1928-02-01

ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE OF CANADA

[Stage Direction]
Hon. J. L. RALSTON (Minister of National Defence) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 13, respecting the Royal Military College of Canada.
Mr. ROSS (Kingston):: Explain.


Mr. RALSTON:: The object of this bill is to bring the provisions of the act respecting the Royal Military College of Canada up to date and in line with the necessities regarding the appointment of the civilian staff in accordance with the provisions of the Civil Service Act, with respect to the qualifications required for students entering the college and also with regard to the financial provisions which for a long time have been out of line with requirements.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



DEATH OF EARL HAIG

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Toronto Northwest):: In view of the death of Earl Haig I would like to ask the government whether in his honour the flags on the House of Commons and on all other federal buildings in Canada will be halfmasted and whether the house should not adjourn for one hour during the time of his funeral.


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Before answering my hon.
friend's question I would like to have a word with His Honour, the Speaker.



CUSTOMS INQUIRY COMMISSION

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. J. GARLAND (Bow River):: I have in my hand a copy of the report Of the Royal Commission an Customs and Excise. Is the government prepared to bring down and lay on the table of the house the ten interim reports which preceded this?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The government has no
objection to laying on the table the ten interim reports, beyond this that three of the reports contain references to firms against which it is recommended that prosecution should be commenced. What the result of those prosecutions will be it is difficult at this stage to state. It may be that these concerns will not suffer as a result of the charges brought against them, and the administration felt it was worth while considering whether or not in the interim publicity should be given to the names and to the references to them. What 1 would suggest is that seven of the reports which do not contain references of that kind might be tabled at once. As a matter of fact they are all bound in one volume and I was having them separated for that reason so that I could lay seven of them on the table at once and furnish my hon. friends, the leader of the opposition and the leader of the Progressive party, with the other three which they can distribute amongst the members. If it is thought well to lay them on the table and thereby make them accessible to the press, the government has no objection, but that has been the occasion of the hesitancy.
I will see that the seven are placed on the table to-morrow and that the other three are given in the interim to the leaders of the respective parties.


Edward Joseph Garland: I do not
wish to appear in any way too hard in this matter but I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether or not the prosecution is to take place in camera. If not, I see no reason for withholding the evidence contained in the three reports to which he has referred because the names of the firms concerned will be made public in any event.



FARMERS BANK

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. R. K. ANDERSON (Halton):: I would like to ask the Minister of Finance whether the Farmers Bank has been definitely wound up and a financial statement received from the liquidator.


Hon. J. A. ROBB (Minister of Finance):: I will take a note of my hon. friend's question and give him a reply to-morrow. I shall have to consult the representative of the exchequer court who is handling the matter.



PEACE RIVER RAILWAY OUTLET

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. D. M. KENNEDY (Peace River):: I
would like to ask the Minister of Railways

The Address-Mr. Pouliot [DOT]
whether the survey of the passes between the Peace River country and the Pacific coast have been completed and a report made. If so, will the report be laid on the table of the house.
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals):	The survey to
which I referred last session has been made with respect to the Peace River pass. I have just received from Sir Henry Thornton a copy of the engineers' report and I shall be very glad to let my hon. friend see it. I do not see any reason why it should not be laid on the table of the house.



GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Tuesday, January 31, consideration of the motion of Mr. Ilsley for an address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session.
Mr. J. F. POULIOT (Temiscouata):: Mr. Speaker, my first word will be an apology for speaking in a language which is not my own, but I will do so to the best of my knowledge and I hope every hon. member will catch every word of my speech. My second word is one of regret that in the high position which you occupy you do not take your share in the debates in this house and I think every member regrets not having the advantage at the present time of hearing your eloquent voice in this house.
May I point out a fact of importance that happened last year when the Holy Father called as a prince of the church His Eminence Cardinal Rouleau? The reason why I mention this fact at the beginning of my speech is because His Eminence, whose dignity and science have been admired throughout Canada, was born in my constituency. I boast at the same time that the Primate of the Roman Catholic church in Canada is a son of Temiscouata county, as is also, I am glad to say, the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe). I am very proud of such electors although they have never voted for me.
I wish to congratulate my hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett). Judging by his speeches since he has attained the leadership of his party, he is a great patriot, and as he is still a young man, I hope that he will continue to serve the country in that capacity and to the best of his ability in the years to come. During the course of this session I hope the house will have the advantage of being told by the leader of the opposition, when it is timely to ask the House 
of Commons at Westminster to repeal the Colonial Laws Validity Act, and also, as he says that his is a constructive policy, I hope that he will supply the house with a constructive program on immigration if the present arrangements are not to his taste.
I also take the liberty of congratulating from the bottom of my heart the mover of the address, the member. for Hants-Kings (Mr. Ilsley). Though I did not have the advantage of hearing his speech, I read it carefully. I admire his eloquence, and I am very glad that his predecessor in this house has been so ably replaced. I mention his predecessor because everyone in this house knows that we were on speaking terms.
I also admired very much the beautiful language used by the hon. member lor Proveneher (Mr. Beaubien), in seconding the address, in French. I am not at all surprised that he had the honour of being elected by acclamation at the last election if he delivers to them speeches such as he delivered in this house the other day.
As to the hon. member for South Wellington (Mr. Guthrie), whose eloquence I admire very much although I do not always share his views, I consider him one of the ten best debaters in this house, and if we did not have the advantage of hearing his speeches answered we might believe everything that he said. I listened with deep interest to his address yesterday, when he attempted to show that the taxes now are higher than they were in the last years of the Conservative administration. That might be true; I am not discussing that, but the point I wish to bring out is that in the years previous to the Liberal administration coming into power the public debt grew very considerably, and instead of imposing taxes upon the people the Conservative government of that day used to borrow money to such a large extent that I think the Minister of Finance to-day should be warmly congratulated upon having reduced the debt. I have another request to make of my hon. friend the leader of the opposition in this connection, and that is that he would be kind enough during the budget debate to give us a constructive policy for reducing the public debt without imposing taxes.
I come now to a most important question mentioned in the speech from the throne, and that is the Dominion-provincial conference.
I wish to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but I shall be unable to tell the whole truth on account of the forty minute limitation on speeches. I shall not speak otherwise than as a member of the rank and file, as a back-bencher, and what I shall say will be

The Address-Mr. Pouliot
spoken entirely upon my own responsibility, but it will be in conformity with the opinions and sentiments of the people of Temiscouata county who sent me here as their representative in this house. I shall speak very calmly; I shall try to be as cool as ice, and my hon. friends will notice that every word I use will be uttered with the greatest sincerity.
I have been elected as a Liberal, as a supporter of the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) and of his government. The Prime Minister is my leader, and I have to follow the advice of his ministers. I wish to be loyal to them, just as my hon. friends opposite wish to be loyal to their leader. The party system has existed for a long time in this country, and while perhaps it does not suit everyone, it is the system that appeals to most of us, and we have to follow party lines. I crave the indulgence of the house for the few remarks I am going to make.
First of all, may I say that the bonne entente is no longer young; she is now quite an old lady, having been born in 1867 when the parliament of Canada first met after confederation. Sometimes we do not share the opinions of hon. gentlemen opposite. It is our right just as it is theirs, to have their own opinions, but when we go out of this house the friendship that has always existed between us continues to exist, and during the few years -that I have been in this house one of the things that I have admired very much is the good companionship that I have always found existing among members of different races, different creeds, and different political parties.
There are, Mr. Speaker, three forms of government in this country. I am looking at this question from a different angle than the leader of the opposition. There is, first, the municipal government, secondly, the provincial government, and thirdly, the federal government; and ever since I have taken an interest in public life I have never seen in any paper a report that a federal minister had ever criticized the acts of a provincial administration, whether Grit or Tory, whether Catholic or Protestant, whether English-speaking or French-speaking. It has never happened, to my knowledge that a federal minister, in his capacity as such, has ever criticized a provincial administration. I have never seen the leader of the federal opposition leaning on the shoulders of a provincial administration for support. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, that I am compelled to say something of a similar character of the Premier of the province of Quebec. May I say, first, that I consider Mr. Taschereau is a good citizen and I am sure he acts in good faith, but he is not my leader.
If he makes a statement I can tell him in very plain language that he is wrong; I can remain loyal, to my own leader without sharing Mr. Taschereau's views and I can be loyal to my own leader when I express entirely different views from those of Mr. Taschereau. May I add that he is, in many respects, a good premier, and that he shares with the Minister of Roads, Hon. Mr. Perron, with his Minister of Mines, Mr. Perrault and with Mr. Nicol, his treasurer, a good part of the credit for the real prosperity of the province of Quebec.
As you are a scholar, Mr. Speaker, you will remember having read that before 400 B.C. Xerxes, king of Persia and Media, who abolished the kingdom of Babel and took away the statue of Bel, crossed the Hellespont. When the Newfoundland case wao to be argued in England Mr. Taschereau crossed the Atlantic in the same glorious fashion. It is always a dangerous thing before a case is over to express an opinion.
The province of Quebec and the Dominion government lost the case before the Privy Council. I give credit to the people of the Department of the Attorney General at Quebec, as well to those of the Department of Justice at Ottawa, because they did their best in that case. No one is to blame. However, they did not succeed. The blame might be put on the lords of the Privy Council, but that cannot be done, because they are immune from the law. I wish to say a word in reference to the judgment in that case. Then Mr. Taschereau gave an interview to the papers. That interview he has never denied-but perhaps he will deny it to-morrow after reading the report of my speech-to the effect that if Canada and the province of Quebec lost Newfoundland and Labrador, it was because Mr. King, the Prime Minister, had' too much to do with imperial questions, and that if he had done some lobbying, as the premier of Newfoundland had done, Labrador would have remained as a part of Canada. Well, Mr. Speaker, if Mr. Taschereau is right in saying that when a Prime Minister attended the Imperial conference he paid too much attention to imperial matters, one thing is sure, and that is that Mr. Taschereau did not study imperial questions at that time,, and if he had known more about imperial questions the speech * from the throne in the province of Quebec, which was read on the 10th January last, would not have contained this paragraph:
My ministers believe that Canadian unity and the future of Canada will be best assured by respecting provincial autonomy and by remaining loyal to the British North America Act in the spirit as well as in the letter.
The Address-Mr. Pouliot

In reference to the Newfoundland case, Mr. Taschereau was wrong when he tried to evade responsibility by putting it on the premier's wide and strong shoulders. There was no responsibility at all, as I have previously said, but when I read part of the speech from the throne in the Quebec legislature, I heard some gentleman opposite who never did anything to support Mr. Taschereau in his elections say: "Hear, hear." My hon. friends opposite appear to be acquainted with Mr. Taschereau, and I will have a few words to say about that afterwards. What I want to say now is that equality of status between Canada and the mother country is like the equality of mind between Sir. Taschereau and my hon. friends opposite.
Just to please my hon. friends on the other side of the house, may I quote an extract from an interview given by Mr. Taschereau the day after the last general election, which has been published in Le Soleil, of Quebec on the 17th of May, 1927. It reads:
Nos amis du federal, ministres et deputes, nous ont prete leur concours avec un empresse-ment et une generosite dont je tiens a les re-mercier vivement. La solidarity qui existe entre les liberaux d'Ottawa et les liberaux de Quebec ne pouvait etre mieux demontree.
I will translate the statement as best I can. It read thus:
Our federal friends, ministers and members, have helped us with such earnestness and generosity that I wish to thank them warmly. The solidarity that exists between the Liberals of Ottawa and the Liberals of Quebec could not be better shown.
It means that when Mr. Taschereau called on us for support everyone of us answered, "'Ready, aye, ready." And I tell you that when Mr. Ferguson calls on Mr. Taschereau, he answers, like a pupil, "Ready, aye ready."
Well, Mr. Speaker, there was a great change of attitude after the election. During the election Mr. Taschereau was saying, "My dear federal friends, pray come to my help against those Tories of the province of Quebec." After the election he was saying to the Tories, "Now I don't need my federal friends any more; come and I will kiss you on the cheek." And they seemed to like it.


Mr. EDWARDS (Frontenac):: Does the hon. member get that idea from the attitude of [DOT] the present government towards the Progressives?


Jean-François Pouliot: The hon. member is a great humorist. I think, Mr. Speaker, that the word "solidarity" used by Mr. Taschereau in his message after the elections of the province of Quebec was wrong. There can be no

solidarity between the federal and the provincial administrations because the spheres of action and the problems differ in the respective fields.
We were allies during the election, but afterwards let us see what happened. In municipal government there are pressing problems, as there are in provincial and federal government, but those problems are entirely different in each jurisdiction. Each body has its own way to travel, and what Mr. Taschereau did about imperial matters reminds me of a little story. One day while at college the teacher was giving a lecture in astronomy, in the course of which he explained an eclipse. Holding his watch in his hand he said, "This is the earth;" then he put his fountain pen in front of his watch and said, "This is the moon;" and, indicating himself, he added, "I am the sun." Immediately one of the pupils retorted, "You are a damn liar!" I apologize for the expression-


Mr. SPEAKER:: I was about to draw the hon. member's attention to the fact that it is not strictly a parliamentary expression.


Jean-François Pouliot: Yes sir, and I withdraw
the expression. Perhaps Mr. Taschereau regards himself as the sun on imperial questions, but if so I cannot help but remember my old teacher. We cannot overlook the fact that as a nation we are growing up, and that our constitution must develop with our growth. But of course nothing will be done to change our constitution without the consent of all the provinces of Canada which were parties to the pact of confederation. Then what is the danger to provincial rights? I never heard in this house that the government had the least intention to override provincial rights in the settlement of the very difficult and important questions that arise from time to time in this Dominion.
I do not propose to discuss the imperial conference or imperial questions any further, but I would ask:	Is Mr. Taschereau a specialist
on imperial problems? WThere did he study them? He has his own business to attend to. He has the Saguenay aluminum plant to think of and is so busy talking with American people about their settlement in Canada that he has very little spare time to study imperial questions. Those questions will be discussed in this house. But, Mr. Speaker, I do not see why the premier of Quebec should put in the speech from the throne delivered by the lieutenant governor of the province a paragraph that is a direct attack on the federal administration. Mr. Taschereau came to

The Address-Mr. Pouliot
Ottawa. I am told you were even gracious enough, sir, to lend him your apartments while he was here. He had ample space to work in-he had the library at his disposition. He could have talked with the members of the federal government about everything. Did he not do so? He has every right to his own opinions as a private citizen, but, sir, I submit that as Premier of the province of Quebec he has no right to speak against his friends who gave him such strong support during the election, when there is now no reason for him to fear anything. I respect Mr. Taschereau's views, he may think as he likes so far as I am concerned,.but I contend that the paragraph to which I have referred does not express the real sentiments of the people of my province. We rely on the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) and their colleagues to express our views as a national entity. *
Now, Mr. Speaker, I come to the St. Lawrence waterway. I believe it was the part of wisdom to submit the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, the legal advisers of the government of this country. At whose request was such step taken? I do not know whether it was at the instance of the federal or any provincial government, but, I repeat, it was a wise course to take, because when there is controversy on a point of law, the judicial part of our administrative system, to use the expression of the learned leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) must be consulted. There are three rights of ownership of rivers; private, .provincial and federal. May I give a citation, Mr. Speaker, to show how private ownership of this kind has been treated by the . provincial government of Quebec since Mr. Taschereau has been a minister of the Quebec government. I quote the first paragraph of article 2252 of the revised statutes of the province of Quebec, 1909. It reads:
Sales and free grants of lands belonging to the crown are and have been since the first of June, 1884, subject to a reserve, for fishing purposes, of three chains in depth of the lands bordering on non-navigable rivers and lakes in the province.
A most important case, that, of David McLaren and others against the attorney general of the province of Quebec, was taken to the Privy Council, who gave their judgment on June 28th, 1914. One of the considerants of that judgment reads:
That the appellants were owner?, and proprietors of the bed of the Gatineau river and of the lands and -water powers therein, opposite their property. (20 R. L. 248).
I quoted that judgment to my learned friend the leader of the opposition last year, and I would point out that in it it was held:
That in such rivers the property of the riparian owner extends ad medium filum aquae. ... to the middle line of the water.
This judgment had an important bearing on the legislation of Quebec. In the first place the civil code, which gives the rule3 governing property, was amended a few years afterwards, by 8 George V, chapter 72. That amendment was to the effect that the article did apply to all non-navigable and non-floatable rivers and streams and their banks bordering on lands alienated by the crown after February 19, 1890. But this is not the most interesting amendment; there is another one.
I have read the law as it stood; I have quoted the article showing that there was a reserve, in the case of the crown, for fishing purposes. Now I will quote for the information of hon. members the amending statute, which will amaze them and from which they will see that, by a change m three words, a government can rob the people of their rights. This amendment reads:
Article 2252 of the revised statutes, 1909, is amended:
It seems that this is just as easy as swallowing a spoonful of honey.
(a) By replacing the words: "for fishing purposes''. in the third line thereof, by the words "in full ownership by the Crown". (9 G. V, c. 31, s. 1).
And in this instance the crown was the provincial government of Quebec. Let me quote the law as it now is, from which you will see just what the difference is:
Sales and free grants of land belonging to the crown are and have been since the first of June, 1884, subject to a reserve, in full ownership by the crown, of three chains in depth of the lands bordering on non-navigable rivers and lakes in the province. (R.S.Q. 1925, c. 83, s. 7).
This is my point. A case was submitted to the Privy Council with a view to securing an opinion on this provision, and when the judgment of the Privy Council was shown to be against the province of Quebec as an entity the law was amended with the result that the province, by changing three words in the statute, has acquired the full ownership of the interest of these riparian owners. As a responsible member of this house I make the statement that nothing of this nature has been done by this parliament, and the people have no reason to fear that parliament will take any such action. That is not our attitude and I am sure the federal government will never pass such a law. However, let me add this: If the federal government should introduce such a provision, loyal as I am to my leader and to the government as well, I should feel called upon, being also loyal to my electors, to vote against it.
The Address-Mr. McGibbon


Hewitt Bostock: The hon. member's time has expired.


Jean-François Pouliot: By leave of the house may I continue five minutes longer?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Hewitt Bostock: I fear that if the house gave way in this instance it might lead to an abuse of the privilege.


Mr. PETER McGIBBON (Muskoka-On-tario):: The government of the day has seen fit to call parliament together at this time, presumably for the despatch of business, and probably no more bloodless and pulseless speech from the throne has ever been presented to this house than the one now under consideration. I do not know that this is very much to be wondered at when we consider that this administration has never had sufficient courage to do, at the proper time, what should be done. For example, it is not surprising that no mention is made in the speech of the problem in relation to the great St. Lawrence waterway. I can imagine that when the contents of the speech were being discussed in the council chamber the shades of the Siftons, the Joneses and the Holts were hovering around like the ghost of Banquo before Macbeth. How could the government speak; how could they bring down a policy upon this great subject until the masters behind them had decided what they were going to do?
Yesterday, sir, the Prime Minister said to the leader of the opposition with great emphasis that we do not want people in this country until we have work for them to do. That is a very correct hypothesis, I agree, and I also agree that at present in Canada we have not the work for them to do. But I wondered, sir, if it ever occurred to this government and to the Prime Minister that it is the duty of a government so to shape their policies as to create work for the people? No greater crime can be laid to the door of any government than that which is laid at the door of the present government when we say they have not been able to create sufficient work to keep our own people in Canada. By way of explanation, the Prime Minister remarked that ocean fares had gone up, that conditions in Europe were different from those prevailing ten years ago, and that was the reason we were not getting immigrants. At the time I could not help but think of the people who wanted to migrate to the United States, and wonder if they were any different from the people we are trying to get. Is there any material difference be-[Mr. Pouliot.l
tween the fare from the old country to New York and from the old country to Canada? And yet, with a similar people, a similar climate and a similar country, we have been spending millions of dollars with no success in getting immigrants while the United States have been spending millions of dollars keeping immigrants out.
What is the reason? The reason can only lie in the incapacity of the men who sit on the treasury benches. No government ever had the opportunities to secure immigrants that this government have had. Coming into office shortly after the great war, when this country was advertised to the ends of the earth and the eyes of the whole world were upon our country with its vast stretches of land, its forests, pulpwood, mills and factories, still for five years this government have not been able to bring into Canada a number of immigrants to equal those Canadians who have left and gone to the United States. I drew the attention of the Prime Minister to that yesterday, and lie said he would much prefer that his statement go out to the world instead of mine. Coming from the Prime Minister, of course, I do not doubt that, but I speak the facts. I say to him that there is not a man on this side of the chamber who would not be ashamed to sit in the chair of the Prime Minister to-day while more full-blooded, native-born Canadians are leaving Canada for the United States than we can replace with immigrants from all the countries in the world.
If there is any dispute as to that I have the figures here. In one hand I hold the report of the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Forke) and in the other the annual report of the commissioner general of immigration for the United States, and these show that for the last five years some 50,000 more Canadians moved across the line into the United States than this government have been able to bring to Canada from all over the world. I want you to remember this, sir; since 1924 none but native-born Canadians can go across the American line, and consequently the drain is much more serious. So I ask you, Mr, Speaker, and through you the government, how long this country can stand this drain with a population of only eight or nine million? How long can we afford to lose, eighty, ninety or one hundred thousand people a year to the United States? Since this government came into power 720.000 Canadians have gone into the United States, registering and paying their head tax, and I think it a fair estimate to say that no more than three out of four of those going into the United States register, so I think it fair to

The Address-Mr. McGibbon
say that since the Liberal government came into power in 1922 a million Canadians have crossed the line and taken up residence in the United States. I say to the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Forke) that he is charged with one of the most important portfolios in this government, and I say to the Prime Minister that he and his government have been hopelessly inadequate in dealing with this question. I do hope, sir, that some good may come from the establishment ot the commission which has been suggested by my leader.
That is the most important question in the country to-day, because involved with it is the question of our national debt and taxation. I was pleased to read in Hansard today the remarks of the hon. member for South Wellington (Mr. Guthrie), because he took up a subject with which I was going to deal to-day, but upon which I now find it unnecessary to speak. I refer to the matter of our national debt and the taxation in Canada.
I think he proved conclusively that when you consider all our commitments the national debt has not been reduced since this government came into power. I have the figures showing the revenue for every year since this government came into power, and there has not been a single year in which this government have not taken more money out of the pockets of the people of Canada than did their predecessors in 1921 and 1922. Consequently I ask them, how can taxes be reduced when they have been obtaining through taxation more money year by year? If they wish an example, however, I would refer them to the system of debt reduction in force in the United States, as I have done in this house before; I would recommend to them the plan worked out by Mr. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, by means of which they have reduced their debt from over 26 billion dollars to $17,900,000,000 at present. Under this system of rigid _ economy, something which is foreign to this government, they have reduced the per capita taxation from $50 to $25.
Working under these new rules, Mr. Speaker, one is rather handicapped; you feel that if you digress too far you may get lost and be unable to return, so I will have to pass on. I would like to devote a moment or two particularly to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) and the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Malcolm). Some time ago I noticed in the Financial Post a full page advertisement signed by the Minister of Trade and Commerce who, during the last twelve months, has been promoted to practically a
publicity agent for the government, to boost their stock in a falling .market. I find that this is the creed of the government, as laid down by the Minister of Trade and Commerce:
It remains for our producers and manufacturers to learn more fully of the opportunities awaiting them abroad. To help in this direction, to assist producer and manufacturer, to teach our people "export trade consciousness"
I want you to notice that, sir, because I am going to refer to it later.
-is the duty of this department of the government. The Department of Trade and Commerce has an active organization in the principal trading centres of the world. Working under the direction of the commercial _ intelligence branch at Ottawa, this organization has already enabled Canadian firms to obtain profitable and permanent markets in foreign lands. Canadian officials, strategically located, search out opportunities for the sales of _ Canadian products, and investigate all conditions under which these may be transported and offered for consumption. These official trade commissioners stand ready to assist the Canadian producer or manufacturer. Their whole effort, co-ordinated from Ottawa, is designed to create new markets for Canada, and help hold those we already have. Such a service is at the call of every Canadian who asks it.
That is a pretty fine creed for any government. After reading it I began to look over the record of this government to see how they have fulfilled the conditions laid down by themselves. I noticed, on getting the returns in regard to the different countries with which this government had entered into negotiations respecting commercial treaties, that in practically every country this government had fallen down in the very doctrine which I have just read to the house. For . example, they made with Belgium a treaty which came into effect on the 22nd October, 1924. Prior to that treaty we were importing annually about $3,000,000 worth of goods. After it in 1927 we imported about $9,000,000 worth of goods. Prior to the treaty we were exporting about $12,000,000 worth of goods and in 1927 our exports had risen to $21,000,000. That is one of the most favourable examples.
We made a treaty with Czechoslovakia and our imports in 1926 amounted to $1,272,000 and in 1927, $1,726,000. But the fact is that our exports had not increased in any proportion to our imports.
We made with Finland a treaty which came into effect on August 1, 1925. Before the treaty came into effect we were importing about $15,000 worth of goods and in 1927 we imported about $82,000 worth. On the other hand our exports increased from $1,038,000 to $1,882,000.
The Address-Mr. McGibbon

We made with France a treaty which became effective on September 5, 1923. Prior to that our imports amounted to about $12,000,000 whereas in 1927 we imported $23,992,000 worth of goods. Prior to the treaty we were exporting annually about $14,000,000 worth of goods and last year our exports had increased to only $15,000,000. This export trade does not show an increase in line with the doctrine laid down by the present government. These are the important markets which they said it was their duty to get for the manufacturers of Canada.
We made with Italy a treaty that came into effect on January 8, 1924. In that year our imports amounted to about $1,800,000, whereas, in 1927 they amounted to $3,444,000. On the other hand our exports had increased in the same period only from $18,000,000 to $22,000,000. I might continue and read them all, but as my time is limited I am going to refer to only one more, and my reason for doing so is that it is one which affects the farmers more directly than the rest of the people of this country. I refer to the trade treaty with Australia. As nearly every hon. member knows, this treaty was negotiated in 1925 between the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) and the government of Australia, and by it radical reductions were made in the duties on certain articles, notably butter, coming into this country. In lieu we were supposed to get certain advantages on automobiles and automobile parts, pulp and paper, and some kinds of fish. What has been the result? Members on this side of the house denounced the treaty and said that it would be bad. Events have proved that our denunciations were not even half strong enough because the treaty has proved worse than we ever dreamed it would be. Let me give the house some figures with regard to our trade with Australia. The imports and exports are as follows:
Fiscal year	Exports of
ended March 31 Imports Canadian produce
1924	$1,037,451	$10,923,9971925	
2.634,713	12,035.0861926	
3,042,054	15.411,7461927	
6,296,197	18,965,881
When you put side by side with that the importations of butter, which is the principal thing I want to speak about, you find that the importations of butter from Australia and New Zealand have risen year 'by year until this year they amount to more than ten million pounds and the price of butter in this country has dropped on an average, as estimated by wholesalers, from twelve to fourteen cents a pound. What did we receive in return for this? We were supposed to receive a benefit

in the intermediate and general tariffs on automobiles and automobile parts, and we got it for a while. Then the government of Australia increased their general tariff and left the British preferential alone, so that to-day we have been legally robbed altogether of this market. Shortly after that this government by order in council made the terms of this treaty applicable to New Zealand as well. The Prime Minister, in discussing this treaty with the National Dairymen's Association, made a significant remark to which I want to refer. They met in Ottawa and after they had discussed it for a while and had pointed out to him how these vast importations of butte-were ruining the dairy industry in this country, the Prime Minister made this significant statement:
We must think of empire trade.
The Prime Minister of Canada takes a market for ten million pounds of butter away from the farmers of Canada and gives it to the farmers of New Zealand and Australia, and especially New Zealand, for nothing. Is that a patriotic thing to do to the great dairy industry of Canada? There you have a market amounting to ten million pounds of butter given to the people of New Zealand and Australia and lost to the farmers of Canada.
But that is not the worst of the story. In order to encourage imperial trade with Australia they raised the duty on raisins from two-thirds of a cent to three cents a pound. This practically raised the wholesale price five cents and the retail price six cents. When I looked up the importations of raisins I found that out of 40,000,000 pounds imported into Canada, two per cent or about 800,000 pounds came from Australia. Consequently, the Prime Minister taxed the consumers of this country six cents a pound on 40,000,000 pounds of raisins, or about $2,400,000, in order ..to encourage an imperial trade which we did not get. This was a tax on the people of this country of about $2.50 per pound on raisins, imported from Australia. If you take the gross tax that was paid in this country and divide that into the importations from Australia you will see that it works out between $2 and $3 per pound. That is the price which this country is paying for one of the trade agreements made by this government.
I hope before the session is over somebody in this house will have the courage to rise up and demand that this agreement be modified. We have lost the automobile business because Australia, legally and within its rights, boosted up the intermediate and general tariffs and there is nothing left for us but the paper industry and the fish industry, the exportations

The Address-Mr. McGibbon
of paper amounting to only $2,500,000. I wish that I had time to go more into details but, as I said before under these new regulations I have not the time.
Another matter to which I wish to refer is the question of the status of this country. Last year I did not say anything about it and I do not intend to say very much this year. But when I saw the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), the Minister of Jus-[DOT] tice (Mr. Lapointe), and all the rest of the cabinet going about this country preaching this new charter of liberty which they had secured overseas, I thought it was time for someone to say something for the people who really won that charter, namely, the soldiers who fought in Flanders and France. Before anything more is said about this matter by the government, I would like the Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice or any other member of the cabinet or any hon. gentleman opposite to stand up in this house and tell me what this government ever did to advance our status. I have read all the reports of the different imperial conferences, and I think that every prime minister from confederation down has contributed something along that line-one of the principal contributors was Sir Robert Borden-but I have not been able to find a single thing that the King government ever contributed. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, after he became prime minister in 1896, went to the Imperial conference and demanded the repeal of the Belgian and German treaties, and he succeeded in getting them repealed. That did something to unfetter this country and give us more freedom, because the British preference- was involved, and from that time on his voice was heard at every conference until in 1911 he succeeded in getting a little more detailed information than he had ever got before. Up until that time the prime minister of this country had been practically a spectator at the Imperial conferences. Let me read a sentence taken from Sir Robert Borden's Canadian Constitutional Studies:	[DOT]
Although questions touching foreign relations had occasionally come under discussion at the conferences from 1887 to 1911, there is no reason to suppose that the Dominion representatives had been taken into the confidence of the British government with respect to general policy or commitments.
That is quite true; they never had been taken into the confidence of the British government. In 1911, Mr. Asquith, at the close
of the Imperial conference that was held that year, said:
Gentlemen, I again advert to a matter which has been referred to by Mr. Fisher and Sir
Joseph Ward, that this is the first time-and this conference will be significant in memory in that respect-when, in Mr. Fisher's happy phrase, the representatives of the dominions have been admitted, as it were, into the interior, into the innermost parts of the imperial household; what in the old classical phrase were called the "arcana Imperii" have been laid bare to you without any kind of reservation or qualification.
That was the first time that the prime minister of this country was ever taken into the confidence of the British cabinet so far as imperial foreign relations were concerned.
A few years later Sir Robert Borden did what had never been done before. He attended the imperial cabinet meetings in 1915. We do not know what took place at those meetings because there is no record of them, but at any rate he was admitted into the cabinet councils at that time. Following that development along still further, in 1917 there were two cabinets in London-the British war cabinet and the imperial war cabinet. The imperial war cabinet included not only the Prime Minister of Great Britain and some of his colleagues, but the prime minister of every dominion, and these dominion and colonial representatives expressed the views of the people they represented. It was at one of these conferences that Sir Robert Borden succeeded in getting passed a resolution which I think is the basis of this greater charter of liberty which we are supposed to have got in recent years. In the records of the conference of 1917 you will find this resolution:
The Imperial War Conference are of opinion that the readjustment of the constitutional relations of the component parts of the empire is too important and intricate a subject to be dealt with during the war, and that it should form the subject of a special imperial conference to be summoned as soon as possible after the cessation of hostilities. They deem it their duty, however, to place on record their view that any such readjustment, while thoroughly preserving all existing powers of self-government and complete control of domestic affairs, should be based on a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an imperial commonwealth.
That resolution contains I think the phrase upon which this new charter of liberty was founded, and the foundation was laid by Sir Robert Borden in 1917. Further on in the minutes of that conference, you will find a resolution stating that there should be new means of communication between the United Kingdom and the dominions, and a resolution was brought in by Sir Joseph Ward stating that the Prime Minister of Canada had the right to communicate directly, if he wished to, with the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

The Address-Mr. McGibbon
Certain reservations were placed upon that for business reasons, because the Prime Minister did not want to be bothered with the details of trivial matters, and so it was left to the ministers to be the judge of what communications should go through that channel.
A little later on, the matter of Canada's representation at the peace conference came up. Sir Robert Borden on behalf of this country demanded that Canada should be represented there. You, Mr. Speaker, will remember that when parliament was sitting in the museum we were kept up all night one night in order to ratify the peace treaty before it wras ratified by the parliament of Great Britain. It was desired that our ratification should precede imperial ratification, and we were kept up all night for that purpose. That I think was Sir Robert Borden's main reason for calling a special session of parliament, in order to vindicate the right of Canada to make her own treaties and to make clear that no treaty would be binding on this country until it was ratified by parliament. We did not get that without a struggle, nor did we get representation at the League of Nations without a struggle. Objections were made not only by Great Britain but by the United States, but we finally got representation on the league.
I want this government to tell me anything they have done to improve our status. Sir Robert Borden, as I have already pointed out, had that resolution passed at the Imperial conference in 1917, but what has this government ever done in that direction to justify them coming here and telling us they have brought home to Canada a new charter of liberty. I for one am glad that we have a fuller liberty in our domestic affairs. I do not think any of us would like to go back to the time when we sent over our first contingent, the Princess Pats and all that, and when the imperial authorities tried to requisition our ships during the war, but Sir Robert Borden and his government asserted our rights and I do not think any man can reflect on that time without feeling glad that we have greater liberty in our domestic affairs to-day. But I say that that greater measure of liberty came, not only to Canada but to the other dominions as well by reason of the fact that there were one million soldiers from the colonies on the battlefield; it was not through the influence of the King government. That is all down in the records for any man who wants to read it. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that this government's patriotism must be pretty poor. They must feel their poverty, as far as the patriotic people of this country

are concerned, when they come back here and try to take credit for something they have not done. I ask this country in all seriousness, why should this government rob the dead?


Mr. JOHN EVANS (Rosetown):: Mr. Speaker, neither in the speech from tihe throne nor in the speech of the leader of the opposition was any new fiscal policy or forward outlook for Canada outlined. The government seemingly is very satisfied with things as they are as indicated in the first paragraph of the speech. But over against this is the dismal wail of the leader of the opposition regarding unemployment and the money which is leaving Canada to buy foreign goods. It is one of the economic fallacies often voiced in this house that to be prosperous we must not purchase goods or trade in foreign countries; but the class who put that forward are those who are the favoured ones in our tariff schedules. In answer to the leader of the opposition, I wish to tell him that we do not lessen employment by increasing imports. The increase of imports indicates always an increase of employment, because there must be increased exports to pay for increased imports. It does not lessen employment. But according to the view of the protectionist manufacturer and distributor, it is a detriment to import anything ready to use, because the idea back of protection is not prosperity for the country, but control of the earnings of the primary producers by a certain class in this country. The tariff system can never be a national benefit. It is only a benefit to a certain class and that olass generally one of the smallest in any country. The tariff is always a class advantage and, as far as as that is true, it is the protected class only that benefits. The eighty million dollars worth of goods which we purchased abroad this year more than we purchased last year indicates two things; first a larger purchasing power on the part of the primary producer, and an indication that the earnings of the workers of the country are not completely under the control of the protected class.
Last year the government informed us that no changes were to be made in the tariff because the tariff advisory board were not ready to report, or had not dealt sufficiently with the applications placed before them. The income and excise taxes were cut, which benefited only the rich. We hope that this session will see a reduction in the tariff, and not a further cut in the income tax, and in support of our contention I was very glad to see that the Montreal chamber of commerce passed a resolution recommending the government at Ottawa to maintain an income

The Address-Mr. Evans
tax permanently, as a source of revenue, believing that it is economically sound, a just tax and the most economical to collect. I quote that in support of our contention which we have made for years under the organized farmers of the western provinces. This year the long overdue repeal of penalties on the working class is due. Last year's session of parliament was a rich man's feast. The farmer is penalized on the necessaries of life and his tools of production, and he has to sell his products in the open markets of the world, against all the cheap labour of the world, the cheap labour of Europe, Asia, Australasia and every country that exports. I do not think this truth can be too often reiterated in this house.
A good deal has lately been said about the Australian treaty as it affects the dairymen of Canada. Some protectionist journals of the east have been poking a little fun at the farmer in asking protection against butter, cheese and other agricultural products being imported from Australia. These journals, owned and controlled 'by protected manufacturers and distributors, for whose benefit the protective system of import penalties has been imposed on our primary industries, all wilfully ignore the facts of the case. Trade treaties are always part of the old game of class privilege, and a trade treaty never can be consummated without hurting some one class, to give another class an advantage. The Australian treaty is so pregnant with these features and abuses that it has, more than any other, served to bring these feitures before the people of the country. I would not mention the Australian treaty here were it not for the fact that some of our protectionist papers have, in their blind selfishness, played on the minds of their readers, to whom they are careful not to convey the real truth. As the mover of the address in reply to the speech from the throne said, "the country you are negotiating with always requires a quid pro quo", and in the Australian treaty we lowered the duty on butter from four cents to one cent per pound. That was to give the manufacturers of automobiles, paper, and certain other commodities a freer entry into the Australian market; indeed, some agricultural products were placed on the free list for this purpose. The four cents per pound of import penalty on butter never gave the Canadian farmer any advantage. Neither did it raise the price to the consumer. The price to the farmer on all dairy products was based on the export value, and the Canadian farmer never exceeded the export price. Four cents a pound was put on in the hope of furnishing an excuse for the Canadian 56103-7
manufacturer to exploit the dairyman on the price of the supplies that he was bound to purchase. The present duties on some of these supplies go as high as 35 per cent. Even the equipment most necessary to the dairy industry-chums for example-is very heavily taxed. When the four cents a pound could be of any use to the Canadian farmer to penalize the urban dweller for purchasing Australian butter the government promptly removed that duty. In my view this at once branded the administration as a capitalist government, favouring one class in particular and willing to sacrifice the whole dairy industry for the sake of the protected manufacturers. The government left the duty as high as 35 per cent on many of the supplies required by the dairyman.
Not only does this inequality and injustice exist, but the treaty itself facilitates the landing of agricultural products on our shores to compete with our own producers. So much is this the case that in the comparative short haul, say, from the prairies to Vancouver, our railways declare that they cannot meet the competition of ocean transportation all the way from Australia to Vancouver. So after tying up our farmers by trade restrictions for the benefit of our manufacturers, we see these protectionists in their selfishness gloating over the fact that they have got the dairymen squirming in agony under this injustice. Some years ago Goldwin Smith in his book, Canada and the Canadian Question, used these words:
What corruption can be more pestilential or more dangerous to the commonwealth than the surrender of the commercial policy of the country to private interests in return for the support of their money in elections?
I cannot interpret the terms of the Australian treaty in any other light than that described by Goldwin Smith. He made his comment on the statement of Tilley who, speaking in the House of Commons in 1879, said:
We have invited gentlemen from all parts of the Dominion to assist us in the readjustment of the tariff, because we did not feel that we were prepared without advice and assistance from men of experience to readjust and make a judicious tariff.
The provisions of the Australian treaty were never made by disinterested statesmen, but were dictated by men interested in paper, in automobiles and other commodities who desired priority in the Australian market. I think the words of Goldwin Smith are as true to-day as when he wrote them, and I cannot look on these features of our protective system in any other light than that they always involve a bargain.

The Address-Mr. Evans

. Now, let me discuss this treaty a little further just to show the callousness exhibited by those who negotiated it towards the workers in general of this country in regard more particularly to raisins and currants, which are very necessary articles of food. On those fruits to-day the duty is as high as 43.46 per cent. We import over forty million pounds of raisins and currants per year, yet they carry about the highest rate of duty of anything in the tariff schedules. But the strange thing about it is that our government, for the sake of a small class in the country, the manufacturers of certain articles getting an advantage in the Australian market, has laid the whole consuming public of Canada under tribute. Why? Will any protectionist say that it is benefitting the nation for its housekeepers to pay $143.46 for $100 worth of goods? It is the height of folly, whether committed by statesmen or lunatics, to increase the burden on our own people when negotiating a trade treaty.


Edward Joseph Garland: Would the hon. gentleman make clear the difference between, them?


An hon. MEMBER:: Order!


John Evans: The economic research
department of the Canadian Council of Agriculture made an investigation respecting the effect of the increased duty on raisins at 1he port of entry, and they found that the increase of two and one-third cents totals to the consumer nearly five cents a pound. This agrees with the statement by Mr. Trent of the Bread and Cake Makers' Association. Now, forty million pounds at five cents a pound totals $2,000,000, or about $2.20 for every family in the Dominion. And all this to give an advantage to one class!
Having studied the tariff question for a long time, I am more convinced to-day than ever that all advantages given to any class of persons by this means always involve a bargain. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, whose name is still eulogized by many in this house, called the tariff system, "The mother of corruption." I think those words apply to-day as truly as when uttered by that great Liberal leader. I see no reason for the government any longer to put off dealing with the tariff. While I never could see much good in a tariff advisory board. I must confess that the present one has been instrumental in showing to the public the utter absurdity of maintaining a tariff at all on very many of our products, particularly on the necessaries of life and the implements of production. I predict that the new leader of the Conservative party (Mr. Bennett) will have a stupendous task to 
reconcile the arguments of the protectionists for a- higher tariff with a consistent line of action for himself and his party. The hon. leader of the opposition is. in favour of dealing with Britain in preference to any other country. I gather that from his Toronto speech last November. His words were:
Has England helped the world? How can I help England? We can trade with England, and we should trade with her in preference to any other country.
In the brief presented to the tariff board by the cotton manufacturers there appears the following sentence1:
As between British and American imports into Canada to-day the Canadian cotton industry needs a higher protection from Great Britain on these fabrics on which manufacturing cost is relatively high than it does from the United States.
Not only would they abolish the preference given to Britain but they want to raise the tariff higher than it is against the United States. Not only are they not satisfied with a preference in favour of Great Britain but they want to have a duty against the motherland higher than the rate levied against the United States.
The one argument for protection has always been employment for the wage earners, but the tariff in many cases not only lowers the standard of living for the working man but actually fleeces the consumer in general so as materially to diminish the volume of labour and compel our workmen to seek employment in other countries. Whenever the consumer is charged an unduly high price for any article the purchasing power of the public is correspondingly lowered, and the labour market is always affected to that extent. No protectionist can get away from that fact. Let me give a concrete case to illustrate the point: We will take sugar with the duty as it stands to-day. I select this article as one concentrated on by the research department of the United Farmers of Saskatchewan. There is a duty on Cuban sugar entering Canada of $1.89 per hundredweight, and despite that heavy duty we find that the tendency is to some extent to keep down the price of the refined article in this country. We refined in Canada for domestic use in 1926, roughly, 800,000.000 pounds of sugar. Now the refiners, in the brief they submitted to the tariff board, showed that Canadian prices ranged from 55 to 65 cents per hundredweight above American prices. We should be quite safe in taking 60 cents as the mean. If we multiply that by our sugar consumption we have at least $4,500,000 as the sum we pay above American prices for the amount of

The Address-Mr. Evans
sugar we use. In the same year the total wages paid by all refiners of Canadian sugar amounted to $2,897,109. If we deduct one-eighth of that sum on account of the 100,000,000 pounds exported there is left $2,533,000 as wages paid in the refining of sugar consumed in Canada; and adding to wages the salaries paid the total is $3,460,000, or approximately $1,100,000 less than the extra cost to the people of Canada for the sugar they are using today. This is the result of the operation of our tariff. This was brought out before the tariff board, and surely a government which calls itself a Liberal and low tariff government, as declared by the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning) on the authority of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) last year, and in accordance with the principles embodied in the platform of 1919, cannot allow an incident of this kind to exist any longer than it will take them to deal with it at this session of parliament. Just fancy. In this case we could pension off all the men engaged in the sugar refining industry in Canada and save $1,100,000 if we bought our supplies abroad. Surely the government cannot countenance such an incongruity as that which now exists in our trade policy.
Before I conclude I want to say a word regarding immigration. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) wants to have more people in the country, and from one end of the Dominion to the other, apparently, all urban interests are calling for a vigorous policy of immigration. Why? What is the purpose of this demand? Why the present craze for more people? In the cities of the west this winter many have sought shelter in the goals of the country in order to be fed and to be kept warm. The leader of the opposition himself stresses the fact of unemployment when he states that Manitoba to-day is seeking help from the Dominion government to feed its unemployed. He says:
If you will look at the young, vigorous men who are employed in shovelling snow in this city-
That is, Ottawa.
-you will realise the lack of employment that prevails in Canada.
I quote that from page 14 of Hansard. At page 24 the bon. member is reported as follows:
It is high time that something be done to put the power of parliament unitedly behind an effort to bring people over and settle them in this country.
What does he mean?


Mr. COOTE:: Maybe he is expecting more
snow.
56103-7i


John Evans: He goes on:
We cannot continue as we are and maintain our present position very long.
Putting the two statements together, what are we to make of them? What do they mean? And what does the same man mean by putting forward two such views? I am at a loss to understand it. This, however, is a sample of the illogical utterances on immigration which we are hearing throughout the country. Last summer-and in the summer employment is at its height-we had to go on our knees to Uncle Sam and beg him to allow 4,000 of our men to cross the border daily in order to get a day's wages on which to live. It seems to me it would have been better for our immigration department to send our immigration officers to Windsor and other border cities and, by offering the same inducements as we are holding out to foreigners, persuade many of these people who were going over into the United States to go on the land. Instead of that we had to appeal to Uncle Sam to permit our men to cross the line to obtain a day's wages. The United States agreed to certain conditions, that those who were Canadian-born might cross daily to work for their daily wage, but that this number must be deducted from the quota allotted by the United States to Great Britain this year. So those gentlemen who boast and have boasted of a monopoly of patriotism will accept this favour at the hands of Uncle Sam at the expense of Great Britain, knowing the terrible unemployment problem existing there to-day. Is it reasonable? It certainly is not.
The excuse given for immigration is land settlement, but those who are interested in immigration are those who like to see a hungry crowd around their factory doors every day. Those are the only people who are benefiting to-day by immigration, and I can see no other purpose in a vigorous policy of immigration than to lower the cost of labour and consequently lower the wages of the working men in our cities; I can come to no other conclusion. Those are the men advocating immigration; they are the ones who want raw material for their own factories brought in free, but the policy followed in land settlement is to penalize the primary producer in the prices of his tools and necessary supplies. If land settlement is the object, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that all we have to do is give the man on the land a square deal. If the policy followed in respect of urban industries were followed with regard to agriculture, all our waste places within reach of every railway would be occupied today. Then there would be no need of the
The Address-Mr. Evans

despairing cry of the leader of the opposition, as reported on page 22 of Hansard in these words:
Now, sir, this question transcends party; it is larger than the lives of parties because it strikes at the very life of this Dominion. We must have settlers.
Another feature I would like to mention in connection with immigration is this: If we decide on a policy of immigration the government should engage in this work itself; it should not be given into the hands of railway companies or even religious bodies. It should not be dealt with by private concerns of any kind. If immigration is needed we *should have a definite policy to follow, and the government should carry out that policy. In the return to an order of the house dated February 24, 1927, it was shown that 29 clergymen of the Roman Catholic church were in the employ of the government in immigration work. This has caused a great deal of ill-feeling and comment of a caustic nature throughout the country. There is no need for it, because this is work which should be done by the government. If immigration is needed at all it is a work which rightly belongs to the government. In the past we have seen private companies importing men for their own work; I mention the British Empire Steel Corporation as an example; they have done it more than once, to the detriment of the men themselves and to the embarrassment of this government. I believe our immigration policy to-day should be to let in those who wish to come, if they are from the nations of which we approve and if they are mentally and physically sound. We do not need to spend money by the millions of dollars on any immigration scheme.
These are some of the things which I wish to bring before the government before their policy is laid down in the estimates and the budget, and I hope that in the discussion of these questions it will be understood that I am not looking at these problems from a local standpoint but from the viewpoint of the welfare of the whole nation.


Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, I very much regret that in the speech from the throne the country has very little with which to be either disappointed or satisfied, because the speech from the throne deals with nothing. It refers to nothing except evasions, postponements and references to this commission and to that court. One of the essentials of a speech from the throne is to give the representatives of the people in parliament an opportunity to lay before the house and the government some of the econ-
(Mr. Evans.]
omic ills prevailing in the country from coast to coast, but in looking over this speech from the throne it will be seen that it deals very largely with platitudes; it contains an apology here and an excuse there, an evasion here and an "if" there; it does everything but make some adequate attempt to solve the many great economic problems from which the workers of this country are suffering to-day.
It says nothing at all about the three greatest problems confronting the British Empire at present; I refer to trade, defence and migration. It ignores the whole problem of marketing, both domestic and empire. We have been sending delegates to the old land constantly; almost every train and boat overseas takes a cargo of them, but they fail to do anything to solve imperial problems-or to give effect to the findings of the empire marketing board. It is no wonder that Australia and New Zealand are doing all the window dressing in the old land in relation to trade and migration, and they are to-day getting the cream of the emigrants.
The first comer stone in an immigration policy is to keep the people we already have here and to stop the exodus, but the speech from the throne ignores that entirely. The second essential is to provide work for Canadians at present in this country, but nothing is done to attain that end either. Parliament has been summoned here for the purpose of improving conditions, but the members might better have stayed home so far as the program presented by the government is concerned. In my opinion the government have shown themselves incapable of bringing forward any legislation which will help solve these problems and relieve conditions which exist all over the country. There is no relief for any of the provinces; there is no adequate protection for industry; there is no social legislation in the way of an adequate and up-to-date pension scheme or some system of unemployed insurance; there is no legislation to check the rush of our raw materials to the United States in the crude or semi-crude state, and there has been nothing done to prevent the dumping of cheap, shoddy European and American goods into the larger centres of population.
The results of all these difficulties are to be seen everywhere in closed factories and unemployment. We have no legislation presented which is designed to benefit the maritime provinces, the prairie provinces or those provinces at the extreme west; the speech from the throne deals with nothing and will amount to nothing so far as the good of the country is concerned. It simply shows that we have

The Address-Mr. Church
a government to-day which is absolutely incapable of taking up these problems and offering any reasonable solution for them.
When all this tumult and shouting of the opening of parliament dies, What will the harvest be? What has parliament been called for? Is it called just to listen to the sounding of trumpets and the booming of guns while unemployment is rampant in the city from which I come? Notwithstanding what this government or the provincial government has said, the provincial government never at any time made a survey of the unemployment situation in the province or city which I have the honour to represent. The speech from the throne refers this problem to an endless conference so that it will go around in the same circle as we had a year ago in connection with the coal problem. To this conference or court or commission is referred the question of the resources of Alberta, another economic question, and the question of the St. Lawrence waterway. To another commission has been referred two or three other matters in the report.
The government state: We have nothing to do with unemployment; all that we have to do with unemployment is to launch a great basic industry in the city of Ottawa known as the ambassador cure for unemployment. We have gained a seat at Tokyo, Japan, and when the nominee goes over there, would that Canada had a Gilbert and Sullivan to set to song and verse the burlesque of the sending of that so-called ambassador to Tokyo, Japan, and other capitals. A government that has abandoned the Japanese alliance treaty for the protection of British interests in the Pacific, a government that has refused to give a dollar for the Singapore base, has the temerity now to come before parliament and continue a so-called ambassador cure for unemployment by sending an ambassador to Tokyo. Why not send ambassadors to Italy, China, Germany, Constantinople, Pekin all the capitals bordering on the seven seas?
This government have stated that they have nothing to do with unemployment; that under the British North America Act unemployment is for the provinces and municipalities. We say to the government that unemployment is a matter for the federal government under section 91 of the British North America Act. They are in charge of the tariff, the banking laws, the transportation laws, the immigration laws of the country and for the exodus of Canadians from Canada; and the blame for the present condition of unemployment rests on the federal government. Instead of the
government dealing with this problem, they say nothing about it in the speech from the throne. They are not ready to go as far as they did years ago when they were prepared to pay one-third of the cost of unemployment relief, the provinces and municipalities to pay the rest of the cost. It is all very well for them to make a football out of it. The responsibility is with the Dominion government of the day to see that the people of Canada do not suffer, to see that some remedial legislation is introduced into the house. I regret to observe, however, that no such amendment for the benefit of the worker has been mentioned in the speech. Parliament has often legislated for the benefit of the trusts and combines, the bankers' association, the railways and others, but when it comes down to a question of doing something for the unemployed in the urban centres of population, the government is content with a policy of drift, and will do nothing to try to remove the burden from the working classes of this country. The first duty of a government is to look after the health and condition of its people.
Apparently all the government can do to relieve unemployment is to give a lot of politicians jobs as ambassadors in Berlin, in Pekin, in Constantinople and in all the other capitals of the countries washed by the seven seas.
A few favorite Canadians are to ;be appointed ambassadors at the public expense, while other Canadians have to go as ambassadors at their own expense to search in a foreign land for the jobs that they cannot find in their own country. Many of them returned men who fought for Canada in the great war, at the hazard of their lives.
The great industrial system of the United States was built up on the principle of protection and solved unemployment. In the days of Horace Greeley opportunities for employment in the United States were threatened by imports from Europe. Today opportunities for employment in Canada are threatened by imports from the United States. The United States did not require the founders of American industry to go before a tariff commission to persuade the commissioners that the tariff should be so changed that their industries would be able to employ Americans in their own country instead of driving them to seek employment in foreign lands. Nero never fiddled while . Rome burned the way this government is fiddling in appointing a tariff commission to solve the economic problems of this country. The tariff is not a party question, it is a
The Address-Mr. Church

matter of economics that concerns our farmers and toilers in the various centres of population. But instead of announcing in the speech from the throne some measure of protection and safeguarding legidation that would solve our economic ills, nothing is being done by the government to relieve our unemployed who are asking for a job that they may get bread. Many industries are closed up altogether, others are working only 50 per cent, and even the great agricultural industry of the west is suffering.
Under the present government the question of unemployment has been made a political football between the federal government and the provinces. The Prime Minister referred to a statement made by Mr. Ferguson the other day in reply to York township's application for help re unemployment. I have been through Mount Dennis and Sil-verthorn and other places in West York, and there is much suffering and unemployment and returned men there are receiving $25 a week in some of the sweat shops for two weeks' work, and girls working for $8 for two weeks' work. The unemployment situation is so bad in the city of Toronto that they have had to open up the police stations at night in the centre of the city. Last night dozens of men were brought in and slept in the stations. Let me read one front page advertisement in the late editions of the evening papers of last Saturday:
Major Ord, D.S.O, secretary of the poppy day fund reports a large number able-bodied, willing-to-work veterans with families without a job this winter. He is appealing especially just now for clothes for men, including socks, underclothing, boots, overcoats, trousers and coats. Kind people who have cast-olf clothing to give should telephone Hill 2404 or 2290.
They had to pass the hat around on Armistice day; a tag day is necessary for the relief of unemployed soldiers who fought the battles of Canada in Flanders and France. It will not be necessary to have a tag day to raise $500,000 plus $140,000 to maintain Mr. Massey and his retinue at Washington and a minister at Tokyo or a tag day for the upkeep of Canada House and Mr. Larkin in London. It is a humiliating position for the people of this country to be in that we have to have a tag day and beg money for the men who fought the battles of this country in Flanders and France, and this is very largely due to the fact that the' economic and soldier policy of Canada is all wrong and should be changed. Therefore I regret that in the speech from the throne the government has failed to bring down any measure of relief to prevent the .dumping of foreign goods, to stop the exporta-{Mr. Church.]
tion of raw material, to give an adequate tariff that will solve all the economic ills of every province in confederation and bring about a united and happy Canada, stopping the exodus of our people to the United States and reducing unemployment.
It is all very well for Mr. Ferguson to say that there has been no unemployment. He has been very happy in finding employment for a gentleman from New York, Mr. Graut-stein, who has been presented with the title deeds to the Ottawa valley and the Gatineau, and he has extended rights and privileges to Mr. Backus, another American millionaire, in the northwest part of new Ontario. The Drury government gave Backus a principality of timber. Another government has come along and given him extended resources and water-power rights, so that while Sir Adam Beck has been dead for only a few years, his whole life work has been destroyed in the Gatineau contract and others. Certainly there is no unemployment for these American millionaires and others who cross over the border and find Canada a most happy hunting ground and seize the title deeds to the water powers and the mineral wealth of that great northwestern country. He who has the water power rights holds the key to the development of a district.
What was done at the provincial conference with regard to unemployment? Thousands of dollars of the taxpayers' money was spent to bring those people together, but nothing was done except to make a political football of the question, and nothing was done to take the responsibility for unemployment off the shoulders of the municipalities that are being taxed to death by both federal and provincial government. As Professor Fay, of the university of Toronto, said, the returns published by the Bureau of Statistics and the figures published by the Labour department are not reliable. I cannot get a reply from the present Minister of Labour (Mr. Heenan) to a petition sent to me by men from West York who complain of the non-enforcement of the Alien Labour Act in the bringing in of forty men from the southern states to work in the constituency of West York as nurserymen in the market gardens of that riding. I sent a petition to the minister; I have written him five or six times, but I cannot get a reply either from the deputy or the minister himself. The minister is a deep, sea diver and no doubt he has taken the Alien Labour Act. down with him to the bottom of the sea. When it comes down to doing something for the poor unemployed and the working class of this country, the government is content

The Address-Mr. Church
to pursue a policy of drift and do nothing to remove the burdens of the working men. The first duty of a government is to consider the health, happiness and prosperity of all classes of its citizens, but apparently all that this government can do to relieve unemployment is to give a lot of politicians jobs as ambassadors abroad. A few favoured Canadians have been appointed ambassadors at public expense, while other Canadians to the number of six hundred thousand are sent across to the United States as ambassadors looking for a job in a foreign land. They are not treated as is His Excellency down in Washington, where everybody is going down to see him in his wonderful uniform and three-comered hat, with his glittering sword. These other six hundred thousand Canadians are sent to a foreign land to look for a job which they cannot find here, and many of them fought even unto death for the liberties of this country, but they have been driven out of Canada by the economic policy of this government. When the working men of this country ask this government for bread, all they are offered is a stone by the platitudes and high-sounding and empty phrases in the speech from the throne. Many industries in my own city have been closed up altogether and others are working only fifty per cent of the time under the policy of this government. The policy of this government is a policy of enmity to the production of jobs for Canadians. That great industry that manufactures jobs and embassies for worn-out politicians will not make Canada a nation. The working out of that policy will make Canada a nation of ambassadors.
I want to say a word about the status of Canada. When Canada is in trouble or war threatens we always 'phone for the British fleet. When Canada was in trouble on the great lakes, ouir mariners had to sound their sirens morning, noon and night for American life-saving boats to come to their rescue.
I am a good Canadian nationalist because I am a true British imperialist. The sense of Canada's nationalism increases and multiplies through our love of British unity. The true Canadian nationalist will not want to see this country a dead beat on the taxpayers of the British Isles for the upkeep of battle cruisers and a navy to maintain the safety of Canadian shores and for the protection of Canada's commerce on the high seas. The true Canadian nationalist will not want to see Canada a nation only in the advertising pages of American journals. As a nation we are a pauper so far as the actual reality goes.
The three greatest problems of empire are trade, defence and migration, but there is
not one word in the speech from the throne about empire trade, defence, immigration or the empire marketing board. The empire marketing board has found that only twenty-five per cent of the fruit used in the motherland was produced in the British Empire. The true Canadian nationalist does not want to see Canada a nation just on the advertising pages of American journals; he wants something in real life. Canada is a nation all right, yes, at five o'clock pink teas at Washington and ten o'clock dinners at Washington. Canada is a nation so far as that goes, a nation such as the Irish Free State or Patagonia or Bogota and every petty country on the earth-we are a nation in the same sense that they are. I^Ve have a contemptible little navy which hugs the shores, never leaves our coasts, and for the past year.has been locked up in a garage at Halifax.^ That is the proper place, in my opinion, a most suitable place and lockup, for any change in the status of Canada. It takes more than embassies and Vincent Masseys and P. C. Larkins to make a nation; it takes more than pink teas and ten o'clock dinners at Washington to make Canada a nation. I remember reading in history that Henry VIII threatened the Lord Mayor and council of London that he would remove the seat of government from their city. The Lord Mayor fell on his knees and asked, "Will Your Majesty also remove the Thames?" An American politician to whom I listened, a Republican, boasted that his party had made the United States a nation. He boasted to such an extent that he almost gave credit to his party for the broad rivers and fertile fields of the American west. I may say that I do not know whether the American west owes its broad rivers and fertile fields to the party in power, but I do know that the United States owes its greatness to the broad rivers and fertile fields in the west. The people whom I have the honour to represent have no more pride in the nation-builders of their own party than I have in the nation builders of the party opposite. I have no use for the nation building that Sir Robert Borden, the Hon. Wesley Rowell, and the other oracles of Union government pretended to do at Versailles, dividing Britain's representation at Versailles and at Washington. I have no use for the nation wrecking separatism of Sir Robert Borden's proposal to establish a Canadian embassy at Washington. That embassy is not now and never will be anything in the nature of a centre of service for the good of Canada. The embassy at Washington is a sink hole, and the Canadian high commissioner's office at Lon-
The Address-Mr. Church

don is not much better. These embassies, or sink holes, as I call them, will be duplicated all over the earth by this government. When the seed planted by Sir Robert Borden's and the Right Hon. Mr. Mackenzie King's separatist embassy at Washington has reached maturity, what, oh what, will the harvest be? The harvest will be reaped by the taxpayers of Canada. That harvest will not be in the form of crops that will give an increased profit to the farmers of this country or fill their barns, but it will be in the form of taxes that will empty their pockets. Canada will then be spending two or three million dollars per annum in interest and debt charges on embassy buildings and on the salaries and upkeep of useless Canadian ambassadors, and still more useless staffs of clerks. Canada must spend two or three million dollars per annum in order to prove that we are in an academic way a nation, a nation without a navy or an army.
Never in the entire history of Canada has she at any time been able to defend herself. We are a nation only in a mythical and academic sense. If this was a mock parliament, the speech from the throne would be fitting and all right. I remember the prime minister who leads this house help in preparing a speech from the throne for the university of Toronto students, in mock parliament assembled, and it contained far better ideas of essential measures for solving the economic problems of this country than does the present speech from the throne. A nation is not known by the number of ambassadors it keeps.-Canada owes it to the god of nations that Canada became a nation the day a Canadian keel first parted the waters of our mighty rivers and great lakes. Canada is a nation unsurpassed in the present day and unapproached in history in the magnitude of its coastline and the might of its navigable waters. Canada has a coast line of nearly
2,000	miles from the gulf of St. Lawrence to the international boundary where lake Superior ceases to. be British waters and becomes a coast water of the United States. I could not get much information from the wonderful labour and statistics bureau. The bureau tells us there is no unemployment, but they could not tell me how many sailors were on the great lakes or how many boats or equipment of any kind.
Canada has a lake marine of 300 vessels with a tonnage of one and a half million. Canada has 5,000 sailors and merchant seamen going down to the great lakes in ships and doing business in the great waters of an inland ocean. Canada has a government asleep

at Ottawa that chatters about the new status of Canada. Canada is so much of a nation that Canada's national God-eave-th e-King government must be opening embassies wherever there is some political favourite to be placed in an easy job. Three years ago I raised the question of life saving on the great lakes; I pointed out that there were not life saving crews on those lakes and' no craft or equipment. Hon. gentlemen will remember that cold December when many of our brave seamen perished in the great storm on the great lakes. Canada has a government which is asleep at Ottawa, but we find them sometimes chattering about the- new status of Canada. Canada is so much of a nation that the separatist policies created by Sir Robert Barden and continued by the government headed by the right hon. member from Prince Albert will force the taxpayers of this country to pay not less than $3,000,000 per annum in the upkeep of embassies and the salaries of ambassadors and clerks of embassies. Canada is so little of a nation that there is not a decent life saving station on the coast line of Canada's lakes and rivers from Cornwall to beyond Fort William, except at Toronto where the splendid life saving station is maintained entirely by the patriotic taxpayers of my own city. The Canadians assembled in this House of Commons should blush to follow a government that calls itself a national government and leaves the many thousands of brave lake sailors, as fine a type of men as ever breathed a breath of life, deserted by their own country in their hour of need.
The grain growers of the west and the banks and industries and commerce of the east should be ashamed of this country's callous neglect of Canada's lake sailors. The mother country produced a great Liberal between 1870 and 1880, Samuel Plimsoll, M.P., who directed his efforts against what was known as coffin ships, and who forced legislation to provide for seaworthy ships and life saving aids and help to navigation. Plimsoll, a great Liberal, whose liberalism was of the true and genuine variety, unknown in this country except in the ranks of the hydro-Conservative party in Ontario, fought the hard battles of British sailors who were being sent to death in overloaded cotton ships. The Conservative government of Britain had promised legislation, and when it was proposed that parliament should take recess without bringing down the bill demanded by Samuel Plimsoll, Plimsoll stood up in the British House of Commons and told the ministers of His Majesty's government that they were a set of murderers. Mr. Plimsoll emphasized his sentiment with

The Address-Mr. Church
oaths. There was a parliamentary, scandal, but that great hearted and true Tory democrat and progressive conservative Benjamin Disraeli took the situation into his own hands and to-day the Plimsoll mark of seaworthiness is on the hull of every British ship. There is no Plimsoll in the House of Commons here, and perhaps there is no public opinion to enable a man to do Plimsoll's work if he tried. There is no leader among the hon. gentlemen opposite who has as much true and genuine liberalism in his whole body as Benjamin Disraeli had in ihis little finger. I hope the hon. member for Calgary (Mr. Bennett) will be spared to prove that here is at last a Disraeli in the camp of the Conservative party. We all honour our leader, with his -colourful personality, his enthusiasm, and his warm human sympathy for the under-dog, and I predict for him a great victory in the country. You may have all the organizations and all the money you like, but if you have not public opinion with you all the organizations in the world will avail nothing in an election contest. All these hon. gentlemen opposite profess to have changed Canada's status. Canada is not a nation but a colony in the kingdom of mammon on the great lakes to-day as Canada was a colony in the kingdom of mammon on the great lakes in 1867.
The grain growers of the west whose crop is being conveyed by the sailors on the lakes care not a hoot what becomes of these great sailors. The signs of nationality are in the souls of these brave men, the great sailors of the great lakes who carry the grain crop. They go out in the winter storms so that the grain growers of the west may save a few cents a bushel on the price of their wheat, or that the banks and corporations of the west may increase their dividends- and what has been done for the sailors of the great lakes? Nothing. If their vessel runs on a rock in the darkness and storm of a December night, it can stay there until that ship of the Canadian nation, flying the national flag of. Canada, is pulled off the rock by a steam tug operated by the American life saving service and coast guard.	_
I congratulate the flock of Liberals in this house. There is one solid block of Liberal members who ought to be proud to follow the belling of such a party, to support such leaders as hon. gentlemen opposite have shown themselves to be in their dealings with the great sailors of the great Canadian lakes. I refer to the hon. members for the maritime constituencies of East and West Lambton, North and South Huron, East Essex, North and South
Bruce, North and South Grey and East Algoma. Here are ten constituencies in which the sailors of the great lakes have their homes. These constituencies have elected ten Liberal members. These ten members have supported a Liberal government. That government has made Canada a nation, they say-yea, a nation. Why, a crown colony-yes, the irresponsible ruler of a crown colony-would be ashamed to offer the brave merchant sailors of that crown colony the treatment that this government and the opposite party-and my own party for that matter; it was not very much better-has dealt out to the merchant sailors of the Canadian nation.
The politicians of the Liberal party have long put away Canada's status as a colony. They have loaded Canada's payroll with ambassadors. There is not *a life saver on the payroll. Their Canadian embassies are to be on the stately avenues of all foreign capitals. There are no life saving stations on the shores of the gjreat lakes. The Toronto Star, the Winnipeg Free Press, the John S. Ewart and, yes, the Hon. W. L. M. King type of Canadian nationalist believes that when Canada's safety is in peril of war the Canadian nation should ring up the British navy. These mythical nationalists, when Canada's freighters are in danger in peace, are content to have the captain of the doomed vessel whistle for help from a United States life saving crew.
The closing days and nights of navigation in the season of 1927 recorded a great story of unbroken fortitude and of unshaken endurance which proved that our countrymen, the sailors on the decks of those doomed vessels, were blood brothers of the soldiers who brought glory to Canada at St. Julien, the soldiers who could not be blown off the ground they gained at Passchendaele, who climbed the heights of Vimy Ridge, who gained the victory at Amiens and many another field of glory, men whose names will forever thrill every true Canadian. These sailors struggled or waited hour after hour; if help came to them it was help organized by the valiant hearts and strong bodies of their own country, or if help came it was help bought and paid for by the taxes of the people of the United States. That is Canadian nationality for you. The struggle was a story of glory for Canada's sailors. The struggle was a story of shame for Canada's politicians. The tragedies of the great lakes in the closing hours of navigation last season showed in its true colours the stuff that Canadian nationalism is made of. The Winnipeg Free Press, Toronto Star, John S. Ewart liberal variety of nationality is the nationality
The Address-Mr. Church

that writes and talks and chatters at banquets and refuses to pay under the terms of that nationality.
Canada is a proud and haughty nation. It sends its merchant ships into the winter storms with nothing to do but whistle for a United States service tug when the ship is in danger and to fill the air with the distress signals of a siren with the hope that a United States life saving vessel will put to sea and save the lives of Canadian sailors. Canada, a nation, and in trouble, has a navy maintained at the expense of the old country taxpayer to guard the safety of Canada's shores in war.
I would like to see some immediate action taken as to prison reform, and a special committee should take it up. I find that sixty-four youths of sixteen years of age are in Canadian penal institutions. Are we yet living in a stone age? Canada needs a new broom and reform to restore these men in peace as the Red Cross saved a wastage of men in war. We are away behind the times, and a searching inquiry is long overdue. Grand juries should visit these institutions and make rigid, impartial investigations.
I am surprised, Mr. Speaker, that there is no mention in the speech from the throne of any additional legislation for the further relief of Home bank depositors, many of whom are to-day languishing in charitable institutions. In my opinion there should be no more mergers of our chartered banks without the consent of parliament. A large part of the stock of those banks is now held in the United States. The prices of our bank stocks have been going up steadily, and with so many United States stockholders it would be found impossible in the case of another bank failure to collect the double liability from these stockholders, for they have no property within the jurisdiction of the Canadian courts.
I am sorry to see that the Civil Service Act has been practically abolished. The Post Office Department to-day is run by patronage, even for special, temporary help at Christmas time. The same condition of affairs obtains in the Customs department. We would yet have the old order of affairs in this department and in the administration of the affairs of the Customs department to-day had it not been that the Conservative party, particularly through the instrumentality of the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) forced a house cleaning? Why, the customs commission has spent half a million dollars on judges and lawyers' fees, but it has found out nothing that was not uncovered by the Customs committee of this house-except that the landing

men and other customs employees should be appointed, not by the Civil Service Commission but by the government of the day. Truly, it is a wonderful Teport on nothing not already known before they started.
But the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment is in a worse position still; there it is all patronage. If there is one department that should be free of politics it is the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment. But what has happened? The minister has shown his determination to put the Liberal party on the map and the returned soldier off the map. For instance part of the staff of the Christie street hospital have been fired. Why? Apparently simply because they were foolish enough to go to the front and fight for their country. As to the minister himself, he is simply an absentee landlord, and patronage runs the department.
Then I come to the Department of National Defence. The minister of this department is also actively engaged in putting the Liberal party on the map, and the returned men off the map. I suppose he intends to unlock the door of the garage at Halifax and let our navy run up and down the coast. But really I hope he will not send the boat out to sea, and certainly I should not like to see the minister himself venture aboard for I am afraid it is not a seaworthy craft. This navy is to be replaced by two destroyers which are to be built in England. I wonder he has not gone to a German or a United States shipyard, because the very pens and pencils used in this house, the keys of your office, your desk, your post office locker, are of foreign manufacture-made in the United States. Even the atlas which is sent out by the Immigration and Trade and Commerce departments is printed in the United States. And then the government talks about unemployment! But this proposal to secure two new destroyers from England is a contemptible payment for our maritime protection. I was very much amused at the activity of our first sea lord and admiral of the fleet during the recess. He has been going up and down the country and visiting various centres to help Liberalism, but his fleet has been lost or stolen or has strayed away. I should like to find out who is to be the admiral of the proposed new fleet. I would suggest the hon. member for Lunenburg (Mr. Duff). I think he would make a most excellent and popular admiral of the new fleet.
1 have referred to the Minister of Soldiers Civil Re-establishment as an "absentee landlord". But he is not the only wanderer. We have seen the various members of the cabinet taking Cook's tours, some going to England,

Death of Earl Haig
others to the United States, and one to Australia.	We used to have one or two
Cook's tourists in our party, but they were not in it with hon. gentlemen opposite in th.eir restless desire to sail the seven 6eas.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I think I have talked- and also thought-for nearly forty minutes. Not every member can think for that period of time. But I have only dealt with the fringe of my subject. I am not supposed to be the leader but I have said more than the Prime Minister uttered during the three and a half hours that he held the floor. Let me say that I can find no suggestion in the address and no promise of any plan for solving the economic ills which now confront the Dominion. The speech from the throne written by the right hon. gentleman who leads the government to-day might well have been delivered to a mock parliament at the university. I do not care to continue the debate, Mr. Speaker, because I understand we have a function to attend in the other chamber.
On motion of Mr. Garland (Bow River) the
debate was adjourned.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the house adjourned at 5.45 p.m.
Thursday, February 2, 1928