1926-02-16

OFFICIAL REPORT


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Moose of Commons Befmteo
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Tuesday, February 16, 1926

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to
inform the House that I have received the following letter:
Honorable Rodolphe Lemieux,
President do la Chambre des communes,
Ottawa, Ont.
Honorable Monsieur,
J'ai l'honneur d'accuser reception, de l'edition des "Debats de la Chambre" que vous m'avez gracieusement adressee, et contenant les consolantes et elogieuses paroles que les honorables chefs des different^ partis ainsi que le distingue representant de Bagot, ont prononcees a l'egard de mon regrette mari.
Nul plus que moi fut a meme, a travers les sentiers de la vie, d'apprecier ses nobles qualit&s de coeur et d'esprit, aussi, le geste spontane, et unanime de la Chambre, d6-posant au pied de sa tombe, le itouchant tribut du souvenir, m'emeut, plus que je ne puis l'ecrire, et je me sens reellement impuissante & vous exprimer toute la gratitude que je ressens.
Veuiliez, s'il vous p3a.it, accepter, et presenter pour moi, aux honorables membres de la Chambre des communes, l'hommage de ma profonde reconnaissance, et soyez assure que je garderai precieusement, ainsi que ma famille, le temoignage de cette haute marque d'es-time et de sympathie.
J'ai l'honneur d'etre, monsieur l'Orateur,
Votre tres obligee,
Mme J. E. Marcilb.
Acton Vale, 15 fevrier 1926.



TRANSPORTATION OF COAL

Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Minister of the Interior):: I lay on the table copies of
the order in council dealing with the instructions for an investigation into the railway rates on coal.



REPORTS AND PAPERS

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Statement of estimated amount of work done and approximate expenditures made on the Canadian National Railways to December 31, 1925.-Hon. Mr. Lapointe.
Statement of estimated amount of work that will be done, and approximate expenditures that will be made, in the year 1926 on the various branch lines of the Canadian National Railways.-Hon. Mr. Lapointe.

Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Leader of the House) moved:: That Messrs. King (Kootenay), Casgrain Charters, Tolmie and Spencer be a committee to p. epare and report with all convenient speed lists of members who compose the select standing committees of the House.


Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: May I ask if the names of the members from this side were given by the chief whip?


Ernest Lapointe: Yes.


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Motion agreed to.

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On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Toronto Northwest) :: I should like to ask the government
what has been done in regard to the distribution among the soldiers of the canteen fund amounting to $2,000,000. It is nearly a year now since parliament passed an act in respect to this matter, and voted the sum of $800,000 to the province of Ontario as its share. As yet, however, no commission has been appointed for that province and apparently none will be for some time, although there are many men in need of relief owing to unemployment and distress. Will the government later on in the week state the cause of the delay, and inform the House as to the nature of the existing situation?


Ernest Lapointe: I think boards have
been appointed in the various provinces in connection with the fund referred to. However, I will communicate with the minister in charge of the department concerned, and give the information to my hon. friend in the House.



GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH


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The House resumed from Monday, February 15, consideration of the motion of Mr. J. C. Elliott for an Address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his Speech at
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The Address-Mr. Fraser
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the opening of the session, and the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Sutherland (South Oxford).
Mr. J. A. FRASER (Cariboo):: Mr. Speaker, before resuming my remarks on the particular subject now under discussion, may I refer to an interesting event which occurred no later than yesterday. Hon. gentlemen opposite were kind enough last evening to show their appreciation of various remarks of mine by their applause. Now I should like to congratulate them on the successful termination of the election in the constituency of Prince Albert. May I say, in all sincerity, that I recognize the Prime Minister as an outstanding man in Canada. He is a man of conspicuous ability and capacity in the administration of public affairs. Like myself the right hon. gentleman is a Canadian, and speaking as a Canadian I am very proud of Mr. King as Prime Minister of this country.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


John Anderson Fraser: I wonder if hon. gentlemen opposite would have paid a tribute of that kind to my leader had he been in the same position.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Surely.


John Anderson Fraser: Now that hon. gentlemen opposite are in such a good humour it might be opportune to inform them what they look like from this side of the House. The boot is now on the other foot, and the Liberal party with all due respect to every member of it looks like a second-hand dilapidated motor car, ambling round this parliament on four flat tires, with a broken steering gear and hitting on one cylinder. Hon. gentlemen opposite have sent to Prince Albert and repaired their steering gear and have done it handsomely. The next thing I advise hon. gentlemen opposite to do is to send to the Massey-Harris firm for a set of spark plugs; but for goodness sake 'let them not ask us to adjourn this House in order that they may be able to purchase and inflate a new set of tires.
Having got the House into a pretty good humour and having exchanged compliments across the floor, I will proceed now to the business which I was sent here to attend to, and that is to have the hon. members on the opposite side of the House sent over to this side as quickly as possible.
I referred last night to mining matters generally throughout Canada, and I will now discuss more particularly the amendment before the House, which has particular reference to tariff matters as they apply to the trade and commerce of Canada. Whatever may

have been the main feature of the election in any other part of the Dominion, so far as the district of Cariboo is concerned hon. gentlemen will understand that the principal feature in the campaign, without any manner of doubt, was the tariff question. It was the outstanding issue in Cariboo and I believe in British Columbia. I am not so sure of British Columbia as a whole and therefore will confine myself to my own district. In my opinion that question decided the election. The people in my district are certainly interested in tariff matters; when you apply the incidence of the tariff to the different occupations of the people in that district, they are certainly interested and will listen to you, and if you present the issue in a proper way, as I did, you will see the result. I desire particularly to discuss this tariff question as it applies to the agricultural industry. My hon. friends on the other side as well as the other groups, go around the country when tariff measures are under discussion and try to terrify the people about the Conservatives and the Conservative policy by telling them that we are the favourites of the big interests, that the tariff question is not one which has any application to the prosperity of the ordinary individual, the farmer or labourer, but that it only adds to the notoriously large profits of the corporations and big businessmen. That is the outstanding feature of the talk we hear from the Grits when an election is being held. I desire to be very specific in this, and I say that that is not a proper interpretation of the tariff policy of the Conservative party at all. As I understand it, the Conservative party does not favour high protection. That party favours a fair measure of protection to everybody and every interest.


An hon. MEMBER:: Adequate protection.


John Anderson Fraser: I will give the hon. member a better word than that-something else which he can talk about. The Conservatives are not a high tariff party. We are not in favour of a low tariff but fair tariff.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


John Anderson Fraser: I am glad to see that I
still continue to get applause from both sides of the House. That being the generally accepted policy of some of our Liberal friends, why not give us a hand to assist us to put it into effect?


An hon. MEMBER:: Why do you not do so?


John Anderson Fraser: If my hon. friends were
over here, as they are going to be in a short time, we might be able to do it. I desire particularly to refer to the application of this

The Address-Mr. Fraser
fair tariff policy to the dairying interests of the district I represent. In regard to the dairy interests of Cariboo I speak with some authority, because I helped to organize the co-operative dairy association in the little town of Quesnel, British Columbia. I was a director for the first three years of its life and helped to put the organization on a proper basis so that it could operate for the benefit of the farmers who were anxious to see what could be done in that district by co-operative effort. We have five creameries in the district and one of them is in the Pouce Coupe district, of the Peace river country. We have a creamery working up there across the boundary from Alberta in the Peace river section of the country, and that creamery is located in the district I represent. Since the inception of the creamery at Quesnel I have been closely associated with all the members of the organization, and I have noticed that my farmer friends in the district are continually complaining that the industry is not as profitable as it should be, that the net return they get from the manufacture of cream and the selling of the product to the creamery is not a profitable one, and that, after they deduct the expenses of their operation, there is very little net return for the farmer himself, which is an important point. The industry at present is a going concern, but is not in my opinion firmly established. It is a very grave question to me at the present time whether it is going to be able to function properly or not, or to continue in operation, because the margin ot profit is so small. When a man does not get a profit out of any work he is carrying on, he will quit working altogether, and I am afraid that, on account of the small profit the farmers are making out of this operation, they will sell their cows or turn them over to the butcher for beef, and then the organization will be out of business. Just as soon as you reduce the number of cows below a certain line you are operating your creamery on an unprofitable basis, and no business can operate for a long time without a profit. You must have a reasonable profit in any business. When I apply the tariff policy of the Australian treaty to the conditions that I see in my own district, I am afraid the result of that treaty will be to close up just such organizations as the one I refer to throughout the country, because there is no question- and it cannot be denied-that you are reducing the profit of the farmer from the cream he is selling to the organization, and if that is done in a large degree the farmer will go out of business and try something else.
14011-66^
With particular reference to the Australian treaty and the difference that exists between the height of our tariff walls and that of those we find in other countries, let me point this out. The difference between the United States tariff and the Canadian tariff on butter is at present four cents a pound. If a Canadian farmer wants to send butter into the United States, there are customs men on the border to prevent him from sending it in unless he pays the duty of eight cents a pound. In regard to this question, I am speaking from the British Columbia viewpoint with the city of Vancouver on this side of the border and the city of Seattle on the other. The British Columbia farmer, if he wants to find an export market for his product, can always find it in Seattle. On the other hand, a United States farmer who is exactly the same distance from the Seattle market as our farmer is from the Vancouver market and who can produce butter at the same or prdbably a little less cost, can send his butter into the Vancouver market under a duty of only four cents a pound, whereas the British Columbia farmer has to' pay a duty of eight cents a pound in order to market his butter in Seattle. I contend that a government that will maintain a tariff of that kind, where there is such inequality, is robbing the Canadian farmer of four cents a pound on his butter. If the government in its wisdom would only raise that tariff to the same level as the United States tariff, that is eight cents a pound, immediately the Canadian farmer, handling butter in his home market, would1 reap the benefit of that additional four cents a pound. I believe and I am now convinced that is a fact. What has convinced me? The operation of this Australian treaty has convinced me that this government under the general tariff as applied to the United States, is robbing the Canadian farmer of ibbat four cents per pound. What did this Australian treaty do? It robbed the Canadian farmer of another three cents per pound, because it lowered the protective duty on this commodity to one cent per pound and as the difference between four and one is three immediately that reduction in duty went into effect, what did we find?-every dairyman of the Dominion of Canada receiving exactly three cents per pound less for his cream and butter. That has been admitted by every minister who has spoken on this question and, therefore, this government have taken from farmers throughout this Dominion the value of three cents a pound on their butter.
I am not complaining at all about the United States tariff or about the Australian
The Address-Mr. Fraser

tariff. That is the business of the people of the United States and Australia. I am here to attend to Canadian business; I am here to tell the Canadian government that I am finding fault with them and not with the government of the United States or Australia. The United States farmers make representations to congress that they want enacted such and such a law. For instance, they say that they want a duty of eight cents a pound imposed on butter going into the United States, and congress goes to work and very wisely gives their farmers the protection they want. .Legislation of this character is enacted at the .demand of the United1 States farmer or the Australian fanner, and if that is a good principle for the Australian or the United States farmer, why is it not a good principle for our Canadian farmer to pursue? Why would the Canadian farmer not be just as glad to put that extra three or four cents a pound into his pocket as the United States or Australian farmer? I commend those two governments for doing what they are asked to do by the people who are interested in the different industries, and they must be interested or they would never have got that legislation .passed. The United States congress or the Australian Commonwealth parliament are not going to enact laws unless they are requested to do so by people who are interested in the industry concerned.
I am not arguing in favour of the abrogation of the Australian treaty. I claim that if the Australians, in their superior judgment and wisdom and by virtue of the fact that they have men of greater' ability to represent them in the making of treaties, secure a certain advantage over us, they are entitled to it; but the agitation on this matter should not be allowed to stop until we get these public men out of the way and let some person step in who can make a treaty that is equal all around. I have every sympathy with inter-imperial trade, and I am not going to argue in favour of the abrogation of the Australian treaty just because in it there are certain things which should be corrected and which we shall soon correct if hon. gentlemen opposite will only let us get men of good judgment in charge of the government of this country.
Another reason why we should not be too anxious to ask for the abrogation of this treaty is because certain of our people enjoy advantages under it. For instance, our pulp and paper men, our salmon canners, and also, I think, manufacturers of certain automobile parts and probably automobiles themselves, enjoy substantial advantages in the Australian markets and they are entitled to the advan-
tages which they enjoy in those different lines of industry. If they require that in order to make a little better profit and to stabilize their industry in this country, I am not going to argue that the treaty should be abrogated and these advantages be taken away from them just because the treaty is not fair all around. If one set of men can make a treaty which is not altogether fair, surely another set of men with a little better judgment can be got together to make things fair and just to all.
I want to read certain telegrams which I have received from the pulp and paper industry in British Columbia, a province of which I have the honour to be one of the representatives in this parliament. Both of these telegrams protest against the removal of their advantages under this treaty. I am pretty familiar with the Powell River Pulp and Paper Company. No company is better organized than this. It treats its men fairly and everything is done in an up-to-date manner. The employees are provided with all the care and attention that they should have and nothing is left that could be desired. Everything is provided for the comfort and convenience of these men. On the other hand, the men realize this and they have every respect for the company for which they are working. The company telegraphs:
With reference to amendment to Speech from Throne dealing with the Australian treaty, we would urge upon you that based on this treaty we are expending some eight million dollars in plant extensions hoping to get our share of Australian business and abrogation of treaty would be manifestly unfair particularly without giving it a fair trial. We are satisfied that investigation will disclose that the treaty is both favourable and valuable to Canada.
The other one is from the Pacific Mills, Limited, an organization of which I know very little, but I know it is a bona fide pulp and paper mill company. What I have said with reference to the Powell River Pulp and Paper Company would apply equally to Pacific Mills Limited. I would call the attention of the House to the following telegram :
We are advised that Mr. Donald Sutherland, M.P. representing dairy interests contemplates amendment to throne speech criticising Australian treaty on ground that such interests are being jeopardized. You are thoroughly familiar with treaty naturally and have full access to customs import figures and we are satisfied that any investigation will show that such is not the case. Further than that while the treaty has only been operative four months the benefits to the paper industry and the country as a whole so far exceed any slight disadvantages that any criticism at this time will do great harm both in Australia and in Canada.

The Address-Mr. Fraser
This telegram expresses the attitude of these gentlemen to the amendment now before the House in so far as it relates to the Australian treaty, and they have a perfect right to state their views on the subject as emphatically as they can. It is, I think, exceedingly proper that they should be alive to their own interests and they are to be commended for the activity they display in looking after those interests when they fear that the privileges they enjoy in this country are threatened. To that extent they have my entire sympathy. I do not want it understood for a single moment that I am advocating the abrogation of the treaty to the detriment of the pulp and paper industry in Canada. But I do want to ask these gentlemen in British Columbia a very pertinent question. They derive some benefit from the treaty; they enjoy a certain profitable trade because of its operation. Very well; but do they expect the dairymen of Canada to pay for the privileges they enjoy? Why deprive the dairymen of this Dominion of the same privileges that are extended to a particular industry? On the floor of this House the other night the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) informed us that we produced in Canada some 275,000,000 pounds of butter of which he said we exported
25,000,000 pounds. That left a total of 250,000,000 pounds which we sold in the local market. Now I think I have already established the fact that the inequality in the tariff under this treaty, since it has come into force, has been responsible for a reduction of 3 cents per pound in the price of butter in Canada. No one can deny that.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


John Anderson Fraser: Hon. gentlemen apparently do not follow me. At any rate, that is my contention and while I shall not stop here to argue the point I state, what is a fact, that we sell at home in Canada 250,000,000 pounds of butter, in regard to which the producers have suffered a loss of 3 cents per pound because Of unfair competition. That works out at a total of $7,500,000 which these gentlemen in British Columbia, if their demands are acceded' to, would have the dairymen of Canada lose, as in fact they have already lost it. The pulp and paper people of British Columbia are very properly looking to their own interests; but why should the dairymen of the Dominion stand a loss of $7,500,000 in order to protect those interests? Why not let us all get in line and give to the dairymen the same advantages that are extended to the pulp and paper interests?


Mr. DUSSAULT:: Is the hon. gentleman
multiplying the 25,000,000 by 3?


John Anderson Fraser: I am multiplying the 250,000,000 by 3. The 25,000,000 we export. The hon. member does not understand my argument. I subtracted that 25,000,000 from the total production because the 3 cents per pound could not apply to what we exported but only to the quantity of the product sold at home; and I contend that on that 250,000,000 pounds of butter the farmers would have received 3 cents per pound less undter the operation of the Australian treaty than they got. I do not think that anybody is arguing that the tariff will protect us at all in our export business.


Joseph-Étienne Dussault: Does the hon. member contend that 4,000,000 pounds of butter imported into this country will fix the price of
275.000.	000 or 250,000,000 pounds?


John Anderson Fraser: Where do you get the
4.000.	000?


Joseph-Étienne Dussault: That is what we have
imported.


John Anderson Fraser: I think my hon. friend is altogether on the wrong track. The price obtained in the home market is governed not by any quantity of exports but by the extent of the tariff protection afforded; and as I have said, the dairymen have lost $7,500,000 on the butter sold at home as a result of a reduction in price of 3 cents per pound. Let me impress upon the government as well as upon these gentlemen out in British Columbia this fact, that the dairymen of the Dominion have as effectually lost that $7,500,000 as though a gang of men had shot their cows or burned their buildings or rifled their safes. That is virtually what has been done to the dairymen of this country, for you might just as well injure them one way as another. Now I ask in all fairness, I ask hon. gentlemen representing these pulp and paper interests, is it right, is it fair that our dairymen should be sacrificed in order to protect others? I do not think that we can stand for that.
And do not let hon. gentlemen run away with the idea that our dairymen are the only ones who have suffered under this treaty. My hon. friend from West Kootenay (Mr. Esling) the other night pointed out that the fruit industry had been hit hard, and this applies to all branches of fruit growing. There are numerous branches of that one industry alone which have suffered; and in addition to this the treaty has affected the vegetable grower, the truck gardener, the honey producer, and the hog raiser, for the tariff under the treaty certainly discriminates against Canadian lard.

The Address-Mr. Fraser
And fresh and smoked meats are also in the list of the things affected. In my own district, as I have explained before, we have an area 650 miles by 350, and the people are making a start now in the raising of sheep. But what will happen when we allow the cheap mutton that comes from Australia to enter into competition with our product? And remember that mutton is only a by-product in Australia; it cuts no ice at all with the sheep raiser, whereas in British Columbia it is vital to the sheep industry. He must get a fair price for his mutton in order to make the industry profitable. Sheep-raising is the best paying industry in my constituency to-day. True, it is only being carried on in a small way at present, but the industry is going to grow rapidly because it is profitable. After all, the farmer is a pretty wise man, and when he sees that a particular branch of agriculture is profitable he is going to take a crack at it. But I am afraid the government will come along and with another trade treaty ruin the small sheep-raiser. Remember, we need plenty of wool in this country. In the name of common sense- if this government had any, which I doubt,- why should it put into operation a treaty that would bear so harshly on some of the most deserving classes in this country?
Now, one of my friends opposite asked me something about the meaning of an adequate tariff. Apparently he did not understand the term. I hope to enlighten him before I am through. During the general election our Liberal friends tried to terrify the people by telling them that the Conservative party advocated a high tariff. But we do not want to talk about high tariff, adequate tariff, low tariff or free trade. What we want to talk about is equivalent tariffs-equivalent protection-nothing else.	I went to the trouble
of looking up the definition of "equivalent" I do not see my note here, but I can tell the House what the word means.


An hon. MEMBER:: Brick for brick.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


John Anderson Fraser: Maybe hon. members will
take it as read. My recollection of the definition of "equivalent" as I -copied it from Webster's new international dictionary is: equal in value, force or import. Equal in value-that is what we want in our tariff policy. We want such a tariff policy as will give the same value to the Canadian as the Australian demands for himself. What this country needs is equivalent tariffs, equivalent protection, up and down the whole tariff line. The question should be studied carefMr. Fraser.]
fully and thoroughly by men who have a sympathetic interest in it, and a policy founded on their conclusions should be put into operation by a government that has some back bone and some sense. I have just placed my hand on what I copied from Webster's dictionary. Equivalent means:	Equal
in worth or value, force, power-


An hon. MEMBER:: That is nothing new.


John Anderson Fraser: 
Mr. CAMPBELL:: Is the comparison the
hon. member is making fair? The money for the Hudson Bay railway has already been provided by the sale of western lands.
The Address-Mr. Fraser


John Anderson Fraser: If the money is provided, why mention it in the Speech from the Throne?


Milton Neil Campbell: I do not understand.


John Anderson Fraser: Why put it in the Speech
from the Throne if the money is already provided?


Milton Neil Campbell: The money is in the
[DOT]treasury of the country, and, of course, has to be expended by the treasury of the country, but actually no money will be taken from the federal treasury for the construction of the Hudson Bay railway.


John Anderson Fraser: The hon. member may have better information than I have, but I cannot see how you are going to construct the Hudson Bay railway without spending money. The money must be provided.
The House has been very indulgent, Mr. Speaker, and I do not wish to try its patience too far. In conclusion, I would like to issue a warning to my Liberal friends and to the different groups in this House. I challenged the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill) yesterday that he was afraid of another election. I think all hon. gentlemen opposite are afraid of another election. I think they are scared to death that they will be all wiped off the face of the earth in another election. It reminds me of a situation that is described in Burns' Tam o'Shanter. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that the hero after a night's carousel is going home at the witching hour of midnight, as they call it in Scotland. It was a stormy night, with wind and rain, and riding his good nag through the woods, the hero had to pass a church, surrounded by the usual churchyard. Approaching, he saw streams of light coming from the windows, and emboldened by the forty-rod which he had been drinking, he rode up to the windows and looked in to see what was going on, for in addition to the lights, sounds of merriment were coming from the church. Looking in he saw a dance of witches in progress. He was very much interested; in fact, he became so excited that he gave vent to an exciama-tion of delight at the performance he saw going on in the church. The lights were immediately extinguished, and the witches were out after him. The hero had to make quick steps to get across a stream nearby, and then, of course, he was safe from the witches. As he was making for the stream Burns apostrophizes him thus:
Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou'll get thy fairin'I In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin'!

I think, Mr. Speaker, that illustrates the attitude of hon. gentlemen opposite toward an election.


Mr. W. T. LUCAS (Camrose):: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to detain the House at any great length at this particular stage, but owing to the fact that I voted against the Australian treaty when it was before the House last session, and owing to the fact that I stressed the unfairness of this treaty during my campaign I feel that it is only right, in fairness to myself, before casting my vote on the motion before the House and the amendment to it, to at least make some explanation indicating clearly where I stand on this matter.
But before doing so I wish to draw attention to certain remarks made during the debate by the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Davis) and to correct a mis-statement on the part of the hon. gentleman. I listened very carefully to the remarks of my hon. friend and I must say that I was impressed with the fact that he had apparently given a great deal of study and thought to the subject matter. Furthermore, the whole tenor of the hon. gentleman's remarks was very fair and impartial. But he made this statement, as reported at page 878 of Hansard with respect to Mr. H. W. Wood, president of the United Farmers of Alberta to which I must take exception:
At the convention of the United Farmers of Alberta held a couple of weeks ago, Mr. H. W. Wood, the president of that organization, said:
"We are inviting immigrants to come here, and at the present time conditions for that purpose are better than they have been for some time. It will mean that the people will have to pay from five to ten cents on every bushel of wheat they raise. If they do they wouttd be of such mental calibre that we would not want them. We must fight this infernal thing to death, and if we cannot do it in any other way we must appeal to the immigrants of other countries and say, ' For God's sake do not come here.' "
Then the hon. member for EaSt Calgary proceeded to say:
I mention these circumstances so that the government may have full knowledge of the feeling prevailing in the western provinces with respect to any immigration policy.
I feel, Mr. Speaker, that the hon gentleman did not want to be unfair. Hon. gentlemen will see that the impression given is that Mr. Wood was directing his remarks against immigration. I have here a verbatim report of what Mr. Wood really did say and I ask the permission of the House to place that statement on Hansard so that hon. members will have the correct version of Mr. Wood's remarks before them. Before reading the excerpt I may say that Mr. Wood was

The Address-Mr. Lucas
not speaking of immigration, but as president of the Alberta wheat pool he was dealing with the question of an export duty on wheat:
To me the greatest peril that we are facing immediately, and it will be the most infamous crime that was ever committed in the country in my opinion, and that is an export duty on our wheat. Now that thing is very, very visible on the horizon just now.
An export duty means just one thing, it means-and it don't mean anything else-that we go down in our pockets, or we don't because the money never gets to our pockets; but we pay just so many cents a bushel to the Canadian millers on every bushel of wheat that we raise in Canada.
Robbery, yes a straight unqualified theft, but done through legislation. Now we had some very valuable advice yesterday about not going to the government to get the government to solve our problems for us. "Attend to your own business," and that was as good advice as we ever had. But that advice would be infinitely more valuable to Canada and to humanity if it were given to other people as well as us. Now we are inviting immigration to this country and it is beginning to look like we could honestly do so, because I am not sure they would not be able to make a living here if things go on as they have been going. But suppose we say to them, "If you come to these great wheat fields of western Canada and begin to raise this wheat, in addition to all the natural difficulties that exist, we would expect you to pay to the milling industry of Canada 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 cents a bushel on all the wheat you raise." Do you suppose they would come? If they do they would be of such mental calibre that we would not want them.
Now, that don't only mean that they want to take anywhere from five to forty million of dollars a year out of the wheat producers of Canada, but it means also that they want to create a false position where it will be necessary to maintain that and to increase it.
I heard a manufacturer on the train the other day. in the smoking compartment, where all the problems of the nation are solved-who told about when Grover Cleveland was President of the United States they reduced the tariff on certain things and put certain industries out of business.
I am satisfied that that was true. I don't know the details. But why did it put them out of business? Because they (the manufacturing industry) had been built upon an absolutely false basis. That false basis was created by legislation, and when you begin to remove that false scaffolding and let it down to an honest, true basis, it could not stand; it had all been falsely developed.
Now to put five or ten cents a bushel export duty on Canadian wheat, and instead of having a milling capacity of 90.000,000 bushels as they milled last year, you will soon have developed a milling capacity of 350,000,-000 bushels and you cannot sustain that without a continued theft from the producer. They will ask for increases, saying. "Here is a great industry that we have built up here and must be sustained."
Now I only want to say one thing more. We want to fight this infernal thing to the death, with every means at our command.


Mr. DAVIS:: Mr. Speaker, may I-


William Thomas Lucas: I ask the hon. gentleman to let me finish the statement, there are only a few more words:
And if we cannot successfully fight it any other way, we must appeal to the emigrants of every country in the world, "For God's sake don't come here and get involved in this infamous thing."
It will be evident from the quotation from the speech of Mr. Wood which I have read that his remarks had nothing whatever to do with immigration.


Alfred (Fred) Davis: I desire to state that the
quotation I used was taken from the Calgary Herald of January 20 last and was published on the first page of that paper. If my hon. friend will look at the revised Hansard he will see that the source of the quotation is given.


William Thomas Lucas: I accept the hon. gentleman's statement. As I have already said his whole speech was couched in 'a very fair manner; I feel that he did not want to be unfair. However, the report of his remarks in unrevised Hansard did not give the authority for, his quotation, and I simply took the opportunity to present the correct information as I have it here. Had the hon. gentleman stated in the first place that the quotation he gave was taken from a paper it would have relieved him from responsibility.
Let me now deal for a few minutes with the Australian treaty. While that treaty is not specifically mentioned in the amendment before the House there is no doubt it is one of the treaties under fire at the present time. When the treaty was brought down I felt that it was unfair, especially to the agriculturists of Canada. I may say that I listened with a great deal of interest to the figures given by the horn. Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) the other night as showing the trade between Canada and Australia. Those1 figures are as follows:
Imports from Exports to
Australia	Australia
1917	
$ 762,113	$ 6,549,5461919	
4,963,446	14,019,6291920	
1,371,775	11,415,6231921	
791,980	18,112,861
A question that has occurred to me, Mr. Speaker, is, why we were concerned about going down to Australia to secure a treaty at all. The foregoing figures would indicate that Australia was the one that should have been concerned about sending representatives to Canada for that purpose. Seeing that Australia was not worried about the existing trade conditions I do not think it was wise for Canada to negotiate a treaty with that country especially when in order to make a bargain, the agricultural industry had to be sacrificed to such an extent. We feel as producers that we have been hit in two ways. An import duty of three cents a pound was placed on raisins, which means raising the price to us as consumers, and then the duty was taken off the products we had to sell; in that way we have been hit both going and coming. The
The Address-Mr. Lucas

hon. Minister of Public Works (Mr. King, Kootenay) last night made a very fair and reasonable request in my opinion, and that was that the treaty should be given a fair trial before asking for its annulment. With that I heartily agree. This treaty was negotiated with Australia and passed last year. True there is a clause in it, No. 5, which provides that by order in council any other of the British dominions may be admitted to the provisions of that treaty. Generally, as I understand it-I may be wrong [DOT]-treaties are made for a period of years, but in this case no period of years is mentioned, but a statement is made that the treaty may be abrogated by giving six months' notice. Judging from that provision, it would appear to me that the whole thing was more or less of an experiment, and in my opinion the government would have been very well advised to have confined this treaty to Australia for one year before extending its provisions to the other dominions. If, at the end of that year, we found the treaty was to our advantage we could then extend it to other dominions. If we found it was not to our advantage we would have to deal only with Australia in abrogating it. However, the government saw fit, before the treaty came into operation, by order in council to extend it to New Zealand, and for this I do not hesitate to criticize them. However t'he deed has been done and as I wish to be reasonable I believe that Canada, as a nation having negotiated this agreement with another sister dominion, we should be fair enough to give it a trial for at least one year.
Now, while I opposed the treaty last year and while I opposed it in my camapaign, I desire to make my position clear in regard to the stand I shall take on this amendment. The amendment does not ask for an abrogation of the treaty, nor do I believe we could amend it, and if this treaty should come before the House at some future time-and I think in fairness it should not be brought up for another year, I would be quite willing to deal with it on the information then before us. But, connected as it is with the Speech from the Throne, and not being able to deal intelligently with it at the present time, I feel that I cannot support the amendment now before the House.


Mr. JOHN EVANS (Rosetown):: I did not intend to take part in this debate, but seeing that so many things have been said which I think have given rather a wrong impression in the country, I feel that I should answer one or two allegations. There is before the House now an amendment to the motion for >
Mr. Lucas.]
an Address in reply, which is supposed to serve more than one purpose. Our friends who have moved it and who have spoken to it at some length are carrying on a campaign which is camouflaged party strategy. The amendment in the first place is supposed to put the group to which I belong in a false position before our electors, because my Conservative friends cannot gracefully accept the decision of parliament as to who is to carry on the government at the present time. The other object of the amendment, as I view it, is to persuade the agriculturists of Canada to accept the price-fixing power, or supposedly price-fixing power, for their products, so that an excuse will be had for the manufacturing and distributing combines to increase the price-fixing power which they already have. That is, for the sake of immediate gain to themselves, our workers and consumers generally are to be fleeced of their earnings and the agriculturists of their dues by having to pay enhanced prices on all the commodities which they need to purchase.
A good deal has been said regarding the Australian treaty. The Australian treaty, like all trade treaties, is a one-sided piece of legislation, and I venture to say to-day that were it possible for the farmer, and particularly the producer of butter, eggs, poultry and other tilings of that nature, to take advantage of the production which covers those articles now, neither the manufacturer, distributor nor politician would want the farmer to receive fair play or to obtain the protection for his products which they are now seemingly anxious to give him. The member for South Oxford (Mr. Sutherland) is at variance entirely with all economic laws, to say the least. Were it possible to protect the farmer, the government would have to pay him an amount per pound for his product equal to the protection or pricefixing power which the trade penalties give to the manufacturer, and which is always passed on to the consumer. To give the farmer any protection this would be necessary, because all his products have found their price in the open markets of the world. Will the protectionists do this? I say no, they cannot, and if they could the circle again would soon be complete, because the price of doing anything else would be increased. Whether it was surgeon, physician, mechanic or organized labourer even that gave the farmer any service whatsoever, the cost would be passed on and the farmer would find himself very soon in the place where he started. The end would be that he would be compelled sooner or later to join in the plaintive whine that goes on in this House year after year on behalf of protection for the manufacturer, and

The Address-Mr. Evans
this seems to be very largely the purpose of the amendment.
I say you cannot protect the farmer. All he asks is that the other industrialists shall get off his own back. It used to be that those enjoying the benefit of import penalties persuaded the workingman that protection would give him high wages and a full dinner pail. The labourer has already found out that all they care about him is to have plenty of men seeking work at the factory door each morning. They are trying to persuade the farmer that if he would only agree to higher protection for the manufacturer, he would have his own product increased in price by protection. This cannot be done while we are producing for export, and every bit of increase in the tariff must make it harder for the farmer to produce at a price at which he can compete in the world's market. The protectionists in this House no doubt hope to place us in a wrong light with our electors, but we are supporting the government on a programme pf legislation of benefit to the agriculturist and the people generally. Indeed, much ridicule has been thrown at this group by the press, by anonymous letters, and by debate in this House; but had the Conservative party been sincere in their criticism of the Australian treaty and their professed concern for the welfare of the agriculturist, they would have attacked the Australian treaty from another standpoint altogether. They would have attacked that part of it which places a duty of three cents a pound on .raisins, seeing that the bulk of what we use in Canada comes, not from Australia, but from other countries to which no preference in the tariff is shown. I suppose that Australia will not be able to send us this year more than a one-twentieth part of what we shall need. Whatever we may get from Australia duty free will benefit only the importer or the big dealer; the benefit will not be passed on even to the retailer, much less to the consumer. The strange thing is that I do not hear our Conservative friends attack this part .of the treaty, the part that will most affect the manufacturer, by raising the cost of living, and will as well put further out of line the cost of production on our farms. But as long as there is a penalty placed on anything that we have to import, the protectionist advocate always thinks it is all right because he js himself blinded by the prospect of the immediate gain he thinks he will get when *the government agrees to tax what he is particularly interested in. Indeed, consistency pnd fair play are terms that cannot be applied to men advocating a tax on foodstuffs.
The hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. ,Davis) the other day, when purporting to quote me from page 488 of Hansard, was really reading a quotation from Sir Richard Cartwright. But I do not want to apologize for Sir Richard Cartwright; his arguments were unanswerable at the time. I still believe that every kind of protection is robbery, yes, legalized robbery, just as Sir Richard Cartwright said it was, and, indeed, it is quite plain to-day to anybody who looks into the matter that if it was not possible under the system of protection to obtain something for which no return was given, protection would die a natural death in about the time it takes to tell the tale. They say it will look after the unemployment question. It has never done it. They say it will give us a home market. That is only a joke. The hon. gentleman quoted from Hansard showing that the agricultural industry had been subsidized by large sums of money, and he cited some sums paid for travelling expenses of inspectors and others on educational work. How he can call this a subsidy to the industry, I do not know. To pay travelling expenses for inspectors or educational speakers is not subsidizing the industry. I would like to know what he has to say regarding travelling expenses for hon gentlemen going to the ends of the earth to negotiate trade treaties for the sake of other industries. What has he to say regarding the salaries and expenses of jprevention officers in every manufacturing country that sends manufactured goods to this country? In the interest of our protected manufacturers there is an army of men following up every shipment of goods made to Canada in order to see that the invoices are not falsified and that the goods are not sold cheaper for export than they are in the country of origin. Indeed, our own preventive service last year cost us between $300,000 and $400,000. But can the hon. gentleman point to one dollar the farmer has ever received by enhanced prices on his products on account of the tariff? Is there any product on the farm to which any existing tariff can be applied by way of protection? Is there any commodity the farmer needs to buy that is not affected by trade penalties in the interests of manufacturers? The hon. gentleman mentioned the sum of $63,646 spent in 1923 for educational work as a subsidy of enormous extent. Why, the bounty paid for the production of crude petroleum alone last year was just equal to that, besides $2,500 for the administration of that act. The bounty on copper bars *and rods paid to one company last year was
The Address-Mr. Evans

juet $15,000, besides a duty of ten to thirty per cent on the products of this metal, which duty the consumers must pay. The salaries of the minister, deputy and staff at Ottawa alone of the Customs department last year amounted to over $534,000. Drawbacks paid in 1925 on material for use of manufacturers on exported goods amounted to $10,400,019, and drawbacks on goods consumed at home amounted to $1,533,175, or a total of $11,953,294 in drawbacks alone. There was a total expenditure in that department of $20,018,007. But this is only a small part of what it has cost this country to give manufacturers a price-fixing power on their products, which price the consumer must pay. I find that .General Motors of Canada, at Oshawa, Ontario, one company alone, received a drawback of $2,165,107, while we have t0! pay over thirty per cent too much for our motor cars because of import penalities. But that is only one company out of 132 that benefits under this drawback, and yet the hon. member quibbles about the name that should be given to sueji a nefarious system. Yes, I say robbery, robbery as true to-day as it was in the days of Sir Richard Cartwright.
But let us go back and take a glance again at these drawbacks. Not only did we spend nearly $12,000,000 of public "funds to enable the manufacturers to scour the world for raw materials, but we have maintained on the free list practically everything they need to use in their factories. I say public funds, because since the policy of this country is one of protection that money is taken out of current revenue without a dqu'bt. They tell us that free trade is ia myth; but when it comes to the point where they themselves are obliged to purchase supplies the manufacturers are all free traders. The tariff schedule is perhaps the most one-sided1 piece of legislation extant to-day. I question if there is in the whole world ft piece of legislation that so completely delivers one class of the people over to another to be exploited, a class whose interests have become by legislation of privilege entirely out of line with the interests of the rest of the people. On pages 66 and 67 of the Customs Tariff we find a whole list of articles on the free list. I would invite hon. gentlemen to peruse this book and see the one-sidedness of the whole thing, the discrimination against the agriculturist and the consumers of the country in general. Take pages 93 and 97 again, dealing with manufacturers' supplies, or pages 98 to 100 inclusive with reference to drawbacks, and you will realize how utterly unfair and one-sided the tariff system is. We tax ourselves to give

the manufacturers an advantage; surely then it is not too much to expect that their raw material shall be purchased ftt home so as to give employment to our working men. But such is not the case. This Customs Tariff provides that our manufacturers shall enjoy all the advantages possible to enable them to scour the world for the cheapest raw material while our own raw material and our natural resources go undeveloped, although we tax ourselves for the sake of the manufacturers. We maintain on the free list even importations of iron and steel, the product of foreign mines, while the suppliants of privilege in this House prate about a home market for the farmer. What with bonuses, bounties, tariff's and other things, we have given millions for the production of steel in our own country, and yet in the very place in this Dominion to-day where working men are starving there is a company who have benefited by the system of protection and bonuses and bounties and free raw material, importing these things to work in their own1 smelting furnaces. We 'have scoured the wholte world for scrap iron, old steel, old rails, and so on, importing them free under item 775 of the tariff, while the people have to pay from 20 to 35 per cent for the products made from, these metals. I would advise hon. gentlemen to consult items 414 and 417 which I will not detain the House to read just now.
Our manufacturers do not believe in their own policy. By protection they have driven the cost of doing anything in this country out of line with world prices, and to-day they find it cheaper to import their own raw material than to secure it in this country. Then they come here and claim protection under the tariff to look after the working man. What a fallacy. In this parliament we have suddenly become aware somehow of the fact that the farmer is not sufficiently protected, but I say that the farmer needs to be delivered from those who would protect him. The truth is that the price-fixing power hitherto enjoyed has become useless in defence of the labour organization, and that is the cause of the feverish anxiety for immigration to-day. It is argued that if the farmer would only demand protection it could be used as a fulcrum for the political lever to pry a little more privilege out of the people. The hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Dickie) yesterday deplored the sending of natural products from Canada to other countries, but I would point out that this goes on only in proportion to the extent of the want of enterprise and patriotism on the part of our industrialists and capitalists. For instance, the

The Address-Mr. Evans
desire for an export embargo on pulpwood is prompted by the desire to have the pulp-wood producers delivered over to the manufacturer ; all our manufacturer needs to do is to bid a better price for the raw material. And the desire for an export embargo on wheat is prompted by the same selfish longing to have the producer of wheat at the mercy of the Canadian miller. The Canadian miller never asked for this until the farmer formed his own co-operative marketing scheme by which he could better look after his higher grade. The one thing that protectionists need to learn is that the word "wealth" is significant only when our natural resources are in course of use and enjoyment by the people. To hamper your competitor in order to increase your own wealth is a fallacy, because it always restricts the purchasing power of the home consuming public. Our protectionists have fallen into the same error as the working men did when they tried to prevent the introduction of labour-saving machinery. It is all restriction; but then it is the boast always of the conservative that he ever remains the same. A very illuminating address was delivered lately to the National Council of Farmers' Co-operative Marketing Associations at Lee House, Washington, D.C., by a Professor Macey Campbell of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He points out that the discrimination against the agriculturist by the protective system of the United States is undermining the life of the whole nation. I want to read one or two paragraphs from the report of his address:
Dr. Campbell quoted records of .the United States census bureau showing the steady increase in the percentage of landless tenant farmers. In 1880 the percentage was 26; in 1900 it had increased to 35 and in 1920 to 38. Seven states, he said, now have reached the 50 per cent mark, while in two states more than 50 per cent of the farmers are landless.
Landlessness by the mortgage route also is steadily increasing Dr. Campbell asserted, quoting statistics to show that in 1890 28 per cent of the farmers were encumbered by mortgage, that in 1920 over 40 per cent were so encumbered, and that now farm mortgage indebtedness in the United States has reached the tremendous total of seven thousand million dollars. He says:
While mortgage indebtedness has been increasing, the farmers' equity in these mortgaged farms has been decreasing, with the result that while in 1910 it was 72.10 per cent, in 1920 it had dropped to 70.9 per cent and in 1925 to an estimated 60 per cent.
As the farmer loses the ownership of his land the equity held by others increases. With the average interest rate on farm mortgages standing at 6 per cent, and the average income from farm lands at 3 per cent, there seems little hope of paying off the $7,000,000,000 of farm mortgages. The ownership of mortgaged farm
lands is passing into the hands of persons who live largely in towns and cities.
This leads one to ask, Sir, if at an interest rate of 6 per cent farm land in the United States is going so rapidly out of the hands of those who use it, what must be the condition in this country, particularly in western Canada, where our average rate of interest runs to 8, 9 and 10 per cent, and sometimes over. This has made necessary the cry for cheap money for agricultural purpose, but I predict that unless some of the handicaps are removed from our basic industry, even an agricultural credit scheme will in time also become useless. Let me quote another paragraph from Dr. Campbell's address showing the discrimination against life on the farm. He says:
We who are engaged in education judge of the attractiveness of life in the rural communities as compared with life in the cities by the conditions we find in the homes and the schools. Recently my work brought me into close contact with the homes and schools in the South, in the Dakotas, and in the city of Detroit. I saw barefooted white mothers and children at work in the cotton fields beside the men trying to make cotton enough to carry them through the year. I found a white school operating but two months during the entire year in a bare shack with two windows. The teacher had no preparation above the rural school. Children sixteen years old were in the third grade. They had had no more months of scool-ing than many children have in the cities by the time they are eight.
Here is a further paragraph from his address:
In reply to my questions concerning conditions in Detroit. I received the answer. "Our big organized industries bring in sufficient profits that we are able to support schoofis like these for our children." I saw more good, modem homes in Detroit in three city blocks, occupied by the families of working men, than I saw in an eight hundred mile drive among the farm homes in the entire state of South Dakota. The memory of those barefooted women in the cotton fields of the South haunts me still.
To-day by co-operation we are trying to alleviate some of the unsatisfactory conditions we find on our Canadian farms. The hon. member for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. Edwards) the other day quoted some information he had received regarding the working of one of our co-operative companies, and he charged that company with exploitation of the farmer, stating that while the duty on a certain farm implement was $22.80, the company was charging the farmer $38.30. I am very glad, Sir, to have the opportunity of correcting the entirely wrong impression which the hon. gentleman gave the House. These are the facts. As indicative of the discrimination against those engaged in the basic industry of this country, I want to say that under the rules of our distributing combines
The Address-Mr. Evans

a co-operative company is classed merely as a consumer. That rule to-day is recognized in the administration of our tariff legislation. Under this rule a co-operative company is forced to go to a foreign country and buy its requirements, but at once the Canadian combine steps in and, on the ground that the co-operative company has gone past the wholesaler, the jobber, the dealer and the manufacturer, applies under the Dumping Act for the imposition of a penalty equal to the profits of all these concerns in between. Our co-operative companies, I repeat, are classed only as consumers, irrespective of the volume of business they do or what they distribute. Is that fair?	Is there any British fair play
in that, Sir?	I would respectfully ask this
House to consider this unjust discrimination before any further legislation. along this line is passed. Is this fair play to the working men and women of this country, to those engaged in our basic industry?
I think, Mr. Speaker, it is time that we emphasized the disparity between life on the farm to-day and in the city, and the state of slavery that our men, women and children are subjected to in their attempt to keep themselves above the line of want. I believe it is the patriotic duty of men in Canada occupying positions similar to that occupied by Dr. Macey 'Campbell in the United States to make known the discrimination against our rural life lest we sink to the level of the conditions he has described as prevailing today in some of the finest states of the union. What he has described, Sir, is the result of the system upon which we are exhorted to base our fiscal policy by hon. gentlemen who advocate protection, and who are willing that those engaged in our basic industry may suffer degradation as deplorable as that witnessed by Dr. Campbell if only they themselves can reach immediate wealth at the expense of their unfortunate fellow-Oanadians.


Hon. J. W. EDWARDS (Frontenac-Adding-ton):: Mr. Speaker, representing a constituency in which the people are engaged in mixed farming and are especially interested in dairy production, I desire to give my support to the amendment which has been proposed with characteristic ability and attention to detail by the hon. member for South Oxford (Mr. Sutherland), than whom no more sincere or better qualified champion of the farmers of Canada has had a seat in this House during the last twenty years.
I support the amendment proposed by the hon member for South Oxford for the reasons stated in the amendment-that the Speech from the Throne proposes no remedial legis-

lation to alleviate the injustice under which the farmers of this country are suffering at this time, and have been for many years. I support the amendment also in order to indicate my lack of confidence in a government in which sixty per cent of the people have said they have no confidence, in which the members of this House have indicated they have no confidence-a government, in addition, which has indicated its lack of confidence in the members of this House, as well as its lack of confidence in itself. I also support the amendment as a protest against the manner in which two hon. gentlemen of this House have presented demands on this government and against the acquiescence of the government in those demands-demands the compliance with which constitute a supplement to the Speech from the Throne, demands which are subversive of the very fundamental principles of responsible government, demands which indicate the desperate character of those presenting them and the desperate necessity, pitiable weakness, and lack of dignity on the part of the government acceding to them.
On the 29th of October last the government appealed to the country for reasons plainly stated by the Prime Minister in his Richmond Hill speech. In that speech he stated that he wanted a more definite mandate from the people of Canada. In that speech he stated that the government would no longer be justified in merely marking time and drawing their salaries, that four years of simply marking time and drawing their salaries was long enough. He asked for his mandate; the election was held, and his party now finds itself in this position: the Prime Minister defeated, half of his cabinet defeated, and the membership of his following in this House reduced by some sixteen as compared with its standing in the previous parliament. But notwithstanding those facts, notwithstanding the fact that practically sixty per cent of the people of Canada by their votes on the 29th of October declared they had no further use for this government, the remnant of this government nevertheless comes back here and undertakes to carry on as a government, and then it presents the pitiable spectacle of influencing members of other groups to give them their support in order that they may be able to carry on. They further indicate their lack of confidence in themselves as a government, or their lack of confidence in the merits of the legislation they propose, when they ask this parliament to give them a recess of five or six weeks in order to reorganize the government.
I said, Mr. Speaker, that I would vote for this amendment also as a protest against the manner in which two hon. gentlemen of this

The Address-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac)
House, representing less than two per cent of the membership of this House, have made demands upon the government for certain legislation, which the government has agreed to bring down. On 7th of January, as you will find by referring to page 560 of Hansard, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. AVoodsworth) sent to William Lyon Mackenzie King, to the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen), and also to the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) who is leading the Progressives in this House, a letter in which he asked the question:
Is it your intention to introduce at this session legislation with regard to (a) Provision for the unemployed; (b) Old Age Pensions.
Those letters were sent on the 7th of January. On the 8th of January the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre gets up in this House and declares that his little group- I use his own words-
-are so placed as to be able almost to say which of these two sides-
That is to say, Liberals or Conservatives:
-is to carry on the government of the country.
I think the only inference from that is that it was a very plain indication to the government that they had better come across and favour the proposals demanded; otherwise there might be unhealthy consequences for the government. The letter sent to the right hon. leader of the opposition was answered on the 9th of January, and, as we would expect, the answer was clear-cut and to the point. There was no bidding in the answer sent by the leader of the opposition. Following the letter sent to the Prime Minister, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre says that he had an interview with Mr. King. At that interview, recognizing the desperate position in which the government was placed, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and his colleague pressed for further legislation. Their additional demands referred to the Naturalization Act, the Criminal Code, and the Immigration Act. They received no answer from Mr. King. Then came the vote in this House on the 14th of January, in which the government was sustained by a majority of only three. Evidently the member for Winnipeg North Centre thought that was a favourable time to press for something definite from the leader of the Liberal party. Apparently he was not satisfied to accept the verbal assurances of the leader of the Liberal party in regard to this legislation. He asked him to put his views in writing. The hon. member very frankly says that this method
which he has pursued of finding out what the various parties think with regard
5 p.m. to proposed legislation is perhaps somewhat novel in this House. Y'es, Mr. Speaker, it is a somewhat novel procedure, and one which I think should not be encouraged. On the 28th of January Mr. King writes to the member for Winnipeg North Centre agreeing to his demands, which, I repeat, constitute a supplement to the Speech from the Throne, and constitute also an unblushing bid for support. On the morning of the 29th of January the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre says he received that letter from Mr. King, and on the afternoon of the 29th he rises in his place in this House and puts that letter on Hansard, with these words:
It seems to me-
Says the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre:
-that we must be very grateful indeed that the peculiar combination of circumstances which we find existing in the House at this time has seemingly made it possible to place upon the statute books long over-due legislation in the interests of some of the most needy but least influential elements of our population.
Those were the words of the hon. gentleman in regard to the course which he had pursued. May I point out, Mr. Speaker, that it was in a somewhat similar manner that the celebrated Robin Hood took the purses from the rich at the point of a pistol and distributed their contents amongst the most needy but least influential members of the population? The motive inspiring Robin Hood, the bandit, and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, may do credit to their hearts; but I submit, Sir, that the method is one which would have placed the noose round Robin Hood's neck if they had caught him.


Mr. FORKE:: Did Robin Hood use a pistol?


Sir HENRY DRAYTON:: That is a poor picture.


John Wesley Edwards: Perhaps he used a bow and arrow. My hon. friend must take the language as figurative. At all events I am right in saying that he used1 force in obtaining the wealth of the richer people and distributing it among the most needy of the population. I do not know how to characterize what is proposed by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre under the Criminal Code.


Mr. HEAPS:: Would you call old age pensions robbery?
1044	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac)


Mr. EDWARDS (Frontenac-A<4dington):: No I have no intention of the kind.


Abraham Albert Heaps: The inference is there just the same.


John Wesley Edwards: The inference I want the hon. gentleman to take-and I think he is intelligent enough to take it-is this: That in the case I referred to the bandit used force, took. advantage of circumstances, to obtain what he wanted whether he was entitled to it or not; and the plain inference from my remarks is that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps) have done exactly the same thing. I want to tell them that in my judgment such methods are absolutely subversive of the very first principles of responsible government.
Now, the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) asked1 me a question. We are told that many long years ago a gentleman named Cincinnatus was twice taken from between the handles of the plough and conducted to Rome as dictator, and with the help of the Roman legions performed some wonderful achievements. I believe, on looking over the record, that the hon. member for Brandon has twice been taken from the handles of the plough, brought down here, and is in the position of dictator to the government at the present time. I dare say that with the help of the legions across the way he will be able to perform achievements even greater than those performed by Cincinnatus.
The present situation in this House, which has been brought about by the government's greed for office, is nothing more or less than a two-ringed political circus, with the hon. member for Brandon as the ringmaster cracking the whip and obliging hon. gentlemen opposite to dance to his music. Well, every circus, of course, has its clown, its fun maker, and it is almost unnecessary for me to say who occupies that position in this particular political circus. We all appreciate the fact that the central actor in this political vaudeville is the hon. Minister of Agriculture.


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: Thank you.


John Wesley Edwards: I wish to say that I would be remiss in my duty if I did not express to that hon. gentleman my thanks for the entertainment he has provided for the amusement of the members of this House-my appreciation of his magnificent humour and of the grotesque verbiage in which he clothes that humour.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


John Wesley Edwards: What is wrong about that?


William Richard Motherwell: Let him go on. It is a free country.


John Wesley Edwards: The situation, Mr. Speaker, strikes me as., one of the greatest farces ever staged in any deliberative assembly in this or any other country. The Minister of Public Works (Mr King, Kootenay) the other day quoted a number of figures in regard to the paper industry, the transportation of grain by our railways, and so on. He also declared that the government had given very strong evidence of economy in administration, and so forth. He did not call attention to the fact that the government had paid out over $75,000 to a pulpwood commission, or $167,000 to a grain commission.


Mr. KING (Kootenay):: All of value.


John Wesley Edwards: Nor did be call attention to the $181,000 spent on radio outfits.


John Warwick King: All of value.


John Wesley Edwards: "All of value," the hon, gentleman says. Nor did1 he call attention to the $270,000 paid out in providing golf courses for the entertainment or amusement of those gentlemen who have wealth enough to travel up and down the cotuntry with a bag of sticks under their arm and play with' a little round white 'ball whenever they feel like doing so. Nor did he call attention to the Scribe hotel facts, closely connected with our railway arrangements. He did not point out that they paid to a gentleman called Aronovici $16260 for thirteen months work, $9291 for expenses or pocket money, and then gave him a bonus of $7,500 besides, a total of $33,041 to that gentleman, or an average of $85.75 a day for his work. These are the evidences of economy on the part of the government opposite.
But there is more. Between 1917 and 1920, both years inclusive, the Conservative government collected in special war taxes $179,939,000. That was denonuced in the strongest possible terms by hon. [DOT] gentlemen opposite, but in the next four years-1921 to 1924 inclusive-those hon. gentlemen collected $709,-
540,000	from the same source, or $529,000,000 more than was collected by those whom they formerly condemned. The total taxes collected during the period from 1917 to 1920 under the Conservatives were $1,156,000,000, or an average of $289,000,000 a year. That was denounced by hon. gentlemen opposite. "Put us in power," they said, "and we will reduce

The Address-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac)
the expenditure." In the next four years they collected $1,628,000,000, an average of $407,000,000 a year, or $118,000,000 more per year than was collected by those whom they condemned. I will call attention to this fact, which should not be lost sight of: that the Conservative government in the period from 1917 to 1920 made these expenditures: $164,000,000 for soldiers' gratuities; $102,000,000 in connection with the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment; $80,000,000 in connection with soldier settlement on the land; $10,000,000 on technical education, $7,000,000 on soldiers' insurance; a total of $363,000,000. Most of that expenditure was needed and was incurred before the Liberal party came into power.
Mr. MdLEAN (Melfort): Did that money come out of revenue, or was it borrowed money?


John Wesley Edwards: It does not make any difference whether it came out of revenue or was borrowed money.


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: Did it come out of taxation, or was it borrowed money?


John Wesley Edwards: It came out of the treasury of this country. If 'you borrow money I suppose you intend to pay it back some time; or do hon. gentlemen opposite not consider that a debt or obligation? What difference does it make? The facts are there for everybody to draw their own conclusion. The net debt in 1921 was $2,350,000,000.	In 1925 it had grown to
$2,417,000,000.	If you add to that the
guaranteed railway bonds in 1924 and 1925, amounting to $118,000,000, it made the debt on March 31, 1925, no less a sum than $2,535,000,000. This is the record of the government which tries to speak of the creditable manner in which it has conducted the finances of this country.
The hon. member also said, if I understood him correctly, that the Conservative party was responsible for our railway problem, in that it was under the Conservatives that the railways were amalgamated. My recollection of it is that the amalgamation of these roads, forced upon the country, was acceded to by members on both sides of the House. There was nothing else to do. The Conservative party is in no way responsible for Canada's railway problem. The railway problem of Canada was brought upon this country by the wild spree of railway building conducted by the Liberals when they were in power between 1896 and 1911. It was the Liberal party which built the National Transcontinental and guaranteed the bonds of the Grand Trunk
Pacific. It was the Liberal party which also brought into existence the Canadian Northern and guaranteed its bonds, with the exception of the bonds in British Columbia.
The hon. member also referred to Canada's favourable balance of trade. He thought that that was a good point. In some cases it might be. I take this view in regard to the favourable balance of trade: If Canada could show it had a favourable balance of trade produced by the sale of goods made in Canada and finished in Canada, I would say that that would be a good argument; but what do we find? Canada exports 73 per cent of its wood and wood products in the raw state and imports 64 per cent of those wood products in the finished state. We export 87 per cent of our metals in the raw state and import about the same percentage of those metals when they have been finished, by work on the other side of the line or in other countries. A favourable balance of trade obtained by the export of our raw materials, and especially by the export of those raw materials which can never be replaced, is not a favourable balance of trade of which we should have any right to boast.
Another matter Which was referred to by the Minister of Public Works and referred to by several other hon. gentlemen is the reciprocity pact of 1911.	"Oh," they say, "if
you had allowed us to put that pact on the statute book it would have been a fine thing for the farmers of Canada." That is the ground they take. I take absolute issue with them in that respect. What did that pact propose to do for the farmers of this country? The reciprocity pact did not propose to reduce the duties on the implements of production used by the farmers. It left the duties on, and as a matter of fact the duties on some sixteen agricultural implements, a list of which I have in my hand, were lower in every case in 1921, when the Conservatives went out of power, than under the proposed reciprocity agreement of 1911. In this connection I call attention to this further fact- and I do so because of the reference made to it by the hon. member for Rosetown (Mr. Evans)-that while the members from the west supporting the United Grain Growers Grain Company, which was engaged in the handling of machinery, fence wite, fence posts, flour and various other articles, found fault with the duty in 1911 on binders, mowers and so on of 12^ per cent, which duty they say obliged the buyer of a binder to pay $22.80 more for that machine, they did not want to say one word against that company which was selling binders and mowers and

1046	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac)
other machines, taking out of the pockets of the farmers $38.30 profit on a binder, $13.80 profit on & mower, and so on all down the list. While these people condemned the Conservative party, or any party that left a duty on farm implements or machinery, the United Grain Growers Grain Company of the west were exacting a profit of over 21 per cent on these very same machines, and were taking absolutely no risk whatever in regard to bad debts-because it was a cash transaction all through the deal so far as they were concerned. They stood in the same position in the buying of machines as anybody else. If they bought a mower from the United States it came over at a certain price. They claimed that the duty obliged them to add a certain amount to that price. Very well; accept that if you like; that does not justify their adding a still further 21 per cent profit for themselves. While they professed to be particularly anxious about the farmer, they were showing that in their dealings with the farmers-cadh dealings in which they ran no ridk of bad1 accounts-they were taking exorbitant profits all along the line, not only in regard to machinery but in regard to everything else.


Mr. ROSS (Moose Jaw):: Does the hon.
member happen to know that the Grain Growers Grain Company, even if they were taking 21 per cent more on account of duties, or whatever they took it for, sold those implements at a great deal less than the regular line companies of Canada?


John Wesley Edwards: No, I do not know anything of the kind. I know that was the sworn evidence of Rice-Jones, the manager of the company, given in this budding a few years ago. He stated under oath that the company of which he was manager was taking a profit on those implements of over 21 per cent. There is the plain language; there is the source of my information, and my hon. friend can find his evidence in the report in the Library, as I found it. That is my statement, and I again point out that you must take into consideration the fact that they had their men under salary at the various elevators; they were paying them anyway, and all they had to do was to write one or two letters; it was a cash transaction in every case and there was no risk of bad debts. Surely people who profess to be deeply concerned about the farmers should be content to give them the benefit of the service and let them have the machines without taking a profit of over 21 per cent on the transaction. When they were taking

a profit of over 21 per cent in their own dealings with the farmers, I say it ill became them to come to this House and find fault with any government or party which was imposing a tariff of a little more than Jialf of the profits they were taking.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb), referring to the reciprocity election of 1911, paid that the man who wrote "Rule Britan-pia" was the one who won that election for ,the Conservative party. I do not think he is right in that at all. The people of Canada voted as they did in 1911, not because of "Rule Britannia;" not because they were patriotic citizens of the country, but they voted in their own interests. So far as singing Rule Britannia is concerned, I hope the party on this side of the House will always take the lead in singing that grand old hymn, and I say to the Minister of Finance that he will never find this party trying to substitute any other flag for the Union Jack, either.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


John Wesley Edwards: Some hon. gentlemen across the floor laugh, but I am particularly serious when I say that, ,and I am justified in making that allusion because of what was done here about a year ago by the hon. gentleman who is leading the Liberal party in this country.


Charles A. Stewart: It
worked well in the election.


John Wesley Edwards: 
Charles A. Stewart: Are
those the winter months in Canada?


John Wesley Edwards: The first three months.
1048	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac) .


Charles A. Stewart: The
summer months in Australia?


John Wesley Edwards: Yes, I am glad the hon. member reminds me of that because it seems to me still more thoroughly to emphasize the unfairness of this treaty. These are summer months in Australia when the cost of producing butter there is at its lowest and when in this country the cost of producing that article is at its very highest. Surely that should be taken into consideration.


Charles A. Stewart: My
hon. friend is speaking of exports?
Mr. EDWARDS (Frontenac-Addington)-Exports from Australia and New Zealand and Canada.


Charles A. Stewart: I
thought it was to Great Britain.


John Wesley Edwards: 
Mr. H. C. HOCKEN (Toronto West Centre):: Owing to an inherited and perhaps
unfortunate directness of mind, Mr. Speaker, when I first spoke this session I omitted, much to my regret, the observance of one of the graceful amenities of parliament. I desire now to repair that omission by extending to you my heartiest congratulations upon your re-election as Speaker. Having had the privilege of sitting four years under your direction, I have a full and complete idea of your impartiality, of the dignity with which you maintain the office, and your observance of the best traditions of the speakership under British institutions. I think I may speak for the w'hole House in saying that it is highly gratifying that you have been able so far to sustain the heavy dtrain imposed upon you in the absence of the deputy, and in expressing
the sincere hope that that happy state will prevail to the end of this debate.
If, Mr. Speaker, there is any form of the agricultural industry to which the government should pay particular attention it is in my judgment the dairy industry. The men who are engaged in that particular form of agriculture must work every day. The occupation is not a spasmodic one like grain growing; it calls for work early and late, seven days a week, and a constant measure of industry that is -more exacting, I think, than that involved in any other branch of farming operations. It is more than that, Sir. The dairying industry is really an agricultural manufacturing concern, because the products of the dairy must go through certain manufacturing processes before they are marketed; and the dairy farmer is akin to the manufacturer in the city, both by the constancy of his employment and by the fact that he must manufacture the raw product which he himself produces.
If my argument is sound, Mr. Speaker, it must appear to be most unfortunate that this particular industry should be jeopardized by any treaty that this government could make. It is the business of a government to deal with and to protect impartially all classes of citizens; and there are some forms of agriculture which it is not easy for a government to protect. The growing of wheat is something that is not easily protected, although I think that might be done in this country now. For instance, an export duty on wheat that is exported in bond to be ground in the United States would react, I think, to the advantage of the farming community in Canada. But here is an industry-dairying- which the government could do a great deal to foster. It can protect these men who work harder than any other people, the men on the farm, from unfair competition either from Australia or from the United States, and in my judgment the argument that is based upon the protection of the dairy industry is just as sound as the argument in regard to any other industry.
I entirely agree with the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Fraser) who spoke this afternoon. He said that he wanted an equivalent tariff, an adequate tariff. Well, that was put into another phrase in the last parliament, .one that struck me as being very suitable- a phrase used by an hon. member on the other side of the House. The then member for St. Laiwrence-St. George argued for what he called a cost of living tariff. He wanted a tariff just high enough to enable the manufacturer of this country to live-not to ex-
The Address-Mr. Hocken

ploit the consumer; not to reap excessive profits for himself, but to carry on 'his industry and give employment to tlhe men- he had engaged. That is the stand that this party takes, as far as I know its sentiments, with regard to the tariff. We want the factories of Canada to do business. We want to have them busy, for the sake of the men who work in them, for the sake of their wives and families, and for the general welfare of this country.
I do not intend, Mr. Speaker, to direct any particular attention to the tariff, or to say anything more than I have said with regard to the dairy industry. I desire to draw the attention of the House to something different, something touched on by the hon. member for Victoria, B.C. (Mr. Tolmie) the other day. I am not going to repeat his statistics, but I wish to draw the attention of this House to the scandalous indifference this government has shown towards the question of immigration. There is a clause in the Speech from the Throne setting out the purpose of the government now to adopt an energetic immigration programme. I should like my hon. friends opposite to tell me why they did not do that four years ago. If it is necessary now for this country to get immigration of the right type, it has been necessary for the last four years; and if steps had been taken even two years ago something substantial might have been accomplished by this time. But as we look over the immigration figures we are astounded to find that about as many people are leaving the country as are coming into it.


Arthur Meighen: More.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Or more. A country like
this needs these people more than it needs anything else; indeed, practically all its problems will be solved if we can add substantially to its population. But what do we find? For three years there has been no Minister of Immigration. The hon. minister who had charge of that department was taken from his duties and made Acting Minister of Finance, and from the time that Mr. Fielding retired from the office of Finance minister, with the exception of a few months during which a general election was held, there has been no Minister of Immigration. I consider the Department of Immigration at the present time the most important department in the administration of the affairs of Canada. A great deal depends, of course, upon its successful management. If we had in charge of it a man with a broad outlook who could adopt a large policy, his efforts

would result in making it easy for the Finance minister, because a million or more of population will certainly reduce taxation, will make it easier to balance tlhe budget, will eliminate the deficit from the National Railways, and will restore the country to the state of prosperity which existed in Canada in 1913 and 1914, just before the war. It was during those years we had the largest measure of immigration. If you take the figures for 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914 you will find we had almost a million and a half immigrants in those four years. If you take any other four years since 1885., you will see that they do not compare with that period. 'So that I attribute the present state of affairs with regard to immigration to the failure of the government to recognize the importance of that department. They took from it a capable minister and put upon him the heaviest duties I think any minister has to perform at any time, leaving that department without any head, the administration of it being in the hands of the deputy minister and other officials.
This state of affairs is moist unfortunate, particularly in 'view of the fact that the Imperial government, which is really anxious to assist in immigration to Canada as well as to Australia and New Zealand, have appropriated for that purpose fifteen million dollars a year for three years. That is a large sum, but, as they have stated over and over again, they stand ready with organization and with money to co-operate with the Dominion of Canada to fill up our vacant spaces and to relieve the over-population of the Old Land. Could we get any immigration quite so valuable to us as that from the British Isles? I submit that that is the very best we can get, because those people understand what it is to live under British institutions; they are not strangers to our form of government, our manner of living or our processes of business. Therefore I hold that every possible effort should be made, and should have 'been made in the past, to bring into this country a very heavy influx of people from the over-populated British Isles.
The problem, Sir, is fundamental to the prosperity of Canada, but although that fact has been emphasized by some of the most prominent and outstanding men in our public life, the government has done nothing. I understand that the Deputy Minister of Immigration is now in Europe formulating some plan, Thalt visit is four years overdue. Had this question been regarded as fundamental to our prosperity four years ago, I venture to think we would have had half a million, if not

The Address-Mr. Hocken
a million, more people in Canada than, we have, thus creating business for our railways, our banks, our merchants and our farmers. So that the dereliction of duty in that regard is one for which the government in my judgment. is heartily to be condemned.
The hon. member for Victoria, B.C. (Mr. Tolmie) the other day quoted some remarks of Sir Henry Thornton, Sir Thomas White and others. As far back as September, 1924, I heard Sir Henry Thomlton deliver an address at the National Exposition in Toronto and he then brought to my .mind the supreme importance of the question of immigration. He said that he thought a man of the highest capability an Canada should be selected as Minister of Immigration and that he should not be hampered by government, by any red tape or anything of that kind, but should be assisted by government and should have practically a free hand to carry out policies for filling up this country. Sir Thomas White has been going about making addresses on this subject, and Mr. Corless of the M'ond Nickel Company, another man of some importance in Canada, has been addressing Canadian clubs and similar organizations, bringing to the attention of the public the absolute necessity of an energetic immigration policy. I hope Mr. 'Corless and Sir Thomas White will continue their propaganda, and I hope Sir Henry Thornton will continue to point out to the people of this country that if they want the deficit of the National railways removed, they must fill up our vacant spaces.
It is true some little work has been done in this regard. For instance, several hundreds of immigrants were taken from the Hebrides to Alberta; 'but I question the judgment of taking those people to that particuar spot., because they come from a country where fishing and farming run together as they do pretty well in our Maritime provinces. I think the place for the Hebrideans was New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Prince Edward Island. There they would have had a climate very much like their own and physical conditions almost identical with those they bad left, and I believe they would have fellt more at home on the great stretches of sea, lakes and bays down there than away out on our vast prairies. As a matter of fact, a good many of them have left the prairies and gone to British Columbia. Some will remain there and, I have no doubt, will make good. But the only real plan that has had effective support from this government has, in my judgment, been wrongly directed. I do not know why the Immigration department should take men two thousand miles past vacant farm
lands for which they are well adapted into a country for which they are not, adapted; I question the wisdom of the department in that regard.
Of course a government department will function without a minister; and we have had proof of that in regard to immigration, but no government department can function properly and efficiently without a minister. It is to the man at the head of a department that the officials look for a lead; they must look to him for the formulation of policies, and he must be a man who feels a sense of responsibility to this House and to the country before such a department can function efficiently. A department that is left for three years in the hands of officials must inevitably drift into a condition of routine. Officials necessarily follow routine methods; it is not their business to formulate policies. Indeed I presume-without having an adequate knowledge, as I have never been a civil servant-that civil servants who formulate policies and try to put them into effect of their own initiative are likely to get into trouble. If they want to be safe they will go along the smooth and easy way, and that seems to have been the one adopted by officials of the Immigration department.
As I said, a minister has a sense of responsibility. Without that no man is going to accomplish very much; the more keenly he feels his responsibility the better public servant he will be.. Let a man take hold of any department and feel that the country and parliament are looking to him to administer that department successfully, and he will be inspired with a desire to put forth bis best efforts to make his department highly efficient. My remarks apply to the Acting Minister of Immigration (Mr. Stewart) only so far as he is a member of the administration; but here we are to-day, five years from the time this government was elected, without having had that department effectively and efficiently organized and, for the last three years and at the present time, without its having a minister at all. My hon. friend the other day, when asked certain questions, was unable to answer them. I am not surprised at that, because he is an acting minister with a very heavy department to administer in the Department of the Interior. I am sure be is doing the best he can, but the fault lies with the administration as a whole that they Should allow this exceedingly important department to function without the directing mind and hand of a responsible minister.
It should have been and was possible during the past four years to have all the
The Address-Mr. Hocken

provincial governments co-operating with this government in some well considered plan for the settlement of our vacant areas. I am quite sure that the premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and the eastern provinces would have been more than delighted to confer with a minister of immigration who had any large and presumably profitable scheme to lay before them. There is no province in Canada that is not anxious to get larger settlement, and every provincial government that we have stands ready now and has been ready for the past four years to co-operate with this government in carrying out work of that character. There are many ways in which this might be done. I read recently a proposal made by General Crichtley, of Calgary, that a small community might be taken from some particular county in England and Scotland, brought out here as a body, and placed all together ini one of our provinces. They would be living with their neighbours; they would not suffer from that homesickness which is a very difficult thing to overcome during the first few years that people enter into a new land, and they would settle down to form a new community working together and doing their part to build up Canada. That is only one of many plans that might be suggested.
In Ontario-and I speak of it because it is my own province and I know' more about it -there are between three and four thousand, probably five thousand, vacant farms. Anyway I am well within the mark if I say there are four thousand farms that are vacant or will soon become so by reason of the increasing age of the owners. Their children have gone west and have settled there. The old folks were left at home when they were vigorous, but age has crept upon them and they are no longer able to carry on agricultural operations. Thousands of these farms can be sold for the value of the buildings that are on them. A. well considered plan by this government in co-operation with the Imperial government could plant from 3,000 to 5,000 families in Ontario alone and start a movement for the further settlement of the western prairies subsequently by drawing upon central Canada. For how were the prairies first settled? The backbone of the first settlement of the prairies came from Ontario; the best blood of the west had its source in that province. It was the young men and young women, the adventurous and the enterprising, who went out from that part of the country to settle the west. No province has contributed more to the prosperity of western Canada than Ontario has done. Ontario gave the west

something more than money; it gave them breed and blood, brawn and brains.


Milton Neil Campbell: My hon. friend must
not overlook the Maritime provinces.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: 
Mr. WOODSWORTH:: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. gentleman if he is aware of the reports made by the Child Welfare officials both of the Dominion and of Ontario?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I am, and I will deal with them. The regulation I object to was put into effect as the result of a report made by Miss Bondfield. She apparently was acting upon the theory that the care of young children is more difficult than that of older children. Perhaps it is; I am not prepared to dispute it; in fact I am rather inclined to concede the point. But I would remind the House that these children are the wards of a society which watches them in their home life, their school life and their working life until they are eighteen years of age. Therefore I submit that the earlier a child comes to this country the better.
The Address-Mr. Hocken


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman, I take it, is aware that the reports tend to show that the guardianship was anything but adequate, and that a number of young children were horribly overworked?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I did not so read the report, and I think my hon, friend is exaggerating a little. There was no substantial proof that any large number of these young children had not been properly taken care of. Miss Bondfield's report, has simply been an excuse for the officials of the department to put the regulation into effect at a time when there was no minister in charge of the department, as there ought to have been. That is the gravamen of my charge against the government.


Mr. ROBB:: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to interrupt my hon. friend in the thread of his argument, neither do I wish to enter into controversy with him whether or not children should come to Canada under fourteen years of age; but if he will allow me, I might explain that when I was minister of the department, while in England I met the Overseas Settlement Board. Miss Bondfield was then a member of the British government. A campaign was being carried on in the British press against the sending of young children to Canada, on account of reports received in England regarding the treatment of certain orphans placed in homes in Ontario. We wanted to bring the government and the people of Great Britain to a more favourable attitude towards Canada as a desirable country for immigrants. We therefore invited Miss Bondfield with a member of her committee to visit the Dominion, and we promised to place at her disposal the services of the department to assist her in visiting the homes in which these children had been placed. It was out of regard for her recommendation, endorsed by the Child Welfare Association of Ontario, that I approved of the regulation that children should not be brought to Canada until they were fourteen years of age.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Well, Mr. Speaker, if my hon. friend and the government accept responsibility for the regulation, my criticism must be levelled at them. I say they are absolutely wrong in prohibiting the immigration of children younger than fourteen years of age. Allow me to cite the experience of the Bamardo Home, an organization which has brought out to this country 28,000 boys and girls during the last forty years, with less than two per cent of failures. That organization has also sent out during that period 99,500 children to tihe various dominions-

Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Some of those children to-day are occupying prominent positions in this country. I know them, and they are proud to acknowledge that they came out under the auspices of the Barnardo Home. The operations of that institution have been seriously hampered by this regulation. I may tell the House that there is no more carefully selected immigrants than those who come here under the auspices of the Bamardo Home.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, may
I aslk whether the hon. gentleman has read the report of the general hospital board of the city of Toronto with regard to the Barnardo children that passed through their hands?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: No, I have not had the
privilege of reading that report. Mr. Speaker, in the earliest stages of its operations Dr. Barnardo drew up a set of rules, which I am informed have been rigidly adhered to ever since. These rules are:
(1)	That no child shall be sent out manifesting
criminal or vicious tastes.
(2)	That no child is to be sent out who is not at the time in excellent health and without tendency to disease.
(3)	That all such children must have been passed through a period of the most careful training, not only in industrial pursuits but also of moral and religious character.
(4)	And as regards all children who come up to the standard of the three previous conditions, only the flower of our flocks are to be sent to Canada.
(5)	That upon reaching Canada all children are to come under the care of properly qualified persons connected with our institution on the Canadian side, by whom they are to be distributed carefully into well selected homes. And even then our work is not to be considered complete but regular communication shall be maintained with these children for years by personal visitation of experienced assistants, and by a system of written reports from the child and its employer. That careful statistics shall be kept showing frequent reports of their whereabouts, progress and general welfare, until they have reached an age when they no longer require our supervising care.
(6)	That, if in spite of all these tests, precautions and safe-guards it should be found by experience that some particular child, after having been placed out in Canada becomes definitely immoral or criminal that every legitimate means are to be adopted to recover possession of that child and to return him or her at the earliest opportunity to the Old Country.
That is the policy which I am informed has been followed by the Barnardo officials in the Dominion of Canada. They have placed these 28,000 boys and girls almost entirely upon the farm. Most of these children have gone to school in Canada. They have gone into homes in this country to be treated as one of the family, and how infinitely better that is for the child than to be put into an institution of any kind. I have heard men

The Address-Mr. Hocken
argue that a child whose parents are wicked, if brought up in a home as one of the family, has a better chance than a child brought up in an institution, and I am very much inclined to agree with that. The taint of institutionalism upon a child trained in an institution is something from which it is very difficult for the child to escape, if it ever escapes; but brought up in a home as one of the family and engaging in all the avocations of the family doing the farm work or whatever it may be, the child grows up as a normal young Canadian, with Canadian idealh and Canadian aspirations, and enters upon our life as if it were native-born. There are 3,500 of these boys and girts in Ontario to-day, and the society claims that every one of them is making good. In addition to that, there are known to the managers of the Home and still in touch with them 8,000 older members of the Barnardo family in Ontario. And1 the wonderful thing, Mr. Speaker, is not that so many of these children have succeeded, but that so few of them have failed; for it is on record-I believe upon the records of the statiticians of our own government-that less than two per cent of these children have failed to make good.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I do not like to
interrupt but I should like to ask where that is on file in the statistics of this country.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I will find that out and
let my hon. friend know.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I should be very
glad to see those statistics.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I want to give the House
some idea of how a party of these children who set sail for Canada is chosen. I am arguing, Sir, for the removal of this restriction. I am arguing that these voluntary societies which have made good should be allowed to continue to bring out children in order to place them in homes in this country and have them brought up as young Canadians.
Here is what happens in the process of selection:	On the child being put forward
for Canada-and this is never done without the full consent of the child and 9 p.m. its next of kin1-if it is found that the father or mother has been insane or that the health, mentality or moral state of the child is unsatisfactory, it is not proposed for emigration. If it has been known to be dishonest, untruthful or is mentally backward, it is not allowed to go. Many a time the officers of the society have examined 200 young children to find only 75 suitable for Canada, only 75 who would come up to the standard set for entrance to the Dominion of Canada. Then, before these children leave England they have to go before a committee which is presided over by the medical director of the Barnardo Home. This committee considers first the report from its own medical officer, then the family history of the child, then the dossier card giving a record of the health and mentality of the child during its residence in the home, and a certificate of character supplied by the superintendent of the home in which the child has resided. Now that is pretty careful selection. You cannot get as careful selection as that when you get into the adult class.
Then, after the selection is made, all the papers referred to have to go before the Canadian authorities for their examination, and finally the child has to be passed by the Canadian officers and other officials.
To give you some idea of the type of young Canadians these Barnardo boys have been, I may tel! the House that when the Great war broke out, 6,385 of them enlisted to fight in France for the defence of France and of the Empire. I do not know, Sir, what better test could be applied than that. Children who come out here at a tender age, who grow up as young Canadians, and who are prepared to go out and face what they did face in the big war, must certainly be considered among the very cream of our population, and it is to their credit that over 6,000 of them went out and did their bit. Many of them were on farms when the war broke out, and they gave up their farms, either rented them or left them as best they could. Some of them came back to find their farms in a very sad state, and some of them did not come back at all. That is the product of the Barnardo Home, and I say to the House that if the minister finds it desirable to place a limit of fourteen years upon the age of children brought out by societies that do not take care of the children they bring out, that limit should not be applied to a society that does take care of its children and that is doing as much as the Barnardo Home is doing to populate this country, and populate it with the very best kind of people we can have.
I am trying Mr. Speaker, to make a defence of the Barnardo Home. I think the Barnardo Home has been unfairly and unjustly treated. I want to quote what the Rev. Canon Cody of Toronto says. Those who know Canon Cody -and he is pretty well known in this country -will place the utmost reliance upon what he says. Speaking to Mr. Percy Roberts, the
105S
The Address-Mr. Hocken

chief migration officer of the society, Dr. Cody said:
We want your young people. Their failures compared with their wonderful successes are negligible. Compare them with the same number of other people who come to Canada-there is no comparison. They grow up in the country and they grow into the community. We want your children ninety-nine per cent of Canadians will agree with me.
There is the statement of a man who is deeply immersed in questions of this kind, one of the moral and religious leaders of the province of Ontario, a man not given to making hasty statements, a man careful in all he says, a man whose word is taken wherever he is known or wherever his reputation has gone. But there is not only Canon Cody. I would submit to the House the reports of the Department of Immigration and Colonization of this government, and we have those reports right down to the present day, all approving of this kind of immigration. The report of the Department of Immigration and Colonization for 1920-21 says:
The interest of Canadians and the children were shown in various ways:
(1)	By the cordial welcome given to them on their arrival.
(2)	By the continuous and extraordinary requests for their services received from all parts of the Dominion.
(3)	The profound interest shown in their welfare, treatment and success.
(4)	The general popularity of the movement as a source of supply of farm and domestic help.
(5)	Favourable press notices and widespread desire that the work, as conducted under the present auspices and departmental regulations-
That was before April, 1925.
-should rceive the utmost encouragement and sympathy as the result of its immense national and economic importance.
Those are the words of the officials of the Immigration and Colonization department, and in the same report it is stated that there were 581 children sent out by the Barnardo Home that year, and for these there were 131598 applications. That would indicate to any reasonable person that these children coming out at the tender age of which I spoke, but whose coming is now prohibited, are very much wanted by the men and women in the rural districts of Canada. The demand comes from practically every province in Canada, although there are more of them in Ontario than in any other province. I quote the report further. Speaking of the whole of the children brought out, not only the Barnardo children but others, it says:
The children were generally found contented and well settled, and a very small, number, comparatively, changed situations or had to be recalled on account of faulty traits of character on their own part or during the year.

Let me quote just a paragraph from the report of the department in 1922. The statement is there made:
That the readiness with which the services of these children are sought is conclusive proof of their general adaptability for agricultural employment. In the last twenty-three years the extent of the demand for these young immigrants is shown by the following figures:	From 1900 to March 31, 1923, inclusive, 38,589
children were received. And for the same period 451,680 applications were received.
It will be observed by the members of the House that the supply is only seven per cent of the demand for these young children, and two per cent, it is said, are failures. I want to bring the question right down to the' present report which was tabled by the minister the other day. It will be found on page 71 of the Immigration and Colonization report. The director of that branch of immigration says:
It must not be supposed that all the children referred to in this report are perfect models of the human kind. They are just like ordinary boys and girls, although by training and strict discipline of the schools whence they originally came-
And this is the clause I would like to impress upon the minds of the members of the House.
-they certainly compare favourably with our own Canadian children.
Why should we hesitate, Mr. Speaker, to bring to this country young children who favourably compare with our own Canadian children?
The report goes on to say:
The department through its inspectors, receives definite information, not ony regarding the care and treatment of the child by his employer, but also concerning the child's development, and when failure or unsuitability is established deportation follows. It is gratifying, however, to be able to report that deportations from the ranks of our British juvenile immigrants are comparatively few.
These are the statements of the officials of our own government. They are the men who are in daily contact with the juvenile immigrants, the men Who know what every voluntary child immigration society is doing. Do you mean to say, Mr. Speaker, they would put such a statement as that on the record if they were not well within the facts; if these children had not proved-I was going to say to the extent of 98 per cent at least -suitable immigrants to this country?
I have argued here before, and I should like to repeat, that of all classes of immigrants the most desirable for this country are the young people. We have an organization in Montreal called The British Immigration Aid Society. They aim to bring out boys and girls under twenty years of age. As nearly as possible they bring them out at

The Address-Mr. Hocken
sixteen years of age. Before a boy leaves the Old Country 'his parents know where he is going; they know the name Of the farmer he is going to; they know his post office address; they are in comimunication with him from the day he lands in this country, and he is in communication with them if he so desires. I say that is the best kind of immigration that can be had in Canada. I would not settle down to that class and neglect other classes, however. I would bring in every suitable adult we can get. If I were in charge of t'he immigration propaganda I would say to these people: "You cannot come to Canada and pick uip money. There is no use in your coming unless you are willing to work; but every young man who is able and willing to work can get a competence in the Dominion1 of Canada before he is fifty years of age." But the introduction into this country of boys and girls is the best thing we can do; and instead of discouraging that movement, as this regulation does, we Should go to the other extreme. We should assist everv voluntary organization that is spending its own money, that is doing its own part in bringing settlers into Canada who will make good. Therefore I ask the government, I ask the Minister of Finance, I ask the Acting Minister of Imlmigration, to reconsider this regulation excluding children under fourteen years of age. If it is necessary to discriminate between different organizations, all right; but those organizations which are bringing children in, which are taking care of them and turning them: into igood young Canadian citizens, surely ought to be encouraged, not discouraged; because nothing better can be done for Canada.
As I said at the outset, this is the largest problem which confronts Canada to-day. I will venture to say that when the government changes-and that is an event not very far distant-you will find at the head of the immigration department some outstanding man, who perhaps is not in politics at all to-day-some man such as described by Sir Henry Thornton, who, because of his outstanding capacity, his courage, his vision of the needs and future of this country, will gain for himself the confidence of the whole population. I appeal again to the minister to wipe out this unfair and discouraging regulation and to let these young children come in to be citizens of our country.
I should like to say one other word before I close. I have listened to my hon. friends from the Maritime provinces air their grievances, and I want to express my sympathies with them. They have put their case before this House. Sir, in forceful language, but in
a way that I am sure has commanded the attention and excited the sympathy of every hon. member. I know that in speaking as I do I can speak for the people of Ontario. That province has prospered more as a result of confederation than the Maritime provinces have, and almost as much as the western provinces have. Its people are alive to the importance of salving the problems that face us, and are willing to do everything in their power to bring together, by any means that will work out as a suitable national solution, those provinces that are geographically widely separated.
I point out to hon. gentlemen from the Maritime provinces that the Premier of Ontario has been working diligently to create a bond in trade with the province of Alberta. If it is possible we want the people of the whole province Of Ontario to burn 'Alberta and Maritime province coal. I am not so sure that a solution has not been found for the Alberta situation. If we can get a $7 freight rate-and I do not see that there is
any insuperable obstacle in the way

we
shall free ourselves from the domination of Pennsylvania in the central provinces of this country in respect to coal. If we can do that in the case of far-off Alberta, it surely can be done in the case of nearby Nova Scotia. And if the two great central provinces, where industry is largely centered at the present time-but where it is not going to remain, because industry is bound to be [DOT] established in equal ^eocure in the provinces of the west-can by co-operation with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the east and with Alberta in the west create a bond of trade aggregating $100,000,000 a year, it will do more to bring about a feeling of unity in this Dominion than anything else that I can suggest.
I heard one hon. member say:	"We are
not talking secession or anything of that kind." No, Mr. Speaker, they talk as true, red-blooded Canadians, bound to stand by this Dominion and to solve its difficulties. For there must be a way of solving those difficulties by working unitedly and making of this country what it is capable of being made and what it is destined by Providence to be, one of the greatest nations on the face of the earth.


Mr. J. L. BROWN (Lisgar):: During the
last six weeks, Mr. Speaker, I have been frequently reminded of an incident recorded in that very readable book, Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character. It was formerly the custom of ministers to preach a sermon two hours long in the morning, and, to avoid the necessity of the con-
The Address-Mr. Broum


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: Where does the hon. member find any expression of that attitude of mind on the part of the east towards the west?

The Address-Mr. Brown


John Livingstone Brown: 
Hugh Alexander Stewart: Again I would like to ask the hon. gentleman if he regards that as an expression of a feeling of superiority on the part of the east towards the west?


John Livingstone Brown: It is placing us of the west in a colonial position. It is the same attitude that was assumed 'by the British government in former days toward all their colonies when they insisted on administering the natural resources of the colonies for the benefit of the Mother Country rather than for the benefit of the colonies themselves.


Mr. CHABOT:: Who built the Canadian Pacific railway?


John Livingstone Brown: I must have failed completely in my endeavour to point out that whatever has been done for the west has been done at the cost of the whole of the people of Canada and not at the cost of tl^p people of the four original provinces. So much for that matter; I shall not dwell on it any longer.
I wish to refer briefly to the question that is more immediately before the House. Our hon. friends to our right have been putting forward one amendment after another, something that they thought was a glittering bauble which they believed we would ibe very ready to jump at. I cannot but be reminded of picking berries in the berry patch in our old school days, when the children would run here and there. Someone would call out: "Here is a good patch," and they would run off. Then another would shout: "here is another good patch," and 'the children would be running here and there while the older people were filling their baskets. I have thought my hon. friends have been trying to treat us as children by saying to us: "Never mind the Speech from the Throne; here is something good for you." Of course many of them admit it is good, but they say: "Here * is something better," and they expect us to run after that.
The dairy industry is a matter of supreme importance to the people of Canada and no one realizes that more than do those who are in this corner of the House. We know all about it by personal experience, for when we are at home we have to milk the cows "and do what is necessary in helping to promote the dairy industry of the country. I
IMr. H. A. Sterwart.]
voted against the Australian treaty when it was before the House in the last parliament, and it is because I recognize the tremendous importance of that industry and of the treaty that deals with it, as well as with some other matters, that I object to dealing with it as a side issue-to having it put before me as an alternative for something else; because that is what this amounts to.
The leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen), when it was said that he had endorsed the Speech from the Throne, denied that, of course, as he had a perfect right to do. But are we to conclude that he and those who sit around him are not in favour of those things which are promised in the Speech from the Throne? If we are to come to that conclusion, then I am right in saying that this amendment is placed before us as an alternative, and for my part I do not intend to accept it as an alternative to those things which are promised us in the Speech from the Throne. When the matter itself comes before the House, if it comes before us and we deal with it on its merits, I shall be only too happy to try to deal with it in a way that best meets the needs of the people of Canada. I believe however that the injury wrought to the dairy industry by that treaty has been rather over emphasized. If hon. members would content themselves with saying that during the period of the year when Canada is not on an export basis in the matter of dairy products some injury -may be done to the producer, I might be disposed to agree with them to some extent. But when the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Fraser) goes so far as to declare that the price of all the butter that is produced in Canada and of all that is exported, as wrell as of what is sold in the home market is lowered during the entire year to the extent of the reduction that has been made in the tariff through the Australian treaty, then I must most emphatically dissent, for I cannot follow his argument in any degree. During that period of the year when Canada is on an export basis I cannot see how the Australian treaty can work very much injury to the producer of our dairy products. I shall not follow this matter any further for I have already taken up the twenty minutes which I consider sufficient for me to place my views before the House, but certainly it is my intention to vote against the amendment.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: Why did you
vote against the Australian treaty?


John Livingstone Brown: Very largely for a reason
that has not been mentioned1 by hon. gentlemen to the right. I voted against it

The Address-Mr. Nicholson
because of the increase in the general duty on raisins. As I say, it is my intention when the vote is taken, if we ever get to it, to vote against the amendment; and if we get an opportunity to pass upon the Address itself it will be my pleasure to support it.
'Mr. G. B. NICHOLSON (East Algoma): Coming as I do from a constituency comprising fifty per cent of dairy farmers and fifty per cent of an industrial population, I want to say a word or two on the amendment now before the House. I desire to refer to something said in this House tost night by the Minister of Public Works (Mr. King, Kootenay) in regard to the accomplishments of the government which we have had in this country for the past four years in relation to the public debt and more particularly in connection with the railway situation. The hon. member, with that recklessness which one frequently observes on the part of hon. gentlemen who endeavour to create in this House and in the country a false impression with
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lay at the door of the Conservative party the responsibility for the position in which Canada finds herself to-day so far as the National Railways are concerned. He overlooked entirely the fact that, in the first place, it was the government which was supported by himself prior to 1911 that caused this country to assume an obligation of $220,000,000 oa account of the Transcontinental railway east
of Winnipeg and to become contingently liable and responsible for an approximately equal sum for the Grand Trunk Pacific west of Winnipeg, making in all a total of about $450,000,000, of which about $150,000,000 was represented in the actual construction of railways without regard to the efficiency or the proper placing of the roads.
The next point my hon. friend touched upon was the matter of railway earnings in the years 1919, 1920 and 1921, and from 1922 onward. I took the liberty of asking him at the time what lines he was referring to in regard to the years between 1919 and 1921, and he did not vouchsafe a reply. I want to point out to him that in 1919, 1920 and 1921 we were administering the Grand Trunk Pacific, the Transcontinental and1 the Canadian Northern lines, not one of which was completed. We were not administering as part of the Canadian National Railways the Grand Trunk Pacific or the Intercolonial, which has since been brought into the system and which should have made it possible for all the Canadian National railway lines to be
put on a paying basis. 14011-685
In connection with the moneys that have been expended, the minister .pointed out that $150,000,000 had been spent on capital account in the tost four years on account of the National railways. I have under my hand the latest report from the Department of Railways in which the deputy minister points out that more than $524,000,000 has been expended directly on the Canadian National Railways in the past four years alone, exclusive of over $100,000,000 worth of equipment bonds that have been guaranteed ;by this government. As a matter of fact the debt of the Canadian National Railways has been increased in the past four years and a half by more than $700,000',000, so that, turn it whichever way we may, the Canadian National Railways will never be able to earn interest on 50 per cent of the money that has been sunk in them. I shall touch but briefly on this subject inasmuch as an opportunity may be presented later on to go into it in detail. But what in reality was necessary, when these railways were consolidated into one, to bring them up to standard was an expenditure of $275,000,000, whereas in the meantime we have spent some $700,000,000 on supposed improvements, while the railways are still not up to the mark.
I have here a very illuminating clipping in connection with the National railways. I almost hesitate to quote it, for we seem to have reached the point in this House in relation to our railway problem where one must touch the Canadian National system with very great care and with exceeding caution. The bubble may burst at any moment in someone's face if we touch it harshly, and it is not advisable, it would seem, for anyone to handle the thing roughly. But the president of the Canadian National Railways, addressing the Canadian Club in Toronto on February 1, after pointing out that in the last fiscal year, 1924, there had been expended on capital account more than $100,000,000, which he referred to as an investment, went on to say that the lines were going behind at the rate of $53,000,000 a year, or more than $1,000,000 a week. And this money, he declared, the Canadian people had kissed goodbye. Well, they have kissed good-bye a lot more than that in connection with the Canadian National Railways, and one is at a loss to know what a minister of this government can be thinking of when he points to the Canadian National Railways as one of the evidences of what members of the government call the excellent manner in which the affairs of the country have been administered in late years. When the time comes to discuss the


Arthur Meighen: Mr. Speaker, we are
drawing to the dose of a debate which has been somewhat prolonged, but of which it can be said that it at least serves a much better purpose than any alternative which has presented itself to members of this House. We have heard old subjects discussed and new, and we have heard the usual allegations Which too often come from hon. members down the aisle, that all offered to the House is chaff and straw save what they present themselves. We have heard also, not only in the House, but outside, that we are standing in the way of public business.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Arthur Meighen: Hon. gentlemen across
the way say "Hear, hear," and not one of them could answer me now, what that public business is. Every one of them knows that the only alternative to this debate is to disband and go home and do nothing. Hon. gentlemen opposite are in a splendid position to talk about delaying the business of the House when they not only have no business to present, but themselves, a government and members supporting the government obstructed this House by consuming all its time without intermission for three days in succession. For a government and its followers to 10 p.m. do this in a parliament is unprecedented in the annals of Canada.
The Address-Mr. Meighen

There is one object at least we can serve besides the usual purpose of parliament-the discussion of public affairs-by attending to the post of duty. We can support the hands of a committee which is to-day charged with the heaviest responsibility which any committee of this House has undertaken for many years-the committee on the Customs investigation. I put it to hon. members of this House:	Is it not somewhat better to be
here to dio our duty as far as we can and uphold the hands of that committee, than to abdicate our task, surrender and go home? For our part we have not been permitted, thanks to the votes of hon. gentlemen opposite and to my left, to proceed to the business of parliament as it is the duty of parliament to do, but we are determined to make the best use of our time we can under the circumstances dictated1 to us |by a conjoint majority of this House.
We have before us an amendment, the second one moved to the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. These amendments go to the root of what we believe are faults in the public policy of today. If the debate on the Address is for any other purpose save to enable parliaments to do that, I know not what that purpose
is.	The Speech from the Throne is there. First in one particular, again in another, we ask parliament to declare that that Speech is lacking, and some hon. members have suggested-I know that no one would' who is acquainted with the practice of parliament- that because we make complaint in a certain regard of a Speech from the Throne, therefore we accept it in every other particular. From time immemorial amendments have been addressed to Speeches from the Throne, but never till this debate was it suggested that those amendments assumed acquiescence in all features of the Speech not attacked. Time after time Speeches from the Throne have carried through this parliament without any amendment offered whatever, but in the face of opposition and still without a vote upon the Speech itself. Therefore it is manifest to all that nothing has taken place on this side of the House to be conclusive of acquiescence in the Speech in any regard.
As respects the subjects of the Speech from the Throne, our position was stated, in so far as it is in my authority to state
it, in the address I delivered first. I think I then traversed every subject there treated; where we stand upon it was then stated. The government in this Address has departed from the usual procedure. Why it has departed all of us know, and no one knows

more clearly than hon. gentlemen down the aisle. They departed from it just to offer an alluring berry patch to hon. gentlemen to my left. It has not been customary to come down with a Speech from the Throne and tell where a public work is going to be built, to tell that some public building or some railway is going to be constructed. That practice was reserved for the Speech this year. The leader of the government knows why. It was in order to invite a practice hitherto unknown, that members of this House who ran against government policy and government record should be induced in parliament to vote for the government on the faith of new promises made.
We are told in the Speech from the Throne that the Hudson Bay railway will be completed. On behalf of all those who sympathize with its completion, on behalf of all those, whatever their views may be, on whose behalf I can speak, I ask the government, having taken the responsibility of so declaring and asking this House to vote for such declaration, to tell us what under their plans is involved in the completion of the Hudson Bay railway. Just tell us the beginning and the end of this commitment. It is not usual I know to do so in debates on Speeches from the Throne, because it is not usual to make commitments as to public works in Speeches from the Throne. But the government has done so, and they want our votes for the Speech. We have a right to demand, and we should not be called upon to vote until the demand is answered, what is meant and what money is involved in the completion of the Hudson Bay railway. Are we to have the terminals completed? Are we to have elevators constructed? Are we to have the dredging done? Are we to have all those things done which the government itself declared in a return brought down just a few months ago were included in the completion of the project which, if that return were correct, means that we are committing ourselves to an expenditure of fifty millions of the people's money? Now, I ask the members of the government again:	Are we to be asked
to vote acquiescence in a Speech, to put our endorsement on a programme in utter blindness df where that programme leads and the extent of the commitments' involved?
Similar remarks might be addressed to the government, though they are not wholly so important, in respect to other features of the Address. As to .the amendment it challenges the programme of the administration as laid before us this session in respect of specific

The Address-Mr. Meighen
grievances suffered by large portions of the population of Canada; it declares that this administration has involved that portion of our population in very serious losses and in further danger because of treaties which it has recently entered into, and it complains that there is no suggestion of policy or proposals of any kind designed to remove the discrimination under which these people suffer, the injustice which actually is imposed upon them. Now, we are asked what are those treaties? The debate had not gone very long until it was made quite clear they are the treaties which from the commencement we have opposed. They are the French treaty, to a lesser degree the Italian treaty, and the Australian treaty. These treaties we opposed. When they were before parliament we declared they would involve injury to Canadian business and Canadian trade. We are now at a stage where we are able to demonstrate by results that the position we took was right. And having reached that stage what is the answer of the government? If the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) could be said to speak for it, the answer of the government is this: "The treaties are passed. Surely you do not think we are fools enough, now that we have passed them, to go back upon them? Surely you are not going to ask us to reverse what we did?" We have a right to ask the government to do so, for the reason that before it took the step we challenged its soundness as applied to Canada; we challenged the virtue of its course; we declared these results would follow. Therefore we are in a position to call upon the government to remedy injuries done by itself.
The French treaty can be passed over very quickly; it has been before parliament and under debate many times. A very few comments on its consequences will illustrate its value. In the French treaty there did not appear from the beginning one single concession offered this country save in respect of a few spare parts of farm implements, which obtained entry into France on a little better terms. In every other regard, wherever this treaty touched the actual exports of Canada, the government brought to this House a treaty which raised the duties against them, or which did not affect them at all. In not one single other particular did the government come to parliament with duties against the actual exports of this country lower than before. On the contrary, in relation to some of our most valuable exports the government brought back a treaty under which the duty against our
products entering France was fifty per cent higher than before the treaty was entered into at all. The government told us the treaty was the best it could do. We criticized the government at the time, on the ground that before it ventured to enter into a treaty with France-which had raised its tariff anywhere from four to twelve times over, it was bound in justice to this country to raise the Canadian duties on products in respect of which France would want concessions from us. The government ridiculed our suggestion; it intimated that it was against its policy. With arms tied behind their back, by their own folly, members of the government went over to negotiate a treaty with France. Now I ask any member of the administration to tell me one article in the whole range of Canadian exports which he can show fiom the trade returns was benefited by that treaty.
The Minister of Railways-either the Minister of Railways or the ex-Minister-told the people down in South Essex that the farmers had done better with their hogs because of the treaties the government had made. But not in respect of hogs, or anything else, has the government opened a market; it has not opened a market for the single product of a Canadian farm.	In
respect of products of major consequence, the government virtually killed the industry so far as exports to France are concerned. The member for East Lambton (Mr. Armstrong) showed from the returns of the Trade and Commerce department that where we sold four and a half million pounds of condensed milk before the treaty was entered into, we sold France last year only eighty thousand pounds of that article, and the year before less than a million pounds. Why? The treaty raised the duty on condensed milk by fifty per cent and killed the trade with France. The treaty raised the duty on canned salmon fifty per cent and seriously damaged that trade; and we stand to-day with a balance of trade against us of seven millions where we had seven millions in our favour before hon. gentlemen opposite ventured on the negotiation.
In respect of Italy we are buying now from that country a few hundred thousand dollars more than we were when the treaty was entered into, and we are selling to Italy $8,000,000 less than before hon. gentlemen put their blundering hands on our trade with that country.
Now let us come to the Australian treaty. I state frankly that I base my criticism of this treaty on the fact that protection is the right and the settled policy of Canada. If
The Address-Mr. Meighen

Canadian producers the first and the preferential hold on the market of our own country. While this is the case and essential to the very life of our industry, hon. gentlemen opposite think the farmers of Canada must labour under a handicap of virtually no protection at all on their meats, none at all on their cheese, one cent a pound on their butter, very little on their vegetables, or their fruits, and nothing on their eggs, the great products of the mixed farmers of this Dominion.
Hon. gentlemen say:	We can now export
paper into Australia free of duty. So we can; and nobody is going to complain of any action which is taken to benefit the paper industry. Indeed, we rejoice if this benefits the paper industry. That is all right; not only are we ready to benefit it, but we are ready to pay a price in order to benefit it. We know \ye cannot get a treaty for nothing; the concessions cannot be one-sided in our favour. We must pay something; but I will tell you something the Australians did not do when they ma'de their concessions: they did not make them at the expense of the Australian producer; they made them at the expense of the Australian treasury spread over the whole country, and they never opened .a rift in the protective tariff structure of that commonwealth. The Minister of Finance said:	"Do not be
afraid of these imports; we are an exporting country with regard to butter and this determines the price." I think he had his ear attuned to the song which he often hears from hon. gentlemen of the Progressive party. They seem to think that if we are selling some of an article, it does not matter where the Canadian market is at all. The Minister of Finance knows (far better than that; he knows that is not true. If it is true, anything the most absurd could be deduced from it. If a statement can be made which fairly approximates to the truth, it is this: that to the extent that the home market consumes the product of an industry, the greater that proportion is, the more that industry is affected and benefited by a tariff. And the greater the proportion of export to the home consumption, the less can that industry be protected. It seems to me this is a general law.
In respect of our wheat where our export is very great as compared with our home consumption, the direct influences and benefits of a protective tariff cannot come in the same degree that they come in the case of other of our productions. But this does not apply to the great dairy industry of this country. The proportion of exports in the case of butter is small, about one-tenth, or 
in other words, ninety per 'cent of our production is consumed at home. Does anybody in his senses suggest that the home market, protected, is not better for the farmer here in relation to the goods he sells in Canada than a home market not protected at all? I know the Minister of Finance does not credit any such talk as that. If he does, why did he not address such an argument to his Australian friends? Why did he not say to the statesmen of Australia: You produce a surplus of butter, eggs, cheese and meats. You do not need any tariff against Canada; take it down. We are giving you free eggs; you give us free eggs. Would his argument not have been compelling if there was anything in it? It would have *been far more compelling than if applied to Canada. You sell your surplus abroad and nothing else affects your price at home. But if he ever addressed it to the Australians he could not budge them; they did not move an inch, and he brought back a tariff of eighteen cents a dozen against our eggs, six cents a pound against our butter, five cents a pound against our cheese and five cents a pound against our meats-although Australia is the biggest exporter of meats in the world. How is it that Australia did not succumb to these arguments of the Minister of Finance, if indeed they were ever used? Why, the Australian statesmen were just as impervious to that kind of nonsense as the hon. gentleman's colleagues are impervious to reason. Not one single product of Australia has the tariff against it thrown down in this Australian treaty.
We have given Australia a preference on raisins and currants, and to that I have no objection at all. The Prime Minister went through the country saying that I was complaining of it. Never anywhere did I complain of it in respect of such an article, not an article of Canadian production. It may be a sacrifice as regards Canada in the way of a tax on our people, but at least it is spread over the whole nation and it does not undermine any Canadian industry. It is a concession we can afford to make, and more of those concessions would not have been objected to. We cannot expect something for nothing, and this was the kind of concession we should have made unless the government was prepared to overthrow the whole protective structure in this Dominion. I ask the Minister of Finance again: How does he defend exposing the dairy producers of this country to the competition of Australia and New Zealand, in some respects the greatest exporters in the world, while he asks those same dairy producers to submit to a protective system which

The Address-Mr. Meighen
he supports and intends to maintain on the whole range of industry in our country? It is true the paper industry and the canned salmon industry are important, but as pointed out by the hon. member for East Algoma (Mr. Nicholson), one mill in this province in forty days could supply the whole market of both Australia and New Zealand for an entire year. Is it worth while doing this universal damage to the dairy industry in order to get business for one mill for forty days?
Let me also point out this difference: The paper industry, valuable though it be, is an industry which is being developed at the expense of a fast depleting resource of this Dominion. It is right, of course, that that resource should be manufactured into paper and sold, but it is not so vitally important to accelerate, to rush to get it out just as fast as we can, that to do so we must eat into the vitals of a truly great industry supporting virtually millions of people. As regards the money which the farmers of this country get from the dairy industry, every dollar stays in Canada, or at least every dollar not spent in buying from another country something which should be kept out. The money is money paid for the hard work of the farmer, his wife and his boys and girls. No proportion of it goes to pay interest on foreign capital, payable out of the land. It is the best money that can be earned and preserved in this Dominion, and it is earned in every province from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island, lit is the best, the most valuable portion of the Canadian agricultural structure, and it is that which the minister has exposed and is exposing to an utterly unnecessary peril.
Before the minister went to Australia he was asked from this side to raise the tariff on farm products of this country. He was told plainly in the debate on the French treaty that if he did not do so he would be in no position to negotiate with Australia. As a matter of fact he went there in no position to negotiate; he had no weapons to negotiate with. He had nothing to trade with and so he had to bend the knee and take what Australia gave him. It is true he did try to get an instrument and he made a timid attempt to assert Canada's position. He did propose to come back and raise the tariff on farm products and to give, in view of such elevated tariff, a concession to Australia. But he became frightened and yielded. Why he swerved from that intention we have never been advised. I have never been told, parliament has never been told; but we all have a suspicion. Why did the minister cast away the first treaty he made with Australia? Did he do so at the request of Australia? Not at
all; he will not suggest for a moment that he did. Australia passed that first treaty; their government put it through parliament, and that treaty was infinitely better for us than the one which the minister subsequently brought to this House for ratification. True enough, it was not perfect but it was infinitely better than the one we finally got, for it went some distance in the direction which we say the treaty should have taken. I repeat, why did the minister swerve from that treaty and abandon it? Hon. gentlemen who are new to the House do not remember the whole history. The government came into this House day after day, and what did they teli us? Did they teli us that they were somewhat afraid that a raising of the duty on farm products might get them in wrong with the Progressives? If they had so declared I fancy they would have told the truth, for I have no doubt this was the real reason. No; they put up an excuse and misled the House from day to day. They gave us to understand that the reason for the delay in bringing in the Australian treaty was some action on the part of Australia, some regulation as to how much must be made in Canada of Canadian products if we were to get the benefit of their tariff. Everyone knows now that this was a blind and that while the government was singing this song in parliament they were secretly preparing to reverse their whole treaty, to abandon it in fact, and callously to make the Canadian farmer and the Canadian dairyman pay the entire price of the Australian agreement.
I said a moment ago that the best judges should surely be those most intimately engaged in the industry. But I have by no means given the authority of all; I have received- communications very numerous on this subject from many parts of the country. I want to read from a letter addressed to me by the Canadian Creamerymen's Association. It is a long letter which from beginning to end is hostile to this treaty, but I am going to quote only two passages and I venture to say that these two passages, in their reflection on the wisdom of this treaty, contain language stronger than has been addressed to the government by any member on this side of the House. Let me quote:
The cut in duty from 4 cents to 1 cent per pound has wiped out in one blow the fruit of the whole campaign for winter dairying in Alberta.
How does the minister like that language? Is it the language of prejudiced men? It is the language of an association which represents this industry throughout the whole Dominion. Two, three, four cents a pound on butter in the middle of a winter season, when

The Address-Mr. Meighen
it is harder to maintain the industry than at any other time of the year, represents the difference between profit and loss, the difference between encouragement, and discouragement, the difference between failure and success. That difference the minister has eliminated, and in eliminating it he has done just what the association says he has done: he has undone the work of the whole campaign for winter dairying in Ailberta. I read further:
The treaty was framed in politics, regardless of the needs or opinions of the dairying industry. Its damaging consequences are already imposing hardship upon our people, and undoing all that has been done in the past several decades to build up this foundation block of Canadian prosperity.
If I wanted stronger language I would read the opinions of the Creamerymen's Association of Saskatchewan. I should have thought that the opinion of that institution would have some weight with hon. gentlemen to my left. I do not doubt that those who framed this language-for it appears in their annual report -had in mind the fact that they as part of the taxpayers of our country contribute to the system which exists to-day and that, contributing to it, they are entitled to its benefits. In that contention they are absolutely right. And here is what they say:
Your directors further feel that it is their duty to draw to your attention the impending peril to the dairy interests of western Canada created by the Australian trade treaty, passed near the close of the last session of the Dominion parliament and which came into force on October first of last year. This treaty reduces the duty on Australian butter entering Canada to one cent per pound and permits the entry of Australian cheese duty. free. This tariff, unfortunately, is much lower than the British preferential tariff and has already created a competition in Canada against Canadian dairy products which is destined to have a disastrous effect upon the dairy industry of Canada. By virtue of a previous trade agreement with New Zealand these Australian tariff rates, likewise, became automatically operative as far as New Zealand is concerned. The Western Canada Dairy Association is formulating plans to resist the continuance of this trade agreement and a delegation from this body will wait upon the Dominion government shortly to urge for the repeal of this portion of the treaty referred to. Our company will be represented on this delegation.
Hon. gentlemen will recognise that this does not come from rock-ribbed protectionists; it comes from men who are engaged in the farming industry in western Canada. It comes from representatives of the industry in that portion of the country which of all looks least kindly upon the protective tariff. In the face of these opinions, will 'hon. gentlemen set up the helter-skelter judgment of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell), expressed in that classic tone of which he is so capable, that all this objection is "bunk"? Are hon. gentlemen going to listen to him rather than to t'he views expressed by those of actual and

long experience, and universally expressed without any dissent? I ask the Minister of Agriculture, what does he propose to do?


William Richard Motherwell: I had a talk with them -this morning.


Arthur Meighen: The minister had a talk with them this morning. Well, all I hope is that they have had more influence on him than he will ever have on them. The Minister of Agriculture, anxious to find some virtue in the treaty, declares that at least there is a clause in it enabling its cancellation. I am frank .to admit that probably this is the best elause of all. But .the government should never have been in a position where they could be called upon to cancel the agreement. They are in that .position because of their own folly, because of the surrender of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) to the importunities of hon. gentlemen whose principles he knew were diametrically opposed to his own. 'Let the government reform this treaty; let them reform the treaty in the direction of .the agreement which was offered .them by Australia itself. Australia offered them a better treaty than the one they ultimately brought into this House. And do not let the government be heard -to say that they could not get such a treaty; they got it and came back here and pitched it a-way because of the importunities of hon. members to my left. Will the Minister of Finance say right now that this is not right? We call upon the government now to remedy -this wrong; we call upon .them to remedy it, because it cannot continue -in -this Dominion. The farmers of the country will never consent that protection Shall be placed around other industries of Canada while they themselves remain exposed. This Dominion will never consent, and the government knows it will never consent, to the removal of -protection upon the industries of Canada. This government will never dare venture further along that course. They may be driven, but they will not venture of their own accord. I think I can measure them -pretty well; I have watched them these last few years. Where are they on this tariff issue now? They are under the barn. You cannot get a word from them. All they boast of is that somewhere inside the barn there is going to be "a tariff commission". You cannot get them to announce on what principles they will build their tariff. So knowing, as I know right well, that virtually one and all of them, certainly all but one or two, are just as confirmed protectionists as I am; knowing, as I know right well, that two-thirds of this House

The Address-Mr. Meighen
are determined that protection shall be the settled policy of Canada-that two-thirds apply to hon. gentlemen opposite; on this side we are unanimous; knowing, as I well know, that this Dominion by a vast majority of its people has declared for protection every time it has been an issue, and never more decidedly than in the last campaign,-knowing these things, I call upon the government to remove the unsightly lopsided system which they have imposed upon us, and restore to the country a fair, equitable system of protection, to give to the farmers of Canada what they know this people one and all require. Such is the purpose of this amendment.
Hon. gentlemen of the Progressive party say: We are against the Australian treaty, but we cannot vote for this amendment, because if we vote for it we vote against the berry patch in the Speech from -the Throne.


John Livingstone Brown: The berry patch is in the amendments to the Address, not in the Speech from the Throne.


Arthur Meighen: Well, the child usually runs to the best blossoms, so I ask the hon, member which berry patch he is at himself?


Henry Lumley Drayton: He wants them all.


Arthur Meighen: Let me ask:	What is
the duty of members of this House? The duty of those who believe in the continuance of the condition I have described is clear: Their duty is to vote against the amendment. Every one who votes against the amendment votes for the continuance of this condition of affairs. Does he say that he votes against this new programme? He does not at all. This government went to the country, not on the theory that later it might develop a berry patch, or a list of new promises; not at all. This government went to the country on its record. Hon. gentlemen to my left were elected against that record, they were elected against the government's candidates. I ask those hon. gentlemen to consult their consciences and then to say:	Do they feel that
being so elected they have a right in this House to vote confidence in the government whose candidates they defeated because the government comes down with a new programme? Those hon. gentlemen were elected on their own record in this House. Included in that record was a vote against the very treaty which is challenged in this amendment. Are they going to vote now against this amendment because of alluring promises held out, handed to them for their support, contained in a Speech from the
Throne? Is that constitutional government? Is that doing justice to their position as members of a British parliament? May I ask: What is there in this Australian treaty that justifies you in voting for it for the sake of the promises of this government? Or may I put it the other way:	What reliance is to
be placed on the promises of this government that justifies you in voting for the continuation of conditions such as I have described?
You, Mr. Speaker, have ruled that we cannot apply to hon. gentlemen of this House, "purchased by legislation." Therefore I will not apply it, and-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Arthur Meighen: -and inasmuch as that phrase is out of order-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Arthur Meighen: -I am sure also it would be out of order to say that hon. members were purchased by promises, for such an allegation is infinitely worse. But I ask hon. members in the quiet of their own homes-if any of them have suspicion that voting for this Speech from the Throne and for the condition of affairs I have portrayed has any fitting description in the words, "purchased by promises"-to reflect whether or not it is their duty to do something which, by the rules of this House, is condemned when properly described.


Mr. BRISTOL:: I was paired with the
hon. member for Cartier (Mr. Jacdbs). Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. CASGRAIN:: I was paired with the
hon. member for North Simcoe (Mr. Boys). Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.


Mr. ROBICHAUD:: I was paired with the hon. member for Restiigouehe-Madawaska (Mr. Culligan). Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.


Mr. T. W. BIRD (Nelson):: Mr. Speaker,
I wish to address a few remarks to the main motion. I want to make them in the nature of a retrospect of the session so far as it has gone, and to point out the part played by the Progressives.
At the outset we were faced by an amendment by the opposition which at one and the same time was highly technical and very deeply political. That amendment challenged the right of the government to meet parliament and address this House through the lips of His Excellency. The Progressives, after some deliberation, penetrated through the subtleties of the situation, brushed aside the disquisitions of our learned constitutionalists in the House, and listened to the still small voice of common sense. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that there is a third

The Address-Mr. Bird
party dn this House and some people do not know it yet. The Conservatives attempted to meet the situation by ignoring the third party. We were the poor relation at the feast, to be seen and not heard. But, very politely, very firmly, we refused to be ignored.
The next incident of importance, the incident of chief importance, was the Speech from the Throne coupled with the amendment of the opposition. The Speech from the Throne proved to be distinctly acceptable to the Progressives. The amendment proved to be just as conspicuously unacceptable. Confronted with the two berry patches already alluded to, we chose the Liberal berry patch because the berries seemed more or less real. The others seemed to be hung on. I think that every honest and fair-minded man in this House, including hon. gentlemen to my right, will give the Progressives the credit for voting in line with what they have been advocating in this House for the last five years.
I notice some of the younger members of the opposition have used the threadbare gibe that we have a sort of affinity with the liberals but I want to say that that kind of taunt is played out. We might have allowed other influences to affect our judgment. We have been reminded over and over again by our friends to the right that we endured four years of disappointment from the Liberals. That was fresh and vivid in our minds. We were reminded that they fought an election against us. That also was vivid in our memory. We might have chosen to play the vindictive role. We might have chosen to kick the Liberals out into utter darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. We might have chosen that, but on deliberation we felt that we had not been sent here to indulge in petty party recriminations; and that applies to my hon. friends to the right as well as to the Liberals. It would have been an easy matter to us to forget what our constituents sent us here for. It would have been an easy matter to allow our judgment to be warped by what we had gone through a few weeks ago. But we did not choose that course. The advent of a third group into this House is bringing many innovations. Such a thing as political forgiveness may sound strange on the ears of hon. gentlemen; this House has never known such a thing. But I want to tell the Liberals and I want to tell the Conservatives that we forgive them from the bottom of our hearts. We have much to forgive, and therefore we hope we may be loved much.
We are told by our friends to the right that the Speech from the Throne was a bribe,
and the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) repeated the charge a short while ago. Well I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that if the present Speech from the Throne is a bribe then every Speech from the Throne for the last generation has been a bribe, and both parties were equally engaged in the bribing. The Speech from the Throne as a parliamentary institution has changed its character considerably from what is was in the old days when political parties began the session in just about the same way as the British and French armies began the battle of Fontenov, by inviting each other to fire the first shot. The times have changed since then. Grim realities have entered parliament and have greatly changed conditions. Parliament is not what it used to be when party distinctions were clear cut. In modern parliaments, most of all in a country like Canada, it is impossible for any government, I do not care how big its majority is, to bring down a Speech from the Throne which could not be described as a bribe in the sense that the gentlemen to our right are using that word. The leader of the opposition a few moments ago. addressing his remarks to the government, in this connection said it was one of the most startling, one of the most unusual things, for a government to place in its Speech from the Throne a promise to complete a public work. The leader of the opposition was speaking rashly when he said that; he should have known that it is not unusual. He should know that that thing has been done and done by a Conservative party. Lest I should be charged with speaking rashly I will quote the chapter and verse. In Hansard of 1912-13, volume 1, I read from the Speech from the Throne, a Conservative Speech from the Throne. It says:
A contract for the construction of the Hudson Bay railway from Le Pas to Port Nelson has been awarded and the work is being pushed forward with all possible speed.


Arthur Meighen: Does the hon. gentleman not see the difference between an announcement of that kind and an announcement of public policy?


Thomas William Bird: I contend that paragraph is a
berry patdh just as purple as the face of the right hon. gentleman should be at this moment. Now I wonder what has happened to this Hudson Bay berry patch during all these years. I was reminded by someone sitting near me that sometimes the reason why the berries are not picked is because there is a bear in the berry patch. All these years this berry patch has been dangled before our eyes, and we have not yet picked a berry from it, and I think we will find the
The Address-Mr. Bird

bears somewhere, to use the words of an hon. member, on St. James street, Montreal. Every time the Hudson Bay railway is mentioned as a practical proposition the bear makes its appearance, and the berrypickers are frightened of him again.
I was very (much struck by a reference made by the hon. member for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. Edwards) in this same connection. He said the Labour party and Progressives were like Robin Hood. That stirred up in me a lot of associations. I remember as a young man turning from the old school of English Toryism to become a Radical-not in the present sense of the word, ibut to become the thing I have been ever since; that is, to be on the side of t'he bottom dog all the time, and that is where Robin Hood used to be. I never saw an allusion that miscarried as much as that, and I will tell you why.
Mr. MoGIBBON; Does the hon. member admit the government is the bottom dog in this case?


Thomas William Bird: The hon. member knows
more about dogs than I do, but you know that this beautiful legend of British tradition came right out of the hearts of a suffering people. Unfortunately, literary history and secular history have been so taught that the hon. member for Frontenac-Addington actually believes that Robin Hood was a bold, bad man. His education has not been complete. I am not sure that I can tell the House much about Robin Hood at present. The time has been too short for me ,to inquire into the legend, but I am only using this as a parallel. The legend of Robin Hood-it is not much more than legend-came into existence because of the savage persecutions maintained in England after the Norman invasion. Robin Hood was a true British man who would not put up with game laws-and no British man has ever been able to put up with game laws, unless he profited by them. He was one of the first men in British annals who protested against special privilege. I have been trying to hunt up one of the famous Robin Hood tales.


John Wesley Edwards: If the hon. member will allow me to interpolate, I gave Robin Hood credit for his motives and his kindness of heart, but it was his methods I objected to.


Thomas William Bird: Yes, I am going to give him
credit for both. In order to come as near to the spirit of Robin Hood as I Can, I am going to quote from Wordsworth's poem, "Rob Roy," a good old Scotchman. Wordsworth copied this ballad from the Robin Hood

ballads, and it applies as much to Robin Hood as to Rob Roy. They are both Roberts, and it is a good old English name. He says of Rob Roy:
For thou, although with some wild thoughts,
Wild Chieftain of a savage Clan!
Hadst this to boast of; thou didst love The liberty of man.
And had it been thy lot to live With us who now behold the light,
Thou would'st have nobly stirred thyself,
And battled for the Right.
For thou wert still the poor man's stay,
The poor man's heart, the poor man's hand;
And all the oppressed, who wanted strength,
Had thine at their command.
That applies to Robin Hood as much as to Rob Roy, and more. I will now quote from a well known amoiemt English ballad. Rob Roy had been asked by his merry men what kind of methods they should use- methods now-and he said:
But loke ye do no housbonde harme-
That is the farmer.
That tylleth with his plough;
No more ye shall no good yeman,
That walketh by grene wode shawe,
Ne no knyght,-
He was very broad.
Ne no knyght, ne no squyer,
That wolde be a good felawe.
That was the spirit of Robin Hood. I was looking in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and it says that Robin Hood in the middle ages "is the people's ideal as Arthur is that of the upper classes."
It seems rather strange that the cycle should be complete. We have an Arthur and a Robert here. Then it says he "is the ideal yeoman"-we know the significance of the yeoman in British history-"and Arthur was the ideal knight." That is, the feudalist knight. "He readjusted the distribution of wealth. He deprived the rich and endowed the poor. He was a great sportsman, the incomparable archer"-he loved to pull a long bow, but not in the sense that the hon. member for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. Edwards) pulls it when he addresses the House. "He was a lover of the greenwood and the free life, brave, adventurous, jocular," -just like my hon. friend and leader- "openhanded!'1'-the parallel breaks down a little there; my leader is a Scotsman-"a protector of women." My leader leads the only party which sufficiently believes in the feminine movement to elect a woman to parliament. The knights of King Arthur's table protected women, but they were the women of their own class. That was a one-sided pro-

The Address-Mr. Bird
position, but this knight of Sherwood forest protected all kinds of women. He had the heart to do that. He was not a low brow. Shakespeare described these men in one of his plays when he said that they could find "books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." But the knights of King Arthur's round taMe did not see good in everything and it was because they could not that they did not last. It is a great pity that Tennyson was an aristocrat. If he had been a man of the people, he would have written the Idylls of the Knight of Sherwood Forest, because it is the spirit of that bold, good man that has followed the movement of the people down through all these centuries and that is still embodied in the people of that beloved1 country to-day in a way that it is not in those of any other country in the world. It owes much to the example of men like that and it is these men that special privilege and vested interest have attempted to wipe off the annals of our glorious country. A party such as the one with which I am associated can find much to admire in these humble men who suffered so atrociously and cruelly all the way through our history at the hands of special privilege. In those days special privilege stood out in all its horrors. These knights of Kin? Arthur's table were not what they said they were. They kept their underground dungeons into which they thrust men like Robin Hood, Wat Tyler and the rest of them. Special privilege is all right to contemplate nowadays-


Mr. LENNOX:: I am a lawyer and I voted in favour of the farmer. How did the hon. member vote?


Thomas William Bird: That is the quarter from
which we get all the condemnation of class representation. I never said that I voted for the farmers. I voted for my constituents, who are not all farmers.
So much for the Speech from the Throne. We will take our stand alongside the Robin Hood tradition and not alongside the cruel and conscienceless Norman barons who invaded free England in the eleventh century. The fight has gone on ever since; it is just as real to-day as ever it was. There has been no break in either of those traditions.
Now we had an amendment from the government to adjourn the House and the Progressive party acted quite logically; that is, they accepted the Speech from the Throne; they wanted to see that legislation come into force; they wanted this government to carry on, not merely by leave of the opposition, but effectively and with despatch'-



REVISED

Mr. CHAPLIN (Lincoln):: By adjourning.


Thomas William Bird: -and all those arguments that make the plea that the government because it cannot carry on now, cannot carry on at all, are palpably far-fetched. Time alone will tell whether there is anything in that argument or not, There is 'talk about waste of time and perhaps our friends over there have been to blame as well as the Conservatives; but unfortunately waste of time is a normal feature of this House. It did not begin today; it did not begin a few weeks ago. A committee was formed in the last parliament to study this very question, to try to take up this slack. We know that our parliamentary rules, especially as they apply to a debate like this, are totally out of date. We know that the rules in respect to a debate like this are so lax that it is just as easy for an opposition of half the strength of this one to prevent the government from doing business as it is1 for a number of bad boys to wreck a railway express. There is no trick to it at all; just go on moving amendment after amendment. So we make no apology at all; we have not been 'the party that has wasted time in this House either during this session or in the last parliament.
I come to the last 'amendment, the one that has just passed the House.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: It was defeated.


Thomas William Bird: Well, it passed in disgrace.
Our friends to the right have charged us with voting down this amendment condemning the Australian treaty when we voted against the Australian treaty in the last parliament. That is what the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) went out of his way to try to prove. They forget that we voted against the Australian treaty-


Hewitt Bostock: Mtay I remind the hon. member that he may not discuss an amendment which has been disposed of by the House?


Thomas William Bird: I very much regret to have
transgressed the rules. I had almost reached the point where I thought it was impossible to transgress them.. I suppose I can discuss the essence of the amendment, which was high protection for Canada. This amendment-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas William Bird: I do not wish to transgress the rules very much-just a little bit. I want to get a start for the next thing I desire to say. I was going to say that this amendment like the first one-



EDITION

[Stage Direction]
The Address-Mr. Bird
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas William Bird: I was going to say that high
protection was at the heart of the last amendment and it was at the heart of the first one. The second one was a clever repetition of the first one. I do not say that in a bad sense at all.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas William Bird: I am trying to compliment hon. gentlemen to my left by saying that they were clever, and their purpose is this-and I do not blame them for it-to drive a wedge through the low tariff opinion of this country. That is a perfectly legitimate line of tactics. If you can win over the horticulturist, the truck farmer, you will have a good point of vantage as regards the dairyman and some day as regards the cattle man and maybe the wheat man. My hon. friends believe in climbing up a step at a time and I do not blame them for that. Frankly speaking, I am one of those who believe and have believed for some time that their tactics are going to get a measure of success, because the appeal to self interest is the most powerful appeal when you come to political questions. If you can persuade any class of farmers that protection will pay, you will win over those farmers because farmers are no better than any other Canadians.


Mr. SUTHERLAND (North Oxford):: Does the hon. member imply that the five Progressives who voted contrary to his party are more selfish than the rest of the Progressives?


Thomas William Bird: Not at all. I have known
three of them a good deal longer than I have known the hon. gentleman and I am sufficiently well acquainted with them to know that they stand high in the esteem of the Progressive party. I am sure that any course they have taken this session is as conscientious as any course I have followed myself. When discussing this matter just now I was merely pointing out that the temptation to vote against the government was very real to all Progressives, including these five gentlemen and no one outside of the Progressive party will know how real it was.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Thomas William Bird: Hon. gentlemen to my right
should accustom themselves to have the very best opinions of the motives of others. The Canadian farmer is no different from the American farmer, and if the American farmer has chosen protection I see nothing to prevent the Canadian farmer from doing the same if he believes that he can derive any benefit

from so doing. But the going for our protectionist friends will become heavier and heavier as they get away from the truck farmers to the grain growers.	The ease
with which they have converted the small farmers on the fringe of the big cities is no index to the job they will have on their hands if they attempt to convert the grain growers of this country. I regret to say it, but I think that this is a right estimate of the average Canadian farmer. They are not all like my hon. friend to my left (Mr. Evans), who would advocate theoretical free trade through thick and thin. There is a big sprinkling of such free traders through the west, but I do not think that the average Canadian farmer is just like that; and if our friends want to make a breach in the geoera-tion^old phalanx of rural Canada they must do a lot of persuading, and they must not be too particular on what they base tiheir persuasion. They must appeal to self interest.
The American farmers have accepted protection, but there is one thing that hon. gentlemen have forgotten, and that is that the American farmers, having experienced protection for two or three years, are at the present time agitating for the privilege of fixing prices on wheat. Now I want to say something that has not been frequently said in this House; it has not been said for the reason that the position of the farmers' organizations of this country has not been apprehended by members of this House. Since the beginning of last parliament we have seen grow up in western Canada one of the biggest co-operative organizations in the world, which to-day is marketing 70 or 80 per cent of its wheat through one channel. What does that mean? It means that in a short time the farmers of the wesit will all be marketing their product through the same channel. And what are these Canadian farmers going to do? If we take hon. gentlemen at their word, and believe with them that Canada has for all time decided for protection, what is the commonsense wheat grower of the west going to do?


Mr. MULLINS:: Are you speaking for the wheat farmer or the man who is engaged in diversified farming?


Thomas William Bird: The question is a polite one but I do not see its relevancy. I was talking about the wheat pool and I was saying that if what our friends contend is true, that Canada has for all time to come accepted protection as the policy for this country, then something must happen within the ranks of the organized farmers of Canada. If you can persuade the farmers of this country that

The Address-Mr. Bird
protection has come to stay, then they are going to come to parliament and, if the Conservatives happen to be in power, they will say, "Now then, your brick for brick policy fits in very nicely. We want 40 per cent of a duty on wheat and if the United States duty goes up to 70 cents, then brick by tbrick the Canadian farmer will demand that the tariff on this side be built up to that level". Then, poetic justice coming to pass, what will happen with a body of farmers controlling a stable commodity marketed through then-own agency? They are going to fix prices just as much as the Ford motor works fix their prices. That will be the outcome, and when that happens the theory of protection will explode in universal derision. The part of the body politic who are at present unprovided for will at last have got their feet into the trough and will shove the other hogs along and out in order that they may share in the contents. You say that this is a very imaginary picture I am drawing, but it is not; it is very present in the minds of the farmers to the south of us in the Dakotas and in the wheat growing areas generally in the United States. And more than that, it has got to be practical politics there. It is very well known that the late Secretary of Agriculture in the United States, in the postwar period, was in favour of a price fixing arrangement whereby the American farmer could sell his product on the home market at a price that would recoup him for the cost of production. Let me quote from Henry C. Wallace's book, Our Debt and Duty to the Farmer. At page 200 he says:
The sole purpose of the McNary-Haugen Bill was to re-establish and maintain the normal pre-war ratio between the prices of agricultural crops of which we produce an exportable surplus and the general commodity-price index, thus putting agriculture somewhat near an equality with industry and labour.
Then again at page 202:
This bill met with astonishingly violent opposition. It was fought by grain dealers and exporters who thought it might interfere with their business; by laissez-faire economists; by those who want nothing done to relieve discontent which makes grist for their political mill; by opponents of the protective tariff system who saw in this an application to farm needs of the tariff principle; by representatives of the industrial interests who want nothing done to increase domestic prices of food products; and by many who did not study the measure for themselves but accepted at par the unintelligent criticisms made against it.
Now that is proof beyond all doubt that a
movement is on the way in protectionist America whereby the farmers may recoup themselves for the cost of their production- and in the United States they have no wheat pool.
14011-69J


Thomas Herbert Lennox: May I ask the hon. gentleman, if the Australian treaty protects the Australian farmers on eggs to the extent of 18 cents a dozen, what objection has he to that so far as our farmers are concerned?


Thomas William Bird: I am dealing at present with
the price-fixing problem that' will be precipitated if my hon. friends get their way. In Canada the wheat farmers are in an infinitely better position to take advantage of this kind of thing than the United States farmers have ever been; and as I say, if it is true that protection has come for good, then for these men on the western plains who have to send their surplus to Europe it seems to me there is only one issue: they should use their combined selling effort in order to do exactly what the manufacturers want to do under protection-raise the price of wheat to a point where it will pay them for their labour and invested capital. I do not think they will ever want 10 per cent like the Canadian Pacific Railway, or 20 per cent like the banks; but they surely have the right to demand that their return on their product should be equivalent to what they have invested in the way of labour and capital.
Now, Mr. Speaker, my voice is getting weak. My purpose in rising was not to go into these matters very extensively, but to give the House an opportunity to say whether it had had enough of amendments or not. Therefore I beg to move the following motion, seconded by the hon. member for Rosetown (Mr. Evans):
That this question be now put.


Hewitt Bostock: Is it the pleasure of the
House to adopt the motion?


Mr. C. H. CAHAN (St. Lawrence-St. George):: Mr. Speaker, I understand that
moving the previous question permits one to discuss the whole matter at length. Therefore, unless the leader of the House desires me to continue, I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.



ADJOURNMENT-WEDNESDAY SITTING

Ernest Lapointe: Mr. Speaker, I beg to
move, seconded by Mr. Robb:
That when this House adjourns this day, it stand adjourned until three o'clock in the afternoon.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
On motion of Mr. Lapointe the House adjourned at 12.10 a.m. (Wednesday).
National Monument
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, February 17, 1926