1929-02-21

[Stage Direction]
Mr. L. S. R. MORIN (St. Hyacinthe-Rouvillle) presented the first report of t'he select standing committee on standing orders, as follows:
That the select standing committee oil standing orders be instructed to consider the advisability of amending the standing orders so that certain estimates may be referred to a committee and so that bills, reported from a standing or select Committee shall be placed on the order paper for third reading after having been sufficiently debated by the house.
Your committee recommend that, during the present session, the house may refer any of the estimates to a standing or special committee, concurrently with the committee of supply, but that none of the estimates shall be concurred in by the house until reported by the committee of supply.
Your committee further recommend that, during the present session, when any bill, other than a government bill, reported from any standing or special committee, shall have been considered at two sittings and not disposed of. it shall be placed on the order paper for third reading; and when called in pursuance thereof, the question "That the hill he now read a third time" shall he put by Mr. Speaker and decided without debate or amendment.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. ,1. W. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 38, to provide in the province of Ontario for the dissolution and annulment of marriage.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

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

Mr. BARBER:: I.	Has the government acted upon the recommendation of the special committee, appointed to investigate the administration of the Department of Customs and Excise, as contained in their third and final report on June 18, 1926, as follows:-
"The committee further recommends that as soon as possible regulations be made to prohibit clearance being granted to vessels carrying liquor as cargo sailing from a Canadian port to a United States port; such regulations to make an exception in favour of liquor being imported into the United States in accordance with the laws of that country."
78594-20$
and also as contained in the report of the judicial committee presented on October 15, 1927, as follows: -
"We also express our entire concurrence in the recommendation of the special committee of the House of Commons, as contained in paragraph 10 of the committee's report. An effective method of carrying out the treaty (Canada and the United States) would be to prohibit clearance to vessels of all kinds carrying a cargo of liquor to the United States, contrary to the laws of that country"?
2.	If so, what action has been taken?
3.	If not, why?


Mr. EULER:: Prior to June 18, 1926. there had been a communication from the United States Secretary of State, through the British ambassador suggesting the negotiation of a treaty supplementary to the treaty of the 6th of June, 1924, providing for the refusal of clearance to shipments of merchandise from a port of either country to a port of the other country if such shipments comprised articles prohibited or restricted importation in the country of destination. These proposals were followed in April and May, 1926 by requests for a statement of opinion on the part of the Canadian government and at the date of the report of the special committee of the House of Commons negotiations for a conference on the subject were still pending. The royal commission appointed later instituted enquiries in respect of the same subject and the Canadian government expressed its willingness to hold a conference with the United States' authorities as suggested, but felt that the conference should not take place until the report of the royal commission was available. A conference was finally arranged between the representatives of Canada and the United States on the 8th, 9th and 10th of January, 1929 and the report of that conference is now receiving consideration.


IMPORTATIONS OF ELECTRIC POWER
Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: 1.	Was any electric power imported into Canada from the United States of America during the year 1929?
2.	If so, (a) by whom or what corporations; (b) at what points was such importation made; (e) was such power imported under license; (d) what other terms or conditions were applicable to such importation?
Mr. EULER;
1.	Yes.
2.	(a) It is contrary to the practice of the Department of National Revenue to give information which would disclose the business of an individual concern.
(b) Coaticook, St. Armand, St. John's, Emerson, Gretna, North Portal, Lethbridge, Niagara Falls, Sarnia.
Questions

(o) A license is not required for the importation of electric power.
(d) Importers are required to furnish monthly returns in terms of kilowatt hours covering the quantity and value of electrical energy imported.


LIMITATION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT
Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	Has any communication been received from the British government on the further question of naval plans and the curtailment of the same by Great Britain and the United States, or any communication from the government of the United Kingdom for a conference thereon, and when will it be held and where?
2.	Has the attention of the government been called to such a declaration of policy as reported in daily press of February 18 and February 19 by Sir Esme Howard, British ambassador at Washington, that such a policy has been decided on by the British government and such action immediately contemplated in which the dominions are to participate?
3.	Has any communication on this matter yet been received from the minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary of Canada to the United States by Canada's official foreign office? If so, what was it and will all the papers be laid on the table of the house by the Department of External Affairs?


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: 1.	It is understood that the question of naval relations is receiving the attention of the British government. No communication has been received indicating that it is proposing to summon a conference on disarmament.
2.	No.
3.	The Canadian minister at Washington has kept the government advised on such phases of this matter as were considered relevant. It is not proposed to table any papers.


LEAGUE OF NATIONS-COST
Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	What has been the annual cost, since its inception, of the League of Nations to Canada?
2.	Who were the delegates from Canada for years 1927, 1928 and 1929?
3.	What members of the government, or officials, or private citizens were appointed as representatives in any and every capacity, and what were the travelling expenses, hotel, and other expenditures of each delegate aforesaid?
4.	How many sailed from:	(a) American
ports, and (b) Canadian ports on these journeys?
5- What has been the cost: (a) For capital, (t>) for maintenance for the past ten years of
(a) Canada house. London. England, (b) Canadian embassy at Washington since its inception?


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: 1. 1919-20: $64,043.15; 1920-21: $219,071.81;			
1921-22:	8196,526.69;	1922-23	$210,531.83;1923-24:	$193,712.19;	1924-25	$180,252.49;1925-26:	$185,774.66;	1926-27	$181,119.54;1927-28:	$185,670.87;	1928-29:	$191,865.86 toFebruary	1, 1929.	2.	1926-27: Sir Herbert Ames, Sir GeorgeFoster, Hon. Philippe Roy, 7th assembly; 1927-28: Senator Dandurand, Hon. Charles Stewart, Hon. Philippe Roy, Dr. 0. D. Skelton, 8th assembly; Senator Dandurand, 48th meeting of council; Senator Dandurand, 49th meeting of council; 1928-29:	Hon.
Philippe Roy, 50th meeting of council; Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, 9th assembly, 51st, and 52nd meeting of council; Senator Dandurand, Hon. C. A. Dunning, Hon. Philippe Roy, Dr. 0. D. Skelton, 9th assembly; Senator Dandurand, 53rd meeting of council.
3.	1926-27: Sir George Foster, 83,577; Sir Herbert Ames, 81,040; Hon. Philippe Roy, 81,040; 1927-28: Senator Dandurand, 83,108, 8th assembly; Hon. Charles Stewart and staff, S6,002.50, 8th assembly; Hon. Philippe Roy, 8624.73. 8th assembly; Dr. O. D. Skelton, S2,687.20, 8th assembly; Senator Dandurand, $2,121, 48th council; Senator Dandurand, 81,100. 49th council; 1928-29: Hon. Philippe Roy, 8192.96. 50th council; Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King and staff, $5,968.25, 9th assembly, 51st and 52nd council; Senator Dandurand, $2,400, 9th assembly; Hon. C. A. Dunning and staff, 84,780.06, 9th assembly; Hon. Philippe Roy, $753.80, 9th assembly; Dr. Skelton, Sl.679.50, 9th assembly; 1929: No meeting up to present.
4.	No information.
5.	Canada House, London, England
(a) For capital, Public Works reports, 81,540,781.56;	(b) For maintenance Public
Works reports, S151,380.86; External Affairs reports, $746,605.99.
Canadian Embassy at Washington
(a) For capital, Public Works reports, $477,754.35; (b) For maintenance, External Affairs reports, 8225,502.59.


QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN
Mr. NEILL:: 1. Number of applications received up to date for revaluation of lands held by soldier settlers under the provisions of the Soldier Settlement band Act and its amendments: (a) total number; (b) by provinces.

Speculation in Securities


REPORT FOR YEAR 1928
[Stage Direction]
2.	In how many of these eases appraisal valuations have been made: (a) total number; (b) by provinces.
3.	How many of these cases have been finally adjusted: (a) total number; (b) by provinces.
4.	The average percentage of reduction made
in such oases:	(a) total percentage; (b) by
provinces.
5.	In how many cases notices of appeal to the Exchequer court have been given: (a) total number; (b) by provinces.
6.	When it is expected that these cases will come before the Exchequer court.
SPECULATION IN SECURITIES On the orders of the day:
Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Leader of the Opposition):: I would like to ask the Minister
of Finance (Mr. Robb) as to certain press items in connection with steps taken towards the curtailment of the use of vast sums of money in speculative operations, and especially having regard to the action taken by the federal reserve board in the United States.


Hon. J. A. ROBB (Minister of Finance):: The Canadian Press and certain correspondents of newspapers inquired yesterday as to an item which appeared in the morning and afternoon papers, and the following reply was submitted.
Speculation, coupled with high interest rates which have prevailed in New York for some considerable time, has no doubt attracted Canadian money to that market, but there is nothing in the present situation to cause undue worry. The adverse rate against Canada on yesterday's exchange was decreased by 7/32 under the rate of 19/32 of the previous day.
The banks are cooperating with the government in limiting, as far as possible, gold shipments to the requirements of industrial and commercial business only rather than for speculation purposes.


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. ROBERT K. SMITH (Cumberland): I would like to ask the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning) if he could inform the house when the government intends to fill the vacancy in the directorate of the Canadian National Railways, caused through the resignation of Mr. H. J. Logan, and if, when such appointment is made, a man from Nova Scotia will be selected.
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals): The whole matter is under consideration by the government.
On the orders of the day:
Richard Bedford Bennett: I desire to ask the Minister of Railways when we may expect the report of the Canadian National Railways for the year 1928.


Mr. DUNNING:: I was speaking to the
president about this matter a few days ago and he told me that if it was ready for presentation by the 1st of April that would be an earlier date than it has ever been possible to present it in the past.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I think we had an interim report last year.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend will
remember that we tried the interim report method last year, but it created a certain amount of confusion. It is very questionable if the interim report method is worth the trouble it causes in view of the confusion which results. However, I can assure my hon. friend that every effort will be made to expedite the presentation of the report.


SASKATCHEWAN GRAIN INQUIRY COMMISSION
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. JOHN MILLAR (Qu'Appelle):: I would like to ask the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Malcolm) or, in his absence, the Prime Minister, if any information has been received from the Saskatchewan government relative to the time when a report may be expected from the Saskatchewan royal grain inquiry commission.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: In the absence of the
Minister of Trade and Commerce, I am sorry I cannot answer my hon. friend's question. However, I will direct the attention of the minister to it and ask him to reply at the next sitting.


HOG CHOLERA IN ESSEX COUNTY
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. J. GOTT (South Essex):: I would
like to inquire from the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) if any provision is being made to reimburse the hog raisers of Essex county who suffered heavy losses in the recent epidemic of hog cholera.


Hon. W. R. MOTHERWELL (Minister of Agriculture):: Due to the heavy drains made
upon it, the vote for that purpose has been exhausted, but as soon as it is replenished we will be very glad to consider this matter.
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National Highways-Mr. McGibbon


NATIONAL HIGHWAYS
[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Wednesday, February 20, consideration of the proposed motion of Mr. Kellner:
Whereas the need for establishment of national highways is greater than in 1919;
And whereas in that year the Dominion government recognized its responsibility in this matter by a substantial grant, which grant is now exhausted;	"
Therefore be it resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should consider the advisability that a further federal grant be made to cover -the next five years' development of highway construction.
And on the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Carmichael.
Mr. PETER McGIBBON (Muskoka-On-tario):: When the house rose last evening at six o'clock I had just about concluded my remarks. I had dealt with several reasons why the house should support the motion of the member for Athabaska (Mr. Kellner), and I was referring particularly to some of the objections raised toy the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), who stated that different provinces throughout the Dominion were objecting to having grants made by this parliament, with strings attached to them. This objection would apply to the legislation of a year or so ago when the minister was so urgent in foisting upon the provinces the old age pensions.
When I turn to the estimates and see that $100,000 is being asked to maintain an embassy at Washington, $80,000 for one in Paris and $75,000 for one in Tokyo, I cannot see how this government can refuse to grant some aid to the different provinces of Canada to build roads. There must be members on the other side of the house who dare not go back to their constituencies and say that they did not support this resolution.
The Minister of Railways said that he was convinced this matter would be taken care of some time, but the time is not ripe just now.
I wish to state again, on behalf of the people of the province of Ontario, from which I come, that I look to this government to do something to increase the happiness and prosperity of the people of Canada.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If the resolution which
is before the house means nothing more than appears on its face, I see no reason why it should not be adopted unanimously. The resolution is worded as follows:
Whereas the need for establishment of national highways is greater than in 1919; rMr. Motherwell.]
And whereas in that year the Dominion government recognized its responsibility in this matter by a substantial grant, which grant is now exhausted;
Therefore be it resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should consider the advisability that a further federal grant be made to cover the next five years' development of highway construction.
I assume that some hon. members will attach importance to the words "should consider." If that is all the resolution is intended to imply in the way of an obligation on the government, I would say the government is prepared to assume that obligation at once. I would go further and say that the government will not only assume at once the obligation to consider, but that the government has been considering this matter for some time, is considering it now, and will continue to consider it. But I submit, Mr. Speaker, as hon. gentlemen will be quick to recognize, that if the government were to take this resolution literally, as it appears on its face, and were to act only in accordance with such an interpretation, the next thing we should hear would be that we had deceived the house, that we had not been perfectly frank with the house, that the resolution did not mean what it appears to mean on its face, but that it meant that the government was to be committed definitely to grants for highways, whether provincial highways or a national transcontinental highway.
May I say in regard to the alternative interpretation, that if the purpose of the resolution is to commit the government to making immediate grants for provincial highways, or to commit the government to immediate grants to a national transcontinental highway, the government does not feel that at the present time it is in a position to make that commitment to parliament.
In order to appreciate the significance of this resolution, I think it should be taken into consideration along with other resolutions of a similar character which are being moved by hon. gentlemen on the other side of the house at the present time, and their cumulative effect considered in relation to the attitude being taken at the moment by hon. gentlemen opposite with respect to numerous other expenditures which they have been advocating or are about to advocate. Let me make clear what is quite obvious, namely, that up to the present time hon. gentlemen have been asking the government day after day to spend more money. That has been the nature of practically all the requests that have come to us thus far from the other side of the house. Up to the present moment we had not had from the other side of

National
Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King
the house a single voice raised with respect to retrenchment, a single voice raised with respect to keeping down the taxes, a single voice raised with respect to reducing the public debt. No. Hon. gentlemen have vied with each other in urging the government to take more money out of the federal treasury, not for purposes which we as a federal parliament are obliged first of all to consider, but to supplement the funds of the provincial governments.
I might ask hon. members, as federal members, if they have ever stopped to consider how much credit the federal government gets for its generosity from the provincial governments. I do not know whether all provincial governments keep their accounts in the same way, but I do know that some provincial governments, notwithstanding the substantial grants that have been made by this parliament in aid of matters which come primarily within provincial jurisdiction, have when it came to voting supply in their own legislatures, put in estimates for a certain amount of money and have voted those estimates as representing what the province itself was doing, but have not, in presenting their estimates, given this Dominion parliament the slightest credit for the subventions that we have been giving them in aid of particular undertakings. I have here the report of the public accounts committee of the province of Ontario for the twelve months ended October 31, 1927. We were discussing a day or two ago helping the province of Ontario and other provinces in the matter of further aid to technical education. How are these estimates re technical education presented to the legislature in Ontario? Under the head, " Department of Education," I find the following as the estimates:
Department of Education	Estimates
Salaries	 [DOT][DOT]
Manual training and household science
department	
Grant, Sudbury high school re mining
education	
Grants, Haileybury high school re
mining education	
Agricultural training, grants, etc.. ..
Day and evening classes, grants, etc..
Travelling expenses	
Technical education	 $864,500
Of that amount the accounts show that $S47,198 had been expended, but there is not one single word in the statement on estimates to indicate that of that amount this parliament was assisting the provincial government to the extent we have.
I hope hon. members, as federal members, will realize the obligation which I think the,v
64.000
7.000
7.000
35.000 725.000
5.000
owe in the first instance to the parliament in which they are representatives, and their obligation in respect to what this parliament is doing in the spending of public moneys raised by federal taxation. I believe we should consider the cumulative effect of the resolutions and requests which are coming from hon. gentlemen opposite. The first request was for an increased grant for technical education. Next was a resolution by my hon. friend for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. Edwards) which proposed that we should look into the claims of the different provinces in connection with the transfer of their natural resources, with a view to a satisfactory and equitable adjustment.


Mr. RYCKMAN:: That was carried.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, but it is the same kind of appeal to which I am alluding, an appeal to help the provinces out of the federal treasury, to take money out of the federal treasury and hand it over to the provinces.


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: Is it not equally true that the federal government, through the Prime Minister, had already indicated that the intentions of the federal government were exactly along those lines?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: There is no debate as to that.


Edward Joseph Garland: So that resolution asks for no more than it was the intention of the federal government to give.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: What I am saying is that I think this house would do well to consider the cumulative effect of the several resolutions if they are passed by this house.


Mr. EDWARDS (Frontenac):: The right
hon. gentleman cannot condemn me for that particular resolution because he voted for it himself.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am not condemning anyone at all and least of all my hon. friend. All I am trying to make clear is this.	The hon. gentleman has already
brought in a resolution, which the house has accepted, which involves the payment out of the federal treasury to the provinces of additional large sums of money. That is one commitment.	We have all conceded
that, and we are going to carry it out. But that is only one commitment. If the hon. gentleman has his way, we will be committed again in regard to highways.


John Wesley Edwards: I have not
spoken on the resolution yet.
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National Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King


William Lyon Mackenzie King: But unless my hon. friend takes a different line from that taken by his colleagues, he will join in the chorus of hon. gentlemen opposite.


Mr. KAISER:: May I ask a question?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, but I
hope hon. gentlemen will let me make my few remarks in the spirit in which I let them make theirs.


Thomas Erlin Kaiser: In the statement of receipts for the province of Ontario, do not the accounts show that the province got this money?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, I should hope they would. If it was not mentioned in the receipts, I do not know what would happen. But I will show my hon. friend what does happen with the money that goes from here. It does not go into a fund ear-marked for technical education, but into the consolidated fund of the province of Ontario.


Mr. CLARK:: The reparations money went into the consolidated fund too.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: On the order paper there are still other resolutions asking for further expenditures on the part of the federal government. I wonder if hon. gentlemen immediately opposite will support the resolution of the lady member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail). "That, in the opinion of this house, for every one hundred dollars spent for war one dollar should be spent to promote peace by setting up a chair of international relationships and by instituting international scholarships in each Canadian university." The war expenditures, I think, have come to about two billion dollars, so that one dollar for peace for every one hundred dollars spent for war would amount to several million dollars which if the resolution were carried out would have to be expended by the federal government in establishing chairs in Canadian universities.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That is the
wording. I am glad to see that my hon. friends are probably going to assist the hon. member for Southeast Grey in her resolution.


Mr. MANION:: We will take it under our serious consideration.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Other resolutions are appearing on the order paper from day to day, if not recommending grants.
at any rate recommending that the federal government should establish a system of credits

or something involving Canada's credit for one purpose or other. If all these are taken together and if the government begins to accept them, I am afraid that after we have discharged our commitments and taken out of the federal treasury all these grants to further aid the provinces, there will be very little money left with which to discharge the obligations which the federal government itself is bound to undertake. It is very easy to speak as my hon. friend who sat down a few moments ago did, in referring to the expenditures which the government is obliged to make for legations. We are not asking the provinces to make any contribution towards these objects, because they are part of the obligation of the federal government. This parliament decided that there should be legations and, that being so, they must be maintained, and maintained out of the federal treasury. One could run on in a similar manner through the list of subjects on which we are expending money at the present time. It is easy to say that if money can be spent for one purpose that it can be spent for another. I could take the provincial list and run through the subjects for which the provinces vote money and I could find many quite as worthy as the construction of highways. What about the whole school system of the province? What about the development of the natural resources of the provinces? What about the agricultural work carried on by the provinces? Are these not worthy objects? It might be asked, why should they not in the first instance be supported out of the federal fund rather than highways? The minute one begins to run over the list, one sees, may I say it very goodnaturedly, that the attitude of hon. gentlemen supporting these grants appears to be that of wishing to make good fellows of themselves, pretty much at the expense of the public treasury, more particularly when they feel they are in the happy and secure position of not being obliged to defend their attitude or the treasury, and in the further position that if we should carry out their wishes, they can then turn round and attack us because of necessity we are obliged to tax the people a little more than we otherwise would be obliged to. We can do all these things if hon. gentlemen opposite wish them done and the rest of the house is prepared to agree with them. But we cannot do them and at the same time reduce taxation. We cannot do them and keep down expenditures, we cannot do them and proportionately reduce t'he public debt. If hon. gentlemen will realize the position they are taking, they will see it is simply this: they are asking the

National Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King
government to undertake obligations which will mean increased taxation to the people of Canada, which will mean an increase of expenditures in relation to receipts and a possible return to the old system which prevailed prior to the time of the present administration assuming office, of deficits instead of surpluses in the year's balancing of the public accounts.
The hon. member for West Algoma (Mr. Simpson) made a specious sort of appeal yesterday. He said that the government of the day between 1919 and 1921 were able to give grants to highways, grants to technical education; that they were able to do this and to do that; and then asked, why the present administration could not do the same. I suppose we could if we washed to follow the methods of hon. gentlemen opposite, but how did they accomplish their ends? They made the appropriations they did and were able to make them by virtue of borrowing and by increasing the public debt and leaving it to their successors to pay off the debt and sundry other obligations by taxation which they would have had to raise, had it been their policy to avoid a further increase in the public debt.
Let me call to mind the old maxim that it is well to be just before we are generous, and see how far it has been followed by hon. gentlemen opposite. In the fiscal year ended 1919 there was an increase in the public debt of Canada of over $3S2,000,000.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That was direct payment for railways.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Not at all. It was made up of the general expenditures of hon. gentlemen opposite including these grants. There was this deficit in 1919 of over $382,000,000. In the next year there was not a direct payment for railways and yet in the fiscal year ending March 31, 1920, the public debt of Canada was further increased by over $674,000,000. That is the way in which the country was being governed while hon. gentlemen opposite were in office in 1919 and 1920.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is the most unfair statement ever made in parliament by anybody, and it happens not to be correct.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It seems to
have struck home because my hon. friend is concerned.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That was the demobilization vote of this house, for the returned soldiers.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It includes the moneys hon. gentlemen opposite appropriated for the purposes of which the hon. member for West Algoma spoke yesterday.


Mr. STEVENS:: No.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Does it not include the moneys so appropriated?


Richard Bedford Bennett: It includes the demobilization vote.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: And all the rest. My hon. friends opposite are like the ostrich with its head in the sand; they are deliberately deceiving themselves; they will not look at the facts. At the end of the fiscal year 1921 there was a deficit of $92,000,000. Let us take the next year. In 1922 when this government had been in office only a short time we had to face at the end of the fiscal year a deficit of $81,000,000, a further increase in the public debt. When we came into office, what was the first object we undertook to accomplish? I recall very well the Right Hon. Mr. Fielding, at that time Minister of Finance, telling parliament that unless we balanced the budget the country would get deeper and deeper into debt; that we were heading toward a state of national bankruptcy and that Canada's credit would be absolutely ruined throughout the world. Mr. Fielding took the position that the first thing to do was properly to balance the public accounts. There were two ways in which that could be done; one was to reduce expenditure and the other was for the time being to increase taxation, so that every year we would not be running more deeply into debt but would be placed in a position to pay off obligations which hon. gentlemen opposite had imposed upon us.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Due to the war.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Due to their methods of financing. We started to meet these obligations, with what result? We reduced expenditures and imposed some increased taxation for the purpose, mark you, of meeting obligations which were left to us by the previous administration. At first about all that we were able to do was to hold the deficit at the point at which it had been the year before. The deficit instead of being $92,000,000 was brought down to $81,000,000 in 1922. In the following year-that is, the fiscal year ended March 31, 1923-by pursuing the policy which we had adopted we reduced the deficit to $31,000,000. From that time on instead of deficits we have had sur-
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National Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King
pluses and as we have had surpluses we have steadily reduced the taxes of the people. What are the figures from that time on? They are as follows:
Fiscal year ended	Surplus
1924		 $35,000,000
1925		 345,000
1926		 27,000,000
1927		 41,000,000
1928		 50,000,000
This year I hope we shall have a surplus even greater than that of last year.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is the reason we want money for roads.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Now my hon. friend comes to the point. He says " That is the reason we want money for roads."


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is surplus.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: What about reducing taxation? What about paying off the public debt? Are we instead to begin increasing taxation? My hon. friend's words will come back upon him as soon as we come to the budget.
Mr. BENNETT- Not a bit.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: We shall find my hon. friend at that time asking that we still further reduce taxation.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It is better to spend the money on roads than to waste the public money in public parks at Ottawa and other places.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: We will find hon. gentlemen opposite asking that there should be more in the way of a reduction of taxation.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If you are to reduce taxation, how are you going to carry on the obligations of the government and supplement them with these grants to the different provincial governments for provincial purposes?


Richard Bedford Bennett: Practice economy. Cut down the estimates.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think hon. gentlemen opposite see pretty clearly the position in which they have placed themselves as a result of the attitude which they have taken on these expenditures. The government's desire in this matter is not in any particular to refrain from assisting every worthy object that can be assisted, but rather to recognize in the first place what our immediate obligation is, to carry on the policy
[Mr- Mackenzie King.]
which we have adopted, and which we believe will appeal more to the people of Canada than grants to provincial governments, a policy of having surpluses every year, and every year a still further reduction in taxation.
The hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) suggested that we should have a national highway. The first suggestion was that we should make grants toward provincial highways, and then my hon. friend, not having much responsibility in the matter, goes a step further and suggests a national highway. If the debate runs on very much longer some hon. gentleman opposite will be suggesting an empire highway. Why, it will be asked, should we not link up the different parts of the empire with a highway? Let the motorists from Canada visit Australia and those from South Africa come to Canada, and-


Mr. CHAPLIN:: The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Motherwell) sent his ten thousand dollar car over to Europe.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I assume the
Minister of Agriculture was seeking to practise the economy which my friends opposite advocate.
Where are we to end if that is to be the policy? But let us stop at the point proposed by my hon. friend from Kindersley- a national transcontinental highway. Has he any idea what such a highway would cost this country at the present time? In the first place, to be of any use it will have to be a hard-surface highway; it will have to be kept suitable for motoring in winter as well as in summer; it will have to traverse parts of this country through which, up to the present time, there has been considerable difficulty in constructing roads; it will have to be linked up by means of bridges. I am advised by expert opinion in the Department of Railways and Canals that the least amount for which we could expect to accomplish the end my hon. friend has in view is an expenditure of $200,000,000.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Oh, no, no.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Two hundred
million dollars is the estimated cost of a hard-surfaced national transcontinental highway.


Mr. SPENCE:: Half of that is built now.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I want hon.
gentlemen to see what they are asking the treasury to do. That is the amount at an estimated cost of $50,000 a mile. Possibly

National Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King
there should be deducted from the total something for provincial highways that are already serving the purpose in part. A highway of this character, to be of any real service, would have to touch the main cities of the provinces through which it passed; nothing less would satisfy them, and that would mean a highway at 'least four thousand miles in length. I repeat, what my hon. friend is asking is that the government shall now say it is prepared to make grants to the provinces, or undertake the work immediately themselves if you wish, involving an expenditure of $200,000,000. But that outlay does not include maintenance; once the highway is constructed we will be expected to keep it in repair and in condition for use in winter as well as in summer. These are considerations of which the government has to take account, and I say to hon. gentlemen opposite, if we cannot support the resolution it is because we cannot honestly say to the country that we think this is an expenditure which the Dominion would be justified in making at this time. Undoubtedly a national transcontinental highway will come in time. It is coming by degrees already; the provinces are doing considerable work in developing highways within their owrn jurisdiction, and there is no reason to doubt that the time will come when from coast to coast there will extend a highway to serve the purposes that hon. gentlemen hope it will serve. But at the present moment we do not feel justified in leading the house or the country to believe that we are about to embark on a motor highway involving such an expenditure as I have just mentioned.
So far as the provinces are concerned, I submit that the federal government has been pretty generous in its treatment of them. To-day we are exacting much more in the way of taxation than are the provinces combined. Why should we obligate ourselves still further to increase federal taxation, while the taxation being levied by the provinces-who, after all, we are told, are going to profit most by this project-is to be left at its present rate. If the provinces wish to undertake the work- and highways come within their particular jurisdiction-they are the bodies which should increase their taxation for this purpose.
May I ask hon. members this question? Do they think the provinces would be prepared to contribute to the federal treasury for any purpose whatever? Hon. gentlemen have been saying a great deal as to what a highway will do to unite the country, how ;t will serve those who reside in the remote parts of the Dominion. Unquestionably such a
highway will be a help to some people along its route; but a service that will be much more effective in providing better communication for people who need it most is the air mail service. It will serve infinitely better to link up the whole' Dominion and to meet the needs of our people on the prairies and in remote districts indeed in a! parts of Canada.
I venture to say that if we have two hundred million dollars available for immediate expenditure, we can spend it to much greater advantage, so far as the whole of Canada is concerned, by developing air services that will carry the mails rapidly from one part of the country to another, than by constructing a single motor highway across the country.
And I venture to think that hon. gentlemen will agree that if we are to extend our trade we shall have to increase our trade commissioner service throughout the world. Will the provinces aid us, will they contribute something towards placing trade commissioners in all parts of the world, and towards the expense of collecting information on trade and markets which will be of service to the Dominion, yes, but of very special service to every province as well?
I think the house needs to appreciate that in the wisdom of those who were responsible for shaping our constitution, certain obligations were placed definitely upon the federal treasury, and certain upon the provincial treasuries. The first duty of the Dominion :s to meet the obligations which were thus placed upon it, and which will not be contributed to by the provinces.
This aid-to-highways project was started, as has been said, at a moment when the country was facing a quite exceptional condition. Our soldiers were beginning to return from overseas, and were about to be reestablished in civil life. It was recognized that as the war veterans came home it would not be possible quickly to reinstate them in their different business pursuits and avocations, and that for many something in the way of temporary employment would have to be provided, that otherwise there would be following upon their services overseas a large number of unemployed because sufficient work was not available to absorb the large number of men who were returning home. The Minister of Railways and Canals of that day, the Hon. Doctor Reid, made this very plain when he asked parliament to vote an amount towards highway construction. In the House of Commons debates for 1919. at page 3S99, Doctor Reid is reported as follows:
As I said when introducing this bill, these highways will also provide employment for the
316	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King
returned soldiers. Perhaps at the present time there may not be so great a demand for employment by the returned soldiers; they perhaps do not wish to go into employment immediately upon their return home; but the time is coming when employment will have to be provided, and I think it is the duty of the government to provide employment in the way of good roads and other works of benefit to the country.
Undoubtedly the contributions did help in that way. But the government did not stop at that point in assisting the provinces to meet that exceptional condition. The government came along with grants in aid of unemployment. Despite this -particular work on highways there was a great deal of unemployment, and the federal treasury was asked to contribute to the provinces and to the municipalities in the form of unemployment relief. About all the thanks the federal treasury received was that when several millions of dollars had been contributed, the provinces turned around and said: but you have assumed this obligation, you must go on and assume it for all time to come. In addition we have had as a consequence the view expressed from the other side of the house that it is the business of the federal government to look after unemployment. As the federal government moves into the provincial field now here and now there, it simply serves to encourage the provinces to look to the Dominion to carry out their own immediate obligations. Fro-m 1920 to 1927 this government paid a total of $1,865,880 in unemployment relief in the various provinces-unemployment relief alone. And what have we done in assisting the provinces in other directions? In agricultural instruction, between 1912 and 1924, under the act that was passed to supplement the work of the provinces, we spent SI 1,399,-8S2. On technical education we have spent up to the present time 7,396,888, and we are proposing by the bill which is now before the house to contribute another $2,500,000. Under the Highways Act-the -measure which is being referred to at the present moment-we have given the provinces $18,775,604. Grants to municipalities in -relation to unemployment I have already given. To supplement the propaganda of the provinces in regard to venereal diseases we -paid out between 1918 and 1927, $1,148,237. In respect to unemployment offices which are being carried on by the provinces we spent, between 1918 and 1927, by way of supplementing their revenues from the federal treasury, $1,635,816. In other words, for the periods I have indicated, we have given to the provinces from the federal treasury under these few heads, not to mention others, a sum in excess of $42,000,000 to assist them in car-ry-

ing on work which is their -primary obligation. And in addition thereto we 'have been increasing the annual subsides it-o the -provinces. We are at this moment carrying on an inquiry in one province, and -conducting negotiations with others, which may lead to a further increase in the subsidies which we are granting and which the provinces a-re free to use for any purposes they like. To the maritime provinces, until we finally settle their claims, we have added within t-he last year o-r two annual amounts -as follows: to Nova Scotia, $875,000, to New Brunswick, $600,000, and to Prince Edward Island, $125,000.
May I direct attention to this further fact which bears immediately upon the grants from the federal treasury to the provinces. I believe that everyone who has given any attention to public finance will agree that it is a thoroughly vicious system to have one body raise taxes and another body expend the money thus secured. In other words, give to the provinces these grants from the federal treasury, without their being obliged to raise the money themselves by taxation, and you will not get, with respect to expenditure, that careful supervision which would be exercised if the provinces themselves were obliged to raise the money in the first instance. It is a bad system, a thoroughly vicious system, and that is the reason why the present administration has been seeking to put an end to a system that grew up at a time when the country was in the throes of war or had to meet a post-war situation-a system which, had it been permitted to develop, would have become thoroughly destructive of anything in the shape of economy with respect to the expenditure of the people's money.


Mr. LADNER:: What about old age pensions.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am glad my hon. friend speaks of that. There is another case where we are giving to the provinces a lot of money in addition to what they are raising.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Is that vicious?


Richard Bedford Bennett: A thoroughly vicious
principle?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think it is, yes; I have come to the conclusion that it is a thoroughly vicious principle.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Why doesn't the government provide for old age pensions itself instead of shifting it to the provinces?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: It is the province's obligation, and so far as this government is concerned we have sought to safe-

National Highways-Mr. Mackenzie King
guard the public treasury to the extent at least of one half of the required expenditure whereas hon. gentlemen opposite claimed they were prepared to duplicate what we are doing by assuming the entire obligation. What has been already paid in old age pensions in the province from which my hon. friend comes? We have given to the province of British Columbia $423,105.84; to the province of Manitoba $122,332.42; and to the province of Saskatchewan $76,417.62; or a total to these three provinces, thus far, of $621,855.88. I assume that most hon. members here will live to see the day when every province in the Dominion will have an old age pensions system, and when that day comes the tax upon the federal treasury, to meet the obligation parliament has assumed, will be a much vaster sum than I have indicated. Indeed, I am told that it is estimated at an annual payment of some $12,000,000. When, therefore, we have undertaken to assist the provinces in the matter of old age pensions to the extent of $12,000,000, we can afford I think to let them in the meantime look after highways, which is their immediate obligation.
Let me come to another phase of the question. The provinces, so far as their expenditures are concerned, have been in no way affected by the very exceptional obligations which have been imposed upon the federal treasury-obligations that have grown out of the war. I challenge hon. gentlemen to point to any appreciable expenditure which the provinces have to meet to-day as a consequence of the war. The provinces have been left clear of all obligations in that direction. The Dominion has assumed a very liberal interpretation of its duty with respect to war expenditures. It has not taken, as some have contended it might have taken, the narrow view that while, with respect to defence, we were obliged to meet the actual cost- of war during the progress of war, such matters as unemployment resulting from the war, disablements, pensions, and so forth, did not constitute a federal obligation. We have never taken that attitude; we have assumed the whole responsibility. And what has that responsibility involved in the way of expenditures? To mention only the present annual expenditure attributable to the war, first of all the interest on public debt-the increase in interest, not the total interest on public debt; the annual expenditure for which the Dominion has obligated itself-is over $116,000,000. War pensions amount to $38,000,000; soldiers' civil re-establishment, $6,000.000-I am speaking now of annual expenditures which we have to face; soldiers'
land settlement administration, $1,000,000; Imperial War Graves Commission, $573,000; battlefields memorials. $183,000; adjustment of war claims, $1,656,000-or a total annual additional charge on the treasury, with respect to these obligations which we have assumed and to which the provinces have not contributed in the least particular, of $165,000,000. In the year 1928 over 454 cents out of every dollar expended by the government was attributable to the war.


Edmond Baird Ryckman: Should not a nation meet a nation's war expenditures?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am not
questioning that at all. What I am trying to bring out is this-and I think my hon. friend will appreciate it if he will only follow me. The provinces are a part of the nation; no one can contend otherwise; yet the provinces have not contributed a five cent piece towards expenditures to which I have referred.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Will the Prime Minister
allow me?


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have been
fair to my hon. friend.


Leon Johnson Ladner: The provinces have contributed.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Hon. gentlemen opposite have been speaking about the laudable nature of highways, the useful purpose they serve, and so on. I should like to know whether there is a more laudable or worthy object than the one which I have just been discussing. But you do not find advocates in the provincial legislatures suggesting that because the recognition of war service is a laudable object their treasuries should be charged with the expenditures which are undertaken by the Dominion government.
Charity begins at home, and the provinces have followed that maxim pretty closely; they have looked after themselves. I challenge anyone to point to a single instance in which they have made any contribution whatever towards any object of federal expenditure. I might go a little further and say that the provinces are well able to do a little more, in regard to some of these things, than they have done. Since these grants were made in the first instance many of the provinces have discovered new means of raising revenue. I shall not mention all the provinces, but I might refer to the two which have received the largest share of federal assistance by reason of the fact that they are the largest provinces.

National Highways-Mr. Bennett
Since this system of making grants from the federal treasury to the provinces was started the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have taken over complete control of the liquor traffic and have made profits from the sale of liquor. The net profit of the province of Ontario for the last fiscal year was over $7,000,000; the net profit of the province of Quebec was over $6,000,000 and to this sum may be added a further amount of $1,451,000 from permits and seizures. If these provinces are adding to their revenues about $7,000,000 a year from the sale of liquor surely they can be expected to use at least a part of this for these highways which are so beneficial to the people. I ask my hon. friends as members of the federal parliament to apply to the provinces the arguments they have been applying to the Dominion, and to remember that their first duty is to safeguard the public treasury of this country.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Mr. Speaker, there is a resolution before the house dealing with the question of the construction of a national highway, and the Prime Minister has given what in his opinion were very cogent reasons why the necessary expenditures should not be incurred or the highway built. If he had confined himself to a discussion of the matter having regard to the facts I should not have risen, but I am compelled to do so in consideration of the very paltry reasons he has advanced as to why this should not be done. I use the word "paltry" in its correct and true sense, and when I consider these reasons in detail I think they are somewhat unworthy of a Prime Minister.
My right hon. friend commenced with the statement that there was no advertising to be gained by giving money to the provinces. Stripped down to essentials, that is what he meant.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I was not speaking of advertising; my hon. friend has his mind on the wrong topic.


Richard Bedford Bennett: All I can say is that the Prime Minister contended that credit was not given by the provinces for the money granted by this government for technical education. On turning to the public accounts of the province. of Ontario for 1926, from which I gathered my hon. friend was quoting, at page 16, statement 6, I find the following:
Department of Education; revenue for fiscal year 1926. Ordinary; main office; federal subvention for promotion of technical education, $340,915.56.

The right hon. gentleman seemed to be greatly annoyed because, where there was a mention of this expenditure, there was not placed underneath it a little note reading, "Donated by Mackenzie King".


William Lyon Mackenzie King: 
Richard Bedford Bennett: I was reading from page
16, statement 6, of the public accounts of Ontario, where I find the following:
Department of Education; Revenue for fiscal year 1926: Federal subvention for promotion of technical education, $340,915.56.
That is what I find there, and when he says the government fails to discharge its obligations with respect to national highways because there is not sufficient advertising of the generosity of the parliament of Canada, it does violence to one's understanding of just what may be a sound reason.
Now let me go a step further. The constitution of this country makes provision as to how money is to be raised by taxation. Subsection 3 of section 91 provides that the Dominion parliament may raise money by any mode or system of taxation, but section 92 of the British North America Act provides that the provincial legislatures may raise their money by direct taxation within the province, for provincial purposes. In other words, a limitation is imposed upon the rights of provincial legislatures to impose taxes whereas the parliament of Canada, representing all the people and all the provinces, may raise money by any mode or system of taxation. What is to be done with the money thus raised by any mode or system of taxation is wholly within the power of this parliament to determine, and the question which must be considered by every government is how pressing are the necessities that warrant the appropriation of moneys thus raised to what the Prime Minister has called provincial objects. But, sir, he overlooks the one great fact that the same citizens pay the taxes. That is the essential thing which has been overlooked; whether you consider them as residents of a province or as residents of the Dominion the fact is that the citizens of Canada pay taxes both to the provincial and the federal treasury, and because under our constitution the Dominion may raise money by any mode or system of taxation it has the increased obligation to see to it that in the distribution of these moneys there are those compensating adjustments which place the provinces on a parity with respect to the development of the na-

National Highways-Mr. Bennett
tional policies of Canada. The Duncan report is based upon the great principle that the application of great national policies to this country has not brought equal benefit to every section of it, and therefore there must be compensating adjustments from the federal treasury to the end that every province may receive those benefits which it is intended they should have received by reason of being part of our federal union.
So much for the argument with respect to the lack of publicity or the lack of recognition of high merit on the part of this parliament in voting money to the province of Ontario for technical education. There was a statement, however, which must not be permitted to go unchallenged at this time. The Prime Minister read from the public accounts of this country, but surely he did not intend to leave the impression his remarks would leave upon parliament and the country if they were not contradicted. There are two divisions of the revenues of Canada; the consolidated fund is that fund into which all the ordinary taxes of this country are paid whether they be derived from customs and excise or from direct taxation. Into that fund is paid nearly all the moneys of this country, but when the Minister of Finance paid into it the reparations money paid by Germany to discharge the obligations of that country to our private citizens, in my judgment he did what was wholly erroneous and totally wrong. I make that remark in passing because it was a wrong act on his part to take the reparations money which, under a treaty, was available for the purpose of discharging the obligations to private citizens, put it in the consolidated fund and then go about the country saying how much he had reduced the debt of Canada by depriving people of the money to which they were entitled.
Now let us look at the consolidated fund of this country, and I would like the Prime Minister and those who sit around him to understand that when he made his observations as to the conduct of the finances of Canada during the year 1919 and later, he should have turned to page 45 of the public accounts. There he will find that in every year he mentioned there was a surplus in the consolidated fund of this country. Then what did he mean by talking about deficits? What did the Minister of Railways mean by his remarks about deficits? In 1915 there was a deficit in consolidated account of $2,449724.81, but listen to these figures as to surpluses in the years following, showing the excess of revenues over expenditures in the transaction of the ordinary business of Canada. I find that in 1916 the surplus was $41,797,111.37; in 1917 it was $84,101,950.77; in 1918 it was $82,494,639.72 and in 1919, the year with which the right hon. gentleman commenced, the surplus was $80,215,464.20. In the succeeding year the surplus was $45,902,404.80; in 1921 it was $73,268,391.39; in 1922 it was $34,391,696.36; in 1923 it was $62,321,167.91; in 1924 it was $72,024,492.47; in 1925 it was $27,942,578; in 1926 it was $60,085,026.44; in 1927 it was $79,147,603.79, and in 1928 it amounted to $86,550,021.70. This represents the excess of the revenues paid into the consolidated revenue fund of this country over the ordinary expenditures of the Dominion of Canada.
Then I turn to page 44 of the public accounts and ask myself the single question: How does the Auditor General and how does the Department of Finance say that the deficits referred to by my hon. friend were made up? At every convenient season it is the practice of hon. gentlemen opposite, from their Prime Minister down, to talk about deficits, and then when they are faced with the fact that these sums were incurred in the Great war, they offer apologies or reasons why they should not have been incurred at all, as though the war was something we should not have participated in. That is the position they take.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


Richard Bedford Bennett: If they will turn to page 44 of the public accounts of this country, they will find the following expenditures under the heading of war and demobilization:
1915		 $ 60,750,476 01
1916	
166,197,755	471917	
306,488,814	631918	
343,836,801	981919	
446,518,439	481920	
346,612,954	561921	
16,997,543	991922	
1,544,249	661923	
4,464,759	761924	
446,082	791925	
506,931	271926	
191,392	791927	
64,485	081928	
1,656,011	00
Is it any wonder there was a surplus in the total operations of the country in the years when nothing was spent for war and demobilization as against the time when over $400,000,00 was expended? It does seem incredible that the Prime Minister should stand in his place in parliament and endeavour to leave the impression upon the public mind that the affairs of this country were so managed by his predecessors that these deficits occurred, and not take notice of the fact that

National Highways-Mr. Bennett
these moneys were spent to compensate in some small way those who had rendered them-seilvea incapable of making a livelihood; spent for war and demobilization.
When the hon. gentleman referred to the fact that no moneys had been paid out with respect to the railways, I turned to page 44 of the public accounts brought down by the Minister of Finance, and found the following amounts paid out for railway subsidies:
1918	
$720,404	751919	
43,805	321920	
334,845	55
The sums charged in connection with Canadian National undertakings on land and sea were absorbed at that time as a part of the increased national debt of Canada, instead of the guarantee of this Dominion being put upon the securities of the railway. The hon. Minister of Finance, in the statements he has submitted to parliament year after year has referred to the fact that $30,000,000, $40,000,000, $60,000,000 or $100,000,000 has been raised by the Canadian National Railways under his regime, but with the endorsement of the Dominion of Canada upon the back of the notes. During some of the years I referred to, the money was raised by the country itself and expended by the railroads.
It does seem to me, when a discussion of this character comes up, as to whether or not money can be found to provide for a trunk highway, we should not have to listen to dissertations upon the public accounts of this country, when such dissertations are wholly beside the question and leave out the great expenditures made for war and demobilization and railway subsidies. The fact is that the accounts of his own Minister of Finance, from which he quoted, show that in every year there was a surplus upon the consolidated accounts. In other words, the expenditures for the carrying on of the ordinary business of this country show that in every year that business was so carefully conducted and so economically conducted that there was a large surplus of ordinary revenue in the consolidated fund over the ordinary expenditures of the country.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Will my hon. friend say that after the war expenditures had been deducted, the expenditures during the period to which he has just referred were not greater than the receipts?


Richard Bedford Bennett: I will say that when the
capital expenditures mentioned in the accounts presented by the Minister of Finance are divided between ordinary and capital expendi-
(Mr. Bennett. 1
tures. in every year to which he has made reference the government of his predecessors showed a substantial surplus in the consolidated accounts.


Charles Avery Dunning: Have they included
borrowed money?


Richard Bedford Bennett: The statement shows
receipts and expenditures outside of capital altogether.
It seems to me that the proper place for a discussion of this kind is in the committee on ways and means, but I could not permit the report of the Minister of Finance to be partially read from and leave the impression upon this country that the business had been so recklessly conducted that there was a deficit of between three and four hundred million dollars, when that money was being utilized for war and demobilization purposes. That is the position I desire to make perfectly clear to this house and to this country.
Let us analyze for a moment the other reasons that are given. The right hon. gentleman has seen fit to give a long statement as to the millions of money expended by the Dominion in the way of gifts to the provinces. He did not point out that under our federal union the fields of taxation between the Dominion and the provinces are sharply divided. The provinces are entitled to use direct taxation only in order to raise revenue while the Dominion can raise money by both direct and indirect taxation. Since I went to live in western Canada I have realized, and I think every hon. gentleman from that part of the country has also, that the federal government is in a very happy position in being able to raise such large amounts of money through the customs duties. These duties amounted to $152,509,000 for the ten months ending January 31, 1929, an increase of $24,000,000 over the preceding ten months. During the same period the excise duties increased $6,000,000. The provinces cannot raise money by this indirect form of taxation, and this is the form of taxation which brings in the largest revenue. The western provinces in which road building is most difficult have made as large a per capita contribution to these revenues as any other part of Canada, and they are entitled to ask this parliament for those compensating adjustments which will enable them to supplement the revenues they must raise by direct taxation by grants from the federal treasury.
One other objection was raised to the national highway when it was said it would cost so much money to build. The real truth is that the highway is within six hundred miles

National Highways-Mr. Bennett
of completion. If this six hundred miles were constructed, added to what has been done in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and the mari'times, it would complete a national highway system in this country.


Charles Avery Dunning: A hard surfaced highway system?


Richard Bedford Bennett: I said a national highway system.


Charles Avery Dunning: What is a national highway?


Richard Bedford Bennett: A national highway is
one on which all persons may travel without charge; the king's highway.


Charles Avery Dunning: And what is a provincial highway?


Richard Bedford Bennett: A provincial highway is
a highway wholly within a province. A national highway, as the term is used here, means a highway not bounded by provincial boundaries; it must link up all interprovincial roads so that there may be an all-Canadian highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.


Charles Avery Dunning: Would my hon. friend
limit the meaning of this resolution to closing, with federal assistance, the 600 mile gap he mentions?


Richard Bedford Bennett: My hon. friend must have observed that I did not say "six hundred mile gap"; I said "six hundred miles to complete the highway." It is not a continuous gap of 600 miles.


Charles Avery Dunning: Quite right.


Richard Bedford Bennett: My hon. friend has asked me my understanding of the resolution. It is that this money which is asked for from the federal treasury is not in any sense to be used, as I said when the main motion was before the house, for little ten-mile highways in provinces, but for those interprovincial and international highways that enable travel to pass from one province to another. I cannot say exactly wheTe the gaps all are, and I am only giving the house the benefit of information I sought and which may or may not be absolutely accurate. I am told by engineers that 600 miles of new road, added to what we have, would give us a Canadian highway.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend will understand that that is not answering my question whether he would limit this assistance from the federal treasury to that gap or those gaps. The distinction is a very important one.


Richard Bedford Bennett: As regards that, I could
not undertake, without having before me maps and matters of that kind, to speak with any measure of authority, but the amendment is that the money granted by the federal treasury should be utilized solely for the purpose of the construction of a national highway defined as I have indicated.


Charles Avery Dunning: The hon. member has
not defined it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I have defined a national highway as a highway which connects with the highways of provinces so as to make a continuous national road on which traffic can be handled from one end of the country to the other. When the right hon. gentleman gave these evidences of what he calls the generosity of the federal treasury, he used a term which, I venture to say, if he had used it in the house when one of the measures that he mentioned was under consideration, would have ensured its defeat. He said that it was "a thoroughly vicious principle" for the government to appropriate money to provinces for their expenditure when they had nothing to do with raising it. I put to the House of Commons this question. If that statement was sound, would the old age pensions bill ever have passed this house?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have come to that conclusion since.


Richard Bedford Bennett: In these days of peace
the Prime Minister will remember the old hymn that we used to sing in our younger
days:
While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return.
I am quite certain, if my right hon. friend has arrived at that conclusion after mature consideration, it is because he realizes it is one more evidence of the general policy of the Liberal party to experiment with those things which no one should experiment with and to create conditions which cannot be changed after they are created. Now that he has changed his mind, he will appreciate what was said by a very great poet:
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been.
In the light of that we have in the house this afternoon one of the most striking illustrations of the general tendency of the party opposite that I have ever seen. Here is a prime minister who a very short while after he urged parliament to accept a measure and defended it with all the power at his command, now tells us that it represents a thoroughly vicious principle.

322	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Bennett


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Let me make myself perfectly clear with respect to that. I did not say that the principle of the old age pensions is vicious; I say that the principle of giving money from one treasury to another is, having one authority raise the money by taxation, and the other permitted to spend without the obligation of taxation, and it was the conference with the provincial premiers that helped to convince me on that point, particularly what the provincial premiers themselves said.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I am glad the Premier
of Ontario has had at least one good effect upon the Prime Minister by having a conference with him, because the Prime Minister has seen the error of his ways after coming into contact with Conservatives at the Dominion-provincial conference.


Mr. VENIOT:: Oh, oh.


Richard Bedford Bennett: My hon. friend the Postmaster General (Mr. Veniot) was the one who told the federal government that a moral responsibility attached to it to finish the work begun in 1919. It is perfectly clear that the Prime Minister, having in his own cabinet one of the horrible offenders, speaks feelingly in relation to the result of the policy on which he entered. There were those of us in the house who ventured to point out that the principle was unsound, because it was not based upon contributions being made. I happen to know the Prime Minister in days gone by asserted that the contributory system was a sound system, as he did on that evening after the motion had been made; but that does not get away from the fact that it is rather difficult to suggest that the other provinces should now adopt something that the Prime Minister of our country, the chief of our government, says is a thoroughly vicious principle. It is the first time I have ever heard a prime minister commend to the people of the country a thoroughly vicious principle and it is not quite in accord with those high ideals that usually attach to the utterances of prime ministers with respect to their commendations to the people of the country. I cannot let this pass without making the observation that we on this side of the house contend that, by the application of ordinary business acumen to the estimates of the country and the practice of that measure of economy that would be practised by men in their ordinary business, sufficient money could be saved to enable both technical education and roads to be taken care of. That is our position and I delight to hear those who sit in high places talk about reduced taxation especially to their free trade fMr. Bennett.]
supporters from Saskatchewan, when they collected $152,000,000 out of their pockets by customs taxes in ten months, the highest ever taken in the history of the country. It is such a high sounding platitudinous observation to make that I realize now just why it meets with such stormy applause from those who sit behind the Prime Minister. But I was so vastly interested in our empire highway. On sea and land we are now to have established, as the right hon. gentleman says, a system of imperial highways.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I did not say
that.


Richard Bedford Bennett: To link up the empire.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No. I said
that if we did not reach a vote soon that would be proposed next.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I fancy my right hon.
friend spoke so feelingly because it was another of his colleagues who blazed the pathway to imperial unity of that kind, for I know this summer his distinguished colleague, who did not.regard the moral obligation urged by the Postmaster General when he was premier of a province as being so great as to deter him from endeavouring to embark upon a career of great economy, accompanied by a chauffeur and a splendid car, delighted the capitals of Europe with the spectacle of a Canadian, not only occupied with great official duties, but in a Canadian car bearing a Canadian official license number with an official chauffeur, blazing the way to imperial unity.


William Richard Motherwell: What has my hon. friend got to say about it?


Richard Bedford Bennett: I can fancy that when
the matter was suggested in the cabinet, with the same jaunty air that always characterizes his utterances the hon. gentleman said: "What have you got to say about it?" and I feel quite certain that his attitude to the Canadian taxpayer who has to furnish the money to provide for these expenditures, is: "What have you to say about it?"


William Richard Motherwell: My hon. friend will have an opportunity of bringing the matter up on my estimates, if he wants to do so.


Richard Bedford Bennett: My hon. friend asked me what I had to say about it, and I was just giving him an answer to his question. It is so delightful to find the state of mind that was once said to have been reflected in the utterances of a Vanderbilt, who, when the people complained of his tolls on the New York Central, which was the only road in

National Highways-Mr. Veniot
that community, replied, " the public be damned." and the Minister of Agriculture says, "Well, what have you got to say aibout it?"
The position of the opposition on this matter is very simple. We say that when a country raises over 8400,000,000 per annum, the largest sum that was ever raised in the history of this country, a finance minister who has a desire for economy, and a prime minister surrounded by those who desire to assist the public service-I am not going to traverse that now, for I can only speak with respect to the amendment-should be able to find a sufficient sum of money to complete a national highway in this Dominion extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, linking up the provinces, and supplying means and facilities whereby communication may be readily maintained between the various peoples of this Dominion.


Peter John Veniot: I did not intend to take any part in this debate, but certain references have been made to my attitude in regard to federal grants when I was Premier of New Brunswick and at the same time president of the Good Roads Association of Canada.
I have listened with a good deal of attention to the discussion which has taken place on this resolution, but when I look at this resolution, what do I find? I find in the first place that it is not a statement of fact. If you will read the resolution you will see what I mean. It says:
Whereas the need for establishment of national highways is greater than in 1919-
Now the principle of a national highway was never laid down in the act of 1919-never. If you will read the speeches of the then Minister of Railways, Hon. Mr. Reid, you will find that he defined the purposes for which this money was to be expended, and in no case did he refer to national highways. I was at that period Minister of Public Works in the province of New Brunswick, and had considerable to do in conferences with the then federal government, with the Minister of Railways, and with his highway board, in connection with this grant. On that occasion, as on this occasion, I refused as Minister of Highways in New Brunswick to accept a grant of the federal government for highways with any strings attached to it. I refused on two grounds: First, that the standard they were setting up was too costly for the maritime provinces, too costly even for the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and certainly too costly for the western provinces. The
regulations as first submitted to the conference laid down a standard of road which would cost $20,000 per mile, and the maritime provinces and the western provinces could not afford to spend money at the rate of $20,000 per mile in order to get a grant of 40 per cent of the expenditure from the federal treasury.


John Wesley Edwards: Do you mean that for every province?


Peter John Veniot: Yes, sir. The hon. gentleman shakes his head. Allow me to tell the hon. gentleman that the regulations under the Highway Act as first submitted to the conference in 1919 laid down a standard of hard surfaced roads, and nothing was under the cost of $20,000 per mile. That was one of the reasons why I, as Minister of Public Works in the province of New Brunswick, refused to take that grant. My other reason was that if the federal government was going to give aid to highways in the provinces, they had no right to say to the provinces what kind of road they were to build. That should be left to the discretion of the provinces themselves and the money should be given without any strings attached. That is the stand I took then.
Later on, in the fall of 1919, on the 6th day of October, the federal highway board visited the maritime provinces. On behalf of the province which I then had the honour to represent I still had up to that time refused to expend any part of this federal money. We went on with our own program and our own system of aiding highway construction. In October the federal highway board, accompanied by its engineer, Mr. Dick, came to New Brunswick and the maritime provinces, and met the ministers of highways of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, and after they viewed the situation as they had found it in the three maritime provinces, they consented to modifying their standard, and the result was that money was then granted to Prince Edward Island, which was building dirt roads, and to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which were building gravel roads according to the standard then in practice in the province of New Brunswick, and I may say that the standard of gravel roads as constructed in New Brunswick under the engineers of that province, and independent of federal government, is the standard of gravel roads approved by the federal board throughout the whole length and breadth of Canada to-day. Up to that time, the 6th of October, we had refused to participate in the

National Highways-Mr. Veniot
federal grant, for the reasons I have given, but when their standard was modified, with 328 miles of main trunk roads constructed in the province of New Brunswick under the standard I have mentioned, in the month of December of that same year an order in council was passed approving of the plans, specifications and standard of gravel roads in the province of New Brunswick, and the federal government paid to us $250,000 for the work that we had done during that year.
I have stated that in the beginning I was opposed to federal aid with strings attached. It is quite true that when the other provinces accepted this federal aid, I recommended to the province of New Brunswick, as Minister of Public Works, that they should do likewise. It is quite true that in 1923 or 1924 I came to Ottawa as president of the Dominion Good Roads Association, and on their behalf and on behalf of the province I represented, I presented memorials for the continuation of the federal aid to highways. But since that date I have found myself in very good company. When I came to Ottawa as a minister in the federal government, I was still of that opinion, and when I sat in conference and listened to the provincial premiers telling the Prime Minister of this Dominion that they wanted no such grants with strings attached, but that what they waned was an increase of their subsidies, and to be allowed to do with that increase that which they thought best, I was convinced that I was in better company than I had hitherto been with the Good Roads Association because the provincial premiers in that conference were carrying out the very principle that I laid down as Minister of Public Works in New Brunswick in 1919. It is for that reason, and in order to explain my position in connection with the vote I am about to give, that I rose to speak this afternoon. I am convinced that following out the principles that were laid down by the representatives oi the different provinces of the Dominion of Canada, I can justify my vote in voting against the resolution as it is presented to this house.
Let me point out one further consideration, Mr. Speaker, Why should any hon. member propose a resolution of this kind in direct opposition to the expressed views of the premiers of the provinces in conference assembled in Ottawa? Surely those gentlemen know what they want. Surely it is not our place to say to them: We know better than you do what you want. They told us they did not want this assistance, and that is the

reason why I am justifying my vote this afternoon in opposition to the resolution as it was at first introduced.
I believe that sooner or later we may have to come to the consideration of a national highway.


An hon. MEMBER:: Why not now?


Peter John Veniot: In answer to my hon. friend, I think sufficient reasons have already been advanced why we should not do so now. The arguments to which I have listened in this debate convince me that very few hon. members have any idea of what the construction of such a road will cost. In other words, they have very little idea of what has yet to be done to complete a national transcontinental highway. My hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) has stated that he has been informed that there is no more than six hundred miles of road to be completed to bridge the existing gap. My hon. friend must have very poor judgment of what should constitute a national highway. There is not a mile of highway from Halifax on the one side to Sydney on the other, up to the boundaries of the province of Quebec, that can be accepted to-day as the standard for a transcontinental highway. I know whereof I speak. The hon. gentleman representing the county of Pictou (Mr. Cantley) was good enough to tell the house last night that I was the first Minister of Public Works in the maritime provinces to lay down the principle of road improvements. That is quite true. I do not refer to it for the purpose of personal aggrandizement, but everybody in the maritime provinces knows that "Good Roads Veniot" was the first to have money voted for the improved construction of highways in the province of New Brunswick. I wish to give credit to the hon. gentleman who preceded me in that office. He laid down the framework of a system of road improvements for the province, but, fortunately or unfortunately for the province, I do not know which, he did not last long enough in politics to put his system into effect. It fell to my lot to lay down this policy and carry it out.
Let me point out how the cost of road construction can be met better than the provinces are meeting it to-day. It is wrong to say that when in 1919 the federal government made grants to the provinces in aid of highway construction it imposed an extra obligation upon the provinces to spend so much money in order to get the benefit of those grants, and so encouraged them to adopt a

National Highways-Mr. Veniot
policy which later on they could not financially carry out. That is not true of Ontario, nor of Quebec, nor of New Brunswick. Long before the federal government had ever mooted the idea of granting federal aid, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick had instituted a road-building policy which they were carrying out as rapidly as possible. In 1917 when New Brunswick began the reconstruction of main highways as well as secondary trunk roads out of money borrowed against the credit of the province-using money from the consolidated revenue fund to meet the expenses of its by-roads; they are considered our least important roads in comparison with the first two that I have named-we were receiving from automobile fees 838,000 a year. At that time there were only two thousand automobiles in the province. When we adopted the principle of funding the automobile fees to raise money for highway construction, the Good Roads Association at its first convention condemned the principle as not being practicable; but two years later, when New Brunswick was in a position to give a concrete example of how successfully that principle was being applied, the association at their Halifax convention passed a resolution recommending that the provinces earmark their automobile fees and borrow against that fund on a twenty-year basis to meet the capital expenditure on road construction. New Brunswick was the first province to adopt that principle. As I have said, in 1917 we received 838,000 from automobile fees; last year the provincial treasury received from that source 8725,000, and about $300,000 from its gasoline tax, representing a funding power of one million dollars. New Brunswick has borrowed one million dollars against this fund to carry on the construction of its main highways and secondary trunk roads, and with the provision for a sinking fund the loan will be repaid in a period of twenty years.


John Wesley Edwards: If you concur in that principle, what would you say to the Dominion applying to the same purpose the money which it obtains through excise and other taxes levied on automobiles?


Peter John Veniot: There is all the difference
in the world between the two cases. The province is collecting automobile fees and gasoline tax from those who use its roads, and has no right to apply that money to any other purpose than the reconstruction and upkeep of those roads. Take the province of Ontario, it receives annually from automobile fees and gasoline tax over three million
dollars. I understand the province does fund a part of this revenue for the construction of roads, but not for maintenance. Why should not a rich province like Ontario fund more, if not the whole, of its automobile fees to look after its highways? The money is collected from those who by their use of the provincial highways necessitate heavy expenditures in maintenance and reconstruction. It is a fair proposition. The owners of automobiles should pay for the upkeep of the highways because they are the ones who destroy them. Everyone knows that no matter how you construct any kind of hard surface road, or even a gravel road, there is no such thing as permanency. You cannot find, either in Canada or anywhere else in the world, material that will make a highway which you can claim to be permanent; there is always a certain maintenance cost to meet One of the best highways on the North American continent, between Montreal and Quebec-what is known as the King Edward Memorial highway-is costing the province of Quebec to-day at least from four to five thousand dollars a mile for maintenance. I have travelled over highways between here and Toronto, hard surface in some places and gravel in others; they are among the best roads I have ever travelled over in my life, and yet the upkeep is enormous. I do not see, therefore, how it can possibly be suggested that the federal government should grant money to aid in the construction of purely provincial roads,-I am not referring now to national highways. If that contention were conceded and we contributed money now to a greater extent than we have done in the past, or on as large a scale as we did in 1919, when the provinces received but little revenue from automobile fees, what would be the next step which the provinces would ask us to take in connection with responsibilities that should be theirs?
I did not intend taking up so much time, but I wanted to explain my position in regard to this resolution. From what has occurred in the last three or four years, the changed conditions and the altered opinions of the Prime Ministers of the different provinces, I am perfectly justified in assuming the position I intend to take in voting against the resolution. Before I resume my seat, however, I wish to refer to a remark made by one hon, member in discussing the resolution. It was uncalled for and I believe, had he given it sober, second thought, he would not have made the remark. We may differ with one another; one province can differ with another

National Highways-Mr. Veniot
in its aims and aspirations; in the nature of things we do differ. But when an hon. member from Ontario is so much at a loss for argument that he must condemn public expenditures in the maritime provinces as a means of saving some money to spend on the roads in Ontario, then I think his argument is very far-fetched; it is not worthy of that hon. gentleman.


Mr. ADSHEAD:: Did I understand the hon. gentleman to say that at the Dominion-provincial conference all the provinces were opposed to a federal grant for highways construction? At page 31 of the report of the conference I read that:
On the question of aid for highway construction practically all the provinces, with the exception of Quebec, favoured assistance from the federal treasury.


Mr. YENTOT:: I thought I made myself clear. I said that they opposed the granting of federal aid to anything in connection with provincial responsibilities which had any strings attached to it; and I was all the more convinced that I should support the policy which I laid down in 1919 as Minister of Public Works in New Brunswick.
In conclusion, may I express some surprise at the heat displayed by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) in his reply to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King). Really, to say the least, it was comical to hear the leader of the opposition preaching economy. When you look back on his own record and the record of his own party, no matter at what time they were in power, and then hear the present leader of that party stand up and preach economy, it is enough to make anyone laugh.


Richard Bedford Bennett: A good many of them were laughing.


Peter John Veniot: Why did he not preach and practise economy when he had the opportunity? Take him when he was Minister of Finance for a few short months in the shadow government. What did he do? You will find, if you examine the records, that this apostle of economy, this watchdog of the treasury, consented to the expenditure of some $55,000,000 without any authority from parliament, in order to help elect his friends in different parts of the country.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I am sorry I must contradict the hon. gentleman. The reports brought down by the succeeding Minister of Finance indicated-


Peter John Veniot: I thought I would bring him to his feet.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Oh no. The reports, I say, indicated that the estimates had been followed in their entirety.


Peter John Veniot: The hon. gentleman knew that between July 3 and September 14, 1926, $55,000,000 was expended without one tittle of authority from parliament; and expended where? In the very places referred to last night by his colleague from Ontario where, according to him, the construction of breakwaters and wharves was undertaken, in Quebec, and in the maritime provinces, as a sop to the Liberals. As a matter of fact, it was done in order to give a sop to the Tories in 1926; but no fault was found by my hon. friend, who to-day stands up and preaches economy. I would advise the hon. gentleman to think over his past record in regard to economy before he undertakes to lecture this side of the house.


Mr. CHURCH:: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. YOUNG (Saskatoon):: I am sure that the hon. member for Parkdale (Mr. Spence) will be quite relieved to know that I will not-


Hewitt Bostock: Order. I had not noticed that an hon. member on the other side of the house wished to speak. It is desirable, I think, that hon. members in the respective groups should speak alternately, and if the hon. member will be good enough to make way, the hon. member for Toronto Northwest (Mr. Church) will speak.


Thomas Langton Church: A good many ministers have been visiting Toronto and other parts of Ontario and have been telling the people how prosperous this country is; you have only to put your hand in your pocket to find gold and silver. But what is the situation? When the Laurier government came into power the country was spending $36,000,000 whereas to-day it is spending $400,000,000; yet it cannot afford a few dollars for a national system of good roads. What the hon. member for Parkdale (Mr. Spence) said yesterday has a good deal of common sense in it. The city of Toronto has to spend money on. roads for a radius of fifteen miles outside the city to help the farmers bring their produce in. What this country needs is a national policy in relation to good roads. We have had the most insane railway policy of any country in the world; with useless duplication and waste as a railway policy, and the Liberal party created that debt by building the Grand Trunk Pacific railway. If one fraction of that money had been spent on good roads it would have been

National Highways-Mr. Church
much better for the country. Under the Beveridge bill of the United States the federal government grants money to the state legislatures, and the states build the roads to conform to federal standard specifications.
I congratulate the Progressives for having brought up this question; as a result of this debate the good roads movement will get into politics and it will stay in politics until the government of the day attains a proper sense of its responsibility. In the last presidential election in the United States farm relief was the great issue. Where does this government stand on the question of farm relief? The automobile and motor truck have revolutionized farm transportation, and if there is one province which gets nothing for good roads from this government it is the empire province of Ontario. The government and the municipalities of Ontario have done their duty in building good roads, receiving little or nothing from this government. The municipalities throughout the country are bearing the peak load of taxation to-day, both direct and indirect; they have not the elaborate means of revenue possessed by the Dominion, 'but to-day this government is not doing its duty in this respect. In 1896 it required 836,000,000 to maintain the country; now it requires $400,000,000, but to-day we are spending very little more on good roads than we spent in 1896. We have millions of dollars for frills and fads; $2,000,000 to date for the League of Nations, $2,500,000 for the health of animals, $100,000 for an embassy in Washington and another $100,000 for an embassy in Tokyo. If we had a proper system of going through these estimates we could eliminate perhaps one-third of them and apply the money to essentials; we could build these good roads which are so necessary to-day. I have travelled all over the province of Ontario and in many cases I find that the farmers canont get their crops to market; in the Niagara district many farmers do not gather in their fruit because they cannot get it to the cities because of the cost of transportation. Ontario has spent millions of dollars building roads even in the north, where [DOT]we had to build our own branch railway, the Temiskaming and Ontario line. Ontario wanted a subsidy from this government for the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario railway, which taps the richest mining district in the world to-day, but we could not get it.
The Conservative party started this good roads movement in Ontario in 1906, and the Ferguson government has done a great deal of good in this matter. Mr. Taschereau in *Quebec has done excellent work also, but nothing has been done by this federal government for the central provinces herein. I hope the farmers will take note of the fact that while this government spends money like water, no money is available for these good roads. Any municipal treasurer would strike out about one-third of these estimates, but this government is not operating in a business way. We could stop building branch lines for a year or two and devote the money to a good roads system which would be of much greater benefit. I suppose soon we will be building branch lines to the sun, the moon and the stars.
The present road-building policy of this government seems to be one which robs Peter to pay Paul. There is no such thing as equality of treatment; some provinces get something but the older provinces get nothing. We should spend $5,000,000 a year for the next ten years in the western provinces to put them on a proper footing. In Ontario, Toronto and the Ontario government built the Toronto-Hamilton highway, and now Toronto pays 40 per cent of the cost of building and maintaining it. We should have something similar to the Beveridge bill by which the federal authorities would grant money to the provinces for the next five years for the construction of roads according to standard federal specifications. If that system were inaugurated it would be a great advantage to the people of Canada. The government cannot go to sleep on this question and say they have nothing to do with the construction of good roads. The motorists of Ontario have to pay a gasoline tax, which I believe to be absolutely illegal; I think if it were taken to the privy council it would be shown that the collection of this gasoline tax by the province is ultra vires. Last year Ontario collected several millions from this tax, and a good deal of that money has been used in the ordinary business of the province instead of being devoted to good roads while also the Ontario government spent several millions on roads.
If the federal government would spend one-tenth of the money spent on useless railways we would get somewhere. East of the city of Toronto we have four roads, the Canadian National railway double tracked; we have the Canadian Pacific railway double tracked; the old Canadian Northern and Toronto and Eastern; and to-day the government are tearing up the old Mackenzie and Mann road and selling the ties and so on. That was a useless duplication and waste of money, yet we have hardly a dollar to spend on our highways. I believe if this matter were taken up by a special committee composed of all parties of the house we might formulate a national policy which would be a credit to the country.
32S	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Young (Saskatoon)


Alexander MacGillivray Young: When
the hon. member for Parkdale (Mr. Spence) was speaking yesterday he made some reference to the members from Saskatchewan. He made the statement that they were "muzzled", but I think he took these words back after some little time. He then said that at ieast we were "struck dumb". I may say to the hon. member for Parkdale that we do not know the meaning of those words, and if he is trying to fit to us the situation in which he apparently finds himself, let me say that it does not fit.
I was very much interested in the remarks of the hon. member for Ontario (Mr. Kaiser). He enunciated one or two principles in his remarks last night which I think this house should analyze. I will read what he said:
I am surprised at the position taken by the government on this question. I am doubly surprised at the attitude taken by the speaker who stated the position of the government; 1 refer to the hon. Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning). As member for Regina his policy is to my mind absolutely incomprehensible. If I returned to Oshawa, the home of the automobile industry, and did not raise my voice in favour of the construction of good roads, I do not think my chance for re-election would be very good. Regina, represented by the Minister of Railways, secured one-half of the industry from my city during the last summer, and how any man representing a city with a large automobile industry engage therein can stand up in parliament and vote against good roads is an inconsistency quite beyond my comprehension.
In referring to the Minister of Railways the hon. member for Ontario is somewhat confused. The hon. member for Regina is one thing, but the Minister of Railways is quite another thing. The hon. member for Regina represents that constituency, but, as Minister of Railways, he equally represents every constituency in the Dominion of Canada. My hon. friend from Ontario is very much surprised ; he is usually surprised at anything this government does. For instance, when the tariff on automobiles was reduced he was surprised that that industry did not fail but continued to flourish like a green bay tree. He surprises some of us by the statements he makes,-for example, "I do not think my chance for re-election would be very good". Apparently that is a thing that concerns the hon. member for Ontario. Applying this remark to the hon. Minister of Railways I would say that while the hon. member for Regina probably takes as good care of his constituency as any other member in this house, nevertheless, should his national duties as Minister of Railways conflict with the interests of his constituency, I am proud to say that he would do what was in the interests I'Mr. Church.]
of the nation rather than what was in the interests of his own constituency. Apparently my hon. friend from Ontario is of the opinion that when a policy is to be inaugurated, he must consider first and foremost whether that policy will best protect the industry in his own home town.
I believe, Mr. Speaker, that the duty of a member is primarily to his constituency, but there are many things which affect not only the constituency but also the nation at large. I would say to the hon. member for Ontario, and to every hon. member of this house, that he should not look merely to the effect it is going to have in his constituency; he should look to the effect it will have on the nation at large. The hon. member has certainly defined the Tory doctrine as clearly as it could be done. His principle is that they must protect the interests of the few, while the Liberal party would say that they must look to the effect this resolution will have on the needs of the masses of the people of this country.


James Houston Spence: That is ail we want.


Alexander MacGillivray Young: The fact that
this resolution was introduced by an hon. member of this house is to me somewhat peculiar. We are sitting here as federal members and looking at things from the national viewpoint, and to have a resolution of this kind come before us in this way does not seem to me to be proper. Primarily this matter is one for which the provinces are responsible. It may be, as in other matters in which the provinces are primarily responsible, that this parliament might assist, but the primary responsibility rests and remains with the provinces. Surely the provinces should consider the whole question from A to Z and find out what is involved in this whole national project, and then when the matter had been thoroughly investigated you would expect the governments of all the provinces to make representations to this parliament asking for federal aid. Is that the situation here? We find that the provinces have not investigated this matter to find exactly what it means, or have not asked this parliament for any specific help. On the other hand, we find an hon. member of this house trying to say to the provinces, who have not considered the scheme, "We are going to tell you that you should have some better roads in the shape of a national highway." In my humble judgment the matter should be approached from absolutely the opposite angle.
I come from the province of Saskatchewan. It is a large province; it is a new province,

National Highways-Mr. Young (Saskatoon)
and it is sparsely populated. As far as I am concerned I want to have the best roads that we can afford, but we must consider what would be the best way to build those roads. This resolution seems to suggest that the first thing to be taken care of is a national highway from coast to coast. Such a highway would be primarily for tourists. I am in favour of bringing in all the tourists we can, no doubt about that, and if we can afford to construct all the provincial highways we need and at the same time build this national highway, I am for building both. I am told that the tourist traffic brings a large amount of money into Canada, and I believe that is true, but I want to suggest to this house, and suggest it most seriously, that the producers of grain in the western provinces bring a much larger amount of money into this great Dominion. If the farmers of western Canada were to be asked whether they wanted a national highway which would cross their province, or the class of roads which would be market roads to get them hither and thither throughout the various parts of the country, I do not believe there is any doubt as to what answer they would make. If I were a member of the legislative assembly in the province I would be obliged to consider first how I could best serve the greatest number of the people in the province. If the question of good roads arose I would have to consider as between the producers of grain and the tourists, and I am with the producers of grain always. The hon. member who introduced this resolution apparently is more concerned in getting tourist traffic travelling from one end of this country to the other than in first getting good roads for all the producers.


Mr. KELLNER:: I would like to ask the
hon. member if he has read the resolution.


Alexander MacGillivray Young: Yes, I have,
and I think it would have been much better if the hon. member had read it himself before he submitted it. We may come to the time when in those great new western provinces we can wholly satisfy the producers with all the main market roads they require, and after that they may get a national highway. I am not opposed to a national highway; I would like to have a national highway, but I want first things considered first.
I think the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) this afternoon is very greatly indebted to the hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Manion) for the suggestion as to that 600 miles of roadway. I should like to ask him seriously: Does he really believe that the construction of 600 miles of roadway will
complete what is contemplated in the resolution before us to-day? If so I do not think he has read the resolution, and I suggest to the mover of the resolution that he instruct the leader of the opposition as to its meaning. The hon. member for Fort William told us yesterday that there was a gap of approximately 600 miles in western Ontario. I want to ask the leader of the opposition: Does he believe, if this money were finally voted as suggested in the resolution, that the only thing on which he would spend the money would be the 600 miles in western Ontario. I think he would not say that; in fact, I am quite sure he would not say it. In that case he is bound to come to the other conclusion that more than 600 miles of roadway are required. There are continuous roads going through Ihe provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Does the leader of the opposition believe in those western provinces we have what might be called a national highway? I do not think any hon. member is deceived by any such suggestion as that. We know quite well that what is contemplated in the resolution is a highway with a permanent road surface, one on which you can go from coast to coast. As the Prime Minister so well stated to-day, this would cost an immense amount of money and he placed it at $200,000,000. I ask every hon. member, no matter what part of Canada 'he comes from, but particularly hon. members from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta: would they, at the present time, sanction the appropriation of any such large amount of money for a national highway? I ask them to consider that question seriously before they record any vote in favour of the resolution. We have to-day listened to many things that have very little to do with the motion under consideration; we wandered off into budget debates; we were almost in high heaven. I was wondering where the leader of the opposition was going to end, he was getting so far into the clouds. He had me completely beclouded with figures, and after listening to his very lofty speech, I was not just sure whether he was really in favour of the resolution or not.
In conclusion, I am not opposing a national highway, and if it is going to be constructed, I can tell you where to build it. But for parliament to say under these circumstances that it is prepared now to support the motion, would be to act on insufficient evidence. It may be possible, in spite of the fact that it is not a good principle for one authority to tax and another to spend, that parliament at some future period might expend a certain
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amount of money on this project and the money be well spent. But before that should be done we should have exhaustive information as to the whole project, and the provinces themselves must initiate the scheme. After that it will be time enough for us to say what assistance we shall give.


Hon. J. E. SINCLAIR (Queens):: Mr. Speaker. I am sure we have listened with much interest to the debate that has continued so long, and I do not think it would be proper for me to allow it to conclude without saying a word on behalf of the province that is separated by the Northumberland strait from the mainland of Canada. It cannot be expected that we would be so much interested in the building of a national highway as those who live on the mainland of Canada where travel by automobile can proceed without interruption from one end of the country to the other. For that reason I wish to say a few words in order to convey to the house what I believe is the consensus of opinion of the electorate of Prince Edward Island.
It is a long time since this matter was first brought before the house; it was discussed many years in parliament before it was accepted by parliament. In fact, it was several years after it had been discussed at great length before the parliament of Canada was asked to accept it as a means of creating work for the returned soldiers. In 1919, when it was introduced' by the then Minister of Railways, if hon. members will refer to the debates they will see that in his short speech of introduction of the resolution, a speech which comprised only a little more than a page of Hansard, he emphasized in three different paragraphs that it should be accepted as a means for creating work to re-establish the soldiers who were coming back from the war. We are far enough removed from the war to forget that reason; it cannot any longer be used to create an impression upon the members of the house or the country generally.


John Wesley Edwards: The minister at that time said distinctly that that was a minor reason, not the main reason by any means.


John Ewen Sinclair: If my hon.
friend will refer to page 730 of Hansard of 1919, he will see that the minister, in introducing the resolution, gave that reason as the first reason to be mentioned.


John Wesley Edwards: He gave that as one reason.


John Ewen Sinclair: He emphasized it three times in the course of the short speech of introduction he made at that time.


John Wesley Edwards: I do not
dispute that, but I say that before he concluded his remarks, he said that was not the main reason for the proposition.


John Ewen Sinclair: Then I must
infer, from the remarks made by the hon. member for Frontenac-Addington, that the then Minister of Railways concluded his remarks without giving the main reason to the house, because I read the speech completely this afternoon and I found it as I stated to the house.


John Wesley Edwards: I read it
also.


John Ewen Sinclair: If my hon.
friend finds a reason that was more emphasized than the one to which I referred, I should be glad if he would point it out to the house.
Another point that came up when this question was introduced into the house in 1912 was:	Should the greater be taxed to provide
facilities for the few? That is a principle we should not lose sight of when we are considering such resolutions as the one now before the house, because conditions in Canada differ in the various sections of the ocuntry. The greater part of the revenue derived by our federal exchequer is raised through the customs, and the far-away sections of the country are made to contribute according to their ability equally with the more centra! parts of the country. I think, therefore, that when we distribute federal moneys in the way the highway appropriation of $20,000,000 was distributed, the smaller provinces are placed in an unfavourable position as compared with the larger provinces to share in such a grant. My view in the past has been, and I am of the same opinion still, that it is better for the Dominion of Canada to consider the matter carefully in conference with the provinces, rather than to distribute federal monies in the way proposed in this resolution. It is better to give the provinces an increase in their subsidies, if that be necessary, to cover conditions that have grown up since the last adjustment of subsidies was made. That, it seems to me, is the fairer way. In addition, it gives the provinces the right to vote their monies for the purposes most needed in the province, whether it be the building or upkeep of roads or for some other purpose.
Dealing more particularly with the amendment that was moved by the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) for a national

National Highways-Mr. Sinclair (Queens)
highway to be constructed across Canada, I just wish to say that the same argument holds good only in a more pronounced way, because the smaller provinces, and especially that province which is separated from the mainland of Canada, would not be in a position to benefit from a large expenditure of that kind in a degree comparable with the more central portions of Canada. So I feel sure that those of use who come from the eastern provinces and particularly Prince Edward Island, cannot accept the resolution of the hon. member as readily as those from the more central portions of Canada.
The expenditures that the provinces were called upon to make under the Highways Act of 1919 were met entirely by borrowings by the provinces, and in Prince Edward Island the provincial debt was doubled by the amount it was necessary to raise to take advantage of the highway grant. As has been very well stated by the hon. the Postmaster General, (Mr. Veniot), in the maritime provinces including Prince Edward Island, they did not attempt to build roads to the standard aimed at and attained in the larger provinces. In fact, they could undertake only a system of drainage of properly constructing the bridges, and of making the roads passable over the low and rough places. They did not in any degree attempt under the highway grant to surface the roads, because that would have entailed such a large expenditure in the importation of the necessary material from the other maritime provinces that it would have used up the whole grant. To extend the highway grant for another five years, therefore, would mean further heavy borrowings for the small province of Prince Edward Island, in order to put herself in a position where she could obtain the benefits extended to the other provinces.
I might add that at the time the monies were being expended the government of Prince Edward Island, in order to get the full benefit -of'the forty per cent from the federal treasury within the time that was allowed, passed an order in council expressing the view that they would not be able to earn the full amount, and asking the federal government to allow the cities of Charlottetown and Summer-.side to put up the sixty per cent and continue the highway through the cities. This was accepted by the federal government and the cities put up the sixty per cent.
I might point out that the same is true with respect to other legislation of this nature which has been passed by the Dominion government-the Technical Education Act, for instance. The matter came before the royal
commission investigating maritime claims, and the view that had been presented to the government on several occasions was again presented to the commission, which in its report recommended that a distinction be made so far as Prince Edward Island was concerned in the distribution of the funds granted by this parliament for technical education, namely, that it be extended in that province to agricultural education, as was not the case in the other provinces. It was also recommended by the commission that it be extended, if possible, to giving instruction to fishermen. So I think the house will agree with me that in passing legislation of the kind that is asked for by this resolution, the smaller provinces as well as those in the more distant parts of Canada are placed under a handicap as compared with those provinces which are more centrally located.
Further, we have no demands from the electors in our province for legislation of this kind. There is no movement among the people there for a larger grant or for a renewal of the grant of federal aid to highways. But there is a movement among our people for expenditure by the federal government in other directions, and I think it is only fair for me to interpret the wishes expressed by our people and to say that if moneys are to be expended by the federal exchequer in aid of transportation, many petitions have been circulated among the people of Prince Edward Island, by the farmers' organizations, for instance, endorsed by the boards of trade of the province as well as by the maritime board of trade at its meeting at Halifax, asking for railway extensions to different parts of the province, to serve the needs of the farming sections which are far removed from railway facilities, as well as the needs of fishing centres which are lacking in proper transportation facilities.
So I think we in the east must be guided by the wishes of the people as expressed calmly and in the light of their everyday needs, that it is better to spend federal money under the British North America Act than encroach upon the field allotted to the provinces. I would be much better satisfied to see aid given along the line that is asked for by the people of our province, rather than impose upon them expenditures that they themselves have not expressed a desire to undertake. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I shall oppose the amendment as well as the motion.
Mr. J. E. LiETELLIER DE ST. JUST
(Compton) (Translation): Mr. Speaker, I had no intention of participating in the discussion on the resolution of the hon. member for
332	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Letellier de St. Just
Athabaska (Mr. KeMner), and taking up uselessly the precious time of this house, had not the hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. McGiblbon) criticized, yesterday, the attitude of members on your right, sir, while debating the question of good roadis, a reflection which can be found at page 306 of Hansard and reads as follows:
A good proportion of the members to your right, Mr. Speaker, come from rural ridii^s where roads are almost as essential sis daily bread, and to me it is an interesting sight to watch them sitting there and allowing themselves to be led by the Minister of Railways practically in silence to oppose this resolution. I think I can speak with a good deal of confidence when I say that not one of those members represents the opinions of the people who sent him to this house.
Having, sir, the honour to represent the beautiful and extensive riding of Compton, I
do not wish for a moment to be thought deaf to such a challenge because I recall the splendid highway measure adopted by the province of Quebec and dating from 1912. I was delighted a few moments ago to hear the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) express himself so eloquently on behalf of the interests of the whole country. The house should without hesitation accept the suggestion which he made to refer this resolution to a committee that would study all its aspects and arrive at some fair decision in the interest of the whole of Canada. I was also pleased to listen to the hon. Postmaster General (Mr. Veniot), that very energetic person admired by all the people in this country and so able to face the criticism of our opponents on the opposite side of the house. As I reside in a locality bordering the state of Maine which divides Quebec from New Brunswick, I often have the opportunity of meeting people of that province and I have many times heard them express much regret at the defeat of the hon. Postmaster General as Prime Minister of New Brunswick. It is due to him if the policy of good roads was adopted in his province and I must congratulate him on that score.
Likewise it is due to the Hon. Sir Lomer Gouin, ex-Prime Minister of the province of Quebec, if we have to-day so many good roads scattered throughout the province. It is entirely to his credit, he is the father of those roads. In 1912, the Quebec legislature adopted a splendid measure which the people then were not very familiar with. I heard a great many fanners of various municipalities at the time the government were offering to lend them money at 3 or 2 per cent, refuse it fearing that the act might be contrary to public welfare. In 1912, the Quebec govern-
ment succeeded in negotiating a loan of more than $10,000,000 to begin the construction of gravel, macadam and asphalt roads. After this loan had been exhausted, the people then began to realize the importance of good roads. 1 personally organized delegations that called on the Quebec premier in order to request him to help certain municipalities which, after haying had doubts about the advisability of the program of good roads, wished to obtain the necessary money to build them. I heard the then prime minister tell them: "Gentlemen, this is the outcome of a good measure, when well understood. All I regret is that, in the present money market condition, it is more difficult to obtain money on such terms. I am equally well disposed and as soon as I will be able to obtain a loan on suitable terms, rest assured that I shall again be ready to listen to your requests."
We fully understand the importance of good roads in the province of Quebec. Nevertheless I think it is an excellent thing for the Dominion government to adopt a cautious policy which will permit it, from year to year, to reduce our national debt. Before we further proceed and trespass on the autonomy of the provinces, I think the government should move cautiously, as the provinces have legislated on good roads, they have spent thousands and thousands of dollars, and I am of the opinion that it would not be wise for the Dominion government, previous to studying sufficiently this measure, to agree with the motion before the house. I think that the people have no reason to be offended on the attitude taken, at present, by the government, so worthy of praise for its administration of the country's affairs. To my mind the resolution should not be adopted previous to its being sufficiently studied and before the provinces consent to shoulder their share of the burden and accept the Dominion government's invitation. Often it takes years before an important measure is carried. I was referring just now to my constituency, especially that part known in Quebec as Frontenac, whose chief town I inhabit and which I have the honour of representing, together with my colleague, the hon. member for Beauce (Mr. Lacroix). In 1916, we appealed to the provincial government, as I mentioned a few moments ago, in order to obtain the building of the district road known to-day as the Victoriaville-Woburn highway and, in the direction of Beauce, St. George-Wobum highway. In 1916, we met at Megantic and discussed the important problem of district roads which later on will become international highways. Seventeen years

National Highways-Mr. Ryckman
have since elapsed, and I wish to inform the house that in the course of the year 1930, we shall have the honour of inaugurating that highway which will link Quebec to the state of Maine extending as far as Portland.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.
Mr. LETEULIER DE ST. JUST:	Mr. Speaker, when the house nose at six o'clock, I was just on the point of discussing the importance of having tourists in Canada. It is certainly due to the development and improvement of our highways that such a large number of tourists have visited not only the province in which I reside, but all the provinces of Canada.
If we glance over the statement of the Bank of Montreal, for the month of July, 1928, we note that thanks to the continuous flow of American and other foreign tourists, although the latter in smaller numbers, the retail trade as a whole, improved considerably during the summer season. It is also seen in the same statement that the money spent by tourists amounted to $250,000,000. Indeed, this is a colossal figure! It is of great import that the various provinces use discretion, they must endeavour to improve their roads throughout their respective territories. However, if we examine the various aspects of the question; if we consider how our railways fare in this matter, both the Canadian Pacific and the National railways-owing to the development of good roads and the heavy traffic of vehicles of all kinds: motor trucks, motor-bus and other motor cars, during the summer season, and this is an appreciable advantage for those who love to travel through our provinces-we are aware that it is very detrimental to our railway companies, owing to the fact that they are obliged to reduce the number of trains, and, if we do not show foresight, it will become difficult to regulate the passenger service as it should be.
For these various reasons, I think we should seriously study the measure at present under consideration, both as regards the viewpoint of railways and the administration of the country.
We are all aware that the hon. Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) has a great responsibility towards this country. Often we hear it said that a member's burden is heavy; however, if we stop to think for a moment and consider the enormous responsibility which weighs on the Minister of Finance who is the barometer of the country's finances, there
is need to look carefully into this resolution, in order to avoid the disaster which might befall us should we become too inconsistent The economic stability of a country-we all know-begins with the good management of municipalities which make up the provinces as well as the good administration of the latter themselves, and, through this medium, the federal government is assured of being able to suitably administer our affairs, and each year report a surplus instead of a deficit.
We have been fortunate enough to witness heretofore, an ever increasing trade throughout the country. This allows the Minister of Finance and his colleagues in the cabinet to announce in the budget, each year, a reduction in taxation as well as a decrease of the national debt.
I think, Mr. Speaker, that this resolution should be withdrawn, otherwise I shall be forced to vote against it for the numerous reasons I have enumerated. It often occurs that we do not give sufficient time to questions submitted to us. However, it is true that either the permanent or special committees of this house closely examine these questions, which affords us some guarantee. Thus we have a sound federal administration, one that the people of Canada will appreciate, not only in the course of this year but in future years.


Edmond Baird Ryckman: I hope my words in this debate will be very few, but I am driven to my feet because of an erroneous impression which, I believe, has characterized this debate from its very beginning. It started when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) said, as reported at page 232 of Hansard:
The constitution determines what are properly federal obligations and what are properly provincial obligations. Until we have reduced the debt further and have been able to reduce the taxes upon the people, it seems to me that this matter might very well stand. For that reason I shall vote against the motion.
That was followed, in about the same strain and to the same effect, by the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), who announced that he would vote against the motion. The implication, the plain implication, in the language of the Minister of Finance was that what was asked by this resolution fell properly within the province's authority and should be a charge upon the taxation which the province might impose. That is altogether incorrect. Further, the hon. member for Saskatoon (Mr. Young), who spoke but a few minutes ago, stated that this was a matter in which the provinces should get together and should determine what ought to be done, and then
334	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Ryckman
ask the Dominion government to act. Anyone who reads the British North America Act will feel that such a statement as that is almost foolish.
Four months ago I listened in the supreme court to an argument wherein it was said by counsel for this government that he was instructed' by the Attorney General that, where there was any matter that referred not only to national interests but to interests between two provinces, immediately the subject matter fell within the control of the Dominion. I am not supporting that argument, but I am saying that this resolution as originally placed upon the order paper stated that it dealt with a national highway, and therefore that is a subject wholly within the competence of this parliament. Even if the matter were interprovincial it would be within the competence of this parliament, contrary to the impression left by the hon. member for Compton (Mr. Letellier) as I followed him. Even the hon. member for Ontario (Mr. Kaiser) said he regretted that the British North America Act, passed over sixty years ago, had not made provision for this particular case; he said that could not be, of course, because at that time there were no motor vehicles. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is absolutely declared by the British North America Act that this matter of a national highway or of interprovincial highway communication falls strictly within the terms of the act, so it was quite amusing to hear the Prime Minister state at least twice that this was peculiarly a question for the provinces. I deny that statement; I say it is particularly a question for the Dominion. In this connection I would refer to sections 91 and 92 of the British North America Act and particularly lo subsection 10 of section 92, which specifies the subjects which come within the peculiar jurisdiction of the provinces, as follows:
Local works and undertakings other than such as are of the following classes:-
a. Lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, telegraphs, and other works and undertakings connecting the province with any other or others of the provinces, or extending beyond the limits of the province.
In order to make this more emphatic, subsection 29 of section 91 states that within the peculiar jurisdiction of the Dominion, contrary to what the Prime Minister led the house to believe this afternoon, fall all such classes of subjects as are expressly excepted in the enumeration of the classes of subjects by this act assigned exclusively to the legislatures of the provinces. So according to these two sections the jurisdiction of the Dominion i3 absolute in regard to communication be-
TMr. Rvckman.]
tween one province and another or several provinces. This matter of a national highway is one with which the Dominion must deal; if a province attempted to do so in collaboration with another province the objection would be taken at once that the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the Dominion.
Do not let anyone go away with the idea that the provinces should collaborate in this way or that there is any matter in relation to this resolution, either as it originally appeared or as it has been amended, which comes within the jurisdiction of the provinces. If it is beneficial to have a national highway; if it is desirable to have an interprovincial highway of this kind this parliament must decide what should be done. From what has fallen from the lips of members on the other side of the house I think it is generally agreed that, if we did not have to pay for it, it would be in the general interests of Canada to have such a highway. Other hon. members of this house have pointed out more strongly than I can hope to do the benefits which would accrue from such a highway. A short time ago in Toronto I had the pleasure of listening to an address delivered by Sir Henry Thornton before the Canadian Institute of Industrial Traffic Men on the subject of "How to sell Canada to the world." How are we to popularize Canada? How are we to get people looking towards Canada and to get settlers for our country? I do not know any better way than by showing them the goods, and I know of no better way of displaying the goods than by bringing the people here to see what Canada is and has to offer.
We were told by the hon. member for Saskatoon (Mr. Young) that as far as he is concerned he stands for the farmer against the tourist. So do I, but I stand for the farmer and also for the golden-egg-laying tourist, and no one should know better than the Minister of Finance what those tourists mean to Canada. How often have we heard the Prime Minister tell us that the legislation brought in by this government is intended to favour the four great basic industries of Canada? I say, Mr. Speaker, that I know of no better way to advance the interests of the farmer, the miner, the lumberman and even the fisherman than by a national highway which will bring us the golden eggs of the tourist traffic.
A rather cheap gibe, if I may use the term, was oast upon members of parliament by the Minister of Finance, although I do not believe he was referring to members on this side of the house; he must have been prompted by his experience with his own party. He said

National Highways-Mr. Ryckman
that at the beginning of the session demands rolled in upon him for subventions and aids of one kind or another, but that at the close of the session the members on this side of the house were unanimous in condemning the government for its extravagance. During this session, and any other session I may be able to attend, I purpose supporting a national highway for Canada. I have no interest but that of the Dominion; I am not aligned with those who have been described as preferring the provinces as against the Dominion. That will be my course throughout this parliament. And my course throughout this parliament, and any other I have the privilege of attending, will be to condemn the government for its obvious extravagance. Why? In the special matter that is before us we have the opportunity of expending money-I believe it would be very little if the government got together and tried to solve this problem-in a wise way, and a wise expenditure is the soundest and truest economy. This government can spend the money and get it back tenfold if they will only listen to this resolution and the amendment.
I have been interested in listening to the efforts that have been made to defeat this resolution. One argument put forward by the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning) was to the effect that we had $2,000,000,000 invested in railways and we should be careful in the building of good roads because we might interfere with the receipts of those railways. How futile an argument of that kind must seem to anyone supposed to know as much as the Minister of Railways should know. Documentary evidence can be found that the automobile industry has brought more actual net cash income to the railways than has been taken away by any short-haul trips made by motor vehicles in carrying either passengers or freight.
If you want to build up a country, build up its industries. The Minister of Railways referred to one case which comes closest to supporting his theory, although it is still a long way off, and mentioned Great Britain. Great Britain is preeminently a short-haul country, but what have the railways been doing there? The railways of Great Britain had been paying exorbitant dividends, and it was found that money could be saved by the use of motor vehicles. The railways have tried to meet that situation by competing with automobile traffic, and they find that they can still pay dividends although, not as large as were previously paid. Who on the other sidp will say that that result is not a good thing
for that country? I do not believe the prosperity of our railways would in any way be adversely affected should this resolution
pass.
The government, instead of being at outs with the provinces, should enter into consultation with them, with the idea of using any stretches of road that could be used-should make up their minds that they were going to bridge the gaps, whether they be six hundred or a thousand miles-we should have throughout Canada the best highway we can possibly get. Show Canada to the Americans. I would take half the money-I am speaking at random-that is given to the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Forke) and I would spend that on national highway construction. I would bring the American people over here and show them what a desirable country we have. I am sure we would get settlers, settlers with money, the class we desire to get, people who would populate this country and become Canadians. In that way the prosperity of Canada would be upbuilt.
No one can justify his vote on this question on the ground that this graot is peculiarly a matter for the provinces, notwithstanding what the right hon. the Prime Minister has said. It is not a maitteT for the provinces; it is a matter for the Dominion of Canada. That being so, why cannot the government go right ahead and solve this problem on a business basis? It would not cost the country too much money, and we could effect the result which all of us desire.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that if the government and its supporters oppose this vote, the fact will be made widely known. I do not think the Prime Minister will take much advice from me, but I will tell him that I cannot conceive of any matter which has been before this house, certainly not at this session, which would reflect more strongly against the government than a decision that this resolution, asking that the government take this matter into consideration, should not carry.


Mr. E. J. YOUNG (Weyburn):: Unlike my friend the hon. member for Saskatoon (Mr Young), I am not in favou-r of building a national transcontinental highway. One of my reasons for not being in favour of such a road is that there are too many men like my bom. friend from Saskatoon who are ready to tell the government the exact ;plaoe where that road should go. If w>e decide to build such a road I would be prepared to offer proof that the proper place to run i.t would be through the city of Weybum. I have no
336	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Young (Weyburn)
doubt, that the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), would be quite ready to prove that it should run through the city of Regina, and my hon. friend from Saskatoon would most likely offer proof that it should go through the city of Saskatoon. Even my hon. friend from North Battleford (Mr. McIntosh) would probably be able to prove that it should run through his oiity. Some of us were discussing this morning where this road should run and we came bo the conclusion that the only solution of the problem was to build two highways instead of one.


Mr. RYCKM  AN@: That is better than
none.


Edward James Young: Then, having
built two highways, we would have bo build another, and then a fourth; and we would be meit with demands to build other roads from the boundary to connect with these highways so that the American tourist would have access to them.
Let us consider for a moment what this would cost. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) pointed out this afternoon that the initial cost of a trans-Canada highway would be 8200,000,000. The interest alone on that would be $10,000,000 per year, and maintenance would be at least $20,000,000 per year. There is a total sum of $30,000,000 per year for interest and maintenance alone. When you add to that by all the miles and thousands of miles of other roads leading to it, what is going to be the result? If we embark upon a policy of national highways such as is suggested in the resolution we shall find ourselves at the mercy of a rude stream from which we cannot escape. We are told that they have wonderful roads in the United States. We were told yesterday that they spent some $700,000,000 in building roads. It is true that they have beautiful roads, but what is the result? Where are the farmers who are paying for them? We are told that the road tax there amounts to $4 an acre. Do we want to bring about in this country a condition whereby a farmer will be compelled to pay $4, $2 or even $1 an acre road tax?
It is said that the interest and maintenance of a single highway would be $30,000,000; if you add to that maintenance and upkeep of all the other roads leading to it, and the demand for other roads, I predict without fear of contradiction that inside of ten years we shall have a road tax over and above all our present taxes amounting to $100 a family. I wonder how our friends, the Progressive members who are advocating this highwa3% can go to their constituents, farmers out in the back country who have not a road
IMr. E. J, Young.]
to market, who cannot get out with their wheat and other produce, and say to them: "No, we could not get you a road; we could not get you a reduction in taxation or a reduction in the tariff, but we have voted money for a fine highway from Ottawa so that we members can ride back in our cars instead of having to ride on the railway."
I notice that a good deal of the support for this resolution comes from the Ontario members. I also heard the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) say that there was a gap of only some 600 miles to complete, and I think he said we were all agreed that the biggest expenditure in connection with this highway would be in Ontario. I can well understand why the members from that province would advocate federal aid for the construction of a highway which would be built almost entirely within their province.


James Houston Spence: Would the hon. member
expect the province to build that strip of 700 miles of road around lake Superior?


Edward James Young: I am not suggesting that it be built at all, but I say that if this scheme goes through, it will be largely a grant to the single province of Ontario while we in the west shall have to go on with our dirt roads. We shall be told:	Oh, they
do not cost very much and we will spend our money on the expensive sections in Ontario and British Columbia.


James Houston Spence: Nobody advocates that.


Edward James Young: This road if
built will inevitably come into competition with our railways. Let us consider for a moment how we are treating our railways. When we want a railway company to build a branch line into a district, the first thing they have to do is to buy the right of way. They have to survey it; they have to grade it; they have to lay down the track. After that they have to supply the equipment and keep it in operation. That having been done, we turn round and build a highway on which we allow motor buses and motor trucks to carry on business in competition with the railway. We make the railway buy the right of way, build the road-bed, keep it in repair and operate it; but when their competitors, the motor buses and motor cars, come along, we say to them: We will give you a road-bed; we will maintain it for you; you can have it absolutely free and you can go and compete with the railway. That policy will lead us to the point where some day the railway companies will come to us and say: " If you want us to continue in business, you will have to put us on an equal basis with our competitor; you will have to buy our right of

National Highways-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac)
way, build our road-bed, maintain and operate it." That will be the result if we embark on this policy of terrific development of highways which, after all, are of service only to visitors to Canada and not to the actual producers in the country. I have heard of families who will spend all their income in entertaining their friends and have nothing left for their children. That is precisely what we are asked to do, namely, to spend all these millions of dollars on tourist roads which will be of little benefit to our people. I am heartily in favour of building market roads for the people of the country who require them in order to get their produce to market, and of leaving these high grade tourist roads to some future time.


John Wesley Edwards: Mr. Speaker, I shall occupy but a very
few minutes of the time of the house in speaking on this resolution and the amendment thereto. I speak on it because I was present in the house in 1919 when the $20,000,000 grant was made and I gave that grant my support. I desire to offer my congratulations to the hon. member who moved the resolution (Mr. Kellner), and bo assure him, as I think I can from what I have heard, that whether or not this resolution carries, if we may accept words at their face value, he has done a very great service to the Dominion of Canada in arousing certain gentlemen on the' other side of the house to a sense of their duty regarding extravagance and reckless expenditure in this country, although they have appeared so far to be perfectly callous to all that sort of thing. I noted a remark of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) to the effect that it was all very well for hon. members to give their support to this resolution, and he intimated that that was being done in order that they might make good fellows of themselves, but that it was up to the government to defend the treasury. I wondered at the time whether he was more concerned! about the treasury or about making a good fellow of himself when he and his government agreed to raise the salaries of all the deputy ministers in this country.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Not all.


John Wesley Edwards: Well, all but one or two. I may point out that, in that regard alone, if the proposal goes through, he has committed the country for all time to come to a capital expenditure of $575,000 at 4 per cent. I wonder if he was thinking of defending the public treasury when he was tearing down whole city blocks in order to make parks in this city. I cannot help thinking that a national highway across Canada would probably have done more to advertise this country than tearing down two or three blocks in the city of Ottawa.
Prior to confederation the provinces collected their revenues mainly from customs and excise duties. When confederation was proposed, the question very naturally arose: What will be the source of our revenue? The Dominion proposed to take over the customs and excise and we shall get no revenue from that source. It was understood and agreed at that time that the Dominion government would make use of certain lines of taxation and the provinces of certain other lines. But it was agreed that the Dominion, in view of what the provinces were giving up in connection with such taxes as customs and excise, should pay the provinces an annual subsidy.
I believe the subsidy which was thought to be fair and reasonable in 1867 amounted to about 20 or 25 per cent of the total revenue of the Dominion of Canada at that time. There is no doubt that expenses have grown enormously in the Dominion, and some of them very properly so. There is equally no doubt that expenditures have grown, and grown legitimately, in the various provinces. The point I wish to impress upon the house is this, that at confederation it was thought to be a fair proposition to hand over to the provinces about twenty or twenty-five ^ per cent of the total revenues of the Dominion; that was done by way of subsidy. Although I have not figured it out, I venture the statement that if that was considered a good principle to work on at that time, I do not believe that the provinces are receiving by way of subsidy from the Dominion to-day, in lieu of all that they have given up-the right to certain kinds of taxation and so forth- three per cent of the revenues of this Dominion.	.
It has been said that you may judge the progress of a country by its transportation facilities. In the old days, long before automobiles came into use, there were two mam m'eiams of tmanisipoirta.tion, the railway and the canal. All governments in this country have committed themselves to the giving of assistance to railways; that is one way o transporting goods, and they have justified giving such assistance on the ground that the construction of a certain line of railway for *the carrying of goods is for the general benefit of Canada. And similarly with the expenditures that 'the federal government has made on canals. So it is quite proper to take money out of the public treasury to assist in building a road called a railroad, or

338	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Edwards (Frontenac)
An. building a transportation 'line called a canal, if you choose to send your goods by those two means.
But things have changed in the last twenty-five or thirty years. To-day we have amto-miobilies. I venture the statement that if we had had automobiles in those earlier days when governments recognized railways and canals as means of transportation for the general benefit of Canada, the governments of that day would have recognized the motor highway as a means of transportation, just as they did the railways and the canals. The fact is there and oanniot be disputed, that in the changed conditions which have arisen since automobiles came into general use, highways are of very great importance, not only in respect of tile tourist trade, but on the transporting of goods from one part of the country to another.
Reference has been made by the Minister of Finance to the value of the tourist trade to this country-$200,000,000 a year or more. I think he also said he was informed that the tourists who came into Canada last year consumed over some 15,000,000 pounds of New Zealand butter. He may not have mentioned that it was New Zealand butter, but that, of course, is whiat he had in his mind. He was, mo doubt, working up to a defence of the Australian and New Zealand agreements, getting ready, I presume, for the time when his budget will be brought down.
The resolution asks the government to give consideration to the advisability of constructing a highway across Canadla. It is significant at least that those on the government benches who have opposed this resolution and stated their intention of voting against it have, I think without exception, at some time or another favoured the construction of some kind of highway across Canada. I think they appreciate the value that it would be in bringing the provinces doser together and in advertising Canada; but the time, they say, is not opportune.
It has been stated by the right hon. the Prime Minister and by the Minister of Finance that this method of spending money is vicious in principle. The Minister of Finance took the ground that is was not right for parliament to enter upon a line of expenditure the conditions of which would force the provinces, whether they willed it or mot, to spend money and consequently raise the taxation of the people. A good deal can be said in favour of that argument. I should like to be able to assume that those who used that argument were sincere in doing so, but I cannot believe that, because the members [Mr. J. W. Edwards. 3
of thie government who have advanced that argument are the very persons who have violated that principle in passing the old age pension act; about that there is no question.
It has been suggested that the building of roads is a matter for the provinces alone, and that therefore the provinces should look after it; it is a provincial matter solely, they say, and therefore we should not interfere in it. I do not agree with that contention, and again I say that those who have advanced that argument have not been consistent. We might say that this government has no right to vote a dollar of money for educational purposes, but it has done so time and again, and in doing so, if you adhere strictly to the rule, it has violated the principle laid down that education belongs, not to the Dominion, but solely to the provinces. We have, in a sense, violated that same principle in regard to other grants made for various purposes. The government consider, for instance, that it would be a good thing to do away with level crossings, but they recognize the fact that you cannot expect people in the particular localities concerned to bear all that expense, so^ they set apart a sum of money and say: W e will assist you. The government also recognized that it would 'be a good thing to have cold storage plants established here and there throughout the country. They knew that the people of the localities in which they were constructed could not be expected' to pay the entire cost of building them, and so the government said: To encourage you we will put our hand into the treasury and give you some assistance. Here we have before the house now the proposal to build a national highway which would be a very great advantage to the whole of Canada. It would advertise Canada throughout the world. It would bring to this country tourists by the thousands who, I believe, would cross Canada from coast to coast and return to their own countries to advertise the beauties of Canada or else to return here and make this country their permanent home. It would have many advantages, and I give this resolution my support because I believe it is a reasonable request to ask that the government should consider, and consider very seriously, the advisability of constructing such a highway across Canada.


Mr. THOMAS McMILLAN (South Huron):: Mr. Speaker, the question which is under discussion is the motion which has been, moved by the hon. member for Athabaska (Mr. Kellner). It reads as follows:
Whereas the need for establishment of national highways is greater than in 1919;

National Highways-Mr. McMillan
And whereas in that year the Dominion government recognized its responsibility in this matter by a substantial grant, which grant is now exhausted;
Therefore be it resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should consider the advisability that a further federal grant be made to cover the next five years' development of highway construction.
And the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) has moved an amendment thereto, to provide for a national highway across Canada at the earliest possible date.
I am amused, if not surprised, by the tactics of our hon. friends across the way. That men of such commanding ability, many of *whom are from the province of Ontario, should think they could put this over the members on this side is something that I can scarcely credit, for I have a higher opinion of their good judgment. I may say that I have a very high regard for the hon. loader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett). I admire his courage and his wonderful political fighting qualities, but I am surprised that he should tackle such a subject at this time. Possibly one of the most difficult tasks in the political life of Canada has fallen to the lot of my hon. friend. To criticize the policies of a government when national affairs are not satisfactory is a comparatively easy matter; but, sir, to argue against the striking degree of success which characterizes the record of this government is difficult indeed. It seems to me that our hon. friends are driven to the last extremity in order to find some excuse for attacking the administration, and consequently they hope by this proposition to draw the wool over our eyes. Take my hon. friend from Parkdale (Mr. Spence), a man of commanding ability. I told him last evening that he had made a splendid sipeech except for the inherent weakness of his case; he was on the wrong side. He reminds me of that notable character recorded in the "Brownies of Bodesbec" under the name of Wattie Laid-law. Wattie was a real character in those Scottish days. He was always in trouble and continually appealing to his friends, one of whom would reply, "Aye, Wattie, if ye be in the right I'll help ye." This answer not appealing to his good judgment, he became quite irritated, and stamping his foot on the floor said, "She he's aye talkin' about being in the right, and in the right, but it's no when a man's in the right that he is in need of a frien', but when he is in the wrang." Then my hon. friend from Muskoka (Mr. Mc-Gibbon) seconds the attack of his colleague from Parkdale. They are both very much concerned about the farmer's welfare. They
7S594-221
remind me of the following rhyme which 1
once read in a New York journal:
"Stick to the farm", said the president To the wide-eyed country boy;
Then he hies him away to his White House home
With an air of rustic joy.
"Stick to the farm", said the railroad king To the lad who looked afar;
Then he hies him away on the double quick In his rustic private car.
"Stick to the farm", said the clergyman To the lad on the worm fence perched;
Then he lays his ear to the ground to hear A call to the city church.
"Stick to the farm," said the doctor wise To those who would break the rut;
Then he hies him away where appendix grows In bountiful crops to cut.


An hon. MEMBER:: Stick to the resolution.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


Thomas McMillan: 
Mr. E. A. LAPIERRE (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that this discussion will keep in the foreground a project which is of national importance. There is no doubt that there are but few members of this house who do not realize the tremendous importance to Canada of the -building of a national highway. We have been told by some of the previous speakers of the great benefits that a national highway would confer upon the Dominion, and one of the arguments is that the tourist traffic has brought 8276,000,000 into Canada, which amount, it is said, would be greatly increased did we have a national highway. There is also a good deal to be said with respect to the argument that the construction of a national highway would be the means of bringing closer together the people of the east and our Canadians in the west. I am therefore in favour of the principle of a national highway.
But, Mr. Speaker, I must differ with some of our friends on the opposite side on the question of granting subsidies to the provinces for the building of highways. My objection will be obvious to Ontario members who know the situation in northern Ontario. 
They are aware that north of the Severn river the construction of roads is under the control of the Northern Development Company, and that the money is spent to the satisfaction of the member, provided he is a supporter of the government. There is one reason why I maintain that any project for the construction of a national highway should first be fully considered and all its phases carefully studied. I happen to reside at the front door, so to speak, of the great gap which separates the east from the west and which has so often been referred to as the obstacle in the way of closer communication between the two extremes in Canada. If my hon. friends opposite who advocate the immediate construction of a national highway will stop to think, they will realize that from the city of Sudbury to the boundary of Manitoba there is a stretch of 700 miles of very sparsely settled country; indeed, between Sudbury and Fort William there are but very few residents except at divisional points on the Canadian Pacific. But this great barren area, which has frequently caused visitors to Canada to form a very wrong impression of the vast possibilities of that section of the province, has been declared, by one of those best fitted to pronounce judgment, to contain a greater amount of potential wealth than any other area of its size in the world. And the recent discoveries that have been made and that are being made almost daily lead us to believe that the area in question, this great gap sometimes called the Hump, will in the near future be a source of as considerable wealth as any other part of the Dominion. We believe that in the course of the next ten years we shall have in that section of Canada one of the largest and most prosperous mining areas in the world. This section of Ontario is one which will have to be traversed by the international highway. But anyone familiar with the situation must realize very well that over this territory covering some 700 miles, sparsely settled, where we have practically six months of intensely cold weather, such a highway will cost a tremendous amount of money and will be of use only to tourists travelling east and west. So that before any such undertaking is contemplated by any government we shall have to wait until this development has taken place which we foresee in the near future. It will then be time to determine where this highway shall be located. Is there any member of this house who would propose at the present time to construct a national highway from Cochrane to the boundary of Manitoba? Has anyone considered what the cost of main-

National Highways-Mr. Pouliot
tenance would be of a road from Sudbury to Fort William? These are factors that enter into the discussion, and I am prepared to accept the declaration of the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), that in time we shall evolve a system which will provide us with a national highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.


Mr. JEAN FRANCOIS POULIOT (Te-miscouata):: I listened with a great deal of interest to some of the speeches delivered on this resolution, and the fact that strikes me is thait highways are very useful to tourists, especially tourists coming from across the border. Several years ago I was rather in favour of this idea, that if the provincial governments decided to contribute a. certain sum towards the improvement and upkeep of roads, an additional amount should be subscribed by the federal government. But since then things have changed a lot. In the province of Quebec some very important roads are under the entire control of the provincial government and the municipalities have nothing .to pay for their upkeep. It is a considerable improvement, on which my friend the Minister of Roads of Quebec, the Hon. Mr. Perron, is to be warmly congratulated. This is a burden which has been taken off the shoulders of the municipalities of the province of Quebec, and I hope that the other provinces will follow that very good example.
There is another matter to which I should refer; it is this: in the upkeep of roads a great improvement has been achieved from the profits derived from the sale of liquor in the provinces. A few years ago the province of Quebec started the practice of having liquor sold by the province instead of by private individuals, and, with the exception of the two provinces of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, liquor is now sold by all provincial governments. These provinces derive a substantial profit from this sale, which profit is applied to provincial expenditures and especially to education and the construction of good roads. This is the practice in Quebec under the direction of Mr. Perron, the very able Minister of Roads.
Here is the point: Is this federal government to nurse every new movement in the provinces? Are we to have a minister of highways at Ottawa and a minister for everything else belonging to the provinces? I think the idea is absurd, and I do not think the rights of the provinces should be interfered with by any action of this government.
To sum up, Mr. Speaker, I believe this matter belongs exclusively to the provinces
Quebec has led the way and I think the other provinces should follow. Now that the different (provinces are getting substantial profits from new sources of income I think it should be quite easy for them to look after the improvement and upkeep of roadls. There might be some help from this government, but I think a national highway when it is built should be constructed by the .provinces interested in the project.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to delay the house very long on this question. The amendment states that we should construct as expeditiously as possible an all-Canadian highway from coast to coast, and I think it would be very undesirable to have this house pass that amendment to-night. The good old Book says that no man buildeth a house without first considering the cost, and I think it would be extremely unwise for us to instruct the government to build a national highway with federal funds without first knowing anything about the cost or the conditions under which it would be built. I am quite in sympathy with a national highway, and I think the government would be well advised to look into the matter seriously and without the usual political platitudes, but I am afraid I cannot support the amendment.
I am sorry that this appears to have become a party question. One of the leading Liberal papers in the province of Alberta contained a very timely editorial yesterday in which it said it was glad to see that on several questions in this house party politics had been abandoned, and for that reason men were able to speak as they thought and vote as they felt without any party club being held over them. The conclusion was drawn that the country at large was thereby much better off. I fully agree with that idea, and I think it would be a very good thing to give our attention to the merits of these questions irrespective of how they may affect the different parties.
With regard to the resolution moved by the hon member for Athabaska (Mr. Kellneri, I do not see why the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) should endeavour to place a construction upon it which is not embodied in the resolution itself. I could very well vote in favour of the suggestion that the Dominion government should consider the advisability of such a highway, and I think that is what was meant by the hon. member. When the Prime Minister endeavoured to lead the house to think that by voting for the resolution we were committing the government to some expenditure, I rather differed
342	COMMONS
National Highways-Mr. Lacombe
with him; I do not think it quite right to read into a resolution something not intended to be there. Let us take the words as they are and put our own construction upon them.
However, there is a further point to be considered; I believe the resolution itself is contradictory :	It says:
Whereas the need for establishment of national highways is greater than in 1919;
That is true; that need increases yearly, but the next statement is not correct:
And whereas in that year the Dominion government recognized its responsibility in this matter by a substantial grant, which grant is now exhausted.
If I know anything about that grant it was not given for the construction of national highways. When that money was given the provincial government of Alberta they did not attempt to build a national highway; it was not in the minds of the provincial department or the people that the money was so intended. If that were the intention we have erred; the Dominion government inspectors have erred and should be brought to task, because almost all the new roads in Alberta were built from north to south rather than from east to west. There were certain conditions attached to the granting of this money, and these conditions being fulfilled the government built the roads north and south, first to Calgary and then to the boundary line. It was a highway grant and did not in any way commit the Dominion government to a national highway.


Donald Ferdinand Kellner: Does not my hon. friend think all highways are national highways?


Herbert Bealey Adshead: It seems to me that is
begging the question. The general interpretation placed upon a national highway is that expressed in the amendment of the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael), a highway from coast to coast. In one sense of the word it might be said that every act passed by this house is more or less of a national character by its effect and reaction, but I do not think it a fair interpretation to say that every highway built by a municipality or a province is a national highway.
I have said that the Dominion government was not committed to a national highway project by the grant of 1919. I think in consideration of these facts and in consideration of the rather ambiguous wording of the resolution in that it wrongly states that the Dominion government is committed to a national highway, I cannot support either the resolution or the amendment.


Mr. LIGUORI LACOMBE (Laval-Two Mountains) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, pre-

vious to disposing of the present motion, I think that this parliament should first consider the opportunity of putting in order its own house before helping our neighbours. In fact, we have large yearly obligations which our budget shows amount to $391,000,000. Our national debt still amounts to $2,400,000,000, notwithstanding the wise administration of the present government. I therefore think it would be adding too heavy a burden on the shoulders of the Canadian ratepayers were we to undertake new obligations. It would also be, in my humble opinion, an attempt against the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces. The provinces should legislate in regard to good roads and not the Dominion government, the former collect from the ratepayers the tax on gasoline, and motor-vehicle licenses. They should therefore build and bare the upkeep themselves of their roads. Let me point out, as an example, to this house the large and beautiful province of Quebec whose magnificent national road system is the envy of all tourists who visit us during the summer season. Let me further add a word of praise with reference to a distinguished ex-premier of Quebec, the Hon. Sir Lomer Gouin, who inaugurated that truly progressive policy of our good roads. Let me also recall the truly patriotic attitude of his successor, the Hon.
L.	A. Taschereau, who still carires on that good and sound policy. Finally I wish to particularly mention the Hon. Mr. Perron, Minister of Provincial Highways. It is due to his care, foresight and energy that our national highways are an object of pride to the good old province of Quebec. The Quebec minister of roads intends to further spend $17,000,000 this year. Therefore, I am of the same opinion as the hon. member for St. Denis (Mr. Denis) who certainly delivered a remarkable speech in this house, and I think that each province should follow the example of ours and that we should not apply to the Dominion government to build our national highways.
A short while ago, I heard the hon. member for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. Edwards) trying to compare the object of the present motion with the Old Age Pensions Act. I think that this comparison has no foundation in fact since, at present, each province has its legislation on the building of good roads while the Old Age Pensions Act has not yet been adopted by ailll the provinces. I say, sir, that the question is an entirely different one and I humbly ask the house to consider on its merits.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, for all these reasons and many others which have been so forcibly and well put before this house by members who have preceded me, I shall be obliged to

National Hiyhways-Mr. Dionne
vote against the present motion if the hon. member for Athabaska (Mr. Kellner) insists on a vote.
Mr. GEORGES L. DIONNE (Matane) (Translation):	Mr. Speaker, I had no intention of taking part in the present debate, but seeing how it has broadened out, I think it is my duty to make a few remarks. First,
I wish to state that I shall make use of my maternal tongue and not of Shakespeare's language because it is not only our right but our privilege. Should anyone find fault, I will simply tell him "Honi soit que mal y pense."
Now, sir, I can well imagine a highway not only laid out or projected, but opened to traffic from a point on the Pacific coast, crossing every province of Canada and reaching a point on the Atlantic coast. I can imagine the splendid vista, the beautiful plains it would cross; I can visualize lofty mounts, splendid chains of mountains, vast forests and magnificent waterways strewn along its route. I realize also the pleasure felt by the tourist following this highway through a country replete with so varied and splendid panorama. However, on the other hand, I consider that the necessary expenditure for the construction of such an extensive road and the realization of such a scheme would be enormous, notwithstanding all the pleasure and advantages which would accrue to those who could afford the luxury of such a trip undertaken at various times. Let me say, sir, that the conception of such a highway was a happy one. I shall not take up the constitutional aspect of the question, it was discussed by experts. I shall neither search the British North America Act to find out 'whether the Dominion parliament should interfere in this business of building and opening up a highway, however, I shall abide by what has been done, for in Quebec this matter is closely looked after by the provincial legislature and we must add to the credit of our province that numerous, wide and well built roads that cross it in every direction, and that United States tourists or those of our other provinces, who have the opportunity of motoring over them, find that we have splendid and well paved roads and very interesting spots to visit.
I do not wish, sir, to further delay the house as this question has been sufficiently discussed. In closing my remarks I must take into consideration the views of those who will be called upon to pay the enormous amount necessary to build this highway and the large sums which he will be asked for its maintenance. Under these circumstances, I state that our financial situation does not allow us to grant subsidies for such undertakings. Therefore, I shall deem it my duty to vote against the motion of the hon. member for Athabaska.


Donald Ferdinand Kellner: 


Mr. HUGH ALLAN (North Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to deal briefly with the subject matter of the debate before-


Hewitt Bostock: The horn, member (Mr. Kellner) has the floor.


Donald Ferdinand Kellner: When I moved this resolution, Mr. Speaker, I did not exipeot that it would give rise to such a long or so interesting a debate. I am a little amused at the tactics adopted, by the government and their supporters. We have discussed this motion more or less regularly for two days, during which time throe of the ministers made very short speeches but the rest of them remained mute. However, this afternoon some inspiration seemed to have taken bold of the party and they came out and gave us expressions of their opinions.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) complains about the members in opposition to the government and the independent members moving resolutions early in the session involving large expenditures, and then coming back later and moving resolutions condemning the government for making large expenditures. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that that is precisely what we are here for. If we have not the privilege of criticizing expenditures or, on the other hand, offering suggestions to the government as to where the public money should be spent, I fail to see where wie would be doing any good by being present in this house. The government have sufficient support on their benches to put through any measures they want to, and unquestionably if we have not the privilege of criticizing them we are of no use here.
When I introduced this resolution I pointed out to the house that it came to me from the United Farmers of Alberta; that many members on both sidies of the bouse bad spoken in favour of it; that I had received quite a number of letters and telegrams from private individuals recommending it, and that a few days before I introduced it the hotelkeepers' association had sent me a resolution in favour of it. When the hon. Minister of Finance (Mr. Robb) spoke on this question he mentioned the hotelkeepers' association, but left out aill reference to any other association; the right ban. the Prime Minister did the same thing this afternoon. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the only reason they did that was to create a reflection against that organization, which would also include myself. I have no

National Highways-Mr. Kellner
hesitation in saying that in my bumble opinion I would 'be in just as high company with that organization, os I would be with the Liberal party.
There are many members supporting the Liberal government to-night who have spoken in favour of just such an expenditure as this. In fact, the government do not know whether or not they are in favour of it. The Prime Minister stated that if the resolution means what it sas^, the government would adopt it; I say to him that it says what it means. The Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Dunning) says that it & unconstitutional, and the Postmaster General (Mr. Veniot) is opposed to it. Where does the government stand? The Minister of Railways and Canals says it is unconstitutional, and in proof of that he submits -the statement that when the debate was in progress in 1919 some Liberal members from the west said so. That is not sufficient authority; personally I would not accept that as a very high authority and I do not think the people ait torge will do so.
A good deal of discussion has developed as to whether we are to have a national highway or whether we are to assist the various provincial governments. My contention is that under the resolution either method can be adopted, and I do not believe that the time to decide that question is during this debate. The logical course to follow would be to make a definite declaration as to whether or not we are in favour of giving any assistance and if we are in favour of giving assistance, when the legislation, if the assistance be provided in that way, is brought before the house, the house would then determine what action should be taken.
I want to make one statement in regard to a criticism which has been offered with respect to assisting provincial governments. Practically all the road building machinery that is in Canada to-day is owned by provincial governments and practically al the men who are constructing highways to-day are in the employ o-f provincial governments. It seems to me that it would be very desirable to make use oif that machinery which is now being used by the provincial governments. Of course, as the Prime Minister says, it is one government voting the money and another spending it. They are not spending it without some supervision. Unquestionably all the money that was spent under the 1919 legislation was supervised by the federal government and their engineers approved it all. I presume a similar method could be followed upon this occasion.
It has been stated that the house should not pass legislation with a string to it, and 
that was one point on which the Minister of Railways waxed quite eloquent. He even went so far as to say that when we took this money to the provincial governments they did not want to accept it. I imagine, if he had been as picturesque as he sometimes is, he would have told us that they wrapped it up in a nice little parcel and begged the pro-*vincial governments to take it, and for three or four years some of them refused. But he did not tell us why they refused. The legislation provided that 40 per cent would be spent by the federal government and 60 per cent by the provincial government, and the regulations provided that the provincial government would be at the bottom, and the federal government would be on top. It is therefore not surprising that the provincial governments would have to do their part first and I think beyond the shadow of a doubt the provincial governments would have to re-fuse to take the money until they had their roadbed ready. Saskatchewan was probably the last province to take the money under this grant. I do not think they received any of it until 1923 and possibly until 1924. The reason was this and no other, that that province did not have a mile of road on which they were justified in making application for assistance until the time they made the application.
While we are discussing the matter of having nothing to do with the provincial governments, I should like to make reference to a question that was asked in the house on February 27 of last year. The hon. member for West Kootenay (Mr. Esling) asked this question:
Did the federal government or any department thereof, enter into any agreement with the government of British Columbia, during the year 1927, for the survey of the road between Revelstoke and Golden in British Columbia? If not, has an agreement for such a survey in the present year been arranged for?
The Minister of the Interior (Mr. Stewart) replied:
The subject is under discussion.
It is all right for the ministers to argue that we should have nothing to do with the provincial governments, but evidently they have changed their opinion since last year because then, according to the statement of the Minister of the Interior, they did have undertakings with the British Columbia government. I wonder whether the incentive has changed since then, whether that government is entitled to more consideration than some of the others.
I might quote many hon. members who have spoken in the house in favour of this

National Highways-Mr. Allan
matter. The hon. member (Mr. Gardiner), who leads the group to which I belong, discussing this matter last year, spoke in favour of it. He said that in his opinion the grant should be renewed. I will not read his words. The hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Bothwell) also spoke in favour of it. He said:
I believe an appropriation such as was made in 1919 is within reason and would assist materially in regard to highways.
And he recommended that it be passed. The hon. member for Macdonald (Mr. Lovie) made almost the same statement. He said:
As the provincial governments of the prairie provinces are embarking upon quite an extensive programme of highway construction, something which is long overdue, I would ask the Dominion authorities to vote this session a substantial sum of money to be paid over to the different provinces.
I might quote many more hon. members who from time to time have asked that this work be proceeded with. To argue in the house that this is not constitutional; that you are voting against it because you do not favour the method that is asked for in the resolution, is not dealing with the question in an honest and intelligent manner. Parliament should be in favour of some assistance, or it should be opposed to it, and it should be the duty and privilege of hon. members to vote on that issue without any attempt to draw this red herring across the trail. The resolution does not state in which way the expenditure is to be made. That is something that could be left to the house to decide at a later date. As regards the statement that it is unconstitutional, the government could do anything they saw fit with the money, provided, of course, they have a majority behind them, as they always have. They could even pass legislation to give it to the Minister of Railways or one of the other members of the cabinet, and that would be constitutional. I do not think there is a question in the world that that is a view which is not seriously advocated by those who are supporting the government.
An hon. member asked how we could face our constituents after having asked the government to get behind this resolution. Why do not those hon. members who were out west weeping tears of sympathy on the shoulders of the poor farmer support this resolution and help construct a highway such as it asks for, leaving the provincial governments to take care of the backwoods farmers that they are so solicitous about?
There is a clear-cut question before the house, one that resolves itself into something really worth while for Canada. There
is an opportunity to-night either to take the initial step in bringing such a constructive program into effect, or to kill it entirely. I have not the slightest doubt that there are hon. members who-intend to crucify it, and possibly that decision has been arrived at not by themselves as a matter of individual opinion, but in some little conference which has taken place outside of this chamber. I think that is the intention, beyond, a doubt. But in closing let me ask them to explain the matter fairly when they go before their constituents. There is little to be gained by trying to becloud the issue, by arguing that you are in favour of road construction, but that you do not favour the particular brand the resolution calls for, and therefore you are going to vote against it-with the result, I presume, that you will have no policy whatever.


Hugh Allan: Mr. Speaker, I feel that much has been said in the course of this debate which will impress upon the people of Canada not only the importance but the desirability of the construction of a transcontinental or national highway. I am in perfect sympathy with the principle of the construction of a national highway, not only as facilitating the means of intercommunication, but as promoting a clearer understanding and a closer relationship among the citizens of this great country. But while many things are desirable in connection with the development of this country, it does seem to me that they are not always at the moment economically practicable, and in my humble opinion the immediate and pressing need of the people of this Dominion is the construction of roads in our rural districts to facilitate the marketing of the products raised in our great agricultural areas.
The resolution calls upon the government to make grants for the construction of a national highway, which would indicate, as I think is quite apparent to every member of the house, that the provinces would also be called upon to contribute their fair share. In view of the commitments already made by this government in connection with our transportation facilities, in view of the insistent demand throughout our rural districts for the construction of roads, and in view of the extensive program of road building being carried on by our provinces to-day, to which the municipalities are called upon to contribute, I feel that our people are taxed the limit and I am obliged to associate myself with many members of the house who are opposed to this resolution at the present time.

National Highvxiys-Division


Mr. RINFRET:: I was paired with the
hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan). Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment. I may add, by way of explanation, that although this is a motion of a private member, the hon. gentleman asked me to extend our pair to it.


Eccles James Gott: I was paired with the hon.
member for Kent (Mr. Rutherford). Had I voted, I would have voted for the amendment.


John Wesley Edwards: I was paired with the hon. the Solicitor General (Mr. Cannon), otherwise I would have voted f-or the amendment.

National Highway-Division


Mr. EMBURY:: I was paired with the hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Bothwell). Had I voted, I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. ANDERSON (High Park):: I was
paired with the hon. member for Hull (Mr. Fontaine). Had I voted, I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. PETTIT:: I was paired with the hon.
member for Stormont (Mr. Smith). Had I voted, I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. WILSON:: I was paired with the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi (Mr. Kay). Had I voted, I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. ILSLEY:: I was paired with the hon.
member for Colchester (Mr. MacNutt). Had I voted, I would have voted against the amendment.


Hewitt Bostock: The question now is on
the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Same division.


Mr. EVANS:: Mr. Speaker, while I voted
against the amendment, I intend voting for the resolution.


Hewitt Bostock: Take the division.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: I was paired with the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Caban). Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Eccles James Gott: I was paired with, the hon.
member for Kent (Mr. Rutherford). Had I voted, I would have voted for the motion.


John Wesley Edwards: I was paired with the hon. the Solicitor General (Mr. Cannon) ; otherwise I would have voted for the motion.


Alexander Thomas Embury: I was paired with the hon. member for Swith Current (Mr. Bothwell). Had I voted, I would have voted for the motion.


Alexander James Anderson: I was
paired with the hon. member for Hull (Mr. Fontaine). Bad I voted, I would have voted for the motion.


George Hamilton Pettit: I was paired with the hon. member for Stormont (Mr. Smith). Had I voted, I would have voted for the motion.


Mr. WTLSON:: I was paired with the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi (Mr. Kay). Had I voted, I would have voted for the motion.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I was paired with the hon.
member for Colchester (Mr. MacNutt). Had I voted, I would have voted against the motion.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
On section 1-Export of power.
The CHAIRMAN:: Shall section 1 carry?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


John Frederick Johnston: Shall the title cany?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported.
Hewitt Bostock: When shall the bill be
read the third time?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Now.
Motion agreed to and bill read the third time and passed.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Mr. H. E. SPENCER (Battle River) moved:: That, in the opinion of this house, the estimates should be referred to select committees before being submitted to the committee of the whole.


Hewitt Bostock: This resolution is out of
order, since the same subject already has been discussed during this session, and the matter has been referred to the select standing committee on standing orders. I understand that the hon. gentleman is willing to withdraw the motion.


Henry Elvins Spencer: I placed this resolution
on the order paper before the government decided to bring the matter before the house in another resolution, which was sent to the committee on standing orders. As the government resolution covers the subject matter herein dealt with, I beg leave to withdraw the motion.



ELECTRICITY AND FLUID


[Stage Direction]
Mr. H. A. STEWART (Leeds) moved the second reading of Bill No. 15, to amend the Electricity and Fluid Exportation Act.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: Mr. Speaker, I
assume-


Hewitt Bostock: I understand the motion is carried.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.

Motion withdrawn.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


[Stage Direction]
On the notice of motion being called:
Mr. IRVINE:: Whereas it is the existent policy of this country that reasonable -preparation should be made for self-defence in case of any war involving Canada;
And whereas, such preparation, if undertaken, should be both adequate and of such a character as to make war less likely to occur;

Si. Lawrence Waterway-Mr. Church
Therefore be it resolved that, in the opinion of this house, it is advisable that legislation be enacted providing that on the declaration of war involving Canada, all natural resources and essential services, including transportation facilities, industrial plants, and commercial and financial agencies, should automatically be conscripted for national service for the duration of the war.
He said: I would like this motion to stand for to-night, but I would like it to retain its position on the order paper.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend.will have
to follow the rales of the house. He may proceed now if he wishes, but if he does not do so his resolution must follow the course laid down by the rules.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The hon. member must commence the discussion in order that the resolution may retain its place on the order paper, even though he adjourns the debate.
Motion stands.



ST. LAWRENCE WATERWAY DEVELOPMENT OP WATER-POWER AND IMPROVEMENT OF NAVIGATION

Thomas Langton Church: That, in the opinion of this bouse, immediate action should be taken, without further and unnecessary delaiys, to enter into a treaty with the government of the United States for the immediate development and generation of waterpower on the St. Lawrence river and its deepening and development in the interests of navigation, and that a great St. Lawrence waterway is an immediate and economic necessity for the welfare and best interests of Canada.
And that this house is further of the opinion that ithe government should undertake the construction and operation of this canal as a public undertaking itself and the power incident herein should be developed and generated at cost by the government for the people under public ownership and not alienated to private interests for gain or exported for use outside Canada.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I must apologize to the house for bringing up this matter so late in the evening; I asked the Prime Minister to allow it to stand but he would not do so, and I protest against this treatment.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I do not think I should
be put in the position of appearing to have control of the rules of the house. A moment ago when another hon. member asked that a motion be allowed to stand, I had to tell him that it could not and hold its place on the order paper. I am seeking to follow
the practice that certain rules, having been adopted by the house, so far as it is within my power those rules are to govern without fear or favour in any direction.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I wish to associate myself with
those sentiments.


Thomas Langton Church: The other evening at
twenty-five minutes after ten the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan) was allowed to rise and move the adjournment of the debate on titles till next day, and I wish the Prime Minister would play fair with all the members of this house.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend can move the adjournment of this debate and I will consent to it.


Thomas Langton Church: I will not move the adjournment now; the Prime Minister is not so cunning as he thinks he is. If I move the adjournment now the motion will go to the foot of the order paper and will not be heard of again. I am not going to throw out any life-lines to the government on the St. Lawrence waterway. The Prime Minister has run away from this often enough.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think I should inform the house that I saved this resolution from being dropped altogether by letting the hon. member know that if he did not proceed to-night in accordance with the rules his resolution would be dropped completely. His remarks now are the measure of the thanks I am receiving.


Thomas Langton Church: 
[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Friday, February 22, 1929