1923-06-14

Mr. MACLEAN (Halifax) moved:: That the minutes, proceedings and evidence had on Bill No. 83, respecting banks and banking be printed in blue book form, as an appendix to the journals of the House, in accordance with the recommendation contained in the seventh report of the Select Standing Committee on Banks and Banking.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

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

Mr. COOTE:: During each of the last ten years, what was the total
amount spent in each Province on (a) Public Buildings; (b) Harbours and rivers; (c) Dredging; (d) Canals ?


Hon. Mr. COPP:: 


DEPARTMENT OF RAILWAYS AND CANALS
[Stage Direction]
Statement showing expenditure on canals (by provinces) by the Department of Railways and Canals.
Fiscal Years 1913-14 to 1922-23
Province
New Brunswick	Quebec	Ontario	Year	Total$ 56,299 64	$986,848 16	$3,496,582 28	1913-14	$4,539,730 0890,373 60	891,223 80	6,320,143 84	1914-15	7,301,741 24209,494 85	709,255 80	7,012,845 85	1915-16	7,931,596 50130,524 91	713,353 66	5,171,960 28	1916-17	6,015.838 8552,882 49	523,738 83	2,784,537 36	1917-18	3.361,158 6828,973 55	650,212 90	3,273,833 26	1918-19	3,953,019 7115,953 11	717,619 38	6,228,404 40	1919-20	6,961,976 899,449 13	950,655 16	5,154,082 14	1920-21	6,114,186 435,706 90	983,164 99	7,763,902 21	1921-22	8,752,774 1013,349 38	869,351 98	8,285,779 90	1922-23	9,168,481 26$613,007 56	$7,995,424 66	$55,492,071 52	New Brunswick, Total	$613,007	56Quebec, Total	
7,995,424	66Ontario, Total	
55,492,071	52
Total
[Stage Direction]
Questions

[Stage Direction]
Dredging in St. Lawrence Ship Channel, P.Q.
1913-	14	
1914-	15	
1915-	16	
1916-	17	
1917-	18	
1918- i9	 ;	
1919-	20	
1920-	21	
1921-	22	
1922- 23	 "
11,004,145 22
999,762 43 981,761 64 1,084,769 81 656,421 63 425,332 57 484,186 19 507,211 94 567,370 88 595,845 12
Nova Scotia
Fiscal year	(a) Public buildings	Cb) Harbours and rivers	(c) Dredging	Total1913-14	$ cts. 211,538 88 282,154 90 136,053 99 94,817 40 129,178 84 117,118 48 143,289 68 190,266 97 233,106 93 170,783 43	$ cts. 588,749 89 578,257 63 248,701 73 249,726 62 258,982 58 165,345 29 206,141 49 1,813,592 22 246,171 39 318,443 17	$ cts.	$ cts. 1,157,074 52 1,084,394 85 551,179 68 528,051 60 483,331 87 330,654 941914-15	1915-16	1916-17	1917-18	95,170 45 48,191 17	1918-19	1919-20	1920-21	J JO,4oU lU 2,250,057 85 656,988 95 709,781 601921-22	177,710 63	1922-23	
1,708,309 50	4,674,112 01	1,925,525 05	8,307,946 56
All figures for 1922-23 are approximate.
Prince Edward Island
1913-14		23,777 44 42,521 13 21,375 20 19,394 79 22,198 64 22,750 64 29,942 65 29,886 34 26,991 90 26,179 36	93,797 66 209,956 60		
1914-15					oon 'ti 338,327 90
1915-16					
1916-17			12,634 54 10,097 47 10,946 81 36,825 81 74,347 61 34,979 89 26,801 15		78,701 56 74,550 66 42,875 37 122,645 46 169,546 90 105,118 26
1917-18				42,254 55	
1918-19					
1919-20					
1920-21					
1921-22					
1922-23					
				
	265,018 59	567,451 01	568,723 14	1,401,192 74
New Brdnsw'ick
1913-14		413,604 08 417,463 12 198,394 37 170,488 44 87,500 99 93,623 65 137,739 53 158,725 53 253,829 46 157,556 71	1,538,036 54 1,754,524 75 602,031 72 881,436 17 298,161 59 308,295 95 1,075,564 72 1,384,719 30 1,402,498 82 1,003,840 93	1,822,697 76	
1914-15					
1915-16					
1916-17				354,473 21	1,406,397 82 763,759 06 461,062 36 1,331,529 77 1,673,011 46 1,838,058 44 1,381,953 64
1917-18					
1918-19					
1919-20				118,225 52 129,566 63 181,730 16	
1920-21					
1921-22					
1922-23					
				
	2,088,925 88	10,249,110 49	6,196,551 17	18,534,587 54

JUNE 14, 1923 3889 Questions Quebec				
Fiscal year	(a) Public buildings	(b) Harbours and rivers	(c) Dredging	Total1913-14	$ cts. 2,348,449 53 2,591,691 40 1,361,710 51 680,412 01 689,941 68 537,660 23 693,570 73 703,109 38 796,291 97 799,520 00	$ cts. 1,159,001 61 1,479,133 91 1,572,012 34 2,129,121 87 1,587,653 62 1,219,575 29 768,698 03 707,428 95 686,111 65 751,186 12	$ cts. 353,297 04 303,509 90 250,638 49 151,827 17 181,714 37 63,286 50 207,892 58 189,486 31 145,967 66 188,741 99	% cts. 3,860,748 18 4,374,335 21 3.184.361	34 2.961.361	05 2,459,309 67 1,820,522 02 1,670,161 34 1,600,024 64 1,628,371 28 1,739,448 111914-15	1915-16	1916-17	1917-18	1918-19	1919-20	1920-21	1921-22	1922-23	
11,202,357 44	12,059,923 39	2,036,362 01	25,298,642 84
Ontario				
1913-14		6,281,701 57 5,232,269 06 3,423,555 46 3,960,711 63 3,906,351 38 5,706,438 61 6,415,521 54 6,284,662 94 5,017,262 85 3,935,250 01	2,275,013 20 2,907,041 66 1,732,894 77 1,098,860 09 1,275,398 75 607,454 41 1,275,498 87 2,513,169 69 1,629,073 63 1,461,291 00	1,991,541 12 1,458,129 38 1,001,504 62 738.016	60 339,502 40 244.017	11 165,136 06 242,909 17 186,688 17 249,920 33	10,548,255 89 9,597,440 i0 6,217,954 85 5,797,588 32 5,521,252 53 6,557,910 13 7,856,156 47 9,040,741 80 6,833,024 65 5,646,461 34
1914-15					
1915-16					
1916-17					
1917-18					
1918-19					
1919-20					
1920-21					
1921-22					
1922-23					
				
	50,163,725 05	16,775,696 07	6,677,364 96	73,616,786 08
Manitoba				
1913-14		471,089 26 793,405 26 413,936 74 142,931 06 209,848 71 174,646 85 170,629 18 269,686 34 223,003 07 211,281 11	169,660 90 264,403 91 92,416 09 44,177 79 33,994 32 25,089 02 57,887 99 73,282 05 53,777 07 38,094 77	68,665 74 60,147 59 57,881 49 47,522 90 47,461 36 7,333 23 29,016 58 72,707 16 46,396 87 84,321 89	709,415 90 1,117,956 76 564,234 32 234,63i 75 291,304 39 207,069 10 257,533 75 415,675 55 323,177 01 333,697 77
1914-15					
1915-16					
1916-17					
1917-18					
1918-19					
1919-20					
1920-21					
1921-22					
1922-23					
				
	3,080,457 58	852,783 91	521,454 81	4,454,696 30
Saskatchewan (including Harbours and Rivers and Dredging in Alberta)				
1913-14		750,065 25 325,685 57 186,792 81 125,807 25 118,231 34 113,007 10 151,787 92 145,260 07 155,333 62 175,077 06	89,232 86 66,114 95 38,164 26 3,634 88 2,041 27 876 13 735 96 1,421 20 2,298 80 459 65	9,872 82 14,909 23 14,151 65	849,170 93 406,709 75 239,108 72 129,442 13 121,095 11 124,269 26 158,805 36 146,681 27 157,632 42 192,122 59
1914-15					
1915-16					
1916-17 					
1917-18				822 50 10,386 03 6,281 48	
1918-19					
1919-20 					
1920-21					
1921-22					
1922-23				16,585 88	
				
	2,247,047 99	204,979 96	73,009 59	2,525,037 54
				
Questions
[Stage Direction]
Alberta
(Harbours and Rivers and Dredging included in Alberta)
Fiscal year	(a) Public buildings	(b) Harbours and rivers	(c). Dredging	Total1913-14	$ cts 771,606 39 762,135 86 355,163 38 126,361 29 356,678 88 232,838 55 207,121 69 184,964 11 215,676 04 273,559 00	$ cts.	S cts.	$ cts.1914-15	1915-10	1916-17	1917-18...:	1918-19	1919-20	1920-21	1921-22	1922-23	
3,486,105 19			
				.
British Columbia				
1913-14		927,085 41 1,053,207 41 615,464 99 261,645 91 196.329 23 334,030 91 351,095 52 326,927 48 309,956 51 292,565 06	1,447,567 90 2,686.237 08 2,618,371 05 1,734,118 18 1,490,197 95 450,972 16 476,955 12 454,201 18 1,551,390 44 983,721 44	623,576 72 1,008,444 04 1,089,356 80 763,081 13 455,466 92 152,342 34 373,007 72 361,582 07 305,982 91 259,145 97	2,998,230 03 4,747,888 53 4,323,192 84 2,758,845 22 2,141,994 10 937,345 43 1,201,058 36 1,142,710 73 2,167,329 86 1,535,435 47
1914-15					
1915-16					
1916-17					
1917-18					
1918-19					
1919-20					
1920-21					
1921-22					
1922-23					
				
	4,668,308 43	13,893.732 52	5,391,989 62	23,954,030 57
Yukon Territory
1913-14		89,400,26 62,771 17 62,536 69 49,467 62 40,006 17 38,005 94 37,382 04 39,432 35 36,886 78 40,719 43			89,400 26 67,784 02 67,413 60 52,862 44 44,278 62 38,005 94 37,382 04 39,432 35 42,730 56 43,287 53
1914-15			5,012 85 4,876 91 3,394 82 4,272 45		
1915-16					
1916-17					
1917-18					
1918-19					
1919-20					
1920-21					
1921-22			5,843 78 2,568 10		
1922-23					
				
	496,608 41	25,968 91		522,577 36
(d) No information.

JUNE 14, 1923 3891 Questions NATIONAL DEFENCE DEPARTMENT Naval Services Amounts paid on Public Buildings (.Naval) for 10 years, from April 1st, 1913, to March 31st, 1923.				
Fiscal Year	British Columbia	Nova Scotia1913-14	$ cts. 18,561 41 15,787 71 19,397 54 13,878 41 19,202 92 63,600 93 33,085 26 8,554 30 2,857 82 43,198 86	$ cts. 27,416 38 76,029 00 106,756 92 50,779 59 279,522 45 673,925 19 370,146 04 33,723 57 35,927 02 25,980 951914-15	1915-16	1916-17	1917-18	1918-19	1919-20	1920-21	1921-22	1922-23	
238,125 16	1,680,207 11
				
Note:-No expenditure has been incurred outside of British Columbia and Nova Scotia as there are no Naval establishments in other provinces. Militia Services Amounts paid on Public Buildings (Military) for 10 years, from April 1, 1913 to March 31, 1923				
Yeai	Ontario	Quebec	Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island	New Brunswick1913-14	$ cts. 514,882 91 329,717 43 1,077,611 48 3,521,657 91 405,596 62 512,288 14 595,777 08 445,065 63 182,422 82 190,542 07	S cts. 241,449 64 346,400 83 276,717 25 207,031 08 202,346 48 224,879 06 222,086 37 236,843 75 90,120 70 138,392 38	$ cts. 67,004 75 82,983 47 437,033 80 314,236 67 115,342 98 171,661 26 111,647 51 78,836 13 58,760 77 39,221 08	S cts.1914-15	1915-16	1916-17	1917-	18	
1918-	19	15,667 38 83,707 81 85,552 13 30,495 65 19,843 63 26,132 881919-20	1920-21	1921-22	1922-23	
7,778,562 09	2,186,267 54	1,476,728 42	261,399 48
				
Year	Manitoba	Alberta	Saskatchewan	British Columbia1913-14	$ cts. 117,826 11 80,323 32 136,981 59 122,480 73 56,756 66 47,842 74 43,517 41 137,333 80 87,261 17 74,558 02	$ cts. 29,553 87 20,049 23 67,881 41 80,241 74 53,774 39 57,720 50 84,939 34 17,715 06 16,029 93 20,323 29	$ cts.	$ cts. 70,915 27 37,903 38 37,515 60 61,747 48 46,028 81 58,810 95 41,942 64 43,378 08 22,207 22 27,870 661914-15	1915-16	1916-17	28,850 01 51,038 96 30,865 70 34,639 69 35,018 54 14,815 35 22,985 50	1917-18	1918-19	1919-20 	1920-21	1921-22 	1922-23	
904,891 55	448,228 76	218,213 75	448,220 09
				
[Stage Direction]
Returned Soldiers Insurance

Mr. KELLNER:: 1.	What is the salary of an inland revenue officer in the province of Alberta?
2.	Does he receive any percentage of the fines imposed? If so, what?
3.	Do the officials pay their own travelling expenses?
4.	What is the total amount of government money paid to these officials since ithe 1st January, 1920, to the corresponding date of this year?


Hon. Mr. BUREAU:: 1.	There are no inland revenue officers since the consolidation of the customs and excise services.
2.	Officers of customs and exise making seizures for infractions of the inland revenue laws receive the balance of the fine paid after deducting the informer's share and other expenses,-except in cases where the amount is unusually large.
3.	No.
4.	It is impossible to give the amount paid officers in connection with inland revenue work, as all officers perform both customs and excise work.


RETURNED SOLDIERS' INSURANCE
[Stage Direction]
Hon. H. S. BELAND (Minister of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment) moved the second reading of Bill No. 203, in respect of the Returned Soldiers' Insurance Act.
Motibn agreed to, bill read the second time, and the House went into committee thereon, Mr. Gordon in the chair.
On section 1-Where applicant died prior to delivery of policy, the insurance is payable if application approved and premium paid:
Mr. MANION:: Is this bill just carrying
out exactly the recommendations of the Ralston commission?


Mr. BELAND:: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. H. S. BELAND (Minister of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment) moved the second reading of Bill No. 204, to amend the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment Act.
Mr. MEIGHEN:: Is this bill printed?


Henri Sévérin Béland: Yes, and copies were in
the Distribution office the day before yesterday.
[Mr. CoppJ


Arthur Meighen: It is not on my file.


Mr. FIELDING:: It is on mine.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, and the House went into committee thereon, Mr. Gordon in the chair.
On section 1-Regulations respecting medi-pal and appeal boards:
Arthur Meighen: These bills are not on
the files. They are not on mine, and I have not been able to get a copy yet. We cannot follow the discussion without the bill.


William Stevens Fielding: I will hand my copy
to my right hon. friend.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 2-Appeals, and review and appeal tribunals:
Arthur Meighen: Would the minister explain the effect of these clauses one by one. I do not know what clause 1 means. There are certain words struck out. What is the effect of that?


Henri Sévérin Béland: Last year the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment Act was amended by adding the words that we propose to strike out to-day. The words were inserted in the act last year in order to provide for a medical appeal board, the powers of which were limited to treatment and, in the case of pension, only when a divergence of opinion existed as between the recommendation from a unit and the decision of headquarters. By the provisions of the Pension bill as it was passed last night, appeal tribunals in each district are going to be created. The present amendment means that the provision which was made last year for the creation of a medical appeal board in Ottawa is done away with, and provision is being made under clause 2 that ex-service men who apply for treatment with pay and allowances and are denied such treatment by the department, may come before the district appeal board and submit their case in appeal.


Robert James Manion: This is just implementing the Pension bill passed last night?


Henri Sévérin Béland: Exactly.


Mr. GUTHRIE:: As I understand the matter, there will be appeal boards in the various districts, instead of in the city of Ottawa?


Henri Sévérin Béland: Yes.


Hugh Guthrie: One thing that has been brought to my attention in regard to the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, I think, I might bring to the attention

D.S.C.R. Act Amendment
of the committee, as the constitution of new appeal boards will certainly increase the number of officers in that department and the amount of salaries which is now payable by that department. What strikes one at the present moment in regard to the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, is that, out of the large amount which is annually paid out by the department, a very small amount of the money ever reaches the soldier or is ever used for the purposes of the soldier. As we are drawing into the fifth or sixth year since the conclusion of actual hostilities, the time is coming for a consolidation of some of the departments of government, and the one which is due first for consolidation is, I think, the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment My suggestion to the minister and to the committee would be that before this House meets again, arrangements should be made whereby this department, the Pension board attached to it, and various other suborganizations should be consolidated in the Department of National Defence. The figures in regard to the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment are startling. They have been prepared and handed to me, having been taken from the Auditor General's report of last year. The total expenditure for the year 1921-22 was $17,818,646.70. The most striking thing about it is that $6,922,432.62 has been expended in salaries; in other words, 38.84 per cent of the total vote for the year 1922 was paid out in salaries. Then, for administration of the department, the sum of $3,957,045.26 was disbursed, or 22.7 per cent of the total vote. Now we come to payments and allowances to the soldiers themselves, and we find that the total for that year was $6,940,168.82, or 38.89 per cent of the vote. That is to say, 38.89 per cent represents the total amount which the soldiers received out of that large expenditure of $17,900,000 odd. It strikes me that the cost of administration is exceedingly high; the amount spent in salaries is something enormous. The idea of spending nearly $7,000,000 in salaries for the administration of $17,000,000 seems entirely out of proportion. It may be that these figures, representing as they do the year ending 1922, will not be fully applicable to the year just closed. The year just closed may indicate some saving in this respect, and therefore a somewhat better showing. But my information leads me to believe that the same proportion will be maintained this year. I have not the figures for the year just ended; the auditor's report for that year has not been brought down.


HEVISED
[Stage Direction]
Now, I would be the last man to object to any increased expenditure for the relief of soldiers who might need that expenditure, but 1 would point out that the soldiers themselves are getting very little of the amount expended; aproximately 39 per cent only is going to the soldiers, while 38 per cent is spent in salaries, and 22 per cent for purposes of administration. Does not the minister think that the time has come when he might consider the question of closing up all the outside institutions? In the city of Ottawa, I am told, an arrangement is made with the hospitals whereby they take soldier patients at a rate of $3.50 a day. They give them excellent care and attention at an annual rate of less than $1,200, which is far below the amount spent by the department in connection with patients who are not in civic hospitals. I am also informed that the various hospitals throughout the country are glad to get such patients. There may be a few branches of the department in connection with which special institutions will have to be maintained for a number of years yet to come, but in the majority of instances, I am satisfied, the patients can receive equally good, if not better, treatment at a great decreased cost by adopting the method which has been followed in the city of Ottawa and in some other cities, of utilizing the civic hospitals and arranging a fair basis of payment for these institutions. If this were done, a very large part of the salary list would disappear, and more money could actually be expended on the soldiers themselves. At all events, I am satisfied from the figures before me that the salary list is entirely disproportionate to the work done by the department. I bring the matter up now because the present clause of the bill seeks to increase the number of those persons in the department who will receive salaries. I think it is very proper that these boards should be appointed and the salaries paid, but, at the same time, there is great room for improvement in the old salary list, and the minister would do well to look it over before parliament meets again, and reconsider the matter to the end that a better showing may be made next session.
Henri Sévérin Béland: On the very day I took
charge of the department I myself was amazed by the size of the figures representing the amount that was being paid out in salaries in the department. However, after some days' study of the question I realized that this was a department in which naturally a large proportion of the expenditure would have to go out in salaries. Just one moment's consideration of the circumstances will lead my hon. friend (Mr. Guthrie) to


EDITION
[Stage Direction]
D.S.C.R. Act Amendment
[Stage Direction]
agree with me in this regard. All ex-service men who are seeking treatment must first of all be examined by a physician or medical man. That, in itself, requires a very large medical staff, to say nothing about the men who require treatment in the hospitals of the department. So much for the question as to the treatment of the men. Let us look at another feature of the work of the department,-the pensioners. A very large proportion of the pensioners are not permanent; they are subject to periodical re-examination. For the proper discharge of this work it is obvious that 43,000 pensioners would of necessity require a very large medical staff. This does not take into consideration the men who are seeking pensions and who must also be medically examined.
Hugh Guthrie: I think the pension
costs are in addition to the figures I have given. I have a note here from which I gather that the cost of administration has been deducted from the figures I gave a moment ago.


Henri Sévérin Béland: Does the hon. member
refer to the amount paid in the way of pensions?


Hugh Guthrie: No, I am referring to the cost of administration of the pensions; the sum of $58,373 for this purpose has been deducted from the figures I gave.


Henri Sévérin Béland: That sum of $53,000
covers clerical assistance to the Board of Pension Commissioners in Ottawa. The board do not pay salaries to any of the medical men who are examining soldiers ail over the country. This will immediately convey to the mind of the hon. gentleman and to the House generally that quite naturally in this department a very large percentage of the money must be spent in salaries. Now I come to the figures themselves, which have been taken as a basis for observation by my hon. friend,-the $17,000,000. That was for the year 1921-22. The expenditure was large during that year, but I do not think it was too large. In the following year, 1922-23 this amount was reduced by $3,000,000 if I remember rightly. For the next fiscal year 1923-24 we are asking about $2,500,000 less. This is a substantial reduction. Whether it is as large as my hon. friend would like to see effected I do not know, but it is an honest effort in that direction.


Arthur Meighen: I understand that through 1922-23 the expenditure chargeable to administration was maintained in proportion to the money actually received by the soldiers?


Henri Sévérin Béland: I am not in a position to state whether the proportion has been maintained or not. We have enormously reduced the number of employees of the department. My impression is that this is not a permanent department, and I hope the time will shortly be reached when cases which have become chronic in their nature will be dealt with in homes rather than in hospitals. This policy, of course, is a subject of study for myself and the officials of the department at the present time. How soon it will be possible to disband the department remains to be seen.
My hon. friend has stated that the hospitals of the department should be closed as far as possible. I agree with him. A number of our hospitals have been closed and we have been contracting our operations. My hon. friend may be aware that we have made preparations to close the branch hospital at Burlington, near Hamilton, where we have about 130 patients. A delegation waited upon me some days ago to stress the advisability, if not the necessity, of keeping this hospital open. This request is typical of what we may expect when we begin to close any of these hospitals. But the intention is to contract the service as much as we can and within a few years to confine the care of ex-service men mostly to homes in two or three places in the Dominion. I realize that if we confide the care of our soldiers to the civic hospitals it may be less costly. We are doing that in Ottawa, in Regina and in Winnipeg, with the exception of a small hospital, and I think also in Victoria. I take these suggestions made by my hon. friend in the best possible spirit, and I can assure him that it is the object of the government to contract the service and to disband the department entirely without undue delay. How soon that can be accomplished I cannot say.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 3-Clause 8: Official Soldiers' Adviser.
Mr. SHAW:: How does the minister propose to appoint these advisers? I rather gathered from his statement the other evening that he intended to invite recommendations from the soldier bodies and would act upon those recommendations. Am I correct?


Henri Sévérin Béland: Yes. Of course, I am open to conviction in this regard, but my own view is that as these representatives will have to act solely in the interests of the soldiers they should be recommended by the men themselves. For instance, would not the Do-

Ways and Means
minion Veterans' Alliance be the proper quarter from which to seek recommendations?
I do not want to make these appointments at all I would rather leave them to the men themselves.


Mr. CHURCH:: As these advisers should be in sympathy with the soldiers, would the minister be willing to accept recommendations regarding appointments from the returned soldiers' organizations?


Henri Sévérin Béland: With pleasure. That is the intention.


[Stage Direction]
Clause agreed to.
On section 3-Clause 9: Power to take evidence on oath.
Robert James Manion: What is the purpose of this? I do not remember the explanation which the minister gave a day or two ago.


Henri Sévérin Béland: Under the Pension Act
the Pension board has power to clothe a person with authority to administer oaths for the purpose of discharging certain duties in connection with the act. As a department we have not that power, and, as my hon. friend is aware, the department is discharging most of the work in connection with pensions. The reception of evidence in the case of dependents, for instance, necessitates the administering of oaths, and we find it absolutely necessary to have this power. Besides, I may point out that we are the agents of the Imperial Ministry of Pensions. There are a large number of Imperial pensioners in Canada, and the ministry requires from us sworn declarations as to the bona fides of any claims made by these pensioners. This power to administer oaths would apply only to officials of the department.


Robert James Manion: This will not require the creation of any new positions?


Henri Sévérin Béland: No.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


[Stage Direction]
This House again in Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Gordon in the chair.
William Stevens Fielding: I desire to invite the attention of the committee to several items of the customs tariff which were under consideration before and concerning which some suggestions were offered. These suggestions we have given some attention. It will be remembered that I stated that representations had been made, supported here by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens), that the wording of our clause with respect to the application of the British preference did not adapt itself to the manner in which the trade was conducted on the Pacific coast. We provide for a discount of 10 per cent as applied to goods which are imported by direct shipment. It is pointed out that there is not very much direct trade of that kind between Pacific ports and England; that British imports at Vancouver, for example, are largely brought by way of Hong Kong and transshipped. The wording of our clause, therefore, would not, it is felt, admit these goods to the benefit of the preference. After some consideration we have come to the conclusion to propose an amendment which will cover that case. I therefore propose to insert the following words in the resolution respecting the British preference, after the word "Canada" in the first paragraph thereof:
Provided that goods entitled to the benefits of the British preferential tariff shall be entitled to the discount authorized by this section when such goods are shipped on a through bi!U of lading consigned to a consignee in a specified port in Canada, when such goods are transferred at a port of a British colony or possession not enjoying the benefits of the British Preferential tariff and conveyed without further transhipment into a sea or river port in Canada.
That is, if the goods are consigned to Canada and are transshipped at Hong Kong, that will be deemed a direct shipment.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
William Stevens Fielding: In respect to the two items 208b and 208c, bisulphate of soda and nitre cake, and dehydrated sulphate of cop-, per for agricultural or spraying purposes, I think it was the hon. member for West York (Sir Henry Drayton) who thought that they were already free and that these items were unnecessary. The Customs department say, however, that it is not clear that they are already free, and that these two items are necessary. I think that is the point my hon. friend had in mind.


Sir HENRY DRAYTON:: Perhaps my hon. friend can tell me under what item they are now taxable?	,


William Stevens Fielding: There was some question about it in the Customs department but they were rated under 711, unenumerated. That is the advice I get from the Customs department, and my hon. friend will probably agree that that is probably the only way we can deal with it. I beg to move that these two items, 208b and 208c, be now adopted.


[Stage Direction]
Items agreed to.
Ways and Means
William Stevens Fielding: There was some discussion also on item 281, which deals with fire brick. We were desirous of making a certain class of fire brick free, but the wording we have used, and which we thought would effect that purpose, is not, we are told, quite adequate. T propose to rewrite the item as follows:
281. Fire brick containing not lees than 90 petr cent of silicat; magnesite fire brick or chrome fire brick; other fire brick vaflued at not less than $100 per thousand; rectangular shaped, the dimensions of each not exceeding 125 cubic inches, for use exclusively in the construction or repair of a furnace, kilp or other equipment of manufacturing establishment. British preferential tariff free; intermediate tariff, free; general tariff, free.
It is substantially as it was before, but the wording has been improved.


The CHAIRMAN:: There was a previous amendment to 281; the amended item is now proposed to be further amended as suggested by the minister. Shall the amendment carry?


Arthur Meighen: I just wish to understand it. Item 281 in the budget resolutions of 11th May is subject to a duty of 5, 7i and 10 per cent.


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, it was changed later. Mr. MEIGHEN: To free?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, on the 5th of June. It was the subject of some discussion; my hon. friend will see in Hansard what took place. There is now a slight change in the wording; otherwise it is as then agreed upon.


Mr. CLARK:: If this amendment is
adopted, will all fire brick come into Canada free of duty?


William Stevens Fielding: No; there is a division- certain fire brick will come in free and certain other fire brick will be dutiable.


John Arthur Clark: Will the minister give the reason for taking the duty off certain classes of fire brick?


William Stevens Fielding: This class that we make free is a brick not made in Canada. There was some question whether certain bricks were or were not made in Canada, and the item gave us some trouble. I have reason to believe that it is now fairly satisfactory.


John Arthur Clark: There is a fire brick plant in Clayburn, British Columbia; has the minister investigated whether this particular class of fire brick is made there?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes; it is not included
in this free item. That class of brick would be subject to a duty.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
William Stevens Fielding: There is one other item I wish to deal with just here. I propose to provide for a drawback in connection with items 583a and 583aa, as follows:
1031. Artificial sik tops and waste or artificial! fibre silk, artificial silk yarns or filaments, enumerated in tariff liitems 583a and 583aa, when imported by manufacturers to be further manufactured in their own factories before the first day of July, 1924; portion of duty, (not including special duty or dumping duty) payable as drawback, 60 per cent.
That is the time at which we expect the new operations in connection with the manufacture of artificial silk to take place. This is to provide in the meantime that the manufacturer using these articles may be entitled to drawback. I think my hon. friend from West York (Sir Henry Drayton) suggested it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: That is quite true; I did raise that question. I do not know whether my hon. friend is going quite far enough. Of course, if he did not go this distance it would mean that we could not have spinning done in this country because the outside spinner would have a direct advantage. As I explained before, the botany yarns are made of a combination of wool with an artificial silk top. The artificial silk top itself is of practically no value. It is broken artificial silk stuff and is merely a finish that gives a lustre to the wool. I would like my hon. friend to consider this point again though it may be that we can put it over now in view of what he says that the sections will not come into effect until after he has had a chance of considering it next session. But in view of the fact that the wool top is worth twice as much as the artificial top, and in view of the further fact that our tariff unfortunately provides for a 99 per cent drawback in connection with these yams, the present position is that the spinner of wool yarn in Canada for hosiery purposes-jerseys and the like, and that is the only thing these yams are used for-has absolutely no protection. Further, that section, coupled with my hon. friend's changes in the law this year looking towards the installation of a new industry here, has the further effect of putting the Canadian spinner at an absolute disadvantage as against his competitor overseas. Because in these botany yams you have the composite article, you have the product of two articles. And the imported yarn base, which is of wool, and has twice the value of the artificial silk, will be entitled to the 99 per cent drawback notwithstanding the fact that artificial silk is used in it, while our own producers will be obliged to pay the duties provided by my hon. friend's budget in the production of

Mrays and Means
the botanies, and so they are put by this parliament at an absolute disadvantage. What my hon. friend is doing to-day, while not removing that disadvantage, postpones it and I would ask him for how long a time it is postponed. Is it postponed for a year, or what?


William Stevens Fielding: This takes place on the 1st of July, 1924.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then it would be postponed long enough to enable some rational, reasonable treatment to be given the older industry to prevent it from being put out of business just to help the new.


Hugh Guthrie: While we are on the question of spinning yams, I want to draw the attention of the minister to the question of linen yarns. There never has been in this country any duty on linen yams. For three years we gave them a bounty. The industry had never been established in Canada. It took its start from the demand which arose during the war for aeroplane cloth. We were making aeroplanes here and we could not get the cloth. There was an embargo on foreign yams coming in. Two industries were started in Canada for the manufacture of linen yams from the home-grown flax. A bounty limited to $25,000 was granted for a period of three years, and these two industries were established and were making some headway. Last year the bounty ran out, and the minister announced in his budget speech that it would not be renewetj- Now the position is this. The manufacturers of linen yam have absolutely no protection at all, and negotiations are going on to-day to remove the factory at Guelph, and I think the other factory, to Massachusetts where the United States government gives them a duty on linen yams of 35 per cent. They find that they cannot compete in this country against Belgium, France and Ireland in the manufacture of linen yams. If we are going to protect the silk and wool industry, as I presume we are to some extent, why not the linen yam industry, a yam made from home-grown flax for the purpose of using it in Canadian linen mills? Why should that industry not receive some consideration? My information, received this week, is that negotiations are going on now for removal of this business, employing two hundred men, from Guelph to Massachusetts.


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend is largely correct, but not exactly so. Linen yams for certain purposes are free where they enter into other manufactures, but for other purposes there is a duty now. There was both duty and bounty, but the bounty has expired.
My recollection is that it was not used to any large extent, that only a small amount of the bounty was claimed. The duty in part remains.


Hugh Guthrie: The people who gave me my information are the manufacturers, and they said they did not have any protection on their yarns. I did not look the matter up in the tariff, but I would rather assume that they knew what they were speaking about.


Mr. FORRESTER:: They were quite right.


William Stevens Fielding: It is free for certain
purposes but not free entirely. I have no doubt the manufacturers intended to give my hon. friend a correct statement, but I think he must have misunderstood them on that point.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Is not the real trouble-I am speaking from my recollection of the tariff inquiry-that in so far as these linen yarns are concerned, while we start out with a duty on linen yarn the rebating sections of the tariff are such as to bring about practically the situation that the hon. member for South Wellington (Mr. Gutherie) points out? The minister says it is only for certain purposes that rebate is given. That is true, but these are practically 4 p.m. all the purposes for which the yams are used. They are not used for anything else, and you might just as well take away the protection altogether in most of these cases. It is just like the botany yam; I am more familiar with the botany yarn situation, and I know that one mill has already closed down, and if it had not been for the partial relief now given would have been moved out of this country. I do not think my hon. friend can give the hon. member for South Wellington any real demand for these yams except the demand which is covered by the drawback provision.


William Stevens Fielding: It is one of those cases where one man's raw material is the other man's finished article. I might point out that there is no change in this respect. The bounty has expired, but we are making no tariff change as respects linen yam. Item 543 in the tariff covers:
Linen yarn, when imported by manufacturers of towels, damask, or seamless linen fire hose duck, for use exclusively in (the manufacture of such articles in their own factories.
This comes in free. It is the raw material of the manufacturer and if you put the duty on there I suppose it would make trouble
Ways and Means

for the other. The only change that has taken place here is that the bounty has not been renewed.


Hugh Guthrie: These linen yams have been produced by two or three mills in this country, but the industry has never been a great success here, chiefly, J. think, because it has never received reasonable protection. The supply of linen yarns became critical during the war, when we could not get the yarns at all. There was nothing left to do but to go ahead and make it in Canada, and in order to encourage them the government of that day gave them a bounty for three years. It takes some time to establish an industry and only a small part of that bounty was paid to them. It is not an industry entirely by itself. It is on the same plane as the woollen industry or other industries in Canada, and if the principle of protection is fair-and I submit it is fair in this country and has been in force for many years-why should linen yarns be singled out for no protection? Why should a concern employing a couple of hundred men, just now getting well under way, using their own yarn in their own business, making towels and sheeting and table cloths and the like, be put in the position in which they are now, with no bounty and no protection, having to import their linen yarns from Europe for the purpose of manufacturing them into goods in their own factories, when they could do all that work at home? The result now is that they are just pulling up stakes, and I think within the next thirty days they will be located in Massachusetts, manufacturing there, employing American labour, paying American labour, and sending the yams back to Guelph which should have been made in Guelph. I think the case calls for immediate action on the part of the minister and the government. If this budget is not a protective budget I do not know what it is; and if it is, then it should take care of the flax business and the linen business, just as well as any other industry. I believe my hon. friend from South Perth (Mr. Forrester) probably knows as much about this question as I do, and can throw more light on it than I can. I am satisfied the matter is one of great interest to a large proportion of the people of Ontario. They want to grow flax and to have it manufactured in Canada, but under the circumstances the industry is bound to die in Canada and be transferred to the Stales.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It is not a matter of a drawback, as I thought. It has been carried right into the' tariff, in the provisions as to manufacture. I do not think my hon.

friend can point out any use to which linen yarn is put-that is any quantity of it-which is not covered by other tariffs. I refer to item 543, which is a free item, and 543A which is another free item. I think in the result it may fairly be said that, so far as linen yarns are concerned, there is no tariff at all.


William Stevens Fielding: The hon. member is wrong in stating that this industry has been singled out. We are not touching this industry at all in this tariff, and, not having made any changes, I have not studied the figures closely.


Arthur Meighen: You touched it last year. Last year's touch was the last straw.


William Stevens Fielding: At all events, it is one of the cases which illustrates the difficulty where one man's raw material is the other man's finished article. Here is the item:
Linen yarn, when imported by manufacturers of towels, damask, or seamless linen fire hose duck, for use exclusively in the manufacture of such articles in their own factories.
They are free. If we put a duty on these things, then the manufacturers who use them now and get them free will feel that they are entitled to compensation, and it is a difficult problem to handle. It cannot be settled by saying you will put a duty on these things, because when you do it you are disturbing other things. However, previously the bounty was a war measure, but it did not appear to be used to any considerable extent. It died a natural death, and we are nyiking no change in that. Any criticism my hon. friends can offer-and there may be something in the criticism-should have been offered in the past, because we are not making any change.


Hugh Guthrie: The minister announced in the budget, "We do not propose to renew the bounty on linen yarns.''


William Stevens Fielding: Surely.


Hugh Guthrie: If he had renewed it, as he gave it to copper and the like, I do not think there would have been much complaint, but to lower the bounty will result in the industry leaving us. Thoroughout the whole tariff they bracket together cotton and linen goods, that is, we find the same rate of duty in respect of them, treating them practically as the same article. But when it comes down to the yams, the one has a duty and the other has not. We do not grow cotton in this country, but we do grow flax, and I submit if cotton yarns get a duty linen yarns should have it.


Arthur Meighen: One of these industries
is in the county I have the honour to repre-

Ways and Means
sent. There are only two, as I understand it, in Canada. The other, and larger one, is in the county represented by my hon. friend to my right (Mr. Guthrie). The complaint made to me is that last year there was a small tariff, a very low tariff, one that had obtained against the real competitor, and that is always the tariff that counts1; what there may be against some country that really is not a competitor does not matter at all. The complaint was that the actual duty against the real competitor was cut down on linen cloth to so small a percentage that there was no possibility of it reaching the consumer. It was small to begin with, and was among the lowest of our schedules. The amount taken off has made it impossible to continue in any scale at all. I think about forty of the looms are idle now, and my information comes from the head of the firm, who has been a linen man all his life. He came originally from northern Ireland and established both the industry that my hon. friend speaks of in Guelph as well as this one. My information from him is that there is no possibility of continuing at all-not in the least. I venture to say that, after we have this establishment here, and they become competitors with the foreign linenmaker for the trade of the country, and have become established, and have the homes of the workmen established, if they go away and the industry dies, then it is not a matter of waiting three or four years, but it is probably a matter of waiting thirty years before there will be any commencement made again. This is an indigenous industry. It is not like the illustration the Minister of Finance gave some two years ago of an industry that he said was indigenous and was entitled to support merely because it was based on the brain and inventive genius of one man. I refer to the illustration as to marmalade produced in Dundee. This is an industry built upon raw material, produceable and actually produced in large degree in Canada. A very serious responsibility is taken by the Minister oi Financ.3 when he so allows things to remain, leaving the bounty to go, leaving his reduction of a year ago to go. This is not for the good of the country. Does he imagine that after the Guelph industry gets down to Massachusetts, and after the industry of the hon. member for Victoria and Carleton (Mr. Caldwell) goes to the south of us, we are going to get any cheaper linen than before? Not a chance in the world. Why, the minister is going to lose more revenue because of the loss of the hands of that factory at Guelph than the
bounty he pays. I do not favour the bounty. It may be all right for a short time, but the proper thing is when we have a system to have it complete and fair. The minister says, "oh, but this is the raw material for some other manufacture." So is everything; you can apply that argument to anything at all. These things are adjusted in the tariff by having a lower duty on what is the raw material for the purpose of manufacture and having it a little higher for the goods that do not become the raw material at all. He has done that himself in this tariff in introducing the new protection for artificial silk. He has so arranged it to cover the very objection he is raising now. Why does he not do the same in this case of an article that is, at least, as indigenous as silk, I think more so, and that certainly is far more indigenous to this country than many articles upon which he is maintaining a protection as against the real competitor. I refer to cotton, which is where he found it when he came into power? The real competitor is in the United States. The minister amended the duty on linen cloth a year ago, and it is now only 15 per cent, 2j per cent off. The small bounty that was paid is gone; there is no protection for the yam whatever, that is on the yarn as used for the purposes for which it is made here; and we are facing the consequences to-day.


William Stevens Fielding: My right hon. friend states that there is an import duty except for the purposes for which it is made here. It is not classified in the tariff separately, it is classified under twine and cordage. How much would be linen it would be difficult to say. Let me repeat this point again. We are not by this tariff dealing with that at all. There are many cases where an argument could be put forward in regard to a particular industry and we have no desire to do an injustice to any particular industry. As I say we are not making any change in the tariff to-day with respect to linen and that is why I have not the figures at hand. The matter might be worthy of consideration at another session.


Arthur Meighen: The parties interested in the manufacture have waited on the minister?


William Stevens Fielding: I think so.


Arthur Meighen: The matter has all been laid before him?


William Stevens Fielding: I think so.


Hugh Guthrie: The minister says that he is not making any change on the duty on linen. He overlooks the British preference.
Ways and Means


William Stevens Fielding: Not on linen yams.


Hugh Guthrie: Linen yarn is one item; the manufacture of linen is an entirely different item. Linen yarn goes into shoemakers' supplies, threads, fishing nets, certain kinds of cloth and of course into linen. This industry that I speak of in Guelph has had a hard time for the last fifteen years; but finally it is in a pretty fair way; it has become a very large industry employing five or six hundred men two hundred being engaged in the production of the yarn which is then manufactured in the mill. They have reached the point where the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railways in their dining cars use their make of table napkins and table cloths which are very excellent. The leading hotels of the country buy their linen made in Canada from Canadian flax. The United States have undertaken to protect that industry in that country very handsomely. They give a duty of 60 per cent on linen towels, we give 15 per cent and, I believe the result of the recent cut, if the reduction applies to linen towels, is to cut it down to 12J per cent.


William Stevens Fielding: Not if it is 15 per cent.


Hugh Guthrie: If it is 15 per cent, I understand, there will be no reduction. On sheets and the like, I am told, the United States impose a duty of 45 to 50 per cent; we impose a duty of anywhere from 15 to 17i per cent. The difficulty is simply this. The linen workers in France to-day are earning 80 francs a week-that is the average wage of girls making these linen fabrics in the factories of France. That means $8 in our money.


William Stevens Fielding: I think it is nearer $5.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It is $5.60.


Hugh Guthrie: We are paying $15 to $18 a week to the girls making linen goods in the Guelph mill. I think this mill was started in 1903, and after 15 or 20 years' experience in Canada, we think we are in a position to make a very high class of linen from Canadian-grown flax. It has been a slow process to reach the goal which we have now reached. The situation is so disastrous as regards the tariff, that I doubt very much if the industry can survive. In the United States they realize the situation, and they have so adjusted their tariff as to make the linen industry there a far more marked success than it is in Canada. The question all comes back to this: Is it worth while to make your home-grown flax into your own linen, 
or is it better to buy linen in another country? For my part, I want to see it made in Canada.


Mr. GOULD:: I wonder whether the thought has occurred to hon. gentlemen that the protection they quote in the United States and again in Canada is one of the reasons why the despicable wages are paid to those girls in the factories in France. The matter cannot be interpreted in any other way. The higher the protection goes either in the United States or in this country, in order that French manufacturers may compete, the lower will be the wages paid in those French factories. The hon. member brings in this humanitarian question again.


Arthur Meighen: Supposing we have no factories in Canada and they are in Massachusetts where the protection remains the same, does the hon. member think the addition of the Canadian market to the output of the Massachusetts factories in addition to the United States market will lower wages in the Massachusetts factories?


Oliver Robert Gould: If we as a nation presume to become competitors in a financial way with the United States, there is nothing to prevent the United States from using her tariff weapon and raising the tariff by 50 per cent, bringing about the same conditions to-day complained of by the hon. member for Sou.h Wellington. This is only a vicious circle. I am very much interested in the manner in which the three hon. gentlemen are presenting their case to the Minister of Finance to bring this about. The more concessions are given to these industries, the worse conditions obtain both here and in the Old Country. What is the matter, in my humble opinion, as regards conditions in Canada, is that the purchasing public has not the means to purchase the article. This is only an artificial standard we create by giving this protection to that industry.


Mr. GOOD:: I should like to ask the hon. member for South Wellington (Mr. Guthrie) what were the tariff conditions which surrounded, from 1903 on, the industry which he spoke of as starting in 1903.


Hugh Guthrie: I think in the manufacture of linens the duty was 20 to 22J per cent. You can take it as 5 per cent higher all along the line. There was in this country no industry for the manufacture of linen yarn until 1919, and in order to induce manufacturers to go into that and to use Canadian hemp, a bounty was given for three years. The bounty has run out.

Ways and Means


William Charles Good: Do I understand that this particular industry which has been manufacturing linen cloth has recently started to manufacture the threads for which a bounty was given for the three years which have expired now?


Hugh Guthrie: That is right.


William Charles Good: The contention is that the bounty should be restored?


Hugh Guthrie: I would press for a reasonable duty on linen thread or for a bounty, one or the other, but I have had no communication from my people asking for a bounty. They ask for the same reasonable protection for their manufacture as others in the same list are getting, just as the new silk industry is getting, just as the Minister of Finance is giving to the artificial silk people. This is more important than artificial silk. If the principle is right as regards artificial silk-and I agree with it-it is right in this also. The hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gould) must bear this in mind, the great competition in linens is not from the United States, but from Ireland first where probably the finest linens in the world are made, then from Belgium, then from France, and now there is a very heavy competition from Japan. In all these cases the wages are nothing as compared with wages which have to be paid in Canadian mills. It is to meet that competition that we ask for some reasonable tariff protection. If we get it, we can hold the industry here. If we do not get it, I do not think we can.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
William Stevens Fielding: The only items remaining, I think, in the customs tariff are the two resolutions touching the question of reciprocity with the United States. These have not yet been adopted.


George Newcombe Gordon: There is one item on
the last page of the resolutions, item 1032, with reference to oil which apparently has not yet been passed.


William Stevens Fielding: I thought it had been passed.


George Newcombe Gordon: No. It refers to oil used in the manufacture of manila rope.


William Stevens Fielding: I had been under the impression that it had already been passed. However, if there is any doubt I move it now.


Arthur Meighen: It refers simply to oil?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, oil used in the manufacture of an article which itself is free.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Customs tariff:
8B. The Governor in Council may authorize any Minister of the Crown to enter into negotiations with any authorized representative of the government of the United States with a view to the making of a commercial agreement between the two countries on terms that may be deemed mutually beneficial. Any agreement so made shall be subject to the approval of the Parliament of Canada.
Arthur Meighen: I do not suppose this resolution and the one following will be received by the committee with the same attention and earnestness that would be accorded them if they were considered to mean very much. I can assure the minister that those who are opposed to the idea underlying the resolutions would be in much greater evidence if it were believed for a moment that they were anything more than a mere gesture at this time; and I venture to say that the minister might be surprised at the variety of sources from which that opposition would come. I want to comment, first of all, on the first section. This, of course, while there is precedent for it, yet as a piece of legislation is of no effect whatever. It is merely words; it is merely surplusage in a statute It does not mean anything, because the minister or anybody else in the world could negotiate on behalf of a government without authority to do so; the only thing that he cannot do is to effect something. And thi* of course, does not give him power to effect anything. I suppose it is harmless; if I did not regard it in that light I certainly would oppose it in this House at all consequences The second one is somewhat different, however. It provides-


William Stevens Fielding: Is the hon. member
treating them together?


Arthur Meighen: I fancy it would be just as well to do so; at least one cannot discuss the general subject unless he takes the two sections together. The second one provides:
If the President of the United States, under authority of the United States Tariff of 1922, determines to reduce by 50 per cent-
Those words are struck out, I understand.
-determines to reduce the duties imposed by such act on the following articles, that is to say:
Cattle; wheat; wheat flour; oats, barley, potatoes, onions; turnips; hay; fish as enumerated in paragraphs 717, 718, 719, 720 of the said Tariff Act of 1922, the Governor in Council may by Order in Council make such reductions of duties on similar
Ways and Means

articles imported into Canada from the United States as may be deemed reasonable by way of compensation for such reductions on Canadian products imported into the United States.
This provides for more order in council government. But even this, I think, is harmless. Nevertheless, it has a meaning; it enables the government to do something finally without recourse to parliament, in the event of the United States President acting, as the section states, under the provisions of the United States Tariff Act of 1922. My first comment is this. I do not think the minister has carefully studied that Tariff Act if he really attaches any importance to this section. A reading of that Tariff Act would indicate that there was no possibility at all of anything being done with respect to these articles in relation to Canada. I read the act pretty carefully myself, and while there are two or three sections that cover contingencies, the result in effect is this. If the president becomes convinced that owing to differences in the cost of manufacture in other countries, owing to a disparity of cost of production elsewhere as compared with the United States, the duties imposed by the Fordney-McCumber Tariff are not representative of that difference, he may vary them up or down with a certain limitation in either direction upon his power of variation, that limitation being fifty per cent. But he must have not only the fact established that the duty itself is not representative of the variations in the cost of production, but also a certificate of his tariff commission. Well now, really, does anyone imagine that this is ever going to apply to , wheat, barley, wheat flour, and so forth? Does anyone think that any tariff commission is going to go into the cost of production of these articles in Canada and in other countries, and suggest to the President of the United States that the duty they have in that country to-day is not representative of, does not correspond with, these variations, this disparity in the cost of production? Why, if hon. gentlemen, particularly those from the West, are right about our cost of production, as I think they are, then how in the world can any tariff commission ever find that the duty now levied in the United States is not representative of the difference in cost of production? I do not see how any recommendation is ever to be made. For the matter of that-I give the opinion for what it is worth-all the variations downward which the President of the United States will ever make under the authority of the United States Tariff Act will not amount to anything at all. If he made any variations they would be more likely to be upwards. Even supposing, however, that I Mr. Meighen.)
there is any remote possibility that he would make variations downward, then I venture to suggest that they would not apply to these particular things that the minister has selected for the purposes of this resolution. Consequently the minister is playing pretty safe in respect of his proposal for reciprocity. But he takes other precautions. On this subject he has very frequently dilated on what he conceives, or rather on what he says he conceives, to have been a very grave injustice done to this country by the rejection at the hands of the people of his treaty of 1911. I have lately thought that his lamentation was more apparent than real, that his courage as to a new treaty along these lines was not quite as great as he would have us believe. I wonder why he limits this section to ten articles. He had hundreds in his treaty of 1911. Why are these few selected out of those hundreds? Why are all the others left out? Articles of the greatest possible importance, a list of which I had before me a short time ago, are not included here at all. For example, let us consider fruits	for	a moment.	Whyare	not fruits	in	this list?	Whydoes	the	minister	ask for power	withrespect to wheat but not with respect to fruits? If his courage is really as great as he would have us believe, why does he not ask parliament to give him autiiority, in case the United States is ready to admit fruits	free	into Canada,	as well as wheat,
wheat flour, barley, oats and potatoes? No single case could better illustrate the weakness of the minister's position. But I might go on-meats of all kinds, for example they were within his treaty of 1911. Why are they not here? Why does not the minister ask for power now to do again what- he wanted to do in 1911 with respect to meats in case we are met by the United States? There is perhaps no single article of greater consequence. Going on, I find tomatoes, oatmeal, cornmeal, peas, bran, macaroni, biscuits, maple sugar, pickles, cherry juice, mineral waters, essential oils-and then a whole long list of manufactured or semi-manufactured articles, they are here by the pages, all of which he had in his treaty of 1911, but none of which he has in his request for power to-day.
Now, if the minister has the faith that this country is anxious for his 1911 treaty, why does he not ask for power to make it again as respects these articles? In a word, what puts the special nine he has selected in a class by themselves? In fact as to the main commodities, that is, wheat, wheat flour, products of wheat, potatoes, we had reciprocity within the last five years and we

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have already seen the treatment the United States accord to reciprocity agreements in respect to those articles. Why does the minister want to put us on our knees before the United States for another agreement? They only allowed about six months' operation of our reciprocity arrangement on wheat, wheat flour and potatoes, when they got tired and cancelled the whole thing. But in case they change their mind again the minister wants to go down and offer to them reciprocity on these articles once more in order that they may cancel the arrangement once more. Does he think that a good tariff policy for this country? In fact outside of those and two or three other articles, he mentions no other in this resolution.
Now, if his courage was equal to his protestations he would put every other important article covered by the reciprocity offer in 1911 into this resolution. But he knows just as well as he knows public opinion-and he is not always a bad judge-that if today he brought into this parliament a resolution for power to do what he wanted to do in 1911 he would never carry the country with him. So he goes very cautiously about it, and includes nine articles selected from this list of several hundred, and says "I am willing to take that step," and he knows when he says it that the chance of the contingency arising which he mentions here is so remote that the stoutest Canadian who fears any renewal of a reciprocity agreement need have no misgivings. The first clause is merely words. The second clause is a request for power to act. It is applicable to only a tithe of the long series of articles he included in his treaty of 1911, and the inevitable condition attached, of course, is such that the possibility of the event ever materializing is remote in the extreme. Consequently, I do not see that the insertion of this clause in the bill need give rise to any very serious apprehensions. But I warn the minister again that there are evidences not a few, and some that might surprise him, that if he came forward at this time with his proposal of 1911 he would confront just as strong a current of opinion as he confronted then, and with the same result.


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend has been kind enough to say that I am sometimes not a bad judge of public opinion. After all. we can only offer our own opinions, and I offer this simply as my own opinion for what it may be worth, little or much-that if we had an opportunity to-day of getting from the United States the Reciprocity Agreement of 1911 three-fourths of the country would demand and would be rejoiced to get it.
I am glad to have the assurance of my hon. friend that these resolutions are harmless. Well, that is a great thing; if we cannot do any good in this wicked world, let us not do any harm. Now, are they no good? How much vaue should be attached to them? I have not said that I attach very great value to them myself as to accomplishing anything.
I have explained that I thought it was right and proper that the undoubted intention of this government to seek reciprocity should be proclaimed in a formal way in the resolutions of this parliament. I think there are good reasons for that view.


Arthur Meighen: Why is not fruit in?


William Stevens Fielding: We will come to that. We do not get fruit at the beginning of dinner.


Arthur Meighen: Sometimes.


William Stevens Fielding: May I suggest to my hon. friend that I will follow him, if I can, in the order of his speech. He says that these resolutions are no good, that they accomplish nothing. Well, he ought to have a little more reverence for the historic policy of the Conservative party, for the glorious days of Macdonald, Tupper, Tilley and other illustrious men. In the great National Policy-which we sometimes refer to yet-we find there was a standing offer to the United States just as we have here, not in the same words but the same in principle, a declaration in the Customs Act of that day that Canada was ready to reciprocate with the United States on a large list of articles.


Arthur Meighen: It proved no good then, either.


William Stevens Fielding: Exactly, it did not prove any good. But that does not prove that the offer was not honestly made; I am willing to believe that it was honestly made. In saying that it was not any good, my hon. friend is casting a reflection on the honesty of that clause of the National Policy and of the great men of the Conservative party who have passed away.
But why do we embody the offer in this resolution? To accomplish something. And I say it has accomplished more to-day than I expected it would. It has aroused a state of opinion in the United States which is of the utmost value. We declare our wish for reciprocity. There is nothing new in this, but by putting it in the solemn form of an act of parliament we are bringing it before the American people in a manner that they could not have noticed before. It has had that effect. I say the attention these resolutions have received to-day in the public
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press of the United States and from their public men is vastly greater than I ever expected. I did not expect to accomplish everything at once.	-


Arthur Meighen: Does the minister mean a friendly or an unfriendly reception?


William Stevens Fielding: Certainly, some of the greatest newspapers in the United States have given the offer a friendly reception, and have warned the Republican party that if they do not pay attention to it they will have to bear the penalty by and by. Undoubtedly the offer has had a good effect in that way.
Our friend asks: Why do we not include fruits and many other commodities? Are we bound to put every item that appeared in the agreement of 1911 in our offer to-day? I expect the Clerks of the House would object to such a long list, if nobody else did. We say we are prepared to make a general offer to negotiate with the United States, and we do not limit it to anything, we do not bind ourselves. We say we are willing to open the door for a fair discussion of the whole question without any limit. Fruit and everything else is in the first clause if the Americans see fit to come forward and so propose. But that would require an act of congress. We knew that, we knew that if anything was done under that section at all it would have to be done later by act of congress, and congress will not meet for some months. But there is something the President of the United States can do now. Our friend says that he will not do anything; I do not venture to predict what he will do. The President has power under the American tariff of to-day to decrease or increase duties to the extent of 50 per cent. He can do that without going to congress. We do not care anything about the methods by which he will do this. But if the President desires to act he can get all the necessary information from the tariff commission. Now, with the knowledge that he has that power, we say, "Mr. President, we realize that you cannot make a general treaty with us without the consent of congress, but congress has given you the power to do these things now and if you are willing to act as respects this list of commodities, we Shall be happy to meet you."
It may be asked why we mention these particular commodities. They happen to be staple articles, articles that interest both the East and the West. I mentioned the other day that cattle in the West and fish in the East are articles of paramount importance. The failure of the United States to admit Canadian cattle into their country is the cause of one of the gravest difficulties

that our western friends have to meet, and the refusal of the United States to admit fish into their markets at reasonable rates, or free, constitutes one of the gravest difficulties existing to-day in the lower provinces. The exodus that has been taking place in Nova Scotia to the United States is largely from the fishing districts, due to their being shut out of the American market. I do not say that we are going to accomplish a very great deal; I do sny distinctly that when we put this offer before the United States we are putting it in the most effective way; we are helping to educate the public opinon of the United States on the subject. At all events we are declaring our willingness to do these things, always by way of general treaty when they are ready to do it that way, but in the meantime if they are prepared to deal with us directly under the powers given to the President, then we say we are prepared to act. In both cases we are simply making a declaration of faith, stating something that we want to do, something that would be good for Canada if we could do it; and if we cannot do it, why, we have made an honest effort in that direction. That is the whole case.


Arthur Meighen: The President's powers
apply equally to every item in the tariff. Will the minister explain why he has onions in this class and has not fruit?


William Stevens Fielding: I am a very practical
person. It was pointed out by a large deputation from Ontario that the failure of the United States to admit onions into their markets was a serious matter for that part of the country. That is why we included onions.


Arthur Meighen: Does the minister not
know that it is just as serious for fruit- even more so?


William Stevens Fielding: As a matter of fact the onion question has been pressed upon us very much more strongly than the fruit question. But then, where are you to draw the line?


Arthur Meighen: That is what I say.


William Stevens Fielding: We selected a number
of items; if you multiply them you may make it more difficult to attain your end. If we can get these staple articles into the United States at more favourable rates or free, well and good; if not, no harm is done by our making the offer.


Arthur Meighen: The point is that onions, though a staple, are not nearly as staple a commodity as fruit. The United States

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market, if we could get it and pay nothing for it, would be far more important to us in fruit than it would ever be in onions. It only illustrates this:	In respect of every
single one of them there is always a price to pay; the minister selects those where he thinks the price will be the least; those that they would undoubtedly ask for over there he leaves out, thereby disclosing the hollowness of the whole reciprocity case. That is the point I sought to make: the minister's courage in proclaiming his fidelity to the old pact increases with the remoteness of any chance of his being up against it as an issue in this Dominion.


William Stevens Fielding: It will be an unlucky day for my right hon. friend when it becomes an issue.


Arthur Meighen: The minister snid that in 1911. His enthusiasm to-day is not one whit greater than it was during the session of 1911.


William Stevens Fielding: I said the other day
that there were hon. members in this House who opposed reciprocity in 1911 but who, I am sure, are prepared to vote for it today. There are scores of people all over the country who, blindly led by partisan zeal, voted against reciprocity in 1911, but who to-day are prepared to view it as an economic question and would rejoice to see the agreement of 1911 with the United States put into effect.


Arthur Meighen: The minister is very emphatic in saying that anyone who voted against, him was blindly led by partisan zeal. How does he explain the action of the multitudes who left the party that he then led, or nearly led, to vote against him? Were they blindly led by partisan zeal, too? When the minister designates the attitude resulting from an election he calls it a grouch, but he has been grouching since 1911 over the result of that election, and I fancy if he had another on the same issue he would have another grouch for the rest of his political career.


William Stevens Fielding: I am, however, inclined to think that one of these days there will be another election on that issue, and time will tell the result.


Mr. HOEY:: The hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) I understood, has suggested the amendment of this resolution by substituting the word "such" for the word "similar" in the fourth line.


George Newcombe Gordon: An amendment ha3 been submitted that on the seventh line of paragraph 8c the word "similar" be struck out and the word "such" be substituted therefor. The question is on the amendment.


William Stevens Fielding: I think that would be dangerous. I hope my hon. friend will not press that.


Arthur Meighen: What does this mean? I am glad the hon. member brought it up; 1 had not had the point drawn to my attention. The minster's answer would lead me to think that he understands by the word "similar" as it is there now that in the event of the United States reducing the duties on the articles named in the clause he and his government will have power to reduce anything else in the whole tariff schedule.


William Stevens Fielding: No.


Arthur Meighen: Well, then, will they havj power only to reduce in the case of the articles named in the clause?


William Stevens Fielding: I would say so.


Arthur Meighen: Then would not the amendment suggested be right?


William Stevens Fielding: Well, I do not think the word "such" is objectionable. It really means that we offer reciprocity in these particular articles, so that on the whole I can accept the amendment. I do not think it makes any material difference.


Arthur Meighen: That gives effect to what the minister said. Personally I do not think anything makes much difference so far as this proposal goes.


William Charles Good: If the intention is to deal only with the articles specified, then the amendment certainly is an improvement. But I read the resolution somewhat differently. I was going to ask the minister whether his intention was that the proposal should be in relation only to these specific articles, or whether it should extend to any articles of a like nature. I understand him to say now his intention was that the Governor in Council would be permitted to reduce the duties on these particular commodities and on no others.


William Stevens Fielding: I think that ought to be the meaning of it, yes.


William Charles Good: I want to say in connection with both these paragraphs that I am heartilv in sympathy with their general purpose, but I am afraid they will not get us very far. I believe the minister is entirely in sympathy
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with the proposal for reciprocity betwteen Canada and the United States; I only wish I had as much confidence in those that are behind him so far as their support of the principle goes. I am inclined to think the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen) is considerably astray in his estimate of public opinion on this point. I would like very much to see this issue decided on its own merits. I have some very distinct recollections of the election campaign of 1911, and I know of no election where there was so much confusion of issues as prevailed on that occasion. I have never regarded the decision then taken as being in any sense a decision on the merits of reciprocity. In conclusion I just want to say this: If we do not have commercial union with the United States in a reasonable time I do not think we are likely to be able to maintain the Canadian confederation. In my judgment we may have political union instead with the United States. I do not want to see that. I would like to see the experiment in confederation work out, but I do think that a very large measure of commercial union with the United States, with all that that involves, is an absolute necessity if we are going to preserve our political integrity.


George Newcombe Gordon: The amendment is carried. Shall the resolution as amended carry?


Arthur Meighen: I thought we might have the benediction or other comment of hon. gentlemen on the aspirations of the hon. member for Brant (Mr. Good). The silence is really oppressive.


William Stevens Fielding: Silence gives consent.


Henry Lumley Drayton: What to? Commercial union or political absorption?


William Stevens Fielding: To the principle of the best possible trade relations with one hundred and ten millions of the richest people on earth who live next door to us.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I had expected
that we would have heard something from the government side, just some little thing as to the Canadians and the Canadian people; that even under the present administration every man in Canada could go to sleep knowing that this country can continue to function, and that we were not yet bound to deliver ourselves up to a commercial union on the one hand or a political union on the other. I thought I would have heard that from my friend, but it did not come. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman, there is really only one

thing that I object to in connection with this whole matter, and that is that to-day under the circumstances in which we now are Canada ought to be in a little bit better position than that of a beggar holding out her hand. I would have thought that my friend today would have learned the lesson which he professed to have learned in his budget, that he was wrong in connection with the French treaty in trying to trade without something to trade with, and that he would have had something to offer the Americans, who were described from the other side as good men of business in connection with their dealings -some reason why they should give reciprocity to a country whose markets at the present time they now to a tremendous extent occupy and enjoy. In a small matter my friend learns a lesson. He says that in connection with Australia we needed something to trade with, so we have put a duty on raisins. But there is absolutely nothing done by my hon. friend with regard to the United States, apart from the begging attitude into which we are put-we, next to Great Britain, the greatest national buyer in the world to-day from the United States, we who to-day are giving her the benefit of our markets to 68 per cent of our national purchases. There is not a single gesture from the minister to show that we have any independence of thought or liberty of action or courage-not a single gesture. Something is said about Nova Scotia and fishing. There is one thing to be done for Nova Scotia and fishing. Here you have the cod fishing beds close to Canada. There was a modus vivendi there, and you 5 p.m. have now a tremendous tariff on fish. After that tariff on fish is effective you have the statement made that the American ports cannot be and shall not be open to the Canadian fishermen, and you have this government saying at the same time that Nova Scotia is depleted. You have this government allowing the American fisherman the full advantage of the Canadian location. Our ports are entirely open to him. He gets the advantage which we have by reason of the contiguity of our ports to the fishing banks. That is all right, we are told- everything is all right. Now, if my hon. friend wants to do business, why not try and do business in a businesslike way? Why not show that there is some object in having reciprocity with the Americans? If he is going to try and do business with them I would suggest that when he starts doing it he should have just as much to offer the fishermen of the United States as he wants for the fishermen of Nova Scotia. I would suggest that

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he do not go down there and ask that we get something for our fishermen which the American fishermen already have. I would suggest that when he is looking after our agriculture he put himself in the same position, for example that when he is trying to work out any treaty of reciprocity he should have something to deal with which would help that agricultural industry for which so much concern is professed. You will not get anything by requests and prayers. Take, for example, butter. I think it would be a good thing-


William Stevens Fielding: What about oleo?


Henry Lumley Drayton: I will come to that in a minute, I am glad my hon. friend gave me the suggestion. We have a four-cent rate on butter and the Americans have an eight cent rate. We have any amount of American eggs coming in here to-day at a rate which is half the American rate. Is reciprocity to be just a continuation down the line in these percentages? If it is not to be, I would suggest that my hon. friend ought to have an answer to the American tariff.
My hon. friend says, what about oleo? If there is one thing I want to congratulate my hon. friend upon it is his stand on the oleomargarine question. But he took his stand I think only half way. He said that oleo should be imported and manufactured, and he was perfectly right, under fair terms. The Americans have a duty of eight cents a pound on oleo. We have no duty; and if oleomargarine is to fulfil any real useful purpose outside of the purpose of being a very great necessity-


William Stevens Fielding: If it is prohibited what is the good of a duty?


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend is quite right. The Americans do not prohibit, and my hon. friend would not prohibit, nor would I, but I am pointing out that the Americans had that duty of eight cents, and I was further going on to point out that if there is anything that oleo would be a good thing for outside of the help it gives to those who cannot, unfortunately, at times get butter when they need it, the thing would be to give a market for the amount of beef fats produced in this country and which run up into the millions of pounds. The Americans see to it that none of these beef fats get into the United States, while we had a provision under which everything could be rebated that was used in the manufacture of oleo. We require just a little reciprocity in tariffs at the present time if we are going to
put ourselves in a position to do anything. We must have a little equality. And I think that if my hon. friend wishes to do that, he will put this House in the position in which he put it in relation to Australia. What is right for Australia cannot be wrong in connection with larger issues.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I think the hon. member for Brant (Mr. Good) was a little unhappy in his use of the term "commercial union" in his remarks a few moments ago. I hardly know what is implied by the term myself, and I doubt very much whether he knows. However, I am inclined to think that the idea he had in mind was reciprocal tariff arrangements. If that was what he meant, I very willingly give adherence to that view. If he meant commercial union, I say that, as far as I am personally concerned, I do not know what it means. It may mean a great deal more than he thinks it means, and I should hesitate to pledge myself to support that view, at least until I know what it means. Reciprocal tariff arrangements with the United States is one thing. Commercial union may be very much more, but just what I would not undertake to say.


William Stevens Fielding: The discussion this afternoon emphasizes the fact that, as regards the ex-Minister of Finance, his preaching is substantially different from his practice. He has again and again advanced the proposition that if you want to deal with somebody you have to have something to deal with. He referred to that again and again in connection with the French treaty. I would remind him that he sent his colleague, Sir George Foster, and others over the waters to negotiate a treaty with France, and he did not arm them in the way he says they should be armed. He sent them helpless, and they brought home a treaty. I am not finding fault with that, but the hon. member preaches the doctrine that if you want to deal with other nations you must jack up your tariff. He did not do that. That only proves that my hon. friend, when he talks this way, is not as much in earnest as he is in some other matter. As to the policy of increasing the tariff against the United States, have not hon. members made it a virtue in this country that they did not increase the tariff? Have they not tried to persuade the country at certain public gatherings that they had reduced that tariff, and that they had a tariff almost the same as ours? They undertook to prove that their tariff was lower than ours by some small fraction, and now we are told that the true doctrine is that if you want to negotiate you must jack up the tariff. My hon. friend's
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practice and his preaching are widely different. I do not think he would ever go before the country and proclaim the doctrine he has proclaimed to-day.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am afraid that my hon. friend and I are never going to get this question of precept and practice settled. But there is a great distinction between my hon. friend and myself.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes, and we will come to it; hon. members need not be at all alarmed. There is a very great difference. So far as I know, at any rate, we have tried to put into effect the precepts that we taught and preached. So far we have not sought to discard any principle upon which we stood, for the sake of continuance in office. If we have done so I would be pleased if the minister would point it out. I have not the honour of being in the position of my hon. friend. He has asked "Why did you not do things when you were in office"? Why, my hon. friend knows perfectly well that when Sir George Foster went over to France the House was not in session. The budget was not pending. He knows also perfectly well that it was merely a temporary arrangement. Then he says "Why did you not do the same thing with the States? Why did you not raise the duty?" Surely, my hon. friend knows perfectly well that when we were in office the new rates, the prohibitive rates-and they were not even then as prohibitive as they are now -were brought in as a temporary measure. We desired to do nothing-and Mr. Chairman I think we were absolutely right in the attitude we adopted-which would give the slightest excuse for our friends to the south in proceeding in what we thought was a mistaken course. My hon. friend would have done exactly the same thing if he had thought the tariff was absolutely too low. He has raised some tariff items since he has been [DOT] here. He has raised some items in this very budget. But if he had been where I was, and where the late government was at that time-never mind whether he thought every single bit of American goods coming into Canada was coming in at too low a rate- he would not, I venture to say, have raised a single tariff item. He would have been just as anxious as we were that the tariff wall should not be continued. I ask my hon. friend, were we wrong?


William Stevens Fielding: I think my hon. friend is wrong now.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Were we wrong thinking it was a good thing to give no reason

or no excuse for a continuance of the Ford-ney Bill? To-day the matter is turned into a question of permanent tariff legislation, and it is my hon. friend who has to do it to-day. He says he does not believe in having something to trade with. Why did he advance the tariff rate on raisins? Why, of course, he knows there should be something to deal with; and if it were not for the fact that my hon. friend to-day feels that he is tied here and tied there with commitments in this direction and that direction he would see to it that his tariff arrangement was such that he could look for doing business on a proper basis with the United States as well as Australia.


William Charles Good: I think after the remarks of the senior member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean) I should perhaps make some explanation of what I meant by commercial union. I certainly did not mean reciprocal tariff arrangements. That might mean 50 per cent duty on both sides. What I meant by a large measure of commercial union was the obliteration of the tariff barrier between us and the United States. In connection with what the hon. ex-Minister of Finance (Sir Henry Drayton) said as to the use of the tariff for bargaining, that might be all right if we were looking at it wholly from the standpoint of the producer. But it is a two-edged sword, and if we attempt to retaliate in matters of this sort we may be advantaging somebody on this side of the line and we may be correspondingly disadvantaging somebody else. We must, I think, look at these matters from the standpoint of the consumer as well as the standpoint of the producer. Reference was made to butter for instance. The Americans had a duty of 8 cents a pound and we had a duty of 4 cents a pound. That seems unfair. It depends on whether you look at it from the standpoint of the producer of butter or the consumer of butter. I think the inference is obvious.


Arthur Meighen: The hon. member for
Brant (Mr. Good) is frank, and what is more, he is logical in his definition of the term "commercial union." How it could mean anything else, I cannot understand. What I want the committee to understand is that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding), in approving the words of the hon. member for Brant used a definition meaning exactly the same as the hon. member for Brant said, the closest possible tariff relations with the United States.


William Charles Good: Trade relations.

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Arthur Meighen: That means, no tariff
between the two countries.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: That is surely
a little different.


Arthur Meighen: The hon. member for
Halifax is becoming apprehensive. I see that he is roused. I am glad he is. Does he think there is anything closer in our trade relations with the United States, than no tariff at all? The Minister of Finance saye that commercial union means the elos-[DOT]est possible trade relations.


William Stevens Fielding: I never said anything
of the sort. I will speak of that in a moment.


Arthur Meighen: I thought I had it exactly. I will put myself in the recollection of any other hon. member. If that was not what he said, I do not know what it was.


William Stevens Fielding: Let me say at once
that I did not catch the words "commercial union" from the hon. member for Brant, and therefore I could not have had any reference to that. What I said was that I was in favour of the best trade-I do not know whether I used the word "closest;" I will use it now-the closest trade relations with 110,000,000 of the richest people on earth. That means trade relations, and only an unfair person would say that I had contemplated any other relations whatever.


Arthur Meighen: I did not intimate that
the minister contemplated any other relations than trade relations.


William Stevens Fielding: The right hon. member
said that I had approved commercial union.


Arthur Meighen: Yes, because the hon.
member said that was what the hon. member for Brant meant.


William Stevens Fielding: I said what I said, not
what he said.


Arthur Meighen: The minister said that
the hon. member for Brant meant the closest possible trade relations with the United States.


William Stevens Fielding: I did not say what the
hon. member for Brant meant at all. I said what I meant.


Arthur Meighen: I do not like to contradict the minister but my memory is pretty good. However, this does not matter. That is what he wants himself. He does not mean anything except the closest trade relations only. The closest trade relations means no tariff at all.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Not necessarily.


Arthur Meighen: What would be closer
than no tariff at all, I ask those who interrupted with laughter? There could be nothing closer. If the Minister of Finance meant what he said, he wants no tariff at all between this country and the United States.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Commercial
union might mean a great deal more than even that.


Arthur Meighen: It would eventually, in
my judgment, as I have often said-and I know this is the judgment of the hon. member for Halifax too-but the hon. member for Brant does not think so.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: What is in
my right hon. friend's mind is not the same as what is in my own at the moment. I know what he means-political union subsequently.


Arthur Meighen: Yes.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: It would mean also that the United States and Canada would have the same tariff as against every other country in the world, inclusive of Great Britain, and this would be in conflict with the declared policy of hon. gentlemen directly opposite. It was for that reason that I wish to dissociate myself with that view of commercial union.


Arthur Meighen: I think we have things straightened out now.


William Stevens Fielding: Not exactly.


Arthur Meighen: I thought the Minister of Finance would want to correct something again. The intimation of the hon. member for Halifax is that the closest possible trade relations, meaning, as I stated, and as he does not contradict, no tariff, free trade between us and the United States-


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I did not say that.


Arthur Meighen: He would not stand for that.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I did not express my opinion at all.


Arthur Meighen: Will the hon. member express one now?


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I did not express an opinion on that poipt one way or another. I protested against the use of the words "commercial union," because I said in the first place that I was not quite sure what that meant, and I also expressed the opinion that the hon. member for Brant does not know

Ways and Means

what it means. I repeat that. I like to give adherence to the things I understand, or partially understand at least.


Arthur Meighen: I cannot get the hon. member to say what his opinion, stated by himself, of free trade with the United States would be. The hon. member might just as well speak out. He would fight that with all the strength of his being, the same as I would.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: The subject was not before the committee. I was not thinking about it.


Arthur Meighen: He might just as well say. What is more, the Minister of Finance would not have it, although one would gather that from what he said, and the hon. member for Brant had a right to comment on it in his remarks. The fact is that those things are impossible. Let me be understood anyway. I agree with the Liberal leader of 1890 who went out from his office, because he knew anything of the nature of commercial union could never stop with commercial union and was bound to lead to a far more disastrous outcome.


William Stevens Fielding: I should like to be judged by what I say and not by what my right hon. friend says I said. He said that I had approved commercial union.


Arthur Meighen: I did say that in effect but not in those words.


William Stevens Fielding: My right hon. friend did say that.


Arthur Meighen: In effect that is what it is.


William Stevens Fielding: He also said that I was in favour of no tariff between the United States and Canada. These are both inventions of my right hon. friend. I have talked often, perhaps too often, on the question of trade relations between the United States and Canada; but I challenge the right hon. gentleman to show that I ever said anywhere that I expected there would be no tariff between the United States and Canada. I have never had such an idea. I do not believe in it now; I never believed in it. The right hon. gentleman would have difficulty in convincing people that I said such a thing.


Arthur Meighen: I did not think the minister meant that, but his reply to the hon. member for Brant-


William Stevens Fielding: I did not reply to the hon. member for Brant: I did not catch his remark.


Arthur Meighen: His comment on the speech of the hon. member for Brant would lead hon. members of the House to think he did believe that.


William Stevens Fielding: I was commenting on what my right hon. friend said.


Arthur Meighen: A minister who gets up and says that he believes in the closest possible trade relations with the United States-


William Stevens Fielding: That is right.


Arthur Meighen: -has a right to have hon.. members understand from that, that the Minister of Finance believes in no tariff between us and the United States.


Mr. HATFIELD:: Whether it is the closest possible or not.


Arthur Meighen: It is the closest possible.


Paul Lacombe Hatfield: I say it is not. It may not be possible.


Arthur Meighen: Certainly it is possible.


Paul Lacombe Hatfield: I question if it is possible.


Arthur Meighen: It may not be the greatest wisdom on the part of either country, certainly not of ours. The closest possible trade relations mean no tariff. What I protest against is this loose assumption, for the attraction of those whose minds lean that way, that hon. members are really in favour of the closest possible trade relations between us and the United States. They are not, and hon. members on all sides of this House, at least on two of them, know right well what the ultimate consequences of such a relationship would be.
As regards what the minister said, I want to say only one word before I sit down, because I think I can make the matter clear to the committee. He says: "If we were in earnest when we said that before he went over and placed himself in negotiation with France, he should first of all have had something to trade with by way of a higher tariff on luxuries, we would have done the same thing ourselves." The real central fact is this: The whole French treaty did not go out of effect until the session of 1921 was over. We had no prospect of a new treaty with France. We had to make a temporary arrangement in the summer after the session was passed. How could we have had the tariff raised unless we did that by order in council as the minister is taking power to do very often? We could not raise the tariff. So the minister's retort is entirely without any basis, entirely without any reason behind it. The minister went through a session, during every day of

Ways and Means
which he knew he had to enter into trade negotiations with France. He let the session go by, and therefore he put himself in a position where he had no answer to France at all. As a consequence we have a treaty to-day which I think is the most unfavourable, the most unequal, and to us the most disastrous that we have been compelled to enter into in the history of our country.


William Stevens Fielding: The hon. gentleman sent a colleague to negotiate a treaty with France; whether that treaty was big or little, temporary or otherwise, is not of great importance. He sent him, not armed, as he said we should have been, but simply to negotiate a treaty as best he could, and there was every opportunity, before Sir George Foster went, of raising the tariff.


Arthur Meighen: Not at all; that is the point. The old treaty was in effect in 192021.


William Stevens Fielding: But you got notice that the old treaty was to terminate.


Arthur Meighen: We also got notice later that it was not to terminate.


William Stevens Fielding: Oh, well.


Arthur Meighen: France retracted her position and it was while I was in England that we got notice that the treaty was to terminate. There was no opportunity to come to parliament, and the hon. gentleman's contention has no force.


William Charles Good: I am rather glad that I used the expression "commercial union" because it has led to some illuminating confessions. I do not know what it means in ordinary usage, if it has any such usage, but I know what I meant by it: I meant exactly what the minister said when he suggested that we should have the closest possible trade relations with the United States. I do not suppose that we can reach the ideal, at least in any short time, but I do think that the political independence of this country is conditioned very largely upon our getting the closest trade relations that can possibly be brought about with the United States. And in that respect I take issue absolutely with the opinion of the leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen). I am sure he is entirely honest in his views in that regard, but although this is a very complicated question, which I do not pretend to argue now, I certainly feel convinced from my study of the situation, and of history generally, that unless we can secure a large degree of commercial union, of close trade relations, or of reciprocity-I do not care what
249i
you choose to call it, but I hope the House understands what I mean-then it will be difficult for us to preserve our political independence. If we do get such a condition, it will of course be comparatively easy for us to maintain that independence.


[Stage Direction]
Resolution agreed to.

William Stevens Fielding: I invite the attention of the committee to the resolution on page 12 of the Votes and Proceedings of May 11, concerning bounties on hemp, in regard to which I want to make a change, not as to the amount but as to the distribution of it. I move the resolution, as amended, as follows:
Resolved:
1.	That the Governor in Council may authorize the payment out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the following bounties on hem-p grown in Canada and used in the manufacture of yam or twine, or in the manufacture of hemp further advanced than yarn or twine, manufactured in Canada and sold for consumption therein, during the periods and at the rates following, that is to say:
During the calendar year:
1926,	one and one-half cents per pound;
1927,	one and three-eighths cents per pound;
1928,	one and one-fourth cents per pound;
1929,	one and one-eighth cents per pound;
1930,	one cent per pound;
1931,	seven-eighths of one cent per pound;
1932,	three-fourths of one cent per pound;
1933,	one-half of one cent per pound;
2.	That the sum to be paid as such bounty shall not exceed $125,000 in any one of the said periods;
3.	That the said bounty shall not be paid on hemp yarn or twine, or manufactures of hemp further advanced than yarn or twine, exported from Canada;
4.	That the Governor in Council may make regulations to carry out the intention of these resolutione; and
5.	That the Minister of Trade and Commerce shall be charged with the administration of the foregoing provisions.
The resolution originally proposed to provide for a bounty for five years not exceeding in any one year $200,000, making a gross possible appropriation of $1,000,000. I am suggesting that the gross amount remain at that figure, but that we distribute it over eight years, the amount in any one year not to exceed $125,000. That gives a wider distribution, although the bounty is no larger. We propose that the first year shall be 1926.


Mr. HOCKEN:: Has the minister any assurance that this arrangement will be sufficient to have the industry established?


William Stevens Fielding: I should not be justified in giving that assurance, but I expect that it will. Of course, the people who seek bounties generally want more than we are able to give them, and they rather convey the impression at first that the thing cannot be done unless
Ways and Means

we can comply with their wishes to the fullest extent. I will not say more than that I am hopeful that what we propose will accomplish its purpose. I cannot give any assurance.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I assume that the extension of time now given is the result of further negotiation.


William Stevens Fielding: Yes. It in part meets their desire, but it does not provide all that they want.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Are their wishes met in regard to the extension of time? I take it that they probably wanted to have more in other directions, as well as respects the extension of time. But so far as that particular is concerned, have they been given just what they want?


William Stevens Fielding: So far as the resolution goes it is entirely in line with their wishes, except that it does not go quite the length they would like to have it go. There is one month of difference between the time at which we begin and the time they propose; we want the round calendar year. Otherwise the resolution is in accordance with their wishes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am referring to the question of time.


William Stevens Fielding: We are taking the calendar year rather than the month of December, for convenience sake.


Arthur Meighen: I owe it to the minister to express approval of the attempt being made here, though he has not chosen the method which I think would in the end be best for the country. He has chosen one method which I earnestly hope will succeed. If we can make the growing of hemp in western Canada a real success, that is to say, if we can make it a competitive crop with the others, it would be a great thing for that part of the Dominion. That I am sure of. I do not like the bounty system. I do not think it is a sound one. There may be special cases where it can be justified, but I do not believe that you can get these things that have a strong foothold in other lands started in a new country, where all the experiments have to be undertaken and all the dangers of a new venture encountered, if you let things take their course, as some would advocate. Consequently, I join with the minister in the earnest hope that this will result in starting the hemp industry here, and that from this commencement the enterprise will go on and prosper.


Robert Alexander Hoey: I cannot persuade myself that the minister is at all convinced that this is 
in any sense a successful attempt to establish this industry in western Canada. I do not know that we are justified in concluding that the project will be proceeded with. I am absolutely convinced, from intimate experience, that if this factory is established in Winnipeg, or anywhere else in western Canada, it will end in utter disappointment and disillusionment.
What are the actual facts? We are importing into Canada at the present time about 90 per cent of the binder twine used here. I have been informed on reliable authority that the binder twine interests in the United States cannot extend their markets into Europe. That market is pretty well served at the present time by European concerns, particularly by the Belfast Rope Works, the largest of its kind in the world. We are importing within 90 per cent of the actual binder twine used. Let us suppose that this industry is established on this basis, what is going to happen? Price-cutting immediately; the price of binder twine in western Canada will fall anywhere from 4 to 6 cents a pound. So that in the last analysis this is a direct subsidy to the farmers of western Canada. In no sense can it be looked upon as a subsidy to the industry that is being established. An hon. member in close proximity to me said a few days ago that he was opposed to this subsidy because the government did not subsidize him in his farming operations. But that is exactly what it is going to do if this resolution passes. There is going to be drastic price-cutting, and the only one who will benefit is the farmer. I would not support the resolution from that point of view, because I do not think that in the last analysis the western farmer can be helped by subsidies.
There might be some hope for the success of this firm if it were the mere expansion of an American industry, but as it is being backed by British capital it seems to me that there is absolutely no hope of its success. Are the American interests going to surrender their market in western Canada at a time when there is no hope of extending their markets in Europe without an attempt to crush this rising concern? If there is anything more cruel in modern civilization, anything that might be comparable to the thumbscrew age, it is an attempt to establish an industry in a protected country on a free trade basis. I heartily agree with the right hon. leader of the Opposition that if you are going to have a protective system you must extend that system, you must round it out. These people will pay duty on all the

Ways and Means
machinery they import, they will pay duty on their belting; not only that, the agriculturist who is to grow the hemp will pay duty on his plows and his harness; and then if the argument of our protectionists is true, that protection increases wages, here you have an industry established on a free trade basis coming into the labour market in competition with protected industries. Now, I am 'absolutely convinced that this industry cannot be established on such a basis.
If it is the desire of the government and of the people that a binder twine factory should be established, other ways and means will have to be devised. But I am not sure that the establishment of this factory is an imperative necessity. Let us remember that for every acre grown in hemp there will be an acre less grown in wheat and oats, for the production of which western Canada is peculiarly adapted. The hon. member for Nelson (Mr. Bird) is not present, but I have understood from him that the growing of hemp in Manitoba can only be successfully undertaken in certain sections when the land is absolutely free from noxious weeds. It seems to me that this matter should have received much more careful consideration before any attempt is made to establish an industry on this basis.


William Charles Good: Mr. Chairman, I dissent from the opinion expressed by the right hon. leader of the Opposition in his criticism of bounties as a form of protection. I do not believe in the protective system, but if we are going to give protection to special industries I do think that a bounty is better than a tariff. It is open and aboveboard, and we know what we are paying; we only pay for what we get as we get it. The hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey) has pointed out the peculiar condition surrounding this particular industry. Very frankly, I question the whole policy of subsidizing industries. It seems to me that when conditions are right capital and labour will be applied to natural resources to produce whatever is needed, and we cannot for any length of time subsidize an industry with any national advantage. But supposing that this is a desirable industry, then when conditions are favourable there is no doubt at all that those who are interested will invest in it and carry it on if there is any probability of its being successfully established. If, as has been pointed out by the hon. member for Springfield, the industry is doomed from the start- I do not pretend to pass an opinion upon that, but I think his argument is certainly worth considering-if that is the situation, then it simply means we are passing over a certain
amount of our money to people who may undertake an enterprise of this sort which will sooner or later collapse and our money will have been wasted.


George Gibson Coote: Is this money to be paid to the farmer who produces the hemp? I think that could easily be inferred from this resolution.


William Stevens Fielding: No, it is to be paid to the manufacturer. I presume he will have to buy hemp from the farmer, who will not give it to him for nothing.


George Gibson Coote: If we are to pay a bounty on hemp grown in Canada, it does seem to me unfair that it should be paid to anyone other than the man who grows it. Does not the minister think so?


Arthur Meighen: I do hope that Hansard had the repeated "hear hear" of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Lapointe) to the contention of the hon. member for Brant (Mr. Good) that bounties are much better than a protective tariff, because I fully expect that next year we shall find his influence prevail in the government and there will be a bounty on artificial silk and we shall also find that the boot and shoe manufacturers hereafter will be granted a bounty and the duty will be entirely taken away. We have every reason to expect that from the interruption of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries, especially in respect to boots and shoes.


George Gibson Coote: I would urge that the minister might give me his opinion at least as to whether, if a bounty is to be paid on the production of hemp, it should not be paid to the man who produces it.


George Newcombe Gordon: The minister has already answered the question.


Mr. CAMPBELL:: If we have to choose between a protective tariff and bounties, I certainly prefer the latter, but I do not rise to commend the action of the minister in this respect. Viewing it from the most favourable standpoint, and assuming that this industry would be successful, I can conceive of this company to which the bonus will be paid coming to parliament in the not very far distant future and demanding that a duty be placed on binder twine. That would naturally be the next step, and the farmers in western Canada are not prepared for anything of the kind.


Mr. McBRIDE:: Mr. Chairman, if we are
to have anv new industries established in Canada we must expect to give them some
Ways and Means

help at the start. I am more than surprised that the farmers of the, prairie provinces object to this small bonus to assist this industry, as it is they, more than anyone else, who will receive the benefit of its establishment. And if the industry is established the people of Canada as a whole have nothing to lose by it, the firm itself takes all the chances; we pay no money over until the factory is in operation and turning out the finished article. Not until then does any bounty become payable. I think it will be one of the best things for western Canada that has taken place for many years. It will keep at least $10,000,000 of Canadian money in Canada, and that means something.


Milton Neil Campbell: I do not doubt the
sincerity of the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. McBride) but that is the same old protectionist doctrine that has been preached in this country for the last seventy-five years. But let the industry become partly established and then there will be sufficient reason for your protecting it still further. The industry will still be there; the plant is in operation; if the protection is withdrawn large numbers of people will be thrown out of employment-that is the argument. I say that now is the time to begin. If this industry is what it ought to be; if it is indigenous to the prairie country, it will develop without any bonus.


George Gibson Coote: If the hon. member for
Cariboo was logical I think he would support my contention that this bounty is being paid to the wrong parties. If he wants to bring about the production of hemp, surely he would urge that the bounty should be paid to those who produce it. If this bounty is to be paid to some manufacturer-and if I understood the minister correctly, that is the purpose of the resolution-then I want to register my protest against it. To my mind it is a most illogical proceeding.
Resolution as amended agreed to.


BOUNTY ON PETROLEUM
[Stage Direction]
1. Resolved, that it is expedient to amend The Petroleum Bounty Act, 1909, being chapter forty-six of the statutes of 1910, by providing that the bounty shall be payable on crude petroleum having a specific gravity not less than .8235 at 60 degrees Fahrenheit's thermometer, produced from wells or from shales or other substances mined in Canada which have actually produced crude petroleum before the date of the coming into force of the act to be founded on this resolution.
The said bounty shall be paid at the following rates, that is to say:-
On such crude (petroleum produced on or before the thirtieth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four, the bounty of one and one-half cents per imperial gallon provided fin the existing law shall be -paid;

On such crude petroleum produced on or after the first day of July, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four, and not later than the thirtieth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five, a bounty of three-quarters of one cent per * imperial gallon shall be paid.
On and after the first day of July, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five, no bounty shall be paid.
Mr. LeSUEUR:	Before the committee
passes upon this resolution I would like to place before hon. members, in as exact and as concise a form as I can, the facts surrounding this industry and the results which I believe must inevitably follow the adoption of this resolution. I think we should first get a clear conception of the two basic ideas on which I believe this resolution is founded. The first idea in the cancelling of these bounties is that the treasury of Canada might otherwise be called upon in a large measure for the payment of bounties on account of a possible large production of oil in the future in western Canada. My conclusion in that respect is based directly upon the remarks of the Finance Minister himself in his budget speech. He said:
The total amount paid in the form of bounty in 1922 was $93,636. The amount is not large, and if we had to consider only the conditions which existed when the bounty was applied it might not be worth our while to make any change. But oil hias been found in our western country. There is a widespread conviction that we are on the eve of great oil discoveries in the far west and north. The development of great oil wells in that country would of course be in one way a blessing, as adding so much to the natural resources of the Dominion. But from the Dominion treasury's point of view that which might seem to be a blessing would be little less than a disaster. If there should be, as may very likely occur, great strikes of oil in the western country, the bounties we are called upon to pay would be a very serious charge upon the treasury. We are proposing, therefore-
And then follows an outline of the present resolution. I submit, therefore, that the primary object of the cancellation of these bounties is to prevent a call upon the treasury for large sums on account of the discovery of oil in considerable quantities in the West. The second object of the resolution is based upon a recognition of the fact that grave hardships and serious dislocations in industry will result from the repeal of the bounty; it is an attempt to ameliorate the conditions which would naturally be expected to follow from the repeal. I propose to show just what the withdrawal of these bounties means to the industry in question and to point out that both these objects can be accomplished in a workable and inexpensive way without causing any hardship to this industry.
First let us look at the exact position of the oil-producing industry in Canada. The output in 1922 of the oil producers of Canada

Ways and Means
was about 178,567 barrels. Nearly 93 per cent of that production, or about 164,500 barrels, took place in western Ontario; in the county of Lambton alone the production was about 119,000 barrels, or 67 per cent. I mention these facts simply because I am well acquainted with the actual oil operations in Lambton county, which has 67 per cent of the total production. But when I describe the conditions of the oil fields in that county they may be taken, I believe, as applying generally to the oil-producing industry throughout Canada. In western Ontario, which produced about 93 per cent of the Canadian output, they are operating about 3,547 wells. About 216 power plants are being used to operate these wells. The investment in the industry is upwards of $2,000,000, exclusive of the value of the land, or the value of the leases, as we would call them.
The operation of these oil-fields is more or less along these lines. Most of these fields are old fields but the wells must be cleaned, the casing must be replaced from time to time, the pumping and the power transmission must be maintained, and the result is that it is a fairly expensive process especially when we remember that the 164,500 barrels of oil are produced from 3,547 wells. That means a rather small production per well. In addition none of these wells are flowing wells. In each case the oil has to be pumped and raised to the surface and then gathered to your central tank. That adds to the expense.
I would also point out that these operators are composed of farmers and small producers. They are the owners of a few wells. _ In no case is there a big powerful company in these fields. They are all small operators.
Now with regard to the cost per barrel of that oil, inquiry has been made among these operators, and they are men who have been in the oil business practically all their lives. Their method of operation is economical, and I believe the figures which I am going to give are accurate and can be accepted by the House with confidence. In fact, I have discussed these figures with independent authorities who have every reason to know whether they would be accurate or not, and I am told that they are. We have here the report of one property covering forty wells. It shows that in 1922 the average cost per barrel was $2.40. Another property operating sixty-three wells shows an average cost per barrel of $2.42. Another property operating fifty-seven wells shows an average cost per barrel of $2.51. Another operating 138 wells shows an average cost per barrel of $2.54; another an average cost of $2.58; another an average cost of $2.70, and another an average cost of $2.94 per
barrel. That will give some idea of the cost per barrel of the oil produced in that country.
Now as to the price received for that oil during 1922. The average price received in Petrolia was $2.62^ per barrel, in Oil Springs, being a slightly lighter oil, the price was $2.69£. The price of Canadian crude to-day is $2.58 per barrel. The point I wish to make is this, that the margin between the cost of that oil per ban-el and the average price received for it is very small at the best, and in some cases the margin is entirely supplied by the bounty of 52£ cents a barrel which this government pays. Now if this bounty is removed as this resolution proposes, what will be the result in that field in western Ontario? The result will be that a certain proportion of these producers will not be able to carry on without that bounty. Their costs are equal to or higher than the average price which they receive.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.
After Recess
The committee resumed at eight o'clock, Mr. Gordon in the chair.
Mr. LeSUEUR: Before proceeding with my remarks I will, with the indulgence of the House, briefly summarize what I have said, so that this matter may be presented with some degree of continuity. We are dealing with the resolution on petroleum which is proposed by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding). The bounty at present is 52f cents per barrel. The objects or purposes of this resolution are, in my mind, two; first, the primary and controlling one, namely, to prevent any large or substantial call on the federal treasury by reason of the discovery of oil in quantities in Canada and especially in western Canada. If it were not for that danger, and if conditions were to remain as they are and were, I take it from the budget of the Minister of Finance, there would be little object in taking off this bounty, as the payment for bounties is only $93,666, or possibly one cent per capita per year for the inhabitants of this Dominion. The other object of this resolution in taking the bounty off in two steps is, I believe, to create as little hardship as possible in the results which must inevitably follow this legislation.
I have briefly explained the oil position in Canada; that a great part of the oil produced in Canada to-day is obtained from western Ontario: that is production, representing 93 per cent of the total production of the Dominion, is approximately 164,000 barrels per
Ways and Means
[Stage Direction]
year, produced from about 3,547 wells, owned by small operators, no big companies being concerned, and that the oil must be raised, as there are no flowing wells. This oil must be raised and gathered, and owing to the small production per well, the large number of wells compared with the total production, the average cost per barrel is heavy. I pointed out in detail that these operators, who have been oil men from their youth upwards and know how to handle wells, show that their costs run from $2.40 per barrel to as high as $3 per barrel, and that the average Canadian price for crude oil in 1922 was $2.62i per barrel in the Petrolia district, and $2.69i in the Oil Springs district, there being a slight difference in the specific gravity of the oil. The result is that possibly the majority of these oil operators have no margin of profit, except the profit offered them by the bounty of 52i cents per barrel, and that there are a large number who have a small margin of profit without the bounty.
That was the point at which we had arrived when the committee rose at six o'clock.
I should like to point out the result of the taking off of this bounty. The immediate result will necessarily be that a large portion of these oil producers must cease operations. A careful estimate has been made, and it is estimated that possibly between 50 and 60 per cent of the producers will have to cease operations, and this would mean a cutting down of possibly 50 per cent of the production in western Ontario. But it goes much further. That is simply the primary result. I would like to explain to this committee the method of handling oil after it is produced. In those fields there are receiving stations, and the oil is taken to the receiving station, or pumped to the receiving station, by the producer. From that receiving station the oil is then gathered to the central, larger tanks in the town of Petrolia. There it is taken by the main pipe line and driven by pumps for a distance of about 16 or 17 miles to the Imperial Oil Company's refinery at Sarnia where it is refined. That is the process of transportation.
That transportation system, I would point out, involves these receiving stations and their operation, and the gathering from the receiving stations to that central tank; this involves the measuring of the central tank or the strapping of it, as we call it. It also involves the pumping stations and the driving of that oil through a pipe line for 16 or 17 miles to the point of consumption. That means a very considerable investment, a considerable staff to operate the transportation system and 
a considerable overhead expense. This is the point which I am arriving at: If that production is cut in half by the removal of the bounty, as it certainly will be-there can be no other possible result-you then have a production in that western Ontario district of possibly 80,000 to 85,000 barrels, or not more than 250 barrels a day. What I say to this committee is that with a production of only 250 barrels a day, you have not sufficient oil to transport, to carry the overhead involved in that transportation system. Your 250 barrels a day will not support the keeping of the staffs at the receiving stations, at the central tank, and on the pump and pipe line operation. I can assure this committee with every certainty that if the production is cut in two in that way, it must necessarily mean the dismantling of the pipe line transportation system and the salvaging of what there is there. That will without a doubt be the result of the removal of the bounty.
What does that mean? You have still possibly somewhat under 50 per cent of your oil producers who have a sufficient margin between their cost of production per barrel and the average price which they receive, to permit them to continue operations; but as soon as that pipe line is taken out and dismantled, these producers must secure other means of carrying their produce to market. That means either tanking it by tank wagon or building lines of their own to stations, and erecting receiving racks and so on at those stations. That means an investment, and with this resolution in view, not one of those men will expend that amount. Furthermore, if they simply tank the oil by tank wagon to the Imperial Oil Company's refinery at Sarnia, that means an added cost which, I say, will wipe out, or very nearly wipe out, all the margin of profit they have, and the net result of this resolution means practically the complete elimination or wiping out of that oil field in western Ontario. These are facts which I do not believe can be refuted in any way. They are facts which, I believe, from close acquaintance with that field and with those conditions, make the results that I have indicated an absolute certainty.
William Charles Good: How does the hon, member figure the cost of production in this case?
Mr. LeSUEUR: There are many items in the cost of production. One could not, in the course of an evening practically, tell the hon. member all that enters into the cost of production; but it will mean your maintenance, cleaning, possible renewals, pumping and raising of your oil, gathering, maintenance

Ways and Means
of power stations and so on. There are a hundred and one items.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: Could the hon. member inform the committee whether or not there are any customs duties on well-drilling machinery and appliances necessary for maintaining the pumping stations he suggests?
Mr. LeSUEUR: There have been duties on various articles used in the drilling of wells but an amendment has been made in the budget which is now before the committee. That would not enter much into this, because this is a field already drilled, already operating, and the item of removing the duty affects more a new field which you are going in to drill, to explore and to exploit.
I have arrived at the point where, I believe, I have shown that the removal of this bounty must mean the practical wiping out of this field. Let us see just what that means in the way of results. In the first place, I do not believe much could be salvaged from those wells, and this would mean practically the wiping out of the investment of possibly upwards of 82,000,000. It would certainly mean, conservatively speaking, the wiping out of a great deal of that investment, of very much the larger part of it. In the second place, the Imperial Oil Company pays for that oil, about 165,000 barrels, approximately $400,000 each year. That money is set in circulation in that district, including Bothwell, Petrolia, Oil Springs- and so on, and it goes into every line of commerce. If this industry is wiped out, that money will be spent amongst the drillers in the midi-continent fields, which would be the natural place for that oil to be brought from if the Canadian oil wells are shut down. That is quite an item, and I would say that this is a big argument in offsetting the one cent per capita per annum on the inhabitants of this Dominion which this oil bounty at present calls for.
Another result is this: Petrolia is a town of possibly 3,000 inhabitants. It is a very nice little town with a certain quantity of pavements, with its public buildings, with a water system bringing water from lake Huron, a distance of 16 miles-. In getting these improvements, in making Petrolia a liveable place, the town has incurred a debenture debt of approximately $435,000. The life of Petrolia is practically bound up in the oil industry. If you eliminate that oil industry, you are going to do a most serious injury to Petrolia. I think, without question, you will reduce its population by, at least, 1,000, many say by 1,500. You will cut it in two, because the hardware and other stores which
furnish the oil well supplies and the centre of the oil operations are in the town of Petrolia. If you reduce the number of inhabitants, you are going to lessen the values of property; you are going to make houses and property a drug on the market, and you are going to strain very seriously the financial solvency of that town. You will hurt the whole district around. That will be the inevitable result of the closing down of the oil fields in that county and in those districts.
There is another angle from which to view this, and that is, this bounty had for one of its objects originally the encouragement of further drilling. There is not much further drilling in western Ontario, though there is more than one naturally thinks. There are, I think, at present some wells being put down near Colborne, possibly one near Melrose; there is one in York county; in Lambton there are several; in Sarnia township there is one, in Bosanquet township also and at Thedford. But these are more or less shallow wells in western Ontario going into what we call the coniferous formation which is a shallow formation and which is the usual well strata in those districts. If this bounty is taken off, I believe, at least, for all purposes of shallow drilling, this will produce a most detrimental effect on further exploration work. It will put a wet blanket on all .parties who are either drilling now or are contemplating drilling for oil.
The great fear of the Minister of Finance in this matter has been that there will be a large production in western Canada. But that fear is unfounded; for while there has been spent in western Canada by one company several million dollars in oil operations, up to date the results have not been encouraging and the prospects are not bright. I understand that the president of that company has officially stated that they are not and never have asked or expected to receive this bounty, they are seeking for production on a large scale. That, of course, has nothing to do with the possibility that oil may be found; and I am quite in accord with the Minister of Finance in any measures he may adopt -to safeguard the treasury against large drains from big producing wells. But I believe that this object of the minister's, as well as the purpose of assisting those who are look-for oil, can be most satisfactorily attained by a method which will avoid the hardships which the present resolution must inevitably impose on local industry in western Ontario.
The method which I feel sure will do this is the principle of limiting the bounty to so many barrels per well per day. For example,
Ways and Means

I suggest that the bounty be paid only on the first five barrels per well per day. For example, the bounty would be paid on the first five barrels; and if a well produced any more than that, if it produced ten or a hundred or a thousand barrels per day, bounty would only be paid on five barrels in each case, nothing further would be paid. That would provide complete protection against the fear which the Minister of Finance seems to entertain and which apparently underlies the main purpose of this resolution. I offer that as a principle for the minister's consideration. He may consider that five barrels per day per well is not a wise standard; he may think it should be ten or twenty-five or any other number. That is a matter for him to consider. But I suggest that five barrels per day per well would be a fair amount on which to pay royalty.
Let me indicate a few points in relation to this proposal. In the first place this resolution confines the bounty to those who have already been receiving it, that is, to a particular proportion of the oil producers of the Dominion. The proposal I submit to the committee would treat all oil producers equally, and as a matter of fact it is the principle that is recognized in all countries. I am convinced of the soundness of it, and I do not think there can be any question about its being quite fair. It makes no distinction between the oil producer who has received a bounty in the past, and the man who is looking for oil and may find it later on. The proposal to pay a bounty on the first five barrels only would not only safeguard the treasury but, which is an equally important consideration, would extend the same treatment to all who are interested in oil. Some hon. members may think that this is more theoretical than practical, but it is something to be considered.
I submit, however, that the system is essentially feasible; and it is inexpensive, which is the second point I want to emphasize. We already have inspectors at these various points and they know the fields thoroughly. We have reports in the Department of Mines and in other departments giving accurate data on the wells, besides many other details, and while I do not know whether it is the fact in Canada, I know that it is quite the usual thing in oil fields for the government to be furnished with maps showing the location of wells, and so forth. I feel certain that the government inspectors at these different points are fully acquainted with the different wells and their production, and this system that I suggest, or at all events one similar to it, is more or less in vogue in other coun-

tries where it works satisfactorily. I am not speaking of bounties now; I am referring to the system which is indispensable if a proper calculation is to be made of production.
In the third place, I would point out that the payment of the bounty on the first five barrels only would save the oil industry of western Ontario. I am sure it would. Some of the wells produce over five barrels a day, and they can take care of themselves; but the man who is especially hurt is the very man who would be saved by the payment of a bounty on five barrels a day. This would throw no burden upon the people of Canada. As I have pointed out, only $93,000 is paid per year by way of bounty, and that is less than one per cent per head of the population of Canada; and under this five barrel limit there would be practically no danger of that sum being increased, because nothing would be paid on any production exceeding five barrels. In that way the treasury would not be called upon to pay any substantial amount more than is paid at present.
The Minister of Finance very plainly indicates in his budget speech that if it were not for the fear of great production in the West he might not consider it worth while interfering with the bounty. So far as there is any fear from the West, I submit that it is completely dispelled by the limit that I have suggested. If they do get a large production there, as we all hope they will, the government will pay only on the first five barrels, and on nothing more; and that would not amount to a bagatelle. I submit, therefore, that the proposal I have suggested offers the minister a reassurance which must remove the fear he has of the public treasury being drained by reason of large productions.
Let me assure the minister in conclusion that I am not offering these remarks in any hostile or critical spirit. Far from it. But in view of my intimate acquaintance with these fields of western Ontario I think it is only my duty to state the facts as I know them, and, in as clear a way as I can, point out to the committee the results which I know must inevitably ensue from the enactment into law of this proposed resolution. I have tried to outline what I believe is a practicable, an entirely feasible and, at the same time, an inexpensive solution of this question, and one which, if adopted, would meet the end which this legislation is intended to serve, namely, the guarding of the treasury. More than that, it would alleviate the hardships which must follow of necessity if such legislation as this is carried out.


William Charles Good: The hon. member (Mr. Le
Sueur) has given us a rather black picture

Ways and Means
of the situation in Lambton county. I should like some additional information from him. In the first place, how constant is the cost of production? It would appear to me that a well giving 25 barrels per day would be very much more remunerative to its possessor than a well giving only 5 barrels a day, and that withdrawing the bounty might eliminate some of the less productive wells. Then is he quite within bounds in stating that the reduction called for by the resolution would lead to the scrapping of this equipment? I think some further evidence in that direction might well be called for. Further, why is it that the Canadian wells cannot compete with the American? If the refinery is near the field, how is it that the industry cannot compete with producers on the other side in the absence of this special assistance?
Mr. LeSUEUR: The hon. member is quite correct that the cost of production per barrel depends to a large extent upon the amount of oil produced by each well. A flowing well of course is the cheapest. It flows without pumping by reason of gas or other pressure. As that flow declines, naturally the pumping, cleaning, keeping in condition and so on of the well must be spread over a smaller and smaller return and the cost rises accordingly. As to the American fields, they are very large and the producers there have a correspondingly large production. The second question has escaped me for the 'moment.


William Charles Good: The scrapping of equipment.
Mr. LeSUEUR: No, I am absolutely within bounds in that statement. The hon. member refers to transportation lines. I can assure him there is no question but that with production cut in two the transportation plant will be dismantled.


William Charles Good: Can my hon. friend give
the committee the maximum and minimum costs of production of the various wells? Between what limits do they vary?
Mr. LeSUEUR:	One operator may have
forty wells, another thirty, another twenty, and so on, but the costs which I have before me, and which I believe are accurate, run from about $2.40 to $3.


William Charles Good: Are those the average costs
over the whole field?
Mr. LeSUEUR:	No, these are the average costs of this particular producer and are averaged over the year 1922.


William Charles Good: They are not well costs?
Mr. LeSUEUR:	No, costs per barrel.


William Charles Good: Can the hon. member give
us the limits between which the costs per barrel per well vary?
Mr. LeSUEUR:	That is what I have
given, the cost per barrel; those per well I have not got.


Mr. MacLAREN:: Mr. Chairman, I listened very attentively to what the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) had to say, at the time he introduced his budget, respecting the abolition of the bounty on Canadian petroleum, and, if I may say so, his reasons thereon were not convincing to me. He then said that he desired to do away with the bounties on certain articles, including petroleum, because he thought that these bounties had served their purpose. Are we satisfied that that is so? The purpose of a bounty is to encourage an industry in such a way that it may be made financially successful. Well, is petroleum produced in Canada to-day in that large and satisfactory volume which we would all like to see? I do not th.nk any hon. member will say that it is, and I do not think we would gather from the remarks of my colleague from Lambton (Mr. LeSueur) that that is the case. Certainly I can say that oil is not being produced in satisfactory volume in New Brunswick. Indeed, the minister himself in the course of his budget speech stated that the operations carried on for the production of petroleum in Canada were never very large. They were chiefly in Ontario, and later in some degree in New Brunswick. Then comes this important statement:
The operations have dwindled considerably.
I have no doubt that this statement is correct. And if operations have dwindled considerably, is this not an argument for-continuing the bounty rather than withdrawing it? The minister added:
The total amount paid in the form of bounty in 1922 was $93,636.
He admits that this is a small amount, and that were it not for certain future developments he would be disposed not to disturb this bounty. His words are:
There is a widespread conviction that we are on the eve of great oill discoveries in the far west and north.
Is that sufficiently definite to justify the abolition of this bounty on petroleum? It seems to me that this is too indefinite. There is no doubt sufficient evidence to warrant the hope that in the future there will be a copious supply of oil in the far west and north, but, as the minister says, we are only "on the eve of these discoveries." That is too indefinite,
Ways and Means

I think. In that case we are depending on the future. The experience of everyone in mining is that there are many disappointments; we can only count on the actual mineral production when we see it and when we have it. I quite understand there should be proper safeguards in the event of there being a tremendous discovery or production of oil, but that is against a future eventuality. That condition does not exist now, and in the meantime the bounties are being diminished or removed from industries that are struggling on, and before any considerable number of large, rich oil wells have been developed. I think this action is premature and I hope it will be possible for the minister to give some further consideration to the matter with a view to continuing the bounty or to taking such steps that those engaged in this industry may not have to look forward to its being cut off in two years, especially when there is no assurance of any substantial production for the future. I have heard from the manager of the New Brunswick Gas and Oil Fields, and he expresses the opinion that the removal of this bounty is likely to strangle the production of petroleum. One may ask, why all these difficulties? Why should the wells in Canada not be as rich as the wells in the United States? The answer is a very obvious one; we see it in everything. We have a great production of wheat in the West; why is it there is such a small production of wheat in certain portions of the Maritime provinces? Simply because there is a difference in the condition. You may have a fertile wheat producing country, or you may have a country which is not suited to the production of wheat. You may have rich oil wells, or you may have oil wells of low grade, and so it is with ours, or at any rate with a portion of ours. For instance, in New Brunswick it requires a depth of about 3,000 feet to reach oil, and at that the wells are of small productivity. It is plain, therefore, that there are variations in the wealth producing possibilities of different countries and of different parts of the same country. I urge, therefore, that this reduction of the bounty be not proceeded with; I certainly think it should not take place until we actually have the production of oil that is forecast, but which may never occur. In the meantime those industries which have been built up under the advantage of the bounty and which are now operating should not be disturbed. Capital has been invested in these properties, the work in connection with which is going on under the aegis of the bounty, and I urge most strongly that we should be slow to take action which may lead to very great loss and even disaster.


Oliver Robert Gould: It has impressed itself upon ms that this is another "infant industry". It does seem that when the term of the contract with all these so-called infant industries expires they always have individuals who will appear before the government and ask them to break the contract and to make further renewals of the privileges extended, whether they be in the form of subsidies or bounties. As to the oil wells in Lambton county, I may say that that is my own old county, and I recall that back in the year 1890 the production of oil there was a very flourishing industry. Even in those days oil was drawn past our home up in Warwick township and sold from door to door in the rural districts at 10 cents a gallon. The wells were bored at that time; they were a going concern, and later the prices were enhanced. A lot of people believe it is because of the imposition of these bounties and duties that the price has been enhanced. In any case, since they did all those things in the early days, why should they ask for a special privilege at this time? It is difficult for me to conceive that if there should be an unprecedented flow of oil from the wells of western Canada the consumers of oil would receive the benefit. I would like to see the day when the people should be getting some of the benefits of the natural resources of this country. But we always have someone, to argue for a retention of bounties and subsidies, even in the face of the facts that I have submitted-that in the case of this industry they drilled wells and made a success of their operations as far back as 1890.


William Stevens Fielding: May I say a word first in regard to the observations of the hon. member for St. John City (Mr. MacLaren) ? He advises that we keep this bounty on until we "strike ile", as the saying was some years ago in the West, and then stop it. Well, if my hon. friend will reflect for a moment he will see what the result would be: If we should then say to the West, "We have been paying bounties to the East for twenty years, but the moment you get any oil we stop them all," I would not like to have to answer the criticisms that would come from my western friends. One difficulty incidental, I suppose, to any system of protection, whether it is by bounty or by duty, is that the parties benefiting from it easily train themselves to depend upon it, and then if at a given moment it is deemed to be in the public interest to reduce or abolish that protection, instantly you are told that the industry is going to be destroyed. I suppose they believe it in all sincerity; they educate themselves to believe that without

Ways and Means
this assistance they could not live. Now, we sometimes talk of infant industries. The oil industry is not an infant industry; why, it has almost attained its full age of twenty-one years; it is almost old enough to vote. As to the merits of bounties generally there is a difference of opinion, as we know from the discussion to-day, but I think we will almost all admit that we do not want a system under which a bounty must be perpetual. If there is anything to be said in favour of bounties it is that they may be put on at a certain stage to lend a helping hand,-even that would oe debatable, I suppose. But surely it is pretty generally agreed that nobody wants a perpetual system of bounties. This bounty was granted nearly twenty-one years ago-in 1904. It was originally a very considerable industry. It has now, as I stated, dwindled considerably, but an industry that has enjoyed a bounty for such a long period as twenty years I do not think should make a great fuss if we find it necessary to stop the bounty. We are doing it very gently. We are giving them two years' notice before we stop it, and I do not think a strong argument can be put up against that. I differ entirely with the hon. member for St. John, who thought he had a simple solution-just abolish the bounty when the West gets any oil. We have been paying bounties for twenty years to the eastern oil fields, and I would not care very much to be Minister of Finance if the moment oil is found in the West I had to say: Now we are going to stop the bounty. I would not like to make a proposal of that nature. I hope and believe that the people in Ontario interested in the oil industry and in New Brunswick where they have the shales will be able to carry on. I think they magnify the trouble. They easily persuade themselves they cannot live without this artificial aid. I believe it will be found that notwithstanding the abolition of this bounty this industry will still have a fair chance of living. It is a waning industry in any event, and I believe it will be found that my hon. friend from West Lamb-ton has magnified the danger of the whole thing.
Reviewing what has been said, a bounty has been given to this industry for twenty years. It has not been ungenerously dealt with, nor is it being dealt with ungenerously to-day, when we are giving them two years longer before the bounty is taken off. I think on the whole that the industry has been generously dealt with, and that there will be no ground for complaint if we allow this resolution to take effect.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Would my hon. friend tell us what the objection is to reducing the bounty by fixing the limit at five barrels per well as has been suggested? I think that would make a very large reduction in the expenditure and it would place the small operator in the position of being able to carry on. It would help the small producer; it would help the actual farmer who is carrying on operations. It would be of no help whatever to the large corporations. The larger interests have been getting the benefits of this bounty. Why not make a reduction by fixing the limit at five barrels per well and at the same time aid the small producer?


William Stevens Fielding: I think the people who [DOT] are getting the benefit of this to-day are the ones who have been getting the benefit of it for a great many years. I do not think there has been any material change. I have not the list at hand, but I think the interests enjoying the bounty to-day are substantially the same as have been enjoying it in bygone years.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My'hon. friend does not catch my point at all, not in the slightest. I am not referring to the man who is getting the bounty to-day and the man who got it yesterday. We have had bounties paid without limit in connection with the production of oil. If a well had a capacity of one hundred barrels a day it received payment on the whole output; in other words, if you had a well with a capacity of a hundred barrels a day as against a well with a capacity of five barrels, it got twenty times as much. Now the proposition whereby the treasury can be helped, whereby reductions can be made, whereby no large demand can be placed upon the treasury by the discovery of large gushers that need absolutely no bounty, whereby also the small producer is enabled to carry on-I ask my friend to look into that and see if it is not worth while to try and save that small producer. It seems to me it is worth while to save him and at the same time save the country's money, but if my hon. friend does not think it worth while I am not going to press him any more. But I do not think he has the figures. I do not think he can now tell us what is the largest capacity upon which bounties are being paid, or how many small wells would benefit by fixing the
9 p.m. limit at five barrels per day. Let me put it in another way: Rightly or wrongly a community has been built up in that part of the country. Improvements have been made and you have there a community that will continue to function perfectly well I think from what the local member has said, if the small man is looked after. Now is it
Ways and Means

not worth while to see if the country cannot protect itself and at the same time enable this community to continue and these small producers to carry on? If my hon. friend has any real reason, I could understand that, but I am sure he would want to have some real reason other than the mere fact that the solution is suggested by the local member. So far we have not had any reason given.


William Stevens Fielding: I have had representations from the oil interests, and all the facts that can be suggested in the matter have been presented to me. They have not commended themselves to my judgment. That is all I can say.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Will not my-friend tell me this: What is the real reason why this reduction cannot be made by limiting the bounty to wells with a capacity of five barrels per day, instead of cutting the bounty in half? Why cannot it be done just as well that way?


William Stevens Fielding: I can only tell my hon. friend that having considered all these things his suggestion does not commend itself to my judgment.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then I am afraid, Mr. Chairman, we do not get very far. The hon. gentleman will give us no business reason.


William Stevens Fielding: I thought I had given reasons, but my hon. friend thinks I have not.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend will bear with me. He did give reasons pointing to the necessity for a reduction in bounties. Here is another way in which the reduction can be made and at the same time the small producer can be protected. Now the question I am putting to my hon. friend is this: What is the reason why the reduction cannot be made in that way? He says he does not like it, but that is not a reason. Of course, if he does not want to give me a reason, I am not going to press him any more.


William Stevens Fielding: I have answered my hon. friend.
Mr. LeSUEUR: I do not know whether I make myself clear to the minister, but the one object which the Minister of Finance clearly puts forward as practically the sole reason for the changing of this bounty is this, to give his own words:
The amount is not large, and if we had to consider only the conditions which existed when the bounty was applied it might not be worth our while to make any change.

Then he goes on in the budget speech to say that practically the one reason for this resolution is the fear of big production in the West and the consequent drain on the treasury. Now fixing a limit of five barrels per well will certainly avoid all danger from that source, and at the same time it will save the dislocation which will inevitably follow in western Ontario from the introduction of this measure. I submit that we have sufficient dislocation of trade in Canada today without causing any more, and if we can get a solution which accomplishes the object of the hon. Minister of Finance and at the same time avoids further dislocation- I say that dislocation will follow; the minister may not think so-it will in any event avoid the possibility of it following, it will be taking the safe business course. Therefore I submit that we should put into effect a measure which will accomplish both objects.


Mr. LEWIS:: When the budget was brought down it contained three or four proposals for granting certain bounties. I looked upon these bounties a little more favourably than I did upon the idea of imposing tariff duties, because it did seem to me that a bounty could be removed much more easily than a tariff. But apparently I made a mistake. It is just about as difficult to take a bounty off as it is to lower the tariff. At the same time a bounty should be arranged in such a way that it will be reduced until it finally ceases to be, and I see no reason why at the present time this item should not carry.
I am glad to find that the other bounties that have been suggested will be gradually reduced to the minimum, and that they will be put on the free list. I have much pleasure in supporting the resolution.


[Stage Direction]
Resolution agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Customs Tariff:
Resolved, that it is expedient to introduce a measure to amend The Special War Revenue Act, 1915, and amending acts and to provide:
1. That the maximum amount of stamp tax payable on a cheque, bill of exchange, promissory note, advance on securities, overdraft, receipt by a person for money paid to him by a bank chargeable against a deposit of money in the bank to his credit, express company's money order or traveller's cheque, or post office money order be reduced to one dollar.
William Stevens Fielding: I direct the attention of the committee to this resolution, and I desire to make some changes, to which I will call attention. The resolution is somewhat comprehensive. I do not know whether we will be able to dispose of all the items to-night. In the first place, there is a proposal to

Ways and Means
reduce the stamp tax on cheques. The maximum tax was $2 and we have reduced it to $1. According to the wording of the resolution, the reduction would apply to other things than cheques. It would apply to notes of hand and so on. We desire to amend the resolution so that the reduction will apply entirely to cheques. The item would then read:
That the maximum amount of stamp tax payable on a cheque, bill of exchange, payable on demand, or within three days after sight, receipt by a person for money paid to him by a bank chargeable against a deposit of money in the bank to his credit, express company's money order or traveller's cheque, or post office money order, be reduced to one dollar.
The effect of it is that the reduction will apply only to cheques and not to notes. I would therefore on that point move that resolution No. 1 of the resolutions of May 11, 1923, respecting the special war revenue act be amended to read as above.


Arthur Meighen: The effect of this is to keep the promissory note with the unlimited stamp; that is to say, without any maximum.


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, the reduction applies only to cheques.


Arthur Meighen: I want to have a word to say about that, not from a party standpoint, because I know it is lower than the rate that applied in the days of the late government, and that there was no maximum as respects promissory notes. Really, I cannot see the justice of that tax at all. For the life of me, I cannot see why we tax a man because he owes money. I know that you do not tax a man because he pays his debt. For my part, I do not think there is any justice in the cheque tax. It should be merely a tax commensurate with the advantage given him in paying that way. Even that is a mighty small justification or reason for it. But when you come to tax a man because he is in debt, I cannot see any justice, rhyme or reason in it. I hope I am not actuated by the fact that I have to pay considerable of a tax myself.


Mr. BUREAU:: Fortunately, the hon. member has the money in the bank.


Arthur Meighen: If ever there was an illogical tax, it seems to me it is that tax. It is not pretended that it should be paid by the creditor. You say to a man "If you are in debt, we will jump on your back and make you pay a little more to the treasmy than the fellow who is not in debt."


Jacques Bureau: Oh, no.


Arthur Meighen: lam not arguing this particularly against the minister. All he has done is that he has doubled it. If it is wrong in this case it was wrong as we mainta. ued it ourselves. My attention was not particularly called to it then and indeed that feature of it escaped me personally entirely. I will call the minister's attention to the inequity of the whole thing. According to this principle, why not tax a man because he wears bad clothes?


Jacques Bureau: Does my hon. friend contend that because a man gives a cheque he is in debt?


Arthur Meighen: I am not speaking of the cheque tax now. I do not think the minister's plan in regard to that is right. I think the plan of the late government in that respect was right, but I am not dealing with that now. I am on the promissory note or the overdraft at the bank. If a man owes the bank $20,000 or $30,000 he has to pay $10 for the privilege of owing it every month or so. Here is another instance. Supjpose a man goes into the bank on the 29th or 30th March and borrows $20,000, on the next day there is a tax against him of, say, $4 or $5. He is assessed that amount because he is in debt. Suppose he goes in the next day and pays it off, the minister puts it on again. He has to pay for going into debt and has to pay to get out of debt. There is a toll as he goes in and as he goes out, even though he only owes the debt two days. The reason or the coincidence of it is this: That the banks collect every three months. The act must compel them to or they would not do it. That is to say, at the end of March, at the end of June, and so on, they collect, and if a man owes the money only a day before the end of March he is assessed the percentage of the note at the end of March. If he pays it a day after he is assessed again the same amount. If he does not, and waits until before the hammer falls at the end of June, down comes the minister with another tax on him, and if he pays two days after the minister is down on him again. Of all the utterly unreasonable taxes, I think this is the worst of all. It is wrong to mj mind in principle, and the incidence of it is wrong. Why in the world a man who goes in debt on the 29th of March should be taxed far more than the man who goes in debt on the 29th January is a mystery to me. And why the fellow who pays his debt quickly is taxed still more I cannot understand. The man who pays on the 2nd April is taxed far more than the man who pays on the 2nd
Ways and Means

of May. If there is rhyme or reason in that, I would really like to have the minister explain it.


Jacques Bureau: What do you suggest?


Arthur Meighen: I suggest wiping it out.


Jacques Bureau: Where would you get your
revenue?


Arthur Meighen: I mentioned some methods to-day but I did not get much open support from the Minister of Customs. I think I have more support in his heart than in his expressions.


Jacques Bureau: My heart is with the hon. member all the time.


William Stevens Fielding: I am really afraid that I cannot give any other reason than this one, that we need the money. I propose to move an amendment at a later stage. At present there is no date fixed for bringing the provision into force, and it is desirable that the date should be fixed. I propose that the reduction shall take effect on the 1st August. That will come up a little later.


Arthur Meighen: If the minister has to have this, no matter whom he takes it out of, why not, at least, have some common sense in the method of imposition? Why make fish of one and flesh of another? Why make it a mere matter of chance whether you pay $20 or $10? The minister might just as well collect by a lottery. That would be just as moral and just as sane. The way the matter stands now, it all depends when you happen to make the note and when you happen to pay it. One man may have a note for three months and pay a certain amount only; another man may have a note for three days and pay twice as much. I should like the minister to look into the matter and make it rational, for to-day it is utterly irrational; there is no common sense to it at all. In my judgment, the Whole idea is wrong; it is founded on a principle utterly wrong from the beginning. But if the minister is bound to keep it up, why impose these foolish regulations that fall with utter inequality upon debtors?


William Stevens Fielding: My right hon. friend says that this is inequitable. He is not alone in that criticism. I do not know of any item in the customs tariff that someone does not say is inequitable. I have no hope that we shall ever get taxes in any form which will be admitted to be generally equitable.


Arthur Meighen: Could the minister not do this? This is not a matter of somebody saying that the tax is inequitable; it is a matter
IMr. Meighen.]
of whether the tax is inequitable or not. If the inequality is clearly shown, why continue it? If the minister is bound to tax men because they are in debt, all right; tax them according to the length of time. The length of time now is supposed to be the measure of tne tax, but it is not at all. This is just a mere matter of chance. Why not say that a noi.e that stands for six months will pay so much, a note that stands for three months so much, and so on? Make the tax proportionate to the time. There is no common sense to t'h'3 from whatever angle you view it.


Mr. STEWART (Argenteuil):: Is my right hon. friend contending that because a note is liquidated in three days, it should pay a different tax from one liquidated in three months- one that runs the full tenure?


Arthur Meighen: The way the matter
stands to-day, a man might make a note on the second day of January and carry it on to the 31st day of March, and he pays the tax once. That is three months all but a day. But if he makes it on the 30th of March and pays it off on the 1st of April, he pays a tax twice, although he has had the money for only two days.


Charles A. Stewart: Is the tax net on the instrument itself?


Arthur Meighen: No, it is not. It is the minister's regulation. In one case the man has a note for three months and he pays the tax once. In the other case, he has it for two days, and he pays it twice. The minister says he has to continue that because he has to have the money.


William Stevens Fielding: While the rate has been increased, the wording of the law is precisely the same as it was before. I do not think this is a new feature. We have increased the amount of the tax; but the method is pretty well established; people get used to it, and I think we can look to have it a little while longer.


Mr. HANSON:: One can get used to having one's teeth pulled.


Jacques Bureau: No, one cannot; I have had experience.


Arthur Meighen: I venture to say the
people have not gone into the matter and learned the meaning of it. It is the minister's regulations that are at fault, not the law. Why should such a thing as I have described be continued? One hangs one's head in shame before a debtor when he comes and complains. The thing is ridiculous. Let the minister make

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the tax proportionate to the time if he wishes to continue the tax. A change in the regulations should be sufficient. The way the thing is now, actually one can hardly have the patience to discuss it, because it is not only inequitable, but grossly absurd.


Mr. NEILL:: I also think this tax is inequitable, but on different grounds from those advanced by the leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen). I do not think that his point is well taken in the illustration that he gave *of a man who borrows money on the last *of the month and repays it in the early days *of the ensuing month, and he draws from that the suggestion that the man should pay stamp tax for the length of time he has the money.


Arthur Meighen: It all depends on the month. One month he pays one thing; another month, another thing.


Alan Webster Neill: The same argument might hold good as regards postage stamps. 1 might argue: Why should I pay three cents to mail a letter to Hull, when three cents would take a letter to the Pacific coast? The argument is the same. The time for which the note is drawn, whether for a shorter period or a longer period, has nothing to do with the tax; the tax is a tax on making out, the note, in the same way as the postage stamp is applied in a generic way.
The objection I take to the clause is this: The Minister of Finance has said that there is an absolute necessity to obtain revenue, hence this clause. Why not leave this clause out and let the tax go on at two cents for [DOT]every fifty dollars as the amount increases? Why reduce the maximum from $2 to $1? That will produce, not more money, but les3 money. In its very essence and nature, the tax is unjust as between the small man and the man who handles money in large amounts. A man pays two cents every time he draws a cheque under $50. That applies if he draws a cheque for $2, and the leader of the Opposition might object to that. Let us take an average and say that his cheques average $25, that is for everyone who draws cheques under $50. That would mean that he would pay [DOT]08 per cent on the amount of his cheques. But if a man drew a cheque for $5,000, he would pay only -02 per cent. That means that the small man pays four times as much as the man who is able to draw a bigger cheque. From the point of view of inequality between the tax on the small man and the tax on the big man, and from the point of
view of revenue, I can see no reason for ths change in the maximum from $2 to $1.


William Stevens Fielding: The object of the reduction was this. There are many transactions in which the same amount of money passes through two or three hands. Really it is the one transaction, the one deal, and the cheque has to be given two or three times. Representations along that line were made and we were impressed with them so that we reduced the maximum from $2 to $1 largely to meet cases of that kind.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I admit there is a distinction between the position of the note and the overdraft and the cheque. Indeed, I think it is because there is that great distinction, that the cheque tax becomes all the more abominable. The cheque is an instrument which is drawn by the bank's customer who deposits the money which renders it possible for business to be carried on. He is the man who renders it possible for the borrower to get his accommodation. The one man is taking advantage of somebody else's assets for the purpose of carrying on his business. The man who draws the cheque is the man who makes it possible for that business to be carried on. There is a great difference in principle between taxing the man who discounts his paper and has his overdraft at the bank and the man who draws cheques. But my chief quarrel with the cheque tax is because it is perfectly without rhyme or reason; it cannot be supported on any principle, while you can support the other two taxes that my hon. friend is referring to. You cannot support a tax on a cheque of any idea of value given on anv ascending or other scale. I object to it not only on that ground, but on the ground that it is not being and cannot be equitably carried out, and the minister himself does not know what the law calls for. I can make that statement without fear of contradiction by anybody who has made a study of this legislation. The government are not collecting this; they cannot. It is being collected by the banks, and if there is one there must be thirty rulings given by the department from time to time on the different matters that come up. It is a difficult thing to know how to charge these stamp taxes. Just to see whether I am right or wrong, I am going to ask the minister a few questions. Take the tax on cheques and drafts. What stamps have to be affixed; first, on a draft for $50, payable at sight or within three days thereafter? Secondly, on a draft for $50 payable in ten days?

Ways and Means


William Stevens Fielding: That would be 2 cents.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The minister
says 2 cents; I am afraid he is incorrect. To start with, it would be $2.


Jacques Bureau: Two dollars on fifty dollars?


Henry Lumley Drayton: I said $50,000


Jacques Bureau: You said $50.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then, I beg
your pardon; I meant to say $50,000. Let me again put the question. What stamp must be affixed on a draft for $50,000, payable at sight or within three days, and on one payable in ten days? What is the difference, if there is any? How many managers of branch banks could answer that question? The Minister of Customs (Mr. Bureau) does not know now, and it is his department that is concerned.


Jacques Bureau: We do not determine the
amount of the stamps by the length of time involved. It is the amount of the money on which the tax is to be charged that determines the quantity of stamps, and the charge on $50,000 will be as many two cents as there are multiples of fifty in $50,000, whether the time involved is three or four months. My hon. friend was referring just now to an overdraft. Well, the law provides that he who draws on the bank or gets an accommodation for, say, $50,000, shall pay as many times two cents as there are multiples of fifty in the total.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Just as I
thought, the Minister of Customs knows absolutely nothing about it.


Jacques Bureau: I am following the lead
of my predecessors, and I do not wish to put them to shame.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The hon. gentleman's predecessors gave him no such lead. They had no system of multiplying taxes.


Jacques Bureau: They may not have done
that, but very often they knew nothing at all of what they were doing.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The simple fact is that no one would know anything about this matter unless he had made a special study of it. The difference is that a draft for three days is a cheque, but when it is for ten days it is "time," and you have the $2 limit in one case, while it does not apply in the other. Now, you have these instruments going up and down the country and no one knows anything about the matter. In fact, the minister who is in charge of the whole business does not know. Let us take another illustration.


Jacques Bureau: Does the hon. member
say that a draft for three days is a cheque?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes, sight or
three days.


Jacques Bureau: Under the special War
Tax Revenue Act?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Under the hon. gentleman's act. Let me take another simple case. What stamps must be affixed to a bill of exchange for $10,000: First, when the bill of exchange is drawn in Canada on a person in a foreign country payable on arrival of goods? Secondly, when the bill of exchange is drawn in Canada on a resident of Canada payable on arrival of goods? And, thirdly, when the bill of exchange is drawn in a foreign country on a resident of Canada, payable on arrival of goods? I know that my hon. friend cannot tell me, and it is not fair that we should wait for an answer. He does not know. Yet you have that sort of conundrum put up day after day under this precious system of multiplying stamps on cheques and bills of exchange all over the country. Let me get something really simple. Have stamps to be attached to bills or drafts when delivered to the bank for collection, or need such stamps not be affixed until such drafts are accepted?


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend might
ask me fifty questions of that nature, and 1 should have to have time to consider them. It is a difficult matter to interpret the act on the spur of the moment. The hon. gentleman really magnifies the trouble, for I have not heard of any difficulties. The banks make their returns and we get the money. However, if he is really earnest in the desire to obtain information, if he is putting these questions for the purpose of eliciting information that he wants, I will take them into consideration. But I do not want to interpret the act right off the bat.


Henry Lumley Drayton: But this is not
doing it right off the bat. Here we have an act that has been running for over a year, and the Minister of Customs, who is enforcing it, knows nothing about it. I do not blame him at all. The whole truth is that we have an act which is enforced here and not enforced there, and you simply cannot help it. You have such a mixed up state of things that it takes a Philadelphia lawyer to answer the questions that arise in consequence. My hon. friend says he has heard of no difficulties. Apparently they do not come to his notice, but he would find if he went to the Bankers' Association that there has been any amount of


Ways and. Means
trouble. He would find the same thing if he went to the Department of Customs; he would discover trouble there.


Jacques Bureau: Oh, no.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The hon. gentleman says "oh, no." He has dodged the trouble; he has officers who do the work for him. But I know about the matter because I happened to be held up in connection with stamps on one of these documents. The bank said they had to make the charge under the act, and I pressed for the authority. The authority came in the shape of a ruling from the Department of Customs and Excise, and my hon. friend, the Minister of Finance, takes the only safe position that he can possibly take when he says that I might ask him fifty questions and he would not be able to answer without having an opportunity to consider them. He is absolutely on safe ground, because that is the literal truth. But if the Minister of Finance, the author and creator of these ascending stamp taxes on cheques, cannot tell you, then how on earth do we expect anything like uniformity of enforcement throughout the thousand and one branch banks in the country? The fact is that we are not getting it. I could go on piling up illustration upon illustration in proof of this. The tax is wrong in principle and is unfair in application; and it is not and cannot be enforced evenly everywhere. Just as my hon. friend has trouble in arriving at conclusions, so will others experience the same thing, and in greater measure. Put his intellect against the intellect of a branch manager or of a receiving teller. If the hon. gentleman has difficulties, what must be the difficulties of those officers? One man thinks there is a difficulty here and he makes application to the Bankers' Association. The Bankers' Association make a ruling and they send it to the Department of Customs to see whether they know anything about it. Sometimes, Mr. Ross, of the Bankers' Association, has difficulties, and appeals to the department. Now, that gentleman is supposed to know something about the matter, but at one time he is told that he is right and at another time they tell him he kno.ws nothing about it. And yet we are seriously supposed to regard this tax as having been fairly and equitably administered. My hon. friend says he has got a lot of money out of this tax. I do not see how he can have any idea of the amount.


William Stevens Fielding: I could ascertain.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Has not my
hon. friend ascertained?
250i


William Stevens Fielding: I have not at the
moment.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then it is certainly something we ought to know. I tried to get the information earlier in the session and was then told that it could not be furnished.


William Stevens Fielding: The hon. gentleman
probably knows that in the inland revenue service postage stamps are used to a large extent. I propose to change that. But you cannot tell exactly what money has come into the inland revenue and what into the post office by reason of this tax. My hon. friend says that if I would consult the Bankers' Association I would find there is a great deal of dissatisfaction. I have not consulted them, but I am in contact with them frequently and I am not conscious of any difficulty in administering the act. My information is that the act is working satisfactorily.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The hon. minister tells me first that he can ascertain what money is being obtained from this tax.


William Stevens Fielding: As between the two
departments.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then he tells
me that postage stamps are used in the one case and not in the other. Surely my hon. friend will admit that it is impossible for him to tell to-day what revenue he is getting out of this tax.


William Stevens Fielding: Because of the difficulty as between the postage stamp and the inland revenue stamp, that is correct. We can tell what amount of money we are getting on cheques from inland revenue stamps and from postage stamps, but we cannot allot the revenue between the two departments. We propose to change that: by our amendments to-day and cease the use of postage stamps for the purpose.


Henry Lumley Drayton: In other words, my hon. friend cannot say how many cheques have postage stamps on them. And he is quite right, nobody can.


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend had
the same rule.


Henry Lumley Drayton: In connection
with what?


William Stevens Fielding: Postage stamps.


Henry Lumley Drayton: In connection
with a single stamp on each cheque.
Ways and Means


William Stevens Fielding: What is the difference in principle?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Everything. We made arrangements for the embossing of cheque stamps and were getting in a position where we would know pretty well. I admit we did not have a complete check, but it is something to get an idea as to the number of cheques so stamped. It is a comparatively easy thing to do that.


Jacques Bureau: No, it is not an easy
thing.


Henry Lumley Drayton: But it is difficult to get an unknown multiple of stamps.


Jacques Bureau: The stamps are there to
show if you can get the cheques.


Henry Lumley Drayton: But I suppose
my hon. friend has tried to do that?


Jacques Bureau: I only try to do things
that have sense in them.


Henry Lumley Drayton: As a matter
of principle should stamps be affixed to drafts when delivered for collection, or not until after they are accepted?


William Stevens Fielding: As I said to my hon. friend a little while ago, he can ask very many questions of this nature which I prefer not to answer by way of interpretation. If debatable questions, I shall be very happy to deal with them. I suppose when he puts them that way he regards them as debatable.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I tried to get
this information before in order to advance matters so that I would not have to bring it sup now.	,


William Stevens Fielding: I have no recollection
of any such attempt.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I put a question on the order paper and was told there were not any such rulings.


William Stevens Fielding: When.


Henry Lumley Drayton: At the earlier
part of the session.


William Stevens Fielding: I have no recollection
of it, but I will look it up.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am not pressing the question, but I do not want it to be understood that I have held this matter back just to bother my friend. I tried to get the information in the proper way. I also tried to get these questions on the order paper so the government would know just exactly
{Sir Henry Drayton.]
where they were, but I was informed that under the Speaker's ruling these questions were out of order because they involved an interpretation of law. I thought it would have been easier for the government if the matter had been so dealt with. But I am not asking for an interpretation of the law, I am asking as a matter of principle. No matter what the law is, is it right? Take this case: Drafts sent in for collection-not accepted- returned with notification-new drafts drawn by the same drawer and sent back to the same bank; should there be a duplicate set of stamps?


William Stevens Fielding: Whether the draft is paid or not, I think it would have to bear the stamp. I do not recollect the question my hon. friend put on the order paper. My desire is to see that every information he sought on any public matter should be given to him in all due courtesy, and if he asked any question of that kind, and it was not fairly answered, I shall be glad to look into it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am not complaining.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I put a series of questions with respect to these rulings on the order paper, and they were returned by the Clerk of the House with the intimation that they were out of order because they involved an interpretation of law.


William Stevens Fielding: If they had not been out of order, and they were addressed to me, I would certainly have declined to give any interpretation of law in that way. I do not think it is the business of ministers to give interpretations of law.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I was referring to an older question than that again, to a question I put in the early days of the session as to what rulings had been made in connection with these very stamps. I was told there had been none. I am quite sure that was an oversight, and I am not making any complaint in regard to it. Does my hon. friend think as the author of this tax whether, as a matter of principle, there should be two sets of stamps affixed to the transaction I mentioned?


William Stevens Fielding: I think it is a very legitimate means of raising money for public purposes, yes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then, Mr. Chairman, I just want to show what is being done. A draft is sent in to a bank, and under the rulings, not of the department in the first instance, but of the Canadian Bankers' Association, endorsed by the department, that

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draft, which is not a completed instrument until it is accepted, has to have stamps attached to it to the full amount, if it be a time draft, before it is sent for acceptance; and if that draft is not accepted and returned, under the rulings of the department a duplicate set of stamps have to be placed upon another draft for the purpose of effecting one and the same transaction. Does my hon. friend really think that is right?


Mr. LAVIGUEUR:: If my hon. friend will allow me? When a draft is sent and not accepted for cause, I suppose the party who draws the draft has to put a stamp on it. Can the party who accepts a draft send back this draft again without putting any stamp on it?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Under the rulings each is looked upon as a separate transaction. I venture to say that in nine cases out of ten that ruling would never be followed by any banker in ordinary practice.


Henri-Edgar Lavigueur: It is generally accepted by banks.


Henry Lumley Drayton: There are any amount of others just to show how hard it is to administer this stamp tax. Take for example where an American bank deposits cheques, drafts, travellers' cheques, money orders, notes and other items on which the stamp tax has been duly assessed, is such American bank entitled to withdraw the same by settlement draft without further tax, provided said settlement draft is payable to order of another bank?
Another little question: In case of customers borrowing under section 88 of the Bank Act, and who conduct a sales and purchase account, is it in order to debit the sales account with the amounts to be applied on the loan, instead of obtaining cheques or bills of exchange to which stamps would have to be affixed?
Another question-and I might go on ad infinitum-upon the request of a customer, may his account be debited with the cost of drafts-foreign or domestic-sold to him, without obtaining from him a cheque or any other form of requisition on which stamps would have to be affixed? Another question: In case stamps have to be affixed to cheques or other requisitions for drafts, must similar stamps be affixed to the drafts also? I do not suppose it is worth while going on with the mess, Mr. Chairman. I will ask this question: Under this mixed-up law, in connection with which so many questions can arise and so many different rulings can be given, how is the collection of the tax checked?


Jacques Bureau: Does my hon. friend want to know the amount we get from the tax?


Henry Lumley Drayton: No.


Jacques Bureau: What, then?


Henry Lumley Drayton: How is the collection of the tax checked?


Jacques Bureau: Does he mean by that,
how do we collect on cheques?


Henry Lumley Drayton: No, I did not
ask that. I know you do not do the work; I know the banks are doing it. But how do you check the work of the banks?


Jacques Bureau: That I cannot answer.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I was quite
sure that my hon. friend could not answer, because it is not done.


Jacques Bureau: The law provides for that. A banker is not to accept a cheque unless it bears the stamps. Does the law not say that? Now, the bankers are a lot of men whom I think we ought to have confidence in. My hon. friend seems to have, anyway; their rulings are accepted by him as the law. Now, we cannot check smuggling, although smuggling is against the law, but whenever we catch an offender we punish him. If the banker accepts a cheque to which no stamp is affixed, he is liable to penalty. We presume the bankers are doing their duty; they are helping us to collect the revenue of the country. Unless they want to render themselves liable to penalty they do not cash cheques unless the proper stamps are affixed thereto.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend says the bankers' rulings have my respect. I am not giving them any. It is my hon. friend's department that is doing it.


Jacques Bureau: What?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Giving this
great respect to rulings of the banks.


Jacques Bureau: Yes, you have.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Now, I wish to ask another question.


Jacques Bureau: I will not be cross-examined here.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Well, my hon.
friend may not be willing to answer the question; nevertheless I will put it and he may answer it if he likes. He has said there is a penalty in connection with these stamps. Will he tell us what that penalty is?


Mr. GAUVREAU:: The cheque is no good; that is the penalty.
Ways and Means


Jacques Bureau: The penalty is mentioned
in the act. If the cheque bears no stamps, he is liable to penalty. If it bears only a two cent stamp, there is no penalty; it was omitted last year.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Of course it
was omitted.


Jacques Bureau: My hon. friend thought
he was going to catch me.


Henry Lumley Drayton: No, because-


Jacques Bureau: Is my hon. friend going
to say that he told me about it? He did not tell me; I spoke to him about it. I asked him how he would draw the amendment.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend said a moment ago that there was a penalty.


Jacques Bureau: Yes, there is.


Henry Lumley Drayton: There is no
penalty except that which is provided for failure to place the initial two-cent stamp on the cheque.


Jacques Bureau: Yes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: There is nothing provided as a penalty for the omission to affix any stamps in excess of two cents.


Jacques Bureau: I admit that.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Very good; now, what is the penalty as against the banker?


Jacques Bureau: Oh well, if my hon. friend wants to play that game; if he wants to get smart, let us go out in the open, get a mattress and have it out. This is not carrying on the business of the * country. He knows very well that the penalty was imposed by himself when the law respecting the two cent stamp tax was enacted.


Henry Lumley Drayton: As to the two
cents it is all right; but where is the penalty on the bank for not seeing to it that the proper amount of stamps in excess of two cents is affixed?


Jacques Bureau: I will ask my hon. friend
a question:	When the law respecting the
two cent stamp tax was enacted, was that his law or not?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes.


Jacques Bureau: Was a penalty put on them ?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes.


Jacques Bureau: Then it is there, and he knows all about it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes.


Jacques Bureau: Then what is the use of keeping that knowledge away from the public?


Henry Lumley Drayton: The whole thing is too plain for words. There is a penalty for not affixing the two cent stamp, but absolutely nothing in respect to the multiplication of stamps involved in the tax above that amount.


Jacques Bureau: I admit that was omitted.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It was. Now as I say, it is unnecessary to go on multiplying instances-


Jacques Bureau: We know what your knowledge is-now quit.


Henry Lumley Drayton: If my hon. friend wants a lot more questions I will give them to him, but a moment ago he said he did not want to be examined.


Jacques Bureau: No, I do not want them. You had better answer them for the benefit of the House and of the public.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am not supposed to tell the government what it is to do in all these things; in any case, they would not take my word for it.


Jacques Bureau: You are supposed to tell us what you know, anyway.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It would take too long if I told all I know about the mismanagement of this administration.
Mr. BUREAU Publish it-Webster's dictionary.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I submit in all seriousness to the Minister of Finance that he has a tax which has not been and cannot be equitably enforced. He has a tax which is illogical, a tax the receipts from which he himself does not know, a tax which-he will correct me if I am wrong-is not imposed in any other civilized country. So far as the stamp tax on cheques is concerned, the minister is putting Canada just where he claimed the vote on oleomargarine was putting it the other day. Why should a tax of this kind be further insisted upon? My hon. friend has given some relief; he has taken the maximum tax on cheques down to one dollar. Why not make a fixed rate on cheques. Why not have two cents for cheques up to $50 and five cents, if you like, for all cheques in excess of that amount? Why not, at any rate, have some specified amount so that everybody will know what the law is? And if that cannot be done, what logical

Ways and Means
reason in the world is there for giving the relief upon cheques of the larger sums instead of the smaller sums? Why not leave the cheques in the higher registers as they were and absolve from this multiplication of stamps all cheques, for example, under $500? If there is to be any relief, let us have it where it will do some good. Why stick to relief in the upper registers instead of the lower, instead of in those cases where the people concerned are those who really require assistance?


William Stevens Fielding: My hon. friend is imagining difficulties which to the best of my knowledge and belief have no existence. He suggests that the tax is not being and cannot be collected. All I can say in that respect is this:	The information that has come to
me is that the tax can be collected; it is being collected, and it is a very considerable source of revenue. As for the action of the banks in the matter, my hon. friend may have seen some banker who disapproves of it, but I believe the banks are doing their duty in collecting the money, and there are penalties if they do not do it. I say that my hon. friend is imagining difficulties for the sake of offering criticism.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I cannot understand my hon. friend saying that when a moment ago he told me I could easily ask him fifty questions that he could not answer.


William Stevens Fielding: Yes, I said fifty; make it one hundred if you like. You can ask all sorts of questions with regard to the interpretation of any act that for myself I would not undertake to answer. If my hon. friend has any real questions to put; if he really wants information, I shall be happy to inform him as best I can. But I do not think my hon. friend does want information. He is as capable of judging these disputed points as any person else, and I am quite sure that he knows more about these matters than he is willing to admit.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The minister does not get my point at all. What I am saying is that we have no right to have a law that is so complicated.


William Stevens Fielding: That is a matter of opinion, not of fact.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It is not that I want the information. I have it; I have looked it up. But I am going to give my hon. friend these questions, and by the time he has gone through them and got the answer* right he will find that this is a complicated thing and complicated in a way in which it ought not to be.


Alan Webster Neill: I do not wish to assume the attitude of matching my puny financial knowledge against that of the Minister of Finance. That would be absurd, but this question is one that interests everyone. It comes right home to us all. I have been trying to digest the answer the minister gave me half an hour ago in connection with changing the maximum on big cheques from $2 to $1, and if I have followed his answer right it is this: He said that in certain transactions it became necessary to issue a cheque for the same amount practically two or three times, and consequently the parties to that transaction paid two or three times over, which was really unreasonable, and therefore he made this change. Now I cannot see-it may be my lack of financial ability-that that is logical. I recall a case some months ago in which I was involved in a transaction for $1,700 or $1,800 as near as I remember, and before that transaction was complete somebody had to pay the stamps three times on that $1,800. Under the amendment proposed by the Minister of Finance to-night I will still have to pay three times on $1,800, or three times if the amount was $3,000 or $4,000. That gives me and people of that class no relief whatever. If we were allowed to add these three amounts together then it would be logical, but it does not say that. It says if you have any transaction involving the payment once, twice or three times of a sum under $5,000 you will pay it every time, but if it is only one transaction you will only have to pay once. It is not logical either as applied to the big man, because he will have to pay three times the minimum anyway if the transaction involves two or more cheques. I cannot see how it is logical on that argument to make the change. In view of the necessity of money-and I am not aware there is any intense demand for this change-I would be willing to vote for an amendment to leave the amount at $2.


William Stevens Fielding: I might mention that an argument was used that on the border where accounts might be kept on one side of the line or the other, the effect of this tax was to induce people to withdraw their money from Canadian banks and keep it on the American side. I thought there was some force in that although possibly the argument was strained.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Does the minister think he is meeting that objection by reducing the tax from $2 to $1. I think the reason will still prevail and that accounts will be withdrawn to American banks. That is a very
Ways and Means

real condition on the American border. A great deal of money on deposit in Canadian banks by American citizens residing along the border has been withdrawn just as a result of this stamp tax.


Oliver Robert Gould: I wish to endorse the sentiments expressed by the hon. member for Comox-Albemi. If it were a matter of equity alone I think the Finance Minister would be more warranted in making the maximum tax $3 instead of SI. As the hon. member for Comox-Alberni has pointed out, in the case of the individual who writes a cheque below that amount, more particularly the man of small means who cannot write cheques for large sums of money, the same argument applies. The argument of the Finance Minister is just as applicable to cheques of $10 and $25 as to cheques for a larger amount. I have some sort of an idea in the back of my head that in the case of individuals who are favoured with a $1 tax on a $5,000 10 p.m. cheque the law of gravitation applies, and perhaps that is the only benefit a smaller man would get. In sending out a cheque covering co-operative shipments, for instance, they would get the benefit in being able to send out a large sum of money in one cheque but it would be made up of a number of small cheques going to the parties who make up the shipment. As one hon. member has suggested, in the case of a man who is obliged to go into debt and borrow money to meet an obligation, it does seem to me that he should not be fined for that. It is bad enough for the individual who is fortunate enough to have money on deposit. We will not have very much sympathy with him if he is fined, but the man who has been obliged to go and borrow money to keep himself in business standing, and I speak from experience, is fined at the present time. I think it was earlier in the session that I pointed out that this government was not the only one that might be termed guilty. The former government when individuals bought school lands, for instance, and made a solemn contract with the government to pay 5 per cent, and through some visitation of Providence they were unable to meet their obligations, increased the rate of interest two per cent. That is the thing that people are protesting against, that when in difficulties over which they have no control the powers that be sit on them and fine them a greater amount. I do not think it is fair or just that people who through no fault of their own get into such circumstances, should be obliged to furnish the revenue of this country, when in my humble judgment other and better means could be found.
IMr. Hanson.]


Mr. CARMICHAEL:: Can the minister give the committee an estimate of the reduction in revenue that will be caused by reducing the maximum tax on large cheques from $2 to $1.


William Stevens Fielding: I could not at the moment. I am not sure whether it could be done at a later stage or not. I doubt if it could be done. If it could be done I would be very willing to get it for my hon. friend, but offhand I could not tell him.


Archibald M. Carmichael: I would just like to join with the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gould) and the: hon. leader of the Independent group (Mr. Neill) in voicing my protest against the special privilege given to corporations, companies and financial insututions in this reduction from a maximum of $2 to $1. I find by figuring that the largest sum of money on which a company will pay a tax at the rate of 2 cents for $50 is $2,500. They will pay a tax of $1 on that sum. If a farmer should be fortunate enough to ge>, that much, on the basis of paying 2 cents on an average of $25, he would pay $2, or double the amount. On a cheque for $10,000, and many of our large corporations pay $10,000 cheques quite frequently, the maximum amount they would pay would be $1, while if a farmer should by some unknown method be able to realize $10,000 in a year's operations and pay it out on the basis of $25 amounts he would pay a tax of $8, or eight times the amount that the strong financial corporation would pay. It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that this is unduly penalizing "the under dog," if I might use the expression. Of course, the "bark" is pretty well out of the under fellow now. He might not "bark" very much at this moment, but there is a little "bite" left in him, and he may "bite."


William Stevens Fielding: The arguments of several hon. gentlemen would almost lead to the idea that we should have a graduated tax without limit on cheques and documents. I confess that at one stage that seemed to me to be a fair proposal, but on further consideration it was found not to be expedient. Therefore the maximum was fixed at $2, and now it is proposed to reduce it to $1. I think my hon. friend is mistaken in imagining there is anything in this that is levelled at the farmer. We are all interested in the larger transactions of business. We do not want to crowd big business all the time, and I think the concession that is given, whether it is big business or not, from $2 to $1, is a reduction which ought to be accepted by the House. At first glance a tax graduated simply according to the size of the cheque might appeal to some hon. gen-

Ways and Means
tlemen, but I think on reflection they will find it would not do at all.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I think the general consensus of opinion here is not only against graduating indefinitely, but against graduating at all. If we could only get a small flat tax we would all know about it.
I propose to move in amendment the following :
That no addition be made to the 2 cent stamp on cheques until the amount of such cheque be $500 or greater.
The effect of that would be that there would be no graduated scale on cheques until $500 is reached.


Arthur John Lewis: I hardly know what to say
about this amendment, but I did think in the first place the maximum might be reduced to $1 on the larger amounts. It seems to me it would be a good thing to start at the other end also. I do not know about the transaction of $500 with the 2 cent stamp, but there are a great many smaller transactions, say, of $4 and $5. It would be lifting a burden from the poorer people if the stamp tax were removed altogether, say up to $20 cheques. I find that in the case of the family man the stamp tax sometimes leads to what might be called a little extravagance. For instance, I notice that in the West, when a man receives a certain amount of money for a shipment of grain, instead of placing that money in the bank and utilizing the bank, he keeps the money at home, with the result that very often money is expended on things that would never be purchased at all if the money were safely deposited in the bank. If the minister can see his way clear, not only to help the financial interests by reducing the maximum stamp tax to $1, but also to have the stamp tax taken off altogether in le-gard to cheques under $10, I think it would be a great benefit to the people.


William Stevens Fielding: With reference to the
amendment proposed by the hon. member for West York (Sir Henry Drayton); at the present time a cheque for $500 would pay a 20 cent tax. My hon. friend proposes to reduce that tax to 2 cents. I do not think the House ought to make such a reduction. I think we need the money. I do not think it is a proper motion, and I hope the committee will not agree with my hon. friend.


Mr. RYCKMAN:: I desire to oppose this tax on the grounds already stated and on two additional grounds. It i= well known that taxes generally are unpopular, but this is certainly the most unpopular tax ever levied in Canada. I know that the Minister of Finance must have the money and I appreciate the situation in which he is placed in that regard. If it is necessary to impose taxes in some other way, all right; but relieve us of this stamp tax on cheques. I know that the Minister of Finance in the past has considered suggestions made to him, and while I would not offer him advice, I would like to present the most urgent plea. My first objection to this tax is one *hat has not been given voice to in the House tonight. We find cheques with a score and more of these stamps on them. The minimum cheque tax is 2 cents, and the provision starts with a 2 cent stamp tax. Then in the case of a larger amount, the cheque will have a number of these stamps affixed to it, and it is a disgusting and unsanitary nuisance to have to affix these stamps to cheques. It is irritating in the extreme. I hope the Minister of Finance will live a long time, but after he is gone he will be well remembered, and the only thing that will militate against his reputation will be when these cheques are produced, as they must be hereafter, in generations to come, the people will wonder why, in 1923, we ever submitted to the disgusting practice of affixing stamps to cheques, and why it was that we could find no better way of raising money. The minister intimated that he did not know that the bankers objected very much to this. I heard, within a very few days the manager of a bank refer to this taxation as "Fielding's filthy licking stamp tax," and those who have had experience know exactly what that means. We would gladly pay for that irritation, if we could get rid of it. It is all very well if you can indent the stamp on the cheque, but to go through the practice with ten or twenty stamps is very irritating, and I think the Finance Minister, in the kindness of his heart, should relieve us of it.
I have another objection. There are many bills that have to be paid by a certain date. In the city we have the taxes, the water rates, and the gas bills to pay; and the merchants at times avail themselves of discounts if they can pay before a certain date. At least three instances have come under my notice where a very considerable sum was lost by reason of the fact that after office hours, and after the banks were closed and stamps were not available at the post office, the cheques could not be sent out. A direct loss resulted on account of the parties not having sufficient stamps. You cannot tell what provision to make in a case of this kind, and the result is that the irritation is repeated. Loss results, and the whole thing is so unpopular that I submit, in the interests of the country, of business, and of the Fi-
Ways and Means

nance Minister's immortality, this tax should be removed.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: I would like to ask the hon. mover of the amendment if he is really accomplishing the purpose he seeks to accomplish by it. Suppose, for instance, the amendment were given effect to, and a man wanted to issue a cheque for $2,500; at the present time he would be called upon to pay $1. If the amendment were in effect all he would have to do would be to issue five cheques of $500 each, and he would be called upon to pay a tax of 10 cents. It seems to me the amendment is not effective for the purpose the hon. member has in view.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The hon. member has not caught the idea of the amendment, which was, in the first instance to help the man who I thought required assistance in this country-the man who was issuing small cheques. I wanted to keep the tax down to 2 cents. I think $500 would fairly cover all these small cheques. In the second instance, from the other end, the absurdity of this graduated tax on cheques is abundantly shown. Of course, it is all right to show the absurdity at the other end, just as was shown by the hon. member for Kinders-ley (Mr. Carmichael) a moment or two ago -quite all right to show that the $10,000 cheque in the one instance pays $1 and the $10,000 cheque in the other instance pays $8. It is all right to show the anomaly there. Of course, you show the anomaly when you pay it at the other end just the same, but that is no answer to it. The answer is that there ought not to be a graduated tax on cheques, and if you are going to get away from the graduated tax on the small cheque, there is no other way of doing it.
Amendment (Sir Henry Drayton) negatived.


Mr. FORKE:: I should like to say, in prefacing the amendment which I intend to move, that the remark has been made tonight that this is a very unpopular tax. I suppose all taxes are unpopular.


Edmond Baird Ryckman: This is the most.


Robert Forke: Perhaps it is; but I can recollect for fifty years back seeing stamps on cheques and receipts. That has been an old-established custom in Great Britain for many years.


Edmond Baird Ryckman: One stamp only.


Robert Forke: I cannot remember; I cannot go back and make any statement as to the amount; but as long as I remember I have seen stamps on receipts and cheques. I move, however, in amendment:

That the words "reduced to" in the fifth line of clause 1 be struck out, and the words "two dollars" be substituted for the word "one dollar" cn the same line.
That is putting the maximum tax back to two dollars as it was before.


William Stevens Fielding: May I suggest to my hon. friend that while he can move a reduction in the tax, I do not think he can move to increase it. He is supposed to be in favour of reducing taxation, not in favour of increasing it.


Robert Forke: I suggest to the minister
that he accept the proposition.


William Stevens Fielding: You can take almost
any item of our system of taxation and show that it is very unpopular. My hon. friend is right: all taxation is unpopular. Please keep this in mind: We need the money, and if you are going to reduce the revenue from this source, you may have to find it somewhere else. We cannot afford to give up any considerable revenue A this kind, and I am bound to say from all the information I have-


Mr. KNOX:: This will produce more money.


William Stevens Fielding: I think not in this case. I think not. There are cases where reduced taxes will produce more money-my hon. friend is right at times-but I think in this case it would not. I think the proposal to reduce the tax to one dollar is a reasonable one, and I earnestly ask the committee to consider the matter and to accept these changes.


Mr. STEWART (Humboldt):: Dp I understand the minister to say that he thought reducing the maximum to one dollar would bring in as much as if it were two dollars?


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: That might
very well happen.


William Stevens Fielding: The point I raised was that the hon. member (Mr. Forke) could not move to increase the tax. I think it is possible the maximum of one dollar may produce as much money as the two dollars. There are cases where reduction of taxation brings in more money. On the merits of it, however, as a fair tax, I think one dollar is a very moderate charge to make, and I might reasonably ask the committee to stand by it.


Milton Neil Campbell: I wish the minister
would have that view with regard to the tariff.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The minister
wants more revenue. A ruling has been given in connection with receipts. We are not chang-

Ways and Means
ing receipts at all now apparently, and I suppose this is the best place to refer to it. More money is required and there has been a ruling in connection with receipts, in connection with certain forms of letters, forms of printed letters and the like, postcards, which obviates the necessity of paying a tax on the receipts, on the idea that the same instrument has already paid a tax. If my hon. friend wants more money, that is one thing he might consider.


William Stevens Fielding: That will be considered.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Another thing that the minister might consider is this: The receipt stamp, having regard to cheques, is disappearing entirely. My hon. friend is really losing money in connection with his receipts. This is a form of cheque which is now used by railway companies. The face of the cheque reads:
In full payment for services rendered during the month of....
The endorsement reads:
This cheque is accepted by me in full payment and satisfaction of all claims for services rendered as specified in the body of the cheque. I also hereby acknowledge to have received the amount this cheque calls for.
According to the ruling of the department, there is no stamp attached to that.


Jacques Bureau: There is to the cheque. The same ruling applies.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Owing to the ruling of the department, no stamp whatever is attached to the receipt, because the department rules that the instrument, that is the cheque, has been stamped. The instrument has never been stamped at all. The cheque is one thing and the receipt is another. If we are really going to have fairness in connection with the enforcement of the law as regards receipts, we must see that this is not merely an endorsement of the cheque for the purpose of drawing the money. It reads in so many words that it is an acceptance-
In full payment for services rendered during the month of. ... I also hereby acknowledge to have received the amount this cheque calls for.
There are some 300,000 of those cheques issued monthly in Canada with those receipts which under the ruling of the department, have not to be stamped. But there is another thing my hon. friend will find is going on throughout the country. I am reading the form now from a sample invoice. There is a new way of getting out invoices that are perforated at the top. The customer is asked'
Kindly return this part of the statement with your cheque.
That is just the top part of the invoice. You retain the invoice which shows you what you have. At the bottom of the invoice is printed:
An endorsement of cheque is your receipt. No other acknowledgment will be forwarded unless specially requested.
So you have to send a special letter now in many cases if you want a receipt. The whole fact of the matter is that, under the present rule the department is losing money on its receipt law and regulations. Why, instead of getting answers now, you do not get any answers at all. You send a cheque with a bill and you do not get any reply. The government loses the two cents which it would get for the postage, or if the letter is sent out of town, three cents, and it is not getting the additional two cents. It is plainly printed upon the top of the statement:
Kindly return this part of the statement with your cheque.
Under the statement is printed:
An endorsement of your cheque is your receipt. No other acknowledgment will be forwarded unless specially requested.
I am afraid this is only another way of annoying the public without raising revenue.


William Stevens Fielding: If my hon. friend imagines that you can put on the statute books any law that somebody cannot evade for a time, I have no such confidence. Every law is evaded for a while until, in the light of experience, you can meet the difficulty, and this is not the exception. I am not astonished to find that some people are evading this law. We shall be glad to be able to deal with those cases. The mere fact of an evasion of the law is not proof that a law is wrong.


George Newcombe Gordon: A point of order is raised by the Minister of Finance. I quote from May 12th edition, at page 462:
The principle that the sanction of the Crown must be given to every grant of money drawn from the public revenue, apiplies equally to the taxation levied to provide that revenue. .
The footnote, No. 5, states:
When it appeared from the debate that an amendment proposed to a resolution reported from the Committee of Ways and Means would increase the charge, the Speaker ruled the amendment out of order.
As this amendment is to increase the charge, I rule that it is not in order.


Alan Webster Neill: I would suggest the following amendment which I think would be in order:
Strike out the words "reduced to one" in the fifth line and insert the word "two", and add at the end of the line "and the minimum amount to be two cents on one hundred dollars."
Ways and Means

The effect of that will be to reduce the revenue sufficiently to bring the amendment in order, and yet it will make no substantial reduction. The smaller cheques would pay only two cents on $100, and on the larger ones the maximum would be $2 as it is at present.


William Stevens Fielding: That is the same thing in another form.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It cannot be
the same thing in another form, because one does one thing and another something else. The one is objected to because it raises revenue, but this is a reduction.


George Newcombe Gordon: The amendment proposes to strike out the words "reduce to one" in the fifth line, and to add at the end of the line the words "the minimum amount be two cents on $100."


Alan Webster Neill: I do not think you have
quite correctly read the amendment, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps my writing is not as good as it might be. The amendment proposes to strike out the words "reduce to one," and insert the word "two" in the fifth line, and to insert at the end of the line the words "and the minimum amount shall be two cents on one hundred dollars." The effect is very simple. You san isisue a cheque for any amount up to $100 for two cents, and above that the present law would operate, of two cents for every $50; and when it came to large sums the maximum, as at present, would be $2 instead of $1. The general effect would be to ease the tax on the small amounts, and to keep it as before on the large amounts; but in the total the reduction would be very little.


William Stevens Fielding: The hon. member proposes to make $2 the maximum.


Alan Webster Neill: That is only a part of the
amendment.


William Stevens Fielding: But that part I have
correctly stated.


Alan Webster Neill: That is only half of it.


William Stevens Fielding: It therefore does increase the taxation-from one to two dollars.


Alan Webster Neill: But the amendment should
be taken in its entirety.


William Stevens Fielding: Surely.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I want to raise a point of order myself. I think we are all under a misapprehension. This does not come into effect until the first of August, so that it is not yet within the inhibition of the ruling. We are not raising the tax; we are simply keeping it as it is to-day.


William Stevens Fielding: The ruling applies to
the papers before us.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I think not; I think we are ruling on the effect of the papers before us, and the basis of the ruling is that if the motion were given effect to we should be adding to the rate of taxation, which we are not doing.


William Stevens Fielding: In the first place, the
first of August clause is not yet adopted; but I do not dwell on that point. The question is as between the motion that is placed before the Chairman and the amendment and there can be no doubt about the effect of the amendment.


Mr. BAXTER:: I rather think that the
question must be decided by the burden to be imposed on the people. The proposal would be all right so long as it did not increase the burden on the subject, and that theory must be borne out by the authorities. I invite the committee to consider the point, because otherwise we are reduced to a state of abject helplessness.


George Newcombe Gordon: Before the point is
debated any further, I desire to cite May for the information of the committee. At page 462 there appears the following:
The principle that the sanction of the Crown must be given to every grant of money drawn from the public revenue, applies equally to the taxation levied to provide that revenue. No motion can therefore be made to impose a tax, save by a minister of the Crown, unless such tax be in substitution, by way of equivalent, for taxation at that moment submitted to the consideration of parliament, nor can the amount of a tax proposed on behalf of the Crown be augmented, nor any alteration made in the area of imposition.
On the same page there is a quotation from the House of Commons Debates of the British parliament. I shall read it:
Thus on the 12th April, 1916, the Chairman, in allowing an amendement to be moved in committee on the Finance (New Duties) Bill with the object of altering the method of levying a new tax, insisted that the amendment should be so framed as not to increase the charge that would be imposed on any individual payer of the tax
When it appeared from the debate that an amendment proposed to a resolution reported from the Committee of Ways and Means would increase the charge, the Speaker ruled the amendment out of order.
The question arises whether the amendment now before the Chair would increase the taxation on any individual taxpayer, or would alter the area of imposition.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Does it not
rather turn on the question as to whether or not the increase has reference to a tax that is now existing and not to any charge proposed to be made effective?

Ways and Means


Jacques Bureau: May includes taxation
proposed.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I think the rule has reference to new taxation rather than old.


Jacques Bureau: The quotation which the Chairman read from May refers to proposed taxation, which is the present case.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: No, to taxation in existence.


Jacques Bureau: We are not discussing taxation now levied, we are discussing proposed taxation.


George Newcombe Gordon: Let me just quote again the last words of the authority I cited:
Nor can the amount of a tax proposed on behalf of the Crown be augmented, nor any alteration made in the area of imposition.


Jacques Bureau: That clearly refers to proposed taxation.


George Newcombe Gordon: I must rule that the amendment would in effect augment taxation and alter the area of imposition. It would increase the taxation on some individual taxpayer, and I must therefore rule it out of older.


Alan Webster Neill: If I may be allowed to add to what I have already said, Mr. Chairman, I may point out that while the amendment will increase taxation on some individuals, we must remember that although in the maximum he would pay a little more he will get the benefit of the minimum provision, so that what he loses at one end he will gain at the other. As regards the area of imposition, the amendment proposes no change whatever. If I were suggesting the infliction of a tax on a man who owns a motor car that would be changing the area of taxation, but it cannot for a moment be considered that you are changing the area of imposition in this case because it is confined strictly to the original class of taxpayers affected namely, those who issue cheques. I therefore do not see how the amendment can be ruled ont of order on that ground; and as I have already indicated, the taxpayer ultimately will not have to pay any more, but rather less.


Jacques Bureau: It affects the individual taxpayer so far as the amount is concerned, because it increases the maximum from one to two.


Alan Webster Neill: In an individual instance, yes. But I maintain, and I think it will be admitted by everyone, that while the taxpayer may pay a little more at one end he will in the long run gain what he lost in that direction. because of the saving in regard to the
lcwer amounts. The general result must be to reduce taxation to the individual. I submit that the amendment must be taken as a whole. You cannot discuss one section of it for the purposes of one line of argument, and then take another part of it for some other argument. That is not logical. I say that the amendment in the end reduces taxation instead of increasing it, and that I am sure is t? e spirit of May's ruling. I would point out, however, that while this is a comparatively trivial matter, it is a matter of great importance so far as the ruling is concerned, because that ruling will govern the House in years to come.


William Stevens Fielding: No man can possibly tell Ikw much the individual will gain at one end and lose at the other. You must deal with the individual case, and in the individual case there is to be increased taxation.


George Newcombe Gordon: I must rule upon the authorities which I have cited to the committee in the discussion of this point of order that this does increase the charge which would be imposed on any individual payer of the tax, and that on the other hand there is an alteration in the area of imposition that is being placed upon a certain class of individuals who fall within this rule; therefore I declare the amendment moved by the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill) is out of order.
Amendment (Mr. Fielding) agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Resolution agreed to.

William Stevens Fielding: I beg to move resolution No. 2, Mr. Chairman, on the same page:
2. That after a date to be fixed by proclamation of the Governor in Council the excise tax on wines of all kinds, excqpt sparkling wines, containing not more than forty per centum of proof spirit be reduced to seven and one-half cents per gallon, and the excise tax on champagne and all other sparkling wines be reduced to one dollar and fifty cents per gallon.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I really think my hon. friend must feel it is very unkind that this resolution is printed right after the resolution dealing with the stamp duty on cheques. There was only one argument why people should pay the tax-that the minister wants the money. Then in the very next resolution, which is now before us, he is cutting in two the taxes on champagne and sparkling wines. I am afraid my hon. friend is not consistent. We all know why. We all know the mess he has got into by reason of the French treaty.


William Stevens Fielding: That is the unkindest cut of all. Hon. members on my friend's
Ways and Means

side complained of the advantage given French wines under the French treaty, and we at once stated we would deal with native wines if they would wait patiently. Now we are dealing fairly and equitably with these my hon. friend is unhappy.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Not at all. I think it is the inevitable result of the French treaty.


Arthur John Lewis: What was the tax before?


William Stevens Fielding: Thirty cents and three dollars.


Arthur John Lewis: This is an instance where by reducing the duty it is expected people will drink more wine and consequently there will be a greater revenue?


William Stevens Fielding: This is in order to place native wines in an equitable position with respect to French wines.


[Stage Direction]
Resolution agreed to.

William Stevens Fielding: The next resolution deals with the sales tax. I do not want to go on with it to-night. I propose to proceed with No. 4 in the latter part of the resolutions.
I move:
That Schedule 1 to the said act be amended by striking thereout the items respecting confectionery and beverages.
That is one of the items announced in the budget speech and fully discussed some time ago.


The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Marcil, Bonaven-ture):: Shall the resolution carry ?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes, resolutions 4, 5, 6 and 7:
4.	That Schedule I to the said act be amended by striking thereout the items respecting confectionery and beverages.
5.	That Schedule II to the said act be amended by striking thereout the item respecting beverages and by adding to the said schedule the following item:
"Carbonic acid gas in cylinders, per pound. . . . one cent."
6.	That the provisions of the said act respecting stamp tax on receipts be amended by providing:
(i)	That paragraph (b) of subsection four of section fourteen of the said Act as enacted by said chapter forty-seven be amended to read as follows: "(b) a receipt or document in the nature of a receipt which is taxable under section twelve of this act."
(ii)	By adding provisions for the better enforcement of said section fourteen.
7.	That the provisions of this resolution, except the provision proposed by section two, shall come into force on the first day of August, 1923.


[Stage Direction]
Resolutions agreed to.

William Stevens Fielding: Mr. Chairman, I mentioned it was proposed to provide that hereafter postage stamps should not be used for inland revenue purposes. The resolution I beg to move on that subject is as follows:
That the resolution respecting the amendment to the special War Revenue Act be amended by adding thereto the provision, that subsection 3 of section 19 of the said act, which provides that postage stamps may be used in lieu of stamps specially prepared in fulfilment of any requirement under part 3, be repealed, and that any enactment founded on this provision shall come into force on the 1st day of October 1923.
The effect of that will be that on and after the 1st October postage stamps will no longer be used, and inland revenue stamps will be required for inland revenue purposes.


[Stage Direction]
Resolution agreed to.

William Stevens Fielding: Take No. 3, Sir, on the order with regard to sales tax. The substance of this is that instead of the varying rates hitherto imposed we are to impose practically a general rate of 6 per cent. That is the principle involved. The machinery by which it is to be carried out is set forth in the resolution and is not free from difficulty, but we think we have got it in fairly good shape.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I understood my hon. friend did not want to take up the sales tax resolution.


William Stevens Fielding: I laid it aside for the moment, I had other things before me.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am afraid
some of the members have left the chamber.


William Stevens Fielding: If my hon. friend wishes that it be postponed, I will agree.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Personally I
do not wish to postpone it, but some of the members have left. However, I do not suppose we could finish it to-night anyway. There is a lot yet to understand in connection with it.


William Stevens Fielding: In that case we had
better postpone it.
Resolution stands.
Progress reported.


DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
[Stage Direction]
The House again in committee of Supply, Mr. Marcil (Bonaventure) in the chair.
Dominion Lands and Parks-Canadian National Parks and Historic sites, $1,250,980.

Supply-Interior-Parks
Joseph Tweed Shaw: Has the department come
to any conclusion in connection wi.h the matter of the granting of additional power privileges to the Calgary Power Company in the national park at Banff?


Charles A. Stewart: A good
many representations have been made against the granting of the application, but so far no conclusion has been reached by the department. I do not intend to move in the matter until I have visited the park during this summer, particularly the Spray lake3, which it is alleged, would be affected by the granting of the application.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: What is the policy of the
department, either past or present, with regard to applications for power privileges in the national parks?


Charles A. Stewart: The present government have not adopted any definite policy. An application was granted on lake Minnewanka in the Banff national park to the company making the application in the present case. I would not like to admit that that was establishing a precedent; however, it will have to be definitely settled whether applications of this kind are to be granted, at least on certain areas that are of considerable importance. I may say that applications have been made, though not actively pressed, for the raising of the levels of Waterton lake for the purpose of irrigation in southern Alberta. Of course that is a question in which the United States government would be interested.


Robert Forke: I may inform the minister
that I have been receiving telegrams from the West protesting against the granting of any further power privileges in these parks. It seems to be a very lively question in the prairie provinces. I simply call attention to that fact.


Mr. GARDINER:: The public parks of
Canada have been set apart for the use of the Canadian people. I would like to ask the minister whether he thinks it is within the power of the government to grant such privileges on these areas.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, it is
within the power of the department to do so. We have a bill on the order paper which would put under the control of parliament water-powers as well as other privileges In areas set aside for park purposes, but I may not press that bill. My own inclination is in the direction of reserving these areas purely for the purposes for which they were set aside. But to lay down the hard and fast rule
that in none of these areas-and there are immense areas set aside for park purposes in the Rocky mountains-should any power privileges be given, would perhaps be going quite a long way.


Arthur Meighen: I do not know just what is the minister's mind in the matter, but if I could judge from his last sentence or so, I do not think I am very far removed from him in opinion. I have read some editorial references to the application of some Calgary power company for power privileges on the Spray lakes in Rocky mountains park, or, as it is now called, Banff national park. These references are wholly antagonistic and seem to be based on the supposed principle that when a park is established as such, no use must be made of any of its resources. The point raised by the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Gardiner) seems to rest on the same assumption, that is to say that since the parks are for the whole people of Canada, no use should be made of the resources therein for any practical purposes. I must support the minister when he intimates that it would be utterly impossible to follow that principle. Why, we do not follow it anywhere in Canada. I am not saying a word on behalf of this particular application. I have had no communication whatever from the company directly or indirectly. I do not know whether its application has the least merit or whether it has not; it may be quite the right thing to refuse it. But to lay down as a general principle that because a power is in a park it is sacrosanct and cannot be made use of seems to me absurd. It is a wholly wrong conception that the use of the power of a water is any less for the public than the leaving of it in nature's state that the public may look at it. I would be very sorry to see anything done in the Banff park that would seriously interfere with its value for scenic purposes or its value as a park, and it might be that no substantial use could be made of that power without such interference with its scenic value as would by no means be compensated for by the use of the water for that purpose. At the same time I would think it should not be impossible to provide by regulation for such construction as would not interfere with its value for scenic purposes, but might indeed improve it. It might not be impossible. If it is not, then unless the power is absolutely essential for public use I would not spoil the park for the power. But what I object to is this general assumption that because we have laid aside certain areas and established there parks we must shut out the hand of man and say: Here you may starve for power, industry

Supply-Interior-Parks
may be utterly without the means of sustenance, the public outside may simply be hanged, we have got to keep this thing a thing of beauty. Why, if that were done at Niagara Falls where would we be to-day?


Robert Forke: I do not think there is any general assumption along that line.


Arthur Meighen: Every argument I have seen is based on that. It is not for the sake of a company that the power right is granted. It is because the public need the power. The company has no more claim than any number of people. It has just the same, but it has no more. I have seen articles in American and Canadian magazines about the profanity, the blasphemy of harnessing Niagara Falls and thereby diminishing the flow of water down this great cataclysm of nature. Well, I consider that rubbish. Imagine the people of Ontario to-day with their own backs and hands doing the work that the falls of Niagara are doing, in order that wedding couples could see more water falling over the topi That seems to me ridiculous, and the same is true of Banff national park. I hope the minister will take the greatest care that no matter ior what purpose no great substantial injury is done to the scenic beauty of the park-I would not say no matter for what purpose, for if the purpose be great enough I would spoil the whole scenic beauty, but no purpose is great enough to warrant that. I hope every reasonable precaution will be taken to preserve the beauty of the park, but at the same time I hope solid common sense will be used and that especially in those parts of Canada where power is very scarce no rigid rule will be adopted that will shut out the utilization of power merely because it is in a park. That is all I wish to say about it. I repeat what I said at first, I have had no communication from anybody on this subject. I have not the faintest knowledge as to who the company is, but I must say that the appeals I read in the press made a very weak impression on my mind.


Robert Forke: I would just like to suggest to the minister that the utilization of these powers be not so much for the benefit of a company but for the use of the people in any case where they are granted.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear.


Charles A. Stewart: That goes without saying. I may say in fairness to my predecessors that without adding a single additional provision for safeguarding the public interest, that has been very well taken care of so far as granting water power privileges are concerned.

There seems to be a misconception about the application of the Calgary Power Company. I am speaking neither for nor against them. I am in a different position, having to make a decision, because I have in my department the Water Powers branch, who look at this matter from the standpoint of power, the standpoint which has just been enunciated by my hon. friend, that is, the advantage of having cheap power for the development of industry, and on the other hand I have also in my department the 11 p.m. Parks branch, whose business it is to preserve the scenic beauty of our parks for tourist purposes and as a playground for the people of Canada, and the views of the two branches are widely at variance on this question. The Parks Commissioner takes the ground that we should close the parks absolutely so far as water-powers are concerned. Now I frankly admit I have an open mind on this question. I am keen on scenic beauty, so much so that last summer when this question was very much to the fore I refused the application of the Calgary Power Company to further raise the level of lake Minnewanka. Anybody who has been at Banff knows that lake Minnewanka is within a few miles of the centre of the attractive portion of the park. The Calgary Power Company already have a concession on that lake, and they have increased the lake level, and their application last year was for the purpose of raising it by another ten or fifteen feet. After looking it over I came to the conclusion that it would absolutely destroy the scenic properties of that particular lake. It was very close to where all sightseers of the park come, and obviously if we are to get any return for our investment in our national parks we must keep them attractive enough to draw tourists, and on these grounds I refused the application of the company. They subsequently made application for the Spray lakes. I have not seen them. They are on the other side of the town of Banff. I am not an engineer and cannot tell from a study of the maps just what the effect of raising the level of the Spray lakes would be. However, it is rather an expensive undertaking, and in fact would cost a great deal more than the company would feel warranted in expending at the moment in view of the amount of power they could sell. I think my hon. friend from Calgary is well posted on this question. He represents the city that is most vitally interested, and I believe that the city is somewhat opposed to the granting of the application. I have a perfectly open mind on the question. I want to know what effect it would have on the scenic properties of the park and how it

Supply-Interior-Parks
would affect the river flowing out of the town, because if they draw off a tremendous quantity of water, which they would do in the winter, of necessity the river would be a very small stream for a large portion of the summer while the reservoir was filling up. The reservoir is a huge one, I would gather from a perusal of the maps and plans, but without seeing the actual ground one cannot form a very definite opinion about the matter.
I agree with my hon. friend absolutely that to say that the water-powers of the park shall not be used to serve say that huge area including all the Rocky mountains might be going very far, but on the other hand care should be taken to preserve the scenic beauties of the park. All reasonable precautions should be taken not to impair the scenic properties of our parks, which not only attract tourists but serve as a playground for our own people.


Arthur Meighen: The increase in this item is really alarming, and I cannot see why it is consented to in silence by hon. gentlemen who denounced the voting of about two-thirds of this amount a short time ago. There has been an increase of I think about 20 per cent in two years. What is being done with the money? Where is the tremendous increase going? I have as high an appreciation of the value of our parks as anybody, I think. In fact, I conducted a pretty difficult battle on their behalf against the silent witnesses of this vote, but still I want to know what the extra money is going for.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend I think was not in the House the other evening when this item was pretty fully discussed. The item was left over at the request of the ex-Minister of Finance in order that the leader of the Opposition might have an opportunity of discussing it. There is considerable increase in the item. One of the very heavy increases is due to the fa\iu that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which operated the mines in the vicinity of Banff, are closing down the mines, and consequently we are unable to secure the electric light that we formerly got from this plant, and we have to take steps to construct a new electric light plant. That will represent $150,000. And indeed that is not all it represents. I think it represents nearer $200,000. We have not capitalized the charges with respect to the parks. All the expenditure being taken out of ordinary revenue, it comes out of one year's appropriation. The same thing applies in the little town of Canmore, where we had a nearepidemic owing to the unsanitary conditions, and we were forced to take precautions against the conditions there which were very bad.
We are spending $17,500 to better the sanitary conditions this year. Then at Wainwright we have the problem of taking care of more buffalo than the fenced area will maintain. The herd has grown to about
7.000	head. The area is only capable of maintaining 5,000-I think, much more properly, 3,000. But we are forced to reduce the herd, and as the buffalo are somewhat difficult to handle, we will have to spend $13,000 on the construction of a slaughter house to kill a certain proportion of the animals. I mentioned the other night that we had under consideration the advisability of taking some of the younger animals and turning them loose in the north country, with the herd that we now estimate may be about
2.000	or so, that have gone into that country and are established north of the Hay river along the Mackenzie. But unfortunately we have discovered that we have tuberculosis in the herd, and there is some question as to whether we should allow animals from the parks to mingle with those out on the prairie, where they are undoubtedly free from contamination. We require this amount for that purpose. Then at the Lamont park we have under consideration the advisability of fencing in a larger area for the animals that are there, including a small buffalo herd left there, which I believe was the first buffalo herd in the country. That herd has grown to much larger proportions, and we have to take in a larger area, which will cost $24,000. That practically makes the total increase, or nearly all of it. This might in my opinion under other circumstances be charged to capital account, but the parks appropriations have year by year, no matter what the expenditure amounted to, been charged to revenue account and cleared up in the year in which the work is undertaken. It has the advantage that you are not accumulating any capital charges.


Arthur Meighen: Is the minister harnessing the water power to get the electric light?


Charles A. Stewart: The Calgary Power Company applied for increased storage on lake Minnewanka, and there was a reservation in the agreement with that company that in the event of the government requiring water for the purpose of producing electric light for their own purposes, they were to have it; and we are taking advantage of that reservation.


Arthur Meighen: I am not objecting at all. I was thinking it would be rather inconsistent for us to be harnessing the water and at the same time saying to the public of Canada, "We will not let anybody in

Supply-Interior-Parka


Robert Forke: I do not think the right hon. leader of the Opposition is quite correct. I do not think anybody ever said that nobody could get in-not in this House anyway.


Arthur Meighen: I did not say that any one in this House said it. I mentioned the source from which it came.


Arthur John Lewis: I see there is an increase in the item for the national parks, and possibly quite rightly too. The minister gave one or two reasons why there was an increase. He said we should reserve all historical sites, and two reasons were given why we should do so. One was to induce tourists from other countries to come to see the beautiful spots of Canada. He went on to say these sites and parks were the playgrounds of Canada. That is the point I wish to attack for the moment. If these sites or parks happen to be the playground of the people of Canada, who are the people that are able ,to look upon them as a playground? At the present time these parks are practically situated in one place in Canada, with the result that there are thousands and thousands of people in Canada who are not able to visit them. As far as Saskatchewan is concerned at the present time, I know of no national park or no national playground that we can visit. Yet we have to help bear the burden. As a large amount of money is being spent almost entirely on one spot, to induce tourists from the United States to come along the national highway which has cost a great deal of money, it seems to me, that certain beauty spots should be placed in other provinces; so that all the people of Canada would have the right to enjoy the national playgrounds, the expense of which they have to bear. Is there any possibility of having a national park somewhere in southern Saskatchewan-not eastern Saskatchewan, around the Assiniboia-but somewhere in the western part of Saskatchewan?


Charles A. Stewart: I was going to remark that I think it would be rather difficult even in Saskatchewan to establish a park much closer to my hon. friend than Banff. I may say to him that some of the visitors to Banff come there in Ford cars. They are provided with camping facilities. I was simply amazed to find how many people camp in that way, and visit in Banff park, at very little expense. We are proposing to do something in southern Saskatchewan, in the constituency of my hon. friend, at Estevan and Vidal, where we are making preparations for a park that will be a playground for the 
people of Saskatchewan, where there is reasonable opportunity for it, and where the cost will be reasonable. We could establish these parks in territory that is not fit for other purposes, and I feel that it would be good business to set aside these areas for this purpose.


Arthur John Lewis: I suggest that there is a beautiful spot on the south Saskatchewan river, in the southern part of Saskatchewan.


Robert Forke: The minister has mentioned the fact that Ford cars go there. He means that the farmers are taking advantage of that.


Charles A. Stewart: They do not all go in Ford cars.


Robert Forke: It would be only the farmers who would go there in Ford cars. I see how it works out all right.


Mr. LUCAS:: Can the minister give any estimate of the amount Canada derives from the tourist traffic at the present time?


Charles A. Stewart: It would be a very difficult estimate to make, but we think that somewhere between fifteen and twenty million dollars is brought into the country in this way. That seems a lot of money but if you go to the Banff hotel and stay there for a day or so, and then go to the other points of interest in Canada and stay for a day or so, perhaps the sum would not seem so extravagant after all.


Archibald M. Carmichael: I do not oppose the granting of money for our national parks, but I would like to point out that it was my privilege to go to the Banff national park a couple of years ago. Before being permitted to enter I was charged, I think, the fee of $1. In view of the fact that we are donating such a large sum of money under this item, I do not know whether it is fair and equitable to impose on Canadians a penalty on entering their own park which is kept up by their own money. I do not see that it would be inequitable to charge American tourists. I am rather of opinion that the charge is just the same for both American and Canadian tourists. In connection with the Banff national park, I should like to know if the money charged at the toll gate on entering that park is sufficient for the upkeep of the park.


Charles A. Stewart: No. I could say at once, without the question being asked, that it does not begin to keep up the expenditure on the park. I think my hon.

Supply-In terior-Parks
friend would realize, driving over the roads alone, that there is a tremendous expenditure in roads for the benefit of the man who pays that dollar and who takes his car into the park. That is not altogether the idea. The idea is to have a complete record of those who enter the park and a knowledge of where they are, because, while 99 per cent of the people who go into the park are careful, one careless individual or one individual letting fire loose can do a tremendous amount of damage. It must be remembered that we must guard pretty carefully, not so much the people, as the park itself, to prevent, for instance, fire from spreading Then there is the possibility of people in the park destroying animals in an endeavour to get souvenirs in the way of game heads and that sort of thing. All that work is expensive, but still it must be done. My hon. friend will realize that it is an excellent thing for the visitors to see the mountain sheep which are tame and which come down to the roads. That could not be accomplished unless we looked after the visitors fairly carefully. Perhaps 99 per cent of the visitors do not need super- * vision, but some create trouble for us.


Archibald M. Carmichael: Is it not a fact that the amount levied is the same for American as for Canadian tourists?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes.


Archibald M. Carmichael: In the opinion of the minister, would it not be wise that a distinction should be made, a smaller charge being imposed on the Canadian tourist and a larger one on the American, who contributes nothing for the upkeep of the park?


Charles A. Stewart: I must confess that I have paid the charge on entering the park, and I never thought it was extravagant. It is $1 for your car. You have a week.


Archibald M. Carmichael: Perhaps it is not extravagant for the Canadian, but for the American it should be relatively more.


Charles A. Stewart: That would be a matter of opinion. We do not look upon this as a revenue producer. It is rather more a keeping of someone there in order that we may have an accurate knowledge of who enter the park, who come out, who are in the park.


Archibald M. Carmichael: Has the minister figures to show what the revenue is in the Banff national park for one year?


Charles A. Stewart: About
$8,000. That is not exact.
251i


Arthur John Lewis: The minister a few moments ago stated that it was estimated that the tourist traffic coming into Canada was worth in the neighbourhood of from fifteen to twenty million dollars. A few minutes ago we heard the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) say that it was very difficult to raise money. I was wondering whether the Dominion government had found ways and means whereby they could get a share of that fifteen to twenty million dollars coming into the country.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: There seems to be an impression in the conversation between the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) and the minister, that there is a toll levied upon people who go into the park. There is no toll levied on any person going into the park. There is a toll of one dollar charged on a person taking a car in. I think that is the correct situation.


Charles A. Stewart: That is correct.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Government of the Yukon Territory:
Salaries and expenses connected with the
administration of the territory	 $ 65,000
Grant to Local Council	 45,00
Grant for maintenance and construction of roads	 80,000
Mr. BLACK (Yukon):: In view of the
memorial that I understand has just been received by the government from the Local Council, the Territorial Council of Yukon, for an increase in the membership of the council anc an increase in the indemnity, what policy has the government decided upon in that respect?


Charles A. Stewart: This is a matter that we have discussed in council in respect to both the memorial received and the representations made by my hon. friend. It is felt that there are two requests, the request that the indemnity be increased, and the request that the membership be increased in view of the Mayo silver strike. While the population of the Yukon is not decreasing, I think within the last couple of years we cannot discover that there has been a very marked increase. For that reason it will appear that they have ample representation in the three members. Perhaps in the location of territory there might be some change, but it would not appear to be advisable to increase the number.
As regards the indemnity, I have some sympathy with the request. Nevertheless, during
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all these years they have got along with this amount, and with a population not much more than that of a small-sized city, it would not appear that we would be warranted at the moment in increasing the amount. If the population should increase, then in all probability there would be something to be said in favour of increasing the indemnity.


George Black: Since the last census returns were made, the population of the Yukon has materially increased owing to the discovery of silver ore in large quantities in that territory. A very important silver mining camp has been established and will continue to grow. I have not the slightest doubt about that. An area which was practically unpopulated before except for a few explorers, is now becoming populated. Towns are being established there and permanent settlement is taking place. That part of the territory is entirely isolated from the older and more settled portions. The constitution of the Territorial Council at the present time is practically that of the legislatures of the provinces. The Territorial Council has the same power to legislate as provincial legislative assemblies have. The suggestion was that the membership of the council, which is now three, the members being elected from the city of Dawson and the town of Whitehorse and one member representing the mining community, be increased to four, and this new mining district be given a member. The indemnity is now the small sum of $400 a year. It was reduced to that sum only in the year 1918 when the late government in a burst of economy picked on that item for purposes of reduction, although they might have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars more properly in other directions. The reduction in ihis respect was entirely improper and was made without reference to any one in touch with rhe facts. It was done blindly and the matter should now be remedied. I would ask the minister to take it into consideration, with a view to making a grant in the Supplementary Estimates for the purpose.


Arthur Bliss Copp: What was the indemnity previously?


George Black: At the time of the reduction it was $600 per annum, and some years before that, $1,000. I am sure that in view of the cost of transportation, living and other expenses in that country this is not an extravagant sum.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.

Government of the Northwest Territories-
Salaries and expenses in connection with the administration of the Territories, including the erection of buildings and investigation work, etc	 $114,000
Establishing and operating wireless stations,
including buildings, etc	 55,000
Administration, N.W.	Game	Act,	etc..	..	33,500Northwest Territories,	explorations	..	..	80,000Purchase and maintenance of new ship.. ..	40,000
Charles A. Stewart: As in the case of Banff, we are faced with a difficult proposition to give an adequate service over a very wide area. We have not a telegraph service in the Department of Interior; the service is under the Public Works department and has been rather expensive. We propose this year to substitute a radio service in the north country, putting in a station at McMurray, one at Fort Simpson and another at Dawson, which will enable us to dispense with a very expensive line service running into the Dawson territory, and as well a telegraph service reaching from McMurray northward. That will cost $55,000. It seems a fairly large amount, but fully half of it is expended in the Public Works department on repairs of lines that now give a very indifferent service and which we shall be able to do without. Then we have the expedition to the northeastern shores of Canada, to those islands in the northern sea, where we have to establish ourselves. We [DOT] sent an expedition last year for which we voted the sum of $45,000, but we found this totally inadequate end had to supplement it by a grant which will come up in the Sup-plementaries for discussion. We are asking this year for an increase over the $45,000 voted last year of $35,000. We have an old ship belonging to the Marine department, known as the Arctic, which has made several voyages into the northern sea. It is now becoming obsolete; it is very slow and is costly to operate, and it is dangerous to send into these northern seas a ship of this kind, owing to its age. However, we are sending her this year to establish a post at Cape Sabine just off the shores of Greenland, which residents of Greenland cross to Melville sound. More particularly are we anxious to establish this post because Captain McMillan proposes wintering there with an American expedition. It will be recalled that Captain Peary wintered there on one of his expeditions, and we are somewhat fearful of claims being set up to these northern islands. We are desirous of establishing a police force there to maintain sovereignty and hold the islands for Canada. It may be said that they are

Supply-Interior
not very valuable, but there is evidence of very extensive mineral deposits on the islands, and in future they may become of great value. For that reason we are asking for an increase of $35,000 to send the Arctic back into the north. Further, we have purchased from the British Admiralty a steel vessel that has a speed three times as great as that of the Arctic. That ship will be sent there annually for the purpose of relieving the mounted police force and taking in food. We thought we could put it into commission this year but that is not practicable. It was built in 1920, and is of the trawler type, with a speed of 12 knots and a large capacity for fuel. It was not built for northern waters, and will have to be reinforced in the hull.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Why not take one of the Merchant Marine boats?


Charles A. Stewart: We had every one of them thoroughly examined, but none of them could be converted for the purpose. Besides, they are slow sailers and speed in this matter is an important factor. This ship cost the British Admiralty $200,000 to construct. We purchased it for $55,000, and it will cost in the neighbourhood of $25,000 to reinforce the hull, but we shall have an admirable ship for the purpose for which it is required.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Where is the rest of the purchase money?


Charles A. Stewart: I shall have to ask for a further sum in the Supple-mentaries in addition to the $40,000.


George Black: I just want to say a few words by way of comparison of this service, which it is intended by this expenditure to inaugurate in the north country, with the present service and also as to how the cost of the present service has been distributed, and may be materially reduced. I was glad to hear the minister indicate a reduction in connection with the item. I understand it is intended to erect a wireless station at Fort McMurray, one at Fort Simpson, and one at Dawson in Yukon. This item should to a large extent take the place of item 360 under Public Works, to be found at page 62 of the Estimates, which shows a vote of $277,000 for the Yukon telegraphic system. This item, ranging from $275,000 to $300,000, has appeared in the Estimates each year for the past twenty-three years. It has been a hardy annual, and while it is perfectly right that we should pass it this year, I think this should be positively its last appearance. The cost of the administration of
government of Yukon would be substantial, if only the amounts legitimately chargeable were included, but when very large items that should be charged elsewhere are charged to Yukon the apparent cost of administration of that territory is much greater than the actual cost.
The establishment and maintenance of the Yukon telegraph line has been a great boon to the people of that country. They are isolated as it is, but without the telegraph lines, particularly in winter, they would be cut off from the world. The line is often put out of business by storms in winter and by forest fires in summer, but it has always been patched up again and communication ultimately restored.
Probably nowhere is a daily telegraphic news service so much appreciated as in Yukon. Notwithstanding the period of contraction the Yukon has passed through, the enterprise and initiative of the proprietors and publishers of the daily paper at Dawson, the Daily News has always been such since the very early days of the gold rush that that paper has never missed an issue on a working day, in addition to which they have frequently published very creditable special editions, expending money very generously to give the public an admirable news service, because you cannot get telegraphic news up there without spending money. The people are solely dependent on that line and the paper to keep them in touch with the events of the day. In winter it takes over a month to get a letter to Dawson from eastern Canada. So the House will realize how important this line is not only for news service but for all business purposes.
The line has always cost a lot of money- much more than it should have cost. It was built on a most improvident and extravagant scale in 1900-twenty-three years ago- and it has been most expensively maintained ever since, but there is no longer any excuse for this service costing the country approximately $300,000 a year. There has been little excuse for the expenditure ever since wireless telegraphy came into practical use. What has been done by this vote to-night should have been done ten years ago. I will point out how a very great saving can be effected annually in connection with this northern telegraph line without impairing the service. In fact my suggestions will, in addition to saving about a quarter of a million dollars a year, materially improve the service.
I am going to give the House a few figures which I think will be interesting, though sometimes figures are not. My authority for these figures is the Auditor General's report
Supply-Interior

for the year ending March 31st, 1922-the latest report available-and Hansard of this year containing answers to questions as to the expense of the line. In that connection I would point out to the House and to the government not only the unfairness but, I think, the incorrectness of the government's method of keeping its accounts in connection with this very large expenditure. My attention was drawn to this apparent error in book-keeping by the answers given by the government last session to questions asked by the present Acting Minister of National Defence (Mr. Macdonald) as to the costs of administration of Yukon. The amounts stated were astonishing, and I have taken the trouble to examine and analyze the figures. In the first place let us consider the mileage on the land line. The main line in the Yukon territory is 511 miles in length, the branch lines 60 miles, making a total mileage of 571 miles; whereas the main line in British Columbia is 1,226 miles and the branch lines 1,491Y miles, or a total of 2,717| miles in British Columbia, which with the 571 miles in the Yukon territory gives a total of 3,288{ miles. So that the actual mileage of the line within the territory is not much more than one-fifth of the total. These branch lines extend between points in British Columbia having nothing whatever to do with the Yukon territory-no more to do with that territory than lines in Nova Scotia, yet the expense of them all is charged up to Yukon. For instance, the lines between Hazleton, Port Simpson and Prince Rupert, and between Williams lake and Quesnel Forks, Quesnel Forks and Barkerville, Williams lake and Bella Coola, have nothing whatever to 'do with Yukon.
The annual cost of maintaining that mile-*age within the Yukon territory for the main dine is $40,599, the cost of maintaing the branch lines is $1,660, or a total of $42,259; whereas the expense of maintaining the British Columbia portion of it is annually for the main line $142,588 and for the branch lines $79,471 or a total of $222,059, making with the $42,259 for Yukon a total for the year ending March 31st, 1922, of $264,318.


Thomas George McBride: Will the hon. member
give us the figures of the revenue received from the lines in the Yukon and in British Columbia respectively?


George Black: Yes, I can and will. The total expense for the year ending 31st March 1922 was, as I have said, $264,318. The amount voted for the year ending 31st March. 1923, was $287,900, and the amount voted this year $277,000. I say of those amounts the

proportions fairly chargeable to the Yukon territory are as follows:
Annual cost of maintenance:
Yukon main line	$40,599 83
Yukon branch lines	 1,659 90

And I say one-half of the annual cost of maintaining the main line in British Columbia is properly chargeable to Yukon, or $71,293.90 -in all, $113,553.63 should be charged to Yukon. The amounts fairly chargeable to British Columbia are:
Half cost of maintaining main line in B.C. $71,293 90 Branch lines in B.C	 79,471 76

So that at least $150,765 is annually charged to Yukon that should be charged to British Columbia. This has been going on for over twenty years. As a matter of fact the Dominion government has paid out in that time for British Columbia, and charged to Yukon in connection with the telegraph line, $3,467,509. The same applies to other federal services in Yukon. Take, for instance, the mail service, about a third of the total charged to Yukon should be charged to British Columbia and for international services-in connection with the mail service in the past twenty years they have charged up over a million and a quarter dollars that should not have been charged to Yukon at all.
Another aspect of this overland line is worth considering-that it parallels the Grand Trunk Pacific line in British Columbia, 1591 miles, which stretch costs annually $47,135 to keep up, and has each year since the Grand Trunk Pacific was built-^an absolute waste of money. There has not been the slightest excuse for that expenditure since the Grand Trunk Pacific line was built.
Now, as to revenues. The revenue from the Yukon telegraph system in the year ending 31st March 1922 was $23,279, at a cost of $42,259. That is, it cost almost two dollars for each dollar taken in on Yukon business. The revenue for the British Columbia business was $65,070 at a cost of $222,059. In other words it costs almost four dollars for each dollar taken in on British Columbia business. That is the remarkable state of facts.
But what should be done? I submit that the land line should be abandoned south of the station at Tagish in Yukon and a wireless station established at Whitehorse or Dawson in Yukon territory to connect with Prince Rupert, British Columbia, where they now have a wireless station; or to connect with the wireless at Fort Simpson, Northwest Terri-

Supply-Interior
tories, and McMurray, Alberta, to be established by the vote now before the committee. The land line should be extended to the silver camp at Mayo, Yukon Territory, or a wireless station should be established at this point, thereby at once creating a remunerative system.


Charles A. Stewart: We are going to bring down an appropriation for that in the Supplementaries this year.


George Black: In that connection
I would like to say that I have been making it my business to try to keep track of the government's plans. I have had very cordial co-operation from the officials of the Department of the Interior in the matter of their plans to lessen the cost of this public service.
It is proposed by this vote to establish three stations, at McMurray, Alberta; Simpson, Northwest Territories; and Dawson, Yukon Territory, respectively. In the meantime, in a direct line with these three stations, there has sprung up the mining camp at Mayo, which has no telegraphic communication at all; it is entirely isolated. Upon the matter being taken up with the Department of Public Works the situation so impressed the minister that he decided to put an item in the estimates of this year to extend the land line to the Mayo camp. But when it was found that the Department of the Interior had in view the establishing of these wireless stations, it was decided that a wireless station at Mayo would do all that a land line would do; that it would be less expensive and more efficient. Consequently, as the minister has stated to the committee, a vote is contemplated for the Supplementary Estimates which will also provide for a wireless station at Mayo.
I understand that the establishing of these wireless stations is being undertaken by the Department of National Defence in connection with its army work. That I think is a very fine idea; it is something of use that the Department of National Defence can put its people at. But we all know that in army matters they are supposed to "muddle through." I hope the new Acting Minster of National Defence will be able to inject into that department something like business methods. I have a letter here from the Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defence which would indicate that these business methods have not yet come to pass in that department. The original plan was to build the stations at McMurray, Alberta; Simpson, Northwest Territories; and Dawson, Yukon. Now, the stations at McMurray and Simpson are in the valley
of the Mackenzie river, separated by a great range of mountains from the station at Dawson on the Yukon river; there is no relation between the one and the other.
In conversation with officials of the Department of National Defence I found that their plan was to send one party forward to do this work, commencing at McMurray, journeying thence to Simpson and from there to Dawson. That trip would take two or three years. They could not possibly go across that chain of mountains and take their equipment. They might perhaps leave their bones on the way. This was their plan of procedure, instead of going about it in a businesslike way and sending two parties at the same time, one into the Mackenzie valley and the other up to Dawson and the Yukon, where they could put up their stations at Dawson and Mayo as separate enterprises. And now the Deputy Minister of National Defence informs me in his communication that, apparently, the department has undertaken more than it can do this season; that they will not be able to put in the four stations, and as the scheme first evolved was to put in the McMurray and Simpson stations this year they feel that they will have to proceed with those and let the stations in the Yukon valley, Dawson and Mayo, go until some other time. In other words, they are putting the cart before the horse, starting in the usual army method to "muddle through." I do hope that the Minister of the Interior will have sufficient influence with the Department of National Defence to have the matter reconsidered and that if any of the stations are to be dropped for this year, which I hope will not be the case, those in the Mackenzie valley will be dropped, because except as connecting stations for the purposes of the business originating at Dawson and Mayo, where the people are and where the business is transacted, these other stations are of no use at all. If they have no connections with these other points, Dawson and Mayo, there will be no business for them. Of course, the few people at McMurray and Simpson might listen to radio concerts from Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, but from a business standpoint, from the point of view of the public service, thos'e stations would be utterly useless. So I trust that the Minister of the Interior will endeavour to induce these army people to commence at the right end of the job.
Now by this establishment of wireless the government will get an increased revenue and will actually save very large sums of money. In the first place, they will cut off from the annual expense of maintaining that land line
Supply-Interior

no less a sum than $222,000, and the annual cost, instead of $264,000 as it was for the year ending March 31, 1922, will be approximately as follows: Cost of maintaining land line within Yukon as at present, $42,259; cost of extending land line to Mayo, or to establish a wireless there, and wireless at Dawson or Whitehorse, say, $50,000-which is a very liberal estimate-making a total of $92,259 instead of $264,319. There will be a saving of not less than $172,000 for the first year, allowing for construction. The annual expenditures thereafter will be approximately as follows: cost of maintaining land line in Yukon, $42,259; cost of maintaining land line to Mayo or wireless there and wireless at Whitehorse or Dawson, say $20,000 or a total of $64,259 per annum instead of $264,000, a saving of $200,000 a year, with a more efficient service and greater revenue. If we vote thi3 item of $55,000 and about $20,000 in the Supplementary Estimates to cover the cost of constructing the wireless station required at Mayo, during the ensuing years we will save about a quarter of a million dollars annually, and at the same time give a better service. I say this is too important a matter to be overlooked by the government. No question of politics intervenes to embarrass the government or hamper efficiency; it is a plain business proposition, an opportunity to save annually a quarter of a million dollars of public money. I submit that the suggestion is a very practical one; I doubt if the government has received a suggestion much more in the public interest in the course of considering supply this session. I would also like to impress on the government the importance of that inaccuracy or error in book-keeping and that by a more equitable distribution of the expenses of administration the real cost of administering that territory should appear in the public accounts. The impression has been created, and not without cause, that the administration of Yukon has cost a great deal. But there has been a big revenue from that territory, and having regard to the amounts of the annual grants to the provinces, I do not think that when the items are properly adjusted the cost of administration of Yukon will be found to be so very extravagant after all.


Charles A. Stewart: I would just like to say a word in reply to my hon. friend in reference to the construction of the wireless telegraph stations. I thoroughly agree with him. Our understanding was and is that all three stations would be constructed. Indeed, pressure was brought to bear upon us

early in the winter to come to a decision in the matter in order that they might buy the necessary supplies, because some of them it appeared had to be bought abroad. It was rather difficult because we had to take a chance on parliament voting the necessary supply, but we did take a chance purely in order that the work might be completed this year. My hon. friend can rest assured that anything I can do towards pressing for completion of the stations will be done.


George Black: I omitted to say that on speaking to the Acting Minister of National Defence this evening and calling his attention to the rather unbusinesslike proposal of his department he assured me he would look into the matter at once and endeavour to co-operate with the Department of the Interior.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: Does the Wrangel island vote come under any of these items?


Charles A. Stewart: No.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: Where can I find it?


Charles A. Stewart: There is no vote for Wrangel island.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: Do we own it or not?


Charles A. Stewart: I do not think we own it.


Mr. McMASTER:: Hear, hear.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: I am glad to hear it.


Charles A. Stewart: Mr. Stefans-son is very much interested in Wrangel island and he is bringing the matter to the attention of the British government.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I thought we were told last year that we owned it. Has there been any change in government policy with regard to Wrangel island? Is this not a case of what, we have we hold?


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Further Supplementary Estimates, 1922-23-North West Territories, explorations-further amount required (Governor General's warrant, January 15, 1923), $60,000.
Charles A. Stewart: This is the item of which I gave an explanation with respect to the expedition that went into northern waters last year.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The money has gone anyway.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Further Supplementary Estimates, 1922-23-Canadian National Parks-further amount required (Governor General's Warrants of October 9. 1922, and January 15, 1923), $57,000; to provide for balance of salary of Alfred Larocque, Assistant Power Development

Supply-Legislation
Engineer, Water Power branch, at the rate of $2,200 per annum from October 1, 1922, $60.
Henry Lumley Drayton: What is the reason, for that $57,000?


Charles A. Stewart: An amount of $22,000 is for settlement as a result of the arbitration proceedings in connection with Minette Hot Springs when the addition to the Banff national park was made into British Columbia. Private parties in England had secured a lease from the government of the Minette Hot Springs for the purpose of putting up a hotel, but inasmuch as we thought it wise to retain these springs action was taken by the government in order to secure them for the park. Arbitration proceedings resulted, and finally there was an adjustment of $22,000.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Who was the arbitrator?


Charles A. Stewart: I cannot say at the moment. Then there was an advance of $35,000 for the purpose of commencing work on the electrical plant. That should be added to the $150,000 that we voted in the regular estimates.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The electrical plant at Banff?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, those two items make the total.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It seems irregular to issue a Governor General's warrant under the circumstances. There was no emergency there.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Main Estimates-Department of the Interior- salaries, $1,502,982; contingencies, $115,000.
Henry Lumley Drayton: It seems to me this was one of those cases where we had a discussion that stood over.


Charles A. Stewart: There is
no change in the number of employees. There is nothing additional here except the statutory increases.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Perhaps that
was one of the complaints.


Charles A. Stewart: I have no
knowledge of any complaint. As this is the last item I have to take up-


Henry Lumley Drayton: You should be kept on then.


Charles A. Stewart: If there was any reasonable ground why we should not deal with this item now, if we had had an increase in staff-


Henry Lumley Drayton: It seems to me that this item stood for some purpose.


Charles A. Stewart: What happened was this: The item was called in mistake for the civil government estimate in connection with the Department of Immigration. The chairman called the item but I drew his attention to it and we went on with the civil government Immigration item.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Main Estimates-Legislation-Senate-salaries and contingent expenses, $162,040.
Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: This item is
as presented from the Senate. I think as a rule it goes through more or less formally. It shows a decrease this year.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Pensions-Mrs. Wm. McDougall, $1,200.
William Lyon Mackenzie King: There are a
few pensions on page 23 of the Main Estimates that parliament has been in the habit of voting annually to the persons named. They are the same as last year. These items were not called when Pensions were being dealt with the other evening.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
To provide for retiring allowances to former employees of the Department of Public Printing and Stationery, $55,000.
Henry Lumley Drayton: Has that matter not been exhausted? Was the reorganization not finished?


Mr. MURDOCK:: No. This amount will be required for the former employees of the Printing bureau who were retired prior to the passing of the Calder Act, for various periods from one to five years. Some of those periods have not expired yet.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will call the items that I think are non-contentious, and the other items will be held over.
To provide for the administration of the Business Profits War Tax Act, 1916, and the Income War Tax Act, 1917, and amendments. Appointments for the purpose and an additional salary of $4,000 for the Commissioner of Taxation may be made without reference to, and notwithstanding, the provisions of the Civil Service Act, $2,200,000.


Andrew Ross McMaster: What will the commissioner's salary be with this additional $4,000?


Henry Lumley Drayton: 

Item agreed to.
British Empire Exhibition, $500,000.


Andrew Ross McMaster: That is a very large sum. Is there any explanation?
Supply-Interior


Henry Lumley Drayton: Perhaps it had better stand.


Charles A. Stewart: I may say to my hon. friend that there was some discussion about this matter at the beginning of the session, and commitments were made with respect to it. The Australian government, the New Zealand government, and practically all the overseas dominions, are participating. The Australian government expects to spend over a million and a quarter, and the $500,000 will not anything like meet the expense for Canada, before we are through with this exhibition. This amount is simply for the construction of the building. In all probability, as far as we can judge now, when the total is all in, it will cost $850,000, but we are asking for this sum for the construction of the building.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Is the minister recommending that, with, our budget failing to balance by about $50,000,000, if not more, we should enter on a scheme of further expenditure?


Charles A. Stewart: All I can say in reply is that certain commitments were made in respect to this exhibition when it was discussed in its initial stages, I can say frankly that, it is a very heavy expenditure at this particular time, and it is questionable whether we should continue to participate in exhibitions of this character, but we found ourselves committed to this exhibition, and we found that the other overseas dominions were making heavy expenditures in connection with it. If we go into it, it appears to me we ought do so in a way commensurate with our standing as a dominion, or keep out of it. I do not believe we would be warranted in remaining out.


Andrew Ross McMaster: When were we committed to this?


Charles A. Stewart: At the discussion that took place in 1921, when the exhibition was first mooted. At that time it was intended to hold it in 1923. It has been delayed for a year. My hon. friend wdl remember that Colonel Belcher toured the dominions last year on behalf of this exhibition for the purpose of interesting the dominions and the states, that is the states included in the dominions, in the exhibition itself.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I do not think the hon. member is right if he looks upon this as a legacy. I think it is his own child, but it is probably the best child he has been able to produce. I do not know why he is apologizing for it. He may have a little red blood in

his being, and he may want to stand up for it. It is not anything left over; it is the result of the visit of Colonel Belcher.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: When the present government came into office, there was an undertaking, or what was virtually an undertaking that Canada would participate in the Empire exhibition. Colonel Belcher's tour was simply carrying out an understanding reached at the last conference of Prime Ministers in England.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The whole matter was entirely up in the air, in general; there was nothing specific or concrete. Canada was asked if there should be an exhibition, and we said we thought there should be. The whole thing was in the air. I do not know why my hon. friend is apologizing for the exhibition. There is nothing to be ashamed about in regard to it. I should have thought it was something the minister would say he believed was right, or else he was not going to go on with it. I believe he thinks it is right. If we go into it properly, if we are even going to have any proper understanding and to get any proper distribution of the business we require so much at the present time, particularly in view of the existing American tariff, this is the greatest hope, the best chance you have.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Supervision of government purchases and sales, including salary of L. R. La Fleche at $6,000, $25,000.
Henry Lumley Drayton: Stand.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: What are the particulars?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: This is to provide, just as the item reads, for the supervision of government purchases and sales. As my hon. friend is aware, there has been and is at the present time a Purchasing commission so called. As a matter of fact, the commission has never had more than one commissioner, Colonel La Fleche. He and his staff have to do with the obtaining of tenders on government contracts. As, however, the system operates at the present time, this commission acts as a body by itself, makes its report to myself as Prime Minister, and I certify whatever is sent to me in presenting matters to council to be passed by council. As a matter of fact, I have never felt that I had any real knowledge of what I was certifying to beyond the statement as sent to me by Colonel La Fleche. I think the system as it is working is anything but satisfactory. I proposed to my colleagues, and I think they are agreed, that a better supervision of government purchases would be obtained if a committee of

Supply-Purchasing Commission
council were appointed as a committee to supervise all government contracts and purchases, to which committee there should be attached a permanent secretary who, we propose, would be Colonel La Fleche himself, and that he should have associated with him such members of his staff as might be necessary to enaible them to have a supervision over all government contracts. I think that would be a more effective method of maintaining a responsible supervision of government contracts than the present system which leaves the whole matter to one head of a commission, who carries on his own inquiries without any minister being responsible for what is done.


Oliver Robert Gould: We find now that by this reorganization we save $47,000?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: This is not a reorganization; it is a painful contraction practised almost to the point of extinction as regards real use. At one time we had a commission which did the buying absolutely without the control of the ministers. From time to time departments have made inroads into that, until at the present time, as the Prime Minister says, instead of three men, some of them at least accustomed to making purchases and the like, we now have Colonel La Fleche looking after the matter by himself.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That was the position when we took office.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I think the others got out just after the election.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No, they got out long before.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I think they read some of the things said in this House beforehand.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I beg my hon. friend's pardon-


Henry Lumley Drayton: There is no secret about the attitude taken by my hon. friends in connection with the present commission. If any object is to be gained, it is quite easy to turn up Hansard. The fact is that the departments are now doing their own purchasing. The minister places his contract where he wants to place it. That is the fact to-day. If it is not the fact, I should like to be corrected. The ministers look after their own purchases now, I do not know just exactly


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Did my hon. friend say "now"?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No. I might say that ever since the Purchasing commission was established, certain departments of the government conducted their own purchases wholly irrespective of the commission. Since the present government has taken offce, virtually the same practice has been followed as was followed by the previous government. There is but one commissioner, and the different departments make use of him to the same extent as was done before.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Does the Post Office Department make purchases through this commission?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I cannot say at the moment positively, but my recollection is that the Post Office Department does when it has any considerable purchases to make.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes, when it has anything the minister thinks does not matter. Will my hon. friends say that the regular supplies in the Post Office Department, for example, are bought to-day through this commission?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will not be positive on that.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I suggested that this item might stand to be discussed. I am ready to discuss it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I would say that if there are any articles purchased by the Post Office Department that are not purchased by the commission, they will be purchased by public tender in a manner that is entirely regular.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My information is entirely to the contrary. It is that the articles have not been so purchased, and complaints have been made in connection with the department as to that. I suggest that the matter should stand until we have someone here who is looking after it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am prepared to look after it. I will get any information my hon. friend may wish.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I should like brought down to the House before this item is discussed, the advertisements for tenders for public supplies of the Post Office in the last year, the tenders received, the action taken by the commission, and when the commission first heard of the matter.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: All right.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Before we leave this item, may we look back to a time in the last parliament, when the government of the day
Supply-Purchasing Commission

wished to load upon this country with all its shackling powers a commission to purchase everything from brooms up to cars for the railroads; and I remember a brilliant speech made against it by the late Mr. Stewart, afterwards Minister of Railways in the government, of which my distinguished, learned and hon. friend (Sir Henry Drayton) was Minister of Finance. I remember with what bitter criticism from his own side of the House the proposal of this unlimited commissioning of sales was greeted, and I think perhaps that what the Prime Minister suggests is a step in the right direction. We are pleased to see that there is a reduction of some 847,000, and that hope is held out for even more efficient and economical administration. I recall, too, that in the course of that interesting debate it was pointed out by the late Mr. Stewart how much more efficient the number of purchasing agents in the different departments were than people who were brought from outside, and how the worship of machinery did not of necessity bring about that efficiency desired by the taxpayers.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: And the two bills were withdrawn at two consecutive sessions.


Henry Lumley Drayton: If it is a farce why continue the vote at all?


Ernest Lapointe: It was done by order in council without any right.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: From the little information I have it appears to me that the Purchasing commission acted without jurisdiction. In any event, it seems that they are not functioning to any great extent, so far as many departments are concerned. I am interested in what the Prime Minister says because I have been under the impression for some time, and I propose to give it some effect when the report on the Civil Service committee is submitted, that not only is it essential to have some central organizing body to do the purchasing, but that there be some factor which will co-ordinate the various departments of government in order to prevent any overlapping and overmanning. In that connection I may observe that the Treasury department of England is empowered with that special function. Our Treasury board in Canada has not now, apparently, the necessary statutory powers. It seemed to me that the Prime Minister might be called the general manager of the country and the one who should be charged with the duty of purchasing and also of co-ordinating the departments of government, and that there should be an expert employed by him to look after 
both these functions. I think it is desirable, and much money would be saved in both directions. It is an urgent requirement.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: What my hon. friend has just expressed conveys better than my own words could what I have in mind in the proposal in view in this matter. There is in regard to appointments and different increases in the public service a treasury board before which all these various appointments and promotions have to go, apart from the Civil Service Commission. There is attached to that board an officer of the Department of Finance, whose business it is carefully to go over all appointments to see, so far as the different departments are concerned, that they are all working on a proper basis. The arrangement I am proposing is that in connection with government contracts there shall be a similar body composed of ministers who will correspond to the Treasury board; and similarly attached to that body there shall be a permanent official to be its secretary, a man of experience, with such staff as he may require, who will carefully review all government purchases and contracts and keep the Prime Minister informed on matters that are pertinent thereto. Then when various contracts in the form of orders in council come before the Prime Minister he will be in a position to inform his colleagues of precisely the position in which the matters stand. At the present time, under the arrangement that has been in existence, a recommendation comes to Council and the Prime Minister has to put his signature to it as a matter of course. He has to take the entire responsibility without having any kind of responsible supervision.


George Newcombe Gordon: Carried'


Henry Lumley Drayton: No, stand. I understand that the Prime Minister is going to give me some information as to one department. What the member for Calgary (Mr. Shaw) says is absolutely right. I do not know why there is any beating about the bush. Speaking generally, the departments to-day do not pay the slightest attention to the Purchasing commission.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That is not correct; he did not say that.


Henry Lumley Drayton: That is what I understood him to say, and I understood the Prime Minister to concur in the statement.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: He said that the commission was not functioning.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then the Prime Minister does not concur in what the hon.

Supply-National Safety League
member says, and we get back to where we were before. The Prime Minister, then, will give a list to-morrow of all requirements of the Post Office, tenders, amounts paid, and so forth.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Are you allowing the item to pass?


Henry Lumley Drayton: No.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Very well, we shall hold it.


James Murdock: The hon. member knows that all stationery for the Post Office is purchased through the Stationery branch of the Printing bureau.


Henry Lumley Drayton: That is another case in which the commission has nothing to do with it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That course has always been followed ever since the commission was created.
Item stands.
Canadian National Safety League, $25,000.


Oliver Robert Gould: This is a new item. The committee would like to have it explained.


James Murdock: The Canadian National Safety League is a body of which Major-General Sir John M. Gibson is president, the general manager being Mr. J. F. H. Wyse. For a number of years there has been an Ontario Safety League. To be exact, it has been existence for about nine years, and 13 said to have done splendid work. It has received some assistance from the Ontario government.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Safety in what regard?


James Murdock: Safety from industrial cr other accidents.


Arthur Meighen: From political catastrophe too?


James Murdock: No-


Joseph Tweed Shaw: The league will be needed shortly in Ontario.


James Murdock: -otherwise my right hon. friend would have been more fortunate in 1921. The League in Ontario has been doing accident prevention work for some years throughout the entire province, and the statistics for the city of Toronto are particularly interesting. The ninth year of safety work was completed in 1922 with sixty fatalities fewer than in 1913, the year immediately before the league started work, in spite of an increase in population of 91,000
with its proportionate increase in industrial hazards and an increase of 32.000 in automotive vehicles. There has been a saving of 759 lives in the nine years of safety work and this is all the more remarkable in view of the large increase in the number of such vehicles. The proposal has been to establish a Canadian National Safety First League to inaugurate and carry on a safety first campaign throughout the length and breadth of Canada. Not with just the amount of money that is here voted, but with this assistance and other contributions and resources which the Canadian National Safety League is to secure, it is believed that the work will be very effective in saving Canadian lives and limbs. That, briefly, is the intent of the vote. Last year there were 1,107 fatal accidents in Canada, or an increase of 185 over the preceding year, which would appear to indicate urgent necessity for safety first education.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: Who is the president of this league?


James Murdock: Sir John Gibson. Mr. Wyse is general manager.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: What organization have
they in the province of New Brunswick?


James Murdock: I think New Brunswick is one of the provinces in which the league proposes to get under way a safety first campaign this year.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Mr. Chairman, I must ask the government what method is pursued in establishing this list of what might be called grants in aid? Most of these are excellent societies. The society for preventing people from being killed by automobiles or other accidents is no doubt very meritorious. But is it the duty of the federal government to pick out this, that and another society and give them grants, while there are scores of other societies just as worthy which do not receive any aid from the state? Unless the state proposes to help all meritorious societies with altruistic motives which operate to the benefit of the public-and I do not doubt that most of these societies do so operate-then I think it is poor legislation to favour them. It looks to me as if a friend of whatever administration may be in power has some pet society, and he comes and asks for a grant in aid, and sometimes he gets it. That is one point I want to make.
The other point is the utter disproportion of the amounts that are granted. Here is the Victorian Order of Nurses, one of the very best orders that we have in the country.

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I know recently there broke out in a littls village in my riding the terrible plague of typhoid. The Victorian Order of Nurses went on the scene at the beginning and established hospitals, and did real national service. They get $5,000. Then comes along an Alpine club for the purpose of encouraging climbing in the mountains of Alberta. One would think that that alone would be sufficiently attractive without any aid, but the club receives $5,000. I protested against that time after time when I was in opposition-and I suppose when I am in opposition again I could protest with just the same effect. Then we have other societies, no doubt good in their way. But my submission to the committee is that it is not the business of the state to operate certain specific charitable societies. If it is the duty of the state to operate charitable societies in general, then there should be a general scheme. This giving small donations or large to this or that particular society is unsound legislation and should be stopped. When we have such a tremendous deficit I certainly think it is a mistake to increase the list of these favoured societies. Now, $25,000 for helping people to look after themselves so they will not be run over by automobiles is, I think, far too .arge a sum. I do not doubt it is a good society, but I do not think it is the duty of a state which has the deficit we have to go in debt to the extent of another $25,000 for this aid. If the government feels this is such a society that it should be bonused, then I certainly protest against its being bonused five times as much as the Victorian Order of Nurses.


Mr. MARLER:: The hon. member for
Brome (Mr. McMaster) has very largely and very correctly expressed my own ideas on this particular subject. This is an entirely new vote. To my certain knowledge the Victorian Order of Nurses has pressed the government for a larger vote. The Victorian Order of Nurses is an organization extending over the whole Dominion and doing most excellent work, but notwithstanding that it is given precisely the same grant as last year. Another national organization is the Boy Scouts-badly in need of money; their grant is not increased. Another national organization is the Girl Guides; their grant is not increased. Why, therefore, when an entirely new society comes along it is given a grant of $25,000, while these and other societies throughout Canada of a national and educational nature and of a character which we need in this country are overlooked, I do not understand. Some time ago I approached the government with a view of allowing de-

ductions under income tax statements for grants or donations to educational and charitable institutions, but I was met with the rejoinder: We cannot do it, we need money in the worst way. Notwithstanding that, when the Estimates come down we find an entirely new vote of $25,000. I protest vigorously against this vote, I do not think it should be granted. But if votes of this description are to be granted, the votes of institutions which we know of and which have done good work for many years should be increased instead of new votes being added to the list.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Chairman, it is quite true, as the hon. member for Brome has said, that in regard to many of these grants to particular organizations there is a certain element of chance; that is to say, the government is made aware of their needs, and naturally such action as the government takes is based upon the information it receives. But I think it is only fair to say that every one of these grants is based upon the merits of the organizations as presented to the government and in the light of the conditions and circumstances at the time. I think if my hon. friend who has just spoken (Mr. Marler) will refer to some of the earlier grants made to one or two of the organizations which he has mentioned, he will find the amounts may have been larger in order to help the organization, and what are now being given are contributions after the organization had become well established and well supported throughout the country. This is a new organization, but it is doing a class of work which has come to be recognized as of the utmost importance in the conservation of human life. It is true that the work in Canada is in its infancy, but if my hon. friend will take account of what has been done in the United States by the safety first organization that has carried its propaganda throughout all the states, he will find not only that hundreds of thousands of dollars have been saved to the nation, but that many hundreds, even thousands, of human lives have been saved through the greater precautions taken by the people to safeguard themselves against accident. Anyone travelling through the United States cannot but be impressed by the warnings placarded at almost every turn, designed to instil into all the people the necessity of guarding against accident.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Would the Prime Minister say whether the federal government of the United States bonuses this very excellent society?

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William Lyon Mackenzie King: I cannot give . my hon. friend an answer at the moment, but whether they do or do not, I would say it is essentially work of a national character and in the national interest, and that if some private agency did not take it up, the government itself ought to do so. The conservation of natural resources is an important work of the government service, but I think the greatest of all the resources of a country are its human resources, and the conservation of human resources is an important part of the government's work. I believe a great deal can be done in the saving of life and the preventing of accident throughout the country by well-organized propaganda along the lines of safety first. It is not work that the government, perhaps, is as well organized to carry on as a private organization might be, but where a private organization is established with a promise of doing efficient work and rendering service to the public, and where the work is of national interest, the government ought to give it some aid. I would go further and say that I think the government should not undertake any work which can be carried on by private organizations and which it is in the interest of the state should be undertaken. But where a private organization of itself is not able to carry on efficiently the work that is in the national interest, and if that work can be made efficient through government aid, I believe it is economical in the end to supplement that private effort rather than institute the work as a federal enterprise. It is in that spirit that the government has sought to give this assistance to a work the object of which is to conserve human resources, to prevent accident and injury to life and limb.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: No one would object to anything that is of a philanthropic or generally useful character; at the same time I think we ought to give just a little attention to the objects that this institution is said to have in view and the methods by which it is supposed to carry them out. In most of the provinces we have what are known as factory acts, which make very definite and useful provisions to guard against accident in industrial employment. As to the automobiles about which so much has been said, we have in every province more or less rigid-generally a very rigid-automobile law; and the criminal law of this country goes so far as to provide that if a man drives a motor car while intoxicated he may be subject to imprisonment without the option of a fine. All these things are effective; what, then, is left for an institution of this kind to do? Is it to regulate traffic on the railways? Why, every railway-I believe
the National Railway does it; I am sure the Canadian Pacific Railway does it-gives special attention to promoting conditions of safety. We have all these agencies both legislative and private, working in the direction of safety first, and before we are asked to vote $25,000, or even $5,000, we ought to have a much clearer designation of the means by which this society will operate or the results that it is likely to produce. We have simply been asked to vote $25,000 on the strength of the names of a few people who are said to have an organization in Ontario. So far as any statement submitted to this committee is concerned, I would not say that the existence of that organization has resulted in an increased slaughter of one hundred or more, but the slaughter has increased in spite of its existence, and that is not a very wonderful recommendation for an organization which is operating in that very province.


James Murdock: The hon. gentleman is mistaken-that increase was in all Canada, not in Ontario alone.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: Then we were not given statistics for Ontario where we were told such beneficial results were being produced by this organization. In other words, we have not been given one single, genuine piece of information upon which to determine our vote upon this subject. I know where this whole thing begins and I know where it ends. You will find the same conditions Existing in practically every municipal organization organization throughout the country.


James Murdock: Will the hon. gentleman pardon me? I said that 759 lives had been saved in Ontario during the past nine years as the result of the work of the Ontario Safety League. The increase of deaths from accident in Canada was 185 during last year alone, due to the fact that no safety first organization is operating in every part of the country as it is in Ontario, resulting in the saving of lives.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: I am sorry I entirely misapprehended the remarks of the minister; I think I have got it straight now. But by what system of investigation or of statistical record can the number of lives that have been saved be determined? I would say there are several million people in Canada who have not been slaughtered by any device known to modern science and I do not know that you can attribute their safety to any particular organization. Now, the point I want to make is this: A few well-meaning, and praiseworthy people in the community get together. They

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have a definite and a desirable object, for the purposes of which they subscribe their own money. Sometimes it requires the rental or erection of a building, the employment of a staff, the organization of agencies to carry out their philanthropic work. They do it; they do it well, and it is a good thing for the country, a good thing for every community that that praiseworthy spirit exists. But after a while even the best people become a bit weary of well doing. The effort slackens; they do not want to see their pet child altogether deserted, so they turn to the nearest thing at hand, the municipal organization, and they ask for a grant. A little money is given; the thing is got on a kind of public footing; later a larger grant is given, and by and by the whole institution is shouldered by the municipality. That is not fancy; it is not a mere gathering of statistics, it is an absolute fact. It occurs in community after community throughout the length and breadth of this continent; it is a prevailing public tendency. This organization has succeeded very early in impressing not merely the municipality but the federal government that it is no longer capable of carrying on its work through its own efforts; it comes here as an easy means of obtaining some money. It may be all right to grant the money, but before we do I think we ought to have some clear statement as to the nature of the organization. We do not know yet whether it is something that operates by putting out signs on highways warning people to keep out of the road of automobiles. It may be that it puts up these signs we see all over the country "Dodge Brothers Car." I have never been able to understand that. I do not understand why it should not be necessary to dodge sister's car, dodge father's car or dodge anybody else's car. I do not see why it should be limited to dodging brother's car. I would like to know whether this organization has been operating along that particular line. I want to know whether it is by signs, by teaching in the schools, by lectures in the churches or what particular means they are taking. Do they form classes like the St. John's Ambulance Association? I want to know the particular method by which they save the lives of people. We have not been given one word except certain statistics. I do not know yet whether they operate within the factories of my own province of New Brunswick, whether they supplant the factory inspector and the Factory Act. I do not know whether they render useless certain provisions in our Workmen's Compensation Act. I do not know a thing that has been done by this organiza-
tion. I am not throwing cold wrater on it, I am not sneering at it, I am only referring to the inconsequent way in which this committee is invited to vote $25,000 without being told how it is going to be spent or being shown the connection between the expenditure of that money and the result which it is said is to be produced. Now perhaps I have invited, not reprisals I hope, but the distribution of some essential information.


James Murdock: It may be possible as some hon. gentlemen have intimated, that this is not a legitimate function for the federal government to participate in, or for it even to care as I understood some hon. gentlemen to intimate whether people are careless and indifferent about protecting their own lives and limbs and those of others. The hon. member for Brome inquired about the United States in this connection. I might say that during the war period the United States had control of the railroads and one of the first things it did was to place the most effective, nation-wide, safety first system on the railroads of the United States. It is probably the best system that has ever been used in any country in the world, and it worked with wonderfully beneficial effects in the saving of life and limb.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: I would ask my hon. friend if the railroad systems of this country are not doing that very thing now.


James Murdock: I was coming to that. Canada has 22,000 miles of nationally-owned railroads now. Some gentlemen are talking about the expenditure of $25,000 on this particular item. I want to say as a man who has been a railroad man for more than thirty years that I think if we could inaugurate the real spirit and a recognition of safety first among the great majority of the railroad men in Canada who have to work on the Canadian National railways we would be amply repaid for this proposed expenditure.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: What I want to get at is this: Is it part of this organization's work to teach the railway men of the Canadian National Railway System the principles of safety first? Does that come within what this money is being spent for?


James Murdock: If my hon. friend would only possess his soul in patience-


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: It is five minutes to one.


James Murdock: -I would try and give him the information I think he wants. This is not for the special and particular purpose of inaugurating on the Canadian National railways the safety first movement, but it is for the purpose of inaugurating in each of the

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provinces outside of Ontario among the responsible citizens in all walks of life a safety first organization that will keep before the public, including the railroad men, the necessity of safety first, to co-operate with such safety first organizations as are on the Canadian Pacific, on the Canadian National and as are in the various industrial concerns in New Brunswick and the other provinces in Canada.
jet us see what accidents there were in Canada last year; 1,107 fatal accidents can be divided as follows; 141 deaths were recorded on the steam railways. I know something about how some of these deaths occur.
It is just from sheer, absolute
1 a.m. carelessness. Might I give an example? You all remember the dajrs when there was the link and pin coupler on the railroads, and when the brakemen used to connect the cars by inserting the link in the drawbar and then putting in the pin. To-day they have the automatic coupler, and what do we find? It might be your boy or mine, twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, young and enthusiastic, careless and carefree. He goes on the road and sees two cars coming together with the alignment of the drawbars not exactly as it should be. What do we find? Only too often as the records of the railroad organizations and of the railway commission will show he puts up his foot and kicks the drawbar over with the result that only too often he loses his leg, or possibly he is dragged under and killed. We want a campaign of safety first for that young fellow and the young fellow who is taking the same kind of unnecessary chances in the lumbering industry. We want to educate him by some kind of campaign that will prevent him from doing that kind of thing. We are willing to spend $25,000 as it were on immigration, to save to this country 185 valued citizens to work on the farms and in the factories of Canada each year. I am sure that it would be preferable to put up that amount of money in the protection of the lives of the citizens who are here, protecting them against themselves. Not one cent of this money is to be used for any purpose in Ontario. The sum of $10,000 has been voted by the Ontario government to the Ontario Safety league for the past four or five years, and the results speak for themselves, and only that my hon. friend has referred to the lateness of the hour I could read the records and show just what has been accomplished in Ontario in nine years, apparently by this Ontario safety first movement.
The figures, if my hon. friend had the time and opportunity to go into them, would show conclusively that the other provinces need the nucleus of a responsible safety first organization that will gather to it those interested in the railroads, in the lumbering industry and in the factories of the provinces to work together with the common end in view of having people take the first necessary precaution to save their own life and limbs. That is the campaign that is proposed to be conducted.
Last year 71 deaths occurred on steam railways through people being struck. Surely some of those deaths might have been prevented with just a little reasonable recognition by the victims of their responsibilities to themselves and their families and their country. By perhaps just a little more care they might have been saved. Some of them were run over and crushed; 24 were due to collisions; 24 to falls from cars or engines; all these last were among railroad men.
In the mining, smelting and quarrying group 168 deaths were recorded, of which 97 occurred in coal mining. We all know the necessity for safety first in those industries. Falls of rocks and cave-ins accounted for 65 deaths. 37 deaths were due to explosions and 19 to mine and quarry cars. In the manufacturing industry there were 159 deaths reported, 43 of which occurred in saw and planing mills, and 39 in iron and steel mills. In the saw and planing mills 20 deaths were due to machinery and 9 to flying objects. In lumbering there were 147 deaths reported of which 36 were due to falling trees and 37 to drowning. In the construction group there were 145 deaths, 40 of which were due to falls and 32 to falling objects. Of the total of deaths in industry for the year, explosive substances were responsible for 58 and electric currents for 41.
And, Mr. Chairman, we talked here at considerable length abotit forest conservation. Here we have $25,000 proposed for the conservation of human life and limb. We have talked about forest conservation in this House and very properly so, and I would not wonder if we will talk in this House still more about forest conservation. Shall we hold up our hands and say "Hands off, it is none of our business, pass it on to the big industries, and to the railroads and say that we will not expend $25,000 for the purpose of inaugurating in the provinces of Canada a real honest-to-goodness safety-first movement that will assist in preventing accidents with consequent loss of limbs, or death, to Canadian citizens whom we have here, and want to keep here for the

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benefit of Canada. That is what there is in this proposal.


Mr. HUMPHREY:: In what way are we
going to bring this propaganda directly to the attention of the working men whom the minister speaks about?


James Murdock: By the formation of
these safety-first organizations in various towns. The Canadian National Safety League has a membership in the following places; Calgary, Edmonton, Granby, Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, Regina, Shawinigan Falls, St. Jerome, Three Rivers, St. John, Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and other places. There is a general safety-first organization in all those cities. The proposal is to extend that work.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: By lectures and signs?


James Murdock: By education, by getting together those who are really interested in life and limb conservation to work under the direction of the safety-first organizations.


Levi William Humphrey: Does the minister
really and truly believe that he can get the railroad men throughout the length and breadth of Canada to come and attend these different lectures which will be given on behalf of this safety-first league?


James Murdock: I think that it would
probably be difficult to do so. I would imagine that this Canadian National Safety League would undertake the work in co-operation with other organizations. For example, the 'Canadian Pacific Railway has a safety-first organization and the Canadian National also has such an organization. I presume that in such towns as Moose Jaw and Saskatoon, where both the Canadian Pacific and Cana-dain National to-day have safety first organizations, those organizations would be co-operating with the central safety-first organizations in those particular towns. In other words, they would convey information to each other and co-operate in various ways. I do not know just what the plan might be, but considering the remarkable success which the figures show in Ontario, and the increase of 155 last year in fatal accidents in Canada, I cannot help but feel insistent that there is necessity for a campaign in other provinces, similar to that which has appeared to do such good work in Ontario.


Oliver Robert Gould: How many deaths were there from automobile fatalities?


James Murdock: I am afraid I have not got the exact figures for the automobile fatalities, but that is very important, and there is necessity for a safety-first movement of some kind, even amongst automobile drivers.


Mr. IRVINE:: Does the hon. minister think that the prohibitionists in Ontario will permit him to claim that all this good work in saving life is due to this movement?


James Murdock: The way in which prohibition works only too often I am sorry to say in Ontario-and I am just giving this as my opinion in answer to the hon. member-


Andrew Ross McMaster: Not officially?


James Murdock: No, but it may help to cause accidents rather than to prevent them, I am afraid.


William Irvine: After the very exhaustive and comprehensive interpretation of the item given by the Minister of Labour, I am sure the government will agree to the suggestion that the whole matter be dropped.


Thomas George McBride: The minister says he really does not know how the system will work out, and I quite agree with him. From what I have heard him say, I do not think he knows, and I think the House is entitled to know how it will work out before we invest the money of this country, to the extent of 825,000, in the proposition.


Oliver Robert Gould: I believe this will work out so that there will be overlapping. The provinces have inaugurated a system. In the first remarks offered by the Minister of Labour he cited Toronto. I claim that either Ontario, as a province, or the city of Toronto, should be responsible for the safety-first expenditure in the city of Toronto. I would be more prepared to support the $25,000 vote if it were used for the purpose of apprehending some of the speed artists in Ottawa and other cities. These automobile artists have persuaded the government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to provide good roads through the country, so that they may travel on these roads, and have signs placed on them, but I must be on the lookout, and prepared to step out of the way of these speedsters. They create conditions which enable them to sweep along and kill many people in the country. Signs are placed on the road and we are supposed to get out of the way. That is the condition at the present time. I do not approve of spending $25,000 for the purpose of having signs placed up on these roads, which mean that we have to hop out of the way of the individual who comes along in his automobile and forgets to blow his horn. If this money were to be expended in apprehending some of these individuals who drive through the country and do not blow their horns, I would support it.

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Mr. HAMMELL:: Did you ever drive a
motor car in the city or in the country either.


Oliver Robert Gould: Yes.


William James Hammell: Nine-tenths of the accidents are not due to the drivers of automobiles in this country. I want to endorse this vote. I have had several years' experience in driving motor cars in city, town and country, and I can vouch for the fact that you cannot drive down the easy-going streets of Ottawa without having several hair-raising experiences-do not laugh about it, because I will take some hon. members down and show them how people dodge about, cross the streets at intersections and run in front of automobiles.


Robert Forke: It is the hair we want to see.


William James Hammell: I have never had the
misfortune so far, and I hope never to have it. But I can tell hon. gentlemen that the need is very great to educate the people of all the towns and cities of this country as to how they should act. It is at present almost impossible to avoid an accident, and I heartily endorse this appropriation.


James Murdock: The hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. McBride) asked for certain information. I did not give it just out of consideration for the hon. member for St. John City (Mr. Baxter) who referred to the lateness of the hour. This is a memorandum which my hon. friend should have, which explains the obligations and the purposes of this organization:
The Canadian National Safety League was incorporated in 1918 by Dominion charter, and without share capital. Its objects are:-
1.	To safeguard and protect the public, especially children from the dangers of automobiles, railroads, street railways and all forms of vehicular traffic on the public highways in the Dominion of Canada.
2.	To educate the public through schools, churches, literature and all channels of publicity upon matters pertinent to public safety.


Thomas George McBride: How are you going to do that?


Mr. MURDOCK (reading):: 3.	To minimize the injuring and killing of persons employed in stores, factories, workshops and all departments of industrial and mercantile activity, by instilling into the minds of employer and employee the full meaning of "Safety Always".
4.	To co-operate, so far as lies in the power of the league, in preventing the useless destruction of life and property by fire.
5.	To advocate and secure possible remedies and preventives and to assist in the enactment and enforcement of ordinances requisite to carry out the foregoing by means of-
(a)	Bulletins, education, or any other method of propaganda that may from time to time be considered advisable.
(b)	To be the clearing house of all information, bulletin service, safety films and all literature bearing on accident prevention work, issued under arrangements to the various provincial leagues.
The operations of the corporation to be carried on throughout Canada.
Those are the purposes briefly.


Levi William Humphrey: I did not understand the Minister of Labour to say that this society would make a point of co-operating with railroad companies.


James Murdock: I should say, as my view, they would do that.


Levi William Humphrey: That was the minister's own view.


James Murdock: Yes. This is their statement:
To co-operate, so far as lies in the power of the league in preventing the useless destruction of life and property.
The whole proposal is to bring about cooperative arrangement between all who are interested in this important life and limb conservation work.


Levi William Humphrey: I quite understand the remarks of the minister in that respect, that it is their aim and object to do that; but I am a little concerned whether it will be possible or not to bring about that state of co-operation between the societies and the different railway corporations and their employees.


James Murdock: The hon. member is probably right.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I say just one word further in regard to this item? When it is apparent to members of the committee that the object the government had in view in giving this support was that of helping an organization that was already established, that had been doing effective work in one province over a period of five years, which work had come to be generally recognized as a great human service, to organize similar classes of work in all the provinces of the Dominion, so that this "safety first" movement would receive the cumulative effect of all the provinces of the Dominion working together in a great educational campaign in a variety of forms towards furthering "safety first," probably the committee will be willing to let the item pass without further discussion. It is not proposed at all that this should be an annual grant to this par-

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ticular organization. It is simply to enable an organization, which has made good in one province and which has shown its capacity to do effective work, to get similar organizations or branches formed in all the provinces of the Dominion, so that there will be a nation-wide "safety first" organization carrying on conservation work in human life and limb in all the provinces.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: One would naturally concur in the view expressed by the Prime Minister as to the desirability of carrying out the objects of this society, but we have heard the explanation of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Murdock). We heard first his verbal explanation that this was practically to do the work of "safety first" on the railways and particularly amongst railway men.


James Murdock: My hon. friend is mistaken.


John Babington Macaulay Baxter: That was mentioned. I thought that was pretty well covered by the Canadian Pacific agency and the Canadian National must have some similar organization. But when he came to read the detailed statement of the objects of the society, we found that the railway men were not specially mentioned; that they came only under a very general class, and that the primary object put forward was the protection of the people themselves from vehicular traffic. It is either the one thing or the other that is the chief point. The hon. member who asked: How are they going to do that? has struck about the right note. We have not got anything very definite about that yet. I can understand that the organization will spend a good deal of money for secretaries and all that sort of thing in the different provinces. That is very easy to do, and it does not produce very much result. The Prime Minister says that there have been good results in one province. Why not, before you ask us to pass an item of this size and character in this committee, give us a statement of just what has been done in that province. I do not know yet and nobody in this House does: or if they do, they have kept the knowledge very well to themselves. We can prove almost anything by statistics. I do not know whether the Minister of Labour is familiar with the Clemens' tables in regard to the place of death. I do not know whether he has the tables prepared by Samuel L. Clemens, who many years ago compiled statistics on the subject. I forget the figures, but Mark Twain pointed out that the most dangerous place in the world was a man's own bed, because more people die in bed than anywhere

else. That is quite in keeping with the nebulous character of the information that we have been able to elucidate in regard to this item. Perhaps this is an item to keep men out of bed in order that they may preserve their lives. If so, it has served its purpose admirably well.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Progress reported.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 1.25 a.m. (Friday).
Friday, June 15, 1923