take those steps then we turn in the direction we were forbidden to turn by the electorate of this country in 1910. I have seen it argued in print and heard it argued on the platform for years, just in the language repeated in this debate by the hon. members for Assini-boia, and Dauphin, and others, that this is a farmers' question, that the farmers ought to know what they should do and where to market their goods; that their decision should be final, and that no one else has any concern in the question.	I do
not believe the farmers themselves take that ground; I think they are broader-minded than their spokesmen, or alleged spokesmen, in this House. They know that others are interested in it as well as they; they know that the whole people of this country are interested in it. Oh, says the ,hon. member for Edmonton (Mr. Oliver), if another class of men who are manufacturing goods come to the Government and say it is necessary for us -we are unanimous upon it-that you should put so and so in the tariff, the Government will do so. Does the hon. gentleman believe such a proposition as that? Why, if we followed the manufacturer of almost any line of goods in this country, I am afraid the tariff in respect to that line of goods would go up, but when any class of manufacturers, or any class of interests of any kind come to the Government and say: we are the makers of certain goods, and we know what is best for us; we say to them: you are the makers of the goods and you have a direct interest, but the people of this country are also interested; and we have to decide out of regard to the public interest, and not out of regard to your interest alone.
That is the answer we give to the demand voiced in this House by the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff). I have not the time to pursue the whole course of prices, or to compare the prices to the north with the prices to the south, as has been done at considerable length during this debate. I have never denied, nor could any one who pretended to give any study to the subject, deny, that at many times there is a higher price, sometimes a materially higher price, for hard wheat in Minneapolis than there is on this side of the line. I do not think it can be successfully denied that the average price across the line maintains higher for hard wheat than it does on this side, but I believe that the average is very much below the figures

given by hon. gentlemen opposite. I do not think that the figures which have been communicated by the officials on both sides of the line will support the figures given by hon. gentlemen opposite. The average may be a few cents higher; it varies from year to year, and according to conditions, and the question for us to inquire into is this: not what the conditions are now, which are fixed in the main by the trade affected by the tariff, but what the conditions would be if we legislated, as we are asked to legislate, and whether or not they would bring a greater return to the producers of this country and a greater benefit to the country as a whole. I want the House to understand this, because it is a fact uncontroverted, and hon. gentlemen know it, that while they quote grade for grade across the line with grade for grade here, they ought to tell the House that the grade quoted at Minneapolis and Duluth is always the highest price paid that day, while the grade quoted at Winnipeg or Fort William runs from the lowest to the- highest. But it is the closing price which they compare with that of Minneapolis; consequently, in many cases the closing price may be lower than the Minneapolis, but the average price for the day may be higher than the Minneapolis price.
Then there is the sample market over there, and that sample market principle invades the grade principle as well. The result is that all their wheat of a certain grade does not sell for the same price; there will be a spread of five cents some day between the same class of No. 1 Northern and another class of No. 1 Northern. Similarly with No. 2 Northern. The higher prices quoted by hon. gentlemen opposite are figures covering many months, and they say that by hot allowing free entry we are standing between the western farmer and the markets to the south. It is true that by reason of conditions which are not difficult to understand, if one sets about to study them, very often, and I-think on the average, there has been a somewhat higher level of prices in Minneapolis than on this side of the line, but the outstanding conditions and facts are so clear that it must be manifest to any one who studies the question that those conditions are essentially local, and are essentially the result of circumstances that would be swept away if the tariff were swept away by legislation. If what the hon. member for Assiniboia says is correct, that affirmation of mine is not true, and if what the hon. member for

Edmonton says in support of the hon. member for Assiniboia is correct, it is not true. They say that the farmer in the West is crucified, because there is a combination of buyers and millers which crucifies him and holds the prices down, whereas the benevolent people to the south leave the prices at export level and pay actually what the wheat is worth. They say that there is a combination of millers and grain buyers united on one point, to grind down the poor farmer. The hon. member for Assiniboia says that our wheat is worth at home 7 or 8 cents less per bushel to the farmer than is the American wheat to the farmer of the. United States in his markets, but that our wheat brings at the Liverpool market 7 or 8 cents more per bushel than does the American wheat on the Liverpool market. If that is the case, my hon. friend has produced a good deal of evidence that there is a combination at the bottom of this trouble. If it is the case that there is a combination of millers and buyers who' pay less than the fair market price to the farmer, hon. gentlemen have produced an argument stronger than any I have ever read, in reams of Hansard. What is the fact? Who are the buyers in the western country? The buyers are the millers of the country, but far more so are they the grain dealers of the country, and the biggest grain dealer in the country is the Grain Growers' Grain Company which is a company formed into a corporate representative of the Grain Growers' Association, and which does their business for them. It is a company formed for commercial purposes, it is true, but the directors of that company would be the first to acknowledge that besides being a commercial organization they hold a trusteeship for their patrons in that country and for the farmers in that country generally. They were organized for the purpose, and they say so, of protecting the farmer against the extortions of the grain buyer. If what the hon. member for Edmonton says is correct, the Grain Growers' Grain Company is paying 7 and 8 cents per bushel less at home and getting 7 and 8 cents more at Liverpool than the farmer across the line. The Grain Growers' Grain Company are buyers and exporters both. The hon. member for Moosejaw (Mr. Knowles) contradicted me the other day on that point, and declared that the Grain Growers' Grain Company were not exporters, and he advised the Minister of Finance not to rely on anything I told him.
Imagine an hon. member coming to this Parliament, and not knowing that the biggest grain buying concern in his country is also perhaps the biggest exporter.


Mr. KNOWLES:: I did not say that; the Minister of Finance asked if it were true that the Grain Growers' Grain Company were exporters, and I said I knew they were not exporters, and I still think so, notwithstanding what the hon. gentleman says. '	.


Arthur Meighen: I wonder at the hon. gentleman. Does he still think the Grain Growers' Grain Company are not exporters?


William Erskine Knowles: Yes.


An hon. MEMBER:: What do they do with their wheat?


William Erskine Knowles: Sell it in Canada.


Arthur Meighen: I have the annual report of the company here. I am sorry it is getting near to six o'clock, otherwise I would read it in full. The annual report of the company shows that in order to conduct their export business they organized some years ago a company which is officered by themselves and the stock of which is owned by themselves, the Grain Growers' Export Company. It is run by themselves, and is reported in the annual statement of the Grain Growers' Grain Company.


William Erskine Knowles: It is a different company.


Arthur Meighen: It is a company owned by themselves, rand formed to carry out that branch of their work. They not only export Canadian grain, but American grain. Last year they exported many times more bushels of American grain than of Canadian grain, and their profits on their export business last year were over half a million dollars and they say that they pay for the grade.
Let me impress upon this House that the Grain Growers' Association, through the Grain Growers' Grain Company which they control, a company every dollar of whose stock is owned by farmers, a company I believe, well and ably managed, have the solution of the whole thing in their own hands. All they have to do is to pay the legitimate value of the wheat and if they do that, they will pay the. western farmer not what they are paying to-day, not what the American farmer is getting, but ten cents a bushel more than the American farmer is getting. What about the

Saskatchewan Elevator Company buying last year over 15 per cent of the whole of the grain of Saskatchewan besides what the Grain Growers' Grain Company bought? What about the Alberta commercial organization? All these organizations are buying and are they in league with the millers? Are we asked, as a Parliament, to protect the Grain Growers' Association against themselves? Are they that class of people? I think not. I have not a word to say against the Grain Growers' Grain Company. They are more frank in their statements than are hon. gentlemen opposite. They come out squarely in their annual statement and say: we can scarcely make a dollar buying wheat in this country; we can hardly make anything out of our elevators in Manitoba because the competition of the millers is so keen that we have to pay more than the grain is worth to get it. That is what they say in their own annual statement published last autumn. They say that: the millers, because they can get No. 2 which is almost as good as No. 1 for their purposes, can pay more than we can for No. 2, and they complain that the millers of the West, at points where they compete with the Grain Growers' Grain Company, raise the price of No. 3 and No. 4 Northern up as high as No. 1 Northern and take the business out of their hands. Is that in accord with what we hear in this House? I believe that company is well managed and I do not believe it is mulcting the farmers of the West. If I did believe that I could agree with the allegations of hon. gentlemen opposite, I would say that there would be a case for free wheat or for a remedy that would bring about the same result because this Parliafnent could never do its duty to the people of Canada and allow the western farmer to lose from 5 to 15 cents a bushel on his wheat.


William Erskine Knowles: Would the hon. gentleman. explain how the Grain Growers' Grain Company, which, I understand, has never exported- more than 20,000,000 bushels, could control the price on an export of
200,000,000 bushels?


Arthur Meighen: Not more than 20,000,000? What I have to complain about with regard to hon. gentlemen opposite is that their understanding is not up to date. If the hon. gentleman will get the report-


William Erskine Knowles: I take the president's statement.


Arthur Meighen: Last year they exported
38,000,000 and 39,000,000 bushels of American. wheat alone.


William Erskine Knowles: That has nothing to do with our problem.


Arthur Meighen: Mr. Speaker-


William Erskine Knowles: Will the hon. gentleman allow me to ask him another question?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order, order.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order.


William Erskine Knowles: The hon. gentleman can say whether he will allow me or not.


Arthur Meighen: Certainly.


William Erskine Knowles: What has the question whether they have exported American wheat or not to do with our problem?


Arthur Meighen: I will tell the hon. gentleman in a minute what it has to do with our problem. It shows that they could control it,, and were able to get a fair value for the farmer in connection with such export business. It shows that they are able to make even more money exporting American wheat than Canadian wheat because their margin of profit is less on Canadian wheat. The paid-up capital of this company last year was $867,000 and its profits were $226,963, or 27 per cent. I am not complaining of that profit because so far as I know it was legitimately made, and all I have to say to the Grain Growers' Association,	and	to the	Grain	Growers'
Grain Company is: go ahead, continue the good work as long as you can, because you have solved the problem of the western farmer.
They say that the millers are making colossal profits,	that we	would	get	our .flour cheaper if you would only open the doors and	let	down	the tariff	onflour. Let me deal with that just_ for a moment.	I took the	trouble	to	collect the quotations for flour at corresponding points in the United States and Canada. It would not be doing any injustice if I said that the quotations for the same brand of flour are practically the same, but the average for every month -and I did not take any hand-picked figures, but I took the figures from all over the country-was 10 to 15 cents 6 p.m. higher in the United States than in Canada, and it was about 16 cents higher in January, 1916, in the United States than in Canada. I have these

figures before me and I would rejoice if I had a few minutes to quote them.
Yet, hon. gentlemen opposite say:	Let
Mown the tariff and we will get our flour cheaper. We will not get it cheaper because the price is higher there than it is here. But in addition to that, the price at which the miller can sell his flour depends in the main upon the quantity of flour he can turn out. If you turn out a huge quantity, you will be able to turn it out at a lower price per unit, and if we so change our fiscal arrangements as to make it impossible for the Canadian miller to turn out the product that he is turning out to-day, you will see the price of flour go up in this country.
The late Government recognized that- fact. Why did the late Government, in arranging their reciprocity proposals, insist that 50 cents a barrel be retained on flour? Was there any reason in the world except this, that the miller could not stand it? I do not mean the big miller necessarily. We have 543 flour millers in this country, 303 flour millers in Ontario alone. The big millers are able to stand competition much better than the smaller ones, but is there a man who would feel that he would be doing his duty as a member of this House who would vote for legislation which would be unfair te 303 small millers in Ontario? They pay duty on almost every article they use, they are bound to pay according to the policy of this country, accepted on both sides, and while they are bound to do that, ^ire they entitled to some fair measure of protection or are they not? The hon. member for Edmonton (Mr. Oliver) says they are. He is on record in this House as saying that they are so entitled as a matter of justice. Let me quote what the hon. member for Edmonton says, as reported at page 916 of Hansard:
Then there is no reason why the Canadian milling industry should require an extraordinary measure of protection at the hands of this Government.
I agree with that statement.
It is entitled, no doubt, to whatever measure of protection would naturally fall to it under a revenue tariff: I would not suggest at all that it should not have the benefit of that measure of protection.
If they are entitled in justice to a measure of protection, then upon what principle of reasoning are you going to take it from them? Is it because they are in the minority, is it because they have not as many votes at their disposal as another class? Will the hon. member for Rouville
(Mr. Lemieux) subscribe to the doctrine that because you have fewer people on one side than on another, it is the duty of the Government to do an injustice to the minority? The hon. member for Edmonton says that in justice they are entitled to a measure of protection, but because the interests of the millers and the farmers are not the same you shall do what the farmers say and do an injustice to this other class.
I cannot subscribe to that doctrine. I do not believe that it would be fair or just to the small millers of this country to take the duty off flour entirely. I believe they are interested in this, I believe that the farmers are interested in it, I believe the people of every part of Canada are interested in it, and I believe that under the conditions that exist to-day, if we have free flour these millers, all those dependent on them, and all in a similar position, could come to this Government and say: In the course you have taken, in removing the tariff from everything we have to sell, letting down the walls entirely between this country and every country in the world, you are reversing the verdict of the people in 1911. While on that subject the hon. member for Assiniboia stated that he did not believe that Mr. Lanigan had made, the statement that he directed to me, denying his alleged interview to the effect that the Canadian Pacific Railway, or transportation interests in general would not suffer by the removal of the duty on wheat and [DOT] flour. I had seen a quotation, said to be of some statement Mr. Lanigan had made in the Manitoba Free Press, and I thought that if that was the view of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company the people of this country were entitled to know it. I wrote and asked Mr. Lanigan if he had ever made a statement of that kind, and I have a reply here from him to the effect that he never made any such statement; that on the contrary the arguments that had been advanced in the Free Press by a Mr. McLeod of Brandon were falsely founded, and that in his view the Canadian people had decided the question of free wheat in 1911, and that the decision as given by them should stand. That is the position taken by him. I do not know that the transportation interests are to be impugned in this House because they have a view as to what is best for themselves. I am one of those who feel that the attitude Parliament should assume should be one dictated by national considerations, and by national considerations alone, and that



that parliament or that government is derelict to its duty which eliminates from those considerations any interests, however large or small, or that denies to any single one of those interests its proper say in the government and tariff arrangements of this country. That government does its duty which considers all, because when you injure one you injure another, and you injure all. Let me leave to the House this one consideration. All the avenues of industry and of activity in this country are open to every class of our community. We have no caste system in Canada; that is one of the ripe fruits of democracy that we enjoy and always will enjoy. There is no avenue to trade, or manufacture, or industry of any kind access to which is denied to the farmer, or to any others of our citizens. I am glad to see the movement of organized farmers in the West; I am glad to see the .Grain Growers' Grain company 'become wealthy and prosper; I am gladj to see it under able management, and I say to it, go on, invade all the fields that are open to you to invade: invade, first, those that are nearest to the field you occupy to-day; invade the milling industry of this country if you wish. That company is already dealing in merchanise to the extent of over $1,000,000 a year, over and above its grain trade entirely. I would, say to that company: proceed further; you are big, and strong, and wealthy; go into the milling business; there is one industry in which the West can compete with the East under almost equal conditions; go into the milling industry; invade the field that is now monopolized, according to hon. gentlemen opposite, by the millers; you are able to do it; you have able men at your command; you have developed, these men of recent years; go into that industry, and when you feel that that industry can ge't along with less duty than it has come to Parliament and you will then, indeed, have established a practical argument in favour of removing the duty. There is no caste system in this country; let this company, which is now in the grain trade, go into the milling industry. What do you think, Mr. Speaker, of one of their directors who uses the following language in the press with regard to the grain dealers of Canada:
There Is no good reason why the rest of Canada should suffer, so that the large mills and large dealers should enjoy a special privilege at the expense of the rest of the people.
Can the House believe me when I say ' that these words were uttered by a director
'Mr. Meighen.]
of the Grain Growers Grain Company, the biggest dealer in western wheat that
there is?
That is the attitude of hon. gentlemen opposite. They are in a position to control the grievance they complain of if there is a grievance at all-and because they do not care to control- it they come to Parliament and say: arrange your tariff so that the Grain Growers' Grain Company, which is a product of the Grain Growers' Association, shall not be able to defeat the object for which it exists. The Grain Growers' Guide, quoted by hon. gentlemen opposite, is a branch industry also of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, for I find that in their annual report, in detailing the success of the various enterprises they control, they deliver the result in connection with the Grain Growers' Guide. We have, then, the organ of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, or rather the paper that derives its financial sustenance at all events from that company, calling week in and week out to the Parliament of Canada to protect the farmers against the control- ' ling company which controls themselves. That is a situation which ought to be known to House. If they have a grievance it is in their power to remedy it, and if they do not remedy it they cannot ask us to remedy,' at the expense" of somebody else, that which they have in their power to remedy without expense to anybody at all.
We are told that speculative conditions raise the prices on the American market above the Canadian, level. That is true; but the reverse is also true. Speculative conditions .sometimes raise the Canadian prices above the American prices. The hon. member for Assiniboia tells us that the United States needs our hard wheat; he says they need one bushel of our hard wheat in five-those were his own figures in Hansard-in order to make the highest grade of flour, and he leads the House to believe that they cannot get the wheat at their own doors. Is he aware that the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota produced, in 1912, over 200,000,000 bushels of hard wheat-
260,000,000, I think, was the amount-is he aware that last year something over 156,000,000 bushels of hard wheat was produced right around Minneapolis; that the hard wheat produced right around Minneapolis far exceeds the soft wheat production; that the hard wheat production in the United States is over one-half the soft wheat production, and that of all the wheat available

for the Minneapolis mills by far the greater proportion is hard wheat. So far from having difficulty in getting one bushel in five, they can get three bushels in five right at their own doors. Consequently, speculative conditions, and speculative conditions only, dictate in the main the levels of these markets. Just as soon as you sweep the tariff away you kick the prop from under the premium that is paid in Minneapolis, and you do away with the conditions that put their prices above others; you eliminate everything that kept up their prices, and consequently their prices would fall. The hon. member knows that in September last, when rumours were sent out from Ottawa and circulated in the West that serious consideration was being given at Ottawa to the removal of the duty on wheat, down went the price at Minneapolis, and the gap of six or seven cents that existed before closed up. That is an illustration of what might logically be expected to occur; that is what actually did occur.
I have exceeded the hour for adjournment; I did not purpose to do so. I should like to pursue the subject further, but I am going to acquiesce in the decision of both sides of the House that the debate be closed now.
House divided on the motion of Mr. Turriff.
TEAS: Messieurs:
Boivin,
Bourassa,
Buchanan,
Bureau,
Cardin,
Carroll,
Cash,
Charlton,
Clark (Red Deer), Copp,
Cruise,
Delisle,
Demers,
Devlin,
Fortier,
Gauvreau,
Graham,
Guthrie,
Hughes
(Kings, P.E.I.), Knowles,
Kyte,
Lachance,
Lanctot,
Lapointe	-
(Kamouraska), Laurier (Sir Wilfrid), Loggie,
Maclean (York, O.), MacNutt,
McCoig,
McCraney,
McKenzie,
Marcil (Bonaventure), Marcilo (Bagot), Michaud,
Murphy,
Pacaud,
Papineau,
Proulx,
Seguin,
Sinclair,
Thomson (Qu'Appelle ), Turgeon,
Turriff,
Verville.-44.
NAYS :
Messieurs:
Armstrong (Lambton), MacdoneP, Armstrong (York, O.), McLean Ball,	(Queens, P.E.I.),
68*
Barnard,	Marshall,
Barrette,	Meighen,
Bellemare,	Merner, '
Bennett (Simcoe ),	Middlebro,
Blondin,	Morphy,
Borden (Sir Robert)	Morris,
Boulay,	Morrison,
Bowman,	Nicholson,
Boys,	Paquet,
Brabazon,	Patenaude,
Bradbury,	Paul,
Burnham,	Porter,
Carrick,	Rainville,
Chabot,	Reid,
Clark (Bruce),	Robidoux,
Clarke (Wellington),	Roche,
Clements,	Rogers,
Cockshutt,	Schaffner,
Cromwell,	Scott,
Crothers,	Sexsmith,
Currie,	Shepherd,
Doherty,	Steele,
Elliot,	Stevens,
Fisher,	Stewart (Hamilton),
Foster (Sir George)	Stewart (Lunenburg),
Fripp,	Sutherland,
Gauthier (Gaspe),	Taylor,
Girard,	Thompson (Yukon),
Glass,	Thornton,
Gray,	Walker,
Hanna,	Webster,
Hartt,	Weiehel,
Henderson,	White (Sir Thomas),
Hepburn,	White (Renfrew),
.L'Eteperance,	Wilcox,
Lewis,	Wright.-77.
PAIRS:	
Ministerial.	Opposition.
Alguire,	McMillan,
Ames (Sir Herbert),	Brouillard,
Arthurs,	Truax,
Baker,	Kay,
Best,	Oliver,
Boyce,	German,
Bristol,	Bickerdike,
Burrell,	Douglas,
Casgrain,	Lemieux,
Davidson,	Chisholm (Antigonish),
Fowler,	M'cLean (Sunbury & Queens),
Green,	White (Victoria, Alta),
Gui'bault,	Beland,
Hazen,	Pugsley,
Jameson,	Power,
Kemp,	Robb,
Bavallee,	Lovell,
McLeod,	Carvell,
Munson,	Boyer,
McCurdy,	McLean (Halifax),
Nickle,	Martin (Regina),
Sharpe,	Ross,
Stanfield,	Pardee,
Smyth,	Tobin,
Tremain,	Chisholm (Antigonis' )
Wilson (Wentworth),	Wilson (Laval),
Wallace.	Nesbitt.


William Pugsley: I	was paired with the
hon. Minister of Marine and Fisheries. Had	
I voted 1 would have voted for the motion.


Mr. NESBITT:: I	was paired with the
hon. member for Centre York. Had I	
voted I would have	voted for the motion.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I was paired with the hon. member far Quebec County. Had I voted I would have voted for the motion.


Mr CARVELL:: I was paired with the hon. member for York, N.B. Had I voted I would have voted for the motion.


Mr. SMYTH:: I was paired with the hon. 'member for Richmond and Wolfe. Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. GREEN:: I was paired with the hon. member for Victoria, Alberta. Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. DAVIDSON:: I was paired with the hon. member for Antigonish. Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. NICKLE:: I was paired with the hon. member for Regina. Had I voted 1 would have voted against the motion.
Motion negatived.
At six o'clock the House adjourned, without motion put, pursuant to rule.
Thursday, February 24, 1916.