1930-05-09

PRIVATE BILLS COMMITTEE

[Stage Direction]
Third report of the select standing committee on miscellaneous private bills-Mr. Parent.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. RENE MORIN (St. Hyacinthe-Rou-ville) presented the first report of the select standing committee on standing orders.
Mr. MORIN moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.

Mr. J. A. MACDONALD (Richmond-West Cape Breton):: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Digby-Annapolis (Mr. Short), that the Clerk of the House be instructed to delete my name from the vote recorded at page 133 of the votes and proceedings. I have already announced to the house that I was not present when this vote was taken.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. NEWTON M. YOUNG (Toronto Northeast) moved:
That pursuant to the first report of the select standing committee on standing orders, the provision of standing order 102 respecting the first and second readings of private bills be applied forthwith to a bill "An act respecting the Calgary and Fernie Railway Company" and that the said bill be referred forthwith to the select standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first and second times.
Pension Legislation
[Stage Direction]
PENSION LEGISLATION On the orders of the day:
Hon. H. H. STEVENS (Vancouver Centre):: I should like to direct the attention of the Prime Minister to a telegram which I have received and in connection therewith to ask one question. This telegram is from Colonel Daykin, president of the Vancouver unit of the Army and Navy Veterans, and is as follows:
At a meeting of the Army and Navy Veterans last night there were some expressions of anxiety lest parliament should dissolve without dealing with the Pensions Act. I have been requested to ask that you do all in your power to see that this is dealt with before dissolution.
I should like to ask the Prime Minister if care will be taken to have this legislation passed before dissolution, so far as humanly is possible, of course?


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: I might say to my hon.
friend that some person, for reasons best known to himself, has been very busy in communicating with these local organizations and asking them to wire in about the possibility of this legislation being passed, because in this connection I have already had twenty-five or thirty telegrams. This is the more surprising in view of the fact that I took occasion to state in the house two or three days ago that the utmost care would be taken to see that legislation pertaining to the returned soldiers would receive full consideration. Certainly the intention is to have the pension legislation fully taken care of at this session.



DUTY ON VEGETABLES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. B. ADSHEAD (East Calgary):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct the attention of the government to an article appearing in the Winnipeg Tribune of May 5, 1930, to the effect that a carload of celery had been received in that city on which the duty under the old schedule would have been $189 but on which the present duty was $450. There was also a carload of cabbages received in that city on which the old duty would have been $120 but on which the present duty was $449. I suppose this is an authentic report, and I should like to know whether or not it is true and whether the government can explain the matter.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am afraid that is too

much of a mathematical problem for me. I will have to leave it to the minister (Mr. Euler) to explain when he comes in.



RELIEF TO SWEDISH IMMIGRANTS

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, according to a
despatch appearing in this morning's Gazette, 400 Swedish immigrants at present unemployed in Winnipeg are appealing to their homeland for immediate relief. It is obvious that this is a very bad advertisement to have appear in the European papers with regard to one of the best classes of citizens we have. I should like to ask the government what they propose to do in the matter of relief for this large number of Scandinavian immigrants.


Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Acting Minister of Immigration):: The article referred to by my hon. friend has not been brought to the attention of the government, but I will ask the department to ascertain what authority there may be for the report.



RADIO BROADCASTING


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. P. J. A. CARDIN (Minister of Marine and Fisheries):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the
hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) wanted to make sure that no embarrassment would be created in regard to the radio broadcasting situation in Canada pending consideration of the report of the Aird commission. I want to give the assurance to the hon. member that as long as I occupy my present position I will take every precaution not to do anything which might complicate the present situation and prevent parliament from dealing with the matter as it may see fit when it comes up for consideration.



FISH INSPECTION ACT

[Stage Direction]
Hon. P. J. A. CARDIN (Minister of Marine and Fisheries) moved that the house go into committee on Bill No. 134, to amend the Fish Inspection Act.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
On section 1-Application of act.
Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: Mr. Chairman, the object of this amendment is to remove the doubt

which now exists as to the interpretation of this section. It is contended that the fish containers cannot be inspected before they are used, so we are asking that the act be amended in order that the officials will have the right to inspect containers before the actual packing is done.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 2-Extension of application of act.
Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: This section provides that similar provision be extended to fish oils and their containers. Previously, the inspection of fish oils was carried on under the Inspection and Sale Act, which is administered by t'he Department of Agriculture, and it is intended to bring this inspection under the Fish Inspection Act.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 3 agreed to.
On the title.
Mr. ERNST:: Mr. Chairman, I did not catch the purport of the explanation given by the minister regarding section 1. I realize that this section has been agreed to, but as I read the section, where a container is found to be faulty before being used, prosecution would follow. I doubt very much whether the proposed wording would meet the situation. I believe I had the honour of trying the case which brought about the change in the section.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: The matter was submitted to the Department of Justice and we were told that this provision would meet the situation.


William Gordon Ernst: I have no doubt that the section was submitted to the Department of Justice. If a package is inspected before use and found to be faulty, I doubt very much if successful prosecution could 'be carried out under this section.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: The word " intended "
could be added.


William Gordon Ernst: I make that suggestion to the minister, because, as I say, I have had experience in this regard.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: I would be quite agreeable to meet that suggestion.


William Gordon Ernst: I think the words "or intended to be used '' should be added.
Fish Inspection Act


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: I shall be glad to do that.
I move, Mr. Chairman:
That this section be amended by adding after the word "used" in the sixth line of section 1 the words:
" or intended to be used."


The CHAIRMAN:: There should be a
motion to reconsider the section.


Charles A. Stewart: I move that section 1 be reconsidered.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 1 as amended agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


[Stage Direction]
Hon. P. J. A. CARDIN (Minister of Marine and Fisheries) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following proposed resolution:
That it is expedient to provide that the number of members who may be appointed by the minister to the Biological Board pf Canada., under the provisions of the Biological Board Act, be increased from five to seven.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: Mr. Chairman, the present membership of the biological board is five, which includes one representative from British Columbia and one from the Atlantic coast. It has been suggested that two representatives from each of the coasts should be on this board.


Mr. SHORT:: One of the added members will be from Nova Scotia and one from British Columbia, is that it?


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: Yes, that is the idea.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Cardin thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 137 to amend the Biological Board Act.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first and second times, and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
On section 1-Constitution of the board.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Will the Chairman read the section?
Biological Board Act


John Frederick Johnston: This section reads as follows:
Section 4 of the Biological Board Act, chapter 18 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1927, is repealed, and the following is substituted therefor:

"4. The board shall consist of seven members appointed by the minister, and one additional member appointed by such universities, to be named by the minister, as may engage in the work of biological research."


Henry Herbert Stevens: What I am going to speak of now does not apply directly to this clause, but the minister will, I am sure, be glad to answer the question. About a year ago I spoke on the question of carrying on the work of the biological research board. There was passed by a meeting, I think in Vancouver, of representative organizations interested in the fish business, a resolution reading as follows:
Whereas^ the scientific research conducted by the biological board in British Columbia is considered to be of vital importance to the fishing industry, and also of great value in the formulation of the regulations of the department, it is "with much concern and apprehension that this meeting learns of the reduction of $27,000 in the appropriation for the current year, and it is the unanimous request of this meeting, representative of all phases of the industry, that the amount deducted be made available for the carrying out of the valuable and important projects as planned, during the current season.
I understand there has been a reduction in the estimates of the money available for this very important research work. May I ask the minister whether that situation is to be corrected this session so that the projects planned during the past year or two by this board as a result of its scientific research, may be carried out.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: The officers of the department inform me that this is not going to mean any important curtailment in the work of the biological board.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The minister has not perhaps quite caught my point. I said that it did not apply exactly to this clause. It deals with the reduction in the main estimates. Is there, as a result of that reduction, to be a curtailment of the development?


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: Certainly not.


Harry Bernard Short: In the appointments to these two positions will every care be taken to see that men possessing a thorough knowledge of the fishing industry will be chosen and that men will not be appointed because of their political affiliations?


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: My hon. friend may be
assured as to that because we are going to accept the representations of the industry itself.


Mr. QUINN:: Can the minister say whether the work of the biological board has increased so much that it is necessary to add two more men to it?


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: The members of the board themselves made that representation to us and they felt it would be more advantageous, in order to include the industry, to have four representatives instead of two on the board. The recommendation came from the members of the board itself on representations made to them, I am sure, by the industry.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed. ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE

[Stage Direction]
Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice) moved that the house go into committee on Bill No. 132, respecting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee-Mr. Johnston in the chair.
On section 1.-Readjustment of pensions of officers and constables retired to pension prior to 31st May, 1924.
Mr. BENNETT:: The minister was good enough to supply me with a sheet showing those who would be affected by the change. The next morning I received a telegram from a representative of the old mounted police organization indicating that the measure was not what had been expected; that it went only part of the distance that had been hoped for. I looked into the matter again and I realized there was something in that contention. Members of the force who had been retired on pension prior to a date fixed in the bill find themselves receiving no consideration. The survivors of this class are very limited in number. In other words the benefits are limited to a very small class and a number of members of the old force who retired under the provisions of the law as it existed prior to the date mentioned in the bill, receive no additional benefits. They contend that if these benefits are extended as they are being very considerably to those who retired within the last ten years, it is quite unfair that those who retired 15 or 17 years ago on less favourable conditions should not be considered especially in view of the character of the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police
service they rendered in the pioneer days. To be perfectly frank I believe, on looking into the matter, the contention is very sound. The number is limited and is becoming fewer more quickly than in any other class.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: The old members to
whom my hon. friend refers were looked after in 1925 or 1924. All the rates of pension granted to those old men who had served in the force and who had retired at a time when the pension was very low, were readjusted and those men were granted pensions based on the rate of pay prevailing in 1919. I think parliament was satisfied at the time and I never before had a bill go through the house with such commendation as I received on that occasion. I have under my hand a list of those old pensioners with the rate of pension they were receiving prior to the legislation of 1924 and the rate of pension they have been receiving since. As a matter of fact the present rate of pension is two and in certain cases three times as much as they were formerly receiving. For instance, one man who had a pension of $328.50 has since the legislation of 1924 been receiving, $766.50' and the others are in the same proportion. This bill deals with a special class.
In 1919, under a statute which was passed that year, the governor general in council was authorized on account of the high cost of living due to the circumstances prevailing at that time to grant a bonus, in addition to the salary, to the men of the mounted police. That bonus granted in 1919 was renewed every year until 1924. In that year, a new rate of pay was adopted which incorporated with the salary the bonus, which had been paid as an act of favour since 1919, and the new rate of pension since 1924 has been based, of course, on this new rate of pay which included the bonus. The men who had been receiving that bonus since 1919 and who retired between 1919 and 1924 were not granted a pension based on the bonus as well as the salary, and this amendment is for the purpose of counting for pension purposes the bonus which they received during those years as part of their salary. I think that is only fair.	.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Oh yes.


Ernest Lapointe: But to go back and increase again the rate of pension of the older members of the force who really have been receiving a substantial increase since 1924 does not seem justified because they never received that bonus.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The only point was that this gentleman seemed to think that a limited number of them have not received the treatment which they had expected, but I am frank in saying to the minister that the correspondence which he and I had in connection with the matter related to the measure which is now before the house. That is according to my memory; I have not my file here; I wrote the minister from Calgary. This amendment is merely to convert the bonus into salary for pension purposes.


Ernest Lapointe: Exactly.


Richard Bedford Bennett: And that is all. The limited number that I thought were affected were dealt with to some extent by the legislation of 1924.


Ernest Lapointe: Yes.


Mr. COOTE:: May I ask whether there are any pensions payable to widows of members of the force other than officers?


Ernest Lapointe: No.


George Gibson Coote: Then before the bill passes I want again to bring to the attention of the minister the case of the widows of some of the privates in the mounted police force. I know this matter was taken up with the minister, by the mounted police and others last year. May I draw to his attention again one case which will, I think, bring out very clearly the point which I have in mind, and that is the unfairness of the present pension provisions so far as the widows of privates are concerned. The widows of officers are pensioned but the widows of the non-commissioned officers and constables are not pensioned, and I fail to understand why the minister when he was bringing in this bill to amend the act did not make some provision for the widows of the non-commissioned officers and men. There are not many of them, and it would not cost the country a great deal to take care of them.
Here is the case of Mrs. Shaver. She is the widow of a Sergeant Shaver who died from pneumonia contracted through exposure on duty some years ago. The sergeant had thirty-three years service in the Northwest Mounted Police and was entitled to pension long before he died. I quote:
, Mrs. Shaver is very run down and has to go into a hospital as soon as there is a vacant bed. She has allowed herself to get run down by not taking regular meals, trying to save her money, as she has been out of work for the past four months. I was wondering if the R.N.WAI.P. Veterans were doing anything for widows of ex-members of the force. I feel that Mrs. Shaver is a very deserving case. I know you know her case as well as I do, and I am sure she will appreciate anything you can do for her towards getting her a pension. I do not know yet which hospital she will be going to.
1926	COMMONS
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
When this case was brought to the attention of the minister last year, in reply to my letter to him he sent me a copy of a letter which he had written to the hon. leader of the opposition in regard to the matter, from which I wish to quote briefly:
Unfortunately there is no provision in the Mounted Police Act authorizing the payment of any pension to the widow of a non-commissioned officer or constable of the force, who is either qualified for pension by length of service, or who was in receipt of a pension at the time of his death, and it would be necessary to introduce legislation to provide for pensions to widows of non-commissioned officers and constables, and I have had this under consideration for some time.
The widows of officers are provided for in the Police Act, and they are entitled to receive a pension equal to one-half of that to which the late husband was entitled, or was in receipt of at the time of his death. Small compassionate allowances are also granted to the fatherless children. The officers, however, contribute to the officers' pension fund an amount equal to five per cent of their salary. The non-commissioned officers and constables make no contribution to their pension.
The minister here draws attention to the fact that the officers contribute 5 per cent of their salary to a pension fund and that the non-commissioned officers and constables make no such contribution. That is the only point apparently which he raises in defence, perhaps I might say, of the policy of the department, in making a distinction between the wives of officers and the wives of private constables. It seems to me that that is too small an amount to be taken into consideration in discussing a matter of this kind. As the minister himself stated a year ago in this letter, he had this matter under consideration, and to quote his own words, "Unfortunately there is no provision in the Mounted Police Act authorizing the payment of any pension to the widow of a non-commissioned officer or constable of the force." I want to ask the minister if he will mot even at this late date amend this act so that these few widows might be pensioned. I think it is a reflection on the authorities in this country and on the country itself that the widows of these old veterans are not pensioned. There are not very many of them, and it would not be very difficult for the minister to make provision for them. As the act stands at the present time, it seems to me that there is a clear case of discrimination between the widows of officers and the widows of non-commissioned officers and constables. I am going to make a plea to the minister to amend this act so that these few widows who are still with us might be pensioned.


Ernest Lapointe: My hon. friend has himself indicated the distinction between the case

of the officers and of the men. The officers contribute a substantial part of their salary for the purpose of creating a pension fund, just as the civil servants do under the Civil Service Act, and their widows receive part of the pension the officer would have drawn. In both cases there is a contribution. But the non-commissioned officers and constables in the mounted police force make no contribution for pension. My hon. friend says that this would involve only a few. I would point out that it would involve all those who will become widows in the future. It would not be a special provision to cover just the present cases, but would be permanently in the law and would apply to all widows in the future. I wonder whether a pension system could not be devised to cover the widows of the noncommissioned officers and men. Of course, the men are not receiving a very large salary and I do not know whether they would be willing to agree to a certain deduction from their salary toward the pension fund. If we did not do it that way, we would certainly be creating a precedent. It would be a new system altogether, and it may be a case in which such a new system should be adopted. I am quite willing to study the case, but it will have to be dealt with by special legislation quite independent of this bill.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I want to support the position taken by the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Coote). It does not seem to me that the minister's answer is fully satisfactory. It may very well be that we have to create a precedent in doing this; but why not create it if it is right? It is true that in the past the private members of the force have not been contributing to such a fund. But why not have the fund established? If their pay is not sufficient at the present time to contribute to the fund, it may be necessary to raise it. If it is necessary, it would seem to indicate that in the past they had not been paid sufficient to enable them to contribute to such a fund, in which case it is only reasonable and just that the pension should be paid whether they contributed or not. The commissioned officers do not contribute the whole of the amount which they receive in pensions, but it is presumed that they get sufficiently high pay to enable them to contribute to the pension fund. If we have been paying the privates too low a salary, it is only doing them justice now to take care of their widows in a respectable sort of way. I confess I do not like to have legislation of this character brought forward again and again. We had another measure before the house this session of the same character with regard to the pen-

Royal Canadian Mounted Police
sions of non-commissioned officers' widows. It is of the same character-class legislation. It may be that the officer should have higher pay than the private, but I see no reason whatever that provision for widows of privates should not be made just as -much as provision for the widows of non-commissioned officers. It is no use saying on this particular point that it will be given consideration in the future. It seems to me that when we are making provision for widows in this bill this is the place to deal with the point raised by my hon. friend from Macleod; and, since as he says, only a few widows are involved, let us take care of them now, and in future make some provision for the payment of pensions, if that is necessary. I do not think that we should ilet this opportunity slip by and allow a certain number of this class of people to be neglected.


Mr. ROSS (Kingston):: Mr. Chairman, I
desire to support this request. I think the minister and the house will remember a few days ago we had a little discussion on a similar matter connected with the Militia Pension Act. As long as any minister introduces amendments to this act to deal with a few cases we shall have petitions from those who are not taken care of. The minister knows very well that the application for an increase of pension in regard to the mounted police has brought forth demands from the old permanent militia force officers who have retired and are living on a very small pension. Those of us who have served at all know that the non-commissioned officer and the private are the men upon whom the success of our work is often dependent, and the way we have treated them in the past does seem unfair in that no pension has been given to that class which perhaps deserves just as much as the officers for the services they have rendered. I think the reputation of the mounted police force has been built up largely by the quality of the non-commissioned officers and privates. I should like to see this case considered favourably by the minister. I have no doubt whatever that it will bring demands from other sections of the forces, but the mounted police of the west have done just as much to put Canada on the map as any other section of our forces. Undoubtedly much of the good work accomplished in the past was due to the non-commissioned officers and privates, who, stationed at solitary posts, rendered magnificent service to this Dominion.


Ernest Lapointe: Of course, the men are receiving a pension.


George Gibson Coote: I am making an appeal to the minister on behalf of the widows of the
non-commissioned officers and men who served in western Canada in the pioneer days. The work which they did for the Dominion is not fully realized by people living in eastern Canada; but the testimony in their behalf in western Canada is almost universal. I am sure that the great bulk of the police work in western Canada was done by this very class of men, the non-commissioned officers and men. I am not trying in any way to detract from the record of the commissioned officers, but upon these non-commissioned officers and privates fell the brunt of the work of facing blizzards and going out on unknown trails to keep order among the Indians in the early days. Those men endured great hardships, and their pay was very small. Indeed, it was so small that any of these men who were married could not save anything for their wives. It is certainly a reflection on this country that no provision has been made for them. It may be that the matter needs consideration as to whether the privates and non-commissioned officers now in the force should be made to contribute, in part, to a pension fund if their widows are to be pensioned. But I think we might go back and deal with the widows of these old members of the force. That is the point I would emphasize. Before this bill proceeds further, I would like to ask the minister what is the pay of non-commissioned officers and privates now and how long it has been at the present rate.


Ernest Lapointe: The present pay has been in effect since 1924.


George Gibson Coote: What is the pay for a constable or non-commissioned officer?


Ernest Lapointe: I have not got the information here.


George Gibson Coote: I am asking for the information for the reason that if we knew the pay these men received the majority of the members of the committee, would, I am sure, be convinced that it was insufficient to enable them to save very much. If we cannot get the minister to amend the act to-day, I should like him at least to assure us that the matter will be carefully considered and that he will make a statement to the house at an early date.


Ernest Lapointe: I do not think it is altogether fair to say that we have been treating the mounted police in a parsimonious way. I could show my hon. friend letters and telegrams expressing gratefulness for the treatment which has been accorded them.


An hon. MEMBER:: When?
1923	COMMONS
Royal Canadian Mounted Police


Ernest Lapointe: In 1924 and even since. As I said, when the bill came into committee the pensions were doubled and in many cases they were increased to three times their original size. The salaries have also been increased and so far as the constables or privates are concerned, they receive a pension although they do not contribute to it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Their widows do not.


Ernest Lapointe: I admit their wives do
not but the difference is that the officers are paying a contribution to the fund and that is probably the reason why their wives are receiving a portion of the pension which is granted to them. After all, there are other public servants and if this principle of granting pensions to widows of public servants is adopted, even without any contribution on the part of those public servants, it would extend far beyond what my hon. friend has in view. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) knows that there are, for instance, many widows of men who have been judges in Canada, and at the present time those widows are absolutely destitute; that applies in some cases to the widows of men who were on the bench of the highest court in the land. They are asking for pensions and those cases are worthy of sympathy. However, it is difficult to grant their demands and it is even more difficult to know where to draw the line. In the case of civil servants there is a contribution of part of their salaries for the purpose of creating a fund which will be beneficial to them on their retirement and will benefit their widows. I shall certainly lay before my colleagues all the representations which have been made in connection with this bill. As I said, it is merely for the purpose of correcting an anomaly and it is not intended to create a new condition. The purpose is to give to constables as well as to officers who are retired during a certain period the benefit of the pay which they were receiving both as to bonuses and as to salary. Of course the same applies to widows of officers who were retired during the same period and who will receive the benefits to which they are entitled because of the salary the officers were receiving at the time of their retirement.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: May I draw the attention of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) to the difference between the pensions under bills 132 and 133, the latter applying to judges. After a certain age the judges are continued on full pension for all of their salary. I do not know why one civil servant should be treated in one way and another in another. If judges of the land can retire at a certain age without contributing anything towards 
superannuation, I cannot see why they should receive full pensions at the end of their service. The civil servants have to contribute to a fund and I do not see why the discrimination should be made. I think the hard work of these old pioneers, many of whom I have known and who have kept order in Canada, should receive better treatment.


Ernest Lapointe: All this was considered
when we increased their pensions to two or three times what they had been.


George Gibson Coote: I appreciate what the minister did in 1924 and I appreciate his action in bringing in the bill. I do, however, want to protest against leaving without pension the widows of non-commissioned officers and private constables; I refer particularly to those who served in the west twenty or thirty years ago. To my mind there has been discrimination against them; no provision seems to have been made for the widows of former members of the force.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I would not take up the time of the committee with respect to this matter were it not for the fact that some questions have been raised which are of great importance. The right to pension in the absence of a statutory provision to the contrary arises by contract only, and when any man or woman becomes a servant of the state it is part of his or her contract that a pension shall be granted under certain circumstances. If they receive that pension they have no cause for complaint; it seems to me that that is fairly obvious. That is one of the reasons why men and women are sometimes willing to take smaller salaries than they otherwise would accept in order to secure a position which may enable them to have a pension at a given time. For instance, a judge may leave a lucrative practice because he knows that at the end of a certain period he will receive a fixed revenue per annum for the rest of his life. This is a fact which was stated on more than one occasion in this house by a former Minister of Justice who had been a judge. In days gone by, a man who joined the Northwest Mounted Police was informed by the terms of his contract that if he served a certain number of years, through good behaviour, he would be entitled to a fixed pension for the rest of his life; that contract has been kept. In this country, so far as the right of the widow to a pension is concerned, in all cases within my knowledge it has been predicated upon contributions being made by the husband. I know nothing of cases where pensions have been allowed in

Royal Canadian Mounted Police
the absence of such contribution. The cases to which the Minister of Justice referred are striking illustrations of that. I mentioned to the minister on one occasion the cases of three or four widows I knew; they were the widows of judges who had educated their families and who had had just sufficient money with the limited salaries that judges secured to be able to live decently and perhaps to leave nothing behind them. There was no right to a pension on the part of the widow and there was no right to a pension on the part of the constable's widow. There was no contract between the judge and the state that his widow would get a pension; neither was there a contract between the constable and the state that the constable's widow would receive a pension, so that they stood in exactly the same position. On more than one occasion I have had to consider the matter with a great deal of care because I did not wish to become a party to selecting one person as the recipient of a pension in the absence of any given principle; being unable to apply a principle to the allotment of pensions, the matter gets down to a discriminatory level. That may not be a pleasant expression to use, but it is a fact. In connection with the police force, the minister was good enough to say the other day that I had brought to his attention the cases of several who would be affected by this legislation. The principle is that prior to a certain date they receive a salary with a bonus, and during that period of time a number of them take their retiring allowances or pensions on the basis, as the statute then stood, of the salary without a bonus. Subsequently bonus has been added to the salary as a permanent yearly compensation. This bill places those who retired after that date on a par with those who retired prior to it; it affects a limited number of persons. In 1924 the whole Pension Act was changed and constables, staff sergeants and sergeants found their pensions increased from 100 to 150 per cent. That was an adjustment based upon the application of the principle that having increased the basis for pension in the contract for service between a certain number of people at a given date, it was in the interests of fair play and even justice to all that those who had served in days gone by should have their pensions adjusted on the same principle. I was directing the attention of the minister to some of those who apparently felt that they were not affected in either case, and looking at the list I cannot see the names of the men who have been bringing the matter to my attention. I am going to endeavour to obtain further informa-2419-122
tion, because obviously it cannot be dealt with in this bill in any event, and I shall write the minister accordingly.
I should say to my hon. friends from Macleod and Winnipeg North Centre that I have felt the very serious character of the principle involved in endeavouring to provide pensions for widows where no contributions have been made to the state by their deceased husbands. The Minister of Justice has brought to the attention of this committee one case, and I know of at least four or five others. How can you say that parliament shall single out widows of a particular class for special treatment without touching them all? That has been my difficulty always. I should suggest that hereafter in the contract of service for constables in the police, they be enabled to make some contribution so that in the event of their death a portion of that pension may be continued to their widows. That is the only solution I can offer to the minister and I think on reflection it will be the only solution that any of my hon. friends to my left could offer, for certainly we do not want to have the members of parliament bombarded with requests and the government on the eve of an election or at some other time, asked to yield to pressure in cases which may be very deserving and which may involve extreme hardship but which will necessitate the departure from a principle.
My hon. friend the Minister of the Interior and I were just talking about a particular case which we have had in mind for many years, and the only method by which that case could be dealt with would be to bring in a bill naming that person, who is an old pioneer. He never availed himself of his statutory rights; he never was in a position to do so because he did not serve for a sufficient number of years to secure them. Therefore I think this committee, despite the fact that it does seem to be a matter of very great hardship, should remember that when we are asked to provide money from the Dominion treasury for specific cases, where there has been no contribution by the husband or by anyone, we are opening the door to a bombardment of more cases than I should like to think of at the moment. It gives me a very great deal of difficulty in some instances because of the hardships involved, but in the other hand I think we might fairly amend our contract in the future to provide that hereafter the contributions shall be available for one purpose only, and that is in order to take care of the widow and children by way of pension in the event of the death of the husband. He is assured of his own pension in any case, and if

1930	COMMONS
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
he is unmarried and does not marry during his period of service, or if his wife predeceases him, the money may be returned at a rate of interest which may be fixed, just as insurance companies under certain forms of annuities provide for the repayment of the money paid in.
I make this statement because this is a matter which has engaged my attention on more than one occasion and which necessitated my saying to the minister last year how strongly I felt about a given case which involved great hardship and which was almost a public scandal, but I could not bring myself to depart from what I believe to be a principle even though the person concerned was the widow of one of the most eminent citizens of the country.


George Gibson Coote: I have only one further word to add. The contribution of these men in many cases was the contribution of their lives in the carrying out of their very arduous duties, and these widows have been left. In any case I do not believe there was anything in the act at that time which would have permitted these men to make a monetary contribution, so there was no way open to them to provide for a pension to their widows.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The leader of the opposition has stressed the idea of a contract. As a matter of fact it is much easier for judges and those in the higher positions of the civil service to secure favourable contracts than it is for the lower classes to do so, with the result that usually pension schemes are provided for those occupying the higher positions long before they are provided for those in subordinate occupations. I think that is true, and furthermore even when it comes to matters of relief the same thing applies. Last year estimates were presented in this house providing for comparatively large amounts in the way of compassionate allowances to the widows of those who had occupied comparatively high positions. Some of us then had to take the position that it was not fair to grant these allowances to those people without granting it to these others. If any deviation is to be made from this general idea it does seem to me that some provision should be made for the widows of those who, in their lifetime, were not in a position to set aside amounts to provide for their dependents.


[Stage Direction]
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.
IMr. Bennett.]

[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES STEWART (Minister of the Interior) moved the second reading of Bill No. 135, respecting national parks.
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
On section 1-Short title.
Charles A. Stewart: Mr. Chairman, when the bill was introduced the other day I promised to make a short statement with respect to it, and I shall confine myself to the new provisions of the bill. This bill changes the name of- the Rocky Mountain park to Banff park; it has to do with the boundaries of the parks mentioned in the schedule and provides that in future all parks will be known as national parks of Canada. Formerly additions could be made to parks, or new parks created, by order in council. This will not be possible after the passing of this act; all parks and additions to parks will have to be created by act of parliament. The same will apply to deletions from the parks. Perhaps the most important provision of the new bill is that which takes away from the control of the department and the minister the right to grant leases for commercial purposes. Those will have to be secured by the consent of parliament. The other sections provide for regulations for the purpose of regulating and operating the parks under the control of the Department of the Interior.
Section 11 deals with historic sites. Very frequently small areas of ground are set apart for the purpose of commemorating some national, historical event, and these areas will be under the control of a board appointed for this purpose which decides where the monuments or landmarks shall be set up, and *what inscriptions shall be placed thereon for the purpose of preserving them from a historical standpoint.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: The withdrawal of certain areas from the parks for commercial purposes, say for hydro-electric purposes, would have to be by a special act of parliament?


Charles A. Stewart: The addition to as well as the deletion from any park will be by an act of parliament.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 2 agreed to.
On section 3-Existing parks.
George Gibson Coote: What are the locations of
the parks mentioned in the second paragraph of this section?

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Charles A. Stewart: Fort Howe
comprises the old Fort Howe military grounds in the city of St. John, N.B. Arrangements have been completed for turning this area over to the city to be administered as a civic park. Vidals Point park is a small recreational area in the province of Saskatchewan, located, I think, just south of Swift Current. This park, as well as Menissawok park, was set aside for the purpose of providing additional grounds for-


George Gibson Coote: Local parks?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes. They
are not now required and are being struck off the list of national parks.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 4-Parks to be public possessions.
George Gibson Coote: Will the minister explain
the meaning of the words at the end of the section which are underlined, reading as follows:
so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.


Charles A. Stewart: With the
exception of improvements in the building of roads, the reservation of ground for the purpose of hotels and the construction of wardens' cabins and that sort of thing necessary to carry on the work of the park officials, the idea is to leave the park and the territory included in the park just as nature has left it so that it may be passed on to future generations. Perhaps the explanation is somewhat superfluous, but that is the meaning intended.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Mr. Chairman, this bill
has been permitted to go into committee so that it can be discussed and to enable the minister to have the opportunity of replying to questions. I protest most vigorously against this bill. Nothing is better calculated to increase the life of autocratic powers than such a bill. This house knows perfectly well that what has been done in the case of the resources bills is something which every student of constitutional matters must be opposed to, but this government has stated that they were to be passed willy-nilly and the provinces, not being able to obtain any other bargain, were forced to take what was offered. As far as the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are concerned, those governments would not have accepted, but it was either that or the imperilling of the receipt of our resources. In the province of Alberta there is a park at Banff, one at Jasper and one at Waterton 2419-122J
lakes, and in each case there is a part oi Canada which is not subject to the provincial jurisdiction. That could not happen in the eastern provinces, as the hon. gentleman knows. Section 7 reads:
The governor in council may, from time to time as he deems expedient, make regulations
for,-
That section confers upon the governor in council a legislative jurisdiction similar to that conferred on the provinces by section 92 of the British North America Act. In other words, these parks are to be governed from Ottawa which is 3,000 miles away. A gentleman will sit here and will have an order in council passed by the governor general which will deal with every detail of life of thousands of people. To think of such things being possible in this day I Sir Oliver Mowat thought that he had ended such things, as far as Ontario was concerned. A glance at the succeeding pages of the bill will show the intolerable character of the autocratic power which will be exercised. Do hon. members from the other provinces realize what that means? People went to these areas before the present conditions obtained, but they are not to be permitted to do any act in the ordinary incidence of life without receiving permission. How would the minister like to live under such conditions? How would the members of this house like to be under such restrictions? It is conducive to favouritism and political despotism to a point just short of iniquitous. The population in these parks is enthralled by the terrorism of an official at Ottawa, and they have no recourse whatever. They are dragged up before a stipendiary magistrate, named and nominated by the government, who looks upon himself as an official. There are police officials surrounding him and watching him to see what happens. Then follow the administrative officers, such as the superintendents, who are continually spying out every corner of the park. Consider what one poor resident did at Banff. He painted on a little piece of board a pointing finger with the name of his hotel. Permission had been obtained from the owner of the property upon which he had placed the sign, but the officials pounced upon him and he was forced to take it down. Another man advertised a particular brand of gasoline from his roof, but down it had to come. Then in another place you will find those who have a pull with the government being permitted to do these things. These things are going on and they bring discredit upon this country.
The government is undertaking to carry on this work by regulations made at Ottawa by the governor in council. This is against all
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modern tendencies. Indeed in England the Lord Chancellor appointed a commission to investigate this sort of thing and put a stop to it. The Lord Chief Justice calls regulations of this character the new despotism. In this case you have a cabinet depending entirely upon a western representative because, there being no Minister of the Interior now, I suppose the Department of Indian Affairs will be charged with the responsibility of saying how people living in the parks will be treated. Does the minister think this is fair or right or just?
The way in which this is being palmed off on the public is the amusing part. The permanent officials have added to section 4 these words:
So as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
This is taken up by the newspapers and propaganda is circulated amongst the people stating that there is to be no commercializing of the parks. The minister himself, after the outcry in parliament against commercializing the parks, visited Spray lakes. He climbed one mountain and I think it took him half a day to go up on horseback. He saw they were going to build a dam at a lake mentioned to make the water available for power. There is a lake called lake Minnewanka with some trees about it, and the government obtains some power there. A dam was put there once by a company with which I was at one time associated. The water in this lake has been raised and it should be raised still higher in order to supply electric current to the prairies when the water in the winter is very low. Oh no, we are to leave unimpaired for future generations the glorious beauties of lake Minnewanka! Is that the minister's conception of the matter? The government themselves have built a power plant there and they have not left it unimpaired for future generations. Having done that, they have built roads; they have not left the country in a state of nature. The trails of the Indians in the early days are not the trails now. Instead of that we have excellent roads.


Ernest Lapointe: Roads are quite useful, are they not?


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, but the clause reads:
So as to leave "the parks" unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
Under those words there would be no roads, no villages, no settlements, so that the people might journey into wilderness and gaze upon the beauties of nature, although the government know there are great hotels where hun-

dreds of thousands of people are accommodated during the year and where, if you will, a thousand people can be accommodated on a single night. The government know that the people are living there and that they have made their homes there for generations. These people are subject to this despotism. I would like to see the Minister of Justice have to live under it for ten days and then hear him talk about the glories of this modern free liberalism that is put upon the people. It is substituting for the legislature of Alberta the governor in council.
It is idle further to point out what this means with respect to t'he parks. The government say: We are going to put it through and no one apparently cares very much about it. Let me come now to the more important point, the question of administration. This is Dominion property which is going to be administered as though it were an island in the middle of a province belonging to a foreign power. That is what it means. Is that right or fair or just? If the government were to try this in Ontario they would see how far they would get away with it.
The next point is this. For some time there has been a citizens' council at Banff which came into being by the action of the department itself. The department said: We welcome the idea of an elected citizens' committee at Banff for the purpose of aiding in the administration of the park. Let me point out how much aid they are. They make recommendations and so long as the latter are in accordance with the ideas of the government officials, all is well. But if the recommendations they make are at variance with the idea of the government, then they are all wrong, and never should have existed. Is such a provision of any value? I submit it is not and before this bill is finally put through I propose to offer an amendment-and I have been working out how it could be introduced -to provide that in those parks where the population exceeds 100 or some other figure that may be agreed upon, the council shall have some powers of municipal government. As the situation exists at present, a man with a family is without freedom in the community. I repeat this is substituting for the legislature at Edmonton or the capital of one of the provinces the governor in council and the officials reflect that attitude of mind that is always expressed in the exercise of power that flows from a governor in council-for the moment I am not talking about partyism [DOT]r politics-and it reflects the attitude of mind of the enacting power when it is the

National Parks
governor in council. In other words despotism breeds despotism. Democracy on the other hand breeds liberty and freedom. In this case you have no freedom and no liberty because democratic institutions are denied in the parks and the government substitutes for them the tyrannies and despotism of control by governor in council.
Of course it is impossible for one voice in the wilderness to induce the members of the house to realize how serious the problem is and I know in these days we pay little attention to these matters, although in days gone by the greatest statesmen our country produced made such matters the bases upon which very long and serious campaigns were carried on in order that individuals might enjoy a measure of freedom that is now being taken from them by this legislation. I am doing my duty in pointing this out to the house. It is impossible for me to hope for any redress being given by the government because they denied it to the provinces when the resources bills were being passed. But I say that some day some government may have to repeal this bill, as some day some government will have to amend the resources bills, for you never can create within the boundaries of a province an area that is not subject to provincial control and substitute for that the control, not of the parliament of Canada alone, but of a governor in council, that may make laws which touch the life, freedom, liberty and well-being of every man and woman who lives in that area and with respect to the making of which they have no power or control. The basis of our whole constitution has been the growth of local institutions where the people can control their local affairs, elect their local officials. From that have grown up the provinces and from the provinces the Dominion. Now we say the central authority at Ottawa shall control by regulation the lives of all these people. I ask every thoughtful member of the house to read clause 7 and the regulations that are to be made thereunder and then ask himself how he would like to live with his family under such conditions. It is the negation of every principle that has been developed in the last fifty years of government. It is substituting autocracy for democracy and tyranny for freedom and it does this in the name of leaving unimpaired this great trust that we have and that we call national parks. I can only protest against this and offer suggestions whereby these councils which came into being under a former administration should at least have the right to have their recommendations considered and acted upon if the majority
of the people so desire, as would be their undoubted right if they lived within a municipal area such as this is in name if not in fact.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Does my hon. friend
mean to imply that the inhabitants have no right to elect their own trustees or school teachers?


Richard Bedford Bennett: Not a bit. It is all
regulated and controlled from Ottawa by order in council.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend is wrong. My hon. friend from East Calgary was speaking of schools.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Schools? Oh yes, they
have schools, but that is done by arrangement.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Do they have their own
trustees?


Richard Bedford Bennett: They have power, but
that is only done by arrangement.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Have they not the right to do it?


Richard Bedford Bennett: Not a right in the world.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend is wrong.


Richard Bedford Bennett: They have no right, for
the legislation of the province of Alberta under the Resources Act which we passed the other day is made subject to the legislation of this parliament, and it is perfectly clear that this parliament through the provisions of that statute, if it so desired, could establish any sort of institution it liked.


Mr. CANNON:: That is, the provincial
laws apply unless excluded by Dominion legislation.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, and with respect to taxation itself.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon. friend is wrong.


Richard Bedford Bennett: What about? I took the trouble the other day to inquire.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend is speaking of two different things. Many years ago provincial school districts were set up in Banff and in Jasper park. They are in existence still and will remain in existence until action might be taken by this parliament. There is no power given to the governor in council to change a situation of that kind. If the educational institutions were to be interfered with the Dominion parliament
National Parks

itself would be the only body that would interfere. I agree with my hon. friend that under the provisions of the act parliament would have that power. That would have to be done here.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Exactly. That is what I was saying. My hon. friend from East Calgary wanted to know whether or not they had it as a right or as a privilege, and as it stands now I say that this parliament has jurisdiction. That is the point I am making clear, that jurisdiction would have to be exercised by this parliament.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: By parliament or by the governor in council?


Richard Bedford Bennett: By parliament or by delegation to the governor in council. That is exactly what we are doing here.


Charles A. Stewart: I want to
make it clear that you could not by order in council or by regulations under an order in council deny or cancel the educational rights enjoyed by those citizens.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The hon. gentleman is
not a lawyer, but he will follow this. The
statute says:
By act of parliament of Canada or by any regulation or power authorized by parliament.
In other words, parliament may act directly or indirectly. In this instance parliament is acting indirectly by section 7.


Charles A. Stewart: Section 7
specifies by the governor in council.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But it could do it directly or indirectly. For instance, it deals directly with the appointment of stipendiary magistrates in subsection 4 of section 5. That is entirely new, because the old power has been swept away. As it stood before, the lieutenant-governor at Edmonton appointed the magistrate and the Dominion government paid him.


Charles A. Stewart: For a short period.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, and now the Minister of Justice is to appoint by commission one or more stipendiary magistrates within the park. In other words, the whole administration of justice in any other part of Alberta rests with the provincial authorities, but so far as the parks are concerned, the administration of justice is to be handed over to federal control through its appointees. Subsection 6 of section 5 provides that the governor in council, not

the province, may appoint justices of the peace. Section 6 says:
Lands within the parks shall not be disposed of or be located or settled upon, and no person shall use or occupy any part of such lands, except under the authority of this act or of regulations made hereunder.
That is, no one may get a parcel of land in Banff except under this statute. This is dealing indirectly. That is, there can be no population in this area, no commercial activities. This may all be desirable, but I point out that during the last twenty-five or thirty years very considerable settlements have grown up in these areas and the government have received substantial sums of money for rentals, leases and matters of that kind.
Then you will observe that subsection 3 of section 6 provides:
No lands within a park, other than those specified in subsection 2 hereof, shall be patented or conveyed in fee.
And yet there are enormous areas in the Banff national park which have been patented -to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, for one; to the Canadian Anthracite Coal Company, for two; the vast coal lands belonging to a great American company, for three; vast timber areas, for four; and leases within the park that I know of, for five. It is only fair to point out that the townsite of Jasper and the roundhouse and all the terminal facilities of the Canadian National are within Jasper park. I do not know to what extent lots have been sold for I have not inquired, but the whole system of bungalow camps maintained by the Canadian National is within that park. His permanent officials prepared and offered him this bill. He is told that it is all right and he brings it into this house. But look at the changes it makes. Look for instance at paragraph (h) of section 7:
the granting of yearly permits for-
(i)	the grazing of horses and cattle.
and so forth. All that is controlled from Ottawa. It goes on:
(ii)	the removal of sand, stone and gravel for constructional purposes within a park.


Charles A. Stewart: The same provisions were in the old act. There has been no change since 1913. These provisions are taken from the old act.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Oh yes, but all the words underlined are new. Paragraph (h) also deals with:
(iv) the use in the parks of water for domestic or railway water supply purposes.

National Parks
That is the water supply for your family. All that is regulated down here. Paragraph (h) also deals with:
(<v) the use and disposal of mineral waters for recreational and therapeutic purposes.
Paragraph (i) deals with:
the establishment, operation, maintenance and administration by the Department of the Interior of public works, and utility services and the use of same within the parks.
and so forth. Paragraph (k) prescribes:
the conditions under which any building, sign, placard, advertisement or other structure may be erected, the design and location of any such structure and the materials of which it may be constructed; the general maintenance and improvement of properties in the parks that have been leased; the defining of zones for residential buildings, business buildings or areas in which only buildings of fire proof or fire resisting construction may be erected;
(1) controlling trades, traffic, business, amusements, sports, occupations and other activities.
You cannot have a game of baseball unless Mr. Harkin says so, and he is in Ottawa three thousand miles away. Do you want to go out and do a little fishing? Oh no.


Mr. IRVINE:: Get Mr. Harkin on the
radio.


Richard Bedford Bennett: No, you cannot have a radio within the park unless they so decree. I ask if anyone thinks that is fair. I ask the Solicitor General how he would like to live in the park under those circumstances?


Charles A. Stewart: He would be delighted.


Richard Bedford Bennett: He would, so far as the climate is concerned, and so far as those unfettered conditions of nature are concerned, but when it gets down to the works of man, I wonder how he would like it. A change in the laws may be made here at Ottawa. It is printed in the Gazette, but how do the people there know about it? Surely we should have fifteen or thirty days' notice of any changes. I know men who have been charged with offences because of not knowing of the changes made. I would not take up the time of this committee if I did no.t feel so strongly about this. The minister knows the present conditions there; he knows the friction between his department and the citizens' council. I had a paper sent to me the other day which I read. They have definite views. The minister has other views because his officials here say so. He does his best to adjust the differences. But local rule, home rule, no sir! In the end these people are going to decide. I wonder if this committee realizes that last summer lessees who had been paying
rentals for years for their several pieces of land wanted to put up a few canvas tents for the purpose of housing themselves and their guests during the summer. Were they allowed to do so? Oh no. The picture was not good enough. It was not any interference with the state of nature that was objected to. No, it was the condition under which the tents were to be put up. I think this is an intolerable state of affairs. Once more I say I have no hope of being able to arouse sufficient interest in it here so that the house will take a strong stand against it, but I do not believe that in any country in the world enjoying representative institutions under the federal system would you be able to pass section 7. Imagine what it means.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Section 8 is worse.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Of course, as my hon.
friend says, it is worse; but 7 is more comprehensive in its character.


Charles A. Stewart: This is not the first occasion on which my hon. friend has taken exception to the regulations in vogue in the national parks, but he fails to inform the house that if we are to have national parks, and if they are to be preserved for the purposes pointed out in section 4, we must of necessity have some authority to enforce the regulations, or very soon there will be nothing to leave to future generations. If my hon. friend can work out a scheme by which he can have provincial authority in control of these park areas, and have this parliament vote large sums of money annually for the purpose of beautification and the care and maintenance of these parks, and put the minister and the park officials under the control of the provincial governments, then he will have accomplished a task that no one else has been able to work out.


Richard Bedford Bennett: If he gets a chance he
will do it next year.


Henry Herbert Stevens: May I ask the minister a question at that point for the purpose of elucidation? I am one of those who are exceedingly anxious to do everything that is humanly possible to preserve our national parks for the people. That is the foundation of my approach to this question. As an illustration and basis for my question let me take Stanley park at Vancouver. It is a large area for a city park, I think 900 acres. It is leased by the Dominion government to the city of Vancouver. The city administers it subject to all the laws of the province. I appreciate the difficulty with respect to large areas.
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Charles A. Stewart: No, that
is not a factor at all.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Then let us leave that out of the question. Why could not a department of the government administer a park area within a province under the laws of the province, just the same as the city of Vancouver administers Stanley park under the laws of the province?


Charles A. Stewart: But my hon. friend forgets that there is no conflict of jurisdiction at all. The city of Vancouver has leased that area, known as Stanley park; it operates and controls everything within the park, and of course administers it under provincial laws. Now, my hon. friend must realize that if the government of Canada were providing the funds to take care of Stanley park it would be a vastly different situation.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The minister misses the
point of my question. The city of Vancouver administers Stanley park and conforms with all provincial laws. The city finds no difficulty in administering the patk under provincial jurisdiction. Why could not the commissioner of parks-we will get away from the parliament of Canada-why could not the commissioner of parks, being the lessee, we will say, of Banff park, administer that park under the laws of Alberta, just as Stanley park is administered by the city of Vancouver under the laws of British Columbia?


Charles A. Stewart: They do as a matter of fact. But what my hon. friend is complaining about is that when it comes to a question that may be a very vital one, and when the whole administration is federal and always has been, we should be governed by provincial jurisdiction. May I say in passing that we are making no drastic changes in this bill. We have embodied in the Forests and Parks Act of 1913, all the provisions incorporated in the regulations that are to be put in force by order in council. But let me deal with the town of Banff, with respect to the position of which my hon. friend is taking such strong exception. We would have no difficulty in the world, nor would any question arise, were it not for the municipalities created in the park area.


Richard Bedford Bennett: They are not municipalities.


Charles A. Stewart: They are
municipalities so far as their population and the necessities of that population are concerned.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But they are not allowed to organize as municipalities.


Charles A. Stewart: That is true; nor do I think they are making any serious complaint about that, for the very good reason that they have no financial responsibilities other than to pay taxes for the carrying on of their schools, which they control the same as any other school district in the province of Alberta. They will continue to control their schools, which are under provincial inspection and control. Does not that answer my hon. friend's objection?


Richard Bedford Bennett: No. They might have
that power taken away from them by this parliament at any time. That is not so as to any other school district in Alberta.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, but in order to do so there would surely have to be some very good reasons presented to this parliament before it would interfere in the jurisdiction of the province over education.


Mr. HEAPS:: It would be disallowance.


Charles A. Stewart: Practically.
I cannot conceive of any parliament doing anything of the kind. Moreover, we have to provide in those parks for the necessary control in order to have some uniformity. For example, we have to provide that the same system of taxation shall apply to the citizens of Banff as will apply in Yoho and Glacier parks in British Columbia, because they are contiguous and the same class of citizens will be affected.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But the town of Golden and the city of Calgary have not necessarily the same system of taxation, one being in British Columbia and the other in Alberta.


Charles A. Stewart: But I am
speaking of provincial taxation. British Columbia has income tax, and Alberta has none. But there is no particular objection to the taxation applied. I merely mention it as an example of the difficulties encountered. May I say to my hon. friend that in the United States exactly similar conditions prevail; their parks are national playgrounds; and surely the United States are democratic enough. There is no intention, at least so far as I am concerned, of interfering with provincial laws. As a matter of fact, if we appoint the magistrates-and my hon. friend has not mentioned it, but we take authority to appoint constables as well-their jurisdiction to act is in conformity with the provincial laws, because clearly we are going to pass none.

National Parks


Richard Bedford Bennett: No, my friend is wrong
there.


Charles A. Stewart: With the
exception of regulations.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Exactly.


Charles A. Stewart: These regulations deal very largely with the natural resources of the park; in very few instances do they touch the individual. In the town of Banff there is a population of 2,500 people, but not one single individual owns the land on which he is living; he has it on a long term lease.
Mr. ADiSHEAD:	He owns the improvements.


Charles A. Stewart: I am coming to that. I want to get this clear in the minds of hon. members. He leases his land. Could he go to the city of Calgary or the town of Drumheller or anywhere else and put up any kind of structure? All we ask is that reasonable precaution be taken that decent and seemly structures are erected on the property. There is no city in Canada which would allow the indiscriminate erection of tents. There are hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to Banff every year; it is a beautiful little town and it has been made beautiful at the expense of the Canadian government. That government has installed a waterworks system and an electric light system; and they maintain these two systems, as well as the streets of Banff, at no expense to the citizens.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The citizens of Banff pay for the electric power and sewers supplied by the government.


Charles A. Stewart: I say they are supplied at no expense to the citizens of Banff. My hon. friend would not suggest that they should get electricity or water free of charge.


Richard Bedford Bennett: They pay for it.


Charles A. Stewart: I wish to point out that these improvements have all been provided by the government of Canada. As far as I am concerned I can say that certainly the work was all performed before I became a minister of this government.


Richard Bedford Bennett: These improvements were provided before that time.


Charles A. Stewart: They pay a certain rate for the water they use and they pay for their electric lights, but I say to my hon. friend that so far as improvements are concerned I have no doubt he will agree that
they are unilike most municipalities. The citizens pay very little for their improvements. Before my appointment as a minister of this government it was deemed wise to give the local citizens some control in the running of their community. They were not created a municipality because it was not deemed wise to create a municipality within the boundaries of the park. If these municipalities grow to such an extent that they are able to pay for an administration of this kind, which is not beyond the realm of possibility, and if their growth does not interfere with the plans of the park, they might very well be given municipal government, and that area might be taken out of the park and returned to the province. I do not believe that conflict arises between the towns of Banff or Jasper and this government any oftener than difficulties of a like nature arise in any municipality controlled by a municipal government.


Richard Bedford Bennett: In one case the residents of the municipality are in a position to displace their officials, while in the other case, because of complaints, the citizens are subjected to increased tyranny. That is the whole story.


Charles A. Stewart: I would not say that the regulations amount to tyranny. The citizens as well as the visitors like to see wild life right in the streets of these towns, and it is desirable that it should be so.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Wild life?


Charles A. Stewart: Sometimes we have difficulty with citizens who are determined to keep dogs. On one occasion a lady appealed to my hon. friend because she had been ordered to tie up her dog.


Richard Bedford Bennett: One was shot the other day.


Charles A. Stewart: She was ordered to tie up the dog because it was chasing the wild animals in the park.


Richard Bedford Bennett: They were afraid the elk might kick the dog.


Charles A. Stewart: If the
citizens want dogs they certainly cannot expect to have the wild animal life. If the citizens of Banff and the citizens of Jasper, which latter town is unfortunately a railway centre, were desirous of taking upon themselves the responsibility of running their respective towns and organizing themselves into municipalities, I for one should not object Much as I would regret to have a municipality of that sort in the centre of a park area-be-
National Parks

cause it could not remain outside-I frankly confess we have no difficulty; no friction arises anywhere through the carrying out of the regulations which provide for the preservation of the wild life in the parks. On the other hand I want to say most emphatically that a national park could not be controlled by a provincial government; that is unthinkable and it could not possibly be done. The control of a national park must rest with the federal authorities, if they are to be responsible for the preservation and maintenance of these park areas. There always will be friction in the superintendence of these areas, but in the main we get along fairly well. There are persons in the park who raise complaints about restrictions which are imposed upon them but if they were to go into another municipality, even one of a most democratic nature, they would have to conform to the by-laws of that municipality. So far as these regulations are concerned-and I think my hon. friend will bear me out-there has been very little complaint from the citizens' committee or from anybody else. There have been complaints however from some particular individuals who want to use the park for their own personal benefit.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It is not quite as bad as that.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon. friend will agree with that.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Not quite.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon. friend will also agree that there must be some control over the class of buildings erected, and there must be control over the manner in which the town is governed. I am sure we worked quite amicably with the citizens' committees which are elected from time to time to represent the citizens.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I do not agree entirely with the minister when he says that there is difficulty with the bodies who are interested in the working of the regulations. I do say however that the complaint is not simply that there is friction, because anybody who is familiar with any municipality knows that there are always complaints against the administration of cities by aldermen and mayors. In one case however the citizens are in a position to go to the local city hall and adjust their grievances, while in the city of Banff they are told that the matter must be referred to Ottawa. It is referred to the superintendent of parks at Ottawa and his reply is that he must refer the complaint to the minister. The minister then takes his time in righting the grievance and the result is that there is a fMr. C. A. Stewart.]
considerable lapse of time before the grievance can foe adjusted. I wish to make it clear to the minister that I sympathize with him in certain phases of the situation because I realize that it is difficult to administer a property situated so far away. My complaint however is that there is no recognition of the fact that local control is the only way in which successful municipal administration can be handled.
I wish to refer to section 8 of the bill, to which my hon. friend from Vancouver Centre (Mr. Stevens) referred. In subsection 2 (b) of section 8 I find the expression:
.... without warrant or other legal process at any time enter and search ....
And so on. Under this any settler or any person has power under the provisions of this act or regulation to enter and search any building. Take the case of constables who in some cases delight in the exercise of their power; we know it to be a fact that in places of about 2,500 population where one political group has the patronage of the present government-and I wish my hon. friends opposite to understand that is merely an illustration and may or may not be so-everyone kowtows to the constable. Why is that so? Because he has the ear of the government. The result is that the constable, without a warrant, may make an arrest for a breach of section 8. The regulations are very powerful; a person may do something that is legal to-day, but in view of the fact that a regulation had been passed in Ottawa the day before he is now guilty of an offence. I intend to move now, as I did in the other case, that fifteen or twenty days' notice be given by publication before those regulations can become effective. I refer to any regulations in addition to the ones which now prevail, because we are ratifying and confirming the existing regulations and giving power to grant new ones. It is the theory of the bill that you can administer municipal institutions three thousand miles away, with a citizens' committee which cannot get its grievances redressed unless reference is made to Ottawa. That is the trouble, and when the minister says efforts are being made to remove friction I think he is quite right. I know he is desirous of removing friction, but that cannot be done by refusing to deal with the citizens' committee which has a limited power. When the community goes to the citizens' committee that committee, which unfortunately is without power, can only go to the park officials, who can only transmit the request to Ottawa, where it is dealt with and the decision transmitted back. It was that very complaint which

National Parks
brought about responsible government in the colonies. England was trying to administer Canada from Downing street, and as conditions exist Downing street was distant from some parts of the empire just about as far as Banff and some of these parks are distant from Ottawa. The home government sent out regulations and said to the colonial governors, "Enforce them." Here we send out regulations to Banff and other places and tell our officials to enforce them. When the people complained it led in this country to something close to civil war.


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend is wrong; the citizens' committee is always informed of the regulations.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is what the minister intends to do, but unfortunately it does not always happen. Look at the letter which was written to the minister by the citizens' committee and which is published in the Crag and Canyon.


Charles A. Stewart: I have not received it yet.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I suppose the minister has so many things to do, with the appointment of returning officers and so on, that he finds it difficult to deal with matters such as this, but the letter was published in the Crag and Canyon. I have it on my desk and I will hand it to the minister.


Charles A. Stewart: There are a great many things in the Crag and Canyon which I do not get.


Richard Bedford Bennett: This letter was sent to
the minister and it has been printed also in the Crag and Canyon so that the public might understand the steps taken by the citizens' committee in their endeavour to establish municipal institutions. I regret taking up so much of the time of the committee, because I am really powerless in the matter, but I cannot help thinking that it is my duty to direct attention to the matter, and I believe a remedy can be found. If I had the power I would do it, and I have suggested a remedy to the minister You cannot govern people from Ottawa with respect to local, domestic and municipal matters. There must be a measure of freedom, that authority, coordinated with the federal authority, would bring about peace and happiness as compared with the conditions under which these people now live. Once more I ask the Solicitor General how he would like to live under regulations imposed by irresponsible public authority.


Lucien Cannon: So long as there was no
change in the minister I would be satisfied.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I think that answer aptly explains the whole situation. So long as the citizens bask in the favour of the minister all is well.


Charles A. Stewart: Banff has
grown very rapidly, as my hon. friend knows, and in reply to his reference to the present administration I may say that I did not hear very much complaint about the administration by the former government. I have had no complaints nor have I heard the citizens complaining very much about the administration of the present government. I do not think the question of who is administering the parks has very much to do with it; it is a matter of principle as to how you are to carry on these recreational grounds known as national parks. If you are going to carry them on under provincial control the best thing for the federal government to do would be to step out of the picture altogether and let the provinces carry on the parks. Then we would have no difficulty, but no one wants to do that. I do not know of any citizen of this country who is interested in the preservation of these parks who wants them to be controlled by the provinces.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The people of Alberta
would like it; Mr. Brownlee and Mr. Anderson both have requested it.


Charles A. Stewart: No; Mr. Brownlee did not ask to have control of the parks; his request was that he be given control of the minerals within the parks.


Richard Bedford Bennett: And to bring them under provincial laws.


Charles A. Stewart: He wanted
control of the mineral development within the parks. We have said that these areas, so far as may be humanly possible, shall be preserved against commercial exploitation. My hon. friend has not yet had the administration of the parks.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, I administered them for three months.


Charles A. Stewart: (Edmonton):	You did
not have very much trouble during those three months.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I had a great deal of
trouble.


Charles A. Stewart: You did not have many very serious matters to disturb you. My hon. friend is making a mountain out of a molehill. These communities will be
National Parks

under provincial laws, administered it is true by the federal authorities. If the citizens of these two municipalities are desirous of forming a municipal government and accepting all the responsibilities which will arise under it there will be only one thing to do. We will have to come to parliament and set aside the area on which they are established. That is all that could be done, because this government has no laws under which they could operate. We should have to pass a code and make a Dominion law for the purposes of administration. We are not proposing to do that.


Richard Bedford Bennett: You are doing it by regulation.


Charles A. Stewart: But the law under which it will be administered will be the provincial law except that we have the power to supersede it if we so desire.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The whole administration is federal, and the administration is by regulation, not by provincial law. My hon. friend has said that these towns are growing and that the lands are leased. He is quite right, but there are properties at Banff, in addition to the Canadian Pacific Railway hotel, which are worth $100,000. When the late governor died I remember seeing the appraisal of his estate and the property at Banff was listed at something over $100,000. The government has been selling lots under twenty-one year leases, which can be renewed for a further period of twenty-one years making forty-two years in all. If you lay out a townsite and sell lots to people I think you must realize you are not maintaining a park in its natural condition but are assuming certain responsibilities which otherwise would not arise. The minister must not take my observations as being directed against him, although I think some of the administration, owing to political circumstances over which perhaps he has no control, has been very difficult.


Charles A. Stewart: I would not raise that question, if I were you.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I am raising it, and I say there is a certain political control exercised there by a gentleman who says he has the patronage, and men can only work in the park if they have his approval. That park belongs to the people of Canada, not to that gentleman or to this government. The money is not provided by that gentleman or this government, but by the people of Canada. We might as well understand that thoroughly.


Lucien Cannon: But there has to be some local control.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is the point, and there is none. The minister knows I am objecting to the general principle of administration by regulations that give no opportunity or scope for local control.


Charles A. Stewart: With respect to the individual my hon. friend has mentioned, I do not know who he is.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Now, the minister knows the Brewsters. Who has the patronage there?


Charles A. Stewart: No one has it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The Brewsters have exercised it since 1925.


Charles A. Stewart: Not as far as I know.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Does the minister say not as far as he knows?


Charles A. Stewart: Long before my time that control was exercised by the party which my hon. friend represents. Those gentlemen are still there, and are still in control, and they hire the men who are on the road there.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The Brewsters?


Charles A. Stewart: When my
hon. friend makes an assertion of that kind it might just as well be definitely understood that I have not removed him. The road foreman in the Banff park, Mr. McCauley, was an appointee of the Conservative party and he exercises all control.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is not so.


Mr. VALLANCE:: Yes, it is.


Richard Bedford Bennett: What does the hon. member know about it? There is no evidence of that.


Charles A. Stewart: I have not sought to remove that man. I say here and now that he is a good road foreman, but he is sjtill a Conservative and he employs Conservative help when he can. The same thing applies to the chief warden.


Richard Bedford Bennett: To whom?


Charles A. Stewart: To the chief warden, Mr. Warren. My hon. friend knows that he is a well-known Conservative.


Mr. POULIOT:: There is big game in the park.

National Parks


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend has made an assertion that the Brewsters control the park; I state most emphatically that they do not.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I said that they controlled the patronage.


Charles A. Stewart: They do not.


Richard Bedford Bennett: While the hon. gentleman was talking about the road foreman, I was talking about the Brewsters. The returning officer was appointed for West Oalgary on the recommendation of the minister. He was sent up to do customs work at Banff last summer; his principal business being to find out how the people were induced to vote at the next elections. I know the committee that sent him up. The name of the man in charge is Mr. Young, who is the head of the Liberal organization in Calgary. The road foreman has been there not only under this administration but previous administrations, and is retained because of his fitness for the job. These people who control the patronage have endeavoured to direct the lives of men and women with respect to the work they do. It is a similar condition to what obtained regarding the canal here in Ottawa, when men were forced to join the Liberal association in order to obtain a job. I know of men who have had to join the Liberal association in Banff in order to obtain work, and I protest against that practice.


An hon. MEMBER:: It is not worth it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I agree with that remark. After all, there is such a thing as individual liberty and rights to be granted to even poor workingmen. Such liberty as we enjoy has been obtained through fighting for it. This condition is brought about by the fact that local matters are not under local control. If a man wants a position he has to kowtow to these people. The same conditions obtain in the other parks. I have visited Jasper park and find it the same. Local control would solve this problem. If such a situation existed in a municipality like Oalgary or Edmonton, the town council and mayor, being amenable to the voices of the citizens, would endeavour to cure and remedy it, but that cannot be done in this instance. The hon. minister knows very well that there was patronage in Banff park long before he was minister.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, I know a great deal about that.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I stated quite frankly
that that was so. This distant control is
fraught with grave disaster, and in the past it has caused considerable trouble; in some instances the results have been little short of scandalous. I believe this road foreman was in the park shortly after I went to western Canada. He knows more about those roads than anybody else in that country, and that is the only reason he has not been removed. It would cause a row if he were, and therefore they have not tried to do it.


Jean-François Pouliot: If it is a fact that the principal business of that man was to find out how the people were induced to vote, I am very much amused to see that the leader of the opposition is dissatisfied with his report.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Mr. Chairman, apropos of what has been said already, I would call to the attention of the hon. minister a situation which I think should receive some consideration. Section 5 states:
Every park warden and any other park officer designated by the minister shall have all the powers of a police constable.
Under the system of administration there are justices of the peace, who are really officers of the park administration; there are constables, or people with the power of constables, who may be wardens or employees or anyone who might be named as having that power. In order to realize the extent of this section, it is necessary to turn to section 8. The old section of the act reads as follows:
Any person violating any provision of this act or any regulation made hereunder shall, in addition to any civil liability thereby incurred, be liable on summary conviction to a penalty of not more than five hundred dollars, and in default of immediate payment of such penalty and of the costs of prosecution, such person may be imprisoned with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding six months.
The new section reads as follows:
Any constable or any person having the powers of a constable under the provisions of this act or regulations hereunder may,

(a)	on view, arrest any person

I would direct the attention of the Solicitor General (Mr. Cannon) to this section:
-found committing an offence against this act or regulations hereunder or found committing within a park any unlawful act;
(b)	without warrant or other legal process at any time enter and search any building, premises, structure, camp, vessel, boat, vehicle, conveyance, or other place, and open and examine any trunk, box, barrel, parcel, or other package or receptacle, whether within or without the boundaries of any park, where he has reason to believe there is-
And so on. This is what really perturbs me about this whole system. Here is a community, the park, with officials appointed by the government and responsible to a depart-
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ment here in Ottawa. These officials are the magistrates and constables, and any person within that restricted community who may incur the enmity, or shall I say suspicion of an official, could easily become a victim of such petty persecution as that official might choose to impose upon him. These officials are given powers which are not given to constables in cities. The Solicitor General will agree with me that the right of search without warrant or legal process is a very extraordinary power.


Lucien Cannon: Exceptional.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is a very exceptional
power.


Lucien Cannon: Our customs officials have that power given to them for special reasons.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Those officials are restricted by the limitations of their duty. These are very exceptional powers, aggravated if I may say so by the insular condition of the community. I have no desire to argue in a hypercritical spirit, but rather with the desire of bringing about a realization that we may be going too far.


Charles A. Stewart: Does my
hon. friend mean too far with the penalties?


Henry Herbert Stevens: I was referring particularly to the powers conveyed by section 5 to certain officials of the park. Those officials might be wardens, road foremen or watchmen.


Charles A. Stewart: Particularly wardens.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Yes, that may be so.
These people would be clothed with the right of search without a warrant.


Lucien Cannon: "Where he has reason to
believe."


Mr STEVENS:: Yes, of course, but that
means nothing. They may have reason in their own minds to believe some one has been fishing with a spotlight. They could say that. This leaves the matter wide open for persecution. What I was going to suggest is this:	Why should not the power of administration of justice be under ordinary officers appointed, let us say, by the provincial authorities? Let me go back to the illustration I gave of Stanley park. Stanley park is policed by a policeman of the ordinary police staff of the city of Vancouver. He goes round the park and he exercises the power of a policeman just as any ordinary policeman would do. He is appointed by the city council or the police commission. He is not a peculiar 
official of the park clothed with special powers of a policeman. In other words, if we could, so to speak, reverse this thing, let the province administer the laws, appoint the magistrates and appoint the constables for policing purposes-


Charles A. Stewart: Does my
hon. friend suggest that the provincial government appoint the police?


Henry Herbert Stevens: I say:	Why could not
the administration of the laws, in the absence of a municipal authority, be under the control of the provincial authority?


Charles A. Stewart: My hon.
friend is confining his remarks pretty largely to the communities that would otherwise be municipalities, while the necessity for the right to search on view is for the proper administration of the parks which are purely and simply game preserves. If this were not so, we might as well cease to try to keep them as game preserves, because my hon. friend knows that all along the eastern boundaries of these two parks and along the boundaries of the parks of his province there are located settlers, residents, and if the constables are not there, these people may come in during the season when it is difficult to detect them and clean out our game preserves. As regards the question of arresting on view, our game wardens have that authority. Under the British Columbia Game Act the warden has identically the same right to search, confined of course to game; otherwise you could not have effective administration and preserve the wild life. In our parks we have a great deal of difficulty in preventing poaching, particularly with the thousands and thousands of tourists who are visiting the parks at all times, and also in the winter season when the parks, as I say, on the western and eastern boundaries are fairly easy of access by individuals who wish to go in and make a livelihood by taking game. I confess I think the penalty is fairly heavy, but it is one that has been in vogue since 1913. There was no change whatever in that section; I am simply embodying the old section in this measure. As regards the complaint of my hon. friend that the wardens who will be the constables should not have the right to search on view, particularly in the manner specified in this legislation, may I say that if they did not have that right it would be a great handicap to the enforcement of the game act within the park.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Should the constable not
be compelled to bring the individual before an independent magistrate as quickly as possible?

National Parks


Charles A. Stewart: He must
bring the men before the magistrate in the park; but of course my hon. friend will raise the objection that the magistrate is an appointee of the federal government.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Yes.


Charles A. Stewart: What is the difference between a provincial constable bringing a suspect before a provincial magistrate and a federal constable bringing him before a federally appointed magistrate?


Henry Herbert Stevens: Nothing except this-and
this is the point-that there may grow up in a community of that character an insular, petty condition of mind which often obtains in communities of an insular character, particularly where, as in the case of Jasper or Banff, the community is quite a substantial one.


Charles A. Stewart: We appoint
paid magistrates purely for that purpose. I think in the old days my hon. friend (Mr. Bennett) who has just left the house, had the appointment of two of them. That was under the old police act. When it was changed, the right to appoint by the federal authority was discontinued. Then we reverted to appointments by the province, but the selections were made by the federal government and the police magistrates are paid by the federal government. I confess I cannot see any difference between a provincial constable haling a person suspected of crime -before a provinciality appointed magistrate and a federal officer haling such a person .before a federally appointed magistrate. I cannot help thinking we are very largely tilting at windmills. This administration has been carried on under both parties and I have heard most bitter complaints about the treatment that citizens have received. Some times I have gone to the trouble of investigating these complaints myself, and for the most part they are of the same character as those of which you hear in any municipality in the country.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Usually piffling.


Charles A. Stewart: I quite appreciate the fact, and I am in accord with the suggestion of my hon. friend that there dhould be thirty days' publication of any change in the regulations so that the citizens, and, particularly, the tourists, may be informed about it. We try to post up in conspicuous places regulations affecting traffic in order that tourists who are not familiar with our regulations may become informed, because unless they are familiar with the regulations
tourists constitute a terrible menace on the narrow mountain roads. In administering these park areas we have a good deal of difficulty in protecting tihe game and also the lives of the people who visit them for the purpose of seeing the game. We must also have drastic regulations for the prevention of fire, because that is the most destructive element with which we have to contend. At first view some of these .provisions may appear drastic, but after all if they are judiciously administered they are all in the interest of the people who visit the parks, and particularly the people who live within their boundaries.


George Gibson Coote: I would like to suggest to
the minister that the wording in the old act is far better than the new clause 4. The old section reads that these parks-
-shall be maintained and made use of as public parks and pleasure grounds for the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of the people of Canada.
It seems to me that is much plainer and more understandable itfhan the high sounding language used in the new clause 4. What does it mean by saying?
The parks are hereby dedicated to the people of Canada for their benefit, education and enjoyment.
It would be much better to say that they are to -be maintained for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of Canada.


Henry Herbert Stevens: It is evidence of piety.


George Gibson Coote: I would also like to say
just in passing I do not think it is possible for us to control the actions of future generations Just how we are going to administer and take care of these p-arks and leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations, it is rather difficult to see.


Charles A. Stewart: Does my hon. friend think there is any very great difference between the old section and the new? In both it is a pious hope. I would not care very much if you wiped both of them out. I do not think either section will do much harm or much good to the national parks.


George Gibson Coote: It seems to me that we are just making a pretence of doing something here, and I never think that that is good practice.


Charles A. Stewart: If my hon. friend says that we are not making an effort to preserve these areas for scenic purposes he is wrong.
National Parks


George Gibson Coote: I would not say that. I do not think we are making any greater effort here than under the old act.


[Stage Direction]
Sestion agreed to.
On section 5-Park administration.
George Gibson Coote: In my opinion the magistrates should be appointed by the province. I have never been able to understand why they should be appointed by the Dominion government.


Charles A. Stewart: What is the difference between the appointment of a provincial official to administer a provincial law and the appointment of a federal official to administer laws under the control of the federal authorities, who must of necessity administer those laws in accordance with the provincial law?


George Gibson Coote: I understand the minister to say that the laws of the province were to apply in these parks.


Charles A. Stewart: Surely.


George Gibson Coote: So it is a provincial law.


Charles A. Stewart: Except during six or eight years the police magistrates in the park were appointed by the federal authorities at Banff. Two at least I know of in my time who were appointed by the federal authorities. Later, owing to the amalgamation of the provincial and federal police, that authority disappeared and we had to have recourse for the time being to the provincial authorities and ask to make the appointments. But I may say frankly that Mr. Hunter was suggested to the government at Edmonton by myself as a fit and proper person to become police magistrate in Banff. He was appointed by the provincial authorities and is paid by the federal authorities.


Henry Herbert Stevens: He was appointed by the provincial government?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes.


Henry Herbert Stevens: On your recommendation?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes. I do not see how the appointment of the magistrate by the federal authorities is going to create any very great difference in the result.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I am not sufficiently posted in legal matters to be clear on this point. I understand that the appointment of a magistrate is the prerogative of the provincial 
government. Are we infringing upon the right of the province to control property and civil rights by saying in subsection (4) of section 5:
The governor in council .... may appoint, by commission under the great seal, one or more fit and proper persons to be stipendiary magistrates.
Perhaps the Solicitor General could clear up that point.


Lucien Cannon: I might give my hon. friend an example that will help him to understand the situation exactly. This park is reserved under our control, and we appoint the officials, including the magistrates, just as a city government appoints its officials to carry out municipal regulations. The cities themselves very often appoint recorders to see that the municipal regulations are observed.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Upon authority delegated by the province.


Lucien Cannon: May be. We are the
authorities over the territory comprised in the national parks, and we appoint our own officials. As regards the civil law, I understand my hon. friend's difficulty. It is a complicated matter and it is rather hard to give a short answer to what seems to be a very simple question. The civil law applies to the province, but we as a government, under the British North America Act, appoint judges who administer the civil law in the province.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The Solicitor General has not grasped my point. The Minister of the Interior told us a moment ago that the magistrates were appointed by the province on his recommendation.


Charles A. Stewart: Just recently. They were appointed by the federal government up until the amalgamation of the provincial and federal police.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is in the past, but in this bill we have this new clause in which we say:
The governor in council, on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice, may appoint, by commission under the great seal, one or more fit and proper persons to be stipendary magistrates within the parks, and such magistrates shall be at liberty to exercise any jurisdiction which may be conferred upon them by provincial authority in matters coming within the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the province, in so far as the exercise of such powers may be consistent with the powers hereby conferred.

National Parks
By that section the provincial authority is limited by the powers this bill confers. It says:
-in so far as the exercise of such powers may be consistent with the powers hereby conferred.
Has the federal authority any right to invade the provincial control of property and civil rights by the appointment under the great seal of magistrate? I question whether we have that right.


Mr. McLEAN (MeJfort):: There might be a conflict of jurisdiction in certain matters. For instance, the provincial authorities control the highways, the tourist traffic, and so forth, but the federal authorities control the national parks.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That does not answer my point at all.


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: Further, there are federal officials throughout these park areas and they know a great deal more about the parks and the regulations governing them than the provincial authorities. It would be almost impossible to secure the policing of these parks by the provincial authorities because it is a tremendously expensive proposition. The federal officials being in all the park areas are in a much better position to preserve the game than if provincial officers had to be sent for.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is not my point.


Malcolm McLean: That is the point the hon. gentleman was making, the conflict of jurisdiction.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The hon. gentleman does not get my point at all. He is a thousand miles away from it.


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: The administration of justice within a province and the constitution of the courts is entirely a matter of provincial jurisdiction. This parliament appoints judges, but the organization of the courts and everything connected with the administration of justice within the province is under the control of the province. For instance, in a province we appoint a justice of the peace, and that justice of the peace has power to try offences against federal statutes, provincial statutes and municipal regulations.


Lucien Cannon: If we say so.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: You do not say at all in the province of Ontario what the power of a magistrate shall be. It comes under the general right of the province to deal with the administration of justice in the province.
24X9-123


Lucien Cannon: By means of the provisions of the criminal code giving them that jurisdiction.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: The British North America Act provides for that. Here is the point that I wish to discuss. Is this park a part of the province? The only ground, it seems to me, upon which we could justify the appointment of a justice of the peace to administer laws within a province would be that this park was really not a part of the province, which I understood it to be.


Charles A. Stewart: There seems to be something wrong with my hon. friend's deduction. If the federal authorities under the federal police act had the right to appoint a police magistrate in the Banff national park, which is not changed in any particular by this bill, then clearly the federal authorities have still the right to do this. Either they were wrong when they appointed magistrates before or they were right.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: It was entirely under federal jurisdiction; it was not handed over.


Charles A. Stewart: That may be so far as the land is concerned, but my hon. friend must bear in mind that the provincial authority has not been extended owing to the fact that the provinces are getting back their natural resources. They are operating under identically the same laws; there is no change in their position. True, we have the lands and resources under federal control, which now passes to the provinces, but that does not confer upon them any wider power than they had previously when the federal authority appointed magistrates. I am speaking as a layman. I merely ask the lawyer members how it comes about that we are denied the right we had previously, although there has been no change.


Lucien Cannon: The jurisdiction belongs
to us; we are at home. It comes to us under the terms of section 91, Dominion property.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 6 agreed to.
On section 7-Regulations.
Mr. GARDINER:: If I may go back to
section 6 for a moment. What is the position as to the control of water powers in the parks?


Charles A. Stewart: We control them within the parks always. If my hon. friend has the fear that they might be controlled to the detriment of the rights of the

National Parks

people lower down the banks of the stream, I may say that we have no more control in that respect than any private individual. That is, we cannot take from or deny to those below their water rights.


Robert Gardiner: What provision is made to lease water powers within the parks; will such leasing be controlled by parliament or by regulations?


Charles A. Stewart: By parliament.


Robert Gardiner: And the same in regard to minerals-an act of parliament will have to be passed before any lease is granted?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Will not the minister add those words he mentioned to subsection 2 of section 7, so that the subsection will read:
All regulations made hereunder shall be published in the Canada Gazette for a period of thirty days, and shall thereupon have the same force and effect as if herein enacted.


Charles A. Stewart: I have no objection.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: It would be
better to make it read that the regulation shall not come into force until thirty days after publication.


Lucien Cannon: I move to amend subsection 2 of section 7 by adding after the words "Canada Gazette" in the second line the following words:
"for a period of thirty days."


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
Progress reported.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 38, respecting the Highwood Western Railway Company-Mr. Coote.
Bill No. 57, respecting the Confederation Life Assocation-Mr. Anderson (Toronto-High Park).
Bill No. 113, respecting the capital stock of the Ottawa Electric Railway Company- Mr. Chevrier.


[Stage Direction]
Mr. W. J. WARD (Dauphin) moved the second reading of Bill No. 31, respecting jurisdiction in proceedings for divorce.
Ernest Lapointe: Explain.


Mr. WARD:: The bill before the house is
very simple and very limited in its scope, and I should not think it would be the subject of very much discussion. At the outset I wish to make it very clear that it is not my intention, nor is it the purpose of the bill, in any way to widen the grounds in order to make divorce easier. We recognize that there is a very considerable section of the people of Canada, and indeed a number of the members of this house, who on conscientious grounds object to the granting of divorce, but the purpose of this bill is merely to establish equality of status as between husband and wife in the case of a woman who has been deserted for a period of two years and upwards and that she may make application for divorce in the province in which the husband was domiciled at the time of such desertion.
As the law stands at present a woman must apply for a divorce in the province in which the husband is domiciled at the time the application is made. I am sure the house will readily see how inconvenient, if not impossible, it would be for a woman of moderate or small means, working for her living and bringing up several small children, to travel from province to province in an effort to run down or catch up with the husband who a few years before deserted her. I have in mind the case of a young woman, the mother of two children, who was deserted by a scalawag of a husband some four or five years ago. By her own efforts she has established a home and has maintained and educated her children in a way that would be a credit to anyone. Yet for that woman to secure a divorce it would be necessary for her to travel to another province about a thousand miles from where she now lives and where she was deserted.
As a layman I never have been able to understand why we should have one standard for criminal and civil law and quite a different standard for moral law. If a woman commits a crime she pays the same penalty as a man, but a man may commit several moral offences and have discrimination shown in his favour. I hope parliament now is ready to apologize to the women of Canada for the great injustice that has been done them during all these years and is prepared to pass this

Divorce Proceedings-Domicile
measure unanimously in order to remove from our statute books one of the most discriminatory pieces of legislation that was ever passed in Canada. This will give to the women of Canada equal status in matters of divorce, and I should like to appeal especially to the Minister of Justice to give the measure his support and see that it passes. It has been hefore the house for three sessions; I sincerely hope it will pass the commons now, and if it does I am sure it will pass the upper house and become law.


Ernest Lapointe: Before this measure is carried I am sure my hon. friend will permit me to say what I think about the proposed legislation. I should have thought my hon. friend would have been satisfied with the supposed progress which was made the other night when we passed the bill creating a divorce court in Ontario, without going on wdth this bill. However, I will admit that the new bill as introduced by my hon. friend is better-if there can be anything good about it-than the one he brought in last year and which passed this house after a stormy debate but was thrown out by the Senate. I will admit that this was one of the rare occasions on which I thought the Senate was a useful institution.


Mr. McGIBBON:: When did you change
your mind?


Ernest Lapointe: I have not changed my mind; I hope the Senate will be just as efficient this year if this bill passes the house.
As I have said, this bill is not as bad as the one brought in last year. Under the bill of last year a woman could leave her place of residence and move from one province to another in order to qualify for divorce proceedings. This year the bill of my hon. friend is not so wide in its application; it says that the woman will be enabled to institute proceedings in the province where the husband had his domicile before he deserted his wife. At least this bill will not transfer the activities of the woman from one place to another in order to secure a divorce; she will have to institute her proceedings in the province where she was living when her hudband left her; but, sir, even at that it still infringes upon another principle of British law, which is that an instance in divorce can be started only in a jurisdiction which is the domicile of the parties. Under the British law, and for that matter under the law of all nations, the domicile of the wife is the domicile of 2419-123i
the husband. As long as the marriage lasts there is only one matrimonial domicile, and surely everyone will admit that this is a good law.


Mr. KENNEDY:: Even though he deserts his wife and runs off to another province?


Ernest Lapointe: But the marriage still exists. The mere fact of desertion by one party or the other has not the effect of dissolving the bond; otherwise it would be too easy for many people to do so. If by intention and by the other elements that constitute the domicile such domicile has been effectively changed, then the proceedings would be carried on elsewhere than at the legal domicile. This is not done even in ordinary judicial proceedings, and a serious situation might arise where there might be two instances in divorce, one on the initiative of the wife at the place where my hon. friend, by his bill, suggests it should be, and one on the initiative of the husband at the place where the husband has established a new domicile. There might be two different decisions on these two instances, and appeals might follow which would make for conflict and confusion. So long as the marriage bond has not been declared broken by a judgment of a court, it still exists, and so long as it exists there is only one domicile. I do not give this as my own personal view, as there are authorities on the matter. The only Canadian author dealing with divorce matters is R. R. Evans. In his volume entitled Law and Practice of Divorce, he says at page 261:
It is a fundamental principle of international law firmly established by the eases previously-cited that domicile is the test of any court's jurisdiction to dissolve matters by a decree of divorce and that unless domicile within the territorial jurisdiction of the court selected at the time proceedings are commenced is established such court cannot grant a divorce which will receive extraterritorial recognition. This principle is recognized and strictly adhered to by both the English and Canadian courts, by the courts of the United States and of most foreign countries as well.
The meaning of this is that any divorce granted outside of the real domicile of the parties would not be recognized by foreign countries. My hon. friend should consider that point very seriously before insisting upon the passage of his bill. The author continues:
International law also decrees that a woman upon marriage takes the then domicile of her husband-
The hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail) may not like that; nevertheless it is so.


Miss MACPHAIL:: Well, I do not like it.

Divorce Proceedings-Domicile


Ernest Lapointe: I know my hon. friend does not like it, but I am afraid that it cannot be changed this year. The author continues:
-and while the marriage is subsisting takes whatever new domicile the husband may from time to time establish, and this principle is also fully recognized by English, Canadian and American courts and by the courts of many other foreign countries.
I would direct my hon. friend's attention to the following, on page 262:
The result is that no English or Canadian court will entertain a wife's petition for dissolution except the court within whose territorial jurisdiction the husband is then domiciled, and no cases can be found which hold to the contrary.
If my hon. friend would consider these principles perhaps he would change his mind, but I am afraid he is convinced that he is right. And continuing:
It has frequently been judicially stated both in England and Canada that power to dissolve a marriage by a decree of divorce entitled to extraterritorial recognition is vested exclusively in the place of the domicile of the parties at the time proceedings were commenced; that the wife not only takes the husband's domicile at the time of the marriage but that also at all times and under all circumstances her domicile is the same as that possessed by the husband from time to time while the marriage remains in existence; that the wife can under no circumstances acquire during marriage a domicile separate and distinct from that from time to time possessed by the husband; that consequently a wife can never be granted a decree carrying extraterritorial validity by any court other than that within whose territorial jurisdiction the husband was domiciled at the time proceedings were commenced.
If this bill is adopted by parliament, a divorce granted under its provisions would not be recognized outside of Canada because it, would be against the principles of international law.


Mr. THORSON:: It would be valid in Canada.


Ernest Lapointe: Certainly, because this parliament has jurisdiction. Parliament can do anything except to change a man into a woman, but from the way things have been progressing, especially during this session, I would not be surprised to see such a bill introduced next year. The following appears on page 276:
Residence, allegiance, the nationality of either husband or wife, the place of marriage, the grounds upon which the marriage has been dissolved or other similar matters clo not affect the question of extraterritorial validity, neither does the domicile of the husband at the time of the marriage or of the wife before marriage make any difference in so far as the jurisdic-

tion of any court to entertain proceedings for divorce and decree a divorce carrying extraterritorial validity is concerned. The whole question turns upon the place of the husband s domicile at the time proceedings are commenced and the law relating to domicile then in force there, and it is immaterial whether the proceedings are instituted by the husband or wife. If at the time proceedings are commenced the husband is actually and bona fide domiciled within the territorial jurisdiction of the court before which action is taken the court can whether the proceedings are instituted by the husband or the wife dissolve the marriage and the decree will be recognized in English law.
Last year my hon. friend quoted the case of Cook versus Cook in the explanatory note to his bill presented at that time. When that case went to the privy council, the English and Canadian laws covering the question of domicile in divorce matters were given. At page 746 of the Western Weekly Reports, 1926, volume 1, Lord Merrivale says:
The contention that husband and wife may be domiciled apart and may resort to different jurisdictions and different codes of law to seek thereunder dissolution of the marriage between them appears to challenge directly the rule laid down in Le Mesurier v. Le Mesurier, and affirmed in the House of Lords in Lord Advocate v. Jaffrey, that matrimonial status is governed by the law of domicile of the parties. In the former case the rule was stated bv Lord Watson to be that "the domicile for the time being of the married pair affords the true test of jurisdiction to dissolve their marriage.'' In the latter it was epitomized by Lord Haldane in these words: "Nothing short of a full juridical domicile^ within its jurisdiction can justify a British court m pronouncing a decree of divorce. Both pronouncements are declaredly founded on a principle which was stated in the judgment ot Lord Penzance in Wilson's case:	,, ,
The differences of married people should be adjusted in accordance with the laws of the community to which they belong and dealt with by the tribunals which alone can administer those laws.
And further:
The judgment delivered by Lord Watson in Le Mesurier's case, however, brings inevitably into view the fact that divorce obtainable under different systems of municipal law by spouses living in separate jurisdictions is irreconcilable with the existence of any axiom in private international law that there is in the case of every marriage one sole jurisdiction in which dissolution of the marriage tie can be decreed.
Lord Haldane in Lord Advocate vs. Jaffrey at page 751 of the same volume says:
Nothing short of a full juridical domicile within his jurisdiction can justify _ a British court in pronouncing a decree of divorce.
And he adds:
There can be only one real domicile.
Further:
There is no authority for the proposition that husband and wife can have, while they

Divorce Proceedings-Domicile
continue married, distinct domiciles. If it were otherwise proceedings for dissolving the status of marriage might be carried through in two jurisdictions, possibly with different results.
Lord Merrivale in the conclusion of that judgment says:
Under British law one of the effects of marriage is to give to the spouses a common domicile,-the domicile of the husband. Within the jurisdiction thereby arising, and by the marriage laws to which the spouses are there subject, the claims of either of them to a decree of dissolution of marriage ought to be determined. In so far as British tribunals are concerned it is a requisite of the jurisdiction to dissolve marriage that the defendant in the suit shall be domiciled within the jurisdiction.
In the bill introduced by my hon. friend the defendant would be sued in a place other than his domicile. Lord Merrivale continues:
In such cases actor sequitur forum rei.
This is the true effect upon the present proceedings of the rule laid down in the Le Mesurier vs. Le Mesurier, supra.
There is no doubt, and I think every hon. member will agree with me, that this would be a departure from British principles of law. Why should we do this even if we are trying not only to facilitate divorce but even to offer divorce to those who want it? My hon. friend said: We must have equality of sexes. Equality is a pleasant word and discrimination, I agree, is unpleasant. Still, equality-and I think my hon. friend may agree with me on this-may mean reduction as well as addition. Would my hon. friend-and I will even ask the hon. member for Southeast Grey-would she want all statutes to be changed where inequality exists between the sexes? After all there are the physical laws, the laws against which nobody can contend and which we must recognize. Complete equality would be much more detrimental than beneficial to women.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Will the minister explain that more fully? I should like to have an instance of it.


Ernest Lapointe: I will with the greatest pleasure. My hon. friend wants me to explain the matter more fully. I will give her some instances. I do not know whether the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) is present to-night, but the other day he called attention to this point with regard to Ontario. There are in several provinces laws concerning labour for women, laws concerning minimum wages for women and not for men. Does my hon. friend desire equality on this?


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Certainly I do.


Ernest Lapointe: But equality does not
exist and this law was made for the protection not of men but of women.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Implying that men
have made women their inferiors.


Ernest Lapointe: My hon. friend does not like the one I have mentioned; let me cite another. There are laws making it an offence and a crime for men not to support their wives. Does my hon. friend wish equality on that? Does she think it should be a crime for a wife not to support her husband?


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Yes, if all the laws and all the customs of civilization with regard to women were changed.


Ernest Lapointe: Exactly. My hon. friend is making up my case. All the laws of civilization make the situation different and it cannot be otherwise than different.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Yes, it can.


Ernest Lapointe: Non-support laws?


Agnes Campbell Macphail: All the laws having
been made by men for the protection of men, how can we change them but gradually?


Ernest Lapointe: The law making it a
crime for men not to support their wives was made for the protection not of men but of women. Surely my hon. friend will admit that. I can cite other laws which surely cannot be equalized. There are laws granting allowances to mothers. Can such a law be equalized?


William Irvine: Yes.


Ernest Lapointe: My hon. friend would
favour laws granting allowances to fathers?
Mr. IRVINE. Hear, hear.


Ernest Lapointe: In my province such a law would be a great boon to many people.


Peter McGibbon: Might I remind the minister that those who demand their rights forfeit their privileges?


Ernest Lapointe: In various provinces
there are widows' pensions, and I do not think my hon. friend is right When she says that all the laws were made to protect men as against women. Surely nobody has ever asked for laws granting pensions to widowers; still there are pensions granted to widows. Those are instances where inequality exists, but it exists in a way that protects women rather than men and I think it is rather a benefit to women that such inequality exists. I might mention the fact that military laws are not the same for women as for men. It would be cruel to women if those laws were changed to make them equal as between men and women.

Divorce Proceedings-Domicile *


Agnes Campbell Macphail: It would be much
better.


Ernest Lapointe: Apart from that there are other laws I almost hesitate to mention. In the criminal code there are laws concerning the age of consent. Surely this could not be applied to men as well as to women. In the criminal code there are other laws concerning offences that I hesitate to mention and that I will not mention.


Mr. MANION:: Please do.


Ernest Lapointe: I think my hon. friend would laugh still more if I were to cite two or three of those laws, but the ones I have mentioned are merely to illustrate the fact that it is impossible, because of natural conditions, that complete equality should exist in regard to legislation as between sexes, and I do not think it is desirable that the changes suggested should be made. We do not know where we are going to land.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Terrible.


Ernest Lapointe: My hon. friend (Miss
Macphail) says "terrible," but I would ask, when there is a marriage law and both the law and custom have decreed that the giri shall assume her husband's name, shall we change that for the sake of equality?


Agnes Campbell Macphail: I make the suggestion to the minister that the husband take the wife's name.


Ernest Lapointe: That would perhaps be just as logical as many of the proposals that are made. I have given enough illustrations to show that we may differ from my hon. friend as to this bill and as to the equality of the sexes without being unreasonable, illogical or unmindful of the right and needs of woman. I think that in the interests of the wife and in the interests of woman it is well that these differences which have existed since the world was created should be permitted to continue to exist.
As far as my hon. friend's bill is concerned, I am opposed to it not only because of my views on divorce generally but because the bill is opposed to the principles of British law and of Canadian law and of international law, and because it is also opposed to the law of nature.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: How is it that divorces
have been granted by parliament where the husband has deserted the wife and been domiciled in England or the United States?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: Can the hon. member
give any examples of that?


Ernest Lapointe: I think my hon. friend
is wrong.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: I never can quite understand how a
man of the ability and charm of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) can be so antiquated when it comes to an opinion on women. It is clear to me that he was born about five hundred years too late. The thing we are discussing is this. A man and a woman get married and establish a home, a domicile. They may or may not have a family. The husband deserts the woman, clears out for two years or longer. The wife wants a divorce, but according to our law she must chase her husband over the face of Canada in order to sue for divorce.


Mr. NEILL:: Anywhere.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Yes, but I am speaking now of Canada. It is a humiliating thing. If domicile is a real thing, it must be the home that was created by the marriage. The husband deserts his wife and children, forsakes the home, and then the Minister of Justice asks that the man alone shall retain the domicile. If that is the law, it is poor law, and let us change it. International law may not be in accord with the principles of this bill, but we do not make international law; we make Canadian law, and if we enact this bill into law and other countries make similar laws, international law will come into harmony with advanced thinking on this subject. So I support most heartily the bill that has been introduced by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Ward). If the present law is based on injustice, and it clearly is, let us change it. All this bunk, if you will pardon the word, about equality between the sexes, does not impress me very much. We are actually working towards equality, and clearly from the instances cited by the Minister of Justice to-night we have not yet got equality; woman is not yet a person, in spite of the judgment of the privy council that she is a person in regard to the senate at least. We need very many changes in our laws. We can make them only one at a time. This is our chance at this one, and we will make the most of it.


Alan Webster Neill: I do not want to detain the house or talk the bill out, but I would like to answer the question asked by the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Adshead) because the answer illustrates

Divorce Proceedings-Domicile
the need for this bill. He asked: How is it that we have again and again in this house granted divorce to women whose husbands are patently admitted to be in the United States and therefore according to the law as it stands the woman cannot have the domicile of her husband? The answer is that we deliberately encourage the woman to commit perjury. She is asked if she knows where her husband is. She may say that the last time she saw him he was in Toronto. She is asked if she knows where he is now. She answers, no. "Therefore, to the best of your knowledge, he is still domiciled in Canada?" she is next asked. She is primed to answer "yes", and then the court, in order to do justice, takes no cognizance of the fact that the man is patently domiciled in the United States, and by that subterfuge they endeavour to give a measure of justice to the woman. That just illustrates the need for this bill.


James Shaver Woodsworth: May I give a case that was brought to my attention last summer? A man from the isle of Guernsey came to western Canada, lived there some time and then married a Canadian girl. Immediately after the ceremony she became suspicious of him and left him. He proved to be a scoundrel. He was arrested and sent back overseas. He came back to this country in violation of the Immigration Act, and is now in a penitentiary in Canada. The Canadian authorities refused to allow him Canadian domicile because they wish to deport him as soon as he gets out of the penitentiary. As I understand it, the only place where that girl can get a divorce is in the isle of Guernsey. She is a Canadian girl, was married in Winnipeg, and I believe she should have the right to apply for a divorce in Winnipeg, or at all events in Canada.


Mr. J. L. BROWN (Lisgar):: In regard to the granting of a divorce where the man is in the United States, there must be some misapprehension on the part of certain hon. gentlemen, because I recall distinctly a case that came before the divorce committee in which the husband was in Missouri, and witnesses were brought all the way to this house from Missouri to prove that he was there, and a divorce was granted.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
Section 1 agreed to.
On section 2-Married woman deserted and living apart for two years may commence proceedings for divorce.
Lucien Cannon: May I ask the hon. gentleman who has introduced this bill how it differs from the bill of last year?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: Perhaps I might briefly answer that by reading the bill that was passed last year. The bill read:
A married woman who either before or after the passing of this act has been deserted by and has lived separate and apart from her husband for a period of two years and upwards and is still living separate and apart from her husband may acquire in any one of the provinces of Canada in which there is a court having jurisdiction to grant a divorce a vinculo matrimonii a domicile of her own choice as though she were a feme sole for the purpose of commencing in the province in which she has acquired such domicile an action for divorce a vincula matrimonii praying that her marriage may be dissolved on any grounds that may entitle her to such divorce in the court of such province having jurisdiction to grant such divorce and such court shall have jurisdiction to grant such divorce whatever the domicile of the husband may be, provided that for the purpose aforesaid such married woman shall be deemed to retain the domicile of her husband at the time she was so deserted until she has acquired a domicile of her own choice as aforesaid.
The difference between this bill and the bill introduced last session is that last year's bill gave to the deserted wife the right to acquire a separate domicile from that of her husband, and it would have permitted her to go from province to province in order to acquire a separate domicile for the purpose of commencing an action for divorce. In this bill no such right is given. This bill gives legislative effect to rules laid down in two English decisions, namely, Armytage v. Armytage L. R. 1898 P., at page 18a and Ogden v. Ogden L. R. 1908 P., at page 78. In short, under this bill the courts will presume a continuation of domicile of the parties to the action in the province in which they were domiciled just immediately prior to the desertion by the husband.


Lucien Cannon: Has not my hon. friend any doubts as to whether this parliament has a right to interfere in a matter of domicile? Does not that come under the civil law which is within the competence of the provinces?


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: This bill merely confers jurisdiction upon the courts to grant divorce and does not in any respect change the domicile of the wife. Had it been sought to make any such change, there might be some question as to iits being intra vires of this parliament.
1952	COMMONS
Divorce Proceedings-Domicile


Lucien Cannon: I should not like to discuss the daw outside my own province, but in Quebec the domicile of the wife is the domicile of her husband, and no other. So I doubt very much, even if we did pass this bill, whether the courts would decide that we could change the law of one province as regards domicile. I think there is more involved in this ball than the matter of jurisdiction.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: This bill merely confers jurisdiction upon the courts to grant divorce; it does not change domicile of the parties at all.


Lucien Cannon: But the jurisdiction of the courts is established on domicile. That is a question of civil law and should be left to the provinces.


Joseph Thorarinn Thorson: It is sought by this bill simply to give jurisdiction to the courts to grant divorce under the circumstances referred to in the bill.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported.
Mr. SPEAKER:: When shall said bill be read a third time?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Now.


Mr. RINFRET:: Next sitting.


William John Ward: There is no amendment.


Rodolphe Lemieux: There being no amendment, the bill may be read a third time now.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I move that the bill be now read a third time.


Lucien Cannon: I understand, Mr. Speaker, that the sponsor of the bill would be satisfied to have it read a third time on Tuesday?


William John Ward: Yes.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Next sitting of the house.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, was I in order in moving that the bill be now read a third time?


Rodolphe Lemieux: The sponsor of the bill himself says that it should be read at the next sitting of the house.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have a right to move-


Lucien Cannon: Why do it?


Ernest Lapointe: Why should my hon. friend do it? It is so easy for me to speak for two minutes; why not wait and give a chance to other members of the house to register a vote on this matter?


Rodolphe Lemieux: Next sitting of the house. But the bill could have been read a third time, there -being no amendment.
The hour for public and private bills being exhausted, the bouse will now revert to the consideration in committee of the whole of the bill respecting the national parks.



NATIONAL PARKS

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration in committee of Bill No. 135 respecting national parks-Mr. Stewart (Edmonton)-Mr. Johnston in the chair.
John Frederick Johnston: When the committee rose at six o'clock section 7 had been declared carried.
Sections 8 to 12 inclusive agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Schedule agreed to.
George Gibson Coote: Mr. Chairman, before you report the bill I should like to ask the minister how much is being taken out of Banff park?


Charles A. Stewart: In the Spray lake area-I suppose that will describe it sufficiently for my hon. friend-630 square miles; north and east of lake Minnewanka, 76-6 square miles-


George Gibson Coote: Would there be coal in that territory?


Charles A. Stewart: There is mineral-in the valley of the Red Deer river coming out of the mountains, 290-7 square miles; on the Clearwater, which is a coal-mineralized area, 377 square miles; along the Canadian National railway off Jasper park, 435 square miles. Those are all the deletions in the Rocky mountains. Those sections will go into forest reserve.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: Will they be included in the natural resources transferred to the province?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes.


Sir GEORGE PERLEY:: Before this bill
passes may I say that I have not had a chance to give it full consideration, and I would like to revert to section 11. In this section the expression "national historic park'', is used, and then the explanatory notes refer to historic sites. Are those historic sites set apart by the minister under some other statute?


Charles A. Stewart: No, they
will be set apart under this statute. Proposals of this nature will now have to come to parliament and be approved by parliament on the recommendation of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board.

National Parks


George Halsey Perley: The historic
sites?


Charles A. Stewart: Yes.


George Halsey Perley: This section refers only to historic parks. I notice the word "sites" is not used at all in section 11.


Charles A. Stewart: It covers
the whole thing.


George Halsey Perley: The minister
will pardon me, but I do not understand how it does cover the whole thing. For example, a building which might be described as an historic site would hardly be set apart by the governor in council as a national historic park.
I cannot understand how that could possibly be done. There are many such historic sites- old forts, for instance. The minister says each one of these sites is to be set apart by act of parliament.


Charles A. Stewart: No, that is hardly correct. If the land is federally owned it can, on recommendation, be set apart by order in council.


George Halsey Perley: I should like to know how in the future such places will be set apart. They cannot properly be called national parks.


Charles A. Stewart: But they
are historic sites.


George Halsey Perley: There is no reference to historic sites in this section.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The section
says "may set apart any land"; it is the land which is set apart as a park. It may be reserved to commemorate a landmark or an historic event.


George Halsey Perley: If the Prime
Minister thinks the governor in council can set apart as a national historic park an old fort with no land about it other than the land on which it is situated, very well; but I should be surprised if such a thing could be done and could properly be called a national historic park.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: As I read the section:
The governor in council may set apart any land the title to which is vested in His Majesty as a national historic park.
And it may be set apart either to commemorate an historic event or to preserve some historic landmark. For example, if the governor in council happened to own a few acres of land upon which there was an old fort, such property could be made into a park.


George Halsey Perley: The Prime Minister apparently thinks it would be in order for the governor in council to set apart an old fort without any land around it, and that it could be classed as a national historic park.
I am surprised that the Prime Minister holds such a view.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend apparently is not familiar with the wording of the section. It does not say, "may set apart any historic landmark as land"; it says that land may be set apart to "commemorate an historic event" or to "preserve any historic landmark". It is only the land which can be set apart.


George Halsey Perley: In my opinion,
it should read "national historic park or historic site." I would not call an old fort without any land around it a park.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Neither would


George Gibson Coote: I should like to say a word in regard to Banff park bathhouse, in connection with the upper hot springs. It is because of the finding of these hot sulphur springs that the idea of the construction of a national park first came into being. The bathhouse at the upper hot springs is hopelessly inadequate, and the minister is aware of that fact. I would suggest to him that a new bathhouse be erected this year. May I point out to the minister and to the Prime Minister that the revenue obtained last year from that bathhouse was nearly $12,000. It is located away up on the side of the mountain, and it costs a considerable sum to hire a cab to go to it. A new bathhouse should be built down in the valley, and if that were done the revenue would be twice the amount received at the present house; in two or three years it would no doubt pay for itself. The hot sulphur springs is one of the chief attractions at Banff, and not only that; a great many people go there because of the benefit to be derived from the springs. The pool which is used at the present time is so small that a person visiting the baths in the middle of the day would wonder whether there was room for him. The present accommodation is hopelessly inadequate and as far as the minister is concerned I am sure he would need no persuasion to go ahead with the construction of a new bathhouse, and if it is to be done some provision must be made in the supplementary estimates. I can assure the minister that such a building would prove to be a paying investment. Owing to the amount of unemployment in the country, I do not
Judges Act

think the government could undertake a better piece of work. A new bathhouse could be built and the water could be piped down from the present pool to a reservoir in the valley.


Charles A. Stewart: We have
that project under consideration at the present time. We are spending $800,000 to construct our part of the highway from Golden to Revel-stoke via the Big Bend. Plans will be prepared for the bathhouse and I hope that we shall be able to do the piping this year in order to utilize the two springs for a new building at the point mentioned by my hon. friend.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.



JUDGES ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice) moved the second reading of Bill No. 133, to amend the Judges Act.
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
On section 1-Annuity to judge who held office on 31st March 1927 and continued or continues in office until he attained or attains 75 years of age.
Henry Herbert Stevens: There is only one section to this proposed amendment. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) will be in his seat this evening and he may wish to say something. I do not think however that he has any particular objection to it.


Ernest Lapointe: My hon. friend the leader if the opposition approves of the bill.


Henry Herbert Stevens: I think he does.


Ernest Lapointe: The hon. member for
St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan) also approves of the bill. As a matter of fact it was to give effect to the suggestion made in 1927 by the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George that the new law was enacted retiring the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Exchequer Court at the age of seventy years. It applies only to those who were then in office, because as was represented to me they had been appointed for life and there was some question whether it was fair for those who had been appointed for life to be retired at seventy years of age without giving them a pension to the full amount of their salaries. With respect to other judges who have been appointed since that law was passed or who are to be appointed, the retiring allowance will be only two-thirds of the salary.


George Halsey Perley: I take it that
there was an implied contract with these men who were appointed?


Ernest Lapointe: That is what was contended.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: I should like to ask why supreme court judges should not contribute some portion of their salaries towards a superannuation fund. Even the lowest employee of the Post Office department has five per cent of his salary deducted, and if he does not remain in the service a certain length of time he loses all the money , he has paid in. The judges get good salaries all their lives, and when they retire they continue to get their full salary without paying a cent towards it. I do not think that is fair at all.


Ernest Lapointe: When the question comes up, as it certainly will at some future session, of the salaries of judges and pensions to retired judges, the point raised by my hon. friend undoubtedly will be discussed. I may tell my hon. friend that many judges have already asked to be allowed to contribute, provided that their widows receive a share of their pension, as is the case with civil servants and officers of the mounted police. This will involve a radical change in the present law, but I agree with my hon. friend that it should be done.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: I notice that in the estimates for this year over $1,300,000 is devoted to pensions of this kind.


Ernest Lapointe: Yes, that is part of the salaries of the judges, which certainly are not too high at the present time. As a matter of fact, if my hon. friend was at the head of the Department of Justice he would see how difficult it is at the present time to get the right men to accept judicial positions.


Herbert Bealey Adshead: That amount is for pensions alone.


Ernest Lapointe: But even at that the
positions are not attractive.


Abraham Albert Heaps: I have only one word to say. I am very glad to see the Minister of Justice fighting so hard on behalf of his own union.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.



COMPANIES ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
Hon. FERNAND RINFRET (Secretary of State) moved that the house go into committee on Bill No. 9, to amend the Companies Act.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
Sections 1, 2 and 3 agreed to.

Companies Act
On section 4-Corporate name.
Richard Bedford Bennett: With respect to the question of the corporate name a very serious difficulty has arisen in this country of late, which I think should be investigated. A company made an application for a name. They were told that it conflicted with another company's name. They then proceeded to acquire the name of the other company by purchase. Then they came up here, and although arrangements had been made to spend a large sum of money in development in this country their application was refused and another company was given the name, which is at variance with the regulations. They then sent back the money to their shareholders, cancelled their plans and left the country. They contemplated the expenditure of a very large sum of money, and I think the matter is so serious that there should be some very clear explanation given. I refer to the Texas Oil Company of Canada. The minister knows about it, for these people saw him personally.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: I recall the case, but first I might explain that the only change in this section is the use of the three letters "Ltd." instead of the full word "Limited." I do not suppose my hon. friend takes objection to that.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But this question comes up under this section.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: With regard to the case of the Texas Oil Company I must say that although I recall meeting the representatives of that company and of a company with a similar name doing business in Canada, I would not care to discuss that specific case without having the file before me. Perhaps my hon. friend would agree that since the amendment proposed by this section is a very minor one we might pass it and some other opportunity may be found when I shall be pleased to give my hon. friend the explanation for the action of the department in regard to that case.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I have no desire that the matter should be discussed without the hon. gentleman having his papers, but I thought it might be sufficiently clear in his memory, because it is not of very long standing. This case has been the subject matter of complaint to me in very strong terms; I think it involves a question of far-reaching importance, certainly with relation to development in this country which will not now be carried on because of the action taken. There must be a very clear explanation given, because the regulations under the statute have been contravened by the action taken, and the people
wasted and lost a very substantial sum of money. The hon. gentleman knows the story. If he does not remember the case clearly enough to discuss it without his papers I am content to wait for another opportunity, but before this bill leaves the house I propose to have something to say about this case.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: My hon. friend knows the conditions which exist at present. I should not like to see a bill containing general dispositions and amendments to the law, which have been agreed to by both parties in the Senate and by a committee of this house this year, delayed on account of a specific case which can be well discussed when we take up, for instance, the estimates of the department. I am quite willing to admit that the discretion which is left with the Secretary of State to decide the use of names places him in a very difficult position. An illustration is found in those American companies of long standing which come to Canada to obtain the right to a name in this country. Later on a Canadian company may be formed and desire to use a name which has a certain similarity to that of the American company. I do not desire to go fully into this matter to-night, as I cannot trust my memory. I do remember one company in Canada which applied1 for the use of a name similar to " Texas." The department took the stand that great care should be exercised before the use of that name was allowed to designate a product similar to the products manufactured by the Texas Oil Company of the United States.
I could not trust my memory to give the precise facts concerning this case, but I am sure that my hon. friend and the hon. members around him are anxious to see this bill go through the house. It is purely a departmental bill and has no political significance whatever. It was considered last year by a committee of the Senate and approved, and has been introduced this year practically in the same form in which it left the Senate. It has been examined and studied by the banking and commerce committee, and it was reported to the house with the common agreement of members representing all parties that we should leave aside any contentious matters concerning the Companies Act. It was agreed that we should put through these enactments which give statutory force to practices already followed by the department, and which have been asked for by the business men of the country. I am sure my hon. friend is desirous, as are some of the hon. members around him, to see these amendments pass the house and reach the Senate in time for consideration this
Companies Act

session. I would prefer that he would not ask me to discuss any specific cases, which are, after all, not a part of the Companies Act but are only examples of how the Companies Act has been put into practice. An opportunity will be given to discuss specific cases, and' we could confine ourselves to-night to the consideration of the theory as embodied in the act and amendments proposed.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I quite agree with the hon. minister as to the necessity of his having his papers before him. I am not disposed to quarrel with the suggestion that an opportunity will be afforded to discuss these specific cases when the estimates are before the house; nevertheless the matter is of very great importance. There are regulations which govern the department, and these have been contravened in such a way as to bring considerable adverse criticism upon the department. I agree further with my hon. friend that it is desirable to facilitate the passing of this legislation; in fact the whole Companies Act should be thoroughly gone over because there is an increasing criticism being offered throughout the country over the creation of vast combinations which are considered to be very inimical to the interests of the communities. Such criticisms are now becoming vocal when times are a little hard; they were not so vocal when times were prosperous. I have asked my legal friends to consider this bill, and they are satisfied with it as reprinted. They consider that it is a step in the right direction and that it will facilitate the conduct of the public business. I have no desire to impede in any way its passage, but I desire to see that it is administered in such a way as not to bring criticism, fair or unfair, unduly upon those charged with that responsibility.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 6 to 9 inclusive agreed to.
Section 10-Minister may change name by supplementary letters.
Mr. LADNER:: The minister is aware of a case which I presented to his department concerning a company called the National Biscuit and Confection Company of Vancouver-I am speaking now without their knowledge and without their authority. That company was incorporated provincially in 1910, and in 1923 or 1924 they made application to reserve a name of a similar nature for Canada. The provincial company did not proceed to apply for letters patent, but the National Biscuit Company of New York did apply and letters patent were granted to them. I do not raise this point by way of complaint, because

I think the officers of the department did what they were bound to do under the regulations. The net. result of all this was that the American company which did not operate in Canada in 1910 was able to extend its business in western Canada through purchases and be in a position to compete with an organization having a similar name and which had started in British Columbia in 1910. Is it the policy of the department to grant names to foreign corporations with the knowledge that provincial companies have similar or almost identical names?


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: I recall the case to which my hon. friend alludes, and I believe he was representing one of the companies.


Leon Johnson Ladner: I was.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: The hon. member pleaded his case with much ability and showed a great deal of courtesy to the Secretary of State. The discretion left with the Secretary of State in matters of this kind-perhaps the hon. member for Argenteuil (Sir George Perley) did not find it as hard when he happened to be in that position-is at times rather embarrassing. When we look into the act again next year and have to deal with certain matters which have been left over, there might be a possibility of restricting somewhat the discretion left with the head of the department, or of having regulations passed which will be more binding or of a nature to direct more definitely the judgment of the Secretary of State. My experience has been that a desire to render justice to both sides places the minister in a somewhat difficult position and the case mentioned by my hon. friend is a very apt illustration. I may tell my hon. friend that next year, whether I happen to be sitting on this side of the house and still have under my direction the administration of this act, or whether I happen to be on the other side, I shall be quite willing to cooperate with my hon. friend and his friends in order to adjust that part of the Companies Act.


William Gordon Ernst: There is a possibility you may be left at home.


Henry Herbert Stevens: When this case was being discussed in the committee the Under Secretary of State stated that it was a rule of the department not to allow a company to incorporate under Dominion letters patent under a name already taken up under a provincial act. When we were dealing with the Companies Act some years ago, that principle was clearly laid down and followed by the department.

Companies Act


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: That is true, but there is a distinction between identical names and similar names. I cannot recall a case that was brought to my attention where names were granted which were identical. When the question is one of similarity, it is a matter of appreciation and if the act could be amended to regulate the judgment of the department I would welcome the change. This, however, is one of the rather contentious and not readily acceptable amendments which after consideration we decided to leave over in order not to delay the passage of the legislation.


Henry Herbert Stevens: With regard to such a
contention I may say we are willing to assist in the passage of the measure.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: I know that.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is not the point at all. We discussed this in committee, and it was a matter not of identical names but of names closely similar, names that might be confused. The Under Secretary of State said very frankly to the committee, indeed I think to myself on a question I addressed to him, that it was the practice of the department to refuse incorporation under a name already held by a provincial company. He went on further to say-and a similar answer was given by the superintendent of insurance in regard to his department-that it was the practice to keep in touch with the various provincial governments and maintain a list of the names of various companies incorporated under provincial legislative powers so as not to allow conflict of names. This is an exceedingly important matter. Let me take this instance, of which I have not heard before. I happen to know the company in British Columbia, the National Biscuit and Confection Company, which has been operating for many years. It was incorporated in 1910, if I remember rightly, by the late Robert Kelly.


Leon Johnson Ladner: The name of the British
Columbia firm is the National Biscuit and Confection Company, Limited. The name of the New York company operating in this country is the National Biscuit Company of Canada, Limited.
Mr. iSTEVENS:	The British Columbia
company built tip an excellent business and invested a great deal of capital. It is entitled to its name, to the benefits of that name, to the field that it occupies, and to the prestige it has developed. Along comes this mammoth concern from the United States, entirely a
United States concern, desiring to incorporate in Canada. Very well; let them come, but certainly they should not be given a name that would so conflict with a local concern as to invade that concern's good will. That is the point. The good will of a concern is sometimes exceedingly valuable to it, particularly in the case of a company that deals in goods that go out to the public and win their confidence and approval. Many a concern will spend 25, 30, 40 and sometimes 50 per cent of its capital in building up its business, a good will for its name and goods, before it reaches a position where it is able to pay dividends on its investments, and this sometimes continues for years. That is true in the case of such commodities as Woodbury's facial soaps, cosmetics, and all that sort of thing. A company of this kind depends very much upon such things as the name of the article it manufactures, the name of the company, good will fior its service to the public. Along comes another concern which finds a ready made field; it steps into that field with the advantage of large capital for advertising, and seriously imperils the business of the company already established. That is something which it is the duty of the Secretary of State and his department to guard against scrupulously. I repeat that the Under Secretary of State assured us that that was the doctrine and practice of the department. The minister did not give us much reassurance to-night in either of his answers to my honoured leader and the hon. member for Vancouver South. The intimation he gave was that he found himself frequently in such a position that it was difficult to determine matters of this kind. There should not have been a moment's hesitancy on his part in deciding in that case. He should have said to the United States concern: We welcome you, but you must get another name. There need have been no brain fag over that. I am sorry indeed to hear the explanation the minister gives because it is not very assuring.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: The case that was brought before me was not the granting of the name to the United States company, but the conflict later arising between companies with similar names.


Leon Johnson Ladner: It was the granting of
the name to the agents of the United States company, who were the parties who made the petition here.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: I might repeat what I
said a moment ago. While these cases may
Companies Act

not be numerous, there have been a number of them during the four years I have been at the head of the department, and anybody will understand that I was under a disadvantage in having to refer to these matters from memory; I had expected to discuss the amendments in their general significance rather than in their particular application. The hon. member for Vancouver Centre stated the case properly when he said that the policy of the department was such as he indicated. I will give him the assurance that in every one of the decisions I have had to render under the discretion we are now discussing, I have been fully advised by my officers and I do not think in any of the cases I differed from the advice that was tendered to me, because I relied on the experience, tradition and general custom of the department. I must say that at the time the hon. member for Vancouver South discussed with me, not the case itself, because until the decision had been rendered that would not have been proper, but the general principle whether we should not have in our law a disposition or establish in the department a practice whereby we could in cases like that protect Canadian companies against branches of United States concerns, that certainly appealed to my judgment and good sense. But in the specific case referred to the decision rendered by myself was based upon the advice of the officers of the department and did not differ from the general line of policy we follow in the department. I repeat: There might be occasion to amend the act in such a way as to foresee such conflicts, but taking all in all, the decision rendered in that case was, I think, in accordance with the tradition of the department for a long number of years under every minister who has been in charge of it.


Leon Johnson Ladner: I do not wish to prolong
the argument, because this is an individual case. The minister certainly has under him most able and competent officers-he could not have better-but they are governed by the statute law, and the statute law in its wording prescribes the course of action in such a way that perhaps the officers, technically speaking and not having regard to public policy, might find themselves obliged, having granted the charter, to allow the name to be retained. The point I was making was whether the minister's discretion should not have been exercised on the ground of public policy. This is an enormous concern covering two or three blocks in New York city. It had not been very active in Canada, doing a little
[Mr. Rinfret.3
business in eastern Canada and none at all in the west. It desired to invade this field. It bought Christie's in Toronto and then purchased plants in Winnipeg and Calgary. In the meantime it used the name which it had been using in the United States, and it came to Canada and incorporated under that name. During all this time the concern in Vancouver had been growing to considerable proportion. With all due deference to the minister, for whom I have a personal regard, I submit that it was his duty to have helped to protect the business interests of this country as he could have done by simply saying to this American company, "You must use some other name than that of this provincial company." I think he should have done that as a matter of public policy. It is important from the public point of view, and that is why I emphasize it. When matters of this kind arise in the future the minister, on grounds of public policy, apart from the statutory provisions altogether, in the exercise of his discretion, should see to it that protection is first given to Canadian interests and that their good will and opportunities for business advancement be not hindered or prejudiced merely because someone from the United States comes here and makes application for a charter which clearly on the face of it is prejudicial to a Canadian concern. The names of these three companies were very similar. There was the National Biscuit Company of New York, the National Biscuit Company of Canada, and the National Biscuit and Confection Company, Limited. On the grounds of public policy, I repeat, the minister should have safeguarded the Canadian concern by requiring our American friends to use some other name in Canada.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 11 to 30 inclusive agreed to.
On section 31-Liability of directors.
George Halsey Perley: This section is
to repeal the liability of directors, according to the marginal note. Would the minister give some explanation of this clause?


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: The repeal of section 114 of the act is a consequence of the repeal of section 28.


George Halsey Perley: I understand that, but are the directors relieved of all liability?


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: I am afraid the marginal note is a little misleading. The section to be repealed reads as follows:
Every director of any company who expressly or impliedly authorizes the commencement of

Supply-Post Office
operations by the company or the incurring of any liabilities by the company before ten per centum of its authorized capital has been subscribed and paid for, shall be jointly and severally liable with the company for the payment of any such liabilities so incurred.


George Halsey Perley: So the directors
are relieved only of the liability under section 114; that is, it is no longer required that 10 per cent be paid up before the company begins business?


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: That is right.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 32 to 42 inclusive agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee of supply, Mr. Johnston in the chair.
Post office-outside service-salaries and allowances, $18,632,694.40.
Mail service, including mail service by air, $17,267,000.
Miscellaneous, including $5,000 for the payment of compassionate allowances to employees injured while in the performance of their duties, or to the dependents of employees killed while on duty, such payments to be made only on the specific authority of the governor in council, $1,286,675.
Yukon territory, $150,000.
Total, $37,336,369.40.
Mr. MacLAREN:: Mr. Chairman, whenever this item dealing with the pay of our letter carriers is brought before the committee I take the opportunity of making some reference to this body of civil servants, and I always do so with much pleasure. I believe they are a very efficient body of public servants. It is my experience, and I am sure it is shared by other members of the committee, that they are industrious, trustworthy and courteous and are giving much satisfaction to the general public. I have before me a statement with reference to the work of the letter carriers from which I wish to quote two or three paragraphs. This is the first:
Letter carriers' work embraces all divisions of the manipulative postal service and yet letter carriers are rated much lower than those who only work on one division, and who are seldom, if ever, called upon to work without supervision, or to make decisions, or act on their own initiative, all of which are a daily occurrence with the letter carriers, and when such are satisfactory, all is well, but when they turn out to be wrong, then the carrier is at fault, not the system.
And again:
It was submitted to the experts who classified the service in 1919 that the duties and
responsibilities of letter carriers were equal, if not greater, and certainly more exacting than any other branch of the manipulative staff of postal employees.
This is the third paragraph:
Additional duties have been recently imposed, such as delivery of householder matter, cartons, et cetera, which largely increase his burdens.
Now, Mr. Chairman, there is no question whatever that the letter carriers are not only regular and energetic in the performance of their duties, but that they actually undergo hard work. We must have seen them with their heavy parcels, in all weathers, discharging their duties.
It is well known that the letter carriers are not content with their present rate of pay. They are performing their duties in a very satisfactory manner, and I think it is only due to them that their case should be considered in the most careful way. It seems to me that the Postmaster General should adopt other measures than those already taken to secure additional pay for our letter carriers. I believe we are all not only willing but desirous that an increase of pay should be given to this class of public servants. The Postmaster General states that he has made representations to the Civil Service Commission, which no doubt is the case; but he has failed to secure an increase of pay. I believe there are other methods to which he and the government can have recourse, and I hope they will take some step leading to definite action. I do not think it is the wish of the country that these men should remain discontented when they actually merit a higher rate of pay. Again I urge the Postmaster General to take such measures as will effect an improvement in the remuneration of these very efficient public servants.


Hon. P. J. VENIOT (Postmaster General):: Mr. Chairman, when the committee was dealing with this item last week, the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) asked me if I could furnish him with information on three questions that he submitted. The first was:
1.	How many men have been added to the service who are not subject to the Civil Service Act?
The answer to that is, four. His second
question was:
2.	What is the maximum salary they are receiving?
The answer is: three machinists are paid at prevailing rates, 90 cents an hour, based on an 8-hour day and a 44-hour week. They are paid time and a half for overtime. There
Supply-Post Office

is one temporary labourer paid at the rate of 50 cents an hour for all time worked. His third question was:
Is it not possible for the minister so to adjust the revenues derived from the services rendered by making charges, and securing the sanction of parliament if necessary, to render it possible to pay decent salaries to employees which should be at least $100 per month?
The hon. leader of the opposition himself recognizes that that is a matter of policy. Although I have been studying the situation to a considerable extent for the past year or two, I am not in a position to answer the third question to-night.
There were some other questions asked on May 2. The hon. member for Argenteuil (Sir George Perley) referred to the postal service in connection with Dalesville and stated that it would be quite satisfactory if the patrons of this office were afforded rural mail delivery. I wish to inform him that the department has requested its operating
officers to furnish a report on a rural mail delivery route in the Dalesville district, on account of the difficulty we have had in getting somebody to take charge of the office.
The hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. MacDonald) drew attention to the closing of the post office at Homeville and asked me if I could establish rural mail delivery there. We are taking the same course there as in respect to Dalesville-we are getting a report from our operating officers to see if we cannot bring the district within a rural mail delivery route so as to provide better service.
The hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Manion) asked me:
What is the lowest salary paid, and how many men are receiving that salary?
I had the officials of the department go very carefully into this and I am now in a position to give the information that I did not have definitely last week. It is as follows:
Class title
Postal Helpers. .
Mail porters. . . . Letter carriers. .
Postal clerks. . .
Salary rates
$1,020	$1,140	$1,200	$1,260	$1,320835	205	1	79	85$1,080	$1,200	$1,320	$1,440	$1,50012	28	61	41	59372	129	195	97	2,29984	157	256	138	2,892$1,080	$1,200	$1,260	$1,320	$1,380	$1,440	$1,500	$1,560	$1,620	$1,680	$1,74017	76	2	141	9	99	30	98	350	55	2,150
Another question was brought up the other night I believe by the hon. member for South York (Mr. McGregor)-I am not quite certain it was he who asked it, but that is as I recall it. His question was in connection with the contract for Collection from letter boxes and for parcel delivery in the city of Toronto. The complaint of the hon. member was that the men engaged by the contractor to do the work were receiving $16 for a fifty hour week. I have gone into this question and I have some information before me bearing upon it. The information I have been able to gather is as follows:
4 men at $16 per week.. 7 men at $17 per week.. 11 men at $18 per week.. 1 man at $19 per week..
1	man at $20 per week.. 11 men at $20 per week..
2	men at $20 per week.. 2 men at $19 per week.. 1 man at $20 per week..
Average working hours per week 50 hrs. 57 minutes 56 hrs. 56 minutes 63 hrs.
63 hrs.
63 hrs.
55	hrs. 15 minutes 42 hrs. 45 minutes
56	hrs. 8 minutes 56 hrs. 8 minutes
The statement contains the further information that the average wage per man per week is $18.45, while the average length of time worked by each man per week is 57 hours and 
4 minutes. The fair wage clause in the contract issued within the last two or three months reads as follows:
The said contractor agrees that for the purpose of this contract ten hours shall constitute a full day's work for a courier, and further agrees that the remuneration paid by him to his couriers shall be approximately the same as that paid by mercantile houses and other concerns to their drivers for similar services, and to provide time books approved by the postmaster in which the couriers are to record the hours worked each day in connection with this contract; and the contractor agrees further to produce these time books for inspection when requested to do so by the postmaster. A fine of five dollars will be imposed upon the contractor for failure in every instance to comply with this clause of the agreement.
This contract has been in operation for four years or more. At the present time we are calling for new tenders for this work, as the contractor felt that under the old contract he was not getting sufficient pay. The contract is now being put up for tender with new conditions in the fair wage and hour clauses. Instead of a ten hour day the new contract calls for an eight hour day and a forty-four hour week. Under the new contract cities having similar delivery contracts to that of the

city of Toronto will adopt the eight hour clause, and the wages prevailing in that district will be paid for that class of work.


Leon Johnson Ladner: Last year a discussion took place between the minister and hon. members on this side of the house with regard to the question of letter carriers' salaries. I think the minister's attitude can be summed up in the statement that he was favourable to an adjustment of salaries of letter carriers in the lower amounts. He made the statement that he had made every effort to convince the Civil Service Commission that the salary increases were necessary, and his final statement was that the Civil Service Commission had turned down his plea for increased salaries, and that as a result, he was powerless. Some hon. members on this side of the house thought he was not quite as powerless as his assertions would have indicated, and that the necessary legislation might have been passed.
I wish to place on Hansard a statement contained in a letter received by me which shows the point of view of a letter carrier in regard to the matter of salaries. I have not been authorized to use this statement, although the writer did not state that I should not do so.


Peter John Veniot: What is the name of the author of the statement?


Leon Johnson Ladner: I do not purpose to give that.


Peter John Veniot: Mr. Chairman, it is not fair that statements of this kind should be put on record when the hon. gentleman says he will not give the name of the author. We are not in a position to know whether the person writing has knowledge of what he writes.


Henry Herbert Stevens: The hon. member will give his word.


Peter John Veniot: No, no.


Richard Bedford Bennett: He will take the responsibility.


Leon Johnson Ladner: The statement is not of a violent nature, and it is not intended to create trouble or to stir up prejudice.


Peter John Veniot: I am not afraid of it.


Leon Johnson Ladner: If the statements contained herein are not correct it will be the privilege of the minister to correct them. The opinions stated in the. letter are in accord with my own ideas. The letter is, in part, as follows:
Letter carriers' work embraces all divisions of the manipulative postal service and yet letter carriers are rated much lower than those who work on only one division, and who are seldom if ever called upon to work without supervision, or to make decisions

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Peter John Veniot: That has just been read by the hon. member for St. John-Albert (Mr. MacLaren).


Richard Bedford Bennett: It shows unity of effort.


Leon Johnson Ladner: If it has been read there is no use wasting the time of the house, but it is in the man's handwriting. I think I shall continue reading:

or acts on their own initiative, all of which are a daily occurrence with the letter carriers, and when such are satisfactory, all is well, but when they turn out to be wrong, then the carrier is at fault, not the system. Again, as the last handling of mail between the government and all the public, the letter carrier must stand the blame for all mistakes which he fails to detect, no matter if the mistake be foreign or domestic in origin. It was submitted to the experts who classified the service in 1919 that the duties and responsibilities of letter carriers were greater and certainly more exacting than any other branch of the manipulative staff of the postal service. The carrier is the ambassador between the postal department and the public, and he performs in part all duties attached to the following classes in the department:
Has that been read?


Peter John Veniot: Yes, exactly the same.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Go on and finish reading it.


Leon Johnson Ladner: It continues:
Registration clerk, record keeper, information clerk, C.O.D. parcel and insurance collector, stamp vendor, inquiry clerk, adviser to the department, and financial collector to the department and business houses. Additional duties have been recently imposed, such as delivery of householders, cartons, et cetera, which largely increase his burdens. The letter carrier is the only man in the postal service who acts as a combination post office and information bureau. Yet he is rated considerably lower than other branches of the postal service who perform but one duty with less responsibility. In 1924 Hon. Charles Murphy, Postmaster General, requested the Civil Service Commission to increase the salary of letter carriers to a maximum of $1,560. The commission granted a maximum of $1,440 and cut off the bonus, which was a reduction in place of an increase. The result that followed was another strike of some duration in several of the larger post offices. In 1928 the Hon. P. J. Veniot, Postmaster General, recommended to the Civil Service Commission an increase of salary for letter carriers. The commission again refused the request but added $60 to the $1,440, making the maximum $1,500.
During the past session in parliament the Postmaster General recommended to the commission a further increase in salary for letter carriers, and this request the commission refused to consider, and the present Postmaster General is reported in Hansard as making the statement on the floor of the House of Commons that had the letter carriers been properly classified in 1919 they would now be drawing a salary that would make them contented.
Why do the commission reject these recommendations? The answer is that powers, under

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the amended Civil Service Act of 1919, were conferred on them that no commission in any country in Canada are in possession of. We cannot blame the commission for carrying out the law as laid down. The blame must rest with the government who enacted these powers, as well as the government that continues to perpetuate them. Again, the Civil Service Commission, as we understand their regulations, have the power to increase salaries for added duties. Letter carriers have at least four added duties to perform since their classification was made. Why does the commission not recognize this?
The next paragraph is an important feature:
In 1918 a Canadian letter carrier with a bonus of $350 was in receipt of a salary of $89 a year more than the TJ.S.A. carrier. To-day a U.S.A. carrier gets $600 a year more than the Canadian carrier, both performing the same duties. While the government and the Civil Service Commission have advertised increases for letter carriers several times, the only increase-
He means change.
-which ever reached us was a reduction of $156 a year.
That is a statement from one who is interested in the matter and who knows the facts. I want to ask the minister whether he is taking any steps to fulfil his promise of last session and the previous session to increase the salaries on the minimum rate and, if so, what steps he has taken.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Perhaps before the minister answers I might ask a similar question, and I might be allowed to read some correspondence which was tabled this afternoon and which may partly answer the question which has been asked by the hon. member for Vancouver South. For a number of years very determined efforts have been made on both sides of the house to obtain for the lower paid men in the service, not merely those in the Post Office Department, a minimum rate of pay of at least $100 per month. The other day when the minister spoke of this question I believe he stated that there were approximately 8,800 people working in the postal service under his supervision, in the various grades. He stated also that between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of these men were receiving the minimum rate of pay, which is $1,020 a year. That means that at least 2,000 men employed in the postal service are receiving approximately $90 per month. I have the exact figures here if the minister wishes them.


Peter John Veniot: I gave the exact figures tonight.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Yes; they totalled 8,851, as
I took them down, and the Postmaster General said from 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the men received the minimum rate of pay. As I understand it, a man must work 
three years in the postal service before he gets the first increase. He enters the service the first year on the temporary staff, and while he is on the temporary staff he does not get any increase over the minimum rate. I am told that as a rule he stays on the temporary staff for two years before he is placed on the permanent staff, and then he has to be on the permanent staff one year before getting his increase. Consequently that man has to work three years for $1,020 per year before he is entitled to any increase in pay, and that is why I believe there is such a large percentage of these men in the postal service working for this low wage.
For three sessions at least we have made determined efforts to get the department to do something, particularly for the lower paid men, but so far we have been unsuccessful. I have asked in previous years what the minister expects these men bo do and what remedy they have for bettering their condition. That question has not been answered as yet, and it cannot be answered. These men have only two courses open to them. They can come to parliament and ask to have their grievances redressed, but what happens when they do that? When they come to parliament they come to the proper and logical place, but then they are told that parliament is helpless because of the Civil Service Commission, and during the past few years the result has been that these men have not been given the increases which they requested, because the Civil Service Commission claimed they were not entitled to such increases. There is only one other course of action open to them. If the government does not see fit or does not desire to give these men an increase in pay the only alternative open to them is to go on strike, and if they go on strike what happens? The government declaims against them, calling them almost every name they can think of, for having the temerity to go on strike against conditions which we all agree are almost intolerable.
However, I wish to say, having looked over the correspondence the Postmaster General laid on the table to-day, that he must be given credit for persistence in trying to redress the grievances of some of these low paid civil servants. Let me read some of the correspondence, which I have glanced over hurriedly since it was laid on the table this afternoon. First there is a latter dated May 2, 1928, from the secretary of the Civil Service Commission to Mr. L. J. Gaboury, of which the first paragraph is as follows: '
. ^ ^ 1!' directed to advise you that at a meeting of the commissioners this morning your recommendation for increased compensation for the classes letter carrier, mail porter, postal

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clerk and railway mail clerk was given very careful consideration by the commissioners and that their decision is that there should be no increase granted in the basic rates for these classes. '
That is signed by W. Foran, the secretary. Then there is another letter addressed to Hon. P. J. Veniot, Postmaster General, under date of March 9, 1929, just about fourteen months ago, and also signed by W. Foran. as secretary of the Civil Service Commission. It is as follows:
Sir:
Your recent communication confirming your previous recommendation for higher compensation for the classes postal clerk, letter carrier and mail porter has been placed before the Board of Civil Service Commissioners.
After full consideration of the subject matter in your letter the commissioners have decided to confirm their decision of May 2, 1928, which was communicated to the Deputy Postmaster General by a letter of the same date, that further increase in the compensation of these classes is not justified.
I am rather surprised that any commission such as the Civil Service Commission, in some respects under the control of parliament, would attempt to justify a wage of less than $90 per month to be paid to employees of the government.
The next is a communication dated March 31, 1930, addressed to the Hon. W. J. Roche, chairman, Civil Service Commission, Ottawa. It reads as follows:
The government has again considered the question of increasing salaries of letter carriers, postal helpers, et caetera. I would be pleased if you would let me know if your board are willing to reconsider the decision reached in this matter, so that I can make arrangements for placing an item in the supplementary estimates.
Yours truly,
P. J. Veniot.
The next communication is dated April 4, 1930, from the secretary of the Civil Sendee Commission and addressed to the Postmaster General. I will read only the last sentence because I believe that is all this parliament or this house would be interested in. This sentence has a very direct bearing on the matter now under discussion, and reads as follows:
I am further directed to advise you that if, notwithstanding the representations made by the commission in its letter to the Secretary of State of May 23, 1928, it is the desire of the government to provide higher compensation for postal and other related classes, the commissioners would be pleased to receive directions on this matter as were given in 1925 under the provisions of P C. 1644, a copy of which is also attached hereto.
According to this sentence which I have read, it would appear that we have been given by the Civil Service Commission the right, so
to speak, to put an item in the supplementary estimates, which item the Civil Service Commission would, no doubt, apportion among the employees of the postal service. After a hurried perusal of the copy of P.C. 1644, I think I am justified in coming to the conclusion that if there is no desire on the part of the Civil Service Commission or the Postmaster General to grant increases to the lower paid men in the postal service, it is not necessary to put an item in the supplementary estimates. Only one conclusion can be arrived at, and that is that the putting of an item in the supplementary estimates would be for the purpose of granting increases, as has been suggested by several hon. members of this house. In view of the fact that the Postmaster Gen, eral has in his previous declarations and in correspondence tabled to-day shown that he was in favour of granting increases to the postal service, and in view of the fact that the Civil Service Commission has changed its attitude on this question, I cannot reconcile his having, changed his attitude. Perhaps I have not read closely and diligently enough the communications addressed to the Postmaster General by the Civil Service Commission. If there is no intention to grant increases to these employees, I cannot understand why it is necessary to put an item in the supplementary estimates. Would the Postmaster General kindly inform this committee for what purpose that item was intended, whether it is to grant an increase to the postal workers or whether it is for some other purpose?


Peter John Veniot: Under the provisions of
the Civil Service Act no increase can be granted by the governor in council or can be considered by the treasury board before whom the estimates come before going to the council. The Civil Service Commission fixes the classification and the rates for each class. In 1927, or perhaps it was 1928, in order to comply with the conditions set forth in the Civil Service Act, as Postmaster General I recommended to the Civil Service Commission an increase in salaries for the classes mentioned in the correspondence which has been read this evening. Previous to that, I had brought the matter before the government, informing the government what that recommendation would mean in dollars and cents. Having received the sanction of the government, I then submitted the matter to the Civil Service Commission. As the whole truth has not been told about this matter, I will have to reveal how this matter came into the estimates at one time. Believing that I had obtained the sanction of the Civil Service Commission, I had an item of $276,000 placed temporarily in
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the estimates, with a recommendation to the treasury board. As appears from the correspondence read by the hon. member, the Civil Service Commission refused to give their permission to the increases, stating that they did not consider they were necessary. I then had to withdraw that amount before the treasury board, and it was not dealt with any further by that board. Later on I again saw the Civil Service Commission to see if they had changed their former decision, and their reply-as appears from the correspondence- was that they had not. They went on to say that if we proceeded in the manner adopted in 1925, they would consider an increase in the salaries. We were not given the authority to place any amount in the supplementary estimates. If the matter should be considered by the government and the intention of the government were made known to the Civil Service Commission, they might or might not act. The desire of the government for the increases has been expressed to them by the Postmaster General, and they have so far refused to grant those increases.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: May I ask the
hon. gentleman a question?


Peter John Veniot: I do not intend to be thrown off my argument. There are too many attempts being made to throw ministers off their arguments.


Henry Herbert Stevens: That is nonsense.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I only want to ask a question.


Peter John Veniot: I am endeavouring to give all the information possible and I think I should be allowed to do so in my own way;
I intend to do so in my own way.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: That is the hon. minister's old way, and he did not get very far with it.


Peter John Veniot: If that is a threat on the
part of the hon. member I am quite prepared to accept it.


Charles A. Stewart: The hon. minister will get it.


Peter John Veniot: That did not give the government the authority to place in the estimates the amount which had already been recommended, and that is why that amount does not appear to-day. If the hon. member wishes to ask a question, I am prepared to answer it to the best of my ability.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: Were the increases recommended by the Postmaster General granted in part?


Peter John Veniot: Yes.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: That is all I
wanted to ask.
IMr. Veniot.)


Peter John Veniot: I will explain why; I do
not think it should be allowed to be dropped right there.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: You did not tell us that.


Peter John Veniot: The question did not come up. The increases recommended were for postal helpers, porters, postal clerks, letter carriers and railway mail clerks. The increases granted as recommended were granted by the Civil Service Commission only to the railway mail clerks.


Abraham Albert Heaps: There is in the correspondence a very significant letter which does not altogether tally with the statements made now by the Postmaster General.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: That is nothing new.


Abraham Albert Heaps: I will read it again because
it is short. It is dated March 31, 1930, and addressed to the chairman of the Civil Service Commission by the Postmaster General. It reads:
The government has again considered the question of increasing salaries of letter carriers, postal helpers, etc.
That is only about five weeks ago. Then we have another statement regarding putting an item in the supplementary estimate. You cannot divorce one thing from the other because in the same letter I have just read is the question of placing in the supplementary estimates an item for what purpose? Because the government have considered the question of increasing the salaries of the letter carriers. If an item went into the supplementary estimates it was only for the purpose of increasing the salaries of members of the postal staff and the next formality, if I might put the matter that way, was for the Civil Service Commission to apportion the money.


Peter John Veniot: No.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Will the Postmaster General tell me if the government considered granting increases to the members of the postal service, how was this increase, after the money was provided for in the supplementary estimates, to be granted?


Peter John Veniot: I have already detailed
the procedure. The department in considering the various classes named, either three or four, calculate what the increases to be recommended to the commission will amount to. They place before the commission their recommendation for an increase of salary amounting to so and so, as the case may be in each class. If the commission consider that a sufficient increase, they can accept it if they will at that figure or they can increase it themselves. Once the Civil Service Commis-

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sion accepts either the amount recommended by the Postmaster General or the amount they may fix themselves, that amount is then brought before the treasury board. The treasury board considers the question and submits its decision to council. Then on the decision of council the amount is placed in the main or supplementary estimates.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Let me see whether I understand the Postmaster General correctly. Sometimes I am a little dense in regard to these questions. Evidently during the past two months the government have been quite prepared to give an increase in salary to the men employed under the jurisdiction of the Postmaster General. I think I am being fair in making that statement. I am glad the Postmaster General and I are apparently in agreement so far. The next thing to do was this: The government were willing to place that amount in the supplementary estimates in order that provision might be made for the men to have the increase this year.
I hope I am correct in making that statement.


Peter John Veniot: If the hon. member just adds to that the words: "provided the Civil Service Commission sanction it."


Abraham Albert Heaps: In order that the increase may become effective this year, it has to have the sanction of the Civil Service Commission?


Peter John Veniot: That is right.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Evidently according to other correspondence on the file, the Civil Service Commission had already receded from then-position of 1929 because they say so in that correspondence. If they claim in that correspondence they had already reconsidered their decision of 1929, this means that they were prepared to grant the increases the government were ready to give to the postal workers. There is no other conclusion that I can come to and I do not think there is any other conclusion anybody else can come to, otherwise the Civil Service Commission would have stated in the correspondence under date of April 4: We affirm our decision of 1928 and 1929. They do not say that. They say that they have reconsidered their decision and they are prepared now to grant, so to speak, the request of the government and parliament in respect to giving an increase to these men. I would sugest this to test out the sincerity of the house and also of the Postmaster General himself. I think he wants and we all want to be fair to the men in the employ of the government. Let him bring down in the supplementary estimates an item covering increases to the postal workers. If he does that, I am satisfied there will be no difficulty about its passing the house, because all parties
have been committed to this increase, and I am sure, once it has passed the house, the Civil Service Commission will not hesitate for two minutes to grant the increase to the men in the postal service.


Peter John Veniot: If it were possible for me to place upon the last communication from the Civil Service Commission the interpretation which the hon. member now places upon it,
I would not hesitate for one moment. But that is not the interpretation.


Abraham Albert Heaps: What is it?


Hugh Alexander Stewart: May I be permitted to read to the committee this clause of the letter of April 4, from the secretary of the Civil Service Commission to the Hon. P. J. Veniot, Postmaster General:
I am further directed to advise you that if, notwithstanding the representations made by the commission in its letter to the Secretary of State of May 23, 1928, it is the desire of the government to provide higher compensation for postal and other related classes, the commissioners will be pleased to receive directions on this matter as were given in 1925 under the provisions of P.C. 1644, a copy of which is also attached hereto.
I have P.C. 1644 passed on the 14th September, 1925, the order referred to. It reads:
The committee of the privy council have had before them a report, dated 11th September, 1925, from the Hon. Charles Murphy, Postmaster General, submitting, on behalf of the subcommittee of council which met the representatives of the postal employees on June 4, 1925, and heard their objections to the salary schedules as finally revised by the Civil Service Commission, a verbatim report of the proceedings at the interview mentioned.
The minister recommends that the said report be forwarded to the Civil Service Commission, with the view of having that body make an upward revision of the salaries in question, in the light of the representations made by the representatives of the postal employees at the said interview, and in accordance wth the attached summary, which reflects the opinion and confirms the judgment of the Post Office Department as embodied in the salary schedules submitted to the Civil Service Commission in 1924.
The Civil Service Commission have intimated to the Postmaster General that if he desires an upward revision of those salaries, all he has to do is to submit to them a memorandum, an order in council, similar to that submitted in 1925. The Postmaster General has had that letter before him since April 4, or more than a month. I am going to ask him whether he has taken any steps in -the direction of meeting the request of the Civil Service Commission in regard to an upward revision or a reconsideration of salaries as was done by this P.C. 1644. All that is standing in the way of an increase in salary to these employees is a request from
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the Postmaster General similar to that which was given in 1925. That request has not been made. I wonder if I am not justified, therefore, in saying as I said the other night that the Postmaster General is dodging this question.


Peter John Veniot: I do not wish to prolong
the discussion, because this subject has been pretty well threshed out. I wish to say, however, that since the receipt of that communication from the Civil Service Commission the matter has been looked into to see whether the circumstances surrounding the case on which that order was granted in 1924 are similar to the circumstances to-day. If I mistake not, the conditions arising in 1924 were such that it needed pretty strong action on the part of somebody in 1925 to bring about a settlement of the postal strike, and it was only in 1925 that settled conditions were brought about. That order in council made the increase in salaries retroactive to include 1924. No such conditions exist to-day. The Civil Service Commission have full power, and they only have the power under the act, to grant the increase which has been recommended. The Civil Service Commission have no right to state to the government: While we have the power to grant an increase, as we consider that the granting of this increase is not justified, we will pass on to you the responsibility of telling us that we must do this. I do not think that the Civil Service Commission have the right to assume that position. I have been accused of having trampled the Civil Service Act underfoot, but now I am being asked to recommend that that act be trampled underfoot-


Hugh Alexander Stewart: Not at all.


Peter John Veniot: -and that the power given to the Civil Service Commission under the law shall be exercised by the governor in council. That is what I have been asked to do.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: The minister is not asked to do anything of the kind. All that he is being asked to do is to pass an order in council similar to P.C. 1644, and all that that order in council did was to ask the Civil Service Commission to consider the representations of these men and to make such representations as they saw fit.


Peter John Veniot: The Civil Service Commission have before them now, and have had for two long years, the statement made by the Postmaster General that he and the government were anxious to give the increase, and we asked them to act in the matter and use their authority under the act and accept

the recommendation made by the government through the Postmaster General. They have said to the Postmaster General and to the government: We do not see the necessity.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: They do not say that.


Peter John Veniot: No, they make it stronger.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: No.


Peter John Veniot: Read the letter. The hon.
gentleman has the advantage over me because he has the file before him.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: They say that
they are willing to consider it.


Peter John Veniot: The hon. gentleman ought
to be fair and read all the letters. He should read the letter previous to the one he read, dated 1929. The hon. member for North Winnipeg read that letter, but my hon. friend did not. He is referring to only one letter, that of April 4, 1930.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Mr. Chairman, if we required any proof that the minister was not sincere in his efforts in this matter we have had it in the last ten minutes. He says that in 1924 certain employees of the government, driven to extremes, were out on strike, and in order to get that situation cleared up an order in council was passed instructing the Civil Service Commission to do thus and so. He says that because such conditions do not obtain to-day, therefore the government are not justified in following the course adopted in 1925, when that order in council was passed. My hon. friend from North Winnipeg a few moments ago drew attention to that very fact. He said that through the action of the government and the Civil Service Commission between them these men were, to use his own words, being driven to desperation because of the conditions under which they were suffering. The minister now in effect says: We will hold our position until the men take the position indicated by the hon. member for North Winnipeg.
The minister in a letter to me only a short time ago says, "I have already on two different occasions recommended to the Civil Service Commission an increase in salary." He says further that he has no intention this session of doing anything further in the matter. The point is this. In the last two or three sentences that the minister has just uttered, and if he will read them carefully in Hansard to-morrow he will see that my interpretation is right, 'he said: It is the business of the Civil Service Commission to deal with this question, and I am not going to allow the commission to shuffle its responsibility off on to me. That was the gist of what he said.

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The facts are these: the minister himself has definitely admitted that these men in their request for an increase are in a sound and correct position, that the request is reasonable, because, he says, "I have recommended it twice." If he has recommended it twice, he has twice confirmed the justice of their cause. Surely, if the cause of these men is just, it is the business of the government, in spite of any commission, to see that justice is done to them. But, the minister says, we have no way of doing it. Well, Mr. Chairman, I hold in my bands the estimates of this year. I can take the estimates of any other year and cite half a dozen cases where the ministers of the crown have disregarded the Civil Service Act. Mark you, there is not a dollar for the underpaid $90 a month postal carrier. The government does not dare to pass any statute that might contravene the Civil Service Act. Oh no, that would never do. The minister said: Why, to ask me to do that, to ask me to trample on the Civil Service Act is outrageous. Very good. I find in the estimates for this year this item:
Washington-representation, including salaries and allowances for Minister Plenipotentiary, secretaries and staff, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Civil Service Act, $100,000.
Here is another item:
Paris-representation, including salaries and allowances for Minister Plenipotentiary, secretaries and staff, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Civil Service Act, $80,000.
Just below that there is another item, worded in the same way, of $80,000 for our representative in Tokyo and his staff. The men in these offices are provided for, regardless altogether of the Civil Service Act. I turn to the National Revenue department. On page 67 of the estimates I find this item:
Salaries and contingent expenses of the several ports in the Dominion, including pay for overtime of officers, nothwithstanding anything in the Civil Service Act, $8,064,000.
On the same page is another item to be paid to the Department of Justice for secret preventive service. The item goes on to say that the amount is required to create positions, and so forth, "notwithstanding anything contained in the Civil Service Act." In short, if the words "notwithstanding anything in the Civil Service Act" were not contained in these items, the action of the government in connection with the appointments in question could not be taken. In every case this action is taken, as the minister says, to trample upon the Civil Service Act. Now we are not asking the minister to trample upon the Civil Service Act. We are asking him to do justice to the demand of these men who have a grievance, a demand which the minister himself both in the house and in correspondence has admitted to be just. He says he himself has recommended it. I am going to read this again. This is Mr. Foran's letter of April 4th to the Postmaster General:
I am further directed to advise you that if, notwithstanding the representations made by the commission in its letter to the Secretary of State of May 23, 1928, it is the desire of the government to provide higher compensation for postal and other related classes, the commissioners would be pleased to receive directions on this matter as were given in 1925 under the provisions of P C. 1644, a copy of which is also attached hereto.
There is not any doubt that P. C. 1644, was a legal document. I think it might be just as well to read it into the record so that the analogy may be properly drawn by those who care to read it:



P.C. 1644.

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Certified copy of a minute of a meeting of the committee of the privy council, approved by His Excellency the Governor General on the 1th of September, 1925.
The committee of the privy council have had before them a report, dated 11th September, 1925, from the Hon. Charles Murphy, Postmaster General, submitting, on behalf of the subcommittee of council which met the representatives of the postal employees on June 4, 1925, and heard their objections to the salary schedules as finally revised by the Civil Service Commission, a verbatim report of the proceedings at the interview mentioned.
The minister recommends that the said report be forwarded to the Civil Service Commission, with the view of having that body make an upward revision of the salaries in question, in the light of the representations made by the representatives of the postal employees at the said interview, and in accordance with the attached summary, which reflects the opinion and confirms the judgment of the Post Office Department as embodied in the salary schedules submitted to the Civil Service Commission in 1924.
The minister represents, that having regard to the fact that the salary schedules for the entire civil service are coordinated, it will naturally follow that the representations made on behalf of the clerical service by the civil service association of Ottawa which have been received since the date of the interview above mentioned, will be considered by the Civil Service Commission in conjunction with such action as the commission may take in regard to the salaries of the postal employees.
The minister further recommends that these additional representations be also forwarded to the Civil Service Commission so that a comprehensive decision that will apply to the err tire civil service may be reached at the earliest possible date.
The committee concur in the foregoing and submit the same for Your Excellency's approval.
E. J. Lemaire,
Clerk of the Privy Council.
Now, all that is required is that the minister should take to council a recommendation that in his opinion,-and he already has stated
Supply-Post Office
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time and time again that it is his opinion a minimum salary of $100 a month should be paid to this rank of the civil service, and he should ask his colleagues to pass that and send it to the Civil Service Commission tomorrow, and the Civil Service Commission to-morrow would conform to that request. If the minister is sincere, and if the government are interested in this matter, they can correct it in one meeting of the privy council; there is not the slightest question about it. The minister for three successive sessions has been telling parliament that he has done his best, that he is helpless, that he has passed this on to the Civil Service Commisison and the Civil Service Commission have turned it down. The long and short of it is this, that the Civil Service Commission have adopted a certain general principle in the fixation of salaries and the conditions of work of the civil service. It does not follow that they are infallible and that what they do is the last word. It means that they take in their own judgment, a certain line of action in their interpretation of the act. But the act gives the government power on the recommendation of the minister to send to the commission certain instructions. Let him send those instructions to the Civil Service Commission with a distinct recommendation that a minimum salary of $100 a month should be paid to these underpaid civil servants.
Hugh Alexander Stewart: Now, Mr. Chairman, I think it is perfectly clear that for a month the Postmaster General has had before him the request from the Civil Service Commission for action, and there has been none on his part. But some action has been taken by the Postmaster General on the eve of the general election, as I gather from what I read in the Toronto paper to-day. I refer to the following:
Postmen Pleased with New Change for Civil Service.-Drafting Committee Is Established by Order in Council.-London Man Is Named.
The announcement made yesterday that a federal order in council had been passed authorizing the setting up of a drafting committee in connection with the national civil service councils is well received here.
A. McMordie, Dominion general secretary of the federated association of letter carriers, told The Globe that this was the fulfilment of a promise made some two years ago.
Similar steps, he said, were taken in England, and the conditions of work and salaries paid were all taken into review.
No intimation had been given of the personnel of the committee or the date when it would be set up.
Mr. McMordie stated that D. W. Rehder of London. Ont., would be the likely representative of the letter carriers to represent that section of the council.
So that apparently on the eve of the general election the Postmaster General has been passing an order in council that is not calculated to give the letter carriers any increase.


Peter John Veniot: I think the hon. gentleman should get exact information before he passes criticism.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I say "apparently." I shall be very glad if the Postmaster General will tell us all about it.


Peter John Veniot: The hon. gentleman is so
prone to criticize before he knows the facts that to give the facts after criticism has been offered seems to be no good to him. I may say for his information that what he has read is not due to any action by the Postmaster General. That comes from the Department of Labour which has been considering this civil service council for the last year or so, and is now naming a drafting committee composed of representatives of all branches of the civil service to draft regulations. As a matter of fact, I am not sure whether the council has been named or not, but I think it has been. So it has nothing to do with the Postmaster General.


John Frederick Johnston: Shall the item carry?


Hugh Alexander Stewart: No, we have not half finished with it yet.
Progress reported.


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At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.