1925-02-09

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to
inform the House that Arthur Beauchesne, Esquire, K.C., F.R.S.C., has been appointed Clerk of the House of Commons, in the place of William Barton Northrup, Esquire, M.A., K.C., retired;
And that Thomas Munro Fraser, Esquire, LL.B., has been appointed Clerk Assistant.
FOURTH SESSION-FOURTEENTH PARLIAM ENT-OPENING Mr. Speaker read a communication from Mr. A. F. Sladen, Governor General's Secretary, announcing that His Excellency the Governor General would proceed to the Senate chamber at three p.m. on this day, for the purpose of formally opening the session of the Dominion Parliament.
A message was delivered by Colonel Ernest J. Chambers, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, as follows:
Mr. Speaker, His Excellency the Governor General desires the immediate attendance of this honourable House in the chamber of the honourable the Senate.
Accordingly the House went up to the Senate chamber.
And the House being returned to the Commons chamber:



VACANCIES

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to
inform the House that during the recess I 1
received communications from several members notifying me that the following vacancies had occurred in the representation, viz.:
Of Joseph Emile Stanislas Emmanuel d'Anjou, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Rimouski, consequent upon the acceptance of an office of emolument under the crown.
Of John Morrissy, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Northumberland (N.B.), by decease.
Of John Armstrong MacKelvie, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Yale, by decease.
Of Charles A. Gauvreau, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Temiscouata, by decease.
I accordingly issued my warrants to the Chief Electoral Officer to make out new writs of election for the said electoral districts respectively.



NEW MEMBERS

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to
inform the House that during the recess the Clerk of the House has received from the Chief Electoral Officer certificates of the election and return of the following members, viz:
Of William James Hushion, Esquire, for the electoral district of St. Antoine.
Of Sir Eugene Fiset, Kt., for the electoral district of Rimouski.
Of William Bunting Snowball, Esquire, for the electoral district of Northumberland, N.B.
Of Grote Stirling, Esquire, for the electoral district of Yale.
Of Charles Edward Hanna, Esquire, for the electoral district of West Hastings.
Of Jean Francois Pouliot, Esquire, for the electoral district of Temiscouata.



NEW MEMBERS INTRODUCED

[Stage Direction]
William James Hushion, Esquire, member for the electoral district of St. Antoine, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. P. J. A. Cardin.
Sir Eugene Fiset, Kt., member for the electoral district of Rimouski, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. Ernest Lapointe.
[Stage Direction]
Governor General's Speech
[Stage Direction]
William Bunting Snowball, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Northumberland (N.B.), introduced by Hon. A. B. Copp and Pius Michaud, Esquire.
Charles Edward Hanna, Esquire, member for the electoral district of West Hastings, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. James Murdock.
Jean Francois Pouliot, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Temiscouata, introduced by Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and Hon. Ernest Lapointe.

[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King (Prime Minister) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 1. respecting the Administration of Oaths of Office.

Hewitt Bostock: I have the honour to
inform the House that when the House did attend His Excellency the Governor General this day in the Senate chamber, His Excellency was pleased to make a speech to both houses of parliament. To prevent mistakes, I have obtained a copy, which is as follows:
Honourable Members of the Senate:
Members of the House of Commons:
I have pleasure in welcoming you to the fourth session of the fourteenth parliament.
Since prorogation, the economic situation throughout the world has notably improved. For Canada, the year 1924 was a period of substantial progress. In trade alone, the excess value of exports over imports was more than $260,000,000. The present year opens with prospects of sound and steady development. The financial and trade situation justifies the expectation of an early return to the gold basis.
The problem of the cost of living is the most important that my ministers have in mind at the present time, and every effort is being made to improve conditions with respect thereto. It is apparent that even the most rigid economy in public expenditures will not suffice to solve this pressing problem and the problem of taxation incidental thereto. Their ultimate solution lies largely in increased production and the development of new and wider markets. It is to be borne continually in mind that the existing burden of taxation is due mainly to uncontrollable expenditure in the nature of payments and obligations arising out of the war, and to the encumbered position of the National Railways.
To aid in an increase of production, through the development of our vast natural resources, every effort is being made to attract the right class of immigrants to Canada, and to secure their settlement in the undeveloped areas served by our great transportation systems. In due course steps will be taken to further colonization and settlement in other fertile regions such as those of the Peace river.
The cost of production of raw materials and the necessaries of life has been lessened by the reductions in the tariff and the sales tax effected at the last session. It is becoming increasingly evident, however, that quite as important a factor a3 the customs tariff in their effect upon production and living costs are transportation costs and rates, by land and sea.
I Mr. Speaker.]
It is the opinion of my advisers that the attention of parliament at the present session should be directed more particularly to the desirability of effecting a freer movement of commodities through an equalization of railway freight rates as between provinces and localities, and through a lowering of carrying charges upon shipments by water of the products of the farm, the mine, the forest, the fisheries, and of our manufacturing industries.
Some measure of control of transportation by land and sea is obviously essential to the promotion of interimperial trade, the expansion of export trade generally, and the development of Canadian trade via Canadian ports.
The procedure it may be advisable to follow with respect to railway freight rates will in some measure necessarily depend upon the decision of the Supreme Court in the appeal respecting the Crowsnest pass agreement. With regard to ocean freight rates, action is being taken to overcome the restraints on export trade due to the exactions of the powerful steamship combine known as the North Atlantic Steamship Conference. Your approval will be asked of a measure aimed at affording the government of Canada a control of ocean rates.
It is the intention of the government so to equip our important ports on the St. Lawrence route, and on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as to enable them to meet all requirements of modern navigation.
To secure greater co-operation in the administration of the laws of the two countries respecting smuggling and the prosecution and extradition of persons violating the anti-narcotic laws of either country, treaties between the Dominion of Canada and the United States have been negotiated and signed. They will be submitted for your approval prior to their ratification.
You will be asked to sanction the calling of a conference between the federal and provincial governments to consider the advisability of amending the British North America Act with respect to the constitution and powers of the Senate, and in other important particulars.	_
Your attention will also be invited, during the course of the session, to certain trade agreements, to legislation respecting the handling and marketing of Canadian grain and to other important matters. Members of the House of Commons:
The public accounts for the last fiscal year, and the estimates for the coming year, wil: be promptly submitted. In the preparation of the estimates, regard has been had to the need for continued economy with respect to the public services and public works.
Honourable Members of the Senate:
Members of the House of Commons:
May Divine Providence guide and bless your deliberations.


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


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

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

Deceased Members
Halbert, and that that portion of rule 10 limiting the members of the said committee be suspended in relation thereto.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

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

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

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



DECEASED MEMBERS

William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, in the interval which has elapsed since the last session of parliament two hon. members, very highly respected by all in this House, Mr. John Mor-rissy and Mr. Charles Arthur Gauvreau, have been taken from our midst. It is fitting before we enter upon the work of a new session that we should pause to pay a passing tribute to their memory and to express the sympathy which hon. members of this House feel with those who have been thus greatly bereaved.
Both hon. members were for a long time in public life, and both were very highly regarded. The late Mr. Morrissy entered this parliament only three years ago, at the general election of 1921, as the member for Northumberland, N.B. He had, however, been interested in the public affairs of his own province for a long time, having served in no less than three successive administrations of the province of New Brunswick, and having held the important post of Minister of Public li
Works for something like nine years. Mr. Morrissy had a keen liking and a genius for public life. It is said of him that he entered more political contests than any other public man in his province. Out of fourteen political contests he won as many as he lost. That under these circumstances he should at the time of his death have had, as he did have, the universal regard of those among whom he lived, and whose interests he strove so earnestly to serve, is perhaps the highest testimony that could be paid to his sterling integrity and to his fine independence, qualities in him which all of us well knew. It is a further testimony to his name and public example that the constituency which he represented in the provincial legislature should to-day be represented by his only son.
By all of us on this side of the House Mr. Morrissy will always be remembered for his kindly and generous disposition, for his loyal and helpful support, and for his fine public spirit and public service.
Mr. Gauvreau was one of the oldest members of the House, having entered parliament as the representative for Temiscouata in the by-election in 1897. He was returned! to parliament in the general elections of 1900, 1904, 1908, 1911, 1917 and 1921. For the quarter of a century that he thus represented that constituency he faithfully served the interests of his constituents and the people at large.
Mr. Gauvreau was one of the members of parliament who followed the proceedings of the House with a very keen interest. His talents were employed, however, even more in writing than in speaking. He did not take much part in debate; it was characteristic of him that he was prepared to leave the expression of views to others, and if he felt that his views were clearly enunciated that the right word had been said by others, he was content to leave matters there.
By profession Mr. Gauvreau was a journalist and a notary. He took a keen interest in the history of his native province and in literary pursuits generally, and he has left to our country contributions in prose and in verse which entitle his name to an honourable place among the authors of Canada. It is a tribute to his spirit of patriotic service, and to his example that both his sons served with great distinction in the -Canadian naval service during the period of the war.
Mr. Gauvreau will be very much missed in this House, particularly by members who likewise have been privileged to enjoy a long
Deceased Members

association with parliament. He was always active in matters pertaining to affairs of the House and of his party. He was very regular in his attendance, and took a keen interest in the work of committees. He was a faithful attendant at the party caucus, over which he not infrequently presided. There were about Mr. Gauvreau, the qualities which characterize the man of thought, conviction and determination. There was strength in his silent reserve, and a resoluteness of character to which his quiet demeanour lent emphasis. I do not know that anything more worthy could be said of him than that he was as much beloved by the members of this House who knew him, as he was honoured by the unbroken confidence of his constituents over a period of nearly twenty-five years.
Though past the age of sixty, neither of the honourable members whose deaths we deplore to-day had reached the allotted span of three score years and ten. Mr. Morrissy died in his sixty-seventh year; Mr. Gauvreau at the time of his death was in his sixty-fourth year. It is not by number of years but by reason of service that the memories of men are cherished. Whilst we honour the years of our late fellow-members, their names will command for all who knew them a deeper reverence.


Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: It seems inescapable that at each successive opening of parliament necessity arises for a reference to deaths that have occurred among us. On the present occasion those we lament were members of the Liberal persuasion, and the Prime Minister has outlined the chief incidents of their lives and their great services to the country with a familiarity and a knowledge that I could not rival. Suffice it to say that neither gentleman during his identification with this House deserved aught but kindly reference; they were men whose records were honourable and sincere.
Mr. Morrissy's contributions to public service were mainly, of course, in the provincial sphere. His career in the province of New Brunswick is known to all-his long succession of political encounters, his gallant victories, his honourable defeats, his fine domestic life, and I join warmly and sympathetically with the Prime Minister in offering to his widow and his family this testimony of the reverence of the House.
Mr. Gauvreau was the better known among us. He was one of our members of the longest standing. Very seldom is it the lot of anyone to sustain public confidence in a single
CMr. Mackenzie King.]
county for a quarter of a century. He who achieves that result must have sterling qualities; he must not only be able to command respect but, by talents that few possess, be able to preserve it.
It has been said that Mr. Gauvreau, unlike too many of us in Canadian public life, devoted himself with some energy and some success to literature. I have had the pleasure of reading one of his historical works, and can bear testimony not only to its literary quality but to its value in substance. Gladly I accord him a place among Canadian writers.
The services of his family in the war is something also that we record with pride. His two sons offered themselves in the navy in the early hours of their country's need. Both acquitted themselves creditably and gained a record that is honourable to their family and to their race.
To have been elected seven times a member of this House is itself an achievement greater than anything which might find mention in any eulogy after death. I assure all those who loved Mr. Gauvreau that he gained the esteem of political foes as well as political friends, and that we bear him now in honourable memory by reason of his personal qualities and his public services.


Mr. ROBERT EORKE (Brandon):: I would only add a few words to what has been so well expressed by the right honourable Prime Minister, and the right honourable leader of the opposition. Amid life's activities we are being constantly reminded that we have here no abiding state, and that two respected and esteemed members who have sat with us in this House shall know their places no more.
I did not have the opportunity, being a comparatively new member of the House, of forming a very intimate acquaintance with the two honourable gentlemen who have departed from us; but I knew both sufficiently well to respect and admire their character, their ability and their devotion to their duties in this House. I am sure they did their duty to their constituents and served Canada well; and I think the House, as a unit, will pay every respect to their memory, believing they did their best in the service of Canada and on all occasions acted honestly and uprightly.
We can now only tender our sympathy to the families of the deceased members and express the hope that they may find some consolation in the long and honourable records of those who have gone.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 4.27 p.m. until Monday, February 9.

Reports and Papers
Monday, February 9, 1925



REPORTS AND PAPERS

[Stage Direction]
Report of the Royal Grain Inquiry Commission.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Report on the North Atlantic Steamship Combine.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Annual Report of the Department of Trade and Commerce for the fiscal year ended* March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Low.
Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year ended March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr Low.
Regulations of the Board of Grain Commissioners for the period ended August 31, 1924. -Hon. Mr. Low.
Annual Report of the Department of Public Works for the year ended March 31, 1924. -Hon. Mr. King (Kootenay).
Annual Report of the National Gallery of Canada for the year 1923-24.-Hon. Mr. King (Kootenay).
Annual Report of the Postmaster General for the year ended* March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Murphy.
Rules of practice made by the Court of King's Bench in the province of Quebec concerning criminal cases.-Hon. Mr. Lapointe.
Annual Report of the Department of Immigration and Colonization for the year ended March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Robb.
Public Accounts of Canada for the year ended March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Robb (for Right Hon. Mr. Fielding).
Statements: Governor General's Warrants and Treasury Board over-rulings; Unforeseen expenses April 1, 1924 to January, 31, 1925; Superannuation and retiring allowances for year ended December 31, 1924; Civil Service Insurance for year ended March 31, 1924; Returned soldiers' insurance for year ended March 31, 1924; National Battlefields' Commission receipts and expenditures for year ended March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Robb (for Right Hon. Mr. Fielding).
Lists: Shareholders in Canadian chartered banks; Unclaimed balances, etc., in Canadian chartered banks; shareholders in Quebec savings banks; unclaimed balances, etc., in Quebec savings banks-Hon. Mr. Robb (for Right Hon. Mr. Fielding).
Superintendent of Insurance, report on business of 1923, vol. 1, fire and miscellaneous; voil. 2, life; also report on loan and trust companies for year ended December 31, 1924- Hon. Mr. Robb (for Right Hon. Mr. Fielding).
Statement of receipts and expenditures of the Royal Society of Canada for year ended April 30, 1924. Hon. Mr. Robb (for Right Hon. Mr. Fielding).
Annual Report of the Secretary of State for External Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1924.-Right Hon. Mr. Mackenzie King.
Copies of Orders in Council passed in connection with giving effect to various treaties of peace.-Right Hon. Mr. Mackenzie King.
Annual Report of the Department of Labour for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1924, including reports of proceedings under the following statutes:	Industrial Disputes Investigation Act; Employment Office Coordination Act; Technical Education Act, and. Government Annuities Act.-Hon. Mr. Mur-' dock.
Annual Report of the Department of PublicPrinting and Stationery for the fiscal year ended March 31,	1924, including the
publication of the statutes.-Hon. Mr, Murdock.
Mity-seventh Annual Report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1924,-Hon. Mr. Cardin.
Copies of Orders in Council passed under the provisions of the Dominion Lands Act, the Forest Preserves Act, the Migratory Birds Convention, the Dominion Lands Survey Act.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Regulations for the survey, disposal and management of Dominion lands in the railway belt of British Columbia.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Statement of land sold by the Canadian -racinc Railway Company during the year ended September 30, 1924,-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
List of leases, licenses, permits and other documents cancelled under section 3, chapter 21-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Report under section 7 of the Reclamation Act-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
. List of Permits issued to take intoxicants into the Northwest Territories during the year ended March 31, 1924-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Annual Report of the Department of the Interior for the year ended March 31, 1924,-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the year ended March 31, 1924-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1924,-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
List of land sales cancelled by the Department of Indian Affairs in accordance with section 61 of the Indian Act, for the period
[Stage Direction]
The Address-Sir Eugene Fiset
from April 1, 1924, to January 31, 1925.- Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
List of enfranchisements under section 3 of the Indian Act for the period from April 1, 1924, to January 31, 1925.-Hon. Mr. Stewart (Argenteuil).
Annual Report of the Minister of Agriculture for the year ended March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Report of the Director of Experimental Farms for the year ended March 31, 1924.

Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Orders and regulations passed under the authority of the Destruction of Insects and Pests Act for the year ended March 31, 1924.
[DOT]-Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Orders and regulations passed under the authority of the Cold Storage Act for the year ended March 31, 1924.-Hon. Mr. Motherwell.
Annual Report of the Weights and Measures, Electricity and Gas Inspection Services.- Hon. Mr. Low.
Copy of Order in Council of date the 28th November, 1924, to give effect to the provisions of section 46 of the Copyright Act, 1921. -Hon. Mr. Low.

Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Argenteuil, Minister of the Interior and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs):: 1 hereby give
notice to the House of Commons that no irrigation regulations have been enacted under the provisions of chapter 61, section 57 of the revised statutes; that no regulations have been enacted covering Dominion lands in the railway belt under the provision of the order in council of September 17, 1889; and that no regulations have been enacted under the provisions of chapter 5, section 5 of the Reclamation Act.
I have to report to this House also that during the fiscal year ended March 31, 1924, no new regulations respecting Indians were enacted, and that there were no remissions on sales of Indian lands.



BEREAVEMENT OF MR. SPEAKER

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, we have
just been reminded that the unavoidable absence of His Honour the Speaker from this chamber to-day is owing to the death yesterday of his elder daughter. I know that I express the wish of the House when I ask you kindly to convey to His Honour and to Madame Lemieux the very deep sympathy which we all feel with them in their bereavement.


Arthur Meighen: Mr. Speaker, it is only
within recent hours that I have heard the sad news referred to by the Prime Minister, and I had intended making some reference to it when I spoke later. His Honour the Speaker has suffered in late years more than his share of domestic affliction. His only son lies buried in France-the greatest single sacrifice a man could make for his country. Now this is followed by the loss of a daughter. I assure you on behalf of the party in this section of the House that we deeply sympathize with His Honour and Madame Lemieux.


Robert Forke: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the members who sit in this part of the House I beg to express our sincere sympathy with His Honour the Speaker in the great loss which he has suffered by the death of his daughter.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: I shall have
the honour of having transmitted to the honourable the Speaker the words of sympathy of the Prime Minister, the right hon. leader of the opposition and the hon. member for Brandon.



THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH


[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of the Speech delivered bv His Excellency the Governor General at the opening -'of the session.
Sir EUGENE FISET (Rimouski) (Translation) moved:: That an Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor General, offering the humble thanks of this House to His Excellency for the gracious speech which he has been pleased to .make to both houses of parliament.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I regret that my first words uttered within these precincts should be to express the very deep sympathy which I feel for the loss sustained by His Honour the Speaker. Allow me, Sir, to associate my self to -the right h-on. Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), to the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) as well as to the hon. leader of the Progressive party (Mr. Forke), to offer to the so afflicted family my very sincere and deep regret.
Mr. Speaker, I trust that I may be allowed, without infringing on parliamentary customs, to express to the right hon. Prime Minister our sincere and heartfelt thanks, for having so highly honoured the electors of the county of Rimouski by choosing their humble representative to move the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne.

The Address-Sir Eugene Fiset
I hope you will further excuse the very legitimate pride which I feel in representing in this House this county of Rimouski, so liberal in traditions, and whose political history is written in gold letters in the annals of our confederation.
I feel, Sir, a very deep emotion when I recollect that to-day I fill the place of my father as representative of this beautiful county. During twenty-five years of his political career he devoted the whole of his heart and energy to the fulfilment of his mandate, and in following in his footsteps I cherish but one thought, it is to live up to this reputation of courtesy, sincerity and frankness which characterized him. There are very few in this House, Sir, who, as colleagues, sat with him in the old parliament. The Hon. Mr. Lemieux was one of them and his old friend had predicted at the very outset his brilliant political career which has brought so much credit to our race. This political career, Sir, he has crowned by occupying the Speaker's chair and fulfilling the duties attached to it with so much courtesy, ability, tact and fairness. May I hope that he will share with the son a little of this good friendship which he had for the father, and, especially, that he will be very indulgent towards me in the first efforts of my political career.
Mr. Speaker, may I further be allowed to recall to this House your ex-colleague Mr. Emmanuel d'Anjou. He has thought proper to retire from the federal arena to accept a position in the public service. He left behind him, in the county of Rimouski, the reputation of a gifted young popular speaker who expressed himself with ease and warmth. He did honour to his mandate, and I am sure that all his old colleagues associate themselves with me in wishing him joy and success in his new career.
The task, Mr. Speaker, which has been entrusted to me weighs heavily upon me, and with some anxiety, I realize that if it was rather easy to sit on the floor of the House and help my ministers in answering questions in connection with the estimates of a department, it is an entirely different proposition for me to rise from my seat and attempt to fathom the important question that His Excellency the Governor Genera! has just submitted to the consideration of this House.
However, remembering that the motto which we adopted in Conventum on taking leave from our Alma Mater was: "Audaces fortuna juvat," I dare to be bold and submit to the House a few remarks which the Speech from the Throne suggests to me.
There is, Sir, in the Speech from the Throne a brief and very precise passage, and of such
importance to the economic life of the nation that it overshadows all other questions. We notice in this speech that the government realizing the capital importance of this question intend taking up the railway freight rates and tariff.
We now come, Sir, to the great stumbling-block of the natural development of our trade, the main impediment to the increase in our exports, and especially the greatest factor hindering our farming population from realizing the sale and marketing of their products. This problem affects the whole country, and, if the recriminations of the west seem to express themselves in a louder tone, I can assure you, Sir, that the calmer agitation of the east is no way less forcible.
May I suggest to the government, while considering this question, to apply those same principles of scientific evolution and political economy that were adopted at the last session regarding tariff reductions on raw material. Let them classify as raw material, the products of the soil, our coal and our fisheries. By applying this economical principle to the natural resources of the soil, and by reducing as much as possible this special form of taxation which weighs so heavily on all classes of our population, you will get to the root itself of the greatest obstacle which hinders the development of our national life, you will reduce the cost of living, and by allowing the masses to realize the ready cash so necessary for purchasing power you will help the producer and consumer as well as all classes of society. In my opinion, sir, that is the most important part of the sessional programme and I can vouch for an unanimous approval throughout the whole country if we, belonging to the federal deputation, find a solution to this problem. You will note, Mr. Speaker, that besides our transportation problems, the development of our seaports, those of our great river in particular, must be the special object of consideration by the government. Here is at last Sir, the dawn of that day so long awaited, and we all have the firm hope that the development of our national deep water harbour of our beautiful port of Quebec, will materialize at last. Is it necessary for me, Sir, to draw the attention of this House to the fact that before considering this undertaking the government gathered data and expert information of such a definite kind, thanks to the admirable report, plans and estimates of the Quebec harbour commissioners, that our large shipping concerns, as well as the railway companies, have already given the assurance of their full and entire approval to the carrying out of this project. Is there need, Sir, to add that this all important project is not a local one; it is a national undertaking which affects not only the province of Quebec,

The Address-Mr. Hanna
confidence in my leaders, it is for me a pleasure and an honour to move the motion of which you have been given notice.
Mr. CHARLES E. HANNA (West Hastings) :	Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to second
the resolution that an Address be presented to His Excellency, the Governor General, offering the humble thanks of this House to His Excellency for the gracious speech which he has been pleased to make to both Houses of Parliament.
And, Mr. Speaker, in doing so, may I crave the indulgence of the House in the few remarks I shall make? I am a novice to parliamentary life, and as all hon. members of this House have at one time or another been new members of the House, may I throw myself on their mercy, asking their sympathetic memory in my own behalf.
I recognize that the honour shown me in granting me this privilege to-day is in no way a personal one, but a very direct tribute to my constituency and the (people I represent, and a fine courtesy from the House to a new member. The riding of West Hastings, which has entrusted me with its responsibilities in this honoured House, is neither a small nor an unimportant one. It is one of the few so-called rural ridings of this province which did not recede in population in the years 1911 to 1921, but actually recorded a considerable increase in population. It is a riding which, with its sister riding of East Hastings, has a long and honourable history in the annals of Upper Canada. Drawing a great part of its original settlement from the devoted group of exiled patriots, the United Empire Loyalists, it received in later colonization large groups of excellent farming stock from the Old Land, and to-day presents a .prosperous, steady development, well balanced as between agricultural and industrial, and reflecting a solid growth in education, in expansion and in community spirit, founded on a homogeneous population. It has given to Canada one of her most revered and honoured Prime Ministers in Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and has sent forth to literary fame and a seat in the Mother of Parliaments, Sir Gilbert Parker.
At the present time, when the scarcity of free land and the pioneer effort required for the settlement of available land in northern Ontario and Quebec and the more remote districts of the prairies dampens the ardour of the immigrant, I may be forgiven a reference to the development of Hastings county. Much

of our land was naturally neither rich nor productive; in fact, many stretches of our northern areas are still wild, rugged and unbroken. Yet the practice of thrift, steady if small returns, and intensified farming with special concentration on dairying, have mads Hastings a county of pleasant, productive farms and prosperous homes. Perhaps no great over-night fortunes have been made, perhaps no booms have been recorded; but the sturdy, steady growth of this farming population, who are providing themselves with all moderate comforts, educating their children anc sending them forth in Canada's development, affords, I think, an example not unworthy ol note in Canada to-day.
According to the 1921 census, the 5,597 farms in the county of Hastings comprised a total acreage of 796,787. The value of these farm land's totalled $12,786,065; buildings $9,718,439; implements $4,065,489; live stock $5,969,413. His Excellency in the gracious speech just delivered has made reference to the probability of this House evolving some system of relief from the heavy ocean freight charges, against which Canadian export trade must struggle. Might I mention particularly the handicap imposed on stock farming, by this item? When I mention that on these farms in Hastings there were over 80,000 head of cattle, over 34,000 head of sheep and some 40,000 head of swine, while the stock sold yielded almost two million dollars, it will be realized that the relief suggested will not be confined to western Canada alone Commenting on this item may I also draw attention to the desirability of greater refrigeration accommodation on all boats engaged in our ocean carrying trade. Animal products in my county in this year brought over $3,000,000, and I am confident that there, as in all rural Ontario, this amount could be greatly increased if we were only assured of wider markets.
The efforts of the Department of Agriculture to obtain a better standardization of agricultural produce will be warmly supported in Hastings. It is in dairy produce particularly that we are interested. There are over seventy dairy factories in the county, with an output running over two million dollars per annum. Butter produced in 1923 totalled 1,377,129 pounds, and cheese 7,712,034 pounds. These figures will illustrate to what great extent the prosperity of the district is dependent on the maintenance of a good export trade. I am confident that the encouraging messages of trade consolidation and expansion mentioned in the Address will find hearty support throughout mixed farming circles in Canada.

The Address-Mr. Hanna
Canada's prosperity to-day rests in the first degree on the energetic development of her natural resources, whether the direct cultivation of the land to agricultural production, the utilization of her great mineral resources, or the encouragement and export expansion of her fisheries. Hastings county is very similar to the rest of the Dominion in that within the county we have great mineral wealth, the fisheries of the bay of Quinte, and splendid industrial development at Belleville and Trenton. In 1922, the commercial fish caught and landed in the bay of Quinte fisheries totalled about 1,500,000 pounds, valued to the fishermen at $134,835. While this may seem small compared with British Columbia and the Maritimes, it is nevertheless an industry of tremendous importance to the district and makes for a bond of understanding and sympathy between us in this matter that may not be so strong in some of the inland counties. I think that is well, for I feel that the intangible danger of sectionalism springing up in Canada is one more to be combated than many a more material bogey, and that it is by understanding among widely separated groups with common interests that we shall build up a united Dominion.
Growing evidence that our mineral resources are possibly the richest in the world makes it imperative that provincial and federal governments should unite in conserving those resources, promoting continuous production and maintaining within Canada capital, labour, transportation and power.
The county of Hastings is heavily mineralized. Among the non-metallics found are talc and fluorspar which occur in the vicinity of Madoc; limestone suitable for cement making, near Pointe Anne, seven miles from Belleville; marble and feldspar near Bancroft; aetinolite near the municipality bearing that name; and garnet in the northern part of the county. There are two cement plants in Belleville, and there are four brick-making plants in the county. Metallic ores found in Hastings county include iron both as hematite and as magnetite; mispickel ore which was mined some years ago for the recovery of gold and arsenic; iron pyrites near the village of Sulphide, mined by the Nichols Chemical Company, for the production of sulphuric acid at that point; copper ore in Madoc and Marmora townships; lead in the townships of Lake and Tudor; and molybdenum in Dunganon and Monteagle townships. There are many other mineral deposits in the county of Hastings which so far have not been exploited commercially.
As a business man in the city of Belleville, I am in a position daily to see the inseparable
interrelation of industry and agriculture and the constant interplay of one on the other. There are some fifty manufacturing concerns of varying size in the city of Belleville, and about twenty-five in Trenton. The capital invested runs well over seven million dollars, with a pay roll of over a million, and some three and a half millions to four millions annual gross production. Agricultural conditions have improved. The budget resolutions of last year did not increase imports to our district -they merely reduced the price of the articles affected. This gave a very evident stimulation in the general condition of agriculture, mining and fishing in our district, which was reflected in the neighbouring towns and villages. Basing my judgment solely on evidence within my own knowledge, I find that both agriculture and industry were aided.
The Address gave intimation of reduced expenditure. There is nothing more urgent in the interests of agricultural and industrial development, trade expansion, a renewed flow of population, and a consequent lowered average cost of transportation, than some shifting of the very heavy burden of taxation, federal, provincial and municipal, that young Canada bears upon his shoulders. There can be no division of opinion herein as between party and party, or between dominion and province, province and municipality. And, in the earnest hope that we may all unite towards attaining this desired end, I beg leave, Mr. Speaker, to second the motion moved by the hon. member for Rimouski.


Arthur Meighen: Mr. Speaker, it is my
privilege again to be the first in extending to the mover (Sir Eugene Fiset) and the seconder (Mr. Hanna) of the Address the congratulations of the House on having discharged acceptably a difficult task. We never had any fears as to the 'hon. member for Rimouski (Sir Eugene Fiset), and it is very apparent that the House of Commons is to have no terrors for him. This is not the hon. member's first experience in public circles. As we all know, he has been connected with the service of Canada for some decades, and I take the opportunity to bear testimony to the efficiency with which he discharged his duties. I hope his career in the higher sphere, as we call it, will be equally creditable to him. His health appears abundantly restored.
Speaking in somewhat different strain, maybe he will permit me to extend to him the sympathies of all who have laboured with him, in the fact, as it appears from very recent utterances of his, that for many years he

The Address-Mr. Meighen
suffered torments and anguish taking the part which it was his duty to take in the enforcement of a law very abhorrent to his sense of justice and of right.
We are joining in an Address of thanks to His Excellency for the gracious Speech he has been pleased to deliver. Without in the least degree reflecting on His Excellency, for we all know that no one except ourselves here had less to do with the Speech than had the Governor General, I think this gratitude on the part of the House is a tribute to our sense of humour. There is not much in the Speech but water. What there is of substance will prove very indigestible if I judge it from past experience.
I comment first on the absence of a reference which was to have been expected. The real problems of Canada are domestic. Fortunately we have no very serious or troublesome outside problems now. But one event has taken place in very recent times in which the government has participated, an event of considerable consequence, to which reference might have been expected-I refer to the meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations, and especially to what is known as the Geneva Protocol. This was a protocol in which the great majority of the league concurred, including, as the report showed, the British government and the representative of the government of Canada. I do not feel that I should discuss the protocol at all, much less go into it in detail. But, inasmuch as Canada's representative there, if I may refer to him by name, Hon. Senator Dandurand, concurred in the terms of the protocol, and we are to presume that Canada adheres thereto until at least we are differently informed from the government, ratification is, of course, in order if we as a parliament are to concur. If the government does not feel like asking parliament for ratification a statement of its attitude would undoubtedly be in order. It is of immense importance to us whether we are to concur or not. This protocol embodies a series of sanctions applicable after the event of a disarmament conference and applicable then to any agreement which may be arrived at at such conference and, as well, to the general relations of the concurring powers thereafter. To me it is difficult to understand why at least the example of the British government in this respect should not have been followed. It was the late administration there, the Labour government, which gave its adhesion to the protocol. The succeeding government, that of Mr. Baldwin, holding apparently somewhat different views, declines to ask for ratification
'Mr. Meighen.]
for the present, but gave a resume of its position and stated that negotiations with regard thereto are being carried on. In the Speech from the Throne we are left entirely in the dark as to what the mind of the government is. I make only this comment, and I do so at present in no spirit of criticism:
I do not think we have yet arrived at the time by many jrnars when the League ot Nations, of which I am a sincere supporter, can become anything in the nature of superstate or other than a new and better method for conducting international affairs; and I think it would be a very grave step on the part of this country to so contribute its own view as to virtually advise Great Britain to underwrite the security of the world.
There are one or two other features of the Speech from the Throne to which I now make reference. It is much shorter than last year. It contains the customary eulogy to the government itself, and the customary proclamation that everything is going well in the country. We are making, it says, substantial progress. It was declared substantial two and, as well -three years ago, and it is now more notable than ever. To this I will return later.
Following those words, however, the Speech goes on to mention that the cost of living is now the chief subject which possesses the minds of the administration, and states that, exercising all the economy in their power, they are not able to .take care of it. Something it says beyond economy is essential. Then the government states the reasons for its impotence. What the object of the paragraph could have been I am at a loss to know: I't is a compound of retrospection and despair without what you would expect-an element of remorse. There is nothing in the way of a promise of legislation; it has no useful place in the Speech at all.
From this, reference is made to the need of immigrants. We are assured that the government has been exerting every effort to attract the right class of immigrants to Canada, and in the same paragraph we are told that though every effort has been exhausted they are going to exert some more. I am not sure whether this is the thirteenth or fourteenth statement of immigration policy which has come from the administration. The only comment I make at the moment is: Where are the immigrants? Last year there was some accretion, an improvement over 1922; I think the numbers were about 137,000. For the year 1923, this is reduced to 124,000; but the trend is the more apparent from taking more recent months of each year. For

The Address-Mr. Meighen
the Hast nine months of 1923 the immigration was one hundred and twenty-four thousand odd and for the corresponding nine months of last year it was one hundred thousand odd. The multiplication of policies does not result in the multiplication of immigrants.
Then a reference is made to the tariff reductions of .last year which are said to have resulted in a lessening of the cost of production of raw materials and of the necessaries of life, and the intimation is that because of that legislation we are enjoying a lower cost of living in Canada- As a matter of fact, as all are aware, the cost of living has increased. There may have been reductions in the cost of production of certain articles, but the public gets the benefit when the reduction reaches 'the public and, as official statistics of the Minister of Trade and Commerce disclose, the public is paying higher than ever.
Coming to the next paragraph in the Speech we are advised that something must now be done in the way of control of transportation by land and sea. This it is stated is "obviously essential to the promotion of interimperial trade, the expansion of export trade generally, and the development of Canadian trade via Canadian ports." The procedure that is to be followed with respect to railway freight rates, we are told, will depend upon the decision of the Supreme court in the case of the present lawsuits which are under consideration there on the question of the Crows-nest pass agreement. But as to ocean freight rates "action is being taken to overcome the restraints on export trade due to the exactions of the powerful steamship combine known as the North Atlantic Steamship Conference." The address continues:
Your approval will be asked of a measure aimed at affording the government of Canada a control of ocean rates.
Obviously the government is determined to get away as far as possible from tariff discussions this session. To-day some new subject has to be hoisted to the fore. They have chosen transportation for the purpose. As to land rates, their policy cannot be disclosed till they know the decision of the Supreme court on the Crowsnest pass agreement. Well, may I ask, why not? I thought their policy had been disclosed, not only disclosed but proclaimed all through the length and breadth of half of Canada-not widely emphasized in the eastern portion, but boasted of with unlimited adulation in the west. Why wait for the decision of the Supreme court before deciding to continue the policy so long proclaimed? Did the Prime Minister not go through western Canada turning handsprings on platform after platform, telling the people that he had restored the Crowsnest pass agreement and was entitled to their everlasting gratitude? This was the policy of the government last summer, why is it not their policy to-day? The Supreme court may decide whether or not the government actually did restore the Crowsnest pass agreement-whether or not the legislation, or the absence of legislation, the course they pursued legislatively, resulted legally in the restoration of the agreement. This they can decide and this only; but whether the agreement stays or does not stay, the Parliament of Canada can decide, and the Parliament of Canada alone. No one has ever called in question the power of parliament to legislate yes or no as to the Crowsnest pass agreement. It is not a question of powers that is before the Supreme court at all-not in relation to parliament. Whatever the Supreme court may decide, this parliament alone controls the destiny of the Crowsnest pass agreement. Therefore, if it is still the policy of the administration to do what the Prime Minister proclaimed-and, I have not the slightest doubt, believed-that he had done, why is it not revealed in the Speech from the Throne? Why are we waiting for a decision, on the result of which nothing depends at all in so far as the policy of parliament is concerned? But the fact of the matter is, as everybody knows, and as the government was warned, that by the course they have pursued they have precipitated transportation anarchy and chaos in this country. They have shifted their ground month after month. We have had various sets of rates one month and other sets of rates another month, and the result of it all is to put the government in a position where it either has to reverse its own action or to compel chaos again. But when they come to the water they have no doubts. Both on the Great Lakes and on the ocean their policy is clear. A year ago we were told that there had to be "equalization" of transportation rates on the lakes, and the government brought in legislation amending what it had done the year before. Now they are going to proceed from the Great Lakes to the ocean and control the rates there. Is it worth while inquiring what their success has been on the lakes? Will any member of the government suggest that within the past year there has been one atom of control of one rate on the lakes? The Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) knows there has not. He knows the legislation was precipitate and abortive. He knows it was hastily computed. He never had any faith in it; in fact I am informed he warned his colleagues against it. But what-
The Address-Mr. Meighen

ever may be the various opinions of the government, we all know there is no regulation to-day. We all know that the grain commission which is supposed to have certain powers to define shippers or shipowners, has never exercised those powers, and does not control the rates at all. We know, as well, that the attempt this government made to establish control of rates on the lakes resulted only in the humiliation of the Dominion and in compelling us to throw ourselves at the feet of vessel owners in the United States and beg them to come back and violate the law of Canada. This government had to eat crow at the hands of American vessel owners. Such was the result of their attempt to control freights on the lakes. But, undaunted by their failure in that attempt, they now take to the broad Atlantic, and there they hope to succeed. I am reminded of a quotation given only a few days ago by the versatile member for George Etienne Cartier (Mr. Jacobs), from Childe Harold. As I heard it I thought he probably had this government in mind:
Man marks the earth with rain-his control
Stops with the shore.
Singlehanded they expect to control ocean rates. I do not know what the plan is; it has not been vouchsafed to us. But the newspaper reports indicate that some arrangement has been made with Sir William Petersen, or the company he controls, under which subsidies are to be paid' in large amounts from the Treasury of the Dominion, in return for which, deductions in rates or control of rates is to be secured.
I had placed in my hands just before entering the House the account of an address delivered by Sir William Petersen before the shareholders of the company of which he appears to be the head, two or three weeks ago. In this address he intimated as follows:
The business that I have been about is a little off the beaten track. You have to go out in search of business nowadays. It does not come to you. I have been on a business trip which I think may have resulted in some amount of success and may bring a considerable amount of success to this company. I am not in a position to disclose what the business is, except that it will materialize within the next few months, and I hope that in the early spring we will be able to see our ships sailing under very much more prosperous conditions than at the present prevail, conditions such as most shipping companies are subject to, dependent as they are on the existing low freights.
Sir William Petersen's interpretation of the agreement he appears to have made is that it will relieve his company from the hardships under which they have suffered because of the low prevailing freight rates. Then he adds a word of advice to all the shareholders of his company assembled there not to do as they had been doing, sacrificing their

shares at a discount, but to hold out for par, for if the shares were not worth it then, they soon would be, and he advised them in a very practical way that if any one of them got impatient, just to be good enough to come to him and he would buy the shares from him. So I think it may be fairly presumed that whether this venture is going to be better than the attempt on the Great Lakes for the taxpayers of Canada, it is fully expected to result a great deal better for the shareholders of Sir William Petersen's company.
I wish to make some reference to the Speech from the Throne of last year, just by way of comment on how seriously these prognostications in a Speech from the Throne really should be taken. The first two paragraphs I will read a little later. I start now with the third:
My ministers are strongly of the opinion that a reduction of taxation is of first importance, and that to this end the efforts already put forth to combine strict economy in the administration of the public services with rigorous retrenchment in public expenditures, should be furthered in as many directions as may be possible.
This was the promise of a year ago. The economy so far exercised was to have been furthered in all possible directions. I have in my hands the financial statement of this country to the end of the last day of January, and I find that the result of this promise to curtail expenditure and to exercise rigid economy in all possible directions for the ensuing year has been that the government have spent some $2,300,000 more than they spent the year before up to the same date, and this in the presence of a loss of revenue of $50,210,000. This shows that at the end of January, although at that date, $3,000,000 less in interest was paid on the public debt than had been paid at the same date the year before, we were behind last year the total sum of $52,601,031. This is "substantial progress"-progress in the way of building up a deficit. The next paragraph went on to say:
My ministers believe, however, that in virtue of economies already effected they will, when the present financial year closes, be able to announce to the country that for the first time since 1912-1913 the national budget has been balanced. They are further of the opinion that when the budget for the ensuing fiscal year is introduced it will be fomid that the relation between public revenue and public expenditure is such as to justify some immediate reduction of taxation.
How far was that vindicated by the event? I do not care what speech of a member of the government you refer to, you will always find that last year they reduced the debt of Canada by $35,000,000. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) is especially emphatie

The Address-Mr. Meighen
in his boast of this magnificent achievement. It is only insulting the intelligence of parliament to say that the achievement was brought about by the endorsation of 872.500,000, worth of bonds for the Canadian National Railways instead of by borrowing the money, thus adding it to the debt, and1 lending it to the railways. Of the plan adopted I have never made criticism, but of the concealment of the result I have made criticism, and make it now. That endorsement, in the present condition of the national railways, not resulting-as had been the case in previous years-in a corresponding, or any, reduction of its funded debt, was the same to the taxpayers of Canada, in so far as liability goes, as a direct borrowing of the money. Am. indirect liability in relation to a company that cannot pay its way is of equal seriousness, indeed, it is the same thing as direct liability. The Prime Minister says: You endorsed before and did not add that to the debt. I think I showed, and I believe to-day I can show again that this was not added because there was an offset of equal amount in reduction of the railways, funded debt. But, suppose in this I am wrong, how does that affect the case? If the Prime Minister is right, this means merely that our debt at that time was so much greater than represented. Therefore, our debt now is $72,500,000 greater than this government represents, and to make the matter perhaps clearer, if anything could, that very indirect obligation of $72,500,000 gives rise and will give rise this session to a portion of the estimates which this government is bound to .present, because this parliament has ito vote the interest on the very money represented by the guarantees. Thus was another promise fulfilled. But I pause only to comment that there is a significant absence of both sentences from the Speech from the Throne this year. Evidently the government despair of presenting, even by the device of endorsing the bonds of the Canadian National Railways, a balanced budget in 1825. Evidently, they despair of being able to convince even this parliament that they had the faintest justification for reducing taxation in Canada in the face of her increasing liabilities.
I read the next paragraph of the Speech from the Throne of last session:
In the opinion of the government, such reduction of taxation as it may be possible to effect should aim primarily at reducing the cost of the instruments of production in the industries based on the natural resources of the Dominion, thereby aiding materially in the development of our natural resources, and, through cheapened production, effecting a diminution also in the cost of living.
Whatever else may have been the consequence, there has been no diminution in the cost of living. I hold in my possession the chart of the Department of Labour, from which chart it appears that at the time the policies boasted of in this speech went into effect, the cost of living was 149 in the scale of the chart, and that at present the cost of living stands at 154. This is not reducing very fast. The cost of living stands to-day exactly where it stood at the beginning of 1924; it stands to-day three points higher than it was when the first budget of hon. gentlemen opposite went into effect. I am entirely aware that the chief reason for the cost of living figures is the increased price of breadstuffs. For that increased price it is quite true that the government has no responsibility; but what I am arguing is that no difference whatever in the cost of living figures has been effected by anything the government has done. But there have been a whole lot of other things that I can trace to the government's own action. The cost of living is higher than it was, but the industries of Canada are in a condition in which, as the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) knows, they cannot compare with the condition they were in a year ago. It was not the farm implement industry that was chiefly affected, if indeed it was affected at all. I never stated to this House that the action of the government would make worse the position of the farm implement industry last year. Indeed I predicted, as hon. gentlemen to my left will recall, that all the actual protection that would be removed from farm implements would be molecular. I was somewhat bandied on account of that prediction, but it was absolutely correct. The industries that produced the goods that went into the manufacture of farm implements were seriously affected, and the production of those goods in steel and in various other articles has fallen off by huge percentages, resulting in the throwing on the street of thousands, yes, tens of thousands of the workmen of this country. To this I will return later, because for each statement I have the proof out of the government's own departments and out of the figures presented to the administration by their own supporters. I find, as well, in a pamphlet issued by the Minister of Trade and Commerce that the index figure for wholesale prices registers today the highest level since August 1921. It registers to-day 165.2; at that time it registered 165.5. Thus has another prediction been verified.	-

The Address-Mr. Meighen
Now I read the following from last year's Speech from the Throne:
The stabilization and control of freight rates on grain from the head of the great lakes to Canadian ocean ports and thence to Liverpool, are receiving the closest attention.
The only thing incubated last session had reference to the rates on the lakes. I do not know what was equalized; I never could see what that word meant in this connection at all. But whatever was done in the way of pretended control resulted in a complete fiasco.
I pass from that to something else which was stated to be also in the government's mind.
The important subject of marine insurance as affecting our ports; the permanent equalization of the rate on Canadian flour, and the removal of discriminations in ocean rates on other Canadian products are receiving attention.
Parliament has not yet been informed what the result of the attention has been in so far as this insurance question is concerned. Has nothing at all been the consequence of all the mental worry of the administration? And what has been done about the equalization of the rates on flour? What -have they been "equalized" with? I asked last session what in the world the clause meant, and I got no answer. I find now that it meant nothing, for, so far as parliament has been advised, nothing whatever has been the consequence. Last session it was "receiving attention." Now we are advised in the Speech from the Throne of this session that there is to be a bill to control ocean rates.
Now I return to the feature of the Speech from the Throne common to this session and to last. Possibly I had better read the words of the Speech in this regard as it appears in Hansard of last Thursday:
Since prorogation, the economic situation throughout the world has notably improved.
I do not dispute the facts of the case. It certainly has improved in the United States. I fancy the general assertion is true.
For Canada, the year 1924 was a period of substantial progress. In trade alone, the excess value of exports over imports was more than $260,000,000. The present year opens with prospects of sound and steady development. The financial and trade situation justifies the expectation of an early return to the gold basis.
Let me follow this with the reading of the corresponding subjects in the Address of last year:
I am glad to be able to congratulate you upon the many evidences of increased prosperity. Though the general economic situation still reflects the consequences of the World War, the records of production, trade, transportation, employment and public finance have been uniformly increasingly favorable throughout the Dominion. The state of general employment has been distinctly better. The volume of business has steadily

increased, especially has the country reason to feel gratified at the expansion to a notable degree of its public revenues and decline of its expenditures.
Then comes this paragraph couched in apostolic diction:
I am persuaded that a reduction in taxation, and in production and transportation costs, such as will encourage the investment of capital in industrial enterprise and attract settlers in large numbers to our Dominion, are all that are necessary to effect an economic development hitherto unparalleled.
Forthwith the government commenced to effect just what they said they were persuaded would bring about this very desirable result, reduction in taxation and in production and transportation costs, "such as would encourage the investment of capital in industrial enterprises." I am going to make an examination of what really has followed these prognostications. I do not propose to say that there has been no encouraging feature at all in the twelve months that have gone by. If there is one, it is to be found in the import and export trade returns. I do not dispute the accuracy of the statement that our exports for the calendar year 1924 showed over imports a favourable balance of some $260,000,000. Hon. gentlemen in other days were accustomed to ridicule the boast by any government of a "favourable" trade balance. I never had any sympathy with that ridicule. I like a favourable trade balance. But a favourable trade balance under certain conditions means one thing, and under other conditions does not mean that thing at all. A favourable trade balance produced by sound policies arising from sound conditions is certainly something to be desired. In Canada we must have a favourable trade balance of about $300,000,000 to avoid going back in outside obligations alone, because our debts to the outside world compel us to send that amount annually to creditors beyond our shores. But how does the trade balance to-day -arise? Is it sound in every respect? In many respects it is. The trade balance is accounted for by a very heavy harvest in 1923, by very favourable weather conditions the export extending into the year 1924, and, as well, by high prices for the year 1924, prices which have undoubtedly resulted in amelioration of conditions in western Canada-not to any very marked degree, I am sorry to say, but that there has been amelioration there can be no doubt. These things are sound and right, but nobody could argue sensibly that they flow from any government policy. The government had no more to do with them than with the eclipse of the sun last month. There are other things, though, which while equally foreign to government policy are not fundamentally as sound. Our wood exports

The Address-Mr. Meighen
have grown since 1921-I mean unmanufactured wood-by some $38,000,000, and that does not include the export in the more advanced stage, which has grown bjr vast sums besides. The latter, of course, is not to be deplored, but the whole results in a reduction of the irreplaceable resources of this country, of any reduction of which we must take very serious account. In addition to an increase in wheat exports alone from 1921 of 68,000,000 bushels and some $38,000,000 worth, as I say, in unmanufactured wood, we find raw mineral production going out in tremendously increased quantities. That is not in itself in all respects unsound, hut nevertheless it is something for which the government has not the least occasion to credit itself-something which results not only from the enterprise of the Canadian people, but, so far as government is concerned at all, from the enterprise of provincial governments. Our gold, for example, has grown from an export of $2,-
500,000	in 1921 to $28,500,000 in 1924, and almost similar figures pertain to any of those things which in the main, account for the surplus of our trade-none of them going to the making of work for any appreciable number of the labourers of our country. For none of them in the least degree is any policy this government ever initiated, or continued, responsible.
When I have referred to external trade I have referred to what undoubtedly is the most attractive feature of conditions at the present time. May I ask, Mr. Speaker, are we to hesitate in this parliament to disclose what the actual condition of Canada is? Are members of this House to be cowed by the practice and the threats of hon. gentlemen opposite-I refer to members of the government-when they call a man "no patriot" and "traitor" if he tells what the real state of the people of Canada is? Is it an answer to a demonstration of fact to be described in the language of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) as a "Jeremiah"? Have we got to the stage when the people of this country are afraid to know the facts, prefer to bury their heads in the sand like the most brainless of animals? How is parliament to determine what the right course or the right policy is to be if we are not to take account of the state of affairs which surrounds us, by the results of policies in effect? Is this government to be permitted to place on the record of parliament such statements as this, that as a consequence of the government's policies, as the Prime Minister so often describes them, this thing has resulted and that thing- 2
"substantial progress" in 1922; "substantial progress" in 1923; "substantial progress" in 1924; and is no one to be permitted to show that such a statement is not true at all? I do not propose to be deterred. I think the Canadian people are in a serious mood. I do not think the Canadian people think that even in the face of the repeated bounties of Providence we have enjoyed real progress at all.	[DOT]
Now I proceed to make inquiry into what the evidence is of what the government claims as "substantial progress" throughout the year 1924:
The records of production, trade, transportation, employment and public finance have been uniformly increasingly favourable throughout the Dominion.
It will be noted that of all these records only one is dared to be mentioned this year, that of trade; and even our trade in its total is less than for the year 1923.
The state of general employment has been distinctly better.
I will read another.
The volume of business has steadily increased. Especially has the country reason to feel gratified at the expansion to a notable degree of its public revenues and decline of its expenditures.
Do you realize, Mr. Speaker, why none of these are mentioned this year? For the simple reason that the condition in every instance is distinctly the opposite: instead of a decline in the public expenditure and an increase in the public revenue there has been to date a decline of $50,000,000 odd in the public revenue and an increase of $2,300,000 in public expenditure. Passing back to the speech of last year:
The state of general employment has been distinctly better.
Since the House prorogued last year no less than 94,000 people in this Dominion have gone out of employment. That figure left alone is not fair. It is usual in this country-I think it is inevitable-that in the later months of the year there is a diminution of employment. The minister cannot point to a diminution equal to what has occurred since we prorogued this House. I have the figures before me-and this is a fair comparison: In the year 1924 the diminution of employment was approximately 39,000

it was that much less on the first of January, 1925, than on the first of January, 1924. This is all according to the employment records, not of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Murdock), but of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Low), the author of that celebrated piece of Liberal propaganda circulated' at the expense

The Address-Mr. Meighen

of the people of Canada, known as " Canada is Coming Through." The way I arrive at these figures, I may say for the information of the minister, is this:	I take the percentages; I
know that each one per cent represents about
8,000	or a little less, and I allow for the amount less. The number employed last first of January less, .then, on the first of January, 1923, is some 20,000. It is true that there were about 45,000 more than on the first of January, 1922. That is a fact. But there is not much to be cheerful over in that respect; 1921 represented all over this continent, indeed over the world but especially on this continent, the dip of the after-war reaction. The United States suffered equally with us and as a result millions of their workmen were roaming the streets. The United States has recovered, and steadily recovered. We had a very slight recovery in 1922, but we have gone back, and we are going back still. We have to-day 16 .per cent less employed in Canada than on the first of January, 1920. That 16 per cent would represent approximately 125,000 people.


Mr. MURDOCK:: Does the right hon.
gentleman know that he is quoting from only one side of the figures, and those figures secured from his friends the employers, and prepared, I think it can be shown, for a specific purpose? The right hon. gentleman is not giving the figures that have been secured from the labour organizations and from other sources, and which should be given in order to show the correct status.


Arthur Meighen: Nothing could have been more helpful than the interruption of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Murdock). He has impugned as seriously as he can do anything, the publications of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and he tells me I am not justified in standing in parliament and depending upon the official records of a department of this government. These records he says, are prejudiced. Instead of relying on those figures, he says I ought to base my statements on the report of the trades unions of Canada. Well, I have some trade union reports before me, I had almost forgotten about them; and, though out of turn, perhaps I could not do better than refer to them just now. These were brought to light on the day parliament opened this session, so they are very recent. I quote from a newspaper report of 6th February, of a meeting of the Montreal Trades and Labour Council:
Unemployment statistics for forty unions were submitted at the Montreal Trades and Labour Council last evening, showing that out of 48,000 men covered by these unions, 9,324 are out of employment, and 22,463 are working on short time.
IMr. Meighen.]
That is, sixty per cent either out of employment or on short time. I go on:
The extent of unemployment was greater than in the same period last year-
"Substantial progress" 1 -and a very serious condition of affairs existed among the working classes of the city. Aside from the reports of institutions the committee had been informed from other sources and individuals that more calls from distressed people for personal aid had been received than during last winter or the winter preceding.
The report concludes:
Whatever may be said about the need for a greater population in Canada, it cannot be denied that thousands who were born in this country are unable to find in it the opportunities for earning a livelihood. No more substantiation of this is necessary than figures given by the Secretary of Labour of the United States, Mr. James J. Davis. In the three years, 19211924 there legally entered the United States from Canada over 400,000 people, but according to Mr. Davis 850, 000 persons clandestinely entered the United States in the year 1923-1924 alone, much of which came over the Canadian border.
I would think it would. It goes on:
The Dominion Labour Bureau of Statistics estimates that through immigration and births in the past three years there has been added to our population 700,000.
Seven hundred thousand people added through immigration and births in three years. It goes on:
In the United States' estimate there has legally and illegally entered that country from Canada over 700,000.
I do not see very much more sunshine in the reports of the trade unions than I do in the reports of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. It might be added that the index figure now is 83.9 showing that more than 16 per cent less are employed now than on the 1st January, 1920. I would like the corresponding figures to be produced from the United States and to ascertain if there has been 16 per cent, or even 1 per cent reduction in the same period in that country.
Now I want to read the other references in the Speech from the Throne of a year ago, and show what has been left out this year:
Though the general economic situation still reflects the consequences of the World War, the records of production, trade, transportation, employment and public finance have been uniformly increasingly favourable.
I have shown the record of public finance. It has been uniformly increasingly worse. The record of transportation I have before me, and that record shows that to the end of November last, the latest figures that could be procured-I cannot find the figures at the moment, and I am willing to let it go on Hansard at this, but I know it is more-there was some 8,800,000 tons or $23,000,000 worth of transportation less in those eleven months than in the eleven months preceding. Trade also in its total is less, though the favourable

The Address-Mr. Meighen
trade balance is equal or perhaps a little more. If this clause of a year ago were sought to be reproduced to-day, and there was any fidelity to truth displayed, it would read as follows: "Through the general economic situation still reflects the consequence of the World War, the records of production, trade, transportation, employment and public finance have been uniformly increasing by worse throughout the Dominion. The state of general employment has been distinctly worse. The volume of business has steadily decreased"- as I shall show a little later. "Especially has the country reason to feel mortified at the expansion of the public expenditure and the notable decline of the public revenue."
The reason is apparent why the government did not follow the phraseology of last year. Now I want to make some comment on the next paragraph in the Speech of last year:
I am persuaded that a reduction in taxation, and in production and transportation costs, such as will encourage the investment of capital in industrial enterprise and attract settlers in large numbers to our Dominion are all that are necessary to effect an economic development hitherto unparalleled.
This has been supplemented by a speech of the Minister of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment (Mr. Beland), who true to the mottoes of his party and his colleagues announced even last night that Canada was "on the eve of a great wave of prosperity, the greatest in the last fifty years." I wonder what day there has been in the three years that have gone that we have not been told about that "eve" on the edge of which we are continually standing. Has anybody witnessed an eve that lasted quite so long? How is it the dawn never comes? How is it that none of these things result that the government predicts session after session? There was going to be a reduction in production and transportation costs following reductions in the tariff, and as a consequence there was going to be a flow of capital into investment in industrial enterprise, and settlers were to be attracted to this country in large numbers. The records of the Immigration department show that instead of attracting settlers in large numbers, the numbers are far smaller, and they are getting smaller continuously. In December last, only some 2,000 came to this Dominion. We have heard a very great deal lately about "returned Canadians." I do not know how the records are kept, but I do say that the numbers vary materially from those given out by the United States. In the reports of the United States the number of Canadians returning per year is not so great as the number this government says 2i
came back during a month-namely about
4,000.
But here is something very interesting indeed: If the minister will look at the returns of his own department he will find that the total number of Americans who came to Canada-American citizens, aliens and all the rest outside of Canadians-was, in the month of December, 741. My figures are tolerably close. But he says some 3,000 returned Canadians came in. Therefore, we are asked to believe that of all immigrants coming from that great republic, extending, as it does, east and west for a distance of nearly four thousand miles, four out of every five are returning Canadians! We do not see many of them here, and it would be very remarkable ind'eed if such a proportion as that could prevail. But let us assume that it does; what is the consequence? The emigration from Canada to the United States in 1923 was 181,973; in 1922, 62,289; and' in 1921, 52,929. For the eleven months of 1924,-the figures are the latest I can get,-the recorded emigration to the United States alone is 147,330.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: From what source are those figures taken?


Arthur Meighen: I sent to the Immigration Department of the United States direct and got them; they are quoted everywhere and accepted. But those figures only include the number who report themselves as going to the United States to remain; not those who report themselves as going there to visit, nor to others who get through by one surreptitious method or another; and the United States Minister of Labour reports that 850,000 have so crossed, not our borders merely, but all borders, in two years alone. In this connection I do not quote from any source the government can attack. The Trades and Labour Council of Montreal in their report, which I read to the Minister of Labour, declare that in these three years 300,000 of our people crossed over illegally and 400,000 legally. That body gives 700,000 as the number entering legally and illegally, and it bases its estimate on the report of the United States Minister of Labour. Mr. Grant Mac-Neil, Secretary of the Great War Veterans' Association, who has been appointed to a responsible position by this government and against whom I do not think they will comment, in the course of an article expresses the belief that a most conservative estimate of those who go, besides those who are counted, would place it at fifty per cent of the number who legally leave the Dominion. This is the lowest estimate I have seen anywhere. Now, let us keep within it and we

The Address-Mr. Meighen
have passing from Canada, in these three years of substantial progress, no less than
600,000	of our people. The Prime Minister says there have returned, in the last nine months, some 37,000. I have already stated: my reasons for questioning the accuracy of that return, but assuming it to be correct what does it amount to? Why it means this: That there are at least four and one-half going out for every one who came back during these years of " substantial progress ". All through these years when Canada has been reaping the rich reward of what are called " government policies " immigration diminishes. If I may be allowed to compare what has taken place in this respect in the three years that have gone with the three years that preceded them I shall present a few figures all taken from the government returns. Commencing with March 31, 1922, when, I suppose, this government had got fairly und'er way, the number who have entered Canada since, up to the end of 1924, according to the government records, is 322,017. The number who entered in the previous three years during exactly the same dates was 355,812. To bring in those 355,000 there was spent $4,713,000. To bring in the 322,000 in exactly the same period under this government the sum of $9,102,000 was voted. And while the three years preceding were passing, while the 355,000 odd were coming in, this country returned to its shores and absorbed in civil life no less than 400,000 of its soldiers from overseas. After they have returned, after they are all absorbed in civil life, this government spent over nine millions to bring in 322,000 immigrants; and while those 322,000 have been coming, 600,000 have been going from Canada to one country alone. This is the " substantial progress " which resulted' from the enactments of the policies of this government.
Now, I want to make some reference to a publication which has gone out - with the signature of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, gone out at very considerable expense. The title of this publication is: Canada is coming through! Stand by her; in your faith lies her strength.
None of us fail in faith in Canada, but do not let anybody confound faith in Canada with faith in Canada's government. Here is proof of the case. I will read a few of the statements made. In commenting on these statements I do not pay any attention to outside opinions, especially those expressed in after-dinner speeches. The House will note I have not quoted any. I believe in quoting facts based on the best authority that can be
	.
reached. Now to test the accuracy of the minister's proclamation:
Employment: Canada began the year 1924 on a considerably lower level than the United States, but has ended the year considerably above the latter. In January, 1924, our index number was 88.7. In November it was 93.0.
Does the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Low) say that is true? He says it is. Well, his department says it is not. The official figures of his department state that on January 1, 1925, our index number of employment was 83.9.


Mr. LOW:: Use the same dates.


Arthur Meighen: I am doing that very thing. So on January 1, 1925, our index number was 83.9 whilst the index number of the United States on the same day was 89.4.


Thomas Andrew Low: The leader of the opposition is quoting January 1, 1925?


Arthur Meighen: Certainly.


Thomas Andrew Low: I was not quoting January 1, 1925.


Arthur Meighen: Ah 1 But the Minister of Trade and Commerce says that Canada began the year 1924 at a considerably lower level than the United States but ended the year at a figure considerably above the latter. How do you end the year 1924 until you get to the first of January 1925?


Thomas Andrew Low: Stick to the dates I have
quoted, and you will find the figures are correct.


Arthur Meighen: What does the hon.
minister mean? Why did he tell the public that at the end of the year 1924 we were higher than the United States? We were nothing of the kind. That is the statement I am contradicting. One needs only to take our own government reports, the report of the minister himself, to show that the conditions of employment in the two countries are not comparable at all. In the last report I have in my possession, published by the minister for January, 1925, he said that there was last month a heavy reduction in employment. It also shows that we have lost in the year approximately 38,000, and the same report shows that taking the United States-and numbers of them are quoted here-during the same period there was improvement in employment. These reports are published by the minister himself. In the face of reports of his own department which I hold in my hand, he tells the public, at the public expense- because he charges them for the misrepresentation-that though we began the year worse

The Address-Mr. Meighen
than the States we ended it far better. He says:
The net operating revenue of Canadian railways showed an increase of over two and a half million in 1924 compared with the preceding year. The Canadian National lines in Canada have increased their net operating revenue in 1924 by over one and a half million.
I state, Mr. Speaker, in your hearing that not one word of that is true; quite the contrary is true, and I hold the official reports to prove my words.


Thomas Andrew Low: It is very easy to verify the
figures, and I think my hon. friend will find they are correct if he will take the trouble to look them up.


Arthur Meighen: I hold in my hand the report of the hon. gentleman's own department. This is the report up to the end of November; the report to the end of December is not yet published, it cannot be got; I tried at the minister's department to get it this morning, but could not do so. I quote a paragraph which refers to the Canadian National railways in Canada.
For the eleven months, January to November, gross revenue showed a decrease of $23,173,053.
I stop there only for a moment to remark, that it is gross revenue which really reflects the condition of the country, it is net revenue which reflects the management of the road, or at least contributes to decide on the merits of the management. I proceed to read all of this report:
For the eleven months January to November gross revenue showed a decrease of $23,173,053.
Expenses, a decrease of $21,927,997, and net operating revenues a decrease of $1,245,056.
Why does the minister give, through his department, the facts as obtained from the railways showing a diminution in net of about one and a quarter million, and then publish Liberal propaganda at the public expense to say there was an improvement in net of $2,250,000? The minister cannot escape by any differentiation, because his own department assures me those figures refer to railways in Canada. The figures are worse when they refer to the two companies, United States territory included.
I proceed to examine the second sentence, because I said it was not correct either. It says:
The Canadian National lines in Canada have increased their net operating revenue in 1924 by over one and a half million.
The House will note the minister only mentions the Canadian National lines "in Canada." Unfortunately he is wrong even then, because his own department has shown that to the
end of November there was an improvement of only about half a million dollars. I do not know what occurred in December, it was a bad month as every one knows, but to November 30, eleven months, the whole improvement in net of the Canadian National lines in Canada was limited to $593,701. How does the minister justify charging the public of this Dominion for circulating entirely misleading and false propaganda for his party? I do not want the House to get the idea that this is the full extent of the falling off for 1924, because this report goes on to say that when there is included the Canadian National lines in the States, the whole system, the reduction in net-and this is in operation alone-is $2,239,121. In addition to this loss, the failure to come up to last year in net operation, we have some five to six millions increase in fixed charges; so that there is no possibility-for December is past-of justifying the statements which have been made. The figures already known show that we will be seven to eight millions worse than we were a year ago. And this is considered as authority for the assertion that Canada is "coming through." I, have not any doubt Canada "came through" with money to pay for the advertisement. Another paragraph states:
On December 31, 1923 the Canadian people had on deposit in banks (chartered and savings) $1,274,326,346. This has increased to $1,274,427,867, by September 30, 1924.
That is an increase-to show that "Canada is coming through,"-of $101,341, or about a cent and an eighth each for the people of our country. Yerily, the "policies" of this government are making us rich. Of course the minister adds-and I have not had time to look into, it and therefore do not question the accuracy of his statement-that there had been an increase of ten million in deposits in provincial savings banks. The whole added together would be an increase of a dollar and fifteen cents for each person in this period of time. The minister says this is a demonstration of "substantial progress." Very well, when this government came into power deposits in our chartered banks were $1,387,084,646. They are now $1,274,427,867, and have thus diminished since this government came into power by $113,000,000. How is an increase of a dollar and fifteen cents in these months for each person in Canada to be called evidence of "substantial progress," if the large decrease which I have mentioned extending over the past three years in the deposits in chartered banks is not an evidence of actual retrogression? In fact, all this "substantial progress" the minister talks of. so far as finance goes,

The Address-Mr. Meighen
is progress in building up a deficit, and so far as industry goes, is progress in liquidation and so far as population goes, is progress towards the equator.
I come now to the question of industry, but before I do so there is a paragraph to which it would be really a shame not to refer. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, because I know you are possessed of this quality of mind, just to meditate on the exquisite humour latent in this boast:
The housing scarcity which was so serious as a result of the cessation of building during the war has now been fairly met and the nation is free to turn its capital into more immediately productive channels.
I do not dispute the fidelity, to truth, of that paragraph. Far be it from me to deny this government the capacity to solve any housing problem that ever affected a nation. Put this government in charge of any country on earth and in two years there will be no housing problem to solve. They will solve the housing problem, not by building houses for the people, but by Chasing the people from the houses. It may be worth while to add that the decrease in building permits last year from the year before was, according to the minister's own return, 7.3 per cent and from the previous year 17 per cent. What is to be thought of this conglomeration of falsities by which the minister seeks, at the expense of the people, to parade the alleged achievements of this adlministration?
Let me now make some reference to another question which has received some discussion during the summer. It has reference to a statement I made in the city of Stratford on the 20th day of August last, this statement which, according to the newspaper reports I have here, was to the effect that one thousand factories-


Mr. RANKIN:: Two thousand.


Arthur Meighen: I will come to thathad gone out of business since this government came into power. My words just now were "according to the newspapers." I think I said two thousand, and I know that later on I said two thousand after the violent and rather offensive contradictions of the Prime Minister had been adduced. By the figure two thousand I am prepared to stand.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Give us a list of them.


Arthur Meighen: Yes, I could give the Prime Minister a list. ,


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Will he?


Arthur Meighen: In fact, I think a list of most of them is in the hands of the Minister of Labour now.


James Murdock: No.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I would ask my right hon. friend-


Arthur Meighen: I do not think I should be asked to give publication to individual names, but I will give the proof of what I said right now. I hold in my hand the report of R. G. Dun & Go. for the last three years. Does the Prime Minister dispute that R. G. Dun & Co. is a responsible firm?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will quote to my right hon. friend from R. G. Dun & Co.


Arthur Meighen: What I stated was
that that number had closed their doors. I did not state that that number had failed. Many a business closes its doors that does not fail.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: On Saturday
night.


Arthur Meighen: This is a quotation in
Saturday Night from R. G. Dun & Co. The number of failures, not including those who merely closed their doors, was 625 in 1924. These would not all be included prior to the 20th of August, and I will come to a division later. In 1923, there were 792 and in 1922, 857. The first two years, 1922 and 1923, added together total 1,649 in failures alone. The proportion of the number given for 1924 which would be prior to the 20th of August is exactly 399, and I do not think it will be asserted that there were more failures in the latter part of 1924 than in the former part. Adding 399 to 1,649 we get a total of 2,048 failures according to R. G. Dun & Co., from the advent of this government up to August 20, 1924. In these figures, I repeat, are not included those, too many of them, who closed without the process of liquidation at all. For example, the big glass factory which was referred to last session in the budget speech did not go into liquidation. Have I established what I said? 1 asserted at the same time, from the same platform, that in the same period other industries had opened, but I stated what was the absolute fact, that in employing capacity they did not compare with those which had closed. This is what has been going on. This is what is supposed to satisfy the people of Canada. The debt of our country grows day 'by day, month by month. It is not possible any longer to conceal the truth; it is not possible

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
to remove it if present policies are pursued. According to the government records this country is at the present time $52,000,000 behind where it was at this time a year ago, and when the railway returns come in, that sum is bound to be increased. The actual deficit last year was about $38,000,000. Where are we to land at the end of 1924-25? Are we supposed to presume that sound policies are being pursued which result in this culmination? Is all this satisfactory to the people in Canada? Is this progress comparable with the position disclosed by our neighbours to the south, who are situated much as we are and whose debt after the war and three years after the war was virtually the same proportionately as our own? It is entirely out of the question to appeal to this government to surrender the sweets of power; these are dearer to them than life. But I hope it is not out of the question to ask them, in the sight of conditions which prevail to-day, taking into account and giving every weight to those few which present any favourable aspect at all, to admit their error, reverse their policy, and give Canada a chance.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, I have much pleasure in joining with my right hon. friend in congratulating the mover and the seconder of the Address. The hon. member (Sir Eugene Fiset) who moved the Address is anything but a stranger to this city, though he now comes to parliament for the first time. For many years his distinguished record in the public service has been well known, not only throughout this country, but in all parts of the British Empire. During the South African war he rendered gallant service in South Africa, and through the whole of the late war he rendered as important service as any administrative officer in this country could have rendered the empire at that time. We are, indeed, proud to welcome him to this parliament for his known ability in an executive and administrative capacity; after hearing him this afternoon I feel sure that welcome will be extended not less on the score of his qualities as a parliamentarian and his admirable gift for public speaking. It is, I am sure, a source of pride and pleasure to the hon. member to realize that he succeeds in this parliament his distinguished father who, for many years, represented here the constituency which the hon. member to-day represents and was also for many years a member of the Senate of Canada.
May I, in making mention of this fact, draw the attention of the House to the circumstance that of the five new members
whom we had the privilege of introducing on the day of the opening, and who sit on this side of the House, no less than three succeed their respective fathers to representation in this House of their respective constituencies. The hon. member for Northumberland, N.B. (Mr. Snowball), bears a name which is familiar to all who have followed the public life of Canada. His father was not only an hon. member of this House but was also later a member of the Senate and subsequently lieutenant governor of the province of New Brunswick. The hon. member for Temis-couata (Mr. Pouliot) comes also of a family whose name is well known in our political history, his father having also represented the present member's constituency with great distinction. Of the two other members who were introduced on the day of the opening, I think I can say that in the short time they have been before the public their names have become almost household words in the Dominion. The hon. member for St. Antoine (Mr. Hushion) has not been long in this House, but I venture to say that from one end of the country to the other the campaign which he waged so successfully in the city of Montreal during the recess is as well known as any recent political event.
May I, too, congratulate most, heartily the seconder of the address, the hon. member who now represents in this House the constituency of West Hastings (Mr. Hanna)? I am sure my right hon. friend will agree with me that the constituency of West Hastings is to-day better known throughout Canada than it ever was before. Hon. gentlemen will recollect that my right hon. friend himself opened the constituency last session in order to test public confidence in the present administration. In his courageous way, he chose a constituency that from the days of confederation had been the most strongly Tory of any in Ontario. He chose a constituency in which he thought it would be impossible for anyone other than an opponent of the government to ;be returned. He took a very active part in the fight, he brought forward the policies he is advocating in the most forcible way, and after the election had been fought his candidate was defeated by an overwhelming majority by the new member for the constituency. The hon. member for West Hastings will Hong be remembered by that well merited victory. By his speech in the House this afternoon, he has added laurels to those already won.
My right hon. friend is accustomed to say that the government of the day does not
24	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
enjoy public confidence, and he is continually putting forward his pet panacea of increased tariffs as a means of remedying the ills of the country. Knowing his faith in his patent remedy I marvel that in the course of his remarks to-day he did not speak at greater length on that particular theme. Perhaps he had in mind his somewhat unique procedure of presenting to the public on the eve of the opening of the House a manifesto in the name of his party which sets out his particular remedy for all existing conditions, and may have felt that the manifesto had received sufficient publicity .or the present. What I should like to draw to my right hon. friend's attention is that his panacea was before the Country in 1921 and met with a very poor welcome at that time. He started his campaign in the month of August, and continued it on into December; at the end of all that time, after telling the country that the one great remedy needed for its ills was increased protection, he was left without a single follower in six of the nine provinces of this Dominion. When parliament assembled he told us that the people had been deceived and that the government did not enjoy public confidence. Since Last session six vacancies have given rise to contests in as many constituencies and five out of the six have returned supporters of the present administration. The one remaining constituency, a constituency in which my right hon. friend himself also participated in the campaign, sent his supporter back by a very considerably reduced majority. In view of all this, I should think he would feel that the remedy which he is proposing is not one that the people of this country deem essmtial at this time.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I did not think it would be possible that my right hon. friend would be satisfied with the Speech from the Throne. Last session when a number of subjects were enumerated in the Speech !he told us that we might better have omitted some of them; today when one or two matters are not referred to in specific terms he tells us they ought to' have been included. It is apparent that no matter what the government might attempt in that regard1, it would be impossible to satisfy my right hon. friend.
However, he did make a reflection upon the Speech from the Throne which I think was scarcely justified, though possibly the reason for it may not be far to discover. He said that he thought the speech was mostly water, and that what there was in substance would be found indigestible. As I listened to my right hon. friend's halting and faltering review

of the speech, I could not help thinking that he must be suffering from the indisposition to which he had referred.
My right hon. friend spoke of the Geneva protocol and asked why no reference to it was contained in the speech, why the government had not declared its policy. He made some reference to the effect that the British government had announced its policy in the Speech from the Throne. If I caught his words aright, I would say that my right hon. friend is not correct in that statement. The British and other parliaments of the empire have met recently and so far as I am aware the government of not one of them has announced its policy with respect to the Geneva protocal in its Speech from the Throne; and I 'presume for the same reason-a reason that I think will appeal to hon. members of this House. As hon. members are aware, the government of Great Britain a short time ago made inquiry of the several governments of the dominions as to whether or not it would be possible for some of their members to be present in England during the spring of this year to discuss the Geneva protocol. On account of the opening of parliament members of the present administration thought it would be inconvenient, if not impossible, tc be absent at this time, and so informed1 His Majesty's government at Westminster. A similar reply, I think, was sent by practically all the other self-governing dominions. The suggestion was made that it should be possible, by means of correspondence between the dominion governments and the government of Great Britain to work out this matter in a manner that would be satisfactory to the empire as a whole. That position was accepted by the British government and we are at the present time in communication with His Majesty's government in Britain and with the other governments of the Empire, but in view of the fact that up to the present, the matter has not been disposed of in any final way, as advisers of His Excellency we thought it desirable and proper that no allusion should be made by him to the subject in the Speech from the Throne. The government will make its position known at the right time, and ample opportunity will be given to hon. members to discuss the protocol in all its bearings.
Now, my right hon. friend referred to a number of matters dealt with in the Speech from the Throne of the present session, and to the Speech from the Throne of 'last session -I do not know how he overlooked the Speech from the Throne of the year before- I shall not try to follow him in any detail; rather I shall take up the more important

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
points which he endeavoured to discuss in the course of his remarks. First, may I deal with the question of immigration, because it helps to illustrate as well as any the difference in point of view between my right hon. friend and myself. He said he did not propose to be bullied or bludgeoned or cowed into not making any statement that he thought it was right and proper that he should make. I do not think anyone has ever tried to bully or cow my right hon. friend, and were such an attempt made I may say for him that I do not think it would be successful; my right hon. friend would say what he intended to say, no matter what the consequences were. He said that he thought it was the duty of a public man to state the facte, and he raised the point of patriotism in that regard. Now, I agree with him in that; I think it is the duty of a patriot to see that his country is fully informed in regard to its own affairs. But I would say to my right hon. friend that patriotism extends beyond the mere statement of facts to the interpretation that is put upon the facts, and the true patriot to my mind is the man who will endeavour to put the facts relating to his own country's affairs before the people in such a light as will best serve the interests of his country. In other words he will not seek to interpret the facts in such a way as to serve party rather than public ends, which is, I regret to say, what I am afraid, my right hon. friend has been doing in some of the statistics and alleged facts he has been quoting of late.
In regard, then, to the question of immigration let me give the facts in as few words as I can, and in the light in which I think they should be presented to the country. We do not pretend that during the first year or two we were in office we were successful in bringing immigrants into this country in large numbers. That was no fault of the administration. My right hon. friend had been in office the year before, but at that time, when arrangements should have been made preparatory to the bringing of immigrants from the Old Country, sowing the seed abroad so that results of some value could have been produced, he was not concerned about emigration affairs in Great Britain or elsewhere; he was thinking of a general election which 1he brought on in Canada in the fall of 1921. The result was that when we came into office we found that for a year or more practically the whole machinery of immigration had been stopped, allowed to run down and to rust, that nothing had been done; that as a consequence the flow
of immigration had virtually dried up at its source. Naturally, until it was possible for the government to reopen the offices abroad and get the machinery of immigration effectively at work, there could be no such quick returns as might otherwise have been effected. Let me say this in fairness to my right hon. friend: I think there was some excuse for his attitude at the time. We were just succeeding the period of the war. We had but recently been in the period of demobilization. Men had been brought hack to this country by thousands and had to be re-established in industry. To have added large numbers of immigrants at that time, especially when there was the amount of unemployment as had existed during the preceding two or three winters, would not have been to help any immigration policy but would rather have created discontent and discord throughout the country, a condition which would have operated very seriously against the coming of immigrants to Canada later on. I want to put the facte clearly, as I think it is only by a plain understanding of the circumstances that the country will get a true appreciation of what has taken place.
May I draw attention to another fact, namely the position of Canada with respect to immigration as contrasted with the position of the country to the south? I need not remind this House-and by the way, I would like hon. members to keep this fact in mind throughout the discussion of questions relating to the conditions in Canada as compared with those in the United States, that Canada went into the war in August, 1914, whereas the United States went into the war in April,- I think it was April,-1917. While we with our much smaller population were spending over a million dollars a day in the maintenance of troops abroad, the United States was producing munitions, was producing ships, was selling vast quantities of supplies to Britain and the allies, and receiving in return vast sums of money. When the wav was over we found ourselves with our public debt increased to the extent of two billions of dollars, $1,650,000,000 of which had been added as the capital cost of the war, every single dollar of which was borrowed money and not a cent paid back. There is a circumstance which I think hon. members will do well to keep in mind-the whole capital cost of the war, so far as Canada is concerned, was met by hon. gentlemen opposite out of borrowed money. To-day we have to pay interest on that vast sum; we have to find means of paying off that principal. Yet my right hon. friend criticises us because public expenditures are so large.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
As a matter of fact, two-thirds of the public expenditure is uncontrollable; it cannot be altered one way or the other, no matter what the government may do. As against that increase in our public debt, the United States has been claiming payments from Britain, for supplies furnished during the war, an amount which, if I mistake not, is twice as large as our entire public debt after the war-something like four billions of dollars which will be paid in full over a series of years. When the conditions in Canada are compared with those in the United States, the true patriot is the man who will emphasize to the Canadian people the condition in which this country finds itself at present and the reasons why it has come into that position relative to the great country to the south.


Arthur Meighen: Will the Prime Minister permit a question? Will he not admit that the American debt per capita three years ago was as great as the debt of Canada per capita? Does not that answer his whole contention?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have not the figures of the debt per capita, but I have given a statement, which I think my right hon. friend will not question, as to the different positions occupied by the two countries at the time of which I speak. Now, may I continue what I was saying bearing upon immigration?
At the time that large numbers of men were coming back to Canada for demobilization here; at the time that we were suffering from a surplus of labour seeking occupation, there was a very considerable boom in the United' States. Men in the United States who had made vast sums of money during the war were spending money freely. Then the United States decided-and this helps to explain the immigration that flowed from Canada to that country-to introduce what i3 known as its quota law, designed to prohibit more than a certain number of persons from coming into the United States from Europe. They passed a law which provided that after a certain percentage of the existing number of peoples from the European countries had come in, no other persons from those countries were to enter the United States in that year. But that law did! not apply to Canada, and the result was that with the boom prevailing in the United States at the time, with the vacuum created in the labour market of that country by the quota law, a large number of mechanics and others from Canada crossed the border, as they are accustomed to a'o and have been doing from the days of confederation down to the present, 
to seek temporary employment and to get what benefit they could from the building boom to the south.
There is one further point to be remembered in connection with the crossing over to the United States, and it is this: no man can leave Canada to take up employment in the United States under contract expressed or implied; otherwise he is violating the Alien Labour Act of the United States and is liable to be returned. The only way a man can get into the United States and hope to enjoy the benefit of an opening in a trade or industry, of which he may have learned from a friend or in connection with which he may have received some promise of employment, is to declare that he is an immigrant. The result is that thousands of men who had no thought whatever of becoming permanent citizens of the United States, men who were out of employment temporarily in Canada and desired to take advantage of the boom in the United States, declared that they were immigrants. When the particular work that they went to the United States to engage in was over

it may have lasted two, three, up to four, five or six months-they came back to Canada
Unfortunately our immigration department kept no statistics of those who came back; there are therefore no statistics to set over against the figures recording the numbers who crossed over to the United States temporarily. We did start keeping a record in the month of March last, of those coming into Canada from the United States last year, who had been in the United States at least six months and under three years, and the figures show that they have been returning at the rate of 4,000 a month. Some 50,000 odd have come back within the last year who had been in the United States over six months and under three years. Our records do not show those who have been over there under a period of six months, but as every hon. gentleman who has a constituency alongside the American frontier, or even some distance remote from the frontier, knows, persons are crossing over to the United States at all seasons of the year-a certain number of men and some with their families, who go over there for a short time, very frequently, less than six months, and come back. All these people are shown by the United States authorities as immigrants. No record is kept in our department of their return to this country. Now may I be permitted to ask, is it not the part of patriotism, when people are struggling, as our people are, to improve conditions, to let the country know the truth, to put plainly before the people a circumstance as vital as that?

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
Let me go one step further. I asked my right hon. friend where he got his figures, and he told us he wrote to Washington for them; he got them from the Immigration Department at Washington. But did my right hon. friend write to the Census Department at Washington to get their record of native-born Canadians registered in the United States? This is what I wish to point out to him: During the time he was a member of a government, from 1910 to 1920, according to the records of the Immigration Department of the United States, the department to which he wrote for his information, between 700,000 and 800,000 Canadians, 742,000 to be exact, went over to the United States as immigrants from Canada. That is according to the statistics of the Immigration Department of the United States, one-tenth of the population of this country emigrated to the United States, during a part of the time my right hon. friend and his party were in office. Now, if I wanted to condemn him and his government, if I wanted to misrepresent the facts so as to confuse the public mind as he has been doing,
I would begin to make capital of that sort of thing.


Arthur Meighen: The Prime Minister could not, because they are going at twice that rate now.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend had better not make the situation worse for himself. Let me finish what I was going to say. Those are the figures of the United States Immigration Department, but the, United States Census Department also keeps a record of the persons who remained in the United States, and that record shows that in the year 1920 there were 78,000 fewer native-born Canadians in the United States than were recorded in the census ten years preceding. Now, where is my right hon. friend and his figures? I contend, Mr. Speaker, that exactly the same kind of thing is true to-day. I contend further that no man is a patriot who will quote the figures of the Immigration Department of the United States in the way in which my right hon. friend assumed to quote this afternoon, without at the same time making the kind of explanation which I have made here. He told the House, and it is to go out to the country, that 600,000 Canadians have gone to the United States as immigrants during the three years this government has been in office; that is one-fifteenth of the total population of Canada. Now, who believes that? Who can possibly believe it? Yet my right hon. friend stands there as the leader of a party, and for the sake of trying to make propaganda
to put into his patent medicine tariff scheme, he tells the people of this country that 600,000 Canadians have gone over to the United States as emigrants, and to prove it he quotes the figures he got from the United States Immigration Department. I would ask my right hon. friend, before he repeats those figures, to communicate with the Census Department of the United States and get public records that are authentic, that represent the true state of the case.
A word, now, in regard to manufactures. My right hon. friend went through the previous Speech from the Throne and found there some mention of increasing employment, increasing transportation and trade, increasing savings, and the like, all of which statements were absolutely true. Then he takes the Speech this year, and because mention of the same facts was not made in the same words, he would have the people believe that, relatively to the United States, this country has been going behind. As I recall his words- and he will correct me if I am wrong-he said that while conditions had been improving in the United States they had been growing worse in this country. He referred first to a depressed condition that existed for a time some years ago in the United States, then he came up to the present and said that while matters had been going behind in this country, they had not been going behind in the United States in the same way, and he gave certain figures of employment and living costs in an effort to substantiate what he was saying. I thought that possibly he might be repeating 'his afternoon some of the things he has been saying during the recess, so I went to some pains to get exact information to give to the House in regard to these matters, and if the House will permit me I shall quote a few reliable statistics which show the relative positions of the two countries during this past year, to have been the very reverse of my right hon. friend would have the House believe, namely that conditions were very much worse in Canada during 1924 than they were in the United States.
May I first of all remind him and other hon. members of the visits which we have had in this country within the last few months of two or three distinguished Americans, men of international reputation in the world of finance, statistics and economics, men who are accustomed to use care and caution in what they say about the conditions of any country of which they speak? May I recall teat without exception these gentlemen have referred to the relatively prosperous condition of Canada as compared with condi-
28	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
tions in the United States? There is no name better known in Wall street than that of Mr. Otto Kahn. He delivered a notable address in this city only a few weeks ago in which he told Canadians that to all intents and purposes, so far as he could see, no country had ahead of it quite the future that Canada has at the present time.


Mr. BOYS:: That is a different thing.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Different, in
what particular?


William Alves Boys: The difference between prospects and realities.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If my hon.
friend wants realities I will give him a quotation from another authority. He may have heard or read of some of the speeches made by Mr. Roger Babson, who, as I think hon. member's know, is an outstanding statistician in the United States. Here is what Mr. Babson had to say, speaking at Toronto on the 25r,h of September last:
The situation to-day in Canada is fundamentally much better than in the States, I say that as a statistician not as a publicity man. and my reasons are that in the States we have had this temporary inflation of six month or a year, which suspended the period of re-adjustment.
Conditions in many of the United States cities are worse than in Canada. The boom of 1923 is over and the reaction is taking place; whereas in Canada the re-adjustment of the past twelve months is now behind us instead of ahead of us. Now business has dropped off in the States, factories are working to fifty or sixty per ecnt capacity.
Is that reliable enough for my right hon. friend?


Arthur Meighen: When was that?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That was in
September, 1924.
In the States they are working fifty or sixty per cent capacity, the credit situation is very poor and your workmen who went over the line a couple of years ago are very glad to come back here because conditions at the moment are better in Canada than in the United States. I believe you will return to normal conditions and a period of prosperity sooner here in Canada than we will in the United States.
Now, there is reliability, patriotism if you wish.


William Alves Boys: I hope he is right.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I can assure
my hon. friend that Mr. Babson makes no statement unless he is convinced that it is right.


Arthur Meighen: You can quote him on
anything.
Mr. MACKENZIE KING. I have given a quotation from the speech of a distinguished statistician of the United States who, coming

to Canada, makes the statement to which I have just referred. My right hon. friend the leader of the opposition says that Mr Babson can be quoted in different ways. Very well, I will take the official statistics of the United States and quote to my right hon. friend from that source. I think that probably the bulletins of the Federal Reserve Board are as authoritative and conservative in their statements as any that are published in the United States. I have the latest number, the January issue, of the Federal Reserve Bulletin here which gives industrial and commercial data relating to November, 1924. It says that in that month in the United States there was decreased production in the basic industries, decreased railroad car loadings, and decreased wholesale trade. For the six months ending November the production in basic industries for 1924 is 21 per cent lower than in 1923, and employment is still 12 per cent lower than the year before. Wholesale trade for November, 1924, is only 84 per cent of that of the same month in 1919. For the six months ending November, railroad car loadings in 1924 are 5 per cent smaller than for 1923. Factory employment for November is the same as for October-9 per cent below the 1919 and 1923 level and 20 per cent below the high peak of June 1920.
I have here a statistical table which appears in the Federal Reserve Bulletin on the production in basic industries which gives the whole industrial tale in a nut shell, by comparative months, 1924 as against 1923. I myself have added a column giving the 1924 shrinkage. Here we have the percentages for the five months' period, June to the end of October. I would pause to remind the House that the production of the basic industries determines in a very exact and direct way the production of all the secondary industries. If the basic industries have fallen off in production, the secondary industries will also fall off considerably. Now, what do the figures from this source show as to the conditions in the United States from June to the end of October last year? Let me give the figures:
United States Basic Industries, 1923 and 1924
Month	1923	1924	1924	shrinkageJune	
122	94	28July	
121	94	27August	
120	94	26September	114	103	11October	118	109	95 months average	
119	98	21
The table shows that in the five months ending October, 1924, the basic production in all lines of industry in the United States was 21 per cent less than during the same period of the year before. Could there be more con-

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
vincing evidence of the very considerable depression existing in the United States last year?


Arthur Meighen: Has my right hon. friend figures comparing conditions in the United States during the past year with conditions in that country three years before? It is that that I referred to. '


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have some figures here covering that period, but I thought my right hon. friend had made a comparison between the years 1923 and 1924, these being the years mentioned in the Speeches from the Throne to which his references related. It was his argument along that line that I was endeavouring to answer.
Now to present further particulars. My right hon. friend referred to the iron and steel industry in Canada, and spoke about the falling off in the production of those commodities, leaving the impression that Canada alone in this particular had suffered. Let us examine first the situation with respect to iron and steel in the United States. The United States Federal Reserve Bulletin for December, 1924, at page 953, sets out in parallel columns the iron and steel activity for October, 1924, compared with October, 1923. Against these items I have added the percentages of 1924 shrinkage. Here is the table:
United States Iron and	Steel Production	
October	October	1924 decreaseCommodity movements 1924	1923	per centIron-ore shipments at Lake Superior (long tons)	
5,597,000	8.100,000	44iPig-iron production (long tons)	
2,477,000	3.149,000	27Steel-ingot production (tons)	
3 111,000	3.577,000	15Unfilled orders, United States Steel Corporation (long tons)	
3,525,000	4,673,000	32J
These figures give as true an index of the depression in a basic industry of the United States as it would be possible to find.
On page 951 of the Federal Reserve Bulletin it is shown that pig-iron for September, 1924, averaged 33 per cent below the 1923 level for the same month. Steel ingot production was 17 per cent lower. The total iron and steel production for September and October, 1924, was only 77 per cent of the production for the same months in 1919, five years before. Only 45 per cent of the total number of blast furnaces in the country were in active operation at the end of October, 1924. I submit that if my right hon. friend takes the trouble to compare the statistics in this country with the statistics which I have just quoted from authentic sources in the United States he will find that, having regard to the tremendous influence which conditions in the country to the south have upon conditions in Canada, our showing is considerably the better.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Before the
House took recess at six o'clock I was speaking in reference to a remark made by my right hon. friend (Mr. Meighen) to the effect- and I have the exact words this time-that while the United States was recovering, and steadily recovering, we in Canada were going back, and going back steadily; and he stated with reference to some of the figures which he had quoted that he would like to have the corresponding figures produced for the United States. Fortunately I have with me the figures that I think correspond, so far as the United States is concerned, and I purpose this evening continuing to give further statistics illustrative of the truth of the remark which I wras making, namely, that while there has been during the past year a slight falling off, in some directions in the industry and trade of this country, it has not been anything comparable to the falling off that has taken place in the United States; indeed if an opportunity were given to study the matter thoroughly, one would very probably find that in very considerable measure the slight falling off in employment in this country was directly attributable to the much larger slump in industry and trade which had taken place across the border during the same period of time. I pointed out that in gauging the industrial situation economists have always had particular regard to the basic industries, and that the iron and steel industry is usually regarded as the most significant. The figures that I gave the House indicated I think conclusively, how very considerable had been the falling off in the production of the basic industries of the United States during the period I mentioned, and in particular the falling off in the production of iron and steel. I should like to supplement the figures as to iron and steel by those of a table which is to be found in the Iron Age, a journal that relates more particularly to the iron and steel trade, and which contains official data on that industry. I should like, if the House will permit, to place these figures on the record as they appear in this table. These figures give the total production of pig iron for the

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
years 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1924. They show that during the year 1924 the total production of iron and steel in the United States was 31 million tons; the total production of the preceding year, 1923, was 40 million tons. In other words, in the year just concluded Production of pig iron in the United States, 1920-24,
and steel
there was less production by 29 per cent of pig iron in the United States than in the year previous, and there was less production by 19 per cent than in the year 1920. The table is as follows:
as shown by the Iron Age. Official data of the iron trade.
1924	1923	1922	1921	1920January	3,018,890 3,074,757 3,466,086 3,233,428 2,615,110 2,026,221 1,784,899 1,887,145 2,053,264 2,477,127 2,509,673 2.961,702	3,229,604 2,994,187 3,523,868 3,549,736 3,867,694 3,676,445 3,678,334 3,449,493 3,125,512 3,149,158 2,894,295 2,920,982	1,644,951 1,629,991 2,035,920 2,072,114 2,306,679 2,361,028 2,405,365 1,816,170 2,033,720 2,637,844 2,849,703 3,086,898	2,415,292	3,015,181February	March	1,595,522	3,375,907April	May	June	3,043,540 3,067,043July	August	September	October	1,246,676 1,415,481 1,649,086	3,292.597 2,934,908 2,703,855November	December


Mr. WHITE:: What is the date of the publication?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It is for the
month of January.


Richard Smeaton White: But the date of the Iron
Age in which that table appears?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Last month,
but it relates to the last calendar year.


Richard Smeaton White: The paper is published every week, and I should like to have the date.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will have to get the date for my hon. friend. It is one of the first numbers of this year. So far as Canada is concerned there has been a falling off in the iron and steel industry this last year as compared with the previous year, but the total production of iron and steel in 1924 was considerably greater than in 1922. The falling off has been, perhaps, a little greater than in the United States, but that was to be expected having regard to the relative size of the steel interests and to the relative demand in the two countries for iron and steel products.
My right hon. friend sought to convey the impression that the employment situation was very much worse in Canada last year than in the United States. I have here some figures taken from the Fed'eral Reserve Bulletin for the month of December which reduces to a scientific table, on the basis of an index number, the conditions of employment in the United States for the months of June, July, August, September, and October. I take these particular months just because they happen to have appeared in this number, and were the latest I was able to find at the time at which I was investigating this subject.

Employment Index No.
in the United
Month	States	DecreaseJune	
103	90	13July	
101	87	14August	
101	87	14September	
101	90	11October	
101	91	10Average for 5 months 101	89	12
If we take the average for the five months, there was a decrease from the average of 101 as the employment index number for 1923, to 89 as the index number for 1924, or an average reduction of 12.
I have had corresponding figures for Canada prepared by the Bureau of Statistics with respect to the five months ending October, 1924. Instead of showing an average decrease in employment for the five months, of 12 as in the case of the index numbers in the United States, they show an average decrease over the same period in this country of 6.6 for the five months ending October, 1924, as compared with the corresponding months of 1923. I will give the figures by months:
Employment Decrease in Decrease in Index No. Canada United States in Canada Month	1923	1924June	
93.5	88.4	5.1	13July	
93.6	87.7	5.9	14August	
93.5	86.2	7.3	14September .. .. 93.0	84.5	8.5	11October	
91.8	85.7	6.1	1093.1	86.5	6.6	12
If we take the average for the five months in Canada, the average during 1923 was 93.1 and during 1924, 86.5, or an average decrease of 6.6 as against an average decrease of 12 in the United States covering the same period.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
In other words the decrease in employment in the United States for the period mentioned was nearly twice as great as in Canada.
Regarding employment, the Federal Reserve Bulletin for December, 1924, at page 919, has the following editorial comment:
As compared with previous years the general index of employment is 10 per cent lower than it was a year ago, and about on a level with that of September, 1922. The iron and steel and automobile indices are about one-sixth less than in October, 1923, but correspond rather closely to the level of two years ago. Textiles, owing largely to the small volume of employment in the clothing industry, appear to be still below all months since 1921. No group index is as high as in October of last year, 1923. . . . Earnings, however, were 13.3 per cent less than a year ago, and as in the case of employment were about on the same level as two years ago. . . . Wage rate decreases averaged 9.5 per cent and affected 20,000 employees.
These are accurate statistics with respect to the depression in the United States, and I venture to say that anyone who compares them with corresponding data in this country will find that conditions in the United States were relatively very much worse than they have been here.
I have in my hand a statistical table which, with the permission of the House, I should like to have inserted in Hansard without being obliged to read the details. It gives by a series of index numbers the position of employment in the manufacturing and transportation industries of both Canada and the United States for nearly every month during 1923 and 1924.
Index numbers of employment in manufacturing and steam railway operation in Canada and the United States, based upon the average index numbers reported by employers in 1923 as 100.
Manufacturing Transportation
Canada	United States Canada	United StatesJan. 1923.. ..	.. 87.5	98	96.5	94.7Feb	.. 95.2	100	93.5	94.7Mar	.. 98.0	102	91.9	96.5Apr	.. 95.9	102	92.3	98.2May	.. 101.4	102	93.7	100.9June	.. 104.7	102	100.4	102.6July	.. 104.8	100	103.3	104.4Aug	.. 104.7	100	104.4	105.2Sept	.. 104.2	100	104.4	103.5Oct	.. 102.8	99	107.0	103.5Nov	.. 102.1	99	107.6	100Dec	.. 98.8	97	104.8	95.6Jan. 1924.. ..	.. 89.7	95	98.8	93.0Feb	.. 95.1	97	95.5	93.0Mar	.. 96.3	96	95.0	93.8Apr	.. 96.9	95	95.5	95.6May	.. 98.2	91	97.0	95.6June	.. 99.0	88	101.4	94.7July	.. 98.2	85	101.3	94.7Aug	.. 96.5	85	102.0	95.6Sept	.. 94.6	87	99.3	95.8Oct	.. 96.0	88	100.4	
The significant feature of this table is that it shows that employment conditions are more
rapidly approaching normal in Canada than in the United States. The monthly statistics of employment in Canada, are reported by employers in all industries other than agriculture to the general statistics branch of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. In the United States monthly statistics of factory employment are compiled by the Bureau of Labour Statistics, while those of employment on railways are compiled by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The results are published in the Survey of Current Business, which is published by the United States Department of Commerce. The United States figures for railway employment used in the tables which I have quoted will be found on page 152, those relating to factory employment on page 156 of the November 1924 issue of this publication. In order to facilitate comparison the average employment for 1923 has been taken as 100 in each of the series considered. As I have said, it will be seen from the tables that the latest figures show that both manufacturing and1 transportation more nearly approach the 1923 level in Canada than in the United States. As regards manufacturing, the latest comparative figures for October are 96 in Canada as against 88 in the United States, whilst as regards transportation, the September figure for Canada was 99.3 as compared with 95.8 in the United States.
My right hon. friend spoke this afternoon of commercial failures and referred to Dun's report. I should like to direct the attention of the House to the difference in the impression left by the remarks of my right hon. friend this afternoon and that created by remarks which he has been making since last session and which have been retold throughout the country from month to month, up to the present time. If I am not mistaken, when he addressed a meeting in Stratford and meetings in several other cities and towns during the summer, the right hon. leader of the opposition created in the public mind the impression that the number of factories that closed was something like 2,000. Now, I do not wish to do my right hon. friend an injustice. If that was not the impression which he sought to convey I would be glad to have him say so. I venture to say there is not an hon. member who did not gather from his statement, when he said that two thousand factories had been closed that hs meant factories, and that he was trying to lead the public to believe that such had been the disastrous effect of the changes made in the tariff at the last session of this parliament. When this afternoon he was questioned as to the list of factories closed which he said he had-for he told the public that he
32	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
had a list, but did not want to give away the names of the manufacturing concerns that had failed-he quoted as his authority Dun's reports on commercial failures, reports which include under the heading of failures all kinds of commercial, manufacturing and other failures.


Arthur Meighen: I aid not quote any except manufacturing failures as given by Dun's reports.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am glad my right hon. friend has [pointed1 that out, because it shows he has very much in his mind what I am coming to. He says he only quoted manufacturing failures from Dun's reports. But he never told anyone till he was questioned in the House this afternoon that it was Dun's reports of failures he was quoting. He spoke of two thousand factories having been closed. Now, every hon. member knows that when Dun's report refers to manufacturers' failures it does not refer to factories in the sense in which that term is generally und'erstood by the people of this country. There are many little concerns employing four, five or half a dozen hands that start in business with borrowed capital and do not succeed, and they are put down in Dun's report as manufacturers' failures. Those are the concerns my right hon. friend included in his two thousand' factories that had closed their doors. But my right hon. friend did not bring out another very important and salient point in connection with the figures he was quoting; he said that many of these failures were the result of changes in the tariff which were made last session.


Arthur Meighen: Will the right hon. gentleman just quote what I said!? My statement was a definite one.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am trying to be fair to my right hon. friend.


Arthur Meighen: He is not.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My right hon. friend might as well keep in mind that the impression created by words used is the important consideration. He may twist and squirm and manoeuvre, in conjuring with figures to make an impression, but if that impression is false or distorted! he is giving a false idea of the situation, no matter what language or figures he uses.


Arthur Meighen: Quote my words.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The words
which my right hon. friend used throughout this country created the impression that some (Mr. Mackenzie King.]
two thousand factories had been closed as a result of the tariff changes which were brought about through the introduction of the budget of last spring.


Arthur Meighen: Quote my words.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will quote some of my right hon. friend's words. I did not bring all his words here; he is quite well aware of that fact.


Arthur Meighen: If any.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think I can probably quote one or two for my right hon. friend. I have quotations here from a speech made by him at Stratford on August 20 of last year. He is reported as follows in the London Advertiser of August 21, 1924- possibly he will say he did not use the words:
King closed factories, put workmen on the streets by thousands, reduced output of industries, but has not reduced the price of a single implement.


Arthur Meighen: Are those headings by the London Advertiser?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No, those are quotations from my right hon. friend's speech.


Arthur Meighen: Take another paper.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will take the Hansard reports of 1924, page 2114, of a
speech made on May 15 by my right hon. friend in this chamber in the presence of many hon. members who are here to-day. What did he say then?
There is alarm, there is dismay; there is a stoppage of expansion; there is depression. . . . We are circumscribing the area of employment every day. The inevitable consequences are upon us. Capital alarmed, business harassed, production dislocated, agriculture unassisted, labour contracted, tens of thousands of our children exiled, the debt heavier, taxation multiplied, the budget juggled, these are the reapings of thirty months of this government, the cruel cost to date of its brief and inglorious career.
Then he went out into the country and at Stratford employed the language I have just quoted. The following appeared in the Toronto Globe of April 7, 1924, in the report of a speech delivered at Windsor just before the budget was introduced in this House:
Our factories are closing down, our industries are crippled, our people are leaving the land of their birth. How long will Canada allow this condition of affairs to continue ?
In the London Free Press of August 22, the following report appears of a speech delivered by the leader of the opposition at Eugenia Falls on the preceding day.
The past has demonstrated that each tariff reduction means the closing of new industries, and the closing of industries means that thousands of other workmen must go to the United States to make a living.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
The point I wish to make and which I think my right hon. friend will recognize as pertinent is that he has been using the terms "factories" and "industries" very freely all over the country, but while doing so he has carefully kept from the people the information that the figures which he said he had in his possession, which he stated were authoritative were quotations from Dun's reports of failures, and that he was speaking without regard to the way in which those particular statistics are made up. My right hon. friend, as I have said, was trying to create the impression that those failures were the result of the tariff changes made last session. That was the point of his attack. It was bad enough to describe as factories the many small establishments which had gone into bankruptcy according to Dun's reports, but it was infinitely worse for him to try to make it appear that the legislation introduced by the government last session changing the tariff had brought about such a condition. Moreover, and this is much to the point, my right hon. friend never mentioned that the number of failures, according to the report that he himself was quoting, was fewer last year than the year before, and fewer the year before than in the year again preceding.


Arthur Meighen: They are getting fewer to-day, uO there are fewer of them to fail.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Let me add,
he also endeavoured to create the impression that the manufacturing failures in this country were much greater relatively than the failures in the United States. When trying to create that impression he did not read this paragraph from Dun's report:
Unlike the statistics for the United States, the Canadian returns for last year show reductions in both number and liabilities of commercial failures. The numerical decrease reached nearly 24 per cent, but the falling off in indebtedness was only 2 per cent. Numbering 2,474 and involving $64,000,000, the Canadian defaults compare with 3,247 for $65,000,000 in 1923, and with 3,695 for $78,000,000 in 1922. There were fewer defaults last year than in 1923 in manufacturing, trading and other commercial occupations. Geographical analysis of the Canadian statement shows that a smaller number of failures occurred in all of the ten provinces included in the record.
So, taking the total failures, not closing of factories, in this country, commercial, manufacturing, trading and others, as reported by Dun's-the small and large failures generally throughout the country in 1922-a year for which this government cannot be held responsible because the failures then were pretty largely the result of what had taken place in the years preceding-there was a total 3
of 3,695 contrasted with 3,247 in 1923, contrasted again with 2,474 in 1924. Of the so-called manufacturing failures that my right [DOT]hon. friend speaks of, according to Dun's there were 857 with liabilities of $39,000,000 in 1922-just a year after he had gone out of office and before this government had any chance to get under way with its policies. In the year following there were 792 failures with liabilities totalling $31,000,000; and this last year there were only 625 failures with total liabilities of $36,000,000. This shows conclusively, if statistics mean anything, that conditions so far as manufacturing is concerned have been steadily getting better since this government came into office, and according to Dun's report, which my right hon. friend brought into the House this afternoon to quote from as authoritative, were never better than they were last year.
R. G. Dun & Co. has a report on failures in the United States, and we find from it in contrast to conditions in Canada, that instead of getting better from the point of view of numbers of failures, conditions in the United States in the last two or three years have been growing worse. Here is the statement in the Dun report in that connection.
The third quarter of 1924 breaks the record with the heaviest volume of failure liabilities for that quarter in the history of the United States.
That helps to illustrate the condition of manufacturing in the United States in the last quarter of last year.
The month of March, 1924, holds the country's record for the largest volume of failure liabilities for any single month. The 1924 total of commercial failures was 20,615 in number and $514,225,000 in volume of failure liabilities. This is an increase over 1923 of not quite 2,000 in number and $4,000,000 in volume. Although 1921 and 1922 slightly exceed 1923-24 in number and volume of failures, the year 1924 easily holds the banner over the twenty-five years preceding. It exceeds by a fairly wide margin the combined totals for the years 1919 and 1920, and very largely exceeds the total of the panic of 1908.
This is Dun's record of failures in manufacturing, commercial and trading establishments in the United States. Now, may I add to that the record of bank failures in the United States? We have had one or two recent bank failures in Canada, but I do not recall any of record this last year. Here is the record so far as the United States is concerned :
There were 613 banking failures in 1924, the largest number of any year during the present generation. Liabilities of the 613 banking failures were $202,000,000, which has been exceeded only twice in twenty-five years. The table found on page 10 of Dun's Review for January 10, gives the number and liabilities of bank suspensions in the United * States for the twenty-two-years, 1903 to 1924 inclusive.

34	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
I shall not ask permission to put that entire chart on the record, but I have quoted from it sufficient figures to show the contrast with Canada.
I have pointed out that Canadian failures have been growing less and less in each of the years 1922, 1923 and 1924; in the United States it has been the other way. In 1922 the bank failures numbered 277 with total liabilities of $77,000,000. In 1923 they numbered 578, with total liabilities of 1203,000,000; in 1924 they numbered 613 with $202,000,000 of liabilities. I think, Mr. Speaker, that shows pretty conclusively, quoting from the source from which my hon. friend says he has been deriving his information, that so far as conditions in the two countries are concerned we in Canada are infinitely better off industrially and financially than our friends across the border.
The only remark my right hon. friend made this afternoon that was at all appreciative was one which he could hardly avoid making, namely, that made respecting the balance of trade in Canada having exceeded something over $260,000,000. That was one feature in the Speech from the Throne which my right hon. friend commented on favourably. He said, we ought to have something like a favourable balance of $300,000,000 odd in order to be on a sound basis. Well, I wonder where the country was when he was in power, because the balance of trade was altogether unfavourable at that time.


Arthur Meighen: No, not at all.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: In 1921?


Arthur Meighen: One year of it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, one year -the year that closed when my right hon. friend went out of office, the year he had the handling of the country's affairs.


Arthur Meighen: What about the other
years?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That was the only year that my right hon. friend was at the head of affairs. From that time to the present, ever since this government, as he calls it, has been in power, the favourable balance of trade has been increasing by leaps and bounds. Not only has that favourable balance been increasing year by year, but, in comparison with the United States again-my right hon. friend has been comparing the conditions in the two countries-the balance of trade has been favourably increasing in Canada while in the United States instead of increasing, it has been steadily decreasing since 1921, excepting during 1924, when, due to some large 
loans made by the United States to European countries in 1924, there was a tendency toward an increase in her export balance passing out in goods. I would like to give the House the figures to verify what I have just been saying in that regard:
United States Foreign Trade-Calendar Years
Imports Exports Favourable Balance of Trade
1921	$2,509,147,000	$4,485,131,000	$1,975,984,0001922	
3,112,747,000	3,831,777,000	719,030,0001923	
3,791,938,000	4,167,946,000	376,008,0001924	(11 mos.). . 3,277,023,000	4,145,324,000	868,301,000
So far as Canada's position is concerned, I regret that I have not the figures here, but they will be found in the financial records and they will dhow that in the year my ri^ht hon. friend was in office there was an unfavourable balance of trade. The next year there was a favourable balance, in the year following a very considerable increase, and last year the favourable balance was so much in excess of that of former years that the totai ran to over $262,000,000.
The point that I wish to bring out is this: In the latest period the United States favourable trade balance represented about $8 per head of their population, while the Canadian balance represented about $28 per capita of our population. That, I think, answers pretty conclusively the relative position of the two countries judged at all events by the gauge which protectionist propagandists seem to regard as the one by which the prosperity of a country should most accurately be measured.
My right hon. friend said: Yes, exports are all very well provided they are the right kind of exports. He did not go very fully into what he meant by that. He seemed to endeavour to create the impression that in some way or other it was not a good thing to export any raw material, that the resources of our country were distinctly limited, and for that reason we should be careful about exporting any raw material. AVhen one considers that half of our arable land has not yet been occupied that its estimated total is
300,000,000 acres, not the half of which has been taken up and of the half taken up that not one half of that has yet been improved, I do not think we need have very much alarm about what we do in the way of exporting raw materials that may be raised as the products of the soil.
So far as the timber of this country is concerned it is difficult to form an estimate of its total amount. It is estimated by the Bureau of Statistics that the total forest area of Canada comprises 1,200,000 square miles of which about 40 per cent is covered with mer-

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
chantable timber. We have reserves in this country which are unsurpassed by any country *in the world, except possibly Russia and Siberia, and with our modem methods of forest-conservation, reforesting and the like, I do not think Canada will be running any very great risk in parting with some of her raw material in that particular. Some of it we undoubtedly shall have to part with in order to get the country properly settled, because many forests will have to be cleared before the lands on which they stand will admit of colonization and of settlement.
As to our minerals, there is not a man living that knows the mineral wealth of this country. All we do know is that Canada is a highly mineralized country; has tremendous areas indubitably highly mineralized and the possibilities of which have been no more than scratched. The amount of our mineral wealth surpasses possibly the imagination of the soundest statistician. Our coal reserves in the western field alone represent a very considerable fraction of the total coal deposits of the world. It is estimated that 16 per cent of the world's known reserve of bituminous, sub-bituminous and lignite coal is to be found in the four western provinces of Canada.
So far as gold is concerned, at the present moment we have one mine which alone is at present turning out the second largest gold production in the whole world, and is the centre of a great mining district which at the beginning of this century was unknown.
If we stop to consider mineral exports, we need not fear that we are parting with the nation's inheritance. Our development is pretty sure to be along lines that will help us to discover untold1 fields of wealth hitherto unknown.
Coming to the fisheries, I think we are all pretty well aware, that no fisheries in the world surpass in size, variety and excellence of product those surrounding our shores, those in our Great Lakes and in our rivers; here again I do not think Canada is going to suffer materially through parting with a certain amount of the raw material arising out of a development of her natural resources, not at least, until her population becomes vastly larger than it is at the present time.
My right hon. friend's point, as I gather from his remarks not merely to-day but on previous occasions, is that it is a very bad thing to be parting with natural resources in the form of raw material though all right to do so in the form of manufactures. That is the point I think he was seeking to make, but what he appears to have missed seeing and what is very pertinent to his view is that, since this government, as he calls it, has been 34
in power, not only have exports of our raw materials been increasing, but the exports of partially manufactured goods have also been increasing, and also the export of fully or chiefly manufactured goods. More than that, the increase in manufactured goods has been relatively considerably greater than the increase in raw materials.


Arthur Meighen: Is the Prime Minister
selecting one year and always comparing with that?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No, the Prime
Minister is not like the leader of the opposition; he does not pick and choose just to serve his purpose.


Arthur Meighen: What year is he comparing with?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: He is taking
all the years one after the other.


Arthur Meighen: Then what he states is
not correct.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will give my right hon. friend the figures. I will read them to the House:
Exports of Canadian Produce by Degree of Manufacture
	for Fiscal Years Ended	1914, 1921-24 Value	Per cent
1914			
Raw	materials	272.593,581	63.16Partly	manufactured	43.060,533	10.12Fully	or chiefly manufactured.	115.334,325	26.72Total	431,588.439	100.001921	Value	Per centRaw	materials	524,075,762	44.07Partly	manufactured	193,641,670	16.20Fully	or chiefly manufactured.	471,440,263	39.73Total	1,189,163,701	100.001922	Raw	materials	329,370,942	44.49Partly	manufactured	107,227,564	14.49Fully	or chiefly manufactured.	303,642,174	41.02Total	740,240,680	100.001923	Raw	materials	416,278,028	44.69Partly	manufactured	150,957,734	18.21Fully	or chiefly manufactured.	364,215,681	39.10Total	931,451,443	100.001924	Raw	materials	453,521,750	43.39Partly	manufactured	175,974,117	10.83Fully	or chiefly manufactured.	415,855.189	39.78Total	1,045,351,056	100.00
I should draw the attention of the House to the fact that the year 1921 was still a *part of the period in which the volume of our exports had been considerably increased due to the war and the effects of the war, and therefore it was natural to expect there would be a larger export in that particular year.
36	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
Hon. gentlemen will notice this significant fact, that the raw materials we exported this last year represented 43.39 per cent of the total exports, as against 44.69 per cent in 1923, 44.49 in 1922, 44.07 in 1921, and 63.16 in 1914. In other words, since this government has been in office there has been a material reduction in the amount of raw material exported as compared with the total exportation of the country.
Of partially manufactured goods we exported in 1914,10.12 per cent of the whole; in 1921, 16.20 per cent of the whole; in 1922, 14.49 per cent of the whole; in 1923, 16.21 per cent of the whole, and in 1924, 16.83 per cent of the whole.
Let us now look at the figures for goods fully or chiefly manufactured, and I should like my right hon. friend to get their significance. In 1921, 39-73 per cent of the total export; in 1922, 41.02 per cent of the whole; in 1923, 39-10 per cent; and in 1924, 39.78 per cent; whereas the percentages of export of raw materials for the same years stood at 44-07, 44.49, 44.69 and this last year, the year *of the budget of 1924, 43-39.
I should like to quote further figures of importation and exportation by way of showing that the excess in our imports of manufactured goods over our exports of manufactured goods has been steadily diminishing for the last three fiscal years, so that we now export nearly as great a value of fully or chiefly manufactured goods as we import. If the House will permit me, for the sake of accuracy, I shall read a statement which I have carefully prepared from the figures in my possession. It will be seen from this statement that the Canadian manufacturer who *it is alleged has had a hard time in the last two or three years, has nevertheless been able to export his products in increasing quantities to other countries where he receives no protection.
The exports of Canada are classified into raw materials, partly manufactured goods, fully or chiefly manufactured goods.
Now, our exports of fully or chiefly manufactured goods, which amounted to $303,000,000 in the fiscal year ended 1922, before any tariff changes were made, rose to $364,000,000 in the fiscal year ended 1923 and to $415,000,000 in the fiscal year ended 1924-an increase of about 37 per cent in two years. Our exports of partly manufactured goods, which stood at $107,000,000 in the fiscal year 1922, advanced to $150,000,000 in the fiscal year 1923, and to $175,000,000 in the fiscal year 1924, an increase of 64 per cent in two years.

The position of our Canadian manufacturing industries, taken by and large, may be estimated in another way. By considering the relative values of manufactured goods imported and exported, we can form some idea as to the relation from year to year of our national production of manufactured goods to our national consumption of such commodities. Perhaps it is natural that so young a country as Canada should import a greater value of manufactured goods than it exports. The table I have compiled enables us to set off against each other the total imports and .exports of manufactured commodities for various years, so as to show how far the nation's production of manufactured goods .covers its consumption.
From this table it appears that the excess in the value of manufactured goods imported over manufactured goods exported, which was $264,786,191 in the fiscal year ended 1921, was only $120,485,841 in 1922, $59,377,908 in 1923 and $47,514,339 in 1924. Thus since the present government assumed power, the production of manufactured goods in Canada has been becoming more and more nearly equivalent to its consumption of such articles. If our manufacturers are not as prosperous as we should like to see them, it is mainly because of the restriction of the purchasing power of their chief customers, the farmers of Canada; and with the now visible return of agricultural prosperity the manufacturers will undoubtedly at no distant date reap their share of the gain arising out of the re-established purchasing power of the agricultural community.
Imports and Exports of all Manufactured Goods, 1921-24
Fiscal year
ended	Imported
Mar. 31, 1921.. 929,874,130 Mar. 31, 1922.. 531,355,579 Mar. 31, 1923.. 574,551,323 Mar. 31, 1924.. 639,343,645
Exported
665,087,939
410,869,738
515,173,415
591,829,306
Excess of imports over exports 264,786,191 120,485,841 59,377,908 47,514,339
From this table it will be seen that since the present government assumed power the production of manufactured goods in Canada has been becoming more and more nearly equivalent to its consumption in such articles.


Arthur Meighen: What about paper and pulp.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The diminution to which I refer is due to improved conditions.


Arthur Meighen: My right hon. friend is mistaken.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The next topic to which my right hon. friend devoted his attention was the cost of living. There he

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
seemed to feel it was necessary and desirable to create the impression that the cost of living was greater to-day than in previous years; and he produced a chart, which he said he got from the Department of Labour, I think it was, showing the change in the cost of living by months from 1913 to 1923. It was extended, I believe to include 1924. My right hon. friend will tell me perhaps, if I have not got hold of the same chart. At any rate it was issued in a special report by the Department of Labour in January of this year. My right hon. friend stated that that chart showed a rise in the cost of living, during the past year. Perhaps my right hon. friend will loan me his chart, the one of which he himself made use.


Arthur Meighen: Certainly.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Now that I hold in my hand my right hon. friend's chart he certainly will not be able to dispute what I am about to say. If he will look at this chart, he will see that in the year 1924 for the first time since the year 1918, the cost of living mark dropped below the 150 line. Will my right hon. friend dispute that?


Arthur Meighen: That was just before the policy of the right hon. gentleman of last spring came into effect.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No, it was not just before. My right hon. friend is seriously astray in making that statement, it was just after as a matter of fact. The point I should like hon. members to observe is the method my right hon. friend adopts of quoting from public documents so as to serve his particular purpose at the moment.


Arthur Meighen: The chart shows the
figures just as I stated. The Prime Minister
can give the whole of the chart if he wishes it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I want my right hon. friend to tell the whole truth. If he had given the whole truth he would have made the statement to Which I am now drawing the attention of the House, namely, that last year for the first time in seven years the cost of living living line dropped below 150, the average prices in 1913 being taken as equivalent to 100. There is no denying that fact. I will return the chart to my right hon. friend and he may verify my statement.
May I draw the attention of the House to this further fact: Everyone knows that the cost of living varies according to the seasons. One does not contrast the cost of living in the month of December with the cost in the months of June and July. In the first named month there is coal to be bought and
additional clothing to be worn and additional food to be consumed. My right hon. friend, if he had been fair to the House and to the country would have taken from this report by corresponding months in the respective years figures dealing with the changes in the cost- of living from 1913 to 1924. And what would he have found? He would have found that while for the month of December in the year 1913 the index number was 100 in December 1921 the index number was 156. In December 1922 it was 153. In December 1923 it was 154; and in December 1924 it was 152, the lowest it has been since the days when my right hon. friend was in office. It was 156 in December 1921 at the time this government came into office and his government went out. To-day it stands, according to the records of the Department of Labour, or rather it stood in December 1924 as 152, showing clearly that the cost of living has been going down steadily in this country during the intervening period.
Before I leave the subject I shall touch upon the index figures of the United States. If my right hon. friend were to carry his comparisons to that country, he would find that the figures show a relatively higher cost of living in the United States than we have in Canada, that is contrasting the principal cities in the adjoining republic with the principal cities in Canada, thus verifying further what I said a moment ago about the relatively better conditions in Canada. My right hon. friend quoted from some report, which he said was one of the government reports and therefore should be correct, a list of prices on which he based his remarks respecting the cost of living. Because these prices showed an increase on the whole, he said the cost of living had gone up. There are two points which I would like to make in this connection. First, the cost of livmg estimate is not based on Wholesale prices. It is based on retail prices. The second point is, it is based on the grouping of commodities in accordance with average quantities which the average family consumes. In making up cost of living schedules you do not put down to the consumption of the family equal amounts for grain, preserves, biscuits, boots and the like; but you take for the average family the quantities that would be consumed or used on the average. When my right hon. friend was dealing with figures on the cost of living he was quoting wholesale prices, indices based on some 200 commodities not corresponding in selection or weighting to their importance to the consumer. The wholesale prices, on this basis, on the whole show a slight increase. But, as my right hon. friend knows-and no one


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Some hon.
gentlemen seem to think that it is a misfortune to improve in any way the conditions of the farmers by making implements of production available at lower costs.
" \yith the duty off our raw material we can manufacture our machines so much cheaper that we can undersell our American competitors without much difficulty," said the president of the local plant.


Mr. McMASTER:: What was the paper?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The Kitchener News-Record which, as I have already mentioned, has the distinction of being edited by the hon. member for North Waterloo.
In other parts* of the country, the press records similar statements. The Smiths Falls News-Record of December 30, 1924, contains the report of impressions gathered from an interview with Mr. J. E. Ruby, General Manager of the Frost & Wood Company:
Mr. J. E. Ruby, general manager of the Frost & Wood Company, arrived home last Wednesday from a three months business trip to Europe during which he visited the British Isles and the principal European countries and North Africa. .	.	.
Mr. Ruby was successful in obtaining some excellent orders for Frost & Wood Company machines, and it will be cheerful news to the people of the town that the present force of 175 men employed will be increased as rapidly as production can be got under way, up to 300 or 350. The orders in hand will keep the piant busy for the next four months and by that time it is hoped the Canadian trade will be sufficient to keep running full time for the balance of the season.
In addition to the reduction in the price of farm implements announced last April, further reductions became effective on December 1, and it is hoped that these lower prices to Canadian farmers will stimulate the placing of orders held back by the higher prices which have prevailed during the past few years. . . .
Referring to industry generally, but more particularly to the implement industry, I notice a despatch to the Globe appearing on the front page of the November 20 issue and headed:
Factory whistles blow at night. Industries take on more men.
-there is the following announcement: Woodstock, Nov. 19-The sound of factory whistles blowing at night, indicating that industries are working overtime, is welcome to the people of Woodstock. The Bain Wagon Co., the Canada Furniture Mfg. Co. and the Bickle Fire Engines, Limited, are now working extra
hours, and two other industries have had to engage additional employees during the past few days. These are the Eureka Planter Co. and the Woodstock Wagon
Co.
It is highly desirable, in view of some of the reports that have been circulated during the last few months, that the people of our country should have a clearer appreciation of just what the effect upon industry has been of the changes which were made at the last session of parliament.


Mr. SUTHERLAND:: Do the reductions which the Prime Minister has placed upon Hansard include the reduction in the sales tax, or are they attributable entirely to the reductions in the tariff?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: In a word, they are due to the reductions in taxation which this government made last session.


Donald Sutherland: And put on the
session before.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend is wrong there.


Donald Sutherland: Very largely put on the session before.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No. I may say that the reduction in the sales tax had an effect, and certainly the reduction in the duties had an effect.
There is one important news item that I think my hon. friend will be particularly interested in hearing, and that is that, for the first time apparently for some years past, the Massey-Harris Company, which is, as he knows, a very important agricultural implement manufacturing concern, had a profit. We were told that we were ruining these industries. I will quote from the Mail and Empire which my hon. friend will probably credit as authoritative, this statement, the issue of January 31:
Massey Harris Company's net profits $87,710. Believed agricultural implement business is now on upward trend.
That is the heading to the report of the president of that company. The article goes on to state:
Mr. Vincent Massey, the president, in his report to the shareholders, says that the net profit, after making adequate provision for depreciation and possible losses, although small,-$87,711-is significant in the light of the previous losses amounting to $1,456,000 in 1921, $643,000 in 1922, and $409,578 in 1923 (after eliminating the profit realised from the sale of timber lands, which formed a part of the income in that year). The improvement, therefore, in operating earnings over those of a year ago is $497,288.
In other words, the report of the Massey-Harris concern shows that each year since this government took office, as my right hon.
42	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
friend says, that important concern has been getting a little better off, until at last, it has actually been enabled to pay a profit instead of suffering further loss.


Arthur Meighen: He might follow up with the steel and fertilizer industries.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have already spoken of the steel industry'. I will leave my right hon. friend to talk about fertilizer.
Let me correct another erroneous impression fostered by the remarks of my right hon. friend this afternoon. Last year he and his followers of the opposition sought to create an impression throughout the country that the reason the government's budget, as respects the surplus shown, was so satisfactory was because of ah alteration in the bookkeeping methods of the Department of Finance, namely-the elimination entirely by the administration of items which the government of my right hon. friend had charged up against the public debt of this country. Now, I have in my hand the public accounts for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1924, and I should like my right hon. friend and his followers to look carefully at page 3, where there appears a statement signed by the auditors appointed to audit the accounts. It reads as follows:
We have examined the balance sheet of the Dominion of Canada as at March 31, 1924, and we certify that the balance sheet conforms to the balance sheets of previous years in not including in the net debt of the Dominion issues of the Canadian National Railway Company and companies included in its system which carry the guarantee of the Dominion of Canada. Such guaranteed issues are shown year by year as indirect liabilities.
George Edwards,
of the firm of Edwards, Morgan & Co.
W. Garth Thomson,
of the firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. Dated, Ottawa, Canada, January 27, 1925.
The auditors, I need scarcely say, are chartered accountants having no connection whatever with departmental work, but brought in from the outside as independent auditors to go through the books of the government with a view of making an accurate statement of the situation.
*Now, Mr. Speaker, I should like to have said a word or two more on evidences of prosperity, as I think after the dismal picture which my right hon, friend has been endeavouring to paint in this House and throughout the country during the past year, it is due to the people that the other and the truer side should be brought to their attention, but I will content myself by quoting from the annual statements made by one or two of the presidents of our great chartered banks. Possibly no more conservative men are to be found in the country than the heads 
of these banking corporations, and in making their annual statements these gentlemen are, I think, inclined to be very guarded in the language they use. Sir Herbert Holt, President of the Royal Bank,, said on January 8, 1925:
1	never been more optimistic in regard to the
possibilities of this country than I am to-day. We have been held back by agricultural depression since 1920, but this should disappear as normal conditions are returned throughout the world. ... I feel sure that great prosperity is ahead of the United States in the next ten years, and that we shall find in that country a market not only for larger amounts of lumber and paper, but for increasing quantities of foodstuffs as well.
Sir John Aird, President of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, said on January 12, 1925:
Commercial failures have decreased, there is a slight reawakening of immigration, and the outlook for the lumber business seems to have distinctly improved. A good crop has been harvested for which high prices prevail, and the maladjustment of the farmers' position has thus been largely corrected.
Sir Vincent Meredith, President of the Bank of Montreal, on December 1,	1924,
said:
I am satisfied that a gradual improvement in the trade situation is occurring. Statistical returns support this view, and while there is a regularity in the movement in the main the trend is upward. There has been a better demand for steel in various forms, especially from railroads; textiles trades are gradually recovering from the slump, and dealings in hides and leather have broadened.
Mr. R. S. White, Editor-in-Chief of the Montreal Gazette,-I do not know whether my right hon.. friend regards this paper as his organ or not, but its financial review of the year he will accept, at any rate, as accurate I suppose-in the issue of January 9, 1925, has the following:
Canadian bond sales amounted to $562,000,000 in 1924, $42,500,000 more than in the previous year, and of this amount the Canadian people took no loss than $346,000,000, the remainder having been placed in the United States. It is true that some of these sales were for purpose of conversion and did not involve new money, but a country cannot be called poor whose people increase savings deposits in banks by nearly $50,000,000, and purchase three and a half hundred millions of new bonds in a single year.
Mr. Speaker, may I say in conclusion that I think this House and the country had a right to expect from the right hon. leader of the opposition something more than mere criticism and denunciation of the administration. I think I have shown pretty conclusively that when the statistics on which his criticism was founded are examined carefully and the truth made known the situation is not at all that which he had depicted it to be. However, apart from that, I think we were entitled to have something of a constructive character from my right hon. friend. I think he owes

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
it to the country to toll us wherein, if in office, he would improve the situation. I notice that he has in the name of his party given out a manifesto,-I referred to it a little earlier to-day,-as to changes in the tariff which he thinks are all-important. I do not know just what his reason was for issuing that manifesto at this particular time. Probably recalling the majority of 121 registered against his party's amendment last year, he felt it would save him the necessity of moving any amendment in his speech on the Address this afternoon, seeing the subject is on the order paper and therefore cannot be dealt with in that way.


Arthur Meighen: I have not issued any
manifesto. I give notice of a resolution on the order paper.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am sorry, I was judging by the way in which the notice appeared. The subject matter I refer to appeared in the evening press the day before parliament opened and the day before the order paper was printed. What I saw in the order paper was a reprint. I apologize if I have spoken wrongfully of it as a "manifesto"; it did seem to me that the manner in which it was issued and its length gave it more or less that complexion, in fact, I think it was so referred to by his own press. However, all that my right hon. friend suggests, in the light of the criticism he has made this afternoon is that the national situation is to be improved by increased taxation. He calls it protection, meaning thereby increased tariff, but I hope this House and the country will not. forget that a tariff is a tax, no matter by what other name one may seek to describe it and that higher tariffs mean increased taxation. My right hon. friend contends, as nearly as I can gather, that what should now be done to help meet the condition under which the countiy is labouring as a result of the heavy legacies of debt to which it has fallen heir in recent years, is to increase taxation, and increase it all around. Apparently he not only wishes to increase the protection afforded to manufacturing industries-I think that is what he says should be done-but he suggests that agriculture should be protected in a similar manner. I am sure my agricultural friends will find a lot of consolation in that thought, particularly, when they realize that their commodities are sold in world markets where prices are determined regardless, for the most part, of conditions in any particular country. Then he suggests that certain industries-the coal industry, I think-should be further protected. I do not think he mentions other branches of mining or lumbering, and he does
not mention the fishing industry. I do not know whether he intends to leave that out; perhaps he will tell us when he comes to the discussion.


Arthur Meighen: He did mention that.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, I apologize; he did mention it, my right hon. friend in mentioning these particular industries clearly has in mind the protection of special interests. The fault I find in his programme is that there is an absence-at least, I am unable to discover the presence-of any concern for the one class to which every man, woman and child in this country belongs, namely, the consuming public.


William Alves Boys: Are workers not consumers?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Workers are consumers, yes, when in the capacity of consumers, but in that capacity protection is of no service to them, it is a detriment. My right hon. friend said this afternoon that he was unable to discover the necessity in the Address for any mention of the cost of living. It was natural he should make that remark. Clearly in what he has expressed he has not had in mind the great body of the consuming public in this country. If he is not exclusively concerned with these special interests, why does he not take some steps to protect the professional classes? My hon. friend (Mr. Boys) belongs to the professional class-


William Alves Boys: They do not need it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, my hon. friend is very fortunate. I think in that respect he differs from most members of the professional class.


William Alves Boys: I do not think my right hon.
friend needs it either, does he?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: He needs it
very much; I am sorry to have to say I cannot agree with my hon. friend. If protection is to be worthy of the name, it should have regard for the interests and well being of the great body of the people as a whole, not merely for the special interests. It should include protection of members of the professional classes-which include lawyers, doctors, teachers, preachers-also for those who make up the trading public; those engaged in wholesale and retail trade; for the great body of civil servants, throughout this country; clerks in shops, stores and offices and for the women and children who have to be provided with the necessaries of life, with food and clothing, in a word it should have equal regard for all classes of the community. It is for that reason that the government takes the position

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
that the cost of living is the most important of all the questions which this country has to face at this time. It is a question that cannot be met simply by tariff changes here and there, no matter how considerable they may be. The problem before Canada to-day is how for a population of between nine and ten millions of people the cost of living is to be decreased-how it is going to be possible to reduce taxation from its present large proportions owing to expenditures incurred during the period of war and of railway obligations which have been so considerable during the last couple of years. The only remedy that my right hon. friend has to propose is to increase the tariff, in other words, increase taxation here and there to help special interests. We say the situation cannot be improved in that way. We say that the only way to improve it is, first of all by strict economy on the part of the administration, and, secondly, by the government adopting policies which will increase production in this country in the quickest and most effective manner possible.
It is in regard to the policy of increased production that the government has come forward with a constructive programme which, if given an opportunity to 'be worked1 out, will help to meet the situation. Pant of that programme was outlined in the Speech from the Throne last year and was given expression to in this House in the changes that were made in the tariff at the last session. A further stage in that programme is announced in the Speech from the Throne this year. The two are parts of the one constructive programme which the administration i3 placing before the country as a means of help to _ solve its great industrial, financial and social problems. In a word, that programme is, having regard to Canada's vast resources, to increase production by the only possible effective means. As I intimated a moment ago, we have untold natural resources, whether they be of the soil, the mine, the forest or the fisheries. We have as well great water-powers; we have all that is needed to enable us to be a strong, a great and a prosperous people, a people for the most for whom there should be every necessary comfort and every opportunity. But to develop the natural resources labour and capital are essential, and markets in which to dispose of the commodities which are produced by the application of the people's capital and labour to the natural wealth of which we have such an abundance.
. We have taken steps to improve the labour situation as regards the development of the 
natural resources by strengthening our immigration programme. As I said this afternoon, there are reasons why immigration has Dot been developed as fast as many of us would like to have seen, but those reasons will not obtain as much in the future as they have in the past. WTe must keep in mind that Europe and the British Isles do not serve as recruiting grounds for immigrants, as they did prior to the war. It is not possible to bring immigrants from the Old Land in the numbers in which they were readily brought before the war. In addition to that, we have learned from the experience of other countries that it is inadvisable to bring in immigrants without a careful process of selection; that it is much better to pay attention to quality than merely to seek to increase immigration so far as numbers are concerned. For this reason the government has taken steps to exercise care in the selection of immigrants. We have sought to bring as many as we can from the British Isles and from the northern parts of Europe. But the chance of getting .people to emigrate to-day is not what it was a few years ago. In the old days the government was free to offer any number of homesteads, to offer to settlers inducements of many kinds. We cannot do that to-day as it could be done some years ago, and for that reason it is more difficult to get the labour into the country which is needed f-or the development of our resources. But the tide has set in, and now that agriculture is beginning to attain, as evidenced by the current prices of agricultural commodities, a position similar to that which it formerly held, we will expect to see a large immigration to Canada which will result in a distinct note of prosperity.
In regard to the implements of production which constitute the capital required for the development of our resources we have as I have shown tonight, through our legislation of last session, made the cost of theSe implements less to the settlers of the country. Whether engaged in agriculture, mining, lumbering or fishing this government has helped to -make it possible for persons going into these industries to obtain the capital that is necssary for the carrying on of their activities at a lower cost than prevailed before. When the capital <requ|irement 'is lessened, the cost of production is lessened, and it stands to reason that the whole industrial life of the country must as a consequence be materially prospered. All manufacturing is based on the cost of raw material. All manufacturing, no matter of what branch it may consist, depends on the

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
raw material supplied by one of the four great basic industries, agriculture, mining, lumbering or fishing. If the cost of raw material can be reduced in those industries, then every manufacturing concern in the Dominion will stand to gain, because when you reduce the cost of the raw material there can follow a lowering in the price of the commodity produced, and that without any loss in either profit or in wages. But this is even more important than it appears on the surface. In the building up of this country what is needed above all else is a great export trade. Now the price at which commodities can be sold in a foreign market depends upon world factors of competition. In this country we are trying to maintain a certain standard of labour, and we do not want that standard to be lowered. On the other hand, we have to go into a market and compete in foreign trade with other countries that have standards of labour lower than our own. If we can reduce the cost of raw materials entering into our manufactures, be the amount ever so little, it may be just sufficient to give our manufacturers a chance successfully to compete in that foreign market against the other countries of the world, and it is that foreign trade that we must go out to capture in every way we possibly can. .
Now what has the government found in viewing the situation from that standpoint? The government has found with respect to foreign trade, that year by year, within the last few years, a great combine of shipping interests has been shaping up on the oceans of the world, a combine that seeks to control the entire ocean commerce of the world, a combine of shipping companies so closely knit and interlocked in its workings and operations that within certain limits it can fix pretty much at its own will the price at which commodities can be transported to any part of the world. This House will be favoured shortly with a report which I think it will find illuminating on the subject of this combine and its control of rates across the Atlantic. There are many circumstances that have been affecting the cost of production of late. Speak of the bringing of immigrants to this country! I have mentioned one or two difficulties, but they are not comparable to the difficulty that is encountered in the cost of transporting the immigrant from Europe across the Atlantic. A few years ago the immigrant from Europe could be brought to this country at a cost of from fifteen to twenty dollars a steerage passage; to-day
something like seventy or eighty dollars is required for corresponding accommodation. These exactions we believe are largely due to the monopoly that shipping interests enjoy and which enable them to control rates across the north Atlantic ocean. That monopoly thwarts Canada's effort to increase its production in this one way but unfortunately that is not the only way in which the country is adversely affected. Our commodities have to search out the markets of the world, and what do we find? We find that the rates on the transportation of our export commodities have been going up steadily and steadily for years. They went up during the war; that was bad enough, but since the war they have been going up higher still, with the result that our agricultural industry is suffering the severest of handicaps while manufacturing industries of this country which a short time ago were shipping commodities to the Old Country find1, many of them, that they cannot profitably ship commodities at the transportation rates prevailing to-day. As a government we have felt that if we are to work out in a constructive way this programme of the development of the natural resources and the basic industries of our country and of the manufacturing industries based thereon, if we are effectively to further manufacturing as well as agricultural development, we must seek to make freer the channels of trade by which the products of the farm, the mine, the forest, the fisheries and of our manufacturing establishments reach consumers in different parts of the world from the factories, the farms and other sources of supply where they may be produced. Hence we contemplated the step referred to in the Speech from the Throne which will be announced in detail to parliament in due course and which we hope will be a further factor in helping to solve our great national problems.
My right hon. friend in referring to this matter made a quotation, from Byron's Childe Harold I think it was. He referred to man's control stopping with the shore. Man's control may stop with the shore, but the control of government ought to go beyond the shore, and in this matter we intend to extend our control beyond the shore, if that is possible at all. We hope so far as our effort in this regard is concerned, that the Canadian government will not have to battle alone, but that it may look to the governments of all the other self-governing Dominions and to the government of the Mother Country itself to co-operate with us in fighting this great combination that exists on the
46	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
Atlantic, to the detriment not only of Canadian trade, but to the trade of Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and all parts of the British Empire. We believe in developing trade within the empire, but we have reason to believe that this great combination has been thwarting the full development of inter-imperial trade and so far as our country is concerned has been discriminating against our Canadian ports. We believe it can be shown conclusively that there has been a real discrimination so far as Canada is concerned in the matter of transportation costs across the Atlantic.
As I have said, parliament will be presented shortly with a report dealing with this whole question of Atlantic trade, and the House will also be informed in due course more exactly and in particular of the steps the government is about to take in an effort to cope with the exactions of this powerful combine. The point I wish to make clear at the moment is this: The government's action in this regard is only part of a great constructive programme which has for its objective the development and increase of the wealth of this country, the bringing about of a freer distribution of commodities within the country, and the development of wider export markets as well. We believe the step that was taken last session has already in this short time fully justified itself, and we believe that the legislation which we are going to introduce during the present session if it receives the support of this parliament, will materially assist us to further the diversified industries of this country, agricultural, mining, fishing, lumbering and manufacturing, that it will help the whole industrial life of Canada, and by so helping our industrial life will improve the lot and the well-being of the men, women and children who inhabit this Dominion from one coast to the other.


Robert Forke: Mr. Speaker, I would crave the indulgence of the House. This is the first working day of the session, and I did not expect to be called upon to-night. I would move the adjournment of the debate.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE-NEXT WEDNESDAY SITTING

William Lyon Mackenzie King: That when this House adjourns on Tuesday the 10th instant, it stands adjourned until Wednesday at .three o'clock in the afternoon.

He said: This is just to ensure that the House will meet on Wednesday at three instead of at two o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 9.50 p.m.
Tuesday, February 10, 1925