1924-03-03

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to inform the House that during the Recess I received communications from several members notifying me that the following vacancies had occurred in the representation, viz:
Of the Hon. Thomas Andrew Low, member for the electoral district of the south riding of Renfrew, consequent upon the acceptance of an office of emolument under the Crown.
Of the Hon. Edward Mortimer Macdonald, member for the electoral district of Pictou, consequent upon the acceptance of an office of emolument under the Crown.
Of Edward James McMurray, Esquire, member for the electoral district of North Winnipeg, consequent upon the acceptance of an office of emolument under the Crown.
Of Hon. Alexander K. Maclean, member for the electoral district of Halifax, conse-1
quent upon the acceptance of an office of emolument under the Crown.
Of Auguste Thcophile Leger, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Kent, New Brunswick, by decease.
Of Pierre Joseph Arthur Cardin, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Richelieu, consequent upon the acceptance of an office of emolument under the Crown.
I accordingly issued my warrants to the Chief Electoral Officer to make out new writs of election for the said electoral districts respectively.



NEW MEMBERS

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to inform the House that during the recess the Clerk of the House has received from the Chief Electoral Officer certificates of the election and return of the following members, viz:
Of Fenwick Lionel Kelly, Esquire, for the electoral district of Cape Breton North and Victoria.
Of Hon. Thomas Andrew Low, Esquire, for the electoral district of the south riding of Renfrew.	*
Of Hon. Edward Mortimer Macdonald for the electoral district of Pictou.
Of Hon. Edward James McMurray for the electoral district of North Winnipeg.
Of William Anderson Black, Esquire, for the electoral district of Halifax.
Of Alexandre Joseph Doucet, Esquire, for the electoral district of Kent, New Brunswick.



NEW MEMBERS INTRODUCED

[Stage Direction]
Hon. Thomas Andrew Low, member for the electoral district of South Renfrew, introduced by	Right	Hon.	W.	L.	Mackenzie King and Hon. George P. Graham.Hon. Edward Mortimer Macdonald, member for the electoral district of Pictou, introduced by	Right	Hon.	W.	L.	Mackenzie King and Hon. George P. Graham.
Hon. Edward James McMurray, member for the electoral district of North Winnipeg, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. George P. Graham.
[Stage Direction]


Governor General's Speech
Fenwick Lionel Kelly, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Cape Breton North and Victoria, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. E. M. Macdonald.
William Anderson Black, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Halifax, introduced by Right Hon. Arthur Meighen and Hon. J. B. M. Baxter.
Alexander Joseph Doucet, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Kent, New Brunswick, introduced by Right Hon. Arthur Meighen and Hon. J. B. M. Baxter.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 1, respecting the administration of oaths of office, introduced and read the first time.-Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King.

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to
inform the House that when the House did attend His Excellency the Governor General this day in the Senate chamber, His Excellency was pleased to make a speech to both Houses of parliament. To prevent mistakes, I have obtained a copy, which is as follows: Honourable Members of the Senate:
Members of The House of Commons:
I am glad to be able to congratulate you upon the many evidences of increased prosperity. Though the general economic situation still reflects the consequences of the World War, the records of production, trade transportation, employment and public finance have been uniformly increasingly favourable throughout the Dominion. The state of general employment has been distinctly better. The volume of business has steadily increased. Especially has the country reason to feel gratified at the expansion to a notable degree of its public revenues and decline of its expenditures.
I am persuaded that a reduction in taxation, and in production and transportation costs, such as will encourage the investment of capital in industrial enterprise and attract settlers in large numbers to our Dominion, are all that are necessary to effect an economic development hitherto unparalleled.
My ministers are strongly of the opinion that a reduction of taxation is of first importance, and that to this end the efforts already put forth to combine strict economy in the administration of the public services with rigorous retrenchment in public expenditures, should be furthered in as many directions as may be possible. This is the more imperative, in that the margin of controllable expenditure within which economies can be effected is necessarily restricted.
My ministers believe, however, that in virtue of economies already' effected they will, when the present financial year closes, be able to announce to the country* that for the first time since 1912-1913 the national budget has been balanced. They are further of the opinion that when the budget for the ensuing fiscal year is introduced it will be found that the relation between public revenue and public expenditure is such as to justify some immediate reduction of taxation.
In the opinion of the government, such reduction of taxation as it may be possible to effect should aim primarily at reducing the cost of the instruments of [Mr. Speaker. 1
production in the industries based on the natural resources of the Dominion, thereby aiding materially in the development of our natural resources, and, through cheapened production, effecting a diminution also in the cost of living.
Legislation will be introduced making provision for consolidation of the revenue collecting services of the government under one administrative head. With a view to simplifying and improving the existing system, it is also proposed to constitute a board to investigate and study the various modes of taxation.
National unity, not less than national prosperity, depends upon the surmounting of those barriers which have tended to separate western from eastern Canada and to discourage permanent settlement upon the land. Foremost in this regard are the problems incidental to tariff readjustments and to the marketing of agricultural and other natural products.
The stabilization and control of freight rates on grain from the head of the great lakes to Canadian ocean ports and thence to Liverpool, are receiving the closest attention. It is hoped that the report of the Royal Grain Inquiry Commission authorized last session to inquire into the subject of the handling and marketing of grain will be available for presentation to parliament this session, and that legislation based upon its recommendations may be offered for your consideration.
The further development of our magnificent inland water transportation routes, which will result in lower carrying charges for the products of the farms of the West as well as for the products of the mine, the forest, and the diversified industries of the East, is of vital importance. To aid in the accomplishment of this purpose work on the new Welland ship canal is being expedited.
A further interchange of correspondence has taken place between my government and the government of the United States with reference to the St. Lawrence waterway. In the opinion of my advisers, the importance of this question is such that further inquiry' should be instituted before a final decision is reached upon the proposals which have been under consideration.
The important subject of marine insurance as affecting our ports; the permanent equalization of the rate on Canadian flour, and the removal of discriminations in ocean rates on other Canadian products are receiving attention.
As a stimulus to stock-raising* in the Dominion, and of direct benefit to agriculture, the government has been endeavouring to obtain a lower carrying charge on all shipments of Canadian cattle.
Every effort will be made still further to develop the policy of Canadian trade via Canadian ports.
Particularly satisfactory and promising is the material improvement which has taken place in the financial condition of the Canadian National Railway system.
The Efominion Fuel Board has been created to study and make recommendations in regard to the development of our fuel resources with a view to making Canada independent, so far as possible, of foreign sources of supply. The investigations carried on by this board have already been productive of important results, and legislation to encourage Canadian production will be submitted for your consideration.
The amendments made to the Bank Act in the last decennial revision of the last session provided better guarantees for the public in banking operations; their wisdom has already been abundantly apparent. The depositors in the Home Bank have asked that they should be recouped the amount of their losses, and in their petition made representations which my advisers regard as so important as to warrant full investigation. To that end a commission has been appointed to

The late Mr. A. T. Leger
inquire fully into the allegations made by these petitioners.
The Redistribution Bill of last session respecting the representation of the House of Commons will be reintroduced at an early date. Among amendments to be proposed to the Dominion Elections Act will be one providing for the use of the transferable vote in singlemember constituencies.
Bills will again be submitted, with respect to the construction of Canadian National Railway lines, the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, and race-track gambling. Your attention will also be invited to amendments to	the	Government Annuities	Act,	to
provide additional encouragement in the promotion of thrift and self-help, and to amendments to the Militia Act with respect to the calling-out of the militia in aid of the civil power.
The Imperial Conference and the Imperial Economic Conference held	in London in	the months of	Octoberand November	last	between	representatives	of	thegovernment of	the	United	Kingdom and	of	the
British dominions and India, dealt with many subjects with which the Empire at large is interested. The reports of the proceedings of both conferences will be presented to parliament.
Members of the House of Commons:
The public accounts for the last fiscal year and the estimates for the coming year will be submitted at an early date.
You will observe that in the preparation of the estimates my advisers have felt the necessity of continuing the policy of rigid economy with respect to public services and public works, and of postponing until such time as a reduction in taxation has been effected some undertakings the early consideration of which are obviously in the public interest.
Honourable Members of the Senate:
Members of the House of Commons:
The prospects of an exceptional harvest, so bright at the close of the last session, have been more than realized. Final information as to the crops of 1923 indicate that they were the most bountiful in Canada's history. In again inviting your careful consideration to the important matters which will engage your attention, I pray that the Divine Providence, which has thus favoured our land, may guide and bless your deliberations.


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved:: That the Speech of His Excellency, the Governor General, to both Houses of Parliament be taken into consideration on Monday next, and that this order have precedence over all other business except the introduction of bills until disposed of.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

William Lyon Mackenzie King: That a special committee be appointed to prepare and report, with all convenient speed, lists of members to compose the select standing committees of this House under rule 10, said committee to be composed of Messieurs. Boland, Copp, Low, Kyte, Papineau, Tolmie, Boys, Johnston (Last Mountain) and Halbert, and that that portion of rule 10 limiting the number of members of the said committee be suspended in relation thereto.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister presented the following message from His Excellency the Governor General:
The Governor General transmits to the House of Commons a certified copy of an approved Minute of Council appointing the Honourable H. S. Beland, Minister of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment; the Honourable Thomas A. Low, Minister of Trade and Commerce; the Honourable J. H. King, Minister of Public Works and the Honourable John E. Sinclair, Minister without portfolio, to act with the Speaker of the House of Commons, as commissioners for the purposes and under the provisions of the eleventh chapter of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, intituled "An Act respecting the House of Commons.'*

[Stage Direction]
Report of the Chief Electoral Officer in conformity with the Dominion Elections Act.- Mr. Speaker.
Joint Report of the Librarians of Parliament.-Mr. Speaker.

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to inform the House that the Sergeant-at-Arms, with my approval, has appointed Edouard Taschereau, Esquire, to be his deputy during the present session of parliament.



THE LATE MR. AUGUSTE THEOPHILE LEGER

William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, in the brief
interval of time which has elapsed since our last session, the hand of death has removed from our midst Mr. Auguste Theophile Leger at the time of his death, member for the constituency of Kent, New Brunswick. Mr. Leger became a member of this House in the general elections of 1917. He was re-elected in the general elections of 1921. Being of a very modest and retiring disposition, he took little part in the debates of the House. When he spoke, however, it was always with vigour, and with equal readiness in either the French or the English language. Few members were more constant in their attendance, and few have sought more faithfully to safeguard and further the interests of their constituents.
Mr. Leger was in his 72nd year at the time of his death. He was well known and highly regarded not only in his own constituency but throughout the Maritime provinces. Throughout his life he took a keen interest in public affairs. He was no stranger to the ups and downs of politics, having contested no less than six elections, three in the provin-

Mr. Fielding-Sir Lomer Gouin
cial field and three in the federal field, having won as many as he lost. For a number of years he held the position of postmaster and later of sheriff. Each position he resigned to enter a political contest. He was a staunch Liberal, and a loyal and devoted supporter of his party and its cause.
I am sure hon. members irrespective of their affiliations, will join with me in expressing our sincere sympathy with Madame Leger and the several members of the family in their great bereavement.



RIGHT HONOURABLE W. S. FIELDING

William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, it is not
customary, I know, to allude to the absence through illness of honourable members, but the House will permit me, I am sure, to give expression to the regret which we all experience at the circumstances which prevent the right hon. the Minister of Finance from being in his seat to-day. I called on Mr. Fielding during the morning and found him full of regrets at being unable to be with us, most anxious to be able to do his part. The old zeal and energy were there, but unfortunately not the necessary strength. I assured him that his disappointment at not being present with us would be more than equalled by our disappointment at not having him here. We can only hope that the breakdown which he has sustained and which is due to overwork in the discharge of his public duties may not be as serious as at first it threatened to be. and that in his advanced years he may be permitted to enjoy the health as well as honour which his great career so richly deserves.



SIR LOMER GOUIN-RETIREMENT

William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, the honourable the former Minister of Justice found it necessary by reason of the impairment of his health to ask at the close of last year to be relieved of the responsibilities of office. I am happy to say that accepting the resignation of Sir Lomer Gouin from the ministry has not involved his resignation also from the House and that we may look fomard to the pleasure of having him with us very shortly after the House has resumed its business. At the next sitting of parliament, on Monday, I shall lay on the table the exchange of correspondence which has taken place between Sir Lomer Gouin and myself in reference to his resignation.

Right, Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, very rarely has it been our good fortune, in the now somewhat protracted period of years that I have been a member of this House, to open a session without being called upon to regret the demise of one or more of our members. Indeed, such has been the visitation of Providence on our numbers that at the moment I cannot recall any single session when the sad duty has not devolved upon us. This time, in the case of only one, the hon. member for Kent, New Brunswick, we are called upon to lament his absence from our midst. It was not my personal good fortune to come closely in contact with the hon. member for Kent when he was in the House. I did, however, on many occasions meet him, and I formed of his character an opinion much in consonance with that expressed by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) this afternoon. His companionable disposition, his concentrated devotion to his duties in parliament, his anxious fidelity on behalf of his own constituents, impressed all with whom he came in contact. It is for me a privilege to be permitted to join on behalf of hon. members on this side of the House with the words of the Prime Minister and with the expressions of sympathy which he has uttered in reference to the unfortunate widow and family of the late hon. member.
May I also associate myself with the expression of regret which has fallen from the Prime Minister's lips for the absence on account of illness of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) and the former Minister of Justice, adding only this word, that we regret alike their indisposition and that of other hon. members who are unable at this time to be amongst us.


Mr. ROBERT FORKE (Brandon):: Mr. Speaker, I think I may speak on behalf of hon. members in this part of the House and concur in the remarks that have been made in reference to the death of one who was a member of this House. I am sure we all regret that such an occurrence has taken place, and I would express my sympathy to the family of the deceased member in the great loss which they have sustained.
In regard to the absence of the hon. the Minister of Finance, I can safely say that it will be a distinct loss to this House, and I am sure that hon. gentlemen in every part of the chamber will regret the fact that the hon. minister is not with us to participate in our deliberations. We all undoubtedly recognize his ability, his strength of character and his honesty of purpose, and no doubt the

Reports and Papers
nope is general, notwithstanding all we hear that would suggest the contrary, that some day in the not very distant future, we may see him again sitting in the front ranks of the government.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 4.30 p.m. until Monday,
March 3.
Monday, March 3, 1924



NEW MEMBER

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to report to the House that the Clerk of the House has received from the Chief Electoral Officer certificates of the election of the Hon. Pierre Joseph Arthur Cardin for the electoral district of Richelieu.



NEW MEMBER INTRODUCED

[Stage Direction]
Hon. Pierre Joseph Arthur Cardin, member for the electoral district of Richelieu, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. Jacques Bureau.

William Lyon Mackenzie King: I beg to move, seconded
by Hon. Mr. Graham, that when this House adjourns on Tuesday, March 4, it do stand adjourned until Thursday, March 6.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

William Lyon Mackenzie King: I move, seconded by Right Hon. Arthur Meighen, leader of the opposition:
That what was said by Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Arthur Meighen, Robert Forke, Esquire, Sir James Louglieed, and the Hon. George G. Foster, K. C., on I rid ay last, the 29th of February, on the occasion of the unveiling by His Excellency the Governor General of the monument to the memory of Lieut.-Col. George Harold Baker, M.P., be printed in Hansard as a supplement to the proceedings of this day.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

William Lyon Mackenzie King: I promised last Thursday to lay on the Table of the House copies of the correspondence between the Hon. Sir Lomer Gouin and myself concerning Sir Lomer's resignation as Minister of Justice, and I now lay these documents on the Table.



REPORTS AND PAPERS

[Stage Direction]
Report of the Internal Economy Commission of the House of Commons for the last fiscal year.-Mr. Speaker.
Report of the Secretary of State for external Affairs for the year ended 31st March, 1923- Right Hon. Mr. Mackenzie King.
Report of the Impsrial Economic Conference, 1923; report of 1 he Imperial Conference, 1923!-Right Hon. Mr Mackenzie King.
Copies of the Liqu r Convention with the United States-Righ Hon. Mr. Mackenzie King.
Report of the Cs nadian delegates to the Fourth Assembly of the League of Nations, 1923-Hon. Mr. Graham.
Rules adopted by the various provinces relating to Criminal Appeals under the provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada-Hon. Mr. Lapointe.
Rules and amendments under the Bankruptcy Act.-Hon. Mr. Lapointe.
Report of the Department of Health, for the year ended December 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Beland.
Report of the Minister of Customs and Excise.-Hon. Mr. Bureau.
Report of the Soldier Settlement Board for the year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Robb.
Report of the Department of Immigration and Colonization for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Robb.
Report of the Auditor General for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Robb.
Statements:	Governor General's Warrants
and Treasury Board over-rulmgs; Unforeseen expenses, April 1, 1923 to February 28, 1924; Superannuation and retiring allowances for year ended December 31, 1923; Civil Service Insurance for year ended March 31, 1923; Returned Soldiers' insurance for year ended March 31, 1923; National Battlefields Commission receipts and expenditures, for year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Robb.
Lists:	Shareholders in Canadian Chartered
Banks; Unclaimed balances, etc., in Canadian Chartered Banks; Shareholders in Quebec Savings Banks; List of unclaimed balances, etc., in Quebec Savings Banks.-Hon. Mr. Robb.
Superintendent of Insurance, report on business of 1922, vol. 1, fire and miscellaneous; vol. 2, life; also report on Loan and Trust Companies for year ended December 31, 1922. -Hon. Mr. Robb.
Department of National Defence, Report for year ended March 31. 1923, Militia service and Air service, also for Naval service.- Hon. Mr. Macdonald (Pictou).
Reports and Pape,rs
[Stage Direction]
General Orders, promotions and retirements, Canadian Militia; also Naval Service.-Hon. Mr. Macdonald (Pictou).
Report of the Secretary of State for year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Copp.
Annual Report of the Minister of Agriculture, year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Report of the Director of Experimental Farms, year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Report under Destruction of Insects and Pests Act, year ended March 31, 1923; Agricultural Instruction Act, March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Report of the Department of the Interior.- Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Annual Report, Department of Mines, year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Statements:	Permits to take intoxicants
into the North West Territories; year ended March 31, 1923; Land sold by the Canadian Pacific Railway, year ended December 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Annual Report of the Postmaster General for the year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil) (for Hon. Mr. Murphy).
Annual Report of the Department of Trade and Commerce for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Rules and Forms made under the Copyright Act, 1921.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Copy of Order in Council of the 9th January, 1924, assigning the Copyright Act of 1921 to the Minister of Trade and Commerce for administration.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Annual Report of the Weights and Measures and Electricity and Gas Inspection Service for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Annual Report of the Administrative Chairman of the Advisory Council for Industrial and Scientific Research.-Hon Mr. Low.
Report of Dominion Statistician-Hon. Mr. Low.
Regulations of the Board of Grain Commissioners for the period ended August 31, 1923.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Financial Statement of the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research for the fiscal year ended March 31, [DOT]1923.-Hon. Mr. Low.

Annual Report of the Department of Public Works for the year ended March 31, 1923.- Hon. Mr. King (Kootenay).
Annual Report of the National Gallery of Canada for the fiscal year 1922-23.-Hon. Mr. King (Kootenay).
Annual Report of the Department of Labour for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923, including reports of proceedings under the following Statutes: Employment Offices Coordination Act; Industrial Disputes Investigation Act; Technical Education Act, and Government Annuities	Act.-Hon.	Mr. Murdock.
Annual Report of the Department of Public Printing and Stationery for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923, including the publication of the statutes.'-Hon. Mr. Murdock.
Report of the Commission to inquire into the Industrial Unrest among the Steel Workers at Sydney, N.S.-Right Hon. Mr. Mackenzie King.

Hon. JAMES MURDOCK (Minister of Labour):: I beg to lay on the table of the
House the authentic text of a recommendation concerning the general principles for the organization of systems of inspection to secure the enforcement of the laws and regulations for the protection of workers which was adopted by the International Labour Conference at its Fifth Session in Geneva, October 22 to 29, 1923. The existing laws and regulations in Canada for the protection of workers have in all cases been adopted by the provincial authorities, and this recommendation has accordingly been communicated officially to the respective provincial governments in conformity with the requirements of Article 405 of the Treaty of Versailles and the analogous provisions of the other treaties of peace.



REDISTRIBUTION.

[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 2, to readjust the representation in the House of Commons.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (East Calgary) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 3, to amend the Criminal Code (Capital punishment) .
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Explain.

The Address-Mr. Kelly


Mr. IRVINE:: Mr. Speaker, the purpose
of this bill is to amend section 77, subsection 2 of section 74, section 263, and section 299 of the Criminal Code. I may just explain that it provides for the substitution of life imprisonment in all cases where punishment by death is now the law. The bill was introduced last year, but it did not reach the second reading.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH


[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of the Speech of His Excellency the Governor General at the opening of the session.
Mr. F. L. KELLY (Cape Breton North and Victoria) moved:: That an address be presented to His Excellency the Governor General, offering the humble thanks of this House to His Excellency for the gracious speech which he has been pleased to make to both Houses of Parliament.
He said: I crave the indulgence of this honourable House for the imperfect manner in which I shall present such observations as I desire to make in connection with this resolution. I am a plain business man with all the limitations of such as a public speaker and as a consequence I trust the indulgence given will be the less restricted.
I am deeply sensible of the honour which has been conferred upon the great constituency of Cape Breton North and Victoria, which I have the honour to represent, by according to me the privilege of moving this motion. I am especially pleased to have this honour in view of the fact that during last summer His Excellency the Governor General, the representative in Canada of His Most Gracious Majesty the King, was pleased to come to eastern Canada, and during his tour to visit my constituency where, in North Sydney my native town, as mayor, I had the much esteemed honour and pleasure of welcoming him to my country and of presenting to him my fellow-citizens. The visit of His Excellency, the Baron Byng of Vimy, and Lady Byng, was much appreciated by all our people, and the solicitude, and sympathy displayed by Lord Byng for the returned soldiers and their relatives, served doubly to endear him, not only to the men of Canada whom he commanded on the battlefields of France and Flanders, but to all our people irrespective of race or creed; I may truly say the people of eastern
Canada are the better for his visit and that it was good for him to have been there.
It is customary, I believe, for a member to refer to outstanding features of his constituency. Cape Breton North and Victoria presents more diversified conditions than, perhaps, any other riding in Canada. Its industries are varied. In the first place we have the great industries of coal-mining and steel-making. The oldest coal-mining centre in America is situate within its boundaries; whilst its confines enclose one of Canada's greatest steel plants. Its coastal fisheries are extensive and prolific; and agriculture and lumbering therein are of primary importance. For this and other reasons, Mr. Speaker, the requirements of this constituency are many and varied as regards public works, aids to navigation, and increased public facilities in order that our industries may be more extensively developed, and our trade increased so that this constituency may, in short, come into its own.
From the business point of view the Speech from the Throne furnishes many substantial grounds for congratulation. It is gratifying to know that there are many evidences of increasing prosperity. It is pleasing to learn that whilst this country still reflects conditions many of which may be attributed to the great world war, every branch of industry gives promise of soon again being in a stable and wholesome condition. If I can judge the conditions obtaining in the business world of Canada to-day-and I presume to say I can- I believe there are indications, and many cogent reasons for believing, that Canada ere long will experience vaster and more profitable commercial developments than she has ever enjoyed in the past. In this connection, Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the people of Canada on having in power a government which has already restored public confidence to such a degree that business conditions have already improved, whilst the outlook for the future trade and development of our country is bright indeed.
Taxes are always odious, though at times necessary, Mr. Speaker, and for that reason a country should levy upon its citizenship only the minimum of taxation. That minimum should be assessed in the least obnoxious manner, and equitably levied upon those who can best afford to pay. However, I may say, capital should not be unduly harassed by excessive taxation, and the capitalist should be encouraged in his investments in every legitimate manner. Manufacturing industries can flourish and endure only where taxation and other costs are lightest, whilst the basic industry of agriculture can only survive when
s
The Address-Mr. Kelly

the necessary implements of production can be secured at the minimum of cost and the burden of taxation is made to bear lightly upon the tiller of the soil. The same may be said of that industry which necessitates those who prosecute it to go down to the sea in ships and have their living in deep waters -the fisheries. The task thrown upon the government of to-day, after the enormous war expenditure and other obligations, many of them wholly extravagant and unnecessary, incurred during the years preceding their coming into office, was and still is, a very onerous one. The Canadian people should never forget that the responsibility of the taxation of to-day does not rest upon this government, but upon their predecessors, who were dismissed from office only two years ago.
The removal of all artificial barriers to national unity and prosperity will find a responsive chord in the breast of all true Canadians. Canada is a country of widely divergent requirements, and it is only by endeavouring in the spirit of co-operation and forbearance, the East with the West, and West with the East, that we can hope to draw together conflicting elements. Canadians are one people; and in endeavouring to remove all artificial barriers to national unity and prosperity, I wish the government God-speed. Our people must be united for all time, in order that in this land of ours, wide in its great extent, and peopled as it is by men and women of all races and creeds, these various different elements may, as the days go by, become blended and linked together by national interest and Canadian spirit until the day shall come when
Their varying tints unite
And form in Heaven's light
One Arch of Peace.
I think it is always a matter of honest and legitimate inquiry to ascertain whether the national revenues for the fiscal year have been sufficient to meet the country's expenditures. Ever since the year 1912-13 our national expenditures have greatly exceeded our country's income. Therefore, is it not a matter for sincerest congratulation to have our inquiry answered this year by the words of His Excellency which assure us that his advisers, the government of Canada, since 1921 have administered our affairs and governed Canada so wisely and well, that for the first time since 1912-13 the national budget has been balanced; and further, that, when the present financial year closes, the difference between public revenue and public expenditure will be found to be such as to justify the reduction of some of those taxes which have borne so heavily on our 
people? It is, Mr. Speaker, the most helpful sign, and with the government that holds the reins of office in Canada to-day, backed by the energy, thrift, ability and character of our Canadian citizens, I make bold to predict that ere long we may look forward to the day of surpluses in our country's financial transactions, the day when we shall return to such prosperity as was enjoyed during the golden era of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's regime. Already, Sir, I can see signs of "the roseate hues of that early dawn, the brightness of that day."
Mr. Speaker, I believe the government's opinion, as expressed in the Speech from the Throne, as to where the reduction in taxation should primarily take place is in the right direction, and I see in it the precursor of the further fulfilment of the historic principles of the Liberal party.
The matter of the consolidation of the various revenue collecting services is a consummation devoutly to be wished. I feel therefore Mr. Speaker, the tax-paying people of Canada will commend the government's proposal to constitute a board for the investigation of the various modes of taxation, believing, as I do, that the object of the constitution of such a board by the government is to have the taxation levied and collected with the minimum amount of expense to the government and with the least possible trouble to and exasperation of the person required to bear the tax and pay it.
Sir, the manner of the development of transportation facilities on inland waters, or any manner of transportation which will result in the lowering of the cost of carriage of the products of any of our important primary industries, will, I feel sure, merit the approbation of all fair-minded Canadians. In taking steps toward that end, the government is showing itself truly progressive and true to Liberal principles, and I am confident its efforts will receive the reward of services well performed.
Mr. Speaker, marine insurance is a matter of paramount importance to those engaged in the shipping industry, be they the owners of ships or of the cargoes carried therein. For a great length of time Canadian shipping interests have felt themselves penalized by being charged what they consider excessive rates for marine insurance, whilst in many instances there have obtained discriminatory rates against Canadian ports. That the government is seriously considering this matter is an earnest that we can confidently look forward to progressive methods calculated to ameliorate the conditions at present alleged to obtain.

The Address-Mr. Kelly
The question of the permanent equalization of the rates on Canadian flour and the equalization of ocean rates generally will, I apprehend, find the attentive ear of our consignors and consignees and of our shipping and other business interests, and every true Canadian should earnestly commend this government for the steps proposed to be taken in that direction.
Mr. Speaker, it is exceedingly pleasing to know that the government promises to make every effort to develop the policy of Canadian trade through Canadian ports. Last year the increase of the British preference was conditioned upon the importation of British goods through Canadian ports. The effect of that condition was plainly evident at such import ports as Halifax, St. John, Quebec and Montreal, to which direct lines of shipping come from the British Isles. I would therefore urge upon the government that all goods coming across the Atlantic and Pacific for Canadian use and consumption, should, as a condition precedent to securing preferential customs terms, be imported through Canadian sea ports. The government has already in the short time they have been in power made a good beginning in that regard, and I think "That which they have done the earnest of the things that they will do."
All Canada will be pleased to learn that the financial condition of the Canadian National Railways has improved. This system has been a great drag on the revenue of Canada, with the resultant concomitant of great taxation upon our people. When railways are built they are supposed to do everything within the orbit of their power to help develop trade and industry, and it is to be hoped that the Canadian National system will keep in mind the rights of the people to cheap rates and transportation for the products of the basic industries of our country. The management of the Canadian National system should remember that the railways exist for the development of Canada, and I hope that as the people of Canada are ultimately responsible for the finances of the system the government will not be prone to divert to too great an extent the final say as to the management, policy and control of the railways from the government and parliament of Canada.
That the Dominion Fuel Board has for one of its main objects the making of Canada independent as far as possible of a foreign fuel supply is an encouraging sign of the times, and that legislation will be submitted to parliament calculated to increase Canadian production, is, I feel, of paramount importance to the great coal industry of this country. In
the province from which I come the coal industry may be termed one of the most important. To-day that industry is more or less in a state of chaos. I do not intend to consider all the reasons for the conditions obtaining, as they may be many. Part of the trouble is undoubtedly due to disagreements from time to time between employers and employees. But I feel that the chief reason for the conditions obtaining is restricted and limited markets and high transportation charges. May I therefore make the suggestion and venture the hope that in any contemplated tariff re-adjustments the coal mining industry will be sympathetically considered with a view to the assuring to this industry the Canadian market and thus securing prosperity to our people, and a 'living wage to those who work in the bowels of the earth? May I also urgently request that when transportation charges on basic products are under consideration such rates on coal be stipulated as will assure its transport to where it is required at a price equitable both to producei and consumer?
The Canadian people annually send ou of this country approximately one hundred millions of dollars for coal and coal products of various kinds, while we have within our own borders both west and east inexhaustible supplies of high-class fuel which should be used and so relieve this financial dram upon our resources. To enable the coal from east and west to supply the needs of the great central part of our country should be the aim of the government, and we look with hope to the announcement of a national policy on this important matter which will be of the greatest advantage to the whole country.
The building of railway lines where urgently [DOT]equired should always receive the favourable
"	.	-	___i_ ...L ~lhA oonlequiicvi:	

consideration of a government when the condition of the country's revenues permit of their construction, for the interior of the country can only be properly developed when there are satisfactory transportation facilities. In Canada to-day, I believe, there are many places in dire need of branch lines of railways in order to connect important sections with [DOT] the main branch lines, and so open up and develop the interior country. In this connection I may say, Mr. Speaker* I do not believe there is a place in Canada in more dire need of a branch line railway, and where the people have greater claims to have one constructed, than in the county of Victoria, Nova Scotia, which is a portion of the federal constituency of Cape Breton North and Victoria. Victoria has great natural resources, but without railway con-
The Address-Mr. Kelly

nections these resources must remain dormant and her thrifty and energetic people be deprived of the fruits of development which would most surely accrue if they had a railway through their country. I commend the building of branch lines where they are legitimately required, and in this connection I strenuously urge the construction by the government of a branch line connecting Alba on the main line of the Intercolonial Railway with Baddeck, the shire town of the county of Victoria.
It is most reassuring, Mr. Speaker, to know that as a result of the amendments to the Bank Act, enacted by parliament last year, tie act has been improved. The appointment by the government of a commission to investigate the failure of the Home Bank is, in my opinion, the most reasonable method to pursue; and I feel that when the report oi the commission is received and considered by the government of the day, they will do what is right toward all who are vitally interested in matters pertaining to this bank.
At this session, we are informed, the reports of the proceedings of the Imperial Conference held last year will be presented to parliament. In this connection I wish to congratulate the Right Honourable the Prime Minister and his colleagues who accompanied him to the conference on the manner in which we were represented overseas. The people of the Dominion of Canada have the fullest admiration for the able and distinguished manner m which they carried on the discussions and negotiations for and in behalf of this nation within the British Empire. Right truly did they set forth the true conception and ideal of our people as regards Canada's position as an autonomous entity in that galaxy of nations which will forever surround the British Throne.
Mr. Speaker, there are many other matters in the Speech from the Throne upon which I should like to comment, but this House has been so indulgent, that I feel I should not trespass any further upon its patience. I shall therefore refrain, lest further comment make my too prolix epistle fuller still. I have much honour, Sir, m moving the motion of which you have been given notice.	.
Mr E. A LAPIERRE (Nipissing) (Translation). I think, Mr. Speaker, that my first duty, in rising, is to express my heartfelt sorrow in the loss we have sustained by the death of Auguste Theophile Leger, member .or Kent, who was so unexpectedly taken away .rom the affection of his family and the friendship of all those who were in a position to appreciate the eminent qualities of his heart and soul.
(Mr. Kelly. 1
If I now glance around me, I can but equally regret the absence of two powerful parliamentary figures, the Right Hon. Mr. Fielding and Sir Lomer Gouin, as a result of illness and thereby removed from the scene of our political activities. Let us hope that Providence will still for a long time preserve to their country these* men who unsparingly devoted themselves to her moral and material prosperity.
If, on the other hand these cruel losses have not all been repaired, we should rejoice in seeing Sir Lomer Gouin's seat occupied by a man so eminent and praiseworthy as the Hon. Ernest Lapointe, the new Minister of Justice. Our most sincere congratulations equally extend to the Hon. Mr. Cardin, whom the government, by a judicious choice, has called to the important post of Minister of Marine and Fisheries.
It is not my intention to dwell at length upon the gratitude which I feel towards the Prime Minister for the marked honour which he has conferred upon the constituency of Nipissing, in choosing me to second the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. I highly appreciate the favour which is bestowed upon me to continue, in this House, the rightful tradition of seconding in French the motion on the Address. Representing a county where almost half the population is French Canadian, I feel happy to see conferred upon my constituents, that is upon a numerous group of my compatriots, the honour to vindicate in their name the right of the official use of French in our parliamentary deliberations as well as in our public service.
At the opening of a session of parliament, it is the custom to briefly review the general outlook of the country. While undesirous of going into all the particulars which such an examination would entail, may I be allowed however, to point out to your kind attention a few phases of our economic situation. Undoubtedly I shall be unequal to the task which devolves upon me. I must therefore . rely upon your forbearance to supplement my deficiencies as a speaker; however, I trust you will agree with me upon the reasons that we all have in hoping for a brighter future.
If I first cast my eyes, and this very naturally, I think, towards New Ontario, I perceive the enormous ore deposits of this vast region. Silver, nickel and gold, each day, are constantly being worked on a more extensive scale. The output of these precious minerals is already so great, that the mines of northern Ontario are bound to be rated among the most productive in the world. One might also mention the iron deposits which only

The Address-Mr. Lapierre
await the just renewal of the Dominion government's bounties to further contribute to the incalculable mineral wealth of the district. Let us not forget that the development of our mining industry will soon be one of our most valuable assets making for the return of old-time prosperity.
Already this prosperity is being felt. Thanks, indeed, to a more firm stability of the European countries, thanks to a better international feeling, we may look forward to days less beclouded than those we have just emerged from.
But our reasons for this hope are still closer at hand. They become, in a way, apparent on the simple inquiry into the wise and well balanced policy that the present government proposes to pursue. You are aware, Sir, that the Canadian people rejoice over the reassuring news of a policy fostering commerce, industry and agriculture, together with a policy of strict economy. And it is especially our farmers and the wage earners, 1 mean, those upon whom the burden of taxation falls the heaviest, that applaud the successful efforts of our present rulers. Confidence revives on the farm and in the workshops, and I have no fear in asserting here that such confidence will not be in vain.
No doubt, in order that the financial world should participate in that ever increasing sense of security which is met with in the farmer and the workman, some reform will be necessary, but they shall take place when the time is ripe for such changes. Our banking system will, no doubt, cause the government to thoroughly and immediately investigate. They will endeavour, by wise legislative measures, to stamp out, where they may exist, certain suspicions, nay even certain fears inspired by recent and unfortunate financial failures. Convinced that stability cannot otherwise be established, the government will endeavour to consolidate a banking system where nothing will be left to chance, and where the business man, the fanner and the wage-earner will be equitably protected in their savings.
As everything bears a relation to one another when it is a question of making a country prosperous, the government will take every possible opportunity of keeping a close watch on agricultural progress and helping its normal developments. Such foresight on the part of the government will be the more justified because agricultural conditions in the West, notwithstanding the exceptional abundance of the recent harvest, have not brought that prosperity which was expected and have even left the western farmer in a
more difficult financial situation than the previous years.
If it was now deemed necessary to review the industrial development of the east, one would be inclined to acknowledge that it depends largely on the more or less prosperous conditions of the eastern and western farmers, who are large consumers of products and contribute greatly to the commercial, industrial and financial expansion.
However, there exists another cause for the progress and prosperity to which I want to draw for a moment your attention. How much have we not deplored within the past few years, the enormous drain which our National Railways effected on the public funds. Nevertheless, to the great satisfaction of all, these distressing deficits of our state railways are transformed from month to month into surpluses which are playing an important part in our finances.
As a result of an energetic and wise railway policy, the national debt has decreased instead of increasing and even the ultimate financial success of our important routes of communication is anticipated. Indeed, the public has not failed to appreciate the improvements in our railway service, and in all possible manner has it generously given its support. Everybody now wishes to travel on the state owned railways, and all are desirous of confiding to their care the transportation of their merchandise.
There, however, exists another problem to which the government will devote their earnest attention and that is the problem of the St. Lawrence waterway. I do not wish to discuss anew a question which has already been debated at length. On the other hand, I should feel remiss to my duty if I remained silent on so important a question. Indeed, one must not lose sight of the civilizing influence the St. Lawrence exerted in our history. Explorers, missionaries and pioneers followed that great inland artery. The whole of our national history is linked, so to speak, to this wide fluvial route, unsurpassed throughout the world. For this reason must we congratulate the government in not acting too hastily, when it is a question of safe guarding, on that route, our most sacred interests. In appointing a commission composed of Canadian engineers, the government will have the backing of all those who have had knowledge of certain subsidised propaganda foreign to Canada, a mischievous propaganda, on behalf of an undertaking which not only would entail an enormous capital expenditure and maintenance charges, but which might

The Address-Mr. Lapierre
also bring on dangerous international complications. Why, indeed, should we expose ourselves to see the control of the St. Lawrence river pass into foreign hands. The whole question is of the utmost importance. It therefore, seems to me that we should include in the above mentioned commission, a number of competent engineers, clear minded business men, and especially some representatives of the large shipping companies interested in the real progress of our river navigation and the financial success of the magnificent port of Montreal. In their eagerness to seize their prey, the promoters of this canal scheme have unskilfully hidden their secret intentions, by dangling before the eyes of the western farmer, the spectacle of an Aquitania majestically sailing over lake Superior to fetch and carry its cargo of wheat destined for Liverpool. Indeed, everybody * knows now that it would be the water powers which would be developed along the water course between Kingston and Montreal, which is the sole aim of a propaganda so ingeniously contrived. The government will know how to deal with such rapacity.
Before, however, starting negotiations for a treaty relating to this proposed canal system, would it not be in the interest of the country to make a supplementary survey of the Georgian Bay canal scheme, would it not be better to encourage rather this truly national undertaking which, while contributing to the development of all the water powers required by eastern Ontario, would remain under Canada's control?
And since we are discussing water powers, let us hope that the Dominion government will look into that vita! question: the proposed diversion of the waters of lake Michigan into the canal system of Chicago. If this diversion took place, it would become a real menace to the port of Montreal, and also to all the water powers already established between the Great Lakes and the gulf of St. Lawrence. These are all most serious problems.
But there are others which call for all the watchfulness of the Canadian government, and immigration is one of them.
So far as I am concerned, Sir, I shall heartily approve the government immigration policy, as long as that policy,-which I have no reason to doubt,-will continue to favour the coming of desirable immigrants. Already the benefit of a well-selected immigration has made itself felt through the whole country, and I am satisfied that no one needs to brood over the kind of immigration which

is directed at present towards the Canadian west. We need immigration if we wish to develop efficiently our vast western territories which, within a few years, will become the most favoured region for European immigrants.
However, if on the one hand, we are to welcome a healthy foreign immigration, on the other hand the government must help us to stem the continuous exodus of our youth, and especially that of our French Canadian youths towards the neighbouring republic. The depopulation of our rural districts has, indeed, become a national scourge against which we cannot too strongly react. That is to say, the present government must take the necessary measures to retain those of our people who, attracted by vain illusions, might have had the momentary weakness of forsaking the sacred soil of their ancestors.
Before resuming my seat, let me here state very clearly, Sir, that if this task does appear difficult it certainly is not beyond the scope of the government's means of action. The people have full confidence in the ability, integrity and patriotism of those who are at present in charge of their destinies, and it is not without reason that the Canadian people feel themselves perfectly secure. Guided by a valiant and wise 'leader, an economist, coupled with a statesman and, who .is besides advised by able and devoted lieutenants, the Canadian government cannot fail to rise to the height of the lofty purposes it has in view. Moreover, inspired by the wise and grand traditions bequeathed to it by the Great Deceased, the Liberal party will pursue its upward trend towards the accomplishment of its ideals, and it will as well guide this Canada of ours towards its immortal destinies.
I have the honour to second the motion of the hon. member for Cape Breton North and Victoria (Mr. Kelly).


Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, it is my duty and my privilege to be first to congratulate the mover (Mr. Kelly) and the seconder (Mr. Lapierre) of the Address this afternoon on the acceptable way in which they have performed a none-too-easy task. All of us recall how trying is the ordeal when a new member first addresses this House. Sometimes the ordeal does not become very much mitigated with custom, but nevertheless the first is the most trying, and the success of the hon. members I acknowledge freely and compliment them thereupon. Possibly in respect particularly of the hon. member for

The Address-Mr. Lapierre
Cape Breton North and Victoria (Mr. Kelly), if I caught aright a portion of his address, I should congratulate the government too. I observe that he is filled with ardor and enthusiasm over the many evidences of prosperity abroad in our land, and equally does he compliment the country on the excellence of the administration which now presides over it. I am sure partisan adulation could scarcely reach a more exquisite perfection.
I welcome other hon. members to this House who for the first time are among us; and may I extend my congratulations this afternoon to the hon. member who has lately become Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Cardin) and as well to the Solicitor General (Mr. Mc-Murray) on having attained cabinet rank. Cabinet rank is, of course, the legitimate ambition of all who look to progress so far as their personal positions are concerned in this House of Commons, and its attainment is a matter that calls for the congratulations of us all. Nor do I think that the Minister of Marine and Fisheries and the Solicitor General are to any great degree responsible for those conditions and that state of government which makes the grounds for congratulation so limited at this time. Those are circumstances into which they come and of responsibility for which they from this time on will have to assume their share.
I noted of course, in the Speech from the Throne and still more after listening to the hon. member for Cape Breton North, that the government is extremely anxious to convince the House and the country that Canada is in a state of very satisfactory prosperity. The first sentence is a verdict and I am sure it has been read with curiosity and amazement by many scores of thousands of people in this country. The government in coming to the conclusion, had I think, chiefly its own interests in mind. I do not just know what these evidences are; much less do I know what the government has contributed to such evidences as may exist. I have noticed in official pronouncements, that great credit is taken for the comparatively large figures of our import and export trade. This is constantly pointed to as in itself sound and conclusive evidence of a wholesome and healthy national life, I want to examine for a moment-because this is of maximum importance-these trade returns with a view to inquiring whether or not they disclose such a proper choice of policies as tend to develop our country and increase our population and our wealth. I want to dissect some features of them in order that we may know just what their
significance is, just what they do reveal and what lesson they teach as to the proper policies for our country.
It is true that for the fiscal year last past our import and export figures are greater than two years ago, greater than one year ago-and I propose in the comparisons I make not to go back beyond the three years. For, be it remembered, in the years that preceded, the total trade of our country in almost every line, exceeded the figures of the past three years in such vast proportions that comparison now is impossible. But, after the larger returns which were in the main the outgrowth of war conditions and which followed for a time after the war closed, the inevitable reaction came, here as in every other country. In 1921 that reaction was at its worst-at its worst up till then in the Dominion, in the United States, and in other countries as well. From that date on, we had a right to expect an improvement. Countries similarly situated to our own expected it, and countries similarly situated to our own realized that expectation. We have to look only to that one great nation which most closely in all geographical and commercial respects resembles our own, with which comparison can always most fairly be made: we have only to look to the republic to the south to ascertain how great has been the realization of their dreams of revival. The progress of the United States since 1921 has been phenomenal. Their country has increased in wealth: their trade has multiplied, their internal trade far more rapidly than their export trade; their financial condition has vastly improved. Instead of struggling the world over to induce people to come among them they are actually spending millions to keep people out. In this Dominion of Canada our returns show no such favourable condition. While we have exports now of about $1,014,000,000, as against $802,000,000, in the calendar year 1921 and $884,000,000 for the calendar year 1922, and while our imports show an almost equal advance, the nature of these exports and the results on the country, and the nature of these imports and their results on the country are such to give serious ground for reflection.
We are all aware, of course, that the year 1922 witnessed in this Dominion a grain crop production the greatest in all our history. The Speech from the Throne, of last year stated a just conclusion, that never had Canada been blessed with so bountiful a harvest as in the year 1922. What we saw in 1922 has been surpassed in the year just ended. The

The Address-Mr. Meighen
crop production vouchsafed by Providence is by all odds and from all aspects the greatest in volume in the whole history of our Dominion. Indeed, when I state that our grain exports alone for the year through which we have just passed exceed by almost one hundred millions of bushels the exports of 1921, hon. members will see that in so far as the bounty of Providence is concerned, Canada has had the basic conditions upon which a rapid advance should have been made. Our grain exports have multiplied in volume, accounting very largely for the increase in exports shown in the trade returns. Let not any hon. member misunderstand me when I make this criticism: I am as glad as any hon. member of this House that our grain exports have so increased. This is a yearly crop, and the greater the crops the better for us all, provided, of course, that they are produced and sold under conditions that make for the prosperity of those who give the toil and take the risk;.-I will refer later on to what those conditions are and will try to ascertain just how far this greater production is reflected in prosperity, how far it is one of those evidences of which a government should boast.
But I find that the great increase in our exports is not even in agricultural products, but that it is to be found in what is known as "wood and the products of wood," largely wood, pulp and paper, raw unmanufactured wood, and wood manufactures. In these days have gone up from $186,000,000 in 1921 to $267,553,000 in 1923, an increase in that time of a very large percentage, and of some $80,000,000 in total product.
These wood products exported are very largely exported in the raw, in fact, there has been an increase in raw wood products exported far greater than in manufactured wood products, an increase so great as almost to startle one who examines the trade returns. I will give them later in my address. But in all respects, wood and the products of wood constitute by far the biggest advance in the trade exports of our country, and the least of all the factors in the advance in wood and the products of wood is the ultimate product, paper; while there has been an increase here, it has been the smallest of the whole, and the biggest increase has been in the raw lumber, the pulpwood and the timber, which is sent in vast quantities from our land. Indeed when one looks at the exports to the United States, he finds that over half, or to be exact, $226,000,000 odd out of $422,000,000 worth, consists of wood and the

products of wood. Now, in this regard I wish to make a reflection. Wood constitutes one of the precious resources of this Dominion. Not only is the resource precious, but it is an irreplaceable resource; it is a fast diminishing resource, it	is a
resource depleting so rapidly that a few short years in the life of those now living is, at the present rate going to see the end. Wood and wood products we are selling, but when we are selling them we are selling our estate. We are in the position of a man who, competing with his neighbour, shows greater returns year by year by selling the neighbour some of his land. There is nothing to boast of, there is nothing to rejoice over, there is nothing to congratulate ourselves upon in this very rapid depletion of our wood resources. When the trees of Canada are gone, generations will pass before that resource can be restored. But what I want tc emphasize most is this: The object of the government should be to see to it that such regulations are applied, such policy adopted as brings within our own Dominion the maximum result for the depletion of these our irreplaceable natural resources.
An examination of the returns at the page I have in front of me shows, as well, that we are selling to the United States some $49,000,000 of agricultural products, and that during the same year we have purchased from the United States $78,814,000 odd of agricultural products; or that we a small nation are buying from a country of 110,000,000 of population about $1.60 worth for every $1 worth that that 110,000,000 are buying from us. This is the result of course of American tariff policy. It is a contingency that we must always anticipate, a contingency from which we may be freed for some short period of time, but which is bound to recur, just as certainly as the United States is bound to live. This is the condition under which we exist to-day. It is not a healthy condition. Under a consistently pursued tariff policy suited to this Dominion this would not continue. But this government in face of an American policy which shuts the door of the United States in the face of the farmer of Canada holds the door open to American produce coming into this Dominion to compete against the products of the Canadian farm. The Americans control their policy; we control ours, but I do not see any indication in the Speech from the Throne that any Canadian policy is about to be adopted which is going to give, the farmers of this country the advantage they deserve-and ought to have in the market which they helped to build.

The Address-Mr. Meighen
There is as well a largely increased export of minerals from our Dominion, and minerals in the raw constitute a large portion of that export. It is a matter for congratulation to Canada that our mineral development is proceeding. I am waiting to hear-and I have no doubt we shall hear-hon. members of the government of the Dominion claiming credit for the mineral development of northern Ontario and northern Quebec. Perhaps they will venture to indicate by what means they are responsible. There is mineral development there. It accounts for considerable of the increase in our exports. But let us remember our duty is to see that these resources vouchsafed to us are to the utmost finished within the land that is our own, and to a minimum sent out of the country in such state that other nations and other peoples may get the advantage from them. These trade returns all indicate that this is not bemg done, they indicate that we are engaged to too great extent in the process of shipping raw resources in millions from our country to feed the workshops of other lands.
Looking for a moment at our imports, one cannot help but observe that we are buying from the United States very little in the way of raw resources-at least of raw resources that we do not possess ourselves. What we are buying from that country consists mainly of manufactured products-manufactured products which to the extent of seventy or eighty per cent constitute goods that can be made out of the resources of our own Dominion, or out of resources of our Dominion supplemented in part by imports which we easily can obtain. The United States have so developed their country and so directed their trade policy that they find themselves now shipping manufactured goods into Canada, goods produced by their own workmen, produced from their own farms and mines and developed in their factories, and they are buying from us the raw resources; a happy condition indeed for a country to be in.
From Great Britain we find our imports growing rapidly, and multiplying largely in the way of fibres and textiles. I hope hon. members opposite take some satisfaction from the trade returns in this regard. The multiplication of our imports of fibres and textiles since this government came into operation is something that challenges the attention of every Canadian who loves his own country first. Some forty million dollars' worth of woollens and woollen yarns came in last year, of which over eighty per cent could have been made in this Dominion with the machinery, and the plants already in existence here and by the workmen already trained in their manufacture.
Looking at our trade returns again, I notice that we still expand our binder twine importations, some 53,900,000 pounds, last year. We expand as well our importations of bituminous coal. This is what I call particularly to the attention of the hon. member for Pictou, the Minister of Militia and Defence.


Mr. MACDONALD (Pictou):: National
Defence.


Arthur Meighen: The Minister of National Defence. Here is something, perhaps, for more national defence. It will be recalled that in order to excite the hopes and enthusiasm of his compatriots in Nova Scotia in the election of 1921 the hon. gentleman solemnly bound himself to move in this House a resolution for the increase of the duties on this bituminous coal, and he deplored the fact that this Dominion, and particularly Ontario and Quebec, were practically living off Nova Scotia, poor old Nova Scotia, and were not compelled to pay enough for the privilege of importing American coal-and the House is still waiting for the resolution. I heard the hon. member for Cape Breton North (Mr. Kelly) say that the coal industry in his province of Nova Scotia was in a state of chaos. Hon. members will be surprised at this statement.	Does not the hon.
member recall that to secure his election to this House his confrere from Nova Scotia, the Minister of National Defence, went upon his platform and told the people of his county that the coal industry was in the best condition it had been in for years, due to the fostering care of the government of which he was a member? I happen to have brought his speech with me, for another purpose, but I may just as well use it for this purpose.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Do not take the report that appeared in the newspapers.


Arthur Meighen: I am reading a stenographic report, and I would be just as happy if the hon. minister contradicted it as if he affirmed it.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I will deal
vith the promises of my hon. friend in Cape Breton North election before the debate is closed.


Arthur Meighen: My hon. friend does not seem anxious to hear his own speech. The stenographic report says:
This business of buying coal from the United States has been stopped. The St. Lawrence markets have been restored. So far as our coal and steel industries are concerned, the year 1923 will have been one of the greatest years in this country.

The Address-Mr. Meighen
I find that notwithstanding the embargo the amount of bituminous coal imported into this country last year was $49,899,099, as against the year before $37,387,285.-I am sure the people of Nova Scotia will hope that this class of embargo will not be continued too long-and as against the year before of $48,631,095, when the hon. member promised he would move a resolution in order to make it more difficult to import bituminous coal.
As regards cottons, importations have increased in two years from $46,877,000 to $70,399,000 last year. This, I find, is of considerable interest to many in our country. I find it is of considerable interest to many who, under conditions of to-day, are compelled to close their plants, and many, who, under conditions of to-day, are compelled to sell their homes and to seek in the United States labour denied them here.
Let me refer to a few further features. Our imports of farm implements-and this may have a special interest this session-rose from S7,732,000 the year before-the last year, indeed, before the effect of the hon. gentlemen's legislation came fully into view-to $11,893,646, or an increase in one year of about 55 per cent. If indications in the Speech from the Throne are correct, this, forsooth, is to be cured by making the importation of farm implements easier still.
Other features are interesting. Imports of rolling mill products, which amounted to $28,600,000 in 1921, increased to $50,800,000 in 1923. It will be interesting to have a calculation of how many artisans of Canada have been exiled from our country because of those importations.
As regards farm products, however, it is true that our grain crop has vastly increased, that our grain production has been gratifying in the extreme. I am quite aware that this condition is not universal, because there are eections of the West particularly in Manitoba which have suffered. Nevertheless, if we take Canada as a whole, a tremendous increase in our grain production has been vouchsafed by Providence. But for those products of the farm that are in the nature of manufactures themselves, largely manufactured on the farm, instead of an increase, there is a constant diminution. For example-and this I call to the attention of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell); I did not observe any mention of it in any of those speeches he made during his three or four months sojourn in western Canada this year-our butter exportations went down in one year from $8,015,000 to $4,900,000 last year. Our cheese

exportations have gone down from $27,086,000 in 1921 to $23,600,000 this year, and cheese is one of the largest of the farm products of our country. Our egg exportations have declined from $5,444,000 to $2,900,000. These are some of the products of the farm that mainly count. These are the products of the farm the trend and current of which reveal whether or not a proper policy is being pursued:	One does
not judge the efficiency of government policy by the quality of the weather, by the warmth of the sun, by prevalence or absence of rust, by the visitations of hail; one judges the effects of a government policy by its reflection in trade returns which witness and give proof of the multiplying occupations of the people in their own country. However you put this government to the test, especially in those fields which it has invaded, where it has tried its prentice hand at legislation, in every case you find results that are disastrous or approaching disaster.
I referred a moment ago to the increased exportations of grain, and I stated that almost 100,000,000 bushels-or to be exact, 96,000,000 bushels-more had been grown for export last year than in the year 1921. At the same time, I find-and I do not attribute this, except in part, to the government itself, because now I am referring to those so-called evidences of prosperity as disclosed in trade returns-I find that wheat in 1923 sold at $1.06 a bushel at the shore. This was the average obtained by the Canadian exporter over the year 1923. The average obtained by the Canadian exporter in 1921 was $1.46 for every bushel. This shows a drop to the exporter from $1.46. to $1.06, or approximately 25 per cent. But this does not tell the whole story. While the price of farm products has been falling, the cost of transport, inclusive of lake transport and the cost of handling, instead of falling has actually increased and to-dav the result is this, that the farmer is securing himself much less than the 25 per cent reduction would account for. It is undoubtedly true that for the whole product of the West for 1923 as compared with the product of the West for 1921, the fanner actually obtained only about 70 per cent of the amount that he obtained per bushel in 1921. And, be it remembered, the year 1921 was the year when hon. gentlemen went abroad through the land with flaming swords telling the farmers how they were oppressed by an autocratic government; how the middleman was bleeding them; how they were not getting for their grain the price they deserved; and how, at the same time, because of government policy, they were being charged excessive | prices for the goods which they purchased.

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A few more figures, however, are of interest. I have in my hand the export figures again, and I find that our exports of meats have diminished from $33,000,000 to $23,000,000 in two years; that, for example, our exports of bacon have gone down from $25,000,000 to $18,000,000; that our exports of beef have gone down from $323,000 to $226,000. At the same time, our exports of the products of the mine, in the raw state and manufactured, have gone up from $59,000,000 to $123,000,000 in two years. These are the things that actually disclose the meaning of our trade returns, and I want to ask: Are those exports being reflected, as they ought to be reflected, in the betterment of the Canadian home? Are they especially being reflected in the betterment of those classes of our population who, for years, have been in our land engaged in the historic occupations of this country?
I promised to give the figures in regard to exportations of wood and wood products, unmanufactured. Two years ago the figures were $74,136,000, and this year the figures are $123,694,000. This outside of grain is the big item of the whole export schedule.
* There are one or two other figures which 1 shall give, and then pass on to some observations upon them. I refer particularly to woollen importations:	Woollen importations
have gone up to $39,389,000, an increase of some $4,000,000 in the last year alone; that lefers only to a portion of the importations. When we include woollen yarns the figures are much greater still.
Now I desire to make some observations on the legislative efforts of this administration to stem the tide that has been proceeding. This government, of course, came into power committed to a tariff policy which had been resisted by the previous administration, which, by all members of that administration and by the party which it represented in this Dominion, had been described as a policy bound to result in disaster to our country if implemented in actual legislation. By that tariff policy the present government bound themselves; they undertook not merely to revise the tariff downwards -but to sweep away entirely all customs duties on large classes of importations-on importations of implements of production, of food products, of lumber, of cement and of fertilizers, in short, comprehending a whole long list of classes of articles. In addition to this the government pledged themselves to a substantial reduction on many other fundamental lines comprising on the whole the vast majority of all the importations of this Dominion. Immediately they got into power they proceeded to cast aside 2
that programme. Instead, they began to describe it by indefinite names; they called it something which was all right in 1919 but, as the hon. Minister of Marine (Mr. Cardin) says wholly inapplicable in the present day and generation; they described it, in the words of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), as a chart and compass to be looked at but not to be followed; they described it, in the words of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding), as something which he never believed in at all and did not believe in to-day, and never intended to put into effect. In that policy not one hon. gentleman on the government benches had any more belief than we have on this side of the House. But in order to entice to their side while in parliament, hon. members to my left, they proceeded to give little concessions here and there, hoping that the results might not be too baneful commercially and would be profitable politically. They went upon the principle that Round white stones will serve, they say,
As well as eggs to make hens lay.
And so they touched the tariff on farm implements; they touched the tariff on textiles; they touched the tariff particularly on woollens; and they touched the tariff on British boots and shoes but not on the American product. Now let us examine the effect of the government's intrusions in tariff policy. I speak first of farm implements. I wonder what has been the progress of the disease since the government applied its cure. Farm implements were too high; that was the great complaint. Throughout western Canada they complained that the farmer was being mulcted by the big manufacturers; the then " 'autocratic " government had so legislated, they said, that he had to pay too much for his implements of production. Such was the disease. Let us examine its progress so far. There has been a reduction of 2i per cent duty on farm implements. How much has there been in the price? Eevery hon. gentleman to my deft and every hon. gentleman elsewhere in this House who has purchased farm implements during the latter part of last year found himself paying not less but more; something in the neighbourhood of 20 per cent to-day represents the increase in farm implements over what they cost when hon. gentlemen opposite came into power. I do not attribute the increased cost to the reduction of the tariff; I do not think the tariff had the slightest effect at all on the price; nor do I believe that whatever they do now it will have any real effect, taking one year with another. It will merely remove the

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manufacture from one country to another; it will merely dispose of it to the United States instead of holding it in Canada; and in a very short time the farmers' last state will be found to be worse than the first. What 1 emphasize to hon. gentlemen opposite is the fact that they are not making very much progress in the cure; they are not affording very much relief to the farmer who is getting less for his grain and paying more for his implements.
Coming to boots and shoes, what has been the result? The hon. member for Quebec East (Mr. Lapointe) will hope it has not been much; and I venture to suggest to hon. gen-tlement to my left that if they want this session to test this government's fidelity to its platform they might just make a drive on the duty on boots and shoes. The Minister of Justice (Sir Lomer Gouin) has gone; he no longer reigns in that powerful seat. The hon. member for Quebec East has taken his place. He went through the West denouncing protection. I repeat, if hon. gentlemen want to test just how far the Minister of Justice believes in their policy, let them centre their attack, let them face their barrage against the duty on boots and shoes. When you touch only the class that comes from Britain you do not affect things so much; but in the condition of the boot and shoe industry to-day the Minister of Justice will take very good care that the profane hands of hon. gentlemen to my left wall not be applied to that schedule, a schedule which powerfully con-concerns his county.
They got into the woollen field; they lowered the duty on British woollens, the reduction being 2i per cent in some cases and in other minor cases 5 per cent. With what result? It has multiplied the introduction of British goods and brought about the displacement of the Canadian product, with the consequence that since the first of 1923, of our 124 woollen factories in Canada 20 have closed altogether; and as regards the 124, of all their machinery, cards, looms and all the rest 40 per cent are idle at the present time and the artisans have passed to the United States. The government have thus relieved the unemployment problem to the satisfaction of the Minister of Labour (Mr Murdock). And the process still goes on. All these "evidences of prosperity" I hold now to the view of hon. gentlemen to my left. But the "evidences of prosperity"do not stop here. What is the real test of the attractiveness of a country? Is it not the success with which that country maintains the basic population of which it is composed? Is not

the first object of government, after defence- for defence, of course, comes first, and all of us in the generosity of our hearts will congratulate this government upon its noble efforts at defence-after defence, surely, is not the first object of every administration, is not the very reason for a government's existence, so to pursue public policy as to hold within the country the people who inhabit it? The country belongs first to its parent stocks. These parent stocks are here, and a government that fails to hold that class of population labours in vain in searching the cities and back lanes of Europe to get people to take their place. Unless we can first set ourselves right and pursue a course which makes it worth while for the people of the Dominion to stay at home, that makes it worth while for our parent French-Canadian people and our parent English-Canadian people, to stay at home, what futility is the effort to get other people to come in, themselves to become mere transients, passing through the sieve of Canada into the great reservoir to the south!
Now, what has been going on? I read with some amusement a speech made the other day by the hon. Minister of Labour (Mr. Murdock) in which he tried to persuade an andience in Montreal that, after all, we were not losing very many of our people. I went to the trouble of getting figures on the subject, and I know of no reason why they should not be given to this House. I have the official figures from the American government, giving the exodus from Canada of those who declare themselves as intending to reside in the United States. These figures do not include those who go over there, I am sorry to say in large numbers, and do not so declare themselves, but who nevertheless remain within the folds of the republic. In the year 1921 the figures run, per month, 5,611; 4,308 ; 4,500; 6,009; 5,680 ; 4,644 ; 2,919; 3,763;-to be brief, an average for the year of 4,410 per month. This was the year proclaimed by hon. gentlemen opposite as a year of great distress, this was the year during which they expended so much pity upon the people of Canada for having to live under the sway of the government of that time. For 1922 I will give the figures too, because I recall that the Prime Minister argued two years ago that the effect of our policy would not pass away for a few months, but that after it had passed away the sun of prosperity would shine. I am going to show just how fast the clouds have receded and the sun has risen since he came into office. In 1922,

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particularly until the budget came down, and the government's new taxes came down, the time the government's brand new modified tariff policy was produced, the figures ran just the same as the year before: 3,015; 2,780 ; 3,323;-coming to April 5,309, and then 5,253. The end of the year though witnessed a figure of seven thousand for the first time in many a long day. The average for the year 1922 was 5,198 per month. Hon. gentlemen will see that the clouds were not passing away; on the contrary, towards the end of the year they were thickening andi bringing little comfort to my friends opposite. In 1923 for the first three months the figures were 7,863; 7,312; 8,896. About then came the second budget, and I ask that these figures be considered by themselves. Commencing with April 1923 they run 16,317; 18,658; 18,879; 16,310; 16,685; 16,874; 15,858 ; 20,988; 17,552, or an average from April on of 17,595 per month. This is the fine fruit and flower of the policy of hon. gentlemen opposite, this is the bright illuminating sun that dawned as soon as they got their stride and a chance to implement their glorious policies!
Nor did these figures tell the whole tale. Everybody knows-none know it better than the members of the government themselves- that the actual number of those who have gone from our Maritime provinces, from our central provinces and from our West as well, even in the face of a multiplied farm production, is far vaster than those figures reveal. This is the state of affairs we are labouring under now, this is the crowning evidence of that prosperity proclaimed in the Speech from the Throne and in the address of the hon. member for Cape Breton North and Victoria (Mr. Kelly).
Did hon. gentlemen make any other effort last year to bring about better conditions? If so, what has been their success? I often wonder if this session is to witness a repetition of the grotesque futility of the sessions that have gone. We have had some legislation from this administration. I do not see much reference to it in this remarkable Speech from the Throne. For example, we had Wheat Board legislation from this government in an attempt to relieve conditions in the West. They were going to answer the demand of western Canada as it ought to be answered, and they put on Wheat Board legislation which was to help the western farmer to get his crop to the market at the lowest expense and secure him the biggest return. So they passed the Wheat Board bill for one year, with power to renew it for 24
another year. There it stayed for a year, and then they passed an order in council to renew it for another year. They empowered themselves to appoint a board to take care of the wheat of the western farmer. Well, I do not need to say this board was never appointed. The legislation remained there, but nothing further was ever done, and now I do not see any promise that it is going to be renewed.
Do hon. gentlemen to my left realize the horror of this situation? With what shrieks of despair the clouds would be pierced in western Canada if the farmers there understood that that precious jewel of legislation, the Wheat Board Act, was going to pass into outer darkness! How frightful the prospect! No more Wheat Board legislation from the government of Hon. Mackenzie King. The farmers have to handle the thing themselves, and do the best they can, abandoned by the administration that promised them so much. If ever there was a gold brick palmed off on innocent electors, it was the Wheat Board legislation of this government.
Then they tried their hand again. They passed last session what I think is called an Inland Freight Rates Regulation Bill, by which they were going to control freight rates on the Great Lakes. I wonder how many hon. gentlemen have read the tragic history of that legislation. Of course, it was preceded by a commission-such has been the orthodox plan ever since 'this anti-commission government came into power-and with the customary flourish of trumpets the bill became law. This bill compelled all those transgressors, those iniquitous vessel-owners, who they said had been extorting money unduly from the western farmer, those men who in 1922 took millions in addition to all that had been paid for freight carriage on the lakes in 1921; those who had absorbed the Crowsnest pass reduction and put it in their pockets, the bill compelled all those transgressors to file their tariffs with the Grain Commission before they could charge anything. The Grain Commission wasi to have power to reduce them to such a level as they thought to be just to the man who raised the grain. Well, the early consequences all of us recall. The American boats, not being under the jurisdiction of Canadian law, simply refused to comply. They fled the field; they confined themselves to American traffic. The business was thus given to the Canadian boats, and they had a monopoly. The whole traffic they had and a monopoly they enjoyed; and the Minister of Labour, with that Combines Investigation bill, sat silently in his
\
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An hon. MEMBER:: The Halibut treaty.


Arthur Meighen: Somebody suggests the Halibut treaty. There is no Halibut treaty. There would have been, I presume, only for the pride of the then Minister of Marine (Mr. Lapointe), who wanted to see his signature all alone with no British ambassador's name beside it to detract from its glory. But I am told-just to diverge-that there has been a tremendous diplomatic triumph. Forsooth, the British government has been persuaded to consent that after this, in such case3 as that of the Halibut treaty, where the concern is mainly and wholly Canadian, the minister may sign alone again. The condition though is this, that if our government will first communicate with the British government and with all the other dominions and find that none of them have any interest in the subject, and if after that the British government consents to the treaty by recommending His Majesty the King to authorize signature, then the Canadian minister's signature can go on and stay on in solitary magnificence. This is the new pinnacle on the autonomy of Canada erected by the Prime Minister in the late conference.
Possibly I should refer to some other efforts, not wholly legislative, to remedy conditions. I am not so sure that the object here was so much to remedy conditions for the country as to remedy conditions for the government; but during the summer we had a repetition of those historic negotiations with hon. members to my left. The former leader of the Progressive party, the hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Crerar), was in the same manner as before hailed to Ottawa, this time accompanied by the Prime Minister of Saskatchewan. They were brought down amid very considerable publication of manifestoes and the beating of drums. What was going to take place no one knew. The public were warned, but they were held in suspense. Newspapers not in the service of but very loyal to the administration, under trying circumstances, proclaimed through their Ottawa correspondents that a marriage was contemplated-indeed, that the banns were soon to be published. After all it had been ascertained, said the correspondent of the Toronto Globe, that the demands of the western Progressives were really very small; they did not want nearly as much as was expected, and these two gentlemen were announced as being right on the threshold of the Liberal family mansion ready to take the last step into the
bonds of political matrimony. But no sooner had this dispatch received publication than the whole thing ended. The clouds dispelled. All fears of hon. gentlemen from provinces to the east were proven to be groundless, for did not the hon. member for Marquette publish a statement that he and his colleague were not sent for to consider entering the government at all? Nothing in the way of such negotiation was ever even discussed.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Hear, hear.


Arthur Meighen: Why certainly, and the
Prime Minister says "Hear, hear." All they were sent for was to ascertain the views of western Canada, on the tariff and other subjects. Well, one would think that the Prime Minister would have known from hon. gentlemen to my left pretty much what the views of western Canada, as represented by them, are on the tariff, and on other subjects too. They have not been wholly silent in this House. But if he was not ready to take the spoken expressions of hon. gentlemen to my left, why did he not have some faith in his own ministers? Was not the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) in western Canada all summer? Indeed, did he not do the work of the Agriculture department out there-travelling to and fro among the people, occasionally delivering speeches, and drawing his salary at the end of the month? I think I have now pretty well completed the gambit of his work as Minister of Agriculture. There he spent the summer, and from the west he returned. The Minister of Marine and Fisheries of that day, the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe), was there as well. He travelled through the prairie provinces, and there he denounced, no doubt amid applause, the horrors of protection. There by his conduct he invited the Progressive party to come on with an onslaught against the duty on boots and shoes. He delivered himself of his very best in western Canada. He was a missionary to bring the Progressives once more to the side of the government. He too returned and laid his report at the feet of the Prime Minister. But this report and that of the Minister of Agriculture the Prime Minister contemptuously cast aside. Nor was he better satisfied with the words of the hon. the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Low), for he pursued the western journey too. He came back and announced to eastern Canada that the West was just revelling in prosperity. He could see nothing there but good times and hear nothing but good news. This report the Prime Minister declined to accept as well. And
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then he had some others, I think. I am not sure but I think the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Robb) was out there. At all events, surely he had the new Solicitor General (Mr. McMurray). Did he not take him in in order to get the views of Manitoba? The Solicitor General fresh from the people had just entered the cabinet and was at his disposal, and as well the Minister of Customs (Mr. Bureau), and if all others failed surely the verdict of the Minister of Customs on western Canada woud have been accepted. But all of these ministers of his own who spent the summer travelling, whose private cars were to be seen dotting the stations of the western plains-all these ministers could not bring him a report that was any good.


Mr. BOYS:: There was the Secretary of State (Mr. Copp) too.


Arthur Meighen: I had forgotten him. The Secretary of State in order to illustrate the practice of joining the cabinet to see the world went out west as well.


Mr. COPP:: When was I there?


Arthur Meighen: He was in the West last year as far as Fort William, and the year before all through the West; so he got a bird's eye view one year, and a full view the other, and his opinion should have been of some value.
But I wonder what compliment the Prime Minister paid to the present leader of the Progressive party (Mr. Forke). Upon what principle of reasoning did the Prime Minister conclude that he could get western opinion or Progressive opinion better through the hon. member for Marquette than he could reliably get it through the leader of the Progressive party? The government, headed by the Prime Minister, sends 1,500 miles across the country and brings a private member out of the ranks of another party in order to find out what the views of the people are in order that he may legislate. This is the story we are told. Though the Prime Minister and the hon. member for Marquette may have very little confidence in the judgment of the Canadian people, I must frankly admit they seem to have infinite confidence in their credulity.
How often is this performance to be repeated? Does the hon. gentleman ever think of the effect of these performances upon the country? Last year, for example, we had a promise of stability. Two or three years before we had a promise of battering at the tariff till it was down, and hon. gentlemen

to my left were thereby lured to the side, though not altogether within the ranks of the government party. But all these fine promises of 1919, 1920 and 1921 went by the board in 1923, when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) announced that the assault was -Over and that stability was now the order of the day. Where is stability in the light of the present Speech from the Throne? Stability goes just where tariff destruction went. How long it will be gone it is not for me to prophesy, but I venture to say that the period of the submersion of stability will be just about as brief as the period of the submersion of the other policies which this government has from time to time announced, and from time to time abandoned.
The government comes now and brings in a Speech from the Throne. It is lengthy; it is the longest that I can recall, but, I think, in so far as the submission of material for the consideration of parliament goes, it is the most attenuated and aenemic in the history of our parliament. I would like hon. gentlemen to be good enough just to carefully analyze this Speech from the Throne. In the first place, shining out of every line, it is an electioneering document. It does not partake of the characteristics traditional in a Speech from the Throne. A Speech from the Throne by custom may contain some general observations on the state of the country, on the state of interempire affairs, but primarily it is for the purpose of laying before parliament the government bills for the ensuing session, the government programme, what it is proposed to submit to honourable members of this House and of the Upper House, to the end that we may address our minds to these subjects and determine what stand we shall take upon them.
This is the great purpose of a Speech from the Throne. This Speech contains a few references to microscopic amendments. Something is going to be done to the Government Annuities Act. What it is we are left to conjecture. I do not know what good it does to give us these indefinite words. It does not help us in the least. Something is going to be done to the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act. What it is we do not know, but there is going to be an amendment. Then there is going to be an amendment to the Militia Act by which there is no longer going to be this power of requisition of troops in the way it exists now. This is the programme the government proposes, aside from the intimation in the early part of the Speech that a bold adventure is going to be made in the way of reduction of taxation. But in so far as the

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Speech from the Throne commits them, this adventure is going to be confined to reducing the tariff on the implements of production.
We will all welcome reduction of taxes. Sometimes I have made a prediction as to what will happen in the course of a session. I will make one now. I will ask honourable gentlemen to carefully watch the scope of this tax reduction venture. I ask them just to measure the extent of the reduction and compare it with the extent of the increases, the additions this government has put on in previous years. One cannot help but observe that all of the additions of 1922, all the increases of 1923 were not heralded with any pronouncement in the Speech from the Throne, though I venture to say they were infinitely more important and momentous in their consequences to this country than any reduction we are going to get this session.
Intimation is given-at all events it is interpreted that way-that the proposal of the government is to take the duty off agricultural implements. This is the acceptation applied throughout the country, and the government by reason of its language is responsible for that acceptation. Since when has it been the practice in this Dominion to notify the country in advance of specific tariff reductions in the Speech from the Throne? Always in the life of Canada, yea and in every other country where parliamentary government prevails, the essential practice is that no intimation shall be given of any reduction or increase in the schedules of the tariff until the budget comes down. Why is there a departure from that practice this session? I do not need to ask honourable gentlemen to my left. Everyone of them knows. These are the "white round stones" which are expected to do the work. This is the bid that is made for the support of hon. gentlemen to my left, pending the production of the budget. What matters it to the government if business is disturbed? What matters it to them if there is a dislocation of trade? What matters it to' them if capital is timid and the hand of investment is withheld? What matters it to them if artisans by the thousands apprehend the loss of their positions? These things do not matter if, forsooth, they can get enough votes from my hon. friends to my left to hold them in office till the budget comes down.
Then further on in the Speech from the Throne we find a lot of ruminations about what the opinion of the government is on this thing and on that, and the effort the government has made on one subject and the '*ffort it is going to make on something else,
what the trouble is here and there, and how much consideration the government is giving to it all. We find a prediction that this session there will be a balanced budget, and an implication through the mouth of His Excellency, that this must be the best government we have had for years because it is twelve years since such a thing has been done before. Never did self-puffery get to the stage of perfection that it has reached in this Speech from the Throne.
National unity not less than national prosperity-
Will hon. gentlemen be good enough to give attention to this reading, and try to divine what place it has in a Speech from the Throne, or what on earth it means in the way of a proposal to parliament.
National unity not less than national prosperity depends upon the surmounting of those barriers which have tended to separate western from eastern Canada and to discourage permanent settlement upon the land. Foremost in this regard are the problems incidental to tariff readjustment and to the marketing of agricultural and other national products.
What better is parliament to be in receipt of that philosophy? What does this look to? What is the idea? Passing on, we find the following:
The stabilization and control of freight rates on grain from the head of the Great Lakes to Canadian ocean ports and thence to Liverpool are receiving the closest attention.
We will all hope for a fruitful incubation. What control has this government over ocean rates? What is to be the nature of the operation? What do they propose in the way of legislation? In what direction are they looking? What specifically have they in mind? Or is this simply a sort of declaration of faith, in the hope that faith will be received even as works? In the same paragraph and therefore relating to this topic we find the following:
It is hoped that the report of the Royal Grain Inquiry Commission authorized last session to inquire into the subject of the handling and marketing of grain will be available for presentation to parliament this session, and that legislation based upon its recommendations may be offered for your consideration.
Well, as there are no recommendations yet, what is the ground for "hoping" that legislation may be necessary? Certainly we hope the commission will be through. Our concern for the treasury is sufficient to ground that hope upon. If it does not have some recommendation, it will not be because it has not travelled far enough, or has not had a long enough retinue or that it has not cost the country enough; but I venture to say that its recommendations will bear the same relation

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to the cost that the historic mouse has borne to the mountain.
The next thing the government has "in mind" is:
The further development of our magnificent inland water transportation.
But the extent that their minds have progressed along this line is merely to make further inquiries, and they deem that this is progress sufficient to announce in a Speech from the Throne.
A further interchange of correspondence has taken place between my government and the government of the United States with reference to the St. Lawrence waterway.
We might have taken that for granted. The government will continue the correspondence, and I fancy we shall be at the correspondence stage when the House meets again, if this government is in power.
The important subject of marine insurance as affecting our ports; the permanent equalization of the rate on Canadian flour-
What does that mean?
-and the removal of the discriminations in ocean rates on other Canadian products are receiving attention.
These are /'receiving attention" too. The attention reservoir of the government is evidently very full. What is being done about it? What is meant by "the equalisation of the rate on flour"? I asked one hon. member, a member of long experience in parliament, and he said he thought it meant procuring the same western rate as eastern rate. But this subject is under the Railway Commission. Does it mean the same rate on flour as on wheat? I do not know what it means. I venture to think the government does not know itself. But evidently those charmed words "stabilization" and "equalization" are now taking the place of "co-ordination," as they are to be found in several paragraphs of the Speech from the Throne.
The amendments made to the Bank Act. . . their wisdom has already been abundantly apparent.
The House will await with very considerable curiosity to know just what the fruit of this legislation so far has been. I have not observed any. I am not criticizing the amendments; what I am criticizing is the struggle of the government to boast of achievement. As regards all these paragraphs which I have read, may I ask what place have disjointed ruminations of this sort in a Speech from the Throne? At best, they are only a collection of hopes, mixed in with some zig-zag philosophy-the twilight musings of hon. members of the government before their last long sleep.

Then there is, as well an intimation of free farm implements, which intimation I venture to say will, in the next few months, do Canada more harm than the most ardent advocate of the change at least on the opposite side of the House, hopes will result of good from it in the next ten years. The harm is already taking place. How does this government expect that there is to be any progress, any extension of Canadian plants, any investment of capital of this Dominion, any widening of the area of labour, any stability, confidence and progress while this sword is, year after year, held over industry in this Dominion? Does the government not witness already the result of this constant threat which it has been holding out against industry ever since it attained the seats of power? Are the consequences not in evidence in the exodus returns from our border? Are the results not in evidence in our contracting plants? Are they not in evidence from the three or four thousand failures every year? I want to know who is getting the advantage-and where any advantage can be shown.
The consequence of all this is reflected, I think, in public opinion in some electoral manifestations that we have seen in the year 1923. We had a contest in Essex. It was won by the administration across the floor,-though I do not hear them venture any applause at its memory being brought back. No, the means of winning North Essex were in part revealed at the last session-I say, "in part", designedly. But a majority of 7,195 a year before was reduced to a majority of 1,072, or a fall of something over 6,100 in one year. Just two years ago last spring the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) was wont to read very important lessons from results like that. He thought a government in such a condition should dissolve parliament at once. Then came a by-election in Cape Breton. A majority of 3,339 a year and a half before was reduced to a majority of 632, less than one-fifth of what it was in the general election. And this majority was secured by the clever contrivance, I presume, chiefly of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Macdonald) which brought in a Labour candidate. Or probably he consorted with others to bring a Labour condidate into the field. This Labour candidate took most of them from the Conservative candidate, some 1,600 votes.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My right hon. friend is making a statement that is wholly untrue.


Arthur Meighen: That is the main credit I have seen given to the hon. member in

The Address-Mr. Meighen
eastern Canada in late months. The facts speak for themselves.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I want to ask my right hon. friend to withdraw that statement. It is wholly and absolutely untrue in every way.


Arthur Meighen: Which statement?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The statement that myself or myself in consort with anybody else, induced a Labour candidate to enter the field in North Cape Breton.


Arthur Meighen: I venture to say the
hand of the hon. gentleman was not far away.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I say that statement is absolutely untrue and I insist that my right hon. friend withdraw it.


Arthur Meighen: Well, Mr. Speaker, I am content to let the evidence speak for itself and to accept the statement of the hon. member.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I invoke the rule of the House in regard to my right hon. friend.


Hewitt Bostock: I understand that the
right hon. member has accepted the denial of the hon. member.


Mr. BUREAU:: Qualified acceptance! That is not the rule.


Arthur Meighen: The hon. member, however, took some part in that campaign.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: So did the right hon. member.


Arthur Meighen: Yes, I did, and I am prepared to stand by every sentence I uttered. If the hon. gentleman ever succeeds in consort with his . fellows in reducing a majority by some twenty-seven hundred, perhaps he will not be ashamed of taking part in a campaign.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My right hon. friend's part in the campaign reflected no honour nor glory on him, _ either in the utterances or the results.


Arthur Meighen: It is fortunate for my
hon. friend that he speaks after me. I would be glad if he spoke before me; I would make sure that he did not misrepresent me. I will stand in this House by every word I uttered, by every appeal I made; and what is more, the hon. gentleman has disavowed assertions that he made, affirmed that he never made
them, although they were taken down by a stenographic reporter.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: And my right hon. friend comes to this House and makes statements which he knows are untrue.


Arthur Meighen: My hon. friend is uneasy and I take his uneasiness as a tribute to his conscience. The people of Canada read the address which the hon. member made. He took care to arrive, just two or three nights before the election. In his address, in order to illustrate and in order to confirm for all time the ofLproclaimed fact that this government has divorced the National Railways from all political influence, and in no wise uses it as an agent for themselves, the hon. gentleman made himself the spokesman of the National Railways to announce a decrease of rates soon to take place.
He made himself, the spokesman of the president of the National Railways when he declared that shortly, upon the return of Sir Henry Thornton, the small differential which the railways had imposed upon goods going to Atlantic ports over those going to Partland would be wiped out by the new National Railways administration. And for that he took great credit to himself. How splendid an illustration of the divorcement of the National Railways from political influence! How proper that a minister of the Crown, two nights before a by election, should be the man to announce a reduction of rates on the National Railways. This is one of the assertions attributable to the hon. member. But there is another.
I had made the statement, in addresses which I had delivered, that in my judgment the government had acted precipitately and had not exhausted all other efforts before hurrying solidiers from the ends of Canada, even from as far as Winnipeg, to over-awe the strikers at Cape Breton; and I stated as welt that if the presence of militia were necessary to preserve law and order I would advocate it, as I had always done every time the occasion had arisen in my experience. I declared, however, that I did not believe that on this occasion all other means had been exhausted; and I added by way of illustration that at the strike in Winnipeg, in 1919 a more threatening one, a more difficult situation to handle, the government of the day had got along without sending one soldier at all into the area, and that without importing soldiers the whole matter had been controlled. In order to refute that position, which I had
The Address-Mr. Meighen

taken, repeatedly, the hon. member read a telegram from his deputy minister stating that we had sent our soldiers-at least his words carried this intimation-not on requisition from the mayor or the civil authorities, but that we had sent them under power of order in council. And then he referred to an order in council passed on the 4th of April, 1918, passed with the support of his own finance minister of to-day, passed with the concurrence of the member for Halifax who on this night spoke with him on the same platform but who was in 1918, a member of the government,-an order in council to take care generally of riotous disturbances in the country; because this date in 1918 was many months before the close of the war. That order in council never was acted upon to the extent of sending in a single soldier in relation to the strike of 1919; and I repeat before the Minister of National Defence, who has everything under his own charge in his own office, that when he intimated to that audience that troops were sent from outside at the time referred to by the government or by anyone else, into that area, he intimated what was not true. Not a troop was sent there. The only troops that were used were citizen soldiers who enlisted and trained especially for the purpose of that particular crisis; and they were used only in demonstration, and at the request of the Mayor in order that all might see that the civil authorities, exercising civil instruments, would be supported if the need arose. By those means the whole situation was taken care of, and I venture to suggest to the House that it was done successfully, because the less display of force there is, the less transport of troops, so long as law and order are preserved the better always are the results. I say that matters were handled infinitely more successfully then than they were under hon. gentlemen opposite on this occasion. What I protest against is the assertion of a minister right on the eve of the contest, that there had been a misleading of the audience in a statement that was true absolutely to the letter, and the quoting from his deputy minister of a telegram which had no relation to what had actually taken place in the Winnipeg area. I had not purposed referring to this incident but for the hon. member's repeated interruptions of my remarks.
There was another by-election, this time in Halifax-


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: There was
one in Pictou, too.


Arthur Meighen: Yes, there was one in Pictou, I know; but the hon. member may

recall, that the Prime Minister stated in 1921 that there was no significance to be attached to the re-election of newly appointed Ministers. I did not contradict the assertion, even though it was made in order to nullify the significance of a majority of some
4,000	which we had obtained at the time in St. John and a majority of some 1,800 which we obtained in Colchester. And, as a matter of fact, indeed, very little significance does attach to the appeal of ministers, just appointed, to their constituents for re-election. Hon. members in every part of the House will agree with that. But in all the other cases where did the government come out? In Halifax where did they come out? A majority of 6,000 turned into a minority of some 1,900; a total majority for both candidates of some 12,000 turned into a large minority. Against what? Against the promise of an elevator, against the promise of the Dartmouth pier, against railways sidings hurried up, against the most blazing attempts at constituency bribery ever recorded, save only in the history of Kent. We had a vote last session for an elevator in Halifax. It was stated on this side of the House that probably a by-election was in sight. We were not far astray; the by-election came. Plans and specifications in due titne were got out, and the receipt of the tenders was timed for the month of November, the election being timed for 5th December. The month of November came and so did the tenders. The newspapers of the district were plastered with paid advertisements of hon. gentlemen opposite, plastered with promises of a new elevator, modem in every respect, to cost $1,200,000. Speakers representing the government called upon the electors to vote for the government candidate in order that the elevator might be secured. The senior member for Halifax-not the hon. gentleman just elected-himself put advertisements in the newspapers calling upon the electors to support the government candidate, and the appeal I have before me. One after another, the appeal was,-"We have voted $1,200,000 for the elevator; you are going to have the elevator"; and the government candidate declared that ,he had the authority of the Prime Minister for this assertion. The Minister of National Defence speaking on the platform with the Prime Minister, supported the candidate put forward by the government. Here are some of the reasons which were put forward why the electorate should vote for the government candidate:
1.	The differential rate of 20 cents a ton had been abolished.
2.	The increase of 10 per cent, in British preference.

The Address-Mr. Meighen
3.	The government provided $1,200,000 for an elevator, saying, "The contract for this immense structure will be issued immediately as the Prime Minister announced on Friday night."
Next:
The construction by the government of large cattle sheds at Richmond, which is to aid Halifax in becoming the winter cattle-shipping port and will benefit largely in labour and money as a result of Mr. Fielding's success in seeking the removal of the British embargo against Canadian cattle.
The victor in that great conquest changes I see with the location of the election.
The two million dollar shipping pier at Dartmouth which is to be undertaken at an early date.
The government construction of wharves, breakwaters and dredges, etc.
Why waste all those votes that we passed last session? Why not use them to get government support?
The establishment by the government of an experimental fishery station.
This fishery station to include a drying plant, curing plant, smoke house, and all the rest of it. That was announced a few nights before the election by the hon. Minister of National Defence.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I never
made use of any such promises, and my right hon. friend is confusing me with somebody else.


Arthur Meighen: No, I did not refer to
the hon. minister as making use of all these. I said the senior member for Halifax and the government candidate. But I am sure the hon. Minister of National Defence referred to the fishing plant. I have his speech.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Does my right hon. friend say I should not have done so?


Arthur Meighen: I told the House he did.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My right hon. friend is endeavouring to lead the House to believe that I was talking of cattle-sheds and half a dozen things of that kind. I never mentioned them.


Arthur Meighen: No, the hon. gentleman is excited this afternoon.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Do not worry about my being excited.


Arthur Meighen: He is not the senior
member for Halifax. I do not think he could be.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: No, you used my name.


Arthur Meighen: "Why shouldn't we do
these things?" says the Minister of National Defence.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My right
hon. friend, Mr. Speaker, is misrepresenting me. I said, "Why should I not speak of the biological station?"


Arthur Meighen: Oh, I see. I beg my hon. friend's ' pardon. I must draw a distinction. "Why shouldn't we tell the people they are going to have a fishery plant, a chemical plant, a drying plant, a curing plant, a smokehouse- why should we not do that? That is all right." But, oh, he would never defend promising them an elevator I That is different. He castigates me for intimating that he would defend the promise to Dartmouth of a pier, or the promise of this cattle shed at Richmond; those things are beneath him. The class of politics he represents is such that he could not possibly be guilty of that offence. But when it comes to a fishery station, a chemical plant, a smoke house, a curing plant, a drying plant-it is all right to promise these as the reward for the election of the government candidate.
Now, let us follow up the history of this elevator. The tenders were opened. Even the Minister of National Defence announced that fact himself, announced it on the night of the 30th November. "There have been eight tenders received," he said, "and the only reason you have not had any of these accepted and the contract made is that the Minister of Finance took ill after getting back from Halifax, otherwise he would have called council together and had it done; but just as soon as the Prime Minister returns-and he was then on his way-those eight tenders will be reviewed and the contract made for the elevator." Do hon. gentlemen need to be told there has been no contract made? Have not they heard the election returns? No contract has been made at all, but the government organ a few nights afterwards announced, that the tenders, it is true, had been received, but after all it was found that the plans for this elevator were really too old, that instead of being plans for an elevator such as the government literature had described, they were really plans that had been prepared away back at the time of the terminal contract in Halifax about ten years before. Here the government had gone and used those ten-year-old plans for the non-existent terminals in order to hurry on the receipt of tenders and deceive the people of Halifax. So they said, "We find now we do not need an elevator of that kind at all, and we are going to have new plans and speci-

The Address-Mr. Meighen
fications drawn some time in the dim and distant future when perhaps another by-election comes to Halifax, or when perhaps a general election is in sight. Then this elevator will come on the political horizon once more."
I cannot review the conduct of this administration in Kent, N.B., with the thoroughness I should like. Suffice to say that all the records of Halifax were surpassed. The desperation of the government knew no bounds. Fishery plants? It would not have bothered the Minister of National Defence or any other minister a moment to promise a fishery plant if it would have turned the scales. I do not know but what the record of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) was excelled by that of the Secretary of State (Mr. Copp). The Minister of Justice came in sackcloth and ashes to repent that the government had been harsh enough to have mounted police enforce the fisheries regulations. "This will never be done any more," said the Minister of Justice; "I can, as minister, promise you that no more mounted police will invade your homes to enforce the laws of Canada."
The Secretary of State said: Do you want a railway from Buctouche to Richibucto? If you do, you know what to do. But to have his exact language, he used the following words: the very diction will be identified, the whole style so much resembles that of his great political prototype from New Brunswick, the Hon. William Pugsley, that it would itself be sufficient for identification. So I would expect no denial from the Secretary of State. He said:
Now, I want to ask you in all fairness, who will be your representative? Who will be more apt to get a more reasonable and fair consideration for you, Doucet, the Conservative candidate, or Bourgeois? It is to your very great advantage, and I believe it is your bounden duty, if your want better railway facilities for this part of Kent, to elect Mr. Bourgeois, who will co-operate with me-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.
-who will co-operate with me and my colleagues to give the people of this county what they deserve and what they want.
The language of constituency-bribing will at least never be more plain, though possibly in future years it may develop a degree of skill surpassing the language of the Secretary of State. And another speaker for the government, high in office in New Brunswick, intimated that the largest river would be harnessed, intimated indeed that the money of the Canadian taxpayer would pour in from every source, from the federal treasury and from the provincial treasury too. On these promises the government sought, and vainly

sought, the election of their candidate in. Kent.
These promises are what you might expect from this administration. This class of conduct is in full harmony with the style of argument, with the whole character and colour of the campaign by which hon. gentlemen opposite succeeded to power. I venture to assert that the opinion of the people of Canada, already so often expressed, now sc evident that he who runs may read, now sc apparent that conceivably the government is urging its supporters to keep in the best of health and the pink of condition, for they want no more by-elections-I venture to assert that the judgment of the people of Canada is already written and waits only to be handed down and that the electors only abide the day when the conduct which I have described will be once and for all put an end to-the conduct legislative, the conduct administrative and the conduct electoral.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, it is with
much pleasure that I join with my right hon. friend, the leader of the opposition (Mr Meighen), in extending congratulations to the mover (Mr. Kelly) and the seconder (Mr. Lapierre) of the Address, and I thank him also for the kindly way in which he referreil to the speeches they delivered.
I should also like to thank him for his congratulations extended to my colleagues who have become members of the government since the last session of the House, and to join with him in extending a welcome to the new members who are with us for the first time since last session.
To those who knew the reputation of the newly elected member for Cape Breton (Mr. Kelly), it was no surprise to hear the address to which we listened this afternoon. For some eleven years in succession and then, after a lapse of three years for another year, the hon. member held the important position of chief magistrate of the city in which he lives. He has held the confidence of the people there through his well-known business ability and capacity, and I am sure after listening to his speech to-day we all feel gratified that the part of the province from which he comes has the added voice which he will bring to the discussions of this House.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
The speech delivered by my hon. friend the member for Nipissing (Mr. Lapierre) in every way sustained the reputation he enjoys in this parliament as an effective speaker. His address to-day was delivered in the French language, but as those of us who have heard him before know, my hon. friend, like so many of his compatriots, speaks with equal readiness in the English as well as in the French tongue.
I regret that my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition is not in his seat at thi moment. I should like to have addressed, more particularly to him what I have to say with reference to his own remarks. I must sa.y after listening to my right hon. friend this afternoon that I was somewhat surprised at the comparatively mild tone of his discussion. My right hon. friend during the past six or eight months has been free to run at large throughout this country. He has been delivering addresses in different provinces-down by the sea, in the Maritime provinces; throughout Quebec and Ontario; he has been out through the West, I think almost as far as the mountains, if not beyond; and wherever he has gone, it has been with great difficulty that he has restrained himself in the use of adjectives sufficiently vituperative to describe from his point of view the conduct of this government and the degree to which in his opinion it had lost the confidence of the public. We have followed him across this continent in that pilgrimage of woe, in which he has played the role of chief mourner. We have listened to what he has said about the extent to which the business of the country was falling behind, the extent to which the government was burdening the nation with debt, and the extent to which taxes are being levied on the people of this country. One would have expected that after all my right hon. friend has said about the degree to which the government had lost public confidence, he would at least have had the courage this afternoon, to move, as he had the privilege of doing, a vote of want of confidence in the administration. But my right hon. friend did not take the method which parliament permits to test public feeling in a matter of this kind. He has left the extreme statements which he has made to the press of the country. He has not come into parliament and repeated here many of the things which he has been saying very loudly throughout all parts of this country.
In his peroration my right hon. friend dwelt at considerable length upon two recent byelections, not the last one, but two recent ones. He seemed to think that because the government had not carried every seat that it contested, because it had lost two seats
in by-elections, therefore it had lost to a very great extent public confidence. Well, there have been by-elections before in the history of this country. My right hon. friend was the leader of a government that had byelections, and I would ask this House to consider for a moment just how the record stands as between my right hon. friend in his criticism of the government, and his own position.
In the government that he was a member of, the Unionist administration, there were I think twelve by-elections in a period of two. and one-half years, and during that time the government lost five seats. During the time that my right hon. friend was at the head of affairs himself, his own administration in one-and-a-half years, out of eight by-elections lost three scats. But the members of this House will also recall that my right hon. friend had not the courage in the majority of cases to bring on by-elections. He left seats vacant, and when we went to the country there were ever so many constituencies not represented in this House at all because my right hon. friend was afraid to bring on byelections. He cannot, bring a charge of that kind against this administration.


Arthur Meighen: How many were there?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have not the exact number, but there were a good many.


Arthur Meighen: About one or two.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: A good many more than that, and I would call his attention to this fact: We meet to-day without a single vacancy in the House of Commons. As they have become vacant, we have contested every seat. May I point out that this government since it has been in office, has had thirty-four by-elections, and out of the thirty-four it has lost but two seats.


Arthur Meighen: Did the government win in Lanark, did it win Halifax, or Kent or Moosejaw?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend understands what I mean. I mean seats formerly held by the government. In two yeans, out of thirty-four by-elections there were lost on this side of the House, of seats which the government formerly held, only two, and that at the end of two years. I think that is about as good a record as any government in this country has ever had. Though we did not have the large following which some administrations have had, we did not hesitate to go to the country immediately a vacancy occurred and during
30	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
"two years we did not lose a single seat we formerly held. My hon. friend says that at some previous time I stated that there was no great significance to be attached to the return of a minister by acclamation. I do not recall the occasion he refers to, but I venture to say that if I made such a remark it related to the return of a minister immediately after the time at which the government was formed.


Arthur Meighen: Oh, no.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Not after it had been in office, not after it had been challenged over and over again by the opposition, not after it had been told that it had not the confidence of the people of the country. My right hon. friend was denouncing this government in the different provinces, but we brought on a bye-election in Ontario, and he did not oppose the minister, who was returned by acclamation. We brought on a by-election in Nova Scotia; he did not oppose the minister and he was returned by acclamation. We brought on another by-election in Manitoba, and though our minister was opposed he was returned to this House by a large majority. We brought on another election the other day in Quebec, and the minister was returned to this House by acclamation and took his seat to-day.


Jacques Bureau: He was opposed in the
province of Quebec by the hon. leader of the Opposition.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, after my hon. friend had toured from one end of the province to the other. With regard to the two by-elections which my hon. friend refers to, I think he knows as well as I do the circumstances which accounted for the defeat in those two cases. I think the House is well aware, and I think the hon. gentleman is well aware, that the only questions that were discussed in those by-elections were local questions, except where appeals were made, as they were made by my hon. friend from St. John (Mr. Baxter) of a sectional character-sectional appeals to one part of the country, setting it over against the other. That was the kind of appeal which my right hon. friends opposite made, but beyond that, the by-election had no significance whatever. We have taken the stand with respect to the laws of the country as we found them, that we would seek to administer them without fear and without favour. When we came into office we found, so far as the administration of public affairs was concerned, that to a considerable extent our hands were tied by the Civil Service

Commission, which controls all appointments, which put into office whomever they pleased, without the government of the day having a voice one way or the other. The people of this country have not yet come to utiderstand the meaning of that form of administration of public affairs. I am not going to debate to-night the wisdom of the Civil Service Commission carried on within certain limits and in accordance with certain principles, but I say this-and every member of the House knows it-that among the government's following from one end of the country to the other, the fact that many of those who had been bitterly opposed to the government, men who have been prominent in Tory circles, have been given political appointments under the Civil Service administration, has created dissatisfaction with the government from one end of the country to the other. More than that, as my right hon. friend knows, when we took office we said, with respect to the National railways, that we would divorce their control and management from politics. We selected a man in whom we had great confidence and made him president of the system. We gave him a board of directors to associate with him in the management, and we told him that they were to have a free hand in the administration of the railway. We believed the only way to test the wisdom of the system of national ownership was to give it a fair trial. I have taken very strong grounds on that personally. I have refused absolutely-and hon. members on this side of the House will bear me out in this statement to listen to any appeal in any way to interfere with the control of the national railway system by the president and board of directors. I have told the president and directors that it was for them to administer the railway without fear or favour. In their endeavour to consolidate, to effect economies, in their endeavours in every way to safeguard the interests of the public, they have made changes in some parts of the Maritime provinces which have affected a large number of the citizens there. The government has been held responsible for that, though we have had nothing to do with the changes, and one effect of the changes which have been made in the Maritime provinces, under the direction of the present administration of the railway, has been a certain discontent amongst some . of the government's followers, which has been reflected in part in the results of the by-elections. I think it is only fair that the country should know that. Instead of being condemned for our action, we are entitled to the confidence

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
and support of the people of the country who want to see the Canadian National system given a fair chance and a square deal.
Let me pass on to the next topic with which my right hon. friend dealt. Instead of taking up his speech from the beginning and following it in the order of its delivery, with my right hon. friend's permission, I will take up the last point first and work back to the beginning. He touched upon the Speech from the Throne. I think that was the subject he dealt with just prior to dealing with the question of the by-elections. He said that the Speech from the Throne ought to discuss Imperial affairs, and ought to give an account of the conditions of the country, and the one thing it ought not to do was to touch on any question of the tariff. Whoever heard, he said, of changes in the tariff being described in the Speech from the Throne?


Arthur Meighen: I did not say that at all.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: What did the hon. member say?


Arthur Meighen: I spoke about a specific question affecting the tariff being foretold in the Speech from the Throne.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I thought the hon. member said any change whatever.


Arthur Meighen: I will show you the speech.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I know the workings of my hon. friend's mind, and I jotted down his words. I knew exactly what he was going to say when he came to the question. The impression he tried to convey to the House was that the Speech from the Throne was not the place to mention the tariff or to mention-


Arthur Meighen: No, no.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Possibly since the dinner hour my hon. friend has had a chance to look at the speech he prepared when he was prime minister. Perhaps he looked at it or it comes back to his mind.


Arthur Meighen: No, I know what I said in the speech I made.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Now, I have in my hand the speech which he placed in the hands of His Excellency on the 15th February,
1921.	This is what it contains:
My advisers are convinced of the necessity for revision of the Customs tariff. In order to secure the most complete information a committee has conducted an extensive and thorough inquiry, and has secured the views of all parties and interests in every province. The hearings necessary for this purpose have now been completed, and the conclusions founded thereon will be submitted to you in due course.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear.


Mr. GUTHRIE:: Hear, hear.


Mr. GRAHAM:: Were they ever submitted?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The question
whether or not what is put into the lips of His Excellency is in general terms or specific terms is a very small matter as compared with whether the right hon. member leading the House puts into the lips of His Excellency words which he never intends to carry out and never does carry out. My right hon. friend knows as well as every other hon. member of this House knows, that it is customary to mention in the Speech from the Throne intended revisions in the tariff. I have in my hand the Speech from the Throne of March 25, 1897, and this is the clause that refers to the tariff there:
A measure will be submitted to you for the revision of the tariff, which it is believed will provide the necessary revenue, and while having due regard to industrial interests, will make our fiscal system more satisfactory to the masses of the people.
That is the wording of the Speech from the Throne by a Liberal administration in 1897. That promise in the Speech from the Throne was implemented. The revision was made, and the promise made to-day by His Excellency will be implemented.
My right hon. friend said that the Speech from the Throne should contain some reference to Imperial affairs.


Arthur Meighen: I did not.


Jacques Bureau: He remarked that it contained nothing.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Does my right hon. friend mean to say that he made no reference to Imperial affairs or Imperial relations?


Arthur Meighen: I said that it was usual, amongst other things, to refer to inter-imperial relations. I do not say that the Speech should do so.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That was a part of my right hon. friend's criticism of the present Speech from the Throne. If he takes his own speech, the one to which I refer, I challenge him to find any kind of allusion to inter-imperial affairs in it.
He said that the Speech from the Throne should contain some reference to the condition of affairs in our own country. I do not know whether my right hon. friend has read the first paragraph of this speech; but I think perhaps, it is worth while reading it over to him again.
32	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King


Arthur Meighen: I know it contains that.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Let me read the words, and if anything could be more specific and true, I would like my right hon. friend to tell me what it is:
Though the general economic situation still reflects the consequences of the world war, the records of production, trade, transportation, employment and public finance have been uniformly increasingly favourable throughout the Dominion. The state of general employment has been distinctly better. The volume of business has steadily increased. Especially has the country reason to feel gratified at the expansion to a notable degree of its public revenues and the decline of its expenditures.
This is about as specific and concrete a statement as could be given of the condition of affairs in Canada to-day, a statement which my right hon. friend was not able to put into any address which he ever presented to parliament.
My right hon. friend said: "Why should there be mention in this address of the Industrial Disputes Act?" I suppose because it referred to labour, he thought it was too insignificant a matter to mention. I notice in his own address he said.
An investigation is being conducted by the Department of Labour into systems of unemployment insurances and old age pensions.
That was the announcement he made, but nothing ever came of it one way or another. The reason reference is made in the Speech from the Throne to the Industrial Disputes Act is the same reason as applies to racetrack gambling and to the construction of the Canadian National Railway Lines bill which is mentioned in the same clause, because those were measures which passed this Commons at the last session, but were thrown out by my right hon. friend's friends in the Senate and which we intend to reintroduce at the present session.


Arthur Meighen: And by my right hon. friend's friends too.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think the next subject which was touched upon by my right hon. friend was that of immigration.


Arthur Meighen: Emigration.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, emigration, if he wishes to put it in that way.


Sir HENRY DRAYTON:: That is the fact.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend, in discussing this question, undertook to give to the House a quantity of statistics which he said were based upon returns of the American government. He gave those figures to parliament, but he did not tell parliament in the figures that he quoted that while the

American government keep a record of the number of persons who leave Canada to go to the United States, they keep no record, nor do we keep a record of those same persons returning from the United States to Canada. Nor did he tell the House a fact which I think is, or ought to be known to him, that a little time ago an officer or officers of the Immigration Department made an examination of a number of cases specifically given to them by United States officials of names of persons who were put down on American lists as emigrants from Canada to the United States, persons who had crossed the boundary line, and of the total number of cases that were cited, 60 per cent were found to be the names of individuals who had returned and who were living in Canada again. The figures my right hon. friend cited this afternoon are not true as an indication of the extent of the so-called exodus from this country to the United States. He knows as well, that at different times in the past there have been periods when there has been a considerable efflux of population from Canada to the United States. We have witnessed some of it recently, but what is the reason? If we go back to the original cause, we shall find that one of the reasons was the fact that for a few years the machinery of immigration from other countries to this was completely disused. Of course during the period of the war no effort was made to bring in immigrants. Immediately after the war the immigration machineiy was not set in motion; the offices on the other side remained closed. My right hon. friend did nothing to start immigration to this country during the entire time that he was in office. As everyone knows immigrants are not brought to a country in a day; a great deal has to be done in the way of advertising, in the way of establishing immigration offices for the purpose of giving information and the like, and it takes some little time before a movement will begin to set in from one country towards another. When we came into office we began immediately to establish that machinery. We opened offices in Europe and particularly in the British Isles, and to-day we are beginning to see the fruits of our work in the tide of immigration which is now setting towards our shores. One of the things which I wish to bring out is that the fact that immigration has not been coming for a number of years, lessens to a considerable extent the quantity of work which would be in course of development in the country and does not give the same amount of employment that would otherwise be the case, and for that reason in part some of our people, not finding the oppor-

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
tunities for employment in Canada they have expected, have been tempted to go to the United States to seek employment. But men who have studied conditions claim there is a fairly even balance between the two countries. For example, Premier Dunning, of Saskatchewan, in a conference regarding immigration matters which was held in Ottawa last fall, made the statement that as between the numbers of people going back and forth, in prairie schooners as they term it across the line, it was difficult to say which numbers were the more considerable.
My right hon. friend in one of his public speeches has pointed out that there is a drift from the country to the cities; that it is an inevitable thing, a natural phenomenon in all countries, likely to continue and not attributable to fiscal or other policies of a government. What my right hon. friend regards as inevitable has been happening here. Some of our people living in Canada, particularly those living adjacent to the border, have drifted over to American cities during a period of great prosperity because wages there were high and there was plenty of employment along construction lines; but those people are beginning to come back to Canada in considerable numbers, and I think we shall find, as this year goes on and is succeeded by other years, we shall soon again have the old story of reviving prosperity with increased immigration as we have had it in former years. Let me cite the figures for the last nine months. From April to December of 1923, that is to say for nine months of last year, there were 124,680 immigrants who came to this country as against 60,247 the year previous, or an increase of 107 per cent.


Arthur Meighen: What were the two years?


Mr. MACKENZE KNG:: I am giving the figures for the nine months from April to December 1923 as against the same months of
1922.


Arthur Meighen: Let my hon. friend give the figures for 1921.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have already told my hon. friend that he stopped all the immigration machinery during the period that he was in office.


Arthur Meighen: I know that the Prime Minister said that, but it is entirely wrong; not a word of it is correct. The immigration in 1921 exceeded 148,000.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
conference with me. He kindly consented to come and I had a most valuable and helpful conversation with him. I also had conversations with other gentlemen on the opposite side of the House, not merely since the session opened but during the time preceding which intervened between my return from England and the present moment. Wherever the opportunity has presented itself I have sought to discuss western and eastern affairs with members of parliament. My hon. friend asks me, what about the reports of my own ministers who have gone out West? I am sure the House must have been impressed with one thing, and that is the number of members of the present government who found it possible, and made it a point to visit western Canada and become familiar with western views. The very question which my hon. friend asks shows that the members of the government are doing their duty by the country in seeking to become acquainted at first hand with the needs of the country. If my hon. friend wants to have an answer to his question as to what significance there is in the reports of these gentlemen the members of the government who are from or who have visited western Canada, he will find it in the Speech from the Throne, which reflects their views.
_ There was one passage in particular the significance of which it seemed difficult for my right hon. friend to grasp. He quoted this particular passage:
National unity, not less than national prosperity, depends upon the surmounting of those barriers which have tended to separate western from eastern Canada and to discourage permanent settlement upon the land. Foremost in this regard are the problems incidental to tariff readjustments and to the marketing of agricultural and other natural products.
If my hon. friend thinks that passage is meaningless I will refer him to the group of gentlemen opposite who represent constituencies in western Canada, and I will suggest that he inquire of them whether there is not m it one of the most significant truths ever uttered in this parliament. The exception I take to the remarks of my hon. friend is that he seems to think there should be no negotiations between eastern and western Canada. He asked this afternoon, when are we to have stability if these negotiations are to go on? Let me tell my hon. friend that we shall never have stability in this country until we get eastern and western Canada together, until we get a policy sufficiently national and Canadian for men to stand up in this House of Commons and in referring to it speak of themselves as Canadians, not as Progressives, or Liberals or any other class but 
as citizens who are anxious to see the country prosperous and united. We have set ourselves this task, and I make this appeal to gentlemen opposite who come from the West. We as a government have undertaken seriously to do the best we can, in the light of the knowledge we have, to bind eastern and western Canada together. We cannot do it ourselves, but we say to hon. gentlemen that if they are prepared to give us the support which we need to carry out the policies which we believe to be the national interests, we shall be able to accomplish the task that is before us. In making that statement I am not saying more than my hon. friends from the West have said repeatedly, namely, that they are prepared to stand by this government and support it so long as the government gives expression to the policies which it is pledged to carry out.
Now I might say a few words with reference to my hon. friend's remark on the tariff. To be perfectly frank, 1 could not make out just what he was driving at. I think he finds himself in somewhat of a difficulty. At one moment he wished to have it appear that the government had done nothing in the matter of the tariff. He told us, in not quite as loud a tone as he has done on former occasions,-


Arthur Meighen: Nothing but harm, I said.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: that we had done nothing in the way of carrying out what the Liberal party at the convention had recommended in the way of a downward revision of the tariff. He said, or at least he tried to convey the inference, as he has done before, that we had done nothing in that direction. On the other hand, when he began to seek for material to bolster up an argument against any further changes in the tariff, when he began to think about his high protectionist friends and the kind of doctrine they wish him to preach, he declared that we had) cut the tariff so much that we were destroying the implement business and closing the woollen and textile mills and I do not know how many other industries.


Jacques Bureau: Importing more raw wool and closing the mills. Logical.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend said that when we came into office we immediately threw aside our platform; and' the whole tone of his condemnation of us in the last year or two has been on that score. Now he condemns us for carrying out that platform. He said in his speech this afternoon

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
that I had described that platform as a chart and compass to be looked at and not followed). He knows I never uttered such words in my life.


Arthur Meighen: It follows from the
event.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: We are getting used to the casuistry of my hon. friend. I said that the Liberal platform was a chart; that the compass would be the government of the day, composed of men who were in a position to judge of the country's needs and situation, that they would) be guided by the light of facts as to how far at any particular time it would be wise to go in carrying out the provisions as set forth in the platform. That is the position we took on coming into office, and that is the position we take to-day in reference to the tariff. If we needed any vindication of our position, if we needed any single statement to show that the position which we had taken was the right and proper one, it would >be the attitude of my hon. friend to-day, who does not know on which score to condemn us, and which is equivalent to saying that we have avoided extremes and that in dealing with tariff matters we have exercised that caution, and) prudence, and wisdom so necessary in whatever is being done.
We tell my right hon. friend that what we have done we believe to be in the country's interest, that to carry out what he himself a little earlier in his address mentioned was one of the most necessary and essential things for the development of this country may require us perhaps to go a step further. My right hon. friend spent a great deal of time in pointing out what we should be doing to develop our natural resources. If I gathered the burden of his theme at the start, when he began to speak of trade with the United States and other countries, it was to the effect that the duty of . the government was to do all it possibly could to develop within Canada our natural resources. What is necessary for the development of these resources? Two things -capital and labour. We are seeking to increase the labour by adding to the numbers coming into the country through our immigration policy. What is the capital necessary for the development of our natural resources? It is first and foremost the instruments that are necessary for production in the basic industries. This is the capital that men have to work with. It is by the aid of capital and labour, made as plentiful, as ready and as efficient as it can possibly be, that the industries of our country will be best developed. 3}
And so we as a government have taken this position, believing that in the development of our natural resources lies the foundation of our national prosperity. We have said that just as soon as our finances would permit us to do it we would take the proper steps to relieve essential capital of taxation. We believe that when we announce the budget we will be able to declare that the time has comfe when there can be some relief from the burden of taxation of those instruments 'of production which are essential to the full development of the basic industries of the country.
Now, my right hon. friend said that he doubted our prosperity, that he did not know what evidences there were of prosperity, nor did he know what the government had done to contribute towards it. In the course of his speech he touched on some matters that appear in the Speech from the Throne, but he ignored other very important matters:	He
said nothing of what this government has done to reduce the public debt, to lessen taxation, and to effect economies in the public service- of these things my right hon. friend never said a word.


Arthur Meighen: I did not know they existed.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, before
the night is over I shall teach my right hon. friend that they do exist. The trouble is that in his pilgrimage of woe which he has been engaged in during the last six or eight months he has repeated so often statements that are wholly untrue, statements that are in no way borne out by the facts, and has become so accustomed to listening to his own voice in public, that he. has forgotten altogether what the truth is and what the facts are. I purpose tonight not to give my right hon. friend the kind of generalizations in which he has been indulging, not to make the imprudent and reckless statements he has been resorting to in the various provinces, but to appeal from the misrepresentations he has been making to the facts, and to leave the country to judge between us as to whether or not the propaganda which he and his friends have sent broadcast about the alleged extravagance and the waste of the present administration has any foundation in fact.


Arthur Meighen: Start on the reduction of debt.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will do as
my right hon. friend suggests.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: What did my right hon. friend say with regard to the re-

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
duction of debt? Speaking in Winnipeg-I happen to have here a quotation from one of his speeches-my right hon. friend said:
The burden of taxation on the Canadian people was greater than the burden on any people in any other country similarly situated in the known world.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: This is from the Winnipeg Tribune of September 8, 1923.
He recognized, he said, that taxation in Canada must be great, but to-day it1 was beyond all reason. He wondered how people could reconcile the pre-election speeches of Sir Lomer Gouin, in which there were declarations that the public debt had to come down or Canada would be bankrupt, with the two budget statements of Mr. Fielding. The debt of the Dominion had risen by almost one hundred million dollars since the Fielding regime, and with the last budget had gone the announcement that it could not balance by 1172 -000,000. '


Arthur Meighen: Excuse me. I did not use the figures 1172,000,000 at all; I used 872,000000.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am sorry, but I am taking the quotation as it appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune.


Jacques Bureau: Good for the public, bad
for the House.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend has asked me to speak first of all of the debt and to show wherein this government has done anything to decrease it. I will not say anything of the debt during the period of the war. The country knows that while war is on the accumulation of debt, must be vast, and while it might be expected that the government of the day would seek to meet some of the cost of the war out of the taxes of the people at the time war is in progress, which my right hon. 'friend and his colleagues did not do-


Arthur Meighen: Oh, oh.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, which they failed to do, nevertheless the country would be prepared to expect a very considerable addition to the debt during the war and for a period immediately after the war. The war started in August 1914 and ended November 11, 1918. If we allow until the end of the fiscal year 1919-1920, six years,
I think we are taking what might be correctly termed the war period. During this period vast expenditures would be made on account of war and demobilization, but one would expect those expenditures to end by that time. What was the position of my right hon. friend then? In the year 1920-21, during most of which time my right hon. friend was at the head of the administration, he added to the public debt $92,000,000.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend says, "hear, hear." The next year, the year that he was prime minister, when he had the shaping of his own budget, when he had got past the period of demobilization, when we had come to the time that he says the increase of debt ought to end, he added not $92,000,000, but $81,000,000.


Arthur Meighen: How much of that was
gratuities and how much was due to demobilization ?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am not going into the details of that at the moment. I am asking-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh. .


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will give the full details if my right hon. friend wants them. He knows that I have not got them before me at the moment.


Arthur Meighen: Soldier settlement.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, soldier
settlement and the like. But what is this government doing? Are we not also paying for soldier settlement? Are we not paying pensions and all of these other things?


Arthur Meighen: Very little.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend asked me to show how the debt had increased since the war. I have told him that he added $92,000,000 one year and $81,000,000 the next, and that $81,000,000 would probably have been $92,000,000 if this government had not come into office. We came into office on December 29th, 1921. In 1922-23 we had to carry a great part of the load that my hon. friend left us, liabilities that had nothing to do with the war but relating to a number of things that had we been in office we would never have though of undertaking.
Mr. MEIGHEN. Railways.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will come to that in a few moments. But what was the result? At the end of that year we had not added $92,000,000, nor had we added $81,000,000. We had made an addition of about $31,000,000, or a drop of $50,000,000 in the very first year we. were in office.


Arthur Meighen: Will the right hon. gentleman tell us what year it was that only $31,000,000 were added-the first of it and the end? I want to check him up.
Mr .MACKENZIE KING:	That was the
fiscal year 1922-23.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King


Arthur Meighen: Well, my right hon. friend is entirely wrong. Either that, or the statement of the Finance Minister must be wrong.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: In 1922-23,
$31,500,000, to be exact, was the amount that we added. But as I have explained to the House, that year we were not free, nor are we even yet, in the matter of shaping our budget, owing to the many obligations that we have inherited from hon. gentlemen opposite. But this year, having had one year in which to effect economies, one year during which we had some control, though not a great deal, over expenditure, when the Finance Minister makes his financial statement on the floor of the House it will be found that instead of there being any addition to the public debt, for the first time in the last ten or eleven years there will be an increase of receipts over expenditure.


Arthur Meighen: (rising)-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Arthur Meighen: I am grateful to hon.
gentlemen for their applause, but I do not need it. I was only going to ask the Prime Minister if he would be good enough to tell us how much of an obligation the country has incurred by guarantee of railway bonds, which is the plan this government has taken instead of lending the money directly out of the treasury.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will give my hon. friend perhaps more in the way of particulars than he will be glad to hear.


Arthur Meighen: Well, you will not give
me that.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I shall be very glad to give him anything he asks if he will give me time. I will make my statement now and there will be ample opportunity to go into the details. We all understand the purpose of the propaganda which my right hon. friend through his press has been carrying on, and which he is seeking to carry on at the present time, with regard to supposed extravagance and all the rest of it. First of all, it is to conceal the waste and extravagance which prevailed while my right hon. friend was in office and which is mainly accountable for the large expenditures that still have to be made and the present heavy taxation. In the second place, it is an effort to
9 p.m. undermine confidence in the present administration and to conceal what the present government has done and is doing
in the way of effecting economies in expenditure and also in bringing about reductions in taxation.
I wish the members of the House to keep in mind what I have just said: that this year, for the first time since 1912-13, the budget will be balanced. And that will be done this year, not next. My hon. friends opposite have been talking about extravagance. They have been speaking of the "whisper of death." We have listened to all that kind of propaganda, and the country is beginning to believe that there is some truth in what is being said.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend says, "hear, hear". He is prepared to deceive the people; we want to give the country the truth-we do not want deception. May I say to my right hon. friend that if there is one thing which is needed in Canada to-day more than anything else it is a note of confidence and optimism, not the attitude of detraction and pessimism which my right hon. friend is so fond of taking.
Why were we not able to effect these economies sooner? First of all, there were the legacies which were inherited from the preceding government. There were legacies which grew out of their own extravagance. There were the legacies of war, the increase in the public debt resulting therefrom, the amount that has had to be paid in pensions, and for soldiers' civil re-establishment, and a large amount for soldier land settlement; and miscellaneous amounts involved in the refunding of the debt, an operation that relates particularly to the war bonds. Then, in addition there have been the special obligations which we inherited in the nature of subsidies to provinces and grants made to the provinces for highways, for agricultural instruction, for technical education, large loans for housing, in unemployment relief and several other contributions. There have been the outlays on railways and merchant marine. I would like to give the House just a few particulars in regard to these matters, and as my right hon. friend is fond of getting the exact figures, I will give them to him. For the fiscal year 1919-20 there were total disbursements of $785,869,611, including advances to railways of $45,000,000. The amount was considerably larger than that of any year of the war, but it was the year of demobilization and much of the expenditure has to be put down to that head. For the fiscal year 1920-21 the total disbursements were still as high as $528,283,199, much of it due to the waste and extravagance of my right hon. friend. For the fiscal year
38	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
1921-22, the year that my right hon. friend was in office for nine months, the total expenditure was $463,652,436, and last year, 192223 it was $434,452,340, or a reduction of nearly $30,000,000.
Let me make an analysis of that expenditure and see how far it was possible for the present administration to control the situation. The significant feature of it is the extent to which the expenditure is uncontrollable. By that I mean it is not within the power of the government to avoid making some of the large expenditures that have to be made. Before we can prepare for the services of the government itself, before we can attempt to meet the ordinary expenditures of the public service, we have to face vast obligations exceeding by many times the entire cost of government of a few years ago.
Let me give the principal items. For this last year, generally uncontrollable expenditures as growing out of the war were:
Interest on public debt	$137 892 735
Pensions	 32,988,919
Soldiers' civil re-establishment	 13,365,134
Soldier land settlement	 1,819 825
Charges of management, premium, discount,
exchange	 1,003,068
War and demobilization	 4,464,760
1191,532,441
With reference to the item of $1,819,825 for soldier land settlement, that is for administration alone, and does not include, of course, loans amounting to some eight or ten million dollars. So on war account alone we were called upon to raise $191,532,441 before we could begin to consider any other items of the budget.	.
Then comes the generally uncontrollable expenditure due to the railways and the mercantile marine:
Advances to railways	$77,863,938
Canadian Government Merchant Marine,
Ltd	 5,979,856
On the Canadian Government Merchant Marine, you will note, one of the colossal mistakes of my right hon. friend and his friends, we had to pay $5,979,856.
Then in further uncontrollable expenditure is included.
Regular subsidies to the provinces, under
B.N.A. Act	$12,207,313
Miscellaneous uncontrollable (refunding debt) 4,042 931
That makes a total of generally uncontrollable expenditure amunting to $291,626,479.
In addition to all this uncontrollable expenditure the present administration found itself obligated by statute to pay over to the provinces the following amounts:

Technical education	$ 647,227
Grants for highways	 5,854,396
Agricultural instruction	aid	grants	
1,201,605Employment co-ordination	offices	
264,590Unemployment relief	
944,878

That makes a total of $8,913,696, all of which we inherited and which we had to continue to pay whether we wished to or not, because they were contractual obligations.
To this should be added the expenditures which the present government had they been in office would never have incurred or committed the country to, such as the expenditure of $337,462 on the unfinished $40,000,000 terminals at Halifax. That is what my right hon. friend meant to put into terminals at Halifax.


Arthur Meighen: The hon. gentleman had better get within at least one hundred per cent of the facts. He is at least twice, dr something more than that out.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon.
friend can give his explanation later I will let my figures stand.


Arthur Meighen: Try to be correct.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If we take
the figure of my hon. friend, who says it is only fifty per cent of that, that was a colossal waste of public money and addition to our public indebtedness. Then there was an expenditure of $562,120 on a dry dock at Esquimalt, involving another outlay of $5,000,000. Am I exaggerating there?


Arthur Meighen: No, but the present Minister of Public Works said that the only fault he had to find with us was that we did not start it in time.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The time when my right hon. friend started it was when he was seeking to assist his present political organizer in a by-election.


Arthur Meighen: If my right hon. friend
will permit me-I always permit him a correction

it was started and the land purchased and paid for in 1912, which was about seven years before the time he mentions.


Mr. TOLMIE:: I should like to say to the
Prime Minister that was five years before I ever went into politics at all.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Perhaps my
hon. friend would tell us that the time he went into politics was when they started work on the dock.


Arthur Meighen: It was started two years after.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King


William Lyon Mackenzie King: There were in addition other large amounts outstanding. My hon. friend had some contractual relations with the Dominion Iron and Steel Company, which this government had to meet, in an Exchequer Court award of $1,500,000.


Arthur Meighen: The Exchequer Court
made no award. The government paid it without any award.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The matter
was before the Exchequer Court and a settlement was made on that basis.


Arthur Meighen: The settlement was made by this government.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Other war
claims aggregated a total of $6,784,623. I am giving these figures to the House that they may know why it was when the present government took office it was impossible for us to balance the budget at that time. I think any hon. member will see that these expenditures were all imposed on the government. We had to meet them before we could go on with providing the necessary expenditures in other directions for the public service.
Then there were also expenditures in connection with the acquisition of the Grand Trunk and associated systems of $100,523, or a total of $6,885,146.	.
That makes a grand total of obligations in the way of uncontrollable expenditure of $308,324,913.
Taking the total disbursements at $434,452,340, and subtracting the uncontrollable expenditure as set forth, totalling $308,324,903, it leaves the controllable or regular ordinary expenditure at $126,127,437. In other words, the uncontrollable expenditure has exceeded the controllable by $181,197,466.
In addition to that did I wish to take up the time of the House, I could give a list of commitments to which this government was obligated on account of public works entered into by my right hon. friend, on which there was outstanding on December 31, 1921, $13,-
342,000.


Arthur Meighen: The chief would be the Welland canal, which the hon. member now says he is expediting.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The chief was not the Welland canal. I am speaking only of contracts entered into by the Public Works department and am not including contracts entered into by the Department of Railways and Canals. Among the expenditures was $1,014,735 for Toronto harbour, on which my
hon. friend had paid $2,000,000 odd, making an expenditure of $3,823,677 for the Toronto harbour, in addition to improvements amounting to $2,579,890, of which we still have to pay some. On the Esquimalt dock he had paid $497,140, leaving us a legacy on that account of $4,402,000; and the St. John, N.B., Courtenay Bay works, $5,194,470 on which he had spent $3,284,520, leaving us an obligation still to fulfil of $1,909,950.


Arthur Meighen: Who did the hon. gentleman say started that?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am speaking of the amount spent during my hon. friend's time.


Arthur Meighen: Yes, but who started it? '


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I might point out further to my right hon. friend that though he announced to the country in August, 1921, that the elections were to take place that year, notwithstanding that we were then on the eve of an election, he awarded contracts right and left, with the result that when we came into office we had contracts totalling a very considerable sum signed by my right hon. friend and his ministers, but on which not a single dollar had thus far been paid. We were obliged to go ahead and carry out these contracts:
September:
William Head quarantine station.
Wharf at Manson's landing, British Columbia. October:
Immigration shed at Quebec.
Riviere du Lievre, lock and dam.
Drill shed, roofing, Ottawa.
Deep water wharf at Gaspe.
November:
Alterations to Ottawa post office.
Entrance to Whitby harbour.
Red Deer, Alta., post office fittings.
Wharf at Providence Bay.
Grosse Isle, Que., quarantine station wharf.
Fraser river, B.C., Steveston jetty.
Wharf at Parry Sound.
Wharf at Cowichan Bay.


Arthur Meighen: Are not these all repairs and all authorized by parliament?


Mr MACKENZIE KING:: They are not indicated as repairs. They are all contracts awarded and on which not a single dollar was paid out by my right hon. friend. If they were repairs he ought to have got busy and started repairing if parliament had voted money for the purpose. After the election was over-the election was over on the 6th of December-lie signed a contract on December 9, for painting a bridge at St. Leonard, N.B. and also a contract on December 19 in this city for Printing bureau alterations.
40	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King


Arthur Meighen: Does the Prime Minister think that if his government had been in power they would have taken care to spend the money during election?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think my hon. friend gave a contract for an icebreaker, amounting to a million and a half, after the election.


Arthur Meighen: No, about a million. The hon. gentleman's government spend more than that for a second hand one.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: We spent four hundred thousand dollars.


Arthur Meighen: Besides the repairs.


Ernest Lapointe: No, that is not so; that is with the repairs.


Arthur Meighen: I will ask the hon. gentleman to bring the figures down later. He is wrong.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: 
Arthur Meighen: Oh, no. We were only in process of doing it. We reduced the number by something over 9,000.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am glad to hear my hon. friend make this statement, because before the elections he was saying they had gone as far as it was possible to go, I thought.


George Perry Graham: He did not go as far as
the recommendations.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: However, let me give the facts, with regard to reductions in the service in so far as we have found it possible to make them. First let me point out this fact: in attempting to reduce the service the government has been handicapped to a certain degree by some of the work of the Civil Service Commission. That commission had adopted a form of detailed classification in the different departments which some of us think is responsible to a considerable degree for the numbers that are kept in the service at the present time. That is one of the handicaps we have had to contend with. Another handicap which we have had to contend with in the service, so far as the showing by expenditure is concerned, is the fact that every year there has to be added increases in salaries in the nature of statutory increases. There is nothing to be found in any statute in the nature of a statutory decrease. They are all automatic increases; so that even if we kept the service at the point at which we found it, it would be inevitable that the amount that would have to be paid would be considerably in excess of the figures of the previous year.
There was the further fact that when we came into office we found a serious condition of unemployment throughout the country. As hon. gentlemen know, we were obliged the first winter to vote nearly a million dollars to alleviate the condition created by unemployment. Look at the press of this city to-day; note some of the comments that are being made concerning the intention of the government still further to reduce the public service; you find an appeal being made to the government not to make this reduction because we will add to the unemployment in the city. That condition was very serious when we took office. We had to go about matters carefully, but we did proceed nevertheless. We started in some of the departments in a quiet way, and whenever we found it possible . to reduce the numbers, we did so. With what result? With the result that up to the end of last year, we had made a very considerable net reduction in the public service. In some departments it was inevitable that we should make increases. Hon. members will recall that amongst legislation which we introduced was a good deal providing for increased inspection in different branches of agriculture, the existing inspection services were very considerably expanded, others were added with the result that in the Department of Agriculture we added some 237. In the Department of Finance there were additions of something like 67 owing to the fact that there are increased new services there.


Arthur Meighen: Taxes.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Taxation, yes. There is a good deal of detail work in connection with taxation and various refunding operations. Then in the Customs department the growing revenues in customs and excise have made it necessary to add 36 clerks. In the Post Office Department the expansion of business generally throughout the country has led to an increase of 221 clerks, and to our increasing immigration services we have added 127. We have made a total increase of 688 clerks up to the end of last year in those departments. But despite this increase, making allowance for it, we have brought about a total net decrease in the service of 2,706 in the two years. But that is not all. We have been reducing the personnel of some of the services as well. The personnel of the Fisheries Protection service has been reduced, the personnel of the Military and Naval services has been reduced, the navy by 312, the permanent militia by 418, or allowing for an increase in the Air Force of 77, making a total reduction of 653 in the defence forces. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which we thought was far too large, has been reduced from 1,668 on January 1, 1922, to 1,146 on
42	. [DOT]	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
January 1, 1924, a reduction of 552. That means .a reduction in those three services, Fisheries Protection, Naval and Military and Mounted Police, of a total of 1,253, bringing the total net reduction of salaried persons in two years to 3,959 or nearly
4.000.	That is up to the close of last year. Let me draw the attention of the House to this fact. Some hon. members are trying to create the impression that it is only to-day that the government is seeking to reduce the total numbers in the Civil Service; that as a consequence of some propaganda that is being spread broadcast, the government is to-day, so to speak, getting busy in the matter of reductions in the service. All of these reductions amounting to
4,000	that I have referred to, were made before the beginning of the present year, before the time at which this propaganda had started in so vigorously, so that hon. members will see that from the time it took office the government has been doing its duty by the country in seeking to effect all economies, possible in the public service. In addition, as hon. members know, last session we put through legislation providing for a Board of Audit, which amongst other duties and functions will have to do with effecting further economies in the public service. That step was taken in legislation which was introduced in this House last session. We have felt that a Superannuation Act was also an essential feature in connection with further reductions in the public services. Those measures working tocether, the Board of Audit working in conjunction with the Civil Service Commission and the deputy heads of departments, will, we believe, effect further economies in the public service. We have gone and are going in this matter just os far as it is possible for a government to go.
May I add a word in reference to the outstanding reason why the burden of taxation on the country is what it is to-day? It is because the country to-day is obliged to carry the whole capital cost of the war. That is a statement that I want to make here on the floor of parliament. I made it in Quebec shortly before leaving for the old country. I saw that it was challenged during my absence; but I wish to repeat it here on the floor of parliament, that it has been left to the government that has succeeded the governments of my right hon. friend to pay every cent of the capital cost of the war including demobilization. During the whole period of the war and the period of demobilization, those six years, not a single cent was raised from the tax-payers of this country

to meet the obligations of the war, if we take what was left for that purpose after the government had used what was raised for its own expenditures in other directions. That is a very serious situation, and I say that my light hon. friend and his friends were guilty of distinct negligence in the administration of the affairs of this country, that at a time when they were prepared to conscript men, to send them overseas to fight, they were not ready to get after the men who were making great fortunes out of the war.


Arthur Meighen: Better try to establish that.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will establish it for my hon. friend in a way -that the country will know it.


Jacques Bureau: We all know it and those who got rich know it better than we do.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend has asked me to establish what I am saying. Let me again make clear the statement that this country to-day and for years to come will have to bear the capital cost of the war in whole, not in part, because of the neglect of my hon. friends opposite to meet any of the capital cost of the war during the period of the war and the period of demobilization. Some statement was made in challenge of that by the former Minister of Finance. I have examined his figures pretty carefully and what do I find? I find he has put down to his account the amount that he raised to pay the interest on the cost of the war during the period that he was in office. A payment of interest on capital is a payment for the privilege of not having to meet the capital cost. It is not a payment of part of the capital cost. The other amounts were amounts used for current pensions ; but pensions are not part of the capital cost of the war; they are part of the current obligations growing out of it and extending through the after years. Whether or not I am correct is a matter of simple addition and subtraction. Take the total disbursements and subtract the total receipts. See whether the balance is in excess or less than the amount that was spent on war account. These are the figures and what do they show.
Total deficiency between receipts and disbursements, six years of war period.. .. $1,684,179,975 Less sum spent same period, war and demobilization	 1,670,408,242
$	13,773,733
In other words, $13,773,773 were added to the -public debt over and above the capital cost of the war by the government having

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
failed to raise sufficient to cover their expenditures for other purposes.
The real explanation of the cost of government to-day and of the need for taxation is the manner in which the governments of which my right hon. friend was a member managed the affairs of the country during the period of the war andi the period of demobilization which succeeded it,-the outrageous policy of government borrowing to finance the war. The whole cost of the war, and of demobilization was thrown over upon the men and women of to-day-including those who fought in the war and have returned, >and the relatives of those who lost their lives in the nation's service. Not a cent was raised
during the period I have mentioned, 1914 to 1920 if you will, over and above what was required to meet expenditures incurred on consolidated revenue and capital account apart altogether from the war. The capital cost of the war and the cost of demobilization were financed by loans-loans the principal and current interest upon which it has been left to those of the present day to pay. We are now meeting the cost of the war, its entire cost. In strict accounting, not a dollar of it was met by either the Conservative or Unionist governments of Sir Robert Borden, or by the government of my right hon. friend.
Here are the figures in detail:
Year	Total Revenue Receipts	Total Disbursements	Deficit	Spent on War and Demobilization Account1914-1915	s 133,073,482 172,149,393 232,701,294 260,778,953 312.946,747 349,746,335	$ 248.098,526 339,702,502 498,203,118 576,660,210 697,042,212 785,869,611	$ -115,025,044 -167,553,109 -265.501,824 -315,881,257 -384,095,465 -436,123,276	$ 60,750,476 166,197,755 308,488,815 343,836,802 446,519,439 346,612,9551915-1916 	1916-1917	1917-1918	1918-1919	1919-1920	1,461,396,204	3,145,576,179	-1,684,179,975	1,670,406,242
More than that. Not only did the governments of the day finance the war by borrowed money; not only did they let war profiteers go all but scot free, but in their loans they made the bonds they sold exempt from taxation, so that to-day they carry no part of the cost of the war to those who were fortunate enough to secure them.
To make still clearer my contention that the whole capital cost of the war was passed on until after the war, and still remains as a charge upon the country in spite of the large sums which were collected and are still being collected in war taxes, I may perhaps be permitted to use an illustration the force of which may appeal to those of us who were not reared in the lap of luxury. Many of us in the past, some of us perhaps in the present, have been all too well acquainted with the phenomenon known as the mortgage. We know in our individual experience how we may pay and still pay and pay in interest charges on the thing without being able to make any impression on the principal sum. Even over so short a period as five or six years we may pay in interest from one-third to one-half of the principal of the mortgage without having reduced that principal by a single dollar. Now, that is just what has happened in our national affairs. The hundreds of millions which were
raised by former governments in war taxation all went to pay interest on the rapidly increasing debt and the current expense of pensioning and re-establishing our returning soldiers. In no single year of the late government's term of office after the war broke out, were the amounts raised in war taxation sufficient to do more than meet current interest on war debt and current charges for pensions and the re-establishment of returned soldiers. I have said before, and I repeat, that the whole capital cost of the war is still constituting a mortgage upon the whole national wealth of Canada. What this country has to-day on its back is a mortgage equal to the whole capital cost of the war; and that mortgage was left by the hon. member and his friends.


Arthur Meighen: The Prime Minister
forgets that his Minister of Justice says that even then it is less by half that the debt of any other country in the Empire.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Then you
admit that the Prime Minister is right.


Arthur Meighen: No, I do not at all.


Jacques Bureau: You agree to disagree.


Arthur Meighen: He has no figures at all.
44	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The mere payment of interest is not a reduction of the mortgage; it is simply a payment for the privilege of postponing payment, and it is sheer stupidity or wilful refusal to see the facts which cause it to be represented in any other light. I repeat, the late government failed grievously in its duty during the war period in not making heavier demands upon the self-sacrifice of our people and raising additional taxation sufficient to meet during the war a fair proportion of the capital cost of the war, as was done, for example, in England. Whatever their reason may be, they failed to do it; they loaded the entire charge of the war on the shoulders of their successors, and now they talk glibly to us about our extravagance and taxation.
I thought of giving to the House some further statistics on evidences of increased prosperity, but I think I have spoken at sufficient length this evening.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.


Mr. MARTELL:: Give him some of his
own medicine.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have no
desire to delay the House unduly, but in view of the kind of propaganda to which the country has been subjected during the last year I think it would be to the advantage of all concerned to have the facts brought out in their true light. There are fortunately certain statistics which do tell the truth as to whether a country is prospering or not. We have the statistics of production and of trade, we have the statistics of transportation, and we have the statistics of employment and of business generally, also of public finance. Let my hon. friend take any one of these groups or take them all and he will find in every single division that there are irrefutable evidences of increased prosperity in this country during the past year, and that of a notable character. These are the facts which the country would do well to take to heart, because after all it is a good thing for a people to know when their country is prospering. There is nothing to be gained by belittling the country and making conditions out to be bad when as a matter of fact they are good and improving every day.
My hon. friend spoke this afternoon particularly of the record in agriculture. Fortunately, through the bounty of Providence, there has been a great record so far as the crops are concerned; indeed, it is the greatest in the history of Canada notwithstanding that the crop of last year was at that time also the greatest. Of agricultural crops for the

year 1923, wheat gave a total yield of 474,-
199,000	bushels as contrasted with 399,000,000 in the year previous. The yield in oats was
537.000.	000 as against 491,000,000; hay and clover 14,845,000 tons as against 14,062,000 tons. In Canada there is certainly an abundance of food for man and beast, and of the wheat crop of nearly 475,000,000 bushels over
263.000.	000 were marketed before the close of the year. That is a fact which the government is entitled to take some credit for. Providence undoubtedly gave a bountiful harvest, but it remained with the administration and others associated with it to see that the harvest was to some degree marketed in as profitable a way as possible. Never before in the history of Canada has as much grain been marketed up to the close of the year as was done last year. That was due in part to lowered transportation and other costs, the lowering of which was brought about in some measure at the instance of .the government. As my hon. friends know, it was this government that restored the Crowsnest pass rates on grain in the West. This government also-referred back to the Railway Commisssion the matter of rates on grain to the Pacific coast from Alberta. These reduced rates had a good deal to do with the extent to which crops were marketed at the time, and the prices that obtained. An interesting development is the extent to which the wheat crop was shipped this year in part through the port of Vancouver. In 1920 the shipments of wheat via Vancouver amounted to less than one million bushels. This year the shipments to January 31st total
27,800,000	bushels, and it is probable that in all there will have been shipped for the crop year, the very high total of 50,000,000 bushels via Vancouver. Indeed, Canada will this year, as last, take the first place amongst the world's wheat exporting countries. Take other branches of agriculture. My hon. friend referred to some agricultural figures this afternoon, and perhaps it is well that we should consider some further figures in this connection. For the year 1922 the total value of our agricultural production, that is for field crops, animal products, dairy products and miscellaneous items, was estimated at $1,419,937,000, whilst the capita! value or gross agricultural wealth of Canada was placed at $6,773,942,000. These figures shew the important place which the agricultural industry holds in our national life.
Let us take mining, in regard to which there has been a very distinct revival. The figures for 1923 show a mineral production of $214,102,000; those for 1922 show a production of $184,297,000; whilst in 1921 the production was $171,923,000. In reference to coal con-

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
sumption and the iron and steel production, both of which are basic phenomena in industrial progress, there have been heavy increases of late. In the 11-month period ended November last 35,228,000 tons of coal were made available for use in Canada as compared with 27,952,000 tons, the average for the same period the previous three years, or an increase of 26 per *cent. In 1923 the production of pig iron was
880,000	tons as compared with a production in 1922 of 384,000 tons, or more than double the output in favour of the past year as against the previous period. In 1923 the production of steel ingots and castings was 884,000 tons as compared with 486,000 tons in 1922, or an increase of 80 per cent. The production of coal in 1923 in Canada was the largest on record, being i7,132,000 tons as compared with a production in 1922 of 15,157,000 tons and in 1921 of 15,057,000 tons, an increase of approximate^ 2,000,000 tons. And as a result of the removal of the cattle embargo, 37,000 head of cattle were imported into Great Britain from Canada as compared with 17,000 head for the same period in the year previous.
My hon. friend last session ridiculed the treaty which the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding) had made writh France. What does it show? It shows an increase in imports from France of $869,000 and in exports of $2,083,000.


Arthur Meighen: Is the Prime Minister not aware that these increases were in wheat and other products not touched by the treaty at all, whereas in articles affected by the treaty there was a diminution?"


Ernest Lapointe: There was a large increase in manufactured implements.


Arthur Meighen: In the aggregate there is a diminution.


Jacques Bureau: You are mistaken.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I come now to the question of the foreign trade. The visible balance last year was largely in our favour, one of the results being the rehabilitation of our currency on foreign exchanges. In 1921 it took 111.6 cents to make an American dollar; last year we had reached the point where 101.9 cents sufficed.
The exports of Canadian produce for the calendar year 1923 were $1,014,734,000, an increase of 27 per cent in two years.
The imports for consumption increased from $799,478,000 in 1921 to $903,530,000 in
1923.
The visible balance of trade which in 1921 was in our favor by only $3,222,000 had in

c'.eased to $111,204,000 in 1923.
Not the least gratifying effect of our recent trade policy has been that under it our imports from the United Kingdom have increased from $123,150,000 in 1921 to $136,-
859,000	in 1922 and $154,492,000 in 1923. While the full effects of the extensions made in the British preference are not yet shown * for a full year-they came into effect only on May 12, 1923-it is evident that Canada has been effectively contributing to promote that revival of British industry which is so badly needed in the United Kingdom, and which in its turn will contribute to improve our export trade at a time when our market on the European continent is threatened by the disturbed political, economic and financial conditions there prevailing.
Then take transportation. The total earnings notably increased last year, notwithstanding a downward tendency of freight rates. Especially was this true on the Canadian National Railways.	The total
earnings of Canadian railways for the eleven months ended November 1923 were $429,-
409,000,	or an increase of 6.6 per cent over the corresponding period of the year before, which came to $402,808,000. Out of this total increase of $26,601,000, the Canadian National absorbed about $19,274,000. or over 72 per cent. This has made possible the highly satisfactory statement by Sir Henry Thornton to the effect that the net operating revenues of the Canadian National Railway system will reach $20,127,000 for 1923, as compared with about $2,480,000 for 1922.
That the improved showing of the railways in 1923 is not merely on their financial side, but extends also to the physical volume of their traffic, is shown by the fact that the estimated tonnage of freight hauled in 1923 was 113,500,000 tons, as compared with 108,-
530,000	tons in 1922, and with 103,131,000 tons in 1921, or an increase in the two years of over 10 per cent in the physical quantity of the commodities transported.
The growth of lake transportation and of ocean transportation indicates correspondingly large increases in volume.
Then also in the matter of employment, had I time to go into it, I could point out wherein the Department of Labour index figures show very definite improvement in that regard.
As to public finance, the House has already a statement showing vastly reduced expenditure with vastly increased revenues, making the best showing which this country has known for a long period of time.
Then adding other indices of general business, such as bank clearings, stock figures,
46	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
securities and the like, one sees on every side the indication of a growing and increasing prosperity. There, Mr. Speaker, is the best answer to all that we have been obliged to listen to in the way of detraction on the part of my right hon. friend as to the condition ' of the country, its general business and its finances. That is the answer which we, as a government, make to the criticisms which our friends opposite have directed towards us ; it is what we give to the country in account of our stewardship of the nation's affairs.
In conclusion, Sir, we believe the time has come when, instead of sounding a note of pessimism, we are justified in giving to the country a note of optimism. More than that, we feel the time has come when, instead of making appeals of a sectional character to interests in the east or to interests in the west, we ought to address ourselves rather to the nation as a whole. My right hon. friend and I had the privilege of hearing the other day an address, delivered by Mr. Vincent Massey-one of the young men of this country, accustomed to observe matters carefully and in an impartial way. He was speaking to the citizens of Ottawa, and equally to the people of Canada. He said, "It is not Downing Street but Main Street which is the foe of true Canadianism." The newspaper report of this speech contains the following:
Turning to his theme, the speaker said the whole air seemed charged with the problematical, but so far as he was concerned he would prefer to emphasize the word Canadian rather than problems. He criticized a sectional outlook which he thought was discernible. . . But he had not much sympathy with those who saw b'ue ruin, red revolution, and a yellow peril, a sort of Joseph's coat of misery, which he thought also was hardly the best kind of flag under which to move towards better things.
That expression of view given at a Canadian Club meeting by Mr. Vincent Massey is, I think, the voice of the younger generation of Canada to-day of those who have faith in the country and want to see it go forward, of those who do not approve of the continual note of detraction, of pessimism and of sectionalism which has been sounded so much of late by my right hon. friend and his friends. I have spoken of the young men, let me give my hon. friend the words of an old man, one of the grand old men of this country, one most highly honoured and revered, one who some years ago used to sit in this House as a Conservative member. I give him the words oT Mr. Adam Brown, of Hamilton, now in his ninety-eighth year, words which sound a note of optimism more emphatic than those already quoted and which he and his associates might well take to heart and repeat to the country

as often as they can, for they are uttered by one who has been a keen observer of Canadian affairs for three quarters of a century. Concluding an address to the staff of the Canada Life Assurance Company last month, when for the fourtieth time he moved the vote of thanks to them for their services, Mr. Brown said:
No country in the world begins the new year with greater assurance of prosperity than Canada. Let us as Canadians be prouder than ever of our great inheritance, full of hope and faith in the future that awaits our beloved Canada-a land of peace and plenty, welded heart and soul to the greatest and freest empire the world has ever known, and with hearts that change not, resolve that we will be true to our trust, rendering honest and noble service to our country whatever our calling in it may be, and handing down unsullied to millions yet unborn the precious and priceless blessings we enjoy as British subjects, under the unstained flag of our fathers.
This, Mr. Speaker, is the faith, this the spirit needed to make our country great.
On motion of Mr. Forke the debate was adjourned.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 9.40 p.m.



SUPPLEMENT

[Stage Direction]
(See Resolution of the House, "page 6.)

[Stage Direction]
His Excellency the Governor General unveils the Monument to the Memory of Lt. Col. George Harold Baker, M.P. (5th C.M.R.) killed in action June 2, 1916, at the battle of Sanctuary Wood.
Friday, February 29, 1924.
Members of the House of Commons, invited guests, including His Excellency the Governor General, and members of the general public, assembled in the Main Lobby of the House.
Chairman, Hon. Rodolphe Lemieux, K.C., Speaker.
The audience joined in singing:
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come;
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
Under the shadow of Thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come;
Be Thou our guard while life shall last,
Arid our eternal home.

Baker Memorial
The CHAIRMAN:: Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen: On the morrow of the eventful election of 1911, late in the autumn, parliament was convened at this very spot, under the" gothic arches of the old building which soon after was to crumble and become but a memory. Amongst the new commoners appeared a young man of middle stature with an attractive expression of youth and strength combined. An early training of self-discipline and an exuberance of life blended into a harmonious whole made of him a winning personality full of vitality and charm. He hailed from the Eastern Townships, a picturesque country of rolling hills, dotted with sheets of placid and clear waters, where a luxuriant nature seems to fashion in her bosom the sterling character of her sons.
Harold Baker came from good lineage. His father long before him had, on the forum and in the legislative halls of Quebec and Ottawa, served faithfully and eloquently his country. The son had just gallantly wrested from a loyal and deserving public servant after a momentous battle, the coveted prize of his ambition.
The mandate of Brome was his and in his new career, like that of his forbears, he meant to devote many years of service to the public weal.
Three sessions passed. The House of Commons, busily engaged in enacting laws and solving problems, was hardly keeping pace with the ever-expanding forces of a young and progressive Dominion.
When all of a sudden, in the midst of a glorious summer, the first rumblings of a terrific storm were heard at a distance. From across the Atlantic, threatening lights were seen on the horizon and as hours and minutes fled, the impending storm had gathered and was soon raging from Halifax to Victoria.
The great World War was on us with its long and sombre periods of supreme trials, of hopes deferred, with its unending trail of holocausts on land, in the air and on the seas.
The youngest member of the House of Commons, Harold Baker, was one of the first to answer the call of duty. He saw that duty clearly before him and we, his colleagues, can well remember with what a radiant faith he joined the colours and bade us adieu.
As weeks and months elapsed, the yeomen gathered from the deepest recesses of this broad Dominion and the steady tramp of regiments began, as if marching in rhythmical order, with the roll of the drums. With unfaltering steps, the sun glinting on their bayonets, the first contingents reached Valcartier, impatient to board the Argosies bound for the battlefields of France all ablaze in the deadliest conflict ever witnessed between right and might.
Theirs was not a spectacular adventure. Modern warfare has lost that glamour which in centuries past stirred the imagination of peoples. When whole nations are aligned on the battlefields in a long maze of muddy burrows, war becomes anonymous. Officers and privates face the same dangers, they share the same fate. And so, in June, 1916, a brief and melancholy despatch brought us face to face with the grim and poignant realties of war. Lt.-Col. Harold Baker, our fellow member, had been killed in action at Sanctuary Wood.
The parliament of Canada, shocked, aggrieved at the sad message, felt deeply honoured at the noble example of manhood set by its Benjamin, and unanimously it resolved that another sanctuary, within its own precincts, would be dedicated to him, so that his memory would ever be enshrined with those laurels which since ancient times are the happy warrior's halo.
It is proper and fitting that Your Excellency, you who so gloriously led our Canadian boys to victory in one of the most strategic and decisive engagements of the long and bloody struggle, should be called upon to unveil this, the first monument erected in our Hall of Fame.
This bronze memorial is not only the artistic expression of the gratitiude of the nation to one dearly beloved. It is also a pious memento to all those young Canadians who, during four years of cruel agony, so prized liberty that to save it no sacrifice was for them too great.
It will stand here, at the threshold of the House of Commons, for all time to come, as a supreme lesson of the dead to the living- that love of country, devotion to duty, are not empty words or vain ideals.
It will vividly recall to future generations that the dropping volleys and the muffled drums signalling there yonder the sacrifice of so, many precious lives, was also meant as a supplication to the world that hereafter the gigantic evil of war should be stopped before it got afoot.
Let that ideal for which our heroes laid down their lives be forever our guiding star. Then can it be said that from their exhausted frame buried in distant fields, their soul still radiates in our land-consoling the ones, stimu-
Baker Memorial..

lating the others-a soul refulgent with that spirit of human brotherhood which two thousand years ago was heralded in the plains of Judea by the messengers of the Prince of Peace.
Then, and then only, will it be proclaimed that Canada, bereaved by the loss of her bravest, hath through their sacrifice gained in spiritualities; that as they dashed fearlessly into the fiery furnace they bequeathed to us, the living, a noble and lasting inspiration with a memory emerging from the perishable to immortality.
His Excellency the Governor General unveiled the monument, the guard presenting arms and the bugler sounding The Last Post.
Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING, C.M.G., P.C., (Prime Minister): Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen: The ceremony in which we are participators to-day is one of historic as well as personal interest to all present. It is very fitting that the first monument to be unveiled in these halls of parliament as reconstructed since the Great War, should be to the memory of a distinguished member of the Canadian House of Commons who was hilled in action. It is scarcely less significant, and will indeed be deeply gratifying to all Canadians, that the unveiling of the memorial should be by His Excellency, Lord Byng, who was in command of the Canadian Corps during the action in which Colonel Baker fell, and who to-day is our Governor General.
We are proud that parliament has seen well to pay this tribute to the memory of [DOT]one of her gallant sons, but we would greatly err if this memorial did not speak to us of something more than individual loss and individual sacrifice. It is personal in character, but it is also essentially symbolic. It speaks not of one member of parliament only who gallantly served his country overseas, but of the fifty or more members of the two Houses who enlisted at the time, many of whom served actively in France, and of the eighteen members of parliament who lost sons in the Great War. But it speaks of more than this. It speaks of Canadians, approximately 600,000 in number who enlisted for service in the Great War, and above all of the more than 60,000 who gave their lives as the supreme sacrifice of this nation in the cause of the World's freedom. Of-one and all of these it can be said,
, as it was said of the late Colonel Baker in the legend that appears to the left of the bronze figure:	"And thus this man died, leaving
his death for an example of a noble courage, and a memorial of virtue, not only unto young men but unto all his Nation."
The wider association and larger significance of the memorial is emphasized by 'the words of the legend which appears to the right of the figure. To appreciate them in all their impressiveness' we must recall that they were written by another distinguished Canadian who died of wounds received in the Great War, and whose remains lie, like those of Colonel Baker, in one of the military cemeteries overseas:
To you from falling hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
The legend to the left is our tribute to the immortal dead. The legend to the right is their command to us. The legend to the left comes to us out of the distant past, recalling that great company of the defenders of right and of the faith, who through the ages have revealed the God-like greatness of the human spirit and have entered into the fulness of eternal life. The words of the legend to the right will continue to speak to us through all the years that lie ahead, reminding us of the obligations we who are living owe to those who are gone and to whom in the words of another poet we said: Here-or hereafter-you shall see it ended,
This mighty work to which your souls are set;
If from beyond-then, whit the vision splendid,
You shall smile back and never know regret.
Pray God we may be given strength and grace and guidance to be true to this greatest of all trusts.
Lastly, may I say that it will always be a source of pride and satisfaction to all who view this splendid work of art to know that it also is the creation of another distinguished Canadian, Dr. Tait McKenzie, who, though at present residing in the United States, was born in the near vicinity of Ottawa, and has remained a British subject. The excellence of Dr. McKenzie's art is recognized the world over, and we are proud that we should have this splendid bronze protrait of his as the first memorial to be unveiled in our parliamentary halls.
In a word, to-day's ceremonial is a noble expression of the many sidedness, of our national life-worthy in what in art it has revealed of sculpture and of verse, great in its parliamentary traditions and military achievements, but noblest in all in the manifestations of the spirit of our manhood, a spirit that is ever ready for service, and that falters not at sacrifice.

Baker Memorial
Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN P.C. (Leader of the Opposition): The event of this afternoon is the first of its kind in our country's history. It has been the lot of other nations to have their legislators, their parliamentarians, even their kings put on the uniform of soldiers and go forth to battle and meet a patriot's death, but so far it has been the lot of Canada only once. George Harry Baker, a gifted, comely, companionable man; the youngest of the members of the House of Commons, the centre of the hopes of his associates in parliament, the trusted of everyone, the choice of a fine old constituency, the pride of an honoured family, heard the solemn call of duty at the outbreak of the great war-he answered and he gave his life.
Thousands went to battle with him and thousands died, but Colonel Baker left a scene probably more dear to the ambitions, more attractive to aspiring manhood, than any from which others tore themselves away. There were others in the parliament of that day who joined the colors and went too. Some of them are with us still and all of them have an honoured place in memory and in public regard. But Colonel Baker alone never returned. He made the final sacrifice; bequeathed to his country the heritage of a great example and left for the records of this parliament the legacy of his gallant name.
The character of Colonel Baker is reflected, perhaps best of all, in the letters he wrote home and back to Canada during his service overseas. These are embalmed in a private biography published by his friends, and will be treasured by all who honour his memory. They disclose a modesty of demeanor, a cheerfulness of temperament, a human kindliness and with a splendid courage; qualities every one that we well knew he possessed. "I make no profession as a soldier" he said at a banquet in his honour prior to his departure, "I lay no claim to special merit. My aim is to win the confidence of my men and to leave the rest to circumstances and the turn of events." The confidence of his men he won, a confidence which reached a degree of ardor and devotion rarely equalled in our military annals. The story of the struggle in which he lost his life is one of the most tragic and thrilling in all the long and ghastly but glorious history of war. For a day and a night it raged and on into the next a thundering, deafening, murderous struggle-a struggle perhaps more distinctly Canadian on the allied side than any previous engagement. The names of Maple Copse, Observatory Ridge, and Armagh Wood, places where the sanguinary contest was waged should 4
be names forever remembered by the children of our Dominion. Companies went forward and bravely battled on after their arms had all but disappeared, many of their men deafened and blind, but discipline maintained to the end. General Griesbach, one of our Senators was there; General Macdonell, now Principal of Royal Military College at Kingston arrived also with his men on the scene, and General Draper whom we rejoice to see with us to-day-he too played a noble part. The figure of Harry Baker moving from point to point, making his dispositions for defence, cheering his men, encouraging them by his enthusiasm and his example, is the last memory which his batallion cherishes of their commanding officer. Brave to the last, smiling to the end, imperturbable, unselfish, full of cheer, a leader even in death, he illustrated how a soldier should battle and how gentlemen should die.
A brilliant career was cut short in its prime. All that man had to live for he left behind. A domestic felicity as sweet as ever enshrouded a life, he sacrificed; social position was his, this he sacrificed as well; a professional career already prosperous, this he abandoned, a public service splendid with promise, this too he left behind. The best that life had to offer he cheerfully surrendered that his whole duty might ba done.
We are accustomed to regard such an early ending of a splendid young man as the lamentable close of a life of promise. But the story of Harry Baker is a story of achievements won, even more than it is a story of promise lost. His years of maturity were crowded with things done and well done, in private life, in professional life, in public life, and on the field of war. It is in the spirit of such a career more than in expansion of territory, or even in continuance of Empire, that there lies the imperishable glory of the British name. The names of our great men, spread over the centuries, treasured forever by our children, the light that shines for their example; these are remembered and have their eternal value long after the events through which they passed have been forgotten. In the wide circle of his friends, in the larger area of his activities and his influence in the Eastern Townships where he was reared and which he loved, in the Dominion which he served, and for whose honour he died, Harold Baker will be known as one of those men.


Robert Forke: I feel almost unworthy to take part in this ceremony, as I was not privileged to have the acquaintance of the one whose memory we

Baker Memorial

would honour this day. It is well as it is fitting that ceremonies such as this should take place; that monuments should be erected to the glorious dead. As the years roll away and time passes, time with healing influence will soften the blow that fell so heavily upon many, when the Great War was taking its heavy toll of human life. To them this will ever remain-the memory of the great loss sustained. But others,-and it is the way of humanity,-the incidents of those trying years will only be a memory. Maybe in the pressing importance of everyday duty they may forget the great sacrifice made by our glorious dead; and it is seemly that ceremonies such as this take place, that Memorial services be held, Memorial Halls built, Tablets set up and Monuments erected-Lest we forget! Lest we forget!
It is well that a monument should be erected in this building where one whose memory we honour served his country by representing his constituency in parliament. I was not personally acquainted with this fine soldier and gentleman, but enough for me, he heard the call of his country, he did his duty and failed not.
This statue shall stand to-day and in days to come as a constant reminder of one who did his duty and made the supreme sacrifice. It will be an inspiration to members of this House to serve their country to the best of t'heir ability, with singleness of purpose doing the duty that lies nearest to them. There will be differences of opinion, but let it be honest differences.
The story of the sacrifices our heroic dead made for liberty, for their country, will be forever one of the splendid pages in the history of Canada, and a glorious heritage for our children and our children's children, an inspiration to all who follow that they shall be worthy of the sacrifices made^ "Greater love hath no man than this that he lay down his life for his fellow men."
Hon. Sir JAMES LOUGHEED K.C.M.G., (Leader of the Opposition in the Senate): It is with mingled feelings of sorrow and pride that to-day we pay this tribute to Lieut.-Col. Baker who for some years was associated with us in the parliament of Canada.
In the prime of his manhood, when life was clothed with its greatest attractiveness and promise, he heard the tocsin of war-the . call of duty. All else was laid to one side and he responded with haste to the call of his country. He fell as a soldier and a fighting man would want to fall. He fell on the field of battle. In that world's conflict and clash of arms, the millions who died that we might have

liberty, will live on through the ages. Their deeds are immortal, and while we shall die and be forgotten, they shall always be our survivors.
In this monument of stone and bronze erected by a grateful country, Colonel Baker will outlive not only those living to-day who sat with him in the Parliament of Canada, but this record of his gallantry and death, his life and his sacrifice, will pass down to our descendants as an outstanding and inspiring memory in the history of the Canadian parliament.
While we mourn his death, yet it is with patriotic pride that we think how gallantly he fell. When from time to time in these stately halls we view this monument commemorative of his death, we shall ask ourselves:
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods?
Hon. Senator GEO. G. FOSTER, K.C, (Alma):	Your Excellency, Mr. Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen:	From the hillside
and valleys, from the villages and home lands of that beautiful district in the Eastern Townships in which Harry Baker was bom, in which he lived his life, in which his heart was centered and from whence he marched to glory, I have been asked by his neighbours, as one of their sons, to bring a message of gratitude and appreciation on this dedication day to the members of the Senate and of the House of Commons.
It is not only because you have written in stone and bronze the features and story of the sacrifice of our hero; it is not only because you have added to the glory of the traditions of your parliament by preserving the details of his service, but it is because we know that without a dissenting voice two parliaments have unanimously joined in this noble tribute, and you have thereby spread his fame throughout our country by linking it with this magnifieient structure. For all these reasons, our people are truly grateful.
I am quite certain that I am within the mandate entrusted to me and am voicing their wishes when I express to the four leaders of political thought, who have so generously honoured his memory, the gratitude that will be felt for them; and I can say that there will be written into the history of those Eastern Counties a true transcript of the patriotic lessons which may be learned from their utterances, and they will serve as an incentive for present and future generations to emulate the example of the hero of to-day, not only in case the country may demand a similar service, but in those other walks of life in which

Home Bank Investigation
public service is sure to be required. I am not going to attempt to add one word to what has been said of the history and sacrifice which has been referred to, but only to express the hope that as day by day we pass within the shadow of the monument we have erected we may remember the service which Colonel Baker rendered to Canada, at a time of great national peril, and that we, too, may emulate his example in our everyday service.
Permit me, Mr. Chairman, to express to you our gratitude for the kindly thought which prompted you to give this opportunity to Harry Baker's neighbours to take a part in this great national gathering.
The audience joined in singing God Save the King.
Adjourned.
Tuesday, March 4, 1924