1923-04-13

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the Honour to inform the House that I have received the following letter:
Ottawa, April 13, 1923.
Sir,-I have the honour to inform you that the Right Hon. Sir Louis Davies, K.C.M.G., acting as Deputy of
Maple Products

the Governor General will proceed to the Senate Chamber this afternoon at four o'clock for the purpose of giving the royal assent to certain bills.
A. F. Sladen,
Governor General's Secretary.



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (Calgary East):: I should like to ask the government if they would consider permitting me to move the second reading of my bill on capital punishment before the end of the present session.
I urge this request on the ground that on a previous occasion when the bill was called,
I held it at the request of the Minister of Justice (Sir Lomer Gouin).


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: I should like to have a word with the Minister of Justice before making a reply to my hon. friend. As soon as I have had that opportunity, I will give my hon. friend an answer.



HON. D. D. MACKENZIE APPOINTMENT TO THE BENCH

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: Yesterday the Prime
Mininster declined to give the House any information as to retirements from the government. The statement persists in the press that the Solicitor General has retired and been appointed to the Bench. Why is not the House so informed?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am very sorry that my right hon. friend uses the word "declined". I had no intention of declining to give any information.


Arthur Meighen: I asked it twice.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I misunderstood my right hon. friend. I beg his pardon. The former Solicitor General has retired. He has been appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. That is the only retirement that there has been.


Mr. BUREAU:: His resignation was read in the House yesterday. The right hon. member was not present.
MAPLE PRODUCTS	*
On the Orders of the Day:


Mr. ANDREW McMASTER (Brome):: I wish to bring the attention of the government to matters regarding the maple sugar industry which are d'actualite in our province.


Jacques Bureau: Very well.


Andrew Ross McMaster: The first is that in view' of the low price of the article and the high price of firewood, maple trees are being cut down when they really should remain to be tapped. The association does not ask for the expenditure of money, on which fact they are to be congratulated, but merely that an educational campaign should be inaugurated, no doubt by the Department of Agriculture, to show the unwisdom of such proceeding. The second matter in connection with the same industry is that the Association of Maple Sugar and Syrup Producers complain that there are many infractions of the law at this time, and they would like to see the government move in the direction of a more exacting administration of the act under which maple sugar and maple syrup are administered.


Jacques Bureau: The Pure Foods Act.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Yes, and as we now have a new Solicitor General, I think it is unnecessary to add much more, for a new broom sweeps clean.


Hon. H. S. BELAND (Translation):: In answer to the first remarks made to the House by my hon. friend the member for Brome (Mr. McMaster) I wish to state that the present government has already taken the necessary measures to advertise the merit of products which are known as maple syrup and sugar. Last year an exhibition was held at Beauceville.


Andrew Ross McMaster: In what county is Beauceville to be found?


Henri Sévérin Béland: In Beauce. This exhibition of maple products was generously subsidized by my hon. friend the Minister of Agriculture. I have not heard it said that the producers of Brome county complained that prices of maple sugar were so depressed that this industry was no longer remunerative. I must however, add that the maple products of Beauce county are far superior to those of Brome county.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. I think that the hon. minister should not boost the county of Beauce to the detriment of the county of Brome.


Henri Sévérin Béland: At all events, Mr. Speaker, taking a serious view of the matter, my hon. friend may rest assured that the Health department is taking all the necessary means to ensure a strict application of the act, so as to guarantee the purity of these products. Moreover, this question has

Supply-Civil Service Bonus
already been the subject of serious consideration by the House and all the hon. members are of the opinion that this industry should have the benefit of the government's entire co-operation.



CIVIL SERVICE BONUS

[Stage Direction]
The House in Committee of Supply, Mr. Gordon in the chair.
Provisional bonus allowance for the inside and outside services of the Civil Service, to be paid to such persons and classes of persons, in such amounts and at such times as the Governor in Council may determine, $5,500,000.
Hon. W. S. FIELDING (Minister of Finance) :: I would ask the attention of the committee to item 435, being a supplementary estimate to provide for the bonus to civil servants. It is just one item, and as there is a great deal of anxiety on the part of civil servants as to when it will be carried, I am going to ask the committee to assent to it now before we take up the estimates of my hon. friend the Acting Postmaster General (Mr. Graham).


Mr. HANSON:: Has the government given any consideration to the question of making permanent the bonus that is at present paid to civil servants of the lower classes? I have had a great many requests from members of the outside service particularly asking me to support a resolution of that character. I have not so far arrived at any conclusion on the subject and I think there should be a declaration of policy from the government.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The government has not felt that the present is an opportune time to consider any final revision of salaries, largely for the reason that this year there have been exceptional conditions affecting the cost of living, such for example as the high price of coal which obtained last year. The government thought that under the circumstances it would be advisable to continue the bonus as paid last year, but during the recess which will follow after this session the whole question of the revision of salaries of civil servants will be taken into consideration.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Then the government has no policy on the subject?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That is the policy.


Arthur Meighen: This is the same bonus as given last year and two years ago?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes.


Arthur Meighen: It is a cost of living bonus?	.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It is not quite the same as that which was given two years ago. The bonus paid last year was similiar to that of the previous year, with certain exceptions which were mentioned at the time; but this year it is the same as last year's.


Arthur Meighen: It is as much as it was two years ago?


William Stevens Fielding: Yes.


Arthur Meighen: Does not the government think it would be a great deal better to reduce the cost of living and thereby get rid of the bonus?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That is what
we are trying to do.


Arthur Meighen: I hope the government
is satisfied with its progress-


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Oh yes.


Arthur Meighen: -in reducing the cost
of living.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It is coming
down.


Arthur Meighen: The government's own
records show it is up going. The government in its struggle to go forward is apparently going back.


William Stevens Fielding: Every day in every
way-


Sir HENRY DRAYTON:: You are getting worse.


Jacques Bureau: We are getting better.


William Irvine: Is it a fact that civil
servants with dependents receive a larger salary than those without dependents?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend says "salary;" no doubt he means the bonus which we are now discussing. If he is referring to the bonus, it is true that civil servants having dependents are entitled to a larger bonus than those without dependents.


William Irvine: This applies, I take it, only to civil servants whose dependents are in Canada. I understand that those civil servants who have dependents overseas in Great Britain do not come within this class. I want to make this point, that while this is an excellent provision in behalf of civil servants, there are certain cases in which it is a distinct hardship to withhold the bonus from employees whose dependents happen to be overseas. I



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know some civil servants whose mothers are too ill to leave the Old Country and the bonus is on that account withheld.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The whole
bonus scheme has been worked out by the Civil Service Commission, and no doubt if the point which my hon. friend has raised were brought to its attention it would receive consideration by the commission.


Arthur Meighen: The government cost
of living statistics show that since March, 1922, the cost of living has steadily risen. But not only do the government statistics and the curve of the Labour department, which I shall have in a moment, reveal this fact, but the statistics of Dun, of Professor Michell of McMaster University, and indeed all other Canadian statistics, show exactly the same thing. The curve of the cost of living is now about one point and thre'e quarters higher than it was when the government brought down its budget a year ago. The descent of the cost of living which commenced in July, 1920, and which was precipitate all through 1921, was arrested the very day this government assumed power. However, it resumed very slowly for about two months; but when the budget was brought down and went into effect it commenced to rise. It has risen ever since and is rising now; and it has risen most substantially in the last year. May I ask the government what change of policy they purpose adopting to reverse the effect of the policy they now actually have in operation?


Mr. ROBB:: I might ask my hon. friend a question, seeing that he has the information before him. Is it not true that different economists who have advanced the view that the cost of living is going up say that the largest percentage of the increase is attributable in the first place to rent, and in the second place to coal?


Arthur Meighen: Well, I was not discussing the causes; and as a matter of fact these are not the causes, these -are elements. Rents are going up, coal is going up and wholesale commodities are also going up. I know that coal and rent are going up and in this country are very likely to continue to do so. But the government abandoned the unemployed last winter with the result that they drifted across to the United States, and now there is no one to build. We cannot improve our housing facilities without mechanics, and we are without them; they are now citizens of the United States.


Jacques Bureau: Those who want to build can build. They have the mechanics and the
[Mr. Irvine.[
labourers down my way and they are building there.


Arthur Meighen: I am sorry to say my hon. friend is wrong. There are portions of Canada that are virtually without mechanics altogether.


Jacques Bureau: Portions?


Arthur Meighen: Yes. There are portions that are wholly stripped of mechanics.


Jacques Bureau: Where the calamity howlers live.


Arthur Meighen: So from what we have heard from the Minister of Trade and Commerce there does not appear to be very much hope for the immediate future. He will remember how his Minister of Labour complained in 1921 of the noble struggle that he had made to get the cost of living down and to take from >
profiteers that fraction that should be added to the earnings of the workingman. He was wholly unsuccessful, as he stated, notwithstanding that fact that all through that period, from the middle of 1920 right to the end of 1921, there was a very rapid descent of the cost of living curve. He was not satisfied and complained that he was only allowed a wooden gun with which to go out after profiteers and get the cost of living down. Perhaps his colleagues or the Prime Minister will explain what kind of a gun he has had since. He has been much less successful. In fact, the operation that was well under way was arrested immediately he got into office and the reverse process has been in operation ever since and looks as if it would continue for some time. The cost of living in Canada, even at its worst, was lower according to official figures than the cost of living even in the United States and much lower than in other countries. That was the case right up to the time of the coming into power of this government. I do not think that can be said to be the case to-day. I think it will be found that the cost of living in the United States, making allowance for the difference in the method of calculation, is to-day lower than here, and our prospects for the immediate future, considering the process that has gone on in the way of the depletion of our workingmen, are not good. I should like to have the government's view of this question, as to what kind of gun they purpose giving the Minister of Labour from this on that will be an improvement upon the weapon that he has had; and as to when they expect to succeed in the noble struggle they are making against the cost of

Supply-Civil Service Bonus
living, so that we will not be faced with this vote continuously for years to come.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: As respects the operation of economic laws, I think my right hon. friend will recognize that cause and effect do not operate simultaneously, but that usually the effect of the operation of certain causes is only experienced at some later period. He says that the moment this government took office the cost of living began to rise. If that was the case it must have been due to causes that were set in motion while my right hon. friend was in office.


Arthur Meighen: I did not say that. I said that the descent that took place while we were in office was arrested. It proceeded to go down a little for about three months until the government's budget went into operation, after which it immediately proceeded to rise. It is quite true it was a case of cause and effect: the government's budget was the immediate cause, and the high cost of living is the effect.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The only defect in my right hon. friend's reasoning is that his operation of cause and effect is a little more instantaneous than that which is commonly observed in regard to economic forces. Any study of economic questions will reveal that these matters are not worked out in a week, a month or even a series of months; indeed sometimes they cover several years.


Arthur Meighen: What was the cause of the great descent through 1921?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Occasionally
special causes operate and help to explain special conditions. The increased cost of living this past winter would almost seem to be elementary in its explanation to anyone who appreciates the important part that coal plays in the cost of production and the genera! cost of living. As my right hon. friend knows, Canada has need of coal earlier in the season than the United States, our need of coal extends over a longer period, and the increase in its cost increases the cost of transportation, the cost of manufacture, the cost of running retail establishments, the cost of management of households-it enters into every particular that one can have regard to dealing with the economic situation. Under those circumstances it was inevitable that the cost of living curve should be higher this year than possiblv in previous years. There may be other explanations, but I think this is an all-sufficient one to account for any exceptional rise this year.
115J


Richard Burpee Hanson: How does the Prime Minister figure out, that there has been an increased cost in the price of coal? Speaking1 for the Maritime provinces, where we use very largely soft coal, I can assure him that coal has been much cheaper during the entire year than it was a year ago. That coal goes as far west as Montreal and supplies the manufacturing establishments of the pro-' vince of Quebec and of the Maritime' provinces. I cannot speak for the province" of Ontario, but I would advise the right hon. gentleman that there was no scarcity of coal for manufacturing purposes in the eastern provinces, and that there was not only no increase in the cost, but an actual decrease both in the cost of production and the freight rates, due to a special rate having been put into .effect as far west as Montreal.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend has referred to "cost" all the way through.
I do not know whether he intends to refer to. price, but if he means the price of coal I do not think he need go beyond this chamber to have every hon. member present witness to the circumstance that the increase in the price of coal has been very considerable all through this past winter.


Mr. FORKE:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to make a suggestion to the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen). I think we have a very good gun in this part of the House for reducing the cost of living, and I hope the right hon. gentleman, probably next week, will help us supply some of the amt-munition.


Arthur Meighen: If I help the hon. gentleman to supply it I am afraid the reverse effect would take place. I was warned only last night that my support always turned the government the other way. I shall watch with great interest the operation of the hon. gentleman's efforts oh the budget this session, but I would remind him that the big factor in the increased cost of living is the SO per cent increase in the sales tax. That is the main legislative cause of the higher cost of living. The Prime Minister is now very deferential to the effect of economic law* and world forces and cause and effect. I cannot recall those words falling from his lips in the discussion of 1921. Then those things were wholly absent. It was altogether a case of enabling the present Minister of Labour to have a gun to go after profiteers. But what I want to emphasize is that not only in respect to rent and coal which he mentions now-the latter of which only in a certain portion of Canada and as to one
Supply-Civil Service Bonus

class has risen in value at all-but as respects food stuffs, clothing and the essential factors and necessaries of life the cost of living has continuously risen since the hon. gentlemen took the treasury benches and put their taxation measures into effect. That has been the result ever since, and as a consequence we are called upon to vote five and a half million dollars to-day, and next year we will be called upon to vote the same amount according to present tendencies. Now, will the Prime Minister or any member of his government state when they hope by the success of their anticost of living operations to get rid of this vote?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend says that the vote is increased so much this year over the period during which he held office.


Arthur Meighen: No, I did not say that. I [DOT]said that we are called upon to vote this much this year for the cost of living bonus. This is virtually the same as we had in 1921, and it is the same as we had last year. In 1921 the cost of living was rapidly going down; now it is rising. I know that prior to that time the cost of living was higher than it is now, but I also know that relatively to other countries of the world it was lower in Canada that it is to-day. That is how the government is to be tested-by its own policy.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Before I
answer my right hon .friend, will he admit that the sum we are asking to-day for bonus is virtually the same as it was in 1921?


Arthur Meighen: I will admit that the Prime Minister said so himself. I asked him at the opening of this discussion.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, I have the figures before me now, and I can give my right hon. friend the exact information. In 1920-21 my right hon. friend asked the House, for the purposes of the cost of living bonus, for an appropriation of $12,500,000.


Arthur Meighen: That was three years ago


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am keeping to the 1921 period, which was the one my right hon. friend referred to, and is the period during which his government was in office. He asked parliament then for an appropriation of $12,500,000, of which his government spent in bonus $10,588,890.


Jacques Bureau: With the cost of living going down.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: In 1921-22-that includes the other part of 1921-he asked parliament for an appropriation of $9,375,000, of which his government spent in bonus $7,710,264. When this government came into office we asked for an appropriation for bonus of $5,500,000 as against the $9,375,000 that my right hon. friend had asked for one year and the $12,500,000 he had asked for the year before. This year we are asking for the same amount as last year, namely, $5,500,000.


Arthur Meighen: The amount spent two years ago was about the same. The amount asked for now is some five millions and a half. The Prime Minister stated at the opening of the discussion that this was the same cost ol * living bonus as that of a year ago and as that of two years ago, save in respect to certain adjustments that had been made of a detailed character. He will find, if he goes into it, that it is the same; naturally as we recede from the war it does not apply on as large a volume. It did not apply last year on as large as the year before because of the reduction in staff that we had made in 1921. But the cost of living bonus to-day to the individual is virtually the same as it was two years ago, and if this process continues the government is going to have to increase it.
Mr. SHAWT; In view of the admitted increase in the cost of living over that of last year, has the government considered the advisability of increasing this vote for the present year? In any event, upon what reasoning has the decision been arrived at that the bonus should not be increased over that of last year?
Mr. MACKENZIE KING; The bonus was never intended to correspond automatically with the increase or decrease in the cost of living. It is a general allowance intended to meet exceptional circumstances. The government thinks that having regard to the possible further reduction in the cost of living before the year is much further advanced, this amount will be quite sufficient for the purpose.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Resolution reported and concurred in.
The House resumed in Committee of Supply.

[Stage Direction]
Civil government-Post Office-salaries and contingencies, $1,271,448.
Jacques Bureau: I move that item 19 be amended by inserting after the word "salaries" the words, "including Superintendent of Mail Contracts at $5,400 per annum." These words appeared in the estimates as prepared but

Supply-Post Office
were inadvertently omitted from the printed estimates. The amount of the vote is not affected, as the increase made is already provided for in the item.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I would like to ask the minister how much he is being helped to-day in one of his three activities-his postal activities-by his genial friend the Minister of Customs and Excise.


Jacques Bureau: To the extent of moving the resolution.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Now we have got step number one. I want to know how much money is being credited to the Post Office Department which is taken in by way of taxation not connected with the postal service?


Jacques Bureau: We have carried on the same system that was put in force by my hon. friend when he was administering the War Measures Act. I have no hesitation in saying that it would be a good thing to provide that excise stamps should be used to pay excise taxes and postage stamps to pay postal charges. My hon. friend knows that it is very difficult to estimate how much money is- I will not say wrongly, but not exactly rightly collected-by my hon. friend the Postmaster General that ought to be credited to Customs and Excise.


Henry Lumley Drayton: What my hon. friend says is quite true as to the commencement of things. But where we then used one stamp for purposes not connected with the Post Office, to-day anywhere from five to twenty are used. Besides that, there are the stamps used on receipts, which have nothing to do with the postal service; so that the use of stamps for these purposes has been enormously multiplied. Surely the department has some idea how much of the revenues are properly attributable to their own activities and how much to the postal service.


Jacques Bureau: It is impossible to make any definite accounting in this respect. Either postal or excise stamps may be used for All these purposes which are not connected with postal charges, and unless you make an audit of everybody's books, the accounts of the banks, and so on, you cannot tell how many postage stamps have been used on cheques, receipts, etc. Under the present system that cannot be done. You might arrive at a kind of average. I take it that there is no increase in the volume of business done by the Post Office Department to account for any substantial increase in revenue.	_ j


Arthur Meighen: There has been really none, as I understand it. The volume of mail carried is practically the same as a year or two years ago; indeed, less than three years ago undoubtedly.


Jacques Bureau: To do that we would have to ascertain the revenue of the Post Office three years ago and say that the balance comes from excise, but that would not be an accurate estimate. We cannot do that as the law stands to-day. I would ask nothing better than to change the law so that every excise duty would be payable with an excise stamp. Then we could know the revenue we were getting out of stamps, but as it is now, we cannot. Would the people stand for such a change in the law? Would they say it was too much inconvenience to carry excise stamps in their pockets as well as postage stamps? I do not know. I would be willing to take a chance on that, in order that the revenue could be credited where it belongs, and that could be done if we had postage stamps for postal business and excise stamps for excise duties.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My latter question, in fact, all the questions were addressed to the Acting Postmaster General.


Jacques Bureau: You wanted to know how far the excise tax was responsible, and I wanted to help by stating the case.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am quite willing to admit that my hon. friend is of great assistance in any cause in which he is en- ' gaged.


Jacques Bureau: Do not get sarcastic. It is your law that is there when it comes to customs; the mistake is yours.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I still say that I was talking to the Acting Postmaster General. Now we can arrive approximately at what we are after. For example, what was the amount of mail matter carried during each of the three last years? Knowing that, and knowing that there is no change whatever in the rates for carrying it, we can get a pretty good approximate idea of how much excise has helped out the Post Office Department.
Hon. GEORGE P. GRAHAM (Acting Postmaster General): It is very difficult to get at an accurate statement for the reasons mentioned by the Minister of Customs. I have some sympathy, as a private individual, with the suggestion of the Minister of Customs that these two things should be kept separate and that the Customs and Excise department should get credit for receipts from the stamp tax for which it is responsible; but
Supply-Post Office

as Acting Postmaster General I take umbrage against it. As a matter of fact, I think the amount received from the war tax last year appears in the Postmaster General's report, it is about $7,400,000, if I remember correctly.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend knows that is not covering the question at all.


Mr. GRAHAM:: I thought that was exactly what my hon. friend asked me

how much was received by the Post Office Department on account of sale of stamps used under the war tax.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend has not quite got the point. He has a war tax of his own, and he shows the war tax of his department in his report. Am I wrong in that? What I was asking was the amount of stamp revenue which you got under these other war measures of taxation. I think the minister will find I am right.


George Perry Graham: I took the figures in the Postmaster General's report, where the revenue from the war tax is given as about $7,400,000. It does not say that it represents the one cent extra of postage. I think it is an estimate of the amount from the entire sale of stamps on account of war tax. Whether that includes the stamp tax as we have it in the other form, I do not know. If it does not, I can see no way of getting the information, unless we give an approximate estimate.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Might I suggest that the acting minister ask his representative here, who I suppose knows something about the department, as to how that amount is made up?


George Perry Graham: I am informed that this item in the Postmaster General's report refers to the proportional increase in the postal revenue from the increased letter postage.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then I understand that we are at one on that. The minister now knows that this extra amount raised and shown in the report has nothing whatever to do with stamps on cheques and stamps on receipts, but is merely the extra cent put on postage. We are on common ground there.
Mr.' GRAHAM: That is approximately it, I suppose.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I do not know whether it is approximately it or not. Surely you know. I ask who this gentleman is that is advising the minister.


George Perry Graham: He is one of the officials of the Post Office Department, and a very efficient man.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Which official? I want to know if he is the gentleman who is running the department now.


George Perry Graham: He is chief clerk in the Secretary's branch in charge of estimates.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Might I ask whether the gentleman is running the department now?


George Perry Graham: He is in charge of the estimates, and very properly so.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am not saying anything against the gentleman. I am sure he is absolutely all right. I just want to know for information. If he is not running the department, who is?


George Perry Graham: So far as responsibility to the country is concerned, the Acting Postmaster General.


Jacques Bureau: Hear, hear. Good doctrine.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Now so far as the work goes, who is running the department?


George Perry Graham: Each branch is carrying on its work as usual, reporting to the acting minister instead of to the minister, who is absent through illness.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I thought they usually report to the deputy, and the deputy to the minister. Who are the sub-heads reporting to now?


George Perry Graham: Mr. Murphy, no relation of the minister, is acting deputy minister, and Mr. Coolican is general superintendent of the postal service.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Now will the minister kindly tell me what the amount of mail carried was, the weight of the mail last year?


George Perry Graham: I have not the particulars of that here. The mails are not weighed altogether. Under the new arrangement a great deal of mail is carried by the square foot; it is carried on the space basis, and not weighed.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am perfectly willing to help the minister in every possible way. If he wants to give the information by the square foot let us have it by the square foot. If he cannot give it by pounds, let us have it by the square foot, or any way he likes to give it.


Richard Burpee Hanson: By the gallon.


Henry Lumley Drayton: By the gallon perhaps.


Jacques Bureau: That is my measure.

Supply-Post Office


George Perry Graham: That would be the most popular measure, I presume. As a matter of fact, I have not that information here. I could put the accountants to work and get it in -a few days, but that information has never been asked for in the House before in connection with the estimates. It is the expenditure, rather than the square foot or the number of pounds, that the country is interested in.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I have always thought that there was a record kept of the volume of business done, and I think my hon. friend will find that such a record is kept in the department. I have even seen the totals of the letters handled in different offices given at different times.


George Perry Graham: That is the amount, not the tons.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then we will take the amount. If my hon. friend does not want to give me the information by weight, or by the square foot, will he give me the number of letters handled last year?


George Perry Graham: We have not the information, though as I said before, we might get it by putting accountants to work and going through various returns, but that kind of information was never before contemplated as likely to be asked for in this House; it never was dreamed of. I know what my hon. friend is trying to get at. He is trying to find out, if I understand him, what the return Would be from stamps used otherwise than on letters.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Certainly. In
other words we want to know your postal business and we cannot get the information.


George Perry Graham: I have been asking that
question for some days in connection with the Customs department, because my hon. friend and myself have several times discussed the point as to what the proportion of money received from the stamp tax was. Now the Post Office Department sells these postage stamps but there is no way of discovering where or how the revenue should go. A stamp vendor anywhere in the country sells his stamps to John Smith, and John Smith may put those stamps on cheques or he may put them on letters. Of course an estimate might be made. If we had the receipts from the stamps which are placed on cheques we could find out then how much money is received from that source. There is this other fact: the stamp vendors get a percentage of their sales.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The matter then amounts to this-that the minister is not in a position
to say to-day whether there is a- deficit or whether there is a surplus in the operation of the Post Office Department. I mention this because the Postmaster General himself, has, on various occasions, inspired the publication of items in newspapers supporting the administration to the effect that owing to the great economies which he has effected in the department he has realized a fine surplus. Now we know that the claim is false, the assumption is untrue, it cannot possibly be justified for the reasons which the Acting Postmaster General has given.


Arthur Meighen: It is a fact that the business done in 1922, by all the tests that could be applied would certainly be not more and would probably be somewhat less than in 1921. All the other tax returns of the government would go to establish it. Now, assuming that, we must at least infer that the increased revenue this year over last year is due to the increased stamp tax for the nine months. That increased revenue, as I recall, is between three and four million dollars-about $3,000,000. That would be equivalent to something over 14,000,000 for the entire year. So that the government, by these extra taxes, is taking that amount
4 p.m. of money yearly from the pockets of the people. This has caused the Postmaster General periodically to make newspaper exclamations regarding the magnificent management of the Post Office Department, and afforded stump speakers, including hon. members opposite, in by-elections the only thing that had even the outward appearance of an argument in favour of the contention that they were able to present. I heard many and many a time about the magnificent management of the Post Office Department, in that we had a surplus this year. I really felt some. compassion for the Minister of Customs (Mr. Bureau) when his colleague was taking the credit for taxes that he had assumed the onus of putting on. It did not seem quite fair to me that the Postmaster General should be boasting before the whole Dominion that he had been able to produce a surplus in that department because of the mere fact that the Excise department was taxing the people at the rate of $4,000,000 a year extra for stamps. It costs nothing to sell these stamps, or virtually nothing. Notwithstanding that though, the cost of management of the Post Office Department is annually increasing. The estimates this year show an amount very substantially more than last year. I would not think it should be more at all, because these stamps cost nothing to sell; what costs
Royal Assent

in the Post Office Department is the handling of mail and mail matter. The fact, then, appears to be that instead of having more economical management we have had less; and instead of having a modest, truthful presentation of the facts we have had periodical boasting which really is nothing more than claiming credit for taxing the people.


George Perry Graham: It is a mistake to think that it does not cost anything to sell stamps, but that is immaterial. It sometimes costs 50 per cent, and in other instances 20 per cent.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That commission goes
against the salaries.


George Perry Graham: The fact is it costs money to sell these stamps.


Arthur Meighen: Take it all through, it does not require 10 per cent to sell the stamps or near that.


George Perry Graham: I have not figured out the average. In a good many cases it costs 20 per cent, in others 40 per cent, and in others again 50 per cent; I do not think there is any question about it. I am not trying to pretend that the Post Office revenue has not been swollen by the stamp tax, I admit it has, but to what extent I have been unable to find out. I have tried in various ways to ascertain, but there does not seem to be any system of accounting to cover that point- that is any system which makes a distinction between the two classes of stamps. The revenue of the Post Office Department must, of necessity, be swollen considerably by the sale of stamps that are not used for postage.


Mr. MacLAREN:: Where is the printing done?


George Perry Graham: The stamps are printed by the American Bank Note Company under contract with the Finance department.


Murray MacLaren: But the other printing business, where is that done?


George Perry Graham: At the Printing bureau.


Murray MacLaren: Is it all done there?


George Perry Graham: I imagine it is practically all done there.


Murray MacLaren: I am given to understand that there is some printing done outside the Printing bureau. Can the minister inform me as to that?



THE ROYAL ASSENT


[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by Colonel Ernest J. Chambers, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, as follows:

Mr. Speaker, His Honour the Deputy of His Excellency the Governor General desires the immediate attendance of this honourable House in the Chamber of the Honourable the Senate.
Accordingly the House went up to the Senate,	[DOT]
And having returned,
Mr. Speaker informed the House that the Deputy of His Excellency the Governor General had been pleased to give in His Majesty's name the Royal Assent to the following bills:
An Act to provide for further advances to the Vancouver Harbour Commissioners.
An Act for the relief of Margaret Elizabeth Moran.
An Act for the relief of Ethel Lillian Duncan.
An Act for the relief of Florence Mary Ramsden.
An Act for the relief of Ross John Craig.
An Act for the relief of Florence Dodds.
An Act for the relief of Blanche Hilton.
An	Act	for	the	relief	of	May Woodbridge.An	Act	for	the	relief	of	Alice May Smith.An	Act	for	the	relief	of	Albert Ernest Mould.An	Act	for	the	relief	of	Winifred Rose Foster.
An Act for the relief of Emily May Small.
An Act for the relief of Irene Herdsman.
An Act for the relief of John Frederick King Hall.
An Act for the relief of Herbert Martin.
An Act for the relief of Frederick John Saunders.
An Act for the relief of Robert Archibald Logan.
An Act for the relief of Violet Marie Finn.
An Act for the relief of Harriet Ethelwin Kingsley.
An	Act	for	the	relief	of	Ernest Warren Porter.An	Act	for	the	relief	of	May Elizabeth Meng.
An Act for the relief of Maud Vera Butler.
An Act for the relief of Lillian Black.
An Act for the relief of Florence Elizabeth McDonald.
An Act for the relief of Gretta Melville.
An Act to incorporate The Alert Guarantee Company of Canada.
An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the public service of the financial year ending the 31st March 1924.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed in Committee of Supply, Mr. Gordon in the chair.
Civil government-Post Office-salaries and contingencies, $1,271,448.
George Perry Graham: I think I am in a position now to give fairly accurately the information sought for in reference to the probable amount of revenue derived from the stamp tax this year in excess of that of last year. Last year the whole issue of stamps was approximately
828,000,000. This year it is estimated that at the end of the year it will be about $29,750,000. That is the issue. The officials have estimated that the sale this year will exceed the sale of last year by about $1,250,000.


Mr. NEILL:: I would ask the minister, if I might, why he does not compel the public to put revenue stamps on their cheques? Last year the government imposed a very heavy tax in the way of stamps to be placed on cheques, and this was done by means of putting

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on ordinary postage stamps. Had the government compelled the public at very small inconvenience-or, as I hold, at practically no inconvenience-to buy revenue stamps, the confusion which we have been talking about all afternoon would have been avoided, because each branch would then have its revenue properly credited to it, and the work would be done a great deal cheaper. When you buy stamps to put on your cheque in a country town the post office official gets from 30 to 40 per cent of their face value. This is his commission; in other words, we are imposing a tax upon the public and are paying 30 to 40 per cent for the cost of collecting this particular tax. Take any other tax, such as the income tax, and you will find that the government will claim that the collection can be made for from 3 to 4 per cent. Why is not this system adopted in connection with this particular tax for the collection of which we are paying between 30 and 40 per cent? The public could easily use revenue stamps and this would entail no inconvenience and no confusion. It may be claimed that it would be inconvenient and confusing, but this is not so, because when a man buys one class of stamps at the post office he can equally as well buy the other class. Moreover we have precedent to back us up. When the late government first introduced the tax, which was then a small one, it was provided that revenue or postage stamps might be affixed to cheques. But unfortunately the matter was left optional, and when anyone went to the post office he had the privilege of using either an excise stamp or the ordinary stamp. The postmaster of course, got 40 per cent on the postage stamps while he got only one per cent on the sale of the revenue or excise stamps, and like most people he pushed the sale of the article on which he, was getting the bigger profit. You might say you wanted revenue stamps and he would reply that postage stamps would do just as well and would add that he was short of revenue stamps. In the course of a few months therefore there was practically no sale for the revenue stamps. The mistake the government made at that time was in not making it compulsory for the public to use revenue stamps. The postmaster gets only one per cent on the sale of the revenue stamps, which can also be purchased from the banks, who get the same commission. If the government adopted exclusively the system of compelling the public to buy revenue stamps to put on cheques the inconvenience would be very slight and the profit to the country would be considerable. Besides this, all the confusion and dispute as to where the money should be
allocated would be obviated. I would ask the minister if there is any reason that he knows of in connection with the carrying out of this business why that system should not be adopted.


George Perry Graham: The only reason I have heard advanced against the system is the one of inconvenience to the public. There is a great difference of opinion upon that point. The average person buys postage stamps, and when people wish to issue cheques, in many cases the only place where they can get stamps keeps only the one kind. When the postage stamp is used for both purposes there is no confusion. It has been suggested to me that, under the conditions detailed by my hon. friend, the ordinary individual who used very few revenue stamps and a great many postage stamps might find himself putting revenue stamps on letters in spite of all his care, and putting postage stamps on cheques. Whether that reason is real or imaginary I am not prepared to say, but it is advanced at any rate. I might add that the public do not like taxes anyway, and if you impose them in the most inconvenient form they are annoying to say the least. There is a great deal to be said, however, in favour of having separate stamps for the two purposes. It would enable the Finance department or the Excise department to know exactly how effective any particular tax was. Take, for instance, the receipt tux. Under present conditions it is impossible accurately to state the revenue from the tax receipts. It can, of course, be estimated, but at best it is only an estimate, because the postage stamps that pass through the Postal, department are used on these receipts. If, there were a revenue stamp in use there would be no question at all, and the accounts between the Postal department and the Inland Revenue department would be cleanout, and we should have no discussion such as has taken place this afternoon in regard to the proper allocation of revenue. There is a good deal to be said on both sides. The Minister of Customs (Mr. Bureau) has had the matter under advisement for a considerable time, and had the Postmaster General (Mr. Murphy) been in good health and in the city they would probably have had some conferences concerning it. In the meantime I think I might say that on his return the matter will be discussed with the Minister of Customs because, as I have observed, there is much to be said on either side of the question. Certainly, from the standpoint of the accountants of the Finance department, it would be a great advantage to know what taxes were equitable

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and were really producing income, and this result would no doubt be effected by the use of separate stamps.


Alan Webster Neill: I would point out that it is no more embarrassing for a man to buy at the post office one dollar's worth of postage stamps and one dollar's worth of revenue stamps than it is for him to ask for a dollar's worth of 3-cent stamps and a dollar's worth of 2-cent stamps. He can do the one as easily as the other. I would point out also that although the method I have suggested might be slightly inconvenient, which I do not think it would be, the general public are getting educated, and if they knew, as they do know and as they realize, that the present method of collecting the tax is costing them 40 per cent whereas it would cost them only one per cent under the other system, they would undoubtedly put up with the trivial inconvenience that might be involved.


Robert Forke: Why does it cost only 1 per cent to sell revenue stamps and as high as 40 per cent to sell postage stamps? I would hesitate a good while before I would change the present system, because I think there is a good deal in what the Acting Postmaster General says about the inconveniences such a change would be to the public. The amount of money that is gathered for revenue through the use of postage stamps on cheques is, I believe, somewhat exaggerated, for all the large business organizations use revenue stamps, and it is only in the smaller businesses and among private individuals that postage stamps are used for revenue purposes. I can quite understand the Minister of Customs (Mr. Bureau) objecting to the present method-I * do not know whether he does or not, as a matter of fact-but it would be quite natural for him to do so, because apparently the Postmaster General now gets credit for revenue that is not rightfully his. I do not believe the amount involved is very large after all. Perhaps the minister can tell us why it should cost from 10 to 40 per cent to sell postage stamps? It seems to me an exorbitant amount for the business done.


George Perry Graham: The major part of the salaries of country postmasters is paid by commission on the sale of stamps.


Robert Forke: Then we will remember that in the estimates.


George Perry Graham: If a country postmaster were selling revenue stamps for the Customs department he would only get paid really a commission on such sales, while in the other case he is paid in a measure for handling the

mail as well by a percentage commission on the sale of postage stamps. In the city offices where stated salaries of a reasonable amount are paid the vendor of stamps gets I think from one to two per cent.


Murray MacLaren: Has the minister yet the detailed information on the question I asked in reference to the post office printing?


George Perry Graham: We give our orders to the Printing bureau. The bureau supplies the printing to the postal department. For the most part, if not all, the bureau does the printing itself.


Murray MacLaren: Does the postal department arrange for its own printing outside of the Printing bureau?


George Perry Graham: No. The practice is for the postal printing to be handed to the Printing bureau. The only order given outside direct by the postal department was for a convention programme.


Murray MacLaren: My information is that some of the post office printing is done outside of the Printing bureau. With the exception of these convention programmes does the minister state that all the printing for the postal department is done either through the Printing bureau or by the latter arranging it to be done outside?


George Perry Graham: That is my information.


Murray MacLaren: Would the minister make some further investigation on that point? Of course, my information may be incorrect, but I am informed that some printing is done on the order of the Post Office Department outside of the Printing bureau.


George Perry Graham: What is it?


Murray MacLaren: Are all money orders printed through the Printing bureau?


George Perry Graham: That is what I thought my hon. friend had in mind. I am informed that the printing of money orders is done through the Printing bureau and not direct by the postal department.


Mr. BOYS:: I should certainly like to support the suggestion that revenue stamps be put upon cheques and receipts, but I think it would be a great mistake to compel the public to put a two-cent postage stamp and a one-cent revenue stamp upon letters. Such a regulation would lead to no end of inconvenience, would arouse a lot of adverse criticism throughout the country, and would not secure the information that we have been seeking. If you had revenue stamps on

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cheques and receipts, and restricted postage stamps to letters, the department could take one-third of the revenue from postage stamps and treat it a3 belonging to the Department of Customs, which would give us the information we are after now. But I am sure the public would view with disfavour any suggestion of having to put a two-cent stamp of one variety and a one-cent stamp of another variety upon every letter for delivery outside of their own town.


George Perry Graham: I agree with my hon.
friend that such a regulation would be objectionable. The revenue stamp tax as we may call it could be kept separate, but I do not think it would be advisable to divide the postage of letters.


William Alves Boys: The reason I interjected my observation was because I rather thought the suggestion of the hon. member for Comox-Albemi (Mr. Neill) was that a man might go to the wicket of a post office and buy one hundred two-cent stamps of one variety and one-hundred one-cent stamps of another variety, and I presumed his idea was that the purchaser would put a two-cent stamp and a one-cent stamp of each variety on his letters. That is what I want to protest against. It would lead to no end of inconvenience, and I am satisfied it would not prove popular.


Alan Webster Neill: Mr. Chairman, the hon. gentleman does small credit to the common sense of the member for CorOox-Alberni if he thinks that that is what I suggested.


Murray MacLaren: What objection is there to following the British method in regard to stamps, a method which has been in use for such a long period?


George Perry Graham: What is the English practice?


Murray MacLaren: They have a revenue stamp for revenue purposes, and a postage stamp for postal purposes.


George Perry Graham: That is really what I think the Minister of Customs is endeavouring to get, so that he will have his revenue absolutely separated from the revenue of the Post Office Department. When the Postmaster General returns I imagine that the customs collector will call upon him the same afternoon concerning this matter, as he has been pressing quite hard to have some new arrangement adopted to accomplish this purpose.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I understand
from my hon. friend that the Postmaster
General is returning home. When is he expected?


George Perry Graham: The Prime Minister intimated the other night that the Postmaster General would not be back until after the middle of May. In his present state of health his doctor is very doubtful if he will be able to return even then.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The whole result is that nothing will be done, because you cannot pass any legislation after the House prorogues.


Jacques Bureau: I will try to get something done before that time.


Henry Lumley Drayton: As this matter has nothing whatever to do with postal administration, it is hardly a good excuse to shelve it until the Postmaster General comes back. This has nothing to do with the postal service; it relates to special taxation, and I do not see why the matter should stand until the return of the Postmaster General-which means simply shelving it. I hope that, as the Minister of Customs suggests, an effort will be made to put our accounts in more businesslike shape. Not only is it the fact that when but one stamp was necessary for cheques the volume of income attributable to the sale of stamps for other than postal services was negligible compared to what it is now, but in the case of banks and other corporations the stamps were for the most part embossed on the cheques, so that the accounts could be properly kept.


Jacques Bureau: That was not done in the majority of cases, though.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes, in the case of the majority of banks.


Jacques Bureau: But the public did not buy them.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Very largely,
yes. I noticed also that through the amendment of the Minister of Customs provision is made for Mr. Anderson. That of course, means that Mr. Anderson's employment is not subject to the Civil Service Act. Has my hon. friend not overlooked many other names that ought to be added if he desires to have the department run in conformity with the law? Over a year ago a vacancy occurred in the postmastership at Woodbridge. About a month afterwards an appointment was made by the Civil Service Commission to fill the vacancy, but that appointment has never been confirmed by the government, and an outsider from Toronto has been brought in to do the work. My hon. friend knows
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that is illegal-or is the department to be administered without respect to law? I am not referring to the matter from the point of view of patronage; I am simply dealing with the question whether the Post Office Department is above the law. My hon. friend will find that in not less than twenty-three other cases appointments were properly made by the Civil Service Commission and just as regularly, for political reasons, disregarded. Now the thing is.being legalized in the case of Mr. Anderson; why should the minister not also legalize it at Woodbridge and in connection with these other offices? I would like to know from what votes the payments to these persons are made and who in the department is responsible for them. Under the act it is an offence for any payment to be made in such cases after the expiration of six months. The Postmaster General has managed to get rid of officers who were doing very good work. He has managed to get rid of the former chief inspector, of a very efficient deputy, Mr. Coulter; and apparently, from what was said in the House last night, he is managing to get at outs with a very competent official of the department, Mr. Lemaire. My hon. friend may find it difficult, therefore, to pick up the scattered threads and determine just how these matters stand, but for a commencement I would ask him to give me the date of the appointment by the Civil Service Commission of the postmaster at Woodbridge.


Mr. BALDWIN:: Last evening arguments were advanced in favour of increasing the remuneration of rural mail carriers and establishing new rural mail routes. As a last clincher to the argument one hon. member said: "We have a surplus and can afford to do it." Every well-posted citizen knows that that is beside the fact. I suggest, therefore, that the Minister of Customs and Exuse (Mr. Bureau) make a ruling that excise stamps shall be used on cheques, notes and other documents.
Mr. BLTRF.AU: It is a question of legislation, not of ruling.


Willis Keith Baldwin: If it can be done, whether by legislation or by ruling, let it be done. I have received letters from people who wanted to get the contract for rural mail delivery at less than was being paid for the existing contract. A great deal has been said here by way of comparing conditions in Canada with those in the United States. I would like to know how man}' holidays hon. members would want the rural mail carriers to have, whether five, seven or nine We who live in rural sections know that there are more days than 
that on which the people in rural districts do not get their mail each year owing to the roads being made impassable by storms. The mail carrier, for instance, does not carry the mail on Christmas Day or New Year's Day, and if a great storm comes up between one of these holidays and the ensuing Sunday the people living in the rural sections would not get their mail for several days. These are actual facts. It is better for the mail carrier to work when the _roads are good than when the roads are bad. I was very well acquainted with the man who had control of the rural mail delivery system in Minnesota, and he informed me that there were several days in each year when delivery of mail was impossible on account of severe storms, the breaking up of the roads, and so on. It is the same in northern New England but there are no holidays.
If the mail carriers were to be granted all the legal holidays, as some hon. members have advocated we would be in a fine predicament because there are people living in these back sections who occasionally have some business to do. They may occasionally receive a lawyer's letter giving them perhaps one or two days to pay, or maybe a notice from their bank. That is something that these kind-hearted members who spoke last night in favour of this profligate use of our public money might well consider. We know that all municipal taxes throughout this great country and the United States have doubled and trebled of recent years, and it is because of this wishy-washy way of doing business, of bonusing people, giving them holidays and letting them out of a contract and get more money. In the United States with its much denser population there are ten more patrons to the mile of rural mail routes than there are in this country. We have many rural mail routes that never should have been established. There are instances where a mail carrier is driving on a spur road two or three miles and back. There is nothing like that in the United States. In that country if people live on a spur line they must come down to the main line if they want to get their mail. I only mention these facts because there seems to be quite a mix-up in the ideas of some hon. gentlemen regarding the rural mail delivery system.


William Alves Boys: May I ask if my hon. friend has any spur line in his riding?


Willis Keith Baldwin: I have.


William Alves Boys: Of two or three miles in length?


Willis Keith Baldwin: I certainly have.


William Alves Boys: I have been trying to get one or two and could not succeed.

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Willis Keith Baldwin: They were established in my county in 1915. There are a great many routes costing this country altogether too much. In my county there were mail routes running practically across the county that cost not more than six or seven hundred dollars and that are now costing more than six or seven thousand dollars and serving the same people. Many of these rural communities that are being served by the rural mail service would be glad to have it abolished and go back to the little post office. A great many queer things happen in some cases. Certain little kitchen post offices were left, and post offices that were well conducted, housed in a public building in a community where there were two or three churches, and where business was being done, were obliterated because some postmaster may have voted for reciprocity in 1911.


William Alves Boys: I congratulate you on your influence.


Willis Keith Baldwin: I was a postmaster and mail carrier for thirty-six years, so I have some knowledge of handling the mails.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Perhaps the minister can now give me the information I asked him for.


George Perry Graham: The officer is not here at the moment. I have not the data, but I think my hon. friend would know it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I should like to get it on Hansard. There are twenty-three other cases I want to take up with my hon. friend.


George Perry Graham: There are not twenty-three cases.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then the appointments must have been straightened out recently.


George Perry Graham: These cases are only temporary. They arise because of conflict between the Post Office Department and the Civil Service Commission as to their nominee. Out of the hundreds of appointments to post offices, large and small, and until recently they all came under the Civil Service Commission, speaking from memory there are only twelve or thirteen appointments outstanding now. That is not a very large proportion.
The date of the certificate issued by the commission was the 29th of June, 1922. Take the case of Woodbridge. I am not going into details. The commission have absolute power to make that appointment, and eventually their nominee if they do not change their mind will have to be the man appointed. In
the meantime there is a temporary man placed in charge of the post office at Wood-bridge. The contention of the department is that both being returned soldiers the man named by the department having had postal experience is the better qualified for this position. Personally, I do not know, but that is the contention of the department, and they hope to be able to convince the Civil Service Commission that they are right. As a matter of fact, the commission has the authority and their judgment must eventually prevail if they cannot be convinced that it would be wiser to name the other man.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I would like to ask my hon. friend how long he thinks these vacancies should stand. I want to point out some things to him. The act provides that temporary appointments may be made for six months. That is the limitation imposed by the act. Now these vacancies have stood a good deal longer than six months. At Wood-bridge the temporary man who was put in there was brought up from Toronto. I quite admit that they are both returned men, but I would ask my hon. friend whether he does not think in connection with these country post offices that the appointment should go, as it always did in the past, to a resident of the village? Or does he think a man should be brought in from outside? That is what is being done. There is no possible excuse why the law should not be complied with unless it is that the Postmaster General of this country says that he puts himself above the law. There is no good having any half measures here. What is the use of having criminal statutes if ministers of the Crown act with cynical indifference to the laws that are supposed to bind them? Is it simply because the hon. gentleman is in the position of trust that he now occupies that he is to be regarded as above the law? Should he not rather be the first to show others that the law ought to be respected? Does not my hon. friend think so? The people of that place had the right to have the law observed and that appointment made. I would ask my hon. friend how it is that the cheques for payment have been able to be smuggled past the Auditor General, because under the act payments are only allowed to be made for these temporary purposes for six months? What is my hon. friend paying these temporary men, and where is the money coming from? What officer of his is certifying to these payments?


George Perry Graham: The Civil Service Commission, as I understand it, does not take the extreme view that my hon. friend has announced just now. I do not think there is
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any law being violated. I would not like to refer to the Auditor General as my hon. friend has done. I do not think anything can be smuggled by the Auditor General of this country.	.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Who is the Auditor General of this country?


George Perry Graham: Well then, the Auditor General's office. If my hon. friend thinks that is the case, he should go after the officials of that department.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Oh no, the certificate would come from this department.


George Perry Graham: My hon. friend did not say that. He said it was being smuggled past the Auditor General.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I said nothing of the kind.


George Perry Graham: All right, Hansard will show.


Henry Lumley Drayton: What I said, and Hansard will show it, was that I would like to know who the official is who is supposed to see the law carried out but is certifying to these payments so that they can get past the Auditor General.


George Perry Graham: I do not think there is any question of smuggling names or cooking accounts. It cannot be possible, I do not think there is anything of the kind. There has never been any question as to any of these payments in the case of this office or other offices similarly circumstanced. As I understand it, rural postmasters are not regarded with the same strictness, in the matter of the six months' limit, as perhaps other civil servants are, because the Civil Service Commission readily understands the difficulties surrounding the appointment of these officers as distinguished from those that are appointed to the inside service.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I think that before the item passes my hon. friend should bring down the papers showing exactly how these payments are made. My hon. friend says that the general act does not apply to the postmaster.


George Perry Graham: I did not say so.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I so understood my hon. friend.


George Perry Graham: You understood wrongly.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then I am very happy to be corrected. If the general act does apply we have no right to make any of these payments 'after the expiration of the 
six months, and we are entitled to know therefore how they could be made. Consequently, as the minister does not say that the act does not apply, I will ask him to bring down the papers showing how these payments are made.


George Perry Graham: I will bring down the papers. In the meantime we can continue with the item.


The CHAIRMAN:: Shall the item carry?


Henry Lumley Drayton: No, Mr. Chairman, I am afraid I will have to ask that it stand until the information for which I asked has been brought down.


George Perry Graham: There are other hon. members who doubtless wish to discuss the item; my. hon. friend is not the only one who has the right.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The Chairman asked whether the item should carry. I have no objection to anybody else discussing it, none whatever.


George Perry Graham: Go on and discuss it then.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The ,minister seemed to think that somebody else wanted the floor and, of course, I should be very pleased to yield the floor, or anything else, to my hon. friend at any time. I notice we are having an increase in the staff.


George Perry Graham: No, a reduction.


Henry Lumley Drayton: A reduction, is it? That is splendid. In the general total there is a reduction, but I notice that in some instances there are changes
5 p.m. in the numbers. Has my hon. friend any particulars to give as to that? Is there anything he lays any claim to in connection with that as to economy or the like?


George Perry Graham: Yes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: In which case?


George Perry Graham: In the whole. There is an abolition of sixteen positions and the creation of eight positions with smaller salaries, a reduction of eight officials, although there have been some increases in salary, statutory and otherwise, there is a decrease in the whole amount of $2,000.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Just while we are on the question of totals, will my hon. friend give the receipts of the department up to the end of the year?


George Perry Graham: 
Henry Lumley Drayton: I think that should be gross receipts.


George Perry Graham: It is gross receipts.


Henry Lumley Drayton: If it is then was my hon. friend right when he said that more stamps would be sold. It was stamps issued, was it.


George Perry Graham: Yes, issued.


George Newcombe Gordon: Shall the item carry?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Before the item carries I want to know exactly how the regular practice which _ has been referred to is being carried on in this department. It may be that when the information comes down we will find there is nothing irregular, there may be some extraordinary explanation of it, but at present there is what, on the face of it, is a confession that the law is absolutely disregarded in connection with the Woodbridge post office. My hon. friend says the law is disregarded in connection with some eleven other post offices and he says it is a very small number. I think my hon. friend will find there are more cases than the eleven which he admits.


George Perry Graham: I will tell my hon. friend the exact number.


Mr. HOCKEN:: The details show a decrease of something over $2,000. Will the minister tell us the amount of the superannuation allowance in the case of the former deputy minister and the former superintendent of postal services because, I think, if these two items are added the decrease becomes an increase. I want to say that in superannuating these gentlemen the government has got rid of the two most experienced and best qualified postal officers in the Dominion, men who are just as capable of doing the work they formerly did as they ever were and perhaps a little more so. Instead of trying to promote economy it looks as though the Postmaster General were trying to put a friend into a lucrative position; under the guise of a superannuation the government have practically dismissed the former deputy 'minister and his chief assistant, the postal superintendent. If you add the superannuation in each case to the expenditure it will show an increase instead of a decrease. And this is done by a government that makes some sort of spurious claim to be economical.


George Perry Graham: My hon. friend asked for the retiring allowance. Dr. Coulter receives $4,200 and Mr. Ross $3,900.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: That is over $8,000?	_


George Perry Graham: My hon. friend must remember that both these gentlemen paid a certain amount into the superannuation fund. Their retirement would not involve any charge at all upon the post office; the fund from which that is taken is a different one altogether. If my hon. friend's argument were correct we might take the whole list of superannuations that have taken place in connection with the department and charge the expense against the Post Office Department. Both of these gentlemen asked for their retirement and it was granted.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Is there correspondence to show that?


George Perry Graham: I have a. c8py of Dr. Coulter's letter. I have already read it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Frozen out.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Did Mr. Ross ask for his superannuation ?


George Perry Graham: I am informed so. I have read Dr. Coulter's letter.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I would like to see the letter brought down.


George Perry Graham: Which letter?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Mr. Ross.


George Perry Graham: We will get copies of them both.


Arthur Meighen: I do not think the acting minister seriously wants to let the House understand that either of these gentlemen got out voluntarily. I do not think the Postmaster General, if he were here, would say so. I think the minister would take the responsibility for bringing about their retirement, rightly or wrongly-he would claim, of course, rightly. But the fact undoubtedly is, unless I am very much misinformed, that the minister came to the conclusion that they should be out, and then he proceeded to get their resignations, their requests for retirement. They came. Of the fact I do not want to speak at first hand knowledge; but I feel so convinced that that is the case, that I do not think the minister should seek to give the House the other impression. There are circumstances when such a course is justified, That I am not discussing for the moment; but I object to the House being given the impression that these men wanted to get out of the service, and that they came forward
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themselves and forced themselves out. I am quite certain that is not the case. The minister is talking around the subject when he says that they paid into the retirement fund and became entitled to the $4,200 and the $3,900. That is correct, and the amount is not charged against the Post office Department, but it comes out of the country. If they were in the service, they would not be getting that. They would be getting the salaries that the new men are getting, and the country would be saved this $8,100 until the time came for them to retire. Therefore, what the hon. member for Toronto (Mr. Hocken) says is absolutely right. Instead of being ahead, the country is behind just the difference between the $8,100 and the $2,000. Is it not a fact that Mr. Hector Verret has been retired?


George Perry Graham: Some time ago, I think.


Arthur Meighen: But by the present minister within the last fiscal year?


George Perry Graham: I think the position was
abolished by the Griffenhagens.


Arthur Meighen: That would be a very
good thing. That would be a contraction. I see this does not appeal to the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Lapointe).


Mr. LAPOINTE:: It certainly does.


Arthur Meighen: Everything except an
expansion is a joke to him.


Ernest Lapointe: Some contractions are.


Arthur Meighen: There is nobody, I understand, in Mr. Verret's place?


George Perry Graham: I was informed the position is abolished.


Arthur Meighen: I hope the government
does not undo that piece of good work that was done by the late government, although I am really apprehensive that it will, and get somebody in there. As regards those two gentlemen, they have been relieved of their duties by the will of the minister, with the result that the country is out at least $6,100.


William Alves Boys: Has there been any change in the policy of the department respecting what we have been calling spur lines? As I understand the matter, what is meant is this. A carrier has to go two or three miles up the line and has to double and come back. If there has been a change, I should like to secure one or two extra services in the county of Simcoe. I note that the hon. member for Stanstead (Mr. Baldwin) said that in his constituency he had a number of those. I

congratulate him; he has done good work for his patrons in his constituency, and I would like to do the same for mine.
Another matter I should like to bring forward is this. I do not want the department to do for me anything that is not being done for others. I have five farmers on a route, and the furthest one happens to be within a mile from where the carrier passes on the highway. I understand there is a rule of the department that they will not serve any man who is not a mile away, even if he is on a spur. The result is that these five men have to walk, perhaps in very stormy weather, all the way from a quarter of a mile to seven' eighths of a mile to the comer, and there they may have to wait half an hour or an hour on a bad day for the carrier to come along. A change of that kind would not be very expensive. I suppose there are many such instances; but if that sort of thing is being done in other ridings, and there has been a change in policy, we should all know of it, because I have no doubt that every member has cases of this kind, and it is not right that some should be successful in their efforts to secure relief while that relief is denied to others.


George Perry Graham: I imagine the same policy applies as far as practicable to all communities. There may be certain circumstances surrounding particular communities where the population is very dense, where there may be an exception; but I know of none, and I know of no change in policy. Surely in the older sections it is not cruel to ask a man to walk nearly a mile when there are in this country so many sections where people have to drive seven or eight miles to get their mail. I do not think any exceptional treatment is being given.


Willis Keith Baldwin: The mail route of which I spoke before was established in the summer of 1915 against all overtures of mine and everything that I could do myself to prevent its being established, not by this government., but by the late government. That is in connection with what I said about a postmaster being dismissed for having voted for reciprocity in 1911.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: What is causing the delay in appointing a deputy minister for the department and in filling the other position of superintendent?


George Perry Graham: As a matter of fact, I am not in a position to say what is causing the delay. I would presume that it is the illness of the minister more than anything else.


Arthur Meighen: What is the cause of that?

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Horatio Clarence Hocken: Is it the delay that is causing the minister's illness, or the minister's illness that is causing the delay?


George Perry Graham: I might as well make it
clear that there is no question of the minister's illness and serious illness. I would not want any of the members to be led to believe that there was not a serious condition of health existing with the Postmaster General. I know that to be true.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: It is a very serious thing that a department of this kind should run along so far and through the session of this House without any responsible person in charge, without any person who knows the department to represent it in this House. There is no deputy minister to come and advise the acting minister about anything connected with the department. That is a serious thing and some effort should be made to fill these positions. Perhaps the acting minister can appoint a deputy.


George Perry Graham: The acting minister will not do that. I will call my hon. friend's attention to this fact, that he was quite contented, in times gone by, to have a minister who never came into this House. The Postmaster General was then in the Senate. No person regrets more than I do the absence of the Postmaster General.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: He had a deputy minister.


George Perry Graham: As good Samaritans do in a government or elsewhere, whoever is able does his best to carry the burden of the absent one.


Arthur Meighen: Does the minister have any hopes of being relieved of either the Militia department or the Railway department in the near future, and if so, which one? He ought to know about that.


George Perry Graham: My. right hon. friend is really asking too much.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The minister will, perhaps, give us the list he has of post offices held up.


George Perry Graham: There were twenty. My hon. friend was nearly right. Since the list was made, postmasters appointed by the commission have taken charge of five.


Henry Lumley Drayton: When were the appointments made?


George Perry Graham: I will hand my hon. friend the list I have.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then I suppose this can be put on Hansard without wasting the time of the committee in reading it.


George Perry Graham: It has already been
brought down as a return.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Get a ruling on it.


George Perry Graham: The right hon. the leader of the Opposition moved for it one day in the absence of some other hon. member, I forget whom. At any rate it has been brought down.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I notice from it that my hon. friend has apparently obeyed the law in connection with the five cases. Am I right in that assumption?


George Perry Graham: I would not put it that
way.	,


Arthur Meighen: That would be too frank.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Would it not be true?


George Perry Graham: I would not go so far because I want to be accurate, and I do not want to admit even tacitly that I broke the law. I would say, that, as in all cases, investigations are proceeding and communications are being exchanged, and the department after conference and due consideration have given instructions for the postmasters, to whom certificates were issued by the Civil Service Commission, to take their places in these five instances. As a matter of fact it is only a question of time, unless the commission changes its mind, when the same thing must be done in connection with all cases, because the power eventually rests with the commission.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Am I to understand that the cases against which the minister has a mark are the ones in which the law has been carried out?


George Perry Graham: I would not put it that way.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Are these the cases in which the appointments made by the commission have been made effective?


George Perry Graham: I stated the matter
clearly.


Henry Lumley Drayton: No.


George Perry Graham: Well, to the average person. I explained that in these five cases, after conference and investigation, the department had given instructions for the persons to whom the Civil Service Commission had

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issued certificates to be placed in charge of the offices.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Would my hon. friend conceive it to be the duty of a minister to carry out the appointments made by the Civil Service Commission under the act?


George Perry Graham: It would be the duty of a minister to see that the laws governing his department were carried out; and unless the minister or the department can convince the commission that its appointee is not the best qualified person for the office in question, then eventually the minister must acquiesce in the appointment of the commission.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Another question. In the minister's view, how long a time has a minister the right to hang up these appointments?


George Perry Graham: My hon. friend, lawyerlike, is of course getting down to the crossquestioning.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Not at all; I am merely trying to get the facts, that is all.


George Perry Graham: I would not say that my hon. friend was trying to get the facts; he is trying to elicit opinions.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am asking your opinion.


George Perry Graham: Well, you know, opinions are not evidence. My hon. friend is not trydng to get the facts.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am going to the statutes, but you do not like statutes.


George Perry Graham: Of course, my opinion I can give for what it is worth. Circumstances differ and each case has to be dealt with on its merits, and as the responsible head of the department views those merits. Conditions might arise in one case that wmuld not at all obtain in the other, and the information necessary to be submitted to the commission might be more easily obtainable in one case than in another. My view, as I have already expressed it, is that eventually the Civil Service Commission, if it adheres to a nominee of its own, must make the appointment, as it has the right to do under the act. But in order that the public may be served as efficiently as possible, and that the machinery of government, not only of the departments but of the Civil Service Commission as well, might work smoothly, I think, the commission act fairly in allowing a reasonable time in which to see whether information cannot be placed before them which might lead them to view the

situation as the Post Office Department views it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I wonder whether my hon. friend can tell me what investigation is going on at Woodbridge? He says that when the investigation is over the appointment will be made unless the Civil Service Commission changes it mind. Well, what investigation is now going on?


George Perry Graham: I would not care to give the details.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Surely my hon. friend knows there are none. He must Certainly know that nothing has been done, but that there has been a mere refusal by the minister to carry out the law. Nothing has been done in connection with the thing for months, and if the minister wants to say now, as a matter of fact, that an investigation is going on, then I would ask for the details.


George Perry Graham: Further inquiries are being made. Now that my hon. friend has asked so many questions, showing that he has no confidence in the acting minister or in the department and being evidently under the impression that we are smuggling things by, I might inform him that I have given instructions to hasten to a conclusion as rapidly as possible some of these positions which he says are being hung up. I do not think that anything can be gained by hurrying too rapidly, and personally I should like to know all the circumstances. Now, I could relate some circumstances about Woodbridge.


Arthur Meighen: Go on.


George Perry Graham: But that would not help the situation there; and I could do the same in regard to a good many others. That, however, is not my province. I want to get matters cleared up as rapidly as possible and that is what I purpose doing. I do not want to say anything further until I get all the information I want.


Mr. BRISTOL:: Assuming that the Civil Service Commission has appointed a postmaster at Woodbridge, is it the function of the minister, not merely to examine into the qualifications of the appointee, but also to nominate someone else for the appointment, giving reasons therefor?


George Perry Graham: No, I would not go that length. In the case of Woodbridge the man is in charge now who was in charge when the certificate was issued to the other man.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The position is temporary.

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George Perry Graham: It can only be temporary. He has been there now since the certificate was issued to the other man.


Henry Lumley Drayton: He has been there a year.


George Perry Graham: It does not make any difference how long he has been there. The other man's certificate was issued in June, 1922, and that is quite a while ago.


Arthur Meighen: How can he be kept in the position for more than six months?


George Perry Graham: He has been kept in it and paid.


Arthur Meighen: Illegally.


George Perry Graham: I do not think the commission complies strictly with the act in regard to this six months' provision, in the case of the outside service. I do not think that is their practice. However, these matters will be cleared up in due course, and I want to see it done in all these cases and see the occupants of the positions made permanent as nearly as possible.


Edmund James Bristol: The point I am getting at is simple. Members of parliament to-day are not permitted-at least that is the understanding-to make recommendations to the Civil Service Commission as to who they think should be appointed as postmasters or in any other capacity. I take that to be the law; at least it is what is generally understood to be the practice, the object being to preclude patronage. Now, is it a fact, with reference to these twenty or any one of them, that the minister of the department recommends to the commission some person in lieu of an appointee whom the commission has already recommended? Is that the practice now, or has it been done in any case? If it has, it seems to me perfectly clear that the most powerful person is endeavouring to exercise patronage. and induce the Civil Service Commission to make other appointments that do not seem to be in compliance with the law.


Jacques Bureau: Read the evidence before the committee. It is to the contrary.


George Perry Graham: There is nothing to hinder my hon. friend making a recommendation to the Civil Service Commission, but that does not mean that his nominee would be appointed: he might be or he might not.


Edmund James Bristol: I understood it was not proper for us to do so. I am glad to know that it is proper.
116+


George Perry Graham: You will find the Civil Service Commission receives recommendations from all sorts of persons; I know the department does. When a vacancy occurs an inspector of the department places a person in charge temporarily until such time as the Civil Service Commission makes its selection. In this case the department, rightly or wrongly has differed with some of the nominees of the Civil Service Commission on information that the department has. But the occupancy of the position by any person other than the commisioners' appointee is and can only be temporary, and eventually, if the Civil Service Commission does not change its viewpoint, its nominee is the proper person for the vacancy and must be appointed.


Arthur Meighen: If what the minister says is carried to its logical conclusion it merely means that the intent of the act is defeated. The Civil Service Commission makes the appointment to the position. The government have the power to refuse that appointment. They would be justified in refusing to confirm it if, on the appointment being notified to them, they knew of circumstances that in their judgment disqualified the appointee, in which event it would be the duty of the government, I think, simply to transmit those circumstances to the commission. That would not involve any delay at all, would be carrying out the spirit of the act, and would be as far as the government in any case would be justified in going. If, on the other hand, after the Civil Service Commission makes an appointment, the government set to work to find whether the appointee is going to suit them from all standpoints, and they have an investigation themselves over the action of the commission, and they have a temporary man continued and continued temporarily in the position until they get through with their investigation, that is simply defeating the act. The word "eventually" means nothing; the word "temporary" means very little. Temporary employment may be for ten years. The act provides for six months, but six months should not be necessary. The duty of the government to install a man at once, unless they know of circumstances, not political, that they believe have not been brought to the mind of the commission, in which event they would be right in transmitting the information. Beyond that they have not any right to go ahead conducting prolonged investigations in review of the work of the Civil Service Commission. I think that is a fair statement of the position. If the government just go far enough in the exercise
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of the prerogative that the minister says they have, why, they might just as well recommend the repeal of the act. Putting a man in a vacancy in the first place, and keeping him there until the government is satisfied after their own investigation of the recommendation of the commission, is simply repealing the act.


Jacques Bureau: It ought to be repealed anyway.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I understood my hon. friend is going to bring down the pay sheets showing just how these temporary employees are paid. It may be that they can be paid legally under the act, but I do not think so.


George Perry Graham: I have not made any
promise to bring down the pay sheets. My hon. friend wanted to know how we "smuggled" in those pay sheets. That was the word he used. I insisted that they were not "smuggled." He asked by whose authority payments were made and I told him I would get the information. I do not propose to bring down all the pay sheets.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I only want a sample.


George Perry Graham: I will bring down the information I promised to clear his mind. In the meantime we might as well go on discussing the item, because I suppose there will be a discussion on it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I do not believe any one wishes to discuss it further. I suppose this statement from the minister is to go in Hansard?


The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Marcil):: It will have to be read if it is to go in Hansard, unless unanimous consent is given for it to be taken as read.


George Perry Graham: I am willing to have it go in Hansard.


Henry Lumley Drayton: If the hon. gentleman wants it read I have pleasure in complying with his wishes. This, then, Mr. Chairman, is a list of post office appointments which have been hung up by the hon. Postmaster General. The first column contains the names of the post offices, the second column the names of the commission's nominees, the third column their military status, and the fourth column the names of the temporary incumbents. Bearing this description in mind, I now read the list. The first place is Alexandria, Ontario; the commission has appointed Mr. W. A. Morrison; his military [Mr. Meighen.l	I
status is O.A.S.; the Postmaster General maintains Mr. Peter Ferguson in Mr. Morrison's place.	,


Jacques Bureau: What does O.A.S. mean?


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend will have to ask the minister; I am reading his own list.


James Alexander Robb: Overseas active service.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The next place is St. Barnabe Nord, P.Q.; the commission's nominee is Mr. J. N. Gelinas-


Mr. DUFF:: How do you spell that name?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Capital G-e-1-i-n-a-s.


Jacques Bureau: Go on. I know about that case; it is all right too.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Mr. Gelinas'
position is held by a nominee of the Postmaster General, Mr. Charles Marcouiller. Perhaps the hon. gentleman would like me to spell that name?


William Duff: Yes.


George Perry Graham: I suggest that my hon. friend is not reading the document; he is editing it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: If my hon. friend is objecting to my method of reading I am quite ready to change it.


George Perry Graham: Put the document in Hansard.


Jacques Bureau: Mr. Chairman, may we
comment on this as the hon. gentleman proceeds?


Charles Marcil: Yes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes.


Jacques Bureau: This man Gelinas bought out the place from his predecessor, Gelinas. I was informed of it. I said that even though under the old administration it was the custom to barter post office or other government jobs I would not stand for it. Thereupon Mr. Marcouiller was chosen and appointed by the Civil Service Commission. There are the facts.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then the return is all wrong; it does not show how the department acted.


William Duff: You are reading it upside down.


Henry Lumley Drayton: I am reading the statement as I received it from the Acting Postmaster General.


George Perry Graham: Leave out the editing and get it right-read it.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Here it is. The commission's nominee is stated to be J. N. Gelinas. My hon. friend from Three Rivers (Mr. Bureau) says they did not appoint him, they appointed Charles Marcouiller.


Jacques Bureau: They appointed him and then dismissed him when they found he was bartering a public office.
* Sir HENRY DRAYTON: Who is there
now?


Jacques Bureau: Marcouiller.


Henry Lumley Drayton: He is there-[DOT]


Jacques Bureau: And he is going to stay. He has the sanction of the Civil Service Commission.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Then, Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask my friend if he will not bring down a statement that gives us the facts-


An hon. MEMBER:: Go on with your reading.


Henry Lumley Drayton: -because the facts are incorrectly stated here apparently.


Jacques Bureau: No, the facts are correctly stated, Mr. Chairman. The Civil Service Commission, through their inspector, Mr. Green, recommended this man Gelinas. I went to the Postmaster General and told him that it would not do to barter these public offices. He agreed with me, and the Civil Service Commission confirmed the appointment of Mr. Marcouiller. He was recommended by the department at my instance, he is there and is going to stay there, and he is going to give good service too.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Well, Mr. Chairman, this is only another tribute to the tremendous power and influence of my hon. friend.


Jacques Bureau: My power is due to honesty. The straight course is always the shortest.


Henry Lumley Drayton: The next post office on the list is that of Field, B.C. The commission appointed Mr. J. Roberts, whose status is " O.A.S.". The nominee of the Postmaster General is Mrs. F. Howatson. The next is St. Moise Station, P.Q. The commission's nominee is Mrs. A. L. Michaud; the Postmaster General's nominee is Mrs. S- Vail-lancourt. The next is St. Phillippe d'Argen-teuil, P.Q.; the commission's nominee is Mr. T. LaMarche; the Postmaster General's man is Osias Laurin.
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William Duff: Is he in or out?


Henry Lumley Drayton: He is in; he is the Postmaster General's man. The next is Portneuf, P.Q. The commission appointed to that office Mr. Joseph Thibault, who has military status. The Postmaster General's man is Mr. Isidore Marcotte.


William Duff: What is the revenue from that office?


Henry Lumley Drayton: The hon. member will have to ask the minister. The next is the post office at Maddington Falls, P.Q. The commission have appointed to that office Mr. Emilien Rivard, who has military status. Evidently there is a family quarrel here, because the minister's nominee is the wife of the commission's nominee. The next is Clements-port, N.B. The commission's nominee is Mr. H. G. Potter, who has military status; the Postmaster General's nominee is Captain Elias Rawding.	.


William Duff: Did my hon. friend say that was in New Brunswick?


Henry Lumley Drayton: Yes.


William Duff: That is another mistake.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Supply-Post Office
status; his position is held by Miss L. G. Shannon, Kenabeek, Ont.; commission's nominee, Mr. J. E. Irwin; his place is held by Mr. James Enright, St. John N.B.; commission's nominee, Mr. A. W. Lingley; his duties are performed by the postmaster and other employees in charge of staffs, as shown by the return. I point out, Mr. Chairman, a situation which I do not think so many of my hon. friends will laugh at; out of this long list, the gentlemen appointed by the Civil Service Commission all hold military status, whereas of the appointees of the Postmaster General but one holds military status.


Mr. COPP:: Who appointed Mr. Lingley in St. John?


Henry Lumley Drayton: He has been appointed by the commission but he has not been given the position.


George Perry Graham: My hon. friend did not read all this document.


Henry Lumley Drayton: You said I was a bad reader, and I stopped.


George Perry Graham: Instructions have been issued for the transfer of Blackville, Portsmouth, tVardner, Tamworth and Marmora post offices to the commission's nominees, but the transfers have not yet been reported to the department.
Now, that is very important. Of these post offices my hon. friend has named, five have been handed over to the commission's nominees. That should have been read and put in the record.


Henry Lumley Drayton: My hon. friend said that before.
Mr. GRAHAM [DOT] My hon. friend was reading this document and putting it on Hansard, and he left out a very important item, namely, that, of the twenty offices mentioned, twenty-five per cent have already been placed in charge of the commission's nominees. So that this document, without further comment, must be discounted twenty-five per cent. Moreover, it bears out what I have already stated: you cannot make appointments to all these offices in rural districts on the basis of the rule of three. I said a few moments ago that, information was being secured in respect to all these different cases, and that as rapidly as possible we were filling the positions, where the commission changed its mind, according to the commission's nominee. Twenty-five per cent of that has been done-yes, more, the commission changed its mind in connection with the post office to which my hon. friend (Mr. Bureau) has referred. I contend that, in connection with appointments to these
TSir Henry Drayton.]
offices the department has been doing very well; very few are at this moment not in the hands of the nominee of the Civil Service Commission and such as are not are being placed there. But in some instances the commission has changed its mind after getting all the facts. As I said before, if the commission does not change its mind after all the objections are presented, its nominee must stand. In the meantime I maintain that the position of the department is commendable, not attackable, on this point, because it is not an easy matter to handle throughout the whole Dominion of Canada.


Mr. ROSS (Kingston):: Why was the. Portsmouth appointment held up? There was no sale of that post office.


George Perry Graham: That appointment is now in the hands of the nominee of the Civil Service Commission.


Arthur Edward Ross: But why was it held up so long? I can understand delay where there is a question of the post office being sold, but there was no such question in this case.


George Perry Graham: There were strenuous representations made to the department that this post office should be put in a separate building, also that it should be kept in its present location. The suitability of the commission's nominee was also questioned and the department investigated the matter, just as it does in a great many other cases. That is the report I have. The department having investigated the matter asked that the commission's nominee be put in the position, and that was done.


Arthur Edward Ross: He is a good man. There is no dispute about that. I know him.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Post Office-outside service-to provide for the payment of salary at the rate of $1,000 a year to Lucien Pacaud as the representative of the ^Canadian government on the Pacific Cable board, as from January 16, 1923, $208.33
To pay J. W. Paddle, postmaster at Sunset lake, Saskatchewan, and mail contractor on the Spalding and Sunset lake route, for the loss of a horse while conveying the mail on October 6, 1922, $150.
To pay certain employees of the postal service in the Quebec district for extra services in connection with checking incoming and outgoing British mails during the summer of 1922, $288.14.
Henry Lumley Drayton: Is this Mr. Pacaud the assistant of the High Commissioner?


George Perry Graham: Joint secretary.


Henry Lumley Drayton: This amount is in addition to his salary, of course?

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George Perry Graham: Yes.


Henry Lumley Drayton: What is his salary?


George Perry Graham: I do not know. That would come under the estimates of the Prime Minister for the High Commissioner's office.


Henry Lumley Drayton: It looks as if this was entirely a new matter.


George Perry Graham: Oh no. The Post Office Department makes this appointment every year, and this year it has appointed Mr. Pacaud.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Who acted before?


George Perry Graham: Mr. Lang, I think.


Henry Lumley Drayton: Who is Mr. Lang?


George Perry Graham: He was not in the High Commissioner's office, and it was thought better to have a man from the High Commissioner's office, so Mr. Pacaud was chosen.


Mr. STEWART (Humboldt):: With reference to the second item, is it the usual practice to indemnify mail carriers for the loss of their horses on the routes?


George Perry Graham: I am hardly in a mood to admit anything. We have to take each case on its merits. The inspector made a report on this case, recommending that we might well pay this man $150 for the loss of his horse under all the circumstances, and the department is carrying out his recommendation. I would not say that it would be constituting a precedent, for this reason: Every case will have to be considered on its merits, and if cause is not shown, the department would not be compelled to pay. There have been cases before, I think, where men have been indemnified under similar circumstances.


Arthur Edward Ross: What I want to get at is this: It is not that the amount is very much, although it is a pretty good price for the horse, but if this vote is passed will the minister give me the assurance that in a similar case the owner will get the same treatment? I lost one of my own, and I could give the details which I think would justify payment.


George Perry Graham: I would say this, that every case will be dealt with by the department on its merits, and if my hon. friend makes out as good a case as this man, he will have to be paid for his horse.


Arthur Edward Ross: Might we know what the merits are, so that I might compare my case with this one?


Mr. CAHILL:: And make the evidence to
suit the case.


George Perry Graham: This driver lost one of his horses while carrying the mail. We heard a lot last night about the mail carriers and how poorly they are paid. Well, this horse met with an accident and was killed. We had an inspector investigate the circumstances, and he recommended that we ought to pay for the horse. That is the whole case. If my hon. friend presents his case to the department and the inspector, after investigating it, feels that he ought to be compensated, there is no doubt in the world he would be paid.


Arthur Edward Ross: I suppose it would be all right to present the case here.
Mr, GRAHAM: Oh, no.


Arthur Edward Ross: I mean the general details. They are practically the same.


Charles Wallace Stewart: What kind of an investigation did the inspector make into this matter.


William Duff: A post-mortem.


George Perry Graham: I cannot say exactly what kind of an investigation he held. We have to trust our inspectors and officials. The inspector made his investigation and the department is acting on his recommendation.


Charles Wallace Stewart: Is it not a fact that this mail carrier simply wrote in to the inspector a statement of the case, and on the strength of that letter a report was made without taking any evidence whatever, the inspector simply forwarding the letter to the department with the recommendation that the claim be paid? I understand that those are the circumstances.


George Perry Graham: I could not say what further investigation the inspector made, but on the evidence that he had he recommends the payment of this amount. What else can the department depend on?


Mr. KENNEDY (Edmonton):: What was the nature of the evidence?


George Perry Graham: I will read the letter of this mail carrier. I wish some of those members who were so sympathetic towards the mail couriers yesterday were busy here now. Here is a poor mail courier who has lost his horse in this unremunerative work for a hardhearted government, and some hon. gentlemen object to his being compensated for the loss of his horse. His letter reads:
Dear Sir,-I beg to report that the incoming mail of October 6tb to Sunset lake arrived four hours late owing to a serious accident.
Supply-Post Office

One of the mail courier's horses was killed while travelling through a bush trail about two miles from Sunset lake by a pole, which when stepped on one end by the horse flew up and the other end entering the horse's stomach caused death almost instantly.
The delay resulted through effort spent to save the horse and the difficulty of procuring another to complete the trip as the above occurred in a lonely spot.
This horse was a splendid percheron mare and as her value represents more than a full year of mail courier's salary, you will realize what it means to me as I had only three horses before.
Will you kindly forward a request to the General Superintendent of Postal Service, asking him if, under the unfortunate circumstances, some remuneration for this horse can be made as her loss without remuneration will seriously cripple my ability to continue the performance of my mail service as only one of my remaining horses is able to travel on the road and I am at present continuing with a borrowed horse.
Trusting you will give this matter your early consideration and thanking you for the above favor, I am Yours faithfully,
Sgd. J. W. Paddle,
P.M. & Mail Courier.
Now if that statement be true a splendid Percheron mare would be worth more money than an ordinary animal. It is not extravagant therefore to contribute $150 towards the loss which this man has suffered and I submit that it is not establishing a precedent.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: I still doubt very much whether this animal was worth $150. I did not attend any horse sales in the West in October but I did in January and I saw good horses-young horses at that just ready to break in-sell for $20. Those were better horses than I have seen on most of the rural mail routes in western Canada, and I think the amount in this case is entirely excessive. I think it should be reduced to at least $75 and I move accordingly.


George Newcombe Gordon: Shall the resolution
carry?


Charles Wallace Stewart: I am not
opposed to this payment because of the amount or because the horse was not worth $150, although knowing the actual district where the accident occurred I should be inclined to doubt whether this very valuable Percheron mare was worth $150 last October. Apart, however, from that the objection in my opinion, is that it is creating a precedent. I think this man took the contract, as was said here last night, at. a figure altogether too low; he probably underbid somebody else in order to get it. I do not know as to that but this I am aware of: This man is carrying the mail 52 times a year, on a round trip of 22 miles, for $125, being $25 less than the figure at which he values the horse. Now, I submit that he should not have used a $150 horse for carrying the mail. Bearing in mind the wear and tear involved, and the other conditions,
[Mr. Graham.l
he would have been better advised to have used a $50 pony to carry the mail at the price he was getting. I want to state that there are scores of mail carriers in that same district, or in similar districts within a couple of hundred miles of it, who are having losses owing to accidents to their horses and they never ask the department to recoup them. They are quite prepared to face the possible consequences when they take the mail contract. I say this would be a dangerous precedent to establish. For example, let me cite the following incident. I happen to know a mail carrier who lost a team of horses not' so far away from this very post office a couple of years ago. It was about this time of yeai and a certain creek was in freshet. His tearr was drowned in trying to ford the creek; the owner thought he had not time to take the bridge which would involve a detour of some 15 or 20 miles. I never heard of any complaint by him. He was making a business of carrying the mail and he took his losses as a matter of course. I know of others who have lost horses under circumstances just as exceptional as these. They sound exceptional but actually they are not so. Just as in all bush countries it is not an uncommon thing for a horse to injure himself

very often fatally-by stepping on a stick. This man knew the conditions, just as other mail carriers know them, because he had often travelled the bush roads. Other men take these chances without any hope of compensation and this man should do the same. I am not going to oppose this item but I must say that it is creating a very dangerous precedent. There will be a great number of other claims made in future, quite as justifiable as the present one, and it would be well to draw the line before it is too late.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
At six o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair and the House took recess.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
House in committee on Bill No. 37, to incorporate Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Company (as amended, and recommending that the title thereof be changed to an Act to incorporate Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Company).-Mr. Marcil (Bonaventure) in the chair.

Private Bilh
On section 18-new section:
When the corporate obligations of the company shaU have been paid and its capital stock shall have been retired in the manner prescribed in its by-laws, its property, rights and franchises situate within the Dominion of Canada shall be conveyed to the said Dominion or to such province, municipality or agency thereof as the Governor-in-Council may designate; and its property, rights and franchises acquired from or situate within the state of New York shall be conveyed to the said state or to such municipality or agency of the state as the legislature thereof may designate.
William Alves Boys: I would like to ask the Chairman of the committee if there is any further information regarding this clause. I have no desire in any way to try to impede the course of this bill; but in the committee, when the clause was suggested, I could not see how it could have any useful application. May I bring to the attention of the committee the point I there took. The clause reads:
When the corporate obligations of the company shall have been paid and its capital stock shall have been retired in the manner prescribed in its by-laws.
In the first place the company cannot possibly have any by-laws at the present time, because it is not incorporated. How the capital stock of a company can be fully retired, except with the consent of those who hold stock, I cannot imagine. I understood, perhaps, there would be some explanation, and if there is I would be very glad to hear it.


Mr. McGIVERIN:: This bill was passed last session in this House; it then went to the Senate and was held up there at the request of the National Railways, who have since withdrawn all opposition. In the meantime, an act on similar lines was passed by the legislature of the state of New York, and there was introduced by the New York legislature a section 16, which is exactly the same as clause IS in this bill, the idea of the company being that it is a public enterprise, undertaken by public-spirited citizens in the state of New York and Ontario, to build this bridge and to carry out the undertaking as regards expenditure. with the idea that the state of New York and the Dominion of Canada, or the province of Ontario, as the case may be, will eventually take over the expenditure or the assets of the company. As regards what my hon. friend says, the bill is not very clear. I cannot, however, see any objection to its going through in this form, because in any case either country would have the power of expropriation as regards its half of the undertaking. The hon. member for Welland (Mr. German), as one of the promoters of the bill, stated that it was originally intended in 1913 or 1914 to be an undertaking as a memorial to the one hundred years of peace, and that in the meantime the
war intervened. The strongest explanation that I can make is that it was at the request of the joint promoters in New York state and in Canada that this provision was incorporated in the bill, and it was apparently insisted upon by the legislature of the state of New York that it should be so incorporated.


William Alves Boys: I do not for a moment suggest that the people behind this are not public spirited, that this is not a very desirable thing or that it would not be very useful in that part of the province. Therefore, I want to do all I can to assist the matter; but my hon. friend has not quite answered the inquiry I made. The clause I have quoted provides that when the corporate obligations of the company shall have been paid and its capital stock retired, its property rights and franchises in Canada shall be conveyed to the Dominion or to any province, municipality or agency thereof as the Governor in Council may designate. How can the time ever come when that will be done? It stands to reason that if they want to make a presentation of it to the government they can do so without this clause. I cannot see the purpose of the clause. It does not compel them to hand it over. There are no by-laws at present which say that the stock is to be issued and that stock shall be retired within a certain number of years or by an annual payment. I have done my best to figure out the purpose of the clause, but it seems to me that in its present form it is useless. I suppose it is the same clause as appears in the New York bill, but what good purpose it serves there either I cannot see. It did occur to me that the purpose of the clause was possibly to protect the state of New York on the one hand and Canada on the other, or in other words, that the company could not ask the Dominion of Canada to take over the bridge until its obligation's were paid and its capital stock retired. If that is the purpose of it I certainly do not think that this clause accomplishes it. However, if the chairman himself thinks that the clause is a useful one and protects the country in any way I shall not further oppose it. The chairman heard the further explanation given at the last meeting at which I regret to say I was not present, and so I shall say no more. But I must admit that I do not see what good purpose the clause serves. There are certainly no by-laws now in existence, because there cannot be By-laws of a company that is not incorporated.


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

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 86 (from the Senate), for the relief of Frederick Wesley Graham.

Mr. Hunt.
Bill No. 87 (from the Senate), for the relief of Catharine Gunyo Chatterson Odell.-Mr. Macdonald (Pictou).
Bill No. 88 (from the Senate), for the relief of Marietta Isabel Wilson.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 89 (from the Senate), for the relief of Marian Eugenie MacCordick.-Mr. Jacobs.
Bil No. 90 (from the Senate), for the relief of Elizabeth Frankland.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 91 (from the Senate), for the relief of Arnold Carrington Burke.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 92 (from the Senate), for the relief of Emily Margery Chrimes.-Mr. McQuarrie.
Bill No. 93 (from the Senate), for the relief of Lyle Johnson.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 94 (from the Senate), for the relief of Annie Belle Wilson.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 95 (from the Senate), for the relief of Henry John Burden.-Mr. Ryckman.
Bill No. 96 (from the Senate), for the relief of Ethel Olmstead.-Mr. Rankin.
Bill No. 97 (from the Senate), for the relief of Edward Lewis Britton.-Mr. Arthurs.
Bill No. 98 (from the Senate), for the relief of Ruby Minnie Stallworthy.-Mr. Porter.
Bill No. 99 (from the Senate), for the relief of Chistopher Campkin.

Mr. Maybee.
Bill No. 100 (from the Senate), for the relief of Andrew George Suffel.-Mr. Preston.
Bill No. 101 (from the Senate), for the relief of Joseph Ross Wallace.-Mr. Church.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 105, respecting the Canadian Order of the Woodmen of the World.-Mr. Gordon.
[Stage Direction]
On motion of Mr. McGiverin for Committee of Supply:
William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Chairman, with the permission of the House I would ask that bill No. 75 which appears under Public Bills and Orders be given second reading. For that purpose I would move that the committee rise and report progress and ask leave to sit again this day.


Arthur Meighen: I think the hon. member in charge of the bill (Mr. McMaster) might tell the House the reason for the urgency!


Andrew Ross McMaster: Mr. Chairman, I cannot-


Charles Marcil: This motion is not debatable.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House went into Committee of Supply, Mr. Gordon in the Chair.
Progress reported.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. ANDREW McMASTER (Brome) moved the second reading of Bill No. 75 (from the Senate) to make lawful the marriage of a woman to her deceased husband's brother or such brother's son.
He said: This legislation, Mr. Speaker, originated in the Senate, where it was passed with practically no discussion. I do not intend to delay the House at any great length in exposition of the bill, which after all is of a very simple nature. For the last forty years our law has provided that a man may marry his deceased's wife's sister; in other words, that a widower may marry his sister-in-law. But strange to say the inverse is not the case, and the widow cannot marry her brother-in-law. Now it would appear to me that on the most reasonable grounds there is no real distinction or indeed any distinction to be drawn.
It may interest hon. members if I refer for a few moments to the history of the legislation in this parliament upon the subject. In 1880 Mr. Girouard, at that time member for Jacques Cartier county, who, if I mistake not, was afterwards one of the Justices of the Supreme Court, introduced a bill permitting not only the marriage of the man with his deceased wife's sister, but also the marriage of the woman with her deceased husband's brother. The bill was debated at very considerable length and passed by an overwhelming majority. However, the Senate of that day was not composed as the Senate of to-day is, and there the bill met with opposition and was rejected, but by a very small majority. If that measuie had passed there would have been no necessity for the present bill. Two years afterwards Mr. Girouard introduced another bill, in which he asked merely for legislation permitting the marriage of the man with his deceased wife's sister. That bill was debated for some time, it received a large majority in this House, and was also passed by the Senate. Therefore, as I stated at the outset of my observations, for the last forty years a man in Canada has had the right- although he has been under no obligation- in, the event of his wife's death to marry any one of her sisters. But the wife who lost her husband has not had the right to marry his brother.
Now, it would seem to me that if we believe in "equal rights for all and special privileges for none" that men and women in regard to this as in regard to many other matters should be put on the same basis. My first argument in support of the bill is that for the last forty years in which the

Supply-Trade and Commerce
present legislation has been on our statute books I know of no. inconvenience caused by it. I believe if this bill were accepted and we could cast our minds forward for forty years, we would see that no inconvenience would result from the adoption of this legislation.
I am told that the provision under which a woman is forbidden to marry her deceased husband's brother is often disregarded, the marriage taking place in this country, or is often avoided by parties going into the United States-because there is only one state in' that country which forbids such a marriage-there contracting the marriage and returning to Canada if they see fit to do so. I think public opinion is in favour of this bill. When Mr. Girouard brought in his bill of 1882, which is the present legislation, he was able to invite the attention of his colleagues to the fact that three hundred women in Montreal had petitioned for the legislation. I can now tell the House that the Local Council of Women, representing a large body of thoughtful women throughout the country, some 300,000 in number, have asked for this legislation.
There cannot be any objection to this legislation on the part of those who are guided in life by the Scriptures. We will remember that little idyll found in the Book of Ruth which tells us that Naomi said to her daughters-in-law that they should go home because she was unable to provide them with husbands in the country to which she was returning. In the old days-if we are to have recourse to those early times for enlightenment and example-it was not only the right but the obligation of the male survivors of a deceased husband to marry the widow. You will remember that the founder of the House of David, before he married Ruth, received his right to do so from a nearer relation. So that I think we need not have any religious qualms in accepting this legislation. It seems to me so reasonable and so equitable as to really not require any argument, and I shall reserve anything further I may have to say in the case of any opposition being made to the bill. It seems to me that the bill speaks for itself.
Motion agreed to and bill read the second time, considered in committee, reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The House in Committee of Supply, Mr. Marcil (Bonaventure) in the chair.
Trade and Commerce-Commercial Intelligence Service, including salaries, travelling expenses, contingencies and other expenditure of Trade Commissioners,
Assistant Trade Commissioners, Junior Trade Commissioners and Commercial Agents; and miscellaneous expenses in connection with the development and extension of Canadian trade, $320,000.
Mr. MANION:: How many trade commissioners have we, and what are the principal countries in which they are located?
Mr./ROBB:	We have twenty-three trade
commissioners and four commercial agents. The trade commissioners are located at Melbourne, Cape Town, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Shanghai, Liverpool, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Milan, Buenos Aires, Yokohama, Barbados, Auckland, Paris, Calcutta, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Singapore, Jamaica and Havana, Bristol, Mexico City. The commercial agents are located at Sydney, Australia; Christiania, Norway; Nassau, Bahamas, and Port of Spain, Trinidad.


Robert James Manion: There has been a good
deal of talk in the press at times about our dommercial agents, or the lack of them. Would the minister state what are their general duties and what success they are having so far as this country is concerned?


James Alexander Robb: The duties of the trade commissioners are to look after trade generally, to keep in touch with the conditions in the countries in which they are located, to discover what products Canada may with profit ship to those countries, to keep in their offices a register of exporting firms who desire to do business, to advise the business people of the country where they are located as to what goods might be purchased in Canada, and generally speaking to survey trade conditions and advise the Canadian people where they can do business profitably in that country.
It frequently happens in the countries where the trade commissioners are located that there may be a difference of opinion at the custom house when Canadian goods arrive there, and the trade commissioners resident in those countries and on fair terms with the Customs Department of that foreign country are able in many instances to iron out the difficulties and make it easier for Canadians to trade there. Then from time to time the trade commissioners advise the government of proposed tariff changes that might be looming up in those countries, and represent as diplomatically as possible to the people of those countries the advantages it would be to them to give fair terms to Canadian products.
Another part of the duties of the trade commissioners is this, and it is done with considerable profit to Canadian industries. A firm in Canada desiring to export products to one of the countries where we have a trade

Supply-Trade and Commerce
commissioner located, may communicate with that commissioner and ask for the names of people there who would handle Canadian products. The trade commissioner gives the names only of those whom he considers reliable. From time to time he sends reports to the office of the Minister of Trade and Commerce here, where we have in the department junior trade commissioners in training, supervisors of commercial intelligence and an editor who classifies all this information and sends it out weekly to exporters, boards of trade, banks, colleges, and generally speaking to any person who might be interested in export trade.
Since my hon. friend has invited some observations on the trade situation I would like to point out that Canada is reaching out everywhere throughout the world for export trade, and we are doing fairly well, perhaps hatter than we ourselves realize. Canada geographically speaking is as well situated as any country to do trade with the different countries of the world. If you take a look at the map you will discover the advantages we have in location, the short haul for our products to the different markets of the world as compared with other countries. Canada, as I said a moment ago, trades with the whole world, but I think we might say without disparagement to any of our smaller customers that we have nineteen or twenty first-class customers who take from us various products in agriculture, mineral, and manufactured goods. The United Kingdom is our best customer, but the United States, notwithstanding what we hear of the Fordney tariff, is a very close second. It may interest the committee to know that of our nineteen or twenty first-class customers, for the year ending 31st December the United Kingdom took from Canada $379,540,481 worth of goods; the United States took from us $349,292,392 worth -a very close second. Our next best customer was the sister Dominion of Australia with a purchasing record of $17,411,298. Japan is our fourth best customer, buying from Canada last year $15,799,800 worth. France comes next with $12,869,332; Italy, $12,195,499; Belgium, $12,014,190; and we believe that when the treaties that will be submitted to the House in a few days are proclaimed and go into effect they will add very materially to our business with France, Italy and Belgium. Our exports to The Netherlands last year amounted to $10,891,889; British West Indies, $9,306,935, plus $3,218,332 to Bermuda and British Guiana;; Newfoundland, 88.800,174; New Zealand, $7,124,598, and let me say right here that per capita we have no better
fMr. Robb.]
customer than the little sister Dominion of New Zealand, where there is an excellent feeling towards Canada. Germany, our enemy of yesterday, is to-day one of our good customers. We sold to Germany last year $7,651,117 worth of goods.


Richard Burpee Hanson: How much are we buying from Germany now?


James Alexander Robb: I have not the figures just now. China including Hong Kong, which is listed separately, bought from us $5,293,808 worth; Greece, $5,964,156; Norway and Sweden, $4,597,000; Cuba, $4,905,468'; Mexico, $3,231,580. I am sure my hon. friends will appreciate that there are possibilities of greater trade development in the future with Mexico as conditions in that country become settled.
For the twelve months ending February, 1923, the total exports of Canada amounted to $92S,356,656, or an increase of 8165,808,061 over our exports for the same period the previous year. Canada is not only a large exporting nation of agricultural products, but she is becoming an exporting nation of manufactured goods. It is true that agricultural products enter largely into our exports, but it is also true that our exports of manufactured products are increasing rapidly. Canada perhaps unconsciously is becoming an exporter of manufactured goods.
I am sure it will interest the committee to have a comparison as between the exports of Canada and exports of our great neighbour to the south, the United States. For the year ending March 31st, 1922, the records of the statistical departments of the United States and of Canada show that of the total exports of these two countries, the exports of raw material of the United States were 39 per cent, and of Canada 44 per cent. Of partly manufactured products the exports of the United States were 11 per cent, and the exports of Canada 14 per cent. Of manufactured products the exports of the United States were 49 per cent, while those of Canada were 41 per cent. When we analyze our business on a per capita basis Canada ranks very high as compared with other countries. On a per capita basis the little Dominion of New Zealand comes first with an export of $154.54. Canada comes second with an export per capita of $100.63, and keep in mind that 41 per cent of that export consisted of manufactured products. The United Kingdom has an export per capita of $63.36, and the United States has an export per capita of $33.95 as against a per capita export for Canada of $100.63.

Supply-Trade and Commerce


Robert James Manion: I presume I would be quite right in supposing that in manufactured exports are included such commodities as flour? That is, any goods which are not produced from the soil and sent out in the shape of raw material would be included in manufactured articles?


James Alexander Robb: If we ship wheat that is a raw product. If we ship flour that is a manufactured product. If we ship milk that - is a raw product. If we ship butter that is a manufactured product. If we ship pulp-wood it is a raw product. If we ship paper it is a manufactured product. If we sfhip pulp it is partly manufactured.


Robert James Manion: The reason I asked the question is this; I take the facts to be just as the minister states them, but very often in explaining our exports I have noticed that statistics are given with the idea particularly of boosting one side or the other. So that the statistics are mixed up. For example in agricultural exports butter, condensed milk, flour, and things of that sort, are included which are really manufactured articles as my hon. friend says.


James Alexander Robb: This statement has been prepared for me by the statistical department. It is without any colouring whatever and is given exactly in the form in which 9 p.m. they hand it out. Now, coming back again to the question of our exports. The total exports for the 12 months ending in February of this year were 8928,356,656, of which 42 per cent were finished products. When it is recalled that in 1890 the total exports of Canada only amounted to 8185,000,000, and that less than 6 per cent of those were manufactured products, it will be realized what great progress Canada has made in those 32 years. I would not like the House to believe that we should remain as we are with our arms folded, that we should be satisfied with our immense exports and the volume of manufactured products we are sending out. It seems to me that it should be the ambition of this country not only to increase our production but to increase the manufacture of our own products in our own country.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Arthur Meighen: Converts every day.


James Alexander Robb: I have in mind the days of my boyhood when many of the farms in our part of the country had a mortgage on them, and the people were struggling to build homes and become properly established with comforts for themselves and their children. They were
then breaking the land and growing a little grain, and they sometimes had to haul that grain 20, 25, 30, and even 50 and 60 miles to market. In that country to-day the conditions are changed. There are no mortgages on the farms or, if there are any, they are very few in number. The children of many of the people who then had mortgages on their farms to-day have investments in victory bonds and other securities. They possess comfortable homes, with large bams and great herds of cattle in the fields. It was the cow that paid off the mortgage on the farms in eastern Canada; and, looking at conditions throughout the country, it seems to me that we should not be discouraged for the future. The eastern provinces-the province of Ontario, the province of Quebec and the Maritime provinces-are well adapted for dairying; but there is another province in the Dominion which, perhaps, possesses as great, or even greater advantages for profitable dairying if the people there will work as the people of eastern Canada worked-I refer to the little province of Alberta. The conditions essential to successful dairying are cheap feed for the cattle, water and a good climate. I am sure no person will say that the province of Alberta has not a good climate, that it has not plenty of water, that it has not plenty of good feed for stock. I would like to remind mv fellow members in the province of Quebec_


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: May I interrupt the hon. minister?


James Alexander Robb: Yes.


Edward Joseph Garland: I wish to deny most emphatically that there is an abundance of feed or even of water in that province.


James Alexander Robb: Well, I visited Alberta for many years annually long before my hon. friend came to this country, and if he is discouraged with Alberta, I am not. I do not believe that my hon. friend with his pessimism represents the true feeling in that province. When I remember that in the autumn of last year, at the greatest exhibition held in Canada, the province of Alberta carried off most of the best prizes for butter; when I remember that the province of Alberta is as near the sea as many ports of the province of Ontario-


An hon. MEMBER:: Except for freight rates.


James Alexander Robb: -I have no reason to feel discouraged over the future of that country. I know that dairying means hard work.


An hon. MEMBER:: And no pay.

Supply-Trade and Commerce


James Alexander Robb: I am not prepared to admit that, but it means comfort, it means happy homes, it means the family united where there is work for the boys and the girls.


An hon. MEMBER:: And fourteen hours a day.


James Alexander Robb: Yes, fourteen hours a day and longer than that. But we are working fourteen hours a day in this chamber and we are doing fairly well at it. I am not making this statement with the idea of casting any reflection on my hon. friends from the western provinces, but rather to encourage them, and to say to them that what eastern Canada has accomplished, surely western Canada can do also. I am not one who believes that the son has less grip than his sire, and I believe the young men of to-day, if they are ready to get down and work as their forefathers worked, will find as good a future in Canada as in the country whence they came.


Mr. GOULD:: In his early remarks the minister stated that trade commissioners were in foreign countries for the purpose of advising the government. Particularly he mentioned that they were there to anticipate if any false moves, we might say, were made in connection with the tariff. Are we to understand from that that our trade commissioners are in foreign countries for the sole purpose of anticipating these tariffs, to endeavour to get as low a tariff rate for the exports of this country as possible?


James Alexander Robb: I would not say that. They are there to watch conditions and to advise their government from time to time. Let me repeat again, they are there also to advise Canadian shippers of advantages in the countries in which they are located. In that connection, let me read for the information of the House a letter that I have from the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, Regina, dated the 29th September, 1922, to our trade commisisoner in Calcutta, India:
Dear Sir,-We have to thank you tor your very comprehensive letter of August 18 giving statistics on the 1921-22 wheat crop and outlining the conditions under which India's wheat cultivation is carried on.
We note that your monthly reports are embodied m the Commercial Intelligence Journal, and as suggested by you, are taking steps to be put on the mailing list for this paper.
Then on the 11th April, they wrote for this information for a ten-year period, which Mr. Chisholm, the agent there, supplied them. Let me cite this record to show of what advantage these men are. Through the efforts of Mr. Emery, trade agent in China, of this crop there has been sold a total of 225,000 sacks of

flour shipped from the Vancouver Milling Company, the Robin Hood Mills at Calgary, the Robin Hood Mills at Moose Jaw, and the Maple Leaf Milling Company at Medicine Hat. We have also a record of a large quantity of butter which was shipped from a creamery in Alberta to China.


Mr. HARRIS:: We are, I am sure, all very much indebted to the worthy minister for giving a few of his observations on the trade situation. I rather think he trampled on the ground of the Minister of Agriculture, and that he would have been better advised to have interested us in his travels to foreign lands. I have in mind more particularly the question which he himself raised last year, namely that our trade commissioners in some of these foreign lands were found to be doing business, as he said, due, perhaps, to the niggardliness of this particular vote or votes of a like nature, on back streets of various towns and cities. It would be very interesting to the committee if the minister would, as the Minister of Agriculture did, give us a little summary of what he found to be the condition of affairs as regards these particular officers.
A further question which I have in mind is this. Is any effort being made on the part of the Department of Trade and Commerce to secure the same trade relations between Canada and Cuba as the United States enjoy with Cuba at the present time. I hope the minister will, at least, tell us some of the things that he observed in that trip of his around the world.


James Alexander Robb: I thought I had given my hon. friend a rather interesting review of trade conditions in that part of the world.


Joseph Henry Harris: Did the minister find our trade commissioners working on back streets as he said, and does he anticipate that he will require a larger appropriation this year than in the past?


James Alexander Robb: We have made a considerably increased allowance to the trade commissioners and also increased their living allowance, so that they are getting much better located than they were. In Shanghai, China, we have recently organized an exhibitios t iom, where samples of Canadian products for sale in that country are continually on exhibition. We have this on the rental basis, so that the firm shipping the goods pays a rental that almost covers the total expense. I think this is on a paying basis, or practically so.


Joseph Henry Harris: Will the minister give me the information regarding Cuba?

Sup-ply-Trade and Commerce


James Alexander Robb: As my hon friend knows, negotiations regarding tariffs are under the Department of Finance. A representative is in Cuba now watching Canadian interests.


Joseph Henry Harris: A representative of the Department of Trade and Commerce?


James Alexander Robb: Yes.


Mr. LEWIS:: I was delighted to hear the minister speak so optimistically regarding the prairie provinces. I wonder whether his optimism is well founded.


James Alexander Robb: I hope so.


Arthur John Lewis: I happened to be in Moose Jaw last week-


Mr. STEVENS:: Did the hon. member meet the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) there?


Arthur John Lewis: This time I did not go into the barn; but I noticed in the window of one of the grocery stores, fresh eggs marked 18 cents per dozen. These came from the country; and the farmer had to pay for the crate and breakages before the eggs reached the store, and I presume there was a little profit on the crate too. I asked some of the people in the country what they were receiving for eggs and they said 14 cents. I just wonder, considering what they have to pay for their food, whether it is a profitable situation for them to sell eggs at 14 cents per dozen. I also found that dairy butter, not creamery butter, was selling at 22 cents. It does not seem to me that these prices show that the West is going to be prosperous in a very short time. It is true that we need all the markets which the minister has spoken of, and I trust by the opening up of the larger markets of the world, the price will increase and the farmer will be given a fair deal for what he is raising.


Mr. GARDINER:: The minister has given the committee the amount of exports that Canada had during the last year. Can he give the committee the same figures as regards the imports?


James Alexander Robb: I have some imports from different countries. This is not so well classified as the other. I would be glad to hand the statement over to my hon. friend if he is interested.


Robert Gardiner: What is the total?


James Alexander Robb: I have not the total.


Robert Gardiner: The minister stated that there were practically no farm mortgages in Canada.


James Alexander Robb: In the section of country where I was born and brought up.


Robert Gardiner: Just that one section.


James Alexander Robb: I was citing conditions in that part of the country when I was a boy when there were many mortgages. I said that to-day there were but few mortgages in that part of the country. What I said was that the people who at that time had mortgages to-day have victory bonds.


Robert Gardiner: Can the minister give us some idea as to what peculiar conditions in that part of the country would be responsible for this freedom of the farms from mortgages? His statement seems an extraordinary one.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Perhaps it is the good old cow business.


James Alexander Robb: A little hard work


Edward Joseph Garland: Does the minister mean to say that we do not work hard out in the West?


James Alexander Robb: I am not saying anything about the West; I am talking about the East. The hon. gentleman asked me to what cause the condition I have described is attributable. A little hard work and patience and continuous saving from year to year will bring it about.


William Irvine: Are there for sale any of those cows that paid off the mortgages?


James Alexander Robb: Yes, not long ago, I know, one sold in British Columbia for $1,600.


Mr. SALES:: A Quebec cow, sir? Is the minister aware that we have had evidence only this week from prominent men in the province of Quebec that the very conditions he speaks of actually obtain there, namely, hard work, long hours and small pay, and indeed less than small pay, rather no pay at all but a deficit instead, and that these same conditions are driving the young people off the land in that province at the present time? Is the minister aware of that?


James Alexander Robb: I am told that the young people are leaving the land not only in Quebec but in old free trade England.


Thomas Sales: Well, that only proves a fact that has been well known for many years, indeed throughout the ages, that the men on the soil are expected, as they have always done and as people think they will continue to do, to work longer hours than anyone else for less money. That is the fact of the matter and we can prove it, and that is the very reason the people are leaving. The young

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people are getting educated; the boys are getting more sense. I can give you my own personal experience. I sent my boy to the Saskatoon Agricultural College and when he came back he used language which I cannot repeat in the House of Commons. It was the first time I had heard him express himself vigorously. He said, "I am not going to be such a-well, such a fool as you are." I said, "What do you mean, Jack?" He answered, "I am not going to work fifteen hours a day to grow cheap food for the man who wants to work eight." And I cannot blame him.


Mr. FAFARD:: Are you opposed to education?


Thomas Sales: No sir, I am not; but when you educate a young man you develop his powers of comparison and when he sees one man working eight hours while he has to work fifteen, he naturally resents the idea.


Mr. PELLETIER:: Let them combine
forces and work together.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The fault does not lie with the man who has to work fifteen hours but with the man who does not want to work more than eight. Perhaps some of the evil lies in that direction.


Mr. COOTE:: The hon. member tells us where the cause lies, but he does not tell us who is hit in the result.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: A barber works fifteen hours a day all the year round. Does the farmer in the West work fifteen hours a day throughout the whole year?


Thomas Sales: Do you think he ought to?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I am asking a plain question. Do these men in the West work on the farms fifteen hours a day all the year round?


Thomas Sales: I can answer the question so far as my own farm is concerned. We have stock on it and while the men certainly do not work fifteen hours a day throughout the entire year, in winter they work ten at the very least; and always bear in mind that they work hard on Sundays as well.


Mr. PRITCHARD:: I am surprised to hear the minister make the statement we have heard this evening. I cannot speak for Quebec, of course, but the hon. member who referred to conditions there was speaking from the evidence that has been brought out in regard to that province and no doubt that is the best evidence we can have, I can, however, speak of conditions as they exist in my own province. I happen to represent as good a farming section of the country as can be found in

Ontario and perhaps as good as any in the whole Dominion, and a few weeks ago I got certain information from one of the men of the type the minister speaks of. This gentleman who is a successful farmer has been in his locality for thirty years and I want to make a reference or two to the statement he made to me. Now, the minister stated.that in eastern Ontario or Quebec, which is much the same, there are no mortgages outstanding to-day. I wish I could bring myself to think the same. As a matter of fact, and quite naturally, we have mortgages in Ontario, and I do not see any way by which we could possibly avoid having them. Let me explain why, A farmer gets a section of land, it matters not whether it is large or small. If he raises a family and puts by a little for a rainy day he is under the' necessity of mortgaging the farm, if he wants to have something to live on in his old age. Obviously therefore he cannot hand the farm over to his son without encumbrances. The son gets it with a mortgage on it and he too raises a family and naturally gets into the same position, so that again the mortgage is passed on to the next generation. If I might speak of the farm on which I live, I might remark that my son now represents the third generation holding the same homestead. For these reasons therefore it is inevitable that we shall have mortgages; and although I have not the statistics by me to give figures., I am satisfied that there are as many mortgages on our farms to-day as there were thirty years ago. I honestly believe also that the men holding these mortgages are not as well satisfied with the securities as those who held mortgages at that time.


Joseph Henry Harris: Is there a mortgage on the holdings you have in the city of Toronto?


John Pritchard: I do not happen to have a home in the city of Toronto.


Joseph Henry Harris: Have you any holdings in the city of Toronto?


John Pritchard: Yes.


Joseph Henry Harris: For the benefit of the committee, will the hon. member give his equity in these holdings in view of the opinions he has expressed?


John Pritchard: Wait until the time comes; I will do that later. I want to deal with the question to which the minister referred. I met at the railway station a short time ago a gentleman from the constituency adjoining my own, and I might quote what he said in a conversation we had, in order to convince the committee that some of the statements that

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have been made in this House have not been made without some foundation of fact behind them. This man has been successful in his farming. You talk about dairy cows. For thirty years he has had as good a herd of Jersey cows as can be found anywhere in the country, and they have been as intelligently cared for. He works fourteen of fifteen hours a day, and while he was not complaining, because as I say he has been successful, he gave me some facts which I think it is well for the House to know. When I informed him of the nature of the debates that have taken place in this House he told me that he and his son had sat down and figured their profits for the year 1921, and they discovered that they had not quite a dollar a day after deducting all expenses. That is a well managed farm and I defy the minister, which is saying a good deal, to find a more successful man than this gentleman. Yet that is just what he told me a couple of weeks ago. These conditions exist whether we want to admit the fact or not; and while we are not grumbling in western Ontario, and no one can say he has heard us grumble much in this House, I do not want to sit here and have statements made which I know are not true concerning the district I represent as well as that part of the country generally. I have sat here and listened with a good deal of patience to men who have tried to be optimistic,and I can bear with them, because I would rather take an optimistic than' a pessimistic view of things generally. I do not like the world to know our actual condition. It is bad enough to let the House know, but unfortunately Hansard publishes our statements whether they are pessimistic or optimistic, and they go forth to the country. I have refrained from saying anything pessimistic, but I do not want the impression to go out to the contrary because otherwise we who know the actual conditions in our constituencies may be laughed at when we get up in this House and refer to them even in the most guarded terms. We will not stand for that. If the member for West Toronto (Mr. Hocken) or the member for East York (Mr. Harris) wants to know particulars of what I refer to I shall be pleased to enlighten them in my room, but I am not going to publish them on the floor of the House.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: I am sincerely glad to know that the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Robb) and so many other hon. members are keenly interested in dairy farming. It is news to me, because I have been interested in it in a direct way all my life, but since coming to this House I have not heard very much
117	[DOT]
upon this phase of farming. I believe dairy farming in eastern Canada is perhaps the most prosperous line of agriculture which our farmers have been following, but I think the minister left an .impression which is not altogether correct. I do not know what particular part of Canada he was referring to in the very rosy picture he unfolded to us of a farming community that was encumbered with mortgages thirty or forty years ago but now enjoys prosperity in the way of comfortable homes and victory bonds. I would like to know just exactly where that favoured spot is, because from my acquaintance with the dairy industry in Ontario I very much question whether the picture truly depicts actual conditions.
I have before me evidence, some of which I laid before this House two years ago in the course of the budget debate, and which has been further confirmed since that time by Professor Leitch of the Ontario Agricultural College. Professor Leitch was brought up on a farm and educated at the agricultural college. He has had practical experience in managing farms on a commercial scale, and for a number of years past he has been making a special study of mixed farming in Ontario, both dairying and stockraising. In his sworn evidence before the Special Committee on Agricultural Conditions he gave a summary of conditions that obtained on a certain number of specially selected farms. These farms were selected as representative of average conditions in certain sections of the province, which were by no means the poorer sections. I do not wish to quote this evidence in detail, but here are some of the results which he gave to the committee and which are substantially in line with my own experience. I sincerely hope that this summary will elicit as much cheering from the members in my immediate vicinity as did the remarks of the Minister of Trade and Commerce.
For the year ending May 1st, 1921, summarizing the financial operations of dairy farmers in the county of Oxford-the banner dairying county in Ontario, equal I think to the section to which the minister was referring-after allowing 5 per cent on investment and 26 cents an hour for eleven hours a day for 365 days in the year to the farmer, the cost of producing milk was found to be $2.70 per 100 pounds, while the price received was the same. The following year there was a considerable reduction in the cost of production, it dropped to $1.95 per 100 pounds, but the price received was also lower, being $1.8?



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per 100 pounds. So that with this very moderate allowance for wages and profit the farmer was selling his milk at a loss of 12 cents per 100 pounds-that is, 12 cents per 100 pounds less "than would allow him 26 cents an hour for wages and 5 per cent on his investment. Surely no commercial undertaking could ask for a less margin of profit or a lower wage than that. Following this same calculation down for the year ending May 1st, 1923-assuming, of course, that no change will take place in the figures for the next month-on the same basis the estimated cost of producing milk will be $1.70 per 100 pounds, while the price received will be $1.65 per 100 pounds, or 5 cents less per 100 pounds than the cost of production.
Those are average conditions in the very best dairying section of Ontario. I assume that conditions are no better in the particular section to which the Minister of Trade and Commerce was referring. Although the dairy farmer is engaged in perhaps the most prosperous line of agriculture in this country, those are the results that he is obtaining at the present time, and surely the picture is not so rosy as the minister would have us believe. Those figures do not show anything unusual. There is no occasion for a dairy farmer to be alarmed at them, there is no particular reason for discouragement, because he has always had to put up with conditions such as these and very often very much worse. I do not know if they were any better at any time. Perhaps during 1918 conditions may have been just a little bit better than those figures would indicate. But those are the figures for the last three years, and they indicate in a fair way the condition of the dairy farmer to-day in this province.
Although the men of forty or fifty years ago no doubt should be accorded great credit for their energy and courage, I have it on the mthority of men who are older than the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce, men who have been engaged in this work all their lives, that dairy farming at the present time is very much harder than it was fifty years ago; that farming in this part of Ontario, in the province of Quebec, entails more work, more energy, more thought, more constant application, than it did forty or fifty years ago. I believe that to be the case.


James Alexander Robb: I think that is right.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: If that is
the case, and if it is true, as the minister avers, that there are fewer mortgages now than there were then, I must conclude that the men engaged in this business are entitled

at least to some credit for the way they are carrying on. I question that statement, however; I doubt very much whether mortgages, even in the dairy sections of this province and the neighbouring province of Quebec, are becoming fewer. I do not wish to draw any pessimistic picture of the prospects of the dairy farmer, but I would like to have these few figures placed on record in order that an accurate estimate may be formed by hon. members who, perhaps, do not know the actual conditions of dairy farming as they exist to-day.


Miss MACPHAIL:: When the hon. member for Glengarry (Mr. Kennedy), who has iust spoken, said that the farmer, his wife and family work and the farmer gets the money, he stated the truth. It is true that the farmers work hard; it is true their days are long and their pay is poor. But it is also infinitely true that the farm woman's day is longer and her pay poorer. With all due deference to the superior wisdom of men, one mistake that I think the men continually make in this House is that of treating the problem of rural depopulation as a man's problem and a man's problem only. Hon. members talk about the boy getting an education, as if when you have talked about the man and the boy you have finished the family-but you have not. You want to remember that the girl is also getting an education. The girl has seen her mother work as that mother does not want her daughter to work and as the daughter herself does not want to work. If you go over a rural community to-day-take your own constituency, for example,-and tabulate the results of your observation, you [DOT]will find more young men on the land than young women: the girls leave first, and that is a pretty sure indication that the boys will leave later. I have noticed so often that the matter is looked at from the man's point of view. When a man is forced to quit farming, if you go into the case carefully you will find-and this applies to over half the cases-that he quits because of inability to carry on the work any longer. It is because the wife or the housekeeper in that house is broken down in health, or because of the woman's rebellion at the drudgery of her life. So I feel that the other view of it, the feminine view, the woman and girl part of the household, will have to be considered before the problem of rural depopulation is to be solved.
I am glad the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Robb) is so optimistic; it is easy for people who are not farming to be optimistic. Our farm at home has no mortgage against it; there are no sons in the family

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or there would be a mortgage against it. There is some little money coming in besides that which is the direct result of farming, but we did not break even last year and will not this year. How long can anybody go on under those conditions? I sent out eight questions to 900 soldier settlers on the land in Ontario. I have received up to date possibly 400 answers. If the minister would like to have a pleasant Sunday afternoon, I will lend him these 400 answers, and if he still says there are no mortgages on the farms of Ontario I am sure that after reading the information contained in these replies he will not be so optimistic.


Mr. CALDWELL:: Being a member of this special committee which is taking evidence with regard to agricultural conditions in Canada, and being a farmer myself, I have been very much disappointed at much of the evidence we have received. 1 know that in my own province of New Brunswick the agriculturists are in very bad financial condition. We were told by our provincial government within the last six months, when we went to them for some assistance to tide the farmers over and enable them to produce a crop this year, even to enable them to stay on the land-because large numbers of them are migrating to the United States, owing to the very serious conditions prevailing here-we were told that had we been raising cattle we would to-day find ourselves in good circumstances; that had we ceased two or three years ago to grow potatoes and gone into the stock industry, we would now be in a comfortable position. I had hoped that that was the case, because if only one province of Canada was in a bad financial condition with regard to its agricultural industry, it would not be very serious.
Our committee has endeavoured to get evidence from all the provinces, and I think we have obtained evidence from most of them with regard to the agricultural conditions. I wish to state briefly some of the figures that Professor Leitch put before us-and by the way, I think his was the most convincing evidence, due to the fact that he had actual statistics. A lot of people do not take very seriously the statistics compiled at the experimental farms; they are government institutions, and whether the work is correctly done' or not it is apt to be looked upon as not carried out under normal conditions. Professor Leitch, as the hon. member for Glengarry (Mr. Kennedy) has said, has carried on experiments on farms under actual farming conditiorfe. He took seventeen average farms in Ontario and instituted on each an accurate system of bookmi
keeping. He visited the farms frequently through the year to see that the books were accurately kept. An account was kept of all outlay for actual operation; the farm was credited with every item of production, and at the end of the year those seventen farms had a balance on the wrong side of the ledger of. on the average $460. These seventeen farms were representative, he told us, of the best counties in Ontario; they were in one of the finest stock raising sections in the province, and on those farms dairying and the growing of fat cattle were carried on.
I thoroughly agree with the member for Glengarry when he says he believes that cattle growing and dairying are the most profitable branches of agriculture in Canada. I have come to that conclusion after listening to the evidence bf witnesses from the various provinces on the different phases of agriculture We also had before us very recently a milk dealer from Montreal who was raised on a farm, whose brothers, he told us, are farmers. He himself is not farming, but we came to the conclusion after listening to his evidence, that few of the witnesses who appeared before us understood farming conditions better. He told us of the conditions in the province of Quebec-which, by the way I looked upon as one of the most prosperous provinces of the Dominion. We had been told repeatedly that the farmers of Quebec were both prosperous and contented. I had hoped it was so; indeed, I believe it is true in larger measure of that province than it is of any other. But this milk dealer told us that due to the cost of the production of milk exceeding the price received for it, the young people were leaving the farms; they were drifting to the Canadian cities in small degree and to the United States in a much larger degree, and the consequence was that the older men were not able to carry on the operations to the extent that they formerly did. They could not afford to hire help to carry on their industry, therefore they were selling off their cattle and decreasing production; and the situation was viewed with alarm. He said the tin\e was coming in the not far distant future, when, if present conditions continued., dairying would reach the vanishing point in the province of Quebec

notwithstanding the statement made by the Minister of Trade and Commerce to-night. I cannot help thinking that the minister is living in the past; that he has not been out in the country during the last two or three years. I admit that there was a brief period during the war when farming was profitable in all its branches. I want to admit this also. I think that during

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the prosperous period the farmers contracted habits that would be considered more or less
extravagant by the farmers themselves, but not by city people by any means, because in the most prosperous days I do not think the farmers enjoyed anything like the luxuries and comforts that might be considered luxuries that are enjoyed by people in the cities in the very worst times. That is my candid opinion, and I have had a good opportunity for observing.
The hon. member for Calgary just now took the words out of my mouth when he asked if any of these cows were for sale that the Minister of Trade and Commerce spoke of. Our committee would be glad to dispose of them at fancy prices to help pay off the mortgage on the farm and keep the farmer in comfort. We have heard from many men who have been raising cows and have been given very full statistics on production, and know something about the conditions.


James Alexander Robb: I fear I have somewhat stirred up hon. gentlemen, and they are getting away from the real issue. I am bound to say I cannot quite follow all this debate. I present to my hon. friends proof taken from the statistics of the Dominion of Canada that our exports have increased from $185,000,000 thirty-two years ago to 1928,000,000 to-day. I tell them of the conditions that existed when I was a boy, when there were mortgages on the farms, and of the conditions that exist there to-day. I never pretended for one moment that farming was a very profitable proposition to-day. I know it is like most other businesses in Canada to-day, the profits are smaller than during the war period, but I maintain that there is no reason in this country for the pessimism which we have heard expressed in the House. I do not believe that sort of argument is the best thing for Canada. I was simply trying to strike a note of encouragement for my friends of the western provinces when I expressed that opinion, and it is only an opinion for what it is worth, although I am bound to say I have heard it shared in by many people. I remember not so many years ago when every Alberta man you spoke to told you that Alberta was the best province in the Dominion. Go to Alberta, was what they all said. Those were the days when the easterner was buying town lots at fancy prices. I tried to point out to my hon. friends the natural advantages of that sunny province, and I have hope yet for the province of Alberta because, geographically situated as it is, being as near to the sea as many parts of Ontario, with a fertile soil and wonderful agricultural possibilities, a
FMr. Caldwell.]
splendid supply of coal, good running water, and producing the best wheat in the world-


Edward Joseph Garland: We can't get a price for it.


James Alexander Robb: -why with such resources, should it not have a great future before it? You can use your coal and your natural gas-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


James Alexander Robb: -I mean the variety up ar Medicine Hat, to drive your flour mills and turn- your wheat into the best flour in the world, and have the offal to feed to dairy stock in the province. Just have a little of the courage of the early men who cleared the land in eastern Canada and things will come all right. Nobody who travels along the countryside and sees the comfortable homes and large bams and great herds of cattle in the field can fail to be impressed with these the best evidences of prosperity. Of course, there are always people who are leaving the land. I left the land myself, out of compulsion. In those days it was not so easy to get a farm as it is now. I was the elder of two boys, and I left the farm much against my will to become a miller's apprentice. My brother is on that farm to-day. He has the adjoining farms and we hope that his boys will remain there and their boys after them, because we know it is a happy and a comfortable home, and that there is a prosperity and contentment on the land that you do not get in the cities where you have to get up at the shriek of a whistle in the morning, and are fined if you are late getting to work.


Thomas Wakem Caldwell: That is not as bad as an alarm clock.


James Alexander Robb: I agree with the hon. member across the way who said it is the woman who "works hard, and if there is any place where a woman has to work hard, it is on a dairy farm.


Mr. STANSELL:: I have for some time been an admirer of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and I am sure that he has now justified that opinion by his ability to start something. I am glad that the discussion has ,turned on subjects that are prolific of debate and with which I am intimately acquainted-dairy cows, mortgages and natural gas: I do not propose to prolong this discussion, most of which, if I may be allowed to say so, is rathej fruitless.


George Newcombe Gordon: If the hon. member will allow me, I was just going to call the atten-

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tion of the committee to the irrelevancy of a discussion of agriculture upon this item. Unless the committee is willing to allow it, it is altogether out of order.


James Alexander Robb: I think it is a profitable discussion.


John Lawrence Stansell: I thought that possibly
owing to the absence of the Minister of Agriculture his department was being administered by the hon. member for Chateauguay-Huntingdon.


An hon. MEMBER:: He is over there
now.


Richard Burpee Hanson: He is very subdued though.


John Lawrence Stansell: I do not wish to lead the discussion into irrelevant channels, but I do desire to say something that has not been said on this subject and which I think ought to be said, and that is with respect to the question of farm mortgages. You cannot prove anything by the existence of farm mortgages as to the prosperity or lack of it in farming, and I think I can'show why. From my knowledge of farming in Ontario there have always been farm mortgages, and I believe there always will be. Whether farming is made more profitable or not, that condition will continue for this reason: The man who is not a success on the farm, and whose farm is mortgaged, will naturally have to let it stay mortgaged because his lack of success does not enable him to pay it off. On the other hand the man who is successful, and let me say that profits on the farm are small, only succeeds in paying off his mortgage after a number of years of hard work, and by that time he is ready and properly entitled to retire. One of the boys or an immigrant buys the farm, makes a small payment and gives a mortgage to the former proprietor for the balance. So mortgages will continue. They may be changing all the time. Some men may make money, and others may lose, but owing to this continual transfer of property mortgages will continue to exist on the farms. The man who takes up farming as a means of living is a man of small means as a rule, and can only secure a farm by making a small payment and giving a mortgage for the balance. So it proves nothing as to the prosperity or lack of it in farming to point to farm mortgages, and anyone who argues from that basis is on aboslutely unsound premises. I think that is one point that has apparently been overlooked.
I would like to say further, I believe from personal experience and from some knowledge I have gained that there is a farm problem at
the present time, and if we had a little less discussion and a little more practical work I think a great deal could be done towards bringing about a solution of that problem. I propose to offer a suggestion to the House which if acted upon would do a great deal towards solving the problem. If you will bear with me just a moment or two I will attempt to do what very few have so far tried to do this session. It is a common thing to find that the man who has had no experience in a particular subject is the one who professes to know most about it. I would recommend to the government that they appoint a small committee to investigate this problem and attempt to find a solution, and I will outline what I think the work of that committee should be. First, I would ask for half a dozen members of this House who know nothing about farming by actual production but who know all about it in theory. I would also have half a dozen members of the farming group in the House-


Oliver Robert Gould: Here is one.


John Lawrence Stansell: -who know all about other lines of business by theory and nothing from actual practice. I would further recommend that half a dozen businesses may be acquired at the expense of the government and half a dozen farms in various parts of the country secured. Then I would reverse the existing operation and put the farmers into business and the business men on the farm where they would have the benefit of instruction from the colleges of agriculture. These men could be given a good deal of help and being intensely practical individuals -experts if I might call them such- could easily become familiar with the particular operations to which they were devoting their attention. Then, after two years had elapsed, I would let these men come together, give parliament the benefit of their experience, and recommend to this House something in the nature of a real solution for the existing difficulties. In the meantime, of course, the profits in both cases would go to the state. Now, I have something else. The undertaking in question would only employ twelve men. I would suggest that the rest of the country, while this experiment is in process, get down to hard work and stop grumbling until the committee is able to present a report.


Henry Herbert Stevens: May I ask the minister a question or two pertaining to this item. He will recall that last year when these estimates were under consideration I brought to his attention-indeed it was under his consideration as well-the question of the development of

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trade with certain islands in the southern Pacific, more particularly the Fiji Islands. This may, perhaps, seem to the committee comparatively insignificant, but as a matter of fact there is a prospect, I think, of developing some very excellent trade to the advantage of both parties. I received correspondence lately, and I have no doubt the minister also has, more particularly on the question of cocoanut oil, considerable quantities of which are brought into this country, and its importation. If the minister could give the committee some information in regard to that question I would like him to do so. I do not think it is necessary for me to enter into details as he knows, perhaps, the whole subject pretty fully. Before I complete this request, however, he will recall that one of the points at issue was the providing of suitable cold storage facilities on the steamers running between our Pacific coast and Australia, calling at Fiji to bring the products of Fiji to Canada. The minister will also recall this: That the market in times gone by, prior to about a year or two years ago, for Fiji fruit-pineapples, bananas and such like, was chiefly in Australia. But in that case they competed with the northern Australian product and therefore the new tariff of Australia largely shut that fruit out. On the other hand we have an excellent market for those fruits and Fiji offers a capital market for our manufactured goods. Would the minister give the committee the benefit of the latest information on these points?


James Alexander Robb: I have not before me the
figures of the general trade with Fiji, but my recollection is that generally speaking the Fiji group purchases about $80,000,000 worth of goods a year, some of which products Canada might supply. Prior to the introduction of the latest Australian tariff the Fiji business was largely with the Dominion of Australia. They exported to that commonwealth considerable quantities of bananas, some oranges and pineapples; but Australia placed a very heavy duty on these imports particularly bananas. I am not just sure of the rate but it was prohibitive the hope being entertained of starting a banana industry in Australia. It was represented to the Dominion of Canada that Fiji would be a profitable source of trade for this country inasmuch as they could supply to us the bananas and other fruits which we now purchase from the Central American states, and that in return \hey would buy Canadian products.
Let me say in passing that there is some misapprehension as to the value of the Fiji market. I stopped there on the way down to
TMr. Stevens.]
Australia and met the governor and his council; in fact, travelled down with the colonial secretary, who has a summer home in British Columbia and who had gone there for a rest. They give to Canada a preference in that market. In some of the islands quite an area is devoted to raising cattle; but their principal source of revenue, as far as I could make out, would be from the production of pineapples. I am not sure that it would be possible to introduce their bananas on this market because our people have been accustomed to a banana different to the species which they produce. Also I am not very sure, from the information I gained, that the Fiji banana has the requisite keeping qualities for shipping. They had there an expert banana man who had been brought from the West India Islands, a Scotchman, and hr had hopes that they would develop in the Fijis a considerable banana business. I had a meeting with the planters down there and arranged with the New Zealand-Canadian line, which is subsidized by us, to reserve certain cold storage space for shipments of Fiji products to Canada. They were to try the experiment for a period and I gave
10 p.m. them the assurance that if they would supply sufficient business to make it a paying proposition we would then consider their request to equip and put on that service some of the vessels of the Canadian Government Merchant Marine. I am satisfied we shall get business going down there, maybe not going to Fiji but to other countries, provided we can get return cargoes. I was not satisfied, however, that it would be a paying proposition to equip a vessel at this time. Nevertheless, the experiment is being made in the manner indicated, and after we have the experience of six or eight months we shall be better able to determine what can be done.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Could the minister give
the committee a statement regarding the negotiations between his department or the government and the government of Australia in connection with preferential treatment, and more particularly having reference to the very large and important newsprint business going on between the two countries?


James Alexander Robb: Let me say right now that I appreciate, as does the government, the consideration hon. members opposite have shown in not pressing any questions upon the negotiations with Australia. As my hon. friend knows, in the negotiation of treaties between one country and another, it is generally arranged that the statements are made at the same

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time in both countries. We in Canada are in this condition that we must await the pleasure of our Australian friends before we can make an announcement. I would say this, however, that I was very kindly received in Australia; that I sat in with the Tariff Board of Australia for three weeks; that they have a statement prepared to submit to the new government, and that we have hopes that the new government will favourably consider the proposition, so that trade between Canada and Australia will continue to grow.


Arthur Meighen: I cannot help but be amused at the minister's solicitude for fear there would be a premature announcement of that pregnant and fruitful mission of his to Australia, for fear something would be said that would compel him to make an announcement prior to the exercise of a similar privilege by the public men of Australia. When a treaty is arranged, it is usually announced simultaneously in both countries; but when no treaty is arranged and nothing on earth done, I cannot see any necessity for simultaneity in such a case as that. I would think promptness, frankness and repentance would more become the political commercial traveller in conditions of that kind. For the life of me I do not know what the minister's idea was in starting to Australia, in the midst of a political campaign, to negotiate a treaty. The Australian officers, whoever they might be, the Australian ministers could have no idea or no basis for an idea whether either the officer's or the ministers would have any authority at all in the course of a few days, or in the course of the time that inevitably would elapse before a treaty could be made. The minister, of course, was kindly received. Why would he not be? He surely did not think there would be rudeness on the part of our Australian cousins. He was kindly received; no doubt he attended many dinners; no doubt he had a fine trip and no doubt he saw quite a lot of the world both going and coming. I understand he passed through the Suez canal. He visited Fiji. I do not know but what he also saw some parts of China.


James Alexander Robb: India.


Arthur Meighen: He may have also polished off his almost perfect knowledge of India. That all took place. But what could have been done towards the negotiations of a treaty, I do not know, and I do not know what the minister could honestly have expected to do. He is back and he says: " Do not ask for results, because these things should be announced simultaneously in Australia and in Canada." He may have studied over a few
schedules with tariff commissioners there. How much further does that get him. No further at all. I venture to say that he is not one day	nearer a treaty	with	Australiathan he was	the day he	came into power.
Does he intend to go back next year, or is , this a case for a return visit from somebody in Australia? What is the purpose of the government in this regard, or is there some other minister who is now in for a trip.
I suggest that in view of the valiant if not triumphant, services of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr.	Motherwell)	of	late,	some ofthese favours	be accorded	to	him,	and that
the globe-trotting be not in the future monopolized by the Minister of Trade and Commerce.


James Alexander Robb: It is fair to the leader of the Opposition that I should say to him why I went to Australia. My right hon. friend and I entered this House the same day, and 1 have a great admiration for his agility and cleverness in trying to draw an opponent. Let me assure him right now that he is not going to draw me far enough to say anything abou. the treaty, when it will be announced or what it will consist of when announced. But it is fair to answer the question why we went to Australia. I was sent to Australia by the government on the invitation of the genial friend of my right hon. friend, the Prime Minister of Australia, who first sent his minister, Senator Pearce, as my right hon friend knows. We met Senator Pearce together.


Arthur Meighen: About a year and a half


James Alexander Robb: Oh, no.


Arthur Meighen: A year and a quarter.


James Alexander Robb: My hon. friend is a little off. February of last year, Senator Pearce opened gotiations with this government. lhe ime Minister of Australia cabled the Prime inister of Canada urging him to send a miner down there to conclude negotiations ened by Senator Pearce. We considered the atter- 'it was decided that some person ould go down, and the morning when I had structions to cable the Prime Minister of istralia when we would arrive, the Canadian ess intimated the possibility of an election in istralia. We again cabled the Prime Mm-,er of Australia pointing out what the Canaan press carried, and a reply came back to me along at once, that there was nothing to terfere with the negotiations. I started and ached Vancouver. The morning I reached incouver the Canadian press announced the ssolution of the Australian parliament, and

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the Prime Minister of Canada cabled the Prime Minister of Australia pointing out the news carried in the Canadian press and suggesting that we defer the trip until after the elections. But the Prime Minister of the sister dominion of Australia urged that a minister from Canada should come along. Would my right hon. friend say that we should have been so discourteous as to refuse that invitation from a sister dominion.


Arthur Meighen: It was not a case of discourtesy; it was a case of this government .exercising its judgment as to when an opportune time for the conference might be. The Prime Minister of Australia may have been very optimistic as to the result of the contest.


James Alexander Robb: Others have been.


Arthur Meighen: It does not follow that his optimism should have been shared by the government of Canada so far as to transport a minister of Trade and Commerce diagonally around the world to negotiate a treaty with a government that undoubtedly had no security of tenure, and that now, I understand, is out of office. Were the ministers with whom the hon. member negotiated returned? Are they to-day in power? Not one of them. What was the value of his negotiations? He should have been the judge whether this expenditure and this absence from office and duty here were wise on behalf of the people of Canada. The Prime Minister of Australia should not have been the judge. The government of Canada should have exercised its judgment in the premises, and if it did, so much the worse for its judgment.


James Alexander Robb: My right hon. friend is wrong. One of the ministers with whom I had friendly conferences regarding trade, is to-day Prime Minister of Australia.


Arthur Meighen: One of them and all the rest on the other side. The government is a different one altogether; the influences are not the same; it. is not controlled by the same factors in any way. The minister has no treaty. If he went to Austrailia and negotiated with responsible parties, where is his treaty? He has not a treaty.
Mr. CAIIII.L: Does one always have to have a treaty when one looks for one?


Arthur Meighen: No, but we like to have one when we pay for one. I honestly hope the results, when they come after the next or the succeeding visit, will be better than the results so far of the various treaty-making efforts of the government. I would much rather the infertility continued. I would much
[Mr. Robb.l
rather the death and decay that seem to surround this government would remain, and that nothing of new life would even ferment, than that we get much more of the character of treaties that have been presented up to date.


George Gibson Coote: I was endeavouring to get an opportunity to say a few words before the hon. member for Vancouver (Mr. Stevens) threw his cocoanut oil on the troubled waters; but I was unsuccessful. I wish to draw the attention of the minister to a little item which I read in the press a short time ago, possibly while he was on his tour of the world. In this article it is stated that the Minister of Trade and Commerce had been addressing some members of the Country party in Australia. A deputation was urging upon the minister the extension of the British preferential tariff to Australian products. I quote the following:
The deputation stated that the Country party was wholly in favour of the removal of high duties on agricultural implements and tools of trade, and in return it was hoped that the Canadian government would extend preference to Australian products. In the course of his reply Mr. Robb said, as reported in the Country News, of Adelaide, the official organ of the Country party:
Our country is very different from yours and while our tariff has not pleased everybody, it is at least endorsed by those who are producers. I maintain that it is neither good policy nor good business to encourage immigration to a country and then, when they have settled down to work, penalize them by heaping burdens on their industry.
In the report I am quoting there appears in parenthesis at this point "hear, hear."
Our policy is to make implements of production and tools of trade as cheap as possible. Then production itself is cheapened, foodstuffs are cheapened, cost of living is lowered and the nation is sounder and safer (Applause). You may rest assured that if there is no reciprocal arrangement at last made between Australia and Canada it will not be Canada's fault (Applause).
The article goes on to say:
We can appreciate the applause of the deputation; Mr. Robb's remarks embody an eminently sound policy, but why doesn't he talk like that in Canada?


Arthur Meighen: He used to.	.


George Gibson Coote: Why has he to go over to the other side of the globe to tell farmers that it is bad business for a nation to tax their implements and tools of trade? If he would tell the farmers of Canada that it is not good policy or good business to encourage settlement on the land and then penalize the settlers "by heaping burdens on their industry," he would gain as attentive and as appreciative an audience as ever he could get in Australia or anywhere else. Doesn't good policy and good business, like charity, begin at home? Mr. Robb in Australia is anxious that the farmers should have cheap implements and tools of trade; it means cheaper production and cheaper living. Mr. Robb in Canada

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supports precisely the same policy as the Australian government of taxes on agricultural implements and tools of trade, and a consequent penalizing of the primary producers.
I hope that last sentence libels the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Robb). I trust it is not true and that he will support a policy that will mean cheaper tools and implements of production for the farmer. I hope we shall find him supporting a budget of that nature, although I am not very sure about it. But I did wonder to-night when the minister made his statement whether he had been hunting for a market for butter while on his tour of the world. If so, it seems to me that Australia was rather a peculiar place in which to start looking for it. I was very much pleased indeed to hear of the possibilities of dairying in the province of Quebec, and I am glad to hear that in that particular section of the country the farms are not mortgaged. But I want to warn those people beforehand that they must be on the look out. The Minister of Trade and Commerce has urged the Alberta farmers to go more heavily into the production of butter, and I want to quote something for the benefit of the minister who can warn his people at home of what is ahead of them. This is taken from the evidence given by Mr. Leitch before the special committee which is inquiring into agricultural conditions. Professor Leitch was asked this question by the chairman:
Q. You know the Department of Agriculture is advocating mixed farming to a large extent to our western people. If that is carried out to any appreciable extent, it will mean the competition of the West in butter and cheese, butter especially. What effect will that have?-A. Under present conditions the quality of Canada's butter supply-of course, it can have but one effect, and that is to reduce the price.
By Mr. Hammell:
Q. What about our export surplus?-A. That cannot readily compete, on account of its quality, with the countries of Denmark and Australia.
By the Chairman:
Q. We do not make as good butter as Australia?- A. No.
By Mr. Caldwell:
Q. We do not have the grading'-A. The three western provinces make butter that is a credit to this country. Ontario and Quebec butter is a disgrace to the country.
Q. How about the Maritime provinces ?-A. I could not say.
By the Chairman:
Q. Professor Leitch, give us the reasons for our falling down in butter production, and give us some remedy.-A. Up to two years ago. we did not make enough butter in Ontario to supply our own home demand, and since we were just making enough, or not quite enough for the home demand, the price was good.
Our people, the consumers of Ontario, are not quite educated to a high quality of butter, they are easily satisfied, but two years ago we had a little surplus to export from Ontario, and it went over to England, a large part of it, and made a very bad reputation for
itself as compared with the butter from Denmark and Australia and western Canada, but the quality reflected on all Canadian butter.
Now, I think it is my duty to point out to the minister that if he gets all these farmers in Alberta producing butter, when it comes into competition with the poor butter of Ontario and Quebec the farmers there will have a hard job to market their product. Alberta can produce butter; the farmers there produce the best butter in Canada. I saw that statement in the Agricultural Gazette a few months ago; it was reported that Alberta in a Dominion-wide competition had the highest score of any province in Canada in their butter exhibit. If we are making the best butter, it is quite evident as the minister will see, that when we begin to compete with this poor butter cf Ontario and Quebec they are going to experience a great deal of difficulty in marketing their butter at any price, because as Professor Leitch says, when the quantity is increased the price will be lowered. The people of Alberta can make good butter and they will make large quantities of it if you will show them the market for it. When I went home last summer after the session, the man who was running my farm told me that they had sold their butter at 18 cents a pound in June. Surely it is not necessary to argue, even with the Minister of Trade and Commerce, that no matter how good a cow you have, butter at 18 cents a pound will not return such wages as will sustain life. I was visited by a woman from our home town a few weeks ago. She stated, that four weeks ago to-morrow, in that town of seven hundred people there were one thousand dozen eggs marketed and the price paid by the stores was 15 cents a dozen.


Mr. FOURNIER:: That is bad treatment of the hens.


George Gibson Coote: Yes, it is hard on the hens. Ten years ago that might not have been so bad. But the woman who takes these eggs into town and gets 15 cents a dozen for them probably wants to buy some gingham or cotton to make clothing for the children at home. Ten years ago the price of checked gingham, 36 inches wide, in the T. Eaton Company's catalogue was 18 cents a yard. In their present catalogue the same quality of gingham, 27 inches wide-you will notice it has been narrowed down-is 23 cents a yard. Factory cotton in 1912 was 10 cents a yard, now it is 25 cents per yard. It will take quite a few dozen eggs to buy enough cotton or gingham to clothe two or three

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children now. Circular pillow cotton used to be 18 cents ten years ago, to-day it is 35 cents a yard. I could give quite a long list of articles showing that compared with ten years ago the purchasing power of the farmers' eggs will return him about 8 cents or 9 cents a dozen. Now, do hon. gentlemen think it is fair for the Minister of Trade and Commerce to urge us to pin our faith to the cow-and I suppose he would include a few chickens?


Joseph-Fernand Fafard: It has been stated to-night that during the late by-election in Moose Jaw eggs were on sale in a certain grocery there at IS cents a dozen. I must correct that statement. Maybe it was made in good faith, but I do not think it is fair to the hens of Moose Jaw. I have before me the Moose Jaw Evening Times of April 9th in which the price for eggs is given at 40 cents a dozen.


Robert Forke: Mr. Chairman, the statement of the last speaker has induced me to rise to my feet. I think it is agreed by all, nowith-standing the difference of opinion expressed, that agriculture is really in a bad way at the present time. I do not like this constant cheering when any remark is made about farmers not working all the year around. It is not true. I can assure you that the farmers of Manitoba do work all the year round.


An hon. MEMBER:: And the farmers
all over.


Robert Forke: I have remarked before that I am not as pessimistic perhaps as some of my friends, although I do not differ with them as to present agricultural conditions. But I think there are other factors that perhaps we do not pay enough attention to, and I am confident that if the hon. member who has just given us the price of eggs at Moose Jaw could have given us the price which the farmer received for those eggs there would be a considerable spread disclosed. Two or three weeks ago while in an Ontario farm home I asked the lady of the house what they were getting for eggs. She phoned to the local store and found the price was 35 cents a dozen. When I returned to Ottawa I asked my wife what she was paying for eggs and she told me 60 cents a dozen. Now, Mr. Chairman, there is one of the greatest difficulties we have to overcome in our system of doing business-the cost of distribution. I do not care whether the producer is a manufacturer or a farmer, each is suffering alike because the spread is so wide between the price the producer receives and the consumer pays. It is
[Mr. Coo ted
no use our throwing recriminations backward and forward: this will not do us any good. The cost of distribution is one of the great
problems that faces us, because this cost represents so much waste. I do not think anyone all along the line is making exorbitant profits to-day, but our system is too cumbrous and complicated to meet modern conditions.


Mr. ARCHAMBAULT:: What would my hon. friend suggest to decrease the cost of distribution?


Robert Forke: I have no remedy offhand, but I have no hesitation in stating that I think a good deal can be done by legislation. At the same time I believe the remedy to a certain extent is in the hands of the people themselves.


Joseph Archambault: How would my
friend decrease the cost of distribution by legislation?


Robert Forke: That is a pretty difficult question to solve offhand.


Joseph Archambault: It is difficult for everyone.	.
Mr. F'ORKE:	I think co-operation would
help a great deal. The cost of production can be brought down by various methods that I might enumerate and will perhaps have an opportunity to do so in this House at a future time. We have theories, they may not be correct, but at the proper time I am quite prepared to state my ideas of what can be done from the economic point of view. I do not suppose my hon. friend opposite will agree with me. However, I give him credit for believing he is right, and I hope he will extend to me the same courtesy.


Joseph Archambault: Surely.


Robert Forke: I thoroughly agree with my friends who have painted a rather black picture of agriculture. Where I differ from them is in my outlook towards the future. I have even some faith that the cow of the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce can assit us with her butter, and no doubt our hens too can be relied upon to do their duty. But the tremendous difference between the price received by the producer and the price paid by the consumer ought to be eliminated. Recently I received a letter from a merchant in a town in Manitoba in which he said he was only able to pay 19 cents a dozen for eggs. I do not know what is being paid in the cities at the present time, but I have an idea that a great many of those 19-cent eggs are going into cold storage and will be sold at a very

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much higher price later on when the supply is scarce. I think the farmers by having cold storage facilities and marketing their eggs at proper times may help themselves along this line.


James Alexander Robb: I promised the hon. gentleman opposite a few moments ago to give him figures respecting butter shipped to the Orient last year. We shipped 174,784 pounds of butter and about 6,000 pounds of cheese.


George Gibson Coote: Is any valuation given?


James Alexander Robb: The value is given at $54,366.19.
I am not sure whether that is f.o.b. at point of shipment or at Vancouver.


Robert Forke: I would point out to the minister that the export value does not cut very much of a figure so far as agricultural products are concerned. The prairie provinces this year produced some 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 bushels of wheat-a tremendous amount. No such wealth was ever produced by the same percentage of population in the world before, and yet we find that those producers are not able to make a living. The export value shows that the wealth is in the country, but the people who produce that wealth are not reaping the benefit.


James Alexander Robb: I have not been offering these figures as indicating profitable business at all, but merely to show the extent of Canadian business.


Arthur Meighen: I will ask the House to bear with me a moment while with much deference and humility I offer a few observations on the subject that is under discussion, although it is not the subject that is referred to by the motion. I was interested in the remark of the hon. leader of the Progressives (Mr. Forke). He begged of the hon. member for Chambly and Vercheres (Mr. Archam-bault) that as the two of them differ in their attitude towards this farmer's problem the hon. member for Chambly and Vercheres would give him credit for sincerity, which he would reciprocate. I know that the request will not be denied, for the reason that it is only a few months since the hon. member for Chambly and Vercheres adopted the same attitude as is now adopted by the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke). It is only a few months, indeed, since the difference between the sale price of the farmer and the purchase price of the consumer was laid at the door of a profiteering government by the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce himself, and was laid ak the door of that awful monster, protection, by all hon. gentlemen across the
way. Consequently they should not be slow in according courteous treatment to the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) while he now presses home the arguments in which they were so prolific just eighteen months ago.
Let me refer to another feature. I do not think anyone has listened to these contentions longer than I have or has been the object of them, the one to be destroyed by them, more directly than I have been. The leader of the Progressive party himself, in the fall campaign of 1921, emphasized the serious position the country was in because of the policy pursued by the then administration; because of what he alleged was the big interest affiliation of the Prime Minister of that day. Why, he said, we have the spectacle of the farmer's products going down until he cannot make a profit, while the stock of Dominion Textiles, for example, is at a figure higher by far than just a few years ago; the one is up and the other away down. The hon. gentleman had on his paint and feathers and was on the warpath to bring about a change in those conditions by political effort. Today the farmer's products are much further down, textile stock is much further up, and the leader of the Progressives has retired from politics. Why all this change? What is the cause of the intensifying, the aggravating of the condition against which there was so much thunder in the fall of 1921? There was nothing complained of in that day that to-day does not exist in intensified and aggravated form. I appeal to hon. gentlemen to my left if such is not the case. It is the case; the cost of living higher; the farmer's products selling lower all along the line; what the farmer has to buy standing up; prosperity harder to find in every part of this Dominion.


An hon. MEMBER:: Do not be pessimistic.


Arthur Meighen: No, I will not, but before I am through the hon. gentleman will understand my views on these questions; at any rate it will not be owing to lack of effort if I do not make them understood. Much of what hon. gentlemen complain of respecting the condition of farming in Canada is true. In fact, I do not know of very much they have said that is not true. The condition of farming in this country to-day is a very difficult one. The farmer is undoubtedly getting pre-war price for what he sells and is paying almost double the pre-war price for what he buys. That is true of the whole Dominion.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Is Saul also among the prophets?


Arthur Meighen: "Well, Saul also may be among the prophets-I heard Saul prophesy a

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year and a half ago in the person of the hon.
member for Brome, but I have not heard Saul anything like so loud in recent weeks, and I do not look for very much from him in this session. Now, in eastern Canada the pressure of these conditions does not come home in quite the same degree as it does in the West, for reasons that I will advert to later, but which for the moment I will only describe in these words: In western Canada the tendency to invest the profits of the inflation period was greater than in eastern Canada, because the land, which is the farmer's capital, was nearer at hand and more abundant. That is one reason; another is this: That the volume of purchases per man is greater in the West, and consequently when the cost of purchases rises, the western man feels it more than does the eastern farmer. Nevertheless conditions are difficult in every province. I may be asked whether I attribute this to the administration. If I followed the example of hon. gentlemen opposite I would do so. I do it in part; I believe there were variations in taxation a year ago that in at least substantial degree-material degree; put it that way-are responsible for the extra burdens the common people of this country carry now. But I do not attribute it wholly to hon. gentlemen opposite or to any policy being followed by the government of the day, it is only partly due to that, and that part, while it is material, is not the main factor by any means. Why do I say so? I ask hon. gentlemen to look the world over now, as I asked them to do two years ago and a year ago, look into other countries and ask themselves the question: Is the condition of agriculture better there than it is here? Are not the same wailings, the same cries and complaints, heard in every country of the world at this hour? Are they so loud and so fierce and so well foundationed in any country as they are in the Old Land, free trade England to-day? What is the main problem of the British government right now?


Robert Forke: Taxation.


Arthur Meighen: Taxation, yes; and they are heavily taxed. We do not know what taxes are compared to what they have over there. But agriculture over there is not specially taxed; the great burden of taxation does not fall on it at all.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: What about the rents-the rent burdens of agriculture over there?


Arthur Meighen: Of course they have a rent burden, but you have an interest burden in its place. The hon. gentleman attributes it to rent over there? What about Ireland? In

Ireland the rent burden has been pretty much done away with, but precisely the same conditions prevail.


Mr. BIRD:: Does the hon. gentleman contend that the ratio of taxation to wealth is greater in Great Britain than it is in Canada?


Arthur Meighen: Yes, I think it is.


Thomas William Bird: Is the right hon. gentleman certain about that?


Arthur Meighen: I think it is. It is on the mass of the people. The tax in Canada on very great wealth is heavier than it is there, and the tax on the mass of the people is heavier there, although it has been made heavier in this country within the last year. Hon. gentlemen assert that there must be something wrong with government policy because agriculture is in this position and because there is a constant diminution of the proportion of agriculturists in our country to the total of population. I know it is in the minds of hon. members-I know it is not in the mind of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and never was; he only pretended it was-that this condition is due to false fiscal policy. Well, if there is a country in the world that illustrates the diminution of agricultural population more clearly and more forcibly than any other, it is Great Britain. Great Britain to-day has not more than 17 per cent of its population on the land.


Robert Forke: Surely the right hon. leader of the opposition would never compare Great Britain with Canada on equal terms as regards agriculture?


Arthur Meighen: Of course not.


Robert Forke: Great Britain is not an agricultural country at all; it is an industrial country.


Arthur Meighen: But it was pretty much an agricultural country before free trade came in; I will give the hon. gentleman the figures in a moment. I say that to-day 17 per cent
of the population of Great Britain are on the land. In the year 1850 there was over half, of the population, on the land, so that it was pretty much an agricultural country. I think that the process of diminution has been intensified there by the failure to provide a preference for the British producer in the British market. But I do not think that is the main cause in the diminution of the proportion of agriculture.


Mr. EVANS:: What was the population at that time? Are there hot as m*,ny on the land now as then?

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Arthur Meighen: Not by any means. If the hon. gentleman will read the reports of the expert committees appointed by the government of Mr. Asquith he will find that the number on the land to-day is not by thousands, nor tens or hundreds of thousands, nor by something over a million what it was then. It is, I think, between one and two million less than it was at that time. There are reasons for it, I know. I was just about to say that it is not due in the main to the fiscal policy of the British government, although I know it is the opinion of the great bulk of agriculturists of the Old Land, and I think they are right, that if the fiscal policy of Great Britain were different and they had a preference in the market they have helped so much to build up, there would be a larger proportion of farmers in that country to-day; but there would not be anything like the proportion there was fifty or sixty years ago. Is there a country in the world to-day where there is the same percentage of agriculturists as there was fifty years ago? There is not, and I will say this further: There is no country in the world where the diminution of agriculturists in proportion to the rest of the people has been less than it has been in the Dominion of Canada.


George Gibson Coote: Would Canada have had a less proportion of her people on the land today if she had not for years carried on a persistent, paid, government propaganda to put people on our vacant lands?


Arthur Meighen: I think we would have had less people on the land if we had not had that propaganda, not only less on the land but less everywhere else. I do not think the propaganda has resulted in a larger or smaller proportion on the land. I think it has resulted in a somewhat larger population, more on the land and more elsewhere as well. I do not think it has affected the proportion by any perceptible amount whatever.
I was speaking of the Old Country. Now I come back to Canada. I ask hon. gentlemen to inquire and tell me of a country in the world where the proportion of agriculturists to-day as compared with fifty or eighty years ago is as great as it is in Canada. I do not think there is one. I know the United States is not one. I know Great Britain is not one. Great Britain has gone down from nearly sixty per cent to about seventeen per cent, where it is to-day.


George Gibson Coote: Was there any other country that had the same amount of free land to exploit?


Arthur Meighen: The United States had. Australia had, the Argentine had-all these
new countries of the world had. I do not know that they had as much fine new land for agricultural purposes as we had, and if we had the more that would be one reason why we have diminished less than they have, and what the hon. gentleman has in mind would be right. But what is the fundamental cause of the diminution of the proportion of agriculturists in the Dominion, in the United States, in Great Britain, in France, in Germany, in Australia, in every country in the world? Surely it is not because the people the world over have been following mirages in fiscal policies, have not had brains enough to see what is the right and proper course. We cannot come to that conclusion, because while one country has followed one course, another has followed another, and it so turns out that those who pursued the policy of free trade have found their proportion of agriculturists come down most rapidly of all.


John Evans: Does the hon. member mean to say that there are vacant farms in Great Britain?


Arthur Meighen: I have seen them, but I would not say there are vacant farms where the land is good and reasonably fit for agriculture. I do not know whether there are pr not, I know that land has gone out of cultivation and into grazing to the extent of millions of acres. However, that is not the point. I am trying to deal with the matter in the large. There are influences of a minor character that are different in one country from another, but when you find every country has its urban population multiplied and its rural population diminished, you must look for something more basic than anything that is peculiar to the individual country.	_
What is it that is basic? Why surely it is this, and this is not anything new on my part. I was seeking to make this clear to the Prime Minister when 1m was leader of the Opposition, and I did not have much success. 1 will have far better success to-night. I know it was understood then thoroughlv by the Minister of Trade and Commerce. The fact is we do not require as large a proportion in the world to-day to produce what the farmer produces for the world as we did in those times. Why do we not? Some would say, because we have machinery which produces more rapidly, we do not need as many on the land. That is true, but that is not the main cause in my opinion, for the reason that we have also machinery in other occupations of life producing other goods much more rapidly than they were produced in olden times. It is

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one of the reasons, however, because the multiplication of production by machinery is more emphatic on the land than it is in many others of the occupations of mankind.
But the main reason to my mind is this, that with the advance and evolution of civilization the needs of the human race multiply, the demands of the human race multiply. They multiply in one field after another, in the field of what we wear, in the field of the amusements necessary to entertain us, in the field of travel. In all the different spheres of this life the demands of the world are getting greater, more complicated, more multiplied, and it takes a bigger proportion to cater to these demands to-day than it did in days gone by. Where an hon. gentleman to-day travels at the rate of a thousand miles a year his grandfather travelled at the rate of a hundred miles a year. It takes men to conduct that travel. It takes a part of the world's population to provide the facilities and see that these things can be done. Then there are a thousand engaged in amusing the world to-day where only fifty were engaged seventy-five years ago. That is all consuming a portion of the population, and consequently, because of that continuous process that has been going on for decades, the world does not need and therefore the world does not employ as many in producing the single article of food of which the human being consumes just as much to-day as it did half a century ago, just as much and no more. I have tried to make clear what I regard as the fundamental cause, and what I think economists-I do not pretend to be one myself-regard as the fundamental cause of a process that is world wide.


Robert Forke: The hon. member, I think, has given us a complete outline, but he has missed the point.


Arthur Meighen: What is the point?


Robert Forke: The point is this. The wealth has to be produced from thfe land just as much as it ever had to be, and those on the land to-day have to cater to a much larger population than formerly. That is one of the reasons why agriculture to-day is in such poor shape. We have radio and other inventions that must be paid for. How are they paid for in Manitoba, let us say? Largely from the products of the soil. Consequently the soil is more and more taxed to pay for all these luxuries.


Arthur Meighen: I do not think the hon. member's mind is on the right line. If, of course, we assume that the farm pays for everything-	.


Robert Forke: I do not say that exactly.


Arthur Meighen: That is the line of MS' reasoning.


Robert Forke: There is no wealth in Canada but what is produced from the natural resources of the country.


Arthur Meighen: Or in any other country.


Robert Forke: Well then, the more luxuries are multiplied, the heavier the burden becomes on those who produce the primary wealth of the country.


Arthur Meighen: I do not see that at all. Any man who works, whether he works at the basis or at the top, whether he is working to bring the gold out of the mine or the coal, or working to turning those products into something else, every man is contributing to the world's wealth.


Robert Forke: Excuse me again. Does the hon. member think that the man who is working at the production of radio apparatus is as necessary to the human race as the man who is producing a bushel of wheat?


Arthur Meighen: Not at all.


Robert Forke: Then why put them on a level?


Arthur Meighen: I was not putting them on a level. I say that every man who produces of the world's wealth, whether he is producing at the top, at the acme of the last effort of manufacture, or at the very bottom out of the soil is contributing to the world's wealth.


Robert Forke: I do not deny that.


Arthur Meighen: That is all I stated, but the idea, to my mind, is entirely erroneous that the more the world enjoys the more those on the soil have to pay for it, work and bear. It is not so at all. No man is compelled to stay on the soil in any free country. There are those who think a terrible calamity has occurred if their son leaves the farm and goes to the city. I have no sympathy with that view whatever. I think the future of our land depends upon the growth of boys on the farm and their maturing not only into farm life but into all walks of life. The greatness of our nation depends upon the young farmer who is getting into other walks of life as well as producing sufficient of the products of the farm to meet the economic needs of the country in which he is bom. When a man finds he can do better elsewhere, his country has no call on him to stay on his father's farm. If he thinks he can do better any where else he has

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just as good a right as any other man to get into another field. It is a free country and he can go where he thinks he may do better. We are producing proportionately far more than we did years ago. We are producing far more grain. If we produced twice as much I do not think it would be any better for those who were producing it-it would be worse. Let those who wish go where they can be best employed to their own advantage and in my judgment in so going and so acting they are doing the best thing for the country in which they live. There will still be plenty of wheat produced, there will still be plenty of barley produced, and it may be that prices will be higher because there will not be so many working at it. Then we will get that readjustment for which we are waiting.
We are however suffering much to-day from a condition which I think is more or less artificial. Time will have to cure it, and such measures as will tend to cure it should be adopted. In the world to-day, by virtue of the power of organization, those engaged in other walks of life have an advantage over those employed upon the land. Because of the power of labour to organize owing to the uniformity of the work in which they are employed, they have been able to hold up the production costs of goods made elsewhere than upon the land. Had the farmer equal power of organization-he has an equal right-then he would be in a position to obtain results parallel with the results of those engaged in production in other fields.


Robert Forke: My right hon. friend has got my point of view exactly; he has stated everything I have been trying to get at.


Arthur Meighen: I am very glad if that is so, but I was dealing with another phase of the subject. I am trying to show now the cause of the extreme feature of present conditions.
It is not due to the fiscal policy 11 p.m. of one country as opposed to the fiscal policy of another. It is due to something far more basic, namely, what I mentioned first. But this affects the situation too: There is an artificial element in production of another character. Much can be gained by the economic organization of the agriculturists of the country. The economic organization of agriculturists is an essential thing and must be perfected in this country far further than it is especially in organization for distribution. Organization will come that will control the total output of the farmer's products and thereby make his sale price bear some relation to his cost of production just as is enabled to be done in other fields of production. How long that will be in coming no one can foresee; but there will be far more effective organization, economic organization, of the agriculturists of this country; and I hope I will not be accused of political prejudice-much less any other kind of prejudice- if I suggest that if the efforts of the agriculturists of Canada had been directed on economic lines for concerted production

 or indeed, restriction of production-in fields that were shown not to be successful; more economic distribution' of the products of the farm, more direct distribution of those products to the consumer than we have through the cumbersome system of	to-day-if
that, had been the main object of agricultural organization in Canada, instead of the attainment of political power, it would have been better for the farmers of this country. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as attempting to say that I have any objection, or that anybody has any objection, to the farmers obtaining political power. Not at all, they have the same rights as any other people in this Dom-inibn; but there cannot be anything gained by a political farmers' party.
There can be a lot gained by economic organization amongst farmers. Where it ha3 been directed along that line great results have been achieved. They have been achieved more easily, I think, in smaller and more compact countries of less diversified conditions. There conditions more readily lend themselves to organization. Great things have been done in Belgium, in Holland, and in other countries of that character. They have also been done in larger countries. Even in the United States the farmers have achieved great results, when they have centred their energies upon economic organization and have not launched into other fields.
Now, having advanced these ideas I want to emphasize again that I do so certainly out of no prejudice to any part of our population. I do not pretend to have any special knowledge of farming; I have never sought to impose a knowledge of farming either on this House or any audience; but I think I know something of farm conditions. Before I take my seat, let me say that I do not pay very much attention to the evidence of any man no matter how expert as to whether farming pays or whether it does not pay. You can bring an expert to try and show what a thing costs and what it sells for by taking so much an hour for 11 hours a day in the case of a farm; and you can get a result that will show that no class of farming pays in any part of the country. But I have been on land

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when we had to sell farm products

dairy products-at less than the worst quotations-yes, less than one half the worst quotation-offered by any hon. member in this House, and I know that on that farm the mortgage was paid off, I know that a large family was given an education. I venture to say that if Expert Leitch had got into the recesses of the house on that farm and had got at the same material that he got at to come before this committee, he could have shown there was a loss on the operations of that farm every year. I do not know how we are going to get reliable or useful statistics as to what a bushel of wheat, or a quart of milk, or a pound of butter costs. With all deference I venture to say it cannot be done but I do know of farmers who through good and bad times, through difficult weather as well as through fair weather, have managed to make comfortable homes and comfortable fortunes, have managed to raise creditable and useful families, and such is the best proof that agriculture has paid in general. In the stage at which we are now I know there will be little money made, I know that manjr will go back, but these things adjust themselves as time moves on. What we are suffering every country in the world has gone through; and the way we can accelerate the return of better times is firstly by better organization; secondly, by intelligent direction; and, thirdly, lightening the taxation burden by economies in overhead expenditures which, in the case of a country, means economical administration.


George Newcombe Gordon: (Mr. Marcil, Bonaventure): It is my duty to warn the committee once more, as I have done already, that we have wandered far away from the item under consideration and unless it is the wish of the committee to proceed I must call hon. members back to a consideration of the question. I will read the resolution, if necessary, unless the committee wants to suspend all rules and continue discussing the condition of agriculture.


Andrew Ross McMaster: I did not intend to take part in this discussion but there have been some observations made by the right hon. leader of the Opposition which impel me to say a few words. The speaker in one breath advised the farmers of this country to be more businesslike, and to get organized better both for production and for marketing. I would ask the House to consider whether there can be any organization of production if you are to remain in happy ignorance of the cost of production, and I would make the

point, that the experts who have come before the committee which has been examining into agricultural conditions have endeavoured to apply business principles to farming and to the question of whether or not it ever has been possible, is possible, or will be possible in this country to make farming pay on a purely commercial basis. It is well that the real facts should be known and that the' people should find out where they stand. I always like to listen to the leader of the Opposition, and I felt a thrill of pride pass through me to-night when from his remarks I gathered that he had not been hearing my voice as often as he was accustomed to, and that he did not expect to hear it for some time to come on such a subject as this. That is one of the reasons why I hasten to correct that impression.
I want first of all to direct the attention of the committee to what I would call an historical inaccuracy in the argument of the leader of the Opposition. He will persist in his contention that free trade hurt agriculture in Great Britain. May I tell him and this committee that the agriculturist of Great Britain, that is the man who was actually doing the work on the land, the working agriculturist who had been an independent person for some generations before, by 1835 to 1840 was almost a serf working for another man, or as one of them said, "I be protected and I be starving." I do not forget that when I was a boy in Scotland, an old lady, who remembered those days, told me that before the abolition of the Com Laws in Scotland, the people went hungry. That was the condition in which agriculture was before the elimination of the Corn Laws. It was such a condition that not only the intellectual people, but the sympathetic and kind-hearted people of England, rose in their might and did away with that economic injustice which then existed.
The right hon. gentleman went on to say-


Arthur Meighen: Before the hon. gentleman proceeds, does he dispute the fact that practically the entire body of agriculturists of England resisted the abolition of the Corn Laws, just as practically the entire body is asking for protection on their products to-day.


Andrew Ross McMaster: The right hon. member is wrong in his history. I have given a certain amount of sympathetic study to the history of England between 1815 and 1846. During the Napoleonic wars the landlords of England made a great deal of money. The farmers of England occasionally made money, but in times of scarcity they made tremendous profits out of their poor fellow citizens. Then the landlords raised the rents and there was not

' Supply-Trade and Commerce
any great profit for the farmers. The landlords got a great deal of money during the Napoleonic wars. After the Napoleonic wars were over after 1815, the cost of wheat, of com, of other cereals, dropped in the old country; but rents did not drop. What happened was this, that the landlords of England, who controlled both houses of parliament, the House of Lords and the House of Commons in England, imposed by law, semi-starvation on the vast body of the English people, the poor folk. They prohibited the entrance of corn into England until corn was 80 shillings a quarter. That was the law of 1815. In 1827, they inaugurated a sliding scale which very little helped the situation. The British workmen always protested against that. Finally, after years of agitation, a few British manufacturers formed the Anti-Com Law League in 1837 or 1838. After eight years of one of the most wonderful popular agitations that ever took place in any country, they converted the people to their views. First of all they had to convert the workmen in the towns. The workmen in the towns were not sympathetic to the Anti-Com Law League at first. They thought it was a " bourgeois movement," to use the expression of to-day. They thought it was a "masters' movement." John Bright and Richard Cobden converted the workmen in the towns. Then they went out and they were able to convert the agricultural labourers. As time went on they were able to convert the farmers, and finally they were even able to convert a certain number of landlords, and certain great lords and territorial magnates rallied to their cause. A Tory premier, Peel, who had been elected in 1841 as a protectionist, against the Whigs, who at that time were more or less free-traders, saw that if Great Britain was going to be saved from the social disturbances which took place and which caused tremendous revolutions in 1848, if they were to preserve the British constitution, there was nothing to do but to do away with this economic injustice and to wipe out the Corn Laws. That is a plain, unvarnished and inadequate statement of what happened in connection with the elimination of the Com Laws in Great Britain.


Edward Joseph Garland: History repeats itself.
Mr. McMASTER; History repeats itself but in a different fashion,. The people who were suffering through economic injustice in England, were those who suffered from the power of certain people, who had a home market for all that they could produce, maintaining prices at an arbitrary level through
legislation. To-day the revolt against protection, against a high tariff in this country, comes from people who are able to produce far mote than they consume and who wish to compete in the markets of the world on a fair basis with their competitors from other lands, just as the British manufacturer or the British workman who at that time could manufacture far more than Was required to supply the people of Great Britain, wished to send on equal terms his goods to South America, Europe and elsewhere in the world Great Britain adopted a policy of free trade. Capital and labour were then free to seek the greatest economic returns. There has been a certain diminution of the rural parts of England; but the rural labourer of to-day is in an infinitely better position than his grandfather was when he and the farmer who farmed the land and the landlord who owned the land were protected by a high tariff on what they produced. Jf men came into the towns of Great Britain from the country places, that was not only because they wished to earn better wages, but because there was in many an English village-this did not apply to Scotland to such an extent-a petty tyranny of vicar and landlord, which the spirits that desired freedom could not endure. It was only in the eighties that the farmer had the right to shoot hares that were destroying his growing crop. If he did that before then he might find himself in difficulty before the bench of magistrates.
What is the fundamental cause of hard times among the farmers? The leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen) showed himself, as all men of sense should be, sympathetic with the conditions of the farmer. But he seemed to think that this was a worldwide condition. It is not, altogether. If you look at Europe you will find that the peasant is about the only man there who is really getting on at all well. In Europe a vast number of people have been reduced from the level of being able to eat bread to what in the old days of protection in Great Britain used to be known as the potato level, when people had to eat potatoes and rye because they could not afford wheat and wheaten bread. The fundamental ' difficulty of the situation to-day is that the purchasing power of Europe has depreciated because of the war and the inability so far of the European peoples to settle their disputes on a reasonable basis, in view of the fact that each one, afflicted with an extravagant development of the protectionist virus, has raised tariffs against the other and made the position much worse than it would have been had they only allowed trade to flow between the different
REVrSED EDITION

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countries on that continent. It was a fine thing in one way to allow the national aspirations of the different races in Europe to find expression in the formation of free states. But when these states have raised tariff barriers against the other they hurt themselves to an enormous extent.
I have just one more word to say. There is something in what the leader of the Opposition says, that there are a relatively smaller number of people required to grow food than was the case years ago, and that occupation for the surplus-those who are released from the land-is found in the fact that although people can eat only three meals a day-I think if they live in England they can eat five, although in this country they eat three a day-they can wear any amount of clothes and use any quantity almost of the necessities and luxuries of life all of which things must be manufactured. There is something in that. That may have something to do with the relative diminution in the rural population of any country. But I respectfully submit to the committee that Canada is about the last country in the world where that principle should have had application, because I know of no country, except perhaps the Argentine republic or Australia-and Australia only to a certain extent, for the whole northern half of that country is so warm that it is difficult for white men to live there- I say I know of no other country in the world where that principle should have been applied. It seems to me that it should have come into Canada later than it would anywhere else, and I am afraid that we have suffered concurrently with the rest. But what I would point out is that Canada has not only in the past forty years suffered a diminution in her rural population; we have failed to keep our immigration as well as our natural increase either in the cities or in the country. That is the serious question before the people to-day, The farm is the reservoir of man-power, says the leader of the Opposition. I agree with him. He and many other men in this country and in this House are striking examples of the contribution which the farm has ma'de to the city. But it is a mistake to drain the reservoir too much; it is a mistake to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.


James Alexander Robb: I do not like to interrupt the debate, but I would observe that there has been no criticism whatever of the item under consideration. It represents a reduction of $10,000 while we show an increase of business of $165,000,000. At tljis late hour I think we might adjourn the debate upon the fiscal

policy of the country until the budget comes down.


Arthur Meighen: But it shows something more than that. The cost was the same when we had a business of several millions more than now, so that the argument of the minister would not be of much value. Possibly I might be allowed to move the adjournment of the debate after I have offered some remarks. I did not think I had ventured to discuss the fiscal issue as such; that was not my object. The part of my remarks to which the hon. gentleman took exception was my statement that the state of prosperity of the British farmer would, I thought, be better today had he had a fair preference in the market he himself contributed to build.


Andrew Ross McMaster: That is, the home market? .


Arthur Meighen: Yes; the hon. member
takes exception to that statement. He states that though the agriculturist was the last to be converted, he really was converted to free trade before it carried. Well, his statement is that of a man living seventy years after. I will refer him to a speech of a public man at the time that this contest was on, just about the period when the Com Laws were abolished; and I'will tell him where he can find that speech. This man was himself a free trader, and I rather think, had I been in his position at that time, I would have been one too. But I would not have been one had I been a British agriculturist.


Andrew Ross McMaster: You would have been had you been a farm labourer.


Arthur Meighen: I do not know how the
farm labourer would get on unless the farmer prospered.


Andrew Ross McMaster: The landlord took it mostly in the rent.


Arthur Meighen: I do not think there was any great difference of view between the farmer and the farm labourer.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Oh yes, there was.


Arthur Meighen: If the hon. gentleman will read the speech of Thomas Babington Macaulay, after his election in Edinburgh, when he returned to his constituency to thank the electors, he will find one very significant commentary on the election which that gentleman had just been through, that being about the year 1849. Macaulay said: In my county I had the greatest difficulty in ascertaining where my opponents stood on the issue of free trade. When I got to the city I found

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large posters, "Vote for Smith and Free Trade," and as soon as I got into the rural districts I found equally large placards, "Vote for Smith and Protection."


Andrew Ross McMaster: But Disraeli said, within two or three years of that, that protection was not only dead but damned.


Arthur Meighen: Yes, because the population of the cities was increasing rapidly, and was greater than the population of the country; and of course there were some in the country who were in favour of the other policy. But I was not arguing the general issue; I have done that before and I will do it again at the proper time. I only rose to furnish some evidence of what actually was the division of opinion in England at that time. I have done so, and the hon. gentleman can find the reference I have given him within a few yards of where I sit. As to the condition of opinion now on this question, I do not know that I can do anything better than point to the report of the committee established to look into the condition of British agriculture and to devise some means of extricating it from the calamitous situation in which it finds itself to-day. That report recommends one principle and one principle only, that of protection; and the committee heard British agriculturists fully before submitting its report. It may be that the peasant of Europe is in a rather better situation than the other stricken elements of that disaster-pursued continent. That may be true. But I wonder if that is true in Great Britain. Europe is not a free trade body of nations; it is a protected group of countries. It is only in Great Britain where we find a government appointing commissions to discover some cure for the distracted state of the agricultural population. And the cure they recommend is the one I have just outlined to my hon. friend.
Now, I always admire fidelity, even though it is blind fidelity, and I have no objection at all, in fact I hope the hon. member believing as he does-and I have not the least doubt of his sincerity-will continue to air his opinions in this House and to press them home. But I sympathize with him now in that whereas in the last parliament he enunciated and propounded those views to the applause of two parties, he has now to be content with the applause of only one.


William Stevens Fielding: Is it not also correct that the British government have declined to act upon the report to which the right hon. member refers?
118J


Arthur Meighen: I do not think they have acted yet. I rather detect, though, in the interruption of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) that he has no belief at all in tariffs.


William Stevens Fielding: No. it is rather a desire on my part to see that the facts of any given case are correctly stated.


Arthur Meighen: I did not state what the British government has done. The report has only been in a week.


William Stevens Fielding: That happens to be important.	[DOT]


Arthur Meighen: Yes; buff the report has only been in a week. If the government of Great Britain acted upon that report and introduced legislation within a week of its receipt they would be a great deal more expeditious than the government of Canada now is.


William Stevens Fielding: Hear, hear.


Charles Marcil: Shall the motion carry?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


Thomas William Bird: No.


Charles Marcil: I think it is about time to call the attention of the committee once more to the circumstances that I allowed the departure from the rule in the first instance because I was told there was *no objection to the discussion; but it is altogether irrelevant and out of order.


Thomas William Bird: I shall be very brief, Mr. Chairman.


Charles Marcil: I must apply the rule.


Thomas William Bird: I was stimulated to rise by the remarks of the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen). I think his attitude of mind is to be commended, although the process of his reasoning is open to criticism. I think the spirit he has shown is what we want to see manifested to a greater extent in this House, where there should be a serious effort to settle the problem that confronts our agriculturists. However, we have had the experience of seeing the subject treated more or less lightly, and consequently the note of seriousness voiced by the leader of the Opposition is very welcome to my ears. I am one of those who admires the rare quality of the right hon. gentleman's mind, but listening to him to-night I regretted that it was not engaged in a better cause. Circumstances have placed him in a position where he has to main-

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tain a dead issue; but I think if Providence had dealt with him differently we would have found him addressing his mind, as he did tonight, effectively to living problems, much to our satisfaction.
Now, he referred to the comparative conditions prevailing throughout the countries of the world with regard to agriculture, and he specified Great Britain in particular. I do not think that agricultural conditions in that country are commensurable with agricultural conditions in Canada. Farming is altogether a different proposition in the two countries. But there is,one relevant point; the farmer in Great Britain believes he is the victim of fiscal conditions; the farmer in Canada believes the same. It makes no difference that in Great Britain the complaint is based upon the operation of free trade, while in Canada it is based upon the operation of protection, the principle is the same. Agriculture whether in Canada or Great Britain is suffering from the social policy of the respective countries. The social policy in Great Britain is free trade, and with all due deference to the member for Brome (Mr. McMaster) I must say that the British farmer has suffered from that policy.


Andrew Ross McMaster: If the British farmer
suffered from the introduction of free trade, how was it that rents went up from 1846 until about 1870, when vast quantities of cheap cereals coming from the newly opened lands of the western part of the United States brought rents down?


Thomas William Bird: I think the hon. gentleman
will admit that rents in Great Britain are not closely related to the prosperity of the farmer.


Andrew Ross McMaster: The British farmers
have to make a certain amount of money before they can pay rent to their landlords.


Thomas William Bird: I think the hon. gentleman
must admit that the present attitude of the British farmer is sufficient evidence that he believes the fiscal policy of Great Britain is detrimental'to his interest.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Some British farmers
want to keep our cattle out, others want to let them in so they can finish them. There is a difference of opinion.


Thomas William Bird: I do 'not want to delve into
history, but I know that the British farmer since the abolition of protection has been a consistent supporter of the protectionist party. No matter where his labourer stood, the British farmer has always stood for protection. But that is not the point. I am trying to show that in Great Britain the farmer has
'Mr. Bird.l
been the victim of a social policy, and I contend that he was rightly asked to suffer because he was in the minority. The social prosperity of Great Britain depended at the time upon the acceptance of free trade; the social prosperity of Great Britain to-day depends upon the maintenance of free trade, and the British government has had to turn down the request of the farmers for protection on that very account. The present British government is a Conservative government, predisposed to protection, and yet it has- said to the farmer:	We cannot grant you protection
because it would be against the social interests of this country. So the British farmer at the present time, no matter what he has been asked to do in the past, has for the moment been called upon to sacrifice himself for the social prosperity of his country.
Has not that been the case in Canada? Has not the farmer here in the last generation or two .sacrificed himself for the social prosperity of the country? From the beginning this has been a social policy. The agriculturists of Canada have been asked and are being asked to sacrifice themselves for the social prosperity of the nation. I contend that whether in Great Britain or here what is wrong socially cannot be economically sound. That is the position the British government is taking now, and I suppose that the protectionist in this country takes the same attitude.
We ask ourselves, in the condition we are now in, in a preponderatingly agricultural * country; can we afford to take that attitude ? Can we afford in the interests of Canada as a whole to ask agriculture to sacrifice itself? When the farmers of England approached their government they said: Now, farming is either an economic or a social proposition. You have .either got to let it rest on an economic basis and accept the results, or you have to treat it socially; and if you treat it socially you have to grant it either protection or a subsidy. Those are the two propositions that the British farmers put before their government. But the present British government, which is a protectionist government, said: "We cannot give you either a subsidy or protection, because we believe it would be against the best interests of the country to do so." In Canada we have to face the question of the social welfare of all the people. If it is the desire or if it is thought right that Canada should sacrifice the farmer for the rest of the people, well, we have nothing to say. The farmers in England have nothing to say. They have accepted the decision of the government and they have to govern themselves accordingly-to go out of

Supply-Trade and Commerce
business, if necessary, in order to save the country socially. Are you going to sacrifice the farmer of Canada economically in order that Canada socially may prosper? That is the position you are up against. You cannot laugh this thing out of court; it will come up recurrently and will have to be faced.
I shall not go into the argument of the right hon. leader of the Opposition in regard to the diminution of the proportion of the population engaged in farming. I think that in that respect he got beyond his depth. It was all very well for him to argue that agriculture had diminished relatively with respect to numbers, with respect to its size. That is to say, the more shoes you put on the people's feet the less food you have to put into their stomachs, or the more you amuse their minds the less you will have to satisfy their appetites, and so on. You can argue along these lines, but you do not touch the point we are dealing with to-night. It may be true that agriculture is diminishing proportionately, but why should that be the basis of a contention that agriculture should at the same time diminish relatively with respect to its economic standing. Why should the farmers be worse off than they are to-day, even though they are less in number? According to the usual methods of reasoning, if the farmer belongs to a more exclusive set and ministers to a larger body of people, he ought to be better off than he was before; but that is a point that the right hon. gentleman altogether shelved.
Let me say a word in conclusion in respect to the right hon. gentleman's remarks concerning organization. We all know on this side that organization is of great value to the farmer, as it is to any other class in the community. The right hon. gentleman is not here but I would like to ask him what his definition of economics is, and what his definition of politics is-where he draws the line between the two. He received a great deal of applause from his own followers when he deprecated the entry of the farmers of Canada into politics, and yet he wanted the farmers to organize in their own interests. Where, in his opinion, do economics end and politics begin? What is the theory of government and the functions of government? What does he expect the government to do for the people or for any class of the people? What is the duty of the government toward the farmers or the manufacturers or other classes of the community? Is it simply to prevent individuals in each class from picking the pockets of individuals in the other classes, or see that the individuals in one class do not brutally knock down members of the other
class? I do not think so. The duty of this government is to adjust the relationship that exists between the different classes of this country, to see that one class is not unduly profiting at the expense of another.
The Farmers' party is here to-day because it has come to the point where it fails to see any dividing line between politics and economics. We are here as an economic group and not as a political group. We do not want political power; the aspirants to political power are opposite and to our right, not here. We are here as the exponents of certain economic principles, and that is what we stand for. We are not here in any narrow group sense; we are here with varied interests, but those interests all converge on the one principle of a proper adjustment' as between the different classes that make up this Canada of ours. I would like to meet the right hon. gentleman on his own ground and ask him whether the manufacturers have not profited by going into politics. Why, have other classes entered politics? Because they do not see any difference between their economic and their political interests. I suggest that there be a little more consistentcy in the definition of terms. We are living in the past when we think of politics as some sacred arena into which the ordinary people may not enter unless they take off their shoes at the gate. That belongs to the past-that policeman theory of government, that idea that the government has nothing to do with the real problems of the people.
It ill becomes the leader of the Conservative party to try to keep economics out of politics, because if any party were responsible for desecrating the sacred realm of politics by the introduction of economics, it was the Conservative party. When the Liberal government in England of the last century stood with arms upraised in horror at the invasion of economics into English public life it was the Conservative party that ruthlessly tried to bring it in, that tried to get rid of that theory of laissez faire and of the devil take the hindmost. The Conservative party in England tried to do that, while the Liberals were endeavouring to apply the policeman theory of government. We are not politicians in this group; you have noticed that many times. But we do pretend in a small way to be economists in a practical sense; that is, we know where the shoe pinches. You remember Kipling's story of the butterfly and the poor toad under the harrow. We have instances in this House of the butterfly giving good advice to the poor toad that feels every spike in the harrow. We do not pretend to be introducing radical notions into this House but we do

Supply-Trade and Commerce
pretend to be bringing the actual conditions to the notice of hon. members and of the government. You experienced politicians, you statesmen, you people who have been walled up here for years living in a false atmosphere *-we are trying to let daylight into you. We are accused of preaching blue ruin in this quarter of the House. Why, in the last century every man who tried to get a square deal for the public was called a blue ruin preacher. Some hon. members say they think it is a pity that we should preach blue ruin: I say it is a pity we should have to preach it. I was back home for a few days last week, and I called my executive together. A man of long experience stood up and said: "I can tell you from my experience that more than fifty per cent of my neighbours are hopelessly insolvent, and mind you, I come from a place that is called one of the gardens of the West, where farmers might be expected to prosper." The galleries of this House have ears, the reporters' gallery, has ears, and I hope that the benches on the floor have ears, but there should be a difference in the way our plea is heard when we come with our tale of woe. It should not be received critically on the floor of the House here. It should be received rather sympathetically and with some insight into the motive with which it is given, because we do not speak these things to the public. We forget the galleries when we speak; we do not know they are there. We do not know the reporters' gallery is there. We are speaking to you, and we do not expect you to blurt these things out all over the world. We are reasoning with you because you are the people with power in your hands to remedy these things. Who else can we go to for remedy? You cannot expect us to let these things ferment in our minds in silence. This is the place where complaints should be made, and this is the place where complaints should be heard, and heard sympathetically, with a statesmanlike breadth of mind and spirit.
I am sorry to have detained the House. I know a lot of this might have been said at another time, but it will not now be said at another time, so there is no time lost.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
James Alexander Robb: There is an item in the Supplementary Estimates we might take up.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I think the minister will agree that we have had a long and perhaps more or less profitable discussion to-night not very closely related to his estimates, but we have passed a couple of items and as the hour is late, I think it would be a gracious act for

him to move that the committee rise and report progress.


James Alexander Robb: We will agree to that.
Progress reported.
On motion of Mr. Fielding, the House adjourned at 11.45 p.m.
Monday, April 16, 1923