1932-10-11

Right Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Prime Minister):: I have pleasure in laying upon the table two copies of the report of the royal commission to inquire into railways and transportation in Canada. The French copy is not yet completed, the translation is in process of being made; it is hoped that if there is no interference with the present rate of speed it will be completed in a few days.
I desire to move, seconded by Mr. Guthrie:
That six hundred copies in the English language and two hundred copies in the French language of the report of the royal commission

Questions
to inquire into railways and transportation in Canada, laid on the table of the house this day, be printed forthwith; and that standing order sixty-four be suspended in relation thereto.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

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

Mr. DUFF:: What was the total cost of the investigation into the railway situation by the so-called Duff commission?


Mr. RHODES:: Expenditures not complete. Disbursements to date $58,983.62.


GYPSUM QUEEN INQUIRY
Mr. DUFF:: 
Sir GEORGE PERLEY:: 1.	$23,003.75.
2.	(a) Nil.
(b)	Living allowance	$ 2,600 00
Travelling expenses	 1,164 95

3.	(a) $9,275.
9b) Living allowance	$ 1350 00
Travelling expenses.. ..	1,205 81


$ 2,555 81 IMPERIAL ECONOMIC CONFERENCE
Mr. DUFF:: 1.	What was the total amount expended in connection with the Imperial economic conference?
2.	How much was paid for entertainment and hotel and other expenses while said conference was sitting in Ottawa?
3.	What amount was expended for transportation and other expenses in connection with the trip to the Welland canal for the official opening of said enterprise?


Mr. RHODES:: 1.	$238,581.88.
2.	$138,505, including all lodging and restaurant charges of delegates and official parties.
3.	$5,769.75.


MOTION FOR PAPERS
William Duff: For a copy of all the correspondence, including letters, telegrams and other documents exchanged between any member of the Dominion government or any official thereof and The Aluminum Company of Canada regarding the importation of oil from Russia;
Also any correspondence, letters, telegrams and other documents exchanged between the Dominion government of Canada or any official thereof and the government of Russia or any . official thereof in regard to said matter.


Mr. RYCKMAN:: As the hon. member well knows, it has not been the practice of the Department of National Revenue to disclose its dealings with any one who does business with it. Subject to that restriction there is no objection.


William Duff: Let it stand then if the hon. minister has no objection.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Stands.



WAYS AND MEANS

['Mr. Speaker, I rise at this rather late hour to take part briefly in the present debate. This autumn session was called to discuss the trade agreements of the last Imperial economic conference, held at Ottawa, in the course of the months of July and August last. Not being acquainted with these trade agreements, it is difficult to discuss them at present. Perhaps this explains why the people of South Huron did not wish to pronounce themselves on an issue of which they knew neither the import nor terms. No doubt they were satisfied to judge of the government\'s record which was so well put before them by our friends on your left, sir, the faithful workers of the Liberal party, not only from Ontario, but from all over Canada.\nIf we are to believe what we have read in the Canadian, English and American press, this conference was the cause of many a surprise to a great number of people, and this in varied fields of activities. Without knowing the result of these agreements, I wonder how the government will settle the trade exchanges with England, if Canada remains on the gold standard while the pound sterling is depreciated. I am not a financier, but according to common sense, it seems to me a difficult problem to solve, under the present circumstances, I wonder how they are going to reconcile our two monetary systems so different from one another.\nI read, sir, the speeches of the mover and seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the Throne. I congratulate them both on their literary attainment. After perusing the speech of the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Laurin), I have no further doubt that he believes in his leader and will follow his star, until it shoots across the skies to fall into the St. Lawrence river, below Quebec, or in the beautiful county of Montmagny represented in this house by the hon. deputy speaker (Mr. LaVergne) who is at this moment presiding over our deliberations.\n108\tCOMMONS\nThe Address-Mr. Mercier (St. Henri)\nSince last session many events have taken place throughout this country. We have had a number of by-elections. The results of these by-elections in Quebec and New Brunswick may be looked upon as an approval of the stand taken by the Liberal party, during last session, on the various economic questions debated in this house. The people realized that the claims put forward \'by the Liberal party were just and deserved to be endorsed.\nWe first had two by-elections on the same date, one in Quebec and the other in New Brunswick. In Quebec we had to contend against all the conservative forces, not only of the Montreal district but also of Quebec. All the fighting element of the Conservative party came to the rescue of the Conservative cause, led by ministers who erected a real Xmas tree, in the middle of June, in the city of Montreal, making all kinds of pledges, such as wharves, etc., offering to supply work to their followers, if the Conservative candidate was elected; bringing dredges from the lower parts of the St. Lawrence and placing them near the Montreal East wharves in order to have the people of Maisonneuve believe that there would soon be work for all if the constituency elected a Conservative member. I am supported in this statement by an interview given to "La Presse" by the hon. Minister of Marine (Mr. Duranleau), which was in answer to criticisms made by Mr. Jean Fauteux, the defeated Conservative candidate, who stated that his party had not sufficiently supported him in this contest. In this interview the hon. Minister of Marine gave proof of his tireless work, and showed how hard the whole Conservative party had fought to storm this Liberal fortress. Although the Liberal majority decreased from\n4,000\tto 1,500 owing to there being four or five candidates in the contest, candidates of all shades, labourite, communist, conservative and liberal, the liberal standard still continues to float over Maisonneuve. The interview of the Minister of Marine proves that no blame can be attached to the Conservative party as regards the efforts made to win this election, hence, this victory of the Liberal party is the more significant. The new member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Jean) an advocate practising at the Bar, in Montreal, has taken his seat on your left, sir, among us, his colleagues who rejoice, and to help us in safeguarding the people\'s interests which the Liberal party has always had at heart.\nThe same day another election took place in the constituency of Royal, in New Brunswick. The hon. Mr. Jones was returned, but with\n\na majority greatly decreased-from about three thousand to six hundred in round figures. Again there we won a victory if we are to put faith in the speech of the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) when, in answer to the right hon. Loader of the Opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King), he stated: "We have reduced the majority in Maisonneuve." If this argument can be put forth by the leader of the government, it also stands good for the Liberals. We have decreased the Conservative majority in Royal from three thousand to about 600, this is really a moral victory and a happy omen for a Liberal victory at the next general election.\nA few months later, the battle bugle called us to take part in the by-election of South Huron, in Ontario, we had nothing to do with the date of this by-election. The Imperial Economic Conference had just concluded its work, from all sides one heard of the supposed success of this conference; the government was under the impression that everything was in its favour. Much had been said about this conference, perhaps rightly if we are to judge by the solemn gathering, at Ottawa, of all the diplomats of the empire. This no doubt was an honour for Canada, and the government relied on the results of this conference to hypnotize the people of South Huron; however, they made no success of it and a defeat was their reward. The . victorious Liberal party increased their majority from 349 to 1,989 votes. This by-election was to the credit of our leader, and the Liberal party and a rebuff for the government. Mr. Speaker, I move that the debate be adjourned.']
Edgar Nelson Rhodes: That this house will at its next sitting resolve itself into a committee to consider of the ways and means for raising the supply to be granted to His Majesty, and that standing order 57 be suspended in relation thereto.
_ He said: It is of course understood, as indicated by the Prime Minister in his statement to the house on Friday, that the motion may only carry by unanimous consent.


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Leader of the Opposition):: I understand, Mr. Speaker, that this is the motion it was intended to move to-morrow. I see no reason why it should not be moved to-day.


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: No, this merely sets up the committee.


Richard Bedford Bennett: As the right hon. gentleman will remember, I indicated that we would give notice. By unanimous consent the motion might have been adopted the other day, but having given the notice this is merely to set up the committee. The resolutions that effect the tariff changes are to be tabled to-morrow by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Rhodes).


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. IAN MACKENZIE (Vancouver Centre):: In the absence, Mr. Speaker, of the
Steamship Bright Fan

hon. Minister of Marine (Mr. Duranleau) may I ask the right hon. Prime Minister if it is the intention of the government to introduce during the present session legislation to implement any recommendations of the Gibb report.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The hon. Solicitor General (Mr. Dupre) is the Acting Minister of Marine in the absence of the minister. I am not in a position to give an answer to that question until the .minister returns. Certainly legislation, if any, will not be introduced until after the adjournment.


WORLD ECONOMIC CONFERENCE
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. J. L. RALSTON (Shelburne-Yar-mouth):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask
the right hon. Prime Minister, as Secretary of State for External Affairs, if there is any objection to bringing down whatever correspondence is in the possession of the government with regard to the world economic conference, about which he spoke last night.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I will have
to take time to answer that question, treating the request as a notice of motion. I am not in a position to say definitely, but my recollection at the moment is that the only communications we have are communications from the secretariat of the League of Nations. The document from which I read last night is of course available to the hon. gentleman as a publication of the league. But it was supplemented by despatches which came from the British government, which in any event I would not be in a position to bring down until after I had consulted that government as to whether or not there were any objections. That is the position. But I will look into it to-morrow.


HUDSON BAY RAILWAY
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. B. M. STITT (Nelson):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to ask the Acting Minister of Marine (Mr. Dupre) a question, based on a series of telegrams I have received from Churchill in connection with the sinking of the steamship Bright Fan in Hudson straits on or about October 1.
The first telegram is dated Churchill, the 10th of October:

B. M. Stitt, M.P.,
House of Commons, Ottawa, Ont.
Hear Friend Barney: re enquiry into sinking of Bright Fan in Hudson straits. I was passage worker on board from Churchill to England and as you are personally aware have my faith pinned on the success of this route. It certainly is essential that I should be on this enquiry on behalf of your government and all Canadian citizens concerned. Captain Oliver of the Bright Fan now wants leave me here at Churchill. This train I am informed leaves tomorrow morning for Montreal so you will have to act quickly if you want a thorough enquiry into this unfortunate disaster. I am prepared to go and have the true facts of the whole situation. Get in touch with your ministers and wire me expenses by return. Kind regards,
Bert Barker.
On the strength of that telegram I wired Mr. Barker yesterday as follows:
Ottawa, 10-9-32.
Bert Barker,
Churchill, Man.
Wire me correct statement of facts followed by sworn statement and I will then be in a position to demand on floor of house a thorough enquiry re sinking of Bright Fan.
Regards,
B. M. Stitt.
Then I received this morning a further wire from Ernest J. Schofield, notary public, Manitoba, which covers the sworn statement made by Bert Barker in regard to this incident :
B. M. Stitt, M.P.,
House of Commons, Ottawa, Ont.
Replying to your wire of this date I have to-day made the following sworn statement, and quote verbatim:	_
I, Bertram Herbert Barker, of Churchill, in the province of Manitoba, passenger worker of SS. Bright Fan. make oath and say: That I was on the SS. Bright Fan-


Pierre Édouard Blondin: Order. Does the hon.
member intend to address a question to the government? If so, I wish he would proceed with the question and not take so much time of the house reading affidavits and telegrams and other communications. This is not the proper time to read them.


Bernard Munroe Stitt: The question arises from this wire, Mr. Speaker, I could not intelligently ask the question unless I read this wire.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: It means he prefers to
read them, but he can ask the question right now.


Bernard Munroe Stitt: Very good. I would like to ask the Acting Minister of Marine whether or not opportunity will be given to Mr. Barker to appear before the board of inquiry that I understand is being called to inquire into this disaster. Mr. Barker

The Address-Mr. Woodsworth
will be in touch with the captain. I hold that he is the most important witness that can possibly appear before this board.


Hon. MAURICE DUPRE (Acting Minister of Marine):: In answer to the hon. member I will say that the inquiry will be made immediately and Mr. Barker will be . heard as well as all other witnesses available.


William Duff: By the wreck commission, may I ask?


UNEMPLOYMENT-WORK IN MONTREAL
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. ARTHUR DENIS (St. Denis) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, the City Council of Montreal has decided to carry out certain work in order to relieve the unemployed. A delegation came to Ottawa to request a contribution from the government in order to defray the cost of such work.
No answer having yet been received, I wish to inquire whether the government will now disclose its intentions in this respect.


Hon. W. A. GORDON (Minister of Labour) :: If the hon. member will put the question on the order paper I will be glad to answer it.


Joseph-Arthur Denis: I aim sorry that the hon. Minister of Labour was unable to catch my question. I notice that there are French Canadian ministers present in the house, could they not answer me orally?


GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH
[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Monday, October 10, consideration of the motion of Mr. P. G. Davies for an address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, and the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Mackenzie King.
Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I find myself
very largely in agreement with the amendment, though from my point of view it does not go far enough. I must congratulate the leader of the opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King) on his conversion to many of the ideas that have 'been advocated from this comer of the house for some years past, but I remember also that when the right hon. gentleman was in office he took no action along the lines that he now advocates. Take unemployment, for example; if, in the last year the right hon. gentleman was in office, he had taken vigorous action along that line,
I am quite well convinced that he would be in office now. Take the question of proportional representation. We introduced that question from this corner, but the government gave no help whatever, though there was abundant opportunity for bringing in this reform. Take the question of a central bank. Older members of the house will remember the inquiries of 1923 and 1924, and I personally brought forward motions along this line in 1926, 1926 and again in 1928. I would ask where the present leader of the opposition was then and what position he and his Minister of Finance took in the debates which were held in those years. However, I am very glad indeed to find that he has been converted, and in this comer we feel that from now on, in discussing some of these measures, we will have the support that hitherto we have not had.
I have been wondering, however, whether the leader of the opposition would go so far as to agree with his colleague from Vancouver Centre (Mr. Mackenzie). Only a few days ago, on September 27, during an address before the Laurier Club, the hon. member for Vancouver Centre is reported by the Canadian Press to have stated his position as follows:
Money must be dethroned as the dictator and must resume its real place as the servant of humanity.
I heartily agree with that statement. Further, the hon. member declared:
The nineteenth century battle for political freedom lias been won. We must now dedicate ourselves to the twentieth century problem of economic deliverance.
Again I heartily agree; we welcome a new recruit. Further on, in outlining the new objectives of Liberalism, the hon. member said that Liberalism must direct its efforts, if it was to keep in the forefront of progress in these changing times, along certain lines which he mentioned, and among other things he included the care of the unemployed as a national duty. That again is very different from the position taken by his leader several years ago. He mentioned also the writing down of interest rates and the establishment of a national bank, and he stated that we must meet with courage the question of our public debt, which I presume means scaling it down in some form or other. The hon. member declared also that we must declare in favour of lowering world tariffs, and so on.
Some hon. MEMBERS; Hear, hear.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am very glad indeed to find the support that is being given this corner of the house in connection with these matters.

The Address-Mr. Woodsworth
In the speech from the throne there is nothing to indicate that the government has any proposals designed to meet the pressing needs of the Canadian people. I must say that the speech is replete with meaningless or misleading phrases. Look at the following: "The acuteness of the depression is past," "approaching prosperity," "the strength of our financial structure," and "improved conditions." Since the Prime Minister believes that the depression is fundamentally psychological I presume that he may be pardoned for his professional optimism. Evidently he beileves in the old Coue formula, "Every day in every way we are getting better and better," but I would say that although he may be free to take that position in a professional sort of way, to me it seems intolerable that he, a wealthy man, should proceed with evangelistic fervour and unctuous phrases to lecture the poor people on the spiritual advantages of their poverty. The Prime Minister says:
We have no desire to undermine that high courage, that resourcefulness and ability of our citizens to emerge out of difficulties, strengthened by trial as by fire.
It does seem to me that this is very much like a man standing in security on the bank of a stream watching some poor fellows struggle in the current and go down one by one, encouraging them to battle manfully against the current because it may prove to be the very best way of developing their muscles. I think of men whom I know, who are struggling to support families and who are anxious from day to day and week to week as to where their food is to come from. Some of these men have been driven even to suicide by their anxiety, and what has the Prime Minister to say to one of them? I presume he would say, "Well, my good fellow, I know this is very hard for you, but be consoled; out of it all you will come purified as by fire. You will develop courage, initiative and all those qualities for which Canadians have striven in the past." I think of some of the women whom I know who have no opportunity of securing the medical attention they require; their eyes and their teeth are neglected; in some cases they are putting off from day to day and week to week operations that should be performed at once if their lives are not to drag on in misery. What will the Prime Minister say to one of them? " My good woman, I am veiy sorry; you are passing through a hard trial, but you are developing qualities of high courage, and you will emerge from these difficulties strengthened as by fire." I

think of some of the children who to-day are being denied an education. I know there are hundreds in my own community who are given no chance to go even to the higher grades of public school; who are not having a chance to attend high school, who have not the funds to go on to university; some of them tramping about the streets without the prospect of ever getting a job. What can the Prime Minister say to these, but to urge them that in some way or another, out of it all, in spite of difficulties, they may develop a high courage and be purified as by fire?
When I think of how wealth is acquired, I ask, why should wealthy men talk to poor men in that way? It is all very well to say that in the old days men acquired wealth by their own hard work, by the sweat of their brow; but the greater part of the wealth of this country was not acquired by that means. No one can spend ten years in this house, walking around the corridors here, without learning that a good deal of the wealth of this country is acquired rather by special privileges of various kinds-grants, Beauharnois deals, concessions, charters, subsidies, tariffs, and all that sort of thing; yes, and bank charters, as my good friend from Southeast Grey (Miss Maophail) says. And then we find people who have acquired wealth by the purely arbitrary arrangements of society talking in this way to poorer people who by the same purely arbitrary measures have been deprived of the means of subsistence. I say that this kind of thing is intolerable.
The Prime Minister may talk as he likes about the strength of our financial structure. Well, may I quote a couplet which I have quoted in this house before? Lowell warns:
Think ye that building can endure
That shelters the rich and crushes the poor?
The day before parliament opened I picked up a Montreal paper in which I read of the relief given in the city of Verdun. These are the figures: for a family of three or four persons, $5.60 per week for 14 hours' work; for a family of two persons, $4.80 per week for 12 hours' work; for one person only, $3.20 per week for 8 hours' work. This is the increased schedule that is coming into force; it was ratified by the council of the city of Verdun at a special meeting held on October 3, 1932. I ask whether these amounts are sufficient to support any Canadian family in decency? Yet the Prime Minister is afraid to have larger sums granted lest this might discourage initiative and so forth on the part of the people. In the same newspaper I

The Address-Mr. Woodsworth
noticed a letter calling attention to an incident which had occurred a few days before. Let me read it:
This week at Cap aux Os, Gaspe county, a little girl eight years old fainted in school. The teacher took her in charge and when she came to, asked her if it were customary for her to have fainting spells. The little girl opened her eyes and replied: "No, but it was my turn to go without breakfast this morning."


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


James Shaver Woodsworth: May I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that any man who wants to ridicule that kind of thing is hardly fitted for a place in this house. When we get away from our figures and our great international policies and get down to cases like that, then I ask, what application have a great many of the phrases in the speech from the throne to the lives of the ordinary people of this country? In Toronto Saturday Night I see a writer, basing his calculations on government statistics, declaring that there are 100,000 young men coming forward every year, our own Canadian-born, looking for jobs, while there is no place in which they can be absorbed. A great many of these young men are college graduates, and others are high school boys. Many of these young men are riding the freight trains. I made an appeal yesterday that if possible these transients might be returned to their destination after the harvest was over, and one newspaper states that I was appealing to have them allowed to ride the freight trains to go home. That was not my thought at all. Our coaches are almost empty these days, both on the Canadian National and on the Canadian Pacific, and I say that the least the government could do would be to afford these young men transportation on decent trains. The trouble with many of these transients is that no one can say where their domicile really is. They have not been located in any particular place for any length of time; they have been transient labourers drifting back and forth, helping with the harvest in the west in one season, and in another season working in the timber forests of the north. It is not fair to insist that they be regarded as domiciled in any one place; that is not the way in which this country has been developed. But they should be cared for, and it is simply adding insult to injury when we talk as if these people were criminals and begin to lecture them about avoiding anything that will sap their powers of initiative.
The speech from the throne refers to the "enviable financial position of this country," and I admit that a few financial and industrial concerns may be prosperous. I noticed some 53719-5
weeks ago, in the New York Times of June 12, a statement with regard to the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey:
As Imperial earned the equivalent of 68 cents a share last year, the New Jersey company included in its consolidated report $12,784,000 from this source.
So that our Canadian oil company is assisting to the extent of $12,000,000 to keep up the tottering structure of the New Jersey company. Banks and some other institutions are prospering; but what about Canada's 500,000 unemployed, to put it at the minimum? What does the speech suggest for them?
The problem of unemployment continues to receive the anxious attention of my ministers.
After three years the problem of unemployment "continues to receive the anxious attention of my ministers."


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Two years.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I stand corrected; two years and three sessions. The speech goes on:
Plans for the reestablishment of the unemployed in various parts of the country are in preparation and will become operative as soon as, in the opinion of my ministers, the public expenditure incident thereto will be productive of commensurate benefits.
Which means simply nothing; everyone knows that. It is simply a stringing together of phrases that give no idea of what the government proposes, and lends a great deal of colour to the belief that it proposes nothing at all.
I would seriously suggest that the Prime Minister and the other ministers be forced to spend some six months of each year going in and out among the people until they find out what the condition of the people really is and what the people are thinking. They seem to be so isolated from the life of the common people that they have no conception whatever of actual conditions.
The Prime Minister says that there is one province that has asserted that it is able to look after its own affairs. May I ask this question? Are our French Canadians satisfied with the conditions in their own province? There came to me a few weeks ago two pamphlets which I found of interest; one was an attractive folder by the Montreal Light, Heat & Power Company. In the section dealing with labour I found the following statements :
Montreal is particularly fortunate in the fact that the French Canadian makes up a large percentage of common and skilled labour population. . . . For many reasons they are not

The Address-Mr. Woodsworth

responsive to the influences which underlie the contagious industrial unrest that is noticeable throughout the world to-day.
Then I turn to another document that goes on in very much the same strain. This is a very well gotten utp publication, issued by the city of Montreal and, I am sorry to say, signed by Fernand Rinfret, the member for St. James. I find the following under the heading of "The Factory Labour Situation:"
With his background of religious instruction and social training, the French Canadian workman is solid. . . . The French Canadian is happy and philosophically content with his lot. . . . Families are proverbially large.
The women are industrious, trained in craft work, and skilled in machine tasks. ...
As the most highly developed industrial centre of Canada, Montreal is the logical reservoir for skilled and unskilled labour. As the chief port of entry from Europe, Montreal ordinarily holds a substantial percentage of the incoming industrial workers.
Consequently the stability of the permanent labour body, coupled with opportunities which a floating population normally presents, make Montreal an ideal source of factory labour.
If the French Canadians are content to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, then with its large surplus population Montreal undoubtedly offers wonderful facilities for the setting up of American factories. This publication continues:
The city's labour problem is minimized, particularly in times of depression, by the absence of organized socialist or communist bodies.
If this pamphlet had told the whole truth it would have stated that anyone making a protest would be promptly clubbed.
Mr. LaVERGNE : Not in Montreal.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes, in Montreal. The hon. member will remember that last year I quoted from an article which appeared in the Montreal Witness.
Mr. LaVERGNE : But the hon. member was not quoting facts.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I quoted from a paper which I have found to be quite reliable. The speech from the throne goes on to say:
-this season's bountiful harvest forecasts greatly improved conditions-
I do not think that statement is true of the west. I do admit that there is a 'little more money passing, that certain benefits have accrued because of freight charges and so on, that a certain amount of money is paid for materials purchased from the east and to that extent the eastern financial interests are benefiting, but the western farmer's interest is not so much in the size of the crop as in the question of markets, prices and debts. Without a larger market, without increased

prices and without a decrease in debts the position of the western farmer is absolutely hopeless and unless the western farmers succeed the whole west goes down.
I should like to repeat an incident related to me last year by a gentleman who first definitely verified the facts. A woman came into town to purchase some garden seeds- I do not know whether or not She had been told that she ought to go into mixed farming as a solution of her troubles-and brought with her four dozen eggs. She was able to sell the eggs at only five cents per dozen, receiving in all twenty cents. She bought two packets of garden peas for which She paid ten cents each and upon her return home she counted the peas and found there were only thirty-three. This incident is almost an epitome of the conditions which exist throughout the west with regard to most commodities and illustrates the situation facing even mixed farmers. Without arguing the case, I say that there must be either a scaling down of debts, a lowering of interest rates or a measure of inflation, or reflation, if you like. Only this will accomplish the desired results. It is the only way by which the west can exist and let me warn that if the west is permanently out of business it will be hard on eastern Canada. Even for selfish reasons the west cannot be ignored.
The Prime Minister emphasizes the fact that his government stands for a sound money policy and he ridicules any reforms in money matters by referring to them as cheap nostrums in the form of quack remedies. He was so enamoured of the phrase that he rolled it over four or five times.


Miss MACPHAIL:: A sweet morsel.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes, a sweet morsel to be rolled under his tongue.
Had the Prime Minister been present I would have called to his attention an article which appeared in a recent issue of Time and Tide. This article is by Sir Arthur Salter, to whom the Prime Minister referred last spring as ranking as one of the foremost authorities in the world at the moment. Sir Arthur says:
I believe that a concerted policy of reflation to a determined point would be an immense advantage to the whole world.
I have read the speech from the throne very carefully but I can find no indication of any comprehensive program to meet changed world conditions. In other parts of the world they are awakening more rapidly than are we to the need of more fundamental changes, and in this connection I should like

The Address-Mr. Woodsworth
to quote from a rather unexpected source. Addressing a recent conference on business education, the Prince of Wales said:
We have all been learning through the surest and hardest of lessons-adversity-how closely the prosperity of all nations of the world depends upon the prosperity of each and all of them. In these days of swift transport and communication and of interlocked commerce and finance, it is more than ever true that nations cannot live to themselves alone.
And again:
The world-wide trade depression and economic disturbance from which we all suffered so much has been largely caused by maladjustment of distribution and consumption of the world's capacity for production. The potential output of the existing means of production in the world is far greater than ever before. If all the employable labour were employed for a reasonable number of hours per week, the world would have at its disposal a volume of commodities and services that would enable the entire population to live on a higher level and comfort and well-being than has ever been contemplated in the rosiest terms of the social reformer.
The urgent task for the world is to bring about the adjustment necessary to bring consumption and production into proper relationship. not a simple, not an easy, but quite a possible task.
Mr. LaVERGNE:	Why is the Prince of
Wales an unexpected source?


James Shaver Woodsworth: It might have been supposed that the Prince of Wales was among those people who were immune to the influences of modern life but I suggest that he shows a much keener interest in what is going on in the world than is shown, shall we say, in the speech from the throne delivered here in Ottawa.
I should like to congratulate the Prime Minister on his changed attitude towards Russia. He has been rather inclined to boast that he has an unchanging policy, an undeviating policy. The speech from the throne last year contained the following paragraph:
Pursuant to the fixed policy of my government to combat all influences which are inimical to the social and economic welfare of this Dominion, an order in council has been passed prohibiting the importation of certain commodities into Canada from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
In giving publicity to this order in council, the 'house will remember that the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Ryckman) made the following statement:
The government is convinced that there is forced labour in the cutting and transport of timber and the mining of coal, that political prisoners are exploited, that the standard of living is below any level conceived of in Canada and that, broadly speaking, all employment is in control of the communist govern-53719-51
ment which regulates all conditions of work and seeks to impose its will upon the whole world. This is communism, its creed and its fruits, which we as a country oppose and must refuse to suport by interchange of trade.
I am inclined to think that the speech of the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) must have had some effect because I find that it was about that time that there was a rescinding or modification of this order in council in so far as it affected raw furs. I do not quite understand how raw furs could escape the criticism of the Minister of National Revenue, but I suppose there was some good reason for this action. Just a little later on a large shipment of Canadian flour was made to Siberia. I have no proof but it is generally understood that that flour went to increase the stocks which were being held by the Soviet people in case of trouble with Japan. That flour was paid for either in gold or in goods, and I cannot understand why the Canadian government would permit the incoming of any tarnished Russian gold after having said it was such a fearful thing to -permit Russian goods to enter this country. I do not know how this flour was paid for?


Mr. ARTHURS:: It was paid to an English firm.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Well, it is all right as long as we do it through somebody else..


James Arthurs: Sold by them too.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am glad that we have been given an illustration of the old Chinese phrase of "saving one's face." Then we find this latest development of the Aluminum Company of Canada, a subsidiary of the Aluminum Corporation of America, a Mellon company, sending its aluminum out in exchange for oil. So we have oil. I am a little bit puzzled about this because I had understood that Senator Webster had something to do with preventing the first shipment and why he has not prevented the second, I do not know. I hope before the session is over the government will give us some little insight into what transpired there which made it possible for them so to modify their original idea. My friend behind me, the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) says that maybe the oil is coming through English channels. I do not understand so. I believe it is entering in competition with Trinidad oil supplies. The government however may complete its conversion on this point, for I notice by the press that the Soviet representative is being invited to the world economic conference at London and we cannot get our banking straightened out until


G8 COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
The Address-Mr. Woodsworth
the Prime Minister receives some instructions at that world economic conference. I hope before long we shall learn something of Soviet banking so that we may be able to go on with the revision of our Bank Act!
The speech from the throne tells us that we must extend our Canadian bank charters for one year. I would point out that if the Prime Minister's argument is valid it should have prevented him from participating in an Imperial economic conference before a world economic conference was held. Why settle the question of tariffs before we get the light that is likely to be thrown upon tariffs by a world conference? The Prime Minister is very anxious to get light from all quarters. If he paid any attention to the reports of the League of Nations, he might have learned, according to those reports, that high tariffs were absolutely suicidal. Last year and in previous years we have been prevented from securing much needed amendments to the Bank Act by the statement: You just wait for another year or so and at the decennial revision you will have an opportunity. Now, when we reach the time when we hoped to have a revision of the Bank Act we are told that we are to be put off for another year. Might I suggest to the Prime Minister that if he is anxious to secure the fullest information possible, why not have a committee of the house set up this year that could consider the various questions from our Canadian angle before the world economic conference meets? That would be eminently reasonable. If the Prime Minister is sincere in saying he wants everything that can be got from the economic conference, at least we could go so far as to consider in this house through a special committee what we think is necessary.
In the middle ages along the Rhine, which I can remember very well visiting some years ago, there were many castles inhabited by robber barons who imposed heavy tolls upon passing merchants. The barons were very respectable in their day. I have no doubt that they insisted that the trade of that part of the world could hardly get on without them. I have no doubt that they persuaded the common people of that day that it was highly providential that the Rhine river ran past their castles. They were able to occupy their strongholds for many a long year. I venture to suggest that posterity will regard our modern financiers as very much the twentieth century equivalent of the robber barons of the middle ages.
The speech indicates that the charters are to be extended for another year. This means that the barks are to be given a chance to

exploit Canada for another year. We have given them for another year the very special
privileges which they enjoy and which in many instances have been misused, and this is being done in spite of statutory provisions. I hope that the next time we hear from the Prime Minister about statutory provisions, hon. members will remember this instance.
I have not had time to go into the question of the Imperial economic conference, and I am afraid that without the agreements before us we are talking a little bit in the dark. However, as several hon. members have already extolled the results of that Imperial conference, I should like to place upon Hansard an interesting summary which I again summarize from the Economist, an English paper, of August 27, at page 379. It is headed "The harvest of Ottawa." I quote:
The draft agreements, incomplete as they are, reveal sufficient indications of the trend of the concerted policy to warrant the conclusion that from the standpoint of particular British interests and that of the world advantage alike, much more has been lost than has been gained.
Again:
The conference, as we see it, has failed utterly to realize its only worthwhile objective -the expansion, as opposed to the mere diversion, of trade.
Again:
The agreed principle of compensatory tariffs (with "infant industry" reservations) is in itself a denial of the only sound conception of specialized international exchanges of goods.
Again:
For example, the wheat duty, unless Canada establishes a cast-iron selling pool (and the preference is conditional on sales at the "world price"), will probably hurt the British consumer as little as it benefits the Canadian producer.
Again:
Where the real failure of Ottawa lies is in the total absence of any vindication of the truth that economic progress is to be sought in the general lowering of tariff values.
Again:
Stripped of their equivocal verbiage, the British right to "reasonable" protection, the agreement to prohibit imports frustrating "by state action" the proposed preferences-all of which is likely to involve acrimonious controversy hereafter, the Ottawa agreements in substance are narrow and sterile.
Had I had the time that is accorded to the Prime Minister and the official leader of the opposition, I should like to have advanced some of the convictions which are coming with more and more force to us here in this corner. I am glad to say that we are finding that not only throughout the west but across

The Address-Mr. Brown .
Canada an increasing number of people are dissatisfied with the programs of both the old parties. I am not censuring individual members in the old parties, although I do find it difficult to understand how some of the western members can vote for policies which spell disaster to the west.
Mr. YOUNG:: Hear, hear.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I would say however that both the old parties are thinking in terms of past years. They are working on policies which no matter how adequate at an earlier stage are hopelessly inadequate to meet present conditions.


Mr. GOTT:: You are the only far-sighted
man in Canada.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Some one has
suggested I am the only far-sighted man in Canada, but I do not believe a little cheap ridicule of that kind will go very far.


Eccles James Gott: We have listened to that
stuff for the last forty minutes.


James Shaver Woodsworth: On this and other
occasions I have taken opportunities to quote extensively from economists, some of whom have been endorsed by the Prime Minister himself. I have done so because I did not want anyone to think that I was voicing merely only my own conclusions. But there are some hon. members, such as those who now interrupt, who never take the trouble to read what other people are thinking, and I am not sure that they take the trouble even to think for themselves.


Mr. J. L. BROWN (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker,
I do not know that I should have spoken at this time had I not felt it incumbent upon me, a member representing the province of Manitoba, to voice my opposition to certain policies of this government and to bring to the attention of the house and country one of the most vicious acts of which this government has been guilty. Shortly before the house prorogued at the close of the last session an order went forward from one of the government departments which would seem to demonstrate that parliament is no longer a supreme authority in Canada, and that our system of government instead of being democratic, as we fondly wish it to be, is really a combination of a dictatorship and a bureaucracy. I refer to a regulation issued by the Department of National Revenue concerning duties on repair parts for agricultural implements.
Before dealing with that matter perhaps I might be allowed the privilege of referring to some of the matters to which reference is
made in the speech from the throne, and to some of the statements made during the course of this debate. Like hon. members who have preceded me, I should like to pay tribute to the two young gentlemen who moved and seconded the address. They discharged in a very worthy manner the duties placed upon them, and I think hon. members will agree that they proved themselves worthy of the confidence placed in them by the Prime Minister. Having said that, however, may I add that from the standpoint of hon members on this side of the house it is a matter of regret that young men at the beginning of their political careers should advocate policies which experience has shown to be disastrous not only to Canada but to the whole world. In that respect, however, they are simply following in the footsteps of the Prime Minister and hon. members opposite.
It would seem that the leader of the opposition has appealed in vain to the Prime Minister and his supporters to accept the advice given by Rudyard Kipling to learn from t'he mistakes of the past. There seems no indication whatever that hon. gentlemen opposite are in the least degree dissatisfied with the results of the policies they have been advocating during their term of office. If the Prime Minister and his friends have not learned that the results of these policies have been disastrous, I can assure him the people of Canada have. He need not seek to minimize the result of the election in South Huron; it is as clear as day that those results are the handwriting on the wall.


An hon. MEMBER:: What about Three Rivers?


John Livingstone Brown: Let the Prime Minister ask his supporters from the province of Manitoba what interpretation they place upon the election held in that province on June 16 last. I think there will be no uncertainty, if those men speak their minds when they have a heart to heart talk with the Prime Minister. The right hon. gentleman is very fond of boasting about the number of men who come to him, pat him on the shoulder and express approval of the policies he has adopted 3nd put into force. He would be more convincing if he were to give some of the details; we should like to know who these men are and what positions they occupy in Canadian public life. I think it is safe to say that if we had a record of the blessings and curses directed towards this government the latter would exceed the former by at least ten to one. However, putting aside the results of
. The Address-Mr. Brown

the election, and forgetting for the moment that those results are an indication of the popular mind, I should like to point out to the government that a new organization known as the Importers' Association has come into being. This new organization is attempting to do the work of the much maligned Council of Agriculture and the Consumers' League. The only difference is that the Importers' Association is composed of business men who have found their interests seriously affected by the policies of this government. On the other hand, in the Council of Agriculture and Consumers' League there were no members who had any immediate personal advantage to gain, but were giving their energies and spending their money for the public welfare. The purpose of the Importers' Association would seem to be to protect themselves against the vicious practices put into force by the Department of National Revenue.
I shall not undertake to discuss at length the matters referred to in the speech from the throne, but perhaps I might take this opportunity to make a few general remarks concerning the conference and the agreements resulting therefrom. The test to indicate success or failure of the conference depends upon two premises: First, has the conference had the effect of promoting unity and harmony within the empire and increasing inter-imperial trade? Second, has the effect of that conference been to promote international harmony and facilitate international trade? If it has not accomplished both of these things then we must conclude that the conference did not achieve that measure of suocess it should have achieved. For, Mr. Speaker, the great duty with which statesmen are faced today is to bring about closer and more harmonious relations between the nations of the world, and the one factor which prevents those relations more than anything else is the restriction put upon trade by the various nations. The unfortunate point is that Canada must consider herself as one of the sinners in that connection. Perhaps one would not care to express a positive opinion as to the results of the conference or what the effect of the agreements might be, but I would go so far as to say that I have very grarve doubts as to whether or not either off the results I have indicated has been achieved. The Prime Minister is not very convincing when he seeks to leave with us the impression that throughout all its proceedings the conference was a veritable love feast. When two men meet, one holding the point of view that Canada must be first, and the other that Great Britain must be first, when they are seeking

not what they can do or what they can give for the well being of the empire, but what they can get for their own national interests, when one party to the controversy insists that the other shall cease to trade with an outside nation, it is not likely that harmony and goodwill will reign. The very fact that certain members of the British cabinet have seen fit to resign, holding the view that their delegates were subjected to undue pressure by representatives of the dominions, believing as they do that their freedom of action in regard to their own financial policy has been sacrificed, believing as they do that good-will and harmony among nations cannot be promoted by the agreements that have been made, it is not easy to believe that harmony rather than friction has been the result of the Imperial conference. Of course it may be that the Prime Minister is able to see harmony where no harmony prevails. It was hard for him to admit that the result of the conference of 1930 was to 'Create friction rather than harmony. Even when the Right Hon. Mr. Thomas designated his policy as humbug the Prime Minister could not see that that was an indication of anything but good-will. I was interested to note the published report that the Prime Minister sent a cable to the Right Hon. Mr. Thomas thanking him for the help he had given at the conference. Sometimes I think the Prime Minister is entirely lacking in a sense of humour. The impression made on my mind when I read that statement was that it was simply an endeavour on the part of the Prime Minister to give public notice that he and Mr. Thomas had buried the hatchet.
I have always had very grave doubts as to the possibility of building up a united empire on tariff agreements. I have always had a great deal more faith in what Lord Hailsham referred to somewhat sneeringly a couple of years ago, when he said that there was nothing binding the empire together but the froth of sentiment. I wish to say, Mr. Speaker, that that froth of sentiment, so-called, is an infinitely stronger bond of union than any tariff agreements that can be made, and when that goes, everything goes. There is not the slightest indication that anything has been done in this conference to strengthen the sentiments that bind us to the mother country and that bind the different dominions of the empire together.
I often, think a good deal of nonsense has been talked, both before and after the conference as to the danger of the empire going

The Address-Mr. Brown
to pieces. Here is the heading of a Canadian press cable that appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press:
Hold empire unity advanced at Ottawa. Chamberlain says all danger of break-up of empire set aside.
Neville Chamberlain, is he the son or grandson of Joseph Chamberlain?
An hon MEMBER: A son.


John Livingstone Brown: Well, he is certainly running true to the family record. It was my privilege to be in England in 1903 when Joseph Chamberlain advanced his program for imperial preference, and the cry was that the empire was going to pieces unless we were given preference in the British market. I resented that at the time, I have resented it many times since, the implication that our loyalty to the empire depends upon our getting two or three cents a bushel extra for our wheat. Not at all, that is not the bond of empire. The bond of empire is common sentiment, common tradition, the belief that the British empire is the greatest force that the world has seen for bringing about a better era, better conditions in the world at large. These are the things that bind us together. I would like the idea to go forth from this house to Great Britain and throughout the dominions that as far as Canada is concerned at least there was never any danger of breaking away from the empire because two Tory politicians could not agree on matters of tariff.
The Prime Minister undertook to read a lecture to the leader of the opposition because the leader of the opposition questioned the statements made in the speech from the throne in regard to the betterment of conditions. The member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr Woodsworth) has dealt very effectively with that matter, but let me say that when the Prime Minister undertook to justify himself because he felt it obligatory upon him, as he said, " to strengthen the morale of the country," he showed complete inability to see these things from the standpoint of the common man. He can see it from the standpoint of the man in business, the man of big interests, the man who has money to invest, but he cannot see from the standpoint of the man who is almost down and out. It does not strengthen the morale of our farmers in the west or starving people in the cities to tell them that things are getting better. If the Prime Minister understood the psychology of the ordinary individual he would recognize that these statements only irritate men who are struggling against adverse conditions. They resent being told that things are getting
better, that everything is going to be all right in a little while. He should not treat the people of Canada as children. No good cause is advanced by making assertions that every person knows are not warranted. Everyone knows that the assertion that things are on the upturn and are better than they were is entirely unwarranted. It would be well if we would get down to the discussion of things as they are. I commend to the Prime Minister and his followers an article in the last number of Harper's magazine entitled, ' Let us Talk About Unpleasant Things". The article is directed against those in the United States who continue to advocate old policies, who still hold that things are all that can be desired and that the betterment is coming. It is pitiful that we should have a man like President Hoover making the address he did make in Iowa the other day, upholding the application of higher tariffs as a remedy for all the ills of man. It is pitiful also that even in Canada we find people insisting that conditions are all that we would like them to be, refusing to face the facts as they are. We do not want this Pollyanna attitude; we want to be treated as reasonable men. We will face the situation courageously and more to the purpose if, instead of flattering ourselves that things are improving and that they are better than they were, we face the facts.
There can be no betterment of conditions, Mr. Speaker, speaking particularly for western Canada, until the farmers are able to get a price for their products that will come somewhere near paying the cost of production; we might as well face that fact. The other day our municipal councillor said that probably they would not get more than ten per cent of the taxes this year. Last year they were able to collect only about thirty per cent, and the year before about seventy-five per cent. What is the use of telling those men that things are getting better? The other day our local doctor said to me, "Last year people needed clothes, but they were able to do without them; they managed to pull through, but this year they must have new clothes." You can make your underclothing last one year longer, but it is pretty difficult to make it last two more years. That is the condition of affairs, and we might as well recognize it. I think we will be well on the way to improvement when we realize the conditions that actually exist.
I said I was going to deal with one specific matter, Mr. Speaker; I had reference to the action of the Department of National Revenue in bringing into operation a regulation discriminating between two classes of business men in connection with repair parts
The Address-Mr. Brown

for agricultural implements. Perhaps I might recite the history of this matter. At the short session two years ago the government, sanctioned by parliament, raised the duty on agricultural implements from 6 per cent, 7i per cent, 10 per cent or 12 per cent to a flat rate of 25 per cent, and at the time it was proposed that the duty on repair parts should be increased to the same figure. Representations were made to the Prime Minister, who was then acting as Minister of Finance to the effect that it would be desirable to' postpone the application of that higher rate of duty on parts, and it was finally decided that the old rate should apply until July 1, 1931. That old rate was further extended to March 31, 1932, and when that date drew near some of the western members on this side of the house, and I have no doubt on the other side as well, received communications from firms dealing in repair parts, who wanted to know what was likely to be the action of the government. The hon. member for South Battle-ford (Mr. Vallance) put a question to the Prime Minister on one occasion in connection with this matter, but he did not receive a particularly courteous reply. Again on April 1 the same hon. member asked the following question:
Some two weeks ago I directed a question to the Prime Minister which I wash now to direct to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Rhodes), this being the 1st of April. When the Prime Minister, acting as Minister of Finance, presented his budget last year, he brought in certain schedules having to do with the tariff on repairs to farm implements. Because of representations made by the opposition he decided that these schedules should not become operative until after March 31. It is now April 1, and I should like to ask the Minister of Finance if those proposed schedules are now in operation, or if the government have taken care of the situation by order in council.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Rhodes) replied as follows:
Pending the bringing down of the budget I am happy to inform my hon. friend that the matter is being provided for by order in council.
On April 6 the budget was brought down, and the Minister of Finance made this statement:
With one exception, no tariff amendments are therefore proposed. The exception relates to repair parts for farm implements, for which the special rates granted to March 31, 1932, will be further extended to March 31, 1933.
We accepted that assurance as given by the Minister of Finance; of course we did not regard it as completely satisfactory, because we would have liked the postponement made indefinite, but we accepted it as a fair state-
[Mr. Brown.)
ment by the minister. What happened? It would seem that about May 25, while this house was still in session, a regulation was put in force by the department making a distinction between certain classes of dealers, and granting the lower rates of duty only to repair parts imported by the makers of the machines for which the parts were intended.
Speaking for myself, I had no opportunity of learning of this action before leaving Ottawa. It was brought to my attention when I received a memorandum sent out by Winnipeg dealers protesting against the regulation, accompanied by a request that we should wire the Prime Minister in regard to the matter. I did not do that, but I did write a letter to the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Ryck-man) to which in due course I received an acknowledgment stating that my representations would receive the consideration of the government. So far as I know that was the end of it, because shortly before leaving Winnipeg I inquired whether the regulation was still in force and found that to be the case.
Perhaps I might explain the situation that exists in the west, and no doubt to some extent in the east also, though I- think it is probably more serious with us in the west. In the United States there are a number of independent manufacturing firms who specialize in repair parts, manufacturing almost anything in the line of repairs for farm machinery. Perhaps the most important single item of repair parts is ploughshares, and since these companies commenced operation we have been able to buy ploughshares for from $4.50 to $6 a pair which we could not get from the machine companies for less than from $8 to $10. I think there was a time, indeed, when we paid as high as S12 a pair] and I know I bought a pair myself for which I paid $10. Perhaps someone will say that the shares we are buying at the lower price are not as good, but you can trust the farmer to decide that for himself. I have used both types of shares, those known as the soft centre shares and those known as the crucible shares, which are made by the independent companies, and the general verdict is that once they go into the fire for sharpening there is no difference. Anyhow we are satisfied to buy these lower priced shares. Now what is it we object to? We object to this action by the Department of National Revenue in violating a distinct understanding which was given this house by the Minister of Finance.
I wonder what the Minister of Finance thinks about it. Is he going to allow himself to be placed in the position of having given to the

The Address-Mr. Brown
house an undertaking which he is not prepared to carry out? This has been done by the Minister of National Revenue and he must take the responsibility; it has been done by the Department of National Revenue acting through its officers. Surely this is a violation of the principles which ought to govern the administration. Am I not right in suggesting that it is a question whether parliament is the supreme ruler of the country, and whether as a matter of fact we are not now under a government of dictatorship and bureaucracy? I do not think it is possible to speak too strongly on this matter. They have given the explanation that these are pirate companies which are making these goods. Well, if they are violating any patent or anything of that kind they will be taken care of by the courts. But in answer to the statement that they are pirate companies, I should like to read a short editorial from the Winnipeg Tribune, a paper which, though it frequently criticizes the policy of the Conservative party both in provincial and federal affairs, is nevertheless in a general way a supporter of that party. This is what that newspaper says editorially:
The reply of the Department of National Revenue, that its regulation No. 536 is designed "for the protection of the original manufacturers of farm implements against the competition of 'pirate' parts manufacturers," is far from reassuring.
What has the Department of Revenue to do with "piracy?" If it is an illegal practice, that is a matter for the Department of Justice and the courts.
The term "pirate part" was invented by one class of manufacturer to describe the products of another class. It is a trade term which has no standing in law and, like most defamatory libels of a general nature, very little basis in fact.
Departmental officials overstep their powers when they begin to pick and choose between different brands of the same article. The Commissioner of Customs is supposed to be a tax collector, not a Galahad on a stool.
Evidently the department has been cajoled, on improper and irrelevant grounds, into making a regulation which is unjust and unfair. Not the least interesting feature of the incident is the object-lesson it gives. Incorruptible officials, it seems, are accessible to an adroit use of moral indignation. Given the right touch of propaganda at the right moment, an independent jobber becomes a "pirate," and the Department of Revenue becomes a morality squad.
Some competent authority at Ottawa should step in and break this short-circuit before it sets the house afire. Emotional bias is no substitute for impartiality in the administration of the acts of parliament.
Now, what is the effect of this new regulation? The Winnipeg Free Press made this compilation:
Cost of Laying Down Binder Canvasses Since May 25, With Exchange at 15 Per Cent Prior to May 25, 1932
Invoice value	$ 100 00
Exchange 15 per cent	 15 00
Duty 6 per cent on $115	 6 90
Excise tax 3 per cent on $121.90..	3 66
Sales tax exempt

After May 25, 1932
Invoice value	$ 100 00
Exchange 15 per cent	 15 00
Duty 25 per cent on $115	 28 75
Excise tax 3 per cent on $143.75..	4 31
Sales tax exempt

Duty and excise prior to May 25, 1932.. $10 56 Duty and excise after May 25, 1932.. .. 33 06
Cost of Laying Down Plough Shares Since May 25, 1932, With Exchange at 15 Per Cent
Prior to May 25, 1932
Invoice value	$ 100 00
Exchange 15 per cent	 15 00
Duty 10 per cent on $115	 11 50
Excise tax 3 per cent on $126.50..	3 80
Sales tax exempt

After May 25, 1932
Invoice value	$ 100 00
Exchange 15 per cent	 15 00
Duty 25 per cent on $115	 28 75
Excise tax 3 per cent on $143.75..	4 31
Sales tax exempt

Duty and excise prior to May 25, 1932..$13 30 Duty and excise since May 25, 1932.. .. 33 06
The duties shown in the first column are still paid by the favored importers; their competitors pay the duties shown in the second column.
It will be noted that owing to the cumulative character of the duties levied the discrimination in the case of binder canvasses is boosted from 19 to 23-50 per cent and in the case of plough shares from 15 per cent to nearly 20 per cent.
Who suffers from this policy? In the first place, of course, the independent implement dealers; they suffer. Let me say to the house that this business is one of tremendous proportions, and there is every reason to believe that it amounts to about a million dollars a year. The president of one of these firms told me that they did a business of $200,000 a year, that they had 1,500 subagents throughout the country, and that 60 per cent of the business of these sub-agents was in these repairs. They are the first people to suffer, naturally. Their business
The Address-Mr. Brown

has been interfered with, they have been discriminated against, and they are justified in complaining. But as everyone knows, the ultimate consumer is the real sufferer in the case; and in this case it simply means an increase in the price of the products we buy.
Before leaving home I made inquiries and I found that the price of ploughshares has already gone up; and the dealer tells us that it is because of the duty. In other words, the farmer has to pay the difference in the price. In my letter to the Minister of National Revenue I made an appeal to him to consider the condition in which the farmer finds himself to-day. Why should they insist on putting a still further burden on the farmer's back? Why do they insist on making him pay more for these implements which he must use than he would otherwise? It is not only the fact that we are paying increased prices, but there is the question of convenience to be considered. There are many implements in the west that are not now sold by the dealer, and through these companies we can get repairs for them which we should not otherwise be able to get. That is the situation that confronts us. I think, therefore, that I am justified in making this protest against the action of the department in imposing this burden upon us.
I am quite satisfied that hon. members opposite who come from the west realize just as keenly as I do the injustice of what has been done; I have no doubt that they realize that their own position has been prejudiced. It was said in the election of 1926 that Arthur Meighen had not given his western supporters a feather to fly with. The present Prime Minister is hanging a millstone around the neck of his supporters every day he is in office, and they know it.
It would be interesting to know just who are the beneficiaries. It is the implement manufacturers. I ask the Minister of National Revenue to tell this house upon whose representations this action has been taken. I do not suppose he will, so I will supply the information. It was done because of the representations made to the department by Mr. Thomas Russell of the Massey-Harris company. There is good reason to believe that representations were also made by other Canadian firms. I think the Canadian people should know just who are their friends in regard to matters of this kind.
I shall not delay the house any further as the matters referred to in the speech from the throne undoubtedly will be debated at greater length at some future date. I hope that when the agreements entered into at the

Imperial conference are before the house we will be able to find in them something which will promote not only imperial harmony and good will but give a lead to the nations of the world as to those steps which must be taken if we are to have better international relations, if we are to reach that day when war will be banished and we shall live together as men and women made in the image of the Divine. So long as these trade wars continue there can be no possibility of peace among the nations of the world.
Mr. JEAN-FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata): Mr. Speaker, my first words shall be to tell you how happy I am to see you presiding over this house to-day and the pleasure I have in observing your present good state of health. I desire to congratulate the mover (Mr. Davies) and the seconder (Mr. Laurin) of the address in reply on the very commendable speeches they made yesterday. I congratulate also the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Brown) who is such a true representative of the farmers of the west and who made such an interesting and practical speech this afternoon. Yesterday my hon. leader (Mr. Mackenzie King) analyzed with great skill the speech from the throne. He deserves great merit for having shown that this speech contains very little detail about things which should be done at once and which unfortunately will have to be delayed. No doubt we will have other opportunities to discuss the agreements arrived at during the recent Imperial conference, and in due course I intend to express the views of my electors on this matter.
In the meantime may I say a few words in connection with a matter which is of great concern to the people whom I have the honour to represent, I refer to Canadian National railway matters. I should first like to read an. excerpt from the Canadian National Railways magazine of February, 1931. This article contains a resume of the speech made by Sir Henry Thornton during a dinner in Montreal which was attended by the hon. Minister of Railways (Mr. Manion). The article reads as follows:
In his opening remarks, Sir Henry Thornton voiced the regrets of the two directors who were unavoidably absent from the gathering. The occasion, he said, provided an opportunity for the officers and members of the cooperative committees, now holding their meetings in Montreal, to meet the new directors and the Minister of Railways. Speaking of the Minister of Railways, Sir Henry said: "I should like to take this opportunity of saying that I have served under a number of ministers of the crown, but I have never served under one for whom I had more real affection, as the present incumbent of that post."

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I expect Sir Henry was correct in that statement. He continued:
We have in him one who ardently desires the welfare of the Canadian National Railways system, one whose heart beats with ours-
I did not know that they were Siamese twins:
-and one who, in addition to the performance of his ministerial duties is likewise a really fine friend.
Had I been in Sir Henry's position I should have used the same language but I would have had no fear for the future. The trouble is that Sir Henry shook the minister's foot instead of his hand. The Minister of Railways must have likened Sir Henry Thornton to a giant like Holofernes or Samson, while he put himself in the position of Judith or Delilah. Did he forget that when Samson shook the columns of the temple, the Philistines were crushed under its ruins?
I should like to call attention to a very important document which was submitted to the royal commission on transportation. This was presented by the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees and when this matter is before the house I intend to take an opportunity to refer to it. In the meantime may I remind the house that if the situation of the railways is bad it is because they are not provided with sufficient traffic. We have no trade because of the high tariffs. Railway men are suffering because of the barriers which have been erected against the entry of foreign goods. No one can sell when no one is buying. That is an elementary principle and I am glad to see that the government now intends to lower the tariffs. I should like to point out that during the special session when the tariff agreements then before the house were carried there was one voice which said "carried on division." That voice was mine, and I was backed up by a few of my colleagues. This is not reported in the proceedings of the house but it was reported at the time in Le Devoir, of Montreal. At that time I did not agree to the passing of these agreements, and as time has passed the government has been proved to be in the wrong in imposing high tariffs. The government have attempted in vain to cure unemployment but at the same time their action has brought about the dismissal of a large number of railway men. Who is to provide for these men? Will the government pay them an amount equal to that which they received when times were better? Between Moncton and Riviere du Loup nine stations have been closed; four have been
closed in Gaspe and there is talk of closing the stations at Cacouna, St. Arsene, Tobin, St. Anaclet and Routhierville. Caretakers have been appointed at these stations who receive from $15 to S20 per month, according to whether or not they live upon the premises. These men may be present in the station but they cannot give any information to prospective passengers or shippers. A farmer wishing to ship goods must go to the next station in order to obtain the information he requires. That is a very bad situation and it will not improve conditions in Canada.
Six stations have been closed between Riviere du Loup and Ste. Rosalie and other ones are supposed to be closed also. Between Moncton and Riviere du Loup the services of twenty-two operators have been dispensed with and those of twenty on the Levis division. Those men are essential for the good management of the railway business. They have experience and they arrange the meeting of trains and so on in order that no accidents may occur. I do not see why their sendees have been dispensed with while other men who are rather useless are retained in their positions. If there is a man who earns several thousand dollars a year and does no useful work, his services should be dispensed with rather than those of poor men who earn fifteen hundred dollars a year each and who are necessary for the good management of the railway. It is better to dispense with the services of one man than to dispense with the services of four or more and very often, while that man may be set back, the country will not suffer on that account.
Strange things have happened. For instance, at Causapscal in Matane county one operator has been replaced by a man named Miller. At Amqui an operator has been replaced by a man named Jardine. Neither of them speaks French and the people there have to endeavour to get information from those men who cannot answer them properly in their own language. As you know very well, Mr. Speaker, from the old campaigns that have been carried on for the rights of the French language, it is a shame that men who are bilingual have been replaced by men who are not bilingual. I would not object to the appointment of an English-Canadian by birth or naturalization if he has seniority rights, provided that he is bilingual. I do not see a Frenchman who does not speak English being transferred to the maritime provinces or to Ontario. Why are we treated by the railways in a different manner? The Progres du Gulfe, a French weekly of Rimouski, published
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a very impressive article on that subject some time ago and I would draw the attention of the management of the railways to it.
Something that is most extraordinary is the number of private ears used by superintendents and assistant superintendents all along the line of the Canadian National railways from ocean to ocean. I have no time to expose the whole situation, but may I point out what happens in the province of Quebec and the adjoining districts. For instance, in Quebec there is a man named Mr. Morazain who is general superintendent. Do we need him? Not at all. What is he doing? He is doing only the work of a repeating office. There are many superintendents; there is one named Mr. Atkinson, superintendent at Levis. He has two assistant superintendents. He is drawing quite a large salary. At Quebec there is another superintendent, Mr. Edgley, for the Saguenay division. He has also an assistant superintendent. Further, there is a man named Mr. Sunderland who is superintendent of transportation. These men are all in Quebec receiving fat salaries at the expense of the poor man who can do useful work while the work done by these men who are drawing large salaries is not so useful. Why do those men remain in their jobs while other men are set back? This is unfair.
To sum up, in Quebec city there is a general superintendent whose services we can easily dispense with. What is his salary? It may be $5,000, $6,000; I do not know; but even if he gets five dollars, it is too much. There is Mr. Edgley, superintendent of the Saguenay division, Mr. Sunderland, superintendent of transportation. If the local superintendent does his work, we do not need a superintendent of transportation, so we can dispense with his services. Mr. Atkinson at Levis has two assistant superintendents. That is too much. We can dispense with the services of at least one of them. Mr. Gibeault at Campbellton, has two assistant superintendents, one Mr. Dupont, a former conductor. 1 was pleased at the time with his appointment because I am always glad when a man receives promotion in the railway. He has since proved to be unable to write decent French or English, and his only occupation consists in dispensing with the services of his fellow employees on the railway. That man is absolutely useless there and he can be taken out with great saving to the railway. The same thing applies to another superintendent, I think Mr. Gordon, who was manager of the Gaspe railway and who was appointed assistant superintendent of the Canadian National railway at Campbell-

ton. We can dispense with his services. The Gaspe railway is now under the management and control of the superintendent at Campbellton. Why then do we keep that man who was there and had a good job at the time? The Gaspe railway was operated by a private concern, but now we do not owe him so much a year simply because he had that job before. He was fortunate to have it. Let him find another job. The same thing applies to Levis. One of the assistant superintendents there is the former manager of the Montreal-Southern railway. We can dispense with his services at a saving to the railway. This is only one part of the subject.
The other part, which is very important, is the use or misuse of private cars. The other day when I was coming from Montreal I had a seat in the Pullman car in which there were many vacant seats and there was a good car that was empty. It was not used by Mr. Morazain, who had his private car at the back of the train. I learned he had come from Quebec on the north shore passing through Joliette, coming back from an inspection tour. On those oars they have the most delicate food, better than what is provided in any hotel on the continent, long cigars, londres from Havana, fine liquor. I cannot describe it as it deserves to be, because I have never been in those cars except at times to shake hands with people, but I have seen those large and expensive cigars. I am glad the Minister of Railways (Mr. Manion) is listening to me as I am making those practioal suggestions. Let those superintendents smoke Canadian tobacco. Let them sit with the commoners. Let them sit in the other cars that are used for general transportation. What is the use of giving a private car to the superintendent of a certain division? There is a private car, a fine car, just as good as any, for Mr. Morazain. Then, in order that there may be no jealousy, Mr. Atkinson who lives a mile away from Quebec, at Levis just across the river, has another special car just as good as that of Mr. Morazain. He had an old car but he changed it for a new special car. Then we find that Mr. Edgley has his own car, and I am not sure whether or not Mr. Sunderland has one. The fact is however that he has the privilege of using a private car. The superintendent at Campbellton has one. I know for a fact that Mr. Griffin at Edmundston, eighty miles from Riviere du Loup, has a private car. In fact, within a distance of two hundred miles, or less than that, there are five special cars. In connection with those cars there are expert cooks such as might be used in the Chateau Frontenac, the Chateau Laurier or the Royal

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York. And why should we have all this extravagance in each case for one man supposed to make an inspection tour. In my view those inspection tours are unnecessary. The engineers in charge do travel by handcar and control the work. A superintendent might be allowed a special compartment in a train, but I can see no reason why he should be supplied with a private car so that he may travel like the Prime Minister or the Governor General. If savings were made in this connection the result would be that employees who now earn their livelihood by the sweat of their brows, men who are doing useful work and are in charge of large families would be allowed to remain at their jobs.
Mr. Speaker, I have something very interesting to tell you. So that there may be no misunderstanding by hon. members not familiar with the French language I shall attempt to translate the documents before me from French into English. Perhaps I should not have taken this opportunity to place the correspondence before the house had I not received a communication dated September 20, from the Postmaster General in which he extended to me an invitation to take advantage of this session to expose some matters, or to ask questions. In reply I sent a page to his office stating that I wished to speak about him this afternoon. Very unfortunately he answered that he was too busy to come to this chamber. Probably he was learning the English language, although I suggest he speaks hotter English than French. Probably the minister was learning that his name in English would be translated by the word "exit." I feel free to say what I think about his ways and doings, although, Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry to do so. However he has been notified by writing and bj' word of mouth; he does not want to come to the chamber, therefore it will be so much the worse for him.
In a speech delivered at Place Viger hotel in Montreal on September 9, he said this:
The only change shows that the post offices receiving remuneration lower than $3,000 fell under the control of the Postmaster General, but the preference goes just the same to the veteran who, according to the report of the inspector, receives sixty per cent or over in his examination. This is the new article 57a in the amended law.
On April 8, 1932, there was a motion in the house asking for a copy of all reports in connection with the dismissal of the postmaster at Notre Dame du Lac, and the appointment of his successor. The return was tabled on April 11. On May 30, I received a letter from the Postmaster General's secretary stating that
the report on the candidates had not been forwarded to the Civil Service Commission. On June 8, I asked for that report; on June 11, I received from the Postmaster General a letter which meant nothing; on June 15, I asked for the report and was told it was not included in the file on account of a clerical error. On June 17, I received the following communication:
I must tell you that the administrator's report was sent only a short time after it was received for a new examination of the candidate, and we have not received it back.
On June 22, I received the following:
As a matter of fact the document lias not been taken away with the intention of preventing production in the House of Commons. After having examined it the departmental officials have found that for certain reasons the file was incomplete and have sent it back to the administrator. It is a matter of departmental routine.
What happened in that instance? A veteran made application. How was he rated by Mr. Green, the Quebec superintendent? According to a letter sent to me on June 13, 1932, by the Postmaster General, the man was rated eighty-five per cent. Although I have not time to read the whole letter from Mr. Underwood to Mr. Green, I shall read at least part of it:
March 24, 1932.
Dear Sir:
I am returning herewith your report on the applicants for this position.
In reference to the application of Mr. Dominique Cote, returned soldier, the inspector rates the application eighty-five per cent but it is stated that the location and accommodation offered are poor.
A good reason! The fact is, however, that the same location was offered that had been used for years before. Here is something to which I should like to draw the attention of the house: That report was not tabled in the house because the Postmaster General objected to the fact that the man was rated eighty-five per cent by an officer of his department. That is why he sent it back to have it changed. He took the trouble to have a letter signed by that man photographed and sent to me. On that occasion I said, "Mr. Minister, you will note that this man, a veteran and applicant for the position, exhibits much better handwriting than you or I." Matters were so arranged that a man other than the veteran applicant received the position. The veteran was insulted when he was accused of ignorance because, as a matter of fact, he was as well educated as the minister.
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Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, the groups in this comer of the house stand for a new economic system, and for a number of years we have put forward our views. Both the house and the country are fairly well acquainted with our convictions in this regard. I might summarize them briefly by Saying (that we do not believe it possible to patch up the present capitalistic system, and our efforts will be put forward incessantly looking to the building up of a new system. I regret that the amendment moved by the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King), which regretted so many things, did not regret also that the government had run out of patches. The system has been patched so much that there are no more patches to put on, and every patch in coming away has left a larger hole than before so that now the system is nearly all hole.
So I say we do not believe the present system can be patched up, as all administrations have tried to patch it. We say further that planning is essential for the national life of this country, and we have suggested very definite grounds upon which a system of planning may be established. Then we have said very clearly, both in this house and throughout the country, that we regard the first essential step to be taken in the construction of a new social order is the nationalization of credit, and we have endeavoured to set forth the details of such a procedure. I am not going to elaborate on these things at this time, beso
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cause when resolutions already on the order paper are discussed we will be able to deal with these matters specifically. I am going to devote the time which is at my disposal now to some of the arguments put forward by the Prime Minister last night, and incidentally there are no other arguments from the other side to answer. Perhaps the silence of the government benches is more eloquent than any arguments they might have put forward. I appreciate that it is very difficult for the government to defend its policies in the light of the present situation, and I do not say that it is altogether the fault of the government. I am prepared to admit that the situation with which the government was met when it took office was very difficult, but I say that the actions of the government have not improved matters at all. Instead, things have gone from bad to worse, so that undoubtedly this administration has been faced with the greatest task to confront any administration in the history of Canada. I appreciate that fact. I do not wish to offer any carping criticism but the situation has become so desperate and the condition and the temper of the people are such that it is necessary for us in this corner of the house to speak without equivocation.
During the course of his remarks last night the Prime Minister made reference to nostrums, to sound money and to the use of a printing press in regard to the paying of our foreign debts. These phrases, which mean so little when analysed but which may stand for so much when reiterated by such an authority, ought to be met, not with sounding phrases and tinkling cymbals but with facts, and the only things that are accepted by us are facts. First let me take a few moments to deal with the excuses which were put forward by the Prime Minister for present conditions, excuses which were also given by the leader of the opposition when he was in office, and which I presume will be used by the next government if it continues to attempt the impossible, namely, to make the capitalistic system work.
The first excuse given was that this is a universal condition, that Canada is not the only country suffering from unemployment, great debts, low prices for commodities and so on, but that in fact all the countries in the world are in a similar position. And so the inference is that if the governments of all countries have failed to find any solution for the economic problem of our time, surely it cannot be expeeted that Canada alone can find such a solution. Now of course we have to admit that the problem is universal; and why? It is universal because

capitalism has built up an artificial international interdependence. How did capitalism do that? The answer is that under its profit philosophy capitalism must, of necessity, develop in each country a surplus of goods which it cannot sell at home and for which, therefore, it must seek some foreign market. Capitalism was responsible for an artificial internationalism which we have to recognize to-day. But has that anything to do with the present problem of Canada?
What are the fruits of capitalism which are so international? The first is a concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few; the second is the growing army of unemployed who are displaced by machinery and by more modern methods of production; the third is a growing progressive indebtedness which not only has not been paid but never can ibe paid, either >by the individual or by the public. Of course these fruits of capitalism are universal, since capitalism itself is universal. But again I ask, what has that to do with the immediate and pressing necessity with which we are faced in Canada?
Canada has a population of ten million. It has an abundance of food, an abundance of clothing, and an abundance of coal for power and for keeping us warm in this cold climate, and it has an abundance of material for building homes. Now let us stop there, because I believe that most Canadians this winter would be fully satisfied, for the present, if they had food, clothing and shelter in abundance, Well, what does this government-and the same question may be asked of all governments in the civilized world-say in these circumstances? It says to the people of Canada, "It is true you have produced a great surplus of food, but unless we can sell that surplus of food to someone outside Canada our own people must starve." That is the philosophy of this international capitalism.
I say that regardless of international interdependence the Canadian government must, out of the abundance of our natural resources, out of the abundance of our production, find a way to give to every Canadian food, clothing and shelter and the right to work for these things, or else confess the bankruptcy of the Conservative statesmanship of this country. The excuse is given that Canada is no worse than any other country, and this I readily admit. Canada is certainly no worse than any other country although she ought to be a good deal better. I am not sure that she is, but she certainly should not be worse. But what kind of excuse is that to a hungry man? Suppose the Prime Minister and I were taking a trip across the Atlantic and at midnight we both

The Address-Mr. Irvine
fell overboard. After a while, let us say, I bobbed up on top of a wave and said to him, "Ha ha, I am not worse off than you are; I am not more wet than you are and I am not m greater danger of being drowned." That would be true, but it certainly would not get either of us out of the Atlantic. So that it is all very well to say that Canada is not worse off than any other country, but that does not lift this or any other country out of the present damnable depression. These are the stereotyped excuses which the leader of the opposition used in the last election and for using which he was laughed at by the gentlemen who are now in power. And it is the excuse which is being used now by the party opposite. Well, I repudiate both; they are excuses which will not be accepted by the Canadian people very much longer.
Now I come to a direct reference which the Prime Minister made to some of the things which have been advocated from this comer, and whether I am right or not I think that his references were particularly aimed at this section of the house. In his usual forceful manner he spoke about nostrums. I thought I knew what nostrums meant, but I looked it up to make sure. The word has three meanings. First, a nostrum is a medicine recommended by its preparer; secondly, it is a medicine the ingredients of which are kept secret by the inventor; and thirdly, it is a quack remedy, and a quack means a pretender.


An hon. MEMBER:: Hear, hear.


William Irvine: I am glad that my hon.
friend recognizes his own policy when he hears it described by someone else. I have been going over the Conservative policies and I find that all three meanings of this word can be aptly applied to those policies. First, we have a medicine recommended by its preparers. Take, for instance, the fixing of tariffs by order in council, a medicine recommended by those who prepared it. Well, that has been a failure. Let us take the second meaning of the word, a medicine the ingredients of which are kept secret by the inventor-the Imperial conference, for instance; the whole thing kept a secret by its inventors. And someone reminds me of the government's policy of unemployment, which has so far been kept a secret. The third meaning of the word is a quack medicine. Now, capitalism has been dying for two generations and every government that ever sat opposite has been quacking on it and applying quack remedies. Quack remedies applied have been tariffs, tariffs and more tariffs, all nostrums offered by the govern-53710-6
ment. We demand that they put an end to their nostrums and get down to policies that will work. Among these nostrums the Prime Minister referred specifically to sound money as one would refer to the sacred documents upon which the faith of a people is based, or to the golden calf which was once ground up and given to the Israelites in the water they drank.
It seems to me that when he used this phrase sound money in the sense in which he used it the Prime Minister certainly underestimated the intelligence of the Canadian people. I can assure him that, from my associations with the Canadian people-and I have travelled over this country in the last two years a good deal more than he has been able to do, because he has been very busy-the majority of the Canadian people to-day no longer regard money as a divine mystery which must be protected both by church and by state. The public mind has lost some of the reverence which it used to have for the gold basis, for example, especially since Great Britain slipped off that basis and since they have been able to taste some of the fruits which have followed.
I say frankly that the phrase sound money actually stinks with error and fallacy; it has very much more sound than sense. Let me say to this house that sound money is something that Canada has not and never had. Sound money is something which no nation in the world has ever had on a gold basis. The agitation from this corner of the chamber has been to get sound .money and bring aJbout the abandonment of unsound money. Let me ask a few questions of my hon. friends which they can answer at their leisure. Is it possible for sound money to be based on gold?
Mr. LaVERGNE: Certainly.


William Irvine: I warrant that the hon. member who answers first knows least about it. That is usually the way.
Mr. LaVERGNE: It is so easily answered.


William Irvine: But the answer which comes as easily as that is usually nine-tenths wrong, I ask my hon. friend to let the history of the depressions of the world give the answer. Was it sound money which forced Great Britain to abandon her system? She did not take that action of her own volition, she was forced to do so. Was it not sound money which the Prime Minister declared in his opening remarks at the Imperial conference had broken down? He stated that the sound money system of the world had collapsed. If

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it collapsed, it no longer can toe regarded as sound. The reason for its collapse was that its basis was unstable, and that basis was gold. Therefore, you cannot possibly have a safe sound system of money on a gold basis. The facts of history, not the opinions of the Prime Minister, myself or anybody else afford the best proof of my statements. We must take the cold, stern facts of history.
Can it be considered sound money when it has failed to perform the true function of money, namely, the distribution of goods? Goods are rotting in Canada because they cannot be distributed there being no money with which to distribute them. This is what has happened under the sound money system of this government. I ask a common-sense question: Is it sound money which fails to do that which sound money ought to do? Perhaps the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Stevens) will answer that question. I am quite sure that the answer will be that it is not sound money when it does not do what sound money ought to do.
Let me ask my hon. friend who is so loquacious: Is it sound money which ties this nation to the apron strings of Wall Street and which enables the financiers of New York to dictate the policy of Canada, whether it be under a Liberal or Tory government? Is that sound money? That is the kind of sound money we have at the present time.
Is it a sound policy to deprive our people of the available abundance, to maintain them in various degrees of want down to the starvation point because of the lack of the one thing in the economic system which is the easiest to provide-money? There is difficulty in providing wealth, that necessitates human labour, sweat, brains, and organizing genius. When we consider natural products we realize that it requires the facing of the vagaries of weather conditions. Wealth is hard to produce but when it comes to the symbols of wealth represented by a little bit of paper and a stroke of a banker's pen, then we have paralysis. We have been able to do the most difficult of all things, produce wealth, but we have been unable to produce the symbols which stand for wealth.
An empty stomach deprives a man of the ability to see glowing romance in a theoretical gold dollar which he has never been able to glimpse in reality. I am afraid the Prime Minister's eloquence, great as it is, will fall short of achieving its objective when he attempts to raise once again the status of the gold dollar. I think he will labour in vain if he tries to bring our people to an attitude of

mind where they will be proud to starve in the interests of strong financial structures. I have no objection to his trying, but I am afraid he will not be successful.
Let us look at the words which were put into the mouth of the king in the language of the document which we are supposed to be discussing. The speech states: " I rejoice that the wisdom of your steadfast policy of retrenchment has maintained the enviable financial position of this country." Who is " this country "? I should like to know whose financial position has been made enviable because of the retrenching policy of the present administration. Everyone knows what retrenchment means, it means that matters are made worse under conditions such as these. Every dollar withheld from circulation because of the retrenchment policy of this government means that from $10 to $20 worth of wealth is rotting because of the lack of a purchaser.
Let us see if we can find who has been maintained in such a splendid financial position because of this policy. Are the working people in an enviable financial position? Let us ask those who have been put out or threatened to be put out of their homes because of inability to pay their rent if they are in an enviable financial position as a result of the policies of this or any other administration. Let us ask the mothers of the nation who have had to reduce their standards of living because of reduced incomes if they are in an enviable financial position. Let us ask the unemployed, who, by the way, number more than our bankers, if they are in an enviable financial position as they tramp by the rivers and take shelter under the bridges against the rains. Let us ask them this question as they beg from door to door for a bite to eat and as they try to steal rides at the risk of their necks upon our empty railway cars. I think we must come to the conclusion that these were not the people the king had in mind when he made that statement.
Let us ask some more questions. Let us ask the farmer who purchased his land and machinery when the dollar was worth forty-five cents and who is now called upon to pay for his purchases with goods worth one-third of what they were worth at the time of his investment, if his financial position has become sound and enviable. Leit us ask the farmer who has not paid the interest on his mortgage for two or three years let alone reduce the principal if his financial position is enviable. Let us ask the farmers both in the east and west, who have been producing at a loss and who have had to reduce their standards of living in order to stay upon the

The Address-Mr. Irvine
land if their financial position has become enviable because of the policy of sound money. We must say again: Evidently the speech from the throne does not refer to the farmers.
During the past year the business men of this country have had to struggle to pay their interest charges and meet their notes at the banks; they have had to face reduced sales while overhead costs remained the same; many have been driven into bankruptcy but let us ask them if their financial position has been made enviable. I think we must come to the conclusion that the speech from the throne does not refer to the working people, to the farmers or to the business men. Did it mean the professional men then? Ask the doctors who have been working for two years, in many cases for nothing, unable to collect their fees because there was not enough money in circulation in the pockets of their patients to pay them. Ask the lawyers who have been doing very little most of the time and getting nothing for what they have done. Ask them if the position is one that is enviable in a financial way. You will find out then that the speech from the throne means simply that the only people whose financial position has been made enviable are those who have control of the finances of Canada, the credit of Canada, the banking of Canada, the people from whom we borrow and the people who Live by debts. By setting those few against the entire population of the state, we have a policy which has stabilized the financial position of half a dozen and left the 9,999,994 unconsidered. I suggest to the government in all seriousness that they take those financiers and their enviable financial position along with them, put them on some island by themselves and there let them rejoice forever more in their enviable financial position, but allow the people of Canada by some means to enjoy the abundance which they have created.
Would it not have been better if the king had been caused to say truthfully: I rejoice that my people have produced abundantly and that they are allowed to enjoy that abundance; I rejoice not only that the standards of living have been maintained amongst the working people and the farmers, but that there has been a rise in both cases and I rejoice that in so far as economic wellbeing can make people happy, my people are happy. What a strong, epoch-making speech from the throne that would have been! But alas, instead of that we have an enviable financial position for the few, a strong financial structure in Canada, if you please; but we have starving, hopeless multitudes of people and we have abundance of goods that cannot be consumed and growing debts that cannot 53719-6i
be paid. All these things are present and yet we must thank God and rejoice that we have an enviable financial position.
I must hurry on to the printing press. Those who have opposed the suggestions in regard to monetary reform, which, at least since 1923, have come from this section of the house, have never tried to answer the arguments or to meet the facts. They have always endeavoured to scare people by throwing up their hands and shouting about printing presses. I think they had better not shout so loudly about printing presses, because it must not be forgotten that the banks use the printing press to print the notes, and they use the people's credit behind it to justify them in doing that. It must not be forgotten that the state uses the printing press to print the notes that must redeem the notes of the bank, so they must not laugh at that. If it is all right for the bankers to use the printing press in the interest of bankers, who says that it is not all right for the people to use the printing press in the interest of the people? Let hon. members take that printing press suggestion home with them and think about it, and then let them not talk so much about printing presses hereafter. But let me hasten to say that no one from this comer of the house has ever been so foolish as to advocate that we print money on a printing press to pay our obligations in New 'fork. That was the statement of the Prime Minister. We have never been guilty of such folly and I have never heard anybody else uttering such a statement as that.
The Prime Minister, in the development of his argument proceeded to say that when Great Britain went off the gold basis, that struck a terrific blow at Canada, a knock-out blow, somebody suggests. I think if Canada had followed Great Britain, she would have ducked the blow. That is the point. Great Britain did not get any blow. It was the best thing that ever happened to her, and in that regard let me refer my hon. friend who says that she got a blow, to The World's Economic Crisis by Sir Arthur Salter, K.C.B., Sir Josiah Stamp, K.C.B., J. Maynard Keynes, M.A., Sir Basil Blackett, K.C.B., Henry Clay, M.A., D.Sc., and Sir W. H. Beveridge, K.C.B. If those names and letters following them cannot convince my hon. friend of their authority, I cannot. He will find in this very book that the ablest economist in Great Britain points out, not in these words that I am going to use, but to the same effect, that the slipping off the gold basis was one of the best things that had happened to Great Britain in many years. There is no need to argue that. If my hon. friend who is
The Address-Mr. Irvine

mumbling his objection has not been convinced of that, it is hopeless to try to convince him. My point still stands that if Canada got a blow, she received it because she stuck her head in one spot and refused to remove it out of the road of the blow. Let me say next that the condition by which Great Britain slipped off the gold basis was the relentless logic of the sound money theory that is advocated by this government. Great Britain did not choose to go off the gold basis. On the contrary a national government was formed and elected by the people to keep her on the gold basis.


Mr. CHAPLIN:: Does the hon. member
argue that Canada remains on the gold basis?


William Irvine: That is another question
which I shall be glad to take up at another time.


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: The Prime Minister says it is on the gold basis.


William Irvine: Canada is hanging by her
fingertips on to the gold basis, a condition of affairs which leaves us in a worse position than if we were completely off it. But the folly of this cannot longer be doubted. The unequivocal declaration of the Prime Minister yesterday about our adherence to sound money means nothing other than to hang on to the gold basis and, if possible, to hunch up on it a little further than we are. I say again that the sound money theory was the cause of Great Britain going off the gold basis, so what arguments can be set forth in favour of the sound money theory which plays such tricks as the Prime Minister said that it played on us when Great Britain slipped off the gold basis?
Let me also emphasize what was brought out clearly last night by the hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Gardiner). There are, by the way, seventeen countries that are off the gold basis to-day and that are working in harmony on the pound sterling basis. Those seventeen countries have not met with destruction. As a matter of fact Great Britain borrowed enormous amounts of money from France and the United States to enable her to stay on the gold basis, and after she went off the gold basis against her will, she found this so profitable that she was able to pay off those loans in New York before they became due. I would ask the Prime Minister to inquire from Great Britain how, when they were off the gold basis, they could pay their commitments in New York, indeed when they were further off the gold basis by a long way than

we are now, without apparently losing anything to hurt. There must be some way of doing this. Great Britain did it.


Mr. SPENCER:: She got gold.


William Irvine: 
Edward Joseph Garland: And they are saying it.


William Irvine: I am not saying exactly what they say, it might not be parliamentary. As my forty minutes have almost expired let me conclude by saying that apparently the government intends to retain the gold basis. Gold is only one commodity; it is so scarce that it cannot function. It is very hard to find, and there is not enough of it. As one commodity it can be cornered by one nation, and under such circumstances it would be impossible for our financial system to function. That is what is called a sound money system. We stand for a money system based upon the

The Address-Mr. Butcher
character of the Canadian people, plus all the wealth of the Canadian people-not on only one commodity.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. HARRY BUTCHER (Last Mountain) :: Mr. Speaker, I wish to call to your
attention and the attention of the house two sentences to 'be found in the speech from the throne. The first of these sentences I know to convey nothing but the truth. The second I also believe to be absolutely true. The first will be found at the foot of the first column of the second page. It reads as follows:
-the economic situation still weighs heavily upon all classes of the community,-
I think possibly one might say that this is a general truth. But on the other hand this situation weighs more heavily on some classes of the community than upon others. There are some classes, very few in number, to whom perhaps the situation does not present any great difficulties. For instance, the fortunate few who derive their income from government bonds no doubt find that their spending power has been increased by the fall in the general price level. On the other hand there are some classes who are suffering most acutely. The attention of the house has been constantly drawn to this fact.
The other statement is to be found earlier in the first column of the second page. It reads:
The problem of unemployment continues to receive the anxious attention of my ministers.
I am quite confident that that is correct. It could not be otherwise.
I also find in the paragraph from which I have taken this sentence a promise for the present, reading:
Under the powers granted them at the last session of parliament they-
The ministers.
-have been able to develop further, in cooperation with the provinces and municipalities, a scheme of direct relief to be put into operation during the autumn and winter months to the extent required by prevailing conditions.
There is further a declaration as to the future:
Plans for the reestablishment of the unemployed in various parts of the country are in preparation and will become operative as soon as, in the opinion of my ministers, the public expenditure incident thereto will be productive of commensurate benefits.
The problem of unemployment is certainly one factor, a very important factor, in the condition that is referred to in the first sentence that I have read. The economic situation still weighs heavily upon all classes of the community. Another most important factor is the low price level, rendering it impossible for the producers of this country to spend as they do in normal times. As far as one can see there are no plans for permanent improvement yet formulated by the government. But a large proportion of our people are suffering from hunger, suffering from the lack of clothing, lack of fuel, many of them in abject destitution, many homeless, and a very great many hopeless. I am quite confident that every hon. member of this house is not only seized of the desperate character of the situation but is exceedingly anxious to see it remedied. I cannot believe that within these walls there is any one who is indifferent in the slightest degree to the sufferings of our less fortunate fellow men. Everything that has been done in the past has merely tended to amelioration of these conditions. Much has been done, I admit, to render the position of our less fortunate fellows less uncomfortable than it otherwise would have been. But it appears to me that there are yet underlying evils to be eradicated before our people can enjoy the happiness and prosperity to which all citizens of this country are justly entitled. We are still told that there are to-day between one and one and a half million people living on the borderline of want, men, women and children who are lacking many of the necessities of life and all of them lacking all the minor luxuries of life, and that in a country which, as has been so often said by hon. members on both sides of the house, is richly endowed with natural resources, with wealth of almost every kind, and possessing a singularly resourceful, energetic and willing people and abundance of up-to-date machinery for production. I have no doubt too that every hon. member has pondered these facts, and has done his very best to find a solution for our difficulties.
Nevertheless most of us feel that these conditions cannot continue indefinitely. It is not reasonable to suppose that the patience of the people is illimitable, that it knows no end. I am of the opinion that if this parliament does not strive with great diligence to find a way out, or striving, fails to find it, one of these days the people will say "If the parliament that we have elected cannot find a way out, we will find other individuals to perform the services that we have imposed

The Address-Mr. Butcher
upon our present members." We must expect to be replaced by others if we fail to find a solution for our difficulties.
In all that I am saying to-night I want to avoid captious criticism. I have very frequently criticized what I believe to be the mistaken policies of the government of the day. I have often severely criticized statements made by members of that government. But I have yet to impute unworthy motives, or indifference, to any member of the government. In these days there are not lacking those who are quite confident that they know the reasons for our present sufferings, the causes of the present depression, and who are equally confident that they know the remedies for these conditions. In my opinion it is not always the most vociferous who are the best informed. Intelligent analysis of public affairs is much less common than hasty and ill-considered declamation. Too often the less a man knows of the implications and difficulties of national government, the greater the confidence he displays in declaring his opinions in relation thereto. For that reason I propose to-night to suggest rather than to declare.
First of all, I think it would be advisable to make a short diagnosis of the causes of our present troubles as I see them. During the past two years I have made a list of the various reasons I have heard ascribed for this depression, and I can assure you it is a very lengthy list. I am not going to quote all the reasons that have been given, because some of them are in my opinion foolish in the extreme. But there are some twelve that I have here which seem to me to be contributing causes to a greater or less extent.
I want to refer briefly to these causes in order that I may take the liberty of suggesting what I believe are remedies that may be applied by this present government and by this parliament. I will first recapitulate them:	The war; war reparations; armaments; the capitalistic system; the gold standard; the banking system; deficiency of currency and credit; overproduction; the mechanization of industry; the paralysing load of debt; fear and international distrust; restriction of trade, and tariffs.
I do not know that I have placed these in the order of their importance, but if they can be regarded as contributing causes, I would ask what this parliament can do to prevent a recurrence of the conditions we have experienced in the past arising from these causes, and to remedy those that now exist. I would first premise that in my opinion, some of these causes can be eliminated only by international action; others partly by national action but

only wholly by international action, and some wholly by national action-and when I say national action I mean action by this Canadian parliament.
Let us further investigate these causes, the first of which is the war. I do not suppose a single individual can be found within the Dominion of Canada who would claim that the great war had nothing whatever to do with our present condition and our present difficulties. The question may be asked whether we would have had difficulties similar to these had there been no great war. Doubtless in this house there are many men who remember the year 1914, who remember that during the spring and summer of that year thoughtful men all over the country were wondering what was going to happen during the following winter. Even during that summer season there was unemployment, and people were wondering what would happen in the fall. Unemployment clouds were threatening over our heads, but as we thought they were about to break the clouds of war broke upon us instead, and only then were the clouds of unemployment dispelled. But how much better we would have been prepared to meet the situation at that time if we had been compelled then to face the problem of unemployment. I have but to direct attention to a few facts to enable us all to realize how much easier it would have been to deal with the situation at that time. In 1914, according to the Canada Year Book, our national debt was $314,301,625. On March 31 last, according to the same authority, our debt was $2,261,000,000; it had been multiplied practically by seven. In 1914 the interest on our national debt was approximately $12,605,000, and it is now about $121,000,000; it has been multiplied by about ten. In 1913 the cost of government in Canada was $144,456,878, while in 1930 it was $398,176,246, or an increase of some $254,000,000. Again I point out how much easier it would have been for Canada to meet this condition of unemployment had it come in 1914, and this brings me to one of two lessons we might learn from that great event, which brought upon the world so much sorrow and suffering. One lesson is that we should strive, as we have striven always to maintain world peace, and the other is that we should carefully avoid all those occasions and all those acts that are so apt to lead to war. One of those acts, I would say, is the restriction of trade, the desire to do anything other than trade freely with other countries. I think restriction of trade undoubtedly caused war in the days that are gone, and it might easily cause war again.

The Address-Mr. Butcher
The next suggested cause for our troubles is war reparations. There is no doubt that these reparations have been and are now a stupendous load upon debtor nations, stifling and choking the very life blood out of them, but to-day we notice that creditor nations are just about as badly off. The biggest of all creditor nations probably has as great a body of discontent as exists in any other nation in the world, a body which is only a little less obvious than the discontent which obtains in the largest of the debtor nations. Could not Canada set an example and use all her influence towards the cancellation of war debts? Our credit may not be large, but it is possible that our influence might be felt by all other nations. I know there are forceful arguments to be presented against the cancellation of international debts and war reparations, but I firmly believe that even more forceful arguments can be found supporting that action. I have before me an extract which appeared in the Ottawa Citizen last January, which reads as follows:
The members of the Arts and Letters Club were last night privileged to hear an authoritative address on "International Banking and Debt Paying" by Archibald C. Kains, wherein the speaker, from wide knowledge and experience gained when filling the positions of governor of the 12th Federal Reserve Board of the United States and as a member of a banking commission to which he was appointed by the late President Wilson, gave his views on the present international financial crisis.
Mr. Kains expressed the opinion that it would eventually be for the good of both debtor and creditor nations if all war debts were cancelled, and he advanced strong arguments in support of this contention.
The third of the causes which I mentioned is armaments, which no doubt constitute a staggering burden on all the great powers, with immense sums of money being spent both openly and secretly in the endeavour at all times to have forces stronger than those of other nations. But armaments are not a cause of unemployment; they are rather a cause of unprofitable employment. I would ask this house to imagine how many dwellings for the homeless, how much clothing for the ragged and ill-clothed, and what great quantities of the necessities of life might be purchased if the money now devoted to the maintenance of armaments were to be spent for these useful purposes. Again, cannot Canada set an example by saying, "We are at peace with the world and propose to remain so. We have beaten our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks." It may be said that this is impractical and visionary, but I would ask hon. members to reconsider and see if it is as impractical as may be supposed.
The next cause to which I referred was the capitalistic system. This afternoon we heard from the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) a very strong indictment of that system, and possibly much that was said by the hon. member is correct. Perhaps it will not be necessary entirely to scrap that system, but who to-day would dare call it perfect; who would say that it is beyond criticism? On both sides of this house can be found men who recognize the weakness and the desperate need of repair of this system. We do not need to go to those whom we call red to find opinions of this kind. I have taken an extract from the Canadian Bar Review which I desire to read, and I am sure no lawyer here imagines for a moment that the Canadian Bar Review would publish anything of a seditious or communistic nature. The extract is as follows:
Wealth divorced from a recognition of social responsibility offends the quickened sense of justice that has grown out of the unparalleled economic crisis the world is now contending with. This is sufficiently clear from the multiplication of social service clubs on this side of the Atlantic and their comprehensive programs for the relief of the sick and needy. Organized philanthropy is thus showing the way for a larger control by the state of the national wealth. This, of course, can be done without any dislocation of our present constitutional mechanism, and while it undoubtedly would be another and a significant step towards the goal of the socialists it will leave us still some way to go in that direction.
We find countenance for what we have here ventured to say on the subject of state control of wealth in the following passages from an article written shortly after the war by so conservative a thinker as Professor Jethro Brown:
I would ask hon. members to note that this statement is quoted with approval by the Canadian Bar Review:
There still exists in all civilized communities the most glaring contrast of riches and poverty. ... I suppose no one hopes for the realization of an ideal distribution of the national income; but the present distribution is so capricious, so dependent on accidents of birth or circumstance, that it embitters social relations, and threatens the very foundations of society. . . . It is probable that the bulk of the electors in democratic communities of to-day would vote for socialism; but . . . there are great practical difficulties in introducing socialism without an industrial chaos extending over a long period. . . . But, whatever the future may have in store, it appears to me to be indisputable that the increasing control by the state of economic or industrial relations is rendered inevitable.
Taken from Labour of April 5, 1932, is an unprecedented example of the truth of this one statement which I have just quoted to you, Mr. Speaker, namely, that the distribution of wealth is so capricious or dependent on the aocidents of birth and circumstances
The Address-Mr. Butcher

that it embitters social relations and threatens the very foundations of society. "Speaking of family fortunes"-this is in the United States, of course,-this article states:
According to an article in the "World's Work" magazine, three brothers in this country control assets of just under $8,000,000,000.
The personal wealth of these brothers is put at $500,000,000.
Their banking resources are given at $787,300,000. The assets of non-banking corporations which they control through outright ownership, dominating interest and otherwise, total $7,490,425,000. This brings the wealth of which they are masters to the sum of $7,990,425,000,-about half the national debt of the United States, or $65 each for every man, woman and child in America.
These three brothers own the aluminum industry of America. They have the second place-if not the first-as owners of oil, power and steel. They have enormous railroad holdings not included in the list above.
Their names are Andrew W. Mellon, Richard B. Mellon, and James R. Mellon.
The gold standard is one of the causes to which the existing depression is ascribed; the charge is made that it is pantially, or, as some of our extreme friends declare, wholly responsible for this depression. Who will claim that the gold standard is still functioning for the good of mankind? Not our great bankers. Some of us may be disposed to say that the gold standard is unimpeachable and that nothing can be said against it. Rut what do we find? We find that even the economists have passed strictures on the gold standard, although not so wholeheartedly as the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) did this afternoon. Let me quote the economist of the Royal Bank of Canada:
In 1928 and 1929 the world's gold was sufficient to maintain a healthy price structure, but it is clear that there is not sufficient gold in many countries or there would not have been a suspension of gold payments, but this is maldistribution of gold, not a shortage.
This is the question I would put to this honourable house. If it is right that gold, or a shortage of gold, or the maldistribution of gold is one of the principal causes of our present troubles, and many thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed men hold that it is certainly not guiltless, then is it not almost incredible that the amazing genius of mankind has not yet devised a way to make gold the servant, as it was intended to be, instead of allowing it to be the master, as it sometimes is? I want to read a quotation from a speech made by the Right Hon. Reginald McKenna, chairman of the Midland Bank of England. We may assume that the chairman of that bank is not communistic nor red. He

is undoubtedly a man of great knowledge in the financial world, and he says:
Let the gold standard be made to work satisfactorily, that is, let it give a stable value to money, and we shall be quite ready to go back to it. On the other hand, if it continues to work as in recent years, with a constantly depressing effect on prices, we shall be driven inevitably to cal! for some other method of controlling the value of money.
"Is it possible, then, with or without the gold standard, to maintain the pound at a constant value measured in internal purchasing power? If we are not frightened by the term 'managed currency,' and can harden ourselves to some degree of indifference to exchange fluctuations, there seems no reason to doubt the possibility. I do not know why we should be alarmed by the idea of a 'managed currency.'
"The world has now got so far as to admit that the long-continued depression and universal economic unsettlement are due, in part at least, to the inefficient working of its monetary machinery. The time has gone by for the childlike belief that as long as a country is on the gold standard all is well. Harsh experience has shaken this faith rudely; we have found that returning to the gold standard did not in fact bring prosperity, and going off it did not entail ruin. So far from ruin, indeed, our present trade conditions are distinctly improved, and we are getting on at least as well without the gold standard as with it.
And Sir Basil Blackett, director of the Bank oif England, made this humorous comment on gold:
The question. Why do banks keep gold? can be answered, I think, frivolously, in several ways. I think the first, and perhaps the most important answer would be because the banks think that people think they ought to keep gold, or even because the banks think that people think that the banks think they ought to keep gold. Possibly another answer would be because the central banks are not clever enough to manage any system other than the gold standard, or they are not clever enough to persuade people to think they are clever enough to manage any such system.
I suggest that the government of the day might with advantage have this matter taken into consideration to see whether it is possible or wise to carry out the proposals of the Macmillan committee. One of the suggestions of that committee was that the internal currency of a country might well be independent of gold. There are some -who say that the banking system is partially responsible for our troubles. It may be. Personally I have no reason to complain about any treatment I have received from the banks; they have always been exceedingly careful in granting me loans and have granted me less than I have asked for, being wise in so doing. However, it is said by cine class of individuals in this country that they are monopolistic and merciless and by others that they are power-

The Address-Mr. Butcher
ful and sane. At this time it is neither necessary nor wise perhaps to pass too great strictures on the banks in view of the fact that in a short time the Bank Act will be under revision. But I do want to point out that the feeling which so many have against the banking system of the country today is by no means new. Gladstone said some years ago:
From the time I took office as chancellor I began to learn that the state held, in the face of the bank and the city, an essentially false position as to finance. . . . The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantial power in matters of finance, but was to leave the money power supreme and unquestioned. In the conditions of that situation I was reluctant to acquiesce, and I began to fight against it by financial self-assertion. I was tenaciously opposed by the governor and deputy governor of the bank, who had seats in parliament, and I had the city for an antagonist on almost every occasion.
In 1916 President Wilson made the following statement, with regard to the United States:
A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit,-our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.
I do not say that these conditions obtain in Canada but I do say that it would be well for the committee to be appointed to consider the revision of the Bank Act to investigate this possibility, which is in the minds of many men throughout this country, that the real gov ernment of the country is in the hands of the financial interests.
I should like to read from the Royal bank monthly letter of February, 1932, as follows:
_ 'The present depression is usually explained in terms of extravagance, overproduction, excessive tariff barriers, et cetera. In varying degrees these, as well as other contributing factors, produced situations which were essentially unsound; but, speaking generally, the controlling influence has been the mismanagement of money and credit. The average price level is determined by the relation of goods and services rendered to the volume of the money supply, and the disastrous fall in the general price level would not have occurred had the supply of money been properly regulated.
I assume that this matter will be taken up by the committee to be appointed to consider the Bank Act. If not, I suggest to the government that it should be.
It is said that overproduction is the cause of our present condition, but such cannot be the case in the light of all the suffering through lack of necessities which there is at the present time. There are hundreds of thousands of farmers who need almost a complete new line of machinery; there are millions of farmers,
labourers and others who need new clothing, new boots, new homes and other necessities and in the face of these needs it cannot be said -that there is overproduction.
Others say that it is the paralyzing load of debt, federal, provincial, municipal and personal, which is the cause of our trouble. But what do we find? Creditors seem to be just as badly off as the debtors. There does not seem to be any possibility of payment of these debts at the present time. I quote again from one of Doctor Marvin's speeches as follows:
As prices have continued to fall, the burden of these debts, as well as that of other longterm debts such as bonds and mortgages, has been increased by 50 to 75 per cent. It is coming to be recognized that there must be a major rise in prices or there will be heavy cancellations of a substantial proportion of such obligations. One thing or another is inevitable; prices must rise or there will be a wholesale cancellation or repudiation of such debts. For the same reason a continuation of the present price level will bring on wholesale bankruptcies.
I am quite aware that this house will not delve into the question of provincial, municipal and personal debts; these are matters for the provinces to consider. But surely the federal authorities should consider the conversion of our present federal bonded indebtedness along somewhat the same lines as those adopted recently by England. It is admitted that there must be a scaling down of debts or a substantial increase in commodity prices.
The next factors to be considered are fear and international mistrust. The world is faced with the problems of large armies, increased air forces and heavier armaments of all kinds. Canada may not be a great offender in this respect but I believe that she could wisely reduce her standing forces, small as they are. She could show to the world a splendid example in this respect.
Fear is a great factor in blocking progress. It prevents those of us who are older from embracing new ideas, we are unwilling to progress. I venture to say that it would be a good thing for this House of Commons to have in it some young, adventurous blood. We should have men here who would not be afraid to try out those things which have not yet been tried out in this country of ours.
Had time permitted I should have liked to refer to the tariff, as that, in my opinion, is the greatest of all causes of the present degression. My hon. leader (Mr. Mackenzie King) very ably referred yesterday to this matter, but there are a few figures which I had prepared and which I should have liked to give to the house. However, I have enumer-
The Address-Mr. Young

ated several causes for our present condition. No doubt many of these causes can be cured only by international action, yet there are some which could be remedied by the national action of the Canadian people.


Edward James Young: Mr. Speaker, there are two or three remarks made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) last night to which I should like to direct attention. He is reported on page 44 of Hansard as saying:
The same right hon. gentleman who went to and fro in this country and said: "Who will represent Canada at the Imperial conference in 1930?" could not fail-and he did not-to disguise his spleen that there should have been a successful conference in Canada in which he did not take part. There was nothing he could do to injure that conference that he did not do before it was held. There was no platform upon which he appeared that he did not endeavour in some way to make it more difficult for the government of his country to represent Canada at that conference.
I think that that statement was altogether uncalled for. If any criticism could have been levelled at the leader of the opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King) in connection with his attitude towards the conference, it was that he maintained a silence in connection therewith. During last session when the conference was under discussion he told the government plainly and honestly what rules he thought should be followed in carrying on the negotiations. After that he remained silent and made no attempt to set up any stumbling block in the way of the success of the conference. The stumbling block which nearly if not completely wrecked this conference was the same stumbling block which completely wrecked the conference of 1930, and that was the legislation introduced and passed during the short session of September, 1930. Prior to going over to England to attend that conference the Prime Minister called parliament together and had legislation passed which made it inevitable that the conference should be abortive. That legislation made it impossible for Great Britain to sell her goods in Canada, but the Prime Minister went to the conference and asked Great Britain to make it possible for us to sell goods in her country and at the same time to exclude goods from other countries. The Prime Minister said:	"We
have successfully shut your goods out of Canada; now we ask you to shut out from your country all goods except ours." Can you* imagine anything quite so nervy, if I may be permitted to use that term? Is it any wonder that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald replied:	"We
cannot do it." It ill behooves the gentleman

who was responsible for the wrecking of the conference of 1930, and whose policy nearly if not completely wrecked the present conference, to get up in this house and say that the leader of the opposition tried to place any stumbling block in the way cif the Imperial economic conference of 1932.
On page 49 of yesterday's Hansard we also find the Prime Minister making reference to Britain going off the gold standard. He said:
When England went off the gold standard this country wras struck the greatest blow it has ever experienced, the force of which we have never been able to measure.
I did not know we had been struck such a terrible blow when Britain went off the gold standard. The blow that staggered this country most was the blow that was struck by the present government in the short session of 1930, and renewed in subsequent sessions. I remember one time watching a butcher killing a steer. He took an axe and struck it on the head. The steer fell to the ground, but the butcher, before proceeding to bleed it, struck it a second blow. The steer knew nothing about the second blow; he was completely stunned by the first. If we received a deadly blow from England when she went off the gold standard, we were quite unconscious of it because we had not recovered from the blow dealt us by the present government in their tariff legislation.
My right hon. friend tells us on the same page that lack of confidence in banks, in individuals and in institutions was one of the causes of present conditions. It is not lack of confidence, it is lack of a basis of confidence. Give us a sound basis for confidence and confidence will return. If you are a manufacturer and you go into a bank and try to borrow only a thousand dollars, the banker will ask you what you want it for. If you tell him you want it to manufacture certain goods and to try to sell them, he will refuse to give you the money. Why? Because he will say: You cannot sell those goods, or if you can sell them you will not get the cost of production. But if you go into a bank and say: "I want $100,000 to produce goods for which I have a market and for which you know 1 have a market," you could not get out of the bank without the money; they would not let you go. Give us the basis of confidence and confidence will be restored immediately.
On page 54 of yesterday's Hansard the Prime Minister makes this statement:
If the requirements of this country are met by the cheaper goods dumped upon our markets

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from abroad, from Europe and elsewhere, while the Canadian farmer is denied access to those countries with his wheat, the treaty with France being an outstanding example, what happens to the entire industrial fabric of Canada?
The inference is that if we allow France and other countries to dump cheap goods into Canada, our whole industrial fabric will collapse and our people will have nothing to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. If other countries dump their goods into Canada, they either give us those goods for nothing or sell them at a price. If they give us those goods for nothing-and everybody knows they will not-then our people will have the goods they require and they will not have to work to make them; it would not matter whether they had employment or not. But those countries will not ship their goods in here for nothing; they will ask a price for them, and that price will have to be paid in Canadian goods, because there is no other way of paying for them. Therefore the price paid for the goods dumped into this country will give employment for our people. My hon. friends opposite seem to think that all our requirements will be dumped in here and that nothing will be taken in exchange. That is not so. During the election they went about the country saying:	If you elect
us to power we will reduce imports by $500,000,000; we will shut out $500,000,000 worth of imports. Now they boast that they have done so. I ask the hon. gentlemen: Did they know, at the time they were making the promise that they would shut out $500,000,000 worth of imports, they would at the same time and by the same act shut in $500,000,000 worth of exports? If they had told the people then:	We will reduce your imports
by $500,000,000 and as a result your exports will go down by a similar amount; you will be doing that much less business; you will have that much less employment, that much less work for your railways, would the people have voted for them? No, they would not. Why did they go throughout the country and make that statement? They did not understand the situation. They did not understand that imports were paid for by exports. They did not understand that when goods are imported we have to produce other goods to pay for them, and that when we refuse to buy goods from other people, other people are not in a position to buy goods from us.
What has been the result of this policy? Some of our industries have increased their profits, but our people have been denied goods and employment. Not long ago I saw the report of one of the silk industries in Canada, one of the industries that has been specially
cared for by this government. What did this report say? It said that this year they did less business, produced less goods, sold less goods and made a greater profit than in previous years. What does that mean? It means that the people of this country had less clothing to wear, but the profits of certain manufacturers were increased; that the number of men employed in that industry was not as great as in previous years because they produced less goods. That has been the policy of the government and the result of their policy.
It is time we were beginning to take stock of some of our industries. In a time like this when every industry is looking for ways and means of cutting down expenses, every wise manager looks over all his plant, takes careful stock of each department, finds out what it is costing to operate that department and what revenue he is getting from the operation of it, and determines whether or not he will continue it. If he finds he has a department that is costing him more than it is yielding in revenue, he will close it down. It is time that Canada did the same thing. We have in this country many manufacturing industries that do not justify their existence, that are costing us more in dollars and cents than they are paying in wages to the Canadian people. I will cite only one example-the oil refining industry paying $8,000,000 in wages and charging the people of Canada an additional $24,000,000 in prices. We cannot afford at a time like this to support industries of that kind.
The Prime Minister, speaking of the question of unemployment, said that the handling otf the situation was a provincial and municipal matter; that it was the function of the federal government, when the municipal and provincial authorities were unable to finance the matter, to help them financially. I shall accept that explanation of the situation, but I think hon. members will all agree that if the government is furnishing the money, it should at least be consulted in the matter of expenditure. I believe the government intends to be consulted as to the manner in which this money is being expended. Last year when the matter was up for consideration I made a suggestion, I think to the Minister of Labour (Mr. Gordon), that a certain plan which had been adopted in a small way in Saskatchewan should be adopted universally throughout Canada in order to relieve unemployment. The plan was simplicity itself; it was this: That unemployed men be given five dollars a month each to go and work on a farm; that the farmer be given five

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dollars a month to take him. The five dollars a month given to the unemployed man would buy his clothes and tobacco if he needs it. The five dollars a month given to the farmer would help to board the man. There are in this country some three-quarters of a million farms. I would say that at least one-third of them are in need of improvements which the farmer cannot make because he cannot afford the labour. Around these farms there are little improvements, for instance to fences, machinery, buildings, etc., that could be made with a little cash outlay and labour if the farmer could afford to do this. They are not being made because the farmer has not the time to do it or the money to pay anyone else to do it. If you could put men on farms in that way, it would cost the government only ten dollars a month each to maintain them. They would not be herded in the cities in an atmosphere of discontent where unsound doctrines might be preached in their ears. They would be in a position to learn whether or not they wanted to go on the land. They would 'be self-supporting. They would feel that they were earning their way. I believe you could dispose of one-third of a million men in that manner. That is perhaps the cheapest way in which you could handle the unemployment situation. I do not claim that this is an original suggestion of mine. It was tried in a small way in Saskatchewan; it might be extended, and I recommend it to the government for their consideration.
In the Prime Minister's speech there was one statement with which I heartily agree, and that is that the government is going to stand for sound money. My hon. friends in the corner of the house do not seem to think much of sound money. I think the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) stated to-day that sound money has failed to make it possible to exchange goods, and for that reason it is of no use. I am sorry the hon. member is not in his seat, but if he were I should ask him this question: What kind of money would make it possible to exchange goods if the governments of the world stand over the people and say, "We will not let you exchange, in any case." The trouble is not with our money; it is with the governments of the world which say to the people, "You shall not exchange the product of your labour for the product of the labour of some other person." Page 57 of yesterday's Hansard contains the following statement by the leader of the group in the corner:
Recently there appeared in the Commercial Intelligence Journal published by the Department of Trade and Commerce of this country a

statement by our representative in Australia, that the Australian farmer was securing two shillings and threepence to two shillings and sixpence per bushel for his wheat delivered at the siding, depending on the freight rate. That, Mr. Speaker, turned into Canadian money means something in the neighbourhood of fifty-two to fifty-four cents up to sixty cents a bushel, and the Australian farmers' wheat, generally speaking, is of inferior quality to our western Canadian wheat.
Mr. Young: What is Australian money worth now?
Mr. Gardiner: Australian money is depreciated, and that is one of the reasons why the Australian farmer is getting a larger price in actual money that we are getting in Canada.
Mr. Young: When you translate that into Canadian funds, will he make what you said?
Mr. Gardiner: It will be very close to that.
I took the trouble to translate into Canadian funds, the figures given by the hon. member. He made the statement that two shillings and three pence is equal to fifty-four cents. He did not state whether or not those were English or Australian shillings. However, if the wheat were delivered to a siding in Australia I presume it would be calculated in Australian shillings. Turning to the Commercial Intelligence Journal of October 8, I find the Australian pound is worth S3.04. Therefore translated into Canadian money, the actual price the Australian farmer receives for his wheat is only thirty cents or approximately the price we receive. Then we must consider that the Australian farmer delivers his wheat to a point close to seaboard, and is not confronted with the long freight hauls for which Canadian farmers have to pay. I think when hon. gentlemen in the corner of the house advance arguments in favour of inflated currency they should give us all the factors. What does it cost to ship wheat to Liverpool? What is Australian money worth in Canadian money? All these points should be considered. If he meant the Australian farmer was receiving two shillings and three pence in English money for his wheat, and that that was worth fifty-four cents, then English money must be at its old par value, and what is the object of his saying that we should tie our money to the British pound? If his statement there is true, it must be true that Canadian and British money are already at a parity.
The leader of the Progressive party asked this question yesterday:	"Why should so
many of our people go hungry when our farmers have so much food in the country"? Why should they? I ask hon. members this question: Who owns the food? Who produced all the wheat? The farmers did. Why cannot other people get it? Because they

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have nothing to give the farmer in exchange for it. Do hon. members in the comer believe that the farmer should be required to give his wheat away and receive nothing in return from those who happen to be unemployed?


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: They are nearly
doing (hat now.


Edward James Young: We have every sympathy
for the unemployed, but we know that thirty cents a bushel does not pay for the growing of wheat. With 30 cent wheat we cannot pay our taxes; we cannot pay for our seed or the interest on our mortgages. These are our difficulties, with wheat at thirty cents a bushel. Yet hon. gentlemen say: Why should not the unemployed help themselves to all this wheat? The answer is that they have nothing to give in exchange for it. What is money, anyway?


Mr. BELL (Hamilton):: I have not seen
any. Show us some.


Edward James Young: I think we can agree that money is a medium of exchange, a means of exchanging goods for goods. We do not want money for its own sake, but we do want the goods we can buy with money; that is what it is for. When you go into a market to sell goods, what are you doing? You are selling the product of your labour, and you are expecting to receive in exchange for it the product of some other person's labour. One does not carry the product of his labour with him, he cannot. For that reason money was invented to represent such products. A man entering the market to sell the product of his labour for money has a right to expect that the money he receives represents an equal quantity of somebody else's labour.
What is the true 'basis for money What is the basis for currency? Labour. I am quite willing to admit-I believe everybody will admit that a skilled labourer is worth more than an unskilled labourer, that the labour of a man who applies himself assiduously to his work is worth more than the man who does not. But, making due allowance for all that, when one enters the market to exchange his labour with that of another man such exchange should be on an equal basis. In other words one day of your labour should be equal to one day of another man's. I believe it would not be humanly impossible to determine the exact value of a day's labour, and for .that reason a standard has been set up to represent as nearly as possible the average value of such labour. In arriving at a standard the question was asked: How much labour does it take to produce a certain commodity? What commodity was chosen as the measure? That commodity was chosen the amount of labour in the production of which varies less than in the production of an}' other commodity known. I refer to gold. The amount of human labour required to produce gold has varied less than the amount required to produce any other commodity. When Sir Josiah Stamp w'as visiting Canada he stated .that the time had not yet arrived when the world could get along without a metallic basis for its currency. What did he mean iby that? He meant that gold represents the most accurate measure we can get of the amount of labour required to produce a given quantity of it. That is why we state that gold is the best standard we have. We do not say it is perfect, but it is the nearest we can get to perfection because the amount of labour required to produce it is more constant than that required to produce anything else.
The statement is made that the gold standard is mot functioning. Why is it not functioning? What determines the price of gold? the law of supply and demand determines the price of gold, the same as it determines the price of anything else. The amount of gold in the world has not varied greatly, but hon. members know what happened,-There was a war. During the war certain nations placed other nations in their debt. After the war those debts had to be paid, and war reparations had to be made. The creditor nations receiving the greatest amount of these payments said, "We want payment in gold." The normal way to pay such debts would be payment in goods. After the war however those creditor nations said, " We will not take goods; we want gold." The debtor nations said, "We have no-t any gold; we cannot give it to you." In reply the creditor nations said, "Sell your goods on the world market and get the gold for which we are asking." Following that there was a scramble for gold throughout the world. Debtor nations did their best to get the gold to give to the creditor nations. The creditor nations took that gold, hoarded it, and removed it from the market with the result that there was an artificial scarcity of that commodity. The ultimate result was that the price of gold went up and the price of everything else went down.
What was it that made it possible for these nations to corner all the gold in the world, or the larger part of it? It was the tariff. The gold was cornered because those creditor na-
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tions said, "We will not take goods." They raised tariffs and shut out the goods. Remove the tariffs of the world and what will happen? Gold will resume its normal position, and prices will resume their normal level. Prices will become normal because the relative amount of labour required to produce an ounce of gold as compared with the labour required to produce a bushel of wheat has not varied. If we allow economic forces to take their natural course, prices will come back to normal. I say however that the root cause of our troubles lies in the fact that tariffs of the world have put gold in a place where it could not be used or cculd not function. The remedy is not to tamper with the gold standard, not to look for another standard, but to remove the cause of the disease. Remove the tariffs. Let trade flow in its natural channels, and gold will take its proper place and function properly. My hon. friends in the corner speak of inflating the currency-I am wondering how they would get the new money into circulation. Will they use it to bonus the farmer for his wheat? That would not put purchasing power in the hands cf the unemployed. Will they use it to hire these unemployed, to create public works, trans-Canada highways, million dollar auditoriums, parks, unnecessary stations and so on, all of which will saddle us with an immense maintenance cost later on? If so, what are you doing? You are saying to the farmer and to the worker who is in emploj'ment, "You must while you are working give the produce of your labour to support men who are building roads which you do not need (but which later on you will be called upon to maintain, you will have to keep these men out of your meagre earnings doing something that is going to saddle you with further expense later on." Is it right, is it fair to compel a man who has *worked and produced honest wealth, to exchange that wealth for worthless paper that does not represent an equal amount of labour of anyone else? I say it is not.
I would like to draw your attention for the moment to the position of the farmer. Take the case of a farmer on a half-section of land. I am going to take a good farmer on a good half-section who grows good crops. On the half-section of good land he will have probably three hundred acres under cultivation. One hundred acres of that would be under summer fallow, fifty acres perhaps devoted to growing feed for his stock, and one hundred and fifty acres devoted to producing a marketable crop, say wheat. He is a good farmer, he is going to get a good crop; we will give him an average of twenty

bushels per acre-I think my western friends will say that is a pretty generous average. So from that one hundred and fifty acres he will reap three thousand bushels of wheat, which at present prices will bring him about $1,000. He does most of his work himself, and he has not time to do much other work than growing his wheat, but he keeps a cow or two, raises a couple of calves and a few pigs and chickens, and he or his wife keep a little garden. We will value all the other produce of the farm at $300 a year, which I think is a pretty generous allowance at prices now prevailing. His total, income for the year would be $1,300. What are his expenses? Taxes $200; interest on his debts, $200. To thresh his wheat and the other grain which he produces for feed, approximately $250, which will include the feeding of the threshers. We are not going to allow him much help; he will have to do all his work himself except during harvest time, so we will allow him $50 for harvest wages; and for repairs to machinery, oil, etc., $100; binder twine $50, and depreciation of his implements, stock and buildings $150. Then he will have to keep 150 bushels for seed, worth say, $100, for that wheat has to be cleaned. Total expenses therefore are $1,100, total income is $1,300, leaving him for his year's work the munificent sum of $200.


An hon. MEMBER:: He is lucky!


Edward James Young: My friend says he is lucky.
He is. Mind you, I have taken a good farmer, on an exceptionally good farm, obtaining exceptionally good crops. Not many average twenty bushels to the acre.
Now, I want to compare that man with the worker in the manufacturing industry. Average wages paid-I got these figures from the 1932 Canada Year Book, and they are 1929 figures, so we will make allowance for the reduction since. Average wages paid to. industrial employees in 1929, $1,044; since then there have been reductions, ten per cent, twenty per cent, say an average of twenty-five per cent, bringing the average wages of industrial workers to $800 or $850. Farmers^ wages $200, industrial workers' wages $800.
I said a moment ago that when a man goes into the market to sell the product of his labour, if he has worked as hard and skilfully as another man they should exchange on the basis of a day for a day. But here we find a farmer compelled to give four day3 of his labour in exchange for one day of the industrial worker's labour.
Look at it another way. In 1913 wheat was selling at the local elevators out west for approximately 70 cents a bushel, to-day it is

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Mr. Howard
about 30 cents. At that time industrial wages were about S500, to-day over $800. Industrial wages have almost doubled, farmers' wages have been cut in half. There again you get the same relationship, four to one.
Look at it another way. In 1914 just before the war broke out an eight foot binder in western Canada cost the equivalent of 225 bushels of wheat, $180 at 80 cents a bushel. To-day that same binder would cost him 900 bushels of wheat. Again you have the same relationship, four to one. So from whatever standpoint you contemplate it, the farmer today is compelled to give four days of his labour in exchange for one day's labour of the industrial worker.


Leslie Gordon Bell: But of course it costs him more to live in the city.


Edward James Young: I am glad my hon. friend mentioned that. Why does it cost him more?


An hon. MEMBER:: Because he pays rent.


Edward James Young: Let me explain. He goes into the city and there he has a certain voting power, and he has voted himself paved streets, parks, lights, the best of schools, all kinds of improvements and conveniences. He has voted those things to himself, he has gone into debt for them, and then he has said "Now we must make the farmer pay for these, because we cannot live without them." When I speak of the farmer I refer to all the primary producers; the same thing applies to the miner, the lumberman and the fisherman.
This is a condition that cannot continue. It is responsible in a large measure for the conditions prevailing in this country to-day. Why? When the farmer has to give four days of his labour in exchange for one day of the other man's labour he has got to work four days while the other man sits idle for three and works one. He cannot employ the other man. Your industrial worker must sit idle three days waiting for the farmer to accumulate three days' work, then they both work the fourth day and exchange products. Yet in spite of all this, the fact that the industrial worker is out of work to-day because the farmer cannot employ him, what is he doing? He is asking for unemployment insurance, asking the government to go to the farmer and say, "Here, you cannot employ this man, it is true, but you must give him unemployment insurance when you cannot employ him." And there i* a new party being organized in this country, a Farmer-Labour party, asking for a new deal on behalf of the farmer and the labouring man. A new deall On what basis is this new deal to be made? On the
old basis of four to one? Is the farmer still to be compelled to give four days' labour in exchange for the other man's one? If that is the basis of the new deal we will have none of it. I cannot understand hon. gentlemen in the corner, supposed to represent farming constituencies,-they are not here to-night, they should be-joining up with a group whose aim is to perpetuate that condition. Not only perpetuate that, but compel the farmer to pay unemployment insurance to the men that he cannot afford to hire.
How has this condition been brought about? How have they managed to multiply wages of the industrial worker by two while they cut the farmer's wages in half? Quite simply. It is easy for men living in communities to get together. They got together, they went to their employers, they said, "We want more, we must have a larger share of the product of labour." What did the employer say? He said, "My friends, I would like to give it to you." "If we can get the government to so arrange things that we can make the farmer pay it, we will give it to you." So they came to the government-not this government alone but to every government we have had in this country-and said, "We cannot carry on in this way; we must maintain a higher standard cf living. You must give us a protective tariff; you must shut out other goods; you must put us in a position to demand higher prices from the farmers of this country for the goods we have to sell. Then we will be able to pay our men bigger wages and maintain a higher standard of living." But where was that higher standard to be maintained? It was in the cities. How about the farms?
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, how long this condition can continue. They have succeeded so far; in the last twenty years they have cut the wages of the farmer in half while the wages of the industrial -worker have been doubled. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if that condition can continue, and I ask you whether, as long as it does continue, prosperity can return to this country.


Mr. C. B. HOWARD (Sherbrooke):: Mr. Speaker, my reason for taking part in the debate to-night is that I wish not only to protest personally against the condition of affairs as I find them in my constituency and my section of Canada, but also to voice the protests of the electors of the county of Sherbrooke against the actions of the present government in the handling of the affairs of the country.
When I listened to my right hon. friend the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) speak in this house last evening I could not help but think

The Address-Mr. Howard
of the same gentleman when he was sitting on this side of the house as leader of the opposition. I remembered a speech which he delivered here on February 24, 1930, when there was not one-tenth the unemployment that we have in Canada to-day, when conditions were prosperous in comparison with conditions as they exist to-day. The right hon. gentleman then spoke as follows:
What about conditions in this dominion at this moment? What about conditions from east to west? It is true that part of the unemployment is seasonal; but since the beginning of the year I have traversed Canada from Victoria to the far east and in every city of this dominion, east and west, there is abnormal unemployment, so that men who are accustomed to give, as I have been, to assist those who are unable to earn sufficient to keep body and soul together, have never before seen such distress as I have seen in the communities I have visited. Yet all that the men have sought is the chance to work. What have we done in regard to the situation? .... What was the Minister of Labour doing? What was the Prime Minister doing? Were they calling conferences? The only conferences they were calling were conferences to determine how best they could ward off the blows of an indignant people. The only conferences they were having were as to how they might increase their power and retain their positions. We must look the fact squarely in the eye that there has been great unemployment in Canada since the first of the year. During the winter we have entered upon we have seen greater suffering and privation than we have known during the last quarter of a century, and yet this government has absolutely failed to take any steps of any description whatsoever to deal with the problem. Is there any answer to that? Do you mean to say that steps could not be taken? Do you mean to say that the Dominion government should make no contribution to provide assistance to provinces and municipalities in matters of this kind? Who brought many of these men into this country? Certainly it was not the provincial governments, for wherever they have been consulted in matters of this kind they have given their answers in no uncertain terms. Now they are being consulted whereas formerly they were not. Yet the Dominion government says: We have no responsibility in the premises. I do not know whether the Prime Minister is correctly reported or not, but the report of his observations was that if the provinces were too poor to take care of them the government might see what it could do to assist them. That is the sense in which his observations came through the Canadian Press. That is not the performance of the obligations of the central government of Canada.
Yesterday the right hon. gentleman wanted to be absolved from some of the preelection promises that had been quoted. May I remind him that before absolution can be granted two things are necessary: One is that a person must be sorry for having sinned, and

the other is that he must be absolutely determined not to do it again. I am not going to quote any of the preelection promises made by the right hon. gentleman; instead I want to read a short article from the Montreal Gazette, of June 27, 1930, as follows:
.... and the King government cannot escape the charge of having neglected to realize that the first duty of the Canadian government is to provide work for Canadians.
That is not a promise; it is a statement of fact, that the first duty of this government is to provide work for Canadians. Let me ask not only hon. members of this house but also the people in my constituency, those in the rural sections of Quebec and in fact the people anywhere in Canada, whether or not the present government has done or is doing anything to provide work for Canadians at the present time. [DOT]
As I have already said, my reason for making these few remarks is that I want to express my disappointment in the speech from the throne, which contains these words:
The problem of unemployment continues to receive the anxious attention of my ministers. Under the powers granted them at the last session of parliament, they have been able to develop further, in cooperation with the provinces and municipalities, a scheme of direct relief to be put into operation during the autumn and winter months to the extent required by prevailing conditions.
Two years ago, Mr. Speaker, we were hurried to Ottawa for a short session of parliament, when practically no unemployment existed. We were told we could not wait until the regular session; we had a special session called for the purpose of "ending unemployment." This year, however, with unemployment much worse - yes, ten times worse; with agricultural conditions such as have never before been seen in Canada; with conditions in our cities known only to those who live in the cities; with industrial conditions to find the equal of which we must go back not to the depression of 1921, not to the depression of 1914, not to the depression of 1908, but for a period of forty years- in these circumstances we are not to give consideration to unemployment, the most important question in Canada to-day.
I want to place upon record a few actual cases in Sherbrooke, and I wish to enter my protest against the way the unemployment situation is being dealt with. I have here on a slip the name of a superintendent in one of the factories in Sherbrooke, a man living on Lincoln avenue, who two years ago was drawing $40 a week as foreman in one of the

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plants. His salary has been reduced in the last two years to S19 per week and he is getting only two days' work a week. He has eight children besides his wife and himself to support, or ten in the family. I leave it to this house or to anyone in Canada to say whether a situation of that kind can be tolerated. Yet the present government takes no steps to remedy matters. I have the slip of another gentleman whom I know personally, a man in Sherbrooke, with a family of nine children besides himself and his wife, eleven altogether, and I wish to direct the attention of the house to the seriousness of this particular man's condition.
Some years ago he had that ambition about which the Prime Minister spoke last night, the ambition that characterized the pioneers of this country. And here, incidentally, let me tell the members of the government that the spirit of the pioneers still exists in Canada. All the people want is a chance to work. Well, this man purchased a lot in the city of Sherbrooke. He paid $460 for it and at a cost of $300 he built what some people might call a shack but he calls it his home, of which he is as proud as any man could be of a $50,000 home. But what is the condition of this man today? He has paid for his house, but he has not paid enough on his lot and if the people who own it wanted to put him out they could confiscate his house. Fortunately, however, they are not doing so. Four children sleep in the same bed. Yet this government has the audacity to stand up in the parliament of Canada and talk, without doing anything to remedy such a situation. Another gentleman had that same pioneer ambition. A few years ago he purchased a house for $3,400, and he did so because he had faith in the country and felt assured that there would be no change of government. He paid $1,400 down on that property and today he has outstanding a balance of $2,000 Formerly he was paying $20 per month rent but he cannot meet his payments on the house now. He has not paid taxes for two years and is in constant fear that the house will be taken from him.
Another man purchased a small property in Sherbrooke for $300, and if those to whom he is indebted on account of the house wished to take it from him they could do so. The amount he has paid over a period of years is now all wiped out. The roof is leaking so that he is practically living in the open air. Let me add-and I want this underlined-that this man has seven children besides his wife and himself to support, but he has no revenue coming in, and the milk dealer in Sherbrooke is supplying him with milk and not charging him. He is not cutting off the man's supply 53719-7
of milk when he knows that he cannot pay for it. He has lived sixteen years in Sherbrooke and was employed by the same company for nine consecutive years. I know another gentleman who was eight years in the cotton mills and who has been two years out of work. He had a property for which he paid $1,500, or rather agreed to pay. He had paid $400 on it two years ago, but today he has an accumulation of unpaid interest and taxes so that he is back to his original status.
I know another gentleman who was working for seven years with one of the railways of Canada. He has five children besides himself and his wife to support. He built a $600 home on a $450 lot. He had paid off $250, but today he is back to his original status. He has no revenue whatever. He has a garden around the house and he and his family are living on the supplies they obtain from it. Again, as in the other instance I have already cited, the milk dealer is carrying him.
Iam painting a picture of these conditions, not because I think that Canada is going to the bow-bows, because I do not think there is any danger of that, and I am just as much an optimist as any man in this house. I believe that we have the greatest country in the world, or one which we can make so; but we cannot go on with the present administration in power and expect to get anywhere. Let me cite another illustration-and I am bringing these up because every single one of these men came to my office the day before 1 left to come here for the session, and I took notes in detail myself with a justice of the peace present.
A farmer in Rock Forest, one of the finest rural sections in the county of Sherbrooke, some years ago in the good and prosperous times, purchased a farm for $4,500, on which he was to pay interest at the rate of 6 per cent, reducing the principal at the rate of $500 per annum. I see in their seats my hon. friend from Rrome-Missisquoi, my hon. friend from Chateauguay-Huntingdon and my hon. friend from Compton, and I know that they will appreciate what I am saying because they know what conditions are in their constituencies. This man had reduced his loan by $2,000, but last year he could not pay his $500 of principal and therefore went to the mortgage holder and said that he would pay the interest. He paid the interest, but what happened this year? This year he can pay neither principal nor interest. This is in a farming constituency and hon. members from rural sections will know what farm products are worth at this time. This man went to the mortgage holder and told him his story. The



The Address-Mr. Howard
man holding the mortgage said, "What are you going to do?" The man said he would look after t'he farm and carry on. But the following week a speculator came on the scene. He went, not to the farmer but to the man in the city who held the mortgage and said, "So and so has not paid his interest. How much do you want for the claim?" They bargained and the speculator gave the mortgage holder a cheque for $2,000 for the claim and put the farmer off the land. He resold the property for $.500 down and $3,000 'balance, and came to my office to borrow from the farm loan board $2,000, for his tenant so that he would have made a clean profit and sold the farm to another party, but I put him out. I bring these matters to the attention of the house because I consider that the policy of this government pays little heed to people in the cities and rural sections of the country, and if is time that these things were driven home to their notice.
I know a man from the county of Compton who went around to the farmers buying cattle. He bought forty-seven head of cattle and put them on the Canadian Pacific and shipped them to Montreal, to the stock yards. This happened three weeks ago. The average weight was 1,250 pounds. He paid the farmers nearly 4 cents per pound, and do you know what they offered him in Montreal? They offered him 2 cents per pound, and after staying four days and paying for his board and buying feed for the cattle, he reloaded his stock and shipped them back to Compton, at Eaton's Corners.
Let us now get back to the system which this government has tried to put in force-* direct relief. Some of us do not realize what direct aid is. Let me tell the house what it is in the city of Sherbrooke-and it is as well administered in that city as it is in any other place in Canada. The members of this government thought that the way of giving the work which they promised to provide for the people was too expensive to Canada, because it might injure the capitalist or the speculator. Mark you, I do not say this in a socialistic spirit because I believe in the capitalist system; but I direct attention to these things in the hope that the government will endeavour to mend their ways and to remedy the situation. In the municipality of Ascot, one of the municipalities outside Sherbrooke, there are forty men without any employment whatever. That is a lot of people for a small municipality. They have decided that the best thing to do is to give work to these fellows. They are given two days work per week; they work eight hours 
a day and receive fifteen cents per hour in goods, not in money, or an equivalent of $2.40 per week. These men receive their little provisions to keep them from starving, but I ask hon. members where they are going to get money to purchase clothes, to pay rent, to pay for light and gas? I am not finding fault with the way the municipality is handling this, but I do say that direct relief is wrong in principle. I was going to say it is a rotten way to handle the situation.
A short time ago I wrote a letter to a certain gentleman asking for some information I desired. I asked him to reply immediately, but it was some three weeks afterwards before I received a letter. He told me that he regretted the delay in answering but it had been caused by his inability to obtain the price of a postage stamp. He stated that three weeks ago the city gas company had turned off his gas, that the week previous to his writing his electric light had been turned off. He stated that he could live without light but he had three little children who had not had a warm meal in three weeks. His wife was not in good health but he was unable to buy her the necessities she needed. As he said: "Que je fais une vie bien triste." If such things are to take place in a country with the possibilities of Canada; if young children are to be faced with the possibility of their growth being stunted in tender years, then I fear for the future generations.
When I speak later in connection with the industrial conditions prevailing in Sherbrooke 1 shall have more accurate figures, but at the present moment I should like to give the house certain information concerning the relief being granted in the city of Sherbrooke. This city has a population of 29,500. Last Saturday there were fed in the soup kitchens 050 families, representing 3,500 people or one-eighth of the population of the city. The other day a lady came into my office with her coat pinned at the neck and said: "Mr. Howard, I am not here to find fault with the soup kitchen; we are getting plenty of good food and my rent is being paid by the city, but I ask you to look at me and tell me if there is any way in which I could have perhaps just a dollar a week with which to buy some clothes and shoes for the coming winter." I do not make these statements to disparage my home town; nor, as I have said already, do I make them against Canada, but I do make them against the system which we are putting into force. Such a system should not be put into force in a country like ours.
The other day I visited one of the most popular boarding schools in the province of Quebec, a school which is attended by the

The Address-Mr. Howard
boys and girls from the agricultural Protestant minority section of the province. I found that this school had only one-half the attendance of last year. In other words, it will have to operate this year with a deficit of $15,000, and it is now faced with an overdraft of $20,000 at the bank. Why has not this school, one of the finest educational institutions in the good old province of Quebec, the necessary number of students? It is because the farmer has not the necessary $400 to send his boy or girl to school. The boys and girls throughout this section of the country have been hearing this statement made on every public platform in Canada: Do not make the mistake your dad made; go and get an education. The parents have saved and stinted in order to send their children to school. Every professor in the university, every manager of industry, every head of our great institutions has been saying: This is a competitive day; if you get an education you will get a job. What are the conditions today? There are hundreds, yes, thousands of young men with the finest educations ready and willing to do anything, even dig ditches- they can do it better with an education-but they cannot find a job. They are being absolutely discouraged; they cannot find work and do not know what to do. This is the condition which prevails in the country which we love and which we call Canada.
Some men from my section have spent their own money to come to Ottawa to interview the Prime Minister. This was not an organized effort paid for by someone else, but simply a group of men who were willing to pay their own expenses in order to have an opportunity of interviewing the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is not the dictator of Canada, he is the servant of the people, yet when these men arrived in Ottawa they were refused an audience by the Prime Minister. There were eight of the best farmers in the eastern townships whom I know personally and who are known to other hon. members who were in that delegation. I would hesitate to refuse admission to my home either day or night to any one of those agricultural gentlemen, yet they were refused admission to see "the servant of the people."


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Charles Benjamin Howard: Ask them and they will
tell you. Go and see Mr. Charles Green, of Lennoxville; Mr. Hilton Ross, of Brompton road; Mr. J. B. Reid, of North Hatley: Mr. John Ross, of Brompton road, or Mr. Edwin Ducker, of Belvidere road, the head of the farmer association in the county of Sher-53719-71
brooke, and they will all tell you that they were refused admission.
I should like to say a word or two about the amalgamations which have taken place in the railway field. As I have no desire to say anything in connection with a report we have not seen, I shall not refer to the report of the transportation commission at the present time except to say that I do not think the Canadian National Railways is being given a square deal. When economy and saving is made at the expense of the workers, when amalgamations are carried out which put men on the street, it is time that such economy was stopped. A few dollars may be saved on the one hand, but money must be paid out in the form of soup kitchens, on the other.
In connection with the amalgamation of the Quebec Central Railway with the Canadian Pacific, the senior man in the service, a man who had been with the company for forty years, was retired on pension. With that action I have no fault to find, but the next man in line of service, a man who had given twenty-eight years of the finest sendee any man could give to a company, is out on the streets without a job. Naturally he does not know anything but the railway business. The next two men, each with twenty-three years of service, are out on the streets of Sherbrooke. The same applies to the next man with twenty-one years of service, and the next in line with sixteen years of service. If that is the kind of economy to be practised by this government I am against economy if we have to take it in that way. These men should be carried on at least until things improve. These men who have spent their lives in the service of the company should at least receive a square deal. I want to go further than that. As regards the labouring man to w'hom we cater as we do to the farmer, when he knows that all he is going to get for loyal service is to be fired at the discretion of the company, how are we to get efficiency? What kind of service can he give to his company when he sees men after twenty-three, twenty-one and sixteen years of service thrown out on the street without any consideration? The best way to introduce bolshevism and communism into this country is by following out that line of action.
I should like to correct another statement which I have heard on every platform in Canada and which I have heard time and again in this house by the Prime Minister himself, and that is: Oh, if we had not maintained the value of our currency in this part


Mr. C. E. BOTHWELL (Swift Current):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to refer to one sentence in the speech from the throne, as follows:
The unity, fortitude and capacity of the Canadian people, without which all your labours would have been in vain, shall be now the foundation upon which, with cooperation and faith, we will build a Canada greater than we have yet known.
In connection with that sentence in the speech of His Excellency I want to go back to the opening session of this parliament and quote a few sentences frcm remarks made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett). As reported in Hansard of September 16, 1930, at page 239, the Prime Minister enunciated a portion of the policy of the government as follows:
We propose therefore to provide that so far as may be reasonably possible the requirements of the 10.000.000 people living on the northern half of this continent shall be provided by Canadian producers.
Following out, I presume, that enunciation of policy at that particular session of parliament, legislation was introduced to increase the tariff and the house was assured, in words that I intend now to quote, that no increase in price to the Canadian consumer would result from those increases in the tariff. At page 240 of Hansard of the same session the Prime Minister is reported as saying:
There then remains to be considered the consumer. I was much taken with the observations made yesterday as to the desirability of caring for the consumer; it was a part of every address I made during the last election to the electors of the country. I believed it was the duty of this parliament to protect alike agriculture and labour, industry and the consumer. And I say to you, sir, and to this house, that with respect to the items that are dealt with in these schedules we have definite and quantitive assurances from the manufacturers that their enactment will result in no increase in prices.
At page 242 of Hansard of the same session the Prime Minister, in speaking to an amendment to the customs tariff, quoted the section as follows:-
In the event of the producers of goods in Canada increasing their prices in consequence of the imposition of any duty under the provisions of this act, the governor in council may reduce or remove such duty.
And then said:
That is the embodiment in statutory form of what I said in the opening of my observa-

The Address-Mr. Bolhwell
tions; it confers upon the governor in council power to reduce or remove duties where there has been any effort on the part of the producer to exploit the consumer. Shortly put, that is what the provision is.
We all realize that we in Canada have been * going through difficult times. We know that the primary producers can get but very low prices for their products, and that they will suffer unless they are placed in a position whereby they can purchase goods on a price basis comparable with the prices of the commodities they have for sale. Apparently that idea in the Prime Minister's mind caused him to make the remarks I have quoted. Later in the session he placed himself more clearly on Hansard. At page 501, in reply to the leader of the opposition he said:
But I would answer the right hon. gentleman's question by saying: Yes, I would regard it as an increase in price and I would, if necessary, utilize the machinery of this section to correct it.
That statement was made in answer to a question as to whether or not that section would be operative if prices outside of Canada had fallen. His intention is made clear when at page 531 of Hansard he is quoted as follows:
Where you have an undertaking such as that given in good faith, and you have in a statute a section enabling you to exercise a power in the event of that undertaking not being kept, I certainly would not, as a public official and minister, for a moment stand on any finely drawn legal document, but on the broad basis of an understanding given in good faith. And if that undertaking is not observed the power of the section will be invoked.
Again at page 578 the Prime Minister is reported as follows:
I have indicated to this committee that I agree entirely with the observations of the right hon. the leader of the opposition, and if there should be a great falling off of prices beside us and an effort made to maintain present prices in Canada, that would be utilizing the tariff to increase the prices and would be a violation of the undertaking.
I presume the Prime Minister and his government are at least to some extent entitled to rely on the reports of the standing committees of this house, although I do not know just how far the duty of the Prime Minister extends in regard to analyzing the evidence taken before such committees. I am referring now to the report which was made at the last session of parliament by the banking and commerce committee which investigated the prices of gasoline. I should like to add that discussion in the house on the report was prevented. Under a reference made to the committee from the house a report was brought down which, to say the least, was most misleading. During the investigation witnesses were heard from various oil companies situated in different parts of Canada and some from the United States. A firm of chartered accountants was engaged as auditors, and members of that firm were sent out to get certain information. Towards the closing days of the investigation the auditors returned, not to give the committee information as to the facts they had ascertained, but to give their report on such facts.
Following the report of the auditors a majority of the committee brought in a report which, with the exception of a few recitals at the first, contained practically the exact words of the auditors. No regard whatever was had of the evidence taken by the committee when the auditors were away getting information. Notwithstanding and in contradiction of that report I should like now to refer to some matters proven before the committee. The points to which I shall direct attention show that, in the words of the Prime Minister, the Canadian consumer is being exploited. From the evidence given it would appear that between September 1, 1930, and February 8, 1932, there had been a great drop in the price of gasoline in the United States, but a very slight drop in Canada. At this point I should like to place on Hansard a comparison of gasoline prices in American and Canadian cities as of September 1, 1930. These are retail prices computed in imperial gallons:
September 1, 1930
New York	 19-56
Augusta, Me	 21-36
Manchester, N.H	20-88
Burlington, Vt	 21-96
Buffalo	 20-16
Detroit	 20-83
Duluth	 21-00
Minneapolis	 20-64
Grand Forks	 23-04
Minot	 22-68
Helena	 27-00
Halifax	 24-00
St. John. N.B	 24-00
Montreal, Que	 24-00
Sherbrooke, Que	 23-15
Toronto	 23-00
Border Cities	 22-00
Fort William	 24-50
Winnipeg	 24-50
Brandon	 27-50
Regina	 30-00
Calgary	 27-00
The average United States price in the various cities mentioned was 21-737 cents and the average Canadian price 24-877 cents or a

The Address-Mr. Bothwell
Evidence was also given as to the price of Roumanian gasoline laid down in Montreal, but as it was getting towards the close of the investigation we were not allowed to submit figures. I intend to present those figures to the house tonight. Inquiries were made of a firm in London, England, asking for quotations on oil and gasoline, and their answer was that they could supply Roumanian gasoline, laid down in Montreal with everything paid except duty and sales tax, at a price of 5-9062 cents per imperial gallon. Quotations were also obtained from another source by one of the oil companies in Ottawa, and the price quoted was SI4.50, United States currency, per ton of 2,240 pounds, c.i.f. Montreal, May shipment from Constanza, provided prompt action was taken. That price, without duty and sales tax, amounted to 5-75 cents per imperial gallon.
The question of bootlegging in the United States took up a good deal of the time of the committee. The oil companies contended that bootlegging accounted for the spread between United States and Canadian prices, but I submit that this contention is not borne out by the evidence presented to the committee. At the time that claim was made gasoline could be bought coming from Roumania or from the Dutch West Indies at prices equal to those for which gasoline was being sold in the United States. As a matter of fact the Shell Oil Company imported their gasoline partly from the Dutch West Indies and partly from Chicago, because they were able to get quotations at about the same figure.
Other evidence was given before the committee which I think has some bearing on why the Imperial Oil wholesale price and manufacturing costs were so high in comparison with the McColl-Frontenac and British American companies. The evidence was that the International Petroleum Company, Limited, a subsidiary of Imperial Oil, from which Imperial Oil buys its crude, sells about eighty per cent of its output in the world market and only about twenty per cent to Imperial Oil, at prices that are supposed to be comparable with those charged in the mid-continent field of the United States.
While dealing with the capital structures of these companies I should like to deal with that of International Petroleum, and I will try to be brief. This company is paying a dividend of about forty per cent on the money actually invested in the company. I am referring now to the analysis of the International Petroleum Company which appears in the

Financial Post survey of corporate securities of Canada for 1931. There it is shown that this company has $500,000 of preferred stock authorized with $500,000 of preferred stock outstanding. There were 39,800,000 shares of common stock authorized, of which 14,324,088 were outstanding, of no par value. Both preferred and common stock rank equally as to dividends. Almost all the preferred stock and about 58 per cent of the common stock is owned by the Imperial Oil. In April, 1929, the entire capital stock was split two for one, the par value of the preferred stock being reduced from $5 to $2.50. The number of shares of both kinds of stock was doubled, and outstanding shares were exchanged on the basis of two new shares for one old share. The initial dividend on both common and preferred stock was 12i cents, paid June 26, 1929, and 25 cents paid September 26, 1929, and regularly each quarter ever since. This works out at about 40 per cent. This publication also deals with another subsidiary company, the Andian National Company, which is controlled by International Petroleum. The dividends paid 'by that company work out to about 24 per cent.
In connection with these companies producing and manufacturing oil in Canada, I think the evidence taken by that committee should be drawn to the attention of the Prime Minister. We will consider the McColl-Frontenac Company, for instance, whose report was brought out while the evidence was being heard. The net operating profits of the McColl-Frontenac Oil Company for the fiscal year ending January 31, 1932, amounted to $3,370,186. After deducting reserves for depreciation, bond interest, preferred stock dividend and income tax there remained the sum of $907,958, which was equal to $1.81 on the common stock outstanding. This compared with $1.43 on the common stock outstanding for the fiscal year ending January 31, 1931, so it would seem that while every other company is suffering from the depression this oil company, at any rate, is making more money than ever. I might say also that when evidence was being taken by the committee it was shown that in the United States wages in the oil industry had been reduced anywhere from five per cent to twenty per cent, and it has been stated in this house many times that wages in Canada have been reduced by from five per cent to twenty-five per cent. The oil industry in Canada, however, is the outstanding exception and has made no reduction in wages. The other day I was speaking to an agent for the Imperial Oil Company, who

The Address-Mr. Bothwell
told me that as yet he had suffered no reduction and that he had not heard of any reduction being made elsewhere. So in addition to paying boom wages the oil companies are still able to increase their profits.
I am not going to deal further with that company, but will turn to the British American Oil Company. In 1930 this company earned $1.01 per share and paid a dividend of 80 cents per share. In this connection I should like to direct attention to a statement which has been quoted frequently in this house, but which I think should be quoted once more. The chairman of the board of directors is reported as having said:	.
Dealing with an item of $874,000 set aside for depreciation, I said that $174,000, or $700,000 less than the amount set aside, would have been sufficient. The larger amount was written off because 9 per cent of the net revenue is payable to the Dominion government for taxes. We think such a nominal writeoff would have substantially increased the earnings per share as indicated in the figures presented in the foregoing.
Coming to the Imperial Oil, the sworn evidence is that all the money ever paid to the Imperial Oil for stock, either by employees or by the public at large was $64,094,530. An analysis of the financial structure of this company was published in the Financial Post of April 1931, and quoted in the Western Retailer for Aprii 1932. It came out while this hearing was in progress; we had it in the committee. I wish to quote one or two paragraphs from that publication:
A reference to the above table will show that owing to the bonus and series of splits the holders of the first 110,000 shares would today hold 14,080,000, or more than one-half the shares outstanding. These shares cost $15,666,300, and based on the profits paid by this company are valued today at $9 per share or $126,720,000, at a time of depression. The holders of the next 80,000 shares issued are less fortunate, holding today 64 shares only for each share purchased between 1915 and 1917.
No mention is made of the dividends per share subsequent to 1924, when following the second split of four for one, the $25 shares were changed into no par value shares. It requires enormous profits to pay interest on 26,742,792 shares, upon which the market places a value of around $9 per share of approximately $240,000,000. Such profits can only be obtained, we maintain, when there is an absence of competition. The average price on the market of Imperial Oil shares in 1930 was $22.38, which wrould mean that Imperial Oil were endeavouring to pay dividends on the staggering sum of a market valuation of $599,000,000.
Evidence was given as to what the earnings of the Imperial Oil were for 1930, but we have
since received a report of the earnings for 1931 and in the press the figure was given as $18,226,894. On the basis of the money actually paid for Imperial Oil stock at all times, the net earnings for the year 1931 work out at about 28 per cent.
After listening to that evidence given before the committee, we thought we were entitled toi discuss the matter on the floor of this house. We did not believe that the auditors who spent a few weeks going through the books of one company had the right to make a report for the committee. But that is what they endeavoured to do and what was done. We believe that the investigation showed clearly that the oil companies in this country are taking advantage of the tariff and of the fixing of values for duty purposes, and therefore we moved an, amendment directing attention to seme of the matters that indicated why prices should come down. We called attention to the overproduction of crude oil; of the greatly reduced prices of other commodities entering into the manufacture of gasoline; reduction of wages and salaries everywhere except in Canada, and in Canada in every industry except the oil industry, which reduction in wages and salaries averaged from 10 to 15 per cent. We also pointed out the reduced cost of manufacturing through increased efficiency. We showed that you could buy gasoline in other countries at prices comparable with those obtaining in the United States. The evidence given before the committee showed that there had been reductions in other countries between 1930 and 1932 which were not fallowed by the Canadian producers. We showed that there had been in recent years a marked decline in world prices. We showed that advantage had been taken of the increased tariff of September, 1930, and we reached the conclusion that the narrowing of the spread in prices between wholesale and retail, by increasing wholesale prices, which actually happened, and reducing retail prices while importations from outside Canada were restricted, tended to create a monopoly in the industry and to drive out the independent distributor. Evidence was given by witnesses that if they were able to buy outside our refiners, without the dumping duty, they could sell gasoline at 2j cents less than they were selling it. These were the conclusions that must be arrived at from the evidence.
I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, that I shall have to stop here; my time is up.


Mr. J. K. BLAIR (North Wellington):: If I were allowed to do so, Mr. Speaker, I might
The Address-Mr. Blair

on this occasion follow a custom of the house which would put you in a very embarrassing position by asking you to proclaim it eleven o'clock. You are sometimes asked to say that it is eleven o'clock when, as now, it is half past ten, and sometimes when it is midnight or one o'clock. In Washington they move the hands of the clock, making the clock, rather than the Speaker, untruthful. That, I think, is a much better practice; it casts no reflection on the Speaker. Nor am I now reflecting on the Speaker but on the custom. It might be well to abandon that practice or to modify it so that we might more nearly be telling the truth. I am well aware that people try to tell the truth, even my opponents on the other side; but sometimes they try so hard to make a point that the truth seems, according to our ideas at any rate, rather badly twisted.
Everywhere at the present time, on platforms and in other places, we hear the statement that we have turned the corner; we are told that prosperity is just around the corner. Repeatedly during the last two years we have been assured that there was a ray of economic sunshine through the clouds; the clouds were lifting and the situation was improving; the farmers were becoming more prosperous. We have heard so much of that talk that the poorer classes have become very much dissatisfied.
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. The promises that were made prior to the last election were false promises; they have not been fulfilled. But there was something of speculation in those promises, because there was an element of futurity in them. It was like a doctor making a prognosis; sometimes he cannot interpret the future rightly. But in these promises made in the present day there is not so much an element of futurity as there is an element of observation. When promises are made to be fulfilled in the future they are accompanied by certain obligations. Perhaps when promises are made before elections we should consider that they are apt to be exaggerated and speculative, but it is a different thing when, after two years of severe depression, we are told repeatedly that times are improving. There is an element of falsehood about such statements, and I think this falsity is a little more manifest than it was prior to the elections. I believe that these statements are made with the idea of bolstering up the financial interests and encouraging people to buy. It is rather amusing to hear the poorer classes being urged to buy and thus end the economic depression. It is impossible for them to buy because they have [Mr. Rla'r.l
not anything with which to buy. It is an absurd request to make and those in the higher positions should realize this fact. There is too much money at the top and too little at the bottom.
One of the methods adopted by the government to relieve this distressed condition is to raise the rate of interest paid on governmental bonds. The sale of these bonds has absorbed whatever loose money there was in the country and the farmers now find it impossible to obtain mortgages on their property. It is almost impossible to renew a mortgage on a farm for even half the value, and the same applies to town properties. To increase the rate of wages of money will not help to relieve conditions, it simply accentuates matters. Another method adopted by this government has been to reduce the price of farm products, which is the wages of the farmer. The government has raised the wages of money and lowered the wages of men, both methods being entirely wrong.
I do not think the government realizes the conditions which prevail in the rural communities. Mortgages have been foreclosed on farm after farm, nnd many more would be foreclosed were it not that the mortgage companies fear having a number of farm properties on their hands. I think I am safe in saying that one farm out of five would be sold were this not the case. At the present time it is almost impossible to rent a farm property at more than the amount of the taxes. I do not think that the government has been at all sympathetic with the farming and working classes.
The only person in Canada who cannot enter the House of Commons is the Governor General. I think the Conservative party has made a mistake in choosing as its leader one of the wealthiest men in Canada, a man who perhaps could not be considered a commoner. It would be bad enough if he were simply a private member, but it is worse when he has control of the house. In some countries men of such wealth are not usually considered suitable as members of the legislature, and I think this is one mistake we have made in this country.
Just a word or two on the tariff. Many companies operating in Canada are subsidiary to parent companies in the United States. A previous speaker referred to the oil companies which are subsidiary to the American companies. Many of these companies have agents to look after their interests and sometimes these agents are members of this house and have a say in tariff matters. Almost

The Address-Mr. Mercier (St. Henri)
every industry we can name is subsidiary to an American parent company. Our steel industry is controlled from the American side. They use such names as Canadian bread, Canadian flour, British American oil and Imperial oil, but the money paid into these companies finds its way to Wall street. The consequence is that Canada suffers financially and may in time have to face bankruptcy because of this practice.
There are some things regarding which we are paying heavily, not to Canadian but to United States companies. If we were assisting our own Canadian companies some of that money might come back and be distributed among the poorer classes of this country. As the situation is, however, a large portion of that money finds its way to Wall street. For instance, it has been reported1- and this is worth while investigating

that the parent company of the Imperial Oil Company being some $4,000,000 short, the Imperial Oil Company sent across the line some $12,000,000 to balance their account. I will not vouch for the truth of this; I have read it in different places and it may have an element of truth in it and be worth while considering. The reason I say there may be an element of truth in it is the vast difference tha)t exists between the price of gasoline in Canada and the price across the line. Any person considering the situation would readily say that a difference of some six cents could easily be deducted from the price of gasoline in this country and it would still be above the United States price. As we are handling in Canada some 600,000,000 gallons, this would mean that $36,000,000, or a large portion of it, would likely find its way to the United States.
In times like this when we have such a depression and wish to remove it, the first thing to do would, I think, be to lower the rate of interest. I understand Ramsay MacDonald has set the rate at 3i per cent. The last government loan in this country was, I believe, at four per cent. If there were some way of lowering the rate of interest on our government loans and on bonds, and if a loan of that nature could be used to pay off some of the loans we have previously floated, it would mean a great saving of money to the Dominion. It would also mean that people requiring money for farm mortgages would be able to secure it at a reasonable rate. At the present time it is almost impossible for our farmers to get money at any price even if their security is apparently very good. That being the case, as I said a moment ago, with too much money at the top and too much
poverty at the bottom, surely to lower the rate of interest, the wages of money, and to try if possible to maintain the wages of the working people, would be a means of relieving the depression. It is impossible for the poorer classes to buy goods unless they have some source of revenue. I do not know of any better system that would help to relieve the depression than the one I have suggested. It would mean much to the farmers and to the rural communities.


Mr. PAUL MERCIER (St. Henri) (Translation) :: Mr. Speaker, I rise at this rather late hour to take part briefly in the present debate. This autumn session was called to discuss the trade agreements of the last Imperial economic conference, held at Ottawa, in the course of the months of July and August last. Not being acquainted with these trade agreements, it is difficult to discuss them at present. Perhaps this explains why the people of South Huron did not wish to pronounce themselves on an issue of which they knew neither the import nor terms. No doubt they were satisfied to judge of the government's record which was so well put before them by our friends on your left, sir, the faithful workers of the Liberal party, not only from Ontario, but from all over Canada.
If we are to believe what we have read in the Canadian, English and American press, this conference was the cause of many a surprise to a great number of people, and this in varied fields of activities. Without knowing the result of these agreements, I wonder how the government will settle the trade exchanges with England, if Canada remains on the gold standard while the pound sterling is depreciated. I am not a financier, but according to common sense, it seems to me a difficult problem to solve, under the present circumstances, I wonder how they are going to reconcile our two monetary systems so different from one another.
I read, sir, the speeches of the mover and seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the Throne. I congratulate them both on their literary attainment. After perusing the speech of the hon. member for Jacques Cartier (Mr. Laurin), I have no further doubt that he believes in his leader and will follow his star, until it shoots across the skies to fall into the St. Lawrence river, below Quebec, or in the beautiful county of Montmagny represented in this house by the hon. deputy speaker (Mr. LaVergne) who is at this moment presiding over our deliberations.
108	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Mercier (St. Henri)
Since last session many events have taken place throughout this country. We have had a number of by-elections. The results of these by-elections in Quebec and New Brunswick may be looked upon as an approval of the stand taken by the Liberal party, during last session, on the various economic questions debated in this house. The people realized that the claims put forward 'by the Liberal party were just and deserved to be endorsed.
We first had two by-elections on the same date, one in Quebec and the other in New Brunswick. In Quebec we had to contend against all the conservative forces, not only of the Montreal district but also of Quebec. All the fighting element of the Conservative party came to the rescue of the Conservative cause, led by ministers who erected a real Xmas tree, in the middle of June, in the city of Montreal, making all kinds of pledges, such as wharves, etc., offering to supply work to their followers, if the Conservative candidate was elected; bringing dredges from the lower parts of the St. Lawrence and placing them near the Montreal East wharves in order to have the people of Maisonneuve believe that there would soon be work for all if the constituency elected a Conservative member. I am supported in this statement by an interview given to "La Presse" by the hon. Minister of Marine (Mr. Duranleau), which was in answer to criticisms made by Mr. Jean Fauteux, the defeated Conservative candidate, who stated that his party had not sufficiently supported him in this contest. In this interview the hon. Minister of Marine gave proof of his tireless work, and showed how hard the whole Conservative party had fought to storm this Liberal fortress. Although the Liberal majority decreased from
4,000	to 1,500 owing to there being four or five candidates in the contest, candidates of all shades, labourite, communist, conservative and liberal, the liberal standard still continues to float over Maisonneuve. The interview of the Minister of Marine proves that no blame can be attached to the Conservative party as regards the efforts made to win this election, hence, this victory of the Liberal party is the more significant. The new member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Jean) an advocate practising at the Bar, in Montreal, has taken his seat on your left, sir, among us, his colleagues who rejoice, and to help us in safeguarding the people's interests which the Liberal party has always had at heart.
The same day another election took place in the constituency of Royal, in New Brunswick. The hon. Mr. Jones was returned, but with

a majority greatly decreased-from about three thousand to six hundred in round figures. Again there we won a victory if we are to put faith in the speech of the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) when, in answer to the right hon. Loader of the Opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King), he stated: "We have reduced the majority in Maisonneuve." If this argument can be put forth by the leader of the government, it also stands good for the Liberals. We have decreased the Conservative majority in Royal from three thousand to about 600, this is really a moral victory and a happy omen for a Liberal victory at the next general election.
A few months later, the battle bugle called us to take part in the by-election of South Huron, in Ontario, we had nothing to do with the date of this by-election. The Imperial Economic Conference had just concluded its work, from all sides one heard of the supposed success of this conference; the government was under the impression that everything was in its favour. Much had been said about this conference, perhaps rightly if we are to judge by the solemn gathering, at Ottawa, of all the diplomats of the empire. This no doubt was an honour for Canada, and the government relied on the results of this conference to hypnotize the people of South Huron; however, they made no success of it and a defeat was their reward. The . victorious Liberal party increased their majority from 349 to 1,989 votes. This by-election was to the credit of our leader, and the Liberal party and a rebuff for the government. Mr. Speaker, I move that the debate be adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
On motion of Mr. Bennett the house adjourned at 10.55 p.m.
Wednesday, October 12, 1932