1925-04-23

COPYRIGHT ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
Mr. W. G. RAYMOND (Brantford) presented the second report of the special committee appointed to consider and report upon Bill No. 2, to amend and make operative certain provisions of the Copyright Act, recommending that the committee be given leave to sit while the House is in session.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. GEORGE P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals): I lay on the table copies of the sixth annual report of the Canadian Government Merchant Marine. These copies are in English. Copies in French will be brought down in a few days.
[Stage Direction]
Correspondence between the government of the United States and the government of Canada in reference to the St. Lawrence Waterway.-Hon. Mr. Graham.

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

Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	What were the receipts from the customs port or quarantine station of Pinhorn, Alberta, for the fiscal years of 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1924?
2.	What were the expenses for the same port for the same years?


Hon. Mr. COPP:: Department of Agriculture.
1.	1920-21, $2.00; 1921-22, $6.50; 1922-23, $12.75; 1923-24, $20.00; 1924-25, $7.75.
2.	1920^21,
D. Coristine, veterinary inspector,
salary, arrears, bonus and expenses	$3,752 20
Coal for quarantine station	 43 75
Total	$3,795	95
1921-22:
D. Coristine, veterinary inspector,
salary, bonus and expenses	
$3,106	15Coal for quarantine station	
156	00Total	
3,262 15
Questions
1922-23:
H. J. Elliott, veterinary inspector, salary, bonus and expenses.. .. $3,314 15 Repairs to quarantine station.. ..	374 00
Ploughing fireguard	 36 00
Coal for quarantine station	 132 00
Total	$3,856	15
1923-24:
H. J. Elliott, veterinary inspector, salary, bonus and expenses,. .. $2,573 99 Repairs to quarantine station....	93	00Ploughing fireguard	
36	00Coal for quarantine station	
138	50Total	$2,841	49
1924-25:
H. J. Elliott, veterinary inspector,
salary and expenses	$2,603	18Repairs to quarantine station.. ..	133	36Ploughing fireguard	
30	00Total	
$2,766 54
In connection with the above figures, inspection fees are only collected on commercial entries of animals, while those imported as pure-breds or settlers' effects receive free inspection and test, if required. The location of Pinhorn is such that commerical entries of live stock may be considered negligible.
The veterinary inspector stationed at that point does not, of course, confine his duties to the inspection or test of animals entering Canada, but is used in connection with mange work or such other work as may be required, which has been of very considerable magnitude in some of the years covered by the above figures.
Department of Customs and Excise.
1 and 2:
Receipts Expenses
1919- 29	$ 390 00 $ 1,712 82
1920-	21	
45	00	1,308	751921-	22	
130	70	1,362	501922-	23	
232	SO	1,497	601923-	24	
1,422	51	961	50
EXPERIMENTAL FARM, OTTAWA Mr. STIRLING:
1.	Has the Government sufficient land for experimental farm work at Ottawa?
2.	Is any land available for such purpose conveniently situated to the present farm?
3.	Does the government contemplate buying any more land in the near future in connection with the development of experimental farm work at this point?
4.	If so, where and when, and at what price?
150*	^


Hon. Mr. MOTHERWELL:: 1.	No.
2.	Yes.
3.	The matter is under consideration.
4.	Answered by No. 3.


CAMP BORDEN
Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	Is it the intention of the government (or has any promise been given) to remove the Royal Canadian Air Force aviation camp from Camp Borden to Camp Mohawk at Deseronto?
2.	If so, what is the reason for the change and the cost of such removal?
3.	Were other sites centrally located and owned by the government, such as Long Branch, considered?
4.	If any change has been decided on, on what grounds was the removal deemed necessary and what officer of the department recommended it?


Hon. Mr. MACDONALD:: 1, 2, 3 and 4. The matter is under consideration.


EXPORT OF ELECTRICAL POWER
Sir HENRY DRAYTON:: 1.	Under the regulations of the government will the tax on the export of electrical power be placed on the exporter or will such export be made illegal unless paid by the importer?
2.	In case the tax is placed on the exporter is any provision made to cover the case of power exported under firm long term contracts or will the municipalities bound by said contracts be obliged to pay the said tax?


Hon. Mr. LOW:: 1.	The exporter will pay the tax.
2.	No.


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS -RETIRING GRATUITIES
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. W. J. WARD (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, in the session of 1923 I brought up the question of certain gratuities given to retiring officials of the Grand Trunk railway. As will be seen by reference to page 1667, volume 2, of Hansard of that year, the question was asked as to whether or not certain officials would be called upon to return the amount awarded them. The Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham) announced, and his statement will be found at page 1668 of the same volume, that the officials in question were going to refund the gratuities they had received. I should like to know whether the officials in question have made such refund, and if so when?


Mr. SPEAKER:: I think the hon. gentleman had better give notice of his question, it is rather involved and could not be answered
2348	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
offhand. The hon. gentleman will therefore give notice as required by the rules of the House.


William John Ward: I did give notice to the Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham) that I intended to ask this question.


Mr. GRAHAM:: I can answer it, Mr. Speaker, if you like.


Hewitt Bostock: I think we should adhere to the rules of the House, and it is in the interest of proper procedure that notice should be given of such questions. This question can be placed on the order paper.


THE BUDGET
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, April 22, consideration of the motion of Hon. J A. Robb (Acting Minister of Finance) that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair for the House to go into committee of Ways and Means, and the proposed amendment thereto of Sir Henry Drayton.
Mr. A. E. ROSS (Kingston):: When the House rose at six o'clock yesterday I was proceeding to narrate the difficulties of the ordinary member in his attempt to grasp the financial situation as presented in the budget speech of this year. The second budget speech, as delivered by the apparently second Acting Minister of Finance, (Mr. Marler) has left us in a position of great confusion. We got as far as the statement that the ordinary revenue of the country was $344,000,000 and the ordinary expenditure $342,000,000, leaving a supposed balance or surplus of $1,823,000 odd. But we ordinary members were nonplussed by this grant of cash of $18,027,000 to the Canadian National Railways. If we take that as ordinary expenditure, no matter where it has been obtained, we have a deficit of $16,204,000; but if we accept the conclusion as arrived at by the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Marler), and with which we in this section of the House agree, namely that all assistance to the railways, whether cash, guaranteed loan or unguaranteed loan, is to be taken as a debt of this country and should be so marked and should be included in our obligations, then we can without any further discussion and1 without any evasion say that our additions for the year to the national debt comprise the following items:

Cash to Canadian National Railways.. .. $ 18,027,000 Last year's vote to the Canadian' National
Railways	 56,527,000
Further estimates to be voted this year.. 7,500,000 Vote for branch terminals	 18,000,000
Total	$100,054,000
From this amount we subtract the apparent
surplus of $1,823,000, leaving a debt net or deficit of this country of $98,231,000. No one can deny any one of these figures, and I would like hon. gentlemen to note that I have omitted from this list the following
items:
Amount of refunding debt	$17,000,000
Amount to the Canadian Government
Merchant Marine	 900,000
To the Quebec Harbour Commissioners.. 600,000

And as we cannot obtain information as to whether these two amounts are for a certainty included in any other figures given by the minister, we will take it for granted and give the government the benefit of the doubt and leave them out. Therefore we come to this conclusion: that at the very least the additions of this year to the debt upon our country is $98,231,000. I know, Mr. Speaker, that other hon. members will find1 items in the budget that they will say should be added to it, but as an ordinary member I am taking figures that cannot be disputed. And, taking this minimum amount, can this government or any member of it say that we have a balanced budget? The statement has been made, and no doubt will be made in the future that the budget has been balanced; but in the face of this statement which I have submitted, and any manipulation of the figures by a minister of the crown or by an official of the crown to-prove a balanced budget, how can we describe such a statement except by saying that it is untrue and misleading? Some members may use stronger language and in doing so may incur the displeasure of the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Marler), who, in dealing with this budget has climbed up the back stairs of the band wagon and is attempting to iplay the big drum; but so far as we are concerned we will continue to make our affirmation in whatever language we like to use that the budget is not balanced. And in the last few years no Minister of Finance has claimed a balanced budget. Our public debt is mounting by leaps and1 bounds under this government having this year increased by the large sum of $98,231,000.
Now, sir, let us look at it from another angle-I am not making this statement as a chartered accountant but just as an ordinary member of the House. From time to time

The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
statements are made that our debt has been reduced so many dollars. For a number of years this government has been dedaring at the end of each year that there has been a surplus. These statements are made with the intention of leading ordinary members of the House and the public to believe that the debt of the country is being gradually reduced. The financial statement, however, as it is put before us from time to time-


Mr. MAULER:: The hon. member used
the word "surplus" a moment ago. Hon. members will find precisely the same word used, and exactly the same terms and the same application, in the speeches of Sir Thomas White and of the hon. member for West York (Sar Henry Drayton). Was there an intention on the part of those ministers to mislead the .public also?


Arthur Edward Ross: The statement was made by the hon. member-who is one day agreeing with the government .and the next day disagreeing, and now tlhat he sees signs of an election he has climbed on the band wagon-that similar declarations were made by former finance ministers. I merely wish to say that the former ministers never made the statement he has made. The hon. member for Shelburne and Queens (Mr. Fielding) did not make the statement that he balanced the budget.


Herbert Meredith Marler: I am not referring to the member for Shelburne and Queens, but to Sir Thomas White and the member for West York (Sir Henry Drayton). Has my hon. friend read their speeches? If he has he will find that what I say is exactly true.


Arthur Edward Ross: Last night I asked my hon friend a simple question and he rushed out of the chamber with his papers. In the years 1922, 1923, 1924 and 1925 there were surpluses as follows:
1922		 134,391,000
1923		 62,321,000
1924		 72,000,000
1925		 1,823,000
Making altogether surpluses of a hundred and seventy million and some odd thousands. Ordinary people like ourselves would naturally think the public debt would be reduced by that amount of money, but instead of that there was an increase each year except one, as follows:
Increase Decrease
1922		$ 81,000,000
1923	 31,000,000
1924		 335,000,000
1925	 13,000,000
$125,000,000	$35,000,000

The statement made yesterday by the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George would no doubt explain much of this. But the simple statement that there is a surplus or that the public debt is decreasing is not of much use to us. We can only take the statements year by year and ascertain whether during that period we have added any amount to the net public debt or not. This budget, like former budgets, also shows a constantly increasing burden on the middle and poor classes of this country. Let me draw the attention of this House to two or three items. The income tax brought in the following amounts:
1921		 146,000,000
1922		 78,000,000
1923		 59,000,000
1924		 54,000,000
You will notice a decrease each year in the income tax collections. The business profits tax brought in the following amounts:
1921		 $40,000,000
1922		 22,000,000
1923		 13.000,000
1924		   4,000,000
In addition to these taxes, which show a gradual decrease, we have the sales tax, cheque tax, transportation tax and so on. From these there was derived:
1922		 $ 73,000,000
1923	 106,000,000
1924	 120,000,000
I claim, therefore, that this budget shows a constant increase in the burden upon the poor people and the middle class, and a corresponding decrease in the burden upon the incomes and business profits of the rich.
An hon. member said the other day that he had been "flimflammed" by the budget. It is rather late at this time to learn this lesson, but it is better late than never. Yes, we and the country have been flimflammed by the statements of this government. I should like to call the attention of the House to two or three of those statements. It has been claimed by this government that taxes are decreasing. Just as I have shown in my statement about the sales tax, cheque tax and transportation tax, I want to show how the taxes have been "decreasing" upon the people of this country. To a question for items in regard to the sales tax, and the amount of money collected from it each year the following answer was given:
1920- 21	$ 38,000,000
1921-	22	
61,000,0001922-	23	
91,000,0001923-	24	
100,000,000
In 1923-24, when the government had increased the sales tax by one hundred per
Net increase.

The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
cent, there was collected from the people, through their ordinary purchases, $100,000,000. When this tax was reduced in 1924-25, the amount collected was still $62,000,000. There is no great showing there of this direct tax upon the people being reduced.
Another claim made by the government is that they are practising a certain amount of economy. The position puts one in mind of whittlers round the country stores who are armed with a jack-knife and a stick, do nothing but whittle and accumulate about them a lot of shavings, with nothing manufactured, nothing achieved, nothing gained. The government has been whittling at economy for quite a number of years, and I should like to draw the attention of the House to certain results of the efforts of this combination of whittlers across the way. They whittled at the Civil Service, cutting out some little bumps, while they allowed others to grow larger. Under this operation the Auditor General's department increased by $17,000 a year by the addition of one employee. They whittled at the Department of National Defence, cutting out eight clerks, six stenographers and seven file clerks, but they added five clerk typists and three senior stenographers. They whittled out an inspector of harness and saddlery and added one inspector of leather products. They whittled out one inspector Of cloth and one inspector of clothing, and they added two inspectors of textile products. They whittled out one packer and one helper and they added two office appliance operators. They whittled out one messenger clerk and they added two office boys. They whittled down pensions by $60,000, but they increased the expense of the Pension board by $13,000. They whittled at the combines stick, and they have not reduced a single combine, although they have spent $50,000 in the whittling. They whittled at the Public Works expenditure, and while they were whittling the cost of the Scribe hotel mounted from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. Tills has been the style of economy they have practised in spite of t'heir declaration as to what they were going to do according to their great plan marked out in 1919. I would like to read that. The statement begins:
Whereas, on the 31st March, last-
That is 1919-
-according to the statement of the Minister of Finance, the net public debt was $1,584,000,000, or, roughly, $220 for every man. woman and child in the Dominion, involving an annual interest charge of about $115,000,000; . . . .
And whereas, national disaster will overtake this country should the present method of financing the country's affairs be continued. . . .

Be it and it is hereby resolved that the serious nature of the country's financial situation calls for the profoundest consideration of all patriotic citizens, and the exercise of the severest economy by the government; that increase of revenue must be sought from an equitable and effective imposition and collection of graduated taxes, on business profits and income, applicable to all incomes above reasonable exemptions.
I have given the House an example of the "economy" practised by this government in regard to the income and business profits taxes showing that these have been constantly decreasing while the direct tax upon the ordinary people has been increasing.
I should like also to refer to the question of an export tax on power. I think it can be taken for granted that the people of Ontario, at least the part known as eastern Ontario, are strongly opposed to this idea, for the following reasons. We are now faced with the impossibility of increasing our amount of power. This sale of power to the Americans will certainly further increase the lack of power to us on this side of the line and will also set up competition for the price of power unless something is done by the government. For these reasons eastern Ontario is strongly opposed to this export tax. That part of the province is crying today for power; and, as I said in a forme." address, power means a great deal in the economic life of the people of this province: it means a lessening in the purchase of coal. We feel therefore that our source of power which is at our door, on the St. Lawrence, should be available to us. We cannot afford to wait for the result of this great scheme which is mentioned to-day in the press: I refer to the investigation into the canalization of the St. Lawrence. It would take a number of years to produce power under that scheme, and Ontario requires power to-day. Our supply will be at an end in 1926 and this export tax will certainly lessen the amount available to us.
There is another point indirectly connected with the budget to which I shall now refer, and that is the criticism which has been levelled at the Canadian Government Merchant Marine. I would point out that all that has been said to the detriment of our merchant marine is practically tantamount to a criticism of the shipbuilding powers and capacity of this country; it is absolutely a criticism of the men and the corporations that have been engaged in the business of building ships in Canada. I do not think that either this government or any other government or its followers can afford to indulge in criticism of this kind. I have here a little book from which I obtain my facts in regard to the

The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
marine situation, and I learn that in 1883 Canada held third place in tonnage amongst the nations of the world; her tonnage then was 1,311.000. In 1907 she had slipped back to seventh place with a tonnage of 657,000, a decrease of 654,000 tons. In 1907, Mr. A. G. Baillie published this little book to which I have referred, showing that there was then a tonnage of 1.069.000 of foreign vessels in Canada, not one under the British flag, employing 20,000 foreign seamen and thus debarring from work that number of Canadians. In 1916 Canada had gone back still further, occupying the sixteenth place. In 1915 there were 200.000.000 bushels of Canadian wheat for shipment but not one Canadian ship to carry that product:	Canada
was a grocery man without a delivery wagon, thousands of customers calling for his supplies. In 1917 Premier Lloyd George cut out transportation of everything except war materials and the necessities

of life, and millions of barrels of apples, besides lumber, pit props, and so forth, remained in Canada without any chance of being delivered, thus causing a great loss to the people of this country. Canada had farmed out her shipping to the foreigner and so lost millions of dollars. Sixty per cent of Canada's wheat crop in 1917 was shipped through foreign ports and the farmers paid in excess freight alone to foreign ships some $120,000,000. or $15,000,000 more than was spent in the building of the merchant marine. The situation in. British Columbia in 1915 was critical. Australia was calling for apples and potatoes but there were no ships available, while India was demanding railway ties, _ of which one cargo had been shipped on a foreign boat, other orders which had been given having to go by the board because there were no ships to carry them. Not one British Columbia built ship, it is said in this book, was in the foreign trade. And the situation on the Atlantic was about as bad in 1916. Captain Alexander ,T. Fraser, of Rexton, New Brunswick, found forty-two ships loading lumber on the Miramichi river, not one of them flying the British flag; they were all Scandinavian with the exception of two whioh were Russian. Thirty were wooden vessels which paid for themselves in one voyage. So that our merchant marine was built under very critical conditions; the ships were perhaps rather small inasmuch as the war had proven that the loss of large liners and steamers made serious inroads into the world's tonnage, so that it would be more economical to construct smaller vessels. These were the facts during the war, although of course the post-war conditions
were different. Now, these Canadian vessels, which have been subject to too much criticism, are not so poor in quality as the critics across the way try to make out. They were built by Canadians at a time when the demand for vessels of that size was greatest, and as this matter indirectly touches the budget I would point out to the House that the criticism which has been directed at our merchant marine is really a criticism of the shipbuilding industry of Canada, which we should encourage rather than injure in any way.
There are some other matters which I should like, to touch upon, such as, for instance: the defence of our Pacific coast; the culture of our fisheries; assistance to develop our ores in this country; the wastage of our natural resources; and the effect of the ooal tax. But I am going to leave these points for a future occasion. I want now to sum up certain features of the present situation in Canada; and before proceeding I will observe that it has been sufficiently established that the government in the present budget have demonstrated that instead of reducing they have increased the debt as well as the taxation of the country. I do not want the House to go away with the impression that the government have not accomplished something; there are certainly 'things which they have accomplished and which I shall enumerate without going too much into details. The government have brought down a "balanced budget" at the expense of a tremendous skyscraping public debt; they have established a harbour at Belle River without Ships; they have established an elevator at Prince Rupert without grain; they have established an immigration office in Paris without immigrants; and they have succeeded in deporting more good red-blooded Canadians than have left the country in any other era, with all its factors, in all our history. The result, of their efforts has been so great along these lines that even one of their celebrated commissions joined in the exodus until it was called home by the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb); I mean the pulpwood commission. The government have succeeded, too, in providing jobs for the best political hacks that have stood by them in past years; and to give them credit, they have accomplished one of the best things in the Department of Agriculture, they have procured a balanced ration for the hen.
Now, Sir, in view of this list of accomplishments the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) has now decided to throw down the gauntlet and call on the fray. He has sent his colour sergeant to hoist the colours,
2352	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
to raise the standard, and the hon. member for Chambly and Vereheres (M. Archambau'lt) has unfurled the flag. The fight is not to be on these matters of paramount interest to Canadians, but again it is to be waged upon the graves in Flanders and upon the sorrows and the mistakes of the Great war. In other words, the great federal fight is now to be waged on the Ross rifle. I should like to say, by way of answer to a question which I put to the hon. member, and which he did not answer, that the adoption of this rifle cannot be laid at the door of the Conservative government. It was developed following the disadvantages which the British and Canadian troops laboured under in South Africa, through their rifles being outdistanced by the celebrated Mauser rifle with its better sighting. As a private in that war I know whereof I speak. The Ross rifle was assembled in Quebec, and it was adopted in 1906 on the recommendation of the then Minister of Militia in the Liberal government, Sir Frederick Borden. To show how for a few years the improvement of that rifle was secured practically through the influence of Conservative members of this House, I may say that in 1906 and 1907 the Northwest Mounted Police were armed with it, one thousand rifles having been sent out to them. But in a very short time they discarded the Ross rifle and returned to the Winchester and the Lee-Enfield. The Ross rifle was adopted in 1906 by general order No. 104. Complaints were made during that year by the Conservative members of the House as to its defects, and as a result an investigation was held at which witnesses from all parts of Canada were examined. One of those witnesses was the deputy minister of the department, Colonel Fiset. His evidence was that he knew nothing about it. But as director general of the medical services he must have known that year after year from various camps complaints were made about that rifle.


Sir EUGENE FISET:: Will my hon. friend permit me? He knows very well that when the contract for the Ross rifle was entered into, it was on the recommendation of the Small Arms committee, which was presided over by the late General Sir Sam Hughes. The recommendations of that committee always went directly either to the minister or to the cabinet. Therefore it is not surprising that the deputy minister did not know anything about the Ross rifle.


Arthur Edward Ross: Mr. Speaker, I
quite expected that this explanation would be made. The Ross rifle was adopted in 1906, 
and the Small Arms committee was not organized until a year or two later. That very point was raised in the debate at the time. I quite agree that the then Colonel Sam Hughes had a lot to do with it. But he was not Minister of Militia at that time, he was not even deputy minister.


Eugène Fiset: I did not say so.


Arthur Edward Ross: May I correct the hon. gentleman? The adoption of the Ross rifle was not on the recommendation of the Small Arms committee, it was on the recommendation of a committee of experts appointed by the minister. Am I right?


Eugène Fiset: Yes. I beg the hon. gentleman's pardon. But the hon. gentleman mentioned that the recommendation came from the then Minister of Militia. I said the rifle was adopted on the recommendation of the Small Arms committee.


Arthur Edward Ross: Which did not
exist then.


Eugène Fiset: But I say that when the contract for the Ross rifle was entered into it was as stated by my hon. friend on the recommendation of a special committee, presided over by Colonel Sam Hughes.


Arthur Edward Ross: I leave it to the
House to decide. There is a difference between a Small Arms committee and a committee of experts, for which the minister is absolutely and entirely responsible. Now, before this Small Arms committee was formed an investigation was held on the complaints that came from members of the Northwest Mounted Police and the militia. To show how this rifle was foisted upon the militia, it is significant that during that investigation men who were in change of the camps and districts attended and were prepared to give evidence as to the defects of the rifle, but in the committee room they found the Minister of Militia facing them, and they decided that if they were to hold their positions they had better keep their information in their pookets; which they did. But a sergeant of the Northwest Mounted Police was brave enough to bear the brunt. In spite of a lot of brow-beating he stuck to his opinion as to the defects of the rifle. Thereupon the investigation was called off, with the intimation that it would be renewed in the Public Accounts committee the next year, but nothing more was ever heard of it. Then came the formation of the Small Arms committee, and the rifle having been improved in the meantime, in 1909 our men were able to take first

The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
place at Bisley. From that time on no further complaints were heard until the change of government came, when it was found that a contract had been entered into by the former Minister of Militia with the Ross Rifle Company for delivery of many thousands of these rifles. Eighteen thousand were delivered in 1908, another thirty-eight thousand in 1909, and they were being delivered a thousand at a time right up to the outbreak of the Great war. Now, I think it was a great mistake for the hon. member for Chambly and Yer-cheres (Mr. Archaimbault) to blame the loss of our men at the front upon the defects of the Ross rifle. The adoption of the Ross rifle was an effort on Canada's part to develop a national small arms weapon, an attempt to have a rifle possessing long range and splendid sighting. But when the Great war came that rifle was found to be of no use in the trenches. It was too long, it was a straight-tpull rifle, and it had not undergone sufficient tests to prove whether or not it would jam. Unfortunately under actual war conditions it did jam, and no doubt lives were lost. But undoubtedly the earlier defects of the rifle had been pointed out by the Conservatives, and its improvement was due to the Conservatives, and if it had not been for their action our first division would likely have gone to France armed with the old Mark 1-and God knows what the disaster would have been in that event.
So that, if disasters followed the use of the Ross rifle, the improvement of it was the result of the continued complaints and demands for investigation. Even in 1908 there was a demand in the House of Commons for an investigation, which was refused by the then minister. It is too bad that these things have to be brought up. I am not speaking harshly of anybody; I know that accidents occurred and mistakes were made in the war. During that first fight of St. Julien the men were not experienced not only with the rifle but with other equipment they took very l'ttle care. On the plains of Salisbury we had to fit them out three times at the very least. We repeatedly drew their attention to the necessity of going out and keeping their water bottles full. All these things were forgotten by the men until the disaster came upon them, but from that day on there was an improvement in this respect, and the men benefited by their experience. If any party is to be blamed for the Ross rifle you might just as well blame them for the want of preparation in combating the gas, for which we were never prepared.
The second great point in this campaign over which the flag has been unfurled, in the fight that is to be waged, is that 100,000 unfit men reached England. I do not care to discuss that. As the late Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defence (Sir Eugene Fiset) knows well, it was all due to a want of proper medical examination. But in spite of 'hat I would point out that unfit men reached France and gave sufficient service there as unfit men to offset the S150,000,000 which was lost by the unfit men in England. I would say this, in answer to it all: If this is to be the slogan of the fight, then it is to be remembered that these men at least reached England, and that some of them reached France.
To pass on .quickly, I want to say that the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) and this government have had a great heritage passed into their hands in the way of the mines, the forests and the other natural resources of this country. So far their policy has been one of dissipation, both in men and in natural resources. The natural resources are flowing in streams from the shores and the borders of this country. Our sons and daughters are passing in great numbers over our boundaries, and your graphs and figures and budgets are not preventing their exodus. Within the borders of our country the condition of our people is largely unheeded by this government. The present condition in one section particularly is a blot on our national life. Appeals have been made to this House, in the House and out of it, but they have not stirred the Prime Minister. Let me read to you his pledge and that of his party in this respect and ask whether this, another of the great pledges, is being fulfilled:
Therefore this gathering of Liberals in convention assembled pledges itself to a vigorous prosecution of the measures Ibest calculated to conserve the life and improve the physical standard of our Canadian
citizenship.
Mr. Speaker, in view of the appeals being made to this House and of the condition of the people in one section of the country- I refer to Cape Breton-I ask, is that pledge being fulfilled? Is the attention being given to the conserving of the life of our people in that part of the country which is pledged by the government in this undertaking? The excuse has been put up that this is a provincial matter. It is not so much a provincial matter; in a former address I pointed out that health was a Dominion matter and that federal relief had not been confined to largo or small cases; that it had been varied in its
2354	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Ross (Kingston)
application. During the history of this country we have provided large amounts by way of relief for different purposes. In 1880 this country sent over to the relief of distressed Ireland, $100,000. In 1899 this parliament sent to the West India sufferers, $25,000. In 1902 this parliament sent to relieve the sufferers in connection with the volcanic disaster in the West Indies, $50,000. In 1900 the San Francisco earthquake and fire disaster was the occasion of a gift of $100,000 from this country. In 1907 and 1908 the sufferers through the earthquake in Jamaica received $50,000 from Canada. In 1909, $100,000 was contributed to the relief of sufferers from an earthquake in Italy. In 1915 the sum of $25,000 was granted by parliament in connection with the Newfoundland sealing disasters. In 1921 typhoid conditions in Europe were relieved by this parliament through a contribution of $200,000. Following the disaster at Halifax the Conservative government, or Union government, whatever you like to call it, brought down a vote of $25,000,000 for the sufferers there. In 1918 those affected by the disasters at New Waterford and Stellarton were assisted by the Union government .to the extent of $25,000, $10,000 going .to. New Waterford and $15,000 to Stellarton. Yet in the face of this condition the present appeal for relief falls upon stony hearts so far as this House is concerned, and we see our people suffer.
I am not going to say whether this condition is due to one cause or to another, but from the reports brought here and the appeals made it is evident that children 4 p.m. are suffering, that they are ill fed and poorly clad, and the result must be to bring about neurasthenic and tubercular conditions. The plight of the women is also a serious one. Looking at the children they have brought into the world and seeing them suffer for want of food must produce among them a neurotic or neurasthenic condition from which they may suffer for years to come. Amongst the men, if this strike condition continues, there will develop a spirit of spite, hatred and malice, followed, perhaps, by murder and arson. All these things are a blot upon our national life and should not be allowed to continue. Grant that it is an industrial conflict; then, Sir, I would point out that we have at the head of this government a man who is by experience most capable of dealing with just such a situation, according to his own words. I have here a pamphlet published by himself containing a speech which he delivered in parliament outlin-

ing his services in connection with the adjustment of relations between workers and employers in war industries. Now, Sir, a man who has had that experience should be best able to cope with a comparatively small matter of adjustment such as that which now demands attention in Cape Breton. In this pamphlet he is given the credit of solving the problems connected with the industrial civil war then taking place in the industries of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. He was thanked by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company for his services on that occasion. He settled the difficulties in connection with the Bethlehem Steel Company plant, according to this statement, and he adjusted the differences between the Standard Oil Company and its workers in Indiana, when the men received an increase of 11.11 per cent in wages and a six-day . week. Here, Sir, is a little David who went, out against these industrial giants of another country and settled all1 these problems. Yet a festering sore exists in our own Dominion and nobody has the courage to come and settle it.
I might refer to other conditions. The exodus is an old story in this House. The existence of the exodus is denied yet it is still going on. I read to-day in the paper that twenty-five men a day are leaving Cape Breton, and I have here another item which speaks of greater numbers leaving. I do not know the man who is at the head of the latter movement but I want to say that many of the men in Cape Breton are war veterans and they have my sympathy. The clipping that I have refers to a Glace Bay war veteran, A. R. MacDonald, who up to 1914, when he returned home to join the Canadian Expeditionary force, spent several years in the Argentine. He is one of the movers of this scheme, open to returned men only, under which it is proposed to take a colony of about one thousand men from Cape Breton to the Argentine. Mr. MacDonald is quoted as saying:	"Under the government we now have
in Canada, the chanices are that this number" 

he is speaking of the 100,000 ex-service men who have been expatriated to the United States-"will be augmented considerably this year." He adds that if suitable arrangements can be made with the Argentine government a thousand veterans will be moved from the Glace Bay district. I have also received this morning another communication which contradicts the claim that conditions are satisfactory in Canada. There was an election in West Hastings. I am waiting for the cheers from hon. gentlemen opposite.

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs


Mr. CASGRAIN:: We won it.


Arthur Edward Ross: Yes, and 'here is the result.
This is a letter which was sent out this morning, I think other members of the House received a copy:
Dominion Combing Mills Limited, Trenton Dear Sir.-
1.	Are you aware of the fact that the action of the Department of Customs in not enforcing the Customs Act is equivalent to discrimination against our firm ?
2.	Items 555 and 556 of customs tariff are not being enforced.
3.	The Commissioner of Customs and his staff are aware of this and admit the facts.
4.	This duty was placed on the statute to encourage someone to establish a key industry.
5.	After investigating the matter and being assured there was a duty on wool tops, we established the finest combing mill in the world at Trenton, Ontario, capable of taking care of the entire requirements of all the worsted spinners in Canada.
6.	Over 15,000 citizens of Canada are financially interested in the success of this company and all the wool growers in Canada, and numerous other industries, will profit by its success.
7.	The failure of the government to enforce and collect the duty as called for, means a loss of over half a million dollars a year in revenue, on wool and wool tops, and a severe hardship to the shareholders in thi3 company.
8.	The officials of the department claim that they cannot enforce this duty without instructions from the Finance Minister.
9.	As one of the law makers of this country, will you please call the attention of the Finance Minister to the unfairness to us in this matter, and use your best influence to have the law properly administered.
I predict that as a result of this situation this large industry, one of the finest that we have in Canada will soon pass into history like many other of our woollen mills.
In conclusion I wish to say that the present budget, like the former three which have been brought' down under the present administration, demonstrates that this government has failed in its promises of economy, reduction of the public debt, and reduction of government costs. It has failed in its efforts to lower the cost of living, to break combines, to give employment to the people. In the discussion on the unemployment situation which has taken place the government have admitted that our only hope is in the provinces; that their own hands are tied and that they are as helpless as a new 'bom babe; that the words of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Labour are as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. It is apparent that the Prime Minister and his sleeping partners can no longer inspire enthusiasm and hope in the hearts of the people, many of whom have migrated to fields of greater hopes whilst many more are still going. This condition will continue until the country awakens to new life under a new policy and a new
leader-a new leader who will introduce a policy which shall protect, and in protecting upbuild again and develop the shattered industries of Canada, including our great primary industry of agriculture.


Mr. S. W. JACOBS (George Etienne Carrier) :: Mr. Speaker I had some doubt in my mind for a considerable time as to whether the Ross rifle really was a good weapon or whether it was not, but after the feeble attack made by the gallant general from Kingston I have come to believe that in attack the Ross rifle is a very feeble thing indeed. Nothing new of any kind or character was introduced by the hon. member today except a lot of glittering generalities in which everyone indulges who has really not very much to say of a concrete nature against the government. As for myself. Mr. Speaker,
I think that if I were to attack the government I perhaps could do better than the hon. gentleman.


Mr. HOCKEN:: Go to it.


Mr. BOYS:: Begin at once.


Mr. MEIGHEN:: Follow your judgment
ana go right at it.


Samuel William Jacobs: I am afraid that if I were to start anything of that kind it would make me somewhat unpopular on this side of the House, and I am always mindful of the story of Balaam who was sent to curse and remained to bless. In any event I think it is quite wise for me to remain within the lines. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that if I have obtained any share of the good will of my colleagues in this House, and I hope I have, 1 think it is due to the fact that I address the House as infrequently as I can. I find that the man who speaks the oftenest here is most unpopular. I also find that the hon. gentlemen who are always talking about economy are the gentlemen w|ho are the least economical in the matter of time when addressing this chamber. It has been calculated that it costs the country $18,000 per day when the House is in session. This, I believe, is the nineteenth day upon which we have been debating this motion. That would mean that we have involved the people of Canada up-to-date in a cost of over $300,000 and I do not think it is worth it.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Mr. ARCHAMBAULT:: And my hon.
friend is proceeding to add to the cost this afternoon.
The Budget-Mr. Jacobs


Samuel William Jacobs: No, my contribution to the cost will not amount to very many dollars, but I can assure my hon. friend that if he objects I will be willing to turn the amount back into the treasury.
The tariff is brought up every year and discussed ad infinitum. I have been in this House for over eight years. I have listened to the various discussions upon the tariff, and so far they have left me cold. I do not believe that any one member in this House during the past fifty years has changed his vote as the result of the debate on this question of the tariff. If he changed his vote it was for some reason other than the tariff; the tariff was given as the reason for it. The tariff has been attacked on the one side for its inadequacy and on the other for its iniquity. But we have the tariff with us, and we shall always have it. It is impossible for this country to get on without a tariff. I think every hon. gentleman will admit that. If we have a tariff it should be in my humble opinion one that will protect us against other countries. What is the use of a tariff that will not protect? We may as well have no tariff at all. It is only natural that I should express views of this kind, coming from the district from which I come. It is possible that if I lived in a western province I would hold vastly different views from those which I hold now. It is a matter of atmosphere, geography and votes. Votes, after all, are the most important thing. So that when I hear people talking patriotically about the tariff it makes me smile. It is purely, as I said before, a question of geography and nothing else. After all, what does tariff tinkering amount to at the present time? We have got beyond the point of appealing on the question of the tariff. Suppose we raised the tariff on this item or on that item two and a half per cent, or lowered it two and a half per cent, do hon. members think that will affect the country? I say that it will not. We have reached the condition of affairs now that the financial condition of the country and the success of our country are not going to depend upon the question of the tariff, but on other and more important questions. The railway question, for instance, is the most important matter in the country. We had some figures from the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Marier)-and I am sure no person will controvert those figures-to show that this country has paid out to the National Railways in one form or another within the last five years between five and six hundred millions of dollars. How long are we going to be able to continue? If we are going to per-
mit this condition to continue it spells ruin for the country. There is only one solution of this whole question, and that is, instead of having two lines in this country, one-half nationalized and one-half privately owned, we should have one line owned by one or the other, either the government or the privately-owned company. Now the privately-owned company is the Canadian Pacific. I think every hon. gentleman here will admit that the Canadian Pacific has made a success of the running of its lines. It is the most successful and the best managed railway company in the world. And in competition with that we have the Dominion of Canada also running a railway line. The duty of the government of Canada is to govern the country. The duty of a railway company is to run the railway. Now will any person suggest that the Dominion of Canada can run a railway company better than the Canadian Pacific?


Mr. EULER:: It may be quite possible.


Samuel William Jacobs: Will the hon. gentleman tell me what kind of success other governments who are quite as acute and able as our government have had in the running of railways? What governments have been successful in running railways? Take the ease of Australia. It is said that in that country they have the worst served railway in the world.


William Daum Euler: Paying its way.


Samuel William Jacobs: It is paying its way, but
what kind of a way is it? It is a poor railway. I met a gentleman from Australia, who had travelled round the world, and he stated that never in his experience had he seen such a condition in regard to railways as he saw in Australia.


William Daum Euler: Would' the hon. gentleman tell us what he said about the service on the Canadian National Railways?


Samuel William Jacobs: I do not know what he said about that, but I do not think any person can object to the service on the Canadian National. It is first-class in every respect. There is nothing better in the world than the service on the Canadian National? And why? Because the Dominion of Canada is at the back of it to pay the piper, without any regard at all for economy. When they need money they say, "Send seven million" or "Give us ten million," or "Give us fifteen million." and like Moses when he struck the rock, the water gushes forth.


Mr. GOULD:: I should like to interject the' remark that last week a gentleman who had just returned from Australia was in my office,

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs
and stated that the service given there was very good, and that shower baths were provided on the trains in Australia.


Samuel William Jacobs: Very good. That shows
they have a little water in their stock. For the last two or three days the newspapers have been filled with a surprising bit of information, a discovery made by Sir Henry Thornton, that if the two 'lines were amalgamated, the combined lines would pay the fixed charges of these two railways. That is quite an important piece of information. It is the first bit of good news we have received from the Canadian National's head for some time. That information was given us in 1921 by Lord Shaughnessy. He told us exactly the. same thing as Sir Henry Thornton told us a day or two ago. The Shaughnessy plan, hon. members will remember, was a scheme whereby the Canadian Pacific would take over the Canadian National Railways, eliminate duplication and overlapping, co-ordinate the two lines, and have them run as one; and he proposed that, in consideration of that, their fixed charges would be assumed and a dividend in perpetuity would be paid to the stockholders of the Canadian Pacific. That did not seem to be an unreasonable thing. If they turn over their line they want something in return for it, and that seems only reasonable. What are the figures? As I calculate them, about $35,000,000 per annum is the amount which this government would be asked to guarantee. Now in consideration of that sum, they would take over the Canadian National lines. Lord Shaughnessy in effect proposed that if by some arrangement with the Canadian Pacific Railway certain assets, not being strictly railway property, could be segregated, and the railway property added to the government system, the system would comprise 31,000 miles of railway with a considerable number of parallel lines unimportant or useless. The consideration to be given the shareholders of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in exchange for the properties above defined would be in the nature of an undertaking by the government of Canada to pay to the shareholders in perpetuity, a fixed annual dividend on the Share capital, to be supplemented by a further payment when the whole property was yielding a specified return. The extraneous assets of the Canadian Pacific Railway would be transferred to and be administered by trustees or by a subsidiary company with another board of directors, so that the directors of the railway company would be interested only in the administration of the trust placed in their hands by the people of Canada. There would be no motive
for selfishness, if such a thing were possible in the circumstances. The income on their shares being fixed and unchangeable, excepting as above provided, the Canadian Pacific Railway shareholders could receive no advantage from preferential treatment given to any particular portion of the railway system. The directorate would have every incentive for wise, prudent and business-like administration.
These were the broad principles of the plan. As to details, the political management was ruled out as impossible and ruinous and the proposal made that the existing Canadian Pacific Railway management be utilized under the terms of a contract approaching perpetuity in its duration, to administer and operate the whole property for account of the Canadian people. Under the consolidation, and taking 1920 figures as a basis, the gross earnings would be $342,283,000 and the operating expenses $345,973,000; to the latter would have to be added the annual fixed charges of the whole system, the guaranteed dividend on Canadian Pacific Railway preference and common stock, and incidentals; the resulting total deficit would be about $SO,000,000. Against this Lord Shaughnessy added a possible saving of $56,000,000 bv bringing the combined average of operating costs to the Canadian Pacific level, a saving of about $12,000,000 by reducing these costs four per cent or five per cent more, in years less expensive than 1920 which he thought possible, with the balance easily wiped out by improved conditions of national settlement and development.


Arthur Meighen: What is the hon. gentleman reading from?


Samuel William Jacobs: From the Castell Hopkins
Canadian Annual Review.


Mr. HUGHES:: Did Lord Shaughnessy not stipulate that the best-paying portions of the Canadian Pacific would still belong to that corporation, and that the revenue derived from them would be in addition to the guaranteed revenue of the government of Canada?


Samuel William Jacobs: He did stipulate that the
property which was not particularly railway property would be segregated and taken out, and that they would turn over merely the railway proper.


William Daum Euler: I am asking for information only because I have forgotten to some extent the particulars of Lord Shaughnessy's suggestions. Would the hon. member tell us what Lord Shaughnessy had to offer by way
The Budget-Mr. Jacobs

of return for the large sum that the Dominion has given or lent to the railway?


Samuel William Jacobs: What he had to offer was
efficient management and elimination of competition. Surely that is an important matter.


William Daum Euler: Who would continue to pay the interest on the heavy investment?


Samuel William Jacobs: The same parties that are
continuing to pay it now, until such time as the line may be made to pay. Surely my hon. friend would not expect Lord Shaughnessy to put his hand into his blue jeans and pay the $100,000,000 a year of deficit.


William Daum Euler: Does the hon. member recall that Sir Henry Thornton yesterday, in committee, stated that under his plan of merging, the Dominion of Canada would be paid interest on the moneys that have been advanced; that is, the savings that could be effected would be sufficient to pay interest on all the fixed charges including the indebtedness of the railway to the Dominion of Canada? Lord Shaughnessy does not promise that.


Samuel William Jacobs: Of course, Sir Henry
Thornton so far has been a splendid promiser. I should like to point this out first, that we cannot in this House discuss what took place in committee yesterday inasmuch as the matter is not before the House. As regards what Sir Henry Thornton is capable of doing, I do not wish to disparage in any way his ability because I have a very high opinion of his ability as a railwayman.


Hewitt Bostock: The hon. gentleman has
just stated what I had in mind, that no discussion is permissible of proceedings before a committee which has not yet reported to the House. I supposed the hon. gentleman referred1 to what appeared in the papers of yesterday, and that is quite a different matter.


Samuel William Jacobs: I was particular to do that,
but the chairman of the committee (Mr. Euler) probably thought he was a law unto himself and could transgress the rules. What I said was this, that anything that the Canadian National Railways under government ownership can do for us, the Canadian Pacific can certainly do. They have been in the business for forty years. Their business is to run rail-[DOT] ways. They have made a success of their railways. In our case, as I have already intimated, we cannot run railways because we are too busy governing the country. That is our business, and I doubt whether we have succeeded in it. This Dominion cannot be a maid-of-all-work. We must restrict our

energies to what we are sent here to do and nothing else. I do not know whether hon. members realize the feeling of uneasiness throughout the whole of Canada with regard to this railway situation. We feel that our money is being thrown into a bottomless pit; that every dollar we put into this railway we shall never get back; that we are simply preparing these railways, fitting them up, bringing them up to the mark in the hope that some day we shall be able to turn them over to some individual or company who can run them.


William Daum Euler: Not at all.


Samuel William Jacobs: We shall never be able to
get a cent of our money back. I do not agree with the hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler). I rather agree with the hon. member for Laprairie and Napier-ville (Mr. Lanctot) who said last year that he would sell the railways for a dollar -and has now reduced the sum to fifty cents -to anybody who would take them over and not ask us for another cent.


Mr. MacLEAN (Prince):: Does the hon. member suggest a combination of the two lines and a government subsidy with control of rates?


Samuel William Jacobs: My suggestion is that the
lines should be amalgamated in order that we might never hear the word "subsidy" again; that we should close the door on it, lock the door and throw away the key. I wonder whether hon. gentlemen realize that about 34 cents of every dollar which we collect by any form of taxation from the people of this country goes to the upkeep of the Canadian National railways. Do hon. gentlemen realize that the $50,000,000 which we collect from the income tax pays about 40 per cent ol our loss on the Canadian National Railways? How long is it possible for us to go on and pay in that way? There must be a limit tc it at some time. There seems to be nothing at the present moment except promises that at some time in the dim and misty future we shall be blessed by having a line which will not cost us anything further in the way of outlay to run. But I am not the optimist that the hon. member for North Waterloo is. I believe that as long as we have this line, it will be a white elephant on our hands; that it is going to bleed us white, and that if we do not take care as to the future, the time may come when there will be a question of repudiation of the debt on this line as well as the debt of Canada to others.


Mr. PRITCHARD:: I have been trying to find out, listening to this debate, what are

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs
the total liabilities of the Canadian National Railways on which we are paying interest. Can the hon. member tell us what they are?


Samuel William Jacobs: I have no idea. I am afraid to look up to find out. I am frightened to know what the figure is. The hon. gentleman as well as others perhaps ought to be satisfied to know that it is a very large sum and not to know the real facts.


Mr. GOOD:: How would the hon. member
view the proposal to amalgamate the two lines and put the Canadian Pacific organization in charge just as the Canadian National organization under Sir Henry Thornton is in charge now? Would he expect that they would get out of debt and put the railway on a good foundation?


Samuel William Jacobs: What I am trying to argue is that when we eliminate competition, we shall be in a much better position than we are now. We have duplication, overlapping, want of co-operation. Sir Henry Thornton said the other day: "I spent $1,100,000 last year and I intend to continue advertising because I think it is a good thing for my company to do." If we had one line of railway, there would be no necessity for advertising. People would have to take that line or walk. That is only one instance. We would be cutting out all these lines running in a parallel direction from one city to another. I have in mind Ottawa where we have nine railway trains every day taking down a handful of people to Montreal. It is criminal to do a thing of that kind, and all through this country you find the same condition prevailing. It is absurd that we should have our line in competition with another line, and the result is that neither of them can be made to pay. The Canadian Pacific last year barely met their dividend charges. I think they had about $100,000 over, and a large portion of that was taken from proceeds which were earned not out of the line proper.


William Charles Good: Does the hon. member argue
that the Canadian Pacific organization is much more efficient than the Canadian National organization?


Samuel William Jacobs: I am not prepared to say
that they are more efficient, but I am prepared to say that we want only one efficient road rather than two inefficient roads. This country has a population of eight or nine million people, becoming less every day, as I shall be able to show before I conclude. We have not room in this country for practically three transcontinental lines. The
United States, with their population of 115,000,000 have not one transcontinental line; there is not one uninterrupted line from coast to coast in that country. In Canada on the other hand we had at one time three transcontinental railways. Now, we have room for one, and my proposition is that one of these lines, the Canadian Pacific, should take over the other lines in Canada under some such plan as has been outlined by Lord Shaughnessy. I do not say that we should at once fall in with that scheme, but it is a basis for negotiations. We might be able to work out something, however, if we adopted that plan, that might be better for the people of the country and for the Canadian Pacific Railway as well.


Arthur Meighen: Is it not a fact that there is now, or ought to be at least, less wasteful competition and overlapping than when, instead of the Canadian National Railways, we had three competing systems?


Samuel William Jacobs: We had three competing
systems apart from the Canadian Pacific
and there was a lot of waste. But how did that waste occur? No one knows better than my right hon. friend.


Arthur Meighen: I know.


Samuel William Jacobs: We had Mackenzie and
Mann every year in the lobbies, and they got away with $25,000,000 on one occasion and $45,000,000 on another; many millions of dollars did they draw from the coffers of this country in order to run these wasteful lines. That is what happened; but thank God that is all a matter of the past; let us hope that we shall have no more of that. Sir William Mackenzie has gone to his reward and the haunts of Sir Donald Mann know him no more. I think that perhaps the people of this country have learned a great many things since the war, and they have learned many things since taking over these lines. They have found that these lines were not run for the profit of the country nor for the profit of the stockholders of Mackenzie and Mann, but for the profit of half a dozen buccaneers who made away with all this money and left us holding the bag.


Arthur Meighen: Then the hon. gentleman agrees that the amalgamation of the three systems was a good thing?


Samuel William Jacobs: Yes, the amalgamation of the three would be a good thing.


Arthur Meighen: " Was " a good thing.


Samuel William Jacobs: There was no amalgamation of the three.
The Budget (Mr. Jacobs)

Mr.	MEIGHEN: Yes,-the	Canadian
Northern, the Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific.


Samuel William Jacobs: I am willing to admit that that was the only alternative we had; we could only amalgamate them.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear.


Samuel William Jacobs: I do not think the right hon. gentleman had any option; with him it was a case of Hobson's choice.


Joseph Archambault: What about a
traffic arrangement with the Canadian National and the Grand Trunk at the time of the question of the purchase of the Grand Trunk?


Samuel William Jacobs: I don't get that.


Joseph Archambault: I mean, what
about a traffic arrangement as another alternative?


Samuel William Jacobs: Now?


Joseph Archambault: No, I am talking about the time the question was discussed of acquiring the Grand Trunk railway. What does the hon. gentleman think, as another alternative at that time, of a traffic arrangement between the Grand Trunk and the Canadian National Railways? That alternative was proposed in this House.


Samuel William Jacobs: I do not think it would have come to anything, because eventually these lines would have had to be taken over and be amalgamated, as they were. I may say frankly that at the time it was done I was rather violently opposed to it, but I have come to believe that there was nothing else for the country to do than to take them over. And now there is nothing else to be done than to give these lines over to the Canadian Pacific.


Joseph Archambault: Give them?


Samuel William Jacobs: Turn them over under the Shaughnessy plan: or some similar arrangement.


William Daum Euler: The hon. gentleman has made a strong criticism of the " buccaneers " of the railway world in years gone by. Is that not a criticism of private ownership, under which these things occurred?


Samuel William Jacobs: Surely my hon. friend does not suggest that every private person is a buccaneer.


William Daum Euler: I did not say anything about buccaneers; it was the hon. member himself who used that term.


Samuel William Jacobs: I am referring to certain gentlemen in particular whose names I have no wish to mention, although they are not in this House, 'who got away with all this money and left the lines on our hands.


William Daum Euler: Under private ownership.


Samuel William Jacobs: Private ownership is one thing and buccaneer ownership another. Now, as I said before, we have a population of eight or nine millions to support these two lines, and it will be admitted by everyone, I think, that we do not want two lines in this country. There are gentlemen in this House, in fact I think the same is true of all hon. members, who want only one line; there is not a person who wants two. The question however is, who will run them? Should it be the Canadian government or the Canadian Pacific Railway Company? In this connection I am reminded of one of the Bab Ballads, about the cook and the mate of a ship who were both stranded on an island and who after a time found it necessary to resort to cannibalism. The mate said something like this, "You ought to let me eat you, seeing that I am more in authority than yourself." But the cook did not see it in that light; he said, '"I would be glad to accommodate you, but I am a cook and can prepare meals much better than you can. Why should you want to cook me when you are not a cook?" That is the position to-day in regard to the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National system; the Canadian Pacific knows how to run railways; they are the cooks, whereas the others are merely mates and nothing else.
As to the suggestion that the Canadian Pacific Railway should be taken over by the Canadian National Railways, I do not think that those who make a proposal of this kind have thought of what the additional cost would be, and that is something that appals me. I am sure there is not a public man in this country who would think of taking over the Canadian Pacific Railway, with everything that that implies, and incorporating it with, I was going to say, a corpse, -at any rate, with something that would be a corpse if we withdrew from it the support which we give it from day to day.


William Charles Good: Why not put the excellent
Canadian Pacific Railway organization in charge of the combined railways? Why

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.
should not the country amalgamate the two systems, taking over the Canadian Pacific with its excellent organization, and, if that organization is much better than that of the Canadian National, giving it control?


Samuel William Jacobs: I would object to that because the ultimate power would be in the hands of my hon. friend from Brant (Mr. Good), of my hon. friend from Lisgar (Mr. Brcwn), of myself and other members of parliament. And we do not want railways. That is my reason for wanting the Canadian National turned over to a company which would be under no obligations to the government and would not look to the government for support. You give a man a crutch or a stick and he will lean upon it for support until after a while he will not be able to walk straight. We want all the lines brought under an efficient management such as we find in the Canadian Pacific Railway, the best managed railway in the world. I am sure we could make a success of the combination. What has been shown is that under an amalgamation of the two lines there would be no loss. The deficit of the Canadian National Railway system last year was $57,000,000 and the addition to the funded and unfunded debt was $119,000,000. Can we sit quietly by and allow this sort of thing to go on, when we are told by the heads of the railways that all that is necessary to eliminate loss is an amalgamation of the two systems? That is a question I put to hon. gentlemen.


William Charles Good: Was not the proposed guarantee of the minimum of ten per cent, which the Canadian Pacific wanted, a crutch?


Samuel William Jacobs: No. Three per cent of that ten per cent comes from the land department of the Canadian Pacific Railway; and then there is the ocean service, which would not go in. What they want is a guarantee of the dividends which they have been able to pay their stockholders for the last twenty-five years. And that is reasonable. They are earning the dividends now and have been earning them for years. Why should they make any arrangement that would endanger these dividends to their stockholders, giving them nothing in return? They want to have those dividends turned into bonds and to have a guarantee of $35,000,000 a year, a paltry sum having regard to the very vast amounts which we have been paying out since taking over the Canadian National Railways. And they say that when this is done the lines will be amalgamated and they will be able to show by figures that there will be no loss to the 151
country, while the fixed charges will be met from year to year.


Mr. FORKE:: All this is very interesting
and we are getting information, but I want to ask the hon. gentleman a question. If all the railways in the country were run by a private corporation, would he still be in favour of having the railway commission fix the rates? Otherwise, would not the country be entirely at the mercy of the company?


Samuel William Jacobs: The line would be controlled by the railway commission, who would fix rates, indicate what branch lines were to be built, and so on, as they do at the present time. The railway company would be the creature of the railway commission. There is no suggestion at all that the railway commission should be abolished. Such a suggestion would not work. I grant you that if this vast monopoly were to begin to function without some regulative body such as the railway commission, it would be a disastrous thing for the country.


Mr. CANNON:: If that be so, what happens to government interference that my hon, friend was criticizing?


Samuel William Jacobs: This is not government interference.


Lucien Cannon: All the railway commission's decisions are subject to revision by the government.


Samuel William Jacobs: After all, public opinion
counts for something.


Lucien Cannon: It does here also.


Samuel William Jacobs: There may have been some little sporadic criticism of the railway commission from my friends on the opposite side, but it was well-intentioned criticism, and I do not think they ever questioned the honesty or integrity of the commission.


Arthur Meighen: Has the hon. gentleman
looked up the recent life history of the Minister of Agriculture?


Samuel William Jacobs: I am afraid my right hon.
friend was taking the Minister of Agriculture seriously on that occasion. I think it may be gathered from the remarks I have made this afternoon that I am not quite in favour of public ownership of railways. I wish to make that clear to the House. I have always been opposed to public ownership when private ownership can be made to apply, because I believe in the efficiency of private ownership. I believe that private ownership has been able to accomplish almost everything that has been accomplished so far in this wcrld, and that

23G2
The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.

public ownership, or the interference by governments and by governing bodies generally, has always been a brake and detriment to progress. I am talking generally. In any event I throw out these suggestions for what they are worth. I feel that the temper of the people is in favour of some change in our railway policy, and that the sooner we do something along these lines the better it will be for the government and for the country. Our people will not stand very much more of this tinkering with our railway system. It is a running sore, it is something which must be cured. We have to do something, and at once; and my suggestion, I hope, is a fair solution of the problem. I have yet to hear from any public man in Canada that the taking over of the Canadian Pacific line by the Canadian National, running as it is, is going to meet with the approval of this country. To me it is just like taking a healthy child who has never been sick and putting him to bed with a sick child suffering from a contagious disease. That is exactly parallel to what would be done if we put the Canadian Pacific Railway in with the Canadian National Railways.


Alfred Edgar MacLean: Do you think you would have had those advances from the Canadian Pacific Railway a few years ago. before the Canadian National Railways made the showing they have made under the present management?


Samuel William Jacobs: Do you mean advances looking to an arrangement?


Alfred Edgar MacLean: Yes.


Arthur Meighen: That is when they did come.


Samuel William Jacobs: They were not suffering at that time, because they were making hay while the sun was shining-they were dealing with cripples at that time. But to-day it has become a very serious matter for the Canadian Pacific Railway. They feel they are pitted against the government of Canada, and it is a fight to the death. Everyone knows what the result will be.
Now, as I said before, we have a population of less than 9,000,000, and there is a general complaint throughout the country that we are losing our people at an alarming rate. It is true. Last year, according to the returns of the United States Bureau-our own government does not keep any returns,-we lost to that country 159,000 of our population; that is people who paid their head tax and went through in the ordinary way. They were credited to Canada,-if I may so term it. What
[Mr. Jacobs.!
kind of people go from this country to the United States now under the quota law? Our native-born; only those are taken in. What becomes of the foreign-bom in Canada? They go in by the underground route.


Robert Forke: They do not go.


Samuel William Jacobs: They all stay here?


Robert Forke: Out -west, anyway, they stay.


Samuel William Jacobs: I am surprised to hear that. I thought they migrated to the United States in about equal proportions. The.fact that a man is foreign-born does not make very much difference if he wants to go to the United States. At any rate, we will say a certain number of them went. Perhaps they are so satisfied in the region of Brandon that they do not leave for the United States. That is not the experience down my way. I know the United States immigration office is besieged from morning to night by people who are trying to obtain the necessary permission to enter that country. At a rough computation I would say about a hundred thousand of those people went to 'the United States. How many immigrants did we bring into Canada last year? We brought 140.000. What kind of people came in? Half British bom and half foreign bom. Now, as I said before, the vast majority of the people who went to the United States are Canadian-born -a much better class, I grant you, than the foreign-born. Why is it that these people have gone in such numbers to the United States? I know my right hon. friend the leader of the opposition will say that it is because of the lack of tariff in this country. I do not know how far that is true, but I think my right hon. friend is magnifying the number of people who went to the United States because of poor tariff conditions here. Our people who crossed the line did so because there is no quota law preventing their entry into the United States. Are hon. members aware that the government of the United States 'has put into effect a quota law which prevents more than 2 per cent of any nationality entering that country, based on the number of that nationality who came there before 1890?


Robert Forke: I may be wrong, hut does
not that quota law prevent not only foreign-bom but British-born going to the United States?


Samuel William Jacobs: It prevents English-born
no more than foreign-bom; 2 per cent of any nationality* are allowed entrance. It makes no difference if the immigrants are

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.
descended from the angel Gabriel; they cannot enter the United States if more than 2 per cent of them 'have already come in during that year. What happens? We have the United States declaring by law that the only people who can enter their country in unlimited numbers as against the rest of the world are the Canadian-born. What does that mean, Mr. Speaker? It means that Canada is being drained of her native-born to satisfy the demands of the United States. It is only a question of a very short time, unless diplomatic representations are made to the United States, before every native-born Canadian will be walking the streets of Chicago, Detroit, Boston or other American city, and we may see a specimen in our museum stuffed and properly mounted to show what a native-born Canadian was once like.


Arthur Meighen: Will the hon. gentleman permit me? Irrespective of any quota law restrictions, what is his explanation of why our Canadian-born should want to go to the United States?


Samuel William Jacobs: Well, it is thei law of
gravitation, I suppose; the greater attracts the lesser.


Arthur Meighen: They did not a while
ago.


Samuel William Jacobs: There never was such an
exodus to the United States as there has been since the quota law was put into operation. So you have cause and effect side by side. Never befdre did they have such a law in the United States, and never before did we have so many Canadians migrating to that country. So it seems to me clear that this policy on the part of the United States is designed to drain this country of the best element that we have, and1 after a while Canada will be as bare of our native-born as Jacques Cartier found her in 1534.


Mr. MANION:: Would not my hon. friend admit that if the larger proportion of those who are going to the United States could get work in Canada they would remain here?


Samuel William Jacobs: They may and they may
not. The spirit of adventure is strong in the young Anglo-Saxon. ,He likes to go abroad, to seek for adventure. He wants to know what the world is like before he settles down. And then distant hills look green: he thinks Detroit is a (paradise, that Chicago is the door leading to paradise, and so on. Everything looks well to him until he arrives, 151*
and then he finds that things are not quite as he would like them to be, but he has cut the painter and he cannot go back. The point I am trying to make is this: This policy on the part of the United States is designed for the purpose of drawing from this country the best element we have. Why not allow naturalized foreign-born Canadians to go into the United States? Surely in every respect they are as good as the others. Suppose a man happens to have been bom in Germany, or born in England, or bom, if you will, in Scotland-and I think the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) will admit that you cannot get a higher type than the Scotch; and I am almost inclined to agree with him, that Scotchman or that German or that Englishman, under the present regulation, will have to be put on the quota provided for by the United States with regard to the country from which he came; he cannot go in as a native-born Canadian. Of course that keeps out all the other foreign-born Canadians, and as I have suggested, it is only a question of time when we will have only foreign-born in this country.


Mr. COOTE:: May I ask a question? If
Canada were to put on a quota law to reduce the number of foreign immigrants coming into this country, might not some of those native-born Canadians be inclined then to stay at home?


Samuel William Jacobs: Would my hon. friend like
to make the experiment?


George Gibson Coote: I would not object at all.
I would be very much in favour of it.


Samuel William Jacobs: I think my hon. friend will
agree that these experiments in the matter of immigration are dangerous. They are not practical; they are not natural; they come to nothing. If you want immigration into this country, open the doors and let the people come in, but do not say, we do not want this man because his hair is red, or we do. not want this man because his teeth are long-let them come in and let them work out their own destiny in this country. To pursue a different policy is a mistake, in my opinion. In the United States they have this quota law 'because, they say, " We have already too many people in our country. We have 115,000,000 and we do not want any more. We want to digest those we have; we want to make men out of them; we want to give them an opportunity to acquaint themselves with and adopt American ideals before we bring in any more."
The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.


George Gibson Coote: If that is the case, why does not the United States apply the quota law against us?


Samuel William Jacobs: Because they want our few Canadian born citzens in their country-they want them. I suppose one of the reasons may be that we have such a large frontier, consisting of practically 4,000 miles, and it is almost impossible to keep them out-but that would apply to the foreign born as well. I am not in the secrets of the statesmen of the United States, but the fact remains that they will permit Canadian bom citizens to go into their country without let or hindrance and with regard tc others they are permitting only 2 per cent to go in. These are the bald facts.


Arthur Meighen: May I ask the hon. member a question? If it is the attraction really of large population or the lure of distance that draws our people to the United States, why is it that they do not go to England?


Samuel William Jacobs: Our people?


Arthur Meighen: Yes.


Joseph Archambault: That is a farfetched argument.


Samuel William Jacobs: Well, I do not know why they do not go to England. Perhaps the fact that they would have to walk 3,000 miles across the Atlantic might have something to do with it-that may be one of the reasons. Perhaps we could send them on the right hon. gentleman's merchant marine or the Petersen ships.
Now what I desired to point out was that this law was designed to withdraw from this country the best element of our population. The United States are making a distinction Between different types of British citizens in Canada. They pay no attention to the fact that a man who is a British citizen has his naturalization certificate. They say that is of no account with them; they treat that certificate as a scrap of paper. I would like to draw to the attention of the House something that happened in the United States in 1912. There was a treaty between the United States and Russia up to that time passed ia 1832, under which the United States traded freely with Russia, and generally the two countries were on terms of international intimacy. A short time prior to 1912 the Russian government enacted a law which provided that people of Jewish persuasion, although holders of American naturalization certificates, would cot be permitted to enter Russia. There was one exception-they allowed bankers to come

in. Unless they were bankers they could not come in. President Taft took the
5. p.m. matter up diplomatically at the time with the Russian government, pointing out that American citizens must all be treated alike, regardless of race or creed. The Russian government at that time pnd up to the revolution were the most reactionary in the world, and they refused to accept the views of President Taft. Accordingly the treaty was denounced, the President of the United States refusing to agree to any proposal under which a distinction would be made between different classes of American citizens. But now, in the year of grace, 1925, another rules in his place, and we have discrimination made -with regard to Canada in the matter of race, in the matter of nationality, by the declaration that if you are not a Canadian-born citizen, whether you have a British naturalization certificate or not, you cannot go into that country. Well, I say that is a matter which ought to be treated diplomatically between this country and the United States. We ought to deal with the United States in the same way that they deal with us. We ought to make them recognize that they have duties as a great state to perform towards other states. We cannot very well object to their allowing our native born to go into their country, but we ought to say: If you are taking them in, you must take them all in or none.


Lucien Cannon: Would that not increase the number of Canadians going to the United States?


Samuel William Jacobs: It would-that is rather
obvious. But the point of my argument is that if you increase the number going to the United States you probably would get fewer Canadian born to go, and they might be prepared over there to accept the number two article, that is, the foreign born. The result might be to leave a few of the Canadian born in this country; because I should hesitate to think that if I wanted to see a real Canadian I would have to go outside of Canada to see him.


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: May I ask the hon. member a question? Could he tell the House when the United States adopted this quota law?


Samuel William Jacobs: There were two laws adopted. One was adopted some time during the war, fixing the quota at 3 per cent and the year as 1910. After that it was found not to work effectively enough. In July, 1924, it was reduced to 2 per cent.

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.


Arthur Meighen: The first was not applicable to Canada at all.


Samuel William Jacobs: No, the first was not applicable to Canada at all.
Now, how have we dealt with the question of bringing people into the country in order to make good the loss which is constantly taking place by this migration? I am not a medical 'man and if I am wrong in my theory there are some hon. members who will check me up, but when patients suffer from hemorrhages the doctor prescribes some blood-producing food in order to make good the loss induced by the hemorrhage. I think my hon. friend from Port William and Rainy River (Mr. Manion) remembers enough medicine to say whether that is true or not.


Robert James Manion: My hon. friend is almost
as good a doctor as he is a lawyer.


Samuel William Jacobs: I thank my hon. friend for
the compliment. Now, how do we deal with the situation? We have certain rules, certain regulations, certain orders in council, with regard to the entry of immigrants into this country. There are three classes of people who can come into this country to-day and I will tell you what they are. One is the farmer class. There is no protection for the poor farmer; anyone can come in and enter into competition with him.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Shame.


Samuel William Jacobs: It is a shame. The next
class is the farm labourer; and the third class is the female domestic servant. Eliminating for the moment the farmer-even with all his faults we love him still; everyone likes the fanner, he works while we sleep- we now have two classes-farm hand and female domestic-the man servant and the maid servant; those are the only strangers that are permitted within our gates. We brought in 48,000 maid servants last year at the time when we were losing to the United States 200,000 Canadian-born, who could employ them. Why did we bring in 48,000 maid servants?


Mr. WARNER:: Does the hon. member
pretend to tell us that those people going to the United States were all able to employ other immigrants coming into this country?


Samuel William Jacobs: Well, I shall have to look
up the statistics on that question because I have not got the information. Now, why was there such a strong demand for domestic help and for farm hands last year in the country? I do not know that there was any
particularly strong demand for them except that these two classes of labour are not unionized; the walking delegate, the president of the Trades and Labour Council, and the workers' associations are not interested in these classes of labour. So these two classes were permitted to come freely into the country.


William Daum Euler: Will the hon. gentleman permit me a question which is in the interest of . accuracy? He states there are only three classes allowed to come in-the farmer, the farm labourer and the female domestic servant?


Samuel William Jacobs: Yes.


William Daum Euler: Is it not a fact that, so far as the British Isles are concerned, there are no restrictions of any kind with regard to occupation?


Samuel William Jacobs: Yes, that is true; but I was talking of Europe generally. A change was made last year with regard to people from the British Isles; they come in without that restriction. The streets of London-Trafalgar Square and the embankment-can be emptied into the Dominion and nothing will be said because those immigrants are British citizens -" civis Britannicus sum ". But no other class can come in except under the restrictions I have stated. Not one person from the continent of Europe can enter without a permit unless he comes under one of the three classes mentioned. Now, why should we adopt the same attitude with regard to immigration that the United States has adopted? They say, "We have too many people in this country, we do not want any more.'' Surely we cannot urge that. The United States is suffering, if I may use another medical expression, from high blood pressure; we are suffering from pernicious anaemia. And yet we are taking the same medicine that they take. I made a calculation a few daj's ago in regard to what I thought would be a reasonable number of people who could be permitted to come into the country by this form of immigration, and I thought that about five per cent would be a reasonable number per annum-that is to say one hundred people in this country ought to be able to absorb five people. I know of instances in the past where we have been easily able to absorb five per cent.


Lucien Cannon: You grant quite a big
appetite to anaemic people.


Samuel William Jacobs: We have got to feed
anaemic people with rich red food; and I
The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.

think five per cent is what they can absorb without getting dyspepsia. Five per cent is not an unreasonable number. Now, five per cent of the population we have here is 450,000 people a year. We got in last year
140,000	of the classes that I have referred to.


Arthur Meighen: The year before last
somewhat less.


Samuel William Jacobs: Yes, I think somewhat less. Surely there must be something wrong in this system that the government has adopted. Why is it we are not permitted to have the open door in the matter of immigration into this country? I would think that was exactly what the railroads would want in order to make them pay. Perhaps I would not have advocated this drastic scheme for the amalgamation of the two lines under private ownership if we were getting people in who could support two or three lines. Sir Henry Thornton, speaking in Montreal the other day as president of the Canadian National Railways, said: "I would permit to come into this country every healthy Caucasian". And he added: "I believe that is what this country needs in order to make it prosperous." My right bon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) is on record as having said that when his party .comes into power he would permit every healthy white person to enter Canada without let or hindrance. That seems to be the view of public men throughout this land-to allow every person to come in here and work out his own destiny.


Arthur Meighen: I have looked up the
statement to which my hon. friend referred and there was a qualification as to being capable of carrying on a useful occupation in Canada.


Samuel William Jacobs: Yes, I would assume that.
The government said:	We are oyer-industrialized; we want more farmers, we want less industrials. Whether it is because they expect continued support from our farmer friends in the future or not I cannot say. The fact remains, however, that they are rather favourable to the entry of farmers, and they set their face strongly against any movement to the cities. Now, last year when I was speaking on this very question I made the point-at least I strove to-that if you bring in a large number of people of one class, and you bring in none of another class, the tendency will be for a levelling-up in due course; that is to say if you send people on the farm and you find that there is a lack or dearth of people in the cities the attraction to the city by means of larger wages will
I Mr. Jacobs.]
denude the farms exactly in the same way as before those people came. You must have people in the cities to attend to the wants of the industrial class, and you must have people on the farms to attend to the needs of the agricultural class. But this lop-sided policy will never be a success. Immigration must proceed in natural channels and as soon as you begin to adopt artificial schemes and artificial tricks to accomplish this or that you are interfering with nature and bound to come a cropper. For the last seven or eight years in this House I have delivered my annual on the question of immigration, and as I have said before, I have been a voice crying in the wilderness. There is no one to give me support on this question in this Chamber. I am in a class by myself. I have promised my support to any party in this House or any p-arty outside of the House who wants to get in, who will give their adhesion to a policy of this kind, and so far no one has come forward. The only member who at all approaches my view in this respect is my _ right hon. friend the leader of the opposition. I do not know whether it is a case of:
The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.
The fact remains that when he was in power for a number of years nothing was done. The present rules and orders in council and regulations are those which were put into effect during his regime.


Arthur Meighen: We were bringing our
soldiers back, and we had to absorb our soldiers then.


Samuel William Jacobs: I am glad my hon. friend
has some pretext, but the bald fact remains that he was in power and could have done something in the matter of stimulating immigration, but did nothing. Now he is prepared to do something. Whatever man hath will he give for his political life. I am rather dubious of these death-bed repentances, although I have very little choice. I know that the party in power at the present time are not prepared to do anything, although I give them my support. I have threatened and urged and gone almost beyond the limits of endurance, but so far nothing has been done, and, so far as I can see, nothing is going to be done. Now what am I to do under the circumstances?


Arthur Meighen: Come across.


Joseph Archambault: Keep going.


Samuel William Jacobs: I have held out the olive
branch to the hon. leader of the Progressive

The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.
party, (Mr. Forke). I am willing to follow him. I am willing to follow the Labour party, small though it be.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: Or the Ginger group.


Samuel William Jacobs: Yes, the Ginger group. I
am willing even to take ginger.


Daniel Webster Warner: Go out and buy a farm.


Samuel William Jacobs: So far nothing has been
done. I warn my hon. friends on this side of the House that an election is impending, that there are large numbers of people in this country who think as I do on this question and they are going to give their support to the party who will promise the open door in the matter of immigration. As for me, I have always given my support, such as it was, to the party now in power, but this matter of immigration is one which transcends politics, political .affiliations and party friendships. I always will while in this House advocate the open door in the matter of immigration, because I feel it is in the interests of the country that we should have a proper immigration policy. It is detrimental to the country to have the policy which is now in vogue, which has been handed down to us as a heritage from the right hon. leader of the opposition-a sort of Trojan, horse. We have gone along and have not examined into it to see what it was. In view of the serious condition in which the country finds itself in regard to the railway problem, in view of the appalling debt which we have on our shoulders, in view of the emigration to the States, surely the government ought to get together to see if something cannot be done in order to stimulate immigration. Something should be done by those who are leading this country.


Mr. ARTHURS:: My hon. friend says he is in favour of the open door. Does he mean exactly what he says?


Samuel William Jacobs: I am in favour of the open door as expressed by the right hon. leader of the gentleman who has just spoken. I am in favour of allowing into the country every healths'- white person who is able to make a living. Why should not such a man be allowed to come into the country? He is going to help pay our debts, and surely he is about the most welcome person we can get just now.


James Arthurs: Is the policy of the present government along that line?


Samuel William Jacobs: The policy of the present
government on immigration is like the wisdom of God, it surpasseth all understanding. Sir Henry Thornton in his annual report thought this matter of immigration very important.
The policy of the government puts Sir Henry Thornton in a very awkward and anomalous position at the present moment. He is asked to run the railway and make it pay, and yet the door is closed to people who would come in and make it pay. He is asked, as my ancestors in Egypt were asked, to make bricks without straw, and he cannot do it. He has always been at variance with the government on this question. We have on the board of the Canadian National Railway, Mr. Tom Moore, president of Trades and Labour Councils, who has declared himself in favour of the policy, if I may call it such, which the government has now in force. He is against bringing into the country people who might compete with the .people who pay their annual dues for his upkeep. The government, evidently feeling that he was a man after their own heart, promptly made him a director of the Canadian National Railways. Now he is advocating on his side keeping out all immigrants because they are inimical to the interests of organized labour of this country. On the other hand, we find Sir Henry Thornton makes the following statement:
From time to time, and particularly during the past two years, reference has been made on various occasions to the need for immigration. The whole future of Canada and of the railway systems in Canada depends upon increased population and upon the increased traffic which would result therefrom. As compared with what might be done in order to bring about the desired result, the efforts made in the past might be termed somewhat spasmodic and unorganized. If there is to be real success the matter will have to be handled otherwise in the future. The Dominion as a whole, the provinces individuality, the railways and all other business organizations are, each of them, interested. The problem is of sufficient magnitude and importance to justify in its solution the employment of the most capable and energetic minds in the Dominion. The investment of money on a larger scale than in the past will also be required.
I call particular attention to the final paragraph which says:
The matter might be entrusted to a permanent commission constituted somewhat on the lines of the Board of Railway Commissioners, except that more commissioners would doubtless have to be appointed; and this Immigration Commission would have to be authorized to make expenditures under a general programme approved by parliament.
He says this matter is so important that a commission ought to be appointed to deal with the entire question, to make the expenditures and study the whole matter. He would favour a commission similar to the railway commission. At the present moment we have not even a standing committee in the House to deal with immigration. We have a standing committee to deal with onions and cabbages, and a standing commit-
The Budget-Mr. Jacobs.

tee to deal with fish, but when it comes to human beings, a matter in which every person in the country is interested, and with which the whole future of the country is concerned, we have nobody to whom we can refer any question at all. Surely this matter is of sufficient importance to provoke at least some interesting discussion in this House. For nineteen days, ever since this debate started, I have waited in vain to hear some public man rise in this chamber and advocate some kind of immigration policy. But nothing has been done, and feeling that nothing would be said during the entire debate, I felt it my duty to rise and make these remarks, some of which, to a certain extent, are distasteful to me to make.


George Gibson Coote: Would the hon. member be
good enough to tell the House whether hf has any work in .Canada for the 450,000 people whom he thinks we could profitably bring in each year?


Samuel William Jacobs: Work was found for the
hen. member for Macleod when he came, was there not?


George Gibson Coote: I had the honour to be born in this country.


Samuel William Jacobs: Work was found for the
hon. member when he was born.


George Gibson Coote: I had to go out and look
for a job.


Samuel William Jacobs: The 450,000 people who
should come in will be glad to go out and look for work too. This country has not been scratched yet with regard to its resources. We have the greatest natural resources in the world. We have power which, when developed, will produce, according to statistics, 41,000,000 horse-power. I notice my right hon. friend (Mr. Meighen) is a little surprised at the figure. I have the figures and I will go so far as to say that there is 41.200,000 horse-power waiting to be developed. We have the greatest mines in the world. We have a country larger than the United States. At the present time we have three human beings to every two square miles of territory, and yet my hon. friend says there would not be work found for
450.000	people.


Mr. SPENCER:: If we have such great
possibilities of work, why cannot we put the
60.000	unemployed at work now?


Samuel William Jacobs: I will tell my hon. friend
whyu I do not know who those 60,000 people are, but I will venture to tell my

Iron, friend that most of those people are from the British Isles, gentlemen who largely do not want work. I do not say that is true of all of them, but it is true of a very large number. The hon. gentleman probably remembers the story of two Englishmen on the streets of Toronto. They were walking down Yonge street and one said to the other: "See how happy everybody looks in this city." The other said: "Why should they not be happy? Do we not own them?" That is the view the Englishman has of Canada. He will not work himself; he wants the other fellow to do the work. The men who work in this country are the men who come from the continent of Europe and not those who come from the streets of Glasgow, Liverpool and London. They are victims of the dole. They have never done any work or wanted to do it. They are wastrels, useless, and they never should be permitted to come into this country. I am speaking, of course, of a certain type. The House will not, for a moment, think I am making an attack on the British people. I say this is true of a certain type. If you will analyse each and every one of these cases, you will find that many had an opportunity to go to work, but would not go. WTe see them in our country and in other places. Every man who comes to this country and who is ready and willing to work, can find work to do. That is why those people who come from continental Europe, ignorant of our language and of our customs, are able to find work. They are willing to put their hands to anything. That is why they are a better element in the community than those whose only qualification is that- they can talk English and think they own this country.


Mr. SPBAKMAN:: Does my hon. friend
contend that the same rule applies to the Canadian-born who, as the hon. member said, were leaving Canada in large numbers and who, as he himself stated, were a better class of citizens than the foreigners we might bring in


Samuel William Jacobs: I do not know whether my
hon. friend was here when I said that those Canadian-born people are attracted by larger wages in the United States and by the lure of the gas light, the moving picture houses and everything that is implied in a large city in the United1 States. Many of them go off the farms. I venture to say that, perhaps, 50 per cent of those people who have gone to the United States have gone off the farms in order to improve their condition in that country, not because they could not get a living

The Budget-Mr. Gould.
here. I will not believe work cannot be got in Canada, a country of 3,000,000 square miles, larger than the United States, and with 9,000,000 people. It is absurd to think people cannot get work here. In Montreal I think one man in a thousand was out of work during the winter which has just passed. That is a negligible quantity. There is plenty of work for people to do.


Arthur Meighen: Does the hon. member
mean to say that only five or six or seven hundred people were out of work in Montreal?


Samuel William Jacobs: At most, only one person
out of one thousand people was out of work in Montreal at any one time.


Arthur Meighen: Where did the hon.
gentleman get those figures?


Samuel William Jacobs: I got them from a source
which, perhaps, the right hon. gentleman will not think accurate, the Montreal Star. I am afraid I have already taken up too much of the time of this House and there is nothing more that I wish to say. I did not expect to speak for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but it is only because I had something to say that I rose to speak, strange to say.
I trust, however, my views, such as they are, will foe taken into the serious consideration of the gentlemen who now form the government of Canada. I wish to make no threats, to utter no warnings; but I cannot give my support to any party in this House that is not prepared to accept my policy as outlined to-day with regard to immigration, and I. am prepared to give my support to any party in this House that is ready to adopt this policy.


John Pritchard: I do not know, but I
am pretty nearly a convert to my hon. friend's idea of immigration. I would like him to answer one question in connection with it before I decide to embark on the idea. How is he going to overcome the difficulty that arises when the cities have a fixed price for carrying out the services of their people and -when, in all the rural districts of this country, we have to compete for labour and whatever our products will bring? How are you going to hold people in this vast area of country where we have unorganized labour, when the cities are holding out inducements of big pay and short hours? Can the hon. member suggest how to overcome that difficulty?


Samuel William Jacobs: I am afraid I have not
clearly understood my hon. friend. Would he mind repeating his question?


John Pritchard: Organized labour and
the government are fixing remuneration in the
cities with big pay and short hours for the people who work there. In the rural districts where we have not organized labour, even the government refuses to pay to people working there the same remuneration it pays to people in the cities. How are you going to prevent immigrants from going where they can get short hours and big pay?


Samuel William Jacobs: How are you going to prevent a farmer from selling his farm, or a hired man from going to the city? They are going there now to take the place of others. The high wages are an attraction to them.


Robert Forke: That is what the hon. member said. How are you going to stop that?


Samuel William Jacobs: My theory was to allow the people to go wherever they want to go. If they want to go on the farms, let them go there; if they want to go to the cities, let them go there. If they find they cannot make a living in the cities, they will wander on to the farms. If they find they are not fitted for farming, they will go elsewhere. We have a continent to fill up. Surely it offers possibilities to every person who comes in. The man who is not a success as a farmer may become a member of parliament.


Mr. McDONALD (Timiskaming):: What
does this new party stand for? Does it want an overflow of population into this country for no other reason, as it seems to me, than to have a surplus of labour with a view to cutting down wages? And will that party be called the Jacobs party?


Samuel William Jacobs: The original Jacob had only twelve sons and he went to Egypt and was a success there.


Oliver Robert Gould: I wish
to join with hon. gentlemen and with the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) in expressing my regret at the absence through illness of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fielding). And I think thait one new note may be introduced at this time when I say that I extend to you, Mr. Speaker, my sympathy in that the House has so long refrained from allowing you to resolve it into committee of Ways and Means. Largely that fault must be laid at the door of the government. During the past week they have been revivified and have now decided to enter into the full spirit of debate. Considerable difference is evident now in the demeanour of the House and in its activities compared with what was apparent earlier in the session when we were advised, very nearly twice a day by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King),- that we
The Budget-Mr. Gould.

should do all we could to expedite the business of parliament.
I wish first of all to offer a remark or two with regard to the address delivered yesterday-afternoon by the hon. member for St. Law-rence-St. George (Mr. Marler). That very, very dry address was delivered ostensibly for the purpose, or at least for the intended purpose, of clarifying the budget speech of the Acting Minister of Finance, and the hon. member this year appears in a different role from the one he played last year. Last year he was critical of the government and denounced them roundly because they did not make a clear exposition of the financial condition of Canada. I have here the volume of Hansard containing the remarks of the hon. gentleman at that time, and perhaps it would show better than anything else the changed attitude of the hon. gentleman if I read a few extracts from that speech of his. As I say, he was critical of the government last year; yesterday he appeared in the role of an apologist for them. He seemed to labour a point yesterday. And, in passing, let me say that I hope the fortunes of war will never permit him to have an opportunity of placing figures before this parliament in an official capacity for the House to digest, for his explanation yesterday was more confounded, it was ten times more complicated, when he got through, than was the original state of affairs which he undertook to elucidate. It seems to me that the hon. gentleman might have saved a good deal of time and might have explained the situation fully by stating that the executive of the government, who usually prepare the budget speech, have brought down this year a form of statement similar f^o that which has been followed in connection with the last seven budget speeches to which he referred, as submitted by the four preceding ministers of finance of Canada. That would have been an ample explanation of his point and it would have obviated a speech of two and a half hours. Let me now refer the House to page 1571 of Hansard of last year containing the remarks of the hon. gentleman at that time:
As a matter of fact, to give the people the idea that the day of abounding surpluses has arrived is merely to encourage spending and a lack of economy, and I therefore ask, Sir, with all due respect, if we do give the people that idea, is it the right idea to put forward? Why should we not, as a matter of fact, take the people entirely into our confidence? Why should we not exhibit to them a simple statement of our financial affairs in language which they can all understand ?
Further down the page the hon. member is reported thus:

I know that a certain part of the railway debt is at present merged in the consolidated debt; other parts are .not so merged. But it does not matter under what account the parts not so merged are taken, the parts, wherever they may be, constitute the total debt of the Dominion of Canada. In other words, we cannot increase our railway debt, without increasing our total debt.
That is the attitude which the critics of the government this year have universally taken; it is the same attitude which the hon. member for St. Lawremce-St. George took last year in his speech on the budget. This year the 'hon. gentleman has altered his position. There is another extract from the hon. gentleman's speech to which I may Tefer the House:
This government, as I have stated before and can only repeat to-day, has had to bear great expenditures, partly due to the war and partly due to causes over which they have absolutely no control. But what I venture to ask,-and I do it with a]l respect-is: Why try to place before the public a difficult system of accounting which the public itself cannot be expected to understand? Why not place before the public the actual condition of receipts and expenditures as they may occur from year to year, taking the public into our confidence as questions arise, and asking the pubiic to assist us in governing this country which is so exceedingly difficult to govern?
If hon. gentlemen wish to follow Hansard of last year further they will find in the hon. gentleman's speech a substantial en-dorsation of the comment I have made, that whereas he appeared as a critic of the government at that time he now comes forward as an apologist in their behalf.
I must say that I have never approached the task of making a speech on the budget in this House with so little cheer or with so little of what one might call vim as I do this year. And this is due to the fact that the budget on this occasion necessitates vain repetition; all the scoldings of the past must be reiterated and all the advice which hon. members have tendered the government from time to time must be offered again. It becomes discouraging therefore when individual members of parliament who have received what they regard as matured advice from their constituents find this advice discarded by the government, more particularly when gentlemen who repose in the seats of power were elected to office on the strength of the very things which their critics now advocate. I wish to refer to the visit which the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) and his party made to western Canada last fall. I took the pleasurable opportunity of attending one of his meetings, although I had to drive the car a hundred miles either way to be present, seeing that our railway facilities are not adequate enough to enable us to take ad-

The Budget-Mr. Gould.
vantage of such occasions. We might hope for better facilities in western Canada, for at such times we have to suffer inconveniences, driving our cars hundreds of miles, to do honour to the Prime Minister of Canada. The burden of the right hon. gentleman's plea was that the people of the west had made a mistake in not having sent to Ottawa representatives who could sit in the party caucus and thereby make known to the government -what their wants were. The Prime Minister does not understand the spirit of the western people. There was very little applause when he made that statement, and it was urged continuously.
The people of the west are not to be caught with that sort of bait. The government know full well that after considerable discussion those papole had prepared a platform which they considered a new national policy for the Dominion of Canada. That was known as the platform of the Canadian Council of Agriculture, a council which did represent people from all parts of Canada. Later on the title was changed to "The Farmers' Platform." That was a change to which I have never subscribed, and it has given much opportunity for critics of the new national policy, as we designed it to be, to misrepresent our movement as a class movement. Now I want to draw attention to this fact to prove that the people do not need to have their representatives in a government caucus or any other party caucus to make known what they are asking for, because in 1916 our platform was published, and in 1917 we find that the party now in power made another unsuccessful attempt at the polls, and then it was that they appeared to suddenly realize that a national convention was necessary. It was held in this city in 1919, and a platform was evolved which bears many close resemblances to the platform of the Canadian Council of Agriculture. Evidently someone was aware either of what the people required or that another platform had been built which would appeal to the country. I have heard, and hon. gentlemen here have heard it declared, a thousand times, that there is similarity in the two platforms, that there is no reason why the Progressive party should be distinct and apart from the Liberal party. Well, in so far as their platforms go I admit that they have much in common. But while I admit that, I have also to draw the attention of the House and the country to the fact that we were the originators of the very meritorious platform of the Canadian Council of Agriculture.
That is my first proof that the people do not need to be represented in a party caucus to make known their wishes. My second proof is this, and I might be allowed to illustrate it. We of western Canada look upon the party politics of the Maritime provinces almost as if it was a disease. I believe that no more bitter political fights have ever been waged in Canada than those which have characterized elections in the Maritime provinces. Even since this parliament was brought into being we have heard many times about the "solid sixteen" from Nova Seotia, and we know something of the partisan spirit that distinguishes the politics of the Mari-times. I do not say that harshly, but the fact that the " solid sixteen " have sat in the party caucuses continuously and the fact that we have heard louder murmurings from the Maritimes during the past two or three years than from any other part of Canada shows the futility of the party caucus to satisfy the wants of the people. If representation in a party caucus is a means whereby remedies may be initiated, why do we hear these constant murmurings from the Maritime provinces? I have thought that hon. members from the Maritime provinces, as representing the needs and rights of their constituents, have so much in common with the representatives of the people of western Canada, that if they would stand in their places and openly denounce and vote against the administration which they now support, their constituents in the Maritimes would rally to their support. And I am not speaking now of any one particular party; my remarks are applicable to the two old parties. I am sure the people down there would back up any of their representatives who would take that course. It is my opinion that the people of the Maritime provinces and the people of the west have so much in common that, combined, we could make industrial Canada sit up and take notice.
I give it again. Sir, as my opinion that industrial Canada has been the cause of three-fourths of the political and economic unrest in the Dominion since 1874. We are paying a huge price-we always have-for the erection and the continuation of industrial Canada. We are asked to continue it now. If we had the condition -which I have pictured, we would have factories going to the coal areas of Nova Scotia and of Alberta. Instead of that, under our present policy we subsidize the coal barons-and tax ourselves-to take coal to the industrial area, and in turn that industrial area manufactures products upon which we protect them and again fine our-
2372 .
The Budget-Mr. Gould.

selves. In a word, under our present policy we levy a double fine upon the people. As I said before, we should force these factories to locate in our coal fields rather than penalize ourselves by subsidizing them to bring coal to the industrial area. By so doing they would have a growing market in western Canada for agricultural implements, and we would save freight both on coal and on implements. This is applicable to the Maritime provinces, it is likewise applicable to western Canada. Perhaps our condition at the present time is a judgment upon us because of our blind partisan attitude in the past.
I wish to refer to the hon. member for Brome (Mr. McMaster), not in any unkind spirit at all, and I regret that he is not in hie seat. There is a personal something that binds the hon. member for Brome and the member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gould) in a tie for friendship. It commenced in 1919, when he, accompanied by another hon. member, visited the electoral district of Assiniboia, and took an active part in a certain by-election. It was at that time that I made the hon. gentleman's acquaintance. Fresh from the convention halls of the city of Ottawa, where the Liberal platform of 1919 was framed and adopted, he proclaimed to the people the following: Here is our new platform, here is the Liberal party's pledge to put this platform into execution, all you need do is to entrust to then} the reins of office, and I pledge my word that that platform will be put into effect; you do not need any other representative than a Liberal. Well, the reply of the people of Assiniboia was that they had been deceived before, and they did not propose to be deceived again. I would' ask the hon. member for Brome, who was right? In the course of a very able address delivered by the hon. member some few nights ago, he laid down the policies which he thought Canada should follow. I am in accord with him very near to the limit, but When he added tnat he could not oppose the budget because he feared the government would be defeated, I felt I must part company with him.
We have contended, Sir, many, many times
and we would not make the contention if we did not have ample justification for it- that there is not the difference, really, of the snap of the fingers between the two old political parties of this country, the Liberals and the Conservatives. This view is confirmed in the policies of both parties-not as enunciated but as practised. A proposal which is before the House and the country to-day is another illustration of the similarity of our two old friends-I refer to the proposed tariff board I can quite believe that if this becomes an 
issue they will quarrel and squabble over it for weeks in this House as to who shall constitute that tariff board, but the main principle of the board is already in the minds of the government as it is also in the minds of the official opposition. The right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) has his resolution on the order paper, and he proclaims that this tariff board is going to be erected to look into the evils that beset us. Before I make a few remarks upon that, I want to refer to a conclusion I reached after reading an article in the Financial Post of April 17 in which the experiences are- given of a gentleman named Mr. Beld-i.ng, who had been delegated by certain newspapers in the province -of New Brunswick to go to western Canada and declare unto them the difficulties under which the Mari-times were labouring. As he expressed it himself, he went forth proclaiming the policies of the Maritimes and the things that would benefit them, but he came back making a d;fferent kind of speech. Summing up, he stated that he thought the solution for the economic difficulties under which Canada was labouring might be foundl if the- country were divided into four zones and each of these zones sent representatives to a conference and there, through compromise and otherwise, an endeavour were made to reach a solution that would be acceptable to all parts of the country. That, in my opinion, would be much better than a tariff board; it would help to solve the problem. I do not wholly agree with Mr. Belding's conclusions. He says that the various zones should be represented by delegates from the boards of trade of all the zones referred to. I wondered as I read the article whether he knew that there was an industry in Canada called agriculture, which represents at least fifty-two per cent of the population and seventy-five per cent of the created wealth of the country. I wondered why he should confine it to boards of trade; his urban mind seemed to think there was nothing else in Canada but boards of trade. Agriculture has large organizations representative of that phase of our national life, organizations that are paying attention as best they can to the economic difficulties of Canada. I do not condemn the principle that Mr. Belding has advanced, but I do want him to appreciate the fact that agriculture will not stand aside and allow boards of trade to dictate a policy for the Dominion of Canada.
At six o'clock the House took recess.

The Budget-Mr. Gould.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


Oliver Robert Gould: 
James Arthurs: Is that true?


Oliver Robert Gould: I have read statements from the National Liberal-Conservative hand-book of 1921, and I do not think the hon. gentleman will repudiate that authority.


James Arthurs: As a matter of fact, did we not make a reduction?


Oliver Robert Gould: This book states so, and the argument I am trying to make is that when our Conservative friends charge our Liberal friends with being the cause of the closing down of the factories and the men being out of work as a result of the paltry reductions of last year, why did they not say, ''We reduced the tariff to a greater extent and consequently we must also have closed the factories and put men out of work"?


Robert James Manion: The charge was not so much in regard to reduction as in regard to the instability that these reductions brought about.


Oliver Robert Gould: In reply to my hon. friend from Fort William and Rainy River (Mr. Manion) I would say that if the paltry tariff reductions the government made in the tariff brought about such disastrous results, then the Conservatives should have brought about a more serious condition, because they made greater tariff reductions, although they claimed to be a high tariff party.


James Arthurs: My hon. friend is wrong so far as I or this party are concerned. We never advertised that we were going to introduce a high tariff at all.


Oliver Robert Gould: Well, that is all right. I will accept the statement of the hon. gen'.leman, if that is satisfactory. But the people of Canada believed that my hon. friends ad-
The Budget-Mr. Gould.

vertised it in that way, and I think :f hon. members will read' the propaganda which follows in the same Liberal-Conservative handbook, they will see that it is advocated there, when they are appealing to the different classes of people, particularly in the urban centres.
I wish to refer to the resolution which the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) has placed upon the order paper, which he has not had an opportunity to debate. There hon. members will find the argument for a consistent and even a higher tariff. The inference is given that the tariff has to be raised to give more work and more employment for the workman. We want to have a policy in this country, whether it is a Liberal or Conservative policy, that the people can depend upon. If you elect one party which profess a lower tariff, let them cany out that policy and give a lower tariff.


Robert James Manion: I do not remember the handbook my hon. friend speaks of, but I presume what the Conservative party were setting forth at that time was what they had done for the farming community in this country, and were not advocating a lower tariff. They were pointing out that they had made cuts in agricultural implements which should satisfy the farmer, but they got very little support from the farmers of the prairie provinces.


Oliver Robert Gould: In reply to my hon. friend again, I was not endeavouring to prove the merits of the high or the low tariff at the present time. I was trying to prove the inconsistencies of the two old political parties in this country, and also endeavouring to prove that there is such a similarity in practice that the people do not need to take their assertions very seriously.
Now there are two points brought forth in the proposed' resolution of the right hon. leader of the opposition, and the first one is that the farmer is to be at last included in the principle of protection. Always in the past those who talked protection aimed at the farmer as a victim. At the present time, since the farmer has risen to his feet and protests because he has been made in the past the victim, this sop is held out to him in the hope that it will beguile him fiirthe". Let me assure Lon. members that he is not going to be beguiled, because he realizes that there is only a certain amount of wealth created and although it is said to be distributed equally, he knows that those who have been the recipients of special favours will continue to receive the benefit and the farmer will get the small share in the end.

The second point is this, that the resolution proposes that a commission shall find out and report back to the government whenever abuse is made of the taxes. That is very enlightening, because we had all been given to understand-and I am sure the speeches that have been made in this chamber will bear me out in that statement-that it never was considered that those industries that had been the recipients of special privileges ever took advantage of that fact or did a wrong thing. If the right hon. leader of the opposition were in his place I should like to ask him wherein and when he found that any of these industries had taken advantage of the tariff. That is information we have had ever since we have been purchasing implements, and yet the right hon. leader of the opposition, the champion of higher protection in this country, has just proclaimed to the world that at last he has found out that some of these industries have been taking advantage of the tariff. It is very enlightening indeed.
Now, Sir, I give it as my opinion that if a tariff commission were appointed to look into the merits of the case, I would only support it on the understanding-and it is a theory which I have advanced at least half a dozen times in this chamber-that the commission should be empowered to go in and ascertain the merits of the institution which asks for protection. That is to say, a commission should be delegated or empowered to go to these organizations who think they have a right to have this special privilege, who have accepted it in the past, who have been guilty of malpractices as the right hon. leader of the opposition states in his resolution, and investigate these concerns. That is the first and the only thing I would delegate to theim and they should be asked to bring in a report to this House. I should want to know how the physical value of their plants compared with the fictitious values which we have been led to believe they possess. At least, if the values were fictitious we would find it out. They would report to the House and we could apply a scientific adjustment to the statements made in the report and find out how they stood. We have had our doubts in the past and made representations, and yet no government in Canada from the time protection was first imposed has had the courage to appoint a commission and send that commission to the industries to ascertain from them the reasons why they asked for this protection. It has been very interesting, Mr. Speaker, from time to time to hear the gratuitous advice that has been tendered by the proponents of high protection,

The Budget-Mr. Gould.
yea, even to the Mother Country, Hon. gentlemen can bear me out in this, that sometimes it has almost reached the point where they would ridicule the fiscal policy -of the Mother Country. With that in view, I made a clipping from a paper, and I want our Conservative friends to pay particular attention to this, because these words come from the mouth of a member of the British House of Commons. The report is headed, " The path of protection," it is applicable to my argument, it expresses exactly my views and the views of scores of thousands of the workers of Canada and it is just as applicable to the people of Canada as to any country in the world where the .principle of protection is in force. These remarks were made by Captain Wedgewood Benn, DjS.O., Liberal in the British House of Commons:
The Path of Protection
Captain Wedgwood Benn, D.S.O., Liberal, in British House of Commons:
I am speaking about the lobbies of this House, and I am referring to the change that has come over our political campaigns in connection with this sort of debate and this sort of duty. We are constantly being pressed by people who come here not for grievances to be redressed, not for some public interest to be attended to, but because they want something done which will put money in their pockets. Men who in the old days thought of nothing but their customers and pleasing their customers think now of nothing but wheedling members of Parliament and nobbling Ministers. People, who in the old days thought that the secret of success was to give better value for money, say to-day, "If we can get a tariff, better value is of no account." Their object is not to promote the public interest but to manipulate divisions in the House of Commons.
That is a complete change, and a very evil feature. I cannot summarize this point better than in the words of a Tory of Tories, the Noble Lord who sits for the University of Oxford (Lord Hugh Cecil), who said: "Protection will lead to the corruption of our public life as it has led to the corruption of the life of other countries The purity of our public life is the lifeblood of Europe. If Conservatives go in for Protection, I will have nothing to do with such an apostate party. If they determine to travel down the path of dishonor and Imperial ruin, I will wash my hands clean of so great a crime.
That is the -condemnation. That is the answer to hon. members who may think it their right or duty to challenge the fiscal policy of Great Britain.
A tariff -lias the same effect as a depreciated currency. That is to say, if you impose a 10 per cent tariff tax, the purchasing power of the individual is decreased by that 10 per cent. If you impose a 20 per cent tariff tax, the purchasing power of the in-ddividual is decreased exactly one-fifth. If you impose a 25 per cent tariff tax, the purchasing power of the individual is decreased one-quarter. We have had a condition similar to that in Canada, and it means one-quarter less purchasing power or one-quarter less need for the beneficiary to exert himself. Let me illustrate and this may be used in reply to the charges of our hon. friends that men are out of work. About twelve years ago-and I use my own case as an illustration,-I purchased a Massey-Harris five-foot mower for the sum of $65, giving my note for it. It was a good machine and I still have it working on my farm. Last year when I went home I required another mower, and I went to the HasseyvHarris agent and said:	"I want another five-foot mower. What is the price?" He told me it was $112. I said: "But I ha-e just returned from Ottawa and we had a cut in the tariff on these mowers this year". He said:	"I will look that up". In the tariff
and the sales tax the reduction was $5 and I paid him $107 cash for the mower, taking it home. I -had saved $5, but I turned around and said: "Now I want a scrub scythe", and I got it for 85. Did the worker have any less work to do because I bought two implements with the same money, or would he have had less had I just purchased one? That is by way of illustration.
I propose now to direct the attention of the House to the practical views which reveal themselves in the budget. The first thing which stands out so that he who reads may understand, is the fact that we have a national debt of $2,431,487,112.88. In conversation with a gentleman to-day I was using the figure of 9,700,000 as the population of Canada. He said: "Man,, you are away out. I would not mind betting, if it could be proved, that the population of Canada is not more than 7,000,000 to-day." The item, however, was made up as of March 31, 1924, of $2,417,783,274.88, to which is added in 1924, according to the statement of the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb), a deficit of $13,703,838, making the total which I gave before. Taking the population at 9,700.000 souls, we find that makes a per capita debt of $2,506.70. I have an object in giving those figures, and that is to bring home to- the people of Canada, if I possibly can, the exact position by which the are surrounded, the burden that they have upon their shoulders. Possibly, this will be an incentive to the people to pay more attention to the affairs of state and to see that real cause shall be shown before any individual shall come back to this House. An average family of five would be assuming a burden of federal debt of $12,533.50; or a family of nine, that is seven children and the two parents-and I know a home not far from mine where there are nine-would be assuming a burden of federal debt of
The Budget-Mr. Gould.

$22,560.30. These are practical figures that the layman can understand. The charge cannot be placed against them that was made across the floor of this House in regard to the budget.


James Arthurs: Does the hon. gentleman seriously contend that, on the basis of these figures, the per capita is $2,000?


Oliver Robert Gould: Yes, $2,506.70 per capita.


Robert James Manion: It is just ten times too
much.


Oliver Robert Gould: This is the capitalization.


Mr. BENOIT:: Divide it by ten.


Robert James Manion: ' I hope my hon. friend is closer to the truth in the remarks he made about the Conservative party.


Oliver Robert Gould: In regard to the statements I made as to the Conservative party, I do not wish Hansard to print the whole proof I have in my hand. It would be rather condemnatory, but it would be the truth.


Mr. PUTNAM:: What is the date of their
platform?


Oliver Robert Gould: Volume No. 2, published by the National Liberal-Conservative party, publicity committee, October 1921, the last election.


James Arthurs: The hon. member has not answered my question. Does he seriously say that the federal debt is $2,000 per capita?


Oliver Robert Gould: I would not say now and I do not think I could compute it right here as I stand. My leader tells me that it amounts to about $250. I have a zero added, I think. I want to point out, however, that no matter what it is, the burden is big, and my idea in bringing the matter forward is to show to the people what burden they are carrying. Further, I show to them that they have this burden placed upon them not by the party we call the Progressive party of Canada, but by the Liberal or the Conservative party, or by both, who to-day extend their chests, and say: Here, people, you are in the slough of despond, but look upon us as your saviour and accept our policies.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Does my
hon. friend know that three-quarters of that debt was due to the war?


Oliver Robert Gould: Yes.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Then, why blame it on our political party?


Oliver Robert Gould: I am aware of that and
I will prove later that a great proportion of

it was due to expenditures on railways which were built thirty years ahead of their time. That is the maladministration to which I refer and it is all included in the national debt. It is absolutely useless to allow the present administration to attempt to solve the problem or to relieve us of the condition which they were in part responsible for bringing upon us. The average taxpayer, reading from the figures of the Acting Minister of Finance, will also see that there is a Canadian railway debt of $582,000,000. That is a debt that is due to this country, including unpaid interest amounting to $130,000,000, and plus loans in 1924 of $118,000,000, making a totai of $830,000,000.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The hon.
member does not mean to say that this government inaugurated the policy of consolidating the three systems? The Liberal party opposed that policy in 1917.


Oliver Robert Gould: I am not saying that, nor have I made any reference to that point. But you cannot determine and attribute the extent of blame for which the two political narties are respectively responsible.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: But my hon. friend said it was all due to this government.


Oliver Robert Gould: No, I say that the Acting Minister of Finance brought down figures to show that there was a deficit of $830,000,000; that is to say, we have a total amount involved in connection with the Canadian National Railways of over $2,000,000,000. But while we have lines of steel and the rolling stock of subsidiary concerns to offset that, th e government in my opinion brings down a statement showing a total slippage in earnings of $830,000,000.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Does the hon. gentleman think that it was a mistaken policy to take over and consolidate these railways?


Oliver Robert Gould: No, not at all. Indeed1, as far back as 1910 and 1911 the whole cry in western Canada was that such a consolidation was bound to come about because the people of the west were strongly condemning the principles that had obtained in connection with our railway policies in Canada up to that time. Hon. gentlemen in this House will bear me out that the firm opinion in western Canada at that time was that the principle of national ownership of our railways would inevitably be recognized and adopted for the reason that the method that

The Budget-Mr. Gould,
had been pursued by the political parties had so far been disadvantageous to the country. Now that the hon. gentleman has put that question to me I want to assure him that I do not for a moment attack the principle of government ownership of our railways. I will say however that this principle has not been really tried in Canada; and that statement might be advanced by way of reply to the hon. member who spoke this afternoon (Mr. Jacobs). That hon. gentlemen condemns the principle of national ownership, but I repeat that it has never been fairly tried in this country, and I honestly believe that if it were given a reasonable test on an equal basis with the Canadian Pacific Railway it would prove that the Canadian National railway system could be just as successfully operated. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that to-day, with the heavy extra burden which the Canadian National Railways must carry, they are making a wonderful showing and are compelling the Canadian Pacific to do better than perhaps tnev would otherwise do.
How we are to save Canada in the present crisis is perhaps a difficult question to settle. The present government is trying to save it by scrapping its 1919 platform, while our Conservative friends propose to put the country on its feet by making the cost of living higher than it is at the present time.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: We propose to make
employment more general.


Oliver Robert Gould: I think the hon. gentleman
must have been out of his seat when I gave figures to prove that the Conservative party had reduced the duty on agricultural implements to a greater extent than the Liberal party had done, so that the cry of closed factories was more applicable as against our Conservative friends than as against the Liberals. Now, there is another thought that occurs to me in connection with our railways, and that is that every dollar of their capitalization can be shown on paper. Such is not the case with the Canadian Pacific Railway. When making comparisons we must bear in mind that in cash, in dollars and cents, the capitalization of our National Railways can all be set down in black and white; on the other hand, there cannot be shown on paper everything that the Canadian Pacific Railway has received. For instance, the lands given to the Canadian Pacific were acquired by that company at a dollar an acre, and they say that this land to-day is worth fifteen, eighteen, twenty-five and thirty dollars, these enchanced values 152
being attributable to the activities of the men who had gone in and settled on the land along the lines of the railway. These men were pioneer settlers, and hon. gentlemen must remember that they had to assess themselves municipally to build roads past the vacant sections of land which the Canadian Pacific Railway held out of use. These vacant sections were between the farms and the school, the church and the town generally and they were the breeding place of everything injurious to agriculture. And besides that they were exempt from taxation. Our Conservative friends must not forget that they are responsible for granting the charter to the Canadian Pacific Railway, and while I do not blame them for doing that I think at the same time that more consideration should have been given the people. If you take into consideration the amount which the people who settled around these vacant lands of the railway were obliged to assess themselves municipally to make improvements and the loss to the agriculturist because of the destructive pests these vacant lands harbored you will find that all that the Canadian Pacific Railway received, indirectly as well as directly, does not appear on paper, and if all these things were shown on paper in the case of the Canadian Pacific, even the present capitalization of the Canadian National would sink into insignificance in comparison.
Last year in the vote on the budget the government received a majority of 112, If the hon. member for West Calgary (Mr Shaw) were in his seat I would ask him to predict the majority on this occasion. The hon. member is the only prophet I know of in this House and I am sure that if he knew he would tell me; had he known I was going to speak he might have assembled his snakes and toads, with the curl of smoke, and told me beforehand what the majority might be. However, if I might venture a prediction on my own account, I would suggest that the majority this year will be much less; let us say that it will be approximately one-fifth of what it was last year. And even if the government secures one-fifth of the majority it got last year I argue that this will represent a decline in prestige to that extent owing to failure to implement its pledges. This government was elected on a platform similar to that of the Canadian Council of Agriculture which preceded it by three years. I do not want that point missed. The group opposite, elected on a platform similar to that of the Canadian Council of Agriculture, added to the members on this side who support the same policy, represent three-fourths of the membership of the House of Commons,

The Budget-Mr. Gould

and that I contend would fairly reflect the opinion of the people of Canada, particularly concerning tariff matters. But- although the government came into office on the strength of those pledges, they have now taken frighi at the hue and cry of industrial Canada; because of some picayune reductions on implements last year fear has driven the administration into retreat. They are poor champions of their policy if they allow an industrial area in Canada, representing only approximately one-fourth of the elected members of the House of Commons, to scare them into the position which we find them holding today. They are absolutely afraid to step out and carry out any of the planks of their platform.
Now. Sir, I want to refer to one or two things which appear in the budget, and particularly to the tax that is proposed on a certain document which, though not a cheque, yet represents a man's ability to go to the bank and get money. Representations have been made to the government from the floor that an enormity is being practised upon the individual who ships cream. Let me illustrate. A man who is established in the dairy business with a herd of twenty or thirty cows will get quite a large cheque for the cream that he ships to the factory, and the two cent stamp does not matter very much to him; but the poor individual who is starting in the dairy business, the soldier settler, if you will, who is possessed of only two or three or four cows, gets maybe a two and a half dollar cheque for his five-gallon can of cream, which it has taken him some time to fill; he will be obliged by this proposed legislation to pay two cents upon every cheque he receives. I say that in this regard you are taxing the poorest man, and the proposal is not equitable, it is not just, and no government should attempt to place it on the statute books, no matter what the financial needs of the country may be. I think, with other hon. members, that $10 should be the minimum cheque upon which stamp duty should be paid. I might carry the story further, I might refer members to the Turgeon report, which states positively and conclusively something which we who grow wheat knew, that the individual who is forced to sell his wheat upon the street pays the greatest price for the marketing of his product. He has to pay this two cent stamp duty on a very small cheque, whereas the more fortunate individual who ships his wheat in bulk receives his money back by express. That is where the greater part of the profits are made, at the expense of the poor individual. By last year's budget the man who

can least afford to pay has to bear this two cent stamp duty on every small cheque. I have seen a man unfortunate enough to have to take in a load of tough, damp grain for which he received a paltry sum of money. But unhappily the man who is hardest hit is up against this two cent stamp tax oftener than the man whose transactions are on a much larger scale. I think if the government knew the condition of affairs they would not endeavour to impose such a tax.
Now Mr. Speaker, I have before me a programme which I believe should be upon the statute books to-day, and I am confident that the majority of these proposals which I am about to read would have been enacted had the people reposed confidence in the Progressive party in 1921. We have urged the present administration to incorporate in our statute books the majority of these measures which I Shall now enumerate. Had we been entrusted with power we would have enacted into law the following measures:
1.	The redemption of all untaxed war bonds that remain in Canada and the imposition of a tax upon them.
2.	A Dominion system of long term credits for agriculturists, whereby they might have an opportunity by a system of amortization to pay off their debts. This is something due our agriculturists, and they will not be satisfied until such a measure is enacted. The government were aware of the conditions which called for such legislation at the time they took office, and surely they have had a sufficient interval within which to inaugurate such a policy.
3.	A commission to ascertain the actual position of those industries which ask for protection or high tariff, and also to ascertain how many of them are indigenous to Canada. I think the establishment of such a commission is long overdue.
4.	Writing down the over-capitalization of the Canadian National Railways so as to put the system on a fair basis to compete with its rival.
5.	Settlement of the natural resources question. I think we can safely say that we would have honestly attempted to bring that about.
6.	The principle of proportional representation. The government promised to bring down a bill for this purpose, but they are very lax in redeeming their promise.
7.	Revaluation of soldier settlement land and other soldier assets and placing them on a normal basis. This is due our soldier settlers, indeed overdue, but the government

The Budget- Mr. St. Pere
are lax in their duty, and make no attempt to do anything that might cause them to go down to posterity with a good name, which after all is the thing to be desired.
8.	Completion of the Hudson Bay railway.
9.	Enactment of a law that 7 per cent be the maximum interest chargeable by our banks, and the imposition of severe penalties for infractions of the law. This is another piece of legislation which the government should have enacted; certainly we would have placed such a law on the statute books.
10.	Revival of the wheat board in 1922. Yes, this was very dear to the mind of the westerner, and it does not affect anybody else.
11.	Amendment of the Bankruptcy Act to make it applicable to the agriculturist, thereby giving him a chance to start again. That is another thing due the agriculturist that this government should have enacted long ago; but no, they sit idly by and are loath to do anything.
12.	Suspension of the coastal laws thereby controlling lake freight rates. That is something we would certainly have done.
13.	Withdrawal of the 'Canadian Government Merchant Marine from the North Atlantic conference, and the use of the ships to bring down the north Atlantic freight rates.
14.	Removal of the tariff and sales tax from the necessities of life, and the imposition of a luxury tax sufficient to make up the difference.
15.	Here is another original suggestion. What would hon. members t'hink about a tax on golf courses? I would tax all except municipal golf courses. We have our millionaires with their luxurious golf clubs and extensive grounds untaxed, while hon. members in our legislatures say that the child who goes out to purchase a 25 cent movie ticket should pay a tax.
Mr. ST. PERE:	W'ould my hon. friend
tax professional hockey?


Oliver Robert Gould: That is a matter for the
provinces to decide. My proposals have to do with federal legislation.
16.	This is a proposal which would not bring in any revenue, but I think it would have a salutary effect. There should be kept a record of members' attendances at meetings of the House and of committees, which should be published annually, so that the public might know what their representatives were doing.


Mr. LANCTOT:: And reduce their indemnity if they did not attend?


Oliver Robert Gould: I would reduce the indemnities of members living within a few hundred 152*
miles of Ottawa. I have occupied more time than I intended, Mr. Speaker, but it will not have been wholly wasted if the government will see the wisdom of taking steps immediately to translate some of my suggestions into law and thus give the people of Canada good reason to rejoice.
Mr. E. C. ST. PERE (Hochelaga) (translation) : Mr. Speaker, "Give me a good policy and I shall give you good finances." We must admit that this parliament should not give to these words of Baron Louis too great a scope, for, in these practical times, we must conclude that good financing can be shown, even though the balance sheet shows only a small margin to the good. Agreeing with the great Gladstone, I would like to see that the yearly budget of all our governments be not too large. This would encourage our administrators in being more economical in expenditures and consequently, the country would be better governed.
I am not, Sir, a follower of the doubting apostle. I have faith in the honour, ability and in the science of those who the government appoint to the administration of public affairs, especially in those employees of our administration who have been called upon to fill the so responsible position of making up our budgets and, in particular, of compiling its very interesting statistics which we call our yearly financial report.
Mr. Speaker, I have always made it a point to be sufficiently truthful as to not lie to myself, and to contend that, at present, our country enjoys unparalleled prosperity, would be to misrepresent the facts. On the other hand neither am I a pessimist and I shall be content, together with all the practical people of this country, to point out that our public debt is very large, and I consider it a duty to endeavour, with all those who think of the future, to find measures so as to face the situation; without looking very far back to discover the causes which have brought on these conditions, causes which everybody knows, and that I do not think proper to remind the public of too often. What is or rather what are the causes of our troubles? We are no worse off, in Canada, than the people in other foreign countries. All these countries, Sir, have suffered from this great cataclysm which is called the Great war. In all those countries we find, to-day, a revival of energy, an overflow of patriotism to face the present situation, and I cannot see why, here, in Canada, we, with this youthful country filled with hopes, should fall back and confine ourselves to a narrow pessimism and think that in our beautiful country we have
The Budget- Mr. St. Pere


James Arthurs: What country is the hon. gentleman quoting from?


Mr.   S@: We have also heard, Sir, quite a lot about emigration. Certain speech makers would have us believe that our present tariff as the primary, the active, the sole cause why our people are going away to the United States. Such is not the ease. I am speaking more particularly of what is taking place in my own province. Certain French Canadians have a habit of migrating periodically to the United States and returning some time later. Those who are acquainted with the French-Canadian centres of New England will understand me when I say that I wonder if these people are as happy in the land of Uncle Sam as they were at home here in Canada. I have visited personally the "Little Canadas" of a number of New England cities and I make bold to declare that the French Canadians of our great cities, that all the workmen of our great cities, are far better off than those in the United States.


Joseph Archambault: Hear, hear.
Mr. ST. PERE:	Last fall I had the good
fortune to listen to a sermon, in the church of St. Louis de France, Montreal, preached by his Lordship, the venerable Bishop HallS, of Hearst. He requested the congregation of that magnificent parish to carry his words to the province of Quebec, and to say to all French Canadians: "By all means stay where you are! What I am telling you now,-said the venerable prelate-is the opinion of a great many French Canadian parish priests in New England; they have said to me: "Urge French Canadians to remain in the province of Quebec. There they are at home and they are far, far happier indeed than they can ever hope to be under the Stars and Stripes".
And since we must speak of immigration let us deal with that question.
I do not hold with the hon, member for George Etienne Cartier (Mr. Jacobs) that we should adopt the policy of the "Open Door".


Joseph Archambault: Hear, hear.
Mr. ST. PERE: The hon. member told us this afternoon that the United States and Canada were each afflicted with a great evil, though of a different character in each case, and he proposed to apply the same remedy to both. I am wondering if the open door, the policy upheld by my hon friend from George Etienne Cartier for eradicating this supposed Canadian evil, would really be the remedy we need. Apparently our .population is too small; we are told that we should increase our population 60 as to ensure the profitable operation of the Canadian National Railways. I maintain, Sir, that if there be something wrong with Canada we should 'be very careful
(Mr. St. Ptre.l
not to take an overdose of the medicine in attempting to right matters.
I am very close to my constituents; I meet them every day,-and the workmen of our Large cities are not only French Canadians; some are English too and Irish,-and they say to me: "Mr. St. Pere, try and get the government not to open the door too wide to immigration; we, who belong to this country, we who are Canadian-born, have first right to a living in Canada, and these foreigners come here and take our jobs away from us".
I congratulate the government for closing thi door a little, and to go one step further, until prosperity returns somewhat to the Canadian soil, I would be in favour of having this door closed a little more.	.
Let us now examine our National Railways. We have, in this House, a great number of theorists. We should have a great many practical men. I look upon this enterprise- however national it may be-as very detrimental and, mark you, I do not sanction by that a merger of the National Railways with the Canadian Pacific Railway so as to create a monopoly in Canada, but what I advocate, what the business men of my electoral division request, what the workmen cal! for, what those who possess moderate means ask, what those who, for the greater part, pay the income tax ask, is that these large expenditures be diminished. My views on this subject agree with those of the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Marler). It is all very well, under the plea of attracting traffic, to spend money on radio, and so on, however, these large outlays, this additional burden that the country is called upon to carry, where do they come from, if not from the pockets of the taxpayers of this country? And, notwithstanding all the arguments the theorists may bring to bear on this subject, notwithstanding all that may be said by those who see in this national enterprise a good business transaction, a patriotic thing, there is not a man in this House who can convince me that it is to the advantage of Canada to keep up an enterprise which threatens us with deficits for twenty-five years to come, whatever may be the figure of our population. And moreover why delude ourselves with false hopes? Will Canada, ten years hence, have 10,000,000 more of population than it has to-day? Whatever the case may be, I state that an enterprise which threatens us with a yearly deficit of $50,000,000 for fifteen years to come, is not a desirable one, and that the sooner we improve our situation, the better the population of this country will be satisfied.

The Budget- Mr. St. Pere


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Mr.   S@: Now, Sir,
coming to immigration. I am not an extreme opponent of immigration; however I must state that this immigration should be closely watched. It is all very well, after a thorough physical inspection of the candidates, to bring into this country handsome specimens, statues of Tanagra, if you like, however there is one thing that we must closely watch: it is the mentality of those who come to us.
We have listened, this year, to various views aired in this House; we have heard the claims of those-including even a lady member- who wished at any price to amend the British North America Act; we have listened to some asking us to pay a pension to all the gunmen and burglars who ransack our homes, and we were forced to listen to long winded speeches on resolutions devoid of all practical sense. And, we afterward ask why the sessions are so long, and why the cost is so great 1 There is one suggestion which I might make to the government-and, on this subject, I must beg your indulgence if I take advantage of the privilege afforded, at present, to the members of the House, of making a long speech. I hope that in the near future, I shall see myself obliged, and this with pleasure, to cut short my remarks so that they may be summed up in a half hour speech, the practical side will perhaps be the gainer, and the country will benefit greatly from the economy which this will allow us to carry out.
Mr. Speaker, after the remarks I have just made, this House will, perhaps, want to know what are my views on the tariff. I think my views are those of a practical man; I have matured my views, Sir, after consulting the grey hair business men of my electoral division; I considered myself too young to come to a definite opinion on the subject. Here are my views on the tariff: I would put the maximum tax on the unnecessary things; this would be on a downward scale until it reached things necessary, and it would stop at the necessities of life.
I would go one step further; I am not the Finance Minister, however, if I were, perhaps, I would be bold enough to make the following suggestion: I would submit for the approval of the House, a proviso to be placed in the tariff, a flexible proviso, as the one *which, at present, regulates the American tariff. Those who reside in the neighbourhood of the great Canadian Metropolis, I might mention those from all parts of the province of Quebec, and also my colleagues from the rural constituencies, would support me on this question. I mean the early fruit and vegetables which come to us in the spring from the American gardens. I do not wish to deprive anyone, for I am against every kind of prohibition, of alcohol as well as of races, however, we must not forget that all farm products come from the United States in the spring; again do I state, I do not wish to deprive anyone of the pleasure of eating to his heart's content these products, by advocating a very high tariff, however, the moment that the same Canadian products are placed on our markets, I think it would be a sound policy so. as to help both our market gardeners and farmers, to raise somewhat the tariff on American products.


Joseph Archambault: Would the hon. member allow me a question? Would he be in favour of raising the Canadian tariff to the level of the American tariff on said products?


Mr.   S@: Quite so.
It is rumoured, Sir, that if a vote were taken, at present, throughout the country, because of the stagnation in business-for I told you, Sir, at the outset of my speech, that I was am optimist-a great number of Canadians would vote to annex Canada to the United States. I do not know where such Canadians come from, however, I take advantage of this occasion to assert-and past history is there to prove it-that if this project received a favourable vote, the majority favouring annexation of Canada to the United States would certainly not come from the beautiful province of Quebec. From an historical viewpoint we are Conservatives. Let the Americans come here and bring their capital., they will be received with open arms; if they wish to carry on their work peacefully, they are again welcome; but never will the fond hopes held, in the past, by the hon. Senator Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts materialize, he stated to one of the most prominent French-Canadians in the United States, that within twenty-five years Canada would form part of the United States and that the first to pass over to the Stars and Stripes would be the French Canadians of the province of Quebec. I think, Sir, that the hon. Senator Cabot Lodge had formed a wrong opinion of us, for if there is a people who want Canada to remain Canada, if there is a people who have at heart the love of their country and especially a faith in its future; if there is a people, I say, filled with such sentiments and desirous of seeing them survive, this people is surely that of the province
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of Quebec. We are blessed, Sir, with a government system without its equal in the world, and the task of all good citizens, and especially of the public man, is to adapt it to the needs of the day by modernizing practices somewhat grown old and established for an entirely different economic and social status. In accordance with this principle, it is not a new list of reforms which it is necessary to offer parties, but a technique capable of bringing about reforms. Political strife, not only necessary, but fruitful in the future, will have no other function than to eliminate the negative-unattainable-the positive constituting itself in the general consensus.
My wishes to the opposition are that it remain-as Lamartine thought it at one time -the party of hopes; 'but what I still more desire is that the policy of our government be the science, the policy of all that may help to make national life healthier, more intense and more stable.


James Arthurs: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I should be congratulated or commiserated on the fact that I have been unable to follow the hon. member (Mr. St. Pere) who immediately preceded me, in the most excellent political speech he has just delivered. Fortunately I am aible to read the beautiful language in which he spoke, although I could not follow his spoken discourse; therefore he will pardon me if I do not attempt to deal with his arguments in the few remarks that I am about to make.
The gentleman who preceded him was the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gould) to my immediate left. While I have no desire to say very much about the remarks of the hon. member for Assiniboia, I would like to call attention to one or two things. In the first place he condemned the party of which I am a humble member in that during their regime they reduced the duty on agricultural implements; in other words they were the only party within his political knowledge who carried out the pledges they gave. Not only in this House but in the west, in the country from which my hon. friends or most of tnem, come, on platform alter platform they have referred to the fact that my leader when in opposition proposed to lower the duty on agricultural implements, and the present member for Assiniboia tries to condemn the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) because he was the only man who fulfilled the pledges he had made. But the hon. gentleman went further: he said that the farmer had no protection. I would like

to point out that while the protection for the farmer, especially in the province of Ontario, is entirely inadequate, there has been protection, and that protection is entirely owing to the party to which I have the honour to belong.
He said further-and I am going to get through with his remarks as quickly as possible-that a 10 per cent duty meant a 10 per cent decrease in the purchasing power of the individual and a 20 per cent duty meant a 20 per cent decrease ini the purchasing power of the individual. Why not follow that along; why not say that if we did as they have done in the United States, place a duty of 100 per cent on many articles, the result would be no purchasing power at all? The thing is absolute nonsense on the face of it.
During the course of his remarks-I called attention to it at the time-the hon. member for Assiniboia was wrong in his figures. He said! the debt per capita in Canada was something over $2,000 when as a matter of fact it is less than $300. It shows how accurate the hon. member was in the majority of his statements.
Now, I am the eightieth speaker, Sir, in this momentous debate; seventy-nine have preceded me, and I think the government side have taken their share in the debate. Hon. gentlemen opposite have referred to members of this party as pessimists. I listened very carefully to the remarks of my hon. friends, when I was in the House; the speeches of the others I have read very carefully, and I have yet to find a man either on the government side or on my left, or in this party, who is entirely satisfied with conditions as they are to-day. I have not heard one man say that he was satisfied with the budget as brought down-not one. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) in his address quoted more than copiously from extracts in an attempt to show that the United States were just as badly off as we were, but that does not make us any better, nor does it make the United States any worse. The greater part of the-speech of the Prime Minister, however, was directed along that line.
We have another minister, the Minister of Labour (Mr. Murdock). During his maiden address on the tariff he spent the greater part of his time in showing up what he called Conservative propaganda and in taking short extracts out of various papers-I think the longest was about three lines-to show that certain factories were going ahead, that some were going to open up, and that sort of thing. Well, I would like the Minister' of Labour-

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs
because it particularly applies to his department-to go to one of our industrial towns, I do not care which one; he can take his choice of Hamilton, Brantford, my own home town of Parry Sound-and ask the man on the street what the actual conditions are. Let him ask almost any of the men in the factories down in our country who are working from two, three to four days a week, who have homes of their own, who are not able to migrate to the United States for various personal and business reasons. These are the men to ask, and I am sure that if either the Prime Minister or the Minister of Labour goes to the trouble of making such an inquiry of the men in the real industrial centres in Quebec or Ontario, I do not care which, he will find out the facts.
The present tariff, Mr. Speaker, is the result of what the Prime Minister has designated as a "pause." Last session he said that the government intended to pause-shall I say, in its downward path?-in its path, anyway, and that for the present there would be no material changes in the tariff. Well, if the policy suggested by the government is right, why not let us go ahead with it and do something to create a better situation than prevails at the present time? If the policy is wrong why does not the government resign, why does it not go to the country and let the people say whether that policy is a right or wrong one for Canada at the present time?
Now, Mr. Speaker, there are three principal questions, as I look at it, in this country that ought to be settled The first one is the question of population. This has been evidenced by the remarks of probably the best thinking minds and the best financiers in the country. We have had remarks on this subject from men like Sir Henry Thornton, and Mr. Beatty, and from the heads of all our banking institutions, from men who are closely in touch with the financial situation in Canada to-day, and they are unanimous in claiming that the principal problem before the country is to get sufficient population to support the burden that we must carry now and in the succeeding years. The second question is the tariff question on which I intend to speak later. The third question is that of freight rates. These, I believe, are the three principal difficulties which confront Canada at the present time.
First, Sir, let me take up the question of population or immigration. Last year speaking in this House I made a reference to the emigration from Canada to the United States, which at that time I thought was very serious, and I stated that 182,000 of our people had
gone to the adjoining republic during 1923 The Prime Minister replied in these words.
My hon. friend, I presume, knows-
I ask the House to mark those words.
-that the figures he is quoting from the returns of the United States Immigration bureau are not regarded even by the United States government as in any wav corresponding to the true situation; that the census of the United States, for example, is entirely different from the showing made by the immigration statistics.
I pointed out at that time that the figures which I quoted represented the exact number who had paid the head tax upon entering t'he United States. I have no doubt at all that hon. gentlemen opposite did not believe the figures I then gave, but I should like to establish their accuracy now by quoting an even better authority. As reported at page 2014 of Hansard of this year the Minister of Labour quoted these figures regarding the emigration from Canada to the United States for the year 1923-the year for which I gave figures that were disputed' by the Prime Minister:
Immigrant aliens admitted to the United States from Canada during 1923, 182,369.
Or 369 more than I claimed a year ago.
Number of admissions during the year 1924, 159,098.
The minister gave the figures for 1924 as 159,098. Personally I am satisfied that as many Canadians left this country for the United States in 1924 as did in 1923, and this exodus is still continuing. It is quite true that t'he government claim that a certain number of those people are returning; but on that point I want to quote another authority-a gentleman whom I am sure every member of this House knows well and regards with the deepest respelct. This gentleman i.s Mr. C. G. MacNeil, of the Great War Veterans' Association, whose figures are as follows:
During the year ending July 1, 1924, 200,690 persons with Canadian domicile gained admittance to the United States upon announcing intentions of permanent residence in that country. This official tabulation does not include those who left Canada for a temporary stay in the United States, but who eventually* remained.
In this connection I should like to remark that the Minister of Labour stated that many of these people are returning to Canada again and gave figures showing that in 1923, 43.432 returned and in 1924 the number was 43,316. He stated that these figures represented Canadians who had paid the $8 head tax and had obtained a refund on their return to Canada. I am quite sure that the minister, if he thinks t'he matter over in a sober manner and after due reflection, will not repeat that statement in public, because the figures as furnished by
The Budget-Mr. Arthurs

the American authorities of those who have actually returned and received a refund of head tax, during the five months beginning with April 1924 are respectively 265, 215, 259, 199 and 190. That is a vastly different story, because those figures constitute less than one-fifth of the number claimed by the Minister of Labour. I have other extracts here on the subject but I have no desire to take up time by reading them. I think I can prove conclusively to the satisfaction of any fair-minded man, either by the statistics of the United States or of Canada that we have lost during the last three years 500,000 population.


Mr. SINCLAIR (Queens):: Oh no.


James Arthurs: There is no question
about it. My hon. friend shakes his head but I ask him if Canadians have not gone to the United States from his own town. I am sure he will not deny it. There is not a member in this House who will say that his constituency has not lost people who have gone to the United States in the last three years. They consist of the very best class of the young active men that we have in this country. Those Canadians who are leaving for the United States comprise many of our skilled workmen; they include young men who have been educated, to a great extent, by the different provinces of the Dominion, and have gone to the United States because they cannot find suitable occupation in Canada.


John Ewen Sinclair: Would my hon friend give the official figures of the estimate of the loss of population obtained from the Bureau of Statistics?


James Arthurs: I have already given the figures for 1923. They were disputed by the Prime Minister when I gave them to the House last j'ear but this session they have been verified by the Minister of Labour.


John Ewen Sinclair: What figures
does my hon. friend refer to.


James Arthurs: The figures of those who emigrated to the United States and declared their intention to remain there.


John Ewen Sinclair: I asked my
hon. friend to give an official estimate of the population he said we had lost during the last three years. The Bureau of Statistics makes such estimates, and it is open to my hon. friend to obtain the figures.


James Arthurs: My hon. friend is entirely mistaken. I did not say we had lost population; I said we had lost good Canadian citizens which is vastly different.


John Ewen Sinclair: " Population "
was the word my hon. friend used.


James Arthurs: Well we have lost to the United States, in my opinion, 500,000 people in the last three years. I do not care whether the government is expending one dollar or twenty dollars to bring Doukhobors here; I would sooner see Canadians remain in their own country.


Mr. FORRESTER:: I should like to ask my hon. friend how it is the cities and towns in Ontario and Quebec have a greater population than they had three years ago according to the municipal returns?


James Arthurs: That may be quite true. The unemployed, even in my hon. friend's constituency I have no doubt, flock to the cities. That is the answer.


William Forrester: You are making misstatements. .


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Arthurs: I am quite sure the
answer that I gave was a reasonable one. The trend of the population has been to the United States for many years, as my hon. friend knows, but in hard times unemployment is rife. Every member in this House, whether on this side or the other, knows that the general tendency is to go to the city and look foT relief; and undoubtedly that is the case in the particular instance referred to. I was going to point out, if I could, in a feeble way, what this really meant to Canada. There can be no question that the figures that I have given-and if necessary I will read reports from American authorities which present much larger figures than the ones I am giving-prove that we have lost, largely from Quebec and Ontario but also from the eastern provinces, five hundred thousand young, active men who have gone to the United States. If we take their earning power at only one thousand dollars a year, which is a very low estimate-


John Ewen Sinclair: Does the hon.
member mean that we have lost that number, that the population of Canada has decreased to that extent?


James Arthurs: I have answered that.
I do not care a cent what the statistics show, but during three years we have lost five

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs
hundred thousand people to the United States, and the Department of Immigration of the government of which my hon. friend is a member cannot show one-half of that immigration during the same time that remained in Canada.


John Ewen Sinclair: The population has increased, as shown toy the statistical department, and has been as great during the last three years as at any time during the last decade. Their estimates have been twice verified by the census returns.


James Arthurs: That will not be the
case this year. My hon. friend cannot get away from the proposition I put up. We are losing people to the United States. The facts are incontrovertible.


John Ewen Sinclair: They are coming back.


James Arthurs: They do not come back. I made a very low estimate when I said that the earning power of each man was one thousand dollars.


Mr. MERCIER:: Does my hon. friend
think if a man could earn one thousand dollars he would go to the States? Would he not stay in this country?


James Arthurs: That may be true, but if we had work for them here, they would earn that amount of money in Canada and spend it here. That is the point I am making. My hon. friend will admit that one thousand dollars a year is not too much for a young man to earn.


Paul Mercier: No.


James Arthurs: My estimate then is fair.


Paul Mercier: If they could earn that amount of money in this country they would not leave. I do not say that they are leaving however.


James Arthurs: The very fact that they cannot earn money is the reason they leave Will my hon. friend say that for a skilled workman a thousand dollars a year is an unfair salary?


Paul Mercier: No, I would not say that.


James Arthurs: I am saying that it is a fair salary and I am using that figure. If we have been losing five hundred thousand men in the last three years, we have been losing five hundred million dollars of business in this country. If these young men could get work in Canada, what would they do with
their money? They would spend it in Canada. They would have to be housed and clothed and they would require the ordinary necessaries of life. We are losing as long a3 these men remain out of Canada, one thousand dollars per man, and this amounts to many millions per year. I am going to prove that when I come to the tariff, and to show what we have lost by the figures of the government themselves.	'


John Pritchard: How does the hon. member explain that the compensation board of the province of Ontario have paid out in wages for the year 1924 over $9,000,000 more than was paid out in 1921?


James Arthurs: I do not think the compensation board has anything to do with it. It just happened there were more men injured than before.


John Pritchard: The report states that it has been paid out in wages.


James Arthurs: The compensation board
pays no wages.


John Pritchard: No, but the industries paid $9,000,000 more than they paid in 1921.


James Arthurs: That does not make any difference. The hon. gentleman knows, if he comes from Ontario,-and I do not know his constituency-that factories are closing ali around and there are many men out of work all over Ontario on that account. The argument that they paid out more in wages does not signify anything. The other fellows have gone away; that is what I am trying to prove at the present time and the statement of my hon. friend is beside the question. I should like any hon. member who disputes the facts I have given to go to any manufacturing town in Ontario, Quebec, Halifax or any of the eastern provinces, and ascertain the situation. We do not require to be told about it. We all know what it is. I was going to give a few figures in contrast to the five hundred thousand we have lost in the last three years. The present government has more than doubled the expense of the Immigration department of this country in the last few years. I will quote from the Department of Immigration and Colonization of this government, sessional paper No. 13, page 7, and there can be no question about that authority. The statistics are:
1922		 89,999
1923		  72,887
1924		 148,000
In 1923, when we lost 180,000 to the United States, our total immigration was 72,887, and
23SS
The Budget-Mr. Arthurs

last year, when we lost 159,000, we got from Europe 148,500.
What is the answer to that? Does the government deliberately desire to have this country populated with men who are flexible in their ideas and exchange our Canadians for them? Or are they trying to keep Canada for Canadians? These are the figures and that is the situation. That is the reason why we are contending that the whole thing is a farce, so far as this government is concerned. The Speech from the Throne left out one other item which would only go to prove the argument I am advancing. Two or three years ago we had a very strenuous situation regarding housing in Canada, and it became so serious that the government was prepared to put up $20,000,000 for a scheme to assist in this regard. Since this government came into power, and especially during the last few years, we have not heard one word about the housing scheme-absolutely nothing. Do hon. members know why? The people have left Canada and they do not require the houses. If we go to the city of Toronto or the city of Hamilton or other large places we can rent houses for a third of the amount asked a few years ago, and have no difficulty in getting houses. That is one thing the government seem to pride themselves on. That is the situation so far as Ontario is concerned.


Paul Mercier: In Montreal they are
building all the time.


James Arthurs: You have a large industrial situation there and conditions are different. However, this year Ontario may improve in that respect.


Joseph Archambault: That is an improvement.


James Arthurs: Some people think so.


William Forrester: How many new
houses have been built in Ontario cities in the last three years?


James Arthurs: Building permits in Toronto alone were 7 per cent less than thev were the year before.


William Forrester: Every city has had an increase in building permits in the last three years.


James Arthurs: Except in Montreal there was no increase last year.


Joseph Archambault: In Montreal the
construction has been increased.


James Arthurs: I said so-27 per cent
increase in Montreal, 7 per cent decrease in Toronto and all other cities.


William Forrester: How does the hon.
member reconcile that with his statement now?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.


James Arthurs: The hon. member for
George Etienne Cartier (Mr. Jacobs) this afternoon made a very pertinent remark, which described the situation as regards the government side most aptly. He said the tariff was a matter of geography. It is absolutely so as regards the government and that has always been the case. During the last election the tariff was simply a matter of geography. The government had just as many policies as there were different sections in the Dominion of Canada, and I believe they still intend to pursue that policy. There i3 one difference that stands out in the mindfe of both my hon. friends opposite and my hon. friends to my left-they have no doubt at all as to the fiscal policy of this small party to their right. We do not change our politics according to geography. We have the same policy from the Atlantic to the Pacific.


Joseph Archambault: Does my hon.
friend believe in an iron-clad policy on this tariff?


James Arthurs: I do not care what
kind of a policy it is so long as it is a policy, but my hon. friends have no policy and they never had one.


Mr. RINFRET:: Will my hon. friend admit their geography is shrinking?


James Arthurs: Temporarily, although it
is not decreasing at all.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: Shrinking, I said, getting
smaller.


James Arthurs: The question as regards
the tariff is: Whom does it benefit? I know my hon. friends to my immediate left will say that the tariff is maintained for the purpose of benefiting the capitalists. They . will all agree to that. I see a lot of them nodding their heads.


Mr. CALDWELL:: About five per cent of
the population.


James Arthurs: As a matter of fact, the
man who benefits most from the tariff is not the manufacturer, but the working man and the farmer.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


An hon. MEMBER:: Let us laugh.


James Arthurs: I shall endeavour to prove that.

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs


Mr. LEWIS:: Not the farmers of the west.


James Arthurs: The farmers of the west
will one day, we hope, be as prosperous as the farmers of the east and the farmer of the east to-day is not asking for and does not want free trade. The farmer of tihe east is in exactly the same position as the farmer in the United States. What is the man who lives opposite to us across the Montana border asking for? Free trade? Not at all. He wants protection of the highest possible kind and he is getting it.


Arthur John Lewis: He sees his mistake now,
does he not?


James Arthurs: He is demanding more.
The principal object in all protection is to preserve the home market and to give the working man in any country an equal chance with the working man with whom he has to compete. There can be no question at all that even in free trade countries they have a tariff, or safeguarding-of-industries laws, or some other means by which to protect their workmen against those countries which have a lower standard of living or depreciated currency. There is no exception in the world.


Mr. EVANS:: Will the hon. gentleman state, under the Safeguarding of Industries Act, how much the manufacturers are benefited, or if it gives them a price-fixing power at all?


James Arthurs: The hon. gentleman may be akin to his friend the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Hoey). The other evening when the hon. member for Springfield was addressing the House, I asked him about the Safeguarding of Industries Act in Great Britain. I knew that the act had been abrogated by the late government. I knew and he knew, or he should have known, that a similar and much more stringent measure is being put on the statute books at the present time. He knew and I knew that there is no question that the British are prepared not only to protect themselves and their industries against countries having debased currencies or lower or worse living conditions, but to declare that against all nations, and this in effect makes an absolutely protective tariff. There is no difference in the world, no matter what you call it. Hon. gentlemen are quite as well aware of that fact as I am.


John Evans: Answer my question.


James Arthurs: I have answered it, I
think. I should like to give a few illustrations of what the British and we are up against. I. hold in my hand a statement of current wages
in Germany under date of September 1, of last year. While they are given in marks, I will reduce them to dollars and cents. Any hon. gentleman is at liberty to do his own arithmetic if he wants to, but my arithmetic is more accurate than that of an hon. member who preceded me this evening. In Germany, skilled mechanics in the building trades are absolutely at the top of the list, higher than those engaged in chemical, leather, metal, paper or textile industries. In the building industry they receive .66 gold marks as hourly wage, or a weekly wage of 35.64 gold marks. This, at the ordinary basis of 23.82, brings the weekly wages of the most highly paid German mechanic, that is, in the building trades, to the magnificent sum of $8.40 a week, and he is working nine and ten hours a day. I do not care what stand any other hon. gentleman may take in this House: I do not care whether it is the stand my party takes or not; I am absolutely opposed to allowing goods manufactured under those conditions to come into competition with those manufactured by our workmen in Canada. I do not think I will take the time to read the whole list, but I can assure the House that I am quoting now the highest priced mechanic under date of September 1, 1924.


Joseph Archambault: From what paper is the hon. member reading?


James Arthurs: From a paper issued by the American Department of Labour. I forget the name just at the moment, but I will give it to the hon. gentleman in the morning. Let us take labour conditions in England, and I am quoting now from the official organ of the government, the Statistical Review. That must be right:
Wages per week
Industry	In Great Britain In Canada
Pulp and paper (average)..	$13 20		$24 17
Shipbuilding-			
(average)			11.70	21.00
Building Trades-			
Plumbers	16.50	55.00Plasterers	16.20	55.00Bricklayers	15.90	44.00Carpenters	15.85	39.60Labourers	11.65	20.00Steel-	(a) Iron Moulders ..	13.95	35.00(b) Labourers	10.25	18.00(c) Machinists	13.60	28.00Canada Germ'ny Engl'nd	Bricklayer	100	28	45Moulder	100	30	51Labourer	100	40	60All occupations	100	41	55
These figures are taken from the statistical report submitted by the present government, and the point I make is that it is absolute
The Budget-Mr. Arthurs

nonsense for any country, where living conditions are as they are in Canada and as we hope they will continue to be, to try to compete, with labour at these prices, under any free tirade policy or anything approaching free trade. I do not think that our working men should be asked to labour under these conditions, and as a matter of fact I shall never advocate anything of the kind. Although there has been so much debate here on the budget, there is little difference of opinion regarding the tariff except as between hon. gentlemen to my left and the rest of the House. Hon. gentlemen to my left themselves say that the gentlemen immediately opposite, the party in power, are as strongly protectionist as we Conservatives are, and I have not the slightest doubt that I could look into the eyes of many hon. gentlemen opposite me, especially when the House is rather better attended than it is to-night, who are stronger for protection along certain lines than I am myself. For after all we are not a party of high protectionists; we stand for reasonable protection. So that hon. gentlemen opposite belong to exactly the same school as ourselves; they follow the same course as we do and the only real honest opposition to the tariff comes from hon. gentlemen to my left.


Arthur John Lewis: Why do you not sit together then?


James Arthurs: There is a difference:
we are absolutely candid in our stand.


Arthur John Lewis: The other is camouflage?


Mr. ELLIOTT (Dundas):: Why are you opposing a protectionist budget?


James Arthurs: Do you call this a protectionist budget?


Preston Elliott: What is it?


James Arthurs: It is nothing at all; it is merely a standing pat.


Preston Elliott: Would you raise the tariff if you were in power?


James Arthurs: Certainly, on some things I would make a fair increase. The hon. gentleman should remember that a few moments ago one of his leaders rebuked my leader because he reduced the tariff in certain directions.-All we want is a fair tariff.


Preston Elliott: Will the hon.
gentleman explain what he means by "fair."
rather the reverse. So long as I can remember, the province of Ontario at least has always had the deepest concern for and interest in the welfare of the western provinces. And I can remember the time when many hon. gentlemen sitting to my left, one of whom is laughing at the present time, were not in this country at all. I remember when that hon. gentleman himself was not here, and it does seem to me, because these gentlemen have certain fiscal views, that that is no reason why they should try to instil into the minds of a certain number of people in the west that eastern Canada is opposed to that part of the country. There is no reason why they should try to give those people the impression that Ontario is a country composed of capitalists and monopolists; for all that sort of thing is absolutely untrue. In the great province of Ontario there are more farmers than there are anywhere else in the Dominion; there are more farmers in that province than in the three western provinces combined. I am sure there is a greater output of agricultural products in Ontario as regards variety than in those provinces. Hon. gentlemen to my left have their own views, and while we are perfectly willing to do anything possible to aid the west, either in the way of freight rates or by the amelioration of conditions, we do not believe, certainly I do not believe, that hon. gentlemen should come asking this or any other government for concessions Which would operate adversely to the majority of the population of eastern Canada.. I say that frankly. I think that the average man in Ontario, whether farmer or manufacturer or labourer, is a protectionist on principle, and the men in the west should have some sympathy for their viewpoint, which is just as honest as the free traders'.


Arthur John Lewis: Will the hon. gentleman
not admit that the protection now in eastern Canada is a concession from the west?


James Arthurs: We had the tariff before
the hon. gentleman came to Canada.


Arthur John Lewis: That may be, but that is no reason why you should have it forever.


James Arthurs: The hon. gentleman and
his friends came to Canada knowing what the policy of the country was; they took up life in the western part of the country knowing the conditions under which they would have to work. And they made their money there.


James Arthurs: Life is too short. Now, Mr. LEWIS:	But protection is not a law
we have no quarrel with western Canada; of the Medes and Persians.
	j

The, Budget-Mr. Arthurs


James Arthurs: There is not much use
arguing with a man who has made up his mind. I would point out that while hon. gentlemen to my left, collectively,-


Miss MAC PH  AIL@: I would call the hon.
gentleman's attention to the fact that all hon. members who sit to his left are not gentlemen.


James Arthurs: I tender my most humble apologies to the hon. member for having overlooked her presence.	'


John Evans: Will the hon. member admit
that the tariff is a concession?


James Arthurs: No; it is not a concession, it is a necessity, an absolute necessity. I venture to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that if you could get a secret vote in the House tomorrow you would not find five hon. members opposed to the tariff. They are all of the same mind with us; they know that it is an absolute necessity, whether they advocate it or not.


Arthur John Lewis: A tariff for revenue.


James Arthurs: Hon. gentlemen are no!
opposed to the tariff at all.


John Evans: Will the hon. member explain what the tariff is? Is it not a tax that someone must pay?


James Arthurs: 
Arthur John Lewis: My hon. friend said that the United States farmers are asking for protection, and he quoted the duty of 42 cents a bushel on wheat. Will he explain why it is that United States wheat is 8 cents a bushel cheaper in the United States market than Canadian wheat in Canada?-which shows it is absolutely impossible to protect the farmers' commodity.


James Arthurs: Has my hon. friend never told his constituents that the duty raises the price of the article protected? He has repeated that, five or six times in the House to-night. Here is a case where they have a duty on wheat and the price is lower.


Arthur John Lewis: If that is true, what is the
value of a tariff as far as the farmer is concerned? The tariff only raises the price so far as industries are concerned.


James Arthurs: As a matter of fact i
has nothing to do with it, especially in this case.


Arthur John Lewis: If that is so, why are you
arguing for protection in order to give our people work?


James Arthurs: That has nothing to do with it. Further I would point this out, that. While the United States are protecting themselves against the farmers of Canada, they are our principal competitors in many of the markets of the world. I may take Great Britain as an instance. In 1923 the United States shipped 31,461,744 cwt. of wheat, while Canada shipped only 28,486,785 cwt. In the matter of flour the situation was somewhat better, we shipped more than did the United States. In the matter of barley last year alone-the year before was worse-the Americans shipped 5,500,000 cwt., and we shipped only 2,900,000 cwt. Then take bacon, last year our neighbours shipped over seven million pounds sterling worth to Great Britain against our five million, while the year be-.
The Budget-Mr. Arthurs

fore the figures were eleven million pounds sterling and three million respectively. I am quoting round figures. In spite of the fact that they are preserving their home market for themselves, they are using their surplus production to compete with us in the only open market we have in the world according to my hon. friends to my left.
I might show the effect which the Fordney tariff had on the export of our products to the United States, but it is not a very pleasant task. It was most remarkable. For instance, in 1921 we shipped 1,009,019 pounds of mutton to the United States, last year the figure had dropped to a mere 11,000 pounds. In 1921 we shipped $12,500,000 worth of cattle, last year only $1,100,000 worth. It shows how effectively the American market is being protected against the products of our farmers, and the figures I have already given demonstrate to what an extent their American rivals are competing in the world s markets. They have a double advantage, they have their home market, and in addition they beat us in the markets of the world.
Now let me deal with the reductions in the tariff that were made at the instance of my hon. friends to the left, because I have no doubt that the tariff reductions m agricultural implements were put forward by the government without a good deal pressure from my hon. friends.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Not at all.


James Arthurs: Well, we will say inducement.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Nor inducement either.


James Arthurs: Well, moral suasion. At any rate, reductions were made.


Arthur John Lewis: We will accept the responsibility.


James Arthurs: This was the result, and I am quoting now the hon. member for saskatoon (Mr. Evans) who, at page 105 of Hansard, said:
In spite of the much-vaunted cut in the tariff last year, the cost of living to-day in the Dominion is quite as high or higher than it was before the paltry change was made. Goods are just as dear for the workers, the cost of production on the farms is just as high.
Surely I am quoting from good authority. Then I must refer to a certain list put upon Hansard last year by my hon. friend from London (Mr. White), which in itself was very valuable. I might point out that although various members have differed with him
[Mr. Arthurs.l
more or less, they all agree that the price of agricultural machinery to-day, in spite of the one or two cuts made by the government, is just as high as it was when they took office, as a matter of fact probably higher.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


James Arthurs: Come and prove it. The figures mentioned by the hon. member for London have never been questioned. He pointed out that the abolition of the sales tax more than compensated for any single reduction that had since been made. Hon. gentlemen will have an opportunity of trying to prove that these figures are not correct. But they know that they cannot disprove them, they know that his arguments are not to be controverted, and that the only thing that saved the farmers in the west was not the reduction in duty, but the removal of the sales tax-and as a matter of fact they did not get the full benefit of that. But what was the result?


John Evans: Nobody got it.


James Arthurs: The only person who got any benefit was the manufacturer of agricultural implements. The hon. member for London said that while the buyer of agricultural machinery had received a less tariff reduction than the sales tax amounted to, on the other hand the manufacturer got more for his implements, because he had the sales tax to come and go on, and besides that he was granted certain concessions in the drawback of duty on the goods which went into the manufacture of these various implements.


Arthur John Lewis: How does the hon. gentleman account for the closing of the factories that he has been speaking of for the last hour?


James Arthurs: I am coming to that. I
have personal knowledge of such cases.


Arthur John Lewis: If the manufacturer got more for his goods why should he close his factory?


James Arthurs: I have very intimate
knowledge of factories being closed. But the fact remains that what reductions were made were at the expense of the great iron and steel industry of Canada. I do not use the word "great" in the ordinary sense. It was a growing industry, an industry of which we were all proud, and which by all the laws of nature should be a success in Canada, for we have the greatest iron mines in the world, we have unlimited coal resources, we have the men, we have the machinery, but as a matter of fact we are gradually drifting to the position where almost every dollar's worth of our iron is being imported from the United States. I

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs
can give a case in point. My home town happened to have the good fortune to possess a smelter. That has been closed. Do you know where the machinery has gone, Mr. Speaker? It was bought by Henry Ford and shipped to the United States.


Arthur John Lewis: We had better get Mr. Ford to run the country, I think.


James Arthurs: He appears to be getting along fairly well. As a matter of fact the condition is as I have stated it, not only in my home town but in many other towns where the iron industry predominates.
During his speech in this debate the Prime Minister quoted copiously from the Iron Age in order to bolster up the argument that things are not as good in the United States as they might be. I want to quote from the Iron Age, too; I want to give some figures from that publication for the benefit of my hon. friends to my left. They show the number of men employed and the wages paid in the furnaces and steel mills in Canada for the years 1920 and 1924, as follows:
1920	1924
Men employed in furnaces and
mills	
11,874	5.S86In secondary industries	
101,887	69,485Wages paid-furnaces and mills $22,824,520	$7,825,280In secondary industries	$125,680,417	$83,806,802
I do not say that these results are altogether attributable to the reduction in duties made by this government; I do not mean to go that far, because I want to be fair. But the uncertainty facing these people in the matter of duties has led to the laying off of hundreds and thousands of men in the industries affected; and there is no question about the fact that this is one industry which should remain in Canada. I would point out also- and I quote further from the Iron Age- that during the years 1923 and 1924 the production of pig iron in Canada decreased 52 per cent, which goes to prove what I said before. It is also shown that during 1921, thirty plants engaged in the iron and steel industries or their subsidiaries failed; in 1922, seventy-seven; in 1923, eighty-three, and so on. That shows the extent to which this industry has been affected.
I am now going to quote from an authority that will be accepted, I am sure, by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Macdonald) ; I refer to Premier Armstrong of Nova Scotia. In fact, I suppose it is hardly necessary for the minister to listen to it. as he is no doubt familiar with what the Premier of Nova Scotia has said in this respect. The solution Mr. Armstrong offered when he came to Ottawa to interview the


REVISED
[Stage Direction]
Prime Minister was this:	First, a revision
of the customs tariff upon iron and steel and their products, in which consideration should be given to the difficulties now hampering the steel works of Nova Scotia, and so on; lower ad valorem duties on semifinished steel; the cutting out of numerous exemptions, and so on. He points out that in his own province the number employed in 1920 in the iron and steel industry was 13,874, while in 1922 it had fallen to 5,000, showing how hard the industry was hit in that province.
Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Will the
hon. member permit me? It is only fair in making that comparison to say that in 1919-20 the steel industries of Nova Scotia had been working at full capacity owing to the demand for products required during the war.


James Arthurs: The war had been over
two years then.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: But that
was immediately following the war-a conjunction of circumstances.


James Arthurs: That may be true, but
the hon. gentleman will not dispute the fact that there has been depression, nor will he deny that the figures I gave are, in the main, correct; that there is unemployment and that these industries are suffering in his own province.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: As a
matter of fact, in the city of Sydney today the industry is working full time.


James Arthurs: Just one-the blast
furnace only.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Oh, no.


James Arthurs: I have the figures. Now
let me give another illustration of the effect of the want of proper protection or adequate duties.


Mr. BIRD:: Before the hon. member
passes from that, would he permit a question? He has been dealing with the possibility of protecting the farmer. Suppose it be possible to get the wheat farmer to accept a tariff of 40 cents a bushel on wheat, would he agree that the farmer should fix his price so as to take advantage of the tariff?


James Arthurs: I am quite willing to accept the hon. gentleman's first suggestion. I have no doubt that outside of the wheat farmer every farmer in Canada would jump at protection. So far as the wheat farmer


EDITION
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23H
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The Budget-Mr. Arthurs
is concerned, I think there ought to be an embargo against wheat going to the United States, so long as they keep the duty on it; I would support that with both hands. We should not let their milling industry get the benefit of our wheat without the payment of duty-because it goes in there free for milling purposes. We should take advantage of the circumstances under which we live. I am going to take that matter up a little later on another question; I want to hurry through. The hon. gentleman will excuse me; I am certainly in favour of doing anything possible to increase the prosperity of our farmers, whether in the west or in the east. Personally I honestly believe that a protective tariff is the best course to pursue.
Thomas William Bird: Well, granting it be so, I am just a little concerned about the application of it. We will leave the wheat farmer out of it. Take the cattle producer; we will suppose there is a high protection on cattle, sufficient to allow the farmer to make cost plus. Would the hon. gentleman be willing to have the cattle growers of this country fix prices so as to take advantage of the tariff?


James Arthurs: If the farmer gets a duty on his cattle and can fix a price, why not the manufacturer?


Thomas William Bird: That is what the manufacturer does now. I want to know if the hon. gentleman will agree to have the farmer do it.


James Arthurs: Oh, life is too short; I must get through. I will discuss that at any time with my hon. friend; I am not afraid of the argument, but I have certain remarks I want to put on Hansard and the hour is getting late.	-
I want to point out another result of plain, ordinary tariff tinkering. I am well acquainted in the city of Hamilton, and a couple of years ago I saw a splendid manufacturing establishment going up there, built by Libby-Owens for the manufacture of window glass, the only plant of its kind in Canada. These people have been manufacturing for about twenty years in the United States, protected by a high duty. I can remember when as a hardware man I bought my first American glass, twenty years ago, imported into Canada in competition with Belgium. Well, the factory was started at a cost of $2,500,000. The duty was 12J per cent, and I am sure no hon. member would say that was excessive. The duty was reduced by the 
Belgian treaty to lli per cent. But on account of the present position of the Belgian currency and the fact that this government gave no protection to compensate for its depreciation, the duty on this article actually became less than 3 per cent, and the result is that this factory, employing eight or nine hundred men, is closed and the $2,500,000 invested is lying idle.


John Evans: Is there not a duty as high as 35 per cent on plate glass?


James Arthurs: I am referring to ordinary window glass, not plate glass. The hon gentleman should study the tariff. Ordinarily the duty is Hi per cent; he can verify it himself. My hon. friend can verify that later, but the fact is that this factory is closed. It used last year, or the last year of its operation
59.000	tons of good Canadian material, and it exported or shipped from its factory 18,000 tons of product, a total of 77,000 tons. The same factory used 3,000,000 feet of lumber in making cases and I forget how many thousand tons of straw and other materials were used for packing purposes. Taking only the item of freight, it represents a very large amount. When you have 77,000 tons of material it represents, practically, one hundred train loads of thirty-eight cars; my hon. friend can figure out for himself what that means. Who suffered by that and who gained? lliere is not a gentleman in this House who can say that he got his window glass at a rate one-quarter of a cent cheaper last year than before. But here are 800 men out of work, and
77.000	tons of material, the handling of which is lost to Canada. There is a greatly reduced demand for our lumber, for our straw, and other commodities, as a result of the closing up of this factory, and who benefits?


John Evans: Will the hon. gentleman say why this factory went out of business when it was enjoying 11 per cent protection?


James Arthurs: The hon. gentleman will permit me tc correct him; I said nothing of the kind. What I said was there was 11 per cent protection nominally, but on account of the depreciation in Belgium and the competition from that country it amounted to less than 3 per cent. But even if the factory enjoyed 11 per cent protection and yet was obliged to shut down who benefits? The hon. gentleman does not get his glass one cent cheaper.


John Evans: Why did the factory shut down, 11 per cent protection is quite an advantage?

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs


James Arthurs: Does the hon. gsnlleman know, or has he given a thought to, the actual conditions? Has he ever thought of the fact that the Oliver Plough Company are moving to the United States; they are no longer going to manufacture their implements in Canada?


John Evans: The hon. gentleman has treated my. question with contempt. I happen to know why the Libby-Owens factory cannot compete with the rest of the glass makers.


James Arthurs: I am not treating the
matter with contempt, quite the reverse. I am giving these results with regret, I am only too sorry to see the damage inflicted upon the industries in this country. There is no question about what the results are; t'he facts speak for themselves. This particular factory is closed, and the price of glass has not been decreased to the Canadian consumer. That is no advantage to this country; nobody in Canada has benefited, it is the Germans and the Belgians who have derived all the profit. If the hon. gentleman wants to legislate for the Belgians let him go ahead; I certainly will not follow him along that line.
Now let me consider for a short time the question of the home market. Eighty-five to ninety per cent of all the products of Canada are consumed in this country. According to American authorities from 97 to 98 per cent of the products of the United States are consumed at home. I am giving figures as quoted by the Economist which I think are fairly correct. In this House a short time ago the hon. gentleman who leads the Progressive party spoke somewhat slightingly of the home market. To what extent are the actions of the hon. gentleman and his followers tending to neglect of the home market? How much are they tending, rather, to cause Canada to send more and more of her goods to foreign countries in the hope of finding a market at all. I want to ask in view of the fact that the United States to-day is the richest country in the world-there can be no doubt about that-and her foreign trade is only two or three per cent of heT total trade did the United States make her wealth at home or abroad? There can be no question of what the answer to that question must be. The United States is making money out of her home market; it is true she is lending money to foreign countries and sending whatever surplus products she may have to the foreign market, but she is making the bulk of her wealth at home; and the sooner we follow the example of the United States the better it will be for us.
Great Britain has taken care to protect herself against cheap labour. I hold in mj hand the proposals of the government regarding the legislation which is to take the place of the Safeguarding of Industries Act. Under the proposed legislation it is possible to impose-and it is probable it will be enacted- a stronger protectionist tariff than Canada has had for many years. As a matter of fact under the Safeguarding of Industries Act they had duties as high as 50 or 60 per cent and those in a so-called free trade country. I should also like to call the attention of my Progressive friends to the fact that there is no country to-day, I think, with a lower tariff than Canada has at the present time. To be correct, almost every civilized country in the world is greatly increasing its tariff. The Irish Free State is putting higher duties on various articles than they ever had before. British India first increased her tariff from 11 to 15 per cent, and on some goods there is an increase in duty from 20 to 30 per cent. No later than last year an increased rate of duty on most iron and steel products was put into force. Australia has increased its tariff four times since the war. To-day it has not only a high tariff but it has brought into force a dumping clause. In addition it can appraise imports at prices corresponding to prices of similar Australian products. In other words the manufacturing selling price in Australia is taken as the dutiable value in that country.


Arthur John Lewis: Is Australia's dumping clause worse than the dumping clause in force in Canada at the present time?


James Arthurs: We have no dumping
clause unfortunately.


Arthur John Lewis: We have not?


James Arthurs: No dumping clause worth anything.


Arthur John Lewis: Let my hon. friend ask the
customs officials.


James Arthurs: We should have one
fifteen times as strong; what we want is a real dumping clause. Look at the way in which the United States applies its dumping clause. Because of the lower freights at which the smelter at the Soo can deliver to Cleveland and other points on the Great Lakes the United States applied its dumping clause against Canada. Just imagine that in comparison with the kind of dumping clause we have.


Mr. STEWART (Humboldt):: Does my
hon. friend think that a dumping clause fifteen times as strong as it is at the present
153i
The Budget-Mr. Arthurs

time would be in accordance with the moderate tariff he has been telling us he advocates?


James Arthurs: I would prohibit dumping altogether; I would have no hall-measures. In Newfoundland there has been a general increase of 5 per cent on practically all imported goods. In South Africa increases of duty were made in 1919, 1921, 1922 and 1923, applicable to almost every line of commerce. In British Guiana the ad valorem duty was increased by one-third in 1920. From tjme to time the rates have been further increased. In 1921 a surtax of from 15 to 30 per cent was imposed; and in 1922 the surtax was increased by another 15 per cent to 25 per cent.


Charles Wallace Stewart: Do I understand the hon. gentleman to mean that he would prohibit the entry of all goods into the Canadian market that would enter into competition with our own manufactures?


James Arthurs: No, I am not talking
of that at all. There is something wrong with the hon. member's thinking apparatus. We were talking about a dumping clause- not anything else. In British Honduras there was an increase of 33$ per cent.


Charles Wallace Stewart: I suppose,
as he refusas to explain when invited to do so, it would be useless to ask the hon. member what he understands by a dumping clause.


James Arthurs: I have here a list of all the countries in Europe, South America and the British Empire, and in every case there has been a decided increase in duties since the war, some of them most remarkable, running as high as 500 or 1,000 per cent. I am not going over them, but I have them here and any hon. member can look at them if he wishes.
I have a few words to say with regard to the freight situation, and' I desire to point out, particularly to my hon. friends to my left, that the one great trouble with almost all Canadian conditions to-day is not the fact that we have too much or too little tariff, but that we have too high freight rates. Without regard to the condition of our tariff at all, we are paying annually to the railways approximately $500,000,000 a year. We paid last year in customs $120,000,000; or in other words we are paying four times as much in freight rates as we paid out under the total customs tariff. A reduction of five per cent on our freight rates, which would not be excessive, would be equal to a twenty per cent reduction in our tariff, which would give our friends to my left fourteen per cent bonus on their agricultural implements com-
ing into Canada. This shows how serious the situation is, and while I do not pretend to be a freight expert, or to have a trained mind along the lines of freight or transportation charges, I cannot for the life of me see why a carload of wheat going to Fort William, to be ground for the use of the people in Fort William, should be charged two or three times as much freight as if that carload came to Fort William, was ground in transit and sent to another country. Those are the conditions. We have them in Ontario. We have got to pay a far greater rate on freight which is sent us than is paid on freight which goes right past our door to a point much further away. I pointed out last year that whereas the Canadian National Railways had fixed a rate of $9 a ton from Drumheller to Toronto or points in Ontario, or an average of $450 per carload, they were drawing crockery from Vancouver to Halifax for $360 a car, a vastly more costly article to transport, a thousand miles longer haul; still they were asking $90 less freight on it than was being paid on coal. I cannot see any justification for that and that is why I say that one of the great problems facing Canada to-day is the freight tariff. We should have some reasonable means of applying a remedy. I can see no reason for the present condition.
One other subject which I do not think has been touched upon so far is the question of pulpwood. Most hon. members have handled it with gloves, or left it alone. We have had during the last couple of years,-and would have had for five or six years more if we had not called them back-a pulpwood commission in Canada inquiring into the question of pulpwood1. Eventually the 'government had to recall them after they started on a world's tour. The cost of that commission was something like seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars. We have their report which is absolutely non-committal. We find that propaganda is being circulated through Canada at the present time both for and against an embargo on pulpwood. The average man I think does not understand the situation. If he did, he would oppose an embargo. I think I understand the situation and I am opposed to an embargo for several reasons, but more particularly because, especially in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba,-and I believe all the western provinces-we have two classes of pulpwood. We have the ordinary spruce pulpwood and we have a poplar which is increasing in quantity all the time, especially in this province, for which we have little or no

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs
market in Canada at the present time. I think somewhere between ten and twenty thousand tons of poplar are used in this province. For that reason, if for no other, 1 would be opposed to an embargo. However,
I am in favour of an export duty. I do not care whether my	views are
altogether in	accord with	the views
of my associates around me os. not, but I state quite frankly and freely that I am opposed to the export of raw material where it is possible to manufacture it in Canada.
I am opposed to the export of asbestos in its raw state, because we control the world's market. I am opposed to the export of unrefined copper or nickel because, in a similar manner, we should be able to control the world's output and the world's price, and the labour and the profit should be conserved for our own people. In an exactly similar manner I would advocate that this government place an export duty upon pulpwood, starting, say, at fifty cents a cord, increasing the duty to a dollar the second year, a dollar and a half the next year and proceeding in that way. The result would be that the settler or owner would not suffer, but would rather benefit, because the Americans would endeavouT to get the pulpwood at the lowest possible price, knowing the duty would be increased the next year. The result would be that on our present export of 1.400,000 cords per year we would have an income of $700,000, which could be used for the general purposes of Canada or for the purpose of preserving our forests both from fire and from the destroying influence of insects, which are perhaps worse than fire. Therefore I think it would be advisable that the government should carefully consider the proposition of placing an export duty on pulpwood. I am in favour, as I said before, of reserving to our own country the other assets which we have.


Mr. CARRUTHERS:: Suppose you raised
the export duty high enough, would it not amount to the same thing as placing an embargo on pulpwood?


James Arthurs: My proposition would
be not to put it so high as to have that effect. The price of pulpwood is a variable one. The Minister of Soldiers' Civil Reestablishment (Mr. Beland) told me the other day that in the Eastern Townships they were Pbtaining, I think, $14 and $16 a cord for their ordinary spruce pulpwood. I speak subject to correction but I am quite satisfied there are parts of Ontario, equally accessible
to the Ontario markets, where the price would be probably $10 a cord; so that, as a matter of fact, the addition of fifty cents or a dollar a cord would have very little effect on the export trade. We would have the benefit of the revenue, and there would be the possible inducement to bring the mills from the United States to Canada, if conditions were suitable.


Mr. BROWN:: The hon. member spoke
about raising the price from year to year, say from fifty cents to a dollar. I think I got him aright. He said that the Americans, knowing that that price would be raised, would come in and buy. The statement was made to me the other day that the Americans, anticipating an embargo, had already overbought, and that, for that reason, the price of pulpwood was lower to-day. Is that the case?


James Arthurs: From my experience I
would say that such a condition is impossible. Export pulpwood as we have it in this province, because it belongs to the owner is a commodity which is produced largely by the farmer in the winter time, with the assistance, possibly, of a few extra hands, and the quantity available in the winter is more or less limited. It is limited by the quantity of help he can secure and weather conditions. If the snow is deep, very little pulpwood can be got out. If conditions are unfavourable, none is got out. Therefore, I do not think any action of our American friends in that regard could have any effect. That is my experience.


John W. Carruthers: Does this pulpwood not deteriorate very rapidly? I am told that it does and that they would not be able to secure a price if they kept it for any length of time, as it would not be of much value in making pulp and paper.


James Arthurs: It does not deteriorate at all if it is piled. If you go to one of these pulp mills, you will see where they have immense quantities piled for eight or ten years. Of course, it is peeled. If the bark is left on, it will deteriorate. As regards deterioration in the hands of the farmer, he is never that much ahead. Farmers are largely small operators; they have a few cords here and there; but in the aggregate this amounts to many millions of cords. A farmer is quite able to take care of his own quantity.


John Livingstone Brown: At whose expense would the export tax be collected?


James Arthurs: That is up to the government.

The Budget-Mr. Arthurs


John Livingstone Brown: It would mean that the settler producing that pulpwood would receive that much less.


James Arthurs: I said at the beginning that I did not think so. I think the anxiety of the American or other person to get the pulpwood would be equivalent to a small increase of fifty cents a cord, and I believe it will be a dollar in a year.
I want to say just a few parting words. What we require to-day is some policy that will build up Canada. Any policy -that will do this will largely solve our difficulties, especially those difficulties in connection with debt and taxation. I have some notes on taxation, but I will postpone inflicting them upon the House until a later date. What we need in Canada is a larger population, people who will build up homes, who will be happy, who will have fair wages and constant and steady employment. If a man has employment, what does he do with his wages? He spends them, and his purchases help to keep others at work and make conditions better all round. He must be fed, clothed and housed, and so must his family. He pays taxes to the municipality and to this government, thus making the burden lighter for others. But without employment he must either migrate or become a liability to the community.
This party of which I am a humble member is not composed of pessimists. We believe in Canada, but we believe in Canada for Canadians. We welcome immigrants, provided that they are ready to become good Canadians. We believe in and are proud of our natural resources, but we also believe these resources can never be developed nor the prosperity of this country restored under the policy of the present government.


Mr. H. E. LAVIGUEUR (Quebec County) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just taken his seat, told us, at the outset of his speech, that he was the eightieth to speak on the subject which is, at present, submitted to the House-the budget. The hon. member further added that he saw absolutely nothing of any value in this budget; that it is insignificant, and means nothing. I suppose that the hon. member for Parry Sound (Mr. Arthurs) came to that conclusion after listening to the numerous speeches which were delivered on the subject. Since the budget has provoked such a protracted discussion, it is a reason not to get alarmed, and we can assert, on that score, that the present government's policy, is one of progress, pros-

perity and especially a policy which in no way can harm the interests of the country as a whole.
Last year, Sir, some people complained that the few changes made to the tariff would bring ruin to the country and the closing oi a great number of our industries. The people of this country can bear witness that nothing of the kind^happened. The House itself rejoiced in noticing that the budget voted last year was truly in the interest of the Canadian people. The industries which we feared might have to suffer by these slight changes, have increased their production instead of decreasing it, and the people of this country benefited by it.
Mr. Speaker, the member for Parry Sound held the government responsible for the exodus of Canadians to the United States; he contended that for the last three years more than 500,000 Canadians have left the country to go and settle in the United States. He should have told the House what was the cause of such an exodus instead of holding the present government responsible for such a state of things. Moreover, the hon. member knows fully well that, during the difficult period of the war-from 1914 to 1918

we were busy, owing to the decision of the Tory government, who at that time was at +he helm of the affairs of the country, sending our last man overseas and spending our last dollar to win the war. But, alas! what a contrast between the attitude we took and that of the Americans! While we were sending over our soldiers to fight in the ranks of the allies, our good friends, the Americans were piling up millions. Certainly, the enticement was great for Canadians who could not take part iD the war, and, when our industries were at a standstill owing to the manufacturing of ammunition or otherwise, our Canadians, I say, were drawn towards the United States by the enormous salaries paid in that country where they took advantage of the war to accumulate millions by supplying the allies with all the material they needed. Is not, Mr. Speaker, the Tory government somewhat responsible for the exodus of our people to the United States during that period. Unfortunately, this state of affairs continued after the war, owing to the sad plight in which the Tory government had placed our country. What has been happening within the last few years is but the aftermath of what took place under the Tory administration. The hon. member for Parry Sound has, moreover, stated that the population of this country had not increased; he is mistaken, for it has increased, and, with the excellent immigrants that we are

The Budget-Mr. Lavigueur
drawing to this country, and especially with the sound policy of the hon. Minister of Immigration, we can hope for a greater increase in our population, which will help to carry the burden left to us by the late government.
I had no intention, Sir, to take part in this debate. I had imagined, like the hon. member for Parry Sound (Mr. Arthurs), that the time already allotted to the discussion of the budget had been more than sufficient to enlighten the House and the whole population of Canada. Nevertheless, I deem it my duty to congratulate the hon. Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) on the budget he has submitted to the House. This budget will certainly receive the approval of the House and of all the good Canadians, the thinking public, for it is the best that could be brought down under the circumstances, knowing the difficult situation in whifoh -the country is at present. I wanted, especially, as the hon. member for Quebec South (Mr. Power) has done, to recall to the House the pledges of the government towards a certain part of the Quebec district, and more particularly towards the city of Quebec. I wish to speak of the Quebec harbour and of certain urgent work which is absolutely necessary for the government to carry out without further delay.
First, I want to mention some development work to be undertaken in the harbour of Quebec. This subject is not a new one, it has been discussed iu the House for a number of years past; myself, I had occasion at each session, for the last nine or ten years, to claim, together with my colleagues from Quebec, the rights of the city of Quebec on this subject.
Together with all the other members of the district ianld the city of Quebec, I was sorry to see that the government found1 it impossible, last year, 'owing to uncontrollable circumstances, to grant to the city of Quebec the same subsidies-large, it is true-as those that were granted to other cities, in particular to the Port of Vancouver, towards the building of the bridge on the South shore, at Montreal, for which $7,000,000 was voted, and towards the building of the Toronto viadudt, for which the House .voted $18,000,000. And since, a short while ago, $7,000,000 were voted for the breast-works of the walls at Toronto, so as to build beautiful promenades and allow our fellow-citizens of the Queen city of Ontario to enjoy their walks.
I did not criticize the amounts voted for all these works, as parliament voted them after matured deliberations, because these outlays were urgent to carry out developments in certain localities. However, Quebec has Certain legitimate claims, Quebec has a right
that her claims should be considered, and that is why I again rise, this evening, as I have done, at each session, to demand fair-play, the same fair-play for the province of Quebec which has contributed its large share to the advent of this government and has been able to maintain it in power during the last four years, thus allowing the country to be governed in. the beneficial manner it has been under the able leadership of our devoted chief, the worthy successor of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King). And, if the province of Quebec has given its sincere support to the present government it is because that province, indignant at the way it had been treated by the Tory government, from 1911 to 1921, wished to avenge itself against the Tory government by sending to sit by the side of tile Prime Minister, sixty-five members representing sixty-five counties of said province.
The province of Quebec, Sir, asks for no favour; I repeat this each session. The city of Quebec simply requests the government to fulfil the pledges contracted towards the city and harbour of Quebec; pledges recognized by the governments which have followed one another for the last fifteen or twenty years, and acknowledged by the solemn word of one of the Prime Ministers of the government which preceded the present one; I mean Sir Robert Borden, ex-Prime Minister of Canada, who, on various occasions, acknowledged the rights and claims of the city of Quebec and even promised to award the contracts. Not only had we moral pledges, on the part of the government, but there was more than that: there existed notarial agreements between the Dominion government and the city of Quebec. These agreements were not carried out by the late government, notwithstanding the promises made, and notwithstanding that it had recognized its legal obligation. The present government, Sir, has also pledged itself, as its predecessor, to fulfil the legitimate claims of the city of Quebec.
I wish to recall to the House the speech which was delivered, on October 22, 1913, at the Chateau Frontenac, in Quebec, by the Right Hon. Sir Robert Borden, and in which he told the citizens of Quebec that the Dominion government acknowledged their claims and would carry out the necessary work for the development of the Quebec harbour, as promised and in compliance with the existing agreements. Sir Robert Borden stated, at the time, that the development of the Quebec harbour was not a local affair, but that it was in the interest of the whole country that millions be spent for the development of our

The Budget-Mr. Lavigueur
harbour. If you will allow rue, Sir, I shall quote a few excerpts from Sir Robert Borden's speech, which were included in a speech I delivered here, on September 15, 1919. Here is what Sir Robert Borden has to say in regard to the work to be carried out in the Quebec harbour:
I shall give the English text which I have here and which faithfully reports the words and phrases which Sir Robert Borden used on that occasion:
Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen:
Will you permit me in the first place to express my grateful appreciation and warm acknowledgment of the kindness and hospitality of my fellow-citizens of this city in tendering me this banquet and in extending to me so cordial a welcome and reception. Whether we worship at the same altar, whether we are affiliated with one political party or the other, we are all united by a proud confidence in the resources of our country, in the possibilities of their development, in the freedom of our institutions and in the greatness of Canada's destiny.
Welcome an Inspiration.
Your welcome is of itself an inspiration but apart from that one cannot fail to be inspired by the memories of the past when visiting this city. Here, more than three hundred years ago were laid the foundations of the Canada of to-day. If even in later years and since the birth of this Dominion it required faith and courage to persevere in this task transmitted to us by the founders of Confederation, how shall we estimate the faith, the courage and the strong purpose of those who consecrated their energies and their lives to reclaiming for the cause of Christianity and civilization what was then a vast wilderness in this western world. May the soul and purpose of our nation ever be strengthened by the memory of the ideals which inspired the pioneers of Canada when first they undertook the task which now committed to our keeping.
Quebec is thus unique among Canadian cities, in the associations and traditions to which I have alluded. But apart from these, when one considers its majestic situation, at the portal of the greatest inland waterway of the world, its commanding position at the head of the gulf of St. Lawrence which lies like a great land-locked ocean almost at your feet, the vast territory largely undeveloped which lies tributary to this city, and the unbounded opportunities for the development of industry and of commerce which are thus afforded, one realizes the immense importance that this harbour should be so developed and equipped as to enable it to compete on at least even terms with any port on this continent for a legitimate share of the world commerce flowing to and from our shores.
Whatever differences may exist between the policies of political parties in Canada, I am sure they will be found united in the view that the great national ports of this country should be adequately equipped for the purpose which I have stated. It is in this view that I desire to set forth to you to-night the works which the government deem necessary and which they have already undertaken for the proper equipment and development of this harbour.
Must look well ahead
In approaching a question, one realizes that we must build not for to-day or to-morrow or for ten years hence, and that no proposals can be regarded as adequate unless they are so comprehensive in their character as to permit of proper extension to meet the necessities of the large future. We can estimate to l Mr. Lavigueur.]
some extent the probable development within a few years; but one would need a prophetic vision to foresee the enormous increase in our commerce and the equipment necessary to cope with it during the lifetime of even a single individual. Considering the resources of this country, still on the eve of development and the population flowing in marvellous streams to our shores, one may conjecture that the bright eyes of children to-day at play in your streets may still be undimmed when this Dominion shall have surpassed in population the British Islands, or that favoured land from which came the ancestors of more than two million Canadians. . . .
Must obtain western traffic Having regard to the probable enormous development of western traffic to this city and its wonderful possibility by reason of the situation which I have described, and seeing also the necessity of providing adequately for future development, the government thought it desirable to possess an extensive waterfront on the St. Lawrence. With this view we have acquired three miles of the best waterfront in Quebeo extending from Sillery to Cap Diamond; and portions of the waterfront from the Cap Diamond to the Champlain market have also been secured. This magnificent waterfront will give to the government and to the Harbour Commission the opportunity of almost unlimited development of port and terminal facilities; and I hope you will agree that in thus looking forward to the possibilities of the future the government have taken no unwise course. In adopting this policy, we feel that we are acting not in the interests of Quebec alone but in the interest of all Canada, for Canada, as a whole is concerned in the provision of modern and effective facilities necessary for the outflow and inflow of commerce at all great ports.
Whenever necessary we can also arrange for connection of the tracks between the Champlain market station and Louise Basin for the transfer of freight which can largely be carried on at night without disturbance or inconvenience to the business activities of the city. While the great union station which the government is to occupy jointly with the Canadian Pacific Railway will subserve the principal requirements of traffic, it is also desirable that there should be a station at the Champlain market for the convenience of that portion of the population in the immediate vicinity. The plans for this station are now in course of preparation and the work will be commenced at a very' early date and will be carried to completion with no unnecessary delay. . .	*
Harbour Commission Work Let me now advert to the work which has been carried on by the new Harbour Commission since its appointment less than a year ago. Two English engineers of eminence familiar with the problems of harbour development were instructed to draw up a general scheme for future as well as for immediate development. The plan which they proposed was most carefully considered by the commission which consulted with the railway [DOT] companies, the steamship lines, captains of steamers, pilots and other competent persons and eventually concluded that the recommendations of these engineers should be carried out. Plans have accordingly been prepared in accordance therewith and the work is now under construction. The bulk-head wall on the St. Charles' side is in course of construction. . .
Ministers favour Quebec
Holding strong opinions as to the necessity of adequate equipment for our ports, I have taken a warm personal interest in the proposals for the equipment and development of Quebec. I need not assure you that Mr. Pelletier has been indefatigable

The Budget-Mr. Lavigueur
in his efforts to reach a satisfactory conclusion in these matters. Let me add that Mr. Cochrane, Mr. Rogers and Mr. Hazen have given sympathetic consideration and careful attention to every reasonable suggestion for the effective carrying-out of our proposals. The works which I have described will involve the expenditure of very large sums, but the national purposes which are to be served amply justify that expenditure.
You maj' see, sir, that the claims of the city of Quebec were acknowledged not only by the present government, but also by the late government, in 1916.


Arthur Meighen: Hear, hear!


Henri-Edgar Lavigueur: Now,
Sir, the late government discontinued the work begun at Quebec; war broke out; they invoked the plea of war, and the work on the Quebec harbour was stopped.
Last year we were told, when we requested that the promises and pledges of the Dominion government towards the city of Quebec, be carried out, that the request of the Quebec Harbour Commission had been submitted a little too late to be taken into consideration. I regret -this delay in starting the work on a permament basis. An amount of $500,000 has been placed at the disposal of the Quebec Harbour Commission and the preliminary work has begun. Considerable work was carried out last autumn, and now we request the government to fulfil the pledges made by the late government who neither carried out its promises nor its pledges, and who not even recognized its notarial agreements with the city of Quebec. We, therefore, ask the present government to act and to act immediately; to be just towards the city of Quebec. We, the members of the Quebec district, rely upon the good will of the government, and we hope to obtain justice-of which we have no doubt-and that the necessary amount will be voted to carry on the work. Since we have voted $10,000,000 for the Port of Vancouver and $25,000,000 or $30,000,000 for the Toronto viaduct, we trust that the amount of $10,000,000 requested by the Quebec Harbour Commission, will be granted to us. We expect that from the present government. For my part, Sir, on the plea of being a strong supporter of the government, I trust my hopes will not be in vain, and I rely upon the government to be just towards the city of Quebec.
Apart from the claims which I mentioned a few minutes ago, the city of Quebec has others. It subscribed to the government, for the construction of the Transcontinental, amounts nowhere else exceeded in Canada. Besides, the city of Quebec has transferred, as a free gift, a property valued at the time
at $2,000,000, for the building of the Union station; and, for the Quebec harbour works it practically gave away-for the small sum of $60.000-land estimated at more than $3,000,000. Again, the city of Quebec has subscribed $650,000 for the construction of the Lake St. John railroad! and Canadian Northern. The city of Quebec has done more to promote the building of railroads and the development of its harbour than any other city in Canada.
People will say-and it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that I have already heard this objection voiced-that the Quebec Harbour Commission is indebted towards the government and does not meet the interest charges. Well, if the Quebec Harbour Commission has not always met the interest charges, Quebec has furnished its port for the landing of immigrants, and if every immigrant landing at Quebec had only contributed the small amount of fifty cents, I believe that would have been fully sufficient to meet the interest coming due by the harbour commission. And besides, the amounts subscribed by the city of Quebec more than fully meet the interest charges past due which the Quebec Harbour Commission may still be owing.
But, Mr. Speaker, every dollar spent in the harbour of Quebec, contrary to the practice followed elsewhere, has been charged to the account of the Quebec Harbour Commission. If the millions squandered to maintain an open channel along the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal were taken into account, as well ns the amount of work carried out in the port of Montreal, or in other ports, by the Department of Public Works, and which have never been charged up against these various boards, it would become apparent that much more has been done in other ports than in Quebec. As I have just stated, every time a dollar has been spent in Quebec harbour, it has been charged up against the commission, which has not been the case in other places.
'Well, to-day, we are relying on our ministers, we are relying on our government, we are relying on the House, so that fair treatment be meted out to Quebec and a grant of $10,000,000 at least, be made to enable the harbour commission to carry out its development plan and develop the port, in the interest of the city of Quebec, of the province, and as it was so ably put by Sir Robert Borden, in the interest of tihe country at large.

The Budget-Mr. Lavigueur


Lucien Cannon: Will the
hon. gentleman allow me a question? At the beginning of his remarks, the hon. gentleman has quoted a speech made by Sir Robert Borden, when Prime Minister of Canada. Were the pledges made by its Prime Minister at Quebec fulfilled by the government of Sir Robert Borden?	*


Henri-Edgar Lavigueur: The pledges given by the government of Sir Robert Borden were never fulfilled by the government of the day, neither were they fulfilled by the succeeding government presided over by the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meiighen). Notwithstanding the protests and repeated demands of the whole representation of Quebec, our claims were always ignored. And to-day we appeal to the present government to fulfil the obligations incurred by the former government, of which they have acknowledged the principle and concerning which they have pledged themselves.
I would like, Mr. Speaker, to call the attention of the House to a request for a grant to bring relief to the population of the island of Orleans which is part of the constituency of Montmorency for the provincial legislature, and which I have the honour to represent in this House. The island of Orleans is a most beautiful spot, only four or five miles distant from the city of Quebec. At certain times of the year, the six agricultural parishes of this island are completely severed from the mainland. Repeatedly we appealed to the government to obtain relief for the people of the island of Orleans and, for a few years, we have been given free use by the hon. Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Cardin), of a boat plying between Quebec and the island of Orleans, at certain seasons. The people inhabiting the island have organized a company, to ensure communications, previous to the building of that splendid bridge which the former Tory administration had positively pledged itself to build. Sir Rodolphe Forget, then member of the county, had promised a splendid bridge between the island of Orleans and the Cote de Beaupre.
I have already mentioned this pledge agreed upon by the former government and I have insisted that it should be kept, but as I understand the conditions of the country are such as to prevent the fulfilment, at present, of this pledge, undertaken by the former government towards the people of that island. We, therefore, request from the present government, the hon. Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) to kindly grant a subsidy to a company of enterprising citizens of the island of Orleans, 
who have formed a company, subscribed the necessary capital and have awarded a contract for the building of a boat that will carry on a regular service, winter and summer, between the island of Orleans and the mainland, this will have for effect to relieve in the future the Marine department from the necessity of placing a boat at the disposal of those people at certain penods of the year. I requested from the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Low) a yearly subsidy of $3,000, so as to help this company and allow it to give a useful service, and I do hope that the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce, who is always well disposed when it is a question of just and reasonable requests, will not refuse these people such a small subsidy and will follow the good example given by the provincial government which has granted this company a subsidy of $4,000 per year, during twenty-five years, so as to help them to build a boat for that service. I, therefore, rely upon the government to grant this subsidy to the directors of this new company of the island of Orleans.
Allow me, Sir, to remind the House that, last year, a subsidy of $10,000 was voted for repairs to be made to the breast-works of the walls of St. Gregoire de Montmorency. This amount was spent and we ask now that there be included in the supplementary estimates, an additional sum necessary to complete the work, pursuant to the report sent to the department by the district engineers. I shall avail myself of the presence of the hon. Minister of Defence (Mr. Macdonald) to advise him to dispose of the Va'lcartier camp which served for mobilization of contingents sent to Europe, during the war. This land was purchased by the government who expropriated a number of Valcartier families, and these, today, wish to buy back their lands. The expropriations carried out by the government were responsible for the scattering of the sixty-five families. We, therefore have now sixty-five good farmers with their families who are ready to return to the land. There is no better work to be performed than to encourage oui fellow citizens of Quebec, or of any other province, to remain on the land and continue to farm it. I would therefore, suggest to the hon. Minister of Defence (Mr. Macdonald) to kindly give his attention to this request and allow those farmers who were expropriated to take back possession of their lands in consideration of a price, if not small, at least reasonable.
I should like also, Sir to strongly support the steps already taken by the hon. member for Lotbiniere (Mr. Vien) and tbe other

The Budget-Mr. Stewart (Humboldt)
members of the Quebec district, in regard to the completion of the Quebec bridge. I mean the building of a vehicle thoroughfare on the bridge. It has always been understood, and the citizens of Quebec have always looked at it in that light, that the Quebec bridge would be completed, since the government took charge of it. When a company, composed of enterprising citizens of Quebec, was formed to build this bridge, it was a question at the time, not only to build a bridge upon which ten or fifteen trains would circulate per day, but to build at the same time a thoroughfare for vehicles and pedestrians. We are told that the estimated cost of a vehicle roadway on the Quebec bridge would be about $500,000. I think that the government should have no hesitation in making such an outlay to complete this bridge, which is one of the marvels of this world, and which, once completed, would be a further attraction for the numerous tourists who visit Quebec. I know beforehand that the provincial government, as usual, would be disposed to do their share, if necessary, also the interested municipalities. I, therefore, ask the government to kindly give consideration to such a request, together with the others I made, and to well receive this claim, which has already been so ably put forth by the hon. member for Lotbiniere and the other members of the Quebec district.
I wish to add a few words in regard to the Gaspe railway, which the government was often requested to take over. The province of Quebec has even made an official request to that effect. As we succeeded in finding millions for the improvement of railways in other parts, we should be able to find means to do justice to the good people of Gaspe, and Bonaventure by allowing the management of the National Railways to take over the Gaspe railway. I cannot too strongly support the requests of the hon. member for Gaspe, the distinguished Speaker of this House, and the hon. member for Bonaventure (Mr Marcil) who very much wish to have this question settled.
Mr. Speaker, before closing my remarks, I make a last appeal to the government who is morally pledged to carry out the development and improvement of the Quebec harbour. I am glad to see that the present government wish to honour their obligations. We are told that the depositors of the Home Bank will be indemnified, that this is a moral obligation on the part of the government. I, therefore, hope, Sir, that if the government wish to honour the pledge agreed upon to develop the Quebec harbour, the ministers representing the province of Quebec, will soon give us the good news that an amount of $10,000,000 has been placed at the disposal of the Quebec Harbour Commission. I feel certain that the people of that province will be thankful for it, and I can further assure the government that the electoral divisions of the Quebec district will do their duty, as they did in 1917 and 1921, by sending to Ottawa, to support the new government of Mackenzie King, after the next general elections, all the members of the district of Quebec.


Charles Wallace Stewart: I cannot refrain 'from making a
comment on the hour of the night at which I rise to take part in the debate, but I understand that the whips have been totalling up the pages of Hansard that have already been covered in this discussion and have come to the conclusion that the time has arrived when we must make an effort to conclude our remarks within a reasonable length of time. I would not go so far as to say that I resent having to speak at this hour, but I do feel that it is rather unfortunate, from my own standpoint, that I should1 be the first upon whom the blow should fall and that I should be obliged to place before the House so late in the night the remarks I desire to make. I may assure you, Mr. Speaker, that it may be quite late when we get through to-night if I am required to complete the statements which I wish to make.
Just in passing, while I am speaking of the lengthy remarks that have been made, I would point out that there are now, as I believe, over 650 pages of Hansard covered by this budget debate, of which half may be credited to the members on the opposite side of the House while two-thirds of the remainder may be credited to the party who sit to my right. An hon. member says discredited; I would not say that. But those in this part of the House are not to blame for unduly prolonging the debate. We have taken our turn, it is true, but we have not been unduly long in the remarks we have made to the House; we have tried to place our viewpoint concisely before hon. members and I shall endeavour to do the same to-night.
I do not want to approach a discussion of the budget proposals in any attitude of mere carping criticism; I propose to discuss the budget itself and the amendment that has been submitted by the official opposition, and I shall deal with both in the same temper. I trust I am in a position to accept the advice of Lord Bacon, who declared:
Head, not to contradict and to confute, nor to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider.
2404	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Stewart (Humboldt)
It is in that frame of mind that I would .approach both the motion and the proposed amendment. Now, I was elected a member of this House independent of any party, and T stand to-night independent of any party shackles, free of any prejudice that may be the influence of any party affiliations. Since coming into this House I have been able to view the proposals put forward by the government from a wholly non-partisan standpoint. I have no objection to anyone referring to those who sit in this corner as a party, so far as our organization here is concerned. But if the word! is used in its full and recognized significance, as it is applied to the two old political parties, I repudiate its application to us.


Mr. STANSELL:: Does the hon. member
contend that we on this side are in any different position?


Charles Wallace Stewart: Perhaps I have not made myself clear, but I shall endeavour to do so. After having listened to the volume of debate to which I have already referred, coming from members of the party who sit to my right, I cannot but draw the conclusion that at least their party affiliation has had something to do with the unanimous attitude in which they have approached and criticized budget proposals. I might say the same thing with regard to the majority of those government supporters who have spoken at considerable length in behalf of the policies enunciated in this year's budget; I believe that in a great many cases their party affiliation has had a direct influence upon the statements they have made. From statements that have been made by some of the same gentlemen in this House-and statements which perhaps have been more frequently made outside-I have been led to believe in the past that those gentlemen advocated a policy somewhat different from that which is outlined in the budget proposals that we are now considering.
I was sent here by my constituents as an independent and with a free hand. As I have translated their mandate, it was that I should view, as Bacon has advised, the proposals put forward regardless of where they came from, not with any thought that because of their source I must oppose them or, on the other hand, that I must support them, but to view them wholly on their merits, and to support them if their merits seemed to justify them in my judgment. I am approaching this budget, I say, in that attitude, and having fully considered it, I find that it is not in accord with the mandate I received from my electors. I want to be fair, I want to give 
the government credit for those policies which I think are wise, but having weighed the whole, I must frankly confess at the outset of my remarks that I do not view the major proposals, particularly the fiscal and the taxation policy, with favour. The first two budgets that were presented to this House during the life of this parliament I opposed for similar reasons. The budget of last year I supported, and I make no apology for having done so, although, I have been criticized in some quarters for my action. I make no apology, I say, for having supported that budget. And I do not hesitate to state further that if the government had this year made similar .proposals, even going no further than those of last year, I would have supported them again. I am well aware that the government are labouring under certain difficulties in the raising of revenue, and that in their field of taxation they are somewhat limited, owing to the fact that they have to encroach upon every sphere of taxation and that they have to raise revenue wherever revenue can be obtained. But because I was sent here with a definite mandate to obtain, if possible, tariff reductions and more forms of direct taxation, I cannot agree to the proposals along those lines that appear in the budget.
I have tried not to form this judgment from a mere casual consideration of this year's proposals, but to sum up the results of the government's policies during its three years of office. In so far as the tariff reductions are concerned, I am very much disappointed when I see the result of that summing up. I have not very much faith in averages in regard to tariffs, but when we take the gross customs duties that have been collected and compare them with our total imports year by year, it at least indicates the direction in which we' are heading, and I am going to ask the forbearance of the House for a few moments while I place some figures on Hansard. I ask, Mr. Speaker, that I be permitted to read only the initial figures, indicating millions or hundreds of thousands as the case may be, and that I be allowed to place on Hansard the full figures. This statement has to do with the customs duties levied and collected and the imports during the years that can properly be taken as indicating the results of the policies of this government. I start with the fiscal year 1922-23, during which our total imports weie 802 millions plus, and our gross customs revenues were 133 millions plus. Out of that figure, though, there was returned in drawbacks $15,000,000, leaving a net of $118,000,000. The percentage of the total imports on the free list was 33 plus per cent.

The Budget-Mr. Steimrt (Humboldt)


Mr. McMASTER:: Free or dutiable?


Charles Wallace Stewart: The percentage of total imports on the free list was 33 plus per cent. The net customs revenues of the year represent (A) of the total imports 14.7 per cent, and (B) of the dutiable imports 21.9 per cent. The next year, 1923-24, our total imports were 893 millions plus, the gross customs revenues 135 millions plus, the drawbacks 13 millions plus, the net customs revenues 121 millions, the percentage of the total imports on the free list 34 minus per cent. I am making a note of this percentage of imports on the free 'list for a purpose, and you will' notice that it is not materially different from the year previous-33 plus the year before, 34 minus this year, or less than half of one per cent difference. The net customs revenues of the year represent (A) of the total imports 13.6 per cent, and (B) of the dutiable imports 24.5 per cent-a slight decrease in the item in which I am particularly concerned that is, the percentage of dutiable imports. In the year 1924-25, that is the current year with which we are now concerned, the total imports are 650 millions plus, the gross customs revenues-the items comparing with those which I have given for the other two years have not been available to me. The net customs revenue, as estimated by the department, was 108 millions, although I noticed by a return 'placed on Hansard yesterday, in answer to a question, that it exceeds the estimate, being 120 millions; but I have not changed my percentages, having used the lesser figure of 108 million dollars. The net customs revenues represent (A) of the total impor-ts a percentage of 16.6 per cent, but if the figure that has been supplied by the government is correct that will be considerably larger.
The statement is as follows:
Statement of total import trade and customs
revenues
1922-	23, total imports	 4802,579,244
Gross customs revenues	 133 803 587
Returned dates and drawbacks	 15,747 118
Net customs revenues	 118,056 469
Percentage of total imports on free list. 33 per cent Net customs	revenues	represent	of	(a)total imports	
14.7	per	centof (b) dutiable	imports	
21.9	per	cent1923-	24, total imports	
$893,366,867Gross customs revenues	
135,103,672Returned duties and drawbacks	
13,602,874Net customs revenues	
121.500,798Percentage of	total imports on free	list. 34.7 per centNet customs	revenues	represent	of	(a)total imports	
13.6	per	centof (b) dutiable	imports	
20.5	per	cent1924-	25, total imports	
$650,894,554
Gross customs revenues and drawbacks. (Not available)
Net customs revenues (Est)	 $108,200,000
Percentage of total imports on free
list	(Not available)
Net customs	revenues	represent	of	(a)total imports	
16.6	per	cent
So I point out that from these figures I am led to believe that the fiscal policy of the government is not materially reducing the customs tariff. I am not going to place further statistics on record, but I make the statement that my observations have led me to believe that this is not only true in a general sense, it is also true in a particular sense, that the items in which we . are especially interested in having placed either on a lower basis or on the free list have not been materially altered. I would refer to the statement made by the hon. member for Centre Winnipeg (Mr. Woodsworth) when he spoke a few days ago. He referred to the fact that last year the reduction of duties on agricultural implements, according to certain figures that he had worked out, would not amount to more than 83 cents on a half section farm. His figures, perhaps, could be manipulated so that the reduction would show even less than that, or I have no dohbt they could be arranged to show something more. At any rate, they are near enough to accuracy to indicate that the reductions of last year have mot made a very great difference to the cost to the consumer of those implements upon which the duties were reduced.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Before the hon. member proceeds further along this line, should he not give credit for the reduction which would almost inevitably take place in the price of the home-produced machinery as well?


Charles Wallace Stewart: Yes, I am
perfectly willing to do that. I think it was the hon. member for Brome (Mr. McMaster) who directed the attention of the hon. member for Centre Winnipeg (Mr. Woodsworth), to that; and I think it is quite true. If we are to inquire into the actual cash reduction that has been made, we shall, of course, have to take the total of our home consumption, compare it. with our imports, and multiply it out. It would increase to a considerable extent the amount that has been realized. I think it was the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gould) who said earlier this evening that in the purchase of implements for his farming operations he had benefited by the reduction to the extent of $5. It has been said that those who have purchased heavily in that kind of machinery have realized to a larger extent than that, but at best the average has not been high. However, as I said a little while ago, I have no apologies to make, no regrets to express, for having supported the government in the attempt they made in this direction last year, and if they
1406	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Stewart (Humboldt)
had given some indication that they were headed this year m the same direction and that they proposed to make similar reductions on those articles that are the necessities of life or that are the implements used in our primary production, )I would have supported them again this year. But because that feature of their policy is conspicuous by its absence, not alone in the budget proposals but in the speeches that have been made by the supporters of the government, I take the stand that I cannot support the proposals that are made this year.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Will my
hon. friend permit me? Does he know that the revenues of this country declined S52,000,000 this past year, and does he realize the difficulty of getting revenue?


Charles Wallace Stewart: Yes, the hon. gentleman is quite right, and that is why I took the trouble to put all these figures on record rather than the averages. Some hon. members in this debate have quoted averages alone, and averages do not, of course, correctly represent the situation unless one takes into consideration the fact that the imports have been reduced. I made the statement that for 1924-25 our imports have been reduced from $893,000,000 to $650,000,000, but when I take the customs revenues that have been acquired from those imports I find that the percentage is about tihe same.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: What method does my hon. friend propose whereby the falling revenues can be sustained?


Charles Wallace Stewart: I think it was two years ago, Mr. Speaker, that in speaking to the budget I dwelt at some length on certain taxation proposals that I advocated. I have referred to them already this evening under the general heading of more direct taxation. The hon. gentleman, I think, fully understands what I mean by that. My chief objection to the tariff policy of this government, or of any government for that matter '-my chief objection to the raising of revenue through tariff is that it is an indirect form of taxation. Of course I could go much further than that. The hon. member for Brome would call my attention to the fact that the tariff tax is not reflected wholly in the revenues of the country but that it is a much larger item than that; being an indirect tax it is misused to the extent that we pay many dollars out, perhaps, for every dollar that finds its way into the revenues. Direct methods of taxation are what I advocate. I do not propose at this time to go into the matter in detail or 
to specify any particular system, any more than to assure the hon. member who is representing the government to-night that any system of direct taxation that has the least principle of fairness on its face, I will support, rather than-


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: It is pretty hard to find new avenues, in Canada.


Charles Wallace Stewart: It may be hard to find new avenues. In fact I think I have already mentioned that I realize the government have already explored perhaps almost every field. But I flhink they have not fully covered every field; it may be possible for them to go further. And I will support them when they go further in imposing direct taxation, provided that they reduce our indirect taxes through the customs duties at the same time.


Andrew Ross McMaster: If the hon. member will permit a question, is it not also true that a number of our duties are so high that they yield little or no revenue because all goods of foreign production are kept out?


Charles Wallace Stewart: I wholly
agree with the line of thought that is inferred in the statement made by the hon. member for Brome, and I thank him for bringing that to the attention of the House so concisely.
I want to make a further statement with regard to the attitude of the government supporters in this House and the press supporting the government throughout the country. I cannot say I recall having heard a member of the government use the term "concession" with regard to present tariff proposals, but they have made statements that leave a similar inference. I have been surprised at the number pf times the expression "tariff concession" has been used in the press, particularly in editorial comments, during the last few months. It seems to me a most peculiar thing, if I understand the meaning of the term "concession," that the attitude or the policy of the government when it is towards the lowering of customs duties should be termed by the press as a "tariff concession." If there is any such thing as a tariff concession it is when a special interest is given the protection of a tariff, not when the general industries of the country are relieved of the burden of taxation through the tariff.
I say I reproach the supporters of the government who have left that inference-and there are several of them who have-and I further express my surprise that the press which supports this government should use that term "tariff concessions" with regard to the policies of a government which was elected

The Budget-Mr. Stewart (Humboldt)
on a platform promising that there would be tariff reduction.
Turning to the financial statement of the Acting Minister of Finance, I do not propose to go to the extremes that hon. members to my left have gone. I do not consider the financial statement baffling, nor do I think it is iniquitous. I have certain proposals I wish to make-certain suggestions, perhaps it would be better to say. The government have probably taken the matter of psychology into consideration-not particularly this government- because it has been shown to us, I think, in a way that cannot be refuted, that the form of accounting and the form of this budget itself are not materially different from those applicable to the budgets which have been presented by a goodly number of finance ministers in the past. But I do believe that finance ministers, in making up their statement of accounting, are apt to take into consideration the psychology of the people. They probably look for the political effect on the mind and the thought of the people, and for that reason the form of the financial statement has been such as to draw forth severe criticism from some hon. members of this House. I say that I do not criticize the present Acting Minister of Finance, or -any of his predecessors in particular. I think there has been a general tendency-which is not discreditable to the present government; the provincial governments, and probably the governments of all countries do the same- to present the financial statement in the best possible light. I would suggest, however, that our present financial statement is not wholly adequate to the needs of the country at the present time. Without disputing the figures that are placed before us, without claiming that improper inferences have been drawn from the figures submitted1 to us, I do submit that further details could be given to us that would make the financial situation of Canada more intelligible to the average citizen. We have had presented to us a budget which shows a surplus; at the same time figures have been brought forward showing that when our major Liability, that is our railroads, is taken into consideration, that surplus disappears into thin air and is replaced by a deficit. Those figures do not appear plainly in the financial statement offered to us by the Acting Minister of Finance; and my suggestion is that although that statement may well compare with other statements given in the past the fact that it is similar to budgets brought down five or six, or even ten years ago is perhaps nothing
to its credit, and I believe it could be improved upon to some extent. The leader of our group stated that he was not an accountant but only a plain business man. I too claim no particular right to be advising the Minister of Finance as to how he should do his accounting; but as a plain man I do state that I think the budget figures could be given to us in a more comprehensive form than they have been given. The fact that we have at the same time a surplus and1 a deficit is confusing to some minds to say the least. The fact that there has been a falling off in revenue due to a reduction in the total imports into Sthe country might be more plainly set out in the financial statement.
Before passing too far away from the matter of the tariff proposals I want to touch on the announcement of the Acting Minister of Finance that the government intends to appoint a tariff commission. I listened with very great interest to reasons given by the hon. member for Cape Breton South and Richmond (Mir. Kyte) as to why he supported the present proposal although he had opposed ' it on a previous occasion. He told us that when the Conservative party were in power -they being in his estimation a high tariff government-he considered it bis duty to oppose their recommendation for a tariff commission at that time. I wonder if he realized that when he was making that candid statement he was furnishing arguments against the creation of a tariff commission to those sitting here who hold views similar to those I have expressed to-night-reasons why we could not favour such a proposal at this time. If we were convinced that the present government favours lower tariff than did the government in office at the time my hon. friend refers to, his argument might have some effect. But the contrary being the case, his argument as to why we could not support a tariff commission a number of years ago still holds good in so far as I am concerned and I think the same may be said for a number of my colleagues. I cannot refrain from repeating certain arguments that were used in the debate of 1912 because I think they very well state the case against the proposed tariff commission; and the fact that they were advanced by a gentleman who until recently was a member of the party now sitting on the government benches should lend some weight to them. The Hon. Mr. Maclean, then member for Halifax, speaking in this House in February, 1912-and his statement will be found at page 2642 of Hansard of that year- made the following declaration:
2408	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Stewart (Humboldt)
I am opposed to this bill, because I believe it is a violation of constitutional practice in all British countries; because it directly or indirectly, and perhaps unconsciously, assumes to give a tariff commission powers of legislation.
That is his first objection, and it appears to me to be one of the strongest that I can urge.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: My hon.
friend is arguing about something that does not exist. It is not the proposal of this government to set up a tariff commission similar to the one proposed by the government in 1911-12. It is only proposed that certain officials, with probably an additional member representing the interests to which my hon. friend would be especially devoted, may be employed for the purpose of preparing data. We do not propose to create any tariff board that is going to prepare a tariff, such as the government of that day proposed.


Charles Wallace Stewart: I think it
most unfortunate that a full and clear explanation with respect to the proposed tariff commission was not made at the time of the announcement that a tariff commission would be appointed. I think it also unfortunate that-


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I want to
say to my hon. friend that nothing was said by the Acting Minister of Finance that warrants his assertion that we propose to create any such board as the Borden government contemplated.


Charles Wallace Stewart: Then it is
highly unfortunate that the present government should have announced a commission of such a character and with the same name, regardless of whether it is proposed to confer upon it the same wide power. If that is not the intention I am very glad to have the correction of the hon. minister. At the same time the principle that underlies both propositions is the subject of attack in the few further sentences I propose to read:
I object to* it because it tends to weaken the doctrine of ministerial responsibility as it obtains in all British countries. I object to it because the duties which, under the bill, are assigned to a commission, refer to matters which in all British countries are dealt with directly by the responsible advisers of the crown.
Mr. MiVCDONALD (Pictou):	My hon.
friend again misapprehends the situation. There was nothing said by the Acting Minister of Finance that would indicate by any manner of means that this ministry sought to absolve itself of responsibility and place it upon any board. We are simply providing for an arrangement under which data might be gathered. No power is to be given to any
[Mr. C. W. Stewart.l
organization to raise or lower the tariff, and Mr. Maclean's argument referred to a board that was to be entrusted with that power.


Charles Wallace Stewart: The minister's explanation may have a material effect on my criticism of the proposed tariff commission as I understand it; but there is one further statement that perhaps will satisfy the hon. gentleman that I have a just ground of objection to the proposed commission. Here is one statement at least that is applicable to the present proposal whether the statement made by the minister be accepted or not.
I object to the bill, because the purpose sought to be attained by it can be better attained by less expensive and less objectionable methods.
I object to it further because it seeks in a manner, in a veiled manner perhaps, to validate by a statute the doctrine of protection in this country.
The last statement, I think, applies to the proposed commission as well as to any other commission of that character that might be formed. It seeks to give a definite understanding to the people that the present government wishes or desires to perpetuate the tariff; it tends to create an impression in the public mind that the present government are seeking information and will obtain that information not from all sources but from certain prejudiced sources.


Mr.   MAODONALD@Pictou: My hon.
friend is entirely wrong. Why should anything of that kind occur?


Charles Wallace Stewart: Permit me
to give an illustration of what the people are thinking. We have in this country a railway commission. I have heard that commission criticized at various times by people, who are much interested in the rulings it makes, because they are the people who eventually have to pay, and the criticism that is levelled against the railway commission is that they are by their position enabled to secure one side of the story very readily and easily. The railways may come to them with a claim, it is placed before them in a plausible manner, and it looks to them to be wise to adopt or to admit the plea of the railway; but those people scattered all over the country who have to foot the bill, find it very difficult indeed to concentrate their information on the matter and bring it to the attention of the railway commission. They have a way of bringing it to the attention of the government in this House, because 235 members have been sent here for that purpose, but these people have no easy way of presenting their concentrated information before the railway commission:	And I claim that we will have

The Budget-Mr. Steimrt (Humboldt)
the same objection and the same suspicion regarding this commission. Although the hon. gentleman says I am altogether too suspicious, I tell him I only represent the people and I assure him they will be suspicious of any commission which is set up, where those who are seeking tariff protection can go to the commission and give information to them, while those who are footing the bill all over the country find it difficult to approach that commission.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The hon.
member wants to be fair, but he is certainly under a misapprehension. The criticisms he suggests with regard to the railway commission may have some basis by reason of the fact that the representatives of the people do not have the same opportunity of discussing questions before that body before the orders are given in the same way that they have of discussing matters in this House. But I want to have it distinctly understood there is no proposal by this government to get rid of ministerial responsibility for one moment; and in the case of this board which it is proposed to create, the government of the day will be absolutely responsible for anything that is proposed to this House and my hon. friend can discuss the matter in the House, just as he can now. It is entirely different from the railway commission and the analogy he draws is not applicable.


Charles Wallace Stewart: In so far as the rulings of the Board of Railway Commissioners are concerned, we have the privilege of discussing them in this House sometimes long after they have been made and when the evil effects have gone so far as to be beyond recall. I know the minister will say I am too suspicious; but the fear which I have at the present time with regard to the tariff commission which it is proposed shall act in an advisory capacity towards the government is that it will have acted in a similar manner to the railway commission, or that the advice of the commission will have been acted upon bv the government before we are in a position to take action, and the position will be the same as it is with regard to the railway comm.'ssion.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I desire to point out that any board acting under the government of the day would only be obtaining data for the information of the government, and that such a board would have no legislative or regulative power with regard to the tariff whatever; but the government would submit a budget just as they are submitting 154
one now, and every hon. member would have a right to discuss it before it became law, which is an entirely different position to that of the railway commission.


Charles Wallace Stewart: There is that difference I am free to admit. If it has no legislative power-and I accept the word of the hon. gentleman representing the government that they do not propose to give it legislative power

it has that advantage, and we would have an opportunity to discuss, at least to some extent, their proposals.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Just the
same as hon. members can discuss proposals of the government now.


Charles Wallace Stewart: No, not to the same extent as we have now, because the business of that commission would be to secure information with regard to the tariff, and we know, as I have already Said, how easy it is for certain concentrated interests, corporations, for example, to bring their viewpoint to bear and to make it bear very forcibly on the commission, while it is so very difficult for the great mass of the people to present their viewpoint.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am sorry my hon. friend thinks the government should bring down a budget without having any information before presenting it. That is the logical result of my hon. friend's argument.


Charles Wallace Stewart: No, I do not think they should bring it down without information at all, but if the hon. member is seriously contending that the tariff commission is absolutely for nothing but information alone, I am going to read to him again the statement that was made by the hon. member for Halifax back in 1912. He said:
I object to the bill because the purpose sought to be attained by it can be better attained by less expensive and less objectionable methods.
Passing from that proposal of the Acting Minister of Finance I take up another of his taxation proposals. That is the amendment to the War Revenue Act, and by that amendment he proposes to alter the effect of a certain clause in the act. That clause provides that all papers addressed to a bank on which money is paid shall bear stamps. By mutual consent I presume certain of those papers have been exempted u-p to the present time, but it is now proposed that these papers shall bear a tax stamp, and it is to this matter I particularly wish to refer. I believe that it has been mutually agreed to exempt certain papers. The papers referred to are issued in payment

2410	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Stewart (Humboldt)
for grain, known as grain tickets, and in payment of cream, known as cream or milk tickets-


Andrew Ross McMaster: Are they cashing them at the bank?
Mr. STEWART (Humboldt)': They are. I do not wish to camouflage the situation in the least. I want to say frankly that in my estimation they are cheques. They are honoured by the bank and payment is made. Although in the past the government apparently has looked upon them as something other than cheques, it is now proposed to look upon them as cheques, and place the tax upon them the same as is placed upon cheques. Well they are receipts but they are also cheques, and I would prefer if the government treated them as cheques, and if the government is going to tax them, then tax them just the same as other cheques. But I will make my protest because I do not think that tax should be levied. I would admit it is asking for a special exemption to be made, but let me point out, Mr. Speaker, that in the application of this War Revenue Act and this particular clause of it which provides for placing stamps upon cheques, an exemption has already been made to which I and many other members took exception, that all cheques for sums over $2,500 should be exempt from taxation. One dollar tax is the limit. I regret very much that the acting minister is not here in order that I might address myself to him primarily. If there were not an exemption in that act, I would hesitate to ask him to make a special exemption in favour of these gentlemen, although it might be necessary to do so. They are primary producers and producers on a small scale. Those who are benefiting under this clause have benefited under it for a special reason which I shall refer to. But because there is an exception already made, because it is not wholly justified, and because I took exception to it before, I am going to ask for a further exemption to be granted, and to ask that the cheque for produce from the primary producer, when issued for sums under ten dollars, should be exempt from taxation.
I regret almost as much that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) is not in his seat. I should like to point out to him certain things vdiich, it seems to me, he must have overlooked in connection with this tax, or he would have devoted a little less time to the Hudson bay and1 a little to this when he made his speech a few days ago. Over a number of years in western Canada our best farmers-and many of them have been 
in our legislatures, some of them members of the government, and the Minister of Agriculture has been one of them-have been endeavouring to induce those who are engaged in the dairy industry to produce a better quality of cream, in such a manner to raise the quality of their product, a product which has to be exported, and thus by raising the quality of their produce, to bring to themselves a greater remuneration than they could possibly hope to receive for a lower quality product. It is probably not necessary for me to do this, but I am going to give a little of the reason why this was one of the methods used to induce producers of cream to produce cream of a high quality. Of course, there are other factors that enter into the quality of cream than its delivery to the creamery, but one of the chief factors that has to do with the quality of cream is the time at which it reaches the butter maker after it has been taken from the milk. Gentlemen of eastern Canada, perhaps, do not realize to the full extent the handicap that farmers in the west labour under as regards distances. I have recollections of creameries and dheese factories that are dotted over certain parts of Ontario and that I knew years ago when I lived here, and I know none of the patrons of those industries had to take their milk or cream any great distance to the factory. But in western Canada, that is a handicap. It is always difficult to get a sufficient quantity qf cream within reasonable distance of a factory so that it can be delivered there while it is in a fair state of freshness. Years ago it was recognized1 that the fact that cream was being held * too long on the farms was tending to lessen its quality. Therefore, this idea was put forward of making it possible that payments should be made every time the dairy farmer delivered his can of cream. That was carried out, and that is the policy that is followed in practically all the creameries of western Canada to-day in order to induce the dairy farmer to bring in his cream. It was realized that the dairy farmer producing cream was, in many cases, producing it because he needed a little ready cash as time went on. It was not his main industry, only a side line, and one of the inducements for him to bring in his cream was to give him a ticket which he could cash for his cream can every time he brought it in. I am going to quote what an owner and operator of a creamery said to me just a few months before I came to Ottawa. This bears directly on the matter, although at that time he had no idea there was to be any such move as this to put a tax on the

The Budget

Mr. Steimrt (Humboldt)
tickets he was issuing. He stated that in the last two or three years there had been more improvement in the quality as well as the quantity of the cream that was delivered to him than in the previous fifteen years he had been operating the creamery. One of the things that tended towards that was that he induced his patrons to bring their cream to him, if not every day, only a few days old, and the cream being brought to him while it was in a proper state of freshness, produced the proper quality of butter, the result being that he was able to pay a higher price for the cream and obtain a higher price for his product. Those tickets have been free of the two cent tax, but it is now proposed that they shall bear it. This is going to be a financial burden upon the dairy farmer, although the dairy farmer is not able to pay any further tax. The government have admitted in the past that our primary producers are worthy of special consideration, but in this instance they are overlooking that. It is estimated and, I think, very accurately, that this will place a burden of $100,000 by way of taxation on the cream producers of the three western provinces. These tickets that are issued for cream are almost invariably for sums less than $5. Very rarely they run over $5.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Is it necessary to issue them every time the cream is brought in?
Mr. (STEWART (Humboldt): I have 'tried to point out that that method was adopted as an inducement. In many cases at the present time it would not be necessary, but our industry is still in its infant stages.


Andrew Ross McMaster: I hope the hon. member is not going to use the infant industry argument that is used so often. I do not like to hear that from the west.


Charles Wallace Stewart: It may be worn out as regards the west, but I have noticed that it is a splendid argument to use in this House and, perhaps, I may be permitted to use it just as others have done.


Mr. DECHENE:: It is one form of protection.


Charles Wallace Stewart: This is not a form of protection.


Joseph Bruno Aimé Miville Déchêne: To help an industry in its infancy?


Charles Wallace Stewart: No, I am placing this on purely a business and what I consider a fair basis. I have said there are 154i
already exemptions. A man who does his business by issuing cheques of $2,000 or over, has the benefit of an exemption. There may be good reasons for this although I question it. If that gentleman has this privilege, why not give to the man who does his business in these small amounts, some similar exemption? On a transaction of $2,500, the business man, wheat farmer or anybody who does business in items of that size pays one dollar of a tax, but on cream tickets the tax on $2,500 would at a very conservative estimate amount to $10. Is there any fairness or justice in that? Is that asking for protection or for fair play? The hon. member for Brome says: Why should these tickets have to be issued in such small amounts?


Andrew Ross McMaster: It does not look businesslike.


Charles Wallace Stewart: I have already attempted to show to the hon. gentleman that there is a reason for this. When the results are as good as they have been in the western provinces, this is surely good business. This has been the best kind of business for western Canada. It has built up our dairy business there from practically nothing until it takes second place to none in the Dominion as regards quality, and we are growling in the quantity of the butter that we export. It is just with regard to the quality that the emphasis has to be placed on the system that is used. It might seem that I am unduly stressing this particular point, but I think I am not. I said that I was sorry the Minister of Agriculture was not with us. If he were, I am sure he would think back to the years when he himself took an active part in establishing, perhaps, the very system that is in vogue now', because he laid a good deal of the foundation of our dairy (industry in Saskatchewan and he would realize that at one fell swoop here the government is wiping away one method that was very efficient in bringing about the desired results. I am going to ask the Acting Minister of Finance to reconsider this.	I hope, although he is out of
reach of my words, Hansard will be brought to his attention and he may be asked to reconsider the imposition of this tax not because of the amount of it, that is insignificant so ^ far as our revenues are concerned, but it is a very considerable amount to place upon those who-and again I venture to bring upon myself the censure of the hon. member for Brome-to place upon those who are still engaged in what I may term an "infant industry;" many of them are just beginning to start into dairying in the west.
Privilege-Mr. Murdock

I do not know what the temper of the House is, Mr. Speaker-


Andrew Ross McMaster: Go on.


Charles Wallace Stewart: Hon. gentlemen who are sitting around me are, I know, doing so to give me courage that I may carry on; I know hon. gentlemen opposite are growing very tired; and as I have a number of comments to make yet, and it is now almost one o'clock, I would ask that I be allowed to adjourn the debate.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Mr. Speaker,
it was understood between the whips that the debate would go on until one o'clock, but I think we are sufficiently close to the hour that if my hon. friend cannot finish within that time I would offer no objection to his adjourning the debate.
Motion agreed to and1 debate adjourned.
On motion of Mr. Macdonald (Pictou) the House adjourned at 12.55 a.m. (Friday).
Friday, April 24, 1925