1916-03-15

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 57, for the relief of Nora Louise Jackson.-Mr. Douglas.

[Stage Direction]
[Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.]
COAL FROM HALIFAX TtO HUDSON BAY.

Mr. W. M. MARTIN:: 1.	Has the Government made any attempt to locate one D. D. Bennett, of Regina, who was said to have been' implicated in the hay and oats scandals in that city, and who, as alleged, left the city before the trial of one Mitchell on a charge of forgery, in connection with the purchase of hay and oats by the Militia Department?
2.	If so, what success has attended the efforts of the Government?
3.	Does the Government intend to prosecute the said D. D. Bennett?
4.	Will the Government receive information, if offered, as to the whereabouts of the said Bennett?


Mr. DOHERTY:: 1.	Yes. .
2.	The agent of the Department of Justice at Regina states that Bennett was taken into custody by the American authorities for the purpose of being deported to Canada as an undesirable and that he was to be handed, over at Pembina on the 4th March instant. His deportation has, however, been deferred by reason of habeas corpus .proceedings which will come on for hearing on the 15th March instant.
3.	The agent of the Department of Justice at Regina has been instructed to institute prosecution proceedings against Bennett as soon as he is deported back to Canada, or, failing deportation, to take extradition proceedings.
4.	Answered by No. 2.


MR. AUREBE GELY.
Mr. BOURASSA:: 1.	Is Mr. Aur&le Gely of LSvis, employed by the Government in the Excise office at Lfivis?
2.	If so, (a) since when, (b) on whose recommendation, and (c) what is his salary?
3.	Is the Government aware that the same AurSle Gely, while an employee in the excise office at L6vis, is said to have held the position of traveller for the Chinic Company, of Quebec?


Mr. PATENAUDE:: 1.	Yes.
2.	(a) Uth Sept., 1913; (b) nothing on record; (c) $1,000 per annum.
3.	No.


GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS.
Mr. MARCIL:: i
1.	Is there a rule in the Department of Inland Revenue preventing an inspector of Weights and Measures from taking part in municipal elections as a candidate, or acting as a councillor or mayor?


Mr. PATENAUDE:: There is no rule, but the practice is not encouraged.


OTTAWA MILITARY CAMP DOCTORS.
Mr. ALFRED THOMPSON:: 1.	Who are the medical doctors who have been in charge of the military camp at Ottawa since the commencement of the present war?
2.	How many men are there in that camp?
3.	How many deaths of enlisted men have occurred in that camp?


Mr. KEMP:: 1.	Records show the following medical officers have 'been employed in Ottawa with units as shown against their names, since August, 1914:
Capt. L. C. E. Bernard, 2nd Div. Engineers, C.E.F., from Nov. 14, 1914, to Jan. 13, 1915.
Lt.-Col. T. W. H. Young, 2nd Div. Engineers, C.E.F.', from Jan. 14, 1915, now overseas.
Major F. W. McKinnon, Engineers Training Depot, C.E.F., from June 28, 1915, still on duty in Ottawa.
Lt.-Col. J. W. Shillington, Engineers Training Depot, C.E.F., from Feb. 22, 1916, still on duty in Ottawa.
Capt. J. H. Munro, 38th Overseas Battalion, C.E.F., Jan., 1915, now in Bermuda.
Capt. A. R. Farrell, 7th Bgde., C.F.A., C.E.F., from March, 1915, now overseas.
Capt. J. H. Jones, 8th C.M.R., C.E.F., from Sept., 1915, now overseas.
Capt. J. H. Laidlaw, 77th Overseas Battalion, C.E.F., from Aug. 18, 1915, to Aug. 31, 1915.
Capt. N. M. Halkett, 77th Overseas Battalion, C.E.F., from' Sept., 1915, still on duty in Ottawa.
And in the base hospitals caring for these troops, the following medical officers have been employed:
St. Lukes-Major G. S. MacCarthy, Major F. W. McKinnon, Capt. A. F. McLaren.
Protestant General-Lt.-Colonel D. A. Whitton, Major A. F. Argue.
Water Street-Major J. L. Chabot, Major R. Law, Lieut. R. H. Ells.
2.	2,019 ull ranks as on the 1st March, 1916.
3.	Of the men treated in hospitals, the hospital records show three have died.


STONE FOR SOULANGES CANAL. .
*Mr. BOYER:: 1.	What was the amount of the tender submitted bv Messrs, J. A. Major, of Montreal, and Philias Dore, of Valleyfleld, for the supply of stone for the construction of the pier on the Soulanges canal?
2.	Were the tenders called publicly?
3.	If so, in what newspapers?
4.	What are the daily salaries of the officers and crew of the tug Carillon, of Napoleon Ber-

trand, Napoleon Molleur, Alex. Menard, Joseph Beriault and of Rosanna Bertrand?
5.	What salaries were received during the past season by AdSlard Royal, Edmond Royal, Benjamin Gauthier, Avila Gauthier, Joseph La-londe, Daniel Lalonde, Valmose Filiatrault, Wil-brod Legros, Jos. Lefebvre, Isidore Lecompte, Honors Miron, Xavier Dubois, ArsSne Beriault, Louis Gagnon and Isale Leroux?
6.	What was the character of the work given them to do?
7.	Under whose superintendence was such work done ?
8.	From what date to what date did the carrying of the stone last?
9.	What quantity in tons of stone did a scow contain?
10.	How many scows were used in the transportation of the stone?
11.	How many scows did the tug Carillon tow at each trip?


Mr. REID:: '
1.	Under date February 3,	1915, the
superintending engineer of the Quebec canals forwarded tenders for the stone to be furnished at the head of the Soulanges canal from J. A. Major & Co., of Montreal, Quebec, at $1.60 per cubic yard, and Phileas Dore, of Valleyfleld, Quebec, at $1.90 per cubic yard. Owing to these prices being high, and there being some difference as to the basis of the tenders so that a proper comparison was difficult, neither tender was accepted. Under date the 23rd of July, the department asked for tenders by circular letter from J. A. Major & Co., Montreal, Quebec, and Phileas Dore, Valley-field, Quebec, specifications being prepared calling for tenders on a per ton basis. The only tender received was that of Phileas Dore, Valleyfleld, Quebec, at $1.20 per ton of 2,000 lb., delivered on Government scows at point directed by the contractor, according to specification. This tender was recommended by the Chief Engineer of the department, and accordingly was accepted. It now appears that the letter addressed to J. A. Major & Co., of Montreal, Quebec, asking them to tender, was later returned to the department, marked "Opened by mistake, A. J. Major," after the tenders had been dealt with.
2.	Tenders were invited by departmental circular letter.
3.	Answered by No. 2.
4.	The salaries of the officers and the
crew of the tug Carillon are:	Napoleon
Bertrand, $85 per month; Nap. Molleur, $85; Joseph Molleur, $60; Alex. Menard, $50; Joseph Beriault, $50; Rosanna Bertrand, $40.	.
5.	Salaries received during the past season as follows: Adelard Royal, $232.75; Edmond Royal, $84.20; Benjamin Gauthier, $105.80; Avila Gauthier, $101; Joseph

Lalonde, $128; Daniel Lalonde, $77; Wil-brod Legros, $98; Jos. Lefebre, $140.20; Isidore Lecompte, $27.80; Honore Miron, $12; Xavier Dubois, $1; Arsene Beriault, $42.20; Louis Gagnon, $4; Isai'e Leroux, $41.80; Valmose Filiatrault, $141.
6.	Levelling top of bank, forming slope, unloading scows and placing stone on slope.
7.	L. S. Pariseau, C.E., and J. T. Lemaire, C.E.
8.	From the 25th August to 25th November, inclusive.
9.	Average 113 tons.
10.	Three.
11.	One, except one trip with two scows.


SOULANGES CANAL DREDGING.
Mr. PAPINEAU:: 1.	What quantities of material did the Dredge No. 2 raise during the summer or 1915, for the enlargement and deepening of the channel at the entrance to the Soulanges canal?
2.	Who were the officers and men of the crew, what were their respective daily salaries and from what date to what date did the said dredge work at that place?
3.	Did Dredge No. 2 do any other work at any other place on the canal?
4.	If so, where, and what quantities of material was raised, and the number of days occupied?
5.	Did the Government pay the board of the men on such dredge?
6.	If so, how was such board procured, and how much per day for each man did it cost?


Mr. REID:: 1.	25,190 cubic yards, scow measurement.
2.	William O'Brien, superintendent, $150 per month; Alf. Leger, engineer, $90 per month; Alph. Paradis, craneman, $90 per month; H. Voisard,, assistant craneman, $55 per month; R. Danis, fireman, $60 per month; R. Belanger, deckhand, |$50 per month; Ed. Montpetit, deckhand, $50 per month; Victoria Seguin, cook, $40 per month; J. B. Deschamps, night watchman, $2 per day. Dredge No. 2 worked at channel upper entrance from May 1 to November 19, except from the 9th to the 13th of June, when she was working at Valley-field.
3.	Not in the canal, but at Valleyfield preparing foundation for protection to dam.
4.	Quantity of material raised at Valley-field, 4,130 cubic yards, scow measurement; number of days occupied, 19.
5.	No. None of our crews are boarded by the department.
6.	Answered by No. 5.


FOX RIVER BREAKWATER.
[Stage Direction]
* Mr. LEMIEUX:
1.	What sums of money were spent by the Public Works Department on the Fox River breakwater, county of Gasp4, since the 1st January, 1912?
2.	Who has been appointed superintendent of the works ?
3.	How much has been paid up to date to said superintendent?
Mr. ROGERS:: 1.	$10,525.55.
2 and 3. Alexis- Dufresne, as foreman, $723.25; Ernest Lapage, as foreman, $171.


PICKLED FISH.
Mr. SINCLAIR:: *
1. How many barrels of pickled fish have been inspected and branded by the Government inspectors during the year 1915?
2.	In what localities, and what number of barrels were inspected in each place named'


Mr. HAZEN:: 1.	1,328 barrels inspected, 1,211 branded.
2.	St. John, N.B., district, 899 inspected and branded; Miramichi and Caraquet districts, 319 inspected, 302 branded; Halifax district, 10 inspected and branded; Prince Edward Island district, 100 inspected, none branded.


ENLISTMENT OF POST OFFICE EMPLOYEES.
Mr. BEST:: How many Government post office employees from each city in the Dominion have enlisted for overseas service since the war started?


Mr. CASGRAIN:: Charlottetown, 4; Halifax, 14; Sydney, 3; Amherst, 2; Truro, 1; Moncton, 3; St. John, 19; Fredericton, 1; Quebec, 5; Sherbrooke, 5; Montreal, 43; Ottawa, 53; Cornwall, 1; Brockville, 2; Kingston, 3; Belleville, 2; Peterborough, 7; Lindsay, 1; Toronto, 164; Galt, 3; Guelph, 5; St. Catharines, 2; Hamilton, 16; Brantford, 7; Woodstock, 1; Berlin, 1; London, 21; St. Thomas, 2; Chatham, 6; Windsor, 2; Niagara Falls, 1; North Bay, 1; Port Arthur, 5; Fort William, 8; Winnipeg, 126; Portage la Prairie, 2; Brandon, 10; Regina, 35; Moosejaw, 36; Saskatoon, 32; P-ince Albert, 10; Medicine Hat, 6; Edmonton, 40; Strathcona, 3; Calgary, 76; Lethbridge, 14; New Westminster, 6; Vancouver, 74; Victoria, 26; Nanaimo, 2; Prince Rupert, 2.


WAR SUPPLIES-BAYONETS.
Mr. OARVELL:: How many bayonets, with the bulge removed, as described by the Minister of Militia on page 1413 of Hansard of this present session, have been manufactured and delivered to the Canadian Army?


Mr. KEMP:: It is impossible to give the correct numbers, but it is understood that these changes were made in England, as far as the bayonets which have been sent overseas are concerned. As regards those now being manufactured, negotiations are under way to have the alterations made in Canada.


SHELBURNE CUSTOMS DUTIES.
Mr. KYTE:: What was the amount of customs duties paid at the port of Shelburne, N.S., for the month of December, 1915, respectively, on imports from the United States of America, and on imports from other countries?


John Dowsley Reid: United States of America, $3,478.07; other countries, nil.


UNOPPOSED MOTIONS FOR PAPERS.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. McKenzie.-For a return showing the names of those who have been furnishing food, clothing and other necessary supplies to the soldiers at North Sydney and Sydney Mines, since 4th August, 1914, to 1st February, 1916 ; the names and amounts paid to each, and amounts due to each on 1st February, 1916, over and above what has ah eady been paid; whether the said supplies of all kinds were obtained or colled for by public tender, and if so. how the tenders were called, and who were the tenderers; whether the contract for such supplies was always given to the lowest tenderer; the names of those who tendered and the figures of the tenders in each case; and the different methods by which tenders were invited, and for what classes of merchandise or supplies.
Mr. McKenzie-For a copy of all letters, telegrams and petitions in the possession or under the control of the Post Office Department having reference to the dismissal of Postmaster MoRitchie at North . River Centre, Victoria county, Nova Scotia, and to the appointment of Neil McLeod in his place.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier.-For a copy of all correspondence between the Government and the provinces, regarding increased co-operation in the promotion of immigration and land settlement, commencing with a letter of the Minister of the Interior to the provincial Prime Ministers, in November, 1911.

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: I wish to cal) the attention of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries to the fact that merchants in Quebec doing business with the West Indies have written to me that they cannot get space for molasses and products of that kind on board the subsidized steamers plying between the West Indies and St. John. Their correspondents in the West Indies

tell them that these steamers refuse to take syrups, the whole of the space being taken up by sugar, which, they say, is more paying freight. These merchants say that for some months past they have not been able to obtain any molasses. In view of the fact that these steamers are subsidized by the Government, this matter ought to be inquired into. I would ask the good offices of the Minister of Marine, or of the Minister of Trade and Commerce if he were here, to look into the matter and tell me what answer I may give to my correspondent in Quebec.


Mr. HAZEN:: I shall be very glad to do so, although the matter is one that comes more within the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce which controls questions of subsidies to .steamboats. I understand that these West Indian steamers during the present winter have been carrying very large cargoes. Although they are much larger boats than were on the route a few years ago, the development of business this winter has been so great that they have been unable to carry all the cargo offered. I presume it is necessary for them to bring the sugar to Canada for the purpose of affording work to the employees of the sugar refineries. I understand from the Minister of Railways that an attempt is now being made to relieve the situation, and it is probable that a boat belonging to the Railway Department, the Durley Chine, may be sent to the West Indies to help relieve the congestion. I shall be glad to make inquiry and to communicate such information as I may obtain to my right hon. friend.


INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY-ALLEGED EXPROPRIATION OF COAL.
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
John Dowsley Reid: I wish to refer to a statement
made by the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) on the 10th instant, when I was absent from the House. He said:
Coal consigned by the coal companies to industries some of them engaged in the manufacture of munitions, has been expropriated by the Intercolonial railway, and the information I have by telegram is that the taking of this coal is resulting in the stoppage of these industries.
When my attention was called to this, I
telegraphed the manager at Moncton, and received a reply stating that the hon. mem-

ber's information was wrong, and that no coal had been expropriated by the Intercolonial.


PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Right Hon.   S@: I rise in order to make a personal explanation. In the course of the debate the other evening, I used this language :
And when he suggests there was an alternative proposition from the other side of the House in amendment to the Government measure, he conveniently forgets that the amendment proposed to postpone any action whatever until after a general election should he held in Canada.
Mr. Pugsley: I do not think I proposed that, nor that any one else proposed it.
Sir Robert Borden : Does not the hon. member remember the terms of the amendment?
Mr. Pugsley:	I do not think that was in It.
Sir Robert Borden : He may not think so, but that does not alter the fact that it was in it. His memory is not so good on this as on some other points. I have a distinct recollection that the proposals offered by hon. gentlemen opposite involved the postponement of action until after the general election.
My bon. friend from Pietou (Mr. E. M. Macdonald), at a later stage in the debate, expressed surprise that I should have made th'e statement to which I have alluded; and he read the amendment which was offered by my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) on the 12th day of December. I should like to say, in explanation and support of my assertion, that on the I3th of February, 1913, as reported at page 3103 of Hansard, the hon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville) moved a sub-amendment in these words:
That the following words be added at the end thereof:	" and the consent of Parliament
should not he given to this resolution until it
has been submitted to and received the approval of the electors."
That amendment was undoubtedly accepted by my hon. friends on the other side of the House because when it was voted upon on the 13th of February, as is recorded at page 3239 of Hansard, the right hon. leader of the Opposition and all his supporters either voted for or were paired in favour of that sub-amendment. Then, at a later date, on the 18th day of February, as reported at page 3482 of Hansard, 1913, the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff), upon the second reading of the Bill, moved the following amendment:
That the said Bill be not now read a second time, but that it be resolved:
That it is the constitutional duty of the Government, under the terms of the British North America Act, Immediately to introduce a measure for the readjustment of the representation of the provinces in the House of Commons, according to the population of the said provinces as established by the census of 1911, and that this House do not proceed further with the Bill until such readjustment has taken place, .and the people have been duly consulted on the said Bill.
The leader of the Opposition and his followers voted also for that amendment. To give a perfectly correct statement of the record, I should, in fairness, say that my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition and those who supported him voted al^o for the resolution proposed by my hon. friend on the 12th day of December, although they had previously voted for the amendment of the hon. member for Assiniboia. It is an absolute fact that they voted for the sub-amendment and for the amendment on the same day, the one proposing to postpone any action until after the people had been consulted and the other proposing immediate action. Hon. gentlemen on the other side supported by their votes both these propositions. And then, further, I find also that when the Bill reached the Senate, Sir George Ross, the Liberal leader in the Senate, moved the following amendment, which was carried by a vote of 51 to 27:
This Hous? is not justified in giving its assent to this Bill until it is submitted to the judgment of the people.


Wilfrid Laurier: That was not an alternative policy, but, having failed in one thing, try something else.


Sir ROBERT BORDEN :: The policy of my right hon. friend succeeded very well, because his amendment carried in the Senate and the Bill was defeated on that ground. I am giving it as an illustration of the proposals to which I alluded in my reply to the hon. member for St. John.


VICKERS-MAXIM WORKS, MONTREAL-LABOUR TROUBLES.
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. VERVILLE:: I wish to call the attention of the Government to the fact that there will ;be a great meeting of protest on Friday next respecting the strike at the Vickers-Maxim Works in Montreal; and if the Government does not do something I would not be surprised if there were a general strike there.


Wilfrid Laurier: Is there no reply to my hon. friend?


Robert Laird Borden: The Minister of Labour informs me that he has given a great deal of attention to an endeavour to bring matters to a more favourable situation in respect of the labour conditions in Montreal. He informs me that a meeting was held on Monday last between some members of the 'Government, the mayor of the city, and some of the labour representatives. It was believed at that time that the differences which existed were in a fair way of being settled. The Government will, of course, give its attention to the suggestion which my hon. friend has put before us, and to the view which he has expressed as to the danger of the strike extending, if these differences are not removed.


Mr. DOHERTY:: I had the pleasure of
being present at the meeting to which the Prime Minister has referred. At that meeting the workmen were represented, and likewise the employers. There were present His Worship the Mayor of Montreal, the hon. Minister of Inland Revenue, and myself. Different suggestions were made, and
when we parted I was under the impression that there was every reason To believe that an understanding would be come to. A few moments before the hon. member (Mr. Ver-ville) rose to ask his question, I was shown a telegram very much to the effect which he stated. I have been in communication with some of the gentlemen connected with the Vickers establishment, trying to impress upon them the suggestions made at our meeting, and I had in mind to suggest to the Minister of Labour that he call their attention to what has been said, with the view of doing anything it may be possible to do to meet the situation.


CUSTOMS TAXATION.
[Stage Direction]
On motion of Sir Thomas White (Minister of Finance) the House went into Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Rhodes in the Chair.
1. Resolved, that it is expedient to amend Schedule A to the Customs Tariff, 1907, and to strike thereout tariff items 92 and 267, the several enumerations of goods respectively, and the several rates of duties of customs, if any, set opposite each of the said items, and to provide that the following items, enumerations and rates of duties be inserted in said Schedule A:
Tariff Items.	-	British Preferential Tariff.	Intermediate Tariff.	General Tariff.60 cents.	90 cents.	90 cents.2B7	Oils, petroleum (not including crude petroleum imported to be refined or illuminating or lubricating oils), '8235 specific gravity or heavier at 60 degrees temperature, per	J cent.	h cent.	^ cent.267a	Crude petroleum in its natural state, ' 7900 specific gravity or heavier at 60 degrees temperature, when imported by oil refiners to be refined in their own factories	5 p. c.	74 P- c.	. 74 p. C.
Provided, however, that the goods hereinbefore enumerated shall he exempt from the rates of duties of customs specified in section 3 of the Customs Tariff War Revenue Act, 1915.
Wilfrid Laurier: Are you taking up the amended resolutions?


Sir THOMAS WHITE:: No, I propose that we take up the resolutions relating to the tariff, namely the duty upon apples and upon fuel oil. Tariff item 92, which it is proposed to strike out, provides a tariff of 25 cents, British preferential tariff; 35 cents intermediate tariff, and 40 cents general tariff per barrel of apples. There has also been a special customs tariff under the War Revenue Act of 1915 which amounts to 5 
per cent British preferential; and 74 per cent each in the intermediate and general tariff; that is an ad valorem duty. The new rate is 60 cents per barrel, British preferential, and 90 cents in the intermediate and general tariffs.


Mr. MICHAEL CLARK:: Before this duty passes, I would like to say a word or two. I have not troubled my hon. friend (Sir Thomas White) much this year. An unrepentant free trader could not pretend to be altogether dissatisfied with a Budget in regard to which the Minister of Finance and the financial critic of the Opposition are contending with one another as to the best form of direct taxation to impose. That is

a condition of affairs which is eminently satisfactory to one who has been preaching that doctrine in this House for many years. But I do not know why the Minister of Finance, when he was making so courageous and so noble a departure, from my point of view, should not have made it whole-heartedly. Nobody knows better than he that he should not have introduced this duty on apples. He told us last year that the customs tariff was the mainstay of the Finance Minister in the course of twelve months he has managed either to lose or to break his mainstay pretty badly. I wish he had thrown the old thing away altogether, and not bothered the people of the prairie with this trifling miserable little duty on apples. I do not know why he did it; perhaps he will favour me personally with the information. It is a very miserable' little duty, Mr. Chairman, in a Budget that has many good points about it, and it is such a splendid concrete example of the general evils of protection that I feel I am entitled to take up the time of the committee for a minute or two about it.
Speaking on another subject the other day, the Minister of Finance said he was inclined to look at free wheat from the national standpoint. That was a very good sentiment coming from the Minister of Finance of a party who on tariff matters profess always to hold a policy which they call national. How can he defend this tariff on apples from the point of view of a national policy? He did not attempt to do so. The Minister, in his Budget statement, said this is done specifically to help a given industry in a certain province, so that, so far from having anything national about it, it bears the earmark of class, provincialism, or any other word that constitutes narrowness and opposition to what is. in the national interest. It sets the province of British Columbia, if my hon. friend likes to look at it in that way, against the Prairie Provinces; and coming from the Prairie Provinces I should not be true to the best interests of the nation, which are represented very largely in those provinces, if I did not make an emphatic protest to my hon. friend. Why should he put another burden on the Prairie Provinces this year? What have they done? I know that two of the provinces are very Liberal in their complexion, but surely that would never actuate my hon. friend. I know something else about all the Prairie Provinces; 1 know that the people inhabit a part of Canada which perhaps needs fruit more
than any other part of the Dominion. They suffer from the cold climate' of Canada's winter in such a way that fruit is an absolute necessity of their existence, and very essential to theiT health and to their prosperity. Does my hon. friend say he is helping the nation in hurting the health of the sturdy farmers who have given you a crop this year upon which the prosperity of the whole nation depends? I am very much in earnest about this thing, and I hope my hon. friend will listen to me, because I think that before I have finished I shall have pretty nearly moved his distaff or mainstay or whatever he calls it. My hon. friend is a good-hearted man; I know that. He cannot have any internal spite against the people of the prairies. But does he ever think seriatim of the things he has done and is doing to those people? He took an hour and forty minutes to speak against their being allowed to sell their wheat where they want to sell it; and last year he put on a tariff that fell very largely upon those people. Now he comes along, and, after doing his best to prevent them from making money by selling their wheat, he tries to take a portion of the little money they do get for the apple growers of British Columbia. Is it fair or decent to the people of those provinces? I recall to my hon. friend's attention a statement in which we have the true national outlook of a man of vast financial responsibility, who understands this country very well, and who represents West Toronto. At the beginning of last year he said: " Everything in Canada this year depends upon this year's crop." Yet, when Canada depends so much upon those men on the prairies, why should these successive burdens be placed upon them? Pharoah was not in it for a cruel heart with my hon. friend. He set the Israelites to make bricks without straw, but my hon. friend wants the prairie farmers to pay high rates for their apples without selling their wheat. He is a modern Pharoah, and I am ashamed of him, much as I think of him in a great many ways, as I may tell him before I sit down. There is no end to the injustice he is going to mete out to the people of the prairies if I do not get him checked in some way or another. It is a positive sin against the health of the people, and nobody can say that a sin against the health of the people is a very good feature of a national policy. There is nothing national about it; it is very local indeed. It is much more local even than setting up British Columbia against the prairie provinces. It is much worse than
] 766

that because the great majority of the people of British Columbia are not apple producers; they are apple consumers. 'The people of Vancouver do not grow any apples, not at all events on the streets that I saw when I was there. You have 100,000 people in Vancouver who are consumers of apples, so that my hon. friend, in pursuance of this broad national policy that he has produced, is not only setting a portion of British Columbia against the Prairie Provinces, but he is putting a very small portion of British Columbia against the rest of the province. I would like my hon. friend either to give up this or give up professing that he is following the National Policy in tariff changes. The people of Vancouver and Victoria are just as important as the people who produce apples. In regard to the prairies, we find our market for beef to some extent in British 'Columbia, but we in Alberta do not ask my hon. friend to protect us in the raising of beef. We should be ashamed to do it. I do not care where you bring beef from to compete with the steers that we are raising in Alberta, they would never be looked at, they would never get across the line. But why should my hon. friend penalize the men who are raising beef in Alberta? Our beef speaks for itself; why does he not make his apple producing friends produce fruit that would speak for itself?
I have no objection to the men who raise apples, but I have an objection to their economic policy, and I want to point out to my hon. friend that in helping this industry he is following a very false line of economic policy. Does he not know-I am sure lie does, because his knowledge is encyclopaedic that these gentlemen whom he now seeks to protect paid far too much for their land in British 'Columbia? He is going to help out these people with their dear lands. A great many of them are not apple growers at all; lam sorry to say it, but in British 'Columbia there are a great many of my own fellow countrymen, and there is nobody so keen to take advantage of another Englishman as an Englishman who has been in the country for two or three years and who is holding land until he can get some other Englishman to come out and give him more than he paid for it himself. I would be sorry to say that about the apple growers of British Columbia as a whole. All I want them to do is to raise apples on the same principle that we raise beef in Alberta,and that the grain farmers raise wheat in the other provinces.

I remember that the Minister of Trade and Commerce last year, when tariff taxes were being objected to as bearing too heavily upon the farmers of the West, said that he felt quite sure that the farmers of the West would bear , their proper share of the war expenses. I wonder if I could not place similar confidence in thh raisers of apples, because there are two sides to the loyalty business. The Minister of Trade and Commerce was appealing to the farmers of the plains very broadly, and indirectly, and he was putting it in a very complimentary fashion when he sai : I am quite sure that the farmers are such good, patriots that they will stand by these impositions for the sake of the Empire and pay them gladly. But that has two sides to it. Some people's loyalty consists in asking the other fellow to pay, and that is the kind of loyalty I do not believe very much in. I do not think there is much loyalty on the part of those men who raise apples and, who say to me that I have to be loyal enough to pay them more for their apples in time of war than I pay in time of peace. I have not much use for the loyalty that consists mainly in putting such a sacrifice on other people.
Talking of one portion of British Columbia being supported at the expense of the great consuming portions of that province brings me to make an inquiry that I would much rather not have to make. I have always had the very greatest regard for my hon. friend the Minister of Finance. He knows it; his psychology has been a continual and interesting study to me, and there is not a man who has taken more pleasure in observing that the Crown very rightly, as I think, has recognized his very great abilities by giving him a well-earned knighthood. I have the highest appreciation of my hon. friend, and I was delighted when this honour was paid him. We have all been pleased to see the rapidity with which he has fallen into the ways of this House, and the certainty with which he has advanced in the ranks of statesmanship after having been picked up just a little precariously at the last election. Having this great regard, for him, I am just a little sorry that he should have stooped to this miserable piece of politics, or tariff legislation-economics he rather likes to call it. I would suppose he would like to pass it off as good economics, but if he is going te do that I wish he would tell me what he is going to get 'from it because the farmers of the plains will want tp know what revenue he is getting from it. If the

revenue does not justify it, he will have difficulty in justifying it on the ground that he is going to help these men who have given far too much for their land. I am not at all sure that my hon. friend was not actuated hy a motive that I would rather he should not have been influenced .by in introducing this legislation. I am not at all sure that he was so much concerned about the troubles of the apple growers when he introduced this legislation as he was about the troubles in the local administration of British Columbia. I am very suspicious upon that point. If that was his motive, I am bound to say that the charge of shortsightedness which I brought against some of his tariff legislation last year has much more justification even in regard to this legislation because in regard to this he has been extraordinarily shortsighted. He did not see that Victoria and Vancouver people could not possibly take any interest in the raising of the prices oi apples except to resist it. He should have seen it 'because these were places where his apple tariff was going to have the very first chance of producing political effects. They produced effects beyond anything which was looked for by the hon. gentleman. But my hon. friend confusing his economics in that way, I cannot help saying that I can hardly be sorry for him. What he wants to recognize in dealing with economic questions is that they must be put upon a broad principle and the broad principle in regard to production in Canada is that it is not necessary to produce apples at all. What is necessary is that we should eat them. There is nothing in producing apples. My hon. friend, on general principles, goes too far in regard to production. Production is not the great thing that we want in this country; consumption is the great thing. If you undertake to consume plenty you will produce plenty. A -man who does not produce anything gets no wages and his consumption is pretty low. If you look after the consumption of a thing you will never need to be afraid of the production. Consume plenty and production will go on. That is the principle that my hon friend should have gone upon. He has a great sense of humour. If he had not had this sense of humour he would have rejected this course as suicidal because he would never have gone into this thing at al'l for the purpose of restoring the falling fortunes of Sir Richard McBride. We have read in our Shakespeare of another Richard exclaiming
under rather hard stress of circumstances: A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse. That Richard, unfortunately, did not get a horse. This Richard did not get a horse but he got a ship and fled from the scene. My hon. friend 'comes to his rescue a little late and says: There is a little duty on apples for you. I do not think it will do much for Mr. Bowser either.
I want to warn my hon. friend solemnly against ward-heeling economics of that kind, for the future of his reputation as Finance Minister of this country. This duty was a paltry miserable duty to bring in at this time, and one which cannot be justified on any sound ground whatsoever. In another speech the other day my hon. friend said that he and the rest of us were looking forward to different things after the war. I am quite sure things will be different, but I do not think that on this question of tariff and economics, things will be different in the sense in which my hon. friend is looking for them to be different. War is the greatest of human re-actions; this is the greatest of all wars; and I personally would die of despair if I did not think that the rebound of the wave towards progress will be the greatest the world has ever seen. And progress is not achieved by going further along the lines of tariff legislation. I cannot help thinking that Providence has taken a very apt pupil in hand in my hon. friend the Minister of Finance, and he took him and the rest of us in hand in rather a vigorous manner when he burned down the old Parliament building. He sent the Minister of Finance down to the Museum here for a special purpose, I am quite sure; and the special purpose I would commend to him is that he should look for progress after the war, and he could not help that progress in any better why than by finding the fossil remains in this building, and putting as much tariff in that part of the building as he possibly can, and leaving it there when he and the rest of us are spared leave here for the new Parliament building. Meanwhile, I would not wait till we make the shift, but I would advise him to find out where the fossil remains are and put this little apple duty among them before it ever has an existence.


William Thomas White: My hon. friend
from Red Deer (Mr. Michael Clark) has been so complimentary in his remarks towards myself that he disarms antagonism, even political antagonism. He and I are good friends, and I know we should con-

tinue to be so. My hon. friend has spoken of fossils, and it is curious that while he was speaking I should have been thinking of our being housed in this museum. I was throwing my mind forward to the period after the war in which, along with the other changes that will have taken place, my hon. friend from Red Deer will either have reformed or be one of the few remaining free-traders, in which latter case the museum might be an appropriate place to house him as a specimen of an extinct race of economists. All that is quite within the limits of the possibilities of this war. The trouble with my hon. friend is that he got started wrong; he was caught young, and he has never got over it. He can see no good whatever in protection. Well, I look forward to the conversion of my hon. friend. He has spoken of himself as an unrepentant sinner, but some of the greatest sinners in the world have been converted.


Michael Clark: I said an unrepentant free-trader.


William Thomas White: And the conversion of a hardened sinner is usually sudden and frequently lasting. I recall the case of John Bunyan, and of Saul of Tarsus, who was converted when a great light suddenly burst on him on his way to Damascus. When this war is over and my hon. friend sees what free trade has meant as between Great Britain and Germany, and realizes the advantages of a self-contained country and a self-contained Empire, I should not be surprised if almost as great a light bursts on him as fell on Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus. And I look forward to most eloquent speeches from him, in this House, if he should be here, in favour of protection as the true economic policy of this country.
My hon. friend has spoken of the National Policy, and has asked what relation this duty on apples has to the National Policy. Well, it seems to me that the basic and most important industry in Canada to-day is agriculture. A part of agriculture is the growing of apples, and it does seem to me that it would be a most desirable thing if Canada should, as she undoubtedly can, not only raise all the apples required for the people of this country, but have a large surplus over for export. There is no reason in the world why Canada should not raise all the apples consumed in this country. It is simply a matter of distribution.

Before I come to the matter in hand, my hon. friend from Red Deer repeated a remark I made last year, that the tariff was the mainstay of revenue. That is quite correct. I should like to see my hon. friend as Minister of Finance endeavouring by any other means to provide the amount of money that we require to meet our expenditures and increased interest charges due to this war.


Mr. McCRANEY:: Is the proposed increase in the duty on apples for the purpose of revenue or to protect the farmers of British Columbia?


William Thomas White: As stated in my remarks on the Budget, this duty is in my view indispensably necessary for the safeguarding of the apple industry of Canada, and particularly of British Columbia. It is frankly for that purpose. My hon. friend spoke of loyalty, and he was rather unhappy in his remarks because it chances that no district in Canada has evinced its loyalty in more striking fashion than the fruit growing district of British Columbia.


Michael Clark: Is my hon. friend quite fair? I was talking purely of loyalty to taxation. The last remark I would wish to make is that one section of the country is giving more soldiers than another; we had better leave that out. My hon. friend will admit that I have never indulged in talk of that kind at any time.


William Thomas White: My hon. friend did not make it quite clear in his remarks to what he was referring when he spoke of loyalty. However, I accept his explanation.
Coming to the matter in hand, there is a very extraordinary situation in British Columbia. I deprecate very much the references made by one or two hon gentlemen opposite to the British Columbia political situation, a question to which this duty on apples has absolutely no relationship whatever. The question of raising the duty on apples has been before my department for not less than three years. Every year there have been deputations, and the fruit-growers of British Columbia have made the strongest kind of representations as to the serious situation that exists there, and have asked for some kind of relief. So no question possibly arises as to this duty on apples being connected with the British Columbia political situation. The Government have acted with no haste in the matter. Representations have been made to us for the last two or three years, and we finally came to the conclusion that unless some kind of tariff were granted-


Mr. A. K. MACLEAN:: What were the representations made by the delegations from British Columbia in regard to the apple industry?


William Thomas White: The British Columbia fruit grower is in competition with an abnormal condition of affairs that exists in the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. In these states there has been a very great over-production, and my hon. friend, knows that, with the planting that has been going on for the last few years, over-production is likely to greatly increase in the future. The fact of the matter is that apples produced in these states have been selling on the American side as well as in Canada at much less than the cost of production.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What is the quantity *bf~British Columbia's export of apples in carloads?


William Thomas White: 
Mr. TURRIFF:: Is it not true of every apple-growing country that many apples are sold at less than the cost of production?


William Thomas White: That may be true. But in British Columbia this has been a standing condition for a considerable time past, and such a condition has been reached that unless this tariff measure is granted the consequence for the British Columbia fruit-growing industry will be most serious. Apart from British Columbia, it is to be remembered that two years ago we had in-Canada a condition in which it was almost impossible to dispose of the apple crop. It looked as if apples were to be left to rot under the trees. The Minister of Trade and Commerce embarked upon a campaign and assisted in relieving the situation. All the signs point to a large increase in the apple crop for this year, and^ for that matter, for many years to come, op account largely of the extensive planting that has taken place in Tecent years. It comes down to this: Is there any reason why the Canadian fruit grower-not confining the argument to British Columbia, but taking the ifruit industry from the Atlantic to the Pacific-should not be given the benfit of the Canadian market? It does not necessarily mean that the price of this fruit will go up; it means that the Canadian grower will have a better opportunity in his own market, and that, I believe, is the true national policy.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What is the good of it if it will not put the price up?


William Thomas White: Then the hon. gentleman's argument is that no matter how high the tariff may be, even if prohibitive, foreign goods will still come in3


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Not necessarily.


William Thomas White: My argument is, that with this increase in the duty, the Canadian market will be reserved more for the Canadian grower. It does not necessarily mean-


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: The hon. gentleman
is getting away from the point, and I want to hold him to it. He tells us that the British Columbia apple producer is engaged in a losing industry because he cannot obtain a price which will yield him a profit. The hon. gentleman proposes to improve that condition by increasing the duty. But how will the increase in the duty improve the situation, unless it enables the producer to get a bigger price. And how can he get a bigger price unless he gets it from the Canadian producer?


William Thomas White: The greater
market for his product in Canada.

Mr. MAC'LBAN: We only imported 269,000 barrels of apples last year in all Canada; that would not help very much.
Sir 'THOMAS WHITE: The British Columbia fruit-growing district is not a very large one, but it is a very important and growing section in British Columbia, and the effect of this, we hope, will be to give them a larger market in Canada for their product.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What does their yearly production amount to?


William Thomas White: The British Columbia yield in boxes has been as follows:
Boxes.
1910		 210,000
1911		 250,000
1912		 430,000
1913		 477,000
1914		 685,000
1915		 787,750
My hon. friend will observe that the production in 1915 was nearly four times as much as in 1910.


John Gillanders Turriff: Were they not doing
well enough?


William Thomas White: No, they were not doing well enough; they have not been doing well at all. As I say, unless this tariff change is introduced, the future of the British Columbia fruit-growing industry is of a most precarious character. I do not believe that any hon. gentleman would like to see an important section of the community most seriously affected by a condition of affairs that can be remedied by legislative action in this House, and such action not taken.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: There might be
some other way.


William Thomas White: I would be glad to have suggestions as to a way. 1 do not know of any other way to assist the situation.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: The Minister of Trade and Commerce ('Sir George Foster) promised a couple of years ago to find a market in Australia.


Mr. KNOWLES:: The position of affairs, as I understand it, is one of only this year.


William Thomas White: No.


William Erskine Knowles: I thought the first excuse given was that the condition of affairs is serious because of the great over-produc-

tion in the United States. But the minister says that that is' not correct, that this is a permanent tariff that he hopes to have remain as long as he is in power. He says that is correct?


William Thomas White: I make no statement as to how long a tariff condition will continue; it would be most improper to do so.


William Erskine Knowles: Rightly or wrongly I
had the impression, either from what was said in the Budget or from some other reliable source, that it was on account of the condition of affairs this year-a great overproduction in Washington, Oregon and Idaho-that this action was necessary. If I am incorrect in that-


William Thomas White: It has been for the last three years.


William Erskine Knowles: Therefore, the thing is more serious than we thought. The seriousness of it has been growing, and we shall be lucky if it does not get worse. It is remarkable that under this adverse condition of affairs the apple industry of British Columbia in four years multiplied itself by four. Our contribution on the prairies to encourage an infant industry may be made in a spirit of charity, but I will be dashed if we want to help people who quadruple their wealth in four years -we are not doing that well ourselves. I have not heard the minister say: We will take something out of other parts of Canada and give it to the poor homesteaders in Saskatchewan, because they are not increasing their wealth 100 per cent every year. But if you apply that principle to British Columbia, why not apply it to Saskatchewan as well? My view of this whole protection business-I do not know whether any one cares about it or not;
I do not know whether it is worth five cents or not-is that if this Parliament wants to make pets and favourites of the apple growers of Br'tish Columbia, it ought to be done at the expense of the people of Canada, not at the expense of Saskatchewan and Alberta only. If the minister wants to help the apple growers of British Columbia, why does he not vote some money, fifty cents a barrel if he likes, check it up carefully and pay it out to these people? Let the people in the Annapolis valley pay a share of it; let the people of Quebec pay a share of it; let the whole people of Canada pay a share of it. That would be

more like a national policy; that would be putting the expense upon the nation as a . whole, instead of piling it all on the Saskatchewan and Alberta prairies. These prairie districts are a mark, not a market.


William Thomas White: Was there any tariff on apples during the tenure of office of tire late Government, of which imy hon. friend was so ardent a supporter? If so. what does my hon. friend say about that?


William Erskine Knowles: I am afraid there was a tariff.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Erskine Knowles: Since the minister has
raised that point, I may say what I said in this House eight or ten years ago; I support the Liberal party not because of their tariff, but in spite of it. There is nothing on which my mind is clearer than on this point: in the interests of my people, in the interests of the Dominion of Canada, as between the two parties in this country I shall continue to support the Liberal party.


Mr. MEIGHEN:: Did not my hon. friend, when in opposition support a tariff policy? Did he not frequently say from his place in Parliament that a tariff policy was right?


William Erskine Knowles: I do not recollect that.


Arthur Meighen: What about farm implements?


William Erskine Knowles: I repeat that as between the two parties I would not do anything to put the high protection party in power, and to put the Liberal moderate tariff party out. But if there were a real, genuine free trade party in this House, I would have to support that free trade policy. No person by any political knavery or fakirism or anything of that kind, can convince mo that I ought to support the greater of two evils- because I look on tariffs altogether as an evil. I am just as clear on this point before my constituents as I am in [DOT]this House. The people of the Prairie Provinces would be very foolish if of the two parties they did not support the Liberal party at this juncture. Let us take this case as a case in point. It is not a large matter; it is a little measly matter, as measly as some of the apples that come from British Columbia. This duty on apples is the thin end of the wedge. Hon. gentlemen opposite want to see how the people of the Prairie
Provinces will stand a little touching up along the line of duties. Perhaps another tariff commission will be suggested to us before long. In his speech the other day *the Solicitor General said: "How could we give you an open market for wheat? If we give you an open market, the *first	thing	we	know you	will	wantfree	trade	in	something	else; one
thing will lead to another, and it may come to the point that the protection business will be knocked on the head." The hen. gentleman said in effect: "We cannot give you an open market, because if you get a taste for it, you will be anxious for more." The hon. gentleman did not use these w'ords, but that is what he meant. This matter of a duty on apples is not a *large matter, but it is all the meaner and all the more unfortunate that this miserable, measly, picayune, small business should come from the Minister of Finance at a time when people ought to be great and big in financial matters. I do not think any one cares a great deal about the money part of it, because the amount involved is not very large; it is the principle of the thing that we object to. Why put it all on the people of Saskatchewan and Alberta? If you want to encourage the apple growing industry, why not do so by providing better storage facilities? Why not assist the industry at the expense of the federal treasury? Surely hon. gentlemen could do something that would make it advantageous for our people to buy British Columbia apples. Surely the brains of the Government could devise some means by which the industry could be encouraged if hon. gentlemen want to encourage it. I think there is a great deal in what the hon. member for Red Deer said: that a great deal of the trouble comes from the fact that these lands in British Columbia are held at such outrageously high prices. The Creator intended that these lumber fields and fruit gardens should be used by the people, but they have got into the hands of speculators Favourites of the McBride Government got them as pap, and they have so shuffled them that a grant of land which they got for practically nothing, after changing hands a few times, was worth millions of dollars. Then the people of the Prairie Provinces are told: You have got to pay a price for your lumber which will pay interest on the absurd capitalization of the timber limits; you must pay a price on your fruit which will cover the interest on the absurd capitalization of the British Columbia fruit fields. The minig-

ter has remarked that this duty will not increase the cost of apples. Even after having been subject to the sobering influence of the last year or so since the war commenced, the minister could not help laughing when he made that statement. To say that it will not make higher prices to the apple growers is a joke-a pretty serious joke, because of the principle that is involved in it. The Minister of Finance is a great statesman in some respects, but even great statesmen sometimes make childish statements, and I think the statement thai this duty will not mean larger prices to the people who raise apples is one which is unworthy of the man who fills the position of Finance Minister of Canada. I hope that the minister will rise in his place and withdraw that statement.


Mr. SUTHERLAND:: I have followed
this discussion so far with considerable interest and some amusement. One would almost infer from the remarks which have been made with regard to the proposed duty on. apples that Canada was a rather small country in which apple growing was confined to a very small area, and that this duty is really going to affect only the people of the prairie provinces. I protest against any assertion of that kind. I would like to remind the House that this duty has been asked for, not only by the people of British Cotanbia, but by the people of other provinces as well.


Michael Clark: May I point
out that the hon. minister, in his Budget speech, said the exact opposite of what my hon. friend says? He used the words "especially British Columbia;" therefore our criticism is directed against the statement of the minister. >


Donald Sutherland: I am dealing with the arguments advanced in committee this afternoon; I trust that the hon. gentleman will grant me the privilege of confining my remarks to those arguments. This has been a very live question in Canada for quite a number of years; the situation has not been more acute during the past year than it was for many years previous. Any one who has followed the fruitgrowing industry in the Dominion of Canada will readily understand that the past year was not the worst year in the history of our country so far as the importation of American fruit is concerned.
But we do know that there is in the United States a combine among the wholesale

fruit dealers which practically forces the retailers in' Canada to take so much of the American apples and similar fruit, that we can very well grow in this country, whether they went to or not, if they are to receive a supply of such fruit as oranges which we do not produce. It is nothing new to the people of this country to see the fruit stores in our large cities at this time of the year practically filled with fruits from the western United States, Oregon, and Washington territory. The importations in the last five years have been very large. In 1911, they were 150,000 barrels; in 1912,
195,000	barrels; in 1913, 320,000 barrels; in 1914, 331,700 barrels, and in 1915, 269,01X1 barrels. Thus we did not suffer so very much from American importations in the past year as in the two previous years. British Columbia undoubtedly has great prospects, there is a great future in store for it as a fruit producing country; but in the province of Ontario there are even greater posibilities for the growing of fruit than in any other province. These possibilities have been overlooked, but we find at present there is at least $50,000,000 invested in apple orchards in Ontario, which is more than double the amount in any other province. This question is quite a live issue in Ontario. If we are ever going to make of Canada a great nation, we have got to give and take a little among ourselves. Some parts of Canada may not be adapted to a certain industry while other parts are, and if we are going to build up and develop these parts that possibly have advantages, then we must suitably regulate our tariff. The hon. member for Moosejaw (Mr. Knowles) could not but hark back to the wheat question this afternoon, and it is only a few days since I heard hon. gentlemen opposite admit that the wheat from western Canada commands from 7 to 8 cents more on the Liverpool market by reason of the fact that it retains its own identity. That is surely something to be proud of. If you attend the meetings of the apple-growers associations in the city of Chicago, where they have the greatest exhibit of fruit that is to be found in the world, you will invariably find that the quality of the apples grown in Canada is better than that of those grown in the United States.


John Gillanders Turriff: Then why so much duty?


Donald Sutherland: It is true that the American apple has a better appearance. The apples grown in Oregon and Washington territory, with their d,ry climate, develop a beautiful colour; they have a wax-

like appearance, but they have not the quality of the Canadian apple. That is evident to every one. A few years ago, when the Festival of Empire exhibition was going on in London, the apples selected for exhibition by the Department of Agriculture of Canada were not grown in Britisli Columbia, or in the Annapolis valley, but in a section of Ontario that a few years ago was shown on the map as being outside of the apple-growing district, in the inland counties of Western Ontario; the apples which were shown were selected by the Government of hon. gentlemen opposite from apples grown in the county of Oxford, from which I come. The apple growing industry in Canada is practically in its infancy, and under proper conditions there are great possibilities for its development. It will frequently be found that the Americans are dumping their surplus stock into Canada at times when, in order to keep up the market at home, they can afford to dispose of their surplus in this country at a low rate to the injury of our fruit growers. If you are going to have a stable industry you cannot permit it to be subjected to competition of that kind, and I say the Government are entitled to a great deal of credit for having placed this item in the tariff at this time in order to enable that great industry to be developed as it ought to be. It will redound to the credit of this Government in years to come, and I am satisfied the people of Western Canada are not going to suffer as a result of the increase in the tariff. They will be purchasing apples from the people of British Columbia, and of Ontario, and of the Maritime Provinces, and the people in those provinces will .be purchasing from them many things that they will be able to raise; a reciprocal trade will be carried - on between the various provinces, which will be much better than a trade carried on with people who are prepared to take every possible advantage in dealing with us. That question was settled, and settled for all time, in 1911. The people of Canada spoke at that time and stated emphatically where they stood with regard to any arrangement of that kind. It is simply a waste of time for us to hark back to anything of that nature to-day because we may as well face the issue fairly and squarely, as I am satisfied for one that if there is any part of Canada that feels there is not a sufficient area in Canada to grow enough fruit for the people of Canada, they are making a great mistake. We are an exporting people as far as apples are concerned.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Nobody would
deny that. There is no necessity of the hon. member making an argument that we can produce sufficient apples for our own consumption, because we do that today and much more; we export. The question is, where are you going to get the market?


Donald Sutherland: Yes, we export today, and so do the Americans, by reason of the conditions that exist, they are prepared to unload their surplus stock on Canada in order to reduce that stock-


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Only 200,000 barrels.


Donald Sutherland: It was 269,000 barrels last year, 331,000 the year before, and
320,000	the year before that. This is not a small amount to be coming in each year under those conditions, and when you see in our large cities in Ontario, such as Toronto, that the fruit stores are largely supplied with American apples, then I say there is something wrong and it is time for the Government to take some action with regard to the matter.


Mr. DOUGLAS:: Will the hon. gentleman explain just why Canadians buy Oregon apples to-day?


Donald Sutherland: I thought I made
that quite clear, it is not a matter of today but a matter of years.


James McCrie Douglas: Is it a matter of price?


Donald Sutherland: Apples have been
sold in Ontario much lower than in United States for years past. Just for the very reason that the Apple Growers' Association in the United States are bound to Bet rid of their surplus stock in some way in order to keep up the prices in their own markets.


Mr. GREEN:: The question of national
policy and national preference is no new question in this House. The principle has been in operation for many years past. During that time the various Ministers of Finance who have had tariff matters to regulate have tried from time to time to make the burdens bear equitably upon the whole people of Canada, and at the same time protect certain manufacturers and certain industries that needed protection in this Dominion. When hon. members opposite saw fit to attempt to find in the British Columbia provincial by-elections the reason for the Finance Minister dealing with this question at this particular time, they were very

unfair, and had no knowledge apparently of the facts. Delegation after delegation has come to the Capital city during the last four or five years, not only from British Columbia, but from the other fruit-growing districts in Canada, and have sought to have a duty placed upon apples that would enable them to supply our own markets. At this particular time in the history of the Dominion, a delegation from British Columbia arrived, and again pressed the claims of the apple-growers of Canada upon the attention of the Minister of Finance. They pointed out that, so far as British Columbia was concerned, we were not a manufacturing country. We were being taxed under a tariff for almost everything that we used. The few things that we could supply to the balance of Canada were not in the happy position of being sufficiently protected to enable us to retain that market.	'
The question has been asked this afternoon as to how we are going to keep this market without materially increasing the prices. If we could get the whole of the market of Canada, we would be in a better position to deal directly with the consumer. We would practically have a market for the whole of our product, or the greater portion of it, and we would be able to supply a better class of fruit than we have been supplying in the past. The hon. member for Moosejaw (Mr. Knowles) seemed to be surprised because apple growing in the province of British Columbia had increased from 210,000 boxes in 1910 to 787,750 boxes in 1915. Surely he knows that in British Columbia this industry is practically an infant industry. The increase in production is not because of the prices, and not because of the money that is being made out of the sale of apples, but because the trees are coming into bearing. The apple growers of the Western States, particularly those of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, have planted apples over something like
550,000	acres of land. Their production is so great that 75 per cent of their trees will have to be uprooted, and the acreage put to other purposes; and then when those remaining trees are in full bearing, they will have sufficient to supply their own markets. So far as British Columbia is concerned, we have not as yet any over-production, and we are not likely to have any. The cost of producing a box of apples today is, on the average, about $1.08, and that is not based on any extravagant value for the land. The Fruit Growers Association representatives who were here told me 
that the estimated value of apple growing land was $125 per acre, and any one knows that that is not an exorbitant price for land in the valleys of British Columbia.
The situation at present is that there is such an enormous over-production in the three western states which I have mentioned, that, when the growers there have graded their apples, they make the price on the prairies and sell their lower grades in Canada, they having far more than sufficient of the better grades to supply their ordinary market.


James McCrie Douglas: Has the hon. member
any idea as to the price the grower in Washington and Oregon receives for his apples, say for No. 1 Fancy?


An hon. MEMBER:: Forty cents a box.


Robert Francis Green: It is not 40 cents a box.
Time and time again they have flooded the prairie districts with apples at from 30 to 70 cents per box. Occasionally they get as high as $1 and $1.20 for some of the better grades, but these apples very seldom come into our prairies.


James McCrie Douglas: I meant apples comparing with your No. 1 grade.


Robert Francis Green: The better grade do not
come in at all to the Prairie Provinces.


James McCrie Douglas: I know differently.


Robert Francis Green: 
Mr. BUCHANAN:: I had occasion to make some remarks about the apple duty when I spoke on the Budget. I want to express the opinion again that I expressed on that occasion, and it is that this increased duty on apples means an increased cost to the consumers on the prairies. I am not relying upon any gift of prophesy which I may possess for that assertion, but I have read a statement made by a Vancouver wholesale fruit merchant, and his statement is that it means an increased cost to the consumer. He presents the usual protection argument, and he says the duty could not have any other effect, and that the more protection there is on fruit the greater will be the price demanded by the distributor.


Mr. J. E. ARMSTRONG:: Is the hon. gentleman aware of the arrangement which is about to be consummated between the large co-operative apple growers of Ontario and British Columbia and the Grain
Growers Associations in the western provinces whereby the Grain Growers Associations will distribute all the apples required by the western country instead of allowing the fruit to be handled by a trust?


William Ashbury Buchanan: During last year the United Farmers of Alberta were distributing apples on that basis. But that does not make any difference practically in regard to the matter and that does not mean that the fruit growers of British Columbia will not take advantage of this increased duty when they will be without competition from Washington and Oregon. They will charge more to the men who distribute the fruit and the price will go up; there is no question about that. The hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Green) argued that deputations have been coming here and pressing this matter upon the Government and that finally the Government has yielded to the argument that they " have put up and granted this increase of duty. I understand that these deputations have been coming for the last three or four years. My hon. friend from Red Deer (Mr. Michael Clark) dealt with the political side of this assistance to the fruit growers. An expression frequently used by the hon. the Minister of Finance (Sir Thomas White) is that certain things synchronize with certain other things, and if that be true is it not peculiar that this year, when there is a possibility of an election in British Columbia and when there are by-elections in that province, this Government grants this request and gives the apple growers this increased duty. The argument of my hon. friend from Red Deer holds absolutely good on that question. The request is complied with in 1916 when the life of the British Columbia Legislature is expiring.
Another point. Deputations have been coming to this Government, since it cams into power in 1911, from the grain growers of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba asking for free wheat, and their requests have not been complied with up to the present. The Finance Minister tells us that he is assuming a national position. The national position he takes is that of a supporter of one industry in this country-the milling industry. While he takes this attitude in connection with free wheat he comes to the assistance of the fruit growers of British Columbia; or at least he says he is coming to their assistance. This means a further increase in the cost of apples to the consumers of the prairies. If the Minister of

Finance had investigated fruit conditions in British Columbia he would have found that there were other reasons than the competition from the states of Oregon and Washington for the condition of that industry. The statement was made in 1911 by a gentleman who was opposed to the reciprocity measure that reciprocity, in so far as it affected the fruit industry, would be a good thing for the fruit growers of British Columbia. His argument was that if they were compelled to feel the effects of real competition from across the line they would box their fruit better and they would go out and hunt for a market and get it. That is about what will happen to the fruit growers of British Columbia. The British Columbia Department of Agriculture carried on an extensive advertising campaign in Alberta last year and there were fine window displays of British Columbia fruit in the stores of my city. I am satisfied that the increase in the sale of British Columbia fruit in Lethbridge amounted to at least fifty per cent. They advertised and appealed to the people to buy British Columbia fruit, they displayed it in the windows and they gave the people some idea of the kind of fruit they were able to produce. That is what they had failed to do in past years. When Alberta has a surplus of butter to sell it does not come to this Government and ask to have an increased duty on butter. It goes to British Columbia and develops a market. It produces a good article and therefore it is able to dispose of its surplus butter. The fruit growers of British Columbia should cultivate a market in the neighbouring provinces and not come to this Parliament for an increased duty to stifle competition and cause an increase in the cost of fruit to the people of the prairies.
The Minister of Finance is interested in the development of Canada. He wants to see imigration into this country, he wants to see the Prairie Provinces, as well as the other provinces, prosper, and he wants to see an inflow of population after the war. My judgment is that as long as people come to Western Canada, investigate the conditions there and find that the cost of living is high and is increasing, he is. going to interfere with immigration by such legislation as this. What will follow in connection with this duty on fruit? The people who come over to Western Canada from the United States are accustomed to getting fruit and getting it fairly cheaply. When they come to the West and find that apples are expensive, when we put an almost pro-

hibitive duty on American apples coming into this country, and when we increase the cost of .apples so that ordinary people will not be in a position to buy them, do we not interfere with people coming and settling on the western prairies?
My hon. friend from South Oxford (Mr. Sutherland) says that this duty will help the apple industry in Ontario. All well and good, but it does not help the farmers of Western Canada who have to buy fruit and who have to pay high prices for it. They do not raise fruit to any extent, nor will they do so for many years to come in those provinces. They have to import it from other provinces, and why should they not be in a position to get that fruit at the best possible price? We will buy British Columbia fruit when the fruit raisers produce that fruit, box it and get it to us in good shape as they have been doing during the past year. They have made a step in that direction, they have created a demand and that demand will increase. But I am afraid that if this Parliament increases the duty on apples and puts the fruit growers of British Columbia-if not the fruit growers, the middlemen-in a position to charge an increased price for their apples, it will do a great deal of harm to their present market on the prairies and will consequently do harm to the fruit growers themselves. That statement was made in a paper published in British Columbia which I have read only recently. The statement was made that this duty might interfere with ' the present market of the British Columbia fruit grower on the prairies because the fruit grower might take advantage of the high protection and increase the cost to the consumer. I would like the Minister of Finance to consider seriously the objections which have been made by the Prairie Provinces to this increased duty on apples, especially, as he says it is according to his own statement, for the benefit of only one province.


William Thomas White: I said for the
benefit of the whole apple industry but especially that of British Columbia.


William Ashbury Buchanan: I read in the report of the minister's speech a statement that it was particularly for British Columbia.


William Thomas White: I spoke of the
apple industry generally and of that of British Columbia particularly. What is the whole sentence?


William Ashbury Buchanan: I will read it:

We regard this duty as indispensably necessary for the preservation of the apple growing industry of Canada and particularly that of British Columbia, which has been most-seriously affected since the outbreak of the war.
I still contend that this djity is directed principally to the province of British Columbia. I do not think the war h-ae had any effect on the apple industry of that province, except to increase the market for British Columbia apples, in the Prairie Provinces. I am satisfied that there has been an increase in that market during the last year.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: Are we to understand that the Grain Growers' Association and the other farmers' associations, who will act as middlemen in distributing amongst the Prairie Provinces the output of the apple industry of British Columbia and Ontario, will charge excessive -prices to the oeople in those Prairie Provinces?


William Ashbury Buchanan: Leave the middlemen out of the question -altogether, and say that the fruit is bought direct from the fruit growers in British Columbia. I am satisfied that the fruit growers will demand a higher price for their product by reason of the fact that under this tariff competition will be got rid of. There is no question about that. These fruit growers are only human, and they will take advantage of this increase in the tariff.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: Not necessarily.


Air. STEVENS:: I desire to make a few brief observations on this question, and to deal with -one or two points raised by hon. gentlemen -opposite. Taking the last point first, the main objection of hon. gentlemen opposite seems to be that this duty will mean an increased price to the *apple consumers of the Prairie Provinces.


John Gillanders Turriff: All over Canada.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I am glad my hon. friend has taken in the whole of Canada. That puts the question on a broader and a much better basis. However, I was referring to the statement that had been made by my hon. friend from Red Deer and others that the duty would mean -an increased cost to the consumers of the Prairie Provinces.


Michael Clark: I beg my hon. friend's pardon. I mentioned particularly the city which he represents in this House.


Henry Herbert Stevens: 
Michael Clark: Of 5 p.m. course, I pointed out that the minister was short-sighted because he could not see that that would be the effect.


Henry Herbert Stevens: My hon. friend dfb not see it.
Air. CLARK.:	The people of Vancouver
saw it.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Aly hon. friend never saw it at all. He tried to make the argument that this was a political measure. As a matter of fact, it is a measure-I am speak-


P.EVISED EDITION COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
ing of the local and not of the national aspect-to save an industry in British Columbia which at the present time is not over-producing, arid which for the next five years will not produce to the extent of its natural market's demand. It has also been argued that one of the reasons that the apple industry in British Columbia is in hard, straits is because of the nigh price of land. That has not been demonstrated by any figures, or been attempted to be proved by hon. gentlemen opposite. As a matter of fact, it is not the reason at all. In the first place the land in British Columbia upon which the fruit is grown is perfectly useless-I am referring to the Okanagan valley and the Dry Belt

unless it is irri-. gated, and irrigation works demand a large investment of -capital. On-ce this land is irrigated it produces and becomes valuable. But there must be a large and a long investment before the apple industry becomes a paying proposition. It is, perhaps, six, or eight, or nine years before you get a crop off your trees. The trees have to be sprayed and fertilized in this non-productive period; you have to cultivate the land, keep up the fences, and put in irrigation works. All these things enter into the cost of production of apples. In the Western States I have referred to, it can be demonstrated conclusively that they have over-produced. Large areas of land have been planted in apple orchards and other fruit, and the trees are now coming into bearing at a very rapid rate. A very large percentage of these fruit growers are going into liquidation, and the British Columbia fruit grower is faced with the competition of a bankrupt community. Now, that is not a fair competition. My hon. friend from Medicine Hat (Mr. Buchanan) used the butter illustration. As a matter of fact, he and the hon. member for Bed Deer, and others engaged in the butter business, have a protection for their own market.
James McCrie Douglas: Apples are protected to ibout 25 per cent.


Henry Herbert Stevens: This will make it about 25 per cent.


John Gillanders Turriff: This will make it about 100 per cent.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Not at all. This will make the duty about 25 per cent of the actual market value of the apples. That is clear and beyond question. The butter argument is not reasonable. If the farmers in the Western States of the United

States were shipping their butter into Alberta at a lower price than the Alberta farmers could produce butter at, the farmers of Alberta would be down here 1,500 strong, howling for protection.


Michael Clark: No.


Henry Herbert Stevens: There is no question about it. And in such a case my hon. friend from Red Deer would be a convert from free trade.
Mr. MoCRANEY: What price does the apple grower get in British Columbia, so that we can compare it with this duty of 90 cents a barrel?


Henry Herbert Stevens: They get about 22 cents a box in the orchard.


James McCrie Douglas: And the duty is 13 cents.


Henry Herbert Stevens: My hon. friend (Mr. Douglas) will not argue that 22 cents a box is a reasonable price to the grower. Does he make that argument?


James McCrie Douglas: No.
Mr. STEVEN-S: No,-no more than he will make the argument that 30 cents a bushel is a fair price for wheat or 15 cents a pound a fair price for butter. He must grant to- the grower in one department of agriculture what he claims for another. All we ask for the grower is a reasonable price-a living wage, if you like that term.


James McCrie Douglas: The hon. gentleman has misinterpreted my meaning. I was trying to get at the relation of this duty to the price. If the grower is selling at 22 cents a box, would not the customs authority be justified in taking that as a basis for duty?


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is the price to the producer, in the orchard. I think the fair price to consider for duty is the wholesale price in the market.
Mr. M-cCRANEY:. At what price can -the fruit grower of British Columbia raise a barrel of apples profitably?


Henry Herbert Stevens: About $1.08 a box for No. 1.


John Best: Is that $1.08 per box or per barrel?


Henry Herbert Stevens: Per box. That is for the No. 1 apples. Of course it would be less for the No. 2 grade, or the No. 3 grade which is equal to the "C" grade imported from the United States, which is our keen competitor. Give us a fair chance in the market of Canada, so that we shall be

assured of marketing a reasonable quantity of our crop, and we will be able to sell that apple at a very little increase, if any increase at all, over the cost at the present time. My hon. friend should remember that the chief cost of thfe apple as it comes on the market is transportation and distribution.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Tl}e transportation charges would be in addition to the cost that the hon. gentleman gave a moment ago?


Henry Herbert Stevens: Certainly. The main difficulty in the marketing of apples to-day lies in the cost of distribution. The distribution has been greatly improved within the last few years. I understand from the chairman of the Railway Commission that transportation has been brought down to the lowest possible figure, so that that consideration can be eliminated from the argument. We come down to the wholesaler or commission merchant who handles the freight. This is a perfectly legitimate business, and I have no complaint to make of the men in the business. But it seems to me that in connection with the fruit business, what we require is that the grower should get into direct touch with his market. There is no business which lends itself better to that method of distribution than apple growing, for you have the apples in packages which can be handled and distributed easily. As stated by my hon. friend from East Lambton (Mr. Armstrong), efforts have been made, and with a measure of success, to bring the grain growers' organization of the Prairie Provinces-a very fine organization-into cooperation with s the western fruit growers, so as to save the cost of distribution. I suggest to my hon. friends who have been putting up this, as I consider it, rather bitter objection to this clause-a very strong objection at least-that they had better facilitate the co-operation between these two great agricultural bodies, whose interests are common, and endeavour to overcome this economic loss or wastage occasioned by distribution. My hon. friend spoke a little while ago about the importations into Vancouver, and 'he expressed the opinion that this legislation would be against the interests of the people of Vancouver which is the chief centre of population in British Columbia. I must thank my hon. friend for his solicitude for the people of Vancouver. On the other hand, I think I know a little about Vancouver, and 1 would 1122
say to him that the people of that city realize that the development of the hinterland of British Columbia is to their advantage. My hon. friend was in Vancouver in 1911, and I listened to him with a great deal of interest in his discussion of the reciprocity proposals. He and his friends pointed out what an immediate advantage reciprocity would be to the people of Vancouver. There may have been some truth in some of these statements, but the people of Vancouver were far-sighted and they realized that their best interest lay in the development of the whole country rather than in the immediate reduction in price of some of their food commodities. I am quite satisfied to go before my constituents on the basis of supporting the development of the agricultural sections of British Columbia, knowing that the development of these sections will tend to benefit the city of Vancouver and other centres of population.
The hon. member for Red Deer pointed out in rather eloquent terms that this was a very reactionary war, that all wars were reactionary and this particularly so.


Michael Clark: I did not say that this war was particularly reactionary. I said this was the greatest war in history, and I said that generally war was reactionary.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That seems to me to be splitting hairs. The hon. gentleman said that war was reactionary and that this was the greatest war in history, and the inference is that this is the most reactionary war. But I would point my hon. friend to the action of the people of Manchester -the home of his idol, Richard Co'bden, a man whose memory I also revere and honour-who, the larger majority of them have already declared in favour of a policy of protection.


Michael Clark: Surely my hon. friend is not serious. He would not suggest that a majority of the Chamber of Commerce constitute a majority of the inhabitants of a place of three-quarters of a million people.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I presume that the
Chamber of Commerce represents the views of that great commercial city, which was the cradle of free trade, and has been its home at least, since 1841.
From that time until within the last six months they never uttered a word that could lead one to think that they were in the slightest degree departing from the

policy of free trade. They had weeks of debate on this subject, and a majority whicli threatened to be almost overwhelming declared in favour of the policy of protection. Just as sure as the sun will rise to-morrow, a policy of protection within the Empire is coming. I do not apologize for defending a measure of protection.' My right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition for fifteen years stood solidly by the policy of protection, and if he came into office to-morrow he would stand solidly by protection again. He dare not go before the country and say that he would not. The hon. member for Red Deer is consistent; so far as I know, he has always stood for free trade. I always admire a consistent man, but I certainly do not agree with the views of the hon. member for Red Deer. I do not think that any member on the other side of the House would go as far as he does in standing by free trade. Views similar to those which he entertains have now been abandoned by the people of Manchester, represented by the Chamber of Commerce, which has been the birthplace, the cradle, the home of free . trade.


Wilfrid Laurier: Is the Manchester attitude that of free trade within the Empire, or protection within the Empire?


Henry Herbert Stevens: They have changed
their whole ideas as to trade; they have abandoned free trade as it has been in England. I would tell the hon. member for Red Deer, the champion of free trade in this country, that to a large extent the preparedness of Germany and her success in prosecuting this war as she has up to the present time have been the result of the policy of free trade in England.


Michael Clark: Does my hon. friend refer to Germany's preparedness on sea?


Henry Herbert Stevens: I do.


Michael Clark: She has scarcely been
been heard of on sea.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It was not the policy
that my hon. friend advocated in 1912 that made Great Britain prepared on sea. If it had not been for the bull-dog policy of Winston Churchill, in my estimation there would be no Canada to-day. My hon. friends opposite laugh, but I say further, that whatever be our judgment of Winston Churchill's action in connection with the Dardanelles or with other matters, we must admit that the policy which he followed for years before the outbreak of war made

it possible for Great Britain to control the seas as she does, and as she did within twenty-four hours after the outbreak of war.


The CHAIRMAN:: I feel it my duty to
direct the attention of the committee to the fact that we are discussing a proposed resolution to amend an item in the tariff. I would respectfully suggest that hon. members refrain from discussing the naval issue.	[DOT]


Henry Herbert Stevens: In justification of my
dealing with this subject, I may say that I was simply referring to a suggestion made by the hon. member for Red Deer. I say this to hon. gentlemen from the Prairie Provinces: give us a fair chance to market a larger quantity of our crop, and we will keep down the prices. That is a sound economic argument. If hon. gentlemen will bend their efforts towards encouraging the co-operation of these two branches of agricultural industry, they will do greater service to the country than they can do by fighting this proposed amendment to the tariff.


Mr. LOGGIE:: Will the hon. gentleman
tell the committee what he considers to be a fair average price to the British Columbia grower for average grade apples, delivered in Vancouver?


Henry Herbert Stevens: We do not handle our
apples just as they are handled in my hon. friend's part of the country. We put them up in boxes, and handle them in very carefully selected grades, under severe inspection laws and regulations. The usual grades on the market are the first, second, and third grades.


William Stewart Loggie: What price does the wholesale merchant pay for the average grade?


Henry Herbert Stevens: I should judge from 90 cents to $1.75 a box. Of course, I do not speak authoritatively.


William Stewart Loggie: The h6n. gentleman says
that this is a measure to save an industry. If that be the case, the consumer pays to that industry an amount sufficient to save it. For one barrel of apples that we import into Canada, we export four. I think it would be found that a very large proportion of the total. importation of 267,000 barrels was brought in between seasons, that is, in the months of May, June and July, from the southern portion of the United States. 1 cannot understand why the producers of British Columbia cannot compete, when they get or ought to get a reasonable price.

Apples imported into Canada during last year cost, at the point of production, $2.41 a barrel. Added to that would be duty at the rate of 40 cents a barrel; and the cost of transportation from the orchards to the wholesale dealer would make the average price over $3 per barrel. In view of this fact, I do not see why these who have orchards in suitable districts in this country cannot engage in successful competition. I suppose that the effect of this measure will be that the producer in British Columbia will endeavour to raise his price to the producing centres near by. I suppose the hon. gentleman is right in saying that the measure is designed to save an industry; but is it good economics for one portion of the community to help another portion of the community to live? There is such a thing as carrying a national policy to extremes. There is at present a duty of 40 cents a barrel on apples.


Mr. OLIVER:: Plus 7| per cent ad
valorem.


William Stewart Loggie: The total duty then would be 90 cents a barrel plus the 7| per cent special war duty, which is a very heavy rate on a commodity of this kind. It hardly seems businesslike to tax the consuming community to that extent. Why is it done? Simply to enable the producing sections of Canada to obtain a higher price for their apples than they would be able to secure if the consuming portions of the country were permitted to get them from an adjacent country at a lower cost. While we must have revenue, and it is not unreasonable to have incidental protection, it is very doubtful if we should impose a protective duty simply for the purpose of assisting any industry.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The hon. gentleman is
arguing against imposing a burden on one part of the community to help another. Would he favour the removal of the duty on coal, which would affect his own province?


William Stewart Loggie: Allow me to answer my
hon. friend in this way. The duty bn coal now is a very, very small percentage of the cost. When you impose a small duty, in view of the fact that we must have a revenue, it becomes a tariff for revenue purposes. But when you come down to the principle of protection,-and the hon. gentleman has admitted that this is a measure to save an industry and not a measure for revenue purposes-


Henry Herbert Stevens: The duty on coal is just about what we are asking on apples, ^between 25 per cent and 30 per cent.


William Erskine Knowles: Two blacks do not make a white.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Not at all.


William Stewart Loggie: I would be very glad to
see the duty on coal reduced to a reasonable rate. On such a commodity as apples, I certainly do not think that such a high rate of duty should be imposed as is now suggested. I believe that all commodities of this class, such as coal, in fact all natural products, ought to come into this country as far as possible free of duty. We might well say that coal is one of the products that should be brought into this country at the lowest possible rate of duty.


James McCrie Douglas: I wish to say a few words on the question of duty as it effects the Prairie Provinces. We in Alberta in particular, and it applies equally to the people of Saskatchewan, are forced to pay extremely high prices for our apples. Apples, it is generally recognized, are an essential article of food to-day, and anything that tends to increase the price naturally effects every one of the inhabitants of those provinces, because they all use apples. I have been dealing in apples for many years and know something about the prices. The statement made by hon. gentlemen opposite that the United States export their poor grades of apples-and that we in Alberta buy them is absolutely beside the truth, because in my experience' I never bought a box of apples that graded under No. 2 if I knew it; I have always bought No. 1 stock. We have to pay heavy transportation charges, and we cannot afford to pay freight on poor stuff, and that is the reason we cannot afford to buy apples from Ontario, although we have tried to do so year after year. I consider that we are an extremely patriotic people when in the face of the quality of fruit we have had to put up with from Ontario we still have faith to keep on trying year after year. We have been bitten so often that our patience is exhausted, and we are now forced to buy our fruit from the neighbouring states of Oregon and Washington.


Mr. LEMIEUX:: You should try Quebec. That is where the best apples are grown; right in Rouville county.


James McCrie Douglas: We are not all millionaires, and to buy apples from Quebec would entail a cost of nearly $8 a barrel, which is

prohibitive. We have to pay, year in and year out, an average of $2.25 a box for apples.


Robert Francis Green: Do you buy direct from the grower or from the jobber?


James McCrie Douglas: I have bought both ways. It is almost an impossibility to buy direct from the grower.


Robert Francis Green: That is what I thought.


James McCrie Douglas: The growers in British Columbia and the American growers are all marketing now through exchanges, which is an especially good way of marketing fruit. But to my mind the real crux of the situation, so far as British Columbia is concerned, is their very poor marketing facilities. The statement of the hon. member for Lambton was rather grotesque, when he said that the growers of British Columbia and the growers of Ontario were uniting to have the products of British Columbia and the products of Ontario marketed by the grain growers of the three prairie provinces. The farmers might supply their own wants, I can quite conceive that, by buying direct from the exchanges in British Columbia, or in Ontario.


Mr. WEBSTER:: They are doing that
now.


James McCrie Douglas: But that does not affect the price of apples to any appreciable extent. We are still paying $6.75 to $7 a barrel in the prairie provinces. If, in the face of these exorbitant prices, this Government puts on an extra tariff of 50 cents a barrel to that extent it will add to our burdens, while, at the same time, the grower in British Columbia is not receiving a fair price for his apples. There is no question about that. He is getting, as hon. gentlemen opposite have stated, from 22 cents to 80 cents. According to the statement of the Minister of Finance, 80 cents is the average price paid for apples to the British Columbia grower, and that is a very high estimate, because the hon. member for Kootenay says that the price was 22 cents in 1914. I have a telegram from a prominent fruit grower in Salmon arm, who states that in 1914 the price to the grower
was 22 cents a box.
*


Robert Francis Green: That refers to apples on ' the trees, before they are touched.


James McCrie Douglas: Yes; it may be the price before they are picked, but in 1915, his price was 80 cents a box picked. As a

matter of fact, I know that the farmer gets no more than 80 cents a box, and sometimes as low as 60 cents a box, when he takes his fruit, not from the tree, but into the exchange. The contention, therefore, that that price is for apples hanging on the tree is not very well founded. With a price of that kind, and a tariff of 30 cents, per box, the hon. member for Vancouver is not quite consistent when he says that they are quite willing to submit to a duty of 25 per cent, because, with apples costing around 60 cents a box, to produce or sell and1 with a tax of 30 cents, the grower would have more than 25 per cent protection. I have figured it out that the tariff at the present time, under the present growing conditions, represents very close to 40 per cent protection. If we could be certain that the producer in British Columbia would derive the benefit from this taxation, and that we, the consumers, would not have to pay any more, I am sure the people of the Prairie Provinces would be patriotic enough to purchase their fruit from British 'Columbia. But we have had experience in the past that does not hear out that contention. I claim that under the present proposed tariff we would not enjoy the benefit which has been suggested by the hon. gentlemen from British Columbia, and the consumers in the Prairie Provinces would be forced to pay, practically the whole of this enhanced duty. I want to warn the Minister of Finance of the effect it may have. To-day the farmers' organizations in the western provinces are looking so seriously on this question of increased taxation that they have passed a resolution pledging themselves to be patriotic to the Dominion of Canada by buying their-farm machinery in the United States, and paying the duty, so that the treasury of Canada will be enhanced, instead of paying the manufacturers of Eastern Canada an enhanced p'rice, which goes directly into then pockets, and not into the treasury of Canada. Be very careful lest the same condition arise in connection with the fruit industry.
M. J. G. TURRIFF (Assiniboia): After the discussion we have had this afternoon, the Ministpr of Finance would be well advised if he withdrew this resolution. I am very much of the opinion that if it was not the intention of the Minister of Finance to ufe this for the political advantage of the party in British Columbia, it certainly was the intention of some others. As I under-

stand the matter, the bulk of the apples grown and shipped from British Columbia are from the Kootenay country, the southern portion of British Columbia, and naturally it would be very much to the advantage of my hon. friend the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Burrell), who, we all regret, is not in his seat. I have no doubt that this duty was proposed largely in the interest, and at the request of, the Minister of Agriculture. We have heard a request from my hon. friend who represents Vancouver, for reciprocity between the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia. He pointed out, or some one else did, that large delegations came from British Columbia and asked that this duty be put on apples. The Minister of Finance lent a very ready ear to that demand for raising the duties, but when a much stronger delegation came from the Prairie Provinces, representing one hundred times the interest that exists in the applegrowing districts of British Columbia, and asked that duties be taken off, the Minister of Finance turned his deaf ear towards them.


Mr. GRAHAM:: Both ears were deaf.


John Gillanders Turriff: Yes, both ears were deaf on that occasion. If my hon. friends from British Columbia want to develop the apple industry, why do they not follow the example of Alberta and Saskatchewan. When the farmers in these provinces wanted to develop the cheese-making and buttermaking industries, what did they do? They did not come to Ottawa and ask for extra duties to be put on. They appointed men, and paid them, to take charge of cheese factories and creameries on behalf of the farmers' organizations, and these establishments were run by the Government for two, or three, or four years. When they had been fairly well established, and were turning out good butter and good cheese, the Governments pulled out altogether; the farmers then ran the creameries and the butter factories themselves, and to-day they form a very important industry in those provinces. -	<


John Webster: Is it not the fact that the butter makers in Alberta and Saskatchewan are protected by a tariff of 4 cents per pound?


John Gillanders Turriff: My hon. friend is perfectly right, but will he point to a single instance where the farmers of these provinces asked for it? The farmers of the Western Prairie Provinces are not asking for higher duties; they are asking to have the duties taken off. They are prepared
to face any competition on the face of the earth in connection with the products they have to sell. If my hon. friends from British Columbia want to put the apple industry on a proper basis, let them go to their Provincial Government and ask them to take action along the lines of that taken by the Governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan in connection with butter and cheese. Do you think you are going to develop a national spirit in the Dominion of Canada when you set one province practically against another, or when you attempt to do so? My hon. friend from Lambton (Mr. Armstrong) tried to lead this House to believe that the farmers' organizations of the Prairie Provinces and the apple growers of British Columbia were getting together, and that the farmers' organizations of the prairies were going to distribute British Columbia apples. My hon. friend is very, very much mistaken if he holds that out as the view of the western prairie farmers. The Minister of Finance is treading on mighty dangerous ground when he keeps putting one burden after another on the prairie farmers. Let me read what has taken place within the last few days in this very connection. I read from the Manitoba Free Press of Wednesday, March 8:
Increased duty on applies protested. Canadian Council of Agriculture passes strong resolution-Officers elected.
At the annual meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture yesterday, the following resolution was passed unanimously:
I" Whereas, at the request of the British Columbia fruit growers, the duty on apples has been raised from 40c. to 90c. per barrel; whereas; this is an enormously high duty-approximating 100 per cent ad valorem of the cost of production of apples in .Canada; and whereas, the evident purpose of the imposition of this duty is to force the prairie consumer to pay a higher price for apples; therefore, be it resolved that this the Canadian Council of Agriculture, in meeting assembled declare this to be an unrighteous attempt to exploit the prairie farmer for the benefit of British Columbia fruit land speculators, fruit growers, and middlemen, and we advise the farmers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, that if this ^becomes law and they are to be taxed in this manner, they pay these taxes into the federal treasury by purchasing imported apples rather than pay the same duty together with profit thereon to British Columbia land speculators, fruit growers and middlemen."
The following officers were elected: J. A. Maharg, Moosejaw, president; R. W. Woods.
- Carstairs, first vice-president; president U.F.A., Ontario, second vice-president; and R. McKenzie, secretary.
Each member of the council reported a growing bitterness because of the gradual but continuous burden of tariff taxation imposed on them for special privilege without any corresponding relief, and which does not go into revenue.

Then it gives a list of those who were *present. I commend it to the Minister of Finance and my hon. friends who represents the apple growing districts in British Columbia. Just as sure as the sun will rise to-morrow, if this becomes law the British Columbia apple grower will sell fewer boxes of apples in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba than he is selling at the present time. The apple growers have increased their output 400 per cent in the last four years.	Is that not going fast
enough? Yet, in face of that they come here and demand legislation that puts an added burden on the backs of the people of the prairie provinces. If this were only a money matter I would not take up one minute of the time of the House in discussing it. The money is important in a way, it will amount to $200,000 or $300,000 a year, hut the most important part of it is the underlying principle that has actuated the Minister of Finance in putting this duty upon apples. We know what has taken place in the last few days in British Columbia, and I am sure it was for the purpose of helping his friends there that the minister proposed this tariff to Parliament. The hon. member for Vancouver spoke about the small tax this would be and he said that the people he represents are in favour of developing the hinterland of British Columbia. A few years ago I was in Vancouver and I looked around the fruit stalls there to see what the British Columbia fruit was like. I spoke to the fruit dealers and they told me they did not 'buy very much fruit from the Okanagan Valley. The apples I saw there were principally American apples.
Mr. STEVlENS: How many years ago was that?


John Gillanders Turriff: Three years ago.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is only in the last three or four years that Okanagan Valley apples have been produced in really large and staple market quantities.


John Gillanders Turriff: That may be perfectly right. I was last there three years ago and conditions may have changed very much since then but they told me when I spoke about the consumption of British Columbia apples in Vancouver and Victoria that freight rates were such that they could not buy them.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That has been adjusted since.


John Gillanders Turriff: They said they could
bring in apples from the United States, pay the freight and duty and get them for less than the Okanagan Valley apples cost. My hon. friend also spoke about the quality of the apples. I want to tell him, as was pointed out by my hon. friend from Strath-cona that the poor grades of apples do not come in when our buyers know it, because they do not order poor grades. One reason why complaints have been made in the past about British Columbia apples is that they were not in many cases of the finest quality. They are a fine looking apple, but it is a new industry in that country and the apple growers there have not got to the stage of being able to produce the best apples. They are not producing as good apples as they can produce and as they will produce later on. The reason so many American^ apples are bought in our part of the country is that for the same money they can get a better apple than they can get from British Columbia. They are getting a better and a cheaper apple, and that is what is going to govern all through the piece. Our people like any other people will buy the apples that they can buy best and cheapest.
The Minister of Finance, in this matter, is undertaking to legislate especially for a very small number of people, because from a statement put before the House it appears that there were about 30,000 acres of land planted with apple trees and only a moderate number of these trees are bearing. Are the people of the whole Dominion to be punished to help the men who are growing apples on let us say 10,000 acres? The hon. member for South Oxford said that it was a shame to see so many American apples sold in Toronto, but no doubt these apples came in at a season when they were not getting Canadian apples. Why should millions of people in Canada, living in the cities and who do not grow apples, be forced to pay a higher price for apples in order to give a little more to land speculators or fruit growers in British Columbia? Is that fair, ip that reasonable, is that a national policy in any sense of the word, is it right to benefit a few, a very few, at the expense of the many? It seems to me that if that is the idea of this National Policy the time has about come when there should be a revision of ideas in connection with that policy. To my mind, the way to help the British Columbia apple grower is to make his conditions as nearly right as possible and leave the tariff out altogether.

It was a very favoured argument of hon. gentlemen on the Government side for many years prior to the reciprocity agreement, that we were ready to bring down our duties if the Americans would only do the same thing. What has taken place? At the reciprocity election, as I may call it, there was a certain duty on apples. Since then that duty has been materially reduced by the- American Government and to-day, if my information is correct, and if not I am sure my hon. friend's experts will, through the minister, set me right, the duty on apples going into the United States is 10 cents a barrel. The people of Canada were saying to the Government of the United States for many years :	If you will
reduce your duties we will reduce ours. The United States reduced their duty on apples to 10 cents a barrel three years ago, two years prior to the 6th of October last, and this Government now comes forward and says:	We are going to put the rate
on apples up to 90 cents a barrel. Ninety cents a barrel on apples is practically 100 per cent ad valorem. I venture to say that the farmers of Canada from the Atlantic to ' the Pacific do not get more than 90 cents a barrel for all the apples they sell at their farms. My hon. friend the Minister of Finance in order to benefit a small section of the country is forcing every man, woman, and child in the Dominion who eat apples to pay 100 per cent duty on the apples they consume. I leave it to you, Mr. Speaker,
I leave it to the members of the House to say whether that is a fair proposition, whether it is a reasonable proposition, whether it is a law that should be put on the statute-books. But apart altogether from the prairie consumers, why should dwellers in the large cities be compelled to pay a large increased price for apples? During many months of the year we import apples from the United States, and if this measure passes we shall have to pay the extra duty.
At six o'clock the House resumed and then took recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock, and then went into committee.


John Gillanders Turriff: I have a few words to say in the hope that the Minister of Finance will withdraw this particular clause. I do not say that my hope is very lively, but, knowing how fair-minded he is, I think that hope should be well grounded. It has been stated that it costs $1.08 a box to grow' apples in
British Columbia. That is at the rate of $3.24 a barrel. That is a very high price, and if it costs that much to grow apples in British Columbia, it would appear to me that they are not growing them as cheaply as they might; and if that is the case it is not fair that a few apple growers should be helped to maintain an over-expensive system of growing apples at the expense of the consumers generally, especially the consumers of the Prairie Provinces. There is no doubt that there has been improvement in Britisli Columbia apple culture, and in the handling of the crop. It strikes me that if our apple-growing friends in British Columbia would go on with this good work and arrange for the proper distribution of their crop, as well as the proper packing and shipping of it, instead of coming here and asking for more protection, it would be much better. If I believed that this extra duty would really benefit the apple growers of British Columbia, or even that they would get a reasonable, share of it, I would not be so strongly opposed to it. But I do not believe that the actual grower is going to get very much benefit out of this duty.
There is another ground on which we of the Prairie Provinces have reason to complain. Some hon. members, including, I think, the hon. member for Vancouver (Mr. Stevens), pointed out that the apple growers of the states adjoining British Columbia ship their poor quality apples into the Prairie Provinces-that 85 percent of the	apples shipped into
western Canada were of No. 3 grade. If we in the West have to eat the poor grades of apples from Oregon, what is to be our position under this duty? This will enable the British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia apple growers to ship their good qualities of apples to foreign markets, and then, behind this prohibitive duty of 100 per cent, compel us to buy the poor grades.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Will the hon. gentleman permit me to correct him? What I said was that 85 per cent of the apples imported into the Northwest were of C grade, which is equal to our No. 2. I did not say they were a poor grade. On the contrary, they are a very good grade of apples.


John Gillanders Turriff: I accept the correction; but the argument remains the same. If a duty of practically 100 per cent is put upon apples, the growers vrill be able to ship those of good quality to outside markets and force the poor qualities on the people of the West who are compelled to import apples either from British Columbia, On-

tario, or the United' States. We in that country are willing to pay and we do pay, a good price for apples, but we want to be in a position to command apples of good quality; we do not want the ' Government practically to take us by the throat and tel] us that we must use the' refuse apples while the good ones are shipped elsewhere.
As I have stated before, for many of the people in my own constituency this will represent a duty of almost 300 per cent. Carloads and carloads of apples come into the stations south of the boundary line, in art ordinary year when there is a good crop, and my constituents can go and buy apples at 25 cents a bushel shovelled in bulk out of the car. A man will buy 30 bushels at 25 cents, or 75 cents a barrel. Under this clause, he will be called upon for a duty of 90 cents on these apples which cost 75 cents. This is an inducement to the people of that country to smuggle. Why should the Government go out of their way to make it almost imperative for my constituents to do smuggling?
In view of the facts that we have been brought out in this discussion, I would ask the Minister of Finance to withdraw this proposal. If he will noit withdraw it on economic grounds, will he not withdraw it on national grounds? It was pointed out by my hon. friend from Strathcona (Mr. Douglas) that the farmers' organizations of the prairies, at their annual meetings or at meetings specially called, had passed a resolution calling on their members not to buy Canadian farm implements, but to buy American farm implements and let the money go into the treasury for the purposes of the war instead of going into the pockets of the manufacturers. We have the same farmers' organizations this week protesting against this duty on apples and calling on their members to buy American apples and pay the money into the treasury. I want to tell the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that they are bringing on a most unsatisfactory state of feeling in Canada between the East and the West, and are deliberately driving the wedge horrie. The action of the Government in this pin-pricking policy-because it does not amount to anything in dollars-i? calculated to have far-reaching effects. On these grounds I hold that the Minister of Finance should leave this apple business alone. The duty is high enough, surely. It was stated here this afternoon that in British Columbia a few years ago the farmers got 22 cents a box for their apples. As the duty was 39

cents a barrel, this meant a duty of 13 *cents a box. Was not that duty high enough? And even when apples are worth 50 or 60 cents a box, is not a duty of 13 cents a box-with the additional duty of 7J per cent ad valorem that was added last year-quite enough?
I do not know what the apple growers of British Columbia can be thinking about when they want to have a duty of 100 per cent. It is all right for them, perhaps, but what about the people who have to pay it- not only the people of the Prairie Provinces, but the consumers and workers in every village, town and city in this broad Dominion? Again I ask my hon. friend the Minister of Finance, in the interest of this country and in the interest of the national policy which he is so fond of advocating, to withdraw this item. I am sure that if he does that he will be doing something good for Canada. Throughout the West a feeling of dissatisfaction is growing strongly and rapidly with regard to the efforts that are being made to tax unfairly the people of that country.	*
Mr. JOHN A. BEST (Dufferin):	After
hearing this matter discussed for three hours this afternoon, I have come to the conclusion that many hon. gentlemen in this House think that in the western provinces is to be found the only place of any importance in the Dominion of Canada. It is estimated that it costs this country $6 for every minute that the House is in session; therefore the people have to pay over $1,100 for the time which has been lost in discussing this apple question. We are here to legislate the greatest good for the greatest number. I want to tell hon. gentlemen from the West, who take up two-thirds of the time of this House, that we [DOT] have one city in the province of Ontario that has as great, or almost as great, a population as any one of the three western provinces.


Michael Clark: Who is building it?


John Best: I refer to the city of Toronto. Hon. gentlemen have not heard a protest in this matter from the city of Toronto, where the people have to buy all the apples they consume.


John Gillanders Turriff: Do I understand my hon. friend to say that the city of Toronto has a greater population than the three prairie
provinces?


John Best: Pretty nearly as large a population as any of the three prairie provinces.


John Gillanders Turriff: The hon. gentleman had better look up the census returns.


John Best: The fruit-growing industry of the province of British Columbia is a new industry, and it wants protection. We have got to aid all new industries. I may point out that more apples are produced in the province of Ontario and in other parts of the Dominion than are produced in the province of British Columbia. Do we want to see the orchards in the province of Ontario that border on the United States go to waste? In the county in which I live hundreds, yes, thousands of barrels of apples rot under the trees simply because we cannot get a market for them. If the people in Western Canada were anxious to get these apples and were willing to pay the price, they would have them sent to the West. I think it was the hon. member for Strathcona (Mr. Douglas) who said this afternoon that he has paid as much as $6 or $7 a barrel for first-class apples. I may tell him that in the city of Ottawa I have paid $6 for a barrel of apples; as much as $7 has been paid in Toronto. I do not see why the people of the western provinces should find fault when they can get first-class apples at $6 and $7 a barrel. We must put on a duty to protect the people who are growing this kind of fruit all over the country. If the farmers of this country can not get protection, who ought to get it? It has been said by hon. gentlemen that the duty	on	apples will nowamount to $1 a barrel, an increase of 50	per	cent.	If they
are going to pay 50 cents a barrel extra for apples coming in here from the United States, I do not see how they would get much benefit from free wheat. Something was said about farm implements. I am one of those who were in favour of the legislation introduced by this Government permitting harvesting machinery to come into this country free of duty-a thing that had not been done during the fifteen years hon. gentlemen opposite were in office. With the exception of the 71 per cent duty that was put on since the war started, the farmers of Canada get their harvesting machinery free of duty, and the duty on other farm implements has been considerably reduced. Yet these free traders who sit opposite kept up the duty for fifteen years. I say that the Government have a right to protect the fruit growers in
British Columbia, in Ontario, and in the rest of Canada, and I believe that the people outside of these provinces are not finding fault with what they will have to pay for their apples.
Mr. GEO. E. MeCRANEY (Saskatoon): This increase of the duty on apples is intended purely as a protective measure. I understood from the Minister of Finance that it was not for revenue purposes, so that there is no doubt that it is for .the purpose of helping the apple trade throughout the country. Some items of revenue tariff have incidental protection; some items of protective tariff have incidental revenue; but this is one of the cases in which we have a purely protective tariff. If any change is to be effected in the way of revenue, I think the minister will say that it is to get less rather than more revenue. As it has been represented that the apple industry in the country is in a bad way. I am quite willing to admit the advisability of doing something for it. I have been accustomed, as member of a municipal community, to vote for loans, even for bonuses, to manufacturers in my own town, and I am willing to consider the giving of aid to an industry which claims that it is in a suffering condition. I think, however, that before such a proposal is put before us, the minister should make a definite statement-which he has not done-as to how manV fruit growers in the country are affected by the adverse conditions; as to the extent of their losses, and the amount necessary to effect a remedy; also as to whether the condition is permanent or only temporary. We should know, further, what is to become of any vote that we make-because we make a vote as assuredly by decreeing that the people shall pay the amount directly to the fruit grower by way of duty, as we do by voting a stated sum of money out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
If we are going to benefit the fruit growers I think we should be assured that all the money that we vote is going to the fruit growers-that if there is any information as to how much of it will go to the transportation companies and how much to the commission men and other middle men, that information should be placed before us. But nothing of that kind has been mentioned. Some figures have been furnished to the House. The hon. member for Edmonton (Mr. Oliver) stated the other day that there were some 30,000 acres planted in apples in British Columbia, and
/

that the value of the apple orchards in that province was in the neighbourhood of $20,000,000; but, as for any information from the Minister of Finance or from this Government, we are only told that representations have been made by the apple growers of British Columbia to this Government. The statement of the minister was wholly in regard to the apple situation in British Columbia, and it only came out incidentally during the discussion that any other part of the country was interested in the item. We from the West had occasion a year ago to come to Parliament because there had been a great drouth in Western Canada, and we were able to tell the minister with some approximation, how many acres would have to be seeded and how many bushels of grain would have to be purchased. We arranged for the security that was to be given, and the minister knew pretty well when he came down to the House how much it would be necessary to vote, and he knew also the terms on which the money would be repaid and the rate of interest. We have been given by the minister no idea whatever what revenue this increase of the tariff is expected to produce.
Something was said by the Solicitor General the other day to the effect that the amount paid out per family by way of the increased price of apples owing to this' increase of duty would be from 75 cents to $1 a year. We have been treating that as a very small amount, and when we are talking about war contracts and the great War Budget, perhaps 75 cents or $1 a year per family sinks into insignificance. Perhaps it would be well for us to get back to a frame of mind where we could consider figures that are within the range of our imagination. I confess that millions of money conveys very little idea to me; but I can understand 75 cents or $1 a year to so many families in this country. We have no recent information as to the number of families in Canada; but the Year Book of 1914 shows from the census of 1911 that the number is 1,517,742, and to which, of course, would have to be added the natural increase in the five years which have since elapsed. This would bring the number of families somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1,750,000. If the estimate of the Solicitor General is correct, it means that the
1,750,000	families, approximately, are paying something over $1,500,000." On the amount of investment in British Columbia

orchards, which is $20,000,000, if our object was to protect that industry and that industry alone, we would be giving a bonus equal to 7-J- per cent. I should like to get - some figures from the Minister of Finance to show whether it would not be better to buy annuities for those people and charge them up against the consolidated fund and be done with the matter, than to put on a tax the extent or benefit of which we cannot estimate. We cannot be entirely sure that the money is not diverted to some other purpose than that which the Government intends. I am quite prepared also to give a vote to the apple growers of British Columbia or of all Canada of so much apiece, if it is thought desirable to do that, and we must have the proper information, in order to help them out of this trouble.
But if there has ever been .anything to bring us to the point of view that any assistance must be given by way of bonus and not. by a protective tariff, it is the very legislation which the minister brings before this House. We have on one side of the Bocky mountains farmers who ask that the duty be taken off a product similar to theirs, wheat coming into Canada, so that they may get a free market. Perhaps the time may come, I hope it will, when the farmers of British Columbia will ask that the United States market be thrown open to them-that their apples will be so much better than those to the south that they can go into that market and command it. But, if I know this Government aright, the Government would say: "Oh, no, there are the barrel men; we have to let them sell their barrels to the apple men, and we cannot permit you to make any arrangement which would enable you to place your apples in the American market." That is what they are doing in the case of wheat. They put it up to us in the West that the flour men must be looked after, and therefore no advantage can be given to the producers of wheat in the way of a wider market. Perhaps my effort to show that a bonus is much better than a protective tariff is foolishness in the eyes of the financiers on the Government side. At any rate, it is the faith in which I have been brought up, and the older I grow the better I like it. I shall be very glad indeed, as instances of this sort come up, if we can discuss them from the bonus standpoint, so that we shall know whom we are helping and to what extent.
I hope that the minister will withdraw this item, which proposes to put $1,500,000 of taxation upon our people, and to hand a

portion of it to the growers of apples. If he wants to help the growers, he should bring in some other scheme which will appeal more strongly to the sensible public, and of the working of which they will have more knowledge.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: I feel satisfied that the hon. member for Saskatoon (Mr. McCraney) was not present at the previous debate on the Budget or he would not have made some of the remarks he has just offered. During that debate a great many statistics bearing on this question were placed before the House, giving some idea of the extent of the apple industry. " Figures were given showing that over $100,000,000 is invested in the apple industry in the provinces' of Canada outside of one or two western provinces. I am sure we were all delighted to hear that even in the province in which my hon. friend- (Mr. McCraney) lives, it is possible to develop a great fruit area. We all hope that in years to come a great fruit industry will be developed there. But I am sure the hon. gentleman is willing to live and let live, and when he appreciates the enormous amount of money that is invested in the apple growing industry, and'the fact that the province of British Columbia purchases from Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba grain, flour, hay, butter and other products of the farms to the extent of over $12,000,000 per annum, he will recognize that the province of British Columbia has some claim to consideration.
There is another statement which I think is worthy of consideration. While the province of Nova ISCotia exports several hundred thousand barrels of apples out of a total export of 1,200,000 barrels per annum she will find herself up against transportation difficulties next fall. 'They are beginning to worry about that in Nova Scotia now. My hon. friend from Halifax (Mr. A. K. Maclean) would do well to revise the statement he made in connection with this Budget, and withdraw a portion of it, because, if he will read the latest number of the Co-operative News, the official organ of the fruit growers of Nova Scotia, dated March 2, he will find this statement:
We regret to have noticed among our or-ehardists a pessimistic feeling about the future of our industry should the war continue. We are told that America has not interfered with us on the European market because she had a small crop, but that the reverse is likely to be the case next year. Do not let this matter
worry you, for there are two facts that will very effectually handicap American competition. The first is the increased duty on American apples entering Canada. This has at the instance of the British Columbia fruit growers been increased to 90 cents per barrel.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Is that a Nova Scotia journal?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: Yes, this is the Cooperative News, published in Halifax, N.S.. the hon. gentleman's own riding. Surely he must know of it. Sixty-five per cent of the fruit growers of the province of Nova Scotia not only recognize it, but assist in editing it. It goes on to say:
While the duty will be of material assistance to British Columbia, it wi'l a'so be of immense benefit to Nova Scotia, as far as her western trade is concerned, because it will effectually stop the dumping of the American " C " grade apple on the prairie market and will thus give us an opportunity to do considerably more business with the West than heretofore,	[DOT]


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What does the
hon. gentleman think of that statement himself?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: What can any one
take out of that statement but that the Nova Scotia fruit growers are delighted, and that they heartily support the proposition now before the House, whereas my hon. friend said they were not interested and would not support this proposition?


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I think the duty is absolutely valueless to apple producers in Nova Scotia, and I think that everybody of any reputation engaged in the business in that province will say so. My hon. friend told us a moment ago that Nova Scotia exports 1,200,000 barrels.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: The bulk of them
go from Nova Scotia.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: It is a fact that Canada's total imports were about 260,000 barrels. If the duty had taken effect last year, it would not have furnished a market for those 1,200,000 barrels that my hon. friend speaks of.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: That may be all
true.	.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Is it not true?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: It would be necessary to find a market for the surplus apples that-are produced in Nova Scotia, but last year and the year before there were between
300,000	and 400,000 barrels imported.
]790


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: No, 269,000 last year. My hon. friend is arguing that British Columbia should secure the Prairie Provinces as its market. He argued that way a moment ago; now he is arguing that Nova Scotia also should secure the Prairie Provinces as its market.


George Perry Graham: And the Ontario men say the same thing.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: We cannot all get there.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: It would be folly to ' expect that Nova Scotia would ship enormous quantities of fruit to the West when she is able to export them abroad; but, in consequence of the shortage of tonnage today, it is impossible for her to export her apples at a satisfactory price. I would rather take the word of the fruit growers of Nova Scotia in their official organ than that of the hon. gentleman in regard to the benefits that are to be derived from the increased tariff.
Another statement which I wish to make is this: That one-half of the Fruit Growers' Association in the province of Ontario have already submitted an offer to the Grain Growers' Association and the farmers' associations in the western provinces to supply fruit at very little increase on the actual cost in the East. That offer is made to the Grain Growers' Association and its distributing agencies in the western provinces in order to assist them in obtaining the Ontario fruit at a lower cost than ever before. There is no doubt in my mind that they will be in a position to offer fruit to the western provinces at a cost less than that of years gone by.


George Perry Graham: How will that help the British Columbia fruit growers?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: If the ex-Minister oi Railways were in British Columbia to-day, what would he find? He would find Mr. Mussleman, the Secretary-Treasurer of the Grain Growers' Association, interviewing the different fruit growers' associations in the province with the object of entering into just such an arrangement as I have mentioned with the British Columbia fruit growers, so that fruit from British Columbia and Ontario may be brought into the western provinces and distributed by the Grain Growers Association and other farmers organizations at a less cost to the consumer than hitherto. Hon. gentlemen opposite should remember that the United States fruit trust have absolute control of the distribution and sale

of fruit in those western provinces and I can not emphasize too strongly that they have been bleeding the people there. Naturally they are using every exertion to discourage the importation of fruit from British Columbia and Ontario into those provinces.
Mr MoCRANEY: Does the hon. gentleman say that the fruit trust of the United States is bleeding the western provinces?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: I say it, and I say it advisedly.
Mr. MoCRANEY: How do you work that out?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: If the hon. member had been here a few days ago when this matter was up for discussion, he would have heard the statement that over 500,000 acres of apple orchards have been planted in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, that these trees are fast coming into bearing, and that even how the United States growers are producing apples in such quantities that they are unable to make a reasonable profit.
Mr. MoCRANEY: How is that bleeding us?


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: The hon. gentleman will find that it is the United States fruit trust wh,o handle the fruit in his own town, and dictate the price to the distributors.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: He will find that
every car of that fruit is sent under special instructions, and that special prices must ,be paid before it is delivered.


John Gillanders Turriff: Will the hon. gentleman allow me to correct him? ,


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: I do not need to be corrected on that score; I know what I am talking about.


John Gillanders Turriff: No, you do not.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: I know what I am talking about, and if the hon. gentleman wants further proof of it I can furnish him with all that is necessary to reasonably satisfy even the hon. member for Assini-boia. I have made the statement and I am prepared to stand by it: that the fruit trust, whose head office is in Winnipeg, have control of the distribution of fruit in almost all of the cities, towns and villages

in the western provinces. If the hon. member for Saskatoon will read Hansard he will find plenty of food for thought on this subject.


George Ewan McCraney: The statement has been made to-day that the apples which are brought in from the United States are second and third grades. If that is so then we in the West who eat them can say that they compare very favourably with the first grades from British Columbia. I am not going to reflect upon British Columbia apples, but I do say that the men who reflect on the British Columbia apples are those who assert that the apples we get from the United States are of poor grade, because if they are then the first grade apples in the United States must be dandies. The British Columbia and the Western States apples are well packed and, even in quality as we get them in the boxes, and that is'why British Columbia and United States fruit has a preference over Ontario fruit in *the western provinces. I say it with regret, because I come from an apple growing district in Ontario, that Ontario apples are not even, that the best apples are at the top, and that sometimes there are some pretty mean apples in the middle. Perhaps, if we have a few more elections like that which took place in Peel we will in future get better apples from Ontario. In my hotel here in Ottawa the other day I was eating an apple and I asked the waiter if he could find out where it came from, because it was such a good one, and he told me it was a British Columbia apple. Why is it that in this very province British Columbia is supplying the hotels with apples?


Robert Francis Green: Because the apples are better.


George Ewan McCraney: Of course they are; that is right.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: I want to say in answer to the hon. gentleman that the most careful inspection of Ontario apples is going on every year during the packing season, and the man in charge of the fruit association is giving his very best attention to that work. I am, therefore, sure that it would not be possible for inferior fruit to be shipped to the Northwest. At any rate, I would hope not.


John Gillanders Turriff: I wish to correct the
statement of the hon. member [DOT].Mr. Ar.n-strong) that the apple trade of the Prairie Provinces is in the hands of the United
States fruit trust. I say that is absolutely not the fact. In my own constituency there are merchants in the different towns who bring in fruit by the carload, who send to Ontario, British Columbia, and the United States and get prices, and they buy whenever they can get the right quality of fruit to the best advantage, and they sell it where they like, and they have no connection with, and are under no control of any United States fruit trust.
Mr. J. E.ARMSTRONG: The hon. gentleman has made the statement that they have not brought in apples from the United States, but merely from Ontario and British Columbia; that is a very different question.


William Thomas White: Listening to the observations of hon. gentlemen opposite, 1 have been thinking that there has been much cry and little wool. It seems to me we have had a good deal of talk about a very small matter. In order that hon. gentlemen opposite, who have taken part in the debate, and who appear to be really concerned about the imposition of this tax, may sleep to-night, I would like to assure them that even on the basis of the present importation, assuming that the extra duty will have to be paid, which will not be the case, in the very next item which we shall consider, namely, the item in reference to crude petroleum in which the duty on heavy distillates used largely by the farmers in the West is reduced from two and a half to one-half of a cent per gallon, the reduction more than equals, as far as the farmers of the West are concerned, the extra duty upon apples.


George Ewan McCraney: You had better not
mix crude oil and apples.


William Thomas White: You cannot mix them, but I mention that in order to relieve the consciences of hon. gentlemen opposite. While there is a small increase on apples, really inconsequential as far as money payment is concerned, there is a reduction in the next item that will more than equalize it.


John Gillanders Turriff: I would like to ask the minister if there is not also an increase in one of the oil items. While it may not apply so much to the farmers, and while it applies particularly to the railways, if you increase the cost of fuel oil to the railways, you increase the cost tcv the farmer.


William Thomas White: Perhaps my hon. friend would raise that point on the next

item. I do not believe myself that the Railway Commission would,, on that argument, order an increase in freight rates.


George Ewan McCraney: Perhaps the minister would tell us to what extent crude oil is used in agriculture and in other industries.


William Thomas White: When we reach the next item.


Frank Oliver: When the minister was discussing this increase in the duty on apples in his Budget speech he gave the impression that it was a provision especially for the apple-growing industry of British Columbia, but from the course of the discussion to-day I should incline to the view' that instead of this item being specially intended to improve the position of the apple grower in British Columbia, it was simply following out the general line of policy which has been pursued by this Government since it took office, in the way of placing more completely in the 9 p.m. hands of their friends the middlemen, an important article of the food of the people. As has been Observed by speakers to-d,ay, especially on the other side of the House, this duty applies to the whole of Canada. It affects not only the people of the Prairie Provinces as consumers, but the people of all Canada as consumers, and, according to our friends who come .from apple-growing districts in . other provinces, it affects not only the apple growers of British Columbia, but the apple growers of the whole Dominion. Therefore we are bound to consider this legislation not as a local, but as a national question. Speaking of this increased duty in his Budget speech, the minister said:
We regard this duty as indispensably necessary for the preservation of the apple-growing industry of Canada, and particularly that of British Columbia.
So far as British Columbia is concerned, the apple-growing industry has grown from
200.000	_ barrels four years ago to nearly
500.000	barrels last year.


Robert Francis Green: What w'as the cause of that increase?


Frank Oliver: It does not concern me what the cause was: the fact is what I am concerned with. And the fact is that the apple-growing industry grew' from 200,000 barrels four years ago to nearly 800,000 barrels last year. That is not disputed. We also find 'that the country at large ex-

ported over 1,000,000 barrels of apples, and imported only a little over a quarter of a million. Therefore, whether we take it in regard to the industry throughout Canada as a whole, or in regard to the industry as respects British Columbia alone, of all industries in Canada the apple industry seems to stand* least in need of special tariff legislation or special tariff consideration. Canada is an apple exporter, and if the course of trade were permitted to go in the natural channels and in the natural way, the price to the producer would be ruled by the export price; and, that being the case, the producer would not expect to benefit, and would not benefit by the imposition of an extra duty. The only purpO'Se of an increase in duty where the article which it is proposed to protect is an article of export rather than of import is for the purpose of enabling those who are in control of the trade to take advantage of fictitious or artificial prices at the expense of both the producer and the consumer. Just as in the Canadian milling industry the miller buys his wheat from the Canadian producer at a less price than his competitor in the United States, and sells his finished product to the Canadian consumer at a higher price, so, by this legislation it is proposed to put those who are in control of the apple trade in. Canada in the position of paying what they please to the producer, and charging what they please to the consumer.
This has been spoken of as a trifling matter. -But at this time, when the country is compelled to assume ever-increasing and already enormous financial obligations, when the necessity of increasing the efficient production of the people by lightening their burdens is the first duty of the Government of this country, it is no trifling matter to bring forward legislation for which there is no reason or excuse except that it is for the purpose of enabling those engaged in the apple trade still more thoroughly to control both the buying and the selling markets of this country. This is a matter affecting not only the prairies of the West, but every citizen of this Dominion. This legislation affects the citizens of Toronto, and Ottawa, and Montreal, surrounded as they are by apple orchards, just as much as it affects the citizens of the prairies of the West, because its purpose is to put the supply of his requirements under the control of an organization that .will take more out of him than it can take to-day.

It is said the consumer will not have to ipay more. But it is also said, on this side of itlhe House, .and it cannot be denied, that if the consumer does not have to pay more there is no possible purpose in the legislation. Fo,r the producer certainly is not going to get more unless either the consumer pays more or there is some readjustment of the conditions intervening between the producer and the consumer, and this latter is neither contemplated nor suggested by this legislation. At the present time, in the province of Alberta, the retail price of apples is approximately $2.25 for a box containing 40 pounds of apples. That is equal to $6.75 a barrel. Anybody must admit that that is a good stiff price for apples, and everybody will say that if the producer got his fair share out of that price he would be doing very well and would not need to ask for beneficial legislation.	The apple orchards of British
Columbia are situated within between four hundred and five hundred miles of the city of Edmonton. At Salmon Arm, on the main line of the Canadian Pacific railway, during the past season, the apple growers received 80 cents a, box for their apples-for which apples we in Edmonton paid $2.25 a box. The year before, these growers received 22 cents a box-and we in Edmonton paid the same, $2.25. At Penticton, last year, the growers of apples got an average of 85 cents a box, ajxd the year before the average was 40 cents a box. Now, Penticton is a hundred miles further from Edmonton than Salmon Arm, and it is not on the main line, and yet the grower at Penticton received a better price than the grower at Salmon Arm.


Robert Francis Green: I think there is a misunderstanding there. The price in one case is for the apples on the tree, and in the other case for the apples boxed and ready for shipment.


Frank Oliver: Did the price of 22 cents a box include the box?


Robert Francis Green: No.


Frank Oliver: Did the price of 80 cents a box include the box?


Robert Francis Green: Yes.


Frank Oliver: Then, we will have to take the opinion of the man in the business, which information came by wire yesterday in reply to an inquiry. His telegram reads : 11-3
Salmon Arm fruit ranchers selling through Okanagan United growers, received for No. 1 apples, 1915, 80 cents per box net. In 1914, 22 cents per box, net.
If the box is included in one case it is included in the other, and if it is excluded in one it is excluded in both. The hon. gentleman can have it either way he likes, but he cannot have it one way in the one case and the other way in the other case. I have a telegram from Penticton, dated yesterday, which says:
Apples per box, No. 1, 85 cents last season ; year before, 40 cents.
The point I make is that the price we pay at Edmonton, the consumer's price does not govern the price received by the producer, as matters stand to-day. And how it is expected that the addition of 30 cents a barrel to the protective duty is going to better that condition, I cannot undei-stand, when no provision is made for securing any change. If to-day the transportation companies and distributing agencies take the difference between 80 cents and $2.25, are they not going to take the difference if the duty is increased by 30 cents a barrel? There is no manner of doubt that the transportation companies and distributing agencies to-day take an undue toll from the producer and from the consumer. They do that under a protective advantage of approximately 60 cents a barrel. Will the Minister of Finance or the hon. member for Kootenay (Mr. Green) tell us that they are not going to pursue 'the same course if their advantage is increased by 30 cents a barrel? Will the hon. member for Kootenay or anybody else tell us how the addition to the duty of 30 cents a barrel will make them less likely to take advantage of the producer at one end and of the consumer at the other?


Robert Francis Green: It is going to make this difference, that the producer will have the market to himself, and will be able to make better market arrangements. He will get into direct communication, and will deal direct with the consumer.


Frank Oliver: If he can do that with an additional duty of 10 cents a box-for that is what this additional duty will amount to -why cannot he do it without that addition?


Henry Herbert Stevens: For the simple reason that at any time the growers in the Northwestern States may flood the market with consignment cars at prices as low as 30 cents a box. Hundreds of carloads are



shipped in in that way. So that the grower in the Okanagan valley has no.t got and cannot establish a market to which he oan regularly ship his fruit, because he does not know what, moment he will get a wire shutting off his shipments. Nobody can do business under those conditions.


Frank Oliver: I can assure my hon. friend that if these remarkably cheap apples came to Edmonton, no Edmonton citizen ever got the benefit of them. We were paying the standard prices for apples, wherever they came from.


Robert Francis Green: Perhaps they came from the American fruit trust.


Frank Oliver: The American fruit trust is the Canadian fruit trust, as far as we are concerned; it is absolutely one and the same thing. The fruit trust that is .squeezing the Okanagan grower and the Edmonton buyer at 60 cents a barrel protection can squeeze them just as much at 90 cents a barrel protection, and certainly it will do so. Is it not a fact that the year before last fruit was rotting on the ground in the Okanagan?


Robert Francis Green: It is.


Frank Oliver: Is it not a fact that we were paying $2.25 for apples at that very time? Yet the Minister of Finance proposes to put 30 cents a barrel additional advantage in the hands of the American fruit trust. They cannot do worse to the grower in the Okanagan than let his fruit rot on the ground, but they can take 30 cents a barrel more out of us; that is the only purpose that will be served.


Joseph Elijah Armstrong: If the producers in British Columbia and Ontario, through their Fruit Growers Associations, make definite arrangements with the farmers' distributing agencies in- the western provinces, is there any possibility of any such condition arising in the western provinces as that to which my horn, friend has referred?


Frank Oliver: I do not know what may occur as between the apple growers and the farmers' associations. I only know what is occurring now, and what has occurred in the past. The increase of the duty by 30 cents a barrel is not going substantially to change the conditions except to the advantage of the trust. My hon. friend says that if this duty is increased the apple grower of British Columbia will be able to market his own fruit in the West. I do not know whether he will or not, but, accord-

ing to the figures, it seems to me that he is perfectly able to do that now. We will allow him 80 cents a box for his apples; it is not claimed that he gets any more.


Robert Francis Green: It costs $1.08 a box to produce them.


Frank Oliver: That is not our fault. If it costs him so much to produce them, the only answer is that he is not growing apples in the right place. The apples exported from Canada, over a million barrels, are valued at $2.40 a barrel, or 80 cents a box. If the British Columbia apple grower cannot produce apples at the price at which the Nova Scotia apple growers produce for export, then he is working under wrong conditions and has no right to expect the people of the rest of Canada to maintain him in an industry the location of which he has not chosen wisely. As to my hon. friend's suggestion that apples cannot be produced in British Columbia at less than $1.08 a box, I should be out of order if I characterized it as absurd; certainly it is not such as coincides with my view. If there is any place on the North American continent where apples can be grown more cheaply than in the district of Salmon Arm, I have never seen it. There is no reason why the British Columbia apple grower cannot compete on equal terms with the grower of apples in Washington and Oregon.


Henry Herbert Stevens: They are all going broke in Washington and Oregon.


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend says they are all going broke. Well, they are selling apples, and that is what the consumer of Canada wants.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is the receivers who are selling the apples.


Frank Oliver: 
Robert Francis Green: The cost of package and packing is 48 cents a box.


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend will have to accept my protest against his figures. They are just as far out of the way as his assertion in regard to the cost of growth.


Robert Francis Green: My figures are those of the Fruit Growers' Association of British Columbia, and of Prof. Lewis, an expert of the United States Government.


Frank Oliver: If it costs the British Columbia grower so much to grow his apples and so much to pack them, he ought to be in some other business; he has no right to ask the people of Canada to maintain him in a losing industry. As a matter of fact, we are to-day paying 65 cents a box for apples in excess of a fair price, allowing everybody everything to which he is entitled. If that is not a sufficient margin to enable the Fruit Growers' Association of British Columbia to find their own markets on the prairies, it simply argues that they have not enterprise, or that they are under control and management that dpes them absolutely no credit. They have no right to ask this Parliament to tax the whole population of Canada in order that the fruit combine and the transportation interests, not the fruit grower, shall get more money.
I have given the transportation rate at 38 cents a box. That is 38 cents for carrying 50 pounds of freight for 400 miles. Wheat is carried from Winnipeg to Port Arthur over 400 miles, at 6 cents a bushel: that is, 10 cents per cwt. It costs 7i times as much to bring the same weight of apples from Salmon Arm to Edmonton as it costs to take a bushel of wheat from Winnipeg to Port Arthur, the same distance. Now, admitting that apples should pay a higher rate than wheat, we do not admit that 74 times as much is a reasonable rate. The fact is that the apple industry has been exploited from start to finish, just as the mining industry and many others have been. The land speculator has expected to make a fortune out of the price of land, the transportation companies have expected to make huge profits out of the transport of freight, and then the fruit dealer comes in and expects, and realizes his expectation, to make more than the transportation company or the U3J
fruit grower out of the unfortunate consumer. My friend the Minister of Finance proposes to legislate to add 30 cents a barrel to that tariff condition which enables this robbery to be perpetrated, not by the unfortunate man who is growing fruit in British Columbia, but by the fruit dealer and the transportation companies who handle the transportation and distribution of the fruit.
When the Minister of Finance mentioned this proposed fruit duty in his Budget speech, he spoke of the fruit industry of British Columbia. It is true that there is a fruit industry of British Columbia, but it is in a very small part of British Columbia; and the greater part of that province is in exactly the same condition as the Prairie West in regard to the production of fruit. The miners of Fernie in the constituency of my hon. friend (Mr. Green) the constituents of my hon. friend from Vancouver (Mr. Stevens), the constituents of my hon. friend for Victoria (Mr. Barnard), and those of my hon. friend from Comox-Atlin (Mr. Clements) will all pay this extra price. My hon. friend who represents the miners of Nanaimo (Mr. Shepherd) will have to explain to those miners why he has been instrumental in adding to their cost of living, which already has climbed so high, in the name of the fruit growers of British Columbia-who will not receive the benefit of the duty that is being imposed. This duty is just as much for the benefit of the railway companies and the fruit combine as the duty on flour is a duty on behalf of the railway companies and the milling industry and no't on behalf of the farmer who produces the wheat. It is in the last degree objectionable that the attempt should be made to show that one section of the country must live at the cost of all the rest. If that is a fact, it is an unfortunate condition. But it is not a fact and never was a fact. The fruit-growing area of British Columbia is well adapted to the production of fruit. It is well situated in relation to markets, and if it is not to-day prosperous it is not because of a lack of natural conditions for production, or location in relation to advantageous markets, but it is because it is in the same position as the grain-growing industry of the West in relation to the milling industry. It is in the hands of a combine which exercises the advantage that the tariff gives it to levy an unjust toll upon the consumer on the one hand and upon the producer on the other, and every addition that is made.

to the tariff increases the power of the combine and its ability to increase its unjust toll.
267a. Crude petroleum in Its natural state, *7900 specific gravity or heavier at 60 degrees temperature, when imported by oil refiners to be refined in their own factories-British preferential tariff, 5 per cent; intermediate tariff, 7J per cent; general tariff, 7J per cent.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Would the minister give rather a comprehensive explanation of the effect of this change in the tariff, perhaps discussing both items at the same time. There is a reduction in the tariff, which some hon. gentlemen are at a loss to understand as expressed in the amendment.


William Thomas White: 
Mr. NESBITT:: That means crude oil?


William Thomas White: Fuel oil is the ordinary term.


George Ewan McCraney: Would the minister say just what he means by fuel oil?


William Thomas White: I understand that after the various processes of refining there is a residue. That residue is known as fuel oil. It is used as fuel. It is in competition with coal. It is used in locomotives and steamboats and by manufacturers, as fuel, and it is used in some provinces for ordinary heating purposes. It is fuel, it is the residue.


George Ewan McCraney: Does the item include
gasolene?


William Thomas White: No. I will tell my hon. friend later what it does not include. The best way to describe the article we are dealing with now, because this oil schedule is quite technical and complicated, is to describe it as fuel oil.


George Ewan McCraney: There are certain traction engines which are advertised through-

out the West as being oil fuel engines; is it the oil for these engines to which the minister refers?


William Thomas White: 
Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Do I understand that the oil used as power by steamships and engines was previous to this tariff subject to the war tax only?


William Thomas White: That is right.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What is the difference between the half cent per gallon and what now comes under item 267?


William Thomas White: It is an increase from about one-third of a cent to one-half cent.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: 
William Thomas White: Yes. I may say that by way of revenue we expect to get about $500,000 from this tax.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What is the quantity usually imported?


William Thomas White: It is difficult to separate the items, to which we have been referring, from other items that are included in the trade and commerce returns.
I would estimate the quantity imported at about 100,000,000 gallons.


Edward Walter Nesbitt: The minister is now speaking of oil for locomotives?


William Thomas White: Fuel oil for locomotives and steamships, and for heating purposes; in fact, it is fuel just as coal is.
I understand it is also used in the manufacture of munitions.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What is the cost of that oil to railway and steamship companies?


William Thomas White: From 2 to 4 cents a gallon.


George Perry Graham: Do I understand that the duty on gasolene is not changed?


William Thomas White: There is no change as regards gasolene.


George Perry Graham: I understand from what the Solicitor General said that there was a change.
Sir' THOMAS WHITE: There have been several mis-statements in the course of the debate. I did not hear what the Solicitor General said, but, for example an hon. gentleman on the other side thought the change referred to illuminating oil, and! he made a rather touching domestic reference to the child being deprived of light when going to bed. The child will be able to go to bed as usual, because there is no increase in regard to illuminating oil. Not only will there be additional revenue, but I believe the change will be of some material advantage to the great coal industry in British Columbia.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: In what way?


William Thomas White: My hon. friend from Halifax knows how Nova Scotia treasures the duty upon coal, and how important that is regarded by all good Nova Scotians. So this duty will, I think, have an important effect upon the coal mining industry of British Columbia.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Those who have hitherto consumed oil, must cease using as much in the future, if any benefit is to accrue to the coal industry. The minister informed us that this particular oil fuel
was consumed by the railways and steamships on the Pacific coast. Which of these two will be consumers of coal hereafter- the railways, or the steamships, or both?


William Thomas White: I think that it is not probable that the steamship companies will discontinue the use of fuel oil; nor do I think that the railways are likely to discontinue its use. But for the future, I think the tendency will be to use coal more than fuel oil; that is to say, there will be more of an equality, so to speak, in the use of coal and fuel oil. I may say that, of late years, the use of coal in the province of British Columbia, to take that province as an example, has steadily declined, while the certificates show, on the other hand, that the use of fuel oil has been on the increase. The figures are rather startling.


Edward Walter Nesbitt: Some people say that the coal of British Columbia is not satisfactory for steamship purposes. Does the minister know whether that is so or not? Why has there been a general increase in the use of fuel oil?


William Thomas White: I think the reason is that they have been able to get the fuel oil so cheaply. It has come in free of duty. My hon. friend knows that in the province of Ontario there has frequently been an agitation by the manufacturers for free coal, but, as I said to my hon. 'friend from Halifax, Nova Scotia is very much interested in the duty on coal. Fuel oil has been on the free list, and the use of it has greatly increased in British Columbia. On the other hand, as I have stated, the amount of coal used has steadily declined, and coal mining is one of the most important industries of British Columbia. The production of coal on Vancouver Island since 1911 has been:
Gross tons.
1911		 1,443,000
1912		 1,250,000
1913		 730,000
1914		 814,000
1915		 786,000
So that in 1915 the production of coal on Vancouver Island was about half that of 1911.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: Would the minister give the statistics as to the importation of fuel oil during these years?


William Thomas White: The difficulty is in separating them, but I will give some figures which will throw light upon it.


George Perry Graham: While the deputy is finding those figures, I might just say that the duty will be quite a heavy tax on the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Pacific, while it will add revenue to the Canadian Northern men who own the coal mines.


William Thomas White: I am told,
although I do not know, that the Canadian Northern men do not own the coal mines.


George Perry Graham: I am afraid you were told wrongly.


William Thomas White: However, I may say to my hon. friend that in the last few years we have received a great many memorials from the coal mining districts of British Columbia, boards of trade, and others who are very much interested in this subject. The amount which will be paid by the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk Pacific with respect to this duty will not be large for such corporations. There is another consideration I mentioned at the outset that weighed in a very considerable measure with me, and that is that we shall derive a revenue of $500,000 from this tax.


Mr. MACDONALD:: From what particular source?


William Thomas White: That raises a very fine economic question as to who pays the duty. Some would argue that the oil producers in the United States would pay the duty, and others would argue that the railway and steamships companies, and some other interests in British Columbia, would pay it.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: What do you think about it?


William Thomas White: That would raise another question, such as the question as to who pays for the German navy. But we would get very far afield if we took up that question.


George Perry Graham: Through what medium
does the minister expect to get it?


William Thomas White: The customs
office.


George Perry Graham: From whom does the
customs office expect to get it?


William Thomas White: That is the same question again.


George Perry Graham: It is interesting to consider the effect it will have on different interests. I do not imagine the Grand Trunk Pacific wrill be specially hit by the new war

tax, but the Canadian Pacific will be. I do not imagine the Canadian Northern will be struck very, hard by it.


William Thomas White: Do you not think they will have 7 per cent on capital?


George Perry Graham: I am inclined to think
not at the present time. But the two other companies that are using oil for fuel in the mountains, for the protection of the forests and possibly for their own benefit, will have to pay an extra price for their oil, or else they will have to buy coal from the Canadian Northern or the interests that own the Canadian Northern. I am not sure it will work out just as the minister expects. If the revenue is to be derived it will be derived from one interest, the Canadian Pacific, which is being pretty heavily taxed for war purposes anyway on account of its position financially. If a revenue is not to be derived from this company it may be because they do not use oil, that they will do away with their oil consumers and use the coal that their competitors have to sell. I am not sure that my hon. friend is not working out a plant for one interest as against another.


William Thomas White: I am quite sure I am not working a plant and that I expect to get $500,000 of revenue.
Mr. GRAHAM Then they will not be burning coal; they will stick to oil.


William Thomas White: I think the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern, if they use oil, can well afford to pay this tax. At all events, I shall not lose any sleep about their ability to pay this or any other tax.


John Gillanders Turriff: Will the minister tell us to what extent a ton of oil compares with a ton of steam coal for power purposes on a locomotive?


William Thomas White: I do not believe we have that information. It is a question that we could hardly anticipate. In answer to the inquiry of the hon. member for Pictou as to the imports, I find that
196,000,000 gallons of petroleum, crude fuel and gas oils were imported last year and about one-half of that would be fuel oil. In round numbers that would be 100,000,000 gallons as I stated.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I find in the Trade and Navigation Return for 1915 this item:
Crude petroleum, gas oils, other than napthha, benzine and gasoline, lighter than '8235 but not less than -775 specific gravity at 60 degrees. .
. . 64,057 gallons.


IS, 1916
[Stage Direction]
The duty collected on this importation amounted to $960. If that is. correct my hon. friend is not going to get very much money out of it.
William Thomas White: My hon. friend is mistaken. The articles to which hp refers are not embraced in this item. It is item 267 that we are dealing with. There is a large consumption of fuel oil in Ontario in connection with the manufacture, among other things, of munitions.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: If the purpose oi this tariff change is to secure revenue, it, would be more favourably considered by the House than if it had another object. I think the minister should instruct the House as to whether this change is to he permanent or whether it is his intention to remit the taxation, and revert to the statu quo after the war, or the necessities as to increased revenue have passed. There are many disadvantages, from the standpoint of British Columbia even, in changing the tariff upon oil. The figures which the minister submitted to us about the coal industry would indicate a gradual falling off in coal production, but I assume that that corresponds to the general decline in business in British Columbia during the past few years. I would expect, although I cannot establish the statement by any authority, that all lines of industry had declined in that province during the past few years and accordingly coal production has fallen off. With the resumption of British Columbia's former prosperity, which I hope will come some time in the near future, we probably will see the coal production back to the old figures. But this particular product, fuel oil, we are informed, is used by steamships and railways and it will be interesting to inquire why they adopt that method of power in preference to coal.
As regards the Pacific coast, I understand that most of the tonnage entering Victoria and Vancouver use fuel oil; at least, a great many of the steamers do, which is not true of'shipping on the Atlantic coast. Fuel oil is a more efficient and cheaper power producer than coal. Most of the freighters built in Great Britain during the last few years have been equipped for fuel oil in preference to coal, and we shall see more of that in the future than in the past. Now, if shipping on the Pacific coast uses oil as power because of its greater efficiency and lesser cost, it is not desirable from the standpoint of the ports of British
Columbia to compel shipping to use the more expensive power. I understand that a delegation from British Columbia has been, or is coming, to Ottawa to urge the Government to assist in providing tonnage for the Pacific coast, which they are sorely in need of at the present time. If that is true, it is not sound business to increase the operating costs of ships by competing them to use a power which is more costly than fuel oil, and also less desirable from many other standpoints. I do not think it will be conferring any advantage upon British Columbia to compel them to use coal instead of fuel oil on their ships and railways. The hon. member for South Renfrew (Mr. Graham) has stated, and it has been stated on a great many occasions in the past, that at . least the Canadian Pacific railway have been using fuel oil in the mountain region for some years, mainly to prevent fires, which of course
10 p.m. are more likely to occur when coal is used. I understand that they made this change largely at the suggestion of the governmental authorities oi British Columbia, owing to the frequent fires caused by locomotives, and which resulted in great losses to the lumbering industry in that province. If, a few years ago, public opinion in British Columbia compelled the Canadian Pacific railway to adopt fuel oil as its power, I do not think it is fair to do anything which might compel the road to revert to coal, as that would increase its operating costs.
We have had a lengthy discussion this afternoon and evening about apples, and the representatives of British Columbia have claimed the Prairie Provinces as their natural market. They startled the House, and the country I imagine, with the figures they gave off the cost _pf production of apples. To those figures there is to be added the cost of freight. Now, if this change in the tariff means an addition to the power cost of railways, I suppose that in some way or other this extra cost will be charged against the traffic, and just as likely as not apples will have to bear its share along with the other commodities carried by the railway. So in that respect you would be conferring no advantage on British Columbia, even if this change in the tariff indirfectly caused a little increase in the consumption of British Columbia coal. If the minister is proposing this change in the tariff for the purpose of revenue only, I can see that he has established a case, although I do not say that it
.1800

cannot be well answered. But if he proposes this change upon other grounds I think it is not reasonably supported, by all the facts and circumstances, and I do not think the change he proposes is justified or justifiable. I think we should have a declaration from the minister now, whether or not he proposes this as a revenue measure. It does look as if it were intended as a permanent measure. If so, we on this side of the House should he inclined to look at it from an altogether different angle from what we should if it were just a temporary measure, and for revenue purposes only.


William Thomas White: As I have already stated we should derive a revenue of about $500,000 from this change. That is a substantial amount and it' is very desirable that we should obtain it at this time. T also stated that the change would confer an incidental protection which I think is much needed by the coal mining industry of British Columbia. As to making statements whether a tariff change is permanent or otherwise, I think it exceedingly inexpedient for a Finance Minister to make any such statement, and I believe it has never been done. The tariff of this country is revised and changed from time to time, and when changes are made they are announced in the Budget in the usual way. This 1 suggested change will give revenue and will, I believe, be of benefit to the coal mining industry of British Columbia. It seems to me that the two reasons I have given are pretty good grounds for this change and I believe it will meet with public approval.
Mr F. H. SHEPHERD (Nanaimo). T'.r hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean) evidently fears that the proposed tax of half a cent a gallon on fuel oil will be a hardship and have disastrous results. I may tell my hon. friend from Halifax that the imposition of the half-a-eent duty does pot bring coal on a parity with fuel oil as it existed previous to the invasion of fuel oil in the province in the year 1910. I will endeavour to treat this-matter as impartially as I can. Naturally I represent the industry of my constituency, namely, the coal mining industry of Vancouver Island. The invasion of fuel oil has very seriously affected the industry of Western British Columbia and incidentally of Eastern British Columbia; so much so that if the importation of fuel oil continues on the same scale as for the last five years, the very

extensive coal mining industry of Vancouver Island will be seriously threatened. If the committee will bear with me I will give some figures which will throw considerable light on the matter and supply information which from the questions that have been asked I presume hon. gentle-paen have not at hand. The production of coal in 1910 was 99 per cent of' the total fuel production of the province. In 1914 it had decreased to 76 per cent, or in other words the industry had been invaded to the extent of a quarter of the total.
Going back to the year 1905, the committee will observe, there was a gradual increase in the output of coal in British Columbia, an increase, I may state, which has gone on continuously since the very inception of the industry at a uniform ratio, and which continued until the year 1910, when the invasion of fuel oil commenced. If hon. members will form a mental profile of the figures I shall give, they will have a graphic idea of what the invasion of fuel oil is doing to the coal mining of British Columbia. The following figures show the output of coal in tonnage and value for the years given:
Tons.
Year.	(2,240 lb.) Value.
1905	
1,384,312	$4,152,9361906	
1,517,303	4,531,9091907	
1,800,067	6,300,2351908	
1,677,849.	5,827 4721909	
2,006,476	7,022,6661910	
2,800,046	9,800,1611911	
2,193,062	7,675,7171912	
2,628,804	9,200,8141913	
2,137 483	7,481,1901914	'	
1,810,967	6,338,3851915	
1,546,664	5,313,240
The amount for 1915 is the estimate of the provincial minerologist, as the returns were not available up to the time of the issue of the bulletin. These figures show a decrease of over 1,200,000 tons in 1915 as compared with 1910. The corresponding importations of fuel oil during these years, except, of course, from 1905 to 1909, inclusive, were as follows:
Year.	Gallons.
1910		,. . . *	5,941,746
1911		 7,299,727
1912		 20,454,309
1913		 79,233,053
1914		 110,547,653


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Wh6 were the principal consumers of this oil?


Mr. SHEPHERD:: The railway companies, the steamboat companies plying in the coasting service, manufacturers, and, to some extent, for the heating of large buildings. Probably the chief consumer is the

Canadian Pacific railway, which my hon. friend quoted in his remarks. I shall refer to that later. To further show how seriously the invasion of fuel oil has affected the coal industry, I will give a statement of the number of persons employed in the several years:
Number directly
Year.	employed.
1910		 7.158
1911		 6,873
1912		 7,130
1913		 6,443
1914		 5,732
That is, the employees in 1914 were fewer than those in 1910 by more than 2,000. The coal displaced by oil in these several years is as follows:
Tons.
1910		 32,011
1911		 46,347
1912		 129,869
1913		 503,067
1914		  701,889
The value of the coal displaced in 1914 was over $2,000,000.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: Does that mean the loss of production in the mines, or the actually reduced consumption on the vessels and in .other places?


Francis Henry Shepherd: That is the equivalent of the oil imported during that year. Of course, oil is duty free and pays no royalty. The coal mines of British Columbia paid the following royalties in the years cited:
Year.	Royalty.
1910		 $315,220
1911		 230,479
1912		 285,734
1913		 258 736
1914		 218,216
The percentage of coal to the total fuel produced in each of these years is as follows:
Per cent.
1910		 99
1911		 98
1912		 95
1913		 83
1914		 75
Now, various theories have been put forth as to why the invasion of fuel oil occurred. One of the favorite reasons is that it was largely due to the labour troubles .on Vancouver Island. But that is not the case. It is true that the labour troubles in Vancouver Island may have accelerated the use of fuel oil, but by no means is it responsible for the enormous invasion that has occurred. The labour troubles commenced in September, 1912, but one company only was affected until May, 1913,
when the strike spread to the other mines. But shortly afterwards the mines where the strike started were working to almost their full capacity, and at no time was the whole of the output cut off. The importation of fuel oil rose from over
7,000,000 gallons in 1911 to 20,000,000 gallons in 1912. The labour troubles did not commence until the year was well advanced.; therefore, the output of coal was not seriously curtailed. The true reason for the increased importation was the rapid extension of oil-burning installations, which was in keeping with plans, conceived and determined upon long before the labour troubles of Vancouver island commenced. This is especially true of railway and transportation companies. The operators asked not that the proposed duty should be prohibitive, but that it should be sufficient to place the coal mining industry upon something like a parity with its competitors. It is not intended or supposed that the large consumers, or, for that matter, any of the consumers who have gone to the expense of making oil-burning installations, will return to the use of coal. But we do believe that the imposition of the half cent per gallon duty on fuel oil will act as a deterrent upon those who otherwise would have entered upon the use of fuel oil.


Frank Oliver: What is the cost of the imported fuel oil?


Francis Henry Shepherd: The cost of imported fuel oil delivered at the wharf in Vancouver is about two cents per gallon. It requires about three and a half barrels of oil to equal one ton of Vancouver island coal. The cost, therefore, of the oil equivalent to one ton of Vancouver island coal would be approximately $2.80. The cost of the two fuels, one on the wharf at Vancouver, and the other at the pit mouth in Nanaimo, would be $2.80 for the oil and approximately $4 for the coal. Of course, there is the gulf to cross, and that would add a little to the cost of the coal. The committee can readily see, therefore, the enormous advantage that accrues to the railway companies and other users of oil by reason of the cheaper cost. It is no severe impost upon the users of fuel oil to pay one-half cent per gallon, as they were deriving an enormous advantage by the use of fuel oil which they did not enjoy previous to its importation. Had the duty imposed been such as to place the cost of fuel to these users above the original cost of coal, there might, as has been suggested by the hon. member for

Halifax, have been some injustice; but such is not the case. I have reason to believe, of course, that the large users would naturally object even to the imposition of this one-half cent a gallon. When you come to consider that the duty not only is a source of revenue at a time when it is much needed, but also will tend to preserve one of the most important industries in British Columbia; and when you consider how generously these transportation companies have been treated by the Government, you would naturally think that they would accept graciously this increase of duty, especially as it means the preservation of an industry of which they themselves are beneficiaries. Large coal mining centres must contribute to the railway companies by freight, transportation of passengers and otherwise, and it would seem not to he business policy to endeavour by selfish sentiment, if I may use the expression, to prevent an industry like the coal mining industry in British Columbia from enjoying full prosperity. Speaking of the generous manner in which the railway companies have been treated, I believe it is a fact that in British Columbia double freight and passenger rates are charged. There is reason for this. British Columbia is a country of physical and geographical difficulties. The cost of the railway in the first instance was great; the cost of operating is great. In this connection I may say that the railway companies operating from the state of Washington, south of the boundary line, who have railways built across the alluvia] flats of the Fraser river, do the very same thing. The moment they cross the international boundary they charge double rates. Their engines are fired with fuel oil, which is probably put on in the state of Washington; these engines come into the province and return to the United States in due course. They will not pay this half-cent duty, although the double charges are imposed. I commend this to the consideration of the minister, because this may be a matter which he has not covered in his proposal to collect a half-cent duty on all imported fuel oil. Of course, you could not collect a tax upon fuel for motive power on board a steamer making a trip into a port and going out again. Still, the fact remains that these engines run into British Columbia with fuel oil and will continue to do so.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Supposing a tariff is imposed against oil used in the locomotive, as the hon. member suggests should be 
done. Would the railway company continue to use oil and pay the duty, or would they change engines at a divisional point near the international boundary line?


Francis Henry Shepherd: I am not pressing the matter; the revenue would be so small that it need not be considered.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: But it would not serve the interests of my hon. friend's constituents at all if they continued to pay the duty. It would do the coal mines of British Columbia no good unless the people of the province ceased using oil for power. To accomplish the purpose suggested by my hon. friend, the railways will have to change engines at the divisional point nearest the international boundary line, and consume coal from that point on to Vancouver.


Francis Henry Shepherd: They might change
engines. My object in giving that little illustration is that these railway companies are enjoying the enormous advantages granted to the Canadian Pacific railway for building through rugged countries, while they have built their railroads through comparatively easy country.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I understand all that. But my hon. friend evidently desires the imposition of this duty for a specific purpose, and he is quite frank about it. That purpose is to lessen the importation of fuel oil and to increase the (production of provincially produced coal. At the same time he reminds the committee that this duty is not prohibitive. If it is not at all prohibitive, the result will be that we may get a revenue, but oil will be consumed just as usual and there will be no increase in the consumption of coal, and no one will benefit unless it be the Minister of Finance.


Francis Henry Shepherd: I am afraid my hon. friend has a short memory. I shall read again:
The operators do not ask that the proposed duty should be prohibitive, blit the duty should be sufficient to place the coal mining Industry upon something like a parity with its competitors.
And I followed those remarks by stating that it would not be a prohibitive duty but would be a deterrent duty that would deter those who had otherwise contemplated going into the use of fuel oil, and would therefore -arrest the enormous invasion at this point, and therein the coal miners would be benefited.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: All who are now in will stay in, and no more will come in.


Francis Henry Shepherd: Precisely. And the invasion will be arrested at this point. It may be argued that the coal mines are protected by the existing duty. This was referred to by an hon. member this afternoon. But the import duty on coal is really not protective, for this reason, that the coals from the state of Washington belong to a comparatively recent geological period. It is an inferior class of coal, and there is no demand for it in British Columbia. It is only in cases like strikes or labour troubles that the coal from the state of Washington is shipped, into British Columbia, and, of course, it then pays a duty of 53 cents a ton. I claim that the 53 cents is of no real practical benefit or protection to the coal mining industry of the island. There is another thing which probably the imposition of this duty will accomplish, and I commend this to the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Michael Clark). This duty should give an impetus to exploration for oil fields in the western provinces, and if it accomplished that I think it would be worth while imposing the duty. I understand that the prospects of oil in Alberta and the northwestern provinces are very good, indeed, and I have no doubt the day will come when oil will be found in sufficient quantities to be commercially valuable, and, perhaps, the question of duties then might be reconsidered. If oil was produced in Canada in sufficient quantities, so that we would have no fear of the invasion of foreign fuel oil, then the question of this duty could be reconsidered-But I do maintain that a duty on fuel oil at this particular time should give a stimulus to oil exploration in the northwestern provinces. In conclusion, I submit that this duty will fill the two-fold purpose of giving a good revenue to the Government at a time when it is needed, aqd protecting an industry which, should ihe invasion of fuel oil continue in the same ratio as it has in the past, would be threatened with extinction.
Hon. GEO. P. GRAHAM: This seems to be a very hard country to govern, and the people seem to be very difficult people to please. Most of the day one section of the country has been asking for a duty to encourage the production of apples, while another section of Canada has been opposing it because it will tend to make the apples too dear. We find to-night the Minister of Finance and my hon. friend who has just sat down approaching this subject of a duty on fuel' oil from different angles altogether. Of course the Minister of Fin ance admitted casually that it might help the coal industry, but if it helps the coal business it will not help him, because the moment the coal takes the place of fuel oil, the revenue which the Minister of Finance is after ceases. Both of these objects cannot be attained except in the happy way the hon. member from Nanaimo suggests, that the Minister of Finance can have whatever revenue he can get from the present duties, but cannot get any more. There is a difference between Ontario and British Columbia. Only last week the province of Ontario paid over $8,000,000 for the purpose of getting cheap power, while British Columbia is asking for legislation to prevent the obtaining of cheap power. It is most difficult for legislators to know just what to do.


William Thomas White: Hear, hear.


George Perry Graham: The British Columbia
coal industry is a great industry. Any person who knows anything about it can sympathize fully with the position of the hon. member for Nanaimo. Once deprive that portion of the province of this industry and you injure it very materially. On the other hand, I think it is going to be absolutely impossible to suppress the more extensive use of oil as a fuel. It is admitted that it is cheaper. My hon. friend is asking the imposition of the duty; but fuel oil is so much cheaper that people are using it in place of coal. It is a serious situation so far as coal is concerned, but I am inclined to think that some other way out of the difficulty will have to be found because, to my mind, fuel oil is going to be used more and more. In this province electricity is becoming the chief motive power and under a provincial arrangement through the Hydro-Electric (Commission, this power is being distributed all over Ontario for the use of manufacturers, and is even being carried into the homes of the farmers and small consumers at very reasonable rates. This is necessary. The manufacturers of Ontario find it necessary in order to compete with the cheap power across the line, where coal is produced in abundance and where they have cheap electric power as well. If that be the case, no argument can be advanced in favour of increasing the cost of power to men engaged either in transportation or any other business requiring cheap power, if

we are to make Canada a country capable of producing in competition with other countries.
Even the small consumer of power in his own home, or on his farm, gets the advantage of this cheap power. I suppose my hon. friend from Nanaimo (Mr. Shepherd) knows that the Imperial Oil Company has recently established a plant in the West for the sole purpose of being close to their customers, and,- I presume, of supplying this fuel oil at an even cheaper price than it has been supplied at hitherto. I am told that the company expects to do that.


Francis Henry Shepherd: That is not the oil to which I refer. That was explained by the minister. The oil used on the prairies is heavy distillates. The Imperial Oil Company are not distributing fuel oil.


George Perry Graham: They may be distributing the refined article, but I should think they will distribute fuel oil as well when they get properly in motion. At least, I am told it 'is one of their objects, to bring that fuel closer to the market. It is a difficult problem. While I sympathize to the fullest extent with the wish of those who are rightly interested in the coal industry, I think they will have to be prepared in the future, and before very long, to see oil used as fuel to a very large extent. The Board of Railway Commissioners may insist that all the railway companies shall use oil as fuel. I am not sure, but I think recommendations have been made to them in the past with that object in view, in order to protect the forests of British Columbia from fire, which causes great havoc. Already two of the great transcontinental lines, the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk Pacific, are using oil as fuel. The Canadian Northern railway is not using oil as fuel because that company have some interest in extensive coal mines, and, of course, have their own coal.


Francis Henry Shepherd: I may assure my hon. friend that the Canadian Northern do not own the Canadian Collieries.


George Perry Graham: They own other coal deposits, if not the Canadian Collieries. At any rate, I know that several charters were got to enable them to run to their coal mines in British Columbia.


Robert Francis Green: The Canadian Northern Company, or rather Sir William Mackenzie, 
floated a company which took >ver the Dunsmuir colliery. That is the only mine in which, I think, they are interested in in British Columbia, and they are not interested' in that to anv great extent. That was a personal speculation of Sir William Mackenzie's, and he has turned it over to British investors, and has practically no interest in it now.


George Perry Graham: I was not criticising them it all; I was simply pointing out that the two railway companies which have no interest in coal mines use oil. and that if it is found to be beneficial the Board o( Rail-Aray Commissioners may make an order to the Canadian Northern to do the same thing. The two railway companies which are using oil are not acting on an order from the Railway Cbmmission. After all, I am inclined to think that this duty will not help the coal industry so much as it will help to get revenue for the Finance Minister. I sympathize with my hon. friend from Nanaimo, but I do not think it will have the effect of stopping the use of fuel oil, because I think that fuel oil will be cheaper in the years to come than it is now and that there will be better facilities for using it, and better means of getting it. It will be apt to become cheaper instead of dearer. Those who use it tell me that it is superior to coal as a fuel, for the purposes to which it is put. I am rather inclined to think that the Minister of Finance will get considerable revenue out of the transportation companies. It may be regrettable that the one transportation company, out of which he expects to get his war tax, is one which my hon. friend from Nanaimo says will contribute the greatest amount of revenue from this new tax.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: I want to congratulate the hon member from Nanaimo upon his perfect frankness, and upon the manner in which he has presented his case this evening. From the statements made by the hon. member it appears that this tax has been imposed at the request of the hon. member from Nanaimo, and probably of other gentlemen from his province. It also seems perfectly plain that it is proposed with the object of preventing the consumption of fuel oil, and, to that extent, of assisting or encouraging the consumption of coal. If that is the object, it means that the minister will not get revenue out of it so much as that the people who have

to use .power in British Columbia will pay a greater price for their fuel. If the people of British Columbia are satisfied with that arrangement, and if the transportation companies are satisfied with it, possibly no very great harm may accrue, because we can all appreciate the importance of keeping the coal mines in British Columbia going. But the difficulty I see is that people in other parts of the country, who are not so much interested in keeping the coal mines of British Columbia operating, are going to suffer as well. I think the Minister of Finance and the hon. member for Nanaimo ' will see the force of that argument. If you are going to make power expensive, you are going, just to that extent, to increase the expense of production, of business, of manufacture, and of transportation, and to affect practically every phase of industrial life in Canada. That is the principle involved, it seems to me; that is the almost vicious side of it.
My hon. friend from South Renfrew (Mr. Graham) referred to the province of Ontario. That province probably offers a ground of comparison to some extent, but it is not a good comparison, because in Ontario, unfortunately, they have no coal. But go further east, go down to the Maritime Provinces, where we have both coal and water-powers. What would be thought if the people of the Maritime Provinces and Quebec came to Parliament and asked that a heavy embargo be placed upon the production of water-power? Would you not say that either they were crazy or selfish, or that something was wrong with their mental operations? Yet I do not see any difference between that proposition and the proposition put forward by the hon. gentlemen from British Columbia, who frankly say: It is true we want to make power dearer, but we want to do so in order to help the coal mines of British Columbia. Go down, if you will, to the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, or to Eastern Quebec, where Nova Scotia and New Brunswick coal is used practically exclusively; if this Parliament were to say: We are going to put, a tax oil your horsepower or unit; your water-power is too cheap, so cheap that it is taking the place of coal, therefore we ought to do something in order to prevent you from using this cheap power and in order to develop the coal mines-I do not know what the people of British Columbia would say to a proposition of that kind, but I know what would happen down east. Any man who
made such a proposition would meet with a very warm reception.


Francis Henry Shepherd: Water-power is a home product, but fuel oil is not.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: It is partly, but I do not think that that helps my hon. friend much. The effect would be the same as on the coal industry. I do think that this is class legislation, that it is legislation intended evidently-indeed, the thing is admitted frankly-to help put a certain industry in one portion of Canada to the detriment of dozens and dozens of other industries in other portions of Canada. If my hon. friend feels like pressing it through, I presume it will go through, but I want to register my protest against the principle involved,. I believe the hon. member for Nanaimo knows a little more of what he is talking about than does the minister. I do not say that offensively, but I wish it to be understood as being complimentary' to the hon. member for Nanaimo. I believe the member for Nanaimo is right when he says that the result of this legislation will be an increased consumption of coal and a stoppage of the importation of fuel oil, with the result that we will have protection in its most vicious form, and the revenue will not be bene-fitted to any extent thereby. If this were put forward purely as a revenue producer at a time when the country needs revenue and we must have revenue from some source, we would all have to bury our principles and, our ideas upon many things. The Minister of Finance says this is a revenue measure, but if we are to take the evidence of the gentleman who knows all about it, we must come to the conclusion that this is not a revenue producer, but a protective policy pure and simple in order to boost the production of coal in British Columbia, and to make the cost of land and marine transportation, and the heating of houses, very much higher in Canada in the future than it has been in the past.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I would like to ask the hon. member for Nanaimo if fuel oil is used in the heating of houses in British Columbia to any extent, or is it confined, to the larger office buildings and hotels?


Francis Henry Shepherd: Just to the larger buildings, sky scrapers, and very few of them.


Frank Oliver: The impression is prevalent that the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Pacific are using oil in the moun-

tains as the result of the exercise of authority either by this Government directly, or by the Railway Commission. I would like . to ask the minister if there is any warrant for the assumption that they have not been free agents in the matter of the adoption of oil instead of coal burning locomotives?


William Thomas White: I made inquiry, and I was informed that there is no warrant for such an assertion. There appears to have been no order made on the subject either by the Government or by the Railway Commission.


Frank Oliver: Did my hon. friend's inquiries go far enough to find out whether such an order had been made by the Government of British Columbia? I understand that oil burning engines were adopted in the interest of forest protection and I find it hard to believe that both of these companies would introduce oil burning engines at great expense unless they were compelled to do so. Would my hon. friend tell the committee if the Government of British Columbia exercised that authority?


William Thomas White: I am told that no such authority was exercised by the Government of British Columbia, but a request [DOT] might have been made by the Forestry Branch of that province. I understand that no order has been made. It would appear to me, from the consideration I have given the matter, that the railway companies will continue to make use of fuel oil. It is true they will have to pay this additional duty upon it, but it would not appear to me that the amount which they would be called upon to pay is unreasonable, having regard to the fact that we are in need of revenue-


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: That is not the point.


William Thomas White: -and that this fuel oil has been on the free list. It is the point in so far as the question put to me by my hon. friend from Edmonton (Mr. Oliver) is concerned. Let me ask my hon. friend from Nova Scotia (Mr. Maclean) a question. He is aware that there is a duty upon coal. I do not know a more important subject, from the tariff standpoint, than the duty upon coal in so far as Nova Scotia is concerned. I do not believe any gentleman from Nova Scotia would advocate taking that duty off.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: That is not this case at all.


William Thomas White: That is this case to a certain extent.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Not at all.


William Thomas White: Why is the duty on coal valued by Nova Scotia? Because it is a protection given to the coal industry of that province.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: In the market outside
of the province itself. It is not designed as a protection within the province which is producing the coal.


William Thomas White: Does my hon.
friend say that the only purpose served by the duty on coal in so far as Nova Scotia is concerned is in respect to the export business?


George Perry Graham: From the province to
other provinces.


William Thomas White: Well, this is Canada. It is true we have different, provinces. But would my hon. friend say that coal would sell as high in Montreal, or in Ontario, if there was no duty on coal?


Frank Oliver: My hon. friend says that the increase in the duty on apples will not make any difference in the price. If that is so it should not make any difference in the price of coal.


William Thomas White: What is the position of the coal mining industry of British Columbia? I thought the statement of my hon. friend from Nanaimo was a reasonably fair statement. He said that this would not prevent the use of fuel oil but that it would tend to put fuel oil and coal upon a parity. He made one or two points of extreme weight. One was that the competition at present is not fair. The coal mining industry of British Columbia pays a royalty to the British Columbia Government. The coal mining industry of British Columbia supports several thousand workmen and their families and plays a very important part in the economy of the entire province. On the other hand, what Canadian labour is employed in so far as fuel oil is concerned? What part does its production play in the economy of British Columbia? What royalty does it pay in which the province of British Columbia is in any way a participator? Is it quite fair that there should be a protective duty which prevents American coal from entering into competition with Nova Scotia coal, in the interest of the coal operatives of Nova Scotia and I am entirely in favour of

that tariff-and that the coal mining industry of British Columbia, equally important, relatively, to that province, should have no measure of protection against the competition described by the hon. member for Nanaimo??
Mr. A. K. M4CLEAN: They have the duty on coal.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: They have the same protection that the Nova Scotia coal miners have.


William Thomas White: There is no coal imported into British Columbia.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: Nor into Nova Scotia
either.


William Thomas White: I should think not into
Nova Scotia. But there is no foreign coal imported into British Columbia. It's geographical situation is different from the geographical situation of the East. The effect of this tariff is going to be precisely what I have said. I say perfectly frankly, as I said at the beginning that it will give a large revenue and that incidentally it will give a measure of protection to the coal mining industry of British Columbia. Has my hon. friend ever heard of a tariff policy for revenue and incidental protection? Has he ever heard that expression before? I think he has. There is nothing strange about this proposition at all. It will give the Dominion Government a substantial revenue and it is not going to prevent the use of fuel oil. It certainly will not in the province of Ontario and it certainly will not in the province of British Columbia, but it will have a tendency towards bringing about a greater use proportionately of coal and consequently it will inure to the advantage of the British Columbia coal industry just as the tariff on coal inures to the advantage of the Nova Scotia coal industry, as it should.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: If the resolution passes now I suppose we can discuss these patters further when the Bill is 'brought down. This duty upon fuel oil opens a much bigger question than I think the members of the committee thought of. The tariff item was not explained at all by the minister in his Budget speech, and attention had not been directed to it specifically by anybody in this House until this evening. From the standpoint of British Columbia, it may be very undesirable to impose this duty; I do not say that it is, I do not pretend to know the subject very well.


Frank Oliver: The minister has referred to certain oils mentioned or alluded to in this item. Is gasolene subject to this duty?


William Thomas White: Gasolene is not
affected in any way by the tariff changes proposed in the Budget.


Frank Oliver: What are the oils, calling them by their commercial names, which are affected?


William Thomas White: Fuel oil, and the other oils known as heavy distillates, such as gas oil, road oil, and petroleum tailings. These latter three are known under the comprehensive name of heavy distillates. The heavy distillates are used in what are known as internal combustion traction engines, which are largely used in the West.


Frank Oliver: I am sorry to say I cannot agree. Gasolene is what is used in these traction engines.


William Thomas White: Gasolene is also used. I am informed that about 1,000,000 gallons of the heavy distillates are used. The duty on these heavy distillates has been reduced from 2J cents to half a cent a gallon. That is a very substantial reduction upon about a million gallons of oil.


Frank Oliver: That is the point I want to get at. Upon what quantity is the reduction madp? My impression is that the minister has entirely over-stated the amount, because I am satisfied that a very large proportion of the traction power in the West is gasolene.


William Thomas White: I may say that gasolene is free, except for the war tax.
Resolution reported.	,
On motion of Sir Thomas White, the House adjourned at 11.03 p.m.
Thursday, March 16, 1916.