1923-03-16

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS

Mr. ANDREW McMASTER (Brome) moved:: That the third report of the special committee appointed to inquire into agricultural conditions be concurred in.


Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: This report, which was read yesterday or the day before, calls for the appointment by the government of a royal commission to inquire into the grain trade, and adds a recommendation that this com-

Agricultural Conditions
mission be given powers by the federal authorities and also by the provincial legislatures. I have grave doubts as to the wisdom of the latter proviso. Some of the legislatures concerned, perhaps all three of them, are sitting. But, in the light of the decision of the Court of Appeal of Manitoba regarding the powers of the commission which was appointed by the late government and which was arrested in its work, I am not clear as to what powers which this government is not amply authorized to confer the committee desires to place in this commission. I do not know what the provincial powers are that the committee has in mind. It seems to me that the proviso is going to delay the work of the commission, a commission which, it will be recalled, I urged to be appointed in my . speech on the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. What is the need of that proviso? Would it not be better to eliminate it and appoint a strong commission amply armed with federal powers-for our powers of investigation are very wide indeed-rather than put in the way of the commission impediments that may result not only in delay but possibly in disaster?


Andrew Ross McMaster: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. SPEAKER:: The hon. member has exhausted his right to speak. Perhaps the seconder of the motion might deal with the subject.


Hon. J. A. ROBB (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: There is no trade in Canada that has been so often investigated as the grain trade. I have before me a record showing that between 1897 and 1921, a period of twenty-four years, there were fourteen royal commissions, federal and provincial. In 1921, a royal commission was appointed to investigate the trade, and it is within the memory,
I imagine, of almost every member of the House that the work of that commission was blocked through an injunction obtained in the courts. I have no legal knowledge nor any legal pretensions, but my recollection is that the action to obtain that injunction upon the commission was taken under provincial statute. With the wish therefore to avoid the possibility of a recurrence of such an injunction, I take it, the committee on Agricultural Conditions unanimously put in this proviso. The government have no pronouncement to make on the issue raised by my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen). If it is the desire of parliament that there should be another investigation into the grain trade the government are quite willing to carry out that desire, and it will necessi-fMr. Meighen.]
tate the placing of an amount in the Supplementary Estimates. If, however, in the judgment of legal men the proviso will delay the proceedings, then, of course, it might be a matter for conference, and I am not sure whether my hon. friend who is chairman of the special committee (Mr. McMaster) would not desire to look n ore carefully into that aspect of the subject. But I would appeal to you, Mr. Speaker, that the chairman of the committee, who has no doubt given the matter legal consideration, and possibly has already consulted with the Justice department, might be unanimously given the right to explain the legal features of the matter.


Mr. BUREAU:: Without precluding other members from speaking.


Hewitt Bostock: With the unanimous consent of the House the hon. chairman of the committee may, of course, speak again. I may say to other hon. members, however, that when the member for Brome (Mr. McMaster) speaks he will close the debate, and if any hon. member desires to speak on the subject he should do so now.


Mr. O. R. GOULD (Assiniboia):: I think I have already placed myself on record during this session in regard to this matter. Speaking, as I have previously said, in behalf of the producers, I believe that they should have the privileges which a commission of this kind would afford. While it is true, as the minister states, that fourteen commissions have been appointed within a certain number of years to investigate the grain trade, it does seem to me that events have shown in the past that the producers, the men who have the real grievances, have not had an opportunity of placing their views before any commission. At all events, the results have never been to their satisfaction. I have many letters in my office to-day from individuals throughout the country who endorse the attitude I have taken in the past on this subject, when I have urged the appointment of a commission specifically for the purpose of hearing what the producers have to say. And I have tried to point out that in all parliamentary committees appointed by the government such expert evidence as has been given has resulted, I honestly believe, detrimentally to the interests of the producers. My only plea for a commission is based on the desire to facilitate the producers in laying their case before such a body.


Hon.   S@: Let me say in the first instance that if we can do anything to facilitate a proper inquiry into

Agricultural Conditions
the grain trade we want to do it; and I may add that our attitude is exactly the same as it was in 1921. The only thing we are afraid of, however, is that, very likely unwittingly, nay, I will go further and say, absolutely unwittingly, because I know the hon. chairman of the committee-there is a grave danger of our going through the same sort of farce that we went through last year in connection with the wheat board. It is a great deal better to do something we know we can do ourselves than to undertake anything in regard to which our powers are open to dispute. We know at the present time that we can make a certain investigation, and possibly having regard to all the different matters which will be found to be a proper subject of inquiry we might be able to legislate as broadly and as fully as we should like to. I admit that what the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Robb) says is technically correct, there have been many different investigations; but I think he will look in vain for any general investigation into this business in the last ten years. He will not find one. I should like to have the minister converted to the idea of the great necessity of a proper investigation.


James Alexander Robb: I admit it.


Sir HENRY DRAYTON:: We tried to convert him last session, and I thought we had succeeded. Indeed, I thought we had a pledge from him that there was going to be an investigation during the recess. We gave him a vote of $50,000, I think, for that purpose, and apparently all parties wanted the investigation.
Now, in so far as the strict legal position is concerned, it is perfectly true, as the hon. minister has pointed out, that interests which did not want the investigation that was being conducted by the Grain Inquiry Commission applied for an injunction and stopped the investigation temporarily. That injunction ought never to have been issued according to the unanimous opinion of the Court of Appeal of the province of Manitoba, which, reversing the decision of the trial judge, held that this parliament had absolute power to order the investigation. We thought the investigation should have been resumed, but we did not have control of the matter and nothing further was done.
Our only desire, Mr. Speaker, is to have a real investigation as quickly and fully as such an investigation can properly be held, so that we may know eixactly what the troubles are, if troubles there be. And certainly we have heard of many; why, every
day we are receiving complaints. Cannot we find out what the truth is and remove grievances which, I have no doubt, exist? We want to help our hon. friends, and we know we are helping them for we told them to go ahead and not get themselves in a position where possibly they would be held up through misunderstandings or by obstacles raised here and there. Surely, for the present at any rate, the unanimous judgment of the Court of Appeal of Manitoba, unappealed as it has been, ought to be enough for us.


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I think the confusion that has arisen in regard to this report is possibly the result of its wording. If I understand the purpose the committee has in mind, it is that this government should appoint a royal commission, and that if any of the provincial governments desire to cooperate they themselves should give powers to that particular commission. In other words, it is to permit the same gentlemen to exercise all the authority that can come to them from both the federal and provincial governments. If that is correct, I would say that so far as our government is concerned we will endeavour promptly to appoint a commission and to have in mind, in the selection of its personnel,, the choice of gentlemen who would inspire the confidence of the governments that are likely to unite to cooperate in this matter. If that is the view of the committee it ought to settle the matter.


Mr. A. B. HUDSON (South Winnipeg):: Mr. Speaker, I am not a member of the committee on Agricultural Conditions, but I have some knowledge of the legal position, and particularly of the injunction which the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen) has referred to. An injunction was taken out and supported by the trial judge, who held that the commission was improperly issued and was beyond the powers of the Dominion authorities. As my right hon. friend has said, there was an appeal from that decision, and the Court of Appeal reversed the trial judge's finding, holding that the Dominion authorities had power to create that commission. The point in argument in support of the injunction was that the commission covered matters which were not within the purview of the Dominion parliament, but were solely within the jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures. That argument was not supported by the Court of Appeal. But since this decision of the Court of Appeal the Privy Council has decided that the act which
Agricultural Conditions

created the Board of Commerce was ultra vires. That had a direct bearing on the extent of the Dominion's powers in regard to matters such as this, and following that decision the Manitoba Court of Appeal held that some portions at least af the Canada Grain Act were ultra vires of the Dominion. For that reason if a commission is now issued solely under Dominion authority questions may be raised which were raised in the preceding case, and may create obstacles.


Andrew Ross McMaster: I thank you Mr. Speaker, and the House for giving me an opportunity to briefly address hon. members in connection with the report which was brought in unanimously by the committee of which I have the honour to be chairman. When we had the matter of investigating the grain trade brought before us we first of all discussed whether or not we should make the investigation ourselves. We came to the conclusion that if we attempted such an investigation we should have to set aside for the time being all our other work; it would give us more than really we could accomplish ourselves. Then I was asked to confer with the law officers of the Crown to see whether there was some way of obviating the situation which arose in connection with the last royal commission which was stopped in the course of its investigation by a judgment of the court of first instance in Manitoba. True, that judgment was set aside by the higher court of that province, but in rendering judgment the Court of Appeal indicated that, although a royal commission appointed by the federal power had the right to make a general investigation, still in the course of that investigation questions might come up touching contract, property and civil rights which would fall under provincial jurisdiction, and which might lay the investigation proposed to be carried on by the commission open to attack by any one who came before the provincial courts. So we proposed that the government should appoint a commission and should invite the provinces to name the same gentlemen as commissioners for the same purpose, and that these gentlemen should start their work clothed with every power that the sovereign authority of the provinces interested or the sovereign authority of the Dominion might bestow upon them. It seemed to me that that was a wise proceeding to take. It may consume a little more time at the beginning but certainly it opens a way for a full and complete investigation without possibility of let or hindrance.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. NEILL:: I should like to ask the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Lapointe), only he is not present, if he would give orders to expedite bringing down the report of the commissioners who investigated the wreck of the Alaskan off the coast of British Columbia. This wreck investigation took place on the second of February; the investigation commission sat then, and on one or two subsequent days. This is the sixteenth of March, and I think the report might be forthcoming by this time.



INQUIRIES FOR RETURNS


[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Arthur Meighen: On the 12th of this month, an order was passed calling for production of the correspondence with the British government relating to the Halibut Fisheries Treaty and the execution thereof. Of course, that is four days ago. Some orders might take pretty long in preparation; but this concerns only one department. The correspondence would not likely be very long, and I think an hour would likely be enough in which to copy it. I was expecting the return yesterday or to-day.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think I can promise to give my right hon. friend most of the papers to-day. The delay has been on account of a cable having been sent to the British government to ask a question with respect to some of the papers, and the reply not yet having been received.



BONDED WAREHOUSES, NEW BRUNSWICK

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. CALDWELL:: How soon may I expect the papers asked for under an order for return passed on 5th March, covering correspondence between the New Brunswick government and the federal government regarding bonded warehouses in New Brunswick?


Jacques Bureau: I can bring the return down on Monday for my hon. friend.



MR. JAMES LARKIN

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. WOODSWORTH:: Can the government give any information concerning the

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question which I asked yesterday, as to the reasons for refusing Mr. James Larkin admission into Canada?


Mr. STEWART (Argenteuil):: I have no further information than that an investigation is being made with respect to. this case. I expect to hear to-morrow.



PROPOSED CUSTOMS OFFICER AT NEW YORK

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. LADNER:: A despatch has come from British Columbia dealing with the question of a customs officer at New York. It quotes Mr. Oliver, the Premier of British Columbia, as saying that:
-when he drew the attention of Premier King and Hon. Mr. Fielding, Minister of Finance, to the fact that duty was being collected on goods going from eastern Canada to British Columbia, they were astounded. The existing customs regulations laid it down that Canadian goods transhipped in a foreign port, unless under supervision of a Canadian customs officer, bad to pay duty on entry into Canada. Yet, when British Columbia asked for the establishment in New York of a customs officer, the application was refused.
I want to ask if, in fact, the government have refused the application for a customs officer at New York. Because, I should like to say, this is a question in which public bodies, boards of trade and so on, at the coast, are greatly interested, and I understood the government had the matter still under consideration, and perhaps favourable consideration. This is a statement by the Premier of British Columbia.


Jacques Bureau: Does the hon. member want the Prime Minister to answer?


Leon Johnson Ladner: No.


Jacques Bureau: An application has been made to place a customs officer at New York to look after the traffiic that goes via the ocean and the Panama canal. This matter has been under the consideration of the department, and while the department has not decided definitely, it feels inclined to refuse the application, because this would divert traffic towards the United States and all the Canadian railways would get out of it would be the haul from the-point of departure to the boundary-the whole of the railroad haul to the sea and the whole of the ocean freight would go to the United States.



CANADIAN PURE BRED STOCK

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. SUTHERLAND:: I notice that in the estimates provision has been made for the appointment of commissioners to visit South America and Great Britain with a view to securing trade in Canadian pure-bred stock. When will the report be placed on the Table or has it already been placed on the Table?


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: I have one of the reports ready. The other one will be ready, I expect, in the course of a day or two.



IMMIGRATION AND COLONIZATION

[Stage Direction]
The House in Committee of Supply, Mr. Gordon in the chair:
Immigration-outside service-salaries, $700,000.
Mr.- HOEY: It was not my intention to take part in this discussion which has already become unduly long. I feel, however, that I should refer to the address delivered during the course of this debate by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland). I regret that that hon. member felt it incumbent upon him to make certain statements, not because I believe the statements were in themselves untrue. In so far as they relate to Alberta, they may be conservative, but in so far as they relate to western Canada, as I know it, they are hopelessly and outlandishly exaggerated. The weakness of his address, it seems to me, lay in the fact that he failed to distinguish between conditions for which a mistaken economic policy has been responsible and conditions that are inherent in or natural to the territory which he described. Naturally our sympathies all go out to hon. members who have come from other lands, lands of peace and prosperity, and we can all realize their anxiety to return and enjoy the peace and prosperity associated in our minds with those lands from which they originally came.
I want to follow very closely in one particular the hon. member for St. John City (Mr. MacLaren), when he decided to discuss this problem of immigration from a purely sectional standpoint. I want to look at it from the standpoint of the province of Manitoba, with which I am most familiar, and in doing that I want to answer the question put, I think, by the hon. member for Hants (Mr. Martell), the chief interrogator for the Liberal party, who.asked. "Why should we bring immigrants into this country?"
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[Stage Direction]
Turning to the province of Manitoba for a moment, what do we find? We find in that province political, educational, religious and social institutions far in excess of our present needs. We have in the province of Manitoba a parliament building of which we are justly proud, that was built in all good faith anticipating immigration, a structure which cost almost exactly as much as this edifice in which I speak this afternoon. We have also in that province an agricultural college, one of the finest in the Dominion of Canada, an agricultural college that cost us millions of dollars and costs us now hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to maintain an institution the capacity of which has never been tested. Nor is that all. If we turn eastward from Winnipeg to the Winnipeg river, we find there a complete power plant. It was opened in January of this year at a cost of exactly $6,000,000, money invested largely by American investors, business men of astuteness, men who have unshakable faith in the future of that province-an electrical plant that is at present giving us electricity far in excess of our present needs, the cheapest light and power on the American continent, a plant that ought ultimately to make the city of Winnipeg one of the largest industrial centres on the American continent.
If we turn to lake Winnipeg we have there in our fisheries, if they are carefully guarded and legitimately exploited, a source of inexhaustible wealth. We have our mining areas in the north, two of which have just recently been opened up, the value of which has not yet been determined. I say that the institutions to which I have referred earlier in my remarks were all built, in my judgment, in good faith. But we are over-institutionalized. I am not blaming anybody in the province of Manitoba to-day for that, but we are groaning and staggering under the burden of taxation resulting therefrom.
Let me take hon. members in imagination just for a moment or two to a typical Manitoba town. The train service is tri-weekly. We arrive at the depot and get into conversation with the station agent. If he is an honest man-and all station agents are honest men, as the Minister of Labour (Mr. Murdock) well knows-what will he tell us? He will tell us what hundreds of- them have told me, that they could handle three times the traffic that they are at present handling, and handle it just as efficiently without one cent of added cost to the company. Turning to the section men what do we find?	Exactly
the same conditions. Go into the village itself and there you will find two' or three storekeepers who are unemployed FMr. Hoey.]
two-thirds of their time. Go into the schools immediately adjoining that territory, and what do you find? You find school teachers, employed at a salary of approximately $100 per month, teaching seven, ten or fifteen youngsters, when they could just as efficiently teach forty-five. We find in those territories -and I know Manitoba; I do not take second place to any member in this House in my knowledge of Manitoba and conditions in that province; I stand open to correction, the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) sits to my left-we find in those territories men attempting to farm-shall I say, or to scratch? -large areas of land. In this regard I often think of a story I once heard of a farm wife who sent a youngster out to set the hen on some eggs. She gave him a specified number, and when he returned she asked him how he accomplished the task. He said, "I accomplished it fine. I set the hen down on two hundred eggs." "Oh", she said in astonishment, "a hen can never cover two hundred eggs." "I know that", the boy replied, "but I did it just to see the old fool trying to spread herself." It. is most pitiful, Mr. Chairman, to see the attempts on the part of certain sincere but mistaken agriculturists in the province to "spread themselves". Almost everything has been sacrificed-in some cases the education of their children, domestic utensils in the home, all sacrificed-in a mad lust to acquire more land. What would immigration mean to these districts? It would mean, first of all, a daily train service, and a daily train service would mean a daily postal service. It would mean the enrichment of the social life and the satisfaction of the social instincts of that community. It would add no extra burden so far as the maintainance of the institutions is concerned. That is my point.
I pass from that to what I consider to be the cardinal fallacy that has entered into this debate. "If you bring settlers into Canada you are going to increase production, and increased production will mean deflation of prices, if indeed you can obtain a market for your products at all." It is scarcely necessary to deal with such a fallacy; it is so pitifully obvious. If you bring an agriculturist from the United States and establish him in the province of Manitoba, does he still remain a producer in the United States? If you bring an immigrant from southern or northern Europe, or even from Ireland, does he remain a producer in Ireland? You cannot cut out competition by shutting men out of the country. The crux of the whole question is, are we going to bring them in

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here to co-operate with us or let them remain outside to compete with us? That is the crux of the whole situation. "Oh," you say, "if you keep out European industrial workers we exclude competition and keep up the price of wages." Do you? You cannot keep out their products except by the erection of tariff barriers in which my hon. friends do not believe. Personally I cannot follow a course of reasoning that would allow manufactured articles to come in, and deny men the right to enter this country and manufacture such articles here. That is the cardinal point. "But", you say, "we can keep them in Europe; it is true we cannot keep them from competing with us, if they are Slavs, on the free markets of England, but we can keep them unemployed in Europe." Yes, but to the extent that you keep them unemployed there you paralyze Europe's purchasing power, and consequently cause reaction against your own trade and commerce.
I want to make this suggestion to the minister, with whom I have considerable sympathy and in whose sincerity I absolutely believe, I want to ask him if he has ever seriously considered the advisability of extending to rural areas in this province the housing scheme created by the late government and confined until now to the urban centres. We might establish in the province of Manitoba-or indeed, for that matter, anywhere in Canada-a standard farm labourer's dwelling constructed out of concrete, indestructible, at a cost of say $2,500; we might establish such cottages on our larger tracts of land, give the farm labourer a home in which to live with an acre of land upon which he could produce during the summer months sufficient to keep him and his family during the winter, a little cottage where his wife could board the hired help of the farmer that are now a nuisance-I might precede that by an adjective but I do not want to-to the over-worked farmer's wife, where the wife of the farm labourer could help the farmer's wife during the busjr season of the year, and where the farm labourer's family could grow un and enjoy the great advantages of rural life. Similar homes have been erected in European countries, the suggestion is in no sense original. After you had erected such homes and had brought men with their families and established them there, after they had acquired experience and had become familiar with Canadian conditions, is it not the most likely thing in the world that the man who is to-day farming two sections would enter into an agreement with his farm labourer now Canadianized

I mean Canadianized in so far as farming experience is concerned-to take over half of the land he is attempting to scratch.
Reference has been made by the hon. member for Centre Winnipeg (Mr. Woodsworth), to unemployment in the city of Winnipeg. Unemployment exists .there. Unemployment has always existed in Winnipeg, and personally I do not think the government treated Winnipeg fairly in regard to unemployment relief this year. Winnipeg has for years been the rendezvous for the surplus farm labour of the three prairie provinces. You can talk to thousands of them on the train, and what do they tell you? "We are going to the Peg. there's no other burg on the prairies big enough to give us a good time." The result is that they crowd in from bankrupt Alberta and from comparatively prosperous Saskatchewan, causing unemployment, causing congestion, creating chaos-and the city of Winnipeg has got to maintain them. We have a real grievance, speaking as an industrial worker in the city of Winnipeg, against the agriculturists of the prairies; and I think the time has come when we have a right to demand of them that they absorb their surplus farm help in the fall of each year. How can they expect us to maintain it?
Mr. COOTE:: Does my hon. friend not
believe in immigration? If so, why does he object to this labour immigrating to Winnipeg?	[DOT]
Mr. HOEY; I say the time has come when we have a right to demand that these agriculturists, a great many of whom are in no sense insolvent, absorb their own surplus labour. And I want to say that after fifteen years' intensive study of the rural problem in the province of Manitoba, I do not think this labour can ever hope to become absorbed until some such scheme as I have indicated is launched. Personally I would take the whole amount to be voted for immigration this year and build farm labour cottages. The building of these cottages would cause employment and stimulate the building trades; it would distribute wealth in this country and go far to create a spirit of optimism; and when you have these homes constructed I can assure you that there are thousands with their families to-day in the urban centres who will be glad to go out and take possession of them. The scheme may seem impracticable, it did seem so to me at one time, but it is the best suggestion I can submit.
I am opposed to the co-operation of the government with the Canadian Colonization Association-not because I know anything of
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that body, but because I believe the co-operation does no go far enough to achieve practical results. But it goes far enough to create suspicion in the minds of the people, and create a great deal of unpopularity so far as the government is concerned. That, without knowing anything about the association, is the position that I take. If I were the minister I would put forth a supreme effort to interest the provincial departments of immigration. I would propose to the province of Manitoba that their department of immigration, which has been dead for some years, might be resuscitated and placed under the Minister of Agriculture, the federal government perhaps, paying the salary of the Deputy Minister of Immigration. I would propose some such policy to all of the provincial governments. I would go further than that, I would get in touch with our municipal reeves, and our municipal councils throughout the province; I think that the thing might be very profitably discussed if we are going to have a conference on the problem of taxation in this country. And then I would utilize the whole machinery associated with the Soldier Settlement Board. Now, if the federal government, the provincial governments, the municipal authorities and the Soldier Settlement Board cannot put across this scheme of immigration I do not think the Canadian Colonization Association can. The co-operation which is proposed by the minister is going to be interpreted as a tacit confession of failure on the part of the Dominion government to undertake a task which is paramountly their duty.
Now, just a word with regard to the type of immigrant that should come in. I have come in contact with thousands of so-called non-English-speaking people in the province of Manitoba. I have entered their homes; I have met them in a thousand and one different ways. I want to say that they are not the most prosperous people in the province to-day, but they are as prosperous as other sections of our Manitoba people and, I think, the most contented. They were driven up into the northern sections of the province; they had to encounter almost unsurmountable obstacles. They have made good, their young men are entering the universities and graduating with honours; they are entering the professions; they are a source of pride not only to Manitoba but to the Dominion as a whole. But when you turn to the class of immigrants that we should encourage to come in, it is a somewhat difficult task to determine the most desirable type. Personally I am opposed to bringing into

this country any man who has passed the age of 35 years. You can never detach him from the old country habits and from the old country methods of doing things. Again and again he will remind you of the kind of trains they have in the Old Country, the way they live there and the way they do things there. If you bring him out when he is comparatively young, he forgets the Old Country. I never think of the Old Country. Therefore, I would discourage men who are past the age of 35 years coming to this country.
Speaking of Scandinavians I would admit all the Scandinavians into Canada to-morrow and would be prepared to accept the responsibility for so doing. I never met in western Canada a Scandinavian who was, if you will pardon the colloquialism, " broke." I remember a former American school teacher in Minnesota paying me a great tribute on one occasion when I was in conversation with her. She asked me how long I had been in that part of the country where I resided.
I said I had been there three years. She said " How did you acquire such a working knowledge of English?" I said they spoke English in the land from which I came. She . said "Have you not come from Sweden?" The Scandinavians are the best settlers that have been brought to this country. But when you are deciding the type of settlers it all depends on the ambition of the individual, and unfortunately it is difficult to detect ambition in a man-when you are first introduced to him it is absolutely impossible.
I can remember an immigrant who came to this country some fourteen years ago. When he arrived in the city of Quebec he had not $35 which, at that time, it was necessary for him to have in order to land. But by his ingenuity he evaded the immigration authorities and got in. He came up to the city of Montreal, and unemployment at that time was rampant. After two hours' search he secured a job in a Montreal tannery owned by a Scotchman, washing and stretching hides. The old employer said to him " The work is difficult and onerous, but the wages are high ", and he received for his work in that tannery for two months $7 a week. He saved in that two months enough money to take him to Fort Frances in New Ontario, where he obtained a position at $400 a year, where he worked for two years and saved enough to enable him to take a five-year college course-that is, with the little additional sums the he was able to earn during the college vacation. We sometimes hear of men living on a meal a day. This particular immigrant

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lived for four days on one meal, and I remember on one occasion he lived for five days on one meal, and the last six weeks of the year in which he graduated he lived for ten cents a day, and was denied
4 p.m. the privilege of writing home to his [DOT]	parentte, because he did not have the
money for postage. His parents were then living but have since died. He graduated from that institution, and is to-day a member of the Dominion parliament. He is still in his thirties, and by no means a physical wreck. I wish to say that even the discussions that have taken place on this subject have not shaken my faith in the Dominion of Canada. With that experience, Mr. Chairman, could I honestly and conscientiously deny young ambitious men the right to come into this country? I would not encourage them to come in, and I would not spend a cent to bring them in, but I would allow them to come if they so desired. We have a tremendous debt in this country. We have social conditions that are depressing, but I believe we can bring immigrants in here who will help us surmount these difficulties, and help us pay off these financial obligations, and in the meantime these immigrants may enjoy a measure of prosperity which is greater than you can enjoy in any other country in modem civilization.


Mr. CLARK:: I find myself, Mr. Chairman, very much in agreement with the sentiments expressed by the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey) and I think it entirely proper that I should congratulate him upon the attitude he takes on this question. I certainly agree with him in his statement that immigration in this country is a great necessity. I look upon the problem of immigration as the greatest problem facing this country to-day. It is the country's most important business and likewise the most important business of this House. Canada cannot develop without an increase in her population. The subject of immigration cannot be considered except in relation to three things, farm industry, our railways and our industrial concerns. Each one of those has its own bearing upon this subject. Our farmers complain that they are not making profits today. I think .the same is true of our industrials. Canada is over-industrialized, she is over-built with railways, and at the present time all classes are suffering owing to the lack of markets. The hon. member for Springfield said: Are we going to bring in immigrants to co-operate with . us, or leave them out to compete with us? I think that is all very well, so far as it goes,
but if they co-operate with us they will certainly create markets for our farmers and for our manufacturers, and traffic for our railways, and increased traffic will produce what the farmers so urgently desire, lower freight rates, and thereby lessen the cost of their agricultural implements and other necessities. Increased production and increased markets must also enable the manufacturer to reduce his overhead, and by increasing the volume of his production, enable him to reduce the price at which it can be sold. Furthermore this increase in population will mean , more people to share our burdens of taxation.
A great deal has been said with regard to the question of emigration. I believe that emigration from our farming community has resulted from the burdens borne by these farmers due to high freight rates, due to the fact that they are not getting more for their produce, or very little more, than they were before the war, and due to the decreased value of our dollar. Therefore, our farmers are leaving, wherever they can, for better farms, or better places to earn a living. The lack of markets has caused stagnation in industries and building trades. The result is that our skilled artisans, our professional men, our architects are leaving the country to go to the United States where there is an industrial boom. But when we create those conditions which are bound to result from an increased population these men will flow back into the country.
I believe that the matter of great importance in connection with any policy of immigration is to select immigrants from the right sort of people, and the qualifications of such people, in my opinion, are these. First, the mental capacity of the immigrants; secondly, I would see to it that we secure people whom we can assimilate; and thirdly, I would insist that the people who come are such as will not drag down the standard of living in Canada. We in British Columbia have a very good illustration of the sort of immigrants we cannot assimilate, in the orientals who have been allowed to come into the country. And the people in the East, I believe, have also had an example of people whom it is impossible to absorb into the populatitjn in those immigrants who go into the city of Montreal, for instance, and work in the sweat shops, thus driving out our best labour from the manufacturing industries and forcing them to seek employment elsewhere. I know of two industrial concerns in Hamilton, one of which has failed recently. That firm always employed good Canadian citizens of Hamilton,

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and I believe they have been driven out of business because of the fact that we have permitted to come into the country sweat shop labour that we cannot assimilate into our population, and with which our own people cannot compete.
I have listened with a great deal of interest to the long explanation given by the minister and I must confess that I have yet no clear conception of what he has done or what he proposes to do with reference to this problem. I believe that we are entering an era in the history of this country when we require for our proper development something new in the shape of an aggressive immigration policy; we need measures that are vigorous and bold. We have to take a chance if we are to succeed; we cannot sit down and rely on old methods and the course of nature if we are to secure the population which we so much require. I know of a scheme which has been before the department for at least a year and which involved the bringing into Canada of the most desirable type of settlers from the north of Scotland, from the Hebrides, but I have reason to believe that these settlers have not yet been secured, although at least a thousand of them could have been brought in in the last year. Why has not this been done? I cannot understand why we should suffer from a moment's delay in this regard. We want people in this country of the right sort and we should not hesitate a moment in seizing an opportunity to bring in a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand men who will make desirable citizens.
With the majority of the members of this House, I regard farming as our basic industry; and so far as I can gather from the minister's policy he purposes to look for agricultural immigrants from foreign countries. True, he states that the British will be given the preference. But what steps is he going to take to bring people from the British Isles into Canada? I have waited for some explanation as to why such a small amount is spent in advertising in Great Britain in comparison with such a tremendous sum in foreign countries. That explanation has been promised but so far it is not forthcoming, and I think that this House might have expected it almost forthwith, after the suggestion that was made that enough was not being spent in Great Britain. In my opinion it is possible to secure desirable settlers from Great Britain for farming purpose-I have given one instance of where there are farmers available for- this country who have not been brought in.
t


Charles A. Stewart: Perhaps I might reply to my hon. friend at this stage in regard to the matter of advertising. The approximate sum spent in Great Britain is $69,000, and in all other countries about $200,000.


John Arthur Clark: Well I still look on that as being almost as bad as the figures we were given at first, of some $3,000 and $90,000 respectively. This country requires an energetic and aggressive campaign for immigrants from Great Britain.


Charles A. Stewart: The hon. gentleman is complaining about nothing having been done in the north of Scotland. We have hadi an agent working there and settlers are coming from that part of Great Britain about the beginning of next month.


John Arthur Clark: I was speaking of last year;
I was refering to people who, I knew, were available but who were not brought.


Charles A. Stewart: If my hon. friend was in the House when I spoke he will remember I stated there was a delegation of five gentlemen who travelled throughout Canada last year from the north of Scotland and who were coming back to this country with a fairly large number of their neighbours. These people intend to settle in the vicinity of Red Deer, Alberta, that desperate province, about the ruin of which vve have heard so much.


John Arthur Clark: I am glad to know that some steps are being taken in this direction, but at the same time I want to impress upon the minister the fact that our people are anxious to increase the 54 per cent of Anglo-Saxons who now reside in Canada. And we can do this by a proper, aggressive campaign for immigrants from Great Britain. I do not know whether a suggestion from me is of any use, but I cannot see why we should not inform the British government and our agents in Great Britain that we are prepared to take in this country 100,000, or as many as they like to send, of the youth of Great Britain from the ages of fourteen to sixteen or seventeen. The Canadian government could take the responsibility of placing them on proper farms and carrying out a system of inspection oi these farms to see that these youths were properly educated, and there might be, in connection with a scheme of this kind, a regular annual examination, so that these boys, when they qualified under tests prescribed by the Department of Agriculture, or whatever department was selected, might be enabled to secure land of their own and '

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be encouraged to develop it. By so doing I believe we could form the foundation in this country of such a future as we cannot expect if we bring in undesirable immigrants from foreign countries.
The same poilcy should be adopted for our cities. I think, with the hon. member (Mr. Hoey), that there should be co-operation between our Department of Immigration and the various municipal councils. But I would go further. We have in every city and town social service organizations such as Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, Y.M.C.A.'s and church associations, every one of which is directly interested in the development of this country. I would advocate that we carry on a campaign of education among these organizations 'with a view to impressing upon them the great importance to Canada's welfare of increasing our population by the addition of the right sort of people. And I believe that if proper steps were taken to co-operate with these organizations we could secure the results we desire.
We have placed before us briefly three views: one, no restrictions; two, no immigrants; three, selected immigrants. I want to support my argument for selected immigrants, and for immigrants as largely as possible from the British Isles, with some figures giving the experience of the United States. They have gone through a period in their history similar to what we will go through in the next hundred years. They have had the experience, let us benefit by that experience. What I am about to quote is the result of their experience gained from scientific tests made by them during the war. Scientific mental tests were made on 1,700,000 officers and men of the American expeditionary force. This is a quotation from the official army mental tests:
Relatively early in this supreme struggle, it became clear to certain individuals that the proper utilization of man-power, and more particularly of mind or brainpower, would assure ultimate victory. . . All this had to be done in the least possible time. Never before in the history of civilization was brain, as contrasted with brawn, so important; never before, the proper placement and utilization of brain-power so essential to success.
Our War Department, nerved to exceptional risks by the stem necessity for early victory, saw and immediately seized its opportunity to develop various new lines of personnel work. Among these is numbered the psychological service. Great will be our good fortune if the lesson in human engineering which the war has taught is carried over directly and effectively into our civil institutions and activities.
The purposes of these psychologcal tests were, as stated in the army orders: "(a) to aid in segregating the mentally incompetent, (b) to classify men according to their mental capacity, (c) to assist in selecting competent men for responsible positions." And, to quote
a subsequent official pronouncement after the administration of the tests: "In the opinion of this office these reports indicate very definitely that the desired results have been achieved."
These tests were made according to nationality of the individual, and the table which I shall now present gives the percentage of inferiors found among 1,700,000 men, namely:
Percentage of inferiority
Country of Birth-
England	
Holland	
Denmark	
Scotland	
Germany	
Sweden	
Canada.. [DOT].. ..
Belgium	
Norway	
Austria	
Ireland	
Turkey	
Greece	
Russia	
Italy	
Poland	
8.7
9.2
13.4 13.6
15.0
19.4
19.5
24.0
25.6
37.5
39.4
42.0
43.6
60.4
63.4 69.9
In the table giving the percentage of superiority we find the English again come first. Here are the figures:
Percentage of superiority Country of birth-
England	
Scotland	
Holland	
Canada	
Germany	
Denmark	
Sweden	
Norway	
Ireland	
Turkey	
Austria	
Russia	
Greece	
Italy	
Belgium	
Poland.. ..'	
19.7
13.0
10.7 10.5
8.3
5.4
4.3
4.1
4.1
3.4
3.4 2.7
2.1 .8 .8 .5
I think these tables tell a very interesting story summarizing the experience of the United States. In selecting immigrants from foreign countries I think the minister might-well be guided by the experience of the United States and profit by the lessons they have learned.
I should like to refer to a remark made, I think, either by the minister himself (Mr. Stewart) or by the leader of the Progressive party (Mr. Forke), that the Londoner cannot stand the conditions on our farms.


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
say so.


John Arthur Clark: Then it was the leader of the Progressive party. I take issue with him. While the Londoner of mature age may not make a good farmer, still the youth born in London will if he is properly trained. I be-

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lieve the Londoner can be trained to do anything. Many of us saw the Londoner on the field of battle, and we also saw him living under conditions that no farmer in this country has ever had to endure-sleeping in the mud and on ice with nothing under him but a waterproof sheet. And he stood it. We must not belittle the Anglo-Saxon, the British, because I feel that the United States have proved beyond all question that the immigrant of Anglo-Saxon stock makes the best citizen. He is the dominant influence in the United States to-day. In my opinion the only way in which we can make this country prosperous and have a national type with a proper patriotism is to follow the policy of bringing the Britisher to this country and thus making Canada a British nation instead of the conglomerate nation we shall be if we persist in the policy of bringing in foreigners.


Mr. EULER:: Mr. Chairman, I am not entering this debate with any thought of delaying the estimates, nor of embarrassing the minister, but to offer what little I can to solve what seems to be a very difficult problem. I am glad to speak for a moment, if it is only to congratulate the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey) on the excellent address he gave the committee a few moments ago. I was very glad to hear what he said, because after I had visualized the picture drawn by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) last night I feared that one of the factors in the prosperity of the city from which I come was about to disappear entirely.


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: Mr. Chairman, if I may be allowed a question. Is not the hon. gentleman aware-I am quite sure the hon. member for Springfield is-that the crop of which we have a record in the Manitoba Free Press for 1921 fell below the taxes of the province by over $16,000,000?


William Daum Euler: Mr. Chairman, I was not referring to an isolated statement of that kind at all.


Edward Joseph Garland: But that is the fact.


The CHAIRMAN:: Order.


William Daum Euler: I was referring to the statement my hon. friend made last night that his province was practically bankrupt. And people who are bankrupt cannot buy goods.


Edward Joseph Garland: We are not buying them, either.


William Daum Euler: I think it is hardly necessary to argue that immigration is desirable, although I know there are elements in this

House that are rather unfriendly to the idea of bringing more people into this country. I do not think the point needs labouring that we want more people. In a country of the size of Canada, with its illimitable resources, the question of the need of more people should not be open to argument at all. But if in working out the details, the minister finds that he is meeting with a good deal of difficulty and some opposition, I would say to him, if I may, that in this parliament as elsewhere, it is absolutely impossible always to reconcile the ideas of various people, and he should go on just as he thinks is in the interest of the people of Canada. When I say that, I would also say-and I will refer to this later-that I do not entirely agree with one or two of the suggestions which he has in mind.
The value of immigration cannot be minimised. It develops our natural resources, in the first place. The greater 'the number of people you have in the country, the greater the consumption and therefore, the greater will be the production required. Thus, the question whether we should have more people in this country with its great spaces and its resources should not be open to argument. There are certain facts operating against the success of immigration at the present time, even if we open the door very wide. The first thing is the high cost of transportation. The people of the British Isles, and the people of European continental countries as-well, are not blessed with a great deal of this world's goods. In many instances, they have not the money, even if they so desire, to pay their way across the ocean. In past years those immigrants who have come to Canada-and I Have knowledge of some of them-have come here because their friends or relatives in this country have advanced them the money to pay for transportation. The second reason is this, that in the past two years the restrictions have been so onerous that it has been impossible for those people to come. While some of those restrictions have, I am glad to say, been removed by the present government-and I am in this making no special criticism of the previous government- the effects of those restrictions are still occupying the minds of people who would like to come. There are, I understand, people today in England and on the European continent who believe it is impossible for them to enter Canada, who believe that the restrictions which existed at one time are still in force. A vigorous immigration policy would include making known to the people whom we wish to secure the fact that they -would be welcome if they desired to come to Canada. For that

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I would spend a little money; I would not spend a great deal. I may say frankly and almost at the outset that I am in favour of voluntary immigration. I am not particularly enamoured-and I say this with all goodwill *-of any scheme which contemplates the expenditure of great sums of money to induce . people to come to Canada, and perhaps, painting rosier pictures than should be painted. I am also not very greatly in favour of spending large amounts of money on those people after they arrive in Canada. Briefly, I would say this. I would spend a reasonable sum of money in acquainting the people of various countries from which we wish to attract immigrants, with the fact that if they are willing to work, if they are healthy, if they are white, if they are morally and physically sound, we shall be glad, to welcome them to this country and to open the door to them.
I might say, just in passing, in reply to the speech of the hon. gentleman who preceded me (Mr. Clark) that I am quite in sympathy with him w'hen he says that we ought to encourage immigration from the British Isles. I believe, however, if we desire to obtain all the immigration which this country ought to have and which it can stand, we cannot stop there.


Edward Joseph Garland: What class of men -would the hon. member bring from the British Isles?


William Daum Euler: I was coming to that a little later on; but. I would say to my hon. friend that I would not bar a man whether he was a farmer or engaged in any other occupation, provided that he was physically, mentally and morally fit. I was going to refer for a moment to some of the remarks made by one or two hon. members opposite, and more particularly to the remarks made by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland). Last evening, when I was listening to him, I felt rather depressed and discouraged for fear that what he said might possibly be true, although I could hardly believe it. I was, for that reason, particularly pleased that the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey) took up the cudgels on behalf of the western provinces and said what he did.


Edward Joseph Garland: I would not like the hon. member to go on record in that way. Every word of what I said was true, and the hon. member for Springfield admitted that quite possibly it was true in Alberta.


William Daum Euler: I did not hear the hon. member for Springfield admit that the West was bankrupt. In discussing western Canada and the life of the farmer there, I say with all sincerity-and I think my hon. friends will 78i
believe me-that those who come from industrial Ontario have every sympathy with the western farmer, and I believe we are willing to go almost any distance in a reasonable way to help them, if giving such assistance is possible. In saying that, I am thinking now of another farming district in Ontario. I come from the county of Waterloo, the centre of a farming and industrial district in western Ontario. I believe that there we have, perhaps, the happiest combination, the combination that makes for success. We have an industrial population, manufacturing towns and cities surounded by good farming country in which mixed farming is being carried on. If that could be developed in western Canada, I think the problem that is being discussed would be solved.


Mr. CAMPBELL:: Would the hon. member tell us where the farmers would find a market for products from mixed farming?


William Daum Euler: I was coming to that. That deals very intimately with the question of immigration of which we are speaking now. That is why I am in favour of immigration for the West as well as for other parts of Canada. I was going to make a comparison. In western Ontario, the part of the province from which I come we have first-class agricultural land. In Western Canada, I fear it is true that many of the farmers, particularly in southern Alberta, from what I have heard, have become located on land which will never be able to support them as an agricultural community. That will correct itself in time. Apparently, the. greatest difficulty they have is their distance from the *market. The population is not there to consume that which they themselves p duce, and they are forced to the necessity of exporting their goods by rail for some thousand or fifteen hundred miles and then overseas to foreign markets. I am not a pessimist when I say this, but this has often occurred to me when the difficulties of the western farmer have been discussed: I am not sure whether the West, in the matter of growing wheat and exporting it thousands of miles to the country of consumption, is not at the present moment conducting what is really a great experiment. I do not know whether it is possible for western Canada to continue to grow wheat only and to send it to market, this requiring the expenditure of large sums of money for transportation, something which cannot be overcome at the present time. It must be difficult to carry this on, because the western farmers are in competition with countries where wheat can
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be produced at low prices and transported at lower costs.


Mr. HOEY:: Is the hon. member aware that the best British economists inform us that wheat consumption in Europe to-day is only one-third of what it would normally be if Europe were re-established?


William Daum Euler: That is, in a way, an answer to my question. When the European peoples become able again to purchase to the full extent of their requirements, the price of wheat will go up, and that will immediately be reflected in the prosperity of the western farmer. Let us hope that that condition will soon come about.


Oliver Robert Gould: " A good time coming


William Daum Euler: In the meantime the eastern farmer has his local market, and I am inclined to believe-I do not care to be dogmatic with regard to these things-that that which makes the eastern farmer prosperous will be what in the end will have to make the western farmer prosperous, and that is the development of a home market.


Miss MACPHAIL:: Does the hon. member consider that the eastern farmer is prosperous to-day?


William Daum Euler: I am speaking now for the farmers in my own community. Perhaps when I use the word " prosperous", I use too strong a word.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Daum Euler: I am not going to' say I used too strong a word. I said " perhaps ". I do say this, that the farmers in the neighbourhood in which I live are very comfortable. They produce a great many of the things which they need; they produce a variety of commodities-butter, cheese, eggs, wheat, and the other products that are raised in western Ontario, and which they take to the towns and industrial centres. The point I want to make is that the interests of the cities and towns are identical with theirs, the farmer gets his home market there, and the working man living in the towns and cities gets the benefit of having these goods brought in to him from time to time. I believe that that will be the salvation of the West. Perhaps I should not say the salvation, but I believe that is the proper solution of their problem. When the hon. member for Springfield spoke of the development of a water power in Manitoba great-enough to move the wheels of vast industries, I was hoping that at no distant time the West itself would begin to create its own industrial centres, and then the problem of the farmers

will be solved if they apply themselves diligently to farming as farming ought to be carried out, and do not try to spread themselves over too much territory, as was mentioned by the hon. member for Springfield.


Oliver Robert Gould: What is "too much"?


William Daum Euler: If it is true that the western . lands, as in some cases has been mentioned, are not in a position to produce crops, if that should turn out to be the general condition in the West, which I do not believe, then I do not see how any legislation on the part of this or any other government can relieve the situation. I am not referring particularly to the tariff. I know my western friends would like to have the tariff reduced, and in some cases entirely wiped out. I come from an industrial community. Some 150 to 175 manufacturing establishments are operating in the town from which I come, and I say to my hon. friends, if it is of any interest to them to have me say it, I am not a high protectionist. I have the good of the industries at heart.
I do not wish to see them destroyed.


Mr. SHAW:: Can my hon. friend mention any member of this House who is a high protectionist?


William Daum Euler: I think that almost anybody in the chamber is as capable of forming an opinion with regard to that as I am.


Mr. HANSON:: Then the hon. member is not in sympathy with the tariff plank in the Liberal platform of 1919.


William Daum Euler: I do not know just exactly what the hon. member is driving at, but I will say quite frankly that I at no time approved of the tariff plank in the Liberal platform.
I was making a comparison between the eastern farmer, and the western farmer, and for that reason I did not think it necessary to discuss the tariff in this connection for the simple reason that the tariff applies to the eastern farmer just as it does to the western farmer. If the trouble, then, is with the markets, they must find their market in the United States where there are great centres of population nearer to them, or else build a market of their own. The latter takes time and immigration, and that is my sole reason for referring to the West and western conditions in this way.


Mr. BIRD:: How would it be possible for the West to build up industrial centres without some form of protection against the highly developed industrialism of Ontario and Quebec?

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William Daum Euler: There is no reason in the world why the west could not develop industries just as Ontario has done. I can see no point in that argument.


Thomas William Bird: The hon. gentleman seems
to be anxious to protect the industries of his own town against the industries of the United States. Have we of the West not the same right to be anxious concerning the highly developed industries of Ontario?


William Daum Euler: I cannot grasp the hon. member's solicitude for the industries of western Ontario. I do not see why in the course of time western Canada, which is under exactly the same economic conditions as eastern Canada so far as the tariff is concerned, cannot develop industries in the same way as western Ontario has developed them, or Quebec, or any other part of Canada. Perhaps I am very slow in grasping the point of the hon. gentleman.


Thomas William Bird: I wish I could put the question a little more clearly, because it is vital. How does the hon. member expect western Canada to develop industries without some form of protection against the highly developed industries of Ontario?


William Daum Euler: In exactly the same way as, to-day, a small manufacturer can begin his industry in Ontario and build it up in competition with the larger ones.


Mr. GOOD:: Why, then, do the Ontario
manufacturers need protection against the United States manufacturers?


William Daum Euler: I did not propose to get into a debate on the tariff, though I am not at all afraid of debating the tariff. As I said, I am not a high protectionist, or perhaps I might say, as one hon. gentleman said once, I am not a very high protectionist. The one answer to that question, and I propose then to go on with my argument, is this: As against the United States you have a population of 120,000,000 to compete with. Their manufacturers have a market of 120,000,000 of people as compared with the 8,000,000 of people that the Canadian manufacturer has for his market. I will say this, and leave it at that:	I believe there are many manufacturers in Canada to-day-and I know some of them in my own community-who would be willing to enter into open competition on an equal basis with the United States manufacturer if the tariff wall came down both ways. But to ask the Canadian manufacturer to throw his market open to the highly developed industries of the United States, with their big home market, and not have
access to that market himself, that, I say is not a fair and square deal.


William Charles Good: They are ready for reciprocity.


William Daum Euler: Now, I think I might be permitted to go on with my real argument.
I have said that I favoured a form of voluntary immigration with no great amount of money expended in bringing the people here, but I would like to make known to them that they could come, and that we would welcome them -when they did come. I would open the door reasonably wide with proper precautions. I would let in the man who looks like a worker, though I agree with the hon. member for Springfield that it might be pretty difficult to say whether a man is an earnest worker or not, but where there was any doubt I would be inclined to give the immigrant the benefit of the doubt.
I think there are certain things that are fundamental in the discussion of this question. First of all, the immigrant should be physically healthy, mentally and morally healthy. Secondly, there should be a certain racial fitness, and in that I am not going so far perhaps as some others; when I speak of that, I would say that I would exclude the oriental; I would go that far, and not a great deal further. And then there should be a certain industrial fitness, although I think that is of minor importance.
Now, some of the non-essentials as I view them are these: I would not insist on any great money qualification. If this country had insisted on immigrants having a certain amount of money in their pockets upon arrival, I wonder how many of us would be here to-day. I think the forefathers, the fathers and grandfathers, of a great many of us, would not have been able to come to Canada if there had been any money test at that time. I am glad that requirement has now been removed. I do not think the matter of language is so important; that will correct itself in one generation. I further think that the matter of occupation is not of very great importance either, because if we enforce too many restrictions, if we ask too many questions of these people as to what they are going to do, exactly what man they are going to be employed with, and all the rest of it, the impression will remain in the European countries and in Britain that it is difficult to enter Canada, and a great many people whom it would be desirable to have come here would not even attempt to enter. So I say that if men fill all the requirements of which I have spoken I would let them enter Canada no
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Mr. LEWIS:: During the past few weeks when reading the newspapers I was in hopes that peace was in sight in Ireland. But after hearing the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoev), I have decided that the prospect is' hopeless. In regard to this important subject that is now being discussed I was just a little disappointed in the spech of that hon. member. I will tell you why. My hon. friend mentioned immigration, and also spoke af the economic factors that entered into the life of the WTest, but devoted practically the whole of his time to the subject of immigration. I wish he had devoted his fine talents to solving the economic difficulties that are the real' cause of our dissatisfaction at the present time.
The hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler) made the statement that the West needs salvation. By implication he admits that the conditions are not what they should be in the West, and in speaking of the conditions of Canada in general and the subject of immigration he naturally spoke of the brotherhood of man. I wonder whether the brotherhood of man takes in the black man and the yellow race as well as the white race. Of course, I do not believe in these people being admitted here, but it seems to me to be a little inconsistent, when you are speaking of the brotherhood of man and the equality of man, to discriminate against those races. I+ may be that some time in the near future it will be difficult for us to discriminate against those nations which are becoming enlightened forces in the world at the present time. The hon. member for Burrard (Mr. Clark) spoke of British immigration. So far as that question is concerned, he has my sympathy. I believe to a large extent that a British country, or a country that was settled by the
British to a large extent, should be populated by that stock, and for that reason I am in sympathy with what the hon. member said in regard to that policy.
I was very much impressed with the very excellent and most extraordinary speech of the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland). In the first place it was excellent in preparation, excellent in delivery and most extraordinary in the revelation that he gave to this House last night. He qualified his statement to some extent by saying that he was dealing largely with the conditions in his own constituency, and I have it on the authority of the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Stewart) that a part of my own constituency is really in a -worse condition than the constituency of the hon. member for Bow River. But after I got home last night, feeling depressed with the situation, I came to the conclusion that it was not the part of wisdom to generalize and to say that the whole of western Canada was in the same condition, because we do know that in certain portions of the West it is possible at least to make a comfortable living. As far as my own constituency is concerned, I do not say that the fault lies with this administration, but it seems to me a great fault lies at the feet of the governments who opened up large areas of land that should never have been opened. That is one of the problems of the West. Lands that should have always remained ranch lands should never have been opened for homesteading. If I shut my eyes for a moment I can see a stretch of a hundred miles in my own constituency that
5 p.m. to-day is largely becoming a barren wilderness, and yet fifteen years ago it was the most productive part of my constituency. The government opened mile after mile of land until they got a little too near the hills, with the result that after the prairie grass and shrubbery were taken off the hills, the wind played havoc with the soil, and smothered the valley with sand, till to-day, if you drive through with a motor car, you will find the fences covered with it. So that the fault was not altogether with the country, but the trouble arose because of the opening of certain territories which should never have been opened to the settler.
I am glad to see there is a remedy in view, and the government to a large extent have advocated that remedy. There is a scheme on foot by which those good settlers who are acclimatized and experienced shall be taken off those bad lands and transferred to lands more favourable to the diversified agriculture
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which we advocate in Saskatchewan. With reference to the remedy which the hop. member for Bow River emphasized last night, I am entirely in accord, but I am not in accord with the general conditions. However, I agree with the remedy which he advocated and emphasized. There is one point upon which I differ, and I differ because of what I heard this afternoon. He made a quotation from a statement of the Bishop of Birmingham, to the effect that the British race were being sent to the colonies to re-ftivigorate them. Well, if the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey) and the hon. member for Bow River, are samples of the stock they are sending here to be re-invigorated, I do not think that the British nation is going to become defunct, or that they are in a state of decay or in need of regeneration.


An hon. MEMBER:: How about yourself?


Arthur John Lewis: That is all right, The hon.
member for Springfield said that in a careful analysis of western conditions we should discriminate between the economic factors that are entering into the situation and the country at large. I quite agree with him. I am quite in accord, and I do not play second fiddle to any one in regard to eulogies of the West. I think it is a splendid country. I think it has the most productive soil of any country in the world.


Mr. MARLER:: Hear, hear.


Arthur John Lewis: Nobody denies that. We are not denying that. We can produce 400,000,000 bushels of wheat in the coming year, as far as that is concerned. But in spite of the fact that we have the finest land and can produce the best wheat in the world, to a large extent we are not prosperous and many people are leaving us. Therefore, what we say is not that the land is not good or that there is anything wrong with the country, but that there must be something wrong with our internal policy which makes conditions as they are.


Herbert Meredith Marler: Are the people all right
out there?


Arthur John Lewis: The people that we have, yes. But- some of the people who come to us are not always the best.
The hon. member for West Edmonton (Mr. Kennedy) spoke of the literature that was sent to the Old Country. I remember, twenty years ago, receiving this very literature. I admit it was a little exaggerated, but I am not sorry that I came to this country. I am glad that I came. The hon. member 
for Springfield tells us about coming to this country and working his way through university. I may tell him that I was in the same position when I came to Canada. I took the first job offered to me. I was told I had an appointment in Winnipeg when I came here, but I found the agent was lying to me. I simply settled down and took the first job I could get. After a number of years I saved enough to take a university and theological course, and I had a wife and family at the same time. Any country where there is this possibility of a man of ambition getting through, I think, is a worth-while country. There is nothing wrong with the country. But it is probably our internal conditions that make it what it is at the present time. In the matter of comparison can you compare Canada with Germany, where we are told economic conditions are terrible and people are hardly able to live, or with Russia where conditions are so bad-with apologies for the hon. member for Centre Winnipeg (Mr. Woodsworth). In those countries, there seems to be economic chaos. As far as other countries are concerned, with the one exception of the United States, it seems to me at the present time that Canada is the finest country in the world.


Mr. MARTELL:: Why except the United
States?


Arthur John Lewis: At the present time it seems to me that the conditions in the United States, with its internal policy, are possibly a little better for the people who want to create desirable home conditions. The climate is not so severe and industrial conditions in that country seem to give better scope for men who are seeking employment. Of course, from the point of view of my wife and family, I would say that Canada is the best.
Let me say a few words in regard to the speech of my hon. friend (Mr. Rinfret). I always listen to that hon. gentleman with marked attention. He generally has a prepared address and we usually expect something worth while from him. But his immigration policy I do not agree with. He said he was willing to let any people come into Canada from any country in the world. That statement, I think, is far too general. The hon. member sympathises with the minister and the government because he says there are so many contradictory views placed before parliament on this subject that it is very difficult to know where one stands. It seems to me, however, that he rather increased the contradiction. There is one thing he did say that struck me and that was that the reason

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for immigration was obvious. I listened to learn just wherein it was so obvious, and the hon. gentleman explained himself. In the first place, he said, immigration was to help the people who are now in the country to bear the burden of the national debt; secondly, it was to assist our National Railways; and in the third place it was intended to increase our wealth. Now, I do not think that any one of these three things is the real reason why we should get people to come into Canada. You tell the people of other lands that you want them to help bear the national debt, to assist the railways out of their difficulties, and to contribute towards our wealth, and they will look for some other field for their activities. It is easy to see, of course, that if you increase the number of people in the country and divide the debt amongst ' them you will decrease it proportionately. But I do not see how, if the wealth in Canada today is stationary, you are going to increase it by bringing more people into the country, when at the same time that increase in population means a decrease in the debt. It does not appear to me to be logical that in one direction you decrease the national debt by bringing in more people and, in another, you increase the wealth by the same means. The hon. member also referred to emigration to the United States. He did not say whether the figures were correct, but no doubt they were approximately so. He gave a cure for this outward flow of people; he said that it lay in an increase in the number of immigrants coming into the country. And he was surprised at the' opposition of the farmers to farm labourers coming into Canada. Now, so far as my hon. friend for Springfield is concerned, in view of the conditions in Manitoba, there may be room for immigrants there; and if the people in that province are in such circumstances that they can assimilate farm labourers and take care of them in winter they should do so. But, speaking for my own constituency, I must say that during the winter we have not even enough work for our own boys who are living on our farms to-day, and I do certainly hope that there will be found some solution whereby the western farmer can be enabled to make ends meet.
Now a word or two with regard to the statement that we need a class of immigrants from northern Europe to go into northern Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and the observation that came from across the floor that this class of people will exist where the average Canadian would perish. I do not think that it would be the best" plan to bring such people into the country. It
may be that we can get a class of settlers who will establish themselves on such lands as are evidently in contemplation. But I see a difficulty; how are you going to keep them there? Let me state my own experience. We have certain people of that description whom we settled in Saskatchewan; and what do we do immediately we find them there? The different churches-and I am speaking of my own church as well-immediately look over the situation from the home mission standpoint, see that these people are isolated, and go to them with this statement, "Why, you have not the facilities for education that you should have." Then what action do we take? We make our appeal and gather money from East and West and in Saskatoon, Prince Albert and other places we build what are called "school homes." We then educate the most favoured and the soundest of these boys at the home in Saskatoon and in immediate proximity to the collegiate and the university, and after we have educated them we find that instead of going back to their own people as we had expected, they enter into our professions and defeat the very object for which we had them educated. So that in the ultimate analysis the people do not settle at all. The older generation stay there, but the younger generation, of whom we say that our democracy should be built up, will not stay under these conditions. So that unless we loop the loop every ten years by resettling that northern country, this kind of education and settlement is not advantageous to the Canadian people at large.
I do not wish to speak at any great length on this subject, but there is one thing that was said by the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Irvine) with reference to children who might be brought into this country. He presented one phase of the argument against the bringing in of these children by almost casting a blot on our national life. He spoke about the number of babies that died under one year of age in Quebec, Ontario, and all through the list of the provinces. Now, I have had some experience so far as this is concerned, and I am convinced that the death rate in Canada of children under one year compares favourably with that of any other country in the world. We all admit that some children die under that age, but we could not rear them all; that has never yet been done. So that there is no argument in that respect against bringing children into the country. There is, however, an argument against such immigration, in that, as it seems to me, during the period of adolescence these children should have at least the influence of a real home under the care of father and mother
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and not be subject entirely to the influence of strangers.
Now I come to what I think is the crux of the whole problem. Why is such a desperate effort being made to-day to secure immigration to Canada? That seems to me to be the crux of the entire situation. I am not against immigration to Canada. Not at all. I believe that ambitious young men and women should come to this country, and I think that there is plenty of room for them. But why this desperate effort? If conditions in the country were all right and people here were satisfied I have no doubt that they would tell their friends just how things were. But it does seem to me that there is something wrong with our internal policy when we find it necessary to make such strenuous efforts to secure people. We are told that the United States to-day has received almost its full quota of immigration from the British Isles, although it has no special immigration policy. The United States does not make any particular plea for people to come in. The only reason I can see why people go to the United States is that immigrants who go there are so satisfied with the internal conditions and the economic life of the country, and find that there is such a possibility of making a home, that through their own propaganda other people are attracted to the country.
My hon. friend the member for St. Law-rence-St. George (Mr. Marler), who is in his seat at the moment, made a very fine speech, but there was one thing he bemoaned. He said that if we do not get immigration to this country we shall soon be out of existence. I am surprised at the hon. member making that statement. If it came from British Columbia, where it seems face suicide is on the increase, it would be all right; but it seems out of place coming from the province of Quebec, which I think is doing her duty towards the national life of Canada. I might say myself that I do not believe there is any danger of our going out of existence. Fifteen years ago there were only myself and my wife; now we are ten.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Mr. LEWTS:: So I do not think there is any danger of our passing out of existence for some time. But after carefully looking over the arguments of the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George, I am led to this conclusioli, that he contends that the prosperity of Canada, industrial, economic and social, depends entirely on the prosperity of agriculture. I think that is a right conclusion to draw from his speech. If it is wrong I hope he will say so.


Herbert Meredith Marler: I do not think my hon.
friend is quite right. I said that agriculture was tributary to the cities, and that you had to have a properly balanced population. I think the rural population should be greater than the urban in a country of this description. They should be balanced; that is my argument.


Arthur John Lewis: I accept my hon. friend's statement, but it does seem to me he went further and said that the basis of the prosperity of our industrial life depended upon the prosperity of agriculture.


Herbert Meredith Marler: I admit that. I think it
does in this country.


William James Lewis: Then I think we are agreed that the success of agriculture is essential to the well-being of the whole of Canada.


Herbert Meredith Marler: Hear, hear.


William James Lewis: Now, I want to ask: Is immigration going to assist agriculture? Are we making one step in the right direction co that the prosperity of agriculture may become the basis of the well-being of Canada? That is the only question I wish to ask. I shall try to answer it in a few moments.
There is one other subject I wish to speak upon in passing, and that is the deporting of immigrants. Recently I was speaking to a clergyman who seine time ago went over to the Old Land. He told me that he decided to take a berth in the steerage because he found there were on board thirty-three or thirty-four British immigrants who were being deported. He spoke to these people and found among them a Scotchman, a very strong man physically and apparently mentally sound. He had had a position offered to him in Canada, but for some reason on arrival he was detained, later placed behind bars, and in a month's time deported. That man was a veteran of the Great Wrar and had received honour at the hands of the British authorities. When he tells his own people in Scotland of his deportation it is safe to assume that any intending immigrants to this country after hearing his story will change their plans and go to the United States.


Charles A. Stewart: Would the
hon. gentleman give me the name of the individual so deported?


William James Lewis: I will endeavour to furnish it later.


Charles A. Stewart: Thank you.


Arthur John Lewis: One hon. member speaking about the causes of failure said there were

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two: one, over-purchase of land; the other, heavy overhead expenses. Are these the real causes of the difficulty in which our agriculturists find themselves at the present time? I do not think this is the trouble in Saskatchewan; it may be in Manitoba where holdings of two sections are said to be common, but the great majority of the people where I live in Saskatchewen-and I am acquainted with over 1,000 families-farm a half-section which I do not think is too large. Consequently I do not believe that the two causes mentioned are responsible for the general failure of agriculturists in the West.
I think the hon. minister (Mr. Stewart) in speaking of colonization said he hoped his scheme would enable men to be settled within eighteen to thirty miles of railway facilities where they could engage in mixed farming.


Charles A. Stewart: Not thirty miles; up to fifteen.


Arthur John Lewis: I thank the minister for the correction. I believe that mixed farming is going to be one of the main solutions of the difficulties of Saskatchewan farmers at all events. The hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Manion) in speaking of the solution of the problems confronting this country said that free trade would ruin the East and he voiced the opinion that the kind of people wanted here was domestic servants and labourers with pick and shovel. I believe that m this discrimination between men engaged in manual work and professional men there is a false philosophy which sooner or later will drive our highly organized society to the wall. I remember some years ago in the University of Saskatchewan coming in contact with men who thought that because a man had a university education he had a right to a better home than the man who worked in the sewers, for instance. It seems to me that the man who works in the sewers, who, as we say, does the dirty work, is far more in need of recreation and the luxuries of home than the professional man; and I think the sooner we as a democracy realize that the health and sanity of this nation depend to a large extent upon the groundwork, the so-called dirty work of looking after our sewers and so forth, the better it will be for all concerned. The sooner we educate the people that any honest work is worthy of a place of honour in our society, the sooner we shall recognize that there must be a commensurate reward for the proper discharge of the disagreeable work of the community.


Herbert Meredith Marler: Quite right.


Arthur John Lewis: In my constituency of Swift Current we had a class of people who are called Mennonites. I understand from the Minister of Agriculture and from the people around Swift Current that the}' were the best class of farmers to be found in the district. They were making good, and yet for some reason or other they in a body went to Mexico. We do not believe that the Mexican conditions are better than our own, and yet as far as I am able to discover we did not turn a hand to try and stop this exodus. They may not be ideal citizens in conforming to our educational laws, but they are amongst the very best farmers to be found anywhere.
Now, I do not think it would be wise on my part to take up the time of this House without offering some solution of the problem that confronts us. In this connection I do not want to be hard on the government,. The Acting Minister of Immigration has my sympathy, but I have listened for a definite policy of immigration, and so far as I can gather it seems to be this. When we, as representing the farmers speak in regard to the tariff, rve are told that the government listens first- of all to the manufacturers to see if it is possible for them to do without certain protection that we wish to have removed. That may be the right course to pursue. The manufacturers understand manufacturing conditions better than we do, and therefore the government may be justified in listening to them. In the same way it seems to me that when we, who are agriculturists, come down to this liouse and describe the conditions of agriculture, an industry in whose success we are personally interested, the government should listen to our representations. But instead of taking the advice of those who are on the spot and experienced in agricultural conditions, the government listens to someone else. The same may be said in regard to labour. Labour has its representatives here who tell us that they do not need any industrial immigrants. Do we take any notice of what they say? I did not think that all the wisdom of the sages was monopolized by the capitalistic and manufacturing classes-not by any means. I think it will be found that the greatest men that have ever lived have all sprung from the farm. For that reason, it seems to me, it behooves the government to listen to the agriculturists as regards their conditions and the solution of their problems.	-
I will close by speaking briefly regarding three things. If I were to be asked what I consider would be one way to improve the condition of the West, I believe the remedy and immigration should come in at the same
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time. I do not include one to the exclusion of the other. We should have people coming in because, in my constituency, you have a school, you have taxation, and if people leave the land, the burden on the few that remain becomes intolerable. Therefore, if people are moving from this country, we must have other people to take their place. But at the same time, we should have a remedy that will cause people to remain in this country. One of the solutions of the problem is, I think, this. I am not speaking of agricultural implements, and I am speaking directly now to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding). I would place the absolute necessaries of life on the free trade list, and I would also remove the sales tax and give the people who are endeavouring to make a home an opportunity to establish themselves on the land. That would be one of the remedies that I would advocate and I give that advice to the government.
The second, it seems to me, the hon. member for Springfield just touched on, and that is the lack of co-operation amongst the whole people of Canada. What I mean by that is this. I think it was found some time ago by investigation that, as regards a hundred commodities that enter into the national wellbeing of the people of this country, the factory price was forty cents on the dollar, but sixty cents was taken up before an article got into the hands of the consumer. That is "over-commercialization," if you can use that term. I have seen it in my village, a village with two stores, and the commercial men crowding on each other at the rate of five or six a day, selling brooms, bluing, washing machines and so on. It seems to me that we are overrun with that class of people who are taking out a picking, in the middleman sense, before an article gets to the consumer. I am not saying that the manufacturer charges too much for his commodity; perhaps he does not; but before an article gets to the consumer, instead of costing forty cents, it costs one dollar. What we are kicking against at the present time is this lack of co-operation, and if some means could be devised by which we could eliminate many of these middlemen, commercial men and selling' agents, and lower freight rates I believe one of the greatest problems that enter into the production of our western lands would be solved.
I do not know that I should presume to give advice to the government; but this is my final statement. If I were asked to go into a business, first of all I would look into that business to see if it was solvent, if there was any danger of bankruptcy. If I found that
[Mr. Lewis.!
the business was exceeding its revenue, I would think twice before going in. We have the great business of Canada, nationalizing our assets, our industrial life and our agricultural life, and we are inviting people to come to this country. They look into the situation and the financial state of Canada, and they find that we as a government-and I include myself in this parliament-are exceeding our revenue in the administration of our work by over $40,000,000 or $50,000,000, as the case may be. If we as a people want to get people to come from different parts of the world, people who are intelligent, who can discriminate, then let us clean house in this parliament; let us, as a nation, begin to live within our income, and the time will not be long before we hear once again the tramp of feet of people coming to our shores, and the laughter of the children in the many homes that are found within the borders of Canada.


Mr. MACDONALD (Pictou):: A consideration of the matter involved in this appropriation is one of the most important that could engage the attention of this parliament. The problems involved, which have been discussed by various hon. gentlemen who have spoken in this debate, are of the most vital character; they strike at the existing condition of affairs in this country. It is, therefore, quite right that we should have had such a full discussion as we have had, and I hope the discussion will go on until all hon. members may deal with this question from their various points of view. The hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Lewis) and the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey) who preceded him from the other side of the House are, I think, to be congratulated on the fact that they have lifted the debate to a much higher level than that on which it stood yesterday., I did not have an opportunity of hearing the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland); but on reading over his remarks, I began to wonder whether he really belonged to a party which called itself "Progressive", because if there ever was a misnomer as regards the application of the term "progressive" to that hon. gentleman as a member of that party, then I am sure it revealed itself last night. Rather, he might be said to belong to a "retrograde" or " pessimistic" party, in whose make-up no vestige of progressiveness could be found. When the hon. member for Springfield and the hon. member for Swift Current manfully and courageously faced and laid before us the real situation in the country and discussed the matter in a practical way, I am sure the House and the country felt gratified at their contribution to this debate.

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Everybody must recognize that the situation in Canada to-day is one which demands the closest possible attention and the wisest judgment on the part of every hon. gentleman who happens to represent in this House any portion of the people of Canada. We are confronted by great problems which one might enumerate at length; but I need only mention the fact that the problem of taxation which bears upon the wage earner, the farmer, the artisan, in fact, every man in every occupation in life, is of so severe a character that how we are going to deal with that problem and how we can reach the stage and time in our history when we may be relieved in some degree of that burden, is a matter which is of great importance, not only to ourselves, but to those who come after us in this country. That problem is not to be faced by sitting down and declaring that this is the worst country in the world because hon. gentlemen who use that argument in discussing this question, utterly fail to pay the slightest attention to conditions which exist elsewhere. My hon. friend (Mr. Garland) who came from across the ocean, knows that the land from which he came is to-day suffering under difficulties and conditions a thousand times worse than those that exist in Canada. If you take the whole of Europe, the situation there was well described a few days ago by Hilaire Belloc, speaking in Montreal, when he discussed the possible fate of civilization which at the moment was hanging in the balance in Europe, and pointed out conditions that existed. If that is so in other parts of the world, why should hon. gentlemen in this House undertake to tell a pitiful story of exaggeration as to conditions that happen to be found in one locality due to drought, and the continued failure of crops on account of like conditions, and lead the House and the country to believe that Canada is in a desperate condition, because that happens to be the situation in one particular part of this country?
We have our difficulties in the East. Our farmers and wage earners have problems of a more or less grave character; but where do these problems come from? They come from the reaction which followed the war in a very great degree. Nowadays, we are all too apt to think that the solution of matters that come up for consideration to-day can be determined by the wisdom which we possess for the moment, and that we must not look at the story of the past or the lessons of history in order to find out whether or not in the days that have gone, the people that have gone before, have had similar problems
to deal with. What was the situation in Great Britain after the great Napoleonic wars? Let me call the attention of the committee to a very short statement regarding that published in an admirable work, written by Mr. Marriott, M.A., Professor of History in the University of Oxford, and. entitled England Since Waterloo.
The human heart through all the ages that have gone has always remained the same. Problems of a different nature would recur throughout the ages and they were solved by the wise men of those days but in the century following probably exactly the same problem would arise under different conditions varying according to the country where it did arise, and would have to be dealt with along the same lines. One might think to hear hon. gentlemen talk about the condition of the country that at no other time were conditions in any other country comparable to what we have in Canada to-day. Let me call your attention to what this writer says. Speaking of the conditions, that existed in Great Britain during the Napoleonic wars, he says:
For the last twenty years England had been the only country in western Europe free from the devastating effects of military operations. She had consequently been called upon 'to supply the commercial needs of the whole world, and, thanks to the recent improvements in agriculture and in manufacturing industry, she was in a position to do so. The result was seen in a totally unprecedented expansion of foreign trade.
The conditions with us during the war while our sons were fighting overseas were the same as when the sons of Britain were fighting one hundred years ago on the Continent. We were freed from the devastating influence of the war itself, and we had an unprecedented period of prosperity in this country, a period of unusual development of our agricultural and industrial life, with the greatest foreign trade we ever had since confederation. But what was the reaction that came in England? This writer says that almost immediately after the war:
Bad harvests and violent fluctuations of prices were bringing widespread ruin upon agriculturalists. In the hope of assisting them the legislature in 1815 prohibited the importation of wheat until the price reached 80 s. a quarter. But this afforded no relief when, as in 1816, the price fell to 52s. 6d. It is easy to blame farmers for their folly in taking leases' at rents calculated upon war prices, and to condemn landlords for extortion.
Just as it is easy to say that the people took on too much land in the West:
But meanwhile the course of English industries appeared to be threatened with imminent ruin. Reports received by the Board of Agriculture in response to a circular letter issued in 1816 attest the severity of the crisis. Farmers, who a few years ago were competing eagerly for farms, were sending in notices to
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quit, and many farms were unlet; mortgagees found it difficult to realize; credit was collapsing; banks were failing in all directions; substantial farmers were becoming parish paupers. And while the producer was ruined the consumer derived no benefit. In December, 1816, wheat which in the spring had fallen to 52s. 6d. rose to 103s. Agriculture had become a mere gamble.
The condition was even worse in England than that portrayed by the hon. member for Bow River last night. It continued:
If landlords and farmers were ruined, merchants and manufacturers were in no better plight. . . . Traders, as is their wont, looked no further than their noses. The inevitable happened. With the restoration of normal conditions the continental demand for English goods rapidly slackened; prices came down with a run; production was paralysed, and thousands of hands wen turned adrift to swell the army of the unemployed. . .
As William Cobbett himself observed: "When men are in distress they are out of humour: they have not time and are not in a disposition to listen to reason." .... Because work was scarce, machinery was smashed and factories were destroyed. . . . Nor was the unrest confined to the agricultural counties. The Tyneside colliers, the Preston cotton-weavers, the Wiltshire cloth-workers, the Monmouthshire and Staffordshire ironworkers, the jute-workers of Dundee,-all alike were in ferment, demanding more employment, higher wages, and cheaper food.
That was the condition of affairs which faced the statesmen of the Mother Country-after the Napoleonic wars. The picture portrayed there was a very grave and a very dark one indeed. We have'no such dark picture confronting us in this country to-day. We had a period of unprecedented prosperity and of high prices during the war. Then the reaction came and prices fell. Conditions have not been righted, and that is one of the reasons why this discussion has been brought on. But here in this marvellous land of ours, with a territory exceeding that of the United States with great undeveloped mineral wealth as well as great tracts of agricultural lands that have not been opened up, with our great forests, our fisheries and all the other resources in this land which could support a population of 100,000,000 as well as the population of 8,000,000 that we have to-day, are we going to sit down helplessly and hopelessly and say that we do not expect to see the conditions arise under which all that we might hope for would come? I had the honour and distinction of coming to this parliament some twenty years ago and of imbibing from that great statesman, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, some of that inspiration and belief in the future of this country which dominated him in his long political career. He told us and told the Canadian people twenty years ago of his abiding faith that the twentieth century would be .Canada's century, and I am satisfied that out of the mist and gloom and uncertainty of these days, which while it exists to-day is not at all comparable to what is to be found

among other nations of the world, if we but-play our part properly in the days that are to come, that prophetic utterance of his will be fulfilled.
Let us also look at the situation in the United States at the time of the Civil War. There was a great nation absolutely rent asunder by an internecine struggle between the North and the South. Immediately following the war came a period of depression. Their currency became degraded, and that country might almost have been looked upon in the view of the world outside as a nation with no hope for the future. Yet with that wonderful spirit of unity and the development of a national spirit which came to the United States of America, they entered upon a period of prosperity and advancement which in the next fifty years made them the greatest nation in the history of the world. And so we have lessons to learn from the experience of the Mother Country one hundred years ago, and lessons to learn from the experience of the great people to the south of us sixty years ago, and shall we not stop for a moment and see whether the paths they have trod, the lines which they have laid down, and which resulted in their advancement and progress and prosperity, are not such as we might also well follow?
One of the great things we lack in this country to-day is a national spirit. If there is any one thing the Canadian people need, and to this task no matter to which party we may owe allegiance to-day we might well join together and devote ourselves, it is the development of the idea of a great Canada whose sons we ought all to be proud to be; it is the realization that has come to us in this generation carrying on from the generations that have gone before in this wonderful land with its free institutions, where no man is discriminated against on account of birth, religion or station, where the highest position in the gift of the people is open to the man of honesty, ability and integrity, as we have had the fact recorded in this very debate by the hon. member for Springfield who so eloquently told the story of our possibilities. In order that we may develop that spirit, we must see to it that sectionalism is eliminated in this country. Instead of this continual argument going on about the attitude of antagonism between the man in the workshop and the man on the farm, let us realize that in this House, I venture to say, the greater percentage are farmers or sons of farmers, men born on the farm who have occupied prominent judicial and business positions and a high status both in this parliament and elsewhere in this

and other countries. Why should there be any antagonism between the different classes in this country? Rather than that there should be any antagonism between the men in the workshops and mines and the men on the farms, let us vie with each other to be co-mates and partners in everything that makes for the progress and advancement of this our common country.


William Charles Good: How can the hon. member prevent the development of antagonism between classes if there is a feeling that one class is exploiting another?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: If certain gentlemen	like my hon.	friend for
Brant (Mr. Good) wish to preach the gospel of class consciousness in this country they are doing little	to promote
the development of national spirit. I do not believe, Sir, that in this country there is any occasion to preach such a gospel. If there ever was a country that is free from any social condition in which you have upper classes, or middle classes, or lower classes that country is Canada. In that respect we are far in advance of our friends in the United States who, in their hundred years or so of history, have developed an aristocratic class-a class aristocratic as to wealth-which, in its disregard to the rights of the people, is far different even from the aristocracy of birth which exists in the Old Country. But here, in this free land, where the men of to-day are the successors of the workers of yesterday, and where the reward always comes to integrity, to effort, and to industry, we have a condition where there is no room for the existence of class consciousness, no matter in what quarter it is advocated.


William Charles Good: I object to the hon. member insinuating that I was preaching, and have preached, class consciousness. I asked him a straight question as to how we were to prevent the development of these antagonisms if there was a feeling among these classes that injustice had been wrought.


George Newcombe Gordon: Order.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am very glad to receive the assurance of the hon. member that he will not join in the efforts of those who are engaged in preaching class consciousness. In that case we may welcome him to the ranks of those who are looking to the development of a true national spirit in this country. Nevertheless, there are selfish men on the farm just as there are in the workshop.


William Charles Good: I admit it.
Supply-Immigration


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Just as there are selfish men in office too, but the selfiish men in any of these occupations are not the men to take the lead in influencing thought in this country but rather men of greater breadth of view.


Thomas William Bird: Can my hon. friend point out an instance in the history of British political life, or economic life, wherein the solution of the difficulty was not attended by the presence of class consciousness, I refer particularly to the problems that arose after the Napoleonic wars? '


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: ties that the hon. gentlemen opposite complain of would not have existed to-day, or if they did exist would have disappeared, had the view not been entertained then by a great many that for all time the trade of Canada must flow east and west; had we realized that we cannot be a hermit nation but must trade with our neighbors, and with other nations. However, there is no use in arguing that a movement towards class consciousness is going to remedy a trade condition. We have got to realize this, that in all parts of Canada we are suffering from the after effects of the war, from the deflation which is going on-following an abnormal prosperity and development that occurred during the four years of that great struggle. We must all pull together in Canada and apply ourselves resolutely to the problems which confront us so that we may be able to pass on to those who come after us a prosperous land and a happy condition of affairs as the result of our administration and our efforts.
We are told that men are leaving the farms and going to the cities. Well, they have been leaving the farms and going to the cities during all the ages. They have been going also to the United States; they have been going to and from the United States for a great many years. In eastern Canada, comparing the conditions which exist to-day with those which prevailed when I first had the honour of a seat in the Nova Scotia legislature, I remember the time when the young men of our province used to take their axes, go into the forest, hew down the trees, and make homes for themselves. They do not do that to-day. There came the lure of the free lands of the West. Harvest excursions were introduced, the boys of the East were carried out west there to learn that they could acquire 160 acres of land by simply staying on that land six months a year for two years. They went out to the West, saw the land which did not need the axe in order to bring it into a state suitable for cultivation, and thousands of them settled there. To-day the men in the East are not willing to go out and cut down the forest to make homes for themselves as their predecessors used to do with this exception: that the sons of Quebec still retain the wonderful pioneering instinct of the men who settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence two or three centuries ago, in greater degree than people in other portions of Canada. Our people have felt the lure of the cities, they have experienced the stirring of life that the twentieth century has brought with it, they have

felt the development of materialism that has been going on not only in the cities but also among the tillers of the soil. The present situation is, perhaps, not due to any financial or economic reason; it is due to inherent conditions which have prevailed at all times but have become more deeply -accentuated within the last few years. We see the same thing in the United States. I read with interest a speech made in New York by Judge Manton, a distinguished jurist, who declared that the United States had lost by emigration during the last calendar year 100,000 of its workers-men who had come from southern Europe, had tarried for a period, and had gone home. The country, in the meantime, had received 32,000 people who had come to take the place of the 100,000 workers referred to. What was the situation last fall over there? Plans were drawn for the construction of public and other buildings to the extent of over five billions of dollars. Then the call came to the worker in Canada and every other worker elsewhere who was out of employment. Do we forget one of the difficulties we have in this country that when the snow comes in November there is a period of six months when our workers cannot engage in any outside employment? Thousands of these men have gone over there temporarily. They have gone from my province. They went from the city of Halifax which was partially destroyed during the war by an explosion. After that explosion men came from all parts of the Maritime provinces to engage in the work of reconstruction. When that was finished they went to the United States, to engage in this wonderful building movement which developed there. They are gone, but they are coming back again, and I say there is no reason why we should be fainthearted on account of either of these things. In the cycle of events all these problems come and go, but if we have abiding faith in the possibilities of Canada, then let us look forward with confidence to the future.
At six o'clock the * Speaker resumed the chair and the House took recess.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock. PRIVATE BILLS



THIRD READINGS

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 3, respecting The Royal Guardians. -Mr. Mitchell.
Bill No. 13, respecting The Nipissing Central Railway Company.-Mr. Lapierre.

Supply-Immigration
Bill No. 32, to incorporate The Alert Guarantee Company of Canada.-Mr. Ladner.
Bill No. 36, respecting The Quebec Central Railway Company.-Mr. Tobin.
Bill No. 38, respecting The Essex Terminal Railway Company.-Mr. German.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 55 (from the Senate), for the relief of Margaret Elizabeth Moran.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 56 (from the Senate), for the relief of Ethel Lillian Duncan.-Mr. Macdonald (Pictou).
Bill No. 57, (from the Senate), for the relief of Florence Mary Ramsden.-Mr. Macdonald (Pictou).
Bill No. 58 (from the Senate), for the relief of Ross John Craig.-Air. Macdonald (Pictou).
Bill No. 59 (from the Senate), for the relief of Florence Dodds.-Mr. Hocken.
Bill No. 60 (from the Senate), for the relief of Blanche Hilton.-Mr. Harris.
Bill No. 61 (from the Senate), for the relief of May Woodbridge.-Mr. Harris.
Bill No. 62 (from the Senate), for the relief of Alice May Smith.-Mr. White.
Bill No. 63 (from the Senate), for the relief of Albert Ernest Mould.-Sir Henry Drayton.
Bill No. 64 (from the Senate), for the relief of Winifred Rose Foster.-Mr. German.
Bill No. 65 (from the Senate), for the relief of Emily May Small.-Mr. Garland (Carleton).
Bill No. 66 (from the Senate), for the relief of Irene Herdsman.- Mr. Garland (Carleton).
Bill No. 67 (from the Senate), for the relief of John Frederick King Hall.-Mr. McMaster.
Bill No. 68 (from the Senate), for the relief of Herbert Martin.-Mr. Shaw.
Bill No. 69 (from the Senate), for'the relief of Frederick John Saunders.-Mr. Shaw.
Bill No. 70 (from the Senate), for the relief of Robert Archibald Logan.-Mr. Garland (Carleton).
Bill No. 71 (from the Senate), for the relief of Violet Marie Finn.-Mr. Sheard.
Bill No. 73 (from the Senate), for the relief of Harriet Ethelwyn Kingsley.-Mr. Rankin.
Bill No. 74 respecting the Montreal Central Terminal Company.-Mr. Rinfret.

[Stage Direction]
The House again in Committee of Supply, Mr. Gordon in the chair:
Immigration-outside service-salaries, 1700,000.
['I promised the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen) that before the House rose I would lay on the Table, the correspondence passing between the government of Canada and the government of Great Britain respecting the Halibut Fisheries Treaty.\nOn motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 10.55 p.m.\nMonday, March 19, 1923']
Edward Mortimer Macdonald: When the
committee rose at six o'clock, I was endeavouring to deal with that phase of the discussion which was referred to by several hon. gentlemen as to the fact that there was a continual flow of emigration from Canada to the United States. Some hon. gentlemen went so far as to argue that, therefore, we should take no steps for further immigration to this country. I was pointing out the unique situation that that great country to the south occupies, the fact that for a great number of years there was a continual flow back and forth between the two countries, and the further fact that last autumn there developed in the United States a tremendous boom involving an expenditure running into billions of dollars. This naturally drew from Canada, in the autumn and winter months, men who were unable to engage in outside work in this country. In addition to that, in considering this question, we must always remember that we are situated alongside a country with a population of a hundred million people, with wonderful diversity of climate, which enables the people within its borders to engage, at all seasons of the year, in vocations to which they are accustomed. Another fact in this connection that we must not forget, is that the United States, of all nations which participated in the war, came through in the best financial position. Almost every European country is debtor to the United States, and she succeeded in obtaining and in bringing within her borders the greatest percentage of the available gold in the world. That has been her situation. Therefore, she was better able than other countries in which these advantages did not exist, to stand the reaction which followed the war, and she had the further advantage, owing to the fact that she did not enter the war until a later date, of having participated probably to a greater extent than any other country, in the benefits resulting from the tremendous expenditure, on supplies required during the war. So that it was natural that, during that period, those who might, for the time being, be out of employment in Canada, might find their way to the United States.
It is also well worth remarking that the United States was the one great democratic country that, during the war, did not find it necessary to destroy its party alignment in order to carry on its affairs. The historic Republican and Democratic parties maintained their identity and worked together through all the problems that came before that great nation. I am sure the lesson which we ought to learn from the magnificent position she occupies to-day, should not be lost upon, some hon. gentlemen in this House.


An hon. MEMBER:: Explain.

Supply-I mmigra tion


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The fact is so self-evident that it is hardly necessary to give an explanation. In Canada, ever since the war, we have been under the shadow of the swing of the pendulum that occurred after the tremendous prosperity that existed in this country, the high prices that were paid for and received from agricultural products, the continued activity of our industries in the East, all this creating an abnormal condition which naturally was followed by the situation which we have before us. Fortunately, we are beginning to see the turn of the road. Last year's great crops in the Northwest helped to bring back the nation's poise once more; and as we are awaiting the advent of spring, from all parts of Canada, from the eastern provinces as well as from far-off British Columbia, comes the word: The Canadian people are looking forward with confidence and hope to a renewal of normal conditions under which this country made such marvellous progress in the twenty years before the war. Under those conditions we have no reason to doubt the fact that we should look for, maintain and support a vigorous and aggressive policy of immigration. I take it that notwithstanding the remarks we have heard as to the lack of necessity for attempting to obtain immigration into this country, hon. gentlemen will agree that we are the one great undeveloped country of the northern zone whose resources have yet been touched only in the slightest degree, and that the need is apparent for more people to develop the available wealth of this country. Perhaps, I have been labouring that argument, because I am sure hon. gentlemen will agree as to the necessity of activity along those lines having regard to the problems before the people, and the advantage and necessity of having additional population to cope with them.
What is the class of people that we should have in this country? We have had various arguments and suggestions in regard to that. I was interested in seeing what Abraham Lincoln, whose language and whose predictions have almost come to be regarded as the voice of a seer, said in one of his wonderful utterances as to the conditions that existed and should exist in the country to the south of us. He said:
We should welcome every person of good family who really means to incorporate himself into our society, but repel all who will not be a real addition to the health and strength of the United States.
It seems to me that that general statement is one we might well adopt with regard to the immigrants who come here. I believe there should be no restriction as to nationality or religion with respect to the men who are

to come to Canada. The test as laid down by Lincoln is one. that I think we might well apply to everyone who' comes here to participate in our Canadian citizenship and take part in building up this country. We do not want any laggards in this country, but men and women who are industrious, and who realize that indolence and indifference will lead to failure here as in any other country.
Hon. gentlemen who come from other parts of Canada have spoken of the advantages of their own particular part of the country, and in that connection reference has been made particularly to the West. I am free to say that I think those of us who come from the Maritime provinces have been altogether too modest in asserting the advantages which would flow to the immigrant who should settle in our part of the country. We cannot boast of wheat fields that will yield the products of the earth simply by a little scratching, and by that I mean that fertilization is required, but we can boast of this, that the settler who comes to our part of Canada will be able to find a home there, not necessarily in the forest, but close by the forest, where he can get his wood to keep his family and himself warm, and where he has no difficulty in getting water for his household and his stock. There he will be beside the great ocean which yields with the slightest possible effort the best food any settler could have in the fish that swim in the sea. We have also there rich fruit belts, and the conditions as to living and the social conditions generally offer to anyone with a limited capital, even the settler who com^ to Canada with only $2,000 as; his entire capital an opportunity to make a home for himself and his family in the provinces down by the sea under better conditions I believe than obtain in any other part of Canada. When he has started his home there, he will be able to live with less effort than he would elsewhere, because nature has so generously endowed that part of the country with those things that the poor but able and industrious man looks for in the place where he wants to make his home. That is the place I think where these immigrahts who come to our shores should settle.
There are many problems that have been suggested in connection with this question. I do not profess to be an expert upon it. I believe that the question of the best regulation of immigration is a very difficult and a very important one, and personally I would be disposed to leave in a very broad way to the minister, who has given very careful attention to this subject, the solution of these various problems.

Supply-Immigration
We hear a great deal about the British Empire colonization scheme. It is a singular thing that for the first time in the history of the Empire, Great Britain has embarked upon the policy of assisted emigration. Never before-has she undertaken to engage in the policy of assisting her people to go abroad, either to other parts of the Empire or elsewhere. The necessity for this action has been unquestionably due to the tremendous amount the unemployment doles have reached. I do not mean to say that that is the sole reason why the proposition is made that Great Britain should help send her people to all parts of our far-flung Empire and participate in their upbuilding, but still that fact does exist, and a proposition is made which would involve the assumption by Canada of very grave and very serious obligations if she undertakes to participate in the scheme. It does seem to me that there are a great many problems involved in questions of this kind, and the solution of this immigration problem is one in which the self-reliance and th< energy of the individual immigrant ought to be trusted to a very great degree if it is going to result successfully.
I view with some alarm the proposition that we should bring'people out wholesale to this country, find land for them, pay them to stay on the land, and altogether finance them. Why, if Canadians are ever to be worth while, the men of to-day must do like our fathers did, and go out relying on themselves to build their homes and establish themselves in this country. It has become the fashion to-day to ask the government to have a finger in every pie, and if every man who is to come to this country is to be financed from the general treasury, that is a proposition that must be very seriously considered. I welcome as I am sure every Canadian should welcome, as many people from the Old Country as can come here, for naturally we would like to have them join with us in the development of Canada and the upbuilding of the Empire, but I think this matter should be approached with the greatest possible care. I do not wish to be understood as absolutely condemning it, but I think the minister should give it the gravest consideration and the closest possible attention in order that the correct solution of the problem may be arrived at. I think that with a return of prosperity to this country, which I believe is coming, we car safely leave the selection to the man who desires to get away from the difficult conditions in Europe and elsewhere, and who is looking abroad for an opportunity to make a new home for himself and family, and with all the 79 i
advantages Canada has to offer, I think that with the advent of prosperity this country will prove a great attraction to- these men fron across the sea.
With reference to the Canada Colonization scheme, I gathered from the statement made by the minister the other day that we di< not have before us the full facts in the matter, and personally I propose to await with interest the fuller statement which we were promised later on in this debate. In this connection let me remind hon. gentlemen that though some severe criticisms have been made, we have also had tributes paid to the immigration law of this country as it stands to-day. Judge Manton, federal judge for the state of New York, and one of the leading jurists of the United States, in discussing about a month ago what he regarded as the inequalities and injustices of the American law went on to point out this:
Our younger neighbor at the north, Canada, can teach us a lesson in dealing with the question of immigration. Its law is simple and direct. There the immigration officer may admit any immigrant who otherwise complies with the provisions of the immigration act, if it is shown to his satisfaction that such immigrant is (a) a bona fide agriculturalist entering Canada to farm, with sufficient means to begin farming in Canada; (b) a bona fide farm labourer to follow that occupation, who has reasonable assurance of employment; (c) a female domestic servant with reasonable assurance of employment, or any other labourer who has reasonable assurance of employment.
The. wife and family are admitted with the immigrant labourer. The passport must be vised by Canadian immigration officers stationed in Canada and simple provisions are made which aid and invite the immigrant to the shores of Canada.
Notwithstanding the criticisms that have been made of our immigration system, this statement made by a gentleman who is unquestionably an expert and has studied all the phases of the American immigration problem is an indication that we are quite up-to-date in the immigration law we have in this country.
I have detained this committee at very much greater length than I intended. I merely wish to say in conclusion that I hope every man who takes part in this discussion will feel, when expressing his views on this problem of immigration, that we are dealing, or ought to deal, with it in the most serious manner, entirely apart from any local or any narrow political consideration, and animated solely by the greatest possible faith in the future of our common country, and that we will do all we can to bring to this Dominion men and women who will come within Abraham Lincoln's estimate of what the citizens of a country ought to be. I hope that we will give to the government and the Acting
Supply-1 mmig ration

Minister of Immigration, in dealing with this problem at the present time, the greatest opportunity for thorough study and thought in order that such a policy may be devised as will work out in the best interests of Canada not only for to-day but in the days that are to come.


Mr. MORRISON:: Mr. Chairman, the immigration question which is now before us is a national question. Nevertheless, it seems to me as though some hon. members have been looking at it from a merely local viewpoint. My sympathies to-day are with the Acting Minister of Immigration in his, efforts to solve this great problem in the interests of Canada. I believe the government need constructive criticism of their policy, and I will try to offer to-night suggestion-3 "'hich may be helpful.
Economic conditions in Canada to-day, as previous speakers have said are poorly balanced, and are mainly attributable to the war, but local factors and conditions have also had their influence. It is a trait of human nature to try and pass the blame on to someone else when things go wrong, but I think if we are courageous we will take our share of the blame and admit that we have contributed in some degree to the position in which we find ourselves at present.
I contend that many of the farmers who are in great difficulty-and that such is the case cannot be denied-are responsible to some extent for the existing trouble. I do not wish to underestimate the picture painted by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland)-he was conscientious in expressing his views, and I give him credit for it but I do not think that conditions are as bad as described even over the entire West. The farmers, in my opinion, helped to a certain extent to bring about the difficulties from which we are now suffering. During the war years they allowed their judgment, to some extent, to be warped. They got out of alignment with the true conditions and in good years did not conduct their operations wisely. They were not sufficiently careful in their expenditures during the period of high prices and good crops. Following the big harvests of 1915 and 1916, we had five successive years of comparative crop failure in large areas covering thousands of square miles, with the result that in those areas there is great distress to-day. Hence, it is the duty of parliament to try and alleviate the condition of the people in those districts if it possibly can.
I also think that the labour unions-including the coal miners, the building trades, the

transportation workers, the railway and shipping interests-have all contributed towards making the problem as we find it to-day. The farmers have to sell their products on the open markets of the world in competition with cheap labour, and have to buy commodities produced at unionized prices. Our dollar, as one hon. member said, is to-day in reality only worth about seventy cents, while unionized produced goods are selling at prices in excess of their real value. Some of the farmers are afraid of over-production and the consequent reduction of the prices of the products which they sell. I do not like the idea of restricting production. I think it is a poor policy for any organization of people- whether it is producers of coal, or farm products, or anything else-to adopt. Restricting production in an effort to make high prices only creates poverty. The world does not need high prices for anything; high prices denote a scarcity in some quarter. An extremely high price for wheat would be reasonable evidence that there was a famine in some country. Surely we do not want a condition of that kind. I think that what we are suffering from very largely is underconsumption. Most of us realize that Europe is our main market for food products to-day, and Europe is in a chaotic condition. The great mass of people there are not eating as they would if they were working steadily. Consequently they cannot buy, and we cannot sell our products. This big problem cannot be righted in a day; its solution is going to take time even though we all do our utmost, and even though a greater degree of harmony prevails in the future than in the past among European governments.
I would like to see greater production in every line of activity, in every line of industry. To-day we have a big overhead expense in running this country. We have railways which would carry several times as much freight as they are carrying to-day; we have a post office system large enough to cater to the needs of twenty-five or thirty millions of people. But our overhead has to be met, even though we have but a comparatively small population, just as much as though our population were far in excess of what it is. I think, therefore, it behooves us to get people into Canada in order to utilize those public facilities which are costing us so much, and thus help to lighten the per capita burden. To-day we have great natural wealth which is lying undeveloped. Natural wealth in its raw state is more of a liability than an asset if it is not worked. I think that what Canada needs is the intelligent application of labour to our natural resources so as to de-

Sup pi y-Im migration
velop and work them up to nearer 100 per cent of capacity. When Canada reaches that stage many of the economic difficulties from which we now suffer will have disappeared.
I would give prospective settlers, as nearly as possible, the actual facts about Canada. I would not try to picture the prospects for settlers in colours too rosy. Let the actual facts be stated, and if the truth will not attract settlers let them stay away. A dissatisfied settler will do more harm to the immigration policy of Canada than anything else. If we can succeed in satisfying settlers that will be the best immigration agency we could have. Hard conditions are not confined to Canada; they obtain in many other countries including the great United States. I will not admit that conditions are roseate throughout the entire republic, although that is what we have been hearing so much about to-day. In some of the great middle western states farming is in a precarious condition to-day, due to an over-inflation of the price of land when the war was on. In the great states of Iowa and Illinois, where the price of land went up to three or four hundred dollars an acre, they were fortunate enough during the war to get big crops, and, as we all know, they got tremendous prices. That threw the farmers generally off the track, and they overvalued their lands. Farm lands were sold for three or four hundred dollars an acre. Many farmers sold their small holdings and bought larger ones. The result is that thousands of those farmers are absolutely bankrupt and are looking for new places to locate and start in business. These farmers would make the very best settlers that Canada could procure.
I am sorry, for this reason, that the member for Bow River painted as blue a picture as he did, because the American agents will use the statements that have been made on the floor of this House to try and keep people from coming to Canada. I know that the United States government had two men in the city of Regina before I came down here, trying to get settlers to go to the States. They were working among the Mennonites, trying to show them they could give them better terms in the States than they were getting here. A friend of mine in western Canada, an exAmerican farmer, told me shortly before Christmas that a neighbour of his who was very much dissatisfied with conditions in Alberta, took his boys and went back to their old stamping ground in the States. They found conditions even worse there than in northern Alberta when they left. They returned to northern Alberta.
There are many people in England, Ireland and Scotland who would improve their positions very much if they came to Canada. The same is true of the Scandinavian countries, and Germany, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland. Large numbers of the people in these countries would be delighted to come to Canada. I do not like to mention matters that come under my personal notice, but I will give one instance which will give the House a little idea of what can be done. A neighbour of mine, a German farmer, got his sister-in-law and six children to come out here. They have been here about 17 months. Shortly before I left home he came to my house and told me that it cost SI,600 to bring that family out here-a widow with her six children, the youngest being eight years old and the eldest a girl of twenty. In fifteen months they had paid back the $1,600 and had $300 in the bank. That man said the family were simply delighted with everything in Canada, it was so much better than conditions in Germany. Those people make the very best settlers Canada can get. I submit, Mr. Chairman, that we should forget about the alien enemy and try to do the right thing by these people. The great common masses of Germany are not the people who brought on the war. It was the military element that was in the saddle and forced the situation, but the great common people were not to blame for it any more than our working classes were to blame. I would like to see the restrictions against alien enemy countries lifted, and would like to see all good, sane, worthy people brought in. We want everybody who is willing to take off his coat and go to work and who would not be too particular about what work he did. These people would be valuable citizens in Canada. It used to be said that every man was estimated by the government as being worth $1,000 to the country. The greatest asset Canada can have is her people, and I submit that those people make settlers that are second to none. They are not afraid to encounter hardships, and we may as well admit that settlers have to suffer hardships. It is not a bed of roses and we should not hold up such a picture before prospective settlers, because if we do we will only have dissatisfied settlers, who will go some place else, and we will have spent our money in vain.
Referring to the conditions under which new settlers should expect to start in this country, some people expect they are coming to a ready-made farm. I do not think it is at all necessary to give them that idea. Canada
S upply-I m m igra lion

wants working people, domestics and farm labourers. We are very much in need of them. A good farm labourer will soon become a tenant farmer, and, with an improved land credit system, which I hope we will get, those men will soon become proprietors of farms. It can be done, but it cannot be done in a day or in a year or two. I venture to say that most of the men in this House who are farmers started in a small way; at least, many of us started as farm labourers and worked our way up and that is good enough for the incoming immigrant. The man who gets a chance to work and gets good pay for his work is not entitled to any more. I do not feel sorry for the man or woman who has to work. I feel sorry for a man who cannot find work when he is willing to work. But if incoming immigrants have got a
9 p.m. fair field, and good wages, as they will have in this country, they can get along much better than they can in the Old Land. About 25 or 30 years ago farmers that went West, while they were not compelled to endure as much hardship as the pioneer settlers in Ontario and Quebec in clearing their farms, yet they had to put up with hard conditions. The hon. Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) was for 20 years located 25 miles or so from a railway station. It would take him two or three days to make the round trip to Indian Head with his grain. He had to put up with many hardships, and thousands of others were in a similar position. The average incoming immigrant from Europe, or even from the United States, should not expect to have everything handed to him on a plate. Give them a fair chance and they will make good. In my constituency there is a lot of vacant land, on which some day prosperous farmers will be located. I admit the best of it was taken up, but there is plenty of land yet where good men will succeed. We want some branch lines of railway there, but the railways like to put a line in some place where they are sure it will pay, where there will be a big production and large tonnage to ship out right away, and that condition prevails in most of the western constituencies. There will be lines built in to help out the unfortunate people that went in there ten or fifteen years ago with the expectation that railway lines would be built. These lines will be built when they have more population in those districts. We are overbuilt with railway mileage to-day, according to our population, and immigration will hurry the building of railways when we get more settlers in. Somebody asks, are we justified in spending

money on an immigration policy? I say, yes. I say that at the cost per capita of immigrants Canada to-day can make no better investment than to spend money to bring immigrants to the counriy.
I have my doubts about the wisdom of this Canada Colonization Association. I would have preferred seeing this government cooperate with the provincial governments in the matter of immigration and have the provincial governments take it up with their municipal authorities and distribute the immigrants. I think this could have been worked out more satisfactorily in that way. I do not know whether it would be more economical, but in the past there has been much misrepresentation by interested shipping companies, railway companies, and real estate companies, painting too rosy a picture, and they got the settler out here and he was immediately dissatisfied. Now, this is a very delicate problem that should be properly attended to, and I think the government should take the responsibility of it instead of deputing it to some other, organization.
My hon. friend (Mr. Hoey) advocated the building of labourers' homes. I do not like the idea of asking the government to do anything of that kind. On many of these large farms there are two or three houses to-day which the settlers had to put up for themselves. I think that we should go rather slowly and not undertake to build homes for anybody. Most of the settlers who went out to this part of Canada built them very cheaply. I myself lived for seven years in a house, if you can call it such, which cost me $65, and there are lots of people who have lived in shacks that did hot cost them much. They have lived in them for years, and they are healthy men to-day. I think that most people can manage to build their own homes after t.hej' have been out there a little while. Some people say that you cannot afford to build to-day as you could twenty-five years ago. Well, the best wages I could draw was $40 for a month at harvest time, or $1.25 a day, and I have paid men five times that during harvest. I have paid them by the month five times as much as I ever got myself. Labourers get more money to-day and they can get work out there more easily than people could twenty-five years ago. I like to see people come here and help themselves. I do not think we should spoon-feed people; let the right class come out who are willing to dig in and help themselves. Now, I think I have said enough for the present. There are several other hon. gentlemen who would like to speak, and although there is much more

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that I might say on the subject, I shall not weary the House further. However, I should like to see several hundred thousand immigrants a year brought into Canada and distributed throughout the country, provided they are of the right type, because I am sure that most of the provinces can assimilate large numbers of hard-working settlers.


Mr. DESLAURIERS (Translation):: Mr. Chairman. I have listened with much interest to the speakers who have expressed their views on the question of immigration. After consideration of the policy which the hon. Minister of the Interior, at present, submits to us, I deem it my duty to strongly support him, although a number of my colleagues have thought fit-they call themselves good Liberals, -to state that this policy is devoid of sense or rather foolish. For my part I think there is wisdom, foresight and especially good judgment in this policy. Some favour the open-door policy for all immigrants as regards our country. I believe this would oblige us to recommend a policy devoid of control, which would be a source of more evil than good. In regard to the immigration of artisans to this country, I am very glad to hear that the hon. member for George Etienne Cartier (Mr. Jacobs), has kindly invited the hon. Minister of Labour to take a trip to Montreal, so as to enable him to form an opinion as to the needs of the labouring classes in the metropolis. As I represent a constituency which by itself forms a large city, I take the House as witness that I will place at his disposal large halls, capable of holding 10,000 people. I would advise him to invite at that meeting those who contend that there is unwillingness to do any manual labour rampant among the electors and I would ask him not to forget to invite the hon. members for Hochelaga, St. Henry and St. Denis. I would further advise my hon. colleague to also invite those members who have already expressed their opinion in the House on this question; moreover, to come himself and advocate the reduction of salaries of the people who work three days per week during six months in the year, and I promise him that the same evening the question of labour immigration will be settled and that our honoured guests will return to Ottawa after witnessing some good evidences of democracy and bringing back a precious souvenir of their visit to Montreal.
For the last twenty years Canada's policy has been marked by a system of migration, and if we are to-day facing an immigration problem requiring a rather tactful handling, it is because this system of migration has produced here another problem, far more serious
in my opinion, than is the emigration problem, without which we would not have devoted so much time to the question of immigration.
In about twenty years, the Canadian government has brought to this country more than 1,500,000 Europeans. We, to-day, find out that the increase of our population barely exceeds a figure representing its natural increase. There is therefore as many people who leave Canada as there are immigrants entering.
In 1921, for 90,000 immigrants received
100,000	of our own people have crossed the 45th parallel, in search of more favourable conditions. In the province of Quebec the evil is of long standing. Between 1865 and 1890, more than 400,000 of our people have crossed the border. This emigration has not diminished. In 1910, when the country enjoyed the greatest prosperity, it was shown, during the inquiry made by Mr. Rene Dupond, that there emigrated to the United States 19,093 of our countrymen. A few months ago, a paper published in the United States, Le Messager, of Lewiston, stated that during the year 1922, for the period of July, August and September 5,000 Canadian families, that is to say about 25,000 people had crossed to the frontier. In one parish alone in the Richelieu Valley, in the space of a few weeks only, 126 people went over to the American side. In one of the northern parishes, seven families, in a week's time, sold their furniture at auction, and purchased railway tickets to the United States.
Proof of these statements may be obtained by calling at the United States immigration bureau, at Montreal. There it will be seen that on many week-days, they have to make out as many as 100 certificates for French Canadians to enable them to enter the United States. The question that we should ask ourselves, at present, is certainly the one which the hon. Minister of the Interior, on November 16, 1922, put to the Kiwanis club, at Montreal: "What is the cause of there being so many Canadians in the United States; why are there so many deserted farms in Canada?" The reasons are numerous. The enticing wages offered in the United States is one of the causes. A number of families not finding in this country means of subsistence, leave for more clement skies. We also have a quota of adventurers, citizens who settle now here, real immigration agents who, through their advice, induce many people to follow them. There are also those who have heavily mortgaged properties which they cannot clear, and who emigrate to the United States hoping to make a fortune. Lastly, there are those who
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seek a more favourable climate; and on that score the United States offers better advantages than Canada. I admit that it is hard to restrain immigration if we take into account the reasons I have just enumerated.
There is also a class of citizens who are forced to emigrate to the United States, I mean the large families with holdings too restricted in area to provide for their needs, and which they cannot possibly extend. I think, Sir, that the government could perhaps come to an agreement with the provincial governments, so as encourage the>
settling in new territories of those families who still desire to cultivate the land and thereby remain together on our Canadian soil.
I believe it would be possible to found a trust and loan institution for settlers; I also think that it would be possible to establish for these new settlers, a good market for the disposal of their lumber and grain. W,e should particularly assist in the transportation of these families so as to allow them, once settled on these new farms, to visit their relatives; in this way, they would act as agents for the government and attract many of their people to these new territories. We should, in my judgment, extend to these men of goodwill, facilities for railway transportation, settlers should not be left to pay their railway fares out of the few dollars remaining to them, thus exposing them to hardships once the work is started,-my opinion is that the government must undertake first an educational compaign. This campaign should especially begin with our own settlers so as to help them in the fulfilment of their task and so as to let it be known among our people that there must be in Canada, as in other countries, a national spirit which pledges the people to obligations and duties towards the country.
The Minister of the Interior should have agents to organize the common effort, watch over our interests and to carry on publicity in all possible ways; such as excursions, demonstrations, lectures and literature so as to pave the way to success and cultivate the love of one's country. This would perhaps cost much less than to import, at our expense from European countries, settlers who will be exposed to the same hardships as our own settlers and who, as in the past, will at our expense, cross over the borders to settle in the United States.
In 1921, while a serious situation existed, I deemed it my duty to rise in this House and bring on a debate on the subject, when we had 500,000 unemployed, according to the statistics of that day, when revolution was ram-[Mr. Deslauriers.l
pant in Russia and threatened all the European nations, when the Workers of the World, that you all know as an outgrowth of the Soviets began to branch out in various cities of this Dominion. I moved a resolution perhaps somewhat radical, asking that the admission to this country of all immigrants be stopped until conditions became normal again. At that time this resolution apparently supported to a certain extent by the government of the day, did not have the good fortune to please everybody. I was then the object of some criticism on the part of certain colleagues, I am, however, glad to see, to-day, on the Orders of the Day, under less solemn circumstances, a proposed resolution by my colleague from George Etienne Cartier, having as marked a radical character as the one I proposed in 1921, although tending exactly in the opposite direction "O tempora, O mores!" instead of having, as he then had, the sympathy of his colleagues the contrary is happening to-day and I should be glad to see the vote taken to-night on his resolution in regard to immigration. I wish however, to prove to my hon. friend and to those who may share his views, that he was in error when he said that I examined the immigration question through spectacles which did not allow me to see beyond the county of St. Mary. To give the proof, I shall travel 800 miles away from my home: I shall go down to Gaspe; it is some distance from St. Mary's but I think it is well known by most of the members of this House. All tourists know the country for its beautiful spots, they are aware that it is rich in beautiful vistas of valley and plain; with fisheries renowned for the abundance of their fish, and their high quality as well; mines also of great value. Indeed, we all know that there are zinc and lead mines in operation; we all know that at Port Daniel, on the coast of Baie des Chaleurs, there is to be found a large bed of bituminou-' schist; finally we all know that the country is rich in forests that are taken advantage of by Americans by way of New Brunswick. Now, notwithstanding all these natural advantages, farming is at a standstill, fisheries pay very little, the lumbering is done to the benefit of a foreign country. Why does this state of things exist? Because the means of transportation are useless or inexistent. The country is drained by a number of rivers, such as the St. John, the Dartmouth, the York, the Bona-venture, the St. Anne, the Madeleine, whose water powers could be utilized to bring to life the pulp and saw-mills of Gaspe. The utilizing of these water powers would allow the manufacture, in Gaspe, of all the pulp and

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paper which is at present being manufactured in the United States with the pulpwood of Gaspe. This would help to keep in our country a class of our countrymen which is very valuable to us and already acclimatized; it would moreover control this rush of emigration which is taking place at a staggering pace.
According to many hydrographic authorities, the Bay of Gaspe could be turned into one of the freight ports of the world if some woik not of a very extensive character were carried out so as to allow the largest ocean craft to enter that bay twenty-two miles long; this would shorten, by 375 miles, the ocean route. A few years ago, a private company requested from the government permission to build a railway from Gaspe to Amqui, and, later, from Amqui to Edmundston, this would have further shortened the freight route by about two hundred miles. However, an hon. senator of the Maritime provinces, whose name I do not know, prevented this company obtaining a charter. Would it be possible now, in order to retain the whole population of Gaspe in that territory, to get in touch with this company and to grant it a charter free of charge, since it was disposed to carry on all the necessary work at its own expense? It is an acknowledged fact that this railway would be an excellent thing and would come to the rescue of the one that exists now and which is not sufficient. The railway of the Quebec Oriental Company and Atlantic Quebec and Western Company does not suffice, first of all, it is practically useless owing to its length and its exorbitant freight rates. We have at Murray Bay a deep water wharf which cannot be utilized as a winter port because the building of a branch railway of less than two miles in length has always been refused. The whole population of this locality is thereby isolated and business intercourse being rendered impossible for these people, they are obliged to emigrate; and that is what is happening. If this branch line was built, I feel certain that would greatly contribute to retain at home the inhabitants of that locality. The government might also agree to the building of a winter port on the coast of Baie des Chaleurs, at Paspebiac or at Port Daniel. The proposition was already mooted but, there again, influences, either local or provincial, were brought to bear to prevent the carrying out of the project. I think that it is under such circumstances as those under which we are at present placed, and when it comes to discussing questions so ticklish as that of immigration, that the government should not only consider the province which I have chosen as an example, but also co-operate with every province, where the necessity arises, so as to
stop that rush of emigration towards the United Ctates, dispensing us with the necessity of bringing here, at the public expense, foreign citizens.
We can but praise the government for the appointment of Mr. Arthur Lemont to the Immigration Bureau, at Ottawa. The good effects of his work is already being felt. We must also congratulate the government on the advertising campaign which it has undertaken in the United States for the repatriation and the settling in our country of our own people at present in the United States. Already good results have been obtained, namely in the counties of Chicoutimi and Lake St. John, where during the last year, 263 families have settled on farms and 126 in the villages. Last year alone, 2,471 people came from the United States to settle in the province of Quebec. Why did these people decide to return to their country? Because they knew they could earn their living, owing to colonization, agriculture and the industries being in full swing.
Mr. Chairman, I am coming to the end of the few remarks that I had to make. I sincerely believe that the question of emigration that I have just discussed is more important than the immigration one and I think if we went to the trouble of keeping our own people in this country, we would not find ourselves in the sad plight of having to bring foreigners here. I support almost in its entirety the policy which the hon. Minister of the Interior has proposed. Perhaps, he might again consider the item in his programme relative to young children. I think it would be more practical to hold on to our public money so as to bring up our own abandoned children rather than apply this money to foreign children.
I was listening, last night, to the remarks of the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) on the immigration question. He stated that the western people did not wish or have need for, more immigrants. I am led to believe that he did not then express the views of the western provinces, for, at the time of the last census, they gave us proof that they did not think they had a sufficiently large population, by inflating the figures of the census so as to secure more representation than they were really entitled to.
As to the hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail) I must say, that I cannot agree with her theories going so far as to deny the dignity of labour. I contend that a young girl can perfectly be honourable and so honoured while performing domestic duties, when she would perhaps, if constrained to
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change her occupation, be a failure as a school teacher.
I am glad to have had the opportunity of drawing the government's attention to the emigration question of our people, for I am satisfied that if, after giving the question serious consideration, they are able to solve the problem, it would be from the economic standpoint, to the great advantage of Canada.


Mr. DICKIE:: I have thought, after listening to this debate for several days, if a composite picture could be drawn of it, I would like to have that picture. We have had all kinds of expressions of opinion and arguments with respect to the policy brought down by the minister, and I do not see any finality in anything that has been said with respect to that policy. I am sometimes almost persuaded to one phase or another, and then another speaker arises and disabuses my mind. I am reminded of an old man of ninety-two years of age who had never taken a drink in his life. Some prominent temperance people were holding a meeting in the vicinity, and they decided to motor out to interview this old gentleman. They went out and saw him. He was hale and hearty, ninety-two years of age. He said:"Yes, gentlemen, I have never taken a drink in my life." While he was talking, there was a noise of furniture being broken upstairs, and someone expressed a little concern. The old man said:	"Never mind, that is only father;
he has been out and had a drink or two, and they cannot do anything with him." So that shows that what may seem almost unassailable is probably not quite as sound as it would seem. I sympathize with the minister in connection with the policy that he has placed before the House. I sympathize with him because of some of the criticisms that policy has received. It is my humble opinion that he is trying to do what is best for the country in what is a most complex, difficult and contentious problem.
I am going to deal with this problem from an entirely different angle. I am going to try to show that it is of very little use bringing immigrants to this country, unless we can prepare the country for them. For a number of years now we have had very many of our men and women going to the country to the south of us. Why are they going? I am going to endeavour to tell this House why they are going, and they are going in greater numbers now than in previous years. This is due in large measure to the wonderful prosperity which that country is enjoying at the present time, to which prosperity we are contributing in a large degree. Our young men are leaving the West, leaving the Pacific province, of

which I am best able to speak, and their fondest wish when they leave is that they will return at some early date, for they love their country and are only leaving it because of the better opportunities that exist in the United States. The reason, I think, Mr. Chairman, is this: We have an adverse trade balance with our neighbours to the south, of $200,000,000 every year. A fairly constant stream of $200,000,000 of gold or its equivalent is flowing yearly from this country to the United States. Just imagine-one billion dollars every five years from a population of nine'million people! What can be the result? We must inevitably follow that stream of gold. We will drift the way the gold is going. We have a trade balance in our favour with the old countries of Europe and people from those countries are following that gold out here at all times. We want them to stay here. Canada cannot afford to be a preparatory school for people from European countries whose ultimate destination will be with our neighbours to the south. If they come here and remain here they will probably displace some of our citizens, and then they will go. One man who has been brought up in the resourceful Canadian school is in some respects worth on an average three men that come to us from European countries. I think that will be conceded. We must keep our people at home.
How are we going to stop them following this constant stream of gold to the United States every year? My remedy will be one which will not appeal to my hon. friend from Saskatoon probably, but he may agree- with me before I get through with my argument.
One phase of my remedy would be for each of us to practise a little patriotism ourselves for the sake of our country. There is not a person in this country who does not buy something that is manufactured in the United States when probably he could buy something here that he could get along with just as well. I do not mean to discourage trade with that wonderful country to the south, but we must keep our money at home, and we can probably do that by a little self-denial on the part of each person in Canada, if we only would do it.
Let me explain a little further how this stream of wealth affects us. In the island where I live, Vancouver Island, we have a large coal mining population in the district represented by my hon. friend the member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill) and myself. We have a coal mining population of 20,000 people. We find a market for not one half the coal we can mine, and it is rated as the best bituminous coal on the continent to-day. In

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the years 1920 and 1921 we were sending $1,000,000 approximately every month out of British Columbia for fuel oil, $12,000,000 a year from a population no larger than the city of Toronto. What could occur under those circumstances? What did occur was this: We send out that million dollars a month, and we are importing 360,000,000 barrels of oil every month. That is the equivalent of 90,000 tons of good coal. That displaces that output of
90.000 tons of coal, and to mine that
90.000 tons .of coal monthly would represent a population of 6,000 or 7,000 pepple. This oil comes into our country. Our coal mines are only working part time, and none are paying dividends. They have been good to their employees. We have had no trouble with our coal miners in British Columbia, although they are largely imbued with socialistic ideas. They were true all through the war, and we had uq complaint of them loafing on the job. Our coal operators tried to treat them as men, and receiving such treatment, they are content. But with this $1,000,000 worth of oil coming into our country every month, these coal miners and others who are dependent on what the coal miners do, drifted down into California, and they are down there now working in the oil fields. They simply followed our money to California. There is no other way out of it. The thing seems perfectly plain to me. In California they are having a period of unexampled prosperity. What is known as the Huntington Beach field, near Long Beach, has turned out to be a wonderful oil producing field. In a strip of barren country known as Elk Hills, from which geologically speaking iittle was to be expected, there is I believe, the deepest well in the world. It was drilled to 6,500 feet and was a failure, but with all the money they have there they tried again, and at 4,500 feet I understand they opened up a gusher of 45,000 barrels a day. Since then numerous wells have been placed there, and it is now one of the great oil fields out-rivalling even Oklahoma. On the Pacific coast transportation is very cheap, as the oil comes in tank steamers to British Columbia. At one time before this Huntington field was opened up, we had to pay $2.75 a barrel. Now by buying for future supply we can get it at $1.24 a barrel. It we had the assurance that we were going to get it that cheap for two years more, our coal mining population would be absolutely wiped out. There is always a chance, as people know who are familiar with the oil question, that some day a well will begin to spout salt water, and then the well is done, and it is only the uncertainty
of the life of the oil regions in California that keeps our coal mines operating at all to-day. We are just living from hand to mouth in that respect. I am not going into the remedy for that now. I shall leave that to a time when the subject may more appropriately be discussed.
Just on the subject of people leaving our country, I may say that our probably greatest potential wealth in British Columbia, is timber. Nearly every day immense booms of our logs leave British Columbia for the state of Washington to be manufactured into lumber in the mills there. That raw material is going over there every month to be manufactured, and our people are leaving this countiy and going over there to assist in that manufacture, or people are manufacturing over there who would come to our country and do the manufacturing here if they were forced to manufacture it in British Columbia. The slojfes of our mountains are being denuded. There is a regular timber boom on out there, and a great part of this timber is going to our neighbours to the south. Is not that a matter for grave consideration?
There is another matter which occurs to me at the present moment. I am quite familiar with an undertaking in which half a million dollars has been embarked, and that is the creosoting industry in the constituency of Burrard, which I believe the Minister of Finance has had drawn to his attention. This industry has had simply a life and death struggle for years. For this reason: On the American side they have two immense creosoting plants doing an immense volume of business. I do not need to tell any of you gentlemen that an industry conducted on such a scale can simply crush the life out of a smaller competitor. We have a comparatively small plant in British Columbia, but given equal treatment, given a chance to succeed, it can be made a success. That would mean giving employment to 200 people, which would represent a population of nearly a thousand souls. In that industry preference has always been given to married folks and to white people. When tenders for piling are asked for, the creosoting plants on the American side put in bids at such a low figure that our people cannot compete with them. It has been asserted that the American firms put in such low bids that they made no profit at all. They do that, we have reason to think, in the hope of crushing out their Canadian competitors. The minute they succeeded in doing that, competition would disappear and the prices for creosoting piles and material would go up to rates much beyond
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what the British Columbia company is doing this business for. That is another argument which undoubtedly will be used later on in favour of a higher tariff wall.
A policy which appeals to one section in Canada we well know does not appeal to another. In the Maritime provinces free trade is looked upon very kindly. I do not believe that Quebec could succeed under a policy of free trade, or that Ontario would be any more successful. Undoubtedly the prairie provinces would succeed; free trade would be a great temporary benefit to them. In British Columbia free trade would simply put us out of existence. I could multiply arguments showing what the result would be. Therefore, why cannot we sit down and reason together, regardless of political dissensions, and see if we cannot devise some remedy, such a remedy as a business man or a business firm would devise. I know of no reason why we could not do that. I believe that every thinking man in Canada should be in favour of erecting a tariff wall in this country corresponding in height to the tariff wall that has been erected against us by our neighbours to the south. Why, Sir, I have heard Americans laugh at us for neglecting to do this; they wonder at our being so slow in adopting this protection. What argument is there against our doing this? We import forty million pounds of pork products every year from the United States. We also import, I do not know how much, butter-probably a couple of million pounds. We allow the United States to ship butter into this country under a duty of only 4 cents a pound, whereas in the case of the five million pounds of butter which we exported to that country last year we paid a duty of eight cents a pound- That meant a difference of four cents a pound which might represent the profit to the Canadian manufacturer of that butter. What is the argument in favour of such a policy? I can see many good arguments in favour of reciprocity which was so strongly supported by the Minister of Finance. Some of us, however, were fearful of the future effect of reciprocity on this Dominion. Whether right or wrong I for one was fully convinced, from personal judgment, and in view of the statements of Mr. Champ Clark, Mr. Taft, and others that the policy was one which required careful consideration on the part of Canadians. But, Sir, reciprocity is absolutely out of the question at the present time. Under the circumstances why allow to these gentlemen in the United States privileges which they do not extend to us?

With respect to our Progressive friends to my left something must undoubtedly be. done for them and for those whom they represent. Unless the farmers on the western prairies prosper, to a limited degree anyway, we cannot prosper as a whole in Canada. Out in British Columbia we look to them for our market, we would like to be more closely associated with them so that we might work together. In the matter of Canada's welfare we should all be closely united. As the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) so eloquently said, we must be united if we are to make of this Dominion the country which it should be, a country of which we will all be proud. Why not let us all work together? Why not let us forget this miserable political bickering and sparring for position; let us sit down in council together and try and do business. The benefits which my hon. friends to my left would lose under a policy which I advocate could be made up to them in some other way. The hon. member for Comox-Alberni suggested that we might possibly bonus the production of wheat. I do not agree with that suggestion, but possibly some concession in the matter of freight rates might be given to them which would be sort of equivalent for any benefit they might otherwise derive under free trade. The great argument in favour of a policy which I recommend is that under it our money would remain in this country. If we only had $100,000,000 of the $200,000,000 which we send over to the United States what could we not accomplish in this country. The future of Canada is fraught with great possibilities. I have made a somewhat modest study of geological and mineralogical conditions and I say it is the consensus of opinion among mining men that the great Laurentian plateau away to the north of us holds possibilities leading us to expect that it will prove to be the greatest gold mining country in the world. We have plenty of reason for optimism. But let us try and stop the flow of gold which is at present going from Canada to the United States. If we do this it will help to put an end to the exodus of people from this country. At present there is a great boom over there to which we are contributing very materially. People will go to a country which holds strong attractions in the way of possibilities, but after all there is in the heart of every man a love for his own country. Make the conditions here more attractive and you will be able to repatriate many Canadians now in the United States. Personally I think very little of a man born in this country with a soul so dead

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that he will ever forget that he is a Canadian.
There is another thing which would contribute materially to the prosperity of this country. We have got to find a remedy for the situation which exists in Canada at the present time in regard to coal. Our American friends have been more than kind; they have allowed Canadians to have coal when they could have used it themselves to good advantage. In 1922 we sent 860,000,000 to the United States for anthracite and bituminous coal. Now that flow of gold to the other side of the line could be stopped. Suppose we have the anthracite fields that are said to exist in Alberta. I do not know whether the facts are overdrawn with respect to these immense deposits or not; at any rate we know there is plenty of coal there. Even supposing our railways haul that coal at a loss, if we can only keep in the country that $60,000,000 now going to the United States do you not see how we could make good any losses incurred in the transportation of coal via Canadian channels. Such a policy would work to the great benefit of Canada. We have unbounded reason for optimism. If we will only work together we can make this country a land to be proud of and we can prevent our people from leaving the Dominion and going to the country to the south. We will also pave the way for a flow of acceptable immigrants from European countries.
With respect to immigration, reference has been made by some of the British Columbia members to the oriental problem in that province. I am not going to say anything about it tonight except that it is a very serious problem, more serious than this House evidently realizes. We also have to have a good white population out there; some of them are not just what we would wish. In saying this I hope it will have some influence on any action which the minister may contemplate in respect to bringing immigrants from Europe. During the peregrinations of the Fishery Commission last summer we called at Malcolm Island where there is a Finnish settlement the members of which are said to be free lovers and socialists.	I do not
know whether they are Marxians or Leninists. I do know that they are absolutely discontented although they live on an island which is an elysium compared to the country from which they came. Owing to the noxious doctrines evolved from the unsound reasoning of unsound brains, they have imbibed, however, they are absolutely discontented. There is no reason why they should be. We listened to their woes
for a while. We sat in a large hall with a drop curtain on the stage. There was depicted on the curtain an Hogar-thian female with a large red flag. We deliberated under the red flag in this country with people living better than they had ever lived at home. Those people were told at the last election that if they did not exercise their franchise they would probably lose it. We were informed that a number of them voted and deliberately spoiled their ballots. We want no such citizens. It may be said they were white people and perhaps their children will be all right. Well, they may be, but what chance has a child raised in an atmosphere of sullen discontent and sodden lust to become a good citizen? It may be true that in after years environment will bring out the best that is in them, but. the best that environment can bring out is pre-determined by heredity. True, some may be useful citizens, but the chance for children of that kind is a remote one. I would very much prefer that no more of those people should come here. With respect to oriental immigration, I have no doubt that other hon. members will deal with that in a very comprehensive way later on.


Mr. BALDWIN:: If ever I thought there was need of building up in this country a spirit of patriotism and love of country, it is since this debate commenced. We have been taken by some speakers to the hill tops of patriotism, and others have taken us to the dark valleys, if not of death, then of despair. When we look at this vast and amazing country, and see the opposition that has been aroused against allowing people from the crowded sections of middle Europe and Scandinavia to come over and work out their destiny, it seems to me the situation is peculiar. The hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Marler), the hon. member for St. John (Mr. Baxter), the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey), and a few others appear in this debate like an oasis in a horrible desert. I am pretty nearly the oldest member of this House, as near as I can figure it out; I have lived along the United States boundary and I have seen the pendulum of immigration swing to and fro many many times in my lifetime. It seems to me the pendulum is swinging the people into the United States and for what reason? On account of the United States not entering the war for two or three years after it commenced, they have become the richest nation on the earth. They are now engaged in the greatest development possible in the country, notwithstanding the immense cost. If
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states of Wisconsin and Minnesota was comprised very largely of these people. An hon. member on the other side spoke a few moments ago about lifting the ban from our former enemies of the war. I most heartily concur in that sentiment. You will find in the United States that the German element has been second to none in the settling of that country. I do not think there should be any more talk about race hatred. I am a pacifist and am opposed to that sort of thing, and this world will never be right until race hatred ceases. With our tremendous railway system, with our extensive waterway system to feed our railways, and with our practically unlimited natural resources, it is simply beyond the scope of my judgment to know how we can get along without a broad immigration policy. The writers in our newspapers and magazines are for the most part agreed on the necessity for an energetic and comprehensive policy of immigration, and I think it may be safely assumed that these gentlemen possess as much wisdom as any of us in the House. They see no other way out.
I think the Progressives and the Labour representatives entertain a wrong idea in thinking that the more people we bring into this country the greater competition they will have to meet, for it must be borne in mind that every settler is a consumer as well as a producer, and we need men that will do hard, laborious work and rough it. In the United States the early settlers lived in dug-outs and shacks built of poles and roofed with straw, they roughed it, and the most affluent people in the United States to-day are the descendants of those settlers in the great Mississippi valley and westward for two or three hundred miles. For fifty years or more these men hung on to their land with just enough returns from their work to exist on and pay their taxes, until ultimately with the development of the country the rise in the value of their land made them prosperous and even wealthy. I say the same good fortune will attend our farmers in the West: Let them hang on and deny themselves for the present and with the development of our country they, too, will become rich like the American farmers.
Our Progressive friends have been bewailing both this session and last session the unsatisfactory conditions of agriculture. Let me make a comparison. In New England, in Minnesota, Dakota, Idaho, Oregon and Washington just as many tales of woe are heard as in Canada. And I would tell our western farmers that just as many tales of woe can be told right down in my community, the Eastern Townships. Why? Because our farmers

paid three times more for their farms in many instances than they are now worth. That is an instance of over-capitalization.
It has been suggested, Mr. Chairman, that every member give his opinions regarding the solution of our immigration problem. I have given mine. I presume the minister, with whom I sympathize very much would like to see this debate close before we sleep, and therefore I refrain from making any further remarks.


Mr. SPEAKMAN:: Mr. Chairman, I realize that this is perhaps one of the most important debates which can engage our attention, because immigration and all that it involves touches practically every phase of our national life. In immigration itself is wrapped up not only the present condition of this country but the possibilities of its future development, and therefore I repeat, this is one of the most important subjects that we can discuss.
It is customary, I believe, to commence with a few remarks concerning present conditions. We have heard so much from so many different angles that I shall content myself with a consideration of the conditions which will to a large extent influence the class of immigrants coming to this country and which also will to a large extent direct and guide any immigration policy that may be evolved, for it is upon pi'esent conditions that the policy of the minister (Mr. Stewart) must be founded if it is to be successful.
I find there is general agreement on one point-that for one reason or another we have not been able to take anything like full advantage of the immigration we have received in the past. Now, that is not a statement which can be very well controverted. Indeed, I do not think it is an argumentative statement at all. it is a statement of fact founded upon the figures of the department itself and upon the knowledge of every member of this House and of every one outside who has given any thought to this subject. We have not been able to take advantage to any great extent of our past immigration policy because we have not succeeded in retaining the percentage which we should have retained of the men and women who have come here.
Why is it? In speaking of conditions I shall refer to those portrayed by two hon. members who sit in this quarter of the House. I shall first take the picture drawn by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland). I regret some of the criticisms that have been directed against his speech. I know, and many others in this House know, that in describing conditions as they exist in his part

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of the country he described them with truthfulness and exactitude. I do not say that those conditions prevail generally throughout the West, but I do say that in the part of the country from which the hon. gentleman comes those conditions exist as he has described them. I know because although I do not live there part of my constituency runs into that country. I also know because thirty odd years ago I went through that district and at that time every oldtimer- and I include the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell),-and every rancher knew it was not fitted by nature for farming. In that country, in fact throughout the whole West, there are two reasons for adverse conditions. One is the lack of sufficient rainfall to produce crops-a natural condition which no government can mend. No government can cause enough rain to fall for the production of crops. The other condition is one for which to a large extent governments may be held responsible-the economic policy which we have followed during the past. I wish to divide those two adverse conditions, because the government has enough sins-and I am not speaking merely of this government but of preceding governments also-they have enough sins to answer for without calling down the sins of Providence on their head as well.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Surely that is dangerous theology, that Providence is responsible for sins?


Alfred Speakman: The hon. gentleman is probably better qualified to speak as to that. I was simply discussing natural shortcomings with which the farmer has to contend. During the last general election a certain gentleman not unknown to fame in this country made the statement, with which I sympathize to a great extent, that his lack of success in that campaign was due very largely in the West to too much rain having fallen in some places and not enough in others. I am not going to blame the present government or the preceding government for these conditions. They exist in that part of the country, and in stating those conditions, I think the hon. member performed nothing more or less than his bounden duty in this House because, if we are to provide remedies for conditions that prevail, if we are to improve those conditions, we can provide those remedies or improve those conditions only if we have a knowledge of the conditions as they exist. Those conditions may be unpalatable to us; we may not like to face them; but if they are there, we should know they are there, face them like

men, and see if, to some extent, they can be overcome. Nothing can be gained by closing our eyes to facts and imagining, because we do not see those facts, they do not exist. When the hon. member for Springfield spoke and poured forth his optimism and praise of the great province of Manitoba, I was cheered up; I felt almost exuberant in my joy to know, in one part of Canada at least, all was well with the world. I could not, I will admit, quite understand the full' extent of his optimism in the face of some facts that even I was aware of, for instance, that there are at the present time in that province unpaid taxes amounting to $14,000,000. But no doubt that was attributable to the "overinstitutionalism", was it not?


Robert Alexander Hoey: That it was staggering under taxation.


Alfred Speakman: That it was staggering under taxation, and I am not going to hold that against my hon. friend at all. But when he spoke of that province, again I say, if those are the conditions there, the conditions of which he was cognizant, he was right in stating what he did. As for myself, I shall have to walk the middle of the road again. You know, I have noted that it has been commented upon that I have been given to moderation in this House; I intend to stick to moderation in this House, and in this respect I shall be moderate again. In my part of the country and that extends over a good deal of Alberta-conditions are not as bad as they are painted by the hon. member for Bow River. We are in a part of the country where we have in an average year sufficient rainfall and sufficient feed for our stock, where we can grow crops year after year, where we engage in dairying, where we raise beef, hogs, poultry and eggs, and where in most years we can make our living. I believe that, given a decent chance economically, given laws under which we can carry on, under which we shall be put on an equality with other people, in our part of the country and taking the West as an average, we shall certainly succeed.
There is in this House no man to whom I will yield a place in my pride in Canada, in my optimism for the future of Canada, if rightly governed and if proper policies are put into effect. I believe we have at the present time, in potential possibilities, one of the greatest countries in the world. No one who has ridden as I have ridden over the plains of mv own Alberta, who has gone through the mountains and seen the enormous deposits of the easily mined coal to be found there, who

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has seen hills covered with cattle, the crops that can be raised and the results of the gas deposits, who believes, as I believe, that oil, that almost every natural product can be found there, can despair of a country like that. I believe we have potentially one of the greatest countries in the world, indeed, as the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) said, probably the one great undeveloped country in the northern zone, and there is no country to which we need take a second place. But if we grant that-and most hon. members have granted that- then why is it that during the past forty or fifty years we have not been able to retain more of our population; that we have not succeeded better than we have succeeded with that foundation of natural resources? In an ordinary business, if a company or if a certain number of men were provided with capital, with a splendid stand for doing business, with all the essentials to conduct a successful business and to carry it on to a successful conclusion, and they failed, would you not think their failure was due to bad management on their part? Therefore, if in the face of those natural advantages we possess, we have not succeeded as we should have succeeded-and I do not think any hon. member will say that we have succeeded up to the present time-I. contend that there must be something wrong with the management.


Mr. McBRIDE:: Since I have come into
this House, I have not heard one person in this section say a good word about the prairies. How is it that from 2,000 to 3,000 people come to the coast every year and that many of them go down to California and have a good time if conditions on the prairies are as bad as represented?


Alfred Speakman: No doubt, many men
do go to the coast from some of our towns and a few from the farms. I have heard a good deal about the men who go to California, and spend their ill gotten gains in riotous living during the winter; but it has not been my good fortune to meet one of them. There may be such men, but they can be but a very small percentage of the men who live on the prairies.
The hon. member just asked me how it was that there was no one with a good word to say for the prairies. I am one who will say a good word for the prairies. I believe the prairies and those western provinces have all that is necessary to make a great country. I have lived there since I was a small boy; I went in there when the country was absolutely undeveloped, and my life, my whole
rMr. Speakman.]
upbringing has been in that country. I have grown up in it; I have learned to love it; I believe in it, and I have the greatest faith in it. It is not the country which is at fault, and no one in my presence will say that the prairies are at fault. The prairies are all right. What I contend is this, that given those prairies as they are, with all their vast resources and potential wealth, the men living on the prairies and working them should be now in a better financial position than they are, and we should have been able to hold our population there.
I know criticism is easy. Nothing is easier than to criticise and to say that the policies of the past were wrong. It is far more difficult to offer any suggestion as to how things might be bettered. I am prepared to offer one or two suggestions; I am not prepared to say that they will absolutely hold water, because they have never been tried out, and until they have been tried out, they will be in the nature merely of a theory or experiment. But I believe three or four changes could be made in our economic system, in the laws which govern our country, which would tend to eliminate many of the disadvantages under which we live at the present time and to bring back at least a reasonable measure of prosperity. I have enough confidence in the country "for that. I will state them very briefly, because the time is getting late, and I like to live up to my reputation of confining my remarks to a very short period. First- and this matter is being worked on now- we should have a better system of credit. I have touched on that before and I shall not go into it again. Second, we should have a tariff which would not bear so hardly upon the basic producers. It is acknowledged on every side that at the present time the tariff is an unmitigated evil to the men on the prairies. Since I have come here I have learned to sympathize more deeply than before with men who are not on the prairies, because I know more of the troubles with which they are faced. I have learned that no one section of the country can have all it desires; that the matter must be one of compromise. But so far the compromise has all been made by the men on the prairies, and the tariff policy could be adjusted so that it would not bear so hardly upon those men and would not raise the cost of their means of production so far beyond the proper proportion of the value of the stuff they raise.
Again, and this is perhaps one of the most important questions-and that is not just a statement, it is a fact-in the matter of transportation for years the western railways

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have been bled for the benefit of the eastern end of the system. There is absolutely no question about that. All we have to do is take the statements made before the Transportation Committee last year, and every hon. member must acknowledge that through these past years, whether under the Crowsnest pass agreement or not the prairie section and the British Columbia section of the railway system of this country have paid a large part of the profits for the system as a whole. I believe that an equalization of rates in that respect all the way through from points to the east and from points to the west, would be of very material assistance.
Further, I believe that with the encouragement of a system of co-operative buying and selling by which the produce could be pooled and sold in large quantities at the lowest possible cost, eliminating the enormous cost of distribution which at present stands between producer and consumer, and which I believe can be done-I think that the cumulative effect of these four remedies, which are worth trying, would go far towards making it possible for the dwellers on the plains to live and to prosper.
What is the remedy offered by some of our friends? Immigration. That means that when you have a leaky barrel, one with a hole knocked in the bottom, you are going to fill it by continually pouring in more water regardless of how fast it is running out. That seems to me to be somewhat of an absurdity. It has been pointed out by some hon. members that as long as there is this enormous demand in the States, our people will keep going to the States, and apparently their only remedy is that we shall pump immigrants into Canada who will pass on to the south until the United States is saturated, and then the residue may remain here. I contend that that is a most absurd policy. We cannot afford to assist in bringing in immigrants if they are simply to use Canada as a sort of calling place on their way to the States, and continue that process until the United States is saturated and has received all the population it requires. I say we cannot afford to do that. When I look upon this country and hear the glowing eulogies pronounced upon it by various members-and I endorse all those eulogies, I believe this is a great country-it makes me all the more deplore the paucity of policy on the part of the government, and I am not referring particularly to the policy of the minister but the policy of this government and of other governments preceding, in attempting to deal with this problem.
80i
What have been the policies suggested? They are embodied in a few words spoken by one of the members to my right, who said that the remedy, forsooth, was more protection. Protection, forsooth, was to be the great panacea which would alleviate and remedy all our wrongs, which would set us all right and enable us to retain our population, enable us to succeed where now we are not succeeding, and to prosper. I have 'a great deal of respect for that hon. gentleman. I find him in private life to be a most kindly and sympathetic man, but I cannot believe that the simple continuance of a system which has been found to be absolutely useless in that respect for forty or fifty years is going to solve the problem.	Something more than that is
needed. As a young member in parliament I do not pretend to have the knowledge that is necessary to solve a problem of that kind.	I have some suggestions, some
ideas of what might be done, but I cannot pretend to bring forward any solution. The problem has baffled a great many of our wisest men. But in order to solve it, the first thing that must take place is the realization that these conditions exist and that the old methods have failed. If these methods have failed, it seems to me that the obligation is upon the shoulders of the men upon whom has been placed the responsibility for governing this country, and who I believe to be intelligent and sincere men, to find a remedy. We can make suggestions; it is for them to act upon them.
I would like to say a word as to the possibility of immigration itself. I am not one of those, nor do I think there are many in this House, who are among those who believe that we should not have any more people in this country, that this country cannot support any more people than it has at the present time. I believe that this country could support five and ten times the population it has at the present time. I believe it would be good for the country and good for the immigrants themselves, but until we have a policy of retention to go hand-in-hand with the policy of _ immigration, an immigration policy is suicidal. It in itself cannot solve the problem. Immigration to my mind is a result. It is not a means for gaining a result. It is the result of sound policies put in force, practised, and the two must go hand in hand. We know, even the farmers, and we are not credited with knowing much by some members of this House, that it is absolutely useless to sow a crop of wheat, buy your seed and put it in the ground, unless you get the ground right first. You have to plough it, and till it, and

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put it in proper condition, or you will not have any crop, and I wish to reiterate and emphasize the fact that that applies absolutely in the same manner to the crop of people we wish to sow here. If they are to grow and prosper and succeed, they must be planted in the proper soil, and we must prepare the soil for them.
I	was somewhat interested in a few remarks that were made by one or two hon. members who apparently feel that they have a personal grievance in our presence in this House. I was struck by a remark of the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) and I speak of him with a good deal of respect because I admire his ability, ability gained, no doubt through many years in this parliament, and no doubt also through his legal studies and in his practice. The ability with which he can present a case is only equalled, if possible, by the ability with which he evaded answering any question asked of him. I was interested in one thing he said in particular. He said that the United States, which is a very great country, was prospering far more than Canada was at the present time under the two-party system, and that they had not found it necessary to bring in a third party in order to save the country. That is a criticism that might cut both ways. If this country had prospered under the two-party system then this third party would not have entered the House in this country. The third party entered this House as a protest on the part of a great many people against the way in which the business of the country had been handled by the two old parties. That is the reason we are here.
It was also stated by the hon. member for Stanstead (Mr. Baldwin) I think, that we were here representing one particular class. Well, to some extent that is true.


Willis Keith Baldwin: I think I did not say one particular class. I said that men were in the House representing certain classes.


Alfred Speakman: In that case I must apologize to the hon. gentleman, but at this distance I certainly understood him to say that there were men in this House who had come here to represent a class.


Willis Keith Baldwin: I did not mean the farming class.


Alfred Speakman: I am glad my hon.
friend does not mean his observation in any derogatory sense. I will admit that some of the members here are largely representing one class. And why? Because any hon. member sent to this House represents the majority of the people in his constituency. They cannot
[Mr. Speakman.J
help the fact that in certain constituencies the majority of the people happen to be of one class; there is no known means of preventing the majority in any constituency, or in any province, from sending representatives to parliament if the people come together and work together in co-operation. If any excuse were necessary for the farmers sending men to represent them in parliament that excuse is to be found in the statements of some hon. members in this House, and the fact that certain hon. members seemed to be unaware, until the last two sessions of parliament, of conditions as they existed amongst the farmers.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I wish to make one or two suggestions with respect to the subject of immigration itself. I am not sure whether they will be of a constructive character, but I hope they will be. The first suggestion would be as to the type of settlers we could do with here. They should be settlers who would come on a voluntary basis, selected simply according to their fitness for admission to this country, of a type that would be apt to succeed here under reasonable conditions, I would not draw a line at Anglo-Saxons particularly, I would not limit admission to people who come from the United States or from the Old Land. All through our western country we meet with a great many people, especially people from northern Europe, and I want to say this: Although I am of British birth myself, and am perhaps prejudiced in that direction sometimes, no better settlers are to be found anywhere than the Scandinavians, the Dutch, the Finlanders, let us say in many cases the Icelanders, the Esthonians, and a number of other such people. They make splendid neighbours, fine farmers, excellent citizens, and they are turning out to be good Canadians. I have met them by scores and by hundreds and in every case I have found that their standard of living is rapidly rising to the standard of living of the Anglo-Saxon. They are striving after high ideals of citizenship such as are held by the true Canadian, and they are endeavouring to make true Canadians of their children. I am not in favour, however of bringing people of these nationalities and establishing them in colonies consisting exclusively of people of their own race. That is no way to build up a country. You cannot build up Canada by establishing in it little Scandinavians and little Russians. These people must be treated as individuals, and established individually, if they are to be absorbed into the life of this country and become part of the real Canadian population.
There is one point in the minister's policy that I would like to comment on for a mo-

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Immigration
ment, and that is the possible use of the Soldier Settlement Board for the purpose of locating men on the land. Now, Mr. Chairman, I have become somewhat familiar with the working of that organization, and I believe that the staff are admirably qualified to carry on some aspects of this work. I would not believe in the staff of this organization acting as immigration agents-that is going out to solicit immigrants to enter this country. But I think there are no men better qualified to do that; to take care of and locate people after they come here; they have the knowledge, and they have the experience, in fact the store of data they have at their disposal is simply enormous and may be utilized to good advantage; I would agree to that only on one condition. I would not be in favour of-in fact I would strongly protest against- that organization being allied in any way with any corporation, or any company, in this country whose business was the establishment of persons on the land. Whatever success they have obtained in settling soldiers on the land-and I believe under the circumstances it has been considerable-has been due to the fact that they were able to control the character of land which the settlers would buy, and control the price to be paid for that land. That is the secret of the success they were able to achieve. But if someone else were allowed to sell at high prices to settlers land that was absolutely unsuitable for farming, and then the Soldier Settlement Board were to step in and take over the supervision of those men, and assume a part of the responsibility for their success, it would put them in an absolutely impossible position, and would make it absolutely impossible for them to succeed. If the responsibility is placed on governmental officials or a governmental organization, then the necessary authority and powers should go along with that responsibility; the two things cannot be divorced. I have seen farm after farm where the farmer was industrious, thrifty and honest, working all hours of the day and night, absolutely fail for the simple reason that the land upon which the farmer was located was totally unsuited for farming purposes. I am very much afraid that any colonization company might list properties of an unsuitable character and the Soldier Settlement Board officials would have no supervision over the choice of those lands or the price to be paid for them. Yet they might be asked to assist in supervising the work of the settlers afterwards. I think such a situation would be absolutely impossible. I believe in granting assistance to those who are going to be settled on farms. I do not believe in the system of assisted
passages, but I do believe in giving intending settlers all the information possible as to the places where they should be located, and the style of farming which might be followed profitably in certain districts. I also believe in protecting them against the exorbitant exactions of men who, in some cases, have more land to sell than they have conscience. I believe in looking after the prospective settlers to that extent. We have no officials more competent to perform that work at the present time than those on the staff of the Soldier Settlement Board.
In conclusion let me say that the way to ensure the success in connection with immigration is to inaugurate a plan under which a governmental policy which will enable men to succeed shall go hand in hand with the policy of bringing in more immigrants. That course being followed I would let the people of those countries where there is a surplus population know of the opportunities to be found here. I would let them know of the opportunities that exist, what lands there were, inform them of the laws under which they must live-in fact give them a true picture of the conditions they must face and the possibilities of success. Having done that, if they were of a suitable type to be admitted into Canada and wished to come to this country I would do everything possible to welcome them here and to see that they got a fair chance to be favourably located, to make a living, and to prove that they were capable of becoming good citizens.
One hon. member spoke of the co-operation that was necessary. I also think that cooperation is necessary. I think that the cooperation of every man and woman who is already in this country is the main essential. I think the one thing that, more than anything else, discourages a settler is to come into a new country and find himself apparently unwelcome, to find himself excluded from the social circles, excluded from friendships and from neighbourly kindliness. I think one of the greatest ways in which we can co-operate, one of the greatest helps we can be to the new arrival is to see that he gets the help that honest, kind hearted neighbours can give. In my opinion that will prove a very great help indeed. I am in favour of having as many people coming to this country as desire to do so, if they are suitable for the country and can make a living here. I would go further; I am in favour of doing all we can so to change conditions and so to change some of the laws under which we work as to make it possible for those men to succeed.
Progress reported.
Civil Service Act



The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr. Marti!, Bona venture):: I have the honour to inform the House that I have received a message from His Excellency the Governor General, signed by his own hand, reading as follows:
I have received with great pleasure the Address you have voted in reply to my speech at the opening of parliament and thank you for it sincerely.
Bynq of Vimy.
Government House,
Ottawa, 16th March, 1923.


HALIBUT FISHERIES TREATY-CORRESPONDENCE TABLED
William Lyon Mackenzie King: I promised the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Meighen) that before the House rose I would lay on the Table, the correspondence passing between the government of Canada and the government of Great Britain respecting the Halibut Fisheries Treaty.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 10.55 p.m.
Monday, March 19, 1923