1935-02-11

[Stage Direction]
Mr. ANGUS MadNNIS (Vancouver South) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 16, to amend the Dominion Elections Act, 1934.
Mr. GUTHRIE:: Explain.
Mr. MaoINNIS:	The purpose of this
amendment is to extend the privilege of voting by absentee ballot to the men in the unemployment relief camps on the same conditions granted in the case of other occupations enumerated in the act. The only change proposed is the addition of a definition of "unemployment relief camp worker," and the insertion of the words "unemployment relief camp workers" in section 2 of subsection 99.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



FISHERIES ACT AMENDMENT

[Stage Direction]
Mr. THOMAS REID (New Westminster) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 17, to amend the Fisheries Act, 1932.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: explain.


Mr. REID:: The purpose of the bill which I am asking leave of the house to introduce is to prohibit the catching of salmon by the use of purse-seines in the waters adjacent to the mouth of the Fraser river, with the object of preventing the further depletion and de-

Privilege-Mr. Bennett
struction of the great salmon fishing industry in that river, and also to protect the livelihood of thousands of gill-net fishermen.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



ELECTRICITY INSPECTION ACT

[Stage Direction]
Hon. R. B. HANSON (Minister of Trade and Commerce) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 18, to amend the Electricity Inspection Act, 1928 (French version).
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Explain.


Mr. HANSON (York-Sunbury):: The proposed amendment is merely to correct a clerical error in the act as it now stands. On the translation of the act from English into French certain words were inadvertently omitted, and the amendment is to insert those words in the French version.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



PRIVILEGE-MR. BENNETT

Right Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Prime Minister) :: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege I desire to point out that on Friday last I directed attention to the fact that the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Howden) had given certain warnings at his nomination convention. I did that on the strength of a statement that said the warning was given and indicated that he had used the language at his nomination meeting. I have since investigated the matter with great care, and I find that the Winnipeg Free Press of October 22, and the Winnipeg Tribune of the same day, make reference to his nomination. It was incorrect for me to say that the hon. member for St. Boniface had made the statement in question. It was made by the president of the Liberal Association of Manitoba. I quote from the Winnipeg Free Press of October 22:
John Caswell Davis, president o.f the Manitoba Liberal Association', warned that the Conservatives probably would introduce a "false issue" into the campaign to separate the people of the dominion on a racial and nationality basis.
That is all that is said. The report in the Tribune is this:
Referring to the Stevens commission, J. C. Davis, president of the Provincial Liberal Association, stated that, so far, only "handpicked" concerns had been investigated. The "big fellows" were still untouched. He also warned the electors against possible attempts on the part of the Conservative government to so juggle amendments to the British North America Act as to stir up racial feeling.
I express my very sincere regrets that I did an injustice to the hon. gentleman on Friday last when, in consequence of the dispatch to which I had reference-which was neither one of these-not mentioning who was responsible for the statement, I attributed the statement to him. That was an error and I offer him my apologies for having done so. But the statements in question were made by the president of the Liberal association in the province of Manitoba, who was speaking presumably in the presence of the hon. gentleman.


Mr. J. P. HOWDEN (St. Boniface):: I have nothing to say in the matter, and I appreciate the Prime Minister's action in this regard.



QUESTIONS

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

Mr. MOTHERWELL:: 1.	Is the international wheat committee, or the continuing subcommittee thereof, still functioning?
2.	If so, in what direction?
3.	Has the attention of the government been directed to a statement made on page one of a monthly review of the wheat situation, issued on the authority of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, under date of January 23, 1935, which reads as follows: "Stocks of wheat in Canada continue at a higher level than a year ago. On January 11, 1935, the Canadian visible supply amounted to 257,000,000 bushels as compared with 237,000,000 on the same date a year ago"?
4.	If so, what is the government's policy in relation thereto?


Richard Bedford Bennett: I may say to the hon.
gentleman, who is an experienced parliamentarian, that part of his question it would be difficult to answer, while part of it is improperly on the order paper. The answer to the first is, yes. The answer to the second would be, in the direction of success. The answer to the third would be, yes; and the answer to the fourth is that the question should not be on the order paper.


Mr. SPEAKER:: As to the first three,
answered; as to the fourth, dropped.


FREDERICTON, N.B., POST OFFICE
Mr. MICHAUD:: 1.	What was the total cost of painting and other repairs of the post office at Fredericton, New Brunswick, from January 1, 1934, to January 1, 1935?
2.	Was the work for painting and carpentry done by contract or day's work? If by contract, who was, or were, the contractor or contractors? If done by day's work, who was the supervisor, and what rate of wages were paid to men employed on such work?

Questions


Mr. STEWART:: Leeds):
1.	SI ,652.
2.	For the following items local tenders were invited and lowest accepted as follows: painting, Jas. Coy, SI, 175; repairs, Jas. Coy, $165; electrical work, R. L. Hazlett, $104.50. For small emergency items amounting to $207.50 the district resident architect who supervised the work had different firms in Fredericton do the work and render accounts for same. No information re wages paid.


FIRE INSURANCE COMPANIES
Mr. COOTE:: 1.	In the case of fire insurance companies holding Dominion licences, what was the total of the net amount l'eceived for premiums during the years 1919 to 1933, inclusive?
2.	What was the net amount paid for losses during said years?
3.	How many fire insurance companies operated under Dominion licences in 1933?


Mr. RHODES:: Answer 1 and 2:	Fire Insurance in Canada
Net premiums Net losses Year	written	incurred1919	
$40,031,474	$16,679,3551920	
50,527,937	21,935,3871921	
47,312,564	27,572,5601922	
48,168,310	32,848,0211923	
51,169,250	32,142,4911924	
49,833,718	29,186,9041925	
51,040,075	26,943,0891926	
52,595,923	25,705,9751927	
51,375,637	20,831,9311928	
54,826,851	25,544,6641929	
56,112,457	30,209,8391930	
52,646,520	30,427,9681931	
50,342,669	29,938,4091932	
46,911,929	30,068,9231933	
41,573,986	21,655,460$744,469,300	$401,690,976
After deducting all reinsurance premiums in the case of Canadian companies and all reinsurance premiums paid to licensed companies in the case of British and foreign companies.
Note.-For the years 1919 and 1920 the figures shown represent net cash received for premiums and net losses paid.
3.	240 companies.
farmers' creditors arrangement act


Mr. LAFLECHE:: 1.	How many farmers from the county of Richmond-Wolfe have made application in connection with the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act?
2.	How many of those cases have been settled to date?


Mr. RHODES:: 1.	In the province of Quebec official receivers are appointed for judicial districts. The county of Richmond-Wolfe is in the judicial district of St. Francis. As reported to the end of December there were 485 interviews by official receivers in the judioial district of St. Francis.
2.	The number of settlements reported by the official receivers in the judicial district of St. Francis is 27, but in the great majority of cases proceedings are still pending.
provincial debts


Mr. EULER:: What is the amount of the debt of each of the western provinces to the federal government?


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Debts of each of the western provinces to the dominion government February 7, 1935
(Department of Finance)
British
Manitoba Saskatchewan Alberta Columbia
Loans under relief acts	 $12,433,629
Treasury bill re overpayment subsidy	....
Housing loans	 1,095,000

$13,528,629	S36,864,254	$12,445,750

Canadian farm loan act	in the province of Nova Scotia during each
of the fiscal years 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933 Mr. DUFF:	and 1934?
1.	How many applications for loans under 2. How many of said applications were the Farm Loan Act were made by farmers granted during each of the said years?

Questions
3.	What was the total amount of loans asked for during each of the years 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933 and 1934, in Nova Scotia?
4.	What was the total amount of loans made in Nova Scotia during the years 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933 and 1934?


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: 1,	2, 3 and 4.
Nova Scotia
V ear ending	Applications	Amount of loans	Loans	grantedMarch 31	received	applied for	No.	Amount1930	
242	$516,095	95	$154,9001931	
140	291,505	43	68,1001932	
132	261,230	36	55,1001933	
115	193,150	33	362001934	
87	125,355	9	14,700716	$1,387,335	216	S329,000


Mr. HANSON (Skeena):: 1.	How many applications for loans were received under the Canadian Farm Loan Act in Skeena riding, British Columbia, during the years 1930 to 1934, inclusive?
2.	How many loans were granted in the said riding during each of the above years?
3.	What are the names and addresses of those to whom loans were made, and what amount in each case?
4.	What are the names, addresses, positions and salaries of the present officials connected with the said act in the Skeena riding?


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: 1 and 2. The records of the Canadian farm loan board are not kept by constituencies and the information asked for is, therefore, not available.
3.	Transactions between the board and borrowers are regarded as confidential and it is not considered in the public interests that information revealing the names of persons who have obtained loans should be given.
4.	None resident in Skeena riding.


MACPHERSON WHARF, P.E.I.
Mr. MacLEAN:: 1.	Was MacPherson wharf, in King's county, Prince Edward Island, repaired in 1934?
2.	If so, how much money was spent on this wharf ?
3.	How much money was paid out in wages?
4.	How	much	per	day	did the	foreman
receive?
5.	How	much	per	day	did the	average
labourer receive?


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: 1.	Yes (MacPherson's Cove wharf).
2.	S3,364.16.
3.	SI,498.46.
4.	60 cents per hour.
5.	30 cents per hour.
92582-43J


EMERY FLEURY
Mr. DUBOIS:: 1.	Is one Emery Fleury, of Saint-Leonard, Nicolet county, employed in the Department of Agriculture?
2.	If so, what are his duties?
3.	What is his salary?


Mr. WEIR (Melfort):: 1.	Yes.
2.	Record of performance inspector for dairy cattle.
3.	$1,134 per annum.


AGRICULTURAL LOANS IN QUEBEC
Mr. TETREAULT:: 1.	How many applications were made in the province of Quebec for agricultural loans, from 1927 to 1930?
2.	How many of these loans were granted?
3.	What was the total amount of these application for loans?
4.	How many of these farms have been taken over by the farm loan board, from 1927 to 1931?
5.	What is the amount of arrears, capital and interest to date in connection with farm loans made in the province of Quebec?


Mr. RHODES:: 1.	From inception of operations in Quebec in 1929 to March 31, 1930, a total of 1,865 applications.
2.	350.
3.	$5,738,990.
4.	To March 31, 1931, none.
5.	As at close of last fiscal year, March 31, 1934, principal arrears $52,96384, interest arrears $107,568.95.


LEAGUE OF NATIONS
Mr. POULIOT:: 1.	What was the number of delegates of the several nations, present at the fifteenth assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva in the month of September, 1934?
Questions

2.	Which members of the other delegations did the Canadian delegates meet officially?


Mr. BENNETT:: 1.	Fifty-four members of the league were represented throughout the fifteenth assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva in September, 1934; the number of delegates from these states was 140. Two other states were admitted towards the close of the assembly.
2.	Such members as participated in the work of the several committees.


IMMIGRATION 1930-1933
Mr. BRADETTE:: 1.	What was the total number of immigrants that came into Canada from every country of the world during the years 1930, 1931, 1932 and 1933, respectively?
2.	What number from each country?


Mr. GORDON:: 1.	1930, 104,806; 1931, 27,530; 1932, 20,591; 1933, 14,382.
2.	Statement follows:
Statement of Immigration to Canada, by Origins, for the Calendar Years 1930, 1931, 1932
and 1933
	1930	1931	1932	1933
Albanian			5		
Arabian	1	2	Armenian	
27	5	1	7Belgian	
329	54	40	26Bohemian	
British-	
11	7	....English	
17,069	4,599	2,101	1,412Irish	
4,862	871	350	278Scotch	
8,903	2,010	800	561Welsh	198	76	53Bulgarian	
353	14	12	12Chinese	1	1Croatian	
600	113	93	102Czech	
246	69	69	52Dutch	38	30	25East Indian	
80	52	61	35Esthonian	
83	8	1Finnish	
2,749	100	32	45French	
424	94	90	76German	797	562	389Greek	23	34	29Hebrew	
3,702	214	313	420Italian	467	280	253Japanese	
217	174	119	106Jugo-Slav	65	48	65Lettish	
33	1	3	3Lithuanian	
612	59	43	42Magyar	493	311	484Maltese	5	2	Montenegrin	
3	Moravian	3	Negro	14	9	16Persian	1	1	Polish	560	379	360Portuguese	
5	2	1Roumanian	28	31	27Russian	
1,017	71	74	63Ruthenian	
Scandinavian-	
8,045	503	438	378Danish	
1,184	65	49	46Icelandic	1	Norwegian	66	54	29Swedish	62	34	13Serbian	34	30	25Slovak	338	253	400Spanish	10	6	7Spanish American	1	1	4Swiss	
257	37	17	21Syrian	15	20	13Turkish	1	2Totals, via ocean ports	12,335	6.882	5,882From the United States	
25,632	15,195	13,709	8,500Grand totals	27,530	20,591	14,382
[Mr. PouIiaU

Motions for Papers


CHAPEL POINT, P.B.I. WHARF
Mr. MacLEAN:: 1.	Was Chapel wharf, in King's county, Prince Edward Island, repaired in 1934?
2.	If so, how much money was spent on this wharf?
3.	How much money was paid out in wages?
4. How much per day did the foreman receive?
5. How much per day did the average labourer receive?


Mr. STEWART (Leeds):: 

QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. REID:: 1.	How many requests have been made for debt adjustments or compromises in the province of British Columbia since July, 1934, to the end of 1934, under the act to facilitate compromises between farmers and their creditors?
2.	How many were adjusted during the same period ?
3.	How many requests have been made for debt adjustments or compromises, under the above act, to the official at New Westminster, British Columbia, up to the end of 1934?
4.	How many adjustments have been made during the same period?
5.	What was the total amount of the debts of those applying, in British Columbia, for adjustment under the act, up to the end of the year 1934?
6.	What were the total reductions made in the compromises which have been effected during the same period both in the province and in the district of Westminster?


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Return tabled herewith.



UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

Mr. ROBERGE:: During the years 1933 and 1934, what sum has the federal government paid for direct relief, without the provinces or the municipalities having been called upon to contribute, to the following provinces:	(a) Ontario; (b)
Manitoba:	(c) Saskatchewan; (d) Alberta;
(e) the Yukon Territory; (f) New Brunswick; (g) Nova Scotia; (h) Prince Edward Island; (i) Quebec?



FARMERS' CREDITORS ARRANGEMENT ACT

Mr. MacLEAN:: 1. Who has been appointed as official receiver in each county in Prince Edward Island under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, and what salary does each receive?
2.	Do any of those so appointed hold any other office under the dominion or provincial governments? If so, what office and what salary is attached to it?
3.	Who has been appointed registrar under this act for Prince Edward Island' and what salary does he receive?
4.	Has a provincial board of review been appointed under this act for Prince Edward Island? If so, what are the names of the chief and other two commissioners, showing the salary each of them receive and indicating the one who represents the creditors and the one representing the debtors?


Edgar Nelson Rhodes: Return tabled herewith. MOTIONS FOR PAPERS



TRANSLATORS' SALARIES

Mr. BRADETTE (for Mr. Perras):: For a statement showing all salaries of the 91 translators who, according to the explanatory notes to Bill No. 4 (an act respecting the Bureau for Translations passed by the House of Commons, May 28,	1934), receive the
aggregate sum of $252,000 annually, as on January, 1934.



REPORTS TABLED SINCE OPENING OF SESSION

Joseph-Arthur Bradette: For a list of all reports published in English and tabled in the House of Commons since the opening of the present session, and also for a list of all reports published in French and tabled in the House of Commons since the opening of the present session, with the date on which each of such reports was tabled.



GREEN RIVER-RIVIERE VERTE STATION, N.B. MAIL SERVICE

Mr. MICHAUD:: For a copy of all documents, letters and telegrams, exchanged between the Post Office Department and any other person or persons, from June 1, 1933, to February 1, 1935, relating to the carrying of the mail between Green River post office and Riviere Yerte station in the county of Madawaska, in the province of New Brunswick.



ST. JOHN RIVER INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE PAINTING

Joseph Enoil Michaud: For a copy of all documents, letters and telegrams, exchanged between the Department of Public Works and any person or persons from June 1, 1934, to February 1, 1935, relating to the painting of the International bridge on the St. John river, between Madawaska, Maine, and Edmundston, New Brunswick.



ROTHESAY, N.B. MAIL CONTRACT

Joseph Enoil Michaud: For a copy of all correspondence, letters, telegrams and other documents, exchanged from June 1, 1933, to January 31, 1935,
Motions for Papers

between the Post Office Department and all other persons, relating to the contract for the carrying of mails between post office Rothesay, New Brunswick, and the railway station.



MARKETING ACT

Mr. MacLEAN:: For a copy of all correspondence, letters, telegrams and other documents that have passed between the government of Canada or the central board appointed under the Natural Products Marketing Act, 1934, and any person or persons, provincial governments or incorporated companies, asking for or relating to a scheme for the marketing of potatoes from or in the provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and/or Ontario, under the Natural Products Marketing Act, since the passing of the said act to date.



C. STANLEY VAN ALSTYNE

Mr. CAMPBELL:: For a copy of all correspondence, letters, telegrams and other documents in the possession of the government, regarding the discharge of C. Stanley Van Alstyne from the penitentiary at Portsmouth, Ontario, during the years 1933 and 1934.



PETITE RIVIERE AU RENARD, QUE.-WHARF

Mr. BRASSET:: For a copy of the paylist in connection with the works at the wharf of La Petite Riviere a.u Renard, county of Gaspe, during the year 1931-32.



CODLOMBE, DORCHESTER, QUE. POST OFFICE

Mr. POULIOT:: For a copy of all correspondence, letters, telegrams, reports in the hands of the government, concerning the change of the postmaster at Coulombe, Dorchester county, since August, 1930.



ORDER IN COUNCIL P.C. 463

Jean-François Pouliot: For a copy of order in council (P.C. 463), dated February 27, 1931.



PUBLIC WORKS CONSTRUCTION ACT

Joseph Enoil Michaud: For a copy of all correspondence, letters, telegrams, and other documents, exchanged between the dominion government or any member or any department thereof and all other persons relating to the following items of schedule "A", chapter 59, 24-25 George V, the Public Works Construction Act: item 19, Campbellton, New Brunswick, wharf repairs; item 32, Dalhousie, New Brunswick, post office; item 41, Eseuminac, New Brunswick, breakwater extension; item 49, Fredericton experimental farm, New Brunswick, new dormitory; item 75, harbours and rivers (New Brunswick only); item 98, Moncton, New Brunswick, public building.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It is this motion that I asked a few days ago to have stand until the hon gentleman who makes the motion was in his seat. He is asking for the typewriting

of almost, I should say, several thousand documents. In every department of the public service various people have written to the ministers in connection with matters of this kind. The minister informs me that the files in his department are available to the hon. member if he desires to see them at any time, but that to take time to copy all the items involved in the words "and other documents, exchanged between the dominion government or any member or any department thereof and all other persons" would be to prepare a very, very voluminous return, and cause a very great deal of labour. If the hon. member desires to see the files they are available for him.


Joseph Enoil Michaud: I am glad to accept the
suggestion of the Prime Minister, and shall be satisfied if I am allowed to inspect the files of the department at any time I suggest, regarding the correspondence only.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: The motion might stand.


Richard Bedford Bennett: No, he accepts that.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: Dropped.



PEACE RIVER OUTLET


Mr. D. M. KENNEDY (Peace River) moved:: That, in the opinion of this house, the Peace River country should be connected by a direct railway outlet to the Pacific coast.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I introduced a similar resolution on the last day of February, last session. The Minister of Railways (Mr. Manion) at that time moved an amendment to the resolution making it read as follows:
That, in the opinion of this house, the Peace River country should be connected by a direct outlet to the Pacific coast when circumstances permit.
He commented as follows:
This amendment is not moved with any desire of blocking the resolution, but rather to call attention to the necessities of the present financial situation. ... I suggest therefore that the hon. gentleman accept the amendment on the understanding that it means exactly what it says; that when circumstances permit, which we trust will be in the very near future, every consideration will be given this project.
Throughout the year we have had I believe a very general improvement in Canada, in Great Britain, in other countries of the empire and also in the United States. It is only a few months ago that in the United States the recovery program was endorsed by an overwhelming majority, showing, I think,

Peace River Outlet
that in the opinion of the vast majority there had been a distinct improvement in that country. A few days ago I read in the press a statement coming apparently from the Right Hon. Stanley Baldwin in which he was reported to have said that Britain was leading the world in recovery. Of course we had the radio addresses of the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Bennett) assuring us that the ship of state was well through the storm and that the time for definite action toward permanent reform hau come. There is no doubt that anyone who is conversant with price levels, farm prices, railway freight conditions, railway earnings and even I think unemployment figures, will concede, whatever opinions he may have about the system under which we are living, that there has been a very definite improvement in the last twelve months.
I want to say a word about the form of my resolution. I have always introduced this resolution in pretty much the form in which I am introducing it to-day, but the Peace River railway problem is not merely one of an outlet; it is an outlet with the necessary connections within the country itself. It is a problem comprising some mileage that might be considered main line and a large percentage of branch lines that will serve local territory throughout the Peace River country. Sir Henry Thornton appearing before the Duff commission in 1931-32 made the statement that in his opinion that commission was appointed about thirty years too late; in other words it was appointed to try to straighten up certain troubles that had developed in connection with the railways of this country instead of having been appointed thirty years ago when it might have prevented a number of these troubles from developing. The Peace River did have its investigation at the beginning of the thirty years and not at the end, and in 1927 a very complete survey of the Peace River country as a whole was made with reference to the 10,000,000 acres suitable for settlement and readily available. I think it may be said that the plan was studied with a view to serving that whole territory, gradually building up the railway system and providing ultimately for over 1,000 miles of railway without one mile of duplication. We have railway unification in the Peace River because the Peace River railways are to-day jointly owned, so I do not think it can be said that we are going to have any troubles from duplication such as exists in the rest of Canada.
Whenever we speak about railway development the natural tendency seems to be to
bring up this question of the railway problem. What is the railway problem of Canada? It has been exhaustively studied by commission after commission and by railway experts, but I do not think that anywhere has it been suggested that either in the interests of the railways themselves or in the interest of the country generally branch lines properly laid out are anything but an asset. So I am going to argue that branch lines, or any railway that may serve local territory suitable for settlement and already settled, cannot be any part of Canada's railway problem. In the Dray-ton-Acworth report of 1917, in section 7 of the summary of conclusions and recommendations, I find the following;
The development of Canada justified two transcontinental lines. It did' not justify three. The Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern should have been amalgamated.
There is no suggestion throughout the Drayton-Acworth report that branch lines properly built and properly located had anything to do with creating the railway problem of Canada.
Then we have the Duff commission report, which goes into this matter somewhat extensively and from which I wish to make a few quotations. At page 41, dealing with the duplication of railway mileage it says:
The duplication of railway mileage in Canada is of two general types:-
(a)	the lines of railway constructed by various owners, which lines, when they came under common ownership and operation, were found to a considerable extent to be duplicative of one another;
(b)	the directly competitive sections of the two principal systems which, because of unwise rivalry and lack of cooperative spirit, were separately constructed, whereas joint construction and operation, or agreement as to running rights over lines already constructed, would have served' all necessary requirements and prevented much waste of public and private funds. Related to this group are lines which are functionally duplicate although not located in the same territory.
These problems relate to both branch and trunk lines. Of the lines in group (a) it has been possible, since the consolidation of the Canadian National system in 1923, to eliminate a certain amount of duplicate mileage.
It then refers to the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk between Edmonton and Red Pass Junction and between Napanee and Toronto. Then it continues:
The principal duplications of type (b) involve main line mileage of considerable length, with long-established services.
On page 19 we find this statement:
An outstanding feature of this large expenditure is the amount spent on branch lines.
Peace River Outlet

The two railways expended, during the nine year period, $162,451,546 in the construction and acquisition of branch lines totalling 5,018-60 miles. A policy of cooperation would have avoided a considerable part of this expenditure, probably one-third. This mileage is equivalent to the provision of a line of railway extending from Halifax to Vancouver and back again to the Manitoba boundary.
Then on page 21 it is said:
On behalf of the Canadian Pacific it was stated that the company had been forced to anticipate the building of branch lines, the construction of which might have been deferred without injury to the public, and that protective lines had had to be projected under a threat of invasion by the Canadian National.
The Canadian National stated that to refrain from branch line construction would result in 'the system being deprived of any opportunity for reasonable and proper development. Strategic territories, contiguous to their main lines, would be entered by their rival and, while admitting that they entered upon the construction of lines not immediately required, they defended this policy on the ground that to open up new territory in anticipation of settlement and immigration, and to maintain the company's relative position with regard to the rival transport enterprise, was in the long run justified.
The only criticism is with regard to duplication; duplication of branch lines and duplication of main lines, both in the Drayton-Acworth report of 1917 and the Duff commission report of 1932.
I have before me two speeches made by the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Mr. E. W. Beatty. In the speech made in Toronto on January 16, 1933, he said:
Canada has a population of about ten million people. It has approximately 42,000 miles of railway, or 236 people per mile of railway. In other words, it has fewer people per mile of railway than any other civilized country. It has several thousands of miles paralleled by other miles, serving the same territory and reaching the same terminals. This constitutes our greatest individual item of waste. Why should we maintain something we do not require and maintain it at tremendous loss, and can we afford to do so?
The point in all these statements is parallel lines; two railways being built where only one was required created the problem. I argue that inasmuch as in the Peace River country the projected lines have been located so that such a situation cannot arise, railway construction there should not be held up because of any recommendation that has ever been made to the House of Commons so far as I can see by any authority competent to speak on the matter. I am willing to admit that Mr. Loree did say something about lines having light traffic, but anyone who understands the railway situation in Canada knows that branch 
lines on the frontier are as necessary to main lines as are the branches or roots to the trunk of the tree. They act as feeders, without them the main lines would not have the traffic necessary to make them profitable. Mr. Beatty said in respect to branch lines that they are an asset to the railway as well as to the country, railway construction must proceed if a new country is to develop and progress. The only essential is to keep that construction within reasonable bounds, which are governed by economic principles and the application of intelligence.
I think I have made that point clear enough. One cannot study the history of railway development in Canada without being struck by the tremendous swing from increasing mileage by thousands of miles annually down to practically nothing. I have before me a statement showing the number of miles of new construction coming into operation each year since 1900. I see that in 1922 we had 3 miles, in 1915, we had 4,783 miles. The average for the thirty-four years from 1930 to 1933 was about 750 a year. It was true that the vast mileages built in one year were in what has been called periods of prosperity. But I think that railway construction, the investment of new capital, was a cause as well as a result of prosperity. It is very difficult to unscramble cause and effect in a matter of that kind.
When the depression struck Canada-and I am now coming to part of the financial side of my argument-the first reaction of governments and businesses everywhere was to economize by cutting out capital expenditure, but we very soon found out that this kind of economy was creating about as many problems as it was getting us away from. People refused to invest money; government estimates were cut down; public w'orks were not proceeded with. These were all temporary expedients, but there is not a government in Canada that has not been forced to review the problem in an altogether different way. In 1930 in this parliament we had a vote of $20,000,000 to provide for unemployment relief. Since that time I believe the government of this country has provided for the same purpose something like $111,000,000. Last year in this house we passed a bill providing $40,000,000 for the construction of public buildings. Within the last few days the hon. member for East Toronto (Mr. Church) introduced a resolution advocating a housing program in Canada, and I think the statement made by the Prime Minister in connection with that debate was very significant. The right hon. gentleman said that the purpose of

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a good deal of this sort of legislation was primarily to provide employment, and that the secondary effect would be to create other employment throughout the country.
In introducing this resolution this afternoon I want to say that in my judgment it can be viewed from the standpoint of the relief of unemployment and the provision of housing accommodation in the pioneer settlements of the Peace River district, and I think it is just as capable of being considered from that standpoint as from any other. The railway problem of Canada is related to the whole economic problem of the country, and it seems to me that if we can relieve unemployment by constructing public works, by investing public money or in other ways, and at the same time do work that is really necessary or that will be necessary in the very near future, we will be doing something really worth while. I believe the settlement of the Peace River country is permanent; I do not think there is a single thing about that country to indicate that in a short time it will be farmed out, or that it will be affected by drought or anything else that will drive settlers away. From my twenty-three years' experience in that country I can say that it has all the elements of permanency so far as weather and soil conditions are concerned. I do not believe you can have a permanent agriculture without live stock, and you cannot have live stock without suitable conditions to produce grass and feed. There is no place in the Peace River district, so far as I know, where these things cannot be grown, whether it is alfalfa, grain or any kind of grass. In that country we have timber, and I think the records for the last twenty-three years will show that the rainfall always has been ample. With all these advantages, together with the fact that ground fruits may be grown at any point, I think we can expect people to come there and make permanent homes in that district.
So, Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I am asking the government seriously to consider commencing in the near future the construction of at least some railway mileage to serve that settlement which is already in existence. I am asking the government to build railways that will fit in wdth all the plans that have been worked out for an outlet to the Pacific coast and which, in the meantime, will serve a settlement that has all the elements of being permanent. To-day we have settlers trying to establish themselves twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty and eighty miles from the railway. A few years ago the Alberta government sent Doctor Wyatt, of the Alberta research council, to the Peace River country to make an intensive survey of soil conditions. He made
a survey of about 3,000,000 acres, and as a result we know that the soil is suitable for settlement. It is not all first class, but a very large proportion of it is. I should like to put on record the winnings of the farmers of the Peace River country at some of the big fairs during the last few years. I am quoting from the Grande Prairie Herald, old timers' historical section, issued about two months ago:
Eighteen World Championships Won at Chicago in Last Eight Years
Winning a total of thirteen championships in grain classes at the International Hay and Grain Show at Chicago within eight years, and in addition taking so long a list of first, second and third prizes in all classes of grains both at Chicago and at the Royal Winter Fair at Toronto and at other shows throughout Canada, farmers of the Grande Prairie district have succeeded in firmly establishing this district as the greatest grain growing area on the North American continent.
Championship wheat was first sent out of the Peace River country as far back as GO years ago, a priest of the mission at Fort Chipewyan won a world championship at Philadelphia with wheat grown in the mission garden at the far northern outpost. Again in 1893 the late Rev. Gough Brick captured the world championship at Chicago. Then for 17 years Canada did not appear in the list of big prize winners, and the Peace River country did not undertake competition until 1923, when Herman Trelle of Wembley, exhibiting for the first time, took third prize in spring wheat, and went back to Chicago in 1926 to win the double championship in both wheat and oats.
From that time onward, the Wembley district of the Peace River country has established itself firmly as the outstanding grain growing area of the continent, with a record of five world championships in wheat, five in oats, four in peas, two in timothy and one each in rye and flax. World champion grain growers of the Wembley district since 1926 include Herman Trelle, 13 championships: Erich Andersen, two; John Allsop, one, and P. U. Clubine, one, with Robert Cochrane, of Grande Prairie, taking one. The final bid for fame was made by Wembley grain growers this season, when three young members of the junior grain club, John Allsop, Paul Sebastian and Justyn Rigby captured respectively championship and third and fourth prizes in spring wheat class, 'while Herman Trelle took championship in oats. Others who have figured in world championships are Erich Andersen, former oat king, and Robert Cochrane, who has swept the board at Chicago in timothy seed, of which he was a few years ago classed as the largest producer on the continent.
I think this record shows that in the Peace River we have a country with very rich soil. I believe the yields in the Peace River country over a period of years have shown that the climate is proper for purposes of production. The records show that settlement is fairly well developed along the route of the proposed outlet, and that the railway would traverse a region as rich as any in western Canada. I have mentioned before and I
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should like to repeat that according to the surveys there would be 6,000 economic acres of land per mile of railway in the Peace River district, while there are only 5,000 in the rest of the prairie provinces.
What would be the significance of the construction of a certain mileage of railways, probably fifty or sixty or whatever it may be, from the standpoint of unemployment relief or that of enabling settlers to establish themselves? I believe the division would be about as follows, so far as the providing of work on a railway costing about $30,000 per mile is concerned:
Per cent
Labour on the spot	38
Rails and fastenings	 18.5
Camp supplies, groceries, etc	 9.0
Freight on materials	 9.0
Forest products, i.e. bridge timber, piling, fence posts, planks, lumber,
etc	 6.0
Steel products, i.e. culverts, fence wire, telegraph wire, bridge iron, iron for
equipment, repairs, etc	 5.0
Rental of work equipment	 4.0
Miscellaneous manufactured supplies.. 2.4
Horse feed supplies	 2.2
Land purchased	 2.0
Gasoline and oils	 1.5
Coal steam and domestic	 1.2
Interest on money borrowed for investment	 1.2
100.0
This is a matter of significance not only to settlers who without reasonable railway transportation would be unable to settle properly, but to the rest of Canada. A purchasing power would be put into circulation which would affect not only steel rails, groceries or other commodities, but would have a tendency to keep in circulation the economic wealth of the dominion.
A good deal has been said as to whether or not branch lines pay, and in this connection the Northern Alberta Railways have been mentioned. I know that all railways in Canada are to-day having their difficulties.
Speaking before the Senate committee Mr. E. W. Beatty, chairman and president of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company stated that the branch lines built by that railway were not losing any more money than were the main lines. I quote the following from Mr. Beatty's statement before the standing committee of the Senate on railways, telegraphs and harbours:
Industrial and commercial enterprises also entered new fields, and for all these, railway service was necessary. These settlements and industries owed their existence in a very large masure to the colonization and development work of the company, and it was but natural that it should look forward to a share of the traffic which they might yield. As has been said, the orderly progress of its program was affected by the action of the rival system, but the future of the company could not have been protected if it had refrained from following the march of settlement. The traffic returns of the new lines up to 1930 fully justified their construction, and the falling returns of subsequent years have been no more characteristic of the new lines than of other parts of the railway.
I have been preparing some figures in connection with operating ratios of the Canadian National Railways, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Northern Alberta Railways. It is not possible to take one comparison and be certain that one has been fair. I believe however that a comparison of operating ratios would be a fairly safe guide as to just what a railway is doing. Having in mind the fact that all railways find it difficult to earn not only operating but additional charges, I should like to place some figures on Hansard. I find that in 1933 the gross earnings per mile of railway of the Canadian Pacific Railway amounted to $6,111; on the Canadian National Railways it amounted to $5,700 and on the Northern Alberta Railways, $1,621. The following table will serve to show the percentages of the three railway companies to earn a dollar in the years mentioned:
Average for
Company	1931	1932	1933 three yearsCanadian National Railways	
95.69	95.96	96.74	96.13Canadian Pacific Railway	
79.36	80.70	78.29	79.45Northern Alberta Railways	
80.72	79.13	79.86	79.90
Hon. members will note that the percentage for the Northern Alberta Railways is almost the same as that of the Canadian Pacific Railway. These are figures I have taken from Canadian railway statistics issued by the Dominion bureau of statistics.
I do not believe we can have sensible and economic construction of railways by alternating between tremendous programs of construe-
tion and no construction. If we are to build railways economically we will have to do so gradually and steadily. Professor Jackman at page 30 of his book Economics of Transportation shows how the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway cost far more than was originally estimated bceause at the time of its construction there was an extensive construction program throughout Canada

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resulting in much higher costs for rails and material than had been originally estimated. That is inevitable if we are going to have booms and depressions. It seems to me the time has come when we ought to face our problems squarely, without fear, in the full belief that Canada must develop and that we must develop it steadily. It has been said if we cannot cut off the tops of the booms and the bottoms out of the depressions we can never have stabilization.
I believe the time has come when we must face the problem about which I have been speaking. In my judgment the Peace River country must be settled. Because of weather conditions in the southern part of the province settlers will be driven to the northern areas. The Peace River area is rich in natural resources, and in this connection we must not forget what the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Fraser) said last year about the resources west of the mountains as well as the fertile country to the east. As undoubtedly this railway will ultimately be built I believe we ought to start right now, because there is a need for additional purchasing power, and an opportunity would be afforded settlers who otherwise might be in the bread lines to establish themselves. The time has come for some action towards the building of at least lines which to-day may be branch lines but which would work into a permanent scheme for future railway service for the Peace River country.


Mr. J. A. FRASER (Cariboo):: Mr. Speaker, I do not purpose to cover the ground as thoroughly or from as wide a viewpoint as has the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Kennedy). He has, in fact, covered the situation so well from the general standpoint that I think it could not have been better done. There is one remark that he made during the course of his address with which I heartily agree, and that was that the government of this dominion, in providing for the relief of unemployment through the construction program which they have in mind would do well to provide work for these pioneers living on the outskirts of civilization so that they could maintain themselves without having to go on the dole. That is one very good reason I think why the construction of this railway would justify itself many times over.
My hon. friend from Peace River mentioned that there were people in the Peace River country who had to go sixty miles to get to a railroad, but in the British Columbia area of the Peace River I think my hon. friend knows perfectly well that there are many people living to-day who have to go a
great many more miles than sixty to get to a railway. As a matter of fact, some of the residents of the district that I have the honour to represent are attempting to produce crops and earn their livelihood as far as one hundred miles away from the railway.
There was another remark made by my hon. friend from Peace River with which I also fully agree, and that is that the construction and completion of this railway outlet for the Peace River country should be undertaken gradually and steadily. I am going to suggest that at least a start might be made on the construction of this railway to serve the people who are already located in the area and who are a great distance from the end of steel. That construction would be of very great benefit to these people. I refer to that part of the Peace River territory which lies on the north side of the Peace river and within the province of British Columbia.
In order that the general public may understand the situation may I say that the Peace River country, speaking generally, is about one thousand feet in elevation above the level of the Peace river, and that the people living north of the river in the British Columbia section of the Peace River territory have to haul ail their supplies and production from that height of land down one thousand feet to the level of the river, and then cross the river, and climb up again to the same height on the other side of the river. It must also be remembered that during at least two months of the year the river is impassable on account of ice conditions, when the ferries are not able to operate. I am going to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that those people who live on the north side of the river should be supplied with railway facilities at as early a date as possible.
The northern Alberta railway lines are at present built to a place called Hines Creek, and to reach the area which I have been speaking of you have to go about one hundred miles west of Hines Creek; and 150 miles from Hines Creek would bring the railway to Hudson Hope, to the canyon of the Peace river. I suggest that as a matter of unemployment relief it would be good business for the government to provide two or three million dollars to construct that part of the line from Hines Creek west to Hudson Hope, or as much of it as that amount of money would construct. I do not think that is asking a great deal from the government, and I think the government would find that it would be money very well spent, because it fits absolutely into the scheme as outlined
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by the hon. member for Peace River for the construction of the western outlet for the Peace River country. It would remain for all time as part of the main line of the western outlet., and let me remind the house and the country that both the government and the opposition are on record in favour of providing the Peace River country with a western outlet. To make a small start such as I have suggested would be a very good thing in times like these. In that area north of t'he Peace river we have a population at the present time of four thousand people; I am talking now altogether about the British Columbia end of the Peace River country. There are in the Peace River area of British Columbia a total of about ten thousand people, four thousand of whom are on the north side of the river, and who, as I have explained, have to transport their supplies and production from one side of the river to the other.


Mr. MANION:: How many people would that branch that my hon. friend suggests serve?
Mr. FRASER (Cariboo); About four thousand people at the present time.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I wish to put on record some resolutions that I have received. The first is from the board of trade of Fort St. John, as follows:
Moved by Mr. Finch, seconded by Mr. Bruce: That in view of the fact there is no likelihood of a coast outlet in the near future and the district lying north of the Peace, being separated from the railroad by the said river, which for at least two months in the year is impassable and,
Whereas the majority of land lying between Fort St. John and Hines Creek is good agricultural land, and is in a district where a railroad could be built economically.
Therefore we respectfully urge that the railroad from Hines Creek, Alberta, be extended to the Beaton river, British Columbia, at the earliest possible date.
The Beaton river is in the centre of the area which I have described. Here is another communication from the Fort St. John Farmers' Institute, addressed to myself, under date of January 29:
Naturally we are very interested in a railway outlet for the country on the north side of the Peace river and we are writing you, respectfully requesting you to represent to the proper authorities the great need of this particular part of the country for better railway transportation.
As you are arvare, at present agricultural products must be taken by truck, on roads only fit for their use during part of the year, or by the much slower means of sleigh or wagon for a distance of about sixty miles to the

railhead at Dawson Creek. That is the distance from Fort St. John, it being considerably greater from other important parts of this large and fertile agricultural area. You of course also know that at certain times of the year it is not possible or practicable to get freight across the Peace river-this being a serious problem in the matter of delivery of farm produce to the railhead.
It has been stated that this country is not ripe for a railway and probably some estimate, in support of that contention, has been made of the freight at present available. Are the farmers expected to raise crops and stock to full capacity without really adequate means of shipping and with no hope of obtaining those facilities within a reasonable period? We think that this is a point that is often lost sight of. You of course have information at hand showing the extent and potentialities of this country and we are not forgetful of representations you have already made.
An extension of that branch of the N.A.R., which is on the North side of the Peace river, into what was known as the " Block," would, we think, greatly help the farmers on the north side by shortening their road haul.
Respectfully yours,
President.
Secretary treasurer.
I have another resolution from the North Pine Farmers' Institute, which is in the same area, as follows:
Whereas the immediate and pressing need of the western portion of the Peace River country is railway transportation facilities and more especially that vast section of newly settled country lying north of the Peace river and extending west from Hines Creek, the logical and ultimate need of the whole Peace country being a Pacific coast outlet directly west to tidewater,
And whereas the proposed Obed route is entirely inadequate to all but a small section in the southeast,
Therefore be it resolved that we, the members of the North Pine Farmers' Institute in general meeting assembled, unceasingly press for the immediate extension of the railway from Hines Creek westward to tap the Peace river block of British Columbia, to be extended eventually, as circumstances warrant, to the Pacific coast.
And now I wish to quote from a letter written by R. T. Elliott, and printed in the Grande Prairie Herald as Dawson Creek news in June of last year:
Referring again to the construction of the first section of the coast outlet railway, your correspondent received the following personal letter from Mr. R. T. Elliott. K.C., of Victoria re his recent reference to this problem, viz.:
Victoria, B.C.,
June, 3, 1934.
Many thanks for the Grande Prairie Herald of May 25. Delay in building to Finlay Forks is a crime. The trouble is to get truth into the

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east. People there cannot realize the comparatively small investment necessary to bring a new great west into buying power.
That is signed R. T. Elliott.
The editor goes on to comment on this letter in the following terms:
If that is the trouble-and we agree it may be, in part

then it is up to every public body interested in the early construction of a coast outlet to keep on bombarding the east with "the facts" regarding the economic soundness as well as the desirability of this road. That the argument no longer rests upon the agricultural traffic which would move in that direction but in addition there would be made available at once immense mineral areas which as Mr. Elliott says would bring "a new great west into buying power." We are convinced that of the many speeches made at Ottawa on the coast outlet resolutions, none made a deeper impression than that portion of John A. Fraser's address where he quoted "facts" regarding the Finlay Forks area. Various speakers following, expressed their surprise and deep interest in the "new angle" he had introduced to the government. Surely this offers some hint as to the spot where the political ice is the thinnest, so let us pile on the truth till the ice breaks in all directions.
That is -a comment on the address which I had given in which I attempted to lay before the house some facts in connection with the potentialities of Peace River. I am going to put on record some additional facts. I may not be able to get them all in on this occasion and I did not put them all on record when I spoke before. I have here a clipping from the Peace River Block News of August 31, 1934, in which the following statement appears:
The refusal of the railway company to extend their line from Hines Creek in to the north of the Peace River block may be excusable but it means that a large crop of grain which is being harvested in that fertile area will have to be hauled overland to Dawson Creek. . . . All supplies for the north and west have to be hauled by road from end of steel or the wholesale house at Dawson Creek and all grain and stock shipped out the same way. Surely the thousands of people depending on the roads for their very existence are deserving of some consideration.
That by the way is a criticism of the effort of the British Columbia government to keep the roads in condition. In other words, not only have they long distances to haul but the condition of the roads is hardly fit for travelling.
On many occasions the possibilities of the Peace River have been indicated and it is not necessary for me to put on the record any further facts in that regard, because they are now pretty well accepted. Last year I mentioned the mining possibilities in the area, and I would ask the house to bear in mind that the construction of the line from Hines Creek
to Hudson Hope would assist mining operations in that district. But I did not then include all mining operations, because I said little about coal. I outlined what was possible in connection with the precious metals as well as in copper, zinc and lead, but I scarcely touched on coal. Now I want to give a reliable estimate of the amount of coal in the Peace River area. This area lies at Hudson Hope and the particular area in which the coal lies-that is, the coal to which this estimate refers-is on the south side of Peace River. A strip seven miles long and one mile wide southwest of the canyon contains a definite estimated quantity of 85 million tons; that is the definite estimated tonnage. It has been looked over, surveyed and estimated by competent engineers and that is their estimate. Another strip seven miles long by one mile wide south of the first strip gives double this estimate, though this latter estimate is not definite. This gives you some idea of the quantity of coal available at Hudson Hope, and I suggest that there is opportunity for the distribution of that coal through the construction of the railway.
In addition to this we have possibilities of water power development in the canyon itself. Tributary to and along the river in various places we have large quantities of timber which could be made available for manufacturing purposes. The canyon itself is eighteen miles long and there is a drop in that eighteen miles of 270 feet, and the river itself is 200 feet wide. For that eighteen miles it goes between two walls of solid granite and is only 200 feet wide and, as I say, it drops in that distance 270 feet. If the whole flow could be utilized at one or more stages of development a minimum of 81,000 horse power could be developed, with a maximum of 245,000. That will give you some idea of the other potentialities of the district. All this is tributary to the Peace River and within the area which I am attempting to have served by further railway construction. I do not think I am in any way extravagant when I ask that the government give some attention to this matter at a very early date.
In order to show that things are moving in the district and that development is taking place, and to show that there is a certain amount of production, I want to quote from the Peace River Block News of January 25, 1935:
During the past year 356 carloads of settlers' effects were forwarded from Edmonton over the entire N.A.R. system, seventeen of these being unloaded at Dawson Creek (end of steel in B.C.), one at Pouce Coupe and one at Tupper.
6S6
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In addition to these cars, many settlers trekked in with wagons, etc. There are thousands waiting for conditions to pick up, so that they can raise enough money from the sale of surplus stock and equipment to make the trip, to what one writer terms "The Glamorous Peace" and make a fresh start.
Although a wet fall affected the yields in the "Block" considerably it is estimated that between three-quarters of a million and one million bushels of grain will be shipped out during the 1934-35 crop year. To date about 300,000 bushels have already passed through the elevators.
As stated in a previous issue about $50,000 worth of cattle, sheep and hogs were shipped from the district. In addition eight carloads of horses have also been sent out, bringing in approximately $12,000 net to the sellers.
I could quote other statistics to show that a very substantial production is going on in that area from year to year, and that with the extension of railway service that production would greatly increase. My hon. friend from Peace River (Mr. Kennedy) indicated that the northern Alberta railways seemed to be economically operated. They are operated at about eighty per cent of the revenue which they earn, and while not paying all the costs of interest on the money invested in these roads they still do earn a substantial amount.
For my part I think it is reasonable to ask that a start be made on the construction of this road from the point of view of the employment it would provide not only in the area itself but from the standpoint of the assistance which it would give to business throughout the country as a whole. I submit that, both political parties having definitely and sincerely promised the people that this outlet would be built, the time is now opportune for a start to be made on it, continuing from year to year until an outlet is provided to the Pacific coast.


Mr. ALFRED SPEAKMAN (Red Deer):: I would like to associate myself again with the mover of this resolution (Mr. Kennedy, Peace River) and with the hon, member for Cariboo (Mr. Fraser) who has so ably supported the suggestion. I am not in the position of those two hon. gentlemen of being wholly familiar by a long residence in those districts with all of the different points which might arise in this discussion. I cannot, like them, describe in detail the varied needs, the varied resources, the potential and actual wealth of that great area, but as one coming from a different part of the west, from central Alberta, I would like to indicate the feeling which exists among the inhabitants there toward their more northerly brethren. I would like also to place particular stress upon two points which seem to me to make the

immediate commencement of this project an urgent matter, and to point to the fact that this is indeed the logical time to make that commencement.
One aspect which is becoming of increasing importance and urgency is that which has relation to the great drought problem of other parts of Alberta and of the west generally, and to the fact that increasingly during the last years the Peace River country has been the mecca of those who have found themselves unable to continue in agriculture in the dried out areas. Thousands to my knowledge have set their eyes upon that district; thousands have already moved there and thousands now contemplate leaving the barren areas where they now reside and commencing a new Life in that newer country. I might point out, as has been indicated so well by previous speakers, that in the Peace River area you find the last great west, the last great fertile district which is at present but scantily served by transportation facilities. You find in it the last great area of agricultural land which is well supplied by nature with moisture, where the soil is of a fertile character and where real opportunity is afforded not only for the production of new wealth but for something which 1 think is of still greater importance-the creation of permanent homes. The eyes of people from the less fortunate areas have been directed there. Many have gone and they have found that the greatest handicap which they must overcome is, first, their distance from the railroad, a distance which must be experienced to be appreciated, for one who has not lived under such conditions cannot possibly realize what it means to be attempting to raise farm or any other products fifty, sixty or a hundred miles from the nearest railroad. I must confess that my recollection of that situation is not of recent years, but I have a very vivid recollection as a young man of central Alberta, for I had the dubious pleasure of going there when no railways had been built north of Calgary and when we were depending for our supplies upon a railway a hundred miles away and for our mail upon an occasional stage coach. I think I can still in memory appreciate the situation of settlers in the Peace River area.
Then too, they are facing another handicap: the excessive cost of shipping their products to the markets. It is true that arrangements have -been made, which under all the circumstances are perhaps somewhat fair, so that the entire additional cost of shipping their stuff back the hundreds of miles to Edmonton and then again westward to the

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coast is not borne wholly by the settlers; but the additional cost is very heavy; I think it averages perhaps five to five and a half cents a bushel on wheat and when you subtract from the prices other farmers have been receiving during the latter years that additional four and a half, five or five and a half cents a bushel which those settlers must pay, you will see that additional subtraction from the low price of their product may mean the difference between success and failure. Many are now rather deterred from entering that country because of fear of inability to settle within reasonable distance of a railway and because of the cost they must incur in shipping out their grain.
There is another aspect which to my mind makes the situation exceedingly urgent. Those of us who remember, as many of us do, the real opening up and the large settlement of western Canada in the beginning of this century will recall that development rested mainly upon two certain factors. The first was the free lands, the homesteads that were offered and the opportunity afforded to men to establish themselves in agriculture at relatively little cost. Most of them however were without funds and the second factor was the one which assisted them in making their settlement; that is, that the beginning of the century was marked not only by the opening up of a great west but by a tremendous program of railway construction. Thousands and tens of thousands of those settlers were able to finance themselves and to tide over their first hard years by working on the railways, by assisting in constructing the right of way. That is a matter which should be before the members of the government at the present time. To-day and during the past months and years in the Peace River hundreds of settlers have gone there, forced perhaps from their own farms by despair and failure, starting again under more favourable auspices, but without funds and compelled to rely upon relief for subsistence during those hard years. I suggest that under those circumstances it would be the part of wisdom were a program of construction moderate in cost and degree to be carried on which not only would -bring to the people of that country the transportation facilities to which I among many believe they are entitled, but would provide work for those who are making a fresh start and enable them to avoid being placed on public relief, thus maintaining their own morale, their self-respect and enabling them to pay back in the form of useful work and construction which would be of value during the coming years, the money which was paid to them.
In consideration of those two points and in consideration of the development which is only just commencing, of the opportunities afforded and of the drought problem which requires relief, I believe this is an opportune time to make at least a commencement upon that work to which every political body in Canada is committed, a work which every economist has declared sound, in order to provide for that last great railwayless area in the west the transportation facilities which will make it in the future a prosperous country, a country of homes and wealth producer for this dominion.


Mr. A. E. MUNN (Vancouver North):: I wish to say just a few words in support of the resolution moved by the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Kennedy) and so ably supported by the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Fraser) and the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Speakman). The government in power at Ottawa is, as we all know, under certain obligations to the Peace River country; that is an old story. I am not advocating that this government or any other government enter upon an extravagant expenditure, but this matter must be kept before any government that is in power. In the special session of 1930 I advocated that something be done in this connection as unemployment relief, and each year following I have said a few words in the house in support of this resolution, recommending that the unemployed start work on the road at one end or the other. It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the natural resources of that country, we all know about them. Those of you who have not visited that country have read about it; there is no question that we have there perhaps the finest wheat land out of doors. I am going to make a suggestion. This government operates under the Department of National Defence unemployment camps. I am told that in those camps there are about 8,000 homeless men getting 20 cents a day together with indifferent board and clothing, for which they are expected to do some work. To my mind that is a disgrace to the people of Canada, and an insult to the intelligence of the men in those camps. I have visited some; I have three or four of them in my riding. After the last session I wrote the minister suggesting that instead of carrying on that disgraceful plan those men be paid a minimum wage for a short working day and in cooperation with the British Columbia government put to work to finish the Pacific Great Eastern from Burrard inlet to Prince George. I am not advocating that this government buy that road.

Peace River Outlet


Robert James Manion: Will the hon. gentleman give the points again that he mentioned?


Albert Edward Munn: From Burrard inlet, that is from Vancouver to Prince George. At the Vancouver end there is about thirty miles to complete. Then from Quesnel to Prince George there is something like eighty miles graded and on which a good deal of work has already been done. If this government in cooperation with the government of British Columbia would put these boys to work, give them a short day, minimum wages, decent treatment and the tools to work with, they would have that road built in a very few months. Then there would be that part built as a Peace River outlet, something like five hundred miles. As I said, I am not trying to unload that road on this government. British Columbia has it. It is a white elephant at present, but the road is there, it has to be maintained and will have to be extended some time. This government could arrange for running rights or something over it as compensation for the assistance that might be given at this time. Any government which is in power in Canada is obligated to the people in that country. Many of them went there depending on the promises made by both the major parties, and I think by my hon. friends to the left, that there should be a Pacific outlet from the Peace at the earliest possible date. I have therefore, Mr. Speaker, very great pleasure in supporting the motion.


Robert James Manion: Mr. Speaker, I have as usual
listened with a great deal of interest and sympathy to the speeches made by the hon. gentlemen supporting this resolution. I have always been impressed by the remarks made by the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Kennedy) and the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Fraser) who are so directly interested in the proposition. I made it my business to check up, and I find that the hon. member for Peace River from 1922 to 1935 has in each year, a total of fourteen sessions, brought up this subject in the house, and brought it up exceedingly well. And the hon. member for Cariboo on all the occasions since he came into the house has been of the utmost support and assistance to the hon. member for Peace River in this matter. I also listened with interest to the other speakers, the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Speakman) and the hon. member who has just taken his seat (Mr. Munn). In regard to the latter I must say that his proposal, while perhaps worthy of consideration from the standpoint of unemployment, would not help the people in

the Peace River at all; his proposal was to extend the Pacific Great Eastern northward to Prince George but until there is some connection with the Peace River section that would be of no present help to the Peace River district.


Albert Edward Munn: It would be a start.


Robert James Manion: Yes, it would be a start, but from the wrong end. I think the people in the Peace River territory would prefer to have it start at the other end.
The hon. member for Cariboo made a suggestion which strongly appeals to me, provided the financial condition of the country were such that the government could carry it out. He suggested building from Hines Creek to the Beaton river. The resolution which he read to the house was also submitted to me some time ago, I presume by the same people. But that project would only serve four thousand people, and would not help the other thirty-five or forty thousand, although it would at least be a start in the right direction.
The trouble again is the question of finances. I understood him to say, and I think he was correct, that it would mean about one hundred miles. I think there has been little railway built in Canada that has cost less than $30,000 a mile. The hon. gentleman whispered to me that this could be built for $20,000, but with all respect I doubt it, because the cheapest railway ever built in Canada for any distance was the old Canadian Northern, and I think it cost about $30,000. It may be that this line could be laid on the ground very cheaply, but as ordinary highways cost from $20,000 to $40,000 a mile of paved road I doubt if this could be built for less. Even taking it at $20,000 it would mean an expenditure of $2,000,000 to serve about four thousand people. That shows the difficulty of going on with the large order of providing a western outlet to the Peace River territory under the conditions that we are enduring to-day.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: I think the hon. member for Cariboo was referring to the people in British Columbia, but there are people scattered along the north side in Alberta, in addition to the four thousand.


Robert James Manion: Well, that may be correct. I say that the proposal appealed to me, and I say this as sincerely as anything I have said in this house that I should like to see the government of Canada do something as a start to serve those people in that last great west and north. It is true that all parties,

Peace River Outlet
certainly the two major parties through their leaders I am told, have promised that something should be done, and I have no doubt that both leaders made those promises in good faith, thinking that conditions were either going to continue in an upward trend or come back very rapidly. But, of course, the whole difficulty has been that the world condition through which we have been passing has placed Canada, together with the rest of the world, in such a position that it has been a very serious matter to consider an estimated expenditure ranging from 813,000,000 to S80.000.000 according to the number of branch lines that might be built. I understood my hon. friend from Peace River to say to-day that branch lines are more important than the outlet at the present time. I may have misunderstood my hon. friend, because I was interrupted a number of times by hon. members submitting other matters to me and I was not able to listen to all that was said, though I was here all the time.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: Any outlet that may be built will be composed of branch lines serving local territory connected with the present system.


Robert James Manion: But the direct outlet
itself, if it were built, would mean that a great many branch lines would have to be built in order to give the people proper service.


Donald MacBeth Kennedy: Ulti-
' mately.


Robert James Manion: Yes. My hon. friend
read from the report of the royal commission on railways regarding their opinion as to branch lines, but I thought he left out one paragraph that perhaps should have been read. I am not mentioning this with any desire to refute his argument or to oppose his personal attitude, but when my hon. friend read a number of quotations I think perhaps he might have read the concluding sentence of paragraph 55, at page 21 of the report, which states:
Your commissioners have questioned the representatives of both lines as to justification for the construction or acquisition of this additional mileage.
That is, speaking of the branch lines.
The explanations given are not such as to convince us that this policy has been sound or wise.
I do submit with all due respect that there were too many branch lines built, perhaps by both parties. I am not discussing the political side of the question at all, but I believe that 925S2-44
both railways, in the heyday of prosperity, went too deeply into the construction of branch lines throughout the west.
I shall not take very long, but if I may I should like to review the whole question very briefly. My hon. friend from Peace River and the hon. member for Cariboo felt that they had dealt with this question so often that they merely brought forward new material, and I think both hon. gentlemen presented splendid arguments. They did not review the situation, however, and in a few words I should like to mention the different propositions. There have been proposals in regard to four outlets from the Peace River district, the Aggie-Obed route, which would link up with the Canadian National on the east side of the territory; the Monkman pass route, the Peace pass route and the Pine pass route. Just before the crash of 1929 the two railways were leaning rather strongly towards the Peace pass outlet, which would connect up the Peace River territory with the Pacific Great Eastern railway, which was mentioned by my hon. friend who has just resumed his seat. But when the crash came the two railways, headed at that time by Mr. E. W. Beatty and the late Sir Henry Thornton, took the attitude, which they have maintained consistently since, that they could not afford to go into any expansion of this kind. They took the position that if branch lines or outlets were to be constructed from the Peace River territory the country would have to do it alone, with no assistance of any kind from the railways except perhaps in connection with operation. They took the attitude that at least ten times the present traffic would be necessary to make the outlet by the Peace pass pay.
There have been four investigations into this question. I should like to refer to the last one, the investigation of 1932. I have in my hand Hansard of last year, from which I should like to quote the report in connection with that investigation, because it puts the whole situation in a concise form. That commission was made up of Mr. Gzowski of the Canadian National Railways, Mr. Fair-bairn of the Canadian Pacific Railway and Mr. Crysdale, who was recommended by the province of British Columbia. I Should like to read three paragraphs from their conclusions:
In view of the above, our conclusions are:
1.	No western outlet is justified for the present, as the existing railway furnishes the most economical route. It will take many times the present traffic to justify another railway-outlet.
2.	The Obed route -

Peace River Outlet

To which I have just referred.
[DOT]-for a western outlet is the most favourable from a railway economic standpoint, considering the present phase of the railway situation.
While it is not mentioned it must be admitted by those who understand the territory that the Aggie-Obed route, to which I have referred, would mean a considerable amount of back haul.
3. We recommend that the matter of a final route be decided when the question is a practical one, believing that by the time the volume of traffic has reached a point where a western outlet is justified, general and possible local conditions may have materially changed. When the decision is imperative, the whole situation should be reviewed, in order to appraise all the contributing factors, including the potential traffic which may accrue from the lines beyond the definite areas included in this report.
That is a summing up of their report. It .nay be added, as I pointed out last year, that Dot only did Mr. Beatty and Sir Henry Thornton agree with this report, but Mr. Brownlee, then Premier of Alberta, appeared before the royal commission and took very much the same attitude. As a matter of fact Mr. Brownlee went so far as to say that in his opinion, and in the opinion of the government of Alberta, it was not so much an outlet from the Peace River district that was required as it was more branch lines. That was his conclusion, after giving the matter a good deal of study, and I must confess that I never saw Mr. Brownlee here in Ottawa at any of the interprovincial conferences without being impressed with the fact that he was one of the sanest and ablest of the western men attending those conferences.
I merely add this word, that the total program is still out of the question; I am quite frank about that. The people of Canada simply have not sufficient money at the present time to embark on a program embracing anything like the complete Peace River project, which would cost anywhere from $13,000,000 to $75,000,000 or $80,000,000, according to the number of branch lines required. Speaking personally, however, because the matter has not been discussed at any length, I must say that I am impressed with the proposal of the hon. member for Cariboo, in association with the hon. member for Peace River, that something should be done looking to the ultimate construction of a westerly outlet from the Peace River area. I may say quite sincerely that so far as I am concerned I shall endeavour to have this matter given fair and reasonable consideration.
It must be pointed out, as well, that since this section became settled the rates have been brought down very materially. For example,
(Mr. Manion.]
in 1921 the rate on grain from Grande Prairie to Fort William was 63J cents per hundred pounds. In 1925 the rate was reduced to 35i cents, not much more than half the former rate, and that is the rate in effect to-day. In 1921 the rate on grain from Grande Prairie to Vancouver was 58 J cents; it is now 28 cents, or less than half the previous rate. While some aid has been afforded in that way, it does not, of course, assist the settler who is 50 or 100 miles from railway service of any kind; I am quite free to admit that. It is true that world conditions are improving, I think with reasonable rapidity, and as the hon. member for Peace River has pointed out conditions in Canada have been improving as well. Last year the two railways combined, namely the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National Railways, took in of gross revenue about $27,000,000 more than they did in the previous year. I believe the hon. members for Peace River and Cariboo, and other hon. members who may be interested to a lesser degree, may feel that there is more hope at the present time of something being done than there has been for some years. At the same time we must remember that even last year, with increased traffic, the Canadian Pacific Railway earned only sufficient to pay its bonded indebtedness, and the Canadian National Railway is still about a million dollars per week short of paying the interest charges on its bonded indebtedness.
I am going to take the liberty again-and I hope the hon. member will accept my suggestion-of moving the same amendment I moved last year. I assure him most sincerely that I do not move the amendment with any desire of stalling his proposal, but I do it entirely from the standpoint of honesty. It is possible that the house could accept the hon. member's motion just as it stands, but it seems to me that with the addition of the words I suggested last year, namely "when circumstances permit" the expression of the house could be made a little more honest. Otherwise, an acceptance of the motion as it now stands would be merely a pious hope and would perhaps give a greater amount of encouragement than I, in my innate honesty, desire to give. As amended the resolution would read:
That in the opinion of this house the Peace River country should be connected by a direct railway outlet to the Pacific coast, when circumstances permit.
In moving the amendment I have not in mind any desire to delay the purpose the hon. member has in mind, but it is moved so as to be quite frank with the people in that section of the country, with the hon. member and

Cooperative Commonwealth
hon. members who supported him. I would add merely this that at least I feel quite impressed with the idea that something might well be begun at the present time not only to assist the people of the Peace River section ana to give them hope for the future, but as a method of assisting in unemployment relief. I assure the hon. member and other hon. members that I shall endeavour to bring about something in the shape of assistance along that line.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Resolution as amended agreed to.


Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre) moved:: That, in the opinion of this house, since the capitalist system is failing to function in the interests of the great majority of the people of Canada, it should be superseded by a cooperative commonwealth in which the profit motive would be subordinated to that of public service and ruthless competition replaced by collective ownership under democratic control.
He said:	Mr. Speaker, a few days ago
when the trade agreements were under discussion the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Quinn) commented on the fact that I had protested against the time being spent on a discussion of matters which had been dealt with several years ago, and that the suggested motion was simply one of confidence in tho government. He very ingeniously suggested that I should be the last person to protest because the resolution standing in my name was in effect a vote of confidence in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. In one respect he is correct, but he failed to catch my point, namely, that in the resolution then being discussed we were asked to endorse a decision which had been made three years ago. In this resolution we are asked to endorse certain principles which we trust will be accepted in years to come.


Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):: You did the same thing two years ago.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Three years ago my proposal along these lines seemed to some rather academic. However two years ago when I introduced a similar resolution I was in a position to call attention to the formation of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federa-ation. Last year matters had advanced to a stage where we were able to present a carefully considered program. After the past year and a half we are in a position to report still further advances, because in the three provincial elections, namely in British Columbia. Saskatchewan and Ontario, some 300,000 votes were polled for the candidates of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. I interpret that fact to mean that 300,000 people have endorsed the resolution I now have the honour to move. In the provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation is now the official opposition. Recently in the cities of Winnipeg, St. Boniface, Windsor and Toronto men identified with the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation have been elected mayors. For these reasons I submit the matter before us is no longer academic.
Before we may bring forward a suggestion of a new social order it is necessary to convince the general public of the bankruptcy of the old order. To-day I have very great pleasure in calling as my chief witness no other than the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) himself. I regret that at the moment he is not in his seat, but I believe we owe him a debt of gratitude for his radio speeches in that for the first time a Prime Minister of Canada has frankly recognized that the present system is no longer sacrosanct and has himself taken the lead in condemning that system. The Prime Minister expressly suggests that the capitalist system should be judged on its merits. In my view that is an excellent statement. In his first radio speech he said, "The economic system will be examined without prejudice," and further, "If it has failed we must change it." That has given me courage to suggest in what ways it should be changed.
I would call attention to the fact that in their comments newspapers seem to have had the idea that we of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation want to abolish capital. According to the economist capital is simply that wealth which is used to produce new wealth. Our capital consists of our mines, our factories, our railways and so on. No one wants to abolish capital, but what we do suggest is the abolition of the capitalist system, namely the system under which wealth is largely concentrated in the hands of a few. In its modern form at least, that system is of comparatively recent origin. It has grown up in the last one hundred and fifty years, since the introduction of machines into Great Britain, with the resulting organization of industry, commerce and finance. We desire, then, to abolish a system whereby the control of those means of production is so largely centred in the hands of a few.
Cooperative Commonwealth

The Prime Minister further has recognized that the capitalist system did serve a useful function. I quite agree with him in that. He says:
The old system served you well, but it ended in a nuisance. Is that so or not. It ended in
a condition under which there has been universal depression and unemployment and poverty in the midst of plenty.
If that is true, and I quite agree with the Prime Minister, then it is high time that we began to ask ourselves whether we cannot discover some system which will lead us out of our difficulties.
The Prime Minister also very thoughtfully discussed the question that bothers a good many, and that is: If the system worked well in the past, why should it not continue to work? I quote the Prime Minister again:
Possibly some of you will maintain that because the system has served us well in the past there is a presumption in favour of its continuing to do so in the future, but clearly there is no proof that it will do so. Indeed present conditions are surely proof that it will not.
And he goes on to say it should be reformed. Now I would go further than the Prime Minister went in this regard. I believe that the present system cannot work much longer. It worked in England a hundred years ago because her surplus products were exported to other countries. At first it was merefy commodities that were exported, but later on we find the export of capital goods, and then when the system was set up in other countries there came about that extreme rivalry that led to a great many international complications and that finally I believe was the basic cause of the world war. Those who had been our customers became our competitors, and we have now reached the stage when nearly all the more forward nations have adopted the capitalist system. Japan is the last great nation to adopt it, and to-day we know that owing to their efficiency and their lower standards of living, and perhaps to the depreciation of their currency and other financial factors, the Japanese are able to outbid some of the older capitalist countries in the markets of the world.
Now we face the fact that nearly all countries are attempting to get these outside markets. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is elementary that goods must be sold either at home or abroad. Until recently we have had an expanding foreign market, but to-day that market has ceased to expand and in fact it is beginning to contract for every country. No nation can hope to have the same opportunities that it had before.
tMt. Woods worth.]
What about our home market? Here is where we get into difficulties because under this capitalist system the people have not the consuming power to buy back what is produced; that is the real difficulty to-day. The government faces somewhat the same difficulty when they find it next to impossible to pay the interest on their bonded indebtedness and at the same time to extend social services. If they could extend social services, undoubtedly that would help to lift the depression, but they cannot do that and at the same time pay the interest on their bonded indebtedness. Industry is in much the same position. If it were possible for employers of labour in Canada to double their payrolls in every direction it might be possible to get things moving and to recover prosperity again, but I venture to say there are very few employers to-day who are in a position to increase their payrolls and at the same time meet their interest charges and overhead expenses. So that governments and the industrial world alike are prohibited from doing the very thing and the only thing that would save the situation. There is the anomaly that faces the world.
I have said before, and I repeat it, that years ago when I was trying to read some social economics I could not understand the phrase that was often used, "the inherent contradictions of capitalism," but I think we have reached the period when the inherent contradictions are beginning to manifest themselves. I submit that what worked a hundred years ago when only one nation had adopted the system is not working to-day when almost all the leading nations of the world have adopted this system. I could not get a better witness than the Prime Minister to testify to the evils which have developed under capitalism. I quote him:
Many faults and injustices in the capitalist system . . . child labour, sweat shops, slave wages, crushingly long hours, inequality of benefits, low prices to the primary producers, high prices to the ultimate consumer.
The Prime Minister must surely have been reading the evidence given before the price spreads committee because that is a very fair 'summary of the evils revealed in the evidence there. The Prime Minister goes on:
The selling price .... sometimes influenced by unconscionable monopolistic purchasers or by certain types of middlemen and distributors, some of whose activities would properly include them within the class of economic parasites.
I always like the Prime Minister's phrases. "Economic parasites" is a good phrase, and I have no doubt it will be re-echoed on a great

Cooperative Commonwealth
many soap boxes across the country. In fact, I rather think the Prime Minister caught it from some soap box orator.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I think I got that from the hon. gentleman.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Possibly; I quite agree. I am glad that what I have said along these lines has not been without certain results. The Prime Minister goes on to talk of:
Men whose mounting bank rolls loom larger than your happiness, corporations without soul and without virtue.
Again:
Behold the sad and idle multitudes throughout the world. If the system is functioning as it should, why are there so many unemployed?
That is the question I should like to hear asked again and again. If the system is functioning why are there so many unemployed?
The Prime Minister concludes on this point:
The real answer is that there is something wrong with the system.


Jean-François Pouliot: He spoke as if he were your disciple.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Well, I should be very glad to have him as my disciple if he had been truly converted.


Jean-François Pouliot: Then you would have to apply discipline.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The Prime Minister goes on to say:
Many fail to realize what unemployment means. It is a visible expression of the inherent defects in the capitalistic system.
Again I like the phrase

the inherent defects in the capitalist system. I think that is our trouble to-day. It is not a question of this or that small defect. It is a case of our having to face the inherent defects of this capitalist system which has grown up in the last hundred or hundred and fifty years. I quote the Prime Minister again:
Canada on the dole is like a young and vigorous man in the poorhouse. The dole is a condemnation, final and complete, of our economic system. If we cannot abolish the dole we should abolish the system.
I heartily concur. If we cannot abolish the dole, then let us abolish the system.


Mr. HANBURY:: He said, "if."


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes, he said "if," and I would like to ask if the Prime Minister is taking any steps to abolish the dole.


Mr. BAKER:: Unemployment insurance.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Unemployment insurance does not touch the question. Unemployment insurance will not assist anyone now on the dole.


Richard Langton Baker: We are on the way.


Jean-François Pouliot: It will not even assist the baker.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I know it might be possible for the federal government to transfer this matter to the provinces, to have an unemployment insurance scheme to which certain classes would be asked to contribute and from which certain classes would receive benefits. That is all very well, but it does not touch the half million people now out of work, who together with their dependents number over a million. What does the Prime Minister propose to do with them? So far there is no answer, and I think we have to admit that since the right hon. gentleman is the Prime Minister of the country, since be earlier recognized that unemployment was a national problem, he must either abolish the dole or, if we are to use discipline, we insist that we abolish the system.
I am glad to say that the Prime Minister, for the first time as far as I am aware, has also frankly recognized that the trouble does not lie in the weaknesses of individuals. A great many people say that if a man is out of work it is his own fault. Or that if a man is overcharging or exploiting the public you have to deal with him; because he has not the love of God in his heart he should be curbed in some way. The Prime Minister sets out clearly the real situation:
Individuals did not cause the faults in the system: Growth and change in the system were primarily responsible for that:
I agree; it is not a case of dealing with individuals, of getting rid of a few greedy or shiftless people. We have to deal sooner or later with the system itself. The Prime Minister gives us a little review of capitalism:
The industrial machine became more efficient, more powerful, more concentrated.
Again:
Only since the war has there been that turbulent advance, that frantic development, that terrific concentration of business, that overcapitalization of industry which had an ending, at least of a certain sort, in the crash of 1929.
In another paragraph he tells what that crash meant:
What we called the crash of 1929 has been the crash of the system which has broken down under the conditions under which the capitalistic system was born.
In other words, in these earlier addresses of his the Prime Minister recognized clearly, or he tried to make us believe that he recognized clearly, that the system was done for. He then proceeded to outline some of the more recent developments of the system. He
Cooperative Commonwealth

was at the time suggesting that Liberalism had not kept pace with the development, and I quite agree with him, for it is the worst indictment of Liberalism that its program has not kept pace with the economic developments. The right hon. gentleman outlines these developments in some very fine phrases:
The practices of business men were modified . . . the fine theory of the open market place disappeared . . . laissez faire weakened and died . . . concentrations of business increased . . . monopolies grew more threatening . . . capitalism became more dominant . . . the profit system did less and' less toward an equitable distribution of the benefits of the system.
That is a splendid characterization of the later development. The evils, he said, flourished-
-in the times when capitalism ran itself, ran the people, ran the state.
I submit that while the Prime Minister spoke of those conditions as being in the time of the Liberal regime, those conditions have existed for some considerable time and they exist to-day. Capitalism is to-day running itself, running the people and running the state. We have had to a very large extent unregulated capitalism. I submit that if there is anything wrong with us to-day it must be admitted that the big business people have been in control, hence they need not try to put the blame on the interference of the state. The big business men have been given a free hand; they have been given carte blanche and they have taken full advantage of it. So that if we are in a bad way to-day, big business is to a great extent accountable for the situation.
Further, we have reached a stage which might very well be described as economic slavery. There are very few people who are free to-day. A man is not free to speak in this city of Ottawa if his speeches are likely to prove unacceptable to the powers that be. Very few people are free to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. We have a species of economic slavery, and my Liberal friends can talk until they are black in the face about freedom won by the Liberals of the past, I tell them that until a man is free economically he is not really free, and political freedom has become a mere sham. The state has been and is to-day, in my judgment, an instrument of capitalism. I could have wished that the Prime Minister would do the heroic thing and break the grip of capitalism. I do not know that I have ever had any strong hopes, although the first addresses he gave really made one wonder what might be coming. The Prime Minister finishes his outlining of the devolpment of the system:
fMr. VVoodsworth.]
A generation of strife; death in foreign lands, at home the fearful struggle for wealth, the dreadful siege of adversity, the march of the breadlines, the resistance of brave hearts against the prospect of unchanging want-
A scathing denunciation. But I think I have the right to ask the Prime Minister this question: What does he propose to do about it? So far the only measure he has brought down is the unemployment insurance scheme; that is all. I do not want to anticipate what may come later in the session, but that was said to be the biggest part of the social program to be brought down-an unemployment insurance scheme that does not touch the most needy, the unemployed, a scheme that will be restricted to a very small group, a scheme that excludes the farming and fishing communities, the lumbering communities and the casual workers who are in very great need, a scheme which, if carried out 100 per cent, will only bring us into line with Great Britain under the Lloyd George regime. As the Prime Minister himself said in introducing the resolution, a great many of the nations of Europe have adopted similar legislation. It may alleviate conditions here and there but it will not do anything to get at the fundamental evils of the system.


Jean-François Pouliot: Scheme is the word.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I wonder sometimes as I have read and re-read these addresses of the Prime Minister-does he really know the meaning of words? Does the Prime Minister really know the meaning of these phrases he has been using? I do not think we can allow the Prime Minister merely to declaim; we must ask him, since he is in that responsible position, what he means by these phrases.
One more quotation or so and I am through with my chief witness. The Prime Minister recognizes apparently that this system is doomed. Listen to this:
In the crash and thunder of toppling capitalism . . .
Does that mean anything? Again:
The old order has gone. It will not return.
Does that mean anything? He goes further in that than I could possibly go. I should say that the old order is getting pretty shaky, but I do not think it has gone yet; I wish it were. And take that last address which he gave not many weeks ago in Montreal. After he had very gracefully paid his tribute to the influence of Mr. Litvinoff, JohnStrachey and Sir Stafford Cripps, he said:
The social ideal must be the determining factor in the future as the individualistic ideal was in the past.

Cooperative Commonwealth
I agree with the Prime Minister. In that regard I find myself at the opposite pole to many of my Liberal friends. The Prime Minister's position however is a far cry from the rugged individualism he has been asserting and, I would go further and say, from the individualism embedded in our laws and in our public practice. What about the relief camps? Is that project dominated by the new social ideal?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Call your chief witness.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, I do not call my chief witness; I call to my witness the thousands of young men who to-day are being demoralized under that system, the loggers,
lumber workers and people throughout thfi country that are all being demoralized. I call the large numbers of people in our cities who are eating in soup kitchens to-day and are being demoralized. I call the families such as the one I mentioned in my opening speech of this session, where there was a tragic suicide simply through discouragement. Are we-and this is too serious to make party capital out of-any of us now trying to work out a new conception, a new social ideal?
What about the distribution of wealth? I have in my hand a study recently made of the estimated distribution of income receivers other than agricultural workers and their incomes for the census year 1930-31. The table is as follows:
Size of income for the year-
Number of persons
Per cent of total
Per cent of total income
Under $1,000	
1,526,000	56.2	25.4$1,000-$1,500	
643,000	23.7	25.9$1,500-$3,000	
448,000	16.5	28.8$3,000-$10,000	
85,000	3.2	12.9$10,000 and over	
11,000	0.4	7.0
As long as income is so poorly distributed as that, surely we have not begun to catch a glimpse of what it means to have a new social ideal.
The Prime Minister suggested that under the circumstances we should reform, which according to him means regulate. If we in this corner are correct in our studies, I would say that it is impossible to reform the present system; that it is impossible effectively to regulate it and the only thing to do is to work out a new system. That is why we have gone forward with our idea of a cooperative commonwealth.


An hon. MEMBER:: Words.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Somebody says
"words." No, not words; it represents a new ideal. Whether hon. members agree with us-and I would frankly admit that this is a matter for discussion and I cannot hope they will all agree with us-I contend that it represents a new ideal, one that is now being held by a very large number of people throughout the world, and one that is gradually crystallizing in the form of political parties. Undoubtedly the elections, if not the one to be held next summer, will in the near future be fought on this issue of reform and regulation or, if you will, stabilization, on the one hand and on the other the establishment of an entirely new economic system.
We suggest two things that must characterize the new system. First of all the profit motive must be subordinated to that of public service. The Prime Minister would I think
be the first to admit, and certainly the former Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Stevens) will admit, that under our present system the profit motive has run wild. But this is not because of the fault of the individual; it is because the system is so arranged that the big prizes go almost automatically to the most unscrupulous or those who to-day are occupying positions of special privilege. We say that the whole conception of making profit must give way to the new one of giving service to the public. That means reorganization in a great many ways. I am not one of those who suggest that we have to have a highly bureaucratic system of state socialism. I do not want that; I think there are always dangers connected with such a system. If we look at the situation as it exists in Canada, I fancy certain things will naturally be carried on by the federal authorities. We already have our railroads, one of them in name publicly owned, though the Prime Minister told us last year that it was owned not by the people but by the bond holders. Some day I hope the railroads will be publicly owned not only in name but in reality. That is one move. To-day even the Liberals or at least a certain number of them are committed to the public ownership of banks.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Of the
central bank.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes; I was giving them credit for altogether too much-to the public ownership of the central bank. At
Cooperative Commonwealth

least if the hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Mackenzie) takes that position, his leader (Mr. Mackenzie King) has not so far expressed himself very clearly on the matter. Undoubtedly the federal parliament will have to control our banking system and certain other things that are essentially general in character. There are other matters that-may be taken over by the provinces, such as not merely the distribution of liquor as we have it in Quebec, Ontario and most of the other provinces at present, but possibly the distribution of bread and milk and coal and other essential public services. That can be done through the provinces.
Other things could be managed by the municipalities. We already have in my city the public hydro. In Toronto they have the public transportation system. In all these matters the difference between private and public ownership is this: that private ownership is concerned with making as much profit as possible while under public ownership we are seeking to give as great service as possible. That is true even though we have the competition of privately owned corporations with our publicly owned systems-more than that, even though most of us are obsessed with the profit motive. Some of these days we will get rid of many of these hampering ideas inherited from the past. Further than that, we would like to work toward the free development of a large number of cooperative institutions. Some time ago we had producers cooperation exhibited more or less in the wheat pools in the west and I think that principle was sound. We would have consumers' cooperatives. If I am rightly informed, about one-third, if not more of all the families of Great Britain are now members of their various consumers' cooperatives. I should like to see similar cooperatives fostered and established in this country. I should like to see the government take a" strong stand in the matter of giving these cooperatives a chance, and curbing the private competitors that now make it so difficult for them to do business. Along these and kindred lines we seek to develop the cooperative principle under which the profit motive would be subordinated to the public service.


Jean-François Pouliot: Would the hon. member
be kind enough to tell me when it will be convenient for him to answer the fifty-five questions which I have asked him?


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have no thought whatever of answering the fifty-five questions.
I have not even read them. I shall answer questions that are relevant to the matters in hand and that have not been dealt with.


Jean-François Pouliot: Then may I ask the hon. member to define what he means by the word "profit."


James Shaver Woodsworth: I have not time;
I have only a few minutes left. The hon. member can find the definition in the dictionary.


Jean-François Pouliot: But I have not my hon.
friend's dictionary.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Further than that, under a cooperative commonwealth we shall get rid of ruthless competition, which will be replaced by collective ownership under democratic control. We have nearly all been bora and brought up under an individualistic system. Many of us are children of the pioneers of this country, and we naturally like to think of carrying on each man by himself. But to-day the world has been swept into a position in which very few people are carrying on their own affairs in their own ways; we are living in the midst of a collective system. We travel on a great railway system-there are only two in this country to-day; we deal with banks-there are only some ten of them in this country to-day. We cannot start our own little individual business. The trouble is that the collective system under which we are living is under the control of a very small group of people who are using that system to feather their own nests rather than give service to the public. Under these more or less monopolistic conditions we believe that we must take the next step forward; this collective machinery should be used for the public benefit, and that can be brought about only by some real measure of democratic 'control. I do not mean that everything must be governed by a parliament such as this; parliament as it is now constituted is hardly fit to carry on the business entrusted to it, much less to carry on a lot of detailed business such as would be involved in taking over a number of enterprises. But we can have commissions appointed-


Jean-François Pouliot: Bureaucracy I


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, it is not bureaucracy. On those commissions would be represented the people engaged in the industry, which is an altogether different situation from what we have to-day.


Jean-François Pouliot: Who will appoint them?


An hon. MEMBER:: The U.SB.R.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Oh, someone says
the U.SS.R.-the old cry. I thought we might at least get through one debate without having something of that kind dragged in.

Cooperative Commonwealth


An hon. MEMBER:: Litvinoff.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I perceive that these gibes are being directed not against me, but against the Prime Minister.
Only last Saturday we had a meeting of the council of our Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, and I was very glad to have that council draw up a statement of our position in view of the Prime Minister's so-called reform legislation. This was not a preelection manifesto, as the papers had it. I should like to read a few paragraphs-it was in some of the papers this morning:
In the opinion of the National Council of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation the program of the federal government is entirely inadequate to meet the situation.
Reform or reconstruction; that is the issue.
That capitalism has broken down even the old parties now agree. Debt, unemployment, insecurity, the hopeless position of youth, are signs of an economic system in decay. Their persistence and the failure of reform measures in all countries confirm the repeated declarations of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in respect to the economic problem.
The old parties tell us that the system can be patched up by "reforms." But if reforms have not solved the problem in other countries how can the same reform solve it in Canada?
The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation believes that capitalism can be neither reformed nor restored: Profit for the few and prosperity for the masses are incompatible. The only permanent solution of our problems is to get rid of capitalism and replace it by a new social order, the cooperative commonwealth.
Effective reconstruction must begin where human suffering is greatest. We therefore propose the following as the first steps towards the cooperative commonwealth:
(1)	Finance:
Socialization of all financial institutions so as to secure control of prices and production and to finance socially useful public works and services by national credit.
(2)	Agriculture:
(a)	Adequate minimum income for the farmer as a first charge on his production.
(b)	Statutory reduction of the farmer's debts, with prevention of forclosure and eviction.
(c)	Planned extension of markets for farm products.
(d)	Bringing the price level of what the farmer sells into line with the price level of what he buys.
(e)	Encouragement of producers' and consumers' cooperatives.
(f)	Socialization of packing and other processing plants.
(3)	Labour and Social Services:
(a)	An immediate large-scale program of socially useful public works, including housing financed by public credit.
(b)	A national minimum wage to give every family a standard of living commensurate with the nation's capacity to produce wealth.
(c)	Protection and encouragement of trade unions and workers' organizations, and an
effective voice for the workers in the management of industry.
(d)	National non-contributory social insurance with adequate benefits against unemployment, sickness, accident, old age and death.
(e)	Socialized health services.
(f)	The six hour day and five day week, to be increased or decreased according to social need.
(g)	Abolition of relief camps.
The carrying through of even these proposals will, of course, involve extensive socialization of industry and social planning, as outlined in the Regina manifesto of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: The hon. gentleman's
time has expired.


Richard Langton Baker: If I may ask the hon. gentleman a question, is his desire for revolution instead of evolution?


James Shaver Woodsworth: You can call it
what you like. Ask your own Prime Minister what he means by reform.


Richard Langton Baker: I am asking the hon. member.


Jean-François Pouliot: Who will pay for all this?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Who pays for all
things to-day? The people.


Jean-François Pouliot: But if they make no profit it would be impossible for them to pay.


Mr. R. K. ANDERSON (Halton):: Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) in his presentation of his case. I notice, however, that he has considerably changed his policy from that of a year ago. He is coming towards the Conservative policy as enunciated by the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) in the speech from the throne. For the first time he has put on Hansard the policy of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No, we did it last year.


An hon. MEMBER:: This is a new policy.


Robert King Anderson: It is a new
policy, then, because it is not the same policy as before. The hon. member objected to the discussion in this house on Thursday last of the empire trade agreements. I am going to discuss these empire trade agreements because they are part of the Conservative policy and we are discussing at the present moment the policies of political parties. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation presented their ease to the country in the last two or three provincial elections, and got considerable support; consequently they feel entitled now to

Cooperative Commonwealth
take their place as a real political party. The hon. member for Toronto-Scarborough (Mr. Harris) presented a resolution-


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, I
regret to interrupt the hon. gentleman, but I submit that at the moment we are discussing a specific proposal and it is hardly fair to divert the discussion to an altogether different matter, one that is already on the order paper, one that has been discussed and presumably will be discussed again. I suggest that the hon. member is entirely out of order.


Robert King Anderson: We are discussing political parties and their policies.


James Shaver Woodsworth: No.


Robert King Anderson: The hon.
gentleman has presented the policy of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, and the policy of the Conservative party has been put on Hansard-


James Shaver Woodsworth: I press my point of order.


Robert King Anderson: *-in connection with the empire trade agreements.


Pierre Édouard Blondin: There can be no question about the point of order raised. There is already on the order paper, in the name of Mr. Harris, a motion with respect to the operation of the Ottawa agreements, and I think the hon. gentleman will be quite out of order in discussing them on this motion.


Robert King Anderson: I bow to your ruling, Mr. Speaker. Those agreements were part of the policy which led up to the program enunciated at the opening of this session in the speech from the throne, and ever since he took office in 1930 the Prime Minister has been leading up to the proposal now before the house in connection with the relief of unemployment. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has given the house his policy in connection with the relief of unemployment, but that policy has been greatly changed since he first presented it here. He has also changed the name of his party by leaving out the word "federation." Evidently he is being educated by what he hears in this house, and is changing his attitude accordingly.
I should like to refer to a statement issued by the North American Life Association Company as the result of an investigation conducted by them. They take one hundred men at twenty-five years of age, and show that at the end of forty years, when most of these men have reached the end of their earning ability, sixty-one will be living and thirty-

nine will have died. Of the sixty-one still living, fifty-two or more than fifty per cent of the original number, will be living on charity or will be dependent upon the assistance of friends and relatives, leaving only nine who will be independent. Of the nine, five will be working for a living, while four will have earned and set aside enough for their old age. This would seem to indicate that under present conditions it is very difficult for the average man to lay aside sufficient during his working years to take care of his old age, which would seem to show that something is wrong with the system under which we have been operating up to the present time. This depression has caused great distress throughout the country, and I should like to read the solution suggested by the ex-kaiser with regard to this point:
1.	Unemployment cannot be cured by material means alone, for it is " spiritual distress."
2.	While it is true that the machine threatens our entire economic life, yet the mind of man, which created the machine, will also "find ways and means of effectively meeting the excesses of technics."
3.	One effective way of meeting unemployment is that of taking industrial workers out of the big cities and away from the machine-dominated factory, and "putting them to work at building streets and canals, or cultivating waste land, or colonizing them" as small farmei's.
4.	For the machine, as for business, certain regulatory laws must be promulgated "so that its planless, inorganic multiplication and use may cease."
5.	This regulations must come about "by international agreement."
In his seclusion in Holland the ex-kaiser has been able to view what has been going on in the rest of the world.
The proposition advanced by my hon. friend is simply a socialistic program. Socialism has not been a success in the world. I should like to quote from a very pertinent article written by a Toronto man named Frederic Davidson. I do not know who he is, but his remarks go right to the point. He says:
Socialism would socialize initiative-and slay it; would submerge the gifted who alone bring forth all that makes life worth living here below. Socialism takes from those who have, by reason of their initiative and self reliance, and gives to those who have not, who never could have otherwise, without these qualities. Socialism thinks it can get nothing without taking what belongs to others. And in this it sees clearly, for socialism is sterile, non-productive.
Socialism never has produced anything in the world and never will, because it takes the people in the mass and not by the individual. The individual who has initiative.

Cooperative Commonwealth
courage and ability has always produced what has made the world better. The London Morning Post recently contained a very interesting article, from which I should like to read
a few sentences:
"The moral and intellectual wealth of a nation," says Galton, "largely consists in the multifarious variety of the gifts of the men who compose it, and it would be the very reverse of improvement to make all its members assimilate to a common type. . . . "Civilizations," says Gustave Le Bon, "have been created and directed, not by crowds, but by a small intellecual aristocracy. . . . Nor can education make men equal, since it confirms the inferior mind in its inferiority while strengthening the superior mind in its superiority.
Evolution, then, does not equalize; it differentiates, and not only in individuals, but in classes. Man is said to have emerged from a primitive communism, in which all enjoyed the cold and precarious equality of the cave-level; but he has been sorted out in the course of ages into classes and vocations, every one the complement of the others, and now lives in an ordered society, highly complex and infinitely differentiated. By an atavistic impulse the socialist would obliterate all class differences and reduce mankind to its original state.
In other words socialism would reduce all classes to a common level, and all classes would be controlled by the state. Eventually there would be only two classes, the governors and the governed, and in a few generations we would be back where we were many centuries ago. Then the old fight for freedom and liberty would have to be fought all over again. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre says we have no liberty of speech in Canada to-day. I say we have in Canada to-day the greatest liberty of speech the world has had at any time. At the present time a man can say almost anything he likes so long as he does not advocate violence against the state. If Mr. Tim Buck comes to Ottawa he will have the privilege of addressing any number of people he can get to listen to him, if he will simply keep within the law.
Capitalism has been blamed for all the ills of life. The hon. member moving the resolution said that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, and that it must be done away with. I want to say that capitalism has been a great success, and in essence it is sound and will prevail. The capitalist is the only fly in the ointment. He is the man who has caused all the distress of the world, and he must be eliminated-not the capitalist system, but the capitalist himself. Capitalism has produced a superabundance of all the necessities and luxuries of life, and at the same time it has eliminated the sweat from the brow
of man. It has made this system the greatest and most wonderful in the world's history. To talk of scrapping a system which has given such service is plain insanity. I say that to the hon. member, and any man who talks about scrapping the capitalistic system must have a loose cell in his brain and ought to have a surgical operation to cement it into place.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Will the hon.
member undertake to do the job?
Mr. ANDERSON (Halton); Probably in the case of the hon. member it would be a little dangerous. Any system which can produce such overabundance with so little labour can and will distribute its benefits to all classes of humanity, if it is given time to adjust itself to our changing needs.
I emphasize again, as I did two years ago, that the change must come gradually and imperceptibly. Impatience would create an upheaval which would destroy the system and the people themselves. We are moving rapidly enough towards a socialistic state. During the last few years we have been going in that direction very rapidly, and if we continue to follow that course we will have a socialistic system unless we bolster up the capitalistic system. I am not advocating a policy of laissez-faire, but I am supporting the policy enunciated by the Prime Minister in the speech from the throne. I would recommend eliminating the defects in the capitalistic system and bringing it up to date. The utopia envisioned by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre cannot function to-day; it cannot function until the human heart has been purged of greed and selfishness. That has been the cause of the downfall of the capitalistic system.
I have but a few more remarks to make, because I realize my voice is not in good condition to-day. Two years ago I advocated that the government would be wise to set up a system whereby certain of the unemployed men eligible for such work could return to small acreages of land. The idea was to take many of these men out of the towns and put them on small acreages, give them some assistance in the building of their houses, and instructions as to how to work their property. As a result they would have a stake in the country, and I believe in a few years they would be in a position to pay back what they had borrowed from the government. Some who are now discontented would be satisfied; they would have something to do, and would not be standing about on street corners and criticizing other people.
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A few days ago I read in the Ottawa Journal an article written by a man from Gatineau, Quebec, who signs himself "J.J.F." Although not formerly a farmer his statement indicates he would like to get back to the land. These are his words:
To one who, like myself, looks over his shoulder at the forty-years-old dead line, the question obtrudes itself "Whither goest thou?" The answer always is: "I do not know." And there are many who must make the same unsatisfactory reply.
There could, however, be a different one. There is a solution for such as I. Merely the agency to give it effect is lacking. It is a modified "baek-to-the-land" movement. Not back to the farm-I have never done farming on a large scale-but back to the land nevertheless: To the large garden and the raising of fowl, etc. These things I have done, and could do again. It is no royal road to riches but it is a highway to a living, to peace of mind, to self respect and to the lost luxury of work. It would put back the "dead line" another twenty years.
There must be, I am sure, many suitable locations for such an enterprise, which are now either temporarily vacant or abandoned. The only immediate needs are two to five acres of land, a house that can be made habitable and water. Given such a location free for one year, I would guarantee to pay rent thereafter and eventually to buy. There are many others, I feel certain, who would take advantage of such an opportunity.
That is one way to employ the unemployed. From the Chicago Daily News I have extracted the following to indicate the cost of employing the unemployed in public works undertakings:
There is no costlier form of relief than public works. Take one point of the new program, the elimination of grade crossings. The New York Times has made a study of the elimination last year of a grade crossing at Great Neck, New York, half by the state, half by the Long Island Railroad. The job gave direct employment to 185 men for eleven months at an average cost per man of $3,500. Direct relief for each man would have cost $432. To employ these men, in this case, cost eight times as much as direct relief would have cost.
That is a most interesting commentary on the expensive proposition of giving employment to unemployed through a program of public works.
In the reconstruction program proposed I would -ask the government not to forget the largest class in the dominion, namely the middle class. If we are to judge by the present attempts being made towards reconstruction it is obvious the middle class will get the worst of it. They do not get any benefits from government relief. They are too wealthy to obtain relief from the government, but they are not wealthy enough to obtain the services given to labour, services which the wealthy can quite easily pay for.

When they reach old age these people are dependent upon the money they have invested in bonds, stocks and securities of different kinds. The tendency to-day is to reduce the interest rates on -those bonds or stocks. In a few years these people, who are now selfsustaining and would be in a position to maintain themselves in their old age, will be on the list of unemployed and will have to receive relief. I should like to ask the government, municipal authorities and industrial concerns to -have consideration for and help to keep solvent that class which has paid by far the greatest amount in taxes.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to say a few words in support of the resolution now before the house, I may say that I shall not take very much time to answer the hon. member for Halton (Mr. Anderson) who spoke just before the dinner recess. I can assure him that the party to which I belong has changed neither its program nor its name, although he may think so. As a matter of fact what he really thought was a change on our part was that he was hearing advocated in other quarters some of the policies we have been advocating for years, and becoming more familiar with them he does not now think them so wild and terrible as they appeared to him two years ago. The change really has been in himself and not in us.
The hon. gentleman made certain statements which he himself proceeded to answer. He said that socialism had never been a success anywhere. Then he told us that we were proceeding as rapidly as possible towards socialism, which from his point of view cannot be a desirable thing. Then he told us that capitalism was an unqualified success, and from statistics went on to prove that about eighty per cent of the people under the capitalist system died in poverty, leaving no property, not even enough to bury them. With that I agree.
I should like to answer the question asked by the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) as to who is going to pay for all these social improvements we are suggesting. Who is going to pay for all these improvements in human society? As a matter of fact, I think it is fairly easy to tell him who is going to pay for them. Wealth can be and is produced only by applying human labour to natural resources. Then those who are going

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to pay for everything are those who apply that labour. When we look around us and see the wealth on every hand-our great cities, our farms, our great industries', our railways-that is the wealth of the world, and that has been created by human labour. The reason we are in the depression we are in to-day, Mr. Speaker, is because labour did not get enough for producing that wealth, and that is the answer to my hon. friend's question as to who is going to pay.
The thought in this resolution is the most important question before the people of the civilized world to-day. It is the topic of conversation wherever a few people are gathered together. That is, can the present capitalist system be reformed, or what are we going to put in its place? These are the questions that are uppermost in the minds of thinking people to-day, and anyone who does not consider that question important is dead from the chin up.
Two years ago when a similar resolution was moved in this house there was a great deal of opposition to it, of course, and no doubt there are a great many people to-day who will not accept the thought embodied in the resolution. However, regardless of the reception which the resolution may receive, I am quite satisfied that the ideas which we are putting forward are making progress and are meeting with a more and more favourable reception every day.
I have said that almost all thinking people the world over who are giving any thought to the questions of the day are inquiring and thinking about these changes that must come about. I recollect that last session the hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler) touched on this subject in his speech on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. At page 612 of Hansard of 1934 he said in part:
If I may take just a few more minutes I should like to conclude with a few observations upon a subject which I regard as of even greater importance.
That was of even greater importance than the question he had just been discussing. He went on:
I believe that by legislation of some sort, by planning or by some adjustment, there should be brought about in this country a condition whereby the spread between the return to labour and the return to capital should not be so great. 1 have made that statement before in this house. I do not know whether it is the enunciation of a socialist doctrine, but I believe that if the man who produces, who labours on the farm, in the factory-and perhaps I am thinking more particularly of the factory-in the mine or elsewhere does not
receive enough money in return to enable him to buy back that which he produces, you are bound to have depression.
That is very clear, and as I said a moment ago, the reason we have this depression to-day is that those who have produced the wealth of the world have not received sufficient for producing it to enable them to consume or use it. The hon. member for North Waterloo went on:
I am not going to say just how that is going to be brought about. My friends in the corner say that it can be done only by entirely scrapping the present system. I am not ready to go so far as that; I do not believe my hon. friends in the corner of the house are ready to take hold of matters and bring all these things about. If we did anything of that kind I fear we might end in chaos, a condition which would be worse than what we have to-day.
Of course, whether it would be better or worse would depend altogether upon the person who is speaking. I know a great many people in this dominion who think that their condition at the present time could not be any worse than it is now. I am doubtful if the hon. member for North Waterloo realizes what we mean when we say that this system must be scrapped or abolished. I hope he has not in his mind the idea that we wish to destroy the capital or industrial equipment that we now have. That is not what we mean at all, and no sensible person who gave the matter a moment's thought would suggest that we were thinking of anything of that kind. Capital is not so much a material thing as it is a social relabionshp, and it is that social relationship and the purpose for which we now use capital that will have to be abolished or scrapped-whichever word you prefer-and not the equipment itself. When we have changed the purpose of production, that is, when we begin to produce things to meet the needs of the community and not for the purpose of making profits for the owners of the machinery of production, then we have abolished capitalism; but we have not abolished the equipment and the instruments of production, which is altogether a different thing.
I should like to quote an authority who has been quoted in this house on previous occasions, if the hon. member for Temiscouata will bear with me in this. Sir Arthur Salter, who has also been on the air recently, makes this statement:
We cannot restore the old competitive system. We must recognize that there must be increasing socialization and increasing control of such activities as are not completely socialized.
Two years ago Sir Arthur Salter would not have gone so far as that, but he has been
Cooperative Commonwealth

thinking. He has been observing the development of economic conditions, and he has come to the conclusion that there is no solution for our problems except more and more socialization, more control of the means of production and distribution.
The resolution now before the house is in two parts. The first contains a statement of fact, that the capitalist system is failing to function in the interest of the great majority of the people of Canada. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The second part of the resolution recommends that since the present system is failing to function it should be replaced by a system that will function. Although the resolution does not say so explicitly, the implication is there that the system is failing to function because it is based on the profit motive. Consequently the resolution asks that the present system be superseded by a system from which the profit motive will be eliminated, so that instead of competing for rewards we should cooperate for social benefit.
What should be the objective of any rational system of production-any economic system? The rational objective of any economic system should be the supplying of the social needs of the people as fully and on as equitable a basis as possible. Measured by these two reasonable and attainable ideals, our present system, everyone must agree, has broken down and the opponents of the resolution must admit the failure of the system or else in some logical way justify the glaring paradox of our time, poverty in the midst of plenty. Those who disagree with the resolution virtually maintain that property rights are more important than human rights; that on the one side are the few with property and on the other side the many with their needs, and that they are going to stand with the few and with property. There is no middle course whereby each should have consideration. If we follow profit then we must leave the road that leads to social service, and vice versa. I have here a copy of a pamphlet which I believe each of the members has received. It is a report of the findings of a commission which was appointed by the United Church of Canada in 1932. After considerable study the commission embodied their findings in this report, the title of which is Christianizing the Social Order, and the report is signed by Sir Robert Falconer and Doctor W. T. Brown of Victoria College, Toronto. In a paragraph dealing with the defects of modern industry they say:
Despite the enormous gains made possible by the employment of modern science in the service of human needs, we are confronted with a new fact-dire want in the midst of plenty. 
Production is deliberately restricted and produce is destroyed, not because it is not needed, but because that procedure promises higher prices. Human energy is often diverted from the production of the essential needs of life to socially undesirable or useless ends. Both in towns and rural areas people are compelled to li''e, in dwellings which lack the ordinary conveniences of modern housing, or are so overcrowded as to make decency and health almost impossible; yet the material for building and the energy of builders are available in abundance.
I have read from this report because, on looking over the Parliamentary Guide, I find that a great many of the members of the house are members of the United Church of Canada, and I would ask them to take this report and study it closely. If they do so I am sure they will find that it goes a long way in the direction of what we have been advocating in this house for the last five years.
I wish to quote very briefly once more from the report of the commission, but before doing so I must touch on another point. We have sometimes been accused of stirring up class antagonisms and engendering class hate. To this we plead not guilty. These class antagonisms and this class strife were already in existence, created by the very conditions that create classes. If we have referred at any time to classes we have referred to them only as a physician might refer to a condition he found after examining his patient. We found certain conditions prevailing in human society; we found want and misery in the midst of abundance and consequently came to the conclusion that that want and that misery, side by side with abundance, could not possibly exist except in a society where there were classes. So that we are therefore no more responsible for what we have found than the physician is responsible for the disease he may find after he has diagnosed his patient's symptoms. In this regard I would quote the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett). He has been quoted several times to-day, but I will put one or two more quotations on the record. In his radio address on January 4 he said:
Let us first examine income. To do so, I think it is helpful for the purpose of their discussion, to divide all recipients of income, from whatever sources, into two broad classes:' non-producers, and producers or workers. . , . The non-producer does not work for his income. It is his invested money which works.
He goes on to say:
# Now, we may divide the producer or worker into three basic classes: the rural and urban worker, the agriculturist, and what is sometimes colloquially called the white collar worker. ^ This latter class shares in common with their brethren in agriculture and industry,

Cooperative Commonwealth
the hardships of these times. Their problems are essentially the same and they stand in need of the same measure of relief from them.
All that is necessary to make that statement complete is to say, "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain."
To quote once more from the pamphlet to which I have already referred, Christianizing the Social Order:
The strife between classes and groups growing out of the social stratification based on income, and the economic struggle for a larger share of the product of industry, is a factor of increasing significance both in national and international life. The struggle enters the international field when national groups of producers or financiers seek privileged access to raw materials or markets. This economic nationalism has now become more perilous than at any other time, for those who seek privilege within the nation tend to influence governments and to evade control; and then in their exploitation of new fields they veil their private interests in the garments of national honour and glory. When they succeed in this the economic conflict passes over into international war.
The division of the country into classes, based on ownership or income, or the access to the means of life, leads therefore to strife. Not only does it create strife within the nation; it leads to strife outside it as well, and it leads, as the report says, to international war.
I will give a further example of this class division by referring to the United States. In the United States in 1933 was commenced a program which is sometimes called the Roosevelt experiment. All of us remember the extent to which when the present president of the United States came into office on March of that year, the industrial collapse had gone in that country; the whole economic life of the nation was almost paralyzed and the capitalist class there had no idea what to do to get out of the mess in which they found themselves. Mr. Roosevelt began putting his program into effect and at the beginning there was no obstruction whatever; the capitalist class of the United States were so discredited that they did not dare to raise their voices. Mr. Roosevelt began to use the nation's credit to start the wheels of industry going, and improvement began to take place. But the moment that was accomplished the resistance from the owning class of the United States began. That resistance has continued until to-day so that the new deal is in a state of collapse. Let me assure the Prime Minister that if he goes ahead with a radical program that is worth while, that will improve the
conditions of the masses of the people of this country, he will receive the same obstruction and opposition from the owning class here as President Roosevelt has received from the owning class in the republic to the south of us.
A short while ago I read in a book a statement-I believe the mover of the resolution (Mr. Woodsworth) made the statement today-that profits for the owners of capital and prosperity for the masses were entirely incompatible. Of course that is one reason why the present economic system cannot be reformed or restored. May I put the situation in this way: the necessity of making profits precludes the possibility of solving our problems under the present system. That is so because the capitalistic system is based essentially on the law of supply and demand; in other words, the law of supply and demand of goods and services is the governor which regulates business activity. Society itself is not supposed to take thought as to how its needs are to be supplied; that is left to the desire for gain which is inherent in all of us. No wonder we are in the difficult position in which we find ourselves! The theory is- and I believe it is correct-that where there is a demand for a commodity or service, people who have capital to invest will invest it in the production of that commodity or service. When the supply exceeds the demand, prices will fall and then capital will desert that particular field of production and seek a field in which the demand exceeds the supply. But when prices fall for the reason mentioned, profits also decrease. Therefore it becomes clear that in order that these people may continue making profits, the demand must always exceed the supply; that is, in order that profits may be made, we must have scarcity. The moment we enter into an age of abundance, such an age as we are living in now, at that moment profits become impossible. Man's ingenuity, his inventive genius, along with the kindness of nature has ushered us into an age of abundance, an age in which there is no scarcity, and consequently unlimited profits such as were made in the past are quite impossible.


An hon. MEMBER:: Except by creating
an artificial scarcity.
Mr. MaeINNIS:	Except by creating an
artificial scarcity. There is however a very definite limit to that. The development of capitalism has created such a large industrial organization that large numbers of workers are divorced from all contact with their means
Cooperative Commonwealth

of livelihood and consequently have to be taken care of out of the earnings of industry in some way or another.
Some of our opponents are opposed to our policy because they say it will interfere with private property. That may be true in a sense, but the freeing of the chattel slaves also interfered with private property; yet will anyone say that that was not a step in human progress? The situation in which we find ourselves to-day is that we have slavery of another kind-the ownership of the means of production in the hands of a few and the great mass of the people without access to those means of production except on the terms laid down by their owners. Consequently they are just as much slaves as were the chattel slaves; all the freedom they have is to work, if any is available, on the terms laid down by the owners of industry, or to starve.
Property is of two kinds; there is property in the means of production, corporate property, which cannot be said to-day to be private property in any true sense of the term. No one can put his hands on the Canadian Pacific Railway or the Bank of Montreal or any of those large institutions and say: That is my property. It is corporate property. That kind of property has value to the people who say they own it or are the shareholders in it, because the community uses it. The moment the community ceases to use any kind of corporate property, it ceases to have any value. The railway companies complain about the competition of motor bus and motor truck transportation. What are they complaining about? What they are complaining about is that the community, the people of Canada, are transferring their patronage from the railways to the motor buses and trucks and consequently are taking the value out of the Canadian Pacific and putting it into the other form of transportation. What I think is quite a logical conclusion to come to is that if the people of the nation, because of using an institution of any kind, give value to it, the nation or the community should own it and use it and appropriate the proceeds of it, whatever they may be.
I would have liked, had there been time, to mention other objections that are sometimes raised to socialism, or to a cooperative system, whichever terra one cares to use. One of the objections I have heard on many occasions to socialism, is that it would break up the home. At home yesterday morning I listened to a service broadcast from one of the United churches in Ottawa, and I heard the pastor

pray for the homeless single men in our unemployment camps. It is strange that under a system of society that was going to preserve the home we should have in a great rich country such as Canada a class that we call homeless single men, or homeless men of any kind. It means that these men's homes have been broken up, that they have been deprived of their homes. To break up the home is one thing that socialism will not have to do; capitalism has already done it. A little less than a year ago the child welfare committee of the League of Nations took up the matter of the condition of child an in poor homes. A report in the Vancouver Daily Province of April 18, 1934, says:
Alarm over the disastrous effects of the depression everywhere is strongly expressed in the draft report of the league's child welfare committee made public at its meeting.
Struck by the serious character of psychological effects produced by depression upon children, and of the strained and discouraged family atmosphere which is inevitable in homes suffering from unemployment.
The committee emphasizes the necessity of removing children from the pernicious atmosphere of their own home during the greater part of the day and sending them to nursery schools, recreation centres and reading rooms in order that they may enjoy quietness and freedom from care and irritation which are essential conditions to their development.
The committee recommends all governments to reexamine their legislation with a view to safeguarding better unity of the family, assuring the child's development and protecting his self respect.
We agree with that. But I think we also agree and maintain, at any rate I do, that while under certain circumstances and for a certain part of the day a child should be in school or kindergarten from an early age, yet the child who is deprived of the love and care that it should receive in a proper home is forced into society under a handicap that he will never overcome. Even if for no other reason than that, it is time we considered our social organization. These young men in our unemployment camps will carry all their lives the scars of their present circumstances, but we should at least begin to make provision for the children yet unborn, the future citizens of this country, that they may be able to build up a country of which they may be proud, although we cannot be proud of the present conditions. But we are hoping for something better. It is because of the conditions that we find about us, for which capitalism has no answer, that we ask this house to take into consideration the immediate changing over of our economic system in order that the machinery of production may be released from the restrictions placed upon it by the profit

Cooperative Commonwealth
motive, allowing us to use it to the utmost to provide people with food, clothing and shelter and give access to a full cultural life for every citizen of this dominion.


Jean-François Pouliot: First, Mr. Speaker, I shall answer
the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth). He said this afternoon that he had not read the fifty-five questions that the member for Temiscouata had put to him on February 9, 1933. I admit the bon. gentleman may not have read them all, but he has heard a few of them, because they were recited in an audible voice in this house when he was here. The hon. member for South Essex (Mr. Gott) said, as reported at page 1950 of Hansard:
Would the hon. member permit me to inform him that his questions are so hot that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has left the chamber.
Mr. Heaps: In deference to the hon. gentleman who has left the chamber, I think my hon. friend from South Essex ought to have first found out why he left it.
Then the member for Temiscouta continued :
I do not discuss that viewpoint. I simply wish to put my questions on record in Hansard in order that everyone may take cognizance of them. My next question follows-
Sir, it is very easy to understand what has been said in plain language in this house. My hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre heard about half the questions I directed to him, and then instead of staying to the end he left the house, a thing that he very seldom does. I am sorry that he left the house when I was not through asking him questions in very polite language. Those questions were not based on quotations from Sir Arthur Salter or from the United church or from a book whose author has not been named before by his son-in-law. They were based on pure logic. Logic is something with which the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is not familiar; that is the main trouble with him, he has no logic. He has not the faculty of analyzing facts. He knows certain facts, but he does not distinguish between the system and the individual. I admit that capitalists have often been wrong. Widows who have in the bank the proceeds of insurance on the life of a husband now deceased are legitimate capitalists. In a different class of capitalist is the man who took advantage of the fact that he had supported the present government to request the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) to increase the tariff, insinuating that trade might be
increased thereby, who lied to the government in telling them that if the tariff was raised he would employ more men and pay them better wages. That is one fault I find with capitalism-no, not with capitalism, but with certain capitalists. We have sharks in this country, I admit that; but from that are we to conclude that everyone who has property of some kind is to hand it over to the control of my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre and my hon. friend from Vancouver South? Would it be safe for them to entrust all their investments and property to those who, though men of good faith, know nothing about the business of this country? That is not a harsh statement; I will prove it.
If all the bills these two hon. gentlemen have presented to this house had been adopted, do you think the capitalist system would have disappeared from this country? What did they do in this house to alter the laws on our statute books, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) since 1921 and the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Maclnnis) since 1930? What is their record with regard to legislation? It is nil. They cannot even boast about getting the house to change section 98 of the criminal code; it was done by the Liberal party. If our social order is so bad why did not my hon. friends come to this house and do something to change the order? What are they doing to-day? My hon. friend from Vancouver South has introduced a bill to change the elections act. What has he tried to change in the social order of this country? It is all humbug and deceit. Was that intentional or was it not? Perhaps it was unconscious; the hon. member is here to say. Those hon. gentlemen come here with the shoes of the actors in Roman theatres, one pair for comedy and another pair for tragedy.
I hear these hon. gentlemen speak about the troubles of the workingmen in this country. I have a right to speak about those social matters, because when I was on the other side of the house I was the first member to quote figures with regard to employment and low wages in the province of Quebec; my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre remembers that. My hon. friend from Vancouver South will not remember, because he was not in the house then. Before the labour members did anything with regard to working conditions in my native province I gave figures, which are on record in Hansard, showing how the workingmen of my province were paid in comparison with the workingmen in other provinces. I was a humble man, a lawyer, not a tram conductor, not a man

Cooperative Commonwealth

working on the wharves of Vancouver but a lawyer who meets people and tries to do his best for them. I was and am a humble man, but a man of sincerity and a man who knew where he was going. I worked for a long time with the officials of the Department of Labour, and from the bottom of my heart I thank Hon. Peter Heenan, who was Minister of Labour at the time, for the help he gave me on that occasion. What was the result? A year later legislation was introduced by the Minister of Labour in the Mackenzie King government regulating the wages and hours of labour of the men employed by the federal government. Thus a lead was given the provinces, and if that lead has not been followed it is not our fault. But may I say, sir, that what was done at that time by the member for Temiseouata should have been done a long time previously by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, who never thought of it. He was busy reading this and that.
Well, sir, enough of that. If I were one of the electors of the constituency of Vancouver South, after listening to what my hon. friend has just said I would say to myself, " He may be sincere, but where is he going? He does not know his way." His leader, who preceded him, spoke about party capital. Does he forget that party capital is one form, perhaps the worst, of capitalism? That is what I wish to tell him. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre says, "No Litvinoff,; no Russia;" he does not like us to speak about Russia or Litvinoff. I should like to see him prevent me from comparing him with Litvinoff; I should like to see him prevent me from telling him that the only difference between the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and Gandhi is the goat and the spinning wheel. I am a free man, and I am here to say what I sincerely think about his policies. He comes here with a resolution so vague that he cannot explain it. That is why these hon. members have not brought in any sort of legislation to change the social order; they do not know what they want. They come with a spot-light like those who kill game in a forbidden way. They come with a spot-light to blind the eyes of the people; but God forbid that those policies ever should be adopted in Canada. They never will be, because like castles in the air they have no foundation.
These hon. gentlemen have not taken time to think over the real conditions in this country. They accept hearsay evidence all the time because they cannot form their own judgment on the facts available to them. The hon.

member for Winnipeg North Centre said he had not read the questions I put to him. I will prove, sir, that he is greatly mistaken, and to do so I need only refer to another big book, the Hansard to which I referred a few moments ago. It is a wonderful book with 2,354 pages. It is a most respectable book on account of its size, and I am sure my hon. friends in the extreme corner are delighted to have such an imposing volume shown to them. We have heard something about a change that is coming in our social system, in regard to profits. Plato published a book also, and I might tell my hon. friend from Vancouver South that Plato is a man who has been buried for quite a number of centuries. He published a book called The Republic, in which he described an ideal state, something like the lost paradise, something wonderful, but a state which never existed in the world. Let us come to Plato, who describes the state conceived by my hon. friends, but to which they have not yet given birth. It is an ideal state where no one can make profit, but where taxes will be imposed upon the people. When I asked the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre who would pay for the enormous expenditures, he said that the people would. The people will have to pay for that, while making no profit. It is a mystery. And whether or not the hon. member for Vancouver South quotes Salter, or quotes or misquotes the United church or the other churches, or quotes the book he had a few moments ago the author and title of which he did not mention. I do not see how he can explain how people will be able to pay taxes to anybody if they do not have more money than is strictly required for food, for clothes, or for lodging. If they have more money than is required for those purposes, is that not profit? It would be profit. Therefore, in the state they advocate profit will be necessary, and not only profit, but a higher profit than there is now, because taxes will be higher.
How many people are to-day unable to pay the municipal taxes on their land? If one looks at the official gazette for any province he will find it is much thicker than it was before. Why? Because so many lands are being sold; people cannot pay their taxes; they have no money now. My hon. friends will advocate this garden of Allah; it is very fascinating, but it is just a cross word puzzle, a jig sa/w puzzle, something extraordinary. Under their system people will make no money, make no profit and pay more taxes. I am reminded of the story about the ship which was 300 feet long, 35 feet wide and had

Cooperative Commonwealth
a displacement of 10 feet. There were 400 people on board, together with a crew of 40. The ship had three funnels, two masts and two screws. What is the age of the captain? And, sir, I know a man who worked on that problem for two nights, and he found that the age of the captain was 56 years, 2 months, 3 days and 4 hours. I am sure that gentleman must have been either the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre or the hon. member for Vancouver South.
I have before me what was said about profit on another occasion by my hon. friends the dreamers and Utopians in the extreme corner of the house. It is different now. I can see the influence of the timid questions put by the hon. member for Temascouat-a. Here is the definition which was given on a former occasion:
A federation of organizations whose purpose is the establishment in Canada of a cooperative commonwealth in which the basic principle regulating production, distribution and exchange will be the supply of human needs instead of the making of profits.
We have heard it. When the production is greater than the consumption it should cease, automatically. My hon. friend took the same viewpoint as the Prime Minister, if we may judge toy the right hon. gentleman's action in decreasing the acreage of wheat. A decrease in production, that is it. When the production equals the consumption, it would cease automatically, and therefore people would make no profits. That is their ideal state. AVhat about exports?
But now there is a little change in the gospel of Vancouver South and Winnipeg North Centre. We find that no longer is the supply of human needs instead of the making of profits the basic principle regulating production, distribution and exchange. It is that no longer. That is no good. The social system is changed. We have a change in their own social system made by those dreamers and Utopians. They have changed it themselves. What is the necessity for the government to change the social order? Hon. members in the corner of the chamber have changed it. They have had enough of their program, the same as people have enough of a motion picture, and it has to be changed in the middle of the week. The change we now have is this:
Resolved that in the opinion of this house, since the capitalist system is failing to function in the interests of the great majority of the people of Canada, it should be superseded by a cooperative commonwealth-
Which is a euphemism for communism,
-in which the profit motive-
The profit motive-
-would be subordinated to that of public service and ruthless competition replaced by collective ownership under democratic control.
In the first place there was no making of profits,-the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre may rise in his place and deny his attitude if I have not stated it correctly. He must remember what he said at other times. But he has now changed his mind. It is no longer a question of making profits. Profits are now permitted, under the autocratic rule of Winnipeg North Centre and Vancouver South. They say:
It should be superseded by a cooperative commonwealth-
Alias communism-
-in which the profit motive would be subordinated to that of public service.
Subordinated by whom? Subordinated by Winnipeg North Centre; subordinated by Vancouver South. They will be the czars of Canada; they will restore the old order of Russia. That is why they are so angry when we mention Russia. They are czarists. They believe in autocracy. They believe they are the repositories of revealed truth, and they will decree by their own powerful will that * the profit motive shall be subordinated to that of public service.
What do they mean by profit? I ask the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre to define the word "profit" and he tells me to look at the dictionary. It is not for me to look at the dictionary. The hon. member will recall the words in the Latin grammar, sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probet-the wise man does not affirm anything which he cannot prove. Those are the words of wisdom. They are not Litvinoff's; that is a maxim of truth based on the experiences of the centuries. I will tell my hon. friends, for whom I had respect until now, that if they do not clearly explain their program and their scheme-because it is only a scheme-if they do not explain it in a satisfactory way I will say that it is a contempt for the House of Commons to ask hon. members to listen to such talk as they have uttered. I will tell them that first of all they should go to the basic foundations of social life. Although not covered by section 98 of the criminal code it is really a criminal offence to deceive the Canadian people by telling them that the group in the corner of this chamber will do this, that and the other thing. Those hon. members know very well that without imposing additional taxation it would be impossible for any government to fulfil the foolish promises they
Cooperative Commonwealth

have made. It would be impossible to do what they have promised without making greater the burden of taxation which falls upon the shoulders of the good citizens of the country. I will give them one last chance. I will give them the benefit of the doubt. But, Mr. Speaker, I say they should be more serious, and when a member asks them politely for information about their own plans, which they must know, because they are supposed to have conceived them; if they will give no answer at all, I am free to form my own judgment upon them and to tell the electors in my constituency in the province of Quebec and the electors of any other constituency in this wonderful country which is Canada that these gentlemen at the extreme left of this side of the house are not serious, that they are just trying to make party capital, when telling those poor people who are suffering acutely: Follow us; we will give you anything that you wish; put us in power and see the marvels that we shall do in this country."
The candidates of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation have received a minimum vote in all the by-elections since the last election. It is true that the Labour member for the city of Hamilton was elected. He visited Russia not long ago and has seen and learned about communism, and the description that he gave to the press of the conditions in Russia was entirely different from the picture which is given of the cooperative commonwealth by our friends to the extreme left. They do not even dare mention the word communism now. But you, Mr. Speaker, are a student, and if you will analyze the social system in Russia, on one hand, and the social system advocated by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the hon. member for Vancouver South, on the other, you will see that they are one and the same thing, and that the difference is only in the name. My hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre is of United Empire Loyalist stock just the same as the Prime Minister of this country. He has been brought up in the British traditions of democracy, but I am sorry that he and the Prime Minister have forgotten the teachings of their youth. I regret it from the bottom of my heart. But let me tell you, sir, that although I have no English blood in my veins, just a little Irish blood-


Mr. McINTOSH:: Have you no Scotch?


Jean-François Pouliot: Not now; nevertheless I
say that I am truer to the principles of British democracy and of British government than

my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre and my right hon. friend the Prime Minister.
What we hear, sir, is but a deluge of words from the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and his supporter the hon. member for Vancouver South-a perfect deluge of words. He says: I have compassion for the multitude. This was said by one who was not the Man of Nazareth, as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre always says, but it was said by our Lord. There is not a man in this house who, unless he has a heart of stone, can listen unmoved to the sufferings of the poor, but if my hon. friends of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation have something better to offer than the present system let them come forward boldly with public bills to amend the laws of this country. Let them tell us where there is injustice from their viewpoint. They must be familiar with the laws of this country. They often say: We are not lawyers, we are not hair-splitters. No, but there is the law maker's intent; there is the intention of the law maker, which counts; and will my hon. friends deny any responsibility for the laws which they have voted for since they have been here? What are their intentions with regard to amending or changing the social order? I hope that they will tell us that or tell us what they have done in that regard Let my hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre tell us about the amendments that he has had enacted to change the social order, and then we can judge what would be the result if he could put his will into force and have his ideas enacted into law.
To sum up, Mr. Speaker; I have spoken about these hon. gentlemen for a time, and now through you I am speaking to them. I cannot speak on behalf of the government; I am against them on a matter of principle. I do not dare to speak on behalf of my party, but I can speak for myself as one who has listened to the hon. gentlemen of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and as one who has taken the trouble to read their program-which is no mean task-and to try to get something rational from it. So far as this resolution is concerned there is a missing link between the first part of their argument and the conclusion-not a missing link in the Darwinian sense, but there is a link missing just the same; and I should like to have some more explanation from them. I have put questions to them, and if I am not to receive any further explanation, then when the time comes to discuss this matter once more, or several times more, whether in this house or out of it, we will tell the people

Cooperative Commonwealth
that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the hon. member for Vancouver South were not serious and were just playing politics when they brought in their resolution about the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. The people of this country in an indignant mood will tell them: You are not going to fool us any more; and then the candidates of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation will not receive even a minority vote, or enough votes to give a chance to any Tory candidate to be elected.


Mr. J. R. MacNIOOL (Toronto Northwest):: Mr. Speaker, a resolution similar to the present one but not exactly the same was moved in this house in 1932 and another in 1933. I believe the resolutions of 1932 and 1933 were identical. But when the resolution was moved again in 1934 there was a change in it, and there is a change again now in 1935. I opposed the former resolutions and I rise to oppose this resolution also. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) in his address took a good deal to his party when he described the mayor of Toronto as a Cooperative Commonwealth Federation mayor. The mayor of Toronto is a capable gentleman with a great deal of ability, but in the last election, like Joseph, he wore a coat of many colours, one of which was the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. In his support were many well known and staunch Conservatives and many well known and staunch Liberals, and his principal support came as I understand it from the independent Labour party. So the hon. member cannot claim the mayor of Toronto as an out and out C.C.F'er.
The hon. member quoted many articles from the press in which he purported to show that the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) had denounced the capitalist system. Well, I listened very attentively to the Prime Minister in all his speeches except the first one; I was not at home on that occasion and had not the pleasure of hearing the speech as it was delivered, but I read it carefully afterwards. My memory is that he denounced the abuses and the violations that had crept into the system and intimated that he and his government would reform the system and cut out the abuses.
The hon. member said further that nobody wanted to abolish capitalists, but I cannot see where that coincides with the platform of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, which was apparently adopted again on February 10, and one item of which reads that the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation believes that capitalism can be neither
reformed nor restored. So that if capitalism is to 'be wiped out, of course capitalists go with it. The hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Maclnnis) said that the program advocated by this resolution of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation had not been changed; but I find a change in the resolutions that have been moved except the first two. In 1932 the expression is used "a large number of" in referring to the people, and in the present resolution it says "great majority." In the resolution of 1934 the word "masses" is used whereas, as I say, in the present resolution the people are referred to as the great majority.
I find a slight swinging to the right in the present resolution as compared with the former, because in the present resolution we have the words "by a cooperative commonwealth in which the profit motive would be subordinated to that of public service." Subordinated merely means being on a lower plane. This is the first resolution my hon. friends have moved in which, I take it, from the resolution itself, there is some justification of the profit motive; otherwise the word "subordinated" would not be there but perhaps there would be the words "wiped out " and in that regard it would be on a par with the former resolutions. There is, I say, a swinging just a little to the right from the extreme left position of a few years ago, and in this the mover of the resolution and those supporting him are in line with what is being done in Russia. There is a slight move in Russia towards the right. I have here an associated press dispatch from Moscow under date December 30, 1934, quoting one who I presume is the head of the republic, the Hon. Joseph Stalin, in an address to the metallurgical group of industry. Apparently the iron and steel industry is not making that headway which it would like to see, although it is making progress, and to encourage the men working in the plants producing iron and steel to do betteT Joseph Stalin is quoted as using the slogan, "Technique without men is dead." And further down:
Higher pay for efficient technical men was one of the means Stalin suggested to directors of the Soviet iron and steel industries for improvement of their technique.
"Organize wages so they will strengthen the decisive links of production and prompt people on to higher skill," Stalin urged. "This is what we need in order to create a large army of industrial technical cadres."
That is quite a move to the right, because in all the arguments that have come out of Russia we were given to understand that there was to be equal pay for similar work. So that
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we find them swinging slightly to the right over there; and our friends in the opposite corner, leaving in their resolution the two words "profit motive," merely putting it on a lower plane, are also swinging slightly to the right.
Reading over the resolution, and remembering what the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) said in the press- it may not have been a correct report-giving his views in endorsing some if not all of the proposals of the Prime Minister in his radio addresses, I thought that if a resolution were moved by the opposite corner this session it would be more or less in these words. This is just a suggested resolution: "Resolved, that in the opinion of this house, since the capitalistic system has been prevented from functioning as it should do in the interests of the people of Canada, as a result of the failure of governments in past years to stop the introduction of the abuse and gross violation of its true principles, this house endorses the courage of the present government in its projected legislation designed to eradicate and cut out the abuses and violations of the capitalistic system and supports its determination, at this session, to enact the necessary remedial legislation to achieve in the best interests of the people this laudable objective." That would be very good and to the point.
This is my fifth session in this house and I have yet to hear-or I cannot remember having heard, I will put it that way-any constructive suggestion from the opposite corner of this house looking to the providing of sound employment for the unemployed. We have had several speeches to-night, one or two at any rate from the opposite corner, and not one thing has been said in the way of providing sound employment for the large number of unemployed in the country. Before I sit down I shall try to show what the government has done in that regard and what it proposes to do. Let me refer first of all to Count Nicholas Ignatieff, an exiled Russian nobleman, now a professor in Lansing, Michigan. Speaking at Orillia to the Canadian Institute on Economics and Politics, he made two or three significant statements in reference to Russia and the cooperative system in vogue there. He said:
The peasants fought collectivization desperately and almost fought the government to a standstill. They slaughtered stock, destroyed grain and starved themselves rather than submit.
What does it mean? Just this: collective man is the latest product of man's hallucinations-
I believe the hon. gentleman who just sat down referred to something that was said a3

being like an hallucination. This is from a Russian nobleman who knows what hallucinations are:
-there is no such thing. Man is primarily individual and his happiness and his most important functions are individual.
If this country is to have inflicted upon it- if that is the proper word-the abolition of the capitalistic system and to have substituted for it cooperative commonwealthism, then individualism will be destroyed. My experience over a long period in association with many thousands of men, observing them work and produce from their heads many splendid and successful inventions, has convinced me that if you eliminate the opportunity of the human race to aspire to produce and to conceive ideas and profit therefrom, you will eliminate from this world much of that which is to its advantage. Continuing, Count Ignatieff says:
True cooperation starts with the individual. The right to private property is recognized. The individual is free to do whatever he will with his share of his earnings, accumulate wealth and leave it to his children.
Collectivism, on the other hand, seeks to submerge the individual in the swarm, in the herd-it negates every aspect of individualism and recognizes no human inequalities. It sets up the tyranny of the swarm over the individual.
But as I said at the outset, there is a slight wheel from the doctrine of "all are equal in Russia" to the doctrine that those who labour hardest and produce the most shall receive some extra consideration for their efforts.
I am not one of those who believe the cause of all our troubles is the capitalistic system, but I do believe what I understood the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) to say in his radio addresses, namely, that the abuses and violations of the capitalistic system are partly if not wholly responsible for the troubles through which we are passing. The capitalistic system is founded on sound doctrine. We all know the fourth commandment refers to the fact that man shall work not more than six days a week. Well, legislation that is before the house this session is designed to provide one day of rest each week for all workmen, and in that particular the capitalist system of this country is going back to that principle and that doctrine of the fourth commandment.
Another principle of the capitalist system is the practice of thrift, and here again we are encouraged by the _Holy Book to practise thrift. I have in mind the parable of the talents: three different servants were each given talents; one buried his, the second doubled his and the third increased his five to ten, and on the return of the lord of those

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servants the latter two were commended for their thrift. The practice of thrift is one of the doctrines of the capitalist system, and I do not know how thrift is to be incorporated in the theories advanced by hon. gentlemen in the far corner Who are sponsoring this resolution.
Then we have another doctrine of the capitalist system-the reward for labour. I am in accord with that; I believe those who work hardest should receive the most; that is if two are labouring in the same line of business or profession, the man who is willing to deny himself and work hard is surely entitled to consideration for his determination to advance in his work.
Then we have the doctrine of the reward for skill. Why should a man not be rewarded for his skill? In support of this we have the head of the Russian state arguing before a group of iron and steel manufacturers in Russia that they too must depart from their former doctrine of equality of men to a doctrine of reward to those who do the most, achieve the most and produce the most.
Another principle of the capitalistic system is that individual effort should receive consideration, another, that men should live uprightly. I am strongly in accord with that, that those who live uprightly and endeavour to do the most good in this world, do the most for humanity.
Then we have the doctrine to treat others as we would be treated. Well, there have been violations of all those doctrines or principles. It has not been a question of violation this year or last year, but it has been a question for years of progressive violation, progressive abuse of the capitalistic system. On Friday night last when on the debate in connection with introducing the eight hour day we were told by those who opposed the resolution that this government could not bring about the eight hour day; that that, so they alleged, and other kindred subjects are within the jurisdiction of the provinces. Perhaps that is one of the reasons, the fact that there are nine provinces and nine provincial governments, why the capitalistic system has been violated and abused in this country as it has been.
Then we have the further doctrine of being honest and paying our accounts. When the Pharisees, seeking to tempt Our Lord in reference to money matters, asked Him if they should pay tribute to Caesar, He asked them to show Him a coin. He then asked them whose image and superscription was on the coin, and they told him that it was Caesar's; whereupon He said to them: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." The trouble is that in this country and, indeed, throughout the world, accounts have not been paid that should have been paid. These and many other doctrines followed by the capitalist system have been violated and abused. Along come the government of the day proposing reforms. They have the courage and the determination bo do it, and the Prime Minister in his addresses said that he would remove abuses. I believe he will, and I believe the house will support his legislation to do away with the violations and abuses of capitalism. If a ship sails the seas for years without 'being taken into dry dock it will become covered with barnacles; therefore ships are taken into dry dock periodically and the barnacles scraped off. We should not condemn the ship because it did not travel as wrell 'before the barnacles were scraped off as after. The capitalistic system is cluttered up with a lot of barnacles of one kind and another; this government is going to scrape them off, and the abuses and violations will be eliminated.


Mr. IRVINE:: But there is a hole in the
bottom of the ship; what are you going to do about that?


John Ritchie MacNicol: Plug it. In 1932 a committee of the United States senate investigated one of the great abuses of the capitalistic system that is, stock market abuses, which prevailed, incidentally, not in the United States only but in Canada as well. It was not investigated in Canada, and that is why I refer to the United States investigation. These were nothing short of outrageous and never should have been permitted. But we cannot say that the capitalistic system was responsible for that. Now they have been eliminated, and the government of that country is to be congratulated upon what it has done in that regard. I shall give one example of the gross abuse of the capitalistic system that took place there, and no doubt there w'ere similar cases in Canada also. The committee reported that stocks were boosted by false statements, that the public were rigged-that was one of the most outrageous abuses practised on the public. Then there were bear raids, bull raids, short selling and long selling, and stock splits. I have read of stocks that were split not opce or twice but four, five, six, seven, and eight times, without any new capital being added. That is a violation of the capitalistic system, and never should have been permitted. I am sure this government will deal with any situation like that if it has control of the matter and the provinces do not act. Then there were wash
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sales, and selling against the box, and buying and selling at the same time. In 1929, when the first crash came, stocks on the New York stock exchange shrank $29,000,000,000, and in 1930, there was an additional fall of $20,000,000,000, or a total of $49,000,000,000 within a year. Stock promoters and market manipulators never should have been permitted so to violate the principles of honesty, thrift and fair play that are the foundations of the capitalistic system. However, the government of the United States have enacted new legislation designed to prevent such exploitation in the future. Think of Radio stock, which in 1921 stood at $105,000,000; in 1929, without addition of further capital, rose to $1,400,000.000; and in 1930 after the crash it dropped to $175,000,000, a shrinkage of $1,225,000,000. That was an example of the great abuses and violations of the capitalistic system, but abuses of the kind will be eliminated both across the line and in this country. I hope the Canadian governments will rise to the occasion and by whatever methods they may adopt prevent in future any such stock exploitation as has taken place in the past. Of course the stock market people offer the defence that during the war people were educated to buy bonds and stocks, money was plentiful and people learned to buy, and that is one of the causes that made this exploitation possible. But the governments of this country must enact legislation to prevent this and other abuses of the capitalistic system.
Then there are other violations; sweat shops-the Prime Minister has already announced that he will eliminate sweat shops. Some may say he has not the power; but I doubt very much if any hon. member will oppose the elimination of sweat shops or oppose giving the government power to eliminate them. Sweat shops are not a necessary part of the capitalistic system; they are a violation of the system and never should have been permitted to exist. Neither should the seven day working week. The government hv its eight hour day and forty-eight hour week legislation is going to stop such abuses. Then as to mergers, I do not say that in no case should mergers be allowed, but there were altogether too many of them; the great flood of mergers was not a legitimate feature of the capitalistic system but a violation of it.
Then will anyone say that the outrageous waste, not only in Canada but in the republic to the south, such as the slaughter in the United States of several million hogs, the destruction of millions of acres of com and

cotton, was any true part of the capitalistic system? They were violations of it. We all know, too, that the great war was responsible for much of our trouble. Certainly the abolition of war is the desire of every hon. member of this house, but I cannot understand how war can be attributed wholly to the capitalistic system; I call it a heinous violation of the system.
Then we have rampant partyism. This parliament is in its fifth session; during its life the country has been going through the worst depression in the world's history, and I am sure that hon. gentlemen opposite will admit that the government has at least done its best to bring the country through. Yet how often have we found them forgetting partyism and rallying to the support of legislation enacted for the advancement of this country? Surely partyism should not be carried to such a length that we must denounce everything that our opponents advance. Surely our opponents are sometimes right, and when that is so I believe in admitting it.
What do the government propose in order to eliminate the abuses of the capitalistic system that now exist? We have the proposed establishment of the eight hour day, one day's rest in seven, and unemployment insurance. Someone said something about unemployment insurance to-day; when that resolution is under discussion again I propose to speak on it, but for the moment I will content myself with saying that in spite of what has been said the unemployment insurance measure will do a great deal of good and will fill a long felt want in this country. In addition we have proposals along the lines of national health, controlled speculation and minimum wages; it is proposed to abolish sweatshops, and finally steps have been taken by the government to provide work. One of the hon. members from Winnipeg said the government was not doing anything to provide employment. I devote a good deal of my time to matters pertaining to labour; in the course of the recess I come in contact with many hundreds of men who are employed in industry, and I speak without fear of successful contradiction when I say that the government has done a very great deal, through legislation, to provide new employment in this country. The government has not received very much support in that regard from hon. members in the far corner, among others, but it has enacted legislation that has resulted in a great deal of new employment.

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When the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre returned from a trip to Japan he gave an interview, which appeared in the Toronto Mail and Empire of January 14. The hon. gentleman is reported as decrying Japanese cheap labour, and as saying that Japanese goods are cheap partly because of low labour standards but largely because of downright efficiency. If we pass the resolution now before the house, in what way shall we be protecting Canadian workmen against either Japanese efficiency or Japanese cheap labour? As the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) said, we have to deal with realities; we have to look at things as they are, and we have to consider our country in the light of what is going on in all other countries. Certainly this is no time for Canada to take up some new-fangled idea, or rather an old idea revamped. With the serious situation in which we find ourselves this is a time when we must face things as they are and look at realities, and certainly I cannot see how any resolution such as this will help the situation.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I should like to say that resolutions similar to this have been before the house on four or five occasions previously. I think if I had moved a resolution that had been thrown out by the house four or five times, I would not bother introducing it again.


Mr. E. J. GARLAND (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, I think it a tragedy that we should have such discussion as has taken place within the last hour and a half; it would indicate a failure to appreciate the Prime Minister's words, "the crash and thunder of toppling capitalism."
The previous speaker (Mr. MacNicol) dealt with the alleged reforms of the present government and expressed regret that there was not more wholehearted support from this section of this house in regard to that legislation. He asked, "Why do we not look at facts and realities?" In his speech he did not face one fact or one reality; he did not even approach a consideration of the problem. We have misery, destitution, poverty, and unemployed millions here and throughout the world. We have a hopeless outlook for youth with education of no value, so far as entrance to the economic field is concerned, and the government comes along with shreds and patches that have been tried out in other capitalist countries, and which have left them in the same morass that we are in. Yet the government wonders why we are not enthusiastic about the program.
They tell us that prosperity is returning, and that therefore this legislation is going to be all right. Again they do not face facts or estimate realities. The Wall Street Journal of comparatively recent date points out that in the first six months profits in 56 industrial corporations of the larger type had increased by 174-6 per cent over the previous six months. That looked like returning prosperity, and my hon. friend who has just sat down would so describe it. Hon. gentlemen opposite and to my right would describe it as such, and would be content to place that fact before the public. Continue; analyze a little closer, and you find that while profits increased by 174-6 per cent sales increased by only 51 per cent. In other words profits increased three times as fast as sales. Exactly the same thing is taking place in Canada and has begun to take place in Great Britain. It has been accompanied by this further phenomenon, that whilst profits and sales increased, wages continued to go down. At the very time the Wall Street Journal published the statement to which I made reference, Miss Perkins, Secretary of Labour for the United States of America, had the great courage to publish a statement relating to the situation. In that statement, with the official imprimatur of the Department of Labour, she stated that during that period factory payrolls went down 6-8 per cent, or a decline on the average of $10,460,000 a week. So we find profits going up at the expense of the wage earning and producing classes.
How long do hon. gentlemen think their system can continue with that going on? How long can they hope to carry on a system that shows such a mad, illogical, untenable and uneconomic condition? But that is not all. This government now proposes legislation which already either in part or in whole has been adopted in other countries. Yes, in whole-all of it has been adopted in many countries, such as Great Britain. A far wider experimentation has taken place in the United States. It is of value to us to-night to consider just what the results have been in the United States, in order to ascertain whether or not we may draw conclusions therefrom. I would suggest that the last speaker (Mr. MacNicol)

it would be of no use to suggest it to the one who preceded him (Mr. Pouliot)-should analyse what has taken place in the United States under what is called the new deal. The actual level of wages in that country in July, 1934, was up 8-5 per cent as compared with the level in July, 1933, followed, as Miss Perkins noted, by a decline. However they were up at one
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stage, and we shall deal with that picture for the moment. Wages were up 8-5 per cent. Prices during the same period were up 9-6 per cent. At a moment's consideration hon. members will realize that the effect is obvious. The net effect is that the purchasing power was decreased 1-1 per cent. Surely that was not the purpose of the new deal; I believe its purpose was the very reverse. In my view it was the sincere intention of the government of the United States, just as I believe it to be the sincere intention of this government, to increase the standard of living and the purchasing power of the people. But under the present system it cannot be done. It has been tried out in the United States to a far greater degree than this country proposes to try it, and in that country it has failed.
These actual figures dealing with the purchasing power of the American middle class are significant, and I ask hon. members to take them into serious consideration. In 1933 the incomes of the middle class ranging from less than $10,000-a substantial sum-down to nothing were decreased by five per cent as compared with their revenues in 1932. On the other hand individuals having incomes of a million dollars or more per year saw an increase in revenues ranging from twenty to forty-six per cent. An analysis shows that while in the aggregate middle class incomes were being reduced, higher incomes were being enormously increased. Surely that was not the intention of the new deal. Yet that was the effect of the attempt to regulate capitalism-and we will find that the same results will follow in this country under the present proposals.
I turn now for a moment to a consideration of conditions in Europe. What is the lesson we may learn from the experiments over there? In western Europe general industrial production, despite the rigid state regulations of many nations is about fifteen per cent less than it was in 1913, and in addition to that fact we must consider the further one, namely that between 1913 and to-day there has been an enormous increase in population. Therefore in Europe they had an increase in population together with a fifteen per cent decrease in production. Capitalism has not justified its existence, has it? Regulation has not shown effective results, has it? In 1922 fascism came into existence in Italy, and at that time many promises were made to the masses of the people. In 1933 the wage rate in Italy was seventeen per cent less than it was in 1929, and unemployment
[Mr. E. J. Garland.!
had increased from 293,000 to 1,057,000. That is a fact worth while considering. And so we find that- fascism has not separated Italy from the general capitalist collapse which has affected all the world. We should profit from their twelve years of experience. In Germany since 1930 the workers have suffered a decline in wages averaging sixty-three per cent, and the decline is said to be worse among the agricultural classes. In that time the level of the so-called upper classes has remained relatively constant in all those countries. Yet we propose to patch and scratch in this country.
Yes, you know, people do draw conclusions, very final conclusions, from very strange premises. I was frankly amused when I read in a newspaper what purported to be a report of an alleged interview with the Prime Minister while in England not long ago. He is quoted as follows:
I was delighted in London to see such evidence of increasing prosperity.
Evidence of increasing prosperity.
Well dressed people on the streets, crowds in the shops, and the spirit everywhere apparently indicated that England is leaving the depression behind her.
Yes, and that same day I walked down the main street of the city of Calgary. I saw well dressed people on the streets; I saw them in the shops; I even saw individuals smoking cigars; I saw ladies and gentlemen 'greeting each other with smiles, but I did not come to the conclusion that prosperity had returned. Did the Prime Minister take the trouble to examine the broken industries of Bradford? Did he go to Lancashire? Did he go out to the slums of Stratford east and Bow road? Did he look at the herds of hopelessness in England? Did he listen even to the Prime Minister of England who about that time said that there were millions who never again would be employed, millions whom Ramsay MacDonald described as "human scrap"? Of course those people will never be reemployed under capitalism. It cannot be done. There is no place for them any more than there is for our youth, under capitalism. Did the Prime Minister take the trouble or has any hon. member who assumes a returning prosperity simply because profits have gone up in spots taken the trouble, to ascertain the fact that in Lancashire there are 16,000,000 idle spindles, and that a committee appointed by the British government has been investigating the matter? Do they know that the committee has already made an interim report in which they propose scrapping 7,000,000 spindles? That is a recom-

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mendation to create an artificial scarcity, such as the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Maolnnis) has described. Unless we create a scarcity capitalism cannot continue. Unless the Canadian people and the people of the world are to be content with a lower standard of living, this present system can neither be regulated nor continued.
Sometimes institutions which have their very foundations in the system unwittingly confess its total and absolute failure. The insurance companies of Canada are supposed to be the sheet anchors of capitalism, the sheet anchors of the thrifty, and all that sort of stuff. In order to get business they advertise extensively in the newspapers. In 1928, when there was what is termed a capitalist boom, one of those insurance companies published an advertisement in the Canadian newspapers in an endeavour to secure the money of thrifty investors. The Canada Life Assurance Company asks the question-and here we see the appeal to fear, the psychology of modern advertising: "What happens to one hundred average men of twenty-five years of age upon reaching the age of sixty-five?" Out of the vast compilation of statistics that are at their disposal as a result of their actuarial research covering many years, they are able to make this accurate statement, and no one questions it; no one has counter-statistics to offset it: One of the hundred will be wealthy; four will be well to do and able to enjoy some comfort and recreation; five will be still working for a living, with no prospect of relief from drudgery; fifty-four will be dependent upon friends or relatives or charity; and thirty-six will be dead. So to one hundred young men of twenty-five years of age this intelligent, highly to be appreciated capitalist system has nothing better to offer, even in days of prosperity so-called, than that four out of the hundred will have some security in old age; five will be still working for a living with no hope of escape from drudgery at the age of sixty-five, and the remainder of the one hundred will be either dead or relying upon friends or relatives or charity. If there be hon. members of this house who desire to sustain a system so self-condemned as that, frankly I cannot understand their mentality or their logic, and I dissociate myself from them.
I pick up statistics of this government's own departments, data available to every member of the house, and I find facts that should shock hon. gentlemen of this house even if the investigations before the mass buying committee have not sufficiently done so. I find, for example, in a census bulletin published under authority of Hon. H. H. Stevens,
Minister of Trade and Commerce, a departmental bulletin entitled, Earnings Among Wage Earners for Canada and the Provinces, the following facts.
In the coal mining industry in my province there are employed 5,474 persons, and their average annual earnings according to the bulletin amount to $652. They are employed 27-51 weeks-27 weeks-out of the year. But, you see, the poor devils have to eat for fifty-two weeks, and they have to clothe themselves and pay rent and light and fuel and all the other things for the whole year; and so we find that they had to live fifty-two weeks on an average of $12.50 a week, or $1.78 a day. Is it suggested they ought to be very enthusiastic about the system? Would I if I were in their position be hurrahing for it and for those tinkering with it until even the Prime Minister would be gratified?
Now take the earnings of all wage earners in Canada. According to this same bulletin, pages 12 and 13, I find that the average yearly earnings for all employed in Canada is S743. Male earners secured on the average $927, and female earners S560. By the way, it is a significant thing that in this interesting man made system of ours you will find, if you check the figures, that in every case the women work more weeks and usually longer hours and in every case receive less pay than the men.


Miss MACPHAIL:: That is chivalry.


Edward Joseph Garland: No, it is
capitalism.


Mr. STITT (Selkirk):: I think it is thriftiness on the part of the women.


Edward Joseph Garland: The average yearly earnings for all employed in Canada is $743, and the average earnings received by agricultural workers is $293 per year.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is their keep.


Edward Joseph Garland: No, they
get that out of killing a few hogs or chickens. That $743 amounts to $14.30 a week or $2.07 a day for all Canada. That is what capitalism has to offer them so far.
Take another side of the picture. Keep in mind, please, the figures I have just given, the average yearly earnings of $743. I wrote to the Department of Labour to ascertain what they regard as an adequate annual budgetary maintenance, and I find that by the industrial relations committee a few years ago an investigation was made into this question and a compilation made by the
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bureau; the Labour department have brought the figures up to date to August, 1934, and they are as follows:
To maintain a poverty level of existence in Canada you require $661.16 per year. A minimum subsistence level would require, according to the department, $1,069.16. But the average earnings per year in Canada are only $743. Therefore the average earnings in Canada are less, by nearly $300, than the minimum subsistence level set out in the tables of the Department of Labour. The health and decency level is $1,328; and the comfort level $1,867.
Now contributory unemployment insurance, taking into consideration all these facts, can only bring you to the conclusion that its chief effect will be to reduce at least during this time the available purchasing power of tht masses of the people. I am not opposed to it for that reason, but I just desire to point out facts, especially to my hon. friend who has just taken his seat. If these poor beggars have to carry on with average earnings per year of $743 and are expected to pay any contribution at all, it can only lessen the total volume of purchasing power and in the long run have but little effect. Certainly it can have no other effect until there is another depression, if we ever get out of the present one, and we are not out of it yet.
Then we have the other side of the picture. The concentration of the control of the means of life is one of the major developments of the last century under this capitalist system Everybody admits that to-day, and everybody is beginning to apologize for it, including the last speaker. The Mellon family, for example, a family that conducts business in Canada as well as in the United States of America, provides probably one of the best examples of how wealth, and with it the destinies of millions of people, have been concentrated in a few hands. While the masses of the people were suffering in the penurious condition I have stated, this family fortune was being built up until to-day the Mellon family has a fortune estimated at eight billions of dollars, or, to be exact, $7,990,425,178. Now, that is a pretty substantial fortune. That is capitalism. That is capitalism because it gave the opportunity to a predatory type to take the fullest and grossest advantage of the system that encouraged predatory characters.
I would like my hon. friend who made some reference to the fourth commandment, or something like that, to take that into consideration. The whole philosophy of competition is contrary to Christ and to the teachings of Christ, and the very principle
[Mr. E. J. Garland.)
of competition in a capitalist society is utterly incompatible with the teachings of Him to whom he referred.
Then take even their own newspapers. Just about Christmas time this advertisement appeared on behalf of the Calgary Albertan, published in the city in which the right hon. the Prime Minister represents the west riding:
It said:
Feeding many on little. Is this your problem? The Albertan will help you solve it. Economical but nourishing and attractive meals can be prepared for your family cheaply. We will show you how to prevent waste; how to make tasteful meals from cheaper commodities; how to utilize to the utmost all the food properties of your provisions.
Yet at that moment we were selling cattle at destructive prices to a government in order that they might be turned into fertilizer. But our capitalist newspapers will advertise, in the face of that, this sort of thing to unfortunates who are expected to live on an average of five cents per meal on relief in our cities-advertising how they may be able to put life into their bodies by economizing in those things of which to-day we are able to produce in such vast abundance. Just think of the stupidity of the system. Does anyone think that these things can be remedied by regulation? There comes to my mind one classical illustration which I heard not long ago from a gentleman whom the Prime Minister has quoted, certainly without disagreeing with him, so far as I could ascertain from the newspapers. I refer to Mr. John Strachey, who told this interesting story in my hearing. One of the best illustrations of the insanity of the present system is to be found in the experience which two countries in Europe have recently had. In order to relieve unemployment conditions in Holland the government of that country decided to start great public works with a view to employing the unemployed, and the object of these public works was the reclamation of the Zuyder Zee. They were to erect dykes and drain the water off the land They had previously ascertained that the land itself was fertile and would be productive, and so they employed their unemployed. After the land had been restored they placed the unemployed on it, producing. They then found that they were producing so much wheat that they created a surplus wheat condition in the local market, and the government that had encouraged the development of that enterprise was then compelled in turn to buy the surplus wheat. Having bought the surplus wheat they attempted to find a market and, not being able to find one at remunerative prices, they finally sold the

Cooperative Commonwealth
wheat at cost to the Danish government in order that it should be fed to hogs there. The Danish government fed it to the hogs, with the result that there was an increase in the production of hogs, which threatened the market; and to avoid the collapse of the hog market the government of Denmark took over the surplus hogs. They could not tell what to do with these hogs and so they in turn converted the hogs into fertilizer. Then, finding that Denmark was so well provided with productive land and that production was so high, they had no market for their fertilizer in Denmark but succeeded in selling it back to Holland, so that they could spread it on the reclaimed Zuyder Zee to create more wheat to feed more hogs to be converted into more fertilizer, and so on. That is capitalism. My friends do not like it. They speak of the sacredness of the home, while around them they see their own people daily dispossessed of their homes, daily evicted from their homes. And who owned those homes-the home dwellers? You will find an exact parallel in other countries to the situation I now portray to you. I take four of the leading industrial states of the United States and according to a census of recent years we find that there were 4,828,000 dwellings in those four states, and of that number 4,115,000 were rented. Did private initiative, private enterprise and courageous loyalty to capitalism enable those people to buy homes and hold them?
Mr. Speaker, this movement, to which I have the honour to belong, has for its purpose the establishment of the sanctity of true private property and its extension, and we seek to have every person own his own home as an inalienable right and not as a matter of sufferance or charity. And it can be done. We have the man power, the scientific attainments, the artificial power, the raw materials, the willingness to work and the capital-it is all there. All you have to do is to bring these things into harmony. Capitalism lived-for I think it is dead-so long as the workers were able to feed the capitalists. But capitalism failed, to use the mildest term, just so soon as the capitalists had begun to feed the workers; and the more the capitalist has to feed the workers the more certain it is that the destruction of the system has been accomplished.
The proposed unemployment legislation is to make the workers feed the capitalists and their unemployed brethren as well. That is what this type of unemployment insurance does. It makes the employed feed the capitalists-for they will always pass on their costs to the consumer-and in addition to that
the employed has to feed his unemployed brethren. You cannot solve an economic problem of this magnitude by anything of that sort. It cannot be done, and that is so obvious that one does not need to stress it.
Hon. gentlemen to my immediate right believe, as I myself believed for many years, that all the present horrible muddled condition can be remedied if only we will restore the free market, free, unregulated competition. If only we will do that, they think, everything will be splendid. Well, I have changed my views in that regard; I no longer believe that position to be either tenable or possible of attainment. To do this, let us find out what we should have to do. We should have first to restore the normal flow of commodities by levelling the tariff and by the reversal of the policy of administrative protection-in othei words, world free trade or as near an approach thereto as possible. Secondly, it would be incumbent upon any government holding these views to break down the trusts and monopolies, for they interfere with the free movement of internal exchange just as effectively as tariffs interfere with the international movement of goods. Next, they would have to reverse the entire tendency towards the establishment of social services and of state and trade union protection for the wage earner; for social services and static wages are progressively freezing one of the most important variables of the law of supply and demand. In fact restoration of the free markets in labour would have to be accomplished if restoration of the system were to be accomplished. In addition, it would be incumbent upon them to establish some form of monetary control on a world scale which can attempt-and I use the word "attempt" advisedly-the task of mitigating world crises. In fact, restoration of the stability and continuity of international exchange must be accomplished if those hon. gentlemen are to make good their protestations. How could those reforms be brought about, even if they were advisable, in our present developed state of society? How are you going to level or diminish the existing tariff barriers of the world? Who is to do those jobs?-for if those tariffs are disastrous to the world market as a whole, they are of enormous benefit to particular capitalists. In short, the general enrichment that free trade would bring about could be achieved only at the cost of a gigantic redistribution of wealth among both individuals and communities. Individual capitalists would be ruined and whole industrial sections laid desolate. The free trader given power to scale down tariffs will also by that act be given power to bestow great

Cooperative Commonwealth
wealth, to deal destruction here, to bring ruin there, and so he will be opposed by every powerful and organized force of the entrepreneurs of every state fighting for existence. Try to do this, Mr. Speaker.
Second, they have to break the trusts. Who will inform the Holts, the Mellons and the others that they have to divest themselves of their present privileges and relinquish them to the will of the state? Why, as somebody suggests, there might be a great difficulty in securing campaign funds in the next election, if such action were taken.


Mr. HOWARD:: Oh, no.


Edward Joseph Garland: My hon.
friend accompanies that "no" with an ironical laugh which does justice to his negative. I should like to know who is to do this, because these people not only control vast corporations with tremendous powers but are interlocked with financial institutions as well. You cannot break the trusts and monopolies to-day. As a matter of fact trusts and combines are inevitable under capitalism; the competitive system itself compels that sort of aggregation in order that profits may be higher and security more assured to the people who are participating in the system. In short, not only would they have to take Sir Herbert Holt, Andrew Mellon and other people by the throat-and I am quite certain my hon. friends to my right do not intend to do that-but in addition they would have to release the existing state monopolies; for every one of them is an interference with free exchange. They would have to release Hydro in Ontario; they would have to release all social services that have so far been established; they would have to release government control over civil aviation and government control over radio, certainly the commercial side of it. All these things would have to be done if those hon. gentlemen think their philosophy is the correct one. Yes, the government or the state would have to free itself from interference with business of all kinds, except that form of interference that might be required to prevent combines and monopolies from coming into existence, and that is going to be some job.
Next, the free traders must, having challenged the greatest interests in capitalism, proceed to take away from the workers everything they have gained in a century of organized effort. It is of little use to restore freedom of exchange of commodities both internationally and at home and leave trade in one vital commodity, human labour, hedged about by every restriction and restraint. The
[Mr. E. J. Garland.)
free market can operate successfully and automatically only when all its interconnecting parts are movable; for if one of those parts sticks, the whole jams. It therefore would be essential that the price of human labour should vary freely in its relation to supply and demand. Further, as some social services provide, through the intervention of the state, income for labour in addition to that secured by wages, the existence of the legislation definitely retards the tendency of the price of labour to find its natural level; and hence it is important of course to the free trader that all such gross interferences with the freedom of the market, such as trade boards, old age pensions, health insurance and other forms of direct contribution by the state should cease. No laissez-faire system, no system of free competition could continue.
Finally comes the need of establishing international monetary control in order to prevent the wild fluctuations in international exchange that will hamper the movement of commodities in a free world market. The establishment of such a monetary control implies inevitably the setting up of a super power international in character, a bank that would have such control as to be able to determine the necessary steps and controls to be taken in order to regulate all exchange rates as between nations so as to avoid any clog in the system. Obviously that is incompatible with national sovereignty. So world tariff levelling, world tariff trust-busting, world trade union smashing and finally the inducing of French bankers, United States senators and all those other people to deposit their gold in some central bank in Geneva or wherever it is thought convenient, is the pleasant task of the free trader.
The system is gone and we might as well realize it. When we do we shall turn our efforts to the setting up of a cooperative social system in this country that will enable the harmonious functioning of the factors I mentioned earlier, man power, artificial power, resources and factory equipment, in order that we may be able to satisfy fully the needs of the people of Canada.
Mr, J. H. STITT (Selkirk): Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of interest to the advocacy of this great cause which has come from hon. members to your left in the corner, but I must say that I am entirely unconvinced; I am a doubter still. When I listened to the eloquence of the last speaker, the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Garland), who on every occasion when he rises in this house really preaches a prose poem,

Cooperative Commonwealth
I was amazed that the Divine Creator had given such a great gift for such a cause manifested in such a way, which can be nothing other than speech wholly and utterly divorced from all reality, not taking into consideration for an instant the glaring facts of life, the real nature of man and the complex problem which he has to solve.
I have not prepared my address for this occasion, so the house will pardon the imperfection of my efforts. This may be the last speech I make in this house-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


James Herbert Stitt: -but I want to say what a privilege it has been for me as an independent Conservative-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


James Herbert Stitt: I maintain that my utterances in this house show me to have been the most independent party man in the house.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Still a party man, though.


James Herbert Stitt: Still a party man, yes, because I believe in cooperation, because I believe in joining what energy and power I have with the power that moves in a real sphere in the real universe. The last speaker began by speaking of realities. He told the hon. member for Toronto Northwest (Mr. MacNicol) that he did not face one single reality. I ask the last speaker if he really approves of the resolution that is before us. I followed the development of every point in his discourse. At the end he spoke about world socialism, but this resolution has to do with conditions as we find them in Canada. Let me remind the hon. member here and now that in the debate on the marketing bill during the last session, on April 26, 1934, he said, as reported in Hansard at page 2559:
I am not a socialist; I have never been a socialist; I have never read any work of Karl Marx except what paragraphs appear in current digests or magazine articles.
I ask the hon. member now if he really supports the resolution, or if he has become a world socialist?


Edward Joseph Garland: I have no hesitation in answering both questions at once. The answer to the first is yes, and to the second, no. I have not discussed international socialism, and I did not mention it to-night.


James Herbert Stitt: The hon. member talked about control of credit, about the freedom of world trade.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is Liberalism.


James Herbert Stitt: What was he talking about if not about world socialism? he was utterly lost in a litter of language.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Read it to-morrow and see.


James Herbert Stitt: He attempts to cast contempt on this party and on the Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) and his policy of reform; he talks about the shreds and patches of the reform policy. I say to this house and to my constituents and to the people of this country that I honestly believe that the most radical prime minister we have ever had in Canada is the Right Hon. Richard Bedford Bennett, and that his policy of real reform is the only hope of the suppressed masses in this country. He is the man who has not been afraid to grapple with circumstances as he found them in a real way. The hon. member held up the United States and President Roosevelt as having failed. What of the billions that they have poured into circulation? Is he greater than Roosevelt?


Edward Joseph Garland: I am too modest to answer.


James Herbert Stitt: If Roosevelt has
failed and is continuing to fail, how does he hope to succeed? How does he hope to persuade the people of Canada that his leader, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth), can save the nation? With a gesture of contempt he said, "How long will this system go on?" I tell my hon. friend that this system existed before he was born, and it will continue to exist long after he is dead and gone, after every one of us is dead and gone. His leader spoke about the necessity for something new, as if he were espousing a new cause. Years ago when I was a student at Queen's university we learned that Plato talked about socialism and communism. Why, this is as old as mankind; it is a relic of society in its most primitive form-it is not new. The hon, mem ber spoke about the purpose of the new dea' in the United States; he said it was to increase purchasing power. They poured out billions and billions and are pouring out billions still in the United States; and have they increased purchasing power? He sa3rs they have not. What then is his alternative? The hon. member is perfectly right when he says that there are conditions existing in society which are absolutely cruel. No one can approve of a system that alternates from the peaceful pursuits of civilization to the savagery of war; certainly we agree with his condemnation of the system. But what is his alternative?
Cooperative Commonwealth

Not content with analyzing the situation in the great republic to the south, our eloquent friend took us on a Cook's tour through Europe. He spoke about Italy and gave statistics regarding wage reductions there. Are he and his companions greater than Mussolini? "Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed that he is grown so great?" This is a question I might reasonably ask of the hon. member for Temis-couata (Mr. Pouliot). If he were in the house now I would ask him if he would kindly invite me to dinner before I rise again to address the house. I imagine he must feed upon dynamite.


Mr. BEAUBIEN:: The Prime Minister's
dynamite.


James Herbert Stitt: It is dynamite to
some of the Liberal party I am afraid, or perhaps even nitroglycerine and gun cotton.
But let us take a look at Europe. Look at the situation in Russia. I hope the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre will pardon my making reference to Russia, because I have never classified my hon. friend as a revolutionist. I believe the hon. member who leads the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation is a man of the highest motives. I believe he is a great idealist. I believe the suffering of humanity has so deeply marked his heart that he cannot forget it. I believe that his purpose in this house and throughout his life is to make the bread of life a little sweeter for the poor, if I may put it that way. I also believe that there are many men in this house who have the same ideal, even men in the Conservative party. But when I analyze this resolution I realize the lack of logic in it. Let me read the resolution in order that we may see just how much truth it contains. It is very much like the Declaration of Independence, which started with a lie, that all men are created free and equal. I think that was one of the most poetic lies ever penned by our political philosophers. The hon. member says in his resolution:
That, in the opinion of this house, since the capitalist system is failing to function in the interests of the great majority of the people of Canada-[DOT]
When you postulate the fact that the system is failing to function in the insterests of the great majority of the people you mean that more than half of the people of Canada are in a condition approaching destitution or poverty, and I do not think that is correct. There is enough suffering in Canada, God knows, without starting your resolution with an exaggerated statement which, upon its face, certainly is not true.

When we talk about the failure of the capitalistic system I wonder if we ever recognize its virtues and merits. What has the capitalistic system done for us? It has lessened hours of labour; it has lightened the drudgery of toil; it has harnessed the power that is leaping in the cataracts and the rivers. The other day, as I looked at the river here and saw that magic array of lights along the shore, I was thinking that if an Indian who, living in the north in seclusion, and not having heard of the inventions of modern society and the great privileges we now possess, came down the river and saw this array of lights, he would think the stars had fallen from heaven and were dancing up and down upon the hills. The capitalistic system has done nothing? Even in this House of Commons the capitalistic system has permitted the great amount of freedom and liberty. It has enabled you and me, men bom of poor parents and without monetary resources or power, to come here in the name of the people and, in the temple of the people, to speak against all the power that ever was or ever will be with the voice of freedom and love. There is no good in the capitalistic system? Look back to the days of Queen Elizabeth. Remember how they lived then, when they had no sanitation, when they had not discovered glass, when there was practically no pottery or porcelain, when they knew nothing about the modem science of medicine; when they feasted and drank together in palaces in which there was nothing but a litter of straw for a carpet, where they flung their despised bones to the dogs. To-day I, a mechanic's son, and you, are rich, with more freedom and more luxury than Queen Elizabeth on her throne ever had or ever dreamed of having.
I remember once, when I was a lad, looking at Eaton's catalogue. That was a long time ago; Eaton's have been in existence for a long time, like the capitalistic system. I was about six years of age, and I remember that on the cover of the catalogue there was a picture of the horseless carriage. I looked at my aunt and said, "Is that a horseless carriage, Aunt Laura?" She said, "Yes, Jim." My hon. friend said the Prime Minister does not know the meaning of words. I think he is very wrong. I think if my hon. friend wants to learn the meaning and magic of words all he needs to do is listen a little more to the Prime Minister, and he will be able to preach the greatest sermon he ever dreamed about. But I said to my aunt, "Horseless means without a horse, does it not?" And she said, "Yes, Jim." I said, "Will it go without a horse?" And she said, "It will go without a horse." "Will it go up hill," I

Cooperative Commonwealth
asked. "Certainly it will go uphill," she replied. Then I said, "Well, I don't believe it, Aunt Laura; I don't believe it will go without a horse." Then we had that fairy tale about Cinderella and Prince Charming, and the glass carriage with the four horses. What have we to-day? We have a little instrument that has the power of sixty or a hundred horses.
What has capitalism done? It has ransacked the ages and spoiled the climes. It has solved the problem of production, and beyond the dreams of avarice, beyond any conception that any of us ever can have, the future will be even more glorious than the past.
Now look at the next section of this resolution. After starting on its way by stating what I claim to be a falsehood, it says that the capitalistic system should be superseded by a cooperative commonwealth in which the profit motive would be subordinated to that of public service. My hon. friend from Winnipeg North Centre was a preacher of the gospel in which the ideal of unselfishness and public service was the keystone. For 1,935 years the Church of Jesus Christ has been alive in this world. The best educated, the most fearless and the best men we have are the priests and the preachers of our churches, but have the truths of the Christian religion penetrated to the core of society? Are they the dominating motives of men? Is unselfishness absolutely on the throne? Is it all powerful? How can we hope, by a resolution of this kind, to change the very nature of mankind? How can we hope, by dressing a criminal in a new suit of clothes, to make him a saint or a gentleman? How can it be done? Let us look at this problem from a philosophical standpoint. I have often wondered just why it was such good politics for a man to become a sort of socialist now and then.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


James Herbert Stitt: I am telling you the truth, sir, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When we get our feet around the old stove or before the fireplace and light our pipes, we pat ourselves on the back and suddenly we are all socialists. Is it not funny? But this is what struck me the other day, in thinking over this problem: Truth, as one of the great writers has said, is a jewel of many facets, and if we are to appreciate the whole truth we must be able to observe the beauty reflected from all the facets. Men have a very 92582-46
hard struggle to make a living. They have a harder struggle to attain independence or comfort; and when you seize upon this one condemnatory element in the system; when you abuse it, when you criticize it, when you damn it, you are at one with man in his despair. He agrees with you, because like most of us and unlike a few of us he knows that he cannot comprehend the sum total of reality, and that he will never discern all the lineaments or all the aspects of truth. You are certainly hitting upon one element of truth, but only one. Be very careful-and I say this in all kindness-be very careful that you do not unconsciously capitalize discontent-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


James Herbert Stitt: I said "unconsciously," and I did not say it unkindly. We have to be very careful that we do not capitalize the forces of discontent and cause mankind to turn away from its true friends in a divine frenzy for beautiful abstractions which can mean nothing more than anguish.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: We had some beautiful abstractions in 1930.


James Herbert Stitt: I beg the hon. member's pardon?


Agnes Campbell Macphail: People turned to some beautiful abstractions in 1930.


James Herbert Stitt: I do not think so. However, the hon. member may have her own opinion, and I shall respect it as I always do. Perhaps I may ask the hon. member for Southeast Grey (Miss Macphail) this question: Is she at the present time a member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation?


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Ask the UF.O.


James Herbert Stitt: Ask the U.F.O.? Well, "by indirections find directions out." I should like to ask the hon. member for East Hamilton (Mr. Mitchell) if he is a member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Mr. BELL (Hamilton):: I rise to a question of privilege. I am the member for Hamilton.


James Herbert Stitt: Mr. Speaker, I was falling into the fatal error of looking at that jewel of truth and perceiving the wrong facet.



Cooperative Commonwealth
Let us go on with the resolution. We find in it the expression: "Ruthless competition replaced by collective ownership under democratic control". That is a mouthful. Is that communism? The resolution refers to ruthless competition which is to be replaced by collective ownership. The only collective ownership I could conceive would be ownership by the state. Does the expression "collective ownership" mean that the state shall own everything? And then we find the words "under democratic control". I believe the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre in referring to democratic control this afternoon said that this House of Commons, organized as it is, is incapable of realizing what he had hoped it would realize. What does he mean by democratic control? What does he mean by collective ownership? How is he going to attain collective ownership? Is there to be utter and immediate confiscation by the passage of law, so that all property shall be vested in the state? If there is not to be confiscation will there be payment for the property which the state will vest in itself? If there is to be payment, what kind of payment will it be? How much will the payment be, and in what way will it be paid? What does the resolution mean, anyway?
I think, Mr. Speaker, that the resolution, like all Oaul, is divided into three parts; but where one can find more gall in one part than in the other is very difficult for me to state-although I think it is in the first part.
I agree with the mover of the resolution when he states that the system under which we live is not an ideal system; but I ask him what is his alternative? What is the argument derived from history, and what do we learn from our contemporary experience? Let us analyze the situation in Germany to-day. Germany is a country which does its business under a greater degree of state control than obtains in any other country, with the exception of Russia. I read an article a short time ago in Current History stating that when one goes down the main street of Berlin he sees all the glory and all the pageantry of pre-war days, but if he should get off the main street he would find that the condition of the people is bad beyond description. In those side streets he would find families going out day after day to beg for their bread. That is an example of state control. Let us go back to Russia. The
(Mr. J H. Stitt.]
hon. member does not like me to refer to Russia; however I shall tell about a young man who came back from Russia to my constituency. This young Polish chap had learned to make tractors in Henry Ford's factory, and had been persuaded to go to Stalingrad to assist the Russians in the manufacture of automobiles. He was supplied with everything in the way of clothes and food, and was given adequate police protection. In the Chase National bank of New York $180 was placed each month to his credit. Notwithstanding all this he came back to the constituency of Selkirk to live with his peasant father and mother. Speaking to the boy directly-because I did not obtain my information from any intermediary source- I said, " Why did you come back to this country where no doubt some months will elapse before you can obtain a position? Why did you leave that new country with all the privileges it held for you?" He said, " Mr. Stitt, I was afraid to go outside the compound at night." "Why were you afraid?" I asked. He replied, " The Russians were so poorly clad I was afraid they would murder me for my clothes."
As it is eleven o'clock, Mr. Speaker, I move the adjournment of the debate.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Tuesday, February 12, 1935