1934-03-20

[Stage Direction]
Second report of the select standing committee on agriculture and colonization.-Mr. Senn.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. W. D. EULER (North Waterloo):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Manion). I believe he stated yesterday that the annual report of the Canadian National Railways would be tabled very soon. I would like to ask whether or not the government has decided on the establishment of the usual committee on the Canadian National Railways, and whether in that event both the report and the estimate which has just been submitted will be referred to that committee.


Hon. R. J. MANION (Minister of Railways and Canals):: On the day I table the report I intend definitely to answer that question, though I think there is no reason to believe that we would object in any way to the establishment of the committee, if the house desires. Apparently the house does, so we will probably establish it, and submit both the report and the estimate to that committee.



SHIPS CLEARANCE PAPERS

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. PIERRE F. CASGRAIN (Charlevoix-Saguenay) (Translation): Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the hon. Minister of Marine (Mr. Duranleau) where navigators may obtain permits in French, when leaving various Canadian ports; and also, guide books relating to marine charts and tidal records. I received complaints from navigators, who, last year, endeavoured unsuccessfully to obtain these documents in French.
Mr. BARRETTE (Translation):: Name
them.


Hon. ALFRED DURANLEAU (Minister of Marine) (Translation):: The question of the hon. member will serve as notice; I shall inquire and report.



MR. EDGAR BOUTET

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. JEAN FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, is the government aware that Edgar Boutet, employed as secretary to the executive of the Post Office Department at a salary of $2,100 per year, from December 1, 1933, was present in the Press Gallery during the sitting of the house, at various times, since the beginning of the session? Is the government also aware that said Edgar Boutet is still the correspondent of the newspapers "Llllustration" of Montreal, and the "Journal" of Quebec, in which he writes false and unfounded articles about the members of this house? I should like the government to furnish me with full information relating to these two questions; moreover, whether the said Edgar Boutet is still in the employ of the Post Office Department; if not, when was he retired?


Right Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Prime Minister) :: Mr. Speaker, the private secretaries
and chief executive clerks to ministers are, of course, political appointees, and in the main they discharge political duties. If it is thought desirable that one of the secretaries to a minister should attend in the press gallery for the purpose of giving information to his minister, it has been the custom to do so, and always will be, so long as the offices of secretary and assistant secretary obtain. I have no knowledge of this particular case, but I merely mention that is so with respect to these matters in general. Whether or not Mr. Boutet is engaged in supplying information to journals favourable to his chief I cannot at the moment say, but if he is I

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
may say he is following a custom which has been pursued by men in his position since the position came into being, and will continue long afteT he has ceased to occupy his present post.
Mr. POU'LIOT (Translation): This gives him no right to lie.



PENSION ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. F. G. SANDERSON _ (South Perth): Yesterday I directed a question to the Minister of Pensions and National Health (Mr. MacLaren). The question was one I had asked previously, namely, on February 6, last. When the minister replied yesterday I was unable to hear him. The answer I saw in Hansard this morning is ambiguous, and does not convey anything. I shall put the question to him again. Is it the intention of the government this session to bring down any amendment or amendments to the Pension Act?
Hon. MURRAY MacLAREN (Minister of Pensions and National Health):: My answer
is very similar to the one I gave yesterday: The government has not considered the subject. Yesterday the hon. member asked whether it was the intention of the government to bring down legislation, and I said the answer was in the negative. In other words, the government has not considered the subject.
Mr. (SANDERSON: If I may be permitted to say so, when I put the question to the minister on February 6, his answer was that the matter was under consideration.


Murray MacLaren: I shall have to look
into the matter and see what the circumstances were. Probably the circumstances at that time were different from those obtaining to-day.



AMENDMENT PROPOSING COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF THE NATION

[Stage Direction]
Hon. EDGAR N. RHODES (Minister of Finance) moved that the house go into committee of supply.
Mr. HENRI BOURASSA (Labelle):: Mr. Speaker, in the course of the debate on the address I stated that in my opinion "strong measures" would have to be taken to remedy the evils under which Canada is suffering. I further suggested that the most important of these measures could not be enacted into law or practice unless there was some degree of
cooperation between federal and provincial authorities, and likewise between the various parties and factions in this house.
Some of those measures I propose to expound to-day, realizing of course that they are not all of equal value and importance, and further, that they could not all be put into execution at once. But I sincerely believe that most, if not all, of them are worthy of being considered without bias by every member of this house. I propose to offer them, so far as my temperament permits, in the most lenient and conciliatory manner. If, at times, my words sound harsh in the ears of some of my fellow-members, I pray them in all sincerity to disregard the sound and to consider the intention, which, I assure them, is altogether friendly and conciliatory.
In order to cover the ground, and as well to remain within the rules of this house, I think it proper to resort to a time honoured procedure of the British House of Commons, "that grand inquest of the nation," as it has been called for centuries; and therefore at the end of my remarks I shall move, seconded by the hon. member for Comox-Albemi (Mr. Neill), in amendment to the motion that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair for the house to go into committee of supply:
That the house, while prepared to grant to His Majesty all necessary supply to carry on the administration of the country, is of the opinion that a special committee of the house should be appointed to inquire into the state of the nation and suggest prompt and effective measures of economic and social reform.
With regard to financial matters proper, I propose to be as short and concise as possible; first, because I have not the slightest pretension to being an expert in such matters, and secondly, because they have been and are daily being discussed in this house in various forms. May I say to the Prime Minister that I quite sympathize with him, in this regard? I read with pleasure and sympathy the remarks he made last night about the same questions coming up over and over again. Of course that is unavoidable; and my only purpose in referring to some of these questions is simply to cover the ground and indicate the action on finance, taxation, trade, and social reform, which I think is imperatively needed.
First-I will not say first in importance, but it is the most obvious factor in the situation-is the debt, federal, provincial, municipal, corporative, individual. Undoubtedly Canada, more perhaps than any other country, is overburdened with debt. Undoubtedly, again, it ought to be the main concern of every government, and I use the word government in

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
the broadest sense to include not only political governments but industrial governments as well, to search unceasingly for some practical means of reducing that burden. Many have been suggested. My friends to the left, on various occasions in years past, and this year again, have suggested what they call the inflation or reflation of money, in order to increase the purchasing power of the masses of the people, and also to enable debtors to pay their debts with less money than they received. I have read much on inflation in theory, and also as applied in various countries of the world. Is it because of the infirmity of my mind, or perhaps because of what my good friend the Secretary of State (Mr. Cahan) termed once my infernal French logic? but I have not yet been able quite to agree with my friends to the left, as to the beneficial results of inflation.
When they speak of controlled inflation, well and good; but the experience of the world in the last ten or fifteen years-I might say centuries, because inflation is nothing new: Philip the Fair of France, in the fourteenth century, resorted to inflation in his own way; the French Convention, also, when it created the assignats; that was inflation with a vengeance-long experience and contemporary history teach us that controlled inflation soon becomes uncontrollable inflation.
But what makes me more doubtful still is the obvious fact frequently pointed out by the Prime Minister-and it ought to be obvious to all-that you cannot compare the situation of Canada with that of many other countries which have resorted to inflation. No system of economics can operate in exactly the same way in two or more countries situated in different circumstances. Canada has enormous natural resources to be developed in the future; but, at present, Canada owes not only to her own nationals, as does France for example, apart from her war debts, but we owe also to various countries, and more especially to the United States and England. How would a policy of inflation result in a settlement of our debt to England, on the one hand, and to the United States on the other? Of course, if you could get the British and American governments to maintain equilibrium between their currencies and ours, if you could get our British and American creditors, holders of our bonds, federal, provincial, municipal and railway bonds, to accept payment in terms of our own currency, well and good. But will they?
One of the main reasons given by our friends to the left was that a controlled inflation resulting, iit was said last year, in bring-
ing the Canadian dollar on a par with sterling, would have a tremendously stimulating effect upon the sale of our wheat, for example. If I remember aright, the pound sterling, as compared with our dollar, stood then around S3.50. It has been quoted for some weeks now at $5.10 of our currency; but I have yet to learn, either from the press or from any information given to this house, that the price of our wheat has risen in proportion to the downfall of our dollar. That is what it is; it is not the pound sterling which has gone up, it is our dollar which has gone down. Where is the benefit to the seller of wheat or of any other commodity in an inflation such as we have had?


Mr. LUCHKOVICH:: Was that not the cause of the rise in the price of wheat last year?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Perhaps it was. I am not conversant with those matters, I am simply suggesting that it has not had all the effects which it was expected it would have.
_ In discussing these questions of currency, inflation and deflation, and later on, taxation, my main concern is for that class of people which is not represented by any party in this house. The lower middle class do not belong to any labour organization, to any farmers' organization, to any manufacturers' association or to any organization of business men or social workers, in the broad sense of the word. They receive very little consideration at the hands of municipal, provincial and federal governments. In this country as in every other country, this class is the mainstay of social order; it is the cement which maintains a certain degree of harmony and conciliation between the various classes of the community. Inflation would ruin most of these people in Canada, as it has done in Germany, in France, in Italy. It seems to me that inflation is simply a policy of ruining Peter in order to enrich Paul, and Paul is not enriched in the long run. If you raise the prices of those things which you produce, you also raise the prices of things you need. The farmer, the labourer and everyone else is in turn producer and consumer. I am afraid it will take a much bigger brain than that possessed by any hon. member of this house to work out a sound policy on those lines; and we must have longer experience in order to be sure that the results will be permanent. I pass on.
Many words have been uttered with regard to a direct reduction of our debts. This matter was before the house last evening. I was only in the chamber a very short time and I had not the privilege of following the

_____	Social Reforms-Mi. Bourassa
debate; but before coming down this afternoon I read carefully the speech delivered by the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett). If one considers only the money question and the reflex action of brutal repudiation, in whole or in part, upon our credit abroad or our credit at home, the arguments propounded last evening by the Prime Minister are unanswerable. But I repeat, credit is not the only thing and the maintenance of the money power should not be our main consideration. I admit that the problem is baffling; but all efforts should be made to find a means of reducing our debts. So far as I am concerned, I think a partial repudiation, backed up by statements showing what we owe, what we earn, what our people can pay and what they cannot pay, would be more honest and less hypocritical than the so-called inflation policies which have been pursued by all governments in Europe, even by the British government when it went off the gold standard. We must prepare our creditors, both foreign and national, to accept from us, should the crisis last, a fair compensation. They will have to, in any event, in a few years. That is the only honest way in which a debtor nation can liberate itself; this should be the action taken by Canada to liberate the present and all generations to come. But if we are to present a statement of our financial situation to our creditors we must be prepared to place a levy upon the wealth of this country. This must be done to show our goodwill in meeting our creditors. Later on, when I speak of taxation, I shall have more to say of this.
As the Prime Minister said last evening, we cannot think of our indebtedness without considering the situation with which we are confronted in our railway systems. The hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler), with whom I agree more often since he is no longer a minister of the crown, has courageously and openly suggested amalgamation. The genial and clever Minister of Railways (Mr. Manion), whom curiously enough I like better since he has become a minister than I did when he was in opposition-as we say in French, he is a minister born although an Irishman-has intimated also that we must prepare for amalgamation. I am no expert; but as an old student of history I should like to express the view that it is always risky to adopt any measure of a permanent character in an effort to solve a great problem during a time of panic and crisis.


Robert James Manion: I do not like to interrupt, but if the hon. gentleman will permit me?
Mr. BOURASSA; Certainly; I have ample time to-day.


Robert James Manion: I am sorry to have to correct my hon. friend but I have never intimated that we should prepare for amalgamation.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Perhaps that is my French logic again; but I thought I could read that in the excellent speech which the minister delivered, I think on the second reading of Bill No. 25. But it does not matter, and I accept the minister's correction.
Instead of deciding immediately that there shall be no amalgamation or that there shall be immediate amalgamation, why not con-tine to utilize and extend, as an experiment, the provisions of the act passed last year and continued in Bill No. 25 passed at this session? I mean by this, to strengthen the control of the body created to harmonize our two systems, subject always to the supreme authority of the state. The state may be represented by this cabinet to-day, perhaps by that cabinet to-morrow or perhaps by the cabinet over here the day after.


An hon. MEMBER:: Never!


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: It does not matter; it
does not make much difference. Napoleon the third, who finished his reign in folly, but who was a good conspirator and, like some of my friends in the three parties, a shrewd politician, once said to one of his ministers, "Never say never in politics."


Richard Bedford Bennett: Balfour said the same
thing.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Oh yes, of course; it is obvious. It is very prudent.
I was going to say that whatever party is in power, it has not the right, in the fulfilment of its trusteeship to parliament and to the people of Canada, to abandon its supreme control over any body created by parliament for carrying out any of the powers of administration delegated by parliament to the government. But with that reservation of principle, I say that the body charged with the management of our railways should have much greater powers over what I call capital issues. It should receive-always with the same reservation-the power to suppress useless lines and to sell some of those costly hotels, ships and other works of luxury built up during our years of folly and extravagance. And, in conjunction with the state, it should devise means of reducing or contracting the debt of the two railways, both its capital stock and its debenture stock. Above all-

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
and this I suppose is on the way towards accomplishment; at least I hope so-there should be an end to foolish capital expenditures; there should be stringent economy in operation, compatible with effective service.
In the Duff report a good deal has been made of the competition to which the railways are subject, thanks to the development of the truck and autocar service. May I repeat what I have stated more than once in this parliament, in the old days as well as in more recent times? Why do our great services, why do our governments never go outside the British Empire or the United States to look for examples? On this very question of automobile competition, had they gone to France, they would have found that the great railway companies in France, and more especially the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee -the P.L.M.-instead of waiting until competition had become disastrous, instead of bewailing the condition, and asking for special legislation to maintain their monopoly, took hold of the road traffic and put into operation the most splendid automobile service that exists in any of the countries I know of; so that an Englishman can land at Boulogne or Calais, and traverse the whole of France, stopping at any place he likes, putting up at the best hotels or in more modest places, reaching the coast of Italy by way of that beautiful country, the upper Seine valley, the Rhone valley, the Cote d'Azur, right through, by means of autocars owned and operated by that great railway system. Why did not our chiefs of railways take a short trip to France to study that system before asking the provincial governments or the federal government to take steps to do away with the competition against them?


William Daum Euler: They were watching each
other too closely.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Just one word more with regard to railways. It has been frequently stated in this house that we are handicapped by the fact that the Canadian Pacific Railway is an independent company. Well, I cannot agree with that. The Canadian Pacific Railway is a creation of parliament. It was nourished by parliament, of course at the expense of the country. I do not say, unduly. I have the greatest admiration for the pioneers of that great system; and while I do not approve of every detail connected with it, generally I quite approve of the help given to the Canadian Pacific Railway by the government of Sir John A. Macdonald. But now, where are we? Where is the company and where is the country? Without discussing the manner in which it has been administered

in the last ten or twenty years, without entering into details, I say that the Canadian Pacific Railway is now indebted to this country to a sufficient degree to force the government morally to interfere in its management; and I will say why. We have guaranteed a loan by the banks to that company of $60,000,000. The Prime Minister has said that that loan is amply covered by a block of shares deposited with the banks. In case of default, will those shares belong to the government or to the banks? If they belong to the banks, it is wrong. My experience in private life and my fairly long experience in public life has taught me that he who guarantees pays, directly or indirectly. Now, whether in order to see that the guarantee given remains good -what we call in French legal parlance " le gage du pret "-or whether in anticipation of the day when the government will have to pay this $60,000,000 or a part thereof to the banks, it is the duty of the government to keep a close hand upon the administration of the Canadian Pacific Railway, to see that its finance is managed in such a way that not only will it maintain its own credit for the benefit of its shareholders, but also for the sake of our own treasury and for the sake of the people of Canada. I will put it in a short way, one which I am sure will appeal to my good friend from New Westminster (Mr. Reid):	He who pays the piper calls
the tune. I might add that if I had anything to do with the payment of this piper I would sometimes call different tunes.
This brings me to government expenses. Again I lay down the general proposition that in the circumstances through which this country is passing, a complete stop should be put to every luxury expense, if I may call it so. In this respect I am sorry to differ from the Prime Minister. When I read in the newspapers that the American Senate had, for once in a century and a half, done Canada a great service by rejecting the St. Lawrence treaty, for the first time in my life I sang within myself, Hail Columbia! I do not say, mind you, that the time will never come when that great scheme, that great plan, cannot and ought not to be carried on. But I repeat the old Latin proverb:	Est
modus in rebus. We should never forget that.


An hon. MEMBER:: What does that mean?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: There ought to be a mode and a time in doing things.


An hon. MEMBER:: Chaque chose a son
temps.

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Yes. I lay down the same general proposition with regard to public works generally, but that I reserve for the chapter devoted to unemployment.
I come now to ordinary administrative expenditures, and I am beginning to enter ground upon which I am afraid I shall find myself in disagreement with most of my colleagues. I believe there should be a stiff reduction in several of the public services. Take the rural mail. I state frankly before the house what I have said in my own constituency: As representing a rural constituency I have always been opposed to rural mail delivery.


An hon. MEMBER:: Do not say that.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: That is my opinion. I am expressing my own opinion with which my hon. friends may disagree. All I ask of them is to bear with me in patience as I have done for many days and nights when I have listened to them. I believe rural mail delivery has been of no real benefit to the farmers; it has helped to destroy rural life; connected with the postal delivery of the large departmental stores, it has helped to kill local trade, to destroy local activities, with the other consequences that I shall point out when I come to the social problems proper.
Again I am going to speak of a matter which probably will raise still more objection and protest. I refer to war pensions. In order to shelter myself, so to speak-although I am used to storm and bad weather-I shall quote two or three paragraphs of an article which appeared in a journal published in Ottawa, one never known to be a mouthpiece of rebellion or of extreme pacifism or of antipathy toward the returned soldiers. In an article published in the Ottawa Journal on October 13 last I Tead this:
In 1918, the number of thosereturned soldiers-
-receiving pensions was 25,000. Five years later, 1923, the number had grown to 63,000. To-day it is over 90,000. Where in 1918, when the war closed, the cost of pensions in the treasury-
I suppose that means "to" the treasury.
-was a little over $7,000,000, it has grown in 1933 to over $40,000,000. More than 240,000 people in Canada-soldiers and dependents of soldiers-are helped by these pensions.
Then, as a comment, the newspaper says:
Canada has passed through three years of financial crisis. With hundreds of thousands of people unemployed, and purchasing power destroyed, and the crushed taxpayer unable to meet the treasury's demand for money to meet
calls for debt and relief, the situation has been a desperately difficult one. Yet through these three years, notwithstanding a fierce need for retrenchment, the country has gone on paying war pensions, has added steadily and heavily to the pensions roll.
This is something which veterans, fair minded and responsible, should surely bear in mind. They must realize something of the country's position; of its declining revenues; of the obligations it has had to face; of the calls that have been made upon it and upon the country's financial resources.
I shall not insist any more upon that point to-day.
Now, over and above war pensions, we have a frightful increase in the payment of doles to the unemployed, with a threat of a permanent financial burden, placed upon the country, on account of an unemployment which will last until we adopt stringent measures to reestablish the balance between city dwellers and rural population. What is the result? First, as regards finance applied to social needs, the war pensions and the dole system are, and will remain for years to come, an insurmountable obstacle to the adoption of a set plan of social insurance for the benefit of all classes in Canada. Without reopening old sores, without discussing whether we were right in participating in the war, in enlisting, first voluntarily, then under pressure, and thirdly by conscription, the youth of Canada to go and wage a war foreign to America, may I put this question to any fairminded man in the house? Not only to my pacifist friends, but equally to the brave men who have shown their sincerity in going to war on their own account and have not contented themselves with preaching war to others and remaining at home to enrich themselves, as so many warmongers and patriots did from 1914 to 1918, I put this question:	Is it really a
moral obligation on the part of Canada to maintain a body of men with their wives and children, men who were induced to fight for four years out of Canada, to destroy life and property, in a just war if you like-I am not discussing that? If it is, what do hon. members think of our moral obligation to thousands of good men and women who have worked all their life in Canada, for Canada, to give children to Canada and money to the exchequer of Canada? Are we going to make them lose, after fifty years of hard life, all that they have saved, and then die in misery, in order, first, to pay our creditors 100 cents on the dollar, and, second, to keep up two privileged classes, the war pensioners and the dole receivers?
So far as ordinary government expenditure is concerned, I have only one word to say.


Miss MACPHAIL:: I do not intend to.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: I have now to deal with a still more disagreeable subject, that is taxation. But we have to face it. We do not want to repudiate our debts-I accept the word of the Prime Minister. We have not yet found a means of restricting them. There remain only two things-curtailment, stringent curtailment of expenditure, and increase of taxation.
In that connection I want to point out
the reasons for a capital levy. At first sight

such a proposal is distasteful; all taxation is distasteful. Unfortunately this suggestion has been presented, not only in Canada but in most countries, by socialists, by would-be revolutionists, under the name of conscription of wealth. I might ask, as has been asked frequently: If it was right to conscript men to destroy, is it wrong to conscript wealth to reconstruct? But I will leave that aside. If the men of wealth, if the great corporations of this country understood the situation as it is, there would be no need to conscript wealth; they would themselves enlist freely, voluntarily, and help in reducing the debt. For my part may I say that after forty years of assiduous labour I have been able to put aside, out of the money I earned from year to year, about $25,000. I suppose my friends to the left will not consider me as a wicked capitalist. I had a little inheritance which, as I felt in duty bound to do, I have transmitted intact to my children. What I received from my parents I reserved for my children; and as soon as they come of age I give them their share according to what I consider their merits. The other is what I have saved. Now I tell you quite frankly that I would be mighty glad to give, out of that $25,000, $1,000 to the government to help reduce the debt. But it should be on three conditions: first, that every Canadian should pay his share in the same proportion ; second, that the whole of that contribution should go to the reduction of debt; and third, that by courageous measures of economy and taxation, budgets should be balanced hereafter. By doing so I would consider my $1,000 well placed.
The difficulty is that big business men, with their genius and perhaps also their greed, will not pay their share voluntarily; but I think the time has come for governments, starting with the federal government, to educate public opinion, and particularly the opinion of those who possess, that such a form of taxation, far from being a measure of confiscation, would be the safest measure of conservation. Once they have been taxed in order to alleviate the burden of public debts, once the economic situation generally has been bettered by such a diminution of debt, then their affairs will grow, and what they keep of their wealth will be better preserved by having paid some of it to maintain or rather to restore the finances of the country, than by trying to enjoy it unduly until the crash comes.
But there is more than that, sir. Of course I admit that I am an old-timer and have queer ideas. At * times I seem to be the representative duly appointed, morally speak-

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
ing, of all the cranks in Canada from Sydney to Prince Rupert; from some of the letters I receive I think I can claim that title fairly. But I also receive communications from people of fair minds and right thought belonging to all parties. The thought which I am going to express is that which I think is in the minds, and even more in the heart and conscience, of a large number of Canadians. This generation, to which we belong, responsible as it is-not all the individuals but the whole community under the law of solidarity-this generation which is responsible for the follies which preceded the war, railway follies and others, which is responsible for the follies of the war, which is responsible for the perhaps greater follies which followed the war, has not the right to leave to the next generation, to your children and mine, the full burden of the payment for our follies. What would you think of a prodigal father who, having piled up debt after debt in debauchery and extravagance, would say to his creditors: My children will pay you? That would be worse than the cruelty described by Christ as being almost impossible: "Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?" That is what we are doing.
I am now coming near to the day when I will have to render account to my God for what I have done in private and public life, and I do not want to leave this world without having protested against the injustice that will be perpetrated if we leave future generations to pay the whole of the debts that have been piled up thanks to our lack of foresight, to say no more.
Now, coming to ordinary taxation-I am sorry that my hon. friend the Minister of Finance is not here but perhaps his attention will be called to just one instance I am going to give.
I am in favour of maintaining and perhaps of increasing, with care, the income tax. But I point out here publicly that which I have shown to various ministers who have succeeded to office, either in the treasury or in the Department of National Revenue, since I came back to parliament. Since last year, taxation is imposed on government annuities over SI,200 and on ordinary revenues over $1,000. I must say that owing to a judgment rendered in 1858 by a good English judge who had more knowledge of law than of economics, or even of simple mathematics, an annuity is considered as being total income, which is of course absurd and nonsensical. Then, in our devotion to everything British, a judge-I was going to say an equally stupid
judge, but I shall not say that-a judge in Canada copied the judgment delivered in England, and gave the same decision.
I do not wish to carry the argument to greater length, but shall simply give some figures. Suppose a man of sixty years decided to invest a sum of $25,000 in government bonds. Under the last issue he could get $25,000 worth of bonds for $23,362.50. In twenty years time-and I am referring to a twenty-year issue-he would receive $20,000 in interest. That is, he would receive interest for twenty years at the rate of $1,000 a year, and would not pay a single cent of income tax. Suppose another man, the same age, had taken an equal sum of $23,362.50 and purchased from the same government a life annuity. He would receive annually $2,247.47. Of course, everybody knows that that includes a revenue of only four per cent on the S23,362.50. The rest is capital reduction. He would receive in interest, during these twenty years, $18,690. But during that same period, under the present rate, he would pay $638 of income tax. Is that just? That is a capital levy. I have just said that I have no objection to a capital levy, but let it be a levy on all capital. Why pick out a class of people who have been invited to purchase annuities? I have before me circidars sent by government agents inviting such purchases. Of course those purchases are very advantageous to the government, because the capital is never totally paid back. It is paid by instalments, according to tables of mortality which are very well calculated. This procedure is much more advantageous to the state than would be the selling of bonds. Nevertheless, you let go scot free the man who purchases a bond, and who will receive your interest of four and a half per cent; and then you tax a man who is only drawing an annuity. If he dies within twenty years you inherit the portion of his capital he has not received, and besides, you have collected taxation. That shows how all matters of taxation have to be scrutinized, and I believe this statement applies to almost every form of it.


William Daum Euler: Is the hon. member quite certain that moneys received under the annuities system are taxable?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Yes, under the amendment of last year there is a margin of $1,200. I have deducted the $1,200 from the $2,247 which he received, and state that he is taxed for the difference.


William Daum Euler: He can get only $1,200.

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: That is the margin.


William Daum Euler: I do not wish to interrupt my hon. friend. At the moment I think only SI,200 can be paid in annuities, and that is not taxable.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: Yes, now. And this also is a mistaken policy, because if there is one form of investment which any government should invite, it would be those annuities. But at the request, or rather, under pressure from the life insurance companies, the government limited the amount. They have thereby lost millions of dollars upon which they would have paid only four per cent, while they have launched debentures giving four and a half per cent, plus commissions to brokers.
I am not going to dwell longer with the subject of taxation, because there may be an opportunity in the debate on the budget. I shall not mention the sales tax, excise taxes and so on, but shall simply lay down three principles which I hope the government, and the Minister of Finance in particular, will consider.
First, if we want to have some degree of financial balance and social justice, there must be an understanding between federal and provincial authorities, including of course municipal authorities, as to the manner or the mode in which they levy taxation upon the various communities in this country. In some provinces we have double income tax, while in others there is biut one. A consideration of this matter should be the main object of the next conference between federal and provincial authorities.
Second, in every form of taxation, either direct or indirect, I urge upon the government the necessity of caring for the small trader, the small industrialist, the small proprietor, even the small capitalist or what they call in France "l'epargniste" or even "le rentier." I know that at times those people are called social parasites. I suppose in Europe, where estates have been transmitted from generation to generation in certain families, some might be called social parasites, unless they render to the state and to the nation some other services. But in this country those parasites do not exist. Practically all of those small proprietors living on their revenues in their old age, are retired workers or retired employees. For years and years they have been meritorious contributors to the general welfare of the community, municipal, provincial and federal. So far they have been the best supporters of moral and social order, the cement of the social structure. They are by

nature, by instinct and by interest, essentially conservative, in the best sense of the word. But if ruined by taxation or otherwise they may become the most desperate revolutionists, because there can be no hope for them in beginning a new life. If hon. members have followed, as I have, the trend of events in Europe since the war, they must know that it is this class, this small middle class, ruined and oppressed, which on the one hand has supplied the forces of communism and on the other hand the counter forces of fascism. Do we want that in Canada? We want neither the one nor the other. My friends to the left do not want it any more than the Liberals or the Conservatives, but that is what we are preparing.
Finally, in all matters of taxation, remember first, last and above all the rights of the family. Here and there we hear of the necessity of having a larger population to help us in paying our debts and lifting the burden of taxation. Agreed. But vhat do we want? Do we want more foreigners to come in, or shall we give the preference to the children of Canadian families? By Canadian families I mean good Canadian citizens of whatever race they may be, whether born in Canada or outside. But of that more towards the dose of my remarks.
Before I leave the question of social and economic reform I want to say a word about the life insurance companies. The Prime Minister referred to them last night, and quite rightly so. In a sense the life insurance companies, from the social viewpoint, are more important than the banks. In a new country, and more especially in the United States and Canada, the life insurance companies have become the financial mainstay of the family. Quite a number of individuals belonging to the professions, to trade or industry, and who have allowed themselves and their families to live what I call an extravagant life, have nevertheless devoted a large portion of what they earned to purchasing insurance policies. Take, again, the small tradesman or the farmer who puts aside a few dollars each year to purchase a policy of $1,000 for his widow and family. All that money goes into the coffers of insurance companies. We often hear about the trusteeship of the banks with regard to the funds entrusted to them; but the amount of private funds in the hands of the banks, as was so ably demonstrated by the Secretary of State (Mr. Cahan) in a speech delivered in Toronto a few days before the opening of the session, and which by the way was one of the best I ever read from him or anyone else, is only four per cent of the so-

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
called money or of the apparent volume of the transactions which the banks carry on between debtors and creditors of the banks. That is what a bank plays with. On the other hand, the funds in the hands of insurance companies are composed of real money entrusted to the company by policyholders, and most of it for the benefit of their families. Is it not the primary duty of the state to see that that money is properly invested and kept as safe as it possibly can be? But how has that duty been done? I know that we are now face to face with the decision of the privy council, that the control of insurance companies rests with the provincial governments; but surely this question ought to be dealt with, first by conference, and then by concurrent legislation, so that, whatever governmental authority is exercised over insurance companies, the funds entrusted to their hands and upon which the bread and lives of so many hundreds of thousands of Canadians depend will be kept safe. Is that done at the present time?
I want to avoid as much as possible personal issues, and I do not want to be unduly harsh upon the directors of the large companies, but after all we are here to say the truth-at least we ought to be here for that.
Take the case of the Sun Life Assurance Company, by far the largest concern in Canada. I have taken these figures from its last report, dated December 31. 1932. Their total assets amount to 8611,436,152.70. Of that amount real estate represents $26,546,571.26; and in this last figure is included the cost price of that tower of Babel in Montreal, the head office of the company, amounting to $21,392,282.36. It is quite illustrative of the follies of the last ten years. That tower of Babel stands beside that immense hole, empty of earth and of everything else, which is the future Canadian National Railway station in Montreal-an abyss on the one hand, a pyramid of extravagance on the other. How many millions would that tower fetch at prices prevailing to-day?
Take the item of bonds, debentures, and debenture stocks. In the books of the company they are carried at $117,393,222.98; but that has been scaled down by the superintendent of insurance here to $107,861,810.99, a reduction of about ten million dollars.
Take the item of stocks. Preferred stocks are carried on the books of the company at $23,244,147.07, and that has been scaled down to $19,576,944.04. Common stocks are carried at S298,954,632.81, and that figure has been brought down to $292,472,334.11. Other assets, $164,978,492.30.
In other words that so-called trust fund of the Sun Life Assurance Company is composed, up to 48 per cent, of the common stocks of all sorts of concerns in America, north and south. Those great believers in the national creed of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Stevens) are great believers in the Canadian people following that creed; but they do not believe in it so far as the company itself is concerned, because they invest all the money they can outside of Canada.
The liabilities of the company are shown as $603,438,205.87, of which 8586,007,260.37 is due to policyholders, most of it due to women and children in Canada. Other liabilities are shown as $17,430,945.50. So, to guarantee this $586,007,260.37 due to the policy-holders there is a surplus altogether of $5,997,946.89, exclusive of the capital stock, $2,000,000.
Now what are all those stocks worth? Nobody knows. Without betraying any confidence I might say that four or five years ago, when that company came before parliament to secure the right of issuing more capital shares, I had given some study to the situation of insurance companies, especially the Sun Life, and I went to see one of the most authoritative men in this country on this subject. I said to him, "On the face of their report are they not bankrupt?"-That was the year they raised the dividend to their shareholders from 50 to 75 per cent. He replied, "Of course, but what is the use of saying it? It would create a panic."
Without insisting too much, I might say that some years previously, when the Canadian Northern Company came before this parliament for assistance, and when the present Prime Minister fought against it, what was the reason given in and out of parliament for giving that assistance ? It was said: If we do not rescue the Canadian Northern and Mackenzie and Mann at the expense of the country, it means the bankruptcy of the Bank of Commerce and the Canada Life Insurance Company.
Now I ask, is it fair that the public should be blackmailed and the public treasury tapped because the powers that be, federal or provincial, have not exercised beforehand their duty and found out what was the real situation in these great companies before they came to ask for assistance?
I could give three or four more examples, but it would take too long. It all amounts to this: If a small trader or industrialist, a small banker or capitalist, operates for some time at the expense of the public and goes to the wall, he is put in bankruptcy; and if he has been crooked he is put in jail. But if you

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
steal millions you are safe, because if you are denounced it will shake the confidence of the public. I should like to relate a story, one which I think is true, to show how such things react in various countries, but I shall resist the temptation of giving names. Not long ago, a meeting of shareholders or debenture holders of one of those large concerns, organized by one of our largest banks and supported, operated and mal-administered by several of our kings and captains of finance, was held in Montreal. A Scotchman was present, representing the creditors of Great Britain. He asked if Mr. So-and-So was there, and he was told he was. He said, "I want to tell you that man is the greatest scoundrel in Canada." "Oh, no, pardon me; Sir So-and-So is a greater scoundrel than the other." That is the impression left upon our foreign creditors by some of our great financial operations. Such a thing may endanger the credit of Canada just as much as the bringing to account of these perpetrators of frauds and exploitations. At least, that is my old way of looking at things.
This brings me to another matter, the control of stock exchanges. I brought this matter up, I think thirty-one years ago, in the old parliament. I do not mean to boast, but I have had no personal experience with these organizations. I would not go to a stockbroker's office or to a stock exchange any more than I would go to a house of prostitution. I do not like them. To me, stock gambling is to legitimate financial operations what prostitution is to marriage. I am not referring to the regular sale and purchase of stocks and debentures, but this is, anly a small percentage of the business carried on by these organizations. The legitimate purchase and sale of securities is, I am told, not more than one per cent of the total business transacted. Most of it is gambling, playing on ups and downs. It might be said, so much the worse for those who lose. If they were the only ones concerned, then I would agree. It is a different thing when a man goes to a gambling house and loses money at cards, or bets on the wrong horse at a race track. Stock gambling brought about the crash of 1929. It means the shaking of the financial structure of the country; it means damage to the credit of corporations, honestly administered; it means damage to the credit of the country; it means damage to the economic life of the whole nation. It is the duty of the government to stop this. When I brought up this matter before,
I think in the session of 1903, I received all sorts of compliments from people on all sides. I received letters from people in Montreal,

Toronto and elsewhere, stating that at last the truth was out and hoping that the government would act. Of course, the Liberal government of that day did not act; the Conservative government which followed did not act, nor did any other government. Why? Do hon. members know what people are saying? They say: You will never get reform in that way because too many members of parliament are interested in the game. I do not believe that, but that is the impression abroad.
I was told last week by one of the safest, one of the keenest bankers in Canada, one who enjoys the confidence of the whole financial and commercial public, the confidence of all parties and all governments, that three years ago all the stock exchange brokers in Montreal, with the exception of perhaps two or three, were absolutely bankrupt. They had to be carried by the banks because the banks were afraid of the reactions which might follow. Are we going to allow such things to continue? I have reminded the house already of a very remarkable reform brought about in Italy, not by Mussolini, but by the Liberal government of Giolitti, the safest man who has been at the head of affairs of that country during the last half century. He was frightened at the speculative spirit that had developed in his country. The Germans were coming in and investing millions, and Italians with their instinctive gambling spirit-they have had their mora and their lotteries for centuries-began playing with hundreds of thousands of lire. This gambling was injuring the credit of the country; and many families were ruined. Giolitti decided that there must be a stop. He put through a very simple law which rendered null and void the sale' or purchase of any bond or share unless it was paid for one hundred per cent and registered in the name of the purchaser. Of course there were protests:	Restriction of trade! Encroachment upon individual liberty! But he let them cry. Later on, he was told by practically two-thirds of the business men of Italy, some of whom had criticized him most severely, that he had saved Italy. I repeat, why should not we go outside the countries under the British flag or under the star spangled banner for guidance in some matters? Intelligence, especially economic intelligence, is to be found elsewhere. Take France, for instance. I have friends in the various parties in that country. I do not like their politics, either national or international. However, economically speaking, France has the best record of any occidental country in the world.

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
Vi hy this is so I shall reserve for a future occasion; but at this time I would remind the house that in that country, the government has preserved a fairly equal balance between utter neglect of its duties and undue interference. I think the time has come for us to act in a similar manner.
I shall not refer to the control of prices, an extremely important matter, as this is the subject matter of the study of a committee of this house. I shall not do more than say to the hon. member for St. Mary (Mr. Des-lauriers) that I concur entirely with the views he expressed some time ago in connection with the fuel situation in Montreal. Do hon. members realize the social and moral danger arising from such a situation? As we say in French:	Put yourself in the shoes of the
average individual in Montreal. I suppose there are in Montreal at the present time some three or four hundred thousand people either poverty stricken or on the verge of poverty. Just imagine these people having to pay three; times what they should pay for their coal during a winter like this. An inquiry was started, but imagine their feelings when they read that after Senator Webster had given his testimony he started on a cruise around the world in one of our palatial boats. No doubt when he was going through the strait of Gibraltar and was contemplating that magnificent rock, no doubt when he was nearing the Red sea, and glanced at the pyramids and perhaps put a question to the sphinx; no doubt when he reached the Straits Settlements, having been in contact with all races and nations of the world, he forgot all about the coal situation in Montreal. But I ask again, what are the feelings of the people who had to pay four times as much for the coal as it was worth-the coal controlled by the monopoly organized by Senator Webster? Do you think they have much regard for our leading classes, for the Senate of which that hon. gentleman is an ornament, or the House of Commons which is supposed to stand in defence of the rights of poor people, or the governments-because this refers to Quebec as well as Ottawa-which are supposed to care so much for the masses during an election? Of course, we all love the people when an election comes on; we are prepared to give them everything they want. But after the election is over, we allow them to be fleeced by our friends, party contributors and pillars of church and state and social order.
I pass now to control of credit, which is perhaps the most important question. I will not speak of rural credit, but I would invite those who take an interest in this subject to study how an Italian Jew, Luzzatti, solved
the problem in Italy before he became Minister of Finance, in the same cabinet with Giolitti. He started, in characteristic Italian fashion, in a very small way, organizing a few individuals in this village, in that part of the country, and elsewhere, and so on, until, within a few years, not only did the small rural banks save agriculture, the culture of vines, but when Italy was on the verge of bankruptcy, thanks to the megalomania of Crispi, who launched Italy into the arms of the triple alliance, it was these small banks that saved Italy. The big banks had invested so much money in armaments, in big industries and other large concerns that they had no more money to lend the government. It was the farmers, the vine growers of Italy, through their banks, who saved the situation and put Italy once more on the safe path.
Here and now I predict that if the countries of Europe, Italy especially, are spared war or revolution within the next ten years, they will pass through this crisis much more quickly than we shall and will emerge in a far better condition, because they have not lost their senses to the extent that we have; they have not abused credit as much as we have, both for public and private enterprises.
I will not refer to our banks except to state quite candidly that my attitude towards these institutions, in matters of credit, is the opposite of the general attitude in Canada. My reproach to the banks is not that they have refused credit but that they have given it too freely in times of extravagance. It is all very well to say that the banks do not lend money on land, on mines or on stocks; but when money was abundant, when business was supposed to be prosperous-business as a matter of fact was ill; it was suffering from a fever of folly in the years which preceded the crash,-any ten individuals in Montreal could borrow money on notes signed by one another-what for? To put into trade? No, sir; to speculate, to gamble in lands and mines and stocks. They did it either directly or through their stockholders. It would be interesting to know the amount of credit which was once given to one single stockbroking agency in Montreal-why not name it?-Holt, Gundy & Co., by the Royal Bank, the head of which is Sir Herbert Holt, associated with the same Holt, Gundy. It would be interesting to find that out.
Now there is another form of credit in which I take a good deal of interest, from the point of view of the family, of small people, and that is the sale of goods on terms or on instalments. That has done a good deal to ruin small trade; it has ruined families, not only financially but morally.



Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
Dishonesty in business has increased in the city of Montreal during the last ten years to astounding proportions, and that owing largely to the system of sales on instalments, protected as it is by a law passed some years ago in Quebec.


An hon. MEMBER:: Does that apply only to Montreal?


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: No, but Montreal is a
large city. There are many people whose dwellings are filled with goods unpaid for, over which the landlord has no claim and which the legal owners, the original sellers, do not care to take back inasmuch as they have received very often enough money on such goods. They leave them there with the result that the tenant who has purchased the goods is in debt, does not pay his rent, and the landlord suffers, the city suffers and everyone suffers. In the long run the seller himself suffers because he has too much out on credit.
We should put a stop to this as well as to the growth of the system of coupons and premiums and "drawing cards." I was amazed at a memorandum given me last fall by one of the most important tobacco firms in Montreal, showing the amount of money which they are forced to disburse in order to cope with the competition of other firms who resort to this sort of thing. That is not only an imposition on competing firms and factories, but it is also unfair to the trade; because the so-called premiums which they give fill up certain stores with goods purchased at much less than cost price and therefore sold in unfair competition against the ordinary trader.
Now to sum up this chapter, I say that the main concern of parliament and of the government should be to revive local life, to revive local trade half ruined by the large departmental stores, aided by the state through postal distribution and rural mail delivery. We should do all we can to revive local industry and husbandry, destroyed by trusts and combines protected by tariffs and defective companies acts, both federal and provincial. Village life is undermined, rural communities are depleted, cities and towns are congested, with all the economic, political and social consequences that follow, a far greater menace than bolshevism in Russia, because that is the hotbed of bolshevism in Canada.
My friend from Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth), on a subject akin to this, said, "Oh, but we cannot turn back the hands of the clock." I beg to differ from him on that. It all depends on the clock. I have known clocks, well made, the hands of which could be turned backwards or forwards. I

will not say the same for cheap clocks-and our economics, though they have cost us much money, are cheap in quality. But surely if the clock runs amuck it can be stopped; the pendulum can be adjusted, the wheels cleaned and set in order so that the clock will keep correct time and mark the right hour all day long. Is that not the real thing we should have in view? I contend that it is. I contend that what we need, from government down to the poorest individual in the land, is a return to normal life. What we need is to bring back, not only to the farm, as has been mentioned frequently in the house, but to the village as well, a large number of people who have been lured, by the war and by the false industries started during the war, to the large cities.
May I recommend to the attention of all the marvellous work done in a modest way by a modest employee of the Canadian National Railways in Montreal, Mr. J. E. Laforce? Not only by lectures over the radio, but also by his own active work, he brings to the Abitibi and various other districts, once or twice a month, sometimes ten, sometimes twenty families whom he places where it is most likely they will succeed. He does not organize things in a spectacular way, with big trains filled up with men, women and children who are thrown into the desert, the forest or the marsh without any prospect of success. No; he knows the place; he knows the people; he knows their needs; and what money he gets from governments he knows will not be misplaced. If those humble efforts of a single modest French Canadian employee had been, I shall not say helped, because he has been helped sufficiently, but followed up; if his example were followed now and repeated in every large centre of Canada, that would be a far greater contribution to social readjustment than many great schemes.
We must also look to a reduction in the cost of living and labour. Here again I am afraid that I shall not be in accord with most people. The general opinion seems to be that we should keep everything up. I say that we should bring everything down-not down into the abyss, but down to the level on which most human beings were accustomed to live prior to the war, where we shall find rest, not in the clouds, not on the tops of mountains, not in the depth of abysses and marshes, but on good solid level ground.
We must also encourage thrift and honest production. Some years ago the Minister of Trade and Commerce launched a creed urging all consumers in Canada to purchase Canadian made goods. An appeal should be made to all producers in Canada, from manufac-

Social Rejorms-Mr. Bourassa
turers down to labourers and farmers, to give us honest products. Since the war, the quality of many of our products has deteriorated owing to lack of conscience on the part not only of managers but of labourers as well. The main concern of most people, to-day, among those at the head of affairs, is to make as much money as possible, and of those at the foot to get rid of their work with the least possible effort of intelligence and of the hand. A sense of duty is lacking in all classes.
It is said: But you will thereby lower the standard of living. Here again I am afraid that I shall find myself more in isolation than ever. What is meant by a high standard of living? Of course, if cost is meant, I admit that more money is spent by the average Canadian or American than by the average European. But if by standard of living is meant a certain balance in human activities, a certain degree of satisfaction to the mind and to the heart, and comfort to the body, I have no hesitation in saying this:	I have travelled
and lived in eight or ten countries in Europe. From the view point of either moral, intellectual, artistic or even material life, the standard of life of the French, the Italian, the Swiss, the Belgian, the Dutch, the German, not to speak of the Britisher, is higher than that of Canadians and Americans. One of the closest students of things British, a great admirer of Great Britain and the British mind, a Frenchman who knows all parts of the British Empire and, by the way, a Protestant by religion, Mr. Andre Siegfried, whom I knew thirty-five years ago, who is still a close student of all matters pertaining to England and her empire, and to the United States i epublic as well, published three or four years ago, at the inception of this crisis, a most illuminating book on the situation in England. He then predicted, with evidence at the back of his opinion, that England would never recover her supremacy in matters of trade and industry until her people renounced their false ideas with regard to standard of life, because the continental European, more modest, more economical and at the same time more concerned about giving a little time of his life to thought, study and art, contenting himself with more modest foods and humbler garments, but at the same time having more satisfaction in life, gave better work than did the Englishman. If we had to compare continental Europe with America, I am afraid the comparison would be still more disastrous.
That brings me to the question of unemployment. I shall be very brief on this question because it has been so frequently dis-74726-105A
cussed. I immediately express the view that we must as soon as possible suppress the dole and also the concentration camps. Let us give work, yes, but here I want to say what I think about work. Give big works, spectacular work? No. That again shows the spirit of the parvenu. Trans^Canadian highways, big buildings? No. That means that half the money goes to contractors and in payment of machinery. Further, it means simply the transportation of thousands of men from one part of the country to another, thereby training in a wandering and homeless life hundreds of thousands of Canadians. I say, on the contrary, that we should have numerous small works, useful works, everywhere. As regards the constituency that I represent, I pointed out to the permanent official who had to deal with relief funds, that this government alone had spent in my constituency some $6,000 or $7,000 that could have been spared because they were spent on useless work. Of course he said that that was due, and I suppose rightly so, to the fact that the expenditure had been approved by the Quebec government. I said: "When you give money to Quebec, surely you should know what is done with it." It is useless building public halls, roads to enable club men m Montreal to go more comfortably at the time of trout fishing or deer hunting from that city to the midst of my constituency. Build useful works, works that will result in peimanent benefit to the people of the locality, scattering men here and there, in villages' so that they cannot be a threat to any place where they are and still less a threat to the community. In other words, a great problem in this respect is what some people might call conscription of labour. Call it that if you like. As I said about conscription of wealth, labour having been conscripted to kill and destroy, surely it is as legitimate to conscript labour to reconstruct and give life. But it is not necessary to call it by that odious name. The problem is, a better distribution of work and labour with a view to reestablishing a balance between rural and in ban population and sending back some of the blood now concentrated in the centres through the arteries to all parts of the country.
That brings me to a much discussed question, that of the maintenance of public order. Here again I am sorry but I cannot quite agree with my hon. friends to the left. The main function of the state is to maintain public order for the benefit of all.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Who said it was not?

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: But the state cannot
exercise that power with moral authority unless the repression of disorder takes place everywhere, from top to bottom. Torture has been reestablished in Canada, to secure avowals from people not even declared guilty by courts of law. Scourging is now being inflicted on burglars; perhaps it is necessary, but my sense of justice and that of many other Canadians is not satisfied. If we are going to reestablish forms of punishment which were discarded two hundred years ago as barbarous, and inflict them on the small criminal, then I suggest that the pillory should be reestablished in the Place d'Armes in Montreal, and men responsible for the present economic and social unrest be put in the stocks, so that the good people from town and country will have the right to go and throw cabbages at them, as was done in London and Paris and elsewhere, when there was some kind of social justice. I would not kill them, but I would give them a good
lesson.	.
Something must be done to alleviate the " hard, cruel, relentless " burden now weighing upon the shoulders of the masses. I borrow those words from the encyclical of Pope Pius XI. Men of wealth who abuse their power, keeping the poor, keeping us all, in various degrees, in subjection, must be brought to their senses or severely punished. This is not revolution. Co back in history. I will give only two instances. Find out in what manner Louis XIV dealt with Fouquet, in what manner Napoleon dealt with Ouvrard; and you will see how, under monarchical government in one case, dictatorial in the second, but with the consent of the people, _ millionaire financiers who had abused their power were dealt with under the law.
But having said so much, I also say it is the duty of the government to suppress, and better still to prevent riots; not so much punishing the rioters, most of whom are poor, misguided fools, but by punishing, first, those who, by their injustice to the poor and the oppressed, cause such a state of suffering that they lose their head and follow the first demagogue who appeals to them. Secondly, I go further than the Minister of Justice went last year; rather than punishing the rioter when the riot has taken place, I say boldly: Gag the demagogue.
I know my hon. friend near me is concerned about liberty of speech, and I know he is sincere. Before I answer him on this point, however, I give for a second time a friendly warning to my Quebec friends, right or left: cease charging the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) with com-

munistic views. You know it is untrue, you know it is a slander, you know it is unfair to a man with whose ideas you may differ, but whose sincerity no one can question. I repeat, a day may come, and come sooner than you think, when people who now denounce the leader of the C.C.F. will regard him as a bulwark against demagogy and communism. Eveiyone who reads what is taking place knows that he has no bitterer enemies in Canada than the communists, he has been denounced by them from the beginning. But I repeat, I cannot share his view that liberty of speech must be untrammelled. Liberty of speech, like every other kind of liberty, ceases to be legitimate when it endangers social order and interferes with the liberty of others.
Much has been said about those trials for blasphemy in Quebec. Some have said it is a return to mediaevalism. May I repeat what I stated during the debate on the address? Try to understand the feelings of all. For forty years I have endeavoured to understand the viewpoint of the westerner, for example, and on many occasions I have been able to make my fellow citizens in Quebec understand some of the problems of the west. Likewise, try to understand us. Realize this, I say it from the bottom of my heart, that an insult to our God, an insult to our church, is more hurtful to our sense of human dignity than an insult to father or mother. Shall we then, those of us who have authority, let the first demagogue on the street^ throw mud at the name we revere and at the institution in which we were born and in which we wish to die? Is it not interfering with the liberty of those poor bleeding people who have no other consolation but in praying to God in remaining from birth to death in the arms of their church, to have it insulted without any protection being given to them? We do not ask anybody to believe as we believe, but we ask not to be insulted. As I said to one of those demagogues: How much bread will it give to the poor, or what good will it do them, that you throw mud at the name of God, or throw insults at men and women who, for forty or fifty years, have lived a life of sacrifice to feed the poor, clean the unclean, give some kind of moral life where there was only dirt, corruption and degradation? Respect us as we respect others.
But, it is said, we must save democracy. I must confess that to me democracy is very much a catch word. During the war I was once bold enough to state before an audience in the United States something, that the moment I said it, I thought would bring thunder on my head. You remember Presi-

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
dent Wilson's famous saying, "We fight to make the world safe for democracy." After I had seen the turn of things, the passions, the greed, the ambitions of all nations as revealed in the peace negotiations, I said to that audience: Ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid we must slightly correct President Wilson's saying, and admit that we have fought to make the world safe for hypocrisy. The famous definition: " Government of the people, for the people and by the people," is at once a truth and a falsity. "Of the people" -of course, it is obvious; every government is a government of the people. " For the people"-that is what it ought to be, but unfortunately very few governments are for the people governed. They are first for the people who exercise government. "By the people"-that has never been and will never be. Under a democracy the people, once in a while, delegate to certain legislative or governing bodies individuals who are supposed to represent their views. But which of us can claim that upon any question coming before the house, he is voicing the views or the aspirations of the people he represents? Of course not.
Socialism is sounder-I am not afraid to say this-than either democracy or liberalism. As a reaction against individualism, it has been a godsend to the world; but in practice it is evincing itself as a mere entrance either to communism or to fascism, two forms of tyranny.
It may be asked: Why not stick to the good old conservatism? Well, at the risk of appearing very critical, I say that conservatism is an impossibility. In its strict sense and usual practice, it means the conservation of everything which exists-of the bad as well as of the good. It means the conservation of the bad germs which bring about revolution. If you wish to preserve or restore what is good in society, you must boldly destroy what is wrong.
On one point, however, there must be agreement. Whether we like it or not, a new social order has to arise. May I make a slight correction and suggest that what we need is not a new social order but a restoration of the old one, a reconstruction, which would mean making use of all that was true, good, enduring and fruitful in the old society, and giving a new construction adaptable to present needs. Under such a restored order there ought to be a just balance between authority and liberty, between individual right and social duty.
Before closing, Mr. Speaker, may I crave the indulgence of the house, for the remainder of this speech which is already too long, to resort to my notes? It is the first, and probably the last time in thirty-eight years, I have done so. However, as these are very delicate subjects, I have preferred to put down in writing what I have to say.
Under the law of nature spiritualized by Christianity, social order rests on three bases, of unequal importance:	property, family,
religion; the material, the social, the spiritual.
Property is theft, said Proud'hon-" La propriety c'est le vol." That proposition raised a cry of horror and reprobation, especially from the ranks of property owners. But the greatest Catholic social leader of Germany, I might say of Europe, Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence-he whom Pope Leo XIII since called his " predecessor " in the work of social reform-Ketteler had the courage to acknowledge that Proud'hon's paradox " contains both a huge lie and a fertile truth." Of course I am quoting the translation. " We must first destroy what is true therein to make it a complete falsehood

It is the false right of property which gave birth to the false theory of communism." That is, the false right of Droperty under modem legislation. In other words, the right of property is real; but in the concrete, much property is acquired by theft and held unjustly, with the complicity of man-made laws.
According to Catholic teaching, from Christ to Pius XI, through Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Bossuet, and thousands of others, no man has an absolute right of property on any thing. God is the creator and sole owner of all earthly goods. In his munificence he puts at the disposal of mankind, of all men, women and children, for their sustenance, all that the earth contains and produces. No individual has the right to possess himself of anything to the detriment of his fellow beings. All that any individual can claim is the right to enjoy the fruits of his labour, to capitalize them-I do not like that word; I would rather say to stabilize-and freely dispose of them, by testament or otherwise, but never to the detriment of other individuals and of the community at large. Whenever any individual, or group of individuals, violates that law of social justice and order, it is the right, nay, the pre-eminent duty of the state, representing the community, and bound to protect the poor, the oppressed-as the kings of France, when Christianity prevailed over Roman law, swore to, in their coronation oath-it is the duty of the state to intervene and check greed, accumulation of wealth, combines, and all the devices by which the

Social Reforms-Mr. Bourassa
kings of finance oppress the poor and deprive them of their natural right to acquire their modest share of temporal goods.
Property, private or corporate, to be legitimate, must be honestly acquired, properly administered and used for righteous purposes. To be useful to society it ought to be fairly distributed amongst the largest possible number of individuals in the community.
Now-and on this point I call the special attention of my French speaking and Catholic colleagues on both sides of the house-this form of property, the small property, the most legitimate, the most useful to society, is being destroyed in Canada, in Quebec, in the city of Montreal especially, by capitalism, by taxation, by false economics and a foolish standard of life, as rapidly and effectively as in Russia by communism and bolshevistic rule or misrule.
The situation is still graver when you relate property to family. According to Pope Leo XIII, the right of man to private property- limited as aforesaid-is strengthened by the "extension" of man into the "domestic society," the family.
Family is the essential cell of society. To Canadians, this obvious truth need not be demonstrated, although it would be easy to point out the disintegrating influence exercised on the family, in Quebec, by French jacobinism as expressed in our Quebec civil jode, and all through Canada by the no less destructive individualism transfused to us by the Manchester school of thought.
All I wish to say now, as a warning to our leaders, in church and state, is this:	Family,
like private property, is at present being threatened, nay, demoralized and destroyed, in Canada, in Quebec, in the city of Montreal more perhaps than anywhere else, by capitalism, materialism, taxation and extravagance, as surely, if less ruthlessly, as in Russia, under the yoke Of Lenin and his disciples. In Montreal and other large centres, it is almost impossible to-day, for thousands of good, honest men and women, to maintain a home and a family, and for thousands of young folks to found one. Hence a rapid spread of anti-conceptional practices among married people, a frightful increase of immorality in the young people of both sexes, a marked degradation of faith and morals among all. I am referring now to Catholics and French-Canadians alone. Not that I think they are any worse than others, but I am more concerned about them. These signs of moral disintegration are forerunners of revolution. Remember France, ten years, five years before the storm which carried away church and monarchy. Think of Spain, a few years ago.

These portents, I confess, give me more concern, as a father, a Canadian, a Catholic, than the crimes and follies perpetrated in Moscow, or the greater or lesser degree of orthodoxy, heterodoxy or a-doxy in the program of any political party in Canada. In a country like Canada, facts, sentiments and tendencies count much more than theories and doctrines.
This brings me to the third and, by far, the most important basis of social order.
Was it Karl Marx or Lasalle who said that religion is the opium of the people? Like Proud'hon's paradox on property, this also contains a truth and a falsehood. False religion, or religion misinterpreted and misapplied, may, like opium, stupefy and poison an ailing community. But, like opium again, when properly administered, it alleviates sufferings, makes possible an otherwise killing operation, gives sleep and rest, and finally enables the body, individual or social, to recover health and strength.
Religion is not much in vogue these days, -not even among our church-going population in Canada-I mean true religion. Statesmen ignore it, at least officially. Most of the scientists disdain it. Materialists deride it. Nevertheless, it was, it is, it shall remain the only permanent foundation of social order. Without belief in God, in divine justice and mercy, there can be no peace on earth'-no lasting peace between nations, no set order within nations. The brotherhood of man cannot be without the fatherhood of God. No human power has the right to govern men and nations, to command obedience, unless it rests on a God-ordained basis of authority.
Why obey Moses or Caesar, Louis XIV or Henry VIII, Hitler or Mussolini, R. B. Bennett or Mackenzie King, George Henry or Alexandre Taschereau-Heaven knows it is hard at times to obey any one of them!- why, I repeat, obey them unless one believes that all powers, faulty as may be the men in authority, are to them delegated by God through the explicit or tacit consent of the people? Why should I sacrifice some or any of my whims or caprices, still less of my needs, to help any other man unless I believe that all men are the children of the same Father in heaven, redeemed by the One Saviour, Son of God and brother of man?
The essence of religion is the love of God and of one another, and that love must express itself by deeds, individual, social, political, national and international.
Religion cannot maintain its sway on human minds, direct human activities, still less check human greed and all human passions, unless it is taught to man, from childhood to death,

Social Reforms-Mr. Luchkovich
unless it penetrates everywhere-not only in places of worship, but in the home, the school and the shop, in parliaments and in courts of law-everywhere men converse, study, work, govern, legislate and judge. And the teaching of religion, to be effective and enduring, must be given by the duly constituted authority of the church, or under its direction. This is what makes the ever-perplexing problem of church and state relations so difficult to solve in countries like Canada, where several churches are recognized by law and claim, each of them in varying degrees, the right to teach religion in their own way.
On this delicate point, may I be permitted for the first, and probably the last time in this parliament, to confess my faith without equivocation? Born in the Catholic fold, I was reared in a family circle comprising Catholics, Protestants and agnostics. I was exposed to those various currents of thought. Fifty years of study, of travel, of contact with some of the leading minds of our time- and, through reading, of the past as well- have entrenched me in the belief that the Catholic church is the church divinely instituted and divinely inspired to lead men to their eternal salvation along the path of truth and justice, individual and social. Woe to us, bad or tepid Catholics, whose conduct in private and public life stands in testimony against the teaching of the church, a stumbling block to the weak, the unbeliever, the agnostic or the separated brother!
Heaven knows, I wish all Canadians, all men on earth, were true Catholics, better Catholics than I am! But under no circumstance do I believe in conversion by force, or in a state-ordained religion, such as Philip of Spain, Henry VIII in England, Louis XIV or Napoleon in France, Josephus in Austria or Peter the Great in Russia, tried to impose upon their peoples, to the detriment of both church and state.
In our days, all that the church can and does claim in fact is the right to teach, in the home and the school, as freely as in places of worship, the duty of all men to God and to their fellow beings, the respect of legitimate authority, of true liberty also, the practice of justice and charity to all, poor and rich alike. Now, that duty is incumbent upon all churches. Without any sacrifice of principle, dogmatic or ethical, all churches can and should work, either in conjunction or on parallel lines, to help the government and guide the people on their way to social and economic salvation. On the other hand, it is the duty of the state to second the spiritual
power in its mission, but never, never to try and make use of religion for political or party ends.
Mutual help, toleration and forbearance between churches, classes and races, between provinces, cities, towns and rural communities, and also between political parties and factions, are today more essential than ever in Canada, and elsewhere. Without that moral accord, no law, no measure, no plan of financial or social reform, can succeed and save society.
At this point, may I open a short parenthesis and deplore the wave of anti-semitism now passing in the province of Quebec? Launched by a handful of irresponsible individuals, may it soon die out!. It is so unchristian, so contrary to the best traditions of Quebec! -the first part of the British Empire in which the Jews received at the hands of a Frenchspeaking and Catholic majority, twenty-six years ahead of England, the full recognition of their civil, political and religious liberties. Should any French Canadian of sense and understanding be tempted to encourage that propaganda of hatred, let him remember that an attack upon any minority is a threat to all minorities. Jews are in the minority in Quebec, but Catholics and French Canadians are in the minority in eight provinces out of nine. Beware of reactions.
In conclusion may I express the fervent hope that all forces in the land, moral, intellectual and material, will coalesce on a ground of mutual understanding and cooperation to face the present critical situation with fortitude and self denial. Let each and all make his sacrifice to save the nation from the greed and selfishness of too many possessors of wealth and power, and thereby avoid the fast coming revenge of the poor and dispossessed. Let the spiritual overcome the material. Let us all, French or Englishspeaking Canadians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, raise our souls to heaven and pray the Father of all men and all nations to inspire our leaders in church and state so that they may lead us in the path of salvation. But to accomplish this, they, the leaders, must give to the people who are crying for moral and material nourishment, not the stone of brute force and soulless laws, not empty words of nugatory advice, but the divine bread of justice and the material means to live and let live.


Michael Luchkovich: Mr. Speaker, if no other hon. member desires to speak I should like to say a few words before the question is put. The previous speaker (Mr. Bourassa) has introduced

Social Reforms-Mr. Guthrie
a few matters which have been brought to the attention of this house on numerous occasions. He spoke of unemployment, of interest and of other matters. Hon. members in this corner of the house have introduced resolutions dealing with these fundamentals but every time they have been introduced, they have been turned down by the government. Just recently the principle of titles was accepted by the government, and in this connection I have a little plan which may or may not help to solve the present depression, Why not hold the government down to something tangible? It is not the use of titles but the abuse of titles to which this section of the house is opposed.
While the hon. member was speaking I figured out that there were at least seven kinds of titles which could be given to people in this country. A man could be made a duke, a marquis, an earl, a viscount, a baron, a baronet or a knight. I have figured that in Canada there are about ten thousand persons with a hankering for titles. I figure that there must be at least 1,600 with a hankering for the title of duke. If each of these were to pay $50,000 into the coffers of the state it would add to the treasury of Canada about $80,000,000. There are about 1,500 men who would like the title of marquis. At $25,000 apiece, this would add $35,500,000 to the coffers of Canada. About 1,400 would like the title of earl; at $15,000 a head this would make $21,000,000. Thirteen hundred men would like the title of viscount; at $10,000 each this would provide $13,000,000. There are 1,200 who would like to be barons; at $9,000 each this would provide $10,800,000. Eleven hundred would like to be baronets; at $8,000 each, this would provide $8,800,000. There are perhaps 1,000 of the common run of men in this country who would like to have the title of knight; at $7,000, this would provide $7,000,000. Assuming that there are 900 men who would be satisfied with any title; at $6,000 each they would provide $5,400,000. We would thus have the magnificent sum of $183,500,000 to help to balance the budget and solve the question of unemployment and other pressing problems.
I thought that this issue had died away back in 1919; I thought that it had been interred with all the good or bad that there might have been therein, but evidently it has been resuscitated. The Prime Minister has given it a shining badge of honour. I am reminded of a dead fish which has been thrown up by the ocean to rot upon a sandy beach and then taken back again. The whole

thing looks to me like a dead mackerel. I see no reason for reintroducing the question of titles. If anyone wants a title, let him pay for it and provide the magnificent sum of $183,500,000 for the benefit of this country. I cannot express myself in any other words than to say it is like a dead mackerel in the moonlight-the whole thing shines and stinks.


Hon. HUGH GUTHRIE (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, we have listened this afternoon to a very able discussion of the affairs of Canada considered on broad and general lines. I am sorry that many members of the government have been otherwise engaged in some of the committees and were unable to remain to hear the greater part of the address of the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Bourassa). He has covered so much ground in his survey of conditions in Canada that it is hard at the moment to express an opinion either favourable or unfavourable in connection with certain of the propositions which he has laid down with his usual force and ability. However, I am satisfied that the house and the country will profit from the clear exposition which he has given of national affairs as considered from his own point of view. I have no doubt that in launching his motion on this occasion it was his intention to place his views fully and forcibly before the house and the country and, the hon. gentleman having achieved that object, I am wondering whether he would now be willing to withdraw his motion or whether he desires the matter to be carried to a conclusion.


Joseph Henri Napoléon Bourassa: As the Minister of
Justice (Mr. Guthrie) has said, naturally in framing the resolution I had not in view the adoption of any particular form; I simply wanted, as he says, to open the way to a broad discussion of all aspects of the problem. So far as I am concerned therefore I have no objection to withdrawing the motion with the consent of the house.
Amendment withdrawn.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee of supply, Mr. Rowe in the chair.



ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE

[Stage Direction]
Pay of force and allowances:	(including
salaries of two constables, Ellesmere island district, at $2.25 per diem to assure department against loss through death, arms and ammunition, barrack buildings, repairs and renewals and furnishings, clothing and equip-

Supply-Mounted Police
ment, communication services, court and legal expenses, criminal investigation branch, enforcement of federal statutes, fuel and light, transport horses and dogs, transport mechanical, dental, medical and hospital, miscellaneous, special services Opium and Narcotic Drug Act, printing and stationery, transport railway, rations, rents, travelling expenses, transport water), $5,603,595.75.
Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: Will the minister give the house some particulars as to the size of the force at the present time?


Hugh Guthrie: When the mounted police bill was
before the house and in committee I gave the figures and they appear on Hansard. My recollection at the moment is that the force at the present time all told is 2,512.


Mr. LUCAS:: Provision is made in this
item for two constables in Ellesmere island district. What are their duties?


Hugh Guthrie: One of their principal
duties is to hold the island formally in the name of the crown. There are some contentious claims in regard to the ownership of it, and I believe that at the present time there is prospect of an expedition under Mr. Shackleton, son of the great explorer, who will go to Ellesmere island within the next few months on a voyage of exploration. The one main object in a few of these very northerly districts is to occupy them formally in possession of the crown.


Mr. GRAY:: Is it the policy of the force
to use spotters in connection with the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?


Hugh Guthrie: No; it is not the policy of the force to use spotters.


Ross Wilfred Gray: I am glad to hear the minister say that. I had not intended bringing this matter before the house at this time, but I wish to direct the attention of the minister to the fact that spotters are being used and have been used in the past along the border of the constituency which I represent. I condemn this practice as heartily as the minister does. In connection with narcotics I can appreciate the contention that there may be some reason for it, although even there it is to be deplored. I have personal knowledge however, that spotters have been used, and in the particular instance I have in mind the spotter employed was a boy of twenty, a chap named Campbell from the city of Windsor, who was used to go in and if possible get someone to commit a crime, and the evidence he gave at the police
court in connection with the matter was that he was paid some fifty dollars for the information he would obtain if convictions followed. I stated at that time in the court that I would call the matter to the attention of the minister and I do so now, convinced that I shall have the assurance of the hon. gentleman that the subject matter will be investigated. I have not my file before me at the present moment but I am quite prepared to lay all the facts before the minister and I hope I shall receive his assurance that the matter will be investigated and the practice stopped.


Hugh Guthrie: If my hon. friend will write me a letter giving the particulars I will undertake to have an investigation made at once. The term spotter may not perhaps be understood in the same way by my hon. friend and myself.


Ross Wilfred Gray: I think so.


Hugh Guthrie: We have a secret service in the force, as is well known-


Ross Wilfred Gray: He was not in any way a
member of the force.


Hugh Guthrie: -but we do not employ men to induce others to commit crimes. That is a reprehensible practice and is not permitted in the force, and if the facts are given I will have them investigated at once.


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: Is it the policy of the department to employ any detectives from private detective firms?


Hugh Guthrie: No. Any in the secret
service belong to the police force itself and not to private firms.


James Shaver Woodsworth: With regard to
these detectives who belong to the force itself, are their instructions in any way to provoke people to make speeches that might be considered to be defamatory or libelous or seditious?


Hugh Guthrie: I can answer that without a moment's hesitation: no; they have no such instructions.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Are there in the
force to-day people who are carrying on such tactics as were carried on some years ago by Corporal Zanith and more recently by Sergeant Leopold?


Hugh Guthrie: Sergeant Leopold was a member of the secret service of the force.
Supply-[DOT]Mounted Police


James Shaver Woodsworth: Are tactics carried on by other members of the force similar to those carried on by Sergeant Leopold?


Hugh Guthrie: I know nothing in regard to the conduct of Sergeant Leopold for which he should be reprimanded at all. He was carrying out his duty.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I may say that it is commonly believed in a great many labour circles that at ordinary meetings of trade unions and at other gatherings of labour people there are present detectives who are there to work their way into the trade union organizations and on occasion to advise action which would be anything but desirable in the public interest. It seems to me that it is going very far for a government department to have men doing such work as was done some years ago by Sergeant Leopold and as, I presume, is being done to-day. He became an official of an ordinary trade union. As such he undoubtedly had access to the books and he participated in the discussions of that trade union. A trade union is a quite legitimate organization. In talking before labour groups I have again and again been cautioned against listening to certain people who were regarded by the members of the trade unions as spies. Do not, they said, let them lead you to say anything which might in any way give them a tag. I remember meeting Sergeant Leopold ten or fifteen years ago when he was an official of a trade union in Regina. I remember his asldng me to come to his home, an invitation which I could not accept. I thought it was given in all good faith but my time did not permit me to accept it. I think it is an outrageous situation when legitimate trade unions may be invaded by government spies and when we never know whether the discussions that are going on are absolutely in good faith or whether they are being participated in by people who have ulterior motives to serve.
Only the other day I was in a group in Toronto where there had been a good deal of disturbance right within the organization itself and when it was suggested to me that in all probablity one of the men who had provoked the disturbance was an agent of the government. I am in no position to say whether or not that statement was true.


Hugh Guthrie: Then the statement should not be made here. It is a nasty insinuation against a very good force.


James Shaver Woodsworth: As I say, I am in no position to say whether that statement was true.


Mr. ROBINSON:: Has the hon. member then any right to insinuate that?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes, I have because I know the work carried on by Sergeant Leopold and I know the work carried on some years ago by Sergeant Zanith. The latter, it was shown in court, was selling books which he knew to be banned. If instructions were given to those officials to go, if it were possible to do so, into a meeting of the directors of, say the Royal Bank or the Sun Life or the Webster coal combine and secure secrets there, I do not know that I would have very much to say against such action. But when legitimate trade unions are liable to be invaded in this way, I wish to make a decided protest against that kind of thing.


Hugh Guthrie: Then I give a distinct denial to the insinuation which has been made by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. He says that government secret agents or spies have invaded meetings of legitimate trade associations or unions and I give him an absolute denial to that statement. I think his insinuation is unworthy of him. He listens to rumours, rumours coming to him I think in many cases on very questionable authority and his grievance against this particular man Leopold is that he is the one who gave evidence when the eight communists were convicted in Toronto. That is the grievance of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre in that instance. I do not know what meetings he attends; I do not know why he has to be warned at those meetings of the presence of spies, but I can assure him that in legitimate meetings of labour unions or associations there are no government agents or spies.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I would be glad to accept that statement of the minister, but I can hardly do so when it was revealed in the statements of Sergeant Leopold that he had been a member of a trade union in Regina.


Hugh Guthrie: I did not say that he was not a member; I said that at that time it was a communist union he was secretary of and at that time he was doing secret service work.


James Shaver Woodsworth: All I can say is that I remember meeting him in the regular trade union meetings in the city of Regina.


Mr. MITCHELL:: Sergeant Leopold was financial secretary or secretary of the local

Supply-Mounted Police
union of the international brotherhood of paper hangers and painters in Regina and this in my judgment substantiates the statement made by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. Whether he may have been placed there to spy on the communists, I have no knowledge, but I know at that time he was an officer of a regularly constituted union in this country. He sat in the Regina convention of the trades and labour congress and if I remember aright, he was some years ago a delegate there at that congress and at the same time, of course, a member of the secret service.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: This item looks to me as though it were a consolidation of several items as they formerly appeared in the estimates. It covers practically all the estimates of the mounted police.


Hugh Guthrie: It is the same item as that which appeared last year.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: But it is somewhat different from the estimates of the mounted police for years prior to last year.


Hugh Guthrie: I think there were only two items formerly.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Could the minister tell us what it means and could he, say after the six o'clock recess, give us the amounts for the different services represented? As I read the item it does not make much sense:
Pay of force and allowances:	(including
salaries of two constables, Ellesmere island district at $2.25 per diem to assure department against loss through death, arms and ammunition

That is the first sentence. Can the minister tell us just what it means? I think this is a badly compiled arrangement and what would help us in the committee to understand how the total expenditure is made up is to get some details as to the different services that are indicated.


Hugh Guthrie: I think the item is exactly the same as it was last year, but in former years I believe there were two items instead of one. I suppose it was consolidated for the sake of convenience more than for any other reason. I asked the commissioner to be here at eight o'clock; I did not anticipate that the item would be called until then, but I shall have all the details in the evening.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Perhaps we
might take up the next item and pass it, allowing this one to stand.


Mr. ROSS:: Before we pass to the next item, I should like to ask the minister whether these policemen in performance of their duty collect fines. For instance, in the enforcement of a federal statute, are the police entitled to go out and say what the fine will be in a particular case and to collect the cash? Have they authority to do that?


Hugh Guthrie: They have no authority to collect any fines, but in those cases certain allowances are made under the revenue acts of Canada. I think similar allowances are also made to certain customs officers. These do not go to the men; they go to a trust fund belonging to the force. The individual as such gets nothing of the fine. Formerly a certain amount was paid to the man who gave the information and conducted the prosecution.


Arthur Edward Ross: I think the minister misunderstood, I am not charging them with collecting the fines in their own interests. I am one of those who support the enforcement of law and order, who will not charge them with anything wrong, but I do think that this excellent body is gradually establishing a custom and system which is bringing discredit on the force and raising a great deal of dissatisfaction throughout the country. It may be the desire to make this one large, grand dominion body; at any rate I know that there are places and operations in which local police, provincial police, and the mounted police are all acting, and the result is productive of public opinion not favourable to good order. Along the front certain regulations and statutes are applicable. For instance there is the law, probably directed against rum running and smuggling, that requires a motorboat visiting the Canadian or the American side to register there, and then immediately return to and register at the nearest customs port. But that has caused a great deal of unnecessary trouble and the imposition of fines upon people along the border. For instance there are two islands in the St. Lawrence, one on the Canadian side and the other on the American. If people pass from one to the other for a game of bridge the boat has to report that it has been over to the other side. That requirement has led
Supply-Mounted Police

to the imposition of fines. Let me tell of one ease that I know will gain the sympathy of the minister and of the committee. Two Americans, a man and a woman, were summering on Wolfe island. They received a notice in the night that their son was in some trouble and that they had to get home immediately. They got a motorboat to take them to Clayton. The man who took them over, a good Canadian citizen resident on Wolfe island, failed to go to Kingston or Gananoque on his return and report that he had been across. One of these policemen went to Clayton, found that this boat had registered there, and that there was no registry of its return to the Canadian side. The result was a fine of 850, with possible seizure of the boat. Now that is inflicting unnecessary trouble and suffering on a man who had done a charitable act. Fortunately we were able to get a certain amount of the fine refunded.
Then there are these house to house searches made on a blanket warrant. There is a long island one mile from the American shore. People there are perhaps eighteen miles from any place on the Canadian side where they might deal. People will not go that distance. A high school boy in Kingston who earns a little money in the summer by rowing Americans, getting the use of a boat from one family and another, was found with a little flashlight that he had purchased on the American side for fifty or sixty cents. He was fined SflS, taking perhaps all his summer's earnings. Another was found with an old pair of overalls, and he was fined $28 or $29. I grant you it is the enforcement of a statute, but it seems to me small pettifogging interference. These people are not smugglers. I support with all my strength the repression of smuggling and rum running but I protest against the police entering citizen's houses with a blanket warrant and with no object in view but the chance of finding small things like that. I say to the minister and to the committee that one of the officials of the Department of National Revenue, Mr. Sim, who has been promoted, said it was rather a raw piece of work. It is not the sort of work that a great body should do.
Let me tell of another case on this island. Two Americans, brothers, had been coming for over twenty years to a certain summer place, not only while it belonged to its present owner, but in the time of his father before him. They had a lot of tackle, a shotgun, a rifle, and other things that had been in their possession for years, ever since they had first gone there. The police came and demanded of the owner of the house

that they be allowed to look around. Remember they were not dealing with highly educated people, and this man did not know what answer to make. They found certain things, one being a paint brush that had been there for twenty years. When he was asked about these articles he was honest enough to tell what had come over from the other side; and having to decide quickly he replied: "They are mine; they were given to me." If he said they belonged to tlie Americans he knew they would be seized. For that he was fined $238. We got a little of it back, but I say to the minister that these things are regarded along the front as petty and unnecessary interference. I do not believe the police should have a blanket warrant to go into the homes of peaceful citizens, not smugglers, not rum runners, and make search from house to house.
At six o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair and the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 29, respecting the Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company-Mr. Kennedy (Winnipeg) .

[Stage Direction]
On the order:
Second reading of Bill No. 36, respecting British Columbia Telephone Company.-Mr. Fraser (Cariboo).
Mr. FRASER (Cariboo) moved:: That the order for the second reading of Bill No. 36, an act respecting British Columbia Telephone Company, be discharged and the bill withdrawn.
Motion agreed to and bill withdrawn. SUPPLY



ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE

[Stage Direction]
The house again in committee of supply, Mr. Gobeil in the chair.
Pay of force and allowances:	(including
salaries of two constables, Ellesmere island district at $2.25 per diem to assure department against loss through death, arins and ammunition, barrack buildings, repairs and renewals and furnishings, _ clothing and equipment, communication services, court and legal expenses, criminal investigation branch, enforcement of federal statutes, fuel and light, transport horses and dogs, transport mechanical, dental, medical and hospital, miscellaneous, special services Opium and Narcotic Drug Act,

Supply-Mounted Police
printing and stationery, transport railway, rations, rents, travelling expenses, transport water), $5,603,595.75.
Arthur Edward Ross: Before six o'clock I had
enumerated a number of cases in the vicinity of the constituency I represent in connection with which I considered there had been unnecessary interference on part of the police. Perhaps I have not stated clearly that near the islands I have mentioned there are farmers who, in some cases, are quite close to the American border, even within a stone's throw, and who, perhaps for weeks cannot reach the Canadian market. Owing to winds, ice conditions in spring and fall and road conditions in winter they are practically separated from the Canadian market. While in some cases I must admit the law has been broken, perhaps the circumstances warranted the action taken. But I do think that the infractions were so small that the police did not have the right to go in and search private houses either on slight or no suspicion, and with very little justification. It may be that there are laws which would make the action of the police legal, but if we have such laws they are causing a great deal of dissatisfaction among people who are living under conditions with which probably most of us are not acquainted. It may have been that some of the officers were inexperienced and new to their work. The time has come however when advice could be given quietly so that the officers would proceed properly. I quite admit that perhaps they should not be instructed to let infractions of the law pass; I would not stand for that. But I do think that they should not have the right to enter a private citizen's house and conduct a search with no authority other than a blanket search warrant, and to state to people who may be quite uneducated that they are operating under a proper warrant.
In about ninety per cent of the houses about which I was speaking the police found absolutely nothing, a point which to me shows that they were dealing with good, law abiding people. In another instance they were dealing with two American brothers who had been in the place in question for over twenty years, both during the father's and the son's ownerships, and who had accumulated quite a number of articles. The son who was in the house at the time of the search and who was approached quickly, inadvertently admitted that the goods belonged to him. He felt that if he said they belonged to the two Americans they would be seized and he would lose two good tourists. For that reason he was fined and the fine was collected. I am asking the minister if the officers had
authority so to act and to collect fines which reached about S250. I am not going to excuse infringements of the law. I must explain however that the other cases I described were of only a very minor nature, one being that of a little schoolboy who had a flashlight worth about fifty cents, and the other being that of a boy who had a pair of overalls.
I believe the minister is sympathetic enough to know that there is dissatisfaction among these people who fear that their homes can be entered by a federal policeman, even though he does not show a proper cause. This condition is raising a great deal of dissatisfaction, and there is a misunderstanding of the conditions under which the people in question are living. As I say, they are twenty miles from Kingston, twenty-two miles from Gana-noque and about fifteen or eighteen miles from the nearest store. I have enumerated all that was found in the search. I believe it is necessary only to draw the attention of the minister to the fact that the authorities must not drive the people too far. In these days we are living under peculiar conditions, and just a little bit of what might be termed autocracy among these people will produce a very great deal of dissatisfaction. As I have stated I do not condone any infraction of the law, nor do I excuse smuggling. I am quite agreeable to supporting the law in every way; if the officers know that smuggling is being carried on they should go armed with a proper search warrant. But unless they have a search warrant I say they are not justified in taking action, and the people resent very much the fact that officers can enter private homes and appear to be at perfect liberty to search as they wish. People feel that their homes are their private possessions, and that while in them they cannot be imposed upon. I am aware of the fact that there may be some who may not be in sympathy with what I say, but I know these people and the conditions under which they live, and I do know that there is dissatisfaction amongst them because of this interference for petty reasons. I think it is only necessary to bring the matter to the attention of the minister and those in charge to have a remedy provided. If the law is there, an unjust law, we should be able to amend it. If the law does work an injustice, people should be given some consideration for what has been necessarily imposed upon them by the forces of nature.


Mr. BROWN:: I should like to say a word
or two along the same line as that taken by the hon. member for Kingston City (Mr. Ross). Those of us who live close to the boundary line have had brought to our atten-
Supply-Mounted Police


Mr. BEAUBIEN:: May I make a protest to the minister along the same line? My county borders the states of Minnesota and Dakota, and there is a lot of bush in that district. I wish to say at the outset publicly that the officers in my district are about as fine a lot of men as you would want to find anywhere, human and experienced. I do not blame the police. I blame our laws more than anything else. In that bush district, especially during the winter time, a man has to go over to the United States to get his horses shod because he cannot get them shod on this side without going a tremendous distance. So he gets them shod on the other side of the line so that he can haul wood, and suppose he does bring back a few little commodities worth perhaps two or three dollars from the United States. I do not say that he should not have to pay duty on those goods, excise or sales tax, or whatever may be due, but I do say, whether the fault lies with the statutes or not, that the penalty imposed, particularly for a first offence of a petty nature, is too severe, and most of the people living in the district are not in a position to pay the penalty that is imposed. They are not making that kind of money, especially if they are cutting cord-wood. Those who have been cutting pulp-wood in that district have had a very hard time to make both ends meet. Most of them are French Canadians or Norwegians, with large families. They have been receiving a very small price for their cordwood, and there had been practically no sale of pulpwood for the last two or three years until last fall. I would ask the minister to give this matter his serious consideration. A first offender should not be penalized to the extent he is to-day for committing some petty offence. If a man makes a business of smuggling and is

Supply-Mounted Police
caught at it two or three times the penalty should be imposed, but in these petty offences, particularly a first offence, some discretion should be used by the officers because the present penalty imposes a burden on these people. They may be bringing in two or three dollars' worth of goods without any intention at all of defrauding the Canadian treasury. I trust the minister will give this matter his consideration.


Hugh Guthrie: Mr. Chairman, I have
listened with a good deal of interest to the representations which the hon. members for Kingston City (Mr. Ross), Lisgar (Mr. Brown) and Provencher (Mr. Beaubien) have made with regard to the particular districts which they represent in this house. These hon. members fully understand, I would gather from their remarks, that in each of the instances they have related, offences were committed against the customs or excise laws of Canada. As head of the Department of Justice for the time being and as the minister in charge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police it would ill become me to advise any member of that force to disregard the law. I have to take the other course; I have to give instructions that the laws as they appear upon the statute books must be enforced. If there is anything unreasonable in our customs and excise laws, if there is anything unjusit, if there is anything which should be altered or amended, why not bring in a bill to make the necessary alterations? As the laws stand upon our statute books I have but one duty to perform, and that is to see that they are strictly enforced. There is no discretion permitted to me or to the members of the force in this respect.
I realize the inconvenience and annoyance suffered by people as described by the hon. member for Kingston City (Mr. Ross). These people reside close to the border and probably do not think it a very serious matter to break the customs or excise laws of the country in trivial instances. For the information of the hon. member for Kingston I would say that many complaints have been made to the mounted police from business men in Brockville, Belleville and Kingston in connection with the traffic across the river. Because of those complaints, a little greater diligence has been exercised in recent months. One complaint was in connection with the smuggling of motor car radios. Upon investigation it was found that a considerable traffic was going on in these radio sets along lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence river. The former members of the preventive service who have since been transferred to the mounted
police have been instructed to see that there is a strict enforcement of the customs and excise laws. These annoying search warrants, or writs of assistance, of which the hon. member for Kingston complains, have been provided for in the Customs Act for generations. They allow considerable latitude, in connection with the collecting of revenues. They give practically the right of free search of any suspected premises. I realize that in many instances considerable annoyance has been caused, particularly when no evidence of smuggling has been found. I sympathize with these people, but all I can do is to direct the attention of the Minister of National Revenue to the remarks which have been made. Personally, I cannot turn to the right or to the left; I must instruct the police to enforce the laws.
No doubt the hon. member for Lisgar has given his own views in connection with the incident he related. In all probability he knows the parties and he states that, in his opinion, no offence was committed. However, I gather from his remarks that the man was tried before a magistrate of the province of Manitoba and that a fine was imposed for some breach of the law.


Albert Joseph Brown: No.


Hugh Guthrie: I understood my hon.
friend to say that he was fined $15.


Albert Joseph Brown: Under a misapprehension
he pleaded guilty to having the cattle.


Hugh Guthrie: A magistrate of the province of Manitoba, over whom I have no jurisdiction, heard the case. The parties appeared before him and a plea of guilty was entered, and I assume the magistrate, in imposing the fine, performed his duty. There was a breach of the law and there was a convic^on. I cannot believe that my hon. friend would expect me to ask the members of the force to close their eyes at an incident of that kind. If the mounted police hew to the line and perform their duties and endeavour honestly to carry out the laws of the country, I do not think they should be open to criticism. They should be commended. If there is anything wrong with the law, then this parliament should alter it but so long as the laws remain upon the statute book, it is the duty of the mounted police to enforce them.


Arthur Edward Ross: Mr. Chairman, we all admit that the minister is perfectly correct, but we contend that the use of a general warrant of that kind constitutes a misdemeanour. Why should a man who has never been under any suspicion and is known to the whole com-
Supply-Mounted Police

munity as an honest and reliable man have his house searched simply because someone has passed up and down in a boat? Honest people who have had their houses searched and nothing has been found certainly have a grievance. If there is reason to believe that a certain house contains anything, a warrant could be gotten out.


Hugh Guthrie: They do not require to get a warrant; they have a writ of assistance.


Arthur Edward Ross: I know they have.


Hugh Guthrie: It is issued under the Customs Act.


Arthur Edward Ross: I know just what the criticism would be regarding what I am going to say. The time has long since arrived when people should have some defence against the law. There are too many laws which permit entry into a man's home for the purpose of collecting a tax.
The minister mentioned automobile radios. Police officers went in to collect this tax and valued these sets at S60 each. This set may have been smuggled, but they should have dealt with that matter and not gone back five or six times to close up the man's shop and nearly put him out of business. He had been convicted and had paid a fine and he should have been left alone. This radio set should not have been valued at $60. All along that front you can get one for $23 or $24. These people have every reason to kick against the law. I do not hold the minister responsible but I contend that the home of a man who is above reproach should not be open to inspection at any time the police might come along. All I am asking is that discretion should be used in these cases.
Evasions of the law should be punished, but it is goin^ beyond that when a boy is taxed $28 because of a flashlight. In another case a boy was taxed $28 or $29 for an old pair of overalls. As I said at the beginning, I am not attempting to condone law breaking but I submit that in these cases the law has been too severe. A man who is above reproach in his community should not have his house entered at the whim of the police. If the minister were in my place I know that he would make a similar complaint. I am simply doing my duty and appealing on behalf of a large number of people who feel that an injustice has been done. I do not defend a man who has brought in a radio illegally but, as an hon. member across the way has said, I do think that the penalty imposed in certain cases has been too severe. I submit that a man above reproach should not suffer an injustice such as I have described. We all 
have admiration for British fair play, and we resent anything of this sort. Any man in this house would resent it if a policeman came along, without suspicion, and said, "I am going to search your house." That is all I complain of, and I hope that as a result of bringing the matter forward a little more reason will be exercised. I am quite in accord with what the minister said, that he cannot stand up and say, "Don't do that." I do say however that some exposure, the bringing forward of what is an injustice to some people, will probably result in a rearrangement and some further consideration so that there will be no injustice against good citizens.


Hugh Guthrie: The penalties are provided by a statute passed by this house, and I have no doubt that in the case cited by my hon. friend (Mr. Ross) the magistrate took all the circumstances into consideration. I am inclined to think he imposed the minimum penalty.


Arthur Edward Ross: These matters never came before the magistrate.


Hugh Guthrie: They might have come
before him if the person accused had so desired.


Arthur Edward Ross: The police simply came in and collected the fees.


Hugh Guthrie: There is power in the
officer himself to assess the fine, but that does not prevent the man from going to the magistrate to have it assessed if he desired to do so. I do think that the fines in trivial cases are rather severe under the Customs Act, and I said so last session. There has been a notable modification in the excise penalties. Now, both these acts will be before the house this year, and if hon. gentlemen feel interested in the subject why do they not move amendments when the acts are under consideration, in respect of penalties or of writs of assistance? So long however as these clauses remain in the act the penalties imposed by that act must be paid.


Ross Wilfred Gray: Before recess my right hon.
leader raised a question with the minister as to this vote, which amounts to $5,603,000 odd. It was pointed out that, if not last year, certainly in 1930 this vote was broken up-


Hugh Guthrie: Into two pieoes.


Ross Wilfred Gray: And so on. As I say, this is tihe greatest conglomeration of powers and expenditures that one can possibly find embraced within a single pair of brackets. It is true that in 1930 this vote amounted to only $3,000,000 odd, and I grant that since that time we have taken over the preventive service, certain provincial forces, and that warrants no doubt the vote asked for to-night. But in 1930 the item was split up into several subdivisions. We have: Pay of force, including salaries of two constables, Ellesmere island district, at $225 per diem, to ensure department against loss through death, $1,279,772.75. Maintenance, including billeting, travelling expenses, forage, fuel and light, clothing, repairs and renewals, etc., $1,625,452.50. To compensate members of the Roya'l Canadian Mounted Police for injuries received whilst in the performance of duty, $10,000. To assist in enforcement of federal statutes-Expenditure chargeable to this vote shall be in connection with such federal police duties as may be defined by the governor in council upon recommendation of the Minister of Justice-$75,000. To provide for special services in connection with the enforcement of the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act, $50,000. To compensate William Pinsky for medical attendance on his child, who was fatally wounded by police dogs, at Fort Resolution, $500.
That last item was no doubt for that year alone, but in any event we find that this item in 1930 was split up into five subdivisions. What I think the leader of the opposition objects to, as we all do, is that we have built up a huge machine with very wide powers. I have protested in the past, not perhaps in the house but in public, against the building up of this huge police force with such powers as we gave them last year under the Migratory Birds Act for example, by which they became ex officio game officers, with powers under the Indian Act whereby they act as what I might term truant officers, and with other powers. We have so encumbered this force with positions, with offices and with powers that, as the hon. member for Kingston has rightly said, we have brought the Royal Canadian Mounted 74726-106
Police force into disrepute-a force which we of the older generation were taught in our schools to regard as the greatest institution in the dominion. That institution, I say, has been brought into disrepute by reason of the fact that this government, under the minister, or at any rate with his consent, has allowed other departments to delegate to the force duties that should be discharged by themselves. The vote carries a total of $5,600,000 odd, and we are putting into the hands of the superintendent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the power to distribute this vast sum of money as he sees fit. Formerly the amount allotted to the enforcement of federal statutes was $75,000, a sum which apparently was considered sufficient at that time. Now we are leaving in the hands of one man the power to juggle the figures as he sees fit. I think that the minister should reconsider the item. I protested at the time against the added powers delegated to the force and I submit that the minister should now give the committee an assurance that he will recast this vote, not merely from his deputy's books, but with a view to ensuring that one official will not be simply handed a blank cheque to dispose of as he thinks fit. I am asking him to reconstruct the vote so that when we ask him next year how much has been spent in the enforcement of federal statutes he will be able to tel'l us, or how much has been devoted to this or that specific purpose, and so on down the line. In short, I protest giving a blank cheque to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the way here proposed.


Mr. COWAN (Long Lake):: Disrepute
nothing. The hon. member for West Lamb-ton (Mr. Gray) says that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has fallen into disrepute. This is the first time I have heard such language used in regard to that force. I have lived for fifty years in the west right alongside them at their headquarters.


Ross Wilfred Gray: The hon. member did not hear what his colleague the hon. member for Kingston (Mr. Ross) said about them.


Walter Davy Cowan: I do not care where he comes from. I heard what my hon. friend said and I want to tell him that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police does not require him or me or anybody else to come to their defence. They have a record of fifty years and it stands good. It is the best record of any police force in the world; I defy the hon. gentleman to go throughout the world and find a police force that has a record equal to that of the Royal Canadian Mounted

Supply-Mounted Police

Police. He says that they should enforce the law with discretion. I have never known them to do anything else. I have been many a time in their detachments; I have associated1 with them in many ways; I have known them as intimately as anyone can and when any hon. member says that they have fallen into disrepute, I want to tell him right now that he and I are at loggerheads.


Ross Wilfred Gray: We always have been.


Walter Davy Cowan: My hon. friend talks about the boundary. What are we going to do with it? Are we to let United States bootleggers and everybody else in, to commit whatever depredations they please? They did not do it in days gone by and they are not going to do it now.


Ross Wilfred Gray: Will my hon. friend pardon me?


Walter Davy Cowan: Yes, he
needs pardon, a thousand of them.


Ross Wilfred Gray: While I live on the boundary, I never even mentioned it. The hon. member is again confusing the speech of his colleague the hon. member for Kingston City with mine. Why do they not get together?


Walter Davy Cowan: My hon.
friend was talking about boundaries and everything else.


Arthur Edward Ross: May I draw attention to the fact that I never mentioned the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.


Walter Davy Cowan: I never said that the hon. member did. My hon. friend across the floor did so. Let me give an illustration. On one occasion I was going home on a street car in the city of Regina and I was hanging on to the strap as I had to do. A man came up beside me and said, "Hello Doc." I looked at him; I did not know him from Adam. I said, "I have not seen you for a long time." I was fishing. He said, "I have just got home." I said, "Where have you been?" He said, "I have been home for three years." I said, "Where is your home?" He said, "It is in the States. Thank God, I am back in Canada. This is the country to live in, as I tell the people down there every day. I tell them that if they want good government, law enforcement, they have to go to Canada to get it."


Mr. VENIOT:: That was in 1929.


Walter Davy Cowan: It has always been the case. For a time in the west we had the provincial police, but now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are back again and

there cannot be found a finer body of men anywhere; they are the very best. Hon. members do not need to be afraid of the mounted police not enforcing the law properly. If there is anything wrong, the law may be wrong, but that is not their fault; that is the fault of my hon. friend and myself. Let us change the law, but so far as the administration of it is concerned, let us leave it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and it will be properly carried out.


Ross Wilfred Gray: Before I ask the minister to reply to what I have suggested, may I simply say to the hon. member for Long Lake (Mr. Cowan) that I had and still have the highest regard for the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and if this government or whichever one it was had left the Royal Northwest Mounted Police as such, we would not be debating any such question in this chamber. I hesitate to recall to the hon. gentleman's attention that there is not now any Royal Northwest Mounted Police. I am sorry that that force has been done away with, having been merged in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the estimate for which is now before us and that this force now includes preventive officers, Migratory Birds Act officers and Indian truant officers. That is my complaint, and it is not the subject matter which the hon. member has just mentioned. I am sorry if he does not know the Royal Northwest Mounted Police no longer exists. If he does not, then it is time he consulted the minister whose estimates are now before us.


Walter Davy Cowan: Why did the hon. member say that the force was in disrepute?


Ross Wilfred Gray: I am merely discussing the item that is now before the committee, not what may have happened in the past.


Mr. McLURE:: What is the difference between the two forces?


Ross Wilfred Gray: Simply that there is no Royal Northwest Mounted Police force.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: What is the difference between the new force and the old?


Mr. HOWDEN:: There is a very big
difference.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: What is it?


John Power Howden: The hon. member need only consider the men to whom we were accustomed, the big policemen we had in w'estern Canada. They are now a thing of the past.

Supply-Mounted Police


Ross Wilfred Gray: I think the minister understood the point I tried to make as regards the splitting up of the vote so that we might have the details. He has always been fair in connection with the matter. Perhaps I am wrong and if I am I shall be glad to be convinced. I have expressed my view and I would appreciate hearing his.


Hugh Guthrie: I have no objection to giving the details for which my hon. friend has asked, but I emphatically disagree with him when he says that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have fallen into disrepute. It is a more efficient force to-day than it ever was in the history of the country. It is a better recruited force. The same physical standards are maintained now as have been in effect since the force was first established. There has been no change in that respect. As the years go by, it will no doubt increase in efficiency; experience leads to efficiency in those respects, but in every sense it is a better force to-day than ever it was before. It remains the finest police force in the world. The fact that some new duties have been cast upon it, not with the idea merely of increasing its duties but with the idea of saving a great deal of money to the people of Canada-


Ross Wilfred Gray: That is a matter of opinion.


Hugh Guthrie: That is the reason the migratory birds convention and the customs preventive service Were placed under the mounted police. The arrangements for this last transfer were made by the former government, as the Minister of National Revenue would state were he in his seat now.
The vote itself is in the same form this year as it was last, but the leader of the opposition wanted some details. In former years there were two or three subdivisions of the vote. I may state roughly it is estimated that the mounted police force costs about S2,000 a man or a little more, but the whole of this vote is not lost to the treasury of Canada. About SI.500,000, or perhaps a little better, comes back into the treasury, not into the hands of the department or of the mounted police force, but into the consolidated revenue fund. So the net cost would be in the neighbourhood of $4,000,000 and not the $5,600,000 which we ask for in the estimates.
The largest item is that of pay and allowances, which was set out as a separate item in the year referred to by the hon. member for West Lambton (Mr. Gray) the amount for pay and allowances this year is $3,549,159.49. The next item is that of maintenance, which amounts to $2,054,436.26. Those two items
make up the whole amount of the appropriation for which we ask. As regards pay and allowances, I suppose I do not need to describe this item in greater detail; it represents just what it says, the pay of the force and allowances to the force. The maintenance includes a great number of miscellaneous items. The main items I will give, in round figures:
Rentals throughout Canada.. ..$201,000
Rations for the force	110,000
Uniforms and equipment	 227,000
Transport	  818,000
The amount for transport is made up of four items, as follows:
Water transport, which includes the operation of the marine,
that is the customs service.. ..$315,000
Railway transport	 175,000
Mechanical transport	 275,000
Horses and' dog transport	 53,000
Total	$818,000
Mechanical transport includes the cost of motor cars; we have about 400 cars and trucks. Formerly this was a mounted force, but it is not so to-day in the former sense. In the early days they had 600 or 700 horses, but now I think there are just 240 horses. Ex' perience has demonstrated that horses are not fast enough for modern police work. The modern criminal, the hold-up man, is equipped with a fast motor car, and if he is to be overtaken and arrested the policeman must be equipped with a car capable of equal speed. Therefore in trucks and cars we have about 400 all told. These cars average about three years in service. After they have gone from 35,000 to 45,000 miles and break down we turn them in and get an allowance on them on a new car. Of course the cost prices of the new cars are standard prices; the competition is as to who will give the largest allowance on the old cars.
The other items are:
Hospitalization	$ 60,000
Civil service salaries	 160,000
Headquarters civil service	 32.000
Criminal investigation department. 61.000 Printing and stationery	 100,000
We have a considerable staff of civil servants throughout the dominion. Then in
addition there is a long list of minor items which you might call sundries or contingencies.
After submitting the matter to the treasury board and after consultation with the comptroller of the treasury it was decided to put this whole vote in one item. It was formerly in one item, but it was subdivided into five
Supply-Mounted, Police

sections as stated by my hon. friend. One of those items, that for compassionate allowances, will not appear in the future because the amendment to the act passed last week will provide for that. The Narcotic Drug Act is now under the heading of criminal investigation, amounting to $61,000, formerly $75,000.


Ross Wilfred Gray: A separate vote?


Hugh Guthrie: No, it is included in this item; it is all one vote. The Narcotic Drug Act vote is wiped out altogether and is now under the general vote for maintenance; there is no special allocation for the drug act enforcement.


Mr. STEWART (Edmonton):: This is but another example of the usurpation of power by this government, although perhaps this is the most aggravated case. It is no use for the minister to tell us that this one vote contains all those items. I am disturbed when he tells us that the comptroller of the treasury, in consultation, I presume with the commissioner of police and himself, has agreed to a sum of $5,615,000 being lumped in one vote. Parliament does not know of and can have no control over the disposition of those moneys. The minister tells us that certain allocations are made; that is true as far as departmental allocation goes, but if there is a deficit on any one of these allocations then it is very convenient for the minister or his commissioner to take money from some other item; parliament has no control. The hon. minister knows perfectly well the reason these votes were subdivided; it was that parliament could have control over the particular vote. Under the former administration there was no possibility of taking a sum from another vote and using it for any vote that was short. But here the government and the commissioner may use their discretion in regard to the whole $5,615,000; they may switch these votes in any way they like.


Hugh Guthrie: Oh, no.


Charles A. Stewart: Perhaps the comptroller of the treasury has something to do about it, but parliament has nothing to do with it, and formerly parliament did have that control.


Ross Wilfred Gray: An awful difference in view!


Charles A. Stewart: I should say there is. This is not the only instance, but it is the most aggravating one. It is going on in practically every department of the government. Take the Northwest Territories vote, or take the one with which I am most

familiar, the Mines Department; they have all been lumped since this government came into office. For the purpose of getting the estimates through the house I will admit it is a good system as far as the government is concerned, but a bad one from the point of view of parliamentary control. When parliament passes them item by item the government as the servant of parliament cannot spend more than the amount allocated under each item, but when the whole sum is lumped the department has a free hand, subject only to the comptroller of the treasury. I have not examined that act very carefully, but I wonder if the comptroller of the treasury will not allow the commissioner and the minister to spend this $5,615,000 for the various items set out without reference at all to whether or not they are keeping within the items given to parliament as making up the amount. If they are voted as separate items, then neither the minister nor any one else can spend any more than the amount allocated unless they secure a warrant for the purpose, which they have to have voted when parliament is convened. The complaint I make is that in all these votes as they have been lumped during the three years this government has been in office, control over the expenditure of public moneys is taken away from parliament. My complaint is not about the administration of the mounted police force; I do not know anything about it; I presume it is being efficiently managed. But not only in this particular vote but in half a dozen other votes the same thing has been done. In the Indian department you see nothing allocated for the maritime provinces, for Ontario, for Quebec- no; it is all lumped in one sum, and the minister and the department can spend that sum without reference to the allocation that formerly existed under specific votes. The government takes a much wider power than parliament ever intended the minister to have. I register now my protest against this system that is gradually taking from parliament the power to control expenditures by votes in the House of Commons.


Hugh Guthrie: I can say only this, that
the system has been in vogue for a long time, even under the government of which the hon. member formed a part.


Charles A. Stewart: Not at all.
Let us for example, consider the administration of the Narcotic Drug Act. Does the minister mean to tell me that that was in this vote?


Hugh Guthrie: I shall point out a few.

Supply-Mounted Police


Charles A. Stewart: Take the
administration of the Customs Act:	Does
my hon. friend mean to say it was lumped in this sum? All these services have been grouped under this one vote.


Hugh Guthrie: And that was the way
the railway estimates went through this house for seven or eight years under the government of which my hon. friend was a member. That is precisely the way the aviation vote always went through. That is the way it went through last year, and the way it passed this committee only a few nights ago.


Charles A. Stewart: I did not
say it did not go through in that way.


Hugh Guthrie: I shall read the vote
appearing in this year's estimates under the heading " aviation ":
Royal Canadian Air Force-expenses in connection with the general maintenance and training of the permanent and non-permanent active air force, and provision of facilities therefor, $1,805,000.
Then, there is a vote of $187,000 for civil aviation.


Charles A. Stewart: Yes, I
understand that.


Hugh Guthrie: That is the fact.


Peter John Veniot: It was divided in 1933.


Hugh Guthrie: I am reading from the
estimates which passed this committee only a few days ago.


Peter John Veniot: In the estimates for the
fiscal year 1933-34 the item was divided into two sums of $3,549,159.49 and $2,054,436.26.


Hugh Guthrie: Civil aviation in one and military in the other.


Peter John Veniot: I am talking about the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.


Hugh Guthrie: Yes, I understand that.


Peter John Veniot: It is now all lumped in
one.


Hugh Guthrie: And other departments
were treated in the same way. The item for railway expenditures as presented this year and last contains only a single vote. Item 253 in this year's estimates provides for a vote of $2,400,000, and no details are given. That is the principle upon which these estimates have been prepared.


Ross Wilfred Gray: Will the estimates which the
minister has given with respect to the various details, namely fuel and light, air services and the other services he has outlined, be
maintained, and will no vote or any part of it be transferred to another department? Will the minister give that undertaking to the house?


Hugh Guthrie: Yes, I give that undertaking as far as I am able to do so. These figures are all appropriated, have all been examined by the treasury board, and been included in one item.


Charles A. Stewart: But that is not my complaint. The minister is too old a parliamentarian not to know that he has full authority over the $5,000,000.


Hugh Guthrie: I have given the undertaking, and if I am still in office I shall carry it out.


Charles A. Stewart: I am not
questioning the minister's good faith, but I am saying to him that votes which formerly were under separate headings and voted for specific purposes are now lumped in one sum. I am not saying that this is the only example. We could turn to the Department of Indian Affairs and find items in one lump sum. I am merely pointing out to the minister and to the committee that there has been a continual usurpation of the powers of parliament, and a tendency to give to the minister the right to spend willy nilly money which formerly had been allocated to separate votes which could not be exceeded. That is my complaint.


Mr. BRADETTE:: Under this item I should like to ask three questions. A few moments ago the minister spoke about the high standard of recruited men. I Should like to know how recruits are chosen, because in the eight years I have attended parliamentary sessions not a single young man from my section of the country has been able to get into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although there have been many applications. I know that at the present time when there are so many men out of employment it would be a difficult matter for a new recruit to find his way into that wonderful police force, but I should like to learn from the-minister as to what recruits are chosen, or what' their qualifications must be. I do not know the exact number of police on the force, but there must be hundreds of them, and if appointments were divided among the 245 constituencies some young men would be chosen from every section of the country. I believe the applicants from my section are typical of our fine young Canadianism, and I should like the minister to enlighten me on this subject.
Sv/pply-Mounted Police

The second question I wish to ask is this: Is it true, as is currently stated in northern Ontario, that there is no direct communication between the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Ottawa and the officers of that body in the arctic zone, and that the only direct communication is through American channels? I pointed out only a few days ago to the acting Minister of Fisheries that if such an anomaly existed it should be remedied at once.
In the third place, I should like to compliment the government for their innovation of two years ago when they gave to the guards around the parliament buildings the big fur coats to be used during the winter months. I believe those coats are made from buffalo pelts, and I should like the minister to tell the committee if the supply is to be extended to all members of the force. I repeat that it was a worthy act. To have those men standing throughout cold nights in the winter months, practically freezing to death, was most unfair, and I should be in favour of issuing the coats to every member of the force.


Hugh Guthrie: In regard to the last point taken may I say that we are endeavouring to supply all members with these fur coats made from Canadian buffalo hides. I believe in a very short time we will have accomplished the full issue.
In regard to the question about recruiting, may I say that the force is at the present time a trifle over-recruited. There is a wastage in all forces of this kind, and every few months some vacancies occur. The allotment throughout Canada is made by provinces, having regard to the number of men operating in each province. We try to keep our proportions constant, and it is quite possible that when the applicants to which the bon. member referred filed their applications there were no vacancies in the Ontario contingent. When application is made a very critical examination, as to natural intelligence, education and physical development, is given. Any man who passes the examination is then placed on the waiting list, and as vacancies occur they are filled from that list. I may tell my hon. friend that I do not myself see the application lists; that is a matter with which I am not in any way personally concerned. When, on occasions, applications come to me from hon. members, I refer them at once to the commissioner who, in turn, with his subordinates, deals with them without reference to or consultation with me in any respect. I do not know about the applicants to which the hon. member referred, but if he will let me

have their names I shall make inquiries and make a report as to how they stand.
As to communications, may I say that we have direct communication by radio through Canada with all the important Arctic stations, but in two or three of the minor and more remote stations we are able to obtain communications only through American stations in Alaska. That condition we hope to remedy some time in the near future. I may say however that we have direct communication now with all important points.


Peter John Veniot: What is the practice in renting quarters for the mounted police? For instance, let us consider the town of Bathurst in which there is a property under rental for the police. What is the practice and how is it worked out?


Hugh Guthrie: We have a great many
rented quarters throughout Canada. The practice is to look over the particular locality where we desire quarters and to ask the district officer commanding in the neighbourhood to make inquiries as to suitable quarters and as to rentals. When he has done so he makes a report to the head in that particular province, and that report comes forward to the commissioner at Ottawa. After an inquiry as full as we can make it, we select the quarters.


Peter John Veniot: The reason I ask the question is this. The police headquarters in Gloucester county are in the town of Bathurst. They were very suitable quarters close to the business centre of the town and to the post office. Considerable expense was incurred on those quarters, I do not know whether by the proprietor of the property or by the police department. The property was rented from one named Lee Palmer, and the police continued to occupy those quarters during a period of a year or perhaps two. But all at once word came for a change in the location and the police were moved to almost a back part of the town. It has caused considerable talk and all kinds of rumours as to why the change was made. I would like to have the reason why the property rented from one Lee Palmer was discontinued as police headquarters in favour of the property mow occupied. The minister may not be in a position to give that information offhand, but if he will have it looked up I shall be glad to get it.


Hugh Guthrie: I shall see that it is looked up as speedily as possible, and I will write my hon. friend giving him the information

Supply-Mounted Police


John Power Howden: Although I quite appreciate what the minister lias said, I was rather surprised when he stated a few moments ago that the physical standards of the mounted police had not been changed since the force was first established. Probably no force in the entire service of His Majesty the King enjoyed the reputation of the northwest mounted police. When the queen's jubilee was held in 1897 the finest body of men that attended that celebration from any part of the empire was the detachment from the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and at any gathering of British military units since the mounted police have maintained the same high place. It requires no praise from me to uphold their fame and their reputation for efficiency in this Canadian country. They established a record in western Canada before this country was opened up which certainly has never been surpassed at any time or place. But what I rose particularly to say, and it is not by way of criticism at all, is that when I was a much younger man than I am now I spent a number of years on the western prairies and frequently came in contact with these men, and the surprise that I got to-night was to hear the minister say that the physical standards have not been changed for admission to the force, because at that time the force was composed of big men. I do not ever remember seeing in those days a man in the northwest mounted police who was not able to look down on the top of my head without any difficulty at all. They were splendidly built, manly fellows. I have met many of them in western Canada whose parents had sent them out all the way from India to join the force just for the excellent training they would receive, but I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, there are a great many men in the force to-day who are not tall enough to look down on the top of my head.


Hugh Guthrie: Five feet eight inches is the minimum.


John Power Howden: That lets me out, then. I do not propose to criticize the present standard at all because I believe it is recognized in police circles the world over that the smaller man is the more active and more efficient.


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: Hear, hear.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


John Power Howden: I merely wish to make that observation. While I am on my feet I should like to say that it has been stated

a number of times by the hon. member for Kingston City (Mr. Ross) that the members of the mounted police are authorized to collect penalties for infractions of the law.


Hugh Guthrie: Just the customs law.


John Power Howden: It may be that in the wisdom of the department that is the correct thing to do, but it seems to me that if there are not actual openings for abuses in that regard, certainly the people who are guilty of the infractions are not getting the fairest show in the world. If they were brought before a magistrate all the circumstances of the case would be considered and the fine adjusted to fit the crime, so to speak; but if there is a specified penalty for every infraction of the customs law I presume the mounted police must exact it, and, as has been pointed out by the hon. member for Kingston to-night, there are a great many cases in which the penalty fixed is entirely too severe.


Arthur Edward Ross: There is not a specified fine, but the officer is supposed to ascertain the value of the smuggled article, and as I pointed out in the case of an automobile radio that is not by any means the end of it because in that case they took three times the value of the article. There is no specified fine, but there is a principle to be observed. The officer I suppose has to go back to the customs and get the value of the article. That is the principle on which they told me they had acted. I may be wrong and if so I should like to be corrected.


Peter John Veniot: They must have applied the dump.


Arthur Edward Ross: Yes, and after they have ascertained the value, there is a fine of twice that amount.


John Power Howden: I should like the minister to state whether he thinks it is a reasonable and proper state of affairs that these constables should be permitted to collect the fine.


Hugh Guthrie: I do not want to express any opinion in regard to the Customs Act, the administration of which is not in my department. If I were to give my own opinion I think the penalties under the Customs and Excise Acts are too severe; but they are there, and until they are altered I do not know that I can do anything but enforce them.


Charles A. Stewart: I want to
protest again, as I have done on former occasions, against the constable who lays the complaint having the right to impose the fine.
Supply-Mounted Police

That did prevail in the old territorial days, but now that magistrates are much more conveniently located and easy of access it does seem to me that the constable who makes the arrest and files the complaint should not have the right to impose the fine.


Hugh Guthrie: I just want to explain that. It is an erroneous impression that the constable who makes the arrest can try the case or impose the fine. He cannot do it in any part of the country. Under the Customs Aot the man who makes a seizure has the power to impose a penalty. I agree with what the hon. member for West Edmonton (Mr. Stewart) has said with regard to a constable making an arrest and then imposing a penalty. I will go further and say that I have always been of the opinion that the magistrate who issues an information should not try the case concerned. He hears one side of the story when he issues the information and his mind is apt to be made up before he tries the case. In many remote districts this would not be possible, but in general it should be the practice followed.


Peter John Veniot: I was in the revenue department for a number of years and on many occasions I have made use of the writ of assistance. In my opinion it is very seldom that an officer using this writ will do what is not right. There are cases where this happens, but such cases are the exception. An officer, like every other human being, is liable to err in judgment, but my experience has been that the responsibility for any injustice done, especially in connection with the fines imposed, lies upon the shoulders of the magistrates. We sometimes see a magistrate imposing different fines for the same offence. He will try a case one day and impose a fine of -S200; a similar case will come up the nekt day and a fine of only $100 will be imposed. How is this done? The magistrate consents to the charge being brought under another section of the act where a lesser fine can be imposed. In that way favouritism is shown and the police officer is blamed instead of the magistrate.
I agree with the minister that a magistrate who takes a complaint should not try the oase. When he receives the case his mind is liable to be made up from the story given by the complainant. When he tries the case the next morning he may hear a different story but his mind has been set by the story he heard the day before. The same magistrate should not try the case except in special instances when there should be two magistrates.
[Mr. C. A. Stewart


Mr. CANTLEY:: Reference has been made by hon. members on both sides to the high standard of our mounted police force, but there seems to be some change of sentiment in this regard. I suggest to the minister that the hiring out of large numbers of the force to different provinces has not been conducive to the maintenance of the high standard of this organization. This force has rightly had a high reputation in the northwest. The minister will remember the matter in connection with which we had a conversation a few days ago. When this force was formed it was never the intention that it should be hired out to provincial governments and I am convinced that such procedure is not in the best interests of the force.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Miscellaneous expenditure, including remuneration to members of the mounted police force (to be expended under order in council, and not to exceed $1,450 for period from 1st October, 1933 to 31st March, 1935) for assistance in the remission service of the Department of Justice, $15,000.
Charles A. Stewart: Has the
minister come to any conclusion with respect to pension allowances to members of the mounted police who are in the civil service?


Hugh Guthrie: A report has been made
to council and a decision is pending. I understand there are more involved than the number mentioned by the hon. member, although it is not a large number.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Yukon territory-miscellaneous expenditure, including salaries and allowances of court officers, et cetera, $9,500.
Charles A. Stewart: Is there a
judge located in the Yukon?


Hugh Guthrie: Yes; the same judge has been there for twenty years.


Charles A. Stewart: I thought
he was retired.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
The administration of the acts, respecting food and drugs, opium and narcotic drugs and proprietary or patent medicines, including the laboratory of hygiene, $130,000.
Public health engineering, $15,880.
Marine hospitals, including burial expenses of destitute deceased mariners and grants to institutions assisting sailors. $163,500.
The administration of the acts respecting quarantine and leprosy, $150,000.
Immigration medical service, $126,920-Total, $10,334,500.

Supply-National Health
Mr. TOTZKE:: In connection with the first item in this vote, which includes the administration of the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act, has the decrease anything to do with the administration of that law?


Murray MacLaren: It is based on the expenditure of last year. It is found that $130,000 is sufficient for the purpose of administering the acts under the item. The expenditure last year was $126,818.42.


Albert Frederick Totzke: What is the position in
connection with the administration of the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act? Is any headway being made in the mitigation of the opium and narcotic evil?


Murray MacLaren: The provisions of the
act, as regards the suppression of the habit, are being carefully followed out with the assistance of the mounted police. There were 340 prosecutions last year for various infractions. I am asked whether there is any amelioration. I do not think it is very pronounced. There is a certain improvement, but not very considerable, though the indications are rather favourable. There is still much room for improvement in this respect.


Albert Frederick Totzke: Have many actions been
taken against the legitimate trade, pharmacists and medical men, in connection with the opium and narcotic drug traffic?


Murray MacLaren: Last year one medical
man was prosecuted. There are a number of instances in which they are warned and counselled, so that the one prosecution does not indicate the full activity; but in view of the peculiar conditions that exist they proceed with discretion, and the medical men who are on the doubtful list are carefully observed and supervised. As regards the pharmacists, there were no prosecutions during the year.


An hon. MEMBER:: They are all good.


Murray MacLaren: No, I do not say that
exactly, but they are supervised. Their books are inspected at regular intervals to see that they conform to the law and that their sales are recorded in the proper way.


Mr. REID:: Has the minister considered
what took place in British Columbia last year in regard to the growing of poppies? Out there the growing of poppies has become rather extensive and there were some prosecutions of Hindus and others who had been baking the heads of poppies, drying them and rsing them in some form or other. It is of particular interest to us in that province to know what the attitude of the government is, whether the department has examined the
poppy heads to ascertain how much opium they contain and, in view of the fact that they do contain a little opium, whether restrictions will be placed on the growing of poppies.


Murray MacLaren: The matter is receiving consideration. I cannot make a definite statement at the moment but my memory is that the question of suppressing the cultivation of the poppy in this country is now being considered.


John Power Howden: Speaking of opium and narcotic drugs, it used to be the practice of the authorities in Canada a few years ago

and I know what I am talking about-to send around certain men, whether you call them spotters or stool pigeons or by any other name, to the medical men. Not infrequently it happened that a hard looking individual would turn up at the office of a medical man -an individual who very evidently was an opium addict, who very evidently was suffering and badly in need of relief; and with a great deal of persuasion, occasionally the medical man would be prevailed upon to give him, not a prescription for a narcotic, but some temporary relief. Fortunately I was never one of those medical men, and I am not speaking for myself, but I thought at the time that the practice was contemptible, because shortly afterwards the medical man concerned would be taken to task if not actually fined for what he had done. I rise merely to express the hope that it is no longer the practice of the department to carry on that form of campaign. I should like the minister to make a statement.


Murray MacLaren: The practice of using these men as decoys-


John Power Howden: Decoys, precisely.


Murray MacLaren: -is not made use of by the department. I believe it was formerly, although I have no personal knowledge.


John Power Howden: It certainly was.


Murray MacLaren: At any rate, others in connection with the department before my time, as well as myself, have disapproved of instigating infractions of the law and then proceeding to punish the persons concerned. That procedure does not exist to-day.


John Power Howden: In a current issue of a magazine called Health, I read in an article these two short paragraphs:
Those interested in the health movement in Canada have felt that it is most important that the principle of dominion leadership in health matters be maintained if we are to ultimately develop a coordinated health
Supply-National Health

program for the dominion and that the most important unit in such a program should be the dominion Department of Health. Any weakening of this department would appear to be a serious matter.
Therefore the announcement of a few weeks ago that the division of child welfare which had rendered admirable service for more than ten years under the distinguished direction of Doctor Helen MacMurchy had been dissolved and its functions turned over to one of the voluntary associations, came as a distinct shock to everyone interested in the progress of public health in Canada.
Evidently the division of child welfare, which m-ost certainily had been doing excellent work in this country and for the federal government, has been discontinued. Might I inquire of the minister what led up to the discontinuance of this really excellent branch? It is a well known fact that Doctor Mac-MurChy was one of the most able physicians in the entire dominion.


Murray MacLaren: The work as carried on by the division of child welfare within the department has been transferred to an organization called the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare.


John Power Howden: That is a voluntary organization, is it not?


Murray MacLaren: Yes. Far from there
having come to my notice anything in the way of criticism, a very large number of letters have been sent to me personally commending and approving this change. It has been remarkable how from all parts of the country there have been expressions of approval of the change. All the former objectives of the division of child welfare are now being carried out and, I believe, more effectively and efficiently by the organization to which this work has been transferred. As the change has occurred within only a comparatively few months, one is not justified in speaking of actual results and experience on the basis of a few months' operation. On the other hand, so far as the work has gone under the new organization, the result is promising. If the change does not prove a success, it can be altered again, but the change was not made on the basis of there being any doubt of its being a success. There is, however, still the alternative that should the new method not be satisfactory, the former procedure can easily be restored, but that is not what I am looking for as the result. The name of the secretary of this voluntary organization under which the work is now being carried on is, I think, familiar to all hon. members, especially to those who are interested in social welfare, Miss Charlotte Whitton, who is very active

and efficient and who is familiar with conditions throughout the country. In the arrangement which we have made with this organization there is a special provision that its committee shall have on its board two medical men in Ottawa, one who is a specialist in obstetrics, and the other a specialist in connection with children's ailments and diseases. They are there as advisers to the council. In addition, Doctor Heagerty, director of the medical health branch of this department, is also a member of the council and in cases where advice is required or sought, it is given by this committee of an obstetrician, a pediatrician and the head of our own health service who has the diploma of public health. One advantage of the change is that those who are engaged in the work come into closer contact with the people than was the case with our division of child welfare previously. The Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare has branches throughout the country and therefore is able to come into intimate contact -with all centres. Nothing but good will come from its work and the principles of social welfare and health and the care of maternity cases and children will be brought to the people more widely and in a more intimate way than has been the case in the past.
As regards publications, the Department of Health issued from time to time suitable pamphlets for the instruction of mothers and families. This is not being discontinued, but it will continue to be carried on by the organization which I have mentioned and there will be the advantage of the articles being reviewed and approved by the specialists of whom I have spoken and who are now engaged by the year for their advice and instruction.


John Power Howden: Is the government making a grant to this Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare?


Murray MacLaren: The previous grant was $10,000; with the ten per cent cut it may have been $9,000. We are now paying about $12,600 to the council. There is considerably less expense under the change than there was previously.


John Power Howden: Is this the only voluntary association of this type that is receiving a grant from the government?


Murray MacLaren: I see that last year we gave this organization, the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare, $9,000; previously it had been $10,000. Then there is a grant to the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene.


John Power Howden: This year?

Supply-National Health


Murray MacLaren: This year. These are the most akin. There is a grant of $18,000 to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind; a grant of $22,500 to the Canadian Tuberculosis Association; a grant of $9,000 to the Victorian Order of Nurses; one to the St. John Ambulance Association, and one to the Red Cross.


Charles A. Stewart: Does the minister think it is good business to delegate to a social organization the functions formerly performed by the department in connection with child welfare? The Department of National Health is a comparatively new department under this government, and I understood at its inception, that its purpose was to give leadership to the social agencies all through Canada that were doing health work. It is true there are departments of health in the different provinces, but I understood that this department was to lead and coordinate the efforts of all the health organizations. To me as a layman this change seems a step in a backward direction. I know from my experience in the Department of Immigration that when we delegated the functions of the department to organizations for the purpose of bringing immigrants into the country it only led us into difficulties. I protest against this move; I do not believe it is good business to delegate to a society, headed by Charlotte Whitton or anybody else, the functions formerly performed by the Department of National Health. I think the minister will find that as time passes too much power will be usurped by an organization of this sort. It is all very well to say that the chief health officer of the department sits in as a member of the board, but he will be entirely overshadowed. Moreover, constant requests will come from this organization for further assistance. It seems to me that the national health is important enough to require that this department should retain the powers with which it was clothed, in regard to child welfare as well as other activities. I take it that child welfare is one of the most important functions of the department. I do not know much about this council, it may have great merit, but I assume it is much the same as other organizations of the kind, and to hand over to it the powers and authorities formerly held by the department to my mind is a step in the wrong direction. I regret that the minister has taken it, and I protest against such a policy.


Murray MacLaren: I think perhaps the hon. member was not in the chamber when I gave the reasons for what is being done, because I
believe that if he had heard what I said he would not be so strong in his opposition. However, I recognize the right of different people to hold different views. I believe it is a step in advance; he believes it is retrograde. Within a year or so we shall see who is right. I ask the members of the committee to bear it in mind and see which prophecy proves nearer to the truth.
My hon. friend says that the director of the health division will be overshadowed; I think he does not know him. From my experience I do not believe he will be overshadowed; either the whole affair will proceed satisfactorily and in the interests of the country, or it will not be continued. It is well safeguarded by the two specialists I have spoken of, who are here and available every day to advise the association. The work instead of being curtailed will be considerably enlarged and extended.


Charles A. Stewart: It will be if you pay for it.


Murray MacLaren: Excuse me; that is not borne out by the facts. There is a saving in expenditure rather than an increase.


Charles A. Stewart: If my hon friend will allow me, if he lives long enough-


Murray MacLaren: May I continue, Mr. Chairman? I shall be glad to give my hon. friend an opportunity in a moment. At the present time there is an economy as far as expenditure goes.


Charles A. Stewart: There always is at the start.


Murray MacLaren: My hon. friend is entitled to hold a different view. But I think there is a very great deal to lead us to believe that by this change there will be a gain in efficiency in looking after maternity cases and children and social conditions.


Mr. SPENCER:: I wish to support the criticism of the hon. member for West Edmonton (Mr. Stewart) regarding what we might call this division of labour by the Department of National Health. I cannot understand why the care of child welfare was taken from the department. I am sorry that having to be away from here at a committee meeting to-night I did not hear what the minister said earlier in the evening, but it seems to me we are not making nearly enough of our federal health department. I admit that there is a health department under each provincial government, but in my opinion a great deal of work could usefully be done in coordinating the activities of the different
Supply-National Health

provinces through the central agency. It seems to me that we may as well do away with the department entirely, if it is not going to be any more aggressive than it has been in the last three or four years. Without spending a great deal more money but with much more activity we could help the provinces. At the present time one hardly ever hears of anything being done by the federal department, and as the hon. member for West Edmonton (Mr. Stewart) has said, I feel that in turning child welfare over to a private institution a mistake has been made.


John Power Howden: A few moments ago the
minister mentioned the name of Miss Charlotte Whitton. I was going to ask him if it was due to this lady's influence that the change had been made so that the federal department of health had discontinued activity in child welfare and had transferred the work to this voluntary organization known as the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare. I understand Miss Whitton is secretary of this institution, and it is reasonable to ask if her influence had anything to do with the change.


Murray MacLaren: I would not like to
suggest anything of the kind with regard to a distinguished lady such as the one in question. Perhaps the question was not asked seriously; I hope not. I know that those who are connected with the federal council were willing, the department was willing, and arrangements were therefore made.


John Power Howden: A short time ago the
minister told us that the federal government was making grants to institutions connected with mental hygiene, the blind, child welfare, tuberculosis, the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Red Cross and the St. John Ambulance Association. One very beneficial organization, the Canadian Social Hygiene Council, has not been considered in this grant. True, its activities deal only with venereal disease, but that disease is one of the greatest menaces to the health of our people. It seems strange that all the organizations named should be honoured with assistance from the federal government but that no assistance should be given to the very active organization I have named. Further than that, the federal government have withdrawn the $200,000 grant from the provinces, and there is probably no other medical organization throughout the length and breadth of the land that means so much to the welfare of our people as does the movement to exterminate venereal disease. May I suggest to the minister, in view of the fact that so

many organizations are receiving assistance, that the grant should be extended to this very laudable movement, and that they may be empowered to proceed with a work which in many parts of the country has been temporarily discontinued.


Murray MacLaren: I have listened carefully to the remarks of the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Howden), and I admit that if it were possible to give assistance to this organization it would be quite proper. Indeed, other organizations might be included in the list, which I do not regard as by any means exhaustive. The organizations were included through selection more than anything else. I should like to draw the attention of the hon. member to the fact that the operations of the Canadian Social Hygiene Council are not entirely restricted to venereal disease. They deal with all forms of disease.


John Power Howden: But chiefly with venereal troubles.


Murray MacLaren: That may be, but the fact is that the council deals with all forms of public health measures; I have learned that from the officials. Some years ago $200,000 was voted, and later reductions were made, first to $150,000 and then to $100,000. I wish to point out however that the vote was not given to the social hygiene council.


John Power Howden: It was given to the provinces; I understand that.


Murray MacLaren: Yes, the vote to the provinces has been discontinued.


John Power Howden: Quite so.


Murray MacLaren: While I do not wish to advise the association as to what it should do, because that is a matter which must be left to their own judgment, I have said to their officials that it would be better for them to restrict their work to venereal disease. I believe there is advantage to be gained in concentrating on something of an important and definite nature. I must admit that the Canadian Social Hygiene Council is not on the list I have named; I should be pleased if it were. I should not like to encourage the idea of applications for grants from other sources. The object of giving the $200,000 originally was to give a start to the movement throughout the provinces, also with the hope that once it was operating and was seen to be an effective measure the provinces would be able to carry on. It may be that the work is being carried on to a lesser degree, but good work is still being done.

Supply-National Health


Sir EUGENE FISET:: I wonder if the minister realizes that by the very fact of cancelling the grant of $50,000 to the provinces, he is destroying the only connecting link that existed between the federal government and the departments of health in the various provinces. Two years ago when we discussed this question and begged the minister to reestablish that grant, he stated that he would take the matter under consideration. I wonder if he would not take under consideration this year the desirability of providing in the supplementary estimates the sum of $50,000 for this purpose. I know that the departments of health in the various provinces, more especially in the province of Quebec, were depending absolutely on the portion they were receiving of that grant of $50,000 to carry on their special services, on venereal disease, for instances, as mentioned by the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Howden).
There is another question which I would ask the minister to consider. He stated a moment ago that he had transferred certain duties to a special body in Ottawa which seemed, so far as I could judge by the minister's statement, to act in the main locally in Ottawa, and perhaps in Ontario. I wonder if the minister has taken the trouble to inquire what has been done in the province of Quebec.
Last year I called the minister's attention to the fact that the province of Quebec had adopted a different system from any other province so far as child welfare was concerned. Ten years ago what they call sanitary units were organized under the direction of one who is now the superintendent of health in the province of Quebec, Doctor A. Lessard. The movement was started in the county of Beauce, and the results there, so far as child welfare was concerned, were so marvellous, that it spread until at the present time we have in the province fifty-five sanitary units, each with a medical officer paid by the provincial government, and in the unit, when it embraces more than one county there are two or three nurses who are also paid by the local government. They are given an allowance to enable them to operate all through the summer, and they visit not only the principal centres in each county, but even the most remote sections. They give lectures on hygiene and prevention. They visit every family in each community. They advise mothers and instruct them in the precautions to be taken in case of isolation, and so forth. They teach them what precautions to take against infectious diseases, and give instruction on all other subjects
relating to hygiene. These units have been operated by the province, and the only contribution which the province receives in support thereof is $12,000, which is subscribed by the county itself, the remainder being paid by the government.
So far as venereal diseases are concerned, if the minister will take the trouble to read the last report on public health issued by the province of Quebec, he will discover that we are practically depending entirely on the grant received from the federal government to carry on the campaign against venereal diseases.
As to tuberculosis, we have adopted in the province of Quebec, over and above the care of the people affected with tuberculosis, the system prevailing in France called the Granger system. It has also been adopted in England and in parts of Scotland. It consists of segregating from contaminated families in the big centres the children of families who are not affected by the disease. They are placed in the country under the supervision of the parish priest, and are visited daily by the officers of the health unit. Of course the system is expensive. It costs nearly $20 per month to maintain each child, and the whole of that expense is borne by the provincial government. What surprises me is that in view of all these new methods that are being adopted all over Canada, the federal department of health has never taken the trouble to ascertain through the college of surgeons of the different provinces what method could be adopted to coordinate the work done in the provinces with that which is being done by the federal department of health. It seems to me that the federal department should take the lead in this matter, and that it should first of all ascertain through the different medical colleges what could be done to improve the situation. Then reports can be received from the provinces, and if you had a conference with the provinces on public health it seems to me that you would arrive at much better and more material results than you have to-day, under the haphazard method that is now being followed of transferring over to famous ladies or others the duties of the department in regard to public health.


Murray MacLaren: I have listened with great pleasure to the views put forward by my hon. friend from Rimouski, who has advocated with much vigour several very excellent things. It is particularly gratifying to me that he has done so because he has advocated the cooperation that has been carried on by the department for a number of years. We recognize that the health units
16S4
Supply-National Health

have prospered and done very excellent work in the province of Quebec, and we are pleased that that is so. It is to their credit; but it is also their duty. That is the idea of the whole health organization in this country, that the provinces should do this work, and I think that it can be said that the province of Quebec has led in the matter of health units. Why? Outside of the characteristics of the people of the province of Quebec-


Eugène Fiset: Because they had a good minister.


Mr. CASGRAIN:: And a good government.


Murray MacLaren: I think one of the main reasons is that their clergy have supported that movement and encouraged their people to have confidence in it, a.nd so the health units have been conspicuously successful in the province of Quebec.
My hon. friend from Rimouski said that the provincial government had been the basis and support of that work. He does not recall perhaps that the Rockefeller Foundation, if my memory serves me, gave a substantial grant for a certain number of years to support the initiation of these health units. That grant may have ceased; I rather think the time has elapsed.


Eugène Fiset: No, they are still
subscribing.


Murray MacLaren: They still are. Well, I ;hink it would be fair to mention that to the members of the house.


Eugène Fiset: I have no objection whatever. I praise the movement.


Murray MacLaren: The Rockefeller Foundation has been a rather generous benefactor. I am delighted that my hon. friend from Rimouski has advocated another thing that we are doing. Please do not forget that we have a very useful coordinating and cooperating organization called the Dominion Council of Health, which meets twice a year in Ottawa. I believe the next meeting will be in June, and I ask all those who are interested in health matters to attend the meetings and see what it is all about. The council is composed of a health representative from every province, a representative of the agriculturists, a representative of Labour, and two from the women's organizations. A specialist from the Toronto university also attends, in addition to one of our own officials. At these meetings, which last two or three days, an effort is made to coordinate the work of health officials throughout the dominion. Notes are compared and when considered advantageous, there is a standardization of records and statistics 
relating to the treatment of infectious diseases and all such matters. Matters of interest and value to health officials are discussed. The dominion tries to take the lead in health matters, and, speaking in a very modest way, I think we have taken that lead. This organization is called together at the expense of the federal government and papers are read and discussed. I do not think there is anything which could prove more useful and valuable. A small pamphlet on health is published and distributed to the medical men throughout Canada. Many of them write in and say they are delighted to have it. This is another method of coordinating public health matters in this country. In any consideration of these matters I do not think we should omit mentioning the Dominion Council of Health.


Humphrey Mitchell: After listening to this
discussion I have come to the conclusion that if we go much further the only thing we will have left is the name. In my opinion, the minister has not yet given a reason for the abolition of the child's welfare department and the delegation of certain powers to an outside organization. I have not been convinced that this change was necessary and I should like to know why it was made.


Murray MacLaren: I have gone over this
matter twice already, but apparently the hon. member was not in the chamber.


Humphrey Mitchell: I was present.


Murray MacLaren: I shall be pleased to
go over it once more. We believe that there has been a gain in efficiency and an increase in activities by reason of this change.


Humphrey Mitchell: Do I understand from
that that the department was inefficient prior to the change being made?


Murray MacLaren: No, but there are
degrees of efficiency and I believe we have added to the efficiency. In any case a change would have been necessary because the director of child welfare had exceeded the limits of the requirements by two years. Even apart from that reason, I believe this change will be in the interests of the people of Canada. As far as child and mothers' welfare matters were concerned, the department could not come in actual contact with the people, but this condition is now being corrected. The new organization is not divorced entirely from the department. The senior officer of our health division is a member of the council and a member of the committee, and with him are two others, one an obstetrician and the other a specialist in child diseases. These

Sup-ply-National Health
gentlemen advise the council and supervise its work here in Ottawa. The publications which were formerly published by the department will still be published by the new organization in an improved form.
As I said before, this new method may be discontinued at any time. Hon. members need have no apprehension that we are bound to carry it on forever, but I do not anticipate that there will be any request for a change back to the old method. Our object is to pursue this matter in the best way possible and that could not be done under the old arrangement. The department could not reach the people to the same extent as this council will be able to do. They have branches from one end of Canada to the other and will be more closely in touch with the homes of our people. If our aim is to educate and help the people, I believe this organization offers the best method of doing so.


Humphrey Mitchell: How much was saved
by this change?


Murray MacLaren: The expenditure last
year for salaries, travelling expenses, printing -we did a good deal of printing in the way of pamphlets-and stationery, amounted to $19,217.99. For this year we estimate the salaries at $6,165; travelling expenses at $358.85; stationery and printing at $1,818.51, making a total of $8,342.36. That is the estimate I have here but I do not think it is quite accurate; I believe the expenses will be about $9,500.


Humphrey Mitchell: Do I understand there
will be a saving of about $10,000?


Murray MacLaren: The saving will not be
anything like that. I gave the figure for last year, $19,000 or a little over. Under the new arrangement, allowing for the grant, and some additional expenses, I would put it at $13,500 as my estimate.


John Power Howden: It might be as well for
us as a committee actually to realize and to understand what an important change such as this will mean, and the only way we can do so is to have it indicated by the minister what the activities of the former child welfare department of the federal health department were, and what activities are contemplated by the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare.


Murray MacLaren: The activities are the
same. The advantage I believe is that they will be carried out in a broader and more extensive way.


John Power Howden: The minister has said on several occasions to-night that the federal department of child welfare did not come in contact with the public.


Murray MacLaren: No, I did not say that; I said, not to the same extent. I say so many things that are changed just a little bit, not intentionally, but they are changed. I did not say that they did not come in contact with the public; that is impossible. I said that they did not come in contact, nor could they come in contact, to nearly the same extent as they will under the new organization.


Mr. McINTOSH:: I have one question to
ask with reference to item 194, which deals with the important matter of national health. In regard to the administration of the acts respecting opium and narcotic drugs, may I ask the minister whether the jurisidction of the department has been confined to the enforcement of these acts in Canada or whether extraterritorial jurisdiction has been exercised by the department outside the dominion?


Murray MacLaren: As far as the actual
work goes, being instrumental in taking steps to suppress the traffic, the efforts are entirely within Canada; prosecutions naturally are within Canada. But our sphere does extend beyond Canada, to this extent, that we send our special narcotic official to Geneva, generally once a year, to take part in the deliberations there and to assist in the drawing up of regulations regarding the restrictions and suppression of narcotics.


Cameron Ross McIntosh: That means, then, that
there is international cooperation with respect to these acts?


Murray MacLaren: Oh yes, quite so.


Henry Elvins Spencer: The minister has called
attention to the fact that the department has saved about $10,000 in making the change, taking the work of child welfare away from his department and turning it over to a private association. He informed the committee that better work is being done and that more people are being helped through this change. I would ask, therefore, where was money wasted in the earlier arrangement?


Murray MacLaren: First of all, I did not say $10,000. I think the figures will show about five thousand five hundred.


Henry Elvins Spencer: I think the saving is between $5,000 and $6,000.
Supply-National Health


Murray MacLaren: My hon. friend asks
where money was wasted. I am pointing out where the saving will be.


Henry Elvins Spencer: But where did we waste money before?


Murray MacLaren: In the department there was a medical director besides four stenographers. That expense was maintained and is now eliminated, because the organization is now being carried on by the council on child and family welfare.


Henry Elvins Spencer: Did four stenographers
make up the difference of between $5,000 and 86,000? At that rate they are paid more than most stenographers.


Murray MacLaren: I have not the exact figures; they have not been finally adjusted. I say however that there is a saving because there will be a lesser expenditure of several thousand dollars, I presume, about five. But I do not wish to make an exact statement. There will be less expenditure of some thousands of dollars under the new arrangement.


Henry Elvins Spencer: I would ask a question with regard to the taking away of the grant from the Canadian Social Hygiene Council. The minister admits that some excellent work has been done by this association. Personally I do not know of any health association in Canada that has done more and better work across this dominion. It has probably been a very important link connecting up the work of the health department in the various provinces. Up to a few years ago they were getting a grant of $100,000. The minister himself admits the value of this association and the good work they have done. I understand that the grant has been entirely discontinued for two years. Why was it discontinued?


Murray MacLaren: They never had a grant of $100,000.


Henry Elvins Spencer: How much was it?


Murray MacLaren: That grant went to
the provinces, not to the social hygiene council.


Henry Elvins Spencer: Can the minister give the exact amount that did go to the social hygiene council?


Murray MacLaren: The last grant given a few years ago was $10,000, although it had been larger than that. There is naturally a little confusion about the grant that has been going to the provinces and administered by them, but the last grant to the social hygiene council was $10,000.


Henry Elvins Spencer: Considering the excellent work that association has done, will the minister inform the committee why the grant was taken away?


Murray MacLaren: I know nothing about these terms; I did not use the word excellent. I said it was a good organization.


Henry Elvins Spencer: What is the difference?


Murray MacLaren: I said that there was
a selection of them and all the organizations unfortunately are not receiving grants. Further, I would like again to point out that social hygiene does not restrict itself to venereal diseases and I presume that were there a grant to-day, it would again go to the provinces where it is concentrated in dealing with that disease. The social hygiene council, so far as I am aware, deals with all conditions of ill health.


John Power Howden: The minister has stated
once or twice in the course of the debate that the federal department of health was coordinating the health services of the provinces through the medium of the Canadian health council, and I think he said that this body met once or twice a year-


Murray MacLaren: Twice.


John Power Howden: -to discuss matters and that through their deliberations and activities, the activities of the various provinces in health matters were coordinated. Some years ago I had the pleasure of attending one of the meetings of that body, and if I remember well, it discussed a wide variety of subjects, all no doubt pertaining to the health of the Canadian people, but, as I understand the situation, at that time those papers were merely read and discussed and possibly some recommendations were passed on to the federal health department. I was not able to see from their activities that they would have any possible influence on the health services of the provinces. If we are going to give the citizens of Canada a uniform, standardized policy of health, we require a statutory control exercised by the federal government through its health department. We must have a standardized control with the nature and degree specified of the activities of the provinces with regard to health services to their citizens. In order to get that, I am of the opinion that the federal government will have to contribute to the expense of such a program, because undoubtedly it will entail considerable expense. I do not think we shall ever have an entirely satisfactory health program in Canada until we have such a

Supply-National Health
coordination of the services of the provinces, and we can have a definite coordination only through statutory control exercised by the federal government. So far as the Canadian health council is concerned, although, as I stated before, I have attended one of its meetings, I cannot see that it can have very much influence on the health services of the provinces.


Murray MacLaren: There again we do not hold the same view. My opinion very clearly is that it exerts a valuable measure of cooperation, bringing together the health officers in the different provinces and others interested in that work. The result is just the same as one would have in a conference -the benefit of an opportunity to discuss matters with one's fellow health officers. There is no question that it is of much value.
I should like to make this statement on the subject generally; those who have been speaking have been pointing out matters to be criticized and suggesting improvements. [DOT]One might gather from that that public health in Canada is not advancing. That is an incorrect impression. I have not heard one member either to-day or yesterday referring to the marked advance being made in Canada every year. I can speak for my own province that had the first minister of health in Canada.


Peter John Veniot: The first in the world.


Murray MacLaren: Perhaps in the world. This gentleman was formerly, I think, a minister in the cabinet of the hon. member for Gloucester. I refer to Doctor Roberts, [DOT]who was, I certainly was under the impression, the first minister of health in Canada and I daresay, as the hon. member for Gloucester says, the first minister of health in the world.
Let us consider for a moment the case of Hew Brunswick, because I think we can learn a good deal from that little province. Public health there has advanced steadily; it has kept pace with the progress of similar systems anywhere else. Let me now refer to Ontario. Without making undue comparisons, I think Ontario stands at the top, so far as public health in Canada is concerned. Is there no improvement there? Why, it is striking. All I ask is that we do not have the impression and that the impression does not go out to the public that we are not gaining ground steadily. The same thing applies to the other provinces; Quebec and the others are doing excellent work. I have no doubt the degree of improvement has varied in different provinces according to their means and perhaps
for other reasons, but the fact is that public health is from year to year gaining substantial ground in Canada, notwithstanding the objections advanced with regard to leadership and organization.


Mr. MYERS:: I would like to draw the attention of the minister, the committee and especially the hon. member for Gloucester (Mr. Veniot) to the fact that the little province of Prince Edward Island has had a minister of health since 1927.


Peter John Veniot: I might state for the information of the hon. member that New Brunswick was the first province to have a separate department and minister of health and that department was established in 1918.


John Howard Myers: I bow to the superior wisdom of the hon. member.


Henry Elvins Spencer: We have had remarkable figures given for the province of Quebec with regard to the work being done under the full time health units. It is well recognized that the establishment of these health units was made possible through the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation. I understand that foundation gives grants, probably one-third of the cost, for the first three years and then withdraws its support. A number of provinces have hesitated to develop that sort of health care because of the fear that when the Rockefeller Foundation stops its grants, the provinces and the municipalities could not afford to continue the work. I should like to congratulate most heartily those who have been carrying on the work in Quebec, because it has been productive of splendid results. I believe British Columbia comes next in the number of full time health units. Alberta has two experimental units. Recognizing the fact that the Rockefeller grant is for only three years, I would ask the minister whether he has given thought to the matter of asking the government through his department to continue the grant when the support of the Rockefeller Foundation is withdrawn?


Murray MacLaren: Unfortunately the hon. member was not in his seat when we were discussing the Rockefeller grants and these health units of Quebec that had done so well. As to the hon. member's question, I do not wish to indicate any expectation that it will be carried on this year.


Henry Elvins Spencer: Has the minister given sufficient thought to the matter to cause him to advocate that the federal government take the responsibility of carrying on where the Rockefeller Foundation leaves off? If that is done I am sure other full time health units would be established throughout Canada.

Supply-Pensions


Murray MacLaren: I quite understand that it would have to apply to all parts of the country; it could not be restricted to one province. AH I can say is that we will make a note of the matter and look into it and consider it further. But I do not wish to give any assurance in that regard. Anything done would have to apply to all the provinces.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Pensions payable to men on active service, Northwest rebellion 1885, and general pensions, and civil flying, $22,000.
Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):: Will the minister explain the reduction of $4,000 in this item?


Murray MacLaren: The amount is based on what was expended last year. It chiefly concerns those who were in the Northwest rebellion, and that was a good many years ago.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: What is the number of these pensioners left now?


Murray MacLaren: The amount expended last year was $21,510.78; slightly less than the vote for this year. There are 49 disability pensioners and 6 dependent pensioners, a total of 55. For the Northwest rebellion these are the items: 23 privates, 1 corporal, 1 sergeant, 1 warrant officer and 1 lieutenant, a total of 27; and 1 dependent. Then there are a few others, for instance one under civil flying. When members of the civil service fly on duty-which is quite seldom, I understand- they would come under this. There is one such case.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Progress reported.
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Wednesday, March 21, 1934