1927-02-24

ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL AND WESTMINSTER ABBEY CHOIR CONCERT IN PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to inform the House that I have received a special invitation for the House to hear to-morrow in the parliament buildings the famous choir of St. George's Chapel and Westminster Abbey.
The choir could sing either in the morning or at 2.30 in the afternoon. I will leave it

for the House to decide which hour would suit them best. Shall it be in the morning or at two-thirty?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: In the morning.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: At two-thirty.


Hewitt Bostock: I think "two-thirty" has
it, and the choir will be notified accordingly. They will sing either in the Hall of Fame or in the railway committee room, according to the number present.



REPORT ON AGRICULTURE

Mr. W. F. KAY (Brome-Missisquoi) moved:: That the report of the Minister of Agriculture for the year 1926-1927 be referred to the select standing committee on agriculture and colonization.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. J. S WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 108 to amend the Civil Service Act, 1918.
He said: This bill provides for the setting up of machinery for consultation between civil service employees and the officials of the government. It is designed to provide means for the hearing of grievances and for the promoting of efficiency. I believe it is quite in harmony with the idea recently put forward by the Prime Minister when he said:
I think that in the relations of the civil service and the government a council on which there would be representatives of the civil service to speak directly to members of the government, or to take up with heads of departments matters of interest to all government departments could be of the utmost service to all concerned.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. M. N. CAMPBELL (Mackenzie) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 109 to amend the Civil Service Act, 1918. (Director of Civil Service).
He said: I may say that the object of this bill is to carry out in part certain recommendations and suggestions made to parliament in 1922 by the special committee appointed to inquire into the Civil Service of Canada.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
On the order: First reading of Senate bills:
Hewitt Bostock: The four bills mentioned on the order paper are irregular in some particulars and I call attention to the fact that

Questions
these irregularities ought to be cured before the bills are given the first reading. I shall therefore pass to Questions.



QUESTIONS

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

Mr. WOODSWORTH:: 1.	What amount is being paid for the removal of the wreck of the Canadian Government Merchant Marine steamer Canadian Recruit?
2.	What was the sound market value of the Canadian Recruit on the date of her stranding?
3.	What was her insured value on same date?
4.	How much was the hull insured for on same date?
5.	Was she covered against protection and indemnity risks, and if so, why is the cost of the removal of the wreck claimed from the public treasury ?
0.	Have tenders to remove the wreck been properly advertised for?
7.	If so, what are the names of the tenderers and the amounts of their bids?
8.	Has any salvage been realized on the old material, and if so, what amount?


Hon. Mr. RINFRET:: 1.	The removal of the wreck when fully completed is estimated to cosit about $95,000.
2.	Estimated market value, $189,000.
3.	$462,150.
4.	$346,613.
5.	(a) Yes. (b) Underwriters declined to accept responsibility for removal of the wreck, and the work had to be undertaken without further delay to meet the demands of the shipping interests, the wreck commissioner having in a report recommended the removal:
6.	Yes.
7.	Tenders were received from the following:
Canadian Salvage Association Limited, $178,000; Canadian Import Company, Limited, $181,000.
8.	No.


ACQUISITION OP QUEBEC-SAGUENAY LINE
Mr. PARENT:: *
1.	What is the amount paid for the acquisition of the railway commonly known as Quebec Saguenay line?
2.	How much has been spent for the completion of said railway?
3.	On what date was said line taken over?
4.	What is the total revenue from the operation of said railway for the last fiscal year?
5.	What is the cost of maintenance and of operation of said line?


Hon. Mr. DUNNING:: 1.	$3,489,313.53. See page XIX of annual report of Department of Railways and Canals for the fiscal year to March 31, 1919.
32649-381	' f ,
2.	Cost to complete railway and additions and betterments to December 31, 1926, $4,332,996.60. Total cost, $7,822,310.13.
3.	March 4, 1919.
4.	$105,775.93.
5.	$278,592.88.


PELEE ISLAND MAIL SERVICE
Mr. GOTT:: 1.	To whom was the contract let for the mail service for Pelee Island, Ontario, for the winter season of 1926-27?
2.	What was the contract price?
3.	How was the contract let?
4.	Has the government ever considered aeroplane service for Pelee island for the winter months?
5.	Have representations ever been made to the department or government for aeroplane-service for Pelee island for the winter season?
6.	If so, by whom, and what reply was given, what assurance or response made?
7.	Does the government think that it would be m the interests of the people of Pelee island to institute aeroplane service between Pelee island and the mainland during the winter season, and will they consider seriously the institution of same commencing December 1, 1927, and continuing until March 31, 1928, as an experiment to eliminate the dangerous and almost impassable service rendered by the mail boats?
Hon, Mr. RINFRET:
1.	Guy McCormick.
2.	$1,600 per annum.
3.	By public tender.
4.	No.
5.	No information.
6.	No information.
7.	No information.


REDUCTION OF CUSTOMS DUTIES ON ALCOHOL
Mr. KAISER:: 1.	Has the government received any request or communications from the legislatures of various provinces or from any one acting on their behalf, in regard to a reduction in the excise and customs duties on alcohol or alcoholic beverages?
2.	If so, from which of the provinces and what is the nature of such request?


Hon. Mr. ROBB:: Answering on behalf of
the Department of Finance, a letter has been received by the Minister of Finance from the premier of one province marked by the sender " private and confidential."
Question No. 2 is answered by No. 1.


TARIFF BOARD REPORTS
Mr. ADSHEAD:: On what cases have the tariff board rendered their reports to the government?


James Alexander Robb: Reports have been made to the Minister of Finance on the following:
Questions

Solway flake calcium chloride for removal of duty. (By General Construction Material Company, Limited, 394 St. James street, Montreal.)
Pumps and pump parts for reduction of duty. (By Ames-Baker,. Limited, Brandon, Manitoba.)
Player piano music rolls for tariff adjustment. (By Q.R.S. Music Company, Canada, Ltd., through Mr. A. G. Slaght, K.C.)
Nail keg cooperage for tariff adjustment. (By Cooperage Company of Canada, Ltd., Hamilton, Ont.)
Epsom salts for relief by customs duty or bounty. (By H. B. Callander, Basque Chemical Production Co., Ltd., Ottawa.)
Gabardines for rebate of duty paid on gabardines for the making of shower-proof garments. (By Fels Limited, Montreal.)
Invalids' wheel chairs for removal of duty or reduction. (By Mrs. Annie Chapman, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.)
Invert sugar (Nulomoline) for increase in duty. (By W. P. Downey, Limited, Montreal.)
Oil tops for decrease in duty. (By Artie Refineries, Ltd., Lethbridge, Alberta.)
Objects of art for readjustment of tariff. (By trustees of the National Gallery of Canada.)
Tin for amendment. (By J. E. A. Dubuc, M.P.)
Tops for gloves for reduction of duty. (By Price, Paterson, Limited, Vancouver, B.C.)
Foxes and canaries for breeding purposes for removal of duty. (By H. S. Tibbs, Clyde hotel, 185 King street, east, Toronto.)
This completes the list which the department has received.


RIDEAU CANAL-RETAINING WALL
Mr. GARLAND (Carleton):: 1.	Has the government started work on the retaining wall on the Rideau canal, at Ottawa?
2.	If so, when?
3.	What qualifications and recommendations are necessary for a labouring man to secure employment on this work?


Hon. Mr. DUNNING:: 1.	Yes.
2.	21st February last.
3.	(a) Qualifications:	physically fit and
competent for the class of labour hired for, as judged by the superintending engineer in charge.
(b) Recommendations: those of the representatives of 'the federal electoral district where work is carried out.


SALES TAX-REVENUE
Sir GEORGE PERLEY:: 1.	What -was the revenue from the sales tax in the fiscal year 1925-26?
2.	What is it estimated to be for the current fiscal year ?


Hon. Mr. EULER:: 1.	$74,025,093.31.
2.	This department has no estimate made of the' sales taxes for the current fiscal year, but the collections for ten months ended January 31st, 1927, were $63,713,767.21.


THE ROYAL MINT
Mr. YOUNG (Saskatoon):: 1.	Is the Royal Mint at Ottawa exclusively owned, controlled and operated by the federal government ?
2.	If not, is it owned, controlled and operated by the British government?
3.	If not, is it jointly owned, controlled, and operated by the federal government and the British government?
4.	If owned, controlled and operated, either wholly or partially by the British government, under what terms and conditions?
5.	If not exclusively owned, controlled and operated under the jurisdiction of the federal government, is it the opinion of the present government that the time is opportune for such exclusive ownership, control and operation?


James Alexander Robb: 1-4. The Ottawa Mint was established as a branch of His Majesty's Royal Mint by proclamation published in the Canada Gazette of December 21st, 1907. Its operations are conducted under the Master of the Royal Mint, subject to the provisions of the proclamation under which the governor-in-council of Canada regulates the mint's .operations in various respects including the determination of the coins to be struck for the Canadian currency.
The mint building and equipment are the property of the government of Canada. The mint's operations are financed from the Dominion treasury. Its expenses are borne by Canada and its earnings are paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund of Canada.
5. The matter has not been considered by the present government.


QUEBEC BRIDGE-VEHICLE HIGHWAY
Mr. LAVIGUEUR:: 1.	Has the government received lately from the provincial government of Quebec or others, requests for subsidies in connection with the construction of a vehicle highway over the Quebec bridge?
2.	Have estimates been prepared in connection with the building of a highway on said bridge?
3.	Has the government the intention of build-

* Importation oj Scotch Miners
ing or helping to builcl said highway, and, if so, do they propose to vote, at this session, a sum of money with that aim in view?


Hon. Mr. DUNNING:: 1, 2 & 3. Engineers representing the Canadian National Railways and the provinicial government are at present investigating the possibility of establishing highway communication by way of the Quebec bridge. When the report of the engineers is complete, it will be duly considered.


BEAUPORT-POST OFFICE SITE
Mr. LAYIGUEUR:: 1.	Was a piece of land purchased in the town of Beauport with a view of building a post office and, if so, when was it purchased and what was the purchase price?
2.	Has the Department of Public Works had plans, specifications and estimates prepared for the construction of a public building which will serve as a post office in the town of Beauport, and, if not, does the government intend to have plans, specifications and estimates prepared for said post office?


Hon. Mr. ELLIOTT:: 1.	(a) Yes.
(b)	February, 1913.
(c)	$2,500.
2.	Plans, specifications and estimates were prepared by this department and tenders were invited, but as tenders were considered too high no action was taken and cheques were returned.


QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN
Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	What are the names, salaries, and expenses of all clergy, indicating denominations, employed by the government in immigration work, (a) in Canada; (b) in the United States; (c) in Great Britain and Ireland; (d) on the continent of Europe ?
2.	Wliat amount of the grants are given by the government of Canada to all voluntary agencies engaged in immigration work, giving the name and amount paid to each?
3.	Were the officers referred to in question
(1), if any, appointed by the Civil Service Commission, or by whom?	.


GERMAN REPARATIONS
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Hon. II. H. STEVENS (Vancouver Centre): Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State (Mr. Rinfret) was not in his seat when I put this question yesterday: Is he prepared to lay on the table the report of the reparations commission?
Hon. FERNAND RINFRET (Secretary of State):: Mr. Speaker, an interim report has
been sent to my department by the commission containing schedules showing a tentative apportionment of a great number of claims, but as that apportionment may be changed by the final report I do not think it advisable to lay it on the table now.


AUTOMOBILES-REFUND OF DUTY
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. E. J. GARLAND (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to direct the attention of the government to a communication I have received recently from an automobile dealer pointing out that the automobile retailers are having difficulty in securing the refund promised to them by the government last session.
Upon the government's announcing that such refund would be made, the dealers had no alternative but to reduce immediately the retail price of the automobiles which they had on hand, and they are accordingly, and have been for the past six months, out of pocket the total amount of their refund claims.
Has this matter been drawn to the attention of the government before? If so, what do they propose to do about it?


Hon. W. D. EULER (Minister of Customs and Excise):: Mr. Speaker, I might say for
the information of the hon. gentleman that last year an item was placed in the estimates to reimburee automobile dealers on claims which arose in 1920. The refunds will be made as soon as the rate of interest is worked out, which will be at no distant date.


IMPORTATION OF SCOTH MINERS
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. A. A. HEAPS (North Winnipeg):: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Minister of Immigration if he is in a position to give to the House any information with respect to the recent importation of miners from Scotland into Nova Scotia.


Hon. ROBERT FORKE (Minister of Immigration) :: Mr. Speaker, I cannot say anything that will convey any further information to the House in regard to this subject. I might repeat what I think was said yesterday, that any British subject who is physically fit and has sufficient funds to maintain himself until he secures work is free to enter the Dominion. Consequently we have no jurisdiction in the matter. It has been the policy of the department whenever it has been notified of a surplus of labour in any industry to advise its agents on the other side so that they can convey the information to parties interested.
Telephone Rates Case


Mr. A. W. NEILL (Comox-Albemi):: Might I ask the hon. Minister of Immigration if the Scotch miners referred to paid their own fares? Is it not a fact that their fares were paid by the British Empire Steel Corporation?


Robert Forke: I have no information as
to that-. I do not see what difference it would really make.


Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon.
minister another question? Whether any application was made by the British Empire Steel Corporation for permission to bring these men in?


Robert Forke: Mr. Speaker, I am inclined
to believe that at some previous time a requisition was made by the British Empire Steel Corporation to get miners from Great Britain. I cannot definitely say how recently that requisition was made, but I can find out and let the hon. member know at another sitting of the House.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Thank you.


TELEPHONE RATES CASE
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Toronto Northwest):: I should like to ask the Minister of Justice a question based on an order or judgment of a majority of the Board of Railway Commissioners for Canada, effective March I, granting a substantial increase of rates to the Bell Telephone Company. An appeal is being taken on questions of both law and fact to the Supreme court and Governor General in Council. As the case is still sub judice will the Minister of Justice, as Attorney General of Canada, or the government under the Railway Act, grant a stay for thirty days of this order, or request the commissioners so to do before these new schedules of rates are sanctioned, especially as one of the board in a dissenting judgment holds that both the law and the facts were against the company's contention?
This would be a reasonable application of the doctrine of sub judice. Section 56 of the Railway Act defines the powers of the Governor General in Council as follows:
The governor in council may at any time, in his discretion, either upon petition of any party, person or company interested, or of his own motion, and without any petition or application. vary or rescind any order, decision, rule or regulation of the boards, whether such order or decision is made inter partes or otherwise, and whether such regulation is general or limited

in its scope and application; and any order which the governor in council may make with respect thereto shall be binding upon the board and upon all parties.
I would suggest that the minister might answer this to-morrow.


Hewitt Bostock: Order. The hon. gentleman has put his question.


Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, I may say meanwhile that we have not received any information in the matter except what has been published in the newspapers. If an appeal is taken and an application is made as suggested by my hon. friend, it will be considered and dealt with on its merits.


CUSTOMS COMMISSION-ITINERARY
[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day:
Mr. W. G. ERNST (Queens-Lunenburg):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of Customs if it is the intention of the government to have the customs commission sit again in the Maritime provinces? I put the question because at the time the commission was there last year the chairman intimated that its work could not be completed owing to the imminence of the general election, and I have since seen it stated in the press that the commission did not intend to again visit either Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.


William Daum Euler: Mr. Speaker, I might say that
the commission of inquiry is not in any way under the control of my department. I will direct my hon. friend's question to the proper quarter.


William Gordon Ernst: May I ask the hon. minister under whose control the commission is?


William Daum Euler: It is not controlled. It has authority to go wherever it pleases. For the information of the House I may say that I understand it is the intention of the commission to proceed again to the Maritime provinces, but I am not saying that with any authority. My hon. friend's inquiry should, I think, be directed to the commission itself.


THE BUDGET
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, February 23, the debate on the motion of Hon. J. A. Robb (Minister of Finance) that Mr. Speaker, do now leave the chair for the House to go into committee of ways and means, and the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Coote.﻿599

The Budget-Mr. Hocken
Mr. H. C. HOCKEN (Toronto West Centre):: Mr. Speaker, having regard to the pledges of the government and to the large support that the government gets from the free trade element in this House, I presume that we on this side who believe in reasonable protection for the industries of the country ought to feel more or less satisfied that this particular budget does not further reduce tariff duties. It will be a disappointment to my hon. friend from Rosetown (Mr. Evans), who predicted last session that -there would probably be a reduction in the duty on boots and shoes. But boots and shoes is a very tender spot in the tariff with many hon. gentlemen opposite. The rosy picture which the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) paints of present conditions in Canada are not at all in accordance with the facts. I am prepared to admit that there is some slight improvement in trade, but it is more a hopeful spirit than any actual advance in conditions of trade and industry throughout the country. I judge, from what we have read from the general managers of our banks, that a concerted effort is being made by them, which perhaps is very laudable, to cultivate a spirit of optimism in the country, and in that desire they have gone much further than the facts would warrant. I do not think any person who has a knowledge of the industrial situation to-day can claim that this country enjoys that abounding prosperity referred to by the minister. The only class that is fully employed in Canada to-day is the farming community; and of course the farmer has always a job. But if you get into general industry you find a great many factories working half time, a great many closed down, and a general state of anxiety on the part of those who have the management of these enterprises under their charge.
I am not surprised to learn that the unemployment index is better now than it was last year. 'This is due, not to a larger number in employment, but to the fact that there are fewer people to be employed. When our people are leaving the country at the rate of 100.000 a year, there are inevitably fewer unemployed left at home. And that is exactly the situation so far as general industry is concerned. There may be an industry here or there enjoying special favours, like the implement industry which is doing very well, but if you take the whole range of industrial activities throughout the country you will find that the conditions are not at all such as are described by the Minister of Finance.


Mr. McMILLAN:: What special favours
does the implement industry enjoy?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Free materials and freedom from the sales tax. If we had in this country to-day all the Canadians who have gone to the United States, unemployment would be as great here to-day as it has been in the past few years, or greater.
I fancy my hon. friend from Macleod (Mr. Coote) will not expect the members of this party to have any particular sympathy with his amendment. Speaking for myself, at any rate, I must say I have no sympathy for it. It comprises two things: first, a demand for lower duties, and secondly, a protest against the reduction in the income tax. Now, we are not going to get any lower duties this year, and I think the explanation given by the government, as indicated by my hon. friend from South Huron (Mr. McMillan) yesterday, is quite reasonable. He points out that the ministers have been so busy that they have been unable to prepare a budget providing for lower duties. That is a fair explanation; it is one that any free trader on the other side of the House may find it easy to accept. There appear, however, to be one or two over there who do not accept it. although the hon. member for South Huron, at least, does. And, as I say, it appeals to me as a reasonable explanation. The protest against the reduction in the income tax, embodied in the amendment, comes properly from a section of the country that does not pay any income tax worth speaking about. Take the province of Saskatchewan for example : the total payments of income tax there work out at an insignificant fraction over one dollar per head of the population. If you take Ontario, on the other hand, you will find the per capita income tax given at $8.66. So that hon. members from the prairies who pay no income tax-


Mr. EVANS:: Give a reason for that statement.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I am not prepared to
explain how it is they escape the tax. Certainly the people of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been more prosperous than the people of any other province in the Dominion during the .past year or two; and if -they have not been paying income tax it is not because they have not the means of doing so. It strikes me as a -somewhat selfish attitude for the members of the prairies to take in refusing to allow reductions to the central provinces in the enormous taxes which they pay to keep up the revenues of the country. I shall refer to this question later on.
Let me now refer for a moment or two to certain statements made by the hon. mem-
The Budget-Mr. Hocken

ber for South Huron yesterday. The burden of his speech was that agriculture in Canada does not receive from government the consideration that it deserves. I should like to know wherein agriculture is denied consideration by this government or by the government of any province of the Dominion. I agree with the hon. member that it is the basic industry, and at the present day the largest in Canada. But there is no industry in this country which receives so much consideration from eveiy form of government as does agriculture. In the first place there are special freight rates for the western agriculturist- the lowest freight rates in the world, rates which the railways tell us are not adequate to meet the cost of transportation. If that is the case, that low rate must be made up by the central provinces and by the taxpayers generally. Agriculture in the west enjoys, therefore, a special subsidy in the low freight rates which it gets and which the taxpayers of Canada at large must pay.


John Evans: What authority has the hon. member for the statement that the railways have declared the rates unequal to the cost?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: My hon. friend knows
very well that it is by an act of this House that the west gets the special freight rates which it enjoys to-day; and he knows very welll that those rates wmuld be higher if they were placed on a parity with the freight rates throughout Canada. There is no doubt about that. These freight rates are in effect a subsidy, a bounty to the grain growers. But it is not only in that respect that agriculture is considered. Travel throughout the country and you will find in every province experimental farms conducted for the benefit of the agricultural industry; a central farm adjoining this city and farms in every province in the Dominion. These institutions are comparable with the laboratories of great industries. An industry that wants to improve its methods, to find more efficient plans to carry on, has to engage experts at large salaries and maintain large staffs in order to improve and reduce the cost of its product.
I am not objecting to' that. That is an expense which all other industries have to meet, but which in the case of agriculture is met by the Dominion government and all -the provincial governments. Surely that is a consideration that should be taken into account. Not only experimental farms but agricultural colleges exist everywhere for the special training of agriculturists and for improving their plans.
(Mr. Hanson.]


Mr. CAMPBELL:: Might I ask if that is not an admission that all other industries in this country are largely dependent upon agriculture?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I think agriculture depends upon other industries as much as other industries depend upon agriculture, and if my hon. friend will allow me I shall have a word to say about that later.
My hon. friend enlarged upon the decreasing agricultural population particularly in the United States. I do not know how much he has read on the subject; but I have done some reading on it and the best information I can- get is this, that in the United States and in Canada too, agriculture has become big business. The 100 acre farm in the western states and, I think, in western Canada too, is pretty nearly a thing of the past. By the use of improved machinery men are now farming one, two or three thousand acres, and they bring into operation machinery by which one man will do as much work as eight, ten or perhaps a dozen men used to do some years ago.
Mr. MicMILLAN:	Might I ask the hon.
gentleman a question?


Hewitt Bostock: I have noticed there has been a general cross-examination this afternoon, and although it is done good-naturedly and the hon. gentleman who has the floor has been kind enough to give replies-[DOT]


Thomas McMillan: I was interrupted freely yesterday.


Hewitt Bostock: -I may remind hon. gentlemen on both sides that it is not fair to an hon. member speaking to be interrupted every moment. I would ask hon. members to adhere to the rule.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Agriculture is very different from what it was a few years.ago. The farmers have now a machine that reaps and threshes the grain so that all operations in between reaping and threshing are avoided. Under those conditions farms of thousands of acres can be and are being cultivated, and the reduction in the number of people employed in agriculture in the United States is directly attributable to the enlargement of farms and the improvement of machinery.
If we went back to the old days when we had a reaper with men following it to bind the sheaves and shock them up, in order to produce enough food for this country we would require on the land five times as many people as we have to-day. Agriculture is keeping pace with all other industries and

The Budget-Mr. Hocken
on the farms things are being accomplished to-day that were not dreamed of a few years ago. These things account for the lessening of the population on the farm. While the agricultural population of the United States may have decreased somewhat, the general population of that republic has increased and that country has gone through the most astonishing period of prosperity that it has ever experienced. There is a higher standard of living for all classes, of people; the country is prosperous in the highest degree, and I venture to say the farmers there are sharing in that prosperity. If there is any indebtedness it is probably attributable to the purchase of these costly machines, costing $4,000 or $5,000 a piece, but enabling the farmer to produce that much more and to reduce the unit cost of his product.
My agricultural friends deliver in this House and fill the newspapers with arguments in favour of free trade. But they do not examine the whole question; they do not take into account many factors that ought to be taken into account in arriving at the best policy for this country. As Canadians we ought to ask ourselves this question:	Am I
desirous that this country shall be a great country, have a Burge population and be prosperous? Starting from that point I contend that no country can be truly great on one industry. If my hon. friends had their way and absolute free trade were adopted as the trade policy of Canada, we would get down to one industry.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Not at all.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: There is not in any city
in Canada an industry to which my hon. friends would desire to give any protection. If they had their way and absolute free trade were put into effect, this would be solely and only an agricultural country. The greatness of a country depends not on one industry but on a diversity of industries. It depends on many different lines of industry being established and carried on profitably. There is no country of any consequence in the world that attempts to live on agriculture. Admitting that agriculture is the basic and most important industry in the Dominion of Canada, yet I think if those who are engaged in agriculture would look at the question all round, they would discover that if they were going to do their whole duty as Canadians they must give some consideration and some reasonable protection in order to allow other industries to live. There is not in Canada to-day a farmer who has children reaching up to the age of maturity and self-support who does not profit in his family by the existence of a variety
of industries. I wonder how many of my hon. friends opposite who have children who have gone out to make their own way, have children who are engaged in industry or commerce that is due to the existence of those industries in our cities. Let me take the case of a farmer in Ontario, because I know more about that, although I do not know much about farming.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear. *


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I think I know a little
more about farming in Ontario than some of my hon. friends opposite know about the industries in our cities, and I have more regard for the farmer than my hon. friends who would argue in favour of Simon-pure free trade have for those engaged in those industries.


Miss MACPHAIL:: Do farmers in Canada ask the industries of which the hon. member is speaking to tax themselves for the benefit of agriculture?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Whether they ask or not,
they do undoubtedly. The taxes that go to support this government are drawn from industry-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: -and the concessions
that the farmers get for the small amount they pay per capita in the way of tariff duty more than compensate them for what they have to pay. I say, Sir, that it is in the interest of every farmer in the country that we should have prosperous cities. These cities create openings for those members of the families of farmers who are not adapted to agricultural pursuits and have no taste for agriculture, and if you take a farmer with a family, of five or six children, we will say, more than half of them leave the farm; they are not adapted to farming.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: They all leave the
farms do they not?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Not while they are as
prosperous as they are to-day. So that if we are going to have an all-round country here, we must have cities as well as rural districts.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Is the hon. gentleman arguing that without protection there would be no cities at all, no industries?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I think I can say that
there would be very few cities and those would be of very little account. If my hon. friend had her way and brought free trade into effect-and I think she believes in free trade-the cities of this country would shrivel up.
The Budget-Mr. Hocken


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Yes, they would shrivel
up. If we were buying our implements and buying our manufactured goods from the other side, as my hon. friends would have us do, what would there be to keep the cities alive? I say that it is much better for the farmer that there should be some communities of considerable size within his reach.


An hon. MEMBER:: They constitute local markets.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Not only that, but they
make a vast difference to his social position. The prairies to-day are better districts to live in than they were forty, or thirty, or twenty years ago, because there are cities.


Mr. DONNELLY:: Has not England's
fiscal policy made her great?


Mr. MANION:: No, protection-protection up to 1846. That is what made her great.
' Mr. HOCKEN:	My hon. friend from
Willow Bunch (Mr. Donnelly) has not read far enough back; he has only read back to the time of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. Let him go farther back and he will find that Great Britain was made preeminently an industrial nation by protection.


An hon. MEMBER:: And she is coming
back to it.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Yes, with the Safeguarding of Industries Act and similar legislation. It was only when England gained that position of industrial preeminence and had control of the commerce of the sea, that she found it to her advantage to adopt free trade in order to sell her products abroad and bring raw materials in free. In my judgment England will never recover the preeminence she enjoyed in industry under a free trade policy because every nation in the world is straining in all possible ways to build up its industries and is putting into effect protective policies in order to do that.
Where in history can my hon. friend point to a growth equivalent to that of the United States which has been built up and maintained by protection? And the farmers of that country are stronger protectionists than any other class of people.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I predict that the day
will come, Mr. Speaker, when my hon. friends who sit to my left, or their successors, will be just as keen for protection as the farmers of the United States. I venture to say further that if the agriculturists of Canada, and it is

certainly true of the agriculturists of Ontario, study the whole question of building up a great nation in Canada, they will come to the conclusion that a reasonable measure of protection is as necessary for them as it is for the cities and the towns.
I have only one song to sing as a rule-


Ernest Lapointe: Hear, hear.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: -speaking on the budget, and what I have said is-purely incidental to what I want to say. I wish to say a word for one industry in this country that is perishing because of the disfavour in which it finds itself with the government of the day. I want to bring to the attention of the House the condition of the publishing industry in Canada, and when I say that it is perishing I speak absolutely by the book, for within the last five or ten years the number of publications that have suspended because of inability tq meet competition-foreign competition-runs into the hundreds. I submit that the publishing industry is a great industry, and it is not failing in Canada because of any fault of the men that are engaged in it. I can name to you men who have invested large sums, and who have done their best in trying to produce Canadian magazines teaching Canadian sentiment, trying to further that Canadian spirit of which we have all talked so much and for which we do not seem to feel inclined to do very much. Sir, the blame, in my judgment, lies directly upon the administration, an administration that will not enforce the laws now upon the statute books, will not apply the items which are in the tariff. If the items already in the tariff schedule were applied there would be some hope for Canadian periodical literature, and it is with the "hope that springs eternal in the human breast'' that I want to present the case for the publishing industry again to-day.
I would like hon. members first to consider the character of that industry. It is not like the manufacture of a machine, or of wearing apparel, or of anything that is in general use. This industry is one upon which Canadian sentiment must be built; it goes deeper than the manufacture of any goods that are in general use. It goes right into the minds and hearts of the people, and if we are going to develop a country with a sentiment of our own, and to inculcate a real Canadian spirit in our young people, then we must -have some kind of a vehicle for the purpose, and the best vehicle that I can think of is a periodica] press.

The Budget-Mr. Hocken


Mr. KENNEDY (Peace River):: Would not the daily newspaper meet that need to a very large extent?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I think not. The daily
newspaper gives us the news, and contains an occasional political article or a neutral article, but it is essentially a presentation of the news of the day, of the happenings of the world. It does, of course, express Canadian sentiment, but not at all in the way that a periodical press does. The man who writes for the daily paper writes of the hour; his articles must be composed in an hour, or in a few hours at most. The man who writes for the periodical press takes weeks or months, takes whatever time is necessary to prepare his article to his own satisfaction, and he produces a form of literature that is much more effective in developing a national sentiment than anything a newspaper man can write. My hon. friend in the chair will see the force of the statement I make. I say, Sir, that that is the only agency we have for contributing to the education of the masses and building up a strong national sentiment among Canadians, and for stimulating that sentiment. Surely it must be admitted that this is desirable from every standpoint. If we are going to remain Canada, we must be Canadians. We must have some special idea in our heads as to our own nationality. We cannot imbibe the ideals of a foreign state without suffering in our own sentiment, and that is the situation in which we find ourselves to-day. All that is best in this periodical literature that floods our country is pro-United States. There are 70,000,000 copies of American periodicals coming into this country every year, not one of them telling the Canadian story, all of them leaving the impression that God's country is the United States, and putting into the minds of our young people the idea that the land of promise is over the border, not here. It is one of those agencies that have done so much to attract the best we have.


Mr. YOUNG (Saskatoon):: Unfortunately,
one of the difficulties is that the Conservative party have been trying to make everybody believe that.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I did not quite get what
the hon. gentleman said. I am free to admit that there are a great many admirable magazines coming in here from the. United States, but at the best they teach United States: they do not teach Canada. They stimulate the idea in our young people, and in some of our middle-aged people, to seek for
those green fields far away, and it is one of the means that has been effective in attracting so many of our young Canadians over the border. From every province in Canada they slip across, and while it is very flattering to us to know that almost any Canadian can get a situation in the United States, it is not very encouraging to those of us who want to see a great country built up here, populous, prosperous and powerful, as it can be, and as I hope it will be. But the day is being delayed, and the attractions of the United States are being presented to our people by this flood of literature that comes in.
And at the worst, Mr. Speaker, we have admitted to this country to-day the most pernicious literature that is published on this continent, perhaps on any continent. Certainly nothing could be much worse than what is published in the United States and sent in here free. I am going to read to you what the Washington correspondent of the Baltimore Sun said about this class of publication in the United States. Writing to the Independent, of Boston, he said:
And not only have we produced a great smut crop of a coarseness peculiarly our own, but the more obscene of the French papers have now been translated into English and appear on the news stands along with the originals. When you stop to analyze, scrutinize, and check up, there is here presented more reason for apprehension as to the future than any other single symptom in America to-day.
The place to fully appreciate its proportions is in the smaller cities and towns, with populations ranging from 20,000 up to 100,000-towns, for instance, like Fairmont, West Virginia, where one news dealer sells 2,200 copies of every issue of a single monthly, exclusively devoted to stories of sex experiences and the nude in art; or like Steubenville, Ohio, where out of 110 periodicals on sale in a single store, 60 were either out-and-out a prurient type or bordered on the libidinous line.
Tt is not the cheap and sexually suggestive fiction magazines, although these are many and rotten, that constitute the real shock troops of these paper battalions of literary indecency, so much as the smaller and more compact nonfiction affairs frankly and exclusively given over to obscenities. Some of these are published in Chicago, some in Philadelphia, but most of them in Newark, New Jersey, and are issued by the same individuals under different corporate names. They mainly contain a rehash of the dirty stories and jokes told in the smoking rooms of pullman cars or hotel lobbies.
Some of my hon. friends may say: You are talking about the United States. Well, Mr. Speaker, I went down to Sparks street during the lunch hour, and I went into only one store, but I picked up a few samples of the kind of stuff that is coming into this country from the United States. Here is one
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of them-Sea Breezes. Shocking, isn't it? Any member of this House can go down to Sparks street and buy this magazine. I do not suppose any member would buy it, unless he had a purpose, but the truth is that the youth of the city are buying it. Young people are going through the pages of a thing like that.
Then I picked up another one, and the title itself, I think, condemns this one-Sex Stories. That is admitted free, contrary to the very item of the tariff. I wish my hon. friend the Minister of Customs (Mr. Euler) were here. There is a book unfit to be sold in any store in the city of Ottawa or anywhere else for that matter, but it is Canada we are concerned1 with.
Here is another-True Experiences-another of the sex story magazines. This kind of stuff, bound, as you see, in different sections, comes into this country free, in violation of three different items of the tariff.
So, at its worst, Mr. Speaker, it is about as bad as it could be. I could get you sixty other magazines of the same type, only I did not want to spend that much money, and I thought these three samples ought to be sufficient to convince the House that a kind of literature is coming in here with the approval of our customs officials and of the government that ought to be excluded.


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: Would the hon member advocate barring that class of magazine from the country?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I certainly would.


Malcolm McLean: Thank you.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: In the United States, Mr. Speaker, they do everything they can think of to stop this flood of literature. They suppress a magazine, and the next week it appears under a different name.


Mr. BROWN:: I am heartily in sympathy
with some of the views expressed by the hon. member, but would it not be well to take this up as a single problem, rather than complicate it with questions of the customs tariff?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I would think, Mr. Speaker, that the present laws against Obscene literature would exclude this kind of stuff. It is within the power of the Customs department to exclude these magazines now, on the ground of Obscenity, but they come in free, and are part of that great flood of literature to which I object coming in in the way it does, to the destruction of our own peri-

odical literature, and to the destruction of a very important industry in this country. The voice of Canada, as it can be expressed in a periodical press, is stifled because our magazines are absolutely unable to compete with those in the United States serving a community of 120,000,000 of people.
The conditions which are maintained at the present time render it quite impossible to establish a distinctly Canadian periodical press. We have in our customs tariff three items; one that provides that on all advertising matter coming into this country from the United States a duty of fifteen cents a pound shall be charged. That is not enforced. I have before me a magazine of 204 pages, mostly advertising, all of which ought to pay fifteen cents a pound under our own tariff, but this comes in free, not only competing with our own magazines, but by the advertising competing with every paper in Canada through the great volume of advertising they put in. I submit further with regard to this magazine and others of the same class that the dumping duty should be applied. This magazine weighs a pound and a half. I weighed it myself. The raw paper in the rolls is worth nine cents, and it is sold in the stores of this city for five cents. The dealer buys it for three cents. Here we have nine cents worth of white paper beautifully printed and bound, the type set up, and articles paid for, and it comes into Canada at three cents to the dealer and five cents to the purchaser.


Mr. YOUNG (Weybum):: What does it
sell for in the United States?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Five cents.


Edward James Young: Then how can
you apply the dumping duty?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Nine cents' worth of paper is sold for three cents, and if that does not come within the dumping clause, then the act should be amended so that it will come within it. No Canadian can advertise in this magazine. It has a circulation of about 80,000 in Canada, but it has a total circulation of over a million, and the Canadian advertiser who would pay for a million circulation would get only 100,000, or less. Canadian advertisers, therefore, are excluded from this publication; they are excluded from the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal, because they cannot get more than 100.000 circulation, or 130.000. I think, in the case of the Saturday Evening Post. But if they advertise they have to pay for a circulation of a million. In the first place we have a duty of fifteen cents a pound that should be applied to magazines

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Mr. Hocken
of this class, because while a certain amount of reading matter which is admitted free is mixed up with advertising, these periodicals are essentially advertising publications. They are not published primarily as literature, but as advertising mediums and should be treated as such by the Customs department of this country. Now another item in our tariff says:
Books, viz, novels, works of fiction or literature of a similar character, unbound or paper bound, or in sheets:
British preferential tariff, 15 per cent; Intermediate, 22J per cent; General tariff, 25 per cent.
I submit that all the magazines that come here should pay the twenty-five per cent rate under that item. There is the item in the tariff; they do not enforce it, but they fall back upon another item, No. 184, which reads:
Newspapers, and quarterly, monthly and semimonthly magazines, and weekly literary papers, unbound, free.
You will notice it says "unbound". Here is a magazine, a very decent one too, and the Customs department says that is unbound. It has sixteen sections. These sections have to be collated and stitched, the cover put on, and more work is done in the bindery than is done in the pressroom on this magazine, and yet our Customs department says it is unbound. I do not know how that can be defended. But if this publication were treated as it should be instead of being admitted free under item No. 184, it would pay twenty-five per cent, and if it paid twenty-five per cent, it would be something of a discouragement to the American magazines in their effort to capture the whole of the Canadian market. I do not say this magazine ought to be kept out but if we have an item in the tariff providing that it shall pay twenty-five per cent, it should pay that amount, while the British magazines would come in under the preferential tariff of fifteen per cent. I am not asking for any special or further protection for magazines. I say apply the tariff as it stands. I suggested last year that, instead of charging fifteen cents a pound on advertising matter, a general rate of ten cents a pound on the whole magazine should be applied. I did that because the customs officials state that it is impossible to separate the advertising in a magazine like this from the reading matter. Of course that is not impossible at all. It is done in the United States for postal purposes, but it means a certain amount of work for every one that comes in; so last year, instead of sticking to the demand for fifteen cents a pound, I suggested ten cents a pound as being
easier to collect. I want fifteen cents on the advertising, or I want twenty-five per cent, according to item 169 in the tariff.
If we have a tariff that can be interpreted exactly the opposite of what it says, what is the sense of it? It does not accomplish anything at all.
While these publications are admitted free into Canada, the Canadian publisher has to pay duty on everything that he uses. He has to pay on his paper, he has to pay on his machinery and he has to pay on his electrotypes. I have ninety-one items here in the tariff that enter into the publisher's business which are dutiable, and he comes then into competition with people who pay no duty. He is forced up against the free list of American magazines. I have the record here of one periodical published in the city of Toronto. This publisher could go to Buffalo, buy his paper, print it, get all his electrotypes and everything, and he could save $490 on every issue, as compared with the cost of publishing in the city of Toronto. He could save 85,583 dollars a year if, instead of doing his printing in Toronto, he took it over to Buffalo. In the first place, he has to pay a duty of twenty-five per cent on his paper. Paper is cheaper there than in Canada. He can buy paper in Buffalo and lay it down in Toronto, and when he gets it in Toronto it is exactly the same price as the co3t of the paper in Buffalo, with the duty and the freight added, and that is about a cent and a half a pound. That is a very heavy impost upon the publisher of that magazine-$490 an issue, besides all his equipment. I have a list of ninety-one different articles entering into the business of the publisher. The tariff runs all the way from 10 per cent to 35 per cent, everything the man uses is taxed, and then he comes into unhampered competition with the American publisher.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Is my hon. friend complaining of that tariff?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: No. I say the papermakers and other manufacturers ought to enjoy enough protection to keep them alive; but I say further the publisher ought to get some protection too; he at least ought to get the protection that is now contained in our own tariff.
How the Minister of Finance can justify the present interpretation of the items in the customs tariff is absolutely beyond my comprehension. I am confident that if the government took a fair and reasonable view they would at least say: We will adopt item 169 of the customs tariff and charge 25 per cent
The Budget-Mr. Hocken

on all these magazines. That would not exclude a single American magazine; but it would do this. The Saturday Evening Post has started a subscription campaign in order to get a circulation in Canada of 200,000 copies. A tariff of 25 per cent would simply discourage that campaign and would leave the publishers of that paper to take the natural circulation that they may get. At the present time they are spending enormous sums of money in forcing the circulation of the Saturday Evening Post-all to the detriment of existing Canadian publications, and it is a most unfair position in which to put our publishers. .
I can conceive, Mr. Speaker, that if the publishing industry were given a fair deal we would have more ink-makers, perhaps we would have another paper mill or .two, and the general industry surrounding and cognate to the publishing industry would benefit correspondingly. Of course, the automobile manufacturers gelt their raw materials free, so do the implement manufacturers, -but the publishers get nothing. The publishers are not asking particularly for free raw materials, they are willing that those with whom they deal should have reasonable protection

what Mr. Marler used to call "a cost of living" tariff; but they claim that this country should be protected against the flood of 300 different magazines that come in here every time they are issued.
It may be interesting to the House to know that 25,000,000 pounds of advertising printing comes into Canada from the United States free of duty every year. If we applied our tariff on that 25,000,000 pounds we would get in duty $375,000 at the 15-cen-t rate which I have mentioned. That indicates the handicap under which our publishers are working. It is equivalent to this government paying a bounty to the American publisher to compete with the Canadian publisher. That is exactly the position. If conditions were reversed, if Canadian periodical literature was going into the United States in anything like a comparable volume, the United States government would put on a tariff over night. They would not stand for that, they would not permit their people to be fed up with Canadian literature as we permit our people to be fed up with American literature. It must be borne in mind that if we put on a duty of 25 per cent the price of the Saturday Evening Post would not be increased at all; its publishers would absorb that tax. Horn, members may be surprised to hear that the total _ weight of the Saturday Evening Post sent into Canada in 1926 amounted to 8,978,944 pounds.

A tremendous volume of this paper is also sent in here through the mails and is carried by the Canadian post office for nothing; we get nothing at all out of the postage. Altogether 659,275 copies of American mag-azines are carried by the -Canadian mails for which our government gets nothing at all-not a cent. The total circulation per issue of these magazines is 1,468,886 copies. Some of them are weeklies, some monthlies, but per issue we have a million and a -half copies of American -publications coming into this country free, in defiance of our own customs tariff. In other words, we buy eight American magazines for every Canadian magazine bought in this -country.
Every .person who knows anything about the publishing business and certain newspapers have taken notice of this state of things, and they all agree it is about time that something was done by the government to at least give sufficient protection to our Canadian publishers to enable them to live and build up a Canadian literature. The Kitchener Record, the paper of -the hon. Minister of Customs (Mr. Euler)-I am sorry he is not in his seat-says:
Acting upon the contention that the Canadian publishing trade is suffering from outside competition, the delegation suggests the imposing of a tariff of 10 cents a pound on all periodicals and week end magazines entering Canada. It is estimated that the consequent revenue would be approximately $5,000,000.
I should like to read to the House what the Globe says on this subject:
Sooner or later the Canadian government will be obliged to take cognizance of the vast circulation of United States publications in this country. They are strangling the publishing industry here, depriving Canadian -workers of millions of dollars' worth of employment; they are "Americanizing" Canada by means of the reading material offered; they must have a very grave effect on Canadian industry in general, owing to the tremendous amount of advertising of United States products carried in their columns.
The Globe puts into a paragraph practically my whole argument, and I think it should be considered very carefully and sympathetically by the government. The Orillia Packet, which is a very well edited weekly paper, says:
By all means let us have a duty on the American publications that are flooding Canada to the extent of more than a million copies a week. It is one new tax to which no objection can be taken.
I do not know, Mr. Speaker, that I can have any influence with my hon. friend the Minister of Finance, but I have pleaded with him, I have beseeched him, and I have said everything I can think of to convince him

The Budget-Mr. Bourassa
of the justice of what the publishers are asking for. All I am requesting him to do now is to see that his colleague the Minister of Customs applies the tariff we now have against these magazines. I ask him to suggest to his colleague that item 169 should not be interpreted as classing as unbound a magazine of the kind I am now holding up for him to look at. I do not know whether the minister saw this magazine. It contains sixteen different sections, all collated, all bound. There is more work in the bindery than in the printing. Yet that is classed by the Customs department as unbound-manifestly an indefensible interpretation. If the hon. minister would take enough time to go into this question with reasonable care I think he would discover that what the magazine publishers are asking for is not only reasonable, but something that cannot be evaded and the evasion defended.
I submit, Sir, as I have done on former occasions, that this is one industry that should receive consideration at the hands of the government. It is not asking much, only what is on the book; and if my hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) will grant this request, he will do something at least to support a movement which will make for a better and a more prosperous periodical press in Canada than we have at the present time.


Mr. HENRI BOURASSA (Labelle):: For
once I find myself in complete accord with my hon. friend from Toronto West Centre (Mr. Hoeken) in the desire to protect the youth of the country from the filthy literature-is it literature?-which at .present comes from the United States and is sold throughout Canada in the cities and towns, in the stores, at the street corners, everywhere. I think, however, that the hon. gentleman might have addressed his remarks to the House generally rather than to one particular quarter. Last year partly at my request, the late Minister of Customs excluded the filthiest and most obnoxious of these American magazines, and the first thing that was done by the shortlived government, which was put into power, in the name of virtue, in the month of June, was to admit again those very undesirable publications. I do not bring this as an argument against any party. I simply join hands with the hon. member in requesting the Minister of Customs to take steps to keep out literature of this sort. If the minister does not do so of his own good will he will hear more about the matter. He should apply again the regulation or, as I believe, the order in council, or the order of the Customs department, which was put into force by the late Mr. Boivin.


Mr. GUTHRIE:: Can my hon. friend give
us some information regarding that order in council of which he speaks? On whose recommendation was the publication in question banned? I never heard of the matter before, and I should like to look into it.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I am not sure that it
is an order in council; but I know that last year the late Mr. Boivin, then Minister of Customs, issued orders to prohibit the entry into Canada of such filthy rags as the Daily Mirror and publications of that nature. And these publications were stopped. The moment the succeeding government came into power, however, the publications in question were allowed in again. That is all I know about the matter.


Hugh Guthrie: Are they still coming in?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Yes, you will find them at every street corner in Montreal and Ottawa; and the school children are buying them every afternoon. They are the filthiest and most degrading kind of reading. As every hon. member knows, I do not believe in promoting virtue by means of laws; but I may point out that in England, where more than anywhere else in the world, personal liberty in these .matters has been preserved, parliament has passed legislation prohibiting the dissemination of such reading matter. Lately, one of the Labour representatives in the British parliament was in the United States, and he made the sensible observation that before the American people attempted to make men sober by law, they should see to it that the minds of the youth of the country were not degraded to the degree they are to-day in the United States. In that respect I am absolutely in accord with the sentiments of my hon. friend, and I am prepared to support any movement that tends to protect the youth of Canada against the influence of such publications.
With regard to the other aspect of the question, with which the hon. member ha3 dealt in a very interesting manner, that of protecting the publishing industry, it should be brought to the attention of the tariff board. I do not think this is the proper time to discuss that question from the various points of view that can be advanced. Again I entirely agree with the hon. member that everything should be done to foster a national sentiment, but I fear that in many ways we are not adopting the right means. You will not build up a national sentiment by means of a protected literature. If you take other means to that end, if you direct the minds of the youth, to whatever race or province
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Mr. Bourassa

they belong, to the fact that Canada is their country, and not France, not England, not the British Empire, then in a generation or two you may have something like unanimity among Canadians in regard to their common nationality. Thereafter a literature with a national sentiment will develop. I do not know that a national sentiment has ever been created anywhere by literature, nor that literature has ever been fostered by means of tariff protection. If in the school, in the family and in all our social and political activities, we appeal to the one sentiment of devotion to Canada as our common country, we shall create the mental and moral material upon which a national literature will grow. I do not know how it goes in the English-speaking provinces;1 but according to the hon. gentleman himself, as he spoke here last year, similarity of language with the United States makes the people more open to the penetration of American ideals and thought. I can say however that, so far as our own province is concerned, more or fewer papers coming from another country would not affect in the slightest degree our conception of Canadianism. This may suggest that something else is wrong with the English provinces in the matter of fostering a national sentiment. I will not however dwell on that point now. The hon. member is to be congratulated upon having raised the subject, and I trust that this is not the last occasion on which he will have brought it up.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Not unless we get relief.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: There is another point
of view from which the question may be discussed. American publications, and Canadian as well, which take advantage of the low rates offered by the Post Office Department to disseminate throughout Canada what are practically advertising catalogues, are a detriment to the ordinary trade of the towns and villages. The spread of -this advertising matter throughout the country has had something to do with the crisis through which local trade in the small towns and villages has been passing for many years.
With regard to the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Coote), It find myself in this position, that while agreeing almost entirely with the opinions expressed by the hon. member as well as by the member for Southeast Grey (.Miss Mac-phail), I cannot bring myself to the point of supporting the amendment, for the simple reason that the first paragraph censures the government for not dealing with the tariff at this session, notwithstanding that it was unanimously agreed last session that the whole

question of the tariff should be submitted to a commission of inquiry. On this question, therefore, I take exactly the same ground I took a few days ago on another subject. The House, in the exercise of its supreme jurisdiction, has seen fit to create a body to gather data and secure information to enable us to deal with the tariff in a satisfactory manner and with some measure of expert knowledge at our disposal. I hope that the tariff board will not rest content with receiving petitions from certain industries for more protection and, therefore, with looking at the question from a purely industrial point of view. Last year I ventured to suggest that it was not only the tariff question that should be studied thoroughly from an expert and economic point of view, but the whole problem of taxation as connected, not only with paying our debt and meeting our fixed charges, not only with the balancing of our Budget as between revenues and expenditures, but mainly with regard to the situation of the various communities, the different classes of people in Canada who contribute to the prosperity of the country, and to find out whether they suffer or not from the systems of taxation that we have adooted from time to time without much thought, I am afraid, being given to the interlocking of the various parts of the fiscal machinery.
When that is done, of course the government will have to take their stand. I have much personal friendship and sympathy for our Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb). He is a canny Scotchman, and next to my race and my province, the Scotch people an<d Scotland are very close to my heart. But a canny Scotchman must not push diplomacy too far. The time is soon coming when the hon. gentleman and his colleagues will have to choose whether they belong to highland or to lowland. In his native country there were a few highlanders and a few lowlanders who, after having stolen each other's cattle, found a new country, no man's land, which separated the lowlands of Scotland from England, There they changed somewhat their patriotic occupation, and they alternately plundered the highlands and lowlands, and the land of the southron or the Sassenach. '
After the inquiry has been completed, the government will have to make its choice as between-I do not say no tariff: nobody, I think, advocates that at the present time- but as between tending towards low tariff and freer trade, or stability of tariff as upheld by the hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Manion) for example, and a stiff increase in the tariff as recommended by the hon. member for West Calgary (Mr. Bennett).

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I could leave the matter there, and logically I should not discuss the tariff, since I consider the House is not in a position to pass judgment upon it. But in view of certain declarations that have been made in this House by members of all parties this session, last session, and during the two election campaigns through which we have passed, I wish to place myself on record emphatically-and I will do it upon every occasion-against the idea that the province of Quebec stands for a high tariff. It has never done so in the past. It is less so favourable to-day, and the time is, I think, soon coming when not only the rural population of Quebec, but a fast growing number of thinking people in the cities will realize that the protective system, as applied so far, has done just as much harm to rural Quebec and eventually to the whole of that province as it may have done to the west or the maritime provinces.
When the government make their choice, if they are in need of scientific argumentation against the principle of protection, against the application of protection, they will find ample argument in that extraordinary address which was delivered to us a few days ago by the hon. member for West Calgary. With the little knowledge I have of economics, I admit I remain dumbfounded. I greatly admire the talents, the brilliancy and the versatility of the hon. member. In fact, he found it possible within the scope of one oration to bid fairly and boldly for leadership either of unalloyed Tory imperialism or of Simon-pure Liberalism, and he ended practically with an offer to socialism. The hon. gentleman is quite fit, I admit, to lead any and every party. Was it a warning to the future convention to be held in Winnipeg, that if the perpetually renascent Conservative party do not take advantage of the shining lights they have at their disposal, some of those shining lights may find their way elsewhere? I do not know.
But not only did the hon. gentleman base his very interesting and convincing argument with regard to the principles of taxation upon that prophet and precursor of the Manchester school which gave free trade to England1- Adam Smith - but he out-Heroded Adam Smith. He added two principles to the famous four principles once enunciated by the father of free trade. Those two are that taxation, to be properly laid down, to be beneficial both to the country and to the individual, must be universal and visible. This stands as the most direct condemnation of the principle of protection that can be imagined. If there is one form of taxation which is not and which cannot be universal, it is a customs 32649-39
tariff, at least as we have applied it. If there is one form of taxation which the ratepayer cannot measure, cannot count, so that to him it is not visible, it is that form of taxation which he never pays himself, but which he reimburses to the government or to the protected manufacturer through the retail dealer to whom he goes to get all his necessities of life.
I think I could discern, in listening to and reading that very excellent address, that perhaps the hon. gentleman thought that we could combine, as it has at all times been, held, although somewhat paradoxically, I think, the principle of free trade and the principle of protection, just as the United States have done. I know it has been an argument frequently used in the past and sometimes used in the present by upholders of a protective tariff. Strange to say, that argument and that example have been mostly, if not exclusively, used1 by members of that party which, for the last twenty-five years at least, have been posing before the people of this country and the people of the empire as the staunchest upholders of all British institutions. Its stand always is: We should do as the United States have done; if we imitate the United States we will reach the same result.
I do not want to dwell at length upon that. But if we reflect a few minutes upon the differences in conditions-climatic, geographical, economic, ethnical-we will realize that even if we should copy to the letter, in every item of our tariff, or in any other part of our fiscal legislation, the policy of the United States, we could not reach the same results. Because we are not similarly situated; because there are many raw materials required by our protected or non-protected industries that we must perforce and for all times import. Therefore the idea that Canada can be a self-contained and a self-sufficient country is nullified at the beginning by the very conditions of the country itself- conditions which no government, no party, no policy, can change or will ever change.
With regard to the effect of the tariff on the peopling of this country, I have heard that question discussed for the last thirty-five years at least. I remember my old friend Sir Wilfrid Laurier telling me that in making his maiden speech in the legislature at Quebec, in 1872 I think it was, he had denounced the Conservative government because of the migration of our population to the United States. I remember well the time between 1891 and 1896, when this country was passing through very dire commercial, agricultural and industrial crises, when we Liberals were denouncing the Conservative

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party because protection had ruined this country, because protection had uprooted the rural population of our provinces and brought them to the large industrial centres; and because, when the crisis came, if they did not go back to the country they took the road to the United States. There are many causes for the migration of our population from Canada to the United States. There are those permanent causes to which I have just alluded with regard to our fiscal policy, permanent causes which it is absurd to ignore. The Climate of Canada as compared to that of the United States is of itself an impediment. The geographical division of the country is in itself an impediment. I once defined Canada, as it has been carved by diplomats, by politicians, on both sides of the ocean, without any regard to the future, without any regard to the national exigencies of the countary, as "a geographical absurdity." But that is done. Does it mean that we cannot face the issue and remedy it? No; but it means we have some obstacles to vanquish; it means that we should exercise more patience, it means that we cannot hope to see this country grow to the same degree of amplitude as the United States have grown during the century that has passed. It means also-and for many, many years to come., probably for all time to come-that vast portions of our country, especially the western portions, will always have to export an immense quantity of farm products for which they have the right to demand the easiest market, the largest and most varied number of markets, in the easiest and cheapest manner; and we, as Canadians, have the duty to help them in getting them as much as we can.
With regard to the maritimes, well, one of of the late colleagues of some of the hon. gentlemen sitting on the other side, a true old Tory, Mr. McCurdy, in several articles and lectures, endeavoured to prove, and I think did prove somewhat successfully, that the application of the protective policy had practically ruined all the small industries of his province; that Nova Scotia had suffered from protection and by protection, because the application of protection to the conditions of our country had concentrated the large industries mainly in the two provinces of Ontario and Quebec-I would go further and say mainly in some of the large centres of Quebec, and more so in various centres of Ontario-and had ruined all the small local industries of the maritime provinces. I am not a judge as to that, but here surely is testimony that cannot be allowed to go by the board without being examined. So that 
taking into account the conditions of all parts of the country, taking into account those permanent conditions to which I have referred- the configuration of the country, as well as the lack of population which we cannot hope to remedy in a few years-Canada must for a great number of years look to foreign markets to export the vast surplus of her farm products. And if we want to get foreign markets, and many of them, we must be prepared to deal fairly with those countries where we will find such markets. The hon. member for West Calgary made an argument which I think is sound. He said we should look rather to those countries where our products are needed than to those that will take Them simply on account of some treaty we may make with them. As a general proposition that is quite true, but it has to be scrutinized. All our surplus products, either agricultural or industrial, will not be needed all the time in one country or in a few countries. Conditions change elsewhere as they do here. The conditions of production differ; the wage-earning power of various countries changes; the value of the money of a foreign country changes, and has changed tremendously since the war. But the hon. member for West Calgary said that if we relied upon foreign markets for the exportation of our products, we may find ourselves-by a stroke of the pen or in a single night-deprived of those markets and thereby our trade and industrial conditions will be entirely upset. I think this is an argument in favour of looking for as many markets as we can get, because we cannot suppose that if we export our wheat to ten countries instead of four we shall be in more danger than if we look only to one market. You cannot suppose that a country will agree to trade with us, either by treaty or by necessity, and then change its policy just as a matter of caprice as the hon. member said. You cannot reasonably anticipate that if you deal with twenty countries instead of ten, those twenty countries will gather together and arrive at a decision to close their markets to our product just for the sake of making good the argument of the hon. gentleman.
But where I could not follow the hon. gentleman was the application he made of that argument to the policy pursued by the government in trying to make treaties. The argument applies to a certain degree to countries that take our produce of necessity- precisely the contrary of what he said-and which by a change in their tariff, if they see fit, may change our conditions. But I have always understood that, all the world over, the purpose of trade treaties was precisely to

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create and maintain for a certain number of years certain conditions of stability between the two parties to the treaty. When we made the reciprocity treaty with the United States in 1854, it was made for ten years with the proviso that it could not be terminated except on two years' notice; so that for at least twelve years we knew with what conditions we had to deal, so far as the United States was concerned; and the very proof of the unsoundness of the argument of the hon. gentleman is, that enumerating a number of countries with which we have trade treaties at the present time, he mentioned the fact that the United States at a certain time adopted a stiff tariff against our products. Precisely; we had no treaty with the United States.
But there is one point which has been touched upon by the hon. gentleman, and I think neglected by most other speakers, upon which I want to put myself on record once more, and that is with reference to our preferential trade. The hon. gentleman grew enthusiastic on that point. He let us see the dawn of the day when the whole British Empire would be a self-sustaining and self-contained empire. He reminded us of the patient gathering of figures by Lord Long. Lord Long was a very able man; but as a practical politician able to get a policy through, there was one man connected with that idea who was far stronger than Lord Long, and that was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. It does not mean, because the famous trade reform campaign turned so stiffly against the Tory and Unionist party in England that tariff reform will never come about; but I think some facts that came out then prove to us that if there is an unrealizable policy, or one absolutely uncertain, it is that idea of an inter-imperial trade union. Always as in the United States, the hon. gentleman said. Again I repeat, if Canada cannot expect in the application of a protective policy to reap the same results which the United States have reaped, because of the differences in conditions between the two countries, to a far greater extent is it futile and idle to think that the British possessions scattered over the five continents, separated by the seven seas, composed of all climates and races, can ever come to a common policy in any matter whatever that can be conceived. You may say that precisely because of the diversity of conditions which exist between the various countries of the British Empire, the British Empire can be self-sustaining. Theoretically, yes, if you can bring all those countries together and make them stick together as do 32649-394
the fifty states of the American union. Quite so, but precisely because each of the countries of the British Empire has closer neighbours than other British countries, has trade relations, and intellectual relations, good or bad, such as those that have been described this afternoon by the hon. member for Toronto West Centre (Mr. Hocken), it is idle and futile to think that you will ever get them to agree upon one empire policy. Therefore, we have to fall back upon the somewhat lame and, I may say, absurd policy which we have been practising for the last thirty years.
One very curious thing about that policy, Mr. Speaker, is to find that the three parties at present dividing public opinion in Canada are agreed upon it. The high protectionists are in favour of maintaining the British preference; the freer trade party, as the Liberal party is supposed to be, are also in favour of maintaining that preference; but to my astonishment, gentlemen on the other side who are bent upon the ideal, which they may reach one of these days, of absolute free trade are also in favour not only of maintaining but increasing the British preference. Have they never thought that the strongest argument in fact which they can leave in the hands of the protectionists of this country is the maintenance and increase of the British preference? Do they know how it was originated? I can tell them.
I was then a young member of this House. In 1896, as in some years previous and some years after, the Liberal party had denounced protection as organized theft and robbery. At the same time, some of the organizers of the Liberal party had received subscriptions from the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and had pledged themselves that the program of the party would never be applied. So the poor leaders of the party were divided between their public utterances and the private engagements that had thus been made. Something had to be done. That is always the argument used by party leaders in those circumstances-'something must foe done'- and they adopted that device of the British preference. They said:	We will grant a
preference to British goods, and not only to British goods, but to the goods of all countries that will offer us terms equivalent or as nearly advantageous. There was some sense in that. It was based on a policy of reciprocity. It was a policy inspired by the idea of looking for markets everywhere.
Three years later, under the excitement of the South African war, it was decided to put the stamp of patriotism on that policy. Not Canadian patriotism, no; but the stamp of imperial patriotism. The old policy of

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Sir John Macdonald, that of a true national policy for the benefit of the people of Canada and the protection of Canadian industries against British as well as foreign competition, was discarded, of course;, by the newly formed and inspired Tory-Imperialistic party; and the Liberals who then and later had a disposition to follow suit weakly, the Liberals -partially Tory, partially protectionist, partially imperialistic, partially everything- thought they would go about half way between the attitude of the Tory party and their own past promises, and thus we went on.
Now wiiat has been the result? The maintenance of the British preference is practically the only cause for the agitation for a higher tariff, so far as our large industries are concerned. Take the woollen industry, or the boot and shoe industry. Talk with those men in private. I know a good many of them. I took up this question twenty-five years ago when I was in this parliament, and I know several of the most important manufacturers of boots and shoes in the province of Quebec. Privately they all tell you that if the British preference were done away with they would not demand a higher tariff, as their present protection would be sufficient But in order to keep in line with the false sentiment that was at the basis of that policy they say:	We have no objection to the
maintenance of the British preference provided you raise the general tariff. The same with the woollen industry.
But if you intend to maintain that British preference, why not apply it honestly and in a practical manner? I think the Minister of Trade and Commerce mentioned the other day that the Australians-and quite properly -in the application of their treaty with us demanded, for example, that automobiles, in order to come under the treaty tariff, should be manufactured in Canada to at least fifty per cent of their value. If I am not mistaken, in the application of the preference, they exact 75 per cent of British value, either in raw material or in labour, before they consider the goods as being imported from Great Britain and entitled to the preferential tariff. Here we do not follow that principle. A personal friend of mine, interested in a very large business, travelling in France, Belgium and Germany a couple of years after the war, saw there in foreign factories woollen goods stamped in advance " British made goods They were made in Germany, they were made in Belgium and they were made in France and shipped to England. A little surplus work was done upon them in England and they were reshipped to Canada as

British-made goods. I think that kind of competition is unfair and dishonest. If we wish to have a British preference, let it be a truly " British " preference; but let us not permit the British trader, at the expense of both the English and Canadian labourer, profiting by the cheaper labour of the continental countries; to impose upon us under false pretences merchandise which is neither British nor Canadian, but foreign made.
But I go further. The time will soon come when, recovering our senses, we will do as all other countries have done, and make our choice either for a protective tariff pure and simple, as Macdonald and Tupper conceived it and applied it-a purely Canadian protective policy-or we will make up our minds that, considering the conditions of our country as they exist and the need of a larger market from year to year for our farm products, we are not going to sacrifice those advantages for the maintenance of a few artificial industries, and at the same time enforce upon our people the necessity of buying at a higher-price goods which they could get elsewhere, especially those goods which are made of raw material not coming from the soil of Canada, and which the soil of Canada will never produce. That is all I have to say upon that question for this year, but I want to place myself on record and protest once more against the assertion that Quebec stands as one with Ontario on that question. I will go further and say that I believe that there is an increasing number of people in Ontario who realize that the protective policy has not given to the country at large what it promised.
As far as the province of Quebec is concerned, I pledge my word in that regard. I have known my province for many years. I have carried on not only political campaigns but various campaigns of education on many subjects. I know rural Quebec perhaps better than urban Quebec, but I know the people of the cities also; and I say the number of people in the province of Quebec who realize that the so-called national policy has not given to us yet what it has promised is growing. I do not say that we are prepared, by a stroke of the pen, as the hon. member for West Calgary has suggested, to upset our policy. No. Sensible people must take account of facts and of created-I will not say created rights-but industries developed, giving employment to a large number of people. I think I can fairly claim for the people of my province that they are pretty sensible on the whole. They may not agree with the member for Toronto West Centre (Mr. Hocken) upon many aspects of the national

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spirit, but I think on the whole we have proven that in matter of economics and matters of financial administration we are pretty sensible. We are not so apt to jump at every new idea that is proposed. We are very careful before we accept clap-trap. On the whole the province of Quebec is the best situated of the whole Dominion, financially, economically and socially speaking. From that point of view the province of Quebec is not prepared to jump one way or the other, but it is prepared more than ever, to listen to good reason whether it comes from Saskatchewan, Alberta or Nova Scotia, when we are asked to revise our fiscal policy in order to suit the needs of the whole of Canada. The province of Quebec is more convinced than ever that from a French Canadian point of view, or an all Canadian point of view, agriculture is the important industry of the country. We feel that the spirit of the rural population is certainly the safest for the country to rely upon.
I am not so sure of the argument that we must create by artificial means more industries in our country. We have already too many. What we want is an adjustment of industries. What we want is an adjustment of the capitalization of industries, an adjustment of wealth as between industrial interests, tradesmen, farmers and various classes. In other words, what we want is the introduction of certain principles by which we can arrive at a proper adjustment in matters financial, material and economic. If I could revise the utterances of Adam Smith I would say that, over and above the four principles enunciated by Adam Smith a hundred and fifty years ago, and the two principles enunciated by hi3 successor in this House, I would say that the main thing in view in our whole dealings in the fiscal and financial field is that we should not think of the wealth of any class, but of the maintenance of the family. That was the great fault of the Manchester school. They thought of the individual. They were essentially individualists. They rendered great service in freeing the individual from the yoke of monarchy, from the yoke of autocracy, from the yoke of aristocracy; but, unfortunately, they did that with a view of bringing in the individual considered by himself, either as a ratepayer or as a citizen. But we must come to the right and sound view that the maintenance of the family, of the family spirit, of the family prosperity, is the basis of all sound society. If we do that, if we maintain what we have, especially in the province of Quebec, of the social spirit, created and developed in a well-organized family,
we will have done more to resist the spirit of American absorption, of American imperialism, of American mentality, than by any rate of customs tariff applied.to this quantity of magazines and newspapers.
Now, with regard to the rest of the budget,
I must confess that there I stand, I will not say in glorious isolation, but in noble minority with my friends opposite on almost every point. Had it not been for that premature paragraph contained in the first portion of the motion of the hon. member for Macleod, I would vote with them with my two hands. I entirely agree with them that the war debt should be paid by war taxes. I entirely agree with them that we should not diminish the war taxes as a whole, and that we should keep them before the eyes of our people as the price we have to pay for our criminal follies accumulated from 1914 to 1918. At the same time, I should not like to go too fast. I would not advocate paying off tod rapidly our debt, because if we want to preserve future generations from the calamity which a blinded public opinion, conducted by public men whose motives I will not qualify, but who sacrificed the present and the future interests of our country in order to serve foreign ends on another continent, I should like our descendants when the next war come3 to have something before their eyes that will cause them to say: Let us wait before we attempt to commit suicide once more. I think we should continue to bear a pretty heavy war debt and heavy war charges until the worlds atmosphere has cleared and until Canada has decided whether it belongs to itself or whether it is to be in the future, as in the past, the instrument of an imperialistic policy in the Pacific or the Atlantic, in Europe, Asia or elsewhere. Morley once said:	The
tax gatherer is a good school master. The present generation has listened to the lesson. Let the member for Toronto Northwest (Mr. Church) endeavour to launch a crusade for an expedition to China, and he will find out that the present generation, in Ontario as elsewhere, has learned something of the lessons of the war. But twenty years hence? I do not know. Therefore until we have made up our minds what our duties are, what our national entity is composed of,' what our obligations are to ourselves or to somebody else-until that time I think it is a good object lesson for us to keep before ourselves a pretty stiff war debt.
But I think our war taxes, as all other taxes, need readjustment. I expressed that view last year; I still hold it. Something was done towards attaining that end last year. I am
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sorry to say that I do not find the same spirit in evidence this year. I do not think there was any necessity for the 10 per cent reduction in the income tax. It will give nothing to people with small means-they do not pay it-and very little to people who pay, let us say, $100 of income tax. The real beneficiaries will be the people with large fortunes and large incomes, that is, the people who are most responsible for the creation of that debt, and a large proportion of whom built up fortunes in the four years of war at the expense of our population-fortunes dipped in the blood of our sons. Instead of making that reduction, which will curtail the financial means of the government to meet our war charges, I think the government should have implemented the promise made last year by the late Minister of Customs, that if any change was made this year in the income tax it would be to exempt all children under 21 years of age and in charge of their parents. I repeat

it may be a hobby with me; I admit I am interested-we should always think of the family in these matters. We pretend to be one of the most advanced countries on earth, we pretend that our civilization, our literature, our system of education may stand on a par with those of the most enlightened countries. Well, what encouragement do we give fathers of families to endow their children with a complete education? We punish them for having children, we punish them for keeping their children at home in order to educate them. I say that is wrong, socially speaking. Better maintain the 10 per cent all round and make the fathers of large families benefit by the further exemption which was promised last year by a -then member of the government.
Now with regard to householders, they also have much to do with the family. Last year my friend from St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan) and myself joined hands with respect to this. I think we should put all householders on the same footing. At present the man who owns his house is exempt from taxation on its yearly value. An employee with moderate means who pays $500 or $600 rental is not allowed to deduct that as a charge against his income. I think we should all be put on the same footing, that there khould be a deduction, which could be calculated as a fair average, let us say, in cities of $500 a year, and in rural districts of $300 a year; and whether a man owns his house or pays rental he should be allowed to deduct that amount; but that if he owns a house worth $200,000 or $300,000 he should pay something

on the yearly value over and above what is necessary for providing the average class of habitation for a family. To show you the spirit, Sir, in which those things are considered, I was talking over that point last year with one of the highest officials of the department, a very honest and capable man. Here is what he put forward in objection to my proposition: "Well, that is pretty stiff. A man who owns a house worth $200,000 ought to be a useful citizen. I don't see why we should go for him." Surely if a business man, or a man with acquired or inherited wealth, has the means of living with his family in a house that has cost one-fifth of a million dollars, he is -capable of contributing a little more to the exchequer, of this country than the man who has to pay $40 a month to live in a rented house-with the danger of seeing his rental raised, as was done during the war by some of those people who pay nothing on the yearly value of their palaces -but doubled the rentals -of their tenants during the war-other patriots!
Let me mention a small matter, though I was told that it might be pretty important as far as the amount of money collected is concerned. I was given this information by someone closely connected with the making and operation of this income tax. I have seen myself in the American law and in the circulars issued by the American government to their various officials engaged in the application of the law, that the object of the' American income tax law is to tax all revenue at its source. With regard to the very large companies employing a considerable number of individuals you thereby reach the income not only of the companies themselves, but of all the individuals -connected therewith, in so far as these incomes are represented by salaries, profits, bonuses and so forth. On the other hand, I am told that the government, quite properly, has made arrangements with a number of foreign governments, the American, the British, the Belgian, I think, and several others to this effect: nationals of any of these countries living in Canada pay income tax in Canada only beyond and above the amount they would pay in their own country; and if our tax is lower they pay the difference to their own country. Canadian employees living in foreign countries and employed by Canadian companies do not fall into this category. The company deducts from its receipts all the salaries paid to the foreign employees, and these private incomes are not reached by the Minister of Finance. Their income tax is paid, for example, to the United States in the case of Canadians living

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there. If we applied the principle which is in force across the border, we should reach the income at its source and in that way we might reap a pretty fair surplus of taxation.
With regard to the sales tax, I am not competent enough to offer any comments, not having had enough experience in that branch of taxation. I will say this, however. Last year I called the attention of the Minister of Customs to the situation of what I may call small rural industries, such as sawmills, sash, window and door factories, and so on. The minister informed me that he had already the power to exempt some of these and that he would secure the means of exempting others who had only a small trade. Let me give an illustration. There is, in my constituency-I am sure there are many similar cases elsewhere-a first rate labourer, a good intelligent fellow who grew up in his trade until he was able to put up a small plant which he operates with his son. Last year he brought me all his sales tax returns, the monthly sheets which he is obliged to fill up to meet the exigencies of the Customs department. In the whole year he had manufactured and sold no more than $2,200 worth of goods, out of which he had to purchase his raw material and keep a family of twelve; and he was exacted $110 in sales tax! Here is the father of a family of twelve paying $110 as his contribution towards the redemption of our war debt-for which I can assure you he was not responsible-out of a gross revenue of $2,200. Surely there is no sense in that. It may be asked, could he not have passed the tax on to the purchaser? Well, you know how it is in the country. Here is a very small factory and about a mile away there is a small mill where the individual gets his work done. The farmer, rather than pay the sales tax to the so-called manufacturer, purchases his lumber, goes to the mill, gets his work done there and so escapes the tax. Some consideration should be shown to such small traders.
I come now to the stamp tax, which has been called a nuisance tax. I fail to see that it is more of a nuisance to put a $10 stamp on a large cheque than a fwo-cent stamp on a small cheque, although I think it was a good thing to raise the margin from five to ten dollars. In my opinion, however, we could have required the use of stamps of denominations in keeping with the value of the cheques issued, without causing injury to anyone. I have already suggested, and I make the suggestion again, that there should be a stamp cheque on all coupons on debentures presented to the banks. I have been told by very well informed people that a large number
of our patriotic millionaires are evading the income tax through holding a large portion of debentures that are not inscribed, being anonymous and "payable to bearer." They do not declare these coupons and there is no possibility of the inspector ascertaining where they are. Dividends can be reached; the names of shareholders can foe discovered; but the names of bondholders cannot be got at. I suggest that a two-cent stamp on each coupon presented to a bank would not be much of a charge on debenture holders, and it would bring a comfortable revenue. That would be visible taxation; it would be equitable taxation; and it would be convenient and cheap taxation-cheap, that is, from the standpoint of the government. That brings in four of the principles of Adam Smith No. 1 and Adam Smith No. 2.
With regard to postage reduction, I voted last year for this measure, and while I cannot censure the government in this regard I think we were perhaps somewhat hasty. I do not want to compromise anyone, but I may say that I had an interesting conversation with a person in authority in the Post Office Department. I assure the minister at once that he was not criticising either the minister or the government, but he made the simple observation that had we kept that one-cent tax on letters we could practically have rural mail delivery all through Canada to-day, provided by the amount represented by the postage reduction. There, again, I think a 'little thought would have led to a more satisfactory outcome. It is true, as the hon. member for West Calgary (Mr. Bennett) observed, that the burden of that tax fell on large companies carrying on a heavy correspondence. Certainly the reduction means practically nothing to the farmer or to ithe labourer, being merely a matter of a few cents a year, and it would have been a substantial contribution to the improvement of the postal service, while being easy to bear.
I do not want to detain the House much longer, but in closing I desire to say a word or two regarding the redemption of the debt. His discussion of this question constituted the most interesting part of the speech delivered by the hon. member for West Calgary. It is this particular part of his address which I bear in mind when I say that the hon. gentleman, having qualified to lead the Tory imperialistic party as an advanced protectionist party, and having qualified further to resurrect the old Manchesterian Liberal party, apparently has qualified also for the leadership of socialism in offering what is perhaps the most advanced socialistic proposition I
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have so far heard in this House. Of course, I would not discard it on that account. I was reminded whole listening to the hon. gentleman of his propensity for quoting great Englishmen. Have you noticed, on political and parliamentary questions involving matters of precedent, how frequently the hon. gentleman resorts to Gladstone, while in economics Adam Smith seems to be his source of inspiration? I fancy a good Liberal conscience is haunting the powerful brain of the hon. gentleman. There I was reminded of an utterance of Sir William Vernon Harcourt when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. One day he was introducing a measure, I forget just what it was, and someone interrupted saying: "That is socialism." He said: "What of that? Are we not all more or less socialists to-day?" In a sense -that is true. If by socialism we mean that we -must have regard to the interests of society, to the interests of the state, as covering and protecting the interests of the family and the individual, I am quite agreed on many socialistic ventures. No doubt society has been too frequently in the past sacrificed to individual interests and appetites or even grievances.
The plan proposed by -the hon. gentleman is interesting but it is just as well to see it as it is. He was interrogated three or four times by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Railways, I think: Well, is that not enforced borrowing? No, no, was the answer. Of course it is. I have worked in insurance companies; that is, I have endeavoured to create and to put on a pretty fair footing a small company in my province, and I know how this goes. The inspector comes every year, looks up the books of -the company, finds out what are the outstanding policies and what is the amount of the reserve. He comes there with the law in his hands and he tells the company: You must present me with a certain value of certain investments in order to respond to the requirements of the law. There is a list of investments that serves to cover the reserve. But if the state comes in and says:	The
first thing I do is to impose upon you 4 per cent national debentures which must form part of your reserve, then I say:	You force
the company to lend you money at 4 per cent. There is no use in playing with words.
I do not say it is wrong but it must be examined into carefully. In the case of large companies that have been operating for years I do not think there is any harm and, indeed, there may be much good in such a policy. But if you enforce upon small com-
TMr. Bourassa.]
panies at the beginning certain values and thus restrict their earning capacity, you may put them into a rather difficult position to start with. I admit however that is a detail that will have to be studied. What interests me is the advancing of -the idea and it has to be taken up. We must not start with the idea that some of those -things are repugnant to past traditions. We have broken all traditions. We have put upon the shoulders of the people of this country a war debt of $2,600,000,000 for a quarrel in which Canada was no more concerned than Greenland.


Mr. GEARY:: Oh, nonsense.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: That is my view and
the view of many Canadians.


George Reginald Geary: I beg pardon. I was rather thinking aloud.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I have no objection to
people thinking otherwise. I respect all opinions, especially of those gentlemen who have sustained their opinions at their own risk and expense, as the hon. gentleman did.


George Reginald Geary: I am sorry I interrupted
the hon. gentleman.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I have much less respect for those who -have -taken the best advantage possible of that sincere sentiment in some and of the imposition of that war burden upon the rest of the country, to enrich themselves. The sooner we reach them in the most practical manner the better. But unfortunately I am afraid that the further we get away from the war, -the more difficult that will be. I agree with the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woods-worth) that the honest, equitable and sensible manner in which we should have provided for the reimbursement of our war debt would have been a capital levy during and immediately after the war, would have been to follow up the growth of capitalism during the war, in order to find out the source of prosperity of many of the industries and individuals who gathered wealth during the war, while masses of the people were shedding their blood and paying out their money. But of course the further we get away from the war, the more difficult it will be to apply this principle of justice, because at the present time, with -the system in vogue not only in -this country -but all the world over, a vast proportion of that infernal wealth, acquired by theft and crime, by the exploitation of the good sense, the patriotism and the blood of the masses of the people, is in -the hands of other parties who are innocent of its origin. That is one of -the results of the system of modern capitalism. The creators of immoral,

The Budget-Mr. Cantley
unreal wealth, soon find means of getting so many people to partake of the titles upon which their wealth reposes, that they create a community, I will not say of accomplices, but of associates who cry out, " socialism,'" "communism" and "spoliation" the moment the state comes out and challenges the validity of their titles or endeavours to tax them. That is the great difficulty.
But at least let us see things as they are; let us confess the reality of things. Let us instruct the people on that very situation and by all means let us endeavour to readjust our fiscal policy. Let us try to impose the burden of taxation, I will not say so much against the rich as for the relief of the poor. I partake of the views of the hon. member for West Calgary (Mr. Bennett) to this extent, that everybody must pay something, but I end with these words:	All
people must pay according to not only their means but their social usefulness to the nation and to the state. The father of a family who bears for twenty or twenty-five years the material and moral burden of raising the proper kind of children for this country is the best contributor to the material as well as to the moral wealth of that country, and I think that must be taken into account when you raise taxation and speak of the power of paying. The tax is not always paid in money although it takes a great deal of money to-day to raise a family. It is paid with mental effort, with moral dignity, with all contributions to the development of those young men and girls who will be the people of Canada to-morrow. I think everything we can do to help fathers of families to bear the social burden of taxation as easily as possible is the best contribution we can make to the prosperity of the country.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. THOMAS CANTLEY (Pictou):: Mr. Speaker, in continuing the debate on the budget I have no intention of tendering any lengthy or profuse compliments to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb); his native honesty is apparent to and his courtesy recognized by all members of the House irrespective of party affiliations. His ideals as to the best fiscal policy for this country naturally do not meet with the entire approval of hon. gentlemen on this side. Speaking for myself, I was disappointed, greatly disappointed, that the Minister of Finance made no provision looking to any relief or protection for the
iron and steel industry of Nova Scotia, or for any encouragement to the coal-mining industry of either eastern or western Canada. Providence has been exceptionally kind to the agricultural industry of this country during the past three years, and probably the great majority of hon. members will agree that whatever amount of prosperity we may have had in this country, be it great or small, is due almost entirely to the bountiful harvests which Canada has enjoyed during that period.
Before dealing with the budget I wish to refer to a statement made at the last session by the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa), and which is reported at page 550 of revised Hansard for 1926. Speaking on January 29th last year respecting our exports of raw materials, and replying to the then hon. member for South York, Mr. W. F. Maclean, he made some reference to the export of nickel from this country and its entry into Germany. The hon. member for Labelle had spoken of our extracting the mineral and sending it to the United States to be converted into the various forms for which nickel is adapted. Mr. Maclean interjected the remark "And to England", to which the hon. member for Labelle replied:
Not only to England, too, if my hon. friend will allow me. I should not like to open up that vista upon our so-called imperial policies, but I suppose my hon. friend knows that not a German warship could have been finished, not a German cannon could have been hardened to the point of usefulness, had it not been for the Canadian nickel controlled by the international company-
The hon. member for Labelle made some reference to the various armament firms of Great Britain, Germany and France, and then stated:
-so that every German cannon which was hardened with Canadian nickel and loaded with shells similarly hardened, which helped to kill sixty thousand of our sons, brought tremendous dividends to the numerous bishops, lords and members of parliament of England, who drew their dividends from the German weapons as well as the Germans did from English weapons.
These statements were commented on by the then leader of the opposition, Right Hon. Arthur Meighen. Replying to him the member for Labelle again referred to the matter and stated:
I should not like to develop this theme at too great length now, as I hope to have occasion to do so at a later date. I may say, however, that all my information was secured in London from high officials of the Naval department, from gentlemen connected with the Department of the Chancellor of Exchequer and from people who have traced the capitalization of the armour trust under which all those companies drew their dividends.
The Budget-Mr. Cantley

consumed in the winter months after the close of navigation in the St. Lawrence, such an outlet would go far to furnish employment to our miners during this-under present conditions-season of unemployment.
I should like to point out further that, as to the reductions made in the agricultural implement duty and the relief afforded the automobile manufacturers last year, the great bulk of the cost of doing so fell on the iron and steel trade of this country, and largely on that of the maritime provinces. To illustrate that point I would like to -take one item as given in the returns, which shows that the importation of these items in 1924 reached a value of $2,211,000. In 1925 it was slightly less, $2,035,000, while for the year 1926 it rose to $3,463,287, an increase of more than fifty per cent. Owing to the provision that one-half the value of the automobile had to be manufactured in Canada our manufacturers of cars imported billets from abroad-chiefly from the United States, the balance' from Germany-and from such steel billets and bars forged the automobile axles. That provision did not help the steel industry of Canada one iota, because Canadian steel was not used in the production of automobiles; it was all imported.
The iron and steel trade has had to bear all, or nearly all, the reductions made in duties on agricultural implements. Under the tariff exceptions covered by items 445, 446, 446b, 447b, 448 and 591, the imports of steel from the United States in 1925 represented a value of $767,706; in 1926 that value had climbed to $2,037,000. But -that is not a fair statement of the case, because prior to 1925 this class of steel enjoyed a rebate of 99 per cent. Allowing for this, however, the fact remains that over $2,000,000 worth of steel was imported free from the United States last year for the making of -agricultural implements. The Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company at one time supplied a considerable proportion of the agricultural steel used by the implement makers of Ontario and Quebec, but due to putting practically on the free list most of the material used in the manufacture of agricultural implements, the Scotia Company have been forced to scrap fully a quarter of a million dollars' worth of plant, designed, built and installed solely for the purpose of producing steel for the manufacture of these implements. That capital has been lost and that portion of our trade wiped out. Therefore I say that the steel industry has had to bear the brunt of all the concessions given in recent years to both the implement and automobile manufacturers of this country.

The tariff board has functioned for about a year, and so far as the public is aware has accomplished very little of a constructive nature, and so far, as regards the coal or steel industries, simply nothing. The Minister of Finance this afternoon gave us more information than we have had hitherto in regard to what has been done by that board. I rather think that his statement of what it has achieved was not such as to greatly impress the House with its value.
I am sorry the minister is not in his seat, because I should like to point out to him what the situation is in some of the towns of the maritimes as a result of the condition of affairs that I have attempted -to describe. On the hillside above the Scotia plants at Trenton, also at New Glasgow, are hundreds of steel workers' houses. Many of them are empty; others are lost to the owners who, having invested the savings of a lifetime, are now being foreclosed and sold out by loan companies. The builders of these houses and hundreds of others of our best steel workers, mechanics and fitters, able to take their place alongside the best mechanics on the continent, are to-day in Detroit and other United States cities, solely because the steel trade of Nova Scotia has been -the victim of - a defective tariff policy.
I have before me a copy of the Canadian tariff. It contains about seventy items which are on the free list or under the 99 per cent rebate clause. This Canadian iron and steel tariff is the most irrational, illogical and mixed mass of oult-of-date items that it is possible to imagine. We have in this tariff items that have stood unchanged since the first iron and steel tariff was formulated in this country. Some of these items refer to classes of goods and materials that are not made and have not been -made -in Canada for twenty years.
I refer to Swedish rolled iron and rolled steel nail rods for horseshoe nails. No Swedish iron horseshoe nails have been made in Canada for years, and still that item remains as paint of the tariff. There is another item referring to the small spindle that goes into the knob of a door lock. It has stood on the free list for thirty yeaTS, although there is not a -mill in Canada that could not roll in a few shifts all of this material consumed in Canada in the past ten years. I could also refer the House to a lot of other items that are just as objectionable and just as ridiculous.
The iron and steel pipe makers of Ontario and Quebec are favoured by the present tariff to an extent that probably is not realized by many hon. members. They are able to import iron and steel skelp from the United States

The Budget-Mr. Cantley
or from any other foreign country ait a duty of five per cent, while they have a tariff on their own product running from 27i per cent to 30 per cent. There is no reason why the furnaces and mills of Nova Scotia generally should not provide that skelp, and would if we were given an equitable proportion of the protection on pipe. Surely, Sir, we are entitled to the same protection on steel skelp as the manufacturers enjoy on their pipe. I go further. We have a very much greater right to protection, because the capital employed in the production of the steel embraced in the skelp is infinitely greater than the capital employed in the manufacture of skelp inlto pipe. In addition to that, the volume of labour employed in turning skelp into pipe, which is a very simple operation, is very slight compared to the labour involved in the production of the skelp. Now, why should we have a tariff which discriminates against an industry in which large volumes of labour are employed and large amounts of capital are invested as compared with one in which the capital investment and the labour employed are trifling.
I should like to refer now very briefly to the question of coal. During the war years Nova Scotia bunkered the warships, battle cruisers, and converted liners, which kept the Atlantic trade route free to national and neutral commerce. With Nova Scotia coal was also bunkered thousands of British, allied and neutral steamers, liners and freighters, which put in for examination at both Sydney and Halifax en route to British and allied ports, being freighted with men, munitions and army supplies. Nova Scotia was then all-essential to the successful prosecution of the war. Now the war is over and our miners must remain idle during most of the winter months because of defective trade, tariff and transportation policies. To obtain the maximum output from our Nova Scotia collieries as now developed and equipped we must have more men during the active shipping season than are now available. At the present time, during the winter season, thousands are idle. This condition must be remedied and I ask the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) and the government to now provide that remedy. This lack of men during -the shipping season will explain some of the difficulties to which our friends at the lower end of this side of the chamber have been referring in the last two or three days. It is imperative that we have more miners in the summer months in N ova Scotia than we have to-day if we are to attain our maximum output. What happens when the St. Lawrence is closed to navigation? We provided two and a half million
tons of coal for the St. Lawrence last summer.
It is indeed our only market. During the winter months that market is closed by ice. The result is that a considerable proportion of the miners in Cape Breton to-day are idle, including some of -those who recently came from the other side, although their condition is no worse than that of our native mining population. This condition is altogether due to the fact that we have not a sane, reasonable, workable tariff policy in regard to fuel. Why should we buy from sixteen to twenty million tons of coal a year from the United States when there lies in Canada, in the east, in the west and in the central provinces, one-seventh of the entire coal supply of the whole world? If we were sensible we would so regulate our affairs as to be independent as to fuel of any nation on the face of the globe. Why do we not do so? The time will come, and it will not be long deferred when the people of Ontario and Quebec will be unable to obtain American anthracite, which to-day they think indispensable. I have here some fifteen resolutions presented to the House of Representatives in the United States during the years from 1923 to 1926, memorializing congress to enact laws to prevent the exportation of anthracite to any country whatever. This for the reason that the people of the United States realize that within a very few years their supply of this coal will be entirely exhausted. I wish it were exhausted now, because there is no reason why we should buy one ton of anthracite coal from any source, especially when those who have it do not want to sell it to us.


Mr. PERRAS:: What was the difference between the price of coal in July and in October of last year?


Thomas Cantley: Where?


Fizalam-William Perras: In the maritime provinces.


Thomas Cantley: There was no appreciable difference so far as I am aware.


Fizalam-William Perras: Give us the figures.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Thomas Cantley: This national fuel question is not a laughing matter; it is a serious question in the province of Nova Scotia and it, should 'be regarded in the same light by every member of this House, no matter from what section of the country he may come. I trust that the Minister of Finance when he comes to consider the Duncan report will so approach the question of coking plants that we shall be able to dispose satisfactorily of
The Budget-Mr. Cantley

our fuel problem, with a view to replacing American anthracite. If this were done it would not only be satisfactory to Nova Scotia but it would cheapen the cost of this form of fuel for the people of central Canada.
I have already made a slight reference to the tariff board and I want to offer the Minister of Finance a suggestion. The customs tariff as it now stands and has stood for several years is grossly unfair to the maritimes, and instead of a board of inquiry who, during a year's labour, have produced nothing tangible, the minister should himself investigate the matters affected, as did his predecessor, who took the trouble to go over the whole o.f Canada, holding sittings in various industrial centres and familiarizing himself with the actual conditions. He did not rely on any commission to supply him with information which he considered it his duty to obtain at first hand. The Minister of Finance is a level headed business Scot, and I hope he will appreciate the importance of the suggestion I make and act upon it. If he does we shall be delighted to see him in Nova Scotia, and to do what we can to give him all the information he wants which will be of benefit to him in his capacity of Finance minister as well as to the province of Nova Scotia and the Dominion at large.


Edward Joseph Garland: Before I discuss the budget I desire to refer for a few moments to the address delivered by the hon. member for Toronto West Centre (Mr. Hocken). I was amazed at the extraordinary presumption of knowledge of farming displayed by that hon. gentleman, and the most astonishing statement he made in the course of his speech was that as a result of the introduction of certain improvements in farming implements, the farmers had nothing whatever to do between reaping and harvesting. That may be true in one or two instances where the farmers can grow their crops under dry conditions which enable them to use what is known as the combined harvester and so thresh as well as cut about the same time. But if the hon. gentleman knew anything at all about farming he would know that the number of these machines in Canada is quite limited, the cost being so very high; and he would know also that a good part of the price of these machines is due unquestionably to the protection which the implements still carry. Further on in his remarks, the hon. gentleman rebuked the farmers of the west, who he said were more prosperous than any other class of the population. I hope I quote him correctly. He

thought that the farmers in the prairie provinces were in a more prosperous condition than any other class, and he gave as the reason the fact that they received more privileges from governments than anybody else. He cited amongst other matters the Crowsnest agreement and pointed out that the country suffered because of the application of these rates, which were, he said, unfair. Further, that the railway companies did not profit by these rates; and so on. I do not wish to go at any length into a discussion of this question; I do not need to. The answer is clear and simple. Hon. members in all parts of the House who were members of the committee investigating the Crowsnest pass agreement, know very well that under oath before that committee the. unrefuted statement was made that even if the whole Crowsnest pass agreement were restored, rates under it, excepting in one instance, would still be higher than rates on the same commodities over similar distances in easterr Canada. That is my answer to the hon. gentleman who alleges that we are profiteering, so to speak, at the expense of the railway companies and also of the general population of this country.
Furthermore, quite recently Mr. Vien, a member of the Board of Railway Commissioners, made this statement to the Canadian Pacific railway counsel:
The Crowsnest rates are very, very profitable.
Subsequently Canadian Pacific officials under cross-examination agreed that the rates were very, very profitable. Where then does the argument of the hon. member for Toronto West Centre stand? The hon. gentleman should also remember this fact, that on all the products we ship from the western provinces outward for sale anywhere else we secure special rates only on export commodities. Our products when sold are sold subject to a deduction of transportation rates from the price. The hon. member should get into his mind this fact, that on the other hand manufacturers add to the price of their commodities the total freight to the destination, so that not only are we as primary producers compelled to have deducted from our price the transportation rates on what we sell at the time we sell it, but when we buy commodities from the hon. gentleman's friends in eastern Canada-and we are very glad when we can buy them; they are sometimes very

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
good-we have to pay transportation charges upon them all the way out. We are thus caught both ways, and still he alleges that this is a special privilege to us.
There are many other questions which might be taken into consideration but I do not wish to dwell too long on the hon. member's speech. Let me take up briefly just one other point at this stage. He suggested that to-day, owing to the introduction of labour-saving devices, we were becoming very prosperous. Of course we know that is ridiculous. We know that the same labour-saving devices are applied in eastern Ontario and farming conditions there are anything but prosperous. Although in western Canada we had last year a relatively large crop, the grade was very low and the net result to the farmer was not high. On account of the quantity of grain reaped by most of us it was a year in which we did not lose as much as we lost in other years and some districts made gains. On the whole conditions were little better than those of t'he last five years so far as agriculture was concerned. It is only fair to make that statement. But for hon. gentlemen to suggest that we are amongst the prosperous classes is ridiculous.
About the time, let us say of Lincoln, out of every one hundred persons seventy were engaged in agriculture. This meant simply that seventy farmers or farming people produced enough food supplies for themselves and thirty others and, in addition, they may have had a little for export. To-day, as a .result undoubtedly of labour saving devices and improved farming methods, roughly thirty out of every one hundred persons are engaged in. agriculture. This means that thirty persons are supplying themselves and seventy others with food supplies and, in addition, have a vast surplus for sale in foreign markets. On that basis, if on no other, agriculture should be the most prosperous industry in this country, instead of being amongst the most depressed. The proposition is so simple that one need not worry about it any longer.
May I say to the Minister of Finance, a man for whom I have the deepest respect and affection, that he has succeeded at least in introducing into this House a rich man's budget. It is a triumph for the rich man in this country. It is disastrous for the poor man in this country. It offers nothing to the great working classes, the great masses of the people, except what they can secure on what may through good fortune be passed on to them through possible reductions in the price
of commodities as a result of the reduction in the sales tax. It is problematical whether retailers and wholesalers will .pass on that reduction except in the case of high-priced commodities; but as regards articles of low value there is very little possibility that any of the reductions will be passed on to the common people. Therefore let me sum the budget up at the opening of my remarks; let me give it a title, we will say. It is a rich man's budget. You will like Robb if you have a big income; you will not like Robb if you have not a big income. Some hon. members belonging to the august Conservative party to my right say that they do not like him; that they hate him. I think they do political^ speaking; none of us does, personally speaking.
The Minister of, Finance appears to have taken a good deal of his policies from Mr. Mellon. Mr. Mellon is a very astute man, but he represents, as no other man does in the United States, the big interests of that country. Far be it for me to say that the Minister of Finance represents the big interests of this country, but certainly he is doing his best to assist them. There have recently come to us some despatches in which it is indicated that Secretary Mellon's triumph in the enactment of the new tax law means that he has saved to the richest individuals and corporations in the United States more than $3,000,000,000 in federal taxes. We have not enough people in this country to enable the Minister of Finance to do that; but if we had, no doubt he would do it. Twenty millionaires were listed, showing the amounts they saved by the 1926 tax law over their tax of last year. For example, Mr. Rockefeller Junior, who gave $10,000 to the Republican ' campaign fund in 1924, saved, as a result of the introduction of that law, $2,762,000 of the payment of $6,277,669 he made in 1925. Mr. Henry Ford, who does not seem to have contributed to any campaign fund, is said to have saved $1,147,875, and Edsel Ford saved $949,544. Strangely enough, Mr. Mellon himself comes next-I do not know whether the Minister of Finance is in the same position; perhaps he can inform us later-with a saving of $828,348. He too gave $10,000 to the party campaign fund in 1924. Far be it from me to suggest that there is any connection between the income tax reductions of this year and the campaign funds of either party, but the time is now come in this country when the fullest possible examination into
634	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
the sources of campaign funds is overdue, and on that point I intend to dwell at some length a little later on.
Before I get to that stage let me take up the budget items in sequence. It is proposed to make a reduction of 10 per cent in all rates of the income tax. Last year's reduction was swallowed-well, reluctantly by some of the members of this comer of the House, because we were convinced, or had been convinced iby specious argument, that it meant an increase in taxation of the richer people and a saving to those who did not have big incomes. However, we unwillingly swallowed it. The situation in the House may have justified us to some extent in so doing. We had an extensive program of legislation to carry into effect, but notwithstanding the plausible argument that the rich were being taxed more and the poor less it would not have taken much for us to have opposed it. But this year no longer does there exist any excuse for supporting a budget which proposes to reduce the income tax all the way round. I say so because in this country the great majority of the people, by far the great majority of the people, pay no income tax, nor can they pay it. The income tax, indicated this afternoon, is a war tax. That is, it was introduced during the war years for the purpose of assisting in meeting the cost of the war. It was introduced into Great Biitain, about the time of the Grimean war for a similar purpose, but its advocates have always insisted on the introduction of the income tax in order that amongst other tax reforms it may be used by steadily increasing stages to replace unfair indirect taxation. Hon. members to the right of the Speaker, who are fairminded men who sincerely and conscientiously believe in low tariff and think that the future of this country depends upon the development of her natural resources rather than on the fostering of artificial industries, will certainly have some difficulty in explaining the position which they have taken so far on this point. They should not overlook the fact-I do not think they are overlooking the fact, they are simply blinding their minds temporarily to it; but it will foe brought subsequently to their attention with great force and strength that every step taken in the direction of reduction of income tax takes them further and further away from tariff reduction. Not only that, but it takes away from them the ability to tax those who can pay and are able to pay because of the war, because of the profits made in the war, because they were the 
people who accumulated during the war vast sums, vast fortunes, as a direct result of the war. It is true some of it has been distributed through death, inheritance, distribution of estates, and so forth, but the bald fact remains that the people who now *are in a better position than any others to pay income tax are those who have profited, either directly or indirectly, from war conditions. It is not fair to the public, it is not fair even to hon. members opposite, that a Minister of Finance should introduce into this House a budget in which I say to hon. members opposite they had no part. I challenge hon. members opposite to tell me if they were ever taken into consultation upon this budget. The public does not know it. The public assumes -always has assumed, I am sorry to say- that the Minister of Finance before the introduction of the budget at least consults the party that sits behind him and is supposed to support him. I do not believe a single member opposite saw the budget, had it read to them, or knew anything about it before it was brought into the House. They are in the position that I am. It is not until after its delivery that they are able to form any idea with respect to it or are in a position to criticise it. Is that fair? It is in my opinion a most ridiculous position in which to place hon. members. That the nation's annual statement should be prepared by one man without consultation with anybody else is bad enough, but .that he should budget for the nation's future, for the business or finances of the year, without consulting .any of his party other than possibly the Prime Minister, is a most ridiculous situation, and one which still further emphasizes the necessity for the private members in this House, on all sides and in all parties, to do what they can to strengthen their own hands, and to take away from the executive council the steadily increasing usurpation of the control of the House.
Now I am going to come to another stage in this discussion. The Minister of Finance in his budget statement indicated that the war depression had passed. There is not a man in the country believes that-.that is a man who thinks. There may be some who simply read headlines and will swallow such statements wholesale. There may be thousands in the country, aye millions, who, reading the headlines, "Twenty-seven million dollars tax reduction, twenty-seven million dollars savings to the people," will think that that is actually the case. It is so absurd to

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
put the thing in that way that it would be hardly worth while answering if it were not for the fact that so many people will believe it. So will people believe that there has actually been a doing away with, a destruction of, post-war depression. There may have been some abatement, but if the Minister of Finance had only turned to the statistics he himself placed on Hansard without reading them to the House he would have seen that fifty per cent-no less than fifty per cent-of the annual expenditure is still directly attributable to the war. On page 390 of Hansard a table, placed there by the Minister of Finance, shows that interest on the public debt, the result of war, amounts to SI 16,607,000 and there are these other figures; war pensions, $36,650,000; soldiers' civil re-establishment, $7,200,000; soldier land settlement (administration), $1,300,000-and by the way it does not take into account the tremendous losses that are going to follow that unfortunate scheme; Imperial War Graves Commission, $810,000; battlefield memorials, $200,000; adjustment of war claims, $155,000; or a grand total of $162,922,000, directly attributable to the war. And yet the minister says that the war depression is over. Yet the minister says:	"Let us get rid of nuisance
taxes and war taxes." It is all right for my hon. friends to my right. They have always been supporters of indirect taxation and in opposition to direct taxation, but my hon. friends opposite have certainly nothing to be proud of in a budget of this type. The Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), who comes down here from Saskatchewan surrounded by a galaxy, a veritable squadron, of low-tariff men, now finds himself in the pitiable position of having to swallow a budget which has not a single tariff reduction in it but worse still represents action directly opposed to the whole principle of direct taxation and opposed to the very principles he himself has very frequently advocated. I admit that political exigencies may require him to adapt himself to conditions, but I cannot believe for a moment that the Minister of Railways is comfortable; even now he scratches his eyebrows with uneasiness and with worry.


Charles Avery Dunning: I would ask my hon.
friend to explain, while he is on the subject of direct and indirect taxation, the gasoline tax of three cents a gallon imposed by the United Farmers government of Alberta. It may be interesting to reconcile the principles.


Edward Joseph Garland: I should
say the gasoline tax was a direct tax. It is applied to the cost of the article and we know dashed well when we are paying it. Its visibility is unquestioned, and it ought to appeal to the hon. member for West Calgary. There is no doubt about its visibility, and if that is the best answer the Minister of Railways -can make to my suggestion it simply demonstrates to its utter and complete conclusion the unfortunate position in which he finds himself.


Charles Avery Dunning: I may have something to say later on.


Edward Joseph Garland: One of the most eminent professors probably in this country, Dr. J. C. Hemmeon, of McGill university, recently gave a very illuminating and interesting address to a group of individuals in this city, and among other things said by him was this:
Income tax accounts for only eighteen to twenty per cent of the total federal taxation in Canada, while in the United States income taxation raises fifty per cent, and in Great Britain a still higher proportion.
Yet the Liberal government, Liberal with a large "L", is getting further and further away and collecting less than ever before from direct taxation. How under heaven is the party in power at the moment going to justify to the electorate, so badly deceived, the position they have taken on this question? The professor goes on:
It is a little strange that when our income tax was the same as the United States, they raised 30 times as much from this tax as we did in Canada.
Now wait for the question: Was not the population larger? Yes, but by how much? Twelve or thirteen times. There is the answer. I do not think we have had in Canada a more inefficiently conducted department than the department in charge of the collection of the income tax. My hon. friend from Toronto West Centre criticised the farming class to-day so bitterly on this question and charged that we were self-interested in our position with regard to the income tax, implying that the position we were taking as a group on this question was directed purely by self-interest, that we were not paying income tax as a class, and we -are not I admit except for a very small proportion. Let me just give the House some figures, and still further assist the hon. member for Toronto West Centre by quoting from an article which appeared in the Vancouver Province a short time ago:

626	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
The federal income tax for the last fiscal year yielded $56,197,056, according to a report made by the Department of Finance at Ottawa. The various provinces paid as follows:
Ontario	$26,539,342
Quebec	 18,281,878
British Columbia	 4,150,852
Manitoba	 3,423,623
Alberta	 1,445,075
Saskatchewan	 872,761
New Brunswick	 712,187
Nova Scotia	 693,403
Yukon	 40,503
Prince Edward Island.. ..	37,428
The returns show that Ontario paid nearly half the tax, and that Ontario and Quebec together paid four-fifths of it. British Columbia, the third province, paid something over 6 per cent. It is worth noting that British Columbia paid nearly as much income tax as Manitoba and Saskatchewan together, though our population is not much more than half theirs, and that we paid three times as much as the three maritime provinces, whose population greatly exceeds ours.
If these figures mean that our prosperity here on the coast was proportionately greater than the prosperity of the prairie provinces or the maritimes, we should have no complaint to make. But it scarcely means that. It means, on the contrary, that we, being more highly industrialized, have larger payrolls and therefore more people who are shining marks for the shafts of the income-tax collector. As a matter of fact, the income tax of Canada is paid almost entirely by the people of the cities whose incomes are easily ascertainable. The farmers, even in prosperous years, escape.
I do not think a more unfair statement could have been made. Now, Mr. Speaker, I wish to offer a challenge to the government and to my hon. friend from Toronto West Centre. If the farmers are not paying income tax it is only because of one of three reasons, or a combination of them: (1) They have no income on which to pay the tax; (2) the income tax collectors are inefficient in collecting, are not looking after their job; or (31 the farmers are crooked and are deliberately defrauding the income tax collector.


Mr. CAHAN:: Or fourthly?


Edward Joseph Garland: I do not
know of any other reason. Perhaps the hon. gentleman would suggest it.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Or fourthly, that the income tax provisions as they are now applied bear less heavily upon the income of the farmer, who raises the products of his own consumption and for the support and maintenance of his family, than upon those engaged in industrial occupation, to whose income the tax applies without any such deductions.


Edward Joseph Garland: I will read that over to-morrow.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Edward Joseph Garland: I do not
like hon. members to laugh at that, because I do not intend to be discourteous in any way. I am simply thinking of my own line of argument, and I find it difficult to get my mind off it and concentrate on. some other point that may come up.
This is what I say to the hon. member for Toronto West Centre and the members on this side of the House, and to the press that has deliberately calumniated the farmer, and to any members on the other side of the House who may have been deluded by that propaganda: I challenge a full investigation into farm incomes. I challenge it with a full knowledge of what the results will be. We do not have to go very far back. We have only to go back to 1923 and study the evidence that was given under oath before the special committee on agricultural conditions to find out if the statements made on this side of the House and in the press are accurate. No, Mr. Speaker, as a class we have nothing to fear from the fullest investigation into our incomes in recent years. We are not evading the tax. We are willing to pay the tax, and always have been, and wTe only wish that we had an income that was large enough to be taxed.
I do hope, Mr. Speaker, that this will put some kind of quietus to this unfair propaganda which has deluded people who sincerely believe it-labourers in the cities, the working class, artisan, even the professional classes. In cities like Toronto and Montreal, many of these people firmly believe, as a result of this wretched stuff, that the farmers, especially in western Canada, are deliberately evading the income tax. I deny it, and I challenge the fullest investigation into it. I ask the hon. members who believe it, the hon. member for Toronto West Centre, for instance, to move a resolution for a committee, and he will get my whole-hearted support, and I am satisfied the support of this corner of the House, and members on the other side as well.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Why don't you move for the committee yourself?


Edward Joseph Garland: Because I am so convinced that the thing is an utter mistake, a most ridiculous misstatement, and that only insensible persons or people who have no knowledge whatsoever of the facts would believe it.

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: It might remove a very erroneous impression, then.


Edward Joseph Garland: I would be delighted to do it. Mr. Speaker, may I ask that the government establish such a committee? Let me offer it to them as a recommendation. I am afraid, however, that the Minister of Finance will find himself in a difficult position.


Charles Avery Dunning: The hon. gentleman knows that an investigation into the incomes of a class would produce no results. The question is as to the income of the individual in every class as distinct from every other individual, and that is the difficulty of arriving at an accurate conclusion.


Edward Joseph Garland: If the minister wants a clearer and a surer way to get at the facts, let him publish the income tax returns of the farming people in Canada. I offer that information as to myself freely. I am quite satisfied that if the department will only publish the income tax statements of the farming class, hon. members will get a good deal of information.


Charles Avery Dunning: I agree. My hon. friend appears to think I am attacking his line of argument. Not at all. I am simply stating that the method of investigation he proposes would be futile, so far as results are concerned, as applied to a whole class. I think that the great difficulty with regard to the income tax is the fact that a very great many farmers have not the accurate means of ascertaining their own income which other business men have.


Edward Joseph Garland: As a representative of the farming class, I ask that in justice to us, and in justice to the public generally, the whole veil of secrecy over income taxation and income tax returns be removed. Let us have the truth. Let us have the whole situation put frankly before the people, and we shall see then who it is that is defrauding the administration.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Would it not suit your purpose just as well to make a clear distinction between the assessable income of the farmer and the assessable income of the industrial worker? The industrial worker pays rent. He is not allowed for it. He pays for every single article of food that enters into the consumption of his family. There is no deduction. But the farmer to-day has rent free, and he has the products of his own farm for the support of himself and his family, which the income tax does not touch.
32649-40J


Edward Joseph Garland: It is simply another demonstration of the unfortunate position in which armchair farmers sometimes get themselves. Let me tell hon. members that we have to build our houses. We have that capital investment to make. If we do not have to pay rent, all right, I agree qcith you that we do not; but one would imagine from what you say that we do not have to build our houses, that the food we consume and the lands on which we raise produce came to us simply by waving a little wand. The fact is we have to dig in, and we have to build our houses, and if our labour is not equivalent to the wages paid artisans, then what about it?


Mr. SPENCE (Maple Creek):: We have
to show these things in our returns too.


Edward Joseph Garland: Yes, we
have to. We place on our returns an amount for every chicken consumed by the household. We make a return for all of them. For every egg produced. We do not have many eggs that spoil.
In a further analysis of the situation I would like to point out to the House that out of a population of something over 9,000,000 people only some 71,000 people were totally relieved from income tax returns last year. I am not sorry these people got some relief: but I believe the tax is based on a correct principle; I am completely in accord with the principle, as the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) pointed out, that every man should pay some tax. But it is absurd for any hon. member to believe that when a man buys anything he is not paying a tax, because there is not a thing which we consume, there is not a piece of clothing we put on our backs, there is not a household utensil, carpet, basin, soap or towel, upon which we are not paying a tax which goes into the pocket of either the manufacturer or the merchant. The hon. gentleman need not snort. It is a fact, and all the snorting in the world will not get us away from if. An ex-Minister of Finance, Mr. Fielding, stated in a budget speech that for every dollar that came into the revenue of the country as a result of customs tariff taxation three dollars went into the pockets of the manufacturers. He had charge of the administration of these things, and should really know what he is talking about.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: But my hon. friend does
not know.
62S	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)


Edward Joseph Garland: He was not challenged. My hon. friend did not challenge him and cannot challenge him.
Out of the total population of Canada last year there were 3,173,160 people gainfully employed, and one-fifteenth of that number were subject to income tax. Fourteen-fifteenths of the population gainfully employed-not of the total population but simply of those gainfully employed-did not pay any income tax. That means that their incomes were not high enough to pay taxes, or that the tax was not efficiently collected.
Let us pass to another stage, and ask who profit by the Robb budget this year. Take the city in which we now reside, and, applying that question to the city, find out just the exact position. Mr. P. H. Veale made a report of the income taxes paid to Ottawa in the year 1926, and this was published in the Ottawa Journal on 27th January, 1927. I will not read it all, but will ask permission to place it on Hansard.


Charles Avery Dunning: Is that the federal
income tax?


Edward Joseph Garland: 
S3 O) 4)
[Stage Direction]
3 M 2 2 a) O E * a Z & c < cd.S
2	3
70.8	1,760,088
23.9	3,437,451
3.1	1,460,376
1.9	2,446,207
0.3	2,648,520
0J T3 tC <1>
co 1
a o, o
1 § S
Pp *.p
14.
29.
13.
21.
23.
7.013	100.%	11,752,642	100.%
There are over 36,000 wage earners, male and
female, in the city of Ottawa. Of these only
7.013	have sufficient income to qualify them to pay income tax. Thus 28,987 (or 80.52 per cent) of Ottawa wage earners are not living, but merely existing on a pittance.
It is not satisfactory to know that a person with an income of $130,000 would be able to buy a couple more limousines or build an addition to his house, and* it is not right to encourage the rich man to spend a little more money on luxuries while the great burden of the war debt still rests on the backs of the poor man. It is with regret that I find the Liberal party adopting a policy of this kind.
On the question of farmers and the income tax, let me indicate to the hon. members for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr, Cahan) and Toronto West Centre (Mr. Hocken) one of the reasons why the farmers have not paid income tax as a class generally. The total capital invested in agriculture in the year 1925, according to the Canada Year Book, was $7,508,645,000 The value of all agricultural produce in that year was $l,453,3oS,000. Note that the investment of $7,500,000,000 gave a return value on the produce raised of $1,453,000,000.
Now let us come to the capital invested in manufacturing. The amount is $3,380,000,000. The manufacturing production, less cost of raw material, was $1,311,000,000. In other words, with a total capitalization of a little more than twice as much, agriculture receives approximately the same amount of return as the manufacturers do. Is it not a ridiculous position for a manufacturer to rise and claim for one instant that the farmers are defraud-

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
ing the country in regard to the income tax, that they are evading it, getting rid of it, and dodging it, While they,-the manufacturers- have placed upon their shoulders the full burden of it? You cannot convince the farmer that that is the case.
Now I come to one other question. For the fiscal year ending 31st March, 1926, the excise tax collected on matches, a pretty useful little article, was $3,991,999. On the basis of these collections the reduction the income tax made by the Minister of Finance this year will amount to roughly $548,000, over half a million dollars. Now, let us see who is going to get it. In the pre-war years if you went into a store you could buy one of these small boxe3 of smoker's matches for a cent. Taxation was imposed and the price went up to two boxes for five cents. These two boxes carry half a cent excise duty apiece, the two together one cent. The minister cuts off 25 per cent of that one cent-one-quarter of a cent. I ask any hon. gentleman in this House to indicate to me how the retailer is going to pass on to you or to me as consumers that quarter of a cent saving. So much for that. The housewife goes into a Dominion store and buys three boxes of matches in a single carton costing 25 cents, each box holding 300 matches, or 900 in all. The total saving on that carton as a result of the tax reduction will amount to 21 cents. Who is going to pass that on to the consumer? The fact is clear, Mr. Speaker, that not one cent of that $580,000 will go back to the consuming public; but it is a direct loss in revenue to the country. Who get it? Well, I hesitate to suggest that the hon. member for West Calgary Mr. Bennett) will benefit in any degree from it. It might enhance the value of his stock-but that is his own business anyhow. The fact of the matter is that the match companies in this country will have to pay to the government $5S0,O0O less this year than they did last year, supposing the consumption of matches is relatively the same. They may pass the saving back to the wholesaler, 'being very honest and altruistic.
Charles Avery Dunning: They must.


Edward Joseph Garland: All right, we will grant that they must. The wholesaler might pass it back to the retailer. But the hon. gentleman who has just interrupted me, the Minister of Railways, himself knows that as far as the western part of this country is concerned we do not deal in fractions of five cents. He knows that all over western Canada you would be laughed at to suggest that you
could go into a store with 4J cents to buy two boxes of matches, or that the retailer is going to deduct 2J cents from 25 cents, the price of the 900-match carton. The fact of the matter is, and I challenge contradiction, that not a dollar of this tax reduction will be passed back to the consuming public; but the treasufy is absolutely out of pocket $580,000.
Far be it from me, Sir, to suggest that this is the result of any peculiar situation that may have developed, but it is significant to note that there appears to have been established during this session an understanding of some nature or other in which the public certainly are interested, and upon which the public should be informed-an understanding between both the old parties.


An hon. MEMBER:: No, there is no understanding at all.


Edward Joseph Garland: Well, perhaps my hon. friend had better wait a moment before he becomes too voluble about it. I read with considerable interest, after indeed listening to it previously, the speech of the hon. member for West Calgary. The whole tone was so placatory, so mild, so unlike the usual form of criticism that we have had in so able a manner from Sir Henry Drayton and other financial critics in past days, that one at least suspected there might be an ethiopian dodging around somewhere in this old woodpile. I was not surprised then at the speech by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) delivered some time previously, and I began to understand it. It was an amazing speech for a member of this House who has in the past been one of the bitterest critics the party opposite ever had, and one of the most able, a man who prepares himself with the greatest care, but tinctures with the bitterest gall the criticism he pours on members opposite.


Mr. JACOBS:: He may have seen the error of his ways.


Edward Joseph Garland: He may
have, but one wonders, and is justified in wondering, what sudden and extremely illuminating light came upon him to show him the error of his ways. It might have been a match-it might have been the striking of a whole box of matches. I thank the hon. member-I am not sure what constituency he comes from-for the suggestion, coming as it did from my hon. friend's own party. In his speech the member for Vancouver Centre intimated that the Conservative party had
630	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
expedited the passing of certain measures. They certainly have. He continued:
This afternoon we advanced several important bills for the Minister of Finance with scarcely any comment,-
It is quite true-and so different from last year!
-and I must say that the ministry have been very prompt in making brief statements and explanations.
The ministry certainly have.
I am exceedingly anxious that we should expedite the business of this session. We have had a couple of years of pretty hard parliamentary duty, and I think both the country and parliament will be the better for a little surcease from bitterness and controversy.
No doubt about that whatever.
I can say on behalf of my colleagues on this side that we have tendered to the House our hearty cooperation.
Now, to whom does he refer by in "the House?" Well, there is only one group of individuals to whom it would be necessary to extend cooperation. I cannot imagine the party to my right extending much cooperation to us. They had their opportunity last year -and did not take it. I assume therefore that some cooperative understanding has been reached with hon. members of the government, and I should like to ask hon. members opposite what .is the understanding, when this year the Liberal party, having gone to the people only a short time ago and having been returned by a fairly large majority as the result of, in part, a low tariff budget and low tariff pledges, come down to the House with a strong phalanx from western Canada, all of them I presume honest and sincere low tariff men. Western Canada sent down one Conservative-one protectionist. Well, so far as the public can judge, so far as I can judge, that one man has more influence in the councils of the Liberal party than the whole phalanx from Saskatchewan, than all the members on that side of the House-and hon. members on this side of the House now assure me that is right.


An hon. MEMBER:: Absolutely.


Edward Joseph Garland: What further evidence can you, Mr. Speaker, ask? I leave it to their conscience. I leave them to the people.


An hon. MEMBER:: They have none.


Edward Joseph Garland: I do not
doubt that a bit either. I do not think there is much conscience in a cooperative under-

standing between two political parties, each alleging itself to be opposed to the other, and inevitably putting up the same sort of sham battle to delude the people. It is another case of dear old Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let me predict, Mr. Speaker, that during the remainder of this session you will see just one little scrap. It will be the pleasantest little session you ever saw so far as both the old parties are concerned, and onfy will they make one little mock battle, to interest the. public and delude them, on the Duncan report. When the maritime question comes before the House, oh yes, my friends here will have to raise some sort of noise, unless they get all it recommends; and if they get it all, in what position are the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Forke), the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell), the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Stewart) and all those other ardent low tariff spirits going to be? Under heaven what sense is there in the formation of a cabinet before a party of low tariff supporters in whose personnel there is almost an even break between protectionists and low tariff men? What under heaven is the use of it? If the Liberal party is sincere, if it believes in low tariffs and wants to have them, the only thing the Liberal party can do is to rid itself of the protectionists in the cabinet. Certainly the Liberal party can never adopt a low tariff policy nor carry such a policy into effect so long as the Minister of Finance is the person who now occupies that position, and so long as he is backed by the hon. member for North Bruce (Mr. Malcolm) and others as well. And there are many others. What a pretty spectacle it must be to see the hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler) and the hon. member for North Bruce, together with the Minister of Finance-I hardly think he worries the rest of them very much-sitting on one side, three of them, against the Minister of Railways, the Minister of Immigration and the Minister of Agriculture on the other side. A pretty spectacle indeed, and almost aa ridiculous as the present railway commission; three men sitting on either side and blocking the proceedings whenever the need arises.
The hon, member for Toronto West Centre (Mr. Hocken) interrupted the hon. member for South Huron (Mr. McMillan) during the course of that gentleman's speech with a question as to why the farmers in the United States did not advocate free trade if they were in such wretched circumstances. And a further question was asked the hon. gentleman in regard to the McNary-Haugen bill. The

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
hon. member for South Huron was asked to explain that bill. Put the two together and you have the answer. The McNary-Haugen bill is a bribe to agriculture in the United States to accept protection; it cannot be interpreted as anything else. It is a bribe of the worst type and the farmers there will suffer for it, if they accept it. Do not let hon. members delude themselves. I heard the proceedings some time ago of one of the rural conventions in the United States -the Master Farmers' annual banquet in Nebraska. As hon. members who study agricultural conditions in the United States no doubt know, the master farmers in the United States are an organization of the more reactionary farmer class; they are the wealthy farmers, the men who have made a supreme success of their calling. One would therefore expect a measure of reaction from that group, and any bearings in the direction of shall we say, anti-protection would come from them as somewhat in the nature of a surprise. Yet only in January of this year at their annual meeting in Nebraska they loudly and apparently unanimously applauded the idea of complete free trade in pure bred stock. They suggested further that so far as they were concerned they would not be hurt by a lowering of the tariff barriers against our cattle. Nor would they be hurt. If, therefore, anyone suggests that the farmers of the United States are heart and soul protectionists, he is asserting something that is quite erroneous. The farmer of the United States is just as wise and astute in business matters as we are, and so long as the United States exports to the world at large so vast a quantity of its products as it does to-day, the farmer there cannot be anything else than a believer in a lowering of the cost of producing what he raises. Canada certainly leads at the present time in export, and to those who suggest that within a few years we shall become protectionists I would mention this fact that we export now, roughly, 300,000,000 bushels of wheat a year while the United States exports 186,000,000, a comfortable figure, almost 200,000,000. All other countries who are heavy exporters fall so far below that mark as to be almost insignificant: the Argentine 48,000,000, India, 11,000,000, and Australia, 8,000,000.
I regret this coalition that has been formed, this cooperative understanding or working arrangement that has been reached, and for this reason: the people were appealed to not only on the question of the tariff but for the purpose of establishing a stable government. The people did return a stable government. They answered the appeal of the politician to establish such a government, and not only did
they provide the stable but they put a Forke in it. The unfortunate thing is that so far as this budget is concerned, the fork is either blunted or the handle is broken. There is the hon. member for Neepawa (Mr. Milne) opposite, who from his physical appearance would seem to be able to wield a fork, but unfortunately the handle of the fork is jn the grip of two powerful hands-that of the hon. member for North Waterloo and that of the hon. member for North Bruce. I doubt therefore whether we shall see any moderation in tariff protection so long as the government is formed of its present personnel.
I would remind hon. gentlemen opposite that in the session of 1922-23 the Liberals had a majority in this House, and that in that year they did nothing in the way of reducing the tariff. That was the year of Mr. Fielding's "stability" budget. And how that budget was applauded by hon. gentlemen to my right 1 How they liked its stability 1 In 1924, however, the Liberals had no majority because of the situation that had developed. What happened then? They reduced agricultural implements materially. They came a little step nearer to the ideal which we and they have advocated, and the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Stewart) rang upon the dear old bell the deathknell of protection. In 1925 the government had again a majority of one or two as a result of some by-elections in the east, and again they did nothing. But in 1926 they were a minority group, so small that they had to depend for their existence entirely upon the support and cooperation of the groups in this corner of the House. In that year, when they were in the most precarious position that any government has been in in Canada, they did the finest work, they brought in the finest budget. They proceeded some distance in the direction of implementing their preelection pledges and keeping their platform. In the year in which they not only had no majority but were in such a condition of abject minority that they had to depend utterly on the cooperation and counsel of the groups which surround me and with which I am associated, they achieved the most. That rather talks loudly for cooperation between those expressing similar principles. It ought to be an indication to my hon. friend from South Huron of the usefulness of some form of cooperation between groups, not for the purpose of merely expediting the business of the House, but of getting the best legislation enacted for the country. That is the thought that commends itself to me.
This year the party is restored, and with the assistance of the Liberal Progressives it had a majority over all. And this year a budget is
632	COMMONS
The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
brought down, in which nothing of real merit is proposed. The tariff is not touched at all. What is the excuse? The tariff board. How my hop., friends from Saskatchewan have rung the changes on the creation of the tariff board. Nothing should be done they say until the recommendations of the board are before us; that is what we are told. But there is not an hon. member on the other side from western Canada who does not know that while everyone who advocated the creation of a tariff board did so for the known and avowed purpose of preventing further increases in the tariff until an examination had been made, There was never at any time any conception in the minds of low tariff people in Canada that the board should be used as a shelter behind which politicans could hide in order to avoid keeping their pledges. Yet that is the position in which my hon. friends find themselves. I do not believe they will all support the present budget; I do not believe they can. Certainly it will amaze me if the hon. member for Maple Creek (Mr. Spence) and the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young), splendid low tariff advocates, who I am sure are absolutely sincere, can find it in their hearts to support a policy which withholds from them that ideal situation which they seek to realize. No, Mr. Speaker, the thing is ridiculous. And when we make an appeal for the publication of the reports of the tariff board we are met with the astounding reply that it would not be wise to publish the evidence taken before the board for the reason that if we were to broadcast every report made to the minister it might result in drying up many sources of information. My answer to that is that it would certainly dry up a great deal of the present crying for tariff protection. Let me lay this down as a principle in which I firmly believe. That no tariff protection should be granted to any industry in this country until that industry has submitted to the public who must pay the cost, all information needed with respect to its profits, its general business management and all matters in connection with the industry. That is only fair. If the public are going to be taxed in order to extend to an industry a special privilege, then the public are entitled to the fullest information in regard to that industry.
I come now to the sales tax. I applaud the reduction in the sales tax because I believe in a measure it does assist the common people, not to a material extent, not to $27,000,000 worth, but slightly. Let me, however, suggest that it would have been more in keeping with the pledges of the party opposite if they had taken steps first to reduce the tariff instead of reducing the sales tax. Both are 
evil taxes because they are taxes on consumption, but the sales tax does not lend itself to such complete pyramiding as the other. There is not such a complete exploitation of the people under it as there is under the customs tariff, and so of the two the sales tax is preferable. Therefore there should have been a reduction in the tariff before a reduction was made in the sales tax.
I come now to a portion of my discussion which I approach with some hesitation. It again touches the question which I mentioned a moment ago, that of the corruption, the complete and utter debasement of both the old parties. I wait for a challenge. I have in my hands some of the evidence given before the royal commission investigating the Customs department. I remind hon. members of the evidence given in the committee of this House last year when amongst other witnesses we had Mr. Nash testify under oath that Mr. Hiram Walker had stated to him that some hundreds of thousands of dollars had been given to the campaign funds, not of one but of both political parties. We now find-and I read the heading in one of our western papers, the Western Producer, published in Saskatoon-


Charles Avery Dunning: Is a heading evidence?


Edward Joseph Garland: I will read the evidence in a moment.


Charles Avery Dunning: But the heading is not evidence.


Edward Joseph Garland: No, but the hon. member will not like the evidence when we come to it.


Charles Avery Dunning: I know all about it. I
have read it.


Edward Joseph Garland: The heading reads:
Is it possible to have moral, efficient or democratic government in Canada while members are elected to parliament and to legislatures through the use of huge sums of money subscribed by wealthy corporations or individuals.
That campaign funds are subscribed and spent, is admitted.
In order to refresh the memories of our readers on this point, we print the following extract from the Vancouver Province, under date of December 14, last year. Mr. Russell White-law, a director of the Vancouver Breweries, was on the witness stand before the royal commission investigating into customs irregularities.
Mr. Russell Whitelaw, recalled, denied the suggestion of Mr. Rowell that the consolidated exporters had liquor put up in tins, for shipment abroad.
Mr. Rowell examined the witness at considerable length respecting the now famous cruise of the motor vessel Truscilla, which cleared

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
for a Central American port and was arrested a short time later at Tuinbo island while the cargo was being transferred from cases to sacks.
The witness denied that he had anything to do with her sailing orders, or clearance papers. He had paid the harbour dues and the captain gave him the receipt he obtained for the payment.
Continuing, the witness said, in answer to questions by Mr. Rowell, that he was aware that the Truscilla had been arrested by customs men.
Mr. Rowell: You know that her bond was to be cancelled, and that collector Allen had instructions to go ahead and collect from guaranty company that had put up the bond, and that after four or five months he got orders from Ottawa to release the bond. What do you know about that bond being released?
The Witness: I had heard that the bond was released.
"Who told you?"
"The solicitors."
Counsel now produced a cheque made payable to "Cash" for $10,000. He asked the witness to explain to whom and for what it had been given.
He was reluctant to answer, and turning to the commissioners asked if he must do so. He was instructed that he must answer the question.
"It was for campaign funds," he replied.
Mr. Rowell: To whom did you pay this?
Witness: To F. R. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson, who was in court, asked permission to make a statement from the counsel table. This was granted. He stated that the money came to him as a contribution to the Liberal campaign fund for the federal election of 1925. Following the election, it was found that a number of the bills had not been paid. The Consolidated, having promised some time before to make a contribution, and not having done so. prominent Liberals came to him and sought his assistance in getting the promised contribution. This he had done, and the $10,000 was turned over to the proper officials of the Liberal party charged with the collection of campaign funds. He added that the payment of the money had nothing to do with the stopping of the effort to collect the Truscilla bond.
Then Mr. Rowell made a very significant remark:
Mr. Rowell: They simply synchronized.
Mr. Anderson: It had nothing to do with the bond.
Then the editorial comment on this is:
Here is a bond to be forfeited! Here is a government in power at Ottawa with authority to release the bond! Here is an interested liquor man, subscribing $10,000 to the funds of a political party. There is the government at Ottawa under the control of the party to which the interested liquor man has made his generous contribution! Here is the bond released. Here is Mr. Anderson saying that the secret passing of the boodle has nothing to do with the bond! Perhaps Mr. Anderson may be right.
That was Mr. Anderson. Now we have Mr. Hyatt. This extract is taken from the columns of the Vancouver Province, under date of December 17, last year:
"Light was shed at Thursday afternoon's session of the royal commission investigating the customs department, on some of the recipients of the unvouchered cheque of Mr. Henry Reifel, head of the Vancouver Breweries. Glen C. Hyatt, Vancouver broker, informed the commission that he had received in all from Mr. Reifel the sum of $42,000, which he handed over to the Liberal party.
Mr. Hyatt appeared before the commission as a voluntary witness, and although his counsel, Mr. J. W. de B. Farris, asked the protection of the court for him, as was done in the cases of other witnesses, he scorned to accept it."
He scorned to accept the protection of the court although he had committed what, under the election act, is an offence punishable.
"The total amount received was $42,000, said Mr. Hyatt, 'and I desire to say that the cheques were taken to be turned over to the Liberal party. The purpose of the cheques being made payable to me was that they might be kept on record without giving publicity to the fact that they were funds for political purposes. It may be noticed that three cheques were made out on the one day. That was done at my suggestion for the same purpose. One went to my personal account, perhaps more, but they were all for the same purpose.' "
Mr. Hyatt and Mr. Anderson were not candidates in that election, but they were agents for other parties. The question the public must inevitably ask is: Who were the parties for whom they were the agents? Who benefited by this form of corruption? For it is corruption and nothing else. Men and corporations nowadays are hardly altruistic enough to contribute to the campaign fund of any party unless they expect ultimately to get some form of privilege, some reimbursement. Let me suggest to the government that if there is one duty that is clear now, it is that not only the government but its partner this year, the Conservative party, should agree to have the fullest investigation into this whole question with the view of punishing the offenders. How evil this thing is, how opposed to law it is, how utterly indifferent to the laws are the people concerned, is best evidenced by the following. If you will read section 10 of the Election Act you will find the following very clearly set out:
No unincorporated company or association and no incorporated company or association other than one incorporated for political purposes alone shall, directly or indirectly, contribute, loan, advance, pay, or promise or offer to pay any money or its equivalent to, or for, or in aid of, any candidate at an election, or to, or for, or in aid of, any political party, committee, or association, or to, or for, or in aid of, any company incorporated for political purposes, or to, or for, or in furtherance_ of any political purpose whatever, or for the indemnification or reimbursement of any person for moneys so used.
634	COMMON'S
The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
Subsection 2 of section 10 reads:
Every director, shareholder, officer, attorney, or agent of any company or association violating the provisions of this section, or who aids, abets, advises, or takes part in any such violation and every person who asks or knowingly receives any money or its equivalent in violation of the provisions of this section, is guilty of an indictable offence against this act, punishable as in this act provided.
Now the penalty clause is section 84, and it reads as follows:
Any person who is guilty of an indictable offense against this act is liable on indictment or on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $2,000 and costs of prosecution, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor, or to both such fine and costs and such imprisonment,
And so on. I can imagine some of our brewers doing hard labour; it would be somewhat interesting. But let me say Mr. Speaker, that this is a clear disclosure now exposed before a government which has acclaimed itself from time to time as being free from the influence of these interests. Why I have heard ministers rise in this House and declare the freedom of the Liberal party from the dictation, control, or domination of interests in this country, while the public, has now had before it evidence under oath showing that not the Liberals alone had been the recipients of large sums of money, huge sums of money, from brewers, but the Conservatives also. Who knows how wide the ramifications may be? We know very well that all the campaign funds did not come from brewers only. The public are entitled to the fullest information as to all the sources of campaign funds, and I now ask this administration to take immediate steps to punish the offenders in this matter. It is true that many of the witnesses, individual witnesses, were given the protection of the court, but the law is clear as to incorporated companies giving moneys to this purpose. The brewers themselves, who are now clearly convicted by the evidence of giving contributions, are equally liable, and they should be prosecuted and penalized to the fullest extent of the act.
Now let me remind hon. gentlemen to my right that they have in their party a very eminent gentleman, one of the most able spokesman they have. Some years ago, on May 14, 1914, that hon. gentleman made an excellent speech in this House in which he
spoke of railway promoters having left___
-a long trail of parliamentary corruption, of lobbying of degradation of parliamentary institutions, of the lowering of the morale of public life and the degrading of those standards by which public life should be truly measured. 
That is what the hon. member for West Calgary thought of the lobbying and corruption that went on at that time in this country when railway construction was one of the principal questions before this parliament. The hon. gentleman went on to say:
Both sides of the House have been to blame. Just a few days before a general election, one party proposes and the other acquiesces. They are bound to ask a few questions in order that the contribution to party funds may be large enough. Let us look the business squarely in the face.
And then he continued on the subject he was discussing. There you have placed before you the opinion of a man now the financial critic for the opposition, a man who is heralded throughout the country as the possible leader of the Conservative party. I appeal to him to cooperate With other members in the House in getting this investigation. His words are clear; the evidence is clear. If his sensibilities are still as delicate -and I believe they are-if his ethical code is still as high-and I believe it is-I ask that he and other hon. members in this House do what they can to induce the administration to institute an investigation. But I will tell you frankly, Mr. Speaker, that I doubt very much, knowing the influence that can be brought to bear on individuals, my power to induce either party to start an investigation or to punish the offenders. Political parties to-day depend too materially upon campaign funds, upon huge contributions from special sources, to assist each other in disclosing the source from which these funds come. I cannot for the life of me imagine the Liberal party, for example, consenting to a committee investigation or an investigation by a commission which would, in order to prosecute the inquiry effectively, have power to call before it every member of the Liberal party, every member of the Conservative party and every member in this corner of the House, and compel them to give evidence under oath as to the sources of their campaign funds. Senator Borah in the United States recently suggested that very plan. I suggest it now to the Minister of Railways who is temporarily leading the government in the House to-night. I ask him to take the matter up with his colleagues so the public can depend upon it in the future that their representatives in this House are not in some secret form or other controlled and nominated by outside interests which can afford to contribute to their campaign funds. Mr. Speaker, it is a disgrace that is now becoming apparent to a greater extent than it ever did before

The Budget-Mr. Garland (Bow River)
when for so long it was merely a matter' of suspicion. We have never had the evidence so clearly before us as we have at this moment, and if public confidence in parliamentary institutions and in our representatives is not to be undermined, I ask that this government shall undertake to have some efficient form of investigation into the sources of campaign funds of both parties, and bring about the total and complete elimination of secret campaign funds in the future.
Now, Mr. Speaker, there are many other questions I have desired to discuss to-night, but the hour is late and I do not intend to delay the House any further; I simply wish to state my position. The amendment appeals to me because it represents the expressed viewpoint of the people I represent. It represents that viewpoint clearly and distinctly, but that alone might not convince me of the necessity of supporting it. In addition I am satisfied that the future of our whole country is involved in the adoption of the principles in the amendment moved by the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Coote).
I do not believe that a country of this vast size, depending as it must for generations to come upon the basic industry of agriculture for its greatest wealth, for its healthiest development, can afford to continue the shackling of agriculture and the hampering of other natural resources by increasing costs.
I accept with pleasure the correction of the amendment made by the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young). I would have been glad to have seen him move an amendment in which the words were inserted "to reduce the high cost of living and production." I agree with the hon. member. It was an excellent suggestion, but it does not remove the validity of the statements in the amendment. If that is the sole excuse of the hon. member for Weyburn for failing to vote against the amendment, I am afraid he is in a weak position. If the existence of a tariff board, and the fact that the amendment does not aim specifically in words at the cost of production, is the excuse of the hon. members from Saskatchewan, then they are in a weak position also; but I feel satisfied that the old members of the Liberal Progressive group are not going to go back on their pledges. They cannot go back to their people and say, "We accepted, deliberately accepted, a policy of indirect taxation, as the abiding policy of this year's budget." We accepted a policy which defeats our avowed principles and ideals; we accepted a policy which tends to prevent reductions in the tariff. They cannot do that; they
will not do it, and so I suggest that on this vote any man pledged to the low tariff doctrine, any man pledged to the principle of direct taxation, as opposed to indirect, will be keeping faith with himself and his people if he votes in support of an amendment whose purpose it is to establish the direct principle in budget making in this House.
The hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) this afternoon, in a very eloquen* speech, indicated that he took exception to one clause in the amendment, that referring to the reduction in the national debt. I am afraid he misunderstood or misread tne amendment. I agree with the hon. member for Labelle that any immediate and substantial reduction in the national debt would be unfortunate. It would place too heavy a burden upon us at a stage when we need all our resources to recover from the war depression.
I agree with him also that it is an excellent policy to leave the national debt as long as possible standing before the people as a monument to the foolish madness of war. But let me submit to the hon. member that in asking for a systematic method of meeting the national debt and of attempting to reduce it, we are not asking for an immediate and substantial reduction in the debt. Far from it, but if the Minister of Railways and the cabinet are generally agreed that some reductions are going to take place in the debt every year-and they are, and I know my friends to my right are-is it unfair to ask that the reduction take place on a systematic basis instead of in the present haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion? That is all the amendment asks in this connection, and as such it should appeal to reasonable thinking men on the other side, even to the hon. member for Labelle.
I have pleasure, Mr. Speaker, in supporting the amendment. I dislike intensely the budget, for the reasons I have pronounced, and I sincerely hope that the government will find it possible to accept the suggestion that it should strike out of the resolutions the one introducing the reduction in the income tax. If that were done, I feel satisfied that it would gratify the mass of the people in Canada, not the mere rich, but hon. members in this portion of the House as well.
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals): Mr. Speaker, it is my intention to take only a very short time in this debate on the budget, as there are only a few points of importance that I desire to make.
The Budget-Mr. Dunning

I think, first, I should express the appreciation of the government of the very fine compliment to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) which is involved in the great numbers of congratulatory messages from all classes and all parts of Canada which it has been my privilege to see, addressed to the Minister of Finance, on the budget which he brought down the other day. The one thing which is noteworthy in that connection is that, unlike the hon. gentleman who has just spoken (Mr. Garland), many of the citizens of Canada, having regard to the very hectic period through which government in this country passed so recently, and to the fact that following the election on the 14th of September last and the swearing in of the present government early in October, ministerial by-elections became necessary, express their surprise and gratification that in such a short space of time, it now being only the month of February, the Minister of Finance has been able to get a sufficient grasp of the situation and mature his judgment sufficiency to enable him to present the kind of budget and the kind of proposals which he brought down to the House the other day.
I always enjoy listening to the eloquence of my hon. friend who just sat down (Mr. Garland). There are advantages in occupying a position in the House which involves no responsibility for policy.


Edward Joseph Garland: May I
suggest to the hon. minister that we are prepared to accept positions of responsibility? There is nothing would give us greater pleasure than to assist the hon. minister and the cabinet.


Charles Avery Dunning: I asked a question or
two, Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of enlightenment, of my hon. friend when he was speaking. I sat and listened while he cast reflections upon the motives of every hon. gentleman in this House, and said not a word.
I think now I might be entitled to proceed, having suffered as the rest of us have suffered from his accusations of a complete lack of sincerity, for that was the whole tenor of my hon. friend's address as relating to every member of this House who did not belong to his peculiar little provincial class group in that corner. While I am on that subject, may I say, without taking too much credit to ourselves on this side of the House, and without in any way offering any apologies or excuses for my hon. friends opposite, that I have sufficient confidence in the judgment of the people of Canada as a whole to believe 
that the people of other parts of Canada as well as Alberta are just as likely to send honest men to this House as is that province.


Edward Joseph Garland: May I
suggest to the minister that he does me an injustice? Far be it from me to suggest that honest men do not come from other portions of Canada. It was political parties I was speaking of.	*


Charles Avery Dunning: I have no quarrel at all with my hon. friend's statement of his opinions. It has been suggested from both sides of the House during the course of this session, and previously, that the tone of debate is not elevated by casting reflections on other men's motives, and my hon. friend's speech was replete with reflections upon the honesty of the motives of other members of the House. I am content in that regard to abide by the record of Hansard. That is all I desire to say with respect to the very admirable address to which we have just listened, except to emphasize that it is a comfortable position to be in where one has no responsibility whatever for the policies of government, to be in no danger, as the members of an official opposition are always in danger, under our British system of government, of being called upon to assume responsibility as a government for putting their policies into effect. My hon. friend speaks from a position where there is no danger at all of the people of Canada entrusting him and his friends in the near future with the responsibility of putting into effect the policies which he advocates. Such a position has great advantages indeed, and my hon. friend with his eloquence is fully capable of making the most of them.
So far as those of us who sit on this side of the House are concerned, the people of Canada on the 14th of September last placed upon us a very great responsibility. We had to go back to our constituencies for re-election, and then we were compelled in the nature of things immediately to call the House together in other to have as soon as possible the authority of parliament for the expenditures which were being made in carrying on the public business of the country. In addition, many of us, being new ministers, were compelled to take the necessary time to familiarize ourselves with the workings of our departments so far as that was possible in the short space of time available, and now we are expected, to paraphrase all that my hon. friend says, to bring about the millennium less than one month later. It is not possible.

The Budget-Mr. Dunning
My hon. friend could not do it. He is in a much happier position to-day than he was last session. My hon. friend does iove to rock the boat when it is perfectly safe to do so.


Edward Joseph Garland: I might suggest that last year I did not hesitate to rock the boat in favour of my hon. friends.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend is not
quite as shrewd in appreciating a point as I thought he was. Last year he was very careful-and I do not suggest any improprieties- to do all he could to prevent the parliamentary boat from upsetting. This year he is quite aware that any boat rocking indulged in on his part will not upset the boat anyway, and therefore he is perfectly free, and has taken advantage of his freedom to rock the boat as much as he possibly could.


Edward Joseph Garland: The hon.
member knows quite well that I have been-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order, order.


Edward Joseph Garland: If that is hon.. members' idea of fairness, all right.


Hewitt Bostock: I did not call the hon.
member to order because I thought the hon. minister was permitting the interruption. If it is a question of privilege he may be allowed to state it; otherwise, I hope there will be no more cross-examinations.


Charles Avery Dunning: I am merely offering
good-humoured raillery in return for my hon. friend's speech, which consisted of an impeachment of motives of hon. members on this side, and I suggest that my method of debate is infinitely preferable to that favoured by my hon. friend.
With reference to the statement made, not only by my hon. friend, but by another of the group in that comer of the House on this question of responsibility, may I point out that if I understand it correctly there are three groups in that comer of the House. I find no fault with it, but when my hon. friend speaks for the people of Canada, I am reminded of the story of the Three Tailors of Tooley Street, who issued that famous manifesto headed "We, the People of England". On very many subjects my hon. friend cannot speak for all the three groups in that corner of the House.
Mr. GARLAND. (Bow River): Quite right, I do not pretend to.


Charles Avery Dunning: But we must have in this country a group of men large enough to command sufficient majority in the House to enable them to put through a common policy.
We do not believe that every one of us at all times can get his own individual way. We from Saskatchewan do believe that Canada is bigger than Saskatchewan. I may tell my hon. friend in that regard that on the election platforms from east to west in the last election, discussing this very matter of fiscal policy, to which he paid so much attention-in my own province of Saskatchewan, in the province of Ontario, in the provinces by the sea and in British Columbia-I used words to this effect: that complete free trade might possibly be the best thing for Saskatchewan, and it might be the best thing for Alberta, but neither Saskatchewan nor Alberta is the whole of Canada, and I wound up by saying, neither is Ontario. I said then what I say now, that we must regard this matter of tariff as an intensely practical matter affecting every individual in this country. We should treat it and endeavour to make it the servant of the whole people, having due regard to the interests of the whole country. I will come to my Conservative friends in a few moments.


Mr. STEVENS:: You are doing fine.


Charles Avery Dunning: Hon. members in that
corner of the House say that this is a Tory budget.


Edward Joseph Garland: Hear, hear.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend says
"hear, hear",-


Edward Joseph Garland: And the
Tories accept it too.


An hon. MEMBER:: Not yet.


Charles Avery Dunning: The hon. member for
Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) says, not yet.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I said nothing.


Charles Avery Dunning: Then I mistook the hon. gentleman who made the comment. I should like to tell my hon. friend (Mr. Garland) now, with all the authority of my colleagues, that the impression my hon. friend sought to create to-night throughout Canada, as he knows his words will be reported, that there was some sort of coalition or understanding this session between the Conservative party and this government, is absolutely and completely false. The fact that my hon. friend from Vancouver Centre made some remarks with respect to expediting the business of the House, which could have come with the same propriety from my hon. friend (Mr. Garland) himself does not justify the statement. Those remarks, I apprehend, did not intend to convey the existence of some sinister plot between these two larger parties against the best inter-
63S

The Budget-Mr. Dunning
ests of Canada. I can say that so far as the government is concerned, and so far as the men who sit on this side of the House are concerned, there is no such understanding, coalition, legislative or executive, or in any other way whatsoever and my hon. friend well knows it. He is scattering a suspicion abroad which does not do him very much credit.
Replying to those who say that this is a Tory budget, I would ask them to imagine what sort of budget would have been brought down if my hon. friends of the Conservative party had been occupying the treasury benches to-day; because however much I may disagree with the tariff policy of the Conservative party I will give them this credit: If they sat here to-day and were charged with the duty of bringing down the budget they would bring down a budget in conformity with their principles, in conformity with the arguments they have used throughout three election campaigns-that the tariff schedules of Canada should be increased in very many important particulars.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friends say
"hear, hear".


An hon. MEMBER:: Quite right.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend believes that is right. I am merely answering the charge that this is a Tory budget, and why? Because it increases the tariff? No. There is not a Tory in this House who will not admit that if the Tories were making the budget they would materially increase the tariff. This is charged with being a Tory budget because it neither reduces nor increases the tariff. I might ask who, after reading the past budget debates, particularly the more recent ones, can have any doubt whatever as to which is the high tariff party and which is the low tariff party in Canada? Or imagine again- and I commend this especially to my hon. friends in the far comer of the House, particularly those Progressives from Saskatchewan -how high the tariff wall round Canada would have been to-day had my hon. friends of the Conservative party been in power from 1921 to the present time. They have consistently proclaimed their belief throughout the whole of that period that the tariff should be increased. Throughout the whole of that period indeed the tariff walls surrounding almost every other country in the world have been increased. Had the Conservative party been here to-day and honestly carried out what they led the people of Canada to believe is

their policy, we would have a tariff as high as the tariff now existing in the United States. Will my hon. friends say "hear, hear" to that?


An hon. MEMBER:: No, no.


Charles Avery Dunning: Evidently the "brick for brick" policy has been abandoned recently.


An hon. MEMBER:: It never existed.


Charles Avery Dunning: Evidently it has been
abandoned in view of the much-heralded attempt to capture votes in western Canada by holding a big convention in Winnipeg next October.
During the period since 1921, so far from increasing the tariff, it has been lowered in many important particulars and the British preference has been increased at a time, as I have stated, when tariffs in other countries were being increased. Even had we not touched the tariff in a downward direction since 1921, still Canada's tariff would be very much lower to-day as compared with that of other nations by reason of the tariff increases they have put into effect. I should like some of my hon. friends in the corner, who have access to so much information apparently, to find out for me how many countries to-day have a lower general average of tariff than the Dominion. It would be interesting information and would lead the way to much fairer criticism than we have listened to in this regard. We are between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand we are accused by the Tories of ruining Canadian industry by tariff reductions-


Robert James Manion: Which is the devil?


Charles Avery Dunning: Well, if I have to define the term I am afraid I shall have to say that the Tories are.


Robert James Manion: Talking politically now?


Charles Avery Dunning: Yes, nothing personal at all. We are accused by the Tories of ruining industry by our tariff reduction. Ohl think of the debates of last yearl Think of the great delegation which my hon. friends were so pleased to see come here, to which they referred in such moving terms! Think of the empty factories and empty homes and ruined people of Oshawa! It never happened.


Mr. McGIBBON:: Think how anxious the government were about fixing them up.


Charles Avery Dunning: It never happened. On the other hand our radical friends in the corner accuse us of introducing a Tory budget. The fact of the matter is that neither is right. We have not ruined industry, and

The Budget-Mr. Dunning
we do not intend to. Our tariff reductions have actually helped the industries to which they have been applied. The Minister of Finance naturally will not attempt to forecast in this budget what may be contained in future budgets. It would be unreasonable to expect it of him.
May I here digress to state to my hon. friend who has just spoken (Mr. Garland) that he has enunciated-I hope with the responsibility of the group to which he belongs 

a new policy with respect to the duty of a finance minister in regard to the presentation of his budget. He says the Minister of Finance should discuss all his proposals with all of those who sit behind him before they are presented to the House. That surely is a new proposal and one to which I am confident my hon. friend has not given the thought which he gives to most questions he discusses in this House. Why is it that from time immemorial, both in the British House and in every other House conducted according to the British plan, the contents of the budget are kept secret until the moment when the minister delivers his pronouncement? Why is it that tariff reductions and other things of a like kind become effective immediately upon the minister's pronouncement in regard thereto? It is because, if my hon. friend's method were followed, some people would have advance information, and there would be leaks, there would be speculation, and there would undoubtedly be an increase of this talk of scandal- which my hon. friend is so fond of referring to-in the public life of the country. I venture to say that even in the government which is controlled by partisans of my hon. friend, and which is a provincial government where the necessity for secrecy in connection with the budget cannot be so great as in the federal House, where fiscal and other matters of greater importance are dealt with,-I venture to say that even there the provincial treasurer does not acquaint the whole world, not even the whole of his own party following in the House, with the contents of his budget before 'he presents it to the legislature. My hon. friend is silent. Silence gives consent. Again we are asked in this House, as we were once before by my hon. friends in that corner, to adopt a principle in the federal parliament which they themselves in the legislature which they control have not adopted.
While the Minister of Finance naturally will not budget for future years, he does authorize me to say this, in reply to the insinuations from the far corner regarding the fiscal policy of this party and those who support it, that
the Liberal fiscal policy is unchanged. We shall move forward cautiously with the aid of knowledge of the facts secured by the Tariff Advisory Board toward the goal of making our tariff structure bear as lightly as possible on production, industry and the people generally, having always in view the greater prosperity of all the legitimate industries of Canada. The tariff must be made to serve the best interests of the Canadian people as a whole. .It must be adjusted from time to time to meet the needs, not of one class or group or industry alone, whichever one that may be, but of our whole economic structure


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Charles Avery Dunning: This does not mean-


Edward Joseph Garland: That is good Tory propaganda all right.


Charles Avery Dunning: It is to my hon. friend's perverted mind.


Thomas McMillan: It is true Liberalism.


Charles Avery Dunning: This does not mean
tariff-tinkering so called, but it does mean a continuous expert examination and adjustment whenever the facts so revealed warrant.
Now, my hon. friend smiles and says that is true Tory doctrine. I should like right here to ask Tory endorsement of this, "Toward the goal of making our tariff structure bear as lightly as possible on production, industry and the people generally."


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Charles Avery Dunning: They agree. Well now, Mr. Speaker, the millennium has come indeed. I have been listening during this budget debate to pleas for increased protection, at least three to-night, the arguments for which did not take into account the people at all,-


An hon. MEMBER:: Oh yes, they did.


Charles Avery Dunning: -but which took into account merely the people (engaged in a particular industry.


An hon. MEMBER:: Oh no, no.


Charles Avery Dunning: That is the fault I have to find, and that is the distinction I draw between our attitude on this side of the House and the attitude of hon. gentlemen opposite. Why, we had a plea for the onion-growers. There are three hundred of them in Canada. And my hon. friends opposite want to tax all the people of the Dominion for the benefit of those three hundred onion-growers. Will they deny it? There is no denial. I could go on and cite a list as long as my arm of special privilege tariff increases demanded by hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House,
The Budget-Mr. Dunning

not at all in conformity with the principle that I have just been endeavouring to enunciate.


John Evans: Will the minister inform the House who put 47a on the statute book?


Charles Avery Dunning: Frankly, I cannot answer that question. I do know, however, that while my hon. friends may find in this, which I regard as a fair, moderate statement of the tariff policy of the Liberal party-


Henry Herbert Stevens: A chart?


Charles Avery Dunning: More than a chart.


Robert James Manion: Not too specific.


Charles Avery Dunning: Perhaps my hon. friend
would be more specific as to what he would do if he were charged with the duty of preparing a budget. We have no doubt at all about our friends opposite. Every one of them has some pet industry for which he wants to have higher protection. That is the policy of the Tory party, but it is not the policy of the Liberal party.
With regard to the farmers and the income tax, I might, with all due deference to the hon. gentlemen in the far corner opposite, who always speak for all the farmers, be permitted to express the view of a farmer. I will not attempt to speak for them all. I will give the views of a farmer with reference to the income tax problem. The income tax is an ideal tax, in so far as it conforms to the standard of making every citizen pay something towards the conduct of public affairs in his country upon a reasonable, equalized and graduated scale in proportion to the wealth of the individual. Unfortunately, like so many ideal things, this tax presents very serious difficulties in the way of administration. One of the earliest difficulties in connection with the income tax in this country, a difficulty to which hon. gentlemen in that comer have frequently called attention, is the problem of successfully applying it to the farmers because of the nature of the farming business. The difficulties that were encountered in the earlier years, when the exempted amount was much lower than it is to-day, are well known to every member of the House. Not one farmer, not ten or a hundred, but thousands have complained to me about the nuisance of having to keep the kind of returns which were necessary in order to enable the Income Tax branch to determine whether any tax was due from them or not. As more than one man has put it, "We go to forty dollars' worth of time and 
trouble to find out that we owe the government ten dollars." I know my hon friends would say it is the fault of the system.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: Is not that due to the
fact that the average farmer must work from twelve to fourteen hours a day, and so cannot possibly keep books?


Charles Avery Dunning: Taking my hon. friend's
statement at its face value, if there is a class in the community who work from twelve to fourteen hours a day conducting their own business, and on that account are unable to keep books, I should like the hon. gentleman to tell me how he could possibly levy an income tax on such a business? That is the whole difficulty, and I will be frank enough to say that one of the reasons why I personally favoured an increase in the exemption from income tax to the present level was my conviction that it would automatically eliminate from the sphere of operation of the tax a very large proportion of the farmers of Canada. I did so, not because I wanted to give them any special privilege, but because, from the operation of the law in the past, I knew that it really resulted in men going to all sorts of trouble, yes, and of being persecuted as in the nature of things they must be, besides incurring a good deal of unnecessary expense out of proportion to the amount they owed the government. I had in mind, too, the fact that the farmer does pay in the form of indirect taxation a greater amount proportionately than the rest of the population. I do believe that, although I have no scientific proof of the statement. If my hon. friends object to the ten per cent discount provided for in the budget on the present graduated scale of income tax they should in all fairness get back to what I described in the first place as an ideal income tax, one which is levied on the whole of the people who have incomes and which shall be proportionate to those incomes, however small. If they do that, however, they will get back to the point where they will have to solve the very problem which has baffled every one up to now, and that is, how to apply the system successfully, equitably and reasonably to agriculture. We have never succeeded in doing it, and our hon. friends who criticise us have never put forward any constructive suggestion as to how it could be done. The question which the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Kennedy) asked a moment ago admits the impracticability of the whole scheme as applied to farmers who, according to him work from twelve to fourteen hours a day and therefore cannot keep books. If

The Budget-Mr. Dunning
that is true, it is impossible to levy an income tax on such a business. Now, if my hon. friend has any scheme whereby the tax can be collected in that case, he will earn the thanks of the people of Canada in submitting it.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: I suggest that they go
on the eight-hour day.


Charles Avery Dunning: Do I understand my hon. friend to suggest that there should be a compulsory eight-hour day for agriculture in Canada?


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: I offer it as a suggestion to the farmers.


Charles Avery Dunning: But this is a legislative
body, and what we are looking for in this connection is some legislative suggestion. Unless, therefore, my hon. friend is prepared to offer some proposal which can be incorporated into the law of the country, the difficulty which I am seeking to point out still remains.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: We might have legisation along the lines of the Liberal platform of 1919.


Charles Avery Dunning: This is the first time I
have heard it suggested that the Liberal platform of 1919 devised any method whereby farmers who work fourteen hours a day might be enabled to keep books.


Mr. GLEN:: I take it from what the minister said, in reply to my address of yesterday asking for some assurance from the government in the matter, that the policy of the government is in the direction of lower tariffs and that it is not the intention to abolish the income tax as a permanent fiscal instrument. Am I right in assuming that?


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend must
not put words in my mouth. The words I used were explicit and they were words behind which every member of the government will stand. I may remind the hon. gentleman of what my hon. friend the Minister of Finance has himself said. Some people tried to hold a pistol at the head of the Minister of Finance last year, we all know with what success; and those who try the same thing again, whether friend or foe, will find the same result.


James Allison Glen: On a question of privilege, I
did not on Tuesday present any pistol at the head of the Minister of Finance. All that I stated was that a number of us were returned .to this House on low tariff principles; that we were faced with a budget which seemed to meet with the approval of the Tories and of which we were somewhat sus-32649-41
picious that we were anxious only to know what the government's studied policy was with regard to the fiscal policy of this country and particularly in regard to the income tax.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


Charles Avery Dunning: I can only say this. My language a few moments ago was explicit and I will read it again for the benefit of my hon. friend, although it was not directed at him especially, because it is absurd to ask the Minister of Finance to budget to-day for next year. That cannot be done. I say this to my hon. friend again and on this he must make up his mind and take his responsibility. I want .to be fair to my hon. friend because it has been suggested by speakers during the course of this debate that my hon. friend did put a pistol at the head of the Minister of Finance. To all who suggest such I make the same reply, and I make it on behalf of the Minister of Finance who has already spoken and with his full authority. I will read the words again because they are the words of the whole government, not my words. I cannot amend them of my own volition and my hon. friend will not get me to amend them of my own volition.
We shall move forward cautiously with the aid of knowledge of the facts secured by the Tariff Advisory Board toward the goal of making our tariff structure bear as lightly as possible on production, industry, and the people generally.
If my hon. friend is still suspicious after that statement, I can only leave him with his suspicion, remembering as I am sure he does-


An hon. MEMBER:: Read the rest of it.


Charles Avery Dunning: Yes, I will read it all.
Unlike some of the documents that some of my hon. friends have produced, it will bear reading twice. The Hamilton speech never was read twice. I will read the rest of it:
Having always in view the greater prosperity of all the legitimate industries of Canada.
Does my hon. friend quarrel with that?


James Allison Glen: Does the hon. member wish
me to reply to that?


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend has made his speech. He asked me certain questions.


James Allison Glen: I thought the minister was
asking me if I was satisfied with that.


Charles Avery Dunning: I have permitted a great deal of latitude. I enjoy this, I think, almost as much as anyone else in this House, but there is a tendency rather to take advantage of my good nature on this occasion. Suffice it to say that the tariff board has been in

The Budget-Mr. Dunning

operation, as hon. friends well know, for less than a year. Some fifty-two applications for increases and reductions have been placed before it. It has inquired into some of them and reported upon thirteen. I feel sure that my hon. friend who spoke last (Mr. Garland) would not desire to proceed to slash the tariff without knowing the facts; or maybe like no one else in Canada, he knows all the facts now. We must in that regard as members of the government confess our ignorance; we must confess our need of enlightenment with respect to these specific items under examination by the tariff board. That is what the tariff board was created for.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Reductions were made
last year.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend refers to last year. There are some things that stick out so plainly as to be clear to the average citizen. Until we had a tariff board, we had been endeavouring to cure them by the aid of such machinery as was in the possession of the government. Last year we reduced the tariff on automobiles in the face of the strongest opposition across the way, as my hon. friends know.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: And then gave the automobile manufacturers a bonus.


Charles Avery Dunning: I wonder if my hon.
friends opposite were in power now if they would increase the duty on automobiles 1


Mr. CLARK:: We would not be deceitful.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend says:
We would not be deceitful. He is suffering from the same disease as the hon. gentleman who spoke last-always impugning the motives of other people.


John Arthur Clark: No, we never could get at
your motives.


Charles Avery Dunning: I agree that my hon.
friends never can get at us.


John Arthur Clark: No, at your motives.


Charles Avery Dunning: I would like to know if my hon. friend would have been satisfied if, without time to study the facts properly, we had introduced amendments to the tariff this session on the basis of the recommendations of the tariff board with respect to these articles. I would like him to think how the cost of living would be affected by action upon the reports we have so far received, by action upon flake calcium chloride, by action on pumps and pump parts, by action on nail keg cooperage, by action on Epsom salts, by action on gabardine, by action on invalids' wheel
IMr. Dunning.]
chairs, by action on invert sugar, by action on oil tops, by action on objects of art, by action on tin-as regards which, by the way, the application was for an increase; by action on tops for gloves, by action on the duty on foxes and canaries imported for breeding purposes, or by action on the tariff on player piano music rolls. These are the items upon which we have a definite report of the facts found by the Tariff Advisory Board and on no others.


Edward Joseph Garland: Is the House to take it as the declared policy of the government that it will not reduce the tariff until after the board has reported favouring a reduction?


Charles Avery Dunning: That is not the declared policy of the government.


Edward Joseph Garland: That is the inference to be drawn from the hon. member's last remarks.


Charles Avery Dunning: I have allowed my hon. friend to make at least six speeches and I think he has had enough opportunities. At the present time, having regard to the facts I have stated in respect to the period through which we have passed, we do not intend, as the Minister of Finance has indicated, to bring down any tariff changes this session and we have none to propose. If my hon. friend i3 here in the future, I am quite sure he will find some other ground on which to criticize us even if this vanishes, because the kind of political appeal my hon. friends in that corner always make is the kind of political appeal my hon. friend has made to-night. He says: We are the only honest men; everybody else is actuated by motives of selfinterest, by inference is the servant of some big interest.! That is the only kind of political argument my hon. friends in the far corner present to the electorate. True, they do think about matters of economics as the rest of us do. We could debate these matters like gentlemen, but it is pretty difficult to debate like a gentleman with men who consistently take the ground that your motives for differing with them are unworthy motives and objects of suspicion. It was because of that whole note running through the address of my hon. friend-and a splendid address it was otherwise-which caused me to rise to-night. I had no intention of doing so; in fact, as the House can see, my address was not properly prepared because I intended not to speak until to-morrow. My object is merely to set forth as clearly as possible what the tariff policy of the Liberal party is. It has been expressed much better by our leader,

The Budget-Mr. Stevens
who is not in his seat to-night, and there is no reason for anyone in the House or the country to have any doubt what it is. It is clear cut. Our actions throughout the last period of years since 1921 are the best evidence as to what our policy is: We stand by our record in that regard. We intend to pursue that policy in the future.
On motion of Mr. Stevens the debate was adjourned.
On motion of Mr. Robb the House adjourned at 11.05 pan.
Friday, February 25, 1927