1928-05-14

[Stage Direction]
On motion of Mr. Vallance, seconded by Mr. Bothwell, the following bills were read the first and second times on division:
Bill No. 305, for the relief of Florence Reno Moxon Attewell.-Mr. Casselman.
Bill No 306, for the relief of Mary Irene Boyd.-Mr. Hepburn.
Bill No. 307, for the relief of Augustus Vernon Ellis.-Mr. Church.
Bill No. 308, for the relief of Agatha Jean Hobbs.-Mr. Anderson (Toronto-High Park).
Bill1 No. 309, for the relief of Hazel K. Clunie Howard.-Mr. Howard.
Bill No. 310, for the relief of Helen Stewart Graham Lovell.-Mr. Casselman.
Bill No. 311, for the relief of Marie-Anne Palardy Murphy.-Mr. Bill No. 312, for the relief of Joseph Patrick Nolan.-Mr. Stinson.
Bill No. 313, for the relief of John James W ard.-Mr. Anderson (Toronto-High Park).

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

Mr. ESLING:: 1.	Since the institution of the federal appeal board how many sittings has the board held, (a) on the mainland of the British Columbia unit, and (b) on the Vancouver island district of the British Columbia unit?
2.	On what dates and at what points were sittings held?
3.	Who are the official soldiers' advisers for the mainland district and for the island district, and what salaries do they receive?
4.	At what sittings of the appeal board on the mainland of British Columbia and at what sittings on the island were the official soldiers' advisers in attendance?
5.	What are the names of the official soldiers' advisers for each of the other units in Canada and what salaries do they receive?
6.	How many appeals were heard by the federal appeal board during the year 1927?
7.	How many appeals are pending in each unit or district throughout Canada?


Mr. KING (Kootenay):: 1.	The federal appeal board was instituted on August 17, 1923. Since that date there have been sittings on (a) the mainland of British Columbia, and, (ib) Vancouver island as follows:
(a) Mainland:	At Vancouver 79 days; at
Kamloops (including Tranquille sanatorium) 56103-188
9 days; at Nelson 5 days; at Prince Rupert 1 day; (b) Vancouver Island: at Victoria 42 days.
2.	Vancouver: January 11 to January 16, 1924; March 17 to March 24, 1924; May 19 to May 29, 1924; September 15 to September 26, 1924; January 26 to February 6, 1925; June 15 to June 19, 1925; September 14 to September 18, 1925; May 31 to June 11, 1926; September 22 to October 8, 1926; June 6 to June 10, 1927; September 16 to September 21, 1927.
Kamloops (including Tranquille sanatorium): February 9 to February 11, 1925; June 21 to June 24, 1926; June 20 to June 21, 1927.
Nelson:	September 22 to September 24,
1925; October 18, 1926; September 23, 1927.
Victoria:	January 18, 1924; March 18 to
March 20, 1924; May 15 to May 16, 1924; May 30, 1924; September 29 to September 30, 1924; January 19 to January 23, 1925; June 22 to June 26, 1925; September 8 to September 11, 1925; June 14 to June 18, 1926; October 11 to October 15, 1926; June 13 to June 17, 1927; September 12 to September 15, 1927.
Prince Rupert: June 29, 1925.
3.	The official soldiers' advisers in British Columbia and their salaries are as follows:
Mainland: Capt. Ian A. MacKenzie, headquarters at Vancouver. Salary, $3,000 per annum.
Vancouver Island:	Lieut. G. H. Sedger,
headquarters at Victoria. Salary, $2,400 per annum.
4.	The official soldiers' adviser for Vancouver Island has been in attendance at all sessions of the board in his district. The official soldiers' adviser for the mainland has been in attendance at all sessions except those at Vancouver on September 23, 24, 25, 26, 1924, during which imperial appeals only were heard and his presence was not required; and June 18 and 19, 1925, at Vancouver, June 29, 1925, at Prince Rupert, during the occasion of the annual convention of the Dominion Great War Veterans' Association and the convention of the British Empire Service League in Ottawa. On these three days Mr. MacKenzie was represented by his law partner Mr. Bruce Boyd.
5.	The following are the names and headquarters of each of the official soldiers' advisers in Canada, and their salaries: H. F. Hamilton, Halifax, $3,000 per annum; C. Robert Hawkins, Fredericton, $1,800 per annum; H. D. Johnson, M.D., Charlottetown. $1,200 per annum; A. Pettigrew, Quebec, $1,800 per annum; V. J.	Locke, Montreal,	$3,600	per	annum;Ohas.	Askwith, Ottawa,	$2,000	per	annum;J. V.	Conroy, Toronto,	$3,600	per	annum;E.	N.	Freimlin, London,	$2,400	per	annum;J. R.	Bowler, Winnipeg,	$3,600	per	annum;F.	E.	Rutland, Asst, to	Mr. Bowler Si,680
Questions


Mr. EDWARDS (Frontenac-Addington):: 1. Did the Canadian National Railways have offices in the city of Buffalo in what is known
	(a)	
1919-20	$ 980	041920-21	
4,595	521921 22	
5,033	701922-23	
4,481	421923-24	
4,734	241924-25	
4,517	251925-26	
5,198	051926-27	
4,778	n1927-28	
5,544	85

as the Ellieott square building, and at what rent per month or year?
2.	Have the Canadian National Railways offices been changed to the Liberty bank building, and, if so, when, for what reason, and at what rental?
3.	At what cost were new furnishings supplied, and what was done with the furniture formerly in use?
4.	Is it correct that from $90 upwards were paid for chairs for the offices in their new location?


Mr. DUNNING:: 1.	Yes; rental $3,000 per annum.
2.	Yes; May 1, 1928. The management state that the Ellieott square building, formerly occupied, was on a side street, with no advertising value and the railway was seriously handicapped in consequence. The present location is in the heart of the best shopping district on Main street, which is the chief artery of traffic in the city of Buffalo. The rental of the new office is $15,000 per annum.
3.	To fit up the new office and furnish it in keeping with the surroundings and also the offices of other railways, an expenditure of $4,600 was made. The furniture formerly in use in the Ellieott square building was turned in to the railways' stores department for use at other points as required.
4.	No.


HUNTER BUILDING
Mr. STEVENS:: 1.	What was the total cost of the Hunter
building:	(a) amount paid for land, (b)
amount paid for building, (c) amount paid for furnishings?
2.	What amount has been paid each year for (a) lighting, (b) heating, (c) annual upkeep and repairs, (d) cleaners and cleaners' supplies?
3.	What is the total floor space of the said building?
4.	What proportion of the said floor space is occupied by offices?


Mr. ELLIOTT:: 1. (a) $242,136.59 (including $2,662 paid as tenants' compensation); (b) $1,434,164.67; (c)
Furnishings	brought in	by the departmentsoccupying offices.	the building	from their previous(b)	(c)	(d)$ 8,174 82	$	$16,033 4029,806 79	1,525 10	31,099 6630,270 01	2,251 14	32,643 1114,213 43	6,726 50	41352 8814,039 88	4,677 60	37,639 0417,739 89	3,165 29	38,222 8522,168 40	8,386 53	34,872 6119,171 31	7356 13	39,558 0916,982 88	3,408 66	39,636 99
Saturday Sittings
3.	231,498 square feet, including basement, storage and boiler room.
4.	149,734 square feet.


IMMIGRATION MEDICAL OFFICERS
Mr. HOCKEN:: province since t'he date of his appointment. The preventive service is a mobile force and officers are appointed for the whole province and not for any particular county or district.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

[Stage Direction]
1.	How many Canadian doctors are there in Great Britain appointed to examine intending immigrants?
2.	What are their names?
3.	Where did they reside when living in Canada?
Mr. KING (Kootenay):: 1.	26.
2.	See attached list "A".
3.	See attached list "B".
Names of Immigration Medical Officers in Great Britain
Jeffs,
IJame List "A" H. B.
Canadian Residence List "B"
Parney, F. S.
Parks, M. Archibald, C. H. Arpin, C. N.
Audet, G.
Bain, T. D.
Currie, G. C.
Cock, J. L. Delamere, H. D. DuPlessis, F. X. L. Douglas, J. S.
Egan, W.
Ferguson, G. B. Grant, J. E.
Hames, C. F. W. MacDermott, W. B. Nodwell, G. R. Rolland, R.
Savoie, A. M. Turnbull, A.
Boyce, G. J. MacLeod, C.
Neelin, W. E. E. Henderson, R. S. Boyd, W. J.
Toronto, Ont. Edmonton, Alta.
St. John, N.B. Toronto, Ont. Regina, Sask. Quebec, P. Q. Dashwood, Ont. Regina, Sask. Halifax, N.S. Toronto, Ont. Richmond, Que. North Bay, Ont. Ottawa, Ont. Hamilton, Ont. Loekeport, N.S. Birtle, Man. London, Ont. Grand Valley, Ont. Montreal, P.Q. Regina, Sask. Flesherton, Ont. Windsor, Ont. Halifax, N.S. Mountain, Ont. Lilloet, B.C. Estevan, Sask.



DIGBY, N.S., PREVENTIVE OFFICERS

Mr. SHORT:: ]. How many preventive officers are there in Digby country, Nova Scotia?
2.	What are their names?
3.	When were they appointed?
4.	What is the salary of each?
5.	How many seizures, if any, have been made by each officer?


Mr. EULER:: 

SATURDAY SITTINGS

Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved:: That on Saturday, May 19th instant, and every Saturday thereafter until the end of the present session, the house shall meet at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and the order of business and procedure shall be the same as on Fridays.


Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Leader of the Opposition):: In view of the fact that Thursday the 17th and Thursday the 24th instant are holidays, this is a most inconvenient motion to many hon. members. There are many pressing reasons why some hon. members, especially those who sit on this side of the house, will be absent on Thursday and Friday, and to come back on Saturday is a highly inconvenient procedure to everybody who has to be absent from this city.
In addition to that the motion is objectionable inasmuch as it provides that the procedure shall be the same as on Fridays and Friday is one of the days when the Speaker leaves the chair without motion for supply. That the procedure should be the same as on Mondays would not, I think, be an unfair suggestion, because the rule permitting the Speaker on two days to leave the chair without motion for the house to go into supply is only a recent innovation, as a matter of fact dating back to 1913. Prior to that a motion was required whenever the Speaker left the chair for the house to go into supply. If the procedure on Saturdays is made the same as on Fridays, when there is practically nothing but estimates left to deal with, this house will have but one day on which to present its grievances and there are many grievances which the house has to present between now and the end of June. I suggest to the Prime Minister that with the motion as it now stands it is very inconvenient for many members to sit on these two Saturdays, whatever may be done on succeeding Saturdays.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: Will the house be sitting on succeeding Saturdays?


Richard Bedford Bennett: " Mondays I hope that suggestion will meet with the approval of the government; but if not, we can do nothing more than present our position and if necessary move that the word " Mondays " be substituted for the word "Fridays".


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Towards the end of every session for years past the house has met on Saturdays and the order of business on the Saturday has always been similar to that on the Friday. I might mention this further feature which may have escaped the attention of my hon. friend, namely, that on Friday the order provides for the first hour in the evening being devoted to private bills. The government felt in that particular it would perhaps be furthering the wishes of a large number of members if we followed the same procedure as on Fridays.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Make it Tuesday then.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If the question is only one of moving an amendment on going into supply my hon. friend will find that he will have plenty of opportunities. There will be the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If such a really serious situation were to develop that an amendment on going into supply on some subsequent Saturday were desirable I have no doubt he will wish to have the house continue in session, for a day or two longer, in which event he will have an opportunity of moving his amendment the following Monday. The government has sought to ascertain, through the whips and in other ways, the general wish of the members; the motion has now been discussed two or three times, and so far as I am able to learn it is as nearly in accordance with the general wish of hon. members as any motion is ever likely to be. In the circumstances I would ask my hon. friend to allow the motion to pass.


Mr. E. J. GARLAND (Bow River):: Whilst I agree with the motion of the Prime Minister as to taking Saturday afternoons for the business of the government, I must at the same time express my understanding of and sympathy with the attitude taken by the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) as to the matter of going into supply. I think it is only right, if Saturdays are to be taken, that every opportunity should be given for presenting whatever grievances hon. members of this house may have.
The complaint;, however, of the hon. leader of the opposition, that the taking of Saturdays is objectionable on the ground that hon. members want to leave the house on Friday or Wednesday night and be away until the

following Monday is not an argument that is very potent with those of us who have to stay here from the beginning till the very conclusion of the session. Although I have a very deep sympathy with hon. members whose business or social engagements entice them away from the happy surroundings of this house for several days at the end of the week, I do not feel that public business should be held up on that account. But I do think that the Prime Minister should give to the hon. leader of the opposition the opportunity of allowing supply to be moved in the ordinary way on Saturday, if Saturdays are to be taken from this on.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I say,
Mr. Speaker, that rather than have it appear that the government is in the least concerned about any motions on going intc? supply, I have no hesitation whatever in changing the Friday to Tuesday. It will be the wish of hon. members to have the first hour in the evening reserved for private bills, should that be necessary. If that meets the wishes of my hon. friend, as I think it will, and generally the wishes of the house, I will move to amend the motion accordingly and to strike out the words "and procedure."
Motion as amended agreed to.



KINGSVILLE, ONT., DREDGING

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. J. GOTT (South Essex):: I would
like to inquire from the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Elliott) if there is any dredging to be proceeded with in the near future at the port of Kingsville, Ontario, and if so, if he will make an endeavour to proceed with it as quickly as possible.


Hon. J. C. ELLIOTT (Minister of Public Works):: I have no knowledge of any dredging to be proceeded with in the immediate future at Kingsville, but I shall make inquiry.



IMPORTATION OF EGGS FROM CHINA

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. PETER McGIBBON (Muskoka-On-tario):: I would like to ask two questions of
the Minister of Health (Mr. King); first, when he is going to bring down his estimates. I have been waiting for years to see them, and I have not seen them yet. Secondly, I want to ask him if he will, in the interests of the health of the people of Canada, investigate the statement that was made to a committee in this building by supporters of the government in connection with the con-

Pension Act
ditions under which the eggs imported into this country from China are produced. I cannot repeat in the house the language that was used in describing those conditions because it is too filthy to be repeated, but if the conditions are as indicated, these eggs are certainly a menace to the health of the people of Canada. I would ask the minister to investigate the matter and, if the conditions are found as reported, to exclude those eggs from the country on the ground of public health.


Hon. J. H. KING (Minister of Health):: In reply to my hon. friend's first question, I would suggest that he inquire of the Prime Minister as to the time when those estimates will come before the house. They have been tabled, but I have not yet had them before the committee. They will be brought before the committee at the convenience of the government as directed by the Prime Minister.
In relation to the importation of eggs from China, I shall be very glad to look into the information which I understand has been placed before the committee; I shall have inquiries made to ascertain just what that statement was. I am not familiar with it, not being a member of the committee.


Peter McGibbon: The minister was present, also the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb).


Mr. KING (Kootenay):: My hon. friend
is referring-


Peter McGibbon: To the meeting in the
railway committee room.


John Warwick King: I know what my hon. friend is referring to now. I shall be glad to have that matter inquired into.



CHINA-JAPAN RELATIONS

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: Under article XI of the
treaty of Peace it is declared to be the friendly right of each member of the League of Nations to bring to the attention of the assembly or of the council any circumstances whatever affecting international relations which threaten to disturb international peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends. I should like to ask whether Canada, either as a member of the council or of the assembly, is taking any action with regard to the trouble which now exists between two members of the league, China and Japan.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Unfortunately up to the
present time Canada has no source of official information regarding what is taking place in the orient other than the British government. It would seem that if the situation were such as to require the intervention of the league of nations on behalf of these two oriental countries, it should come in the first instance from Great Britain rather than from Canada. I have been given to understand that some other member of the league or some other power has already made representations with respect to the situation. But Canada has not, for the reason that we have not received any official information at first hand to guide us in the matter.



DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. II. E. SPENCER (Battle River): Some days ago an order of the house was passed for the production of certain papers with regard to the Smith inquiry of last year, and also with regard to certain reports brought up by one McClymont, at the request, I understand, of the Deputy Minister of the Interior. I should like to inquire when these returns will be tabled.
Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Minister of the Interior):: So far as the papers in connection with McClymont are concerned, they will be tabled at once. I did not quite catch what else my hon. friend was referring to.


Mr. SPENCER:: It was with reference
to the report of Commissioner Smith.


Charles A. Stewart: That report was tabled long ago.


Henry Elvins Spencer: And the motion called
for the production of the exhibits.


Charles A. Stewart: Oh, the
exhibits, yes.



PENSION ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from May 9 consideration in committee of Bill No. 289, to amend the Pension Act.-Mr. King (Kootenay).- Mr. Johnston in the chair.
The CHAIRMAN:: When the committee
last sat, certain sections were adopted, certain other sections were allowed to stand, and certain sections were not considered at all.


John Warwick King: We were dealing
only with those sections which the pensions
Pension Act

committee had passed unanimously, and I think we had reached section 11.


John Frederick Johnston: Sections 3, 5, 6 and 10 stood.


Peter McGibbon: Mr. Chairman, may I
be permitted to revert to section 4-not by way of objection at all, but simply to point out that I do not think it goes as far as the committee intended. The intention was that a man should receive all information uopn which an appeal could be based.


John Warwick King: I have no amendment.


John Frederick Johnston: Is it the desire of the minister to take section 5?


John Warwick King: That is a committee section.


Richard Bedford Bennett: As I understand it, we
are passing without much discussion those sections of the bill that were agreed to by the select committee, and the sections that are purely departmental and amend the existing law have not yet been considered by the house.


John Warwick King: Exactly.


John Frederick Johnston: Sections 5, 6 and 10 are not dealt with.


Mr. ROSS (Kingston):: Will the minister
allow reconsideration of section 4?


John Warwick King: I am told that
the section as now drawn meets the situation and was accepted by the committee; but if there is good reason why it should be reconsidered, I have no objection. I would, however, prefer completing the other sections and coming back to section 4 if it is thought advisable to reconsider it.
Sections 11 to 18 inclusive agreed to.
On section 19-Time from which payment of pension for disability shall commence.


John Warwick King: An amendment
has been suggested to this section to clarify it. It has received the approval of the committee. I move that the following be substituted for the present section:
19. Paragraph (b) of section twenty-seven of the said act is repealed and the following is substituted therefor:-
"(b) in the case in which a pension is awarded to an applicant the appearance of whose disability was subsequent to his retirement or discharge from the forces, in which case a pension may be paid from a date six months prior to the day upon which application for pension has been received or from the date of the appearance of the disability whichever is
[Mr. J. H. Kine.l
the later date, or from the day upon which application was made to the department for treatment in respect of the injury or disease resulting in disability for which pension is awarded provided that if treatment was commenced under the jurisdiction of the department in respect of such injury or disease resulting in disability a pension may be paid from the day following that upon which the treatment of the applicant by the department was completed."


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Richard Bedford Bennett: The old section left out the word "disease" and simply referred to "disability".


John Warwick King: Yes.


Peter McGibbon: Is it definitely plain that the primary treatment must be for the same disability as that for which the pension is awarded?


John Warwick King: Yes.


Mr. VALLANCE:: Mr. Chairman, there are some of us over here interested in this bill, but. we cannot hear what is going on.


Mr. ADSHEAD:: We cannot hear at all.


John Frederick Johnston: Order.
Sections 20 to 26 inclusive agreed to. ,
On section 27-Pension to unmarried wife at discretion of commission.


John Warwick King: That, Mr. Chairman, is also a committee section. I wish to change the wording of the side note to read:
Pension at discretion of commission in certain cases.
It does not affect the section at all.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That seems to be somewhat pertinent to the question I mentioned to the minister the other day.


Mr. THORSON:: It is a different principle.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Your saying so does not make it so.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
Section 28 agreed to.
Sections 29 and 30 stand.
Sections 31 and 34 inclusive agreed to.
On section 4

Information to be placed on file.
John Warwick King: Section 1 passed
the other day, but I may explain that it involves merely a change in the title of the

Pension Act
amalgamated departments. As regards section 4, this is in accordance with the recommendations of the committee.


Peter McGibbon: I spoke to the minister the other day in regard to this provision, pointing out that in my opinion the intention of the committee had not been borne out. Let us take the case of a man living in British Columbia who applies for a pension which is refused: the intention was that the file should show all the reasons on which the decision was based and on which he might wish to establish his appeal.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: Section 4 as it stands in
the present act is in accordance with the suggestions made by the Canadian Legion, and I believe it carries out the suggestions of the committee, based upon the recommendations of the legion. Those suggestions have been incorporated practically verbatim in this section 4.


Arthur Edward Ross: I do not wish to
create any difference of opinion, but it will be remembered that during the discussion of this question in the committee, while the point of view of the legion was undoubtedly as indicated, there was something else implied. There was evidently a desire that the reasons, or the evidence upon which the decision was based, should be fully set forth. I have been speaking to a representative of the legion since and he said, "We should like to go that far, but we don't know whether it will be granted". I think it is only fair that this should be done. For example, a man applies for a pension and the information comes back, "Your application has been considered by the board and it has been decided that the bronchitis in your case is pre-enlistment". To enable this man to go on to an appeal, it is desirable to know upon what evidence it has been decided that the bronchitis is pre-enlistment so that the appellant may be in a position to furnish counter evidence. That is only fair. And it is only for purposes of appeal. If we included in this section a stipulation that there should be disclosed such evidence as is required for these purposes, the reasons would have to be given for the decision that the disability was either pre-enlistment or post discharge. Only upon that evidence can the man make his appeal.


Mr. RALSTON:: The section as drafted
is word for word the recommendation of the committee.


Peter McGibbon: We agree.


Arthur Edward Ross: But the discussion went further.


James Layton Ralston: On the file there would
appear all the evidence submitted. I do not
think you could expect, in the judgment of the board, which is inserted in a form, that there should be a complete consideration of all the certificates pro and con and of all the medical evidence upon which it was found that the disability was either post discharge or pre-enlistment. That is on the file and is available to the soldier's adviser. What the ex-service man really wanted was some provision which would obviate the clash, which apparently has frequently occurred, between the board of pension commissioners and the federal appeal board in connection with the diagnosis. In some cases a man was suffering from a disability which the doctors found it impracticable to actually name; as to the disease which gave rise to the disability there was a difference of opinion between the board of pension commissioners and the federal appeal board, and it was held that the federal appeal board had no jurisdiction. It is this difference of view which the present section is designed to meet. The old section set forth the ground on which pensions were awarded or refused, and that has been amplified into three subsections setting out, first, the medical classification of the injury or disease causing the disability on which the claim is based; secondly, the medical classification of every injury or disease which the board considers in dealing with the application; and, thirdly, an absolute statement as to whether the board found that the injury or disease was either post discharge or pre-enlistment or whether it was an aggravation of a condition resultant from service. I do not think you could give very much more in the way of particulars in a judgment unless you set out the file.


Arthur Edward Ross: But the information desired is not on the file. Let me give a concrete case. A certain ex-service man applies for a pension on account of asthma and the board decide that the asthma was pre-enlistment. The man has submitted all the evidence he can possibly get to prove that it was not pre-enlistment and there is nothing on the file to show on what ground the board concluded that it was. There should be some evidence in that direction; they might get the evidence from some neighbour or other person to show that the man had suffered from asthma before enlistment. But, as I say, there is nothing on the file to that effect. It is cases of this description to which we refer; you do not get on the file the reasons for the board's conclusion. We want to know just why they have come to a certain conclusion-what evidence there is for their decision.
Pension Act


James Layton Ralston: I am not a medical man; the hon. gentleman has the advantage of me. Generally speaking, however, if there is a decision that the asthma-or whatever the disease may be-was pre-enlistment there would surely be evidence forthcoming, from the family or from someone who knew the man, in regard to the attacks from which he had suffered. That evidence might come from a great many sources and it is all on the file. I will quite agree with my hon. friend; if it is a case where the board deliberately made a finding with no evidence at all, the file itself would show that, but this is only asking them to set out what is not on the file. I do submit that we are getting into the realm of administration and out of the statutory provisions altogether. I have repeatedly urged that the pension board, when they advise a man as to pension being refused, should give him some idea of the ground on which the refusal is made, to let him know what kind of evidence he should adduce in order to support his case. That was one of the reasons why the soldiers' advisers were appointed, in order that they might go over these files and tell the man what sort of evidence he should have.


Peter McGibbon: I believe the committee did not quite know really what they wanted. If you consider these first three subsections, they could be answered by one word, such as bronchitis, tuberculosis, arteriosclerosis or something of that kind.


James Layton Ralston: In order that we might
have something concrete before us I wonder if my hon. friends think their case would be met if, in addition to the three subsections we have already, we re-enacted the old subsection (b), which required that the board of pension commissioners set out the grounds on which pension was awarded or refused.


Peter McGibbon: I think that would help.


James Layton Ralston: That has been cut out
but if that were reinserted I think it would provide the particulars my hon. friends want.


Arthur Edward Ross: The minister has
the point; that information should be on file, because in many cases there is nothing to show why the board came to a certain decision, and in those cases the man cannot go to appeal without being at a disadvantage.


James Layton Ralston: I would suggest that we add as subsection (iv) "The grounds on which pension is awarded or refused." That was in the old act.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Has the soldiers' adviser or his agent full access to these files?
[Mr A. E. Ross.]


James Layton Ralston: Yes.


John Warwick King: I move that we
amend section 4 by adding the following subsection after subsection (iii):
(iv) The grounds on which pension is awarded or' refused.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
On section 5-Commission attached to department.
Richard Bedford Bennett: Does the minister think
this section gives effect to the proposals mentioned in the explanatory notes with respect to it? There is no provision covering appeals to the federal appeal board, which was included in the old section.


James Layton Ralston: Under the old act the
federal appeal board was attached to the Department of Justice.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: My friend is thinking
of subsection 2 of section 7. That' is incorporated in section 51 of the act, so provision is made elsewhere.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Without going through
it, will the hon. gentleman say it is sufficiently clear that there is no doubt about it?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: I think so.


Richard Bedford Bennett: What about the question of clerks and employees attached to the commission being subject to the Civil Service Commission?


John Warwick King: They will be.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Is that clear?


John Warwick King: Yes, I think so.
I understand that is the case at present, and this makes no change in that regard. The change here is more in administration; it has been felt that a saving could be made and equal efficiency given if the routine auditing and accounting were done by the officers of the department rather than by the pension board themselves, they confining themselves strictly to the adjudication of applications and being relieved of the necessity of carrying accountants and auditors and so on. This will bring the staff under the control of the departmental heads.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Does not this amendment limit to some extent what you might call the independent character of the commission?


John Warwick King: I do not think
so; that is not the intention.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It may not be the
intention, and I say this with no desire to give offence, but does it not place this com-

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mission practically under the control of the minister as a sub-department of his department, which I think was not the intention of parliament when the commission was created? The Minister of National Defence will remember that one of the points strongly urged was that this should be a commission more or less lifted out of politics, if I may use that expression in no offensive manner, and certainly the effect of this amendment is to make the commission nothing more or less than a branch of the department.


James Layton Ralston: It is always attached to
the department.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But this is the way it
reads:
The commission shall be attached to the department and the expenses required to be incurred for the discharge of its duties, including the salaries of its officers, clerks, and other employees shall be met out of the moneys provided by parliament for the purposes of the department.
I speak subject to correction, but my memory is that we dealt with the commission as a distinct branch of government with regard to appropriation and so on, and now it must rely entirely upon the departmental appropriation.


John Warwick King: That is true.


James Layton Ralston: That is the case now.


John Warwick King: The commission
has its own vote of $80,000 or $90,000. A great deal of the trouble that has arisen between the pension board and the department, in the matter of administration, has been in the control of certain individuals who are merely carrying out routine. I have provided that the pension board, in order that they may be more independent and be better able to carry out their work, should have under their control the officers on whom they are depending to secure information regarding the pensioner or proposed pensioner. Heretofore, the medical men in the field were in the offices of the Department of Soldiers Civil Re-establishment, and that department reported through to the pension board. It is now proposed that they will have the control of their medical officers and the officers in the field, the men securing information, investigators and so on. We believe that considerable economy can be effected by one auditing organization and one accounting organization, without in any way interferring with the commission or its independence. It is merely a matter of administration.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I am sure the minister
is very anxious to have this matter removed
from the field of political activity. Will he be good enough to look at the old and the new section? Under the old section the commission had the powers and duties of a deputy head of a department for the purposes of the Civil Service Act. The bill, as now drawn, gives effect to a principle entirely opposed to what the minister has now stated. Section 5 says that the expenses:
including the salaries of its officers, clerks, and other employees shall be met out of the moneys provided by parliament for the purposes of the department.
In other words, the commission may require help and it may not be able to get it; if the minister says, "I am not going to provide it," that is the end of it. Heretofore, the commission has functioned as an independent branch, receiving a direct appropriation from parliament which was subject to the supervision of the Auditor General. You have reversed that exactly. The minister said a moment ago that questions relating to clerks, and matters of that kind, would be determined by the board. What he proposes to do now is to take these matters out of their hands. The section says: "Shall be met out of the moneys provided by parliament for the purposes of the department." In other words, if he thinks that they should not have additional men to carry on their activities, they cannot have them because the minister is not going to provide the money to pay them. He is in supreme control of the whole fund under which this commission is to operate, and, heretofore, that was not so. I cannot think that this is a step in advance, nor will it promote economy.
When I asked the minister a moment ago about appointments, he said that they were now under the Civil Service Commission, but will they be hereafter?


John Warwick King: Yes.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Where is that in the
act?


John Warwick King: That is provided for in the act we passed a day or two ago, bringing about the amalgamation.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That does not touch
the question at all, and we must not evade it. The minister is well aware, if he will consider it at all, that that does not touch upon the question. The old act said that the commission shall have all the powers and duties of a deputy head of a department for the purposes of the Civil Service Act. This will make this service a special branch of the department, and provides that the salaries of clerks and other employees shall be met out
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of the moneys provided by parliament for the purpose of the department. The effect of that is to take the appointment of these clerks out of the Civil Service Act. I do not say that that is intended, but that is the effect of it. I think the minister sees my point and I hope he will make the matter a little clearer.


John Warwick King: How would
it be if we amended that section by dropping the words, "for the purposes of the department." Would that make it clearer?


Richard Bedford Bennett: I was going to suggest
that the salaries of officers, clerks and other employees, should be paid out of moneys provided by parliament for the purpose. Does not the minister think that it is desirable to add those words to make that abundantly clear? We want to have it perfectly clear that these employees and officers will undoubtedly be under the Civil Service Act.


John Warwick King: Or we could insert the old section, which says:
The commission shall have all the powers and duties of a deputy head of a department for the purposes of the Civil Service Act.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Having regard to how
this provision has worked out in the past, I think it will be more satisfactory just to add that subsection. Speaking subject to correction, I understand that under the old act, this has worked out satisfactorily. Is that correct? The Civil Service Commission made the appointments from time to time on the requisition of the commission?


John Warwick King: Yes.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Under those circumstances, I think the minister's suggestion would meet the case.


James Layton Ralston: We can reinsert the old
section.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Exactly. Do I understand the minister to suggest, as an amendment that the salaries of officers, clerks, and other employees shall be met out of the moneys provided by parliament, and the words "for the purposes of the department" shall be struck out?


John Warwick King: I would like to
let this section stand for a moment, because it is rather important. It was drafted with some care in order that we might have better administration. That is really what we are after.


Richard Bedford Bennett: We all want that.
[Mr. Bennett.l


John Warwick King: I would like the section to stand for the time being, until we can give it further thought.
Section stands.
On section 6-Additional duties.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is merely a reenactment of the old section?


John Warwick King: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 10-Pension suspended on imprisonment or paid to dependent.
Richard Bedford Bennett: The other day I mentioned to the minister a case that was brought to his attention some time ago. I fancy that several members have had the same kind of case brought to their attention. However, I do not think that this question can be dealt with usefully under this section.


John Warwick King: I do not think it could be done under this section.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 30-Federal appeal board.
Richard Bedford Bennett: It was section 30 that
I desired to discuss with the committee in connection with section 5. Section 30 reads as follows:	.
Such officers, clerks, and other employees as may be required for the proper discharge of the work of the board shall be furnished by the department, and the salaries of all such officers, clerks and other employees, together with all other expenses incidental to the carrying out of the work with which the board is charged, shall be paid by the department and shall be charged a_gainst the salary or other appropriations of the department.
It is very desirable to make this provision absolutely clear.


John Warwick King: I suggest that the section stand for further consideration.
Section stands.
On section 29-Term of office.


John Warwick King: This section deals with the term of office of the appeal board. There is a suggestion that this section should be amended to give more permanency to the appointment. The section as drafted reads:
Of the members first appointed to the board, other than the chairman, one-half shall be appointed for a term of two years and the other for a term of three years, and they shall be eligible for re-appointment for such further terms of two or three years, a? the governor in council may deem advisable.

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The words " two or three years " were substituted for the words " not to exceed five years I understand in the committee there was some doubt as to whether the use of that term " not to exceed five years " would exclude them from further appointment, and they decided to reduce the term to from two to three years. A term of two to three years seems to be rather a limited term; at least it would not attract the type of men we would like to have act on the board.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Was that not what was intended by the Ralston report, namely, that it would not be a permanent body, but rather that to clear up the situation they would be a charge on the public service for a limited number of years?


John Warwick King: That is true.


James Layton Ralston: It turns out that they are going to be as permanent as the pension board. They are still operating.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But in view of the
amendments that are now being made to the act in the endeavour to meet the situations that experience has taught us should be met by legislation, the necessity for this board will become less and less apparent. That is, in the operation of the act as the committee has now amended it, there should be less necessity for the appeal board to act.


James Layton Ralston: We are now giving the appeal board direct jurisdiction over the meritorious clause, which is the one which will be invoked more and more as the years go by.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is the minister's personal view?


John Warwick King: In consultation
with the Department of Justice we have had the following amendment suggested which would replace the amendment as it came from the committee:
Every member of the board shall hold office during pleasure or such limited period of time not exceeding five years as the governor in council may prescribe, and shall be eligible for re-appointment from time to time as in the case of the first appointment, provided that any member who is appointed for a fixed period of time shall be removable for cause.
It is just a question whether the period of two or three years will attract the men that we should have on a board of that character, or whether we should extend the period to five years.


Richard Bedford Bennett: There seem to have been a good many applicants for the job.


Peter McGibbon: I am unalterably opposed to long appointments, I do not care whether they are on committees or on the bench or anywhere else. When you appoint a man to a position for ten or twenty years, no matter who he is, where he is responsible practically to nobody, he becomes autocratic, domineering and instead of being more efficient, he becomes less efficient. There is nothing like keeping people keyed up to their jobs. I am opposed to extending the time limit. In fact I moved in the committee that the pension board be brought under the same regulations as the appeal board, and I can see no reason why there should be a distinction between them. I am not impressed with the idea that you have to make long-term appointments in order to get good men. If a man 'has the ability, the inclination, the ambition, he will take chances on making good. All he wants is the chance, and you are making a mistake in fixing long-term appointments for these offices. Nearly everyone who is on the committee was impressed, rightly or wrongly, with the fact that there was a lack of harmony between the soldiers and both of these boards. It is no use endeavouring to disguise that fact. The soldiers were complaining not so much about the law and the bulk of the regulations as about the spirit in which the act was being administered. A large part of our work was to correct the act so as to make it absolutely compulsory for both of these boards to do what we wanted them to do. As a matter of fact we were restricting what you might call the liberty of each of these boards and compelling them to carry out the specific desire of parliament.
It is a mistake to increase that tenure of office of this board and the board of pension commissioners could to advantage be put under similar regulations as the appeal board. If you have good men on the board, you have the privilege of reappointing them. If you do not have good men, they automatically fall by the wayside and you do not have to cause ill feeling by dismissing them. In the end if you limit the term of office of these boards you have greater harmony and greater satisfaction expressed by the soldiers. If you are going to make the term ten years with eligibility for reappointment, that means twenty years, which will carry them through the lifetime of a large number of the soldiers. I am positively opposed to long appointments. On one occasion I suggested to the Minister of Justice that he should get the senators to retire at a certain age. In the railway commission I think the ten-year limit is the right
Pension Act

principle to follow. We should place in these positions younger men who will be more energetic, more ambitious and who will probably throw greater enthusiasm and energy into the work.


Mr. BOYS:: How many members are there on the board?


John Warwick King: Seven.


William Alves Boys: Does the minister think this
section is workable? I understand there are seven members on the board and it reads:
Of the members first apointed to the board, other than the chairman, one-half shall be appointed-
That would mean three and a half.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: Other than the chairman. There are seven including the chairman.


William Alves Boys: Excuse me.


James Layton Ralston: You will not have to
split them up. I took some interest in this and I think the hon. member from Muskoka perhaps misapprehends the section as drafted and the suggestion made by the minister. The section in the original act is rather peculiar. Section 50, strangely enough, provides no limitation whatever for the appointment of other than the first members. That is to say, after you have appointed your first members, the other members may be appointed under the statute for a certain specified time without limit. There appears to be some ground for that for the reason that it does not seem to be implied that they are appointed during pleasure, because it is expressly inserted in the act that any member may be removed for cause. If they were appointed during pleasure, there would not have to be any provision for removing them for cause. I understand that there was considerable discussion in the committee about the fact that the section as it stands does not permit anybody to be reappointed for an aggregate term of longer than five years, no matter whether there may be two or three reappointments.


Richard Bedford Bennett: How long is the chairman appointed for now?


James Layton Ralston: The chairman holds office as chairman at pleasure. The chairman is one of those as to whom there is no provision in the act, limiting or extending his appointment.


William Alves Boys: Does the minister say that
the chairman is not appointed for any specified period?


James Layton Ralston: As to the chairman as a
member of the board, there is no provision limiting his appointment.


William Alves Boys: If he is appointed as one of
the seven, he should start-


James Layton Ralston: For instance, I think he
might under this act be appointed for ten years.


William Alves Boys: I realize that I was wrong
in the observation I made at first, but suppose we apply it now:	If there was a provision
which said that the chairman shall be appointed for five years, and of the remaining six, half shall be appointed for two years and half for three years, then it would be all right, but in a hurried glance I do not see anything in the act which says that the chairman, apart from the other six, is appointed for a specified period.


James Layton Ralston: I quite agree.


William Alves Boys: Then we start with an appointment of seven members, and we look to this section, which says that half are to be appointed for two years and the other half for three years.


James Layton Ralston: No, we do not.


William Alves Boys: Then under what section is
the chairman appointed separately from the other members of the board.


James Layton Ralston: He is appointed under
subsection 2 of section 50. Section 50 says:
There shall be a board known as "The federal appeal board," consisting of not less than three nor more than seven members appointed by the governor in council on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice.
There is no limit whatever. Then you come to subsection 4, which says:
Of the members first appointed to the board, other than the chairman, onc-half be appointed for a term of two years and the other for a term of three years, and they shall be eligible for reappointment for such further terms, not to exceed five years, as the governor in council may deem advisable.
I understand that in the committee there arose the question as to whether or not the phrase "not to exceed five years" did not mean the aggregate of all the reappointments which could be made; in other words, that if a man were appointed for two years and then for three years, would npt the power of reappointment be deemed to be exhausted? And it was suggested that it should be provided that he might be reappointed for as many terms as was thought proper, because by reappointing him you would get the benefit of his experience and information.

Pension Act
The other point is this: Under the act, and the suggestion of the committee, there is no limit, as I have pointed out, to the appointment of the chairman or to the appointment of any other member that the first member of the board, and it has been suggested by the minister, and is embodied in the section which he proposes, that everybody shall be limited. If they are first appointments, they would not be for more than two or three years, and they never can be reappointed at any one time for longer than five years. It seemed to me that that was advisable.
My hon. friend the leader of the opposition referred to the report of the commission with which I happened to be connected. I find here that their recommendation for the period of appointment to the federal appeal board was five years. It seemed to me that was sound. In the first place, it did not provide for life appointment or for a long permanency, but for some permanency so that a man might have the expectation of some reasonable period of employment, and thus be willing to cut himself off from something else and perfect himself in this work. The suggestion made here is that if you appoint a man first for two years, and he is a good man and you want to reappoint him, you cannot reappoint him for more than three years at the very outside.


William Alves Boys: But you could continue to reappoint him.


James Layton Ralston: Quite right.


William Alves Boys: I would certainly agree with
that.


James Layton Ralston: And the five years makes it so that the man can feel, "I do not have to depend upon the whim of somebody to reappoint me; I have at least five years service before me, so I will take my chance and go into the service."


Richard Bedford Bennett: There are a great many applicants, unfortunately.


James Layton Ralston: Yes, and perhaps they are not all qualified. It is not everybody who is qualified for the pension board or the appeal board. A man requires not only medical and legal or business experience, but he has to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove as well.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Some of them are the
latter.


James Layton Ralston: And therefore it seems
to me that it is worth while to consider giving some permanency to the appointment, providing you have a good man who has served for two or three years-


Richard Bedford Bennett: What are the salaries?


James Layton Ralston: For the chairman, $7,000, and $6,000 for the others. The amendment which the minister suggests does two things. It puts a limit on everybody's appointment -the chairman's and appointments which would be called first appointments; they are not to exceed five years-and secondly it puts a limit on reappointment, which is not to exceed five years. As the leader of the opposition says, in the course of time the federal appeal board may work itself out of a job, but that is not going to be for a long time yet, I am afraid, and the amendments that are passing this year are the reverse of cutting them out of work; they are giving them additional work and additional responsibility, and perhaps imposing qualifications which were not thought of when the board was first appointed.


Peter McGibbon: I do not think the minister just caught my point. It is pretty hard to discuss this matter without being considered personal, but I do not wish to be considered personal in what I say in regard to either the federal appeal board or the pension board. As a matter of fact, I know very few of the members. But the point is this: If the minister goes on the assumption that he has a perfect board now, and wants to keep them all on, he might just as well pass an age limit for their retirement at seventy-five or eighty years, but the impression we got in the committee was not that the board is perfect, but that it is far from being perfect, and the federal appeal board is just as bad as the pension board, or worse. If the minister is going to raise the period-


James Layton Ralston: He is not raising it.


Peter McGibbon: I thought you were
making it five years.


James Layton Ralston: It is five years now. This is cutting it down to two and three years, but it is making it so that you can reappoint a man.


Peter McGibbon: I thought the minister
was proposing an amendment to make it five years.


James Layton Ralston: It is five now under the act, and the committee suggested an amendment cutting it down to two or three years, but providing that you could reappoint him. The minister's suggestion is that when the reappointment comes, it may be for a period of at least five years.
Pension Act


Peter McGibbon: That is my point. It
should be for two or three years.


James Layton Ralston: It is five years under
the act now.


Peter McGibbon: I would suggest dealing with the pension board in the same way you deal with the federal appeal board.


James Layton Ralston: That is another question.


Peter McGibbon: I am not saying that
in a personal way at all, but I think you would get better satisfaction that way.


William Alves Boys: As I understand it, the reappointment is given by subsection 4 of section 50, which reads:
Of the members first appointed to the board, other than the chairman, one-half shall be appointed for a term of two years and the other for a term of three years, and they shall be eligible for reappointment for such further terms, not to exceed five years, as the governor in council may deem advisable.
Under the present law they may be reappointed for five years. I think there should be a limitation, but no disqualifications. Because there is the right to reappoint for five years, you are not obliged to exercise it; discretion may be used under that section. I am strongly inclined to think that if you got a good man, and offered him a reappointment for one or two years, he might not care to accept it. It seems to me that a person would have very carefully to consider accepting a five-year appointment, because after that time, if his services were dispensed with, what would he do? I prefer leaving the law in its present form.


James Layton Ralston: Would my hon. friend have that apply to everybody? In other words, cut out the word "first" in the first line of subsection 4?


William Alves Boys: Yes.


James Layton Ralston: As it is now there is a question whether the governor in council could not appoint some of them for ten years.


William Alves Boys: It would work no hardship to put them all on the same basis.


James Layton Ralston: It keeps them "on their toes", as one hon, member put it.


William Alves Boys: I quite agree.
Mr. (McPHERSON: Under clause 4 in the original act there was power to reappoint "for such further period, not to exceed five years." This amendment says that they "shall be eligible for reappointment for such further terms of two or three years." Would not this [Mr. Ralston.l
be restrictive to one reappointment? I agree with my hon. friend from Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. McGibbon) that the advantages of a shorter term were shown before the committee. It was the general opinion that the appointment should be made for a nominally short term, but that the appointees might be reappointed even to the extent of ten or fifteen years so long as they were giving good service. I rather think the proposed amendment would limit the term either to two or three years. The minister suggests a five-year term. Personally I am not very much interested in whether the term be two, three or five years, provided there is a reasonably short appointment and a short reappointment so these men wil be kept on their toes and give good service to the public by looking after the soldiers properly.


James Layton Ralston: This is the amendment suggested, and I think it will meet my hon. friend's views:
Every member of the board shall hold office during pleasure, or for such limited period of time, not exceeding five years, as the governor in council may prescribe; and shall be eligible for reappointment from time to time in the ease of a first appointment, provided that any member who is appointed for a fixed period of time shall be removable for cause.
That gives the governor in council power to appoint members of the board to hold office during pleasure, which, should occasion arise, would enable council to cut them off immediately. A member of the board might be reappointed for a further period, but not longer chan the original term. All the members would be removable for cause.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The words "during
pleasure" would have no value at all.


James Layton Ralston: If you appoint them during pleasure the appointments are probationary.


Mr. BLACK (Yukon):: This was all carefully considered in the special committee, and the amendment in section 29 represents the conclusion arrived at, with the possible exception of the word "first" in the third line. I think if you eliminate that word the subsection represents exactly what the .committee wanted in the way of legislation. It was the intention of the committee to recommend that the reappointment should be made at pleasure for the period of two or three years, as the government saw fit, and not for a period of five years. Of course, if the minister is not prepared to accept the recommendation of the committee, that is a different matter.

Pension Act


James Layton Ralston: Does my hon. friend find in the subsection any power at all for a recurrent reappointment?


George Black: Yes. He "shall be eligible for reappointment for such further terms of two or three years."


William Alves Boys: There are two classes of terms, but surely it does not limit the reappointments.


James Layton Ralston: Is not that just what it does do?


William Alves Boys: I would not think so. The language may be ambiguous, but it can be clarified.


James Layton Ralston: Is it not to provide for staggered appointments, one for two years and the other for three?


William Alves Boys: Yes.


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: Could not the subsection be clarified by making it read, "for one or more periods of two or three years"?


James Layton Ralston: With all respect, I do not think much of the two- or three-year limitation.


William Alves Boys: I suppose this is to ensure that you will always have some members on the board who had been on previously, the first half being appointed for two years, the other half for three years, and they would be reappointed respectively for three and two years.


James Layton Ralston: Yes.


William Alves Boys: Then why not put in the words " from time to time," thereby removing any ambiguity as to reappointment?


James Layton Ralston: I do not think that will remove any ambiguity. The suggestion here is to give the governor in council power to appoint up to five years; then they can regulate any man by reappointing him for a shorter or longer period.


Mr. M ANION:: But you have your different periods in your original appointments, some for two and some for three years. The future appointments could all be for two or three years. You do not need to step them; you have already done so. Some will drop out in 1940, some in 1941, and so on.


John Warwick King: When the appeal board was first formed I think it was expected that it would not continue for more than five years.


Robert James Manion: I am speaking of the
amendment to subsection 4 to section 29.
M!r. KING (Kootenay): Quite so. But if this bill is accepted the appeal board will be continued for a considerable period, and it seems to me you will find difficulty in getting the type of men you need to accept appointments for such a short term.


Richard Bedford Bennett: You would get as good as you get now. I will give you a hundred of them before six o'clock.


John Warwick King: To get the better type of men we have to extend the period to five years; I am not sure it should not be ten.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The period of time should not be longer than five years, having regard to the conditions which first brought this court of appeal into existence. The Minister of National Defence in dealing with the matter originally did not contemplate the possibility of the board being in existence for any length of time. Circumstances have now made it likely that- it will continue for many years. Under those conditions it is essential, as the member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. McPherson) and the member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. McGibbon) said, that these men should have a continued thought of the importance of their office and not get into a state of mind where they would not be as desirous of discharging their duties as they were when originally appointed. If you appoint them during pleasure, or for a period not exceeding three years, it seems to me you have done justice to the whole situation by imposing on them always the thought that they must discharge their duties properly, because there has been much complaint that the entire personnel of the board is of one political faith. That in itself is wrong. I put it to the minister, if in a board like this a total disregard of political considerations should not prevail. I have been told so frequently by returned men, "They are all of one political faith on that appeal board. What hope is there for me?" That is a wrong state of mind on their part, but it is brought about by a wrong attitude on the part of the government who appoint the appeal board. The appeal board should be appointed without regard to anything of this sort. That is my view at any rate.


Peter McGibbon: I may call the attention of the minister to the fact that the chairman of the appeal board was at one time on the pension board and was removed.
Pension Act


John Warwick King: He was at one
time chief medical adviser, but not a commissioner.


Peter McGibbon: One point I would
emphasize is this: These appointees should be men who served in France and had some experience in the front line. This is coming to them. There are a good many men who were smashed to pieces in war service and they ought to get the preference in all these appointments. I move that the 'five year period be reduced to three years.


John Warwick King: The amendment
is only proposed; I have not moved it. The committee reported unanimously and the house accepted their recommendation and it is not my purpose to bring about any disagreement between its members. I argued that it was advantageous in the interests of the soldier as well as of the men' who compose the board that the appointment should be for a period of five years. I have not changed my mind, but rather than have a division of opinion on the resolution as it has come from the committee I withdraw my amendment and allow the section to stand as it is.
Mr. McPHERtSON: In my view the amendment as suggested by the minister is preferable to the amendment as it appears in the printed bill. It covers the case fully.


John Frederick Johnston: Shall section 29 carry as it stands in the printed bill?


William Alves Boys: I thought the minister was
allowing the section to stand.


John Warwick King: I am withdrawing my proposed amendment and allowing the section to go through as it is.


William Alves Boys: Are you not going to meet
the doubt expressed by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Ralston) as to the possibility of the section, as it stands, limiting reappointment? If it does limit it provision should be made for reappointment. I would suggest the words "from time to time" after the word "reappointment" in the thirty-seventh line.


John Warwick King: If there is no
objection on the part either of members of the special committee or of this committee I move that the words "from time to time" be inserted after the word "reappointment" in the thirty-seventh line.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
Progress reported.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from May 8, consideration in committee of Bill No. 288, to amend the Soldier Settlement Act.-Mr. Forke.-Mr. Marcil in the chair.
John Frederick Johnston: Section 1 was called
at the last sitting of the committee. Section 2, "Revaluation of land".
On section 2-Revaluation of land.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I am told that the
department has ruled, under the authority of the Department of Justice, that when a settler buys a property-at least when he receives money from the board and pays for the property and gives the mortgage back-his lands cannot be revalued. I think that parliament intended that these lands-


Charles A. Stewart: That is
section 2.
Mr.	BENNETT:	The	chairman	called
section 2. Should we not apply the same principle to those who get money from the board, buy land, give a mortgage and take title, as in the other cases where there are agreements outstanding?. It was certainly intended by parliament last year that we should.
Mr.	FORKE:	That is section 2.Mr.	BENNETT:	The	chairman	called
section 2.
The	CHAIRMAN	(Mr.	Marcil):	The
leader of the opposition is right. At the last sitting of the committee section 1 was considered and I have initialed it as carried.


William Alves Boys: It certainly was not carried.


The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Marcil):: Then we will revert to section 1.
On section 1-No patent to issue until amount owing to board is repaid.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: I must say that I object to this section as much as ever. I will outline to the committee exactly the process through which the soldier passes in obtaining land. In the first place, the soldier did not know when he bought land that his homestead would be encumbered in consequence. I want the committee to follow the process throughout and see whether we ought to have the soldier's homestead, as well as the land, encumbered. First of all he had to go to the settlement board and satisfy them that he was
MAY 14, 192o
Soldier Settlement Act
capable of farming and after he passed the board he picked out his land. The board said, "We will not allow you to pay for the land the price which you think you ought to pay because you do not know very much about it." They wanted to get full value for their money, so they sent an inspector to value the land at a price at which the board would be able to recoup themselves if the land ever came back on their hands. As soon as the inspector came back to the office of the board the applicant was informed that the land had been valued at so much, and the soldier was asked to pay one-tenth of the price in cash. If he bought a $4,000 farm he had to put his hand in his pocket and pay over $400 to the board as further security. Then they bought the land, taking the deed in the name of the crown, and the soldier settler having paid his $400 took back an agreement for sale.
After having gone through all that he went on the land, but he could not sell a bushel of grain except with the consent of the soldier settlement board. I have documents on file to the effect that the soldier settlement board had to give their consent before grain could be sold, and they stated how much of the sale price they were to receive. In addition to that they sent out inspectors who watched the settler to satisfy themselves that he was doing right with the land and that their security was still good. If he secured a loan on cattle, those cattle remained in the name of the board; he could not sell a cow and could do nothing with the products of those cattle unless he received the approval of the board. The inspector would come around and say, "Where are those cattle; where is the increase? What have you done with it?" He was restricted in all quarters; he could do nothing except with the consent of the board. The whole purpose of that procedure was to make certain that the land would be valued at a price at which the board could recoup themselves; then they received one-tenth of the amount from the settler, and finally they made sure that the settler could not dispose of anything unless the board were satisfied that they would get their share of the sale price. Nothing was said to the settler about a homestead which he might take up, but after all that procedure the board now propose that when the settler fails and they have to take back that land, as would be done by a mortgage company, they shall put their hands on his homestead as security for the amount still owing.


An hon. MEMBER:: No.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Who said no? The
amendment states:
When a settler obtains Dominion lands, whether by soldier grant or otherwise, and thereafter secures the approval of the board to any advance to him pursuant to this act, while there is owing by him to the board any sum or sums of money...
If the settler has taken up a homestead, that homestead is encumbered with a charge for the debt he may owe the board. A mortgage company would not proceed in that way, and I do not see why a soldier settlei should have land which was not considered when the original agreement was made encumbered in this way.


Charles A. Stewart: I think my hon. friend is wrong there, if the settler did not have the homestead at the time he secured the advance.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: But nothing was said
about it in the agreement; if it had been included then, there could be no objection, if the agreement under which he bought the land from the government included the homestead, there would be no need for this act.


Mr. CAMPBELL:: I am not sure that
I quite understand how this amendment will apply. I will just give the minister a specific case. Here is a soldier who recently lost not only the land he had purchased from the board, but his homestead which was encumbered according to his agreement. The board have foreclosed on the land he secured from them and on his homestead. Under the act recently passed by this house this soldier settler wants to take up a second homestead, and in that case I wonder if that second homestead will be encumbered to secure any indebtedness which might be still charged against him?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: I think it is quite clear that any homestead he may take up subsequently will not be charged with any previous debt owing .by him to the board.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: It says, "When a settler obtains or has obtained."


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: I am referring to the
question put by the hon. member for Mackenzie. If he will look at the language of the new section 26 he will find the following:
"When a settler obtains or has obtained Dominion lands, whether by soldier grant or otherwise, such lands shall be subject to a first charge in favour of the board for any sum owing to the board in respect of any sale or advance thereafter approved for and made to him by the board pursuant to this act and no patent shall be issued to such settler for such lands until the amount of such sum so owing with accrued interest has been fully repaid."

Soldier Settlement Act

So if there were a sale made to him before he gets his homestead, or if any advance were made to him before then, his homestead will be free from the charge.


Mr. NEILL:: There is one word which I
think should be changed; I refer to the word "sale" in line twelve. This section says that such lands shall be held as security for any sum owing in respect of such sale. It is not in respect of a sale but in respect of a purchase; the debt is owing by the man who bought the land. I did not think any obligation rested upon the man who sold the land; I thought the obligation was on the man who bought the land and did not pay for it.


Charles A. Stewart: It deals
with the sale to the soldier or the advance made to him.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I think it is
covered by the words, "sale made to him."


William Alves Boys: It refers to the sale made to
him, which is the same as a purchase by him.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 2-Revaluation of land.
Richard Bedford Bennett: I would like to ask the
minister the question which I propounded a moment ago, as to whether or not section 68 could not be further amended by providing that lands which have been purchased with money advanced by the board, for which mortgages have been given, should be subject to revaluation in the same way as other lands mentioned in the section. It seemed to me incredible that such a limitation should exist, having regard to what parliament did last year, yet the Department of Justice has told the department presided over by the Minister of Immigration and Colonization that we could not revalue those lands.


Charles A. Stewart: I understand that this matter was very thoroughly discussed in the committee, and perhaps there were good reasons why that is not embodied in this bill.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: It is included, if I might say a word in explanation. I think the purport of section 2 is to cover just those cases which the leader of the opposition has in mind. There were two soldier settlement schemes, the one of 1917 and the other of 1919. Under the 1919 scheme title was taken by the board, who sold the land to the soldier under an agreement for sale. Under the 1917 scheme there was no such procedure; the money was advanced to the soldier, who

bought the land, obtained title in his own name and gave a mortgage back to the board. The purpose of this section 2 is that the revaluation scheme shall be applied to those persons who had obtained an advance under the 1917 act, which advance was used in the purchase of agricultural land. I think section 2 carries into effect the very object which the leader of the opposition referred to.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It occurs to me, Mr. Chairman, that the language should be sufficiently comprehensive to cover the point I have raised, as that appears to have been the intention of the committee. I shall treat it as though it were, although I was somewhat surprised when the department ruled that they could not deal with it. Subsection (a) of section 2 will meet the situation with respect to indebtedness to the board, and subsection (b) will meet the situation where the price has been paid, with the approval of the board, for the land and improvements. I do not think it is made abundantly clear that that is what was intended to be done, but we will take it for granted.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: It was because of the
ruling of the Justice department that this question came before the special committee.


William Alves Boys: It is next to impossible for any member to appreciate what this does. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with it, but we have not the act before us. If we had the section of the act we would know what it covers, and then we could see if there was an error made. All I have to say is that if there is any distinction between the soldier who gets an allowance and a revaluation where there is no mortgage, and the one who cannot have a revaluation where there is a mortgage, it would seem to be most inequitable. A mortgage should not control the thing at all. What does control it is the first sale, and if that sale was made at too high a price; if the revaluation shows that he paid $5,000 for lands that were worth only $3,000, he should be allowed the difference; there is no doubt about that.


James Layton Ralston: Only the first sale, with the participation of the board.


William Alves Boys: I have heard what my leader says regarding what is intended, and I have heard the hon. member say that this implements that intention, but I have not heard anybody quote the act. I do not say that this does not cover it, but surely it could be made clear and we would not have to guess at it. The Minister of the Interior did not seem to have any too much confidence about it, but possibly he was just speaking

Soldier Settlement Act
with that usual caution that characterizes him. Let us have the section read to us, and also the amendments.


Charles A. Stewart: I shall be
very glad to do that. My reason for being cautious is that I have found it pays to be cautious when I am talking to a group of lawyers. Section 68 reads as follows: Notwithstanding anything in this act, a settler who has agreed to purchase any land from the board, who has not assigned or transferred his interest in his land-
That is amended in the following manner: (a) by inserting immediately after the word "who' where it first appears in the second line thereof, the following:-
"is indebted to the board in respect of an amount loaned to him by the board under the former act for and expended in the purchase of agricultural land or"
And then follows the wording of section 68: who has not assigned or transferred his interest in his land,
Then (b) amends subsection (c) of section 68. My hon. friend does not want me to read the whole section? I will just read the amended sections.


William Alves Boys: That will be all right.


Charles A. Stewart: I will read down to where the amendment takes place: (c) The depreciation in value to be determined shall be the amount by which, through no neglect or mismanagement on the part of the settler, the price at which the board agreed to sell the land and improvements to the settler
Then comes the amendment:
-or the price under the former act paid by the settler with the approval of the board for the land and improvements
Then the section goes on:
-exceeds the present value, and in determining the present value of the land, improvements made by the settler shall not be included.


Mr. CLARK:: I made a proposal to the minister the other day that when he brought this act back he include in it a provision to make the employees of this department permanent. The same day the Minister of Health, in his bill to amalgamate the departments of Health and Pensions, brought in a provision which, in effect, makes the employees of that department permanent, and thereby subject to the Civil Service Act and entitled to superannuation. The employees of this department are in exactly the same position. They have been in this department nearly ten years, and they have done and are doing very important work. I understand that they are doing the colonization work for the Immigration department, in addition to administering the Soldier Settlement Act. 56103-189J
I understand also that they are doing colonization work, or a large portion of it, for the railway. Surely under the circumstances these men should be made permanent and should be given the same opportunity and treatment as the other civil servants. The fact that they are, in the main, soldiers in my opinion makes their case that much stronger. I cannot understand why they have been kept out of this right for ten years. I think this offers a very convenient opportunity to make these employees civil servants and entitled to the provisions of the Civil Service Act and superannuation.


Mr. FORKE:: I was considering bringing
them under the Civil Service Commission at the next session of the house. However, if there is any strong desire in the house that it should be done this session, it probably could be done. I should prefer, however, to wait until after the report comes from the committee that, is now inquiring into immigration matters.


John Arthur Clark: Is it true that they are doing colonization work for the Immigration department?


Robert Forke: Yes.


John Arthur Clark: And it is true that they are doing a large portion of the colonization work for the railway?


Robert Forke: The railways do not admit
it.


John Arthur Clark: Is it true they are doing
something?


Robert Forke: I think they do.
Mr. CLARK. Then is not their case unanswerable?


Robert Forke: I think they have a very
good case.


John Arthur Clark: Is it not a very simple
amendment that is required?


Charles A. Stewart: Having had some experience myself, I did not wish to stand in the way of any department of the government coming under the Civil Service Act. That is not my intention, but I think it would be well to wait at least until the report of the committee now dealing with immigration matters is made, because it will have some bearing, undoubtedly, on whether this organization known as the soldier settlement board is to be a permanent one or not. They certainly are not required to be permanent to administer this act alone. They have been doing, as my hon. frend has pointed
Soldier Settlement Act

out, a considerable amount of colonization work; there is no doubt about that. I think the committee which is inquiring into these matters will have something to say as to that, and I suggest that it might be well to leave this matter until the committee has reported.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Mr. Chairman, I hope
the minister will deal with this matter at this session. I have received a very large number of letters and telegrams from gentlemen whom I do not know, residing in various parts of western Canada, asking that the matter be impressed upon the attention of the government at the present session of parliament. Having regard to the service they have rendered and the responsibilities they discharge, and the willingness of the minister, as he has himself stated, favourably to consider the matter, I think that this should be dealt with at the present session. We hope that he will do this without necessitating our endeavouring to move an amendment on the third reading of this measure in view of the representations that have been made from various parts of Canada, if the bill could be dealt with by an added section at the instance of the minister himself, that would be much more pleasing to us than if we were compelled to make a motion which I suppose the government, with its majority, could easily vote down.


Robert Forke: I have no serious objection to that. Of course I would have to consult the Prime Minister and the government before introducing an amendment of this kind.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Quite so.


Mr. COOTE:: There is just one objection
that might be offered to that suggestion and that is whether it is necessary to have the organization made permanent in character. It is quite fair for the employees to ask to be placed on a permanent basis, but I question whether Canada should contemplate making the soldier settlement board a permanent body in the government service. Surely the work of the settlement board will be completed in a few years and therefore I do not think we should say definitely now that for a long period of years we shall require a number of these men in colonization work. I do not really know whether that is necessary.


Robert Forke: My experience is that the
colonization end is the bigest end of the immigration work. As Minister of Immigration my opinion is that their work will be necessary for many years to come.


Alan Webster Neill: I should like to ask the
minister in charge when we are going to get
[Mr. C. A. Stewart. 1
some action on this revaluation. I think the question is appropriate as the title of the section is "revaluation of land". Revaluation was long overdue when the act was passed in 1926. The legislation was delayed a year owing to the defeat of the government. It has been passed for more than a year now. All claims had to be entered before October last; that is seven months ago, and as yet I have not heard that any of the settlers in my district have had their claims finally settled. Their claims have been investigated and I think, generally speaking, a number of claims throughout Canada have been satisfactorily arranged so far, but they have not yet the authority of law. These men are kept sort of dangling between the devil and the deep sea, not knowing what they will get or whether they will get anything in the way of revaluation. I should like to know whether any progress has been made. Can the minister give me some definite assurance when the matter is to be, if not wound up, at least proceeded with to the extent of making progress.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Without repeating it, I
should like to associate myself with what the hon. member for Comox-Alberni has so well said. The other day there came to my attention a case of considerable hardship. As the hon. member said, the settler is left suspended between the devil and the deep sea. He is perfectly willing to take a swim if the opportunity offers, but he must resist with all his power the effort made to drive him to the gentleman to whom the hon. member has referred, and in terms meaning the government itself.


Robert Forke: I can assure the committee
that every endeavour is being made by the land settlement board with extra assistance to have the settlements made as quickly as possible. Many difficulties have arisen but the board is doing its best. My intention was that when my estimates came up I would give a complete report upon the parcels of land examined, the percentage of reductions made, and all other data in connection with the work carried on during the past summer. When my estimates come up I shall be glad to make a statement of that kind.


William Alves Boys: Have any settlements actually been concluded?


Robert Forke: Quite a number.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Supposing the settler
bought school lands, would they be covered by this?


Robert Forke: I think so.

Hay Inspection Act


Mr. SPEAKMAN:: I should like to suggest that the hon. member for East Calgary has certainly left upon those who have not studied the act the impression that this is a new and stringent regulation. As a matter of fact it is a modification of an act which has been in existence since 1919. That is, under the general act all Dominion lands, whether obtained before or after the receipt of a loan, were brought in. Now this is restricted to those he obtained before a loan was made. I may say frankly that I have gone and I shall be prepared to go as far as I consider it possible to go in relieving the soldiers' obligations, but I feel I have some responsibility as a member of parliament to the taxpayers and that is as far as I am prepared to go.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Progress reported.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. W. R. MOTHERWELL (Minister of Agriculture) moved that the house go into committee on Bill No. 73, respecting the inspection and grading of hay and straw.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Marcil jn the chair.
Section 1 agreed to.
On section 2-Regulations.
Charles Marcil: There are two subsections added to section 2, as follows:
(c)	by inspection certificate, to certify the class, quality and/or condition of hay or straw, and such inspection certificates issued by officers appointed by law for that purpose shall be accepted in the courts as prima facie evidence of the particulars therein set out.
(d)	to prescribe the places where and the conditions under which the inspection or reinspection of hay and straw may be made.


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: The purpose of the two new subsections that have been added is simply to authorize the department to issue certificates of inspection in any case where this method of inspection is invoked. That is not the law now. We are issuing certificates at the present time without any particular authorization, but under this bill we are taking authority to issue the certificates wherever this inspection system is invoked by any hay seller or buyer. It is voluntary legislation, and the principal purpose of the amendment is to reclassify and re-introduce a different system of grades.


George Gibson Coote: I have received a letter from some hay growers in Alberta asking whether they would be given some representation on the advisory board when the grades are being established.


William Richard Motherwell: Our usual practice, wherever there is an organization of hay producers, or an organization in any other line of business that is being dealt with, is to give representation on the advisory board, and particularly are we desirous of having a representative from each province to represent the hay growers.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I was going to say to the Minister of Justice, to whom I was just speaking, that to make the certificate prima facie evidence in the provincial courts," plus the fact that the legislation is in itself in my judgment an invasion of the legislative jurisdiction of the provinces, will some day invite a declaration from some court that the whole matter is ultra vires of this parliament. I content my self with making that observation, because in your desire to impose the certificates in the provinces by federal legislation, you are now going the whole limit and saying that the courts are bound to take the certificates of this department as prima facie evidence of what the inspectors say regarding the quality of the hay or straw.


William Richard Motherwell: I would not like to dispute my hon. friend's theory of the matter, but the fact remains that we have had this principle embodied in at least three or four acts, and they have never been challenged in the courts.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The only one that got to the courts was the one about eggs, and it was held to be bad.


William Richard Motherwell: We have this principle embodied in several acts.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 3

Reasons for grading.
Charles Marcil: This section has been amended by adding after the word "matter" in subsection 2 the words, "not naturally produced with the hay or straw."
Section as amended agreed to.
On section 4-Imported hay and straw, how to be graded.


Alan Webster Neill: What is the meaning of the words "applicable to hay grown in the province into which hay is imported"? The bill says that when straw imported into Canada is inspected, the inspection and grading has to be done in accordance with the provisions of this act, but in the case of hay there are these additional words, "applicable to hay
Hay Inspection Act

grown in the province into which hay is imported." There is no provision in this act dealing with specific regulations as regards one province more than another, and I should like to ask what is the purpose of these words.


William Richard Motherwell: Under the old act there was a variation in grades in different parts of Canada; there would be an outstanding difference in the quality of the hay. The intention here is simply to recognize distinct grades for each province, where necessary. Dawn in the maritimes, for instance, in Nova Scotia, we have marsh hay, having peculiarities differing substantially from upland hay, although it is tame hay. In New Brunswick and in Prince Edward Island we have the regular order of hay. In Quebec it is largely timothy. In the prairies the hay has distinctive characteristics, and in Alberta it is largely alfalfa. The idea is to work out a system of grades that will take care of the peculiar characteristics of hay that we have throughout Canada.


Alan Webster Neill: Are you going to establish grades by regulation?


William Richard Motherwell: Under the advisory board.


Alan Webster Neill: There is nothing in the act to indicate the minister's intention to do it according to regulations made under the act.


William Richard Motherwell: We have power in the act to make regulations.


Alan Webster Neill: If it is to be done by regulations, reference ought to be made to the regulations in the act, but there is no reference here.


William Richard Motherwell: If my hon. friend thinks that would make it any plainer-


Hugh Alexander Stewart: If regulations are to be passed under the provisions of this act under which grades are to be established, surely the regulations should be mentioned in the provisions of the act.


William Richard Motherwell: This section is no doubt capable of improvement to make it more lucid, but it is just as we have had it in the old act, although that may not be a good commendation. But I see my hon. friend's point. We have power, however, to act on the advice of the advisory board in the matter of establishing standards.


Mr. LANCTOT (Translation):: Mr. Chairman, I had the privilege of being present at the sittings of the committee on agriculture

which, some time ago, recommended the adoption of this bill. To-day, I wish to set forth the viewpoint of the province of Quebec, because in this country there are various qualities of hay. I wonder whether Alberta, among other provinces, grows really hay for commercial purposes. I rather think that this bill is especially introduced to please the farmers of Alberta, because there is a variety of other things in their hay. They made the sale of this hay legal, although they admitted that it contained wood and bones of animal carcases, etc.
As I stated, before the committee of agriculture, there are to-day all kinds of new machinery to take care of the hay crop, work which we old timers of Quebec used to do by hand. I am still in favour of grading the hay in the field after it has been mowed and raked separately; we do not gather it in hay-cocks to-day because we have hay loaders. Unfortunately, this makes the hay more difficult to grade. It is different with grain, which we can pass through the fanning-mill, and if necessary we pass it through two or three times so as to obtain grain suitable for seeding. The hay cannot be put through the same process. For instance, in one mording about 20 arpents of hay is cut on a piece of land measuring 15 arpents in length by li to 2 arpents in width; let us suppose that we have in succession a strip of pure clover, another of mixed clover, and a third of fine timothy; in my father's time all the timothy, the pure clover and the mixed clover were handled separately and also placed in different bays in our barns so that we had some fine, medium and ordinary hay. We therefore had a bay of fine hay, a bay of medium hay and a bay of ordinary hay. When it was taken into the bam we could separate the various qualities and we sold the hay according to its grading, Nos. 1, 2 or 3; who could grade the hay to-day while it is being pressed since it is all mixed? Grading is simply impossible. I have been a hay dealer for the last 36 years. I employ, to grade the hay, men with experience, as well qualified as any inspector of the Department of Agriculture. When I purchase 100 tons of hay from a farmer I send an expert; the latter examines two cars and grades them. He places in one car the best quality of hay and that of medium quality in one of the warehouses which we have here and there throughout the district where the hay is bought. If the hay was graded in the fields we could caution the farmer; and he would bring us

Dumping Duty-Mr. Anderson (Halton)
hay of good quality only and we would not be bothered with the kind of hay which we are apt to have in storage. In my own county the farmers bring me good hay, because I tell them to grade and separate it in the fields. I am aware that for a farmer who has very little hay to sell and but one barn, it is harder. However, when farmers have three or four barns at their disposal for hay, they can grade it better than inspectors and dealers. We, the dealers, together with our experts, grade it the best we can, yet the hay is mixed, it can be camouflaged but this does not often happen in a county where the dealer can warn the farmers and tell them to do the right thing. You know that the careful person is always in demand; he goes to the trouble of grading his hay and sells a better product. As a rule we pay him sufficiently to indemnify him for his trouble.
In regard to this measure and many others introduced by the Department of Agriculture, we find it is overdone and it is very annoying to have so many acts in regard to every thing and which have no meaning.
As to the province of Quebec which grows a great deal of both timothy and other hay of good quality, I think that the expert, who championed the bill before the committee of Agriculture (Mr. Clarke), should allow the old dealers to carry on without troubling them. We can assure him that the experts of the Department of Agriculture cannot do any better than we can.


William Richard Motherwell: To do full justice
to the observations of my hon. friend (Mr. Lanctot) I shall have to wait until they are translated, which will not be until to-morrow. Therefore I move that the committee rise and report progress, and ask leave to sit again.
Progress reported.



SUPPLY-DUMPING DUTY

[Stage Direction]
Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice) moved that the house go into committee of supply.
Mr. R. K. ANDERSON (Halton):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to move an amendment to the motion to go into supply, similar to the amendment that was moved last Tuesday by the hon. member for Victoria (Mr. Tolmie). The subject matter of his amendment was not then pronounced upon by the house, the debate being concluded under the eleven o'clock rule while I was speaking, and consequently I adjourned the debate.
The amendment is being moved again for the purpose of once more bringing to the
attention of the government and the country a matter of considerable importance owing to imports of agricultural products at certain seasons of the year to such an extent as to be injurious to the producers of similar products in the Dominion. These importations affect particularly the farming classes in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and relate to fruits and vegetables and poultry products It will be generally agreed that these may be described as necessaries of life, and are essential to the health of our people, particularly fruit and vegetables when they first come on the market. The sale of the home grown product is injuriously affected by the importation of similar products produced in the United States under conditions that make it impossible for our producers to sell their products at a comparable price. As I have said, fruits are essential to the health of our people, particularly in the summer time; but there are certain seasons of the year when fruits are still more essential to the health of the people of the United States. At those seasons the producers in the United States have a surplus for export, and they dump that surplus into Canada, where it is sold practically to cover the cost of transportation.
Last Tuesday I was interrupted by the adjournment of the house before I could complete my remarks regarding the extent and importance of this industry to Canada and point out the necessity of preserving our home market for Canadian producers. No one will contradict the statement that the home market is the best market for the producers of these particular products. Members of the delegation that interviewed the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) a short time ago claimed-and they ought to know what they were talking about

that Canadian-grown fruit and vegetables are the cheapest that the Canadian consumer can buy. All the delegates asked for was that they might be protected against abnormal competition in their home market, and undoubtedly when the surplus fruit and vegetable products of another country are being dumped here the competition is abnormal. The same thing applies to poultry and particularly to eggs, and if the producers of these commodities in Canada are capable of supplying adequately the demands of the Canadian people they should be protected from the imports of the surplus of similar products of other countries.
The delegation which waited upon the government two or three weeks ago was a large body representative of these two particular industries; they came from every
2984	COMMONS
Dumping Duty-Mr. Anderson (Halton)
part of Canada, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. They were here and they presented their case in a very forcible and impressive manner. They stated on that occasion that they would be perfectly willing to accept a seasonal tariff which would enable them to have their own market at that season of the year when their products were available for the home consumer. That surely was a very reasonable request and one which the government could scarcely deny. If they had been asking for a high tariff the year round, to keep out similar products from other countries when they could not be supplied at home, the case would have been different. The Prime Minister, in his speech a week ago, made this observation, as reported at page 2813 of Hansard:
The members of that delegation, for the most part, came here under the impression that the power just referred to had been taken away from the administration.
I quote the Prime Minister in this regard merely to assure him that the delegation had no misunderstanding as regards what they were asking fur. They knew perfectly well that the power had not been taken away from the administration to afford them assistance in connection with the dumping duty; they knew that the dumping clause in the Customs Act had not been repealed. But they did know that the order in cofuncil authorizing the Minister of National Revenue to fix the fair market price of articles coming into Canada had been rescinded. There was no misunderstanding on that point.
The hon. member for Rosetown (Mr. Evans) opposed the dumping clause on the ground-and he quoted figures-that the application of the clause increased prices in Canada. He instanced particularly peaches and raspberries. He claimed that the clause increased the prices of peaches in the western provinces from two to three hundred per cent over the prices that obtained in those years when the dumping clause was not invoked. I have in my hand a statement showing the prices of peaches in various parts of Canada for the years from 1923 to 1927, and I shall quote from it in order to show how erroneous were the statements made by the hon. member for Rosetown. We will take Calgary, for example, a city in the prairies 

and I fancy the hon. member was referring particularly to prices in the prairie provinces. The following comparison speaks for itself:
Calgary . Regina
1923	
$1	60 per box $1	50 per box1924	
2	08	1	951925	
1 751926	
1	50	1	581927	
1	78	1	75

It will be remembered that the order in council empowering the Minister of National Revenue to place a valuation on these articles when imported was passed in July, 1926. In that year peaches in Calgary were $1.50, ten cents below what they were there in 1923, when there was no dumping duty invoked; while in Regina it was $1.58, or eight cents above what they were in that city in 1923. In 1927 peaches sold in Calgary at $1.78, slightly above what they were in 1923, but considerably below the price obtained in 1924, when there was no dumping clause; because in 1924 they were $2.08. And in Regina, in 1927, the price was $1.75 as against $1.95 in 1924. This shows that even in the prairie provinces the invoking of the dumping clause did not increase the prices of these articles.
As regards the importance of these industries I want to quote a few figures from the Bureau of Statistics showing the amount of money spent by the people of this Dominion in these commodities and also the Canadian production in one year. We will take fruits and vegetables. In 1922 this industry produced in Canada $55,000,000 worth of fruits and vegetables as compared with $46,025,000 in 1927. That point was stressed by one of the delegates from Ontario, Mr. Fisher, who pointed out that because of competition from the United States the fruit and vegetable industry was being injured particularly in Ontario, but in the Dominion at large as well.


Mr. YOUNG (Weyburn):: Will the hon.
member repeat those figures?


Robert King Anderson: In 1922
Canada produced-this is home production- $55,000,000 worth of fruit and vegetables as against $46,000,000 in 1927, or a decrease of about $9,000,000. That point, I was saying, was stressed by some of the delegates, 'who pointed out that the industry in Canada was declining because of insufficient support from our fiscal policy. In 1923 the production in Canada was $58,000,000 as against $43,000,000 in 1926; in 1924, it was $44,000,000; in 1925, $48,000,000; and in 1926, as I said, $43,000,000. This shows a steady decline in the production of fruits and vegetables in Canada.
It is well known that this country can produce fruits and vegetables equal to and better than those of most other countries, and there is therefore no reason why the Canadian industry should not be flourishing. I would suggest to hon. members from the prairies that they go to Toronto and motor through the Niagara peninsula. If they do,

Dumping Duty-Mr. Anderson (Halton)
I can assure them that they will see one of the most beautiful districts in this or any other country in the world; if they go towards the end of this week they will find it a most beautiful spot. When, the peach and cherry trees are in full bloom that section of the country is a veritable garden of Eden. The market gardeners there are fairly prosperous, but they could be made much more so. And that is only one of the sections of the country where this condition prevails. Certainly it would be a calamity and a tragedy if any policy initiated by this parliament should jeopardize that particular industry.
Then we come to poultry and eggs. I think the great importance of these products is not fully realized by many people in this country. In 1922 the production of poultry and eggs was valued at $62,850,000, in 1923 at $62,370,000, in 1924 at $65,084,000 and in 1927 at $97,937,000. That is a very large amount of revenue to be derived from poultry and eggs. It has been stated that this industry brings more money to the people of this country than our great fishing industry. In 1927 the total revenue from fruits, vegetables, poultry and eggs amounted to $143,962,000. Not only have we a splendid market in Canada for our poultry and eggs, but I would remind the house that in England alone we have a market for two and a half billion eggs each year. England consumes annually about five and a half billion eggs, and produces only about one-half that number. Over six hundred million eggs are imported from the dominions, the remaining coming from all over the world, so we have a large market in that country. The hen is sometimes looked upon as the humblest of the farm stock, yet it has been stated that poultry raising is the only industry which always shows a profit under normal conditions. For these reasons I think the government should seriously consider reintroducing the dumping clause.
Reverting to the question of fruits and vegetables, I have already said that five provinces are interested in this industry, their production being as follows:
Province and	Total	TotalDescription	Year	Quantity	Valueova Scotia-	bbl.	Apples	. 1926	927,370	$2,411,1621927	950,000 Bush.	2,850,000Pears	. 1926	9,000	16,6501927	13,500	23,625qts.	Strawberries. .	. 1926	510,000	71,4001927	450,000	63,000Province and	Total	TotalDescription	Year	Quantity	ValueNova Scotia.-Con.	Raspberries. ..	1926	22,500	4,0501927	21,700	4,340Other berries ..	1926	80,000	10,400
New Brunswick

1927	90,000 bbl.	12,600Apples	1926	30,000	97,5001927	28,000 qts.	98,000Strawberries ..	1926	750,000	90.0001927	1,000,000	130.000Raspberries. ..	1926	40,000	6,8001927	35,000	6.300Other berries . .	1926	200,000	26,000Quebec-	1927	225,000 bbl.	27,000Apples	1926	111,600	474,3001927	104,600 qts.	481,160Strawberries ..	1926	2,000,000	280,000Ontario-	1927	1,910,500 bbl.	248,365Apples	1926	573.600	1,720,8001927	673,500 bush	2,188,875Pears	1926	114,240	222,7681927	211,300	390,905Plums and	primes .. ..	1926	173.800	225,9401927	157,100	282,780Peaches	1926	158,700	449,1211927	306,180	918,540Cherries	1926	110.000	256,3001927	173,000 qts.	534,570Strawberries ..	1926	3,500,000	455,0001927	2,644.000	370,160Raspberries. ..	1926	1,200,000	204,0001927	2,304,000	368,640Other berries ..	1926	950,000	114,0001927	1,017,000 lbs.	183,060Grapes	1926	24.000.000	720,000British Columbia-	1927	34,560,000 bbl.	1,382,400Apples	1926	1.311.800	4.984.4001927	1,060,900 Bush.	4,667,960Pears	1926	143,200	236,2801927	110,800	299.160Plums and	prunes	1926	173,000	224,9001927	120.050	342,142Peaches	1926	79,250	154,5371927	43,900	127.310Apricots	1926	56.650	127.4621927	17.300	64.875Cherries	1926	91,640	320.7401927	29,510 qts.	162,305Strawberries. . .	1926	2,979.000	506.4301927	4,202,000	588,280Raspberries. . .	1926	3,482,000	487,4801927	3,028,000	393,640Other berries ..	1926	2,965,000	326,1501927	2,296,000	206,640
These figures will show that this industry is scattered all over the Dominion, that it produces a considerable revenue for the Dominion and affords a living for a large number of people. The delegation which came to Ottawa some weeks ago to interview the government in this regard was composed of
2986	COMMONS
Dumping Duty-Mr. Anderson (Halton)
250 people, who claimed to represent 150,000 fruit, vegetable and poultry producers in Canada. Allowing five persons to a family, that delegation represented well over half a million people who make their living through this industry. Surely it would be proper to make every possible effort to foster a home industry of this kind; it is not in the interests of Canada or any other country to import articles or products which can be supplied by the domestic producer. We should conserve our markets for our own people, to induce our people to take up these industries and to induce people to come to Canada from other countries and carry on this line of work. If we give the necessary assistance we can easily bring about that result, because we have the climate and the soil conditions which are favourable to this branch of agriculture, while nowhere in the world can we find better conditions for the production of eggs and poultry. The people of the prairie provinces should be interested in this matter, particularly in the poultry industry, since almost every year at the Christmas season they send large shipments of poultry to the markets of Ontario and Quebec. They also produce eggs in those provinces, and you would think that they would be the ones interested in seeing that the industry was put on a good paying basis.
The delegates, when they made their representations to the members of the cabinet, stated very definitely that it was in the best interests of the consumer as well as of the producer to keep the dumping clause in effect. They mentioned the fact, which everyone will agree with, that when the application of the dumping clause does not increase the price to the consumer, and when the domestic article is equal to or better than that imported from the outside, the use of home grown products is in the interest not only of the consumer but of the producer, and the government should take cognizance of the fact that in encouraging the consumption of domestic products they are at the same time serving the interests of consumer and producer.
I draw these facts to the attention of the government. I do not wish to labour the question, but I only say to the government that they would be well advised to read care-fullly the statements made by the various delegates when they presented their cases, and to come to the conclusion that the order in council giving protection to these particular products be reinstated.
I therefore beg to move, seconded by Mr. Stirling, the following amendment:

That all the words after the word "that" be stricken out and the following substituted therefor:
"In the opinion of this house the necessary action should be taken by the government forthwith to effectively control the importation into Canada, either on sale, or on consignment, of natural products of a class or kind produced in Canada under conditions which prejudicially or injuriously affect, or threaten to prejudicially or injuriously affect, the interests of Canadian producers".
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Edward James Young: Mr. Speaker, two mistaken impressions have gone abroad throughout the country in regard to what has been done in connection with these dumping duties. The first is that the government by order in council has deprived the farmer of what little protection the tariff affords him. That is a mistake. The duty as fixed by the parliament of Canada on natural products has not been tampered with. The duty on fruits and vegetables is as it was. The duty on fresh vegetables to-day is 30 per cent and the duty on fresh fruits is specific, being so much a pound or a box or a barrel, as the case may be. With those duties the government have not interfered and so far as I am aware they have no intention of interfering. The other wrong impression that has gone abroad is that the government, by order in council has repealed the dumping clause in so far as it applies to natural products. That also is a mistake. The dumping clause has not been tampered with in the least. The dumping clause requires no order in council for its enforcement. It applies to-day to fruits and vegetables just as much as ever it did. It applies to fruits and vegetables just as much as it does to manufactured articles. What then has happened? Perhaps I can best explain the matter by referring to the statutes themselves. Let me turn to the dumping clause, which is section 6 of chapter 44 of the revised statutes. It reads:
In the ease of articles exported to Canada of a class or kind made or produced in Canada, if the export or actual selling price to an importer in Canada is less than the fair market value of the same article when sold for home consumption in the usual and ordinary course in the country whence exported to Canada at the time of its exportation to Canada, there shall, in addition to the duties otherwise established, be levied, collected and paid on such article, on its importation into Canada, a special or dumping duty, equal to the difference between the said selling price of the article for

Dumping Duty-Mr. Young (Weyburn)
export and the said fair market value thereof for home consumption; and such special or dumping duty shall be levied, collected and paid on such article, although it is not otherwise dutiable:
Provided that the said special duty shall not exceed fifteen per cent ad valorem in any case;
And so on, with some further exceptions.
To what does that dumping clause apply? It applies to natural products and manufactured goods alike so long as similar goods are produced in Canada. When does it apply? It applies when those products are being dumped into this country. The definition of dumping as given in the clause is that goods are being dumped when they are being sold for export to Canada at a lower price than that at which they are being sold for consumption in the country of origin. What is the penalty attached? The penalty provided in the dumping clause is a special duty equal to fifteen per cent of the value of the goods. What is the method of enforcement? It requires no order in council, no order from the minister, no order from any official in Ottawa. Any person who is interested can go to the collector of customs at the port of entry and say: "These goods are being dumped into this country; they are being sold to us at a lower price than that at which they are being sold, for home consumption in the country from which they came; here is the proof of my statement." That is all that is required to bring the dumping duty into effect and to have the special duty of 15 per cent added.
Let me turn now to what was section 47a or, as it is now numbered, section 43 of the Customs Act. It reads:
If at any time it appears to the satisfaction of the governor in council on a report from the minister, that natural products of a class or kind produced in Canada are being imported into Canada, either on sale or on consignment, under such conditions as prejudicially or injuriously to affect the interests of Canadian producers, the governor in council may, in any case or class of eases, authorize the minister to value such goods for duty, notwithstanding any other provisions of this act, and the value so determined shall be held to be the fair market value thereof.
To what does this apply? It applies only to natural products. When does it apply? It applies when those products are being sold in Canada at a price with which our own producers or growers cannot compete. It takes no cognizance of whether those goods *are being dumped into the country or not, so long as our producers cannot compete with the price. What is the penalty provided? Not a special or dumping duty but an increased valuation which shall be the basis for computing the ordinary duty. What is
the method of enforcement? By order in council. When those goods are coming in and being sold at a price with which our growers cannot compete, then the minister can ask for an order in council which will give him power to impose this arbitrary valuation.


Robert King Anderson: When goods
are dumped into Canada at below the price in United1 States, on what price would the 15 per cent duty be collected?


Edward James Young: On what was
determined to be the fair market value.


Robert King Anderson: The fair
market value in the United States?


Edward James Young: Yes. Let us get this clearly in mind. Let us compare the two. The Dumping Act applies to all goods produced in Canada, natural products and manufactured goods alike. The old section 47a applies only to natural products. The Dumping Act applies when goods are being dumped into this country. Section 47a is not concerned whether goods are being dumped into this country or not; it applies when they are being sold at a price with which our growers cannot compete. The Dumping Act provides a special -or dumping duty of 15 per cent of the value of the goods. Section 47a makes no such provision; it provides for an increased valuation. The Dumping Act works automatically simply by someone producing the evidence of dumping to the customs collector. Under section 47a an order in council is required'. There is the distinction, as clearly as I can explain it, between the two sections.
Section 47a has been on our statute book for a number of years, but not very much attention was paid to it. It remained for the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) to discover the evil use to which it could be put.


Mr. STEVENS:: A good use. An official
use.


Edward James Young: I will explain
this to you as clearly as I can in a minute. During the short time he was Minister of Customs he caused to be passed an order in council giving him power to impose this arbitrary valuation on fruits and vegetables. It did not make any difference to him that there were no Canadian vegetables ready for the market at the time. He got authority and he fixed the value. Let me use the example I used last year, tomatoes, I choose this vegetable because our largest importations are in tomatoes, and they best illustrate what was done. Tomatoes were
2988	COMMONS
Dumping Duty-Mr. Young (Weyburn)
selling in Tennessee at SO cents a box. The duty is 30 per cent. My hon. friend said that the value on tomatoes should be 85 cents a box. By so doing he increased the duty from 30 per cent of 50, to 30 per cent of 85. In that he was within the law; that was the intention of the law, and if he had stopped there, perhaps nothing further would have been heard of it. But he did not stop there. In his zeal to prevent the people of this country from eating fresh vegetables, he imposed on top of the already increased duty a special or dumping duty. Mind you, he did not say that tomatoes were being dumped into this country, because they were not; but he imposed a duty anyway. He added the 15 per cent, not 15 per cent of 50, but 15 per cent of 85, so that the duty which he found to be 30 per cent of 50, he left at 45 per cent of 85, and when you figure that out it comes to 76| per cent of the value of the goods. The duty that he found to be 30 per cent of the value of the goods he actually raised to 76i per cent. Fortunately, my hon. friend was not long in office.


Richard Bedford Bennett: My hon. friend is aware that the present government passed two additional orders in council along the same line?


Edward James Young: I will come to
that, but the hon. gentleman knows that the present government repealed those orders in council.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Oh yes.


Edward James Young: And that is
what my hon. friends opposite are objecting to, I believe.
As soon as the people of Canada discovered what was being done-and we took good care to inform them-they decided that my hon. friend was not the man they wanted in charge of the customs department, and on election day they told him so.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Oh no, I am here.


Edward James Young: Yes, but not
here. When the session opened the following winter some of us undertook to find out why those dumping duties were being collected. Let me say that whatever faults my hon. friend has, he does seem to inspire loyalty among his subordinates for those who acted under him were not at all anxious to tell us anything. We found it difficult to get the information. But we persisted, and our search led us to the secretary of the Canadian Horticultural Council, the evil genius of Canadian agriculture, the man who is

working night and day to deliver the farmers of this country into the hands of the Canadian Manufacturers7 Association, the( ;man who openly boasts on the streets of this city that he is going to make protectionists out of the farmers.


Peter McGibbon: Half of them are
made already.


Edward James Young: We went to him and asked why these dumping duties were being collected. He said, because the goods are being dumped into this country. We asked him what evidence he had, and he said plenty, but all the evidence he could show us was a letter from a man in British Columbia stating that the United States expected to harvest a very large crop of fruit that year, and urging that some steps be taken to prevent the people of Canada from buying any of that fruit. That is all the evidence they had that dumping was being practised, and yet my hon. friend imposed dumping duties. We ventured to express the opinion that these dumping duties were not being lawfully collected, that those who were being made to pay them could go into court and force the government to disgorge. We went to a lawyer about it; we went to two lawyers; we went to three lawyers, and they all gave us the same opinion.


Robert James Manion: May I ask, just for information, who is "we"?


Edward James Young: I was one of them anyway.


Henry Herbert Stevens: We, the three tailors of
Tooley Street.


Eccles James Gott: The hon. gentleman is very
broadminded. Colonel Lindbergh said "we" referring to himself and his plane.


Edward James Young: As I was saying we secured the opinion of a number of lawyers to the effect that these duties were not being lawfully collected, and that they could be recovered by those who were being compelled to pay them. Armed with this opinion we went to the officials of the department, and they laid the matter before the minister. Fortunately we had a Liberal government in power then, and they said, "We do not want anything like this. We will have to look into the matter. We do not want to be in the position of collecting duties and then be compelled to refund them. Anyway, we do not want to collect money to which we are not entitled," and so they asked the Department of Justice for an opinion. I have that

Dumping Duty-
-Mr. Young (Weyburn)
opinion before me. It is lengthy, and I shall read only the final paragraph which sums up the whole case. It says:
My view is that a decision of the minister under section 47a has no effect to bring a transaction within the dumping duty clause which is not otherwise within it.
There is the reason, the prime reason, why the order in council was rescinded, because the best legal authority we could get said that we had no right to collect those dumping duties under the act.


Henry Herbert Stevens: What the hon. member
has just read does not say that.


Edward James Young: What I have just read says that exactly.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I do not think so.


Edward James Young: It says:
My view is that a decision of the minister under section 47a-
That is, the value placed by the minister:
*-has no effect to bring a transaction within the dumping duty clause which is not otherwise within it.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is absolutely meaningless.


Edward James Young: It means a whole lot.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It does if you read something into it that is not there.


Edward James Young: It means a whole lot if my hon. friend will take the trouble to study it.
Let us see what was the purpose in impos-sing these dumping duties in the first place. What object was to be achieved by imposing them? I think everybody will admit that there was one object, and one object only, and that was to shut out the importation of American fruits and vegetables, and to secure for our Canadian growers a monopoly of the home market. The hon. member for Halton (Mr. Anderson) who spoke this afternoon, gave us figures which showed that the Canadian grower already controls 93 per cent of the home market, and the purpose in imposing these dumping duties was to give him the other 7 per cent, to give him a 100 per cent monopoly of that market. Did the imposition of those duties accomplish its purpose? Did the imposition of those duties succeed in shuting out the importation of American fruits and vegetables, as the votaries of the protectionist idol so fondly hoped it would? I shall prove to you that it did not. Let us examine the trade returns. The fiscal year ending March 31, 1926 is the last year before
these duties were imposed. Let us compare our importations of fruits and vegetables for the year ending March 31, 1926, with the importations for the year ending March 31, 1927:
Imports
Apples: 1926, 150,840 barrels; 1927, 201,589 barrels, increase.
Apricots, quinces, nectarines: 1926, $139,289; 1927, $83,709, decrease.
Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries: 1926, $6,227; 1927, $37,392, increase.
Cherries:	1926,	$81,071;	1927,	$120,912,
increase.				
Grapes:	1926,	$826,531;	1927,	$939,164,increase. Melons: decrease.	1926,	$412,600;	1927,	$382,644,Peaches: decrease.	1926.	$643,001;	1927,	$501,576,Pears: decrease.	1926,	$926,398;	1927,	$855,274,Plums: decrease.	1926,	$495,035;	1927,	$425,226,Strawberries:	1926. 3,168.975	pounds,$607,345;	1927,	3,944,707	pounds,	$668,417,
increase.
All other fruits (dutiable): 1926, $64,977; 1927, $150,650, increase.


Eccles James Gott: Are these importations?


Edward James Young: Yes.


Eccles James Gott: I thought the hon. member
just said that there were no importations.


Edward James Young: You have been
dreaming.


Robert King Anderson: The hon. member has forgotten that the dumping clause was being applied in 1926.


Edward James Young: My hon. friend is mistaken.


Robert King Anderson: No.


Edward James Young: These figures are for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1926. To sum up, for the year ending March 31,
1926,	our imports of fresh fruit of the dutiable kind were $6,094,686, and for the year ending March 31, 1927, $6,067,778, showing a reduction for the year ending March 31,
1927,	as compared with the previous year, of $26,908, or a little less than $27,000. We imposed those dumping duties for the purpose of shutting out $27,000 worth of fruit. And do you know how much in duties was collected? They amounted to $1,287,000. In other words, to secure a market of $27,000 wt collected duties from our people of over a million and a quarter dollars.
But there are some fruits on which those duties did not apply-bananas, grapefruit, pineapple, and so on. In 1926 we imported

Dumping Duty-Mr. Young (Weyburn)
$13,608,000 worth of these duty-free fruits; in 1927, $15,227,000-an increase of a little more than $1,600,000.
What is the point? There is in this country an ever-increasing market for fresh fruits and vegetables. But the housewife who has only a limited amount of money, and must get something with it that will go round the table, will buy the fruit which she can buy cheapest. In our endeavour to make her buy our own Canadian-produced fruit we have artificially increased prices of these same fruits. What has the housewife done? She has turned to the fruits not affected-to the duty-free fruits. We have, then, in trying to create by this artificial means a market for our own fruits only succeeded in creating a market for tropical fruits. The explanation is simple. Go into any store in Ottawa to-day and for five cents you can get two of the biggest and finest bananas you ever saw. But you have to pay five cents for one apple that has probably seen better days.
How is it with respect to vegetables? We cannot, as we do with fruit, resort to some other kind that is not taxable, for tropical vegetables do not come in. For the fiscal year 1926 we imported $221,000 worth of cabbage, as against $316,000 worth in 1927; of onions, $394,000 worth in 1926, as against $396,000 worth in 1927; of potatoes, $481,000 in 1926 as against $647,000 worth in 1927; of tomatoes, $1,110,000 worth in 1926, as against $1,173,000 worth in 1927; of other vegetables, $1,915,000 worth in 1926 as against $2,117,000 worth in 1927. The total value of fresh vegetables imported in 1926 was $4,236,123, and in 1927, $4,747,630-an increase of $511,000.
Now, has the imposition of these dumping duties achieved its purpose? I say, no, it has failed and failed utterly. Why, then should we continue this imposition? What effect did it have? The imposition of these dumping duties had the same effect on the fruit and vegetable market as the imposition of a similar duty on woollen goods would have on the woollen market; it simply persuaded people to buy something else. Fruits and vegetables came in anyway. The hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) has been out in the country making speeches-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Good ones, too.


Edward James Young: Yes. He likes to make speeches. If I could make as good speeches I should like it too. But anyway he went to Guelph the other night and stated that these dumping duties were wiped out because a few members on this side of the
[Mr. E. J. Youna.l
house threatened to withdraw their support from the government unless such was done. In this the hon. gentleman was not correctly informed.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Not the dumping duties.
I was very particular in the language I used, for I have followed this matter with great care. The report is inaccurate.


Mr. DUNNING:: The reporter's fault.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Orders' in council. The point is clear enough. It is all the same.


Edward James Young: From what the hon. gentleman says I suppose he has no objection to the dumping duties being wiped out. I am very glad to hear that. But I want to say this: We on this side did not use any threats against the government. We have lived long enough to know that no worth while victory was ever achieved by means of threats. All we did was to assemble the facts of the case, and lay them before the government. The justice of our cause and the inherent goodness of human nature did the rest.


Mr. FANSHER (Last Mountain):: Will the hon. member kindly tell us who passed 47a? How did it become law?


Edward James Young: My hon. friend wants me to admit that the Liberal party put it on the statute book. I admit it. All the more reason why the Liberal party should repeal it.


Mr. CHAPLIN:: They have repealed it.


Edward James Young: No; I say, all the more reason why they should repeal it. The members of the Liberal party are not so small-souled that they are afraid to say: We made a mistake and will go back and correct it.


Eccles James Gott: Did they not promise to repeal it?


Edward James Young: You will find out in due course. We on this side of the house stand solidly behind the Prime Minister in what he said the other night. The question with us is: Shall the tariff laws of this country -be made by parliament, or by order in council, or by departmental regulations? We take the stand that they should be made by parliament, and by parliament alone. If parliament sees' fit to increase the duties on agricultural products, we shall bow to the will of parliament, however foolish we may think the move; but we do not bow to the will of departmental officials or anybody else who presume to make tariffs without consulting parliament.

Dumping Duty-Mr. Stirling


Peter McGibbon: May I ask the hon. gentleman a question? Would he like the house to believe that the government took everything into consideration before they set the duties on anything?


Edward James Young: Of course they did. I do not suppose my hon. friend will believe it anyway, because he cannot believe anything good of this government. We are solidly 'behind the Prime Minister in the stand he took the other night-that we must have government by parliament and not by order in council. I say in that stand we have the wholehearted support of the leader of the opposition, for since he has been elected to his present position no man in Canada has spoken louder or more frequently in denouncing government by order in council; no man has insisted more vehemently that the authority must rest with parliament and should not be taken away by the executive. In the light of his utterances, then, I say he is going to support us on this motion. He can do nothing else.
Now I should like to refer to t'he situation in the fruit-growing province of British Columbia and in the prairie provinces. Once these orders in council were passed, effectively shutting out of our market American fruit, the fruit-growers of British Columbia went to their provincial government and got them to create a committee of internal direction, to which they gave power to license the fruit growers, to tell them where they should sell their fruit, when, and at what price. In doing so they were in effect empowered to dictate to the people of the prairie provinces not only what we shall pay for our fruit, but how much of it we shall have. That is the situation. Last year in British Columbia they produced 90.000 odd cases of peaches. They ate about half of them themselves, leaving approximately fifty thousand boxes for the use of the prairie provinces. We out there consumed over 400,000 boxes. But while the fruit growere of British Columbia could not begin to supply our market for fruit, they had this dumping duty put on, which compelled us to pay an 80 per cent duty on the 400,000 boxes which we bought from the States because British Columbia could not supply them. It is all nonsense to say that the fruit producers of this country receive low prices for their fruit. We pay just as high prices in the season for British Columbia fruit as we have to pay for American fruit out of season, and once our own British Columbia fruit comes on the market we never use any American fruit, because theirs will not compare with ours for quality. I will say that for the fruit growers of British Columbia. #
What is the matter with the Ontario fruit growers? The trouble with them is this: They have been in the habit of selling to a local market where they do not take any trouble or care in packing their fruit and preparing it for market. The day is past when they can sell exclusively in a local market, and now that they are obliged to ship their product a distance it will not carry west of Winnipeg because the fruit is not properly packed. We never get their fruit in Regina in a condition fit to use.


Mr. BANCROFT:: They also voted against a cheap rate for that fruit going west.


Edward James Young: Ontario did?


Leland Payson Bancroft: The Conservative party voted against a cheaper rate on fruit going west under the Crowsnest agreement.


Edward James Young: To sum up:
The disadvantage from which our producers of fruit are suffering are: first, insufficient production, and second, improper packing and shipping methods. And the latter reason applies particularly to Ontario. If the fruit producers of Ontario wish to hold their present market or to secure a wider market all they have to do is to adopt modem methods of packing and marketing. If they do that they do not need t'he dumping duty. The government was justified in repealing this provision because it was totally ineffective as a means of shutting out importations and, secondly, because under the law as it stands they have no right to collect these duties.


Mr. GROTE STIRLING (Yale):: I associate myself with the amendment 'before the house because of the seriousness, as I see it, of the situation which faces the producers of natural products in this country. There is now, and for a long time there has been, great misunderstanding over a misuse of terms. I have heard in this house references to the "Dumping Act"; yes, I have heard ministers refer to the Dumping Act. The hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Young, Weyburn) referred to the Dumping Act. There is no Dumping Act in Canada, nor was there ever a Dumping Act in Canada. What we have had and what we now have is one clause of the customs tariff, which was placed there in 1904, sponsored by the Right Hon. W. S. Fielding. He put it in there to meet certain conditions which he saw existing, and I want to quote a sentence or two from the speech which the right hon. gentleman made in introducing that clause. He had been referring to the memorable words of Mr. Cleveland: "It is a condition and not a theory which confronts us".
Dumping Duty-Mr. Stirling


Edward James Young: Will the hon. member quote what his own leader said on that occasion?


Grote Stirling: I have not got it, but if my hon. friend knows the page of Hansard he can. easily read it.


Edward James Young: I have read it.


James Dew Chaplin: It will be enlightening.


Grote Stirling: Mr. Fielding proceeded:
We recognize that fact in tariff matters as in many other matters, and we say that many new conditions have arisen and are arising of which we are obliged to take notice.
Further on he said:
I quite realize that what I may call the extreme free trader, that is, the theoretical free trader, if there be such a man, who attaches more importance to a theory than to the practical things of this life, may ask: "Why should we care about that? We do not get the benefit of cheap goods." Well, if he could be guaranteed forever or for a long period that we would obtain cheap goods under that system the question would be a very fair one. If these trusts and combines in the high tariff countries would come under obligations, with sufficient bonds, to supply us with these goods at the lowest prices for the next fifty years, it would probably be the part of wisdom for us to close up some of our industries and turn the energies of our people to other branches. But surely none of us imagine that when these high tariff trusts and combines send goods into Canada at sacrifice prices they do it for any benevolent purpose. They are not worrying about the good of the people of Canada. They send the goods here with the hope and the expectation that they will crush out the native Canadian industries. And with the Canadian industry crushed out what would happen? The end of cheapness would come and the beginning of dearness would be at hand.
Then later on he added:
We propose therefore to impose a special duty upon dumped goods. That special duty, subject to a limitation which I will mention, will be the difference between the price at which the goods are sold-the sacrifice price- and the fair-market value of those goods as established under the customs law of the country.
That was Mr. Fielding's method of dealing with conditions as he then found them. Three years later, speaking in the city of Toronto, Sir Wilfrid Laurier is quoted as saying:
Why did we introduce that anti-dumping clause? We introduced it for the reason I gave a moment ago, that it was essential to the success of manufacturing that the man who is engaged in business should know exactly the conditions under which he would operate; and we put in this clause to prevent the demolition of market.
I contend that these two great Liberal leaders introduced that legislation for the purpose of meeting conditions as they found them; and I further contend that such was

Sir Wilfrid Laurier's love for the good people of Quebec, the market gardeners of Quebec, that if he found an evil confronting them such as we now find he would certainly do what was in his power to remove that evil. That clause met the conditions as he found them. I do not know to what extent the dumping clause was satisfactory in meeting the conditions that faced the manufacturers of non-perishable products, but I do know that that clause has never been effective in taking care of the difficulties with which the producers of perishable products have had to contend. That clause proved too inelastic; it was too easily evaded; it was useless to the fruit and vegetable producers. So badly did they suffer from conditions that in 1920, after the shipping season of that year, their representations found the ear of the Union government, and in 1921 the valuation clause was placed in the Customs Act, enabling the minister to declare what the value for duty was, on a basis of comparison with the actual cost of production of similar goods imported into this country at a like date. That clause was made use of in the fruit and vegetable shipping season of 1921 and it was effective. Then came the change of government, and early in the session of 1922 the Liberal government repealed the valuation clause in the Customs Act, ridiculing the idea that it would be possible to declare what the actual cost of production was, although it had so been declared the year before, based very largely on the published figures in the American states. I think that the government realized that they had gone rather far when they removed that assistance, for later on in the session of 1922 they passed this clause which my hon. friend has been referring to, then called 47a, since called 43. The hon. member read the clause, and the gist of it I will repeat: it was to enable the minister to declare what the fair market price was. Because section 6 of the customs tariff, left by itself, did not so declare, and it was necessary that there should be a valuation clause.
Now clause 47a required that an order in council be passed, but we notice that the shipping seasons of 1922, 1923, 1924 and 1925 passed with no order in council having been given the minister on which he could begin to take action. I well remember in one of those years the then Minister of Customs, accompanied by his commissioner, coming into British Columbia. He came down the Okanagan valley, and we entertained him to a luncheon in the city of Vernon. There we laid before him the difficulties with which we

Dumping Duty-Mr. Stirling
had to contend, and I well remember Mr. Bureau telling us that it was his firm intention to protect us against the evil of dumping. We did not understand what method he was going to adopt; we lived far away from this home of phrases; we did not understand clauses and orders in council, and perhaps we did not even know of the existence of orders in council, but we trusted Mr. Bureau. We found that a certain sporadic collection of dumping duty went on in those years, and then in 1924 it reached our ears that rebates of dumping duty were being granted. Early in the session of 1925 I placed questions on the order paper asking whether the dumping duty had been rebated, how much had been rebated and why, and the answer I received was thoroughly evasive. Later on I took it up with Mr. Bureau's successor and told him what I have just told the house. His reply was that he would look into it, and if there were an answer I should have it. I have never had the answer, but I do not think I am going too far when I surmise that these duties were rebated simply because no order in council ever had been passed, and when a rebate was asked for it was granted. When the Duncan report came out early in 1925 we read in it that in every case investigated by the commissioner in which a rebate of the dumping duty was requested, that request was granted. No orders in council were passed in those four fruit shipping seasons; then we had a change of government and the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) became Minister of Customs. We made representations to him with regard to this dumping; he realized that it was being carried on and that order in council was passed in July 1928 under which the minister proclaimed what was the fair market price, and we received protection. During the shipping seasons of 1926 and 1927 we were reasonably protected from the dumping of these foreign fruits and vegetables.
In the minds of those who are opposed to our way of thinking, apparently the two main objections which are raised to this antidumping duty are first that it is wrong in principle and second that the consumer pays more. With regard to the first I infinitely prefer the view adopted by Mr. Fielding, that we have to meet conditions as we find them and that our actions should be in accord with those conditions. With regard to the second point, I maintain that it is wrong in fact. There was a dumping restriction in 1926 and 1927; if it is true that the consumer always pays more when dumping is restricted surely we should expect to find the prices paid by S6103-190
the consumer in those years higher than in preceding years, yet while there are many factors which affect the price paid by the consumer I maintain that you can go through the whole list of fruits and vegetables and you will find that the consumers in Canada did not pay more; frequently you will find that they paid less. I submit that it is a fallacy and has been proved to be such time and again that of necessity the collection of dumping duty means that the consumer pays a higher price.
There are reasons why in my opinion the producer of perishable products should receive perhaps greater attention than the producer of products which are not perishable. The latter does not need to market his products immediately they are ready; the wise business man, with his finger on the pulse of the market, is able to realize when something is backing up, and perhaps he can move his operatives or change his machines to some other article for the time being. That is not the case with the producer of perishable products, and most emphatically is it not so in the case of the tree fruit man. In my orchard I prune my trees, irrigate them, cultivate them, spray them, thin the fruit and plant crops between the trees to plough in and enrich the soil, but I have no control over the blossoms. I do not know in the least what proportion of those blossoms will bring forth fruit. A bountiful crop comes along and naturally I am pleased, although with it my expenses in thinning, hauling and packing go up. However, that is perfectly all right so long as when I come to market my produce I find that there is a reasonable opening in the Canadian market for me to sell that fruit. I have to fell it when it is ready or make use to a slight degree of the very expensive assistance of cold storage, but in the main I have to sell it when it is ready, and if when I come to sell it I find the market already full of or threatened by the produce of another country I maintain that I, a Canadian producer responsible for developing a little piece of Canada, am not getting a square deal.
There were no orders in council passed from 1922 to 1925; the clause placed on the statute books by the Liberal party was not made use of for our benefit, and yet the Prime Minister to-day asks us to realize that there has been a great deal of misunderstanding, that really nothing is changed, that the provision is still on the statute books and that if we apply to the minister with a good enough case and the minister can get council to adopt his view, council will proceed to pass one of these orders in council. Remembering



Dumping Duty-Mr. Stirling
the past, is it reasonable for the producers of fruits and vegetables to look with any satisfaction on assistance which the government say we may receive? Surely we should not have to wait until the damage is done. The wise man does not wait until the fire has started to provide himself with a fire extinguisher; surely he buys his fire extinguisher and has it loaded and primed and ready to use as soon as the first wisp of smoke appears. I maintain that we must have this protection not only against actual damage but also to take care of the threat of damage which is hanging over us.
Conditions have changed since 1904, and within the last few years a special custom has come into being. In the United States today it is customary to roll cars to a certain concentration point, and we will take Chicago as an example. From many states of the union hundreds of cars of perishable products are rolled to Chicago, and the shippers of those cars hope that before they reach Chicago the cars will be sold. In the majority of cases they succeed, but many cars which are not sold, reach Chicago, and as the contents are perishable something must be done with them. They cannot glut the tracks in Chicago; they must be sent somewhere. Where are they sent? Do they send those cars into an American market which has a sufficiency of that article already? They do not; those cars are rolled into Canada, and if there is no restriction against that rolling into Canada they come into a portion of our Canadian market which probably already has a sufficiency of that article.
This difficulty that we have to contend with is not a new one. We had it last year, and we had it the year before in many different kinds and varieties of fruits and vegetables; we know we shall meet it again. In the central parts of British Columbia this year we are looking forward to one of the most bountiful crops of tree fruit that we have ever seen; everything indicates that. This also applies to the three Pacific states just south of the line. We know it is their intention to put their C grade apples into our Canadian market, so that they may leave their own great city markets of the middle west and the Pacific coast free for their own extra fancy and fancy fruit.
Let me read this letter, dated Kelowna, B.C., April 6, 1928, addressed to myself:
I hear rumours that there is a possibility of the federal government removing the Anti-dumping Act. I trust this is not to be.
I am back recently from a tour of the orchard districts in Washington and Oregon. I had
i Mr. Stirling.!	:
many conversations with officials, growers and shippers; they all report that the crop in sight thisyear is the largest on record.
Wherever I went I was asked about the committee of direction. They appeared to be interested at hearing it had functioned well for its first year, but they remarked, "You had an easy proposition, since our crop was so short we had no fruit to spare for Canada. What will happen this year with our bumper crop in sight? We will have to put a lot of our fruit into Canada to stabilize our own markets." Some of them admitted it was good policy on their part to pour fruit into Canada even at a loss, simply to keep it off their own markets and so get a good price the year round in their domestic market.
There is no doubt in my own mind, should the dump duty he removed, no matter how well the committee of direction may function they will never he able to get the home grower even the cost of production for his fruit.
Does the federal government want to see the fruit industry in British Columbia prosper or not? If they do, then for goodness sake urge on them the vital necessity of retaining the dump duty.
Yours sincerely,
A. Harman.
This man is a prominent fruit grower about ten miles north of Kelowna. He has served his term as director of the Kelowna Growers Exchange, and for two years he was the chairman. He knows just exactly what we have suffered from, and he also saw in the seasons of 1926 and 1927 that we had reasonable protection from this dumping. With the splendid looking crop in sight, he fears for the future.
These indications do not only come from the British Columbia fruit section. I have a letter here from the secretary of the Medicine Hat chamber of commerce, addressed to my leader. I wish to quote a couple of paragraphs from it, as follows:
Medicine Hat and the immediate surrounding district is noted for the production of vegetables which are marketed at an earlier date than in any other part of the prairie provinces.
The profit from these early vegetables to a very large extent enables the truck gardeners to compete against the importations from the United States during the whole of the growing season in Canada. As it is only the better off classes than can afford to purchase the early grown vegetables that are necessarily sold at a much higher price than those that are grown at a later date, we fail to see how the cancellation of the dumping duty on vegetables will benefit the population as a whole, but it will, undoubtedly, be a benefit to the growers in the United States_ and equally a detriment to the growers in this and other parts of Canada.
We trust that you will give your earnest consideration to the above and realize the necessity of replacing by order in council the provisions of the act applicable to fruits and vegetables, thereby enabling a large and hardworking class of agriculturists to prosper.
That is largely our contention, Mr. Speaker, that we, the producers in Canada, should be

Dumping Duty-Mr. Stirling
able to look with reasonable satisfaction to the possibility of marketing these products in the Canadian market. It is not in our interest, nor do I think there is any evidence that we have been guilty of deliberately attempting, to raise the price to the consumer. I have said in this house more than once before that my earnest desire is to increase the quantity that I sell, and I will not do that if I raise the price. I have certain overheads to meet; the organizations which handle the packing and selling of my fruit have certain overheads to meet, and it is to our advantage so to satisfy the Canadian consumer that he will absorb double the amount that we have been selling him.
The fruit and vegetable growers throughout Canada were distressed at the news that the government had cancelled the orders in council which enabled that restriction to be effective in 1926 and 1927. A large and responsible delegation came to Ottawa, consisting largely of farmers from Quebec and Ontario, with some representatives from other parts of Canada. They met the Prime Minister and nine of his colleagues; the most noticeable absences being the French ministers from the province of Quebec. They put forward their case, and I am within the facts when I say that they were disgruntled at the rather brusque interruptions from the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb). It was noticed that the minister was not sure of his facts, for he said that the orders in council had not been cancelled. The Prime Minister drew attention to the fact that there was a misuse of terms in the minds of the speakers. I think the delegates realized that they were coming to this place of acts and clauses and orders in council, and I do not think it was to be wondered at that their tongues got twisted. What they endeavoured to put forward was that the fear of the loss of the effect of the dumping restriction was in their minds.
The Prime Minister, when he came to reply to the speakers, read a letter from Mr. Blake Robertson of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, but he did not say to whom it was written. He drew no conclusion from that letter, but left us to draw our own. He then proceeded to draw attention to the fact that the telegrams which he had received in considerable numbers were in identical language. That statement was not accurate, but I am quite ready to admit that probably the majority of them were. Why was that? Those of us who represent the fruit and vegetable growers thought that it was merely our duty to prepare a statement to be sent to the various associations throughout the length and 56103-190J
breadth of Canada. We, who should know orders in council and clauses, endeavoured to put forward a correct statement of what had happened-the three clauses involved, the orders in council, and the cancellation thereof -in an endeavour to place before the producers in Canada a correct statement of facts with regard to these things. We suggested that they should telegraph the Prime Minister, and follow their telegrams up with a letter, particularly drawing attention to the interests of their own districts. I pointed out that we were sending this out to laymen and that we should indicate in a skeleton telegram what should be placed before the Prime Minister. I am in the judgment of the house whether that was a wrong thing, an inadvisable thing, in any way a reprehensible thing to do. I take it that it was but reasonable to get those people to act along the correct lines in regard to the facts. The Prime Minister drew no conclusions from those two incidents, but I want to assure him, if his friends have not already done so, that the producers of fruits and vegetables are seriously alarmed and deeply concerned at the turn of events, because looking back over the years since 1922 they cannot but think that the Liberal government has shown a callousness of outlook towards the producers of fruits and vegetables in Canada.
The Prime Minister then proceeded to make an astounding statement, and I could hardly believe my ears when I heard it. When I read it in the stenographic report next day I still found it difficult to believe that the Prime Minister could have used those words. I read from the stenographic reiport as follows; and I will give the immediate context:
Now, I say this, that that order would never have got past any treasury board, would never have got past the cabinet, if a single minister of the crown in it had ever dreamed that the passing of such an order was going to be interpreted by the officials of the department of customs in the manner in which it has been,, that is, to fix duties at the present time on asparagus, on hothouse tomatoes, on canteloups and articles of that kind, some of which are not even grown in this country.
I	examined the appraisers' bulletins to refresh my memory and I could find no articles that could be so described. I telephoned to the department, read the Prime Minister's words, and asked them to what could the Prime Minister have been alluding. They said: We do not know. I suggest that in that the Prime Minister has made use of an inaccurate statement which has gone out into Canada and with which the truth will never catch up. I do not think I am stretch-
299G

Dumping Duly-Mr. Stirling
ing imagination to the breaking point when I say that that will go out to the dark places of Canada where free trade is still worshipped as a fetish and a man will say to his fellows: See what these protectionists have done nowl They have put this over a minister! The minister has collected a dumping duty on fruit Which is not even produced in Canada. The Prime Minister says so. So one more fallacy in lieu of argument will be used to hammer the protectionists and that fallacy is written on the account of the Prime Minister of this country.
The right hon. gentleman proceeded and I think a fair summary of what followed was this: that when the government discovered that the minister had assumed under the orders in council a greater power than parliament intended him to have, they cancelled the orders in council, but that there was nothing to prevent a grower or anybody else from laying his case before the minister when the damage had begun and that if the case was strong enough, the minister would then proceed to approach council with a view to getting an order in council. We suffered in that way during the regime of 1932 to 1925. I remember an occasion when application was made to the Minister of Customs at Ottawa. Possibly it was the month of August and the ministers had dispersed. Possibly the minister was away on a trip, but he could not even be found and I presume that even this hardworking cabinet must sometimes take a holiday. I can imagine the circumstances in the summer months when it might be extremely difficult to find in Ottawa a quorum of council and there would be the danger that that quorum might consist of the free trade section of the cabinet.
Towards the end of the proceedings of that delegation the attention of the Prime Minister was called to a letter from the Justice department. that the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young) read a little while ago. He was asked what the position would be or words to this effect: Supposing it was definitely shown that the legality of that clause was in doubt. The answer of the Prime Minister roughly was that if it was in doubt parliament only could set it right. This I consider to be a most ominous phase of the situation. We are at present told that we must rely on a government whose immediate predecessors were the authors of this clause, a government which in previous shipping seasons never put an order in council into being, and that we must trust that government, even though the legality of the clause itself be in doubt, to take care of us in the Okanagan who see that

magnificent crop ahead and who know that the fruit crop across the line is ready to come into Canada. It is not reasonable to expect that the producers of natural products in this country will be satisfied with that view. I do not consider that t'he government could be condemned more strongly for anything else than for their inaction if this session is allowed to end without effective restriction having been provided to take care of the situation which will arise if, when we come to market our produce in the markets of Canada, we find those markets full of the produce of another country.


Alan Webster Neill: Mr Speaker, before dealing with the amendment under discussion I should like to make a statement on behalf of the poultry industry of British Columbia. Perhaps I am going too far in claiming to represent all the poultry-men, but I certainly can speak for those in my own district and as conditions on the whole of Vancouver Island and the lower mainland are exactly similar to those in my district, I may be said to represent their views also. I am approaching the subject entirely from the point of view of the poultry producers. I am not going into the fruit and vegetable aspect of the situation. I notice with interest that the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young) in the midst of his enthusiasm, speaking with all the religious devotion of a fiscal fanatic, never pleaded, never could, and never dared, state that the dumping duty had been improperly enforced as regards eggs. He confined his whole remarks ' to that phase of the matter as represented by fruit and vegetables, and very properly so, because it would have been impossible for him, even with his ability and with his peculiar point of view, to have made out a case as regards eggs. I might put the case concisely by reading the terms of a resolution which I put on the order paper when this matter first came up, but which I was prevented from moving because of the progress of the session and private members' days having been taken away. I will read the resolution as I intended to move it in the house:
That whereas a dumping duty was imposed in January, 1927, on imported eggs-
I should like to remind the hon, member for Weybum that this was introduced not by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) but by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell), and, I venture to think, very properly so.
-and whereas it was applied with such moderation that, although checking wholesale

Dumping Duly-Mr. Neill
importation at low prices, it allowed eggs to come in freely when the price rose above forty-five cents per dozen.
And whereas in its most extreme application it never reached, together with the ordinary duty, to as high as 10 cents a dozen;
And whereas while affording some protection to the poultrymen of Canada, it did not unjustly increase the price of eggs to the consumer;
And whereas the operation of said dumping duty was withdrawn by order in council on or about the 29th March, 1928;
And whereas such action is not called for by any body of consumers or justified by the present price of eggs and the present conditions of poultry farming in Canada.
Therefore be it resolved this house is of the opinion that the government should consider the advisability of reimposing the dumping duty on eggs, as formerly imposed, or, alternatively, increasing the ordinary duty on eggs imported into Canada.
That puts the case, so to speak, in a nutshell. I should like now briefly to elaborate one or two points.
Regarding the method by which the dumping duty is applied, the hon. member for Weyburn has correctly explained, I think, the greater part of it, only perhaps he confused the situation by referring to section 47a. It would be better to keep to the section as it is now, section 43 of chapter 42 of the revised statutes. The method by which this duty is enforced is by the application of section 43 of chapter 42 and by section 6 of chapter 44 of the revised statutes of 1927. These sections are still the law, but the orders in council made under them have been cancelled. The clause which deals with dumping is, taken alone, of no use at all to improve the situation, because eggs, for instance, as well as manufactured goods, in order to come within the meaning of section 6, have to be sold cheaper in Canada than in the United States, and they were not being sold cheaper in Canada than in the United States. Therefore you could not apply the dumping duty. It requires the two together; it requires the application of section 43 as well as of section 6. Section 43 alone is of no use because it only says that the minister, as instructed by order in council, car. declare the fair market price. It needs coordination between the two to make the application of the duty effective. We are told that these two sections are still the law. So they are, but tihe law is a dead letter, and will be a dead letter because the orders in council passed under them have been cancelled. It is all very well to say:	There is the law;
you can take advantage of it. If a hurricane blows the roof and walls off my house, it is small comfort to me to be told that the framework is there and that if I wait long enough another hurricane may perhaps blow them back again. That is hardly likely, and it would be a very poor bet. Or if a man finds
that all his silver plate has been stolen, you can tell him:	There is your house, and perhaps the thief will bring it back. Well, miracles are not unknown, but I think it is extremely unlikely that Lloyds would insure a chance of that kind, and so it is with the dumping orders in council.	After having
been taken away in the last month, what reasonable likelihood is there of their being reimposed? If that were done, the whole of this amendment falls to the ground, of course.
Another point. Supposing the government were so impressed by the particular case that may be made out to-morrow or next week that they wished to apply the dumping duty; it would be impossible to apply it because the two sections are illegal. That is the ruling that has been given by the Justice department, as mentioned by my hon. friend from Weyburn, and it does not need a lawyer; even a layman can see that the two are separate and distinct and lack co-ordination. Section 43 says that you can declare the fair price, but it stops there. Section 6 says you can put on the dumping duty. But there is a lack of coordination between the two. Half a dozen words added to section 43 would bring it into the scope of section 6, and the two would be legal. But to-day, as they stand, we have the opinion quoted by my hon. friend from Weyburn the opinion given by the Deputy Minister of Justice, that the two are not coordinated enough to make the imposition of the dumping duty legal, and with that opinion before them the government dare not impose the duty again because they would be open to any shipper taking action against them for damages, and possibly heavy damages. If that is so-I would like to be contradicted, if contradiction is possible-it is useless to say that we have retained section 43 and section
6.	We were told no later than Friday by the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) that it was not the intention of the government to bring down any new legislation. Any amendment to these sections certainly would be new legislation. So we are faced with this condition; it is not the intention of the government to amend these two sections, and therefore they are practically useless.
Turning to another phase, I stated in the resolution which I have quoted that this method had not been abused so far as eggs were concerned, and that statement is absolutely beyond challenge. The Minister of Agriculture in his wisdom, and I use the word advisedly, put the fair market value at such a moderate price as to prevent the method being abused. He fixed it at 45 cents, and it is not possible at that figure, with the dumping duty
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and with the ordinary duty as well, to impose more than 9^ cents per dozen, or say not more than 20 per cent. The hon. member for Wey-burn talks of 70 and 80 per cent.


Edward James Young: And in some cases 100 per cent.


Alan Webster Neill: 
Peter McGibbon: Does the hon. member
think that these Chinese eggs are fit for consumption under any consideration?


Alan Webster Neill: No, I do not, and if the hon. gentleman will allow me some of his forty minutes to dilate on that subject, I shall be very glad to do it, because I have studied the question, not intimately, but from a distance -I would hate to profess an intimate knowledge of the inside of any Chinese egg. The importations from all countries show the same relative drop. In 1927 the importation amounted to considerably over 3,000,000 dozen, and they went down the next year to 1,000,000 dozen, or a drop of 2,000,000 dozen in one year. So that shows it was doing some effective work. I may say that I am not dealing with frozen eggs, which come in under a different duty and under different circumstances altogether. I have in my possession-I do not have it before me-a poultry journal, enjoying a large circulation in the United States. They are putting on a most intensive campaign to influence the president to increase the duty on eggs. Why? They ask it because of the enormous importations of Chinese eggs. The eggs that were denied admission into Canada have been going into the States, and the American poultry men are asking for an import duty-not of ten or twenty cents a dozen, but of twenty-five cents a dozen on all eggs; and with their well-known fiscal views in that country they are quite likely to get it. Then where will those Chinese eggs of the poorest quality find a market? They will come back into Canada again, the door having been opened for them by the lack of this legislation. Already there is evidence that they are coming in at prices utterly impossible for us to compete with. They have been offered laid down in Winnipeg at a price which would mean 15 cents a dozen for our eggs to compete.	*
I would ask this further question. I say that the dumping duty did not unduly increase prices. Well, did it? Here is evidence. I hold in my hand a publication issued by the Department of Agriculture called the Egg and Poultry Market Review. Under date of April 3, which was about a day or two after these orders in council were taken off, I read as follows:
Car lots of eggs have been offered in the west at-extras, 31 cents; first, 29 cents; seconds, 26 cents per dozen, f.o.b., freight charges extra.
You see, Mr. Speaker, while the minister had power to put on 45 cents as the fair market price, British Columbia was offering eggs with the dumping duty on as low as 29 cents

Dumping Duty-Mr. Neill
for firsts, which would be the average grade. Does anyone think 29 cents per dozen, ex-Vancouver, is too big a price to pay for that class of eggs? Surely the price has not been unduly increased by this dumping clause. Then again, did the removal of the dumping clause do harm? I will quote the next sentence in this same government report:
Sales have been made on the basis quoted above, but large numbers of these have been cancelled following the notice of the removal of the dumping duty on eggs.
This is a government publication which says, and says truly I have no doubt, that those sales at a fairly low basis were cancelled as soon as it was known that the dumping clause had been removed. In a later issue of the same paper I find:
In large measure the removal of the dumping duty is responsible for the present easiness.
I would call it "uneasiness" so far as the poultrymen are concerned. So we have the evidence out of the government's own paper that the price was not unduly raised, and that it fell away as soon as the dumping duty was taken off.
I have before me the Vancouver Province, a well-known paper, giving the market prices. The price to the farmer for his eggs ran from 24 cents down to 18 cents a dozen, or an average of 21 cents. Would anyone of us like to raise eggs at 21 cents a dozen at the prices for feed that I will now quote from the same paper? No. 2 wheat sells for $2.50 a hundred pounds. May I inform my friends from the prairies that No. 2 wheat in British Columbia does not mean No. 2 Northern. It means No. 6, or sometimes a grade lower than that, a mixture, and sometimes, if the feed merchants feel good-hearted, No. 0 with a mixture of No. 5. We pay $2.50 for that in Vancouver. The price is also quoted for a hundred pounds of oats- $2.70. Some of our older men may go back in memory to the days in Ontario when they could buy eggs for 15, or perhaps as low as 10 cents a dozen; but the farmers did not pay $2.70 for a sack of oats to feed their hens. You never can raise those eggs at 20 cents a dozen. I should like to quote two reputable men. I do not propose to give their names, but I know them well. One has got something like five thousand birds. He writes me:
Last month-
That is March.
Last month I shipped over 10,000 eggs, and I only received over the cost of the month's feed bill $14.20, for a month's work every day, including Sundays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Fourteen dollars and twenty cents a month. Who would not go poultry farming? He goes on to say:
Something will have to be done soon or B.C. will be shipping eggs from the United States for home consumption.
What the other man says is even worse:
My last shipment of eggs netted me here just 16.59 cents a dozen.
About 16J cents a dozen. He continues:
That is the average. I continually see at wharves and stations on Vancouver island thousands of fine-looking birds being shipped into Vancouver markets, birds in the pink of egg-laying condition being sacrificed after a winter of high-priced feeding. This can only mean that hundreds of poultrymen all over the country are going into the cities again in search of work. Is it not pitiful?
He adds:
There is a great movement to bring more people into the country, for the benefit of the Canadian Pacific and railway companies I suppose, and dump them on the land. What for, for heaven's sake? I am strongly tempted to write the European publications warning them against this step. I feel it as a kind of duty.
I do not know but what he is right. I should like the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Forke) to listen to that. There is a popular feeling that if you throw a man out of the land, success and prosperity is bound to be his.
The argument is sometimes raised, and possibly will be to-day, that we must consider the question of cheap food for the workingman. I have always found the workingman to be no fool. He is strongly against sweated labour; that is, goods produced by labour sweated to the extent that it is very poorly paid. I am quite sure his sympathy will go out to the poultryman who worked a whole month for $14.20. His labour is sweated to the extent that payment for it disappears entirely. No Canadian workingman would stand for a proposition like that. Moreover, our workingmen are quite smart enough to know the inevitable result-the elimination of half the poultry growers, followed by increased prices for eggs and poultry imported from the States.
Another point I made in my resolution was that this action was uncalled for. I certainly would ask this question: Who wanted this action taken? Where did those people come from and when did they ask for it? I do not think the government could possibly answer the question. There was no agitation, no feeling of ill-will, no feeling that anybody was paying too much for eggs. The removal of the dumping duty came as a bolt from the blue, and was thrown in, so to speak, to
Dumping Duly-Mr. Neill

remedy some possible injustice in connection with these other natural products; but it does not apply to the question of eggs, and I protest eggs being included in this matter.
I am not here to discuss the question of tariff. I am not in favour of a high tariff. Some time ago a body of economists, more or less under the aegis of the League of Nations, went on record that it would probably be better for the world at large if a system of free trade were adopted. Yes', the League of Nations is strongly in favour of disarmament, but I never heard them say that only one nation should disarm and the rest should be armed to the teeth. I do not think those economists would ever have seriously put forward the thought that one nation should be the goat of this' idea of free trade- and not only one nation, not only one industry in that nation, but one part of the industry in that nation. That was never contemplated by those men. So long as we have a tariff-and it cannot be denied that we have, with every prospect of keeping it for many years to come-then the farmer and egg producer is as much entitled to his share of that tariff as the manufacturer. And we are not asking for very much, not for the 25, 30 or 35 per cent that the manufacturer gets; we are only asking for what at most comes to 20 per cent, and that only under occasional circumstances.


An hon. MEMBER:: Adequate protection.


Alan Webster Neill: No, I will not split hairs. In desperation we have turned to the market in New Zealand and have sent a shipment there. But what do we run up against in New Zealand? A 20 per cent ad valorem duty. And what have we in return to protect us?
There has always been a dumping duty under every government, Conservative and Liberal alike, but section 6, the dumping clause, is powerless alone. The Conservative government, recognising that fact, passed an extra measure providing for the imposition of an arbitrary dumping duty. The Liberals also recognized it when they took similar action in 1923. We need this extra legislation to give the dumping clause teeth, so to speak.
One word more as to the value of the industry. As I mentioned before the delegation, the egg industry alone-not including poultry -last year in Canada produced something like $80,000,000. This was the revenue from the humble hen. The royal commission on fisheries reported the other day that so great was our fishing industry, so vast its importance, that they would recommend a special department, with a minister at the

head of it, to deal with fisheries alone. And what was the output of our fisheries last year? Only $56,000,000. The egg industry alone, on the other hand, produced last year some $80,000,000. Perhaps we need a ministry of eggs as well. I do not think I am beside the mark when I say that there are probably a quarter of a million of people dependent upon this industry, which is supposedly a side line.
What do we want? We want legislation introduced correcting section 43 and bringing it into line so that section 43 and section 6 may be enforced legally. And we want an assurance that the two will be applied, because nothing else will suffice. If the government gives us that assurance, then this amendment falls to the ground. That is all we want.
I come now to the resolution itself. We are told by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) that he regards it as a want of confidence motion, and I know it is the custom so to regard such resolutions. But there is nothing in the rules that compels us to treat it as a want of confidence vote. I remember a resolution which we attempted to put through this house some years ago, providing that a government's defeat on a question of this kind should not be held to be a vote of want of confidence, unless followed by a specific resolution to that effect. Had that resolution been adopted, I venture to say that many more hon. members in this house would vote for this amendment than will do so. I submit that this resolution should not necessarily be considered a vote of want of confidence. The very language of the motion indicates that such is not essential. It declares that "in the opinion of the house necessary action should be taken." There is no condemnation of the government for something they have done in the past, which is the usual form of motions of want of confidence. The resolution merely asks that something be done in the future. There are on the order paper probably thirty resolutions which are couched in the same terms, many of which we have discussed. Not one of them would involve the defeat of the government if it carried, for the simple reason that these resolutions are academic. But they would bind the government to some action if they passed. Well, the resolution now before the house is of the same character; it is couched in similar language.
There is one thing which I like about this amendment and which I do not often see in the budget amendments of my hon. friends opposite, and that is its clear-cut and definite nature. Generally speaking, the tariff amend-

Dumping Duty-Mr. Gott
ments of my hon. friends opposite are so vague, so comprehensive and so partisan that it is almost impossible for anyone, trying to look at them from a non-partisan point of view, to make up his mind whether to vote for them or not. In this case it is not so; the resolution is confined to one statement of fact, a definite condition which exists, and it asks that this condition be remedied. It is, as I say, clear-cut, and it is easy to decide on the point. It is easy for every hon. member to say, "I am going to vote for or against a proposition which may mean the preservation in Canada of an industry on which a quarter of a million people are dependent, and of which the output is something like 880,000,000 a year".
I have no quarrel with my hon. friend from Weyburn-with whom, I hope I may say, I am personally friendly-or with any other hon. member if he takes a different view of the matter, provided he is satisfied that he is expressing the views and voting in the interests of his constituents. So far as I am concerned, the interests of my constituents are so plain, the pledge I made them-practically the only pledge I did make-being that I would put their interests first in my consideration, that I cannot do anything else than support the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Halton (Mr. Anderson).
Mr. ECCLES J. GOTT (South Essex): It seems to me that there seems to have been a general disposition, if not an effrontery, on the part of the government to evade the issue that has come before the country through the cancellation of order in council 1088, implemented by authority entrusted to the Minister of National Revenue in section 47a of the Customs Act, now 43. In order to remove any misconception or general misunderstanding as to what had actually been done, I asked the following question of the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Euler) on the orders of the day, on April 25, page 2368 of Hansard:
Has the authority given to the Minister of National Revenue to determine the value of fruits and vegetables for the purpose of applying the special or dumping duty been cancelled?
Further I said-I wanted to make the question specific and definite:
By this I do not mean, has order in council 1088 been rescinded, but has section 47a of the Customs Act been so amended as to take away this authority from the minister?
The reply I received from the Minister of National Revenue was:
There has been no amendment to the act whatever. The order in council authorizing the minister to fix values has been cancelled.
I quote from the Border Cities Star, of April 21, the report of a meeting of the Independent Order of Daughters of the Empire held at Hamilton, one of the main consuming centres of Ontario. A despatch dated from Hamilton, April 20, reads:
Yesterday, the final day of the three-day annual meeting of the Provincial Chapter, I.O. D.E., a resolution was passed which will be sent to the federal government asking for a reconsideration of the rescinding of the dumping act in order that the fruit and vegetable grow-ers of Ontario may be protected.
The resolution reads: "Whereas the special dumping act will not be applied during the coming season in the matter of fruits or vegetables: whereas, in consequence our growers will suffer, the Provincial Chapter, I.O.D.E., views with alarm this condition of things and would respectfully urge the government to seriously reconsider this matter, feeling that the Canadian fruit and vegetable growers have every right to protection.
On the order paper I put certain questions appearing as question No. 16, as follows:
1.	Has order in council No. 1088 been rescinded and cancelled?
The answer was, "Yes."
2.	When was same rescinded and cancelled?
Answer: March 19, 1928.
3.	When did the rescission and cancellation become effective?
Answer: March 19, 1928.
4.	Has the tariff board made any recommendation regarding protection for early Canadian fruit and vegetable growers, seasonal or otherwise ?
Answer: The subject is under inqury.
There are hundreds of other questions that have come before the tariff board which are still under inquiry.
5.	If so, what was the substance of such recommendation ?
Answer: Still under inquiry.
6.	Is the government aware that resolutions are being passed by boards of trade, town and city councils, chapters of the Daughters of the Empire and other bodies, protesting against the government's action in rescinding order in council 1088?
Answer: Some resolutions have been received.
Despite this, the Minister of Finance had the precipitance and temerity to tell the delegates who assembled here that this order in council had not been cancelled. This is what he said when speaking to Mr. Fisher, a member of the delegation. Mr. Fisher said:
Now that privilege has been taken away and we feel that we have been discriminated against.
Hon. Mr. Robb: Wait a moment. Who said it was taken away?
Mr. Fisher: Well, maybe I have not used the right word but the order in council making it effective has been withdrawn, as we understand it.
Hon. Mr. Robb: No.
This was said after the Minister of National Revenue, in answer to a question put by my-
Dumping Duty-Mr. Gott

self, stated definitely that it had been cancelled. Now I want to put on record samples of the resolutions which have been received by the government, and first I would refer to one or two which were sent out before the delegation came to Ottawa. The first is dated April 10, and comes from Grimsby:
The fruit growers understand that the order in council authorizing the Minister of National Revenue to fix values for fruits and vegetables under section 43 of the Customs Act, Revised Statutes, has been cancelled. '
Realizing from their experience of the dumping act as administered in former years and as administered in the past two years during (which latter period the minister was authorized to fix values) the apparent impossibility of getting action quickly enough to be of any practical use, they feel that they are virtually being left without the protection of a dumping act unless the power is again given to the minister to fix values.
The very rapid changes which take place in the supplies available and prices in these very perishable lines render it more necessary to have an efficient dumping act in operation to protect this industry than almost any other.
How badly the home market is needed for the industry can be easily verified by application to either loan companies loaning in the fruit areas or banks operating branches in these areas. During the last five or six years there has been a steady shrinkage of the quantities grown in Canada and a big increase in the quantities imported from the United States.
The industry is in vital need of an efficient dumping act and the Ontario growers hope that their members will help to procure for them an anti-dumping clause for their industry which will be effective.
I am going to put one more resolution on record, dated April 17 of this year and coming from the Grimsby chamber of commerce:
Re Cancellation of Special or Dumping Duty
It is with surprise that we learn of the cancellation by order in council of that portion of the dumping act applicable to the fruit and vegetable industries.
Under existing conditions we are satisfied you cannot help but'admit that the fruit and vegetable industries of our Dominion are insufficiently protected to warrant increased production on the part of all agricultural branches of the industry, and the government's recent action is certainly most detrimental. Without the protection which formerly existed all products grown in the United States will have free access to our Canadian markets, whereas the act as previously administered offered a seasonable relief, but with this eliminated you will realize without doubt what will happen to the fruit and vegetable industries.
I direct the attention of the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister to the next part of the resolution :
During the week ending April 11th, 1928, Dominion market reports show importations into Canada of two hundred and eleven cars of fruits and vegetables of a class or kind grown in Canada. These features considered you can readily realize as the season advances,

and our fruits and vegetables grown in Canada by Canadian producers and largely for Canadian consumption, what the result will be under the present existing circumstances. We submit that the Canadian consumer would be materially benefited, if our producers were only
fiven the advantage of the act as formerly in oree, thereby stabilizing conditions to the betterment of all, which fact can be verified by statistics of the past four years.
We solicit your preferred consideration of the above, and trust in your wisdom you will realize the necessity of replacing by order in council the provisions of the act applicable to fruits and vegetables, for without prosperous agricultural conditions we cannot have a prosperous Dominion.
Thanking you in anticipation of your prompt attention and adjustment, thereby maintaining this Canada of ours for the Canadians.
Yours very truly,
Grimsby Chamber of Commerce.
In the report of the proceedings which took place when the delegation was present in Ottawa, I find that the Prime Minister used the following words:
Now that is the only point at issue at the present time that in any way as far as I can see it, is creating a conflict in the minds of some who are interested in this matter.
Under that clause there was passed an order in council. Just how it came to be passed I am not in a position to say. An order in council was passed on the 13th day of July, 1926. That was the first one. That order reads as follows: Whereas the acting Minister of Customs and Excise reports that from information in his possession it is established that fruit and vegetables of a class or kind produced in Canada are being imported into Canada from glutted markets in the United States, at values such as prejudicially or injuriously affect the interests of Canadian producers;
Therefore His Excellency the Governor in Council under and by virtue of the provisions of section 47-A, hereby authorizes the Minister of Customs and Excise to value such fruits and vegetables for duty notwithstanding any other provisions of the Customs Act. the values so determined to be held to be the fair market value thereof.
The Prime Minister said he had no knowledge of where the order in council came from. I would like to have his attention just now, because I took occasion to put this on record once before, and I would like to show him the origin of this order in council. Under date of June 30, 1926, I received the following telegram from the Seacliffe Growers in the riding which I have the honour to represent:
We respectfully wish to draw your attention to the fact growers here have been seriously handicapped by heavy importations of southern cucumbers and tomatoes which have severely hurt marketing of our hothouse crops in this district. We are now about to begin heavy shipments of field crops such as cabbage and tomatoes and if above unfair competition continues serious losses will be sustained by our growers. We would ask you to use every influence to remedy these conditions.

Dumping Duty-Mr. Gott
This telegram was passed over to the Minister of Agriculture, who wrote me saying he had referred the question to the Minister of Finance who in turn referred it to the tariff board, that inactive body which was not, and is not, functioning. On July 2, 1926, I received another wire from the Seacliffe Growers, as follows:
Cabbage crop nearly unsalable. Prices offered would not net growers one cent per pound. Tomatoes in much same position. All owing to import of American stuff which is being dumped in this country at prices that take such low duty that there is no protection to our growers. Cannot something be done to enforce anti-dumping act. This situation has already entailed serious loss to producers in this county.
I would direct attention to the following figures, which probably explain the state of affairs responsible for these telegrams. During the week from June 24 to July 1 inclusive, 1926, there were imported into Canada 128 carloads of tomatoes, which arrived at their ports of entry free from duty, or at least under such low rates of duty as gave no protection to our growers. I would ask the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young), who says there were no importations, to try if possible to grasp these figures. In seven days, the cars received at the different points were as follows:
Montreal	 79
Toronto	 35
Winnipeg	  8
Ottawa	 6
Total	 128
During the seven consecutive weeks from May 12 to June 30 of the same year the importation of 1911 carloads of early vegetables threatened destruction to this industry in Canada. Here are the figures for the weeks ending as follows:
May 19	 205
May 26	 230
June 2	 365
June 9	 220
June 16	 260
June 23	 217
June 30	 414
Total	 1,911
I ask the hon. member for Weyburn if there were any importations during that period.
Fortunately for the farmers of Canada, and particularly the farmers of South Essex, whose interests I was trying to protect at the time of this disastrous flood of importations from the United States, a change of government was taking place. The Hon. H. H. Stevens was appointed Acting Minister of Agriculture in the new government. I returned to my
riding and went into the fields of the respective municipalities and ascertained the exact conditions that existed. Under date of July 10, 1926, I wired the Hon. H. H. Stevens as follows:
Vegetable growers of South Essex have drawn my attention forcibly to glutted conditions of their markets making it impossible to dispose of their produce with the result that crops are being left in the field. Government reports issued by the Fruit branch department of Agriculture show hundreds of carloads of competitive vegetables imported weekly-see telegraphic report No. 14 showing 414 cars imported into eleven Canadian centres during the short period of one week. American reports show such crops in the United States being shipped at prices that do not pay cost of transportation to market, far less cost of production, with result that ad valorem duty imposed by our government and based on invoice price at point of production means absolutely no protection against heavy importations. These deplorable conditions existing now with reference to hothouse tomatoes, cabbage, and beans will continue with reference to main crops of field tomatoes and potatoes which are now ready to be harvested, unless some immediate action is taken now by our department. On my return to Essex county I made a personal canvass of the district and find conditions exactly as represented in this wire.
This is the wire that produced order in council No. 1088, for it was passed three days following.
Under the authority of section 47a of the Customs Act and order in council No. 1088, dated July 13th, 1926, the Hon. Acting Minister of Customs and Excise valued certain fruits and vegetable products when imported from the United States, as follows, per pound net:	,
Tomatoes, 5 cents.
I will ask any hon. member opposite if 5 cents a pound is too high a valuation to put on tomatoes.
Cucumbers, 3 cents.
Cabbage, 11 cent.
Celery, 2 cents.
Onions, 11 cents.
Potatoes, 2 cents.
Asparagus, 10 cents.	,
Carrots, 11 cents.	.
Beets, 2 cents.
Lettuce, 3 cents.
Spinach, 3 cents.
Cauliflower, 2J cents.
Peaches, 4 cents.
Raspberries, 17 cents.
It was held that these values should be the fair market value thereof for purposes of application of ad valorem rates of duty and special duty. I have here the bulletin known as appraiser's bulletin No. 3209. The bulletin quotes section 47a of the Customs Act, and explains the application of the special duty,
Dumping Duty-Mr. Gott

or dump duty, and shows its effect in the following conclusion:
At present Mississippi tomatoes in 4-basket crates (15 pounds net) are selling and imported at 60 cents per crate, which is less than the fair market value set above (75 cents per crate). The duty would, therefore, be assessed as follows:-
Regular duty, 30 per cent of 75 cents, 22J cents; special duty, 15 per cent of 75 cents, 111 cents-total 33J cents.
The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) takes exception to my referring to the warehouse which he built at Leamington as a shed. This was built by the Minister of Agriculture, and I believe he was sincere when he built it. I do not think there is any man in public life who is more sincere with his work than the Minister of Agriculture. When he built this onion warehouse he thought he was doing the onion growers of South Essex a good turn. What the onion growers of South Essex want is the implementing of this order in council which took the duty or tariff on onions from 30 cents to 58 cents. We do not want an onion shed to store our onions in until such time as the American, Spanish and Bermuda onions are on our market, underselling our Canadian farmers. We want the right to have our own market, which is the best market we can have. We want protection and tariff on onions.
I would like to say to the hon. member for Weyburn and to the hon. member for Rose-town (Mr. Evans), who quoted the high prices that were being paid for Canadian products, that after order in council No. 1088 became effective-it took some time to get it effected, but 1 wired from Windsor to the customs department that order in council No. 1088 was not being properly and sufficiently enforced as intended-the importation of surplus produce from the United States ceased almost immediately after it became effective. The producers and consumers in South Essex were both benefited. The producers got more for their products and the consumers paid less, simply because the middleman was eliminated. The consumer also got fresh vegetables every day direct from the farm.
There is not a farmer in South Essex, whether he is Liberal or Conservative, but who is in favour or order in council No. 1088. I sincerely wish that protection in this country was employed in such a way that only the people who vote for it could benefit thereby.


Hon. J. A. ROBB (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I will detain the house only a very few moments. I observed from the debate this afternoon that everyone seems to

be desirous of helping the producer, though there are some who have a different idea of how to go about it. This government has been attacked this afternoon for not protecting the farmer; not doing anything, according to the arguments of the hon. gentleman opposite, to help the farming industry. I also recall that on other occasions this government has been attacked for giving everything to the farmer, and we have been attacked for sacrificing other interests of the country to the farming industry. Hon. gentlemen opposite have attacked us not only in our tariff changes, not only in our reduction of taxes as it applied to farm products and the required farm implements and utensils, but as it applied, in some cases, to the freight rates given to help that industry. Not only in this house, but on the platform during two successive elections, this government has been attacked because of its attitude towards the farming industry. The representatives of the Tory party placarded the billboards of the country advocating-and also in their speeches they advocated-a tariff policy against the United States, a brick for brick policy.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


James Alexander Robb: Will any person deny that?


Peter McGibbon: The Right Hon. Arthur Meighen denied that in this house dozens of times. It was brick for brick only as applied to agricultural products.


James Alexander Robb: That is just what I want, and in a few moments I will show how this brick for brick policy would affect Canadian industry. It has occurred to me that this is but a repetition of the budget debate and the resolution now presented for consideration might very properly have been introduced at the time the budget was introduced. I do not raise this as a point of order; we are not afraid of the vote; we want to know just where the house stands on this particular question. But I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is very questionable whether this resolution is in order, because it is practically and to all intents and purposes the same resolution as was introduced on the budget debate.
I wish just for a moment to deal with the observations of the hon. member for Yale (Mr. Stirling) who very frankly admitted that he and some of his associates had worked up that flood of telegrams that came to the Prime Minister and all the other ministers for a time. My hon. friend, however, as well as the hon., member for South Essex (Mr. Gott), who has just sat down, apparently misunderstood a statement that I made when the

Dumping Duty-Mr. Robb
delegation waited on the government some time ago. I told that delegation very frankly that the law remained on the statute book just as it stood before. It is true that the order in council enabling one minister of a government, or officials acting for the minister, to fix values was changed, but the law remains as it has been for some years. If hon. gentlemen wish me to take up time in reading it, it is probably just as well to put it on Hansard. This is the law as it stands on the statute book to-day:
If at any time it appears to the satisfaction of the governor in council on a report from the minister, that natural products of a class or kind produced in Canada are being imported into Canada, either on sale or on consignment, under such conditions as prejudicially or injuriously to affect the interests of Canadian producers, the governor in council may, in any case or class of cases, authorize the minister to value such goods for duty, notwithstanding any other provisions of this act, and the value so determined shall be held to be the fair market value thereof.
That is section 43 of the Customs Act. The producers of vegetables and fruits in British Columbia, besides the protection contained in the federal law, now enjoy a certain protection through the provincial government, and I should not be surprised if hon. gentlemen at some time, maybe before the end of 1929, will be attacking the provincial government for the very act which that government has in force now, protecting the fruit and vegetable growers of that province.
The hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill) regards this not as a want of confidence motion and I imagine he is quite sincere in his view. But looking into the faces of hon. gentlemen opposite I can see that they have no doubt as to what the resolution means. If the amendment carries and the government is defeated on the motion to go into supply in order to vote money to carry on the affairs of the country, my hon. friends opposite will immediately rise and claim that this was a vote of want of confidence in the government, so my hon. friends have no doubt whatever about the matter.


Eccles James Gott: The Prime Minister himself so stated.


James Alexander Robb: I am not going to go into any details of figures because some of these have already been given, but I observe that the mover of the resolution as it was presented to the house the other day has no doubt about what they desire. It is not the dumping duty that my hon. friend desires to be imposed; it is an increase in the tariff, because my hon. friend (Mr. Tolmie) stated clearly:
The value of a dumping clause depends, first of all, very greatly upon its continuity and
steady enforcement, so that a man is enabled to figure from one year to another, whether he is a buyer of these products, a dealer, or the producer on the land.


Mr. TOLMIE:: Would that not be clearly shown if we were dead sure of having a dumping clause applied every time that it was necessary? It would be necessarily a fixed tariff if we knew the dumping clause was to be applied when it was necessary. When the Americans were aiming to dump goods into this country it would be ample assurance for the buyers to go ahead and for the producers to produce.


James Alexander Robb: My hon. friend's friends and our friends, the growers of vegetables and fruits, now have an inquiry going on before the tariff board. They have already had three hearings and the hearings are not yet completed. This is a large country and interested parties from all sections have not yet been heard. I am very frank to say that in some cases in this wide country there might be something to be said for a seasonal duty, but
1	propose to show hon. gentlemen opposite who are arguing for a brick for brick policy against the United States, that they are arguing for a policy that in some cases will not increase but reduce the Canadian tariff.


Eccles James Gott: Will the hon. member permit a question?


James Alexander Robb: I will put this on record and later on I will answer some questions for my hon. friend. What are the Canadian tariffs and the United States tariffs on the items that have been complained of during the debate this evening? The tariffs are as fdllows:
Commodities
Canadian tariff-United States tariff
Apples: 90 cents a barrel; 25 cents a bushel.
Or about 66 cents a barrel.
Apricots: J cent a pound; i cent a pound.
Blackberries, gooseberries and raspberries:
2	cents a pound; 11 cents a pound.
Pears: | cent a pound; I cent a pound.
Strawberries: 2 cents a pound; II cent a
pound.
All other green fruits, n.o.p.: 25 per cent; 35 per cent.
Cabbages: 30 per cent; 25 per cent.
Potatoes: 35 cents per 100 pounds; 50 cents per 100 pounds.
Tomatoes: 30 per cent; I cent per pound.
Turnips:	30 per cent; 12 cents per 100
pounds.
Vegetables, n.o.p.
And this is the big item.
30 per cent; 25 per cent.
So that our tariff in many cases is at present higher than that of the United States. But
Dumping Duty-Mr. Robb

I observe that hon. gentlemen opposite who are asking us to protect hothouse products are the same gentlemen who have been urging that we should put a higher tariff on coal, making it more expensive to produce these hothouse products.
Hon. gentlemen have talked much of the importations coming in here from the United States. Let me say that Canada is not only an importer of fruits and vegetables, but she is an exporter of fruits and vegetables as well, and for the nine months of the fiscal year 1928, from April until December, I find that our imports of fruits were greater than our exports, our imports being $5,993,494, and our exports $3,166,697. But of vegetables we imported $4,614,980 and we exported $6,103,502, or about $1,500,000 more of exports than of imports.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Potatoes and turnips.


James Alexander Robb: There were some potatoes and turnips, but those were not the only products we exported. My hon. friend will be interested to know that we exported strawberries, for instance.
Hon. gentlemen have referred to the imports of eggs. I find that the imports of eggs from April to December, in 1927, ran in value per dozen from 86 cents to 89, 59, 44, 43, 42, 43, 50 and 49 cents, and the average price of our imports of eggs for January, February and March of this year was 48 cents per dozen.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is fixed by the minister.


James Alexander Robb: I do not know that it was fixed by the minister.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Under the order in
council.


James Alexander Robb: I imagine that Some of these eggs that came in must have been high-priced eggs for hatching.


Mr. LADNER:: Surely the minister does not contend tlhat that has any bearing on this question, because the dumping duty does not apply to prices over 45 cents. I do not see the relevancy of the minister's figures at all.


James Alexander Robb: Nobody is going to get hurt very much with eggs coming in at these prices. My hon. friends opposite are always afraid that something is going to happen in the future, particularly with this government in power. I recall that in 1924, 1925 and 1926, and right up until recently, we have been attacked, particularly by our friends from British Columbia, because we had ruined, they said, a great industry through

making the Australian treaty. The British Columbia hen was not going to cackle any more because of the Australian treaty. As a matter of fact, we have not brought in one single egg from Australia since that treaty came into effect.


Eccles James Gott: We have from China.


James Alexander Robb: That does not cut any figure; the Australian treaty did not apply to Chinese eggs.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Will the minister give the figures for the months from January to April when eggs were down to 27 cents, and great importations took place? Why did he omit these months?


James Alexander Robb: I have not those figures.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Those are the ones you should have.


James Alexander Robb: I have the figures here of the price of eggs in the New York market and in the Canadian market.


Leon Johnson Ladner: For what month?


James Alexander Robb: They are in the Toronto Globe of Friday last. I find that eggs were selling in New York at 324 cents and were quoted in Toronto at 31 cents, so that nobody is getting hurt very badly.


Leon Johnson Ladner: What about January, February and March?


James Alexander Robb: We are dealing with present conditions.


Mr. GUTHRIE:: With seasonal eggs.


James Alexander Robb: Our friends opposite have
attacked us many times for helping the farmer.


Richard Bedford Bennett: You are hurting him.


James Alexander Robb: No. I recall that we were attacked for having helped the farmer on his freight rates, coming out of the Okanagan valley and other parts of the country. I recall that at one time this government had to meet a resolution introduced by hon. gentlemen opposite. We reduced carload freight rates to Vancouver from 49 cents to 45 cents; to Calgary, from 1384 to 104 cents; to Saskatoon, from 1624 to 150 cents; to Regina, from 1624 to 150 cents, and to Winnipeg, from 1624 to 150 cents, and we were attacked by our hon. friends opposite.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Would the minister mind giving particulars when that attack was made.

Dumping Duty-Mr. Robb


James Alexander Robb: The change rates became
effective in November, 1922. That is when the attack was made.


Hugh Guthrie: The house was not sitting then.


Henry Herbert Stevens: May I take the liberty of interrupting the minister? He is surely not serious in saying that there was an attack made on the government because of the freight rate reductions quoted by him. I submit to the minister that no such attack was made.


James Alexander Robb: My recollection is that it was, and my recollection also is that we were attacked when we reduced, as we did, the tariff rates on the requirements of the fanner, particularly for the orchardists and farmers of British Columbia. Then we reduced the sales tax. There was an exemption of sales tax granted in 1924 from thirty-four articles, and hon. gentlemen opposite attacked us for the reductions and exemptions we made in the sales tax. Hon. gentlemen opposite also attacked us on account of egg grading.


Richard Bedford Bennett: No.


James Alexander Robb: Yes, you did, and my hon. friend who sits to the right of the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Guthrie) moved a resolution protesting against the egg grading.


Hugh Guthrie: The courts said it was illegal.


James Alexander Robb: No, they did not.


Hugh Guthrie: Yes, they did.


James Alexander Robb: Every session since 1922, we have heard these tales of woe from hon. gentlemen opposite, and yet the industry continues to grow and prosper. The act remains there. We have on the statute book right now all that is required to protect these industries. It is the policy of this government to find larger and wider markets for the products of the farmers and gardeners of western Canada, indeed of all Canada, but we have also some obligations towards the consumers, and when prices become unduly high, as they sometimes do, is it not reasonable that the government of the day should take the responsibility of having brought to them recommendations before applying the dumping duty? I say now that whenever it becomes apparent that the dumping act should be applied in the interests either of the producers or of the consumers, this government in the future as in the past will not be afraid to do its duty.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Before the minister concludes, may I ask a question, which I think is very pertinent to the point of his remarks? Do the government maintain that they have power under the statute to apply the dumping duty as they formerly did?


James Alexander Robb: The statute has not been
changed in any way whatever; and if my hon. friend questions our right to do it, then he is questioning the right of one of his own friends, who at one time did introduce this.


Leon Johnson Ladner: I am not questioning anybody's right. I believe the right is there. But in view of the words of the minister- they were not very definite-I desire to ask him whether the government think they have the right, under the existing legislation, to apply dumping duites as they did before. That is a simple question, and it seems to me it goes to the root of the whole matter.


James Alexander Robb: Let my hon. friend submit
a case to the government and see how quickly we will test it out.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Why does the minister
evade my question?


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order.


Leon Johnson Ladner: What is the use of discussing these matters if we go round in circles?


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


Leon Johnson Ladner: I have asked the minister a straight question.


Hewitt Bostock: Order. The hon. gentleman may not exercise his right to speak by putting questions.


Leon Johnson Ladner: I am merely asking the
Minister of Finance a question.


Hewitt Bostock: It is out of order.


Simon Fraser Tolmie: May I ask the minister
a question?


James Alexander Robb: Yes.


Simon Fraser Tolmie: In the event of a carload
of fresh vegetables appearing at the boundary line 'to-m|orrow morning, have you the machinery to put the dumping clause into effect right away?


James Alexander Robb: We have the same legal
machinery that has always existed in the act.


Simon Fraser Tolmie: That is by order in council. It would take forty-eight hours to put it into effect.
Dumping Duty-Mr. Lacombe


Eccles James Gott: The hon. minister said he
would answer my question.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


Mr. LIGUORI LACOMBE (Laval-Two Mountains) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, I am anxious to take part in this discussion because, I think, that the question introduced in the house by the hon. member for Victoria (Mr. Tolmie), has a very important bearing on our tariff policy. Our most distinguished statesmen have always endeavoured to find a solution to this important problem and quite naturally the question again crops up in the house. As representative of a riding almost exclusively agricultural, especially in that part of the county of Laval-Two Mountains which is known as the garden of Montreal, I wish to request from the government the greatest possible protection, assistance and fairplay on behalf of the farming population of my riding. I further wish to request, and in so dong I am but echoing the eloquent words expressed by the hon. member for Laprairie-Napierville (Mr. Lancotot)-I wish to request a seasonal tariff for the truck farmers of the county of Laval-Two Mountains and the province of Quebec. Perhaps the government will soon adopt this policy; I hope that such will be the case in the interest of the farming classes.
Let us bear in mind, sir, that the farming class controls the basic industry of this country. Should agriculture fail, our prosperity will dwindle. That is why the motion introduced by the member for Victoria, beam upon one of the most important aspects of our economic life.
I wish to point out to the house, that it is in the interest of all the people in this Dominion, consumers as well as producers, that new markets be found for our natural products which, according to certain specialists on statitsics, could feed 35,000.000 people, while we are barely 9,000,000.
I do not entirely agree with the views of my colleague, the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young), when he states that we should equally consider the welfare of all classes of society. Among these classes, which one toils the most? Is it not the farmers who, when dawn is breaking are already on their way to the fields to prepare and put in the seeding? Is it not the farming class which work not 300 days only in the year but 365 days? The farmer has not even his Sundays to himself. The farming class is the one which feeds the people of Canada and the whole world. It is therefore entitled to the greatest possible assistance and fairplay on the part of our governments. That is why I request for the truck farmers of Quebec and the riding of Laval-Two Mountains especially a seasonal

tariff which would abolish the disloyal competition of the United States, our wealthy and powerful neighbours who have climatic
advantages over us.
I have already given my views on this question. When the budget was brought down in the house, the hon. member for St. Law-rence-St. George (Mr. Cahan), introduced a similar motion. I voted against sudh an amendment because I considered that class and sectional interests should give way to considerations making for the general welfare of the country. For the same reason, I shall again support the Liberal government, which offers to the people of this country a sincere and sound administration. I must add that I cannot place my trust in a possible return to power of our hon. friends of the opposition, because in the past they never raised that tariff. I believe that this motion is simply introduced in the house with a political purpose. Having full confidence therefore in the distinguished men who are at present directing the destinies of this country, I shall support the government.


Mr. H. J. BARBER (Fraser Valley):: Mr Speaker, I wish to add my protest on behalf of the producers of my district in particular anidl of those of the province of British Columbia in general. I join with my good friend the hon. member for Yale (Mr. Stirling) in calling the attention of the government to the result of their action of last month in removing by order in council the powers of the Minister of National Revenue to fix the fair market value of fruit and vegetables, eggs and poultry. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb), referring to the representatives of British Columbia, said that they protested against the action of the government in bringing in the Australian treaty so far as eggs were concerned. I do not think that any great protest was made in regard to eggs; we did not paint any picture of the future of the poultry industry as being affected by that legislation. But we certainly did point out what the effect would be on the dairy industry, and the picture we painted at that time is quite visible to-day. So far as these other industries are concerned, they are vitally affected by the action of the government.
The minister referred to certain machinery set up in British Columbia to deal with this great problem of the fruit growers and he observed that no doubt, before next fall, many of us would be condemning the provincial government for its action in introducing that legislation. Let me direct his attention to the fact that the Premier of British

Dumping Duty-Mr. Barber
Columbia is to-day telling the people and the press of that part of the country that he is keeping the wires to Ottawa hot in protest against the action of this government in cancelling the order in council under discussion. More than that, according to a despatch in one of the coast papers, he made the statement that he had wired to his Minister of Lands, Mr. Pattullo, requesting him to join the large deputation that waited upon the government asking for a restoration of this legislation. We find, however, that Mr. Pattullo was not present in the delegation, although the people of British Columbia believe he was.
I am not going to discuss section 6 and section 47a; these two sections have been fully dealt with to-night. I should like to know, however, who suggested that the government should take this action, or for what reason they did so. There has been no demand from the consumers of the country. This order in council fixing the fair market values of the products affected has gone a great way towards stabilizing industries during the last two years. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) the other day intimated, I think, that no request had been filed with the Minister of National Revenue (Mr Euler) this season, or within the last few weeks, to have an order in council passed in regard to fixing fair values. I hold in my hand a telegram bearing date April 25 addressed to the hon. member for Yale, as follows:
Armstrong, B.C.
Have wired Minister of Customs to have fair price of asparagus dumped in from America set at twelve cents pound. Unless this is done it means ruination to B. C. Growers. We have half ton daily to ship from Armstrong. Please use influence to have this effected immediately.
Poole,
Fairfield Ranch.
This was a request from the growers in Armstrong, and they say that they have forwarded a demand to the Minister of National Revenue asking him to take the necessary steps to have an order in council passed fixing the price of this particular commodity. Then we have a request from the Canadian horticultural council, filed with the minister, bearing date March 12 and setting forth suggested prices and seasons. This was filed not only with the Minister of National Revenue but, as well, with the Minister of Agriculture. I will not read it, but I may point out that, in regard to strawberries, it was suggested that they be valued at ten cents per pound for duty purposes, from June 1 to July 31, while raspberries were fixed at fifteen cents, from June 15 to July 31. And so on down the
list. These are two requests that have been filed by the producers and the representatives with the department up to the present time.
I have had several protests from my district, copies of which, I believe, have been forwarded to the Prime Minister or to the Minister of National Revenue. I will not deal with them all; I intend to touch upon one or two only. I have one from Mission City dated April 13. This communication states that at a meeting held on the date mentioned, some 2,000 fruit and vegetable growers of British Columbia were represented, and that they earnestly endorsed the application already made by the associated growers requesting the immediate restoration of the order in council as provided in section 47a, now section 43 of the Customs Act. The present indications are, it is stated, that there will be a heavy dumping of American produce on the Canadian market, whereas the production in British Columbia will be in excess of the requirements of the prairie provinces. This is signed by the following: Fruit and Mercantile Exchange, Ltd.; Wilson Fruit and Produce Limited; Central Fruit Distributors Limited; Maple Ridge Co-operative Exchange; Japanese Consolidated Farmers Exchange; and Dewdney Rhubarb Growers Association.
I have another telegram from New Westminster embodying a resolution of a large mass meeting of poultry farmers, held there on April 23, protesting against the removal of the dumping duty; also a telegram from Port Haney, intimating a unanimous request on the part of the Maple Ridge Poultry Association that t'he federal member lodge a protest with the Minister of National Revenue, in the name of the association, urging that every effort be made to have the dumping duty restored, or a higher duty imposed on eggs coming into Canada from the United States.
A question has arisen, with some of our friends opposite, as to the principle of the matter; they are apparently opposed to antidumping legislation. The hon. member for Yale has already referred to the economic conference under the auspices of the League of Nations, and the Prime Minister has discussed the subject on more than one occasion in dealing with tariff matters. I wish to refer to the final report, at page 35 of which there is a statement regarding indirect means of protecting national trade. Section 2, which refers to dumping and anti-dumping, is as follows:
The conference recognizes that the question of dumping is of particular importance to those countries which have adopted a liberal tariff policy, and lays stress on the fact that, although

Dumping Duty-Mr. Esling

the consumer may secure, as a result of dumping, certain transitory advantages as regards price, there can be no doubt that dumping creates a state of insecurity in production and commerce, and can therefore exercise a harmful influence quite out of proportion to the temporary advantage resulting from cheap imports.
The same applies to dumping employed by powerful firms or commercial combines in one or more countries to destroy the similar industries of another country, and thus to enable them afterwards to raise the price on the market of that country.
It is certain that dumping is facilitated by the existence of high import duties in the countries practising it, and that it may lead to the introduction of high defensive duties in the importing country.
The conference considers that dumping must be reduced to a minimum, and that in order to attain this object, every possible measure should be taken to establish universally stable conditions of production and commerce and to reduce the excessive customs tariffs of exporting countries.
The conference recommends, however, that importing countries which find themselves compelled to take defensive measures against dumping should not resort to excessive, indirect or vexatious measures which would have a more far-reaching effect than is intended.
I think everyone will agree that the request we are making to-night on behalf of the producers of vegetables and fruits in this country is not unreasonable or excessive. The Minister of Finance has said a great deal about the tariff and has tried to drag the tariff across the path as a red herring. It is not a matter of tariff; it is a matter of fixing something upon which we can base a tariff. For instance, as it was explained the other day, a commodity may come to our borders which has no fixed value on which an ad valorem duty can apply. The idea of section 47a, and the reason for the power given the minister under that order in council, is to have a fair market value set upon that article on which a duty may be collected. This not only protects us from a cheap grade of fruits and vegetables but enables us to fix a basis upon which our duty can be collected, and on behalf of the producers of my district and those throughout the country I feel it my duty to support the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Halton (Mr. Anderson).


Mr. W. K. ESLING (West Kootenay):: If the producers of natural products in Canada are not to be encouraged at least to the extent of having their own home market, one naturally wonders why this government is spending about $3,000,000 a year to bring in immigrants to go on the land. In 1922 Hon. Mr. Fielding took exception to the provisions brought in by the Conservative government in 1921 to protect our markets against being flooded by fruit and farm products from the

United States. Mr. Fielding contended that those provisions were not workable, while the fruit growers and farmers took the stand that they were not only workable but were of great value in stopping the flooding of the Canadian market with fruits and vegetables from the United States at a time when the markets of that country were glutted. The then Minister of Customs, in keeping with Mr. Fielding's suggestion, brought in this amendment which has been known as section 47a and which is now section 43. When this session of parliament opened one of the first resolutions on the order paper was in the name of the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young), asking the government to rescind the order in council making it possible for the Minister of Customs to fix values for the purpose of customs duty. The hon. member suggested that it had been intimated from this side of the house that the withdrawal of that resolution was the result of threats, but I do not think the government has any fear of threats to-day, since they have a good majority in this house. However, the conclusion is general that the hon. member withdrew that resolution more particularfy for the purpose of saving this government considerable embarrassment, because we must not forget that this very order in council which has been rescinded was authorized by the section passed by the present government, with the approval of the Prime Minister and all his colleagues in the cabinet. I think this action was taken not only to save the government from embarrassment but to relieve hon. members from Quebec, many of whom would have had to vote against the government; and it also saved the Ontario Liberals some embarrassment. We must not overlook the Minister of Health (Mr. King), in whose political waverings I am always very much interested. When section 47a wias introduced, in defending it he said it was for protection against unfair and unreasonable competition, and that the amendment was only intended to overcome conditions which arose at certain times when there was an unfair competition under which the grower of natural products could not exist.
To be very brief, I simply wish to voice the protest of the farmers, fruit growers and poultry raisers of my district against. the cancellation of this order in council, and 1 hope the government may find some means of restoring it.


Mr. J. A. FRASER (Cariboo):: As the case has been so admirably presented to the house by the hon. member for Yale (Mr. Stirling) and other speakers, I do not propose at this time to go into the question of the dumping

Dumping Duty-Mr. Fraser
clause at any great length. The fruit and vegetable industry of this country is sufficiently important that a person who represents a district which produces fruit should have something to say on this matter. The fruit and vegetable industry of Canada produced $48,500,000 last year, of which British Columbia produced $13,500,000, or about 28 per cent of the total fruit crop.
My district is inhabited to a very large extent by fruit growers, especially in the neighbourhood of Shusway lake, down to the end of the district near Yale. It contains a very valuable fruit-growing area, and, in deference to the wishes of the people who live in that section I wish to protest against the removal of this dumping duty. I should like to put on file some of the telegrams which I have received from that district. The first is from the Shusway Lake Co-operative Growers, and reads as follows:
Strongly endorse attitude of associated growers of British Columbia on question of dump duty. Rely on you to do utmost to get dumping protection as before.
They are simply asking for the dumping protection they had before.
Then I have another one from W. Crossley of Kamloops, as follows:
On behalf of Clearwater strawberry growers please protest vigorously against removal of dumping duties. Will mean ruin to us if duties removed as American late season rubbish spoils our market on prairie for high grade berries. Last year, although American growers got $5.50 per crate, when our crop ready they dumped several carloads on prairie market and forced price down to $2.75. This was to put us out of business. Urge application of dumping duty two weeks before our season opens and prevent unfair competition.
This shows the attitude of the strawberry growers of that district.
Then I have a letter from the British Columbia Fruit Growers' Association, protesting in the same way. Then I have another letter from the Salmon Arm Farmers' Exchange, protesting against the removal of the duty, and also a letter from the Associated Growers of British Columbia, Limited, representing the fruit growers in my section of British Columbia.
We find a peculiar situation in regard to some of the criticisms which have come from the other side of the house as to this duty. For instance, the member for Weyburn (Mr. Young) complains that the fruit growers of British Columbia co-operate in selling and distributing their fruit. I think they have a perfect right to co-operate in selling their fruit. You do not find British Columbia saying anything against the wheat pool on the prairies, and the fruit growers of that province
56103-191J
are just trying to do for themselves what the prairie men have been so successful in doing, and no more.


Edward James Young: The pool is not enforced by fine and imprisonment.


John Anderson Fraser: There is no fine and imprisonment in connection with the British Columbia fruit growers.


Edward James Young: There is.


John Anderson Fraser: Then we have the statement of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) at which I am rather surprised. The Minister of Finance said that the fruit growers of British Columbia enjoy protection from the provincial government. I have the annual report of the Interior Tree, Fruit and Vegetable Committee of Direction, and I want to read a few paragraphs from that report for the benefit of the Minister of Finance. One paragraph, under the heading of "Setting of Prices", reads as follows:
The committee is charged with setting prices, "which shall be fair to the producer, retailer and consumer." This is not a particularly easy thing to do. In the last analysis it is the consuming public, who. at least, limit the prices obtainable. Again, the committee has felt that it may serve the industry better by helping obtain wide and sustained distribution at reasonable prices than by possibly restricting sales to merely a portion of a crop in an attempt to obtain spectacular prices.
That is, the object of the committee is to obtain reasonable prices in order to get wide distribution. Then it goes on to say:
It cannot always control the prices at which products must move. These are controlled by competitive or, sometimes, weather conditions, but it has certainly stabilized the industry and market to a noteworthy degree.
That is all the fruit growers of British Columbia are attempting to do, and I think it ill becomes either the Minister of Finance or the people of the prairie provinces to find fault with an organization which is only attempting to do what the wheat pool has done. No person in British Columbia has anything to say against the wheat pool; they all commend it and they are glad to see the people on the prairies enjoy the benefits from it, but we would like to have a little reciprocal treatment so far as our effort at co-operation is concerned.
I want to draw attention for a few moments to the attempt of the Prime Minister to make the delegation which waited on him a few days ago believe that the order in council was an attempt to fix duties or that the Customs officials were given the privilege and were using it to fix the tariff throughout the year. In his remarks to that delegation he went on to say that the government was
Technical Education

under the impression that the Department of National Revenue were given the power to fix the tariff. He said also that he was very much surprised to see they were exercising the right to fix the tariff to extend over the entire year, and he emphasized the fact that this order in council was giving them the power to fix the tariff throughout the year. At another place he said:
I wanted to bring out, and I think it has been brought out clearly-and if it has not been brought out clearly up to the present,
I would be glad to be interrupted by anyone who does not see it-that what the government is taking exception to is the giving to the Minister of Customs power to fix the duty on any classes of products that are named in these orders, notwithstanding the duties that are already fixed by parliament in the Customs Act.
At another place he goes on to say:
The government's attention has been drawn to the way in which this order in council was being applied by the officers of the Customs department. The order was never intended to give such power as that to the Minister of Customs, and the officials of his department, and if there is any doubt we had better have the orders cancelled altogether.
That is again pointing out the fact that they are fixing the tariff. The orders in council have been dealt with several times, but I want to point out that that is an entirely misleading statement for the Prime Minister of this country to make. There is no power to fix the tariff in any part of the orders in council. Power is given to fix the valuation for duty purposes, but not to fix the tariff. It is entirely a misrepresentation of the orders in council to say that that section fixes the tariff.
On motion of Mr. Fraser the debate was adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Tuesday, May 15, 1928