1933-02-02

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

Mr. REID:: 1.	How many coniferous seed extraction Diants are operated by the government?
2.	Where are these located?
3.	What were the various amounts of coniferous seed extracted last year?
4.	To what countries is this seed exported?


Mr. MURPHY:: 1.	One.
2.	In New Westminster, B.C.
Business oj the House

3.	Pounds
Picea sitchensis (Sitka spruce).. 732 Pseudotsuga taxifolia (Douglas
fir)	 30
Pinus contorta (Lodgepole pine).	140
Tsuga heterophylla (Western hemlock)	 13
Thuja plicata (Western red
cedar)	 37
Abies grandis (Lowland fir)....	20
Alnus Oregona (Oregon alder)..	25
Alnus sitchensis (Sitka alder)... f Chamaecyparis nootkatensis (Yellow cypress)	 i
Total	 997J
4.	British Forestry Commission, London, England; Forestry Branch of Government of Northern Ireland.


IMMIGRATION OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS
Mr. REID:: ]. How many agricultural labourers were admitted to this country during the years of 1830-1931-1932: (a) from European countries; (b) from the British Isles, including also the Irish Free State?
2. How many immigrants exclusive of agricultural labourers were admitted to this country during the years 1930-1931-1932:	(a)
from European countries; (b) from the British Isles, including also the Irish Free State; and in both eases not including boys or youths?


Mr. GORDON:: 1.
From the British Isles (including Irish
Free State)	
From European countries	
2.
From the British Isles (including Irish
Free State)	
From European countries	
The above figures include all adult



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. O. L. BOULANGER (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to raise a point of order. On Monday of this week I presented a resolution; it was not adopted because as soon as I had finished speaking the hon. member for Compton (Mr. Gobeil) caught the Speaker's eye and moved the adjournment of the debate. Yesterday a resolution was introduced by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth). After the adjournment of the debate on it my resolution was placed in that section of the orders of the day entitled public bills and orders. I find today that the resolution introduced yesterday by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has been placed ahead of mine in the orders of the day. I do not know much about the intricacies of printing the Orders of the Day, but it seems to me in good logic that as my resolution was presented first it should appear first in the section to which it belongs.


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: On the same point of order, may I submit to Your Honour that I did not move the adjournment of the

	Fiscal	year	
1929-1930	1930-1931	1931-1932	1932-1933
			(6 mos.)
13,257	4.557	551	17428,057	12,118	50	6539,978	18,141	5,125	1,62031,948	18,962	2,877	1,453male farmers and farm	labourers.	
debate last night but that you called six o'clock while I was still continuing my speech. The adjournment was moved in the case of the resolution to which the hon. member refers, and it properly takes its place on the order paper. The continuation of yesterday's discussion is the natural order for today.
Mr. LaVERGNE:	On this point of order,
according to standing order No. 17:
(1) All items standing on the orders of the day (except government orders) shall be taken up according to the precedence assigned to each on the order paper.
Therefore today, the adjournment of the debate having been moved on Monday, it seems to me the motion of the hon. member for Bellechasse (Mr. Boulanger), should appear today on the order paper before the resolution of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth). This question has to be discussed in the house. I think the point of order taken by the hon. member for Bellechasse is correct, and his resolution should appear before that of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.


Mr. SPEAKER :: In my opinion the arrangement of the order of business as it appears on the order paper today is correct and

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Garland
in accordance with standing order No. 27, if the hon. member will refer to that:
27. If at the hour of six o'clock p.m. on a Wednesday, ... a motion on the notice paper be under consideration, that question shall stand first on the order paper of the following day, next after orders to which a special precedence has been assigned by standing order or order of the house.
Consequently the resolution under discussion, to which the hon. member was speaking at six o'clock last night, takes precedence on the order paper today.



PENITENTIARIES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. SAMUEL FACTOR (Toronto West Centre):: May I ask the Minister of Justice
(Mr. Guthrie), if he intends tabling the report of the superintendent of penitentiaries in connection with the riots?


Hon. HUGH GUTHRIE (Minister of Justice) :: There is a report now in the hands of the printing bureau, which I expect to have in the course of a few days.



UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. P. HOWDEN (St. Boniface):: I
would like to bring to the attention of the government a rather serious condition that exists in the city of St. Boniface. The matter is embraced in a brief telegram. But if it is against the rules of the house to read the telegram, I will explain the matter.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: I think it would be as
well to address the question direct to the government. It is not a desirable practice to read telegrams or newspaper extracts in prefacing a question.


John Power Howden: The message is from the mayor of St. Boniface. He states that the merchants in St. Boniface have refused to honour the vouchers of the city of St. Boniface for relief. He says that the city of St. Boniface, in applying to the provincial government, have been notified that they cannot afford any relief, and he wires to me, asking that I present the matter to the federal government in the hope that possibly this government may be able to fill the gap and render the necessary assistance. May I, therefore, ask the Prime Minister, as representing the government, whether the federal government of Canada is in a position to assist the city of St. Boniface at this time.


Mr. BENNETT:: I think the Minister of
Labour is in a position to answer that question.


Hon. W. A. GORDON (Minister of Labour):: Many requests come to the federal government from municipalities throughout Canada, suggesting that this government should deal directly with the municipalities.
I would earnestly suggest to the hon. member that he ask the mayor of St. Boniface to turn to the premier of Manitoba with his troubles, and proper subscriptions such as we have been making will be made in order to assist them in the discharge of their functions.


John Power Howden: I have already stated
that the mayor of the city and the council have appealed to the local government, which is unable to help them.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: The question has been
asked and answered.


John Power Howden: I have not yet received
an answer whether the government will or will not assist in the matter.



COOPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Wednesday, February 1, consideration of the motion of Mr. Woodsworth:
Whereas under our present economic arange-ment large numbers of our people are unemployed and without the means of earning a livelihood for themselves and their dependents;
And whereas the prevalence of the present depression throughout the world indicates fundamental defects in the existing economic system;
Therefore be it resolved,-That, in the opinion of this house, the government should immediately take measures looking to the setting up of a cooperative commonwealth in which all natural resources and the socially necessary machinery of production will be used in the interests of the people and not for the benefit of the few.
Edward Joseph Garland: At the adjournment of the house last night I was endeavouring to point out that the evils from which we are suffering under the present economic system are attributable in a large degree to the fact that we predicate success under that system on the accumulation of wealth. We were not, I suggested, very particular as to how the wealth was acquired, by what method it was obtained, at what cost to the people, the extent of the suffering involved, nor did we have any regard to its effect on the welfare of the people as a whole. All that seemed to be required was to acquire wealth, and if one secured enough of it we would spread red
1714	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Garland
carpets for the fortunate possessor, strew roses in his path, he might even aspire to the highest offices in the land.
I suggested that the philosophy under which the system operated belonged to a barbaric stage in the progress of society and not to what we are pleased to call a Christian social order. The condition of things I indicated belonged to a primitive and barbaric state of society, and underlying it all was the philosophy of the survival of the fittest. As pointed out yesterday by an hon. member, the commercial system seems to be actuated by that idea, and he properly paraphrased the old sentence; because, were it the survival of the fittest, that would be bad enough but, as he well said, it means today- the survival not even of the fittest but of the " slickest."
Someone has said somewhere that if he were asked to design a crest emblematic of the present order he would first draw the two donkeys' ears that bedecked the head of the mythological King Midas. He is said to have devoted his entire attention to the acquisition of wealth, turning everything to gold, and we are told in the end he suffered starvation, despair and death. Now we see around us an economic system based on precisely the same philosophy that actuated King Midas, the acquisition of wealth, and it is dying, as its prototype did, in starvation, misery and despair. This does not mean, of course, that capitalism will vanish tomorrow or next week. It does mean, however, that in sound evolution, economic forces, forces beyond the apparent control of either of the political parties in this house, will bring an end to a system a characteristic of which is inhuman injustice.
I would ask hon. members opposite whether they imagine for an instant that a state that is not founded on social justice and equity can survive. If they do, then they ignore the teachings of history; for we have seen empires and nations dethroned and dispossessed of power 'because injustice had crept into the functioning of the economic and social systems under which they existed. Regard, if you will, the Roman empire, where great Oaesars and nobles invested with special privileges passed on their way to an unhappy end. Study again the French revolution, characterized by the Bourbonistic type of mind-a type of mind still prevalent in this country, sad to say, the mind which can suggest to people who are suffering that if " they cannot get bread they should eat cake." That type of philosophy, which is still prevalent, was responsible for the destruction of the
Mr. E. J. Garland.]
leaders of France at that time, so that all that is left of that era, apart from a few written words in the history of the day, is the memory of red threads in the stockings knitted by Madame Defarge and those associated with her when the heads of the rulers fell. Consider again the situation of Russia, then the last remnant of medieval autocratic feudalism left in Europe, a remnant which in turn came to its unhappy end.
What have we here today? The leader of the opposition well described the situation not long ago when he said that we have a form of imperial feudalism. We have more than that; we have an economic imperialism, extreme in type, into which has been concentrated, by a process of greed and acquisition on the part of the few, the entire control of and dominion over the wellbeing of our people. Do you imagine that the capitalistic kings and emperors of finance and industry today are on a sounder basis or can survive any longer than did the old feudal kings and emperors of past days? Disabuse your minds of that idea; the present condition cannot continue. This injustice cannot last. As the hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Mac-phail) said yesterday, "red-blooded Canadians," to use the words of the Minister of Railways (Mr. Manion), will not permit the continuance of such a system in this country. In Great Britain at the moment there is such gross inequality -that a study of statistical returns will indicate that about ten per cent of the people control almost all the wealth and power in the state. That seems pretty bad, but turning my studies to a work by Professor W. H. Wakenshaw, formerly of Exeter college, Oxford, in regard to the distribution of wealth in America, I find that in 1850 sixty-two per cent of the national income went to the producer and thirty-eight per cent to the non-producer; by 1860, ten years later, forty-three per cent went to the producer and fifty-seven to the non-producer; by 1870 thirty-three per cent went to the producer and sixty-seven to the non-producer; and by 1900 ten per cent went to the producer and nearly ninety per cent to the non-producer. Of course we may dispossess ourselves of responsibility in that regard by saying that it is not so in Canada. Unhappily for those who hold that view our own statistical returns will disabuse them of that conception. If -hon. members will take the trouble to analyze thoroughly the income tax returns of Canada they will find, speaking roughly, that there are about 5,300,000 persons in this country of twenty years of age and over, the

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Garland
adults of Canada. Of that number about three per cent pay income tax while ninety-seven per cent apparently have not enough income to fall within the income taxable class. Of course this does not mean that there is not a large body of wealth outside the income taxable group, but hon. members know how difficult it is to live upon their present salaries or indemnities; they are subject to a small amount of taxation under the income tax and therefore know something of their difficulties in maintaining a reasonable standard of living. The knowledge of this fact will give them some conception of the extraordinary disparity in income in the dominion when they realize that ninety-seven per cent of the people are on a lower plane and are living under very much lower standards than they are themselves.
No system in which such inequalities exist can continue. I should like to ask hon. members opposite and to my right if they think that we are upon a solid foundation when the economic system apparently relies for its stability upon the economic freedom of the few and the economic enslavement of the many? We may not think ourselves responsible for the excessive disparity which has brought this condition about, we may not think ourselves responsible for the unrestrained racketeering upon the part of the .ndustrial and financial institutions in their wild exploitation and waste of our natural resources, in the grabbing for wealth, in unjust taxation, and for many other evils inherent in the system, but I do not think that I need to tell hon. members that we are responsible, particularly in this chamber. Upon us has been placed the onus of solving these problems and bringing about a social order in which justice shall prevail. We are responsible and we have a duty to see that these wrongs are ameliorated or replaced by a system more equitable, by one which will subordinate the interests of the individual, the greedy, predatory individual, to the general good of society.
Any student of the questions back of the present world system of monetary control, involving as it does our own country, knows that it involves also the piling up of the means of production at the cost of a progressive, relative lessening of the means of consumption. The consuming power has seriously declined, there is less and less inclination at this moment to increase the production of goods; in short, as one of my colleagues has said, the end of an era has arrived. There are still experts, so-called, who suggest that we should continue to
develop production. The Prime Minister himself in his now famous, or perhaps I should say notorious New Year's address, directed the attention of the people of wealth in Canada to the necessity of investing their reserve funds in production. In the name of heaven why should we produce more goods which the people are not permitted to consume, or more goods which cannot be shipped abroad under the existing system? What object could be attained at this moment by investing more money in production? As has been so well said by those who have preceded me, the job is to develop a system by which we can consume and then production will take care of itself.
After all, this is a part of the real issue, of the practical question which is before us, the suffering, the inhuman injustice and misery which is all around us. Individual hon. members are more and more becoming cognizant of the true condition, but many others have not gone behind the cold statistics. Do they realize what 700,000 or 1,000,000 unemployed men means? Do they understand the spectre of want? Do they understand the gnawing worry and anxiety of the family whose breadwinner cannot get a job no matter how he tries? Do they understand the degrading and demoralizing effects of having to go down daily or weekly for relief, of going to certain stores in order to obtain a very meagre existence from a not too benevolent state? I wonder if hon. members have any conception of the weakened minds, broken bodies and diseased souls which these conditions have brought about? Have they studied the figures of suicide to ascertain their causes since this depression commenced? Have they studied the records of the penitentiaries, have they found out that these institutions today contain about double their normal quota? Have they undertaken an investigation of the insane institutions even in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and found them overflowing and this in the face of the fact that all too many others are unable to secure admittance to such institutions? I wonder if hon. members have really understood the inexcusable horror of real want?
Have hon. members ever gone into a magistrate's court some morning when the vagrancy charges are being brought up? I had the suffering to endure of attending a court in Toronto a few months ago, and I shall give the house a picture of what I saw there. There was a number of men ranging in ages from sixteen to thirty-eight years. Most of them appeared to be the ideal type of citizen, earnest looking, and, according to their
1716	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Garland
declarations, willing to work; they were healthy looking except that they were becoming rather pallid and thin-cheeked. The same ritual took place in every case. As the unfortunate man was brought before him the magistrate said "guilty or not guilty?" "Guilty, sir." "Do you want work?" "Yes, sir." "What kind of work?" "Any kind, sir."	"How long have you been unemployed?" The answer to this question varied from two to three years to two weeks. "You cannot get work?" "No, sir." "All right, three months." And so it went on, as the court pursued its relentless task. The magistrate seemed to be a human sort of individual who had an understanding of his task but he was as much a victim of the system as those who were brought before him, there was nothing he could do to give work to those men.
The steady stream was broken twice by pitiful incidents. There was one man brought there, a six-footer, a fine looking type of man who looked like a Cape Bretoner or a highland Scotchman; he had the high cheek bones and the prominent nose of the fine highland type. He stood in the dock with a sort of defiant look upon his face and as the magistrate said "guilty or not guilty?" He said, "guilty, sir." "Do you want work?" "Yes, sir." "What kind of work?" "Any kind, sir." "How long have you been out of employment?" "Two weeks, sir." "You have been in the city for two weeks?" "Yes, sir." "You cannot get anything to do?" "No, sir." "Do you want work?" "Yes, sir, I will take anything." "What have you been doing this summer?" "I was working on a farm." He then gave the name of the farmer and the location of the farm. With a lawyer's trick the magistrate turned to him quickly and said, "what did you do with the money you made farming?" With a slight smile upon his face the man replied, "I was working for my board." The apparently customary judgment of three months was .then given.
Does the house get the significance of this? Three months for what crime? For the solitary crime of not being able to get a job under a system which has broken down and which can offer no job. This is why we are sending our own Canadian citizens to gaol. There was only one foreigner vagrant present the morning I attended court, a Macedonian, an old man who had been picked up by a constable upon the streets in a sick condition. He had asked to be sent to a hospital and this was the only instance in which a constable was called upon to take the witness stand. The magistrate called upon the court interpreter, who happened to be a little, stout Jewish or Armenian

woman. She stepped over to the dock and talked with the man in his own language, and her interpretation corroborated the evidence given by the constable. She said that the man said he was sick and would like to go to a hospital. For the first time the magistrate seemed to be disturbed; he lifted his hands off the desk in a gesture of despair, thought for a moment and then said, "Oh, well, you will get some medical care there; three months." Three months for the sick as well as for the well, and we call this a Christian society, we call this a human society. We believe that a system of this kind can endure; bon. members opposite think they can make it endure but I tell them that they are treading in the midst of dreams if they imagine that such injustice will continue to be endured by the people of this country.


Mr. LAWSON:: If the hon. gentleman will allow me a question-


Edward Joseph Garland: Just a
moment, and I will answer any questions that I have time after my forty minutes is up.


James Earl Lawson: Will the hon. gentleman
give me the date of the incident to which he refers?


Edward Joseph Garland: I do not
have the date of the incident at the moment nor is it necessary because you can go to any magistrate's court in Canada where vagrancy charges are tried, and you will find the same thing, or practically the same.


James Earl Lawson: The hon. gentleman-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down!


Pierre Édouard Blondin: I would ask the hon.
gentleman not to interrupt without permission from the hon. member who has the floor.


Edward Joseph Garland: 
Some hon. MEMBERS:: What is your
plan?


Edward Joseph Garland: May I have a little order, Mr. Speaker?


Mr. SPENCE:: Deliver your own views;
never mind reading so much.


Edward Joseph Garland: Hon. gentlemen will hear my views aplenty before I get through. I understand that the constituency of Parkdale from which my hon. friend (Mr. Spence) comes is convinced that the time has come when his usefulness to the city of Toronto can be dispensed with.


James Houston Spence: You do not know much
about it.


Edward Joseph Garland: I should
like to give a quotation from Sir Basil Blackett, a director of the Bank of England,
1718	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Garland
from whom my hon. friend from Macleod (Mr. Coote) quoted yesterday, but as he had not time to include this reference I wish to place it on Hansard in support of our contention that we must have a definite economic planning of our society and the greed and predatory ruthlessness which has been the motive force so far must give away to the welfare of the community. I quote from The World's Economic Crisis. Sir Basil Blackett said:
All along the line we have simultaneously to get to work to overhaul existing methods and practices and to rebuild our institutions.
He goes on:
There is no reason why in a short time any human being should feel serious anxiety about the provision of food and clothing and house-room for himself and for those for whom he ie responsible. Science offers to us and to the generation immediately ahead of us a standard of living

Notice what he is saying:
Science offers to us and to the generation immediately ahead of us a standard of living and of material comfort immensely higher than any that has been known to the most fortunate of those which have gone before.
Let it be our work to make that utopian dream, if you wish to call it that, that " nostrum"-like prediction of so respectable a person as Sir Basil Blackett, a director of the Bank of England, come true. Let that be the object of every hon. member of this house, instead of supporting the crazy-quilt state of society which has grown up, like Topsy, without planning or direction, and with the overwhelming motive of the private accumulation of wealth irrespective of the well-being of the people. Why should we any longer assume that the provision of work is necessarily the primary object of industry or of our own social effort, when as a matter of fact the entire trend of industry and of our economic and scientific system is towards the elimination of employment or the reduction of the necessity for labour. Is it not time then that we came back to a question which I asked in the house three years ago when I was discussing the technological changes in industry? The question was: Is the sole basis of living to continue to be a job? If it is, then the job must be found and under a profit-making capitalistic system jobs cannot be found for the increasing volume of unemployed throughout the country. So much for that aspect of the matter.
Here we have a country rich in natural resources, with tremendous agricultural wealth -a by-word in the mouth of every politician, sometimes even in the mouths of statesmen.
(Mr. E. J. Garland.)
We crow about it; we boast about it, and in the past we bad very just pride in it. Let us examine this. With an economic system under which we unfortunately have been compelled to function, we find our statistical returns show that in the last ten-year period, prior -to 1931-and this does not take into consideration the terrific decline in values since 1931, which decline of course has been tremendous-the private ownership of farms, the sacred god of capitalism, has declined by 28,842 farms.


An hon. MEMBER:: What percentage?


Edward Joseph Garland: I will give this in another way. The percentage of tenant farmers increased by 32-9 and that of part owner and part tenant farmers by 70 per cent. The actual decline in the value of farm property is 20 per cent, or a shrinkage of 81,025,000,000. What security in private ownership is there under such a system as this? No, sir, not even the hard-working man who has devoted bis life savings to the acquirement of a home, of his own personal property, is secure under capitalism in the possession of his home, of his property; nor is a farmer today, except it be under the guise of some temporary legal enactments such as debt adjustment boards and moratoriums, guaranteed anything like continuity of ownership in his property, his home or his farm, or even the right to operate. Not only is that the case, but we have a system under which a man has not even the right to work. Will hon. members let that sink in/to their consciousness, become seized of its meaning? A man is kicked out of a job as soon as his services are not required by the profit-making industry, whatever it may be, and he has no chance to return to it until profit again becomes possible to the industry. Do hon. members think such a system will endure? I ask them to defend it if they can. The census figures to June, 1931, show that the value of lands declined $984,000,000, or an average decline of about $1,495 per farm. What then of the decline that has taken place since then? WTe find roughly one-third of the holders of farms, 224,000 out of 728,000, reported on their mortgages. What did they report? They reported outstanding mortgages amounting to S677,000,000, or almost $700,000,000. No, this system is definitely done; it is definitely passing to its miserable conclusion.
Of every sincere member we ask but one thing: thait he devote himself to a recognition of the different economic forces now at work.

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. MacNicol
We have plant equipment such as our forefathers neveT dreamed of; we have resources of great potential value; we have tremendous artificial power resources without which, of course, the machines would be largely useless. I have not time to give all the illustrations of the scientific attainments of the Canadian people. What we have to do is to make these available to humanity. I am sorry my permitted time has passed.


Mr. J. R. MacNICOL (Toronto Northwest) :: Mr. Speaker, I have only one comment to make on the speech delivered by the hon. member for Bow River. My colleague, the hon. member for West York (Mr. Lawson), on hearing the statements made in reference to the police court of Toronto, than which there is none fairer anywhere, asked the hon. member for Bow River to give the dates of the cases to which he made reference. That the hon. member has refused to do.


Edward Joseph Garland: I shall do so.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


John Ritchie MacNicol: If the hon. member will give the dates now, I shall resume my seat and allow him to do so.


Edward Joseph Garland: Just as soon as I can get my files, I can give the hon. member the dates and the name of the magistrate.


John Ritchie MacNicol: While the resolution before the house in my opinion in its tenets savours of socialism, and while outside of this house the utterances of the mover of the resolution (Mr. Woodsworth) on the public platforms throughout the country savour of communism, I do not for one moment intimate or suggest that the supporters of this resolution are either socialists or communists. Further, if the resolution had been moved by a socialist, I am not one of those who think that on some occasions somewhere socialists have not advocated perhaps worthy objects. But the resolution itself conforms to the statements made by the mover of the resolution on many platforms throughout Canada during recess of parliament, and as I am opposed as strongly as I can be to the resolution, I propose, in my argument against it, to quote some of the statements made by the mover of the resolution during the course of his speeches. The resolution states:
That, in the opinion of this house, the government should immediately take measures looking to the setting up of a cooperative commonwealth.
The expression "cooperative commonwealth" is not by any means modern. It has been
used by socialists from the time of Karl Marx in 1847. Mr. Philip Snowden, now Viscount Snowden, many years ago in his book on socialism said this, on page 139:
Socialists, as we have seen, look to the attainment of the cooperative commonwealth

On the same page he quotes the then Mr. Arthur Balfour, later Prime Minister of England, as giving a definition of socialism which I should like to place on Hansard. Mr. Arthur Balfour, speaking at Birmingham, on November 14, 1907, is quoted as saying:
Socialism has one meaning only. Socialism means, and can mean nothing else, than that the community or the state is to take all the means of production into its own hands, that private enterprise and private property are to come to an end, and all that private enterprise and private property carry with them. That is socialism, and nothing else is socialism.
I propose to place before the house some of the statements made by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) during his campaign across the country. Speaking in the riding of the hon. member for West York, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is quoted by the Toronto Star of December 9, as stating:
J. S. Woodsworth, M.P.. stated that the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation was an organization "that has frankly a socialistic basis."
Immediately thereafter, as no doubt the honest, intelligent workmen of West York in the town of Long Branch,

and they are intelligent and honest and they are neither socialists nor communists-gasped at the expression "socialism," the hon. member proceeded to say:
"We don't want to smash things." he declared "All we want is to take control from the hands of the few for the benefit of the nrany."
That is another stock socialistic expression that you read in all the books on socialism of the last sixty or seventy years. At London on December 12, the Border Cities Star quotes the hon. gentleman as saying in his advocacy of a new social order:
"Will you choose the orderly way or a vast and violent upheaval as they had in Russia?" he asked. "If those who are now in the enjoyment of special privileges"-
That is another stock socialistic expression you read in all books on socialism-
"-decide that they will not do what is pro posed, it will be a great deal the worse foi them, for the change must come."
That is, the new proposed order, which in my humble opinion is founded on socialistic tenets, must come. In other words, if we do not accept this proposed new propaganda in
1720	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. MacNicol
an orderly way, then we shall have it jammed down our throats by a violent upheaval. Further, in London, the hon. member made this statement:
The time has come for people to think these things through. We have got to band ourselves together to bring these changes about. We will have to make the effort. Some people in London have asked me since my speech this afternoon if it shall not be necessary to have a great climax as they did in Russia.
That is, a vast and violent upheaval in which several million people were killed.
What is our major business today? The major business of this house is to do something to encourage the investment of capital in factories, buildings and land. I know my hon. friend said a moment ago, as was also said yesterday, that we have too many factories at the present time. There is nothing new in that idea. I quote from the report of the United States Commissioner of Labour for the year 1886, or forty-seven years ago when they had exactly the same conditions:
The nations of the world have overstocked themselves with machinery and manufacturing plants far in excess of the wants of production. This full supply of economic tools to meet the wants of nearly all branches of commerce and industry is the most important factor in the present industrial depression.
There is nothing new in it. The world got out of that depression in 1886 and by encouraging capital instead of decrying it and doing everything possible to hurt it, the world will get out of this depression too. The hon. gentleman in concluding his remarks at London, after making a very slashing attack on the bankers of Montreal, made this statement:
"People shout at us that this is socialism, bolshevism." he declared. "Maybe it is. What of it? Who runs this country, anyway?"
I should like for a moment or two to deal with the question of socialism and communism. Many people do not care to read socialistic books, and out in the country socialism is generally taboo. I have carefully studied the works of Karl Marx and of his two associates Friederich Engels and Ferdinand Lassalle. Boiled down, their principles are three. First, surplus value; second, the economic interpretation of history; third, class warfare. I think I can associate all of these principles with this resolution. What is surplus value? In Marx's own interpretation it is the difference between the cost of producing an article and the sale price of it. And he goes further and says that the plant in which the article is produced, the capital to operate the plant, and all associated with the implements of production are the surplus

values of past years and belong to the commonwealth. It is on that basis that in Russia today we have the community plants, which as you know are very, very large. Well, that kind of doctrine will not go in this country, nor anything like it.
Then the economic interpretation of history; Marx says that away back in the tribal days all land, and all that was produced on the land under control of the tribe, belonged to the tribe. That is the basis of the collectivization in Russia, state farms. This country will never tolerate any such condition as that.
Then the whole idea of class warfare is this, that capital and labour are antagonistic, that their interests are directly opposed. I do not believe that. On the other hand I do not think that in the past labour has always had a fair return for its efforts. But I do believe that the consideration given labour during the last fifty years has advanced, and I believe further that as time goes on the relationship will perhaps be much fairer than it is today. But class warfare will not help.
I ask, Mr. Speaker, if all this talk about the breakdown of capitalism encourages the investment of capital and provides employment? It does not. It freezes capital, it induces capital to go elsewhere, where there is safety. It causes unemployment. During the last two months statements have been made on the public platforms throughout this country, irresponsible statements, that have had a material effect in increasing unemployment in this country. Far be it from me to try to connect up the sponsors of this resolution, or the speeches delivered throughout this country recently, with the third internationale in Moscow, because the mover said yesterday that they were not in any way connected with Moscow, and I accept his statement. But I am going to quote some statements, and leave it to the members of this house to decide whether this movement is or is not in any way associated with or like what is advocated in Russia. Before doing so, let me say that I am one of those who hope that some good will come in Russia. I sincerely hope that the condition of the Russian peasants will improve. I do not like to hear of any country retrogressing instead of going forward and I sincerely hope that the Russians will prosper.
In the trial in Toronto known as the King vs. Timothy Buck and others, a great deal of evidence was adduced and enrolled on the records of the court. According to this evidence it appeared that the communist

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party of Canada was a section of the communist international and that from the year 1924 onward the theses and statutes of this organization became binding upon the communist party of Canada.
I wish to place on Hansard two or three of the statutes of the communist international whose headquarters are at Moscow:
The communist international makes its aims to put up an armed struggle for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and to create an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state. The communist international considers the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only means for the liberation of humanity from the horrors of capitalism.
This is one of the stock socialistic phrases.
I quoted a few moments ago statements in which the expression "violent upheaval" was used. Let me now quote the following:
Only a violent defeat of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of its property, the annihilation of the entire bourgeois governmental apparatus, parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal, etc., even the individual exile or internment of the most stubborn, and dangerous exploiters, the establishment of a strict control over them for the repression of all inevitable attempts at resistance and restoration of capitalist slavery, only such measures will be able to guarantee the complete submission of the whole class of exploiters.
How often have we not heard that expression, "class of exploiters.'' Those who do their very best to keep the wheels of industry running, those who invest their money in plants and industry, are called exploiters by those who do not invest any money in industry or give employment to anyone. Now I wish those who represent agricultural districts to take particular notice of the next quotation I am going to give. I frequently go out into the country-it is not necessary to. mention the riding-in Grey county, inhabited by the sons and grandsons of those sturdy pioneers who hewed that country out of the forest and who have farms of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred acres and more. I would ask those who represent agricultural districts throughout the country to listen to this:
The landed peasants or farmers are capitalists in agriculture, usually managing their lands with several hired labourers. . . . This is the most numerous element of the bourgeois class and the decided enemy of the revolutionary proletariat:. After the victory of the proletariat in the towns this class will inevitably oppose it by all means from sabotage to open armed counter-revolutionary resistance. The revolutionary proletariat must therefore immediately begin to prepare the necessary force for the disarmament of every single man of this class, and, together with the overthrow of the capital-53719 109
ists in industry, the proletariat must deal a relentless, crushing blow to this class. To that end it must arm the rural proletariat.
Speaking in London, the mover of this resolution, referring to the question of farmers, is quoted in the Border Cities Star as having said-


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: I am sure the hon. member is trying to be fair. May I say that I made no reference whatever to the resolutions that have been just read.


John Ritchie MacNicol: In the Border Cities
Star, of December 12, the hon. member is quoted as having made in London the statement which I am about to read. If he says it is not correct, I shall be more than pleased to withdraw it, for, as he says, I always try to be fair to everyone.


James Shaver Woodsworth: What I have said
is that I made no reference whatever to the theses of the international which the hon. gentleman has just been reading.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I did not suggest anything of the sort. I never associated the hon. gentleman's name with the third international or with the international communist organization. What the hon. gentleman is quoted as having said is this:
If a violent upheaval were to come here it would be hard on all except perhaps the small farmer off in the hills, who would be able to live by himself.
In other words, all the rest of them had better look out.
If it is possible for us to avoid that sort of thing we should do it.
I know that he would not for a moment advocate bloodshed or anything of that nature.
Many people who are at the head of things here are trembling in their boots. If anyone were to make a push against the government, it would go over like a house of cards.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I have a very strong opinion of the present government and I do not for one moment think that anything of this kind can upset it.
The hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland), in his concluding remarks a few minutes ago, made some allusion, if I understood him correctly, to the fact that someone had not been rightly treated in our courts. Well, in this countiy under a capitalistic system we at least have courts and they are conducted by competent judges, so that every man and woman gets fair play in any court in the land. That, however, is not the state of affairs in that country which is held up as the example par excellence of a cooperative

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commonwealth. Let me quote from the Toronto Star of June 20 a dispatch from Berlin:
G.P.U'S Machine Guns Mow Down 370 Men and Children
Villagers charged with refusing to sell grain to state Survivors' tales
The slaughter of 370 Russian men, women and children by G.P.U. (secret police) officers in the village of Turbachoff, near Kiev, was reported in a despatch from Warsaw to the newspaper Lokalanzeiger today. . . . The residents were charged by the G.P.U. with conspiracy to refuse to sell their grain to the state and resisting Soviet grain collectors.
A few days ago we all read that some 45,000 kulaks or farmers in southern Russia were dispossessed of their land and marched off to the frozen territories in the north of that country. Would the proposer of this resolution have a state of affairs in this country, in which people can be machine-gunned in this fashion, or would he rather have the capitalistic system as it prevails in Canada? I know what the people of Canada would choose. Hon. gentlemen are merely deluding themselves, therefore, when they imagine that they have made any impression on the audiences to whom they have addressed their views throughout this country. There is an old saying that people out of curiosity will go to see anything once. The hon. gentleman and his lieutenants have had a great deal of publicity during the last few years, and out of natural curiosity people have crowded to hear them, but those people were not socialists or communists.
It has been said tlhat the capitalistic system is the cause of our present condition, but I do not believe for one moment that that is so. The Napoleonic wars caused a depression in the 1830's which continued until the 1840's. That depression was just as severe as the present one although perhaps it was not quite as hard upon the people because at that time the majority lived in rural communities while the minority resided in the cities, the reverse of the situation today. The wars in America and Europe in the 60's and in Europe in the early 70's were directly responsible for the depression which lasted from 1873 to 1879.
The great war is largely responsible for the present depression, and in this connection I shall refer to one or two instances which I believe supplemented it. Technocracy has been mentioned, it has been said that the machine has displaced man. The governments in all countries encouraged the scientists, the physicists, the chemists and the engineers to go the limit in increasing pro-

duction because destruction had been so great as to make it impossible to produce sufficient for the people to carry on. After the great war had ended our system was left loaded up with a machine far beyond its necessity, but the economic and capitalistic system had nothing to do with that.
Following in the wake of the great war we had a period of high pressure salesmanship when people were loaded up with commodities which they did not require and for which they could not pay; the people mortgaged their financial stability for some time to come. Then we had the experience of the stock-market. I have before me a report issued in 1932 by the United States Senate in connection with the exploitation of the public through the stockmarket. Without dealing with this matter at any length, I have in mind one case where a stock was forced up by dishonest methods from a valuation of $105,000,000 to $1,400,000,000, and then, by equally despicable methods, forced down to $170,000,000. Our economic system had nothing to do with that. Such matters can be regulated and righted and should be righted.
I invite the hon. member and those associated with him to desist from the campaign now being carried on. This is only interfering with the investment of capital and the reducing of unemployment throughout the country. There are many other things which would help this country and to which they could devote their time. The regulation of stoclcmarkets is one and the advocacy of the abolition of war is another. If war were abolished I believe it would do more than anything else to make depressions impossible in the future. I invite the hon. member and those who are associated with him to cooperate with all of us in the house, who I am sure are in earnest in their efforts to see that this country should get on with its business, to see that the great era of unemployment through which we are passing shall be relieved. If we could all work together and forget parties for a while, much could be accomplished. This is not the time for the bitterness of party strife. Canada is not alone in facing this condition, the whole world is suffering, and I for one believe that we should forget partyism and should all unite to try to put Canada back upon her feet. We should try to do everything we can to provide employment for those who are out of work and to relieve the conditions now being faced by our country. Instead of carrying on as they have carried on during the last few months, instead of holding up

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the financial institutions and everything else to attack, hon. members should cooperate. If that were done I feel sure that it would be better for Canada and that we would soon be back upon our feet.


Mr. HENRI BOURASSA (Labelle):: Mr. Speaker, whether or not we agree with the resolution now before us or with the views of those who have supported it, I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woods-worth) for having brought this subject before the house. Before the affairs of Canada and the world are finally settled there will have to be much thinking and even some talking; and the more we think these matters over, the more we revolve and study them outside of the ordinary lines of party, -the better for all concerned. Whether we agree or disagree with the resolution, I think we should give attention to these matters.
If this resolution is brought to a vote I will vote against it, for reasons which I shall presently give to the house. Nevertheless, I thank the hon. member for having brought forward this resolution, and I feel free to express my acquiescence in some of the views which have been presented, especially by the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps). Without diminishing the merits rightfully belonging to the other speeches, I think he has perhaps remained the closest to the gist of the resolution and presented the soundest views in support thereof. It seemed to me that he gave the most faithful paraphrasing of the recent encyclical of Pope Pius XI.
Last Saturday I happened to be in New York where I met an Irish Catholic who is very enthusiastic, about social work. For the last four or five months he has been endeavouring to foster organizations among the Roman Catholics of the United States to uphold and expand the principles of social justice as expressed by the Pope. He told me of a curious incident of that campaign. He said to his great surprise he 'had found very little preparedness among his fellow Roman Catholic citizens, and that the greatest success which he had had so far in the city of New York was at a gathering largely, if not exclusively, composed of Jews. This has convinced me once more of the soundess of St. Paul's prophecy, that when the Jews come into the fold they will make the best Catholics. In saying this, I am referring only to social matters.
This resolution has two aspects, one, political or constitutional, and the other, and perhaps broader, social or economic. At the 53719-1091
outset of the remarks of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) quite properly raised a constitutional objection. I do not think that this aspect has been sufficiently considered, and, therefore, I propose to deal with this phase. On the other hand, may I suggest to the Prime Minister and to hon. members of the house who are always ready to raise constitutional objections to any measure of social or economic reform, that they are thereby suggesting objections to the constitution itself. Of course, if we take the resolution as suggesting that the present constitution of Canada should be discarded in order to establish, in place of our confederation, what is called a cooperative commonwealth-and I must say I do not yet quite understand what that expression means -the constitutional objection is properly raised. Curiously enough, this is not the first, nor the tenth nor the twentieth time, that, in an experience running now for forty years of political life, I have been struck with that dual tendency so un-British among our English speaking fellow members: some always suggesting that a law must be superseded, wiped out and something entirely new put in its place; and others sticking to the letter of the law to oppose everything new. This is essentially un-British. What has made in Canada as in other British possessions the enduring success of British institutions? It is that by instinct and by practice, British legislators make as few laws as they can. They make them when new needs have imposed themselves, not all of a sudden, not in the miidst of a passing crisis, but over a long period; or they make laws to give statutory form to a practice already long established. Probably the difference in temperament and practice as between Canada and Great Britain has arisen from the fact that we have a written constitution, whilst in England they have not. But it should not be forgotten that our so-called constitution is not in the broad sense of the word, a constitution. I have always maintained and I still hold that the broad lines of our constitution and its fundamental basis are the unwritten constitution of the British world, operated from year to year, from century to century, carried the world over by people of British origin and operated in partnership with them by what I might call new associates of the British people such as the Hindus and the Mabommedans in India, the French Canadians in Canada, the Dutch in South Africa, and1 so forth. Curiously enough, the point has come where some of those Britishers of foreign origin seem to have preserved a better understanding of British
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institutions than have many Britishers by birth, race and origin. I claim that the object of the framers of our constitution was merely to apportion and distribute the legislative and administrative powers between the central government and the various provincial governments. It is whiait I might call a code of legislative and administrative functions. Within the four comers of that constitution, what prevents the federal parliament in its sphere, the various provincial legislatures in theirs, and even our municipal governments in theirs, in developing the practice of cooperation in political, economic and social matters?
This brings me to the broader aspects of the question as presented to us. If the mover of the resolution had framed it in other words; if he had suggested that the efforts of public bodies as well as of individuals and of classes, if you like, should tend towards closer cooperation between the various public bodies, classes and interests, and that such cooperation would offer us a better solution to our problems than the existing chaotic and archaic system of unbridled capitalism, I would fully agree with him; and he would find in the old province of Quebec, considered, rightly perhaps in certain respects, the most conservative and traditional province in Canada, much support for that idea. But the moment he or anybody else suggests any radical change in the frame of our constitutional act, immediately this raises other problems disconnected, if you like, from the economic problem; but nobody can expect any class of people in this country to set their brains into compartments. It is all very well to talk of the present evils-and I am absolutely in aecord with my friends to the left that the picture they have given of those evils is not exaggerated. I am also in accord with them that the present political and economic system has proved a failure to correct those evils, and therefore that we must look for some remedy. On the other hand, they cannot expect us, in looking at those matters and thinking of those possible remedies, to forget other things which are as dear to us as the possession and retention of wealth, as the settlement of economic problems, and that is the preservation of those objects for which we have struggled for years and years and even centuries: the preservation of our civil liberty, of our municipal laws, of our civil laws, of our religion, of our French culture. These worthy objects are not only legitimate objects of care for the French Canadians. I claim as a Canadian, without any racial qualification or without any limitation of race, that the preservation of 
the racial and cultural characteristics of the province of Quebec is a necessity for the preservation of a Canadian nationality. They are the only real, standing and permanent obstacles to the mental, economic and social absorption of Canada by the United States. It is not by armed force, by differences in law, that you will preserve a Canadian nationality not inimical to but different from the United States civilization. Although of course there are several factors governing that preservation, I claim that the most permanent, enduring and characteristic, the one which goes deeper into the minds and hearts of a large proportion of the people of this country and which at the same time strikes the foreigner as characteristic of Canada, is the dualism of this country. By that I do not mean that the other elements do not count; on the contrary, I cherish the hope that those various elements will preserve their own culture, their own characteristics. But I claim that thanks to history, which we have not made, thanks, if you like the language better, to the will of Providence, for three centuries there has developed on the northern part of this continent a civilization which draws its best characteristics from the two great English and French civilizations. Those things, to me, are and they ought to be to every Canadian, just as dear as the reestablishment of social and economic order. Therefore, as my hon. friends will see, the constitutional aspect should be considered at once from a more particular angle, and also a broader viewpoint than either, if I might say so, their viewpoint when they think only of the obstacles before them in their struggle for better social life, or that of their opponents, who make use of the constitution as an obstacle against sorely needed reforms.


Richard Bedford Bennett: May I interrupt? The
resolution asks, not for cooperation, but for the setting up of a cooperative commonwealth.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Quite so. That is exactly what I said, and that is my main reason for voting against it. But at the same time the resolution does contain the suggestion of cooperation, and I think this is the proper time to ask ourselves this question: whether under the present regime-the 'capitalistic regime, so called, though I do not like that expression-it is possible to continue and enjoy individual liberty? And this further question: Can we, with the legal and administrative machinery, federal and provincial, that is now in our hands, cure the present evils and do something to guard against their recurrence? I claim not, sir.

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Bourassa
Let us take first the question of private ownership. It is all very well to set up a bogy, the bogy of communism, the hidden hand of Moscow. I have read a good deal about Russian affairs, as the hon. gentleman who has just preceded me has done, and I congratulate him upon most of has reading; but I do not know what is actually going on in Russia and to what extent their system is good or bad. I am not prepared to 'assert or deny that some good will or will not arise out of it. I still belong to the old catholic school and believe that there is no absolute evil on earth, that there is only one absolute good, and that is God Almighty. Outside of that, everything human is a composition of good and evil; and very often out of evil good has arisen and salvation has come to the world. Take, for instance, the French revolution. It was certainly detestable in its principles. It committed crimes and brought human misery just as much in proportion to population as has the Russian revolution. Nevertheless even the most Conservative countries in the world, today, have to trace back some of their most cherished institutions to the destructions wrought by the French revolution.
But I am not talking about Russia; I am talking about Canada. What is the situation with regard to economic affairs? Is it true that the struggle is between individual liberty, on the one hand, and socialism on the other? It may come to that, but I claim, sir, that under the present system, individual liberty and individual enterprise in trade and industry and all forms of social life are threatened and crushed by the present economic system as it now works. The hon. member for North Winnipeg, very rightly put the question to us yesterday. "What remains of initiative to the labourer?" Is it not true that under the present system man has become enslaved, in a different form, if you like, but just as effectively as he was under the iron heel of the Romans? Not only is the labourer losing the liberty of exercising individual intelligence in his work by reason of being tied down to a certain part of a machine and knowing nothing of the rest, but take the case of the farmers also. Reference has been made to them by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland). Take my own province of Quebec, for example, perhaps the most conservative province of Canada, and where today there are hundreds, thousands of good farmers who are on the verge of expropriation, who are left with one hundred acres of land under their feet simply because the creditor is afraid of taking over the farm for his mortgage or because the municipality is
afraid of selling all the farms that are in arrears for taxes.
In the city of Montreal we have a very interesting class of labourers, past labourers, if you like. Advanced socialists and communists of the type which has been described this afternoon might call them capitalists. Some of those men worked steadily for thirty or forty years as tramway employees, railway employees, and in spite of their small wages saved a certain sum of money year by year- others were carpenters, plasterers and so forth. They put some little money aside, and when they came to the age of about fifty, purchased a building lot and erected upon it a three-flat building. They put into that building all their spare capital, So,000 let us say, and then borrowed from the insurance or lending companies, who were running after just such investments four or five years ago, let us say $10,000. Then with their own hands they put up that building, expecting that when they reached the age of sixty they would have a property worth about S20,000. They lived in one of the flats themselves, and from the other two derived revenue sufficient to keep them. Thousands of these buildings exist in Montreal. Thousands of these small capitalists have lived happily in that way for years and years. But their lodgments now are empty or are occupied by lodgers whom the owner keeps there simply in order to heat the lodging, and who pay no rent. The owners in the meantime are called upon to pay more taxation, and of course to pay interest on their mortgages, and are refused mortgage renewals by the lending companies. Consequently they have gone in a delegation to the municipal authorities and to the provincial government, asking for what? Asking to be put on the list as paupers, and some of them are actually receiving relief funds from the St. Vincent de Paul Society and other charitable institutions. Does not that justify what was said by one or two speakers yesterday, that under the present system of capitalism individual property is being expropriated?
Now is that the fault of the system? Not altogether. I agree with the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat (Mr. MacNicol) that the war is largely responsible for it. I am glad at last to receive testimony from various quarters that I was right in the opposition which I carried on, nearly alone, during all the war, against the crime we were then committing against future generations in this country by bleeding our country to death, by piling up billions and billions of dollars of debt. We were not only participat-
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ing in a crime against civilization in our own day, but we were transmitting to generations to come the consequences and punishment of that crime. But let that pass. The war is undoubtedly responsible for a good deal of what we are suffering from today. But is it not true that the advantage that was taken of the war, not by all capitalists, but by the greedy exploiters of capitalism, has doubled and trebled, perhaps multiplied tenfold, our suffering?
What do we consider capitalism to mean? If by capitalism we mean an association of five or ten individuals who pool their money to carry on a legitimate enterprise, and who by reason of the risks of that enterprise reap any benefits therefrom, then within certain limits which the state ought to fix I admit that that sort of capitalism is useful and legitimate. But when you have eight or ten financial brigands who meet together, and instead of subscribing their own money, let us say to the extent of 81,000,000, to put on a 'legitimate enterprise, issue paper for $10,000,000 and get gullible subscribers to take that paper for good money, and load upon the consuming public the charge not only of paying a return upon the $1,000,000 that was legitimately required, but upon the $9,000,000 stolen from the public and pocketed by those brigands, do you call that private initiative? Do you think it is proper that under the laws of this country, whether federal or provincial, such things should go on?
I was talking recently to one of the most important business men of Montreal. I asked him " Could you point out any large enterprise in Canada that in one way or another is not built upon fraud? Fraudulent processes or watered stock?" He is a very coolheaded fellow, connected with one of the largest banks in Montreal. He thought a minute, and said, " There may be, but I know none." Now those institutions and corporations exist by the will or permission of the state. They function under our legal system, whether provincial or federal does not matter. I will give two or three examples. One very important for the province of Quebec is the lumber industry. Of course it is badly hit by the general conditions of the market, but it is ten times worse on account of the brigandage of a handful of the most unscrupulous financiers of Canada. They took eight or ten lumber concerns, honestly capitalized, honestly administered, doing an honest business, and drew them into their pool, covered the whole thing with a fake capital amounting to millions, and now they are in bankruptcy. Yes, in bankruptcy 
to the public, but these financiers have pocketed the proceeds of their brigandage.
Another example is the operations of the Sun Life Assurance Company. There has been a sensational trial in Montreal, of a man, who, I think, wrote foolish articles, not that what he wrote was untrue, but he wrote in a very foolish tone. But the manner in which that trial was conducted is a striking picture of the spirit that prevails. He engaged good lawyers to defend his case; those lawyers were made to understand that if they took up his case they were done for as far as the favour of the Quebec government is concerned, the head of which is a director in the concern. They quitted the case. The case was shifted from one court to another until it reached a judge-I do not want to be disparaging, I think he is a very nice man, but nevertheless before he became a judge he had all his life long been a corporation lawyer, connected with the organization of some of the most shameless enterprises of this country. Before I knew anything about these accusations I knew a little about insurance affairs. I studied the report of the Sun Life Assurance Company three or four years ago at the time they came here with their bill, which was thrown out, thanks to the effective resistance of Hon. Mr. Robb and of Mr. G. D. Finlayson, the permanent head of the Department of Insurance, a very able and efficient and honest man. Nevertheless, on a report which on its face showed a diminution of $6,000,000 in their assets, they increased the dividends to their shareholders from fifty per cent to seventy-five per cent in one year, with the result that the shares, originally $100, were quoted at some $3,000 to $4,000.
I need not dwell upon those examples. I will finish with two connected with public services solely. I think it will not be said that the transportation of workers between their homes and their work, that the supply of electric light and gas for home and industrial use, ought to be left entirely to private enterprise with entire disregard for the public. Well, what has it come to in the city of Montreal, the metropolis of Canada? The tram service, the electricity service, the gas service, are in the hands of one single concern, or ratheir of a few men who control not only those public services, but indirectly that enormous lumber monopoly which is now in bankruptcy, the Sun Life Assurance Company and the Royal Bank, and of course the Montreal Trust Company -because each respectable bank must have a trust company to carry on with the money

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Bourassa
of the depositors operations which the Bank Act forbids to the bank. You have there this greatest financial-industrial monopoly, controlling tihe city of Montreal. Do you want to see what it means? There are two parts of the island of Montreal that have not yet been absorbed, the town of Outremont, in which I live, and the town of Westmount. The people of Westmount are fairly enterprising; they considered they were being squeezed by the Montreal Light, Heat and Power Company, so they organized a plant of their own, with the result that the price of electricity went down at once fifty per cent. And we have this spectacle in the city of Montreal: on one side of Atwater Avenue the poorer individuals pay four cents while on the other side the rich people of West-mount pay two cents. Is this social justice or economic equilibrium? Do you think the people will stand it very long and be satisfied with this "upholding of the constitution?" No! I give this warning to true Conservatives-I use the term in the large sense, there are Conservatives on this side and Conservatives on that side, just os there are socialists on either side. I repeat, I am not afraid of the word "socialism." It always amuses me when I hear cries of horror on both sides of the house the moment socialism is mentioned. Forty years ago Sir William Vernon Harcourt, a Liberal, it is true, but surely not a revolutionist, was taunted with the accusation of socialism. He said, "What does it mean? Everyone is more or less socialist, after all." Think of the advance since then, not towards Marxian socialism, but towards the adaptation of some of the essential principles of socialism to modern life; far more advance in conservative England than in so-called progressive Canada. Corporations have far more power.over the public in Canada than in England. Conservative governments in England have taken much more effective means of curbing the powers of large corporations than we have in Canada, under either the Liberal or the Conservative regime. But attention is being drawn and focussed upon this situation. I give this Warning to true Conservatives: Do not raise the bogy of bolshevism all the time. Do you know what people, even good farmers, are beginning to say in the province of Quebec? "Well, after all, bolshevism is in Russia; it is far away, but we know what we are suffering from and we are not going to be satisfied with denunciations of bolshevism all the time. What we want is some alleviation of our own evil." That is what the people expect from us. Let hon. gentlemen remember the results of the anti-German propaganda during the war, when people were made to believe that the Germans were cutting off the ears and arms of all the children in the towns of Belgium, and that they were using human grease for their cartridges. There are still a few Chinese who do believe that sort of thing, and still a few Canadians who believe that the Germans were cutting off the ears and arms of children in Belgium; but all informed and intelligent people know better than that. Today you could not possibly make people believe all the lies that were accepted as gospel truth during the war.
I do not believe in attempting to remedy any situation or in trying to accomplish anything by lies or by giving what we call in French the tangente, by throwing sidelines on foreign situations in order to make the people forget their own situation. I claim that the principle of cooperation is bound to increase, is bound to take the place of the old practice of individual enterprise which has been crushed by corporate capitalism; and I believe that if we want to prevent the evils of bolshevism, if we want really to prevent Canadians of all classes and in all our provinces from developing instincts of revolution, we must do something else than we have done in the last five, ten or twenty years. We must combine the true and eternal principles of social conservation with true measures of social progress and reform, and I claim that this can be done only by means of cooperation, not necessarily the enactment of a cooperative constitution but the recognition that no class can save the country, no class can save the world. No system can save the world, but all classes, looking primarily to their own interests if you like-because we must take human nature as it is-and all parties, looking to their own traditions and prejudices and shibboleths, should at least broaden their minds and stiffen their wills to establish some sort of cooperation between parties, between classes, and in a country like ours between provinces and races, if we are to pull the country out of the present quagmire.
May I close these remarks with a quotation? I am not strong on quotations but I must say that I was struck by a sensible observation of an author who I suppose is an economist. I may say by way of parenthesis that I largely share the views of the Prime Minister when he says that economists very often have not many practical remedies to offer. They always remind me of a lesson in medicine given by Moliere in Le Malade Imaginaire: "pri-mo seignare, ensuita purgare

and you
1728	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Bourassa
swear not to cure or to kill your patient otherwise than according to the rules of the faculty."
This book I read with interest because it is unpretentious; because, as the author says, his object is not to teach extraordinary things but to try to bring the minds of most people to the consideration of ordinary truths. Now, mind you, he declares himself, and he proves it, quite antagonistic to communism or even socialism if you take holus bolus the doctrine of socialism as propounded by Mara and others and put into practice more or less in Russia. He is not foolish enough however to imagine that all that has been preached and practised by socialists is all wrong. Therefore he gives a warning at the end of his book which I commend to people of ordinary minds like myself, people who will find comfort in it because it is understandable. The book is The World Economic Crisis 1929-31, by Paul Einzig. The author speaks particularly of the struggle, perhaps much more menacing than some people imagine, between antagonistic schools and interests as represented on the one hand by Soviet Russia and on the other, broadly speaking, by western Europe and America. He says:
Should the Soviet Union pursue an aggressive arid destructive policy, the rest of the world may be compelled into a defensive alliance which would have to make use of the weapon of economic boycott.
This government tried it tentatively in a very limited way.
It is possible, however, that the Soviet authorities realize that there is no hope for stirring up a world revolution by means of ruining the industries of capitalist countries through cut-throat competition. In that case, they focus all their energies upon trying to accentuate their economic progress instead of trying to destroy that of other countries. Our task will then be to do our utmost to maintain and even increase our economic superiority over the new system.
To that end it is essential that we should establish cooperation in all its possible forms. We cannot afford any longer to suffer periodical setbacks caused by crises. . . . The rival economic interests which are reluctant to curtail their freedom of action for the sake of cooperation, should be made aware that their very existence is at stake. Nothing but the closest relations betwen them, coupled with the cooperation of political powers to maintain internal and_ international peace, can maintain the superiority ^ of our economic system which is the raison d'etre of our social and political system. In order to accelerate our progress and to prevent setbacks, individuals, groups, and classes will have to consent to sacrifices which will be, however, rewarded in the long run by the results obtained. If we combine judiciously the advantages of cooperation with those of individual initiative, there is no reason to fear that a system where individual initiative is eliminated can ever win the victory over us. (Mr. Bourassn.l
Therefore, in the name of all that is true and legitimate in private initiative and private property, which is now being expropriated in Canada as fast as in Russia; in the name of all that is best in our past traditions, Canadian, French or British, I seriously call upon the members of tire various parties and groups of this house to forget for a moment their party differences and to do all they can, not to counteract every new idea that is presented as being a form of bolshevism, but to listen attentively and sympathetically to every suggestion which is made, prepared to reject what we think is wrong and to accept what is right. Do not let us endeavour to crush the growing feelings and aspirations of a suffering people by telling them that what was good enough for our fathers is good enough for us. Do not let us tell them that this is a passing crisis and that things will adjust themselves. They will not, and we know it. It is all very well to preach optimism if by optimism you mean that we must foster the feelings of hope in a better future. But if by optimism you mean that we must go on deceiving the people as to the gravity of the crisis, that we must let the people believe that because of a little change in the tariff, because of little treaties made here and there, matters will adjust themselves-no. It is wrong to deceive the people. We have deceived them too long. I know that in my own little sphere of life hundreds of people are starving today. Why? Because they believed three years ago that if there was a change in government, while they would not be rich, they would be well off. And so they spent their little savings. Others thought that because of a little measure of relief adopted in Ottawa in conjunction with Quebec that all things would come out all right. There is not one specific measure which has been adopted either here, in Quebec, in Toronto or elsewhere which can cure the evil. The best intellects among the capitalists, among the traders, among the farmers and among the labourers must get to work and convince themselves that the main thing is not to turn over the country to the labourer, to the farmer or to the capitalist, but that the one standing law of humanity is that every individual in every class must make his bit of sacrifice in order to save the whole. If we make it better for the whole, then the individuals in all classes will benefit.


Mr. G. C. WILSON (Wentworth):: Mr. Speaker, it is several years since I have had the privilege of addressing the House of Commons. Coming here in 1911 I am now classed as the third oldest member on this side of the house, not in age but in service.

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Wilson
1 served in the legislature from 1908 to 1911, and the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) will pardon me if I say that if he had worked as hard in Quebec as I did in Ontario from 1908 to 1911 for the introduction of publicly-owned hydro-electric power, they would not be paying such high prices today in Montreal for their power. As I say, I have not cluttered up Hansard with long speeches and I do not know just how long I will be able to continue today because, as many hon. members know, I am speaking against medical advice. Not long ago the Independent Labour party came into the town of Dundas to hold a meeting and the hon. member for East Hamilton (Mr. Mitchell) was introduced with the statement that he had said more in one session of this house than I had in twenty-one years. I do not deny that accusation. I happen to be one of those to whom a banquet was tendered because it was thought I was going to pass out before very long. My leader was kind enough to do the honours, and I think that fact coupled with the fact that I am a Presbyterian and believe in predestination and foreordination, made me not think very much of what the doctors told me. It is due to a kind Providence and the use of sweet cider that I am here today.
Having a Scotch grandmother and an Irish mother I had to learn the twenty-third psalm and the fifty-fourth paraphrase, but my father beat me out because he could recite the hundred and nineteenth psalm without a skip. I could never accomplish that and I suppose the reason was that I did not take enough pease brose for breakfast.
I should like to recall a story concerning Sir John A. Macdonald. He spoke in Hamilton in 1891 during his last campaign. I was at the back of the rink on Jackson street where he spoke when a member of the audience in a whisper just loud enough to carry over the heads of the people said, "Oh, go to hell." Quick as a flash Sir John said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have been in public life a great many years, I have been invited here and I have been invited there, but this is the first time I ever had a direct invitation to Grit headquarters. I decline with thanks." Personally, I do not feel like accepting the invitation of any party whose ultimate goal is chaos and the disregard of law and order.
In enlarging upon the wonderful strides made by the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail) said that multitudes are joining the Cooperative Commonwealth
Federation and halls will not accommodate the crowds of those eager to enter.
The hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) said that he did not like to quote scripture and I am reminded of an occasion where a choir leader was asked to sing the national anthem and he got up and sang "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" before starting with the national anthem. I would refer the hon. member for Southeast Grey to St. Matthew VII, 13-15, which reads:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
I, like Sir John A. Macdonald, must graciously but emphatically decline the invitation to join the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) may claim that the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) is not interpreting scripture as many of the most eminent theologians would do, but it must be remembered that today the churches are allowing their pulpits to be occupied by salad faced college professors and new era economists who, suffering from high blood pressure and brainstorms, exploit mew theories instead of preaching the simple gospel of the Nazarene, to which we will have to return if we are to get out of the deplorable position in which we are today. Can the house imagine the pulpit of Calvin being filled by a Woodsworth, the pulpit of Knox by a Bland or that of Luther by a Garland? We must learn to put first things first. I should like to quote from an editorial which appeared in the Globe of December 2, 1932, entitled, "Thirteen Years After" and which reads:
Still the insistence that there must be a revolution bespeaks little for a gain in wisdom. When revolution is proclaimed as inevitable, even the "mental revolution" of Miss Agnes Macphail, as a beginning, whether there is bloodshed or not depends upon the kind and amount of energy devoted to propaganda, as history has shown.
And then again:
The Canadian Annual Review of 1919 records that, upon committal for trial of eight strike leaders, "a meeting with indignant speeches followed, addressed by Rev. Dr. Salem Bland and J. S. Woodsworth, who dealt at length with the evil work of those who were trying to 'crush the Russian experiment in democracy.' "
A little further on we read:
This all happened at a time when labour, so called, was depressed compared with previous months, and when the One Big Union was out
1730	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Wilson
to "subdue the mad dogs of capitalism and open the gates of freedom," when the theory was, as Rev. William Ivens was reported to have told a Winnipeg labour meeting, addressed by himself and Rev. Doctor Bland: "All you have to do is to walk into any industry, tel! the owner you are going to take it over, and it is done."
The hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail), as reported on. page 1694 of Hansard, has this to say:
Had either of the old parties offered solutions, or even attempted to offer solutions, or had the government extended some sympathy to those suffering so greatly, they would have held much of the ground which they so easily won in 1930, and the Liberal party would have gained ground more rapidly than it is now doing. The Liberals, of course, do offer sympathy, if nothing else.
I am very glad to say that the Canadian people cannot be reconciled to continued want and privation, suffering, disease and early death in a land of abundance. They cannot and will not be reconciled to it. If they could they would not be the red-blooded Canadians about whom the Minister of Railways and Canals talks so much. The attempt of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation is to build a social order or society which will serve mankind, instead of allowing a social organization to continue which makes mankind serve the system.
One would think from a speech that sounds like "holier than thou," the hon. member for Southeast Grey was above all this sort of thing, but as we all know, she has joined the capitalistic class, and I wish to refer to an inoident which took place while she was on a speaking tour. This appears in one of the Fergus papers, but I do not wish to quote that part of it. I desire merely to refer to an inoident that took place. While certain people can criticize the capitalistic class and find fault with members on this side, I am aware of an incident which occurred when the hon. member addressed the Women's Institute at Rockton in my constituency. What was their surprise when two days afterwards they received a bill from the hon. member for Southeast Grey for $12 for her expenses. This is the patriotic lady who says that we should do this and do that. She has now joined the capitalistic class and become the "Oil Queen of the West." I do not intend to deal with the Fuego Oil Company. It has no connection with or reference to tempus fugit, which in Russian-pardon me, in Latin-moans "time flies." Perhaps it would be better for me to quote:
In time the ignorant may become learned, the foolish may be made wise, and the wildest, wanton maiden may be brought to a modest matron.
The hon. member for Southeast Grey has not brought, forward any solution of our

present problems, other than to say, as reported on page 1694 of Hansard:
The attempt of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation is to build a social order or society which will serve mankind, instead of allowing a social organization to continue which makes mankind serve the system.
That is a mere platitude, not a plan. I would be daring indeed should I suggest to the lady member a plan that is claimed to be a formula for happiness, but I am not suggesting it impolitely, and I suppose if it appears in the Mail and Empire it must be all right. This paper has an article under the following heading:
Formula for Happiness
I will read a portion of it:
Ten happy couples, living within a short distance of each other in Cape Breton-some of them next-door neighbours-celebrated on Sunday their golden weddings. Judging by the names in the Sydney Post they were all Soots or of Scottish descent. The MacPhees have fifty grandchildren; the Maclsaacs, twelve children, twenty-two grandchildren and three great grandchildren; others somewhat smaller families. Inevitably they were asked the secret of long life and happiness.


An hon. MEMBER:: Tell your Prime
Minister.


Gordon Crooks Wilson: Here are some of the
answers:
"We have always had food and love and laughter," said Mrs. MacDonald, "and these are the only real necessities of life. When women today talk about necessities they mean automobiles and telephones, electric lights and permanent waves. I never had any of those things. When I was married women didn't want anything but homes and babies."
An hon. member has said: "Tell your Prime Minister." Well, I can include the leader of the opposition (Mr. Mackenzie King), the leader of the party immediately opposite me and myself, so there might be a race. But I do not think there will be one, because I shall not be a starter, not even an added starter.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre yesterday made reference to my leader in these words:
Does anyone mean to say that the great fortunes in Canada have been built up by what could be termed "honest toil?" Has the I'rime Minister's own fortune been gained by honest toil?
Then, after quite a dispute in the house it will be remembered that when the Speaker was about to name the hon. member, the latter started to say:
I withdraw my imputation that the Prime Minister has made his money dishonestly.

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Wilson


James Shaver Woodsworth: May I point out
that I did not say I withdrew "my" imputation. The hon. gentleman is misquoting Hansard.


Gordon Crooks Wilson: I beg pardon. I should have said "any imputation."


James Shaver Woodsworth: I did not mean to impute anything of the kind.


Gordon Crooks Wilson: I do not mean to impute to the hon. member anything except what is found in Hansard. I apologize for the error.
Hon. members know the difference between an accident, a coincidence and a habit. An accident is when a man for the first time throws himself out of a third-story window. If he throws himself out a second time, that is a coincidence, and if he throws himself out a third time, that is a habit. I think in this case it has become a habit, and it does not do credit to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.
The hon. member for Southeast Grey thinks she has a remedy, and if I may quote from the Globe, this is it:
There are the presses, many in need of a run, and no scarcity of paper and ink, with pressmen and printers eager for work. There should be nothing more necessary than to get up steam-
If she had anything to do with the matter, I think they would be run by oil.
-turn on the juice, or turn the wheels by foot power. Anyway, start the press. The output would "appall" even the workmen. By a little overtime there soon would be so much money that it might be carried awray by the armful.
It all seems so simple. Let the designers turn out handsome bills. Let them be crisp and crinkly so that there may be melody as they circulate. Money talks now. Make it sing-with Miss Macphail conducting.
That is from the Globe.


Mr. IRVINE:: The hon. member is not quoting the hon. member for Southeast Grey.


Gordon Crooks Wilson: No.


William Irvine: That is good enough for the Globe, but it would never do for the hon. member for Southeast Grey.


Gordon Crooks Wilson: 
An hon. MEMBER:: Hear, hear.


Gordon Crooks Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I am very
glad to hear an hon. member say "Hear, hear."

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Maclnnis
Now they ask, and it is only a suggestion of a member on this side: How would you go about improving some of the conditions? In the first place I would certainly try to put agriculture on its feet.


Mr. SPENCER:: How?


Gordon Crooks Wilson: By dealing internally with
the troubles we have, that is with the milk problem, the butter problem, the daily problem, the meat and meat products problem, right at home. I know you are going to say it is a provincial affair. Yes, but we can overcome all this; we have overcome a lot of things since the right hon. Prime Minister came into power, and furthermore, though constitutionally it may be wrong, constitutionally we have done many things that are not exactly according to the law. The carrying out of the empire pact will, I think, lead to great advances, if we carry them out in the spirit and not in the letter of the law as some have argued. We wasted seven weeks here discussing the treaties from the constitutional standpoint, and what the price of barbed wire is going to be, and the price of socks, cream separators, and so forth, wre made ourselves the laughing stock of the world, because other parts of the empire had passed the treaties. As far as I am concerned, I hope to remain a Canadian and a British subject.
To our British institutions and traditions hold we fast,
Follow close to old Trafalgar, nail the colours to the mast,
Clinch the ties that hind us to them, give the world no cause to think
That this Empire's chains might sever at our firm Canadian link.


Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, I have often wondered
why we come to parliament. But the hon. member for Toronto Northwest (Mr. Mae-Nicol) has enlightened me. He said the reason that we are here today is to encourage capitalists to invest their capital in factories and plants. I presume all would be well if the capitalists would only do that, but if they do not, evidently he has no other solution for our problem, and we must go on starving.
I was also glad to know of his acquaintance with our old friend, Karl Marx, and that he was able to distinguish at least three basic principles in the Marxian philosophy, namely, surplus value, the class struggle, and the materialist conception of history. But he merely named these; he did not go on to explain them, nor did he refute Marx, although he said that everyone knew that we
have not a class struggle. I would like to ask, how does he account for all the struggles and conflicts that have gone on between the various classes all down through history, not only during the capitalist regime, but through feudalism and chattel slavery? In all these the workers had to fight with their masters, and the wage slaves under capitalism have to carry on the same struggle. Every advance they have made has been made through blood and tears.
Does the hon. member deny the fact of surplus value? How does the employer get his profit? Let me explain what surplus value is. Before a worker, a propertyless man who has no other way of getting a living, can get into industry, that is before he can get a job, there is first the understanding that he shall produce for his employer in values more than his employer gives him in value in return for his labour. If lie is working eight hours a day, in say three hours he produces his own wages, then for the remaining five hours he is producing values for his employer. That, very briefly, is the surplus value theory of Karl Marx. No person employs a worker except under those conditions. There would be no reason for doing so. The reason employers will not employ workers today is that although they still produce a surplus, that surplus cannot be disposed of.
We are told that conditions today have arisen out of the world war, but we ask: What did the world war rise out of? Was it its own cause? As the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) said in regard to another subject, every intelligent person realizes today that the German kaiser did not cause the war. The cause of the war was the conflict between the various capitalist countries to find markets for this surplus value that they had filched from their wage slaves. Through the development of capitalism and industrialism in every country it had become impossible to find markets for this surplus value that was accruing to the employers internationally. And that is the very reason why today we cannot have international concord or international action on the questions confronting the world,
I was very much impressed with the speech made by the hon. member for Labelle and his impassioned appeal for cooperation between the various classes in the community and the various parties in the country. But it is absolutely impossible to have cooperation between the exploiters and the exploited. There is no cooperation between the wolf and the lamb unless the lamb is inside the wolf. Nor is there cooperation be-
1734	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Maclnnis
tween the workers in industry and the employer, because of the inherent exploitation that must exist. I am not blaming employers. My friends in the corner here usually blame the banks for the condition that this country is in, the fall in prices and so on. I blame neither the banks nor the employers; they are compelled by the necessities of the situation to eat or be eaten, to exploit or be exploited. The reason we find so many today placing the blame on the banks for the conditions under which we suffer is the lack of understanding of capitalism and how it functions. The banks are not in the banking business for the good of the country, they are in it for the good of the banks; and if the good of the banks and the good of the country are not in accord, then the good of the banks will prevail, until some stronger power than the farmers have at the present time takes a hand in the situation.
There is something very significant in the reception this resolution has received in the house on this occasion. If anything were needed to indicate the serious condition of the country it is found in the attentive hearing that has been given to the speeches on the resolutions. There has been quiet attention on this side and rather boisterous attention from the other side, but nevertheless attention-almost every man in his seat listening to what is said. We did not have that on other occasions when we brought such matters forward. It was driven home to me when the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) ended his speech with the words that the system as we have it now was finished. That statement met with laughter from the other side, but that laughter was only halfhearted; there was no enthusiasm behind it. It was not the spontaneous outburst you would have got in 1930 if such a statement had been made at that time. The statement, however, is true. It is not a laughing matter and that is why hon. gentlemen opposite did not laugh heartily. They all realize the truth and they express it in conversation outside no matter what they may say in the house.
Another realization is coming and that is that, the system being finished, there are only two alternatives. We shall have to reconstruct the whole system so as to make it work, or else we shall have to have socialism. The present system is based on competition and we must make the competitive principle work or adopt a cooperative system. And that is all that is meant when we use the word socialism.

The constitutional question was raised by the Prime Minister very early in the discussion. I was glad to hear from the hon. member for Wentworth that we had done unconstitutional things already and that it did not matter so long as the results were satisfactory. I quite agree with him there. It does not particularly matter whether what is done is in accordance with the strict letter of the law so long as the results are in the interests of the people of the country. Indeed, after listening to the leader of the opposition during the last two or three years I came to the conclusion that there was no constitution left to violate, and my reading of history leads me to believe that the constitutional question is trotted out only when the ruling class does not wish to do something which ought to be done. As a matter of fact, raising the constitutional question is about the best way of passing the buck that I know of. Let us go back to the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act of 1931. In that act we find, these words, which caused a good deal of discussion in the house:
and for the maintenance of peace, order and good government in the country.
By the insertion of that phrase the government took to itself the right to do anything it might see fit by order in council. It stated so very plainly, and the Minister of Justice, in replying to the criticisms that were made against that act, made this statement as reported in Hansard of 1931 at page 4439:
It is recognized that there is a national emergency. . . .
Another significant statement.
We recognize this emergency by the adoption of these words from the British North America Act, and they were placed in the bill as the foundation of our authority to pass such an enactment. They have nothing to do with the question of enforcement, they are merely a declaration to give us the jurisdiction which we know we have under the circumstances but of which we want to be sure.
The act did say something with regard to enforcement, because we find in it these words:
All orders and regulations of the governor in council shall have the force of law and shall be enforced in such manner and by such court officers and authorities as the governor in council may prescribe.
That, if you like, is going a long way towards unconstitutional action. So that with the passing of that act, and with the precedent set us by the Prime Minister himself, it seems to me that a good deal could be done which the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation would like to see carried out. The measure that was adopted in 1931 was adopted for the

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Maclnnis
reason that a national emergency existed, and the reason it did not go further was that the national emergency was not great enough. When the emergency does become great enough, other things that have to be done will be done and will be done constitutionally.
I do not think that as Britishers we should feel greatly disturbed over unconstitutional acts, because British history bristles with such acts. I suppose it was quite unconstitutional for the barons in the thirteenth century to bring a document to King John and tell him to sign on the dotted line. I remember quite well that in my history book I was taught at school that King John, with a smile on his face and rage in his heart, did sign on the dotted line. It was also I suppose quite unconstitutional during the Civil war in the reign of Charles I for the people to cut the king's head off. But who blushes today because that was done? These are some of the things we are proud of. Some hon. gentlemen here celebrate the glorious revolution of 1688. It is true the revolution was bloodless, but that was a mere accident. And they would celebrate it with just as much gusto if there had been considerable bloodshed. Yet they talk about unconstitutional acts.
What about the famous or infamous telegram sent by the Acting Prime Minister of Canada to a lawyer in Winnipeg during the general strike there? Let me read a telegram from Mr. Meighen to Mr. Andrews, of June 17, 1919.
Notwithstanding any doubt I have as to the technical legality of the arrest and the detention at Stony Mountain, I feel that rapid deportation is the best course now that the arrests are made, and later we can consider ratification.
If the cooperative commonwealth acts on the same principle we will do things today which we cam ratify later on, whether they are constitutional or not, and I do not see how the leader of the Senate could find fault; nor could the Conservatives in this house complain, because they made no complaint against the action indicated in this telegram when it was done. If therefore we find it necessary to arrest Mr. Meighen and others we can have the arrest ratified later. If we find that we have done anything illegal, we can ratify the arrest after we have held them in Stony Mountain or some other place for some time. These however are minor points.
The great question that we have to solve is why and how we got into this state, and how we are going to get out of our difficulties. It is quite useless for the Conservative party, as they did in 1930, to put on the shoulders of the Liberal party all the responsibility for
the condition of affairs that preceded this administration, and it is equally useless for the Liberal party to place the blame on the Conservatives for the conditions that prevail today. I have no doubt these conditions would be pretty much the same if the Liberal party were in power, and that is not casting any reflections on them. We might as well get to the basis of the conditions and, instead of one party blaming the other, we ought to endeavour to find a solution. And let me say that it would be just as useless for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation to try to place the blame on these two parties unless we ourselves intended to alter fundamentally the basis of the present social order.


Mr. POULIOT:: Does the hon. member contend that if the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation were in power that conditions would be any different?


Angus MacInnis: No, not if the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation endeavoured to administer capitalism. The difficulties which arise are not caused by parties. When times were good the Liberal party governed well enough and I presume that if times were good today the Conservative party would govern well enough and there would be very little objection, especially from those who like that kind of thing. It would not satisfy me but that is neither here nor there. It would seem that businessmen can rim their businesses only when conditions are favourable and the very fact that today they do not know what is wrong or what they should do to set things right is proof positive that they do not understand the fundamentals of their own system and how it operates. While things were prosperous the bigwigs of business thought that they were responsible for the prosperity. They were like the fly upon the wheel; as long as the wheel was turning the fly thought it was responsible for its revolving, but when the wheel stopped, the fly had no idea why it had stopped. Business has slowed down and these people do not know what is wrong or how to right the condition. The fault does not lie either with the lack of business ability upon the part of businessmen or with the lack of administrative ability upon the part of governments. It is because of qualities which are inherent in the capitalistic system.
Speaking upon the question of unemployment during the session of 1931, I stated that the root cause of the condition which prevailed in the country at that time was the private ownership of the means of production-capitalism. It was the private ownership of the means of production which is
1736	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Maclnnis
vested in a few hands and which operates only when the owners can make a profit. I challenge anyone to prove that that is not the case. We have a superabundance of commodities on one side and we have misery, want and starvation on the other. Why can we not take the abundance on this side and give it to those who are suffering in want and hunger? It is because between the abundance and the misery stands the ownership of the means of life. Until we have changed that social relationship there is nothing we can do that will be of any particular benefit or help in getting us out of our present situation.
There are those who say, like the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa), that if we could only change men's hearts we could do it. Others say that it can be done by merely changing the monetary system but I have yet to see a monetary reform, I do not care from whence it comes, which will incline any employer of labour to give to his employee more of the actual value of his labour than he is now getting. By the very necessity of the case, the employer of labour is compelled to increase the spread between what the labourer gets in wages and what he takes in profits. Until we can solve this problem there is no use in putting forward monetary reforms or other palliatives.
Then we come to the matter of surpluses. At the present time it is impossible to dispose of the surplus which has been produced by labour. Despite this fact every employer of labour, not necessarily because he is greedy, not necessarily because he is anti-social but because of the inherent nature of capitalism, is compelled to lower still further the wages of his employees. He is compelled to do this in order that he may compete upon more favourable terms with other employers producing the same kind of commodity. Every time an employer of a particular class of labour, for example, shoe workers, reduces the wages of his employees, although he may be able to mleet world competition, he is reducing the purchasing power in his own particular community. He is reducing the purchasing power at home in order to increase his ability to sell in markets abroad. Under the present system it is impossible to get away from this condition, and we cannot meet the situation by offering some sort of monetary reform.
Capitalism was able to continue just as long as this surplus production could be disposed of, either by being invested in new capital or through being wasted in war. However, whether it was invested in new capital or wasted in war, there was always left behind

a load of debt upon which interest must be paid. The problem facing the governments of the industrial countries of the world is how to meet the ever-increasing debt burden and the ever-increasing expenses of unemployment out of an ever-decreasing revenue because of the slowing down of the production of wealth.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.
Mr. MaeINNIS:	Mr. Speaker, the hon.
member for Toronto Northwest (Mr. Mac-Nicol) and the hon. member for Wentworth (Mr. Wilson) endeavoured to make up for their lack of knowledge of the policies of the socialist and labour movement in this country by trying to frighten the people of Canada with tales of Moscow, the Third Internationale, patriotism and so forth. The hon. member for Westworth said that if there were any one in Canada who was not satisfied with conditions as they existed he had better go to Russia. I know of many Conservatives who are not satisfied with conditions as they are in Canada; neither am I, but I have no intention of going to Russia because to do so would not rectify matters in this country. Canada is my native country, by accident of birth, I admit, but I am going to stay here and do my share in making conditions better.
To try to connect us up with the Communist party is certainly most foolish, because anyone who knows anything about the tactics of that party and who has read any of its literature, knows we come in for more condemnation at the hands of that party than does either the Conservative or the Liberal party. Let me read a short item in connection with the election in my constituency in 1930. I had there as opponents a Conservative and a Communist. It was rather strange that in every constituency where the Labour party ran a candidate in the dominion election of 1930 and in no other, the Communist party had also a candidate. This, I think, will bear out what I say. After referring to me in language that was anything but complimentary, the Communist party say:
This is what the Labour party here offers to the workers of South Vancouver and Canada. The Communist party is in this campaign to expose the Labour party for what it is-a worse enemy of the workers than the avowed capitalist parties.
A rather peculiar feature of that campaign was that while I had two opponents who were

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Maclnnis
supposed to be diametrically opposed to each other, neither of them said anything against the other in the election, but each of them turned his guns on me. In order to show where the sympathies of the Communist party went, let me read a little further:
Unfortunately, the Communist party in Vancouver South has a family name-Bennett

that may mislead some of the voters on polling day, but he earnestly hopes that no Conservative will vote for him in the belief that it is a vote for the leader of the Tory party.
This was because if they voted for Bennett in Vancouver thinking it was the then leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett), those would be votes taken from the Conservative candidate in that election and consequently votes in my favour. The Communist party naturally were not in favour of that. I should like Conservative members to explain this if they can.
To deal further with the reference of the hon. member for Toronto Northwest to the philosophy of Karl Marx, I do not know whether this is the first time it has been quoted in the House of Commons, but I do not think it will do members any harm to get a better conception of that philosophy, of the genius of the individual concerned, whose monumental works, the analysis of capitalism, capitalist economists have for the last seventy years been trying to discredit and have been unable to do so. Let me read from his work, Capital, at page 533:
We have seen how this absolute contradiction between the technical necessities of modern industry, and the social character inherent in its capitalistic form dispels all fixity and security in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands the means of subsistence, and by suppressing his detail function to make him superfluous. We have seen, too, how this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstrosity, an industrial reserve army kept in misery in order to be always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human sacrifices from among the working class, in the reckless squandering of labour power, and in the devastation caused by a social anarchy which turns every economical progress into a social calamity.
Is that not absolutely true of the present situation? I can prove this by quotations from various other sources, but let me give one. On December 27 last the Vancouver Province had an editorial on the project which France has in hand at the present time of irrigating 1,000,000 acres of the Sahara desert. After referring to that immense project, that is expected to be at least partly finished by the end of three years, it goes on to say:
But to a disillusioned world the news brings no gleam of hope, no anticipation of happiness. It is true there are millions of people who 53719-110
could use the cotton that will grow on the new Sahara acres, if they could get it. But there are great quantities of cotton grown in the world now-in Egypt, in the United States, in India-and the market for it is dull and the pi ice low. If the million acres of Sahara land come under cultivation by 1936 and begin to produce, then a million acres of marginal land in some of the countries that produce cotton now will have to go out of cultivation or be turned to some other crop.
Maybe they will start growing wheat.
Unless, of course, the market can be widened. We have come to the point in cotton, and not a few other things, where the irrigation of one desert means the creation of another.
If those who do not understand Marx or have never read him will take a little time to read what he has written and then compare it with conditions as they find them today, they will very soon be convinced of the wonderful insight of the man. Let me read a little further from the famous thirty-second chapter of volume one:
That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. Thus expropriation is accomplished by the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist kills many.
That is what the hon member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa), was telling us this afternoon in such beautiful language. I quote further:
Hand in hand with this centralization or this expropriation of the many capitalists by the few, develops, on an eevr-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and thus, the international character of the capitalistic regime.
I hope the hon. member for Toronto Northwest will continue his studies of Marx, and we may expect to hear more from him in the future. In face of the situation that is confronting us, in face of the fact that we have an abundance that we do not know what to do with, all that the present ruling classes are able to offer us is more economy. All that they can offer to a people now almost suffocated with the abundance of their own production is more economy. Let us see what this economy means. First of all it is practised by the cutting of wages. Lowered wages mean less purchasing power. Less purchasing power means a lowered consumption of goods. A lowered consumption of goods means the slowing down of industry. The slowing down of industry means more unemployment. More unemployment means

1738	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Maclnnis
more governmental expense, and that means more taxation and more difficulty in balancing budgets. Then we arrive at the stage where in order to meet the situation we have to economize still further and go around the whole vicious circle again. That is the solution, and the only solution, that the present ruling classes have to offer. We maintain that all the factors that were present in 1928 and 1929 at the height of the boom are still here. We have our natural resources; we have the same mechanical means of production; we have the human skill and technical training and all the human labour necessary to operate our machines; and yet because the employing class cannot make a profit out of the operation of their equipment, factories and machines are idle, and thousands starve.
It is said that Canada will not stand for socialism. Well, sir, I say that there is one thing that will prevent socialism coming in Canada, and that is that those now responsible for affairs in this country make capitalism function in the interests of the people. That is their business, and if they cannot do it, no one else can.
I was interested in noting that even as great a conservative as President Hoover has come to the realization that governments must take more interest and a more constructive part in the organization of production. In his last message to congress in December, 1932, in closing President Hoover made this statement:
With the free development of science and the consequent multitude of inventions some of which are absolutely revolutionary in our national life, the government must not only stimulate the social life, the government must stimulate the social and economic responsibility of individuals and private institutions but it must also give leadership to cooperative action amongst the people which will soften the effect of these revolutions and thus secure social transformations in an orderly manner-
That is what we are after-social transformations in an orderly manner.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, in my opinion we have finished the upbuilding of our industrial civilization; it is now more than sufficiently equipped to supply the needs of the population for many years to come. Such being the case, the government of this country, in common with nearly all the governments of the world, is facing a very serious situation. It is faced with a collapsing social structure. It is not responsible for that impending collapse. I take it that it built as well as it knew. Most of us thought that we were living in the best of all good worlds, a world in which it was possible for everyone to get richer than everyone else,

provided we were willing to work hard and take advantage of the need of our fellows.
The system is slowing down and failing to provide for our needs in even the inadequate way in which it once did. The slowing down is the direct result of its own development. Change now is inevitable. The only choice is to faciliate change or oppose it. Ours is the opportunity of helping to bring in the new social order which will make the bounty of nature as organized by the intelligence of man available to everyone. But changes do not wait for our pleasure, and we oppose them at our peril.


William Irvine: The resolution moved by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) surely merits reasonable consideration and is a subject of fair debate. So far as I can see there is no need for any rash imputations from either side, nor is it necessary to bring in personalities. The resolution clearly sets forth the line of thought which divides the government from those in this comer, and indeed divides the official opposition from those in this comer. I have been surprised that so little interest has been manifested in a question which will shortly be, and is now in fact, an issue not only in Canada but throughout the world, and one which will undoubtedly be the issue at the next election in Canada, whether we wish it or not. I am surprised that the government has not taken a deeper interest in the issue. Only two government members have spoken, one of whom told us that he has been silent in the house for twenty-one years, and now he comes out in defence of the capitalist system. I hope he will not take it unkindly when I suggest to him that if he has been successful for twenty-one years with his tactics of silence, it was a great pity to break it, because I do not think he will be nearly as successful making speeches as he was by saying nothing.
I am surprised that some of the members of the official opposition have not had anything to say on this question. The hon. member from Vancouver Centre (Mr. Mackenzie) has declared from the floor of many platforms in the western provinces that there is nothing in the program of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation which has not been in the Liberal program from time immemorial, and that he supports our platform in every detail with the exception of its land policy. I am surprised thait he has had nothing to say in this debate. I had hoped that he would tell us just how far he was willing to go on this resolution, which marks the only real difference of opinion in this house.

Cooperative Commomoealth-Mr. Irvine
We had an election in Calgary very recently. It was for a provincial seat covering practically the territory of two federal ridings. In that contest, which was held under the proportional representation system, we had the Conservatives and the Liberals joined together under a new name. Neither party dared to run a candidate under the banneT of either Liberal or Conservative. They both joined together as against the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation candidate. What was the result of that election? A little over two years ago the Liberals and the Conservatives combined had a surplus over the Labour candidate of 24,988 votes. The territory was not precisely the same; in fact, the area left out in this most recent election included a large agricultural district in which we would have expected to get ninety per cent of the votes. But we may take the vote in the recent Calgary by-election as representing the relative strength of the two forces-the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the capitalist forces. At that election we reduced the majority of 24,988 to something like 1,800. That would seem to indicate that the people in the country are more interested in this question than some hon. members of this house.
This resolution goes to the very heart of the present economic system. It implies, if it does not definitely state, that the capitalistic system, or the economic system under which we are now living, has distinct characteristics. One of these is the private ownership of public utilities and public lands, or what should be public lands, and power which should be public power, and sources of wealth of that sort. It next implies that the method of capitalism is competition, and that competition has led to anarchy within the nation and bloody wars outside. It implies also that the object of capitalistic production is profit. This resolution implies- and I want hon. gentlemen to listen, because some of them have suggested that no proposals have been made-first, public instead of private ownership; cooperation instead of competition; production for use instead of production for profit. It stands for a planned control of our national economy instead of the present anarchy. It stands for the priority of human needs over property rights. It stands for international peace, to come as a natural consequence of cooperation, instead of international strife inevitable in a condition of competition such as we have at the present time.
These, Mr. Speaker, are our proposals. And I take it that there is room for debate on them. We are perfectly willing to be shown that these proposals are impractical, if the hon.
53719-110J
gentlemen who are so interested will undertake to show it. These are our proposals, and we turn to the government and to the opposition and say: What are yours? Have they ever been articulated? The government's attempted remedies are already on the scrap-heap. The first was increased tariffs. Have the tariff increases done anything to improve business? Have they wiped out unemployment or done anything to meet the immediate needs of the hour?


Mr. VALLANCE:: You voted for it.


William Irvine: My hon. friend is having one of his dreams. I am telling him and telling this house that as far as solving the economic problem of Canada is concerned, tariffs have failed. But that does not say you can do without tariffs, or that I would not vote for them.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I ask you to keep order when hon. gentlemen who are so anxious to talk when someone else is talking create disturbance. My hon. friend reminds me of a rooster that has been defeated in a barnyard fight and moves a little way off from the scene of his defeat and forthwith begins to crow up another reputation.


John Vallance: Had you that all written out?


William Irvine: My hon. friend realizes that he has not been able to bring forth a single proposal in this house, nor has his leader, nor has his party. They have been expecting to gain power from the failure of the present administration, but up to the present time they have not advanced one constructive policy. If they have one, I am waiting to hear it, and if it is constructive enough I am with them, but so far nothing has come.


Mr. BRADETTE:: The new Messiah!


William Irvine: And the devil! I hope, Mr. Speaker, you will allow me a little extra time, because it is impossible to reply to all these interruptions and carry on my speech and keep within the time.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: Order.


William Irvine: 
James Earl Lawson: 
James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, I will not sit down. A question of privilege, Mr. Speaker. The hon. gentleman is not stating what took place. There was no extolling the wonderful
1746	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Lawson
privileges existing in Russia. I gave a statement as to what I found there, in some places praising it.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: That is not privilege.


James Shaver Woodsworth: -in other places condemning it.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: The hon. gentleman is making a speech.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am not making a speech, Mr. Speaker. It is a question of privilege.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: Order. The hon member may not agree with the hon. gentleman who is now speaking, but this is not the time to reply. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) will have his opportunity to reply.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I am not replying,
I am speaking on a question of privilege.


An hon. MEMBER:: Of opinion.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, it is a question of privilege. I absolutely deny the statement made by the hon. member.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: The hon. gentleman will have his opportunity to reply, as I have just pointed out.


James Shaver Woodsworth: As a member of this house I have a right to rise at any time on a question of privilege.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: In my opinion the hon. member is not speaking to a question of privilege.


James Earl Lawson: I have no desire to do the hon. gentleman an injustice. Time will not permit me to quote at length from the speech which he then made. I have given to this house my interpretation and understanding of the words which I then heard, and which I have subsequently read, and if any hon. members of this house are interested in coming to a judicial conclusion as to whether or not I have misstated or misrepresented the remarks of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre I refer them to his speech in Hansard of 1932, commencing at page 114. Before I finish I shall give a quotation from it to illustrate my point.
When I find in every session since I have been in this house the hon. gentleman so solicitous, so concerned for that country which has a completely state-controlled economic system; when added to that I find him blos-

soming forth in 1932 as the leader of this new -not political party-social movement, and when I find that the utterances of the gentlemen who support that movement lead ultimately to complete state control, then, sir, I think I am justified in coming to the conclusion that the cooperative commonwealth is communism; communism without bloody revoluton, if you will; communism without what these hon. gentlemen are pleased to term bureaucratic control, if you will, but nevertheless, as an economic system and in its essence I say that cooperative commonwealth is communism and communism is cooperative commonwealth.


Edward Joseph Garland: Absolute rubbish!


Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):: That is what it is.


James Earl Lawson: The remark of the hon.
member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) on this subject is only equalled by his knowledge of aviation.


Edward Joseph Garland: I am not as much in the air as my hon. friend.


James Earl Lawson: Sir, I happen to represent in this house a constituency which in point of population is one of the largest in the Dominion of Canada, and ninety per cent of the people of that constituency are labouring people. So that there may be no misunderstanding either in this house or in that constituency as to where I stand, let me say here and now that I stand for capitalism as an economic system, as against communism or cooperative commonwealth.
Let me for a moment contrast the two systems. Time will not permit me to state in detail all the reasons for my judgment; I can deal with it only broadly. Capitalism in its origin as I understand it was individualism unrestrained. Communism in its origin was individualism absolutely throttled, choked.


Mr. MOTHERWELL:: It is now, too.


James Earl Lawson: Human nature, with its weaknesses, developed in the capitalistic system greed, avarice, acquisitiveness; so to meet that weakness in human nature governments from time to time, or the state if you will, legislated-legislated to restrain the full exercise of individualism; hence we have on our statute books what is sometimes called social or paternal legislation, such as old age pensions, workmen's compensation, mother's allowances and so on. Nevertheless capitalism with such restrictions still permits a degree of individualism, of initiative, of the exercise of

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Lawson
ability. Communism found that with individualism completely throttled and choked it could not survive. Initiative was gone, the will to accomplish, the desire of the workman to be a craftsman disappeared and there developed in Russia under that communistic system what I think has been best described by Maurice Hindus as, "Nichevo",-"I should worry." Machines were ruined carelessly, production was slowed down, desire for achievement and inititative, were lacking. To counteract that situation communism started a system of bonuses in the form of holidays and trips to the seashore. They found that would not work. Then they changed their whole system of equality of wages and started paying higher wages in certain trades. That has not worked except to a comparatively small degree. So you find this communistic system gradually drifting back to the inherent principle of capitalism, namely that human beings are not automata, that you must allow the exercise of individualism, must have incentive, must allow initiative and reward it.
One hon>. gentleman speaking to-day mentioned something that I frequently hear discussed. They are constantly talking about the state creating corporations and conferring upon them special privileges. They talk about the creation of financial corporations. Do my hon. friends who are the accredited representatives of labour loose sight of the fact that in this democratic state we create the labour corporation, the labour union? We create the great corporation of labour, the labour unions, and we confer upon this corporation many special privileges, two of which come to my mind at the moment-collective bargaining and picketing. In picketing we legalize for the labour corporation that which would be an offence against our law as something amounting to a restraint of trade. So let us remember that governments, either of to-day or of the past, have not just existed for the purpose of creating great financial corporations.
My hon. friend from Bow River told us this afternoon of several incidents that occurred one morning in the Toronto police court. I do not represent the city of Toronto, nor is any part of it in my constituency, but for ten years in the practice of my profession I frequented the police court in that city. I have frequented that court in the not far distant past, and never have I found occurrences such as were outlined by the hon. member for Bow River. I grant you that in the past, before the days of our social legislation which provided for the aged, I have seen old men come up, charged at their own request
with vagrancy and sent to the gaol farm, which is not so bad a place,-I have been there- indeed, on one occasion by mistake they locked me in with a prisoner, so I have some experience of the place. But let us not forget that the city of Toronto, supported financially by this government and by the government of the province of Ontario, provides hostel accommodation and shelter, and also makes provision in other ways for those who are in necessity and want. I do not say that it provides luxuriously, but it provides for those who are in want, and I say here and now that if the hon. member for Bow River will at any time tell me any incident of a man willing to work, brought into the Toronto police court and charged with vagrancy and sent to gaol for three months, I will promise to get that man out at my own expense-and it will not bake long.
In the constituency I represent, some of those gentlemen who are speaking for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation have been addressing the unemployed. And bear in mind, there are many of them in my constituency, so that I have just as good a knowledge of their condition and the privations they are suffering, as have hon. gentlemen who talk so much about them in this house. But in my constituency they talk with loud acclaim about the fact that not a man is unemployed in Russia. Well, I imagine it is true. But may I point out that unemployed Canadians in this country, under the relief arrangements made by reason of the payments in taxes of the people who are working and are earning-these unemployed men in this country to-day, I say, are better fed and better clothed, and live under just as good conditions as the average employed worker in Russia.
I said a few moments ago that I would refer to part of a speech on Russia delivered by the leader of this new social order in 1932. I shall do so now. That speech always stuck in my mind. The hon. gentleman was telling us of some of his experiences. He said:
I will give a little illustration which I believe I have published somewhere and which I think is very illuminating. We were waiting at a street corner to allow the traffic to pass and a group of high school boys and girls, ranging in age from fourteen to sixteen years, passed, each one with a _ spade upon his or her shoulder. They were jollying one another and joking as high school youngsters will, and on inquiring where they were going I was told that this was their free day-they have one day free in five, although I believe in the last few months the plan has been altered in some industries where they now put in six days straight-and they were spending their holidays by giving
1748	COMMONS
Cooperatii Commonwealth-Mr. Lawson
voluntary assistance to some particular state enterprise which was lagging behind its schedule.
I do not object to that; more credit to the boys and girls of Russia. But lhie continued:
Mr. Speaker, can you imagine a group of our high school boys and girls putting spades on their shoulders and starting off to tamp ties on the Canadian National railways? They might if we had such a plan. The fact remains that we lack that enthusiasm which seems to be so prevalent in Russia.
That speech stuck in my mind, and as the bon. gentleman uttered those words there occurred to me these few lines:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
In 1914 in this country we had boys just out of the high schools who shouldered, not spades but rifles, who offered to give up not their holidays but their lives in defence of this country and its institutions. We 'had young girls, some of them from homes of luxury and ease, who donned the uniform of voluntary nurses and went into our hospitals and made bandages and treated the wounded, living under conditions such as they had never been asked to put up with before. My hon. friend asks, Will you find Canadian high school boys and girls performing a service for Canada in the hour of necessity? I answer yes, a thousand times yes. And so good an opinion have I of the high school boys and girls of this country, of their intelligence and their ability to think, that I venture to say that when the opportunity is given them to express their views-because a great many of them will be of age by the next election-they will with one accord turn down this cooperative commonwealth proposition of communism for Canada.
My hon. friends sometimes lose sight of fundamental characteristics of human nature They seem to proceed on the assumption that all men are equal. That is a fallacy. Men are no more equal in mental capacity or moral fibre than -they are in physical strength ot stature.


William Irvine: Who ever said so?


James Earl Lawson: I do not say that you
have said so in so many words, but I do say that your reasoning is predicated upon that premise, and upon others equally fallacious which I could name. Now, I do not think that the capitalistic system is perfect. Just as we have had to make changes in the system in the past, sometimes by negotiation

between capital and labour, sometimes by legislation of the state, so in my opinion we shall have -to continue from time to time to make changes in the capitalistic economic system. But what I refuse to do is, willy n-illy, without being convinced by sound argument -and logic, to swap the devil I know for the devil I do not know. The aim of the capitalistic system, realizing as it does that all men are not equal, is to give to all men in this democratic country an equal opportunity to have the comforts of life, an equal opportunity to -attain that which is best in life by the exercise of individualism, of initiative, of those qualities which raise man from the level at which -he starts to the level he ultimately attains. May I suggest to some hon. members that -because of the equal opportunities which have been given to us under capitalism there are many of us where we are today, in a much better position than we were a few years ago.
I stand for that system which will give equal opportunity. Communism has proved conclusively that it can make rich men poor but it has not provided one tittle of evidence that it can make the poor man richer. I am not interested in any economic system the object of which is to tear dowm, to make the rich man poor; but show me an economic system or a change in our present capitalistic system which will make richer the poor man in this country or give him an opportunity for a better and fuller life and I will support that change as forcibly -and vehemently as I have tonight stood for the capitalistic system.


Henry Elvins Spencer: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great pleasure during the last forty minutes to the hon. member for West York (Mr. Lawson), having been interested not so much in what he said as in the adroitness and ability he displayed in trying to make the best of a bad case. His first Statement was that the members in this corner of the house had no knowledge of fundamental principles. It is not necessary for me to say that if any hon. member or anyone in the country cares to look through Hansard for the last ten or twelve years he will find contradictions of the statement made by the hon. member. He is a clever debater, he is well liked by all of us, but he knew he had a bad case to defend, and, like the able lawyer he is, he started out to do the best he could. He spent much time in castigating the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth). The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre need fear no

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Spencer
challenge in this house. He has his own record of which he need not be ashamed. Furthermore, he is looked upon by a large portion of the population of Canada as the greatest private member in this house, and I think that is the best compliment which could be paid to any hon. member.
The hon. member for West York attempted to criticize the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Knowing that he had no case to make against us, he started off with the wrong premises. He said that the federation was communism and that communism was the federation. I wonder if the hon. member knows that so far apart are these two that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is being continually opposed by communists at the different elections. If the communist believed in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, he surely would not oppose the thing in which he believes. I think these facts fully answer the argument advanced by the hon. member for West York.
I might remind the house that two years ago this same hon. member was the father of a bill which would have given statutory power to certain individuals to charge those poor, unfortunate people who were forced to borrow money from them a rate of interest, with all charges, amounting to about eighteen per cent. That is something of which the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has never 'been guilty.
I was interested in reading yesterday a leading article in the Ottawa Citizen, written I might say before this debate commenced. I should like to quote a few lines, as follows:
The vision of Canada's capacity to support a hundred million people, as Hon. H. H. Stevens pictured it recently, would become more real. At any rate, it would be seen that there is no need to submit to nationwide privation when the natural resources of Canada so far exceed the needs of the Canadian people.
And again:
When the national policy of Canada is more along the lines of planned economy, with surveyors and engineers and accountants exercising more influence than speculators and financial promoters, the people of this country may look forward with more hope to the coming of the real commonwealth. After seeing Canada as the dominion land surveyors have seen it, there should be no denying of the true vision of Canada as a land of plenty.
As proof of the need for the debate which has taken place yesterday and today, I should like to quote from a statement made yesterday. I do this particularly for the benefit of the hon. member for West York. Speaking in the House of Lords on June 22, 1932, Lord Marley said:
The capitalist system is tottering. Unfortunately we cannot be entirely detached because we are affected in the common smash . . . the difficulty of the system is how to consume the goods which the system is able to produce. The greatest danger in the world from the system is the danger that the only means of consuming these goods to an adequate extent is by another world war.
We were in a somewhat similar position in 1913. The war broke out and for a time saved the situation, because when all is said and done a war consumes the greatest amount of goods in a given time. There was a glut of goods at the time but the war got rid of them and to that extent saved the situation. However, in the long run debts were increased enormously and the aftermath of the war has been felt for some years in the extremely high taxes which the people have been called upon to pay in order to take care of the interest upon war bonds.
When I hear people talking about how to get out of this crisis, when I hear them saying that the only way is to work harder, produce more, save and consume less, I think of that well known character, the Reverend Malthus, who some one hundred and fifty years ago not only wrote but preached throughout the country that it was absolutely necessary to have disease and wars to take off the surplus population; that with the world as it was it was quite impossible for the people to be fed or clothed or looked after as to various necessities. That was quite possibly true in such an age of scarcity, but since then, as hon. members have pointed out, many forces have come to our assistance. We have had steam, the internal combustion engine and electricity. As has been pointed out in the last two days, we have passed from an age of scarcity one hundred and fifty years ago to an age of abundance today. Therefore, the solution which was suggested then, and perhaps entirely correctly, is quite out of date now, and the more we use antiquated remedies to try to cure the present crisis, the worse we shall make it. I quite agree with the statement made this evening by the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Irvine) that in any cycle of time there never is sufficient money paid out in the cost of production of goods to enable the buying of the goods when they are put on the market. So many people think all that is wrong with our system is that some have too much and others have too little. That has something to do with the matter. The inequality of wealth has a good deal to do with the situation as we find it today, but it certainly has not everything. Even if we were able to equalize incomes, that would not
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solve the problem; it would probably alleviate a certain amount of suffering, but we would still be up against the glut of goods that is being continually collected under the system.
Let us consider for a few minutes the signs of the times. I notice the hon. member for West York did not refer to the signs of the times, because if he had his argument would have been on very bad ground. First of all, we have to recognize the fact that we have poverty and plenty side by side, poverty in the fact that people cannot buy the things they want, and plenty in the fact that there are storehouses and wholesale houses full of goods wanting buyers. Then we have inequality of wealth. It is not necessary for me to go into that, because anyone who is familiar with the figures that were given by the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland) yesterday, knows only three per cent of the people are in a position to pay income tax.
Again, the system is a debt creating system. I have yet to find the individual who can prove it is not. I think the hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail) mentioned that last year municipalities defaulted to the extent of $45,000,000. If hon. members care to go to the trouble of writing to the bureau of statistics, they will find that if they take just the bank debts, railway debts, government-federal, provincial and municipal-debts, and certain industrial debts, they alone amount to about nine and a quarter billion dollars. Many economists consider that our interest bearing debts in this country amount to between $17,500,000,000 and $20,000,000,000. The present deflation, which is perhaps being felt more than any other, particularly with regard to agriculture, has had the effect of doubling and trebling debts. Even if it had only doubled debts: if by halving prices, we had doubled debts, it would be only fair to reverse that process and by doubling prices to halve debts. That would be fair to everyone.
Let us look at the railway situation. Our railways, whether privately or government owned, are close to a bankrupt condition. Never before in our history has the big private railway of Canada has its shares selling so low on the market. Why are our railways suffering so badly? We have only to look at our international trade to find that it has fallen down to less than one-half. We must recognize the fact that the railways depend a good deal on traffic coming not only from across the border, but also from across
[Mr. Sper.PAr.l
the oceans, and if you halve traffic coming into the country, you will halve such traffic on the railways. Budgets, whether provincial or federal, are not being balanced. I know full well that whoever happens to be in charge of federal or provincial administrations are doing their best-and I do not for a moment question their sincerity-to balance their budgets, but they are not able to do it.
As mentioned the other day by the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Coote) the value of farm products has dropped no less than sixty per cent, and the total farm revenue has dropped during the last 3 years by $925,000,000.
I should like to put on record a few figures I had sent me the other day with regard to an average of five farms. They are so startling I think those who have not as close a knowledge of conditions in western Canada as they have of the east, may be interested in getting them. Five average farms were taken. It is true that these farms had one year been hailed out and one year dry, but otherwise they were good farms and in a good part of the country. The average acreage of those farms was 427 acres. The debt against each was $6,916. The debt and interest charges accumulated since 1929 amounted to $1,188.31. The crop this year was twenty-six and a half bushels an acre. Hon. members will agree that this is a very good return. The average total crop was 3,524 bushels. The total return from the crop this year per farm was $712.40. One would say: Well, possibly they would get along with that. Let us see where this revenue disappeared. The average payment to mortgage companies or owners per farm was $254.22. The average cash expenses, threshing, seed, twine, labour and taxes was S412.45. The average return from the crop left to the farmer for one year's food, clothing, fuel, running expenses and to pay debt was $45.73. Unless those farmers receive an average price of seventy cents per bushel basis Fort William on an average crop of an average grade, it will be impossible for them to pay their 1933 interest charges on the total debt plus cost of production, let alone any payments on principal. I put that on record because it is only a duplicate of what we find we are up against in many parts of Canada, and another reason we must look at this crisis in the serious way we should, and do more than parliament has done so far to remedy it.
We have the problem of inequality of income. I will hurry over the various reasons for that. We have the control of machinery, the appreciation of the machine going to the owners. That phase of the subject was enlarged upon this afternoon. We have the

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Spencer
effect of interest charges, the stock market exploitation, which was so ably pointed out by the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa). We have financial control. I have not time to go into that, but every business man in the house knows what financial control means. Furthermore, as regards the mechanization of industry, although one might think it would not develop to any great extent in difficult times, I should like to point out that it is in these difficult times the mechanization of industry proceeds faster than ordinarily. Under the competitive system, the manufacturer who is going to sell goods has to cut down his cost price, and if he can find some way of cutting down his costs and his payroll by putting in labour saving machinery he will do it every time, and one cannot blame him under the present system. Therefore, we can fully expect in these difficult times, when manufacturers are at their wits' ends to know where to sell their goods, that they will make every possible use they can of the progress of mechanization. Our problem, it seems to me, is not to stop the machines from working, but to develop science and invention to the limit, and at the same time to find means of distributing the products of the machines. That is all we ask in the resolution now before the house. We are suggesting that the human being be put first, and the machine second; unforunately to-day the human-being often takes the second place.
We have to replace competition by cooperation. We have to distribute goods and services which to-day are certainly a glut on the market. The hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Coote) spoke very effectively yesterday on the control of prices through the control of money. If one takes the September bank statement of the years 1928 and 1932 he will find in them a contradiction of the statement that is so often made, that there is just as much money in the country now as there ever was. Comparison of those two statements will show that there is $584,000,000 less in loans owing to the banks to-day than four years ago, and that the bank deposits are less by $362,000,000. During that time I might add that the banks were able to put $7,000,000 into new buildings, and set aside $30,000,000 for reserves.
I am not going to take u,p the time of the house by going into details of how money today is written into existence through bookkeeping, and written out in a similar way, because that phase of the subject was ably covered yesterday by the hon. member for Macleod. I should like, however, to quote a terse statement by Professor Soddy of Oxford, who sums up the situation in a nutshell:
Another and most important fact to be emphasized, is that virtually all the money in the hands (or banking accounts) of the community originally came into existence in the form of loans from the banking system It can come from nowhere else, nor otherwise than as loans. This fact, which reverses all the old concepts of loans as money taken out of pre-existing deposits, is demonstrated fully in Major Douglas's works, and, in fact, has since been endorsed by Mr. McKenna, the chairman of the Midland bank. The order oi procedure is as follows:	_	.
(1)	Money is printed or written into existence by the banks:
(2)	It enters circulation as a loan to somebody:
(3)	It is then spent, and then becomes a "deposit" in the name of the receiver.
For the benefit of the hon. member for Northwest Toronto (Mr. MacNicol) and the hon. member for Wentworth (Mr. Wilson) who spoke this afternoon, and who I am sorry to say spent most of their time in criticizing this corner of the house rather than putting forward something constructive, and who were both particularly anxious to know what our policy was, I am going to put on record the proposed program of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, commonly known as the C.C.F. Their proposed program is as follows:
1.	The establishment of a planned system of social economy for the production, distribution and exchange of all goods and services.
2.	Socialization of the banking, credit and financial system of the country, together with the social ownership, development, operation and control of utilities and natural resources
3.	Security of tenure for the farmer on his use-land and for the worker in his own home.
4.	The retention and extension of all existing social legislation and facilities, -with adequate provision for insurance against crop failure, illness, accident, old age and unemployment during the transition to the socialist state.
5.	Equal economic and social opportunity without distinction of sex, nationality or religion.
6.	Encouragement of all cooperative enterprises which are steps to the attainment of the cooperative commonwealth.
7.	Socialization of all health services.
8.	Federal government should accept responsibility for unemployment and tender suitable work or adequate maintenance.
Such a program naturally we would not expect to bring into effect overnight or in a year or two. It is an object to be aimed at, and if the program comes into effect within fifteen years it will represent greater progress than we have seen made in the last twenty or thirty years.
Before sitting down, I should like to state what I think are the five chief fears of mankind. First is the fear of the loss of work by those who have not otherwise the means to sustain themselves. Those, of course, who have purchasing power from other sources, if
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they have no work, can enjoy themselves; we call that leisure; but for those who have no other means of subsistence, loss of work means enforced idleness.
Then we have the fear of poverty, and unfortunately we have only too many in this country today afflicted by that fear. It is not necessary for me to give the numbers, because they have been given before, but I am sorry to say that they are growing.
Then there is the fear of sickness. That is something that could be obviated. With the great numbers of medical men now in the field and the number of students going into our universities, we ought to be able through the aid of medical science to keep the health of our people at a higher level than that which prevails today. A doctor in Edmonton told me only the other day that doctors could not get a living because the paying was bad, and he thought no other medical students should be allowed to enter the universities. I would suggest that we can never have too many doctors so long as we have in this country sickness that can be cured or alleviated in any way.
Then we have the fear of debt, a fear which is probably worrying more people in this country today than ever before.
Lastly we have the fear of penury in old age.
These are the things, Mr. Speaker, that we are aiming to obviate in the future by gradually bringing into effect the policies which we have placed before the house. I should like to point out that apparently people in the old country are facing this problem perhaps a little more seriously than many in this country. It may be because they are facing greater economic stress. I would like to quote from one who has been mentioned before, Sir Basil Blackett, a director of the Bank of England, and a former controller of finance of the British treasury. He said:
We are facing the possibility of a collapse which would compare in history only with what happened at the end of the Roman empire. In view of what we have done with currency and what currency has done with us in the last twenty years we are all fit for the lunatic asylum.
I commend that statement particularly, for his edification, to the hon. member for West York. If we had made that statement from this corner of the house I suppose he would have said: That is communism. But it comes from a director of the Bank of England.
In closing I want to say that I have no hesitation in supporting the resolution.


Mr. G. R. GEARY (South Toronto):: Mr. Speaker, the resolution before the house is plain in its words. It states that:
The government should immediately take measures looking to the setting up of a cooperative commonwealth in which all natural resources and the socially necessary machinery of production will be used in the interests of the people and not for the benefit of the few.
Like other members, I have been very much interested in the launching of this so-called Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. I observed the meetings, and I hear from those who addresed them, the leaders of the party, that they are well-pleased with the numbers of people who attended the meetings and the reception which the speakers received. That is hardly to be wondered at. People will go to hear something new. But one hears also from those who were at those meetings that after all nothing was advanced to them which seemed really to offer any solution of the difficulties under which we are at present labouring.
Feeling that interest, and noticing the resolution on the order paper, I looked forward with some interest to this debate. I expected that the arguments of those who were furthering the resolution would at least contain something definite in the way of description of the state to which they wished to attain. But I have looked for that in vain. True, we have heard the program related by the hon. member (Mr. Spencer) who has just sat down, and we have heard diatribes against capitalism. But for a definition of the cooperative commonwealth at which they aimed we are forced to look elsewhere. We find the term as part of the Marxian philosophy, part of the program of socialism as it was finally brought into being an Russia. That that is what is aimed at is, I think, borne out by the fact that there was brought forth the well-known socialistic argument that if this state cannot be arrived at by peaceful evolution then it would oome about by revolution and force. So I am forced to the conclusion that what the proponents of this resolution hope for is the establishment 'here of a state such as we find today in Russia. I will not quarrel as to the means of bringing i,t about; one of the speakers has differentiated between their program and that of communism by saying that communism seeks to attain its ends by force-


Mr. SPEAKMAN:: May I ask the hon. gentleman a question? He said it had been stated that in the event of this program not

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Geary
being brought about by peaceful means, force might be used. Was that statement made by one of the speakers from this comer at any time?


George Reginald Geary: Yes, made yesterday during the course of this debate.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, I
think the hon. member ought to mention the one who made the statement.


Mr. MOORE (Chateauguay):: You made it.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Pardon me, I did not make it. I am sure the hon. member for South Toronto (Mr. Geary) will be fair in this.


William Henry Moore: You implied it if you did not make it.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No. What I said was, if it were not brought about by peaceful means I feared-


William Henry Moore: Oh, you
feared! What did you say in Edmonton?


George Reginald Geary: Mr. Speaker, I am in the judgment of Hansard. At page 1689 the hon. member is reported as follows:
Well, if many take the position that we cannot do this thing constitutionally, and behind it is the threat that it will not be permitted to be done constitutionally, then none of us can answer as to what may actually take place.
I do not want to quibble over words, I a.m only saying that the well-known socialist argument has been advanced, and I deduce from that that what is sought is the establishment of a system similar to that which they have in Russia today. There is no other example today of anything approaching a cooperative commonwealth as set out by socialistic writers except what we find in Russia.
And the ban. member for Winnipeg North Centre, on the same page, just above the quotation which I have read, said:
It may very ivell be that force may prove inevitable-


An hon. MEMBER:: A threat.


George Reginald Geary: That is the proposal.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, Mr. Speaker. I have no objection whatever to my words being quoted, but I did not suggest that we would in any way bring about a revolution by force.


George Reginald Geary: I am only intimating, what is perfectly clear from the extracts I have read, that hon. members opposite take the view that if this is not brought about by peaceful evolution then it will come to pass by revolution and force.


Miss MACPHAIL:: Yes, but not force by
us.


George Reginald Geary: I am not saying that.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: You are inferring it.


George Reginald Geary: I am stating the facts.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Some of your own
people are saying the same thing.


George Reginald Geary: Putting the best construction on the conditions in Russia that one may, one favourable to the Russian situation, I ask you, sir, if by any possibility there can be in this country any feeling that our people, our proletariat so-called, our farmers, would be satisfied with the condition of things under which people are obliged to five in Russia? There is mo other cooperative commonwealth suggested. I was looking for a definition; if there is any other my hon. friend, the member for Winnipeg North Centre will be able to indicate it in his reply. There was no looseness in the drafting of this resolution, because I looked back over the program that had been set out in Hansard, and I find that the same thing occurred there. Looking at page 1689, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is reported as saying that the Independent Labour party believe in the establishment of a cooperative commonwealth, with production for use and not for profit as its economic basis. And further on on the same page, that the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation has on its program the bringing about of-
-a federation of organizations whose purpose is the establishment in Canada of a cooperative commonwealth in which the basic principle regulating production-
And so on. So that the resolution now before the house follows in terms exactly the program or platform of the Independent Labour party formed in 1921 and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of which we hear now for the first time.
In that view was not the interjection of the Prime Minister perfectly apposite? Does it not mean that if we are to adopt a system of a cooperative commonwealth such as they have in Russia, the only one proposed, we thereby scrap confederation and the constitu-

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tion of this country? The observation was fully justified by the words of 'the resolution now before the house. It is a far cry, as the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) said, from such a resolution to one emphasizing the duty of citizens to work together and cooperate for the good of the state. With such an expression I would have no fault to find. I think it is our duty to work together, to do the best we cam by united effort to lift the pall of depression which has fallen so densely upon the world and in a lesser degree upon this country of ours.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre was good enough to say in closing that he trusted the discussion would not degenerate into a calling of names, but that on the other hand we would attempt to discuss seriously the principles which are at stake. May I say in all kindness that it is a pity the hon. member violated that sentiment before he gave it utterance. He does not advance his cause, nor do those who spoke after, or some of them; they rather cheapen it by levelling taunts such as were levelled at the Prime Minister of this country on matters that are purely personal. I resent that, as I would resent its being said of any hon member of this house. All I would say in passing is that the words of the hon. member in closing his speech were good. These words I hope we can follow, and discuss this matter on its merits and with a desire to elucidate some of the reasons for and against this action which is advocated.
My hon. friends advance a proposition. Now their business is to make that proposition good, and if they can make it good in this house or in the country they will have achieved their object. But they cannot make it good by deviating into attacks upon the house as a whole or upon individual members of it. As a matter of fact, the program ns I read it is exactly the program of socialism as we find it in the United States. Hon. members opposite know the magazine The World Tomorrow, which is purely socialistic. Their program follows the program of the socialist organization over there, without deviation in essentials, and it is interesting to note that that magazine was very strongly behind Norman Thomas, the presidential candidate of the socialist party at the last election-apparently a fine citizen, an upstanding man of character and conviction. Probably the socialist party was never better led than it was at the last presidential election and if I remember rightly that party got 
fewer votes, relatively and absolutely, than it has received in any other presidential election.
Now my hon. friends disclaim, and of course I accept their word, any intention to capitalize the unrest of the country. Let me say to them however that they are doing so, perhaps unconsciously; nevertheless, this movement does look towards the capitalization of unrest, and you will find that, I judge, from the comments that have been made at these different meetings. However, let us pass that. I refer them to the speech-and his speeches are always eloquent-of the hon. member for Bow River, a speech that suffered somewhat from the same disability to which I referred earlier. It was a speech that consisted, I submit without argument, in a diatribe against capitalism, and I think that what the hon. member was aiming at was not capitalism under the capitalistic system in all its branches, but that part of it which has evinced itself in the plundering by a few of the public domain or treasury or the pockets of the people; and in common with all other members of the house, I would take no exception, I would offer no objection to a campaign that could be carried on to clip the wings, to destroy the power of those people who have, by manipulation of stock markets, by manipulation in the offices and not in the plants, destroyed the productive power and the very solvency of many of our best industries. I have many in my mind at the moment. They do not need repetition, but the fact remains, and I think you will find this side of the house, as you will that comer, allied with any effort to destroy the possibility of that sort of thing occurring again.
My hon. friend from Bow River-and this is really what brought me to my feet-instanced a case in the police court in Toronto. From his description of the man who sat on the bench I think I know the magistrate; but he narrated something that seems incredible. He gave it with the tone of one who was watching an executioner. Some poor devil camie up and was asked a question or two and was given three months in gaol, and this he said went on hour after hour. I do not know much about the police courts; my practice does not happen to lie there; but I read of their proceedings and I have never heard of anything like that. I think my hon. friend has forgotten the circumstances to some extent. True it is that in some cases some poor destitute person comes before the court wanting shelter; he has asked during the night to be picked up-at any rate this was.

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Geary
the fact before we arranged matters better in Toronto-an order that he might be given warmth and shelter in one of the institutions, particularly the gaol farm near Toronto. Today however, under the honest and capable administration that exists in Toronto, our destitute are being taken care of in great numbers-the more's the pity-single men and married men and their families, and are receiving food and clothing and are given shelter. There has been no corruption. We get people not only from the city itself but many hundreds and thousands from outside; yet, with the aid of this government and the provincial government and our own treasury we have been able, I say with some pride, owing to the very careful and sympathetic administration of the resources entrusted to us, to take care of the destitute in the way I have described.
The proponent and supporters of this resolution went by very easy steps from the general determination to establish a cooperative commonwealth to certain measures which they thought this house should take under advisement at the moment. These I suppose are what are referred to in the resolution as the immediate steps which the government should take. My hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre went immediately to "economic planning." I believe my hon. friend from Red Deer introduced that in this house last session or perhaps longer ago than that. From that the hon. member went to banking and credit, currency and inflation, and of these matters I wish to speak for a moment, because apparently they are steps which are to be taken at once in order to bring about the condition of affairs which my hon. friends have described as a cooperative commonwealth. Later there will be opportunity for discussing these questions in detail.
There is however one observation I desire to make with regard to credit. I gather from the speeches made that the credit aimed at, the credit which it is desired to establish, is some sort of credit administered practically directly by the government of this country, directed or administered by a body answerable to this House of Commons. If that means that individual cases of credit are to be handled directly or in the manner I have indicated as indirect, by this House of Commons, then I can say at once that I am opposed to it. All my life I have wanted to be able to step up to some wicket and hand in my note and say, "I want this much," and get it. But I can conceive of no rhyme or reason, nor will my hon. friends when they come to think of it, why the money of this country, any more 53719-111 i
than the money of private people, should be handed over except on recognized and proper principles of loan. If, on the other hand, what my hon. friends aim at is a central bank as established in some other countries, there is something to be said for it as well as something to be said against it. There will arise difficulties, because in Canada we have no money market, for instance. It would mean placing in the hands of selected bankers an expensive institution, and you would still be in the hands of those who are anathema to my hon. friend-the bankers. We have a system now. How well it works I cannot tell; I do not profess to say. Under the Finance Act there is a certain loosening of credit over and above the gold coverage. In any event that is not a matter in regard to which immediate steps can be taken- It is a matter that requires study and investigation by a committee or commission, or in some way, so that the arguments pro and con can be stated in the house in such a way as to enable the house to make up its mind on the question.
As to inflation, there are two kinds so far put before us. One is that suggested by the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Coote) and, I think, the hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Maophail), which is simply the printing of money. If I remember rightly, the hon. member for Southeast Grey last year advanced this proposition-that we should 'build the St. Lawrence waterway; it would be expensive, but we could pay for it by bills freshly printed for the purpose. Yesterday the hon. member for Macleod said very much the same thing, and then proceeded to state how this money would be put into circulation. His proposal firstly was that a certain amount be given away, and secondly that we should use that money to build all sorts of public works and social enterprises and that sort of thing, most of which I do not think we need at the moment, and none of which we can afford.
With that sort of inflation we have this difficulty, which my hon. friends will recognize at once. If you inflate money you can buy in the end, with that inflated money, the same number of articles that you could have bought with the money as it stood at the price these articles then were. There may be stimulation for the moment; they expected it in Great Britain, but the results which they anticipated have proved to be entirely illusory; they have not received the benefits they hoped for. We would have the same result as far as internal trading is concerned, but if it was only an internal matter it would make no difference whether we printed dollar
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Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Geary
bills, hundred dollar bills, wampum, or anything you like, If we simply traded our money within the boundaries of this country, all would be well and good; but it is when you come to deal with matters outside the country that you have to rearrange your thoughts.
The other method suggested was to tie up our -currency t-o British sterling. Toward the end of last session the hon. member for Wey-burn (Mr. Young) gave a very lucid and forceful address with regard to this matter, one which would bear re-reading by hon. members. But sterling is not stabilized, it is often subject to the raids of speculators. During the last four weeks it has risen twenty-five points and we cannot anticipate what raids will be made by continental countries; it may be forced down to a point lower than it was four weeks ago. Sterling is subject to constant raids by continental financiers, and if we tied to sterling we would be tying to something unstable commercially. If we tied to sterling we would have to consider the matter of balancing the benefits against the cost. This country has been hard hit by a depreciated currency because it is a producer of primary products, but on the other hand Canada is a great debtor and unfortunately the substantial part of our indebtedness rests in the United States.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Does the hon. member mean that this country is particularly hard hit by a depreciated currency or by lack of a depreciated currency?	[DOT]


George Reginald Geary: By the depreciated currency on the other side. All countries that are primary producers are naturally in the same position. My hon. friends from the west who grow wheat instance this fact very cogently by stating that for the pound sterling they get so many fewer dollars then they used to, and they cannot buy upon the same basis. I think there is a great deal to be said for that contention, not in trading within the country but rather in the payment of debts. When we come to the resolution sponsored by the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Speakman) we shall have an opportunity of discussing this matter in detail.
To my mind there is no sense in inflation qua inflation, but there is a great deal to be said both for and against the present situation with regard to debts. If there be a sound method of dealing with the question of debts, we should seek it, but we should not seek to remedy that situation by unsound methods.

What I am really getting at in my cursory discussion of these principles of finance and currency is that this question is largely international. From the other side of the house we hear again and again of the interdependence of this country, that we cannot be an economic unit, that we cannot trade within our own borders, that we must seek for greater opportunities for trade, both within the empire and in other directions. Trade must be increased, but if you are going to trade with any country you must be able to conduct that trade on a system of exchange which is somewhat stable. The whole question of the stability of money is wrapped up with the question of the stability of exchange, which in turn is wrapped up with the question of international trade. We are to have a conference to discuss these very matters, and it seems to me that we would be most ill advised to make a drastic change in our currency at the present moment and to go to that economic conference with some system at which we had jumped or guessed.
It is all so easy to say that we can pay our debts by printing so much money, that we can build this work or that by printing so much money, that we can obtain advantages by depreciating our currency-if we can do it so can other countries. If it is so easy I wonder that it has not been done all over the world. Does anyone think that the Prime Minister of this country, the cabinet or the legislators in this house have any desire to do anything but what is best for the country? Surely that must not be suggested; it should not be suggested that proposals are rejected only out of some spirit of stubbornness.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Or perversity.


George Reginald Geary: Anything you like. Men of sense, men of discrimination and men of experience in business are doing their very best, and if they cannot agree with hon. members in the far corner, they should at least be given the credit of doing their best according to their lights and ability. They are seeking to remedy the situation.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: I have always said that it is the light that is wrong.


George Reginald Geary: To give my hon. friend credit, she is shedding just as much light as she knows how, but just how much she knows, I do not know.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: It is a little better than the Prime Minister's, and that is something.


George Reginald Geary: If my hon. friend wants
to carry on a personal war, that is none of my

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Geary
business. I am dealing with an international situation. My hon. friends have filled pages of Hansard with quotations, and may I say, again in all kindliness, that I do not think they get anywhere with such methods. To me a quotation is absolutely nothing unless I know the context, the local background, and the reasoning which has led the author to the conclusion cited. I fancy that if I dug into books on economy I could find quotations which would be diametrically opposed to each and every one advanced in this debate by my hon. friends. However, if they will examine the quotations which they have placed on Hansard during this debate I think they will find that without exception they are predicated upon a proper international system having been found and adopted.
I have directed my observations largely to this point; that as far as monetary systems go, we are interdependent. Each country is so tied up with other countries in trade that we are dependent upon the facilities provided for exchange. We can not go on our own, and we would be most ill advised to do anything of the sort. If we are able to get a full, frank and free discussion of this matter at the coming conference, it is more likely that the qeustion will be solved there than by anything adopted by this chamber and having a relation only to the bounds of this country.
Hon. gentlemen say: what is to be done? We have one problem of our own which is costing us an enormous amount of money- the Canadian National Railways. That is a matter immediately to our hand. There is also the one I mentioned a little while ago, the control of those who have plundered by their manipulations of the stock market. As the hon. member for Labelle has said, we have not exercised the forces of the law in that regard as much as they have in England. That is a matter ready to our hand.
There is also another vast problem to be solved, that of war debts and reparations. Reparations would not exist if war debts could be abolished. Reparations would be done away with if creditors would do away with war debts. If war debts were abolished there would be a great effect upon the morale of the people of the world. There would be a restoration of confidence and an abolition of fear which would go a long way towards setting this world once more upon the road to recovery.
These observations are not intended to be a discussion as close as one would like to make it of matters still to come up, but I
say once more that if we approach this question in the spirit eulogized this afternoon by the hon. member for Labelle, that of cooperation, that of getting together, that of putting our shoulders to the wheel and recognizing the difficulties under which we labour, then surely out of the united wisdom of this house will come measures which will react to the benefit of this country and probably lead us out of our difficulties.
Before I resume my seat I should like to say that the discussion in this house of the conditions prevailing throughout the country is not without bad effect. As long as we are moderate, reasonable and accurate in what we say with regard to conditions, I suppose no harm can be done. But it should be remembered that this country is not so badly off as many others. I believe, and I think other hon. members do also, that given a chance Canada will find her way out more quickly than any other country provided she has wise and proper guidance. If this country does not think the guidance it is receiving, the direction it has at the present moment, is right, the remedy lies with the house, with the electorate. Personally I earnestly feel that the government can not succumb at this moment to the temptations that beset it in regard to currency. It could popularize itself to many unthinking people by yielding to the clamour of some groups or members, but it will not do that unless it thinks it is right. I believe the government has a quality which must carry the admiration of the house in that it is strong and courageous, that it believes its principles and its policies are right, and that it will hew to the line, let the chips fall where they may; that it will pursue the course which in its wisdom it deems best for this country, and that in its deliberations and acts it will have regard for one thing only, that which is in the best and highest interests of Canada.


Mr. A. W. NEILL (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the last speaker (Mr. Geary) upon his well reasoned and moderate speech. I should like to take a few minutes to explain briefly the vote that I propose to give upon this subject. I had thought this matter was going to be treated, as we so often treat these resolutions, in an academic spirit, and that it would be ultimately possibly withdrawn or shelved, affording a very useful opportunity for hon. members to express their views on the situation as it presents itself to them. But I understand that the matter is going to a vote and I am confronted with the necessity of voting yes or no on the resolution before us.
1758	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Neill
This is not a question of condemning the government for their alleged misdeeds or of applauding them for what they have done; it simply stands by itself. But in that connection I must pay some attention to the statement of the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett), when he spoke as follows:
What the government is trying to do is to hold together this country-to maintain its financial and industrial integrity.
When a man in the position of the Prime Minister of Canada, with the opportunities for information he possesses and must possess, uses language like that, and says further'-[DOT]
We are dangerously near the limit of this country to pay additional taxes.
-we must all pay heed and give credence to the situation as he there outlines it. There are thousands, yes, probably hundreds of thousands of people in Canada today, who, if given an opportunity tomorrow would vote for this resolution. They would vote for it as it is, not because they understand it. If they do understand it, it is not because it has ever been explained to them. They would vote for it merely as an expression of their dissatisfaction, disgust, if you like, with existing conditions, and turning to any port in a storm, they would take the only means presented to them to express that dissatisfaction. The resolution is calculated to create, let us say, a vast political cave of Adullam. We are told in Scripture that David went down into the cave of Adullam, and there resorted unto him every one that was in distress, every one that was in debt and every one that was discontented. Can we get a better epitome of the situation as it is in Canada today?
This resolution is extremely comprehensive, and that is at once its strength and its weakness, its appeal and its danger. It is comprehensive enough to take in anybody and everybody. The prince and the pauper can find a common footing. The millionaire, disgusted because he has lost one-third of his millions, and the man in the breadline who has lost his all, are equally welcome, and can find common ground for entering this political cave. Conservative and communist are alike welcome. A disillusioned workingman can meet there the millionaire or the disappointed political grafter who is turning against the party that he formerly supported. They can all meet and they will all be welcome in this political cave of Adullam.
But is it wise for us at this time to adopt the attitude of a wounded animal, which, injured by he knows not what, blindly kicks out or bites at the nearest object within his reach? I know, of course we all know, how 
wide is the distress in Canada, and that the existing discontent is general and entirely justified. It would be idle to deny that. I shall admit further that the workman and the farmer have too long been the victims of the moneyed and manufacturing interests of Canada, and there is ground for saying that it is about time this condition changed. But will it improve .'the general condition of Canada to create another tyranny, somewhat similar, another class government, of course a somewhat different one from the system under whose sway we have been so long? I hardly think so.
The hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa) this afternoon suggested more cooperation. Suppose we try something along that line before we go to the extreme of a cooperative commonwealth. Let us adopt a national government. We have had precedents for that in many countries throughout the world. Let us forget party politics and get together the best men on both sides. There are many things that readily suggest themselves that can be done to improve existing conditions, but I have not time to deal with them all. Last year the Secretary of State (Mr. Cahan) said, I believe-and if I am wrong I apologize-that no law could be framed to prevent the watering of stock. That is nonsense. A system could easily be found that would pass on every issue of stock by every corporation, and if it were found there was watering of stock to an improper extent at the expense of ignorant buyers, we could refuse to allow it to be issued. That evil and a very great one, could be easily checked.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I do not think the
Secretary of State put it in those words. In fairness to him, I think he said that there was no law to prevent people from buying watered stock, because they could buy it if they wanted to do so.


Alan Webster Neill: If I am wrong, I withdraw
the statement, but I certainly had the impression he said there was no way by which it could be prevented. However, if it were not offered for sale, of course people could not buy it. What brought ruin to many a poor and many a rich man in 1929 was the collapse of the stock market. That could largely have been prevented in its most disastrous effects by forbidding gambling on margin, which was the cause of impoverishing many people. I need not go into that, because it would take too long.
We could inaugurate a system of unemployment insurance of far-reaching effect, not

Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Neill
attempting to deal with conditions today, because that would be hopeless, but looking toward the future. Let us do the Joseph act reported in Scripture: in the years of plenty he created reserves against years of want. These things could be brought forward and adopted without upsetting our whole fiscal system, and I do not find them in what I have gathered of the program of the cooperative commonwealth. I have to vote either yes or no on this question, and I find that if we pass the resolution, the house and the government will be bound immediately-note that, immediately-to take measures looking to the setting up of a cooperative commonwealth. Are we really prepared to do this, or shall we vote for it only because we think it is popular at the moment?
If I vote for it, I am in all honesty committed to it. I have to go home and explain it to my people, but I do not understand it because it has never been definitely explained to me and I doubt very much whether the leaders of the party could explain it in the language that would cover the whole ground. It is entirely too vague for my purpose and taste. It suffices not to turn aside pertinent questions such as the Prime Minister asked this afternoon when he pointed out that the nationalization of land was a provincial matter. It will not do to pass that off as a detail. These things are part and parcel of what we are asked to vote for and we ought to know them.
I wonder what would be the first six things they would do if they got into power? Or let us ask, even the first two? The hon. member for Battle River (Mr. Spencer) read out a partial program but it was only a suggested proposal he gave and I have a somewhat different program I took from a newspaper. He was the first man in the debate who gave anything tangible to go upon, and he stated even what he suggested might not come within the scope of practical politics for the next fifteen years.
One of the first things suggested is the abolition of money, at least of all such as we must have if we want to trade with foreign nations. Perhaps that is an excessive statement, but that is the spirit of it. The money that would be created, in the sense I understand their proposals, would be of little use outside Canada.
Then there is the nationalization of land. Do we realize what that means? From every man who has a home which he has hewed out of the wilderness or a house built in town, his property is to be taken away. These farms and houses pay heavy taxes at
present to keep up the respective governments; who is going to pay them in future?
I wonder. Let us grasp the idea: this means all land, and in addition we are to have nationalization of industry, because you have to go the whole hog. I have to ask myself do I realize all that that involves? Am I prepared to vote for that?
Then we come to another feature: Production for use and not for profit. I have not time to deal with that, but that means simply Russia and nothing else. I do not agree with the hon. member for West York (Mr. Lawson) when he says that the whole thing is communism; he seeks to damn it for political reasons. There is good in the cooperative commonwealth program, but that particular feature of it is communism pure and simple. There is no question about that; it cannot be explained in any other way. It is not socialism: it is communism, with all that it involves, because you have to take it all, and we are being asked to put it into force today or tomorrow. I know that it would be popular with many people in my constituency if I voted for the resolution, because it has a sort of specious appeal, but I have a responsibility to those people, not to look behind, but to look ahead. These working men trusted me. They gave me the opportunity to come here and educate myself in these matters, to see and learn and observe. They gave me the time and the opportunity, and they would demand foresight on my part and can hold me responsible if I were to catch at the passing fancy of a moment and then go back to them and say: I have landed you in something the end of which I can only guess. I am responsible to them, and I accept my responsibility. I shudder to think of the condemnation that would be my just guerdon if I took a step that I felt might end in disaster and make their condition far worse than it is now, if that be possible, and it is.
I do not think I can be accused of favouring capitalism. My record in this house, I think I can safely say, has been one of radicalism. I have supported and am willing to go to considerable lengths in supporting old age pensions, unemployment insurance, health and other social legislation. I would go further than we have done, but I must have a clear vision of where we are going. I want to know where it is going to land before I start the rock rolling down the mountainside, and I cannot see where we are going under this program. I do not know and I have not been told what benefits it would really confer.
1760	COMMONS
Cooperative Commonwealth-Mr. Neill
The hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland), in his able speech, made, not an argument, but perhaps the very best appeal, although a specious one. His appeal was this, that the two great parties have failed to produce anything better, that their system has failed, so let us now try this. It is a plausible argument; I do not know that it is a sound one. He says in effect: You have made a mess of things, and so now try our policy, which has at least the merit of being new and untried. That is all the merit it has, and newness and untriedness is not always the very best recommendation in these days. When we are in deadly economic peril, in which all of us are involved-for the man in the bread line and the Prime Minister with all his wealth have just the same thing at stake, their all, and if we go down we will all go down in one common catastrophe-it is not the time for rash experiments by wellmeaning theorists, undoubtedly with the best intentions, but lacking experience and cohesion. How long could a combination of farmers who essentially must believe in dear food and cheap labour coalesce with the labour party who must in the very nature of things believe in cheap food and high wages? And when we see the deep anxiety of the Finance minister as to whether he can make ends meet and make his budget balance, is it wise to give out to the financial world that we are contemplating going along this path, this new and untried path, a path on which we cannot even see around the nearest corner, a path whose main recommendation is that it is new and untried? Are these the days and these the times to go into things such as that? I am under no obligation to either great party in this house and could readily give my support to any scheme that seemed to offer a reasonable hope of a workable measure of reform. But like the man from Missouri I must be shown. If I cannot see the distant scene and ultimate benefit, I must surely be shown some benefit in the immediate future, and until I see that, and something more, at least the promise of some permanent benefit, I shall be somewhat reluctantly compelled to vote against the resolution.


Mr. ANDERSON (Halton):: I would ask
you to call it eleven o'clock, Mr. Speaker,



ADJOURNMENT-BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Richard Bedford Bennett: Tomorrow is government day, and we propose to go into supply, on trade and commerce estimates. We were in supply on trade and commerce once this session, and we should be able to take them on Friday,

but if there is any question as to that, we can do so by consent. I do not know whether it was ever contemplated when the rule was made that once being in supply in the session you may go into supply any day with respect to those items. We were in supply this session already on the trade and commerce items in the supplementary estimates.


Mr. MACKENIE KING:: Have any other departments besides trade and commerce been in supply this session?


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, the right hon. gentleman may remember moving an amendment on going into supply in connection with agriculture, and a point of order was raised whether its subject matter had not been covered by the debate on the address. The debate continued for two days and was concluded on the third, when we went into supply and took four or five departments. Perhaps the right hon. gentleman will remember that we took pensions and national health, trade and commerce, civil government, and there was one other, if my memory serves me.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The proposal
is to go on with trade and commerce estimates tomorrow?


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Friday, February 3, 1933