1918-05-07

FIRST READINGS.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 73 (Letter F of-the Senate) for the relief of Frederick Ernest Zang.-Mr. Redman.
Bill No. 74 (Letter G of the Senate) for the relief of Thomas Bailey Wainwright.- Mr. Middlebro.
Bill No. 75, respecting the Protective Association of Canada.-Mr. Demers.

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. J. W. EDWARDS (Frontenac):: I desire to draw the attention of the Government, if their attention has not been already called, to an article which appears in this morning's Journal-Press, which, in describing the proceedings of an exemption tribunal held in the city of Hull yesterday, states that fourteen exemptions were granted, all the applicants being between

the ages of twenty and twenty-three. The cases cited are:
John Burns, burner, aged 22, claimed he was sole support. Disallowed.
George Oharron, merchant, 21, claimed ill-health. Allowed.
Louis Carufel, culler, 21, claimed domestic conditions render his presence necessary. Allowed till August 1, 1918.
Albert Bourgoin, papermaker, 20, claimed he was sole support. Allowed till Get. 1, 1918.
Oscar Demers, clerk, 20, Claimed1 he was sole support. Allowed till Oct. 1, 1918.
Auguste Guerin, employment not stated, 20, claimed domestic reasons. Allowed till Aug. 1, 191S.
Major-General MEWBURN (Minister of Militia and Defence): I saw in this momr ing's paper the article from which the hon. gentleman has quoted, and I immediately telephoned the Military Service Council, who had no knowledge or information regarding it, but are having the matter investigated. It is presumed, but I am not positive as to that, that these were claims that were pending under the Military Service Act on which decisions had not been given. Any appeals by young men between the ages of twenty and twenty-t'wo inclusive who come under the Order in Council, even if exemptions are allowed, are immediately and. automatically cancelled as the men are called up for service. The Military Service Council have promised to present a report on the matter, hut they say the explanation that I have given is the only way in which the matter referred to by the hon, gentleman can be accounted for.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: Do I understand from the answer which the Minister of Militia has given, that the tribunals are still sitting and that they have authority to grant exemptions?


Sir ROBERT BORDEN:: The tribunals,
of course, are still sitting, as their functions still continue. The effect, however, of the Order in Council, which has been approved by both Houses of Parliament, is this: Any exemptions heretofore granted, or now claimed, or that are now pending, are abolished in respect of men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two, both inclusive, or in respect of any other age that may be called out under the provisions of the Order in Council so approved. Do I make myself perfectly clear to my right hon. friend? Of course tribunals have to do their work, because until men of other ages are called ,out, the question of exempting them must still be determined by the various tribunals, and eventually by the central appeal judge. But as soon as men of any particular age are called out-and men from twenty to twenty-two years inclusive have been called out- this exemption, whether granted or claimed, ceases to be effective so far as they are concerned.


Wilfrid Laurier: That is what I understood. I understood that by the recent regulations, approved by this House, all exemptions granted by tribunals, were null and void.


Robert Laird Borden: In respect of the y oung men of the ages mentioned.


Wilfrid Laurier: But do I understand that the tribunals are still sitting for the hearing of claims of men of other ages?


Robert Laird Borden: Yes, because it is uncertain yet whether men of other ages will be called out under the provisions of that Order in Council. If they should not be called out then, of course, the question of exemptions would have to be dealt with.


Wilfrid Laurier: Then the
tribunals are sitting for other reasons than those specified in the last Order in Council?


Robert Laird Borden: The tribunals
are sitting. As far as men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two years are concerned, it would not seem to me that the tribunals ought to deal with them once they have been called out.


Wilfrid Laurier: That is the way I understand it.


Robert Laird Borden: I entirely agree with my right hon. friend. All the tribunals would have to say with respect to these men is, " This Order in Council has been passed, and it is of no further use to consider your exemption." But with respect to men between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-four, who have made claims for exemptions, their claims must still be heard.


Wilfrid Laurier: Pardon me again. This is a matter of isome importance and there may be some confusion abroad. I have understood that with regard to the men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two no exemptions are to be allowed.


Robert Laird Borden: That is correct.


Wilfrid Laurier: And that with respect to men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two all the exemptions that have been' granted are of no account.


Robert Laird Borden: That is quite so.


Wilfrid Laurier: If that be so, what is the use of the tribunals sitting?


Robert Laird Borden: It is no use for the tribunals to .sit with respect to men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two. But there are men not within these ages who have claimed exemption and whose claim's have not finally been dealt with, and these must be considered by the tribunals. Do I make myself clear?


Wilfrid Laurier: I do not know that I understand exactly.


Robert Laird Borden: Men from twenty to twenty-two years inclusive have been called up. iSo far as they are concerned exemptions are abolished whether already allowed or now pending. But there are men from twenty-three to thirty-four years, both inclusive, who are in Class 1 and who have claimed exemption, and appeals are pending with regard to them. Some of these appeals have not yet been disposed of, I believe, by the first tribunal. It is necessary to proceed with the consideration of these claims because it is not yet known whether these classes will be called out.


Mr. J. E. LESAGE (Hochelaga):: I call attention to certain matters which have taken place lately in Montreal. I have been aware for quite some time that the medical examination is not as complete as it should be. Now that we understand that all exemptions are supposed to disappear under the Military Service Act as amended, it seems to me most important that the medical examination should be made conscientiously.


Mr. SPEAKER:: The hon. gentleman is proceeding to enter into a discussion. I would remind him that such is not in order at this stage.


Robert Laird Borden: Ask your question.


Joseph Edmond Lesage: I want to know if a chemist or a dentist, who voluntarily reports to the proper depot in his district for military service is entitled to be examined as he should be, and how he would be classified by the medical boards? The reason I referred to the medical examination was not to dispuss the subject, but simply to have an explanation on that particular point. I understand that a chemist or pharmacist who applies naturally expects to be classified by the medical board. If he should be examined and classified in Category A he is not entitled to be considered, as I understand, as eligible for service in his particular medical branch. That is why I

wanted to submit this detail to the Government in the hope that they would see that the medical examination is properly done. I would like to know from -the Government what proceedings should he taken and -what this young fellow should do to be classified by the medical boards as he should be.


Robert Laird Borden: I am afraid I do not understand the hon. gentleman's question.
Major-General MEWBCRN: Men reporting for service will undergo a medical examination as to their physical category to determine whether they are fit for general service or not. If a man is found fit for general service he is put in Class A, and he will join the regular depot battalion. The medical board have nothing to do with tho classification of a man according to his trade or occupation. The intention is to try and utilize the services of a man where his professional knowledge or otherwise may be best for the nation. If he is a chemist and desires to join any particular branch of the Army Medical Corps, it is a question of whether there are vacancies requiring such men. I understand that in England they are trying to classify men according to their trade and occupation, whereby their knowledge will be best utilized. The medical examination made when a man reports does not go into that: It is to determine whether the man is physically fit or not.


Mr. J. ALFRED LEDUC (Westmount-St. Henry):: With reference to the exemptions from twenty to twenty-two years of age, I would like to understand this matter thoroughly so that when we go before our constituents we can tell them about these exemptions-


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: The hon. gentleman is not in order.


Robert Laird Borden: What is the question?


Joseph Alfred Leduc: The question is: are the exemptions still in effect, or are they withdrawn with respect to men from twenty to twenty-two years old?


Robert Laird Borden: They are absolutely withdrawn in t'he case of men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two years, both inclusive, but in respect of other ages the tribunals may adjudicate.


Joseph Alfred Leduc: What I wanted to put before the House, Mr. Speaker, is this: a man.
who-


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Order.


Robert Laird Borden: What is the other
question?	,


Joseph Alfred Leduc: The other question is: I *want to know if a man can still go before a tribunal in cases where he has had his exemption claim in his pocket for about two months, the hearing being postponed from one day to another, and no decision having been given?


Robert Laird Borden: What age does the hon. gentleman refer to?


Joseph Alfred Leduc: Twenty-one years, going on twenty-two.


Robert Laird Borden: His exemption is of no avail if he is twenty-one years. If the hon. gentleman wishes further information he might see the Minister of Militia and Defence who will endeavour to make :t perfectly clear to him.



THE BUDGET.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed the debate on the motion of Hon. A. K. Mac-lean (Acting Minister of Finance) that Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair for the House to go into Committee of Ways and Means (resumed from May 6.)
Mr. J. A. CAMPBELL (Nelson):: Mr. Speaker, it seems to be the consensus of opinion in this House that the Budget speech of the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. A. K. Maclean) was a businesslike and comprehensive effort and that his taxation provisions are along right lines. However no taxation proposals are free from criticism and such as has been given has been mainly .of a constructive character, being of the nature of suggestions with the idea that certain changes would bring the Budget still more in harmony with existing conditions. There are so many things to be considered in a large question of this kind, that I venture the opinion that were the hon. acting minister himself to go over the ground again he would' himself advocate some material changes. It is not in a spirit of condemnation, but with the same helpful idea that has actuated previous speakers, that I shall venture to discuss certain items.
A feature of the Budget proposals which stands out prominently in this connection is the tax on tea. I am anxiously looking forward to the minister's explanation as to why he proposed a specific duty on tea rather than an ad valorem duty. Tea is a commodity rvhich, owing to its universal use, would lend itself to a tax which would
bear equitably upon all. Those who are' in the poorer circumstances of life buy the cheaper brands of tea, while those who are in in (better financial circumstances buy the more expensive brands. The result is that an ad valorem tax would bear equitably on the different classes of society. In this case a straight duty of ten cents per pound has been fixed, so that the burden is not equitably distributed. Possibly the acting minister has an explanation -for this.
In this case the burden is greater than it appears, for although the tariff is only ten cents per pound, it is placed presumably on the import price of tea, on which two or possibly three profits will be charged, with the result that by the time it reaches the consumer the tariff will have increased the price of a pound of tea by twelve, fifteen or sixteen cents-and this increase will be no less on a forty cent pound of tea than it is on tea which sells at $1.40.
In the West we have always looked forward to the time in the near future when the duty on agricultural implements would be materially reduced, if not altogether eliminated. It was stated some time ago that an arrangement had been made whereby matters affecting the tariff should not be considered during this- session of the House, or before the conclusion of the war. I am in conformity with hon. gentlemen from Saskatchewan who have already addressed the House, and who say that as far as they know such an arrangement was not made. For my part, I never heard of it until I came to this House. I have been confidently expecting that some reduction, at any rate, would be made on agricultural implements, thus lightening the burden resting on the farmer and bringing about that which is of such serious importance at this time, increased production. However, the West will do. its duty; will hear whatever burdens are placed upon it; will even accept more or less gracefully any unfair discrimination that may ibe made in connection with the tariff. We reserve, however, to ourselves, the right to our opinion of those who use the tariff for their own advantage, at the same time pretending .to wear the cloak of patriotism. I regret that some measure of reduction has not been made in the tariff on .agricultural implements; perhaps there are reasons of State more important than I know of why this has not been done. We shall, therefore, in the meantime, in view of existing conditions have to wait, hut trust it will not toe for long.

The acting minister intimated that the debt of Canada is now $1,200,000,000. The interest on this debt at 5 per cent would be $60,000,000-and the principal amount is increasing by leaps and 'bounds. Interest charges and pensions will certainly bring the annual outlay in this connection up to a far greater amount than what was the total outlay of the Government a few years ago. This is an increasing burden which, if the present plan is followed, is to be handed down to posterity. It seems to me that the situation is not as it should be. While posterity should, perhaps, have to bear a large share of the burdens of the war, it is possible that.too great a share is being unloaded on them. The remedy for this state of affairs is rather in the nature of a preventive; that is, we should pay more at the present time-. Now is the time to tax the people; the people are prepared to pay and to accept with equanimity and patience whatever reasonable burdens are placed upon them. Any criticism we have to make along this line is that the acting minister has not gone far enough in his taxation proposals. Incomes might be taxed to a greater extent than they have. been. I am informed that a man in England who is receiving a yearly income of $6,000 pays $900 by way of income tax, whereas a man receiving a similar income in Canada pays only $120. No matter what we at home have to pay in money, the burden we have to bear cannot compare with the sacrifice of those who are fighting our battles at the front. There is far too great a discrepancy between the $900 paid in England and the $120 paid in Canada on the same amount of annual income. I am not contending that at this time the income tax in Canada should be as great as it is in England, but the discrepancy should not be nearly as marked as it is.
As has been pointed out on several occasions, the Government should exercise the most- rigid economy in the administration of all its departments. Several ministers have already indicated in what way this economy is to be brought about; others, we are satisfied will follow along the same lines. But there is an opportunity now under. Enion Government for practising -such economy and making it of the most rigid nature, that has not prevailed hitherto under any government that Canada has had. The Union Government can set an example which all future Governments of Canada, whether Union or of the party variety, will feel it incumbent upon them to follow strictly-it will be hard for them to get 
away from it. I do not advocate that Civil Service salaries should be cut down, except to the extent that many salaries paid to those who are uselessly employed might be eliminated. As a matter of fact, in quite a number of cases salaries should now be increased. I might mention specifically salaries in connection with certain departments of the post office, with regard to which more will be said later.
As the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Kn-ox) pointed out last night, there is another way of providing for the tremendous debt that the country will have incurred for war purposes, and that is by creating as much wealth in the country as .we can.-As he pointed out, there is no way whereby so much wealth can be created with so little effort as by giving proper attention to our vast natural resources. With the exception of the three prairie provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, these natural resources belong to the provinces themselves. In the three provinces which I have mentioned, however, the natural resources -belong to the Dominion. Vast resources have not yet been alienated from the Crown.; possibly they were not known to exist hitherto, or the situation might not be as it is. Developments have -taken place within the last few years which show that immense resources exist in the northern parts of thetse provinces which hitherto have been undreamed of. These prairie provinces have been looked upon -as great wheat producing areas, -solely devoted to the raising of grains and cattle. But would it be surprising to you, Mr. Speaker, and to bon. gentlemen of the House to know that a comparatively small proportion of the: vast areas' of these provinces is really known as wheat producing land, and that only a very small proportion of this is actually used in the raising of grain and cattle? To illustrate this, I point out that Prince Albert, which is looked upon' as a city pretty far in the north, is really -several miles south of a line which might mark the northern boundary of southern Saskatchewan. That is, Prince Albert is down in- the southern part of the province of Saskatchewan, thus leaving the vast northern part of the province to a certain extent unknown land.
Some years ago a scheme was devised for the marketing of the increasing crops of grain of the prairie provinces in a more expeditious and less -expensive manner. The idea was to build a railway from the wheat fields to Hudson bay. It is not

within the purview of my remarks to discuss at all the Hudson Bay railway. I do not need to argue the advisability of the construction of such a railroad on the grounds mentioned, because I know of no national enterprise that has had behind it such unanimity on the part of the people as the construction of this road. Both great political parties are pledged to its support. Both of them had this programme in their platforms. The right hon. gentlemen who now lead the respective sides of this House both spoke in favour of the project, and addresses along the same lines were delivered by Sir Charles Tupper. When Saskatchewan and Alberta *were formed into provinces, the platforms of both parties in the first elections in those provinces contained provisions to the effect that it was necessary, in the interests of the country, and particularly in the interests of the West, that this road should be built. If there is any question regarding the attitude of the people of the West as a whole in the matter of tariff reform, in the matter of reducing the duty on agricultural implements or eliminating it altogether, there is- absolutely no question in the minds of the people of the West, they are absolutely and entirely united, as to the advisability of constructing the Hudson Bay railway.
As I have previously intimated, the argument used hitherto has been entirely of the character stated, but a large quantity of water has passed over the rapids of the Nelson river during the past few years, and now we find that conditions have materially changed and that there are other arguments, probably of more importance than those already advanced, for the construction and early completion of that railway. It is well known that there are in Hudson bay resources of great value, in particular, minerals of various kinds, and fish. The construction of the railway will, therefore, give Canada another ocean port, and will bring to the people, particularly to the people of the West, the benefit of the immense resources which lie in and around the shores of Hudson bay. The most important feature in this connection is the fact that we now know that in the northern parts of the western provinces, and particularly in Manitoba, in which more results have been brought to light within the last few years, and in which, by the way, lies the whole extent of the Hudson Bay railway, resources of great importance have been shown to exist. Up to that time that northern territory -was looked upon as a vast waste of rock, forests, water and
muskeg, and the railway was simply considered as a bridge between the wheat fields of these provinces and Hudson bay, and regret was expressed that the intervening distance was so great, because there would be no local traffic therein whereby the railway could earn any revenue. In the mind of the people, the only industry in that country was the fur trade. The fur trade is still very important, producing a yearly revenue of a million dollars in that district alone, but it is the least important of the resources to be found in that particular , stretch of territory.
People tell me that there are no agricultural possibilities in that northern country. There is a general opinion that land that is not of agricultural value, that territory that does not produce crops of grain or raise stock, is of no particular use. I do not for a moment 'admit that there are no agricultural possibilities, but I want to emphasize *the fact that these are not the only important resources; that there are other resources that are worthy of taking a place beside those of an 'agricultural nature. But in that northern country there are great areas which are suitable for farming purposes of different kinds. It is true that there has not been definite exploration and investigation of the agricultural possibilities of that northern country, but explorers have been there at different times, missionaries have lived there, surveyors and other men have been sent out by the Dominion Government, and there are settlers in different parts of the country. I have here a number of opinions regarding the agricultural possibilities of that stretch of country, but I shall just quote a f.ew of them. I shall start off with a quotation from an article by Mr. J. B. Tyrell, than whom, perhaps, there is no one more cognizant of the situation in , the northern country. Mr. Tyrell has made many trips of exploration throughout that territory, and he has, during the past twenty or twenty-five years, paid considerable attention to it. He says:
Incidentally we determined the existence of an extensive area of rich alluvial land in the valley of Grass river and its vicinity.
This is in the neighbourhood of a mineral deposit about a hundred miles north of The Pas:
For a hundred miles north of the Pas the country is almost level, and the soil is often quite thin, being underlain by flat-lying beds *of limestone. Thence onward almost to the end of the track the land is generally rolling and sparsely wooded with spruee and poplar. The underlying rock is chiefly granite hut it

is usually covered1 with a considerable thickness, perhaps 'thirty feet or more, of beautifullv stratified clay which looks as if it would yield abundant crops to the farmer if it were properly cultivated. Very few cuttings on the railroad go down into the granite rock, but there are a number which show beautiful sections of this rich stratified1 soil.
Mr. Dickson, of the Department of the Interior, who made a special trip of exploration and investigation into that territory, has this to say:
Prom 50 to 76 per cent thereof is arable land, and probably has a good agricultural future. I estimate the area of that portion included from north to south, between Wintering and Cross lakes, and from east to west, between Setting and Sipiwesk lakes, at 2,000 s<j. miles. The soil is exactly similar to that around Cochrane, in new Ontario, which -yields such large returns under right treatment. On well drained spots, as far north as Split lake, the flora is almost identical with that of similar sites in Riding mountains of Manitoba, proving that during the growing season these localities lie under one and the same isotherm, or nearly so. And yei Riding mountains are nearly 400 miles south-west of Split lake. Two other factors which help vegetation in this northern clay belt are the low absolute elevation-only 500 to 700 feet, and the large proportion of sunlight during the growing.sea-son.
Mr. R. H. Campbell, Director of Forestry of the Forestry Branch, Department of the Interior of Canada, in an address delivered before the Canadian Forestry Association at Winnipeg in 19X3, said:
In northern Manitoba, an area approximating three to four million acres on the Saskatchewan river might by drainage works be made of agricultural value. At present lake and muskeg cover most of this area.
A start has already been made in the raising of cattle in the district around Moose lake, and has met with very great success. Several men are engaged in the business and have fair sized herds. In the future these will be increased, and doubtless other men will engage in the enterprise. The oldest inhabitant is Mr. T. H. P. Lamb, who in talking to me some time ago said tha,t a two-year old steer which he drove into The Pas in March, tipped the scale at 1,224 pounds. It was rolling in fat and had been out in the open ever since it was a calf.
I have travelled over that northern country extensively, and while I have not gone far back from the railway, except along the watercourses, I can confirm the statements made in the extracts I have read. For a distance of a hundred and twenty-five miles north of The Pas to the crossing of the Nelson river, at Mile 240, there is a territory which compares favourably with the 
scrub land of the southern portion of Manitoba. The soil is a rich clay loam, with sub-soil of different kinds, and is capable of growing satisfactory crops.


Wilfrid Laurier: What about the climate?


John Archibald Campbell: The climate of The Pas is practically the same as in Winnipeg, but further north it gets colder. I would not advocate the raising of wheat crops in that northern country; I think wheat crops could be raised to better advantage in the southern portion of the province. But I would advocate the raising of the coarser grains, cattle, roots and vegetables. In some places cattle can stay out all winter. Of course, there is a great diversity in conditions throughout that vast district; some places would be quite suitable for raising cattle, while others in the same latitude would not he suitable at all, but on the whole the crops I have mentioned can be grown satisfactorily. I might quote from the Rev. John Semmens, who is well known in the West,, and has spent Several years as a missionary in the North. He has lived in that country year after. year and is therefore in a position to say definitely what are the possibilities for that country.
He says?
There are found large areas of open country and valleys of tributary rivers, where the soil is rich and deep and there grazing, and stock raising could be very successfully carried on. The sheltering forests and the abundant water sources and numerous beaver dams, and the rich native grasses, would indeed make this locality ideal to sheep raisers and general ranchmen. The absence of anything like a market has hitherto kept this country from being reported of, but if a railway becomes an actual fact, Manitoba will add- very much to her available resources when extension comes, and settlers will find that in soil, in wood, in grasses and in waters, this unknown land will afford comfortable homes for thousands.
But it is not in the matter of agriculture that we look for immediate development. In the last few years development has been mainly among mineral lines. Before going into that, I might touch on some of the other resources of that country. First, take timber and pulpwood. There are vast possibilities in that country for the ex-ten si.o n of this industry. As to merchantable timber, there is a mill at The Pas with a capacity of one hundred thousand feet per day of ten 'hours, or of two hundred thousand when two shifts are working. If it were not for the scarcity of labour, this mill would double its capacity, but as conditions are, that will have to be a later development. The timber around there is

practically all 'Spruce, and runs from eight to twenty-four inches in diameter. il am not prepared to say how much of this kind of timber can be found north of the 'Saskatchewan river, only somewhat cursory examinations have been made, but there are at any rate areas of merchantable timber sufficient for the needs of the settlers and development work in that district. Timber, of course, is a commodity which comes in very useful in the development of other resources. There are however extensive areas of timber valuable for pulpwood, and these demand careful investigation. I am satisfied that before long there will be mills up in that north country rivalling those in the East. It is to be noted that tributary to these areas may be found, as a rule, water-powers of considerable magnitude.
With regard to fish, the cold waters of the northern lakes turn out a product which is second to none in this country, the main varieties being sturgeon, whitefish, trout, pike, pickerel and several others. Eighty ears of fish from this northern district were shipped from The Pas this winter. That perhaps is not a very great quantity, but this is the first time commercial fishing has been attempted in that country, and the quantity would have been considerably more if it had not been for peculiar conditions affecting the fishing at the beginning of the season. One was of a local nature, and the other was the ruling of the Food Board. Just about the time when the fishermen were ready to go out to the fishing grounds the Food Board fixed the price delivered at The Pas at seven cents. This was not high enough to justify the fishermen going out, and a number of them did not fish at all. Shortly afterwards, the board realized they had made a mistake, and increased the price to seven and a half cents, hut then it was too late, and there was not as much fishing done as would otherwise have been the case. While I do not wish to criticise the actions of the Food Board in any way-I think it is doing a good work-I would point out that when prices are to he fixed, a fair margin of profit should be allowed to those engaged in the industry, and an announcement should he made sufficiently ahead to give those affected time to make their preparations. In the case of fish, the price should be announced not later than July. I must say that the price fixed for fish last year was not high enough to justify the fishermen getting out the quantity required. It was not on a parity with the prices fixed for 98
wheat and other commodities, and perhaps not as many fishermen will go out next year for that reason. The best of them could barely make a living at the price fixed last year, and many of them played a losing game. I have no hesitation in-recommending that the price this year should be fixed1 one or two cents higher,^ in order to give the fishermen who are doing this work for the country reasonable remuneration for their efforts.
Perhaps, Mr Speaker, one of the features which has. been given least attention is that regarding the water-power resources of the country. I do- not wish to delay the House by going into detail here, but I have read over the reports of the Conservation Commission and of the Water-Powers Branch of the Department of the Interior, I have gathered information from far and wide, and I have arrived at what I think is a very conservative -estimate of the horsepower that can be developed from the water-powers in northern Manitoba. The hon. member from Prince Albert (Mr. Knox), in his address last evening, gave us some information withi regard to the water-powers in -Saskatchewan. In the district to- wh-ich I refer there may be developed the following:
Horse Power.
Saskatchewan river (in Manitoba)	
Nelson river	
Churchill river	
Hay, Burnt Wood, Grass and other rivers	
1-00,000
2,500,0-00
50-0,000'
400,000
Total	 3,500,000
These figures, I am satisfied, are well within the mark, -although we have no definite measurements or reports on a number of these water-powers. The important point is- that the falls which furnish this power are in close proximity to- the resources which I have already mentioned, and the development of which will toe assisted toy the utilization of such power. Perhaps the most important mineral deposit which has- toeen discovered in- the North is within- thirty miles- of a waterpower from which- 50,000 horse-power can foe developed, and it is the intention- of those who are in charge- o-f the property to de-[DOT] velop that power as eo-on as the labour situation is- such that the work can foe done. I would also point out that the Hudson Bay railway practically parallels the Nelson river for a stretch of about 300 miles. At mo point during the whole of this distance is the railway far from the river. The river is one that drains one of the

just as much entitled to a patent or a grant for it' as the mian who does his duty on a homestead. Just why there should he this difference I do not know. There is this further ill-effect which has been wrought by the change: the mining regulations are out of conformity with regulations or laws in the country to the south of us and in adjoining provinces. The provinces of Ontario and British Columbia have enacted laws under which grants or patents are given to the holders of mineral claims, and similar laws are in force in the United States. We, -therefore, find that in the country' surrounding the prairie provinces there is one style of procedure, and in those provinces there -is an altogether different kind of procedure. I will not delay the House longer by discussing the matter at -any further length, but would- strongly urge that it be taken - up comprehensively and -a law passed covering the whole subject.
I have sketched in a brief manner some of the -existing conditions and possibilities o-f the great northern hinterland of the three prairie provinces, and I would express the hope that the Government will give to the development of the twa&t resources* indicated their very earnest attention and consideration so that the greatest and best results may ibe obtained therefrom for the people of this country.


Mr. A. M. DECHENE (Montmagny) (Translation):: (Mr. Speaker, the financial statement which has been -submitted to this House by the "alter ego" of the Minister of Finance, this year, requires to be studied with most particular attention. With the-war raging throughout the world, with the famine threatening everywhere, with the economic ruin of several people; is this not sufficient to -awaken those who rule this country? On such a momentous occasion, one must not let himself be carried1 away by the impetuosity of passion; we must not allow ourselves to -be swayed by any question of feelings; reason should be our -sole guide. Unfortunately for this country, for a period of -almost four years, emotion and sentiment h-ave been dominant in the councils of the Government and are still directing their management of public affairs.
The present- budget is the necessary and inevitable conclusion of the way in which our dictators have ruled over this country. It is -a short statement expressing their desire of affirming their strength, without . providing for the requirements of the people of the Dominion, as regards man power and1 pecuniary resources as well.

Their Orders in Council override the Acts of this Parliament. Have they not amended the Military Service Act merely through Order in Council. The War Measures Act, notwithstanding the extraordinary powers it confers on the Government, does not satisfy their ambition. They require more than that to quench their thirst. Did they not go so far as to -ask this Parliament to vote unlimited amounts for the use of the hon. Minister of Railways, and even in certain cases, without any obligation of accounting to Parliament for their expenditure? There is no country on earth, except Prussia, to-day, where a Government would dare make such an attempt at dictatorship. For once, reason got the better of emotion, in this Parliament, and only a few -scraps of power have remained -in the hands of the representatives of the people. I-t is -a national disgrace for Canada that such an attempt should have been made in this House.
To justify their drastic measures, the Government, and the Prime Minister himself, tell u-s that we must win the war at any cost, no matter by what means. His idea w-as strengthened by the statement made by the hon. minister of Public Works (!Mr. Oarvell), who -believes that, to attain this, -end, we must lay aside part of the constitution of Canada. Thus, do they not -state very clearly that the Government is determined to act as dictators: let ns lay aside part of the- constitution, if necessary. Are we living under the rule of Ancient Rome, or are we -still on the morrow of the French Revolution? However, I fail to see any Caesar or Bonaparte occupying the Treasury benches.
The revolutionary and anticonstitution-al spirit that prevails in the cabinet -grieves me less considering f-roim what part of the country the ministers hail.
We also want to win the war on this side of the House; we want the cause of Justice and Liberty to be triumphant; the cause of the Allies is our cause.
That object is dearer to us than any other. We are- British subjects, and it li-s our wish to remain such. We are at odds with the Government not concerning the end in view, but concerning the means and imethod-s whereby to- wi-n the- war which is tu-n-amimously sought for toy the Allies and by the Canadian people.
What are the m-eans advocated by either of us to win the war? What is then-military or economic value? What will be the effect now and in the future? At this time when a gigantic struggle is being ear-

tied on by the nations, we are justified in asking ourselves with the poet "wlhat will tomorrow be made oif"
The Government wants tomorrow to he made of compulsory enlisting of all men, without taking into account the financial resources of Canada and the necessity in which our geographical position puts us to feed the Allies and to produce more than ever before,
Tlhe Government would like to have plenty of food and they call on the people for increased production.
The duty to feed Great (Britain and her Allies rests with Canada, I believe it is our foremost duty; but they want to supply the armies with men, first, last and always.
It is impossible to apply both these means of winning the war at the same time in this country today. One is the negation of the other. After so many of our people had gone to the front, the rural districts had become depopulated, and to such an extent that now comes from .all parts of the country a cry for fartm labour .and the request that the farmers be kept on the land.
What are the various provinces asking for today? If I refer to the organ of the Wat Lecture Bureau, I find in the issue of March 15, tire following:	[DOT]



GREATER POOD PRODUCTION.

[Stage Direction]
"The average Canadian household to-day has " been little affected by the war so far as food "supplies are concerned, and for this reason too " many of us do not fully appreciate the " seriousness of the situation at home-as well " as overseas- Meatless days and1 such other " regulations already passed may remind' us of " the necessity of being economical, hut a fuller " understanding is necessary if we are to not " only save at home but also economize suffi-" edently to permit of the export of the neces-" sary foodstuffs with which to help fill the " already greatly depleted larders of our Allies.
" The principal factor, if the effort at 'greater " production is to he successful, is to have "sufficient farm labour for seeding and the " harvest. The land is waiting-but we must "have farm help to work it.
"Greater food production is only possible " through augmented labour facilities and with " the drain on our man-power through the call " for fighting men. the call of the munitions "plants and other war time industries, the " farmer finds himself so short of labouring help " that even to bring his crop productions up to " ordinary standards will be a hard' task. But " ordinary standards will not suffice. Not only " must we feed Canadians at home, but we must " feed our Canadian boys overseas and also "help feed the peoples fighting side by side " with our men. With this end in view and with "a full understanding of all the conditions pre-" vailing, the Canadian Food Board is calling " upon the older hoys of the Dominion."
(Translation.) The shortage of labour is still more evidenced by the fact that a delegation of farmers from all pajts of the province of Ontario came lately to submit
a resolution to the Committee of Agriculture of this House, and asked the Government to exempt from military service all .the young men. .between nineteen and twenty-two years of .age who are working on tlhe farms, and to allow them to remain, there as long as they will be required for agricultural purposes.
What about the requests made by the various provinces, as published in the issue of March 15, of the War Lecture Bureau?
Alberta was asking then-that is in March, the 15th of March-6,000 men. for spring and. summer work and 7,000 for harvest time.
Manitoba was asking also .for 7,000 men for spring and .summer work and 10,000 to take in the crops.
Ontario was asking for 7,500 men for spring and summer work, 12,500 men for haying and harvesting; 15,000 boys and, 5,000 women.
Quebec was asking then, 10,000 men,.
New Brunswick wanted from 1,500 to
2.000	men, and Nova Scotia 2,500.
Before the Committee of Agriculture, the other day, the Western Provinces alone were asking as their share upwards of
54.000	men for sowing and harvesting, and we have nothing to give them save the help of women and school-boys.
Therefore I believe that both means aie ineffective when, applied ,simultaneously, because if you send all the men to the front you shall lie without help on the farms.
When facing these facts, can we think of raising more men to force them into the fight? For each request for men we have ten for food. Without plenty of food, we cannot win the war. It will not be the soldiers alone who will win the war, it will he the food and the economic power of the nations who are behind them that will achieve that result:
Mr. Hoover, Chairman of the United States Food Commission, said recently: At the present stage of the war the question of food overshadows all others, those of economy, of strategy and even of the management of public affairs, not only among the nations at war but also among neutrals.
Furthermore, food production is recognized as one of the most effective forms of patriotism. Professor Kellog, a member of the Food Commission of the United States, and a member of the committee for the relief of Belgium, told the Americans that we must follow the example set by Germany, who claims that the production of food is on a par with the best form of patriotism.
[Stage Direction]
What must we think in the face of such statements coming from men of authority, and the denunciations of those who insult our farmers' sons and the fishermen of our coasts? fThe patriotism of the tiller of the soil, the paitriotism-of the fisherman is equal to that of the warrior who goes down into the trenches. His work is (just as useful. True, he toils without danger and lives without glory, but his patriotism is superior to that of his detractors who do nothing for the country or the army, who are, themselves, the real cowards, the real slackers. It is to hide their cowardice and their shame that they throw mud in the faces of their fellow-citizens who perform the work of the country. It is not they who will help to solve the food problem which is >so important, we learn from Mr. Hoover, "that our inability to solve it in all its details will result fatally in our inability to solve the problem of the war in the way that all civilized, nations, together with ourselves, would like to see it solved."
These words of authority would already be sufficient to cause all thinking men to stop a moment and reflect and to imbue them with a more fruitful purpose than that which guides them to-day, if these gentlemen would only consent to lay their emotions aside and direct their conduct by the dictates of reason. It would be well to reflect still further on the cable addressed by Lord Rhondda to Mr. Hoover on the 25th of January, 1918, in which he says:
Unless you can ship to the Allies 7'5,000,0'00 more bushels of wheat than you sent up to the 1st day of January last, irrespective of what we have received from Canada, I cannot take the responsibility of assuring our people that we shall have enough food to win the war.
So this question of food is all-important and in no respect secondary to our duty to furnish reinforcements to our troops in the war zone. We must all do our 'best, our
absolute best, to produce food in abundance. It is not in spending enormous sums of money to raise battalions of soldiers that we will attain the object desired by the Empire .as well as by the people of Canada.
As regards this problem of food we should ascertain what the different provinces are doing. I note in the official publications of the Government, for instance in the Canadian Food Bulletin that Ontario intends putting one million acres under cultivation' to insure the greatest "possible production of .foodstuffs. I note .also that it is the intention of the Maritime Provinces to increase the number of acres under cultivation to 400,000, an average gain of five acres for each farm; and I note that Quebec bas placed1, its objective of cultivation at 600,000 acres.
I observed, the other day, and several members of this House noticed it also, perhaps with regret, that Ontario farmers bad come liere to- interview certain ministers of the Crown. They had to admit that if the young men were taken off the farms they would be obliged to-retrench in their production campaign and reduce the acreage-which they intended planting next isprinlg.
I had heard, moreover, a few days previously, that Ontario was threatened, in all likelihood, with another crop failure.
I am sorry Mr. Speaker that I hava not at hand statistical data in connection with last year's crop in the different provinces; however, since, on more than one occasion, members have taken the floor in this House to throw stones at the province of Quebec, pronouncing it backward and benighted, and qualifying the French Canadians as lazy shirkers, allow me to lay before you a statement of what Quebec has happened to accomplish the matter of increased food production during the last few years. Let those who have produced more and done better, cast stones at us.
Area, yield, quality and value of the staple farm crops in Quebec 1915, 1916 and 1917.
Crops.
Area.
acres.
Yield
by
acre.
Total
yield.
Weight Average bushel. Publish.
bush.
lb.
[Stage Direction]
Total Y alue.
$
Spring wheat
Oats
("1915
-	1916 (.1917
("1915
-	1916 11917
71.000
64.000 277,400
1.400.000
1.073.000 1,492,700
19.88
15.00
14.00
1,411,000
960,000
3,883,600
30.13 22 75 21.75
42.182.000
24.411.000 32,466,200
59 62 57.71 57.94
1	34 1 86
2	46
1.891.000
1.786.000 9,553,700
36.92
33.55
34.34
0 55 0 77 0 92
23.200.000
18.796.000 29,868,900
[Stage Direction]
4.rea, yield, quality and value of the staple farm crops in Quebec, 1915, 1916 and 1917.
Crops
[Stage Direction]
Barley	j 1916
Rye	 1916
("1915
Peas	 1915
1.1917
i 1915
Beans	 i 1916
1915
Buckwheat.
Mixed Grain.
Flax.
Indian Corn..
Potatoes.
.11916 11917
(1915 ..( i916 [1917
[Stage Direction]
r 1915
*i 1916 (.1917
Turnips and other Root crops.
Hay and Clover.
1916 191
1916
(1915
Fodder corn	(1916
(1917
Alfalfa.
(1915
.11916
(1917
Area.
Yield
by
acre.
85.000 72,800
165,600
8.700 8,300
22,450
24,400
21,600
66,457
4.700 4,400
55,157
104.000
101.000
163,577
101,000
91.000 122,819
500
5.700
16,300
13.000 74,339
117.000
112.000
226,917
10,200
10.000
70,192
2.922.000
2.985.000 2,961,983
34.000
31.000 69,030
2,860
2,600
3,818
Total Yield.
bush.
26.53
20.00
18.50
16.71
14.25
16.75
16.56
14.00
12.00
21.89
17.75
15.00
24.69
19.00
16.50
29.67
20.25
21.25
11.89
10.50
8.25
31.17
24.75
24.25
149.66
131.00 80.02
308.25
265.00 224.51
tons
1.26 1.75 1.71
8.61
8.00
8.50
2.84
2.65
2.26
bush.
2.255.000
1.156.000 3,063,600
145.000
118.000
376.000
404.000
302.000 797,500
103.000
78.000 827,400
2.568.000
1.919.000
2.699.000
2.997.000
1.843.000 2,609,900
7,000
5,300
47.000
508.000
322.000 1,802,700
17.510.000
14.672.000
18.158.000
3.144.000
2.650.000
15.759.000 tons
3.682.000
5.224.000
Weight by Bushel mesured.	Average Price.	Total Value.lb.	8 cts.	$48.79	0 86	1.939.000 1.674.00046.67	1 15	48.14	1 58	4,840,50055.90	1 12	162,00053.97	1 40	165,00053.36	1 78	669,30061.14	3 47	998,00059.95	3 22	972,00059.75	4 51	3,596,70059.38	3 17	327,00060.18	5 56	434,00059.99	7 77	6,428,90048.17	0 84	2,157,00046.35	1 21	2,322,00046.55	1 73	4,669,30045 44	0 73	2,188,00044.04	0 99	1, >-25,00044.50	1 33	3,471,20054.16	2 18	15,00054.50	2 50	13,30053.21	3 37	158,40056.85	1 12	569,00059.18	1 52	489,00056.89	2 25	4,056,0000 55	9,631,0000 97	14,232,0001 38	25,058,000[DOT] 0 36	1,132,0000 48	1,272,0000 52 tons	9,298,00015 89	58,507,00011 00	57,464,0009 58	48,523,0006 39	1,872,0005 75	1,426,0005 00	2,934,00011 78	95,0009 50	67,0008 37	72,000
Note.__The areas under cultivation in 1917 are based on more exact data than were supplied
in the preceding year; therefore, they are not strictly comparable to the figures of 1916.
Let part of the money which it is proposed to spend for the purpose of strengthening our military efforts be appropriated to the aid of agriculture and of the different forms of food production; leave the men in the fields instead of sending them to war, and this country will be in .a position to furnish the Allies with what they need
above all else: food, and still more food. In this maimer we shall fulfil our duity entirely, we shall constitute ourselves a force to the Empire and to its Allies.
You should not be astonished, Mr. Speaker, if in the presence of these facts one part of the country has shown itself opposed to conscription. I was, myself,
[Stage Direction]
opposed to it, and I shall continue to be so, until I have been convinced that I am at fault.
We have not sufficient men to produce the necessary food; have we enough to furnish soldiers? We evidently have not. The time has come when we must admit that we have reached the last man; haven't we also reached our last penny?
I was asking ia moment ago " what will be done with to-morrow." We already know that to-morrow will see the last man gone. To-morrpw will see the Allies, our brothers in arms, left without food. Tomorrow will see the last penny spent; tomorrow, national bankruptcy will stare us in the face.
At present we owe more than one billion dollars. Before this session is over we shall have voted another billion to meet the needs of the country and to pay for the administrative bungles of the Borden Government.
The Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Maclean) foretold of a deficit of over 245 million dollars, exclusive of the amounts required for the purchase of the Canadian Northern stock and other of his colleagues' fancy tastes in railways. Douibtless we shall need 150 millions more to meet these requirements; so that we find a deficit of 400 *million, dollars in this year's, budget. This figure alone will open the eyes of the most reluctant and show them which way we are heading. The fine words of our ministers are evidently meant to camouflage our national bankruptcy. , What is our credit worth at the present moment? The 47 per cent specie which we have to guarantee payment of the Dominion's notes is not sufficient to place our credit on a solid foundation either at home or abroad. At the present time are we in a position to pay the tremendous sums required by the Government to continue its work of ruining this country? We may well doubt it when we observe the Prime Minister's silence regarding his American visit. Could they, perchance, have made him the answer; "No- tea-d-e nor truck with the Canucks?" And our credit is too weak to afford us a share in the money lent England by the UniitedStates. We are financially exhausted; after the last man, the last penny. -That is the state to which the present Government- has brought this country: ruin, national poverty, bankruptcy, that is the price of victory that our administrators are ready to pay. What will remain of our citizens' freedom when our ministers will [Mr. D£ch£ne.J
have satisfied the ambitions and swelled the fortunes of their friends? The people, who are forced to pay taxes on their most essential needs, will toil -and sweat to keep the wolf from the -door and to pay the unfairly distributed taxes of the day, while our millionaire war-profiteers will continue to laugh at the poor man's burdens and to wax still richer, immune from taxes on the privileged yield of their millions.
War profits, swelled by the blood of our soldiers, are taxed no more than others. Still they should be the first to pay. Every war industry,- living on the war; and by the war, should be first to contribute to the -cost of the war. These industries are temporary and in no way tend to strengthen the industries of our country for the post-bellum period. It is the industries of peace-time which invigorate a people and raise it from the sloughs of despond. What-has the Government do-n-e to further the development of these latter and to insure their stabilty now and hereafter? The Government is 'trying to destroy, to- discourage our peace-time industries. To-day these industries are barel-y able to hold their own; why not give them the preference over the industries of war? These are principles of justice and politico-social economy which are being deliberately ignored, the more easily to favour those who are building fortunes out of the money voted for war purposes-.
Bear in mi-nd, Mr. Speaker, 'that the people are suffering, that they are groaning beneath -the ever weightening load saddled upon them by the Government. Why -not help the farmer in his endeavours towards increased production by allowing him access to agricultural implements without having 'to pay prohibitive duties. Why not adopt immediately a policy of free trade in f-o-od with our American neighbours. They are fighting side toy -side with us for the same rights, for their flag, for the freedom of the s-aa-s. In addition, they are fighting to repay a debt of gratitude; "Here we are" said Pershing over the tomb of a French soldier; they are fighting for France.
Let us go toack to them; let us start anew the negotiations of Kill and find among th-em all we need to help our people bear the burden of the war, so that this country may be of more assistance to the Empire and to the Allies.
Is- it not astonishing that our Government should have done so little concerning the civil le-establishm-ent of our returned

soldiers? These brave men left all they had, and to-day they must be content with their poor pension of from $20 to $40 a month, .according to rank. On the battlefields of Europe our heroes fell in glory; others, at this instant, are facing the 'German gunfire to carry on the glorious task of their * brother volunteers; they have fought, they are fighting still, for their country, for their family, for their little cottage, for that little corner of the globe which is enshrined in their hearts, and where their dear ones are .anxiously living and yearning for their boys' return.
Alias, what will be our answer to these brave men when they demand their share of happiness and comfort! The awakening, once they have come back, will he terrible for them. They will cry out vengeance and their voices will find an echo in the hearts of their countrymen who will then condemn, as we do, the extravagance 'and the inertia of the present Government. On their return they will find in ruins the country for which they will have fought in vain. What will it profit them to have won the war if the victory has cost them the loss of their own country?
Pause .a moment, you gentlemen of the Cabinet, and contemplate our Canada that you are leading to ruin; reform your ways. Save what is left of our dying country. To-morrow the history of your administration will be inscribed for all time; like that of Nero, your page will he ^ a black page; you will see yourselves buried alive beneath the ruins of our country, beneath the ruins of Canada.
Mr. H. C. HOCKEN (West Toronto):: I would like to add my congratulations to those tendered by other members to the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. A. K. Maclean) upon the presentation of the Budget, and upon the reasonableness of the proposals which he has submitted. I think, Mr. Speaker, that it will be agreed that the imposition of taxes is one of the functions of Government which usually produces the keenest criticism. So I have been interested to notice that the criticisms levelled at the Budget on this occasion have not been very severe, and more interested still to notice that throughout the country the new taxes have been assented to with a cheerfulness quite unusual. I think that is a very great credit to the people of Canada. Some of the taxes which have been imposed, especially the increased income tax and the excess profits tax, while I entirely agree with them, touch a great many people in
such a way as might reasonably lead them to offer protest, but we have bad no objection of any consequence, and the result must be very satisfactory and gratifying to the Government.	.
There has been one feature which has been impressed upon me by my correspondence, and that is that the tax on tea operates somewhat against the British possessions. I have no knowledge of the tea bus- [DOT] iness myself, but I am told that a very large quantity of tea comes to Canada from Ceylon and other portions of the British Empire, and that recently large quantities have been coming from Java in Dutch bottoms. I presume that there should be a preference in taxation shown to the teas that come from the British Empire. But even that objection is not impressed upon me with any great force, and it does not appeal to me as being something for which the Government should be severely criticised.	*
But there is one question before the Government which, according to the newspapers, is to receive some attention., and which I think should receive attention; I refer to additional remuneration for the letter carriers and mail carriers of this country. We have had no definite word as to what the Government intend to do in this matter, but I am quite sure that any hon. gentleman who has regard to the small salaries paid to the men who are distributing the .mail in our cities must agree that their remuneration is entirely inadequate. I trust that the Government will see that that condition is remedied, and that those employed in thus serving the public shall be recompensed in a reasonable way for the labours they perform. The duties of these Government employees are exacting and onerous. They are on their feet all day; they have the responsibility of carrying letters of great value, and, on the whole, the nature of their duties justifies their receiving better remuneration than they have been receiving. I trust that the Government will consider this matter and see that the requests made on behalf of the letter carriers are met as far as possible.
It was not my intention to make any speech on the Budget until the member for St. Hyaointhe (Mr. Gauthier) made certain reflections upon an organization with which I aim connected-reflections which, to m>
mind, should not be allowed to stand on the record without correction. The hon. gentleman compared the Loyal Orange

association', a great loyal and tolerant institution, to Chinamen-rather to the disadvantage of members of that association. That may be due to his lack of knowledge of this institution, but he could easily have become better informed, and if he had obtained information which was within his reach I am sure that he would not have gone so far as to compare those who compose that organization with subjects of nations which we are accustomed to refer to as constituting a yellow peril. The members of this organization may have yellow as their colour, but recent events have shown that the yellow is all on the outside, and that members of this institution have not exhibited the faintest trace of any yellow streak inside, 'because they have done their duty in this great war in such a way as to command the respect of all classes.
I have sometimes been surprised that in some sections of the country this organization is so greatly misunderstood. I wish it were possible for me to present its real character to all the people who do not believe in it, because were I able to do that I could convince them that they are labouring under a misapprehension as to its purposes or as to any desire existing among its members to create trouble. I say that I am surprised, because an institution organized on similar lines exists in great strength and prosperity among particular classes of our population which seem to misunderstand the Orange institution most grossly. I refer to the St. Jean Baptiste society in the province of Quebec. I have observed some of the parades of this patriotic and religious society, and for colour, for music, for all things that make up a very entertaining demonstration, they have certainly been remarkable. 1 think I have seen nothing in Canada that could surpass a certain demonstration which I witnessed in the province of Quebec a few years ago. The organization to which I refer has the same aims as the greiat Orange order, with the one difference that it represents a different religion, and, perhaps, a different idea of patriotism. The &t. Jean Baptiste society is patriotic, as patriotism is understood by the French Canadians, and it is religious as representing the Boman Catholic church. That is within their right; nobody ever heard a complaint from Ontario that the St. Jean Baptiste society was an evil institution and should be disbanded. Indeed, nobody has ever heard from Ontario any adverse criticism of that society. But we have heard some very bitter denunciations at times of 
the other organization in Ontario. The Orange order is patriotic and religious. Orangemen have a different idea o-f patriotism from that of the French Canadian society, mainly in 'this respect: that the Orange order stands for the maintenance of connection with the Mother Country- that is one of their cardinal principles. The other difference is that they represent the Protestant religion. The member for St. iHyacinthe says: "I have a right to belong to the Boman Catholic church." Surely he has. That is one of the things that the members of the association which he rather discredited, if not seriously misrepresented, not only concede to him as a member of the Boman church but is obliged to protect him in. I suppose if there is any paxty of extremists in Ontario, I should be called an extremist. I am satisfied with that classification, however, because I do not believe that I or those with whom T am associated are extremists. Holding the views we do, differing very .sharply from, some of our fellow citizens, we make no attempt in Ontario or elsewhere and have never done so, to deprive them of any right which they enjoy under the constitution. That is a feature of this great loyal Orange order. The only time in Canada's history when an agitation arose in Ontario with regard to anything (that had happened tin 'Quebec was when the legislature of that province passed an Act restoring a considter-able amount of money to the Society of Jesus, an Act known as the Jesuit Estates Act. The passing of that measure aroused considerable discussion in. Ontario and it is interesting to note that the men who organized that movement and carried it on, the men who were the head and front of it, were among the warmest friends that the present leader of the Opposition had in Ontario. The president of the movement was Principal Caven of Knox College. Nearly all the leaders of the movement were well known leaders of the Liberal party in Ontario. Their agitation brought to them a great many from the other side; but this is what happened. There were men in our province who recognized that that Act was within the law, that it was within the constitutional powers of the legislature of the province of Quebec. Among those men was the late E. F. Clarke, for many years a member of this House, a very prominent man, who might have been called, as I have been called, an extremist. I myself heard him at large Orange gatherings tell the Orange-

men of Ontario, who were dissatisfied with that legislation, that they were wrong; that the Act was within the power of the legislature of Quebec, that they had no right to object to it, and that it would be very unwise for them to do so. He was not the only leader in Ontario who took the same stand at the same time. As I recall these circumstances I have been greatly disappointed that in agitations which have later arisen in the province of Quebec, there were not men in that .province who would take the same stand as did the late E. E. Clarke, and who would go to their people and say: "'This is within the power of the legislature of Ontario, we must accept it loyally and faithfully." An organization that produces men like the late E. F. Clarke, who will stand up and oppose their friends when their friends are very angry about certain things in the light of justice, and constitutional rights, and peace and harmony in this country, is an organization which should not be discredited upon the floor of this House.
I should just like to read a few lines to show the kind of men that this organization brings together. As it has been traduced here, its true status ought to he presented. These are the qualifications that are essential for membership in this organization:
An applicant for admission should have a sincere love and veneration for his Almighty Maker, productive of those lively and happy fruits-righteousnes and obedience to His commands; a firm and steadfast faith in the Saviour of the world, convinced that He is the only mediator between a sinful creature and an offended' Creator. His disposition should be humane and compassionate, and his behaviour kind and conciliatory; he should be an enemy to savage brutality and every species of unchristian conduct; a lover of rational and improving society; faithfully regarding the Protestant religion, and sincerely desirous of propagating its precepts, i.e., charity and good-will to all men. Zealous in promoting the honour, happiness and prosperity of his King and country; heartily desirous of success in those pursuits, yet convinced that God alone can grant them. He should have a hatred of cursing and swearing, and of taking the name of God in vain; he should use all opportunities of discouraging them among his brethren, and shun the society of all persons addicted to those shameful practices. Prudence should guide all his actions; temperance, sobriety and honesty direct his conduct; and the laudable objects of the association he the motives of his endeavours.
An organization based upon these lines is one Ithat should at least command the respect of those who do not see eye to eye with all its members . While all its members have not lived up to these requirements, they have lived up to them as nearly as the members of any church obey the injunctions of their religious teachers. Some church members come very far short of living up to the full professions of the sect, or denomination, to which they belong. That is the case with every human organization, and this is a human organization; but this is what we ought to do, and that is the kind of men we aim to have within our organization.
At one o'clock the House rose.
The House resumed at three o'clock.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: When the House rose at one o'clock I was going on to discuss the political side of the Orange order, which has been referred to in a way that I thought required an answer; hut before doing so,
' I should like to say a word on its religious aspect as my hon. friend from St. Hyacinthe-Jtouville (Mr. Gauthier) has referred to that. He claims the right to belong to the Roman Catholic church-a right which no man in this country would deny to him. We in Ontario, or a good many of us, at any rate, claim the right to belong to the Protestant church, and the right to exercise the same privileges as are exercised by any other denomination. To .show how far from intolerance are the people of Ontario, and especially the members of the Orange order, I would point out that we welcome to the city of Toronto every year a number of the Paulist Fathers, who come on evangelical missions to the Protestants of that city. I invariably receive -an invitation to their revival meetings, and I attend as often as I have the opportunity.
I have in my hand at this moment the last invitation they sent me, covering a period from March 10th to March 17th of this year. Our people hear the Paulist Fathers, presenting their religious views with the idea of making conversions, and we say that Protestant evangelists have just as much right to make the same appeal from our .side in the province of Quebec or in any other part of this country. While I have attended a good many of the meetings of the Panlist Fathers they have not yet .succeeded in converting me to their way of religion, but if they persist, long enough no one can say what may happen. Nobody in Canada threatens to invade this right, and as representing the extreme party in the province of Ontario, I would assure the members from the province of Quebec, as this question has been raised so often, that no man in Ontario could possibly raise an agitation that would threaten the religious liberties of any man in the

the province of Quebec. It was then the organ' of the leader of the Opposition and it was defending him and- his policies with a good deal of vigour. The Globe is conducted by men whom I know, and have known intimately for a good many years. There is no finer staff on the North American continent than that whidh is made up of the gentlemen who are responsible for the publication of that newspaper. I know Mr. Stewart Lyon. I worked with him for many years; I know Mr. John F. Mackay, the business manager, and I know that there are not two more public spirited1 men in Canada than they are. I make that statement without reference to the question whether we agree or disagree. I do not agree with them on many political questions hut I know their sincerity of purpose and I know the reliability of the Globe newspaper which first published this matter. I, feel that any paper in Canada would be free to copy its statements and to refer to the facts that wrere contained in any of its articles. The papers in Quebec have been telling us that the existing friction arises through our insulting the people of Quebec.


Mr. J. BUREAU (Three Rivers):: That statement is true.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I did not catch what the hon. gentleman said, but it does not matter. The fact is that for one full year there was no criticism of any kind by any newspaper in the province of Ontario. The men in our province who are styled fanatics, showed remarkable restraint. They were sending out their young men by the tens of thousands when they had reason to believe that another province was pursuing an opposite course, and was retarding and restraining its young men who wanted to go to the front. I say that those people in Ontario showed remarkable restraint in not making any criticism for one year after the policy to which I have alluded became apparent. I was determined, Sir, that so far as I could control it, the newspaper organ which represents the Orange order should not be the first to he chargeable with saying (things by way of harsh criticism of that particular element of our population. Now I am not going to place the responsibility for what was done in Quebec. But it is only fair to say that in Ontario practically every pulpit was a recruiting centre, and practically every public man was out on the hustings urging our young men to enlist. Whether that was so in the province of Quebec I am going to leave 
to hon. members opposite to state,-a good deal might be said in that regard which I do not wish to say.
I Ithink it is true of the province of Ontario, as of the provinces west of Ontario, that we keep our polities pretty much apart from all religious issues. No religious leader in the province of Ontario can bring to bear, in political matters, any influence other than his powers of persuasion with his people. I am not going to discuss the question as to whether in another province much more extensive powers are sometimes exerted; but in our politics we are absolutely independent, and that particularly refers to the element of the population of which I am Speaking. You will hear it said in our own province that-that element is a Tory organization. Nothing could be further from the truth, although it might perhaps be said that the majority of those connected with it are Conservatives in politics. But the explanation for that goe3 back a long way, and it might he interesting to the House to know its genesis.


Mr. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Kamouraska):: Hear, hear.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: that they now possess, and which they have inherited from their forebears, and the maintenance of which they believe to be necessary to make Canada within this century the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world; a nation which I dare to hope will make a contribution to the advancement of civilization and- liberty equal to, if not greater, than thait of any nation on the earth to-day.
That is the ambition animating the English-speaking people of this Dominion. They see in this emergency the necessity of making enormous sacrifices- if they are to achieve this high destiny. That is why feeling exists in some places because of the indifference heretofore of the people of Quebec. And I ask hen. gentlemen from Quebec to give consideration to that sentiment, because it springs from the highest and holiest motives which stir the human heart. I intended to say before, Mr. Speaker, but you will allow me to interpolate here, that, speaking for that extreme faction I have referred to, we believe the French Canadian is potentially as good a citizen as there is in the world. We have not called him .a coward; that charge has been made in .the French papers, but not by us. Some of us have read the history of France, and know that the same blood flows in the people of Qudbec as in the veins of the men of France. We look over their history, we see their heroic conduct to-day and we are forced to believe, and we want to believe, that those who are of that language in this country have the same possibilities and potentialities as the men who are valiantly holding the lines against the Huns. We ask the French people of Quebec to recognize the situation and be loyal to that Act of Confederation which is onr constitution^ accepted by their representatives just as it was accepted by ours.
We have heard some eloquent appeals and pleas for national unity in this House and in many other places. In frying to achieve that aim, Sir, we have a difficult task, rendered difficult by the fact that the makers of our constitution incorporated in it two disintegrating elements which stand there now, which probably will stand there, and which will, in. my judgment, make absolute and complete national unity an impossibility. These two disintegrating features of our .constitution are the two languages and the two sets of schools. There is no proposition from our side tc interfere with them. That being the case

national unity depends upon one thing and that is that the advocates of these two principles, who regard the dual langage and the separate school as among the vi'tall and sacred things to them, shall accept the situation as1 it is and. shall not try to extend these privileges to the province of Ontario or to other provinces outside of Quebec. I am quite satisfied that if they will do that there will be no friction between any other province and the province .of Quebec. If they will not do that, then I submit there is nothing, else for the English-speaking peoplle of Canada to do, than to resist the attempts to impose upon them something in which they do not believe, in which they never did believe, but which was conceded to the people of Quebec in order that they might enter Confederation freely and voluntarily and take their part as citizens of Canada. In the acceptance of the situation, Mr. Speaker, we can reach, if not a complete, then a very considerable, degree .of national unity. But if not in that way, then I cannot see how else it can be accomplished. I put the onus upon the leaders of the province of Quebec to bring that unity about.


Hon. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX (Maison-neuve):: Mr. Speaker, I did not expect when speaking on the Budget that I would have to discuss the Orange Sentinel's orthodoxy, but the hon. gentleman (Mr. Hoeken) has chosen to deliver a lecture on the ideals of the Orange party and of the Sentinel, which he edits. I shall, therefore, for a few moments, reply as best I may to the very specious arguments brought into this discussion by that hon. gentleman.
I wish at once to correct one of the views to which lie gave expression. The hon. gentleman has been very kind-indeed, over-generous-to the French Canadians. He has conceded that the French Canadian is " potentially " as good a British subject as any British-bom or any Anglo-Canadian. Let me add a little rider to my hon. friend's definition. The French Canadian, I am proud to say, is not potentially but actually ,as good and as loyal a citizen as any British-born or any Anglo-Canadian in this free Canada of ours. It is because some people of my hon. friend's ilk choose to consider their fellow men as inferior beings that the other fellow-to use my hon. friend's word-resents such assumption on the part of an alleged superior race. My hon. friend aptly defined himself this afternoon-and" I must congratulate him for his sincerity-when he said, "I am an extremist; I represent

the extremist views of Ontario." Mr. Speaker, the bane of this country is the extremist. My hon. friend said a moment ago: I will tell you what we the people of Ontario-and this reminds me of the "three tailors of Tooley street" and the editors of the Orange Sentinel-expect from the province of Quebec; .and he then gave his charitable advice without charge. Will he allow me to retort what we, the "potentially" good citizens of Quebec, expect from the true Britishers of Ontario? We expect that the President of the C uncil, who specially represents Ontario in the Cabinet, will forthwith appoint a. special censor with a lucrative salary and locate him at the Sentinel office so that he may delete from that paper the incendiary articles which are being published every week with a view to inflame racial and religous passions.
My hon. friend says: But you do not know what are the aims and objects of the Orange Order. I do not care to know them. This is a free country; the Orange Order has been legalized by Act of Parliament, and I do not object to its existence. What I object to is that the Orange Order, through some of its members, should claim the monopoly of loyalty and fidelity to the British institutions. There is no such monopoly in Canada. There is as much loyalty ini the St. Jean Baptiste Society, the St. George's Society, the St. Andrew's Society, the St. Patrick's Society, the St. David Society, as there is in the Orange Order. The St. Jean Baptiste Society, referred to by my hon. friend, is a French Canadian national organization. It was founded in 1834 at Montreal. Its first celebration was held in the gardens of a Mr. Macdonald, a *good old Scotchman-the Scotch and the French never had any quarrels. The first president of the society was Mr. Duvernay, editor of La Minerve, and the song of French Canada-"O Canada, mon pays, mes amours"-.was heard for the first time at that meeting. It was composed and sung by a young student who later became the great leader of the Conservative party. Sir George Etienne Cartier. The St. Jean Baptiste Society has on its crest the words " Rendre le peuple meilleur " to improve the people -that is to say, to educate the people, to preserve their national traditions, to preserve their language, too-the language which has been so mercilessly assailed in Ontario through Regulation 17-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.
Mr. LE'MIEUX:	

the language which
was denied privileges which were given to the German minority in Ontario.
Some hon. MEMBERS : No.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Rodolphe Lemieux: My hon. friend says
that he would circumscribe the French language to the province of Quebec. Half the words of the English language are French words. I can take the last issue of the Orange Sentinel and show him that fifty per cent of the words which appear in that paper are of purely French extraction. The English language is partly French and partly 'Saxon. By the way, I stand for British, not for Saxon ideals. His Majesty the King has adopted the expression " House of Windsor," instead of " House of Hanover "-and I, following the example of my King, will stand for British, not for Saxon ideals. The attitude of my hon. friend and his compeers of the Orange Order with regard to the French language is ungenerous and unBritish; they should at least during this war respect the language of Joffre and of Foch.
My hon. friend read to the House the guiding principles of the Orange Order. These aims as he read them are not in question. Wh'at I object to is the wrong use made of these principles and aims., so lofty when they are read. What I object to is that the Orange Order should' import into this country the bickerings, the contentions, the miseries which have desolated old Ireland for so many centuries. Lessons of loyalty from the Orange Order? Do we not know contemporary history? When the King, Bords and Cbmmons of England had passed an Act of Parliament in the old British fashion, by the majority of the elect of the people, what did Sir Edward Carson, the leader of the Ulster party, do? Did he not promote a rebellion in Ulster, at a time when the Germans were planning the great war which broke out a few weeks afterwards? No lessons of loyalty from the Orange Order for me. My hon. friend has given us some advice; let him accept some from me.' Let me suggest to him not to make of the Pope of Rome the bogey that he is making of him every week in his paper.. He should remember that in 1914, for the first time since the Reformation, a British ambassador was sent to the Vatican, and if His Majesty George V is wise enough to have an ambassador at the . Vatican, to confer at times with the Pope of Rome, surely my hon.. friend, as a *superloyal British subject, will refrain from those innuendoes against the personality of the Pope of Rome. He should also remember that one of the leading Protestants of the Nineteenth Century, speaking of the Roman



Catholic Church, said that no one could deny that at least it was a great school of respect. My hon. friend, for reasons of his own, perhaps in order to avoid discussing the income tax, brought in the Jesuit Estates Act. II shall not relate the history of the Jesuits' on the continent of America. If I had to offer a prize to my hon. friend, my sweet revenge would 'be to send him Parkman's History of the Jesuits on the North American Continent. He would learn there that the' Jesuits were the pioneers, of America; that not a hill, not a mountain, not a lake; not a river, was discovered without the presence oi the (black rolbe. At Washington, in the Capitol, under the dome -the Tories being in office trucking and *trading with the Yankees, my hon. friend may now go there-would find that an overwhelming Protestant American majority have erected a monument to the memory of Father Marquette. In spite of my hon. friend-perhaps because of him, as some day there will be a reaction-1 do not despair of seeing, under the roof of the legislature at Toronto a monument to the memory of the Jesuit martyrs, Fathers Lallemand and Breboeuf, who evangelized the province of Ontario before going to their martyrdom in the state of New York. Perhaps such a monument would be an object lesson for the descendants of any hon. friend.
iMy hon, friend knows that, under the French domination,, the Jesuits' received from the King of France certain estates.-My hon. friend knows equally that the Order was dissolved by the Pope of Rome. Then the cession of Canada to Great Britain took place-because we were never conquered', we -were ceded.


An hon. MEMBER:: History disproves
that.


Rodolphe Lemieux: That is why the treaty of Paris was so benevolent to us. After the cession of Canada to Great Britain, when the British Governors took over control of this country, the Jesuits' estates escheated to the Crown; but later on, when the Order was reorganized, and when we were granted free constitutional, responsible government, Queen Victoria, because this occurred during Her late Majesty's reign, decided to dispose as she pleased with the Jesuits' estates. In other words, the Government of the province of Quebec, under the late Mr. Mereier, undertook to divide the revenues .of those estates between the two sections of our population with a view to promote the. cause of education. One share went to the Catholics, and the other
TMr. Lemieux.]
share went to the Protestants. The minority in Quebec accepted it quite willingly and1 was very grateful to the late Hon. Mr. Mereier for his action in the matter. The agitation against the Act did not arise from the Protestants of Quebec; it arose from the Order of which my hon. friend is a noble representative; it came from the province of Ontario.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: From the Liberals.


Rodolphe Lemieux: When, later on, the question of disallowance came before Parliament, Sir John A. Macdonald, who was a great Canadian, said: "No, this is a provincial statute which the province of Quebec has constitutionally the right to enact and the Dominion Government will not interfere." The views of Sir John A. Macdonald were shared by the then highest authority on the constitution, the late Hon. Edward iBlake. That is the history of the Jesuits' estates. All the agitation came from the troublesome element, from the extremists, as represented to-day by my hon. friend in this House. I wonder why my hon. friend brought again into the debate all those contro-
4 p.m. versial issues. He is, of course, an extremist. He admits that. He must therefore create trouble. The circulation of his paper would be nil if it did not contain those rabid articles against the Pope of Rome and against that French minority which diabolically intends to. dominate the majority in Canada. What a great compliment to the English people of this Dominion of Canada, that Quebec might dominate the majority! Let me repeat to my fellow-men of British blood and of British ideals what that sturdy old sailor, when the Titanic was foundering, said in the midst of the Atlantic ocean: "Be British!" he said to his sailors and to the passengers on board. I say to my fellowmen: Be British ! do not be Prussians, as you are asked to be by such articles as are weekly published in the Orange Sentinel. After all, the British should not be afraid of the French.


John Wesley Edwards: They are not.


Rodolphe Lemieux: 
John Wesley Edwards: Hear, hear.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I hear the voice of the statesman from Sh-arbot Lake. The 'House of Commons is a big pond, but it is nothing when compared with Sharbot Lake, in Frontenac county. My hon. friend admits that the right hon. leader of the Opposition and French Canadian leaders generally did their duty well at the beginning of the war. The famous 22nd Battalion was the result of my right hon. leader's campaign in the first months of the war. I myself was chairman of a committee in Montreal which recruited the Asselin Regiment. We had no difficulties in raising the two regiments as the people responded magnificently. But when the Orange Sentinel and other papers kept systematically insulting French Canadians, labelling them .as sharkers,' slackers, and as disloyal people, they resented those attacks bitterly, and lost their enthusiasm. My hon. friend forgot that they were a rural population and had not the same opportunities for enlisting in as large numbers as the men in the industrial centres of Ontario. He also forgot that they had been separated from Europe since three hundred years, and had therefore not the same links with the old land as the British bom and Anglo-Canadians. When, moreover, the French Canadians saw the privileges granted to the minority by Sir Oliver Mowat, a man of broad vision and noble ideals., being disregarded by the provincial legislature of Ontario,

they paused. Be that as it may, conscription, against the best judgment of the right hon. leader of the Opposition, and against the sober judgment of the country, was forced through this House by closure. The referendum was voted down by Parliament. To-day, after the campaign of hysteria which ended in the victory of Union Government on the 17th of December last, the French Canadians and all those who were opposed to conscription are at last being vindicated-by whom?
By the Ontario fanners, by the members who represent farming constituencies in this House and who form part of the Committee on Agriculture, as I shall show in a few moments. Yes, Sir, the Quebec habitant is toeing vindicated by the Ontario farmer. I have said, not once but ten times, and I repeat it here, Mr. Speaker, that there is no great difference between Jack Canuck and Jean Baptiste. There is this difference that Jean Baptiste thinks aloud-the French blood is responsible for that-and Jack Canuck thinks silently, but in the long run they both think alike. Jean Baptiste was against conscription and he shouted his opposition to conscription. Jack Canuck was against conscription but he was quietly told by the ministers of the Government to "produce, produce; conscription is not aimed at you; it is for the other fellow in Quebec; you will never be conscripted; therefore, vote for the Tory Government." Sir, the handclasp given to the Ontario fanner was nothing less than the handcuff. The Ontario farmer realizes it to-day and he came here the other day to protest-five hundred strong. A friend of mine from the Senate who is somewhat of a cynic and a fellow Tory senator were on their way to the committee room where the sturdy, horny-handed, tan-complexioned- Ontario farmers were sitting silently staring at the Hon. the President of the Council (Mr. Bowell). This Tory senator said to the cynical Grit senator,-if there are any Grits left, Mr. Speaker: "Where are you going?" The latter replied: "I am going to the circus; there is a delegation of French Canadian habitants that have come to ask Majoi-General Mewburn to repeal the last Order in Council. They say they were promised that there would be no conscription of the habitants." The Tory senator said: "No, you are mistaken; it is not the French Canadian habitant; surely it is the Ontario farmer." " No, no," replied the cynic, " it is a delegation of habi-

tanits; were they not the only ones to oppose conscription?" They reached the committee room ajnd the cynic disappeared.	But, to	his awe and.
consternation, the Tory senator saw. the chickens coming home to roost. He was heard stating after the interview: "Old Abe Lincoln was right. You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." If my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) will now permit me to repeat the language of a Unionist Grit, he said, after he had left that .meeting, "After all, the old chief was right." I repeated the story to my leader, and his only comment was: "It is my revenge; I am glad of it." But, as I said a moment ago, I did not rise to discuss the Orange orthodoxy nor the -Military Act. I never dreamt I would be called upon to fight the battle of the Boyne in the precincts of the House of Commons.
I shall now proceed with my remarks on the Budget speech. Let me say to my hon. friend the hon. Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. A. K. Maclean), who is now in his seat, that I cannot congratulate him on the speech which he delivered the other day. I do not deny his ability. You know, Sir, that every Nova Scotian is able. No province has given to this Dominion Parliament such a galaxy of statesmen as the little province by the sea. But I cannot congratulate my hon. friend on his speech, because it is not his own; he only read the speech of the real Minister of Finance (Sir Thomas White). As was said in days of old, "The voice was the voice of Jacob, but the hand was the hand of Esau." In my judgment there has been no change of Government, but I am sorry to say that on the part of my hon. friend the Acting Minister of Finance, there has been a change of heart. Yesterday he sat on this side of the House and he was the much vaunted financial critic, to-day he is Minister of Finance in a Tory Cabinet. I cannot congratulate -him, Mr. Speaker, but I hasten to say that he has all my sympathy. It is hard anyway to quarrel with such a genial friend. The most that any one can -say against him is that if his convictions are weak his intentions are honest. My hon. friend knows that I have always had in store for him much true friendship. Will he allow me to speak to him as a candid friend? Since he has taken the plunge, and crossed to the other side of the House for the time

being I hope, may I warn him against that wily financial ring which defeated the reciprocity pact of his then leader the member for Shelburne and Queens (Mr. Fielding) under circumstances much similar to those which existed in the election of 1917? It is extraordinary, and here I quote from memory from an English historian, how dull the English people sometimes are. The French are a vivacious race; the English race is dull. I would like to inject some of that French vivacity into my fellow-members of English origin.
The member for Queens and Shelburne (Mr. Eielding) knows full well that the people of Canada were stampeded in 1911 with the same flag-flapping that stampeded the people in the month of December last. But yet there were Grits-political heirs of George Brown, of Alexander Mackenzie, of Blake, of Cartwright and of Edgar

who were carried away also. They are so honest that they believed what some other wily, crafty people whispered to them. I want to warn my hon. friend (Mr. A. K. Maclean), because I look for the ultimate salvation of his soul politically, I wish to warn him against that financial clique that defeated reciprocity under false pretenses.
I want to warn him against the buccaneers who are already shadowing him1 in the lobbies of this House in the hope, or rather in the quest, of further subsidies for the Canadian Northern. He knows what happened as the outcome of many conferences which took place last year-strange coincidence-at the Chateau Laurier, between Sir Clifford Sifton and Sir William Mackenzie. Oh, what would I not give, Mr. Speaker, to get the book of- the recording angel, as Mr. Dooley said, and know what passed between those two knights. Yes, I am honest and sincere in warning my hon. friend that if he wishes to live up to his reputation of sterling integrity he mast take great care not to be seen with the buccaneers, whom he knows just as well as I do, because he fought them when he sat on this side of the House; he itoust not only not be seen with them, but must not be influenced by them in these days of (stress and storm. If he should succumb during the present session to their wily arts, it may be his -lot to receive what the right hon. the Prime Minister received the other day -a visit from the sturdy farmers of Ontario, and there are farmers in that province, especially among the Scotch, who know their arithmetic. Would my hon. friend allow me to say why I cannot congratulate him upon his Budget speech? It is because he has not lived up to our
expectations. When he sat last year on this side of the Chamber he criticised very bitterly-I should not say bitterly, because my hon. friend is not bitter but he criticised very severely the Minister of Finance. He claimed that there was an opportunity of administrative retrenchment which would amount to $25,000,000 or $30,000,000, and he said: Be bold and strong in the crisis ! Let me ask what retrenchment has my hon. friend accomplished?
I give him credit for having reduced the main estimates this year by some two, or, let us say, three million dollars in round figures, but this is very far from thirty or forty million. It is true that I have no ministerial responsibility here, but I have my responsibility as a public man and, I hope, as a patriot, and I say to the Acting Minister of Finance that it is possible at the present time, when (the people are being bled white in order to reinforce the boys at the front, to repeat a homely phrase, to reduce the expenditure of this country by at (least $50,000,000. My hon. friend last year spoke of a possible reduction of (thirty or forty million. I say that this year, in view of the impending crisis, a reduction of $50,000,000 would be hailed by the people, Grits and Tories alike. But alas! the Acting Minister of Finance has not carried out any such policy. He said further last year that the time to secure or impose a tax on business profits is when the maximum profits are being earned. Has my hon, friend lived up to our expectations? Has he increased the revenue from the tax which he was entitled to receive from the profiteering companies? Why, Sir, I have a list which would fill a Doomsday book, of industries in Canada which before the war yielded something like seven or eight per cent on their investment, and which today realize as much as the capital which they had originally invested in their business. I say that my hon. friend should take heed of the present hour, and should not permit those companies that are piling up millions out of the agony of the nation to escape without further taxation. I do not object to the tax on tea or coffee, I do not object to the tax on automobiles, I do not object to the tax on tobacco; but my hon. friend knows that by taxing tea, coffee and tobacco' he is hitting the poor man. Why should he let escape the Canada Cement Company, the steel companies, the canners, and various other enterprises that I could name? Last year the hon. gentleman advocated the removal of the surtax of seven and a. half per cent on the general tariff. He


Ernest Lapointe: Was the case
appealed by the Government?


Rodolphe Lemieux: knowledge, not only of British politics, but of English literature and British parliamentary history. The right hon. leader of the Opposition knew there had been a coalition under George III between Newcastle and Pitt, and being a great student, he had read Macaulay's description of that coalition, when "the vilest arts' of corruption were wedded to stainless integrity." Macaulay says:
Newcastle brought to the coalition .a vast mass of power . . . The public offices, the church, the courts of law, the army, the navy, the diplomatic service, swarmed with his creatures .... Pitt, on the other hand, had what Newcastle wanted, an eloquence which stirred the passions and charmed the imagination, a high reputation for purity and the confidence and ardent love of millions.
Newcastle took the treasury, the civil and ecclesiastical patronage, and the disposal of that part of the secret service money which was then employed in bribing members of Parliament. Pitt was Secretary of State, with the direction of the war and of foreign affairs. Thus the filth of all the noisome and pestilential sewers of government was poured into one' channel. Through the other passed only what was bright and stainless.
I repeat that the venerable leader of the Liberal party, when the Prime Minister made his offer of a coalition Government, remembered what happened to Pitt. He knew that Pitt's alliance with Newcastle led to Pitt's downfall, and he refused the offer of the Prime Minister. There is, however, a coalition to-day, or a Union Government based on self-interest, and formed on a fifty-fifty basis. But that coalition will not last. It won the election on the shallow pretext of winning the war. I am told by my hon. friend from Maple Creek (Mr. Maharg) that in this Government there are no Grits and no Tories. My hon. friend is labouring under a delusion. There is a Tory party to-day, and the Government is a Tory Government. Otherwise we should not have the junta we have in Canada governing by Orders in Council under the War. Measures Act, governing with the aid of the profiteers and the flag-flappers. But the most serious thing of all is that the Tory Government has shattered national unity in Canada, because the country has been deceived. Pledges and promises have been made to the French Canadians on the one hand, and-to the Ontario farmers on the other. The Government has been riding the old pair of fiorses, the Catholic and the Protestant. But we know what will happen when that delegation of farmers, two thousand strong, arrives in Ottawa on the 14th of May next.
I say the farmers were deceived. The

Government had recourse to all the expedients of a good old Tory campaign. They first of all showed their best cards, one of them was a four-flusher in the person of Lord Northcliffe. He came to Canada and said:
It is known to economists that the world's supply of food is not sufficient to feed the world's armies and the civilian population, too.
Eight here in Ottawa he said:
Owing to the shortage of labour'caused >by the war, labour has been taken away from the farm, which has produced varying harvests with the result that there is a world shortage of food.
The food controller, Mr. Hanna said:
labour must 'be supplied to the farms by the cities in time of war when labour is scarce. Canada is the base of supplies. Canada must not fall. Canada must produce.
Naturally, the farmers of Ontario said: we [DOT]will vote for this Government which urges us to produce for the hoys at the front. The then Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Burrell) repeated the same thing in the leaflets which he issued. With all these appeals, pledges and promises, the Unionist Government carried the election. But, to-day they have changed their minds. To-day it is man-power, not food production, that is needed. Sir, it is a long lane that has no turning. Because the French Canadian habitant would not be bullied in the ranks he was said to 'be shirking. Because the province of Quebec is a rural province, affording no such basis for recruiting as the industrial province of Ontario, Quebec was labelled as disloyal. Because the French Canadians have been for 300 years on this continent, have no link with Europe and may not have the same reason to cross the Atlantic and join their fellow-men on the battlefields as have British-born or Anglo-Canadians, they are called slackers. It is now found after the tornado of last December, after all the flag waving, after all the money spent in insulting placards, that the Quebec habitant and the Ontario farmer think exactly alike.
Let me say one more word as to the spirit of Quebec on the question of service in this war. The people of Quebec are a God-fearing, law-abiding, liberty-loving people. They protested against the passing of- this conscription measure through closure. There were a few riots, not engineered by the people of Quebec but engineered by agents provocateurs, some of whom were paid by the Department of Justice. The sober minded people of Quebec never .thought of rioting or revolting. There is only one instance, in recent years not of

a riot, but of a revolt against one of His Majesty's statutes passed by this Parliament. In the eighties when the Parliament of this Dominion sanctioned the Canadian Pacific contract, there was a clause known as the monopoly clause. The people, and legislature of Manitoba protested against that monopoly clause, and when they had exhausted all their protests in a constitutional way, the people of Manitoba-the Britishers of Manitoba,-armed themselves with rifles and guns, met the sheriffs despatched at Winnipeg by the Government at Ottawa and thus resisted His Majesty. That is the only instance of revolt against a statute of His Majesty's Government. The people of Quebec never revolted. They protested, as it was their right to protest, but now that the. law has been embalmed on the statute book, out of respect to the majesty of the law, the people of Quebec will obey it. They will do their duty, a'l their duty, and they will do it with credit to themselves and to their native land.
The arguments which were advanced by the Quebec people against the passing of conscription were the same arguments as those which are being advanced to-day by the Ontario farmers, which are being advanced sub rosa by representatives of farming constituencies in this House, and which are being advanced by the committee on-agriculture. Let 'me read a resolution which was unanimously passed the other day by the Unionist members of that committee:
That in the opinion of the committee on agriculture the Minister of Militia should he requested to order:
(a)	That actual farmers who have been called up shall be given leave of absence and
(b) That no actual farmers be required to report until all others in the class affected by the Order in Council of April 2'0th, 1918, have been put in service; such leave of absence and delay in reporting to be 'conditioned upon their actual employment in farming.
So that, Mr. Speaker, Quebec is being vin-. dicated.


Mr. PEDLOW:: Is that a resolution which was actually passed by men who voted down the amendment in this House in favour of exempting farmers?


Rodolphe Lemieux: I say " yes " to my hon. friend, and what is most tragic is that the committee had put themselves into communication with the various Ministers of Agriculture, not only in Quebec-the Quebec minister was asked his opinion only at the last	moment

but
in all the provinces. This resolution was endorsed by the Minister of Agriculture
in the province of Ontario, who said: " Yes, we want all our farmers on the farm." It was also endorsed by the Ministers of Agriculture of the other provinces which had elected Unionist members at the last election. iSo there is reflected in that resolution the unbiased, the unshackled opinion of the honest people of this country. Not only are we vindicated by the members of this House, by the committee on agriculture, but we are also vindicated by one of the ministers, the hon. the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Ballantyne). The minister has lived in Quebec all his life, he was born there, and I am proud to say that his brother is one of my electors. That hon. gentleman, speaking in Montreal on Friday last," said:
Mr. Ballantyne praised Quebec's way of answering to the call, stating that while its attitude towards the Military Service Act was not the same as that of many in the country, there was no more loyal province in the Dominion. He also paid his respects to the fighting qualities of the French Canadian, and thanked Archbishop Bruch esi-
Is my hon. friend from Toronto. (Mr. Hocken) here?
-for the great assistance he had given throughout the war.
I would like to sprinkle my hon. friend of the Orange Sentinel with holy water.
In conclusion, let me say that we must all heilp win the war and we on this side of the House are ready to accept our share of the financial burden which Canada must face. We forgive the discreditable arguments used by most of the press of the Unionist party during the last campaign. Indeed, after the battle was over, surveying the debris on the battlefield, we found here and there, many glittering stil-lettoes still dripping in blood, daggers, Rogers knives1, etc., etc., constituting a collection which many a rogues' gallery might well envy. Those were the weapons that had been aimed at the breast of the right hon. and venerable leader of the Opposition. But thank Heaven, he is still living, and the banner of true Liberalism is still floating over this Dominion.	We can
well afford to exclaim: " All is lost but honour." I wish that every leader of a Canadian political party could say the same. Sir, in one of his great Midlothian campaign speeches Mr. Gladstone used the following words:	.
We oanraot reckon on the wealth of the country, nor upon the rank of the country, nor upon the influence which rank and wealth usually bring. In the main these powers are against

us, for wherever there is1 a close corporation, wherever there is a spirit of organized monopoly, wherever there is a narrow and sectional interest apart from that of the country, and desiring to he set up above the interest of the public, there, gentlemen, we, the Liberal! party, have no friendship and no tolerance to expect.
Above all these, and behind all these, there is something greater than these-there is the nation itself:-The nation is a power hard to rouse, but when roused, harder still and more hopeless to resist.	[DOT]
These eloquent words admirably reflect the attitude of the Liberal party, and, we believe, the ultimate unbiased and undaunted spirit of the Canadian people.
My last words must be essentially Canadian. I gather from the newspapers that some ministers are at the present time scheming-yes, if my information is right, scheming-an ex parte trip to London. But. the Prime Minister is not going, and I am glad that he is not going, to London. At the present time he can well afford to follow the example of General Botha; his presence is urgently required in Canada as the leader of the nation. I am told that the Minister of the Interior and the President of the Council are going together to the Englisii metropolis. Why that association? I would be suspicious if I were one of the other ministers. Is Beaufort going to>
London? Is the famous secretarial organization going to London? Perhaps my hon. friend from Russell may have something to communicate to the House in that regard. I have read somewhere that Caesar was always suspicious of the pale man. I also am suspicious of that pale pair travelling together, and if I were a member of the Cabinet I would ask my hon. friends, the Minister of Marine and Fisheries and the Minister of Public Works, to accompany them. Why give the two ministers to whom I have referred, a monopoly of the loyalty of Canada in London? Why not the Minister of Labour, for instance? Why mot my good friend the Secretary of State, who doubtless would (be glad to. see his native land, because I know that he is Brit-ish-toom. I spoke with him once at a St, George's Society dinner in Montreal, when I tried to explain to him that St. George when he killed the dragon did not kill the Tory party. Sir, the duty of a minister of the Crown at the present time does not lie in joy-riding in London. We have a minister there in the person of Sir Edward Kemp, we have a High Commissioner there in the person of Sir George Perley. Lord Milner does not care to see those gentlemen, nor Lloyd George either; let them stay

at their post. My hon. friend the President of the Council should rather go into the county of Durham this summer and spend his vacations there among the farmers, cajoling them to allow their sons to be conscripted. Moreover the Imperialistic dreams of the Round Table clubs ana jingo associations, of which we have counterparts in Canada have 'had their day in England. The rising and predominating influence over there is the Labour party, and (the Canadian jingoes will get very little comfort from that source. Let them read, learn and inwardly digest the following words from the leader of that great party. Speaking about the persistent jingo conspiracy against the autonomy of the Dominions', Mr. Henderson said:
With regard to that great Commonwealth ot all races, all colours, all religions, and all degrees of civilization, that we call the British Empire, the Labour Party stands for its maintenance and its progressive development on the lines of Local Autonomy and "Home Rule All Round" ; the fullest respect for the rights of each people, whatever Its colour, to all the Democratic Self-Government of which it is capable, and to the proceeds of its own toil upon the resources of its own territorial home; and the closest possible co-operation among all the various members of what has became essentially not an Empire in the old sense, but a Britannic Alliance. We desire to maintain the most intimate relations with the Labour Parties overseas. Like them, we have no sympathy with the projects of "Imperial Federation," in so far as these imply the subjection to a common Imperial Legislature wielding coercive power, (including dangerous facilities for coercive Imperial taxation and for enforced military service), either of the existing Self-Governing Dominions, whose autonomy would' be thereby invaded; or of the United' Kingdom, whose freedom of Democratic self-development would be thereby hampered; or of India and the Colonial Dependencies, which would thereby run the risk of being further exploited for the benefit of a "White Empire." We do not intend!, by any such "Imperial Senate" either to bring the plutocracy of Canada and South Africa to the aid of the British aristocracy, or to enable the landlords and financiers of the Mother Country to unite, in controlling the growing Popular Democracies overseas. The absolute autonomy of each self-governing part of the Empire must be maintained intact.
I 'regret, Mr. Speaker, to have spoken at such length, tout I thought that this was the proper time to utter the words which I have spoken, in order, in company with my fellow-members, to place the sentiments of my race rightly before the people of this country. As was said so eloquently the other day by the hon. member for Kamouraska (Mr. Lapointe) no press has been debauched to present only one side of the case for .us; no press has been bought to defend

the French Canadians. This Parliament is our only forum.
In conclusion, let. me say on behalf of my compatriots that their national creed can be summed up in one sentence; Credo in imam patriam.


Mr. MICHAEL CLARK (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, we have just had a confession on the part of the hon. member (Mr. Lemieux) who has resumed his iseat that he is sorry he spoke so long. I think I should like to give him the assurance that he is not nearly so sorry as the House is.
Mr. (McKENZIE: We are not sorry if you are.


Michael Clark: My hon. friend from Cape Breton gives at the same moment a beautiful example of his want of selfrestraint and of his egotism. He mistakes himself for the House.


Mr. McKENZIE:: I never mistake you fcr anybody else.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Order.


Michael Clark: I am sorry indeed that the chief lieutenant of the leader of the Opposition (Mr. McKenzie) should, so early in the speech of an opponent, who has been left only twenty-five minutes to reply to a speech of an hour and three-quarters, so far forget his duties and courtesy as to interrupt to the extent that the Speaker has had to rebuke him. I hope my hon. friend will in future exercise greater courtesy.
I am quite sure that neither the House, nor any one else outside it who knows me, will expect me to dwell long upon the first portion of the speech of the hon. gentleman from Maisonneuve. Indeed, Sir, it is not my intention to speak long at all, because I think it will be a fair criticism of his speech as a whole to say that the ideas contained in it were in inverse proportion as to number to the vociferousness with which it was propounded. I want to say in all honesty that I have never risen to reply to a speech which required so much time to deliver and which contained so little. When my hon. friend from West Toronto (Mr. Hocken) ventured, in what I think was a very gentlemanly and courteous speech-a speech which certainly did not show any of the bitterness which he was advised not to cultivate by the gentleman to whose speech we have just listened and which was not itself quite free from bitterness-when he (Mr. Hocken), ventured to give his political opponents certain advice which he thought really would make for 
the unity of Canada, my hon. friend (Mr. Lemieux) retorted in kind and gave the hon. gentleman from Toronto advice as to what he thought Quebec might expect from Ontario. Well, if I could do it with due modesty I might, as a distant westerner, venture to give both hon. gentlemen some advice as to what would be best for the whole of Canada. I think I should do it in this way:	I should remind my hon.
friend from Maisonneuve, who is a great reader, that it has been established before commissions both in Belgium and in France, that priests caught by the modem Huns at the head of the greatest military force that this world has ever seen, have been stripped in passing a pig sty, and the pig has been taken out and the priests put back naked in its place. Before the same commissions it has been established that women have been outraged until they died, by man after man from the same army. And if my voice and I say it in all honesty, Sir-could reach the remotest nook and cranny of the province of Quebec to-day, I would try to say in all kindness but in all sincerity:	It is the
altars of your faith that are being outraged and desecrated; it is the children learning to prattle your tongue who are being mutilated; it is the civilians of Belgium and of France who, against all international law, are being shot. I make the appeal to my hon. friend in the presence of these facts; what good can come of an altercation on matters of religious sectarianism when there is a cause like that to champion? That is all I need to say, I think, and I do in all sincerity and kindness, on the first forty minutes of my hon. friend's speech.
The men in the trenches are not bothering themselves about a single sentence or a single thought that was contained in the first forty minutes of his speech. They realize too well that the civilization and the freedom of the world are at stake, and Catholics and Protestants are meeting the foe breast to breast and not fighting with one another about matters which are not worth the wind I have spent upon them, or the tremendous hurricane which raged in the speech of the hon. member for Maisonneuve	'
My hon. friend (Mr. Lemieux) said there had been no change in the Government; that the Government in power now is the old Government. That was his charge. Well, at the beginning of last summer my hon. friend was confident that he would beat the old Government, and what was

the infusion of strength which made the Union 'Government do to him and to- his friends what has happened to them? Than was some change, anyhow, from my hen. friend's confident expectations. Why, my hon, friend from Cape Breton (Mr. McKenzie), I believe, was in his heart already Minister of Justice in the new Government to be.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: I follow my profession; that is more than you do.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Order.


Michael Clark: 
An hon. MEMBER:: Call it six o'clock.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


Michael Clark: Mr. Speaker, if I may be permitted to make a little further criticism of the speech of my hon, friend from Maisonneuvie (Mr. Lemieux), I should like to summarize, if I am able, the points .at which I hinted this afternoon. That speech in my judgment .had two cardinal faults. In the first place, it was miade in apparent oblivion of the great events that are happening in the world today. From anything my hon. friend said from, the beginning to the end of his speech he might have been, unconscious that thrones are toppling, that empires are falling and that all the freest nations of Europe in conjunction with the free outlying commonwealths. of the British Empire. aTe now joined with .the most pacific but perhaps the greatest country in the world, the United. States of America, all of them filled

with the consciousness of the events- which my hon. -friend forgot-filled with the consciousness-, not that the British Empire i-s in danger, which of course it is, but that the military power opposed to us is- struggling, not for the defeat of any given one- of these free nations, hut for the abolition of the very idea of freedom from the face of the earth. The hon. gentleman who is suffering from -such lappa-rent oblivion-I do not want to Ibe too harsh with him-naturally lapsed into the second great fault of his speech. For an hour and three-quarters he talked, -and I appeal to any reasonable and fair-minded man opposite-and there' are many of them; some of them I rejoice to know as old friends and 'some as- newer friends, -to point to a single sentence in that spe-ech which was- not saturated with party-ism -from (beginning to end; it was purely a partisan speech. Of- course, to- -make a party speech under such conditions as prevail in the world to-day comes -perfectly natural to a gentleman -who even de-oeive-s himself into the notion that he is- one of the true Simon-pure Liberals remaining in the world to-day, and forgets there is- one place and one place only where the battle of Liberalism- is- being fought to-day, and that is- on the continent of Europe. My friends opposite s-ay they are Liberals.


Mr. RICHARDSON:: The remnant of them.
Mr. MICHAEL -CLARK:	I object to
their dreaming for a moment that 'they are -even a remnant of the Liberal party. The -fact of the matter is- they are not Liberals-, they are not democrats. For this simple reason

that their attitude, the attitude displayed by my hon. friend from Mais-onneuve . this afternoon, of pure party-ism, -un-forgetfulness, overlooks the fact that if Democracy is beaten in Europe, Liberalism, real Liberalism, and real freedom disappears from the world. The hon. member for Maisonneuve allows his partyis-m to carry him so far that he tries to prove to this House, and probably wants to prove' to the country, that we have the same Government in power now that we had last summer, that there has been no change in the Government, that there are still nothing but Liberals and Tories. Every one who -sits with my hon. friend and votes against woman suffrage and talks as they did twenty years ago about lowering the tariff, which they did- not do-everything of that sort is Liberal, everything else is Tory. If my hon. friend had been in his place I would have put a very simple test 
to his narrow partisan view of -the events-that are taking place in the world. I would have just asked him in a single sentence: "Is every member of the American nation a Tory?" Almost every man of intelligence in that Republic, whether he was formerly a Republican or a Democrat in -the party sense, has forgotten that party ever existed, and they are all to-day standing together behind President Wilson. And- the party sitting here are the men in Canada who forgot the same thing, forgot whether they were Liberals or Tories, and they swept the Dominion outside of one province. That is my answer to my hon. friend's taunt that there has been no change of Government. * The change is one that may go further in this country, and far further in the world, than he has ever begun to dream of.
The Union Government is a new combination. It is a combination of all the best forces that have grasped the events in the world in the way I have just tried to describe, and if they will keep grasping those events, and -keep studying the results that are likely to come out of them, and keep watching the events that do. come out of them, they will rule Canada for many a long day. For one reason, what would you put in their place, Mr. -Speaker? I trust my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) will live until he is a hundred and twenty, but I cannot help my imagination sometimes enabling me t-o wonder what the Opposition would look like if Ue were taken away by the han-d of Time. There is- no possibility of making a Government to govern Canada or any other progressive country out of the elements that took a day to prove that woman suffrage w-as a bad thing, a very wrong thing ac-co-rdinig to the Book of Leviticus or something that was written even earlier than that. How far such thinkers are removed from the current of present day events, from the tremendous need of the fight that is going on in the world, from the colossal events which in some senses it is a privilege to live through, and which events will become more colossal before we are very much older.
If I wanted to illustrate how much this Un-ion Government transcends, from the point of view I have been trying to bring before the House, the party governments which have largely ruled in this country during the past half century, I should take the simple method of referring to the events of this brief session. But before doing that,
I would remind hon. members that a party

came into power in this country in 1896 and held power for fifteen years. I was not a citizen of Canada before that time, but I have talked with many intelligent citizens of this country who watched the events of those years carefully, and it is a moot point, according to the evidence I have gathered as carefully as I can, whether of the platform convention of 1893, from which the chief lieutenant of the Liberal party read at large the other night-it is a moot point whether there was no plank of that platform honoured or only one. I have never heard anybody claim that there were two. That is the way that Government honoured its mandate. Then there was .a Government came into power in this country in 1911, a party Government of the other description, and they were not very strong on fulfilling their mandate either. My hon. friends around me must just take the truth in season as it comes to my recollection. That ie how party government has carried out the mandate of the people. I said a moment ago that we have been in session for two months. What advantage does the Union Government show over the party government that preceded it? In these two months they have shown the most utter earnestness in endeavouring to make a fair start to carry out the mandate which was given them by the people. Take the subsidiary points in the programme that was brought before the people last autumn. There was abolition of patronage. I am glad to say that my correspondence has dwindled almost to the vanishing point because the people are already learning that the Government is going to govern in so far as patronage is concerned, and is going to govern on a very different principle from getting a member to toady around a minister and ask him if he will do this or that, because that is the definition of patronage. In other words, the Government have made a most honest start and endeavour to abolish patronage by putting all appointments to the Civil Service, and all other services in the State, upon the platform of principle and taking them off tho platform of party.
There is another question which I have referred to more than once. It is difficult to believe it possible, but some members on this side of the House have chided the Government in conversation with me because they introduced woman suffrage in the first session of this Parliament. I have said to them: " Do not open your mouth along those lines, because that is the most charming thing that the Government have
done." They have taken this great step in broadening the franchise in this country in the first session of Parliament after they had promised the people that they would do so. These I can refer to as subsidiary paints in the platform of the Government and in the mandate they got from the people.
There cannot be any successful denial of the fact that the main proposition put before the country-as far as my part of the country is concerned, and I do not think it was different in any other part of the country-was that this war was of such transcendent and overwhelming importance that it was necessary to mobilize the man power and the material power of the country to enable Canada to do her full and proper share in the winning of the war. That policy did not appeal to the party opposite, or the method of pursuing that policy in Britain, in France, in America, did not appeal to them, which is pretty well the same thing. They opposed in reality, if in unconsciousness, the only method by which the man and material power of the country could be mobilized. It is true we had the criticism from the right hon. the leader of the Opposition that the Government was conscripting the man power of the country and not conscripting the money power. If that had been true I still would have voted for Union Government because, from what I could see of my right hon. friend's policy, he would not have conscripted anything, and half a loaf is better than no bread. But, I do not think it is strictly true. In regard to the man power of the country, the party opposite stand where they did, except that they do not fight the further application of compulsory military service with anything like the keenness they did last year, and I beg to say to you, Sir, that I think it is very greatly to their credit, it shows that their psychology has been somewhat affected at any rate by the tremendous offensive on the western battlefront in Europe. No one but a child could fail to appreciate what that offensive means to the world. We heard of this military power, ad nauseum, as the greatest military power that the world had ever seen, and can anybody doubt it? They swept into Belgium and France, to begin with, and they nearly gained their objective of Paris before being held up. On the eastern front they went through with incredible swiftness and ran the enormous Russian armies back 'beyond Tannenberg. That was in the first autumn of the war. In the next autumn of the war



they swept over a little country like Serbia and squeezed it like a small sponge. In the next autumn of the war they did the same with Rumania. Last autumn they hurried south and swept Italy backward in the same way. I want to put the question very seriously to my hon. friends: What remains? I will tell them. The last front of freedom in the world is that held by Britishers and equally by glorious, bleeding, but still unbeatable and triumphant Frenchmen. What are we in Canada to do in face of circumstances like that? What becomes of the strategy of my hon. friends in my own province? They had all become strategists, and they showed us that -minor individuals like General Haig and Mr. Lloyd George did not really -know anything about the facts of the situation, and that there was no need of men in Europe at all. "What you want is wheat." What would all the wheat in the world -have done to save us from the results of that offensive if the men had not been there, and what advantage would it be at the present time if you had multiplied your production tenfold if they were not now there? You must realize that if that one last bulwark of freedom were swept aside you need not bother any more about what you are going to produce in Canada, because the Germans will direct you what to do.
Now, I admitted a moment ago that the psychology of hon. gentlemen opposite has evidently been affected somewhat, but they have still, apparently, a very small appreciation of the situation as I have tried to describe it, and as I claim it to exist, because, only a few weeks ago, we were favoured with a repetition of the arguments of last, year, full of that party stuff about breaking our pledges to farmers in regard to exemptions. That does not bother me a moment, and it will not bother the western farmers, because they appreciate the situation. Why should it, in the light of the statement I have just made?-for. evidently, there will be no farming to do except under autocratic rulers if we do not send the men. That is what the Government was confronted with in the fulfilment of half of what I would call the major portion of their programme for which they got such a magnificent mandate from the peo-pje. If it were understood that the Government were going to exempt the farmers, they might turn on hon. gentlemen opposite and say they are the men who are to blame for the Government's pledge, because they

told us there was no need of men. But no man with his eyes open to the course of events would argue that to-day. The need of men was obvious, it was pressing. But the Government broke its pledge, my hon. friend from Maisonneuve (Mr. Lemieux) says. Yes, but it kept its eye fixed on the goal of victory and the need of men.
Now I think I have made out a very good case for the fact that there is a Union Government, as distinguished from a party government, up to now-a very good case. But I have to be fair to myself and to my convictions, and to carry the actual facts of the case just a little further. I want to say that the Government was equally pledged, as far as I understood their position-I certainly was, and every man from the West was, I think-to mobilize the material power, the money power, of the country, as well as the man power, and in so far as it is made from non-party motives I appreciate the point of view that was so well put by my hon. friend from West Middlesex (Mr. Ross) the other day, and was put not quite so well by my hon. friend from Maisonneuve (Mr. Lemieux) this afternoon. I appreciate the point of view; I appreciate the criticism, and I am going to extend it a little. And when I come to speak of the Budget I am bound to say that, just as I have tried to point out the reasons why -a very great change in the thought and attitude of hon. members opposite is necessary before they will be entrusted with power by the people of this country, so it is true from my point of view that the Government, this Union Government, which, after all, is only human, has fallen down a little on its Budget. I do not refer to the non-reduction of the tariff. Personally I hold the same views -about trade matters as I ever did; I suppose I am the only man here who is really open to the accusation of being fully deserving of the madhouse in regard to them, but still they are fully shared by most of my countrymen in the little land from which 1 come. I have been a strong free trader all my life, and I hold my free trade views still, but I want to repeat what I said this afternoon:, that the Unionist Government has given evidence already of its determination with full strength of purpose to do the best things to carry out its programme and to fulfil the orders that were given it by the people. I have so much confidence that the members of the Government are alive to the events that are taking place in the world, and so much confidence also in their intellect, that they will see

md be alert in repairing anything in regard to the tariff that needs to be repaired in the next session of Parliament, if not in this. I believe that all the countries at war will not go in the direction that some people are looking for, a war of imperial zollvereins and protection. I will tell you why I believe it. What is it we are all fighting for, Sir? We are fighting for the triumph of democracy in all the advanced nations in the world, or in all the world, and it is inconceivable in thought that the triumph of that democracy and the introduction of the principle of human brotherhood can lead the free peoples of the world in the direction of fighting a trade war after they have .abolished military war forever. That is my view, and I venture to base a prophecy upon it-that you will have a movement of world opinion and world action along those lines. If that is to come about it will come about in this country at the hands of the Government, because Union Government is a reality, in spite of what my hon. friend from Muisonneuve says, and it is composed of men in whose ability and integrity I have the highest confidence. Tt will be quick to catch the signs of the times and the needs of our nation. I shall very likely live to see far more lowering of the tariff under a Unionist Government than I ever saw under a Liberal one-and that might not be much either.
Now I come to the point of the conscription of wealth, so-called. Well, I think a wise Government, Sir, will be led by the force of events to go a considerable direction in the way of conscription of wealth further than this Government has been led now. Because, in the first place, we will have to copy the wisdom of the other great nations with which we are allied in this contest; and in the second place, if we do not go further than we have gone now in a wise direction towards the conscription of health, forces will toe let loose in the world, after this triumph of democracy for which we are conscientiously fighting-forces will be let loose which will be anarchistic forces, which will be socialistic forces, and instead of taking a great deal of the income of the rich man they will take all he has got. That is my contribution to prophecy along this line.
I want to say on this point candidly- and I apologize for keeping the House so long-that I do not believe the Government has gone as. far as it should with its income tax. I do not believe in a levy on capital, although there are many people in the West looking to the possibility of
100J
that after the war-many people are looking to it and believe it will come to. a considerable extent. I believe the proper thing is to get as much of the money as you possibly can for carrying on the war by means of an income tax, just as they are doing in the United States, and as they are doing to a very much greater extent in Great Britain, I repeat that I do not think the Government has gone far enough in this matter, and I believe public opinion will compel it to go further at the next session of Parliament. It is impossible, of course, as has been said again and again, to make anything like an equality of sacrifice possible in this war. I met, a man, within the last few days, who came into the town of Medicine Hat a few days after war broke out, from a ranch some distance out in the country. He was a South African veteran, and seeing a crowd around a building he asked what was the matter. They told him there was a war on. His hired man was with him, and he said: "Take the wagon back to the farm and tell [DOT] the wife I will come back after I have done my bit towards beating Germany." That was in the first part of the war, and he came back this week. He went to the war prepared to lose his life, if necessary. I know of other cases, well authenticated eases, in the northern part of my province, of men who left their rich farms with cattle and horses, allowed the horses and the cattle to roam the prairies, went to the front and have lost their lives. I know of one man in particular-and this is also a well authenticated case-who after being wounded three times returned to the battle line. He was killed-struck in the middle of the body by a shell and had1 both his legs blown off. There is no amount of money that we can pay, the richest of us, that will make us equal in sacrifice to what these men have done. But surely the argument is made stronger by that very consideration, for a Government going as far as it is possible, in accordance with sound economic thinking and the economic condition of the country, to make the sacrifice of those who are left at home as great as possible along the line of the giving of wealth. If we compare the Budget, that my hon. friend (Mr. Maclean) introduced' the other day in a speech of conspicuous ability, with what they are doing in Britain, the comparison compels me again to think that this Government has not gone far enough. In the year 1916 Lloyd George had predicted a total revenue in England of five hundred million pounds. As the House well knows, nearly all the taxation in England is raised

directly. Well, the English people did better than Lloyd George, who at that time [DOT]held the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer, anticipated. They raised five hundred and seventy million 'pounds- $2,800,000,000-in the year 1916, almost entirely by direct taxation.
We are, roughly, rather more than a seventh of the population of Great Britain and Ireland. A very simple sum in division, seven into twenty-eight, would have told my horn, friend the Acting Minister of Finance a simple method by which he could have raised $400,000,000 for next year, and he only wants $280,000,000-he is not a very greedy chancellor compared with those they have in Gteat Britain. He wants $280,000,000, and he proposes to raise it by borrowing from the people of Canada. If he had made his taxes as high as they are in Britain, and provided the people here are as rich as are the people there-I suppose they are richer in Britain, although it has always been a mystery to me how they could get so much wealth under the "mistaken" fiscal policy of free trade-he could knock off $120,000,000, and get all the money required without borrowing at all. If we are not as rich as are the people of Britain, it would be hard to get the money; that is a moot point; there is none of us who would admit that we are not as patriotic. I think sound fiscal thinking will lead the Government to go further along this line before another Budget is brought in.
I want to make another comparison between the action of the Government upon the income tax and the other taxes they have brought in. I do not want to say much about the tax on matches-I have a recollection that Bobert Lowe, a Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain, was nearly driven out of public life for introducing a tax on matches, and in view of that precedent I rather wondered at the courage of my hon. friend in his action. The people of Britain would not stand for it a minute. They were probably right. It ie one of these small irritating taxes, and we had better wait until next year before we prophesy anything about it. But I want to make a comparison which will perhaps bring out my point of view a little better. The Government are taxing tea ten cents a pound. Now, you can get a pretty fair pound of tea in western Canada for fifty cents. That means a tax of twenty cents upon a dollar's worth of tea. A simple calculation by the House will make it aware of the fact, therefore, that this Government is practi-

cally putting $2,000 taxation upon $10,000 worth of tea-tea which the women who have sent their relatives to the front need, or think they need, to cheer their nerves three times a day, in the circumstances we are passing through. But on an individual income of $10,000, the Government charges only $392. I think they are too kind about that transaction. I have always been extremely anxious to pay an income tax of 95 per cent.on a million dollars. I would like ito do that just for one year to know what it felt like to have $50,000. And then if the war went on I would- make a fair deal on that $50,000 afterwards', but I am ready next year, if the Government will tell me wihere to get the million dollarsi, to let them have 95 per cent of it. Of course, people living in the eastern' parts would not be so rash, because they do not know the glorious freedom and independence of our western country. If the Government had gone further along [DOT]this line they would, have pursued the path of sounder finance, in my humble judgment. I have given them full credit for what they have done along this line. The late Government was the first which ever raised a cent of direct taxation in this country, aud, after all, that is something to be rather proud of. Some of the taxation by which they ra'sed money was very drastic taxation indeed. The business tax-I referred this Mtemoon to the extraordinary shynesss which those enthusiastic direct taxers opposite showed for these direct taxes when they were introduced in this House. It seemed to me self-evident-of course, I was raised and got my fiscal thoughts in the Old Country, where free trade and direct taxation have prevailed for three-quarters of a century-that jt would be sounder finance for us to take more of the money from the pockets of the people as you go along, and not by way of loans. Mr. Speaker, there is no great amount of patriotism, or sacrifice either, in buying a good bunch of Victory bonds with the credit of Canada behind them and 5 per cent interest. I would do a great deal along that line of patriotism if I had the money. But he is a great patriot who says: Take the money now, and you will never have to pay either principal or interest. The Victory bond business is not one of the things which I consider to be the biggest exhibition of patriotism. As a matter of fact, the man who buys a big bunch of Victory bonds is the embodiment of selfishness. This may be extraordinary heterodoxy to the people of the United States and

Canada, but I believe what I say, and I have a habit of saying what I think. In the first place he looks over to the trenches and says: "Poor fellows, they are losing their lives; we have to support them.'' Then he looks at his own pocket and sees .a fine bunch of money, and the Government comes along and1 says: "We would like that money at 5J per cent interest"-and the beauty of the arrangement is that you may never be called upon to pay the principal, you will have to struggle with the interest, hut posterity will pay the principal. This .Victory bond business is not an example of sacrifice; it is an example of selfishness and shirking of duty. The 'man in the trenches is sacrificing, as are the people who will subsequently pay back the principal of the bonds and the interest-none of us knows how long we will carry that debt. We are really putting our sacrifices of blood, on the one hand, on the men in the trenches, and on the other hand our financial sacrifices are put on posterity. The Government have lacked courage in regard to their income tax, which should have been higher. Personally, I would die from the lashings of my conscience,-and I do not profess to have the most tender conscience in the world,-if I received anything like an income of $20,000 a year in times like these. I would like to take all the millionaires out to my ranch, build them each a shack, and let them know the pleasure of working for a living, if they would give most of their wealth to carry on the war. Since the beginning of the war business men have been asking to be faxed, and that is why, with great, regret, I have to say that on this one point the Government have broken down, they have failed. There was a gentleman in Hamilton, whose name I forget now, who handed over the whole of his profits for one year, amounting to seven or eight hundred thousand dollars, without being taxed at all,-conscience money he could not take. I met a business gentleman, who, with his brother is the head of one of the biggest businesses in Ontario, the other day, a lifelong Tory, fifty years of age,-it is only an accident, perhaps, but I never met a Grit of that kind at all,- He said to me, with the utmost seriousness and in the terse language which business men use; Your income tax is all right, but you have not gone for enough with it; do it now and do it quickly; I want to pay my shot now; it is interest that is the ruin of Canada. Sir, that man knew what he was talking about and his views are
representative of those of hundreds of other business men of this country.
The Government-some members of it anyhow-have	with laudable energy
preached economy since this war began. The Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir George Foster) has been very earnest along that line; I am told that he smokes only one cigarette a year, so it runs with his nature. To preach economy is good, but it is in the power of the Government to enforce economy. If you only take plenty of taxes from the rich they will have to be economical, and, because of its newness and its otherwise generally admirable character, it will he a blessed experience to them. How are we economizing on war accounts? I do not know why the Government went in for these petty dockages of a "few civil servants who went to the front. Get the money by direct taxation, and give the men who have gone to the front the fairest show in the world- that is the view of every right-thinking man in this country. I believe the Government have actually done something in making separation allowances less; but not one man in ten thousand in Canada will approve these petty dockages.
I have said a great deal in praise of the Government and it is just as well for them to have a little medicine of the other kind. They are men of open mind and I believe they will take it in good spirit; they know that I mean well, anyhow. I do not think they have economized as much, perhaps, on contracts as they might have, although the (Minister of Public Works (Mr. Carvell), has been an admirably busy man along these lines. I have said this in good part; I have said it with the utmost earnestness and the utmost seriousness. I think that Union Government is giving a splendid justification of its formation and its existence, as will be admitted by any gentleman on the other side of the House who gives reasonable attention to the points that I have raised in that connection, if he has any fairness in him and gets rid of that partyism which took such a violent hold of my hon. friend this afternoon. They have made a fair step at fulfilling their promises to the people. They are putting hard work into this business. Some people attribute to me some share in the parentage of Union Government. It would hurt me if the Government went much further along that direction of being prodigally patriotic with the sons of the rank and file in the trenches and parsimonious with the pockets of the rich. I

believe that the opinion of the people of the country is absolutely behind me in this respect, irrespective of party, I know what the people of the West want in this matter. I know them well- I know them better than some folks thought I did last fall, anyway. I think I know what the labouring men of this country want in the matter; if Canada was canvassed to-morrow they would support the view that I have tried in my own way to bring before this House, and especially before the Government. Realizing their immense responsibilities wishing them well, knowing that they are dominated by patriotism and by the desire to win the war for freedom on which we are embarked, I believe the Government will yet rise to the fulness of their duty on this the only point on which in my judgment they have fallen short.
I should like to finish with an appeal to my hon. friend (Mr. Lemieux), whom I love-he used to entertain me in his own house at one time, and would yet, I think, if I needed it. With the greatest political powers in the world he cannot become a real leader of a united country if he gives way to outbursts of racialism, and to what I am afraid was narrowness, as he did this afternoon; and leads a debate which betrays extraordinary imperviousness to the course of events in the world, ae he did when he spoke against woman suffrage. " Coming all over the world-but we cannot have it in Quebec,"-that attitude will never produce a united country.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Mr. Asquith would not have it in England, nor would Mr. Gladstone.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Order.
Mr. MICHAEL CLARK. Mr. Asquith has more wisdom than my hon. friend; he was not long in seeing the light. I had taken the chair for Mrs. Pankhurst before Mr. Asquith saw the light-I do not know that the accidental combination of Mrs. Pankhurst and myself at a public meeting had anything to do with it. However, the facts are in favour of Mr. Asquith, because he has changed his mind in the right direction. The fact is that war will lead my hon. friends opposite-will lead us all-to develop far more quickly along the lines of progress in one year than people heretofore have done in a generation. Half a century ago you could not have formed a Union Government in this country; it was the pressure of war that did it. Of course my hon. friend says that it is not a Union Government; that it is a Tory Government.

With the indulgence of the House, I would like to put a question to him. He still sees nothing but Liberals and Tories; he himself and his right hon. leader are the only two of the Liberal persuasion worth very much consideration. There are some good, promising young fellows behind them, and everything else is Tory. Why, Sir, everybody on this side of the House holds almost precisely the view with regard to world events that every advanced thinker in America does to-day, irrespective of party. Would my hon. friend make the charge that the United States of America-the freest and in many respects the greatest country in the world- is composed entirely of Tories? He has to get away from this to toe on his old pinnacle.
My hon. friend told me the other day that I -was an exile. I am not an exile from the belief in freedom:; I am not an exile from the belief that the only fight for liberty and democracy is now going on on the battlefields of Europe. My hon. friend knows that; he has given a siplendid young man to the cause, and -I -am proud of it- his only son, if I mistake not, standing with mine. They have forgotten all party strife there; they see only the danger to the world. I speak with the utmost kindness and the utmost sincerity in the last words I utter on this occasion to my hon. friends opposite. Press along; get the Government to go>
further in the way of conscription of wealth, but give up partyism for the moment. Get in behind the hoys in the trenches. My message to-night is the same as it was last year: Realize the great object of the fight and the privilege of living through this period. Then you will have a united Canada-united under a Union which, I trust, will not he lightly broken again.
Mr. JEAN J. DENIS (Joliette):	Mr. Speaker, I listened with attention and interest to the very able speech which was delivered this afternoon toy the member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Lemieux) and with no less attention to the reply of the member for Red Deer (Mr. Michael Clark). Notwithstanding what has toeen said on many occasions during this debate, I want hon. gentlemen opposite to realize that we concur with them in the view that the present circumstances and the situation which we are now facing are the most serious and most inspiring that have ever existed in this country-indeed, that have ever existed through all the ages of time. On the other hand, I wish every member

of th'is House to understand that, no matter how great the crisis, no matter how great the issue at stake, it is inevitable, especially in. such circumstances as these, that men in the same country, having the same aims, the same aspirations and tending towards the same destinies, should, on matters so momentous as these, have different views and opinions. That is the stand that I am going to take this evening in the course of my few remarks, and that is the stand which has been taken by my fellow-citizens oi French origin. Future generations and ages will later show-and perhaps the time will come .sooner than we expect-who was right and who was wrong; but if I am now raising the question of right or wrong, it is not because I want to .contend that we aJone are ri^ht and that we possess right.
I do not contend that at all. I am not so strong a man as to be able, under these circumstances, to say: behold, right is ours, and hon. members on the other side of the House are wrong. But I am strong enough a man to say: We have studied the situa-. tion as it has presented itself to us; we have done our heist to comprehend and understand it, and if we have arrived at a solution which is different from the solution to which our hon. friends opposite have come, our opinion in this respect, notwithstanding the greatness of the effort, should be respected just as highly as the opinion of any hon. member in this House.
One of the main arguments made by the hon. member for Bed Deer (Mr. Michael Clark) in order to overcome the effect of the speech of the hon. member for Maison-neuve (Mr. Lemieux) was that the vigor-our addr'ess which the latter delivered this afternoon contained nothing .substantial and, in fact, nothing that was deserving of an answer. I was very much .surprised to hear the hon. member for Bed Deer make that remark at the beginning of his speech, for he did make it, as I took a note of it at the time, and it will appear in Hansard. For a person who can find nothing fitting with which to challenge or contradict the arguments of an adversary, it is always wise to say: The reasons you have given are worthless, and I shall not attempt to answer them. It would be folly on my part if I were not aware that I am far too inexperienced to place myself between these two stalwarts, the hon. member for Maisonneuve and the hon. member for Bed Deer. Let it be sufficient for me j.o say, in conclusion, upon this point, that, at all events, we on this side of the House all greatly admired the speech of the hon. member for Maisonneuve, and we are all happy that, in these times of stress, we are able to enjoy the privilege of having such a man in our depleted ranks.
It is recognized, and I can safely say, that this Budget is one of the most important delivered since Confederation. It embraces greater scope than any other measure which was ever introduced into this House. The figures are amazing. Yet the discussion of it remains a delicate subject to handle on account of the many delicate questions which are dependent upon it, and of this every one of us has had proof this afternoon and on previous days.
The feature which will at first sight strike the layman is the coldssal amount of money which we have already spent, and the still more colossal amount which will be spent under the new measures and also under the old ones. In view of these facts one can hardly avoid making reflections 9 p.m. of the most serious nature. May I be listened to by this House, however, when I say that my desire is to avoid launching into any unjust criticism or undue manifestation of hostility toward those who do not believe as we do. For I have always believed that earnestness and sincerity are the best policies for any man to follow in all walks of life-politics included-and although this disposition of mind has been the cause of many bitter deceptions I have suffered-.mainly in politics-yet I still cling to these primeval principles. Because I look upon it as a boon, which fends to make a man a better man, to be given the privilege of making an address in the presence of such a distinguished body of men as I now behold. 1 look upon the situation as serious, and I believe we cannot emphasize this too much. If it be the policy of this Government to spend hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, blindly and without any regard whatsoever to Canadian interests; if it be the policy of this Government to forget that Canada is a country which owes to itself preservation and isurvivance, then this Government is rightfully pursuing its policy. Again, if this Administration is content with the principle, once dwelt upon by one of its members, that it is proper and expedient, if needs be, tb drive Canada into bankruptcy in order to assist the Allies in Europe; if such be the consensus of opinion amongst the hon. members of this House, then, again, I say we would be only following our course by adopting this Budget



C0MM0N3

[Stage Direction]
and pursuing the policy which the Government has adopted. If, on the other hand, sound counsel still prevails in this House; if the ideals of the Canadian people are still those which, until a very recent date, had^een pursued by all political men, political associations and political parties in this country, ever since Confederation, then I say it is high time that this wild stampede which has been forced upon us should be halted, and every man in this country should now pause and meditate a moment.
If it be true that I am opposed with all the strength of which I am capable to conscription, yet I am not, we are not on this side of the House by any means opposed to Canada's contribution to this war. On the contrary, we have always said and declared that, regardless of whether or not we were compelled to contribute according to our obligations towards the Mother Country, we were willing to do what we could. But what I want, what we want, is that this contribution be made to the extent only which our means warrant.
What we want is that Canada should not be ruined, bankrupt in both men and money, in her attempt-successful, we all hope but nevertheless uncertain-to win the war by giving the Allied nations the relatively scant and meagre support which we only can produce.
I have said we all hope to be successful, but that the result is nevertheless uncertain, and I want to be well understood on that point. What does Canada's contribution represent in this war? If we are to accept as true the statement in the newspapers that there are now five million men opposing the Germans, what does Canada's contribution of four divisions or ninety thousand men amount to, relatively speaking? It represents about two per cent of the whole. If by sacrificing Canada it was in our power to win the war, I am not ready to say I would not be the first to say, Let us1 do it; because Canada is not as big as the whole of Europe or as big as civilization, and it might not be a bad bargain to sacrifice even our own' country to save Europe and civilization. But what will be the actual result of our contribution in this war? We can add only a very small amount to the forces which are now opposing each other; I might almost say, a negligible amount when we consider the final result of this struggle. But we are taking it for granted that it is the proper thing to do, to ruin and bankrupt this country for the sake of the war. I say 
this is not acting on sound principles. It is not doing justice to ourselves or to the country to sacrifice Canada in order to win the war, when we all admit that Canada by itself cannot win the war and can only assist in a very meagre way in bringing that end about.
I have expressed in a few brief words what I believe to be the sentiments and ideals of my own province, and what I believe to be also the sentiments and ideals of a great many citizens of other provinces in this Dominion. Of this we have new evidence every day. What answer do the delegations get that come here from different parts of Ontario? What do they come here for? They come here, I suppose, because they accept the argument I have just advanced. If the Prime Minister said to these men, "Canada is the only country that can win the war, and if we give our whole we will win it,'' I credit the people of Ontario with patriotism enougn to sav that they would dio it- and I believe every one of those men would return to their homes satisfied and prepared to do what had to be done. But all that can be said to them is this, "Do your best; we are simply a drop in the bucket; sacrifice your whole for the war but be assured that your contribution is not important enough to win the war." Many criticisms have been made of the stand taken by my province. On an occasion like this, where the main if not the sole object of the Budget is the prosecution of the war according to the means adopted by the Government; the application and the enforcement of the law of conscription according to old and new methods, the payment of expenses which have already been made, which are being made now, and which will necessarily be made in the future, and, as an immediate consequence of all this, the necessity of levying enormous amounts of money upon the people-all matters about which we do not agree with the Government or at least^ differ as to methods-I think I should be given the privilege of explaining some of the reasons why my people have opposed, and are still opposing, the policy of the Government in regard to the different matters I have just mentioned, and I feel I will not be doing wrong or injustice to any one in expressing the^ views of my constituents on these divers subjects, if I do so openly, frankly, and honestly, without craft, guile, or suspicion. If I were only relying upon my own authority in reference to these reasons it would not be worth any more than the opinion of an

inexperienced man; but such is not the case. In support of my views I can quote the opinion of all the public men this country has produced, great and small, learned and ignorant, Whigs and Tories, from the fathers of Confederation down to the public men of present times. Every one in this House admits that this new policy of sacrificing Canada to win a war in Europe has always been deprecated by all Governments and by all public men in this country ever -since Confederation, We are, so well aware of that, that when war was declared we heard the Prime Minister say that no one in England had asked us to send troops overseas. If we had been obliged for -some reason or another to contribute in this war, why did not England send for the soldiers of Canada just as she sent for her own soldiers in India and elsewhere? Of course, everybody admits we are not obliged to contribute. We are doing it simply because we are satisfied to do it, because the issue at stake is so tremendous we -cannot help _ doing it, _ and we should not -avoid doing it. The difference of opinion between us is not so great as some people think, and it would not be so great if the facts which I am now going to bring before the House were better known. I have just said that this is a new policy for Canada. We never contemplated a contribution in this war to the extent of conscription, and in this connection I cannot do better than refer to the declaration of the Prime Minister (Sir Robert Borden) himself.
In January, 1916, in the House of Commons, in answer to a question asked by the right hon. the leader of the Opposition, the right hon. the Prime Minister said in the most unequivocal manner that there should be no conscription in Canada. What did that mean? It meant that the effort of Canada was to be a limited one and that it was to remain within the limits of voluntary recruiting which, even at that period, had begun to diminish to a noticeable extent. To say that Canada would not have conscription was virtually to declare that the contribution in men would not go beyond a certain limit and that, as a consequence, the moneys to be expended, being proportionate to the number of men who had enlisted, might also be limited. No other meaning could be -attributed to those words.
But the course of things changed. All of a sudden conscription came, and some people are now surprised because the French Canadians did not jump at conscription,
did not take off their hats and acknowledge that since the Prime Minister has changed his views, we should change ours also. But I would -point out to hon. gentlemen who take -this view that we had been taught otherwise for generations and generations, and no one can change -the mentality of a people in a single hour no matter what the circumstances are. Since then the policy of the Government has been changed so that no one can tell now where we are going, save that we are going fuR speed ahead towards bankruptcy? This is just where the divergence of opinion arises. I deny the right of any member of this House or any Government to drive Canada full speed ahead into bankruptcy in order to try to win the war. That isi where the divergence of opinion -comes in. One group contends that we -should give everything to the war, while the other group supports the idea that we should give everything we -can without driving this country to destruction. It is o-nly a question of degree and I humbly submit that 'both opinions, although perhaps not equally wise, are nevertheless equally sincere.	_
Although I do not admit the idea oi those who would sacrifice everything to the war, still I can understand the sentiment and ideals of those men, and that is the reason I rose -and said that I wanted to speak and to -say things honestly and sincerely without craft, pretense or guile. 1 can understand the sentiments and ideals of those men, but what I cannot understand is that -those who do not agree with our ideal-s should find it impossible, or should refuse, to understand our sentiments and ideals as we do theirs. The only explanation would be that these men are practical exponents of the selfish doctrine of selfinfallibility.
An important question which has often been asked and which I will n-o-w seek to answer is- this; Why did not the French Canadians of the province of Quebec enroll voluntarily to -the same extent as those of English speech throughout Canada generally? Why did they oppose conscription, and at this present juncture why are they n-ot willing to give their own to the war, or, to be plain, why are they no-t willing to give the "last man" -and s-pend the "last dollar" for the war? This query is nothing less than the enunciation under a different form of the problem- I have already disclosed. The an-s-weT is manifold, and if I take the time of this House to give the answer it is because I think earnestly and frankly that from a proper understanding between this side of the House and .the
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other good will oome to all of us. It has been pointed out ibefore that the enrollment throughout Canada has been toy reason of inverse \ ratio to' the time during which people have inhabited this country. In other words, those who were newcomers enrolled in much greater numbers than those who had been old time settlers. And this is only natural. The man who has left Europe recently has not yet become attached to the soil of this country. He feels himself a stranger in Canada and he has always in mind the idea that the old country is his home. The opposite applies to the old settler. He has lost interest in all things across the ocean and looks upon Canada as his real and only country. But the same condition of mind exists still more deeply with the French Canadians for historical reasons. These historical reasons are not known by every one in this country. .If they were better known, our sentiments and ideals would be better understood. In the year 1763, when the Treaty of Quebec established English domination in this country, history teaches us, all those notole Frenchmen who had sufficient means to return to France made their exit from this country leaving behind the poorer classes of the population, whose numbers were a little over 60,000. These people considered themselves exiles, and English domination in those days of strife between France and England was looked upon with the same terror as we now look upon the dreaded Herman, domination. These .things may seem strange, tout hon. gentlemen who are listening to me now, and who are scholars, know very well that these facts as I state them are true. No French nobleman would stay in Canada to submit himself to the yoke of English domination. In speaking of English domination, I am not saying that the yoke of English domination was anything like the German domination, but that was the sentiment of the time. It was the same sentiment as that which existed at one time in England that Catholics should not have the same rights as Protestants', and it was. the same sentiment as that which existed in France at one period that Protestants should not have the same rights as Catholics. Fortunately, those times have passed, but we know that these sentiments of the French Canadians have their root in these facts of history.
If the French Canadians have attached themselves to the soil, if they made this country their home, having lost all hope of ever returning to France, I .hope no one will blame them for this, because it has 
been, held in all countries of the world and through all ages that the immemorial tenure of land and of estates was the very foundation of nobility.
Now let us consider the case of the new settler from Britain. The man, perhaps, arrived from the Old 'Country, five, ten, or fifteen years ago and settled in this country. This man's family was in England, his ancestors were buried there, his recollections were of England, his lore is that of England, the better part of his heart very often had remained in England; and i* was only natural, on war being declared between Great Britain and Germany, that, forgetting at once that he was in a colony, he should flee back to England and take his place in the rank's of the British army. Such action was only natural, but how can you reasonably expect that the French Canadian whose ancestors had been domi-oiled in Canada for one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, who had no relations whatever in Europe, and had no interest there, should do the same thing? You could not reasonably expect it. Of course, in my remarks T am speaking entirely outside of tihe legal question, outside altogether of the question of the right to impose conscription and the obligations that devolve upon us thereunder. I am dealing solely with the question of sentiment, the force of which has been urged so many times in this House. So, for generation after generation, t'he French Canadian had lived here, his affections divided equally between love for his native village and love for the numerous members of his family for whom be had to care. He was taught to think, to believe, and to understand that Canada alone was his country, and-that in the event of war hi® obligations did not go beyond defending his native land; and we all know that this opinion was in conformity with the views held by many Englishmen, not only in Canada but in England as well.
It is recognized that this is the first time such an issue has ever been raised in Canada. If X am emphasizing the point so much it is because I see some of my hon. friend/s opposite smiling, but I am very serious in this matter. I argue that it could not be otherwise than for the French Canadian population of Canada to hold the views they do, bearing in mind the conditions under which they had lived here for one hundred and fifty years and more; and when people declare that the French Canadians are disloyal, that they are antiBritish, that they do not want the war to be won by the Allied nations, and all such kind of stuff, they must be either

ignorant of the conditions under which the French Canadians have lived-, or else they are acting in bad faith. When Canada was attacked, what did the French Canadians do? I have just stated that according to their conception of their duty it was imperative for them to defend Canada. Well, they defended Canada, and history stands as an unfaltering witness to testify that they did their duty. They were taught, and learned, that such was the limit of their duty, and I believe they were taught the truth according to the only possible true interpretation of our constitution.
Such, Mr. Speaker, was the state of things which existed when Confederation was ^brought about. The drafting of the Confederation pact left no doubt in the minds of the Canadian people that their military obligations were limited to the defence of this country, and if room had been left for doubt, the uncertainty would have long ago been dispelled by the teachings of Canadian public men during the last fifty years. What is Confederation?
It is nothing more or less than a contract between different provinces, just as a contract is made between individuals. The province of Quebec was not compelled to enter Confederation, but she did so, and I here declare to-night that we people of that . province are glad of the fact. We are not sorry that we entered Confederation, because we believe in the destinies of Canada, we believe that when these days of stress pass union will exist-not the Union Government, but a real union-between the two great races of this country once more, even if that union has been broken recently. I believe that by exerting our united efforts we can accomplish a lot for Canada; I believe we will achieve such results that in a very few years no one will be displeased, or will entertain sorrow, that Confederation ever existed. I speak from what I know of the sentiment in my own province, because that province entered as a partner into Confederation.
Taking the facts as they exist, under that compact the French Canadians have been taught for the last fifty years that they have nothing to do with wars in Europe. The man who came to this country from England, one, two, five, or ten years before the war, did not Understand that condition of things here. He was supposed to know that Confederation existed, but we can well imagine that he never troubled his head about the underlying principles. That man left England and came to a " colony," or at least came here with the idea that most Englishmen have, namely, that colonies,
being dependencies of the Old Country, must submit to everything that the Old Country demands of them. Of the ruling spirit which influenced Confederation they knew nothing. I am not blaming such Englishmen, I admire their patriotism, but how could it be expected that French Canadians could have the same mentality, the same point of view, as that which influenced the Englishman to leave Canada and return to England to fight on her behalf in this war?
Now let me refer to other events. About twenty years ago the South African war occurred, and lengthy discussions took place in Canada with regard to our contribution to it and the relatively small number of men who were sent on active service at that time. If I am not mistaken, Canada sent four thousand men to South Africa, but before a single so-ldier was despatched, it was declared in the House of Commons of Canada in a most authoritative way, in such a manner that no one could be mistaken, that the contribution of men which we were then making should not be considered as a precedent. Well, Sir, if so much care and trouble was taken to announce to the people of Canada that the despatch of that force to South Africa should not be considered as a precedent, it meant implicitly that Canada was not obliged to contribute men, and if we did contribute men it was because we wanted to render more cordial the good relations that existed between England and this country. So the people of the province of Quebec had another reason for believing that they were not compelled to participate in European wars.
But the newest, most amazing and most dissolving manifestation against out participation in foreign wats, was witnessed during the general elections of 1911 and the period which followed. In the province of Quebec, a new party called the Nationalist party was in the field. According to these men we owed England nothing, and in case of war ought not to furnish her one button for a uniform. They vehemently condemned the Laurier policy of a Canadian navy, to be [DOT]Canadian in time of peace but Imperial in time of war. They denounced with still greater vigour the policy of the hon. gentleman who is now Prime Minister. They denied allegiance to either of the two leaders whose policies they equally reproved. The result was that several Nationalist candidates were elected, and, immediately after, the Prime Minister whom they had de-
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nounced' with the utmost violence received them into the shelter of his fatherly arms just as the patriarch of yore received the prodigal son. The records show, however, that this wonderful metamorphosis was not altogether spontaneous, for, before being allowed] to enter the precincts of a new Cabinet the Nationalists had to severely punish their rebellious .minds with anchor-etic repentance .and show signs of remorse such as even the prodigal son never approached. On the other hand, it is nevertheless true that no penitent sinner ever derived from' repentance such magnificen* and gorgeous rewards as these men received. Oliver Goldsmith writes:
Scarcely any virtue found to resist th-e power of long and (pleasing temptation.
The author of the Vicar of Wakefield did not write for the men of his time alone, but rather with a prophetic instinct he wrote also for some of the distinguished gentlemen who were elected in the year of grace 1911. The temptaition to which these Nationalists were subjected on the part of the hon. Prime Minister-for he seems to have been an irresistible tempter,-were indeed long and pleasing temptations which the heroic virtue of the reformers could not withstand. _ Both the tempter and his easy-to-wm victims have been since greatly punished, the former on account of the many difficulties which he has encountered and of the bitter reproaches which ever since have assailed him from the faithful of his party; the latter by the discredit into which they have fallen among their own fellowmen, a disgrace perhaps equal to none in the political annals of this country.
But what would the French Canadians think while some of these Nationalists were playing that low style of comedy? What could they believe other than that they had been deceived? Was this a reason for them to change their ideas? Certainly, this would never change their conviction® and ideas and they still remained even firmer than before in the sentiments. I have already described. It is not by deceiving people that you will bring conviction into their minds, When these Nationalists had preached all through the province of Quebec that we owed nothing to England and that we should not furnish a button for a uniform if she were at war, they should never have received from the Prime Minister the recompense they did receive. That was a very bad lesson to give to the province of Quebec because it was intimating to the people that credit and confidence were being placed in men who had been [iMr. Denis. ]
preaching to them a doctrine which I believe is altogether false, because I have never thought myself that we should go to the length of saying that we owed England nothing and that we should not give her a button for a uniform in time of war. So, I .say again, that was a very bad example to the French Canadians and would never change their minds or ideas upon conscription or their contribution in this war.
Let us take a more recent event. The last, but not the least event was the general elections of 1917. If anything should be held as sacred in a country which i.s governed on democratic principles and is under a democratic constitution, it is certainly the right of suffrage, for all other rights proceed from the right of 'suffrage. Yet, prior to and during the. last general election, every scheme and contrivance of devilish ingenuity were set to work to defeat the right and the ends of justice. I am not going to give the details. They will be given later to the country. Let it be sufficient for the moment, however, to mention that the War-time Elections Act was a scandal and an infringement upon the rights of the people unparalleled in, the annals of this country. The application cf the Act was equally scandalous, and we should not wonder at this for indeed the Act seemed to have been purposely drafted with such loopholes as would invite fraud and conspiracy, and the invitation was not unheeded, either because imposition, trick, cheat, and treachery even were rampant during the elections. Last Friday night I heard the hon. member for Maple Creek (Mr. Maharg) say that in Saskatchewan the War-time Elections Act was not conducive in any degree to the success of the Administration, and that 'the result would have been the same had that law not existed. Sir, if that statement be correct what a pity that this precious Government, as it was ironically termed-this session by an hon. member on the right, did not think ' fit to dispense with that ignominious law. Lor I do solemnly declare to this House and the country that had the elections been just, free, fair, lawful and unstained, if the verdict had not been one of part only, but a free verdict of all of the population of Canada, the French Canadians would have abided by the decision and submitted to it. This Government had, indeed, a fine opportunity to win to their cause the French Canadians or else to prove to the world that they were really unworthy .and unreliable partners in the great pact of Con-

federation. All the Administration had to do was to win a fair election, and this they did hot choose to do. And that is one more reason why the French Canadians would not change their opinions about conscription. It had been proposed in this House- I do not wish to refer to a debate which is now closed-by my right hon. leader that a referendum should be submitted to the people, but it was claimed that this was unnecessary. Very well, let that question remain settled. But a free election, a right election, was necessary.
This Government-I do not know whether it is the same Government or a different one, but I am inclined to accept the view of my leader, who says that it is the same Administration as the previous one, whose complexion only has been changed-this Government, to impose conscription, had only to say to the French Canadian people: We have the people of Canada behind1 us; if you are not now ready to follow the lead given by the majority of the people, you are unworthy subjects. Had the Prime Minister said this, he would have been telling the truth. Any class of persons in a democratic country who are not ready to submit to the will of the majority, properly and fairly given in an election, are not worthy of consideration or of the deference and respect of their fellow-men.
Such was the state of affairs when the war broke out. It was announced from the beginning that Canada's participation should at all times and under all circumstances be voluntary; that Canada would never have conscription. This was another Teason for French Canadians being confirmed in their previous ideas concerning conscription. But when, in May, 1917, the Government changed' its policy in a fundamental manner and French Canadians did not follow suit, the latter were and still are denounced as slackers, aniti-Britiishers and traitors.
I do not want to hurt anybody's feelings. I am working, not on a policy of disruption, but on coalition and union of the races of this country. It is nevertheless true that French Canadians think logically; that they have only followed the traditions and laws of their country, while those who reproach them have not. What more should we ask of the best citizen than that he follow the traditions and laws of his country? The French Canadians are without reproach in their conduct. They might have enlisted in greater numbers, but it was their privilege to do so, or not to do so. The system was entirely a voluntary one,
and they are therefore above reproach for what they have done. This js only sound logic.
There is a sentiment in certain parts of Canada against my people which I cannot too deeply regret, but which we are powerless to avoid. This sentiment did not find its origin in their non-participation in this war; it has existed for a longer period-indeed, for several generations. I am sorry to say that the province in which this House sits is mainly responsible for this regrettable state of affairs. Long before this war, over twenty years ago, I learned through my own experience of the state of mind of many of the Britishers in Ontario-things which are rather sad to admit. According to these people, all other considerations being even, a French Canadian is not equal to an Englishman for the sole reason that he is a French Canadian. I have probed this problem and- I make this declaration because I acquired the knowledge through the experience of my boyhood when I was attending college in Ontario. I do not say this by way of reproach; we are working to unite this country. I say to the people of Ontario: You think you know something about the province of Quebec; but you know nothing; you think you were born to teach the people of the province of Quebec what they should do and what they should not do; but you are mistaken; send your boys to Quebec, nave them, learn the French language, have them study our institutions, have them see what kind of life we live and what kind of people we are, and you will have more consideration for the French community than you have now. If the people of Ontario wish to confine themselves to their own province, that is their own business; but if they do so they cannot be aware of the facts pertaining to our province; they cannot be alive to the conditions which existed in Quebec long before their ancestors came to this country. If the French Canadians do not contribute enough to the war, our friends from Ontario criticise us. If there is a change in sentiment, and the announcement is made that the French Canadians are willing to contribute, our friends from Ontario want to know why. Not later than last week we were given an example of this. The Minister of Militia had said1:
1 am happy to he able to report to the House many evidences of a marked change of feeling in that province.
He was speaking of the province of Quebec. Assuredly this declaration should have
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been gratifying and sufficient to the virtuous men of Ontario, 'but it was not. One of them could not help asking the minister to what he attributed the- better feeling in Quebec. When the feeling is bad, they say: Let us strike the province of Quebec. When the feeling is good, they say: To what is this better feeling attributed? If the hon. member from West Toronto (Mr. Hocken) had developed his auditive sense to the same degree that he has cultivated and fostered his labouring mind in the discrediting of all that is French and Catholic in this country he would have known that the answer had already been given more than once to his query by a man who has been sitting in this House for over forty years, and who has , full authority to speak- in the name of his compatriots, for he is one of the most noble figures which our race and this country generally have ever produced. On April 5th, 1918 (page 410 of Unrevised Hansard) this hon. gentleman spoke as follows of the French Canadian people:
I know the people well, an-d I repeat what I said on a former occasion, that there is not to be found, in any pant of Canada, a more peaceable or law-abiding population.
The hon. gentleman from West Toronto will find a complete answer in this. The people of Quebec do not approve any more of conscription this year than they did last year, but they submit to the law because they are virtuous enough to do so. Let the fanatics and the pseudo builders of the Empire not forget this, even though a different announcement might be dearer t-o their hearts, that the French Canadians are such as represented by the gentleman I have just quoted; that they have been such in the past; that they shall continue in the future and remain forever a peaceful and law-abiding people.
The people from eastern and western Canada, although they have often disagreed with us, have, to a large extent, endeavoured, so far as I am aware, to treat the French Canadians with consideration and respect, and I cannot thank them too heartily for this. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Ontario. Just as Germany, at the time this war began, assumed the role of the bully of Europe, so Ontario has assumed the same nefarious role towards Quebec. Time flies quickly, and the day may not be far remote when some of the people of the sister province will meet their discomfiture; they will find that in bullying the peaceful province of Quebec, they have arrayed against themselves

the other provinces of this Dominion. If I am saying this, it is because I have been able to come into touch with the sentiments of people from the Maritime and Western Provinces. At the present time we do not agree with the people of the Western Provinces on the matter of conscription; but I think I may be permitted to say in this House to-night, that I have listened to many a speech from these hon. members which has pleased me greatly. They are broad-minded people. The broadness of their minds seems to bear the print of the immensities of the prairies on which they live. We of the province of Quebec have always regarded these set-lers as our friends, and although we are separated on conscription to-day, we still regard them as our friends. As to the people from the Maritime Provinces, I have met several of them who still bear within themselves the old stamp of the Acadian civilization. Meekness, kindness, tenderness, are the words used by Longfellow when he speaks about those people, and1 we' still find the same spirit, to a large extent, if not wholly, in the Maritime Provinces. Why do we not find the same spirit in the province of Ontario? I have just said that some of the people of the province of Ontario, if things continue as they'are going on now, will some day or another meet their discomfiture. I feel- I hope for them I am mistaken-that the day will come when Quebec will stand like a giant stretching his powerful arms to era brace the East on the one side and the West on the other, on top and over the head of Ontario.	-
An hon. MEMBER:: Never.


Mr. DENIS:: 
Mr. R. C. HENDERS (Macdonald):: Mr. Speaker, I would not attempt to occupy the time of the House .at this late hour had it not been for the position, taken on more than one occasion by gentlemen, on the opposite side of the House with regard, to the attitude of certain members now occupying seats in the Union Government. I am not going into ancient history, for we have had a sufficient number of reviews to keep our memories fresh along that line for a considerable length of time, but I feel it is my duty to explain the position of a certain section on this side of the House in order that we may he properly understood.
When the war broke out in the year 1914, nearly all the people of Canada gave a great deal of time and thought to the issues that were at stake, to the questions involved and

the interests that had to toe considered. I along -with others gave som/e study to these matters, and two months and a half after the war bro-ke out, at a very large gathering representative of a large proportion of the agricultural interests of the province of Manitoba, I made the statement that Canada was in this war to win, even if it - involved the sacrifice of the last man and the last dollar; in it because we were defending the great principle of democracy and the great principle of liberty; in it because if we failed to defend that which had cost our forbears so dearly, nothing else mattered much. My recollection is that .after full and deliberate discussion of the stand Canada should take in the war was submitted by Government to the House, by a unanimous vote Parliament decided to participate in this war. Furthermore, not only the people's representatives in this House but the people of Canada themselves in their trades- unions and different organizations called together for the special purpose of making a pronouncement on this question, almost unanimously agreed that we were in this war to a finish, no other course being open to us.
I am glad to hear hon. members on the opposite -side of the House profess their desire to see this war won, tout putting the professions they make in this mild form alongside other expressions they have given utterance to outside this House, I am constrained to think that their ardour slackens somewhat when they reach the eastern part of the Dominion of Canada. Down there, their utterances are more like this: Yes, we are in -the war, and you may do your part but it is just as you feel about it; if you like to enlist, all right; if you do not like to, it is a question fo-r you to decide. That kind of teaching does not work up much enthusiasm in bringing men out to fight, and it seems to me it has had its influence on voluntary enlistments in the province of Quebec. While that was the attitude of that province under the'voluntary system-indifference, .slowness to take hold, lack of -enthusiasm on- -the part of -their leaders-when it was found that the voluntary system was not bringing the men forward as fast as the country demanded and conscription was introduced, these men who had taken little advantage of their opportunities under the voluntary system insistently cried out, "Give us the voluntary system again; let us work along the old line." There has not been as much enthusiasm shown by the leaders of 'the people in the
	.
eastern part of Canada, especially in the province of Quebec, as I should like to have seen.
I wish to dwell more particularly on the position occupied by those wtoo are looked upon -as formerly entertaining Liberal views, and wiho now find themselves occupying positions on this- side of the House -in a Win-the-war -Government. Some of us looked, and looked earnestly, to see a united effort on the part of the East and the West to win this war. We felt there was no room for provincial lines, that Canada was in this war, and that every man, every woman and every dollar should be in it, in order that we might win. -Seeing the -attitude of -the Opposition- on this win-the-war policy, and the attitude of the Government then in power, and th-eir aggressive mood towards winning the war, we were forced, to the conclusion that the only policy open to those who were in earnest in their determination to win the war was- to get together, to stand shoulder to shoulder and to fight it out to a finish.
I have pleasure in expressing my appreciation and delight with the Budget speech as presented by the hon. Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. A. K. Maclean). It is going a long way in the direction of the teachings set forth by the large interest in the West which I have the honour of belonging to. An hon. member of the Opposition this afternoon read from a certain platform setting forth the views of the -Canadian Council of Agriculture -and of the Grain Growers associations, but, instead of reading the whole of that platform the hon. member only read a part -of it. He stopped at the place that -suited his purpose. He gave us the policy dealing with the tariff and I want to say to that hon. gentleman and hon. gentlemen before me to-night that the people in the West representing the great agricultural industry have not changed their position one iota in regard to the tariff policy. I believe it is the right policy for -Canada and we believe the day will come in the not very far distant future when the principles inculcated in the platform which has been laid down by the Grain Growers- will have influence, and sway in this House and the country will get the benefit of the teaching and thinking that has- been put into that platform. .
I would like to -say, and I say it with a great deal of pleasure, that the Government in power previous to the Union Government had their ear pretty close to the ground in regard to some of the planks in that platform and in the last session, when the Conservative party were in power, we

find tha,t two important planks of that platform were incorporated in the policy of the Government.
The great issue in the last election before the people of the constituency of Macdonald which I have the honour to represent, and on which the battle was fought, was the winning of the war-the German attitude towards civilization and democracy and the conflict 'was therefore autocracy and democracy. The question was, -winch .should triumph? We believed that the principles of democracy .should triumph. That was the platform upon which the battle was fought. The West set forth that platform, the people stood behind it, and as a result the representation in this House is what it is to-day. That was the cry all through the West, the war was the issue.
I believe the people of Canada are behind this Union Government and are saying to it: " Go ahead and win the war; if it takes men to win the war, we will give you men; if it needs money we will give you money, - but go ahead and win." I know that here and there you will find men who entertain a different view. You will find those who, because of personal interest, or personal motives, will contend otherwise, but the predominating sentiment of Canada is that there is a struggle going on that will mean much in the future history of the world, and that we must see to it that the principles for which we contend will triumph in that struggle.
Now I propose to deal with a question that I should have dealt with before I expressed the last thought that was in my mind. I want to call attention to the attitude which was taken in the West with regard to the question of the fiscal policy that should be adopted. This policy was very largely discussed on the platforms of the West and the attitude taken by myself, as well as other representatives of the great agricultural organizations, was that if the Government introduced in 'connection with the winning of the war the other planks of the farmers' platform, they would, through them, in a large measure, secure for war purposes the results that they hoped to secure from the tariff. I would like to see some change in the tariff, even although that change were small. If the present Government could see its way clear to removing the 7J per cent duty introduced as a war revenue measure, and allow the money which would accrue from this reduction to go for the purpose of increased production, it would at least be a step in the right direction and the country ait large would benefit thereby. Failing that, so long as the Government carry out their promise in regard to introducing a fiscal policy that would tax incomes and undue profits made under the tariff system we will give it our support, as by that means the same object would be attained and the money would reach the coffers of the Government for war purposes.
I did not intend to. weary the House with a speech, but I only wanted to put myself and the people of the West straight in regard to our attitude in connection with this win-the-war Government.


Mr. L. T. PACAUD (Megantic):: Mr. Speaker, it is fortunate for one who is not too well versed in matters of finance, that it .should be customary in a debate such as this to drift from, the somewhat dry and monotonous discussion of figures to the wider range of national and political issues so intimately involved with the Budget and which have never ceased, to interest and to divide men of different political creeds. Whatever justification there may have been in the past for this frank and outspoken exchange of views, it seems to me, Sir, that .such a course imposes itself upon us with greater force to-day in view of the unusual circumstances in which we meet. The Acting Minister of Finance, in his annual statement, has given us the financial condition of the country for the last twelve months. In perusing the figures which he presented to us a few days ago, with the care and attention which it was our dirty to bring to our task, we could not help but realize still more forcibly the true meaning of war; its ever-increasing toll; the varied and complex problems which have arisen and which will continue to increase as this bitter struggle goes on. Let me summarize, Sir, what, I gather, is our present financial position. It may be said that this war has for the time being apparently made our people prosperous. Our trade has reached an extraordinary figure; and our revenue for the year amounts to $258,000,000. This is, Sir, no doubt, the brightest phase of our financial statement, and yet when we stop to- scrutinize its true meaning we are quickly drawn to the conclusion, that this passing wave of prosperity, this enormous expansion of our trade, rests on a purely fictitious basis; that it lacks the permanency, which alone would make it sound and stable. We clearly see that when this war comes to an end, as rapidly as our war contracts have ceased



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to bring in their unusual and abnormal profits, so rapidly shall we return to the normal state of pre-war days. To convince us, Sir, of this fact, we have but to picture to ourselves our munition plants suddenly closing their doors, at least one-half million of men strolling our streets on the lookout for a new means of livelihood, the readjustment of our industrial life made necessary to meet the new conditions and, above all this, the gradual flow of 400,000 men of our Canadian soldiers returning from the fields of Flanders as rapidly as ships can bring them back, all looking for direction and advice from tbe State which they serve so well and so heroically.
Sir, in the face of such vast problems, coupled with the heavy financial obligations occasioned by the war-a burden which we readily accept, but a burden nevertheless-I venture to suggest that it is high time we Canadians at home should stop nibbling at each other -ps we have done in the past, stop sowing in this land of liberty the seeds of discord and of hatred, and recognize, late as it may be, that our work, a better or more useful work, lies in another direction.
Sir, this war is costing us over $1,000,000 a day. Our public debt has reached the billion-dollar mark. Our interest charge is estimated at $78,000,000, and when we couple this amount with the sums that will be necessary to meet our payments on pensions, we have before us the prospect of being soon saddled with a fixed annual charge of not less than $100,000,000. We cannot wave aside lightly this enormouB financial obligation. It claims our best thought and our best consideration/. It reminds us of our plain and paramount duty, of putting into practice that policy of economy and retrenchment, which this Government has been most lavishly preaching to others without ever living up to it themselves, as their record of the last four years so clearly demonstrates, as the expenditures of the last year, amounting to $203,000,000, has again clearly shown to us. Let me hasten to say, that I know full well, that heavy as this financial burden may be, it will not deter the people of this country from doing their full duty to the bitter end. However long may last this war, the same spirit which animated the people of the country four -years ago is still intact to-day. We then unanimously decided to take our part in the fight for freedom. We, to-day, with the same unanimous voice, proclaim our determination

to stand by our allies, until complete victory has crowned our efforts. It is, Sir, in this spirit, shared alike by all Canadians, that we have put to ourselves these two questions: First, how can we best serve to-day our allies? Second, in what, way can oui continued and active participation in the war be most effective to achieve the common purpose we have in view?
There are those who believe that howeveT long the struggle, the policy of Canada should be more men and still more men for the front. It was this feeling, this belief, this policy, which brought about conscription. It was apparently upon this policy that Union Government was formed. It is not my intention -to dwell on the absolute failure of selective conscription. I was against that policy last year, I am still against it to-day. May I underline that by introducing amendments to the Military Service Act, so as to make it -more drastic, and in their opinion more effective, the Government themselves have recognized this failure. But, -Sir, there are others in this country, who though they believe that the decision that was taken in 1914, in so far as our participation -in this war was concerned, should not be altered to-day, are nevertheless of the opinion, that in view of the new conditions that have arisen, we must change our war methods, respond to the call of our allies, direct our national energy, not only in getting men to the front but also in meeting the new problem that is now upon us, the acceleration of our food production as an essential and vital war measure.
Sir, We cannot minimize the vast importance of our food production at this moment. The Prime Minister in his speech on the Address, used these words:
I .cannot emphasize too strongly the absolute, urgent, vital necessity of increased production of food in Canada during the next year. The issue of the war depends on it.
Are we to remain deaf to this call from the front? Are we to minimize the importance of a policy, upon the success of which, the Prime Minister himself admits, " depends the issue of the war"? There can be but one answer to this question, and it is with this thought, prompted by this high motive, that those who have never ceased to advocate greater production have ventured not only to criticise the Government,-who went back on	their
policy in this connection-but again to suggest the best and only means to attain the object we had in view. Is it not reasonable, Sir, that taking it

for granted that we are alUof one mind in acknowledging the importance of food production, we should also be united in a policy which tends to prevent that shortage of farm labour, by keeping our young farmers to their work, by educating them as to the importance of straining every nerve to do their utmost to produce food and still more food? And yet, Sir, the policy of the Government to-day tends to weaken, if not to destroy, this very purpose. What we are preaching to-day the Government had in mind when they drafted this Order in Council of the 3rd of December last. Political exigencies may have forced them to change their minds; national exigencies have prompted us to remain true to this very policy. Was not its importance again underlined at this very session by the Prime Minister himself, by the words which he uttered and which I have already cited? Again, if we are to .have more food production in this country-the issue of the war depends on it-is it not reasonable and logical that we .should endeavour to lay aside every obstacle which may curtail its success-a success without which, as Lord Rhondda says, " Victory may eventually slip from our grasp?" Andi when in pursuance of that policy we suggest that the duties on farming implements should be abolished, I ask you, Sir, is it fair, is it in the public interest, that our motives in this regard .should be challenged, as they were challenged a few days ago by the hon. member for St. Antoine (Sir Herbert Ames)? I can only say that the views that have been expressed in this House are shared' by a great many Canadians throughout the country. In this connection may I be permitted to read a short article on this very subject which appeared in the Saskatoon Star. It illustrates the case most satisfactorily, and is as follows:

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According to a statement prepared by the Minister of Customs, Hon. A. L. Sifton, agricultural implements entering Canada during the past fiscal year paid import duties aggregating $2,12 O', 000. This is divided among the following items:	Separators, $353,000; parts of
separators, $124,0'00; tractors, $896,000; binders, $89,000; ploughs, $373,000; other farm machinery and. parts, $230,000.
"Produce! Produce! !" is the cry that comes from Great Britain to 'Canada. It is echoed and re-echoed from Ottawa, from all parts of Canada.
Produce with what? Land must be broken to produce, and that means traction power, for horses are not available. Item: Tractors, customs duty, $896,000. It means .ploughs, for there are not sufficient .ploughs in the country to
101*
produce more largely. Item: ploughs, customs duty, $373,000. It means binders, to reap the crop. Item: Binders, customs duty, $89,000. It means separators, to thrash the grain. Item: Separators, customs duty, $353,000 ; parts of separators, customs duty, $124,000.
Certainly it is economic folly, but apparently our fiscal system must remain unchanged, though it put a handicap upon every laudable effort of the people of the country are making, and though it put a heavy handicap upon our greatest war contribution.
The cry for greater production, from the lips of those who are taking no part in the endeavour to get these unnecessary and foolish restrictions upon greater production removed, would be laughable if it were not tragic.
I waive the right, Sir, to comment on the force of this article. To my mind its logic is unanswerable. Be it sufficient for me to say that my conviction as to the necessity of food production in Canada grows deeper as I follow step by step the long trail of devastation and mourning which this war of nations still' stretches across so many lands. During the three better years of this deadly conflict, amidst vicissitudes of varied character, which have brought to us, with the regularity of a pendulum, news which caused us joy as well as that which caused us sorrow, we have never wavered in our belief that final victory would eventually crown our efforts.
We saw the millions of Russia, barely on the threshold of their new-born liberty, forced to lay down their arms and sign a disastrous peace. The steam roller of former days had been cheated of its power by a dangerous and unscrupulous foe. But, Sir, before this downfall in the East, there arose in the West the millions of the American nation, taking up the sword to assure for the democracy of the world safety from the onslaughts of conquering empires. From these two outstanding events in the world's present tragedy can we not deduce, as certainly as is possible when unveiling the near future, these two propositions to guide us in our continued efforts to destroy the system which has been the curse of humanity; on the one hand, that the entrance of the United States into the struggle will mean the final overthrow of Prussian militarism, and on the other hand that the Russian collapse will tend to prolong the war beyond the limit of time which, previous to that event, we might reasonably have thought possible? These are, in. my opinion, the new conditions which Canada must face torday. The longer the struggle the more acute will become the food situation. We once thought that this war would be a battle of armies. We know to-day that it is a battle of
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nations, in which, in addition to the fighting army, is wielded the new weapon of economic warfare, each side striving to starve the other. Sir, we cannot remain indifferent to this new fact. Our Allies are faced with a food menace. It is our duty to see to it that our farms are not depleted.
Mr. F. L. DAVIS (Neepawa):: tions. We should restrict non-essential industries. I am told that a piano company in Ontario, which, before the war, was putting out six pianos per day, is, at the present time, producing and' selling fifteen pianos per day. That is an absolutely nonessential industry, and that is hut an instance. Pianolas, grafanolas and victrolas are being sold throughout the 11 p.m. country. Even automobiles are in the same class, and we must in some way reduce the Output of those nonessential industries if we are going to get the men to carry on our essential industries. The reason I have raised: this point is that I believe, by a proper system of taxation, we would be doing something to limit the production of non-essential goods. But now I see that we must attack the question in another way, and the only way I can see is by limiting the production or, in other words, bringing about by artificial means that condition which a depression of business will bring about. At a time of depression the factories close or they reduce their output, and men are thrown out of employment and are bound, under changed economic conditions, to seek new employment. We must create tho.se conditions. We have yet, it seems to me, in the consideration of the problems of thie Dominion, to look to. the future after the war is over, to the time of readjustment, to that period of dislocation which will follow when war ceases and all war industries are cut off. We have to look to the amount of money which we shall then have to raise tc pay interest and sinking fund upon those large debts which we .are now piling up. It seems to me that we can do much to prevent that dislocation creating a panicky condition, if we but recognize what are just and proper ways of raising the money the state requires. Finally,. lest I should he misunderstood, because I have spent most of my time in urging that our taxation should be greater, I know that must be made conditional, in some measure, upon similar operations of surrounding states, but I should like to see our Government setting a lead in the measures by which it levies this taxation.
Mr. J. F. FA.FART) (LTslat) (translation): Mr. Speaker, the discussion anent the budget statement presented by the Government for the fiscal year of 1918-19 has already brought forth-not 'always light- but often enough, suggestions of a judicious and practical character. On the whole the Government cannot help being grateful for the good advieq given, and taking advantage

of it. However, in order that the results should go hand in hand with the wisdom of certain observations, too much selfinterest, too much narrow-mindedness should not paralyze, on the part of my hon. colleagues on the other side of this Chamber, the execution of what has been suggested to the Government.
As the representative of a purely agricultural county I feel it my duty to express my, opinion in a special way on certain features of the present Budget. !So I shall leave to more experienced political minds the task off exploring the vast domains of political economy. Following my custom, as a surveyor, I shall go, in straight line, and with the shortest possible delay, to the goal I wish to reach. All of which means that I intend making a few brief remarks on the important question of agriculture. My last words will have to do with the loyal attitude of the province of Quebec-and that of the immense majority of its representatives-with regard to the help given to carry on this struggle for the cause of civilization and mankind.
Now, a few words about agriculture. On the one hand, Mr. Speaker, the Government is preaching a policy of increased production. Every day, in all the newspapers of the country the Government is appealing to the population asking for an increase in our yield. We hear repeated every other moment that Canada's increased production will .save Europe from starvation, consequently that this increased production will save the Allies. " Produce more," cries the Government to the farmers, " Raise cattle; *concentrate on your dairy industry; preserve your perishable products by building cold storage chambers; hold big fairs to learn to perfect your methods of cultivation; see that your stock is always healthy; improve their strain finally, intensify production. Victory against Germany demands these things."
That, Mr. Speaker, is the tone of the Government talk, on the one hand. But, on the other, this same Government reduces, by $528,348.40, the appropriations that we were to vote for the furthering of agriculture and increased production. The farmers are told to produce more and then over half a million dollars of appropriations are taken away from them, in comparison with what they were allowed in the Budget of 1917-18. Out of the reductions of $2,015,378.28 that the Government announces in the administrative expenses of the different departments, the Department of Agriculture alone has suffered a decrease of $528,348.40. So that more than one-quarter of

these reductions were knocked off the appropriations meant to promote farming.
And when they have taken over half a million away from the farmers the Government, far from being abashed, have the nerve to ask the farmers to toil from sunup till sun-down to insure increased production. It is not necessary to be a great logician, nor to have spent twenty years in this House in order to realize how very illogical such a policy decidely is. " Raise cattle," says the Government, and in the estimates for 1918-19 the tidy sum of $100,000 is taken away from cattle-raisers. " Give more attention to your dairy produce," says the Government .and, in t.hie year's Budget, grants not one sou more than last year. " Build cold storage plants " says the Government again, and with one sweep they knock $25,000 off the amount voted for this purpose in 1917-18; while in tire cold storage establishments they let over 350,000 pounds of meat and flsh go to rot. " Hold fairs; they will be a great help to you," .says the Government to the farmers, and then, in the present (Budget, we notice a reduction, of $25,000 from the sum voted last year. "Take every means to keep your cattle in good health," still the Government exhorts the farmer; but to make the thing a certainty the Government .subtracts $102,000 this year ifrom the amount voted to help the farmers in the sanitary supervision of their stock.
If this be the way, by reducing the help given to the farmers, that the Government claims to promote .increased production, you must admit, Mr. Speaker, that it is rather a strange policy. I say strange so as not to use the term guilty. Indeed, I would understand the curtailing of expenses in certain departments wheTe the work could very well wait till later on, after the war. But it appears that the Government has turned things upside down from the point of view of enlightened wisdom and the most elementary knowledge of economic factors. The estimates for civil government have been increased $356,555.04; $6,812.50 more to the .Dominion Police; $18,000 more .for penitentiaries!; $148,900 more for railways and canAls; $52,'172.14t more for ocean and lake shipping; $160,664.73 more to the Post Office Department; -and similar increases in other Government departments.
But when it comes to Agriculture $600,000 are struck off the estimates at one sweep, and then the farmers are asked to increase production. It is useless, Mr. Speaker, to pile up lengthy arguments in order to persuade this House of the utter injustice of such treatment, being meted out to our
very large class of farmers in this country. In the face of the figures which I have just quoted and which I extracted from the estimates submitted .by the Government itself, I hope the gentlemen on the Treasury Benches will give justice to whom justice is due and show themselves less reluctant to loosen their puree-strings to assist the farmers.
Before leaving this, subject I wish to call the attention of the House to an item of $21,091.58 under the head of the experimental farm at Spirit Lake, in the province of Quebec. I have .always understood that the institution at Spirit Lake was used a.s a detention camp, and I am quite positive it was utilised for that purpose, since I visited the place myself some two years ago when I was roaming up that way. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that such an item should properly *come under the expense column of the Department of Militia and Defence. Why should the Department of Agriculture pay the expenses of the Department of Militia and Defence? Besides, isn't it a rather queer procedure to open up, at such a place, and at such a critical period as that we are living in to-day, what is an experimental farm in name only? 'The other day the Hon. Minister of Justice answered me ini this House that the Government had spent $32,500 for the military organization of this so-called experimental farm, or rather of this internment camp. So to-day when I find another item of $21,091.58 for agricultural purposes at this same place I ami forced to conclude that the Government has spent the pretty husky sum of $53,591.58 for the satisfaction of having an experimental (farm together with an internment camp; where, moreover, there .seems, to have been produced not one single bushel of wheat, nor one single bushel of oats, and where not a single head of cattle was sold. All that this hermaphrodite establishment seems to have produced is pulp-wood, to the value of $15,946. You will admit, Mr. Speaker, that the experimental farm which produces only pulp-wood is some experimental farm. There were barely fifty families and 400 Indians there when work was begum/ on this undertaking. Who will dare tell us that these few people were) in need of an experimental farm? Was it for the Indians? If such were the intention of the Government, they were mistaken, very much mistaken, on the score* of the results which would accrue. When I passed through there I thought I was doing a favour to an Indian by supplying him with seed potatoes in the expectation that he would get a good crop the following autumn. Some days later I

ideals and with our innate respect for the great principles of the freedom which is the right of each .and every one of us?
In my calling, Mr. Speaker, which I am alone in representing here, it has often happened me to lose myself in the vast expanses of territory which I was traversing with my companions. And when I established' the direction of a meridian line, by the light of the polar star-whether I were in Alberta, in Saskatchewan or in the province of Quebec-I was always working towards the same goal. Mr. S'peaker, the polar star which guides us French Canadian members is patriotism- well-understood, patriotism without narrowness and without rancour, the patriotism of the noblest pages of our national history. And it is also on this good star of patriotism that is fixed the gaze of all those who lay claim to the great principles of Liberalism.
On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, I fear that those who -sit opposite us have taken the wrong road; that they are guided by a magnetic needle which has been unsettled by the constant attraction of power. However, let us hope that before long they will become better 'Magi, and' will find once more the star of patriotism-leaving behind forever the dark clouds of fanaticism and prejudice.
In this way we shall have a united couni try, and' we shall all contribute with onr utmost energy, to the great cause which is ours in common, and to the immortal achievement of victory.
Mr. WILLIAM A. CLARKE (North Wellington): Mr. Speaker, I feel I should be remiss in my duty to the constituents I have the honour to represent if I did not make a few remarks in this very important debate. I do not rise to criticise any of the taxation proposals of the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. A. K. Maclean) but rather to congratulate him and the Minister of Finance (Sir Thomas White) on having carried this Dominion so successfully through the most trying period we have ever experienced in our history. I am placed in a somewhat peculiar position. Of course, as a representative of the people in this House, I am no more responsible for the actions of the Union Government than they are responsible for my actions. Ever since I entered the House of 'Commons I have been a humble follower of the present Prime Minister (Sir Robert Borden) both in this and the last Parliament. I consider him the greatest statesman in the Dominion, and I have been proud to vote 
for every measure he has introduced. We had a most trying time last session and many troublesome questions arose; in fact, I think it was the most strenuous session vse have had since 'Confederation, and I think the Prime (Minister is to be congratulated on the 'splendid way in which he carried us through. On many occasions he met with severe criticism, which I think was carried to greater lengths than one might have expected under the present war conditions.
We have heard a great many splendid speeches from both sides of the House in this debate, but with many of the speeches from the Opposition side of the House I do not agree. I feel it my duty to make a few suggestions', rather than criticisms, in connection with the views of my constituents at the present time. When I go home after supporting every measure that the Prime (Minister has ever presented to Parliament-and it is my intention to support every measure he brings down in future, unless I change my mind or he acts in a very different way from what he has done in the past-I am confronted with the question, what is the Government doing to enforce the Military Service Act? Our county is practically denuded of all the young men who can go to the front.
I have supported every measure for keeping up our reinforcements, and I have done it gladly, 'but yet when I go homo my constituents want to know why the province of Quebec is not made to contribute men for the army in greater numbers. Every one who reads the newspapers1 knows that Quebec has not done her share. A few months ago it was1 stated that only seven thousand had been got from that province altogether. I d,o not (know whether that statement is. true or not, but it has been made on many occasions, and has never been contradicted, so I am inclined to believe it is true. When my constituents ask me why Quebec is not made to do its duty I have to give them some kind of an answer. I have to tell them that we have passed the Military Service Act. Then they want to know why it has not been put in operation, and that is the question I wish to put to hon. gentlemen sitting in the front benches of the Union Government tonight. The only suggestion I have heard is that the weak cog in the wheel in the operation of the Military Service Act is in the Department of Justice. Whether that be true or not I do not know, but I am not in a position to contradict it. If it be true I would suggest to the Prime Minister and

the other members of the Cabinet that some rearrangement be made. I have every respect for the Minister of Justice (Mr. Doherty), but if he is the barrier in putting the Military Service Act into operation some rearrangement certainly should be made. We all knoiw he was tired after the recent campaign. He is getting to be an old gentleman, and he had to take a couple of months' rest to recuperate. I am glad he came back looking so well. But when he came back after a couple of months' rest, if the work was too much for him, or if he [DOT]was incompetent to transact it in the way the people of this country wanted it to be transacted, he should have been given assistance. But instead of that being done, I understand he has had the additional burden placed on his shoulders of administering the Post Office Department. The people of this country are wondering why the Government do not take action in connection with the Military Service Act. It would be an easy matter to rearrange the Cabinet. There are lots of good men supporting the Government, all good, loyal and true citizens, who would make good heads of any department, and I think it is high time something was done to fill the offices with the best men available on this side of the House. I would not go to the other side of the House, because we cannot expect anything from those who have always been in opposition to the Military Service Act and to Canada's taking her proper share in this war. I am not alone in this experience I have with my constituents; I have spoken to other hon. members and the same question is asked in practically every constituency from Prince Edward Island clean through to British Columbia. The people want to know why there is such laxity in enforcing the Act in the province of Quebec. It is all right for hon. members to stand up in the House and say they are doing this and are going to do that, but it is no use training a horse for a race after the race has been run, and possibly lost. Our boys overseas are calling out for reinforcements. In almost every letter from the front we hear that cry for reinforcements, and reinforcements at once, and the people of the rest of this Dominion want the major part of those reinforcements to come from the province of Quebec, and I say they are justified in asking that.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Mr. CLARKE:: My hon. friends
may laugh, but this fs too serious
a matter to laugh at. We do not blame you very much. You do not get any too much support from your leaders; you do not get any too much support from the hon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Le-mieux), who, this afternoon, took occasion to lecture the hon. member for West Toronto (Mr. Hodken). You do not get any too much support from the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier). His loyalty is somewhat questionable at times in the opinion of a great many people in Canada, although not 'by many in Quebec, because fye always stands by them, and I give him credit for it. I must give him credit for an expression which he used in this House not long ago on the occasion of the visit of Mr. Balfour. He stated, and I was glad to hear him, that he was much more loyal to the British Empire now than he had been three years ago. We all heard him state that and I must congratulate him upon having made that statement. The question that this Government is confronted with was dealt with by the hon. member for Maisonneuve this afternoon. That hon. gentleman said that the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Rowell) should go back and consult the farmers, and that the Prime Minister should do the same, and find out what their opinion is with regard to war service. I wish to express the hope, and I do it in the kindest possible way, honestly and conscientiously, that this Government will see fit to man every department with the strongest and best men they can glean from the ranks on this side of the (House, because in this crisis in the war we feel that we cannot have too strong a Government. I am surprised that the Prime Minister is able to bear the burden that falls upon him and I realize that he will need all the assistance that this Dominion can provide for him.


Mr. P. F. CASGRATN (Charlevoix-Montmoreney):: Mr. iSpeaker, in rising to
speak on the Budget to-night, it is not my intention to join issue with certain hon. members on the opposite side of the House on the very burning question that occupied the attention of the country during the last election and which continues to occupy it at the present time. But, I cannot let the references of the hon. member who has just taken his seat (Mr. Clarke) pass without making a protest against the words that he has just uttered with regard to the part that the province of Quebec has taken during the war. The hon. gentleman is mistaken when he says that the


Jacques Bureau: Our loyalty is not bought with dollars.


Mr. CASGRAIN:: The Minister of Justice (Mr. Doherty) is a director of the City and District Savings Bank, in which he takes a great deal of interest. I know that he is a great philanthropist. Perhaps he could tell me why, with all his philanthropy and good intentions, that bank has not seen fit up to the present to raise the rate of interest on deposits. I am sure that his answer will be the argument which I have just advanced, that the bank is prohibited from doing so by the Canadian Bankers Association. All the money deposited in such institutions as the City and District Savings Bank comes from the poor, the working woman as well as the working man, and it is not the small trader or the small manufacturer who benefits thereby, but the financiers, directors and managers, who are in the ring of big banks and corporations.
Now, about investments. I believe it is a fact that in England and France it has been forbidden to invest in outside securities, while here in Canada there are many [DOT]people deriving hundreds of thousands of dollars as interest on stocks and bonds from corporations in the United States. If we refer to the lists of shareholders of different companies in the United States, we find that a large number of Canadians, probably patriotic Canadians, have invested huge amounts of money in that country. We know also that the large Canadian insurance companies own a great deal of securities, in some cases seventy-five or eighty per cent of the stock of certain railways in the United States. I am not far from the truth in asserting that at present nearly $250,000,000 is invested by individual Canadians, companies and trusts in United States securities. Would it not be better if a law were passed, or, as it is so easy under this Government, an Order in Council, prohibiting investments in any other but Canadian securities?
Another source from which the Government could obtain a large amount of revenue would be by taxing the foreign insurance companies, life, fire and accident, who are draining this country yearly of millions of dollars in premiums, which money is taken to the United States and invested in their own undertakings and for their own benefit. There is no reason why a tax should not be imposed on such premiums.
So far as.the exchange rate on the Canadian dollar is concerned, it is not by getting a credit of about $40,000,000 in the United States, as our ministers obtained recently, which will make our credit better. That amount will be only a drop in

the bucket after all, and our trade balance surely cannot be re-established with that small amount of money. It may improve the situation for a short period, for the spring or the summer, but if no further arrangements are made I predict, Mr. Speaker, that our dollar will be nearer the 90-cemt mark than the dollar mark. We must not close our eyes also to the fact that the financiers in the United States are very well aware of our situation, and as some members in this House said recently, they know that we are only banking on paper, as the gold and the silver which we have to meet the Canadian notes which are being printed by the Dominion Government represent only 45 cents on the dollar, and if this policy keeps up a year longer our currency will be worth 75 cents on the dollar at the most. We are told by the Acting Minister of Finance that we should not worry, that business is splendid, that we are doing business with the Mother Country, and that we are even lending her money. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, is that not misleading the public, as, after all, these loans are being repaid by contra account for the upkeep of our army overseas? I would ask the minister to tell us if it is not true that these loans made to England since the wai began have been repaid by contra account? Probably there is not more than $25,000,000 to $40,000,000 outstanding at present, but when the war ends we will be in debt to England instead of England owing us; we will still have a huge bill to pay her.
The Acting Minister of Finance has told us that he needs at present about $280,000,000 for the purpose of carrying on the war. Why not, as has been done in England and other European countries, requisition or commandeer all foreign securities? There are millions of dollars' worth of these held by different people and institutions in this country. We know that holders of capital and the big trust companies and banks have' a great number of these securities on hand invested in railway stocks and bonds in the United States. Why not, as a war measure, requisition the stocks of the Canadian Pacific railway, as was done in England at the beginning of the war? And why not ask all the insurance companies who are bound according to law to deposit with the Treasury a certain amount of securities to guarantee their policies, to substitute for their securities Canadian war bonds?
Another point I desire to touch is that, some fifteen years ago or thereabouts, the

Government granted to the steel industry, then being started, .bounties to run for ten years, and which were afterwards renewed for a .further period of five years. This action was taken to' help to build up these industries. To-day the situation has changed. These industries are most prosperous; their directors are rich; they are paying large dividends to their shareholders and are even in a position to lend money. They are boasting that they have paid all their floating liabilities, and have vast sums to the good. It is differentiating between industries started with the help of the Government and others which got no bounties not to tax the former more than they are taxed at present.
Then why not get back from these companies these bounties in the shape of taxes special taxes, or super taxes, or other means which I have no doubt the Minister Finance can find out, because after all, as I said before, this money was well invested as it started all these industries, but did all the other industries of this country get such bounties and yet they are being taxed to the same extent. You have taxed the C.P.iR., why not tax these- companies and you would get back probably 50 million dollars?
I shall not say very much with regard to the matter of war expenditure. We all deplore the fact that at the beginning of the war certain mistakes were made, especially at Valcartier camp. Ice was brought from Ontario and transported to Valcartier; goods that could have 'been obtained in Quebec were purchased in various parts of the country at high prices and shipped to Valcartier, enormous freight and express charges being thereby incurred in order to help and promote the interests of that good friend of the Government, the Canadian Northern railway. The Government has paid huge amounts of money for motor cars and motor vehicles which have been placed at the disposal of the military authorities-so much so that in the big cities the ordinary pedestrian is in danger of being run over by these cars, because the majors, captains and lieutenant-colonels are in such a hurry to go about their supposed business that they do not care for the public. In England some* abuses have arisen . in that respect. Many colonels and generals have stayed there longer than they should and have drawn their salaries for doing nothing and not going to the front. It is true that many expenditures have to be made in time of war, and that they are very small when compared to the end that is had in view by the people who wish
to see the Allies triumph. But I impress on the Government the necessity of greater economy in the administration of military affairs and of the avoiding of such waste as has taken place on certain occasions.
The member for St. Hyacinthe-Rouville (Mr. Gauthier) made reference recently to the use of public moneys by the Department of Justice in submitting bail for a man who was employed by the Government to detect supposed criminals but who has been organizing riots and sedition in the province of Quebec. I refer to the case of the man Desjardins. In answer to a question which I put to him, the Minister of Justice said that Desjardins had been in the employ of his department. We heard during the recent troubles in Quebec that a hidden -hand might be visited upon certain people who had provoked or started these troubles, and that the Government might be at the back of it. We have proof of the astounding fact that in Montreal last year, when the Conscription Bill was ini course of preparation, persons paid by the Government were trying to organize in Montreal a clique, a certain gang, a certain number of men, a certain club or association, for the direct purpose of trying to violate the law, of trying to stand against the Government to defeat the law. A number of men were arrested in this connection, among them Wisintainer, Goyer, Cyr, Bolduc, Chagnon and Paquette. The judge of the preliminary enquete found that there was enough evidence to commit these men to trial. In the case of Lalumibre, who was the chief of the -gang, Judge St. Cyr, who presided at the trial, went so far as to say not only that Lalumiere and the others should be committed for trial, but that Desjardins, the chief witness of the Crown, should himself be arrested. The judge was surprised that this man had not already bpen taken into custody. An answer was given to a question put in the Senate some time ago which may be taken as indicative of the policy of the Government in this respect, that Desjardins was arrested " upon the instance of the other criminals who were connected with him in this plot, who, when they came to be indicted for their offences, accused Desjardins as a fellow-conspirator and he was indicted accordingly." I want to make a correction here. It is not true that these people had Desjardins arrested in order that they might try to save their own skins; on the contrary, they did not want him to be brought into the case at all, because they

thought they might be adversely affected. The person who swore the warrant against Desjardins was present when Lalumifere was committed for trial; he is a gentleman who sat as representative of the constituency of Nieolet, if I am not mistaken, in the last Parliament. He writes to me saying that after reading the evidence he was absolutely convinced that Desjardins was just as guilty as the others, if not more so, because he had urged them to commit criminal acts which should not be tolerated by any Government, and for which he should be punished. He violated articles 523, 510, 847, 457 and 69 of the Criminal Code. What took place after that? Desjardins was indicted and was let out on bail for a time, by an official of the Government, Mr. Giroux, who supplied bail for him. Afterwards, when the trial started in November last, all the accused were to be tried together, but the trial could not be concluded because One of the jurors took sick and subsequently died. All the accused, with the exception of Desjardins, were let free on personal bail or certain securities being deposited on their behalf according to the judgment of Mr. Justice Pelletier, who said that they could go free. But Desjardins was kept in jail, Mr. Justice Pelletier did not want to allow any bail for him, because he considered his case worse than any of the other cases. I may say that Mr. Desjardins had many lawyers, Mr. Peers Davidson, Mr. Pelissier, Mr. St. Pierre Pruneau, Mr. Normandeau and other criminal lawyers in Montreal; because after a lawyer had defended him for a couple of days, he found the suit was too hot and he could not, as a gentleman of the Bar, defend .Desjardins any longer. Finally, after certain investigations and pourparlers between the attorneys of the Government and the judge, bail was fixed at a certain amount, I think, about thirty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars being secured upon real estate and the balance in cash. As Desjardins could not obtain bail, the party who put up the bail, as we were told the other day, was the Department of Justice, the cheque being signed by Mr. Newcombe and countersigned by Mr. Narraway, accountant of the department. What happened then? The trial started some time ago in Montreal. If was presided over by the same- judge, Mr. Justice Pelletier. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Justice Pelletier is a former friend, and, I think, he is still a friend of. this Government. He was appointed by the Government to his present position. Not I Mr. Casarain.j
long ago he held a seat on the Treasury benches along with my bon. friends opposite. In this second trial, strange to say, the attorneys of the Government were new attorneys. They were Mr. Dagenais and Mr. Maurice Alexander. As I said before, Mr. Desjardins could not keep his attorneys very well. He had to change them every month, or every week, or sometimes oftener. After the evidence was all in, the judge reviewed the facts, and we find certain comments which are very important. The judge for instance says, in a certain part of his charge, speaking about Desjardins:
In other words, a spotter or a spy. He tells us, in answer to one of ray questions, that he induced those boys into error, and that was his object. He told them he was one of them against conscription. It was a lie, according to what he says now, it was a lie. He deceived them, and led1 them into a trap.
Further on the judge says:
If a man acts in that way and is a spotter or an informer, or a spy, he has the right to do all that, and to go and inform the people who have hired Mm about all that took place, and that is the law too, (but a man like that has no right in law, and the law is based on common sense here, he has no right to induce these people to do something wrong. Not even a policeman has the right to advise any one to do a thing which is forbidden, because he is the very man who ought to prevent it, and who ought to advise that it should not he done. Now if a man, clothed with the authority of thie law, assumes the right to advise people to do things which are wrong, that man becomes guilty from the moment he has adopted that course, and, I give you that under >my responsibility as good law, whatever may be thought of it in any quarter.
Further on he says:
Let us consider the stajnd1 that Desjardins is the only one of them ail who tells the truth- even saying that Banger, this young, honest boy, has taken a false oath-that all the others have taken a false oath. Desjardins tells us here of seven different heinous crimes which have been organized and premeditated at the meeting of the 27th of July. Killing public men; killing the Prime Minister of this country; killing General Wilson. He tells us there was a question of setting fire to a city and robbing and blowing up the bank. Be tells us there was a secret committee of fifteen to he formed

and mind you, .gentlemen of the jury, that all that is taken from his evidence as extended by the stenographer-and' which I have taken great care to read as it is-the idea or suggestion of blowing up the properties where newspapers were published, or blowing up the owners of newspapers ; the kidnapping of one of
the ministers, the Hon. Mr. Sevigny	
Desjardins also states that there were revolvers there. There were black-jacks there. There were instruments of torture, and assassination. Now, he comes and reports, and I am giving him all the credit to which he Is entitled in saying that toe reports one part of what has taken place, but he leaves out things in his * reports-leaves out some very important information about things which he himself says

took place there. That is a fact which cannot be denied, and which no impassioned speech will brush to one side. He gives us the reason for leaving that out by saying that he made a verbal report to Colonel Sherwood. After, or, may be, even before the Cartierville outrages, these people did not trust Desjardins any more, and it would also be to his credit if these people did not trust him. They continued their organization and their bad actions without him. There is an outstanding salient fact to which I now want to call your attention, which may be an act of virtue, but which I consider a very disgraceful thing. On the 27th of July, in the year of our Lord, 1917, all these bad things, theft, murder, destruction of property- are prepared and talked about and are, to a certain extent, organized. On the 28th of July, the following day-twenty-four hours afterwards-Charles Desjardins, who knows all that, goes to this crowd and gives them the sum of twenty-five dollars. How it has been said or it has been insinuated here that the Government of Canada approves of that.
And /this, I may say, was referred to as being approved by the Government, by the attorney who defended Desjardins, and who said at the trial that he was defending Desjardins at the request of the Government of Canada. Judge Pelletier goes on to say:
I do not believe it. It would be shameful all the same, if a hundred Governments had approved it. It is so shameful that I do not believe any Government, Liberal or Conservative, would approve of it. This was so disgraceful that Inspector Giroux himself has felt it his duty to enter into this box and tell you what he thought of that. I shall not repeat his words, you still have them ringing in your ears. Now, Desjardins did that. Was that putting money into the hands of these people whom he knew, and he must have known, were not rich men', but where young men just beginning life. They have received this contribution of twenty-five dollars, and they had plotted all these things. Would you have done that? There is the true test. Would you have gone to those people knowing they were going to do these dastardly things, and opened your purses to them? I have too much faith in your honesty and your common sense to think that you would even have thought of doing this. He said he did this "in order to be friendly with them, in order to have their confidence/'
This is what this creature of the Government says. Judge Pelletier continues:
Did you ever hear of anyone gaining the confidence of a gang of blackguards and criminals by opening your purse to them? You would perhaps have to give it up if he were holding a revolver to your head and saying: "Your purse or your life," you might have had to give it up, but you men do not volunteer your money to him. I do not think so.
Further on, at page 40, the same judge in the same charge, says:
There again I find fault, and serious fault, against Desjardins, 'because this is the third time he has given money for unlawful purposes .... I want to make a distinction here which is perhaps necessary for the interests of the impartial administration of justice. I want
to tell you that it is not wrong in law to pay to become a member of a society, bad though it may be, in order to know what is going on there. It is not wrong in law, but it is wrong in law to give money to dangerous people when you have not to give it, when you are not obliged to give it, and when you know that that money helps or will likely help for the commission of a crime-of a crime which you know is going to he committed.
Further on he says:
I shall not discuss that at length, because Desjardins admits that they were not complete. They were far from being complete. For instance the blowing-up or intended blowing-up of the Gazette, the Star, La Patrie and La Presse is mot mentioned in the report. This is a most serious thing. If Desjardins heard of these things, and he admits that he did, and did not report it, he was not only wrong in that, but he was absolutely derelict in his duty. He understands that, because he takes great care to tell us that "What I did not put in my report I told verbally to Sir Percy Sherwood." If he did not do that, it was a very serious matter for him, because when you know of anything of that kind and hide it knowingly, you become an accomplice."
The same judge, in the same trial, says, page 43:
Why was not Sir Percy Sherwood .brought down here? We have the unsupported1 evidence of this boy that he told Sir Percy 'Sherwood, and he is trying to-day (and he is supported by a lawyer who claims he represents the Government) to blacken Sir Percy Sherwood's fair name. That is one of the things 'which I do not understand in this case. It is either one of two things; either Desjardins told Sir Percy Sherwood about this Three Rivers outrage, and then Sir Percy Sherwood should not have waited until the fourth of August, but would on the twenty-eighth of July, the same evening, have informed Chief of Police Berthiaume or Sir Percy Sherwood1 dosed1 his eyes and allowed *this gang to go to Three Rivers if they wished. Now, I am not here to defend Sir Percy 'Sherwood, hut I am here to tell you that in order to save this fellow Desjardins, Mr. Alexander has no right to put Sir Percy Sherwood in the awful position in which he (has tried to put him in this case.
Further on he says:
AV'hat do we see next? It is on the twenty-eighth of July that he goes to Ottawa. He has sent in his report on the twenty-seventh: he writes on the twenty-seventh another letter which must have ben received on the twenty-eighth, and who does he write to? Does he write to Sir Percy Sherwood? He knows that Giroux is not in Ottawa. No; toe writes to a man whom he knows is not there, about a crime which is going to he committed1.
On the twenty-ninth of July, another letter in which pretty serious matters are mentioned is written-to Giroux again.
The judge says further on, at page 46:
Desjardins has told us that he gave a revolver to this man Paquin, a worthless thing, not much more perhaps than junk; an old thing; valueless. The revolver is found', and it works. A very bad position-a very bad

While we should strive to do our utmost to win the war, we should not lose sight of the conditions which will need to be dealt with when the war is over. The Government should be prepared to avail themselves of any advantages that will then present themselves for the development of commercial intercourse with other countries, as well as in our internal trade, and now is the time to prepare ourselves with that object in view. We were given to understand1 that many public works had been stopped, the reason assigned being that we were not able to obtain the necessary money to carry them' on and that the works in question, were not urgent. For- example, work on the St. Charles River improvements was brought to a standstill. But, Mr. Speaker, if that work was deemed necessary a few years ago for the improvement of existing conditions' (in that part of the country the necessity surely is. as great to-day. The few million dollars of outlay involved will not render our financial condition very much worse, and if the undertaking was ia necessary one before the war broke out, it is just as necessary to-day and should not be discontinued.
There has also been a stoppage of work in the harbours of Montreal .and Quebec. .Although it is necessary for us to practice -economy, we must also be keenly alert so that we may take advantage of the opportunities which will present themselves when tthe war is over. lit is very necessary to provide proper harbour facilities for our overseas trade and to maintain adequate transportation facilities, between the different parts of Canada. With the completion of the improvements contemplated at these harbours we should be in a far better position to handle a greatly enhanced volume of trade, at those places.
Some years ago, the project for the construction of the Georgian Bay canal was inaugurated and was strongly supported by several members of Parliament. At that time the Government deeming the enterprise too big, did not feel themselves aible to recommend the appropriations necessary to bring it to a successful completion. Had the Georgian Bay canal been commenced at that time it would by now have been well under way, and although perhaps not completed it might be available later for trade purposes. That canal would have af-fordedvery important transportation facilities for our trade and commerce, and would have been regarded for all time as a great achievement for Canada. We have been

told that public works have been stopped because the cost of material and labour is growing dearer all the time. In answer to that I would say that the Government has been able to find the material, the money and the men necessary to reconstruct the Parliament buildings. I do not criticise their action in that regard, but I would ask if these works' were absolutely necessary in connection with the carrying on of the industries of this country. The Government has emphasized the necessity of making sacrifices now that we are at war. Would it not have been better to have made the sacrifice of remaining in the present building until after the conclusion of the war, and have devoted the money which is now being expended on the Parliament buildings to other public undertakings, which would be of greater assistance in developing our commercial position when the present great world conflict is at an end?
My reason for bringing forward these suggestions now is that the Government and Parliament might take up and deal with the situation before it is too late and provide for the conditions which will arise when the war comes to an end. The hon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Lemieux) stated to-day that there exists in Canada a certain association whose object is to promote the reconstruction of this country after the war. That organization is called the Canadian, Industrial Reconstruction Association, and the hon. gentleman gave the names of certain prominent members of the provisional executive committee. These gentlemen, who are Tories, or Unionists, and are friendly to the Government, and cannot be taxed with being opposed to the war, and at their meeting in Toronto, as well as at their meeting in Montreal recently, they advocated the present as being a most opportune time to provide measures for the improvement of trade and commerce, and to meet industrial conditions of Canada after the war is over, and they suggested that we should get into touch with the people of other countries in order to take snch steps as may be necessary to that end. It is held that the war will certainly bring new forms of taxation, although the customs duties will continue to
be	the	chief	source	of	revenue.	Butifc	is	doubtful	if	all	the forms	oftaxation	that	can	be	devised	will
meet the interest upon the war debt, to say nothing of providing for the pensions and other war obligations that will have been incurred during the present war. In under-

taking their reorganization programme, the members of this association have not been accused of being unpatriotic and not being good supporters of the cause of the Allies, so the accusation cannot in justice be levelled against them with others who came forward with similar suggestions.
Then, a few months ago, the Imperial Government appointed an Empire Resources Committee to consider a resolution adopted by the Imperial War Conference of 1917, which declared that the time had arrived when all possible encouragement should be given to the development of Imperial resources, and especially to making the Empire independent Of other countries in respect of food supplies, raw materials and essential industries. It is important, they say, to any such inquiry that the interest of the Dominion should not be prejudiced by neglect or want of knowledge. There -is no necessary conflict between Canadian and Imperial interests if the situation is clearly understood. Each portion of the Empire must maintain the industrial policy which its conditions demand, and the more clearly that is recognized, the stronger will be the bonds of sympathy which hold the parts together. Beyond legitimate protection of local interests there may he Imperial preferences in control over raw materials, in direction of immigration, and in charge of transportation, which will tend greatly to unify the Empire, enhance its strength and security and increase the general average of prosperity alike in the Mother Country and the Dominions.
This Government has announced its purpose in aiding in bringing the war to a successful issue and looking after the interest of our soldiers who are returning-which two objects we on this side of the House would like to see carried out. But as I have already said, the Government should do its utmost so that the resources and the trade and commerce of Canada may be developed -to the fullest extent when the war is over.
To these, Mr. Speaker, to other'immediate problems, and to new problems that will arise during the war and the period of reconstruction, the Government should give its immediate attention with the single desire to assist in their wise solution, to assure equitable dealing with all classes and interests, and particularly to develop the natural resources of Canada for the national advantage, and maintain in strength and efficiency the industries of the country upon which labour and agriculture, town and township, so greatly depend.
Mr. DESI,AURIERS (St. Mary's, Montreal) (translation):	Mr. Speaker, seeing
the hour is so late and that we must sit again to-morrow, I have the honour to move the adjournment of the debate.


Robert Laird Borden: I think the hon. gentlemen had better go on for a while.


Mr. DESLAURIERS:: ada, while if they send but one million, Canada's showing will have heen six times as great.
Estimated in dollars and cents the disparity is still greater. The United States pay $1.00 per day to each 'soldier; Canada pays $1.10. Basing our assumption on Canada's figure of 420,000 soldiers and a possible .army of 2,000,000 men in the United-States-an average generally accepted' -every Canadian ratepayer, every man, woman and child, pays $24 a year for our army, while the American pays only $7. Should the - war keep on into 1919, the Canadians will be spending $120 and the Americans, $14. These figures have merely to do with the soldiers' pay. If we take into account officers' salaries, indemnities, pensions, transportation and equipment, the difference is much greater. So we must conclude that we are contributing ten times more than they in every respect and their newspapers are decidedly out of place when they heap insult upon us as they frequently do.
Now, have we the necessary means of transportation to carry on a policy like this? In a magazine published in the United States. The New (Republic, I read a short time ago, that 'millions of tons of foodstuffs and munitions-which are absolutely necessary to carry on the war, especially to-day-are piled up on the wharves along the Atlantic seaboard, with no immediate hope of being able to transport them, and that, in any case they will be transported under hazard of the hardest -kinds of difficulties, such as submarines and floating mines,-because there is a shortage of bottoms. On the 18th of last October the Tribune of New York stated that what tortured it most was the thought-that the Allies might be struck down dead before the United States had been able to send them help, because there were not enough ships. And M. Tardieu, High Commissioner for France, sent on a mission to America, stated in the American papers *that his greatest fear was that the United States did not have the ships necessary to forward; at the proper time, the food1 and munitions bought there, the need for which was becoming more urgent as the days went by.
To me it is permissible to think that since the Canadian government have an official ^representative of (the cabinet in Washington, they should be well aware of this shortage of ships and that, in -consequence, -they should energetically pro-
 '
mote shipbuilding in this country so as to help the Allies and allow them to strike with their full strength. We all acknowledge that it is useless to transport splendid soldiers to France if we -have not also the wherewithal to feed them and to fulfil their requirements in tile matter of munitions, since we are suffering from a scarcity of the means of transportation. Besides, when we have before out very eyes the statements of eminent men, like Lord Reading Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Rhondda, Mr. Hoover, Lord Northcliffe and Mr. Kemp himself, urging upon us the imperative necessity of shipping them food, while it is common knowledge throughout the world that France is put on rations and -that the bakers of England and Italy have not sufficient flour for baking bread; when, finally, we read the reports of eminent men like Dr. Robertson, Hon. Mr. Fisher, the Hon. Mr. Caron-, of Quebec, and the leaders of all our agricultural societies, demonstrating, figures in hand, that the present Administration is rapidly heading the -country towards famine; when we know that Canada, to-day is face to face with a shortage of 60,000 hands for getting -in the next crop; when /we know that, thanks to our excessive contributions of men, hundreds of acres suitable for cultivation and ready to be planted, will fail to be, on account of the scarcity of farm labour; is it practical, is it reason aide for the hon. Minister of the Interior to bring down legislation concerning our Indian reserves which have never been cultivated, while we have so much more land already for seeding? Is it really opportune, from a national standpoint, to amend the Military Service Act so as to recruit from our farmers and bur farm workers?
It is not with theories of that -sort that a country is governed wisely.
For my part I find irrefutable evidence that our friends on the Government benches entertain an entirely false conception of their duty to the State; they cannot expect to convince this House that we must ruin Canada, bring starvation upon our European allies and thus win final victory!
In the name of liberty, honour and patriotism, interpreted according to- their own light, they seem free to do anything at all, except what is right. In certain provinces they have succeeded in deceiving the people, but to-day the peop'e have grasped just what this patriotism of the hon. gentlemen amounts to, and to-morrow the people will brand upon the foreheads of

these hon. gentlemen a stigma which through all eternity will torture their souls.
We of the Opposition are in thie war to the very end, taking heed of our strength and our resources. No one detests Prus-sianism more than do we who have met with a few transitory samples of it in this country. Our ranks hold none of those emholdened talkers who on every occasion mouth the august name of liberty and then erase it wherever they find it emblazoned on the walls of our country. We have known what true freedom is and we would like to see the people of Canada continue to enjoy this true freedom.
A few words of recapitulation, _ Mr. Speaker, and I will have done. I maintain that the 'Government should, first of all, build ships so as not to be a burden to any one else; next, develop agriculture ini eveTy possible way so as to sustain, the vital forces of Europe and of Canada. Finally I say that, so far, Canada has done herself proud, in men, in money and in * food; and that Germany has never designed an attack upon Canada.
Mr. A. B. HUNT (Compton) moved tne adjournment of the debate.	,


Robert Laird Borden: Mr. Speaker. I had intended to take steps under the rules of the House to ensure that the debate would be ended to-morrow, as it has lasted a very long time, but I have an arrangement with the chief whip on the other side which will obviate that necessity, and therefore I shall consent to the adjournment if the debate.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
On the motion of Sir Robert Bojden the House adjourned at 1.25 a.m., Wednesday.
Wednesday, May 8, 1918.