1936-03-05

[Stage Direction]
Mr. JEAN-FRANQOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata): Mr. Speaker, the first meeting of the select standing committee on debates took place this morning. It was the first meeting during the last five years. For obvious reasons that standing committee met, but did not sit.


[Stage Direction]
Mr. C. E. BOTHWELL (Swift Current) presented the first report of the special committee on elections and franchise acts, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of
Justice) moved:
That the special committee appointed to study the Dominion Elections Act, 1934, and amendments thereto, and the Dominion Franchise Act, 1934, and amendments thereto, be instructed to study and make report on the methods used to effect a redistribution of electoral districts in Canada and in other countries, and to make suggestions to the house in connection therewith.
He said: When the motion to appoint a committee to consider the elections act and the franchise act was before the house, the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Leader) asked whether the committee would deal with the recent redistribution of seats in this house, I replied in the negative. Since then notice of motion has been given to appoint another committee for that purpose. The motion I now present to the house would meet neither the views of the hon. member for Portage la Prairie, nor the object of the resolution on the order paper. Its aim is rather to study, in a strictly non-partisan, non-political way, methods which could be adopted with regard to redistributing seats in Canada when the necessity arises.
When the last redistribution bill was before the house the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) expressed the view that instead of redistribution being proceeded with by a committee of the house, necessarily composed of a majority representing one of the political parties, it ought to be possible to find a way to have this work done by an independent tribunal, either a royal commission or some other board, which would give some guarantee of impartiality. In the end the redistribution was voted by the majority against the protests of the minority in the house, and there has remained in many quarters, I am free to say, a sense of injustice as to what was done in certain parts of the country. This motion would empower the committee to study the methods used in other places situated similarly to our own country. For instance, in the sister dominion of Australia, a growing country in which the population increases from one census to another,
Elections and Franchise
[Stage Direction]
they have a method under which redistribution is brought about by a board composed of three officers, one of whom is the chief electoral officer and another the surveyor general. Their report is submitted to the parliament of Australia, but if the recommendations contained in the report are not considered proper in every respect it is not necessarily adopted. At all events it seems to me that we have here something which ought to appeal to the sense of impartiality of every hon. member. The motion will not commit parliament to anything, it will simply give the committee authority to study the question and to report to the house as to what in the opinion of the committee would be the proper system of redistributing the representation of the House of Commons.
Right Hon. R. B. BENNETT (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I am not certain that this is not a motion which should be preceded by notice.


Mr. LAPOINTE (Quebec East):: It was.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Oh, I understand. The
question which arises on the motion may be said to divide itself into two branches, the first of which is covered by the constitution. Section 51 of the British North America Act reads as follows:
On the completion of the census in the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, and of each subsequent decennial census, the representation of the four provinces shall be readjusted by such authority, in such manner, and from such time, as the parliament _ of Canada from time to time provides, subject and according to the following rules:
(1)	Quebec shall have the fixed number of sixty-five members:
(2)	There shall be assigned to each of the other provinces such a number of members as will bear the same proportion to the number of its population (ascertained at such census) as the number sixty-five bears to the number of the population of Quebec (so ascertained):
(3)	In the computation of the number of members for a province a fractional part not exceeding one-half of the whole number requisite for entitling the province to a member shall be disregarded'; but a fractional part exceeding one-half of that number shall be equivalent to the whole number:
(4)	On any such readjustment the number of members for a province shall not be reduced unless the proportion which the number of the population of the province bore to the number of the aggregate population of Canada at the then last preceding readjustment of the number of members for the province is ascertained at the then latest census to be diminished by one-twentieth part or upwards:
(5)	Such readjustment shall not take effect until the termination of the then existing parliament.
This section indicates the legal limitations imposed upon parliament in connection with redistribution.


Mr. MACKENZIE (Vancouver):: There is
no limitation there.


Richard Bedford Bennett: There is a very considerable limitation, if the hon. gentleman will permit me to say so. First, there is the limitation as to the number of members to represent Quebec; the number is placed at sixty-five. The second limitation is as to the number of seats that other provinces have with relation to the fixed number of sixty-five, and the other limitation is as to reductions.
To section 51 must be added the provisions contained in the amendment made to the British North America Act in the days of the Borden administration by which no province's representation in the commons is to be diminished below its senatorial representation. Therefore the province of Prince Edward Island, with a population of between 80,000 and 90,000, has four members in the House of Commons, because under the provisions of the agreement under which it entered confederation it has four members in the Senate. Similarly the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia must have ten members each because they have ten members in the Senate. Therefore there is the limitation imposed by section 51, together with the amendment made to the constitution which provides that the representation of a province in the house shall never be less than its representation in the Senate.
The method by which redistribution is to be done fairly is a matter that has engaged the attention of this house ever since there has been a parliament in Canada. It will be remembered that in 1887 the charge was made that a great deal of gerrymandering took place in the constituencies, and that allegation became a distinct issue in that and succeeding elections. In the redistribution which took place after the census of 1891 there were also complaints, and at a subsequent redistribution an effort was made to do something by setting up a committee of the house composed of members from all parties to bring about a reasonable agreement between the parties. After the census of 1921, agreement which was not complete was arrived at; one might say it was agreement with respect to over ninety per cent of the constituencies. In 1931 there was an agreement at one time, but unfortunately disagreement subsequently arose, so that it could not be said that the committee arrived at any final agreement satisfactory to all parties. The great difficulty in Canada has been that because of the shifting of population from rural to urban communities we have a condition which is a reality and which cannot be dealt with on an equitable basis, as was originally intended by

Elections and Franchise
the constitution. For if you had representation by population, just that and nothing more, the representation from the cities and towns would deprive the rural communities of many of the seats they now have. That difficulty has confronted every parliament which in recent years has had to deal with redistribution. But never was the problem so difficult or the situation so acute as it was after the census of 1931, because for the first time in our history, as I have so frequently pointed out, we had a majority of population in our cities and towns. Therefore the basis or unit of representation in connection with urban seats was made far larger than with respect to rural communities, so that if possible the rural population might have representation in the house practically equivalent to that of the urban portion of the dominion. That has not been easy. It may be that there is some fairer or better method which may be set up, but it must be remembered that after all parliament is a far better tribunal than any commission to determine the basis upon which rural communities shall find representation, and is a better body to be entrusted with the duty of applying the rules of representation in parliament.
If representation by population were obligatory it is quite clear that in this house there would be a diminution of members from rural communities and an increase from the urban centres of Canada. In view of what was said by all hon. members, including the Prime Minister, I believe that is something which would be undesirable at this particular time, having regard to the importance of the basic industry of agriculture in the life of Canada as a whole.
Another point was raised, namely that of representation of the universities. Having regard to the provisions of section 51, as the statute now stands it is quite obvious that such representation would be impossible of accomplishment. There would have to be an amendment to the constitution itself in order to enable us to effect that purpose. There are many other matters which would have to be considered from the constitutional angle, if we were to give effect to some of the views we hold. No matter has been so much discussed by parliaments and legislatures as that of the redistribution at elections. It will be recalled that Gambetta in France had certain well defined views as to the division into electoral districts. At different times in England various views have obtained-the single member constituencies, the double member constituencies, and the question as to whether there might not be grouping of constituencies, giving benefit to 12739-50
all for the purpose of carrying into effect the theories of proportional representation. In this country we have in the main stuck to the practice of the single member constituency, except that there have been certain double member constituencies, which in many cases have lost their members by reason of diminishing population. No harm can come from a discussion of the matter by a committee, but I think the committee should have clearly in mind the limitations imposed upon their activities; for if it is suggested that a new redistribution could be introduced and carried through this parliament, insuperable difficulties will be found in section 51. On the other hand, I do not think even the most violent partisan will suggest that the last redistribution resulted in any advantage to the parity then in power. Under the circumstances it might well serve a useful purpose for the discussion to take place, because it is as old as representative institutions themselves and will continue long after we have concluded our discussions with respect to it. If it results in any advantage to air views that have been held from time to time and to take from books and papers the story of representation and redistribution-because you cannot bring witnesses here from France and continental Europe to tell us how they do it-and to have all that put in a report of a committee rather than have it available to us in the volumes from which it is taken, I have no objection, but I cannot see that it is going to serve any very useful purpose.
Mr. ,7. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):	I should like to make one
or two comments, Mr. Speaker, on this proposal. The leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) has suggested that there are very decided legal limitations upon what this committee can do, but it does seem to me, now that amendments to the British North America Act are being considered, it is quite possible that this committee might suggest certain amendments to that act, if indeed specific amendments are being considered. I cannot see why, for instance, because Prince Edward Island in days gone by had a certain number of members, it should have the same number of members to-day, out of all proportion to its population. I think that the people of the west have the right to be as fully represented as the people of Prince Edward Island. It is all very well to hold to certain historical traditions, but it is much more important to meet the needs of the present day.
The suggestion has been made that there might be some representation for the universities, because that has been the practice, I

Elections and Franchise

think, in England; but I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that there are certain groups in this country that need representation much more than the universities. I think of one class in the province of Alberta, for example, where there is a large number of miners scattered through some six or seven federal constituencies that are predominantly rural in character. The leader of the opposition suggests that the farmers, representing a primary industry, should be adequately represented. Well, what of the miners? It is almost impossible for them as a group to be represented under present conditions with small mining areas scattered through predominantly rural districts. If any group is to be given representation it ought to be some of these groups that are at present unrepresented. And again, I think of the large number of people engaged in construction work, scattered all over this country in small areas or along the railway lines, and of those engaged in the lumber camps. They are amongst the most needy of our population, yet in practice they lack direct representation. We have again and again urged that they be given greater facilities for exercising their franchise, but even if they were given that, it is very difficult for them to secure direct representation in this house. I hope when the committee is making its investigations it will not fail to remember some of these more or less neglected groups.
There is one other thing I should like to mention, and that is the necessity in any system of redistribution of a distinction being drawn between the people residing in urban and suburban communities, and people living in the country. Instead of making that distinction we have frequently split the urban population in two and added to each half a section of the surrounding country population. That may have been very desirable in some instances, from the standpoint of party politics, but I suggest that it does not contribute to the general welfare. The farmers have their own special problems, and it seems to me that the redistribution ought to be arranged so that they will have distinct representation. On the other hand, the people living in the cities and in the vicinity of cities really constitute a more or less unified community, and ought to be given representation as a city group.


Mr. WERMENLINGER:: According to
population?


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: According to population. I am suggesting that at present the urban and rural groups are split up and combined in the most astonishing ways. If this

committee would give attention to some of these considerations I think we might evolve an altogether new system that would reflect more adequately the needs of the people.


Right Hon.   S@: Mr. Speaker, with respect to
the question of notice, I quite agree with my hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) that notice appears on the votes and proceedings of last Tuesday, but it has always been usual, as I understand it, to have the notice appear also on the order paper, and it is not on the order paper to-day. I do not know whether it was left off inadvertently. I have seen some of these notices put at the very first of the order paper when they were of a different category from the usual government notices. However, that is a matter of detail at the moment, and does not make any particular difference.
I should like to suggest to the Minister of Justice that the two matters which this committee was set up to consider are the Dominion Elections Act and the Dominion Franchise Act. It was stated by the minister in the house the other day, and quite properly -I entirely agree with him-that it was better to have these questions settled early in the life of a parliament rather than close to the time of an election. Both of these matters which the committee is going to consider are extremely important. Many things occurred during the last election to show that there were faults in both these acts. Some of them were perhaps not important, although other hon. members may not agree. At any rate those are very difficult matters for the committee to consider; they are of great importance. It will take the committee a long time, and it is right that this should be done early in the life of this parliament. But I submit to my hon. friend that this other subject which he now proposes to add to the duties of this committee is one about which there is no need for hurry. The next census will not be taken until 1941; by that time this parliament will have disappeared and a new one will have been elected, and all that will take place before there can be another redistribution. I feel quite strongly that the duties already imposed on this committee are serious enough, and that the committee should not be embarrassed by having this further subject thrust upon it. It is a different matter altogether; there is no occasion for haste in dealing with it, and I submit for the consideration of the minister and of the government that they should not add this new

Questions
subject to the duties of the committee. If they desire to have it discussed, that can be done in the years to come, with plenty of time to spare. I feel quite strongly that it is a mistake to add this subject as an afterthought, to the committee's duties, which are already of very great importance, embracing two very difficult questions.


Ernest Lapointe: Mr. Speaker, may I say in answer
to my right hon. friend who has just spoken (Sir George Perley) that consideration of the matter referred to in this motion is certainly germane to the two other matters which have been referred to this committee. Indeed, proportional representation is mentioned specifically in the reference to the committee for consideration. Any scheme of proportional representation would involve, of necessity, a redistribution of the seats as they are now constituted. Apart from all this, the resolution is general in its character. What is proposed is that the committee shall consider the methods which might be used to effect a redistribution of the electoral districts in Canada and other countries and make suggestions to the house. That does not necessarily mean that there will be an immediate redistribution, it will be a suggestion of what such redistribution should be when the time comes.
I do not agree with my right hon. friend' the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) when he says that parliament cannot at this time, or prior to a new census being taken, deal with the redistribution of seats. Section 51 of the British North America Act-provides that after the completion of a census "the representation of the four provinces shall be readjusted by such authority, in such manner, and from such time, as the parliament of Canada from time to time provides," subject to Quebec having sixty-five members and the other provinces a proportionate number according to what their population may be as compared with the population of Quebec. This section of the British North America Act requires that after every census there shall be an allocation of the number of members for each province, but it does not mean that parliament is prevented from changing the limits of the constituencies provided the number of members allocated is retained. I have not the book before me. but I remember having studied this matter two or three years ago. Lefroy. an authority on the Canadian constitution, states what I have just stated, that while parliament cannot change the number of members allocated to each province, after a
12739-50}
census, parliament has authority to change the lines of the constituencies at any time provided the number of members is not changed. However, as I have said, while that may be done, this motion will not necessarily lead to that procedure. This is merely suggesting that consideration be given to the best methods of having a fair and just redistribution when the time comes that it should be made.
With regard to the last words of my right hon. friend the leader of the opposition, and following the same trend of argument, may I say that possibly the results of the election were not due to the redistribution but were in spite of it.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

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

Mr. REID:: 1.	Is any financial assistance provided by the dominion government to the sons and daughters of officials or officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for high school or any other form of education?
2.	If so, what sums of money were provided by the government for such purposes and to what persons was this money paid during the calendar years 1932 to 1935?


Mr. LAPOINTE (Quebec East):: 1. No.
(a)	Special training for sub-constables in clerical duties in connection with police work has been given at Regina, Saskatchewan, since June, 1934, and out of a total of 43 who have received this special training, ten have been sons of members of the force.
(b)	In addition to the above, five other members of the force (one of whom is the son of an officer, Constable J. MacBrien) are being given courses in law at five different universities of Canada. The only financial assistance given is an allowance of 50 cents per diem each.
(b)	(i) There is need of having members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are experienced in police duties, trained in law. This is being done at Scotland Yard through the employment of special officers in the Criminal Investigation Branch and at the Bureau of Investigation. Department of Justice, Washington, U.S.A. In the latter case, no candidate is accepted for service unless he is a graduate in law or is a chartered accountant.
(c)	No daughters of officials or officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have
Questions

been given financial assistance for high school or any other form of education.
2. Answered by No. 1.


HALLONQUIST, SASK., POSTMASTER
Mr. COLDWELL:: 1.	What is the annual salary of the postmaster at Hallonquist, Saskatchewan?
2.	What commission was paid from sale of postage stamps, money orders, postal notes, etc., for the past fiscal year?
3.	What allowance is made for carrying the mail between the post office and the station?
4.	How is the latter amount arrived at?
5.	Is the basis the same in all cases?
6.	If not, what other basis is used?


Mr. ELLIOTT (Middlesex):: 
FISH CULTURE
Mr. NEILL:: What is the total amount spent year by year for the last fifteen years on fish cultural work in (a) Canada; (b) British Columbia?


Mr. MICHAUD:: 
Mr. H. E. WILTON (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to inquire of the Minister of Pensions and National Health (Mr. Power) whether there is any possibility of the vetcraft shop which was recently closed at Hamilton being reopened.


Hon. C. G. POWER (Minister of Pensions and National Health):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member was good enough to give me notice of his question. In reply I would say that the vetcraft shop was closed on March 1, and will not be reopened. Within a few months the district office of the department will be removed to the new government building and there is no accommodation in that building for a vetcraft shop. These shops were started originally for the purpose of training men in civilian occupations. It was anticipated that the training given would enable partially disabled ex-soldiers to obtain ordinary employment. However, it has been found during recent years that many of those who obtained employment in these shops did not leave. As there has not been any substantial change in the personnel for some time, it would appear that the object for which these shops were originally instituted has not been achieved. There were some eighteen men employed in the shop at Hamilton, receiving something 'like thirty-five cents per hour, the prevailing rate of wages. Each one of these men cost the country approximately $33 to $35 per month, and it has been felt that such men were receiving a preference over other returned soldiers. The men employed in any shop which may be closed will fall into the same category as other ex-soldiers. If they are pensioners drawing small pensions they will be entitled to relief.


CANADA-UNITED STATES TRADE AGREEMENT PROPOSED APPROVAL SUBJECT TO LEGISLATION MAKING PROVISIONS EFFECTIVE
[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Wednesday, March 4, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King:
That it is expedient that parliament do approve of the trade agreement entered into at Washington on the 15th day of November, 1935, between His Majesty's government in the Dominion of Canada and the government of the United States of America, and that this house do approve of the same, subject to the legislation required in order to give effect to the provisions thereof.
Mr. J. A. BRADETTE (Cochrane):: Yesterday afternoon when discussing this resolution I expressed the sentiments of the people I
MARCH 5, 1936	7S9
Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
have the honour to represent. I said that during the last election all parties in Canada were perfectly satisfied that the then administration had been trying to effect an agreement with the United States and also that the Liberal party, if it were returned to power, would do its very best to bring about an agreement such as the one now under consideration. I said further that a good many sections of the population were astonished at the attitude taken by the present leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett). I made that statement for this reason. I well remember that during the last session the then Minister of Finance made a statement in the house to the effect that the great Conservative party had always been in favour of reciprocity or of freer trade with the United States. I have received several communications from people in my own constituency, supporters of the Conservative party, for whose opinions I have always had the greatest respect, expressing their failure to understand the attitude of the leader of the opposition to this particular question.
Yesterday I said that in our part of Canada the people were absolutely impartial so far as the tariff was concerned, but I added that any tariff that raised an artificial barrier in the way of exports from a country such as Canada, which is always on an exporting basis, would certainly put a burden on the shoulders of the people I represent; and that applies to every section of northern Ontario. I also mentioned, so as to be fair, the benefits enjoyed by the newsprint industry. I listened attentively to the remarks of the hon. member for Lanark (Mr. Thompson), particularly when he said that he was content to deal with nations within the British empire, and I pointed out to the hon. gentleman that it was not possible to sell to Great Britain a single pound of the product of the newsprint industry. The natural, the only market we have now or have ever had in the past is the United States.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The hon. gentleman is
not correct. The Standard and the Express are very large users of Canadian newsprint.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: I did not quite hear
what the right hon. gentleman said.


Richard Bedford Bennett: The hon. gentleman is
inadvertently incorrect. The Daily Standard and the Daily Express of London, England, are both printed on Canadian newsprint.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: Well, no one will deny that the great bulk of the product goes to the United States. There was a time when we believed that we were supreme in that industry, by reason of our access and close
proximity to the American market; but anyone who has studied the industry will find that in the last five years we have been faced with keen competition from the Scandinavian countries and from Germany. Sweden is advancing every year with a greater and greater average of production to compete with our Canadian newsprint. One realizes, in this connection, the great change that has taken place through the development of transportation, in the use of motor vehicles and in other ways, throughout the civilized world, so that so far as distance is concerned the world is really getting smaller and smaller; the old channels of trade, which were tedious and involved delays, no longer exist. These are facts to be remembered.
In our section we are primary producers and our surplus must necessarily find its way to the world's markets. I will not repeat what I said yesterday with regard to the tariff on fruit and vegetables. It is sufficient to say that in our part of the country we have been greatly penalized by the application of the so-called seasonal tariff, and I fervently hope that the Department of National Revenue will take steps to ensure that our people in that section will be able to buy these necessities at reasonable prices. I hope they will get fair treatment.
I have no doubt that every member has been lobbied with regard to Canadian magazines and periodicals, and again the bogey has been raised, that unless we erect artificial barriers to keep out such publications from other countries our Canadian mentality will be impaired. Any such statement is obviously far-fetched. There is one thing I implicitly believe in and that is the importance of education and the mental development of the people, and I submit that no obstacle should be placed in the way of this development. For a number of years prior to the imposition of duties on United States and other foreign publications I used to subscribe to the Literary Digest, a non-partisan publication which gives an unbiased view of all questions pertaining not only to the United States but to the world at large. After the duties were imposed however I found that I had not the means of securing that and other magazines. I am quite prepared to patronize Canadian magazines and periodicals; they are well written and well worth reading. But surely our loyalty to Canadian principles and ideals does not involve the audacity of prohibiting the people from reading American publications. I do agree that certain types of United States newspapers which are antagonistic to the British empire, and certain fiction magazines, should be

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
absolutely prohibited; but those that treat of scientific matters, those that discuss international questions, should be allowed access to Canada. Surely our Canadian magazine publishers must have a certain market in the United States in respect of which there could be reciprocal literary exchanges. At any rate, personally I will not put any restrictions on learning and intellectual development.
I know that the hon. member for Kootenay East (Mr. Stevens) will give me credit for sincerity when I compliment him on what he said the other day, and I believe he was but saying what the majority of Canadians think when they take the trouble to study the problem with which we are dealing at the present time. It is always very easy, in discussing a matter such as this, to raise bogies to scare the people, ignoring the fact that we are dealing with economic and commercial problems, for the purpose of making nationalistic and political capital. We have suffered from that sort of thing in the past. Experience has shown that freer trade between Canada and the United States, to the extent that it has been tried, has been beneficial to both countries. It is during such periods that we have enjoyed our largest share of prosperity. I do not go so far as to say that it is a formula for the solution of all our problems; our problems are not so easily solved. But inasmuch as we are an exporting country, I regard it as one of the best means of solving to a large extent our present unemployment problem.
I should like to quote two or three sentences from the speech of the hon. member for East Kootenay. At page 724 he is reported as having said:
Let us look for a moment at the agreement. The agreement is, as I have said, a step or a gesture in the right direction.
This is absolutely true; no one even on the government side will dare to say that this agreement is perfect. It would not need to be amended from day to day or month to month, though perhaps it would from year to year. Later on at page 725 the hon. member has this to say:
There are bound to be some cases where there appears to be an injury, but what I would suggest is that we wait for a time and see whether these imagined injuries are real.
I have no doubt that there is no person on this side of the house who would like to see any of our industries in rural sections of the country markedly injured by the present treaty with the United States. The same applies to all our social and economic and industrial and farm activities. At the

same time, as was stated by the hon. member for Kootenay East, there is no doubt that in some sections a certain amount of sacrifice must be made for the benefit of the whole. Later on the hon. member says:
In the first place I want to say that this treaty is good because the motive and intention behind it are good, and I think it should be supported because the motive and intention are good. There is a spirit of good will in the treaty which ought to be and I am sure is welcomed by both countries.
I hold no brief and have no right to speak for the Conservative party, but it will be a wonderful gesture at this time if the grand old Conservative party will see their way to support the treaty, will recognize the good that is in it, and will help the government in all necessary amendments.
I am very glad of this situation, Mr. Speaker, that for the next four or five years we may not have to hold an election in this country. I mention that point because it means that for four or five years at least there are not going to be raised the great questions with which we were confronted in the past when dealing with reciprocity pacts. We are going to apply the principle of this treaty-


Mr. SPEAKER:: I regret to inform the
hon. member that his time has expired.


Joseph-Arthur Bradette: If you will allow me,
sir, I will make one more observation. I think I have lost about eight minutes, but I accept at once the ruling of the chair. It is certain that in this question there are forces, stronger than politics or mere national selfishness and premeditated misrepresentation, which will keep alive the determination of the two nations to engage in profitable trade.


Herbert Earl Wilton: In coming up to the parliament buildings this morning I could not but be impressed by the beautiful sunshine of the morning and the evidence of the return of dead nature back to life. It should inspire all of us to higher thoughts; we should all be feeling in the best of condition to-day due to the improved condition of the weather. I could not but be impressed also by the seriousness of the fact that two great political parties such as the Liberal and Conservative parties cannot agree on a subject so vitally important to the whole of Canada.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Herbert Earl Wilton: My friends on the opposite side echo that sentiment. But I am sorry to tell them, and I say it honestly, that I cannot feel they are on the right side on this question. I assure them, and in this I in-

Canada-TJ. S. Trade Agreement
elude the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), that I should welcome an opportunity before the close of this parliamentary session to find myself in accord with them upon some measure brought down by the government, if for no other reason than to prove my good will towards them and my determination always to put principle ahead of politics.
I once heard a man say, addressing an audience composed almost equally of Canadians and of Americans, "I hope the time is not far distant when the same flag will be waving over both countries, Canada and the United States." Immediately there was loud applause by the Americans present. As soon as the speaker had succeeded in quieting the enthusiasm of the Americans he explained, "I hope you won't misunderstand me; I mean the Canadian flag." Then there was some applause by the Canadians. I am a Canadian. I was born in Canada. My parents were born in Canada. My grandparents were British; they did not come over to this country on the Mayflower, but they were on the dock to meet it when it came in.
Canada is a great country, and it is the duty of this government to see that nothing is done to block or dwarf its progress. Hamilton, the city I have the honour to represent, has a tributary trade territory of 400,000 people and a population of 150,000, and its manufacturing industries give employment to over
30,000	people. As a citizen of that great city I am interested in its future, and I am opposing this agreement because I see in it closed factories, unemployed men and women, and the breaking down of our commercial, industrial and social development.
The hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Mitchell) speaking in support of this agreement the other day, said he was pleased to know it would make it possible for the people of his constituency to do their shopping in the United States. I wonder if he would have them spend their cash in the United States and, when they ran out of cash, get social credit in Canada. Isn't that a grand example of Canadian loyalty?
I am proud, as I said, to be a Canadian, proud of my British heritage, and proud that I am opposed to anything and everything which tends to affect adversely the best interests of Canada. In this agreement between Canada and the United States I see a real menace to Canadian progress, and I feel that I would be untrue to my duty as a Canadian did I not oppose it. I have heard the word "detour" defined as going the wrong way to get to the right place. I am sure that since I came to this house I have walked at
least a hundred miles up and down its long marble corridors in my daily efforts to find the right place. In opposing this trade agreement, however, I am confident that I am on the right road, even though it is not blocked with traffic.
In a letter I recently received from a friend of mine who resides in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, he had the following to say:
The new trade treaty between Canada and the United States will prove of great benefit to the city of Grand Rapids, which city is known far and near as a great producer of furniture. The furniture manufacturers here anticipate a big increase in production for their Canadian trade, which will mean increased employment for the people of Grand Rapids.
It is only fair to assume that this increased employment for the people of Grand Rapids will mean decreased employment for the people of Canada and the city I represent


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: Why?


Herbert Earl Wilton: This is a Canadian parliament, sitting here to protect and improve the welfare of Canadians, not to advance at their expense the interests of the United States. I regret that I am obliged to oppose this agreement, because regardless of politics it is my duty as a loyal Canadian, my duty to the electors who sent me here, to vote in favour of any movement which in my opinion is for the betterment of the people of Canada. I have no special privilege to express the will of the party to which I belong, but sir, I do feel that I am voicing the sentiment of every member of this group, so frequently referred to as a small minority, when I say that every last one of them would give his undivided support to this agreement if he felt it was in the best interests of Canada so to do. I hope I shall never become so small-minded as to vote against any progressive measure simply because I am sitting on the opposition benches. I hope the time will never come when I shall have to confess to this house that I sat here for several years sacrificing principle to political influence. I would even go so far as to suggest that it might be a good thing in the interests of all of us to stretch a banner across this chamber bearing the words " Canada first."
I see in this agreement the possibility of the American rather than the Canadian flag floating over Canada.


Malcolm McLean: A queer vision.


Herbert Earl Wilton: One needs vision here
No member of this house has a higher respect for the American. people than I have. I have flesh and blood connections with the


Mr. A. A. HEAPS (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, may I remind the hon. member who has just spoken (Mr. Wilton) that in this house there are Canadians just as loyal and as good as he is, and among hon. members who will vote for the agreement there may be as good and as loyal Canadians as among those who vote against it. It would be a sad day for discussion in this chamber and out of it if, in our discussions of questions of this kind, we always brought up loyalty and waving of the flag. In my view matters of this kind should be discussed on their merits, and on their merits only. Whether or not an hon. member votes for or against the agreement has nothing to do either with his loyalty or with his desire to do what is proper in the circumstances.
My main purpose however in rising this afternoon is to say a few words in explanation of my attitude towards the agreement. During the past few weeks, in some Liberal newspapers throughout western Canada there has been a campaign attempting to develop a certain amount of, shall I say misrepresentation, in the minds of electors in western Canada in regard to the attitude of the party to which I have the honour to belong. It is quite true that in this parliament we are only seven, and by the way, "seven" should bring to the minds of the Liberal party a striking incident in British parliamentary history. It will be remembered that Gladstone once after a famous campaign sent a telegram reading "We are seven." I feel quite sure however that in future no one will confuse the twentieth century Liberal party in Canada with the nineteenth century Liberalism of Gladstone.
May I attempt to place in its proper perspective before hon. members and their constituents the position taken by the group to which I belong? For this purpose, although I could go back to an earlier period, I shall be content with going back to 1928. First I wish to place on Hansard a subamendment moved in the course of the budget debate on February 22, 1928. It reads as follows:
That all the words after the -word "regrets" in the amendment be struck out and the following substituted therefor:
"that the government proposes further reductions in the income tax, thus making a serious departure from the principle of direct taxation: that the proposed revision of the customs tariff is inadequate to bring effective relief to the consuming public; and that the sales tax on the necessaries of life has not been eliminated."
More than one hon. member has asked us where we stand on this trade agreement. My reply is that we still endorse the amendment we moved in 1928. May I add that every Liberal member in the house at that time, some of whom have recently been asking where we stand, voted against the subamendment I have read and in favour of substantial reductions in the income taxes paid by the wealthy people of Canada, and gave no relief to the millions who required it at that time. I see in his seat the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Ross) who has been very solicitous about how we stand on this matter. He was one who voted against the subamendment.


Mr. ROSS (Moose Jaw):: A political subamendment.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Everything that comes from us is political, and everything that comes from the Liberal party is, I suppose, quite honest and perfect.


John Gordon Ross: For the benefit of the country.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Then on March 14, 1929, we proposed the following subamendment:
That the amendment be amended by striking out all the words after "house" and substituting therefor the following:
"urges upon the government the consideration of an immediate and substantial increase of the British preference as a step towards freer trade relations between Canada and other nations."
This subamendment was voted down by the Liberal party. Again, hon. members in this chamber who have asked us where we stand on questions of trade and tariff were the ones who voted against that subamendment of 1929.
Coming to 1930, with the Liberal party still in power, I find that on May 8 there was moved from this section of the house the following subamendment to the budget:
That all the words after "it is of opinion that" in the amendment, in the tenth line thereof, be struck out and the following substituted therefor:
The _ government having definitely adopted the principle of increased protection, modified only by certain extensions of the British preference, it is to be regretted that more effective consideration has not been given to the position of agriculture and labour, but that, on the contrary, the changes made in the iron and steel schedules will result in an in-
794	COMMONS
Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
creased cost in respect of all structural work and the machinery of production; and further, that the best interests of Canada would be served by a more substantial increase in the British	preference, particularly as	affectingtextiles and other articles^ of a similar character, together with a modification or abandonment of the regulations requiring a fifty per cent empire content, which have largely nullified	the effect	of any	preference	given;That	a much	larger	proportion	of ourrevenue should be provided for through direct taxation, more especially through the income tax;	.	.
We further wish to state our conviction that these and other changes in our fiscal policies are not of themselves a solution of our modern economic problems, but that effective encouragement should be given to the development of cooperative principles, having regard to production. distribution and the utilization and control of credit.
On May 15 this subamendment was voted down. Among hon. members who voted against these three subamendments submitted by our party were hon. members now sitting on the Liberal side who are asking us where we stand on questions of tariff, and adjustments thereof, to meet present day requirements. I think I might well ask those hon. members who were here when our subamendments were moved, where do they stand?
May I now proceed to discuss a few aspects of the agreement? As I sat in my place and listened to the arguments pro and con I could not help thinking how wide of the mark, at least in my view, were many of the sentiments expressed. Those who are in favour of this trade agreement between Canada and the United States seem to think that by its adoption we are going to usher in an era of prosperity. I only wish, Mr. Speaker, that I could bring myself to believe that such will be the case, in fact what was said by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) was that the removal of trade barriers is the cornerstone of Liberal policy in bringing about a return to prosperity. He said further that the agreement-
-will assist our railways, will bring about an increase in purchasing power, and may help very materially to lift our country out of the depression from which it has been suffering for so many years and to restore an era of prosperity and of better relations with other lands.
These rather extravagant hopes based on the agreement seem to me to be somewhat out of place. We are by the terms of this agreement lowering the tariff barriers between Canada and our neighbours to the south. Our neighbours to the south are undergoing exactly the same economic conditions that we are experiencing in this dominion, and yet it is thought, because we are establishing easier trading relations with the United States, that we are going to increase purchasing power here

in Canada. I cannot see the logic of it. In the United States at the present time approximately ten million people are out of work, without any purchasing power whatsoever, and in addition to the ten million who are out of work there are many more millions who are on the government payroll, working on relief projects. So long as that is the state of the country to the south of us, I cannot see how by reducing the tariff and making it easier for us to trade with them we are necessarily going to increase trade between the two countries.
Then, on the other hand. I listened to the somewhat extravagant forebodings of the Conservative party, that this country is going to be ruined, that we shall become merely an annex of the United States, that we are giving everything in this agreement that we have to give, and so forth. I cannot become alarmed, Mr. Speaker, about these forebodings on the part of those who oppose this agreement, or enthusiastic about the anticipations of those who have a word or two to say in its favour. If the lowering of the tariff is going to bring about all the advantages which it is claimed tariff reductions will produce, how is it that when we had a low tariff government from 1{J21 to 1930 we were heading right into the greatest depression that this country has ever known? I refer to 1929 and subsequent years. Low tariffs did not help us in any way, shape or form to evade the depression that overtook us as well as other countries in the year 1929 and subsequently.
May I go a little further and point out that between the years 1930 and 1935, when we increased our tariff enormously, that increase in our tariff did not help us to get out of the depression either. In other words, Mr. Speaker, those who stress the tremendous importance of our tariff structure as a means of emerging from the economic crisis in which we find ourselves at the present time are leaning to a very large extent, I believe, upon a broken reed. All countries of the world, irrespective of their tariff structure, be it high or low, are undergoing similar economic conditions to those prevailing in this dominion. Take high tariff countries such as the United States. They were hit by the depression and had-and still have-tremendous economic problems to cope with. On the other hand, low tariff countries such as Great Britain, Holland and one or two others I might name, have to deal with the same economic problems as those which the high tariff countries have to face. Consequently something more fundamental than tariffs must be the cause of the economic condition in which we find ourselves at the present time.

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
The Prime Minister has claimed that depression means an absence of trade. I do not know whether that is a complete definition of what depression really is. Depression as I know it would mean that the great masses of our people have not sufficient in the way of food, clothing and shelter, and I would add, so far as Canada is concerned, sufficient of the food, clothing and shelter which they are in a position to produce in abundance and even superabundance. Absence of trade is a very loose expression. There is an absence of trade between this country and other parts of the world. May I also point out that there is an absence of trade between the people of Alberta, say, and the people of Ontario-a complete absence of trade. Why is that absence of trade possible? Why does it take place within the Dominion of Canada? Why cannot the great masses of the people of Ontario buy the coal which either Nova Scotia or Alberta could supply to them and which they want so badly and in many instances have now to receive from charitable sources? Why cannot the people of Ontario, for example, have the things which Alberta is able to supply in superabundance, and why cannot the people of our other provinces have the goods which Ontario and Quebec are able to supply in such superabundance? It is not a question of tariff at all because there are no tariffs between the provinces, and yet there is this absence of trade, the failure to supply the goods which our provinces are able to produce for the people of the other provinces who need them. Why are our provinces not trading with one another as they would if only the real opportunity was there for the people to consume the goods which they themselves produce?
When the Prime Minister spoke of absence of trade, he did not say whether he meant internal or external trade, and I was surprised at some figures which the former Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) gave when he spoke on this question. He pointed out- I am speaking from memory and subject to correction, but I think I am correct-that approximately eighty-four per cent in value of our agricultural products was consumed within the confines of the dominion in the year 1934.


John Gordon Ross: Net or gross?


Abraham Albert Heaps: I think that was the gross
-eighty-four per cent of the amount of agricultural products produced in Canada consumed in this dominion, and only sixteen per cent exported or sold abroad. Then he turned to manufactured commodities and
pointed out that eighty-six per cent of the manufactured products of this country was consumed in Canada and only fourteen per cent exported. If that is so, it means that Canada along with the other nations finds diminishing markets to-day in all parts of the world. Why is it that in 1936 we have these diminishing markets? For the very simple reason that over a period of years the different nations of the world have learned to produce for themselves in the same abundance as the so-called more advanced capitalistic countries. Great Britain, for example, has sent its machinery to India, China, and Japan; these countries are producing in abundance, and the world at large is suffering from the competition it has to meet from them in the shape of manufactured goods, for example, textiles. The art of production has now become so simplified that nations have found it quite easy to produce. Practically every nation of the world is in a position where it can export a surplus amount of commodities. When all nations are on an export basis it means that there is a glut of goods for export purposes without available markets. We find this to be so with regard to many of the commodities which we were able to export in the past. I refer to the products of the farm, particularly to wheat. The nations of the world do not want our products to-day to the same extent that they wanted them years ago. France does not want our farm products, neither does Germany. Great Britain is increasing her wheat production year by year in the hope of diminishing the amount-needed to be imported. She is doing the same with respect to other farm products. The producers of wheat are being heavily subsidized in order to encourage the growing of grain in the old country. We are living to-day in what has often been described as an age of contracting capitalism and diminishing markets.
If we are finding it more difficult to export our products and if there is a demand for these products in this country, we ought first of all to satisfy the home demand before shipping our surpluses abroad. As yet we have never been able to accomplish this; we have not even tried to accomplish it. As has been pointed out during this session, there are at the present time 1,200,000 men. women and children on relief in this country. I am not familiar with the standards of relief in all the different sections of this dominion, but I do know that in some western cities single men receive only two somewhat skimpy meals per day. In some parts of the country families are compelled to live on approxi-

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
mately S-l per week. Such conditions offer an opportunity of increasing our consumption.
So far as we in this corner of the house are concerned, we are for the fullest and freest commercial relations between our own people and those of other parts of the world. Just as we stand for the fullest and freest trade relations with other peoples, so do we stand for the freest and fullest trade relations between province and province of the dominion. However, we take this stand with one or two reservations, which I believe are such as will be accepted by most hon. members. First, we are opposed to the importation into this country of goods produced by sweated labour. We would not only put a tariff against goods of this kind; we would place an embargo against their entry into Canada.
Many of the conditions in Canada and the United States are parallel. Somewhat similar living conditions prevail to the south of us as prevail in this country, but they produce many things that we do not. There is an opportunity for friendlier and closer trade relations between ourselves and the people of the United States. Some people look upon trade as a form of war, but we do not; we believe that trade should be the cement that binds nation and nation together. It should give to the peoples of the world an opportunity of understanding the arts, crafts and culture of the various nations. We should have an opportunity of importing from the different countries of the world these things that are natural to those countries, and we should also have the opportunity of exporting the things that are natural to this country. Such a trade would tend to a better understanding between ourselves and the peoples of other parts of the world. When the government of the day, and I do not care what government it may be, is able to bring about an amicable adjustment of trade relations with our neighbours to the south, I think it is a step in the right direction.
The world to-day is in a great ferment. We claim that the cause of many of the troubles are economic. We believe that the expansion of Japan in China and Manchukuo is motivated purely by economic conditions. We believe that the desire of Germany for expansion is motivated also by such conditions, and I think we all agree that the grab of Ethiopia by Italy is motivated by a desire for greater markets and the need for raw materials.
We want to avoid as far as possible friction between ourselves and other parts of the world, and therefore we are opposed to the raising of tariffs which makes it almost prohibitive to trade with people in other parts of the world. In spite of the fact that there is a diminishing world market to-day, in spite

of the fact that there are so many people out of work, we contend that economically speaking the world is no poorer than it was ten or twenty years ago. In fact, I believe that the reverse is true, that in many respects we are richer than we were a number of years ago. The trouble is that in this day and generation, like Frankenstein, we have created a monster and do not seem to know what to do with this thing of our own creation. AVe have created the machinery of production that produces in such abundance, but we have not as yet learned to bring about a proper and fair distribution of goods. We should endeavour to create a condition whereby people would have a reasonable and equitable distribution of wealth production.
I should like to say one or two words to my friends of the Liberal party. During the course of this debate many hon. members opposite have boasted of the victory achieved at the last election.


An hon. MEMBER:: Hear, hear.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Let me tell my hon. friend who says, "hear, hear" that his boasting is a little previous. I remember how members of the Conservative party boasted of their victory after the 1930 election, and I said to them at that time that although they might have won an election, they had not achieved victory. The victory of the Liberal party will be achieved only when they have cured the economic conditions with which we are faced at the present time. When the Liberal party has brought about an era of prosperity, when the people of this country are no longer suffering as millions are suffering at the present time, then I will agree with members of the Liberal party that they were victorious at the last election.
On many previous occasions when referring to the tariff I have pointed out to the house how little the tariff protection given by the government means to the workers engaged in the most highly protected industries. I have pointed out that the workers in these highly protected industries received practically no protection whatever. I have only to point to the miserably low wages received by the men and women engaged in such a highly protected industry as the textile industry. I can point to other industries even in the city of Hamilton, where everyone is supposed to have a full dinner pail. In these highly protected industries we have found that men and women are compelled to go on strike in order to obtain better working conditions than they are receiving under high protection. In other words, the protection given to many of the

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
industries of the country has been really of no value to the workers engaged in those industries; for we find that in some of the industries receiving the least protection wages have been much higher than in those industries where protection has been highest.
I would point out that the figures given by the bureau of statistics in regard to wages indicate very often not the wages that are received by the workers but the wages that these men and women would have received had they been working fifty-two weeks in the year. These figures are therefore very often misleading. With respect to practically every one of the protected industries, in very few instances do the men and women work fifty-two weeks in the year. Take the textile industry as an example; the wages for girls outside the large industrial areas are $6 a week for beginners. For the first six months they receive the magnificent sum of $6 per week. That used to be for a week of fifty-five hours, but when the howl went up in regard to length of hours the week was reduced to forty-eight hours, and now they work for the same sum on the basis of a forty-eight hour week. However, I have no desire to go into that aspect of the question in detail.
I would say this in conclusion. We in this group of which I have the honour to be a member will support in general the trade agreement that is now before us for ratification. We do not think for a moment that its adoption will solve all our problems, but we do say that we believe that a reduction in tariffs in these days is a step in the right direction. Generally speaking, we believe that it will promote a better feeling between this country and the United States, and where there are natural products that can be advantageously exchanged between Canada and the United States we in this parliament ought to endorse a measure of that kind. Therefore for the reasons I have just indicated we will vote for this agreement between the two countries; and while expressing my hearty concurrence in the agreement I trust that in due course the government will bring in more radical measures as outlined, not in the speech from the throne but in election speeches, to provide for a more adequate and equitable distribution of the wealth produced in Canada.


Hon. C. H. CAHAN (St. Lawrence-St. George):: I desire to discuss one particular phase of the issue now before the house and I trust I shall not be more than a few moments. One is perhaps unfortunate in many respect in living a long life; in another
respect it provides a lengthy experience which enables one to judge by personal contact ever-recurring political issues. I say now frankly that I have had an intimate and close acquaintance with the men of both political parties in Canada who have endeavoured to secure from the United States advantageous reciprocal trade arrangements since 1870 at least; and so far as I am aware, and as I think and believe, there never was, prior to possibly June 14, 1934, an opportunity to secure any reciprocal trade agreement with the United States which did not endanger and imperil either the political independence or the stability of the financial structure of this country.
I make no apologies for having been opposed to every offer we have had from the United States, since at least I was a young man. In respect of this agreement I do not think the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) need have apologized for not securing some improved trade arrangements with the United States between 1921 and 1930, when he was almost continuously in office. He knows and we know there was no possibility of securing any advantageous trade arrangement with the United States during those nine or ten years. In fact, if hon. members will look at the facts-and I like occasionally to refer to them-the United States emergency tariff of May 27, 1921, which continued until September 21, 1922, precluded us from obtaining any more advantageous entry for the exports of Canada into that country; and then under the Fordney-McCumber tariff, from September 21, 1922, to June 18, 1930, which was during the Liberal regime, no more advantageous entry for our exports into the United States could be obtained. If hon. members will look at the facts they will find that, as a result of the Fordney-McCumber tariff, during the Liberal regime-and this is not at all a criticism of the Liberal regime-in a time of very considerable prosperity in both the United States and Canada, the exports of our farm products to the United States decreased from $190,800,000 to $92,134,000, a net annual loss of nearly $100,000,000.
In April, 1929 I was invited by the Chambers of Commerce of Canada, as one of their representatives, being then a member of the board of trade of Montreal, to attend the annual meeting of the Chambers of Commerce of the United States at Washington in May of that year. On that occasion, after a very careful study of the situation, I was able to say to the immense audience gathered there, when the Hawley-Smoot tariff was under discussion in the congress of the United States, that:


Mr. CRERAR:: Both.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: My hon. friend says, "Both." Possibly that is so. But if the increase of trade which w'e obtain from the United States is equal or nearly equal to the increase of trade wdiich they obtain from Canada, the pressing trade and financial problems of Canada remain unsolved under this agreement.
I have studied, or attempted to study, the items of the Canadian tariff and the United States tariff. I know that when I sat down for nearly three months with fifteen men of the French government, three representing each of five departments, for at least four days a week, to discuss and negotiate a possible trade arrangement betwmen Canada and France, we had first to take the tariff of Canada and in respect to each item, examine the trade returns in order to ascertain to what exent a reduction of the Canadian tariff would tend to increase the market in this country for those
French products. Immediately we found that reductions which we proposed to give on certain French products under the most favoured nation treaties would have to be given to Denmark or Holland or Germany or some other state. Then the question arose whether the French producer would profit by a reduction of the Canadian tariff if the same reduction were made in favour of three or four competing European countries. So we had to study each item. Then we turned to the French tariff and studied it in the same way in relation to Canadian goods. Now in these days when members in opposition have no private secretary and not even a stenographer it is very difficult to undertake those complicated studies which I have undertaken before in connection with some other tariff arrangements. But this I do say, as I look into the problem and study it with our trade statistics-and I say this with all respect-I doubt very much whether the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance, with such data as they had before them, -when this agreement was negotiated and finally signed, were able to make a very accurate estimate of the prospective increases that are likely to result in trade between the two countries. Therefore they had to take it very largely on trust, and with a majority such as the Prime Minister commands in this house we also have to take it on trust. But let me say again that from this preliminary study which I have given I do not think very great advantages will accrue to Canada from the completion of this trade agreement.


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: If my hon. friend will permit me to interrupt, he is of course aware that the permanent officials had been working out for the last two years the possible effects of the changes with respect to every individual item.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Quite so; I have no doubt they have been. But if I may say so to the Prime Minister, I deprecate the idea that permanent officials are to become the deciding mediums in regard to either trade or fiscal arrangements. Perhaps I may be accused of egotism when I make this statement, but I would not accept any estimate from departmental officials with regard to any fiscal matter of political importance without at least spending some days or weeks in a reexamination of it from my own point of view, in order that I might pass my own judgment thereon.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That is correct, certainly. I agree entirely with my hon. friend on that point; each minister has to form his own judgments.
Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Quite so. I am not disparaging the participation of the right hon. gentleman in these negotiations, but I think it would be very difficult indeed for him and those associated with him in council to have formed any definite and clear appreciation of the effects of this agreement upon either American or Canadian trade.
Had the Minister of Finance been in his seat there were some points I should have liked to discuss with him. All I can say is that I am deeply interested in some of the financial problems now undoubtedly before him for consideration. He has my earnest and deep sympathy, and my sincere hope is that he may be able to arrive at some solution of these problems which has not yet been reached. I think it is the duty of every hon. member to give all possible assistance towards the solution of these problems.
I believe I am not unfair when I state that when the history of the last five years is written, as it never has been written, and the public are fully informed of the problems we had to face-and they have never been fully informed, as they could not have been without precipitating a financial catastrophe in Canada-my hon. friends opposite will appreciate the efforts which were made by the former Prime Minister and his associates and, on the whole, will feel that we did our best, although we may not have been fully successful in the end.
One word about tariffs. An hon. member who preceded me in the debate suggested that we did not derive very much benefit from our intra-imperial trade arrangements arising out of the economic conference held in Ottawa. I say that he is entirely mistaken. If we had not entered into those arrangements at Ottawa at that time there would be very little stability in Canada to-day. Our favourable trade balance with Great Britain, which balance during the last fiscal year of the Liberal regime in Canada was reduced to 894,000,000, had increased in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1934, to S123.000.000. and to S163.000.000 in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1935. That increase in the sales of Canadian products to Great Britain assisted us very materially in overcoming the financial difficulties with which we were beset. It is further suggested by one hon. member who preceded me that we were in favour of high taxation and that the late government had increased taxation and the rates of duties on imports. We did. By various ways, which if you like you may describe as subterfuges, we did decrease the importations from the United States, and in doing so we believed

that we were salving and saving the financial stability and the whole financial structure of Canada. In the forty minutes allotted to one it is impossible to give details, but I am fully convinced of the fact.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Would that
be equally true of imports from other countries as well?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: We were anxious to take
imports from any country that would trade with us, but the United States would not trade with us. They were exacting from us $350,000,000 or more per annum in cash, in order to pay for the excess of products which we were freely buying in that country. Under the financial and economic conditions which then existed we could not maintain Canada on an even keel, if we had allowed that excess of imports from the United States to enter freely into this country.


Mr. DEACHMAN:: Would the hon. member state where they secured the cash to make the payments to the United States?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: If the hon. member would
simply study the financial returns of this country he would easily ascertain that information.


Robert John Deachman: That is not answering the question.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Whenever the hon. member has time and I have a like opportunity I would be quite prepared to go into a discussion of that question with him or any other member.
In order to encourage trade with Great Britain we have continuously reduced tariffs on goods from that country. In the fiscal year 1935 the average ad valorem rate of duty collected on all imports from Great Britain was only 13-8 per cent, a percentage less than the average of any year since 1874. In 1935, 21-4 per cent of all Canada's imports came from Great Britain, a percentage higher than that of any year since 1911. In 1935, over forty-two per cent of all Canada's exports went to Great Britain, and that was a larger percentage than had been known in any year since 1919. In that year, which followed the close of the war, there was a heavy demand in Great Britain for the products of this country. I contend therefore that the annual sales of Canadian products in Great Britain and in our sister dominions, and the appropriate tariff measures taken by the late government enabled those engaged in Canadian industry to supply to our domestic market millions of dollars worth of Canadian products formerly imported

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
from abroad, and enabled Canada more successfully than most other countries to survive the effects of the late world wide depression.
I do not believe it is necessary to enter into a full discussion of these measures. I have prepared a lengthy brief- which I could place before the house, but I shall be content with stating that I see in this new trade agreement with the United States nothing which is likely to raise Canada out of the fiscal and trade difficulties in which we have been involved in years of depression. I do not look forward with any degree of confidence to the suggestion that this trade agreement will reestablish the prosperity and the industrial and fiscal independence of this dominion. I think perhaps we may be grateful that it does not injure this country more than it actually does. As to a great extent we have to take it on trust, I think we shall have to take it without very much confidence that it is going to reestablish either the industrial or the commercial welfare and prosperity of Canada.


Mr. MAURICE LALONDE (Labelle) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, the question
before the house may be, in my humble opinion, considered from various aspects. May I be permitted, for a few moments, to express views entirely personal, but nevertheless sincere, because this being my maiden speech in the house, I would not wish to be taxed with unsound economic and parliamentary views. However, leaving to others the task of discussing this measure from an economic viewpoint, on the basis of intricate statistics, so allowing others better informed than myself to draw conclusions as they wish, I shall base my argument on grounds of a more philosophical nature, but of actual application, I think, to that class of young parliamentarians who, within the last few years, have had the courage, to face public opinion and to champion Liberalism which has attained such a remarkable place in Canada at the last October election.
Therefore, I shall set forth, as premises, that it is the duty of the government to become more than ever the champion of peace ideals. More than ever the ideal of peace is losing ground throughout the world, and more than ever, I deem that governments, whether they be founded on democracy or even dictatorship, are in duty bound to have as their objective measures inspired by that peace policy. In my opinion, the policy of the right honourable Mr. King's government is all imbued and permeated with peace ideals, because the measure which 12739-SX
we shall be called upon to vote, is the loftiest expression, to my mind, of a tempered free trade, which embodies a manifestation of peace.
What, sir, do we find in the world of to-day Numerous events are occurring which are greatly disquieting to youth. We find a militarized Germany. France alarmed and surrounding herself with guns, Italy no longer able to provide for her sons the land required for their subsistence, Russia who has built up-may I say-an utopian parliamentary system while maintaining an army which is a cause of great worry to her neighbours; and lastly, we see old England beginning to apprehend that her fleet may not be in a position to defend her shores and building aeroplanes in large numbers; only recently, peace was disturbed in Japan. Why, I ask, de we see peace in retrogression throughout the world? If I may be permitted, I shall quote a distinguished French economist, Henri Hauser, who in his work entitled La Paix economique, says:
One of the most disturbing psychological phenomena of the present time has been the retrogression of peace ideals, during the last three or four years.
Why this retrogression? Unexperienced as I am, my impression is that this retrogression from the ideal of peace is due to the fact that the treaties concluded in the course of the last two decades have not responded to the legitimate aspirations, to use the words of an economist of the "glorious victims of 1917"; it is also due to the fact that the treaties of peace were based on economic grounds alone; and lastly, that the greed of the belligerents remains unsatisfied.
With your leave, sir, I shall quote the opinion of an English economist as to the chief causes of these universal disturbances. In his work, A view of Europe, published in 1932, Paul Van Zeeland says:
The general readjustment of after the war, which would have been troublesome under any circumstances, was made still more complicated by the political difficulties, the violent hatreds, the contradictions of all sorts that followed from the remaking of the map of Europe. The accentuation of economic nationalism has retarded, if not indeed prevented, this readjustment in many cases; and one may say that the greater part of the task still remains to be accomplished.
Wh-at is to be done? To those concerned with this country's economic conditions, the answer is that they must resist economic nationalism with the weapons at our disposal, that is, by setting against it the full force of free trade which we are requested by our leader to sanction for the first time in

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the history of the dominion. Henri Hauser quotes the views of Sir Arthur Salter who once wrote:
That economical conflicts could create "not only strongly opposed interests between the various masses of people throughout the world, but an increasing feeling of offence and injustice," in such a way as "to complete, accentuate and inflame political resentment." He concluded with these words which may appear singularly ominous when applied to the days we are living in: "In view of the acuteness of the economic crisis affecting such and such an industry, if one government after another takes steps which the others consider injurious and unfair, and there is no brake in the form of legislation or recognized custom making it possible to distinguish between what is permitted and what is not, it is inevitable that international relations shall become more embittered, and sooner or later, the preventive machinery intended to safeguard the world against future wars will explode under the pressure." Sooner or later: with our eyes set on the gauge, we wonder how much longer the safety valves will function efficiently.
As to the brakes, sir, my personal opinion is that they no longer exist.
We are asked to support a resolution ratifying a convention between the United States and Canada. It is the best, the most commendable endeavour made so far by any Canadian government to recognize the principle of free trade.
Our friends who sit on the center benches opposite are shocked because we dare rob them of part of their small program, but, in my opinion, if the Conservatives have never succeeded in concluding a reciprocity treaty with the United States, it is because the old tory views with which they have at all times been imbued is incompatable with the broad-mindedness of free traders.
In the few moments remaining at my disposal-for I do not wish to speak too long- I shall confine myself to the analysis of the reciprocity treaty with reference to the needs of my constituency. I represent a county of woodsmen and farmers, composing the gallant army of the toilers of the land and of the forest. We have energetically requested to be allowed to sell our lumber and our hay; but always our claims went unheeded. Even in 1934, when I took upon myself to mediate between certain hay producers and certain United States importers, what happened? The first intimation we had was that an embargo had been placed on hay, and, as a result of this prohibition imposed by the late Conservative government, the hay remained in the farmer's bams.
. Mr. DUPUIS (Translation): Shame, shame!


Maurice Lalonde: Hay then sold at $11 and $12 at the barn, and to-day

we cannot get S4 a ton for it. That is one of the results of the super protection with which our opponents have always surrounded themselves and as Lucien Homier says in his works: "Prosperity is an utter impossibility if the nations, after warring with guns, continue to war with tariffs."
The reciprocity agreement was hailed with joy in the constituency of Labelle, especially as regards sections 401, 402, 412, 1402, 1413, 1502, 1716, and 601, which provide for reductions of fifty per cent on the duties levied on lumber products and by-products.
The opposition very magnanimously says: You should have obtained something in return; You should have secured a reduction of at least 100 per cent! The answer is quite simple; a child could give it: it is that, if we are not satisfied with the reciprocity agreement, six months' notice enables us to denounce it. Should the agreement not prove satisfactory to Canada, we will give that notice. There is no need for us to worry over futile considerations. The treaty is a loyal endeavour on the part of the liberal party to establish better commercial relations with our neighbours, and I wonder that those who pose as champions of peace should not at least give us their support by approving the agreement.
I may be permitted to quote a few figures that show that our lumber trade with Great Britain has increased since 1932. Why? Because of the preferential duties. Why therefore should not what is good in the case of Great Britain not also be good in the case of the United States?
Mr. ST-PERE (Translation): Hear, hear.


Maurice Lalonde: If our lumber trade with Great Britain amounted in 1932 to 6 millions and a half, and in 1935- I do not say that it is due to the Imperial agreements; it may be, I cannot tell, but it is after all a matter of tariffs-increased to $20,679,000, why not look forward at least to a change for the better in our lumber trade with the United States as a result of the reciprocity agreement? What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander! The same simple reasoning, it seems to me, applies in political as in other matters.
I have before me a few figures which show, I am sure, that since January, 1936, when, the agreement became effective, our hay exports to the United States have increased. We exported to the United States, in July, 1935, 490 tons of hay; in August, 182 tons; in September, 93 tons; in October, 240 tons; in November, 186 tons, and in December,. 47 tons.
MARCH 5, 1936	S03
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Mr. DUPUIS (Translation):: From Labelle county?


Maurice Lalonde: From the whole of Canada. These are the figures supplied by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
And in January, 1936, the first month in which the agreement was effective, our exports increased to 379 tons. A meagre result, you may say. But, at any rate, there has been no decrease, which is gratifying.
Just a word in connection with lumber. The county of Labelle hopes that the agreement will prove beneficial to the lumber industry, because if there is a class of workers that needs protection, it is the woodsmen. The house is perhaps riot aware of the hardships obtaining in the lumber camps, of the exaction of certain contractors who hold their men in a tight grip. There have been years when woodsmen drew 35 cents a day for ten hours of arduous work; to-day, thanks to the intervention of the provincial government, they get $1 a day, which is still insufficient. I shall not venture to promise them, as some have done, wages of $52 $55 and $60 per month, but I trust that this agreement will result in increasing our lumber exports. According as trade increases, prices will go up, and we shall see once more the golden years of 1927, 1928 and 1929, when our woodsmen received fair wages and were able to provide for their families as free men, and not as slaves.
Mr. Speaker, I now bring my remarks to a close. If I wandered from my subject, it was in order better to emphasize the urgency of taking steps to bring about more friendly relations between the various countries. Statistics show that in one year alone seventy-eight treaties were concluded between various European countries and not one of them has revealed the slightest tendency towards free trade. These so-called free trade agreements have created between nations a spirit of animosity, followed, sooner or later, by reprisals that are sometimes attended by bloodshed. History tells us that at the bottom of every war lies some economic question. This is nothing new. Was not the Italo-Ethiopian conflict brought about by a question of trade? Of that I am positive.
Consequently, if we sanction this reciprocity agreement, as I hope we will, the Liberal government of Canada will stand before the country as a peacemaker; the government of the right honourable Mr. King will be entitled to the gratitude of the younger generation which to-morrow, whether it wish it or not, must shoulder the responsibility of the legislation of to-day, the generation which to-12739-511
morrow will be called upon to assume the administration of the country's affairs. You could hardly believe, Mr. Speaker, how wre, the young Liberals, with the full strength of our enthusiam, perhaps, but also with the deepest sincerity, feel confident that these measures of broadmindedness, of free trade and of neighbourliness, will give to our youth renewed hope....


Vincent Dupuis: There is need of it.


Maurice Lalonde: Indeed, we must have hope. Perhaps in certain respects we have been somewhat neglected, but when we see a government introducing measures of this nature, we have no hesitation in supporting it with the full strength of our convictions, and to-day I feel that I speak for all the young Liberals when I say to the government. of the right honourable Mackenzie King that we place great hopes in its free-trade policy. That is why, at the last election, we gave it our fullest support and that is why to-day the younger members of the Liberal party, united in their enthusiasm, extend their hand to their elders, in the desire to work with them in the best interests of the country and to launch our dear Canada on the road to prosperity and sound progress.


Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview):: Mr. Speaker, the question of reciprocity with the United States has existed ever since Canada has been a country. We on this side of the house are called Conservatives and I think we should tell the house what it is we desire to conserve. Our party believes in the old doctrine of protecting our own markets, for our own products and our own work for our own workmen. That is what this party stands for to conserve, and has preached in and out of season. Burke once said that government was a practical thing; that it was not something to please the fancy or imagination of a visionary and an ordinary politician. Bolder and abler politicians than those who negotiated this trade agreement tried to effect an arrangement with the industrial and agricultural nation to the south of us in the past seventy years, but they got nowhere. I have no doubt the proper place to discuss these two white papers of agreements will be in committee. Both these documents embrace a large number of items upon which reductions in duties are being made. The more I study these white papers; the more I study this whole question, the more I realize that history has a habit of repeating itself. To me the doctrine embraced in these white papers and this agreement is the doctrine that it is more blessed
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to give than to receive. This agreement was negotiated in a rush during a visit by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) to the south, partly for business and partly for pleasure. It was consummated shortly before Christmas and Santa Claus could not have handed out presents more abundantly than did the Prime Minister to the people of the United States.
You and I, Mr. Speaker, come from industrial provinces, the central provinces of Canada, which have been built up by the doctrine of protection. Canada started as an agricultural country, but it was not long before it learned that no country can exist on agriculture alone and it therefore adopted the principle of protection to build up our own industries as a result of which nearly fifty per cent of the Canadian people have been engaged in industry. These two central provinces together pay nearly eighty per cent of the cash taxes collected in Canada, and they are affected economically more than any other provinces by the trade agreement which the Prime Minister has brought into the house for ratification. The agreement seems to be based upon the principle "that to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."
The United States became rich by feeding its own people; it became a great nation because Americans were fed from the great wheat fields in the United States and not with wheat imported from Canada. This agreement seems to have overlooked entirely the maxim of Canada for the Canadians. At any rate our own market for our own Canadian products will be destroyed and our work for our own workmen will be done away with. I oppose this agreement entirely because I fear it will have an injurious effect in regard to unemployment. It will destroy many a basic industry in Canada.
I represent a riding in which there are 300 industries, large and small. Some of them would have gone bankrupt; they would not have been able to keep their doors open but for the British trade agreement consummated in 1932. I have seen on Eastern avenue, Toronto, carloads of an excellent _ product from a Canadian industry being shipped to every country in the empire, and what was responsible for that? It was the result of the statesmanlike policy which the former Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) put on the statute books in 1932. We live in a country in which taxation is becoming increasingly alarming. Why should we not retain our home market for our own products? Our industries provide work for a large part of our population, and those industries depend to a very considerable
IMr. Church.]
extent upon the home market. The hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) has estimated that eighty per cent of our food produce finds a market in Canada, and that market will now be destroyed. Are we to surrender such a valuable home market to competitors in the United States? That is the question before the house. Are we to serve the interests of Americans by giving them a part of our home market, badly needed by our own producers, so that Canadian producers will be compelled to share their own home market with outsiders? What will be the result of this agreement? The Americans will retain their own market for themselves and will come to Canada, where they pay no taxes, and share the Canadian home market for the products of agriculture and industry.
I oppose the agreement for another reason;
I oppose it on the ground that we should have constitutional reform to provide that in the making of treaties no one man shall ignore the views of Canadians at large. We have heard a good deal about Hitler and Mussolini; the Prime Minister, speaking in Toronto, has talked a great deal about these dictators; and yet we find the right hon. gentleman, after a general election, going to Washington, and in one day making an agreement like this over the heads of the House of Commons and the Senate about to assemble. The proposed agreement is not the outcome of any doctrine which is Liberal; it is the net result of the doctrine that your leader is your policy. We saw what became of that doctrine in Ontario. I say that we should have in Canada parliamentary reform that would make it impossible for any reciprocity undertaking such as this, formal or informal, to be entered into by a prime minister with the United States without a full and frank discussion in parliament and with every opportunity for members on all sides to express their views fully. Such discussions are of course useless after the agreement is consummated, for grave issues of domestic and international policy are likely then to be involved. This question of constitutional and parliamentary reform has been raised in the old land, where it led to a very important debate about the right of one man to give India home rule over the heads of parliament. It seems to me that something should be done in that regard in Canada.
I contend that this agreement gives away Canada's birthright; it does away with her own market for her own products, and the creation of work at home for her own workmen. Time will reveal the advantages and disadvantages of the agreement, but certainly what we have before us reminds me of the

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old Toronto Street Railway agreement of 1892. I have read two or three of these white papers and they are filled with jokers at the expense of the people. The leader of our party decided that he would not accept an agreement of this sort; he let Washington know that it was more important that Canadian interests should be preserved than that, for the sake of party advantages, an agreement of this kind should be entered into with its inevitable consequences to the Canadian people. In the period from 1921 to 1930 the United States maintained high tariffs against Canada, and what did the Liberal government of that day do? That government simply turned the other cheek and told the United States to strike it. The result of that government's policy, or rather want of policy, in that decade was that nearly one million Canadians, including men who had fought for their country, crossed to the United States at the rate of a hundred thousand a year.
Canada has been the happy hunting ground for many years of American politicians and financiers. Take new Ontario, west of the Ottawa river and as far as Nipigon. Let me say this to the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Bradette): Canadians do not own anything up there; water powers, mines, and minerals-asbestos, copper, silver, gold-all these things are under the control of American capitalists and politicians.
In federal affairs we have many other examples of that particular doctrine to which I have referred. I remember when this reciprocity question came up in 1911, at the time when Sir Wilfrid Laurier hoped that, as the nineteenth century had belonged to the United States, the twentieth century would belong to Canada. For a long time the United States had desired a market in Canada for manu-tured goods, and the Conservative party were willing to meet them in a spirit of fair play, by giving concessions on raw materials. There was an increased demand for Canadian goods; owing to the industrial and agricultural development of this country there was a great growth in Canada of local industry. Combined with these signs of progress, the potential wealth of the great western provinces also caused great optimism. The result was a pilgrimage to Washington. But what the people of this country wanted was a tariff made at Ottawa, not at Washington. No matter what government has been on the treasury benches, no matter what party has been in power, there has been a continuous and presistent attempt to cultivate better trade relations between this country and the United States of America and a reciprocity that should be equally beneficial
to both countries. The negotiations of 1866, of 1869, of 1871, of 1888, all bear this out. The Hon. Clifford Sifton in 1911 said:
You cannot have, as the pact proposes, a free trade dumping ground for farmers' produce and a closed protected market for manufactured goods. The two things will not stand together. You can reject the pact and remain commercially independent of the United States, or you may accept the pact and have commercial union with the United States.
Sir William Van Horne said, in September, 1911:
Reciprocity is a silly and dangerous thing.-It is not a question of men or of party.
The people were not willing to give up all our home markets for this cheap boon of reciprocity. In 1911 the provincial legislature of Saskatchewan came out strongly in support of the pact. The first test it received came when, in that year, two Liberals, Hon. Clifford Sifton and Mr. Lloyd Harris, abandoned the Liberal party, the latter on account of the reduction of the duty on agricultural implements from five per cent to two and one half per cent. Sir Wilfrid Laurier decided that it was useless to get the pact through parliament without the verdict of the people. After eleven days of obstruction he took the country by surprise, dissolved parliament and appealed to the country on that particular pact, and the government of the day was defeated, as I believe this government would be defeated if this question was submitted to the people to-day. The present government would not have a chance, because our Canadian working men and farmers are no fools when it comes to losing their homes and their jobs, nor are our farmers fools when they are going to lose their markets; they will assert themselves.
As I said, Sir Wilfrid Laurier made a trip out west in 1911 after a session of this honourable house; he met the farmers out there and learned first-hand what the farmers and the grain growers thought of the protectionist policy which the Liberals had adopted from the Conservatives and of the repudiation by the Liberals of their platform when they were in opposition. There was an election, and in view of this they went down to Washington and Mr. Paterson and Mr. Fielding consummated this pact which was signed on January 21, 1911, between Canada and the United States. The agreement was in the form of a note addressed by the Canadian government to the United States in which fifteen points of agreement were recited and three schedules enclosed. This was acknowledged in a note from the United States, and an agreement followed along these lines.
I ask, Mr. Speaker: What must be the future of Canada within the British empire if
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this agreement goes through? I do not wish to wave any flag. Far from it; I am thinking of the homes and jobs of my constituents, and not of the flag, although the flag is an important part of our connection with the British empire. The three important empire problems for this parliament to solve are trade, defence, nnd migration, besides the questions of unemployment and of distributivism. What is the future of Canada in the British empire under this agreement? I for one fear for our future; I do not mean in a constitutional way. I fear for it in an economic way. Definitions do not always include facts. The other day I was looking at a map of the world issued by the Department of the Interior, a sort of illustrated geographical book.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, I am in favour of a principle of confederation of the old Cornish battle cry of all for each and each for all. I believe that a right solution of our economic problems is the proper application of the doctrine of protection for each and every one of the provinces of Canada. We saw that demonstrated in connection with the relief given to the coal, steel and iron industry in the maritime provinces some years ago. My hon. friends opposite opposed the action of the Conservative party in providing a subsidy for coal, iron and steel, which subsidy was afterwards extended to grain on the prairies by the stabilization fund.
Before recess I was referring to the British empire agreements and our relation with the other dominions regarding imperial preference. I was looking at a map of the world issued by the Department of the Interior, all over which map were red patches showing the different parts of the British empire, at the bottom being the caption "An empire on *which the sun never sets." I closed the atlas feeling that the British empire as Victorians knew it and as Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier knew it is a thing of the past. The great group of free nations that we spoke of as the British empire is now known by the high-sounding name of the British Commonwealth of Nations. We now look to Great Britain for the final court of appeal and to the Britsh navy to protect our trade on the seas, but by this agreement we make it clear that we owe her no trade allegiance. Our support in war is a matter for our own decision, and by this agreement it is ourselves first and the British empire a very poor second.

If we vote for trade agreements we are voting for complete commercial union with the United States. I do not say political union, but it will be an economic union, and the United States will never grant Canada dominion status. By this agreement we shall be absorbed into an economic federation which eventually will result in the loss of our economic independence. This agreement comes after the motherland by the 1932 agreements has given us imperial preference in return for real reciprocity. This agreement will loosen Canada's desire to trade with the motherland and will not help empire trade. We shall soon be like South Africa and the Irish Free State which have not only claimed the right to secede but shown by their actions that for all practical purposes they have chosen complete independence. By the agreements of 1932 we decided for closer economic ties with the motherland, but by this agreement we take the position of a son who considers that the parent should give all and expect nothing in return. The general policy in this agreement is; the United States first and trade with England a very poor second.
I am not one of those Conservatives who apologize for my party's share in the defeat of reciprocity in 1911. I believe reciprocity on the basis then proposed would have made a Lazarus out of a country that Sir Wilfrid Laurier proposed to have made a nation. That reciprocity proposal would have exhibited the Canada of Queenston Heights, St. Julien, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Amiens and many other fields of glory, as a beggar for the poor favour of reciprocity and free trade. At that time our opponents contended that the grain growing industry flowed north and south, not east and west and overseas to the markets of the world. But the fact is that grain growing in this country never was a continental industry but is the greatest imperial industry we have ever had. The Liberal party was wrong in 1911 in this respect about grain; they were proven to be wrong. The poor grain grower was fleeced out of a fair share of the proceeds of his crop. By whom? As I said in this house on May 5, 1924, it was by the middlemen and the grain exchanges. The former member for Marquette, the present Minister of the Interior (Mr. Crerar) was one of the heads of the grain dealers, and grain exchanges that combined with the elevators and transportation and other combines who handle the wheat in transit, and I contended at the time in this house that the grain grower was fleeced out of millions by middlemen and not given a fair price or a fair share of the profits of his labour. I gave the Union government some credit for having tried to stop this and for

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trying to help the farmer, but these middlemen in the Maharg case continued and used the courts and injunctions to prevent free trade in grain inquiries when they were clamouring for free trade and reciprocity in grain. Look at what has happened in Buffalo with hard wheat as a result of this policy. The publicity commissioner there says in his statement for 1935 that they have thirty-seven elevators there. They have taken our hard wheat and bootlegged it, mixing it in the elevators and milling it into flour. I saw it myself, and the Turgeon report proved that it happened. They take the best wheat in the world and mix it and mill it at Buffalo and Baltimore and along the American seaboard. The western wheat growers have fulfilled in their experience with these middlemen and profiteers the words of Scripture, "A man's foes shall be they of his household."
I am reading so far from an address I made in this house on May 5, 1924, when I dealt at length with those responsible for fooling the farmers. The worst enemy of the western wheat growers is the policy of the Progressive party, its leaders and its representatives in this house. Another opponent of the western wheat grower is the present policy of the Liberal party, its leaders and representatives in the house. I submitted at the time that wheat growing in western Canada was the most truly national and most widely imperial of all Canada's industries. I said that the wheat growers of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan had more to fear from the big interests west of the great lakes than from the big interests east of the great lakes. I will not give my approval to having Canada's tariffs made at Washington instead of at Ottawa. Reciprocity on 1911 lines would have lasted only until some agricultural bloc in the United States imagined that it was putting a dollar into the pockets of the Canadian farmers. Then the United States and a farmers' bloc would have ended reciprocity as suddenly as they began the 42 cents a bushel tariff on Canadian wheat. The British and overseas market is and always should be a market of customers for Canada; the United States market is and always will be a market of competition with Canada. History always repeats itself in our agreements with the United States. We want to do business with them but on a fair basis. They have the cream of the business, selling us 8150,000,000 a year more than they buy from us. We buy from them about S26.50 per head, and they buy from us about 82 per head.
In my opinion protection for the farmer is what this country needs. A truly national policy would not allow the Canadian farmer
to be stung for an unfairly high price for agricultural implements, automobiles or any other production of Canadian industry. A truly national policy would provide an excise duty that would put into the public treasury every cent charged for agricultural implements or automobiles or any other product manufactured under protection a price that represented fair wages to the workingman and fair profit to the manufacturer. The price should be such as represents fair wage.l to the workman and a fair profit to the man-, ufacturer. I know this proposal will be met with the shout of "paternalism." But I would sooner have the paternalism of a protectionist government than the paternalism of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, a paternalism of free trade that robs those who grow the best wheat in the world of $25,000,000 per annum and puts that $25,000,000 into the pockets of the Americans who handle that wheat, as I showed on May 5, 1924, in this house. We will have to have more paternalism in the management of this country's reserves and the promotion of this country's welfare.
I am just as much opposed to the Liberal party's policy of economic Liberalism of the Manchester school as I am to the teachings of Moscow. I plead for a departure from this free trade law of supply and demand, and for acceptance of the principles of the old national policy 'in our dealings with all the provinces of Canada. I plead for the application of the principles of the old national policy to all industries in this country from the manufacturing of agricultural implements to the growing of wheat. Leave the wheat growing industry of the west to the workings of the law of supply and demand, and that law would not fill the west with wheat growers. If that law did fill the west with wheat growers, wheat would not be worth fifty cents a bushel. The free trade law of supply and demand now costs the wheat grower of the west S25,000,000 per annum. This simply substantiates what I said before, namely, that there should be a rejection of the free trade 1911 reciprocity conditions and a return to the old national policy. When we are dealing with this matter, let us not forget the lessons history has taught us.
May I now discuss the duty on cattle. Last night the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Leader) said that there were two markets for our cattle, namely those in England and the United States. He stated, further, that the United States offered the natural market. I say that it is not the natural market; it is one that is here to-day and gone to-morrow. I say that it is one of the most undependable markets for cattle
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that could be imagined, and it is as fickle in connection with purchases of Canadian cattle as the Liberal party has been fickle in its support of protection. The only real and stable market is that of Great Britain; as it is our best market for grain, so it is our best market for cattle. The cattle kings of Chicago and New York are rejoicing at this agreement. Hon. members have only to read the reports of investigations now going on before a United States senate committee to learn what is taking place in connection with packing concerns and cattle rings in Chicago and other parts of that country. If they read those reports they will soon conclude that the agreement cannot last long, so far as any improvement in the cattle market is concerned. In my opinion it would last just long enough for the cattle dealers in Chicago to find out that the poor farmer in Canada might make a dollar, at which time it would end abruptly.
Owing to the disposition of our exportable surplus as provided in the agreement, there will undoubtedly be a serious unemployment condition on our national railways and other transportation systems. Both rail and water services will suffer greatly. Not long ago I was in Cleveland and while there had the privilege of talking to a celebrated railway official. A relative of ^lis was responsible for the building of three or four billion dollars worth of railways in the United States, including the Nickle Plate and the Big Four. Some of those railway officials said that they hoped, as a result of the agreement, to get a large share of the business running north and south. What will happen to the railways of Canada? What will happen to the money spent on the development of our canals? We have nearly four billion dollars worth of railways, and I say that instead of a deficit of $60,000,000 we shall have deficits of $75,000,000 or $100,000,000. They will lose the revenue from the long hauls from the head of the lakes to Saint John and other ports. I suggest that that is one angle which should be given careful consideration.
I am sorry the hon. member for Kootenay East (Mr. Stevens) is not in his seat. I was greatly surprised, in view of the investigations made by him as chairman of the price spreads commission, to hear him lend his support to the treaty. He is going to leave the working men of Canada at the mercy of American trusts, combines in restraint of trade, sweat shops, and child labour. Investigations have shown that nearly a million children under fifteen years of age are engaged in industries of the United

States; they have sweat shops up to the hilt over there. The hon. member is going to allow these people to ship their goods into Canada, thereby sharing our home market with the products of Canadian artisans. I am surprised to find an hon. member who has given such long and notable service to the cause of protection making a right-about face in that manner. I do not doubt his sincerity, but I suggest he is greatly mistaken in his outlook on this agreement. He has been a consistent supporter of protection, but in this instance I am afraid he has made a bad mistake.
I do not know why no mention has been made of the St. Lawrence waterway in these agreements or negotiations, because I believe sooner or later this reciprocity matter will come before the United States law courts. In the last few minutes at my disposal may I say that I believe this agreement will receive the same treatment as did the new deal legislation in the United States. In that instance a decision was handed down by the United States Supreme Court, which by a majority of one declared ultra vires their new deal legislation. I believe this agreement too, will, for the reasons given in that judgment, be declared ultra vires of the president and people of the United States.
In my view this agreement should be placed before the Supreme Court of Canada also, as was the legislation brought down by my right hon. leader on the new deal legislation of last year. May I say that his personal probity, his political common sense and his political wisdom are known to every citizen of Canada; although one might not always agree with him one must respect his judgment as a great Canadian and he will occupy a place in history. I believe if this agreement goes before the Supreme Court of Canada it will receive the same treatment as did the new deal in the United States. Why should all the measures passed by the last parliament have been sent to the supreme court, and this agreement not be subjected to their inquiry as a matter of law? Also-
This policy of reciprocity and free trade kills industry. It destroys business and has a bad effect on prices. United States imports are to a great extent a menace to Canada. The whole prosperity of the United States has been built up by high tariffs; these are historical facts. Agriculture cannot be the basis for the whole life of a nation. Canada, like the United States, was at first an agricultural country, but at an early stage we found that protection must shelter the birth of big industries. Why can we not learn

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from history? Why build up the industries of other countries, instead of developing our own factories? As a nation, Canada should buy at home. Protection must shelter the birth of every big industry, and must nurture it in its struggling years. The truths uttered by Horace Greeley in the United States would apply as well here in Canada in 1936. It was stated by him that protection gives bread to the workers, in exchange for work, whereas free trade is an obstacle to a nation's growth.
I regret to see an agreement brought down in the manner in which the present one was introduced. If it had been made an issue during the election campaign I doubt very much if the present government would be sitting on the treasury benches to-day. Then, with respect to the quotas may I ask this: Is it wise to accept quotas from the United States? They have stipulated quotas on cattle and lumber, but we do not find any quotas being applied by the people of this country. Why was there not a fifty-fifty arrangement, if this is to be a proper reciprocity agreement, and one which represents fair dealing to both parties? Why do we not have the same arrangement for fish, lumber, and other commodities? I fear that the exportable surplus of United States farmers in years of heavy crops will be turned into Canada, at very low prices. They pay only a small amount of duty, as compared with the amount paid by us. The Canadian farmer pays a higher duty for the entry of flour, eggs, potatoes, cream, and other commodities.
In my opinion the agreement is nothing but one full of jokers, as the lawyers call them. For the last forty years we have purchased on an average of $150,000,000 worth more goods from the United States than they have purchased from us. In forty years that would amount to about six billions of dollars. We have bought these large amounts of goods from the United States, after giving them our raw materials. For instance, they take $6,000,000 worth of asbestos in the crude and semi-crude state from the central and northern provinces, and after importing it they develop it into $69,000,000 worth of manufactured goods, and ship part of it back to us, for us to buy, giving employment to Americans.
The policy of the Liberal-Conservative party has been consistent; it has been the same in all the provinces. I shall have another opportunity to speak on the agreement, and shall not speak at greater length just now. In closing, may I state that I believe we have, as decent neighbours been doing our duty to the American people. We have
given them markets; each year we bought $150,006,000 more from them than they bought from us. We are content to deal fairly with them for three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, but the central provinces of Canada want fair play. We want fair play for agriculture, and for the industries in Ontario and Quebec.
We can remember the days in which the Drury government held office in Ontario. That was a government that preached blue ruin, and the result was that for ten years no industry was established in Ontario, because no industrialists would put money into it. Do we want to have that condition throughout Canada, under this agreement? I believe the Canadian people should have an opportunity to vote on the agreement, and I am stating that if they had that opportunity it would be voted down.


Mr. D. F. McCUAIG (Simcoe North):: Mr. Speaker, following the last election a new wave of optimism was quite apparent, due to a great extent to the confidence of Canadians in the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King). That confidence was increased when shortly after the election the people learned about the able body of men he had gathered around him as a cabinet. Very shortly after, confidence was still further increased when within one month after taking office the Prime Minister announced to the Canadian people that he had been able to negotiate a trade agreement with the government of the United States. I wish to congratulate the Prime Minister upon these achievements, and may I also add my congratulations to you. Mr. Speaker, and to the Deputy Speaker, not only upon your election to your respective offices, but upon the very efficient way in which you have presided over the proceedings of this house.
I am particularly interested in the Canada-United States trade agreement because I represent a riding that is situated in a splendid agricultural district of this province of Ontario. Anything I may say this evening I feel will be only a reflection of the feelings and sentiments of the people of Simcoe North whom I have the honour to represent.
During the last few weeks we have heard a great deal about the condition and the problems of the farmers of western Canada, and we have heard from members from the west, some of whom seem to be under the impression that members representing the central and eastern provinces do not sympathize with their problems. But I feel that the problems of the farmers of western Canada, although perhaps more intensified than
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those of the farmers of our province, are, after all, of the same kind, and that whatever will solve the problems of the farmers of the west will also solve the problems of the farmers of the east. I believe it is the duty of members of the house to study the problems of all our people in all the provinces, because prosperity cannot come to this country unless we have prosperity in all the provinces of the dominion. I am glad that we have this agreement before us because, by affording us wider markets, I am sure that it will do much to bring about prosperity in Canada.
We were told the other day that over one-half of our population is situated in the cities and the larger towns. This is not as it should be in an agricultural country like ours. The flow of population from the farms to the larger centres is not in the interests of this country. Therefore I believe we should pay more attention to the basic industry of Canada and do what we can to help our farmers once more become prosperous.
We heard the other day from the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) that 82%o per cent in value of the agricultural products of this country was consumed at home and only 17^ per cent found a market abroad. But that is not an argument against this trade agreement so much as it is an argument for it, since the larger the proportion of our products that we can sell abroad and the wider the market we can secure, the greater the advantage to our Canadian farmers, not only by reason of the increased percentage of agricultural products sold abroad, but because the increased price they will receive for their products sold abroad will tend to increase the price of their products sold at home.
Although I am not a farmer I am intensely interested in their problems. I feel I know what their problems are. The sooner we members of parliament give consideration to those problems the sooner, I believe, shall we have prosperity throughout the whole of Canada. I hope the day may soon come when our farmers and agriculturists will be able to enjoy many of the comforts and conveniences which the people in the larger centres enjoy. In some places these conveniences and comforts have been brought close to the homes of our farmers, but they are not able to take advantage of them because the price which they receive for the products of the farm does not enable them to afford conveniences, and of course all such comforts and conveniences would add to their overhead expenses.

We also heard the other day something about the price of farm implements in this country. Undoubtedly farm implements are too expensive in comparison with the price which the farmers receive for their products. The trouble to-day is largely that the value of the products of the farm has not in the past number of years increased proportionately to the increase in the price of the implements of production.
We heard members of the opposition during the last week claiming that this agreement was bad, and yet in the very next breath they said that it did not go far enough. There are in this agreement, I admit., some items on which I think the tariff should be reduced still more, but at the same time should we not be thankful for what we have received? It is at all events a start in the right direction. We may be sure if the previous government had been returned to power we would not have the agreement and the lower tariffs we are going to enjoy from now on.
When I listened to the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) and his followers I could not help wondering what would have happened, particularly in the riding I have the honour to represent, if they had made, prior to October 14 last, similar statements to those we have heard them make during the last few days. All through the agricultural district of North Simcoe during the last election I was met with the argument everywhere, that although the Liberals would reduce duties and increase trade if they were returned to power, the Conservative party were going to do the same thing. The only way the Conservatives could attempt to hold the farmers of that district together was by insisting that they would negotiate a trade agreement with the United States and go just as far as the Liberals would.
The farmers of my riding are particularly interested in the reduction of the tariff from three cents to two cents a pound on cattle weighing seven hundred pounds or more. I would like to see that duty made still lower, but a reduction of only one cent a pound in the duty on cattle means a great deal of additional revenue to the farmers of this country. We have heard Conservative members complaining that a quota of 155,799 head of cattle per annum has been established, and they claim that we should be able to ship more cattle to the United States, but I would point out that if we ship only to the limit of that quota, the reduction of one cent a pound in the duty means one and a half million dollars to our Canadian farmers.

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That is only a small part of the story, because by reason of the increased price we shall receive for our products sold abroad the greater will prices be for the products we sell at home. We can ship the full quota to the United States, but in addition the total production of cattle in Canada is approximately 2,000,000 head per year. This would mean approximately $15,000,000 per annum to the farmers of this country. This increase in the price received for cattle, together with the increase in the prices received by our farmers for other products, would bring back to them the prosperity which was lost due to the high tariffs and the blasting policies of the last five years.
The citizens of the United States are entitled to take back with them when they return to that country after a visit to Canada goods to the value of $100 when intended for their own use. I am particularly interested in this matter because I represent a riding which is really the gateway to the playgrounds of this province. This part of Ontario is often described as the place of lakes and waters. It also is on the way to the birthplace of the quintuplets which is claimed by the hon. member for Parry Sound (Mr. Slaght). Citizens of the United States visiting this part of the country buy an enormous amount of goods from merchants in the different cities and towns through which they pass. This fact is proven by the special display of woollen goods such as blankets, Hudson Bay blankets, motor rugs and other articles in the windows of these merchants. These articles are not displayed during July and August to attract Canadian business; they are there to be sold to United States tourists.
We could not expect that that privilege would continue to be extended unless we were prepared to give the same privilege to Canadian citizens returning from a visit to the United States. I am glad to note that this agreement contains this provision. Canadians who go to the United States for a holiday may purchase goods to be brought back to Canada. We are helping the merchants who sell and the manufacturers who make the articles purchased by these tourists and, on the other hand, we are helping our own citizens and our own consumers by allowing them to bring back these purchases from the United States.
I support this resolution because I believe in the enlargement of trade, and especially in the enlargement of trade in primary products. I believe this will bring prosperity, happiness and comfort to the people of Canada.


Mr. GORDON GRAYDON (Peel):: Mr. Speaker, the county of Peel which I have the distinctive honour of representing in this House of Commons is peculiarly interested in the legislation now before the house. This interest is brought about by the many different products produced within the confines and boundaries of that county. May I be permitted at this time to tell hon. members of the house and you, Mr. Speaker, that there is in my riding, among other enterprises, dairy and mixed farming, manufacturing, flower growing and a very extensive fruit and vegetable industry. In my previous address to the house I mentioned the extent of the flower growing industry. We claim that Peel county is the Canadian paradise of beauty. I should like to extend to you, Mr. Speaker, and to every hon. member an invitation to visit Brampton, the beauty spot of North America. We shall not question your brand of politics; if you are a Liberal, you may come; if you are a Conservative, you may come; if you are a member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation you may come and if you are a Social Crediter you may come. However I would like to give one warning; if purchases are made we will perhaps refuse to accept social credit dividends. In the county of Peel we are used to actual cash.
I should like to refer particularly to the three industries in this riding: Dairj'ing, flower growing and fruit and vegetable growing. Our dairying industry partly supplies the great metropolis of Toronto with its whole milk and we take second place to no qther area in the whole dominion in so far as this particular industry is concerned. As I have stated already, we are the largest producer of cut flowers in the world and our fruit and vegetable industry compares favourably with that industry in any other section of Canada.
The hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) has filled volumes of Hansard, which is read religiously by the people in my riding, directing attention to the municipality of Riviere du Loup in his own riding. I want to serve notice upon him that he should look to his laurels because I intend, if my halting efforts will avail, to supplant that constituency, in so far as the attention of the house is concerned, with the one I represent.
We have heard a great deal of the history of trade negotiations between Canada and the United States. All this is very interesting and enlightening, especially to the new members, but may I suggest that the man on the street, the man who is looking for relief from the effects of the depression, is more inter-
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ested in the present and the future than in the historical facts in connection with these negotiations. I suggest that this Canada-United States trade agreement should be viewed through the clear eyes of two classes of our people, the struggling farmers and the workingmen. Let me say a word with reference to the dairying industry in my riding. Because of a surplus production, because of other factors which perhaps are not relevant to a debate of this kind, in many instances the farmers cannot market their milk in as profitable and orderly a manner as they might desire. What these farmers want among other things is an agreement which will relieve the stress and pressure caused by this milk surplus.
It is true that in the agreement there is a lessening of the restrictions on cream going into the United States market. We are always thankful for small mercies, but I suggest that that does not go very far in the direction of helping the people in the riding I represent. I am hopeful, however, that as regards cattle the provisions of the agreement will afford some relief. I have been told by some of the farmers of Peel county that since the agreement went into effect it has resulted not in raising the price of cattle but rather in depressing it, but I am inclined to think this may be only temporary, and I trust that in the end some measure of real benefit will accrue to these hard-pressed men who deserve some assistance.
In the course of the debate a good deal has been said with regard to the protection of industrialists, the implication being apparently that when you protect an industry you are apt, for some reason or another, to ruin the agricultural population, its activities and endeavours. Speaking for my county, we depend very largely upon the home market. A market within twenty-five or thirty miles and comprising nearly 700,000 people is one which our farmers are anxious to maintain and extend, and I commend this thought to the hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Glen), who spoke so eloquently the other evening, and whose facts were so well marshalled. When he speaks about protection to industrialists he should remember that our farmers do not all feel as he does. Indeed, wre regard the protection of industry as a means of protecting and extending our market for our own farm products.
Let me say a few words with regard to the cut flower industry, of which we have heard so much, and of which no doubt hon. members will hear more as time goes on. The flower industry is one that has come in for a good deal of publicity in the house. There

are at present in the town of Brampton about a dozen operators of greenhouses. The largest greenhouse there employs 300 men the year round and there are some others employing altogether a total of nearly 300 more. In other words, about 600 persons are engaged in this industry. Since the initiation of the Canada-United States agreement representations have been made to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) by the largest greenhouse operators in my town, and in addition to these there have been representations, couched in no uncertain terms, by one of the prominent government supporters in Brampton, directed not only to the government itself but to nearly all private members of the house. However I do not wish to speak with reference to this particular aspect of my subject from	the	standpoint	of	theoperators especially in the town from which I come; I would rather direct my remarks from the point of view of the 600 working men in whom I am intensely interested and who are anxious that the solvency of these enterprises in our	town	shall not	be	endangered. It should be the desire of every member of parliament; it should be and I hope it is the desire of the government to see that the standard of living and the wages of these men engaged in the cut flower industry shall be	so raised as to	enablethem to live in the way they so richly deserve to do. I suggest therefore that in the legislation now before the house, by virtue of the United States gaining the advantage of the intermediate tariff	which	allows flowers	to
come into Canada free of duty, no appreciable move is being made by the government towards the goal of a higher standard of living for the men engaged in this enterprise.
Perhaps I might be allowed to dwell for a moment on the history of this business. Before 1930 there was a tariff of 17i per cent on flowers coming into Canada from the United States. Early in that year the present Minister of Finance, in his famous budget, raised the tariff to twenty-five per cent; as a matter of fact, at that time by virtue of the countervailing duties which he also employed, the tariff was increased to a maximum of forty per cent. At the same time there was a duty of forty per cent against our flowers entering the United States. At that particular time, as I find by reference to Hansard, the Minister of Finance, in explanation of the increase in the tariff, stated that it was in consequence of a consideration of the matter by the tariff board. The board had considered it and for that reason he desired to increase the duty. When the present leader of the opposition (Mr. MARCH 5, 1936
Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
Bennett) came into power in 1930 the general tariff item on flowers entering Canada was placed at the forty per cent mark, so that since that time flowers, both those coming from the United States and those going from Canada to that country, have had a duty of forty per cent. However, for some reason the intermediate tariff has been free; and the United States having gained the advantage of the intermediate tariff under this agreement, we find that flowers from that country are coming into Canada free of duty while our flowers are still subject to a forty per cent duty going the other way.
Climatic conditions are very much against greenhouse operators in Canada. For example, in one plant alone in Brampton, in order to overcome climatic conditions an expenditure of S180,000 per annum in coal is necessary to take care of that large area of greenhouse space. If, therefore, there is any adjustment in the tariff we should be entitled to something better than the Americans enjoy with regard to their flowers coming into Canada, instead of having the tariff lower on flowers coming in and higher on those going out. This makes imperative an adjustment in the legislation to be subsequently brought down.
While operators in other centres in the last few years have been experiencing hard times, a number of them having gone into liquidation, operators in the Brampton area have been able to keep going. These are not what might be called fly-by-night concerns, nor are they industries which might be regarded as "children of protection" alone, because as a matter of fact they did not grow up under protection. We are producing in Canada about one million dollars' worth of cut flowers, and that, I submit is something which the government should take into consideration. But what did we find in February of this year? In one of the largest departmental stores in Toronto there were roses-perhaps not as good as ours, because there are no roses as good as those grown in Brampton-selling at twenty cents a dozen, I am told, very many times less than it costs our people to produce them in the town from whence I come. I do not particularly rely on figures, because they may prove almost anything, I believe, but the imports of cut flowers from the United States in January, 1936, as compared with imports of cut flowers in January, 1935, actually showed an upward trend of eighty-five per cent.
I hope always in this house to try to approach these matters as far as possible without partisan bitterness, because it is something w'hich to my mind is inexcusable.
But I cannot emphasize too strongly the imperative need of something being done for these florists when the budget is brought down. If it can be done before that, it will be very greatly appreciated so far as our industry is concerned. When the Minister of Finance is fixing up these items in the budget I suggest that he should not fraternize too closely or take too seriously his friendship with the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Thorson) who sits over there and who delivered the other evening such an inspiring and excellent address, except for one point when he appeared to be a little anxious that the intermediate tariff should not be raised on any items. I have in mind the florist industry, in which I am very much interested, so I suggest that the Minister of Finance see to it that when this item is being discussed the hon. member for Selkirk is somewhere else in the building.
I should like to draw attention to another branch of agriculture in which I am particularly interested and in which many people in Peel are involved, although it is not particularly confined to my riding alone. I refer to the fruit and vegetable business, which has also become a great industry in other parts of the Dominion of Canada. It occupies, however, a prominent and important place in the activities of the people of our county. We have in the county from which I come between eight and nine thousand acres under market gardening and fruit farming cultivation located in an area in the township of Chinguacousy, around the village of Huttons-ville, and also the southerly part of the riding, which contains many market gardeners and fruit growers who are trying to eke out an existence. The whole industry seems to indicate that hard work and uncertain returns are inevitably involved in the business. Last summer, when I was out making a few calls for certain reasons which may be apparent to some members of the house, coming across many of the market gardeners and fruit growers, and seeing the hard work which they had to do, I thought to myself: Why, you are heroes in your fight for economic independence. Coming from a dairy farm as I did, and realizing what a great tie that is to people who have to attend to milking night and morning and be on hand year in and year out, I came to the inescapable conclusion that, after all, the dairying business had only one parallel in so far as hard work is concerned, and that was the fruit and vegetable industry.
So we must remember that in attacking a problem of this kind many factors must be taken into consideration. I do not wish in
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any way to repeat the arguments which were so eloquently put by the hon. member for Yale (Mr. Stirling) the other evening. There are two reasons why I shall not do so. The first is that, as I see it, there has been up to the present time too much repetition of arguments in the House of Commons. The second is that I am afraid, in contrast with the eloquence with which he presented his case, I might be found to be a very poor parliamentarian indeed. However, I should just like to say this much, that in so far as climatic differences are concerned it means that growers of fruit and vegetables in the United States of America have two high class markets and one low or medium class market. The difference in climate, the fact that actually they are able to produce earlier in almost every instance, gives them a high class market in the United States and provides them also with a high class market in Canada if they are allowed to bring their stuff in here and sell it. That means, of course, that special protection is required for this branch of agriculture.
In 1926 the government of the day, under the leadership of Right Hon. Arthur Meighen, brought in legislation which helped the fruit and vegetable growers very materially; it helped them by applying a dumping duty in so far as these perishable commodities were concerned. I will not go into what happened after that; but in 1930 it was necessary that the dumping duties be applied again. From 1930 to 1935, under the government of the present leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett), the fruit and vegetable men, while they complained somewhat because the restrictions were not higher-and perhaps legitimately complained as to that-were reasonably satisfied in so far as the protection they got was concerned. A number of them told me that they believed it was really a Godsend to them that the dumping duty was imposed. The only complaint I received so far as that was concerned was that the growers believed that in some instances it might have been applied a little more strongly and, perhaps, a little earlier.
I had hoped that when the terms of the new agreement were tabled they would disclose that the fruit and vegetable growers would receive that additional protection through the strengthening of the tariff regulations so far as their products are concerned. Broadly speaking, the tariff on fruits coming into this country has been reduced from twenty to fifteen per cent, and on vegetables from thirty to fifteen per cent. However, I may say, in all fairness, that the tariff is not perhaps the most serious matter that has

to be contended with. I am told by one grower, however, that it does and will affect the sale of beets and carrots later on in the year. The tariff reductions would not be so bad if compensating advantages were given under this agreement in so far as dumping duty regulations are concerned. When the government has taken off the dumping duty regulations from some of the fruits and vegetables its hands are tied to some extent in so far as the application of the duties on the balance goes. I am not sufficiently well versed, perhaps, in the details of the industry to say just how far that may go, but certainly much concern is felt among those who are actually and intensely interested in the success of the industry. I should just like to point out and to recommend that in so far as the power is left in their hands, the government shall not only apply the provisions of the anti-dumping legislation severely and restrictively, but shall apply it in time to save the market, which is a seasonal one, for these perishable fruits.
I want to refer particularly to three articles in which I am specially interested. The growers of my constituency produce large quantities of asparagus. I have a letter from one of the large growers in my riding saying that one of the canning companies bought last year a large proportion of the asparagus crop at ten cents. To-day six cents, he says, is the price likely to be paid, because the canning companies are not going to make contracts with the farmers, when they feel that perhaps the supply can be obtained from growers in the United States.


Mr. CLEAVER:: May I ask the hon. member: Is he aware that during the last week the canners have signed up for the asparagus crop of this province at ten cents a pound?


Gordon Graydon: My latest information is that the canning companies have not signed up for the whole crop. Certainly from the information I have they have not signed up for the crop of this grower in the county of Peel. Certainly, if the statement of the hon. gentleman were correct, I would gladly suffer any humiliation on the floor of this house to see it come true.
The growing of strawberries is also an enterprise of great importance in my constituency. This fruit is a perishable commodity; it must be sold quickly and at a particular season. Therefore, when the public taste is satiated by berries from the United States the market is left in a very unreceptive state. Only well regulated and properly timed dumping duties can save the strawberry market for the growers of such a constituency as I

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
represent. I have a letter from one of my constituents saying that he is fearful that the great markets of Winnipeg and Montreal will be largely taken away from the strawberry producers of that county. Another large producer of fruit and vegetables in my riding says that a commission merchant in one of the large cities of Ontario has contracted to purchase seventy-five carloads of strawberries, and under the new tariff regulations $200 will be saved on every carload.
Another branch of the vegetable growing industry is the production of potatoes. Our county produces potatoes of excellent quality. Before this agreement went into effect potatoes coming from the United States paid a duty of seventy-five cents per hundred pounds. Under this agreement the intermediate tariff applies and potatoes enter free of duty. Not long ago I was talking to one of the large growers in my constituency. He said that he was in the United States viewing some of the agricultural districts there, and in one of the southern states he saw an area of potatoes stretching as far as the eye could see, in bloom, many weeks earlier than our crop. This agreement puts the potato growers of Canada, and especially of the county of Peel, in a very difficult position. May I make this suggestion, that when the budget is brought down special attention should be given to the question of raising the intermediate tariff on potatoes to the rate at which it was before? And I ask the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) to consider a suggestion which I think could be easily carried out. One of the growers in my county writes me saying:
A lot of people do not think that potatoes imported will hurt our prices as the freight on them will be heavy. I see this matter at a different angle being a grower of about ten acres every year and in touch with markets frequently. In the first place the grades are not similar. Our Canada No. 2 is every bit as good as their No. 1, therefore the American grower will be able to put on the market a so-called No. I grade of potatoes considerably cheaper than we can. and pay freight and still realize as much for their potatoes as we do according to Canadian grading. I would like to see the American growers compelled to grade their potatoes according to Canadian specifications if they expect to sell them in Canada, then we would have fair competition.
Secondly I do not expect that there will be any encouragement for the Canadian potato growers to try and have their potatoes early, as the market no doubt will be flooded with American potatoes before we have them fit to dig.
One other suggestion, and that is in regard to the dumping regulations. I suggest that there should be some permanent orderly regulation in regard to the fruit and vegetable industry, so that a man who plants his crop in the spring may be able to plan and see a year
ahead and have some reasonable certainty as to results. I leave that suggestion, as the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) said the other day, on the doorstep of the government.
I am not desirous of placing unnecessary obstacles in the way of a government which has such heavy responsibilities and duties. I take my stand against this agreement only in protest against the treatment which has been accorded to the industries I have mentioned. It is my conscientious hope that the rest of Canada may receive greater benefit under this agreement than it [DOT]would appear on the surface that the county of Peel is likely to enjoy. No one in the house will be happier than I shall be if this agreement proves to be a step towards Canadian economic recovery, as I have no doubt the government honestly and conscientiously believe it will be. I do not agree with the policies instituted by the government in its efforts to stimulate trade because I believe in protection for our people, but at the same time I say to the Prime Minister and to his government: God speed, and let us see if something concrete can be done for the people of this whole dominion who so richly deserve improved conditions.


Mr. RALPH MAYBANK (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, there has to be a first
time for everyone, and this is mine. I do not rise to address the house with that feeling of temerity which I think I ought to have. On the contrary my feelings at the moment are quite the opposite of temerity. However, I have observed the very kindly attitude displayed by hon. members and particularly yourself, Mr. Speaker, to the various new members who have spoken so far this session. What I have seen emboldens me to rise at this time to address the chamber.
Nor am I vain enough to believe that anything I have to say is of transcendent importance. I am quite well aware of the fact that anything I may be able to say upon this important trade agreement has either already been said by others or could be stated by other hon. members more adequately. Nevertheless the electors of Winnipeg South Centre did me the honour of sending me here as their spokesman, and I owe it to my constituents to endeavour to express in the best fashion of which I am capable their opinions upon this all-important matter.
I would be doing less than justice to my constituents if at the outset I did not express their appreciation of the promptness with which this agreement was effected, as well as their satisfaction with its broad general lines.
Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement

During the election campaign the gage was thrown down in the words, "Vote Liberal and get action." The people of Canada took up that gage. When the Prime Minister returned from Washington it had been redeemed. This type of action marks a new day for Canadians, and as a result of it naturally the people are imbued with a new hope.
As has been stated many times the agreement is designed to benefit all consumers and many producers. I look at most questions from the viewpoint of the consumer. Cheapness is a corollary of abundance and dearness follows in the train of scarcity. Naturally we want cheapness. It seems to me that in the past more attention would have been paid to the needs of consumers if the consumers, as such, had been organized in the way many producing groups have been. I conceive it to be my duty to endeavour, in some small measure at least, to destroy what has been called the inarticulateness of the consumer of Canada.
Leaving that for the moment, however, and glancing at the agreement, can we seriously doubt that certain producing groups will be benefited by the operation of its schedules, particularly when we remember that in the lumbering industry, for instance, the duty on logging apparatus has been reduced by twenty-five per cent. We get further satisfaction when we see that lumber and timber are given access to the great markets to the south of us, and enjoy fifty per cent less impost than had been the case for several years, during those years, in fact from the time when the last administration goaded the United States government into effecting retaliatory measures against us.
Some time ago I read the story in the Manchester Guardian respecting the lumber industry and I should like to quote from it briefly. The article to which I refer is found in the issue of January 5, 1934, and is, I believe, one of the many sad stories of the last five years.
When the Bennett government took office in 1930 the United States market was open to Canadian lumber. The duty was one dollar per thousand feet, and on an average Canada exported $20,000,000 worth of softwood annually and imported' $2,000,000 of hardwood. The hardwood manufacturers of Ontario applied to the Bennett government for tariff increases to keep out this hardwood, and in April, 1931, the "Canada First" policy was applied by the imposition of arbitrary valuations. In the following June Mr. Bennett imposed a one per cent primage duty on imports, including lumber. This was followed by an order of the national revenue department in August, 1931, reducing the discounts allowed to the United States hardwood manufacturers, and in November by dump duties against United States hardwood doors.

These successive affronts brought retaliation by the Washington government. The duty on Canadian lumber was increased by one dollar per thousand feet. The Bennett government, realizing their error, endeavoured to placate Washington by withdrawing the primage duty. The other tariff increases, however, were retained.
In June, 1932, congress took the final step in retaliation and increased the duty on Canadian lumber from one dollar to four dollars per thousand feet. The effect was ruinous to Canada. Exports in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1933, fell to the incredibly low total of 235,528,000 feet.
The article is headed: "The tariff that lost a market." Happily this sort of action is now a thing of the past.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I suppose the hon.
gentleman knows that is incorrect?


Ralph Maybank: I have been quoting an article from a reputable journal. If there is anything incorrect about it I believe the right hon. gentleman will have another opportunity during the session to deal with it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It happens to be against the rules of the house to read articles, but the member being a new one I did not raise the point. It was not all tariff; it was in part a tax under the Special War Revenue Act.


Ralph Maybank: I should not have
objected if the rules of the house had been drawn to my attention, no matter how new I may be. I am quite conscious of all the right hon. gentleman has said with respect to my newness. However I do not think he quite does himself justice when he rises after the fact to tell me something that I should not have done, and questions it. After all, he cannot have it both ways.
Nor do I think it can be doubted that, normally, a reduction in tariff, such as we see before us in connection with agricultural machinery, would be of benefit to the agriculturists of Canada, despite the price increases about which we have heard in this chamber during the present session. Of course the answer to the price increases, lest there be any doubt as to whether taking off the tariff can raise the price-and of course there is no doubt-is to take the balance of the duty off, and to obliterate every sign and trace of tariff upon agricultural implements.
For my part I like to translate trade movements into hours of work rather than deal with them in millions of dollars. We speak of millions of dollars of imports and exports, but sometimes when discussing them in these monetary terms we lose sight of the amount of work lying behind each dollaris worth of

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
goods moving out of or into a country. If we were to examine the lumber industry, or the manufacturing of shingles, we would find that the total amount of work lying behind a carload of shingles is rarely appreciated. The number of man-hours of labour connected with the felling of a tree and getting it to the skidway is appreciated by few people. Prior to the logs reaching the sawmill a very great number of man-hours of labour are involved, and then afterwards it will take two or three hours per day of two or three different men's time to get the first thousand shingles off any one log. After that, it will take three or four men supplying three or four more men to pack about sixty thousand shingles in a day, and after several days of that sort of work a carload results.
Then commences the next train of work: A man examines the car, the waybills are made up; the different items in the car are checked, and finally five men will be employed in pulling the car out and bringing it to where it will eventually be hooked up in a train. There the whole process of inspection is gone over again, and the car then starts to move to its destination. Consequently, when we talk of millions of dollars of exports, this involves millions or many hundreds of thousands of hours of labour, which is represented by the figure first mentioned. Similar to that is the process in respect to imports.
In addition, when we read these import and export figures, we have to take into account the money which is spent in the various stores after the wage earner has given the money to his wife, perhaps, so that she may do the spending. It seems to me that that ought to bring home to us that the only depression breaker that ever did or ever will have any efficacy, is the exchange of commodities, and if we cannot have that, no depression will ever be broken.
I should like to draw to the attention of the house certain figures which came to my attention last year and which I found in the reports of the League of Nations. They show the contraction of trade throughout the world as thirty-one per cent below normal, and at the same time the employment figures represent employment as being thirty per cent below normal. It seems to me that these figures are striking and ought to bring home to us, if anything can, the fact that it is exchange of commodities, and exchange of commodities alone, that makes for any appreciable amount of employment.
As I have said, my chief interest is in the consumer. I am interested in the getting of goods as cheaply as possible. However, from 12739-52
the viewpoint of the primary producer it seems to me that we should always have a tariff low enough to allow sufficient goods to flow into this country to pay for the products for which our primary producers have to find a market abroad. Whenever we find that our primary products, the products of the farm, the forest and the stream, are not moving out of the country as they should, then tariffs should be lowered to invite these payment-commodities to come into the country and assist in getting our own primary products out.
I confess I do not hold strongly with the idea lying behind such expressions as "quid pro quo." "concessions," and so forth. I regard lowering of tariffs, generally speaking, as good in itself because it tends towards the movement of trade. As far as I am concerned I am only sorry that the tariff cuts made in this treaty are not greater.
Some fear has been expressed that the balance of trade between us and the United States may be unfavourable. Surely we do not have to have a favourable balance of trade with the United States or any other particular country. I had thought that idea had long since been exploded. I must confess I was considerably humiliated when I read the communication of Secretary of State Cordell Hull in 1934 to the then Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) of Canada, in which he found it necessary to inform the then Prime Minister that the settlement of international indebtedness was often roundabout. It would seem from the wording of that letter that the Prime Minister of that day was not aware of that fact, of which most students of economics most certainly are aware.
Equally meaningless, it seems to me, are criticisms of this agreement based on any argument as to per capita purchases. We have been told, for instance, that we purchase from the United States $28.86 worth of goods per capita per annum, and that they only purchase from us $2.23 worth of goods per capita per annum. So what? What does this prove? It does not prove anything. It is one of those propositions that when you state it it means nothing. If we take the whole world as one country and Canada as the other, we find that we buy $55 worth of goods per capita from the world, but treating that world as one country we find that they buy from ns only an infinitesimal amount per capita as compared with that $55. Is it then to be concluded that we shall not deal with that other country, which is the world? The idea is preposterous.



Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
I do not particularly wish to obtrude on the attention of this house anything with relation to myself and my own family, but perhaps I might be permitted to do so to illustrate my argument. I happen to be one of a family of five-three children, a wife and myself.


An hon. MEMBER:: Four.


Ralph Maybank: Four and a half, anyway. Suppose I go down to Utah and start a grocery store there, and that the present head of the Brigham Young family-you know Brigham Young had a great many wives and a tremendous number of children-comes to me and says, "Maybank, if you will undertake that every member of your family will buy from us $50 worth of goods per annum I will see that the Brigham Youngs buy fifty cents worth per capita per annum from you." Do you think I would not jump at the chance? I would not worry about the disparity between $55 per capita on the one side and only fifty cents per capite on the other, if I could get fifty cents each' from that immense number of people, because I believe by now the Brigham Youngs are an immense number.
No; we do not have to worry about the balance of trade with any particular country. We all know now; we have learned to our sorrow in the last five years, that we cannot sell if we do not buy, and that people outside cannot sell to us if they will not buy from us. Naturally I shall support this treaty because it is the one bright spot in the fiscal policy panorama of this country for a great many years.
For just a moment I should like to refer to the subject of publishers and magazines. This is one of the matters referred to by the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe). The hon. member was very much against letting in American magazines. He referred to their teaching a foreign culture and a different patriotism, to their being published by people with a national outlook which varied from our own. I want to say to the hon. gentleman and to all hon. members: The way to help the publishing industry of this country is by removing some of the impediments from which the industry is suffering. Recently 1 received a little publication from an agency which apparently represents the Canadian publishing trade and I had in mind placing upon Hansard a part of the argument cited here. A short time ago I apparently transgressed the rules of the house and I do not want to repeat that mistake. If I am wrong in reading this I hope, sir, you will stop me. Apparently this is a reproduction of an article

which appeared in my own paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, and is signed "H. B. G." I really intend to adopt this article as my own argument; I am not quoting it exactly as an authority. It reads:
AVe are told that while the American publisher has a much larger market for his product than the Canadian publisher, the latter is also handicapped in having to pay more for his paper, his inks, his type, his machinery and other supplies because of customs tariffs and sales taxes that are not borne by his United States competitor. He pays a high postage rate, owing to the increase during the depression. On everything that enters into the production of a magazine, say the Canadian publishers, there is high protection and heavy taxation.
This is the work of the previous administration at Ottawa, which could never conceive it possible to go too far in providing protective devices. But since the attempt to ban the entry into Canada of American magazines was an entirely mistaken policy and one inimical to the intellectual and cultural interests of this country, and has now properly been reversed, it is only right that the duties on the equipment and supplies of Canadian publishers should also be removed or greatly reduced.
I commend that to the attention of the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe and to all other hon. members.
I do not think we need to worry about foreign culture or foreign influence. I suppose we are affected somewhat by these magazines which teach a foreign culture and a different patriotism, but this effect is not very great. After all, Canadians are fairly impervious to influences of that sort. The Canadian people were not affected very much by the American influence with which they were confronted for two or three months before the election. For instance, they were completely impervious to the jargon sent over the radio by Mr. Sage. That was an instance of a Conservative importation of foreign culture, and, far from doing harm, it did the Canadian people a lot of good. I hope it proves to be a salutary lesson to the Conservative party.
We do not need to worry about foreign culture. We are a hardy people; we are a characterful people, and we are quite capable of carving out our own destiny and developing our own character. We may as well make up our minds anyway that we cannot keep out American influence by stopping American magazines. This is impossible when as a part of our daily lives we have the automobile upon the open road, the movie and the radio. Nothing can be done about the matter; we must rely upon our own characters and I believe the character of the Canadian people is sufficient to withstand these successive shocks.

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
As I have said before, I am sorry that the tariff cuts are not more extensive. Instead of the duty on agricultural implements being reduced by fifty per cent, I would prefer to see the tariff wiped out altogether. I consider the tariff on automobiles is entirely too high and that a fifteen per cent combination of imposts would be plenty. I would like to see the gasoline racket stopped completely by putting that commodity upon the free list.
I used to be a lumberjack in British Columbia and at that time I came into contact with that union about which we sometimes hear, known as the I.WAV. These boys would stage a strike for practically any one of the reasons for which a man takes a drink and they were ready at any time to stage a strike for any other reason. Often when they staged one they used to walk down the valley singing. "There'll be pie in the sky when we die." The people in my constituency are not interested in "pie in the sky when they die." They want the benefits of Liberalism right away. They want to be able to pass on a heritage to their grandchildren, a heritage made possible because of Liberal policies put into effect to-day. We want to start with the Dunning tariff of 1930 and proceed from there on.
While this treaty does not go as far as I would like it to go, nevertheless it is wholly good. It does not preclude us from further gifts to ourselves by way of additional tariff reductions. I had intended to refer to certain figures indicating the improvements in trade in the month of January of this year as compared with January of the year before. I believe however that in the main they have already been placed on Hansard. But it is obvious to everyone that both in imports and exports trade in the month of January greatly increased over the previous January, and that, as the Prime Minister has said, was the result of only a partial operation of the treaty. When we again translate figures of that sort into working hours we see the great importance of trade as a means of relieving depression.
I regard this trade agreement as being wholly good because it is the first step; because in the mind of the leader of the opposition, although he would not say so, it marks a newr orientation to the fiscal problems of this dominion. I am further glad to support the agreement because of the example it is to other countries. Five years ago the whole world except Canada was mad with the disease of economic nationalism. Then we followed the multitude to do evil; in fact, in the last five years we overtook the multitude and committed more sin than did
most other nations. But now fortunately economic sanity has returned and it is my hope and belief that by this act we shall influence other nations back in the direction of economic virtue to the benefit not only of those nations but of ourselves and to the general advantage of all with whom they and we respectively live, move and have our being, commercially speaking. For all these reasons I am happy to support this treaty.


Mr. A. J. BROOKS (Royal):: I shall take a few minutes only in discussing this trade agreement, which is of great importance to the people of Canada. It is an agreement in which we are all particularly interested. It is not my intention to discuss it from the general standpoint because I do not consider myself qualified to do so, but I should like to consider it from the point of view of those provinces of which I have the honour to be one of the members-the maritimes.
It is interesting to know that according to the last census the population of Canada has become more urban and less rural, but this fact does not apply to the three Atlantic provinces; we are more rural than urban. The census of 1931 shows that the population of Prince Edward Island was 67,653 rural and 20,385 urban; Nova Scotia, 281,192 rural and 231,654 urban; New Brunswick, 279,279 rural and 128,940 urban, or in the maritimes a total rural population of 628,124 and a total urban population of 380,979. I quote these figures to show' that we in the maritime provinces are distinctly a rural population and are primary producers. The great industries of the maritime provinces are fishing, lumbering, mining and forestry, and any agreement which is made, if it is to benefit us, must give us some benefit in these primary industries that I have mentioned.
Let me take first the great industry of fishing. It is a fact wrhich is wTell known not only in this country but throughout the world that the maritime provinces of Canada possess the greatest fishing area to be found anywhere in the world. It is an old industry, one of the first to be established on this continent; for we all remember from our history that in the days of Cabot men came from England, France and other places across the sea and reported that fish were so plentiful in the northern Atlantic ocean that they could be gathered up in baskets. We have over
8.000	square miles in the bay of Fundy and
200.000	square miles, or over four-fifths of the fishing ground, in the north Atlantic, and in addition to this we have 15,000 square miles of inshore waters entirely controlled by the dominion. Besides this great extent of

Canada-TJ. S. Trade Agreement

fisheries we have, I believe, the best fish to be found anywhere in the world. I say this because it is well known that the colder the water the better the quality of fish, and as you go north in the northern Atlantic and up among the maritime provinces you find, with the purity and coldness of the water, a better quality of fish, including cod, herring, mackerel and salmon. In this great industry some 40,000 fishermen are employed. This will indicate to some extent the importance of the industry. Taking five members to a family-and I am not taking a Brigham Young estimate now-there are about 200,000 people dependent on the industry in the mari-times, and a capital of $16,138,728 is invested in the fisheries of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.
I have laid this foundation to show the extent and greatness of this industry which we have in the Atlantic provinces. It is well known that in the last five or six years the industry has been in a very bad condition. Markets have not been good, and there is no class of people in the maritime provinces -and I doubt whether there is in any other part of Canada-who have suffered more than have the fishermen. Not only have they lost tens of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment, but in 1934 many lives were lost. It is a very hazardous occupation; I doubt whether there is any more hazardous. These men therefore should be well compensated for the work they are doing. I am safe in saying that in the last few months, or prior to October 14, the maritime provinces were promised that in the event of a reciprocal agreement being brought about with the United States they would be one of the first sections of Canada to be considered, and that they would receive great benefits from such a treaty.
In any reciprocity treaty which has ever been mentioned through all these years it will be found, if one will take the trouble to study the history of the proposals and agreements, that the fisheries of the maritime provinces was, or was supposed to be, one of the first considerations as regards any agreement. In this connection I should like to quote the remarks of an hon. gentleman who a short time ago was a member of this house and who to-day I congratulate upon having been elevated to the Senate; I refer to the Hon. William Duff. Senator Duff has always been greatly interested in fisheries in his native province, and on many occasions has spoken in this house as to the great benefits which would be derived by the fishing industry from a reciprocity treaty with the

United States. At different times he brought in several resolutions, and in speaking to a resolution which he presented on February 20, 1933, he gave expression to these thoughts:
My hon. friend asks who imposed the duty; the United States, of course.
Then he goes on:
Now, in my opinion, with the Canadian fisheries in their present condition-
And he had told the house of the deplorable condition of the fisheries at that time:
-there is only one salvation for them, and that is for this government-
And he was exhorting the Conservative government of the day:
-to make a trade arrangement with the United States so that our fish might go into that country.
We hear a good deal about trawlers nowadays. I have no time to go into that question to-day, but if we had the United States for a market there would not be very much talk about trawlers because the trouble to-day is that Canada is a very small market. Great Britain is too far away from us, being some twenty-five hundred miles across the water, and they have their own source of supply so far as fish is concerned, so that practically the only market open to us now, to which we can extend our business, is the United States. I need_ not say that the fisheries of this country are in a deplorable condition, and I appeal to the government to do everything they can to help the industry. There is no question about it that there is a great opportunity for the government as well as for the fishermen of Canada.
Then he goes on to say:
I think the time ripe for something to be done if we are to be clear of our surplus product. This is the time for the government to enter into negotiations with the government of the United States.
That is the exhortation which was given to the Conservative party in 1933. On Feb-rurary 19, 1934, Mr., now Senator, Duff brought in his resolution again. At that time he said:
If an arrangement could be made whereby certain goods from the United States were permitted to enter this country free of duty while the fish from lake Winnipeg, the great lakes and the Atlantic and the Pacific could enter that country free of duty, the fishermen of Canada would be in a much better position than they are to-day. In my opinion, this government should do everything possible to see that this is done.
I quote this to point out that Senator Duff was voicing the opinion of the maritime provinces as regards fish.
A reciprocity arrangement has been entered into, not by a Conservative government but by the government opposite, a Liberal government, and I should like to ask if Senator Duff's recommendations have been carried out by his old government. I think the facts will prove very much to the contrary.

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
I should like to refer for a few minutes to some of our leading fish. In this connection may I say that I am sorry that the hon. member for Queens-Lunenburg (Mr. Kinley) is not in his seat. I was surprised to hear him, in this house a few days ago, tell us that he was the representative of the best fishing county in the maritime provinces and also in Canada, and say that he supported this reciprocity agreement. We find that in Nova Scotia lobsters are the greatest fish product of the province. In 1934 the catch was 18,459,000 pounds, and the market value 82,461,784. As was pointed out by the hon. member for Queens-Lunenburg, this fish has always entered the United States free.
It is well known that we in the maritime provinces and Newfoundland produce practically all the lobsters in the world. We have the finest lobsters that are found anywhere. The only lobster, I believe, that is found outside of Canada is one called the spiny lobster, which in reality is not a lobster at all. Lobsters are entering and have entered the United States free, because the Americans want our lobsters, and I think we shall find in reviewing any agreement with the United States that anything the Americans want from us they allow us to send them free, but anything about which we wish to bargain, it is a very hard matter to make a favourable bargain.
The cod is a fish which is produced in great abundance in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. As a matter of fact, cod is the second largest fish product of the maritime provinces, and our fishermen hoped and expected that it would have been included in the agreement with the United States. But there is a duty, and a heavy one, on cod, and it is because of this duty that many of the fishermen of these provinces are in the deplorable condition in which they find themselves to-day. We expected that the government, in making an agreement with the United States, would take this into consideration and secure the removal of the duty.
The hon. member for Queens-Lunenburg, in speaking the other day, said that he understood one reason why the duty was not taken off cod and haddock was because we had allowed English anthracite coal to come into this country, and that coal was the commodity which the Americans wished to barter in exchange for our cod and haddock and other fish, I think this is a very far-fetched argument, because we all know that in Walkerville, Ontario, for instance, the liquor
producers have been given the opportunity to ship at a greatly lowered duty millions of gallons of whiskey into the United States, and I have not heard that any quid pro quo was demanded as far as whiskey is concerned. It might also be pointed out as regards fisheries in the maritime provinces that the government, on account of the market now opened to the American manufacturer in the maritime provinces, containing a population of over a million, could have very well exchanged our fish for the manufactured products which we shall undoubtedly receive from that country.
I could go on down through the list of fisheries in these three provinces, but it is not my intention to do so. The list is long. I have pointed out that the great fishing industry in the maritime provinces was not considered at all. They speak about swordfish; we all know there is very little export of swordfish to the United States, we know also there is still a duty on swordfish. As to herring, the great market is not in the United States but is I understand, in the British West Indies. Then there is the small herring used in New Brunswick for sardines. Sardines have not received any benefit under this agreement. Sardines form the greatest fisheries export of New Brunswick. In 1934 it amounted to 41,458,200 poundte, of a market value of $1,087,674. These were not exported to the United States, because the United States impose a heavy duty on our sardines in order to protect the sardine canneries of Eastport and the Maine coast. As far as the fisheries of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are concerned they gain nothing from this agreement, although they were led to believe they would receive much.
It is a small step from fish to potatoes. I am not going to say much about potatoes tonight because that subject has already been pretty well covered. I was amused when the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon) in his excellent address spoke of a ten acre field of potatoes. I may tell my hon. friend that in my province of New Brunswick a ten acre field of potatoes is just a back yard garden. We grow potatoes there by the hundreds of acres. In the county of Carleton, New Brunswick, whose representative (Mr. Patterson) I see in the house-and he can verify what I say-it is not uncommon to see fields of potatoes of one hundred acres and more. What do we find in regard to potatoes since this agreement came into force? The potato farmers of New Brunswick are not receiving any benefit under it; very much the contrary.

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
In that connection I wish to read a statement from the Carleton Sentinel, a paper published in the county of Carleton in which many potatoes are produced:
A move is now on foot, sponsored by the New Brunswick Farmers' Industrial Organization, to have a countervailing duty placed on American potatoes, which under the existing regulations may be imported into Canada duty free.	Apparently this phase of the new
reciprocity treaty was not regarded as important, as it would be only on rare occasions	that American potatoes could be
imported as cheaply as home produced stock could be purchased. It is generally supposed that should such a thing happen as a flow of potatoes starting from the south, the government would act at once and place a countervailing duty in effect, such as prevailed prior to 1930.	_
A situation has arisen, however, which was probably not foreseen. Potatoes are now a fairly good price in Canada and it is thought they will go higher, possibly to a price above that in the United States. For that reason dealers on the receiving end are believed, correctly or otherwise, to be watching the market very closely. This has caused some unsettlement of the market, particularly as recent court decisions south of the line will have, it is thought, a depressing effect on the Canadian market.
We believe the federal government would do well to accede to the wishes of the farmers, and put on a countervailing duty as soon as possible.
Then another article in the Hartland Observer, also published in that county, says:
A letter from Windsor confirms the fear that United States potatoes under the treaty would compete unfairly with ours. The writer says, Michigan potatoes are being marketed at 40 cents per bag cheaper than ours, and adds that but for the fact that Canadian dealers are as yet chary about handling them to the [DOT]detriment of Canadian prior contracts, there would be a brisk trade for American spuds in Ontario. Canadian farmers are being made philanthropists to their American cousins.
I received also a letter to-day from a gentleman who is a very large exporter of potatoes in Carleton county, Mr. Hatfield, who claims that there are being sold in Montreal and Quebec. Maine potatoes, called "commercials," of a grade not marketable by Canadian farmers. He also says that Maine potatoes are crossing daily from Van Buren into St. Leonard free of duty under the provisions of the new trade pact with the United States. I quote this to show that as far as potatoes are concerned-and in my province we are large potato producers, as they are in Prince Edward Island and to a less degree in Nova Scotia-we receive no benefit from this agreement for this primary-product. Someone may say that the seed potatoes receive some benefit. That is true, but it is not the seed potato that is the great commercial potato of the maritime provinces, and it is not the

seed potato producer, but the producer of
table potatoes who needed protection.
I rather hesitate to say anything regarding small fruits, vegetables, apples, and dairy products, which we produce very extensively in our province and the other provinces by the sea. What has been said by previous speakers applies also to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We receive no benefit as far as these vegetables and small fruits are concerned. Our market will be open to the products of the United States, which will come in earlier than ours and satiate the appetite of the people in Montreal, Toronto and other places where we market much of our small fruits and vegetables.
Mention has also been made of the lumber industry. We in New Brunswick are greatly interested in lumber. Years ago the United States market was the best one we had, but on account of the duties which have been imposed against the lumber products of the maritime provinces that market was closed to us. The duty has now been lowered $2 per thousand feet, but anyone who is lumbering in New Brunswick to-day will tell you that it was not the producer of lumber in New Brunswick, but the consumer in the United States, who received the benefit of this lowering of duty, with the result that there is far less lumber being cut in New Brunswick to-day than there was a year ago. The only market we had is the market which we obtained through the Ottawa agreements. If it had not been for the Ottawa agreements, during the last three years the lumber industry in these provinces would have been practically dead. Only last week when I was home there were three ships loading lumber in Saint John, not for the United States but for England. A lumberman told me that he was selling one and a half million feet of lumber in England, and that during the last two or three years, and particularly since this agreement came into effect, he did not find it profitable to sell one stick of lumber in the United States.


Mr. RYAN:: Will the hon. member tell U3 who told him that?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Yes, I will tell you any time you wish 'to know.


William Michael Ryan: Tell the house. .


Alfred Johnson Brooks: It is not necessary. Let me tell the hon. member for St. John-Albert (Mr. Ryan) that there are twenty-five members from the maritime provinces in this house and if they will inquire from their constituents they will be told that they have not received any benefit so far as this agree-


Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
ment is concerned. It is a well known fact that under the trade agreement the cities of Saint John and Halifax stand to lose a considerable amount of trade. This was trade that under most favoured' nation agreements was compelled to come through these ports. Now it may go to the ports of Boston, New York or other points along the Atlantic coast.
The hon. member for Queens-Lunenburg found something beneficial under the agreement. He said that as he was going through Nova Scotia he saw some men loading oxen to be sent to the United States to work in the woods. He added that it was a sight he had not seen for a long time. I can believe the hon. gentleman; may I add that probably it is a sight he will never see again. So far as we are concerned, the agreement is out of balance, and I believe people from our provinces will substantiate me in this statement. I was surprised to hear the hon. member defend the agreement. A few days ago, while making a speech in connection with seamen on British ships, he stated that he was particularly anxious to look after the interests of those men who went down to the sea in ships. I would say to him that there are thousands of men connected with the fishing industry in the maritime provinces who go down to the sea in ships, and I would ask the twenty-five members and the four ministers from the mari-times what was done in this agreement for those men who go down to the sea in ships in the fishing industry.
It is not my intention to say anything further than that, so far as the three maritime provinces are concerned, the agreement is very much out of balance. The reason there is such a large representation of government followers from the maritime provinces is that people down there were led to expect big things from the reciprocity agreement. They have been disappointed. Hon. members may have noticed that recently in the press there has been some talk of secession in the maritimes. May I say here and now that there is very little secession sentiment down there, but I do believe that during the last few weeks, born out of disappointment at the agreement, there has been secession talk. In the hearts of the people in the maritimes, however, there is neither the desire nor the intention to secede from the rest of Canada. We have made too great a contribution to the dominion even to think of such a thing. For the reasons I have stated it is my intention to oppose the agreement.


Hughes Cleaver: Mr. Speaker, I rise to take part in the debate with a deep sense of my lack of qualifications, but with a consciousness of the fact that if I did not raise my voice in support of the agreement I would be remiss in my duty to my constituents.
Before entering into a short discussion of some of my reasons for supporting the pact may I be permitted to extend to the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon) my sincere apologies for interrupting him while he was speaking. I did not intend the interruption to be an act of discourtesy, and if he considered it as such I apologize. I know he will be just as pleased as I was to learn that asparagus growers are this year receiving from the canners ten cents per pound, and not the four or five cents the hon. member feared they would be receiving.
May I be permitted to comment briefly on the observations of the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan). As I listened to him I could not but be deeply impressed by his sincerity and the experience behind his words, but I was surprised and almost startled to find that one of his experience in public life could be so far removed from and almost ignorant of the actual living conditions of the great mass of the common people, and I was further surprised to hear him express satisfaction with the trend of affairs in Canada in the last few years. Perhaps so far as our financial interests are concerned there is some reason for satisfaction, but surely when we consider the plight of our farmers and workers we find no cause for satisfaction. Great numbers of our people are on relief, with all its consequent hardship and distress. One worker in every eight is denied the right to earn for himself and his family an honest living. Without fear of contradiction I state that if it is necessary to sacrifice the welfare of the common people to salvage our financial institutions, the price is too great. If the time should come when I as a member of this house would have to choose between property rights and personal rights of the people, I would have no hesitancy in making my choice.
Listening to the speeches which have been made concerning the trade agreement it seems to me that the matters in dispute are brought down to a narrow compass. After brushing aside all the frills I believe the only real objections to the pact that I have heard are the two raised by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett). May I deal first with his criticism of the weakness of our present tariff structure in so far as it applies to the inter-

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
mediate tariff. In this connection he cited several items, but greatest stress has been placed upon cut flowers and potatoes. If I understood him correctly he blames the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) for negotiating an agreement whereby, until a change is made in the tariff, certain articles will enter Canada duty free. I was interested to look back to ascertain who was responsible for the present weakness in tariff structure in so far as the intermediate schedule is concerned. Looking up the record I find that cut flowers constitute item 79b. I find that this tariff was under consideration and some amendment was made to it in the September session of 1930. Now who was the leader of the government in September, 1930? Who was responsible for our present tariff structure, which has recently been criticized, and for which the present government was almost blamed?
Coming to the other item of potatoes, also referred to in the debate, it is item 83 in the tariff, and there again I find that the tariff on potatoes was dealt with by the government on October 13, 1932. Now who was the leader of the government on October 13, 1932? I submit, sir, that our present Prime Minister did everything he could to protect the people of this country in respect to those items in regard to which our intermediate tariff structure is weak when he retained the right on behalf of the parliament of Canada to raise the intermediate tariff on any of these articles if it should be deemed necessary or advisable to do so, and I suggest to you, sir, that it is strange that the leader of the opposition should attempt to blame this government for something which his own government did. If there is any weakness in the structure of the intermediate tariff, who is to blame for that? Our whole tariff structure was rebuilt by the leader of the last government in this country. I am not suggesting that in 1930 when he did revamp the tariff structure he should have had foresight enough to see the dilemma he would be in to-day, but I do say that if there is anyone in the house who should not criticize this government for what somebody else's government did, it is the leader of the opposition.
Coming to the other criticism which has been levelled at the agreement by the leader of the opposition, there is no dispute as to the principle that freer trade between Canada and the United States is beneficial to both countries. There is also no dispute that when the previous government instituted negotiations for the purpose of arriving, if

possible, at a trade pact with the United States those negotiations were instituted in full knowledge of the fact that the powers of the president of the United States were very much limited in their character, and by initiating those negotiations I suggest that the leader of the opposition impliedly accepted those restrictions and cannot now be heard to express any criticisms in regard to them. Therefore the whole matter narrows down to simply an expression of opinion by experts as to whether the bargain which has been made is a fair and square one. and just in that regard I would like to make this statement.
The Prime Minister believes he has negotiated an agreement which is fair and equitable to both Canada and the United States. Any trade agreement which is to be permanent in its character must of necessity be fair to both countries. On the other hand, the leader of the opposition believes that the agreement is ruinous to Canada; that it is an improvident one. Now, when we reach the point at which it is simply a matter of weighing opinions by experts, I suggest that perhaps the best way to do that is to look at the past efforts and the past results of both these tariff experts. Certainly they cannot both be right; one must be wrong, and only experience and trial will prove conclusively who is right. But I suggest that by looking over the record for the last few years we can form a pretty strong conclusion as to which of our tariff experts in this house is the leader we should follow.
In 1930, when appealing to the electors of this country the present leader of the opposition criticized very severely many conditions which existed in Canada at that time, and he blamed the government of the day for those conditions. Private individuals were not to blame; companies were not to blame; the government was to blame. Speaking at Sarnia on July 17, 1930, as reported in the Mail and Empire, the leader of the opposition said:
Someone is responsible for unemployment, not individuals, but governments.
And he set himself up as a tariff expert and propounded the scheme that by raising tariffs he would bring prosperity to this country.
Again, speaking at Winnipeg, he said:
Listen you agriculturists from the west. You have been taught to mock tariffs and applaud free trade. Tell me when did free trade fight for you. You say tariffs are only for the manufacturer. I will make them fight for you as well. I wall use them to blast a way into the markets which have been closed to you.

Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement
Again, speaking at Moncton, on July 10, during the same election campaign he said:
Mr. King promises consideration of the problem of unemployment. I promise to end unemployment. Which policy do you like best?
All the way through his speeches in that campaign the government was to blame, and his government would improve conditions. Then at Saskatoon-and I think his Saskatoon speech was the masterpiece of them all- He said:
No doles, no gifts, no charity, but a chance to work, I say.
The whole story of the leader of the opposition was that we were importing from other countries millions of dollars' worth of goods that we should be making right here at home.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Hear, hear.


Hughes Cleaver: And he would raise the tariffs high enough to stop that importation of foreign goods so that our own workmen would make them in this country and we would all be prosperous. He was a good salesman. A majority of the Canadian people took his scheme at par value, and his party was swept into power with an overwhelming majority, with the result that in September of the same year, at a special fall sitting of the house, tariffs were raised for the express purpose of excluding those imports.
But there was one factor that the right hon. gentleman apparently forgot or did not think of. Statesmen, politicians, business men in other countries are just as clever as are our best men in Canada and are actuated by similar feelings-patriotism towards their own country, and good sound business principles. So that when we raised the tariff so high that we prevented our neighbours from selling to us, those very same tariff walls prevented us from exporting our own goods. International trade is nothing more or less than exchange of commodities. If we will not buy we cannot sell, and the result of five years' experimenting by the late government with high tariffs-I take my figures from the last Conservative budget of 1935-was this: Our trade dropped from a total of 2,506 million dollars in 1929 to about half of that amount, 1,292 million dollars, in 1935. This policy of high tariffs, instead of curing unemployment, has increased it four times. These figures are known to all hon. members. Though the world surplus of wheat has been cut in half, our surplus of wheat has doubled as a result of our trade policy. Our farmers are practically ruined. All types of business
have suffered, excepting, of course, monopolies. The national debt has increased by 900 millions of dollars. Is it any wonder that when the people of Canada at last had an opportunity to vote they voted in no uncertain terms? They passed up and repudiated this policy of high protection. I believe the leader of the opposition has made a real contribution to the life of this country in that by the distress of the last five years he has taught us a lesson we will never forget. In the words of the Hamilton Spectator, a Conservative daily, high tariffs may profit a few people, but for the country at large they do not pay. They are artificial restraints on trade which put men out of work in all countries. After five years of bitter experience with the present leader of the opposition as our tariff expert, is it any wonder that the people rebelled and decided that they would change over?
Halton county, which I have the honour to represent, is sometimes considered as part of the garden of Canada. There is a large acreage under fruit and vegetables. During the past five years our growers asked for and received sufficient tariff protection to exclude all foreign fruits and vegetables from the Canadian market during the crop season. Notwithstanding the fact that they enjoyed a practically exclusive Canadian market during the crop season, this exclusive right turned out to be absolutely valueless. The very instrument which gave them that right was also depreciating the buying power of the general public so that the.domestic market was of no use. Representing the fruit and vegetable growers of Halton county I am pleased to say that they are taking this pact on faith. It is quite true that in connection with potatoes and one or two other items amendments will have to be made because of the weakness of our intermediate tariff structure, but these growers know the Liberal party has never bartered away their rights; they know they have never suffered at the hands of that party and they are looking forward to the future with every confidence. In conclusion, on behalf of the people of Halton county I wish to extend to the Prime Minister and to the officials of his department who assisted him in the successful negotiation of this trade agreement our heartfelt thanks and congratulations.


Mr. BRUCE McNEVIN (Victoria, Ont.):: Mr. Speaker, may I avail myself of this opportunity to congratulate you upon your election to the high office of Speaker of the House of Commons. Unlike many other hon. members, I cannot speak from past experience, but from my observations during the past few
Canada-U. S. Trade Agreement

weeks I am satisfied that you have maintained the high traditions of the office that you have been called upon to fill. I should like also to congratulate the hon. member for East Kootenay (Mr. Stevens), the leader of the Reconstruction party. In his remarks to the house the other day he emphasized what I thought was a very important fact. He said that for twenty-five years he had sat with the party led by the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett), and during that time he had supported sky-high protection. I think it is significant that at this session, the first after he had separated himself from that party and adopted an independent attitude, he should be convinced that it was his duty not only to his own constituents but to the citizens of Canada as a whole to support this United States-Canada trade agreement. I am sure that loyalty to their leader, loyalty to past traditions or something of that kind is responsible for the trend of some of the arguments advanced by hon. members to my immediate left.
Before discussing the details of this agreement I should like first to illustrate what I believe to be some important reasons why this House of Commons, as representative of the opinions of the Canadian people, should adopt the resolution moved by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), which will give legal status to this agreement. One of the reasons why we believe this agreement should be adopted is the fact that in Canada we have developed very extensive facilities for transportation by rail and water. Both forms of transportation are capable of carrying increased tonnage and there are many unemployed transportation workers who will be given work as a result of the adoption of this agreement.
I am not going to maintain that this agreement will meet with the approval of every citizen of Canada. That would be impossible The conclusion of the empire trade agreements created a measure of dissatisfaction in certain quarters of Canada and the old land, and the same may be said of this agreement. However, we are satisfied1 that the adoption of this agreement will be in the best interests of the Canadian people as a whole. I am sure that it could never be concluded on the basis of satisfying each and every individual.
There is another reason why it will be advantageous to adopt this agreement. The investors of the United States have invested the huge total of four billion dollars in Canadian provincial, municipal, federal, business investments and securities. The annual interest and principal payments amount to approximately $240,000,000. I believe this

exchange of international obligations has been one of the reasons why we have been able to conclude this agreement. The general recognition of the interdependence that exists between two countries lying alongside each other has made possible the final settlement of many items.
The hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe), in his speech the other day, argued that we should develop trade east and west. That is all very well; I agree that we must develop trade east and west. But in addition to that we must develop trade across the seas and we must develop trade north and south; for it is absolutely necessary that we should develop our trade from every possible angle in order to take care of the vast surpluses of primary products which we have in Canada.
One important feature of this Canada-United States trade agreement is the application of the most favoured nation clause whereby the dominion will receive the benefit of the intermediate tariff of the United States. I do not think there is any other country in the world that will derive as much benefit from the inclusion of that most favoured nation clause as will the dominion, because by this provision there have been made available the intermediate tariffs of a large number of countries in addition to the United States, and in any further treaties negotiated by that country Canada will indeed reap considerable benefit.
Since the discussion of this agreement started we have heard a good deal about trade balances. Trade balances are important; nevertheless I think I am within the bounds of truth in saying that we cannot set up trade balances as a barometer and declare that they constitute absolutely a measure whereby to judge the solvency or insolvency of a nation. Moreover, we must, in order to get a clear picture of trade balances, take into consideration the entire trade situation in any country. There are many other matters that enter into the prosperity of a nation or into the question of trade balances which the time at my disposal will not permit me to deal with just now.
I should like, however, to illustrate the point with a few commodities. We will have imported in the first three months of 1936, approximately $1,000,000 worth of oranges alone, and in the last fiscal year we imported of that one commodity $5,000,000 worth. If we consider a great many items not produced or manufactured in Canada, it is inevitable that over a period of years we shall expect from our neighbour to the south

Customs Act
perhaps a substantial difference in the trade balance. But we have t'he tourist traffic and several other items to counterbalance that. I mention the tourist traffic, that may not amount to a very great deal in this agreement except the right granted to Canadian citizens to go to the United States and bring back $100 worth o-f commodities free of duty. But in the riding I have the honour to represent there is a district the citizens of which moved in at the time that lumbering operations were in full swing. Now, however, the timber is pretty well gone; we have the citizens, and the tourist traffic is about the only means of livelihood, during a considerable part of the year, so far as these people are concerned. If, therefore, through trade agreements or in any other way we can create a better spirit of good will between these two great peoples, north and south, I am sure this district will reap considerable benefit. I desire to direct the attention of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers), and this may be aside from the question, but I would point out to the minister that in this territory it is necessary, in order to facilitate the movement of tourists, to improve certain trunk roads, and I trust that in the supplementary estimates some provision will be made whereby a scheme can be worked out by which, at least during a part of the year, the people living in the tourist area, without suitable land from which to earn their entire livelihood, may be given some employment to assist them in the education of their children and to help them to maintain a reasonable standard of living.
To my mind, this agreement is not based upon the idea that one country is receiving a great deal more benefit than is the other, nor do I think it was negotiated in that spirit. It seems to me that a safe, sound, sane trade agreement must be based upon the principle of mutual advantage to the two countries involved; and if the agreement is going to last; if it is to be renewed, that is the only basis upon which it can be satisfactorily negotiated. I therefore congratulate the Prime Minister upon the attitude he has taken towards the entire negotiation and all the procedure connected with the trade agreement, which I believe will be of lasting benefit to the dominion.
There is another point of view to be considered. Hon. gentlemen to my left are inclined to emphasize the position of the industrial worker. The riding which I represent embraces agricultural interests, lumber interests, tourist interests and also some important industrial interests. I want to point out-and I believe this will bear the searchlight of this house-that during the period in which the more elastic trade policies of the
government now in office have been in force the industrial workers of the dominion have not suffered to the same extent that they suffered during the last five years by reason of the extreme policy adopted by the government that was in office prior to October 14.
There is another angle of this industrial worker situation that I think we must not overlook. We have in this dominion a potential home consumers' market that is very much affected by the prosperity of the people who are engaged in the primary industries. One of the great needs of the industrial worker to-day is increased purchasing power of those who are employed in the wealth-producing activities of the nation. Therefore when you negotiate an agreement that has a tendency to increase the purchasing power of the people engaged in actual production, this is sure to be reflected in such a way as to assist the industrial workers of Canada.
As I have not time to conclude my address, and it is five minutes to eleven, 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.
Friday, March 6, 1936