1930-04-01

[Stage Direction]
Second report of the select standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines -Mr. Cahill.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. C. G. POWER (Quebec South) presented the third report of the special committee on pensions, and returned soldiers' problems, as follows:
Tuesday, April 1, 1930.
The special committee on pensions and returned soldiers' problems beg leave to present the following as their third report:
Your committee recommends that it be given leave to employ counsel for the purpose of assisting the Dominion executive officers of the Canadian Legion of the British Empire Service League in the matters referred to it. All of which is respectfully submitted.
Charles G. Power,
Chairman.
Mr. POWER moved that the report be concurred in.
Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Leader of the Opposition):: The question of the appointment of counsel representing the Canadian branch of the British Empire Legion is one matter; the appointment of counsel to represent returned soldiers is another. I think I intimated that such counsel should be appointed, but he should not be under the instructions of the legion. He should be there

Excise Act Amendment
to represent returned soldiers, generally. It would be a wrong principle if counsel were not secured to represent, and did not in fact represent the great mass of soldiers who are not members of the legion. The membership of that organization is said to be about 75,000, out of a total number of returned men of something over 300,000. To that extent I think matters should rest until we can have a conference with the chairman, and it might be concurred in to-morrow.
Motion stands.



ROYAL ASSENT

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to
inform the house that I have received the following letter:
Ottawa, April 1, 1930.
Sir,
I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable Mr. Justice Anglin, acting as deputy of His Excellency the Governor General, will proceed to the Senate chamber to-day at 9.00 p.m. for the purpose of giving the royal assent to the interim supply bill.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
James F. Crowdy,
Assistant Secretary to the Governor General. The Honourable
The Speaker of the House of Commons,
Ottawa.



MEETINGS OF COMMITTEES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day.
Mr. G. R. GEARY (South Toronto):: May I call the attention of the house to the fact that there were five committees scheduled for this morning at eleven o'clock. The committees were banking and commerce, industrial and international relations, special committees on pensions and returned soldiers' problems, railways, canals and telegraph lines, and agriculture and colonization. It is impossible for members to attend all these meetings, and I suggest there should be some sort of clearing house so that committees will not clash in that way.



INDIAN ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Minister of the Interior) moved the third reading of Bill No. 22, to amend the Indian Act.
Motion agreed to and bill read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. W. D. EULER (Minister of National Revenue) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following proposed resolution :
Resolved, that it is expedient to amend the Excise Act to provide for power to examine witnesses on oath, and to pay their reasonable travelling expenses; for the imposition of duty on screened malt computed on the quantity after it has been removed from the kiln and screened; for making certain offences indictable, and such other amendments as are deemed necessary for a more adequate enforcement of the act.
Richard Bedford Bennett: I think the hon. gentleman
might make a statement with regard to this resolution.


Mr. EULER:: Mr. Speaker, the provisions of the bill are not many; they are designed almost entirely to clear up some problems and some inconsistencies which have developed during the administration of the act. There are one or two additions all of which, as I say, are designed to make the working of the act more clear with regard to certain weaknesses which have developed. I think possibly if hon. members would allow the motion to pass, the information in detail can be given much better a little later on. I can assure hon. members that the additions which are being made are very simple in their nature and do not involve any great principle at all.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Johnston in the chair.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I suppose this resolution
has received the approval of His Excellency the Governor General?


William Daum Euler: Yes, the matter has been
brought to the attention of His Excellency the Governor General and his consent has been obtained.


Mr. STEVENS:: If we adopt this resolution we agree to the principle of all that is contained in it, and it covers rather a wide range. Would the minister be good enough to take the points one by one and let us know just what are the explanations, in order that we may follow them in their relation to the present act? For instance there is the question of examining witnesses on oath. I understood that the act covered that already. What is the need for that amendment, and wherein does it amend the present act?


William Daum Euler: That particular provision
arises almost directly out of an investigation which was held in Halifax last year, to which reference was made at the close of the session by the leader of the opposition. We found then that our own officers had not power to examine witnesses under oath, and an order in council was necessary to give them that power. In outlying sections of the country it will make it very much easier if the officers have that power. I do not see how anyone
Excise Act Amendment

can possibly be prejudiced in the matter, and certainly it will make the work of the officials of the department a great deal easier.
The next amendment, providing for the payment of reasonable travelling expenses, explains itself pretty well. The proposition to impose duty on screened malt is to do away with the present condition whereby coomings and screenings are compensated for by a refund after the goods have been imported. We are going to do away with that altogether, so that no duty will be paid on the screenings but only on the net result after the screenings have been removed. Then there will be no necessity for refunds. I am not sure that I can add anything more.


Henry Herbert Stevens: What offences are to be made indictable?


William Daum Euler: This arises out of a situation which came up in connection with a certain tobacco company which was caught selling cigarettes without the payment of excise tax. They were fined and promised to amend their ways, but they did not do so. It was discovered that they had recommenced the practice and under the circumstances it was thought advisable to seize their stock, but a considerable doubt arose as to whether we could do so legally. I think the house will agree that in offences of that kind it should be possible for the department to deal more summarily with the offenders than has been the case in the past. We are practically without a remedy; people even move goods out of customs bond without any adequate punishment.


Henry Herbert Stevens: What other amendments are deemed necessary for the more adequate enforcement of the act? That is rather a sweeping power that the minister is requesting.


William Daum Euler: If I wanted to give my hon. friend full information I would have to give him a resume of the bill itself. The bill is very short; I do not know whether or not my hon. friend has it before him, and I hardly suppose the committee would wish me to recite the provisions which are contained in the bill itself.


Henry Herbert Stevens: This is not captious criticism at all; the point is that the minister undoubtedly has a rather extensive bill which will follow this resolution. We do not want the minister to come back at us later on, when we query him on the bill, and say, " Well, you agreed to this in the resolution."


William Daum Euler: I will give my hon. friend the assurance that I will not find fault with anything he may wish to ask later on.


Henry Herbert Stevens: This is a very sweeping sort of blanket cheque we are giving; the minister simply asks for such other amendments as are deemed necessary for the more adequate enforcement of the act. We have not the faintest idea of what that is intended to cover. So as far as I am concerned I want the minister to understand that in agreeing to the resolution, when the bill comes up it does not mean that we will not give it the fullest examination.


William Daum Euler: We will not have any disagreement on that.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Euler thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 48, to amend the Excise Act.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



FAIR WAGES AND HOURS

[Stage Direction]
Hon. PETER HEENAN (Minister of Labour) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following proposed resolution:
Resolved, that it is expedient to bring in a measure respecting fair wages and hours for labour employed by contract or otherwise on public works of the Dominion of Canada.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Explain.


Mr. HEENAN:: The bill which is proposed to be introduced contains three distinct features. It will establish current rates of wages, provided that in all cases they must be fair and reasonable, which is a new feature in our fair wage policy. It also provides that the eight hour day shall apply to contractors, and it also takes in government employees on similar work, as provided for by the bill. When the bill is before the committee we will be able to give any details required.


Mr. MacLAREN:: Mr. Chairman, I think these matters should be considered before the bill is presented to the house. I have received a telegram from an important firm of builders and contractors who state that there are clauses in the bill which would be a possible source of serious embarrassment. These contractors suggest that the construction industry

Fair Wages and Hours
be permitted to submit their views before a bill is presented to the house. I hope the minister will consider receiving suggestions from employers of labour in reference to the clauses of this bill.


Mr. HEAPS:: Will the hon. member state the name of the firm who forwarded that communication ?


Murray MacLaren: I have not received permission to divulge the name, but neither has any objection been offered, so I presume it would be quite in order for me to state that the name of the firm is John Flood & Sons, Limited, of St. John, N.B. Perhaps it would be better to read the telegram. It starts off by calling me "Honourable." Under ordinary circumstances I would not have mentioned that, but evidently they are taking a keen interest in the progress of events. The telegram reads as follows:
Learn Hon. P. Heenan moved resolution respecting fair wages and hours labour on public works contracts.
That would appear to be previous information as the resolution was moved to-day.


Mr. HANSON:: They are an up to date firm.


Murray MacLaren: The telegram continues:
Have memo of bill draft and note provisions which are objectionable to construction industry and possible sources of serious embarrassment.
I would direct the attention of the minister to the following:
Suggest construction industry permitted submission views before bill drafted.
In view of the position which these people occupy in the community, and in view of their discernment with regard to the member to whom they sent the telegram, I would urge again favourable consideration by the minister.


Peter Heenan: Mr. Chairman, it will be quite proper for any citizen of Canada to make representations regarding this measure, but I do not see how those representations can be made until the bill is printed. A representative of that firm of contractors has interviewed me regarding the bill and I told him that he would be at liberty to bring any delegation at any time after the introduction of the bill. I think the hon. member will realize that no one can discuss the bill until it is introduced and printed, and I can assure my hon. friend that after that time we will receive any delegations in connection with this matter.


Murray MacLaren: They do not ask to present their views on the bill, they ask an oppor-

tunity to present their case before the bill is drafted. The minister should have the opinion of those who are interested before he drafts his bill as it is easier to make changes at that time.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister if this bill will be referred to the standing committee on industrial relations, or is it proposed to deal with it in the committee of the whole?


Peter Heenan: Yes.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I think it would be only
fair to those who are interested in this bill that they be given an opportunity to be heard. If the minister does not agree with the position taken by the hon. member for St. John-Albert (Mr. MacLaren), then I would suggest that this bill be referred to a committee of the house.


Peter Heenan: I would rather introduce
this bill as a government measure and take the responsibility than meet the wishes of representatives from all over the country. This is a government measure and it will be dealt with in the committee of the whole.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The government seems to
have one policy for one class of bill and another policy for other bills. This is a bill which will vitally affect business in this country. If it were a political plaything which the minister had in mind, I could well understand that he would not-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order, order.


Richard Burpee Hanson: There is nothing wrong
about that. That seems to be exactly what he has presented-a political baby is now to be born. If the minister intends to pursue the line of conduct he has indicated, I would suggest, in the interests of business and in the interests of the men themselves who labour on public works, that the whole thing should be referred to the committee on industrial relations where the views pro and con can be discussed.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: We ought to see the
baby before sending it away like that.


Richard Burpee Hanson: We can well apprehend
the character of anything that comes from the Minister of Labour.


Abraham Albert Heaps: A few days ago in committee of supply, hon. members from the maritime provinces complained that fair wages were not being paid on certain government con-
Fair Wages and Hours

tracts being carried out there. Now we have an hon. member from the maritimes (Mr. Hanson) complaining of the action taken by the government.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I cannot allow that remark to pass. I was not the gentleman who took that stand, in fact it was the hon. member for Inverness (Mr. Macdougall) and I am sorry that he is not here to-day to speak for himself. I have not expressed any opinion as to the merits of this measure, and the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps) has no right to ascribe wrong motives. In fairness to all concerned, not only to the contractors but to the men themselves, as well as to the taxpayers of this country who, after all have to pay the bill, this bill should be referred to a committee of the house where views thereon could be presented.


Mr. CHURCH:: Mr. Chairman, the department is eleven years too late in bringing forward this measure. Eleven years ago the city of Toronto adopted an eight hour day and the union or prevailing rate of wages, on contracts which is 60 cents per hour. Nothing is done regarding aid to unemployment until we have an election pending, and then the government decides that something must be done to appeal to the labouring class. This bill is brought down eleven years after the large municipalities in the province of Ontario had adopted not only a fair wage clause but the eight hour day in all civil contracts. The minister in regard to that particular amendment has no way of enforcing it. How is he going to enforce this proposal? What penalty will be placed in a contract to enforce it? Many contracts to-day are dead letters. A great deal of this work is being sublet; a contractor gets a job and sublets it to someone else. As I said last night, the Alien Labour Act is a dead letter in this country. Contractors are bringing into Ontario unskilled labour from all over Europe, and the government and the fair wage officer seem to be asleep because they are nowhere to be found nor can they enforce the contract.
No credit is due to the government for bringing in this legislation. It has been forced upon them by what was done by the provinces and the municipalities in 1919 and 1920. The city of Toronto provides for an eight-hour day and in every contract is inserted a fair wage clause, providing for the union or prevailing rate of wages, which in Toronto is sixty cents an hour for unskilled labour.


Mr. ADSHEAD:: After the bill is introduced, will there be an opportunity on the second reading to suggest extensions or amendments to it? I am not objecting to the bill; I am supporting it, but I do not want to be confined to the resolution and not be able to suggest amendments.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I notice my hon. friend
(Mr. Adshead) says that he has no objection to the bill as it stands. I did not know the .bill was distributed. I would like to have had the same opportunity of seeing it and I would perhaps be able to discuss the matter more intelligently. The minister may tell us in a moment just to whom the bill has been distributed and who has had an opportunity of seeing and examining it. It would be interesting to know that.


Peter Heenan: The bill has not been in the possession of anyone but members of the government. It has not been distributed.


Richard Burpee Hanson: A memorandum of the
draft bill has been handed out. Messrs. John Flood & Sons say that they have seen it.


Peter Heenan: All I can say is that if
they have, I do not understand it, because the bill has not been distributed from our department.


Henry Herbert Stevens: In the first place, I do not think there has been any occasion for this bill. The government, all through its history, should have been practising the principle enunciated in the resolution. I have in my hand a letter from The Building Trades Council, Vancouver. It is addressed to me and it reads:
We have been instructed to draw to your attention an anomaly in the methods adopted by the Dominion government in carrying on the construction of public works, viz: when calling for tenders from the various contractors the fail- wage clause is a component part of the contract, therefore it becomes compulsory upon the contractor to pay the established or current wage of the district in which he is doing government work; and in the event of any dispute regarding wages the government fair wage officer is empowered to enforce the act. However, on the other hand when the government undertakes to carry out its own construction work by day labour a different procedure is initiated and the fair wage clause is not given the slightest consideration. The men so engaged are hired in most cases at a considerably lower rate of wages than a contractor would be compelled to pay for the same class of work.
This is manifestly unfair because it debars members of the various mechanics' unions from accepting employment on government work when such work is being carried out by day labour and the matter does not end here, as the standard of living which has been built up by organized labour in this Dominion is

Fair Wages and Hours
imperilled. We would therefore respectfully request that you bring this anomalous condition to the attention of the government and have the act so amended that it will definitely rule; that the fair wage shall be paid on all government work whether undertaken by contract or day labour.
The point I wish to bring to the attention of the minister is this; he gives us no adequate information in the resolution as to the contents of the bill. In reply to questions he has stated: "Well, when the bill comes in, you will see it." He prefers to put the bill in as a government measure and force it through the house. This is a case where there is a definite and reasonable complaint that in certain instances where contractors do government work a fair wage clause is included in the contract. The fair wage clause calls for conditions prevailing and wages paid in the various branches of work in the community in which the contract is awarded, but on government work done by day labour, according to this letter-


Mr. STEWART (Edmonton):: Does he cite the cases he has in mind?
Mr. STEVENS; I have read the letter.


Charles A. Stewart: That is a very general statement.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is the generality of it that is somewhat alarming.


Charles A. Stewart: If a man
wrote a letter of that kind I would expect him to set forth some specific case.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I do not agree with the minister nor with the "Hear, hear." This is an old dodge.


Charles A. Stewart: It is not.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is-to say, when a member brings something to the attention of the house, name the specific case; name the particular job.


Charles A. Stewart: There is never a letter read on this side of the house but that complaint is made by hon. gentlemen opposite. I think it is a perfectly fair and proper question. If my hon. friend's letter makes an assertion, it should give the particulars.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I have not the particulars and I am now making a statement based on the letter. The statement I am making is this: I think it is an exceedingly unwise and unfair policy for the government to carry out work under conditions that are different from those that are imposed upon a contractor
working on government work, should the work be let by contract. I have other letters on this subject; I have looked for them in my desk, but I find I do not have them under my hand. Does the minister cover that point in the bill which he proposes to base on the resolution which is very brief and incomplete? It says simply that it is-
A measure respecting fair wages and hours for labour employed by contract or otherwise on public works of the Dominion of Canada.
That is a very broad, sweeping statement. It might be a revision up or a revision down. You cannot get any information from it. Will the minister say whether the particular point I have mentioned has been covered in the resolution?


Peter Heenan: Evidently the hon. member was not in his seat when I made my first explanation, or perhaps I did not make myself understood, because that is one point I explained. This will apply not only to contractors or employees engaged by contractors but also to employees of the government on government work.


Mr. McQUARRIE:: Will it apply to government employees in the Public Works department?


Peter Heenan: Yes.


William Garland McQuarrie: For instance, on dredging machines and so on?


Peter Heenan: Yes.


William Garland McQuarrie: Is it to be provided that they get a fair wage and also holidays?


Peter Heenan: Perhaps I had better explain. It is to provide that every contract with the government of Canada for construction, remodelling, repair or demolition of any work shall be subject to the fair wage conditions. Those are the contracts, and any employees of the Dominion government itself engaged on similar work will come under this bill.


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: May I ask if the fair wage proposed is a minimum wage or simply the going wage in the district?


Richard Bedford Bennett: The current wage, the minister says.


Peter Heenan: It applies to current wages that are paid in the district, with this added provision, that in all cases the wages must be fair and reasonable. That is new.


James Shaver Woodsworth: That does not mean anything. I have a specific instance that just came to my notice to-day. I should like to read a paragraph from a letter that I received
Fair Wages and Hours

from Canon F. G. Scott of Quebec, with regard to conditions in Grand-Mere. He speaks of the generally bad conditions there owing to the large number of people being out of work through the closing down of the paper mill, and goes on to say:
The government is building a new post office. At present only the foundation work, outside work, blasting, etc. is being done. I am told on good authority that the workmen are being paid at only 20 cents an hour. . . . Probably a contractor has got the job. Could you bring it before the house? The poor people are desperate and forced to work for anything.
In a district like that, where there is a lot of unemployment, and where wages apparently have been definitely forced down, it would seem as if the going wage is not an adequate safeguard. I think if we are going to have anything of this kind at all, we ought to have a definite minimum wage based on the cost of living.


Mr. MacDONALD (Cape Breton South):: Is this bill being introduced in substitution for the draft bill submitted by the trades and labour congress?


Peter Heenan: The trades and labour congress did present a draft bill to the government. The bill based on this resolution does not include everything that the trades and labour congress had in mind, but it does take in most of the important features of their draft bill, and a good deal of what is left out is covered by other acts and regulations, such as the water powers regulations, section 244 of the Railway Act, and our own regulations of the Labour department.


Finlay MacDonald: In answer to a question the other day, the minister told me that the bill submitted by the trades and labour congress had been declared by the Justice department to be ultra vires. Are any such sections included in this bill?


Richard Bedford Bennett: I think that the questions, submitted by the hon. member for St. John-Albert (Mr. MacLaren) and by the hon. member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Hanson) should in some way be answered, because one of the large firms of contractors upon public buildings here in Ottawa, who are also contractors on the Welland canal, have alleged that their financial position, they being presently in the hands of receivers, was brought about by the arbitrary action of a minister of labour who changed the terms of their wage contracts with their employees, and thereby brought about their financial destruction. That is their contention. Whether 
it is right or not, I cannot say. It did occur to me, however, listening to the minister, that he is dealing with a matter that has received the approval of almost every member of parliament. If I turned to Hansard, I should find that practically every member who has spoken on the subject has urged that it was not only desirable but essential that the government should have the same hours of labour and pay the same wages on its works as other contractors. That is based really on the obligation of the treaty of Versailles. That, I think, is unquestionable. The important question to answer, it seems to me, is what effect this bill may have upon existing contracts, where contractors have employed sub-contractors on certain terms as to wages? This resolution does not touch that at all, which I think is an important question to be answered, because as I have already said, one large firm of contractors claims that its present financial position is due to a minister of labour changing the rate of wages to be paid to their employees.


Peter Heenan: The agreements now in
existence contain specific provisions, and this bill will apply only to future contracts.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Quite so. That is what I would suppose.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: About ten minutes ago
I asked the Minister of Labour (Mr. Heenan) a question, and I have not received a reply. I stated that I wholeheartedly supported the bill so far as it went, but that it did not go far enough. Will there be an opportunity on the second reading to offer amendments to the bill?


Peter Heenan: Every member of the
house will have a right to offer amendments when we are in committee.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Heenan thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 49, respecting fair wages and an eight hour day for labour employed on public works of the Dominion of Canada.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



SUPPLY-UNEMPLOYMENT AMENDMENT OF MR. HEAPS TO MOTION FOR COMMITTEE

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Monday, March 31, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King for committee of supply, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Heaps.

Unemployment-Mr. Church
Thomas Langton Church: The amendment of the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps) to the motion for committee of supply, reads as follows:
That in the opinion of this house the government should take immediate action to deal with the question of unemployment.
If we wait till the government takes action, we will wait till doomsday, because they have had all the opportunity they want to take action on this matter, and are incapable of doing anything to give relief or adopting any constructive policy.
Last night I was pointing out to the house what had been done in the United States, under the Hoover administration, to deal with the question of unemployment in a constructive manner. I showed that unemployment came under three heads-cyclical, seasonal and technological. By technological unemployment is meant the unemployment caused by the application of new machinery to industry, thereby displacing man power. Professor E. A. Stewart, of the State Agriculture College, university of Minnesota, says:
Machine-farming developments from 1850 to 1920 have released approximately 27,000,000 workers l'rom agriculture. Picture the undeveloped state of our cities, industries, transportation, and above all the entire absence of our modern sanitary and labour-freeing homes if we were still required to produce our agricultural crops as we did one hundred years ago. It takes but little imagination to picture our now beautiful cities, as a peasant country, ground down under long hours of toil, poorly educated people, faced periodically with famine and pestilence, with simple labour-killing homes for our families to live in. if farming were now carried on as it was in 1830.
While our population in 1950 may be six times as great as in 1850, yet it is conceivable and probable that the decrease in the number of farm workers which started to take place in 1910 will continue, and by 1950 no more farm workers will be required to supply food for a population of 150,000.000 than were required in 1850 for a population of 25,000,000.
This shows the inroads that machinery is making on manual labour. Now, the Minister of Labour says to our municipalities: "We have not anything to do with unemployment; go and see the provincial authorities." Then in turn the provincial authorities tell the municipalities, "Go and' deal with unemployment yourselves." If the Dominion government is not concerned with unemployment, what is the necessity of a Department of Labour? Surely its function is to protect the working classes, to secure jobs for them, instead of neglecting their interests and forcing them to go in their hundreds of thousands to look for jobs in a foreign land. The federal government through its immigration department spends a vast amount of money 2419-73
in advertising in England and in bringing in immigrants, and then these people are left to shift for themselves. Unemployment means that most of our factories are running only half time while others are closed down altogether. No doubt Canada is a wonderful country, but what are we going to do about this unemployment? It is no good to tell starving men about the great natural resources of the country ; they want work to maintain themselves and their families. The unemployed call for bread, and get a stone and no work.
As I said last night, the United States are dealing with this problem of unemployment in a large, constructive way. They are conducting an active warfare not only on seasonal unemployment but on this newer form, known as technological unemployment, brought about mainly by the introduction of machines that supplant the worker. But what is this government doing to solve the problem? They should be in a state of active warfare all the year round against unemployment. In time of war we mobilize all our resources to overcome the common enemy at the gate. Now, in time of peace, let us mobilize all our resources against the economic invader; let us preserve our home market for our own working men. Is the government doing this? No, the pan-American tariff of the government is throwing our workers out on the street. In short, the government say, "We have nothing to do with unemployment; that is a matter for the provinces." No doubt they rely on section 92 of the British North America Act which declares that the establishment, maintenance and management of hospitals, asylums, charities and eleemosynary institutions are in the jurisdiction of the provinces.
There are several causes for the very serious condition of unemployment that we are now passing through. One is the pan-American tariff that I have already referred to. We have been told that Liberalism is the open road. Of course it is. Liberalism is the open road to the LTnited States for many of our workmen as well as for many of our technical and professional men. Last year the Prime Minister told us that in relation to United States tariff matters we must keep a cool head. Now, after a year of this cool-head attitude what is the fiscal policy of the government to-day? It is a cold-feet policy towards the aggression of the United States. Mussolini has said that Italy will pay back the Ignited States in her own medicine; France will do the same. This country? Well, we are suffering from the cool-head-cold-feet tariff policy of the government. We may as well take a leaf out

Unemployment-Mr. Church

of the book of Mr. Hoover, for all is fair in the race for business. Let us tell the people of the United States that we can no longer continue the one-sided "reciprocity" relationship with that country that we have tolerated for the past twenty-five years. The United States have conducted an economic warfare against this country for the last fifty years, making Canada the dumping ground for their manufactured products in exchange for our raw products and' man power; and this man power is of much more importance to the future of this country.
Another cause of the present unemployment is lack of technical education. This government says it has nothing to do with technical education. Then there is the lack of any proper policy of scientific and industrial research. Scientific research does not consist in building a great monument of stone and having a research council with a lot of figureheads-mostly doctors. I have been trying to find out what kind of a doctor Doctor Skelton is; he is in the exterior department. Then we have Doctor Tory, who is a Tory in name only, in the research department. Our policy is all wrong. Let us adopt the policy of the British government in this regard. Instead of frittering away millions of dollars on buildings, let us devote the money to medical science, bio-chemistry and other lines of research by grants to the universities.
The government seem to have a lot of specialists in the immigration department. Well, if they were only as successful in immigration as they have been in emigration I should have no fault to find. The former head of that department has been rewarded with a seat in the other chamber. The only cure the government has provided for unemployunent is the "ambassador" cure. We have ambassadors in Washington, Tokyo and Paris, with their first secretaries, their second secretaries, their third secretaries, while thousands of our college graduates have had to go to the United States. The government's tariff policy seems to be that nothing that can be bought in the United States should be manufactured in Canada, especially in eastern Canada; and that everything that cannot be bought from the United States should be imported from Europe especially from Germany. That policy has helped to fill the ranks of the unemployed. There is no unemployment in Germany to-day, nor in France or Italy. Why? Because each of those countries has adopted a constructive fiscal policy. The government have no coal policy. Instead of fifty or sixty million dollars going to the American coal barons it should go into the pockets of the coal miners of Alberta and

Wales and the maritime provinces. We have a national railway7. What are they doing for unemployment? Their policy of immigration has brought thousands of Europeans into this country.
In the Canadian Pacific Railway system we find Canadians in office, from the top down, but in our government owned system we have many Americans. In the first place, there is Mr. Gaston, a young lawyer from Yale, who is brought in to take the office of vice-president of the Central Vermont line. As a matter of fact, Gaston seems to be a very popular name with the government of this country.
The Minister of Finance claims that he is a low tariff man; the same applies to the Minister of Railways. The Minister of Railways and the Minister of Finance seem to be in a low tariff way the Alphonse and Gaston of the prairies. The policy of the government has been that anything that can be bought in the United States must not be bought in Canada, and especially, in eastern Canada. According to this policy if it cannot be bought from the United States, it should be bought from Europe. Is it any wonder that with such conditions we have unemployment in this country?
One of the unfortunate features of unemployment in Canada is that the workers are forced to lower their standard of living. Another feature is that the state of unemployment has the effect of lowering the morale and self respect of the workmen. Unemployment is a problem of industrial organization, and it is not a problem confined to the operations of individuals; it is a persistent factor in modern life. The industries in Canada however, that can give regular employment to their workmen, even in times of prosperity, are few indeed. From a report I have in my hand I find that from one million to six million people are out of work in the United States, one million is the minimum and once it was six million.
When President Hoover was faced with an unemployment situation he called the heads of industries together in order to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem, but we find no such constructive policy adopted by the government of Canada. Instead of the Minister of Labour trying to stem the tide of unemployment, and summoning industrial leaders, he does nothing. As a matter of fact, the government was asked in this house a few days ago if it would hold a conference to relieve the present situation, and it refused.
Unemployment in Canada is the price society is paying for progress, and in many instances it may be traced to efficient management. Many are out of work to-day in

Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
this country because of the progress of modem industry, and revolutionary changes in Canada. Unemployment is caused by methods of manufacture which make it no longer necessary to produce goods by manual labour. Out of this condition we find decay in society which formerly was prevented because of the need of labour. The efficient executive finds that by eliminating the service of a certain class of labour he improves and increases his output.
A considerable amount of unemployment occurs at more or less regular intervals. Such a situation is due to business depression, and to seasonal ups and downs. Such unemployment is constant. Men are thrown out of work regularly, and because of this the subject needs constructive treatment. They lose their work because of financial failures which are occurring and the removal of plants from one end of Canada to the other. This situation requires attention. Where is the Minister of Labour? What is he doing, when this situation exists in our country. We have hundreds of thousands of bushels of wheat in the western elevators, stored up for distribution on the world market. But what is the situation? We find when the price of wheat goes down, the price of bread remains stationary. What is the Department of Public Works doing towards relieving the unemployment situation? What is being done on the national highways, or on the St. Lawrence waterway?
The Canadian Pacific Railway is doing its part to help unemployment and has voted the sum of $50,000,000 to aid the unemployed and for reconstruction. The Canadian National Railways does not take this as an example, however. Thomas Bradshaw, the president of the Massey Harris Company has returned from Europe, and he advocates a marketing board for Canada; but the government will have nothing to do with it. If we were across the border the president of the United States would not take five minutes to find a cure for the problem which faces us. In Canada, however, we do nothing; we refuse to cooperate with industrial leaders. In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, the government should set up a commission for this purpose.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, year after year, we in this comer, have tried to bring the question of unemployment to the attention of the house.
I think we have to admit that this year the volume of unemployment is greater than it has been for some years. It seems to me most unfortunate that our statistics show the amount of employment, but give very little 2419-73A
indication as to the amount of unemployment. The statistics simply show the number who on a given date are employed, but does not show the number left out. To my mind this is an important item of statistics, and we should have from the Department of Labour the actual statistics as they apply to this subject. There is little doubt, however, that the situation is serious at the present time. A few weeks ago we had a delegation which waited upon the government, composed of officials of nearly all the cities in western Canada; a week or two later there was a similar delegation from the city of Toronto. I need not go into the figures which they presented to the government, as they have been published already in the press. Undoubtedly we have a large amount of unemployment today. Last fall I was through twenty or thirty cities and towns of Ontario, and I found that even some of those places which hitherto had been comparatively free of unemployment were complaining of it at that time.
We may as well face the fact; we have unemployment. I will say very frankly that I would not blame the government for this condition of affairs; unemployment exists not because of administrative defects but rather because of great economic forces over which no government has very much control. The government may and does claim credit for prosperity; I think they take altogether too much credit for prosperity when it exists. I do not much wonder that people who have been taught to praise the government for prosperity will hold the government accountable for hard times when they come, and I think possibly the government will find that out to their sorrow before many months go by. However, as I say, I do not blame the government for this condition; I think we would have a very large measure of unemployment at the present time no matter what government might be in power. Unemployment is not limited to Canada; we have it in the United States to a very large degree, and our conditions are more or less similar to those which exist in that country. We have it in Great Britain as we all know, and we have it in almost every country in Europe. It is a world phenomenon.
Further I should like .to say that I think we should get beyond the stage where we say the unemployed are to blame for the condition in which they find themselves. Many are unemployed through no fault of their own. Again and again we hear people getting impatient with the unemployed and regarding them as the next thing to criminals. I quite admit that there are a certain number who
1148	COMMONS
Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
are lazy and shiftless, but I would say that laziness is itself one of the outstanding results of unemployment. A man who is out of work or who gets only an occasional job for weeks and weeks is not going to continue to be a very good worker, but the fact is that the great majority of the men who are unemployed to-day were employed when work was available, and they would be employed again if work were forthcoming.
Anyone who has been engaged in social work cannot help but be impressed by the hopelessness of the condition in which the ordinary worker finds himself when out of a job. I have been more or less closely associated with the unemployed of my own city for the past twenty-five years. Sometimes we have had more and sometimes less unemployment, but every year in the winter time we have people who are praying that the spring may come in order that they may earn enough to buy something to eat for themselves and their families. Some years ago I was engaged in institutional work, where little children in the kindergarten were being fed at noon because they had insufficient nourishment at home, and some of them were unable to keep on their stomachs the cocoa that was given them, because having been accustomed to only the poorest kind of food the milk cocoa was too rich for them. I say it is no less than a disgrace in this country that year after year we allow maladjustments of this kind to continue. I have stood in a line with the unemployed, and from the scores whose stories I have learned personally, I know that many of these people are only too glad to get a job if the job offers. I remember one day when a few jobs were being passed out to a crowd of one or two hundred men. One man standing beside me was passed over; he gulped and the tears came to his eyes, and as he turned away he said, "I would not mind so much if it were not for the kids." I sometimes wonder, as we sit here in our comfortable chairs and listen to statistics and talk about great policies, whether we recognize quite clearly enough what this unemployment really means in the terms of human worry and human suffering.
We have to-day men in the building trades employed for only six, seven or at most eight months in the year. What are they to do during the other months? They are absolutely helpless in my part of the world; there are no other jobs offering. When the factories close, as they are closed now in some parts of Ontario, what can the man with a little cottage and a family do? He cannot move out to some other part of Canada; he would
[Md. Woodsworth.]
be just as badly off if he did so. He has to remain where he is, and his family may suffer. Consider the coal miners in Alberta, from whom I am getting heartbreaking letters almost daily, asking that something be done. If these companies cannot market their coal what is the poor miner to do? He cannot move anywhere else; he has to stay there and suffer, and naturally he looks to some authority to do something for him.
Last fall in my own city and my own constituency, where the Canadian Pacific Railway has very large shops, within a few days nearly a thousand men were laid off. What could these men do? Their families were there, it was the beginning of winter, and they could not possibly move out. The situation became more and more desperate in the little village of Brooklands, which is a part of my constituency, on the outskirts of Winnipeg. The municipality began to help, but the municipality consisted of the people themselves and it was poor. One of the last things I did just before coming to Ottawa was to meet a deputation which came to see me, consisting of the mayor and councillors of this little village, who asked that if it were at all possible something should be done for them in the way of relief. Already most of these men have mortgaged themselves to the limit, and they wall have to work all this summer to begin to pay their grocery bills.
In this country we must recognize the fact that a considerable amount of unemployment is seasonal in character. Whether or not we admit it to the outside world, in western Canada at least we have a cold climate, and many kinds of work slacken up or cease altogether when winter comes on. Farm labourers are turned off after the harvest, and these men have nothing else to do. Bush work does not open up until later, and at all events there is not so much bush work offering as there was work for harvesters, so these men drift into the cities and increase the problem with which the cities are already struggling.
But I would say that deeper than any of these things I have mentioned is the fact that the unemployment situation seems to be inherent under the existing capitalistic system. We forget that this system, through which the greater part of the productive machinery is concentrated in the hands of a few, is a comparatively new system in the history of the world. In the old days each individual worked with a few tools, produced for himself and consumed pretty much what he produced, or exchanged his products with his neighbours. I am not going into the history of all that was involved in the industrial revolution, but

Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
we all realize that we have an absolutely different state of affairs now from that which existed one hundred or two hundred years ago. Our present system is comparatively new, and we have not yet adjusted many things in it so that they meet the needs of the mass of the people.
Take for example one phase of this situation, the wonderful productivity of the machine to-day. Roger Babson, the well-known statistician, in a recent article in the Cambridge Tribune, stated that since 1914 such progress has been made that to-day thirty men can produce as many motor cars as one hundred men could produce fourteen years ago; forty men can produce as many rubber tires as one hundred men could produce fourteen years ago; in the iron and steel industry forty men can produce what one hundred men produced fourteen years ago; and in metals other than iron and steel sixty men can produce as much as one hundred men could produce fourteen years ago. In varying degrees this is the experience in industry generally. Along this line, I could quote some interesting statistics from the January, 1929, issue of Manufacturing Industries, a copy of which I hold in my hand, but I do not intend to take up the time of the house in doing so. We all recognize how the machine has changed the entire situation, but perhaps most of us have not realized the effect of that change in our own agricultural areas. Let me quote some statistics which a friend of mine procured for me in Saskatchewan, as follows:
On the farms in Saskatchewan, according to the 1926 census, there were 26,674 farm tractors; m 1927, 5,727 tractors were sold; in 1928, 8.703. making a total of 41.104 farm tractors, which means roughly that practically one-third of the farms in Saskatchewan employ tractors. Not only do these tractors apparently displace a number of men but their operation requires men with some mechanical ability and some experience in the operation of tractors, which is evident by the fact that tractor companies conduct schools throughout the province during the winter in the handling and operation of tractors.
In addition to the tractor there is the growing tendency for placing machinery on the farms, as a result of the development of the internal combustion engine and availability of electrical energy. A newer development of farm mechanization is the introduction of the combine. In 1926 there were 148 combines operating in Saskatchewan; in 1927 there were 382; in 1928, 2.679 and the estimate of the Implement Dealers Association for 1929 places the number of combines for this province at between 3,500 and 4.000. Each of these machines will, at a conservative estimate, displace four to six men. They reduce the harvest operation on an ordinary farm, for cutting, stooking and threshing, from a period of possibly ten to fifteen days to five or six days. The total number of these combines in 1928, in the three western provinces was 4,716.
A few years ago immigration was advocated for the west as a means of supplying farm labour, but to a considerable extent that labour is not needed to-day, and in many cases the men brought in are not fitted to do the work which is now required. I wish I had time to give to the house an outline of those books which have become almost standard, such as Tawney's The Acquisitive Society, and Sidney Webb's, now Lord Passfield, The Decay of Capitalist Civilization. I wish hon. members would remember that such social maladies, if I could call them that, as unemployment are part of this system under which we are now living. Some of us are enjoying great privileges under this system; perhaps the whole race is enjoying a higher standard of living, but large numbers of people are suffering because of these maladjustments.
I wish I had time to speak of the larger proportion of production which is going back to fixed capital. A few years ago I mentioned the book of Mr. J. A. Hobson, entitled Economics of Unemployment. He takes the position that although at first our present system may have enabled us to accomplish a great deal more by concentrating wealth in the hands of the few, as this process has gone on and has been extended, not merely to Europe but to almost all parts of the world, we have the phenomenon of a great deal more being produced than the people can purchase, of a very large amount being put back into fixed capital so that the fixed capital is out of all proportion to the commodities produced. That is an economic argument which I think might be considered.
I do not see why we in Canada should not have established a permanent economic commission to carry on research in this particular field. Failing that, it seems to me that we might very well appoint some sort of a joinm parliamentary committee, which might sit even between sessions, as I think is done in some parliaments. This committee would be composed of representatives from various parties in the house and would be able to give definite study to questions of this kind. ,
I do not intend to dwell upon the financial aspects of unemployment, but I would like to quote a paragraph to show what some people think of the underlying financial reforms that might be made. I read from an article entitled Banking Credit and Unemployment as
1150	COMMONS
Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
published in the International Labour Review of January, 1924, as follows:
There is a growing school of economists whose attention is mainly directed toward the possibility of stabilizing industrial activity by judicious regulation of the bank credits upon which industry is largely dependent.
And again:
Bank credit, the main agency through which the community may add to its purchasing capacity, might be regulated, not, as previously, in accordance with mechanical and virtually uncontrollable processes, but in accordance with the broadest interests of society as expressed by a scientific combination of indexes of trade and employment.
When one mentions anything of this kind he is apt to be regarded by the house as more or less of a faddist or crank, and yet these views are being put forward by a large and growing school or series of schools of economists. The subject has been thought worthy of study by the League of Nations.
Unemployment in other countries is brought about by their own local conditions, but our difficulties have been aggravated by our immigration policy. Year after year I have tried to impress upon the house the serious condition which exists in the city of Winnipeg. I should like to read a clause or two from a resolution passed last autumn by the city council of Winnipeg, as follows:
Investigations disclose that a large number of those likely to be unemployed during the ensuing winter are immigrants who have been brought into the country within the past two or three years, and also some who have been put out of employment by the newly arrived immigrants for whom there was not sufficient employment without displacing those who were employed at the time of their arrival.
The responsibility is placed clearly, and these figures are borne out by the conditions obtaining in other cities of the west. Another resolution was passed by the city council which I think is rather interesting. Some hon. members may say that it is very socialistic in character, but it was passed by the Winnipeg city council. It reads:
That council petition the Dominion government- to take steps to shorten the length of the working day in order that available work be more widely distributed.


Mr. NEILL:: What is the date of that
resolution?


James Shaver Woodsworth: It is signed by the mayor and by the city clerk and was passed early this winter. It is a petition to the governor in council of the Dominion of Canada by the mayor and council on behalf of the citizens of Winnipeg and1 of the province of Manitoba. I am sorry I have not the exact date.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Did you say to lengthen or to shorten the working day?


James Shaver Woodsworth: That council petition the Dominion government to take steps to shorten the length of the working day in order that available work be more widely distributed.
We have been told again and again that unemployment is primarily a municipal or provincial responsibility. I quite admit that sixty years ago when a man was out of a job in a little rural area in Ontario or Quebec, this was clearly a local responsibility. I quite admit that in those earlier days when the great part of the population was resident in the country districts or in little villages and dependent upon the country for work, such a matter as unemployment was local in character and naturally would be attended to by the municipalities, helped out in an emergency by the province.
But the situation is entirely changed to-day, and when the Dominion government throws out of equilibrium our population by introducing hundreds of thousands, yes millions of people into this country, the responsibility ceases to be merely local in character and becomes Dominion-wide. Further, as long as the Dominion government so largely controls the country's fiscal policies which may make or unmake an industry, the Dominion government cannot avoid responsibility for ensuing unemployment. It is only in recent years that the present administration has undertaken to refuse all responsibility for social needs of this nature. After the Versailles treaty we find that the report on this subject of the draft conventions was submitted to the Governor General in council on November 2, 1920, by the Minister of Justice and that it was duly concurred in by the council and approved by His Excellency the Governor General on November 6, 1920, as follows:
Recommendation Concerning Unemployed
As to Number 3, the minister observes that the experience of other countries has demonstrated that a system of unemployment insurance, in order to be effective and successful, must be made ancillary or complementary to a system of labour exchanges, the whole being adapted to the principal function of finding work for unemployed insured workmen. In this view,-
And I would like to call special attention to this sentence:
-unemployment insurance has a pronounced federal aspect and on the whole the minister thinks the establishment of a system of unemployment insurance is competent to the Dominion in the exercise of its residuary legislative power with regard to the peace, order and good government of Canada.

Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
I for one am getting a little bit tired of being told by the government that almost any proposal is ultra vires. We are informed in case after case that this has been the declaration of some mysterious people-I do not know just who they are-called the law officers of the crown. When we have in 1920 the Department of the Minister of Justice making an important ruling of this kind, it ought not to be lightly set aside. If the British North America Act was drawn up sixty years ago, surely it ought to be the same in its interpretation for at least ten years and not to be dependent upon what one must more or less characterize as political considerations.
In speaking as I do to-day I am representing the view's not merely of the Labour group with which I am associated, but of a very large number of citizens of western Canada. I should like to read a paragraph from an editorial from the Manitoba Free Press of January 14, 1930. The Free Press on the whole, I think, has been favourable to the present administration. It says:
Senator Forke did not say anything very useful when he told the United Farmers of Manitoba that immigration was not responsible for unemployment. Technically he is probably right, but more than technicalities are needed to ward off unemployment. Most people will agree with Mr. A. R. MacNamara, Assistant Deputy Minister of Public Works for Manitoba, when he stated that so long as immigration is a federal affair, one of the keys to the unemployment situation lies in federal hands. He is undoubtedly right.
More than this, it is common knowledge that persons have come to this country on assisted passages with a "guarantee" of employment in their hands, and have found on arrival that hard times have made it impossible for the propeetive employer to give them jobs. What about these new arrivals? Are they a federal responsibility or are they not? There can only be one answer.
As for the Hon. Peter Heenan's contribution to the problem, the less said about it the better. Even if it is true that the provinces in conference in 1927 definitely stated that unemployment relief was a provincial affair, it does not make Mr. Heenan's position as Minister of Labour much better. The fact is that it is not a purely provincial affair. If the provinces say it is. it is up to Mr. Heenan to disabuse them on that point.
I think that is all I need to quote from the Free Press. I heartily subscribe to that view and instead of the Minister of Labour doing as he did a few months ago when he was asked to call a conference on unemployment, trying to sweep away the suggestion, he should have been in the very forefront endeavouring to champion the cause of labour and the unemployed. I would say to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), who has not yet said a word in this debate: He
may represent a constituency in western Canada, but he does not understand the spirit of the west if he thinks he can hide behind the British North America Act when such important questions as this are at stake.
Reference has been made by previous speakers to what the Minister of Labour said at London. I would be glad if by his speech he has given the public generally the idea that unemployment insurance in this country is needed. I suppose that would be a gain.
I know the impression has gone out that the Dominion government is about to bring in some measure of that kind. A friend of mine in Toronto, who is not a labour man but, as a matter of fact, a financial man, wrote to me a day or two after that speech saying: "I am glad indeed to find out that the Dominion government is taking action along this line.
I have written a letter to the Prime Minister to congratulate him on his action." He said- and he was speaking as a financial man-"I have always taken the ground that labour should have its reserve just as capital needs its reserve." There are many people outside the ranks of labour who are coming around to that point of view.
But whilst there may have been an advantage in the Minister of Labour setting a sort of ideal before the people of this country, it is little less than cruel to raise the hopes of the people unless in some way the government is prepared to back up the statement of the Minister of Labour. The Prime Minister is very fond of dilating upon responsible government, its great advantages and how it was attained. If we believe in responsible government and that the cabinet ought to be responsible for what is said by a minister, then the Minister of Labour ought to be held responsible for an important pronouncement such as the one he made at London. He ought not to give to the general public such a statement as that without being prepared to back it up, or if the report is not correct he should officially deny it. I want to read two or three paragraphs from the report of the Canadian Press. This particular item I took from the Toronto Globe, but a similar statement was in nearly all the papers east and west. This report is taken from the Toronto Globe of March 15, 1930, and reads:
Ottawa to Back Project for Unemployment Fund Heenan States at London
The Dominion government is ready to assist the provinces in establishing unemployment insurance for Canada on a contributory basis announced Hon. Peter Heenan, Minister of Labour, in an address here to-night. In making this announcement, Mr. Heenan said:
"As far as I am concerned, I will utilize my every effort, and the Premier will back me

Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
up, to see that the labouring man who is out of work for any period of the year will have a right to expect and to receive a share of the profits he helped make."
Mr. Heenan said that the nature of certain Canadian industries made it inevitable seemingly that there should be seasonal unemployment in certain occupations. The workers who are unemployed for perhaps two or three months of the year constitute an essential unit in the industrial life of the nation for the remaining periods, and the country should recognize their rights, he said. Mr. Heenan amplified his proposal to say that he believed that the worker, the employer, and the governments, provincial and federal, should each bear a part of the cost of such unemployment insurance.
Now I would like to ask, did the Minister of Labour say that? That is reported by the Canadian Press, and from coast to coast, the government was given credit for it. Did the minister make that statement? I hope that he did. If he did, did the Prime Minister state that he would back him up in that policy? I should like to have an answer from the Prime Minister himself before this debate goes very much further.


An hon. MEMBER:: From the Minister of Labour.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I think the Prime Minister ought to state his position, as well as the Minister of Labour. Further than that, there is a definite pronouncement that the Dominion government is prepared to give a certain amount to assist the provincial governments. Just to be accurate, let me read it again:
Mr. Heenan amplified his proposal to say that he believed that the worker, the employer, and the governments, provincial and federal, should each bear a part of the cost of such unemployment insurance.


Mr. CHAPLIN:: That evidently would not be a vicious principle.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, I do not think that, and I should like the Prime Minister to expatiate a little bit further on what he meant last year by vicious principle. I have read the Hansard only recently, and for the life of me I cannot see anything else than that after mature deliberation the Prime Minister believes that the granting of old age pensions was based on a vicious principle. I believe that he has subsequently denied that, or it is said that he has denied it. I should like him to state frankly what his position is in that regard.


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: I shall be very glad to do so now. I thoroughly believe in old age pensions and in all that this government has done to support them. I would ask 
my hon. friend to produce any statement of mine on Hansard or anywhere else which will bear out his statement that I thought old age pensions were based upon a vicious principle.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have not the page of Hansard.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No, and you cannot get it.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Will the Prime
Minister permit me to bring it before him later?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, but you cannot find it anywhere.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I remember distinctly that there was an interruption by the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Ladner), and the Prime Minister replied. I referred to this last year.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The interruption my hon. friend is referring to will not bear out what he is saying.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I shall be glad to get it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I do not know why my hon. friend should be so anxious to misrepresent me. He knows what my attitude is.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The Prime Minister is hardly fair to me. I have not been unfair to him.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: You are unfair to me now.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I shall take the earliest opportunity possible of finding the page in Hansard and reading it, and I shall hope to do this early enough that the Prime Minister may be able to make his statement based on that Hansard record. I do not want to be unfair to the Prime Minister. What I thought was simply this: As the years have gone on, the Prime Minister has been so busy emphasizing the necessity of placing responsibilities on the provinces, that he has gradually come to the point where he feels that it would not be a good principle for the Dominion government to hand over grants to the provinces in the way that was done under the Old Age Pensions Act. If that is not the case, why I shall be delighted, because it may mean that the door will be open and that we may get other types of social insurance. I would say to the Prime Minister -he may think that I have no right to make the suggestion-that from the political standpoint he could not do anything better in this country than to grant some relief to the tens

Unemployment-Mr. Woodsworth
of thousands of people who are to-day having a very hard time through lack of employment.
I am not particular whether that relief comes from the Liberals or the Conservatives. We in our little corner are too small a group to hope to foe in a position for a great many years to come to bring in a money measure. We cannot do that, but we do urge one of the older parties that has the necessary numerical strength to do it. I should like to take advantage of this opportunity to ask the Prime Minister and the Minister of Labour to place very clearly before this house and the people of this country what their policy really is. I do not think it is fair that despatches of the kind I have read, should go out through the press to the people of this country from coast to coast, and then when we try to pin the speakers down to declare what they really mean to do, we get an evasive reply.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I made a frank reply to my hon. friend in the house, in answer to a question that he put to me. He knows that it is on Hansard. There is no evasion. It is as clear as day.


Mr. MANION:: The Minister of Labour
says exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister says.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The Prime Minister's statement was clear, but it was not the same type of statement that he made the day before in the room where the deputation was being heard.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I beg my hon. friend's pardon. The statement was identically the same, and again I challenge my hon. friend to point to any authoritative source which will indicate that there is any difference. My hon. friend* is not fair. He is not following his usual custom; I will say that.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I want to be fair.
I shall be glad to have this matter cleared up. I was present and heard the Prime Minister. We had no official Hansard there, but a great many people came out from the meeting under the impression that something would be done.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Something
very different from what my hon. friend is now saying.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Then the next day the Prime Minister refused, as he rightly said, to commit himself to definite action. But a few weeks later, the Minister of Labour goes out and says something very different from what the Prime Minister has said, and the Prime Minister so far has not repudiated what the Minister of Labour says.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The Minister of Labour will make his own statement. My hon. friend was referring to me, and I was referring to what he said about me. He can find nothing on record anywhere to support what he says is my attitude with regard to old age pensions or unemployment insurance.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The Prime Minister knows as well as any member of this house that on the theory of the collective responsibility of the cabinet, no responsible minister can make a general pronouncement of policy without committing the cabinet itself. The Prime Minister has not repudiated what the Minister of Labour has said.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend has not heard* the Minister of Labour yet.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have read today the statement, in quotation marks, of the Minister of Labour that went out over the Canadian Press wires, and the Minister of Labour himself has not repudiated that statement. I want to get this situation cleared* up.
I should like the public to know whether the government does or does not intend to do anything along the line of unemployment insurance. If it does not, I think the people of this country will turn to somebody who will. On the other hand, if the government intends to go ahead with a scheme, some of us here are prepared to back them up to the limit. But we should like to know, and the public has a right to know, what the government proposes to do.
I do not want to go into the details of unemployment insurance. May I say simply that it is generally recognized the world* over that under the existing system, with the evils and maladjustments that have arisen, it has become essential that until some better system is brought in, some sort of unemployment insurance should be provided. Here let me give credit to the Prime Minister; he agrees with that position. Well then, I ask, what action may we expect the government to take at this time?


Mr. J. T. THORSON (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I agree with a great deal-


An hon. MEMBER:: Let us have the Minister of Labour-Heenan.


An hon. MEMBER:: The member for Winnipeg South Centre has the floor.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Let us have
Heenan.	*


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: I agree with a great deal of what has been said by my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth).

Unemployment-Mr. Thorson


An hon. MEMBER:: It is time we heard from the government.


Hewitt Bostock: Order.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: With him I agree as to the necessity of a scheme of unemployment insurance. I believe in unemployment insurance, not as a panacea for unemployment, but as a means whereby the evils of it might be very considerably lessened. One of the most comprehensive editorials that has been written on this subject appeared in the columns of the Manitoba Free Press shortly after the unemployment conference that took place in Winnipeg in January of this year. May I quote one or two paragraphs from that editorial? It says:
The idea that unemployment can be entirely cured or prevented will not be entertained by anyone who recognizes the effect that economic changes and the invention of new machinery have had in the past, and will have in the future, in displacing labour, and who also remembers the weakness of human nature and the measure of incompetence and improvidence that it contains. The problem will always continue, and it is a question of reducing it as far as we can. In seriously attempting this, uo one will imagine that it can be accomplished by any single panacea. The problem must be attacked in many different ways and success will largely depend upon general cooperation.
I believe the statement that unemployment will always be with us is particularly true of a country subject to the climatic conditions that obtain in Canada. The editorial proceeds :
Although unemployment cannot be completely cured, the conscience of the present generation is impelling it to make the most intelligent and most resolute attempt to reduce the problem to much smaller limits.
In common with my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre, I agree that a system of unemployment insurance will have the effect of reducing the problem to very much smaller limits than those that exist at the present time. The editorial goes on:
The community hears the cry of the women and children and realizes the worry of men who are unable to help their suffering dependents It knows that unemployment begets poverty with all the unhappy social effects flowing from it. Apart from human compassion, there is the fact that the unemployment of labour is an economic loss and also that the conditions arising from unemployment result, directly or indirectly, in heavier demands upon our general hospitals, mental hospitals and jails.
Then the editorial goes on to consider where the responsibility rests:
What is the responsibilty of the Dominion, the provinces, and the municipalities? And in what way should they cooperate? The Dominion government cannot divest itself of a measure of permanent responsibility,-
[Mr. Thorson.1
With that statement I entirely agree.
-at least whenever unemployment becomes very acute in any section of the country. Apart from the duty of helping any part of the Dominion when there is real trouble there on a large scale, there are two counts on which the federal government has a responsibility for unemployment. It has control of immigration and the influx of more people than the country can absorb is sometimes the cause of unemployment. It is undoubtedly partly the cause of the present difficulty. Another ground for Dominion responsibility is that there are many ex-service men among the unemployed and some of them are there as a result of war service. If it were left entirely to the provinces and the municipalities to deal -with unemployment, and if one province did so more adequately than another, it would be inviting the unemployed to come to that province. With federal cooperation the provinces would all be better able to meet the situation and this trouble would not arise.
The Dominion then has a certain definite responsibility and should be ready to cooperate whenever unemployment becomes too great a burden for the municipalities and provinces. How can that cooperation be given? It can provide work by proceeding with public works and by having the government railway system make a special effort to proceed with improvements. And it can also contribute a percentage of the cost of unemployment relief that is undertaken locally. It may be a bad principle, as Premier King says, for the Dominion to make grants to the provinces and lose control of the spending of the money, but it is a practical expedient which is necessary to meet serious unemployment situations.
So much for Dominion responsibility. Then the editorial deals with the responsibility of the provinces and municipalities:
The provinces have a responsibility because there is always a certain drift of the unemployed within the province, particularly to the larger centres, and the burden cannot fairly be left to them to bear. And the unemployment of their own people is sometimes so great in some municipalities that they have a proper claim upon the province for assistance. The municipalities, of course, are brought directly face to face with the problem. They cannot evade it because it is pressing upon them and they must cope with it as best they can, and with all the cooperation they can obtain. But unemployment is often due to general rather than local causes, and it is unreasonable to leave too great a burden upon the municipalities.
What can the municipalities and the provinces do to lessen unemployment? They can encourage such developments as will ensure a large element of stability of employment. The fact that many of the unemployed in Winnipeg this winter have been farm workers shows that the encouragement of mixed farming, which would keep more farm workers employed all the year, is one practical way of stabilizing employment in Manitoba. The municipalities and the province can also deliberately plan to have as much work available in the winter as possible. Are there other ways in which the Dominion, the provinces or the municipalities can cope with the problem?

Unemployment-Mr. Thorson
Then the editorial deals with the responsibility of employers with regard to unemployment:
The railways, manufacturers, public service corporations, and other employers also have a very definite responsibility to maintain the greatest stability of employment possible and to avoid, wherever possible, the laying off pf workers for certain periods. They cannot, in this generation, treat their workers simply like equipment that can be used or laid aside when not required. They must have regard, and must feel a direct responsibility, for the welfare of their workers. A great deal has been accomplished when there was a real effort towards stability of employment, and great hardship and suffering have often resulted from the lack of such effort. The principle should be accepted of every industry or business endeavouring to carry all its permanent employees and making that a charge against the business.
The editdrial proceeds with a statement which I think is very important, and with which I entirely agree. It is this:
Finally unemployment insurance must be regarded as one inevitable means of dealing with seasonal unemployment in Canada. Under our constitution, apparently, it must be undertaken by the provinces. Should the constitution be amended to enable the Dominion to contribute, since the Dominion has a responsibility in the matter? With the workers, the employers and the government sharing the cost, the workers would be protected against the annual loss and hardship due to winter unemployment. It would be one of the most effective means of dealing with the situation.
I do not propose to analyze the causes of unemployment, or to lay down any rules that ought to be followed in any attempt towards a solution of the problem. I doubt whether the problem will ever be solved, in our present state of distribution of the proceeds of labour and of our national wealth. There are some things, however, which are not the causes of unemployment. The editorial goes on to say:
It is hardly necessary to say that unemployment in Canada or elsewhere is too serious a matter to be treated as a partisan political issue. The suggestion that the problem can be solved simply by raising the tariff and giving greater protection to Canadian producers is answered by referring to the situation in the United States, highly protected and yet with some 3,000,000 workers now unemployed; or to Australia, whose tariff has been raised from time to time for the specific purpose of offsetting unemployment but whose new government finds that unemployment is still very serious, and proposes to apply the old remedy although a recent royal commission expressed the opinion that, while the tariff had been beneficial to Australia, it had been raised too high and was hampering and injuring the country. There is no such cure for unemployment. It must be attacked in various other ways. It is an urgent human problem that demands the best thought that can be given it, and the most practical forms of cooperation that can be devised.
This house has placed itself on record on a number of occasions as being in favour of the principle of unemployment insurance. Reference has been made from time to time to the powers of the Dominion on the one hand, and of the provinces on the other, in regard to this matter. Much as my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre may deplore the fact, the British North America Act is of importance in connection with this subject. May I indicate wherein the difficulty lies?
I do not think there is any constitutional objection to the Dominion government participating in the cost of unemployment insurance, in so far as that cost ought to be borne by the state. The Dominion government now contributes to the cost of old age pensions, and it could with equal right contribute to the cost of unemployment insurance. There is a constitutional difficulty, however, that is fastened upon us by the British North America Act; we are subject to certain restrictions. I use the expression "fastened upon us" advisedly, because it frequently happens that our federal system is an absurd arrangement so far as national progress and development are concerned. I would not be in favour of any scheme of unemployment insurance which is not based upon compulsory contributions towards the cost of it by the employer on the one hand, the workman on the other, with the state as a third contributing party. There is no doubt whatsoever that it is beyond the constitutional powers of this parliament to enact a scheme of unemployment insurance which can effectively compel employers and workmen to contribute to the cost of such a scheme.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Would it not be
possible that the Dominion government could say that if such a scheme were set up it would be willing to make a contribution?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: I am coming to that
phase of the question. No scheme of contributory unemployment insurance can be validly effected, in so far as it is a general scheme, without the cooperation of the provinces in the project. Therefore, while there is undoubtedly a large measure of responsibility for unemployment resting upon the federal government, there is also the necessity of having the provinces enter into such a scheme, because no scheme of unemployment insurance is likely to be accepted by this country unless it is contributory in its character. We must admit that it is beyond the legislative powers of this parliament validly to enact such a contributory scheme.

Unemployment-Mr. Thorson


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: It would be a scheme which would be dependent upon concurrent contributions, in the manner the hon. member has mentioned.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: Yes, and the cooperation of the provinces would be necessary.


Edward Joseph Garland: Does not the hon. gentleman think it is the duty of the federal government to initiate that very thing?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: I would be very strongly in favour of the Dominion government initiating such a scheme.
The situation I have described was realized by those who drew one of the resolutions that was presented to the unemployment conference held recently in Winnipeg. The resolution to which I refer was moved by Thomas E. Moore, an alderman of the city of Port William, and seconded by Thomas W. Malloy, who represented the government of Saskatchewan. The text of the resolution is as follows:
Whereas after an exhaustive enquiry by a committee of the federal government recommendation was made for the establishment of an unemployment insurance scheme for the whole Dominion; and
Whereas the law officers of the crown expressed the opinion that under the British North America Act the federal government cannot inaugurate such a scheme; and
Whereas there is urgent necessity for the establishment of an unemployment insurance scheme;
Therefore be it resolved that this conference endorses the principle of unemployment insurance, and urges the calling of an inter-provincial and federal conference at the earliest possible date for the consideration of the adoption of a Dominion-wide scheme.
There are various methods that might be adopted in setting up such a scheme. We might follow, for example, the course we took when we enacted the Old Age Pensions Act. We set up the machinery for the administration of the old age pension system, and then said, in effect, to each of the provinces, "You may come into this scheme; you may apply it to your province or not as you choose." We might follow a similar course with regard to inaugurating a system of unemployment insurance. One of the difficulties with regard to such a proposal was voiced at the unemployment conference in Winnipeg last January when Mr. MacNamara, assistant deputy minister of public works for Manitoba, said:
Infirmly believe that no city or province dare vorK out a comprehensive unemployment scheme without making that city or that province the Mecca for the unemployed beyond its boundaries. Any scheme must be undertaken in all parts simultaneously. It has been suggested that unemployment insurance is the cure. Fancy any one province undertaking a scheme like that on its own.
[Mr. Thorson.)
That is one of the difficulties of setting up a scheme similar to the one that we set up with regard to old age pensions. Much hesitation might be- shown by any one province in being the first to come into such a scheme.
The suggestion has been made, however, by the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps), that we might in this parliament set up machinery of the sort which I have indicated, and provide that it should not come into operation until three or four or five of the provinces have indicated their willingness to enter into such a scheme. That course of procedure, I think, would meet the difficulty which Mr. MacNamara suggests and at the same time would bring about the necessary cooperation between the Dominion on the one hand and the provinces on the other. With that suggestion of the hon. member for North Winnipeg I quite agree. I would like very much indeed to see proper steps taken towards the calling of an interprovincial and federal conference with a view to instituting such a scheme of unemployment insurance as that which I have endeavoured to outline.


Mr. E. J. YOUNG (Weyburn):: Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree with my hon. friend for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woods-worth)-
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River)): Nor with the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Thorson), who has just spoken.


Edward James Young: Perhaps not, but my hon. friend does not know yet what I am going to say. I cannot agree with my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre when he says that the cause of unemployment is the introduction of improved machinery.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I did not put it in just that way. I suggested that the improved machinery did bring about immediately a certain amount of unemployment, that it was one of the contributory causes.


Edward James Young: We will let it
go at that. The introduction of machinery has had this effect. It has made production cheaper and has made it possible for a smaller number of men to produce the same amount of wealth. When we say that the introduction of improved machinery and methods brings about unemployment, we place ourselves in the position which the workmen took two or three centuries ago when the loom and the spinning jenny were invented. They thought these machines were going to take away their employment; therefore they proceeded to destroy them.

Unemployment-Mr. Young (Weyburn)


Mr. CAHAN:: And so they did for the time being.


Edward James Young: For the time being.. but in the long run the result was more employment, and it was possible for the world to sustain a larger population in a greater degree of comfort because of the existence of those machines.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Kindergarten stuff.


Edward James Young: Perhaps so, but my hon. friend would not be any worse for a little kindergarten teaching. I cannot agree with my hon. friend, either, when he says that a shorter day will solve the problem.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Again that is hardly what I said. I read a resolution passed by the Winnipeg city council, urging upon the government a shorter working day.


Edward James Young: Do you not approve of it?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes, I do, but I do not say that would solve the problem.


Edward James Young: But you approve of the suggestion. Well, in my opinion a shorter working day would mean less wealth created in the world, less wealth for the people to consume; less food; less clothing, less of all the things that go to make real wealth, and therefore you would only aggravate the condition.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Then why not work a fourteen-hour day?


Edward James Young: If it could be demonstrated that by working a fourteen-hour day we could produce more than in a ten-hour day, I think we would be better off to do so. However, what I want to deal with at the present time is the particular condition in Canada at the moment, rather than unemployment in general.
I think at least hon. gentlemen opposite will agree that there is more unemployment in Canada to-day than there has been for some years past. What is the reason for it? The primary reason is that we had very poor crops last year. Railway employees were laid off and have been out of employment all winter, because there has been no wheat to move. Not only were railway employees laid off for that reason, but factory workers are also out of employment from the same cause. Those farmers who had wheat to sell found that the price had gone so low that when they had paid their necessary out of pocket expenses nothing was left for themselves. The purchasing power of the farmer has disappeared; he is not buying. If you would restore employment in this country the first thing to do is to restore the purchasing power of the farmer.
It has been suggested-in fact all the suggestions have been-that we should adopt some form of unemployment insurance, the cost of which would be contributed to by the workers, by the employers and by the government. I have no objection to any form of unemployment insurance which is to be supported by the workers themselves and their employers, but when you ask the government to contribute to the cost of that insurance I object.


An hon. MEMBER:: Why?


Edward James Young: I will tell you why. The unemployment situation has been worse during the last six months than it was the previous six months. It got worse in the fall, when it was found there was a very small crop to move, and that that crop had brought the farmer very little purchasing power. These men who were laid off had been employed for the previous six months, and were paid for every day they worked. The farmer worked the whole year. He did not receive his wages every week or every month. When the end of the season came he found that he was getting nothing for his year's work, and when you ask the government to contribute to an unemployment scheme you are asking that farmer, that man who for a whole year has been unemployed so far as receiving wages is concerned, to contribute to the support of a man who has been paid wages for at least six months.


Abraham Albert Heaps: If the farmer has nothing how could he contribute anything?


Edward James Young: That is a very clever remark. I say the purchasing power of the farmer has gone. The farmer who had some wheat found that when he paid the necessary out of pocket expenses, that is, his threshing charges, his taxes and such things, nothing was left. The government takes a toll on everything that farmer buys, and out of that revenue it is proposed to pay a part of the cost of this unemployment insurance. The government has taken that toll from him and will continue to take it every time he buys anything.


Finlay MacDonald: I should like to ask one question. Is my hon. friend opposed to the idea of the Workmen's Compensation Act, which is unemployment insurance when that unemployment is caused by disability?
1158	COMMONS
Unemployment-Mr. Young (Weyburn) .


Edward James Young: Not necessarily, but that is another question entirely.


Edward Joseph Garland: I should like to ask a question, which I think my hon. friend will not say is another matter entirely. Is he in favour of the provincial government backing the possible losses of the farmers through the wheat pool guarantee and is that not a possible contribution by unemployed labour as well as by farmers?


Edward James Young: That is another
question entirely. I say that it is a rank injustice, and I protest against asking a man who has worked for a whole year and who has received no return for that labour to contribute to the support of a man who has been out of work for only six months. I have seen a farmer sell his entire crop at the end of the season and after paying his out of pocket expenses take every dollar of what was left and give it in wages to his hired man. I have seen that hired man go into the city and within two months he was flat broke, and I protest against the farmer being taxed to contribute towards the support of a man like that for the rest of the winter.


The ACTING SPEAKER (Sir Eugene Fiset):: Is the house ready for the question?


Robert James Manion: Are we not going to have a statement from the government?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


Mr. J. H. HARRIS (Toronto-Scarborough):: Mr. Speaker, it is rather a pity at this stage of this debate to find there is to be no answer from the government to an amendment to go into supply, which is practically a vote of want of confidence. The Minister of Labour (Mr. Heenan) sits mum, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) sits mum, and no effort is made, except the smiles of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) to answer the amendment put forward by the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps).
The government is going to sit there and manoeuvre politically to see what it can do to wiggle out of the situation in which it finds itself. It would almost let the question be put rather than answer the arguments made by the hon. member who proposed the amendment. It would let the unemployed tighten their belts a little bit more before it would enunciate to the country a policy which might relieve the situation. This session has taken the cake as far as political manoeuvring is concerned. The government has "on more: than one occasion sat back in order to see if it were possible to get hold of something apart 
from the general administration of the affairs of the country upon which it could hang an election issue. We have one instance after another which demonstrates its efforts to get away from the maladministration of affairs and to centre the attention of the people upon some side issue. The Minister of Justice looks towards me, and I suppose he would like me to talk about something which would be of interest to him.
The Prime Minister has intimated in previous years that he would bring down some legislation on divorce. After sidestepping several efforts which were made to force him to keep his promise, he asks an hon. member from Winnipeg to introduce a resolution and then, when the vote comes on, he asks the hon. member who sits directly opposite me to vote first, so that the press gallery and the country would not have the idea the government was taking any particular position upon the question raised in the house, as that question had been raised by a private member. The Prime Minister squirmed in his seat, he snapped his fingers and sent a message over that this gentleman should rise first and the government would have no responsibility for the issue, even though the promise had been made a year previous that legislation would be brought down. An effort was made to divert the attention of the people from the administration of this government, and the members of the house almost were challenged to make an issue with regard to the resolution brought in on the customs report. Members were told, "If you do not do such and such a thing and adopt this export bill, we will ask the country about it." Ask the country about anything and everything except the record of your administration during the last few years. The government will sit there and receive the benefit of the discussion upon this unemployment question and will not make any answer to the resolution which is equivalent to a vote of want of confidence. The government is enabled to pick out what valuable suggestions have been made, and then I suppose some member of the government will make a reply Do you call that following the mother of parliaments? Do you call that solidarity of government, when your back-benchers are put up to state their opinions before an official reply is made? As I understand a solid government it is one which, when challenged, immediately states its position in order that the other hon. members may know what it is. I suppose the government will state its position at the end of this debate when it has heard the representations made from all sides of the house as to what is best to be done.

Unemployment-Mr. Harris
Coming to the question under review, there is no doubt that considerable unemployment exists. As the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) has said, unemployment has been worse during the last six months than it was for the previous six months. It has been worse during the last six months than it was on January 28, 1926, when the hon. Minister of Justice rose in his place and stated:
-but the government is willing in ease of serious emergency, when a grave situation exists, to cooperate with the provincial and local authorities, and to bear a share of relief work or other relief measures which have to be adopted to meet a serious situation of that character, and we shall ask parliament to give us authority to that effect.
The hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Young) will admit that the situation is worse to-day than it was in 1926. If this condition exists, why was not something done when deputations came from all parts of Canada and asked this government to participate in unemployment relief in order to relieve an emergency. Not only did the government know about this condition, but during the months of December of last year and January of this year the press of the country were bringing this to the attention of the government. Even that good friend of the government, the Ottawa Citizen, had something to say in December. They reported:
Never before in the history of the city has the Union Mission, the hostel for indigent men, been so crowded at this season of the year as it is to-day.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre gave us the situation in Winnipeg. Four thousand single men and some four hundred married men with their families are being fed by the province and the municipality at Edmonton. The government knew that such a condition existed during December and January, but what is their answer to this plea? Statistics, the index figure of unemployment for September, October, and so on. It is claimed that this is not a federal responsibility but is a matter for the provinces. I think it was the Prime Minister who said that it was first for the individual, then the municipality, then the province, then the government. In other words, the individual who may be in a hopeless and helpless position due to unemployment has to wait until his municipality is in that same position; the municipality in turn is forced to wait until the provincial government has reached that stage; then when they have all reached that state of chaos this government will rise to the occasion and offer assistance for the relief of the situation. Is that fair? We are all one people.

In my opinion, before the hopeless individual finds himself helpless, policies should be enunciated; not economic argument but economic action to relieve the conditions in this country is what the hopeless and helpless individual wants and it is what the members of the government are on the treasury benches for. They are there to give us economic action, to see that these men are not left in this condition. When they are left in this condition through the world situation, the collapse of the stock market and-I will not say wheat pool manipulations but wheat pool activities, then the Minister of Justice, according to his utterance of January, 1926, can come to the relief of the situation, and parliament,
I am satisfied, will endorse what is done.
A deputation from the city of Toronto, from which I come, visited Ottawa and made a few modest representations to the cabinet. We told them of $300,000 being spent to relieve the unemployment in Toronto. We told them that never before in the history of that city did the House of Industry provide so many meals for men out of work. We told the cabinet that all we wanted them to do was to participate in the extra cost involved in the carrying on of necessary work. We told them we had the assurance of the provincial government that they would pay their share and all we asked, was the cooperation*of the Dominion government in paying for the extra cost of carrying on works which will be done this summer. But no, the answer we got was more statistics, more bluebooks, more employment indices. In the meantime the taxpayers of that great city are paying into the treasury and the treasury in turn is paying out to the House of Industry a sum which will amount to more than $300,000 and which will make it that much more difficult for industry to continue, that much more difficult for the citizens to carry on.
The problem has been before the government; the government has taken no action and a great deal of the responsibility rests with it. Of course there has been a great deal of unemployment in other countries. Hon. gentlemen on the other side who will follow me will no doubt tell us all about the difficulties in the country to the south; but in that country they realized the difficulties; they saw what was happening. The hon. member for Toronto Northwest (Mr. Church) told us last night and again to-day that the United States federal government, instead of waiting until the situation was at the fag end before taking action, called together the leaders of industry and of agriculture, and then they took action. Public works to the extent of $175,000,000 and road work to the extent of



Unemployment-Mr. Harris
people's attention from what the real issues are, issues that are staring us in the face, and see to it that when the people have a chance to vote, they will vote on the record of this administration. Stop the political manoeuvring. Be a little fairer with the people who have sent you here to legislate for them, and give them a fair chance with other countries the world over. When I say other countries, I need only refer to the latest bulletin of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, and quote one or two figures of the imports and exports of almost any country you may choose. I find, for instance, that from Czechoslovakia for the twelve months ended January, 1929, we imported 13,133,899 worth of goods, and in 1930, $3,828,018 worth; our exports to that country in 1929 were $1,843,522, and last year, only $606,000. Our imports from Germany jumped by ten per cent in 1930 as compared with 1929, and our exports to Germany declined from $47,000,000 in 1929 to *29,000,000 in 1930. These countries seem to have sense enough to take care of themselves. The United States, the same day that you make them a present of $10,000,000 of the excise taxes of this country, bring down a tariff measure which tends to shut off $75,000,000 of our exports to them. They have the sense to take economic action to protect their own interests. It is time that more of my free trade friends, even my friend from Weyburn (Mr. Young), woke up to the situation that Canada should take care of herself in fiscal matters.


Edward James Young: Has my hon.
friend any figures showing the total of our exports to and our imports from all countries?


Mr. CANTLEY:: The tariff board will give you that.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The consumers league.


Joseph Henry Harris: I have not the question very clearly in my mind, but I can give my hon. friend a ready reference.


Edward James Young: I prefer to make the question clear to my hon. friend. He has quoted our exports and our imports to and from certain countries. Could he give us our total exports to all countries and our total imports from all countries? That would give us a better idea how we stand.


Joseph Henry Harris: I do not know that I can, but the file is quite open to my hon. friend. I will give him information along a line that he knows something about-our exports of

butter. He comes from a constituency that knows something about butter. Our exports of butter are not exports but imports of 34,-
528,000	pounds.


Edward James Young: That does not prove anything at all.


Joseph Henry Harris: It does prove that the butter industry of this country is demoralized.


Edward James Young: It does not.


Joseph Henry Harris: Beef, 26,530,000 pounds, plus. But nine short years ago it was 63,000,000 pounds. What is the answer to that?


An hon. MEMBER:: More beef is being eaten in this country.


Joseph Henry Harris: The answer to that is unemployment on the farms of this country during the winter months.


Edward James Young: It means our teeth are more active.


Joseph Henry Harris: Cattle, sheep and lamb: we exported this year 11,000. You could almost herd them in this room. Nine short years ago we exported 181,000. What about that? The answer is that the men who should be on the farm the year round helping at mixed farming are out of a job; they have to come to the city. If my hon. friend will take the statistics all the way through he will find the same situation.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILL


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 46, to incorporate the Premier Life Insurance Company-Mr. Dubuc (Chicoutimi) for Mr. Mercier (Laurier-Outremont).

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from March 28, consideration of the motion of Mr. Woodsworth for the second reading of Bill No. 20, to provide in the province of Ontario for the dissolution and the annulment of marriage.
Mr. J. GORDON ROSS (Moose Jaw):: Mr. Speaker, at nine o'clock on Friday evening I was discussing the second reading of the bill, and had reached that point in my remarks where I was directing attention to the fact that in a great many cases before the Senate committee, paid agents were used to gather

Divorce Court for Ontario
evidence. I think that very often agents are used whose evidence might be questioned in courts of law.
Another point I intended to bring out was that anybody from the provinces of Ontario or Quebec who wished to procure a divorce through this parliament had first of all to go to a local lawyer, and then obtain an agent in Ottawa. Such procedure makes it more costly to obtain a divorce through this house than through a court of law. Further, if a divorce bill is turned down this year, the same bill may be brought up next year. If sufficient lobbying is not done it may not be passed the next year, and the result is that it has to be considered again and again. Had such a case gone to a court of justice and the judge ruled against it, it is questionable whether the case would be reheard. The judges in the divorce courts will not endeavour in any way to encourage divorce, and will conduct their cases in such a manner that the litigants must be very sure of their ground before instituting proceedings.
The committee of parliament in charge of divorce can rule only as to the dissolution of the marriage, it cannot grant alimony; it cannot rule on the disposition of the children, and no doubt in connection with many cases that come before the committee family troubles have arisen. For instance, the man in the case has proceeded against his wife for a divorce; she knows he no longer cares for her, and she will not contest the application. In such cases the divorce is granted, and the wife, who may be a mother is left without assistance for her children and with no way of gaining redress except by instituting action in some other court. On the other hand, if divorce proceedings in a case of that kind were taken in a divorce court, the disposition of the children, the settlement of alimony and sustenance for the family might be ordered. Evidence would be taken in camera, and the publicity experienced here would be avoided; the rules of evidence would be maintained as they are in the higher courts; decisions of those courts would be followed, and only the best evidence given by proper witnesses would be admitted; the king's proctor would be watching for collusion and cross-examining the witnesses; the interests of the petitioner and respondents would be protected, and no evidence would be given without cross-examination. These several things we avoid by having a divorce court, instead of bringing divorce before a 2419-744
committee of parliament and through the House of Commons.
For those reasons, Mr. Speaker, I intend to vote for the bill, and I hope it will pass as soon as possible.


Mr. GEORGE SPOTTON (North Huron):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to say only a few words in connection with this bill. Hon. gentlemen may feel at ease; so far as I am concerned they will be able to register their votes tonight. Coming from the province of Ontario, I am more vitally interested in this question than I would be if I lived in another province, and I cannot understand why members from other provinces are so very anxious and in such a great hurry to thrust a divorce court upon Ontario before that province has spoken in the matter. Ontario is truly awakening. Six months ago in its rural communities not more than one person in a hundred was in favour of a divorce court, and after the passions that have been aroused have died down and the efforts of those who have tried to stir up the people have been forgotten, it will be found that in our rural communities not even one in a hundred will desire the establishment within the province of such a court.
Many harsh things have been said in the press and elsewhere in connection with this matter, but I think we should be able to approach it from the standpoint of information and fact. I find in a paper published in the city of Toronto, in connection with the recent vote on this bill, the following statement:
One would think that the very fact of the insolent clerical interference would drive the Protestants together.
In other words, Mr. Speaker, because an eminent clergyman of another faith has spoken against a divorce count for the province of Ontario, without any consideration whatever I should simply turn and go in the opposite direction. That appeal, sir, will not stand in the province of Ontario; that statement is not worthy of the source from which it comes and entirely misrepresents the spirit and teaching of the people they are supposed to represent. The article proceeds:
But the vote of last week proves either that they-
That is, we who dared to vote against the divorce court for Ontario.
-are supremely indifferent to the menace of clerical control, or they have come under the influence of the Roman Catholic bishops and priests in their own constituencies.
Divorce Court jor Ontario


Mr. PARENT:: They receive more than
that.


George Spotton: It cost this man $100 to bring himself, his lawyer and two witnesses to Ottawa from Toronto, and he won his case in spite of his lawyer. If he paid that lawyer $50 he gave him all he earned. That man is getting by under the figure given by the lawyer member.
Reflections have been cast upon the committee of the other house, the insinuation being that it was composed of a bunich of incompetents. In looking over the names of the fifteen gentlemen who comprise that committee, I find five eminent lawyers, three eminent physicians anid other men of high standing. We have it on the word of the-chief justice of Ohio that a judge is not the proper type of man to try divorce cases. That learned gentleman points out that there is a sociological, psychological and ethical side to this matter which icannot be considered by a judge who has just given a judgment to Billy Wilson regarding the killing of a steer by the automobile of John Jones, and then immediately switching to divorce cases, and perhaps trying as many as twelve in one forenoon. He quotes an instance of one judge granting a divorce because the wife would not get up before daylight to prepare breakfast for her husband, while a judge in the next county refused a divorce to a man who claimed that his wife would not prepare any meals at all for himself or the children. A lawyer who has been a ward heeler and is appointed a judge is not in a better position to try such cases than is the honourable body which at present adjudicates upon these matters. Chief Justice Marshall
Divorce Court jor Ontario

of the Supreme Court of Ohio has this to say:
It has sociological and ethical features requiring study and treatment of a sociological and ethical nature, which experience has fully demonstrated that courts are not designed to render.
And again he says:
We may therefore conclude that judges of the courts of general jurisdiction are not qualified either by training or by inclination to render decisions in divorce cases.
I will not weary the house with further reading, but that gentleman offers a suggestion that if a commission were appointed to give a sympathetic hearing to these cases, or to even one-fortieth of the 200,000 divorces issued annually, and inquire into the causes leading thereto, a solution might be found to lessen the divorce evil. Last year the Prime Minister told us that he would strive to do something in this regard, and I trust that he has something to report. When the business of the house was being held up last year, the Prime Minister said:
I gather that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) is of the view that by this time the government should see that this method of dealing with divorce bills is anything but satisfactory, or in other words that under the present method it is within the power of a few members of this house to block the entire business of parliament, if they so desire, in order to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the prevailing system of granting divorces through the agency of private bills.
I would not like to think, Mr. Speaker, that the province of Ontario is going to have a divorce court thrust upon it by the members from other provinces, who have a fear that the business of the house will be held up. I submit that the province of Ontario deserves better treatment than that. Ontario and Quebec have always supported legislation which was considered vital to the west or the east, and I plead with these gentlemen not to he in a hurry to thrust this thing upon the province of Ontario. I know that my own county is unanimous in opposing the creeping into this country of such insidious conditions as we find to the south. The Prime Minister continued:
I will say to hon. members of the house that the government will continue as we have been doing to give very serious thought to this question: I could not promise that we will find a solution during this session of parliament, but I would express the hope that by another session, by conference in the interval with members of the house and by other methods, we may find it possible to effect some arrangement which wall enable those seeking divorce [Mr. Spotton.l
to secure such redress as should be given them by a means which will commend itself more completely to parliament and avoid a recurrence of a situation such as we have at the moment.
Further down the Prime Minister says:
It being understood that between now and next session the members of the government and other hon. members of the house will do what they can towards finding some means of freeing parliament from the necessity of continuing to deal with divorce bills along the lines which we have followed thus far.
I would invite the Prime Minister to give us the result of his investigations and his thought in this matter. I am not going to detain the house longer.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


George Spotton: I notice the "hear, hear" comes from sources where a great deal of the time of the house is occupied. I have not occupied three horn's of the time of the house in three years, but I am prepared to occupy time to defend the home life of my province. I ask the other provinces to go slowly in thrusting upon Ontario legislation for which she has not asked. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. member for West Elgin (Mr. Hepburn):
That all the words after "that" in the motion be struck out and the following substituted therefor:
"this bill be not read a second time now, but this day six months."


Mr. MORIN:: I was paired with the hon.
member for East Toronto (Mr. Ryckman). Had I voted, I would have voted in favour of the amendment and against the second reading.


Mr. MERCIER (St. Henri):: I was paired with the hon. member for West Hamilton (Mr. Bell). Had I voted, I would have voted in favour of the amendment and against the second reading.


Thomas Cantley: I was paired with the
hon. the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Mr. Cardin). Had I voted, I would have voted against the amendment and for the motion.


Mr. EDWARDS (South Waterloo):: I was paired with the hon. member for West Middlesex (Mr. Elliott). Had I voted, I would have voted against the amendment and for the second reading.
Motion agreed to and bill read the second time.



SUPPLY-UNEMPLOYMENT AMENDMENT OP MR. HEAPS TO MOTION FOR COMMITTEE

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King for committee of supply and the amendment thereto of Mr. Heaps.
["I cannot speak half as loud as will be the answer the government will receive when next they face the country after the way they have handled the unemployment situation during their term of office. Unemployment is with us in this country, and will be with us as long as we are- in this northern zone, but Providence, which has been so kind to this government in the last few years, will always send snow to the large centres of population to help those of our citizens in winter who find themselves out of employment. The great question that I emphasize is the under-employment which has been caused by the maladministration of this government-under-employment on the farms and under-employment in industry-because we are not exporting the products of the farm and because we are importing products that we can produce on our farms; under-employment because we are importing double the quantity of manufactured goods that we are well able to manufacture ourselves here at home. I say to this government, do not try to steer this issue up some side alley by saying that it is part of an unemployment insurance scheme or something of that kind. Face the issue, and face it fairly and squarely.\n.1 see the Minister of Labour (Mr. Heenan) in his seat. He had his chance to speak, and I think he should have taken advantage of the opportunity to say what he has to say on this question before some of us on this side of the house were called upon to say a word or two. I hope that he will avail himself of the opportunity to speak to-night. As Peter denied his leader three times, so the Minister of Labour will have his chance to deny his leader to-night.\nI see that the apostle of free trade, the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Crerar), is stretching himself a little bit. Now that he has left the scene of storm and strife on the prairies and come down to this haven for a little rest, it will be interesting to hear what he thinks of the hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of products that we import into this country which our own people are quite capable of producing; yet he is content to sit idly by and watch these goods coming in by the thousands of tons, displacing labour and employment in this country. The men who are out of work are not so much interested in unemployment insurance. What they ask is a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Strong men of the north do not look for doles. They do not look for unemployment insurance.\n\nUnemployment-Mr. Harris\nThey look for an opportunity to work and to provide for their dependents. We have heard in this debate of the thousands of unemployed and idle men. What about the wives and children of these men who are undernourished because of unemployment? Should not they receive some consideration from the Minister of Pensions? Why should pensions be thrown into the political arena? Why was not some other subject chosen? I say to him: At the last minute, just as you are going to the country, I would be very sorry to see you try to obscure the issue by making a political football of the returned soldier question. Face the country on the record of your administration for the past eight years, and do not, in collusion with your colleagues on the treasury benches, try to divert the attention of the electorate from your record by making an issue of a matter which should not at any time be thrown into the political arena.\nI will conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker, by quoting an editorial from one of the newspapers supporting the government, the Manitoba Free Press. In its issue of December 17 last I find the following:\nAll that a government can do is to create a set of subsidiary conditions which permit the people to take advantage of their opportunities to the fullest extent possible."]
Joseph Henry Harris: I had not quite concluded my remarks at six o'clock, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Louder.


Joseph Henry Harris: I cannot speak half as loud as will be the answer the government will receive when next they face the country after the way they have handled the unemployment situation during their term of office. Unemployment is with us in this country, and will be with us as long as we are- in this northern zone, but Providence, which has been so kind to this government in the last few years, will always send snow to the large centres of population to help those of our citizens in winter who find themselves out of employment. The great question that I emphasize is the under-employment which has been caused by the maladministration of this government-under-employment on the farms and under-employment in industry-because we are not exporting the products of the farm and because we are importing products that we can produce on our farms; under-employment because we are importing double the quantity of manufactured goods that we are well able to manufacture ourselves here at home. I say to this government, do not try to steer this issue up some side alley by saying that it is part of an unemployment insurance scheme or something of that kind. Face the issue, and face it fairly and squarely.
.1 see the Minister of Labour (Mr. Heenan) in his seat. He had his chance to speak, and I think he should have taken advantage of the opportunity to say what he has to say on this question before some of us on this side of the house were called upon to say a word or two. I hope that he will avail himself of the opportunity to speak to-night. As Peter denied his leader three times, so the Minister of Labour will have his chance to deny his leader to-night.
I see that the apostle of free trade, the hon. Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Crerar), is stretching himself a little bit. Now that he has left the scene of storm and strife on the prairies and come down to this haven for a little rest, it will be interesting to hear what he thinks of the hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of products that we import into this country which our own people are quite capable of producing; yet he is content to sit idly by and watch these goods coming in by the thousands of tons, displacing labour and employment in this country. The men who are out of work are not so much interested in unemployment insurance. What they ask is a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Strong men of the north do not look for doles. They do not look for unemployment insurance.

Unemployment-Mr. Harris
They look for an opportunity to work and to provide for their dependents. We have heard in this debate of the thousands of unemployed and idle men. What about the wives and children of these men who are undernourished because of unemployment? Should not they receive some consideration from the Minister of Pensions? Why should pensions be thrown into the political arena? Why was not some other subject chosen? I say to him: At the last minute, just as you are going to the country, I would be very sorry to see you try to obscure the issue by making a political football of the returned soldier question. Face the country on the record of your administration for the past eight years, and do not, in collusion with your colleagues on the treasury benches, try to divert the attention of the electorate from your record by making an issue of a matter which should not at any time be thrown into the political arena.
I will conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker, by quoting an editorial from one of the newspapers supporting the government, the Manitoba Free Press. In its issue of December 17 last I find the following:
All that a government can do is to create a set of subsidiary conditions which permit the people to take advantage of their opportunities to the fullest extent possible.



[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by Major A. R. Thompson, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, as follows:
Mr. Speaker, Hie Honour, the deputy of His Excellency the Governor General, desires the immediate attendance of this honourable house in the chamber of the honourable the Senate.
Accordingly, the house went up to the Senate,
And having returned,
Mr. SPEAKER informed the house that the deputy of His Excellency the Governor General had been pleased to give in His Majesty's name the royal assent to the following bill:
An act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the public service for the financial year ending the 31st March, 1931.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King for committee of supply and the amendment thereto of Mr. Heaps.
Joseph Henry Harris: Mr. Speaker, when the interruption occurred we had a good representation on the treasury benches. That representation
is at the present time somewhat depleted, but there are one or two ministers remaining.
I want to draw to their attention some of the difficulties which obtain due to recent enactments. The Minister of Justice is in the chamber-


Ernest Lapointe: The Minister of Justice is always in the chamber.


Joseph Henry Harris: When the bell rings for the next election you will have a little more syrup to hand out to your constituents.


Ernest Lapointe: Maple syrup?


Joseph Henry Harris: There will be a little more cream left for you; they will not allow it to go to the country to the south, a country which economically is penetrating Canada to such an extent as has never before been known. Not only has that country penetrated Canada from an economic standpoint, but it is throwing out ideas which are being absorbed by our younger generation through reading American magazines and books. What is the government doing about it? The government is doing nothing to stop this economic penetration; it is doing nothing to stop the adoption of American ideals in this country. It is allowing the United States to send in vast quantities of products manufactured by them, products even of their farms and market gardens.
When the interruption occurred I was proceeding to read from the columns of the Manitoba Free Press. I quote:
All that a government can do is to create a set of subsidiary conditions which permit the people to take advantage of their opportunities to the fullest extent possible. There will be no argument that Mr. King and his government have done so.
Of course there is no argument that they have done so. They have not only failed to create such a set of conditions as the Free Press declares it to be their duty to create, but they have brought about and encouraged an opposite set of conditions under which foreign capital is enabled to exploit Canadian resources with foreign labour in foreign countries, and then to exploit the Canadian market with foreign manufactures. From such a source as the Manitoba Free Press, the rebuke may be judged the most severe one which has been administered to Mr. King and his cabinet.
The unemployed are not among those who lost heavily in the stock market crash; they are not among those suffering from the wheat blockade. Those who lost in the stock market were able to buy their Rembrandts, their radios and their Turkish rugs. It is such men

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
as the 1,132 who were lined up at the soup kitchens in Montreal the other day who are interested in unemployment. They are our kith and kin who demand the opportunity to be gainfully employed in order that they may be able to sustain their families.
We must have for this country a policy which will provide work for the minds and hands of all kinds and classes. Such a policy will never be forthcoming under the maladministration we have witnessed during the last eight years-take another drink, Mr. Minister of Labour-with ministers almost denying their leader, one minister in one direction, another in another; with ministers who will not act when they have the opportunity. In my opinion it has not been a fair "shake " for the workingmen of this country.
In conclusion I ask this government to face the issue fairly and squarely when the time comes, and not try to turn it up some side alley.


Peter Heenan: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to
attempt to follow the last speaker, because I was not aware that we were in the throes of an election; I did not know we were preparing for an election at the present time. At any rate, I am glad to know that the hon. member reads the Manitoba Free Press and believes in some of the ideas expressed therein. I hope he will always follow, believe in and quote from the Free Press, especially during the next and every other election.
I thought we were discussing the amendment to the motion to go into supply, which was moved by the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps), and I desire to congratulate the hon. member for bringing up this very important matter on the floor of the house. I have no doubt that the purpose of the amendment was to enable a discussion to take place with regard to this very important question of unemployment, and great credit is due the hon. member for the moderate language which he used, which indicates his sincerity of purpose in bringing this matter to the attention of the house.
During the course of his speech the hon. member for North Winnipeg asked, among other things, that something should be done immediately for the unemployed. I might state that the purpose of the motion to go into supply was to secure funds with which to carry on public undertakings and let further contracts which would aid the unem-ploj'ed.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The Prime Minister said the estimates of the Department of External Affairs were to be considered.


Henry Herbert Stevens: We have just granted two months' supply, so you can go right ahead.


Peter Heenan: Another matter strongly
advocated by the hon. member for North Winnipeg was unemployment insurance, and in that connection he quoted from my remarks as contained in the London Advertiser of March 15 and asked me to explain my position. I desire to take this opportunity of making my position clear, if it is not clear already. First let me say to hon. members who are advocating unemployment insurance that their appeal is no stronger than the appeals I made on the floor of the Ontario legislature when I was a member of that house. I thought at that time, and still think, that that was the proper place to advocate a contributory unemployment insurance plan.
When the hon. member for North Winnipeg brought this matter before the house a couple of sessions ago and asked that it be referred to the committee on industrial and international relations, no objection was raised by any member on either side of the house. That committee met and worked diligently in connection with this matter, and a report was brought in directing the government to refer the question to the provinces. Last session again the hon. member brought in a similar resolution asking that the question be referred back to the same committee. That was done, and after a good deal of hard work the committee arrived at certain conclusions which they brought before the house in their final report. They endorsed the principle of a compulsory contributory plan of unemployment insurance, but stated in effect that they had received the views of the law officers of the crown, which were that it was a provincial matter. The recommendations made by that committee were brought before parliament, and parliament adopted the report. It is true that an amendment was offered by the hon. member for North Winnipeg which, if it had been adopted, would have asked the provinces to pass legislation giving up their rights in this respect. That amendment was defeated by a very large majority.
The report also recommended that the government, at the next Dominion-provincial conference, place this matter on the agenda and bring it before those attending the conference. This government did not wait for such a conference to be called; as soon as the report was printed it was sent to the provinces in order to ascertain their views. I think everyone will agree that it is far better for the provinces to have time to consider such an important matter as the adoption of

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
an unemployment insurance scheme before discussing it at any conference.
Unemployment insurance will be adopted in Canada only after public opinion has been educated to the necessity for such legislation. The unemployment insurance scheme in effect in Great Britain has been so very much misrepresented in Canada that our people have not yet a true understanding of what unemployment insurance really means, or of the system which is in vogue in England. It has come to be represented in this country merely as a dole. Then again, some newspapers in this country have taken the position that there is no use discussing the question of unemployment insurance in Canada until it is known what system is in the minds of those who advocate it. Personally I am very much interested in some definite, permanent plan which will give something to our unemployed so that they will not need to look for relief every winter or during every season of unemployment. I took occasion at London to tell of a plan which I had in mind, in order to stir up public discussion and help form public opinion.
In this case public opinion certainly must include the working men, because if the working men are to be compelled to contribute part of their wages to any such scheme, of necessity they must know what is in view and what they will be expected to do. I know a number of working men-and I have known more since I made my remarks at London- who oppose a contributory system of unemployment insurance. Many claim that the employer should stand the whole cost, so that in a country like Canada it is necessary first to form public opinion along these lines. In view of that, and in view of the fact that this parliament has spoken already in regard to this matter, my remarks can apply only in the light of what parliament already has said. Parliament has not said that the federal government should contribute to any plan of unemployment insurance. My statement at London, and I thank the hon. member for North Winnipeg for reading from the Advertiser, because I have myself referred him to that paper-was very plain in that regard. I claimed that a simple method could be worked out which would apply to the railroad men much more readily than to the men in any other industry, and I said:
A system could be inaugurated in this country which would be suitable to Canadian needs. Take, for example, our Canadian railroad workers-in the summer time there are upwards of 200,000 men employed, and during the winter periods there are about 25,000 of those workers laid off for several months. The wages of all railwaymen average about $130
per month. If a fund were created, it would take about $5,000,000 to pay these employees half-pay for three months,
I had not in mind a plan which would operate for twelve months of the year, but rather one which would apply to the winter season. My remarks at London continue:
-say January, February and March; the employees contributing about one per cent of their wages and the railway companies the balance. This would not be too hard on either, and, if necessary, the governments could assist.
In the light of what has occurred in this parliament, and in the light of the opinions given by the law officers of the crown, I could not mean anything else but the provincial governments. I went on to say that this system could be extended to every line of industry.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is a very sharp corner.


Peter Heenan: Some hon. members on
the other side of the house know what sharp corners are.


Henry Herbert Stevens: We see the minister running around them.


Peter Heenan: Even if it is a sharp
corner, it is better to go around it than to say nothing at all. I am not afraid.


Robert James Manion: Especially when you can
back up afterwards.


Peter Heenan: My remarks continue:
This system could be extended to workers in every industry and would provide a permanent system.
I agree with my hon. friend from North Winnipeg that the workers are entitled to a permanent system. I then said that the House of Commons had endorsed such a system. My hon. friends will notice that I did not confine myself to saying the Liberals had endorsed this system, but I included my hon. friends in that endorsation. I then stated:
Parliament has also declared it is a provincial matter, and the government has taken the matter up with the provinces, but notwithstanding the fact that it is a provincial obligation, the Prime Minister has stated that if the provinces so desire his government is prepared to cooperate with them in establishing a uniform system.
I could not go beyond the limits set by my leader, who, on February 27, in answer to a question from the member for Winnipeg North Centre said:
My recollection is that a special committee of this house considered this question last session and brought to the house a report to

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
the effect that unemployment insurance was necessarily a matter with which provincial governments rather than the federal government would have to deal. I think I expressed the view yesterday that in my opinion a system of unemployment insurance would be a constructive way to deal with the unemployment problem, to which system not only the employer and the governments concerned would contribute but the worker also. If the provinces make a move in this matter and it appears that the federal government can be of assistance in helping to bring about uniformity as between the provinces of any plan proposed, or can cooperate in other ways in any discussion on the subject, we shall be glad upon invitation to take the matter under consideration.
During the course of my remarks at London I said that I would do my utmost in this regard, and I propose to stand by that statement. So long as I remain in public life I intend to work to the end of providing a solution to this unemployment problem. It may be that I become too enthusiastic about these things. I remember after the Old Age Pensions Act was passed that I went through this country from coast to coast speaking to members of the different provincial governments and upon different platforms in an effort to arouse enthusiasm for this measure in the provinces. Many letters came to members of the government and several editorials were written asking the Prime Minister to keep his Minister of Labour at home where he could mind his own business. My hon. friends across the house prophesied that the Old Age Pensions Act would not benefit any one man or woman in Canada because no province would desire to participate in the plan. They were mistaken in their forecast because I am glad to state that about 35,000 old men and women of this country are receiving benefits through the provisions of that act.


Richard Bedford Bennett: How many?


Peter Heenan: I think it is about 35,000, although I may be one or two thousand out.


An hon. MEMBER:: How many provinces are participating?


Peter Heenan: The majority of the provinces, and three more are now considering the matter.


George Reginald Geary: I am glad you follow the
lead given by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.


Peter Heenan: This amendment asks that the government should take immediate steps to deal with unemployment. The government is asking for supply in order to start the construction of public works. The question has

been asked, what is the government doing to relieve unemployment? I remember when my hon. friends across the way were in power one principle enunciated by them was that work should be given and not relief. We propose to give as much work as possible to take care of the unemployed. We are doing something now, and all last winter we put on a large program of public works, much of which might have been postponed until a more favourable season.' We urged the railroad companies to go ahead with their program of extensions and their orders for supplies, equipment, et cetera, and I think it is generally acknowledged) throughout the country that the Canadian National went ahead with a good deal of work that might very well have been deferred until a more favourable season.
We have also contributed something in our immigration policy. Contrary to what my hon. friend across the floor would say, by order in council we prohibited employers of this country from going over to European countries and bringing in contract labour.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Has that not been the
law for many years?


Peter Heenan: No.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I am pretty sure it has.
You cannot bring anyone into this country by contract.


Peter Heenan: They were brought in by the thousands when my hon. friends across the floor were in power.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I think the minister is
astray.


Peter Heenan: They are bringing them in to-day, but we do not catch them all. Only recently we had to consider the question of letting a contract to build a ferry in this country. The government could have had that ferry built in Great Britain for about one-half the cost that we are going to expend on it in Canada. In order to give employment to Canadian workers we will expend far more than a million dollars extra on that particular work. We are now putting into operation the eight-hour day for government employees. We are also, with the consent of hon. friends opposite, putting into operation the eight-hour day in connection with all public works and public contracts.


Edward Joseph Garland: Could the minister give the house the actual cost of labour involved in constructing that ferry?


Peter Heenan: The contract is away over $2,000,000. There is also the fact that during

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
last winter we contributed in the neighbourhood of $600,000 for unemployment relief for war veterans. I am not saying we should not have done that; I am just telling the house some of the things we have done. Hon. members will realize that the passage of the War Veterans' Allowance Act will also contribute a considerable amount next winter towards the relief of unemployment.
I notice that the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps) was very moderate in his language; there was not a semblance of politics in his whole speech. But such was not the case with hon. members who spoke from the Conservative side, and I did not expect it would be, because one realizes there are very few questions, whether it be mothers' allowances, workmen's compensation or any other humanitarian piece of legislation, out of which they will not endeavour to make political capital. They have discussed the question of federal responsibility; they have talked about unemployment and its causes, the tariff, immigration, and so forth, and have stated that the Dominion government should have contributed something towards the excess cost in the municipalities. It might be well to review the history of unemployment relief measures in this country. During the years following the war, when unemployment was prevalent throughout Canada, there was a cry for financial assistance not only from one or two provinces, but from every municipality and every province, and the federal government rendered financial aid. The policy of the government at that time was declared through the Minister of Labour in a letter dated the 14th of December, 1920. It was addressed to the Hon. Walter Rollo, Minister of Labour in the Ontario government, and in this letter I find the following statement:
The situation should be met to the utmost possible extent by the provision of work instead of the provision of relief.
He stated further on in the letter:
I feel sure the .provincial and municipal authorities will join in to provide a substantial amount of employment and in this way the situation should be materially relieved.
A little further on he said:
Every possible effort should be made to avoid the necessity of any other form of relief.
And in another part of the letter we find this statement:
Should, however, the emergency relief measures become necessary by reason of utterly unavoidable shortage of employment, the federal government is willing to cooperate.
And he outlines a system of cooperation of paying one-third of the excess cost over normal
construction. But all the way through his letter he emphasizes local, municipal responsibility. Everyone knows that the system which was put into vogue at that time was neither equitable nor satisfactory; because hon. members will readily understand that when there is an offer of excess cost over normal construction, it is only the provinces that have large construction work to do and only the municipalities that are financially strong enough to put on a program of construction work, that can take advantage of this. Therefore, the majority of the provinces or of the municipalities did not participate in any such scheme.
The hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Manion) will possibly be making a speech in the house on this subject, but I notice that in Winnipeg he made a speech in which he took exception to my statement that unemployment was primarily a municipal responsibility and, secondly, a provincial responsibility.


Mr. IRVINE:: If these matters of importance to labour be provincial responsibilities, what is the use of the position which the minister now holds? How can he justify to the workingmen of Canada the $14,000 paid to the minister if he cannot do anything?


Peter Heenan: My hon. friend knows it
would embarrass me to tell of all the good works the Minister of Labour does, so that if he is really desirous of ascertaining what the value of this position is, I would advise him to ask the labour men of Canada, the men who urged the establishment of the Labour department of this government.
I was saying that the hon. member for Fort William took exception to my remarks, at least as reported in the press. I could not understand his objection when I read it because I recall that the hon. member for Fort William was a member of the cabinet in 1921. and on October 7 of that year, some time after he had been sworn in, an order in council was passed dealing with this important question, from which I quote this paragraph:
Unemployment relief always has been, and must necessarily continue to be, primarily a municipal responsibility, and in the second instance the responsibility of the province.


Henry Herbert Stevens: If the minister will permit me, did not the government of the day contribute one-third of the cost to assist the provinces in the relief of unemployment?


Peter Heenan: I think my hon. friend
from Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) was also a member of the cabinet at that time.


Henry Herbert Stevens: And we contributed.

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan


Peter Heenan: I was giving my hon. friend the enunciation of their own policy as it appears in the order in council. I will read it again so that there may be no misunderstanding:
Unemployment relief always has been, and must necessarily continue to be, primarily a municipal responsibility, and in the second instance the responsibility of the province.


Henry Herbert Stevens: May I ask that this document be read in full, Mr. Speaker? It is a public document, and when public documents of that character are quoted we are entitled to have the full text.


Peter Heenan: I intend to read it. I would like to read it over and over again, because I get inspiration from it.


Henry Herbert Stevens: You need it badly.


Peter Heenan: If I have made any mistake at all, it is where I have been following in the footsteps of my hon. friends opposite.


Robert James Manion: You have followed nearly everybody else's footsteps in the country at different times.


Peter Heenan: Sometimes I catch up to them.


Henry Herbert Stevens: We are entitled to have
this document read.


Peter Heenan: I will read it in a minute or two. It is good reading.


Hewitt Bostock: The minister has already stated that he intends to read the order in council.


Peter Heenan: Before I read it, I want to say to my hon. friend from Vancouver Centre and to the hon. member for Fort William, who, as reported in the press, assailed the government in Winnipeg and said that unemployment relief was a federal responsibility-


Robert James Manion: May I just correct my
hon. friend? I said that it was a joint responsibility of the municipalities, the provinces, and the Dominion. I have right here the clipping from the press. That is the same statement that I have made on different occasions, and I adhere to it.


Peter Heenan: I think at this juncture,
I had better read the order in council, because it is an interesting document. It is P.C. 3831, dated October 7, 1921, and reads:
The committee of the privy council have had before them a report, dated 5th October, 1921, from the Minister of labour, submitting that the problem of unemployment, and means best calculated to relieve it, has been receiving 
constant study and attention since about De-. cenxber, 1920. On December 14, 1920, a federal relief policy was announced, the object of which was to aid responsible municipal authorities to fairly meet existing needs and prevent suffering to any citizen *nulling to work but unable to obtain employment. It provided for payment by the federal government to any municipality of one-third of the amount disbursed by the municipal authorities for unemployment relief-


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is an inspiration for you.


Peter Heenan: There will be a few more inspirations before we get through.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is an inspiration this government needs, too.


Peter Heenan: It is good reading. I will repeat that sentence:
It provided for payment by the federal government to any municipality of one-third of the amount disbursed by the municipal authorities for unemployment relief, together with a proposal that provincial governments join in on an equal basis. The federal government's disbursements for this purpose since January, 1921, have been over $600,000. Many gratifying expressions of appreciation have been received, in most cases accompanied by the suggestion that employment should be provided instead of paying unemployment doles. Since July 13th the Department of Labour has been in communication with provincial governments, mayors of municipalities and others as to improved methods of dealing with the situation next winter.
It was suggested to the provincial governments that, inasmuch as the extent of unemployment, as well as possible remedies, varied in different provinces, a provincial survey by conference or otherwise might he made by each provincial government, after which a conference of provincial representatives might meet with the federal government to discuss the problem and devise some general plan of assistance to the municipalities, upon whom the duty and responsibility of dealing with relief primarily rests.
Three provincial governments only have thus far signified concurrence in the suggestion for a central conference of provincial representatives, two of which desire the representation to extend to organizations other than governmental.
I would ask my hon. friends who are clamouring for a conference to listen to the next sentence:
Inasmuch as a federal conference with wide basis of representation would be both cumbersome and expensive, of doubtful value, and, thus far, only approved of by three of the provincial governments, and, further, because of the necessity of early decision and action, if useful service is to be rendered, the minister recommends that the following federal policy of basic principles on unemployment be approved.
1.	Unemployment relief always has been, and must necessarily continue to be, primarily a municipal responsibility, and in the second instance the responsibility of the province.

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
2.	That because of the present situation being due to causes beyond the power of local, or even national control, provincial and federal governments should cooperate with municipal authorities
So the situation had got beyond local control, beyond provincial control, beyond even national control. Before I get through I will examine the present situation to see if it i3 as bad as the situation prevailing in 1921.


Robert James Manion: Much worse.


Peter Heenan: It continues:
in,
(a)	helping to create and provide employment.
(b)	where employment cannot be furnished to workmen who are willing to work, to aid in providing food and shelter for themselves and dependents until the present emergency period is past.
3.	That federal funds used for unemployment relief or for relief work must be disbiirsed only through responsible municipal authorities, who in each case shall bear at least one-third of the total or extra cost.
The minister further recommends that the federal government agree to participate in the cost of work provided by municipalities to relieve unemployment on the following basis:
(a)	Municipalities to bear the normal cost, that is to say, the cost of carrying on the said work in the normal working season.
(b)	Estimate of normal cost to be approved by federal government's engineers in the Department of Public Works.
(c)	That municipal, provincial and federal governments bear equally and jointly the actual cost over the estimated normal cost, thereby encouraging the creation of employment where possible.
(d)	That where work cannot be provided the federal government continue to refund one-third of tiie disbursements actually made by a municipality for unemployment relief, conditional upon the provinces participating on an equal basis.
Then:
The committee concur in the foregoing recommendations and submit the same for approval.


Robert James Manion: AVhy did you not copy that yourself?


Peter Heenan: I will explain that before I get through.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is a real inspiration.


Peter Heenan: If my hon. friends will only possess their souls in patience for a little while I will tell them why I did not do it. I wonder why the member for Fort William takes me to task so seriously for imitating what the government of which he was a member initiated at that time.


Robert James Manion: Not at all. We absolutely offered to help in every way, and did help; but you refused.


Peter Heenan: They said that it was first a municipal and then a provincial obligation pure and simple. I wonder why, for instance, they did not take Premier Ferguson to task?


Robert James Manion: Because Premier Ferguson helped in many ways. I was with the deputation from northern Ontario that interviewed him. He assisted us. He did not put us off with the hot air that we get here.


Peter Heenan: The hon. member for Fort William did not come down here.


Robert James Manion: Yes, I was on the deputation and listened to the Prime Minister's remarks, which he says now mean nothing.


Ernest Lapointe: Order.


Robert James Manion: Order yourself.


Ernest Lapointe: You have already made three speeches.


Robert James Manion: You often make too many yourself.


Peter Heenan: Let me quote what appeared in a press despatch of January 24, 1928:
Hopes for unemployment relief from the provincial government were blasted at the meeting of the York township council yesterday. A letter written by Premier Ferguson, in answer to an appeal sent from a recent session of the council, made it plain that the province was not prepared to take any such action. Premier Ferguson stated in his letter "that unemployment is an entirely municipal affair". "It would not be just," he said, "to use the money contributed by the whole province for purely local relief. The municipality derived the benefits from the working men in times of prosperity and should be prepared to bear the burden when times were not so bright." He added, "The only time when the province had rendered any such assistance was just following the war."
I have heard my hon. friend take the premier of Ontario to task for that statement. I think probably the public would expect the Dominion government to take more notice of the representatives of the provinces with respect to their requirements than of gentlemen who are not elected to represent the provinces. In this connection I should like to remind my hon. friends-


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Do not members of the
House of Commons represent their respective provinces?


Peter Heenan: I did not mean it just in that way. I think the public of Canada would expect the federal government to take more notice of the representations of the provincial premiers as to the requirements of the prov-

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
inees than 'they would even of the members in the federal house who are not elected for provincial matters.
Since all these things took place we have had a Dominion-provincial conference in Ottawa, and the question of the Dominion contributing unemployment relief was on the agenda for discussion. I should like to read from the blue book the result of that conference.


An hon. MEMBER:: What date is that, 1927?


Peter Heenan: Yes.
The question of unemployment relief was but briefly dealt with. With the possible exception of Manitoba, no speaker urged federal aid in this direction. Several of the representatives in fact were of the opinion that unemployment relief on any fixed basis was simply an encouragement to unemployment. The representative from Manitoba, however, cited the case of Winnipeg, where at times by reason of itiner-a.nts wandering in unemployment was frequent, though labour conditions were fairly uniform. He believed that if the Dominion government did not undertake to bear any share in the cost of looking after these strangers, it should establish a depot for the relief of those who drifted m from the outside.
That is a pronouncement on this question by the premiers of the provinces.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: That is three years old.


Ernest Lapointe: That is not very old.


Peter Heenan: Yes, we are all getting older.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Unemployment is increasing. Mr. LAPOINTE: The principle is the same.
_ Mr. HEENAN: I find again this year-this is not three years old-that Premier Ferguson made another statement. On January 24, 1930, he had this to say.
Our unemployment problem is spotty in various sections of the province; it centres chiefly in Toronto; but we are paying the one-third excess cost to municipalities, which seems to be meeting the situation.
There was no complaint from the provincial authorities of Ontario that they were not meeting the situation, but simply a bald statement that they were contributing one-third, and it was meeting the situation. I have not heard my hon. friend from Fort William say anything about that.


Robert James Manion: I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that the premier of the province assisted northern Ontario when we came down and asked for help. I was on the deputation and know what I am talking about.


Ernest Lapointe: Repeat that later on.


Peter Heenan: Neither have I heard my hon. friend nor any of his colleagues say anything with respect to the statement made by Premier Tolmie of British Columbia. In a despatch dated Victoria, February 6, 1930, he is reported as follows:
.1 am not in a position to say anything about the unemployment situation here.
He added:
The responsibility of caring for destitute people rested primarily with the municipalities.
That is the opinion expressed by the premier of British Columbia.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I have been criticized in some quarters for not calling a national conference-


Mr. PRICE:: You are repeating what you said before.


Peter Heenan: I beg your pardon?


Mr. SPENCER:: The minister just stated
that at the Dominion-provincial conference Manitoba was the only province which did not accept responsibility for unemployment. I think he knows quite well that Alberta refused to accept full responsibility, and was of the opinion that the federal government as well had some responsibility in the matter.


Peter Heenan: I did not say anything
about the position taken by any of the provinces; I read from the reports of the proceedings of that meeting, and so far as I am concerned it speaks for itself.


Henry Elvins Spencer: But the Minister of
Labour has in his possession a statement made by the premier of Alberta, which I sent to him only a few weeks ago.


Peter Heenan: Yes, and the premier of
Alberta has this report also.


Edward Joseph Garland: What was the last statement on this question made to the minister by the premier of Alberta?


Peter Heenan: I forget what it was but it was not in accordance with this report. I happened to be present at the conference also, you must remember.
I have been criticized by some hon. gentlemen opposite for not calling a national conference, which to me is a very serious question. I feel that to call a national conference during a season when unemployment prevails is not going to help that unemployment very much. I can imagine municipalities and provinces, which might have work in contemplation or actually undertaken, holding up that work for a while and coming to Ottawa to find

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
out who was to pay for it. Our Conservative friends, in their order in council, stated that such a national conference would be at any rate of doubtful value.
Hon. gentlemen want me to follow the example set by the United States; in fact it has been stated on the floor of the house that the government could very well emulate what President Hoover has done. I want hon. gentlemen to know that so long as I am in public life I propose to do what I think is best for the working men of Canada, whether or not it follows what has been done in the United States. I wonder if hon. gentlemen realize that when that conference was called at Washington and the unemployment and distress were shown, one of the first things asked of the labour representatives was whether they would promise not to ask for an increase in wages or for better conditions. I want to say that before I would take the responsibility of calling a conference to do that to the workingmen of Canada, I would want to know that I had the majority of those working men behind me. H you have followed what has been going on in the United States you will know that the conference has not had the result claimed by some of my hon. friends. I thought I knew whether or not I was doing what the majority of the labour men of this country wanted me to do when I did not recommend to my colleagues the calling of a national conference, and I was glad to know, as I am sure my hon. friends will be, that when the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada representing the majority of the workers of this country, met here, our action in not calling such a conference was endorsed.
I am not going to follow the system advocated by my hon. friends with respect to unemployment when they were in power. I well remember reading in Hansard of one hon. member who stated in 1921 that the cause of unemployment was that industries were becoming insolvent and therefore could not give work, and it was stated that the reason they were becoming insolvent was because the working men would not give a fair day's work. I remember those words very well, and I am sure every person in Canada who was interested in labour never will forget them.


Thomas Cantley: Who said that?


Peter Heenan: I will give the name of the hon. gentleman and the page in Hansard after a while, so my hon. friend can read it for himself. I hope, however, that hon. gentlemen opposite will have changed their minds in that regard after having been out of office for such a long time. The same hon. member 2419-75
said that the only cure for unemployment would be to go through a period of depression such as the country was going through at that time. I am not going to adopt that position with regard to the unemployment situation.
When I was interrupted a short time ago I was going to say that some hon. members had misunderstood or misinterpreted my statement with regard to unemployment. It was made to appear by some of my hon. friends that I was unsympathetic and did not really realize that there was unemployment in this country. I want to point out that at the time I made my statement I was dealing with the request to call a national conference. During my statement I not only acknowledged that there %vas unemployment but advocated a means of alleviating that condition. I went on to point out that the federal government was undertaking a large program of public works and that we were asking the railway companies to do the same thing, and I stated that if the provinces and the municipalities would follow that example it would relieve unemployment to a certain extent. It is true that I quoted some statistics to show the amount of employment in this country as compared with that in the United States, but I am afraid those figures did not suit some of my hon. friends, because they adopted the slogan "statistics do not feed hungry stomachs." It appears to me that those figures were too strong for my hon. friends to stomach. The statistics are there; they were not gathered for that year particularly but have been gathered for many years past from the same sources. The statistics at that time, and up to February 1, showed a comparatively greater number employed in Canada than in the United States.


Otto Baird Price: I should like to ask the
minister whether it affects Canadians or Americans when he speaks about unemployment in the United States. Is it a matter of chasing Canadians back home or is it a matter of putting Americans out of employment? Answer that.


Peter Heenan: I am not going into
statistics to-night, although I have them here if it is necessary.
The Prime Minister was criticized when he made his speech for saying that the country was in a prosperous condition, and for quoting from statements made by the heads of financial institutions. I am not going to quote from suich statements, but I am going to quote from the statements made by premiers of our provinces as to what condition those provinces were in at the end of 1929.



Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
Beginning at Prince Edward Island, this is what Premier Saunders had to say:
The island is, however, prosperous. Nineteen twenty-nine has been a successful year. In agriculture and its branches of stock raising and dairying, much progress has been made.
Then he goes on to say:
We look forward to the year 1930 with confidence and optimism. Our people, in common with Canadians generally, are conscious of the urge resulting from a sense of past achievements and .the promise of a great destiny in store for Canada.
Premier Rhodes of Nova Scotia made this significant statement:
There has been a distinct improvement in conditions surrounding our steel-coal industry and prospects for stabilized winter employment are most promising. Real progress has been made in the development of mines other than coal mines, notably at Stirling in Cape Breton, where the zinc lead deposit has about reached the point of regular production, and the further development of our gold mines.
In addition to that he has this to say: Taken as a whole the outlook for the coming year is distinctly bright. I am fully confident that marked as has been our progress during the past few years, there are even better things in store for this province. Our future is assured. The extent of our progress and prosperity depends largely upon the amount of individual effort which we are prepared to put forth.
Premier Baxter of New Brunswick states the following:
New Brunswick has enjoyed one of the most prosperous years our people have ever known, with agricultural and industrial activity especially marked, and a substantial upbuilding taking place in virtually every field of development.
He goes on to say:
The financial position of the province has been markedly improved this year by the successful culmination of negotiations which have been in progress for some time to have the Saint John Valley Railway taken over from the province by the federal government as a part of the Canadian National Railways system.
We will not refer to the statement made by Premier Taschereau. Still, I do not see why we should not read what that gentleman has to say about the province of Quebec:
In spite of many counteracting factors, general prosperity has prevailed throughout the province of Quebec during 1929. Much advance has been made in some of the most important domains, notably in agriculture.
We now come to the statement made by the Hon. G. Howard Ferguson, premier of the province of Ontario:
During the past year Ontario has maintained the steady progress that has long been characteristic- of this province. In all important departments there has been satisfactory advance, and in many ways the outlook for the future has been improved.


Henry Herbert Stevens: What is the date of that, please?


Peter Heenan: The statements I have
been reading are dated January 14, 1930. To continue with the statement by Mr. Ferguson:
In the considered judgment of our financial experts, the position of Canada is fundamentally sound, and this is especially true of the province of Ontario.
Mr. Ferguson is speaking not only of the province of Ontario, but of Canada as a whole. He says:
We are constantly growing and expanding and our faith in the outlook is firmly established by experience.
Next we have the statement made by Premier John Bracken of the province of Manitoba:
It is a common belief that Manitoba is a purely agricultural province. It is true that agriculture is still her chief means of maintenance, but during recent years other industries have grown and prospered until to-day the annual value of their gross output closely rivals that of farm products. The year 1929 has seen substantial progress in this direction. During the past year thirty-six new manufacturing concerns have been established in Manitoba, while twenty-two others have extended their plants. It seems certain the total output will substantially exceed that of 1928, which was estimated at $159,252,000.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Have you any quotation from the remarks of Mayor Webb of Winnipeg?


Peter Heenan: He is the mayor of the city, and not the premier of the province of Manitoba.


Henry Herbert Stevens: But he is the man who is faced with the unemployment problem in the city of Winnipeg.


Peter Heenan: We have next the statement made by Premier Anderson of Saskatchewan :
The settling of our vacant farm lands and the development of industries are reacting favourably upon the growth of our urban centres. The population of some of our larger cities has increased fifty per cent in the last three years. Since January 1st of this year the total value of building permits issued for construction work in the province amounted to $34,000,000. as compared with $20,000,000 for the year 1928.
The future progress of Saskatchewan rests upon the firm foundation of the productive effort of our people, aided by a discriminating immigration policy. Capital from eastern Canada and the British Isles is increasingly available for the development of our natural resources. The achievements of the past have been considerable. We have merely scratched the surface of our vast resources, however, and there is every indication that the future holds in store tremendous possibilities for the people of Saskatchewan.

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan
Premier J. E. Brownlee of the province of Alberta has the following to say:
At the end of another year the province of Alberta finds itself in a strong financial position. At the end of March, 1929, the fourth successive surplus was reported. The surpluses for the past four years have been as follows:
1925		$ 188,019 54
1926	 17,800 53
For the fifteen months ending March 31st:
1928		$	279,763 13
1929	 1,578,823 09
Further on in the article he says:
Therefore, we face the end of the year in a spirit of confident optimism, believing that the next few years, at least, will be years of continued development, both agriculturally and industrially.


George Reginald Geary: Would the minister intimate to the house what he is trying to prove?


Peter Heenan: I thought the hon. members would like to hear this.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The .minister has scrupulously avoided stating what the mayors of Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and other cities have said.


Peter Heenan: The hon. member must realize that sometimes a man chooses to eat and drink what other people do not like.


Edward Joseph Garland: Will the
minister quote the appeals made by Premier Brownlee and possibly some others to the government for relief?


Peter Heenan: I shall be very glad to do that in a little while; I have those statements somewhere among my papers. I am trying to answer hon. members opposite who have criticized the Prime Minister because he has stated that Canada is prosperous. I am trying to show in my own humble way just what the premiers of each of the provinces have said. I know it is hard medicine to take, but my hon. friends sometimes prescribe for others and I would like them to take a little of their own medicine. Premier Tolmie of British Columbia has this to say:
British Columbia has just closed another active year in all its primary lines of industry. Completed returns should show that the forestry output for 1929 will surpass all previous records for quantity, though, owing to falling prices, values will be somewhat lowered.
Then he goes on:
With new mines discovered and old mines developing, with all our primary industries expanding, with additions contemplated or in progress in our abundant hydro-electric powers there appears at this time to be no good reason why 1930 should not be a banner year for British Columbia.
As an ordinary layman I have tried to figure out how Canada can be in such a deplorable condition as stated by my hon. friends when the premiers of the different provinces have stated that their own provinces are each prosperous.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Are the minister and his colleagues aware of any unemployment problem which exists in Canada at the present time or which has existed during the past three months?


Robert James Manion: Certainly not.


Peter Heenan: In my statement of December 16 I stated that the government had asked the railway companies to go on with their extensive programs of expansion, and I suggested that the provinces should do likewise. When the government of the province of Ontario was about to go on with the construction of the highway from the head of the lakes to the Manitoba boundary, which highway had been promised for years and years at every provincial and federal election,, and which had been started, the hon. member for Fort William went down with a delegation to consult with the provincial government. They returned home and stated that the province would go ahead with the work if the federal government would contribute 50 per cent of the cost.


Robert James Manion: We did not say anything of the kind. Mr. Finlayson, the Minister of Lands and Forests, made a statement in writing that they would do that. The provincial government is ready to do its share but this government has not shown a readiness to do anything.


Peter Heenan: That highway has been promised at every provincial and federal election. My hon. friend did not succeed in stopping the provincial government from going ahead, because an announcement has been made in the press that the work will be started when the snow is off the ground.


Robert James Manion: Does the minister suggest that I tried to stop the provincial government from going ahead with that highway?


Peter Heenan: My hon. friend went down to Toronto and after consulting with the provincial government about the highway, the construction of which was an obligation upon the provincial government, he returned with the statement that the provincial government would go ahead with that which they were obligated to do if the federal government would contribute 50 per cent of the cost.

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan


Robert James Manion: They were not obligated to build a trans-Canada highway unless they wished.


Peter Heenan: Would the province of
Quebec be obligated to build a highway through the province of Ontario?


Robert James Manion: The whole house, with the possible exception of those under the command of the government whips, has asked that a trans-Canada highway be built.


Peter Heenan: Which is the trans-Canada highway ?


Robert James Manion: A part of that highway is the highway about which the minister is trying to fake right now.


Peter Heenan: How does the hon. member know this?


Robert James Manion: It is that part which the minister has refused to support but which has the support at the present time of his constituency.


Peter Heenan: I have heard that a meeting of Conservatives from the north was held and the proposal was that if by any chance the Dominion government called this bluff and said that a contribution would be made towards that highway-


Robert James Manion: This government is not
[DOT]calling anybody's bluff.


Peter Heenan: -the Conservatives up in Timiskaming district were to claim that the highway should go through their way instead of through Fort William and Kenora. I am satisfied to allow the electors in that part of the country to deal with this matter. The Conservatives are trying to find an excuse for the province of Ontario delaying the highway a few months longer.


Robert James Manion: They dealt with that question at the last election and they beat everyone who was put up against them.


Peter Heenan: I know one member they did not beat.


Robert James Manion: The minister made a bet upon a public platform, which was a corrupt practice.


Peter Heenan: The trouble with my hon. friend is that he knows I won the bet.


Robert James Manion: I would like to know what the Prime Minister thinks of one of his ministers making a bet on a public platform.


Peter Heenan: I just called one of my hon. friend's bluffs.


Robert James Manion: The minister did not do any such thing. He made a bet on a public platform and his bluff was called.


Richard Bedford Bennett: He called for relief money.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It might be well to discuss unemployment for a little while.


Peter Heenan: This highway was discussed upon the platform at Sioux Lookout and Kenora during the last provincial campaign. The vote taken in the House of Commons last session-and my vote is shown there-was shown to the people in that country, but notwithstanding the man who opposed the Conservative candidate was elected by a majority of over four hundred.


An hon. MEMBER:: What has that to do with unemployment?


Peter Heenan: I have shown that the premiers of each province have stated definitely that at the end of this year they were all in good financial standing. I have not heard any of those gentlemen complain that they are not able to cope with unemployment in their province, although the Prime Minister has left the door open.


Robert James Manion: He surely has.


Peter Heenan: They came down here to the conference of 1927 and stated that they did not wish any contribution towards unemployment relief, and that statement has not been reversed as yet.


Henry Elvins Spencer: The minister should not make a blanket statement like that.


Peter Heenan: The premier of Alberta
has asked for a contribution but has not stated that he cannot cope with this matter himself. He has said that that province has the greatest surplus in its history.


Henry Elvins Spencer: That was before the unemployment began.


Peter Heenan: They said in 1927 they did not want relief, and their statements I have read were all made at the end of the year 1929. The Premier of Alberta did not state he could not cope with this situation; instead he said that his province is in such financial condition that they have the greatest surplus in their history.


Henry Herbert Stevens: As of March, 1929.


Peter Heenan: January.

Unemployment-Mr. Heenan


Henry Herbert Stevens: No, 31st March, 1929, a
year ago.


Peter Heenan: I do not propose to make any excuses in regard to unemployment. I am not going to stand here and say that I have the cure for it. I am not going to agree with my hon. friends who say that the way to cure unemployment is by protection. Neither am I going to agree with my hon. friends who have stated that because the federal government has charge of immigration, it is responsible for unemployment. I can recall the great clamour there has been for many years from that side of the house for a wider immigration policy. I can recall the hon. member for Vancouver North (Mr. McRae) advocating in the house a couple of sessions ago a policy whereby we should bring 250,000 or 300,000 families into this country. He advocated doubling the population of western Canada. Yet I find that the hon. member for Vancouver North a few weeks ago stating that the federal government, on aocount of bringing in so many immigrants, was responsible for unemployment. I think I can recall even a question on the floor of the house some time ago when the hon. member for Vancouver Centre was reported in several newspapers, when he went over to the old country, as having said that there was a job waiting in Canada for every unemployed miner in Great Britain if he was physically fit.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I never made any such
statement.


Peter Heenan: I am glad to know there are others who can be misunderstood or mis-reported once in a while.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is misquoted.


Peter Heenan: I will read the hon. member's own statement. There is a question in Hansard of March 30, 1928, page 1854. The matter was brought u,p by the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Neill). The hon. member for Vancouver Centre is reported in the Sunday Times of London, England, of December 4, 1927, as follows:
"Every unemployed miner in Great Britain," said Mr. H. H. Stevens, M.P., Vancouver, who arrived in Liverpool yesterday on the Canadian Pacific liner Melita. " can be found employment in the Canadian mines, provided he is physically fit."


Henry Herbert Stevens: Read a little more. That is not the statement.


Peter Heenan: That is the statement
which appears in Hansard.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is a distorted extract
out of an interview which was given.


Peter Heenan: I believe that, and I will not read any more. If the hon. member says he did not say that, I believe him, because I know no sensible Canadian would make such a statement.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I quite agree with the
minister. Then why the insinuation?


Peter Heenan: Because that went into
thousands of homes of British miners of England who were looking for jobs, and no doubt thousands came to Canada because of that misstatement. On the one hand statements going out about "blue ruin" are driving Canadians out of the country, and on the other, statements about "wide spaces with a job for every man" are bringing them in. Is it any wonder we have unemployment in this country?


Richard Bedford Bennett: We have the admission.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Peter Heenan: It is no wonder we have unemployment. My hon. friends may applaud. It is no matter to laugh at that thousands of men who have come to this country through misrepresentations in the press or statements by hon. members, find that they cannot secure jobs here.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is utter nonsense.


Peter Heenan: Before I leave the immigration policy, let me point out that the hon. member for Fort William said on the floor of the house, "Canada should be the mecca for the surplus people of the whole world."


Robert James Manion: So it should if we had a proper government and a good policy.


Peter Heenan: Then my hon. friend goes to Winnipeg and says ithat we are bringing in too many immigrants.


Robert James Manion: I did not make any such statement in Winnipeg.
Mr.	HEENAN:	The hon.	member	is
reported as saying that.
Mr.	MANION:	I am not	reported	as
saying that. My hon. friend is just talking.
Mr.	HEENAN:	The hon.	member	forWillow Bunch (Mr.	Donnelly)	quoted from
his statement the other day and I will quote it to-morrow.


Robert James Manion: Nobody quoted it because I was never reported as saying any such thing.
Questions


Peter Heenan: My hon. friends blow hot and bfow cold for political expediency, nothing more and nothing less. Is it any wonder they find there are hundreds or thousands of men out of work? They say that all these things have been done by the federal government, lack of policy on tariffs, immigration and all these other things are responsible for unemployment; yet they have continually advocated immigration from the housetops.


Robert James Manion: Has the hon. member
finished?


Peter Heenan: No.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Wednesday, April 2, 1930