1929-04-15

Mr. J. F. POULIOT (Temiscouata) (Translation) :: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privilege with reference to an article published in the " Evenement," on April 12, last.
With large headlines this newspaper publishes what follows: Mr. J. F. Pouliot interrupted by cries of "Taschereau, Taschereau" and " who placed the bomb."
The question of privilege refers to the following extract:
An incident
An ever youthful member from ou.r province distinguishes himself at Ottawa by wild sallies against the Prime Minister of Quebec. Last night, the House of Commons clearly manifested that he would be the gainer by becoming somewhat more discreet. His speech interrupted by a devil of a noise, became almost as unintelligible as unintelligent. The opposition having taken up the cry of Taschereau, the Govern-

C.N.R.-Railway and Shipping Committee
ment side replied by applauses. While our fiery member once more sat down, happy of having created a storm. But it was a storm of laughter.
The " Evenement " passes for a business newspaper.
Has it not an upward scale of rates for lostly publicity?
Is it true that the first come, in that newspaper, may be bombarded. Your Honour, for one dollar; Your Lordship, for two dollars; Your Excellency, for three dollars; Your Highness, for four dollars, and Your Imperial Highness, for five dollars.
The downward scale for cheap and popular publicity is in that newspaper very amusing.
Is it true that one may be called a Governor for half a dollar; Colonel for a quarter; that for ten cents they shine your boots, and for five cents they lick them?
From July 1, last, the Quebec government has paid for printing and publicity $9,961.38 to this newspaper, whose president, Mr. J. H. For.tier, the directing soul of the P. T. Legare establishment, loudly clamours for protection so as to sell agricultural implements dearer to farmers.
If this is a business paper it is a slot machine paper.


Mr. BENNETT:: A what?


Jean-François Pouliot: A slot machine paper. It insinuates that on Thursday last I attacked the Premier of Quebec in the house. In fact I did not. When I asked-referring to Sir Robert Borden-"Who was the greatest man in the Tory party?"-the gentlemen on your left, Mr. .Speaker, answered, "Taschereau, Taschereau". I said nothing unpleasant in reference to him that evening because one of his children was married in .the morning of the same day, and it is on account of that social function that I observed that truce which L'Evenement has not seen fit to respect.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals) moved:
That standing order 63 of the House of Commons, relating to appointment of the select standing committees of the house, be amended by adding to the select standing committees of the house for the present session, a select standing committee on railways and shipping owned, operated and controlled by the government, to which will be referred the accounts and the estimates of the Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Government Merchant Marine for the present session, for
consideration and for report to the house, provided, however, that nothing in this resolution shall be construed to curtail in any way the full right of discussion in committee of supply; and that the said committee consist of Messrs. Bell (St. Antoine), Cantley, Chaplin, Duff. Dunning, Fiset. Geary. Gray, Hanson, .Telliff, Jenkins, McLean (Melfort), Milne, Power and Stevens.
I may say that t'he motion is ih exactly the same terms as similar motions adopted in previous sessions.
Richard Bedford Bennett: Before the motion is put, I wish
to observe that, looking through the proceedings in past years, it occurs to me that as this house" represents the shareholders of the Canadian National system and sets up this committee as a committee of those shareholders to deal with the accounts and the transaction of the business of the system, no limitation should be placed upon the right of the committee to deal with the whole of what I might call the operations of the system during the year, which would arise out of the discussion of the accounts, if construed an a large way, with respect to employment and many other matters which it is uneoessary for me at the moment to mention, but which any shareholder would have the right to discuss in the case of a private company. I take it that this committee should have all the powers which the shareholders of a private company would have in discussing the business of such an enterprise in which they were interested; for the real weakness of our system of government ownership lies in the difficulty of the shareholders in making themselves articulate so far as the transaction of their business is concerned. In other words, this parliament is the nearest approach we have to the shareholders in a private enterprise, and this committee should be regarded as a committee of shareholders to discuss the accounts, the estimates and the transaction of the business of the enterprise during the twelve months for which those accounts are placed before the committee.


Mr. DUNNING:: I think the description
which my hon. friend has just given of what the activities of the committee should be is a correct description of what the activities of the committee have been in fact in the past______


Richard Bedford Bennett: With some limitation.


Charles Avery Dunning: -with one qualification which arises from the peculiar condition to which my hon. friend has just referred. The shareholders of a private company would of course be free at all times to discuss any matter affecting the business of the company, but they would also be free to determine that it
C.N.R.-Branch Lines

was not wise for publicity to be given to any particular item of that discussion. More or less frequently in connection with the proceedings of the special committee during my experience of it-and I presume prior to that time also-there have arisen for discussion matters respecting which the management desired that the committee should have full information but which the management did not desire to become public property In all such cases the committee has, I think, agreed to have the information given to the committee itself but not made a matter of record. That has very frequently happened. Perhaps I am exaggerating when I say very frequently," but at any rate it hits happened on numerous occasions, and I do not think there will be any disposition on the part of the management to adopt any other attitude in the future. It is of course a little embarrassing, as my hon. friend will see, because of the broad right of inquiry which parliament undoubtedly has. Parliament could publish from the housetops any and every detail of the Canadian National's business if it so desired; but this is not considered desirable for the same reason that it is not considered desirable in connection with some aspects and details of an ordinary private corporation's business.


Richard Bedford Bennett: While it is improper
under the rules for me to make further observations, I desire to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that I entirely agree with what the minister has said. So far as the shareholders of a private company are concerned they do not keep records of their speeches to be transmitted to the public; it is merely a shareholders' record. As regards the record, therefore, I am not so much concerned about that as about the powers of the committee to represent the shareholders in their entirety in dealing with the business of the system.


Charles Avery Dunning: Undoubtedly.
Motion agreed to;



REFERENCE OF ESTIMATES TO RAILWAYS AND SHIPPING COMMITTEE

[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals):	I desire to move
that the estimates relating to the Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Government Merchant Marine, previously tabled, be referred to the select standing committee on railways and shipping, owned, operated and controlled by the government.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals):	I desire to make
a statement, which I suppose is a question of privilege. I find that the other day I gave a wrong answer to my hon. friend from Bur-rard (Mr. Clark) with respect to an important matter, and I should like to make the correction now. The discussion appears at page 1557 of Hansard. The hon. member asked me whether the cost of all branch lines we were considering was not included in the $53,000,000 of estimates " tabled yesterday." I answered that the proportion for the current year would be so included. I find that answer to be an error. The estimates, which are the authority from this parliament for the expenditure of money, do not contain provision for matters which have been provided for elsewhere by this parliament. I want the error noted so that my hon. friend and others will not be under a misapprehension.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 130, to amend the Canadian National Railways Act.
Mr. STEVENS:: Explain.


Charles Avery Dunning: This bill is designed to make a number of minor amendments to the Canadian National Railways Act, most of which were brought about as a result of the revision of the statutes. Changes must be made in the references; I think there is only one change which would not fall within that classification, a change relating to the method of expropriation.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN YUKON TERRITORY

[Stage Direction]
Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 131, respecting the administration of justice in the Yukon territory.
He said:	On account of its geographical location the northern part of the Yukon territory is difficult to control from Dawson; in certain cases it is almost impossible for the mounted police to take prisoners to Dawson or for a judge to proceed to that part of the territory. The object of this bill is to authorize the Minister of Justice to issue an

[Stage Direction]
Questions
order that trials for offences committed in a certain part of the Yukon territory may be proceeded with before a court of the Northwest Territories when it is more convenient to do so.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
AUDITOR general's REPORT
['1 and 2 (a) Name of route\nIndian river No. 1 R.R Indian river No. 2 R.R Indian river No. 3 R.R\n(b)\tKeene No. 1 R.R... . Keene No. 2 R.R.. . Keene No. 3 R.R.. .\n(c)\tNorwood No. 1 R.R.. Norwood No. 2 R.R.. Norwood No. 3 R.R.. Norwood No. 4 R.R..\n(d)\tLakefield No. 1 R.R.. Lakefield No. 2 R.R.. Lakefield No. 3 R.R.. Lakefield No. 4 R.R..\nPer annum\tDistance\nrate\tMiles\n$552.63\t21\n$720.00\t20f\n$815.00\t21\nS780.00\t18i\n$698.00\t22J\n$574.00\t201\n$724.05 .\t20\n$900.00\t23f\n$800.00\t20\n$900.00\t12\n$1,200.00\t38\n$1,400.00\t45\n$860.00\t244\n$856.64\t21J\nUno-pposed Motions for Papers']
Mr. FRASER:: When will a copy of the order in council, mentioned on page XI, second paragraph, of the Auditor General's report for 1927-8, vol. 1, commencing at "payment of grant of $5,000 from vote 294, page 228," be laid upon the table of parliament?


Mr. KING (Kootenay):: Answered by
tabling a copy of the order.



Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: What is the amount each year in each department that is paid out of the treasury without pre-audit by the Auditor General?


Edward Joseph Garland: This question may be dropped, as I intend placing an amended question on the order paper.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: Dropped.


IMMIGRATION-MEDICAL EXAMINERS
Mr. MANION:: 1.	What are the names of the medical examiners retained in England by the immigration department?
2.	How many of them are Canadian and how many British practitioners?
3.	Have any changes been made since 1927, and if so, what changes?


Mr. KING (Kootenay):: 1.	(a) The following medical officers have been appointed to the immigration medical inspection service of the Department of Pensions and National Health and are stationed in England:	Dr. H. B. Jeffs, Dr. W. Egan,
Dr. W. B. MacDermott, Dr. C. H. Archibald, Dr. Margaret Parks, Dr. C. MacLeod, Dr.
R. S. Henderson, Dr. J. S. Douglas, D. J. E. Grant, Dr. H. A. Chisholm, Dr. A. Turnbull, Dr. W. J. Boyd.
(b) 284 roster doctors.
2.	(a) 12 Canadian; Ob) 284 British.
3.	1928-Dr. C. MacLeod, new appointment; Dr. R. S. Henderson, new appointment; Dr. G. J. Boyce, new appointment; Dr. W. J. Boyd, new appointment; Dr. F. S. Pamey, temporarily transferred to Canada.
255 roster doctors appointed to conduct medical examinations on a fee basis.
1929-Dr. G. J. Boyce, resigned; Dr. H. A. Chisholm, employed temporarily.
29 additional roster doctors appointed.


RESTRICTED AREA PLAN-SLAUGHTER OF CATTLE
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: 1.	From February 1, 1928, to February 1, 1929, how many cattle have been slaughtered under the restricted area plan in each of the provinces of Canada?
2.	During the same period what was the total amount of money paid to owners of slaughtered cattle in each province?


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: 1 and 2.
Province	Cattle Slaughtered	Compen- sationPrince Edward Island	1	$ 38 00Nova Scotia	3,589	124.427 10New Brunswick	-	Quebec	20,434	691,396 12Ontario	14	500 00Manitoba	5	222 00Saskatchewan	26	620 00Alberta	-	-British Columbia. ..	206	8,254 0024,275	$825,457 22
Note:-The amount of compensation shown above is the amount awarded on account of the animals slaughtered during the period indicated. A certain proportion of this amount has not yet, however, actually been paid owing to the one-twelfth of the estimates recently voted not being sufficient to take care of all such accounts.


BURNS GRAZING LEASE
Mr. SPENCER:: 1.	Was a grazing lease granted for territory in township 18, range 21-20-19, west of the 4th meridian, commonly known as Burns lease?
2.	If so, when, and to what date does the lease run?
3.	Is this land fit for growing grain?


Mr. STEWART (Edmonton):: 1.	Yes.
2.	A renewal lease covering approximately 30,880 acres in this area was issued for a
Questions

term of twenty-one years from the 1st April, 1926. A similar lease for approximately 20,640 acres was issued for a term of twenty-one years from the 1st February, 1929.
3.	Upon inspection none of the lands leased were found to be suitable for agricultural purposes with the possible exception of 640 acres which was considered essential to the leasehold for growing winter feed.
his majesty's Mail


Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	What was the cost of redecorating post
boxes, mail wagons and other post office equipment in the city of Toronto with the words "Canada's Mail" substituted for "His Majesty's Mail"?	.
2.	Was this work done by contract or otherwise, and at what cost to the government?
3.	What was the cost of replacing the words, "His Majesty's Mail", on the aforesaid post office equipment, in Toronto?
4.	What official or other officer ordered such changes on aforesaid, at Toronto, and by what authority or on whose authority?


Mr. VENIOT:: 1.	(a) Post boxes-
No record of the words "His Majesty's Mail" being used on post boxes.
(b)	Mail wagons or other equipment-
No record of words "His Majesty's Mail" being used. The words "Royal Mail" have been used and are still being used on some post office trucks. The words "Canada Post Office" have been used and are still being used on other post office trucks.
There is no case on record where the words "His Majesty's Mail" or the words "Royal Mail" have been removed from any equipment and replaced by the words "Canada Post Office" or any other designation.
2.	3 and 4. Answered by No. 1.


CALL LOANS
Mr. GIROUARD:: 1.	What amount of money was loaned by the Canadian banks in call loans on the different United States stock exchanges for the year 1928, and for the months of January, February, and March, 1929?
2.	What rate of interest was received by the banks on the amounts so loaned?
3.	What is the total amount of money received by the banks on the money so loaned?
4.	How much of the amount so loaned was the property of the depositors?
5.	What rate of interest was received by the depositors on their money so loaned by the banks ?


Mr. ROBB:: 1,	2, 3, 4 and 5. This information is not reported under the Bank Act. Call and short loans are shown under two headings only
(a)	in Canada; (b) elsewhere than in Canada.


WATERFOWERS-REFERENCE TO SUPREME COURT
Mr. WHITE (London):: 1.	What amounts have been paid to each of the various counsel who represented the Dominion government before the Supreme court in 1928 regarding the reference concerning ownership of water-powers and other matters ?
2.	What amounts are still to be paid each of these gentlemen?
3.	What will be the total cost of the reference to the Dominion?


Mr. LAPOINTE:: 1.	Hon. N. W. Rowell, K.C., $2,500; H. J. Symington, K.C., $3,925.54; Chas. Laurendeau, ICC., $3,931.62; Vincent MacDonald, $9,221.
2.	Mr. Rowell, $12,002.74; Mr. Symington, $9,071.21; Mr. Laurendeau, $7,145.55; Mr. MacDonald, nil.
3.	$60,719.50 according to present estimate.


DRUMHELLER, ALTA., CUSTOMS PORT
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: 1.	What amount of business has been done at the customs port of Drumheller, Alberta, in each of the years 1927 and 1928?
2.	How many persons are employed?
3.	What are the total salaries and wages of the said persons?
4.	What amount of rent was paid each year, 1926, 1927, and 1928, for the accommodation of the Drumheller port of customs?


Mr. EULER:: 1.
1927-28	1928-29
Import Duties..	..	$28,829	14	$89,847 27Excise taxes.. 8,188	14	10,622 79Excise duties	-	-.Sundry collections..	-.	-$37,017 28	$50,470 06
2. 1.
3.	$1,560.
4.	1920-27
April 1/26 to October 31/26, 7 months at $50	 $ 350 00
Arrears November 1/26 to November 30/27, 13 months at $50=
$650; December 1/27 to March 31/28, 4 months at $50=$200.. $ 850 00
Unexpired lease on old quarters,
1-20 April, 1928, at $50=$33.33.
New quarters, April 1/28 to March 31/28, 12 months at $40=$480. $ 513 33

Questions


DRUMHELLER, ALTA., MOUNTED POLICE
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: 1.	What amount was paid for the accommodation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the town of Drumheller, Alberta, in each of the years 1926, 1927 and 1928?
2.	How many persons are employed?
3.	What is the total of wages and/or salaries?


Mr. LAPOINTE:: 1.	1926, $540; 1927, $540; 1928, $540.
2.	One.
3.	1926, S882; 1927, $821.25; 1928, $821.25.


DRUMHELLER, ALTA., SOLDIER SETTLEMENT OFFICE
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: 1.	What amount of rent was paid for the accommodation of the soldier settlement office in the town of Drumheller, Alberta, in each of the years 1926, 1927 and 1928?
2.	How many persons were employed?
3.	What were the total salaries of same?


Mr. FORKE:: 1.	Nil.
2.	One supervisor.
3.	Salary for 1926, $1,815; 1927, $1,770; 1928, $1,890.


DRUMHELLER, ALTA., POST OFFICE
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: 1.	What business has been done by the Post Office Department in the towrn of Drumheller, Alberta, in each of the years 1927 and 1928?
2.	How many persons were employed?
3.	What was the total of salaries and/or wages ?
4.	WThat was the total amount of rent paid in 1926, 1927 and 1928, for the post office buildings or any buildings used for post office purposes?


Mr. VENIOT:: 1.	1927, $16,541.79; 1928, $18,121.13.
2.	Four in both years-in addition to postmaster.
3.	Salaries and allowances: 1927, $5,768.13; 1928, $5,876.21.
4.	For the fiscal years ended 31st March, 1926, 1927 and 1928, $1,030 was paid each year for rent, light and heat for the post office.


DISTILLERY PRODUCTS
Mr. STEVENS:: 1.	What is the gross value of the products of all distilleries of Canada during the years 1925, 1926, 1927 and 1928?
2.	What is the amount of revenue paid by the distilleries of Canada in regard to the said products for the said years: (a) excise duties; (b) sales tax and (e) other fees or charges?


Mr. EULER:: 1.	No record kept in the department of values of Canadian distillery products.
2.	Amount of revenue paid by the distilleries of Canada during the fiscal years ending 31st March, 1925, 1926, 1927 and 1928:-
(a)	Excise Duties:
1925	$ 3,974,076 18
1926	
5,274,993	591927	
7,096,107	241928	
11,635,649	64(b)	Sales tax figures not available,	as no
records are kept of sales tax by commodities.
(c)	License Fees:
1925		 $4,125
1926		 4,500
1927		 5,000
1928		 6,125


PETERBOROUGH COUNTY-RURAL MAIL ROUTES
Mr. PECK:: 1.	What are the contract prices paid to the rural mail carriers, respectively, for carriage of mails; (a) from Indian river; (b) from Keene; (c) from Norwood; (d) from Lake-field all in the county of Peterborough?
2.	What is the length of each route?


Mr. VENIOT:: 1 and 2 (a) Name of route
Indian river No. 1 R.R Indian river No. 2 R.R Indian river No. 3 R.R
(b)	Keene No. 1 R.R... . Keene No. 2 R.R.. . Keene No. 3 R.R.. .
(c)	Norwood No. 1 R.R.. Norwood No. 2 R.R.. Norwood No. 3 R.R.. Norwood No. 4 R.R..
(d)	Lakefield No. 1 R.R.. Lakefield No. 2 R.R.. Lakefield No. 3 R.R.. Lakefield No. 4 R.R..
Per annum	Distance
rate	Miles
$552.63	21
$720.00	20f
$815.00	21
S780.00	18i
$698.00	22J
$574.00	201
$724.05 .	20
$900.00	23f
$800.00	20
$900.00	12
$1,200.00	38
$1,400.00	45
$860.00	244
$856.64	21J
Uno-pposed Motions for Papers



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: 1. What number of, (a) officers; (b) noncommissioned officers; (c) other ranks; of the Department of National Defence were employed at Ottawa for the years 1912-1913 and 19271928?
. 2. ^Vhat number of officers of all ranks were in civil employment in said department at Ottawa for the same periods?
3.	What wras the total number of all ranks in the permanent force in the years 1912-13 and 1927-1928?
4.	What was the extent of military units in the years 1912-1913 and 1927-1928, as to, (a) number of units; (b) total personnel of all ranks in said units?



CIVIL SERVICE-SUPERANNUATION

[Stage Direction]
Mr. PETTIT;
What are the number and names of persons on the old superannuation list numbers 1 and 2?


Mr. ADSHEAD:: For a copy of the interim license granted to Calgary Power Company for the development of hydro-electric power on the Ghost river, province of Alberta.



DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE-PURCHASE OF COAL

Mr. QUINN:: For a copy of all letters, contracts ana ail other documents, relating to purchases of coal made by the Department of National Defence required in Halifax and the surrounding district during the season of 1927-1928.



PORT HOWE, N.S., POST OFFICE

Mr. SMITH (Cumberland):: For a copy of all correspondence, telegrams and other documents relating to the removal of the post office at Port Howe, Cumberland county, Nova Scotia.



COLLINGWOOD CORNER, N.S., POSTMASTER

Robert Knowlton Smith: For a copy of all correspondence, telegrams, and other documents, including the evidence taken, and report submitted by J. Frank Outhit, barrister, relating to the dismissal of Neil Mooring as postmaster at Collingwood Corner, Cumberland county, Nova Scotia.



CUMBERLAND COUNTY, N.S., CUSTOMS OFFICES

Robert Knowlton Smith: For a copy of all correspondence, telegrams and other documents in connection with, or relating to the closing of the following customs offices in Cumberland county, Nova Scotia: the [Mr. Veniot.J
port of Oxford; the port of Pugwash; the port of Wallace; the port of Advocate; the port of Apple River; the port of Tidnish.



BRITISH PREFERENCE-FIFTY PER CENT REQUIREMENT

Mr. M. N. CAMPBELL (Mackenzie) moved:: For a copy of all letters, telegrams, correspondence and any other documents in connection w'ith protests made by importers, consumers or any other parties in Canada to the government against its application of the regulation effective February first last, and which regulation calls for fifty per cent empire labour and material in goods entitled to the British preferential rates.


James Alexander Robb: I believe that all available
information has been tabled already, but I have no objection to this motion passing if it is passed with the reservation that permission be received before we table any confidential correspondence between the British government and this government, or between any of the self-governing dominions.


Milton Neil Campbell: If the minister will
read the motion he will find that it contains no such request. I am asking for the production of correspondence between the government and certain parties in Canada. Sessional paper No. 172, which I received some time ago, covers the correspondence between the government and the British High Commissioner and also between the government and the British Federation of Industries. I am only asking for the protests registered by the consumers.


James Alexander Robb: With the reservations I have made, there is no abjection to this motion.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Hon. CHARLES MARCIL (Bonaventure):: Mr. Speaker, an article appears on page 14 of the Montreal Star of Saturday in which a question put by the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) appears under my name. That is an error and I wish to correct it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I would think the hon.
member would be delighted to have a matter of such public interest attributed to him.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
Mr. J. A. CLARK (Vancouver-Burrard) moved the second reading of Bill No. 85, for the relief of Effie Margaret Hill.
Mr. WOODSWORTH:: On several occasions last year I objected to divorce bills being

Procedure respecting Divorce
passed in this manner. I know nothing whatever with regard to the bill now before the house-and that indeed is one reason why I think I should oppose its passing the house. The member who moved this bill may have some information with regard to it, and if so I think he should give it in detail to this house. Later on I shall insist upon such a statement being made and until that information is forthcoming and the house is fully apprised of the details, I do not think we should be asked to pass the bill.


Mr. GEARY:: The hon. member must
have the evidence.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have in my desk the evidence relating to some sixty divorce cases, and I venture to say that no member of the house has read every bit of that evidence. If he has, I would suggest that he is very much in the position of a garbage can and would hardly be fit to participate in the discussions of the house. I frankly confess that I have not read the particulars relating to any one of these bills, and I know nothing whatever about the particular bill now before the house. I venture to say that nine-tenths of the members are in precisely the same position.


Edward Joseph Garland: Ninetynine hundredths.


James Shaver Woodsworth: And yet we are
asked to vote in favour of the bill. I am rather sorry for the parties concerned in this bill, because it may be inferred by the general public that there is some outstanding reason for the challenging of this particular case. I assure them that I select this bill simply because it is the first one on the order paper. I desire to test the house on a question of principle rather than on the merits of this particular case.
A few weeks ago the house rejected a bill which provided for a divorce court for the province of Ontario. Under the rules of the house I am precluded from discussing that bill, but I would point out that the rejection by the house of that bill puts us in a different position from that in which we were last year. In the debate on the Senate bill the majority of the members of the house took a very high moral stand with regard to divorce when they rejected that bill on the ground that it was improper that any divorce should be granted. All I can say is that if it is wrong on principle to grant divorces we should reject this 'bill and the many others which follow it. On that occasion members on both sides of the house took the high ground of maintaining the sanctity of the
family. Their argument places some of us in the rather awkward position of seeming to condone the evils of divorce and thus assisting in loosening the family ties. I think I could make out a very good case if I should attempt to prove that those who opposed that bill are the people whose action is tending to loosen the family ties and further increase the evils of divorce.
I am opposed to divorces as granted by this parliament. There has been a greater increase in the number of divorces in the province of Ontario, where there is no divorce court, than in the other provinces of Canada which have such courts. That is one ground for asserting that those who opposed the establishment of a divorce court could easily be accused of increasing the number of divorces. In making that statement I do not consider the number of divorces which have been granted in Detroit and other American cities to residents of the province of Ontario. I will be very frank and say that I am not opposed to divorce under certain circumstances, but I know there are friends of mine here in the house who are opposed to the granting of divorces under any circumstance. We talk about the evils of divorce, but I think we ought rather to talk about the evils of marriage, because, after all, it is the failure of marriage that makes the appeal for divorce necessary. In my view, to force people to live together where there is infidelity, and I would go further and say, where all affection has ceased to exist, is very little less than to force them t-o live in what I might term a state of legalized prostitution. I do not want to be guilty of forcing anyone to continue to live such a life, and hence, under certain circumstances, I am in favour of divorce. It is an intolerable situation that a woman should be compelled to continue to be the wife of a man whom she must despise and where her private life must be simply an inferno on earth. If the opportunity occurred in a properly constituted court, I should be glad to do anything I could to relieve the condition of women or of men so placed.
I should like, as briefly as I can, to enumerate some of my objections to the passing of this bill and of other bills of a similiar character wdiich are before us. In the first place, I object to being a mere rubber stamp, and under the circumstances which now exist, that is the position in which all the members of the House of Commons are placed. Let us examine the procedure for a moment. In Ontario and Quebec and, until further action is taken by Prince Edward Island, also in that province, the only way
Procedure respecting Divorce

in which a divorce can be obtained is by coming to parliament and presenting a bill which must be passed through the regular stages, the three readings in this house and the three readings in the senate. As we all know, these bills in practice go first to the senate and are examined by the Senate committee. I believe this year two senate committees are running concurrently and if space were available, there would be three committees, so great is the pressure of these bills. These are reported by the senate committee to the senate and afterwards in due course they come to the House of Commons. At the present time I am not a member of the private bills committee, but for some years I was, and I know that when these bills came before the private bills committee of this house, they passed in batches just as they are passing their first and second readings in this house. Except on very rare occasions there was no examination whatever of the merits of the bills. In fact often, we even had to gc to considerable trouble to secure a sufficient number of the members of the private bills committee to constitute a quorum in order that in five minutes we might pass twenty, thirty or forty private bills. As every hon. member knows, we have never had a discussion in the house as to the merits of a particular divorce bill; a few days ago there was placed in our mail boxes the evidence in the case of forty-five bills, and this morning I received something like twenty additional bills. This would indicate that sixty-five divorce bills are now before us, and I understand that in the course of the session we shall have over two hnudred more than that. This procedure is becoming a veritable farce. We simply go through the motions and it seems that that is inimical to the best interests of the country as well as demoralizing ho the house itself.
In the second place, the laws of evidence are not very closely adhered to in the senate committee. In so saying, I am not casting any reflection upon the senate committee. I have heard the members of that committee freely discuss the matter. In a properly constituted court the judges have had a good deal of experience in sizing up evidence. On the senate committee there are members who have not been judges, some who have not been lawyers, and who are not accustomed to the careful weighing of evidence. I do not pretend to be a legal expert, but on one occasion when I sat for a short time in that committee, I think the procedure would have been considered in any court to be very lax.
I would hate to be tried for my life or to have my liberty at stake and to be tried under 
the laws of evidence which often prevail in the divorce committee of the senate.


George Reginald Geary: The hon. member would not have a chance.


James Shaver Woodsworth: That may be. I think the hon. member for South Toronto is quite right. I would have no chance at all. Further than that, the evidence so-called is all printed and is circulated among the members of both houses. This involves a very heavy expenditure which would not be involved in the ordinary courts where, as I understand the matter, the evidence is frequently taken down in shorthand but is not extended, unless there is some special reason for doing so. Not only is there a greatly added expense, but the evidence so published consists really of obscene literature. I ventured to say last year and I repeat to-day that those reports could not go through His Majesty's mails if wha.t they contained were known. We could not discuss the details of that evidence on the floor of the house without ordering that the galleries be cleared, and it may be necessary before we are through with this matter to ask that we have a private session in order to discuss some of these cases. That evidence is circulated among the members and is generally thrown into the waste paper baskets. I confess I have some qualms of conscience in doing that because members of the cleaning staff, pages and others, may pick it out of the waste paper baskets and get free obscene literature such as could not be offered for sale in the bookstores in any city of Canada.


Mr. RENNIE:: The hon. member said he
had not read the evidence.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have not read it this year. I have looked into it in other years. Last year I read several cases with very great care. I have heard members remarking jocosely that this was very spicy literature. I think, on the other hand, it is revoltingly, disgustingly-


An hon. MEMBER:: Rotten.


James Shaver Woodsworth: -yes, rotten. That is a very good word which an hon. membef has suggested. The evidence consists of sordid details, stripped of all romance of every kind and presented with a stark reality that is absolutely repellent to any except the most morbid minds.
I abject to the present procedure because poor people cannot come to Ottawa to avail themselves of the divorce court here. It remains a privilege of the better-to-do, unless people happen to be located close to Ottawa.

Supposing somebody resides in Windsor: it means a very heavy expenditure to travel and to bring witnesses all the way from Windsor to Ottawa. It means the employment of a lawyer in Windsor and, under present practice, the employment of a local lawyer in Ottawa. In this way the drain upon the purse of the poor individual seeking divorce is very heavy.
Further, the poor man who is charged with being guilty of a crime that calls for divorce has no opportunity of defending himself. The other day a man wrote me from a town in western Ontario alleging that he had been framed by his wife, who sought a divorce. He said, "I am a poor man. I cannot afford to leave my job and travel to Ottawa. The only evidence against me is that submitted by professional spies, professional detectives," and so on the evidence of two professional detectives the wife was granted a divorce, the husband having no opportunity whatever of appearing in his own behalf. I do not think that is fair. The senate committee may be all right in the case of the wealthy, but it is not fair for the poor people in this country.
I am told that in some of the provinces such as Nova Scotia there is an official connected with the divorce court known as the king's proctor, who represents the public. He is there to draw out any evidence that he sees fit, to see that fair play is being accorded. We have no official of that kind whatever, and it seems to me that here again our procedure facilitates divorce much more than is the case under the ordinary procedure of the courts where certain safeguards are provided. Again, in some of the provincial courts-I do not know whether this is true of all the provinces-there is a period of delay after the case has been tried and before the decree is granted. It is sometimes found that when people have got to the point where a divorce is imminent, the trial brings them to their senses as they realize the alternative, and it is possible to effect a reconciliation. But in the case of divorces by this parliament, once the evidence is heard, the decree immediately goes into force and a divorce from that time is inevitable. I would say that the practice of the provincial courts is highly preferable to the practice we have in this parliament.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: Would my hon. friend
permit me? I have been away a long time this session, but if I am not wrong this question has been settled by parliament at this very session, and therefore it is hardly in order for my hon. friend to plead for the
Procedure respecting Divorce
establishment of divorce courts when parliament has already declared against them at this very session.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I do not know that I am pleading for the establishment of such a court, but I am pointing out the weaknesses that inhere in our present practice and that pertain to the very case upon which we are asked to decide to-day. I will, however, try to confine myself as closely as possible to the matters that are before the house at this time. I would say that in this case, and in all these cases, we are making no provision whatever for alimony. In the case of the wife being granted the divorce, she goes out without having any claim whatever on the man who was formerly her husband.


Mr. FORKE:: How about the man?


James Shaver Woodsworth: The man is in the
same position, but he is supposed to be able to support himself, and perhaps under our existing social conditions he can support himself a little more easily because he has no longer a wife who is dependent upon him.


Robert Forke: Sometimes.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I was given an
instance the other day by one of the members of the senate divorce committee. A poor little woman was granted a divorce from her husband. It came out in the evidence, which is locked up in our desks now, I presume, that her husband had communicated to her a venereal disease. The woman is to be granted a divorce under the recommendations of the senate divorce committee, but she goes out without having any redress whatever, without having any provision for ali-monv, and I presume that if she is to secure anything she will have to take a civil action in the regular way in the provincial courts. It is not right that that should be the case, and I intend to do this year as I did last year in regard to some of these cases, and that is to offer amendments making some provision for alimony. I know that hon. members may rise and object that that is ultra vires of the Dominion parliament. Someone asks me why. Because it would trench upon civil rights, but it appears that we ought to do what was done in at least one case in the earlier history of this house and make some provision for alimony.
More serious still, there is no provision whatever in these cases-and wre have forty-five of them before us in this list-for the maintenance of the children.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Is it. beyond our powers to do so?
Procedure respecting Divorce


James Shaver Woodsworth: That is a matter for constitutional lawyers It is a question whether or nut if we pass a measure of this kind it would be an infringment upon civil rights, which under the British North America Act is a matter of provincial concern. That is another of the anomalies under the British North America Act.


Mr. BELL (St. Antoine):: Is it beyond the powers of the senate committee?


James Shaver Woodsworth: I understand that in the very early days of divorce legislation by this parliament there was at least one case in which alimony and maintenance for the children was granted, but I think there were only one or possibly two such cases.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: But they have the power.


James Shaver Woodsworth: That is not clear. That power has been challenged by constitutional lawyers. I do not know that any test case has been before the courts.
Again, I pointed out in at least one case last year that the man, according to the evidence, was nothing less than a brute, and had committed a crime that made him liable to a penitentiary life sentence. That man was allowed to go free, but as a matter of fact I understand he skipped out to the United States, but he was allowed to go there with, inferentially, the right to marry again and repeat his crime and ruin another life. The senate committee took no action in that respect, and we took no action. There is no provision that action could be taken in those circumstances.
It has been stated by the newspapers that I intended to talk out these divorce bills. That is not the case, but this is what I do propose to do. I intend to ask that a roll call vote be taken. The many members of this house who on conscientious grounds are opposed to the granting of divorce salve their consciences by having the Speaker repeat, when the motion is carried, " On division."
I intend to make that a reality and to insist on a division being caMed, and then those members who are opposed to divorce, if they are in. earnest, will get up and say so and take the responsibility of that divorce not being granted. As things now stand, upon some of us who are in favour of granting divorce under certain circumstances is thrown the responsibility of divorce not being granted.
I do not think that is fair. I would say, let that responsibility be assumed by those who on conscientious grounds say that under no circumstances should divorce be granted.
I admit that I am somewhat at a loss to know whether to vote in favour of or against these divorces. I would say that I could 
justify my action in either case because I am opposed to this manner of granting divorces by this parliament, but I am not opposed under certain circumstances to the granting of divorces. I think on the whole that probably the way in which I can best express my own position in this matter will be for me to vote against the granting of these divorces, and that for two reasons. I want this to be clearly understood:	First,
that I know nothing whatever about the merits of the individual cases; and knowing nothing of those merits, in voting for them I am as I have said, simply a sort of rubber stamp. Secondly, I vote against them mainly on the ground that I want this to be a protest against this manner of granting divorce. It may be that if I knew the merits of this particular case under discussion I would vote in favour of the bill; but I do not know the merits, and therefore I am quite clear that I ought to vote against it.
However, I would say there may be exceptions to that course of action, and I want to leave myself free as to this. One day, desirous of observing personally the procedure in the senate divorce committee, I sat through the hearing of one entire case. If I can locate that case in the mass of these divorce bills I intend to vote in its favour, because I think the poor woman who sought divorce absolutely deserves it. Having a knowledge of that particular case I would make an exception of it, just as I might have to make an exception of other cases, if in committee their merits are demonstrated. This may not appear entirely consistent: I admit it. But on the whole in taking this attitude of opposition, I want it to be clearly understood that I do so, not because in my judgment there is necessarily anything wrong about granting a divorce in the particular case that comes before us, but primarily because I want to protest against this procedure.
I feel very sorry indeed that in some of these cases to which we are objecting the parties may be put to unnecessary expense and hardship and delay; I feel very sorry for the individuals. On the other hand, I would say that those responsible for this condition of affairs are the people who year after year and year after year refuse to provide proper courts where these matters can be dealt with.
Further, Mr. Speaker, I shall be very sorry unnecessarily to delay the house. I do not think any of us want to prolong the session. But in my view the responsibility for such delay does not rest on those who insist upon giving reality to the proceedings of this house; it rests rather upon those who, ever since I

Procedure respecting Divorce
have been a member of parliament, have refused frankly to face the issues involved in these cases that come to us in such large numbers.


Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, last year this same question was before parliament, and was discussed by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) pretty much as he has discussed it to-day. On that occasion I was in entire agreement with him, as I am to-day. I think he has admirably covered the whole situation, and there is very little to be added; but I wish to make dear, as he has done, that while I am glad to have the opportunity to vote against every divorce bill which comes before this house, I do so exactly for the reason that he has pointed out, not that I am opposed under certain circumstances to the granting of divorce, but that I am opposed to this house doing so.
That is, I am opposed to the absurd procedure which year after year is followed in this house. The absurdity cannot be made any more evident than it is at this time. If we were actually to take a vote on the approximately three hundred divorce bills which will be presented to the house this session, provided that the senate committee can hear that many cases, it would hold us here for several months. In order to dispose of them we put them through their various stages like frozen corn is put through a chopping mill- we do not even take time to read the bills, wo call them by number; and we do not even stand up to record our votes-we vote in silence. This procedure appears to me to be absurd. In this house we have no facilities for discovering the true facts in respect to any one of these bills.


Mr. SANDERSON:: What about the senate committee?


William Irvine: I was going to mention
that. I have a great deal of respect for the divorce committee of the senate. I believe it works very hard and very conscientiously, but that does not relieve this house of its responsibilities. How does my hon. friend know that the senate committee has done justice, for instance, in this particular case? I have as much faith in that committee as he has, but I am not going to have its members think for me; he can have them do that for him if :he wishes. No senate committee is going to think for me, even if it can do it better than I can myself. If I am to vote on these bills I want to know what led to the conclusions drawn by the senate committee; like my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre, I want to know what is going to become of the children; like him, I want to know what is going to become of those people who are given the right to marry again, which in some cases may mean our permitting the commission of a social crime. I refuse to be a party to that sort of thing.
And I am opposed to this procedure because it has 'become a real problem for the senate. The senate divorce committee is overworked. In fact, I understand that a second committee has had to be appointed to deal with these cases. The senate has protested against this condition of affairs, and it gave point to its protest by sending to this house a bill to establish a divorce court in Ontario. This house refused to endorse the bill, which would have provided a properly constituted court to deal with these cases the majority of which come from this province. So while the senate divorce committee may be perfectly efficient in dealing with these cases, in the first place, it is overworked; in the second place, even although it were all the time efficient in its work, it cannot take the place of this house; we have no right to rely on it to do our business for us.
I think it is only fair to point out Mr. Speaker, that there are but two provinces from which petitions for divorce come to parliament, Ontario and Quebec.


Mr. BOURASSA:: Practically one.


William Irvine: I am corrected by my hon.
friend from Labelle (Mr. Bourassa): he says " Practically one." Perhaps the Minister of Justice will permit me to refer to the bill which was discussed in this house merely to point out that some of the leading members from both these provinces were most active in its defeat. I think the hon. member for Labelle pointed out that to pass the bill would be to press upon the people of Ontario something that they did not want; and I think his point was well taken. But are we not pressing upon the people of this province something that they do not want when we continue granting divorces that hon. members from that province protest they do not want? So I for one am not going to embarrass those hon. Canutes who strove to stem the tide of divorce by opposing the bill to which I have referred, and by refusing to vote bills of divorce for their constituents. I want them to-day to take the responsibility which they did not take the other day. So far as I am concerned, I am not going to sit mum and be counted as voting for divorce bills that I do not know anything about, and that I do not want or care to know anything about. On the other hand, hon. members whose constituents want divorce, and who make long platitudinous speeches about the
Procedure respecting Divorce

honour and sanctity of the home, which they say I want to destroy by establishing a divorce court for Ontario, will not now be able to sit silent while their bills are going through this house.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want to repeat what I said at the beginning, that I am not unfavourable to granting divorce under certain circumstances. I deeply deplore the principle on which divorces are granted, even in our courts to-day, and as they are granted in this parliament. I hope if we are going to continue to grant divorce, the evidence will have to be based on the unhappiness of the people concerned, and not on the filth which fills these reports to-day. That is the ground upon which I should like to see divorce granted, if it is granted at all. I am opposed to any single case that is before parliament. As the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has said, I do not know what are the merits of any individual case, and therefore I am not in a position to vote for an3' particular bill. I can only vote against these divorce bills in the hope that ultimately these cases will be dealt with by a properly constituted court. I am glad to have this opportunity of voting against every divorce bill that comes before this house.


Charles Marcil: In the long period during which I have been a member of this house I have consistently opposed the granting of divorce, and in those thirty years no application has come from my constituency for a dissolution of marriage. I am not objecting to this bill in particular; I am objecting to the principle of the bill. We spend days and nights, weeks and months, years and decades in discussing the material interests of the people, discussing our railway situation, our tariff, our finances, everything that concerns the wealth and prosperity of the country. But how much time do we devote to protecting the home and the generation that is to come afterwards? Grave mistakes have been committed on this question of divorce, and to begin the argument I wish to lay before the house I shall cite the opinion of the outstanding statesman whom Canada had produced up to confederation, the father of confederation'-Sir John A. Macdonald- who declared that in 1857, when the British parliament enacted the divorce law there, it committed a serious blunder. I wish to read these words from Sir John because I know they will have some weight in this house and in this country. This is what he said:
I am convinced that the establishment of a divorce court_ in England has been productive of much mischief. In former times, the procedure with respect to divorce was the same as in force in Canada to-day-that is, it could

only be obtained from the upper house of parliament. In those days divorces were rare, expensive and hard to get, and the morals of the community were spared the columns of scandal with which the English papers are occasionally filled. The establishment of the divorce court in Canada would mean cheap and easy divorces, which would lead to great laxity in the marriage relations. They are beginning to see that in the old country. I hope it may be long before we have anything of the kind in Canada.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: What year was that?


Charles Marcil: I have not the exact year
in which these words were uttered, but evidently it was after confederation. The British parliament has enacted within the last two or three years a measure to prohibit the publication in English papers of columns upon columns of Scandal which were perverting and demoralizing the youth of that country. We publish such matter now in the evidence which is taken in such cases and circulated through these corridors, and which finds its way among young people who should never read it. Unfortunately the thing is going from bad to worse.
I have given the opinion of Sir John Macdonald with reference to a previous generation; let me now give the opinion of another outstanding Canadian, one of the sons of Ontario, who commands the respect of this house and is now Chief Justice of that province. Sir W'illiam Mulock has said:
J think the facility with which divorces are granted in England and in other countries does go a long way to interfere with the sacredness of the marriage tie. There is no reason that justifies, in my opinion, the establishment of a divorce court for the province of Ontario.
Such were the opinions expressed by men who command the respect of the Canadian people, and I have no hesitation in saying that, no matter to what religion people may belong, the immense majority of the Canadian people, 95 per cent of them, still want the home preserved and the marriage tie respected. We are a Christian country, thank God. Canada is surely not going to follow in the footsteps of our neighbours to the south, where the marriage relation has fallen so low-the lowest in the scale of all great nations. Statistics speak. Let us look back and se'e what happened when divorce was imposed upon us. We know how it came about; after the adoption of the divorce law in England in 1857 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick established divorce courts. Prince Edward Island never took advantage of that law; and let it be said to the honour of that province that to-day it is the only province in the Dominion in which but one divorce has been granted since 1867. What has been the

Procedure Respecting Divorce
result of the institution of divorce in Canada? When the question of divorce came before the fathers of confederation, Sir Hector Langevin, speaking for the government of that day, said:
Let us now examine the question of divorce. We do not intend either to establish or to recognize a new right, we do not mean to admit a thing to which we have constantly refused to assent. But at the conference the question arose which legislature should exercise the different powers which already exist in the constitutions of the different provinces. Now, among those powers which have been already and frequently exercised de facto, is that of divorce. As a member of the conference, without admitting or creating any new right in this behalf and while declaring, as I now do, that as Catholics we acknowledge no power of divorce, I found that we were to decide in what legislative body the authority should be lodged which we found in our constitutions. After mature consideration, we resolved to leave it to the central legislature, thinking thereby to increase the difficulties of procedure which is at present so easy.
We found this power existing in the constitutions of the different provinces and not being able to get rid of it, we wished to banish it as far from us as possible.
What has been the record since confederation? In the first decade, from 1867 to 1877, 7 divorces were granted. From 1877-87, there were 16; 1887-97, 36; 1897-1907, 53; 1907-17, over 200; 1917-27, 1,070; and in 1928 alone parliament granted 238. So that the total number of divorces granted by parliament in that period was 1,620, for the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. And the total for the whole of Canada from 1913 to 1928 was 6,052.
There are in this house fathers of families, men who will be responsible to another generation for what we do here; and our records will stand up against them. Are we doing what we should do now to safeguard the sanctity of the home and to render marriage indestructible, or are we not rather going about it in a slipshod manner, allowing divorces to be granted automatically by a few senators on the other side? Indeed, we go so far as to lump them together and pass them en bloc. Surely that is not the sort of legislation which this parliament should give to the Canadian people. This is a serious, a grave question; it is not a party question. The responsibility lies on all sides and on all members of the house. I know the present government will have to consider the question because we cannot allow the present state of things to continue. Some means will have to be found to change the present situation.
I want to give another illustration of what has taken place as a result of the legislation passed in this house whereby the provinces in the west were allowed to introduceinto Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba- the English law in respect to this matter. What has been the result? How have divorces increased since 1913? By years, the total figures for Canada are:
1913.
1914.
1915. 1910
1918
1920
1922
1924
1926
1928
70
53 67
54 114 376 429 548 544 505 543 551 608 748 785
This makes a total in fifteen years of 6,055. Homes are broken up, children are thrown out on the street, and that responsibility weighs upon us and will weigh upon us until other methods are found to bring about the indissolubility of the marriage tie.
In the short time at my disposal I have no opportunity to discuss the attitude of the Roman Catholic church in this regard. That church is the mother church of all Christianity; it was the church of all Christians for fifteen hundred years and it always stood for the teachings of Christ as it understood them. Since then there have been changes; Christians do not agree upon the interpretation of certain passages in St. Matthew, but surely no man in this house to-day would pretend for one moment that our Lord and Master declared that a divorced person could marry again within the lifetime oif the other party.
I hold in my hand a 'book entitled Divorce in America, which contains an introduction by the Right Reverend William T. Manning, Bishop of New York, in which he describes in a few words the horrible condition now prevailing in the United States. Are we to follow in the footsteps of that country, where the people themselves are trying to have the marriage tie respected and the homes saved? After referring to the enormous increase in the divorces granted in the United States, where the average is one divorce in five marriages; after calling attention to the fact that fifty-two different reasons are given for the granting of divorce, and after stating that divorces granted in one state are not recognized in another, this Episcopalian bishop says:
It is our duty to face this situation, to consider its causes and its consequences, and to ask ourselves how it can best be remedied.
The separation of man and wife, and their living apart, for grave cause, is not forbidden by the church. The church allows, and in extreme cases even advises this. It is the use

Procedure Respecting Divorce


Mr. J. L. BROWN (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker,
I do not apprehend that this is the time or place to discuss the principle underlying divorce; the fact of the matter is that we have divorce in Canada and that this parliament has been charged under the British North America Act with the responsibility of granting divorce. That is the situation prevailing to-day, whether we like it or not.
I am quite well aware that it is not in order to reflect upon a bill which has been presented to the house already during this session or upon a vote which has been taken here, but

Procedure Respecting Divorce
I will say that I believe those who have brought this matter before the house have done a service in that they have shown the absurdity of the position taken by the house on a former occasion this session. We are not discussing the theory of divorce; we are face to face with certain conditions, and I think it was because the house failed to realize that fact that we acted as we did a few weeks ago. That is all I wish to say upon that point because, as I have stated, I am well aware that it is not in order to discuss a question which has been before the house already or a vote which was taken on a previous occasion. The question which confronts us now is this: a large number of divorce bills have come before this chamber during a long period of .years; how we shall conduct ourselves with regard to that condition? The hon. member who introduced this matter has rendered a service to the house, in that he has placed before us the condition which exists. I cannot follow him, or the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine), who supported him, to the extent of going as far as they have gone. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) stated that he proposed to vote against this bill because he did not know anything about it; the hon. member for Wetaskiwin said that he would vote against these bills because he did not know the particulars and did not wish to know them. I would say to the hon. members that they are negligent in their duty in that regard. I am not saying that I am better informed than they are with regard to this particular bill, but when they advance that as the reason for their action, then I say to that extent they are negligent in their duty. They say that they do not propose to discharge their duty as members of parliament because they have not informed themselves on the question before the house.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Has the hon. member read the evidence relating to this case?


John Livingstone Brown: I have already confessed
that I have not read the evidence, but I do not propose to make that an excuse for not doing my duty.


James Shaver Woodsworth: On what ground
does the hon. member propose to support the bill?


John Livingstone Brown: The hon. member will have heard me when I have finished; I propose to give very good reasons for the course of action I propose to take.
As I have said on former occasions, I do not think the present system is the best possible 78594-100}
system we could have. However, it is the system in existence at the present time, and I intend to act in harmony with it. I have said that the senate committee deal with these questions, within the limits which are imposed upon them, in manner which commands the approval of those who have seen them taking evidence. I know that they are handicapped; I know that they cannot go as far in the way of granting redress to injured parties as we would like to have them go, and as we believe a properly established court could go, but, at the same time, I think it is a mistake to give the public the impression that these questions are not being dealt with seriously by a body of men competent to deal with them. Whether or not I read the evidence taken in connection with these cases, I have confidence in the senate committee before whom that evidence is adduced, and when they submit these questions to us I believe we are justified in assuming that they have reached the proper conclusion. I shall not vote against these bills because I have not read the evidence, but will assume that the senate committee has properly discharged its duty; that these bills come to us after being properly considered, and, therefore, should be endorsed by the house.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Mr. Speaker, I quite agree with the hon. member who has just taken his seat (Mr. Brown) when he says that this is not the proper time to discuss the broad issue of the principle of divorce. I also agree with the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) when he says that it is not in order to discuss the question of the establishment of divorce courts because, as he says, that question has been decided, for this year at least, by a vote of the house. At the same time, I think the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) has justified the course he has taken when he points out, by way of exemplification, the consequence of the attitude taken by the house on a previous occasion. I think we are all agreed that the hon. member for Lisgar is a very sensible man. He said that he did not want to discuss the theory; he admitted that the system was bad, but he wanted to deal with the system as it is. Carried to its logical conclusion, the position taken by the hon. gentleman would only mean that every time the house found that something was wrong, it could do nothing to remedy the condition complained of because of its being the system then in effect.


An hon. MEMBER:: No, no.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Fortunately, parliaments very seldom act logically.

Procedure Respecting Divorce


Robert Forke: He wanted to point out
that a mistake had been made on a previous vote.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I would advise the hon. minister, who is a canny Scotchman, not to come to the rescue of the hon. member for Lisgar, who is just as canny a Scotchman as he is.
In connecting the words of the hon. member for Lisgar with those of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, my construction is that this parliament is not empowered to deal with the civil rights when it grants a divorce; that it is not empowered to deal with property belonging to the divorced parties or to the children; that it is not empowered to decide what shall be granted to the divorced party who may be in the right in asking for the divorce, or to his or her children. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I think the point raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre in connection with this bill, and all similar ones, is very well taken. The point raised that under subsection 26 of clause 91 of the British North America Act we are dealing with questions upon which we have no power to pass final judgment and do justice to all parties, is a very grave constitutional point.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: No power to grant money or alimony.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Of course not. It may have been done in one case or another, but many things are done occasionally by parliament. or occasionally by a provincial legislature which are against the letter of the constitution. Such a thing stands so long as it is not challenged, but look at what it means. It means that things are done haphazardly which may be challenged ten or fifteen years later in a court of justice and upon which the Supreme- Court of Canada or the Privy Council will pass final judgment, doing away with the whole of our jurisprudence. I do not want to go too much outside this debate, but this has happened with regard to mariage jurisprudence in Quebec. Year after year the superior court, the court of review and the court of appeal of Quebec rendered judgments in a certain sense, when all of a sudden, in the year of grace 1921, the Privy Council gave what some consider as a judgment but what others merely call an opinion, which has practically upset the whole of our jurisprudence in Quebec since confederation. The more I have studied the question-and I have given a good deal of time to it-the more I have become convinced that that judgment of the Privy Council is. legally speaking, the right one. But what does it mean? That for
[Mr. Bourassa.?
years and years the legislature of Quebec and the tribunals of that province acted upon a delusion which that final judgment of the Privy Council simply dispelled. So much for the constitutional issue.
Are we going to take the position that, because certain things have been done for ten, twenty-five or thirty years, we are to go on doing the same? Let us carry that also to its logical conclusion. Let us apply it to any principle or practice of policy in connection with public affairs or private interest. Are we going to consider ourselves bound by what has been done from year to year or from decade to decade by the house or by the senate? Is so, why have a parliament? Why not adopt a final act of (parliament in the form and terms of the laws of -the Medes and Persians and say that what is law shall be law for all time to come?


James Shaver Woodsworth: We have that under the British North America Act.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: That some old-time
Tories who no longer exist even in this house, should have upheld the principle that certain laws or practices should always remain unaltered, I can understand; but that any man, calling himself Liberal, Progressive or Liberal-Conservative, should stand up in the house and say: I will not consider the- merits of a concrete issue, or I will not consider the principle of a certain form of legislation, because it depends upon a system which has -been practised for fifty years, is something I cannot understand. For my part I do not think I was elected in the year of grace 1926 by a portion of the Canadian electorate to come here and do something because it had been done from session to session for the last fifty years.
To apply those considerations to the question at issue, I said before, and I repeat now-


Mr. CLARK:: I rise to a point of order.
This is a bill before the house and the hon. member is not discussing the merits or demerits of it. He is discussing the principle whether parliament should deal with such bills or not. That matteT has been dealt with already by the house at this session, and I submit that the whole discussion is out of order. The only matter which the house can discuss is whether this particular bill is one which should be passed by the house.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Speaking on the point
of order, I quite agree with the hon. gentleman: I think the whole discussion is out of order. But why should the point be raised when I am endeavouring to clear up the issue brought before the house by three hon. members who preceded me?

Procedure Respecting Divorce


Henry Herbert Stevens: The hon. member is now applying the principle he has just condemned.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Quite so. I prefaced it
by saying that logic had nothing to do with our procedure.


Mr. SPEAKER:: The question before the
house is the second reading of a particular bill in regard to divorce. It is very hard to make a distinction between the principle contained in that bill and the general principle of divorce; but as the hon. member for La-belle admits that he is out of order, I hope he will confine his remarks to the particular subject before the house. I repeat, however, it is very difficult to establish a distinction between the principle of divorce that obtains in this particular bill and the general principle itself.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, because that will cut short the discussion, and I hope the decision will stand against further speeches.
With regard to this particular bill, it is a divorce bill. It is a divorce bill framed in the same language as that in which all divorce bills are framed, adopted by the senate and brought before the house. If you go through the statutes of the last fifty years or about so, you find that every divorce granted by parliament, for whatever reasons or causes, is granted in the same form. There is a printed formula in both languages, French and English, and there are blank spaces for the name, the date, the date of the marriage, the date, I think, at which the case has been brought before the senate, or something to that effect. A few words are filled in and the form is adopted by a committee of the senate, sent to this house and passed upon by us without our reading the evidence. I think that will be admitted by every fair-minded man. At least nineteen out of twenty members do not read the evidence; at any rate they do not read the evidence of all those bills, so that, as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. WToodsworth) has said, we act as rubber stamps in order to ratify what has been done by the senate committee under those conditions. I claim that is a bad system of legislation.
With regard to this particular bill we have to look first to the principle upon which it is based. We have to consider the principle upon which we act upon this bill or any other similar piece of legislation. Are we acting as a sovereign parliament, as a branch of this sovereign parliament equal in power to and exercising the same responsibilities as the other branch, or are we acting as a court
of justice? It is one or the other, or both, perhaps. Under subsection 26 of section 91 of the British North America Act, parliament has the sole and exclusive power to deal with marriage and divorce, either from a legislative or from a legal point of view. In other words, no divorce can be granted except by leave of this parliament, directly through private bills as is the case now, or indirectly through the decisions of courts of justice empowered by parliament to act in this regard, with the exception of those courts of divorce which existed in the maritime provinces prior to confederation. Let there be no mistake: the divorce courts that have been established and are working now in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, have been established and are adjudicating under the authority of parliament, under the authority of law passed by parliament
With regard to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which had no divorce courts prior to Confederation, and in which this parliament has not thought proper to establish divorce courts, this parliament acts directly upon every divorce bill, first as a legislative power, and second as a court of justice. It is a great axiom of British jurisprudence that where a right is created by parliament, rightly or wrongly, some court of justice must exist to adjudicate upon the concrete issues which are raised in connection with that right. I think that has been an uncontradicted principle of British government, British legislation and British jurisprudence for centuries past. Therefore, this parliament having received from the British parliament, at its own request, the exclusive power to legislate on marriage and divorce, it has taken a moral or an immoral pledge towards people who believe in divorce to give them a means to exercise that right, which I consider a contradiction of social right and social duty, but of which nevertheless this parliament has accepted the responsibility.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Does the hon. member
mean to say that under subsection 26 of section 91 of the British North America Act this parliament is bound to act on matters of divorce when it is applied to?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: That is the construction I put upon that principle of British jurisprudence, that where there is a right there must be an adjudication upon issues in connection with that right by some form of tribunal. I think that is contained in our code of civil procedure in the province of Quebec as one of its first principles. I am not a lawyeri 578

Procedure Respecting Divorce


Mr. CAHAN:: It is elementary law anyway.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Of course. How can a
parliament which in the name of the sovereign exercises all powers of legislation without limitation, including the creation of courts of adjudication, claim to itself and have put into its national charter the exclusive power to deal on certain subjects unless it is prepared to grant to every citizen of the country a recourse to see whether or not he has the right to invoke that principle of law? It is for that reason that I repeat to-day what I have always said that the one great moral and social crime of the fathers of confederation was to introduce the principle of divorce into the constitution.
I come back to this bill, and my remarks will apply to the next bill and to all these other bills. I cannot understand how anyone who is opposed to divorce on principle, who believes that divorce is wrong morally and socially, can vote for any one of these divorce bills that are brought before parliament. You may say that I have done it. Yes, in a way. We all well know that all of us have done things that had better not have been done. Let us have a little humility. All of us in the course of our political lives have done things which we would like not to have done; but am I to be told in this year 1929, when age is coming upon me, that because I have been wrong or unthoughtful for many years, I am now precluded from being a little more thoughtful and thinking more of my responsibilities to my God, to my country, to my own children and to the children of others? If I have been lightheaded and unreflective in letting pass for years bills of divorce, "carried on division," I am not going to do so in the future. I said last year and I repeat it now-not in any spirit of enmity to this house, to any party in this house or to any individual- the more I grow in age, the more I reflect upon the evolutions of human society, and the more I am convinced that the canker-worm which is eating into the entrails of modern nations is, as the hon. member for Bona venture (Mr. Marcil) has said, the destruction of the sanctity of the home.
Reference has been made to individual sufferings, to the men and women who occasionally are victims of a bad marriage. But can you point to one single law which does not carry with it some individual suffering? Can you point to one single law upon which society rests, and upon which rests the magnificent political fabric of which we are so proud, which has not multiplied martyrs all through 
the centuries of the glorious history of the British Empire, and of the world at large? No. When it comes to the foundations of society you have to choose between social principles upon which no concessions should be made, in regard to which no transactions should be consented to, and the suffering of some few individuals.
As to those who do not agree with me on this point,, I respect their views. But if they think as does the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) and apparently the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) although he was not as clear, if they admit that on certain occasions and for certain causes divorce ought to be granted, then I come back to the other point, that such action should >be taken in a judicial manner, and divorce should never be granted unless all the rules of equity and justice and evidence are applied to each case.


John Livingstone Brown: Why did you not vote that way when the bill was before the house?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I beg the hon. gentleman's pardon. The hon. gentleman does not have to, of course, but if he had listened to me or had read my speech, I am sure that with his keen mind he would see that I am taking now exactly the same position that I took last year, and this year again.


John Livingstone Brown: There is the record of your vote.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I voted against the
establishment of divorce courts by this parliament, after I had put to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre the question, "Are you prepared to amend your bill by introducing into it a clause saying that any divorce court established in any province of Canada shall not come into existence before t'he people of that particular community shall have expressed their will in favour of it?" That is exactly my stand to-day.
When my hon. friend interrupted I was going on to make this point. As regards those members of this house who are opposed to divorce on principle, whether you call it religious principle, social principle or political principle, I do not see 'how they can go on voting for all these divorce bills, and for my part I propose to vote against every one of them every time it is possible to get a division in the house. As to those who think it is their right and their duty to look into the merits of each case, then it comes to a question of their exercising judicial duties. It is admitted that divorce cases are coming to this parliament only from those provinces in which there are no divorce courts. As a

Procedure Respecting Divorce
matter of fact, as I pointed out to the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine), they are practically all coming from Ontario. This parliament, therefore, having taken upon itself the responsibility of acting as a divorce court for the province of Ontario and the province of Quebec, I claim that those hon. members who are of the opinion that each case should be decided on its merits must hold the view that 'both branches of this parliament should make full use of all their powers of inquiry before any divorce bill is granted, just as a court of justice would do before giving the decision of the court in favour of this, that or the other party. You must aipply all the rules of evidence that are in force in all these courts [DOT]which this parliament has created, whether it be the supreme court, the exchequer court or any other court which has been created either by this parliament or by the legislatures of the various provinces, some under their own authority, and others, such as the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba divorce courts, under the authority of this parliament. You must see that the truth is vindicated as far as you can vindicate it. You must see that the principles of equity and social justice are applied to all parties.
One hon. gentleman, I think the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, told of a correspondence he had last year with regard to one of those divorce cases. I also had letters from one of the leading legal offices in Toronto pointing out to me the abominable injustice that was done in a certain case. Whether it was true or not, I do not know, I had no power to inquire into the matter. But it turned out that the senate committee ruled that it had no power either, or did not choose to exercise such power if it had any. Thereupon the woman protested that being too poor to come here to vindicate her honour, a gross injustice had been done to her, that her life had been broken by a decision of parliament which precluded her from being heard. The senate committee passed judgment upon the case; this house passed, not judgment, but ratified the decision of the divorce committee of the senate apparently for the reason-surprising to me-that we have such confidence in one committee of one branch of this parliament that we renounce our responsibilities, we put our conscience, our intelligence and our will into the hands of the eight or ten gentlemen composing that committee. Capable as they may be, learned as they may be, I am not prepared to say, Mr. Speaker, and I do not think I could justify myself before the people who have sent me here by saying: I may have done wrong, I may have been ^a party to a
mistaken decision by the senate committee, but the case was in the hands of that committee, and although the bill could not pass without my vote, I gave my vote without inquiry, blindly, and without knowing anything of the circumstances, because I had confidence in those gentlemen. I cannot agree to do any such thing.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, opposed as I am to divorce in principle, whatever reasons may be advanced in favour of it, believing that marriage is essentially a social principle before it is a question of contract or civil rights, believing, apart from the individual suffering that may arise from the maintenance of any particular marriage, that the great interests of society at large require the maintenance of the natural law and of the evangelical doctrine based upon it and sanctified by the word of Christ, that a marriage once contracted is contracted for life, I propose to vote against every divorce bill. In the next place, not believing that under the present system I can properly exercise those powers of judicial inquiry and judgment which we are called upon to exercise in these matters, I do nob propose to sit as one of the judges on any divorce case; consequently I rule the case out of court by the only means I have at my command, and that is by voting against this bill, against the next bill, and against every other divorce bill 'that may come before this parliament.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Mr. Speaker, I am as desirous of
preserving the sanctity of marriage and of married life as any member of this house could be. I was born and bred and I practised in the early years of my profession in the province of Nova Scotia, where we had a divorce court prior to confederation, a court which still continues to function. On that court sit judges appointed from time to time, both of Roman Catholic and the Anglican faith, who in their inmost hearts are opposed to the principle of divorce. And I presume that every judge finds the duty imposed upon him from time to time of administering laws to which he may be in principle opposed, and, if he were a member of the legislative assembly or parliament upon whom the responsibility is placed of enacting those laws, he would have voted on principle against their enactment. But the judges of that court find themselves in this judicial position, that they are bound by the solemn oath of office to administer the law which comes before them, although they are not morally or personally responsible for enactment of the law. Their sole duty is to pronounce a decision in accordance with the law which is then being administered by the

Procedure Respecting Divorce
court. It is in a similar position that I sit here as one of the members of the high court of parliament of Canada.
The constitution of this country has placed the duty and the responsibility upon the members of this house of administering and carrying out the purpose and intent of that constitution as expressed in the British North America Act. Section 91 declares:
It shall be lawful for the queen, by and with the advice and consent of the senate and House of Commons, to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada, in relation to all matters not coming within the classes of subjects by this act assigned exclusively to the legislatures of the provinces; and for greater certainty, but not so as to restrict the generality of the foregoing terms of this section, it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this act) the exclusive legislative authority of the parliament of Canada extends to all matters coming within the classes of subjects next hereinafter enumerated, that is to say,-
And number 26 is:
Marriage and divorce.
In respect of marriage and divorce parliament sits as a high court, both the commons and the senate. In times past it has been the custom for these divorce bills to be introduced in the senate and thoroughly investigated by a committee of the senate-I presume because that chamber has more time at its disposal- and the pronouncement of the senate committee has generally been accepted by this house. So long as that judicial function is imposed upon parliament, I regard it as my bounden duty to vote on the merits of each divorce bill that is brought before this house. I confess, as hon. members have stated this afternoon, that it is impossible for me to give adequate consideration to the evidence in each case which is printed by the senate committee and sent to every member of this house. I feel reluctant, really, to devote the time necessary to reading that evidence. Occasionally I have taken up at random the evidence in connection with some divorce bill and in the majority of cases, under the law which prevails in this country, I consider the applicants entitled to divorce. In other cases, not having heard the evidence, and perhaps construing it differently from those who heard it orally -because there is a great difference in my experience between reading the printed report of evidence and hearing the witnesses as they give that evidence before the committee-I should be doubtful whether I, sitting as a member of the committee ini such cases, looking at the evidence as it is printed1 and not having heard it, would have rendered the same decision as that rendered by the senate committee. Therefore I have felt that it would be far

better for parliament, and far better for the country, to impose on one of the courts of justice of the land the consideration of these petitions for divorce; because I believe that the judges of this country are far better qualified to render decisions in such cases than are we as members of the high court of parliament. But parliament in its wisdom has decided against relegating this judicial duty to the courts of the province of Ontario, and therefore so long as these bills from Ontario, relating to that province particularly, come before this parliament I feel in duty bound, under my responsibility as a member of this parliament, which is the high court of justice in Canada, to determine according to my conscience and according to the evidence given as to whether I will vote in favour of or oppose each particular bill which is brought before the house. It is very difficult, I repeat, for one to perform in this house that conscientious duty; but under the constitution of the country I think the duty is imposed upon us until such time as parliament decides in its wisdom to relegate that duty to the courts of justice. The divorce court-in the English-speaking provinces which have such courts-not only grants divorces on certain grounds of which we are all aware, but also nullifies marriages which have not been contracted according to the law. In the province of Quebec our courts exercise that jurisdiction of nullifying marriage contracts under certain circumstances, and that to a certain extent relieves those who are domiciled in Quebec from making application for divorce to the parliament of Canada. In the province of Ontario, so far, it appears that there is no consensus of opinion on the part of members representing that province as to whether divorce proceedings are better administered by this high court of parliament or would be better administered by the courts of Ontario. I have no doubt as to that; I think divorce should be relegated to those courts. And as regards the province of Quebec, with all due consideration for the views of my hon. colleagues from that province, whose religious convictions I understand and appreciate, and whose conscientious objections to divorce I also thoroughly understand and appreciate, I say that my own personal opinion is that it would be far better that the duty should be relegated to the courts of justice in that province, and that fewer mistakes would be made in administering the law if its administration were within the jurisdiction of its provincial courts.


Charles Marcil: Knowing the sentiment of Quebec as he knows it, and knowing that the

Procedure Respecting Divorce
immense majority of the people inhabiting that province are opposed to divorce, would my bon. friend undertake to impose it on the province ?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: No, I certainly would not; because many policies which, iln principle both my hon. friend and I might advocate, are nevertheless inexpedient, if it is suggested that we apply them to the whole Dominion generally. Therefore I should be opposed to imposing the administration of divorce upon the province of Quebec so Long as it objected to divorce. And in the same way I would oppose-at least I would not favour -the imposition of the administration of divorce upon the courts of Ontario so long as there is any strong public opinion against it in that province. That is my position.
I think that we are above ordinary sectarian prejudices in this high court; and as, one who has a sincere respect for the religious convictions of his fellow men, I therefore, would not impose upon any province the administration of a law, which was not acceptable to that province, either in respect of marriage or in respect of divorce. But, so long as the constitution of this country remains as it is, I feel it is my duty to give a judicial decision in respect of every petition for divorce that comes properly before this house and this parliament. So that irrespective of my own personal views with regard to divorce-and, I repeat, I believe in the sanctity of the marriage relation as deeply and sincerely as my hon. colleagues from the province of Quebec-I say that so long as the duty is imposed upon me by the constitution of this country, I feel I must administer the law, whatever my personal prede-lictions may be. It may be very distasteful to me, and in many cases it may not be in accordance with what I think should be accepted as the better way of administering the law. , Therefore, so far as this bill is concerned, on which apparently the evidence is conclusive, holding these opinions, I regard myself as in just the same position as a judge of the court of Nova Scotia, of the Catholic faith, who would feel, when the evidence was brought before him, that it was his duty and responsibility to administer the law in accordance with that evidence, although the principle of granting divorces might be utterly distasteful to him. That is the position which I intend to take in this house. So far as the province of Ontario is concerned I see no hope of relegating the duty of administering the law of divorce to the judiciary of that province, until the province actually requests it so clearly as to persuade us to legislate accordingly. At the same time I may add
that so long as we sit as a high court of parliament, exercising judicial functions, I hope I may have sufficient moral strength and personal courage to administer the law, even though sometimes I would not favour the enactment of the law under which that administration takes place.


Mr. W. K. BALDWIN (Stanstead):: Mr. Speaker, I have been a member of the House of Commons for a good many years and I have heard the question of divorce discussed on many occasions. I venture to say that no member of this house is more opposed to divorce on conscientious grounds than I am, because I believe a man and wife contracted to live together and that no legislative body has the right to dissolve that contract.
I ha%re attended only one divorce court in my life, and to me it was a pathetic scene. The husband, a young man of fine appearance, brought charges against his wife, who was present in the court, and during the progress of the case the husband brought out what his six year old boy had said with regard to what he had seen his mother do. This young man seemed quite prosperous and bad given his wife valuable rings and other jewellery; in fact he was so devoted that he deeded his home and made over stocks to her. During the progress of the case the husband charged that the wife drank champagne, scotch and other liquors and went about the country with other men; later I heard the wife say that her husband was a drunken creature, and so on. Each had had an illness, and each claimed that during those illnesses the other had been untrue. It was very pathetic to think that the husband would not attend to his sick wife or that the wife, while her husband was ill, went around the country with other men drinking intoxicating liquor. If I had been given an opportunity to speak to those people I believe I could have brought about a reconciliation, because in the United States I have known of people being separated and then remarrying after having been brought together again by their children or by friends.
I can remember when, so far as I knew, there was not a divorce court in the United States. Now they are located everywhere, and some of the wealthiest women take their children to those nasty places to listen to this terrible evidence. In the United States there are over fifty grounds for divorce; they even grant divorce in some states for incompatibility of temperament. In my opinion divorce is a cancer which eventually will destroy any country; many of the best thinking people of the United States say that divorce will bring about the downfall of that great country. In Canada we can boast of a virile people; we

Procedure Respecting Divorce
are a great nation, recognizing all the moral laws and the laws of God, but as the hon. member for Bonaventure (Mr. Marcil) has stated, divorces have increased in Canada from only seven in one year to about two thousand, and every divorce means broken hearts. If the parties to the divorce do not suffer so much their relatives and their children are disgraced and1 shamed. Our homes are the bulwarks of our nation, and when we destroy the homes we weaken the moral fibre of our Canadian people. So when we grant divorces we take a tremendous responsibility upon our shoulders.
As a member of parliament I have been accused of assisting to procure divorces. No member of this house assists in that way; divorces are railroaded through the house and we must acce.pt the responsibility. I want it distinctly understood that I will oppose in every way any divorce law or measure which may be brought up an this house at any time. What an example we are setting the rising generation, the children who are the hope of the world for the future. We should picture the broken homes, the broken hearts, the disappointed fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers when we consider the question of divorce.
I am not speaking from the constitutional standpoint, which was dealt with by the speaker who preceded me; I believe divorce is destroying our nation, and if this parliament accepts responsibility for aiding and abetting such conditions, I propose to make my stand known. I have not read the evidence in a divorce case for over five years; when these reports come to me I tear them up, and I tried to burn them but I could not do so.
There was one case of divorce in my county and not more than a dozen words appeared in the reports in relation to this case. The man had deserted his wife when the children were quite small. When the children were about twenty-one years of age, the wife finally located him. She, with her sister, discovered him living with another woman in the state of "Vermont. There were four children and the wife was told that her husband was the father of those children, which he acknowledged in the presence of his wife and her sister. That is all that would be required to be proved in order to obtain a divorce. The granting of divorces will increase in number because a contaminated thing grows fast, and it would be a terrible misfortune for the youth of this country should they come to realize that members of parliament would support legislation that would destroy the sanctity of the home.


Mr. A. M. CARMICHAEL (Kindersley):: Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to say any-
thing on this question, but I would like to call the attention of the house to the matter under consideration. This is the second reading of Bill No. 85, letter E of the senate. By saying yes or no with regard to the second reading of this bill, we either register our opinion in favour of advancing the bill one stage, or register our opinion against such advancement. In order to give my own personal opinion, I might say that I am not opposed to the entire bill. I might go further and say that I am not absolutely opposed to the granting of divorces, but I am opposed to certain portions of the bill now before us. We find the bill divided into three parts, the first of which is the preamble. The preamble reads:
Whereas Effie Margaret Hill, residing at the city of Chatham, in the province of Ontario, factory worker, wife of Charles Henry Hill, clock repairer, who is domiciled in Canada and residing at the city of London, in the said province, has by her petition alleged that they were married on the first day of September, A.D. 1920, at the said city of Chatham, she then being Effie Margaret Borland, a spinster; and whereas by her petition she has prayed that, because of his adultery since then, their marriage be dissolved; and whereas the said marriage and adultery have been proved by evidence adduced and it is expedient that the
grayer of her petition be granted: Therefore [is Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:-
There is nothing in the preamble which should meet with opposition. We take it for granted that the senate committee has thoroughly considered the evidence adduced, and has come to the conclusion that the adultery has been proven. Relying on the thorough investigation which has been made, I am prepared to agree to the preamble. If adultery has been committed, it is possible that these two parties are not living together, and, therefore, I am quite willing that this part of the bill should pass. Clause 1 of the bill reads as follows:
The said marriage between Effie Margaret Borland and Charles Henry Hill, her husband, is hereby dissolved, and shall be henceforth null and void.
Up to that point I am in favour of that clause, but I would think that the next clause, "to all intents and purposes whatsoever" might be omitted. If something has come between two parties who have been legally married and which prevents them living together, then I have no objection to legislation being passed which will permit them to live apart. I do not claim that it is necessary that they come here to obtain that right, they could go before a court and get a judicial separation. Of course, it is

Procedure Respecting Divorce
not always possible to arrive at an amicable settlement in a court, which I think is necessary in order to have a satisfactory judicial separation. We might have parties coming here and asking for a bill of divorce whereby they could be eternally separated, as the saying goes. The next clause in this bill reads as follows:
2. The said Effie Margaret Borland may at any time hereafter marry any man whom she might lawfully marry if the said marriage with the said Charles Henry Hill had not been solemnized.
I am not prepared to sanction that part of this bill. In giving my reason for arriving at this conclusion I need only say that we have a Book which is used in this so-called Christian land, a Book which is an authority prior to any statute which might be passed by this parliament. In the twentieth chapter of Exodus there are certain commands given to us to obey. One of those commands is, "Thou shalt not steal," and we take it for granted that when people do steal they commit a wrong and we pass laws to bring them to task.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: It depends upon the
amount of money they steal.


Archibald M. Carmichael: Without a doubt,
the punishment is according to the offence. Another command in that same chapter is, "Thou shalt not kill." When people go out and violate that command they are punishable by either imprisonment for a term of years, or possibly by death.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Again it depends.


Archibald M. Carmichael: Another command
is, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The one Person who is partly responsible for that written message in the twentieth chapter of Exodus was here upon earth, and he told us in very plain language-language which I cannot discard or get around in order to explain away-"Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." How can these injunctions be reconciled with what is proposed here? I cannot reconcile them myself, and, therefore, I refuse to sanction the second clause of this bill. I feel that if we as a parliament sanction such a bill we, in effect, legalize adultery. We override what, to my mind, is a greater authority than any law that we could pass in parliament.


James Shaver Woodsworth: May I suggest,
though, that we have never considered the possibility of bringing in a law against adultery?


Archibald M. Carmichael: Well, that is the
opinion of the hon. member, but-


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, I say that as
a matter of fact, parliament has no law against adultery.


Archibald M. Carmichael: Quite true. We
have laws against stealing; we have laws against killing, and it is quite possible we may advocate a law against adultery. Somebody may be prepared to say that the Founder of the Christian religion more or less sanctioned divorce when He was asked the question in regard to the practice of Moses. I do not believe He did. He was asked: Why did Moses allow divorces in his time? And his answer was that Moses, because of the hardness of their hearts suffered them to give writings of divorcement and to put away their wives, but from the beginning it was not so. That is the attitude I prefer to take, namely, that from the beginning such was not so and was not intended to be so, and I feel that we, in this year of Our Lord, 1929, instead of getting further away from the beginning, should make some attempt to get back to what was the intention in the beginning. Therefore I am going to vote against this bill for the reason that I think the right to marry again should not be included in any of these bills.
Some hon. members have advocated that this matter should come before a court; that the courts are more capable of inquiring into the details and adjudicating upon such matters than we in this house are. I gather that parliament is a court above every other court in the land and we should give the lead as to what course we would expect our courts to follow in similar cases. Our lead should be against passing any bill that gives the right to marry again.
The question was raised whether or not adultery could be made a punishable offence. Why could it not be made an offence? Adultery is taken as the absolute ground for divorce in Canada. If adultery were made a punishable, a statutory offence-and I am not going to suggest to what extent the punishment should be made effective-I am not so sure but that we would curb our divorce evil much more readily than we are doing even by opposing divorce bills. If adultery were made a punishable offence on the part of the person who was the cause of the divorce proceedings, and then if we followed that a little further and classified any person who married after being granted a divorce, as being guilty of adultery and liable to such punishable offence, I am rather of opinion that we would curb our divorce evil to a greater extent. For these various reasons I am going to vote against Bill No. 85, and every other divorce bill that comes before the house.
15S4

Procedure Respecting Divorce


John Arthur Clark: Mr. Speaker-


Hewitt Bostock: Does any other hon. member desire to speak?


John Arthur Clark: The hon. member for
Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) has given some very good reasons for the establishment of a divorce court, but he has given no reasons for a change in a principle recognized by law. If an applicant such as the one involved in this case, were to come before a court and the evidence which is before parliament were given, any court in the land would give that woman the right to remarry. Therefore I suggest that while the member has given a very good reason for the establishment of a divorce court, he has given no good reason why we should change the principle of the granting of divorce by parliament.
At confederation the principle upon which we act was decided by the constitution; the principle upon which we act was reaffirmed a few months ago during this session, and that principle was accepted by the house. Every member of the house, by deciding that there would be no divorce court established for the province of Ontario, assumed the responsibility of sitting in his seat here as he would if he sat upon the bench as a judge. When a lawyer accepts a judicial office in Canada, he assumes the responsibilities that go with that office, and one of tire responsibilities of that office is hearing petitions for divorce. Regardless of his religion, regardless of his convictions, he ds bound to administer the law as it stands. That is the exact position of every member of the house. He has been elected by the electors of his constituency to come here and do his duty. One of the duties of the individual member is to act in a judicial capacity and in every case that comes before the house he is obliged to give his decision in accordance with the facts of the particular case, not in acordance with his belief upon a principle, 'because that principle has been established for us. During this session we attempted to rid ourselves of that particular principle, and we failed. I for one *was quite willing that another body should deal with applications for divorce, but the house decided otherwise. Therefore it is my responsibility now to look into this case and into all other divorce cases, and to give my decision just as I would give it were I sitting upon the bench of the country. My obligation is just as strong as that of any judge, regardless of my personal convictions.
It only remains for us to consider whether the facts of this particular case merit the [Mr. Carmichael. I
granting of a dissolution of marriage. I have read the evidence in this case and it is very simple. I do not think it would be out of place to cite the facts. The applicant was married in 1920 and she fell ill very shortly after her marriage. Her husband deserted her. He has lived for some years with another woman by whom he has had three children. The applicant has been forced to earn her living during these years and She is now applying for dissolution of marriage. The evidence is simple and clear and any court in the land would grant the divorce. Personally I do not know the parties in the case and I do not even know the lawyer. It happens that my name is there as the sponsor of the bill. I have looked into the facts of the case and I believe it is a meritorious one. I believe that we are bound to adjudicate upon it just as though we were sitting as a court of law.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: From what the hon.
member has said, is it not a question whether this lady ought not to be awarded alimony or some compensation for the conduct of her husband in deserting her when she was sick? This parliament has no power to do that.


John Arthur Clark: As far as the petition is
concerned, I did not observe whether the wife is asking for alimony. In any case, as I understand it, she could not get it from this court, though she might from a provincial court. But that does not alter the situation. We are a court, and we are governed by the principles of law as they now exist. We are bound to administer the law as we find it. We cannot at this sitting make a new law. We are confronted with a situation, and we are bound in honour and conscience and in justice and in every other way to administer the law as we find it at this moment. We may, it is true, change the law. I have no objection to the law being changed, but as long as the law stands as it is we are bound to consider the merits of this particular case, and give our decision upon it, regardless of our religious faith or personal convictions.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Might I ask my
hon. friend as a lawyer whether he would expect any jury to decide upon a case in which they had not even heard the evidence?


John Arthur Clark: I do not think the question has any point. We are merely a confirming court. There is a committee which has heard the evidence and we are now, as I understand it, merely determining whether or not we will send this case to a committee of the house for further consideration. I will go this far and say that if a jury heard the evidence as the evi-

Procedure Respecting Divorce
dence is printed, I have no doubt in the world that any jury sitting in any part of this country would grant the divorce.


Hewitt Bostock: Moved by Mr. Clark,
seconded by Mr. Hanson, that the said bill be referred to the select standing committee on private bills.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, at
this stage I desire to oppose such a reference to the private bills committee. It does not seem to me that the principle has been clearly decided, and I have-


Richard Bedford Bennett: Six o'clock.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


James Shaver Woodsworth: When the house
rose at six o'clock, Mr. Speaker, I was about to call attention to the fact that whereas we have heard a great deal about the high court of parliament, the vote after all would show to anyone who knew the position of this parliament, that it was not based on the evidence in the particular case-


Hewitt Bostock: Will the hon. member
allow me. The principle of the bill was carried on the second reading. The present motion is that the bill be committed to the select standing committee on miscellaneous private bills. Under standing order 50 it is provided:
A motion to refer a bill, resolution or any question to the committees of the whole, or any standing or special committee shall preclude all amendment of the main question.
And under the same rule the following appears :
To "commit" a bill means to refer it to a committee, to be considered and reported.
A bill may be committed either to a standing committee, a select committee, a committee of the whole house or a joint committee of the house and senate.
I would particularly direct the hon. member's attention to the next paragraph, 427:
This motion is not debatable under standing order 38 unless it be an order of the day; but, upon the motion for the third reading of the bill, an amendment for the recommittal of the bill may be debated.
The motion now before the house is one of a purely formal character, following as a logical consequence from the adoption of the principle of the bill. I may observe to the hon. member that he will have many opportunities to discuss the present bill and even to propose thereto any amendment he sees fit when the bill is reported from the committee. Under the circumstances I must rule the motion not debatable. Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?
15S6

Procedure Respecting Divorce
Motion agreed to and bill referred to the select standing committee on miscellaneous private bills.



FRANCES GWENDOLYN SNOW LOTT

[Stage Direction]
Mr. W. F. GARLAND (Carleton) moved the second reading of bill No. 91, for the relief of Frances Gwendolyn Snow Lott.
James Shaver Woodsworth: In the discussion of the last bill the mover, the hon. member for Burrard (Mr. Clark), was good enough to give us an outline of the evidence in the case. It seems to me that in the course of the debate we are now to have we ought to get from the hon. member for Carleton the main facts of the evidence in the case now before us. Only as we have such facts can we approach even to a semblance of doing things in a judicial manner. We have been told by those who represent the law to-day that we are a high court of parliament and as such, I take it, we ought not to act without sufficient evidence having been presented. In connection with the last bill we had some second-hand evidence as given out from the senate; we had no original evidence presented to us. However, we did have some statements made by the promoter of the bill, and I think at this stage we should at least have that much before us.
Then it was suggested that we were acting in the capacity of jurymen. I would say that when jurymen are present in a court they are required to be present at the time the decision is made, but half of our jurymen ran behind the curtains. So I am inclined to think it was a political rather than a judicial decision which was given. I think, Mr. Speaker, that if we are going to give a judicial decision on the bill before us all the members of the jury should remain in the room and vote on the merits of the case and on the evidence as it is presented by the hon. member for Carleton (Mr. Garland). Further than that, suggestions were made during the course of the debate which I think influenced the vote of some of the members of the house; some thought they should have the authority of some church for acting as they did.


Charles Avery Dunning: I rise to a point of order. The hon. member is not discussing the bill before the house but is discussing the manner in which members voted on a previous bill.
I was one of those who remained here, so his remarks do not affect me, but if this sort of thing is to be continued I think the discussion should be kept strictly in order.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am happy indeed that my remarks have not affected the
fMr. Speaker.]
Minister of Railways, since he was in his place. I am referring, and I think I am quite in order, to the fact that it was stated that we dealt with these matters as a sort of jury, and I directed attention to the fact that a number of hon. members retired at the time the vote was taken.


Hewitt Bostock: I would ask the hon.
gentleman to confine his remarks to the bill now before the house.


James Shaver Woodsworth: In dealing with
this matter, Mr. Speaker, I think we cannot come to any decision without involving the principle of divorce. Again and again hon. members have stated in this house that they are definitely opposed to granting any divorces; that means that they are definitely opposed to granting these divorces, and I submit that any bill coming before us involves the principle of divorce and that we have a right to speak on that principle.
In the discussion which took place certain members felt that it was against their conscientious beliefs to vote for any divorce bill; some felt that their church authorities were opposed to it, and to support that view certain authorities were quoted. One of the bodies mentioned was the Anglican church, but I hold in my hand a copy of a resolution which was sent not long ago to the Minister of Justice by the Toronto Anglican Diocesan Council for Social Service, and which is as follows:
This council, being ever anxious to uphold the sanctify of marriage, and deploring the increase of divorce, is of opinion after careful consideration that, there being no extension of the existing ground of divorce, the establishment of a divorce court for Ontario (in lieu of the present divorce proceedings before parliament) dealing with the subject according to the recognized procedure of the courts and including the question of the custody of the children and provision of alimony for a deserving wife (and mother), would make for the better administration of the existing law of divorce.
That resolution clearly shows that one of the leading churches, which was quoted during this discussion, is not fundamentally opposed to the principle of divorce but would urge that provision be made, as some of us have suggested, for the custody of the children and for alimony.
Let me repeat what I said this afternoon:
I am opposed to these particular bills as they come along simply because no provision whatever is made for the care and custody of children or for alimony for the wife. Later on, if these bills are returned to committee of the whole, I may propose certain amendments similar to those which I

Procedure Respecting Divorce
proposed last year, in order to provide for alimony. Those amendments may be turned down by this house, but on the other hand they will serve to direct the attention of the public at large to the gross injustice which we are perpetuating by this manner of dealing with these bills.


George Reginald Geary: Why provide for alimony?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Because I think it is cruel to grant a divorce to a woman while making no provision for her sustenance afterwards. Under present conditions she must take action in the civil courts, and I would take it that the general principle should be that the court granting the divorce should be the court which could grant alimony.


George Reginald Geary: I quite agree with the latter statement, that the same court should make provision for alimony if alimony is thought desirable, but the law in regard to alimony is that it does not necessarily follow separation in any form. Alimony is intended to put a wife into the same position of life she would have occupied if she had not married.
Mr. WOODSW'ORTH: Quite so; that is one of the points I tried to bring out last year, that we have absolutely no way of ascertaining whether or not alimony should be granted.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: You cannot have any means of ascertaining that so long as alimony is not claimed by the petitioner.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I know that, and the claim is not made simply because it has not been the practice. It is doubtful if we could grant such a claim, but if there were a regular court that could foe done.


George Reginald Geary: The woman might be much better off without alimony.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Possibly so, but in other cases she might be better off with it and those are the cases I have in view. I would like to make it very clear, Mr. Speaker, that those of us who are opposing these bills are not in any way anxious to break down home life. I do not think that inference would be willingly placed upon our action by any hon. members who are opposed to divorce, but nevertheless again and again it has been put in that way. One would think that by proposing divorce or, as some of us did a while ago, suggesting the establishment of a divorce court, we are necessarily breaking down the homes of Canada. I believe that in many cases the present system is breaking down the sanctity of the home, and the present insistence on adultery as the sole ground for divorce is lowering our moral life.
I have the testimony of such an eminent jurist as Lord Birkenhead, in his treatment of the whole question of divorce, in support of that latter statement. By concentrating attention on the physical act of adultery we lower the whole conception of marriage.
In addition to that, there is one province of Canada from which applications for divorce rarely come; that is the province of Quebec, and there are people from that province who seem to think that they are particularly virtuous because so few applications for divorce come from Quebec, while we are less virtuous who reside in other provinces where there are divorce courts or from which come many more applications for divorce. I do not believe that for one moment; I think in my own province of Manitoba we have a regard for the sanctity of the home as great as that held by the people who reside in the province of Quebec.


Mr. MERCIER (St. Henri):: Does not my hon. friend realize that the citizens of Quebec believe in our Canadian courts and are bound by their judgments?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Quite so, but that does not enter into the question at all. During the discussion the implication came from some quarters that we are less earnest in our desire to maintain the sanctity of the home because in other provinces we have divorce courts, and I state emphatically that I would resent any inference of that kind. If we are to discuss the purity of the home and the general morality of the poipulation we must take into account general illegitimacy, which is very prevalent in some provinces which boast of their higher state of morality. I do not want to enter into any discussion as to the relative morality of the different provinces; I do not think that would get us anywhere, but I do resent the suggestion that merely because I live in a province which has divorce courts we in that province are less moral than the people who live in other provinces where there are no divorce courts. Further, I resent the suggestion that because there are more applications for divorce from the province of Ontario it necessarily follows that the people of Ontario are less moral than the people from the provinces from which fewer applications for divorce arise. I do not think that follows at all, and I do not think we should have these implications put upon the arguments of the members who are speaking on this question.
I yield to no one in my desire to maintain the sanctity of the home. I believe that marriage should be sacramental in character. Whether it be in a Catholic or Protestant

Procedure Respecting Divorce
community, or a community where the people do not adhere to any faith, marriage is sacramental in character where there is true affection between husband and wife. Certain particular religious beliefs should not be brought in to decide this great question of divorce. It is for this reason that some of us feel that divorce cases should be decided entirely aside from such political considerations as have obtained in the past and which were very largely responsible for the rejection of the bill to grant the province of Ontario a divorce court.
I merely reiterate my former position that I shall have to show my protest in what seems to be the only way open, by voting against this bill unless specific evidence is brought forward to show that it is desirable that such a bill Should be passed. I would ask that the promoter of this bill, the hon. member for Carleton inform the house of the reasons for the granting of this particular divorce.


Mr. JAMES ARTHURS (Parry Sound) moved:: That the question be now put.


Hewitt Bostock: I might explain to the
house the effect of this motion. Standing order No. 55 reads as follows:
The previous question, until it is decided, shall preclude all amendment of the main question, and shall be in the following words, "That this question be now put." If the previous question be resolved in the affirmative, the original question is to be put forthwith without any amendment or debate.
In other words, it is the parliamentary closure to reach a decision on the main motion.


William Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I can understand how many hon. members will feel impatient at having to discuss these things which hitherto have passed en bloc without any discussion at all; but I think on more mature consideration they may even thank the left wing in this section for bringing these matters to their attention, if for no other reason than for the dignity of the house itself. I cannot understand how we can allow these things to go on without making a protest. The bill now before the house is just a bill. Nobody knows anything about it. Nobody has risen to explain it. For all we know, it may be to hang this woman and this man. We do not know anything about it.


Hewitt Bostock: If the motion that the
question be now put, that is, the previous question, had carried, the house would imme-

Procedure Respecting Divorce
diately, without debate, have considered the main motion for the second reading of the bill in the name of the hon. member for Carleton. But the house has just decided that the question be not now put. Therefore the question is superseded and cannot be put now. It is superseded and it will come up another day so that we shall have to pass to another bill. This is from Bourinot, page 326:
If the previous question be carried, the Speaker will immediately put the question, without further debate. But if the previous question be resolved in the negative-
Which is the case here.

then the Speaker cannot put the main motion which is consequently superseded, but which, however, may be revived on a future day as the negative of the previous question merely binds the Speaker not to put the main question at that time.
So I may console the hon. member for Carleton by informing him that he may come back another day and put the motion.
Main motion (Mr. Garland) stands.



EDWARD GEORGE CROUCHER

[Stage Direction]
Mr. JAMES ARTHURS (Parry Sound) (for Mr. Casselman) moved the second reading of Bill No. 92, for the relief of Edward George Croucher.
Charles Marcil: Is the sponsor present?


Hewitt Bostock: The motion can be moved by another member.


Charles Marcil: Will the hon. member explain it.


Hewitt Bostock: In that case we will say: Stand.


James Arthurs: Many bills have been sponsored by members for other members who are absent, and no objection has been taken I would ask the Speaker to note the objection in this case.


Hewitt Bostock: I would allow the motion to be put, but the hon. member for Bonavent-ure is justified in saying that he has some questions to ask.
Motion stands.



ELSIE ALICE HERVEY

[Stage Direction]
Mr. J. A. CLARK (Vancouver-Burrard) moved the second reading of bill No. 93, for the relief of Elsie Alice Hervey.
Mr. H. E. SPENCER (Battle River):: Mr. Speaker, I voted against the last motion before the house, and I intend to vote against all like motions when an attempt is made to force legislation through the house without 78594-101
discussion. The hon. member who introduced the bill, although invited by another hon. member to explain it, refused to do so. I am sorry that I do not know anything about the bill that is now before the house, owing to the fact that on Saturday morning only I received from the senate copies of the evidence in regard to some forty bills, and I have had no time to peruse them. I am certainly not going to vote for this bill until I know something about it. If the hon. member who is fathering this divorce bill will give an explanation which will in my opinion justify the motion for its second reading, I shall be glad to support it. But unless he can, I shall be obliged to vote against it for lack of knowledge, and also because I object to the principle of bringing these divorce bills before the house. This is not the proper quarter. I am not against the principle of divorce. Under certain circumstances I think divorce is the proper thing, and that in certain cases a couple is far better divorced than held together legally. At the same time so far as I personally am concerned, before I can agree to the passing of this bill, I want to know what are the reasons why this divorce should be granted.


James Arthurs: Just before the sponsor of this bill rises, I would point out that this house by its vote decided that in three of the provinces of Canada divorce could only be obtained through the parliament of Canada, and regardless how any of us may have voted on that motion, the decision of the House of Commons is that there shall be no divorce court for Ontario, Quebec or Prince Edward Island at the present time.


John Arthur Clark: With regard to this bill-


William Irvine: Is the hon. gentleman closing the debate, Mr. Speaker?


Hewitt Bostock: Yes, if he speaks now he closes the debate.


William Irvine: It seems strange, Mr. Speaker, that we do not have the explanation of the bill until the hon. gentleman promoting it closes the debate. Is it presupposed that if there is an argument against the passing of this bill we shall not be allowed to put it forward? This is indeed more strange than the procedure which we have hitherto followed.
The hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. Arthurs) has advanced as a reason why we should vote for this bill that the House of Commons has decided that for the



Procedure Respecting Divorce
present there shall be no other way of securing divorce except through the parliament of Canada, and therefore we must continue to grant it. If that be a good reason, then this house had better decide to investigate what it is granting, and if it will do that, I shall be partially satisfied at least. I think that any hon. member in whose name a bill stands ought to be in a position to tell the house what it is about. I am not clear whether the relief this woman wants is to hang the man or to put him in prison, or if it is a divorce that she is seeking, I do not know whether she should be freed from her present marriage and no explanation has been forthcoming so far.
I say, Mr. Speaker, that if we are going to deal with these matters in a way that will be creditable to this house and do justice to the intelligence of hon. members, we shall have to find a better way than this. I hope that in the division on this bill, hon. gentlemen in this house, who are the judges of judges, sitting in the highest court of the land, will actually stay in and vote. If I were assured that the majority of the members of this house wished to accept the responsibility for granting these divorces, even wrongly, it would not be so bad as it is, but when those who wish to do these things stay out of the chamber when the vote is on and leave other members to take the responsibility, I do not like that way of doing things.
We on this side of the house have been charged to-day, and presumably we shall be charged also in connection with this bill, that we have been remiss in our duty as parliamentarians as we have confessed that we did not understand what the case was about. Hon. gentlemen have made that charge to-day. Now I want to put this to the thought of the house: If all the divorce applications now before this parliament are to be considered this year, approximately three hundred cases, what would my constituents say if I told them that instead of reading the Bank Act, the Railway Act, the budget and all the other important business that is to come before parliament, I had spent my time reading the evidence in three hundred divorce cases?


An hon. MEMBER:: Dirty dog.


William Irvine: I think they would probably say that, and yet I am told by reputable hon. gentlemen opposite that unless I sit down and read the evidence in three hundred divorce cases I am remiss in my parliamentary duty. That one thing in itself is a sufficient, reason why these bills should not be considered by this parliament and why this bill should be killed.

For fear that you should call me to order, Mr. Speaker, I must say that it appears that the only way in which we can get any constructive action with respect to this matter is to force a discussion on every one of these bills and get a proper explanation of them, and then when they get into the committee stage, to ask for an investigation. But wc shall be told that the senate committee has already investigated these cases. Very well. But do we take the same attitude with respect to all other legislation? Legislation comes from the upper house after passing through their committees, and then when it gets into committee in the House of Commons the matter is again investigated if it is thought necessary. After we pass these motions with respect to divorce bills, it is true that the bills go to a committee, but the members of that committee simply go in there, say good morning, and go out again, and nobody asks any questions about these divorce bills and no consideration is given to them. I give credit to the senate divorce committee. I think the senate committee does its business well, and if we did our business in this regard as well as the senate committee we would not, have to make such speeches as I am now making. As it is now, we are simply taking it for granted that the senate has done its duty and that we can afford to be remiss in ours. I hope that the hon. genlleman in whose name this bill stands will give a clear statement of the case to parliament, and if that involves the discussion of matters which should not be made public for moral reasons, I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, in that case to clear the galleries and let us enter into this discussion and face the issue like men. If I am to judge of the merits of this case I insist upon hearing the evidence, and I hope that every other member will take the same stand.
Mr. GEORGE H. PETTIT (Welland): It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that this house sits in judgment upon these divorce cases in the capacity of a court of appeal, and unless some hon. member can convince this house that the judgment of the senate committee is contrary to the evidence, I submit that we should confirm the judgment of the senate committee. The law is there, and these petitioners for divorce have a right to come before the senate committee. They have gone there and have produced their evidence, and the senate committee have rendered their judgment, and this house, I submit, is bound to confirm that judgment unless it can be convinced that the verdict is contrary to the evidence.

Procedure Respecting Divorce
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Railways and Canals): Just from the point of view of the dignity of this house and of the necessary requirement that its business be conducted with order and despatch, I desire to say a word or two.
I listened very carefully to the indictment of the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine), who has just sat down, with respect to the manner in which the house should discharge its duty. If his argument means anything, it means that with respect to every individual matter which comes before this house each member should carefully study it and form his own individual judgment upon it. That I gather to be his argument and his reason for opposing the acceptance by this house of evidence taken in another chamber as a means for forming a judgment upon these cases. I would respectfully point out to him and to hon. members that part of the machinery of this parliament and of every parliament is committees, which are appointed for the very purpose of going into matters in greater detail and hearing evidence from people outside of this house which it would be impossible for us to hear in this house of commons chamber. We are going a little further in connection with divorce. Why? Because this house determined, rightly or wrongly, that there should not be other means of obtaining divorce in three of the provinces of Canada save through the parliament of Canada. For many years one chamber of this parliament, the senate, has been the court of inquiry with respect to divorce matters, and it has been the custom in this house to accept the evidence there given, the reason for that being partly the knowledge on the part of all members of the care with which the senate divorce committee goes into these matters,-partly that, I say, and partly also the fact that it would be inconvenient and cumbersome and equivalent to denying divorce altogether, even in necessitous cases, to have a similar inquiry with all the attendant expense to the applicant conducted also by this house in its turn. I submit to the judgment of hon. members^ that in accepting the evidence, which is printed and can be obtained by any member who cares to ask for it-


An hon. MEMBER:: It is sent to all members.


Charles Avery Dunning: I am not sure of that.


An hon. MEMBER:: Yes.


Charles Avery Dunning: But in any case the evidence is available, evidence taken by a body against which no one has cast any reflections;
78594-101J
there is no question from any quarter that the senate committee either this year or in years past has not functioned laboriously and efficiently in dealing with the work assigned to it as a result of the method determined by this parliament for securing divorce.
I submit, sir, that this is not the time or the place to discuss whether or not we believe in divorce. This house determined on another occasion that there should be no method of securing divorce in three of the provinces other than by act of parliament. If hon. members desire that this chamber should set up duplicate machinery to that now existing in the senate, I submit that the proper place to argue that point is in the private bills committee to which these bills are referred. It is possible for any member to move in the private bills committee that witnesses be called the same as in connection with any other private bill. But I think such a proceeding would be absurd because of the care with which the matter has been dealt with in the other chamber.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I do not think that this house is attaching proper importance to the work which we are here to do by spending what appears likely to be days, if not weeks, debating these matters, which after all are merely matters of procedure. It is quite within the discretion of this house to determine what procedure shall be adopted in inquiring into the bills referred to it by the senate, whether or not it shall set up duplicate machinery, as in relation to a number of other matters the senate sometimes does set up duplicate machinery when it is not able to accept the conclusions reached by this house. I submit the question is a very simple one. It is whether we should or should not set up duplicate machinery to hear again evidence which has already been adduced before the senate committee. There is no need to take up the time of this house with lengthy discussions on the principle of divorce, because already in so far as it relates to the setting up of divorce courts, this house has determined the question this session and said that the only means of securing a divorce is through the medium of the Senate and House of Commons assembled. That being the case, the decision is really whether we should or should not set up duplicate machinery.


William Irvine: Before the minister takes
his seat may I ask him this question: Is it not so that we already have duplicate machinery in respect to all other legislation? That being so, why not in respect to this matter?


Charles Avery Dunning: No, not in respect to
all other legislation. In connection with very

Procedure Respecting Divorce
much of the legislation the senate does not undertake an exhaustive inquiry to supplement that which has been undertaken by committees of this house. The record of the proceedings of the senate is sufficient evidence of that. My hon. friend will see I am careful not to state that the senate has not that power just as we have in this chamber in relation to anything submitted to us from the senate. I think, Mr. Speaker, we could shorten these discussions by agreeing, if possible, that the question is really one whether we shall or shall not set up duplicate machinery to deal with divorce.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Mr. Speaker, I should like to
congratulate the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Dunning) on having done what I consider it was the duty of the government to have done early this afternoon-declare its attitude upon this matter.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend will
pardon me. I was speaking purely as a member of the house. This is not a government matter at all.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I wonder if my hon.
friend realizes that the government has control of this house and is responsible for the conduct of the business. It is because of that fact that we on this side declined this afternoon to discuss what we conceived to be a great loss of time and' a great injury to the dignity of parliament as a result of the discussions and votes that have engaged our attention. I think my friends to the left have failed, and I am sure my friend from Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) has failed, to appreciate just what this house is now being asked to do.	It is being asked to give
second reading to a bill, a private bill, for the purpose of divorcing two people. Antecedently to that motion being made in this house, a bill was introduced into the senate, a committee having taken evidence on a petition praying for divorce and having determined on that evidence that a case had been made out for the relief sought. It is hardly necessary for me to say, Mr. Speaker, that there is only one ground upon w'hiek this parliament acts in granting divorce, that ground being unfaithfulness on the part c-f one or other of the spouses; and when the evidence was heard it established to the satisfaction of the senate committee the guilt of the offending party. On the bill coming into this house, as the Minister of Railways has said, if we give it second reading it is referred1 to the committee on private bills


a committee of which my friend the member for Wetaskiwin is a member, and I think my friend from Battle River (Mr. Spencer).


Henry Elvins Spencer: No.


Richard Bedford Bennett: My friend is not a
member?


Henry Herbert Stevens: Yes, he is.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The course pursued
before the private bills committee is very simple. The committee can do one of two things: they can call witnesses, hear evidence and determine the action to be taken; or they can do what the probate division does in England, take the depositions already made under oath, read them and determine whether or not the bill shall be accepted.
Now, I wonder if my friend from Wetaskiwin realizes that this parliament consists of two houses, the senate and the commons. A divorce bill is not an act of parliament until it has been approved by both houses. The commons, giving the bill its second reading and referring it to a committee, the committee takes the sworn depositions that were made before the senate committee, and upon reading those depositions it dispenses with the calling of the witnesses. The probate division in England in a very important case involving a question of very serious consequences to the parties engaged, one of *whom lived in Alberta, recently took evidence by affidavit and heard it before Lord1 Merrivale, president of the court, rather than take the witnesses across the Atlantic ocean to testify. And this house in sending a divorce bill to a committee does not ask that committee to deal with it in any particular way; it leaves it open for the committee to take its own course. For instance, if the member for Wetaskiwin so desires, he may say: We will put these people to all the expense and trouble of calling witnesses before our committee. Or committee may proceed as the British courts of justice have proceeded for many years in admiralty cases, in divorce cases, and in cases in the chancery and king's bench divisions, read, if it is thought desirable, evidence already taken before a committee of another house under oath-upon which perjury might be charged-for the purpose of
satisfying itself-the committee-that the
case alleged against the defendant has been made out. Now, is it possible that this House of Commons desires so to hold up to the world-shall I say?-our inability to grapple with a simple problem by making it appear, as my friend from Winnipeg North

Procedure Respecting Divorce
Centre has done this afternoon, that there is a great principle involved, when the house has already decided to establish no divorce courts in the other provinces? I wonder if my friends realize, first, that this is the only court to which they can go; secondly, that that court consists of two branches of our parliament; thirdly, that one branch of that parliament, through a committee, determines for or against the relief that is asked; and lastly that this house is now merely sending a bill to a committee, which committee may itself determine whether it will utilize the evidence that was given before the senate committee or hear the evidence on its own behalf. And then the bill comes back to the committee of the whole house, which treats it as any other legislation is treated, whether it be legislation relating to patents, to the incorporation of a railway company, or any other question. And that is the reason that the senate committee reduces the evidence to writing, because otherwise there would be no record of it; they might be satisfied with the evidence but there would be nothing in writing upon which to proceed. For that reason they reduce the evidence to writing, submitting it to this house in printed form in order that our committee, following a long established practice extending over twenty-five, thirty, forty and fifty years, may have the evidence before it. It was the same in England. I wonder if my hon. friends realize that before the act of 1857 all divorces considered in Great Britain from any part of the British Isles-from Ireland, from Scotland, from England itself-were by way of private bill which was first heard by a committee of the House of Lords. It was from that practice that we adopted our procedure in this country, of having the evidence heard in a committee of the senate in the first place. That committee of the House of Lords heard the evidence and the appropriate committee in the commons could do what they pleased with it; they could consider the evidence as presented to them, if it were printed, or could themselves hear the witnesses, have the evidence taken down, and arrive at their own conclusion.
I do submit that the observations of the Minister of Railways with respect to the dignity-and shall I say the usefulness-of this parliament were very relevant and most pertinent. Many hon. gentlemen in this house, on conscientious grounds, not believing in divorce and desiring, as they always have desired in days gone by, to maintain their opposition, allow the passage of these bills with the qualification, "carried on division,"
thereby indicating that they do not become a party to the action of this house in granting any divorce; and I am satisfied that these hon. gentlemen have no wish to see the institutions of this country waste time, involving thousands of dollars, in dealing with a question which after all, if it is carefully analyzed, will be seen to be a problem in respect to which we are following not only practice and custom but a rule which, I think it will be admitted, common sense dictates-namely, that where evidence is given under oath before a committee of the senate it is desirable that we dispense, so far as this house is concerned, with the calling of witnesses and the duplicating of evidence received under cross-examination in another branch of parliament.
There is another phase of the question which I desire to put to the house in all seriousness. This is the only court through which relief can be obtained; and as suggested to me this afternoon by my legal friend from Toronto, an English court has no option but to decide. When the witnesses have been heard, the judge upon the bench must decide the case submitted to him; and a committee of this parliament having been convened in due form, and haying before it these cases to deal with, must consider and dispose of them. The paltry excuses which have been put forward against dealing with the matter might be worthy of a debating class in a small academy, but they are uniworthy of the parliament of Canada, and to that extent I agree with what has been said by the Minister of Railways. Indeed, I have been waiting all afternoon and evening for some hon. member representing the government to discuss the subject; for the government must assume responsibility for the conduct of public business in this parliament. I therefore congratulate the minister upon what he has said and upon the stand he has taken, and I trust that hon. gentlemen who have used these methods, from a conscientious desire to hold up to the country the Igck of facilities which they say are afforded people to obtain divorces to which they are entitled, will now realize that, this house having deprived such people of these facilities by its deliberate action in declining to create a court, and there being no other method by which redress may be obtained, it is therefore important that a reasonable course be pursued such as will enable that redress to be given without further delay on the part of, parliament.


Mr. A. M. YOUNG (Saskatoon):: I think there is a good deal in what the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning) has said as well as

Procedure Respecting Divorce
in the remarks of the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett); but I do not know that they have said it all. I had a rather unique honour thrust upon me a few days ago when I was selected, as one of the members of the private bills committee, to be a representative of that committee, with the pleasure of attending the committee in the senate to hear these divorce cases. There used to be but one committee in the senate, and apparently it could handle all cases that came before it. Now business has grown so great over there that the senate has felt it necessary to have three committees on divorce. And we used to have two representatives from the private bills committee whose duty it was to hear such cases; now we have six. I assume the object was to have on each of the three committees in the senate two representatives from the commons committee.
I confess that up to the present time I have not had the time to go to the senate to hear these investigations in respect to this very important matter. In the province of Saskatchewan, from which I have the honour to come, we have a divorce court, and on many occasions my constituents have consulted me with regard to this question, asking me why it was necessary for us to spend our time-or, a3 they put it, waste our time-hearing divorce cases from one or two provinces in Canada. My constituents feel that I am wasting time when I listen to this sort of thing. I agree with the leader of the opposition when he says that there is waste of time; but in my judgment we are wasting time when we proceed in this particular way. This is a matter of great importance and I should like to see every case dealt with fairly and squarely on its merits and a proper decision arrived at. When we dissolve a marriage we dispose of but one phase of the whole question. I have some interest in the women-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Alexander MacGillivray Young: -whose marriage ties are dissolved. I am sorry that hon. gentlemen opposite laugh. Apparently they have no interest in women; I am different. Let me go one step further and invite them to laugh at this: I have an interest in the children of every marriage which is dissolved. Now I understand that the senate committee has no power, no right, either to deal with alimony for the unfortunate woman or to make a disposition with regard to the children. With all the good intentions in the world, I am bound to say I have not the time seriously to attend the divorce committee in the senate, nor even to report to the private bills com-

mittee of the House of Commons. There is not an hon. member who does not know that this is not possible. Every 'hon. member in this house spends, I believe, from twelve to fifteen hours every day around these buildings during the time this house is in session; and if I attended to the duty which has been thrust upon me and were present at all these meetings of the senate committee on divorce I should be unable to attend to the business for which I was really sent to this house.


James Arthurs: Why not resign in favour of the Minister of Immigration (Mr. Forke)?


Alexander MacGillivray Young: Perhaps the
hon. member would like to take the position I now have on the divorce committee. I would resign in favour of the hon. member, and I am sure he would do as badly as I do by force of circumstance. At least I will do this much: whenever I have a little spare time and the senate committee meets for	the consideration	of divorce
cases I will spend that time over there and do what I can. At the same time I am opposed to the method we are adopting; I do not think it is a good practice. But I know of no other way of bringing to the attention of the country the fact that this House of Commons is not doing full justice to the question in failing to place within the grasp of certain provinces-and I agree with the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) that we have not done as we should in this respect-the opportunity of establishing for themselves divorce courts if they so desire. If Ontario and Quebec say that they do not desire divorce courts, at least this house, if this were done, would have gone to the extent of placing them in a position to take advantage of this course as they might see fit. I have given this matter some attention and I think I can stand in this house and say conscientiously and honestly that in the courts of the province of Saskatchewan much more attention is given to these questions than possibly can be given by any committee of this house or of the senate. We are charged by some people with obstructing these bills; some of them get rather warm under the collar because of our actions, but no man can charge any one of us with being less sincere in this matter than he is himself. We are not taking this stand with the idea of obstruction; we are simply drawing to the attention of this country the fact that the present practice is not the proper manner in which marriages should be dissolved, which in my judgment is a very serious business.
While it is not proper for me os a member of this house to review the action taken in connection with another bill or another motion

Procedure Respecting Divorce
which came before the house, perhaps I may be permitted to say that members on all sides should seriously consider, this whole question if ever it comes before the house again. If it seems better to grant divorce courts to those provinces which do not now have them we should seriously consider that situation, and then we would not be confronted with the situation with which we have been faced, this afternoon and this evening. Personally I regret on this or on any other occasion to appear to be delaying the business of this chamber; I have not spent much time talking in this house and I do not propose on any occasion to waste time. However, I do not think we have been wasting time this afternoon or this evening; we are simply using this method of directing the attention of the house to a very undesirable state of affairs in certain provinces of Canada, and I want to place myself on record with regard to the action I have taken.


Mr. A. J. ANDERSON (Toronto-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, last year a situation
similar to that with which we have been faced to-day arose in connection with a petition for divorce of which I was the sponsor. That was an attempt on the part of those interested to use obstruction in order to force the hands of the government.


Hewitt Bostock: I would remind the hon.
gentleman that the use of the word "obstruction" is not permitted.


Alexander James Anderson: I was
merely referring to what happened last year and is happening again this year. Obstruction was resorted to last year in an attempt to force the government to establish such a court as has been suggested, and that is what is being done now. Personally I voted for the establishment of such a court in Ontario, and I would like to see that action taken.


Hewitt Bostock: The hon. gentleman is
charging obstruction, and the use of that word is not permitted.
tylr. ANDERSON (High Park): I will withdraw the word; this may be a constructive action on their part, since they want to improve the conditions of affairs, and I think it would be an improvement if this court were established.
The hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) has made himself quite clear; he does not object to these divorce bills being advanced but he would like to see a divorce court established in Ontario. It has been clearly shown to-night and at other times when this subject has been discussed that the
province of Ontario has no court to come to other than the parliament of Canada, and that is a discrimination against the province of Ontario. Some time ago there was a vote on the establishment of divorce courts in Ontario; ninety-nine hon. members voted against such action and sixty-nine voted in favour of it. There was a division among the members who come from Ontario, but another vote took place to-day in which seventy-seven hon. members voted for the advancement of a divorce bill, and there was no division among the Ontario members. So I think the members representing Ontario have shown that this province is desirous of having such a court; that is a reasonable conclusion. But, Mr. Speaker, when I look at the ninety-nine votes cast against the establishment of a divorce court in Ontario I am rather sorry to find that forty-two of those votes were cast by members from the province of Quebec, while not one hon. member from Quebec voted in favour of that measure. I am sure the Quebec members do not wish to be unfair. Ontario has no divorce court and therefore is not on a par with the other provinces of Canada, so it is only fair that Quebec should lend its support to the establishment of these courts. In doing so members from Quebec would not be taking any action which might shake their convictions as to the principle of divorce, because the question of divorce in Quebec is also a local matter. Under our constitution divorce is permissible, and it will remain so until our constitution is amended; such an amendment, which would be a very serious matter, cannot be made except by a bill of this house approved by the various provinces of Canada, since the constitution is founded upon the agreement which was arrived at between the original provinces.
All this would seem to lead to the conclusion that we will continue to have divorce in this country. We have divorce courts in six provinces, and divorce is permissible in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island upon application to this parliament. Some hon. members have stated that they are entirely opposed to the granting of divorces, and the only way to get over that objection is to amend the constitution. It is quite unfair to bring in that argument on these individual applications; the constitution cannot be amended in that way. The constitution is here; it clearly defines our jurisdiction; it is clearly shown and well understood that divorce is heTe and will be granted no matter what we may do in this house. If divorces cannot be secured properly they will

Procedure Respecting Divorce
be granted in some roundabout way. Why should we force the people of the provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island; to go to the United States or some other place in order to obtain a divorce? I submit that it is very improper for us to force them to take this action by refusing to give Ontario divorce courts and by refusing to grant divorces here at Ottawa.


Charles Marcil: May I ask a question? Has the legislature of Ontario, the legislature of Quebec or the legislature of Prince Edward Island ever petitioned to obtain these divorce courts?


Alexander James Anderson: I am very glad my hon. friend has brought up that point. The hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa), with whose views I am not always in accord but with whom I agree on this point, stated in his address that the bill providing for the establishing of divorce courts in Ontario should have been amended in order to make it optional with the province of Ontario as to whether or not they should accept those courts. If the province of Ontario has not asked specifically for the establishment of that court, this parliament can create it anyway; we can appoint the judge and it is up to the province to provide the court house and the other officials. The greatest expense is the salary of the judge, which is paid by the Dominion government, and if this jurisdiction is given the supreme court judges there will be no extra expense. Other legislation has been imposed upon the province of Ontario and other provinces without their consent; as examples we have old age pensions and rural credits.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


Alexander James Anderson: Ontario is contributing to the cost of the rural credit scheme and it has not accepted the principle. If a divorce court is good for the whole Dominion why would it not be good for one, two or three provinces? I am satisfied that Ontario will not refuse the court if we create it. The cost to the province will be so small that they can readily fall into line. If the Dominion government is prepared to pay the salary of the justice who will administer the divorce law, I am quite sure the province will provide the court houses and pay the salaries of the minor officers.


Charles Avery Dunning: The hon. member is discussing a matter which has been determined already by the house.


Henry Herbert Stevens: We have been out of
order all day.


Hewitt Bostock: We are discussing one
particular bill of a long list of private bills. The members who discuss this bill are supposed to be familiar with the particulars of it, and they should confine their remarks to the bill. However, as I remarked this afternoon, it is a moot question as to how to distinguish between the general principle of divorce and the particular bill for the granting of a divorce which is now before the house. I would ask hon. gentlemen to confine their remarks as nearly as possible to the present bill.


Alexander James Anderson: I accept
Your Honour's ruling although I think there is great justification for my dwelling upon the features of this question. There is no doubt that the action which has been taken with regard to this bill is brought about by the action taken by the house on a former occasion. There is no doubt that the senate committee have arrived at a proper conclusion with regard to this bill. The argument put forth that there is not time to peruse the evidence in connection with these cases is an absolute fallacy, because in most of these cases the evidence is very short. The average case could be read over in about fifteen minutes; for I do not think it takes over twenty-five minutes for the senate committee to hear every word uttered by the members of that committee, the counsel and the witnesses connected with the average case. Copies of evidence are sent to every member of the house, and they can. read them if they so desire. I had not seen this particular application until this evening, but I got it from my file and read it in a few minutes while sitting here in the house. There is no doubt that this divorce should be granted. These people are put to very great expense, many of them coming from outside of the country; they are taking the law as they find it and as it is administered, and why should we take the position of preventing them from obtaining their divorces?
I am in sympathy with those who are opposing this bill, because I believe their motive is the establishment of a divorce court in Ontario. At the same time, I think the same result could be obtained by proceeding along a different line, and I believe if the amendment suggested by the hon. member for La-belle (Mr. Bourassa) were accepted it would overcome all our difficulties. I do not desire to say that the hon. member has been using obstructive methods, because that is unparliamentary language, and I believe he desires to bring about a result which would be beneficial to the people. I might refer to an-

Procedure Respecting Divorce
other matter which was obstructed last year, and the principle was accepted this year and went through the house without any objection.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Mr. Speaker, the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) has convinced me that I should uphold this corner of the house in opposing the passing of these divorce bills. He said that there was no other court to which these people could apply, but that court is only half a court.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The court I mentioned
was the high court of parliament consisting of both houses.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: It is only half a court because it cannot grant what a proper divorce court could grant. This court of parliament can only grant divorces; it cannot grant alimony or give justice and equity.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I would point out to the hon. member that such relief has been asked for, only in one instance, and parliament dealt with that case.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: It is not asked for because it is not within the power of this parliament to grant it, owing to the fact it interferes with provincial matters. That question has never come up.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It has come up.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Only in one instance, and that was occasioned by an oversight. The hon. member said that there was no other court to which they could apply, and because this court is only half a court and cannot give equity and justice, there is one of two things which we should do. We should grant the divorce court of parliament power to enable them to allow alimony and deal with these people on a basis of justice and equity. If we cannot do that, we should send these people to a court where they can get full justice. As things exist at the present time, when they go through this court they are forced to apply to the civil courts in Ontario to obtain alimony. As the hon. member for Saskatoon (Mr. Young) said, this is the only method we can employ to draw the attention of the public and of this parliament to the necessity of doing one of the two things I mentioned.
As the hon. member who has just taken his seat has said, it is quite true that it would take only about fifteen minutes for a member to read this evidence. There are about 300 cases, and 300 times fifteen minutes equals seventy-five hours. I for one am not going to spend seventy-five hours in reading this evidence. I went up to my room to-night with
the idea of obtaining some information with regard to these bills, and I spent five or ten minutes tiying to find the particular bill. As the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) has said, my constituents do not send me to parliament to spend seventy-five hours of my time in reading divorce evidence. I do not like obstructive tactics, but I see no other way by which the attention of the house and of the country can be drawn to the fact that we should either reform our present methods or provide a separate court to pass upon these applications for divorce.


John Livingstone Brown: Mr. Speaker,
I sometimes find great difficulty in understanding how men reach certain conclusions, and the speech which has been delivered by the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Adshead) is an excellent illustration of that difficulty. When the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) spoke, following as he did the hon. Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning),
I felt that he had made such a conclusive and absolutely clear statement that the opposition from the corner of the house would have seen the light. But it would seem that while the speeches made by the two hon. members I have mentioned made one impression upon my mind, they made an entirely different impression upon the mind of the hon. member for East Calgary. The house is to be congratulated that the leader of the opposition and the Minister of Railways stated the matter as clearly as they did. I felt very keenly this afternoon that the actions of the house were not in harmony with the best traditions of parliament, or consonant with the dignity of the house.


Henry Elvins Spencer: Was the hon. member
in the house when the hon. member for Saskatoon (Mr. Young) was speaking?


John Livingstone Brown: I was. Since the hon.
member for Battle River has asked how I regard the speech of the hon. member for Saskatoon, I may say that I agree with him up to a certain point, just as I said, when I spoke first this afternoon, that I agreed with the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) up to a certain point. We may candidly admit that they did a service in bringing to the attention of the house the absolutely absurd situation that exists in parliament with regard to the question of divorce, but I cannot follow them to the extreme to which they have gone. They having made their protest, I think, we should proceed to deal with the business of the house in somewhat the same manner as we have

Procedure Respecting Divorce
been accustomed to dealing with it in the past and not change the rules of the game after the game has started.
There was one point I wanted to mention this afternoon but to which I omitted any reference, that is, the obligation of this house toward the people who have brought these bills before parliament. That is something we should consider very seriously. These are private bills. Any private individual in Canada has a right to come to parliament and ask for any legislation he sees fit. It rests with parliament to decide the merits of the case and to determine whether or not the legislation sought shall be granted. A large number of people, how many I do not yet know, have come to parliament in all good faith, and they have a right to assume that parliament will deal with these matters in somewhat the same way as we have dealt with them in the past. The question of establishing a divorce court in Ontario has been injected into this debate. Unfortunately hon. members in that corner of the house, the hon. member for Saskatoon and one or two more, assume that that question is an issue before the house. It is not, and it cannot be made an issue before the house at this session if I understand parliamentary procedure aright, because the house has already decided it. It may be made an issue next session, and from the discussion that has taken place this afternoon I am quite sure that the question will be before the house next session when I fully anticipate that a different decision will be reached. But I should like to remind those hon. members that it is not and cannot be made an issue before us at the present time. We can take whatever position we please on these particular bills, but if I am correct in my interpretation, we cannot establish that court this session. Perhaps better parliamentary authorities than I am will confirm or question my statement as they see fit. That, however, is my understanding of the situation. We have to deal with the facts as we find them and the fact is that a large number of people in all good faith have come before parliament and sought relief, as it is called, from the particular disabilities under which they labour. Hon. members assume that they have a right to vote against these bills because they have not the evidence before them. I take the other ground. As I stated this afternoon, evidence has been given before a committee of another house, and I take the position that unless it can be clearly shown, or unless there is some reason to believe, that a proper decision has not been rendered, we have a right to accept the judgment of that committee.
[Mr. Brown 1
On two or three occasions since I have been in the house and also a member of the private bills committee, there have come before that committee cases where there was some disagreement with the judgment rendered by the senate committee. Those questions were dealt with on their merits. It might be that the judgment of the senate committee was upheld, or the reverse. That is the course open to us now. Let us remember that this is a private bill. The principle was laid down two years ago, when we discussed the ''leorgian bay canal bill, that the second reading of a private bill was always granted unless there was opposition to the principle of the bill. That is a statement which is in harmony with the best parliamentary authorities. Hon. members opposing these particular bills are not opposed to the principle of the bill, that is, the principle of divorce. It is true that some members are. My controversy at the moment is not with, them, but rather with those who are following the leadership of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. The principle of the bill is not questioned by them. Therefore, in the very nature of the case these bills should receive their second reading and should go to the private bills committee where, if there is any particular bill to which any hon. member objects or if he thinks in regard to any particular bill the senate committee has not rendered the best judgment according to the evidence, he can bring the matter up and have it dealt with. Otherwise I think we are warranted in accepting the position that the senate committee in making its recommendation has dealt fairly, justly, and according to the evidence.
I want to fall back again upon my other statement. A number of people have come before parliament in good faith, feeling they have a right to expect we will deal with them in much the same way as we have dealt with others in the past. It is quite evident that the course that is proposed by certain hon. members is to institute a blockade by which these people will be deprived of their rights or of the relief which they have a right to expect.
Mr. WOOD9WORTH: I rise to a point of order. The hon. member for Lisgar has suggested certain motives on our part, namely, that we are trying to create a blockade in order to prevent the passage of these bills.
I object decidedly to that. That is not my purpose, and I do not think it is right that an hon. member should impute motives of that kind to another hon. member. I ask that the expression be withdrawn.

Procedure Respecting Divorce


John Livingstone Brown: I am not charging the hon. member with instituting a blockade, but I am stating what the inevitable result of this particular course of conduct will be, if they insist on calling a vote and discussing every one of these bills as he has indicated he intends doing.


Hewitt Bostock: The expressions "blockade" and "obstruction" are not parliamentary, and whatever may be the result of opposition, as long as the opposition is legitimate it cannot be qualified as a blockade or obstruction.


John Livingstone Brown: I certainly do not wish to use any terms that are unparliamentary, but I am pointing out that that is the inevitable result of the course outlined by these hon members.


William Irvine: Withdraw.


John Livingstone Brown: I have withdrawn to the best of mv ability. I say that I do not wish to use an unparliamentary term, and if the term "deliberate blockade" is unparliamentary,
I withdraw it.


Mr. EDWARDS (Frontenac):: They are
very sensitive when we tell them the truth.


John Livingstone Brown: Yes, they do not like the truth.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I rise to a point of order.


Hewitt Bostock: I should like the hon. member not to charge other hon. members as not liking the truth. If they do not like the truth, what, do they like?


John Livingstone Brown: I withdraw that. They do not always like to have the clear consequences of their conduct pointed out to them.


Henry Herbert Stevens: They prefer darkness to light.


John Livingstone Brown: The inevitable result of the course outlined by themselves will be that many of these bills cannot be passed through this house, because it is physically impossible for us to deal with so many in such a manner. We cannot take a vote on every one of them on the second reading, then have them go to the private bills committee and be discussed there and come back to the house for their third reading. As I say, the inevitable result will be that they cannot be passed through the house, and consequently the people who have come here in good faith, incurred the expense involved in the house and in connection with lawyers' fees, which in most cases are by no means small, will be treated in a manner that is grossly unfair. Unless there is reason to believe that the
evidence taken before the senate committee is faulty, I think we are quite justified in accepting it and granting these people relief.
These are the reasons why I shall give my support to the passage of these divorce bills through the house. While I would strongly support, and did when the other bill was before the house, the establishment of a divorce court to deal with these cases-undoubtedly a court could deal with them better, could go into the question of alimony, for instance -we cannot get these courts at this time, and therefore I say let us, in a manner becoming to the dignity of this honourable house, deal with the situation that confronts us.


William Irvine: Is the argument of the
hon. member that if we consider these bills properly they will not get through this session, and therefore we should put them through without proper consideration?


John Livingstone Brown: That is not my argument.
From the very beginning I have said that these cases are dealt with properly before the senate committee, where the evidence is taken, and if any hon. member feels that in any particular case the judgment of the senate committee is not in harmony with the evidence, he can bring that case before the private bills committee, and it will be dealt with there.


William Irvine: Have I to spend seventyfive hours going into the details of all these cases?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) does me rather an unmerited honour when he suggests-


Hewitt Bostock: Has the hon. member
not already spoken on this bill?


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, your honour.
I think I have a right to speak on this bill.


Hewitt Bostock: Yes.


John Wesley Edwards: And on all
the others.


James Shaver Woodsworth: And on all the others.


John Wesley Edwards: And he
probably will.


James Shaver Woodsworth: As I was saying,
the hon. member for Lisgar has done me a somewhat unmerited honour in suggesting that the members of the house who have spoken against this method of granting divorces are following the leadership of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. I am only an individual member, but I venture

Procedure Respecting Divorce
to suggest that others who have spoken along the same lines, have done so simply because the merits of the case appeal to them-for that and for no other reason.
The hon. member for Lisgar suggests that bills should be dealt with this year in the same way that they have been dealt with in previous years. I am at a loss to know why he should make a statement of that kind. I can think of the Sun Life bill and the Bell Telephone bill which during the past two or three years were dealt with in a very, very different way from that in which bills of that kind were dealt with for a great many years in this house. I can think of railway bills which during the last two or three years have been dealt with in a very different way from the way in which they were dealt with for many years in this house when we were so lavish in granting railway charters. So there have been changes, and I think we are quite within our rights in insisting that these divorce bills should receive fair attention.


John Livingstone Brown: These bills were not before the house last year.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Other bills of this character were. The hon. member for Lisgar says that people have come here in good faith. That may be so. But so have members of parliament. They have come here, and they have certain responsibilities. The hon. member for Lisgar corrected his first statement by saying that if we asked for a vote on all these bills the inevitable result would be that the bills could not pass this house.


John Livingstone Brown: I did not say that.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I made a note
of his remark at the time, and I think I am correct. I understood him to say that the inevitable result would be that if we discussed each of these bills, then the bulk of the bills could not be passed. Is not that correct?


John Livingstone Brown: Yes.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No statement
could better bear out my contention than that, that if we go into a discussion of these bills and hear the evidence, if we actually try to consider each bill on its merits, it will be simply impossible for these three hundred bills to pass this house.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Will not the hon. member admit that precisely the same thing applies to legislation of a different character, leaving these bills out of consideration-that if we treated other legislation in the way he wishes 
these bills to be treated, we could not pass one-tenth of the legislation that comes before parliament?


James Shaver Woodsworth: I do not admit that at all. I think with every other class of legislation we insist that the mover or promoter tell the house in at least a few words the purpose of the legislation and indicate the main points at issue, and the Speaker in connection with every other piece of legislation reads the bill from the chair. But as the Speaker knows perfectly well in the last few years it has become the practice in many cases, with the consent of the house, that the Speaker simply calls the divorce bills by number, without even calling the title of the bill; and he has gone further even than that, because bills have been called in batches and passed in bulk, from one to forty at a time. The forty-five divorce bills now before the house were given their first reading in that way. I would submit to the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) that no other class of legislation is dealt with in that way.


Henry Herbert Stevens: We dealt with all the national railway bills, involving an expenditure of over fifty million dollars, in exactly the same way.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The national railway bills, if I remember correctly, first came before the house by way of resolution, and later the bills go before a special committee, where they are very carefully considered.


Charles Avery Dunning: No, my hon. friend is
wrong. They go before one of the standing committees of this house, exactly as these divorce bills do.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, not exactly.


Charles Avery Dunning: Exactly. The railway bills go before the select standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines, and the divorce bills go before the select standing committee on private bills. That is the only difference.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, I venture to suggest that there is a still more fundamental difference. The railway bills are government bills, and the government stakes its very existence upon them.


Charles Avery Dunning: Of course.


James Shaver Woodsworth: And these railway
bills are very carefully considered first by the experts of the railway, and they are supposed to be very carefully considered also by the railway department before they come before the house.

Procedure Respecting Divorce


Charles Avery Dunning: And they are.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am glad to hear it; but that is the difference between the railway bills mentioned by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre and these divorce bills.


Charles Avery Dunning: My hon. friend is surely begging the question. He knows that the same difference exists between any government measure, on the one hand, and any private bill, on the other. That is not meeting the point raised by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre at all.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The instance given by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre was the railway bills, and in answer to that I am pointing out that there is a great difference between the way the two classes of legislation are considered.


Henry Herbert Stevens: My hon. friend was citing the fact that we passed certain bills by number, en bloc, and I intimated that we followed precisely the same procedure with regard to the railway bills involving an expenditure of $54,000,000.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Those bills had all been considered before. I think the hon. member for Vancouver Centre will admit that.


Charles Avery Dunning: No.


Henry Herbert Stevens: No.


James Shaver Woodsworth: They had been considered by the government.


Charles Avery Dunning: Oh yes.


Henry Herbert Stevens: And these divorce bills
have been considered by the senate.


John Wesley Edwards: I would ask the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth), who in order to determine how he should vote on the second reading of this bill has no doubt studied the evidence in the case very carefully, to be good enough to state in what particulars he considers the evidence weak. He is not speaking about the bill at all.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I do not know, Mr. Speaker, whether the hon. member for Frontenac was present this afternoon, but I do not think it is necessary to review all I said on that occasion. However, I then stated that one of my reasons for opposing the second reading was that I knew nothing whatever regarding the evidence, and that therefore I did not think I was called upon to give my vote in favour of the bill.


Charles Avery Dunning: Why did not the hon.
member read the evidence?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Why did I not
read the evidence? It has already been pointed out that if a member conscientiously read the evidence in these divorce cases, even putting it at the figure stated by my friend from Toronto-High Park (Mr. Anderson), and if only fifteen minutes were devoted to each case-I submit that that is altogether too short a time for me to decide whether a man should be separated from his wife, or a wife from her husband, this being a rather momentous question-if fifteen minutes were devoted to reading the evidence in each case -and I do not know that I could do so in that* time-with three hundred cases to deal with it would take something like seventy-five days;-


Charles Avery Dunning: Hours.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Seventy-five hours; and at three hours a day it would mean twenty-five days. Now, I do not think an}7 member should be called upon to spend three hours a day for twenty-five days in considering these Ontario divorce bills.


John Wesley Edwards: He could
have read quite a number of them in the time he has spent to-day saying nothing.


James Shaver Woodsworth: That may be the
opinion of the hon. member for Frontenac, but I do not consider I am talking about nothing; I am talking about matters of very great interest to many people in this country.


John Wesley Edwards: The hon.
gentleman himself said he was talking about nothing when he acknowledged that he did not know anything about the case, that he had not studied the evidence at all. I am simply using his own words. He admits it himself. I suggest that he go out and read the evidence,-


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


John Wesley Edwards: -and then come back and talk of what he knows something about.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The hon. member
for Frontenac is somewhat facetious. It is very easy for him to give gratuitous advice. I have the evidence-


John Wesley Edwards: The hon.
member does not want to make use of it does he?


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Oh, yes.

Procedure Respecting Divorce


John Wesley Edwards: If the hon. gentleman wants it all to himself, the rest of us will keep quiet.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.
Mr. WOODSWORTH': I hesitate to read the evidence in this case, Mr. Speaker, with the galleries crowded as they are. In fact I think the house would not tolerate the reading of it.


John Arthur Clark: May I ask the hon. member why he could not have read that evidence during the last vote? I read it and had plenty of time to do so.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The hon. member may be a faster reader than I am. As a matter of fact I have been trying to follow the speeches, and if my friends will give me a chance I propose to deal with some of the remarks that have been made.


John Arthur Clark: No speeches were made during the vote.


Mr. WTOODS WORTH:: We have been
accused of holding up the house. I do not think that is a fair accusation.


John Livingstone Brown: It was withdrawn.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am glad to hear it. Nevertheless it was made. I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that before taking action on these bills we should be given a brief explanation of each individtial case, and that we be accorded the right of voting on each case yes or no. I do not think that is too much to ask. More time has been spent in discussing a few dollars for a post office estimate than we have yet spent in discussing this great principle of divorce; and the hon. member for Frontenac has been one of the sinners in that regard. I have never yet discussed a post office estimate, so perhaps I may be pardoned if I take my innings in discussing a matter of this kind.
The hon. leader of the opposition referred to the work done in the private bills committee, and he drew a very fine picture of its proceedings. He said that actually it did the work that is done in courts of justice. Well, as I have sat on that committee for some years, I hope that courts of justice carry on their work more effectively than I have seen the private bills committee function. Any man who has been a member of that committee knows perfectly well that we deal with divorce bills there as we deal with them here-in a most perfunctory way, simply taking them by numbers and adopting them en bloc. As a matter of fact there is absolutely no safeguard or check in the way in which 
the ordinary divorce bill is there dealt with. So that a great deal of what the hon. leader of the opposition said, however fine it sounded, really did not amount to a great deal. He was very impressive, as was the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning), with regard to maintaining the dignity of the house. But, Mr. Speaker, I cannot conceive of anything less dignified than the manner of passing these bills-forty-five of them given first reading Friday after being called by number and dealt with en bloc. Do you call that maintaining the dignity of the house? When a resolution was introduced this evening, supported I think by the member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown), that would prevent discussion of a divorce bill-I refer to the "previous question"-I wonder if that was maintaining the dignity of the house. All we are asking is that the promoters of these bills give an outline of their measures.
The Minister of Railways said it was merely a matter of procedure. On the other hand, the leader of the opposition spoke in very high-sounding terms of the parliament of Canada being a high court. In one sense it may be a court, but primarily it is a legislative body, and I do not see that we have any right to transform ourselves into an ordinary court of this character. But there is a very great discrepancy between this being a mere matter of procedure, the bills to be passed over as rapidly as their numbers can be read, and the picture drawn by the leader of the opposition that we sit here, the highest court of the land, giving judicial consideration to these bills as one by one they are presented to the house.
The leader of the opposition also referred to the practice of Great Britain before 1857. Well, that is characteristic. Does he really mean that we should continue what was the practice in Great Britain in 1857? Great Britain, conservative old country that it is, has nevertheless moved forward a great deal since 1857. Some of us would like at least to keep in sight of Great Britain. Some of us are afraid that if we even suggested doing the things they are doing in Great Britain we would be called radicals and bolsheviks. But the leader of the opposition tells us we ought to continue to follow the British practice of 1857.


Henry Herbert Stevens: He did not say that.


Charles Avery Dunning: In fairness to the leader of the opposition, I would point out that he did not say that at all, nor did he seek to convey that impression. He is not in the house now or I would not interrupt my hon. friend.

Procedure Respecting Divorce


James Shaver Woodsworth: I do not want to
be unfair to the leader of the opposition, but at least he did tell us of the practice in Great Britain in 1857, and he proceeded to say that in our practice we were simply following that practice as it obtained in 1857. My inference was that he expected us to be satisfied with that procedure. If he did not mean that I do not know why he took the trouble to go back to 1857. There would be no point to his remarks.


John Wesley Edwards: That is the hon. member's great trouble, he gets his wires crossed.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am glad to see
the leader of the opposition has come in. If I have made any statement that is not correct I shall be glad to have his correction.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Since the hon. gentleman is good enough to offer me the opportunity, I desire to point out that I made no such observation except to say that this was a high court in this matter, as the parliament of England had been, and that divorce applications, before 1857, did originate in and were heard by a committee of the House of Lords, as they have been here. I pointed out that this parliament had been asked and had refused to take the forward step of creating a court such as the hon. gentleman would support, and therefore we were thrown back upon the practice which existed prior to 1857. I am sure that the hon. gentleman, in his love of dialectics, will try to be more fair as to what was said than to make such observations as he has made.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am glad the leader of the opposition came in to make that statement again. But may I emphasize this: We ought not to go back to 1857 for our procedure. It is high time we were passing on to the reforms that came in that period in Great Britain, but we in this country have remained stationary.


John Livingstone Brown: Has the hon. gentleman a
clear plan to outline whereby we may get these reforms this session?


James Shaver Woodsworth: The hon. member
for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) is attributing to me a far larger program than I had in mind. All I am asking is simply that as these bills come up one by one we give them sufficient consideration to know what we are voting on, and that we have a roll call in order to let the country know where we stand. A great many members have been quite satisfied to have the statement made, "carried on division.'' As I said this afternoon, all I want to do is
to give meaning and reality to these words and to have a division; that is all. What will happen if that procedure is carried out it is not for me to say; it is for the government to say. It is for the government, whom the hon. member for Lisgar supports, to decide a way out of the dilemma, and not for me. All I can do is to ask that each bill shall receive a fair hearing. May I say in conclusion that what my hon. friend from Weitaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) asks of the promoter of the bill in this case is that he do in this instance as he did in regard to the previous bill which he sponsored, that is, that he give us some idea of the merits of the case. So far he has declined to give us any information respecting it.


John Livingstone Brown: Has the hon. gentleman put his mathematics to work to find out how long it would take to have a recorded vote on every one of these bills? We have heard about the length of time it would take to read the evidence. There are 300 bills. It would take, in my opinion, 150 hours to dispose of them in the way the hon. member suggests, and that would be 25 parliamentary days.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The hon. member
for Lisgar is better at mathematics than 1 am. I have not figured it out, but I was taught long ago that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; and if we deal with this bill and the next and the next we shall undoubtedly find some way out of the dilemma before many days have passed. All I do now is to ask once more that with regard to this bill the hon. member who sponsors it should give us an outline such as he gave in regard to the merits of the previous case.


Mr. T. E. KAISER (Ontario):: Procedure Respecting Divorce
creating a divorce court for the province of Ontario, two conditions, whether appearing in the original bill as passed by this house, or incorporated in the provisions enacted by the province. In the first place, I do not believe that any divorce case should be tried in the county in which the applicant, resides; it should be tried in an adjoining county. In the second place, if a court be established in Ontario, I do not wish to see the gruesome details of the whole story published in the newspapers. In my opinion, any information which is to be published should first be submitted bo the judge who tries the case, and he should determine the desirability or otherwise of its publication. These are the only two points I wish to mention and I stand firmly by them: Cases should not be tried in the county in which the applicant resides, and the literature which is spread throughout the country in regard to such cases should be censored by the judge who tries the case.


John Wesley Edwards: The question has come up as to whether or not we should have a divorce court in Ontario or Quebec or Prince Edward Island. As stated by the bon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) that is outside the discussion. We could not introduce legislation this session in that regard if we were unanimously in favour of it. On this .point, however, I would simply say this: It should be within the genius of this parliament, it seems to me, to devise some kind of law which would' give the three provinces that have not now divorce courts an opportunity of establishing such courts if they so desired. But that is apart altogether from the question before us. We are asked to vote on the second reading of Bill No. 93, and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) calls upon the member whose name appears after the motion as sponsor to give 'him the reasons why the bill should be proceeded with. When the hon. member puts that question he knows .perfectly well that the *reason for this, as for every other bill of a similar nature, is defined by law; and there is only one reason. What is our duty in determining whether the bill shall receive the second reading? We have to determine whether or not the evidence on which the senate committee formed its conclusions is right and proper. I cannot shift my responsibility in that regard on to the shoulders of the member whose name happens to be associated with the bill. It is incumbent upon me as it is upon the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and every other hon. member, if we are not satisfied that the senate com-

mittee, taking evidence under oath, has come to a correct conclusion, or if we are satisfied that there is some weakness in the evidence, to get up and say so, to say what that weakness is, and to oppose the bill on that ground'; not merely to get up and talk in generalities about the advisability or inadvisability of conducting matters in these divorce cases as we are now doing. That does not determine how we are to vote.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre spent the better part of an hour on what? Presumably he was speaking on the second reading of this bill, but he did not offer or even hint at a single reason or suggestion, why this bill should not receive* its second reading. His only comment in that regard, after giving expression is a lot of generalities more or less irrelevant-rather more irrelevant than relevant-was that, the member sponsoring the bill should tell us why he was asking that the bill be read a second time. The hon. member knows very well that under our law there is only one reason back of all these bills ; if he or any other member is not satisfied with the evidence adduced under oath before the senate committee, it is up to that member to take exception on that ground. I think the hon. member for Welland (Mr. Pettit) put the matter very well; the court-because it is a court-hears the evidence in a proper way, cross-examines the witnesses and comes to a certain conclusion. That conclusion is passed on to this house and we are asked to concur or otherwise in the decision of that court. If I am not prepared to concur in that decision I should give my reason for that attitude and I should be able to say that I cannot concur in the judgment because I think there is a weakness in the evidence, pointing out that weakness to the house. Otherwise I should vote for the second reading of the bill and pass it on to the committee, which has all the privileges outlined by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) and the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Dunning) in regard to going further into the matter if that is thought desirable. I cannot use the word "blockade"; that is unparliamentary, but I can have my own opinion.


Hewitt Bostock: Is the house ready for
the question?


Miss AGNES MACPHAIL (Southeast Grey):: Before the question is put, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that to me it does not seem fair that we should ask members from the other provinces to spend at

Procedure Respecting Divorce
least some time in listening to the reading of divorce bills based on applications coming from the province of Ontario. It is not fair to the members to expect them to vote upon bills of which they know nothing, bills which are called by number and which are not discussed, nor is it fair to ask them to spend hours of their time finding out what these bills actually are about. I think we are all coming to realize that very soon we must establish a divorce court in Ontario; this is no place to deal with the divorce applications coming from this province. The establishment of a divorce court in this province will neither increase nor decrease the number of divorces; surely anyone who can understand fundamentals must know that. The causes of divorce lie very much deeper, and I am quite free to say that in my opinion one of the causes is the greater freedom of women. Formerly women had no choice; they had to bear all sorts of indignities because they had no economic existence apart from their husbands. That is not true to-day; women are demanding freedom to live their own lives and I would be the last to deny them that right if they wish it.
Many times during the last seven years I have thought it a complete farce that we should sit here and listen to bills being read over about which we knew absolutely nothing. There is no use in the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) or the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) getting up to lecture the house; I know they are both learned gentlemen, but they do not need to tell us that we could know all about the cases which come before us. We cannot do so, and what is more we do not particularly want to know about them; I do not think that is the work which should be done by this house. I do not know what is in the mind of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) but to me it is quite clear that this house must be made so sick of this thing that they will have a sensible point of view when a divorce court for Ontario is next proposed.


Mr. C. G. POWER (Quebec South):: The
strict rules of order have been transgressed so frequently during the course of the day, Mr. Speaker, that I beg your indulgence if I appear to transgress them for one moment now. During the course of the remarks of the hon. member for Toronto-High Park (Mr. Anderson) I gathered that he wished in some way to blame members from Quebec for not having assisted in the passage of a certain bill which came before this house on a previous 78594-102
occasion. Since that time I have looked up the votes and proceedings in order to inquire into the vote oast on February 26 with regard to an act to provide in the province of Ontario for the dissolution and annulment of marriage. I find that amongst the yeas, or those who supported this measure, there were fifteen members from Ontario while amongst the nays there were thirty-three members from Ontario.


John Arthur Clark: Thirty-one.


Charles Gavan Power: So far as I can ascertain, of that thirty-three only seven were of the Roman Catholic faith. I simply wish to place these facts before the house in order that the house and the country may understand that if this divorce court legislation was blocked, certainly it was not entirely due to the members from Quebec; in a large measure it was due to the attitude of members from the province of Ontario, who spoke and voted in this house against the establishment of such a court.


James Arthurs: And is it not a fact that the figures with regard to the members from Quebec were forty-two against the bill and none for it?


Charles Gavan Power: I am not discussing the members from Quebec; I am pointing out to hon. gentlemen, who in some way have been blaming the province of Quebec, that before casting stones over here they should look after themselves.


John Arthur Clark: Mr. Speaker-


Hewitt Bostock: This will close the debate.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: If
this means that the hon. member will block the debate-


John Arthur Clark: I do not intend to block the debate.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: According to the usages of the house when the hon. member speaks he will close the debate, and there is one point upon which I would like to express myself; I refer to the lectures which were given the house by my excellent friend the Minister of Railways (Mr. Dunning) and the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett). I suppose they meant well, but as far as I am concerned I am not prepared to admit that we are lowering the dignity of this house because we propose to see clearly through one of the most important problems with which this parliament can deal. I quite admit that the manner in which the discussion arose, the occasion for this debate, is rather extraorltEVISED EDITION

Procedure Respecting Divorce
dinary; but since the leader of the opposition has referred to the traditions of the English parliament he should know that many of the greatest questions of government, of legislation and of public liberty dealt with by that parliament arose from the most trivial questions. Just by way of example I might remind hon. gentlemen that one of the basic principles of ministerial responsibility was decided by the English House of Commons, under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone, on the mere appointment of chambermaids to the Queen in Buckingham Palace. Another great principle of public administration and the responsibility of various heads of departments was decided under the same leader, one of the greatest statesmen not only of the British Empire but of the world at large, on a paltry question of the purchase of pencils, pen handles and a few sheets of paper in each department. Gladstone was derided by some of the microscopic members of the House of Commons, but he successfully demonstrated to the British people that when a great principle was at issue, whatever the legislative or administrative occasion, it is the right and the duty of each member of the house to discuss that principle, whatever the other consequences may be.
The hon. member for Ontario (Mr. Kaiser), one of the most sympathetic and genial members of this house-everyone loves him, of course,-has raised the argument that this discussion is costing the country so much per minute. The hon. member is somewhat older than I am, but I well remember in the days of the old parliament when we used to say to the opposition members, during the discussion of some trivial estimate, that they were costing the country so much. The answer would always come back, and it was the proper answer, that, whatever the amount of money at issue, there was some principle of administration or legislation at stake. That is the position which we take to-night.
The hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) has spoken of those who are opposing this bill as being under the leadership of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth). As far as I am concerned, I would have no more objection to following the lead of that hon. gentleman, when that lead is well inspired, than to following that of any other member of this house. The hon. member for Lisgar has followed various leads in this house-of course that is his business- and he should not attribute small motives to any hon. member when he happens to agree with some other hon. gentleman.


John Livingstone Brown: I did not desire to cast any reflection upon the hon. member.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: What I want to make
clear to the house is this: Some of us are opposed on principle to all these bills, while others are opposed on principle also, but a different principle. It is our right and duty to discuss every one of these bills in order to make our position clear to the country as well as to parliament. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, I think I have given fair warning to this house as well as to the country -if the country cares for what I do or say here-as early as last year as to the action I would take. I admit that it was towards the end of the session, after we had passed a certain number of similar bills, when I expressed some of the ideas I have expressed here as to the growing hesitancy I had in allowing such bills to pass, and as to the growing 'conviction there was in my mind; firstly, that there was something wrong with the law, and, secondly, that there was something wrong with the practice.
Without going over the work which is being performed by the senate committee, or repeating the declarations made by representatives of that committee when they asked for the concurrence of this branch of parliament in relieving them from their burden, I find further evidence that the practice-leaving the principle aside for the moment-of granting divorces has become an impediment to the free exercise of parliamentary judgment in both branches of the house, as well as a threat to the social fabric which is affected by the increase in the number of these bills.


Charles Avery Dunning: This session the house
determined in the negative with regard to the stand it desired to take in the granting of a divorce court to Ontario. What course does the hon. member suggest the house should follow in dealing with these particular bills?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: If the hon. minister will permit me to finish the point I was discussing, I will give him an answer. However, I thank him for the interruption.
I was pointing out that the practice which has grown upon us is becoming a nuisance to parliament and a danger to the country. As has been mentioned by many hon. members, it is practically impossible to read all this evidence. I received these records in two bundles; and in the interval between six and eight o'clock I endeavoured to classify them. There is no classification other than by name. What did I do? I am a quick worker at that kind of thing, and I classified them in alphabetical order. I then referred

Procedure Respecting Divorce
to the order paper to discover the number of each particular bill, and I marked that number on two or three records of evidence. I spent an hour and a half in doing work that should have been done by the servants of this parliament. When the house met at eight o'clock two or three of these bills were allowed to stand, but during the debate which followed I had an opportunity of going through this bunch of papers and managed to find the evidence connected with the particular bill under consideration. Without insisting further that this manner of offering the evidence to the members is very clumsy and almost unworkable, I can only repeat that it is a parliamentary system which has grown upon us during the last few years. The people who established that practice probably had no idea of the manner in which it would grow.
What do I find in this particular case? The divorce is asked for by a woman who married a certain man a few years ago. Although she does not say in her testimony that there was anything wrong, they seem to have disagreed. She left him and went back to England. According to her uncontradicted evidence, upon her return a reconciliation took place, but she found that during her absence the husband had developed certain habits of which she complained, and she had a special investigator make up a case. Here is the testimony, all contained in three or four pages. That investigator took a friend of his; they went on a certain night to a certain house, and they found the husband walking in a certain room while a woman was in the bed. The whole evidence rests upon these two things. The policeman hired to make up the case says: " The woman in the bed is not the woman here"-meaning not the wife. The other, the second witness necessary to make up a case before a tribunal, says: "I did not see the woman. I only found that she had fair hair." It is upon those two testimonies that a judgment has been granted breaking a marriage tie, without the husband being heard and without its being known whether the man had any previous complaint. Yet we are told that we are a court of appeal and that, in the exercise of that majestic dignity, we have nothing to do but to confirm this judgment rendered by a committee of the other house. I dare say that if the same work was performed in connection with all these three hundred cases, a good many would be corresponding with this. Therefore I quite understand why an hon. member belonging to the province of New Brunswick, who allowed me to make use of his name, a Roman Catholic, voted for the motion moved by the hon. mem-78594- 102J	, .
ber for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woods-worth), some days ago, because, he said:
" Comparing the manner in which divorces are granted or refused in my province with the manner in which they are granted in parliament, I, as a Catholic and the father of a family, cannot vote any longer for this system."
Is all this lowering the dignity of parliament? I can assure the Minister of Railways and the leader of the opposition that the people who have sent me here, humble settlers who can hardly read nor write, but who for many years have carried on a Christian life in the midst of the hills and continued the devoted work of the pioneers in enlarging the moral as well as the material wealth of the country, have placed their confidence in me, not only to vote money for the railway department or any other department of the state, but to do my level best to preserve some of the moral foundations upon which this little country of ours has grown up. Whether it pleases or not members of the government or members of the opposition; whether it is on the occasion of a private bill, or of two bills, or of ten bills, or of fifty bills, I will lose no opportunity to assert before parliament and before the country that we have a duty to perform, not only in the building of railways and the digging of canals, but in the preservation of the morality of Canada.
There is one point which my good friend the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre brought up during the discussion of this bill and which I want to answer right away. He stated, quite properly, that he resented, not the imputation but the deduction that could be drawn from the attitude taken by the representatives of Quebec on a question like-this, because it might be said by some-narrow-minded or ill-willed people that, in: opposing the principle of divorce, we pose as representing a more virtuous population than those of the English-speaking provinces. That is not our way. We have our defects and our drawbacks in Quebec as elsewhere; but if we can claim some credit, it is this: that we have never acted in a Pharisaical manner in teaching lessons of morality to other parts of the country. All that we have done and that we are doing is this: the Catholic and French province of Quebec has made to the Dominion of Canada, its population and its institutions, a contribution of its own which I do not claim to be superior to that of the other provinces, but which I claim to be valuable in the manner and to the degree in which we preserve within ourselves those

Procedure Respecting Divorce
elements of social organization which are our own. Let us admit that there are differences in temperament, habit and tradition. Perhaps among the English-speaking people, especially among those of Scottish and English descent, you can play a little more fast and loose with the laws relating to the organization of families or of society. But when you come to the Latin races, with their more radical temperament and their more logical turn of mind, beware of any attempt made to loosen the ties which preserve the family and the social organization. This is one of the reasons why, while not teaching any lesson to any other element of the population, while not posing as Pharisees, we say: Understand our point of view as we endeavour to understand yours. That is why, since the matter has been referred to, I may be permitted to employ two or three minutes of my time in regard to it.
When the question of a divorce court for Ontario came up, I made it quite clear that I was opposed on principle to divorce; that I was opposed to the establishment of divorce courts everywhere. But since divorce courts have been established in seven out of the nine provinces of Canada in esse or in posse,- because in Prince Edward Island they voted long before confederation for the establishment of a divorce court and they have it in posse if not in esse-I stated and I repeat to-night, and the sense of the house and the sense of the country will have to come to it: the only real remedy for this situation, which has grown upon us and which will be far worse next year, and the year after, than it is this year, is to come back to the true moral and social basis of confederation: wipe off from clause 91 the subsection enabling or, rather, forcing-because in that respect I agree with the leader of the opposition and the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan)-forcing this parliament to deal with divorce. Let us go back to the principle, the spirit of confederation, and let us wipe off those three words: "Marriage and divorce' from clause 91.
It has been said by the hon. member for Toronto High Park (Mr. Anderson):	"But
you cannot do it unless the provinces agree to it." Why? We can not take away any of the rights of the provinces without their consent, but we can always renounce some of our own rights; and. after that, the provinces can, under another disposition of the British North America Act, amend their own constitution according to their needs. Once this parliament, by a joint address of both houses, decides that it will have no more to do with
f.Mr. Bourassa.]
divorce, either in a legislative capacity or in its capacity of creating courts of justice to adjudicate upon divorce, then the provinces are free, each of them according to its views, according to what it considers to be in the best interest of the local community for which its government is responsible, to decide whether or not they will maintain the divorce courts they have or, if they do not have them, create them. This is a practical remedy. I mentioned it during the first debate. I mention it again to-night, not with the hope, of course, that it will be voted upon right away. Perhaps some hon. members who would be disposed to agree to it would not like to receive it from such unholy hands as those of the man who is speaking now. But the time will surely come, and let it come as soon as possible, when individuals and groups and parties being forgotten, some sensible individual, no eccentric or crank of my nature, but some sensible individual accepted as a wise man by everybody, will stand up and propose this remedy; and then it will be jumped at by all the wiseacres of the land; because, I repeat, this is the only manner in which you can at once simplify the operations of this house and return the two branches of this parliament to their proper functions, and at the same time strike off from the constitution that anomaly which leaves a portion of our matrimonial law in the hands of the provinces while keeping another portion here. It was a nonsensical disposition adopted in the last hours of the discussion on the confederation bill. As a matter of fact, it was not in the resolutions of Quebec; it was not in the de-cisisons taken by the parliament of United Canada. It was grafted upon the constitution, like that absurd clause 93 with regard to sdhools, in London, in order to conciliate the views of this church and that church, of this group and 'that; and like all that kind of patchwork it could not work. So long as the population was limited the number of people seeking divorce was not numerous, therefore we did not feel the absurdity or the pinch of the system; but now it is upon us.
I cannot agree with my good friend from Lisgar, who proposes that we let the present system go on for this year. No, sir. If we do not bring it home to every member of this house and to the people whom we represent, the same thing will go on year after year. It will never be remedied until parliament realizes that we are in an impossible situation and thait we must treat it in a radical manner from a double point of view-one of principle and one of practice equally.


John Arthur Clark: The hon. member for Quebec South (Mr. APRIL 15, 1929
Procedure Respecting Divorce
Power) I think presented the best reasons why this house should give due and proper consideration to divorce bills. He stated that there was a large number of members in the house who had voted against the granting of a divorce court to Ontario, and he gave the vote. I have looked at that vote, and I find that there were seventy per cent of members from provinces other than Ontario who voted against the establishment of a divorce court in that province-seventy per cent of the vote. In other words, this house has elected to stand by the constitution. The constitution has been the same since confederation. This is the court which adjudicates upon divorce petitions. This house once more elected this year that it would not delegate that duty to any other court, and every member of this house is faced with the duty of adjudicating from a judicial point of view on the facts of this case* No member of this house can shirk the vote on the merits of this case, any more than you, Mr. Speaker, can refuse to put the question on this petition. That is the issue before the house.
So far as the facts of the case are concerned, I submit that the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) did not correctly represent them. Any member of this house could have read the evidence in this case in five minutes. I read it while the vote on the last bill was being taken. The facts are simple. I do not intend to repeat them because it is the duty of every member of this court to read them and to express his judgment upon them.
There is just one other point. I submit that it is not the duty of the sponsor of the bill to place the facts of the case before the house at all. Someone has to sponsor these bills. It is a mere formality. I have consented in this case to do so. It is not my duty necessarily to put the facts of the case before the house on the second reading. Al'l that is necessary here is to establish the principle: Is this a bill which comes within the law relating to divorce? If it is, then it is the duty of the house to send it to the committee, which will look into the facts of the case, and if necessary call witnesses and check evidence that has been taken before the senate.


James Shaver Woodsworth: To what law does the hon. member refer when he says "the law relating to divorce?"


John Arthur Clark: The common law of England which is in force in this country; the common law of England which has been adopted by certain of the provinces and upon which divorce courts are based.


Henry Elvins Spencer: I asked the hon. member earlier in the evening if he would give us some reasons why we should support this bill.


Hewitt Bostock: The debate is closed. Is it a question the hon. member wishes to ask?


Henry Elvins Spencer: The only information in
reference to the case that is before us has been given by the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa). If the hon. gentleman would give some reasons why we should support this bill, we should be glad to do so. Otherwise I shall have to vote against it.


George Reginald Geary: If it is not too late, Mr. Speaker, may I withdraw my vote? I was paired with the hon. member for Laurier-Outremont (Mr. Mercier). I thought he was in his seat, but he is not.


Hewitt Bostock: Moved by Mr. Clark,
secondedpaid pay and allowances at the time of the appearance of the injury or disease for which he is pensioned.
The chairman of the pension board has supplied the following answer which I desire to read:
Between 200 and 300 eases were adjusted to the correct rate under section 14, subsection (1) of the Pension Act. To publish the names and addresses of those comprising any class of pensioner is considered by the Board of Pension Commissioners to be detrimental to the interests of returned men generally, such information being regarded as confidential between pensioners and the commission. This is also the policy of the British Ministry of Pensions. It is therefore considered contrary to public policy to publish the names and addresses asked for.


Charles Marcil: Mr. Speaker, it is eleven
o'clock.


Mr. MORIN (St. Hvacinthe):: I was
paired with the hon. member for East Toronto (Mr. Ryckman). Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. CARDIN:: I was paired with the hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Cantley). Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. CANNON:: I was paired with the
hon. member for Frontenac-Addington (Mr. Edwards). Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Tuesday, April 16, 1929