1926-04-13

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 19, to incorporate The Agents Insurance Company.-Mr. Malcolm.
Bill No. 20, respecting The Pacific Coast Fire Insurance Company.-Mr. Clark.

Mr. W. F. KAY (Brome-Missisquoi) moved:: That the first report of the select standing committee on Agriculture and Colonization be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to present the following petition from blind persons in the city of Winnipeg-


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order. Is the hon. gentleman going to read the whole petition?


James Shaver Woodsworth: May I read the
petition?


Hewitt Bostock: No. Under rule 75,
certain proceedings are necessary before a petition is in order. First the petition must be presented to the Clerk of the House. The day following the Examiner of Petitions reports, and if the petition does not contain matter in breach of the privileges of the House, it may be read by the Clerk of the House. The hon. member may however present his petition to-day.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I should like to
present a petition signed by some 144 blind persons, and also a petition signed by some
21,000	citizens of Manitoba.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. AY. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved:
That on and after Monday, the 19th of April instant, and on and after Wednesday, the 21st April instant, and all subsequent Mondays and Wednesdays until the end of the session, government notices of motions and government orders shall have precedence after questions and notices of motions for production of papers.
Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I do not
believe the government really and seriously want both days all at once. I am speaking on behalf of my hon. friends to my left who, I see, have a great many notices of motions on the order paper.


Mr. ROBERT FORKE (Brandon):: I
would suggest that the leader of the opposition just speak for his own party.


Arthur Meighen: I would have confined myself to doing so, but I see evidences of the arrangement in the silence of hon. gentlemen to my left. I do not like to assume that they put these motions on the order paper merely for display, but that seems to be the conclusion from the remarks of the leader of the Progressive party. However, we did not put our motions on the order paper for that purpose. I know, of course, that it will be necessary to take an increasing share of the days of private members, but unless the rules are amended, or at least the time deferred, it
Rural Credits

really becomes absurd to place important motions on the order paper at all. It is true that some motions have been called, but that does not affect the case, because if those motions had been moved the others could not have been. All the motions that could have been moved have been moved within the time allotted. Personally, I would not object to Wednesday being taken; I think it is usual to take Wednesday first and withhold Monday for a little time. We will get through as fast as possible; but there are fouf or five pretty important resolutions for the discussion of which an opportunity should be afforded. I would ask the government to amend the motion so as to limit it to Wednesday-I have no objection to that- leaving Monday still available for the business of private members of the House.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I should like to endorse what has been said by the leader of the opposition. It seems to me there are several motions on the order paper that are of importance. There has not been a very long time since the government really established itself to discuss these matters, and speaking for my own little group in this corner, I would say there are one or two motions on the order paper which we would like to have discussed. My colleague (Mr. Heaps) had a motion for the production of papers which, contrary to the usual custom, was put down on the order paper to be debated. There has been no opportunity whatever of having that motion debated. I would hope that we would be given another day or two in order that this and other motions might be discussed.


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: I wonder if it would meet my hon. friend's wishes if we were to leave Monday, April 19, that is, instead of saying "on and after Monday, 19th of April" to say "after Monday, 19th and subsequent Wednesdays". That would give another Monday. If the suggestion is agreeable I should like to amend the resolution in that way.


Arthur Meighen: I think that we should not fix the Mondays yet, Wednesday will be taken, and we have no objection to sitting at night on Wednesday. It is not that we want to delay the House at all, but reasonable opportunity should be afforded to discuss such resolutions as are of substantial importance.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, I am anxious in this, as in all matters, to get unanimity as far as possible. I have no ob-

jection just for the present, %vithout committing the government for any period of time, to eliminate that part of the resolution which relates to Mondays and have it relate only to Wednesdays. Then we will strike out the words "on and after Monday the 19th, instant", and the motion will read:
On and after Wednesday the 21st, instant, and cn all subsequent Wednesdays to the end of the session, government notices of motion and so forth shall have precedence.
That is meeting my right hon. friend in full, but I hope, later on, when we ask to take Mondays, my right hon. friend will have no objection.
Motion as amended agreed to.



RURAL CREDITS

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Hon. H. H. STEVENS (Vancouver Centre):: I desire to ask the government when it is their intention to introduce the rural credits measure. I would point out to the Prime Minister that I have had a resolution relating to this matter on the order paper ever since the commencement of the session. I have refrained from discussing it, not because of any neglect on my part but in view of the notice given by the government that it was their intention to introduce such legislation. I thought it would perhaps be unfair to press my resolution prior to the government measure being brought down. I point out also that the session is advancing, and the rural credits measure is a very important one. It is apprehended that there may be two or more classes of views in connection with it, and I should not like to see such an important measure introduced in the closing hours of the session, when we would be compelled to vote yes or no without an opportunity of offering constructive criticism or amendments. I am desirous of assisting in such legislation. May we expect this measure to be introduced at an early date?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The only reason for the delay has been the desire of the government to bring down a measure that will as far as possible commend itself not only to this House but to the other chamber as well. The law officers of the crown are at the present time, I understand, drafting the resolution which precedes the introduction of the bill and we hope to have it on the order paper this week.

236a
Civil Service Committee



CIVIL SERVICE SALARY REVISION

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. R. E. RYERSON (Brantford):: I desire to ask the right hon. leader of the government if the report of the Civil Service Commission respecting salary revision of the civil service has been received and considered by the cabinet. If so, when will this report be brought down, and when will the decision of the government in relation to it be made known


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will have to read over my hon. friend's question because I am not sure that I caught it all, but if he refers to a statement which appeared in the press to the effect that the Civil Service Commission had presented to the government their report with reference to revision of salaries, I may say that I am advised the report has not yet been received by the government.


Robert Edwy Ryerson: Will the report be laid
on the table after it is received?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The government would naturally wish to have an opportunity of considering, the report before laying it on the table, but after it has been considered if there be no objection, it will be placed on the table of the House.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS ANNUAL REPORT

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. G. B. NICHOLSON (East Algoma):: Can the Minister of Railways and Canals advise us when we are likely to receive the annual report of the Canadian National Railways for the year 1925?


Hon. C. A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals):: I expect to be able to deal with the matter in the course of the next week or so.


George Brecken Nicholson: I am under the impression that the Minister misunderstood my question with reference to the annual report of the Canadian National Railways.


Charles Avery Dunning: I did not hear it all.


George Brecken Nicholson: I was not referring to
the annual statement of the Minister of Railways and Canals. My question was whether he could advise us as to when we might expect the annual report of the Canadian National Railways?


Charles Avery Dunning: I understood that part
of the question, and I cannot at the moment answer it.



ACCIDENTS TO PASSENGER TRAINS

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. F. P. QUINN (Halifax):: May I ask
the Minister of Railways and Canals .(Mr. Dunning) if he has taken notice that during the past three months four rather serious wrecks have happened on the eastern division of the Canadian National Railways, or what is better known as the Intercolonial railway, in connection with two of the most important trains on the railway, namely the Maritime Express and the Ocean Limited, and if he has drawn the attention of the railway board to the matter, so that they might examine the road bed of that division of the railway, with a view to making it safe for the people of the Maritime provinces to travel to the western provinces of Canada and vice versa. This is rather important, and I think it should be looked into at once.


Mr. HANSON:: And give instructions to
have a 'little more ballast placed on the Intercolonial railway.


Mr. MANION:: And a little more ballast
on the government.


Charles Avery Dunning: The question is somewhat involved. I understand my hon. friend to ask whether the Minister of Railways is aware of those wrecks, and the answer is yes. I understand the remainder of the question is as to whether or not an investigation has been made. I may say that investigation is being made. I have not yet received, as minister, the report of the result of it. With regard to the specific suggestion as to how accidents should be prevented, I prefer to leave that to the technical railway men, rather than to suggest more ballast or any other specific remedy. Of course it is the desire of the railway board and of the government that accidents should as far as possible be prevented, but I hardly think that those of us who are laymen sitting here in parliament are able to devise the precise means by which that may be accomplished. I feel reasonably sure the railway officers are very greatly concerned about the succession of accidents and are doing all they can to prevent them.


An hon. MEMBER:: Might I suggest a
royal commission?



CIVIL SERVICE COMMITTEE-1923 RECOMMENDATIONS CONCERNING SALARY SCHEDULES AND OTHER MATTERS

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Henry Herbert Stevens: Supplementing a question already addressed
Soldier Settlement Act

to the Prime Minister regarding the civil service salary revision, the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) will recall that I asked the question and presented a petition or document to the government about ten days ago. On Thursday last the minister was good enough to intimate that he expected to be in a position to make some statement soon. Is he now in a position to answer my question?


Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice):: I think my hon. friend will find an answer in Hansard on the day following the day the question was put, or perhaps a couple of days after, in which, speaking on behalf of the Civil Service Commission, I stated their report would be ready at an early date and sent to the Governor in Council to be dealt with.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Is that the only answer
for the time being that the government have to the question which I put and the petition which I presented?


Ernest Lapointe: What was included in
the petition really comes under the general scheme. I think the answer of the Civil Service Commission covered the points in the petition presented by my hon. friend.



SOLDIER SETTLEMENT ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, April 9, consideration in committee of Bill No. 17 to amend the Soldier Settlement Act, 1919-Hon Mr. Stewart-Mr. Duff in the chair.
On section 1-Revaluation of land sold to settlers.
Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Minister of the Interior):: For the convenience of hon.
members the proposed amendments, as nearly as I could gauge the desire of the committee, have been drafted and hon. members will find them on their desks. The number of the bill is the same but hon. members will use the reprint in which the amendments appear.
In our discussion the other afternoon a very wide field was covered and with the Soldier Settlement Board I have gone carefully over the suggestions that were made in the committee, but I find there are innumerable difficulties in meeting all the requests. One of the most persistent and apparently one that was voiced by almost every member was that the soldier who might be desirous of re-establishing himself on his own land after revaluation should be given consideration. Owing to the provisions of the old act we find it exceedingly difficult to do that without a

great deal of amendment, and after discussing the matter thoroughly with the board we came to the conclusion that in cases where there was a desire on the part of the soldier to re-establish himself on his own land, we would have to hold up the final closing out of his agreement, because after all it is nothing more nor less than an agreement with the board to purchase, and give him an opportunity, if he was able to re-establish himself, to come back on his land.
I am well aware that a much wider field was discussed, and I pointed out to the committee that owing to the fact that a very large number of these farms had already been disposed of and more of them were allocated, the large bulk of the land, if you can call it that, that would be left, would be land of very inferior quality and land upon which, of course, there would be a pretty heavy depreciation before it was sold. After discussing the matter thoroughly, I came to the conclusion that the best thing we could do in that case was to follow the suggestion of the board and notify immediately the party who was being closed out that he would be given a reasonable period of time in which to re-establish himself on his own land. Beyond that I do not think we can go. I discussed the matter with some of the members of the House pointing out our difficulties and they appeared to agree with me in that particular, that beyond that we could not very well go.
If the land is completely closed out, the provisions of the old act rather debar the soldier from securing the land, but we will use our best endeavours to place any man back on his land if the land is available and to give him an opportunity of taking advantage of the revaluation for which the soldiers themselves have been contending. That was the conclusion we came to in order to meet that objection.
The other contention was as to the method of revaluation and hon. members will see in the reprint of the bill our definition, as regards those who would be dealt with, of how depreciation will be computed. That is in paragraph (c) of section 68. It reads:
The difference or depreciation in value to be determined shall be the diminution, not due to neglect or mismanagement on the part of the settler, in the present market value of the land as compared with the price at which the soldier agreed to purchase the said land from the board; provided that in any case where the actual sale price is greater than the maximum amount which under section 16 of this act may be advanced by the board in the purchase of land on behalf of any settler, such maximum amount shall be deemed the sale price for the purposes of this section.

Soldier Settlement Act
That is the provision we made as to the method to be followed by the committee in arriving at a decision as to how much the depreciation, if any, should be on any given soldier settler's land.
In paragraph (e) we have provided for the composition of the district arbitration committee. I found a very wide variation of opinion amongst members of the committee with respect to how this should be done. Some were strongly in favour of having the whole matter left to the decision of the county court or district court judge. Others favoured an arrangement to be arrived at if possible between representatives of the Soldier Settlement Board and the soldiers themselves with provision for appeal in case of dispute. Having in mind the desirability of shortening this and trying to meet the view's of the committee as far as possible, I decided to embody in the provisions of this paragraph the views of the board, that is to make the judge chairman of the board v'ith a representative from the Soldier Settlement Board to be named by that board and a representative of the soldiers themselves. This would not involve any serious departure from the request that they be dealt with by the board where at all possible, but it would provide that the judge would sit on every case. The judge would be chairman of the committee and there would be one hearing which would be final. That would obviate the necessity of an appeal and it would bring the hearing close to the soldier's home, because as hon. members will notice, later on there is a provision that the hearing * be held within the district of the county court or district court judge.


Arthur Meighen: Does that apply to every
case?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, there
is no appeal.


Mr. HANNESSON:: The majority of the board would govern.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, it would have to.


Arthur Meighen: That is to say the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, the soldier and the judge?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes. They would have equal authority with the judge, although undoubtedly in every case the judge as chairman of the board would exercise considerable influence. It would be useless to deny that if the two representatives were in agreement the judge would simply ratify that agreement; but where they disagree he will
be in exactly the same position as in the case of an appeal. The rest of the amendment is intended to conform with the previous changes as provided for in the act. These are the principal changes that are effected by the amendment.


Arthur Meighen: I shall speak only for a few minutes and on one point, namely, the settlement of the question of revaluation. I do not think that the minister apprehends the entire effect of the plan he has suggested. If I understand it, that plan is that in the case of every revaluation there shall be a board composed of a judge of the county court, a representative named by the Soldier Settlement Board and, I presume, the veteran himself or someone acting in his behalf. Who selects the third man? Is it the soldier himself?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, if there is no veterans' organization in the locality.


Arthur Meighen: And if there is one the organization selects the third man. I do not know what the minister expects to gain by that. I am so satisfied that it is not in his own interest to go on with that proposal that I am rather surprised at his having brought it in. In the first place it leaves the situation precisely as it was before in regard to all those cases in which the board and the settler are agreed on the valuation. In that event the situation is just the same as if there never was a board at all, for all they have to do is to go before the judge, who sits there powerless. Why go through the mummery of having a court if that is to be the proceeding? Of course I want the court, but such a court as this is a mere mockery. In every case where the representative of the board and the representative of the soldier himself are at one the judge has no more to say about it than if he were a wooden god. Consequently the minister's representatives will simply be given carte blanche to the treasury of the country in respect of all that wide sweep of cases, in fact over the whole thing, inasmuch as they can agree on any price they like. So that the minister would be in a position, if the representatives were such as have represented governments before, to do what he liked with the treasury to the extent of the whole value of the lands to be revalued. It is not right. The principle itself is wrong; it is false.
Suppose the minister leaves the other two representatives out: see where he is. He is in a splendid position in every single case, because the county court judge then fixes the valuation. The representative of the board
Soldier Settlement Act

and the soldier's representative are both there, and they can argue the facts and produce witnesses; but the judge fixes the valuation and that settles it, so that the minister has no responsibility. Furthermore, the machinery is infinitely more simple, and is less expensive.
I cannot see the slightest thing in the world to be gained by putting these two men on with the judge. I do not think I idolize judges more than I should, but I'submit that it is unfair to a judge to put a veteran's representative or a representative of the Soldier Settlement Board on a parity with himself. I do not think it is treating the bench as it ought to be treated by this House. I do not suggest that judges would refuse to act; I do not suppose they would. Indeed, I think that every one would help in any way he could. But we have to preserve the dignity of the bench, not for the sake of the bench, but for the sake of the people and in the interests of the administration of justice. This is not doing so. I therefore criticize the proposal on two grounds principally; first, that it leaves the minister carte blanche, just as was the case before; and secondly, that it is much more expensive than the other method I suggest and that no purpose can be served by it. And I add a third ground, namely, that it is not fair to the judiciary to put untrained men on a parity with a judge in the hearing of evidence.


Charles A. Stewart: Why more
expensive?


Arthur Meighen: Because you will have
to pay the representatives. If you create a board with a veterans' representative on it. you will have to pay him.


Charles A. Stewart: We may
have to pay one representative, yes.


Arthur Meighen: Certainly, and to that
extent it will be more expensive.


Charles A. Stewart: We should
have to pay him in any case.


Arthur Meighen: No, I do not think so.
If a soldier comes before the board for revaluation I do not see why it should be essential to pay a lawyer to act for him, although I have no objection to that course if the minister so desires."


Charles A. Stewart: It would not be a lawj'er.


Arthur Meighen: Or anyone else who
might represent the soldier. It may be wise to pay someone to represent him, but that is so much more added to the cost. The minister's plan is vulnerable at every point and

I cannot see what he hopes to gain by it. In the honest administration of his office, in the faithful performance of this task, which I assume to be his only motive, he has nothing in the world to gain by having these two representatives acting in conjunction with the judge. On the other hand he has everything to gain by placing the whole responsibility on the judge, who in the fulfilment of his oath of office can assess the value of the land. To make the judge share that responsibility with others, indeed, to shift the whole responsibility from him whenever the soldier and the representative of the board agree, is to make a mockery of the bench and of the law as well.


Charles A. Stewart: There seems to be considerable aversion to the cold application of the law in cases of this kind. I confess there is a good deal in the argument of the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen), but I have received representations from various sources confirming the advisability, with a view to settling the matter as expeditiously as possible, of having an arrangement made between the representatives of the board and the soldier himself, and in the event of such an agreement not being reached, of referring the matter to a judge. When the. two were in agreement I cannot conceive that the judge would have very much to say on the question. He might review the case; he might criticize the agreement; and he might consider in certain cases even where there was an agreement that he had a right to interfere. And undoubtedly the weight of his counsel would have considerable effect upon both parties. It is not uncommon for a judge to act in such a capacity; judges have been doing so on commissions of various kinds where they did not exercise absolute control. I thought therefore that in this way the matter might be expedited. I do not like the idea of appeals, and it was in order to meet the point of view suggested by the various proposals submitted to me by the committee that I embodied this plan in the bill. I cannot agree with my hon. friend that it will cost more to have the county judge deal with it absolutely as a judge after listening to the representations made by each side. I am well aware, of course, of the method pursued in many cases of disputed assessment,-


Arthur Meighen: And in expropriation.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes; but I
do not fear what he anticipates, that the judge's hands will be tied. Indeed I think he will exercise all his discretionary powers in each case. Where there is disagreement the

Soldier Settlement Act
judge will agree with either one or other of the contestants, and that is what he usually does in every case that comes before him. This commends itself to me as the best method of speedily settling the whole matter. The Soldier Settlement Act is not changed in any particular with respect to the board. The board has pretty wide powers under the act. With those powers I have never attempted to interfere, and I do not propose to do so now. On the other hand, I cannot say that I have ever had very strong representations from soldier settlers as to what should be the composition of the board to deal with their cases. A great many of them say they are perfectly willing to leave the adjustment to a representative of the Soldier Settlement Board. Of course, one might infer that the board would be too generous, but I rather gathered the trend of the discussion in the House was that generally the board was not generous enough in dealing with the soldiers. My thought is that this will commend itself to the committee as a fair and equitable method of reaching an adjustment.


Mr. BOYS:: :	I should like to add a word
or two to what my leader has said in connection with the method proposed by the minister. I cannot see any object whatever in having a committee of three. As has been said, if the two representatives agree the judge becomes a figure-head, the case is pre-judged and the decision is really reached before the case gets to him at all. On the other hand, if there is any disagreement-and I would be inclined to think if each did his duty there would be disagreement-it practically means the decision of the judge alone. Surely the minister must realize it will cost a great deal more, if there are going to be thousands of applications, for instead of the county judge presiding you will have a committee of three members. Surely to goodness the judge alone can hear the evidence quickly and reach a decision which will be fair to the soldiers. I am given to understand that members of the House who have been interesting themselves in this matter have received letters from many soldier settlers indicating a desire on their part that the county judge alone should dispose of these cases. I commend the minister for one change he has made; that is, each case must go before the county judge. I think it would have been unfortunate if the clause had stood as it was originally introduced. Now there cannot be much delay, nor can there be much expense. I am not going to advocate that the department should pay a lawyer to appear for the soldier settler. I think myself he can get people in the vicinity to give evidence as 14011-151



REVISED

[Stage Direction]
to the value of the land. I certainly agree with the minister that there should be no appeal. None has been suggested, as I understand, and none is provided. So we are in accord with that. Certainly it will save the country thousands of dollars to leave the matter to the county judge, and for the reasons I have stated it seems to me you will get a satisfactory decision in that way. If the case goes to the committee without being prejudged, it will be his decision which in the end will govern. You will have one arbitrator seeking a high valuation on behalf of the soldier, and presumably you will have someone on behalf of the department seeking a low valuation. The judge may make one come down a little and the other go up a little, but after all it is what he thinks is proper and he gives the decision.
Charles A. Stewart: On the question of delay, my hon. friend is not arguing that because the committee are sitting rather than the judge it would occasion delay?


William Alves Boys: I am not going to say it would increase the delay a great deal.


Charles A. Stewart: Nor the
cost.


William Alves Boys: It goes without saying that if you have three people to agree on the date for the hearing it is going to take longer to get them in accord. The practice in Ontario which obtains in connection with overholding tenants would, to my mind, be the practice to adopt in cases of this kind. Application is received, and immediately the parties go before the judge and ask him for an appointment, which is soon arranged, and the judge at the time appointed hears the case and decides it. So while I am not arguing that the delay would be very much greater, it would certainly be greater to some extent. My main point is that you have a more satisfactory tribunal when you have the county judge, and the country might as well be saved the extra expense that a committee of three would entail.
A very excellent practice has been adopted by the various ministers in showing in italics all amendments to their bills. That practice has not been followed with this bill, perhaps through lack of time, but as a member of the House I do hope that excellent practice will be followed in future. It is so much easier to follow any proposed changes in a bill when they are printed in italics.


Mr. NEILL:: Mr. Chairman, I am in a position to give the committee some direct information of the opinion of the soldier settlers in regard to this matter. The right



EDITION

[Stage Direction]
Soldier Settlement Act
[Stage Direction]
hon. leader of the opposition, not so much to-day but the other day when we were on the bill, emphasized the point that in his opinion there was danger of the soldier settler's representative and the political appointee, the second man, getting together in more or less collusion in order to cut the price down to the applicant soldier to make themselves good fellows with the soldier and thereby secure political influence. That is not the view entertained, at least by one fairly large body of soldiers in the district I represent. They have been hard hit by the old act and are hoping for a considerable reduction in the valuation of their farms. They are fairly well organized. I had a wire from them a few days ago, I have not it with me, but the gist of it is this. The bill contemplated a board to be composed of one man, the appointee of the government, being a Soldier Settlement Board man, one by the soldiers and a third by the government also. They object to that on grounds the very opposite to those expressed by the right hon. leader of the opposition. They seemed to fear that the government having two members on the board might be unfair to them, not too lenient. From past experience there is always a certain amount of antagonism between the man collecting debts and enforcing regulations and the party with whom he is dealing. While their whole point of view was not set out at length in the wire, it was to the effect that they did not think it was fair to them to have two men on the board appointed by the government. They wanted to have the third man appointed by the first two. I wired back that two alternatives had been suggested: one, that the third man should be the county court judge; the other -the proposal of the right hon. leader of the opposition-that the county court judge should be the sole arbiter. I asked them which of the two in their judgment they would prefer. They wired back at once to say they would be satisfied if the third man were a county court judge. I merely give that opinion for what it is worth, but there is a considerable body of men; they know what they want; they know local conditions and that is their point of view.
Mr. CLARK:: Mr. Chairman, I would strongly urge upon the minister that he leave this matter to a county court judge alone. If the soldier wants to have his land revalued he must find a representative to sit on this board. In the district which the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill) represents 
there is a body of soldiers probably one hundred in number. Is that not correct?


Alan Webster Neill: No, that is not correct. Call it 250.


John Arthur Clark: There is a large number, at any rate. The fact is that in British Columbia farm lands generally have depreciated in value by almost 50 per cent since 1920, according to the statistics of the Department of Agriculture. That condition obtains all over British Columbia, and I imagine that in the district represented by my hon. friend the depreciation is greater than that; it is 50 per cent, at least. That will mean a great many arbitrations, and the soldiers will have to find representatives for each of these arbitrations. That means expense, because no man is going to sit as the third arbitrator for a period of months without some recompense. Who is to pay him-the soldier? He cannot pay because he has not the money; many of them have not enough money to buy clothing; they have been sticking it out for years waiting for a chance to get on their feet. They have had a heavy load to carry, a heavy indebtedness to meet yearly and they have not the money to pay an arbitrator. Then who is going to initiate these proceedings? The soldier must take the responsibility of initiating the proceedings, but who is to do it for him? Solicitors are not plentiful in the district which my hon. friend represents.


Alan Webster Neill: There are enough solicitors
for our needs.


John Arthur Clark: A few miles away, in all
probability. There may be enough solicitors, but I know the solicitors on Vancouver island fairly well, and they are not very plentiful. They all have to earn a living. Who is going to pay the solicitors to initiate and continue the proceedings for the men who want to have their lands revalued? Who is to pay the solicitors, or the solicitor retained on behalf of a group of men? The proceedings will be costly enough without having a board of three men on every arbitration. Every arbitration conducted by such a board is going to take longer than would a county court judge sitting alone, because all the members of that board will have questions to ask; they are not men experienced in arbitrations, and the proceedings will be prolonged unnecessarily. On the other hand the county court judge knows how such proceedings should be carried on, and he is qualified to give decisions in judicial

Soldier Settlement Act
matters such as these. I suggest that this wording is very vague indeed, as to how this representative is to be chosen.
A representative of the veterans' organization in the district.
Supposing there is no soldiers' organization in a particular district? I know that on certain islands on the British Columbia coast there is perhaps only one soldier
4 p.m. settler; who is going to act for him? Who is he to appoint to represent him on the board? Can he act himself, may I ask the minister?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, he can.


John Arthur Clark: Then we have this delightful anomaly of a man acting for himself-


Charles A. Stewart: But what is the judge going to do to shorten these proceedings? My hon. friend is raising a barricade of difficulties now and I would like to ask him again wherein the judge will shorten the time expended?


John Arthur Clark: I am coming to that. Of
course there are going to be difficulties; I am pointing out difficulties which I expect the minister to meet and which it is his duty to meet. These points have been brought out before, and I am surprised that the minister has not come back with a solution for them. Either we have this strange anomaly, if the soldier can act as his own representative on that board-


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
say that he could act as a member of the board; I said that he might appear and give evidence.


John Arthur Clark: I must have misunderstood
the minister, but I certainly understood him to say distinctly that the soldier himself could act as a member of this board of arbitration.


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
say anything of the kind.


John Arthur Clark: Then supposing there is no soldiers' organization in a particular district, I would like to ask who is going to represent the soldier?


Charles A. Stewart: If my hon. friend will look at the provisions of the act he will see that the soldiers, either by themselves of by their organizations, may nominate someone for that purpose, but not the individual soldier whose case is being tried.


John Arthur Clark: The words I am looking
at are:
-and one a representative of the veterans' organization in t'he district.
14011-151J
Supposing there is no such organization in that district?


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend will surely admit that where there are three or four settlers, they may organize themselves. That section which my hon. friend read is to give the men absolute scope in choosing the third member of the board.


John Arthur Clark: I am pointing out to the
minister the case where there may be no settlement. I know of one instance where a soldier settler is on an island about 135 miles north of Vancouver; that man is the only settler on the island.


Charles A. Stewart: Is he in a
judicial district?


John Arthur Clark: Possibly so, but think of all the trouble that man will have in finding a soldiers' organization 100 miles away, and then saying to someone, "You come over here and act as my representative."


Charles A. Stewart: If the
soldier is furnished with a form upon which to make his application, with all the information necessary for the consideration of his claim embodied in that form, surely he can fill it in without the aid of a solicitor.


John Arthur Clark: He will certainly need: a
solicitor or someone to take his affidavit, which is provided for in the early part of the act.


Charles A. Stewart: He can go before any justice of the peace, and if that man is 150 miles away his case will get the same consideration; it will be examined by the board and will be presented to the tribunal by the board. I have asked my hon. friend before wherein the difference would lie between going 'before this tribunal and appearing before a county court judge?


John Arthur Clark: I will answer that question
now. In the first place the proceedings before a county court judge will be much more expeditious than those before three men inexperienced in judicial proceedings. Secondly, the proceedings before a judge will be very much -more economical to the man than the proceedings before such a tribunal. Because, I maintain, somebody must pay this soldier's representative. You must either have a man chosen at random for each particular arbitration, a man who knows nothing about arbitration proceedings, to act on behalf of the individual soldier, or you must have one man-


Charles A. Stewart: Surely my hon. friend is again building up a barricade.
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You would not have more than one member of the arbitration board in any judicial district. My hon. friend is not suggesting that every individual case has a different arbitrator?


John Arthur Clark: That is my point. Let me
put myself in the position of the soldier settler. I have been struggling there for three or four years. My neighbour may be quite satisfied with the particular representative for his man on the board. I might say "No; that man will not do for me, I will not have him at any cost. If I am to be entitled to somebody to look after my interests on that board then I insist upon having some voice in the choice of that man. He must be my nominee." I would not submit, and I am certain the soldiers in any district would not submit to what is proposed here.


Charles A. Stewart: May I ask
my hon. friend another question:	In the adjustment of pensions under the soldiers' civil re-establishment is there not a paid individual who acts on behalf of the soldiers in every province? My hon. friend is aware of that?


John Arthur Clark: Yes.


Charles A. Stewart: Well, did my hon. friend ever hear any individual soldier say that this man was not going to be permitted to act for him?


John Arthur Clark: That is quite a different
matter. That man is not adjudicating on his case, he is an advocate.


Charles A. Stewart: That does not prevent the soldier from having any representation made before the board on his behalf through anybody he likes.


John Arthur Clark: I am afraid the minister
does not appreciate the case at all.


Charles A. Stewart: Surely my
hon. friend would not suggest that we should have anything so cumbersome as changing the arbitrator for every individual case. The one committee would deal with every case in the judicial district.


John Arthur Clark: Then if that is the minister's intention I say emphatically that the individual soldier has no representation on that board at all, none whatever, and it would be far better to trust himself in the hands of a judge, who is sworn to do his duty and who is trained in judicial matters, than to trust himself in the hands of somebody appointed in the manner proposed to look after his interests on the board. I may be a soldier

and I may be quite satisfied to have the minister, for instance, as my representative on that board.


Charles A. Stewart: I beg my
hon. friend's pardon.


John Arthur Clark: I say that I as a soldier
settler may be quite satisfied to have the minister act for' me on the board, if that were possible, or I may prefer somebody else. If the soldier on the land is to be represented on this board of arbitrators then he must have some voice in the selection of that third man. On the other hand the minister's suggestion is that the same man shall represent the soldiers on the board in a particular district. He asks me wherein it would be easier if the judge alone were acting and I tell him this: If the same board acts in fifty or two hundred and fifty cases you must pay that board. Who is going to pay the costs? Is the soldier going to pay the costs of his representative on the board? Is that man to be paid remuneration from day to day for each day that he sits?


Charles A. Stewart: The representative of the soldier?


John Arthur Clark: Yes.


Charles A. Stewart: Oh, undoubtedly. You could not expect the soldiers to pay this man themselves. The government will have to pay him.


John Arthur Clark: Under what authority?


Charles A. Stewart: It is provided for in the bill.


John Arthur Clark: I read there:
Expenditures necessarily incurred by any district arbitration committee shall be paid out of monies appropriated from time to time by parliament to soldier land settlement.
That means the expenditures incurred. That does not mean they are entitled to any special remuneration. That does not entitle the Land Settlement Board, or the government, to pay the soldiers' representative one penny as far as I can see. Personally I would feel inclined to move an amendment unless the minister can see his way clear to reconsider this provision. I think such a board is an absurdity, I think it will be cumbersome, I think it will be unfair to the soldier, and that the minister will be well advised to leave this matter with the county judge. I think the same people will be brought into operation if the county court judge is acting alone as will be brought in here. In this way: The board will get together and they may agree upon a fair valuation based upon independent

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reports. In that case an application can be made before the judge to confirm a certain valuation without any long-winded hearing of evidence, but upon proper affidavits or proper valuations from independent sources. The judge determines at this sitting in a judicial capacity. The responsibility is his to peruse these valuations and affidavits. If these two men cannot go and make this application before the judge by consent it must mean a more or less contested application in each case, the judge and the two arbitrators hearing the evidence viva voce, and giving a decision upon that evidence. That will mean that valuators, and so on, will have to go before the board personally and give their evidence as to valuation, whereas if the county court judge is sitting alone the soldier may get independent valuators to go before him in case of a contest, and the independent evidence will convince the judge very easily. Or the two representatives together will go before the judge with affidavits by agreement after having arrived at a valuation which they consider fair. I feel very strongly that this section should be amended and the judge alone made the sole arbitrator from the points of view of expense and of fairness to the soldier concerned.


William Alves Boys: I just want to make sure of
paragraph (g). I think we can apprehend its meaning but I will read it:
Expenditures necessarily incurred by any district arbitration committee shall be paid out of monies appropriated from time to time by parliament to soldier land settlement.
I understand the purpose of that paragraph is to devise a means to pay these two representatives. Am I right or wrong in that?


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
quite catch my hon. friend's question.


William Alves Boys: I am dealing with paragraph
(g) which I have just read, and I take it for granted the purpose of that paragraph is to provide funds to pay the members of this committee?


Charles A. Stewart: There will
be the necessary expenses, yes.


William Alves Boys: That would be their travelling expenses, of course, and there would be a per diem allowance. I think we may assume the per diem allowance would not be less than $10 a day, at least. With two men to provide for that would be 120 apart, from the county judge. Now, I do not know whether the minister has reached a decision as to what the policy of the department is to be in connection with this valuation. Suppose, for instance, the soldier makes application for a
revaluation and he claims that the land should be worth only four thousand whereas he paid six thousand. Suppose the department is of the opinion that the valuation of four thousand which he sets is altogether too low. Would it be the intention of the department to provide counsel, on its behalf to appear and to contest his application with some degree of vigour as would be done in any ordinary case before the Exchequer court, or is it the intention of the department merely to leave the soldier on the one hand, and perhaps to have some lay representative of the department, prepare the case and go before the county judge? I would be almost inclined to think that the department, when they were contesting a case, would want to follow it up with some degree of vigor, and would probably have some qualified person present to act for them. What about the soldier? I know a few in my own county, but we have not very many there. From what I have heard in regard to this matter, there must be many soldiers who could not afford the expense of securing counsel to appear for them and present their case, and there is no provision in the bill regarding costs. Suppose a soldier without means, but with a good case, having confidence in it, decides to go before the board and wins his case; is he to be at the entire expense of securing counsel if that be necessary? Is he to find money for witnesses? Is this board to be in a position to award to that soldier, in case of success, a reasonable allowance for expenses? I think if he succeeds he should get his expenses. Of course if a soldier presents a case which has no merit and fails, he should not get costs. In such an extreme case, if the soldier were worth anything, perhaps he should be made to pay some of the costs. I am not advocating that proposition, but that could be argued and I want to present that feature of the case to the minister.
I want to make a concrete suggestion in the first instance. The fee for counsel would be $10 a day or more, and might easily be $20, but I am satisfied it would not be less than S10 for each of the men. I should think, if you had much of a contest, the average dura-, tion of a case would be a day, two days or perhaps a day and a half, which would mean two days. There you have two days at $10, and that would mean an expense of $40. I would suggest that you should make an allowance to the soldier of anything he saves in revaluation. If he demonstrates he has a good case, he should be allowed $30 or $40 at least, which would be merely the cost this legislation is going to impose upon the country, and give that to the soldier to get
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an expert witness as to valuation. If you want to go a step further, I would be prepared to support the proposition that where a soldier brings his claim before a judge and succeeds he should be allowed reasonable expenses in pressing his claim. It is done in the Exchequer court and every other court
I have not heard a word from the minister as to what good he thinks is going to be accomplished by a membership of three on this committee. What suggestion does he make? If there is disagreement between the two the judge will decide anyway, therefore why not let the judge deal with the matter? It will certainly be less expensive. The case will not last as long, and if you want to dispose of a little of the country's money, instead of giving it to useless men on the board-not useless as far as the men are concerned, because the judge will ultimately decide the case-use that money to help that soldier press his claim. I would make it contingent upon his success, because if he chooses to bring a case asking for a re-valuation in the hope of getting a lower value placed on the land, and fails, I should not suggest that he should get any of the money.


Charles A. Stewart: Nor any
assistance to bring the case?


William Alves Boys: I did not say the soldier
should get any assistance if his case is not meritorious. I can quite understand that if you put in a provision allowing a certain sum in cash to the men, it would be an incentive, perhaps, to bring eases that were none too meritorious. I do not go that far at all, but where there is merit, I say we should help the soldier, and I certainly think there must be very many meritorious cases. In my own county the returned soldiers may be better off and may have greater opportunities than in some of the remote parts of the country, but I feel satisfied there is not one that really has the money to properly handle his case before the judge, and in the west, of course, the costs are heavier. What are the witness fees to be paid? Suppose you confine yourself to the law obtaining in my province and probably in other provinces. The law permits the calling of three experts. Where are you going to get three experts out west to travel a hundred miles to attend a hearing, unless you have a nice little sum at your disposal? Where is the money to come from Is the soldier not to be put in a position to secure redress? You have a provision in the bill that, where the applicant is successful, out of any award that is made a sum is paid in cash, I believe it

is going to be the policy of the department to employ counsel. I am not saying it in a nasty spirit but it is done in all cases. If the department has counsel, in what position is the soldier placed, if he has not money and cannot get competent witnesses, to say nothing about employing an advocate of sufficient ability and experience to properly plead his case
Dealing with the question of arbitrators, you have two tribunals, one is the ordinary judicial tribunal where you have a judge presiding. The other is a board of arbitrators. As far as I know in all arbitrations you have one arbitrator selected by one of the parties concerned and the other arbitrator selected by the other party. It is the duty of those two arbitrators to do their utmost to secure the best results for those who appoint them. Then the third arbitrator is, as a rule, selected by those two arbitrators and is supposed to be an independent man. In this case the soldier is not going to have the same right in that regard. The department will have a man there who will be specially instructed, whose duty it will be to keep that man as near to the original value as possible, because. I take it for granted the department would not fight a case if they did not think they had a right to do it. They would be willing to agree to a lower valuation before going to court if they had doubt about the matter. They are going to fight to keep the valuation up. Who will appear before the tribunal with the same degree of interest on behalf of the soldier? I do not say that there would not be any representative of the soldier. I have a great deal of faith in the representatives of the soldiers on our various boards, and I have nothing to say against them. I think it would be the desire on the part of the veterans' organization and the Soldier Settlement Board to do whatever they could for the soldiers, but nobody suggests that that representative would have the same interest as the soldier himself, or as the representative of a party to an arbitration would have.
For the reasons I have given, I think the minister should leave this with the county judge in the district, and if he wants to hand out any money, instead of giving it to the members of that committee, who are not going to improve the situation but will of course impose expense on the country, better take that $30 or $40 and give it to the soldier to help him present his case.


Charles A. Stewart: I agree
with a great deal of what the hon. member has said, particularly with his remarks in respect to arbitration. I do not share in his

Soldier Settlement Act
fear about the soldier not being represented, but I do share his view that the representative of the soldier and the Soldier Settlement Board are very likely-


William Alves Boys: I did not say the soldier would not be represented. I said he would not be as well represented on that committee by the appointee named by the government as he would by an appointee named by himself.


Charles A. Stewart: I think the hon. member is wrong in speaking of an appointee named by the government. Bear in mind that the representative who will be on the committee will be a member of the Soldier Settlement Board; he will be named by them.


William Alves Boys: It does not say so.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes he is
to be named by the Soldier Settlement Board.


William Alves Boys: The sub-section provides that
the minister may appoint a district arbitration committee, and one of them shall be the county judge and two others are named, one from the Soldier Settlement Board and one from the veterans organization in the district.


Charles A. Stewart: Surely the machinery is there to make the appointment. I was seeking to get away from this thing entirely as minister. Of course, I cannot get away from the responsibility of it any more than the minister can get away from the responsibility of the Soldier Settlement Act, but surely the House does not hold the minister responsible for all the doings of the Soldier Settlement Board. He is, as minister, responsible for the board, but the board itself will name the representative who will sit on this arbitration committee.


William Alves Boys: The bill does not say that.


Charles A. Stewart: It says
through the minister. The minister is in charge of the board. If necessary I will change it to the effect that the board will do the appointing, if that will help the matter in any way, but I do not think it will.


William Alves Boys: If the minister is going to make any changes, he should change the composition of the committee. Will he give us some good reason why he wants three members on the committee instead of just the county court judge?


Charles A. Stewart: I pointed
out a moment ago that where one of the representatives on the committee is a representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, he is a government official and as it is the actions
of the board that are on trial, he will be liable to protect the interests of the government. That, I think, is a fair argument. On the other hand I leave it to the local soldier organization to appoint their representative.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is just where the
minister falls down. Under the correct wording of that section the minister himself as head of the department designates a man who comes from a particular class, a representative of the soldiers.


Charles A. Stewart: But to be
named by the organization.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is not what the bill
says.


Charles A. Stewart: Does my
hon. friend want the organization to name the man and that he shall be appointed?


William Alves Boys: If the minister must have it,
but that is not what I want at all.


Charles A. Stewart: I am
willing to do that. I am willing to step as far away from this thing as possible for political advantage or otherwise, but I want the committee to understand what we are trying to do and I want to argue why I think the arbitration committee is preferable to the judge alone. I am going to base myself on the very argument presented by my hon. friend, and that is this. I do not want the representative of the soldier to be changed on every individual case; neither will any of my hon. friends contend that. The judge has jurisdiction within the particular district, and if he is to be the sole arbitrator he will deal with every individual case in that whole judicial district. I fail to see why anyone should desire that every little corner should have a special representative. Surely they can agree upon some man who will present their case. I admit at once and I do not think anyone will deny that the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board will be named for the judicial district and will sit on every case in that district.


Richard Burpee Hanson: By whom?


Charles A. Stewart: By the
Soldier Settlement Board, or by the government, if you will. There is no objection to that, I take it. Then you are right in the face of my hon. friend's argument that this result will come about, namely, that you have the client represented, of course, by a representative of himself on the board and naturally the representative will bring him with him because he will appear there-
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William Alves Boys: I object to that statement,
"of course." That person is not appointed by him. It is true that a person is appointed by an association of which he may or may not be a member.


Charles A. Stewart: It is a very difficult thing to get down to individual cases. I do not agree with my hon. friend in his argument that just because a soldier, in the opinion of the board and consequently in the opinion of the minister, has not a good case, he should not be given any facilities to reach the court or the judge or the committee.


William Alves Boys: I am not going to argue that far.


Charles A. Stewart: I do not
believe we would get very far with that sort of thing, but I am going to leave it for the moment. If you leave the matter to the judge, you will have the condition of affairs pictured by my hon. friend, of counsel appearing for the government and counsel appearing for the soldier. What does this mean? It means a hard and fast trial before a judge, settled on a point of law.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Charles A. Stewart: I do not
think anyone can refute that. It means that and nothing else.


Mr. BURY:: It could not possibly be
settled on a point of law; it would be settled
on a point of fact-the fact of value. The minister misunderstands the meaning of the phrase " a point of law."


Charles A. Stewart: I am quite ready to be corrected on points of law as I am a layman, but I will challenge any of my legal friends to prove to me that an investigation held with the judge sitting as chairman of the board will not be less expensive and will not entail less legal array on both sides of the case. It will be rather a case of arbitration, because that is the name of the committee, the soldier coming before them if he so wishes. I cannot speak for all the provinces of Canada, but I can speak for my own province where the judge goes around to the smaller centres and holds his court. There is no reason why the committee cannot travel to those small centres and thus make it cheaper for the soldier to appear and bring his witnesses, lessening the cost, instead of having the cold and hard factor of law, which the hon. member for East Edmonton (Mr. Bury) speaks of, brought out before a county court judge. If you have lawyers 
there-and I do not say you can keep them out-I am going to say to my hon. friend that it will be hard for the soldier.


William Alves Boys: Why does my hon. friend press that point? Has he heard me suggest that there should be any lawyers there? I asked him what the policy of the department was to be as to pressing their side of the case and 1 gathered from what he said that they are going to have somebody there. If he wants to provide against lawyers appearing, let him say if he likes that the case be heard without lawyers. I am a lawyer, but I am willing to have it that way. I cannot understand how the minister thinks it is going to cost less to hear a case before three people, one of whom is the county court judge, than to hear it before the judge alone. The minister and I are old friends. He comes from within a few miles of where I live and I remember the highly judicial attitude he used to display in years gone by in the county of Simcoe. I know he knows something about law; he was even an assessor in his own township years ago and he learned something about municipal law. He is not green at all; he is a man of excellent judgment. But why does the minister introduce that point? How is any lawyer going to be involved in this? There is one question alone and that is the value of the land. The question of law does not and cannot arise. The question is purely as to whether you are going to have one or three men to say what the value of the land is. Perhaps I have interrupted the minister too soon and he may have some other arguments. I may say to him frankly that he has not advanced a solitary argument so far as I am concerned-and my mind is open- to show me that he is going to get any good results or save one cent by the process he has adopted as against the one advocated. Anyone who has any independent thought must see that a committee is going to lead to delay. The minister speaks about the tribunal moving about. Is it not easier and less expensive for a tribunal of one to go to the locality in which the land is than for a tribunal of three to go there? How can there be a saving of expense by having three on the committee? I know many people say that the district judges have not enough to do, but I do not subscribe to that. Some of them may not have as much as they can attend to, but many of them to my knowledge have a good deal to do. At the same time, however, I do not think that they have so much on their hands as to be unable to undertake this work as well. I think un-

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doubtedly that the district judge should do in this matter as is done in the divisional courts throughout the countiy: he should hold bis court in the place most convenient to the soldier and to the witnesses who would have to attend the trial. And the judge himself could go to that place, more conveniently and at less expense than could a tribunal of three. Perhaps I interrupted the minister too prematurely. In that case I still await with interest the 'convincing arguments that are to come to show why a tribunal of three will be less expensive and more practicable than a tribunal of one, that one being an independent judicial officer.


John Arthur Clark: Does the minister say that if the judge is the sole arbitrator then the department proposes to be represented by a lawyer on each of these arbitrations?


Charles A. Stewart: I did not say that.


John Arthur Clark: But that if, on the other hand, the tribunal is to consist of three, composed of the judge and two others representing the board and the soldier, the department does not intend to engage a lawyer? That is the inference that must be drawn from the minister's remarks.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon. friends know that many of the representatives of the board are lawyers who naturally are better able to protect the interests of the board than a non-professional man could.


William Alves Boys: That would be hard on the soldier, who in such a case would have a lawyer against him.


Charles A. Stewart: I admit that at once, but I would point out to my hon. friend that the representative of the board, whether a lawyer or a layman, would undoubtedly have considerable experience in any case. He is dealing with these matters every day and is quite familiar with them. He knows the values of the lands and he can put up arguments to support his case, arguments which the soldier who is busily engaged in working his land, no matter how clever he may be, is not in a position to dispute if he appears in his own behalf. I should expect a representative of the settlement board to be a man of standing and judgment, and one who would be able to see that the interests of the board were protected without injustice to the soldier himself. My hon. friend tells me that I have not advanced any argument. Well, the strongest argument I have to offer is this, that by adopting the
plan I have suggested, the proceedings will not have the cold judicial character of a court in which there is formal submission of evidence. My hon. friends will not agree with that.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Per se, is that a harmful
thing?


Charles A. Stewart: I am not
suggesting that it is harmful, but I am of the opinion that the proposal I have submitted will make for a lower cost in the long run.


William Alves Boys: Will the minister tell us how
it could possibly do so?


Charles A. Stewart: I shall try
to if my hon. friends will give me a chance and not too frequently interrupt the trend of my statements. My argument briefly, is this: you cannot conduct a court without the employment of certain legal machinery. At least, I have not seen it done except in the case of an assessment court before which I have appeared in defence of my own position. In that case the municipality was represented by a lawyer, and I spoke only through him. In nine cases out of ten in which facts were heard by a court my experience has been that the appellant was represented by a lawyer. I am convinced that appeals to the courts are expensive. This conclusion I have been forced to after an experience of some seven years, during which time I have frequently settled matters outside, sometimes giving away more than I thought I should have done in the interests of the municipality in order to keep expenses within bounds. For there is no doubt about its being an expensive matter. A number of soldiers who have spoken to me have suggested that in cases where the board and the soldier could agree the matter might be settled by arrangement and, if it were thought advisable, referred to a judge for review, the court being resorted to only in the event of a disagreement between the board and the soldier.
There is no use in arguing that the soldier will be saved any money by one course in preference to the other. He has to submit his claim for consideration, whether it be by a committee consisting of a representative of the board and himself, or by some other tribunal. In order to facilitate matters the board has prepared forms which the soldier can fill out giving all the particulars necessary for the consideration of his case. He makes an affidavit that to the best of his knowledge and belief the statement he submits is a correct report of the conditions under which he is trying to carry on his farming operations. The board, on the other hand, if it disagrees,
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naturally prepares a counter statement showing why the man should not be given the consideration for which he asks. I must say that I do not see any necessity for the employment of legal representatives to act on behalf of either party. It seems to me that they might quietly go before the board, submit their case, and have the arbitration committee settle the matter. I do not, of course, suggest that the judge could not do the same thing, but I fail to see where any reduction in expenses could be effected. I repeat what I said a few moments ago, that to my mind the strongest argument in favour of the plan suggested is that it will make for a more satisfactory settlement. You will get a better judgment from the representatives as named in the amended bill than you will from the hard and fast adjudication of the court itself. I may be wrong, but that is my conviction.


William Alves Boys: The minister says that the
soldier makes his application and supports it with an affidavit, and that the department rejoins with another. Am I to infer that this is to be the method of determining the value of the land?


Charles A. Stewart: No.


William Alves Boys: That is what I thought. Well, then, is it not the intention that witnesses shall be called either before a judge or before a tribunal of three?


Charles A. Stewart: I hardly
think it will be necessary to call witnesses in many cases. There may be a few serious cases of dispute, but on the whole I do not think that witnesses will be necessary.


William Alves Boys: I warn the minister that if
he does not provide in the bill that the evidence shall be documentary in the form of affidavits, there is not the slightest doubt that expert witnesses will be called to give evidence as to the value of the land. If the minister does not intend that witnesses shall be called, he must make some provision in that respect. Now, the minister speaks of a hard and fast legal tribunal. But what is the difference between a county court judge sitting alone, and a county court judge sitting on a tribunal of three? Are you not going to have the same evidence, the same documents submitted, and the same degree of activity and pressure in either case? So far as that answer goes, therefore, it is of no weight. If the minister lays it down that the soldier shall present his case in the form of an affidavit and the department shall do the same, I do not think it makes much difference whether

the tribunal consists of three or one, except as regards the greater expense entailed in the larger body.


Charles A. Stewart: The appearance of the soldier would not be precluded. When the form has been duly filled out applying for consideration, it must be backed up by an affidavit.


William Alves Boys: I understand that. Then the
next step is the hearing of the case.


Charles A. Stewart: The next
step, if the board is not in possession of the full information, will be to send someone on a visit of inspection to the farm. The information submitted to the board might not agree with the complete facts as disclosed by that visit. Of course, I am anticipating a good deal; I have not thought out the form of procedure precisely. The next step would be to estimate the value.


William Alves Boys: The minister surely does not
mean that that is the procedure under this legislation. The application is made, and the committee must meet and hear the case. The case can be heard in one or two ways: either documentary evidence alone is accepted or a date is fixed for the hearing of the parties. Now, I have not the slightest doubt that this is what is contemplated by the bill.
Mr. STEW'ART (Edmonton): I say frankly we could not think of precluding the submission of evidence.


William Alves Boys: Then if this stands in its
present form you have the three of them and the parties appear either with witnesses or with counsel. So you have the same procedure, but in one case before three men and in the other before a single arbitrator.


Mr. MULLINS:: Mr. Chairman, I have
been trying to get your eye for some time. Apparently the legal lights would like to hold the attention of the committee all the time. I want to bring a little horse sense into this discussion. For my part, I want nothing to do with the county judge. I do not want him on the bench either as a judge or in an advisory capacity. I want to see the soldier settler represented on that committee by one of his own number off the land. With all due respect to my legal friends, why should we select the county judge to the exclusion of the man on the land? If the minister will provide a small fee to bring the soldier from his district before the board, it will meet with my approval. I think I have more returned men in my constituency than has any other member.

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Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


Henry Alfred Mullins: I think my friends will
find that I have as many returned men in my constituency as they have in theirs. I have had petitions from the men themselves, and they have asked to be allowed a representative on the board. As their member, it is only fair that I should ask that for them. The hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) says there will be no more Conservative members from Manitoba after the next general election because the Progressives and the Liberals are united and have got horse sense. He may be correct. Anyway, I am not playing politics in this. I only want to play the *game fair. I think the minister has a bill which meets with the approval of the returned men and of the soldier settlers on the land, who are asking for redress, for some assistance in the way of revaluation. During my campaign I met many of them, and I found they were all struggling grimly to hold on. After being three or four years at the front they were anxious to re-establish themselves on the land, but they were too keen and took their land at an exorbitant price. Now it is only fair to re-value that 'land and give those men a chance. Let me say to the minister in an advisory way:	Help the men, the men that
left their land for a few months or during last summer, help them to get back. Help them to get into live stock, and have a practical man travel through the country to teach those men how to carry on with mixed farming. The bill in my opinion meets with the approval of the returned men in Marquette.


Mr. HAY:: Mr. Chairman, I heartily endorse what has been said by my hon. friend from Marquette (Mr. Mullins) with respect to the clause now under consideration. There may be other clauses that I do not agree with, but I will deal with them when they are before the House. I am in favour of having a committee appointed as provided by the bill. I am not favourable to having a trial, as it were, of a judicial character before which the returned men must come in order to prove their case as to revaluation. I believe the soldiers themselves would be opposed to such a scheme and would rather favour the present arrangement. I do not believe it would cost as much as if they were compelled to go before a county judge. It would be necessary in a case of that kind, as the minister states, to have legal advice, because as laymen we do not favour court proceedings very much and we are not anxious to get into court more often than we have to. Consequently I believe the soldiers themselves favour the arrangement provided for
in this clause. I am not looking at it from the political point of view, I am considering it from the angle of the soldier settler who wishes for a revaluation of his land. I certainly approve of this section as brought down by the minister.


Mr. MURPHY:: I have two questions to ask the minister. First, has he received representations from soldiers individually or from soldier organizations as to the manner in which they prefer to have the revaluation made? Second, with regard to this clause:
The minister may appoint district arbitration committees having jurisdiction in such soldier .settlement districts as may be necessary, eaoh committee to consist of three members, one of whom shall be the judge of the county or district court, as the case may be, of the county or judicial district within which the land is situate, such judge to be the chairman of the committee, one a representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, and one a representative of a veterans' or settlers' organization in the district.
Is the minister to appoint the representative of the soldier's organization on his own initiative, or will he do so on the recommendation of the soldier's organization itself? That is a very important point. If the soldiers themselves, through their organization in the district, choose their representative, then I do not think there can be any objection, but if the minister appoints the representative arbitrarily then I think there is room for criticism.


Charles A. Stewart: We have
had no representations from soldier organizations.


Charles Murphy: Or individually?


Charles A. Stewart: No, I have had nothing from soldiers individually. I have not had the opportunity of presenting this matter to them, I have been taking the consensus of opinion of hon. members with respect to the method to be pursued. As to the appointment of the representative of the soldiers, undoubtedly there will be some difficulty, as pointed out by my hon. friend from Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Clark) in judicial districts in British Columbia, for instance, where owing to the mountainous nature of the country the soldier settlements are not in such close communication with one another as they are on the prairies, and consequently difficulty might arise in the various communities not being able to agree upon a representative. But I may say to my hon. friend that I propose to accept the nominee of the soldiers' organization for the third member of the board.


Mr. McQUARRIE:: Which organization?
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Charles A. Stewart: I have
named two. If there is an organization in existence,, we can accept the representative from that organization. If there is not any existence, there is nothing in the world to prevent the soldier settlers interested getting together and naming a representative.


William Garland McQuarrie: But you may have a number of these organizations.


Charles A. Stewart: I realize
that and admit frankly the difficulty so far as British Columbia is concerned. My hope was that the one representative would serve for the judicial district, but I am given to understand that that difficulty does exist in British Columbia.


William Garland McQuarrie: Whose advice would
the minister take?


Mr. GEARY:: I think the minister is a
little in error as to the trial, as he calls it, which may occur before a judge. Would the minister remember that the reason he is putting a judge on this board is because of the experience any man on the bench gets in adjusting belief as to matters of fact, as well as of his knowledge of law. A very important quality of a judge is his ability to adjust conflicting questions of fact and get at the truth. May I also point out to the minister that a board of arbitration consisting of three members is in practice a farce. One party appoints one member; the other party appoints another, and the third member of the arbitration is appointed in some other way. The result is that the third man is the final adjudicator; the other two are counsel. Are we to have that sort of a board with one member, in effect, sitting for each party, and back of them again lawyers for the parties? I merely suggest to the minister that he is complicating matters by having a three-man board. It would be much more simple to create a one-man board.


Charles A. Stewart: I cannot
agree with my hon. friend.


George Reginald Geary: Then I think that is about the end of this discussion, so far as it goes, and I would like to get on to some point about which there is some opportunity for discussion. I think the House has covered this point pretty well, and if my hon. friend makes that his decision, I do not think we are usefully occupying our time.


Charles A. Stewart: I do not
wish to take issue with anyone in respect to his views, but I cannot help thinking that the two hon. gentlemen on the other side of the 
House (Mr. Mullins and Mr. Hay) have perhaps touched the vital point in this matter. I have no personal objection to a judge, I may say frankly, but I have reached the point in my own mind, judging from the arguments presented in this House

and I very frankly confess that I have not asked for outside opinion-where I think all parties will be better satisfied with the tribunal as provided for in the act than they would with the judge acting alone. That is my conviction at the moment, and of course one must stand by his convictions. I would be the last to criticize our judicial tribunals; I think our duty is to sustain them whether we like their decisions or not, but I do feel that in this as in many other cases where the judge is made chairman of the board, he will have some control over the committee, but after all it will not be a judicial hearing in the real sense of the term-


George Reginald Geary: It never is; it could not
be.


Charles A. Stewart: -but will rather tend to give all parties a fair opportunity-


Mr. McGIBBON:: I would like to get some assurance from the minister that he will give the soldier some protection. Parliament is now trying to redress an injustice 5 p.m. done the soldier when he was sold land at inflated prices. I do not see how the soldier is going to profit very much by this court, or call it what you will, unless there is some provision whereby his case will be properly presented. That means that the government must get behind him with a certain amount of money. If the government does not do that the case of the soldier will not be properly presented and he will not in the end get justice. It seems to me that this is the important question in this whole undertaking. The soldier should and must have the right to select his own counsel, and that counsel should be paid by the department. Presumably the soldier has a credit balance in this country; if he has not a credit balance, due to his war service, this bill has no right to be before parliament. A part of that balance should be used in pressing his claims and I submit, Mr. Chairman, that unless the government makes some provision whereby he can obtain a certain amount of money by means of which his case may be properly presented, he may not get justice.
I am not reflecting on the good intentions of the government, nor on the purposes of the bill; it makes very little difference to me

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whether you have a one-man tribunal or a three-man tribunal; the soldier will likely get justice in either case if his case is properly presented. I would like the minister to give some assurance that his department will place a reasonable sum of money to the credit of the soldier in order to allow him to select his own counsel for the presentation of his case. If I were a soldier I would want a lawyer-and a good one-to present my case, and I think the more ably it is presented the more success he will have.


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: May I ask
one question? I understand that there are about 10,000 cases which would be affected by this legislation; there are probably 15,000 men who would make application for revaluation. Would the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat give us some idea of the expense his proposal would entail?


Peter McGibbon: I am not concerned
with the expense; all I am concerned with is that justice be done to these men, and if this bill is not intended for that purpose it has no place before us.


Edward Joseph Garland: We are all trying to do that, but this idea seems to me rather impractical.


Mr. BROWN:: Now that we have agreed
that there must be a revaluation it becomes a very important question as to what tribunal shall undertake this task. There is a good deal of truth in the old saying that the best committee is a committee of three with two members absent, and there is a good deal to be said for the contention that the county court judge should act in this capacity. I think, however^ that it might be just as *'veil for us to recognize the fact that the ordinary individual has some little suspicion of courts of justice. I do not share in the prejudice against judges and lawyers, but I think perhaps we should recognize that it does exist, and it seems to me that a court constituted under the terms of this bill would make a greater appeal to the men who are directly affected than would a county court judge acting alone. It might be well to point out that the right hon. leader of the opposition took the ground that there was some danger that the interests of the country might be jeopardized, and that the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board-who might be spoken of as the representative of the government-would be likely to sacrifice the interests of the government. On the other hand the member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Clark) took the stand that it would not be fair to the soldier to have this board
constituted as this act provides. Those two gentlemen drew two different conclusions from the same premises.
I think there is also a misapprehension as to the spirit in which this tribunal is likely to deal with these matters. I do not anticipate that it will be in the nature of a hard and fast legal trial, or a board of arbitration in which the representative of each party to the dispute is trying to get something excessive for those whom he represents. Naturally, of course, the soldier in the case will want to get his land revalued at the lowest possible figure, but, I do not anticipate that the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board will try on the other hand to secure the utmost he could possibly get from that tribunal. I anticipate that the attitude of the Soldier Settlement Board will be that a large measure of reduction in most cases is necessary, and instead of taking the attitude that it will get the highest possible value placed upon the land_ it will meet the soldier settler in the spirit of give and take and try to arrive at an amicable decision.
Now as regards the matter of expenditures. It is to be expected, of course, that a tribunal of three will be a little more expensive than a tribunal of one. But in regard to the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board I think it might be pointed out that the board will have one representative there anyway-there can bn no question of that-and the representative of that board who must be on the tribunal will furnish it with all the information the board has at its disposal and thus it will be placed in possession of all the facts of the case. Naturally during all these years through which the board has been operating it has become possessed of a great deal of detailed information. I know you can go to that board to-day and get detailed information in regard to any given case. In the very nature of the case the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board will be. furnished with that information when he comes to take part in the proceedings of this arbitration. Therefore I cannot understand why there should be necessity for any other lawyer in the case at all. It seems to me there should be no necessity for any other lawyer to present the case because the representative of the board will be in possession of all the information which the board has to offer upon the subject.
Mr. McGIBB'ON:	Put yourself in the
soldier settler's place. Would you not want to see your case presented in the most favourable light before the board?
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John Livingstone Brown: Up to the present I have
not discussed the matter from the soldier settler's standpoint. If the hon. member will wait perhaps I will come to that. I have been discussing the matter so far only from the standpoint of the board. I say naturally that the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board will be in possession of all the facts the board has to offer upon the matter.
Now let us come to the standpoint of the soldier settler. Naturally he would wish to be represented or to appear in person before the tribunal, and many of these soldier settlers are themselves thoroughly competent men, able to argue their own case, and to make the most effective presentation of it. Therefore, in a great many instances they would not require the services of counsel at all. On the other hand I quite understand that many men are in such a position that it would be very desirable that they should have counsel. In such cases I think it would be quite proper that the government should make provision for the satisfactory presentation of the soldier's case. I would agree heartily with that, knowing as I do that perhaps many men might not be able to look after their own interests if they were not properly advised. Putting one method over against the other-taking the judge on the one hand and the tribunal as provided for in the bill on the other-while there is something to be said in favour of the judge alone acting, it seems to me that taking everything into consideration greater satisfaction will be given by the provisions of the bill to the men whose interests are directly affected, rather than by allowing them to go before a county court judge acting alone, notwithstanding, I admit, that from the standpoint of strict logic a good deal may be said for the position of those who represent that the county court judge alone should act.


Mr. ARTHURS:: I would suggest to the
minister that in the great majority of cases when application is made for a reduction in the value of land the soldier settler has a representative at hand, the local representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, who has been in touch with each and every one of these cases for years back. Why could it not be arranged that a settlement should be made, if possible, as between that representative and the soldier settler, and only those cases referred to the arbitration committee or to the judge where such a settlement was not possible? If necessary we could safeguard that by saying that settlements so made, if any, should be referred for final decision to the judge who is to be the head of the arbitration board. I am quite satisfied in my own mind that the man who has been in touch with the settler, who knows 
the actual conditions, the value of the land- if his experience is worth anything he should know the actual value of the land at the present time-and the circumstances under which each of these settlers purchased his land, is competent to act, and if such an arrangement could be made between the two parties, that is between this local man as representing the government and the soldier-settler, there is no need for any abitration or for any proceedings other than, perhaps, a, review of the finding before the county court judge. In that way we would obviate the questions that arise this afternoon.
I would further say that I am in favour of the one-man tribunal. I think the judge is all that is necessary in these cases. In the great majority of instances the local county court judge is pretty well in touch with the conditions as to farm lands and everything, else within his own jurisdiction. So I say that one man would be just as good as three. I believe it is quite possible in the case of sixty or seventy per cent of these cases, perhaps more, to effect a settlement without any trouble at all.


Charles A. Stewart: I may say
that was what was contemplated by the bill' as originally drafted, but changes were made in order to meet the varied arguments in the House. May I answer my hon. friend at once by saying that where the parties are in agreement the appearance before the arbitration board will be purely perfunctory.


James Arthurs: The bill does not say so.


Charles A. Stewart: That will be the procedure; as a matter of fact, it cannot be otherwise. My hon. friend suggested that there should be a review -of the decision. In such cases there will be a review, that is where the Soldier Settlement Board and the settler agree. That is why I provide the tribunal; so that there shall be a final and complete settlement. In such cases, the preliminaries, such as those my hon. friend suggested, having been gone through and the parties being in agreement, it is only a matter of obtaining sanction; there will be no necessity even for the soldier to appear on his own behalf.


James Arthurs: That would not appear to be the case from the provisions of the act.


Charles A. Stewart: The act
does not so provide, it is true, but it is the procedure that will be followed.


Mr. POWER:: Even though I do not look at the matter exactly from the same angle as my right hon. friend, the leader of the-

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opposition, I am in entire accord with him that this tribunal should be composed of one judge only, the county court judge. In order that hon. members may be correctly seized of the situation I should like to go back and recall the principles on which this legislation was founded. The right hon. leader of the opposition will recall that this act was not conceived with the object of helping the returned soldiers. It was conceived purely and simply as a colonization scheme. In order to show that this theory is the right one I have only to recall to the memory of those who were in the House in 1920 and 1921 the efforts made by hon. members to induce the government of that day to help the returned soldiers who were in other walks of life than agriculture. On many occasions members asked that mechanics be assisted, tnat small shopkeepers be assisted, and they said, "If you help the farmers, why not help the others?" Invariably the answer came back "We are rendering assistance to returned soldiers to place them on the land because they are the best settlers, and this is purely and simply a colonization scheme and not a scheme to help returned men." That being the case, let us see what has happened? We have squandered something like eighty to a hundred million dollars on a scheme that was badly conceived, badly administered, apd which we now find is bankrupt. Therefore the best thing to do is to get out of it as cheaply as we can. I therefore suggest that we appoint one judge on the tribunal, because a judge would be neither trammelled by the exigencies of the returned soldier, nor influenced by the amiability possibly cf some member of the Settlement Board who might be only too willing to assist the returned soldier to help himself. A soldier in such a case might get far more than he was entitled to. Therefore, in the interests of the country, in order to rescue the country from the deplorable situation in which it was placed when this scheme was put in force, I suggest that one judge be appointed, and, in spite of what the hon. minister has said, that he give not a hard and fast legal judgment, but a decision as fair as possible and one through which the country may suffer the least possible.


George Brecken Nicholson: In common with the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) I believe that having arrived at the decision to assist the soldier on the land, the matter to be determined is, what is the best way to do it? Clause (e) provides that the minister may appoint a district arbitration committee
and he chooses as the first member the county judge; then he selects a member of the Soldier Settlement Board and then he selects a third-the minister, not the soldier-and the third may be a member of the veterans' or settlers' organization. Where is the soldier represented on that board? The minister selects those three or one of them is selected by the state, and he is the county court judge. The other two are selected by the minister. The soldier is not represented unless he secures counsel to represent him, and when he is going before that board he is going before two men who are representing the state and his dispute, if he has a dispute, is with the state; we may call it the Soldier Settlement Board if we will, but- in reality they represent the state, and the other arbitrator, selected by the minister from some of the soldiers' organizations, if there happen to be such, is also a representative of the state. These two agree, and where does the district court judge come in?
If the minister would leave that matter in the hands of the district court judge then, the money he is going to spend could be saved, Let the Soldier Settlement Board be represented by someone appointed by the state, and let the third man, the soldier's representative, who need not necessarily be a lawyer, be selected by the soldier himself. If he wishes to select him from the soldiers' organization where there happens to be one,, well and good. If he desires to secure a farmer residing on the next farm to him, let that farmer be his representative, but let him be the representative of the soldier.
Coming to the matter of securing the representative from the soldiers' organization, the question has been asked, what organization are you going to select him from? I know one judicial district in this country where there are two distinct soldier organizations. There was what was formerly the Great War Veterans' organization and there is a complete and separate organization now, quite apart from that organization, and refusing to recognize it, and it is termed the Canadian Legion of the British Empire Service League. I know another district where there is no such soldiers" organization. What are you going to do in that case? Take the newer parts of the country where the settlers are far apart, we find the soldiers are sparsely distributed. There may be twenty-five miles between one soldier and another, and then there may be two or three in a group. (Where will you get the soldiers' organization to represent these men?' You cannot get one. But they have just the same right to representation as the soldier re-
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siding in a district where there are a thousand soldiers. If this measure is to be made effective and satisfactory to the settler, make it as simple as you can, leave it to the district court, let the minister put in a provision by which the Soldier Settlement Board will present the case for the soldier, let the soldier select a man to present his case, and let the department pay for it and fix the fee now. Do not make it possible to have these legal gentlemen getting the large fees that have been spoken of. Set a reasonable per diem allowance. A practical, experienced farmer, if you will, might be selected by the soldier settler to present the case to the tribunal if the soldier so desires. If the soldier desires a lawyer, fix the same per diem for the lawyer as for the farmer, and if the lawyer does not take it somebody else will. Simplify it, let three men comprise the tribunal, but do not have a board with two representatives of the state, or a board the members of which are all selected by the minister and the government, because this would leave the matter in the hands of the government itself to dispense justice as it saw fit.


Mr. CAMPBELL:: Has the government a
policy or plan worked out by which it purposes to revalue the land for its own information? Naturally when the representatives go before the committee they must have a very definite idea themselves as to the value of the land. I presume the government has some policy under which the value is to be arrived at.


Charles A. Stewart: In all cases where that information is not already in the possession of the board it will be necessary for them to make an appraisal of the property, having in mind of course the provisions of clause (c) in the act. They will consider what in their opinion the value of the land is at the present day and make their representations accordingly. The soldier, also having in mind what he has to do, would make his representations from the same basis. Now they may or may not agree, but that would be the ordinary method of establishing the value for assessment purposes or anything else. That is just the method to be pursued, and one must bear in mind that in both cases we are subject to the human frailties of the individual who makes the valuation.


Milton Neil Campbell: The valuation would
be made by the local officer of the board. I should like to point out to the minister some confusion that would arise in that way. Each man would have different ideas as to the value, and I think it would be important

that one set of possibly exceptionally well qualified appraisers should be appointed, and re-value all that- land in respect to which application for reduction is made. Then you would have at least standardization. In one particular district the officer might have an opinion as to the value of the land quite different from that of the officer operating in the next district. When you come before the appeal board you will have the case cited in one of the districts where the land is valued low, and it will be presented as an argument in favour of reduced value in another district; so that if you get a regular man appointed who would re-value all the land, it seems to me you would eliminate a lot of trouble. I can see no reasonable argument in favour of submitting all this to a judge. I believe that in ninety per cent and possibly more of the cases, the revaluation would be worked out quite satisfactorily between the board and the soldiers themselves. If we have confidence in the Soldier Settlement Board to administer the business they have to administer to-day. surely they are qualified to carry this out, and if we have not confidence in them, it is time we got another board. I do not see any good reason for submitting this to a judge.
The argument has been raised that politics will work into it. Politics works into every department of government to a degree, but when there are only 17,000 soldiers, even if every single	one	of them	were put in aposition where he practically had to support the government, that would not keep any government in power. As an opponent of the government I	would not be very greatly	concerned about	that	angle of	the matter,	andin any case	the	question	of loss to	the
treasury is not so great as it would appear because if, through favouritism, some soldier got a particularly low valuation, neighbouring soldiers would naturally use that in the appeal as an argument for revaluation of their lands. Therefore, I cannot conceive of the board going to any great degree in extending favouritism to any soldier. I do not think they could get away with it. The revaluation must be worked out on a reasonable and equitable basis. Naturally, these soldiers will all be watching one another in order to see what the revaluation of their respective land is. If one of these men, because he might be a political favourite, got a large amount written off his debt, naturally the other men would have an argument in asking for the same treatment.


Arthur Meighen: I have already laid
before the minister some consideration which,

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238S
I think, completely destroy this proposal of his, but he does not accept them. The responsibility is his own. I have dwelt on the one mentioned by the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Campbell). I do not know how he comes to the conclusion he does so lightly that the power which could be exercised in this way politically is not very great. He may witness and experience something which will impress him more than anything that can be said on the floor of this House. But I do not want to labour that longer. I should like to call another matter to the consideration of the minister and then my responsibility is over.


Milton Neil Campbell: Might I ask the leader of the opposition if there is not equal danger of that at present and if the officers of the board have not been fairly satisfactory in that regard in the past?


Arthur Meighen: No. Because the officers of the government have no power in the world to make concessions to soldiers to-day. The act will not permit them to do so. It never followed such a principle.


Milton Neil Campbell: They have considerable
power to make concessions in granting loans. In one particular case I have in mind, the granting of seed grain to soldiers who lost their crops, they have great power and I have never seen it abused. I think they have used very good judgment.


Arthur Meighen: Granting loans which the fellow has to pay-of course that has to pass through quite a number of imprimaturs before it is finally done. There is really no opportunity there. The great thing is that the man has to pay it.


Milton Neil Campbell: If the land is overvalued, naturally he will not be able to pay it.


Arthur Meighen: Not now, but he felt he had to when he got the money, and it was not any great benefit to him to get more than he could pay back. In the original act the opportunities for fraud were undoubtedly reduced to the very minimum. It was made a criminal offence to take any commission, for example, on a sale. In the purchase of land the soldier himself had to select it, be satisfied with it, be content with the price, and so declare over his signature to the board. Those were two precautions. In the next place the soldier could not gain anything by pajung too much; he had everything to lose Next, the Farm Loans Board had to be satisfied; before fraud could creep in they had to be deceived or they had to be dishonest 14011-152
Next, the inspector had to be satisfied; before fraud could creep in he had to be deceived or he had to be dishonest. I think the House will admit that there were a series of fortifications against fraud on the treasury which were at least as great as they could be made, but the House knows that they were not successful. The House knows that fraud was committed over top of the whole of them; that the rapacious man got in, got his fist on the treasury and got away with it. He did this to quite an extent on the west shore of lake Manitoba. All these men who should have been on guard were put into a moral sleep; one after another was deceived or one after another was fraudulent. This was the case east of lake Winnipeg as well. As I said before the cases were not general; they were isolated and the proportion was small. Nevertheless, the amount was large and! it was the cause of the worst situation we have in the whole field of soldier settlement.
What is going to be the opportunity in this case? I remind the minister again that he is going to allow the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board and the man to make an arrangement which nobody in the world can upset, which is final. I remind the minister too that while the judge might have power to speak and to advise, that is all the power he has and knowing that, nine out of ten of them will never say a word if the Soldier Settlement Board and the man agree.


Charles A. Stewart: Surely the
right hon. member is not suggesting that the judge would sit quiet under what he considered was a fraud committed.


Arthur Meighen: How does he know it to be a fraud? The two come before him. The soldier says that the land is worth so much and the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board agrees. The judge knows nothing about it. There are no witnesses. In nineteen cases oult of twenty they will just put their O.K. right there. Like other people they are not running about the country trying to put more work on their backs.


Charles A. Stewart: Surely some uniformity would be preserved. I think one hon. gentleman who spoke from the Progressive party put his finger on the spot. I admit that you cannot frame any statute under which you can protect the country against fraud, but as in the case . of assessment appeals consideration is had to the surrounding property and it must be so in every case. The judge is the man who perhaps knows as much as anybody about that, because it is part of his official duty, and I cannot conceive

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that he would sit still under what would appear to be a fraudulent readjustment.


Arthur Meighen: How would it appear to be so? There would be nothing to appear at all. The judge has nothing before him but blank space. He does not know a thing about the matter. I will venture to say that in nineteen cases out of twenty, if not in ninety-nine out of a hundred, the judge would never have seen that special piece of land with the idea of coming to any estimate of its value.
The minister says there must be some uniformity, and the hon. member for Mackenzie mentioned it. I do not know where there is any uniformity in land values. I have quite a little land and I do not know two quarter sections that are uniform in any degree. Imagine such a thing as uniformity in farm land values! There are a dozen considerations in regard to lands that are immediately adjoining, one across the road from the other. Five hundred dollars would be a small variation between one farm on one side of the road and another on the other side, although perhaps both looked the same from the road. That would be accounted for by some characterization of the soil, by the lay of the land. The minister is going to have to use hundreds of representatives of that board. He has to do it. These representatives, I will assume, are of average honesty; they have done their work well and they have the confidence of the board. But they have never had anything in the world to do that would enable them to make money illegitimately. Here, however, that oportunity is going to be put in their way. The $500 could be divided between somebody and the representative and they could go before the judge and agree on the valuation. Who is ever going to find it out? Where is the precaution? There is none at all. The minister is really opening the door of the treasury. That is what he is doing. He is not doing it intentionally, but the fact is that he has not provided himself with a single fortification. And if he remembers his Horace he knows that the immortal greed of gold will tempt the heart of man to do nearly anything. Why should we expose ourselves in this way? There is no need of it. The representative of the Soldier Settlement Board and the soldier should not be given the right to come to a decision not subject to review by anybody. The principle cannot be defended at all and the minister will regret the day he ever suggested it to this House. I have nothing to say about the motives of anyone, but I do say no one has ever sought to administer so vast a thing as this in such a way.


Milton Neil Campbell: Will not the danger be just as great where the two parties agree to a certain decision before going to the judge?


Arthur Meighen: That is precisely the
danger against which I have been arguing ever since the subject came up. My contention is that the representative of the board and the soldier should never be allowed to come to an agreement. To allow them to do so is to open wide the door to fraud to the extent of millions.


Milton Neil Campbell: Is there then no means by which a plaintiff and a defendant could agree between themselves?


Arthur Meighen: There is neither plaintiff nor defendant in this case. The man who is supposed to represent the government is protecting not his own money but the country's. For that reason the principle of plaintiff and defendant does not apply here. That is why an exchequer court is necessary. I suggest that in every case the two should go before the judge and have the judge himself send for the witnesses, the responsibility resting upon him finally. He should decide as to the value of the land. The judge should be held responsible. He will probably spend the rest of his life in the community and his reputation depends upon the honesty of his work. But what about the others? They would likely be gone the next day and no one would know anything about the matter. I appeal to the minister and those behind him not to expose the country to such a peril.


William Garland McQuarrie: Some machinery should be provided in relation to the appointment of the representative of the soldier or settler. The bill as it stands before us does not make that point clear at all. If I followed the minister I inferred that one man would act for the settlers in the whole of the judicial district. How will he be appointed and from whom is the minister going to accept advice in that appointment? In my constituency there are a number of soldier organizations-the Army and Navy, the Great IVar Veterans, the Imperial Veterans, and now a new organization, the Canadian Legion. The bill speaks of "a representative of the veterans' or settlers' organization." In my opinion something will have to be incorporated in the bill to clear up this point; otherwise there will be a good deal of trouble. There is nothing here to provide for the returned men in the district getting together and agreeing upon a man to represent them. I want to hear the minister's view on the question. We should know just how the appointment is to be made.

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Charles A. Stewart: I admit the difficulty and I say frankly that the responsibility is one that I do not like. Unfortunately, however, I do not know of any way of avoiding it and of deciding what representative shall act on behalf of the soldier settler.
I should prefer a representative from amongst the soldier organizations themselves rather than from an organization outside, which might not be particularly interested in the soldier settlement scheme. I would say however that someone representing as nearly as possible the men themselves should be selected, named by them and not 'by me.


George Brecken Nicholson: The minister says that he would like to get rid of the responsibility of making this selection. There is a simple way by which he may do so, and that is pot to have this provision in the bill at all. There is nothing here that provides that the soldiers' organization shall appoint the representative, or that the soldier will have anything to do with that appointment. The simple fact is, as my right hon. leader (Mr. Meighen) has pointed out, that two men will settle the matter between themselves before going to the judge. If the minister wants to escape the undesirable position which he has indicated, I suggest that he have nothing to do with the appointment of the representative, but allow the soldier to select his own man, the government paying that man whatever they would have to pay an arbitrator. I do not think they could get anybody to act for nothing. Let the representative of the board and the representative of the soldier present the case to the judge and let the judge take the full responsibility. That would relieve the minister and the Soldier Settlement Board of any possibility not only of embarrassment but ultimately of wrongdoing.


Mr. CHURCH:: There are too many
technicalities in this bill. The government is providing for a tribunal which is to be rigged up after the fashion of a high court of justice. We know that you create here the same machinery as is used to take over a railway or public corporation worth millions, namely, an arbitration court of a judge and two arbitrators with him. Why should such ridiculous procedure be followed here as in connection with street railways, where merely a few acres of land are involved? The cost of this matter is going to come out of the soldiers in the long run, and the trouble with all soldier legislation in this country is that 14011-152J
it- is not practical enough. Some 100,000 of our returned soldiers have had to go to the United States to look for work, while about
17,000	have been game enough to go upon the land in Canada, and those who have done so have had considerable hardships to endure, requiring the exercise of human qualities of endurance, courage, resource, skill, perseverance that are more the qualities of a race than an individual. This country has given away millions of acres of land to our railways; yet finds it almost impossible to take care adequately of the soldiers who went overseas and fought for us. We are here setting up all the red tape of a superior court of justice in connection with this matter, with all the attending cost and lack of results. Where does the soldier and his family come in while all this red tape is going on? These men demand practical soldier legislation and not technicalities after the Pension Board fiasco. Have we no time to deal with questions affecting our returned men? Are we to devote our time wholly to debating technical points respecting the most impracticable bill that could be introduced on behalf of the men who so nobly did their duty for the empire? I appreciate the difficulties of the minister, but why not put the onus on the county court judges or quaei-judicial officers? Or why not appoint a federal commission of several specially well qualified commissioners to deal with this very important work. Let such a commission take up the whole problem affecting the 17,000 cases involved and get quick action. A similar course was taken in connection with the Home Bank depositors, and I see no reason why a royal commission should not be appointed to deal with what is of vital importance to our returned men.
I urge the minister to adopt this course. Let us quit fooling with this problem-appoint several judicial commissioners to settle these claims quickly, cut out petty matters and settle the bill.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: Mr. 'Chairman, in dealing with the personnel of the board, I think the suggestion of my right hon. leader is the proper one to adopt. There seems to be some misconception by hon. members as to what that suggestion involves. What was in the mind of my right hon. leader when he suggested this machinery was that the county court judge should act independently as a kind of valuator, that he should obtain evidence as to the value of the land and decide what that
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value really should be. Now, our district or county court judges are thoroughly conversant with land values. Members who state the contrary are perhaps unaware of the fact that those judges are continually dealing with actions for foreclosure of mortgages and for specific performance of agreements of sale of real estate, all involving valuation of land. This is simply a matter of precisely the same kind and nature. However, if the minister is absolutely determined to have a board of arbitration, then, inasmuch as he has stated that he is anxious to withdraw as far as possible from all responsibility of appointing the members of such boards, I think he should tell us just how he proposes that the appointments should be made. Difficulties have been raised by members who are familiar with conditions in some of the ridings, and who know that the bill in its present form is utterly impracticable. The minister, I take it, admits that as the bill reads he himself has the absolute right of appointment of all members of the board of three. He says he is anxious to get away from that responsibility-


Charles A. Stewart: So far as
the soldiers' representative is concerned.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: How does he propose to do so? What does he propose to substitute in the bill as it now stands?
I wish now to direct the minister's attention to two other points. To one of them I referred when the bill first came before the House. Subsection (a) of section 1 of the bill reads as follows:
Application for revaluation can be considered only when made by a settler residing on and himself farming the said land.
I called the attention of the minister to the fact that there might be instances-and I understand from some members on this side that this is more than a mere supposititious case; that there are in point of fact cases- where soldiers who have current agreements of sale with the Soldier Settlement Board which are not in default, or which at any rate have not been determined through default, may not be personally farming the land. For some reason or other they may have someone farming it for them, or may have leased the land to a tenant. I now urge upon the minister that the wording of the bill be altered so as to include, and make its benefits open to all soldier settlers who have agreements of sale not determined.
At six o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair and the House took recess.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.



SOLDIER SETTLEMENT ACT, 1919, AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration in committee of Bill No. 17-Hon. Mr. Stewart- to amend the Soldier Settlement Act, 1919, Mr. Duff in the chair.
Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: When the committee rose at six o'clock I was dealing with sub-section (a) of section 1, which addresses itself to the soldier settlers who are to come within the provisions of the bill, and I was urging on the minister the advisability of extending the provisions of the bill to embrace not merely soldier settlers who are personally in occupation of the lands and engaged in active farming operations on them, but also those soldier settlers who, possibly and probably for no reason over which they have control- being still purchasers under contracts in good standing, or contracts at any rate not yet determined by default of payment of the purchase money and ejectment-are not able at present to carry on farming operations. I told the committee that I had the assurance of one hon. member from Manitoba that I was not imagining such a case, that there were in fact cases of this kind. It is not open to the government, it is not open to the House, to make answer: parliament has the right to give all these gratuitous benefits to whomsoever it will. The Minister of the Interior used that argument in introducing the bill. He admitted that certain classes of soldier settlers who appeared to be legally, legitimately entitled to the benefits of the bid were being excluded, that no provision was being made for them. He frankly admitted that these provisions were being confined to one particular class, and the justification he suggested for that was this:	Owing to the deflation of land values,
private vendors continually make readjustments of prices and terms with their purchasers, who otherwise would throw back the lands on their hands, and the new sales no doubt would be at greatly diminished prices. And the argument seemed to be that inasmuch as the private vendor had a right to say whether he would make a new arrangement and abandon part of his purchase price, and had a right to say that he would make such concessions to certain purchasers and not make them to others, the Dominion government and the parliament of Canada had a right to do the same thing. In my humble opinion the argument of the

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Minister of the Interior is unsound, because one of his premisses is false. The parliament of Canada is not in the position of a private purchaser using his own money. The parlia* ment of Canada is using the money of the taxpayers of this country, using the money of the people of this country, and amongst the very people whose money is being used are these soldier settlers who are being left out of the purview of the bill.


Mr. YOUNG (Weyburn):: Is that the argument of the Minister of the Interior or the leader of the opposition?


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: In my recollection it was the
argument of the Minister of the Interior, that these readjustments had continually to be made by private vendors because of the deflation in prices. Now if Canada as a country was in the position of a private vendor I would agree with the argument, because in that, case the Dominion would be using its own money and therefore would have the right to say whether it would or would not make a concession in respect to the money that was due to it-it would be its own money and the Dominion would be the only one to be hit and hurt. But here we are using the money of the people of Canada for concessions to certain soldier settlers, and that very money is the money of other soldier settlers as well as of other taxpayers. Therefore we are not in the same position as a private vendor. I do not see how you can possibly get away from that. You are doing an injustice to a certain class of soldier settlers, and they have the right-these soldier settlers whose claims are not being met, the men who have paid in full for their lands or the men who, by reason of the inflated prices which they paid for the land in the first instance, have made default in their payments and have been ejected, or the mep who have not yet' been ejected but are not personally farming for some reason or otliei-all these men, or any one of them, can come to the Parliament of Canada and say "You have made a concession to these soldier' settlers out of the funds of this country to which I contributed, and I have the same right as they have." I cannot see how the minister can get away from the fact that if the bill passes in its piesent form it will be an injustice to the soldier settlers who, it may be, have paid in lull, not merely out of the proceeds of the:r farms but possibly out of personal m mays that they had acquired from some other source, or which they borrowed and subsequently paid back. And
you will be doing an injustice to those soldier settlers who have not paid in full but who are not able ao present personally to continue farming operations.
Mr.	STEWART	(Edmonton):	My	hon,
friend is wrong about that. We embrace all who are on the land whose contracts have not expired.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: The bill does not say so. In this, as in other mattfers, the mind of the minister is one thing and the expression of the minister in the bill as drafted is an absolutely different thing.
Mr.	STEWART	(Edmonton):	My	hon.friend	should not be so facetious.	The	minister did not say or convey anything of that kind.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I am only reading the bill.
Mr.	STEWART	(Edmonton):	There	are
different ways of looking at the bill, but with all due respect to the ability of my hon. friend from East Edmonton-


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: Will the minister allow me
to read his own bill?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, but not to put any interpretation the hon. member sees fit to put on it.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I am content to stand on the bill as it is drafted, and I will leave it to hon. members, even to those who have said "Hear, hear," to say whether the position I have taken is correct. The bill says:
Application 'for revaluation can be considered only when made by a settler residing on and himself farming the said land.
Surely' no language could be plainer or clearer.


Charles A. Stewart: Does my
hon. friend forget that there is another provision in the bill that he may go on the land and be in occupation of his own land in six months' time?


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I take the minister's word
that there is such a provision. But even that is not sufficient, because a soldier might have left his land for reasons over which he had no control, reasons of health or of business; he may have been obliged to make a temporary letting of his land for one, two or three years. Meanwhile he is keeping up his payments to the Soldier Settlement Board. He is in good standing on his contract, but because he does not come within the four comers of the bill as it is drafted, he cannot
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get the benefit of its provisions. I say again that you are doing an injustice to a large body of soldier settlers. That injustice should be at least reduced to the minimum; you should not exclude the class of soldier to which I have already alluded. You are doing an injustice to those who have paid their purchase money in full, as well as to the other classes I have mentioned, and you cannot get out of that position without completely altering the scope of the bill.


Charles A. Stewart: They have
until October 1 to make application.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: In view of the wording of section 68, which provides that the only people who have the right to apply are those who have not abandoned the land-


The CHAIRMAN:: The hon. member for
East Edmonton has the floor.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I have made the point sufficiently clear, and no doubt other hon. members will take up the point just raised by the hon. member (Mr. Hannesson).
I desire to call the attention of the minister to subsection (c) and I want to assure him that in all I say I am only anxious to offer constructive criticism. I want the bill to be the best measure possible, and I wish the minister would get into his mind the fact that I am not hostile to the bill, still less hostile to himself. The proviso at the end of subsection (c) reads:
Provided that in any case where the actual sale price is greater than the maximum amount which under section sixteen of this act may ibe advanced by the board in the purchase of land on behalf of any settler, such maximum amount shall be deemed the sale price for the purposes of this section.
The words of subsection (c) are:
In any case where the actual sale price is greater than the maximum amount which under section sixteen of this act may be advanced-
Not "is advanced" but "may be advanced." Now I turn to section 16 of the act and I find the maximum amount which may be advanced to be $5,000, ten per cent to be paid down, namely, $500, the balance, $4,500, to be paid in instalments. If that is correct, I would ask the minister to consider what the effect of that will be on the provisions of this section. The maximum amount which under section 16 of the act may be advanced by the board' in the purchase of land on behalf of any settler is $5,000. That is the only maximum mentioned in the section, and, if that is so, the price from which the revaluation price is to be deducted is $5,000. Perhaps I am wrong, and if so the minister will correct me.
{Mr. Bury.]


Charles A. Stewart: The hon.
member is practically correct.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: :	Here is a provision of the
bill which says that when a soldier settler applies for revaluation, if the price he has paid is more than $5,000, they take the $5,000 as the price from which the deduction is to be made. Is that right?


Charles A. Stewart: It is hardly correct. The hon. gentleman will notice that under section 17 there may be cases where $5,500 will be the maximum, or in exceptional cases it may go to $6,000, where the buildings are taken into consideration. But the point is this: the government are not taking into consideration any additional payments the soldier may have made, because I understand in some cases they have paid as high as $2,000. I presume the board took the view that if he were willing to make the investment, and he thought the property was worth that, that was really his business. Whether or not that was a proper position to take, I am not going to argue, but the fact remains that we are providing only for the amount of money invested in the property by the government itself.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: The minister is not doing that. I thought that was what he intended to do, but what he says is this: Where a man has paid more than $5,000, say, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $9,000, $10,000 or as high as you like for his farm, the price for the purpose of valuation is to be taken as $5,000 and then there is deducted from that the new value put on the land. In other words, supposing the new valuation is $4,000, the concession is $1,000 and no more. As regards the statem'ent of the minister about section 17 or any other section in the act of 1919, the only section mentioned in the bill is section 16 and that is the only section with which we are concerned. I do not know whether the intention of the government now is that the bill should stand as it is. I had thought that probably the government's intention was in every case to take the amount at which the farm was valued by the Soldier Settlement Board for the purpose of the loan or the amount of money which the Soldier Settlement Board lent on the farm, and to make their deductions from that. But that is not what the bill says.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend is arguing that we should take in every case the exact amount the government invested in the property?


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I thought that was what the government intended to do.

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Charles A. Stewart: As nearly as possible. I want my hon. friend to realize how difficult it is to get that amount.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: Yes. Those are the two
points I would like to call to the attention of the minister, because they are quite vital points.


Henry Alfred Mullins: Paragraph (e) reads:
Each committee to consist of three members, one of whom shall be the judge of the county or district court, as the case may be, of the county or judicial district which the land is situate, such judge to be the chairman of the committee, one a representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, and one a representative of a veterans' or settlers' organization in the district.
Is it the intention of the minister to appoint that representative of the veterans' or settlers' organization in the district?


Charles A. Stewart: It is the
intention of the government to accept the nominee preferably of the settlers themselves. One of the difficulties we meet with in getting a representative of the soldiers is that there are two or three different soldiers' organizations, but as the only soldier who is interested in this revaluation is the man on the land himself, we shall as far as possible deal with the nominee of the soldier settlers.


Henry Alfred Mullins: Will it be the soldier
settlers in the district that will make the appointment, or will it be the minister?


Charles A. Stewart: They make the recommendation. I have to assume the responsibility of making the appointment.


Henry Alfred Mullins: That is putting too much leverage in the hands of the minister to make political appointments, and I do not agree with that. I want the minister to leave that out and to let the appoinment be made by the settlers in the district. They know more about the matter and it is only fair to them that they should make the appointment.


Charles A. Stewart: I have no
objection in the world, but I want my hon. friend to understand how difficult that would be. I have no concern about the actual naming of the man, but if my hon. friend has had anything to do with soldiers' organizations, he knows how many of them there are and how bitterly they can disagree amongst themselves. That is the only reason on earth why the matter is being dealt with in this way. If there was one definite organization in each province and it would name a satisfactory man for each judicial district, I would accept such nomination at once. I have no desire to interfere. My sole desire would be to accept [Mr. Bury.)
the nominee of the organization that was really representative of the soldier settlers themselves.


Henry Alfred Mullins: I would be far more satisfied if the minister would agree to have the appointment made by the soldier settlers, so as to give them a chance to have some say in the matter without any political influence being brought to bear upon them.


Thomas Hay: I would like to recommend to the minister that he should have one of the soldiers' organizations either in the district or in the province nominate the men's representative who would sit on this committee.
I do not wish to delay the passage of the bill or to make an amendment to it, but I feel sure it would be more satisfactory to the soldier settlers if they had the right to nominate their representative on this committee. Can the minister see his way clear to amend the bill along this line?


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend will at once admit the difficulty. I canvassed the situation pretty thoroughly. In Alberta, which is perhaps representative of most of the provinces, we have two or three provincial organizations representative of returned soldiers. I doubt very much whether the soldier settler has much representation in any of those organizations, although they are provincial in character. They perform a splendid service for the man who has pension difficulties and all that sort of thing, but the soldier settler has been somewhat outside of that. If the soldier settlers would nominate amongst themselves in each judicial district one who would represent them, I would have no objection in the world to appointing him.


Thomas Hay: That is what I am asking, but the bill does not provide for that. The minister has said that he wishes to dissociate himself from the matter in a political way. I can understand his difficulty in getting soldier settlers to agree upon a man, because I do not suppose there are many active organizations in the country districts representing soldier settlers. I can understand the difficulty of the minister in that respect, but I submit that the matter should be taken from the sphere of political influence.


John Arthur Clark: I am glad to note that the
minister sees the difficulty he is in.


Charles A. Stewart: Let me assure my hon. friend that I am not seeing it now for the first' time; I have appreciated that difficulty from the beginning.
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John Arthur Clark: I am glad to note, however, that it is becoming more apparent. The situation is one that, in my opinion, was impossible when the bill was drafted, as it is impossible now. The minister declares that he is anxious to divorce himself from all responsibility in connection with these appointments but this very bill enacts that he himself shall be the person to make the appointments. The board will not be one of arbitration in the interests of the soldier, inasmuch as it will be nominated by the minister himself. No matter how anxiqus he may be to evade responsibility for the appointments, the minister can not do so if he insists upon this bill. He and no one else will nominate both the man who is to represent the board and the man who will represent the soldier. Furthermore, the minister will name the third independent arbitrator, the county court judge. Why not leave the soldier alone to look after his owrn interests instead of taking so paternal an interest in him as to nominate the man who is to represent him? I do suggest to the minister that he might very well leave the matter to the county court judge. The judge, I am sure, would not be wedded to formalities, and he would have no hesitation in accompany' ing the parties interested in the dispute on an inspection of the land, viewing it in order to arrive at a common sense decision. The county court judge would be independent both of the soldier and of the board. If the minister is sincerely desirous to get rid of the responsibility in this matter let him leave it to a member of the judiciary who by the very nature of his office would be independent of all concerned; and let the soldier name his own representative to take care of his interests in the arbitration. It is always possible, of course, for the soldier and the representative of the board to come to an agreement, but I can see no reason why the minister should not leave it solely to the judge to decide upon a fair valuation of the land when the representative of the board and the representative of the soldier come before him. These two might say that in their opinion the land should be valued at less than the price at which it was originally sold, and if the judge were not satisfied the responsibility would rest with him. If the judge were appointed there would be no possibility of collusion between the soldier and the representative of the board or anyone else, and there would be a greater likelihood of justice being done. If necessary the minister could make regulations requiring the judge to view the land and give a valuation where there was no dispute between the two representatives. In any case FMr. C. A. Stewart.]
we can rest assured that in every instance the judge would see that justice was done and that there was no opportunity for any sort of collusion. Only adopting that course can the minister divorce himself from the responsibility which apparently he is anxious to avoid; and only by that course can justice be done to the soldier.


Mr. FOSTER:: When I point out that
personally I should be perfectly willing to accept the decision of the county court judge recently appointed in Hants-Kings, I am sure the minister will acquit me of any desire to be anything but absolutely fair to himself. I make that statement even though the gentleman to whom I refer was a late official of the Liberal party and a Liberal member of this House in the last parliament. I am sure that no one would have any hesitation about accepting any judgment he might render in a matter of this kind. If the minister has made up his mind to have a board of three, the language of the paragraph before us makes it clear that he himself or his successor, should he leave his present office, will have the responsibility of appointing the three. Now, let us suppose that there is a community in which there are five or six or, if you prefer, say two or three soldier organizations, meeting in their respective halls, and each appointing a candidate for the board. I pay the minister this compliment, from the short acquaintance that I have had with him, that if he remained in charge of the department I should be quite willing to trust to his selection of one man out of these five or six competitors. But there might be a change of ministers and one might not be quite so ready to depend upon the selection in that case. If the minister is not willing to admit that the county court judge is fit to be made the sole arbitrator, I would suggest that at least he amend the bill to provide that the judge and the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board should choose the soldiers' representative from among the rival candidates. By so doing the minister would relieve himself of responsibility, shifting it partly to the judge and partly to the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board.


Alan Webster Neill: Does the hon. member, or
any other hon. gentleman for that matter, know of any rural settlement that contains two, three, four or five rival soldier settler organizations?


George Eulas Foster: Right at the moment I
cannot point to any case; I am frank with my hon. friend. But I can point to a number of returned soldiers who would not at

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all be willing to accept the nominee who might be selected by the soldier settlement club or league or other gathering in a certain community. If my hon. friend has not a similar situation in his own constituency, then I can assure him he is very well favoured indeed.


Alan Webster Neill: It may exist as to individuals but not as to organizations.


Henry Alfred Mullins: May I suggest to the
minister that he allow the soldier organization to select a member of the committee? I have a petition sent to me by seventeen soldier settlers in the vicinity of Marquette. I know every one of these boys; they were raised in the district and they are all absolutely capable of taking a seat on that committee. If he does not want to select them from the district, let him select them from the provincial organization. Either method will be satisfactory to the soldier settlers. I think it would be well for the minister to amend the clause to meet this objection. It seems to be the only objection to the bill. I would prefer to have one of the boys on the board independently of any appointment by the minister or the Soldier Settlement Board.


James Arthurs: Mr. Chairman, I can
readily understand that the minister is somewhat " up in the air " regarding this bill, especially in view of the opposition now developing from some of my friends in Manitoba who were enthusiastic for it an hour or two ago. They now see the difficulties which some of us older members have seen for years with regard to this particular form of legislation. I pointed out to the minister today, as I have done on several previous occasions, some of the difficulties which we had to deal with in the special committee regarding the character of this legislation. Although the minister has pronounced upon it, I am still of opinion that the arbitration, if any, should be before the county judge only, because I believe that in the great majority of cases, as I have already stated to-day, the matter can be settled as between the officers of the Soldier Settlement Board and the soldier settler himself.
I might go further and say that I am opposed to this bill in toto, for the simple reason that it gives relief to only one class of settlers, and then to a very limited extent -simply to the amount to which that settler is indebted to the government. There can be no justification for legislation of this kind except probably on three grounds: first, as a means of keeping the settler upon the land; second, as relief to the soldier settlers as soldiers, or, third, as a matter of charity. There can be no other grounds for legislation of this kind. If it is the purpose of the bill to keep the soldier settler upon the land, then we should reinstate all those soldiers who have been driven out by action of the Soldier Settlement Board or by adverse circumstances over which they had no control. Nature does not make two men alike-not even officials of the Soldier Settlement Board. At the present time we have officials of this board who are probably rather stringent in dealing with the soldier settler. They have driven hundreds from the land by officious action, by paternal care, and so on. Some of them have even gone to the extent of telling the settlers' wives how to make bread! This is something which can continue only for a limited length of time among free Canadian citizens. As a result some of these men have left the land. Wherever possible they should be reinstated, especially in view of the fact that perhaps the official of the Soldier Settlement Board in the adjoining district has continued men on the land who have made practically no payments for several years. How can you justify driving off his land one man who has made an honest legitimate attempt to continue as a settler, while to another man who has made very little effort, to say the least, you give certain benefits under this measure?
Many of the men who have already left the land have paid a considerable amount of money on account of their holdings and have made certain valuable improvements. I do not need any further proof of this than the statement of the minister himself that the government has made a profit on all the salvaged lands which have been already disposed of. Why was this profit made? Largely because of the initial payments by the soldier settler himself, amounting to at least ten per cent of the purchase money and in many eases much more than that, and also because of the improvements he put on the land. As to this legislation being based on charity, I do not think the government takes that stand. As a matter of fact every argument-


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: Was it not on
account of crown lands having been sold that the board was ahead of the deal in very many cases after salvaging the soldier settlers' holdings?


James Arthurs: I do not think that enters into the case at all. As a matter of fact it only tends to prove my argument. If a man takes unimproved crown land and
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improves it so that the government makes a profit on its resale, then he should be given consideration for those improvements.


Malcolm McLean: Even if those
lands were not improved, when once the patents were issued to the board would they not be more salable?


James Arthurs: A man who took crown
land under the Soldier Settlement scheme received no loan except for improvements or for stock. So he does not come under this bill in any event. As I said before, the third reason which could be ascribed for this bill would be charity, and every argument that has been advanced from this side of the House or elsewhere against the bill will apply equally in that case. Take for example one or two specific instances that I have thought out myself. Take the case of a man who has come over here desiring to be a farmer, and very careful in regard to assuming any financial obligations. He knew his capital was limited, and therefore he purposely purchased a farm with little or no improvements upon it. We will suppose for the sake of argument that he purchased a farm worth $3,000; he paid about $1,000 upon it; he duly made his payments and improved the farm, because naturally in order to keep himself on the land for seven or eight years he would have to improve it. Under this bill that man gets no relief because the farm to-day is worth at least as much as the loan which the government originally advanced upon it. Then take another man, less careful. He buys an adjoining quarter section and pays $5,000 for it, pays 10 per cent down, and to-day is owing the government a large sum of money. Those two farms are now of equal value-the one which was purchased for $5,000 and unimproved since has no greater value than the one which was purchased at $3,000 and upon which the soldier settler has done certain work. In the one case the careful and industrious man will derive no benefit under this bill; in the other case the man of wider ambition, who was less careful and did less work by way of improvement, will receive a large return from the government.
I think I have already told the House that there is another class of settlers, namely, the men who have paid in full; the men who were tired of this paternal care by the Soldier Settlement Board or who perhaps wanted to sell their farms. They went to Tom Jones or Dick Smith or somebody else and borrowed money at 7 per cent or 8 per cent in order to pay for their farms, and that money is still owing. These men are entitled to consideration and I see no reason why any

thoughtful man, desirous of doing the best for the soldiers and the best for Canada, should not be able to give them some relief. If you pass this act as it is you are going to create a dissatisfaction all through the ranks of the men who have gone on these lands, because they will not receive equal treatment.


William Alves Boys: I have already indicated
definitely my position as to the formation of the tribunal which is to revalue these lands, and I do not intend to repeat what I have already said. If the minister is bent on having an arbitration committee and if that is the prevalent idea in his mind, why not follow-the proper course and give the soldier the right to name his own arbitrator? Did the minister ever hear of an arbitration where more than the presiding arbitrator was named by any outsider? Each side names an arbitrator to act for them; in this case the department would name the arbitrator to act for the board, and the soldier should be allowed to name his arbitrator.


Charles A. Stewart: I have been trying to meet this difficulty. The wording of that section of the bill is:
-one of whom shall be the judge of the county or district court, as the case may be, of the county or judicial district within which the land is situate, such judge to be the chairman of the committee, one a representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, and one a representative of a veterans' or settlers' organization in the district.
I would be willing to have the third man named by the judge, if that would be satisfactory.


William Alves Boys: In common with the minister I have only one desire; that is, to get a bill which will be fair to all concerned. Let the bill stand as it is so far as the judge and the nominee of the board are concerned, but let the soldier interested name his own arbitrator. There will then be at least one member of the board whose main duty will be to consider the soldier and get him what he thinks is proper.


Charles A. Stewart: Do I understand my hon. friend to suggest that each individual soldier should name his own man?


William Alves Boys: Certainly. Does not the minister think that a proposition involving $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000-every blessed thing the settler has in the world-is of sufficient importance to give him the right to name an arbitrator to act for him in the case? All manner of things are occupying the attention of judges, many of them not amounting to one-tenth or one-twentieth of those sums. I am not varying my views one iota regarding

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the tribunal, which I think is best for the department and for the soldier, but for some reason or other the minister-I do not think he has given the committee a good reason- seems to be bent on this committee. If that is so, then let him carry out the ideas that have been prevalent in connection with arbitrations of this kind for years and years.
I understood the minister to say that under the provisions of this amended bill soldiers will have the opportunity for a period of six months of returning upon the land and getting the benefit of this act.


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
catch my hon. friend's remark.


William Alves Boys: The minister corrected himself and said October first. The minister did say six months at first, but I will not quibble over that, whether it is October first or six months. In one case it is a three months' period and in the other case six months, but I am not complaining of that. I want to ask the minister if he thinks there is any chance of carrying that out.


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
follow my hon. friend all the way through.


William Alves Boys: I will state it again. As I understood him, the minister made the statement that he considered the provisions of this bill open to soldiers for a period of six months, even where the soldier was not upon the land. I now say to the minister that that is not so. In the first place it would be only to October first; it would not be six months, because there is not much chance of this bill becoming law for probably another month. So the soldier would only have about three months left. The section is as follows:
Application for revaluation can be considered only when made by a settler residing on and himself farming the said land-
Then the minister seeks to meet the point raised by referring to October first, which appears in subsection (d) of the same section, as follows:
All applications for revaluation must be submitted to the board prior to the first day of October, 1926.
They must be submitted by men upon the land, and if these men are not upon the land now and this bill does not become law until possibly June first, does the minister seriously think any man is going back upon 9 p.m. the land just in the hope that he may get a revaluation and make something? It was urged upon the minister that the provisions of this act should be open to any soldier not upon the land, but whose land was still unallotted. If the original location is still unoccupied why should not a
soldier make an application, whether or not he is on the land? I believe that is what the minister thought he had done; if he did not think that I do not know why he rose to correct the hon. member who was calling his attention to it. If I am right in assuming that that was his intention I think he will agree that this bill will not produce that result. Is there any reason in the world why a soldier who has vacated land; who has suffered-as we all admit very many of them have suffered-and whose land has not been allotted either under the colonization scheme referred to by the minister or under any other scheme; who has put his good money into it and who is out of pocket, should not be able to make application in connection with that land and get the relief intended by this bill? I urge the minister to consider that feature. It is not going to hurt anyone, because if the land is allotted the soldier is out of it and out of pocket, and the man who has sold his land is out of it also. I know there are difficulties in the way; I know the minister wants to do the best he can, and I think this act should be still further amended in the way I have suggested.


Thomas Hay: The hon. member for Parry Sound (Mr. Arthurs) made some reference to the newer members of the House, stating that they were beginning to see light in connection with this question. I may Say that I appreciate very fully the difficulties which confronted the minister in drafting a bill of this kind. I stated so in speaking to the bill when it first came (before this House and I appreciate perhaps a little more to-day the difficulties the minister has had to face in dealing with this situation. I believe the change suggested by the minister will meet the situation, and I cannot agree with the last speaker when he says that each individual soldier should name his own representative. That would be impossible and unreasonable.


William Alves Boys: Would the hon. member tell me why that would be unreasonable?


Thomas Hay: Because the expense incurred would make it impossible. It would be too expensive to the settler to have a representative for each separate case coming before the committee.


William Alves Boys: It would not put the settler to any expense. The representative named by the soldier would be paid by the department, under the provisions of this act.


Thomas Hay: I differ with you on that point.


William Alves Boys: I venture to say the minister will not.

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Thomas Hay: I cannot speak for the minister, I can only speak for myself. A representative appointed by one of the veterans' organizations, or some similar organization, in the centre of the district in which the soldier settler lives, will be sufficient. I think that one individual on the board could represent the different soldier settlers living in the community. I still stand squarely behind the minister with respect to the committee to be appointed, provided my hon. friend makes the change he suggested just now. That would be the most inexpensive method. It would serve the purpose of the soldier settler better than having him apply to the county court judge to have his grievances remedied.


Mr. CAHAN:: In the minister's opinion, under the terms of this section, must all three members of the arbitration committee, so-called, agree in order to have a finding? Must they be unanimous in their opinion?


Charles A. Stewart: No.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Then if they are not to be unanimous in their opinion, under what provision of the bill is it declared that the opinion of the majority shall prevail? The mere fact of calling this committee an arbitration committee does not imply that the finding of a majority shall prevail. Under the terms of the bill there must be first, a unanimous finding, and I think that point should be carefully considered by the minister.
Furthermore, in subsection (c) there is this provision:
The difference or depreciation in value to be determined .shall be the diminution, not due to neglect or mismanagement on the part of the settler, in the present market value of the land as compared with the price at which the settler agreed to purchase the said land from the board-
And then in subsection (h) it is provided:
Upon the hearing of all evidence submitted the committee shall decide the extent to which depreciation in value has taken place and its decision shall be final.
Now, subsection (c) contemplates a finding that no part of the diminution in value is due to neglect or mismanagement on the part of a settler, or if a part of a diminution or depreciation in value is due to neglect or mismanagement on the part of the settler, the settler shall not be allowed such depreciation as is due to neglect or mismanagement, as the case may be. But under subsection (h), when we deal with a finding, all questions as to neglect or mismanagement are excluded.


Charles A. Stewart: Under
which?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Under sub-section (h), because the committee are to decide, and only to decide, the extent to which depreciation in value has taken place. Now the extent to which depreciation in value has taken place is one thing; the extent to which that depreciation in value is due to mismanagement or neglect on the part of a settler is another, and is not to enter into the decision according to the terms of subsection (h).


Charles A. Stewart: I am not a lawyer, but is not the direction in sub-section (c) to the arbitration board?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: No.


Charles A. Stewart: It merely
mentions depreciation.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Sub-section (c) says:
The difference or depreciation in value to be determined shall be the diminution, not due to neglect or mismanagement on the part of the settler-
And so on. I suggest that there is some confusion, because under sub-section (h) you say that the committee shall decide the extent to which depreciation in value has taken place, and its decision shall be final. If that is dealing with the same depreciation that is provided for in sub-section (c), then it is unnecessary. I suggest that a judge of any court would say that there is one provision in sub-section (c) and another in sub-section (h). and that the provision in sub-section (c) wouid necessarily be followed. I suggest in that connection that only a judge who has some knowledge of the law is competent to decide this question of depreciation due to neglect or mismanagement. That is a question that should be left to judicial decision, and I suggest that under this bill it would be far better to leave the matter entirely to the county or district court judge. As the bill now stands I am of the opinion that the committee must be unanimous. If they are not to be unan'.mous, the matter should be decided by the majority, consisting of the judge and one other member. Having got that far, why not leave the decision to the judge after hearing both sides?


Charles A. Stewart: Does not
my hon. friend see that where three men are appointed there must be provision for decision by a majority? They may decide with the soldier's representative on one occasion, and with the representative of the boaid on another. An agreement by two would constitute a decision, but it would be impossible to have a board of three and have them a."

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in agreement. Naturally the contestant would want to bring in a minority report, and the thing would be unending.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: With great respect to the
minister I suggest that that is exactly what he is providing, whether intentionally or not.


Charles A. Stewart: It is certainly not intentional.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I suggest with deference
that under this bill there is clearly no doubt whatever but that committee must be unanimous. There is no provision for a decision of the majority.


Alan Webster Neill: I would suggest that the hon. member should look at sub-section (j).


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: That subsection reads as
follows:
The board may, with the approval of the Governor in Council, make such regulations as may be necessary for the execution of the purposes of this section.
Well, that is as broad as it is possible to make it. But they may only make such regulations as may be necessary, and it is not necessary that two should constitute a quorum of that board. If a fundamental matter requiring the decision of the majority is to be a subject of regulation under sub-sectic.n (j), almost everything conceivable may be provided for. Certainly parliament is not going to give to the minister or to the board, even to the board approved by the Governor in Council, as wide powers as those suggested by my hon. friend.


Charles A. Stewart: It will be
necessary to give the board fairly wide power. You cannot provide the statute for everything that will crop up. All we want in the statute is the necessary provision for the operation of the board and to give parliament the requisite control.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I appreciate that. All I suggest, with deference, is that a matter so fundamental as to whether the three shall be unanimous, or whether the finding of two shall prevail, cannot be provided for by any regulations passed and approved within the meaning of clause (j). (I do not wish to be too fimciy about the matter, but there are so many "cans", "wills", "mays" and "shalls" in this measure that I do not think anyone in the House could tell exactly what it means.


Arthur Meighen: Better can the bill.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Take clause (h), which reads:
Upon receipt of an application for revaluation supported as aforesaid, the board shall refer the same to the district arbitration committee who will thereupon fix a convenient time and place for hearing.
Certainly the word "will" is not the proper one to carry out what I believe to be the intention of the minister. Then take clause (i), which reads:
The committee shall forthwith forward a copy of its decision to the board, and where the decision shows-
Well, the decision does not show anything.
I do not understand the meaning of the word "show" in that connection. You might say, "where the committee finds or decides". I am convinced that someone in the office of the minister has drafted these amendments hurriedly, and without due care to provide that the diction shall be so clear as to obviate litigation.
Mr. CAHiLI: I desire to make a suggestion to the minister, as this appears to be the time for makiug suggestions and several have been made by members of the opposition. My underst inding of the bill is that it is a measure designed to get a lot of people out of trouble which they have got into on account of the action of the Tory party in the past. It was designed and drafted by the Liberal government in an attempt to relieve thousands of soldiers in the country of obligations that they undertook at the instigation of the Tory party in previous years. It was presented to the House, and in less than an hour I have heard at least five suggestions from members of the opposition in regard to various ways of constituting this board.-The suggestion is made by the leader of the opposition that it should be left to the county court judge, then the Conservative whip (Mr. Boys) sitting immediately behind the right hon. leader, suggests that it should be determined by a board of three.


William Alves Boys: No. If the hon. member had been attending to his duties in the House this afternoon he would have heard the very reverse.


Mr. CAHILL:: Did my hon. friend not suggest a moment ago, as to the method of appointing the tribunal, that one should be appointed by the soldier himself?


William Alves Boys: If the hon. gentleman had listened he would have heard me declare my views as to what the tribunal should consist of, namely, the county court judge. But I said that if the minister insisted on the
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arbitration idea, involving a board of three, the soldier should have the right to name one arbitrator.


Frank S. Cahill: That is it exactly-that the soldier should have the right to appoint one of the arbitrators if there were to be three. Another hon. member a few moments ago suggested five, and he was kind enough to allow the government to appoint one of the five, provided the minister now in charge of the bill should be in charge of the matter during the administration of the measure. Hon. gentlemen opposite do not endorse the suggestion of my right hon. friend, and apparently there is no agreement among hon. members on the other side. They got these men into the mess and now they are not willing to let the government get them out of it. The government prepared the bill; why not let them take the responsibility of doing the best they can for these men? The whole difficulty seems to be that members of the opposition think some person is going to get a little political kudos out of it. After the discussion this afternoon in regard to this measure, if these soldiers are not turned against the opposition I do not think anything they can do in the future could have that effect. After listening to the suggestions of the opposition on a bill promoted by the government for the purpose of getting these men out of a difficulty in which they have been placed by the opposition, I suggest to the minister he should ask the committee to rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again, until my hon. friends have had time to consult with the people vitally interested, the soldiers, and ascertain what they have .to say about it. I am quite satisfied the soldiers will tell hon. members opposite that they had better let the government go ahead with the business and not do any more blockading, such as they have been doing for the last few days.


Arthur Meighen: I hope my hon. friend
from Pontiac will forgive me if I do not refer to his speech, but say a few words on the bill. The main purpose of any bill is to express the will of the House as to what should be done to meet the purpose of such bill, whatever it may be.


Frank S. Cahill: The will of the majority of the House.


Arthur Meighen: If we are all ready to let the minister do what he likes, it can be done very simply. I ask the minister if he would support the bill if it read this way:
The minister may appoint district arbitration committees having jurisdiction in such soldier settlement 
districts as may be necessary, each committee to consist of three members, one of whom shall be the judge of the county or district court, as the case maybe, of the county or judicial district within which the land is situate, such judge to be the chairman of the committee, and the others the president and secretary of the Liberal Association, or whoever else the minister likes.
Would the minister support the clause if it read that way, and appoint either the
president or secretary of the Liberal Association or whomever he likes? The clause as it reads has precisely the same effect; under it the minister can appoint whomever he likes as the other two arbitrators; he can appoint the president and secretary of the Liberal Association or anybody he desires to appoint. It is-true the bill says that one shall be the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, but he does not need to be an officer of the board in order to be a representative. He can appoint a Chinaman if he likes and call him. the representative of the board, or he can appoint a Japanese, and call him the representative of a soldiers' organization. He does not need to be an officer of the board. But hon. members say the minister will not do that. Well, why are we inserting this clause in the bill? Why not let the minister do as he likes? Word the bill in this way:
That as respects what the soldier shall pay on any land he gets, the Minister of the Interior may, in the exercise of his mature judgment, and in the light of his Scriptural teaching, do whatever he pleases.
We might as well pass such legislation as that. The duty of the House is so to word the bill as to guard the public interest as best we can. That is the purpose of the wording. I. repeat: The word "representative" does not. mean, as hon. members seem to assume, that a man to be a representative of soldiers' organization is selected by them or is even a member of the organization. He does not need to-be that. The minister can go into Marquette, select the president of the Liberal association and say to him: You are on the arbitration board for Marquette district and you represent the soldiers' organization. It may be said that he cannot do so. Very well, what is the legislation for? He can appoint somebody else and say: You are the representative for the Soldier Settlement Board-and that man does not need to be an officer of the board at all. Surely the minister would not pass the legislation if it was worded as I read it first, but the way he has it in this bill it has exactly the same effect: his powers are just as ample; the meaning is just the same. Surely that is not good legislating.
I know we are taking some time, but the minister is on the wrong line, to begin with; and in the next place the legislation is sloppy.

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It is crude in its whole verbiage; it is not carefully conceived. I have given the minister credit for having in mind only a good bill, a method of working this thing out aright; but he has had no excuse at all for tying to the tail of a judge any two arbitrators of any kind. What does the minister want them for? He is opening the door to fraud. He may not mean to do that and I know he does not mean to; but why do it? It does not matter what he means; if the door is open he can take it for granted that frauds will be committed. He has opened the door to anyone who may be in charge, who desires to act fraudulently in a district, to do so. The door will be just as wide open as anything in the world ever was.
The suggestions have been simple; there has been nothing complex about them. The suggestions are simply these: Follow the same course that you follow in expropriations, that you follow in assessments, that you follow in relation to any other matter' where the crown and the individual under the crown are concerned; simply have the judge hear the evidence and decide. If the minister then cares to provide-and I think he probably would-some means of enabling the soldier to conduct his case, that is a simple matter. Discretion should be given to the judge in that regard to give the soldier a certain allowance up to a limit say, under such conditions that might be framed by regulation. That is only a detail, but the essence of the whole thing is to get your tribunal sound and to get the principle sound upon which the tribunal acts. If the minister gets that done, the rest is not of as great consequence although it is of consequence, of course. If you are bound to move on this line, putting it on a basis of helping rather than on a basis of protection, then you are certainly going to have to extend it to those men who are off the land, whether they were put off or not, and you have to get it just as was indicated in the speech of the hon. member just behind. These are the two main factors if the minister would consider them. It is not that we are wanting to complain.


Charles A. Stewart: My right hon. friend is speaking only for himself in that respect.


Arthur Meighen: I know there are one or two misconceptions of the effect of the bill, but I am not speaking only for myself or only for this side of the House.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon. friend is again misquoting me, for this reason:
I have reference only to his latest statement, namely, that I am making the bill too wide. Not many hon. members share that view.


Arthur Meighen: I am saying that the
minister has not his bill wide enough in the personnel; he did not have it wide enough in the beginning. He is having it apply to a class of cases it does not need to apply to, but there are more cases on the other side to which it does not apply and he is going to have it applied to them. If he does not do so this year, he will next year; he cannot get out of doing it. What I am driving at now -and it is really the main feature-is that he should get his principle right as to the tribunal. That is the simplest thing in the world. The clause could be worded in two minutes; we would then be past that, and I venture to say that we would be past it with the overwhelming concurrence of this committee.


Charles A. Stewart: The appointment of a judge alone?


Arthur Meighen: Yes.	[DOT]


Charles A. Stewart: I doubt it.


Arthur Meighen: If the minister does not do this, the complications he is going to get into will certainly foe very great. Does he imagine he is going to satisfy soldiers' organizations by naming a mam? In Portage la Prairie I do not know how many soldiers organizations there are. There is an Army and Navy Club; there is a Veterans' Association and there are soldiers settled all around that district. W'hich one is he going to recognize? I would not want to have to do it, and if he recognizes one the others will not be pleased. He is going to have representatives on many boards at the same time because there are thousands and thousands of cases. When he sends his representatives out he is certainly going to get some that will not be acceptable, and the whole thing is for no purpose at all. They will only be an encumbrance when they are there. The judge is the one who ought to decide the matter and the one who will decide it if the minister will only simplify his bill.


Charles A. Stewart: The leader of the opposition is quite correct when he suggests that if the president and secretary of the Liberal association were named, I would object to the bill. Any sensible man would.


Arthur Meighen: I said he could name
them.


Charles A. Stewart: Will my
right hon. friend allow me to speak? I am not in the habit of interrupting him.
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Arthur Meighen: The minister interrupted me several times and I was glad to have those interruptions.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, when my right hon. friend strays too far from the path of rectitude. It is useless to argue that such a construction as my right hon. friend has just indicated could be placed upon the wording of the bill. That is the furthest thing from the intention of the bill. If I have told the House once, I have told it fifty times that I have no desire to name these men. I did not think I was naming them. My right hon. friend put that construction on the bill. I was leaving it to the organizations to name their representatives. I have not much objection to accepting the suggestion of the hon. member for North Simcoe (Mr. Boys) that each soldier go before the board, make his own representation and name his own representative quite apart from me altogether, if that will meet the situation, but an hon. gentleman sitting over there objects to that, and I think far some reason.


William Alves Boys: I do not think he understood the intention.


Charles A. Stewart: This is not the ordinary case that we are dealing with, nor have we ever dealt with soldiers' problems from the standpoint of sending them to the courts as the courts exist to-day. On every occasion we have appointed a committee of this House, accepted the finding of that committee and put it into effect. It can be said that committees of this House have been too generous in the past. I had no thought on earth of dictating to the board as to the appointment of their representatives. The only reason the word "representative" is in this bill is that we did not want to name definitely the field or district supervisor, because in some cases these men might not be the proper persons to act for the board. That is all; otherwise we would have named the district supervisor as the individual to be upon that committee. Apparently there is a desire to nail this thing down- to a hard and fast rule. It is not the case -that the government or the minister wants to have jurisdiction in the matter or to -make it a political machine as some hon. gentlemen opposite seem to think. Our anticipation is that this bill will do the government far more harm with the returned soldier than it will do it good. If hon. gentlemen opposite want to take the responsibility of it, I shall be glad to give it -to them, because I think the government that handles this matter will lose -more votes than it will gain. -That is my candid opinion.

Mr. MEI-QHEN: We are trying to help it so that it will not hurt you.


Charles A. Stewart: I question that. However, the government must assume the responsibility. It does not rest upon my hon. friends opposite but upon us, and if wre take that responsibility we must have something to say about the bill. I am not criticizing the suggestions that have been offered and I certainly do not think anyone can charge me with having done so. I have sat here and tried to gather from the various suggestions that have been put forward some idea of what kind of measure would best meet the view of the House as a whole. When the bill is passed -it is scarcely likely to satisfy everyone. With due respect to the legal fraternity as represented in this House, I venture to say that no bill that might be enacted here would meet with their entire approval: there would be some who would have some fault to find with it. At any rate I have not yet seen one measure pass that was agreed to unanimously, and I have seen a good many go through all the stages of legislation in this House.
M-r. BOYS: Is it the intention that a majority of the members of the tribunal shall have the right to give a decision?


Charles A. Stewart: -Certainly.
My hon. -friend does not think that it would be necessary to have an entire agreement, for in that case there would be no decision.


William Alves Boys: No, but there should be some provision whereby any two of the three might bring in an award.


Charles A. Stewart: There are a number of things in this bill which will have to be left to regulation.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: The decision is the decision of the board as an entity and it must therefore be the decision of the whole three, unless you provide in the bill that the voice of two shall speak for the board as a whole.


Robert James Manion: As regards the possibility of appointments being made from political considerations, I would bring to the minister's attention what occurred in connection with the Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, under the Hon. Mr. Beland. That was much more a soldier organization than is the Soldier Settlement Board, for, as the hon. member (Mr. Power) pointed out this afternoon, the Soldier Settlement Board' was originally established as a settlement scheme. The Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, on the contrary, was essentially an organization to serve the interests of the soldiers themselves, and not-

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withstanding that fact changes were made in the medical personnel throughout the country for no other than political reasons. Many such changes were made. If, therefore, there was that danger in connection with the Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, because the medical officers who were displaced were of the wrong political colour, is there not the same danger, indeed, a greater danger, in this case where the organization is not so peculiarly one in the interests of the soldiers?
I do not charge the minister with anything of that kind-


Charles A. Stewart: You cannot, because I have made no changes in the board.


Robert James Manion: I have no doubt that the minister is sincere in his desire to put through a proper measure.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend will not argue that the officers of the board were appointed because they were Liberals.


Robert James Manion: What I am saying is that changes were made in the Soldiers' Civil Reestablishment because of political considerations, Conservatives being replaced by Liberals. And this occurred not in one instance, but in many. At the head of the lakes a Conservative who had served in the lines overseas was replaced by a Liberal who had never been out of Canada, and the same is true of the constituency represented by my hon. friend from Kingston (Mr. Ross). I have heard that hon. member make a similar statement regarding certain officers in his section of the country. The fact of the matter is that throughout Canada changes were made in the personnel of the Soldiers' Civil Reestablishment because the incumbents who were ousted happened to be of the. wrong political persuasion. Now that, as I haive said, was essentially a soldier organization, whereas the board we are discussing was established primarily as a means of settling soldiers. I argue, therefore, that there is a greater danger of political influence being brought to bear in this matter than in the other. I give the minister credit for sincerity and I think he should be only too willing to avoid the possibility of having this legislation used as a political machine. He can help to this end by allowing the judge to be the sole arbitrator in these cases.


Charles A. Stewart: I am not afraid of the political machine. My hon. friend refers to the fact that a few doctors were changed on the Soldiers' Civil Re-14011-153
establishment. God knows there were not many on this board who were of any other stripe than Conservative when it started.


Arthur Meighen: Lots of them.


Charles A. Stewart: Not many.


Arthur Meighen: What about Edmonton?


Charles A. Stewart: I have, however, nothing to do with the Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment. I am speaking of the Soldier Settlement Board. I do not know what their politics were, but there were not many Liberals on it.


Robert James Manion: That is to their discredit, because the men were appointed only on the ground of their having been overseas.


Charles A. Stewart: I am speaking of the Soldier Settlement Board.


Arthur Meighen: Does the minister say
there were not any Liberals on that?


Charles A. Stewart: Not many.


Arthur Meighen: There were only three
on the board, one of whom certainly was a Liberal. As to the other two, I do not know what their politics were.


Charles A. Stewart: Now that
the matter is up we may as well have a free-for-all over it. I do not propose to have it said that because the Liberal party are in office they have indiscriminately made changes for political reasons. I have never practised that sort of thing and probably have not practised it enough.


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: Hear, hear. That
is more like it.


Charles A. Stewart: However,
I do not propose to start now.


Robert James Manion: The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) indicates to the Minister of the Interior the danger that exists.


Charles A. Stewart: It will be
rather a sad day for the soldier settlers if politics are to have anything to do with this matter. Personally I am thoroughly satisfied with the board and with the way they are carrying on, and I can assure the committee that I have never inquired into politics, although it has been stated on more than one occasion that, if anything, the Liberal party has suffered in this respect. But that is not the way we want to approach this question, and I resent the implication, either from the leader of the opposition or from any other hon. .gentleman opposite, that because this bill is drafted in its present form political advantage will be taken of its provisions.

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Robert James Manion: We are only pointing out the dangers.


Charles A. Stewart: M(y hon.
friend seems to be very much alarmed about the dangers.


John Arthur Clark: Suppose the Minister of
Agriculture should take charge.


Charles A. Stewart: The committee is dealing with the Minister of Interior at present; it can deal with the Minister of Agriculture when agricultural matters are under consideration. Now, I am prepared to accept the suggestion of my hon. friend (Mr. Boys) with respect to the soldiers' representative, but I am not prepared to accept the judge as the final arbitrator. I make that perfectly plain to the committee, because the government must take responsibility for the bill. Further, I am prepared to amend the clause relating to the classes to be dealt with.


John Livingstone Brown: If the minister accepts the suggestion of the hon. member with regard to the representative of the soldier, I would suggest, in order to preclude such an interpretation as was indicated by the leader of the opposition, that it be made to read "an appointee of the Soldier Settlement Board " instead of a representative.


Charles A. Stewart: Surely the
committee will leave one poor individual for the minister to have some say about. The government, I repeat, must assume the responsibility in the matter.


John Livingstone Brown: I was merely suggesting that he should be an appointee of the board.


Charles A. Stewart: He will be
an appointee of the board, but the minister will reserve the right to make that particular appointment. The government must have some representation, but there will be no interference on the part of the minister. I am prepared to widen the scope of the bill to deal with every man whose contract is not cancelled, but I will not go further, because to do so to an unlimited degree would only create untold complications. As to the decision of the board, I am quite prepared to insert a proviso that the majority of the board shall prevail in every case.


James Arthurs: The minister referred to "any man whose contract is not cancelled." Will that include those men whose contracts are closed by payment in full?


Charles A. Stewart: Not at all; they are in the same position as those who have cancelled their contracts.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: The contracts are determined.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes. It
covers only the man whose contract is in existence and who owes the government a substantial sum of money on it.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I would point out to the
minister that if he does insert-and he certainly must insert as a fundamental provision of this bill-that the decision of the majority shall prevail, he cannot do so under this clause.
Mr. STEW'ART (Edmonton):	I propose
to amend it.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Then I would call attention to this objection. Provision being made that if the arbitration committee, so-called, is not necessarily unanimous the finding of two of the arbitrators will prevail, it is quite possible for two members other than the judge to unite to oust the judge entirely. Thereupon you have two members of the committee rendering a majority decision opposed to that of the judge on whatever legal questions may arise. I suggest to the minister that he make his amendment read so that one member of the majority of two must be the judge, otherwise it is utterly useless to have a judge as one of the members of the committee.


Robert Forke: Mr. Chairman, the hon.
member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan) apparently is not very sure as to what the bill really means. After listening to all the discussion that has taken place, I have not been able to apprehend the meaning of the suggestions that have been made other' than that the county court judge shall decide all the circumstances. The right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) seemingly is very much afraid that the tribunal will in reality be a political machine. I do not think there is much danger of that if the right people are chosen.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Robert Forke: Well, Mr. Chairman, I have not lost faith in human nature yet. Polities is bad enough, but I believe men can be found to act honestly and uprightly, no matter whether they be Conservatives or Liberals. As I mentioned before, I have had some experience as a member of a tribunal ascertaining the value of land. Land valuation is a very difficult and complicated problem. No man can tell what is the value of a certain portion of land. The only criterion of its value is what anyone is willing to pay for it. That, is the only real basis of valuation.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.

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Robert Forke: Some of my hon. friends
say, "No, no;" but there is no oth^f way of ascertaining the value of land except on the basis of what somebody will pay to get hold of it. The value goes up and down and a great many things enter into the question. Now, a judge may be the very best qualified individual to decide certain legal questions, but I doubt if he is best fitted to give a final decision on the value of land. He is learned in many ways, he is perhaps a good judge of human nature, which, of course, is of great assistance to him in weighing evidence, but, that evidence must be adduced by people who know what they are talking about. Consequently if he has the other two members of that board sitting with him, and they have a pretty good idea of the value of land, I think perhaps he can perform a very useful function in weighing the evidence adduced. In regard to who two of the arbitrators should be, I think the minister would be well advised to take a man representing the soldier settlers in the district. It should not be at all difficult in any particular locality to divide it into districts, and then let the soldiers in those several districts elect someone to be their representative upon the board. I am sure those soldier settlers are so earnest in their desire to get a thoroughly competent board that they would not worry whether their representative was a Conservative, a Progressive or a Liberal. Undoubtedly they would select the best man available to represent them. Although technically the minister is head of the Soldier Settlement Board, I do not think that even members of the opposition believe he is going to interfere with the arbitrator that will be chosen to represent the Soldier Settlement Board. It does seem to me that those two arbitrators with the county court judge ought to constitute a board that will be just as near satisfactory as you can get it. I am quite aware that no matter how you set about doing it, this work will be beset with difficulties and will not give satisfaction to a number of soldier settlers; but we have simply to do the very best we can under the circumstances. I do believe that most hon. members are really anxious to get something that will be as nearly satisfactory as possible. I think I would agree with the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George that the judge should form one of the majority of the committee when the decision is not unanimous. There is something in the argument of the leader of the opposition that there might be some collusion between the soldier settler representative and the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board, and consequently 14011-153J
the common interest might not be taken care of just as carefully as it should be. By making the judge one of the majority I think we shall guard against that contingency.
The minister is altogether too apologetic. I think he ought to make up his mind just exactly what he wants, and fight for it. However, I am inclined to believe the criticisms have been offered in good faith and that we are all anxious to do the best we can for the soldier settler. I have been getting letters every day, in fact I got two to-day, voicing objection to a judge being the final arbitrator. I can understand how the soldier settlers may take that point of view, and of course there are two sides to every question. I have a long letter and quite a large petition from British Columbia-I think they are from the group of men referred to this afternoon by the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill)-and all those people are against the judge having the sole authority. This is a serious question which is going to cost a good deal of money, and I am inclined to agree with the minister that the government will not come through with very much glory when they finish. I am perfectly sure of that.


John Arthur Clark: Would the hon. member
tell us from whom he received the petition, and its contents?


Robert Forke: I could not do that because I have not the petition with me, but it is no secret; I will let the hon. member see it if he so desires. I think I have received more complaints in regard to this question from British Columbia than from any other province; I believe I receive more letters touching this matter than do most of the members of my group, and I find a great deal of dissatisfaction in British Columbia and in Manitoba. I do not know that I have added anything to the value of this debate, but I hope we can get together and work out something which will be satisfactory to everyone.


George Reginald Geary: Would the hon. member allow a question?


Robert Forke: Yes.


George Reginald Geary: In a three-man board does
not the county court judge become the final arbiter?


Robert Forke: Not necessarily so.


George Reginald Geary: Why not, if there is any
dispute?


Robert Forke: The other two members of
the board1 might agree and would form a majority, leaving the judge in the minority.
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George Reginald Geary: Then there would be no
dispute between the other two parties.


Robert Forke: What I suggested was that
the majority would have to ibe composed of one of the other members and the judge.


George Reginald Geary: Is not the judge always the final arbiter, if he constitutes the majority?


George Brecken Nicholson: Supposing the other
two members decide 'against the judge; he would not have anything to say about it at all.


Robert Forke: I suppose that difficulty
might 'arise. However, I have said all that I propose to say in regard to the matter. I am quite satisfied that we will never get a bill with which everyone will be satisfied, but we are going to do the best we can. I have had a little experience with appeals to a judge, and I can tell hon. members that this is going to be very unpopular with the county court judges. They do not want this work, and do not like it. I know that the judges are honourable and patriotic and will undertake the duty, but they will not like the work.


George Brecken Nicholson: I just wanted to ask
the hon. member a question before he closes and I am quite conscious of the
10 p.m. fact that he is just as anxious as anyone to find a real solution to this question. Would he object to the department being represented by one man, the soldier represented by one man, these two appearing before the judge and the judge giving a decision after considering all the facts?


Robert Forke: I think what I have already said would almost lead to that conclusion. There is not very much difference of opinion in regard to the advisability of having those two representatives; the only difference which exists at present is as to the standing they should have. The recommendation of the right hon. leader of the opposition I believe, was that the judge should sit as a judge, with the others appearing as witnesses. Under the other plan, instead of appearing only as witnesses they would be members of the board and would have more standing in that way.
I would like to refer for just a moment to the question of expense. We are not going to add much to the expense by enlarging the board to three. It may be rather arbitrary to put any such regulation into the act, but I would almost be prepared to say

that no lawyer should appear before that board. I am quite well aware that we cannot do without the lawyers in a great many cases; we have found that out by experience, but this is one of the cases where we can get along without their help. I was chairman of a court which held sessions all over the province of Manitoba, and in every place where lawyers appeared we were held up. If we undertook to value land and inquire as to the assessment we generally could get somewhere, but if lawyers appeared in the case it took us hours to get anywhere. 1 hope the legal members of the House will pardon my references.


Alan Webster Neill: In the way this debate has
swung around-I might say rambled around -on the several phases of this bill we have a good illustration of the troubles we get into in departing from the well established rules of the House, sanctioned by years of experience. It has been well known that in a committee we can only debate one section of a bill at a time. Had we not departed from that custom to-day and the last time this bill was being discussed we would have made more progress. As the debate has gone on, one man has spoken of the first section, and following him someone else speaks about the last section. If we had only started at one end of the bill we would have made some progress, and I hope that rule will be adhered to in the future.
I would like to support a portion of the remarks of the hon. member for North Simcoe (Mr. Boys). He brought forward a case which has been brought up again and again during the last two or three days, the case of men who have been what is popularly known as salvaged-that is the technical term -or who have been thrown off or have abandoned their farms. They are off the land. A number of hon. members have made representations on behalf of those men, urging that they be given at least an opportunity to go back on the land again at the reduced value, if such be granted by the board. The minister said twice to-day that he was prepared to make an arrangement of that character; where the land had not been disposed of to an empire settler or in any other way, he was prepared to give the soldier a chance to go back. I do not believe many would return, for many reasons. Most of them are sick of it, but I think it would be the proper thing to give them a chance. I was going to rise when I heard him make that remark early this afternoon and again this evening; I wanted to ask that that be put

Soldier Settlement Act
into the bill, because we all know that utterances made on the floor of this House are not bound up in the bill and form no portion of it. Withii^ the last few minutes, however, the minister stated, if I have not misunderstood him-and if I have I hope he will correct me-that he would not give any instructions to include the man whj has had his agreement cancelled. I think it was agreed by the House that these men should get some consideration, and I think the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Hannesson) was also going to raise that point. I would like ro ask the minister to make that promise agam, and to allow it to be put into the bill in order that these men may have an opportunity of going back again.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: The minister made a statement a moment ago that he would not look after anyone who had left the land. I want to remind him that the last time this matter came up he gave an undertaking that the desired provision in that respect would be embodied in the bill. Now I want to ask him this question: Is he or is he not willing to extend the scope of the bill to cover the revaluation of all salvaged lands undisposed of by the board, so that any former settler may make application and be entitled to the benefit if he can establish to the satisfaction of the board that he has proper qualifications and is financially able to carry on without further assistance? I gave the minister a copy of the memorandum I have here, so that this question will not surprise him. I only ask that the privilege be extended for a matter of two months in respect of a man v'hose land is still in the hands of the board, and for four months in the matter of the selection of any other lands the board still hold.


Charles A. Stewart: I do not
follow my hon. friend. He suggests that the soldier settler be allowed a period of two months.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: That he be given a preference for two months.


Charles A. Stewart: We certainly made a promise that we would give consideration to those cases where salvaging was going through, or in cases where we had not allocated the land.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: Not disposed of it.


Charles A. Stewart: Or disposed of it by allotment or in some other way. I want to make it perfectly clear we are not considering the case of the man whose lands
have been salvaged and are gone, but in cases where salvaging has just gone through, the hope was entertained that we might be able to get those men back. There are a thousand and one difficulties in the way of dealing with a man who is off his land and gone. He still owes the government in many eases a considerable amount of money, his stock and implements have been sold. This illustrates the difficulties that arise. But in the case of the man who can re-establish himself and has not been allocated his land we are prepared not only to receive his application but to notify him that if he wants to come back we will give him reasonable time to re-establish himself.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: Will the time be
extended?


Charles A. Stewart: This man simply comes back and gets into the same position as the man who has not left his land at all.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: I understand the minister is prepared in the case of the empire settlement scheme to give settlers there the land on the revaluation basis. I am not asking anything in respect of land that was abandoned, but in respect of any soldier settler lands we give the returned man who is qualified and does not need further financial assistance the opportunity to buy at the revaluation figure.


Charles A. Stewart: That is
right.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: In making a resale to a soldier settler is the minister prepared to give credit for the amount of principal paid by the settler in the past on the revaluation figure? That point is also mentioned in the memorandum I give him.


Charles A. Stewart: So far as his payments were concerned he would have to go back just as he stood.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: He would receive no credit for past principal payments?


Charles A. Stewart: He would be in exactly the same position as if he had not left the land; he would be in no better or no worse position.


Hannes Marino Hannesson: Suppose he goes on another piece of land?


Charles A. Stewart: That would raise complications. It is a most difficult thing to settle. The man will be beginning
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all over again. I am not prepared to give my hon. friend a direct answer; I want time to consider that.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I understand the minister's
answer to the last question is that in that case the soldier and his agreement will be reinstated, and he will get the benefit of the reduction on revaluation as though he had not been put off the land at all and his original agreement had not been determined.


Charles A. Stewart: I cannot
conceive of any other condition.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: That is the position I understand the minister to take. I understand he is also prepared to amend the bill so as to embody this provision in the measure and not leave it to be provided for by regulations.


Charles A. Stewart: I am afraid we cannot do that without making many amendments in the old act. What is proposed is a very simple process. We will treat cases of the kind as though salvage had not taken place.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: Surely the minister could put
something in the bill providing that in cases where an agreement has been determined, or is in process of determination through the *board, on the fulfilment of certain conditions the agreement that has been or is being determined on that ground may be reinstated, and the man may come under the provisions of the bill in the same way as though he had not [DOT]forfeited his rights. The trouble is just this: I can see that the important provisions of the bill are apparently going to be in the regulations and that is a very pernicious practice. [DOT]We do not want the provisison of the bill to be in the regulations, and leave these regulations at the mercy and under the control of *an order in council. The House ought to *pass on all the important substantive provisions of the bill.
There is one further observation I should like to make in this connection. I cannot see how the country can suffer by allowing a soldier settler who has forfeited his agreement and been put off his land coming forward as a new man, making an application, and getting a preference for the purchase of other lands that are still in the hands of the government. All those lands will have to be put up for sale and they can only be sold to [DOT]proper and competent purchasers at a fair value at the time the sale is made. Now, if the soldier who had forfeited his agreement because of the excessive price that he paid *for his land is now in a position to become a *purchaser of other lands at the price at which 
the government would sell them to a stranger, why should he not have the right to do so?


Charles A. Stewart: There is no particular objection, but should the payments he had made on the former land be carried forward?


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I did not quite catch the minister's question, but my contention is this: I cannot see what objection there is to allowing a returned soldier who has not had his agreement determined, from purchasing land on the same conditions as an ordinary settler.
There is one other matter I should like to mention, and that involves going back for a minute to the question of the personnel of the arbitration board. If the minister is determined to have his board of three, may I again urge in support of the position taken by the hon. member (Mr. Boys) the suggestion which the minister said he was prepared to adopt, namely, that the soldier himself have the right to make the appointment of his representative. It has been stated that the better way would be to allow the soldiers in a certain district, either through their constituted organizations or any new organization, to appoint a representative in their behalf. Now the difficulty is that where a soldier has confidence in the soldier organization of his district he will in any event probably accept the appointee of that organization, but it is not at all uncommon for an individual soldier not to be in particular favour or in good standing with the soldier organization of his district. If he is in sympathy with and has confidence in the soldier organization of his district, he will accept their nominee anyway; even if you leave to him the power of appointing his own nominee he will probably appoint the nominee chosen by them, whereas if you get the occasional man, as you are bound to do, who has not the sympathy or the support of the soldiers' organization, he may desire to appoint his own nominee. I would suggest, therefore, that the soldier would in all cases be in a better position if he were to appoint his own nominee on tile board. It is not an unusual proceeding. In every arbitration where there is a dispute between two parties each party appoints his own arbitrator, and the third arbitrator is selected by the two arbitrators. There is no reason why, in a dispute between an individual soldier and the Soldier Settlement Board, the same thing should not be done.


Charles A. Stewart: I do not
propose to change the arbitration board in any particular, except to accept the suggestion

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made by my hon. friend (Mr. Boys), namely, that the soldier shall appoint his own arbitrator. The other two shall remain as they are, the judge and the representative of the Soldier Settlement Board.


William Alves Boys: I desire to express my appreciation of the consideration given by the minister to my suggestion, but I observe that he seems to rather reluctantly accept the suggestion regarding the right of the soldier to name his own arbitrator. I should not think the minister would accept it if he did not think it was practicable. I believe it is practicable, and I suggest to him that in providing for that he should insert a clause making it necessary that the arbitrator to act for the soldier shall be a landowner resident in the judicial district in which the land is situate. That would avoid any chance of the soldier appointing a man residing many miles away. Where one such soldier has been acting, assuming he is a capable man, the chances are that other soldiers coming before the same judge and the same arbitrator appointed by the board will accept that nominee as his nominee as well, and in that way I do not think there would be very much embarrassment in connection with it.


Charles A. Stewart: Does the
hon. member not think it would complicate the matter if we inserted these provisions? It would be much simpler to let the soldier nominate his own representative; then one man may be chosen for two or three dozen. But if you start in by saying that he must be a farmer-


William Alves Boys: I said a resident.


Charles A. Stewart: I prefer to
leave it open; let him have a free choice and not tie him up in any way.


William Alves Boys: I am quite satisfied Remarks have been made of a critical nature. -I understood we were making these suggestions at the request of the minister, and I offer no apology for any time I have taken up. This is a matter involving millions of dollars, and even if the discussion has taken all the afternoon and part of this evening, the time has been well spent. The minister must feel that some improvement has been made on the previous legislation.


Charles A. Stewart: If the committee agree I should like to run over the bill, because when I bring it back I desire to have it in such form that it wiil meet die suggestions, as far as practicable, that would appear to be acceptable; then, we would not have to
spend a great deal of time upon it. I take it there is no objection to clause I of 68. I propose to amend sub-section (a) by striking out all the words after "revaluation" down to the word "and" in the third line, so that it will read:
Application for revaluation shall be submitted to the district superintendent of the Soldier Settlement Board for the district within which the said land is situate.
That strikes out the provision that he shall be on the land, and it takes in all the soldiers whose contracts are in existence.


George Reginald Geary: Read clause 68, section (1). just before that. There is a limitation still in the act.


Charles A. Stewart: In answer
to what the hon. member for East Edmonton has said, I am informed by the chairman of the board that they have authority now to rescind cancellation proceedings and reinstate the former owner of the land, provided, of course, that they have not disposed of the land; and as a matter of fact they are doing it. So that provision is made for that case. Without amending the act the board has that authority.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: I know that, but they could
not exercise that authority unless you strike out these words, because these words shall surely conclude them.


Charles A. Stewart: If they
reinstated them now they would not have authority to reduce the value of the property.


Mr. KENNEDY (Winnipeg):: So far as
the arbitration board is concerned, the matter has been amply discussed and the minister tells us what he intends to do. But I am still concerned with the question of the man who is on the land. There is the further point of the settler who definitely left the land. That is what we are considering here. I want to cite a case where the soldier, having come to the conclusion that the land was too highly valued, left it and definitely abandoned it. The minister has stated that he would be prepared to consider allowing a man to go back on the land if his agreement had not been cancelled. There is some indefiniteness as to what that means, because I do not think the board takes any formal cancellation proceedings. If the man walks off, they have the authority to salvage the farm and realize on it? Assuming a man has to all intents and purposes left the farm; you now decide to revalue that farm. I want that man to have the right to go back to the board and say. "On your revaluation I want to go back on that land". I think that point is under con-
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sideration. I gathered1, when this matter was being discussed the other day, and recently to-night, that in the view of the minister, if such a man would satisfy the board he was a good risk and was not going to ask for any further commitment from the board by way of advance of moneys, the matter of taking him back on the land would be considered.


Charles A. Stewart: If the land had not been disposed of.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: Yes. I think the House is generally agreed that he should be permitted to go back on the land. Then I think we must amend the bill to make it read in this way. If the minister were dealing with it, I have no doubt he would let the man go back; but in the administration of this measure, whether it be by a board of arbitration or by a judge, you will find that when a man comes to that board asserting a right, they will go to the legislation and say: We have no discretion. Anyone who has had experience with pensions knows that the Board of Pension Commissioners, however philanthropic may be their intention, go to the act and say: We have no discretion. The same thing will ultimately apply to this measure of relief. The arbitration board or the judge will turn to this amendment and will say: Those are our powers. I suggest to the minister that in order to carry out this intention he should so amend the bill as to say in. effect that not only those who are residing on the land, as section 68 (1) says, but soldier settlers who, having left their farms, now desire to go back to farms which have not been allotted on the revaluation scheme, shall be entitled to apply for revaluation.


Mr. MILLAR:: In that connection I should like to ask the minister if such a returned soldier will have the benefit of and be given credit for his former payments on that land, that is in case a soldier is allowed to go back on land that he previously left, the contract perhaps having been cancelled. In some cases he may have paid a sum of money almost as much as the land is revalued at. Is the minister prepared to say whether in such a case the soldier would be given credit for the amount of money he had previously paid, or must he start at the bottom again and pay for the land practically twice over?


Charles A. Stewart: I thought I made it clear to the committee twice this evening that the soldier would be re-established in the same position he was in when he left the land, and that whatever principal

payments had been credited to him would still be to his credit. He might have paid a great deal of interest, but that does not apply on principal payments on the land. He would be in the same position as the man who had stayed on the land and made his payments, when we can replace him on his own land. A suggestion has been made from the opposition that not only should we dn that, but we should allow men to go back and take other land. In that case he could not be given credit for any payments.


Mr. LADNER:: Does the minister say that interest payments on the higher valuation will be charged against the soldier's account?


Charles A. Stewart: You would get into a hopeless tangle if you started to take interest payments into consideration. Whatever principal payments a man has made against his property would naturally apply, but his interest payments are simply interest payments he has made on the land at the valuation whether high or low.


Alan Webster Neill: Will the minister answer the question raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Kennedy) about amending the bill?


Charles A. Stewart: In answer to the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre, I would say that this is not the regular routine mortgage foreclosure proceeding. The board have authority under the act to cancel the agreement with the settler and he is simply served with a notice. What they do is simply to rescind that cancellation when the land is available and not to wait for him to make application, but at once to offer it to him if he wants to come back, provided- and there will always have to be a proviso

that he is morally and otherwise a fit man to come back. There are a great many cases in which it would be a mistake to try to make a man come back; to make it indiscriminate that he should be allowed to come back without let or hindrance is out of the question. But in a case where he wants to come back and he can re-establish himself on the land, that course would be adopted. We have that authority in the act at the moment.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: It does not seem to be so to me.


Charles A. Stewart: Well, they are doing it, although they may be doing it contrary to the act. Of course they cannot reduce the value. The amendments will take care of that situation.

Soldier Settlement Act


Mr. WARD:: In the event of the suggestion that came principally from the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre and the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Hannesson) being adopted, what would happen in the case of a salvaged soldier whose chattels were all gone? It would be impossible for such a man to re-establish himself in order to come under this legislation. I am not sure that that point has been made clear. I have remarked that members making these suggestions, I think without exception, are members who are not soldiers or not farmers.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: The hon.
gentleman is making a mistake.


William John Ward: If hon. members understood the matter as we understand it who have gone through t'he school of experience, they would know that not one per cent of those who have already been salvaged will even make application. I am certain that is the case in my riding. I think we are spending a great deal of time over something that will never happen. We are endeavouring to develop an impossible case. I should like to see, if this suggestion is adopted, that that, soldier is put back in the same position he occupied before he was salvaged; otherwise, he is still tremendously discriminated against. I wonder if the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre has thought out that phase of the question.


Thomas Hay: If the suggestion made by the hon. member for North Simcoe (Mr. Boys) is followed it will mean great expense to the country. The committee cannot meet to consider every individual application for a revaluation. Supposing the committee announce that they will sit at a certain place to hear applications for revaluation. If such individual sdldier has the right to name his own representative on the committee and if you have fifty cases coming before the committee, you will have fifty soldiers' representatives present, and according to the bill we shall have to appropriate money to pay those representatives. That is my understanding of the bill, and therefore I say that the suggestion of the hon. member for North Simcoe is in my opinion impracticable and would prove costly to the country. If we had committees in one or two hundred different districts of the Dominion sitting at the same time and had an army of a thousand individuals representing the soldier settlers, that would mean a large expense to the country. It seems to me that the scheme is unworkable. I would suggest that the veterans' organizations in the different districts nominate the man who is to represent the soldiers. That, I think, would be more satisfactory to the returned men; it would be more workable, and it would be less expensive.


Charles A. Stewart: I want to amend the bill now so that at least we may get something fairly satisfactory, because I can assure the committee that I shall not attempt to change it further. If it is objected to on the next introduction I will withdraw it. And that is no idle threat, because it is an absolute impossibility to secure a measure that will meet the views of the committee as a whole if there is to be no give and take. If on the other hand the government takes full responsibility for the bill I will put it through, but I will not spend an inordinate length of time over it. We have been discussing it now almost three days, and while I do not suggest for a moment that the time has been wasted, I do say that the committee should allow it to go through. Having tried as far as I possibly can to meet the general wish of the committee, I trust that the bill will now be allowed to go through. As regards (a) we shall now include all contracts that are in good standing as well as those that are being rescinded where the land has not been allocated. We are already able, however, to deal with such cases.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: The minister might add a
provision in respect of agreements which are reinstated by the board under the existing act and in respect of which the land has not been allocated. I understand that he is going to amend the bill in relation to agreements that are in process of rescission.


Charles A. Stewart: That is to
say, where the land has not been allocated but is still in the hands of the board. As I have pointed out, we have authority already to deal with such cases.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: That is all I am asking.


Charles A. Stewart: There will be no necessity for adding an amendment to that effect because the board is already empowered in that respect, although it has not the authority to revalue. That authority is being given by this legislation. The board at present can put the soldier back on the land while it is in their hands.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: That is all I am suggesting, to bring within the purview of the bill the agreements that are reinstated by the board under its existing powers.
Soldier Settlement Act


William Alves Boys: I think it will be necessary
to amend line 13 to conform with line 20 in paragraph (a).


Charles A. Stewart: As amended, paragraph (a) will read:
Application for revaluation shall foe submitted to the district superintendent of the Soldier Settlement Board for the district within which the said land is situate.


William Alves Boys: With the words struck out by that amendment the paragraph provides that the application for revaluation may be considered only when made by a settler residing on and himself farming the land. If a man is not residing on the land I should think that he has abandoned it. So that if you omit these words in paragraph (a) and do not strike out in line 13 the words "who has not abandoned his land" the two paragraphs will conflict.


Charles A. Stewart: I am informed that line 13 refers to the case in which there is a quit claim.


William Alves Boys: If that is the meaning of the paragraph I think the language is unfortunate. I do not want to be critical but I do not think you can say that a man has not abandoned his land merely because he has not given you a quit claim deed. When he leaves the land he abandons it whether he gives such a deed or not. I do not want the minister to make the amendment now. I simply bring the matter to his attention because I think it would be wise to make that change.


Charles A. Stewart: Is my hon. friend referring to a man who is temporarily off the land?


William Alves Boys: Subsection (1) reads:
Notwithstanding anything in this act, the board is hereby empowered upon the application of a settler who has agreed to purchase any land from the board, who has not abandoned his land-
And so forth. The last clause in that paragraph, as I have quoted it, means that the man must be still on the land.


Charles A. Stewart: He has not abandoned the land if his contract is not cancelled. If he has abandoned the land then he is outside the provisions of the act.


William Alves Boys: You should provide for all
cases where the contract has not been cancelled.


Charles A. Stewart: We have
covered that.


Leon Johnson Ladner: There is a distinction
between abandonment and temporary absence.


William Alves Boys: I do not want to worry the
minister; indeed, I want to compliment him on the extraordinary patience he has shown in this matter, and I am convinced that he is most sincere in his desire to do what is best. I will therefore say no more but simply bring the point to his attention.


Charles A. Stewart: I do not
follow the argument of my hon. friend, and I want to understand it, because I do not wish to bring the bill back again unless I have it as nearly as possible in final shape.


William Alves Boys: I understand the minister does not expect to do it at this moment. I propose that the committee rise and report progress.


Charles A. Stewart: No. The
committee will not rise until I get a definite idea of where we are going to land with this bill, because, as I say, when I bring it back I do not propose to be bothered with any further amendments. If it is not then satisfactory, the government will have to take the responsibility of passing the measure as submitted1.


William Alves Boys: All I am seeking to do now is to pass on to the minister what appears to me to be a conflict in the wording of these two sections. When he gives consideration to what I have said, if he thinks there is nothing in it of course he will not accede to it; on the other hand, if he thinks there is something in it, perhaps he will accept it.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: Will the minister not delete the words "who has not abandoned his land" from sub-section 1 of section 68?


Charles A. Stewart: I am informed that this section is for the purpose of taking care of cases where the soldier has sold his land to a civilian.


William Alves Boys: I would say at once to the
minister, there is no room for doubt in that case at all.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: In such a case surely the
soldier's agreement must first have been determined.


Charles A. Stewart: I am informed that the section is to cover the case of a settler who has sold his land

abandoning it *-under a three party agreement. Clearly, we do not intend to deal with any but soldiers.


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: The phrase "abandoning his
land" will not cover that case at all.

Supply-Labour


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
*friend would not suggest that either the settler -or the man who succeeded him should be given consideration?


Ambrose Upton Gledstanes Bury: No, I only suggest that the
phrase does not cover the case.


Charles A. Stewart: Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise and report progress. May I say that I am very thankful for the kind expressions of opinion respecting this bill, but I want to add, Sir, that when this measure comes down again the government will accept full responsibility for it, and I trust the committee will be ready to pass it without very much further discussion. I am going to amend the bill to meet what I think is the consensus of opinion of hon. members, but I certainly do not expect to spend another two or three hours over it.


Mr. STIRLING:: May I ask whether the
minister has given consideration to the point I raised with regard to the particular situation -of those soldier settlers who have gone on orchard lands? I have been waiting for him to reach clause (c) so that I might again raise the point.


William Duff: The minister has moved that the committee rise, therefore any discussion is out of order.


Grote Stirling: May I not speak to the
motion, Mr. Chairman?


Charles A. Stewart: I propose to look carefully into the suggestion.


Grote Stirling: The minister proposes to take it into consideration in that regard?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes.
Progress reported.



OLD AGE PENSIONS

William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, the House
spent nearly a day on the second reading of the Old Age Pensions resolution. Possibly lion, members would be agreeable to allow the second reading to pass in order to get the resolution into committee. We would like to make a little progress to-day.


Mr. ROGERS:: I think my right hon. friend should allow that to stand. It is a very important matter.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It is only the
second reading of the resolution. It has still to be discussed in committee, and the bill founded on it has still to be introduced.


Robert Rogers: I quite appreciate that,
still we must have some notice in view of the importance of this measure.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: All right.



DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR

[Stage Direction]
The House in committee of Supply, Mr. Duff in the chair.
Department of Labour-Annuities Act, $5,000.
William Alves Boys: Mr. Chairman, it is certainly
a relief to find a reduction. Perhaps the minister will tell us how he is able to properly carry out the necessary work in connection with this item and at the same time cut off S15.000.


Hon. J. C. ELLIOTT (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Chairman, this expenditure covers disbursements for travelling and advertising. The reduction is madte because it is not expected that there will be any extensive expenditure for advertising this year.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The Annuities Act has
never been given its proper place in the life of the country, and I am surprised that my hon. friend, coming in with all the zeal of a a new minister, is desirous of cutting down the operations of his department with respect to this act. I cannot very well understand why the act should be under the Labour department. The Annuities Act of Canada is a fine thing, and should be promoted by the government, but I think it should be under a department which has offices in every part of the Dominion; in my humble judgment it should be under the Post Office Department, which I think is the plan adopted in the Old Country. We should have some statement of policy by the government as to whether they intend to go on with this scheme and push it. People who buy annuities under such a scheme as this are relieved of all anxiety for their old age; they get back everything without any expense, and it seems to me that instead of embarking upon a very expensive scheme of old age pensions this act should be helped in order to make it really worth while. I do not say one should be assisted to the exclusion of the other, but I do say that this act has never been given its fair share of public esteem. Will the government say whether or not the Annuities Act is to be shelved, to make room for the much more pretentious scheme of old age pensions?


John Campbell Elliott: There is no intention on
the part of the government to shelve the Annuities Act. I quite agree that it is an excellent act and an important one, but we are
Supply-Labour

able to reduce the expenditure as it has been reduced in the estimates-which I may tell the committee very frankly were very largely prepared before I assumed control of the department-because it was thought that without any impairment of the usefulness of the act we could dispense with the sum which has hitherto been expended in advertising.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I notice that the Post Office Department is now embarking on a large scheme of advertising; that is a department with a monopoly in its own field, and in my judgment it does not require any advertising at all. The Annuities Act should be made popular, and the only way in which that can be done is by publicity, bringing the advantages of the act before the public. I would suggest that the minister give some consideration to this matter before his next estimates come up-if they ever do come up-in order to see whether this act cannot be brought before the public as it should be.
I	would like to ask the minister how many new annuities were purchased during the past year. Perhaps we might have the list for the past five years in order to show in some degree whether the act is popular with the public or whether they are leaving it alone, as I am afraid they are.


John Campbell Elliott: The total annuities purchased for the year 1925-1926 numbered 669, with a total value of $1,945,571, as compared with 486 annuities in 1924-1925 with a value of $1,606,665.


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: Would the minister please tell the committee how the appropriation was expended last year?


John Campbell Elliott: It was expended as follows: travelling expenses, $315.05; advertising, $60; printing and stationery, $916.44; telegrams, 80 cents; commissions paid to postmasters, $1,534.85; sundries, $56.14, and outstanding advances, $1.55, a total of $2,884.83 to March 17, 1926.


William Alves Boys: I understand that it is the
policy of the department, so far as possible, to sell these annuities at cost. I remember well a discussion which took place some two years ago; I cannot recall the
II	p.m. figures, but it seems to me that a
very decided profit was shown in the sale of annuities, and the then minister intimated in the House that he had under consideration a possible revision of the basis upon which the cost of the annuities was worked out. I do not know whether the minister has had time to consider that question, or whether he is familiar with it. Can

he inform the committee as to the financial state of the balance sheet for the past year in this connection? If the department is making a considerable profit, would it not be advisable to reduce the cost of the annuities? I remember inquiring into that cost, and I found it fairly high. The minister informed the House that possibly the time had arrived when some reduction in the cost of those annuities could be worked out. I think the cost is figured on a certain rate of interest, and the idea was that that rate might be varied, which would result in a lower cost to the purchasers. I am sure we all agree that this is a most excellent way for people to invest their money and to be assured of an income for the rest of their days. It should be made as convenient as possible, and I think the policy of the government should be to operate that branch as nearly at cost as possible.


John Campbell Elliott: I may say that that is
the policy.


William Alves Boys: Can the minister give us some idea of the condition of the balance sheet for the last year?


John Campbell Elliott: I shall be glad to furnish
my hon. friend with that information; I do not have it at hand.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I asked the minister for details of the expenditure of last year, when $20,000 was voted. The items which he gave the committee amount to only about $3,000, and I wanted the particulars of the whole expenditure making up the $20,000 voted last year.


John Campbell Elliott: I have already given the
items of expenditure.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: Out of the $20.000?


John Campbell Elliott: Yes. The advertising was
not proceeded with; it was not considered necessary last year, and that amount was not expended.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: Then what was the total expenditure last year?


John Campbell Elliott: What I have already
stated, $2,884.83.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: And this year
it is $5,000?


John Campbell Elliott: We are asking for $5,000.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: Then you are
asking for more this year, and there is not a

Supply-Labour
241:
decrease of 815,000. What did the minister mean when he said that there was a decrease of 815,000?
'Mr. ELLIOTT:	If my hon. friend will
notice, the estimate for last year was 820,000, which amount was voted. We are asking for a vote of $5,000 this year, a decrease of $15,000.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: But there is an
increase in the expenditure, perhaps?


Peter McGibbon: If I remember this act
correctly it was introduced by the late Sir Richard Cartwright. I would like to ask the minister if there has been any revision of the rates since that time. Conditions have changed considerably during the last twenty years.


John Campbell Elliott: There has been no revision, so far as I am aware.	,


Peter McGibbon: Is any revision contemplated by the government?


John Campbell Elliott: Not that I know of.


William Alves Boys: That is exactly what I wanted to follow up. I remember the then minister two or three years ago promising that consideration would be given to this matter, and I should like to find out if the department has done that. If not why not?


John Campbell Elliott: My information is that
the matter has been discussed. It was suggested that there should be some revision, but it is found that the rates are as nearly correct as possible. Consequently there has been no revision so far as I am aware.


William Alves Boys: If that decision has been
reached it must be because little or no profit was being made.


John Campbell Elliott: The rates were as near
cost as possible.


William Alves Boys: If the business has been increasing as the minister points out there must have been some increase of profit. This feature is very important in the interest of the people who want to purchase annuities. I do not care whether the discussion comes under this item or some other item, but we ought to know just what money has been made by the department in this connection in the last year, in fact for three or four years, because the surplus must be piling up.


John Campbell Elliott: I shall be very glad to get that information for my hon. friend.


Mr. SUTHERLAND (South Oxford):: Would the minister inform the committee when the administration of the Annuities Act came under the Department of Labour, and what department it was under prior to that, time?


John Campbell Elliott: I understand that formerly it was under the Department of Trade and Commerce and later the Post Office Department. It was brought under the Department of Labour in 1922.


Peter McGibbon: May I ask the minister whether in the matter of sales the annuities have not been a failure, and if that is not largely due to the fact that people can get more advantageous terms from insurance companies?


John Campbell Elliott: There has been a substantial increase in the number of contracts. I could give my hon. friend a list of the contracts for the various dates starting with 1909. Since that year the contracts have been increasing steadily.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Would the minister please give them?


John Campbell Elliott: 
George Brecken Nicholson: Going back to 1924-25, and following up what the minister has said, it would seem that there is a deliberate purpose on the part of the government to let this Annuities Act die. In the report of the Auditor General tabled this session we find that in 1924-25 the sum of $19,922.94 was spent in advertising the act. Last year nothing was spent, and according to the estimate now before us it is not intended that anything shall be spent during the current year. In other words no further effort is to be made to push the scheme. I support what has been said by my hon. friend (Mr. Boys), that the annuities scheme should be well advertised in the post offices in every town, village and hamlet. I am confident that if this was done there would be a very large increase in the number of those who are taking advantage of this splendid opportunity to provide for their own future.


William Alves Boys: I have no desire to hold this item up, but I ask the minister under what item we may get the information we have sought and when further discussion can take place with respect to this feature so important from the two angles to which I have referred. If we can be sure of getting the desired information, and if the minister will agree to discuss the matter in connection with some other item, I have no desire to hold the vote up at the moment. But the minister must give us some idea as to how this will be done.


John Campbell Elliott: I give my hon. friend the assurance that in connection with the Conciliation and Labour Act vote the information asked for will be brought down.


William Alves Boys: And this discussion will be
continued?


John Campbell Elliott: Yes.


Mr. McGLBBON:: Some years ago I got
some information in regard to these annuities and found out that a man could obtain a great income if he invested his money in government bonds. Furthermore, he would have something to bequeath on his death. There must be something wrong in connection with the government annuities scheme, because the annuities are not selling as they should. I should like the minister to look into that.


John Campbell Elliott: The great increase in the number of annuities being sold indicates that my hon. friend's statement is scarcely correct.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The increase is so small compared with the population served by

the act that I do not think the minister and the department can claim very much credit. We have had very little explanation from the minister, but I quite appreciate the fact that as yet probably he does not know very much about the matter. The department is more or less dormant

I think that is a fail conclusion to arrive at-and it is dormant by reason of a lack of publicity. I do not think you can sell insurance or anything else unless you have publicity and go after the business. It is quite apparent that no energy has been displayed by the government in going after the business, and there has been insufficient publicity. I have never sold insurance but often I think I could. There are two requisites necessary to success-publicity, and an aggressive selling campaign. Apparently in this case we have not had either of these requisites. I consider this a fine-scheme and I am rather anxious about it. Will the minister consider an active selling policy and an active publicity campaign? L would be willing to vote him the $20,000 if he would use it for the right purpose. L would like to have some assurance from, the minister that he will look into the question of the cost of the annuity and the cost to the country as well. If the interest is too high he will have his actuary-and I presume there is an actuary in charge of this scheme-go over the figures, and if it is found, as I think it will be, that the scheme-could be placed before the public in a proper way, he should so place it for -the benefit of the Canadian people.


John Campbell Elliott: The increase over last
year has been from 486 contracts, amounting to $1,606,665.03, to 669 contracts, amounting to $1,945,571.12. I do not think he will suggest that that is not a good increase. But I shall be very glad indeed to consider the suggestion my hon. friend has made, probably in the supplementary estimates.


William Alves Boys: What is the total cash on
hand to meet the various contracts?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: We will use
up the value of the item in the time we are discussing it.


Mr. CANTLEY:: 
[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Progress reported.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at 11.20 p.m.
Wednesday, April 14, 1926